The Long Journey Home

Well, as I sat wishing I could've gone to the Seoul art museum with Chi-Hé (see http://chihe13.blogspot.com/2008/11/turn-and-widen-exhibition.html) and writing my 'back home' to do list, I remembered I'd written some things down when I was in Doha about the journey home.

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Leaving Chi-Hé's at 2pmish I walked the 100 meters to the bus stop and waited for my airport bus to arrive. It was a crisp autumnal day, the men out the front of Chi-Hé's local supermarket were hawking the veg over the headset implemented tannoy system and sweeping the street of vegetable debris. It certainly felt strange to put Chi-Hé's key in the mail box and wander past the shop with my bags on - I wondered whether they'd notice I wasn't around anymore. This isn't just arrogance or an assumption that they'd notice a 50% drop in the number of Westerners walking past the shop, they did generally nod and smile as I (or others) walked past.

The bus journey to the airport was largely uneventful, combining in winning style some sleeping, some observation of the city scape, and some of the countryside on the outskirts - a combo I highly recommend for any 2 hour bus journey out of a city. I arrived at the departures hall 5 hours prior to my flight, assuming I'd be able to check in at 5pm (4 hours ahead). I wandered around for a while looking for where Qatar were based and eventually found the counters they would be using later, and then noticed on the 'flight status' boards that there was only enough space for check ins about 2 or 3 hours in advance - partly because codeshare flights were placed on separate lines, so when I looked at one point (I was bored and I'd been there a long time) no less than 50 flight lines could have been removed, which amounted to 50% of the flights, or 2 out of 4 'pages' of flights. So, I got a coffee, had a pain au chocolate with actually chocolate in (as opposed to the red bean paste that I got so used to being in the things which looked like pain au chocolate), and a fantastic sandwich - mozzarella, pesto, and tomato on a light rye bread with walnuts in...and I waited, and waited and waited until 2.5 hours ahead of my international long haul flight, I was allowed to check in...that's 2.5 hours pre-security right there. eurghhh.

When I spotted my flight up on the board, I had a double take as I was sure it said somewhere else as well as Doha. When I noticed there were only about 10 people checking in I really started thinking something was up. I had of course forgotten that my flight was going via Osaka (a natural detour from Seoul to Doha...except of course for the fact that it's about 1000km in the wrong direction - and yes, yes I am sad enough to have checked that). This detour of course also adds down time in Osaka, and takeoff/landing time. We were down for at least 1.5 hours there, and it took about 1.5 hours to get there. (so if we're all keeping up that means by the time we took off again I've been on the plane for 3 hours roughly, and out of Chi-Hé's for 10 hours). From there it was a hop skip and a 12 hour jump to Doha with a shitty semi-broken in-flight entertainment system. I don't know how to describe it technically, but it seemed the indexing system was broken - i.e. I'd select one film and another one would play.

Landing in Doha to a very beautiful sunrise was pleasant, although trying to work out what the hell time it was, and spotting a 9.15am flight to London (4 hours later) rather than my flight (7.00am) was slightly panic inducing. I had about 1.5 hours in the terminal at Doha before boarding...which gives me about 2/2.5 hours there (so that's 24 hours from Chi-Hé's). My first breakfast, going into Doha, was at 3am Doha time, 9am Seoul time, and about midnight UK time.

I was exceptionally happy, delighted, not ecstatic, but certainly relieved to find the entertainment system from Doha working perfectly, making the 8 hour flight from Doha to London a lot more bearable. Fortunately I got through security and baggage claim fast in London, and a short 1.5 hour car journey later arrived home. Arriving home at about 3pm - 12am Seoul time - means that, if we're all keeping up, I arrived back about 34 hours after leaving Chi-Hé's place, and about 27 hours after taking off from Seoul.

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Films I watched on the flight:
Hancock - Will Smith plays a Superhero with some etiquette issues. Very entertaining, very silly naturally but perfect for a flight.

Nim's island - crap children's film, no character development, rubbish plot, crappy 'happily ever after' ending with no good reason for us having got there (except to make the film come to a much needed end).

Swing Vote - Presumably someone (possibly Kevin Costner) said to Kelsey Grammar "Yo Kels' you want to play a republican president?" and he said yes. The film is based around one man's vote being the deciding vote in a U.S. presidential election. Due to a voting machine malfunction on election night he has one week to cast this deciding vote - and thus the candidates devote all of their attention to this 'swing vote'. Now never mind the fact that American democracy doesn't work like this what with the whole electoral college thing, the film is fairly entertaining but although I wish I hadn't fallen asleep for the last half, I won't be going out of my way to watch the rest of it.

Donnie Brasko - Johnnie Depp plays undercover FBI agent who is getting rather too into his roll as a mafia man. Depends how you feel about mafia movies - quite entertaining I thought, but perhaps a bit slow.

Royal Tenenbaums - I will go out of my way to watch the latter half of this film.

Arriving Qingdao

NOTE: updated the previous blog.

I'm sat on the roof of my current hostel waiting to check in. It is 8 o'clock. I have been in Qingdao since 4.30. I sat in the bus station reading for an hour, then decided to try and walk what I thought would be a 1km stroll to the hostel. The bus station was not where I thought it was. Taxi hailed, taxi heads West (I know from the sun, stupid Germans didn't build nice compass oriented roads like the Chinese do), I was heading East. A

rrive with ease and walk through the walk to get to the Old Observatory Hostel (named because that is indeed what it is) past people jogging, exercising in other ways, playing some sort of badminton thing with their feet/hands/body (shuttlecock thing kicked between people like men/boys (generally) do with footballs, only these groups were of middle aged women, and one guy with a sword. Steered clear of him. I arrived at the hostel at 6.30ish, the night guy checked I had a reservation and put my bag away, walking past 2 guys they're putting up on sofas in the corridor (national holiday + beer festival = no beds for non-bookers).

This hostel is beautiful anyway, I've put my first few photos online already it's that nice. For example:


To get here I caught what I thought would be a 9 hour bus from Nanjing. It was in fact 7.5 hours (hence arriving at 4.30 rather than 6 when I'd hoped to arrive). This was a bus with beds. 3 rows of bunk beds down the length of the bus. Each about 6 foot in length, with an inclined head rest such that the person behind you can fit their feet under your head rest, and place some personal items on the shelf which extends from the back of this head rest. Not the most comfortable sleep I can imagine - but equally not too bad, if a little surreal/odd. I've put some pictures on picasa...but I don't think they came out very well. Once such is:


At the front you can see a TV screen (in front of the window in fact), and to either side is a set of bunk beds. At the front of the image are my legs, and it then extends into the bed in front of me. It's hard to take photos even in dark mode without people noticing. The following photo is from www.africa-trade.ci/china/bus/sleeper_bus.htm



So, I'll update more in Qingdao when I get a chance. Thus far, it seems quite nice. We'll see whether it can knock Suzhou as my favourite place in China so far.

HK to Shanghai

Having made the decision that the laptop light is preferable to the reading light in my darkened cabin I'm writing this 4.5 hours in to my 21 hour train journey from Hong Kong to Shanghai. Having eaten a snack of a pack of pringle-esque crisps and had two beers for dinner 30 mins ago and that 4.5 hours being 4.5 from 3.15pm I'm in little mood for the 'bedtime' the family inhabiting my cabin seem to have initiated. (That's 7.45pm for the non-mathematical btw). Although, my experience of the train Chiang Mai to Bangkok rather prepared me for this event, I was rather enjoying my Ben Elton novel. Nae mind.

Having spent my last 3 days in HK largely doing non-city things, I have enjoyed HK rather more. Yesterday I went up the 'gravity defying' (Lonely Planet phrase, I entirely agree with) tram to Victoria Peak, overlooking HK. Well worth the trip for the journey itself – it feels like you're going to go vertical at some points – the views (hazy though they were), and for the newly purchased mah jong set; what any nearing mid-twenties man wants. Also for the full range of punctuation a sentence about it offered.

I've largely subsisted on western food in HK, a hotpot with Vicky (a Leeds friend) and some of her friends, some japanese food (quite Western really), and that's about it for exceptions. The hotpot was a nice experience in that the beer was cheap (21 HK dollars for 3 bottles – that's about 50p each), and it's a social occasion. The food consists of as much meat, veg, fish, fish balls, etc. as you want, and two pots of soup with heaters underneath in which to cook this food – the ultimate food poisoning get out clause for a restaurant. The meal was notably lacking in veg., and not being a fan of fish (or tripe) was a problem, but as I say, socially it was very nice. The reasons for this Westernism are:
1)I'll eat Chinese in China with little other choice
2)nausea at the end of Thailand time led me away from rice, and especially lemon grass (which I love, but the smell of which was making me nauseas)
3)there was no price difference between Western and Asian food (lunch time deals are especially good)
4)There are a lot of cafes with Western food, good coffee and free internet – sold me.

So far this train is more 'luxurious' than the Thai equivalent, although in some ways I preferred that one. This has a dinning cart (bonus), and very nice toilets, and a separate sink area. The beds are divided into sets of 4 (soft sleeper) or 6 (hard sleeper) in cabins. I am on a top bunk in soft sleeper – about 40 pound for the journey. The Thai ones were an ingenious use of space, but these are more Western, and have less noise transmission and so on.

The people I'm sharing a room with seem very nice, with limited English. They're from HK, visiting the man's (2 women, 1 man) brother. I'm unsure of their relation, but I've talked to him a bit, and one of the women gave me some food. The packet of chestnuts was a nice thing to give me, and much appreciated...the shrink wrapped (in foil) chicken liver, and chicken feet...well, how do you react to that? I think I may need to hide them by the morning.

[I did indeed hide them. And I am now in Shanghai in what appears to be quite a nice hostel...more on Shanghai later]

Airport

So! Last night we caught the train from Chiang Mai to Bangkok. In Chiang Mai we'd had to move from one guesthouse (Julie's, about $7 a night) to Supreme (the same but not as social, BUT with a large DVD collection, including Envy with Jack Black inventing va-poo-rize [you can guess its function] - it is not a good film), and then for our last night to SK's at $13ish a night BUT with a large swimming pool. After days of fantastic thai food and good markets we decided on our last day to take it a bit easy, go out to a forest wat and eat western food (at least for brunch).

HEALTH UPDATE - all fine, doxycycline still having no side effects, and no dengue fever (woot woot).

Our train was at 6pm so after an early dinner (4ish) we headed out to the station. The train was on time so we boarded straight away and found our set of 4 seats. At night these are folded together to create a (large but shortish) single bed at the bottom, and a narrow single bed is lowered from the wall above. Along these beds curtains are placed to give some privacy (because there are no berths as such) and to block light. This was more effective for the lower bunk (mine) than teh upper (kirsty's) so I had a fantastic 6 or 7 hours sleep...kirsty did not. Many Thai's seemed to put their bunks down (or have them expertly put down by a nice woman sitting at the end of the carriage) very early (from 7.30 on really). We waited till 9.30 before doing so. Arriving one hour late at 8am (not much shorter than the bus but MUCH more comfortable) we decided to head to Silom - our recent local street - for breakfast. This proved an expensive move but nevermind - the French pastries were delicious.

Heading back to the train station after lunch we caught a taxi to where we wanted to stay - or at least we tried to. There was some confusion over where we wanted to go. And I may have pissed off the tuktuk drivers when I laughed long and hard at a quote of 600 baht (10 pound) to get there - this would be enough to go about 40km or something...I think to Ayuthia anyway, cheeky fuck. We got a taxi with some assistance from the Railyway Police. Nice guy took us out on the road this place was off, and headed too far up it, so we had to loop back (expressway, so that meant taking a turn off) to get back to our soi - which it then turned out didn't exist. Drove to another place - no hotel. Woman there suggested some other place which she claimed was nicknamed 54 hotel (we wanted 54 hostel). We decided to give it a go and were a bit concerened to see a semi-posh looking hotel, and pondering sleeping at the airport instead (as the taxi was at 250 already and cash running v. low - so low that today we only just had enough to get to the airport). Fortunately I have a credit card and the hotel had rooms for 600baht (about 10 pound) which we thouht quite acceptable, especially as we'd get a nice room and nice shower. A day with a lot of faff in anyway...

Bngkok to Chiang Mai

I won't mention owt about Ayuthia - we had a very nice time there, but I think the photos will do (When I get those up).  From there we caught a bus at 8 ('turn up at 7.30 please' bus actually scheduled for 8.30, arrived at 9) to Chiang Mai because the train lines were down as a result of protests in Bangkok.  This wasl es than ideal but at least cheap at 500 baht.  At about 1am we stopped for a break - and to use the loo (although there wa sone on the bus it didn't have running water, so there was a big tank of water next to it to flush it with, and the door didn't close so you had to hold it shut). Another hour of fast driving on and the bus started t o stutter - not a good sign.  From 2am until when we eventually arrived in Chiang Mai at 10.30 (supposed to be 7.30) the bus was going at most at 2mph.  The last 80km was done in taxis.  On our eventual arrival we caught a tuktuk from the guesthouse the taxi had dumped us at to Julie's guesthouse (recommended by lonely planet) and managed to check in.  VEry nice place, only a fan but that's all you need, and 220 baht ($7ish) for the room.  Night market here is fantastic - and as we're slightly worried about money (don't want to get more baht) as we overspent on some meals (lonely planet lied about cost of a dish) we imagine we'll eat there some more from now on!

Yesterday we went on a 1 day trek for 1100 baht (almost $40) which was expensive but included a trek to waterfall (verrryyy nice) to swim in (nicer), an elephant ride (surprisingly fun), white water rafting (too short but very good), and bamboo rafting (bamboo canes tied together...these do not take our weight well and the raft was near the river bed at some points with our knees below water standing up, but never mind.  The low point was a trip to a 'mountain village' which was the most pointless 'hey, you go spend money on these tourist stalls' trip ever.  The village didn't even have a good view really!  So, now we have a few more days in Chiang Mai in which to relax, maybe have a Thai Massage, buy our last bits at the markets before heading (by train this time) back to BAngkok for our flights.

Cambodia and back into Thailand

Much to my annoyance, a long blog I wrote yesterday seems to have been deleted.  I'll try and replace that at some point.  First, something I'd forgotten from before:

We had a fish massage in Siem Reap.  This involves putting your feet in a pool of water with fish in.  These fish then make a meal of the dead skin on your feet.  This obviously creates a very odd sensation - but is quite nice (if tickly) and made my feet slightly less gross.

So, after a pleasant if somewhat hassled time in Siem Reap, we were happy to move on to a small place north of there called Kompong Chnang ($6 bus ride).  We were slightly concverned we'd not know where to get off as the bus goes to Battambang eventually, but the guide highlighted some landmarks so we managed to find the right stop.  Landmarks might be a bit of an overstatement there - there was an independence monument...andf it was the only place we'd stopped that was 'town like' thus far, so we figured it was our stop.  The main attractions of Kompoing Chnang are that it is not Siem Reap...and it has potteries and a river to the North East.  For us another attraction was staying in a nicer guesthouse than we had in Siem Reap for the same price.  This place had functional a/c (the other did not), a nice bed (the other was foam with stained, poorly fitting sheets) and no mosquitos in the room (you guessed it, the other did).  The disadvantages of the place were 1) the electricity cut out a fair few times - leaving us rather hot in our rooms (and without cold beer!) and in the dark 2)the only 'restaurants' in town were not very nice dull places, although cheap.  We walked out to the river on our full day there, which was a very pleasant walk despite giving us the only hassling (you want ferry ride?  We take you, nice ride you see floating village) of our time there and despite the incredible heat (walking in to a restaurant two S.African blokes said 'you hot then' - it was only then I noticed my rather wet t-shirt.

From Kompong Chnang we went to Battambang - closer to the Thai border.  We were staying at the Royal hotel, and were somewhat surprised to find a cheap tuktuk affiliated with the Royal to take us there - normally these are the reserve of crap hotels trying to pull in trade.  For $10 a night we got a nice a/c ensuite room in this hotel complete with roof bar in central Battambang.  On our second day there we took a tour with a tuk tuk ($20 between 3 of us).  We decided to get a guide ($12 for him and moto, $10 for just him - we made a mistake there, especially given later he took Morritz (German guy we went with) to a spice shop and almost certainly took commission for the trip).  Anyawy, we had a very nice day going up a mountain to a Wat, and some caves known as 'killing caves' - used by the Khmer Rouge to kill people in by various means.  There are stil some bones there, although many have been removed and cremated as Buddhism requires.  The only other thing of note in Battambang was The Smokin' Pot restaurant which gave us $4 Amok (curry) with drinks - so cheap (and good) we felt compelled to buy their cookbook - which I will use when i get home.

After 3 nights in Battambang we had to catch a taxi to Poipet - Rough guides, again being rough, told us we could get a 3hr $3 bus in the morning.  This bus in fact left at 11.30 - meaning we'd have arrived in Bangkok about 8pm or there abouts.  So with Lucy (French girl we met there) we caught a taxi for $30 - a reasonable price judging from the signs up for shared taxis in Khmer, with prices set at about that for the whole taxi - lthough in those, there would be 7 people including the driver - tight fit!  We arrived at the border in 2 hours - the road was much improved in \the 23 weeks since we'd been there last, with the mud removed and much more tarmac than previously.  We sailed through both sets of immigration lines, jumped on a tuktuk, to the bus station, and then straight on to a 1st class bus to Bangkok.  On arrival there (5 hours later) we had a bit of a faff finding departures, but got there eventually and again jumped straight on to a bus to Ayuthia.

Bangkok to Siem Rep

The trip from bangkok to siem reap was one I was very thankful I had notes for. We got up at 3.45 in order to get a taxi at 4.30. Bidding our comfortable, but expensive, residence goodbye we got into the taxi to go to the bus station - wondering if he really understood where we wanted to go literally until the moment we arrived. Thanks to the advice i had we easily found the first class ticket booth for aranya prathet (known as aree (phonetic local abbreviation). The bus was comfortable with a toilet on board and a slice of coffee cake (how did they know?!) and a drink too. We arrived in 4.30 roughly. We then jumped into a tuk tuk to get to the actual border crossing. Although he tried to drop us at some place we didn't want to be ("We stop here, you get visa. Visa here 1000 baht, 1200 at border") we were insistent that we wanted to continue to the border. So he dropped us right at the end of the road to the border where some bloke with an official pass got us to fill in some visa documents, and asked for 1000 baht (which incidently is about $33). I refused (again) and we walked down the road with our forms. Got stamped out of Thailand (and were mildly scared by the sign reading "We no longer issue visas at the border") and then continued through to the Cambodian side. The Thai side had a TV and fairly official if formal guards. The Cambodian side was outside at portable tables. At the visa point the man was firm that he wanted 1000 baht. A Canadian who was with our group of people insisted it was $20 (which it is) and refused to pay. We were directed to the actual visa point where for $25 we got a visa each,. I had to pay an extra 100 baht (about 1.40 pounds) because I didn't have a passport picture. I think he just wnated to get rid of us in case other people twigged that they didn't have to pay 1000 baht despite the lies that the rules had changed and this was now required. Oh incidently, none of the forms the bloke with the official badge had given us up the road were of any use during any of this process.

Anyway, we left there and jumped on the free bus to the 'transport depot'. Others did not, believing this to be a scam - a suspicion i can well understand. After a bit of haggling we got the $80 first offer down to $60 - much closer to the government pre-assigned $40 that the poipet to bangkok trip should take, but still outrageous for the trip. We were somewhat concerned by the fact the taxi driver stopped at what I think was a shop - but when we realised he was opening his boot to put a bag in rather than to take ours out we were a bit happier. Similarly, we were pretty miffed when he stopped at his house to drop said bag off, although we were less annoyed when we saw how miffed he looked at his wife (we assume) getting him to put some boxes in the boot too). The rest of the journey is indescribable for two reasons - 1) I cannot convey how crap the road was. I believe mounds of money have been allocated to this road improvement, but much has been lost, allegedly linked to thai airs monopoly over the basngkok to siem reap air route, and thus their obvious intertest in keeping that as the most sensible route to travel. Secondly just because it was fairly uneventful. It was interesting to see very poor places and some clearly more wealthy places. It is evident that the average income would be round $400 (which it certainly was), and its interesting to see - but less to describe really.

So now I'm sat in our new guesthouse place in siem reap, abouty 30 min walk to town centre, or a tuk tuk ride. The place has a pool and our room is ensuite. And I have a beer... Tomorrow we go to angkor wat, and the day fter to the lake. Then we move on to phnom penh, cutting Kompong Cham and Kratie from our trip as a result of the awful transport links.