:: Sunday, June 29, 2003 ::

Well, it looks like this is going to be the final diary entry of the trip. I'd like to go into detail about our last day in Mexico City, our fantastic-cum-frantic drive up the western coast of the States from LA to San Francisco in temperatures in the high 30s, and our big gay two day jaunt around San Francisco, but we get the feeling you wouldn't read it anyway. Besides, we'll be home in 36 hours, so we might as well tell you first hand.

Here then, is an incomplete and entirely random selection of high and low points from the year:

Best journey: London to Bangkok on Singapore Air. Honduras to Guatemala on 'King Quality' bus, with stewardess service!
Worst journey: Inle Lake to Yangon in Burma. Breakdowns, babies pissing in the aisle, hard non-reclining seats for 26 hours.

Best city: Sydney, Phnom Penh, San Francisco.
Worst city: Vientiane in Lao - dead as a dry dingo's donger. San Pedro Sula, Honduras - general sh!thole and AIDS capital of Latin America.

Best beach: Whitehaven in Oz's Whitsunday Islands or West Bay on Roatan, Honduras
Worst beach: Omoa, Honduras, China Beach, VietNam.

Hottest day: Day we crossed from Belize to Guatemala. 44 degrees C and 100% humidity. Nice.
Coldest day: Tied between Hong Kong and Milford Sound in New Zealand.

Best weather: Bay Islands, Honduras. Sun, sun, sun...
Worst weather: Bay of Islands, New Zealand. Rain, rain, rain...

Best animal: Tapir at Belize zoo. Nurse shark 15m under the water at Byron Bay, Oz.
Worst animal: A memorably mangy mutt in Bangkok. Hard to believe it's possible to have no hair AND no skin. Oh, and sandflies everywhere.

Best Beer: Beer Lao, Balboa Ice (Panama)
Worst Beer: Bia Chang (Thailand). Those changovers are not fun.

Best ladyboy: Cocktail 'waitress' in Bangkok.
Worst ladyboy: Unshaven manchick in Panama old town.

Most flatulent people: Burmese belchers, Hong Kong hoikers.
Most hygienic people: Singaporeans.

Best toilet experience: View from 32nd floor of spotless Swissotel bogs in Singapore.
Worst toilet experience: So many bins overflowing with bog roll. So many squat toilets. Maybe Kanchanaburi, where dozens of cockroaches crawled out of the rim after I lifted the seat.

Best New Zealand pie: Chicken, cranberry and camembert. Or something like that.

Best natural high: Skydiving, swimming with dolphins, Nitrogen narcosis diving at 40metres.

Least advisable thing stuck in a fan blade: Nose (Barney's in Fiji).

Highest number of toilet visits in a day: 20 (Barney after a suboptimal green curry in Lao).

Most surprising new thing learned about fish: They sleep.

Best girl companion for Barney: Claire
Best boy companion for Claire: you'll have to ask her.

Thanks for reading our humble offerings. See you on the other side!
:: Barney 6:40 AM [+] ::
...

Guatemala

A few hours after leaving San Salvador, we were in the ugly smogpit of Guatemala City. We stayed in a central hotel, where prices were displayed by the hour as well as per night, but it was surprisingly comfortable, and we had no trouble except for the incessant hooting of bus horns from the bus station over the road. The next morning we walked through the market, hands firmly clamped on wallets, but found the people to be friendly and helpful. After our morning trot, we got on a high-speed chickenbus to Antigua.


Antigua is the best-preserved colonial town in Central America, despite various earthquakes which have damaged it over the years. It is in a valley surrounded by volcanoes, which makes it a very picturesque little place. As a result it is choc-full of tourists, some there to learn Spanish and others to buy ethnic-knacks from local Mayan villagers. We indulged in a bit of the latter, even staying behind a shop in an Adobe-walled colonial house which was until recently a sushi restaurant. The eccentric Paraguayan owner wanted to give each room a theme based on an extroardinary female historic figure. Our room was to be dedicated to Martha Gellhorn (like, who?). She was apparently one of the first female was correspondents, as well as being the only woman to have married, then left Ernest Hemingway. The owner tried to pressure Claire into painting a mural on the wall, but when she failed to produce any materials this proved somewhat difficult, so we left her with Claire´s sketches and told her to find someone else to finish the job.


On our second night we experienced what Antigua is really famous for. For the first time in the entire trip, the Earth moved. For Claire anyway - Barney was busy snoring away in ignorant bliss... The next day´s newspaper confirmed that the rumbling and shaking of the bed was not in fact Barney snoring, but an earthquake measuring 3 on the Richter scale. Nice. After a few days indulging in the exceptional variety of food and lively bars (mostly Irish, of course), we were Antigua´d out.


Our next stop was Lake Atitlan, our final Central American destination. The lake occup?es a former volcanic crater, and reaches 250m depth. Again, it is surrounded by volcanoes, so the camera has been wielded at every opportunity. Around the lake are a series of Mayan villages, and one tourist town called Panajachel, but known as Gringotenango (Mayan for "Place of the Gringos"). We have based ourselves there and taken boats to the other villages. As well as Mayans speaking their languages and wearing traditional clothes, we found some well-placed lakeside rocks and leapt around 6m into the warm water. Magic! One of the weirdest things about the local Maya is their fetish for gold teeth implants. We saw one woman on the back of a pickup proudly displaying a full set of gold gnashers, but most people make do with gold rims around the front teeth and the odd star-shaped bit of gold embedded in the middle two teeth. Mick Hucknall eat yer heart out.


Tomorrow a minibus will whisk us to the Mexican border, and from the border town of Tapachula, we´ll grab an 18 hour bus to Mexico City, making for a grand total of more than 24 hours on buses. Yikes! From there it´s six hours on a plane to LA. Then we´ll be hiring a car (which mysteriously works out cheaper than the train or coach) to drive to San Francisco up the famous Pacific coast highway.


After having a gay old time in SF, we´re embarking on our final journey. Not quite sure where it´ll take us, but wherever it is, we hope to observe traditional indigenous rituals and use only local transport to get from A to B. Oh yes, we are seasoned travellers now, dontchaknow.
:: Barney 2:06 AM [+] ::
...

Nicaragua

War, Sandinists, Reagan, Iran-Contra affair, blah, blah, blah. Where Costa Rica was Central America´s peaceful exception, Nicaragua is the archetypal story of woe and destruction. The moment a vaguely left-wing government gained any power, the US found the nearest convenient counterrevolutionary bunch of bandits, and tooled them up to the hilt so they could rape, pillage and destroy any good work the government and people may have done. It´s not as bad as El Salvador, where there seem to be more guns than people since the US govt pumped $5 billion dollars into the right-wing army´s coffers, but it's still bad. Yet the Nicaraguans are, if anything more welcoming to Americans than to other nationalities. At the border, our US chum was allowed in with no delay, whilst the Brits were made to pay a border fee, pay to photocopy their passports (applied uniquely to Brits, without any explanation as to why). To cap it off, we then tried to get money out of the bank with our credit cards, and were told they would never work "because of your nationality". After two sweltering hours in a glorified Nicaraguan carpark, with no signs to tell border-crosees where to go, and excessive and unsympathetic bureaucracy at every turn, this was just the insult we needed. Having decided that our only option was to return to Costa Rica, we were saved at the last minute by Chris, who offered to lend us money till we found a Brit-friendly cashpoint. Cheers Chris! Neeedless to say, as soon as we exited the bank, we were hit with another mystery tax. On the verge of a tantrum, we paid up and left, righteous tears welling in our unwelcome British eyes!


Despite the shaky start, and nerves on the verge of collapse, we quickly realised that it was only the border employees who were a**eholes in Nicaragua. Everyone else was hugely nice to us. As we approached our first stop of San Juan del Sur, this time on the Pacific Coast, we breathed a huge sigh of relief. We found a nice quiet hotel, discovered a ridiculously good value local restaurant serving the best Chop Suey the world has ever seen, whilst screening the all-important finals of Miss Universe. Our interest in this classy competition was sparked whilst in Panama City - the city was hosting the final, and the "Misses" were being paraded roudn the country while we were there. Claire and I managed to miss the Misses by a day or so everywhere we went, but Alex and Chris followed them religiously, and swore blind that Miss Mexico winked at them (and brushed past, of course) at one of the parties the boys attended. San Juan del Sur was quiet and the beach was filthy, but it still attracted local surfers, and a stroll around the headland revealed loads of expensive properties (mostly owned by corrupt Nica politicians) clinging to the clifftops. In our hotel room we found an oil product amusingly called Lubri-M-Ass, as well as a crab who had taken up residence in my rucksack. Having atoned for an earlier hermit-crab-crushing incident by releasing the beast to its freedom on the main road, we jumped on a bus to the town of Rivas, on the edge of Lake Nicaragua. This is the biggest lake in Central America, and contains the unusual Island of Ometepe, formed by two adjacent volcanoes, joined in the middle by a giant volcanic tisnae/barse. The boat to the island was uneventful, but the 2 hour bus journey from the port to the town of Merida was so unpleaseantly bumpy it left us with double vision for days to come. I don't claim to understand the mechanics of building a road on a base of lava, but I'm pretty sure they could have done better than that. We stayed in a Hacienda, formerly owned by the Somoza dictatorship, then handed over to a local cooperative by the Sandinistas, then sold to a rich bloke who turned it into a one-stop backpacker shop. To give it credit, the place was cheap by Central American standards, dorm beds costing only US$2.75 per head. But it was nasty. There were holes in the walls, everything was damp, and one night Alex found a scorpion dangling from the windowsill by Claire´s and my bed. If you look at the photos, you'll see it was in the process of eating a gekko much larger than itself, using its pincers to insert gekko-goo into its gob as required. In deference to our belief that all animals have as much right to be here as we do, we allowed Alex the job of bottling the little b**tard to death. Very messy it was too, with much post-mortal twitching and bleeding by the scorpion.


One of Ometepe´s main attractions are the Petroglyphs, supposedly ancient stone carvings. Another attraction is a 100m waterfall, which proved decidedly easier to find than the petroglyphs. After a lengthy bike ride over steep, bumpy terrain, Barney and the boys were led first to the lakeside, where local villagers hacked away greenery to reveal a solitary and unimpressive carved stone. Then, promising more stones, three local men led us up a hillside. The promised 200m hike turned out to be more like 2km uphill, and bore no petroglyphic fruit. Only when we got to the top did the men suddenly recall that someone came and took the stones away some years previously. By now in fear of our lives (and imagining that, if we stayed, we would be married off to the village virgins), we made our excuses and headed off for our rendez-vous with Claire and top Ozzie bird Sue. By the time we got there, they had got fed up waiting and had gone, so we postponed our trip to the waterfall to the next day and cycled home to collapse in a hammock. The next daywe hiked for an hour up the side of the volcano and cooled off under the high pressure stream of the waterfall.


We left the luxuries of the Hacienda Merida with a bug in our bellies to compliment the ones on our window sill. Our next stop was the old Spanish colonial city of Granada. We sought out the amazing Oasis hostel and settled in for a few days of uncultured self-indulgence. The previous few days´activities and all-hours travelling had taken their toll, so we used the free internet and DVD facilities to the full. The hostel even had a courtyard pool, so it was a real effort to drag ourselves out to see the European-style town square and impressive cathedrals etc. which make Granada so special. We were also treated to a display of Nicaraguan frog soccer, which turned our pizza-filled stomachs.


Our final stop in Nicaragua was another colonial town - Leon. This was a hotbed of Sandinista action during the war, and the highlight was a trip to the Sandinista museum, a higgledy-piggledy one-man affair filled with photos of him and his mates firebombing police lines, as well as uniforms, badges and newspaper cuttings from the whole civil war era. We were even shown his original Sandinista membership card, but on the down side, gruesome photos of student friends murdered by government troops gave the place a chilling feel. The location of the place was important, as it was an ex-National Guard headquarters which had been overrun by the Sandinistas, and still bore the bullet holes in the walls.


From Leon, we took a combination of four buses, various taxis and a cyclo to get us north to the Honduran border. Thankfully, getting out of the country was significantly easier, and cheaper, than getting in, and we made our way to the the unpronouncable Honduran capital of Tegucigalpa. After a quick meal in the capital´s scary nighttime district (where even Pizza Hut has guards armed with sawn off-shotguns), we said goodbye to our month-long companions Chris and Alex and headed to the hotel for 4 hours´ kip. The next morning at 5am, we were queueing for a "King Quality" luxury bus to Guatemala City, 14 hours away, The bus took us through El Salvador, which we had already written off as too dangerous a destination to spend any time. When the coach pulled into San Salvador station (where we had to change), the steel security gates were closed the moment we were inside. Before boarding the new bus, we were forced to go through airport-style metal detecting machines, and had to pay a "terminal usage fee", almost as amusing as the "X-ray machine usage tax" at the airport in Roatan. From what we saw, San Salvador had some nice areas, but the number of guns and the ubiquitous gun shops made it a menacing place we were glad to get out of.


:: Barney 1:25 AM [+] ::
...

Costa Rica

Having singularly failed, through a combination of meteorological and motivational issues, to see either sea turtles or manatees we departed Bocas del Toro in Panama for the border with Costa Rica. Our expectations of the country the Americans call ´Coaster Wreaker´were low: we knew it was the most stable of the Central American countries (the armed forces were disbanded by the democratic government in the mid 20th Century), and therefore had become a tourist trap. We had also been warned that it was expensive and that the locals were predictably weary of the hordes of rich foreigners in their midst. We were even disappointed with the passport stamp. Our standards are high after some of the beauties we collected in South East Asia, but this one didn´t even have the country name on it, let alone fancy graphics. On this, El Salvador and Guatemala were the main contenders for the crown. However, Costa Rica wasn't all bad.


Our first stop was Puerto Viejo de Talamanca, further west along the Carribean coast from Bocas. This is a hot surfing spot for pretentious American kids, but was still chilled out enough to be preferable to the UK/German equivalents in Greece and Spain. The beach was rocky and unspectacular so we didn't stay long. The bars along the main street provided much more amusement. We (Barney, Alex and Chris, who by now were our firm travel companions) attempted to play pool against The Man with the Second Best Mullet in the World. Needless to say we all failed, as did everyone else who played him that night - but the pleasure of witnessing the Andy Fordham-like mega-mullet cascading down the back of this Hillbilly's sawn-off T-shirt gave the evening a tinge of excitement mixed with abject fear. It´s worth mentioning at this point that the best mullet was on a Brazilian soap opera seen at another bar. This was a full-on greased-back black triangular demi-wave affair sported by a man who seemed to be inexplicably attractive to his female co-stars. Anyway, enough frivolous bad-barnet talk. I can hardly comment, after all, with my record.


After a long and bumpy bus ride (for all its richness, Costa Rica's roads are still shoddy) we arrived in the capital, San Jose. This place is much safer than the other notoriously dangerous Central American capitals, and it had some pleasant areas. Occasionally, there was even evidence of town planning and landscaping. However, the Jade Museum - apparently the city´s main attraction - was closed when we got there, so we went to a historical museum with a lovely butterfly farm instead. Perhaps the highlight of the day was when a carload of local "youths" drove up behind us, rolled down the windows and shouted "PUTAS!" at us, before speeding off (clearly they saw how hard we were). It is truly an honour to be called ´whores´ in a foreign country, and I'll remember that witty gem to repeat to Cambridge´s tourists this summer.


After three relaxing nights in the capìtal, including a much-needed night on the town (where 29-yr-old Chris indulgd his passion for tonsel-tennis with a Tica teen), we got on an even less comfortable suspension-free bus to Santa Verde, a small town high in the protected cloud forests of western Costa Rica. Here we strapped on our hiking shoes (what's left of them) and followed 12km of tracks in search of "The elusive QUetzal", a native red and green Central American bird, so-called because it's fecking impossible to find. One's chances of seeing it are improved if one keeps quiet, which is somewhat difficult when you have eaten a dodgy bit of post-pub fried chicken from a street vendor the night before and have what locals refer to as "los guffs". Still, the cloud forest was a beautiful environment, and at the end of the walk, a specially-constructed tower provided excellent views over the whole area. Also in Santa Elena, we followed a suspension-bridge route which took us high above the forest canopy. As we were doing this, we kept hearing strange zooming noises, and when we looked up we saw people flying past us overhead. 'Ello 'ello 'ello, what´s going on 'ere then? we thought, adopting a pathetically cliched friendly bobby-style tone. It turned out that giant cable had been strung throughout the forest, and you could zoom down them on a special harness. We hurried back to the visitor´s centre, got kitted up with harnesses and quality "Village People" workman's helmets, before being clipped, one by one onto a cable and pushed to our certain doom by two grinning Costa Rican lads. As it turned out, we all survived the 16 cable zooms, some of which were over 600m long. We were even treated to a surprise 30m-high "Tarzan" cable-swing half way along.


As if all the high-octane "extreme" canopy zooming wasn't enough excitement, we got up the next day, and were whisked off by a combination of minibus and lake-going boat to the town of La Fortuna at the base of the LIVE Volcano Arenal. In order to keep our time in Costa Rica to a minimum, we "did" the volcano the same day. This involved heading to a local thermal area, with 9 baths of varying temperatures spread up a hill, and several bars. As we sipped a cold beer in a warm pool, we witnessed explosions and bright-red lava and rocks pouring down the side of the volcano. This place has been a major tourist attraction since the late 60s, when the hitherto dormat volcano spewed its guts out over a local village, then forgot to stop spewing. It's been safely hoying up red stuff in small amounts ever since. Nice work, Volcano fella.


From La Fortuna, the four of us (Claire, Barney, the Ginger Wonder and SeppoMan) headed to the border with Nicaragua, certain that it would be the Land of Milk and Honeys, and the answer to all our fevered prayers.

:: Barney 12:17 AM [+] ::
...

Panama

Panama City

We stayed in Roatan for a few days after "graduating". We hit the beaches again, met some top people (including a 32-year-old bloke from Norfolk who owned more diving-related gadgetry than you could shake a 2nd-stage regulator at (as well as a 28 grand car and a paid-up mortgage - well, he does work for Mars!). We also met an American photographer and an Ozzie couple - the bloke was an environmental politician no less, trying to save the Great Barrier Reef from the effects of overfarming. The stress of political infighting had driven him to go travelling for a year. Sounds familiar. A few days later, we said our goodbyes and jumped on a plane bound for Panama. Actually it was four planes, and we stopped twice in Honduras, then again in the capital cities of El Salvador and Costa Rica before finally hitting Panama City 10 hours later, and checking into a cheap hotel in the city centre.


Although they use the US dollar in Panama, they call it the "Balboa" after the guy who discovered that it was an Isthmus between the Atlantic AND Pacific Oceans. They even print their own coins to prove it. And the good news is things are cheap! In a supermarket cafe in Panama City, a full buffet meal including orange juice is less than $2.50. Beer is under a dollar, and travel costs next to nowt. In the city, the main attractions are the ruins of the original Spanish colony (Panama la Viejo), and the Casco Viejo, or Old Town. The former is just a pile of stones, as Welsh Buccaneer Henry Morgan sacked and burned the town in the good old days of Piracy. The only thing he was prevented from nicking - a golden altar, which was painted black by a cunning Priest to fool Morgan into thinking it was worthless - was moved to a church in the Old Town. Confusingly, the Old Town was built to replace the even older original town, so it is in fact new. But not as new as the new town, with its gleaming silver skyscrapers and modern seafront promenade. Got that? The whole city is reckoned to be unsafe at night, but the old town is dodgy even during the day. So we headed straight there, dressing down and only carrying a disposible camera to minimise our mugging-worthiness. In the end we had a great time, walking round the colonial buildings, checking out the Plaza Bolivar, which with its topiaried hedge and flower gardens is one of the nicest town squares we-ve seen anywhere. We also ran into a Worker's Demo (you know, that thing that people used to do in England, where they voice their opinions in public). Interestingly, we also passed the bombed-out ruins of a club, where ex-Panamanian Dictator, Drug Trafficker and CIA Agent Manuel Noriega used to hang out. The building was one of many bombed during the American invasion. While we're on the subject - and it seems topical - this invasion also claimed the lives of hundreds of innocent Panamanians. Anyway, enough politics - it's a pretty area to walk round, and we even got an impromptu guided tour from a friendly local who talked us through the history of the country, its ethnic mix (the greatest in Central America because of the multinational workers drafted in to build the canal), and the US handover of the canal to Panama in 1999.


The next day we headed for the canal itself, or rather the first set of locks (Las Esclusas de Miraflores). For those of you that we traversed the Warwickshire Ring with, the locks are a bit like that, only muuuuuuuch bigger. They have to fit the world's biggest ships through them after all (called Panamax, cos these are the biggest ships capable of passing through the Panama canal). We saw two ships pass through the dual-locks, one on each side, and were informed that each was paying in the region of $100,000 to do so (the cost is dependent on the weight). The cheapest passage was by some muppet who swam the length of the canal and paid around $0.35 for the privilege. We also visited the Canal museum, and learnt about the tens of thousands who died of Malaria and Yellow Fever in the first (French) attempt at building the canal. (The second attempt, the American one, was a bit less catastrophic, but it meant that all the money from the canal went to America until 31st Dec 1999.)

David

We took a bus to the Western provincial capital of David, which took a piddling seven hours. Here we found a great family-run hostel, whose Panamanian/Italian owners shared their home-grown Avocados with us. We stayed for three nights, and on the second day took a bus to Boquete, up in the hills. This is a beautiful and highly photogenic garden town. We took loads of piccies and sampled some locally-grown coffee, among the best in the World. Then, after another night (and a brutal $2 haircut by a woman who looked like a larger version of Dolph Lundgren) we jumped on a bus Northwards to Almirante on the Atlantic (Caribbean) coast, then got a boat to the archipelago of Bocas del Toro. It's not as nice as Roatan in Honduras, but it's got some great beaches, and more excitingly, colonies of Sea Turtles and Manatees. Believe it or not, both these animals had been on our list of must-sees for a long time. Tonight we're heading off with a conservation group for a four hour nighttime stroll along the beaches to see the turtles, which allegedly get up to 1.7m in length. If we can find anyone to go with, we'll head off tomorrow night to see the manatees. Manatees for the uninitiated are the giant sea-cows, which Ye Olde Sailores used to mistake for Mermaids. More news soon. The Dude abides...
:: Barney 8:07 PM [+] ::
...

Diving on Roatan

This was what we'd been waiting for. We'd heard vague rumours in Asia about how Honduras was the cheapest place to dive, and an American pair we met in Mexico gave us the lowdown on Roatan and said it was THE place to check out. We were not disappointed! It is a developed island, but not overrun with splurging Americans in the same way as Cancun or other hell holes in the region. Yes, there are tour groups (an American cruise ship stops one day a week, and an Italian package tour company flies in once a week), but they keep themselves to themselves. The other novelty fact about Roatan is that they film the truly awful "Reality" TV show Temptation Island there. One day, when we were strolling up the coast to West Bay (the island's top beach), we were stopped by a large American with one of those MacDonna microphone/headpiece things who directed us round the back of the Temptation Island resort. When we emerged further up the beach, we located where they were filming their Temptee interview and stood in the background making obscene gestures at the camera. Oh what fun - I'm sure they'll be inviting us back.


We headed for a dive shop called Reef Gliders, run by a cheery Cherman called Justus (pr. "Yoostoos", hence he was known locally as "Useless"), who was anything but. He quickly put the two of us - and our Dutch comedienne pal Loes - in touch with Divemaster Elan. This French guy was the person charged with turning us from poxy "Open Water" divers, to full-on "Advanced" divers. We immediately hit it off, as he had previously worked in a dive school in Thailand near to where we did our diving. He even sported the nerdy in-joke Thai T-shirt which says (Nitrogen) Narcosis is the Oasis typeface, with "Mad for it" emblazoned across the back. More of the 'Narcs later. Onto the dives:

• Peak Performance Buoyancy. This is where they check that you're capable of floating at a given depth, without knocking chunks off the coral and kicking your "buddy's" air supply out of his mouth. Oh, and they make you do fin pivots on the ocean floor, and have a 'running' race each other without fins on. All in all, a bit dull, and not good for making you read the next bit. It gets better!


• Deep Dive. This is the pant-wettingly (or wet-suit-wettingly) exciting dive down to 40 metres. At this depth, the concentrated nitrogen in the blood stream makes you feel light-headed (Nitrogen Narcosis, or the Narcs). Some people just giggle a bit, but others (like Barney) decide that the corals look like people's naughty bits and explode into uncontrolled hysteria. The strangest thing about the Narcs is the desire to keep going deeper and deeper. Our instructor cut us short around 40 metres. As you head back up again half an hour or so into the dive, the Narcs just disappear, leaving you wondering what exactly was so funny about those giant clams and hosepipe coral you saw below...


• Night Dive. A completely new experience for us. We headed out after sunset to a site called "The Hole in The Wall". Each of us was armed with a torch, and new instructions on how to communicate with the instructor in the dark. Before the dive, I (Barney) was astonished to realise that I had lived 27 1/2 years of my life without knowing that fish slept. We saw this for ourselves, as we descended to around 20 metres - they actually hover under a rock a bob around with their eyes closed. How the hell do they do that? Childish questions aside, we saw loads more wildlife among the beautiful coral - shrimps, lobsters, an octopus - until Claire grabbed my shoulder. I looked up, and saw she wasn't happy. Bubbles were streaming out of her buoyancy control device, and the laws of physics meant that she started rising to the surface very quickly. As she was grabbing onto me, I went up with her. This wasn't dangerous because we were in shallow depths, but it was a shock. Claire's BCD was faulty, so it was replaced asap, and she bravely got on with the dive.


• Wreck Dive. This turned out to be the most exciting dive of the lot. We descended to around 30m, then suddenly the enormous bulk of a 100m wrecked fishing boat came into view. The boat had split into 3 parts which made it all the more impressive. It is a relatively new wreck (1997) so it's not covered in metre-thick coral like other boats, but it is located amid some spectacular reefs. First we swam across the whole boat, then descended over the enormous bough (in the manner of Leonardo di Caprio, except without the drowning bit) and swam to the base of the boat. On the sea floor nearby a giant green Moray Eel was guarding a small cluster of coral. Our instructor cracked a raw egg to demonstrate how the yolk held together under the water. Once he'd impressed us with this, he passed the yolk to the Moray, but it was snatched away from him by a passing fish at the last minute. We finished the dive by zig-zagging through the interior of the boat, up stairs and through narrow holes and small chambers. All very exciting. You couldn't wipe the grins off our faces, until...


• Navigation Dive. Yawn. They show you how to use a compass underwater, tell you about "Natual Navigation" (which basically involves watching where the hell you're going), then sent us down. After we did some excercises the instructor disappeared back to the boat, telling us to find our own way back after a specified time. This is when we realised how hard it was to keep track of orientation, time, depth and everything else, whilst gawping at fish and coral. But with a bit of help from the compass, and a touch of guesswork, we made it back to the boat and surfaced next to it as instructed. It was then that we officially became advanced. And all for the price of a packet of Polos. Well, not quite, but 2/3 cheaper than elsewhere in the world.

:: Barney 8:06 PM [+] ::
...

Honduras

We knew we were in Honduras for two reasons: Firstly, because a road sign said "Honduras" and secondly because the tarmac ran out suddenly, and we were back on dirt tracks. After passing through customs at the town of Corintos, we caught a bus to the seaside at Omoa. The Lonely Planet raved about this place as the next big thing - even printing a letter from a reader who loved it so much they stayed three weeks. However, it turned out to be a croque monsieur. The only interesting thing, apart from the old Spanish colonial fort, was the ongoing legal battle between two hostel owners - one Swiss, one Dutch - who competed viciously for backpacker Lempiras (cash). The old white haired Dutch lady told us how the Swiss guy hurt her feelings. His promotional flyer reads:



"!!Warning!! Old white hair lady waiting @ the bus stop in Omoa center all day long, attacking all new comers, promoting her place as the only one in town, don't buy that!! free rides to her Place!? more like just to get you before you can check out some better Places !!! Her place is not on the beach neither !!!"



Despite the entertainment this gave us, we chose the Old white hair lady's place, and ended up feeling that it was a bit cack after all. And it wasn't on the beach. However, this was a good thing, as the beach was filthy and unappealing, and nobody except local drunks went anywhere near it. Three weeks? We wanted to leave after three hours, and a power cut in the evening only made it worse. So we got up the next day, were refused a lift to the bus stop by the "Old white hair lady" who allegedly spends half her life at the bus stop, and jumped on a chicken bus. First stop was Puerto Cortes, then San Pedro Sula (Honduras' crime capital, and Central America's AIDS capital), then back up to La Ceiba (named after the tinsel tree), on the coast. This journey was spiced up by "Crescendo of Religious Zeal" Woman, who got on the bus and started ranting in a quiet voice about various religious topics, then got slowly louder as the topics moved onto the terrible things that would happen to us if we didn't immediately convert to Christianity. Having made a fuss of putting my earplugs in, things started to improve, until CORZ Woman moved to the back of the bus and started again! I turned away, and focused instead on the acres and acres of banana plantations, all owned (as are the nearby towns and infrastructure) by the American United Fruits Company, more recently repackaged as Del Monte. The man from Del Monte says, "whoooooooaaaaa!" Someone's making a lot of money from Northern Honduras, and it sure ain't the Hondurans! Having said that, they do eat a lot of bananas, but mainly in the form of fried, salted plantain chips, which incidentally I was munching on at the time.

Roatan

From here we took a fantastic 18 minute flight to the island of Roatan. The plane was so tiny, we sat (with our Dutch companion Loes) right behind the pilots, and watched all the action, inside and out, up close. The landing in particular was superb, as we had a full view of the island's edges and the approaching runway. Roatan is a different world from what we'd seen of Central America till then. It is a diving island - like Koh Tao in Thailand - and offers eveything from high class resorts to budget dive shops in the island's West End. This is where we headed, bypassing Sly Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger and - most amusingly - Chuck Norris, all of whom have holiday homes there. The first night we stayed at a place run by an eccentric tuberculotic American woman named Valerie, who wasn't in the least embarassed that the only working toilet in the place was at the other end of the building from the only working tap. Halfway through a shower (at the bit just after the soap was applied) the water supply gave up the ghost completely, and when - minutes later - the electricity failed, we decided that staying in the cheapest place isn't always the best option. The following day we moved to Anderson's cabins. Mr Anderson is an old Afro-American who runs his place like a military camp. Before we could occupy our cabin (which turned out to be right on the sea shore and very nice), we were made to sit down and given a talking to with forceful gesticulations on Anderson's part about the importance of security when travelling. We politely told him we had 10 months' experience, but only then discovered he was deaf. Only when his wife stepped in (and was mercilessly derided for even daring to talk to him) did he get the message and let us go to our room, with an emphatic "Yes, Sir!" A few days later when he begrudgingly got our bank card out of the safe so we could go into town for money, he announced that the banks were closed. We countered that one of the banks had an ATM, which was open 24 hours. Not wishing to let us have the last word he pointed a finger and reminded us "If you are going to the cash machine, don't forget to take your passport". You couldn't make it up really... Whilst in Roatan, we took a fantastic three day course and became Advanced SCUBA divers. Not only is this one of the world's most beautiful diving spots, but also the cheapest (and best value) too. More details about the diving in the next instalment. Since then, we've caught a plane to Panama City, visited the canal's locks and had a stroll through cloud forests in the West of the country. But more of that nonsense in due course. Check out our newly-uploaded photos in the meantime.



:: Barney 1:31 AM [+] ::
...

Guatemala

Tikal

This day started badly, as most days do when you get out of bed at 4am. We jumped on a bus full of eager tourists (mainly German and Dutch, which is to be expected at such an early hour, and realised we didn't have enough cash to see us through the day. Having successfully begged the bus driver to stop the bus at a cashpoint, Barney hopped out, stuck the card in the ATM, and the ATM laughed and spat it out again. On to the next bank. This one goes through the motions, makes the right noises, then spits out the card. And guess what? There are no more banks. On the point of suicide, we announced to the bus driver that we'd have to get off and walk back to our hotel, thus rendering the early morning a wasted effort. Then, just as we were getting off, like a guardian angel, pipes up a voice from behind: I can lend you the money. Saved by a Canadian couple! So off we headed, gurning in our best impression of a smile, to Tikal. After a quick breakfast from an on-site restaurant whose menu contained a great selection of "homelettes", we headed off with a guide (well, it IS a big site, and we couldn't have read a map by ourselves for love nor money). The guide was less interested in the history of the Mayan buildings, most of which are more decayed than their counterparts in Palenque, and more concerned with showing us all the wildlife in the surrounding forests. We saw howler monkeys, spider monkeys, toucans and tarantulas, all in their natural habitats. We also saw the unusual Ceiba tree, with its tinsel-like branch perching at the top of the trunk. We clambered into giant underground chambers which the Mayans used to keep their food cool. We clambered up the stairs of the "Mundo Perdido" or lost world temple, where only two weeks previously a German tourist had fallen 24 steps to her death. The temple had been closed until the morning we arrived. The only change since the accident were the little signs by all the temples saying "Climb at your own risk". With each step 1,000 years old and nearly a metre high, it's easy to see how mishaps could occur. At the other end of the site was a temple where a scene from "The Return of the Jedi" was filmed. It's something to do with the Ewoks, but I'll have to watch that bit again to work out where. Oh yeah, and they filmed a Dutch 'Tango' advert there, too...


Our next stop was "Finca Ixobel" - an American-owned working farm-cum-hostel, where guests stay in rustic accommodation while locals do all the hard farm labour. There are loads of volunteers from around the world who help with reception / kitchen / bar duties, and all of them were top people. We planned to stay one night, but when we discovered that they operated a tab system instead of demanding cash all the time, and had a pool table and darts board, this quickly turned into four nights. To say nothing of the fact that our historical interference over the previous weeks had left us with a touch of Montezuma's revenge, which we needed a few days to fully reconquer. We amused ourselves with a horse-riding trip (predictably, the rainy season arrived 15 minutes after we jumped in the saddle, and the horses tried to bolt with the thunder). We swam in the "lagoon", which turned out to be a stagnant pond which left us covered in green algae. And on the nights when we weren't gatecrashing staff parties, we had games of round-the-clock on the darts board, which started off with two or three players, who quickly became nine or ten. The longest game lasted three and a half hours. Eric Bristow, eat your furry heart out!


From the Finca, we took a bus down to Rio Dulce, the Sweet River. We caught a boat over the river to the Hacienda Tijax, which also claimed to be a working farm, although the only animals in evidence were a couple of mutts in the bar (to say nothing of the dogs walking around). This place even had an activities board which listed such activites as "Swim... Eat...Rent a Dog". The last one in particular caught our eye, as Simon, who we travelled with in New Zealand, had based his entire future career on renting dogs to holiday makers. Looks like he's been beaten to it. We confined ourselves to the pool and jacuzzi, before heading off the next morning on a catamaran to the otherwise-unreachable town of Livingston. This place is a Carribean backwater with little happening. During the evening, we overheard an enormous Carribean woman (Black Carib as they are officially known!) tell a tourist at the next table she looked "red, like a lobster" before bursting into fits of laughter. Later on we bumped into our old Kiwi pals Dean and Lee, who despite their best efforts to lose us, had miscalculated, but cheerfully joined us for a drink and a chat anyway! The next morning we caught a lancha boat to Guatemala's largest port- Puerto Barrios. There we jumped in a cab with a bad-boy who had silver-rimmed teeth and balcked-out windows. When he asked us if we wanted to hear his CDs we expected Public Enemy, but instead we got Chris de Burgh. The world can be cruel sometimes. Thankfully, as the last bars of "Lady in Re-he-he-he-he-he-hed" died away, we were at the Honduran border.

:: Barney 1:26 AM [+] ::
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Belize

Caye Caulker

We punished ourselves with yet another overnight journey from Palenque (this time with loud music all night). Our destination was Chetumal on the Mexico/Belize border. At the bus station, we met Fiona from Ireland, who accompanied us on a converted US school bus over the border down into Belize City. From there we caught a speedboat over to the island of Caye Caulker. Our first Carribean stopover was tiny, beautiful and laid back, but again there was no beach to laze around on. The real fun was out on the barrier reef (second only in size to the Great Barrier Reef). We took a snorkelling day trip on a sailing boat, and we went right to the middle of the protected marine park and snorkelled around not only the usual array of coral and sea life, but also sharks and manta rays which swam around under the boat in exchange for a large supply of fish parts thrown over the side. The braver among us even got to stroke them! We ate fish parts too, but thankfully they´d been converted into burger form beforehand. Overall, Caye Caulker was a great place, and being among English/Creole-speaking rasta men seemed a tad anomalous in the middle of Central America. However, such was the reach of the British Empire that even some of the coastal parts of Nicaragua have English-speaking populations... More of that another time, if we get the chance to go there.

Belize City and San Ignacio

We headed back through Belize City (one of the world´s scarier places), stopping only for a brief stroll through the colonial district. Then we got on a sweaty bus to San Ignacio in the west of the country. On the bus was another of Belize´s unusual sights - three generations of Mennonite dudes sitting together at the front. These are remnants of the Dutch agricultural/religious group who settled in various parts of Central America after persecution in Europe. They are similar to Amish both in their dress and lifestyle, but other than staring at their straw hats and colour-coded cotton shirts, we didn´t pry any further. At some point we hope to check out one of their villages.


We made only stop on the way - at Belize Zoo. This was set up by a somewhat eccentric lady who came to Belize to film a wildlife documentary, then ended up staying to look after the animals used in the filming. The place then metamorphosed into an animal sanctuary, and later a zoo, and the nutty founder still runs it. There's a great selection of animals, all of which we were assured would be in dire straits if left in the wild (which eases the conscience a tad). But the star of the show, and a possible candidate for best animal in the world, was the hippo/elephant crossover the Tapir. I cannot enthuse enough about how wicked these animals are. Suffice to say they eat a lot of leaves and wallow in mud. Magic. If you want to see just how cool a tapir is, see our photos or check out this link to Belize Zoo. Hello? Have I lost you?...


We ended up in San Ignacio, near the Guatemalan border, where we stayed in the wonderfully-named "New Belmoral Hotel". Belmoral (or even Balmoral) it ain´t, but anyway it was cheap by local standards, so it did us. We assured the owner we wouldn´t use the air-con (which would have nearly doubled the price), but then the temperature soared to 105 degrees Fahrenheit (41 Celsius in the new money) and so on went the air-con. Needless to say we were reprimanded the next day, and had to cough up the dough. The following night we brought in some extra fans (of the ventilatory variety) and sweltered in peace. During the day, we hired a canoe, got a lift upriver, and paddled the 10 miles or so back to town through lush rainforest. We swam with the locals (none of whom announced they were "indigenous people" as the Cambodian kids had!) and listened to the exotic birds and howler monkeys, and pulled in just as the sun was setting - beautiful!


The following day we headed to the Mayan ruins of Xunantunich - right on the border with Guatemala. These included an impressive 40m pyramid, at the top of which the heat was even more intense (up to 110 Fahrenheit). Every step we took, 3-5 drops of sweat were falling off our faces - by a long way the most intense and uncomfortable heat either of us have ever experienced. We were drinking bottle after bottle of water, but it wasn´t even touching the sides. So what did we do? Rest? Never! We picked up our 25kg rucksacks, crossed the border on foot, then crammed into a minivan (with our bags on top and 12 seats inside) along with 18 other passengers, and sweltered our way to the town of Flores (a little island on a lake) where we are now. Local slash-and-burn farmining techniques mean that not only is it hotter here than in Belize, but also hazy and smoggy. The sweating is now out of control...


From here we will visit the major Mayan ruins of Tikal, before heading down south. Our bus leaves at 5am tomorrow morning. Marvellous!

:: Barney 1:18 AM [+] ::
...

Mexico

Mexico City

Being interviewed by a schoolchild - Aaah, how sweet! A shy mummy approaches you, expains that her child needs to conduct a dictaphone / video interview with a foreigner for a school project. You oblige, answer a few simple questions, and they leave, both parties enriched and satisfied by the experience. Well, once maybe. But after the seventh "interview" of the day (each) it starts to jar a little. There are only so many times you can reveal your favourite colour to a child who doesn´t even understand the question they´re asking, never mind the response before the novelty wears off. Chatting up their mum turned out to be a far more rewarding enterprise. OK, OK, so this wasn´t ALL we did in Mexico City, but it felt like it at times.


We did attempt to lever some "culture" into the proceedings: We hooked up with Kiwi couple Dean and Lee and took a trip to the impressive Museum of Anthropology. This gargantuan museum (we only managed to get round it in a day because some of the halls were closed) was fascinating, if overwhelming. Each hall attempts to reveal one of the many ancient Mexican cultures at a time, with historical artifacts on the ground floor and contemporary lifestyle and culture exhibits on the first floor. In theory we should now know our Toltecs from our Mixtecs, and our Aztecs from our Teotihuacans, but in practice we took it all with a "poncho" salt and decided to check it out for ourselves as we went along. As to modern-day culture, we stayed an extra day, headed off on the metro with a group from our hostel to Mexico City´s bullring - the biggest outside of Spain, only to find that the bullfighting season had ended the week before. Nice! We made up for this a couple of weeks later - more details below.

Prior to leaving the polluted hell-hole that is Mexico City, we headed off for a day trip to Teotihuacan. This is a pre-Aztec city, with two enormous pyramids (thought to be dedicated to the Sun and Moon) and various other ceremonial and burial structures to explore. The whole town was reconstructed in the early 20th Century according to drawings made by Spanish conquistadores from the 15th Century, but is still an impressive sight, and the first of many for us. It was also the site of numerous interviews with schoolchildren desperate to know our favourite colour as well as vendors of "traditional" volcanic rock carvings (hmmm) and almond-flavoured tequila (yum!).

Taxco

From Mexico City we took a bus two hours to the South to the old mining town of Taxco (not to be confused with Tesco or Texaco, which are a chain of supermarkets and a chain of petrol stations, respectively). This is Mexico´s silver capital - more than 300 silver shops line its cobbled streets - although we were there more for the picturesque snapshots than the bargain-bucket ingots. The town is almost Mediterranean, with delicatelty-painted houses, cobbled streets and signs painted only in black. Even the omnipresent Coca Cola have to paint their logo in black in Taxco! We stayed in the hotel San Javier, an island of luxury in our sea of low-budgetdom. It was made affordable as we shared with our Kiwi chums, and meant we could lounge in and around the pool, and stare wistfully from the balcony at will. The wrought iron fixtures and lovely gardens made us think we´d arrived in the "real" Mexico at last. Then we went to Acapulco...

Acapulco

For three days, we were forced to resist the temptation to "go loco down in Acapulco" and I´m happy to report that we managed it. The place is, however, a dive. It´s never really recovered since its main rival - Cancun - was thrown together in the 70s, and it really feels like a town on its way out, despite the decent number of tourists that still flock there. It´s dirty, crumbly and generally down-beat, although where we stayed was about as far from the iconic 50-storey Marbella-style beachfront hotels as it could have been. Nevertheless, there were three highlights. The first were the "clavadistas" or cliff-divers, who acrobatically leap into a - frankly scary - ravine from heights of up to 35m for the pleasure of the audience (mostly flatlining American crillsifters, oh, and us). Apparently, Elvis performed this feat in one of his films. So there! The second was a visit to the ancient San Francisco fort - where we learnt, then promptly forgot, the difference between a pirate, buccaneer and suchlike. This was located at the port, where all the boats coming to and from the Philippens used to dock, and where the convergence of the two cultures is still apparent (hence the spicy nature of Mexican food, and the Chinese appearance of some of their furniture, apparently.) The third highlight was the following conversation (again, with an American, fresh off a cruise boat which had docked the day before):

American flatliner: Pardon me, are you familiar with the local currency?
Us: Er, yes.
American flatliner: Is this a one peso coin?
(n.b. The coin had the number "1" emblazoned across 2/3 of its surface)
Us: Er, yes.
American flatliner: So, if the waitress asks me for four pesos, I just give her four of these, right?
Us: Er, yes.
American flatliner: Hey, are you guys from England?
Us: Er, yes.
American flatliner: Your boys are out there with us, doing our thing, huh?

(We made a face which obviously showed that our pro-war fervour wasn´t perhaps as strong as his)

American flatliner: Well, I guess maybe war ain´t the best thing, but at least you´re out there with us.

At this point, the risk of "going loco" at unprecedentedly high levels, we thought it best to change the subject, asking Sherlock Holmes instead where the cruise was due to stop next. But alas, this shining beacon of intelligence and international travel acumen didn´t actually know where they were going. So we thought we´d leave him to it and be on our way.

Zipolite on the Oaxaca coast

An overnight bus journey eastwards along the coast took us to Zipolite in the state of Oaxaca (pronounced Wah-HAH-Cah, not Wacaccino, as Dean would have us believe). Despite the three-hour detour resulting from the fact that we slept through our stop (after failing to sleep through most of the night), we eventually took off our bags and settled back into the beach-hut life that we´d so missed since leaving Thailand. The only difference here was that the rip tides made it unsafe to swim more than a few metres from the shore (the lifeguards saved three people on one day we were there - all Mexicans who clearly hadn´t been reading their Lonely Planet guides!) But the beach was great, the food was good and the lifestyle slow. Exactly what we needed to catch up on sleep and reading. It was also a popular nudist spot (rare in otherwise conservative Mexico). Whilst the European and American nudists kept themselves to themselves, the Mexicans let it all hang out, and then wiggled it around just in case you hadn´t noticed. We even spotted a guy with see-through Speedos (just at the back mind, nothing saucy). The only building on the beach with more than one storey was a hotel, on the top floor of which were two old men, who spent all day on their balcony passing a pair of binoculars from one to the other. Despite the abundant birdlife (Pelicans were migrating over the beach all day every day) we think their interest lay elsewhere...

Oaxaca City

Our next journey was another 12-hour bonanza (mostlye during the daytime) and left us in Oaxaca city three hours later than anticipated at 2am. Thankfully we´d booked ahead, and our "accommodating" hostel let us in without any fuss. Mercifully, we had a dorm to ourselves on the first night. By the second night we were joined by a pair of Americans (of the intelligent variety) and a young Mexican couple. In an effort to increase cross-cultural relations (and learn some Mexican swear words) we spent the evening drinking from a two-gallon bottle of Tequila which the couple had brought with them from her family Agave farm in Tequila itself. The next day we headed off to a nearby town called El Tule, whose central square boasts the world´s "largest biomass" - a tree - of ludicrous proportions (a 17m diameter for Chrissakes, between 2,000 and 3,000 years old.) Oaxaca is the indigenous artesany capital of Mexico, so after marvelling at the tree, we dutifully headed back into town for some souvenir shopping, but before long it was time to say goodbye to Oliver and Perla the Mexican slang-mongers, and head off again.

San Cristobal de las Casas

This town is the capital of Chiapas state - Mexico´s poorest and one of the most dangerous as the Zapatista movement is based here. A few years ago the town was seized by Zapatistas but the government soon squished them. Nowadays the new govt prefers to actually talk to them rather than shooting them, so things have calmed down. We were in town for the Semana Santa (Easter) festivities. On Easter Sunday, you couldn´t move for Monsters Inc-sponsored floats blocking the streets. The night before, we were treated to a ´show extremo´ in the town square, where numerous local wannabes came on stage to mime along to backing tapes of the likes of Enrique Iglesias and Christina Aguilera. These were preceded by a "genuine" Mariachi band, and a contender for world´s most shrieky and perhaps most ugly karaoke singing lady. All good fun, and thoroughly enjoyed by our little group (the Kiwis, plus Giuseppe the permanently appalled but hilariously funny Italian who threw his hands in the air and shouted "minchia" at every opportunity).


On our final day in Saint Christopher of the Houses (my translation) we headed to the bullring. Making amends for our earlier Mexico City mishap, we checked out a six-bull extravaganza. By the end we had sweated buckets, bitten our nails down, nearly puked at the sight of blood pumping by the litre from the bulls´ necks, and taken around 100 photos. The whole spectacle is truly amazing, and let´s not forget a) that it is a centuries-old and well-developed tradition; b) that the alternative would be for the bulls to die in a hideous abattoir, and c) that there is always a chance that the bull will win the fight. In fact, it´s probably the latter which draws the crowds. In our case, things had progressed relatively well (barring a few botched and lengthy killings) until round four, at the point of inserting the metre-long sword between the bull´s shoulder blades. If done correctly, this can kill the bull instantly, but in this case, the matador hesitated a moment too long, giving the bull time to flick its head up, catching the matador and hoying him 6 feet into the air. When he fell, the bull charged again, flipping him up and over, but (to the crowd´s minor disappointment) not actually tearing him to pieces. Eventually, the winded matador was able to stand up and stagger round the ring to much applause. He was even granted a couple of ears for his efforts. During another fight, one of the mounted neck-stabbers (who drive a sharpened point into the bull´s neck to get it really angry) got a bit too keen, exhausting the bull and annoying the crowd, who then proceeded to hurl cans and bottles (empty and full) at him until he left the ring. They reward and punish in equal measures these crazy Hispanic types, let me tell you.

Palenque

Prior to leaving, we took a day trip to the beautiful Mayan ruins at Palenque. The site is bang in the middle of the jungle, which lends an air of mystery to the area, and the sounds of exotic birds and wildlife only increases it. The buildings contain many hieroglyophs and frescoes depicting important Mayan coronations and so on, as well as offering overgrown children like us the chance to clamber up steps and explore tunnels. It was straight out of a Tintin book! On the way to the ruins, we stopped at two waterfalls - the beautiful cascades of Agua Azul (Blue Water) and the semicircular falls at Misol Ha, where tree roots extended 50m down the edge of the rock, and more adventurous of us swam right to the base of the falls. The area around both falls is controlled by local villagers, who have set up numerous road blocks to cajole hapless tourists out of as much cash as possible in the name of "conservation".
:: Barney 1:16 AM [+] ::
...

Mexico

Mexico City

LA is not a cheap place to be, and with our funds rapidly dwindling, we decided it was time to get outta there. We headed down to a nearby branch of STA travel and bought tickets to Mexico City. "At least we´ll save ourselves the cost of a couple of mealsby flying all day", we optimistically told ourselves. How wrong we were. The shoddy Mexican operation that is "AeroCalifornia" not only put us on a plane with no TVs, magazines or other diversions for 6 hours, but also NO FOOD! Needless to say, when we arrived at our hostel in the heart of old Mexico City, the cafe was already closed, so we couldn´t eat then either. Then we were stuffed into a dorm with two noisy Brits who shuffled the beds all night, and an Ozzie guy who had to get up at 5.30am to catch a flight to Havana. After a totally sleepless night, we finally drifted off, only to wake up at 10.10am and remember that breakfast finished at 10. By the time we moved rooms, got ready and found the courage to venture into the streets, it was 2pm, and we wolfed down a three course meal in seconds. After another enormous feed yesterday evening and a better night´s sleep (we even made it to breakfast at 9.50) we spent today doing the tourist thing. We visited the Spanish cathedral in the central square or Zocalo (just metres from our hostel), and the recently excavated "Templo Mayor", the centrepiece of ancient Tenochtitlan (which I remember from my Spanish history was the Aztec capital, surrounded by a lake and run by that great feather headdress-wearing bloke Moctezuma, who Cortes held captive then murdered). The Spanish had built houses and a bookshop over the site, so it remained underground until 1978 when a bunch of plumbers unearthed a huge monolith depicting a dismembered Aztec goddess. At that point, archaeologists tore down the surrounding buildings and excavated the whole site. They also added a superb museum.


As you know, Mexico City is the biggest city (or, as Lonely Planet puts it ´megalopolis´) in the world, so in a couple of days we have not even scratched the surface. However the horrendous pollution (which blocks out the sunlight, thus saving on expensive sunblock) has left us both feeling tired, groggy and short of breath. Tomorrow, we´re off to the nearby pyramidic ruins of Teotihuacan, then we'll move east into Oaxaca and down towards Gutemala - and hopefully cleaner air. But we´ll be back in June ready to fly back to LA, then up to San Francisco and then... home. Yikes!


:: Barney 5:32 AM [+] ::
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USA (first time round)

Los Angeles - Where interaction is futile (TM)

Here´s what I used to think of LA: Drive-bys, Niggaz in da 'Hood (note careful inclusion of apostrophe), Wannabe film-luvvies and endless, featureless blocks of skyscrapers. Oh, and the Hollywood sign. The reality is that there are in fact very few skyscrapers - the skyline being on the whole only two or three storeys high - but everything else holds true. As far as the wannabe actors go ,everyone you meet is either in ´the business´or desperately trying to make themselves as unique and/or conspicuous as possible in order to get there, with the weighting heavily on the latter. There is a joke that when someone tells you they´re an actor, you reply ´So, which restaurant do you work in then?´. The trouble with all these competing egos in one place though, is that nobody is remotely interested in anyone else. The closest you get to interaction with the ´locals´ (most of whom were Mexican or Finnish it seemed) was when they were giving you "attitood". Example: As Claire got off a bus, she politely informed a fellow standing passenger that seats were now available at the back of the bus, should she wish to rest her weary legs (ok I´m exaggerating a bit...). The woman turned to her and shouted in the most vitriolic tones that "I got out of your way lady. What´s your problem?" Another time we were hungry after walking two or three miles uphill towards the Hollywood sign (and into the wealthy, walled area known as ´Hollywoodland´). We stopped and bought some food and drink in a supermarket. After paying, the checkout guy moved to put our stuff into plastic bags, and I told him "No thanks, we don´t need them because we´re going to eat it now." He looked aghast at my refusal of his ´service´and turned away muttering "Be that way then, asshole!" When our mate Neil (who we hooked up with Rarotonga) also refused a bag on the incontrovertible grounds of helping to save the environment, veins visibly startin popping on his neck. Needless to say, the other customers were all emerging with paper bags inside plastic bags, inside more bags, to say nothing of the fact that they made the supermarket staff carry their bags the 10 metres to the car park while they chatted on their mobiles and pampered their poodles. Assholes! Another more amusing incident, this time at a busstop, involved a toothless be-ponytailed guy asking us where we were from. We were with a couple of Spanish girls, and we each divulged our nationality. He then iformed us that "My Daddy went around the world when I was young. He went to your country and your country (pointing in turn at us). He brought back a mirror with all French words round the edge. Do you think that was from your country?" he asked none of us in particular, evidently hedging his bets. When I said no, he asked where the mirror could possibly be from then, and when I replied in my least judgmental, most happy-go-lucky voice that it was probably France he looked absolutely baffled and turned away.


Having said all this, we quite enjoyed bits of our LA stopover. On the first night Claire, Neil and I made an impromptu stop at the Laemmle Cinema (He´s the founder of Universal Studios). We saw Michael Moore´s "Bowling for Columbine" which was the best critique of American gun culture I´ve seen, also providing plentiful evidence of the Media/Church/Politically-led culture of fear and paranoia which fuels it. It is truly incredible how stupid some middle-Americans are, even when given the opportunity to exonerate themselves on film (to wit, the various policemen, politicians, Oklahoma-bombing suspects, schoolboy drug and gun dealers that he interviews. To say nothing of NRA chairman Charlton Heston, who organised the pro+gun rallies in Columbine and other towns in the days after they experienced schoolchild-on-schoolchild gun massacres). Anyway, suffice to say the documentary left a powerful impression on us, and certainly did nothing to convince us that America, it´s politicians or people have a clue what they´re talking about.


Our fourth day was spent at Universal Studios, which was the first mainstream studio to bring in paying visitors in the 1920s. There are a variety of theme park-style rides (including the 3D cinema/hydraulic car simulation experience of the "Back to the Future" ride, and the white-water interactive dinosaur experience of "Jurassic Park". But the real highlight in terms of the filmmaking industry was the tour of the stages and sets used in the movies. We saw, among many others, the motel and house-on-the-hill used in "Psycho", as well as Hitchcock´s personal office (currently occupied, according to the sign on the parking space, by Dino De Laurentiis who directed Flash Gordon and Red Dragon). We were also driven past the town which Jaws attacked (naturally Jaws was on hand to jump out of the water at the prescribed moment). One of the stages contained a replica of a New York subway station which shook violently as soon as the studio doors closed on us. Then the ´street´ above collapsed before our eyes, sebnding a full-size lorry careering towards us, and sparking electrical fires and 1/4 million gallons of water hurtling down the escalators towards us. Needless to say, it all ended as quickly as it had begun and the set was back to its starting position before we drove out of the studio. All the while our guide provided "amusing" quips on a TV screen at the front of each of the carriages being towed.


That evening, we headed off to Universal City´s (TM) entertainment area, and after a gargantuan salad in the Hard Rock Cafe (which has John Lennon´s real glasses in a presentation cabinet - yawn) we headed outside and found ourselves by the red carpet outside the Premiere of James Cameron´s new Titanic spin-off "Ghosts from the Abyss". Not only did we see the smarmy multi-squillionaire lech himself, but we were also within spitting distance of such C-list celebs as Ed Furlong (remember the little boy in Terminator 2?), Tom Arnold (fat bloke - used to be married to Rosanne Barr) and Jon Voight (Midnight Cowboy, Mission Impossible, and father of Angelina Jolie). Phew, this is starting to look like the blurb on the back of a rental video. Enough already! I confess it was all much more fun than it should have been, all the more so because we´d blaged the tickets for 1/3 of normal price from a Canadian at our hostel who had four going spare. Normal ticket price is a whopping $57 per head. The other big plus was Silvia and Paula, the two Spanish girls who we went with and who patiently let us practise our Spanish on them. It turned out that I had studied in the same department of the same tiny Spanish university (Vigo) at the same time as Paula, which gave us much to giggle about. However, she fell short of being the sixth random-encounter-with- someone-already-known-to-me as I´d rarely made the 90-minute journey to lectures in Spain, and hence never met her until now!


:: Barney 5:32 AM [+] ::
...

Fiji and Rarotonga (in the Cook Islands)

As we tearfully jetted off to Fiji´s new pastures (or more appropriately, beaches) from NZ, a wave of sadness at the seven fantastic weeks we´d spent in the most beautiful country so far, with the most wicked of company washed over us. We got over it by eating and drinking our way through the entire flight and landed full to bursting point late into the evening on the fair shores of Fiji´s main island ´Viti Levu´. As the darkness fell, a huge storm rolled in and we were told that the cyclones which had been plaguing the South Pacific for the past few weeks were on their way out but not quite gone. With little or no information on where to stay (or in other words, no Lonely Planet), we agreed to a night in a hotel in Nadi (the airport town) since it was late, and decided it would be a better idea to move on the next morning once we´d spoken to some fellow travellers. This proved to be a bit of a mixed bag. Allocated to our room, we entered to find one dim light and a slight musty smell. We chucked our bags on the bed and it was then that I saw the biggest cockroach I´d ever seen scampering up the wall. I hurridly checked around for more and at first glance, there weren´t any. However, on closer inspection (and keeping one eye on the speedy little bugger circumnavigating the room at ceiling level) I found them all. I bravely collected three from the vast amounts of corpses on the floor of our bedroom and bathroom and took them to reception. Obviously they weren´t really interested, but Barney and I were tired and had also been fortunate enough to have been without these filthy pests for the past few months so I was adamant we weren´t sleeping in there with them. The hotel staff couldn´t catch ´papa roach´ at first and then when they did, they beat it to death with a broom on our bedroom floor and reluctantly moved the corpse leaving a trail of ´stuff´behind it. Anyway, this is getting boring and grosse. The conclusion was that we were eventually moved and all was well. La la la.


We decided after talking to some girls that evening, to head for the Coral Coast rather than the islands of Fiji (although the islands are reputed to be much more beautiful). The weather on the islands had been really awful and people had been stuck there in constant storms with absolutely nothing to do except eat. As appealing as eating for Fiji sounded, we wanted some fun in the sun so we tried to book into a ´backpacker resort´ recommended to us called simply ´The Beachouse´ which also had a good reputation for meeting new people (something we hadn´t done for a few weeks). They were unfortunately booked out so we ended up nearby in a little (almost deserted) resort called ´Tuba Kula´. The pool was nice enough but you could only swim at high tide on their bit of beach, and there wasn´t really anyone there, so as soon as we could we hailed the local bus to The Beachouse. The local buses in Fiji are much the same as in Asia but with the biggest steering wheels and gear sticks we had ever seen. They pad them out and cover them in a lovely dark red shade of PVC which makes them look like they might morph into a cheap 70´s sofa at any moment. Anyway, I digress... Though slightly more expensive than we would have liked, the Beachouse fit all the criteria we needed for our relaxing beach holiday within a much longer, well... holiday. Sun, sea, great food, clean rooms, nice people and even four gorgeous kittens were the order of the day. And most spectacularly, every afternoon at 4pm on the dot (just as the rain set in), we were served cream teas with real butter and homemade scones and jams. Delicious - and all included in the room rate! Needless to say, this is where we stayed for the duration of our time on Fiji. Mind you, a lot of the time was spent juggling high tides and low tides with sunny spells and instant storms and trying to make the two fit together well enough for lazing on the beach. The rest of the time was spent snorkelling, swimming, watching the glorious sunsets, eating, drinking and generally meeting loads of nice people. One day, feeling a bit energetic, we went with Juta (a local guide) on a two hour trek through the rainforest to a waterfall. I stupidly wore trainers and socks which quickly became sodden with mud from the absolute quagmire we had to walk through to get there, not to mention the crossing of several deep, fast flowing streams. There were only five of us plus the guide and I think I was the only one who didn´t fall over at all. The route was indeed tretcherous and one guy fell, narrowly escaping with his fertility and had to spend several minutes getting over the pain, and one of the other girls fell crossing a stream and some nursing of bleeding wounds had to be done before she could continue. The waterfall was well worth it though. Gorgeous turqouise blue and fast flowing - and how we all needed a power shower fully clothed when we finally arrived there. On the way back, the guide asked me my name again, and then raised his machette. For a split second I slightly panicked until he started to carve the letters one by one into a tree trunk. So, I will be for a good many years to come, etched into Fiji´s history - or something like that.


Just in case you were wondering (Lyn), I´m writing this part of the diary for once so Barney can get to grips with the political situation in the US in the next instalment, and for another reason too. That reason being because I spent my birthday straddling the international date line and I thought I´d share it with you. I awoke on Fiji to the most glorious sunshine and Barney made me breakfast before we had to catch the minibus to the airport. The journey was sweaty and cramped but it was my birthday so I didn´t care. We got there just in time for check-in and the driver went to get all of the rucksacks out of the back when the boot got stuck. He tried and tried to wiggle it free and then in a flash, left us there and sped off to supposedly ´the Coral Sun offices´ who he said would be able to open it. An hour later, standing outside the terminal building not being able to check in for want of bags and passports and wondering if it was a scam to nick all our stuff, he still wasn´t back. That´s when we met Neil (a top bloke we were to spend the entire Rarotonga ´nightmare´ trip with). Anyway, the driver just got back in time for us to check in and get our flight to Rarotonga, so once again, all was well. We boarded the flight (still on my birthday) and then we were suddenly zapped back in time accross the international date line back to the day before and I was once again a year younger! It was a strange sensation sitting there thinking, now I´m 29... and now I´m 28 again. I suppose that doesn´t happen really. Time goes on regardless of imposed borders. But enforced, back to 21st March we went. We arrived on Rarotonga in a blowing gale and blanket cloud cover and headed for Vara´s place. This was where everyone seemed to be going and despite the wind and now rain, it was basic, but pleasant enough, and on the best beach on the main island ´Muri Beach´. The next day we got up and it was my birthday once again so Barney and I strolled along the beach in the overcast and windy, spitty, rainy conditions and made the best of it. I admit, I did feel a little sorry for myself until I saw some people getting married and had the most crap weather for it. We played a few games of sh*t head (cards) with our new found friend Neil and some others and had a game of frisby and a short sharp shock of a dip in the sea in the rain, and then Barney and I walked out into the evening TORRENTIAL RAIN to a lovely restaurant, where after wringing out my skirt and hair several times, we sat down to a magnificent and expensive (for us) meal. We both got rather trollied and walked back to collect the others for some more drinks at a bar down the road. It was a pretty memorable couple of birthdays! Next day it rained again so we decided a change of accommodation to somewhere with a pool and a TV room would be in order (as the sea was rough in the windy conditions and there was nothing to do). We checked in to a place with an old caravan for an office and some run down old buildings in the middle of nowhere up a dirt track. They´d picked us up for free so we didn´t have much choice other than to stay. Ut-uh! Wrong decision! We´d recruited Neil and Ian and Hannah to come with us there to make crazy parties in the rain too so I felt rather guilty. The beds were like boards, the TV in the TV and games room flickered and belted out a high-pitched buzzing noise. The pool table was ripped and then we noticed it was hopping with fleas. It turned out the beds and entire TV room were infested with them! Neil (being particularly attractive... to the fleas) got bitten half to death as we sat through all 6 episodes of painfully squeaky buzzing Blackadder II, perched on ancient plastic chairs, while I caught and killed several of the new found pests and crunched them satisfyingly between two fingernails. It rained and rained in Rarotonga and after quickly checking our emails in the main town (which contained nothing of any interest - the town that is, not the emails), we were quickly bored again. After a couple of swims in the cloudy pool and three more episodes of Blackadder and an aborted attempt to watch Papillon (failed because the heads appeared at the bottom of the screen and the bodies at the top on this particular video), we decided to change accommodation once again. I can tell this is getting boring now, Claire moaning yet again about her year long holiday, but it was a bit frustrating that everything was going wrong since this was meant to be the most beautiful Pacific Island there is. There were a couple of highlights. We had a nice meal and moved to a decent place to stay which we´d been avoiding as it was directly next to the airport, but hell, in the rain it didn´t really matter. They too had a TV room and nice clean beds and a pool and it was lovely. On our penultimate night (Neil screaming to leave the island as quickly as us), we all had a quick takeaway from the shop down the road and went into town for some drinking and dancing. My hate of fish forced me to be the only one to eat a burger (for stomach lining purposes obviously!) and I wondered why after one beer I started to feel rather queasy, so I didn´t drink any more but managed to have a great night, despite sweating and feeling ill and having to sit down at various intervals. What I didn´t realise then was that my stomach lining (the one I´d lined so well with the burger) was going to make a hasty exit from my poor little tum, no less than seven times during the night, starting the moment we got back from the club. It´s not the night you want to be in an all girls dorm with the bathroom right next door, but miraculously nobody heard me and even Barney was oblivious to my night of suffering until the next morning. I stayed in bed all that day, got up at five, had a farewell swim and we headed to the airport. Neil, who had been almost climbing the walls to get off the island, decided to try to get on our flight on standby to leave for L.A. with us and thankfully it all went according to plan for the first time in over a week. A hearty grin was shown by all on arrival at LAX.
:: Barney 5:25 AM [+] ::
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New Zealand's North Island

Well, we've hit Fiji now, and with it a corresponding drop in the pace of life. So, before all our energies are sapped and we slip into utter idleness, here's a rundown of what we got up to in the North Island.


The first thing to mention is that, despite all the bad publicity which the North Island is given by South Islanders (and seemingly the rest of the world too) it does have some really spectacular places. After our day out in Wellington, we headed north to two towns - Napier and Hastings - billed as the Art Deco capitals of the world. Both towns were razed in an earthquake in the 1930s and rebuilt in a consciously Art-Deco-stylee. Lots of pastel colours, sharp edges and 'snazzy' (there's a word you don't hear often - circumbendibus - there's another) fonts advertising what each building does. Even McDonald's has a 50s American Diner feel to it with Elvis memorabilia and an olde worlde plane parked outside(?) Perhaps the best feature was the seafront boulevard - incredibly straight tree-lined roads with Art-Deco terraces neatly spread out along them. Nevertheless, the towns were not as overwhelming as the marketeers would have us believe, - parts of San Francisco seemed to do the job better.


From there we headed up to Lake Taupo and the heart of the North Island's geothermal, volcanic region. First stop were the 'Craters of the Moon' - an area of intense geothermal activity where steaming geysers and bubbling mudpools do their thing amid technicolour lunar plains. Needless to say, we took full advantage of the opportunity to enrich our knowledge of our planet's inner workings, and were not even slightly tempted by the idea of taking photos of ourselves with geothermal 'steam' and 'mud' emanating from our behinds.


Just south of the lake (which is a vast volcanic crater in itself) is the town of Whakapapa (just so you know, the correct Maori pronunciation is 'Fack-a-papa' Snarf, snarf). Nearby are several impressive volcanoes, including Mt Ruapehu, which last spurted forth ash and rocks in 1996. Needless to say, the locals didn't let it spoil their day, and simply carried on skiing or trekking in the immediate vicinity. Many were distraught to find the skifields closed in the following days - not for fear of further explosions (of which there were lots), but rather beacuse the ash/snow mix didn't make for good skiing. There is no snow at the moment, so we opted instead for the 'Tongariro crossing'. This is a famous one-day hike, covering a 17km track over two dormant volcanoes: Tongariro and Ngauruhoe. The walk started with a one-hour slog over slate and lava-boulders, then followed up with a knee-crunching 3 hour climb up loose scree and boulders to the 1967m high peak of Tongariro. From there it was mostly downhill (including some impromptu but 'gnarly' scree-running along the way). The best views were down into the red crater, and past the delectable looking Blue Lake and the Ketetahi hot springs (unfortunately too sulphurous for a dip these days). The 8-hour megatrek was only made bearable by regular intravenous chocolate and squashed tuna sangers. Mmmmm.


Feeling energised and fit (and just a tad creaky) afer the trek, we headed up to the geothermal town of Rotorua. Everyone warned us that this place stank, but by the time we arrived, we were way too cool to be fazed by guffy sulphuric niffs, and headed straight for a campsite right in the centre of the action. This place is 'world-famous' (their words) as the only campsite in the world with geothermally-heated tent sites, to say nothing of hot mineral spas and a geothermal steam oven. The tents were toasty warm (not too hot, not too cold), and the steamed chicken and root vegetable dinner which we left in the oven for 3 hours was just divine. Whilst in Rotorua we visited the 'Agrodome' which started life as an interactive sheep-shearing experience, or some such nonsense, and quickly developed into the (much more enriching) North Island's centre of extreeeme silliness. First up was Zorbing. For anyone not familiar with Zorbing's oeuvre, this is where you get inside a gigantic rubber ball-within-a-ball and they roll you down a hillside. To add to the fun, they lob in a couple of buckets of warm water to ensure an authentic washing machine-style panic as you career downhill in fear of your life, bouncing hither and thither like a cat in a box. This was something I (Barney) had seen on a video wall in a Spanish disco at the age of 11 - it had made a big impression on me so actually doing it 16 years later was a pretty rewarding experience. Next up was the 'Swoop'. This is where you jump into a giant sleeping bag next to your chum/s, and are hoisted 40m into the air on the end of a giant piece of string. Then you have to pull a ripcord (all credit to Claire for taking on this task - dangling at 40m there is a huge temptation to burst into tears and make them bring you down). This releases you and you hurtle towards the ground before swinging right up the other side. Sounds easy but the first few seconds of falling are petrifying.


There was only one thing left to do before our greed for extremism would truly be sated - the (comparatively tame-sounding) white-water rafting. We headed off in a van with a be-combed-over man who resembled Penfold out of Dangermouse, and after changing into a waterproof fleece (with a cheetah or Fresian Cow pattern on - our choice), we were given a safety briefing. 'If the boat goes over, hold onto the rope and get into the air pocket under the boat. If you get swept off, keep your legs up so you don't get dashed on the rocks' etc. Now feeling the fear, we decided to do it anyway, and headed onto the beautiful Kaituna river for fun and japes. We rafter over numerous rapids and two or three waterfalls but the real highlight was the 7m fall which we negotiated entirely without incident (see pix). It's hard to describe the rush of doing this - again a washing-machine spings to mind - but only when we saw the freeze-frame photos afterwards could we appreciate that this was a sheer drop, and we made it down safely. Nice. The guides added to the fun by making us steer the boat head-on into the base of a waterfall, thus ensuring we 'surfed' the wave at the bottom, which gave the person/s at the front (first Simon, then Claire and Sharon) an impressive soaking, and the rest of a good chuckle.


After Rotorua we headed for the unofficial capital Auckland. Simon accurately described it as a poor man's Sydney which is true, except that with the thousands of yachts on display (not just the ones from the recently-lost America's Cup) it certainly didn't seem poor. Apparently 1/5 of Aucklanders have a yacht - not a bad life really. We entertained ourselves with a trip up the 300m skytower. For once, we resisted the temptation to do the 'Skyjump' (you've guessed it - a ludicrous 20 second guided bungy jump down the edge of this, the city's tallest building). Instead we came down in the lift, and after a night on the town,we jumped in the car for our final NZ jaunt - up to the Northland.


This was to have included a trip to the fabulous Bay of Islands, amongst other things, but ended up being a total wash-out. It didn't stop raining for 3 days, by which time our enthusiasm waned and we headed back to Auckland for our flight to Fiji. Still, we managed to visit Waitangi, the site of the signing of the Waitangi treaty on 6/2/1840, which gave the British throne control of NZ's lands in exchange for protection and integration of the Maori people into society. This treaty is the reason that Maoris enjoy a much better standard of living, and much greater social and cultural integration than their Australian counterparts. Indeed everything in NZ is recognised as bi-cultural, so noone is perceived as more important than anyone else. It all works very nicely on the whole. The other highlight of the Northland were the Kauri forests. Kauri trees are enormous - the ones we visited had a girth of up to 17m and had been growing there for 2,000 years. Good use of arboreal longevity I say. Big up the Kauris! We'll get some photos onto the site as soon as possible.


More news from the sweaty, but relaxing South Pacific Islands in due course. Don't expect any urgency though. There's always tomorrow...
:: Barney 7:06 AM [+] ::
...

New Zealand's South Island

Invercargill to Picton

From Caledonian-wannabe Invercargill in the extreeeme South to Picton in the extreeeme North East, this has been an intense, adrenaline-fuelled three weeks. Now that we've reached the sanctuary of the North Island (no Al, nothing to do with the RAC and Ian Parsley), it's safe to say that any longer in the South Island and they'd have been burying us all in XXX-shaped coffins. Gnaaaaaaarly dude!


There's very little to say about Invercargill. It was settled by Scots (how can you tell?) and, perhaps appropriately, is one of the coldest spots in the whole of 'In Zud' (NZ). It's populated by chalky folk with orange hair, most of whom wear tartan shirts and proudly sport mullets. Had there been a saloon bar, no doubt silence would have fallen and be-mulleted heads turned as soon as we entered. Thankfully there wasn't, and the worst that happened was a flat tyre. After the rental company sent us fruitlessly round the houses, we finally found a mechanic who got it sorted, and even phoned the rental people to - successfully - insist they pay for it. We got the hell out of town and headed back onto the 'Southern Scenic Route' up towards Fiordland and the famous Milford Sound. This place is so remote, there's only one way in and one way out. We bushcamped for a night at 'Ten Mile Bush' and, once the sniggers and fnarr-fnarrs had died down, go tour first taste of the West coast sandflies which were to plague us over the next few days. These things are vicious - they don't suck blood like the humble mosquito but actually bite into your flesh to get what they want. The resulting itch is more intense, but thankfully not as long lasting as a mozzie's, but they swarm in such numbers that yours ankles, midriff, wrists and neck are left looking like a rugby player's ears for days.


Only the sheer beauty of the area takes your mind off the swarms of killer flies. The roads from Te Anau to Milford Sound is one of the most scenic in the world. Its location on a major tectonic fault line ensure that the mountains are steep, jagged and plentiful, and the ludicrously high rainfall levels (8m a year) mean that the waterfalls, lakes (including the appropriately-named Mirror Lakes) and white water rivers are pretty spectacular too. Needless to say, the single-lane access road is jam-packed with busloads of Japanese (and German) tourists, who stop at 5m intervals to wield that video camera at yet another bit of rock. Even more obviously, we were just seconds behind them with our cameras sticking out of the pimpmobile's window and big grins on our chops. When we reached Milford, we made our way to the Lodge (the only budget accommodation option in the area), where the patronising receptionist informed us we could camp in their gravel carpark ('Well, it IS a World Heritage area - we can't possibly introduce foreign species like grass!') for a princely sum. We politely declined and asked if we could take a shower there anyway, to cleanse away the effects of bushcamping. After telling us that the 'casual' shower rate was nearly as much as the extortionate camping fee, we politely declined and decided to stick with the bushcamp. We then went to Milford Sound proper and booked our activities - Simon an afternoon's kayaking, and Barney and the girls a one-hour cruise to the edge of the Tasman Sea and back. The commentary informed us that Milford Sound was not actually a sound (didn't tell us what a sound was) but rather a Fiord carved out by glaciers over millions of years. As well as calm, crystal clear waters and sheer cliffs on either side, the peculiar history of the sound's creation meant it contained a wealth of deep-sea coral and fish species at a depth of only 10m. Here comes the science bit: This was an effect of the huge quantities of rain water falling (via the waterfalls) on top of the salt water of the sound. This created an unusually dark area of salt water under the thin layer of freshwater and along came all the deep sea (dark water) species. Got that? In any case, some smart bod had the idea of creating an observation deck at a 10m depth, and there we were treated to views of black coral (rarely seen by divers as it lives too deep), as well as some very silly-looking fish which lay on their sides all day perspiring and wheezing. Sound familiar?


A couple of days later we headed back South to Te Anau, then East to Mossburn, then North (in a giant U-shape) to Queenstown. Although only 100km or so from Milford, there is no direct road, so the journey takes several gruelling hours. Queenstown is a major tourist centre, and is known as the adventure-sport 'capital' of New Zealand. If you're not leaping out of a plane or hurling yourself into the ether with nothing but a glorified elastic band tied round your ankles, then it's cos you're too busy jetboating up the Shotover river or waterskied-up and catching some 'gnarly' hangtime on the town's lake. Or so the brochures would have you believe. In fact, we decided it was all overpriced and most of it could be experienced cheaper and better elsewhere. Nevertheless, in deference to A J Hackett, the self-declared 'Extremist' who brought bungy-jumping to the western world, Simon and Barney did 'the Ledge' - Queentstown's 'Urban' bungy: video evidence testifies that we hurled ourselves 47m off a perfectly good wooden platform which itself was suspended from the edge of a steep precipice, only to be spared our lives at the last minute by a length of rubber cord, but I don't believe we did it all. Having taken the decision to run off the edge of the platform, Barney then forgot to stop running, producing a comical 'cartoon character running off the edge of a cliff' effect. Only the beat of the bongo was missing.


Next stop was Wanaka, 100km North of Queenstown over the highest main road in NZ (1121 at its summit). This gave us yet more memorable views, this time more reminiscent of an extreme version of rolling green English countryside. Wanaka was a much smaller town less overrun with Miserablites and other tourists. We bushcamped North of town where the nighttime wind was so strong it caved our tent in, and the poles banged us on the head every time we nodded off. The town itself is situated on the edge of another beautiful lake and offers a similarly bewildering array of plain-silly activities to its larger cousin. This is where the fun really started. Claire and Sharon, both a touch wary of heights and having both admitted previously to the overwhelming urge to jump when faced with a cliff face or suchlike (but otherwise very sensible girls) decided that they couldn't possibly leave without lobbing themselves out of an aeroplane. With surprising calmness they were fitted up with jumpsuits and briefed on jumping and landing techniques as well as safety, and in two shakes of a lambs tail, were being whisked 12,000ft into the air in a plane with a hole in the side, only covered on the ascent with a sheet of clear perspex, accompanied only by their 'tandem' jump partners and a couple of camera-wielding nutcases. Those of us left on the ground (been there, done that, even got the T-shirt) were left to watch various dots hurtling out the back of the plane and guessing not just who was who, but also whether they were really supposed to be falling at such a rate of knots. Meanwhile the girls were being treated to a 45-second 200km/h whirlwind freefall, with views extending over snow-capped Mount Cook and the lakes of the surrounding area. It was a cracking day, without a cloud in the sky, so visibility was virtually limitless. Once the 'chutes were pulled we witnessed a few swirling stunts and other jiggery-pokery before the girls landed and came rushing back to the hangar bearing more teeth than is strictly healthy. Again, you'll have to wait to see the videos to get the full ground-rush gnarl of the experience, but there are a couple of photos in the gallery to whet your appetite.


After the girls had recovered Barney and Simon headed off for a spot of 'White water sledging'. This is a bit like rafting, except without the comfort of a raft. Each person has their own body-board and wetsuit and gets to hurtle over the churning white-water, dodging whirlpools and rocks and experiencing the 'river wild' at very close quarters. The first run (around 5km downstream) was mainly to acclimatise us, but the second time round we were lead right into the thick of things. Taking the racing line (ie the centre where all the currents meet), we were whisked through the 'rollercoaster', 'roaring Meg' and 'dead man's something' (I was too busy being sucked under and spun around to hear the full name) and spat out the other end. This was an experience I won't forget in a hurry, but also one I might be able to resist in the future.


After a North-bound evening drive through pitiless driving rain, we arrived at Makarora and decided to forgo the tents in favour of a dry, heated cabin. After pulling up in this township (population 30) another solitary car came into view. I (Barney) was approached by one of the occupants who started asking me something, before we both double-took and realised we knew each other. Those of you who know Gavin O'Keefe will know that he and his sister Sian (the stranger in question) live barely 2 minutes' walk from my house in Cambridge. And, just for the record, Sian was the FIFTH random encounter I've had with people I know from home since being away. The other four were:

• Bangkok, Khao San Rd (1): Tom, a friend who studied Spanish (and appeared in the Spanish play) with me at Bristol University


• Bangkok, Khao San Rd (2): Dave, a friend of Leila's from Sixth Form College


• Vang Vieng, Lao PDR: Jo, my ex-girlfriend's brother's ex-girlfriend (you do the Math!)


• Luang Prabang, Lao PDR: Leila's friend Keshi Bouri, who it transpires crashed my 21st birthday party

Ain't that bonkers? Not 'alf mate. Anwyay, back to Makarora. The following morning the rain cleared up and took off in a 'jet-boat' for an hour. This is pretty much what is says it is: a boat with a nozzle, which sucks up 60 litres of water per second, and shoots it out the back, creating very high speed and manoeuvrability in a boat which barely touches the water's surface. Our driver took us along the Wilkin River at frightening speeds, flying dangerously close to the river bank and then veering away just milliseconds before arboreal impact seemed an unavoidable certainty. About half an hour into the trip he turned round, grinning maniacally, and made a twirling motion with his hand. We soon discovered this meant we would be doing a '360'. Suffice to say the jetboat turned on a sixpence, so we 'pulled some serious G's' and emerged slightly greener around the gills, only to be whisked off for more white-knuckle extremity, with precious little time to enjoy the breathtaking snow-capped peaks surrounding us.


That afternoon, we headed North again to the town of Franz Josef and its resident glacier. After another night camping on gravel in torrential rain, we got up bright and early, got kitted out with waterproof trousers and jackets, woolly hats, mittens, walking boots and ice talons (spikes to attach to the boots), and headed off on a bus. This took us to within 2km of the base of the glacier. From there we trudged for an hour, in a group of 40 over a gravelly plain, to the base of the glacier. We were then split into four smaller groups. We fitted our talons and moved up the glacier. In all the hike lasted about six hours, and in that time we walked up and down ice walls, with our guide hacking out steps for us, crossed gaping ravines, walked through narrow splits in the ice and gaped in awe at the bluish colour of the glacier. The guide explained how glaciers form, advance and retreat, as well as keeping our spirits up as we trudged and slipped for hours - first through rain, then higher up snow. We got about 1/3 of the way up (only madmen, 'extremists' and helicopter pilots make it any further up), and then looped round and made our way down. Check out the pictures to see some of the views we got. Suffice to say, although it was less of an adrenaline rush than some of our other japes, this was far and away the most satisfying, and novel, day out in the South Island. When we got back, we stripped off our gear and ran back to the campsite's spa and sauna, where we all discovered our personal Nirvanas. We then headed off in the rain to the Blue Ice Cafe for a backpackers' pizza deal (including free hard-earned beer) and a perfect day was complete. That night wasn't so great, bringing a rain-storm so powerful it flooded our tent and most of the things in it, but fortunately the laundry's drier was on hand to save us in the morning.


The following day we took another marathon drive which returned us to Christchurch where it had all begun. First we headed North up the West coast, then East over Arthurs Pass. This is supposedly one of the most stunning drives in the South Island (they all say that) but the weather conspired to keep it hidden from view behind a thick layer of mist and rain. When we emerged on the other side into the Canterbury plains, it was a different story: the sun was shining and the sky was cloudless. Having taken up residence at Steve Macklin's house once again, all that remained was to get some fresh blue cod and chips down us (not bad at a quid a pop), and do our laundry. We had a day of 'admin' in Christchurch, then stocked up ready to take off again. The next morning brought tearful (yeah...) goodbyes from Steve (who was due to start his photography course at Christchurch Polytechnic the following day) and a drive North to Kaikoura. Here Simon went swimming with dolphins, where - after encouragement to 'talk to the dolphins as you would want them to talk to you' - he delighted in calling them 'tw@t' and 'w@nker' in a parrot-voice. Meanwhile Sharon was whisked off in a helicopter to view the local resident whales from above. After that, we jumped in the car and drove South-West to Maruia Springs. These are natural hot-water springs open to the public, where you can sit and enjoy the health-giving hot water while enjoying views of the snow-capped mountains all around. Not bad in winter, apparently, and very close to numerous ski fields. Hmmmm - I sense an idea brewing.


Anyway, we bushcamped nearby, then headed up for a night at the Nelson Lakes National Park. Again we were besieged by sandflies, but the campsite had a trampoline, so that was OK. The following day we headed to the Northernmost part of the South Island and the Abel Tasman National Park. [Abel Tasman was the Dutch dude who first sailed into this area and SE Australia - Tasmania - geddit?] We embarked on a 3-day mega-hike along the famous coastal route here. The first day we sea-kayaked around 20km in a small group, guided by Carlos, a local hippy who treated us to a gourmet packed lunch washed down with cappuccinos and mochas on the beach, and pointed out the local seals and other wildlife along the rugged coastline. He also took us to some lovely bays and caves. We had booked beds in a hut at Bark Bay. These were in side-by-side dorms of 14, and would have been fine were it not for Pat Flora the Fat Snorer, aka the Bovine Behemoth, who occupied the mattress next to ours. Her 'congestion' caused her to snore like a roaring steam train, to the detriment of the 13 other long-suffering huttees. Despite waking her numerous times and threatening her with numerous things (including, in Sharon's case, outright murder), she did not stop storing all night. On next-to-no sleep, we roused ourselves and headed off for a 4-hour hike the next day. All along, as we walked through lush forests and passed the stunning coastal scenery we joked of what we would do if Pat Flora turned up at the huts we had booked for that night. Needless to say, we arrived in the early afternoon, and Simon nearly had a coronary when he spotted her Bovineness walking out of the dorm. The rest as they say is history. Of the six people on the same row of beds as Pat, five took their mattresses into the communal kitchen or slept on the beach. Of the rest of us, only those with earplugs got any sleep at all. The rest suffered in grumpy silence.


After another four-hour hike we arrived back in Marahau, caught a taxi to Kaiteriteri (where the car was parked) and drove off towards Belnheim. We stayed at a hostel in Renwick - bang in the middle of the Marlborough wine-producing district - and spent the following day touring the vineyards. We visisted, and sampled the wares of Cloudy Bay, Mud House and Nautilus, as well as some fantastic cheeses, liqueurs and vinaigrettes also produced nearby. That evening we gorged on cheese and wine, and went to bed in our cabin in Picton for a much-needed comfortable night's sleep. From there it was up to the ferry terminal and off to the North Island. The trip to Wellington took two hours and passed through the beautiful surroundings of Queen Charlotte Sound.

With our final South Island pie inside us (this time venison and red wine) we hopped off the boat and drove into the nation's dockside capital. First stop was the Te Papa (Our Place) museum. The plaque outside the main entrance informs us it was opened in 1995 during a visit by 'Kuini Erihapeti' (Queen Elizabeth no less). The museum itself showcases the history of Maori and European New Zealand, but the real highlight was a Lord of the Rings exhibition. Along with cast and crew interviews on video, the exhibits include all the main costumes and props from the film (iuncluing the ring itself), and interactive bits (such as the perception-distrorting photos of big Barney and little Claire which we hope to scan for the website). Gor blimey gov, they sawed a metal pipe into over a million millimetre-long sections to make the genuine chain mail for the fight scenes. And they made most of the sets in triplicate - each a different size to allow for different sized characters. And that's just the start of it. A wicked day out! Now we're off further North for some white-water rafting, zorbing (don't ask), volcano-climbing and more ludicrous activities. We're even hoping to make it to Auckland in time for the Massive Attack gig on the 8th March. Aaaaah, so much to do, so little time. Roll on the beaches of Fiji...


:: Barney 1:29 AM [+] ::
...

New Zealand

Christchurch to Porpoise Bay

We arrived in Christchurch on 22nd January, where we were met at the airport by the shiny, happy faces of one Stephen Macklin esq. and his ladyfriend Ella. After an incredibly early start in Melbourne, and the 'rigours' of a 3 1/2 hour plane journey, we were whisked off in Steve's 'mechanically sound' car back to the well-to-do suburb of Sumner, where he has been living for the last few months. We were instantly struck with how English it all felt. Despite the sunshine and surf beaches, the rough edge which was present all over Australia was conspicuously absent, and we had to readjust ourselves to the fact that people actually engaged in activities akin to conversation, occasionally even involving the long-forgotten art of listening to their interlocutor. There were even correctly-used apostrophes (A big Australian supermarket chain had reached a new low with Pat'e and X'mas, to say nothing of facility's), and puns (such as the restaurant named Indian Sumner - nice one).


Steve's house is 100 metres from the beach, and he lives with Michael and Aaron, two ultra-friendly Kiwi surf dudes with impenetrable Kiwi accents. Even after a couple of days in their company we were still nodding politely when we didn't understand, but by the time we left (12 days later, no less) we were not only well fed and rested, but understanding nearly every word of what was said. We spent most of the days conserving money - taking walks along the beach (it was too cold to swim) and renting out videos (including 'Freddy got fingered' which has to be one of the sickest, and funniest films ever) Having had a run-in with a car rental company who promised us a too-good-to-be-true backpacker bargain motor which turned out to be too-good-to-be-true, we hired a car. The company was called 'Scotties' and had the slogan 'rates to make a Scotsman smile'. This suited us fine, so we were sold.


After reuniting with Shaz-bag and her chum Simon (34 going on 14 - a true gem), we jumped in the newly acquired pimp-mobile (well, it IS purple!) and headed off down the East coast of the South Island. Our first was Oamara, where the highlight was a colony of Blue Penguins. An hour after dusk (which itself is at 9.30pm here, due to our proximity to the South Pole), the penguins waddle up the rocky beach, and into specially made nesting boxes. The paying public sits in a wooden auditorium and 'oohs' and 'aahs' as the cute little (at 30cm the smallest in the world) penguins do their thing. We camped at a town campsite, and the next day grumbled about how much it had cost, and vowed not to do it again.


The following day, we checked into an equally rip-off town campsite in Dunedin, the main student town in the South Island. As the name suggests, this town has a distinctly Scootish feel to it (tartan shops aplenty), as well as more skateboarding students and pikey drifters than you can shake a stick at. The atmosphere was very chilled out, and we spent a very pleasant afternoon listening to live music and eating cheap curries as the town assembled in the central Octagon to celebrate 'Waitangi day' - the day in 1840 when the colonial government signed a peace treaty with the Maoris. You can't beat a bit of cultcha can you?


After stocking up on supplies in Dunedin, we headed off to the Catlins National Park area, where we finally shook off the shackles of Municipal Campsites and went bush. For the cost of a tent peg, the four of us camped in idyllic surroundings, disturbed only by the legions of sand flies, and fired up by a cask of white wine with incredible loony-juice powers. We ate our Thai red curry - cooked on an open fire - and danced, giggled and snored the night away.


After another scenic coastal drive we pulled in at Porpoise bay, and set up camp in our own private bay, thoughtfully cut out of the bush by the campsite owners. Then we clambered down onto the beach and jumped in. We'd been told you could swim with rare Hector's dolphin here, but we had no idea just how close you could get. At one point we were surrounded as they came to check us out, then they moved away and started leaping and flipping in the air. The locals (who look and act like true Royston Vasey residents, and who wouldn't have looked out of place suckling a piglet) claim that human presence is driving the dolphins away from this feeding site, but to us they looked like they were loving the attention and basking in the opportunity to show off. The highlight came when we were stood watching the surf roll in, and all of a sudden saw seven dolphin faces heading towards us at high speed. They were surfing in on the wave, and only moved out of our way at the last minute - watching them zoom past was truly exhilirating. We tried to take a photo with the underwater camera, and our fingers are firmly crossed that it'll come out, so we can share this special moment with y'all. Just round the corner in Curio Bay was a petrified forest, whose fossilised tree roots (similar to species found in South America) have been used by boffins as proof that New Zealand was once part of the supercontinent Gondwanaland (along with Australia, Africa and S. America). After miraculously cooking baked potatos and corn-on-the-cobs on a rains-oaked public barbecue, we went back to the forest and watched some more penguins returning from the day's feed. This time it was the larger (but even rarer) yellow-eyed penguin. These stand nearly a metre tall, and have a yellow stripe (like a Zorro mask) across their eyes. The penguins obliged us by standing in a DiCaprio-esque 'I'm the King of the world'-style pose long enough to allow much taking of photos, before moving on to their nests. Skill! We only saw two or three though, as the others were scared away by thoughtless local bogans who refused to heed the 'keep off the beach' signs. We'll be sending the inhabitants of Royston Vasey down to deal with them.


:: Barney 12:11 AM [+] ::
...

Australia

In an attempt to catch up with the ludicrously out-of-date diary, we present a flash-in-the-pan expose of our time in Australia. The idea was to break it up into digestible chunks (a bit like those overpriced tear-open packets of 'gourmet' Whiskas), limiting our description of each place to 100 words or less. But as with most theories, this one fell apart pretty quickly, but it should prove a bit less waffly than usual nonetheless. The diary begins after our first few days in Sydney, when we had flown up to Cairns and firmly ensconced ourselves in the machinery of the Australian East-coast Backpacker Factory. Bearing in mind that we were shepherded around in the kind of tour buses where they give the driver a microphone (and any Ozzie with a microphone suddenly metamorphoses into a stand-up comedian) I have included a smattering of the Ozzie 'wit' to which we were subjected. Time-wise, this starts around the beginning of December 2002. All the photos for this section of the trip can be seen by clicking here.

Cape Tribulation

Deserted corner of tropical northern Queensland, so named because it was an accident blackspot for Captain Cook's ship. We stayed in a 'farmstay' wheelchair-accessible cabin with a sit-down shower, boardwalked through the rainforest, saw manta rays feeding in shallow waters along the beach (waters are out-of-bounds due to risk of croc or stinger (jellyfish) attacks). We decided against supplementing our dinner rations with jackfruit (from the farm) when we discovered an enormous huntsman spider guarding the fruit. Journey to and from the Cape was broken up with, northbound, an aboriginal guided walk through the Mossman gorge (complete with ochre body painting and staggering didgeridoo playing), and southbound a trip to an exotic fruit farm and a 'croc-hunting' boat ride (which yielded one 'fearsome' baby croc cowering in the shadows). Days earlier, a German tourist had drunkenly ignored 'No Swimming' signs and been 'taken' by a croc. Nicht so wunderbar.


Lamest Ozzie joke: Aboriginal bus driver George told us there were 'tics so big in Cape Trib they've got dogs hangin' off them'! Note also the gratuitous Ozzie abbreviation of Tribulation.

Cairns

Aaaaaaaargh! Tossa del Mar on the Ozzie East Coast. Groups of pissed-up teenage Brits painting the town with pavement pizzas. The 'Woolshed' bar there is legendary. It is said that if you can't pull there, you can't pull anywhere. Being above such trivilialities we spent our time at the hostel's swimming pool drinking the (often free) beers from landlord Mark and working on our tans. One night we used our 'genuine' ISIC student cards to see Red Dragon on the cheap at the local cinema (a real treat after five cinema-free months). Then we boarded 'Noah's Ark' for a bargain day's SCUBA-diving on the Great Barrier Reef. 'Noah' himself sported a proud shaved-under mullet and had the words 'Rock 'N' Roll' tattoed in large gothic script across his shoulder blades. What a legend. Saw some lovely fish and stunning coral, including enormous clams with slam shut when rubbed. However, the reef has suffered from years of over-touristing and is not as impressive as other diving sites.


Lamest Ozzie joke: During his briefing on the diving boat, 'Noah' explained that the boat was fitted with a marine toilet, which ejects straight into the water. He asked us to refrain from number 2s when the boat was moored. 'After all,' he cheerfully reminded us, 'the only fish we don't want to see when diving is the brown trout'.

Magnetic Island

From Cairns, the Greyhound bus whisked us down the coast to Townsville (contender for the most lazily-named place on Earth). From here it was a short ferry ride to Magnetic Island (so named because Captain Cook's compass allegedly behaved strangely when passing it). We installed ourselves at the dual-be-swimming-pool-ed Butlins-esque 'Arkies Backpacker Resort' and divided our time between swimming, mountain biking up a vertical hill to visit a ruined WWII fort and narrowly missing the boobie prize at Arkies' quiz night. Although we failed to see any of the koalas which famously breed in the surrounding forests, we did meet Sharon (from the 'Essex/London border') who became our firm friend and patiently accompanied us all down the coast.


Lamest Ozzie joke: The humour of the 'compere' who led the quiz at Arkies was too lame to even bear repeating.

Whitsunday Islands

So-called because El Capitano Cook thought he arrived here on Whitsunday (in fact he screwed up and it was the day before). We booked ourselves on an 83-foot maxi racing yacht called the British Defender, darling, and took off from Airlie Beach (actually a town on the mainland) with a crew of four and 24 paying tourists (English, Ozzies, Swedes, Germans, Dutch etc) for the islands. When on the boat we had to 'muck in' with hoisting and grinding (sounds like an R Kelly song) the sails. When in the water we had to wear full-body 'stinger suits' to protect against box-jellyfish and irigandjis. We stopped at Whitehaven Beach, whose squeaky white silicon sand melting like marble into the ludicrously pure blue waters make it perhaps the most stunning beach in the world. On days one and three we hooked up with a dive boat and took off to areas of the 'outer reef' where yet more breathtaking coral and rainbow fish awaited us. We also snorkelled around giant turtles and swordfish. Our gastronomic needs were amply catered for by vowel-mangling Kiwi crewmember 'Brindun' (who was fond of 'nupping upsteers to scrub the dick'). Overall, the experience of spending three days in the company of great people, eating great food and drinking great beer (albeit mostly at an angle of about 80 degrees to the water's surface) was exhilarating and well worth the slightly inflated price we paid for it.


Lamest Ozzie joke: Unintentional Kiwi joke actually. When somebody asked 'Brindun' where the bin was, he replied 'What do you mean? He's stinding jist over there!' 'Brindun' was of course referring to fellow crewmember Ben.

Fraser Island

We spent a night in Hervey Bay (inexplicably pronounced 'Harvey' Bay), then moved to the provincial backwater of Rainbow Beach. Following an orientation meeting with the group we were travelling to Fraser Island with, Barney celebrated his birthday in style by going out for dinner with his two ladyfriends (Chox and Sharon), and getting his hair dyed blond and blue, which gave the rest of the group something of a shock the next morning. The trip to Fraser Island began at 7am the next morning when we loaded up a large 4WD vehicle with camping gear, food and booze for 11 greedy tourists (mainly Dutch, English, Canadian and American this time, with an average age of around 19). Those of us old enough to drive took it in turns to drive through the sand-only roads of UNESCO World-Heritage listed Fraser Island. Indeed, the 'extreme' off-roading was half the fun of the trip, although there were enough fast-flowing creeks, beautiful rainforests, native animals (we all became 'dingo-aware very quickly) and stunning lakes bordered by sand-dunes to make the experience an unforgettable one. Barney even achieved small notoriety, adopting a Pepsi-Max style penchant for 'extreeeeme' adventure, to the extent that two 20 year drama school girls even wrote a song about me. Needless to say, Claire put my swelling ego back down a peg or two after we got back, but it was sweet while it lasted...


Lamest Ozzie joke: Don't be ridiculous. This was Fraser Island. There were no Ozzies, just pommies!


At this point we headed even further down the coast to Byron Bay, where as you know we had a fantastic Christmas in the company of our mates from yesteryear Carl and Anna, as well as their charming chums Jo, Cat and Emma. On New Year's Eve, we all ended up at Mrs Macquaries Point (no apostrophe of course) which is a vantage point along Sydney Harbour where we drank ourselves silly for 10 hours before watching the stunning fireworks over the Harbour Bridge in the company of more Pommie tourists than you can throw a cricket ball at (including the notorious, and hugely unfunny, Barmy Army). We had bought a tent off another backpacker in Byron Bay, so we were camping by this point in a campsite in Sydney's suburbs. The place was a cross between Gangster's Paradise and Pikey Hell, so we felt right at home.

Melbourne

We eventually went our separate ways: Anna and Carl to the backpacker car market to sell their van (which they did in four hours instead of the average four days, and promptly b**gered off to South East Asia on the profits), Jo, Cat and Emma to the Blue Mountains, and Claire and I to Melbourne (via the stunning seaside pikey town of Narooma). The highlight of our trip to Melbourne was seeing Tanya Brooman, our old mate from our time at Gaia. Tanya's been travelling for well over a year and has stopped in melbourne to earn money for the next stage of her travels. Not only did she show us around Melbourne on the cheap, but she took us to a little suburban cul-de-sac called Pin Oak Court, better known to the outside world as Ramsay Street. This was akin to a personal epiphany for lifetime devotees of Neighbours such as us, and one could tell that the people who actually lived there were somewhat used to it, going about there business as carloads of Pommie tourists (all old enough to know better) disgorged at the end of the road and giggled their way along the street shamelessly photographing themselves outside each and every house. We were no exceptions, and you can see the pix in the gallery. After just two days in Melbourne we boarded a flight to Launceston (irritatingly pronounced Lon-sess-ton by the locals) in Tasmania.

Tasmania

The Reverend Geoffrey Wilson, one of the main characters in the excellent novel English Passengers had a theory that the Garden of Eden must have been located on Tasmania. I believe he was right. After hiring a car at Launceston airport, we chucked our camping gear in the back, and made like madmen across open ground. In an eight-day 1,700km whistlestop tour, we saw virtually the whole island (those bits accessible by road, anyway - much of the southwestern forests are still unmapped). The variety of countryside in this island the size of Ireland, but with less than 500,000 inhabitants is incredible - from English-style rolling hills with sheep grazing on them to rainforest, to rugged coastline and back in the space of a couple of hours' driving. Much of the island is national parks (some of them World Heritage listed) and there is very little to do except hiking and cycling. As we didn't have bikes we chose to hike, and on most days we walked 10km+ along very well marked trails through the 'bush'. It was here that we saw the greatest diversity of wildlife too. From pademelons (small marsupials) hopping around outside our tent, to possums fighting at the water's edge to kangaroos and wallabies grazing along the footpaths, and even lizards and a snake or two crossed our path. We also hiked up to 'King Billy', one of the oldest and biggest trees in the world - truly staggering. At night we pulled up at campsites (free bushcamps wherever possible) and cooked our tins of beans on an open fire with the sound of the sea just metres from our tent. We spent a day in Hobart, which has the amenities of a capital city, with the small town charm of a place like Cambridge, and the stunning mount Wellington in the background. We spent a day too in Port Arthur, the original and famously harsh convict colony founded on an inescapable peninsula. This is Tasmania's number one tourist destination, and was also the site of a tourist massacre in 1996, when a gunman memorably stormed into the cafe area and shot 35 people in cold blood. The cafe has now been converted into a memorial garden, and is perhaps the most shocking part of the visit. Some of the best hikes we did centred around the enormous Cradle Mountain- Lake St Clair National Park. Indeed there is a walk which goes from one end of the park to the other (6 days / 80km) but we'll leave that for another visit. The photos will do only a small amount of justice to Tasmania's beauty (some are uploaded already, the rest we will add shortly). Suffice to say the landscapes, clean air and flora and fauna of 'Tassie' have left a greater impression on us than any other place we have visited, and have stoked our already great enthusiasm for New Zealand. Plus the Tasmanians do a mean line in beetroot chutney - this perhaps even kept us alive when we had run out of any other nutritionally valubale foodstuffs and couldn't afford any replacements! [We have recently arrived in Christchurch, where we are staying with cheeky Cambridge chappy Steve Macklin. We will shortly be hiring a car and heading off for yet more adventures, but more of that in due course...]


Overall Lamest Ozzie joke: Q: What's the difference between the English cricket team and an arsonist? A: An arsonist would never lose his last five matches.


:: Barney 5:03 AM [+] ::
...

Singapore

Insert chronologically just before Hong Kong!

We left KL early in the morning on a huge bus with armchairs (I kid you not), bound for Singapore. I (Claire) was particularly excited as I was looking forward to seeing some work collegues from repro houses and printers I'd worked with there. Some who I'd met the year before on my business trip, and some who I'd whinged at for over a year for favour upon favour, but had yet to meet.


We arrived in the evening and set about finding a place to stay. After finding our bearings, we headed in the direction of the Raffles hotel. I know what you're thinking, but no such luck I'm afraid! We knew there were three hostels next to each other just around the corner from Raffles, but when we got there, we found that each of the differently named doorways lead directly into the same hostel. Turns out they'd merged into one, so there was no choice for us to make. The hostel didn't really live up to Singapore's spotlessly clean reputation I have to say, but it was about a quarter of the price of the next best option, so there we stayed.


In the morning we called everyone we knew there and set our itinerary for the next few days. Within about an hour, we found ourselves (well I did) in the familiar surroundings of the Lorong Bakar Batu Industrial Estate! Wilfred and Lyn from Master Image (my trusty repro experts) were more than welcoming and after downloading all of our photos onto CD for us, they took us out for a slap-up lunch on Orchard Road. After making arrangements to pick us up again later for dinner, we were left to shop for a few hours along the road that should be a shopper's dream, but is more like a nightmare if I'm honest! It's that all-too-frequent scenario where you have to go back to the first shop you went in after searching all the others all the way to the other end of the street to get what you want. Sound familiar girls... Lyn Kirby...? Well, to do that on Orchard Road, you need to get a taxi back to the beginning! There's no quickly popping back to make your purchase, oh no!


That evening, absolutely knackered, we dined in our first 'posh' restaurant since leaving Londinium. We were taken to a Chinese Herbal restaurant where Wilf and Lyn proceeded to order for us. Among the smorgasboard of delights were scorpions (sting removed) baked in some sort of fishy bread stuff, which I politely declined. Barney, on true form, tried everything on the menu and we left extremely content and a bit too tipsy for the polite company we were keeping. It was our first bottle (or three) of wine since we'd left home, which we did feel we had to explain! After dinner, we were chauffer driven around Singapore and shown all the sights, taken on a boat trip along the river to the Merlion (Singapore's iconic statue), and taken to charming Clarke Quay, where we sat outside watching the boats and the street performers and drank beer. What's that rhyme... Beer before wine, you'll feel fine - wine then beer, you'll feel queer - Ooops! We thanked Wilfred and Lyn for their hospitality, and after they insisted on coming back to pick us up in a couple of days, in the middle of their Monday morning at work, just to take us to the airport (well, we would have had to change trains once you know!), we said goodnight and fell into a drunken sleep.


The next day it was off to Suntec City to meet Jo and Al (the couple we travelled Malaysia with). Al's Dad was in Singapore on business and had his own swish apartment so after yet more shopping (well, what else do you do in Singapore?), we went around there for a huge home cooked spag bol and yet more bottles of wine. The apartment foyer had a huge Christmas tree with fake presents galore! That and the walk to get there along the aforementioned and infamously long Orchard Road, was our first real taste of Christmas. The decorations which line the main streets in Singapore are amazing. They really go to town with flashing lights and fibre optic baubles the size of footballs which adorn ALL of the trees. There must have been thousands of them (see website for pics). Anyway, only after dinner did we find out about the olympic sized swimming pool complete with urinating cherubs and waterfalls that was part of the apartment complex. Alas, by then it was too late and we were too pished for swimming, so we took to the bottle again at a table outside and stared longingly at the moonlit pool whilst swigging back yet more wine!


Another drunken sleep paved the way to our last day in Singapore, and this time we met up with Ada from TWP (a large printing company over there). This was the poor girl I'd moaned and whinged at for over a year to get better prices, quicker printing, free shrinkwrapping and every other favour there is to be obtained in the printing/publishing world. I'm surprised the poor girl wanted to meet me at all! In any case, we finally found her outside Raffles (she recognised us from the website - gulp!) and off we went for another lunch. This time, we were treated to an ultra-trendy Japanese restaurant down by the durian fruit shaped new opera house and concert hall building. Showing true Singaporean generosity, she ordered us almost the entire menu so we could try everything and then wouldn't take any money. It was a bad move on her part because we then insisted we pay for her to come to the zoo and the night safari with us! Ha ha! Singapore zoo is amazing. It's one of the best in the world and set in its tropical surroundings, it doesn't feel like a zoo at all. I think it was possibly the highlight of Barney's stay in Singapore, as he got to see his favourite animal (the Capybara) in real life for the first time! We rushed around the zoo, as we got there a bit late, and then found time to stuff in yet more food in the form of a 'jungle burger' before the night safari began. Just as we decided to walk around rather than take the slightly tacky guided train ride option, a terrific thunder and lightning storm broke out. Watching lions, giraffes and white bengali tigers through the brightest and loudest lightning and thunder storm I've ever seen was an awesome experience. Not sure the otters enjoyed it as much though, as they were all standing together in a group, whimpering with fear!


You'd think that was enough excitement for one day, but no! Ada decided to complete our tour of Singapore with a cocktail in an exclusive bar on the top floor of the highest hotel. The cocktails were to die for and the views were magnificent. I must say, a lot of people give Singapore a bad rap, but my advice is, if you want to get the best from this particular destination, be prepared to spend a little more than you do elsewhere on your travels and you'll have a fantastic time. We did, and we're so grateful to everyone there for their kindness and generosity. We can't thank you all enough! Incidentally, our chauffer (Wilfred) turned up outside our hostel bang on time on Monday morning and delivered us to the airport in style. Just brilliant!

:: Barney 2:59 AM [+] ::
...

Australia

Let's get this straight: Australia is a stunningly beautiful country, admirably surpassing all our expectations. Even from the tiny weeny bit that we've seen we can be sure of that. The bits that we haven't seen are even better, if other people's stories and photos are anything to go by. And to top it all off, the majority of Ozzies are helpful, attentive, generous and humorous with their guests. However, as I (Barney) am by nature a miserable 'glass-is-half-empty' style git, I find it hard to write about the perfection of Sydney Harbour, the stunning dives on the coral reef, the squeaky white silicone beaches of the Whitsunday Islands, the 'Extreeeeeeeeeeeme' 4WD off-roading on Fraser Island, or even the 'laid-back charm' of Byron Bay without making it sound like some kind of trial. Suffice to say that that we're following an incredibly well-worn backpacker's route doing stuff that's been done a million times a year for the last 30 years by overprivileged/lottery-winning (*delete as appropriate) 18-year-old Brits, Dutch, Scandos, Israelis and so on. It is popular for VERY good reasons, but we'll leave that for another day...

After a few weeks' travelling down the coast in the company of the very lovely Sharon (aka Shaz Bag / Jazz Mag / Jam Rag to her mates), we have finally arrived in the hippy-haven of Byron Bay. With the excitement of Christmas (and the hazy memory of Barney's birthday celebrations) building, we have achieved our aim of MEETING UP WITH CARL AND ANNA! Yes, the chunky Simian one and his Polish POW companion - together with their schizophrenic 1970s campervan Toby/Fortuna - have coughed, spluttered and involuntarily offroaded their way 21,000 kms around some of the most underpopulated parts of the world from Western Australia right up to Byron, the most easterly point in Australia just to meet us (or so they tell us). The adventures have begun, but there is more to come... (not least of which another savage indictment of Aussie grammatical abuses.)


I can just sense your palpable excitement as you read this, and can almost hear your eager voice shouting out 'tell us what you're planning for Christmas', topped only by the subsequent squeal of 'Oh, pleeeease!'. Well, in the altruistic name of making YOU happy - and for no other reason - I shall hereunder impart our festive plans for the Yuletide Period:

Yule love it

• 23rd Dec: Last-minute Christmas shopping (the first minute was weeks ago). Meet up with Anna's 3 chums and spend the evening booze-dodging.


• 24th Dec: Trip to Woolworths (no apostrophe), which is a supermarket over here, and buy some kind of Turkeytron. Barney and Claire move from dorm-beds to posh motel room, complete with en-suite bathroom, balcony, TV, kitchenette, washing and drying machines and room to go 'Christm..ental' Reunion with the smashing Shaz Bag and boyfriend Mark.


• 25th Dec: Celebration of the birth of our Lord J.C. and exchange of gifts of gold, frankincense and 'mirth', mate. All washed down with a couple of glasses of champagne and perhaps some 'boogie-boarding' at the beach. In temperatures of 30c+, naturally. Perhaps some community-spirited Carol-singing in the evening. (Like, yeah).


• 26th Dec: Going en masse to see 'Lord of the Rings' ('but I thought that was YOU Barney' - I hear you scream).


• 27th Dec: Chartering a boat for the nine of us and heading out to do a couple of bargain bucket scuba-dives on a nearby reef. And, Gawd bless 'em, they're even replenishing our scruffy clothes stocks by throwing in a couple of T-shirts.



It is - quite lidderally - a hard life. Let us know what you're up to in the guestbook, and rest assured we are thinking of and missing you all. Some of the luckier ones will be receiving a call to remind you of your duty to remember the sacrifices of the Lord at this Christ-mungous time of year. Don't forget there'll be 6 more months of adventure to keep you on the edge of your collective seat next year, so keep checking the site. That's all for now. Merry Christmas and a lidderally smashing New Year.
:: Barney 3:47 AM [+] ::
...

Australia

A brief grammatical interlude

Australia is the apostrophe-police's nirvana:
There are no apostrophes, with the exception of plurals (tomatoe's; beer's) and 'it's' ( but only in the sense of 'belonging to it'), which does have one. This is the only explanation of how a 'backpackers' can be a hostel, and how one tour operator can boast 'Magnetic Islands Best Bushwalking'. And, perhaps more irritatingly, every day (in its non-adjectival application) seems to have become one word: 'We sell fresh bread everyday'.

I could go on... In fact I might at a later date.
:: Barney 9:00 AM [+] ::
...

Hong Kong

On 25th November we arrived in wintry Hong Kong - land of views and shopping. It wasn't the most successful part of our trip, not least because we spent more moola in three days than in three weeks in South East Asia, but also because Barney contracted a rather nasty upper body rash (see photographic evidence). A Chinese doctor took great delight in diagnosing it as 'suspected chicken pox' then sending me away with a cocktail of expensive drugs and a reassuring word or two ('It's very serious in adults'). Luckily, it turned out to be nothing more than a painful irritation and cleared up after a few days in Oz.

The Hong Kong 'Special Administration Region of China' (catchy name...) consists of Hong Kong Island (plus a few outlying islands, one of which houses the airport), and the mainland peninsula of Kowloon. The only available budget accommodation on our first two nights was the YHA-cum-detention centre on top of a remote hill, accessible only by the infrequent and inconvenient minibus service. Dorms were labyrinthine and single-sex, with lights-out at 11pm on the dot. The warders threw scraps of mouldy bread through a hatch in the door for breakfast, and male-female reunions were allowed by telephone through reinforced glass screens, between the hours of 6.15 and 6.20am only. While Claire endured a howling gale through the open window in the girls' cell, Barney scratched himself nervously to sleep, anxious and fearful of Mr Big in the bunk above who snored - and looked - much like an axe-murderer.

Most of Hong Kong Island is covered with high-rise banks, and walking through the streets is reminiscent of the City of London, with blokes in suits yelling 'buy', 'sell', and 'I'm in the library' into their mobile phones. The weather wasn't much of an improvement on London either. We were forced to wear such remnants of the past as trousers and socks, and even bought new jumpers to beat the chills. The highlight were the 'mid-level' escalators, the world's longest covered outdoor escalators (just ask Norris McWhirter), which take commuters from the bayside Central Business District up to the residential district, on the steep hills behind. In the morning the escalators go downhill and in the evening uphill, but there are as many tourists as business folk, as the 25-minute ride takes you through some charming back-streets, past trendy restaurants, bars and tourist tat-shops. The best views (and the ultimate in tourist tat) were to be had from the top of Victoria Point, 800 metres above sea-level at the top of a funicular railway. We had a meal by a window which looked over what must be one of the most recognisable night-time harbour views anywhere in the world. As we huddled with the other tourists on the viewing platform and failed to do the views justice with our camera, we were left truly breathless.

On our last afternoon we dicovered Kowloon, and our opinion of Hong Kong crept up another notch or two. This was much closer to what we'd expected: narrow neon-filled alleyways with tiny Chinese women selling everything from instantaneous laundry services, to fish-in-a-jar, and moody men hawking up mega-loogies into every available street corner and rubbish bin. We walked through the bird market, where more shouty men gather to talk business and buy birds of paradise in miniscule cages. In every street were 'hotel' rooms with hourly rates proudly posted outside. We managed to find a lovely little guesthouse (mercifully available by the night) with air-con, TV and en-suite bathroom, which made the R+R process that little bit easier. The only disappointment came when we decided to try out an 'authentic' Chinese restaurant away from the tourist hordes, and ended up eating bowls of sloppy MSG and tasteless boiled rice. I thought they reserved that for the less discerning European market. Apparently not...

What Hong Kong lacked in charm it amply made up for in stupid brand-names. Throughout South East Asia we were tickled by such plagiarised gems as Pop Song's (copied from Po Seng's) Bathroom Equipment, but HK topped the lot. From the shower units in the YHA made by German Fool Bathroom Appliances to the sensational Schindler's Lifts in the second place we stayed, we were never disappointed.

We don't feel any urge to return to Hong Kong, but we're still chuffed to have ticked it off the list, and it made an excellent 'de-compression chamber' on our return to (relative) civilisation in Australia. And thanks to events in Bali and an involuntary route-change, it cost us nothing to get there...
:: Barney 8:38 AM [+] ::
...

Thailand to Malaysia

Ko Phi Phi

(n.b. Pictures are already up!) After our 10-day stint on Ko Pha Ngan in Thailand, which was as close to Paradise as we have found (so far), we headed south west to Krabi, and from there to Ko Phi Phi. The waters on this island were crystal clear, but the razor-sharp broken coral lining the shallow waters meant that it was less than ideal for our new preferred sport of frisbeeing. Such hardship! The other problem with Phi Phi was the sewerage system. When the local government had run out of cash half way through constructing the sewage tunnels necessary for the ever-increasing volume of tourist traffic stopping on the island, they had decided to 'solve' the crisis by simply cementing over the manhole-covers and hoping the problem would go away. Needless to say the tourists didn't stop relieving themselves, with the result that when the tide is very high, some of the excess slops out into the sea and stinks out the whole town. This was a big problem - even the tourist guide advises you not to open your mouth in the shower!


The big pull on Ko Phi Phi was the smaller of the two islands - Phi Phi Leh. Several of the scenes from 'The Beach' were filmed there, and tourists flock there daily in their hundreds to pay homage not only to Leonardo DiCaprio's unique acting talents, but also the beauty of Maya Bay. This is our old friend karst topography at its best: sheer rocks jutting out of the emerald sea, surrounding a bay on three-and-a-half sides. In between the edges of the rock 'croissant' is a perfect golden beach - deserted in the film, overrun with tourists in reality. Here we were treated to our first experience of snorkelling. We headed to the rocks around the bay and had perfect visibility down to the coral and legions of exotic fish below. We were then whisked off to various other beauty sports around the island, to gawp at more metre-wide brains, spiky urchins with fluorescent, staring purple eyes and rainbow fish. In comparison to the zero-visibility diving we had experienced on Ko Pha Ngan, this was paradise, and we didn't even have to go below the surface. Neither of us can wait to experience the great barrier reef now.

Pulau Penang

From Phi Phi, we took a minibus to Hat Yai - the last major Thai town on the way to the Malaysian border. We spent an uninspiring night there, traipsing through the shopping centres in the rain. The town was full of Malays, taking advantage of the cheap shopping and thriving sex-trade, but it was a cheap place to stay and we were able to leave early the next morning and head for Malaysia. Having crossed the border, we had the impression we had jumped forward 20 years. Everything about Malaysia was more modern - from the expensive cars, to the fast-moving three-lane highways, to the well-stocked service stations. In no time at all we reached Butterworth, then caught the ultra-efficient vehicle ferry (it even had life jackets!) over to Penang Island. This was our second experience of ex-British colonies after Burma. It was colonised by some plucky Brit (no doubt with a cumbersome 'tache) long before Melaka or Singapore. The British influence is obvious not only in the town itself (orderly terraced housing, double-yellow lines, a defensive fort complete with useless cannons in the North-West corner) but also the language. Words like 'Motosikal' (motorocycle) 'Teksi' (taxi) 'Stesen' (Station) 'Poskod' (post code) 'Aktiviti' (activity) and 'Diskaun' (discount) are amusing, if sometimes more logical, variations on the mother tongue. The phrase 'Buka 24 Jam' (Open 24 hours) sounds more Ali G than 7-Eleven. We were also tickled by a restaurant which had self-deprecatingly been called 'The yellow excellent restaurant', although we resisted the temptation to check out the claim for ourselves. Georgetown (the 'capital' of Penang) has a large Chinatown (where the backpacker hostels are concentrated), and a little India. The food in Little India was not only excellent value, but the modest little restaurants served probably the best rubies in the world. In true Indian style (I assume!) they served the food on a flattened banana leaf, and the eating was done manually. Needless top say, Barney dived enthusiastically in, and ended up up to the maker's nameplate in chicken tandoori.


The defensive fort had been built in wood originally, but was later rebuilt in brick. It was the brainchild of the paranoid first British settler Mr Light. It was eventually named after the improbably-monikered Mr Cornwallis (Beavis and Butthead's Cornholio springs to mind), but was never considered strong enough to withstand an attack. So crap did the government find Fort Cornholio, in fact, that they refused to stump up any cash for its renovation, so it is now an even crapper tourist 'attraction'. Slightly better were the funicular railways leading to the top of Penang Hill. Having decided to visit them at rush hour (in the last four months we'd forgotten that rush hours could exist), we spent an hour on a bus to cover 10km then waited another hour for a connecting bus to the base of the funicular. Another hour later we were at the top, and it was persistently raining - so much so that we could barely see the lit-up town 800 metres below. As all the food stalls were closed we couldn't even fill our unfed bellies, and with no umbrella we were confined to the funicular terminus to wait for the next train back and the hellish bus journey back... or so we thought. In the end, we were rescused by a pair of lads, one from Kuala Lumpur and his companion from Singapore. They took pity on us, firstly lending us an umbrella, then giving us a lift into town and treating us to a slap-up meal of Malaysian favourites, including Satay chicken and oyster omelette, before taking us back to the hostel. This was all done in the name of Malaysian hospitality, but it was more than that for the bedraggled pair of us - it was a lifesaver.

Pulau Pangkor

Next stop was the smaller island of Pulau Pangkor, further down the west coast of Peninsular Malaysia. We hooked up with fellow backpackers Al and Jo (sounds vaguely familiar?) as well as Taka, a very endearing but clinically insane Japanese dude (wonder what he's writing about us in his diary). We spent the next few days playing frisbee, snorkelling and seeking out the world's finest cheese sandwich (still looking). The snorkelling was again very impressive, and among other critters we spotted puffer fish, enormous jellyfish, schools of see-through thingies and sting rays. We were lucky to see it all now, as it is soon to be turned into a commercial dive-site. Perhaps even more impressive was the frisbee, which has now turned into a fine art (ahem!) To the 3 different throwing styles (of varying effectiveness) has been added the downhill glory run. which has the power to make the 'runner' look either like a Hasselhof-esque beachside legend or an Eddie 'the Eagle' Edwards-esque friendless tw@t.

Kuala Lumpur

One morning, Claire mumbled something about a lumpy koala, so we caught the ferry back to the mainland and then a bus into the nation's fine capital. Having made our way in the drizzle to Chinatown, we checked out a few budget hostels, which certainly lived up to their name. Of the three we saw (none of whose inter-cellular partition walls reached the ceiling), the 'best' one had filthy sheets on the beds and (presumably) human excrement smeared up the walls of the shared squat toilet. When Claire asked where the shower was, the proud owner pointed to a hose dangling on the floor amongst the aforementioned 'dirty protest'. Trainspotting eat yer heart out. Convinced that there must be something better in a city of that size, we headed off in the rain towards the 'golden triangle'. This is the business district, where the famous twin towers are located. To our relief we found a delightful, friendly hostel with sit-down loos, clean rooms and even air-con. Saved!


KL's main attraction are the twin Petronas towers (as featured in third-rate Hollywood flop 'Entrapment', in which viewers are treated to the electrifying dialogue and effortless chemistry between an ageing Sean Connery and thinking Welshman's crumpet Catherine Zeta Jones). The towers are, and have been for some time through with increasingly less competition, the world's tallest. They stand 452m high, with a viewing platform at a disappointingly low 140m. Nevertheless, tourists are treated to a display in the foyer, showcasing the design and construction of the towers, as well as providing the opportunity for photos taken next to a picture of the towers(?) and some poetry 'inspired' by the towers. This pitiful drivel revolved around 'meeting the challenges of the new millennium'. (Which millennium was that which challenged them to build some humungous towers then?) Another highlight of the city was the Museum of Islamic Arts which featured some impressive daggers and swords with inlaid handles and Arabic script on the blades, as well as Persian (and other) rugs, jewellery, ancient urns and the like, and some scale-models of the world's top 10 mosques. Other than that, life in KL revolves around enormous shopping centres. Whether or not this is an attempt to mimic the retail obsession of more 'successful' neighbour Singapore is open to debate, but it provided us with a few hours' diversion, so we can't complain.


Malaysia is in the middle of Ramadan - the Muslim fasting month. Although much of the country is not Muslim, we have travelled up to Taman Negara National Park, which is. It is slightly frustrating to us spoilt Westerners not to be able to get a decent bit of scran until after 7.30pm, but we have found solace in teasing fasting locals with bags of crisps from the tourist shop. Gosh - aren't we cruel? The English-language broadsheet The New Straits Times, prints daily lists of times (by city) when fasting can end. Thus, while those in Penang can start stuffing their faces at 6.59pm, the poor b*ggers in KL have to wait till 7.01pm. In a sign of the times, these figures appear directly under the enormous logo of their sponsors at KFC. Another quirky result of Ramadan was that we were turned away from Burger King at 5pm because there was 'no beef' in store. (nb. this was our first visit to BK in 5 months, so don't judge us too harshly!)

Taman Negara National Park

Taman Negara is an area of 'pristine virgin rainforest' (their words) in the centre of the Malaysian Peninsula. We reached it - in what is becoming familiar fashion - by bus and boat. On our first night we forked out for the 'night safari'. This entailed sitting in the back of a jeep stuffed with teenage Swedes (so it wasn't all bad) and driving around with a giant torch looking for wild animals that had enough sense not to be anywhere near. The best we saw were some 'leopard' cats (which bore a strange resemblance to domestic cats), a few wild boar and a herd of water buffalos, one of which looked like it was about to charge us. Not to mention the overwhelming sight of a couple of grumpy cows and an owl. Day 2 was a whole lot more impressive. We headed into the forest and walked along the 500m-long canopy walkway. Planks and rope supports have been strung up between trees at heights of up to 45m, and although the hoped-for families of orang-utans swinging happily among the tourists didn't materialise, it did give an awe-inspiring impression of life at the top of the jungle. We followed this up with a two hour hike uphill in blistering temperatures. On the way down we were rewarded with a cooling rain shower, followed by the most expensive beer of the whole trip (two quid fifty for a half-pint). However, the lack of booze has been the only real down-side of visiting a strictly Muslim area. Oh, that and the 24-hour rainstorm which followed. But we mustn't split hairs: after all, if it wasn't for the storm you wouldn't be reading this nonsense.


Next stop is the historical (what does that mean?) coastal city of Melaka. Then onto more ex-English colonies with Singapore, followed by Hong Kong. Watch this space...


:: Barney 10:57 AM [+] ::
...

Union of Myanmar (Burma)

Yangon (Rangoon)

Let's kick off with an excerpt from Myanmar's daily English-language "news" paper The New Light of Myanmar. The following little gem is printed in big, bold letters in every single issue (as well as being plastered on bilingual billboards across the country):


People's Desires

• Oppose those relying on external elements, acting as stooges or holding negative views


• Oppose those trying to jeopardise the stability of the State and the progress of the Nation


• Oppose foreign nations interfering in internal affairs of the State


• Crush all internal and external destructive elements as the common enemy

The rest of the paper is peppered with helpful and concise hints such as 'Give blood' and 'Don't smoke'. Front-page headlines cover the main international news items of the day such as Secretary number 1 of the State Peace and Development Council [aka the despotic military junta running Burma into the ground for the last 40 years] inspects factory/receives credentials of new Iraqi Ambassador etc. In actual fact, the only hint at the existence of an outside world comes in the form of international soccer news and vague stories about EU fisheries policy. And even this is unavailable to most Burmese, as it's written in English. Burmese TV was even more hilarious. Broadcasts last until around 2pm and include subtitled interviews with Shan women, declaring that no Burmese soldiers have ever raped their daughters, and au contraire, they feel protected and cared for by their military government. This is followed by a couple of hours of soulless, grainy, officially-approved Burmese karaoke (more of that later) and the National Anthem. Then the transmitters go dead. What fun!


The politics of this country are too unimaginably awful to dwell on, but, as is often the case in these kinds of places, the people are charming and friendly, to say nothing of stunningly beautiful. We managed a few political discussions with locals, but only ever in confined spaces where there was no chance of being overheard. For example Mr Chan, our guide around Mandalay, told us he was a member of Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy. He was wearing part of the Party member's uniform - which consists of a tartan longyi (traditional Burmese sarong), a collarless shirt and tartan jacket. However, the jacket was kept at home, as the punishment for wearing the whole outfit together would have been arrest and imprisonment. As we drove along, Mr Chang pointed out a military prison, but as the car window was open, and he could theoretically be overheard, he stopped the conversation short until we were back on the main road. This was very reminiscent of Cuba - Oh, the wonders of Democracy!


As a tourist in Myanmar, the government limits you to 4 main areas: Yangon (formerly Rangoon), Mandalay, Bagan (formerly Pagan) and Inle Lake in Shan State. We flew into Yangon from Bangkok. At the airport all tourists are obliged to change $200 per head into Foreign Exchange Certificates (or, more amusingly, FECs). These are exchanged at the rate of one dollar to one FEC - minus 'administration' charges of course - and cannot be exchanged back into dollars on the way out. Hence, they can only be spent in Myanmar. However, when changed into the local currency ('Kyat'), the exchange rate is lower for FECs than US dollars. This means that your hapless explorers end up losing money at every stage. And to add insult to injury, most places refuse to accept FECs, wanting good old-fashioned greenbacks instead. However, if the dollar bill is stained or damaged they won't accept it, so you have to change it into FECs, of which they want more, etc etc. Confused? Try being there... When faced with the mandatory FEC-exchange, we opted to change less than the obligaotry $400, by paying the counter clerk a 'present' (read: bribe). This is a normal part of everyday tourism in Myanmar. Nevertheless, the ever-righteous Claire took it upon herself to demand an explanation from the clerk, asking how on Earth they get away with it and so on. Although the sweet-faced girl never lost the smile from her face, her repeated explanation of 'I am helping you here. You must give me a present' became rapidly more menacing, to say nothing of the burly bomber-jacketed security guard who came over to find out what the fuss was all about. In the end we paid up and passed through smoothly. Together with a taxi driver who was stopped and fined a day's wages ($1) for not having a license to carry foreigners, this was thankfully our only run-in with the Burmese authorities.



After exhaustively shlepping round most of the central Yangon guesthouses with 15Kg bags on we opted for a Chinese-run place called May Shan. It was located bang in the middle of the city, next to Sule Paya, a roundabout topped with a shimmering golden pagoda where locals (the 'natives' as we pseudo-colonialists like to call them) go to pray, sleep and, well, sleep. This was also one of numerous places in South-East Asia where visitors are offered the chance to 'set free' one of many birds packed like sardines into a tiny pancake-shaped cage. For a small fee, the owner lets one fly off, only for it to fly back seconds later to be subjected to more of the same. This was yet another spending opportunity we managed to resist. The main historical site in Yangon is Shwedagon Paya. This is situated on a hill near the zoo (God knows what conditions were like there), and is another giant bell-shaped golden pagoda with hundreds of smaller temples surrounding it. Entry is free to locals, but FITs (Foreign Independent Travellers - nearly as cool as MIBs but not quite) are 'invited' to pay five dollars into the government's coffers to get in. When we eventually upload them, our photos will do the pagoda more justice than we can here. At nighttime the city was virtually dead, but we entertained ourselves with pathetic attempts at joining in games of keepy-uppy (using a 'traditional' bamboo football) with the infinitely more talented locals. We also sampled some Burmese 'fast food', although the only positive thing to come out of that was the opportunity to say that we actually got the 'Rangoon Runnies' in Rangoon...


Next stop was the Northern capital of Mandalay. The intervening journey was by "bus". However, the roads and vehicles were in such shoddy shape that it made Vietnam look like highway heaven. The journey lasted 20 hours and was broken up at hourly intervals by planned meal stops and unplanned blow-outs. The good thing about the meal stops was that the food was, to all intents and purposes, free (20 US cents for a main course, including rice). On one of the unplanned stops, Barney searched in vain for his shoes. After half an hour shivering barefoot outside the bus, Claire spotted the shoes on the feet of the Burmese chap sitting in front of us. He was proudly admiring them, and showing them off to his pals. As soon as he saw us he knew he was rumbled, but he decided to finish his fag off and go and relieve himself before strolling over, taking them off, belching and getting back on the bus. Another cramped and sweltering bus journey lasted 25 and a half hours instead of the advertised 18-21hrs to cover a piddling 726km. On this now-legendary bus, we were treated to an all-night cacophony of scoffing, coughing, gobbing, belching, farting and puking from the 'natives'. Our companion, the right honourable Padraig McCarthy (nationality still unestablished) had blood-red betel nut juice hoiked unceremoniously up the side of his leg at one of the few scheduled stops. At another stop (4am) we were all woken up to have breakfast (it was 4am for Chrissakes!) at a night market on a muddy, pitch-black road. One of the vendors was selling a total of 4 boiled eggs. I mean, I'm not one to pick on the poor people of the world, but is it really worth getting up at three in the morning to sell four boiled eggs? At three separate points in the journey, the suspension collapsed and hand-repairs were effected on the edge of a precipice with the bus jacked up on bits of wood, and some people left dozing in their seats. Worryingly, one of the 'mechanics' had only two fingers on one hand. Still, they just about got us going, and the bus eventually made it to within 100km of our destination before they finally let a few of us jump on another passing bus. The rest of the people (who must have been Zen Buddhists of the most patient kind) were left to rot on the original clapped out bus. The piece de resistance on this particular journey was the couple sitting behind us. The mother was sitting in a fold-out chair in the aisle, as is customary when the normal seats are full, and her tiny baby child was sat on her knee. Eschewing nappies in favour of the au naturel approach to baby care, she twice let her baby piss all down the aisle and onto the many people/bags which happened to be in the way. Needless to say no one batted an eyelid, least of all the excessively flatulent mother of another child who had kept Padraig awake all night with her belching antics.

Mandalay

In Mandalay, we visited 3 'Ancient Cities' around the town. These were collections of temples scattered over the landscape, as well as other attractions such as a 200-year old kilometre-long teak bridge over a lake. One of the cities was an island only traversible by horse and cart. Local kids hung onto the back of the cart (running at full-speed for well over a kilometre) and tried to sell us various items of locally-produced tat. We were then treated to a panoramic sunset viewed from a Pisa-style leaning temple, before returning to Mandalay. The following day we climbed the few hundred steps up Mandalay Hill and explored the silver-and-glass mosaic-effect temple at the top before seeing a slightly less impressive sunset. Five minutes prior to sunset, busloads of American, Israeli and Italian tour groups arrived, took a lift to the top and then took a lift back down again the moment the sun disappeared. We smugly climbed back down the steps, reflecting sweatily on how we were 'keeping it real'. This impression was only confirmed as we saw the same braindead, flatlining tour groups disgorging from buses in other parts of the country. Gosh, aren't we self-righteous after four months away?

Bagan

Our next stop was Bagan. We took the scenic 8-hour ferry ride along the Ayeyarwaddy (formerly Irrawaddy) River, and were rewarded for our early start by stunning views as we approached Bagan itself. It is billed as one of the seven man-made wonders of the world, and it certainly lived up to that. Although each individual temple is not as impressive as its counterparts at Angkor Wat, the overall effect given by the 360 degree temple-studded panoramas is truly breathtaking. The sunsets here were absolutely magical too (see pics, which we will upload asap). We hired bicycles to tour the sites, and checked out a few of the thousands of temples individually. Most were Buddhist, but there are a few Hindu shrines too, all built between the 10th-12th Centuries. (Coincidentally, much of the population of Myanmar is of Indian/Bangladeshi descent, as their forefathers were brought in to work as civil servants by the British imperial regime.) Some of the impromptu guides who showed us round the temples told us that the temples were knocked down by an 'Asquith' in 1975. They have subsequently been rebuilt or restored. We were nevertheless confused (British rule ended in 1948) until we discovered that the Asquith in question was in fact an Earthquake. Bagan was also the site of an impressive bamboo monastery complete with bamboo Buddha (donations welcome) and an eccentric monk who waited for a silent moment before letting off an impressively powerful guff and then giggling about it until we left.

Mount Popa

Following a run-in with the highly irritating and uncooperative owner of the only bus company to travel to Inle Lake, we eventually teamed up with young Mr McCarthy (Welsh perhaps?) and caught a taxi for the 10-hr journey to Inle Lake. This would obviously be unthinkable in Europe, but the whole thing came to less than $20 each, including as many stopovers as we wanted. The best stop was at Mount Popa, a monastery on a 250m hill which juts out of the surrounding landscape apparently at random. Again, pictures speak louder than words (is that the right expression?). Worth mentioning here were the mischievous (I hesitate to say 'cheeky') monkeys which plague the walkways up the side of the hill. For 45 sweaty minutes we were treated to the cacophony of this menacing gang of primates, and as we stepped out to admire the views (yet another sunset) a couple of them even started to get a little over-friendly right in front of us. That certainly spiced up the evening...

Inle Lake

We got to Inle Lake at 3.30am, and were turned away from a few guesthouses before settling on one which seemed to offer good rooms at cheap prices. We were shown around a double room, and Padraig then asked if they had a single room for him. The owner nodded enthusiastically, but didn't make any attempt to show us the room. When prompted, he said of course he would show us the room. After a long hesitation, he picked a room at the end of the corridor, opened up the door and switched the light on, to reveal a young backpacker lying restlessly in the bed. When Padraig pointed out the presence of this hapless paying guest, the owner shrugged and assured us it didn't matter. 'He will be gone in a few hours'. Needless to say we moved on...


The Lake itself was very nice, if a little overcast, and the town had a friendly village atmosphere, but not much to do. The annual water festival began on the morning we arrived, although we cunningly managed to sleep through the dawn procession of leg-rowers (see pics) on the Royal Barge, as well as the arrival by helicopter of the infamous Secretary-1 of the State Peace and Development Council. We chartered a long-tail boat for a one-day tour of the lake, but the most impressive thing we saw (except for a knife-making factory) was a monastery where the bored monks had trained cats to jump through a hoop about 3-feet in the air. Alas, the hoops were not flaming, although our burning rings more than made up for that.


We returned to Yangon with our bellies empty and our camera full, and flew back to Bangkok. At this point we discovered the terrible news about the bomb in Bali, and reflected that, had we not changed our flights in Ho Chi Minh City, we were due to have been there. Two days before we had met Padraig, he had been in the very bar in Kuta where the bomb went off. This sobering experience brought us back to Earth with a bump (thankfully the Myanmar Airways International plane was a little smoother). After a few days in Bangkok, where we were joined by Padraig's dart-loving entrepreneurial mate Kevin 'Dr Evil' Batcheler, we all headed down to Ko Pha Ngan in time for the Full Moon Party. Needless to say, we managed to sleep through the entire once-a-month Party, but we more than made up for it a few nights later with a 'full moon' of our own.


All of us subsequently enrolled for a three day diving course, and we are now FULLY QUALIFIED PADI-CERTIFIED OPEN WATER DIVERS. We sat five written exams and everything! Our deepest scuba-dive with our instructor was 17 metres, but we are now entitled to dive to 18 metres unsupervised, but only in a 'buddy' pair. Watch out Great Barrier Reef. Here we come! Parents please note that our qualification packs and ID-cards will be arriving through the post in the next fortnight. Do not throw them away!


We are on Ko Pha Ngan for the next few days, then we'll be off to the rock-climbing town of Krabi (Maybe more qualifications to come?) We have read the news about bomb scares in Phuket, so we will be staying well clear of that area.
:: Barney 9:30 AM [+] ::
...

Sihanoukville (Cambodia) and Ko Chang (Thailand)

Dear Lyn,

As our most vocal, and perhaps most dedicated, reader we dedicate this write up to you...

Well, well, well. What have we been up to since our last enthralling, rollercoaster diary entry? First of all we ended our trip to Cambodia in the quiet seaside resort of Sihanoukville, named in honour of King Sihanouk. Like most seaside resorts it has plenty of sun, sea, sand and decadence, but with a distinctly Cambodian flavour. As usual, money is everything, so in any crime or accident involving tourists, the richest man (for this read the foreigner) wins. It works the other way too. Every foreign-owned bar or guesthouse has to pay more for their supplies than the locals and therefore has to charge the punters more. The worst thing about the town is the community of grey-pony-tailed sex-pats who come in search of poverty-stricken children to have their wicked way with. We had a great time kayaking out to desert islands and relaxing over a cup of tea with a mad Scottish bloke who was building Cambodia's first ever caravan. Needless to say he was also planning to launch Cambodia's first ever caravan park to keep it in. His other boast was that his bar was the only one in the world to sell nitrous oxide (laughing gas) by the balloon-full. However, following a spot of over-enthusiastic indulgence on his part he had ended up dropping the 50Kg canister onto his hand, crushing four fingers and abruptly ending his guitar-playing (and caravan-building?) career. [Note to parents: we had no trouble resisting the urge to try the laughing gas. Barney has enough of his own to go around.]


From Sihanoukville, we took a speedboat up to the Thai border, and thence to the island of Ko Chang. (Does anyone say 'thence'? Is there any need to be so pompous? Well, yes, frankly, there is.) On the boat we were treated to our final dose of Khmer sit-coms. These are all identical in that they are filmed with one, static camera, and involve 3 people standing in a line and screeching loudly at each other. One of them is a policeman, but the woman (usually standing to his left) is louder than him, and possibly richer, so whatever he is accusing her of she seems to get away with. Then everyone turns and laughs at her because she is fat. In short, Khmer TV has all the qualitites of a Carry-On film except for the humour and suggestiveness.


Our stay on Ko Chang involved a small bamboo beach hut lit only by oil-lamp, and outdoor bathroom facilities. Using the squat-toilet was fraught with dangers such as dodging bum-biting mozzies. Returning to the hut at night was also a hairy experience, as the entrance was guarded by a pack of slavering wolverines bent on keeping you out at any cost. One night when Barney was somewhat sub-compos mentis, it was only Claire's controlled eye-wobbling and 'Crocodile Dundee'-esque murmurings at the dogs which permitted us to tame the beasts and reclaim our rightful beach hut. It was here that we met a long-haired Dutch self-declared 'beauty' whose response to the question: 'What did you do before you came travelling?' was 'Nothing, man. This is my life.' It transpired that this free-spirited 20-year-old Earth-Mother occasionally popped home to her parents for just enough time to squeeze more cash out of them before naffing off again to blow their hard-earneds in sunnier climes. But at the very least she liked to travel intelligently. When she saw Barney reading How Pol Pot came to power she said 'Ooh. That sounds deep. What's Pol Pot?' This was a girl whose wordly-wisdom simply shone through.
:: Barney 6:28 AM [+] ::
...

Battambang

After Angkor Wat, we hopped on a speedboat to the western provincial capital of Battambang. Despite being in the top three biggest cities in Cambodia, it is miniscule and nothing happens there except gambling and prostitution. However, we had no interest in the town itself, so this was no big deal. Our interest lay in the 'killing caves' located about 40km away.

We hired a couple of motorbike drivers from the hotel, one of whom was called 'Mr T'. Mr T had coincidentally been recommended to us by an overly-serious lone traveller who we had met in Dalat, Viet Nam. Now, although no sucker has ever managed to get Mr T on a plane (fool), he was only too happy to jump on a bike and show us round. The killing caves are located on top of a hill, next to a wat, which was used as a provincial torture centre by the Khmer Rouge. We were shown pillars against which 4 or 5 prisoners had been tied and tortured for days on end, then to a hole in the wall used to drain out victims' blood. Then we moved to the caves proper. In one alcove was a naturally-occurring hook, about seven feet up, which was used to string up live 'criminals' whilst the KR slit them open and cut out their livers for later consumption. Next stop was the 30-foot deep cave with a hole at the top, where prsioners were thrown to their deaths. At the bottom of the cave are a number of skulls and bones, together with blood-stained clothing. The other sight in the area was a gigantic dam, built entirely by hand over a period of 18 months, at the cost of over 20,000 human lives. The dam was part of a KR project to recreate the elaborate dyke-irrigation system which Cambodia enjoyed under the Angkor Kings. He also told us about Poipet, a border-town 50kms further up the same road, where former KR leaders live a life of gambling, gem-selling and prostitution (all activities they had previously declared as imperialist and evil) with apparent impunity. Nobody in the current government has the will to arrest them and dredge up the past, so there they still are, walking the streets as if nothing had ever happened.

As deeply moving as all these sights were (all the more for the fact that we were the only visitors at the time), the most moving thing of all was the personal history of Mr T, which he openly and frankly told us about, not without a tear or two himself. He was 11 when the Khmer Rouge removed him, his parents, two brothers and two sisters from their comfortable Phnom Penh home to separate forced-labour camps. He worked from 5am to 11pm in the rice fields, and digging earth for the construction of dykes. He sang along with revolutionary KR songs, ignorant of the lyrical content, and tried to survive as best he could. His only possessions were the standard-issue bowl, spoon and cup. When it was cold at night, he had only dried-out banana skins for warmth. He was forced to take part in 'punishment' beatings of comrades who had done or said something wrong, and even watched friends executing their own parents on pain of death. After three years of this, he heard 'over the grapevine' that his parents and four siblings had all perished at the hands of the Khmer Rouge. When Vietnamese soldiers liberated the country, the KR soldiers fled his children's camp with nothing more than a 'go and find your parents, if they are still alive'.

He then embarked on a month-long barefoot walk to Phnom Penh, where Vietnamese soldiers had taken over all the housing and refused to let ex-inhabitants back in for weeks on end. When he finally got back in, his family home had been taken over by someone else. As if this were not bad enough, he was then conscripted to the government's army where he spent the next few years watching yet more friends die at the hands of the KR. Remarkably, he managed to survive and escaped in the dead of night to become an AWOL fugitive in the capital. His only happiness now came from his beloved wife and two daughters, who he spoke of with an understandably profound fondness. Meeting someone as strong and kind as Mr T was truly inspiring.

As to getting out of Battambang, there is one train every day to Phnom Penh, but it leaves at 6am and takes a staggering 14 hours to cover the 300km route. We left less than 24 hours after arriving by another method: the all-too-aptly named 'share taxi', for which one pays $7 per 'seat'. Somewhat more surprisingly, Cambodian taxi drivers have decided that a normal saloon car has not four, but eight seats. This means two in the passenger seat and four in the back (we were crammed in for seven hours with a couple of touchy-feely, but mercifully small be-buttocked Khmer girls). As to the other two seats, well... it seems the driver is only too happy to budge up and allow another cheek or two in next to his own. Thankfully we were spared this horror, and there were only six in our car (the boringly sensible American girl in the passenger seat had sensibly paid double for the privilege of a whole seat to herself, in order to permit herself to bore us in greater personal comfort).

:: Barney 8:22 AM [+] ::
...

Siem Reap and the temples of Angkor Wat

What can we say about Siem Reap? For one thing, it is Cambodia's busiest and most upmarket tourist resort (to say nothing of being the most expensive). However, upmarket is relative. People own cars there, which is a change from most of Cambodia. There are hotels which cost hundreds of dollars per night, chock-full of jet-in, jet-out tourists from Germany and Japan. Then there are the usual $5 per night hovels, where we comfortably settled in before you could say Jayavarman VII. In the end, the $5 hovel turned out to be a little gem, with free (yes free) laundry, and an impromptu Mongolian fondue on the last night. The ex-government-army (as opposed to Khmer Rouge) owner was only too happy to invite us for free, as long as we signed his guestbook for the benefit of future guests. Despite his insistance that we be brutally honest about the service, whether good or bad, the yak meat and cabbage leaves melting and slipping down our throats was the only incentive we needed to heap praise on the place. In any case, it was distinctly preferable to the 'Cripsy Chinese Sheets' on offer in another restaurant, apparently of iller-repute than appearances would have suggested.

Perhaps the greatest mystery in Siem Reap were the snoring cows. Each night, as we returned to the guesthouse through the quiet backstreets, we were greeted by a rhythmical and incessant chorus of grunting sounds. One of the guesthouse workers was only too happy to go along with our assumption that these were cows snoring. However, after a couple of nights, even we worked out that not every garden and field could possibly have had cows in it, and with our cast combined knowledge of 'The Countryside'(TM) we realised that cows just don't snore. Only minutes before leaving did we discover the truth behind the mystery, and I swear if I catch another bullfrog making that racket again, it'll be toast...

We hired a driver called Mr Johnny (what else?) who 'belonged' to the guesthouse. He spoke excellent English, and seemed to know lots about the temples of Angkor in the surrounding 500-square km area. We bought a 3-day pass at the hugely inflated price of $40 each (the most expensive entry fee in all of South East Asia, and most of it goes straight to an oil company's coffers) and got up bright and early to begin our tour. When Mr Johnny turned up, he announced that he couldn't possibly take us out as he had to attend his nephew's 1st birthday bash along with another 700 relatives. So he passed us over to his somewhat quieter and less knowledgable brother, whose improbable name we couldn't discern despite frequent repetition. 'Oh well, it's only for one day' - we thought - 'and anyway, we don't want someone who natters all day'. We were certainly right on this point. Mr Johnny assured us that his bro Mr Silent was also a 'very safe driver'. One thing is certain: he was also categorically the slowest driver in the world. Ever. Not once did the needle leave its rest on the speedo. This is fine when you're driving past stunning 10th-century Khmer temples, but not so great on an empty highway when all you want is to get home to bed. Day two at the temples, Mr Johnny turned up as planned, and announced that he was far too hungover to possibly take us out. So it was back with Mr Silent and another day of living life in the hearse lane.

The temples themselves were stunning for the most part. Many of them had been attacked or destroyed by the Khmer Rouge, but restoration efforts by teams from Germany, the USA and France among others are bringing them back to their former glory. There are some exceptions: Ta Phrom, one of the most breathtaking temples, has not been touched since it was first discovered by French archaeologists in the late 19th Century. It is amazing because tree roots have become entwined in the brick work, sometimes splitting it open, sometimes knocking a wall down, but in every case adding to the beauty of the place. Angkor Wat itself is impressive in its sheer size, and the quality of the bas reliefs surviving intact on the interior walls. Amusingly enough, the reliefs of topless Apsara dancers all have shiny chests where generations of naughty schoolchildren have been overcome by the 'hilarious' urge to gigglingly rub the bosoms. It goes without saying that we maturely resisted this urge. In the case of Angkor Wat, the temple buildings and even the surrounding moat are mostly undamaged. If you want an idea of what these seminal works of architecture look like, check out the new selection of photos in the Cambodia picture gallery.
:: Barney 8:08 AM [+] ::
...

Overland to Rattanakiri Province

Last week we visited Banlung, capital of Rattanakiri Province, in the North-Eastern corner of Cambodia near the Lao and Vietnamese borders. By 'visited', we don't mean to imply that we just popped up there, and popped back again. Oh no. Rattanakiri is one of the remotest parts of Cambodia, and by extension one of the hardest to reach. Only a handful of tourists can be @rsed to make the journey overland. In the dry season, it is apparently possible to cover the 400km or so in one or two days. However, we are bang in the middle of the wet season, and our journey lasted a somewhat taxing four days.

First stop was Kampong Cham on the Mekong river. This is the third largest city, but it has the air of a small town. There was nothing to give the place any character and the food in the (unmarked) restaurants was bland and sparse. The only real attractions were a pair of hillocks outside the city. One was named the Man Hill and the other - wait for it - the Woman Hill. Both had pagodas at the top (yawn), but the Man Hill was spiced up a bit by the presence of some monkeys (hilariously described in the guidebook as 'cheeky'). After we watched some local tourists feeding and taunting the monkeys (and nearly losing limbs in the process), we took some photos and headed off.

Next stop was Kratie. The 'speed' boat from Kampong Cham took six hours, and owing to the abject lack of escape routes from inside the cabin, we opted to sit on the roof. Kratie is renowned as a place to see the rare 'Irrawaddy' species of dolphin. After an all-too-brief night's sleep, we took a motorbike ride out to a hilltribe village, and were escorted across the river in a rickety wooden boat with a stuttering outboard. After the 90-minute journey to the viewing point, we were rewarded with about 10-minutes of distant fin-spotting. The only thing worth saying about these freshwater dolphins is that they are smaller and blacker than their marine cousins, and very elusive in the wet season: we ended up paying nearly $2 for each fin spotted!

Later the same day we got back on the boat up to Stung Treng. Having herded us onto the boat with great urgency in time for the one oçlockl departure, the captain and crew then sat there for two hours doing nothing until another boat arrived, and offloaded its all-important cargo of motorbikes onto the roof of our boat. Exactly where we'd been sitting. After being cramped onto a corner of the roof with tens of other passengers (including one with a real-live 'chicken in a basket'), it began to rain. As we were crushed to within an inch of our lives by the tarpaulin, we noticed we were sitting right next to a policeman with a loaded gun on his beltloop, just inches from Claire's delicate head! The policeman kept poking a child sitting just under Barney's right buttock, and asking him to translate questions such as 'is she your husband?' to us. After six hours of such interrogation by armed police in the driving rain, we pulled up at Stung Treng, and literally lept off the boat onto the slippery muddy dockside below where we were pulled up by a sea of arms and escorted to a hotel.

We ate, slept and left for Banlung shortly before seven the next morning (no form of long-distance transport in Cambodia leaves after 7am). We paid extra to sit in the cab of the pick-up truck, but were crammed with two other people on the back seat. In the back of the pickup another 11 Cambodians (plus luggage and chickens) were packed like sardines. The road was so atrocious that the 120km journey took well over seven hours. If you don''t believe us, see the photo of the stranded truck in the Picture Gallery.

Once in Banlung, we took a well-earned rest and checked out what there was to do. Within the town, this turned out to be the thin end of b*gger all, but a few kms out of town were a whole host of charming little spots and memorable activities. We were treated to a 2hr elephant ride, guided by local hilltribe people (who didn't even speak Khmer but only their local dialect). The 60yr old elephant took us and our guide slap bang through the middle of the jungle and to secluded waterfalls. There was a path around the back of the falls, where you could experience the 'wow' factor of a huge amount of water gushing down a rock, as well as the 'wet' factor of all the splashback. The only downside of the elephant ride was that we've never had such sore botties in all our life! Next day, we swam all day in a volcanic crater lake, 55m deep with crystal clear waters - Mmmmm! It was here that some friendly village kids strolled up to us, with broad grins on their faces and proudly announced in perfect English: "Hello, we are indigenous people!". This is just about the funniest thing we've ever heard! The kids ended up being very entertaining company, even sharing their inner tube and backflip techniques with us. It turns out they learn their English from a Dutch teacher who works with many of the local minority tribes. Just goes to show how many do-gooders there are out there. Hmmm, maybe a future career in the offing there..?

After a thoroughly relaxing long weekend in Banlung, we decided we couldn't face the four-day trip back, so we flew back to Phnom Penh on a small propellor plane. After 'checking in' at the two-room wooden hut (complete with scales for weighing luggage, dontchaknow) which constitutes Rattanakiri airport, we set off shakily down the mud runway, with our extremely bald tyres, aircon spewing smoke out all over the cabin, and empty seats flying forwards on our TWO landings. We knew to expect the unexpected, but were nevertheless amused when we stopped off somewhere on the way to offload some cardboard boxes full of food and TV's, all made by such reputable multinational companies as Sanjyo and Toshida.

So, we're back in Phnom Penh now having a lazy Sunday off from travelling and after a long lie-in, catching up on our email. Tomorrow, we're off to the beach for a couple of days in Sihanoukville before heading back to Bangkok, crossing the border on yet another speedboat, via the coastal town of Koh Chang. Our route will take us past the site of the refugee camp, just over the Thailand border, where the author of Stay Alive, My Son - about a man's escape from the Khmer Rouge and the loss of 16 family members - ended up after a daring against-the-odds escape over the Cardamom Mountain Range. We highly recommend the book to anyone remotely interested in autobiographical history/human rights, by the way. The author is Pin Yathay.

:: Barney 11:27 AM [+] ::
...

Holiday in Cambodia

Phnom Penh

Phnom Penh must be unique as a capital city - as far as either of us know, it is the only one in recent history to have lain abandoned and all-but-empty for 4 years. For those whose history is a bit rusty (ahem!), the Khmer Rouge entered the city on April 17th 1975, overthrew the CIA-sponsored government, and then ordered the entire population to evacuate the city on the same day. Children were driven out of schools and off the streets, in-patients were wheeled out of the hospital still attached to their drips, and families were shooed out of their houses on pain of summary execution in the street. Anyone who admitted any connection to the previous government was taken away and shot or bludgeoned to death. During the next four years, the Khmer Rouge restructured the whole country into a collectivised agrarian economy, with forced labour camps and all the usual instruments of terror and repression to back them up. Anyone who voiced any opposition to the regime or failed to comply with the backbreaking workload and dizzying array of arbitrary rules, was branded a parasitic enemy and taken into the forest to be bludgeoned to death with hoes (bullets were too precious to waste on ordinary people). As we have found out from people who experienced this first hand, children were often instructed to kill their own parents. Those who refused were asked: 'Why do you refuse to kill the enemy. Are you one of them?' shortly before receiving the same punishment. And these were the lucky ones. In Phnom Penh we visited S-21 (aka Tuol Sleng) - a former secondary school converted into a detention centre where ordinary men, women and children were brought in their thousands and tortured into confessing to crimes such as collusion with the CIA. Yes, children. Once people had been detained and tortured for a few months, they were photographed and then led to Choeung Ek - 20km south of the city - where they were made to kneel in front of a pit full of corpses and they were bludgeoned and thrown unconscious or dead into the mass-grave. As many as 100 people per day died like this, and many of the pre-slaughter photos are up on the walls for visitors to see. The terror is visible in all their eyes, especially the children, and there were even a few Western faces, to remind us that this sort of thing doesn't just happen to someone else. At Choeng Ek, there is a memorial pagoda, with 8,000 preserved skulls arranged according to sex and age. One pile is for girls aged 15-25, another for men aged 40+ and so on. Truly horrifying. These scenes (including the skulls, as we discovered in Battambang) are repeated all over the country. Two million people were executed, starved or worked to death in the 3 years, 9 months the regime lasted. The first to go were politicians and soldiers of the former Lon Nol regime, together with their extended families. Later, doctors, teachers, intellectuals / imperialists (the definition included anyone who wore glasses or spoke a foreign language) and anyone with too much connection to city life, were systematically rooted out and killed. The result was that Cambodia went from being the most developed and wealthiest South-East Asian nation in the 1960s back to the stone age. For example, after all the doctors were killed, it has taken 20+ years of foreign aid and training to establish even a rudimentary network of health centres.

Perhaps the most disturbing thing is that the people who suffered so much under the Khmer Rouge are still suffering: not only did they have to endure the harsh regime of the Vietnamese troops who liberated them from the Khmer Rouge in 1979, but they have also continued to be killed and maimed by the landmines which littered the countryside. Many villagers who believe in black magic think that having a certain tattoo can protect them from landmines - another problem which has been partially addressed through educational posters in village centres and teams of de-miners. A further nightmare which the people endured was enforced conscription into the government's army. They were taken away, often for years at a time, to fight the Khmer Rouge. This lot - who make the Taliban look like choirboys - were only defeated in 1998, when the death of Pol Pot and a mass-defection of high-ranking officers left them powerless.

OK, history lecture over. We only include this because it is still so evident in everyday life here, and as a tourist you are constantly reminded. The flipside of the coin is that the strength of spirit of the Cambodian people is truly inspirational. Not once have we heard anyone complain about their lot, and their will to get on with life despite extreme ongoing poverty and the weight of their loss is truly incredible.

Returning to the city, it is slowly but surely getting back on its feet. The riverfront area is beautiful, and some of the buildings which weren't destroyed by the Khmer Rouge are still stunning; the Silver-floored pagoda in the Royal Palace springs to mind. This was also where we saw the most amazing sunset. Click onto the Cambodia section of the Picture Gallery for the evidence!

Outside the city are several army bases, which earn extra cash by doubling up as shooting ranges. The situation is exactly the same as the rumours I heard before I left: You get off the motorbike, sit down at a table and are presented with a menu. On the menu is a list of guns, the number of rounds you can shoot, and the price for each option. To cut a long story short, my (Barney's) curiosity got the better of me, and I opted for a modest Colt '45 revolver. With no safety training whatsoever, I was presented with a pair of earmuffs and a gun. I stood at a booth and fired off 7 live rounds into what seemed to be a drawing of George Michael in a string vest. Still buzzing from the adrenaline rush, my new-found soldiers pals rushed me back to the menu and - bypassing the Uzi 9mm and the Kalashnikov - convinced me that what I really wanted to do was fire an AK47. To be brutally honest, at that moment, it was all I wanted to do, and when the price started to fall, I was quickly sold! So, yes, I have now fired 15 rounds from an AK47, some on single-burst and some on automatic fire, and it was extremely loud and extremely satisfying. (Check out the photos in the gallery.) But I will never do it again - promise. (Now at least you will all understand when you see my neighbours on News at Ten describe me as seeming 'like such a normal lad. He kept himself to himself, really'.) The other rumour surrounding these shooting galleries is that one can select farm animals of differing sizes (for differing prices) and use these for target practice. These range from a chicken at a 'poultry' $20, to a cow at a more 'beefy' $200. The cow, I was assured, is best dealt with by a rocket launcher (also $200). However, I soon realised the animal bit was a hoax... until this morning, that is, when the hostel owner informed me that there is no need to pay $20 for a chicken when one can take one's own from the market for only $3. Even one as sick as I am happy to take his word for that.

:: Barney 10:36 AM [+] ::
...

Dalat and the Mekong Delta

While we waited for our gleaming new visa extensions, we took a 'luxury' minibus to the former French hill station of Dalat. This was the only truly inland town we visited in Viet Nam, with not a trace of brine to be found. The weather was hot with a cooling breeze in the mornings and rainy in the afternoons. The evenings were crisp and starry. So much like an English Summer was it in fact, that we even had to crack open our raincoats and fleeces. We felt even more at home on our first night, which we spent in the bars and pool halls of Dalat with Siobhan and Steve from West Norwood, who shared our predilection for beer-drinking and 'yo mamma' jokes. Unbeatable!

With the exception of the beaches at Nha Trang, Dalat was the only place we saw any Vietnamese tourists. They were out in their hordes, and as our guide explained to us, it is the number one honeymoon destination in Viet Nam. We saw lots of newlyweds competing for that idyllic lakeside photo, and the stress of it all was obviously getting to them. Although they were dressed up to the nines, they all looked absolutely miserable! On second thoughts, maybe it was the expense that was bringing them down. We were told that the average family saves for two or three years just to afford a weekend in Dalat. And when they get there, they certainly do things in style: Family photos beside the charming concrete statue of a musical stave (next to the 'Valley of Love' lake-and-tat-resort-complex) were apparently a must-do.

We took a day-long tour of the surrounding area in a jeep. First stop was a stunning meditation centre, where the monks keep a pristine garden full of orchids and dragon-shaped topiaries. Our guide assured us that - once the day's meditations are over and the tourists have gone home - the monks nip over to the nunnery across the hill to 'make disco' all night. Next stop was the 'Chicken' Minority village. Like many minority hill tribes, these people weave silk scarves and sarongs for sale to tourists, and apart from that sit around smoking pipes all day. However, unlike most tribes, they have an 10-metre high concrete chicken at the entrance to the village. Neither the (normally so reliable) Lonely Planet, nor or guide could provide a satisfactory explanation as to why, nevertheless we were assured that it had great historical significance to the locals. The chicken villagers are Christians, and there is even a snazzy new Cathedral a few kms down the road. However, there is a lone Buddhist Nun who lives in the village and serves as doctor and pharmacist. She sells home-made incense sticks to tourists to pay for medicines, and since her arrival the death rate during the wet season has fallen dramatically. Even better than that, she let us make our own cinnamon incense sticks, which later blew off the back of the jeep as we 'dried' them. On the road near the village, we stopped at a mushroom farm and a silkworm farm. The guide even sliced open a silkworm coccoon so we could all stare at the poor worm dude who was trying to get some kip inside.

The highlights of the day were the 'crazy' house and the 'crazy' monk. The former was a Gaudi-esque house based around two giant concrete giraffes. It was financed and designed by one of the only architects wealthy enough to get away with such a project - the former president's eldest daughter. Each of the bubble-like pods inside is fashioned into a bedroom (available for a very reasonable nightly fee), and each bedroom had an animal 'theme' (if by 'theme' you understand a concrete sculpture of an animal). Much like the Sagrada Familia, this house is still growing organically. Even if it isn't entirely original it is still an intriguingly incongrous sight in such an otherwise conservative country. As to the 'crazy' monk, well... I know that crazy is an over-used word at the best of times, but this was the biggest misnomer of the lot. The crazy monk is at best mildly eccentric, living in a temple with seven pet dogs and spending his days selling forged works of art to Dutch tourists at inflated prices. He claims to be a Zen monk, and to this end there were endless slogans around his tranquil bamboo garden about how wonderful it is to live for the moment. Nevertheless we discovered that his intentions are somewhere wide of zen: as soon as he makes enough from his forgeries, he intends to get on the first plane to America and live in a slightly more affluent 'moment' there.

We were brought down to Earth, when we discovered that the tour guide himself earned just US$50 per month. He was very good at separating the tourists from their cash, but received no commission for his troubles. Only the threat of instant dismissal kept his motivation levels up for the 362 working days of the year.

Dalat is also famous as a centre of learning - with its mild climate study is much more pleasant. However, hey need to work on their maths-teaching a little. We were chased out of a restaurant by the owner who was adamant that our bill of 293,000 (minus 25,000 already paid) was in fact 278,000 Dong. Only when our high-tech pal David whipped out his palm pilot (easy!) did the owner agree that it was 268,000 and mathematical justice was finally served.

After a couple of days in Dalat we jumped back on the luxury bus, and headed back to Ho Chi Minh City. It was at this point we decided we couldn't survive another day without any 'Western' music for comfort. In the space of a few hours, we had a CD Walkman with carry-case, 2 sets of headphones, and 25 CDs (all genuine originals of course). All for the princely sum of 50 quid. We later added a set of speakers (at a bank-breaking US$4) and now our lives are complete.

We splashed away the next couple of days at Saigon's various swimming pools, including the famous water-park, with its death-defying blacked-out waterslides and lethal wave pools. We met a 14-year old boy in a park, who treated us to a rendition of his favourite Westlife songs. Later that evening, Barney was attacked in the street by a ruthless masseur, who indulged his obsession with 'cupping' (where the oxygen is burnt out of several upturned glasses, which are then placed on the back where the vacuum sucks the skin out. The 'beneficiary' is left with giant purple welts for the next week).

Then we booked ourselves on a three-day trip through the Mekong Delta and into the wilds of Cambodia. The boat trip took us to some fascinating places, including the floating villages of the Cham minority (descendents of the Indonesians who practise Islam and even have their own mosque, albeit not a floating one). We saw a rice refinery, with ingenious shelling and polishing machines straight out of the 19th Century and covered in spiders' webs. We also visited a coconut candy factory and a rice-noodle (vermicelli) factory, where all the work was carried out by hand by the most patient and uncomplaining workers imaginable. One of the more memorable stops was an impromptu one. Our 'luxurious' pleasure cruiser (again, their words not ours) got caught in the underwater foliage and bust a propeller. While we waited for the replacement speed-boat to whisk us to safety, we were treated to a warm welcome by the inhabitants of a nearby floating hut. It was a tiny place, with apparent Tardis-like qualities. Something like 30 kids (as well as a white-faced Geisha-type woman nursing a fine pair of puppies) streamed out and began leaping off boats and shouting 'hello' over and over again. Even after two hours (and a couple of beers with a French guy who had taken four rolls of film in two days flat) we were not tired of the kids, and when the speedboat arrived we waved them goodbye and shot off up the Mekong towards Chau Doc and the border. At one dinner stop, we were treated to a glass of finest Vietnamese snake wine. The snake's venom is extracted and mixed into the wine, and the cobra's corpse is then inserted into the bottle to stare at you (and aid your fertility of course) as you drink it. Fired up by the testosterone-enhancing effects of the wine, Barney decided to try the local speciality: Snake and mushroom curry. I'm not prepared to say it tasted like chicken, that would be way too obvious. Although, to be honest, it did taste like a stringier version of our feathered friends. The following morning we got back on the speed-boat and began the four-hour journey into Phnom Penh. More of that later...

For those of you that are still conscious after reading this installment, we present a little opinion poll. We are racked with indecision about which of the following words would sound best in a Scouse accent:

• Catechism


• Cathedral


• Murky


• Perpetrator


• Trivialities


• Turpentine

Cast your votes or come up with something better NOW on the message board!

:: Barney 7:04 AM [+] ::
...

Hoi An - Nha Trang - Ho Chi Minh City (aka Saigon)

Planes, pains and automobiles

Guess who's back? Back again...
We is back... Tell a friend.
Guess who's back, guess who's back, guess who's back, guess who's back, guess who's back, guess who's back, guess who's back, guess who's back? Der, der, der, DOOM, der, doom, der, doom, der, doom, der...[repeat ad nauseam.]

Hello hip-hoppers... Well, you didn't think that just cos we're out of the country we're not getting our dose of 'yoof culcha' did you? Yes indeed, MTV has hit Asia big time, and every two-bit hotel and backpacker dive is showing it. The Indonesian version is particularly enticing - with hit shows such as Salam Dangdut, and charming ballads like Berdua Dua by half-siren, half-ape, but 100% borderline boiler Delia Paramitha. But that's nothing compared to the stars of Vietnamese national TV. One wonders if May Trang (the Vietnamese 'Spice Girls') are really in the right industry - they are all fantastic lookers, granted, but alas they cannot sing for sh!t and they have teeth that would make Austin Powers' Mum wince. As for spiky-haired Robbie Williams-a-likes Lam Truong and Lam Vi, well... they sound like they'd go better with a plate of pilau and a garlic naan than a recording contract. Half rice, half chips of course.

On another cultural note, it seems the Vietnamese have embraced the music of the Hispanic and Germanic worlds. Yes indeed, from portable ice-cream carts can be heard the haunting melodies of the Lambada and La Cucaracha in ultra-modern monotonal digital sound. As if this weren't enough to send any music connoisseur into aural ecstasy, it is complemented by the breathtaking beauty of Fuer Elise and Love Song (you know, from that musical) effortlessly swimming across the street towards you from the almost orchestral horns of many-a-reversing lorry. Oh, where would we be without music?

Re-winding (selecta) a few days to our time in Hoi An: as well as getting a new made-to-measure wardrobe each for the cost of a pair of pants in the UK, we also met some interesting characters. Not least of which a young girl who helped out at her parents' restaurant and made a few extra bucks by selling useless tat to gullible tourists. We were extra-lucky. Having decided to buy a pot of 'angel-balm' off her in order to get rid of her, we were then treated to her charming conversation. Some of Barney's less charitable chums will no doubt be amused to hear that this cheeky chappess was convinced I was not human but simian. And after spying the earrings, she concluded I must be a female simian. Not content with emptying my wallet like any normal person, she ensured that the streets echoed to the sound of 'oi! Monkey girl!' every time I walked anywhere near. And it's a small town Hoi An, oh yes...

As with all Vietnamese tourist destinations, Hoi An was jam-packed with hawkers and street vendors, who hound you at every opportunity. It came as something of a relief therefore when a sweet old man with a gentle voice came paddling up next to us on the river front and offered us a boat ride in his ramshackle, balsa-wood paddle-boat. Although we blanked him at first, we eventually realised that an hour on the river for next-to-nothing might be just what we needed. So we jumped in with our customary grace and elegance (nearly sending the boat a over t). The old chap was so bubbly and friendly, and so energetic with his paddling, that it took us a good few minutes to notice that one of his pyjama legs was rolled up, and there was no leg underneath. He told us that he had been fishing on a wooden boat one day in 1970 when a US plane flew overhead and scored a direct hit, smashing the boat, and his leg, to smithereens. Since then, he'd occupied himself with tourism as best he could. His prized possession (kept in its own a plastic bag) was a battered old paperback atlas. He showed us the names of different countries in Vietnamese ('Ai-len' is Ireland, 'O-tre-li-a' is Australia etc) and then asked us how big some European cities (including 'Mok-se-va', 'Pa-ri' and 'Lan-din') are in comparison with Vietnamese cities. Resident geography guru Barney (ahem) did his best to show him with awkward hand movements, and despite Mr Truong's 65-years he seemed childishly enthralled by it all. As minor as this all sounds it was one of the nicest hours we've spent in Vietnam.

Before we go any further, back to that bus trip we mentioned at the end of the last diary entry. You know, the one where the nice travel agent (recommended in Lonely Planet, dontchaknow?) swore blind that his bus was comfortable, modern and leak-free and the roads in South Vietnam were all US-built and therefore much better than their counterparts in the North. Well, surprise, surprise. Only once on the bus (with no refund permitted) do we discover there are no reclining seats, no leg room, backpacks crammed along the length of the gangway (meaning the only exit for toilet stops was OUT THE WINDOW!), and leaky air-con. And the roads were 10 times worse, with non-stop pot-holes and roadworks. To cap it all off, there was a fearsome rainstorm which had already flooded Hoi An, and continued for 8 hours into the journey, most of it dripping onto our seats. Yes folks, we can exclusively reveal that travelling by coach ('luxury' or otherwise) in Vietnam is to be avoided. At all costs...

...Which I guess is why we got the plane from Nha Trang to Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon). Left our hotel on 23rd August at 7am, got to the airport at 7.10, checked in, left at 8.30 and arrived at 9.30. All for a staggeringly expensive 25 quid a head. Aaaaaaah! And relax...

Nha Trang itself was lovely. Powdery-sand beaches, lovely blue sea, swimming pools, iced drinks on demand, and some damn fine pizza restaurants all conspired to give us a relaxing few days. Barney got all excited one day and hired a motorbike to see the sights. Needless to say, I returned a few hours later with some mediocre photos, a wallet emptied by conniving kids who told me they were orphans with no Mummy and Daddy (codswallop as I was laughlingly informed by a couple of Aussies on my way out), and a gleaming exhaust burn on my leg. What could be better?

So far, Saigon is much as expected: bigger, dirtier, noisier and more chaotic than Hanoi. There is even more traffic here too, which is almost unbelievable. Got stuck in a Cyclo at some traffic lights yesterday (the first traffic lights in weeks) and the motorbikes, bikes and lorries were so densely jammed together at the junction that nobody moved for 10 minutes until a handful of people mounted the pavement and cleared the way. Also experienced a 'roundabout'. A more fearsome experience we can't imagine, as vehicles approach you from all sides and nobody gives way to anyone. Yet miraculusly the locals manage this day in, day out, with remarkably few accidents.

Easily the most disturbing place in Saigon is the American War Crimes Museum, documenting various atrocities, as well as everyday life for soldiers on both sides, during the Vietnam War. Amongst the more stomach-churning exhibits are photos of children and adults with hideous deformities and skin diseases as a result of agent-orange and napalm-poisoning. There are even two preserved foetuses in jars - one of a baby with an oversized head and another of deformed stillborn Siamese twins. There are also photos of the My Lai massacre, as well as defused US bombs, tanks and warplanes. One of the bombs weighs several tonnes, and had the power to destroy all oxygen within a 500m radius and send seismic waves over a 4km area. Another sprayed out thousands of darts on impact. Naturally, these were only ever aimed at "military" targets... As another amputee Barney met at the foot of a Cham temple pointed out: he didn't hate the Americans for blowing off both his arms and one of his eyes at the age of 11, but he hated War. He'd just heard about the US bombing of Afghani civilians at a wedding ceremony a few weeks ago, and it had brought back uncomfortable memories. Although he had survived, he had been reducing to begging for the last 25 years, because he couldn't physically work and there were no state benefits to be had, neither from the Vietnamese nor the American side.

We have decided to extend our Vietnam visas to give us time to explore the Mekong Delta and surrounding area in a bit more detail. Watch this space.

And, as our chum Eminem so eloquently puts it,

I'm not the first king of con-tro-VER-sy, I am the best thing since EL-vis PRES-ley.

OK, I really will shut up now.
:: Barney 6:33 AM [+] ::
...

Ha Noi - Hue - Danang - Hoi An

An over-"land" adventure

Left Hanoi, one wet evening on the 'night bus' to Hue. It rained, inside the bus, inside Claire's seat and eventually, inside her trousers. Several other passengers had this problem, but on alerting the driver, he pretended we were all invisible. So disturbing was this behaviour that one girl actually poked him in the shoulder, I think to check if he was real or not! Anyway, he forgot he was meant to be invisible at one point (which was lucky as he was meant to be driving the bus) and said "what do you want me to do about it?" So the eternally helpful Claire advised several options... stopping to see where the water was coming from and plugging it with something, giving her another seat (there weren't any) or a refund, or giving me a blanket, (of which the 'staff' had many, but the customers alas few), to sit on while it was raining (on the floor of course). He did none of the aforementioned things and so the wee petal sat, defiantly, in front of him on Barney's blow up travel cushion for the next two hours until the rain stopped. While she was there, someone had the silly idea of asking him to turn the air-con down (as it was freezing), so when they'd gone back to their seat, he turned it up to a full on ice-age and smirked quietly to himself.

The 'night' journey was broken up every few hours The first stop was after one hour - before all the trouble started - at a cafe which sold bats, rat foetuses and snakes (in their own juice) in huge jars with taps on them, just in case you only wanted the juice. Your loyal diarists were considering asking someone about this when we got shepherded back onto the bus. At the next cockroach-infested filthy squat-bog stop, one English bloke was so cold, he took the 'staff' blankets hostage, and threatened to keep them if they didn't open the boot to allow us get out more clothes to wear. The (until this point) laughing driver's face suddenly dropped and he grudgingly opened the boot. When the rain stopped and Claire could go back to her seat, it was only the persistant twin-tone air-horn blasting we had to suffer.

After 14 hours, we finally arrived in Hue, where we had a thoroughly pleasant few days indeed. Among other things we took a motorbike tour in temperatures of 35 degrees+ around the many pagodas and imperial mausoleums near Hue, and explored the enormous imperial Citadel, which still covers half the area of the town. Inside the citadel is the 'forbidden purple city', where the Emperor's many concubines lived, ate, slept and, well... concubined. The only people allowed inside of the compound other than the big man were his eunuchs - not considered much of a threat where the ladies were concerned. Most of the citadel is still in good condition, but predictably enough the most interesting bit (the forbidden city) was bombed into oblivion by our lovely friends the yanks.

Did we mention the yanks? While we're on the subject, we'll tell you about the De-Militarised Zone (that's "Dee Em Zee" to you), which formerly separated North and South Vietnam along the 17th parallel. During the American war (as the locals like to call it), this area was anything but de-militarised. We visited some surviving Ho Chi Minh tunnels in a coastal village (at certain points an impressive 25m deep): American planes had dropped 10,000 tonnes of bombs per square kilometre over the surrounding area (inlcuding all the ancient tribal villages in the way). Many of the bombs were 'digging' bombs, which explode once on the surface, then burrow into the tunnels and explode again. Thankfully in this case, none of the bombs made a direct hit on the tunnels, and many people (including 17 babies born in the tunnels) survived.

On leaving Hue for Danang (and the beach!), on another 'tourist' bus, we encountered an overturned lorry on a hairpin bend up a mountain and got stuck behind two trucks full of cows, tied to the roof of the trucks by their necks and noses! Not painful at all! Four hours late, we finally got to Danang, but we didn't actually get there because the bus only stopped 11km south in a little place called Ngon Noc or something or other. (It's a dirty old backwater next to five mountains, all made from different marble). I forget how to spell it. We're trying to forget the whole place to be honest. We got taken on wobbly bikes to a old concrete block of a hotel run by an old woman with the biggest, brownest Betel-nut-stained teeth you've ever seen, and checked in. Have you ever arrived somewhere and thought 'You on Bubba's land now'?. Well, let me tell you, Bubba don't just live in the mid-West US of A. He has his fingers in many proverbial pies. Indeed, I believe the land we were on was owned by his cousin Budda.

It rained... the beach was deserted and we were starving, so we went to the only restaurant we could see on the seafront. It was run by two giggly girls, and things were going just swell until (ten minutes after taking our order) they finally confessed that they had no food. We did eventually manage to get a plate of chips out of them after considerable effort. Still starving, we went past staggering quantities of marble sculptures (mainly of huge ugly lions) to another restaurant in the 'town'. Waiting for our food to arrive, Barney felt a strange sensation under the table. It was a dog... a micturating dog... indeed micturating right on his foot. When the food came, we were delighted to discover it was more dog... cooked dog... cooked dog that even the dog refused to eat... we know: we tried to make him scoff it as punishment for weeing on us! We stayed locked in our room that night, and couldn't even bring ourselves to venture out for dinner.

We spent the following morning trying to avoid the cheeky 18-year-old local who had been avidly following us since our arrival, intent on smiling cutely whilst lying to us about everything. After shaking him off (oo-er), we were fortunate enough to be picked up (while waiting for the bus) by a guy in an old car on his way to Hoi An. Since this was our chosen destination and he was charging less than the notorious 'tourist' bus, we had a most pleasant, spacious, comfortable journey down to Hoi An. Ahhh! Nice people, nice hotel, nice river, nice boat ride, nice tailor-made clothes and bags at very nice prices. So, we've had a bit of retail therapy to get over our hideous journeys and our encounter with freaksville and we're off for a ruby in a minute. Contentment has reached us at last. We're off to My Son tomorrow to see some Cham dynasty historical sights and then we're off to Nha Trang for a couple of days of R&R on the beach. As that all sounds rather too much like an easy life, we've gone and booked ourselves on THE NIGHT BUS... but this time, they assure us it's new, manufactured in 2001! And, they're picking us up first so we can choose the best seats! We'll see...

:: Barney 2:13 PM [+] ::
...

Viet Nam

(actually the locals spell it with a few more accents, but let's not split hairs)

Ha Noi & Halong Bay

(again, we'll overlook the accents thing)

We've spent a total of 4 days in this 'Hanoi pit of Hell'. So far we have both resisted the urge to stick our watches up our bums, so we are doing significantly better than Christopher Walken's GI pal in 'Pulp Fiction'. Instead we have been waking up early like good little tourists and leaving plenty of time to queue up and follow the hordes of bleeting Chinese tourists around the main sites. Before we go into that, it's worth going back to our first impressions of this place, as it is nothing like anywhere either of us have been before.

We flew into Hanoi from Vientiane on 5th August. We chose that day because the flight alternated between Lao Aviation (whose reputation is atrocious) and Vietnam Air. We were promised the latter, but at the last minute were herded onto the former, which gave us both the jitters. The plane had about 80 seats and two propellers, one of which seemed more eager to start up than the other. In any case, the flight turned out to be problem free, if a little uncomfortable, and the cardboard box full of 'food' was certainly entertaining... If a semi-raw heart-shaped fried egg, a segment of boot-leather and a green satsuma are to your taste that is. Having enjoyed the breathtaking scenery for 75 minutes, we stepped off the plane into an oven, albeit an extremely modern oven. After Vientiane airport, which boasted up to five flights a day, and had to be opened especially to allow us to check-in, Hanoi airport was like a 25th century space-station, with suited-and-booted business types inside and spanking new air-con minibuses lining up under the flyover outside. However, we soon realised that the people were up to the same old tricks. Within seconds of departing we had been approached by legions of touts offering taxis, buses, money and all sorts. In the end we got the tourist minibus, then the fun really began.

Vietnamese roads are like no others (n.b. We reserve the right to alter this statement when we get to Cambodia). Firstly, there are very few cars, so space is divided between motorbikes, buses and cyclos (bicycles with seats attached to the front – see current picture on homepage). Secondly, traffic lights, stop signs and other rules of the road are things which happen to someone else. Regardless of where you are and what right of way you have, bikes come at you from left, right and centre, and frequently from underneath too, judging by the number of abandoned crashed vehicles lining the way. This would be fine if numbers were limited, but with something like 10 bikes per head of population, it adds up to total chaos. To cross the road, you either wait for a suitable gap (and never move), or step out with your eyes closed and pray for dear life that they go round you.

Amongst all this chaos, however, Hanoi is a great place. There are more French colonial remnants than you can shake a stick at, but it still has a unique feel, and plenty of places to get away from it all. The Hoan Kiem lake is a real relief from the sticky, crowded higgledy-piggledy old town, and the 10th Century Temple of Literature (founded by no less than Confucius) is about as tranquil as it gets. On the historical side, we went to Hoa Lo Prison, which was set up by the French as a handy place for torturing locals who seemed to be getting too left wing for the colonialists’ liking, and which was later used by the Socialist government to hold captured American pilots. The US pilots called it the ‘Hanoi Hilton’. The real Hilton is down the same street, and it’s hard to say if this is grim irony or something else entirely. After the misery of the cells in death row and the gruseome French guillotine, amusement was provided by the proudly-displayed propaganda shots of smiling American pilots with brimming plates of food in front of them. Methinks the reality of the place was somewhat different.

The other big tourist trap is the area around Ho Chi Minh’s mausoleum. Apart from the sight of his waxy corpse (which is sent to Russia for 3 months a year for ‘maintenance’, in the grand old tradition of Lenin and co.), you can see the stilt house where your man Ho lived and worked, the gardens he strolled in, and there is even a museum dedicated to the struggle, the revolution and the successes of the Socialist government (which are many, compared to other Socialist states). You can even buy postcards of the great man pensively smoking a fag. Marvellous.

After 3 days in Hanoi we headed to the Aussie-run Kangaroo Café (they’re SO original with their names, these Aussies) and booked ourselves on a 3-day trip to Halong bay, on the coast to the East of Hanoi. Halong Bay is a collection of 3,000 islands and islets set in emerald waters. Once again, they are in a karst formation, so the steep slopes and death-defying forests which cling to the sides are breathtaking. There are numerous caves to explore, as well as a Monkey Island, where inquisitive monkey-taunting tourists can catch rabies for less than the price of a rabies jab. We resisted the temptation, and swam out to a deserted beach half a mile away, where we were able to enjoy the sight of washed up coke cans, fishing nets and polystyrene life-saving rings undisturbed by other tourists. The evening was when it all got a bit special though. When darkness fell, the boat was moored in the middle of the water, and after dinner we all jumped in from the roof of the boat. Every underwater movement produced a phosphorescent glittering effect, as the energy-filled plankton lit up. Apparently trhis only occurs in warm waters, but it is a truly impressive sight and all of us felt that this alone was worth the trip. We fell asleep on the deck of the boat feeling justifiably smug… Those of us who eat seafood were also treated to the delights of locally caught cuisine, and the crab in particular was as good as any that the ever-omnivorous Barney had ever sampled.

:: Barney 9:30 AM [+] ::
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GCSE paper 2: Lao P.D.R.

Luang Prabang, Vang Vieng, Vientiane

Answer all of the following questions, with an emphasis on tedium. Ensure that your readers are left exasperated and fatigued by your work. You have 16 hours.

(1.) Did you find Luang Prabang to be:

a) A charming, eccentric French colonial-style town, with balconied houses overlooking a multitude of bakeries, cafés and restaurants?

b) Based at the confluence of two of Lao’s most important rivers, the Nam Khan and the Mekong?

c) A lovely relaxing place to while away a couple of days, with stunning waterfalls and caves nearby, as well as a hilltop Wat with 360 degree birds-eye views of the town and the sunset enveloping it, not to mention a opportunely-timed rainbow (see pictures in Gallery)?

d) An intergalactic series of milky ways, amusingly forming into the shape of a horse’s arse?

(2.) a) Did you at any time in Luang Prabang, go and see a local show, presented by the least-charismatic man on Earth in broken English and French over an inaudibly distorted loudspeaker?

b) During this show, were you presented to all the ‘actors’ by name and age? For 2 bonus points, were you amused by the fact that the oldest of the actors was 89 years old and named Mr Old? Were you impressed when Mr Old performed a dance holding a 20-litre gourd full of water between his crumbling teeth?

(3.) Moving onto Vang Vieng: On which of the following occasions were you left with the greatest proportion of your muscular and skeletal systems in abject agony?

a) The “bus”-ride from Luang Prabang to Vang Vieng? (For a bonus ten points, describe conditions on the bus.)

A staggering 5-inches legroom between the seats (don’t ask how we measured it). A 200km, 7-hour rollercoaster ride, stopping strangely after 6-hours for the long-awaited ‘mid-way’ break. On average, one landslide per km of mountainous, poorly-paved road. Some of the landslides had obliterated the road, leaving only a mud-track, and others were still being shoveled as we drove over them. All part of the experience though…

b) The “activity” day with a group of 12 “enthusiasts” from England, Ireland, Australia and Korea, consisting of kayaking, inner-tubing down the fast-flowing river and into a cave with only inches of headroom, not to mention bats and spiders… Oh, and the 2-hour crawl (sometimes on your stomachs) through the pitch black cave, with jagged wet rocks and silt under you, clutching a candle between your teeth for dear life? Not to mention the jumping off an Indiana Jones-style rope bridge, and some more kms of kayaking, in the process of which nearly losing the Irish contingent in the rapids, sparking a panicked hour-long rescue mission? (For a bonus ten points, describe the barbecued catbabs served up for lunch by the “traditional” Lao villagers in their “traditional” bamboo hut?)

Mmmmmm… Yummy…

c) The time you ate that dodgy green curry and were left with battery-acid bum for the next 3 sodding days?

d) The life-or-death scrabble through the rucksack in the pitch black to find the Imodium?

(4.) In your experience, is Vientiane:

a) The least-convincing capital city you’ve ever seen?

b) A city with only two buildings containing lifts?

c) The muddiest, most open-sewered city in Buddendom?

d) Just over the Mekong from Thailand?

e) Actually quite charming, with cool, friendly monk dudes desperate to practice their English, and who then take you on an impromptu visit inside their temple, and get Buddha to predict your future (for a modest fee), using only a small red stick.

f) All of the above.

This is the end of the Lao P.D.R. paper 2 test.
:: Barney 1:02 PM [+] ::
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Luang Prabang

A few facts about the Lao Peoples' Democratic Republic:

• It is one of the World's ten poorest countries


• It is neither Democratic, nor does it belong to the people, yet they all seem incredibly happy with their lot, and very kind to farangs (Western tourists) for no better reason than it's nicer to be kind than not.


• It has the dubious honour of being the World's most-bombed country ever. During the 9 years of the Vietnam war, the Americans secretly dumped the equivalent of one tonne of bombs every nine minutes, night and day. Most of the cluster bombs and landmines are still uncleared, making country walks just that little bit hairy...


• There are only 2 paved roads in Lao. Until recently, bandits plied the routes, holding everyone travelling on Route 13 at gunpoint. Thankfully, this has been stopped and the roads are safe again.


• Beer Lao is absolutely magic. It don't be giving you a hangover or nuttin. Oh, and the banana and chocolate pancakes (at 30p a pop) are a God-send too.
  

  
  We had written pages of interesting stuff about Luang Prabang here, but somehow the computer managed to delete it all. You'll have to wait till we can afford to come back and re-write it...
  :: Barney 2:13 PM [+] ::
  ...

Lao Peoples' Democratic Republic

Pakbeng

This is a tiny two-pig riverside transit town which seems to exist solely as a stop-off point halfway between Chiang Kong in Thailand and Luang Prabang in Lao P.D.R. It could be a lovely place, providing the perfect resting place to break up the 2-day long river journey. However, it consists of some seriously grotty rat-infested guesthouses-cum-brothels and a load of drug dealers. Our only option was to check into the only place which looked remotely inhabitable, the overpriced hotel on the riverfront. It was one of the poshest places in town, boasting electricity for up to four hours per evening, and occasional hot water through the shower hose (this is rare in any guesthouse, so it was welcome). It even had its own restaurant, although if they didn't have what you wanted, they just slapped something else down in front of you and grunted. Still, the views made up for this. In any case we were back on the boat before 9am and off to lovely Luang Prabang.
:: Barney 1:39 PM [+] ::
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Chiang Mai and Chiang Khong

Chiang Mai is reckoned to be the capital of northern Thailand. It's a reasonably big city, and the old part of town is bordered by a moat in a perfect square shape, giving it a nice manageable feel. The most anal fact about this town is that in 87% of its area, you are never more than 93 metres from the nearest Wat (Buddhist temple). Graeme, Gordon and the two of us had many a drunken discussion about the relevance of 93 metres. The only satisfactory solution was that it is the distance travelled by a spinning monk, when you grab him by his (bright orange) robe, and twirl him round like a spinning top. We have yet to scientifically test this theory.

We arrived in Chiang Mai at 6.04am and were whisked in our semi-conscious state from the train station to a remarkably cheap guest house called Lanna's. There we were greeted by the extremely bubbly and worryingly over-enthusiastic Julie (renamed Me Julie before we left). Julie is the only person over the age of 30 I've ever met who can shout 'Hey baby! Gimme five! Me love you long time!' at 6 in the morning, and actually sound like she means it! Anyway, she proceeded to ply us with copious free coffee until we were wired. Then she began the hard sell on her trek... Chiang Mai is a centre for trekking, and each guest house competes to offer the most exciting 3-day adventures. If you signed up for Lanna's trek, the room was half price (a quid a night), and if you didn't sign up, then you didn't stay at Lanna's. Or as Me Julie put it: 'some people real snob, you know? I tell them fuck off stay at posh hotel! Sorry for my language. I don't care I naughty'. Anyway, as it turned out, Lanna's was one of the better ones, with a friendly group (we ended up spending around a week hanging out with them), and knowledgable guides. The itinerary was: 1st day: elephant trek followed by hike up the mountain to visit the Laho hill tribe, and overnight in a bamboo hut. 2nd day: Hike to waterfall, 3rd day: Hike to bamboo rafting station. Raft down to white-water rafting centre, then drive back. Unfortunately we never made it past day two, as a bit of food poisoning meant that we had to go back to Chiang Mai. However, the 4x4 truck which took us down the steep, pitted and soaking wet mud-track more than made up for any missed excitement on the rafts. The only other casualty apart from the food poisoning was Grame's eye. Having made it safely through the trek, he, Gordon, us two and the rest of the 12-strong group went out to enjoy a couple of halves of shandy. Five bottles of whisky later, one guy was so drunk he ended up paying 1,000 Baht (17 quid) for a taxi back to hostel... which was next door. Graeme mysteriously awoke (2 days later) looking like he'd gone ten rounds with Tyson. Despite his claims that it was an old injury which had been re-aggravated, we are convinved that he tried it on with Gairdie in a moment of madness, and got a less than enthusiastic reception.

Another notable Chiang Mai feature was a Wat up on a hill 20 kms outside the town, which offered amazing views of the city, together with the opportunity to witness arrogant Dutch tourists kicking donation boxes out the way, then standing in front of Buddha statues, crotch in hand, for a 'hilarious' photo opportunity. The taxi which took us up the nauseatingly windy road to the Wat proudly announced the services of a 'minibus to Mae Rim' which had us in stitches for, ooh, minutes. In 'Mae Rim', one could apparently see an Elephant conservation centre (whose slogan was: 'Where smily faces and happy elephants are making the daily scenario'), as well as a monkey school where happy, fulfilled (oh, and chained-up) monkies learnt to ride bikes and romp for the pleasure of the adults watching. So many activities in such a confined space!

We indulged in a few recovery days, divided between tours of the town and watching ripped-off DVDs in the hostel (the DVDs are actually recordings made with a digital camera inside a local cinema, so they come complete with coughs and snorts from the audience). We then caught a bus to Chiang Kong, which is up near the golden triangle - where the borders of Thailand, Burma and Lao meet - and stayed in a lovely guesthouse overlooking the impressive Mekong river. This was followed by a 2-day boat trip down to Luang Prabang in Lao, where we arrived this afternoon. The boat itself was a rickety old thing with a couple of benches, but it was overcrowded, so most of us were left languishing on the floor for 6 hours at a time. The stunning scenery, games of pontoon and cheely banter from our co-travellers made it an unforgettable experience, even if we only had a bag of crisps and 4 Dairylea cheese triangles to see us through the day!

:: Barney 2:51 PM [+] ::
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Ayuttaya

I believe that the French refer to to towns like Ayuttaya as a 'sheet 'ole'. Unfortunately the English translation escapes me at the moment. This was one of the most soulless, dirty, two-bit, stinking horrible towns either of us have ever visited. One of the few guesthouses which made it into the Lonely Planet with a positive review ('hospitable') turned out to be the least hospitable of any that we have visited. The heat was searing on the day we arrived, so we agreed to pay twice the going rate for a room with air-con, but even this was rubbish - attached to the wall with parcel tape and clunking all night. As we went up to sleep, the surly owner's wife (American bloke, Thai lady. You work it out), told us in her best broken English to 'blow out candles on first floor. I cannot be arse to do it.' To cap it all off the house was littered with what appeared to be the corpses of former emplyees who had been abandoned where they fell. Oh, and there was no running water in the bathroom. What fun!

Despite its unfortuante guesthouses, Ayuttaya deservedly retains its UNESCO World Heritage Site classification largely because of its collection of top-class Wats. These buddhist temples are remnants of the days when Ayuttaya was the capital of Siam. Over the course of history they were repeatedly sacked, looted and burned by crazed Burmese hordes, until the Siamese eventually got bored and relocated the capital to Thonburi (and then over the river into Bangkok). However, enough remnants have survived to make the temples truly stunnning. In one of them, tree-roots have grown around a Budha's head, so it looks like it's carved into the bark. All of the temples are surrounded by crab-apple trees. Allegedly the invading Burmese troops used to fill up on crab-apples, which would lead to a spot of the Rangoon runnies. New trees then sprouted in the spots where they gave birth to their little brown babies. One can only conclude that the Burmese excrete in remarkably neat rows.

After making a hasty exit from Ayuttaya, we boarded an overnight train 700km North to Chiang Mai. Not only did we have fresh sheets and pillows, but they served us a hot a-la-carte meal in the evening, and charged only eight squid each, all-in. Ah... it makes you proud to be British! Chaing Mai is like a return to civilsation, and we'll be based here for a few days. On the morning of the 18th we are off trekking for three days in the Thai/Burmese border region, thankfully some way from where the cross-border shellings have occurred. We'll be elephant trekking, bamboo rafting and white-water rafting. As if that wasn't exciting enough, we'll be doing it in the company of our long-lost mates Graeme and Gordon. Both are looking very rugged after 10 months travelling the world, but have retained their inimitable sense of humour (last night treating a bar-load of people to their highly original interpretation of 'Bohemian rhapsody'). Gordon was last seen disappearing with two Dutch beauties, and you'll have to keep glued to your screens to find out what happens next. In any case, we'll be getting snap-happy with the digicam, and we'll share the results with you asap.
:: Barney 10:42 AM [+] ::
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Kanchanaburi

On 10th July we took the two hour bus-ride to the town of Kanchanaburi, famed for the 'Bridge on the River Kwai' along the WWII Death Railway. The town itself was so instantly appealing that within five minutes of arriving we extended our stay to two days, although this wasn't enough. We stayed in a lovely river-side guesthouse called the Jolly Frog, apparently named after the leagues of giggling frogs hidden in the reeds along the riverbanks.

On the bus we hooked up with an extremely cool wiseguy art-teacher (half Yorkshireman half Italian) called James Petrucci. James has a lot in common with us, not least because of his penchant for reciting movie quotes ad nauseam, and fantasising about acts of extreme violence against unscrupulous bar-owners who put Backstreet Boys on the jukebox. But his piece de resistance was the question: What's the biggest animal you could kill with your bare hands, wearing only a loincloth? After convincing us all that he could 'do' most household animals, and even dispose of a giraffe in seconds (without even kicking its face off), he then sh*t his pants at the first dog that barked within a mile of him. Respeck.

We had heard rumours of a number of spectacular waterfalls near Kanchanaburi, and quickly decided to hire a vehicle to get us around. Not only did we quickly rule out mopeds, but we managed to keep it street and impress all the chicks by landing ourselves a BMW. After we'd signed the rental 'agreement' (with clauses such as 'You will not allow more than 8 people in the vehicle at any one time), we discovered that it was equipped with a Toyota engine, and a slightly less than linear steering wheel - but hey - you can't have it all. By way of compensation, we discovered it had not only an overdrive button, but also a voice box with a smooth American lilt, and a habit of calling me 'Michael'. Actually, that's not quite true, but it did have a tape of Thai techno-pop called 'Can Can Dance', so we were happy. On the first day we made it to San yok noi, where we showered under the falls, and explored the caves, one of which mysteriously contained some life-size buddhas, bats and rapacious mozzies.

On our return to the guest house, Barney stumbled into the bathroom, and lazily opened the loo seat to discover a positive army of cockroaches feasting on an earlier skid... (bear in mind these places have no flush - just bowls of water which you slosh into the offending area and hope for the best). Delighted by the light flooding over them, they scampered out of the bowl and made good with their legs across open bog-floor. We decided not to prove our animal-killing claims, and opted for changing rooms instead. That night we sat on a jetty over the river Kwai, drinking beer, listening to the frogs and watching the bats zig-zag in front of our faces. Suitably awed by our surroundings, and with enough beer in us to kill a small army, we decided to walk the 100 metres or so to the famous Bridge in the River Kwai. The 100 metres turned out be more like two miles, but we had choccie ice creams and a discussion about cake and giraffes to occupy us so it went in a flash. We staggered over the precarious planks of wood which constitute the footpath along the bridge, fully in the knowledge that one slip could end it all, and then we staggered back. We froze with fear every time we heard a car horn or an engine, fearing the approcach of a 1,000-tonne Intercity125, but with the Thai railway service being somewhat less efficient than its gleaming British counterpart, we lived. This time. We were somewhat humbled the following day, when we visited the town's JEATH Museum - bizarre acronym, great museum - and saw the exhibits showing the reality of life for the tens of thousands of allied POWs who were forced by the Japanese army to build the railway through Siam to Burma. The project, which should have taken several years, was completed in only 15 months. This was due to the horrendous overworking of the POWs, who were underfed and left to die of malaria and untreated ulcers in their thousands. Many of those who survived were made to stand on the bridge and wave to the British bombers who came along to destroy the bridge at the end of the War. The railway is known as 'Death Railway', because it is thought that one prisoner died for every sleeper laid along the route.

Feeling distinctly lucky at our easy existence and the peace and beauty around Kanchanaburi today, we headed off in the Beemer for another set of waterfalls. The Erewan falls consist of seven stepped falls, each one more beautiful and more inaccessible than the last. The water was Elsan-blue, and we couldn't resist jumping in for a swim. However, the plunge pools were jam-packed with fish (I swear they were sharks...) which surrounded us and nipped at our arms and legs constantly. Claire handled this with her customary laid-back panache but Barney and James saw the 'kisses' as distinctly more threatening. After making a show of getting out, the lads reasserted their masculinity with talk of gunishing the little bastards.

On our second night we settled into possibly the greatest bar in the universe. Owned by an Englishman who insisted that if we came back on his birthday he would take us on a bikeride and show us some dragons, the bar had a lounge area with Thai reclining cushions, and FREE POOL all night. Claire meanwhile mastered the art of Jenga and whooped the asses of a group of Israeli girls sitting nearby.

On our return to Bangkok, we stopped at a converted VW-Camper cum ladyboy cocktail bar on the Khao San Road, where the 'waitresses' served up a series of lurid liquids, and charmed the tourists with their feminine wiles. While chatting to the bar's owner (who also claimed to be the Thai national tennis trainer and had the Wimbledon badge to prove it), we were interrupted by an Israeli couple (my, my they get everywhere these Israelis). He gathered a group of lads together and produced a bag of fried grass-hoppers. The last one to eat one had to buy a round. Claire slyly offered to be official photographer, and so myuggins here ended up scoffing the spicy, and somewhat crispy remains of the insect. The guy's girlfriend insisted they tasted of peanuts, but later admitted she hadn't blinking well tried them. Anyway, she was wrong - they tasted much more like, well, fried grasshoppers. Nice.

Next stop is the former Capital city of Ayuttaya. In the meantime, we have posted a selection of photos in the Gallery section. Check them out, and keep on emailing us!
:: Barney 4:01 PM [+] ::
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Thailand:

Bangkok and Ko Samet

Bangkok is relentlessly hot, sticky and polluted. You don't so much breathe air as inhale liquidised brussel sprouts through a straw. But it's also cool: chick-boys, cheap Chang beer, and a whole load of cheeky chappies selling bargain merchandise along the touristy Kao San Road make for a welcome change from London. Oh, and having absolutely no responsibility to anyone but ourselves is helping the sprouts go down more easily too.

Since being reunited with our baggage (frankly only about 14 seconds after the last diary entry), we have taken it easy, chilling in the hotel pool at the Asia, and tragically sleeping through the (pricey) breakfast buffet on our second day. We then realised the Asia was a rip-off and moved into the Kao San Road area, forgoing air-con comforts for the 'grittier' real-life experience of a fan-only box-room. The experience was made even more authentic by the hordes of English tw*ts outside the window howling 'Don't look back in anger' at 4 in the morning, and countless cockerels who seemed to think that dawn happens at least once every 20 minutes. And that was between tuk-tuk beeps and their screeching 30cc hairdryer engines.

After our sleepless night, we left on a 'luxury B.I.P.' minibus for Samet Island, where we've been hiding out until today. Among its many treasures, this 'paradise' (their words) island offers endless low-budget pirate Hollywood classics (such as 'Not another teen movie' featuring the smashing Molly Ringwald and Mr T as the teens' top-of-screen mentor), malaria-positive mossies, gheckos (Ooh what a feeling... Gheckos dancing on the ceiling). We also hooked up with another Clare and spent a few days frolicking on the beach and being massaged by special Thai ladies with hands that most certainly don't do dishes. The only problem was the sand/corporal orifice interface - the gents are bound to suffer from a condition known as a 'Sandy Baby' ('Oh - Sandy Bay-ee-bee! Can't you see? I'm in misery...'), whereas the ladies suffer from the distinctly uglier female strain, known as the 'Sandy Toksvig'. As to animal infestations, the only time we had any trouble it culminated in a celebrity insect death-match, of which Barney was the sound victor. If you don't believe me, check out the 'Gizards of Moz' in our beach hut, which serve as a permanent warning to other insects with big ideas.

On our return to Bangkok, we decided to stay in the tourist area again, but we've found a place with a pool to ease the pain of all the shopping and eating. On the way to the internet cafe this evening we bumped into possibly the most idiotic human being on the planet. For the sake of authenticity, we'll annotate the conversation. Imagine an overweight, hairy, red bulbous-nosed bloke (no, not Barney, I mean our interlocutor) who comes from Melbourne, with an over-enthusiastic voice which betrayed his naivete (a bit like that bloke from Strictly Ballroom - Al what's his name?):


Oz bloke: Hey! Have you guys been approached by any tuk-tuk drivers offering to take you round the city for a day for 20 Baht? (about 30p)

Claire: Yup - they take you to jewellery shops then rip you off with cheap jewels. It's the biggest scam in the book. Everyone knows about it.

Oz bloke:Yeah, yeah, that's the fella. That's what I thought.

Barney: Why, have you got a tuk-tuk driver waiting for you outside?

Oz bloke:No, no, course not mate. No, it's just that we had one earlier that said Thai people could buy huge sapphires once a year, and sell them abroad for twice the price. They've just opened it to tourists this week.Apparently, we could pay for our holiday with every purchase.

Barney and Claire: Yup. It's a classic scam. Most of the hotels hand you a written warning about it at check-in. You're not thinking of doing it are you?

Oz bloke: (nervous Ozzie chuckle) Well, it seemed too good to be true...

Claire: So, you've done it then..?

Oz bloke: Well, we didn't actually pick up the sapphires. They told us they were too valuable to carry around, so they'd send them direct to Melbourne (knowing wink to Barney).

Barney: So, did you get a government-authorised receipt you can show the police?

Oz bloke: Yeah, yeah.

Oz sheila: Well, no. We saw the receipt, but they put it in the pile with all the rest from other tourists.

Barney: How much did you spend then?

Oz bloke: 5,500.

Barney: What - 5,500 Baht?

Oz sheila: No... dollars.

At this point they were both still smiling and chuckling. Although they were obviously stupid enough to hand all their cash to a complete stranger without a receipt, we managed to resist the temptation to rob them blind, and instead came down here to, well, laugh. Oh and neck a big Chang.

Tomorrow, we're off to Kanchanaburi, the town where they built the legendary bridge over the River Kwai (erm... that's Khwae aksherly). On our return we have a 2-hour window before our 'B.I.P' night-bus to Chiang Mai. I understand the hill tribes in that region survive on three main sources of income: Grain, something else and opium. How utterly scandalous and reprehensible.

:: Barney 1:43 PM [+] ::
...

I know you've all gnawed your fingers to the bone with worry by now, but I'm afraid I have to reveal that none of your plans to saw through the plane's brake cables have come to anything. Yep - we're in Bangkok. We're currently luxuriating in the faux charm of the Asia hotel-cum-accomoplexatron, although our luggage wasn't quite so lucky. Following a late arrival in Singapore at God knows what time this morning, we had only 15 minutes to transfer to the Bangkok flight, and the luggage handlers didn't quite share our urgency. Nevertheless, we have been assured that our bags will be at the hotel by 5.30pm... which is slightly worrying as it's 7pm already.

As my head is about to explode from not sleeping for 36 hours, I'll sign off for now. The Pruszynska has just turned up, and appears to be pant-wettingly excited about the prospect of a Thai massage and a quick flight to Oz to see her simeon boyfriend. Best go and get us a beer really. TTFN Barney and Claire.
:: Barney 12:02 PM [+] ::
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Thanks to everyone who came to the Carlton / CICO leaving do at the Nordic bar, and the follow-up party at the Corner Store. If you want to see the grisly evidence, check out the Picture gallery section of the site, where I've put together a selection of the choicest and most incriminating photos.

Claire and I are eternally humbled by the effort you made, and we can't wait to see you all again when we finally stagger back. It took a couple of years to get us all in the same room together this time. Next time, let's get it sorted a bit quicker... Anyone who's going to be anywhere on our route over the next 12 months, get in touch and we'll do all we can to meet up.
:: Barney 5:37 PM [+] ::
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[Boz]: Following the Foreign Office's recent advice to avoid all travel to India, we're in the process of re-routing our tickets. Our leaving date has changed to 30th June. First stop will be Bangkok, and thence to Cambodia where we hope to meet up with the tattered and bedraggled remains of Astro and Gairdy. The plan is to projectile vomit our way around South-East Asia for four months in total. (I'm told there is some excellent money to be made speculating in Diamonds in that part of the world - all you have to do is leave a deposit in a Thai bank, they sell you the jewels at bargain prices, then you sell 'em on for millions when you get back home. What could be better for a novice traveller? Make friends and money in one fell swoop. Brilliant!). Then, after a few weeks surfing and "chilling" with the trustafarian brigade in Bali we'll head off to Sydney at the beginning of November. Chunki, better stick some shrimps on the barbie and chill us a couple of stubbies, mate. Bloody ripper... erm... cobber... erm... you flamin' mongrel etc.

Just a thought: Are Ozzie school swimming competitions called Swimming Galahs? Coat, got, leaving now.
:: Barney 10:57 AM [+] ::
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