Coming home

Bueno. Bien. I´m in Lima, killing time in the cheapest, fastest internet cafe I have found in all of my 6 months away. I fly in 8 hours, back to the Ashes, Anglo-Saxons, warmish weather, the almost certain prospect of contracting swine flu by the end of the year, and trying to find some kind of job.

I have been doing more living than travelling here in South America. It´s easier to live a daily routine tired than it is to travel tired, and somewhere over the South Pacific I became tired from being on the road (and in the air) for months. This "living" business, in a comfortable place with a stable group of friends and something forcing you to get up early (i.e. Spanish school), when compared to the naive enthusiasm, energy and wonder of earlier days spent travelling, feels remarkably like the zombie state you get in when you work too hard at home. It´s been a reminder of what it was like before my boss called me into a meeting room in October and gave me my marching orders. A reminder, and a warning never to forget the time you laughed yourself silly when you foolishly turned over your mattress in your hostel to see if the other side wouldn´t look like someone had died on it. (The other side is never cleaner, ever. Why would it be?) Or the first time you got in a cab in Buenos Aires and realised the driver was actually wearing his seat belt and you gave thanks that you had skipped breakfast. Or when you look through your photos of friends back home and realise how much we all look like Vikings. The difference is there every occasion you step out of your hostel and look up and around you, marvelling at the otherness of the place, rather than down at your feet, scanning for dog shit and blocking out as much as possible of your surroundings while trying to be as inconspicous as possible.

I know a rude awakening awaits me in the UK, but coming back is part of the reason for going away. I will fly into London tomorrow evening, hopefully routed in a loop over Docklands, the City and the West End towards the familiar shambles of Heathrow. In the next few days I will reacquaint myself with my family and friends, my language and my country, and the face prospect of an exciting new start doing.... something.

It´s been emotional. I have a long list of places I want to go next if any of you fancy joining me on the next one.

Chau.

Hopefully not Spanglish

Aprender otro idioma cuando tenes treinta y un años es una cosa más dificil de hacer cuando eras un niño. No quedan nuevas palabras en tu cabeza, y el miedo de equivocarte en conversación es más fuerte. Además, el paso de mis estudioas aqui (veinte horas por semana) es más intenso que algún curso en mis escuelas in Inglaterra. Eso me cansa a veces, y tambien me frustra. Los Argentinos en la calle hablan muy rápido, frecuentamente no saben cómo hablar más despacio para los extranjeros.

Pero, como con algunas cosas dificiles, vale la pena, y aun más porque, cuando sos adulto, el proceso del saber es más transparente. Entonces, cada día, cuando estas caminando en la calle, sientes un emoción pequeña. Al principio es porque entiendes unas palabras, después las formas de oracións, y finalmente (sólo a veces para mí), puedes participar en conversacións rápidas alredador de la mesa en tu hostel.

Y cuando soñas en español, o empiezas a usar formas en español cuando escribes en Inglés, o entiendes un canción por la radio, sentés una destreza nueva formando en tu cerebro. Por supuesto, yo miro a la punta de un iceberg, pero de todas maneras eso me gusta. (Y, claro, mi profesora me ayudó con esto texto!)

Dog days and dodging decisions

One of the joys of travelling is that generally you don´t have to take decisions if you don´t want to. The last 3 weeks, mas o menos, have been thus - a period of procrastination over basic choices. In Mendoza, I took 2 weeks to decide where to go next and, having decided to come here to Bariloche, I spent another week deciding how long to stay. Constant ruminations over these life and death issues have resulted in my most idle and frustrating period of this trip. But the snow arrived a week ago, skiing is planned for next week and I have enrolled for another couple of weeks in a new, improved Spanish school.


To fill in the time since my last blog, recently I have mostly:

• been on my first long bus ride (18hrs) across the pancake-flat wilderness of the Pampa between Mendoza and Bariloche;


• seen an evening of locals exhuberantly dancing the Argentine samba in the public square opposite my hostel;


• been attacked by a Doberman while its owner stood by doing nada; (and while we are on that theme, I have also taken the hostel´s dog for a walk during which it got into a fight with a street dog - a fight that splattered blood on the pavement and windows of a restaurant);


• shared two travellers´first sight of snow (and first snowball fight);


• grown a beard;


• and said goodbye to several good friends made in Mendoza, including my lovely "mother" in the hostel there.

My home here now is another small, quiet hostel. It´s out of the way a little, a few blocks above the main streets of Bariloche. Most of the inhabitants, including myself, are young long-stayers: Kate, the ever-procrastinating Sydneysider; Jotape (JP, Juan Pablo), a Cordobeso looking for work in the tourist industry here; Camilo, the wise Columbian who has cycled here from Buenos Aires and who will be returning to Bogota by bike to introduce his new American girlfriend to his mother who he hasn´t seen in 6 years; and Chris, a Texan ex-military guy with a penchant for all things spiritual. It feels like a cross between a student house and a halfway home for intransigent youths, but it is a very happy place, and even the temporary interlopers settle in quickly to the rhythm of the place - usually Columbian cumbia at 4 in the morning.


At the end of this week I will have been at school for 6 weeks, so I think my next blog will have to be in Spanish. Sorry in advance!

You know when you´ve been Tangoed

I fell in love with Argentina last night. Call me a tart (and I have been this week), but I fell for the gentleness of the people of Lao within days. New Zealand took longer before the solitude and frontier-like nature of the South Island found its way under my skin. But if NZ is still developing its identity, Argentina´s intoxicity (!?) stems from a surfeit of cultural and social influences crammed into one nation.

Last night I took my first tentative steps of the tango, a bewildering contradiction of control and passion. After learning a few basic moves, I exited the dance floor and, their toes now safe, Mendocinos from 20 to 70 strutted their stuff. Apart from the 1... 2... 3... 1, 2, 3... rhythm, the defining features of the Tango are, it seems, graceful improvisation without limit, and couples´gravity-defying leans towards each other as they twirl around the room. Every pair had a distinctive style, easy to differentiate but difficult to define, each being a mix of various holds and flourishes and different levels of theatricality. I sat for 2 hours sipping Fernet and Pepsi (a bitter, black drink which puts every other in the shade of bland incipidness), enchanted.

The highlight of the evening was an Argentina samba, much slower than its Brazilian namesake. Superficially a cross between a Morris and a Line dance, dancers tote handkerchiefs that somehow, to eyes admittedly tainted by the local brew, become expressions of their honour, pride and love.

The cliche goes that Argentines are arrogant, but that they have quite a bit to be arrogant about. It´s hard to disagree.

Looking up, down and around

Mendoza is unfurling itself to me, as is Argentina. Slowly, but steadily every day something small becomes clear, such as why the city´s 1.4 million trees were planted in the deep, wide gutters that run along the edge of every street. (They aren´t traditional gutters for rainwater run-off as there isn´t any precipitation here. Instead they are part of an elaborate irrigation system that keeps this city high in the desert green). Or the rhythm of the city, which sees the streets deserted at 3pm and 11pm, but crazy busy around 1pm as the inhabitants hot foot it home for lunch, and also after midnight when people finish their dinner.

Some people engage with a new city on its own terms straight away. They arrive, adjust, absorb and dissolve into the place within days. For others, perhaps most, it´s different. While on the road they develop a protective force field which shelters them from difficult or dangerous situations and gives them a sense of homely security. However, it also creates a certain emotional and cultural distance between them and their locality, stifling the traveller´s interaction with locals. It won´t be hard to guess which type I am, but I have only just worked it out! Language can be part of the barrier, as here, but you can notice things even when travelling in an English-speaking country like New Zealand; like a hesitation before you enter a shop (what system for shoe sizes do they use here?), or the decision to choose inconvenience over awkwardness by walking for an hour to avoid a possible embarrassment on a bus over small change or a confused destination.

This behaviour is deep-rooted and, it is comforting to learn to accept, it is not necessarily a bad thing. What´s more, with time, or a dose of Dutch courage, or just a hearty "Fuck it, you only live once", you can summon up enough blood to buy something unusual from a store or walk a different route to school. Eventually both the heart and mind will open a little wider and the people and place will rush in and find a place in each.

Aaaargh!

I´m desperately trying to get into the way of the siesta, more through necessity than cultural exchange. Like the princess in the fairy tale, I seem to be able to detect every lump in the woodwork beneath my mattress, and together with daily half-7 starts and the thousands of multi-syllabled words flying around my brain, and I am a just touch sleep-deprived. But siestas are less easy done than said, it seems.

But, at the edge of the dark cloud that is a streaming cold (courtesy of one of my classmates, a Team GB Olympic equestrian), I espied a silver lining. A couple of Ibuprofen and a big lunch and I´ll be out for a good 2 hours, I thought. But no, el gordo American who left the hostel a couple of days ago has returned unexpectedly this afternoon, and this time he is billeted in my dorm. Que mal! Now, I know there isn´t a huge amount you can do about snoring, and people who do usually wish they didn´t, but if this guy makes the same noise for the next two nights as he did before he left, I´m going to end up doing time. My solution for this evening is prayer to a non-existent deity and Malbec, both in large quantities.

Settling in to student life

I have signed up for more immersion. More trying to understand the school cook´s gabbled explanation of why he grills meat with newspaper laid on the top. More wrist-slapping from the teachers when I try to ask anything in English, even during our fun afternoon excursions to the hot springs or tours of the town. But I need it. After a week´s lessons and staring imploringly at hundreds of pairs of dark, frowning, confused eyebrows, I have decided I have to stay a little longer and try to get to grips with Spanish. My many years of studying Latin at school are helping with my comprehension, but this is streaking ahead of my speaking which, attuned to French, is to be frank, shit. My otherwise amiable roommate in the hostel, another Federico no less, left me in no doubt that I need to work hard at my pronunciation, comparing my speaking very unfavourably with the Spanish of an exceedly broad-accented rural Irish guy also staying here.

There are much worse places to be put through this torture. This pleasant desert city, flattened in 1861 by an earthquake and helpfully rebuilt on an exact north-south grid, will be my home for a few weeks I think. The town, which gently slopes up towards the Andes to the west, is clearly the place where knackered Peugeots, Fiats and Fords go to die. Mark I Sierras, Escorts and Falcons abound, all belching smoke and growling like dogs, their owners riding their clutches at red lights, wary that the next stall could be the car´s last and giving the whole town a baritone´s hum late into every night. It reminds me, obscurely, of a documentary on the history of motorway service stations...

Habla español? Si, pero muy mal

I should I suppose be writing this in Spanish, except that it would be extremely dull and brief. I started an immersion Spanish course here in Mendoza, Argentina today. Immersion in my school means you can´t even ask where the toilet is in English. I came home shattered, and now I have had two hours´siesta / wait for the supermarket to be open, I´m even more tired! With homework to do tonight, I don´t think I will yet be sampling much of the chief delight of this town, el viño.

What time is it?

I've flown across 8 time zones, but somehow my body clock is still roughly in tune with my hostel companions. That is, because they go to bed at 7am every night - 11pm New Zealand time. Maybe it's because there isn't a huge amount to do in Santiago during the day that they just go out all night, or maybe it's just South America for you.

Another day, another continent

After 47 days, 6,500km on the road, 300 dolphins, 21 hostels, climbing three 6,000ft+ peaks, Grade V rafting, a bungy jump, a helicopter ride and a skydive I am leaving NZ in two days. Naturally this puts me in a reflective mood....

Man first stepped foot on these islands only 700 or so years ago. The subsequent history of huge environmental change at the hands of man and hooves of stock and the oppression of earlier settlers by later waves is dramatic and fascinating. But while Britain wrings its hands trying to reinvent itself for the umpteenth time in the face of globalisation and dwindling resources, New Zealand feels like it is still creating itself as a nation for the first time around. It is can seem naive that a 1930's railway bridge is listed as a historic monument, but this place also feels unburdened and agile, able to learn quickly from the mistakes of older nations.

Settlers came here and marvelled at the fertile lands they had found, a reaction that is easy to imagine in, for example, Hawkes Bay, with its miles of healthy-looking orchards and vines. That delight in the locality and the relative recency of settlement feeds through to its current inhabitants: it is not somewhere any resident I have met apologises for.

My thoughts are now turning to South America, and in particular another land of promise for agriculturalists, bandits and fortune-seekers: Patagonia, courtesy of Bruce Chatwin. Having done all things extreme here in NZ, and risked a period of penury on my return to pay it off, I am wondering what kind of voyage Argentina will present me with. I doubt I will find my own Mylodon in a remote cave. A crash course in fiery Latin American politics maybe? We'll see.

A walk in the park

Well, I did it yesterday, along with the 500 or so people who have been circling the mountain like vultures for the last week. It was less Mount Doom, more Piccadilly Circus. Still, it was an amazing walk; 8 hours and 22-odd km with a side trip to the top of Mt Tongariro (1,967m) to get mobile phone reception and check the football scores. I'll let the pictures tell the story.

And then I jumped out of a plane at 15,000ft today, but more of that in the next post!

Tongararing to go!

For almost the last two weeks I have been circling Tongariro National Park in the central plateau of the North Island in hope of getting a fine day to do the Alpine Crossing, a stunning 18km stroll / mountain assault course between two active volcanos. I've been in Auckland, Taupo (twice), Raglan, Napier and Coromandel - all lovely places with different atmospheres and attractions, but I have become fixated on this walk, touted as the best one-dayer in the world, to the exclusion of everything else. And tomorrow seems finally set fair for a hike up to 1,900m amid snow-capped volcanos! Fingers crossed....

Becoming wallpaper

Being on your own is taboo, and in my experience can make some people surprisingly uncomfortable. I was told explicitly in Vietnam that a single traveller, particularly a man, can be quite threatening. Sole traveller, single parent, lone gunman, the associations with disenfranchisement, madness or criminality can, if you are sensitive to these things, confront you more frequently when travelling, particularly here in NZ, where as a proportion there seem to be fewer single travellers than there were in Asia.

You notice something in the air most often in the evening when you venture to the pub, restaurant or cinema in search of a diversion from cheap stubbies, pasta n sauce, and the hostel's DVD collection. It can be quite a dispiriting experience, but where there is taboo, there are conventions for avoiding discomfort in your and those around you:

1) Mind where you sit / stand. You need to balance being inconspicuous with avoiding lurking in the shadows. In a pub, there are three acceptable locations - by the bar, in front of the Sky Sports TV, or in a fireside armchair if there is one. In a cinema, sitting in the back row is not acceptable, this being the domain of the demonstrably successful in love only. Any location in a restaurant lit by fluorescent bulbs is fair game for a single, however.

2) Take a prop. A newspaper or dog are acceptable accessories to reduce your weirdo factor in a pub. A book is a risky alternative which works in some scenarios, but which can mark you out as intellectually aloof from the common if you are not careful.

3) Watch the time. In every pub or bar there is a time after which it is impossible to sit on your own and retain any semblance of social respectability. It can be any time between 5pm, when the after-work crowd comes in, and 11pm, when only prostitutes, clients and pimps are left (in Asia that is) and it varies between establishments, but the change in music, clientele, menu or whatever it is is instant, palpable, and inviolable.

4) It is never, ever acceptable to enter a pub on your own when a quiz is happening. The point of a quiz is to create an illusion of dynamic social interaction where the anally-retentive can indulge their love of trivia and pointless competition without being ostracised. A single person sitting in the midst, whether taking part or not, would expose this fabrication just as clearly as when the house lights go up at the end of a university disco and reveal spotty youths prancing around with arthritic hand gestures in a bland gymnasium on the outskirts of town.

5) If in doubt, don't strike up a conversation in a pub. It is possibly the most loaded of all initial social interactions, and the chance of success in conversing with a stranger is substantially outweighed by the risk of being perceived as a lonely, alcoholic benefits defrauder. If you need to chat, sit at the bar. A good barman will talk to you. A great barman will make it seem like they actually want to talk to you.

I'm sure the are a million sensitivities that vary across different cultures and scenarios. If enough people contribute them here, maybe I'll pull them together somehow.

Doubtful Sound

Apologies in advance for the length of this entry... The trek to the summit of Avalanche Peak brought on a recurrence of my Premiership career-ending knee injury, or rather the over-ambitiously speedy descent did. It took me three days to come to terms with the fact that I would not be able to walk the Milford Trail on this visit. In recompense to myself, I decided to follow the recommendation of a hostel owner in Wanaka to go sea kayaking on Doubtful Sound, the larger, more aloof and less popular sister of Milford.

So it goes that Captain Cook named this Fiord because he didn't think there would be enough wind for his ships to exit if they ventured inside. This 40km fiord (a glaciated valley which reaches the sea) was my home for two days, my companions Adrian the guide, Scott the New Yorker from Fargo, and Debbie the hairdresser from Cornwall with a nephew who went to my school. After an hour of paddling we reached the main body of the Sound, and Adrian stopped us for the first of his many party pieces. He asked us to estimate the height of the near vertical mountain rising out of the water ahead of us. We centred in on 1,500ft, less than half its actual size. Adrian explained that the scale of the fiord baffles every visitor's senses. Suitably awed, we struck off down Hall Arm looking at geological fault lines marked by huge fissures in the cliffs and listening to far off penguins. Adrian used to work for DOC (Department of Conservation) and was a learned and laconic guide, explaining dolphins recent absence from the Sound as a result of the hydroelectric plant at one end, and bringing to life beech trees' 250-year cycle of life and death clinging to sheer granite rock faces.

Towards dusk we camped by a river mouth and feasted on our various one-pot wonders, washed down by wine in a bag and mini-eggs, courtesy of Jesus' death 1983 years previously. After dinner Adrian said he would take us Kiwi-spotting. His attempts at communicating with the deer in the valley earlier had done nothing to dispel us of his deep lack of seriousness, so we headed past the camp toilet and into the rainforest with our expectations suitably tempered. To our advantage, a full moon was up, and our head torches redundant. Male Kiwis are highly territorial and, when we paused a little way into the bush, Adrian positioned us ahead of him and, with a blade of grass, did a passable imitation of the male of the species. We were deathly silent as Adrian supplanted his faux calls with a shuffling of his feet in the style of a Kiwi trampling ferns. A minute or so later, from maybe 15m away, the dark taking its toll on more than one sense, came the sound of ferns and bracken being broken at pace. The noise stopped and after a few seconds a scream arose from low in the bushes 5m in front of me. It was piercing, plaintive, aggressive, and utterly thrilling. This rare nocturnal bird shrieking at me to "ger orf his laaaand" had me grinning and shaking with excitement. We retreated and, true to form, he chased us further, eventually offering us a glimpse of His Kiwiness in the gloom. A Kiwi in a zoo is runty, absurd and pitiful. In the night of the termperate rainforest in Fiordland it is quite majesterial, and worthy of its status as the national emblem.

Dawn the next day was almost as magical, the daylight offering me the chance to try to capture something of the stillness of this place as the mist rose. The marvel for today, apart from the discover of 51 sandfly bites, was a 3,000ft high waterfall, once thought to be thr highest in the world before a Frenchman decided it was a cascading river instead. Battling the tide a flow from the hydro plant, we paddled for 5 hours around an island and back to civilisation once more - in the form of a village of 200 people. A more than adequate substitute for Milford I think.

City boy goes bush...

... and gets stuck in the mud. It was inevitable really. Driving through the Catlins, a beautiful forest reserve at the southernmost tip of NZ, it was getting dark, and I was getting desperate. I had promised myself I would finally make proper use of my camper, and sleep by the side of a road - just me, the birds and the cold for company. I spied a field with a track into it, and some large ferns to screen me from the road, and after a quick shufti, I turned in. About 5 metres down the track I realised I was sliding sideways rather than driving, the alignment of my front wheels bearing no relation to my direction of travel. Hmmm, I thought, cogently.

A few yards on, and now on grass, I parked up hidden from the road. There was just enough light for me to cook my dinner, so while my venison sausages were turning brown, I went to inspect the track. Alarm bells rang when I found a number of estate agents' signs by the track, which had been ripped down and turned into convenient car wheel-sized rectangles. The track itself was rather haphazardly and forlornly lined with thick fern branches. A gloom descending, on me as well as the scenery, I trudged back to my car to find the number for the AA and whether my phone had reception. It didn't.

I spent an evening cursing my wrecklessness, and only finishing off such a good book as Atonement could distract me from the walking and grovelling I would have to do, and the sarcasm I would have to bear, tomorrow - Easter Sunday.

In the morning, after a few failed attempts to extract the car, which only deepened the twin troughs it was in, I decided to have a hearty breakfast and prepare for a long walk to the nearest town - 10km I estimated. With thumb out by the side of the road I trudged off. Joy of joys, though, and a hunter pulled up in a 4x4 beside me, complete with loaded rifle on the passenger seat. With a toothless grin he sized-up my predicament immediately, and with only a hint of mickey-taking, he reversed and had my car out in a jiffy. As he was leaving he said, "If you'd called the AA, they would only have sent me you know". I smiled at $250 saved, but tonight I'm staying in a hostel.

The land of the leaflet

When Charly and I were in Tunisia, we had a man try to sell us a camel ride into the Sahara using a single sentence containing words in four languages. I marvelled at this feat of communication, but I marvelled more that he had picked up very quickly that we tourists didn't just want a camel ride, we wanted information. This nebulous stuff was clearly more precious to us foreigners than water, or the camel ride itself. We wanted an official camel, from an approved Bedouin, not some mangey beast herded by a toothless Tunisian at the side of the road.

Of course, when we shrugged this guy off and trudged to the tourist office in the sweltering heat, "Gappy" was already there, sat behind his desk. He was civil enough not to rub our noses in our Western uptightness. He knew what we wanted from the get go but had grown accustomed to the process you have to go through to make we tourists comfortable booking anything. It's same, same, but different, in Asia, where, in contractual negotiations, this fine phrase means something like, "Look. For fuck's sake, I know what you want to do and I can do it for you. You read it in the Lonely Planet and it says you can go to this amazing remote place, and don't go by car cos it's not as good as going by boat, and only pay 60,000 Dong/Baht/Kip, blah, blah, blah. And look, it's a fair price, possibly not the cheapest, but you'll have a good time and are you going to seriously argue with me over 50 pence".

Needless to say, this is not the way in NZ, where tourist information is a multi-million dollar business. There are leaflets offering you deals on multiple extreme activities everywhere, even in toilet cubicles. Deciding which paraglide/parasail/hang-glide/glide/rope swing to do is almost impossible, and I long for a short, dirty-looking man to come up to me on a street corner and bully me into doing something I'm not very certain about, but ultimately am likely to have a great time doing.

In praise of the Flat White

I couldn't find decent coffee in Vietnam, the second largest producer of beans in the world. NZ, however, is a different matter. Coffee is a pretty serious business here, and I still haven't reached Wellington, where it rivals rugby as almost a religion. The particular gift of the Antipodeans to the coffee world is the Flat White, of which there is no direct equivalent in Europe. This is a crime, as it towers above all espresso-based drinks. The closest is France's Cafe au lait, but it's just too milky to do the trick.

To use a hackneyed metaphor, the Flat White is the coffee a daughter would be happy to bring home to meet her parents. You'd be embarrassed to sit down to a first dinner with a Latte, a lanky, disappointing, slip of a thing whose nose would probably run into mum's home-made soup. An espresso, a short fiery man with an advanced sense of his own importance, would argue with your dad. A Cappuccino, the desert of the coffee world, would stand out a mile as a short-term fling, bound not to last and only suitable under certain specific conditions. And as for an Americano? Stronger and bigger than everything else and completely vulgar. But a Flat White, third espresso, third milk and third foam, is a keeper, husband material from the outset. Strong enough, but with an edge of creativity displayed in the swirly pattern on the top (see photo). Just perfecto.

Confession time

I'm here because of Leonardo di Caprio. Let me explain. When I was young, I don't think it ever occurred to me to jet off to see other landscapes and cultures. My obsessions, as far back as I can remember them, run as follows: car transporters, James Galway, Lego, maps, aeroplanes, Bananarama, playing golf, designing golf courses, designing airports, REM, Twin Peaks, playing guitar, SW London, running and, currently, Texas Hold 'Em. It seems at some point I was innoculated against the travel bug, as evinced by my infuriating habit (until recently) of turning first to the Dangers and Annoyances section of each Lonely Planet guide I acquired.

Since about 2002 though, one man has been cajoling and entreating me in equal measure to get out there and see the world. Leo. More particularly, him in The Beach, a love of which, though I have tried, I cannot give up. Even more particularly the end scene where, to strains of Dario G's Voices (Acoustic Version) he receives by an email a photo of his adventure in Thailand. He squirms in his seat with excitement, and checks to see no one else in the Internet cafe is prying on his reminiscences. It never failed to raise my heart rate, stir the cauldron at the base of my gut, and get me murmuring, "I will".

I believe the story is based loosely on real events, back in the early days of backpacking when there were dozens of deserted beaches in exotic parts of Asia just waiting to be "discovered" and claimed with a ceremonial raising into the night sky of marijuana smoke and chords of Redemption Song. The events in the film can't happen any more, it is said, but that's not the point. It works better as pure fantasy, and as sustenance for one half of the doublethink that travellers succumb to. A minature anthropic principle reduces the appreciation of your travels because, by virtue of where you are, you are surrounded by people who either are doing, have done, or will do all of the amazing things you are doing, probably cheaper, with better photos. Cue Leo and Dario G, and the remembrance that it is an adventure, your adventure, something you said you would do, saved for, planned, and are doing. No matter how unspecial you feel as you park your converted Toyota Previa next to all the other ones, you tell yourself that it's not every day you drive 200km along a Pacific highway, eat a steak and cheese pie from a clapperboard roadside store, see a Kiwi, and plan whether you will walk or fly onto a glacier tomorrow.

These musings were prompted by an unfinished conversation Dan and I had in Vietnam. So, for completeness, Dan, here are my five favourites (at 31/3/09):

Films: The Beach, Closer, The Seventh Seal, Ghostbusters, and Apocalypse Now

Albums: Highway 61 revisited, University, Meat is murder, A grand don't come for free (Wiki not really painting a pretty picture here, might have to do something about that), Parklife

Hot off the precipice

Call the search party off. Avalanche Peak has been safety negotiated, and the first self-congratulatory beer imbibed. A fantastic 3,500 climb up to around 6,000ft with stunning views across the Southern Alps. And what a beautiful day to do it! I started out at 9am, walking steeply up through trees and bush. Then, after an hour or so, came a glimpse 50 yards ahead of a bald, sheer-faced mountain and I emerged onto a small ledge, with a 1,500 ft drop the other side. My breathe was briefly taken at the change from enclosed forest walk to ridge-top hike. After a few vertiginous glances down, I stuck off uphill, following the markers for another hour to the top of the peak, joining two early birds at the top snapping away on our cameras like kids with a new toy. And these aren't really the big hills yet! More to come!

The best of intentions

Hiking in NZ is so organised you wouldn't believe it. Every two-bit town has a Dept of Conservation office or tourist information place with detailed maps and advice about the local walks and hikes. When you go on any kind of decent walk, you are supposed to register your intentions on, er, an intentions sheet, so they come looking for you if you don't return.

So I register my intentions here. Tomorrow, weather permitting, I climb Avalanche Peak (!), where hopefully I will get my first glimpse of the snow-capped Southern Alps. If I don't blog again soon, send the rescue party :-)

A dozen unformed thoughts

A week in NZ now, 4 days on the road in my lurid "campa" van, and I'm still getting to grips with travelling here. Driving hundreds of km a day affords you time to think, but the stunning scenery and vertiginous drops allow your mind to wander only so long, before your vehicle itself begins to wander away from the (not very) straight and (perilously) narrow.

NZ is beautiful, friendly, like Scotland but cleaner and with higher mountains. And terribly dull. At least, so far. Travellers here are young; and singles generally opt for the Kiwi Experience, a hop on / off bus tour with compulsory mirth on the journey and vomiting at the end of each night. (Or so my prejudice has me believe). Perhaps the extreme sports that are the most conspicuous aspect of this country's culture are a response to the genteelness of the people. Whatever the reason, I would say people here are holidaying, not travelling. For me, it's paling in comparison to the vibrancy of Vietnam, or the laughter in Laos.

Notwithstanding this ennui, probably borne of too little human company, I managed to make friends with some Dusky Dolphins this morning. Kaikoura, north of Christchurch on the Pacific coast, has an unsually deep trench just offshore which brings seals, dolphin and whales reliably within day trip distance of the town. Having seen sea lions first hand in the Galapagos (what? hasn't everyone?) and whales in Scotland, I opted for a Dolphin encounter at dawn. My wetsuit was so thick I could hardly lift it, but at least this provided some mental preparation for the minute or so of hyperventilation on entering the chilly waters. True enough, though, the cold was swiftly forgotten as I swam with 250 dolphin who emerged from the gloom heading towards land after a night's feeding. Singing to attract them, diving to see them, and kicking hard to keep up with them (all at the same time) was a challenge, but getting up close to the beautiful animals was fantastic. There wasn't exactly Flipper-like levels of interaction - they were clearly more interested in each other - but they oozed aquine cool as they cut through the waves. I did think about asking my guide what they tasted like, but then I remembered I'd left Vietnam

If one picture could tell a thousand words...

... it might be this one. That's me on the far left, on point in a raft on the Rangitata River here in good ol' NZ. Some of the bext Grade V rapids in the country apparently, and we got through without capsizing, unlike the rest of the boats. Must have been something to do with the bloke at the front.

A clarification

If anyone was in doubt as to why Cane Toads are a pest, I hope this photo of one, courtesy of my Dad, will clarify matters!

Looking north

It's Paddy's Day, and here in Brisbane the green T-shirts are out and the Guinness is flowing like the Liffey, begorrah. I have to rise at 5am, and as I write in my humid, 6'x7', $45 backpacker cell I'm predicting about 2 hours' sleep at the most.

My thoughts are not with the global influence of the Celts, however, but with a more dominant race, the Chinese. It is geographically obvious that the countries I have visited feel its growing presence more acutely than the UK. The emergence of China as a superpower is palpable here, and everyday people can see the impacts that politicians in the UK are still "predicting". Queensland's modest but beautiful Museum of Modern Art is even in on the act, deciphering the State's historical and present connections to the giant in the North. One exhibit, a collage of hundreds of advertisements styled as Communist propaganda posters, captures the tone of western companies' attitudes to this huge new market. It is presented not as traditional exploitation but the desperation of the potentially marginalised. It underlines that, here in the Pacific Rim, the balance of world power is perceived to have already shifted sunstantially to the East.

It's their world, more than ours

The wildlife in tropical Queensland can make everywhere else seem sterile. Sit for a while on a verandah, day or night, and you'll get the impression that nature is trying to claw back your incongruous humans-only space, such is the number of bats, bugs, lizards, frogs, birds and marsupials that come out of the forest to crawl on you, fly around you, and generally disturb your enjoyment of a cold beer. My family out here is extremely aware of and concerned about man's ability to damage ecosystems, but I did have to note a favourable comparison to Vietnam and Laos, where hunting, pollution and deforestation have, from my limited observations, decimated what was probably once a very similar environment.

Aussies do know a real pest when they see one, and they put them to good use. In the case of the local hotel (pub) in Arcadia on Magnetic Island, Cane Toads are raced for the amusement and financial gain of tourists. Clearly we have a future as toad trainers - we won two of the three races, pocketing a couple of T-shirts and nearly $200!

Hangin with Hamish

Hamish may not be famous in Europe, but he's makin waves here on Magnetic Island off the Queensland coast - literally. Hamish is a Category 5 Hurriane who threatened to put a real dampener on my week of r'n'r with my family in Oz. Happily for us, he's moving south towards the Whitsundays and may wreak havoc on infinitely more glitzy Hayman Island. Guess he'll be voting Labor in the forthcoming State elections...

Dan the Man!

I think it is a sign of how I've settled into being on the road that, now Dan has departed back to Blighty, there is a faint sense of returning to reality.

Going travelling is, I'm beginning to think, a quite selfish act, and having a good friend join you and catching up on gossip about friends, football, and general 30-something issues and angst reveals what a self-centred bubble you can create around yourself. You get used to intense but transient friendships, living more in the moment of a beautiful view or enjoyable meal than in the complexity of life back home. The contrast of going back to being on my own, combined with the incessant noise, oppressive humidity and general chaos of Saigon and the prospect of a new continent in a couple of days, has put me in a limbo. I'm trying to suck the marrow of Vietnam one last time while allowing myself to be happy about leaving the place and moving on to something different.

But I'm impressed with Dan for venturing to this amazing place. He's not an instinctive traveller, and 10 days out of his annual leave is a big commitment. It was easy for me to act the seasoned wanderer, but he didn't see the days in Vientiane and Hanoi where I wandered around the same streets trying to get up to speed with SE Asia and pluck the courage to sit down for a road side meal. There are many Dans, but there is only one Man.

Easy riding

The Big Thing in Vietnam is to jump on the back of a motorbike driven by a self-styled Easy Rider and take to the hills for days on end to see the countryside and people. Unfortunately, a slight altercation with a condescending and charmless old biker put me off this idea completely. Need and opportunity collided, however, and Dan and I found that we could mountain bike from Dalat to Nha Trang in a day, fully supported with a van behind us to offer us cold water and bananas, and scrape us off the side of the road should a wayward truck decide to use both lanes. Our hotel receptionist nonchalently booked this for us, giving nothing away of what lay ahead of us.

What lay ahead of us, as it turns out, was officially one of the top two rides in Vietnam, as determined by Jamie, a long-distance cyclist from Frisco we met on the way. See http://jamieinasia0809.blogspot.com/ for his blog. After a few key hauling ass up through pine forests we were rewarded with a 30km (Jamie will correct me) brake-burning descent, dropping over 1000m on a brand new, but inexplicably empty road through Vietnam's stunning Southern Highlands. The pictures we took cannot do justice to the majesty of the road, and we whooped and screamed like little girls as we tucked our heads into our handlebars to increase our speed (or at least I did). Even the 15km up and down in 35 degree heat after lunch, and subsequent killer chafing, couldn't dent our enthusiasm for this unbelievable ride. If you're within 200 miles of Dalat, you HAVE to do it!

Looking up

The sky in Dalat, the major town in the Southern highlands, is a slight new obsession. The light at 5,000ft is naturally clearer and bluer than anywhere else in I've been to in Vietnam, and the town is perched on a plateau, giving remarkable vistas in every direction.

It is a lovely antidote to the tourist mayhem in Nha Trang, and from wandering around the streets it seems travellers can be numbers in dozens, rather than hundreds. Dan has arrived, pale from a crappy London winter, and my task for the next 10 days is to baptise him in the ways of Vietnam, and get him some damn sun!

More money matters

The expats here in Nha Trang tell you that Vietnamese will cheat you today because they don't think about tomorrow. The locals see only $ signs on your forehead, they say. And these are the foreigners that speak the lingo and still love the place! I can't say my experience goes any way to disproving this view. Water that is 7,000 Dong at the local shop is 8,000 the next day, despite me passing the shop and saying hello to the keeper 5 times a day. Hold out 15,000 Dong while ordering food from a street vendor and, hey presto, the price coincidentally becomes 15,000 - 50% more than the going rate. What's more, the margin of the swindles varies hugely: the real price could be 70% or 7% of the asking price.

While it keeps you on your toes, and gets you to think about the true value of things, only some people (like my ballsy New Yorker companion) have the stomach for a fight in every encounter. For me that's too tiring, and I've reached the point where I just take the rough with the smooth. Sometimes you'll be grievously ripped off. You might catch one or two at their game and get a "discount". You might even find a cafe where reasonable Pho is the same price every day and seems to bear a resemblance to what the locals pay. But you'll never win. The Vietnamese are diligent entrepreneurs when it comes to parting you with your cash. Better to roll with the punches, and seek as much non-financial interaction with locals as possible to balance it all out.

When in Vietnam...

Vietnamese are great snackers, and nearly every street corner has a stall selling something, usually delicious, for next to nothing. Whether it's steamed corn on the cob with a sweet and salty sauce, to whole lobster grilled in a pan by the side of the road, it's almost impossible to go hungry. Indeed you get to the point where you become a connoisseur of particular delicacies, comparing Pho Bo in Hanoi and Hue, and seeking out the best fresh spring rolls from the hundreds of vendors in every town.

A particular favourite of my travelling companions is Bun Bao, a fist-sized, mildly sweet dumpling, filled with different meats or pastes. One evening in Hoi An, craving a post-dinner something, we approached a street stall for some of the delicious balls of loveliness. In very broken Vietnamese we established that they were neither beef, nor chicken, nor pork, and that they were not vegetarian. Up for anything, and emboldened by my snake from Laos, I got one and bit into it to reveal a filling of a quail's egg surrounded by a meaty, oniony stuffing. It's strong gamey flavour revealed nothing of its genesis to me. A passing tourist wandered over and peered into my dumpling. Smiling wryly he said, "Ah yes, I've had one of those". He turned to the vendor and barked, "Woof, woof"? The local broke into a friendly but somewhat wicked smile and cried, "Yes! Woof woof"!

Halong Bay

I've been pretty lucky I think with the tours I have been on when I've been abroad. Of course everybody tries hard to get on, but sometimes you end up spending time with a group of people that gel so well that a potentially pleasant 3 days touring turns into something very special.

This was my good fortune in Halong Bay, a group of 2000 limestone karst islands in the Gulf of Tonkin. Amidst spectacular scenery and fairly luxurious accommodation, 15 people created a 3-day party which brought tears to some eyes when it ended back in Hanoi. We were led by Huang, our guide with a ring tone laugh and penchant for karaoke and palm-reading. Then there was Frank, the slightly insane Quebecoise who we spotted back in Hanoi riding a prostitute's motorbike with her on the back. At the top end of the age range was Than, a wise old Singaporese with a 25-year-old girlfriend back home. Margaret and Michael from Vancouver Island came next, an ex-hippie and an ex-teacher with bodies of pensioners and hearts of teenagers. Gerard and his wife (whose name I forget), Les Francais from Cannes talked mostly to Suzannah, a potentially quite important political journalist from Australia. Heike and Sylvia were the compulsory Germans, both residents of London, the latter almost hyperactive and the former as dry as an Arab's flip flop. Danielle and Matt, recent graduates from Grimsby, added the youth element. The North American contingent was completed by Katie from Canada and Ronnie and Jane, two ER doctors from New York and Philadephia, with whom I have now been travelling for the last 10 days.

We were a motley crew, but all positive and relaxed, each able to chat to every member of the tour at ease. Red wine and Tiger Beer help of course, as did our outgoing guide, but I can't help feeling that Buddha was feeling particularly smiley when he threw us all together.

Getting up to speed in Hanoi

It doesn't take long in Vietnam to realise the locals have a fairly flexible idea of "fixed price", "best price" and "discount for you". It seems a country that quickly finds out the inexperienced or exhausted traveller. With the wrong attitude the constant discoveries that you have paid more than your fellow hotel guests, tour party or diners might be wearing. Fortunately Hanoi is such a captivating, bustling and exotic city that it is hard for grievances to persist. The road-side food and drink is cheap (80p for noodle soup and 60p a pint), and much of the entertainment is free. Shops and market stalls are as colourful and fascinating as any I've seen, and just walking through the buddhist paraphernalia street or the live fish district could easily take up a day or two. Another favourite pasttime is the SE Asian classic of finding the more outrageous cargo you can on the back of a bike. The drive to the airport yielded a handful of great examples seen here, but my favourite was a live cow, which a travelling companion saw perched serenely on the back of a Honda. A speciality of Vietnam, though, is crossing the road. The game is to find the busiest, most chaotic stretch of road you can, and step out directly into the evening rush hour traffic and cross the road slowly as the motorcycles whizz in front and behind you, expertly making just enough space for you to pass. The only rule, make no sudden changes in direction, seems to keep you safe, and the whole experience is more fun than running the gauntlet of bicycle couriers jumping the lights in London.

So Halong!

I've had two days in Hanoi now, an unbelievable city, full of noise, colour, noise, people, and more noise. But it's fantastic to walk around and be ignored by locals going about their business - a bit of a home from home.

Off on a boat trip around Halong Bay for 3 days shortly, so I'll post more when I get back. I just have one question, has there been some snow in London or something?

Leaving Laos Famous

In two hours I leave Laos for Vietnam, promising myself it'll not be the last time I'm here. The last two days here have been the best of all. Monday was learning to ride and drive an elephant, and I am now fully versed in all the futile instructions you need to try to make an elephant do something they don't want to. Then we trekked through the jungle on them and tubed back to "camp", which was in fact a huge luxurious villa for each of us with verandah, outdoor bathroom and huge comfy beds. The next day we went up the river and kayaked 10km or so down into Luang Prabang through some fairly basic rapids, but ones which managed to throw me and my Swiss co-pilot, Nick, into the water. It could have been that we were reaching for river weed to throw at our guide that did for us. A running battle was fought all the way down the river, which we lost miserably.

About half way down I spotted a snake swimming across the river. Out guide, Tuy, spotted it too, and paddled furiously to reach it before it got to the bank. One swift bash on the back and the snake was ours. Tuy explained that this was very good luck, and good eating, and we spent the next hours shouting to anybody on the river bank in Lao "We are very lucky, we have a snake". By the time we passed our camp of the night before, an excited crowd was gathering on the river bank to inspect the snake. It seems the jungle telegraph works a treat. Or maybe it's mobile phones.

Our guide invited us to dine with him that night, with snake soup as the main part of the feast. As a guide he earns reasonable money for the area, but his house was still very modest, and it felt a real honour to be able to go to his house, meet his family, and have fresh river snake - something they probably only have a few times a year at most. The whole Tuy clan were there, wife, child, Mum, Dad, Father-in-law (who particularly enjoys his rice whisky, but not the Merlot we brought them as a gift), Mother-in-law, two dogs, and the Tuk-Tuk driver. With great ceremony the food and drink was placed in front of us, and we did our best to explain how we were very grateful for they effort and generosity.

Among all the people I've so far talked to travelling, there seems to be a concensus that the happiness and the warmness of the Lao is the most of all people in South East Asia, and this makes it a particularly easy and fun place to travel. I'm now steeling myself for the bustle and dynamism of Hanoi, which I'm not sure will be at all same same, but different.

Learning to smile

Two days ago, I realised that my face hurt. I have been smiling for nearly two weeks. It's the Lao way, and a smile is nearly always returned. It just isn't very London.

West meets East

A slightly surreal night last night. Late night ten-pin bowling, followed by staying up all night chatting and then wander across town to give the local monks alms at dawn. If it wasn't for the fact that the whole thing has turned into a bit of a ridiculous photo opp, I think I would have felt slightly sheepish at being drunk as I handed over my bananas and sticky rice!

No place for a point 'n' shoot

Luang Prabang, the old capital of Laos, is a city that makes you wish you were a better photographer. It would be easy to spend weeks here wandering around the sights, and getting to grips with the varying light and haze. It is a UNESCO World Heritage site though, and the locals are now adept at finding ways of parting travellers on the grand tour (with Angkor Wat) from their cash. When the first price you hear on getting off the bus is in dollars, you know you're going to have to a time finding a bargain. It is unbelivably beautiful though. If only I could do it justice.

Heading north

My first long bus journey of the trip today. 7 hours to Luang Prabang, stopping for a rest break at a place called Kasi, appropriately enough. A 200km road like a corkscrew, ascending high over mountain passes and back down to the Mekong valley just in time for the mad dash for a cheap room, cold beer and, in my case, a Chicken Jalfrazi. The Israeli on the seat next to me immediately fell asleep on me, but after a few hours my instinctive Anglo-indignation subsided, and the ebb and flow of the road lulled my senses, and settled me into numbed observation of village after village perched on 15 ft strips between the road and ravines. Children, chicken, pigs and dogs all live at the edge of the road, inches from traffic, but seem to possess an innate understanding of the swept path of the trucks that pass them.

It is the middle of the dry season, and it seems now is time for roof repairs. Almost every villager was squatted by the side of the road bashing the hell out of bamboo stems which, I think, they'll rethatch their roofs with. After the bustle of the Capital and Vang Vieng, the Khao San Road of Laos, it was a glimpse of the subsistence life of most of the population.

Vang Vieng

The day after I arrived at my guest house in Vang Vieng, a note appeared on my door saying the room was required for a long-standing booking in 6 days. At the time, I thought the manager was giving rather more notice than I would have expected. After 6 days here, I now understand. The town exists to keep Westerners drunk or high for as long as possible while providing a myriad of opportunities for them to seriously hurt themselves. Wobbly bridges, complete with live electricity cables as hand rails, take you across the river to the best and most raucous bars; "Tubing" hurls you off huge slides and zip wires into the river; huge kilometre-long caves are available to swim in with little or no instruction. The local crutch-maker does a roaring trade for falang with twisted ankles and bruises like dinner plates.

But it's great, and easy to meet people while you're sitting quietly by the river and then spend the next 5 days together, totally inseparable. Nothing Lao about this in any way, but a proper traveller's experience. Next stop Luang Prabang.

Dancing queens

It is a truth universally acknowledged that male dancers are generally gay. This I have on good authority - from a female dancer friend of mine whose love life would probably have been more fruitful had she made different career choices.

This rule would seem to hold true, even in Laos, a land where homosexuality is still illegal. The lure of the Lao Traditional Show next door proved too strong to endure, and precisely one other falang and I gathered in an enormous hall for an hour's performance of folk dance and song. The series of dances depicted wooings of beautiful, serene women by utterly implausible and hugely camp male protagonists, more made-up and posing than their lovers. Come the compulsory audience participation section at the end, the female dancers giggled in excrutiating embarrassment, but the beaming gentlemen were more than happy to show me precisely what to do with my hands.

Nevertheless, the show was great fun, and I should probably be grateful it exists at all given Laos' Communist Party's fondness for marginalising pre-1975 history.

Sampling Lao culture

Sabadee.

Twas ever going to be the way. The Laos Traditional Show, right next to my guest house in Vientiane, was putting on an entirely authentic and noisy evening of Karaoke, featuring such celebrated Laotian artists as Celine Dion and INXS. Still, the racket kept me awake long enough to see President Obama take office and drink too much Beerlao. This, followed by a first breakfast of bagel with egg, bacon and cheese from a chain coffee shop, and I think I'm well on the way to truly understanding the unique cultural mix this country has to offer.

Still, it's 90 degrees, Vientiane is calm and beautiful, my body is slowly thawing from the bitter month we've had in London, and my guest house is on the banks of the mighty Mekong. Can't ask for more than that. Well I could. You can't actually see the Mekong very easily as there's no water, but my map says it should be there. One of the highlights of Laos is to take a trip down the river, but memories of my last boat journey in South East Asia (also in the dry season - 12 hours, no toilet, lots of getting out and pushing the canoe off river banks) might steer me away from this option.

Leaving London

After a month of fairly frantic packing and planning when nothing about the trip seems real, two things are guaranteed to bring it all home: waving a teary parent off at airport security, and the smell of exotic currency. My Baht procured at Heathrow are not quite as fragrant as (Sierra) Leones, but there's a definite hint of humid oriental evenings about them. Or is it warm Play-Doh? It's evocative of something, anyhow.

In a sign of the deepening economic doom facing the UK, Terminal 4's Champagne and Oyster Bar seems to be no more :-( Weatherspoons is doing a roaring trade...

Thanks for all your messages wishing me bon voyage. Keep well in Bankrupt Blighty folks.