Only Somewhat Boring

I Don't Belize It

2012-01-27T17:13:00.003Z

Sorry for the extremely cod title, but it's a pun you see everywhere here, with minor variations.

It's quite surprising that Belize seems little thought of in the UK as a holiday destination. I've been to a couple of Caribbean islands and would say this is the equal of some of the best there.

Maybe some Brits share my prior image of British troops sitting in a jungle hilltop bunker, sweaty and mossie-bitten.

So, many thanks to Sarah for telling me about her hols in the country and seeding the idea, and to Ian for his recommendation of Ramon's Village.

We got off the flight from Miami without having chosen between the three ways to get from Belize International to Ambergris Caye. These seem to be:
1) Direct flight in a 12-seater plane - a 40-minute wait then a 15-minute flight, but about £97 each, return, on Tropic Air.
2) Taxi to Belize City Airport then a slightly cheaper flight.
3) Taxi to Belize City marine terminal, then a ferry (misnamed as a "water taxi") here via Caulker Caye - probably just under two hours travelling plus an undetermined wait for the boat.

We took option 1, mainly as the easiest path. This was good on the way here, but really pays off on the way back, when we'll need to get up at 8am instead of around 5am.

The air strip is right next to Ramon's and they rang to get a golf cart sent for us. Most of the vehicles on this part of the island are golf carts, mostly hired by tourists apparently unable to walk the short local distances.

Having now taken a boat ride along the nearby coast, Ramon's Village stands out as the native-looking one, all wooden with palm-thatched roofs. It's history is quite interesting: originally built in 1961 with the first pool on the island; destroyed by a hurricane on the night of its completion; derelict for 20 years; mentioned to a regular U.S. visitor by his fishing guide, Ramon; bought and renovated on the condition that Ramon manage it; re-sold in the 1990's and repeatedly improved since; some staff dating back 20 years now, with Ramon still managing.

It does seem like a great fusion of local culture with U.S. business sense and standards (all prices in the hotel are in $US). A worthy recommendation.

We arrived at Ramon's and found ourselves in a one-room, detached "cabana" with a high thatched roof supported by poles inside that sat on the wooden walls. It would have been fine, apart from containing two 4'6'' beds, rather than one larger bed. Apparently we got a "double" rather than a "king".

Ramon's bookings can only be made via a U.S. phone number where the lady puts you on hold for several minutes, regardless of where you're phoning from. I guess our wishes either didn't get passed on or got garbled in translation.

Anyway, we managed to upgrade on the second day to a room with a king sized bed and further from the road. After that I felt better and managed to relax more.

We've had a few highlights during our time here:
- Snorkelling beside many colourful fish in "Hol Chan" marine reserve, a hole in the barrier reef that protects this whole part of the coast and limits local tides to a couple of feet.
- Moving on to "Shark Ray Alley" where we swam close to sharks well over 8 feet in length and even closer to sting rays about 5 feet across.
- Seeing local fishermen filleting fish and standing beside them in the water whilst smaller rays tickled my legs as they swam around after scraps.
- Sitting all day on the beach under a palm-thatch sun shade, watching the line of surf from waves breaking on the reef, with a regular supply of cocktails and cold Belikin local beer.
- Hiring a golf cart ourselves for a couple of hours and going to the edges of this part of the island.
- The flight to the island, low over the water with great views.
- Great local food, with honourable mentions for Caramba, Elvi's Kitchen (who would have thought that was what elviskitchen meant on Facebook?), Wild Mango's (for a great tapas-style lunch) and Hurricanes, where we each had 3 half-tails of lobster with meat that came out whole and delicious.

Anyway, tomorrow we move on to Peru and Lima, and from sea level to 5000 feet. I wonder what we'll discover there?

Last day at Ramon's Village

2012-01-27T16:42:00.002Z

We have had a lovely, chilled and relaxing week here. The weather has been hot and sunny, although always with a strong warm breeze coming in off the sea.

A highlight was the snorkelling - at the barrier reef and then with the sharks and stingrays, some of which were huge! The water is incredibly clear and warm and it felt like swimming in a big goldfish bowl!

We were up at 5.20am this morning to watch the sunrise. Although there was cloud on the horizon, watching the sky change colour from darkness to red, orange, yellow then blue was pretty stunning.

We have eaten out at various restaurants, as well as eating at the resort, and had some lovely food. Lobster is amazing; had not tried this before.

The hotel staff and people in general are really friendly and helpful. I would certainly recommend this resort and Belize - a hidden gem. Lots of Americans here, but very few Brits.

So tomorrow we fly back to Miami to get our flight to Lima.

A first for me!

2012-01-23T21:24:00.001Z

We had a snorkelling trial session today, as I have not done this before. Was a bit apprehensive and do not like being out of my depth and was worried about the breathing bit, but was ok and lovely to see the schools of fish in their natural habitat. We are going on a snorkelling trip tomorrow.

Someone's Got To Do It

2012-01-22T22:02:00.002Z

Left Miami yesterday on American Airlines for a two hour flight to Belize. We then had a 17 minute flight in a light aircraft to San Pedro, then a short ride in a golf cart to Ramon's Village where we are staying; the resort is small and set in lush vegetation only yards from the beach. Our room was nice, but had two small double beds instead of one kingsize, probably a language difference when we booked, all now sorted and we have moved rooms. We enjoyed a cocktail on arrival, followed by dinner of steak, prawns and lobster, with wine for me and beer for Dave. Today has been arduous, sitting by the pool and beach, thinking how incredibly lucky we are to be in such a lovely place and feeling that we left the UK weeks ago and not just four days! My hair is definitely in holiday mode, does not like the humidity or at the moment the wind, as somewhat breezy, but hey I can live with that (don't have much choice!)

Day 2 in Miami

2012-01-20T22:28:00.001Z

It has taken until today to feel that my body clock is in US time. We have slept alot. However, today we woke again to a hot sunny day and once we got ready, we went for a walk through the shopping area, where I brought some shoes (pumps). Still cannot get used to them adding the tax on the product when you get to the tills!

We had a late breakfast, I had fruit, yoghurt and toast - needed something lighter! We then decided to take a bus sightseeing tour of Miami Beach and the City - after which we decided our choice of Miami Beach was the correct place to base our stay.

I have really liked Miami Beach and the people, even after just a short 'taster' visit. Already feels that its ages since we left the UK, so goodness knows what it will feel like after 64 days.

Depress.

2012-01-20T03:59:00.001Z

That's depressurisation, not depression :-)

Villa Paradiso hotel in South Miami Beach, Florida, is aptly named - feeling pretty damn good right about now. Currently we're sitting in a lovely courtyard space next to the hotel in the cool of the night. The room is a self-catering apartment with excellent: air-con, bed, wi-fi, size, cleanliness and location. On that last point, we're on Collins Avenue just north of 14th Street (on the classic US layout of N-S Avenues and E-W Streets). Ocean Drive (N-S) and the long, deep beach are a block east of us, with so many restaurants plying for trade all day long. There's a cluster of shops a block north along Espanola Way (E-W), providing tonight's meal of pizza and beer "to go" (to this courtyard).

We went out to eat (well) last night on Ocean Drive, and walked around through much of today, catching some of the hotter-than-expected sun, particularly whilst strolling in the surf. I thought I should get a better camera for the sights the next months will bring, and chose a Sony WX9 for $200, available at Staples. Froogle said Best Buy had more stock (shout out for Gerald), and they had it on sale for $150! Checking UK prices, it looks like "£-$ parity" is alive and well.

We broke the rules (of timezone-crossing) by having a big "siesta" at the end of our walk, from around 4pm (9pm UK) to 9pm (2am). Oops. Then we woke and had the quite large meal. I'll update to say whether we managed to sleep afterward. [Update: We did manage to sleep through the U.S. night too - gosh, we must have been tired before we left!]

Most of South Beach was built in the Art Deco style in the first half of last century, and there are many great examples all around. Miami Beach is a separate city from Miami, which I didn't know.

It's looking like a good decision to start the trip here, which we only did because we had to change planes here on the way to Belize, and I thought: "if we have to get off there, we might as well see the place." In fact, this is a great place to put the brakes on after the turmoil of everything running up to the trip. It's American seaside - SO different from English seaside - so it's relaxing anyway. Also it's America, not the moon, so we don't feel the compulsion to go and "experience" everything.

One thing has impressed me above all. The people are SO helpful. Most respect goes to the lady bus driver on the "J" bus from MIA airport to Miami Beach. We told her where we needed to go and she actually waved down her colleague on the 120 bus, then helped to carry Clare's bag to the other bus and explained to the driver where we needed to be dropped. Imagine THAT in London!!!!

First Day of Trip

2012-01-19T13:59:00.001Z

Rob picked us up at 6am to take us to Heathrow to catch our flight to Miami. Very emotional saying goodbye to him, my insides were in knots, I could not eat or drink anything. He also a soppy sod, and got emotional too. He will probably hate me for saying that!

Flight good and we landed about 2.20pm local time to a lovely warm 26 degrees. Once clear of immigration and customs, we got two buses (and one very short taxi ride) to our hotel Villas Paradiso on South Beach, literally a walk away from the sea. Once checked in, we decided to go out for an early dinner as we were both really tired after a long day travelling. We found a nice restaurant not far from the beach and enoyed the meal and a few drinks!

Back to our hotel and I was asleep by 8pm, but we both woke up about 4am as we are probably both still on English time. We are going to be really chilled out for the next couple of days, before we fly to Belize, and the only question we have at the time of typing this, is where shall be go for breakfast!

Away

2012-01-18T07:41:00.001Z

We've reached Heathrow early; Clare likes to be early. I like to be "on time" (ho hum) but I've never yet missed a flight, as I've told Clare once or twice, and now gets repeated back to me unprompted, with "there's always a first time." Suppose I'd better try to keep my record or I'll never live it down.

I've travelled a lot in the past, but this feels different - departing for over two months in a single block. We're naturally nervous about what we may have forgotten, so we have cause to be glad about Clare's wish to break the trip into 3 legs, and the fact we're starting in Miami, where we can pick up extra things.

That didn't stop me fiddling with my packing and other final list items until 2am. Clare says she wanted to strangle me. The alarm went off at 5am, when I told Clare that midnight was still 24 hours away. Hope we get some sleep on the plane (although "smart advice" would be to stay awake, supposedly based on the idea that people, removed from having the light of dawn every 24 hours, naturally revert to a Circadian rhythm slightly longer than that.)

There have been so many "lasts" over the past few days. Something that was surprisingly prominent was handing in my security token for work. The laptop and mobile went with little thought, but handing in the token (representing ability to access stuff) really brought home that I'm leaving; full stop. I do hope I get to go back.

Anyway, here's the itinerary for "leg 1", as it is intended:

18 Jan - Miami
21 Jan - Belize
28 Jan - Lima, Peru
2 Feb - Amazon (Puerto Maldonado)
5 Feb - Cuzco
9 Feb - Machu Picchu
13 Feb - Lake Titicaca
15 Feb - La Paz, Bolivia
17 Feb - Buenos Aires, Argentina
21 Feb-21 Mar driving through Argentina & Chile
23 Mar - Home

First day of long leave

2012-01-14T09:11:00.000Z

Well, final day at work has come and gone, does not feel real that the next time I will see the inside of an office will be August. I have left my job(s) in the good hands of Mark and Nicky, good luck to you both. Thank you to everyone for my lovely send off and presents. Trust me, I will miss you all, but I will be back!

The 'famous five' came round for dinner on Friday evening, and we had great time, as we always do. Nicky J and Heaff, will miss our lunchtime banter, but I have to have something to look forward to on my return!

Next task is the packing for a variety of temperatures and climates and looking for the illusive sunglasses! Everything has been laid out in the spare room, with enough medical supplies to stock Boots, but as I am a babe magnet for mossies, better to be prepared!

Still feels unreal, but very exciting...........!

World of Lists

2012-01-14T08:28:00.000Z

The past few months have been hectic: clearing lots of space in Dave's house; moving everything from Clare's house either to Dave's, the charity shop or waste disposal; getting ready to let Clare's house; Christmas and New Year complete with both families; forcing through Dave's career break arrangements; finishing off both our jobs and working out how to hand everything over to our replacements; not forgetting the myriad preparations necessary for our little trip.

It has been pretty stressful, but we appear to have survived (and could plausibly claim to have thrived, but let's not over-egg the pudding).

The whole thing has been driven by lists! More lists than I've ever seen before. Lists on backs of envelopes, lists on big sheets of paper, lists on smartphones and tablets. Bloody, wonderful lists. Places to empty brain turmoil out into, to make space for the generation of more. And then (please God) the gradual death of a thousand little pests, sitting there in rows on the page, shouting that you're not allowed to sit down and rest yet.

Even now, the day after we've both left our jobs, the lists aren't empty. I still have to get my last Rabies jab and go back into my office to drop off my work laptop and phone. I've lost a receipt for £150 of expenses that I won't be able to claim if I don't find it before we go.

Still, the lists are continually getting less and shorter. The biggest list left is the packing list, one that we've been drafting for weeks. I don't suppose I mind that list so much.

A Journey of 60,000 Miles

2012-01-09T13:27:00.011Z

From Clare:

9 days until we fly to Miami, so everything is getting manic at home and work. It has come around so quickly, and only seems like yesterday since we started planning this trip. Also still cannot believe that we have 7 months off work! This is going to be a trip of a lifetime, although it has still not sunk in yet really what we are doing, it will probably become real when we are on the plane.

From Dave:

I love the Great Circle Mapper at gc.kls2.com, and so I put on the three legs of our trip to see what they look like. You can paste the airport-chain lists below into their "Paths" box and see the maps and detail of the flights.

First leg:
Lhr-mia, Mia-bze, bze-mia, Mia-lim, lim-pem, pem-cuz, lpb-eze, eze-lhr = 17,593 Miles

Second leg:
Lhr-pek, pek-xiy, Xiy-iqn, yih-sha, sha-nrt, nrt-lhr = 13,478 Miles

Third leg:
Lhr-bkk, bkk-hkt, hkt-bkk, bkk-syd, syd-cns, cns-bne, bne-hti, Hti-syd, syd-nan, nan-hnl, hnl-lax, lax-jfk, jfk-Lhr = 28,647 Miles

That adds up to a grand total of 59,719 miles to be flown, and I'm pretty certain that we'll drive more than 281 miles as we travel round Argentina and Chile.

Mindblowing!!!

A few notes in closing:

Thanks to Dave's employer, Atos, for granting a career break, so he doesn't need to worry about having a job to return to afterward.
Thanks to Clare's employer, Waitrose, for giving her a long leave (with pay!!).
Thanks to Crispin Speers & Partners, Dave's travel insurer through work, for stretching the maximum trip period to cover the whole of leg 1. Cheers!

Big Plans; No - Huge!

2011-10-29T13:20:00.001+01:00

So we're going away for the whole first half of 2012; just back in time to watch the Olympics on telly (no tickets, naturally).
We're going to break the six-month into three chunks, returning home between:
1) South America = Miami, Belize, Lima, Machu Picchu, La Paz, Buenos Aires and a loop through Argentina and Chile ranging from Tierra del Fuego to the Iguazu Falls.
2) China (Beijing, Xian, Yangtze cruise and Shanghai) and Japan (Tokyo, Hiroshima and probably Kyoto).
3) "Beaches of the World" - Bangkok, Phuket, Port Douglas, the Whitsunday Islands, Sydney, Fiji, Hawaii, Los Angeles and New York. Clare can't remember "Whitsunday", so look for occurrences of "Whitstanley".

After months of procrastinating over planning, it's all coming together in a rush, with the great assistance of Lucy at Flight Centre. We're now holding confirmed flights for most of the above - a few minor changes of date and wrigglings of route still to do.

SO exciting!!!

Hello Again

2011-10-29T13:03:00.001+01:00

Forgive me Reader, it's been a year since my last confession...

I did get home safely from Viet Nam. The tail end of the trip, which I failed to describe, was from HCMC to the Mekong Delta and back. Interesting enough, but the abiding impressions of Viet Nam were:
1) The contrast between Hanoi (which the Americans never reached, and so retains its vibrant, native feel) and HCMC (which was progressively colonised over decades, and so feels much less distinctive).
2) How a "Communist" country feels more like a hub of unrestrained private enterprise than anywhere else I've been.

Anyway, the purpose of this post is to prepare for fabulous new things in following posts!

Clare and I have now been together for almost a year and a half, and we're well into the process of moving in together permanently.

She's worked in a partnership for 25 years and hence gets 6 months off PAID!! We're going travelling together for the first half of 2012 :-)))

From now on, we'll be writing posts together and/or in turns.

Ha Long Etc.

2010-11-19T11:23:00.007Z

Halong Bay

Halong Bay is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, with nearly 2000 limestone islets. I built my current itinerary around seeing Angkor Wat and staying overnight on Halong Bay, which necessitated seeing Viet Nam north to south, working back toward Cambodia.

It's been worth it - Halong Bay is beautiful and mystical.

Part of that is arguably undesirable. Viet Nam apparently has 300 hazy days per year. I haven't worn my sun-hat once. Views from the roads outside Hanoi were hazy, as though seen through a fine mist of light smog.

Halong Bay was worse. Every view was in shades of grey as though seen through the morning mist - all day long. Would have been nice to get some photos just showing the islets, rather than the atmospherics.

I was up to see the sunset and the following sunrise. However, neither was visible - the greyness just faded to black and then got bright again.

Still worthwhile and unforgettable, though.

The Economy

So Viet Nam is a communist state. Really??? Every city-centre house (at least in the old quarter of Hanoi) has a Money Face - the front room downstairs is turned into a shop and tended by the grandparents (no wage bill). I've seldom seen anywhere more driven by private enterprise!

Apparently, the big change was in 1986 which saw an end to collective farms. The land was distributed, with 360 square metres per person. So a family of five would get the best part of 2 hectares, which wouldn't need 5 to farm. The others turning to handicrafts.

Some colloquial names for food found in a field probably date back to before that time:
Flying prawn - Crickets
Paddy field chicken - Rat
Baby tiger - Pussy cat

Guide Giang isn't tall. She puts this down to a great lack of calcium in the diet of her whole generation. They all now take condensed milk in their coffee because that's what they were used to as children.

Houses

Houses in and around cities look like they're built on standard plots - maybe 3 to 5 metre frontage and 10 to 15m deep (e.g. 45M² as 3x15). Some occupy double plots. Apparently, tax is based on plot size, so there's an incentive to build high. Additionally, each plot is developed independently, by contrast with the UK where a street or block is filled with houses of one design, maybe mirror-imaged. Modern estates mix a half-dozen standard designs.

The effect is to make Vietnamese streets look like rows of broken teeth - all different heights and shapes. Sometimes an 5-metre wide 3- or 4-story house is the first built in a new street; looking weirdly thin in the middle of a field!

Death Rituals

Viet Nam is supposedly 85% Buddhist, but most are non-practicing leaving the likely figure at 15%. Buddhists believe in reincarnation, and so in the north of Viet Nam they bury their deceased for only around 3 years. After this time the body should have decomposed (chemicals can assist if not). The remains are exhumed and it is the job of the eldest son to clean the bones. The cleaner, the better the form upon reincarnation (potentially as an animal). The bones are then finally reburied in a different cemetery.

Hoi An

Da Nang, just up the coast, is a big port where a growing number of big hotels has been built over recent years, with the hope of turning the current rare tourist into a huge local industry.

Little Hoi An is by far preferrable. Ancient, small and picturesque - small enough to stroll round with great cafés and local market stalls.

It has flooded twice a year for a very long time and the locals take it in their stride. During the day before my arrival, the water dropped about 2.5 feet (based on the dark line and freshly-dated chalk mark added to the collection on the wall of the old merchant's house. I took off my shoes and waded through their back room to look out the back door; being warned about the invisible stairs down to the quayside.

I took a similar stroll today and the water has fallen another 4 feet, as guaged by the length of the brick legs on the old Covered Chinese Bridge.

I like Hoi An, and I haven't even seen the beach. Nevertheless, it's an early flight to Ho Chi Minh City (aka Saigon) tomorrow.

Viet Nam

2010-11-16T22:50:00.000Z

Viet Nam is proving to be very interesting indeed, but that's true in large part to our local guide Giang ("Zang" but the language has no F, J, W or Z). She is pretty much the perfect guide, not only giving facts about places and history, but an excellent insight into social and cultural matters and issues facing her nation. This gives a much richer experience to us, and I'll relay selected highlights.

On the subject of names, Vietnamese is a monosyllabic language, so it's Viet Nam, Ha Noi, Ha Long, etc. Westerners don't have this constraint and so run names together. Apparently, Viet Nam has asked to be spelled that way in offical references by foreign governments; that might get ignored, or we might cope as with Beijing and Chennai.

Viet Nam = People of the South (w.r.t. China).
Ha Noi = (city in the) River Bend
Ha Long = Dragon Descending (and spitting out pearls that became the thousand-plus islands in the Bay)

The traffic in Ha Noi (Hanoi - seems worse than that in Cambodia. In both vehicles will:
a) drive down the wrong side of the road if that's their quickest route,
b) turn diagonally across the opposite carriageway and stop there until their exit is clear,
c) generate as many extra lanes as they fancy, including driving on the wrong side of the road whenever passing slower traffic.
All of that seems to work in Cambodia, because it feels like they're prepared to cut each other enough slack. It might be the same in rural Viet Nam. However, Hanoi has the big-city urgency thing, and people push on hard until maybe too late. Doesn't feel the same at all.

A striking thing is the "take" here on the Vietnam War (or the American War, as the locals call it, to distinguish from the French War). Viewpoints expressed (not necessarily contradictory) include:
Nobody won, because so many people died.
The Americans "won" because they achieved their objective of stopping the spread of communism - without the war there may have been up to 5 further communist countries.

My ignorant interpretation is that the North Vietnamese must have seen themselves as freedom fighters, having lifted the yoke of French colonial rule from half of their country. My visit to the "Hanoi Hilton" prison detailed the way that the French originally claimed to be bringing civilisation, but actually closed schools to suppress resistance and tortured and killed prisoners. The Americans would therefore simply be involved to continue imperialist occupation. That's not the way I've thought about it before.

Weigh Angkor

2010-11-13T08:23:00.000Z

I like the Cambodian way of naming things. Tonle Sap apparently means Big River. Why would you want to call it anything different if that's unambiguous for you and everyone you care about?

In a similar way, Angkor Wat just means City Monastery (blame the local guide if that's wrong). It used to be surrounded by a city built of wood, but the Siamese army burned it down 8 or 9 centuries ago. At least twice.

The current name of the nearby city is called Siem Reap, which means Siamese Defeated. I suspect this name is later, because parts of Angkor Wat are blackened by the smoke of pre-Siem-Reap burning down.

The best bit for me was starting at 4:45am in the pitch black (my friends won't believe I said that), walking in with just enough light to see, arriving with a hint of purple in the sky and then photographing Angkor Wat for 45 minutes solid as the purples climbed to pinks and oranges and finally the burning orb of the new day stared over each higher tier of the building in turn, daring us to stare back at the irresistible new day.

Less (strictly) romantic was the fact that 350-500 other people were also trying to get into the exact spot that would yield the best photo, so cameras were held higher and higher to try to avoid getting each other in shot. Eventually I stopped shooting the temple and took aim at the thronging horde. If you get lemons....

Other temples followed - Angkor Wat is in a huge "park" area with many other temples. Next best was probably the "Tomb Raider" Jungle Temple. Fascinating and amazing to see tree roots tilting Walls and demolishing ceiling arches. I suppose it wasn't too busy - only a 15 minute wait for a gap in the stream of visitors each time one wants to photograph a scene instead of mainly the seers.

Wouldn't have missed it, though. A day to remember. And Vietnam tomorrow night, provided the letter of invitation successfully turns into a visa.

Phnom Penh

2010-11-10T13:28:00.000Z

In Phnom Penh I was supposed to be joining an organised tour on Tuesday night, but landed on Monday night. Hence I had a day to do the things that weren't on Tuesday's itinerary.

After some soul-searching, I decided that I WOULD visit the Khymer Rouge "killing field" at Cheoung Ek, 15 km outside the city. I could describe it, but there are descriptions elsewhere. I haven't been to Auschwitz, but it must be very similar.

On Tuesday, the group visited the genocide museum - a former school that was turned into a prison, interrogation and torture centre. Of the nearly 20,000 people taken there, only 8 are known to have survived.

I think there are some terrible truths that one has to face as part of humanity, and trying to prevent the same happening again.

Lighter matters:

Phnom Penh has many aspects similar to Bangkok, but overall it seems far less prosperous, mostly less modern and grubbier - like an overgrown town compared to "world city" Bangkok.

For the remainder of Monday, I visited the Russian Market - a low, flat building with rows and rows of separately-owned stalls selling a huge range of things. I didn't buy any hand tools, car spares or electrical components. I did stop at one T-shirt stall where the owner accosted me in English and bought a few of my favourite type of souvenir.

I booked a massage and meant to go for a walk down the riverside after, but got so relaxed that I just chilled out until the tour group met for the first time over the evening meal, driven to and from a restaurant by Tuk-Tuk. There are 10 of us plus the guide, and all seem to be friendly and pleasant people

Tuesday began with a cyclo ride round the town, ending at the Royal Palace. The local guide gave us a potted history of Cambodia, concentrating on recent kings and French colonial rule. Then we walked around for what felt like ages and boarded a coach to the National Museum where another guide gave us yet more information than I need with my current level of freshness.

When the organised tour ends, 7 of us decide to hire a river boat. This proves a good decision, as we have a lovely time chatting together and see a floating fishing village and many shacks with backs propped over a steep river bank on long poles. It's amazing how differently some people live.

Wat Ho

2010-11-08T16:27:00.001Z

As world culture gradually gets homogenised (religion aside), travel becomes more and more about ringing the changes - compare and contrast.

Lots of the experiences I've had over the last couple of days are quite similar to things I could have done in London, but FELT very different.

Public Transport
I used the Skytrain (BTS) a lot [Docklands Light Railway]. My hotel has turned out to be quite well located, at the interchange between the Asok Skytrain and Sukhumvit underground (MRT) [tube] stations. The hotel is a long way from the historic centre where nearly all the sights are, and neither BTS nor MTS go more than half-way there.

Congestion
Bangkok has London beaten here, it seems to me, with much worse traffic. It could be the Tuk-Tuks that enforce this impression, hundreds weaving in and out of other traffic, changing lanes incessantly.
In any case, it takes AGES to get anywhere by road - eventually a deterrent from going all the way into the historic area every day (but see below)

Sights (1)
The first place I went on the Skytrain was Victory Monument [Trafalgar Square if it had twice as many lanes of traffic round it, all full, and no way to get to the middle]. This is one of many places where a walkway sits below the Skytrain track but well above the roads, lifting people above the noise and fumes.

Places to Wander
After peering at market stalls round Victory Monument, I decided to stroll off down some random backstreets to see what serendipity would turn up. In this case it didn't, really. The canals on which Bangkok was once apparently built are now absolutely filthy and threatening to health, but strangely not very smelly.
I ended up under a long elevated motorway, where there were lots of stalls and eating places, all for locals.
This was moderately interesting but, after walking for ages I checked my map and found I was stuck the wrong side of a canal, veering away from anything I wanted to see.

Scams
I now fell for two in a row, but no hard feelings.
1) Below the motorway, I hailed a passing Tuk-Tuk and asked to be taken to the Emerald Buddha temple. He named a price - 200 Baht or £4. I agreed, as it wasn't going to break the bank, but wondered what it should have cost. I later heard that a Tuk-Tuk should cost 100B per hour, and it took about half an hour (a large part in traffic jams). I guess it should have cost 50B or £1, but it got me out of a hole so good luck to him.
2) As soon as I got to the temple, an official-looking chap said it was closed for prayers for the next 90 minutes but, as luck would have it, the Thai government had an incentive scheme going so a Tuk-Tuk driver would take me some places for 20B and bring me back after. First we went to see a big Buddha statue then we went to the "Thai Centre" that the government was backing. This turned out to be an ordinary tailor's shop (I heard later from a metered-taxi driver that the Tuk-Tuk driver probably got 200B from the shop for taking me).
Anyway, I'd heard good things about cheap Thai bespoke suits so I thought I'd see. I chose good quality cloth, but was surprised that 2 suits would be £700. I said I might just be able to justify it at half that price and, because I was genuinely ambivalent, stuck to that. Eventually he did meet that price (2 suits in different material, each with spare trousers). It was only afterward that I thought it wouldn't be such a bad thing to give myself a treat.
I think I must have got a reasonable price, because the salesman was quite sullen once the deal was made. Later I told a taxi driver what I'd paid and he said he'd expect 3 suits at that price. That made me think I'd done pretty well - a tourist (only there to be ripped off, surely) paying only 50% more than a local - not too bad.
I've received the finished suits now and am quite pleased with them :-)
The driver then took me to a jewellery shop, which didn't detain me long, and said he'd take me back. I insisted he take me to the other place mentioned in the 20B pitch, and enjoyed clmbing the Golden Mount and the views from the top.

Sights (2)
Many of Bangkok's top sights are temples (Wat in Thai). One can only see so many. I remember visiting Rome many years ago, and feeling "all churched out."
The complex comprising the Emerald Buddha (solid jade) and surrounding temple buildings were extensive and very impressive, as was the royal palace - French walls, Thai roof, specified by a king well travelled around the world at the time.
Bearing in mind I'd only landed 6am that morning and just popped out to fill in the time until I could check in, I reckoned I'd "done" half of Bangkok, so resisted offers of a canal cruise and got a ride back to the BTS with the taxi driver who gave me the inside track referred to above.

Traffic Antidote
Saturday's road congestion nearly deterred me from going into town again, but on Sunday I thought I'd try a river trip. This turns out to be how to travel quickly where BTS and MRT don't reach. I got the Skytrain to "Central" (S6) and got on the blue-flag tourist boat that runs up the river with some commentary in English (25B one way).
It good enough that I went to the end and came back to where I planned to get off (although the northern-most part isn't really worth seeing).

Sights (3)
Wat Pho IS the most-must-see temple complex, complete with vast reclining Buddha.
I then went across on the little ferry to see Wat Arun (3B each way). Unfortunately, the grounds were full of military people, mainly in dress uniforms but some in green with guns for security. I guessed it was a graduation ceremony, and couldn't get any closer. At least I saved someone else the fruitless crossing a bit later.
I hopped on an ordinary Orange-flag river bus and got back to Chinatown for 14B.

Street Market
When I was a teenager I worked on a stall down Walthamstow Market. The street market reminded me of it a lot, but then I followed it into long narrow alleyways and we were back in Bangkok again. There was only room for one file of people each way between the close-packed stalls, which meant a problem whenever anyone stopped to look at anything. Hectic and different. I hailed a taxi to get me to Hua Lompong mainline train station. This had welcome calming air-con but concerning lunges between minuscule gaps in lanes of traffic jam, with many near misses. Back from there by MRT.

Filthy-Canal-Express-Bus
On Monday morning, I followed another route into town as described in Wikitravel. Skytrain to N1 then big motorboat bus on the remaining navigable canal. This whizzed along, causing lots of spray. Unfortunately, the spray was the filthy canal water. The boat has blue nylon-cloth sheets along each side, that can be pulled up to shield the spray. A choice between seeing something and catching something!

I returned the same way, and carried on back to the airport (Skytrain from Asok to Thaya Thai, then the cheap City Train to the airport, and thence Phnom Penh.

Bangkok at speed

2010-11-06T13:38:00.001Z

Greetings from the roof of the Park Plaza Hotel, Sukhumvit, Bangkok. I'm seated by the pool with a Margarita (and a Margarita chaser). My zippy-off-leg-pants are zipped off and I've discarded my shirt. I'm recovering from my own little whirlwind.

As previously described, I was supposed to return from St. Lucia on Monday morning, chill and pack slowly, then depart for Thailand on Thursday night. Hurricane Tomas screwed that, so I didn't get back until Thursday morning, leaving me with 12 hours in the UK, half spent getting in and out of airports - tight enough to be considered heroic (foolhardy). I tried for an extra 24 hours, but only got half that - leaving me with 25 hours in the UK.

Now, I'm quite a seasoned traveller and can pack for a week working away in about 10 minutes. However, this trip was by backpack, in Tropical climes and had visa complexities that needed to be exactly right.

In the end I kept my taxi to Heathrow waiting nearly 20 minutes, as I finished preparations. That wasn't as bad as it sounds, because the driver was a friend and colleague of my friend and housemate Phil, and she spent the time sitting on my sofa, playing with his baby daughter.

In that past-last-minute gap I booked this hotel - a lot more expensive than I'd have liked, but necessary.

It was odd to be back on a plane waiting to take off again so soon, but obviously relieving to have achieved the turnaround.

The Thai International Airways flight (11h20) was a 747-400, but had a state-of-the-ark entertainment system - one movie at a time projected onto a central screen. The films were good and modern, but unfortunately I'd seen them all on the BA 777 touch-screen, personal choice, pausable system to and from St. Lucia. Still, Thai flights are much cheaper than anyone else's and that has to come from somewhere - no complaints about legroom, though.

The flight landed in Bangkok before 6am and I proceeded to visa-on-arrival, only to be told Brits don't need one. Consequently, I went through the one of the 3 immigration zones furthest from the plane and was relieved that all 3 open into the same huge baggage hall.

Into town on the City Train, stopping a few times and hence cheaper than the express (15 Baht or 60p).

I disembarked at Makkasan station and found a taxi. The driver wanted to ring the hotel and I couldn't understand why, so told him not to bother. Being spoilt in London and Reading, it didn't occur to me that he might have no idea where it was, despite showing him the full address (in English / Latin alphabet) on my iPhone.

I had a map and pointed at where we were and where I thought the hotel was, and he set off the opposite way up the relevant road. At least six stopping-to-ask-someones later he turned around and went to where I pointed in the first place.

I couldn't grumble - he might have gone straight there if I'd let him ring, so it was my fault. The overgrown fare was still all of £4!!

One reason I needed to book a hotel was that I reached it before 9am but couldn't check in before 2pm. Hence I needed somewhere to dump my bags, etc. The other reason was stress reduction - the hotel as a known factor and one less to worry about.

So there I was at a loose end between 0900 and 1400 and bag-free, so I went off exploring.

[At this point in writing, the lack of sleep, battered body clock (Carib->Thai = +12hrs aaargh!) and Margheritas have got the better of me so I'll "retire hurt" and resume later.]

Changeable South-Easterly

2010-11-05T19:57:00.001Z

If you've looked at some of my older posts, you'll have seen my efforts to develop a route to drive round the world, and noted that I haven't gone yet.

The main reasons, in descending order of importance, are as follows:
1) I didn't find anyone to go with. I only looked among friends and acquaintances, not online because I was sceptical about working out from a fairly short meeting whether I could spend months with someone. I thought about going alone, but didn't reach that point, because...
2) It isn't as easy as it sounds. You need visas, mostly in advance, from the edge of Europe to either Thailand or Namibia. The "Stans" on The Silk Road most notably. That rather turns a voyage of discovery based on happy accident into a tightly-scheduled route march. The Americas are a notable exception to this. In addition, there are impassible bits a vehicle would need to be floated past: Atlantic, Pacific, Myanmar, Darien Gap.
These all conspire to make dragging a vehicle round the world seem quite a chore.
3) Global economic meltdown, well at least its implications on getting a job on my return.

So I thought I'd look at the big trip a different way. No vehicle, which means public transport. Solo, which means one has to stay in hostels to meet people. Standard backpacking, then.

I didn't know if that would suit me, so I gathered 5 weeks off work to trial-run this new style of travel.

Then I met Clare and everything changed. Her employer will let her take a 6-month paid sabbatical, to which can be added a month's leave, but she's currently making a new role her own, and so can't go until 2012.

6 months obviously isn't long enough to see the whole world in depth, but South America currently seems a good fit, particularly due to visa-ease. That would mean going for the early part of a year to hit the Andean summer. Clare and I are starting to consider taking the first half of 2012 off, returning in time for the Olympics. We'll need to compromise between our different aspirations, as it'd quite likely be a once-in-a-lifetime thing for both of us.

So now I'm not thinking of backpacking solo the way I was, and so I don't need my trial run of that style. I do have my month of leave booked, though. Clare only had a week's leave, so we went to the Caribbean, as I wrote last time.

Clare isn't attracted to the Far East, but I am. So that makes it a good thing to do when she can't come. To get the most out of my trip with the least organisational overhead, I decided to go on organised tours.

Hence I'm writing this on a looooong flight to a 3-week trip to Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam.

This involves a lot of flights, taking my tally of airports travelled from, to or through from 66 to 72 (as close as I can reckon):

5th-6th Nov Heathrow (LHR)-Bangkok (BKK) TG911
8th Bangkok-Phnom Penh (PNH) TG584
11th Phnom Penh-Siem Reap (REP) K6101
13th Siem Reap-Hanoi (HAN) VN842
17th Hanoi-Hue (HUI)
20th Danang (DAD)-Ho Chi Minh City (SGN)
24th Ho Chi Minh City-Bangkok TG551
24th Bangkok-Heathrow TG916

Here goes :-)

Clare and Hurricane Tomas

2010-11-05T15:37:00.001Z

Now I only normally write here about "adventure" holidays. However, the Caribbean trip I've just returned from converted itself into one of those.

First, though, I need to introduce Clare, my new love. We actually met a couple of years ago in a group of people-who-meet-to-do-things that I found via the Internet (www.social-and-single.org). Clare doesn't match my historic "type", but fortunately the group kept us in proximity long enough to enjoy each other's company, become friends, and then become romantically interested.

Traditionally, I understand that the woman recognises these things well before the man, and so it was here. I really should have twigged when the group was supposed to see a movie, which wasn't then shown, so we went to the pub instead. The evening chatting with Clare was much more fun than the film would have been.

Things came to a head when we arranged a pub visit for the two of us, just as friends - not a "date". Both of us actually wished it was a date but didn't know how the other felt. We now refer to it as "the date that wasn't a date, that was."

That was a few months ago and, as things developed, we decided to go to St. Lucia to use up the rest of Clare's leave for the year (I'd saved up rather more).

I wanted to go to one resort, but they didn't have any available rooms with air-con. So, after more perusal of TripAdvisor (bless its name), we booked at the Bay Gardens Beach Resort (#10 in SL). I'd already been stimulated to write a report myself for the first time (a resoundingly good one), when events took a turn.

A very fast, spinning, hurricane-shaped turn.

We'd booked a Friday sunset cruise, which was cancelled due to a weather advisory, but the evening passed uneventfully so we thought nothing more of it.

On Saturday there were blustery gusts playing boisterously with the tablecloths during breakfast, and talk of a storm on the way.

Tomas escalated into a category 1 hurricane unexpectedly. The winds grew during the afternoon to be quite impressive, and we spent the evening happily in the open-sided hotel bar/restaurant next to the beach, drinking and watching lashing horizontal rain.

We didn't really have any deeper appreciation of what we were seeing. After all, this was only a Category 1 hurricane and surely the Caribbean islands see much worse than that?

I think the problem was that Tomas was so slow-moving (9mph) that it sat over the island for a very long time and dropped a LOT of water.

We were supposed to be flying out on the Sunday night, but when the wind was little reduced that morning, it wasn't surprising when the BA flight out didn't leave Gatwick.

The St. Lucia ports authority (SLASPA) was appallingly poor at communicating, making no reference to the hurricane on its website and, very misleadingly, leaving the previous day's successful arrivals/departures up, dated as today's - suggesting all was fine when it wasn't.

After lots of Googling for news we eventually found a blog post from someone about 5 miles away reporting the Communications Minister statement via Radio 100 saying the international airport could be closed all week.

This wasn't good news, as I had to be back in the UK to fly out for another holiday on the Thursday (see next post for details).

The hurricane had done a lot of damage, mainly in the South of the island, killing 15 at last count and cutting off roads to capital Castries, tour-stop Soufriere and many other places including Hewanorra international airport. Obviously, though, coastal places on an island aren't cut off by boat, once the sea is calm enough.

We met one woman who was evacuated to our hotel (I think from the Jalousie Hilton). She told a horror story of 48 hours without power or water, inability to sleep due to sounds of mudslides, a (consequently) disappearing swimming pool and a 2am evacuation by 3 catamarans, overloaded and still insufficient; with disorganisation leading to some "survival of the fittest" :-(

In our 4-year-old, concrete solid, low rise hotel we had a few small, wind-driven leaks, minimal power blips and, eventually, Tuesday night without water in the taps. The staff stayed on to look after us throughout, rather than trying to rejoin friends and family. If we were impressed before the hurricane, we needed superlatives now.

With my following travel plans under threat, I had to try to get back to the UK by Thursday. I rang Kuoni in the UK. When the duty officer rang back she was unnecessarily short, emphasising I'll-temperedly that the airport was shut and implying I was unreasonable in wanting to bring myself to attention at this point. I imagine that she'd just been on the phone with someone who had been demanding miracles and had carried that over.

It was disappointing, as I've used Kuoni many times over 20 years and expected more professionalism. This wasn't particularly redeemed because she never contacted me again and, when Castries was again reachable and LIAT air shuttles started from there to Hewanorra airport, Virgin Holidays snapped up the seats for their passengers while the local Kuoni reps were still trying to come up with transfer solutions.

It did all come out OK in the end. The rep got us on the air shuttle (although I had to pay $50US per head while Virgin paid for their people). Relieved, I didn't mind too much sitting 7 hours in Hewanorra waiting for our BA flight, coincidentally awaiting reunion with my case that didn't make the first shuttle.

St. Lucia was fabulous, and will be once again when they've restored power, water and roads in the South of the island. And I have to thank again Bay Gardens Beach Resort and all its staff - definitely where you want to be if another hurricane ever visits.

Google Wave

2009-11-15T23:38:00.004Z

OK, so I know this is really lazy, and I apologise so much to anyone who came here to see what I had new to say, but I figure that Google might be searching to see who mentions Google Wave and sending them invitations. I'd really like an invitation (please) because I've watched lots of videos now (on YouTube) and think the way that Wave combines the characteristics of email, IRC, multimedia, history, etc. is REALLY cool and (totally obviously) the unified communications medium of the future.

An idiot's guide to the Credit Crunch

2009-01-22T01:06:00.011Z

I've read lots of printed and online articles and watched lots of TV programmes about the economic situation. As I'm so interested in the causes of the economic situation, let me misquote some of the things I've mislearned:

1) A key cause of the problem was the trading relation between USA and China. It went something like this:
a) China's economy depended on cheap manufactured exports to the US. To keep these cheap, it was important to keep the Yuan low against the US Dollar. This was done by buying US Dollars with Yuan, so keeping the price of one high (high demand) and the other low (high supply).
b) China ended up with lots of US Dollars, and they put these to work by lending them so that Americans could buy even more manufactured goods.
c) This resulted in a very high supply of money available for loan at good rates, with the broker making a margin. There was so much supply that "normal" loan demand was satisfied and new destinations for loans had to be found. These new destinations were (necessarily) those not favoured before, such as less good risks.
d) In America, borrowers representing a good risk get a good "prime" interest rate. Borrowers representing a higher risk (less likely to repay) have to pay higher "sub-prime" interest rates to cover the extra risk. As we know, these guys toppled the house of cards.

2) Imagine someone has to pay you money over the coming years, perhaps because you made a loan that they will must repay by instalments. There is a "debt obligation" to you. That represents an income stream in the future, and you could sell that to someone now. For example, I'm owed $200 over the next 10 years so I could get someone to pay me $100 now (so I can spend it), and then they get the future repayments. This is a "collateralised debt obligation" (CDO).

3) There was a business model that many banks used, but Northern Rock (for example) specialised in. This involved borrowing money from another institution, lending it for a mortgage, then selling the resulting CDO and repaying the first institution. This is fine as long as the money flow continues.

4) CDOs didn't stay with the first institution to buy them, but got bundled with other financial instruments of varying quality and resold (and bundled again and resold again and again). The value of such bundles should depend entirely on the quality of the CDO (the risk that the underlying loan won't be repaid). There are companies whose business is to provide credit ratings on such things, and they were overoptimistic because high estimates made their customers extra money. Hence institutions overpaid for the bundles.

5) This wasn't a problem until some of the sub-prime borrowers started to default on their mortgages. Suddenly, whoever was holding the CDO wasn't going to get as much money as they expected. Trouble was, with all the rebundling and reselling, who could tell how much bad debt any institution owned?

6) Being unable to tell which institutions were holding how much bad debt, and so might not have enough assets to meet their liabilities, no institution could afford the risk of lending to any other. This was a huge problem because most money is tied up most of the time, and much of the operation of banks involves rapid movement via short-term borrowing of a relatively small amout of money (in bank terms), perhaps during the night-time on the far side of the world. This is like the "oil" that keeps the cogs of the financial machine running. When the oil dried up, the international machine siezed up pretty much much immediately.

7) When Northern Rock's money-go-round came to a sudden halt its own reserves, fairly small compared to its business volume, were insufficient to support its daily needs and it couldn't borrow enough money to make up the shortfall. An inability to meet ones liabilities is the practical definition of bankruptcy.

8) In 2000, the money source for UK loans and mortgages was mainly from UK savings. By 2007 the source was mainly foreign financial institutions. When they wouldn't lend any more the supply of loans to business or to individuals as new mortgages dried up.

9) The big government "bail-out" of the banks failed for two reasons. Firstly, it came as loans to be repaid in something like 5 years. Lending to a bank amounts to owning part of it, and having the Government own large parts of banks for longer than 5 years amounts to nationalisation of the bank. The repayment has to come from money received by the banks (e.g. savings). The loans are so huge that it might take all of the money received over 5 years to repay them. In other words there is no spare money to lend onward. This is compounded by a demand that banks increase the ratio between their reserves and their liabilities, and so they need to keep incoming money to build their reserves. Again no onward lending.

10) Reductions in interest rates are supposed to make money cheaper for banks to borrow, and so stimulate the money flow. However, this has little impact against the needs for reserves and repayments described above and can't actually make the banks start lending to each other again.

11) There is a view that the situation will cause the population to reduce and delay their spending. This will impact the cashflow of retail businesses and their suppliers, and they will not be able to borrow to tide them over. This would result in high-profile failures, including of otherwise-healthy businesses. Enough failures would result in enough existing loans to businesses going bad that more banks will fail. Resulting loss of confidence could damage the banking sector beyond a point of recovery by normal means.

12) Another concern arises from the practical/short-term privatisation of an increasing share of UK banks. It could be seen that the liabilities of the privatised banks (even pro-rata) are part of the national debt. I understand that this would make the national debt about 500% of GDP (the total cost of all finished goods and services produced within the UK during a whole year). As a guide, in 2007 Zimbabwe's debt:GPD was the world's highest at 218%, one of only 7 countries over 100%. So 500% would be quite bad then.

13) Such a fear undermines confidence in Sterling itself. This is partly because, after exhausting all other available measures, the option of "printing more money" (or other steps that amount to it) would make the currency worth proportionately less against money of other nations (buy less foreign goods). In the nightmare scenario, the UK government could default on foreign debts, rendering the nation effectively bankrupt (although that isn't actually possible). Sterling has already fallen heavily on foreign exchange markets, and could fall much further.

Are we facing a financial apocalypse despite the underlying "health" of the British economy? I can't tell, but counsels of despair seem to be becoming more common amongst those supposed to be "knowledgeable commentators".

So where's this trip then?

2009-01-21T23:26:00.003Z

Not long after I got home, the expanding impact of the credit crunch became apparent.

I took the view that most recent recessions have been two years. If so, then I'd have a choice between going away for the first year and being unable to get a job for a year after my return, or being gainfully employed for the first year, going away for the second and returning to benefit from the upswing.

In the meantime I'll concentrate on work and hope that nothing else changes in my personal circumstances or those of my loved ones to make it impossible.

Home Again

2009-01-08T09:34:00.002Z

First, apologies for the serious delay to this post. I know I should have posted a marker and gone back to fill in the details later. My problem is that I do like telling stories. It was a hard lesson that in work presentations you usually have to give the punchline at the start of the story and include the middle at the end to skip over when there's no time.
I left the story on the way to Marrakesh.
We arrived well after dark, dodging horse-drawn carts jumping out of the darkness, we hit what seemed the edge of the town centre and started driving around looking for a hotel. Sarah was driving and the traffic made left turns unappealing, so we ended up heading out into the sticks again. I thought I had a vague mental map, based on the half-truths in the guidebook, so I volunteered directions. We did actually find a hotel, but while I went in to check rates, etc. The others had decided to hire a taxi so we could follow it to a hotel that looked good in the book, as we did in Tangier. This worked well as far as getting us in sight on the hotel door, but we needed a couple of tries to reach the underground car park at the back. It was worth it, though, as the hotel was much nicer than the one I'd found.
By now, it was after 10pm and the local Moroccan restaurant was closing, so we had to have a local Italian instead.
The next day was a) Friday and b) Ramadan so the taxi driver we called told us the normal shops would be shut until noon and took us to an government-regulated artisan shop instead. This worked out well, because the prices were fixed. I'm not confident enough in my haggling, especially against world-class experts, to imagine I'd generally beat those on my own. Besides, it saves time and makes buying decisions easier.
We loaded up on tagines, blankets, etc. And wondered around. We didn't find any fascinating alley-maze like Fez, so I don't know if there is one and we couldn't find it.
Keith and Sarah had wanted all along to bring back as souvenirs from Marrakesh some of the Green Mosque Alarm clocks that fans of The Apprentice (UK version) will be familiar with. They secured some and were delighted.
After a quick lunch near the hotel we hit the road to Tangier, stopping only for tea in McDonald's. Keith had been promising himself a Big Mac to celebrate his return to Europe, but pre-peaked. The place became noticably busier at about 6:20pm, the time recognised as sunset for Ramadan.
We stayed again, for our last night in Morocco, at the Continental Hotel, where we were welcomed back to our previous rooms.

The schedule said the ferries left every 2 hours, so the following morning we left with just enough time to get one. However, it turned out that the schedule hadn't been adjusted for the extra Ramadan hour, so we had to wait the extra hour. Processing was another series of palms wanting greasing. Unfortunately, we'd spent out of Moroccan paper money and had no Euros either. The "helpers" looked down on coins as "for children" and weren't at all happy with us. I wasn't about to break into my stash of 20 pound notes to provide tips! The guy organising the final queues for loading was the most unhappy. We scraped up all our last Eurocent coins to give him something and he literally threw them away, then returned once we'd gone aboard (admittedly, lovely and quick) and was disgusted that we hadn't magically gained extra cash to give away during our 100-yard journey.
The voyage was fun, standing out on the rear deck in the sunshine and watching as our view of Tangier gradually widened to span the whole coast of Morocco's Northern peninsular.

As we drove off the ferry in Tarifa, Keith said that he and Sarah wanted to drive straight to Paris non-stop. I think they were inspired to reproduce journeys their dad has made in the past. I didn't see any reason to disagree so that's what we did, 200km each, me first and then Sarah.
Over the course of the trip, the packing in the back had got worse and worse until there was only a small space to sit - very uncomfortable for a big geezer like me. Before Keith's stint, I insisted on re-packing the back, quite amusing Sarah when I stated my objective that I'd be able to lay down. Keith drove on with me in the back, and with a couple of pieces juggled, I was able to sit reclining against the pile with my legs straight out or curl up sideways. Smug and snug.
We drove on in turns round the clock until the small hours of the following morning when Sarah was too tired for her stint so Keith took over and wished he hadn't. That morning I was, surprisingly for the oldest, the most awake.
We'd decided on Versailles as our target, mainly because it's on the RER line so we could go into Paris for a night out. It came to naught, because the others basically slept through from a late lunch until the following morning. Ah well.
The next day was Sunday, and we decided that we only really wanted to be home, drove to Calais, went into both ferry company huts, just made a SeaFrance crossing and started using sterling again.
As we came round the M25, I reflected that the fabulous mind-expanding 3-week experience of Morocco, ramadan, Sahara and back was a world away from two package-deal weeks by the pool!

I'm Home

2008-09-28T18:00:00.000+01:00

I know I should have at least posted to say so at the time. I've pre-dated this so it looks like I did, but I didn't.
I keep trying to finish off the final post, but plunged back into work, etc. and have still failed. Sorry.

Ali Baba's Desert Journey (Not)

2008-09-24T10:55:00.003+01:00

On a map at the wind-tunnel hotel, the proprieter pointed out that it's possible to travel from Erfoud to Merzouga either by asphalt (normal roads) or "piste" (desert tracks), but that there are lots of tracks so we'd need a guide.
Passing through Erfoud, Keith stops at a car workshop and one of the guys there, a mechanic I thought, agrees to guide us. I'm driving as we leave the town on asphalt and, due to a miscommunication, briefly get stuck in the very first deep-ish drift of sand across the road. Great!
Deserts don't turn out to be what I'd thought. Yes, there are great expanses of sand dunes, in various shades between yellow and red depending on the area, but there's far more area of hard-packed sand, covered with many small stones, mostly between the sizes of grit and grapefruit.
It is quite fun driving across the desert tracks, with the occasional patch of deeper soft sand that would be able to bog us down and so we have to go more quickly across or power through.
When we get to Merzouga, the mechanic claims the agreed price for his services was 700 Dirhams, not the already-exorbitant 500 Dirhams that Keith understood. He's a bit stupid, as we were considering employing him to guide us on the next, longer leg of our journey. No way now.
We find Merzouga horrible. It's just a tourist-trap on the edge of the dunes full of hotels all offering "chambres, camping, bivouac."
As the mechanic gets out, another guy introduces himself and tries to establish himself as our "fixer". We decline, and choose one hotel set a little apart from the others for a cold beer with a view of the dunes. Refreshed, we decide to shake the over-eager dust of Merzouga from our feet and head for the small town at the very end of Morocco's tarmac, Taouz.
We have to pass by the "fixer" chap on the way, and stop when he waves us down. He won't take "no" for an answer and stays hanging in through the window. We have to drive off to get away, and even then we see him getting onto a motorbike to chase after us, but we double back and lose him. I guess the mechanic told him just how much money he managed to get from us, and wanted similar for himself.
Another fixer approaches us when we stop just outside the town to check the map, but gives up politely at our disinterest.
We read in the guidebook that there are places to camp in the desert, with GPS locations on roadside signs. We're stopped by the roadside trying to make the TomTom simply show us direction and distance (which it won't let us do), when a Land Rover pulls alongside and yet another "fixer" introduces himself, explains his wares and gives us the card of his hotel. This guy does seem different, smarter and informative rather than persuasive. Also, he offers us a good rate of 200 Dirhams a head for dinner, bed (with aircon) and breakfast.
We drive to Taouz, find there's nothing for us there and reluctantly turn back to Merzouga, deciding to locate the hotel. It's one of the first we come to and the fixer, Hassan, is waiting outside.
We consume our own beer and wine before and with a pleasant dinner. Afterward, we discuss options with Hassan for cross-country travel through the Sahara. We settle on a two-day trip to Mhamid, with our bus folowing Hassan's Land Rover, sleeping in the desert "with family" and going over the mountains on the second day.
Hassan and his colleagues give us nicknames: Keith is Mohammed Tagine, Sarah is Fatima Cous-Cous (which she loves) and I'm Ali Baba (because of my beard).
We set out at about 11:30am (don't ask), with Hassan and brothers Achmed and Ibrahim plus either Sarah or myself in the Land Rover and Keith plus the other in the Landcruiser to minimise weight.
The trip is fabulous, and we see several different landscapes during the day, starting with areas of dark volcanic rock that we have to pick our way through, and including a super-smooth lake bed, which we race across at near-motorway speeds.
Toward the end of the day, we see puddles by the roadside and stop for a closer look. They aren't puddles - they're the edge of a huge flood which we walk onward to stare at from the top of a sand-hump. Apparently, a short way forward the road will be under 4 metres of water. This completely blocks our way forward to our overnight stop and to Mhamid. Judging from the last time this happened, the route will remain impassable for 20 days. Shortly after we turn back, the old men in a village tell Hassan that the water suddenly arrived between 9am and 9:30am this morning, which is why Hassan didn't hear about it when he rang ahead earlier.
The water has come from the Atlas Mountains. This is the same rainfall that fell on us there, causing the landslips that blocked the road! Now it's blocking our route again.
We return to the tiny hotel, on it's own in the desert, where we stopped before for cold drinks.
As a last flourish, the guys drive the Land Rover to the top of a high sand dune, giving me a fabulous view over the range of dunes stretching beyond, by the light of the evening sun. Keith tries to follow but, due to his narrower tyres, bogs down half-way up and has to be pulled out.
We catch the hotel owner just as he's getting on his motorbike to go home. It turns out that the rooms are still being built and don't have lights, power or bathrooms. There's a separate toilet block with at least one sit-down toilet.
Dinner is lovely, a lettuce-free salad dressed with olive oil laced with cumin, followed by a tagine filled with cous-cous, vegetables and some meat which I think is chicken but comes on very non-chicken-like bones.
One thing we've learned about the desert is that there always seems to be some wind, although its strength varies. The bus gets very hot with the windows shut, but driving with front windows open has been entirely bearable. I shut the outside door of the hotel sitting/dining room and the temperature rise means it soon has to be re-opened.
The guys suggest that we sleep on the flat roof rather than in our hot rooms, so we do. Under the substantial blanket the temperate is very pleasant. Lying there, the sky amazes me. With no light or air pollution, the million stars are stunningly clear. For the first time I think I see the milky way. Just before 4am I wake up and find the insects have too. Expecting the guys to get up soon for their 4am meal before the Ramadan daytime fast, I retire to my room.
The revised plan is to make our way to a town not far from our start point (hence not-travel, the flood is the non-desert part from the post title). Some of the way is across sand cut into continual humps by wind or water and proves very heavy going. As we emerge we see more water - our way is blocked again! The depth would only be 2 metres this way, but faster-moving and just as impassable.
We turn back again and head up into the hills, climbing ever higher. We hit water again, but this time the guys decide it's passable. For the first time, apart from one watersplash the first day, we drive into standing water. A bit further on we find the floods have swept away part of the river crossing, so we have to make another way across. Keith gets through with no problems, saying that this is right in line with his experience from Australia.
We find ourselves in an area with palm trees everywhere, some sitting in flooded fields from recent rainfall here.
The guys take us to a local co-operative where a very pleasant guy takes us inside, gives us water and sweet tea ("Berber whisky") and tells us a story about Moroccan history, ethnicity, culture and language, all as depicted in the carpets he shows us. Keith and Sarah say that they live in places too small for rugs like these and the chap takes it well. I decide to recompense him slightly by telling him a joke that a carpet salesman might find useful: (to a woman) "Why is a man like a carpet?" "Lay them properly the first time and you can walk on them forever." It's not a great joke, but the sales chap and his friend are simply delighted.
As we're leaving, the chap asks whether we have any books he can read to improve his English (not that I think he needs that). A little while ago, my dad took up the practice of passing on books and not wanting them back. I'm sure he'll be very happy indeed that a pleasant and cultured Moroccan on the fringes of the Sahara is now the proud possessor of works by James Herriot, Jack Higgins and some Napoleonic political actioner.
We're short of cash to settle with Hassan and co. and we have to go back to Erfoud to find a working ATM.
We round off the day with a 150km run through the dusk to a town with nice hotels to minimise tomorrow's drag to Marrakesh. We'll overnight there, and afterward face the long drive home.

Death of a Friend

2008-09-22T00:48:00.010+01:00

At about 4pm on Sunday 21st September 2008, in the town of Merzouga, surrounded by desert sand dunes, I slammed the Landcruiser door on my Fujifilm FinePix Z3, shattering all its glass parts. The Z3 had been a faithful and well-loved friend through many travels. I can only hope I'll see, and see through, its like again.

Adventures!

2008-09-22T00:48:00.009+01:00

Sarah and I have cheated. We've brought enough clothes for the whole trip. Keith hasn't, and so has to answer the world traveller's question: "how do I get my clothes (esp. pants) clean?" He handed his laundry over to the hotel, at a cost of 30GBP for less than 10 small items (i.e. more than it'd cost to buy new in Tesco, but Tesco isn't here). He has to wait until after the noon checking-out time before their return. Not a success.
We top up with fresh food at a supermarket in expectation of five nights' camping between Fes and Marrakesh. They seem to have everything normally seen in a supermarket in France or Spain, except alcohol. I try to ask two assistants for spaghetti in a tin by means of visual aids, but have to give up after confused looks and twice being offered bolognese sauce.
We drive south toward Midelt, weaving up into the Atlas Mountains with some impressive views. We're crossing a high plain when torrential rain starts. Visibility comes right down and we're soon peering out to spot rivers of water streaming across the road. A couple of times muddy water splashes right over our windscreen, blinding and disorienting us. We try to pick our way forward gingerly, but minor landslides raise our fears that the road could have been washed away, as Keith saw when 4x4ing in Australia, and we're forced to park in the middle of the road and sit it out.
Eventually the rain slows and stops. We find that only about 100m in front of us a fair covering of rocks and mud has been thrown across the road. There's still a river running across the road and, of course, it must have been rather stronger when it moved the rocks. We clearly stopped just in time.
Sarah and I get out and walk through the obstacle to check the depth. It's OK, but Keith drives through before I can get in a good spot to video it. We traverse similar places until, in the advancing nightfall, we pass a couple of people standing beside the road. We have no common language, but they tell us of a problem just ahead. A bridge has partially collapsed, taking most of the width of the road's tarmac strip with it. The remaining ground is just wide enough to pass over on a diagonal. All around there's gaps where there clearly used to be earth.
With about 15 minutes of daylight left, the prospect of trying to pitch the tent right in the wide open, beside the road and on very rocky ground, is extremely unappetising. Then we come across a big landslide, maybe 50 metres across and including rocks up to two feet in size. One vehicle is stopped opposite, with another bogged down having tried to cross the least bad bit. Half a dozen men are trying to lift it out and I help with the final heave.
A chap named Mohammed introduces himself and invites us to stay at his house 9km away. We give a lift to him and an old man with twisted foot and arrive in full darkness.
Mohammed's house is a long oblong single-storey building. It looks so square and substantial that he has to explain it's build of packed mud with walls 50cm or more thick. The first thing I notice is the satellite TV dish outside.
Mohammed makes us very welcome, with sweet tea, which he teaches Sarah to pour (from a height so it cools and mixes, first cup poured back into the pot). We also have sweet Ramadan "breakfast" pastries, bread and a sweet, brown dish of paste tasting of peanuts. Big "sweet tooth" thing going on here!
There is no mains anything, but that's hard to spot. The plentiful and clear water comes from a well several hundred metres away, pumped and transported by vehicle to a tank on the roof. The electricity is from solar panels, charging a battery large enough to run films in English with Arabic subtitles on a colour TV until I went to sleep on a matress in Mohammed's sitting area under the warmest blanket I've ever felt and, Keith tells me the next day, the Moslem Prayer channel played on a black and white TV all night long.
There's a stand-up toilet inside the house, behind a curtain, but the smell doesn't reach beyond.
I suppose it's time for a word on communication. In general I don't claim any foreign language prowess, but I've actually retained a fair amount of my schoolboy French and Spanish. Desperately inelegant and ungrammatical, but enough to be understood at the second attempt. I didn't foresee it, but most of the communication with locals on our holiday has used this, with most of North Africa having been French colonial possessions. Last night's discussions with Mohammed, which required my non-prowess in French, included explaining his family album (after asking if he had a photo of his 3-month-old daughter), British visa restrictions (3 million Dirhams or a "white" green-card marriage), Plutonium's critical mass and the certain fall of America by 2020 (the last two unrelated, I'm sure). By the end I was quite tired.
Breakfast involved bread and olive oil, usually an evening starter for me.
After that, we chose to go for a walk, to see the local plateau and caves, plus a stone of which Mohammed has a photo on his wall - something to do with an ancient father. The walk is advertised at 2km, which I interpret as 5km and (we think) turns out as 8km, all between 11am and 2pm in the heat of the day. The views are genuinely interesting, and we don't regret it, but Sarah suffers from sunburn for days to come.
One of the most interesting parts for me is the way that the next village is using a cistern to irrigate areas and grow maize, tomatoes, etc. beside the desert.
Mohammed introduces us to his friend and neighbour Mohammed, who invites us to spend the next night with him. We get the idea that we could spend days here, but decline gratefully and get lots of fresh figs to eat - lovely.
When we leave, we give Mohammed a lift into Midelt and say farewell fondly. He's hardly gone 30 seconds when someone else is trying to sell or swap a hollow stone containing attractive crystals. Cigarettes are one optional currency - I wonder how many it would have cost?
Going South toward the desert, the camping book we bought with our ferry tickets in Spain suggests a place in the mountains, the Jurassique (c/f local fossils). I'm hesitant to criticise, as the proprieter is friendly and we make good friends with his son Salaam, sharing food together. However, the camping area of the turns out to be a wind tunnel and mid-way through cooking the evening meal we have to abort due to wind force, and eventually complete cooking in their lounge (this is apparently not the first time)!! Somehow we manage not to set light to anything!
Sarah and I take rooms, as the wind is too high for tents or raising the roof of the bus. My towels and bedclothes don't smell fresh and the hot water, indicated by a red light on the heater, doesn't reach the shower "head". The facilities for actual campers, as in Keith, seem to work properly. Salaam assembles us a breakfast with Berber sweet mint tea, honey, apricot jam and substantial Berber bread, which is really nice.
We head on toward the desert, past a beautiful blue lake between orange cliffs in the Valley of Ziz.

Fes

2008-09-21T12:41:00.002+01:00

Our guide at Volubilis drew us a map of how to drive to the camp site we had ended up getting our Tangier hotelier to ring and book for us. We were the only visitors there. Theoretically, there was a swimming pool, which I didn't see but Keith said it only contained a foot of green slime.
The site owners' son Emin, who was about 3 years old, came and we made friends with him. His French was probably about as good as mine, but somehow we communicated.
The campsite was quiet apart from the continual background noise of different dogs barking to each other somewhere in the hills.
Dinner was distinguished by the late discovery that the fish we'd nearly finished cooking was halibut rather than haddock. Fortunately the result was still quite pleasant.
After this, we watched the movie "Hancock", half on my laptop until the battery ran out, the rest on Keith's. Funny to be doing the Hollywood thang in the middle of nowhere, and without mains electricity.
A quiet night's sleep for me, but less so for the others. Instead of "good morning" I got: "you don't half snore." I said it was a lack of alcohol, as they didn't hear a thing the night we hit the wine :-)
We got up really slowly, with a cooked breakfast and time for showers, and didn't start off until 2pm.
Scratching ideas of visiting Moulay Idris or Meknes, we head straight to Fes, which the guide book (back to Lonely Planet now) recommends as the best city for tourists to see.
As we'll be going on from Fes into the "wilds", Keith and Sarah decide they'd like a night in a nice hotel. Me, I don't need any persuading. We pull up in front of a few hotels in the new quarter, and Keith jogs in to inquire prices. The first isn't a hotel, the second is over 200 GBP, the third is the Royal Mirage Hotel and acceptable at about 100 Euros.
A "fixer" attaches himself to Keith and, after saying the hotel has bugs (it doesn't) and he can take us to another, suggests a tour. Strange thing is that he seems to be suggesting we start it some hours ago? It turns out that Morocco has had two time changes recently, one for summer and the other for Ramadan, making sunset (when Moslems can eat again) as early as 6:30pm - sneaky! It also means we started today at 12pm rather than 2pm - the world has changed to match our late wakeup times: amazing!
After being so happy with the guide at Volubilis, we let the fixer take us on a tour of Fes, but Keith makes clear that he doesn't just want to be dragged round shops.
The tour takes us to the tile and mosaic apprentice school, and factory shop; weavers and obligatory "dressed up" photo-op, where they are restrained until Sarah inquires a price; tanneries seen from a balcony accessed through the back of a shop, where all it takes is a close look at one jacket before I'm driven through a sequence of trying on until my protests that we must leave become sufficiently adamant; moving between these is an assault on the senses, the thousand stalls in the narrow alleyways have their own sights and smells and there's the repeated risk of being mown down by a supertanker of the souk - a fully-laden donkey, slow-moving but looming out of the midst and inexorable.
I love it and don't really mind the shops - the sights are there to see because of the trade they do - but Keith and Sarah regret taking the tour feeling they've seen the same elsewhere and would rather have wondered around themselves and seen "less". That's what we'll do in Marrakesh, but it has efficiently covered Fes in the scrag end of day that we actually had available.
We walk to dinner in a guidebook-recommended restaurant, but find it's only doing an unimpressive set menu. Despite this, we manage to order a tagine-served meatball dish that isn't on the menu

Warning: Post May Actually Be Useful

2008-09-18T20:13:00.002+01:00

As a change, I'm afraid this post may have content of potential use to other travellers. I'll try not to make a habit of it, and won't start just yet.

Having joked yesterday that I'd wake at 10:45am to catch the 11am end of the Hotel Duquesa Golf breakfast, I find I actually wake at 10:50 and manage to fill my plate before they start to clear. We spend a lazy midday and early afternoon by the pool, then decide to visit Gibraltar today to save time tomorrow.

*Gibraltar*
When the Brits took Gibraltar in the 1700s, the Spanish retreated just out of cannon range and took up positions at La Linea de la Concepcion, expecting to be back in a couple of months. It's now a major town with a Carrefour hypermarket!
Set the satnav for Gibraltar, but when you get to the point where you'd have to turn sharp right to go 70 metres to some structures that look like border controls, instead hang a sharp left (or go to the roundabout ahead and do a U-ey, then right). There's a largeish underground car park that isn't very expensive - we paid 6 Euros - and has clearance for a 2m high Landcruiser.
From there, it's a short walk across the border and you can catch a number 9 bus to the near end of Main Street (as we did today) or a number 3 to the far end (as we did tomorrow, if you follow my meaning). Both run every 15 minutes and cost 1 Euro single or 2.5 Euros for an all-day pass. Buses stop at 9pm.
Although Gibraltar uses Gibraltar pounds sterling, we didn't find anywhere we couldn't use nasty foreign Euros, although we did find some "heavily loaded" exchange rates - our fault for not having real money.
The bus dropped us in Casemates Square at 6:30pm and we walked the length of Main Street, spotting a cable car from the end. We headed to the bottom, just opposite the Fire Station with plackards of protest outside, only to find that the last lift up is at 7:15pm, almost half an hour ago.
It looks so good that we decide to return tomorrow. After a beer, we catch a taxi back to the frontier.

*Not Gibraltar*
Apart from the bar/restaurants just over a footbridge from the Hotel Duquesa Golf, there a a number of restaurants "by the port" (actually a large resort complex) slightly further away. Reception advises us to get a taxi each way, which turns out sensible but expensive at over 6 Euros for less than 5 minutes. Amazingly, nearly every restaurant is Chinese, with the remainder Indian. Oh no - Brits abroad! Just as we're about to wait for a table at the only Mexican, we spot "little Italy", a square with two Italian restaurants facing each other. The Italian-flag-coloured waiters of El Capitan take position, hovering ready to swoop should we show too much interest. The brown-and-orange staff of Ciao start to float over, but an El Capitan staffer heads them off. We float sideways to defuse a confrontation, then choose Ciao because Sarah doesn't like the other place's name.
We round off with cocktails at "Pantalan 56", a cocktail bar with great ambience, but only the brave should attempt their Margherita with ginger and chilli, as I did.
Because the stationery at our hotel says "Suites Duquesa Golf", that's what I ask the taxi driver for. We end up in a sidestreet outside a place where we asked for directions when we were lost yesterday. I keep saying "Golf" until we end up at the right place.

*Gibraltar Again*
This time we catch the Number 3 bus and get off near the cable car. 8 Gibraltar Pounds for cable car only, 16 with "nature reserve" and more with dolphins, both of which we omit because St. Michael's Cave that Sarah particularly wants to see aren't marked that way. We get to the top at 4pm, just after the snack bar has shut. I get the "multimedia experience" (a Windows PDA with earphone) but get two in a row with low batteries, so learn little from it.
Now comes the real learning point: there are a number of attractions up on and in the rock, including and the caves. They are at either end of the rock, 3km apart, so to see them all will require a 6km+ walk in the burning sun.
So: don't bother with the cable car - get a taxi driver or minibus tour to drive you up from the town and between all of the above. We didn't and so missed our second-and-only chance to see most of the interesting things.

*Tangier*
We'd decided, based on Thorn Tree Forum posts (on the Lonely Planet website) to travel Algeciras-to-Cueta (a Spanish territory on Morocco, as Gibraltar is a British territory on Spain) to get an easier border crossing.
However, we saw an official-looking ticket booth on a fast-road junction and got persuaded to travel Tarifa-to-Tangier instead. Even with a 2m-high car, we still get a year-long open return for 388 Euros, as opposed to the 244 Euro each way that the internet had prepared me for.
Having tickets in advance means that we just turn up at the port and leave without fuss, so a good idea.
According to the adverts, the ferry crossing is 35 minutes. We make the 9pm sailing, but it doesn't leave until after 9:30pm and we don't reach Tangier until 10:45pm.
We fill in our white entry form and our yellow exit form (which we don't need yet) and get our passports checked and stamped on the boat.
Keith is, fortunately, driving as we roll off the boat. A guy in a dark blue waistcoat with a round white logo on it (who I think is a civilian assistant) asks for the vehicle registration document, which we've forgotten to have ready. While we get that out, the guy waltzes off with Keith's passport, which quite worries Keith.
Eventually a different guy comes back, perhaps one with better English. He takes Keith through the filling in of the temporary vehicle registration form, which we'll need to get stamped before leaving the port. Someone else asks Keith whether this is his first time in Morocco. As it is, he has to go off and, as he tells it, answer questions in a police cell. He says the foot passengers are queuing to face the same experience.
The small van ahead of us gets emptied while the other guys in light blue uniforms and peaked hats look on. Every space inside is full! After about five minutes unloading, not one but two motorbikes come out. They've got nearly full-size angines but very low seats, so we assume they're for children with a real head for speed (or very irresponsible parents).
Keith returns without the vehicle form, then another blue-waistcoat guy goes off with Keith's passport, this time causing less consternation. Eventually, it comes back with a stamped form and we're free to leave.
Each time one of the blue-waistcoat guys touches our passport he asks for a tip. We've genuinely left Spain with almost no money (for which, I think I'm stupid) so we give them only change, saying we have no money. I actually changed my last 50 Euros into 550 Dirham on the boat, but keep quiet about it.
I think we finally left the port about 11:30pm, so overall not too bad for a border crossing. We did have ideas about seeking a vehicle accident form and breakdown insurance at the port, but these go by the board as we become so keen to escape.

And so on to the next phase. Colleague Tony has recommended a couple of hotels from his recent trip. One is the Hotel Continental, Tangier, which I researched a little on the internet in the Duquesa Hotel/Suites/Thingy. After we got the ferry tickets, Keith rang and booked, but didn't need to give any card info. I looked on Google maps and Google Earth and found three different locations plotted. Cheers!
I also found directions, unfortunately two different sets, which don't agree. Consequently, the others decide to ignore both and follow a map in the guidebook. At 12:30am we're still lost and going in circles when Keith starts going the wrong way up a one-way street. Among the people who make genuinely helpful comments (try the same in London and it might be different) is a taxi driver. He tells us we're 20 minutes from the right place and suggests we follow him. Some time later we pass the port entrance and are looking up at the hotel. Upon request, he suggests 100 Dirham would be appropriate, so he gets that and much extra gratitude.
So here are the road directions from the Tangier Ferry terminal to the Hotel Continental: As yu're on the last straight bit of road inside the port heading toward the port gates (well, gateway) look up and to your right.You'll see the hotel and save much heartache. The moment you come out of the port gates, turn right. After only 100m or so you come to what looks like a T-junction, but actually the road bends right. Turn right again and go into what looks like a cul-de-sac. On your left is a white ramp. Do a hairpin left at the end and go up that. It leads into tiny alleyways with signs to the hotel car park. Despite appearances, it is possible to fit a 2m high, 5.5m long Landcruiser through these, but I'm glad it was Keith doing it.
We arrive at the hotel and a quiet older man is summoned to check us in. We fill a form in each and wait while he copies the details into a huge book, one person per line across two pages.
Web comments suggested the hotel, the oldest in Tangier, is a place of faded glory. Yes and no. Yes, because there's some places where you really don't want everything shiny and new. No, because they're obviously doing quite a lot of work to refurbish the hotel in a non-disruptive way. I get single room 101 half-expecting a broom closet, but it's a nice sized room looking onto an inner courtyard with TV, aircon and a bathroom that's obviously recently refitted to a good standard. When I take my shower at 1am, the hot water isn't - but that's not an unpleasant surprise. Only murmur might be that only one bulb in the 5-bulb ceiling fitting works, but that's all that's needed. I have a lot of sympathy with people trying to make a place hospitable without wasting money.
It's Ramadam for the whole time we're here and I'm curious about how it will affect us. The room marked "Restaurant" is closed with a large padlock and chain through the handles. I'll have to ask Tony how things are normally. Instead, I'm seated on an outside terrace on the first floor of the hotel, looking down over the port, and given a bowl of rolls and pastries, fresh orange juice and coffee. Nice.
The hotel doesn't take cards, so first task is to find an ATM. A staff member tries several times to give us directions, saying it's one minute, but it still takes us 15 minutes to find anything. We leave, following the signs to the motorway to Rabat, on our way to the Roman ruins at Volubilis, just north of Meknes.
Parking is 10Dh and entry is 10Dh per person. We get a guide to show us round, and are glad we did. There's a number of mosaic floors, upright columns and the big arches at each end of the main street. Wonderful, if you like that sort of thing (and we do).
Funniest thing are the largeish piles of broken pottery, just laying about. Time Team would wet themselves for a couple of bits off the top!

Ups and Downs and Ups

2008-09-15T12:15:00.002+01:00

The glory of Cordoba is the Cathedral Mosque (Mezquita). Once upon a time, this was the most populous city in Europe and a Moslem centre to rival Mecca. When the Moslems took the city, the Visigoth Cathedral was demolished and a fairly low building was constructed, its flat roof,obout 8 metres high, supported by rows of pillars. A series of four rulers successively extended this until the number of "bays" equalled the number of days in a year. Then the Christians re-took the city and built a section in the middle that's more like a traditional Christian cathedral, with spire etc.

This has resulted in a unique and marvellous building, with which we were very impressed and surprised that it hasn't had more publicity.

After this, we decided to head for some ruins 7.5km out of town. Having just bigged-up the satnav in my last post, it had real problems today and kept ordering us the wrong way up one-way streets and making us go in loops when we disobeyed.

To be fair :-) the map detail in Spain has been amazing, showing service roads inside campsites and shopping malls! I guess they must have really changed the roads in the last 5 years, including, it seems, building a big new bypass sunk into a trench right across the road we wanted to follow.

The 7.5km ends up more like 20km and takes well over an hour. When we get to the ruins we find they shut at 2pm on Sundays, the same time that the Cathedral Mosque re-opened after morning services. All that way for nothing.

We then set out toward Gibraltar, taking a gamble and using the new bypass. We see a nasty head-on 2-car smash where the road goes from dual-carriageway to one-lane-each-way. Significantly, a helicopter ambulance sits beside, not looking like it'll be used soon. Sarah said she drove more warily after seeing that.

After much flicking between Rough Guide guidebook and map, I find a campsite described about 30 minutes short of Gibraltar. I swear we did five laps of a couple of kilometres of dual carriageway, including many surrounding roads. Eventually the truth becomes clear: they built all over the campsites a year or so ago and now, even if we go back up the coast, there's nothing we can get to before 11pm, the presumed closing time.

We give up on camping and try to reach a hotel we've seen roadside hoardings for. Even that doesn't turn out as simple as it should. Nevertheless, they do have spaces and we're in by midnight. It turns out that the Suites Duquesa Golf is lovely and not too expensive. During a fruitless search for a bar open after Sunday midnight onvthe advice of reception, we decide to stay two nights and take it easy tomorrow.

So that's an up to finish off a day with an up at the start but a couple of downs in the middle. Not too bad overall.

A final word for the Rough Guide guidebook to Spain. We hate it. Apart from the campsite near San Sebastian, it has let us down at every turn and most placename spellings don't seem to match the roadsigns. Sarah only bought it because the shop didn't have the Lonely Planet guide. Maybe another shop?

Sopping but Super San Seb

2008-09-14T01:22:00.006+01:00

Today almost ran to plan, but very late. Once we were all up I cooked breakfast and washed up. With people going for showers at different times, we weren't ready to go into town until 6:30pm. We found we were all out of Euros and just had enough for three 1.20 Euro bus fares into town with 38 Euro-cents spare between the three of us.

Obviously, first stop in town was an ATM. The bit of plan about sitting on the beach didn't come off, because the day was grey and cloudy, with frequent showers of varying weight. I did offer Sarah the chance to "top up her tan" but for some reason she declined.

I'd been to San Sebastian once before, maybe 20 years ago, when local friends-of-a-friend showed us around. This time we managed to make our way pretty directly to the old part of town, where there are many crossing alleyways full of bars.

Keith suggested that we do proper Spanish-style tapas. This was new to me. Many of the bars fill their counter with plates holding a huge variety of finger food. One asks for a plate, puts a selection on it and then shows the bartender and orders one's drinks. Unlike the continental bar practice I'm familiar with, one pays then. I guess it makes things simpler and allows one to leave easier when finished.

It was fabulous drifting around such an exciting place, munching tapas like the locals, although with beer rather than the wine most locals were drinking, after our wino excesses of last night.

In a square, a stage and loudspeakers were being set up. There were also people of all ages waiting around, each with a placard showing a picture of someone, their name, a date and a place name. Each was different. At one point, the people formed a hollow square and someone started talking through an amplifier. I'm not sure I'd have been able to make out the words if it'd been English.

I don't know if the pictures were of political prisoners or 'disappeared' people from a foreign regime. I don't know whether it was an orderly protest ahead of whatever was going on on tbe stage later. The people who came onto the stage once the demonstration was over appeared to be children. I imagined them preparing something all term and then a huge downpour robbing them of an audience. We went elsewhere, so I don't know the truth of that either. Maybe I'm not cut out to be a journalist (or travel blogger). I didn't even tell the others that last time I was here I saw a Basque Separatist riot and police using shields and firing rubber bullets.

I don't know how many bars we went in during the evening, but the whole thing was a wonderful experience, and the frequent showers didn't dampen our spirits one bit. So a resounding success with the explore, eat, drink and be merry parts of the plan.

We were all happy to round off early-ish and get a taxi back to the campsite at about 11:30pm. We grabbed maps and had a nightcap in the campsite bar. After the success of our long drive yesterday, we agreed to aim for Córdoba tomorrow night - a trip of 884km (TomTom says). We can spend Sunday there and have a shortish hop to Morocco on Monday. Today must be our earliest bedtime of the trip.

The following day starts wet and gets distinctly drier. I wake in the tent to sustained heavy rain. My theory that there must be a way to pack up the inner of my tent before the flysheet proves fatally flawed, and very very muddy. Keith says he has one similar, but with that critical design flaw solved. I wonder if Tesco's do trade-ins?

The drive doesn't prove too problematic. We each do about 200km and then another 100km each to finish. Very soon after we leave San Sebastian the weather clears, and things keep getting drier until we're in the countryside just north of Madrid, which looks really parched. Honest, we'd have brought yesterday's weather with us if we could.

I said there would be more on the cramped 3-abreast seating in the bus. Keith and Sarah decided rapidly after the first day that they didn't like that, and now somebody has to sit in the back the whole time. We've evolved a rotation: back, front passenger, drive, then relegated again. Travelling in the back isn't as bad as I thought, although Keith and I both have to slump down far enough to see forward. Keith and Sarah both say they like it (but neither volunteers for extra stints) and I haven't felt car-sick yet.

We arrive in Córdoba (I'm writing this on a PDA and getting the ó character is a real faff, so I put these in later.) I choose the Andalucia Hotel from the guidebook almost at random. There are 5 in there not called "hostel" and there's no indication on relative prices. We find a parking spot and go looking for the hotel, which it turns out is mid-refurb and shut.

During our search, I spot the Hotel Selu, which is very well-appointed for a 3-star and near to useful places. We stay there.

Out again for more beers. We don't see any bars with tapas layouts like in San Sebastian, but order from the menu at alleyway tables of a "Cañas Y Tapas" (beer and tapas) place. The menu refers to "ration" and "half-ration". We over-order somewhat, but can easily cope with the shame. Bed before 2am - fairly modest.

*Kit*

Time for some words on equipment.

The star item has been Keith's 5-year-old TomTom satnav. OK, so it tried to kill us on the steps and get us arrested in the pedestrianised area, and it needed resetting every day on average whilst in France, and its slowness to update has made us take the wrong turning several times. Despite this, it's been a whole lot easier than having to map-read for each other, and has got us to places we didn't even have maps for. Life would have been much more complicated without, and will be in Morocco - because there doesn't seem to be any satnav maker with maps of North Africa!

Second prize goes to the torch on a headband I bought on a whim in Black's. I've always thought people wearing them looked like twats. It doesn't matter. The pleasure of having light wherever you turn your head is a winner. Good engineering solution, even if a very poor sartorial one.

Honourable mention goes to the cheapo tent from Tesco's. OK, so you can't put it up or down if it's raining, but while it was up I was dry and snug inside and reluctant to come out. Fair enough.

Progress!

2008-09-12T13:57:00.001+01:00

Yesterday was interesting.

The reason why we targetted Blois was a wish to see the Chateau Chambourd, the largest in the Loire although dwarfed by Versailles. It is amazing, for a number of reasons. The roofs are a mad hotch-potch of domes, cones and huge rectangular chimneys. There's an introductory talk in English at 12 so we take breakfast and coffee while we wait. When we go in, the lady denies there is any such talk before 3pm, although the screen above her head clearly disagrees.

King Francis I built this as a hunting lodge. The highlight is a double-spiral staircase up the middle of the keep so that people starting from the same floor but on opposite sides will never meet as they climb. The keep has a 4-time rotational symmetry around the staircase, with each quadrant having a suite in the square centre and another in a round tower at the corner. This gives 8 equal-status suites on each of 3 floors - it's a block of flats for 24 noble families! Each suite comprises a large main room, maybe 25m by 35m and very high, plus a number of smaller rooms. It's like each of those rooms is the size of the main hall in the days when lord, ladies and serfs would all live in one great hall in the manor house. Francis I only visited here for 72 days in his 32-year reign. He and an entourage of 3000 travelled around the country visiting different towns and bankrupting them through the costs of providing hospitality all those people for two weeks at a time. Apparently, this contact with the people helped keep the monarchy popular. An early plot against the young Louis XIV made him stop doing this and he hid in Versailles. That progressively eroded the support for the monarchy, setting the seeds of the French revolution. Funny how big events can have such small causes.

The chateau was always unfurnished, because the party would bring their furniture and finery with them and assemble it on-site, dismantling when they left.

We get back to the bus just before 2pm and agree to put as many miles on as we can, aiming for San Sebastian, just into Spain. In compensation, we'll stay there a whole day before moving on. This turns out to be a really good idea.

The guidebook lists a campsite in the hills above the town, and we reach it on the dot of 10pm, hoping to slip in. No problem! Reception is open to 11 anyway and staffed by a lovely friendly lady. We set up camp and head off to one of two bar/restaurants next door. We order food around 11pm (the spanish often eat late) and leave around 1am.

Here's a strange thing: almost none of the toilets I found in France had seats on them. I don't know if this is penny-pinching, theft or some leaning toward the supposed sanitary benefits of the stand-up toilet. Anyway, this humble bar in a Basque village has a seat on its toilet.

We have no difficulty in deciding that we strongly prefer this to the toilet-seat-less, early closing and rather starchy France we've seen so far.

We celebrate on with most of the wine we bought in LeClerc, which seemed it'd last us through the holiday, a game of cards and deep chats. I retire to the tent at about 4:30am, leaving the others chatting. About 20 minutes later we bump into each other down at the amenity block, where we chat more as we wait for a burst of rain to stop.

The following morning isn't. I wake at 1:30pm and start writing this. Keith surfaces at 2:30pm. No sign of Sarah yet. Today's plan was theoretically: into town, sit on beach, explore, eat, drink and be merry. Only time will tell if we can cope with all that complexity.

First Steps

2008-09-11T15:40:00.002+01:00

Over the first couple of days of our holiday it's become clear that we're a tad short on planning, and suffering for it.
We never did have the planning session. Sarah got up at 8am, had breakfast, then went back to bed. I had breakfast as I predicted between 9:40 and 10:00, then went back to my room because I couldn't find anyone. Keith missed breakfast altogether. To be fair, Keith did say yesterday that he hadn't made a hotel breakfast in 11 years.

"To be fair" is Keith's favourite phrase, which I've deliciously hamstrung him in by pointing out as much. Now he blames his use on me! I like to think the phrase is a reflection of Keith's agreeable character more than his resonse to the outrageously unbalanced statements it sometimes amuses me to make. In either case, those are the blows.

So we met haphazardly at the bus at about 11:30am and set off without much discussion toward Rouen.

Once we agreed upon the fact of our hunger, we still missed or ignored a few suitable places for lunch. This continued until we swept past a fighter jet mounted at the roadside, with a relais behind. This turned out to be the Aeroclub de la terre de la Seine, where we each had the 16 EUR menu. Whatever we ordered, it came with the same hash-brown-like discs, veggies and mushroom. We didn't mind, and none of us had space for dessert.

On to Rouen, and we have to do 2 laps of the town before we can find a non-underground parking place. Keith told a story of one such claiming 4.4m headroom at the entrance, but only 4.1m at the exit. Such dazzling lack of foresight leading to a long queue and a long reverse.

Parked, we take a beer and I learn that neither of the others has brought a raincoat on the trip. I run back for mine when it starts to drizzle, and end up wetter from humidity and perspiration than they get from the rain.

We take in a beer at a hostelry in the "Rue de la Grand Horloge" (road of the big clock - how romantic). We have a beer delicately called Delirium Tremens and served through pumps topped by a row of 12 ceramic pink elephants.

Most interesting thing we see in Rouen is the building now filling the square where Joan of Arc was burned at the stake. It has swooping rooves reminiscent of a dragon's scales and tail. Most of it is a church, with a fish market beside, all in the same style.

We make it back to the Cathedral for the laser light show we're looking forward to, only to find it's cancelled in September apart from 2 days (neither being today).

Having rung and been told that the camp site in Les Andelys doesn't close until "22 hours", we happily turn up at 21:30 to be told that new arrivals had to be present before 18:00. The man lets us in grumpily.

I'm not sure who he was grumpiest at - us or, with the campsite almost empty, the people he put us right next to - a bicycling couple who were already in bed in their tent before we arrived. First we spoke softly and earned a rebuke from a ghost in a dressing gown. Then we whispered and their tent emitted grumbles when we latched a car door as quietly as we were able, or zipped up tents to turn in.

Sleeping hasn't turned out as simple as advertised. The bus turns into (effectively) bunk beds. Keith said he and Sarah would share one while I went in the other. I based my packing on that, bringing a tent as a last resort.

Unfortunately, Keith hadn't consulted Sarah. The tent is now essential accomodation for one of us each time we camp. We'll enjoy it in rotation, which seems more than fair given the situation.

Despite the inadvisability of trying to erect an unfamiliar tent in the dark, my memory returns, it's up in 10 minutes and Sarah takes up residence.

The campsite is below Chateau Gaillard, a now-half-ruined castle on a commanding height over the river that was one of the last obstacles to the unification of France. In the morning we take a brief tour and imagine how things were.

Next is a trip to the house and gardens of Claude Monet. On the way there we divert in Vernon, following signs for a LeClerc hypermarket, where we get food, kit and particularly the wine we'd have liked last night. We look out for hot, ready-to-eat pizza, which some hypermarkets sell, but come up empty and make a pragmatic decision for traditional French regional McDonald's, as the time is getting on.

Monet's house is interesting mainly because it contains very many paintings, all of them in Japanese style. Sarah says it's related to Orientalism, a passion in France lasting into the early 20th Century. The garden is the main attraction for me, though - a blaze of colour to excite the senses when seen in the morning from the great man's bedroom window.

We head off, aiming to reach Blois by evening. We ring the nearest campsite listed in the Lonely Planet guidebook. They shut for new arrivals at 7pm and there's no way we can reach it until 8:30pm.

The last leg before Blois is all motorway, so we don't see any campsites on that. We arrive in the centre of Blois and find the tourist office predictably shut. However, we think ourselves lucky when a nearby shop window has a touch-sensitive window with a computer monitor behind. We see details of a few campsites before settling on one that sounds large and close by.

I say "we think ourselves lucky" because what follows is two hours of traipsing around looking for it. We find one campsite with directions from many customers of a bar in Vineuil, but it's locked up and deserted. We find a few more areas with numbers of parked caravans. However, it's the flat-bed trucks parked beside that finally help us decide these are gypsies rather than tourists.

The shop window also told us that there's an area for camper vans to camp on the quayside. We go there and even find a space, but Keith decides sitting in a dark tarmac car park jammed between other vans isn't his idea of camping.

We give up and ring the Hotel Du Bellay from the guidebook. We do eventually reach it, despite the TomTom satnav trying to send the bus through pedestrian areas and up long flights of steps. My room is modest and clean, even if the room containing the sink and w.c. is not in the best state of repair.

After passing several restaurants busy closing, we find a bar that sells food until 11 and beer until well after midnight. The main topic of conversation is the progress we're making toward heading south. We need to make more miles tomorrow, but that makes it difficult to get into campsites (our preferred option, when possible, to keep the budget down).

On our way back to the hotel, we find a statue that some wags have equipped with a broom, etc. Sleep isn't long in coming.

A Journey of 5 Thousand Miles Begins With...

2008-09-09T12:48:00.002+01:00

Calais (from which, greetings).

Departure should have been easy. I only had a couple of things to do for work on Friday, putting final touches to documents. Unfortunately, as so often seems to happen, a "bush fire" caught light and damping it down soaked up the whole day. It's OK - I'd just do the documents on Saturday or Sunday. I also had those two whole days to pack, so no problem at all.

Cut to Sunday night, when Olympic-class idleness sees me no further forward, but turning the light on every five minutes into the wee small hours to add another item to the list of things I should have packed by now. Hence Monday is a mad race to find and bag everything, finishing in a long, hot, sweaty and fruitless search for the paper part of my driving licence. Damn!

In the midst of this, I still haven't done those bloody documents. I throw myself on the mercy of colleague Ray who, phlegmatic as usual, resignedly takes over my burdens. It'll be beer o'clock when I get back.

Travelling companions Keith and sister Sarah finally arrive late-afternoon to pick me up. Even then, they have to sit and wait (with creditable patience) while I earn my gold medal in last-minute faffing.

Keith's "bus" is a huge Toyota Landcruiser in bright white with a 4.2 litre diesel engine under a bonnet longer than my whole car. As part of my sole weekend achievement in booking our 11pm Monday Dover-Calais ferry crossing for the princely sum of £37 (including £0 high vehicle supplement), I learned that she is exactly 2M high and 5.5M long. Despite these impressive proportions, she isn't very wide, and sitting three-abreast up front proves "snug". Of which, I feel sure, more later.

To get the hang of driving the bus, I'm in charge from home to supermarket and thence Dover. The driving position is very unfamiliar, sitting very upright and looking down at Range Rover drivers. The blind spots are HUGE, and I find myself staring for far too long after each overtake at tiny stick-on convex wedges that Keith has added to the door mirrors, waiting for headlights to recede. Heaven help us if one drops off!

At the port in good time, we're moved to the earlier sailing. I order a burger while Keith has a smoke. As they bring the shutters down, I try to find him but fail. Keith is stuck with an "all day" (all night) breakfast on board for nearly three times the price. Apart fom lorries, the boat is nearly deserted.

Keith's satnav leads us to the Campanile Hotel, Calais, where he's booked us in for the rest of the night. After some juggling, we fit the bus neatly into the last space in the car park, backed into the twigs and leaves of a tree in which we then have to stand to unload.

The button of the night bell sticks, and I struggle to spring it back out. Twenty minutes later it can stay stuck in for all I care - there seems to be nobody listening anyway. Keith specifically checked 24 hour opening and booked guaranteed late arrival. The emergency phone number goes to voicemail.

At least we've learned to pull the bus forward out of the tree before we re-load.

We see an Ibis Hotel across the road, and get within yards of it when a one-way system suddenly makes it a mile away. They have rooms. Ibis - dull and plain, but reliable.

Keith and Sarah come to my room for a night-cap. Tomorrow we'll decide what we want to see in France and plan our route south. Exciting!

We run out of cider and I switch to lager, paying for it in the morning. I search every bag pocket for a headache pill, but to no avail. It'll be a while before I make that mistake again - the lack of pill, rather than the drinking

Trial Trip Tangier

2008-08-31T11:11:00.003+01:00

I'm off to Morocco!

Former colleague Keith is between contracts at the moment, and said he was up for a trial-run long-distance tour trip as long as we could go really soon. I found out recently that the Morocco/Algeria border is shut and so a trip across North Africa can't start from Gibraltar. Morocco has a number of interesting places to see, so it'd be a shame to miss.

So the idea of a trial-run trip via France and Spain to Morocco (and back) was born, and I'll be off next weekend.

Keith and I met yesterday for a "planning meeting" and had a late lunch at a pub near his house. A stream of hot-air balloons were being launched from the next field throughout our chat. I kicked myself for not bringing a camera.

We didn't get into lots of detail, but happily found that we agreed about a lot of things, such as making the journey down through France and Spain "part of the trip", going down slow and coming back fast, what balance there should be between camping and hotels, etc.

Morocco is an exciting prospect; it's an Islamic country and it'll be Ramadam for the whole time we're there, which will probably make eating and drinking rather more complicated.

We're off now to find good maps, ferry/eurostar costs, insurance implications, etc.
It's quite a thought that we'll be leaving this time next week!

Climate picture

2008-08-22T01:45:00.011+01:00

As a way to work out the best (least bad) time to be in different parts of the world I was looking for an animation showing temperature and rainfall through the months of the year. Maybe it's out there, but I couldn't find it. So I made my own, combining images from earthobservatory.nasa.gov. Surprisingly, the most recent whole year for which they have both pictures is 2003!

I used my favourite image program IrfanView to manipulate the images and UnFREEz to animate the gif. Annoyingly, Google/Picasa won't seem to let me upload an animated gif, so it's on Flickr instead.

Nothing's Ever Simple

2008-08-09T14:10:00.006+01:00

I spent yesterday evening with my cousin Stuart. He's travelled in South America twice, mainly by bicycle and bus, and from Turkey, through Iran, Pakistan and India to Nepal.

He gave me lots of good tips, including pointing out that Algeria might present problems. It turns out that, despite calls related to Mediterranean Union unity, the Morocco/Algeria land border has been closed since 1994 and looks set to remain closed.

That probably explains why Ewan and Charley went via Italy, Sicily and Tunisia.

He also told me that:
a) the tourist season in Chile is mainly November to April, outside of which one may have to user roads in Argentina rather than Chile and if you get stuck you'll have to wait longer for help (which screws up my planned trip timing).
b) Having visited India several times, most of the stuff I'm likely to want to see is up in the North, so I may have the opportunity to shorten my route.

Based on these, I've updated my planned route map yet again.

Unapathising

2008-07-26T20:07:00.007+01:00

I've finally got down to it and spent a full day route-researching. On balance, I feel better. The feeling that there's an AWFUL lot to organise just grows.

One of the headaches in my planning has always been crossing Myanmar, and it remains a problem. Originally I drew a fantasy line looping around the north or the country, then read that some land borders were open, so drew a line through the middle.

There is a long running thread about this on Lonely Planet's Thorn Tree Travel Forum, with one poster recently observing:
"What has 2200 views and 236 replies produced? You cant cross between India and Burma."

Although there are reports that it is possible to drive across most of Myanmar before handing your keys over to the military and flying on separately, I haven't see a post from someone who has done this.

In fact, roadblocks and extortion on the India side of the border seem as big a problem as Burma itself.

The two alternatives seem to be:
(A) Northabouts via Nepal and China, but trying this resulted in misery for one group whose paperwork went missing and then learned about a huge deposit needed instead of a carnet.
(B) South by sea, but shipping from Kolkata/Calcutta turned into a nightmare for Dreamtrip (see bottom). For others it was bearable (see "India"). Yet others recommend shipping from Bangladesh (Dhaka or Chittagong). The far end might be Port Klang, Malaysia or Bangkok, Thailand. This seems to cost up to 700GBP and now seems like the preferred solution.

Add to this the impassable Darien Gap between Panama and Colombia that Ed told me about, and I now have 4 sea legs to organise.

Good news today (via NessiesAdventures) is that Iran, Pakistan, India and Nepal all issue visas months before your planned entry into the country, which should make planning for Asia a bit easier.

News about China is both good and bad. They do offer a 6- or 12-month multiple entry visa :-) but other reports say you have to specify your exact route and every overnight stop in advance, thereafter cast in tablets of stone :-((

I've also observed that most visa forms want a departing flight specified, and ticket shown, so they can be sure you'll leave. Having a major credit card may help with this in some cases. Hopefully.

I'm coming to the view that there's not enough time before Christmas for me to properly "get my ducks in a row" and travel any distance. Hence I'm looking at a departure in the New Year, probably March. I have to threaten myself, though, that if I'm not gone by April 1st (give or take) then I'm never going, and I don't want that.

Nothing but obstacles

2008-07-19T06:37:00.011+01:00

Thanks to Michael for the comment, and sorry to take so long to respond. My plans have definitely slipped, and currently I don't have a departure date clearly in mind. I'm still firmly resolved to go, but a few important pieces of my jigsaw don't feel like they're in place.

"N" got back to me. He's decided he has to reduce his mortgage before he can be free to travel, and proposed going this time next year. I do understand, and he hadn't misled me at all by giving any other indication before. Nevertheless, it's obviously a disappointment. I feel that (completely independent of N) I've put my life on hold pending travelling. The most concrete example of this is that I seem to get a phone call from different headhunters about every couple of weeks, and I've been turning them away for six months now because "I'm taking a year off to go round the world." I've failed to progress with my preparations over the last month or so and now the delay to my original plans is growing.

One of the reasons I haven't been putting the effort into planning is the clash between "romantic" ideas and practical realities. As I mentioned before, I thought the "Long Way Down" was such a waste, rushing through North Africa to follow a hard schedule (e.g. make a specific ferry sailing). I imagined that I could proceed at my own pace, staying somewhere for a week if I liked the place. The reality seems to be that visas must be obtained in advance for the coloured-in places on the map in my last post, which requires stating the date on which you'll enter every country. I'm not sure how much fun it would be to have to proceed at a pre-determined, regimented pace across half of Africa and almost all of Asia. The other alternative would seem to be getting visas hand-to-mouth in countries on route, which could amount to hanging around in cities for weeks waiting for slow embassy cogs to turn.

The other thing about visas is that you don't seem to be able to get them a long time in advance. As they seem to me to be the hardest part of the preparations, I feel that there's a lot of research and "getting ducks in a row" and then the month before leaving will be an orgy of "hurry up and wait" (borrowing the military term), to/from and waiting in various embassies.

I had lunch with good friend Ed (of Overlandy.com) who went down South America, spending 4 months travelling, but 6 months overall. We talked through his experiences and my plans. Tremendously valuable. Problem is that Ed believes it's "ambitious" to attempt my proposed route in a year, and I should budget between 18 months and 2 years. Right now, I've mentally allowed for the trip to spill beyond 1 year, but 2 years is longer than I want to leave UK life on hold.

Even though I could do my route either way round (Asia-first or Africa-first), there's still awkward seasonal constraints that really complicate planning and limit when I can leave the UK. In order, worst-first, the ones I know about include:
- Winter in the Andes (May-September)
- Winter in the Silk Road passes (December-March)
- Rainy season in Africa (December-March)
- Monsoon rains in India and Asia (June-September)
Puzzling over this, I think I can see an Africa-first route starting in April (with the car on a container ship in August and January), but there's bound to be experienced travellers out there who know much better.

Finally, normal house insurance conditions don't cover houses that are unoccupied for more than 60 days, as mine could potentially be. It turns out that they mainly want all the water systems in the house drained down. Could be worse - I just have to teach myself more plumbing. A couple of years ago my central heating pump broke and I just couldn't persuade any plumbers to come and fix it, so in the end I did it myself and it's been fine to the point of writing.

Ok, there have been one or two encouragements. I met an old acquaintance who travels to Laos regularly on business and told me that they definitely have a pay-on-entry visa system (he was actually flying there that night).

Also, I've been obsessing a bit about funding the Carnet. Then Ed told me that his bank provided a guarantee without him actually having the cash deposited. They charged him some interest on the amount guaranteed and would have chased him afterward if the money had actually been required. That was good news and at least one thing off my mind.

Finally, just for interest, here's a map (Wikipedia) showing which countries drive on the left (blue) and right (red) side of the road. I always wondered what happened at land borders between red and blue countries, so here's hoping I find out!

Organisation - 1 of many?

2008-06-21T11:23:00.010+01:00

Visas
The largest single class of thing that needs organising is visas. I spent ages working through the Foreign and Commonwealth Office Travel Advice and filling in a spreadsheet.

The following map shows countries that are on my route and need visas in advance in Orange, with Red for really awkward countries.

Biggest problems are:
Turkmenistan - where they have transit and tourist visas. Web hearsay indicates that one could be refused the former, so the latter is safer but you need to be invited and met at the border by an approved travel agent. Visas are only valid 45 days from issue and for 30 days. Starting from London, that'd be a bit of a tight schedule. Also, you can only go in if you have a visa for the next country, which from London would be Uzbekistan. Uzbekistan only allow you in if you have visas for both Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. Aaaaargh!
Libya - who want an Arabic translation of your passport personal info page on a stamped-in format and you also have to hire a guide for $45/day and travel with them.
Laos - who keep changing their visa terms and whose nearest consulate is in Paris.

Carnet
A "Carnet de Passages en Douanes" is a bond that UK travellers driving abroad need to take out via the RAC. You have to provide a multiple of the vehicle value as security against import duties that would be due if you fail to take your vehicle out of a country you've visited. This is well described elsewhere.
Unfortunately, Egypt requires 800% of the value the vehicle would have there, so just driving a £10K car through Egypt would end up costing about £4.6K. Ouch!

Company
As it'd be MUCH better to do the trip with someone else, I have a friend who I hope will go with me. I asked, and he doesn't currently want to be identified in this blog, so I've decided to identify him as N.
This is (randomly) inspired by the Roman Catholic Eucharistic Prayer II:
"Lord, remember your Church throughout the world; make us grow in love, together with N. our Pope, N. our bishop, and all the clergy."

Although N is keen, he's currently gone away to decide whether he really wants to drive around the world (as opposed to reducing his mortgage) and whether he wants to go this August/September (as opposed to improving his CV until next Spring to make things easier when he gets back).
Based on that, my plans are pretty much in limbo until he decides (or I decide otherwise). As N has an extremely suitable 4x4, I can't even think about vehicle preparations.

I feel I have a pretty fair idea of the prep that needs doing, and that most of it can't be done a very long way in advance of leaving. So I can do some of the other things and just wait to push the "red button".

Route Rationale

2008-06-21T09:32:00.008+01:00

This needs to be a mega post! I’ve been failing to get around to writing for ages and now there’s far too much to say now.

Explaining the route
Having decided to drive around the world there are a couple of issues.
- One is the fact that there whilst the aim is to go East-West, two of the more interesting bits run North-South. I definitely want to go down Africa but do I then want to turn round and drive straight back up it again?
- The other issue is that there are (at least) two big wet bits – lets call them “Atlantic” and “Pacific” for a laugh.

It turns out that one issue can be the answer to the other. If driving, I’ll end up at the bottom of Africa or South America with a car that I can either ship or dump/sell and buy another on the next continent. So I can go down Africa and up South America (or vice-versa) and see each just once. Dump/sell potentially has its own complications, with import duties, paperwork, etc. so the current plan is to ship.

Hopefully, shipping will be easiest in containers and therefore between the world’s great container ports. This means that it’s most likely to ship once between:
North America: Vancouver, Seattle (Wa), Oakland (Ca) or San Diego (Ca)
And
China: Shanghai or Hong Kong
And the other time between:
South America: Buenos Aires, Montevideo or Rio de Janeiro
And
South Africa: Cape Town, Durban or Port Elizabeth
In each list, the ports are in my approximate order of preference based on an interesting land route. Uncertainty of choice between Cape Town and Durban explains the “loop” through South Africa on the map in my previous post.

Which way round?
When I drew my route map I intended to go westward (for some reason I always think of it as clockwise). However, getting visas for the "stans" and the prospect of snowed-up Silk Road mountain passes if I leave much after September has made me think about going anti-clockwise. That’d put me in the following places (letters are month initials)
SOND: Africa
JFMA: Americas
MJJA: Asia

I’d be in each place in Summer and, as I know from a past business trip to South Africa, things can look very parched and beige then so I probably won’t see them at their best. That’s probably better than getting stuck for months because Winter weather is early or late.
However, I may have to delay my departure to Spring ’09, which would encourage reversing the route again:
MJJA: Asia
SOND: Americas
JFMA: Africa

Although I think it would also work as:
MJJA: Africa (cooler)
SOND: Americas
JFMA: Asia (but need to check snow here)

Myanmar
On the map in my previous post, you can see that I just showed a route avoiding Myanmar (Burma) by looping around to the North, through China. This was dim. It turns out that there’s a small thing in the way that I’d like to call The Himalayas (but should apparently be the Parallel Gorges Area of the Tibet and Central China range of mountains – whither artistic licence?).

For a while, this gave me a bluey :-(
I could get to the Eastern border of India and then seemed stuck, with the mountains to the North and unfriendly people to the front. Myanmar has a bad rep for murdering monks and doesn’t recognize UK or International Driving Licences – “You must apply for a Myanmar Driving License at the Department for Road Transport and Administration in Rangoon” (fco). Then I found that there are a small number of open land borders and hope to hire a driver – someone must want the money, although I understand that locals do need permits to travel between districts.

There is a vast difference between (a) reaching India and giving up, (b) looping back into China via Pakistan or Tibet, and (c) crossing Myanmar by any means possible and getting into exciting South-East Asia.

The resulting route
So, with changes for Myanmar (transit), South Africa (unlooping) and Tierra del Fuego (added, courtesy of my mate Ed www.Overlandy.com), the route is now:

(Click to enlarge)

Wakey Wakey

2008-04-19T17:41:00.011+01:00

Time to revive this blog. Actually past time.

For more years than I can count, I've wanted to "travel round the world". Over Christmas I came to feel very strongly that I should do it now. I don't have any money troubles and my CV at work is very solid. There's nothing going on in my family that means I have to be in the UK.
So it's time to go.

I had a similar situation the last time I changed my car. I felt I had a choice between an Audi A4 (as the best of the classy saloons that wasn't a BMW) and a Toyota MR2 (as mid-engined 2-seat sports car with a hard roof to match the British weather). I decided I wanted a sports car at some time, and would there ever be a better time than then? So I got the sports car and never regretted it.

In the spirit of blogging, I should probably have resumed posting earlier this year, to share my developing thinking. Never mind - work has been extremely hectic and now is good enough.

As I mentioned before, I've been very fortunate that work and play has taken me to a pretty reasonable number of countries already. In most cases that's been: fly in, dot about, fly out. I feel that to experience "travel round the world" I need to be more immersed than that. So flying needs to be the exception rather than the rule.

Next choice is the means of surface transport over land. I used trains for my Balkan tour, which takes some planning and tends to limit one to larger cities. Thinking of India, I read that "About 70% of the people live in more than 550,000 villages, and the remainder in more than 200 towns and cities" (Ref.). How much do I think I would see of those 700,000,000ish village-dwellers by train? Even the physical act of typing those zeros impresses the huge number on me.

Next (and perhaps most obvious) option would be buses. Trouble is, I've always HATED long-distance coach travel - and that on the heated, air-conditioned marvels we have in the UK. I don't think I'm up for "Dave suffers the buses of the world".

So that leaves private transport. Like many people, I watched Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman touring on motorbikes in "Long Way Round" and "Long Way Down". The latter being mainly a cautionary tale that running to a schedule can so overshadow the journey that it is impossible to savour a once-in-a-lifetime experience. I'll try so hard to avoid that. Anyway, as I don't have a motorbike licence (or associated experience) it seems a little rash to go by bike.

So here it is: "I want to drive round the world".

I have developed a draft route, shown in the following picture, which I'll explain in my next post.

Photos

2007-09-21T19:56:00.000+01:00

Hello,
I've finally put some photos online. You should be able to see them at http://www.flickr.com/photos/13818986@N05/.
Failing that, search Flickr for user dt0000.
Enjoy!

And So To Bed

2007-08-30T19:36:00.001+01:00

Now that my trip is over (and yes, I enjoyed it a lot) I'll be posting a lot less often.

I work at designing and developing fairly large-scale computer systems, and though I might have some things that'd be worth saying, I'd have to be careful not to say anything that'd upset my employer or clients if they found out I'd said it. Shame!

Anyway, thanks for reading with me so far.

God bless and au revoir.

What I've Learned

2007-08-30T19:22:00.000+01:00

As hoped, I've learned a few different things from my travels:

*Stuff to take*

It pays to have a little "bootstrap" money to change at the station (if no ATM is there), just to get a taxi to town or hotel. After that, ATMs are plentiful (in the cities I visited) and work without problem (the occasional one is broken, as at home).

More places are favouring Euros (e.g. Turkey), so they are slightly more useful than Sterling (but I had no problems with changing Sterling).

White T-shirts (with whatever on the front) are a really good idea. I stupidly took some green and grey ones for a change, so I had to walk round showing dark patches of damp.

Taxi drivers where foreigners will arrive (e.g. Stations) can be quite keen to separate them from their money. I got a taxi from hotel to station in Sofia for under 4 Leva (€2). When I wanted to return the first offer was €10, and the driver laughed uproariously when I said 4 Leva. I couldn't get waiting radio-taxis to take me, so I had to settle on a mid-priced cab at the back of the queue, so it cost me 10 Leva (€5) to get back to the hotel.

Insisting (in advance) on using the meter is generally a good idea. "Radio cars" (i.e. come when you ring their office) are usually best, and can arrive surprisingly quickly.

Traveling alone is OK during the day, but not in the evening (for social rather than security reasons). Travelling in company during the day is nicer too.

It'd be nice to have mobile internet (GSM/GPRS/3G) so one isn't tied to internet cafes or hotel internet. It's still worth having a laptop or equivalent that can read/write to a USB key, as you can then plug the key into an internet cafe or hotel business centre PC. My PDA isn't good enough on that point.

I'm going to be looking into Solid State Hard Disks, as it doesn't matter if they get knocked. They're still quite expensive (e.g. Samsung 32GB £270) but will be coming down.

If you want to spend time sightseeing rather than trudging round (probably with your luggage), then you need to book hotels ahead. There is no substitute for the internet, to get maps, see where hotels are relative to stations, town centres, etc. and check hotel availability and rates.

Blogger/Blogspot allows posts to be published by email. I wish I'd worked that out before I travelled, as I could have posted direct from the PDA without having to find Internet Cafes.

WikiTravel.com is good. I'll be thinking about contributing an update or two.

*Where I Went*

All of the big cities where I went had "all mod cons" (e.g. ATMs).

Croatia and Turkey use the Latin alphabet. Serbia and Bulgaria use Cyrillic. Learning the sounds of the Cyrillic letters is a really good idea and will get you a long way (e.g. restaurant, beer).

Many young people in all the places spoke some or more English. Older people, particularly in places that use the Cyrillic-alphabet, typically had less or none.

Tourist-facing jobs tend to be filled by the people with more foreign language knowledge, so making life easier for the likes of me.

It is, obviously, harder to get around where hardly anyone (taxi drivers, public transport staff, stallholders) speaks English - such as Serbia.

Sofia didn't show the signs I expected from Bulgaria's Iron Curtain past. It shows how little impact 40-odd years can have on the architecture of an old city.

Bulgaria seems extremely proud of being in the EU. In 90% of cases, the EU flag flies next to the Bulgarian one. I even saw one combined flag (outside Sofia Central Station).

The Balkans don't bite.

Home Safe

2007-08-26T05:33:00.000+01:00

Just a quickie (darling) to say I got home safe.

Turkey was sweaty to the very end (and that'll probably be my abiding memory of the country).

On the flight home I found myself next to a delightful Newfoundlander called Jennifer. Much travelled before and at the end of 4 months on the road, returning to "school" (but not college :-)) in Halifax.

Landed at Heathrow to find the take-off runway closed and planes not leaving their gates, but BA juggled their planes and we were delayed for less time than I've often taxyed (apparently that's how you spell it).

I bumped into old friends and colleagues Al and Heather in the immigration queue, just back from hols in Larnaca after being flooded out recently.

Elaine was waiting to take me back home (thank you lots).

I rounded off the day falling asleep in my own bed, half-way-through watching recorded F1 qualifying from back in Istanbul, just a short drive from where I started today.

Home and happy.

All Good Thıngs

2007-08-25T22:23:00.000+01:00

*Stuff*

The power cut goes on - so I read my Le Carre under a street lamp in the park across the road until I'm tired (I don't fancy more beer).

And on - so I buy a cigarette lighter to get me to my room. Next door is the only building in the block with electricity and it's because they're running the big generator right outside my window.

And on - so I get up the next mornıng and re-pack (around the Turkısh Carpet, which amazingly fits in - what else have I lost?)

The silver lining is that I'm up really early (and this is BST-2) and decide to take a Turkish Bath. I ask the hotelier who says I'll have enough money (the local ATMs are out with the power). I don't. I empty everything and reach 39.65 Lira of the required 40, which is enough to get in but leaves the masseur looking for his tip.

I can't decide whether he deserved a tip. The massage was good, but the double neck-crack at the end is the most likely cause of the headache I develop later.

I'm back at the hotel before 9am local time!

With no cash left I wander in search of another ATM getting thirstier and thirstier until I spot a hotel and remember I have some sterling that they change for me - saved!

The last must-see sight is the Topkapi Palace, used by the Ottoman sultans after they conquered Istanbul. I wander round it until midday, thinking about the life of the Sultan (I like my sitting room better than his) and the odd life of concubines, taken into the palace in their early teens to be educated, then move up a hierarchy. The Sultan would (so the plaques say) only sleep with the top rank comprising between 4 and 8 of them and, if they became pregnant, they would join the royal family.

Incidentally, the term "harem" refers to the private residences of the Sultan, his whole family, all the concubines and the eunuchs. I didn't spend long thinking about the odd lives of eunuchs.

I grab lunch of Moroccan Lamb based on the last of this morning's cash and pop onto an ınternet cafe one block up that actually has power and post thıs whıle I wait for the airport shuttle.

Crossıng Contınents

2007-08-25T06:11:00.000+01:00

*Travel*

Today I completed my journey all the way from one continent to another (actually about 15 minutes by boat - see below).

The wikiTravel page for Istanbul says don't miss the Basilica Cistern. Definitely right.

It's a large area underground, maybe a football pitch, with columns at regular intervals holding a roof maybe 30 feet up from the walkway piers that have been added for us tourists, about 1 metre above the 1 metre of water in the cistern, teeming with fish.

It's subtly illuminated and I managed to get a few good photos by putting my camera on night mode and holding it against railings, etc to keep it very still.

It dawned on me that all the columns were different heights, with a base beneath each to make them reach the roof. They must have come from a very large number of previous grand buildings. We're talking about well over a hundred columns of between 8 and 10 metres!!

At the end of the walkways there was a café on a platform over the water, so I stopped for an unusual coffee. The café owner chatted to me and persuaded me to go with him to his uncle to learn about quality Turkish carpets.

Yes, I could see what was coming, but why shouldn't I go along to see if I enjoy the ride?

Yes, I did buy a carpet. Combination silk and wool, and in colours I liked. I have no idea whether I got a good deal, but I think I may have, as the uncle didn't seem overjoyed. He swore me to secrecy about the price I paid, but that's probably a standard part of the schmutter.

Incidentally, I saw "schmuck" written down today, translated as the word jewellery. That's not the translation I'd deduced from hearing it in context.

I hovered over a beer until 12 noon, the local check-in and -out time, to move my bags.

This afternoon I did the single thing I most wanted from my journey - travelling from Europe to Asia.

Strictly, I've already been to Asia numerous times (well, at least the Middle East and Hong Kong). But there's something different about getting there by earth-bound transport. Air travel is a bit like the Star Trek transporter - you snap your fingers or click your heels together and suddenly you're in the middle of a new place.

I have to concede (as someone with something like 70 airports behind him) that air transport is cheating-travel. Road, train and boat count. I might possibly make an exception for non-pressurised propellor-driven aircraft, as you're still immersed in the experience, like Phineas Fogg's balloon flight to Paris.

I still recall the wierdness of one of my early flights, to holiday in Kenya. It was like climbing into a big metal tube and waiting while someone made the tube be a third of the circumference of the world away.

Anyway I went, walked round at least one mosque, went through some markets, used an internet café and got back safely. Asia, conquered!

Back in Europa, I bought two badly-needed t-shirts (xxl, which would then make my beer gut xxxl - a harsh judgement so I blame clingy material), walked via the Spice Bazaar to and through the Grand Bazaar (4000 stalls - count them).

Feeling that I've got the hang of Istanbul now, I find the right tram back, and even the right direction.

I'm just about to enquire why my room's precious air-con isn't working when I start fiddling with lights that don't work either. There's a power cut affecting the whole block. Great!

Deciding this means it's beer o'clock, I retire to the 1st floor lounge bar and strike up a conversation in the growing darkness with two Finns here for the F1. It gets wonderfully beery before the mixture of drunkards and candles chimes ill.

They go off with the rest of their group and I go in search of a kebab (honestly a proper meal here, and not just for drunk people).

Destınatıon Istanbul

2007-08-24T13:27:00.000+01:00

*Travel*

Yesterday, arriving in Istanbul, started off almost as an essay in "how not to".

As mentioned, I arrived with bright ideas about finding a hotel by walking round. In my mind's eye I had a picture of treating myself to a 5-star "chain" hotel right on the edge of the shining Bosphorus.

It started OK. The money I changed included exactly the right coins to work the "left luggage" boxes and I got a half-way decent map from tourist information.

Then it got more difficult. There are 3 parts to Istanbul - the Asian side (Uskudar) divided by the Bosphorus from the European side, which is in turn divided by the "Golden Horn" estuary between Sultanahmet, to the south (where most historic sights are) and (e.g.) Taksim to the north (business district, night life).

Nearly all the chain hotels are apparently in the business district or by the airport. Sultanahmet, where I wanted to stay, is an old area with old buildings.

I found all this out from the internet café I found (where the owner was having connectivity problems and I had to restrain myself). I also found that there were two types of accomodation in Sultanahmet, available and attractive, and never the twain. It was only later that I made the connection to the F1 Istanbul GP this weekend, which might have something to do with it.

So I walked to the Blue Mosque area, sweating like a stuck pig. Bad ıdea.

When I got there thıngs dıd look up. I saw a hotel whose name I recognised from the internet. They had a room, but only for one night (fortunately, as it turned out).

The room was nice, with a pleasant view but no air-con. It turned out that the thıng I really wanted from a posh hotel would have been aır-con. I fıddled wıth wındow, curtaıns and fan wıth lımıted success. The small bathroom cleverly acted as a very nıce wet room shower, with perspex sheets on the backs of the wooden doors. I used ıt 4 or 5 tımes.

As soon as I put down my bags, the call to evening prayer started from loudspeakers on all the local mosques, including one from across the road so loud it sounded like it was outside the door. I started to worry about 5am when, on previous trips to primarily-moslem countries I've heard the amplıfıed chanted calls to morning prayers.

One of the key sights is the Hagia Sophia, originally a church, sacked by 4th crusade idiots, then a mosque with mosaics showing crucifixes plastered over. Clever Mustapha Kemal Attaturk (father of modern Turkey) turned it into a museum, so not especially offending Christians or Moslems.

I put on my last remaining top, a shirt I've been keeping for a nıce meal out, and headed off. I'd just paid my entry fee when I had to run for the loo - a hole in the ground one.

Due to the heat and unfamiliar exertions, I was soaked from head to waist in no time. My 'saved' shirt had lasted almost 10 minutes.

Crossing my fingers, I took my last Immodium. I made it round Hagia Sophia and the next-door Blue Mosque.

Feeling a bit better, I walked toward the coast and saw the Abella Hotel (.com) advertising a terrace bar. I had a couple of beers admiring the 180 degree view of Bosphorus and Marmara Sea as the sun set behind.

I finished off the day with a Turkish meal (yoghurt soup, mixed kebab and baklava) at a restaurant sporting East Turkestan political messages.

I woke at 8am, so either 5am didn't happen or I slept through it. I was "bitten to bits" by ınsects too small to see, even though I shut the window.

Rapıdly I found another hotel a few doors down, the Star Holiday Hotel and gleefully traded the view for air-con (god bless it) and a 10 Euro saving. As I left, others were being told the last room had just gone.

Beyond Sofıa

2007-08-23T19:05:00.000+01:00

*Travel*

Lest I get too carried away with bigging-up Bulgaria, my 1st-class Sofia-Istanbul sleeper is slightly inferior to my 2nd class Belgrade-Sofia sleeper. The middle bunk is chained to the wall at an angle, all of the power sockets work as specified (i.e. There aren't any) and there's no bog paper in the loo.

Fortunately, my appropriately named bum bag has a stash from past festivals, most recently the Brecon Jazz Festival (swiped from Sue and Chris's house and now swiped again)!

Next I remember that sleeper trains don't provide towels, and I forgot to buy one in Sofia. Damn!

Later I discover one can either swelter or open the window, with smells each time the toilet has been used. So, suffocating either way, then.

To recap a little, the hotel didn't make it obvious enough how to access the internet (what do you mean, blokes should ask for directions?) so I haven't booked ahead. I'll be arriving in the morning, so I have all day to find a nice place.

Me and my trouser legs saw the inside of the Alexander Levski church, had sushi for lunch, and walked down to the strip of blue on the city map. It turns out to be a small thing somewhere between a storm drain and an open sewer (charitably, more the former than the latter).

I fail to find a pizzeria to repeat my trick of last time. Instead, I eat at the hotel and they put the remainder of my delicious steak in a doggy-bag (actually two plates cling-filmed together - good for them).

I have to say I'd advise anyone coming to Serbia, Bulgaria or similar to learn the Cyrillic letter sounds. With Bruno's help I can now make out restaurant, beer, Moscow and sometimes internet. I also know that narodny means 'national'.

The train arrives at the time it should leave, i.e. an hour and three quarters late. However, they're pretty slippy at shunting an extra 3 cars on the front including, sadly, mine. We leave only 20 mins late.

Starting to learn, I ask where the border checks happen. Sadly, it's 01:20 to 01:55 in Svilengrad for leaving Bulgaria but 02:20 to 03:30 in Kapikule for entering Turkey. Joy! Another restful night sleeper. This time I think "blow the alarm, let them wake me when they want me."

But of course I'm awake anyway. I think I forgot to say how impressed I was with the Bulgarian Border police on the way in - walking through swiftly with a laptop and saying "passport check" to me but the same in French to the guys next door. They were fine on the way out too.

The Turkish could hardly be more different. We arrived at Kapikule about an hour late, and then nothing happened for an hour. Then all the doors got knocked on and between 4:30 and 5:30am everyone had to get off the train and queue for a single guy behind a window to check our passports, one by one.

When I got to the front of the queue he said I needed a visa, so I had to find a lady behind a window in a separate building. The guys in front there didn't have the necessary 15 Euros and got sent away to find some (how? In the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night??)
I was never so glad to have a single 50 Euro note left over from work in Holland! It made 100% (1000%) difference to my ability to crawl back to bed (not sleep) and forget about it all.

Whilst queuing my tummy, which has stood up so well so far, finally turns "dodgy" (And obviously "the train is standing in a station"). I suspect a glass of water kindly provided by the waiter at the hotel, which I thought it'd be OK to risk as I'd had no problems so far. The price of (tummy) peace is eternal vigilance! :-((

I take an Immodium tablet, but this time it isn't quite the "miracle cure" I've appreciated in the past.

Obviously, about half an hour later another couple of blokes had to come through re-doing the passport check. We leave the standard two hours late.

Finally, I get a couple of hours sleep before it's bright sun outside and I have to concede. All of this laying down doing nothing is killing me. I dream of hiding in a nice quiet hotel (loo).
Once the sun is well up, the temperature of the compartment starts to rise, window or no. Scandinavia next, I think.

Surprısıng Sofıa

2007-08-23T09:03:00.000+01:00

*Travel Waffle (MHO again)*

I have to confess that Sofia has surprised me. I didn't identify it, but I came here with a lot of preconceptions. I could say I came to look at the poor backward ex-Communists, recently escaped from their Iron Curtain grey. Completely wrong!

Apart from the Cyrillic, Sofia could be any other European city (in a good way). forty-odd years have left amazingly little negative effect on the city centre architecture, although I'm sure a local could tell you different.

I suppose a lot of side-streets are still cobbled, rather than tarmacced over, but these days that's probably a bonus. I guess some of the imposing government buildings (around the "Party House") probably date from the Communist era.

Looking from the train windows, the rural story is the same - it could be Holland (although slightly rolling rather than dead flat like the Croatia/Serbia border).

I reflect that the Iron Curtain and supposed economic deep freeze of the Soviet era has been lucky for Western Europe. Before WW2 Czechoslovakia, for example, had an international reputation for engineering. The rise of Skoda within Volkswagen-Audi is a restoration, which most UK people have no idea about:
"What do you call a Skoda with a sun-roof?" "A skip."
"Why do Skodas have heated rear windows?" "To keep your hands warm when you're pushing them."

As East-Central and Eastern Europe get into their stride, I wonder how the world will change? Nothing will change the macro-picture of the rise of India and China, but the more-micro-picture will be worth watching.

*Other*

Having toured (tourised? touristed?) hard yesterday, I treat myself to a quiet morning in the hotel, apart from a trip to the station to get tonight's ticket. For some reason, a compartment to myself (like I had coming here) on the same train, now has to be 1st class rather than 2nd. At the exorbitant price of £30ish I don't debate the point. Maybe the sockets will work in 1st (they didn't in 2nd), so I can watch another DVD.

Sofia at Speed

2007-08-22T09:38:00.000+01:00

*Travel*

The sleeper train leaves bang on time. I have the compartment to myself. Initially it's far too hot, so I have to leave the window open all night.

I meet Bruno, who does a similar job to me but as a contractor. He's French-born but has lived in West London for 10 years. We discuss J2EE for a while, and then the tall ship race in the Baltic he's been doing, and is traveling from to a friend's wedding the far side of Turkey. He's on his own too, so we agree to hook up in the morning.

A sleeper train sounds like a good idea, and it is in terms of "holiday efficiency". However, having a border control at some time during the night makes it hard for me to settle. I deduce it should happen at 3:40am, but set my alarm for 5am instead, ending up with about three and a half hours' sleep. At 5 I sort out my bags and I've just finished when the border checks start. We arrive in Sofia late, by what turns out to be 2 hours, once the change from CET to EET is factored in.

Bruno and I get money (3 Dinar = 1 GBP) and coffee, then a taxi to my hotel, the Best Western City Hotel. Bruno takes a room there too. It's before check-in time so we dump our bags and go out walking.

Over the next 6 hours we walk past all of Sofia's important sights, unintentionally starting to follow the "Sofia in one day" walk outlined in Bruno's guidebook. First stop was the golden-domed Alexander Nevski cathedral, which I can't go in because I've forgotten the legs that can zip on to my shorts. Then via Roman ruins and a 3rd Century rotunda building re-purposed in the 4th Century as St. George's Church, and on to the former seat of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, described as "Party House" in one guidebook!

We see a host of other impressive mainly domed buildings, and quite a few sculptures obviously intended to encourage the populous to support the work of the state. My favourite has a skirted woman carrying a man slumped across her back. The bright sun makes it hard to take clear photos. I've forgotten my sun cream again, but I'm not suffering after yesterday when I did the same, so maybe I'll get away with it.

Bruno and I met for dinner this evening. We took in a beer somewhere where the menu was all in Cyrillic and only Bruno's phonetic translations got us anywhere. We went in search of a restaurant advertised in the free tourist map and eventually found it. It seems that the Bulgarian food that isn't italian is mainly cooked meats, verging toward kebabs.

I'm not sure what I'll do tomorrow before my sleeper train, with all the big sights seen. Maybe I can relax!! Alternatively, I could push on to Plovdiv, which has a genuine old centre. A complicating factor in any case is the fact that, if our train arrived two hours late then mine in the evening is very likely to be delayed by a random period as well. Great!

Belgrade Proper

2007-08-21T05:00:00.000+01:00

*Travel*

I did and didn't spend too long at the hotel this morning. I scarcely got out before midday, but I got my hotel for Sofia booked and I was out and about right until my train at 9pm, anyway.

Taxi to the train station to put my stuff in left luggage. The locker fee in coins in Zagreb would be in notes in Belgrade, so how would that be handled? Left luggage turned out to be a building round the side with a hole in the wall and guys inside. I tried to get taxi drivers from the rank to agree to take me to my next destination by showing them a picture on my printout, but they wouldn't take me on the meter - only quoting a fixed price similar to that for the whole distance to my hotel outside town. I walked round the corner and hailed a passing cab. Due to the route and awful traffic, the fare actually came out slightly higher, but I felt OK.

The best sight I saw today was the first, St. Sava Church, a new Eastern Orthodox cathedral being built from scratch to be the biggest EO church in the world! How would modern man go about building a cathedral? From concrete of course. So they've made this huge building with domes and everything, cast in concrete and then they're cladding it in something like marble (hand carved, I checked). They've clad the outside, and very impressive it looks too, and they've started on the inside. You can go in to look and take pictures. You can pray and light a candle. I don't know what happens when they need to do something noisy...

I caught one of the trams passing (7L), using one of the tickets I bought but didn't use yesterday. Someone had to show me how to punch the ticket. It took me straight back to the station! Am I doomed to be stuck there forever? I caught another tram (2) that took me straight to the Kalemegdan fortress (OK, I went too far and had to walk back up the hill;).

Fortresses might not be everyone's cup of tea, but I like them. The site dates back a long way, but what's there now is quite a late design, with at least three defensive rings, overlapping fields of fire, etc. Between the first and second walls are now tennis and basketball courts. Between the second and third walls is a collection of first and second world war tanks (AFVs) and guns (anti-tank, howitzers and a 300mm mortar).

If fortresses don't float your boat, you might prefer the panoramic views from the park in the middle, which overlooks the confluence of the rivers Danube and Sava and I photographed them to death.

I had a great pizza for late lunch just outside the fortress. When I was full I stashed away the last two big slices, which became supper and breakfast respectively on the train.

That was the best of Belgrade. I walked past the rest of the obligatory sights, high-gloss pedestrianised shopping centre, government buildings and churches with domes, the world's ugliest palace.

*MHO (my humble opinion)*

I did like Split, and I think I'd recommend Zagreb (although there's a lot of places I'd recommend more highly for a new traveller). I don't think I'd recommend Belgrade.

Belgrade is a big city with a big city feel, maybe sized to be capital of Yugoslavia rather than Serbia. The old part isn't very old or pretty. I feel it's stuck in the middle of the range of cities, neither one thing nor the other. Tito kept it more open than the Soviet Empire, so I didn't see awful rows of low-quality blocks, or neglectful decay. But it doesn't have classic architecture like half of Italy.

I didn't feel I found its heart (in either sense). Trying to be fair, I kept wondering how a new visitor would find central London.

Also, after an extensive survey, I have to opine that Croatian girls are prettier than Serbian girls (though Bulgarian girls have something of a reputation).

I kept thinking that I must read up on the recent Balkan wars. My recollection was that the Serbs were the (worst) baddies, with the Bosnian Serbs the worst of the worst.

I had this theory that western wealth would provide enough disincentive for people from going to war and risking it, but Yugoslavia blew a hole through that. I know that Tito sat on years of stewing history within Yugoslavia (e.g. Partisans Vs Cetniks), as the Russians did in the USSR and Warsaw Pact, but all the same...

I spend my last hour in Belgrade at an Irish Pub - the Three Carrots. It's pretty "authentic" and the main thing removing it from Dublin is the people smoking inside! I ask the barmaid "Which brewery does your Guinness come from?" It matters, as I never liked the output of the now-closed Park Royal brewery in London, whilst the biggest Guinness brewery outside Dublin is apparently in Nigeria and I had an utterly undrinkable pint once in New Zealand. Her reply: "Which size, large or small?"

I meet Irishman Paul, and learn the bar was set up by three red-headed Irish lads. He also tells me I shouldn't be going to Sofia by train, that there's nothing to see in Sofia and I'd be better off going to Varna on the coast instead. Ah well!

Beograd Boogie

2007-08-20T09:14:00.000+01:00

*Travel*

The land between Zagreb and Belgrade continued pretty well flat, and frequently cultivated, with occasional hills in the distance. The border formalities were'nt too onerous - my passport got checked by outgoing Croatian Customs and Border police, and by Serbian Border police (who read my name into their radio). The Croatian and Serbian Customs simply asked if we had anything to declare. Another uniformed guy popped his head into the compartment and said something, but neither the French girls nor I could be bothered to ask what he'd said.

On arriving at Belgrade station I make my first "cultural learning" - everything is in Cyrillic writing, occasionally with Latin (ours) underneath. Fortunately, the numbers are the same. It seems that very few people here speak any English - worse than I expected after working for years with so many former-Yugoslav colleagues. The guide book explains it's age-related, with younger people much more likely to speak English.

I fruitlessly looked for an ATM, then changed my remaining Kunu (apparently, plural of Kuna) and £80 into Serbian Dinar. As I write, it occurs to me I could have taken a photo of my Croatian notes - I'll do these. The exchange rate is 114RSD:1GBP, so I get over 9000 Dinar. As before, I'm just guessing how much money I'll need for my time here.

Next job is to book my onward journey. The lady on the International Travel desk speaks good english and I settle for one person in a "sleeps two" on tomorrow night's train to Sophia at a total cost of about 1850 Dinar. I don't know if anyone else will be in the other bed - I didn't ask, but what is life without mystery?

Next, I couldn't find any decent maps of Belgrade on the internet, so I buy a paper one at a news stand. At stations here they have 3 or 4 news stands, right next to each other and looking identical. They have a fairly small opening in the middle of the front, surrounded by merchandise. Sometimes you have to stoop to see the person inside. Something else I suppose I should have photographed - D'oh!

Being brave (?), I ask the news-seller how I should get to my hotel. He sends me (by sign language and written-down numbers) across the road to catch a tram number 9, selling me a ticket. When, 20 minutes later, when trams of every other number have passed, I return to plan A and get a taxi. When I arrive at the hotel, I note the absence of tram tracks in front of the hotel and thank the taxi driver with extra warmth.

The hotel room is lovely, actually a suite with separate sitting and bedrooms, and a really large bed. I also have wired internet - luxury! This is a complete change from the expensive cupboard I stayed in in Zagreb. All I can see from my window and balcony are the woodlands surrounding the hotel.

The hotel seems so nice, especially after today's journey that I feel like staying here all evening. But I've travelled so far to see Belgrade that'd be stupid. So I ask the receptionist for old town bars and restaurants, and she directs me to for Skadarska (street) and calls me a taxi, which arrives in 2 minutes and costs 470 Dinar into town (about £4).

Skadarska is on a slight hill and ranged with bars and restaurants, all with chairs outside and several with musicians to serenade the diners. I choose a nice place, but the maitre di declines to seat me because I am alone.

A waiter at the next place down welcomes me, but he's obviously over-busy and makes lots of mistakes, starting off by taking my food order and leaving me for 20 minutes before taking my drink order. Make me wait any time for food, but don't leave me sitting without a drink!!!

First bread and then starter arrive before I have a plate. He brings a bottle of white wine, but I manage to catch him before he opens it and he fetches a bottle of red - chilled, but maybe that's the custom here. Then the mineral water is sparkling instead of still. Fortunately the food tastes nice; a grilled mushroom starter and an main course called something like "uncle Vanya" Fillet, where the steak has inside cheese (strong-tasting but not blue) and some salty form of bacon. The portion is huge and I guess the waiter forgot to tell the kitchen that, although from the "Two Deers" (two person?) part of the menu, the dish is just for one. Just one plate though, so maybe...

When I'm stuffed,I decide to go for a walk. The map shows Republic Square at the end of Skadarska, so I head off. Somewhere beyond that is the last night of the local Beer Festival, which sounds fun if I get that far. I can't see anything "squarey", blame it on the map and walk further. Soon I'm in dark side streets, wondering around lost-but-I'm-sure-I-could-retrace-if-I-wanted-to.

I see a kebab stall and walk up to a customer, asking him to point where I am on the map. It turns out that Republic Square is at the uphill end of Skadarska, and the taxi driver dropped me at the middle walking outward, rather than the opposite as I'd assumed. Hence I'm now in the middle of nowhere.

I ask where I can get a taxi and the stall-holder telephones one for me, again arriving in 2 minutes or less.

Safely back at the hotel I have a couple of beers in the bar. The barmaid has that whole peering-out-from-under-a-fringe thing going on, very early-lady-Di.

Next morning I spend too long typing this. I want to book my room ahead in Sofia, and Best Western will do that for me here, but I need to know where the hotel will be. I need to know whether Belgrade station has left luggage (I forgot to check yesterday) and the must-see St. Save Church, the largest Eastern Orthodox church in the world is well outside the town centre, so I need to know how to get out there and back again. Isn't this relaxing!

Awful News

2007-08-19T19:15:00.001+01:00

I've just heard that my Uncle Maurice has died. My brother Chris sent a text and I rang him back. I knew that he was in hospital, but didn't think things were that serious. He's been under the doctor and had difficulty breathing for a number of years.

Maurice was the greatest storyteller I've ever known. He had so many tales and kept us amused for hours when we were kids. I'll take "The Holesaler" and "The Oggle-Goggle Maker" (How the Sea became Salty) with me all my life.

I remember when I was a teenager and once "helped" Maurice on his building site. Another time I stayed for the weekend and he took me to see "Blazing Saddles", explaining how one might swear on the building site, but not in the home. I'll miss him and the world seems a rather greyer place.

I've asked Chris to text me again once any arrangements are known. I bought a flexible air ticket, but that was in case of travelling difficulties, not something like this.

An Interim Conclusion

2007-08-19T16:18:00.000+01:00

* Waffle?*

I'm going to have to draw a conclusion, lets call it interim for the benefit of the doubt, but all the same: "Going round the world on my own" isn't going to work.

The days are pretty good, but the evenings are a bit shit. As always, I sat on my own to eat, although yesterday reading my book before and between courses rather than tapping on my PDA. Technically, bad manners but...

Then I went down the street I mentioned earlier and it was, indeed, jumping. I found one place where the customers weren't arranged around small tables, and fruitlessly listened for English being spoken.

I did try to spark up a conversation with one guy, but he looked blank (unable or unwilling, doesn't really matter). Admittedly he was wearing a Judas Priest T-shirt and his equal probably wouldn't have given me the time of day in the UK, but he was who was there.

It would probably work if I was like Dennis (Welsh, Australian or extremely un-self-conscious) but I'm not. I don't want to intrude, or make someone deal with me when they'd rather not've.

It isn't a problem for a short holiday like this - I have a lot of good books and TV in English - but an extended period would be another matter.

I can see that staying in hostels might be different. You have to share rooms and interacting with people is (to some extent) built-in. I probably would have been intending to make hostels the exception rather than the rule.

I think I'll have to have another think.

*Travel*

I'm now writing on the train from Zagreb to Belgrade, which will take six and a quarter hours. An outbreak of sense told me that, if I got up a bit earlier and caught the 9am train, then I could have an extra half day in Belgrade instead of frittering it away waiting for the 1:10/13:20/who-knows train.

The weather today is a heavy overcast. Yesterday started dull, but brightened a lot in the afternoon. Split was unbroken sunshine, as appropriate for a coastal resort. I'm wondering what today looks like in Split.

At the end of my walk yesterday I passed a chocolate shop window, where there was a display of novelty chocolate boxes. They each had a plastic embossed relief map of Croatia that helped me to understand the geography.

Split is on a narrow strip of land with a bank of cliffs a mile or so inland. Going North, these move inland and become a range of high hills or low mountains, and it was these that the Split-Zagreb train wove between, giving some attractive and occasionally spectacular views.

From the train, I couldn't tell whether we were going over a range of hills and down again, or up onto a central massif, like Kenya or maybe France.

Speaking of France, today's train mostly goes to Vinkovci but a single carriage goes on to Belgrade (after a bit of shunting). I'm sat in there, in a compartment for six, with two garrulous French women (maybe about 30) to whom I introduced myself, and two men who are silent, but one is reading a Croat newspaper.

I'm tapping away on my laptop, which I was afraid yesterday had caught a virus from a wi-fi hotspot, buy a full Norton scan when booted in safe mode revealed nothing and it looks OK today. I'll do scans with a few more tools before I use it again for Internet banking or credit cards.

There is a power supply in the compartment so, as the landscape seems resolutely flat and pretty well populated (i.e. not a lot to see) I may watch a DVD later if I don't fancy my book. Now that's "Band of Eagles" by Frank Barnard which is, as I guessed, about Hurricane fighters over Malta.

*Waffle (I suppose)*

As I've read memoirs by two real WW2 Malta fighter pilots, it's interesting to note the differences between (apparent) fact and fiction. So far, some characters have been less well introduced before their sudden deaths and incudents of combat are more condensed. The main feel of one of the memoirs was "we went up and saw nothing, maybe bumped into some enemy by accident, had an inconclusive scrap and suddenly found myself alone in an empty sky."

I'm reminded of the two theories of (what's behind) history - the conspiracy theory (it's all an impenetrable deliberate plan) and the cock-up theory (It's mostly due to mistakes and plain luck). I think any reasonable person has to be a "cock-up theory" believer, but maybe the Illuminati will reveal themselves and prove me wrong ;-)

On the other hand, I do think that "fortune favours the brave".

Does that bring us back to Dennis, I wonder?

A Zip Around Zagreb

2007-08-18T14:49:00.000+01:00

Europe is always being renovated! Key sights are forever covered in scaffolding!

In Split, at least it was only a couple of sections of old palace wall and the odd tower. In Zagreb it's one of the two spires of the landmark Cathedral of the Assumption, the sides of St. Mark's church (with the colourful shields on the roof), the buildings all round the one remaining entrance to the old city - the Stone Gate and two of the buildings in the row of parks that run from the station to the main square.

I've done my best to photo round the scaffolding, even craftily using a fountain in one case. But honestly! It's enough to drive a man to Photoshop!!

From the Tourist Info Office I got a pamphlet with two walks, and this morning I did the one round the old/upper city. Very nice. I found the market, in full swing as today is Saturday, and the street with all the bars (named "Tkalciceva"), which will hopefully be in full swing on Saturday night.

I climbed both of the feuding original hills, and walked up the street called "Bloody Bridge" ("Krvavi Most") over the former-stream between them, returning to the level of the main square by funicular railway. The guard proudly showed me his seaside holiday photos on his laptop!

Apparently, tourists are a fairly new experience for the locals - tourism never really came here before.

Although I only have one day here with a few daylight hours either side, the same as I had in Split, I feel that'll be enough to give me the "feel" or "flavour" of the places, which is what I suppose I'm looking for with a schedule like the one I've set.

This afternoon I did the "lower city" walking tour, mainly round a horseshoe of parks south of the main square. OK, but not as good as this morning. The walk took me past the station, where I bought my ticket for tomorrow. The 11:10 train isn't coming until 13:20 (ish?) "because it's coming from Vienna." There's a 9:00am train if I'm awake too early. Otherwise I guess I won't get to Belgrade before 18:30.

I found left luggage, so I can get there about 11:00 and dump my bags. I found an underground shopping centre where I can waste some time, possibly even including beer. Unfortunately, the station is away from the "drinky" part of the city, so the choice of bars may be limited unless I get creative.

Next order of business is to book myself a hotel in Belgrade. Having been kicked off all the wi-fi access points I can actually reach, and having failed to get my laptop on the hotel business centre wired network (I can work it out or I can get a beer), I'm typing this on a hotel PC that has spyware warnings coming up all the time. Public wi-fi zones are wide open to man-in-the-middle attacks, hence no credit card of mine is coming anywhere near the internet here.

Splitting Split

2007-08-18T07:07:00.000+01:00

ABOUT: Leaving Split and getting to Zagreb, written in a Zagreb hotel about 9:30pm

*Travel Stuff (soft-core)*

I was up quite a while before 10am. I packed, made sure my electrics were recharged and sat on the little terrace outside the flat reading my Brookmyre book "Boiling a Frog" (a short title for him). I popped down to the internet cafe and disturbed a chap reading Toronto University internal pages to get a file I made last night after posting with Zagreb hotel details in it (for some reason I couldn't Gmail it).

At ten, the lady who owned the flat turned up, the non-english speaking daughter of the guy who met me off the bus. I still managed (I think) to tell her I liked her flat, I liked Split and I was grateful.

The train "tilted", which was wierd when there was a great view and we suddenly leaned away from it. At one point I looked out the window and saw a house wall at a very odd angle, until I worked out it was us at an odd angle - it was straight.

I found myself sitting next to Ben, an architect from Plymouth, who was with flame-haired Rachel who'd planned the trip, Laura and (I think) Janet. They'd started in Milan before hitting Florence, Rome, Naples and then
across Italy for a ferry to Dubrovnik, up the coast by bus to Split. A quick change in Zagreb and off to a Lake in Slovenia, then round the top of the sea to Venice before flying home. A busy schedule that they've compounded by standing in queues for museums and galleries - something I won't be doing. Nice people, and good luck to them.

I've been learning things during my travel so far. I'm not 20, I'm 43. I wouldn't have liked to arrive in Split to find all the hotels full and playing Russian Roulette with youth hostel vacancies. I arrived in Zagreb and walked out of the station into the hot late-afternoon sun. I had no appetite for walking round the city asking at hotels.

Yesterday evening I looked up the top city-centre hotel's locations, rates, availability and phone numbers. I rang the hotel Dubrovnik then and there to check availability, took a taxi and went there. I had to take rack rate (£78) as the front desk wouldn't entertain the internet rate (£49) or anywhere near. Either they thought it was a "distressed purchase" or they have no flexibility. Either way, I caved.

Behind this are a few issues. If all someone wants is a hostel or a rock-bottom hotel (and one doesn't mind spending time and shoe leather) then one can just arrive and start looking. If I just want to get into my hotel, chill, and then go for a stroll without my bags, then I really need the hotel arranged in advance.

These days that means using the internet (at least w.r.t. towns of any size and outside of Tibet or Sierra Leone - and I may be doing those a disservice).

Using Internet cafes is OK, but it's a lot like launderettes. They were fine until I could afford a washing machine for myself. I'm starting to think that mobile internet access will be a prerequisite for my "world tour".

But is booking hotels ahead spoiling the whole experience? How many researchers did Michael Palin have on his televised travels? What is it I'd be looking for in "seeing the world" as a (reasonably solvent) 40plus-year-old?

*Travel Stuff (harder core)*

The Hotel Dubrovnik is right on the "main" square of Zagreb, "Bana Josip Jelacica" (beware missing accents and various abbreviations). This is the pivot between the historic "upper town", formed from the formerly-warring villages of Kaptol (the Eastern hill) and Gradec (Western). Once reconciled, they proceeded to outgrow their original market and the aforementioned square took on the role.

Between the Square and the Station is the "lower town". South of the station is "new Zagreb" (and you can guess what that means).

Some of the tourist books imply that Zagreb has been a "capital in waiting", a centre of culture, science, etc. Under the Hapsburgs the capitals were Vienna and Budapest. Only after Tito and the breakup of Yugoslavia did Zagreb come to the fore. The guidebooks say that culturally Zagreb looks to Vienna, and I can feel that here. Split felt much more like it looked to Italy (cuisine) and the Mediterranean generally (lifestyle) - a big difference for a small country.

The view from the train was interesting. Population density was amazingly low for almost the whole journey. Split didn't have a "large town" feel (in British terms) and we only passed one town of any size on the way to Zagreb. The countryside, by turns, reminded me of Italy, Austria, Scandinavia, Scotland, Australia and England. There was at least one point where the surrounding forest switched from deciduous to evergreen at a single line, and back again almost as quickly.There were no "industrial zones", just countryside with the occasional cement factory (at least three).

For dinner I found a reasonably pleasant outdoor restaurant just north of the Tourist Information Centre, full of locals. I took the waiter's recommendation on wine (from a non-cheap list of all-domestic bottles) and the wine formed 65% of the final bill. I didn't mind, but it does indicate food and wine costs here - beer is a different, more reasonable matter.

*Itinerary*

I've now worked out my schedule for the rest of the holiday, so I can simplify my previous table:

From	To	Ref	Dep	Arr	Dur
LGW N	Split	BA2888	15/8 16:20	15/8 19:50	2:30
Split	Zagreb Glavni Kolod	IR522	17/8 10:53	17/8 16:17	5:24
Zagreb Glavni Kolod	Belgrade	R741, R419	19/8 09:00	19/8 15:33	6:33
Belgrade	Sofia	D293	20/8 21:00	21/8 06:25	8:25
Sofia	Istanbul Sirkeci	D491, D499, D81031	22/8 19:30	23/8 08:24	12:54
Istanbul T1	LHR T1	BA0677	25/8 17:25	25/8 19:25	3:00

Sweltering Split

2007-08-17T07:20:00.000+01:00

*Travel*

The internet café proved to be more the former than the latter, but it only cost 10 Kuna (£1) to make my previous post.

You can find out from the internet that the Croatian currency is the Kuna (about 10p), made of 100 Lipa, and they use plugs like those in The Netherlands. What you couldn't find out from the internet (until now) is this: I like Split.

The middle of the Old Town is small, based on Roman Emperor Diocletian's 3rd Century retirement home, a large, walled "palace". Most of the outside walls seem to still be standing although, as happens, they've been incorporated into later, smaller buildings, resulting in new, smaller windows where the old ones weren't and at least one door half way up the wall, with no marks to suggest it ever had stairs leading to it.

Among the higgledy-piggledy buildings within and around the walls is Split's St. Dominus church with its 60M bell tower which, of course, I had to climb.

*Waffle About Tall Buildings (in a single bound)*

You see, I'm a big fan of big buildings, going up (among others) Toronto's CN Tower, Chicago's John Hancock building (the Sears building was shut that day), a tower in Auckland, a 50-floor building and a gold mine in Johannesburg (taking me the same distance up as down on a single day). I took in the Empire State and World Trade Center buildings in New York, and had climbed several of the top ten tallest before the Far East building boom took off and changed things. I went to Kuala Lumpur, but plebs like me aren't allowed up the Petronas Towers, so I had to be content with the communications tower there (whose local name I knew I'd never remember).

In case you don't know, there are rules about tall buildings. There
Are two llists - one for habitable buildings (like the Empire State) and one for communication towers (like the CN Tower). Pinnacles do count, but aerials don't.

Once I was doing so well ticking off visits to the top 10 mast-towers that I idly considered getting to Tashkent to get up the huge tower there. Idly, I say - I expect it isn't even open to the public.

It now occurs to me that I've been waffling for a while and should go back and put in an appropriate subheading.

*More Tourism*
(written in an Italian restaurant about 9:30pm)

Reservations are needed for most or all of my train journeys. I saw what I guessed was the station from the top of the bell tower and went to find it, round the side of the harbour.

There were 4 staffed desks in the ticket office, but only one had a queue in front of it. Two were Domestic and the lady behind the other International desk appeared to be doing admin. "Split to Zagreb," I thought, "that must be domestic." But no - I guess the train I wanted was an IC service, so I had to join the queue while the staff at the domestic desks sat chatting.

Is it the attitude of the staff to do this? Of the employer? A restriction of the computer system? Training? It's pretty poor, anyway.

The lone lady doing all the work didn't seem especially warm to people ahead of me, and I was worried about having the right change, so when I got to the front of the queue I put on my best winning smile and was especially clear and polite. The lady was helpfulness itself! Happy me!

Next came beers by the harbourside and lunch in a coffee bar/pizzeria in front of Diocletian's gaff. I had a fabulous Pizza "Skalinada" with
Tuna, sweetcorn, onion, cheese, tomato, mozarella, asparagus, oregano, olive oil, oodles of garlic and an olive (just one, as the menu promised, when I checked).

I've also acquired a taste for Karlovacko beer (large).

*Yet More Waffle*

After lunch I faced the serious question of "the Siesta". Can
I afford a couple of hours to snooze when I only have one full day here, perhaps ever?
Well, those who know me (at least outside work) know I'm never hesitant to rally to the clarion call of idleness.

I call this the "sabbath" question (after the biblical query: is the sabbath made for man, or man made for the sabbath?) Should I stay on a tourist treadmill to see as much as possible or chill out at the expense of sights-seen?

This is aligned with the question: "why am I here?" No, not the religious question, the holiday question. At work I've been doing a project that's sapping, with a host of distractions preventing progress. Hence I feel I need a rest. I did think of renting a cottage in Scotland and sitting relaxing, but I'm here.

The reason is my dream of taking a year off and "going round the world." But what if I put in all the effort to organise a year off, then set off but found after a few weeks that I didn't like it and I'd rather be at home?

So this is a sort of trial run. If taking a siesta makes me happy then screw the tourism. The trip overall has to make me happy, or I'd be better off doing something else.

There is another angle on things. After my siesta I walked through lots of backstreets seeing what homes are like and glimpsing how people live, just a glimpse. Then I walked round the Old Town, ending up with another beer. Now I'm sitting in an Italian restaurant (there are a lot more places to drink than eat here).

I'm sitting here alone because I'm travelling alone. This is a shame, in a few different ways. Having travelled in company, I know that it can intensify the experience: "Did you see that?" / "Why do you think it's like that?" / "Isn't this wonderful?"

Tapping away at the PDA is better (I feel) than reading a book or staring at the walls. It isn't that I'm not enjoying myself, or actually "suffering" in any way, it's just that travelling alone is unusual and one feels as though one stands out for it in "social" places.

If I did my "world tour" I'd mainly be alone too, as I don't currently know anyone else in a position to sod off round the world. I understand there are websites to meet similar types, and on tour one (apparently) keeps bumping into familiar faces.

In any case, solo is the default, so I'd better see whether I still like it. I didn't have any problems in Scotland or Central Europe, but then I wasn't thinking about a whole year.

Just finishing my Sundae, then back to pack. Key handover at 10am then 10:53 train to Zagreb.

Feet Dry

2007-08-16T18:58:00.000+01:00

ABOUT: Arriving in Split, written in apartment

*Blather*

On the plane I found myself sitting next to a Welsh-born guy called Dennis who has lived in Oz for many years. He's been travelling for 28 hours from Perth, which has the best beaches on Earth (he says). I don't know if it's due to Wales, Oz or Army service, but I soon realise that Dennis is absolutely shameless, speaking to anyone without hesitation and asking them straight away any question about their business!

He also has a practice, I learn as we get on buses to terminal and to town, of sitting down next to anyone female and starting a conversation. His unconscious easiness makes me a bit jealous.

The bus to town is full and a girl of about 20 sits between Dennis and me, speaking what I think is Spanish to friends in other rows. I don't fancy her or anything, but having seen Dennis I feel like I shouldn't just sit next to her in silence.

I use my best schoolboy Spanish to work out the phrases "Hello, do you speak English?" and "How many friends are you travelling with?" Then I sit on them in silence for another 20 minutes before persuading myself I have nothing to lose. Her English is (naturally) rather better than my Spanish and I learn that she and ten friends have come from Andalucia. It is still Dennis who learns her name is Mary.

*Travel Stuff -ish*

Whilst on the bus, I get a call from someone to do with the apartment and, when I get off the bus I spot him. It turns out that "Apartment Split" will let out independent people's apartments when their normal capacity is full. I'm delighted - the apartment isn't 1km inland, it's on the 3rd or 4th floor of a 100-year-old building, right beside the harbour, night life and the Diocletian Palace (of which more, I expect, tomorrow).

There's a slight perturbation as, when I get to the apartment, they expect cash. I thought I'd paid by credit card over the phone in the UK, so I didn't take enough out from the airport ATM. I have a dull confirming recollection from previous LateRooms usage in the UK, so I offer the money I have. In the end I go to a nearby ATM to get the remainder and replenish my float. I'm pretty sure they're right, but I'm not really fussed and don't want to be a bother to them - I'm delighted with the apartment (location and characteristics) and the chap has been awfully nice to meet me and show me round on the way.

I agree to hand the keys back at 10am on Friday, so it looks like I'll catch the 10:53 to Zagreb.

From the ATM I go for a stroll up what looks like the prime shopping street. I have an Ice Cream (some tasty green fruit) while walking and then sit for a "draft dark beer 0.5L". Or two. As I sit at the table on my own, peoplewatching, I think of lots of things to write. It occurs to me that I'd probably look less "sad" if I sat there tapping away on a PDA. But much, much more of a "spod". I think a notebook (an actual paper one) may be a good compromise.

After this I take a slice of pizza from a stall next door to McDonald's. I know it isn't Haut Cuisine or "distinctively Croatian", but it is 10:30pm and more "local" than Maccy-D's. However, McD's would have been tastier and added to my (?counter-)counter-cultural "world list" of McD meals shamefully eaten in places where I should have known better (including on top of Victoria Peak in Hong Kong).

It seems "God wants me to" write during my journey, as I find an internet café right next to the apartment. I pop in to learn (a) they open at 6am - not likely to be of interest to me - and (b) they sell bottled beer - of reasonable interest in absence of an off-licence.

Back at the apartment I find National Geographic channel in English. I love countries too small to make a business case for re-dubbing. "Air Crash Investigations" is on, which I love despite being a frequent flier. This week it's about an Egyptian pilot who (probably) committed suicide but took hundreds of people with him. I figure that (outside of a personal bad decision) when it's time, it's time and there isn't a lot to do about it. It's out of my control so why worry?

Airborne

2007-08-16T09:55:00.000+01:00

ABOUT: setting off, written on BA2888

*Waffle*

And I'm airborne - checking that the phone I'm tapping away at is safely in Flight Mode. I wonder if I'll wear out the battery so much on Solitaire and Ballbreaker (actually the game is Bubble Breaker) that I wouldn't be able to bring down the plane if I wanted to - far less write this nonsense.

I'm conscious (having read "Eats, Shoots and Leaves") that I'm being lazy and punctuating using dashes rather than colons, semi or otherwise. What the hell - I'm on holiday!

For someone who flies as much as I do (sometimes to work via Amsterdam Schiphol and back every week for months), my packing for this trip was terribly prolonged and inefficient. I think this is a backlash against the fact that I can pack for a week away in 10 minutes, and frequently have. Maybe it's like acting - much harder to feel you're doing it well if NOT driven by the mainspring of being half-petrified by stage-fright, or missing the plane.

Friend Elaine gave me a lift to Gatwick as "Phil the Cab" is confined with flu. They're insisting on picking me up from Heathrow when I return next Saturday (all being well). That's so nice, but it would be their Saturday night I'd be disturbing/spoiling, unless Phil's working already.

As is my habit, I filled up on books at the airport - two Christopher Brookmyres (a brilliant and quirky "detective" writer who I heartily recommend), the new paperback Le Carré (the old firm) and one called "Band of Eagles" which sounds like "Band of Brothers with Wings" by a different author. I didn't read the blurb, but a line on the cover makes me guess it's about pilots fighting for Malta in WW2, which I became interested in after visiting there a while ago.

These are added to the six books in my checked luggage, already including an older Le Carre as well as "Confessions of an Economic Hit Man" and several hand-me-down books from my Dad, who likes unchallenging blokeish crap as much as I do.

My itinerary (previous post) includes 40+ hours of train travel, so I may need a book or two.

I may also have more time than is healthy to write stuff like this (having rambled so far already). What should I be writing? What do I think friends (or strangers) might be interested to read? I can take some solace from the fact that I titled the blog "Only Somewhat Boring", so I can't be done for misrepresentation.

I'll try an idea that's useful at work - I'll use a management summary, at the top but written last, and subheadings so people can skip over even more boring stuff. I'm going to go back and do that now...

...and I'm back.

*Ready for Split*

I won't arrive in Split until mid-evening, so I decided this morning to book accommodation in advance (obviously not far). This looks like a good idea as most hotel search sites including LastMinute and a few Croatian specialist sites reported no space anywhere. LateRooms found "Apartments Split" and I've booked and paid (Ł94) for two nights.

So I had an address from LateRooms, but where is that? The LateRooms map showed it on the end of the harbour wall. You don't catch me that way! I found a lovely flash/navigable map on CroMap, but it didn't appear to have a search box. I saw a list on the right that had "touristicy" or something half-way down and in a flash of inspiration I clicked the Croatian word in capitals at the top, which opened up a list of street names. The map also had a good print function (right-click on the map).

I looked on WikiTravel about how to get from Split Airport to town (25km). The best answer seemed to be bus to the waterfront bus station, but my now-found accommodation looked to be a kilometre away uphill. Hence I was planning on a taxi, until I was sitting in Gatwick and got a text from a +385 number inquiring how I was arriving.

After a brief exchange of texts, I've ended up with instructions to take the Croatian Airlines bus to the bus station, text when I'm on the bus and they'll come to fetch me. How nice!

*The Trip in Prospect*

Since I started considering this trip (last week), looked into it (Monday) and decided to come (yesterday/Tuesday) I've become increasingly excited. Why? Not sure.
From one viewpoint I'm quite well travelled, in a "beaten path" kind of way. I have a list of about 60 airports I've been to, from or through. I've been to more exotic places than the Balkans, which I should expect to be advanced, mostly Western-facing countries.

I suppose that was mainly with work or "tourist cocoon" stuff (fly in, go pre-booked Western-OK hotel, take organised trips, fly out). On this trip I'll be arriving in places and looking for accommodation there and then. I've done a similar thing in Scotland almost 20 years ago, and almost 10 years ago in Central Europe. This trip will take me through places affected by the Balkan wars, part of the former Warsaw Pact and an Islamic state straddling Europe and Asia. That feels different to me, although I have to admit that Croatia is an easy introduction.

Under Starter's Orders

2007-08-14T23:48:00.000+01:00

OK then, the die is cast. I've done all my travel research and booked my flights.
I'm off for a trip from Split in Croatia to Istanbul in Turkey and I have "just ten days" to do it.

My first choice was to travel between my endpoints by car because it would give me a lot more freedom to stop and see what I want. However, none of the big hire car firms seem to allow cars to be taken into Eastern Europe (across the borders of Bulgaria or Turkey).

I briefly considered buses, but there's a limit to the amount of torture I'm prepared to volunteer for. Once I had a truly awful nighttime ferry crossing of the Irish sea and vowed I'd never again pay someone to make me ill for hours on end.

So I looked up all the flight and train times and they're in the table below. This is mainly for me or "just in case". I don't know which day or time I'll make each journey, so that's missing for now. In general terms I expect:

Thursday Split

Saturday Zagreb

Monday Belgrade

Wednesday Sofia

Friday Istanbul

I'll add Plovdiv if mood or progress indicates.

So here's my itinerary:

From	To	Ref	Dep	Arr	Dur
LGW N	Split	BA2888	15/8 16:20	15/8 19:50	2:30
Split	Zagreb Glavni Kolod	IR522	10:53	16:17	5:24
Zagreb Glavni Kolod	Belgrade	415	11:10	17:26	6:16
		IR524	12:24	18:57	6:33
		IC211	16:48	22:50	6:02
Belgrade	Sofia	D293	21:00	06:25 next day	8:25
Belgrade	Sofia	D491	08:40	17:44	8:04
Sofia	Plovdiv	8611	10:30	13:14	2:44
		8615	13:30	16:11	2:41
		10113	14:05	17:23	3:18
		D491	19:30	21:47	2:17
Plovdiv	Istanbul Sirkeci	D491, D499, D81031	21:57	08:24 next day	10:27
Istanbul T1	LHR T1	BA0677	25/8 17:25	25/8 19:25	3:00

Don't Read This

2007-08-14T01:04:00.000+01:00

Hello,
I know that thousands of people start blogs and then give up on them. I have the mild distinction that I don't really want to have a blog in advance.
I don't think my life or opinions are so interesting that strangers would ever wish to read about them. I write an A4 sheet every Christmas and enclose it with cards to university friends that I haven't seen for years. My reasoning is that I like to get theirs and see that they're still alive and well. Some have said they like my annual missive, but who can tell to what extent they're just being polite?
So the experience relevant to blogging (perhaps) is that each year I sit to compose the newssheet and think that nothing has happened and each year it fills itself and ends up readable. Maybe this will work the same?
The particular stimulus that has made me open a blog is the short-ish holiday I've been planning this evening, of which I'll say more if it comes off. Specifically, my friend Sue said she'd like to follow my progress online. It sounds like a recipe for spending half of every day looking for an internet cafe.
Another friend kept a blog during a (rather more exciting) trip to the Far East.