Singapore

Hello and welcome to... the next blog. As I've probably rambled about earlier, I had to get back to Bangkok after Indonesia in order to get my flight to New Zealand, so I decided to breakt the journey up with a few days in Singapore. My preconceptions of the place were: It is an ultra-controlled totalitarian police state, where you can get flogged for chewing gum and shot for jaywalking (by a Judge Dredd-lookalike), and it is a concrete block floating off the bottom of Malaysia. Which intrigued me. Plus a friend had told me that the food was good, so hey hey.

There is a bit of history to the place - the British were defeated at Singapore by the Japanese in WWII, and a lot of allies got rounded up and killed rather than taken prisoner (the Japanese saw surrender as a cowardly act). The Chinese seem to have got it worse, many were beheaded. My maternal grandfather was one of the "lucky" ones who didn't get killed, and instead got to work in a copper mine on Formosa (now Taiwan) for his troubles. He did survive that though. There is not a great deal of history apparent in the city now - it is all wide roads, cars (though the traffic is not very heavy at all), shiny public transport (and cheap), and absolutely hundreds of expensive malls selling designer goods. As far as it being a police state, the most obvious restriction was on smoking, with smoking outside seemingly restricted to certain areas with ashtrays available. Also there is no eating or drinking on public transport. I didn't actually see any police, maybe they were undercover, but I also did not see hardly any CCTV cameras, certainly not as many as in the UK. People do seem very well behaved there, they all wait patiently for the pedestrian crossings to change to green.

I stayed in the Mitraa hostel (very nice, great staff) which is on the edge of the little India district. On seeing the rest of the city I reckon this was the best place to stay, as it was very lively, lots of cerremonies going on (both Hindu and Chinese/Buddhist) and there were tonnes of cheap food places, with loads of vege options. Food is cheap, but drink is expensive - I had my first pint for 3 months in the Prince of Wales pub, cost me $12, or 6 of yer British pounds. So nearly as expensive as Paris. I had three days there, one to wander around the city, one to visit the zoo, and one to go to the MacKenzie reservoir, which runs into the Bukit Timah nature reserve, this is a patch of native rainforest in the centre of the island.

The zoo was great, many of the animals were almost free ranging, including some of the monkeys. My favourites were the probiscus monkeys, marmosettes, otters, cheetahs, giant tortoises and the absolutely huge python. But the best was the baby komodo dragon, I don't think there are any more of these in the world in captivity! He was very active (makes a change to the usual reptile house were they just lie there) but he stayed still long enough for me to get a couple of shots:
I also saw the big daddy komodo:

The reservoir/nature reserve walk was also good, and was a great cheap day out. I didn't even pay for lunch as I'd taken some extra boiled eggs and fruit from the hostel breakfast. There were lots of wild macaques out, and I saw a really thin snake. There are apparently Pangolins living there (anteaters) but as they're nocturnal its no surprise I didn't see them. I walked part of teh way with some locals which was interesting, they asked a lot about business and football! By teh way, everyone speaks English in Singapore. My favourite part of the walk was the tree-top bridges on the MacKenzie nature trail:

Next time: NZ!

Bali

Hello and welcome to Indonesia part 2. I wrote most of this in Singapore airport, great to have free internet. Blogger is a pain though when trying to stick pictures in, the only way I can do them is to upload them then gradually pull them down through the file, no way to put them in at the cursor or even to pull and scroll at once. Bah. The bold text refers to the few pics I've put in.

After visiting Mt Bromo I paid for a combined bus/ferry ticket back to Denpasar. When I'd first crossed into Java it was night-time so I couldn't see anything; I was glad to see it in the daytime on the way back as the scenery is amazing all the way. The sun was setting during the ferry trip, and the backdrop of volcanoes, ships and the multi-coloured sky was fantastic.


I made a couple of friends on the bus, an Aussie lad and a girl from Munich. Having a chat really helps survive the trip. The expected time of arrival was about 8pm, of course it turned out to be more like midnight. Luckily the minibus only had six people in it - I'd hate to do that trip in a packed out bus. We didn't want to stay in Denpasar so we paid an extra 20,000 rupiah each (about 1 pound 30) to be taken down to Kuta beach. I was expecting a Ko Pha Ngan kind of affair, a couple of bars and some baungalows, but the place is a lot more developed than that, and a hell of a lot noisier. We hauled our bags around the poppies gangs and finally scored some rooms at the Taman Makar II. Quite a good place actually, not in the LP but it has large rooms, a balcony, breakfast included, a bathtub in the room and a minah bird (or a talking bird at least) in the courtyard. The bird could say "hello", "good morning" and make an ach-choo sneeze noise.

Suffice to say we went out and got hammered that night, and the next. For a country with fairly strict drug laws there was a lot of people selling stuff on the street; Best avoided as a) the stuff will be shite and b) there's probably a copper lurking in the background waiting to fine you. Mostly they were selling Ephinedrine tablets, I think thats something they give to people with heart conditions. Our first meal there was at the street stalls by the Poppies club; my Aussie friend indicated that the area we were in was were the bomb had gone off - so that was why there was a bit of derelict land in between two buildings! Apart from getting wasted, we did a bit of surfing on Kuta beach. For me it was a first, and after half an hour I'd only managed to get up on one knee, get very frustrated and get stuck in a rip-tide - that was quite hairy.

After my friends went their separate ways I spent a couple of days in Ubud, in the centre of Bali. It was good to do yoga everyday and not smoke or drink. There's not much to do there, there's a lot of spas and fairly pricey restaurants (though there's cheap vege food too), and tons of art shops. In fact, from walking around the place, it seems every road leading to Ubud is lined with art/craft/tat shops for about 5 miles. There is a couple of nice rice paddy walks up by the north of the town.

It seems every night in Ubud there is a Hindu festival or ceremony, lots of people parading down the street, with some playing the eerie gamelan music. There are also nightly performances, one of which I attended involved a man wearing a wooden horse kicking over flaming coconut shells. I also visited the botanic gardens which were a nice way to spend an afternoon, virtually in solitude.




One thing about south-east Asia is, the souvenir stalls in the tourist places invariably sell the same things. Its crazy to walk down a street with people saying "You want to buy something" and its the same crap as the place next door. I mean, who would want to buy a wooden dildo? I did get one thing - a wooden demon mask, its extremely ugly and I don't know what the hell I'm going to do with it. I've not seen anywhere selling football shirts for the Asian national teams - that would be a good souvenir. All you get are the English ones!

I finished my Bali tour off by going further up north to Bedugal (there is a nice temple by a lake).

From there I walked over the hills and past some more lakes to the village of Munduk.

I think there is a lot of nice walking possible around Munduk, but I had got a blister on the ball of my left foot so I just sort of hobbled from one end of the town and back. Its basically a strip of houses alongside a road running down a fairly steep hill. There are nice views either side of hills, forests, paddy fields and the ocean is visible in the distance. There are a couple of basic Warungs (restaurants), I got a nice tofu/beansprout/satay dish and my first beer for almost a week. Nice for a stop-off if you just want a quiet place.

Finally I had to charter a Bemo van to get me out of Munduk, which cost about a tenner. It doesn't sound a lot but transport and accomodation were relatively expensive in Indonesia compared to the other SE Asia countries I had visited. I went up to Lovina as a lot of travellers that I had met seemed to be heading there. When I arrived I took a tour (again, just me and the driver - and doing the tourist thing which I'd told myself I wouldn't do anymore). We visited the Gitgit waterfalls, which was nice but you know, its another waterfall (none have topped the Kuang Si by Luang Prabang yet).

Then we went to a buddhist monastery on a hill, which was very tranquil and scenic, I didn't see any monks though so I don't know if its a working place or not (my driver did not understand what I meant by monk!). I think its the only buddhist temple on Bali.

The best thing we did was go to the hot springs, another first for me, bathing in faintly egg-smelling warm water was good fun.

I went to Lovina beach afterwards to watch the sunset. The beach is made up of grey volcanic rock, and I got hassled constantly from vendors; also the bars seemed quite expensive there, and the only other tourists where old Dutch couples or single men. And there was a tropical storm so I missed the sunset and didn't get any sleep - I've never heard thunder so loud, the noise went inside me like the kick of a bass drum when you stand next to the speakers in a club.

And after another night in Kuta (supposed to be quiet, but stayed up til 4AM in Piggys bar on Poppies II, my favourite, live music and open mic with the man Rene) I caught a plane to Singapore, which is were I am now. I've nearly caught up with myself! Oh yes. Next time: Singapore zoo!

Thailand to Indonesia (Java)

Hello again, I hope your cobblers are nice and toasty. When I left of I was in Pai, north of Thailand. I changed my travel plans slightly, rather than going to NZ from Bangkok I decided that I wanted to see a bit of Indonesia so had booked some cheap Air Asia flights from Bangkok to Bali. My next flight was to NZ from Bangkok, so I'd have to come back to Thailand after Indonesia. On the way down to Bangkok I stopped off at Sukhothai, one of the old capitals, and spent a pleasant day cycling around the temple ruins.
I'd met someone who was travelling down to one of the islands in the south of Thailand, so I decided to go along, as I wanted to check out Ko Pha Ngan anyway. It was a long journey, and I ended up only getting 4 days on the island. A relatively expensive place, maybe it wasn't worth it for such a small time. I did stay on Hat Rin though, which is the most touristy part. I spent most of the mornings walking up in the jungle behind the resort. Some nice views, and I followed trails that led to other beaches, including Leela beach, my favourite.

I saw a bit of wildlife too. And not just at the Black Moon party.
Next stop was Bali, via a not very interesting plane journey to Bangkok. Waiting 8 hours in an airport sucks! I decided to avoid Kuta at first, the beach resort on the south of Bali, as I'd heard only bad things about it. I had one night in Denpasar, the island capital, which was interesting as there were no tourists there at all. I managed to order food with the help of a local man (Nasi Goreng - fried rice). After that I went on the computer and wrote down a lot of Indonesian language that I thought would be useful. Going to Indonesia was a random decision and I hadn't planned at all, no guidebook, nothing. I soon found out there was quite a few vege meals, probably my favourite was Gado Gado, mixed vegetable with peanut sauce. I only had 2 and a half weeks so I did a lot of travelling there. Unfortunately I arrived in Februrary, the rainiest month, which is the worst month for going to the Komodo National park. So I had to come up with a different plan.

First I took an overnight bus to Yogjakarta as I wanted to check out Borobudur. It was okay for a day trip, the fun thing to do is to look in the giant stone bells on the top, and try to touch the Buddha statues inside (apparently for good luck - what else?).

The city was Yogjakarta was quite cool, there is a palace surrounded by a walled village area, and an interesting market street. I headed back to Bali via Mount Bromo national park. I only saw a small area of the park. From the village of Cemaro Lawang I got taken up in a jeep at 3am up to the viewing platform to see the sunrise over the volcanoes.
Then we did a short hike up to the Bromo crater rim.
Another "with hindsight". I'd booked a bus to Cemaro Lawang as part of a tour. I met some people on the bus to Bali who had just turned up and hiked up it with a local guide from the hotel, I think that would have been better, I only got the morning in Bromo and a few more days would have been nice. Of course, when I first booked the transport the agent said it was not possible to do it independently. I decided after that experience to do no more tours, in fact staying clear of touristy stuff altogether. Well I almost managed it... (Bali next time!)

Trekking in Pai

I signed up for an overnight trek from Pai into the nearby national park. This involved a stay in the jungle and visits to villages of three different hill-tribes. I used Backtrax as I had read that they were reputable. The trek worked out to 800B per day.


There was only me and an Austrian couple, Stephanie and Fabia, and our guide, Cha. We took a public bus from Pai up to the Lisu village at the entrance to the national park (1hr from Pai). The roads are very steep there, at one point our young bus driver could not handle it and had the bus rolling backwards down the hill, luckily a more experienced guy was on hand. A bit of a hairy start to the day. From the Lisu village it was a two hour walk to the Karen village, where our guide was from. The Karen village was nice (picture above), each house has its own garden area and there were a lot of fruit trees and flowers. I learnt the Karen for hello (Um-a-chub-a) and thank you (Tah Bleu). Although the houses were very basic, they had electricity courtesy of generators and government-donated solar panels. There were also several English football shirts on display. Mr Cha hooked up with his cousin (and two dogs), we had lunch (noodle stir fry) and then walked further into the forest.


The scenery was good - the stepped fields used for growing rice, lots of hills in the distance. Quite an arid environment at that time of year (early February), but still some nice vistas.


On the way our guide and his cousin hunted for lunch. There wasn't much in the way of bird noises in the forest, but they managed to get a tiny bird and a squirrel, using a combination of a slingshot and basic-looking rifle. They also showed us how to make fire using just bamboo, which was cool (it involved two halves of bamboo, some shavings for tinder and a lot of friction). All you need to survive is bamboo and a machete!


Eventually we got to the place for camp. I thought we were going to make it from scratch, but the basic bamboo frame was already in place. The guide and his cousin did most of the work, putting leaves over the top, making fire, making the cooking and eating utensils (out of bamboo of course - see above) and cooking the dinner.
I didn't try Mr Squirrel or Mr Bird, which were put into a curry; luckily there was also a coconut-vegetable soup on the go. And lots of Thai whiskey.


It was freezing at night, even with the embers of the fire, two blankets and a sleeping bag, and a fleece. The dogs stood guard which was awfully nice of them.


The next day we tried to get washed in the icy waters of a nearby stream, then walked back to the start, via a village where Lahu people live. The guides sister was there as she had married a Lahu man. I learnt hello in Lahu language (O-bud-a-yaa). The Lahu village was very different to the Karen one, just one open space with dirt on the floor and cattle lazing around.

The journey back wasn't very eventful, except we got a ride in the back of a pick-up truck back to Pai as the bus never came. I enjoyed hiking through the hills and forests, it would have been better if we had been able to participate more in building the shelter and cooking, but I suppose the risk of machete injury would have been high.