I drove up to Nelson from Franz Joseph yesterday. It was a pretty uneventul trip, although there were still quite a few showers. I think I got out of Southland and Fjordland just in time, though, as today there are reports of the worst floods they've had in ten years.
Today, I drove up to the north of South Island to Abel Tasman National Park and Golden Bay. My plan had been to go hiking in the park, but the weather was so poor that I thought it more prudent to stay in the car. When I got to Golden Bay, the visibilty was so bad that I turned round and went straight back to my hotel. Actually, I have a whole apartment, including living/dining room and kitchen and so I've been able to eat in for once. It turns out that the money I save on dinner and breakfast more than pays for the extra cost of the room.
No pictures today, but I have started to add in slideshows of all relevant pictures to my blog postings. I've gone back to my first day in New Zealand and, if I get any spare time, I might go back to Indochina, as well.
Monday, 26 April 2010
Sunday, 25 April 2010
Anzac Day (day 42)
Anzac Day is when the Kiwis and Aussies commemorate their lost in Gallipoli, 95 years ago. To quote from the NZ Government Guide Website:
"For nine months in 1915, British and French forces battled the Ottoman Empire - modern Turkey - for control of the Gallipoli peninsula, a small finger of Europe jutting into the Aegean Sea that dominates a strategic waterway, the Dardanelles. By opening the Dardanelles to their fleets, the Allies hoped to threaten the Ottoman capital, Constantinople (now Istanbul) and knock the Turks out of the war.
Among the British forces were the Anzacs - the Australia and New Zealand Army Corps - who landed on the peninsula on 25 April. The landing, like the Gallipoli campaign itself, was ambitious and ultimately unsuccessful: the peninsula remained in its defenders' hands.
The campaign was a costly failure for the Allies: 44,000 British and French soldiers died, including over 8,700 Australians. Among the dead were 2,721 New Zealanders - roughly one-quarter of those who fought on Gallipoli. Victory came at a high price for the Turks: 87,000 men died in the campaign which became a defining moment in Turkish history.
The Gallipoli campaign was a relatively minor part of the First World War (1914-18), but it has great significance for New Zealand's history and it has become an important symbol of its national identity. The campaign was the first time that New Zealand stepped on to the world stage, and the New Zealanders made a name for themselves fighting hard, against the odds, in an inhospitable environment.
New Zealand marks the anniversary of the Gallipoli landings each year on Anzac Day - 25 April - remembering not only those who died there, but all who have served the country in times of war. The Gallipoli battlefields are now part of the 33,000 hectare Gallipoli Peninsula Historical National Park, or the Peace Park."
Anzac Day is clearly very important to the Kiwis. As stated above, they lost 2,271 men, which sounds very few compared with the number the British or French who died, but in proportion to the size of the country was significant. I was surprised to see that nowadays, on Anzac Day, 95 years after the Gallipoli landings, the Kiwis nearly all wear poppies, just as we do on Remembrance Day. But somehow it seems more important to them. I was in a small town on the way up to Nelson and, whilst having coffee, the whole town was waiting for the church service to end and the procession to begin. I was similarly struck on the previous day in the tiny beach side town of Okarito. This town sported a large war memorial, yet the town seemed to have no more than thirty or so houses. The mystery was solved when I subsequently discovered that the town had previously had a population of 14,000, when it supported the gold mining community in the region, over a century ago.
What did piss me off a bit is that the restaurants all charge a surcharge of 15 to 20 percent for serving food on Anzac Day. This actually applies on all public holidays, not just Anzac Day, and is to cover the additional staff costs on public holidays. I’ve never known any other country to do this.
Enough of the rambling. Today I drove up from Franz Joseph Glacier to Nelson, some 400km. For the trip to Greymouth, I had two girls for company, a Mexican and a Russian. Soon after I dropped them of at Greymouth, I picked up an interesting German couple who were hitch-hiking to Golden Bay and who were spending five months in New Zealand. She was an English teacher and spoke almost perfect English. He was a sports instructor by profession, but a rock climber by nature. I dropped them off some way short of Nelson.
When I got to my hotel, I found that out that I had a whole apartment, bedroom, bathroom, living/dining room and kitchen, just for me. Since I didn't want to drink and drive, I ate dinner in the on-site restaurant, The Orangery. The food was actually rather good, especially the King Fish on a base of risotto, which I subsequently found out, on questioning the chef, to be flavoured with beetroot, onion, apple, cumin and vinegar.
I was a bit pissed off with the pretension of it all. "Do you have a reservation, Sir?" when the restaurant was half empty and almost completely deserted by the time I left. I decided to make a list of the ten things I least like about restaurants and here it is, in reverse order.
10 Restaurants that serve red wine (or worse still port) chilled.
9 Seats that are too low.
8 Background music where the vocals are second-hand copies of the original.
7 Pretentious descriptions for food, as in “A skin-bound melange of ground pork, herbs and spices, nestling against a background of home-creamed potatoes”, instead of “bangers and mash”.
6 Waiters who insist on pouring the wine.
5 Waitresses who say “Not a problem” (or even worse, "No worries") as in “How is your food?”, “Very nice, thank you”, “Not a problem”. Or even worse, as happened tonight: “Is everything still going all right?”, “Yes, thank you”, “Not a problem”.
4 People who let their mobile phones ring in restaurants.
3 Amuse bouches, that don’t.
2 People who answer their mobile phones in restaurants.
1 Germans.
I asked the waitress, in the nicest possible way, of course, why she always said ”Not a problem” and she really had no idea. It’s just the way she talks. Much like supermarket checkout girls used to say “Have a nice day”. It seems to me it’s just a fad, the way Queenslanders always used to end each sentence with an upwards inflexion, as if it were a question. But this seems to have gone out of fashion, at least judging from the Queenslanders I’ve met recently.
In my list of things that I don’t like about restaurants, I should have added waitresses who bring me the bill before I’ve asked for it. It’s like they just can’t wait to get rid of you. This time I had the last laugh on them, though. After they’d brought the bill, I ordered a coffee and they forgot to add it to the bill. Yeah.
When I left, I thought I’d wind up the waitress a bit more, so, when I paid the bill, I said “You don’t know who I am, do you?” She suddenly looked really interested and said “No.o..o, who are you?” I said “My name’s on the card”. I should have added “I don’t know you either”, to make it clear to her what was happening, but I left her wondering. What a sick bastard I am.
Tomorrow I’m off to the north of the South Island, to Golden Bay, in fact. It’s supposed to be really beautiful, so watch this space for an update.
"For nine months in 1915, British and French forces battled the Ottoman Empire - modern Turkey - for control of the Gallipoli peninsula, a small finger of Europe jutting into the Aegean Sea that dominates a strategic waterway, the Dardanelles. By opening the Dardanelles to their fleets, the Allies hoped to threaten the Ottoman capital, Constantinople (now Istanbul) and knock the Turks out of the war.
Among the British forces were the Anzacs - the Australia and New Zealand Army Corps - who landed on the peninsula on 25 April. The landing, like the Gallipoli campaign itself, was ambitious and ultimately unsuccessful: the peninsula remained in its defenders' hands.
The campaign was a costly failure for the Allies: 44,000 British and French soldiers died, including over 8,700 Australians. Among the dead were 2,721 New Zealanders - roughly one-quarter of those who fought on Gallipoli. Victory came at a high price for the Turks: 87,000 men died in the campaign which became a defining moment in Turkish history.
The Gallipoli campaign was a relatively minor part of the First World War (1914-18), but it has great significance for New Zealand's history and it has become an important symbol of its national identity. The campaign was the first time that New Zealand stepped on to the world stage, and the New Zealanders made a name for themselves fighting hard, against the odds, in an inhospitable environment.
New Zealand marks the anniversary of the Gallipoli landings each year on Anzac Day - 25 April - remembering not only those who died there, but all who have served the country in times of war. The Gallipoli battlefields are now part of the 33,000 hectare Gallipoli Peninsula Historical National Park, or the Peace Park."
Anzac Day is clearly very important to the Kiwis. As stated above, they lost 2,271 men, which sounds very few compared with the number the British or French who died, but in proportion to the size of the country was significant. I was surprised to see that nowadays, on Anzac Day, 95 years after the Gallipoli landings, the Kiwis nearly all wear poppies, just as we do on Remembrance Day. But somehow it seems more important to them. I was in a small town on the way up to Nelson and, whilst having coffee, the whole town was waiting for the church service to end and the procession to begin. I was similarly struck on the previous day in the tiny beach side town of Okarito. This town sported a large war memorial, yet the town seemed to have no more than thirty or so houses. The mystery was solved when I subsequently discovered that the town had previously had a population of 14,000, when it supported the gold mining community in the region, over a century ago.
What did piss me off a bit is that the restaurants all charge a surcharge of 15 to 20 percent for serving food on Anzac Day. This actually applies on all public holidays, not just Anzac Day, and is to cover the additional staff costs on public holidays. I’ve never known any other country to do this.
Enough of the rambling. Today I drove up from Franz Joseph Glacier to Nelson, some 400km. For the trip to Greymouth, I had two girls for company, a Mexican and a Russian. Soon after I dropped them of at Greymouth, I picked up an interesting German couple who were hitch-hiking to Golden Bay and who were spending five months in New Zealand. She was an English teacher and spoke almost perfect English. He was a sports instructor by profession, but a rock climber by nature. I dropped them off some way short of Nelson.
When I got to my hotel, I found that out that I had a whole apartment, bedroom, bathroom, living/dining room and kitchen, just for me. Since I didn't want to drink and drive, I ate dinner in the on-site restaurant, The Orangery. The food was actually rather good, especially the King Fish on a base of risotto, which I subsequently found out, on questioning the chef, to be flavoured with beetroot, onion, apple, cumin and vinegar.
I was a bit pissed off with the pretension of it all. "Do you have a reservation, Sir?" when the restaurant was half empty and almost completely deserted by the time I left. I decided to make a list of the ten things I least like about restaurants and here it is, in reverse order.
10 Restaurants that serve red wine (or worse still port) chilled.
9 Seats that are too low.
8 Background music where the vocals are second-hand copies of the original.
7 Pretentious descriptions for food, as in “A skin-bound melange of ground pork, herbs and spices, nestling against a background of home-creamed potatoes”, instead of “bangers and mash”.
6 Waiters who insist on pouring the wine.
5 Waitresses who say “Not a problem” (or even worse, "No worries") as in “How is your food?”, “Very nice, thank you”, “Not a problem”. Or even worse, as happened tonight: “Is everything still going all right?”, “Yes, thank you”, “Not a problem”.
4 People who let their mobile phones ring in restaurants.
3 Amuse bouches, that don’t.
2 People who answer their mobile phones in restaurants.
1 Germans.
I asked the waitress, in the nicest possible way, of course, why she always said ”Not a problem” and she really had no idea. It’s just the way she talks. Much like supermarket checkout girls used to say “Have a nice day”. It seems to me it’s just a fad, the way Queenslanders always used to end each sentence with an upwards inflexion, as if it were a question. But this seems to have gone out of fashion, at least judging from the Queenslanders I’ve met recently.
In my list of things that I don’t like about restaurants, I should have added waitresses who bring me the bill before I’ve asked for it. It’s like they just can’t wait to get rid of you. This time I had the last laugh on them, though. After they’d brought the bill, I ordered a coffee and they forgot to add it to the bill. Yeah.
When I left, I thought I’d wind up the waitress a bit more, so, when I paid the bill, I said “You don’t know who I am, do you?” She suddenly looked really interested and said “No.o..o, who are you?” I said “My name’s on the card”. I should have added “I don’t know you either”, to make it clear to her what was happening, but I left her wondering. What a sick bastard I am.
Tomorrow I’m off to the north of the South Island, to Golden Bay, in fact. It’s supposed to be really beautiful, so watch this space for an update.
Franz Joseph Glacier (day 41)
Still raining hard in the morning, but I'd agreed with Paula that we'd go up to the glacier whatever the weather and so I picked her up at 10am and we set up the trail that leads to the start of the glacier. Fortunately, the weather eased somewhat and it turned out to be a pleasant and interesting walk for a couple of hours.
After the first trail, we took a second trail to the top of Sentinel Point, which was once covered by the glacier. This was a fairly steep and continuous walk for about twenty minutes, ending with a view of the glacier, but was nothing special.
The glacier has retreated several miles over the last hundred years, but has actually advanced over the last five years. This is caused simply be extremely heavy snow falls in recent years, adding much more weight to the top of the glacier, thereby forcing it further down the valley. It is no counter argument to global warming.
When you reach the base of the glacier, there is a rope fence and a notice warning you of the danger of going any further without an experienced guide. It is all in a National Park and everyone is free to go there, but we thought it wiser to follow the advice and so we went no further. You really need crampons on the ice and these are provided to people who take the guided tours. These are quite expensive and, given the state of the weather, I didn't really feel it was worthwhile to pay all that money to be in the pouring rain for seven hours or so. With hindsight, I'm not sure that I took the right decision, but I had a pleasant day anyway.
After lunch in the pub, it started to rain really heavily again and so we thought we'd try the walk in the rainfores,t by Okarito beach. This was recommended as a place to go if it was raining on the glacier. We got there after about a twenty minute drive, but decided that we just couldn't face walking in the pouring rain for another three hours and so we went back to our respective lodgings for showers and a kip.
The rainforests round here are pretty impressive, with many types of flora, reaching high into the sky. There are all sorts of strange plants, like the tree ferns and the fern-like plant that is used as the symbol on the All Blacks shirts (I must find out what it's called).
According to Jerry, many of the trees are berry-bearing, which accounts for the preponderance of finches and other like birds. This morning he put bread on the veranda whilst we had breakfast and we had a great variety of visitors, although nothing larger than a blackbird. He told me how last year his neighbour, a farmer, had been spraying an agent orange-type defoliant on his own land, but that some blew onto Jerry's plot and almost immediately killed all the new growth. It also left Jerry with some ill effects, such as itching, sore-throat and eyes and disrupted sleep patterns. He tried to get the council to take action against the farmer, but they weren't really interested, partly, he says, because of the cost, but also because most of the council are farmers and they don't want to have any interference with what they do.
There's not much more to say about this day, except that I went back to bed fairly early, ready for a 9am start for the long drive to Nelson.
To Franz Joseph Glacier (day 40)
After just three days in Queenstown, it was time to move on, this time to the Franz Joseph Glacier. For once, I had a travelling companion, Paula, a Mexican girl I'd met on the trip to Milford Sound. We met up in Queenstown in the morning and set off for Franz Joseph. Despite the forecasts of rain, the weather held fair for some time and we took some lovely pictures on the way. However, after about an hour, the rain set in and it then poured hard almost all the way for the remaining five-hours.
We finally arrived, a little downbeat, at about 3:30. I was staying at a place about 4km short of Franz Joseph and I dropped my gear off with mine host, Jerry. It turned out that I was the only guest and so he upgraded me to a double room with en suite shower, at no extra cost, which suited me fine. The only problem was that he seemed decidedly odd and Paula refused all his offers of a cheaper room.
That was fine and so, in pouring rain, we drove into town (if that's what you can call it) and eventually found Paula a place in a shared room in a hostel. We stopped at a number of places, including the Information Centre, the YHA and the hostel that Paula finally booked into. At each stop, I mentioned where I was staying and they would all say something like "With Jerry?", with a disbelieving look. I couldn't get anyone to say anything other than one guy who would just say that "he's hetrosexual, at least" which I suppose was some relief.
Eventually we ended up in the pub for something to eat and to get warm. When I asked the barman about Jerry, he wouldn't say anything, but he just hummed the music from Deliverance! This was all getting a bit freaky, especially when he added that Jerry came from California and that that was where Bates Motel was located. I'd already been having visions of Antony Perkins in Psycho, so this didn't help much.
However, I reckoned that someone who'd just jumped out of an aeroplane at 15,000 feet had nothing to fear from a podgy little American (who actually turned out to be a Kiwi). The pub offered a very good service whereby they would drive anyone who was over the limit back to their own homes, so they wouldn't be faced with closure for having served people whe were intoxicated, an offence in New Zealand. After they took me back to Jerry's, I thought I ought to find out what he was like. I also needed to sort out what to do for breakfast, so I banged on his door and went up to his private quarters. He turned out to be quite an unusual man, but nothing like the weirdo the people in town had indicated.
According to Jerry, he worked as a pilot for a small airline for many years, then moved to helicopters, which he flew commerically, mostly crop-spraying. I'm not quite sure of the timeline, but somehow he ended up being engaged to a Thai girl and hopes to marry her later in the year, once he has saved enough for the wedding. As is common in Thailand, they take the wedding photos well before the wedding so that they can give them to the guests at the wedding. He showed me his pictures and she certainly is a beautiful women, much younger looking than the fifty that he says she is supposed to be.
After retiring from flying helicopters, Jerry went to Thailand to tap rubber, which he has now been doing for some years. That is where he met his wife-to-be, as she also taps rubber on the same plantation, although her main job is as a specialist Thai masseuse. I say no more, except that I ended up quite liking Jerry, despite all the insinuations I'd heard.
The following day, I had breakfast with him and it turned out that he also has a wealth of knowledge about the local flora and fauna, the geology of the area and of weather forecasting, which I think he learnt in his time as a pilot. All in all, I found him to be an excellent host.
We finally arrived, a little downbeat, at about 3:30. I was staying at a place about 4km short of Franz Joseph and I dropped my gear off with mine host, Jerry. It turned out that I was the only guest and so he upgraded me to a double room with en suite shower, at no extra cost, which suited me fine. The only problem was that he seemed decidedly odd and Paula refused all his offers of a cheaper room.
That was fine and so, in pouring rain, we drove into town (if that's what you can call it) and eventually found Paula a place in a shared room in a hostel. We stopped at a number of places, including the Information Centre, the YHA and the hostel that Paula finally booked into. At each stop, I mentioned where I was staying and they would all say something like "With Jerry?", with a disbelieving look. I couldn't get anyone to say anything other than one guy who would just say that "he's hetrosexual, at least" which I suppose was some relief.
Eventually we ended up in the pub for something to eat and to get warm. When I asked the barman about Jerry, he wouldn't say anything, but he just hummed the music from Deliverance! This was all getting a bit freaky, especially when he added that Jerry came from California and that that was where Bates Motel was located. I'd already been having visions of Antony Perkins in Psycho, so this didn't help much.
However, I reckoned that someone who'd just jumped out of an aeroplane at 15,000 feet had nothing to fear from a podgy little American (who actually turned out to be a Kiwi). The pub offered a very good service whereby they would drive anyone who was over the limit back to their own homes, so they wouldn't be faced with closure for having served people whe were intoxicated, an offence in New Zealand. After they took me back to Jerry's, I thought I ought to find out what he was like. I also needed to sort out what to do for breakfast, so I banged on his door and went up to his private quarters. He turned out to be quite an unusual man, but nothing like the weirdo the people in town had indicated.
According to Jerry, he worked as a pilot for a small airline for many years, then moved to helicopters, which he flew commerically, mostly crop-spraying. I'm not quite sure of the timeline, but somehow he ended up being engaged to a Thai girl and hopes to marry her later in the year, once he has saved enough for the wedding. As is common in Thailand, they take the wedding photos well before the wedding so that they can give them to the guests at the wedding. He showed me his pictures and she certainly is a beautiful women, much younger looking than the fifty that he says she is supposed to be.
After retiring from flying helicopters, Jerry went to Thailand to tap rubber, which he has now been doing for some years. That is where he met his wife-to-be, as she also taps rubber on the same plantation, although her main job is as a specialist Thai masseuse. I say no more, except that I ended up quite liking Jerry, despite all the insinuations I'd heard.
The following day, I had breakfast with him and it turned out that he also has a wealth of knowledge about the local flora and fauna, the geology of the area and of weather forecasting, which I think he learnt in his time as a pilot. All in all, I found him to be an excellent host.
Saturday, 24 April 2010
My most awesome day yet (day 39)
This was the day that, almost on impulse, I decided to pack in as much high-octane activity as I could. So it was "sod the money, this is the day of my life and I'm going to make the most of it".
My day started at 8:15 with a 15,000 feet free-fall sky dive. After we'd driven to the airstrip and had the pre-jump briefing, we boarded the plane and slowly rose to 15,000 feet. When it came to jumping, I thought I’d be nervous as hell, but I don’t think my heart beat went up at all and I found I was totally calm when it came to the point of no return. I think the fact that I was first to jump may have helped.
The cloud base was at about 8,000 feet and we were way above that when it came to zero hour. We couldn't see the ground at all and maybe that helped, too. On the command from my co-jumper, I just leant forward and fell out of the plane. After a tap on my shoulders, I let go of the jump position and spread my arms out wide. Then we just flew! Wow! I was Superman flying way up in the sky.
After swinging around for about 40 seconds, we dropped right through the clouds and then suddenly were hit by the most magnificent view of Lake Wakatipu, way below us. The chute opened with a bit of a jerk and we started swinging around doing some aerobatics. I have to admit that for a while my ears were hurting and I felt a little queezy in the stomach, but the whole experience was almost orgasmic. After a couple of minutes drifting down, we landed safely back on the ground. What an experience! And I did buy the tee-shirt afterwards. As it turned out, I was very lucky to have been the first to jump as soon after that, the clouds closed in and they had to abandon jumping for the rest of the day.
After lunch, it was off for the Jet Boat ride on the Shotover River. We had to dress up with life jackets, but I don't think there was ever any real danger of our falling out of the boat, unless we crashed, which always did seem a realistic proposition.
I’d never seen a jet boat before, but they are pretty amazing. They are driven by water that is pumped out under pressure in two powerful jets at the back of the boat. I think the fact that the two jets are controlled separately gives the boat its tremendous manoeuvrability. The acceleration is fantastic and they very quickly reach 80km/hr, down narrow gorges, with vertical rocks and hangovers just inches from your head. Quite scary. Our pilot certainly knew how to drive. Apart from trying to scare us to death with his crazy slides into cliff faces, he also threw in a number of 360 degree turns. These were pretty impressive and you certainly had to hang on tight. Not really scary, especially after the first time, but great fun. I guess the whole ride lasted about twenty minutes and, without doubt, knocks the spots off any pleasure ground ride I've ever seen.
Finally, it was off to the white-water rafting, in Shotover Canyon. I had paid to go up by helicopter, but since there weren’t enough people willing to join me I had to take the bus instead. And I’m glad I did. The dirt road we had to take was incredible and not a little scary. They say it's the fifteenth most dangerous road in the world and I can well believe it. You know those emails that come round from time to time showing roads in South America that somehow just cling to the vertical surface of the cliff? Well that’s what this was like and on a dirt road, to boot. And we had a woman driver, sporting bright pink hair, tattoos and body piercing in places you couldn't even imagine! She reminded me of the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, although she was on the large size, rather than totally emaciated. But, boy, she knew how to drive.
As for the rafting itself, it was truly awesome. We were a party of seven rafts, each with four, five or six paddlers, plus the leader. In addition, there was a crazy Brazilian in a Kayak who was there to help out, if anyone got into trouble. As it turned out, his main task seemed to be to splash water over the rafters and to try to pull some of them out of the rafts. At the end, though, he had his come uppance as two of the captains grabbed him and dumped him in the barrell of disinfectant that they use to clean down the wetsuits.
When we got going on the rafts, we shot down canyons with vertical cliffs, shot over rapids and down waterfalls and finally through a 150m tunnel, barely wide enough to take the boat and carved out by gold miners in the last century. We ended up with an almighty crash through some rapids where we were all completely soaked, but we ended up first to finish and not one of us fell out of the raft.
But then we were captained by a long-haired Maori, who went by the name of Chief! He seemed to like the way I was paddling and after I told him I used to row in an eight on the Thames, he seemed suitably impressed. I was all gung ho for overtaking the other boats and he started calling me "Peter the Skiffer" and "the mad Englishman". I did suggest we went on a war party with him to raid one of the other boats, but the Aussie woman who sat next to me didn't seem to like the idea!
We ended with hot showers and coffee and, all in all, I think the trip must have lasted about four hours and for me ended up being the highlight of a fantastic day.
Thursday, 22 April 2010
Milford Sound (day 38)
Everyone said I should visit Milford Sound, so I thought I'd better book a trip - and I'm glad I did. It was a long day, 7am to 7:15pm, but well worth it. For me, the drive there was actually better than the boat trip on the sound itself.
The drive starts with a trip along the east side of Lake Wakatipu. This is the lake on which my motel is situated and is truly beautiful. The lake is S-shaped and at 80km long, is New Zealand's longest lake, although only third largest in terms of area. The whole of this area was heavily glaciated during five separate ice ages, with ice upwards of a kilometer deep. Glaciation cuts out deep U-shaped valleys and, since the hardness of rock in these parts means that there has been comparatively little erosion, a lot of the mountains have near vertical sides. This applies to the lakes too, resulting in Lake Wakatipu being over 400m deep in places. The lake actually 'breathes', in that it has a seiche (standing wave) that has a frequency of almost 27 minutes. The seiche is caused be differences in atmospheric pressure at each end of the lake and results in the water level rising and falling by some 20cm.
The Southland area covers the south-eastern corner of the Sount Island and includes Milford Sound, but not Queenstown. The area has a population of 100,000 people and 8m sheep. Actually, sheep prices have been low in recent years and dairy prices relatively high. This has resulted in many farmers switching from sheep to dairy as well as to beef production. Venison is also becoming increasingly popular.
There is an interesting by-product of the venison production, which I had not heard of before. This is the deer velvet that grows on the antlers and has long been highly regarded as a health supplement in the Orient. It is now being widely sold as a natural remedy for a number of conditions, including arthritis. Apparently, deer have remarkable self-healing abilities, so that if a deer breaks a leg it will completely heal itself within a month. It is thought that something in the deer antler promotes blood circulation, which is why it is good for arthritis. I am going to try it out, whilst I am here as, apart from knee and ankle problems, one of my fingers is becoming quite stiff and sore from arthritis. I reckon there's nothing to lose in giving it a shot.
The Southland area has a very high level of precipitation, averaging seven to eight metres (!) per year, with a recent record of over nine metres. On one day, they had over half a metre of rain. It actually rains on about 250 days in the year. We were therefore lucky to have particularly good weather for our trip to Milford Sound.
This level of rainfall means that the mountain rocks are always damp, which means that lots of mosses and lichens cover the surface. Remarkably, this provides sufficient grip for a specially adapted form of beech tree to cling to the mountain sides and most of the hills are completely covered by the beech, right up to the tree-line. However, from time to time the trees grow to large to hang on and they then crash down the steep mountain sides, into the lake below. As they fall, they take evertyhing in their path. You can see quite a few of these bare patches on the sides of the hills, but they don't remain bare for long as lots of beech seedlings spring to life. These have been lying dormant for years, just waiting for their moment, as soon as the surface is exposed.
As well as the tree avalanches, the area also suffers from a lot of rock avalanches, as well as snow avalanches, in the winter. What I hadn't realised is that when there is a large avalanche, it causes a very strong wind. We saw the results of one of these 'storms', where a large group of trees had been completely uprooted by the wind.
Some of the scenery is quite surreal, which is doubtless why Stephen Spielberg chose to film a lot of Jurassic Park in this area. Also Mount Mordaw from Lord of the Rings was filmed on the mountain on which the Remarkables ski area is set. Incidentally, I just heard that the recenty divorced Shania Twain has a house and 10,000 acres here in Queenstown, just for her and her three horses.
For me, the best part of the day was the drive to Milford Sound, rather than the boat trip itself. One particularly memorable place was Mirror Lakes where the water is so smooth that you get wonderful reflections of the mountains on the surface of the lakes. We were particularly lucky with the weather on the day of our trip which meant that the lakes were very smooth and our visibility, in general, was superb. It was a little cloudy when we got to the Sound but not enough to spoil our views.
Milford Sound is a 15km long, deeply cut inlet on the south west coast of the South Island, running into the Tasman. Rudyard Kipling called it the eigth wonder of the world. Being formed by glaciation, it is actually a fjord and is situated in the aptly named Fjordland National Park, New Zealand's largest. The mountains rise steeply from the sea, reaching up to to 1,500 metres. Many waterfalls feed into the fjord and the ship's captain loved edging the prow of the ship right up to the waterfall so that the people standing at the front were soaked.
The Sound is, of course, very spectacular, but, having just come from Hoolong Bay in Vietnam, not quite up to that standard.
The drive starts with a trip along the east side of Lake Wakatipu. This is the lake on which my motel is situated and is truly beautiful. The lake is S-shaped and at 80km long, is New Zealand's longest lake, although only third largest in terms of area. The whole of this area was heavily glaciated during five separate ice ages, with ice upwards of a kilometer deep. Glaciation cuts out deep U-shaped valleys and, since the hardness of rock in these parts means that there has been comparatively little erosion, a lot of the mountains have near vertical sides. This applies to the lakes too, resulting in Lake Wakatipu being over 400m deep in places. The lake actually 'breathes', in that it has a seiche (standing wave) that has a frequency of almost 27 minutes. The seiche is caused be differences in atmospheric pressure at each end of the lake and results in the water level rising and falling by some 20cm.
The Southland area covers the south-eastern corner of the Sount Island and includes Milford Sound, but not Queenstown. The area has a population of 100,000 people and 8m sheep. Actually, sheep prices have been low in recent years and dairy prices relatively high. This has resulted in many farmers switching from sheep to dairy as well as to beef production. Venison is also becoming increasingly popular.
There is an interesting by-product of the venison production, which I had not heard of before. This is the deer velvet that grows on the antlers and has long been highly regarded as a health supplement in the Orient. It is now being widely sold as a natural remedy for a number of conditions, including arthritis. Apparently, deer have remarkable self-healing abilities, so that if a deer breaks a leg it will completely heal itself within a month. It is thought that something in the deer antler promotes blood circulation, which is why it is good for arthritis. I am going to try it out, whilst I am here as, apart from knee and ankle problems, one of my fingers is becoming quite stiff and sore from arthritis. I reckon there's nothing to lose in giving it a shot.
The Southland area has a very high level of precipitation, averaging seven to eight metres (!) per year, with a recent record of over nine metres. On one day, they had over half a metre of rain. It actually rains on about 250 days in the year. We were therefore lucky to have particularly good weather for our trip to Milford Sound.
This level of rainfall means that the mountain rocks are always damp, which means that lots of mosses and lichens cover the surface. Remarkably, this provides sufficient grip for a specially adapted form of beech tree to cling to the mountain sides and most of the hills are completely covered by the beech, right up to the tree-line. However, from time to time the trees grow to large to hang on and they then crash down the steep mountain sides, into the lake below. As they fall, they take evertyhing in their path. You can see quite a few of these bare patches on the sides of the hills, but they don't remain bare for long as lots of beech seedlings spring to life. These have been lying dormant for years, just waiting for their moment, as soon as the surface is exposed.
Some of the scenery is quite surreal, which is doubtless why Stephen Spielberg chose to film a lot of Jurassic Park in this area. Also Mount Mordaw from Lord of the Rings was filmed on the mountain on which the Remarkables ski area is set. Incidentally, I just heard that the recenty divorced Shania Twain has a house and 10,000 acres here in Queenstown, just for her and her three horses.
The Sound is, of course, very spectacular, but, having just come from Hoolong Bay in Vietnam, not quite up to that standard.
Tuesday, 20 April 2010
Christchurch to Queesntown (days 36 and 37)
I arrived in Christchurch yesterday afternoon, after a long but uneventful flight. apart from being charged for excess baggage. Thank goodness neither the protests in Bangkok nor the fallout from the volcano affected me. I only hope flights get back to normal soon, although I've just heard on the news that the eruption has now increased in intensity.
I must say that after the heat and the hassles of Indochina, enjoyable though it was, it was very pleasant to be back in the west. It's funny how simple things like being able to brush your teeth with tap water suddenly count for so much! The people in Christchurch were so friendly, too. I only had to take out a map whilst I was on the street for someone to come up and ask if I needed help. Christchurch itself is a rather sleepy place, where every street seems to be named after an English town or county. I stayed on Hereford Street, which is next to Worcester Street and Gloucester Street, crossed by Oxford Terrace and close to Cambridge Terrace.
I picked up a hire car this morning and drove down to Queenstown, some 500k. There was very little traffic apart from the odd truck, 4 by 4 or touring coach. The roads are pretty well all single carriageway, with a speed limit of 100k/hour. Since I had to cross the mountains that run down the centre of South Island, near Mount Cook, I expected the roads to be rather slow and I was surprised to find that the slopes were pretty gentle and mostly fairly straight. I was therefore able to keep up a good speed and it only took six hours for the journey, including a lunch break.
After the first 200k, which was pretty flat, the scenery was very impressive, with mountains and lakes, all rather reminiscent of our Lake District. Since it is now autumn, the colours were very pretty, with stunning mustard yellow poplars, yellowowing willows and a mixture of red, yellow and green grape vines (the leaves, not the grapes). It was good to see that There are lots of small wineries as you approach Queenstown. Unfortunately, I won't have time to visit them.
I was surprised to find that the mountains all appear to be made of sedimentary rock, which would indicate that the whole of New Zealand, or at least the South Island, must once have been under water. Through most of the drive, warning signs were posted at all the bends giving advisory speed limits. What I found odd, was that these all ended in five (35, 45, 55, etc.) and never in zero. I wonder why they never think that, say, 50k/hr would be advisablk?
The motel I'm staying in is on the road into Queenstown and has stunning views over the lake. Tomorrow I'm going on a coach tour and boat trip to Milford Sound, on everyone's advice. Then on Thursday I've booked an all action day, including free-fall skydiving, jet boating, a helicopter ride and white-water rafting. I only hope I don't chicken out! I'll let you know in a later post.
I must say that after the heat and the hassles of Indochina, enjoyable though it was, it was very pleasant to be back in the west. It's funny how simple things like being able to brush your teeth with tap water suddenly count for so much! The people in Christchurch were so friendly, too. I only had to take out a map whilst I was on the street for someone to come up and ask if I needed help. Christchurch itself is a rather sleepy place, where every street seems to be named after an English town or county. I stayed on Hereford Street, which is next to Worcester Street and Gloucester Street, crossed by Oxford Terrace and close to Cambridge Terrace.
I picked up a hire car this morning and drove down to Queenstown, some 500k. There was very little traffic apart from the odd truck, 4 by 4 or touring coach. The roads are pretty well all single carriageway, with a speed limit of 100k/hour. Since I had to cross the mountains that run down the centre of South Island, near Mount Cook, I expected the roads to be rather slow and I was surprised to find that the slopes were pretty gentle and mostly fairly straight. I was therefore able to keep up a good speed and it only took six hours for the journey, including a lunch break.
After the first 200k, which was pretty flat, the scenery was very impressive, with mountains and lakes, all rather reminiscent of our Lake District. Since it is now autumn, the colours were very pretty, with stunning mustard yellow poplars, yellowowing willows and a mixture of red, yellow and green grape vines (the leaves, not the grapes). It was good to see that There are lots of small wineries as you approach Queenstown. Unfortunately, I won't have time to visit them.
I was surprised to find that the mountains all appear to be made of sedimentary rock, which would indicate that the whole of New Zealand, or at least the South Island, must once have been under water. Through most of the drive, warning signs were posted at all the bends giving advisory speed limits. What I found odd, was that these all ended in five (35, 45, 55, etc.) and never in zero. I wonder why they never think that, say, 50k/hr would be advisablk?
The motel I'm staying in is on the road into Queenstown and has stunning views over the lake. Tomorrow I'm going on a coach tour and boat trip to Milford Sound, on everyone's advice. Then on Thursday I've booked an all action day, including free-fall skydiving, jet boating, a helicopter ride and white-water rafting. I only hope I don't chicken out! I'll let you know in a later post.
Monday, 19 April 2010
Vientiane (days 33 and 34)
This was the end of Indochina, so far as I was concerned, and not a bad place to finish my touring in Asia. Vientiane, capital of Laos, has an official population of 600,000, although our guide thought that there were actually far more than that living there. The town itself is reasonably modern and has a comfortable feel to it, certainly more relaxed than Saigon and much more laid back than Hanoi. As with Luang Prabang, it sits on the mighty Mekong (not the Mighty Mekon, Dan Dare fans). At this point the river forms the border with Thailand and, at night, sitting in one of the riverside restaurants, you can see the lights of one of the Thai towns, right across the river from Vientiane.
Here's the Royal Palace (I think), a rather magnificent building:
No town in Indochina would be complete without its temples and Vientiane is no exception, boasting the nation's most potent symbol of Lao sovereignty and its most revered Buddhist site, That Luang, a religious monument, completely covered in gold.
The French influence is witnessed by the Patuxai monument, Vientiane's own Arc de Triumphe, only with an Asian touch. This arch stands at the end of a long wide street, reminiscent of the Champs Elysee. Predictably, it was built by the French when they used the city as their centre of operations in Indochina. I wasn't quite sure what to make of the sign, in the middle of some shrubs, that said "No passing a grass". "Don't Bogard the joint" maybe? In passing, it's worth noting that the parks here, and elsewhere in Laos, are very well kept, a testament to communist rule and cheap labour, perhaps?
Also on a religious theme, there's the Haw Pha Kaew, once a royal temple that held the much valued Emerald Buddha. Unfortunately, those nasty Siamese stole the Buddha and it is now housed in Bangkok's Grand Palace. I don't know how true the story is, but I did see it in Bangkok, so I can only assume it's true. The trouble is that out here there's been such a convoluted history between the countries of Indochina that there are old animosities everywhere, diaspora (or diasporas?) in every country and lots of irredentist feelings. It's hard to know which side to believe, although it seems to me that the Cambodians are the most aggrieved, the Khmer empire having once included almost all of Indochina. Having the fuck bombed out of them by the Americans didn't help a lot, although, in fact, Laos was bombed even more. Without doubt, the Vietnamese are the most disliked and no one is too keen on China. Really, knowing very little about the region, it would seem to me quite likely that there will be further wars before too long.
Whilst we were in Vientiane, we also went to the museum for unexploded mines. This was much like the one I saw in Vietnam (or was it Cambodia?) and it left me with the same feelings of sadness and disgust. Those poor people after all this time still losing limbs from all the cluster bombs that litter the country. The Americans have a lot to answer for, but then we've used them too!
As it's the last time I'll be seeing them, I'll finish this posting with photos of my travelling companions, all taken on our last night out together, when we all ate dinner at one of the excellent riverside restaurants (and one of the few where I could get a decent bottle of wine). I must say that they were a great bunch of people and we had a lot of fun together, so thanks to everyone and I hope to see some of you in the UK one day. With apologies in advance for the spelling, they are, in order:
Shay and Lesley, from Canberra:
Peter and Pamela, from Melbourne:
Debbie, from Edmonton:
Adriana, from Brazil, but currently living in London with her husband:
Betsy, from New York:
Laurey, our guide, from Sydney:
And, just for good luck, me:
Unfortunately, Karen, also from New York, couldn't join us for dinner that night as she was suffering from a nasty bug. I didn't get a picture of her either. I trust you are better now, Karen.
Here's the Royal Palace (I think), a rather magnificent building:
Whilst we were in Vientiane, we also went to the museum for unexploded mines. This was much like the one I saw in Vietnam (or was it Cambodia?) and it left me with the same feelings of sadness and disgust. Those poor people after all this time still losing limbs from all the cluster bombs that litter the country. The Americans have a lot to answer for, but then we've used them too!
As it's the last time I'll be seeing them, I'll finish this posting with photos of my travelling companions, all taken on our last night out together, when we all ate dinner at one of the excellent riverside restaurants (and one of the few where I could get a decent bottle of wine). I must say that they were a great bunch of people and we had a lot of fun together, so thanks to everyone and I hope to see some of you in the UK one day. With apologies in advance for the spelling, they are, in order:
Shay and Lesley, from Canberra:
Peter and Pamela, from Melbourne:
Adriana, from Brazil, but currently living in London with her husband:
Betsy, from New York:
Laurey, our guide, from Sydney:
And, just for good luck, me:
Unfortunately, Karen, also from New York, couldn't join us for dinner that night as she was suffering from a nasty bug. I didn't get a picture of her either. I trust you are better now, Karen.
Sunday, 18 April 2010
Luang Prabang (Days 31 to 33)
Saturday, 17 April 2010
Euchre, a card game we played on the Mekong river
Euchre is a whist game, for four players, split into two teams of two. There are various versions, but the one described below is how it was taught to me by two Australians on our trip on the Mekong in Laos. Our version was fun to play, but I'd like to try some of the other versions, too.
Alternative rules can be found at: http://boardgames.about.com/cs/euchre/a/euchre_rules.htm
The game is played with a pack of 23 cards, including all the cards from Nine to Ace, apart from the Nine of Spades. Suits are ranked in the order: Diamonds, Hearts, Clubs and Spades, Diamonds being the highest. The dealer deals one card in the middle (to the 'kitty'), then three to the first player, two to the second, three to third and two to the fourth. After dealing another card to the kitty, he deals two, three, two and three to the four players, followed by the final card to the kitty. Each player thus has five cards, with three in the kitty.
Starting with dealer's edge, the players then bid, as a partnership, for three, four or five tricks. A player who has bid may bid again, but a player who passes must remain silent in the bidding for the rest of that hand. Suit order determines who wins the contract (e.g. three Hearts beat three Clubs, but four Clubs beats three Hearts). With the exception of no trump bids (explained below), all bids are in a suit, that suit forming the trump. There is one peculiarity with the order of the cards, for the trump suit only, which is as follows: Jack of the other suit of the same colour, Jack of the trump suit, followed by Ace, King, Queen, Ten and Nine of the trump suit. For the non-trump suits, the order is Ace, King, Queen, Jack, Ten and Nine, except that if the trump suit is in the same colour as this suit, the Jack will not be included, since it has become the top card in the trump suit. Also, for Spades, there is no Nine.
Unlike bridge, whoever makes the winning bid plays the contract and will make the first lead. However, before he leads, he first he picks up the three cards in the kitty and then discards any three cards, face down, leaving him with five cards. Players must follow suit if they can. The tricks are then played as in standard Whist, except with the order of trumps stated above. If, say, Hearts are trumps then the Jack of Diamonds is treated in every respect as a Heart (the highest trump) and cannot be played as a Diamond, if someone leads Diamonds, except if the player has no Diamonds, in which case it can be played as a trump.
A no trump call can be made at any time in the bidding, but must always be for five tricks. It is the highest possible call.
Scoring is one point for making three or four tricks and two points for making five tricks, provided, in each case, that the contract is made. Two points is scored for defeating a contract. As an unusual feature, scoring is done by each side using a Five and a Six and exposing as many pips as points have been scored. Of course, paper may be used (and is probably more reliable).
An extended version of the game, called 500, uses a larger card set.
Alternative rules can be found at: http://boardgames.about.com/cs/euchre/a/euchre_rules.htm
The game is played with a pack of 23 cards, including all the cards from Nine to Ace, apart from the Nine of Spades. Suits are ranked in the order: Diamonds, Hearts, Clubs and Spades, Diamonds being the highest. The dealer deals one card in the middle (to the 'kitty'), then three to the first player, two to the second, three to third and two to the fourth. After dealing another card to the kitty, he deals two, three, two and three to the four players, followed by the final card to the kitty. Each player thus has five cards, with three in the kitty.
Starting with dealer's edge, the players then bid, as a partnership, for three, four or five tricks. A player who has bid may bid again, but a player who passes must remain silent in the bidding for the rest of that hand. Suit order determines who wins the contract (e.g. three Hearts beat three Clubs, but four Clubs beats three Hearts). With the exception of no trump bids (explained below), all bids are in a suit, that suit forming the trump. There is one peculiarity with the order of the cards, for the trump suit only, which is as follows: Jack of the other suit of the same colour, Jack of the trump suit, followed by Ace, King, Queen, Ten and Nine of the trump suit. For the non-trump suits, the order is Ace, King, Queen, Jack, Ten and Nine, except that if the trump suit is in the same colour as this suit, the Jack will not be included, since it has become the top card in the trump suit. Also, for Spades, there is no Nine.
Unlike bridge, whoever makes the winning bid plays the contract and will make the first lead. However, before he leads, he first he picks up the three cards in the kitty and then discards any three cards, face down, leaving him with five cards. Players must follow suit if they can. The tricks are then played as in standard Whist, except with the order of trumps stated above. If, say, Hearts are trumps then the Jack of Diamonds is treated in every respect as a Heart (the highest trump) and cannot be played as a Diamond, if someone leads Diamonds, except if the player has no Diamonds, in which case it can be played as a trump.
A no trump call can be made at any time in the bidding, but must always be for five tricks. It is the highest possible call.
Scoring is one point for making three or four tricks and two points for making five tricks, provided, in each case, that the contract is made. Two points is scored for defeating a contract. As an unusual feature, scoring is done by each side using a Five and a Six and exposing as many pips as points have been scored. Of course, paper may be used (and is probably more reliable).
An extended version of the game, called 500, uses a larger card set.
Friday, 16 April 2010
Down the Mekong and into Laos (Days 29 and 30)
After the hectic pace of travelling in Cambodia and Thailand, it was something of a relief to relax on a boat trip down the Mekong to Luang Prabang. The trip altogether took two days, with an overnight stop at a somewhat primitive hotel, now much improved by its very recent connection to the electricity supply (previously it had a generator, which only ran from 6pm to 10pm).
Laos is the least developed of the countries in Indochina, but has a history much like Vietnam and Cambodia, albeit without the horrors of Pol Pot. Previously known as "The Kingdom of a Thousand Elephants", it was a subject kingdom of Siam (now Thailand) until it was occupied by the French in 1893 and then by the Japanese, during the Second World War. After Hiroshima, the Japanese left and the French returned, only to find themselves facing yet another fight for independence, this finally being achieved in 1954. Laos was still a kingdom, but in 1975 the communist Pathet Lao took over and have been running the country ever since.
During the Vietnam War, the Americans bombed Laos extensively (and secretly), trying to prevent weapons and supplies from reaching Vietnam down the Ho Chi Minh Trail. In fact, in terms of the tonnage of bombs dropped per head of population, Laos was the most heavily bombed of the Indochina countries, with over one ton of munitions being dropped per person. Much of this never exploded, causing a problem that continues in some parts to the present day.
Laos boasts forty-nine ethnic groups in a population that has more than doubled since WW2 to its current level of 6.7m. Some two thirds of the population is Buddhist, although many are animists as well. The government apparently allows complete freedom of religion and freedom to do whatever else you want, provided, so we were told, that you do what the government says (work that one out!). In fact, the country does not have a particularly oppressive feel to it and the people seem to be pretty contented, although not enjoying a high standard of living. The standard of living is actually one of the lowest in the world, the average annual salary being under $1,000.
There are, however, some pretty repressive laws, for example:
• There is a curfew at 12 midnight.
• It is illegal to have sex with anyone unless you are married to that person.
• Anti-drugs legislation is very strict and possession of even a very small quantity of any illegal drug may result in the death penalty.
• It is illegal for a foreigner to ride a motor cycle.
The scenery in the Mekong valley is pretty impressive, although unfortunately visibility wasn't good because, at this time of year, farmers burn off all the old crops, resulting in a low-level of smoke enveloping the whole country. Nevertheless, the boat trip was very relaxing and gave plenty of time for reading and such things as playing cards. In fact, I learnt another new game, this one rather good (see separate blog).
We saw a number of local activities along the river including fishing, both with nets and with bamboo rods, panning for gold and farming, including rearing pigs and chicken and growing rice and bananas.
At one point, we stopped to visit a small village that lived up on the hills on the side of the river. The people there had nothing to sell and were obviously pretty poor. Some of the children did go to school and one of the boys, who looked about sixteen, but was actually twenty-two, did speak a little English. He was an orphan and still went to school, even at twenty-two. It wasn't clear what he was doing at that age, but I presume it was some sort of primary school. Personally, I didn't feel comfortable gawking at the villagers who, mostly, just stood around, looking, I thought, rather embarrassed. The kids, however, seemed to like it, especially when they were shown photographs of themselves.
We ate lunch on board the boat each day and enjoyed the food prepared by the boatman's wife (the whole family live on tbe boat and just ferry people up and down the Mekong). Whilst we were on board, she bought from the riverside, a live iguana and a rice paddy chicken, the local name for a kind of rat that lives in the rice fields. Fortunately, these were both for the family's own use and not for us. She also bought a large fish (a catfish, I think), that the fisherman had caught in the Mekong and been keeping alive on a line in the water.
All in all it was a well-spent couple of days, for me particularly, as it allowed me to unwind after the heavy schedule of the last three weeks. It also gave us all time to get to know each other and, I'm glad to say, we are an interesting bunch of people, who seem to get on well. There are two Australian couples and four separate ladies, two American, one Canadian and one Brazilian. Then there's me, the sole Englishman. Our tour leader is a delightful and very helpful young Australian girl (in picture).
Laos is the least developed of the countries in Indochina, but has a history much like Vietnam and Cambodia, albeit without the horrors of Pol Pot. Previously known as "The Kingdom of a Thousand Elephants", it was a subject kingdom of Siam (now Thailand) until it was occupied by the French in 1893 and then by the Japanese, during the Second World War. After Hiroshima, the Japanese left and the French returned, only to find themselves facing yet another fight for independence, this finally being achieved in 1954. Laos was still a kingdom, but in 1975 the communist Pathet Lao took over and have been running the country ever since.
During the Vietnam War, the Americans bombed Laos extensively (and secretly), trying to prevent weapons and supplies from reaching Vietnam down the Ho Chi Minh Trail. In fact, in terms of the tonnage of bombs dropped per head of population, Laos was the most heavily bombed of the Indochina countries, with over one ton of munitions being dropped per person. Much of this never exploded, causing a problem that continues in some parts to the present day.
Laos boasts forty-nine ethnic groups in a population that has more than doubled since WW2 to its current level of 6.7m. Some two thirds of the population is Buddhist, although many are animists as well. The government apparently allows complete freedom of religion and freedom to do whatever else you want, provided, so we were told, that you do what the government says (work that one out!). In fact, the country does not have a particularly oppressive feel to it and the people seem to be pretty contented, although not enjoying a high standard of living. The standard of living is actually one of the lowest in the world, the average annual salary being under $1,000.
There are, however, some pretty repressive laws, for example:
• There is a curfew at 12 midnight.
• It is illegal to have sex with anyone unless you are married to that person.
• Anti-drugs legislation is very strict and possession of even a very small quantity of any illegal drug may result in the death penalty.
• It is illegal for a foreigner to ride a motor cycle.
The scenery in the Mekong valley is pretty impressive, although unfortunately visibility wasn't good because, at this time of year, farmers burn off all the old crops, resulting in a low-level of smoke enveloping the whole country. Nevertheless, the boat trip was very relaxing and gave plenty of time for reading and such things as playing cards. In fact, I learnt another new game, this one rather good (see separate blog).
We saw a number of local activities along the river including fishing, both with nets and with bamboo rods, panning for gold and farming, including rearing pigs and chicken and growing rice and bananas.
At one point, we stopped to visit a small village that lived up on the hills on the side of the river. The people there had nothing to sell and were obviously pretty poor. Some of the children did go to school and one of the boys, who looked about sixteen, but was actually twenty-two, did speak a little English. He was an orphan and still went to school, even at twenty-two. It wasn't clear what he was doing at that age, but I presume it was some sort of primary school. Personally, I didn't feel comfortable gawking at the villagers who, mostly, just stood around, looking, I thought, rather embarrassed. The kids, however, seemed to like it, especially when they were shown photographs of themselves.
We ate lunch on board the boat each day and enjoyed the food prepared by the boatman's wife (the whole family live on tbe boat and just ferry people up and down the Mekong). Whilst we were on board, she bought from the riverside, a live iguana and a rice paddy chicken, the local name for a kind of rat that lives in the rice fields. Fortunately, these were both for the family's own use and not for us. She also bought a large fish (a catfish, I think), that the fisherman had caught in the Mekong and been keeping alive on a line in the water.
All in all it was a well-spent couple of days, for me particularly, as it allowed me to unwind after the heavy schedule of the last three weeks. It also gave us all time to get to know each other and, I'm glad to say, we are an interesting bunch of people, who seem to get on well. There are two Australian couples and four separate ladies, two American, one Canadian and one Brazilian. Then there's me, the sole Englishman. Our tour leader is a delightful and very helpful young Australian girl (in picture).
Chiang Rai (Days 27 and 28)
On the way back to our hotel, we had a brief visit to another temple, finally arriving back at the hotel, exhausted, at about 7pm.
Friday, 9 April 2010
A few odd pictures
Live pigs being taken to town for New Year feasts (the greenery is to keep them cool):
Another way of transporting the pigs, this time four in a basket:
And live chickents:
Loading the 'taxi':
The girls ride side-saddle:
Live fish in the market:
Clams just baked in the sun (phew):
Fruit of the lotus flower:
A filling station (the bottles on the left contain petrol):
Loading the 'taxi':
Floating school on the largest fresh-water lake in South East Asia:
Live fish in the market:
Interlude and my political ramblings (Days 26 and 27)
Everyone else on my trip has now left and I have a day to relax in Siem Deap, before moving on to Chiang Rai in Thailand to start my tour of Laos. In the meantime, I thought I’d jot down some thoughts on the forthcoming election. I’m sure there will be a lot of disagreement with what I have to say, so let’s have some feedback.
A couple of months ago, I came to the conclusion that the Tories had blown it and so I placed a £400 bet on Labour to win the election. This was with Betfair and I thought the bet had gone on at 17 to 1. I believed that the odds would shorten as the election approached and that I’d be able to back out the bet at a handsome profit. However, when I logged on to Betfair to check the latest odds, it turned out that my bet hadn’t actually been placed. To this day, I don’t know why and I didn’t get round to following it up. I guess I must not have clicked the Confirm button.
Anyway, my thoughts then were that the Tories were doing everything they could to lose what should have been certain victory. The country was in the deepest recession for eighty years, despite Gordon Brown’s frequent boasts of ‘having ended boom and bust’. Living standards were falling and public sector spending was certain to be cut, just as taxes were certain to rise, whichever party gained control. Labour had taken us into a much hated and, arguably, unsuccessful war and Gordon Brown himself, though not responsible for the war, was deeply unpopular.
So what went wrong and why have Labour started to recover in the polls? As I see it, the Tories have only themselves to blame. Their biggest problem is that they have dithered about how to handle the recession and have not presented a clear way ahead for combating the recession and the rising debt mountain. Indeed, it seems to me that they still don’t know what to do or, if they do know, they are not telling us. For a while it seemed as though they were all for getting to grips with the deficit and they then started to talk tough about savage cuts in Government spending. But, just as suddenly, that resolve disappeared and they began talking about protecting spending on, for example, the Health Service, that oh so over-bloated sacred cow.
At the same time they played into Gordon Brown’s class hand by saying that they would continue with their pledge to cut Inheritance Tax (how on earth can that be a sensible priority?) and by saying that they would provide tax benefits for married couples. Both these would be expensive to implement and should hardly be priorities when we’re facing a prolonged period of austerity. Elections are won or lost on the middle ground and these are policies that will appeal to few people outside of their core vote and are therefore pretty pointless. Many people live together quite happily without being married, so why risk penalising a huge swathe of the population just to appeal to Mr and Mrs Tunbridge Wells who will, almost to a man (or woman) vote Tory anyway? And it’s just the same with Inheritance Tax. Sure this appeals to the Tory voter, but is not likely to attract many floating voters. Finally, there’s the promise to repeal Gordon’s forthcoming increase in NI contributions. Surely now is not the time to introduce a further tax on jobs, but the way the Tories suddenly announced that they would withdraw most of the increases smacked of policy being made on the hoof and certainly does nothing to inspire confidence.
Whilst the Tories have been presenting a very confused and not very attractive set of policies, with little conviction too, Labour have begun to spell out a much more appealing set of promises, to wit, protect spending on health and education, continue spending to see the country out of recession, no immediate tax rises (lies, but truth doesn’t matter in politics, it’s only being elected that counts), help the common man, rather than those Bullingford Tories. At the same time they are managing to project Gordon as the man who’s saved the world from disaster (it was he who said he’d saved the world, after all) and David as the man who is only there to support his own kind. Bullshit, of course, but a much more appealing message to the man on the Clapham Omnibus than anything the Tories have to offer.
So what should the Tories be pushing? This is where it gets difficult. Economists are split down the middle as to whether or not it is too soon to put the brakes on and to cut back on the deficit. There’s also little agreement as to whether quantitative easing should be increased, paused or reversed. So far as I can see, virtually all economists are agreed that we will have to make serious cutbacks in order to control the level of debt and it’s just a matter of timing. In this respect, Brown’s approach of keeping up the spending in the short term is bound to be appealing. People have short time horizons and if they believe that there’ll be no real hardship in the short term, many will be satisfied, irrespective of the longer term prospects. The problem with this approach is that there is likely to be continued pressure on the pound and a real risk of losing our triple A rating, with a consequent dramatic increase in the cost of borrowing (as the Greeks are now finding, to their impoverishment), which we can ill afford. Already, interest payments are going to be a significant part of Government spending and if the cost of borrowing goes up, this will only mean further pressure on Government spending, in the form of further cuts and/or higher taxes.
Since the expert economists have such differing views, it is difficult for the ordinary person to be dogmatic about how to approach the deficit. If pushed, I would favour much more rigour about Government spending. I think most people would agree that Government spending has got way out of control, particular on health, education and pensions. It’s not so much that the level of spending is too high, more that we’re not getting good value for money. On balance, I think that I would introduce an across the board cut of 10% in all Government spending including, particularly, health, education and defence, and an even larger cut in social services. I would be inclined to retain spending levels on the police service as we are likely to face an increasing level of lawlessness, but on balance, I think it would be better if we allowed no exceptions.
I can’t prove it, but I believe that if local managers were given the right to manage, without constant Government interference, they would be able to provide much the same level of service, but for far less money. If we were to introduce such cuts, there would be no problem with confidence in the City and our triple-A rating would be assured, holding down our interest costs. It would probably mean an increase in the value of the pound, potentially harming our export potential, although since the export boom that was supposed to come from a devalued pound hasn’t materialised, this is probably unlikely). Furthermore, an increase in Sterling would help to bear down on inflation, but this may be the last thing the Government will want (more of which later).
Such severe cuts might be the ‘best’ thing to do for the economy, but it does beg the question as to whether or not the Tories would be electable if they proposed such policies and here I am not sure. I would like to think that the majority could be persuaded that things have got so bad that we have to take tough action now or face either worse difficulties in the future. And this, of course, is the Tories’ real problem. I have little doubt that Osborne would like to present a tougher image, but both he and ‘hug a hoody’ are afraid that the public won’t buy it and they haven’t got the guts to show real leadership. I’m inclined to think that they’ve shot their bolt anyway. They’ve dithered for too long and they can’t now start to present the tough policies the country needs. I suppose our hope is that whichever party is elected, they will actually be forced to introduce significant cuts, despite the (worthless) promises that they all have made in the campaign.
As I see it, this means is that the Tories will have to adopt a very negative campaign, as Labour is already doing, witness the Prince of Darkness and his sniping comments about Cameron and Osborne. So I expect to see the Tories’ campaign focusing on the things that Gordon and Labour have done in the past and which have gone wrong. For example, they should hammer home that Gordon said he had ended boom and bust and that now we’ve just suffered the biggest boom and bust the country has ever seen. They should repeat the fiasco of Gordon’s ‘Golden Rules’ and how these have now all been abandoned. They should keep on reminding the electorate that he raided the private pension funds, let public sector pay and pensions get out of hand and sold the nation’s gold when the price was at rock bottom. They should tell everyone that his removal of the responsibility for bank regulation from the Bank of England to the FSA was a total disaster and they should stress that it was the same Brown who a couple of years ago lauded the light-touch regulation he introduced to regulate the City who now wants to introduce the toughest of all controls over banking, including the ridiculous Tobin tax. There are many more such failures of policy that can be highlighted, from health and education spending to constitutional reform - and the Tories need a special unit to focus on such issues. It may not be rocket science, but in the absence of any effective positive message, it may be the best they can do.
Incidentally, whichever party gets in or if there is a hung parliament, I think an increase in VAT to 20% must be on the cards as an early measure. This will be inflationary for a year, while it works its way through, but that may be to the Government’s advantage. If they don't get to grips with the deficit, the pound will crash and the cost of servicing the debt will rocket. That will lead to more inflation, but this is what the Government will want as their only option to control the deficit will be to inflate their way out of the problem. And that’s why I’m still bullish for gold.
A couple of months ago, I came to the conclusion that the Tories had blown it and so I placed a £400 bet on Labour to win the election. This was with Betfair and I thought the bet had gone on at 17 to 1. I believed that the odds would shorten as the election approached and that I’d be able to back out the bet at a handsome profit. However, when I logged on to Betfair to check the latest odds, it turned out that my bet hadn’t actually been placed. To this day, I don’t know why and I didn’t get round to following it up. I guess I must not have clicked the Confirm button.
Anyway, my thoughts then were that the Tories were doing everything they could to lose what should have been certain victory. The country was in the deepest recession for eighty years, despite Gordon Brown’s frequent boasts of ‘having ended boom and bust’. Living standards were falling and public sector spending was certain to be cut, just as taxes were certain to rise, whichever party gained control. Labour had taken us into a much hated and, arguably, unsuccessful war and Gordon Brown himself, though not responsible for the war, was deeply unpopular.
So what went wrong and why have Labour started to recover in the polls? As I see it, the Tories have only themselves to blame. Their biggest problem is that they have dithered about how to handle the recession and have not presented a clear way ahead for combating the recession and the rising debt mountain. Indeed, it seems to me that they still don’t know what to do or, if they do know, they are not telling us. For a while it seemed as though they were all for getting to grips with the deficit and they then started to talk tough about savage cuts in Government spending. But, just as suddenly, that resolve disappeared and they began talking about protecting spending on, for example, the Health Service, that oh so over-bloated sacred cow.
At the same time they played into Gordon Brown’s class hand by saying that they would continue with their pledge to cut Inheritance Tax (how on earth can that be a sensible priority?) and by saying that they would provide tax benefits for married couples. Both these would be expensive to implement and should hardly be priorities when we’re facing a prolonged period of austerity. Elections are won or lost on the middle ground and these are policies that will appeal to few people outside of their core vote and are therefore pretty pointless. Many people live together quite happily without being married, so why risk penalising a huge swathe of the population just to appeal to Mr and Mrs Tunbridge Wells who will, almost to a man (or woman) vote Tory anyway? And it’s just the same with Inheritance Tax. Sure this appeals to the Tory voter, but is not likely to attract many floating voters. Finally, there’s the promise to repeal Gordon’s forthcoming increase in NI contributions. Surely now is not the time to introduce a further tax on jobs, but the way the Tories suddenly announced that they would withdraw most of the increases smacked of policy being made on the hoof and certainly does nothing to inspire confidence.
Whilst the Tories have been presenting a very confused and not very attractive set of policies, with little conviction too, Labour have begun to spell out a much more appealing set of promises, to wit, protect spending on health and education, continue spending to see the country out of recession, no immediate tax rises (lies, but truth doesn’t matter in politics, it’s only being elected that counts), help the common man, rather than those Bullingford Tories. At the same time they are managing to project Gordon as the man who’s saved the world from disaster (it was he who said he’d saved the world, after all) and David as the man who is only there to support his own kind. Bullshit, of course, but a much more appealing message to the man on the Clapham Omnibus than anything the Tories have to offer.
So what should the Tories be pushing? This is where it gets difficult. Economists are split down the middle as to whether or not it is too soon to put the brakes on and to cut back on the deficit. There’s also little agreement as to whether quantitative easing should be increased, paused or reversed. So far as I can see, virtually all economists are agreed that we will have to make serious cutbacks in order to control the level of debt and it’s just a matter of timing. In this respect, Brown’s approach of keeping up the spending in the short term is bound to be appealing. People have short time horizons and if they believe that there’ll be no real hardship in the short term, many will be satisfied, irrespective of the longer term prospects. The problem with this approach is that there is likely to be continued pressure on the pound and a real risk of losing our triple A rating, with a consequent dramatic increase in the cost of borrowing (as the Greeks are now finding, to their impoverishment), which we can ill afford. Already, interest payments are going to be a significant part of Government spending and if the cost of borrowing goes up, this will only mean further pressure on Government spending, in the form of further cuts and/or higher taxes.
Since the expert economists have such differing views, it is difficult for the ordinary person to be dogmatic about how to approach the deficit. If pushed, I would favour much more rigour about Government spending. I think most people would agree that Government spending has got way out of control, particular on health, education and pensions. It’s not so much that the level of spending is too high, more that we’re not getting good value for money. On balance, I think that I would introduce an across the board cut of 10% in all Government spending including, particularly, health, education and defence, and an even larger cut in social services. I would be inclined to retain spending levels on the police service as we are likely to face an increasing level of lawlessness, but on balance, I think it would be better if we allowed no exceptions.
I can’t prove it, but I believe that if local managers were given the right to manage, without constant Government interference, they would be able to provide much the same level of service, but for far less money. If we were to introduce such cuts, there would be no problem with confidence in the City and our triple-A rating would be assured, holding down our interest costs. It would probably mean an increase in the value of the pound, potentially harming our export potential, although since the export boom that was supposed to come from a devalued pound hasn’t materialised, this is probably unlikely). Furthermore, an increase in Sterling would help to bear down on inflation, but this may be the last thing the Government will want (more of which later).
Such severe cuts might be the ‘best’ thing to do for the economy, but it does beg the question as to whether or not the Tories would be electable if they proposed such policies and here I am not sure. I would like to think that the majority could be persuaded that things have got so bad that we have to take tough action now or face either worse difficulties in the future. And this, of course, is the Tories’ real problem. I have little doubt that Osborne would like to present a tougher image, but both he and ‘hug a hoody’ are afraid that the public won’t buy it and they haven’t got the guts to show real leadership. I’m inclined to think that they’ve shot their bolt anyway. They’ve dithered for too long and they can’t now start to present the tough policies the country needs. I suppose our hope is that whichever party is elected, they will actually be forced to introduce significant cuts, despite the (worthless) promises that they all have made in the campaign.
As I see it, this means is that the Tories will have to adopt a very negative campaign, as Labour is already doing, witness the Prince of Darkness and his sniping comments about Cameron and Osborne. So I expect to see the Tories’ campaign focusing on the things that Gordon and Labour have done in the past and which have gone wrong. For example, they should hammer home that Gordon said he had ended boom and bust and that now we’ve just suffered the biggest boom and bust the country has ever seen. They should repeat the fiasco of Gordon’s ‘Golden Rules’ and how these have now all been abandoned. They should keep on reminding the electorate that he raided the private pension funds, let public sector pay and pensions get out of hand and sold the nation’s gold when the price was at rock bottom. They should tell everyone that his removal of the responsibility for bank regulation from the Bank of England to the FSA was a total disaster and they should stress that it was the same Brown who a couple of years ago lauded the light-touch regulation he introduced to regulate the City who now wants to introduce the toughest of all controls over banking, including the ridiculous Tobin tax. There are many more such failures of policy that can be highlighted, from health and education spending to constitutional reform - and the Tories need a special unit to focus on such issues. It may not be rocket science, but in the absence of any effective positive message, it may be the best they can do.
Incidentally, whichever party gets in or if there is a hung parliament, I think an increase in VAT to 20% must be on the cards as an early measure. This will be inflationary for a year, while it works its way through, but that may be to the Government’s advantage. If they don't get to grips with the deficit, the pound will crash and the cost of servicing the debt will rocket. That will lead to more inflation, but this is what the Government will want as their only option to control the deficit will be to inflate their way out of the problem. And that’s why I’m still bullish for gold.
Angkor Wat and other temples (Day 24)
Angkor Wat
Angkor Wat is one of the most famous heritage sites in the world and was one of the highlight of our trip. We left the hotel at 4:45 am in order to see the sun rise over this massive temple complex. I could never see why this was going to be such a mystical experience, as all we would see would be the temple, silhouted against the sky. And so it turned out. Sunrises have not been spectacular on this trip, as the weather has been so good (no red sky in the morning here). All in all, I would rather have had another couple of hours in bed, although whilst we were waiting for the sun to rise, I did have that feeling of expectation I last experienced when I waited in Regent's Park some years ago for the eclipse of the sun. That was an experience worth waiting for, whereas this was rather a let down. Having said that, the temple itself is spectacular and well worth a visit, just not at that hour in the morning.
Work on the temple commenced in 1112 and it took some thirty years to complete. Angkor Wat (literally Capital City Buddhist Monastery) sits in the middle of a large, forested plain. In the 12th century, the area was open fields and supported a population of some one million (c.f. London, which, at the same time, at least according to our guide, had a population of about 50,000). Then, Cambodia covered most of Indochina and supported a population of about six million.
The temple is completely Hindu, built by the king as his resting place and in honour of the three main Hindu gods, Visnu, Rama and Brahma. It was built primarily of sandstone, quarried some hundred kilometers away and transported to the site on bamboo rafts and by elephant. Some lava rock was also used, but without any apparent pattern. You just see patches of it in places. Some of the labour was provided by slaves, but mostly it was done by local people, happy to work on the constructioon as it was in honour of their gods. Cambodia was, and still is, a very religious country. Then the people were Hindu, now they are mostly Buddhist, but the importance of their religion is as strong as ever.
Lara Croft and Tomb Raider
Ta Promh, a late 12th temple, is a Buddhist temple, built in honour of the ancestors. Buddhists are very respectful of their ancestors. Indeed, every home boasts an ancestor altar, where the living members of a family regularly pay their respects to their ancestors, often leaving food by way of an offering.
Unfortunately, or perhaps not this temple has not well withstood the ravages of time and the forest has largely taken over. Kapok trees, in particular, grow throughout the temple. These often grow to a huge size and intermix with the stonework, causing much damage. The upside is that this creates some very interesting structures and this was the reason the site was used for filming Angelina Jolie as Lara Croft in Tomb Raider. The pictures speak for themselves.
Preah Kahn (Sacred Sword)
This is another late 12th century Buddhist temple, this time built as a tomb for the king. The temple included a dancing school.
Cambodian dancing
After dinner in a large restaurant in Siem Reap, we were entertained by a troupe of Cambodian dancers. I can't say that this is an artform of which I can claim any real understanding or appreciation. It's all done in slow motion, some of it, to me, being more reminiscent of a gymnast's beam exercises than of a dance. It seems that the art is all in the deliberate movements of the fingers and the toes. Maybe, but, quite honestly, I'd rather watch a pole dancer.
Lara Croft and Tomb Raider
Ta Promh, a late 12th temple, is a Buddhist temple, built in honour of the ancestors. Buddhists are very respectful of their ancestors. Indeed, every home boasts an ancestor altar, where the living members of a family regularly pay their respects to their ancestors, often leaving food by way of an offering.
Unfortunately, or perhaps not this temple has not well withstood the ravages of time and the forest has largely taken over. Kapok trees, in particular, grow throughout the temple. These often grow to a huge size and intermix with the stonework, causing much damage. The upside is that this creates some very interesting structures and this was the reason the site was used for filming Angelina Jolie as Lara Croft in Tomb Raider. The pictures speak for themselves.This is another late 12th century Buddhist temple, this time built as a tomb for the king. The temple included a dancing school.
After dinner in a large restaurant in Siem Reap, we were entertained by a troupe of Cambodian dancers. I can't say that this is an artform of which I can claim any real understanding or appreciation. It's all done in slow motion, some of it, to me, being more reminiscent of a gymnast's beam exercises than of a dance. It seems that the art is all in the deliberate movements of the fingers and the toes. Maybe, but, quite honestly, I'd rather watch a pole dancer.
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