Sawat dii everyone, A colleague of mine in London has a sister who visited Bangkok (map) in the early 70′s. She recalls that the town smelt overpoweringly of blossoms. Nowadays it smells mostly of smog and, like all of Asia, cooking. To the traveler, the city appears to be a maze of dual carriageways, pedestrian [...]
Chao everyone, Since leaving Hanoi, I have been travelling with Phil Chittock, an electrical engineer from Invercargill in New Zealand. Phil getting acquainted with the wildlife, China Beach, Vietnam23 September 1999 Phil has a unique perspective on the Marco Polo debate. For the past few years, Chinese and Italian historians have been quibbling over whether [...]
Ni hau everyone, Bridge, Mount Emeishan, China28 August 1999 After climbing Mount Emeishan, essentially a 3000m high staircase covered in equal measure by mist, fir trees, azaleas, and Chinese day-trippers, I took a three-day ferry trip down the Yangtse, through the Three Gorges, to Wuhan. These gorges are soon to be covered up by the [...]
Tashi deli everyone, “Lhasa is all fucked up.”, said Bernard turning his nose up at all the Internet cafes, the PLA (Army) led Chinese tour groups, the Lonely Planet toting Westerners and the cheesecake and pizza selling Tibetan restaurants. I imagined him thinking; “I mean really, cheesecake in China! Have you ever heard of such [...]
Namaste everyone, I love Kathmandu. I am sorry, but I do. Without doubt it has been the most tourist-orientated city so far, unquestionably the most expensive. Despite all this, despite myself, I have been seduced by it’s filter coffees, it’s sit-down loos and it’s supermarkets selling Gillette shaving blades and Werther’s Original sweets. Yesterday evening [...]
Namaste All, Like an infection, I seemed to pick up some bad karma in India. In Agra, while walking around the Taj Mahal in the 43°C heat, I caught bronchitis. The following morning I woke early and took a cycle rickshaw to the station in time to catch my 1st Class air-conditioned – with free [...]
Arrived here on Tuesday evening after a stunning 6hr bus ride up from the Punjab. Perched at the foothills of the Himalayas this “Little Lhasa” is only 1000m higher than Amritsar, but the difference could not be more blatant. McLeod is surrounded by hills awash with conifers and other evergreens. These hills and the valley [...]
Locals here joke that the good thing about Islamabad is that it is only 15km from Pakistan. It isn’t hard to see why. With it’s tree lined streets and painted parking spaces, it’s invisible sewage systems and air-conditioned shopping malls it resembles nothing so much as a little piece of suburban South Africa, planted on [...]
Salam all! Phew! After passing through the literal, internet and alcohol deserts of Iran and Baluchistan, have finally arrived here, in Quetta, South Western Pakistan (map). Ruins of Darius’ PalacePersepolis, Southern Iran The bus trip from Taftan, at the Irani border, to here is worthy of a page on its own. Suffice to say that [...]
Here a cafe, there a cafe, everywhere an internet cafe! Seems I am not going to have too much trouble keeping contact if I stick to the well-trodden back-packer routes. This one comes gratis with the accommodation. Got to Istanbul on Monday only to discover that the Trabzon ferry was not running. My quick change [...]
