Monthly Archives: December 2012

Happy Christmas and New Year from New Zealand

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Sitting in the garden, under a nearly full moon on Christmas night, having had a swim in the sea earlier in the day, is what it’s all about in New Zealand.

The day before yesterday I should have been awarded with a DoE medal for orienteering, as I found my friend’s house, and she truly lives in the middle of nowhere. I wiggled for miles down a tiny valley as instructed, and eventually came to a plain metal farm gate with 238 on the post. I didn’t dare drive in. What if Jenny really lived in a housing estate in Wellington with the same street name, and I was about to let myself onto a complete stranger’s property? So I phoned , and equally to her amazement , I was in the right place. The only signage in towns and main roads is to other MAJOR destinations, no local settlements or streets are ever mentioned. Very difficult.

On the way south I stopped off for a few minutes at a beach that goes further than the eye can see in each direction. Everyone drives right down to the sea with all the paraphernalia, and the swimming is limited to a very small area between the safety flags, while all the lifeguards are hanging around their tents, looking tanned and beautiful, and hoping there will be no call for their services.

The nearest sea to Jenny’s is a cove about half an hour’s drive away, and very rocky. I have never seen such clear water in my life. The sea was quite chilly, as it is still early in the summer, despite being the hottest Christmas Day in Wellington since 1934, 29c.. But I was determined to go in anyway.

It did seem strange watching the Queen’s speech, something I haven’t done for about 10 years. Makes you realise that some of New Zealand is more English than the English.

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Still travelling

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On a balmy evening, the day after mid- summer day, I went into town , population 40,700, at 6.30p.m. to look for dinner ( I’m learning , they eat early here, probably why there’s not many Spanish tourists). I think I really ought to keep up with the World News, obviously the Bomb has been dropped, Anthrax alert, H.M. died unexpectedly, there’s no one else about. After a few minutes of wandering around admiring the Art Deco Cinema and “Anderson’s, for men”‘, a fine 1930s emporium, clothes probably to match, though I didn’t check…. I find a restaurant that is open. Sitting outside having dinner the only sign of life are guys in Subarus with spoilers, cruising up and down Victoria Avenue, with it’s many zebra crossings and frequent speed bumps. You’ve guessed , I am exaggerating, and being unkind to my host country. The good thing is that the restaurant has delicious food, and plays great jazz and 40 year old music!

I have driven through the most amazing country side over the last two days, every time there is a pull-off on the left hand side, and sometimes even on the right, if not on a hairpin bend, I stop to take in the view. Today I also went on a road that runs parallel to the main road, but not all of it is sealed, quite usual here. The scenery on the main road was a series of mini volcanic bumps for 90 kilometres. Then I double backed on the other road,( which runs along the River Whanganui, NZ’s longest river), for as far as it was made up.

After about 45km, I was craving caffeine, and was pleasantly surprised to find the unlikely combination of gallery and coffee shop, no wonder a lot of people here are on the large size, their cakes beat the National Trust Tea Rooms hands down. I can’t see how she makes a living, only about four other people there, on a lovely Saturday lunch time, including a couple from Malvern!

Any way the cake-making lady came and sat with me, a good chance to find out how places like this exist. I asked about school… Some children do it by correspondence, but as she said, if their parents aren’t that interested they get no education nor contact with other children. There is a school at Jerusalem, 11km up the road which covers the valley, but that’s only up to about 14 years old, then they have to go to Whanganui, about 50km away, so stay with family or friends in the town or board, only to have social problems when they leave the valley. A community seems to consist of about ten households and be about 20km apart. The other thing that interested m , is where the income for these communities comes from? Sheep and honey seemed to be the answer, really I don’t know why Manuka honey is so expensive, there are as many Manuka trees here as there are heather moors in Scotland. It’ s a very isolated life, the nearest in the U.K would be living in the Hebrides!

I have decided that these cars going past aren’t all Subarus, but have just knocked their silencers off , after years of nothing better to do than cruising over speed bumps……

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40 Years behind the times…..

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………Then where’s the sex, drugs and rock and roll. I’m in a major tourist resort and it’s like heaven on a Saturday night, (Sorry, Mr Cohen), I struggled to find a bar, and saw only a couple restaurants, no wonder the motel room is fitted with a good kitchen. However they’ve almost exonerated themselves…the picture below.

Looking at the little timber frame houses it’s easy to see that people built what they had left behind. I can remember houses like that when I was a kid, but we’ve knocked ours all down while it seems to have become the style of building here.

My first day of driving was like going through Scotland in the rain, but with Agapanthus and tree ferns growing at the side of the road. But today the weather has been fine and the views wonderful, and I have come down from the Bay of Islands, north of Auckland, to Rotorua, famed for its smelly sulphurous water.

When I get wi-fi again, I will post three blogs at once, so you’ll have to scroll back to find out about my visit to Singapore and Auckland. Still, something to read on Boxing Day between the cold turkey, cold turkey sandwiches and oh-no-not-turkey-curry-again.

I keep filling up basins just to see the water go down the plug in the opposite direction, and have worked out why our clocks go clockwise……any other anorak come up with the answer?…….

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And onto New Zealand

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Really I ought to write down first impressions while they are fresh, not wait till I’ve been in a place 5 days and getting used to the way things work.

The first evening I was wandering through Auckland I was struck by how dirty the pavements are compared to Vietnam, leaves, cigarette butts, chewing gum all sorts of litter, and just heaps of dust and muck in corners. In SE Asia every one is sweeping outside their houses, shops and stalls all the time, and someone is always going round picking all the rubbish bags up. And something that made me laugh, the huge wide, four-or-five-lane streets with a couple of cars (and no cycles or motos) with people waiting for the green man at traffic lights and no traffic approaching. The thing that really bugs me, is that wi-fi is NOT free in Hotels !! And you can’t get a meal after 7.30. So I’ m in danger of going hungry every evening.

Sorry, that was a lot of moaning. Good things…… There are plenty, it doesn’t get dark till about 9.00p.m.. You can have a shower, move an inch and still feel fresh and cool. I can, sometimes, understand the natives, though when I declared I had walking boots at Customs, I couldn’t understand why he asked my about a tint, does my hair need the roots doing that badly?? Of course he was referring to camping and talking about a T E N T. The lack of traffic has become a plus as I have now become a driver, though I’ m sure coach drivers here would be boringly safe.

Auckland is a great city, with the Sky Tower, the tallest building in the Southern Hemisphere, and a sailors paradise, I would have loved to take a day out on an America Cup type yatch, but had neither the time nor the money, so I settled for a trip to a volcanic island, where they have maintained the original balance of nature, and there is an amazing museum, recommend if you’re coming here.

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Sorry Ed…..

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Just sacked the Editor, realised you had the blurb about Halong Bay and Hanoi twice. So now onto Singapore…….

It’s just so different. The architecture blew my mind, sky rise buildings you would never dream of. It’s very sterile after the places I’ve visited. It’s a clean, modern, law abiding , expensive City State, and everything works. There’s a buzz, but more like London on steroids, than other parts of Asia. I was generously put up by relations of Cheltenham friends, who showed me round and made sure I saw the best bits, and explained the politics and economy of it, which I would never have found out otherwise. Thank you Phil and Claire and of course, baby Olivia.

So much for being brave and travelling through Asia alone, and the only thing I lost after nine weeks was half a tooth, teach me to buy nougat as a way of spending my last Singapore Dollars!!!

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Fallen off the edge of the world

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I haven’t fallen off the edge of the world, merely slipped into the Southern Hemisphere. But before that happened I had a great time in Hanoi, Halong Bay, and Singapore.

At Hanoi Airport you are told how much the taxi will be, in dollars. The taxi seemed to go on for miles, so you start wondering if all is as it should be and also know it’s gong to be a roller coaster ride when the driver puts on his seat belt. The Old Quarter is tiny streets and alleys, so the hotel took a bit of finding, luckily the taxi driver took my luggage in, as it was the wrong hotel despite its name, “we have another Hotel round the corner”. I had read about scams like this!! Anyway they did, and though the taxi driver tried to extort twice the agreed rate out of me, I stuck to my guns, but he more or less threw me out this time!!

This was just an overnight stop, as I was off first thing next morning to Halong Bay. A “must see” when in the North, Vietnam’s umpteenth World Heritage site, and I had treated myself to a 3 day Cruise on a Luxury “Junk”. We paddled, (well, I didn’t, as the guide I was sharing the kayak with asked me to stop paddling, because we were going in a very wiggly line) through little tunnels almost having to lie down in the kayak, into lagoons, saw floating villages, how pearls are created and had a trip to an enormous cave. Those and of course eat a lot of delicious food and drink at huge expense (a bottle of Champagne was $50.00), made a great holiday.

The drive to Halong Bay was interesting as it showed how industrial the north is. Still rice fields and vegetables being grown but huge factories, cement works, dirty, dusty and driech. Obviously no building regs, houses all over the place with no order, or worse still deserted half built developments. Very depressing.

Back to Hanoi, and time to get my head round the streets, also time to eat real street food as I only had three days left. I took parsimony to a new level. A guided walk at 6.00 a.m. with breakfast. Then street lunch and a haircut, at the end of the day street supper including a beer, all for $12.00. The reason I really liked the Old Quarter, is that it is not a tourist ghetto, but still a working part of the City. As in a Medieval city the streets each have one sort of shop. The local people are also there in the evenings drinking and eating. It took me the three days to realise that Bia Hoi (the local draught beer, not too strong or fizzy) costs between 5000 and 12000 dongs, and I had been paying 20,000 ($1.00) for fizzy Bottled Tiger beer. Silly me.

Having thought I had got to know my way around, realisation dawned when going back to the Airport, all I had done was the London equivalent of knowing a bit of Covent Garden and perhaps discovering where Soho is.

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English?

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My benchmark for puzzling English was in Spain when looking at menus with a friend, finding a restaurant we could take Mum to later in the day. We wondered what “died of vegetables” would taste like. Luckily the menu was also in French, where Ratatouille turned out to be the answer! So some of the choices I have seen on menus here doesn’t surprise me, but might put me off. Unfortunately I can’t remember any specifically.

But my favourite odd English was in Phnom Penh, where I went to a performance of Khmer dance. Before the production started, a screen had a message to the audience, telling us that King Sihanouk had recently died and is lying in State, so that before the performance please would we stand and, to show our respect, observe a minutes slice for the King.

And then of course as we all know you must not touch exhibits in museums….

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Catch up

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Hoi An is a beautiful 17th/18th century Vietnamese/ Chinese city with French Colonial thrown in, not destroyed by the American War as most places have been. It’s rather like going to Broadway, something slightly museumish about it, and full of tailors , dressmakers and shoe shops that will make you new shoes by next morning. Some of the silk is decidedly dodgy, the attendant in the silk museum showed me how you can test its purity, but as it involves setting fire to it, you might be hounded out of the market. The best way for you to find out more about the town is to look it up on the web, as I can’t do it justice.

Then on to Hue, a pretty big city and I thought I would need a couple of days there. Actually one day would have been plenty, as the Old Citidal, Palace etc, was largely destroyed in 1945 when the French were having a war here, then finished off by the USA. I could spend one hour at the Fine Arts Museum, and then there’s the Culture Museum, two hours? No…… a thorough examination of the former took fifteen minutes and the latter was closed for lunch. Never mind, a massage and a good book took up the rest of the day.

My passion for road travel has waned, as has your interest in it by now. Originally I wanted to take the next leg of my journey, the top half of Vietnam, by train, but decided that I didn’t want to sit on a train for 18 hours. So against my Eco-instincts I flew north to Hanoi. I have to say it was great to cover about 350 miles in 55 minutes, even though I feel I have cheated.

Arriving in Hanoi quite late in the evening is quite scary, especially as the taxi driver didn’t know where the hotel was, and there are two with the same name, hotel proper, and backpackers’ hostel, which I discovered I was booked into!! If I hadn’t been so hungry I would have stayed in my room, but had to find an ATM and food. The Old Quarter is like a medieval town, a mass of tiny streets and alleys. But the great difference between Hanoi and anywhere else I have been, is that this was not just a tourist Ghetto, but full of bars of locals too. I’m longing to have a proper explore in daylight.

I was a bit worried that the fortune I had paid to a travel agent in Nga Trang, might have been a scam and that the next part of the holiday wasn’t going to happen, but I should know by now, not to worry and that things turn out alright.

So now I am having a luxurious cruise in Halong Bay, 2 nights on a “junk” and like all cruises too much yummy food and tai Chi on the sun deck at sparrow’s fart!! Swedish, Swiss, Spanish, French, Oz, Korean, New Zealanders, Austrian living in Hawaii, USA, One Brit. 30 disparate nationalities !!!!

P.S. ( I’m not yet so wanton that I’ll pay $100.00 for a bottle of Champagne though)

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The worst bus drive of them all!!!

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To go back a bit to what hopefully will one of the last bus journeys in Vietnam, from Quy Nhon, the strictly Vietnamese tourist resort, to Hoi An. This should have been perfectly straight forward journey including a 6.a.m. pick-up from the hotel.

Firstly the non-English speaking Hotelier, (are you a hotelier when your rooms are £6.00 a night?) called a taxi as soon as he saw me come downstairs, the taxi- driver’s eyes glistened when he thought he was to take me all the way to Hoi An. The only way to get this sorted was for Hotelier to call the travel agent to check what was what…. We’re talking 5.45a.m. here. So dead on 6.00 a.m. a mini cab arrives and drops me at the side of the road by a bus stop. Why not the bus station????

I was told the bus would be 10 minutes and luckily just able to grab a baguette (or Baget , as I saw on one menu ), the second mini bus which I was bundled on to, proceeded for about an hour to drive around the town, very slowly, hurrah!! Picking up people, parcels and letters. Then we we out on the open road, and I knew this was for real, and we speeded up.

However there is a silver lining to every cloud.The journey was alleviated by Mrs Motor-mouth. A stout middle aged lady in a blancmange pink sweat shirt and a flowery pink sun hat . She caused much hilarity when she turned to me with a toothless leer, and asked “woss your na’e?” And repeated Vicky back. The rest of her harangues was probably about dumb foreigners but she made everyone laugh. She had no on/ off switch nor volume control, thankfully after about 2 hours her batteries ran out.

As we went through towns and villages the driver’s assistant lent out asking people standing on the verge where they were going, occasionally people got on, or handed a shopping bag to him. There was no stop on this ride for food or a pee, no free water or hand-wipes. After a bit people started to get off, but quickly, he didn’t even stop properly. The driver would race past three or four lorries at once,then pull sharply in front of them all to stop to collect or discharge a letter or passenger. On one occasion a guy on a motorbike appeared on our near-side and a shopping basket was exchanged on the move, like the baton in a relay race.

I was thrown off at what was obviously the end of the drive, but even I could work out it wasn’t Hoi An. Umpteen taxi and moto drivers hassled me, but the bus driver gracelessly pointed out the local bus. That slowed things down a bit, but I reached Hoi An in one piece….. So though the journey was not at all what I’d expected I was so relieved to reach my destination I even took a moto (20 kilo suitcase and all) to my luxurious hotel.

Imagine my joy when the room had a bath and a kettle………

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