Lamenthe

The end of Colombia

2009-08-08T22:14:00.002+01:00

Tomorrow I fly to Peru. Today I am in Bogota. On Thursday I was in the Caribbean in Cartagena. Taking planes to places when you're used to the bus is strange, as I can't believe I've managed to cover so much distance in so little time.

So, Colombia. It's been a brilliant couple of weeks, in an amazing country with amazing travel buddies and lots of fun and sunshine. It's very cool in South American traveller world to love Colombia right now, but I honestly think that I would still love it even if no one else did.

I went diving again whilst up in Taganga, and I'm so glad I did. The two fun dives I did were the first I'd done since taking my Open Water in Thailand, and I'd forgotten just how amazing it feels to be in the water. I thought that would be the last diving opportunity I would have on this trip, but happily I have found out that I can also dive in Brazil.

After our extended beach time in Taganga, the travel buddie group splintered off, with the boys going off to do the 6 day Lost City trek, Carina staying in Taganga and Jayne and I heading for Cartagena.

Cartagena is beautiful, but it's basically Europe. It's a perfectly preserved colonial city of cobbled winding streets and churches, which is scarily similar to bits of Barcelona's old town, the South of France and, most strikingly, Dubrovnik. It's very hot, and not really a party place, so lots of people were speeding through, but little occasionally-homesick-for-Europe me really enjoyed the time I spent there.

I indulged myself slightly by choosing to fly from Cartagena to Bogota instead of taking a 20 hour bus. Flying was more expensive, but only by 30USD, and I got there in 1 and a half hours! Going on planes makes me so excited - I'm even excited about tomorrow's flight. It's almost a shame that I'm that I'm too clever and ambitious to be an air hostess, huh?

Bogota is cool, in both senses of the word. As the capital, it's edgier, more fashionable and more noticeably gay than anywhere else here. It's quite a change from the beautiful but plastic WAG wannabes of Medellin, or the rastafied residents of the Caribbean. I like it, but I think I would like it more if I wasn't so damn cold - it's only 15 degrees for heaven's sake! I am dreading the genuine cold of the Andes, without even thinking of the cold of England in November. Whoever meets me at the airport is going to have to bring thermals and a big duvet coat...

Colombia. It´s really nothing like you think it is.

2009-07-28T19:19:00.002+01:00

I´ve now been here in sunny Colombia for over a week, so apologies for neglecting the blog. Sometimes it feels like a real obligation to write rather than something I have a choice in.

In my week, I´ve crossed the border from Ecuador, spent a weekend in Cali, did some mid week resting on a coffee plantation, then spent last weekend in Medellin before boarding a very long night bus all the way up to the Caribbean coast at Taganga, where I am now.

The one thing that has marked all my experiences in all these different places? How utterly different Colombia is to how it is portrayed to the outside world. I haven´t felt this safe since I´ve been in Japan, I haven´t met people this genuinely friendly since I don´t know when, and I haven´t seen this level of clean, developed cities since, er, Tokyo.

If I were a Colombian, I would be constantly annoyed at people presuming I´m a drug trafficker or guerrilla, or that any visitor here will get kidnapped. I highly advise every single person I know to come here - the cities are safe, the nightlife is *amazing*, the people always smile, the buses are better than anything on the trip so far, the beaches are beautiful, and we have a beachfront room with amazing views for 10USD each.

Wonderful British Airways have helped me out again, and I have added 2 new flights to my itinerary. I´m flying from Bogota to Lima in about 2 weeks, saving myself 4 days on a bus or 350USD on buying the flight properly. I therefore have 2 weeks of Caribbean, and don´t have to take a bus journey of more than 3 hours for the whole time! I cannot remember how long it has been since I´ve been able to say that.

One final hello to my lovely yet swine flu stricken friends in East London - I honestly thought it would be me getting it not you, hope you´re all ok.

Reading material

2009-07-17T20:54:00.002+01:00

So that I will remember, and so that you can all see how much reading I've been doing, these are the books that I've read since being in Las Vegas with the kids back in May:

Bonfire of the Vanities - Tom Wolfe. Brilliant, but made me feel guilty about being on Sherman McCoy's side throughout.
Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck. Short, edifying.
Man and Boy - Tony Parsons. Triste.
The Boys from Brazil - can't remember the author, given to me for free by another traveller as it was in such a state no one would take it in exchange. Jewish.
The Other Hand - Chris Cleave. Read it! So good.
Sex and the City - Candace Bushnell. Pickings were thin in Bocas del Toro.
Still Alice - Lisa Genova. An American book about Alzheimers. Muy depressing, read it in 4 hours.
A chicklit bit of rubbish whose title I can't even remember now
44 Scotland Street - Alexander McCall Smith. Comforting, too easy to read.
Cityboy - Geraint Anderson, of Londonpaper column fame. Depressing on far too many levels.
The Mosquito Coast - Paul Theroux. Read if you skipped Honduras and are looking for reasurance on your decision.
Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh. Finished this morning, love love loved it. Lots of interesting things to say about Catholicism.
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius - Dave Eggers. 2 pages in.

Higher than I've ever been before

2009-07-14T22:17:00.002+01:00

Somehow I have managed to be in Ecuador for a whole week already, when I'd only planned to go through it on my way to Colombia, and yet I think I will end up here for another week after this one. There is rather a lot to do here, y'see.

On flying into Quito, I'd intended to spend 2 nights there then leave, but a combination of altitude sickness and liking it meant that I stayed 4 nights. In the way that these things often work out, I did a pub quiz on my 4th unintended night there. My team and I embarrassed the competition and won hands down, aided by my faultless ability to Name that Tune, and the fact that one of my team mates was an MIT post doc. The rather generous prize was a bottle of Ecuadorian rum and a free night at a retreat up in the mountains near Cotopaxi. My 3 other team mates couldn't make it, so I claimed it as mine, and swiftly packed for a weekend in the mountains.

Cotopaxi is the highest volcano in Ecuador, and is the nearest point on Earth to the sun. That was one of our quiz questions, incidentally... Anyway, it's technically only 2 hours from Quito but in every other way it's a million miles away: the hostal had almost no electricity and no internet, and was a 1h30 drive along dirt road from the nearest town. It's run sustainably, so grew all it's own vegetables, and had eco toilets and solar panels powering the generator. The view from my room took in Cotopaxi in the distance, with nothing but sheep and cows between me and it. We had 3 meals a day prepared for us, and the rest of the time could sit in front of the fire drinking tea and reading.

I hadn't intended to do any of the crazy adrenal fuelled activities that people go to Cotopaxi for, but for reasons I can't quite explain I ended up signing up for the mountain biking down a volcano and the 5,000 metre hike up Cotopaxi - one each morning. Frankly, I am indescribably happy that I did. I was a long way out of my comfort zone on both: neither the brakes nor the gears really worked on my bike so I was careering down the side of a volcano unable to stop, and the altitude on the hike up Cotopaxi made me feel like I'd ran a marathon, but the pain was definitely worth it. I think my time spent there has fundamentally changed me: it had been so long since I'd taken any exercise that I'd forgotten how good the post sport feeling is, and I'm now intent on doing lots more. Anyone fancy climbing Kilimanjaro when I get back? It's only 5,895 metres, so I've done most of it...

I'm really enjoying travelling on my own at the moment - I've met lots of lovely people, but I'm way past the need to meet people just for the sake of it. I'm happy speaking Spanish and making my own way around, meeting people in the evenings and having a beer and a chat then leaving them and going off on my own the next day.

Goodbye Central America

2009-07-08T17:07:00.001+01:00

This is written from high up in the Andes, in Quito, but I shall try to imagine myself back at sea level in the Caribbean in order to tell you about my time in the San Blas archipelago of Panama.

For a variety of reasons alluded to in the last post, plus the fact that most of my favourite people all went to see Blur in Hyde Park on Friday, leaving civilisation for a while and going to a deserted island without electricity, phones, internet or indeed anything else seemed like a really good idea. Bref, I was right. You often don´t realise how much you need to spend a few days reading, sleeping in hammocks, sunbathing and swimming until that´s what you´re doing.

San Blas is a group of islands, which form part of an autonomous area of Panama ruled by the Kuna people. They have their own tribal way of deciding things, a very distinctive way of dressing, and a very indigenous way of seeing the world. They are the only people allowed to own property and run businesses in San Blas, meaning that it may be just about the only Caribbean paradise that will never be overrun with resort hotels and Americans. Kuna women have short, Western style hair, which is cut when they turn 13 or 14 to signify that they are now women and can marry, so they look markedly different to everyone else in Panama and indeed Central America, as short hair is a rare thing around these parts. The children don´t speak Spanish, and although there is a school on a nearby island, they don´t go often, as according to one mother, 'it´s a bit far and no one sees the point'. They are incredibly poor, incredibly welcoming and incredibly religious.

I stayed on an island called Naranjo Chico to the locals (population about 20), but Robinson Island to tourists, for the simple reason that the basic huts we stayed in were owned by a local called Robinson. For 20USD a day, we got to stay in bamboo huts right on the beach and have 3 meals per day cooked for us. Aside from the tiny shop that sold beer, Coca Cola and rum, there was literally nothing else to spend money on. Going to the toilet involved walking along a plank to a makeshift wooden hut suspended over the sea, and showering involved scooping water from a tub that was left out to collect rainwater. My days were spent hanging out, having long conversations with the Chilean couple and French girl that were my island companions for the first few days until the inevitable group of 25 partying Israelis turned up on my last day and drowned everyone out by shouting in Hebrew and being rude to the locals. Poor Israelis - so nice alone, so awful in big groups.

Whilst there, I was woken up at 5am by my second Central American earthquake. It wasn´t a very big one, and was actually pretty fun. I went outside of my little hut and saw all the locals running around touching everything and making their children run into the sea. Apparently they believe that the earth is held up by a man, and earthquakes happen when he gets tired and passes the earth from one hand to another. After a quake, they have to touch everything they own to make sure that its soul hasn´t fallen into the abyss. The next day none of the locals went into the sea, as they believed that the earthquake had woken up all the evil beasts that live there, and they had to wait for them to go back to sleep before they could swim again.

After 3 days my impending flight required me to leave, although I could have happily stayed longer. And now my Central American time is over - goodbye awful food and endless mosquitoes, I enjoyed my time with you but right now all I can think about is South America! In my 4 months, you can expect me to visit everywhere, except Venezuela and the 3 little Guyanas. Exciting!

The first instances of travel fatigue

2009-07-01T16:36:00.002+01:00

I don't know why I haven't written for so long - I'm 3 whole countries further south now, have surfed, then bussed for a long time, and had myself a few more days in the Caribbean.

This is written from Panama City, where I arrived at 5am this morning. I've been looking forward to being in a proper city for weeks, and had been anticipating today as an air conditioned shopping and coffee day, with perhaps a visit to an art gallery. My bubble has been completely burst, as today is the Panamanian president's birthday or something, and absolutely everything is shut. It's only 10.30 and I have no idea what to do with my day. I am so bored! It doesn't help that I was bored out of my mind in a town called Boquete yesterday, where it rained all afternoon and there was literally nothing to do except read the badly written book I picked up at the beach.

Generally, as objectively great as everything is, I'm starting to get travel fatigue. I'm bored of meeting travellers and having the same 'where are you coming from, where are you going' conversations. I'm bored of only meeting people under 25 (what is it about Central America and gap years?), bored of constantly moving, but bored if I stay in the same place more than 3 days, bored of Central America's tasteless food and absence of culture that isn't desperately trying to become the United States...

It really must be time to change continents!

18 hours and 4 countries later

2009-06-21T00:00:00.003+01:00

Spending one week in Belize and two in Guatemala when I only have 5 in Central America was always going to mean lots of long distance bus journeys at some point. That point is now. I write from Granada, in Nicaragua. To get here, I left Antigua, in Guatemala, at 4am, getting to Guatemala City for my 6.30am bus to San Salvador, in El Salvador, where I changed to the 12pm bus to Managua, in Nicaragua. As any of you with a world map will see, going from El Salvador to Nicaragua also means going through Honduras. That´s 3 whole border crossings in one day, and believe me, with corrupt officials that bribe westerners entering countries, and nurses that check you for swine flu, it´s not a whole lot of fun.

The bus was quite empty, and I was the only tourist on it until some others joined in Honduras. I chatted to a Nicaraguan girl (she can´t have been more than 21 yet had her 7 year old son with her) for most of the journey when I wasn´t watching Zoolander on my iTouch or sleeping. She was amazed that I was a) 30 b) not married and c) childless. The look of utter pity on her face when I told her I didn´t have children yet was a sight to behold!

Bus journeys of this sort are a rare opportunity to actually meet locals. The problem with Central America is that the capital cities, where the young, cool people are who would want to talk to backpackers and have some interest in us besides our money, are horrible places that you just can´t spend any time in, so we´re stuck in beautiful tourist towns and isolated beach or lakeside villages with amazing scenery but few locals. It´s not something that bothers me unduly right now, as South America beckons so soon, but it did get me thinking. I´ve met lots of female solo travellers that will happily talk to and go for a drink with local males on their own, with no intention of letting anything happen other than having a nice chat and practicing their Spanish, and they´ve all been fine, but for some reason doing that holds absolutely no appeal for me. I just can´t be bothered spending my time explaining where my boyfriend is and making things up in order to have a conversation. Machismo really does rule the world!

I´m going to the Isla de Ometepe tomorrow for a couple of days, and would be very surprised if there´s anything more than the most basic internet access available there, so probably no updates for a little while...

Before I leave Guatemala

2009-06-17T20:21:00.002+01:00

I should really say something about the things I've done in the last few days, non? I'm currently trying to upload photos to facebook, but the internet connection really doesn't want me to, so I shall try words instead of pictures.

Tomorrow I leave lovely Guatemala and all my friends here, and head for Nicaragua. My aim is to spend about 5 days there, seeing Lago Ometepe and taking in the Pacific coast, before speeding through Costa Rica on another bus to Panama. Panama might merit a week or two, then I'll jump on a plane to Ecuador and start my South American adventure. The Panama - Ecuador flight is my last one before the flight home, and although I still have a few months left, I have started to feel like I'm on my way home already. I'm now pretty scared about the prospect of coming home and having to face reality again.

But, yes, Guatemala. After the volcano climbing exploits, we headed up to Lago Atitlan for the weekend. It's only 3 hours from Antigua, but the journey might rate as the worst so far, only competing with Laos to Phnom Penh for discomfort and lack of roads. It's a miracle I wasn't sick.

We stayed at a little village called San Pedro on Atitlan, which is known as the 'backpacker' place to be, as opposed to Panajachel which now has 4 star hotels and San Marco which is full of new age hippies taking 7 day vows of silence.

To be quite honest, we didn't do that much there. It's very cheap, and we used it as a place to save money, cooking our own food and watching films for large parts of the time spent there. Atitlan is hippie central, so lots of other people are there sitting around and doing nothing, talking about yoga classes and reiki healing. I enjoyed it, but it did test my hippie tolerance to the limit. I had the phrase 'just get a job!' going round in my head for a lot of the time.

The one thing that we did do was visit a town called Santiago Atitlan, in order to see the fabled Maximon shrine there. Every year, a different house in Santiago takes turns to have Maximon in their home, and receive visitors all year round who come to pray for money and love and luck. Inevitably, the residents of Santiago have realised that they can make money from tourists who want to see it too, and on arrival at the dock there we were accosted by guides, tuk tuk drivers and small children who wanted to take us to see the 'real' Maximon, fighting with each other and with us to convince us that their Maximon is the real one. There are anywhere from 2 to 10 Maximon in the town, and much time was spent trying to work out which one to see. As half our group was girls, we ended up going with an impossibly cute 10 year old boy (who looked about 6) in a tuk tuk to the very outskirts of the town and seeing the 'real' Maximon there. I was a little underwhelmed to see what was basically a statue of Christ covered with headscarves and US dollar bills, but the locals did really seem to be worshipping him, and it was rare to have the opportunity to see inside a Guatemalan house. I suppose we'll never know whether Maximon is genuine or not - I could picture the locals bursting into fits of laughter after we left at the money that they just got out of us to see a small blinged up statue of Christ in someone's shed.

Being in Guatemala and deciding what to do next

2009-06-11T19:16:00.000+01:00

After a few undecided days, my mind made itself up pretty easily about what I'm going to do with the next couple of months. My next flight currently leaves Panama City for Ecuador on 30th June, and I'm going to try to catch it if I can. If I can't, I'll push the date back, but only by a week or so. I've met so many people that are coming north from South America, and although Central America is great for beaches, diving, wildlife and jungles, they've all said that all the really great things about their trips happened in South America. Since I have to be home by November at the latest due to impending birth of niece or nephew number two, and because my funds may only take me as far as September or October, any time I spend in Central America is cutting down my South America time.

I've also decided, after much heart wrenching, not to go to Cuba. I know deep down that this is a decision I may live to regret, but the flight, the visa and the expense of being a tourist there would mean a 5 day trip would come to about 600 pounds. I've also heard lots of not so great stories about the hassle that solo Western women get there, and I just can't be bothered with facing it anymore. Like India, I think I will wait until I can go there with the protection of a male.

Incidentally, although I am aware that there is such a thing as swine flu, you don't hear about it at all here. I've met lots of people that were in Mexico during the 'worst' part of it, and they said that it wasn't actually that bad. Many only heard about it at all because people that had seen the press coverage in England were calling them to check they were still alive...

Anyway, what have I been doing since Flores... Well, I've pretty much been in paradise for the last 4 days. Semuc Champey is in the middle of Guatemala, it takes hours to get to on a dirt road, and there's nothing there but scenery, but it is possibly the most idyllic place I've ever stayed in. Semuc Champey itself is called the 8th wonder of the world here. It's a series of pools formed by a limestone bridge that grew over a section of the river in a really deep valley. Ok, so nature was never my strong point and I've explained it badly, but it was incredibly beautiful, and that's all you really need to know. We went swimming in the fresh water pools, went tubing down a bit of the river, went into some cool caves that you had to swim through... I could have stayed there for weeks.

We were all staying at El Retiro in Lanquin, about an hour's drive on bumpy mountain road from Semuc Champey, which hands down wins the award for best hostel I've ever stayed in. It's on a hill going down to the river, which you can swim in, hammocks abound, the people are great... If they charged 25 pounds a night I'd still have stayed there, but as it is I payed 25 quetzales (a bit less than 2 pounds) to stay in the hammock room and get woken up by the hostel's cow mooing right next to us in the morning.

I really didn't want to leave, but had to, so here I am in Antigua, which is easily the most touristy and developed place in Guatemala. It reminds me of Oaxaca, and San Cristobal de las Casas in Mexico, but also of Luang Prabang in Laos and Siem Reap in Cambodia: every poor country has one perfect colonial city where everything works and you can get pizza.

I'm only here until tomorrow, sorting things out today and not really doing very much. I watched Pulp Fiction over breakfast in the hostel today, and I might read in a hammock later on if I can find the energy. Yesterday was a really big day - I climbed a live volcano! Volcanoes are everywhere in Central America, but Pacaya is still very much alive, and has actual lava running down the side of it. It took an hour and a half of hellish uphill walking followed by climbing over hot volcanic rock to get to the lava, but it was worth it to be able to say that I've roasted marshmallows in lava at the top of a volcano and lived to tell the tale. I know this is a rather stupid thing to write, but I had no idea that it was going to be so hot up there; I felt like I had spent an hour in an oven by the time we left. I was wearing my white Primark trainers, which is all i have in terms of feet coverage, and my poor little feet were very very hot by the end of it all. I'm just pleased that my 2.50 pounds bought me enough rubber to stop the soles melting, which is apparently relatively common.

Normal service resumes

2009-06-06T00:31:00.002+01:00

Apologies for the 2 month break in blog writing. Since my last post from Japan, I've been to LA and Colorado, had a travelling hiatus, went to Vegas, went to Belize, and am here writing this in sunny Guatemala. Phew. The last couple of months have been pretty schizophrenic, and it took me a while to get back into the world of backpacks and hostels and conversations about where you've come from and where you're going, but I think I am now.

In order not to make this post inordinately long, I'll skip all that happened in the US, plus gloss over the week spent in Belize at the beach and on a sailboat in the Caribbean and start here in Flores, which is the town that you stay in in order to visit the Mayan temples at Tikal. It's on a small, hilly island in the middle of a huge lake, and is very scenic. It's obviously a massive tourist trap, but it's nice.

I'm staying in a pretty perfect hostel - one of those ones where everyone knows each other and spends the day hanging out in hammocks listening to Manu Chao and drinking pineapple shakes. I think everyone that has ever visited Flores will have stayed here, and with good reason.

Everyone is here to visit Tikal, which I wasn't particularly excited about, feeling more that I should visit it as you shouldn't come to Guatemala without going, but it turned out to be utterly stunning and well worth the visit. I had to get up at a hideous 4.30am to get there for opening at 6am, but since I chose not to join everyone else on the guided tour, I had the whole entire place to myself for the first couple of hours, and spent them sat on top of one of the temples looking out at the jungle listening to my iPod. Ok, so I know nothing about the history of Tikal, but hey, Maya Schmaya, right?

All other activities undertaken in Flores have involved finding ways to escape the heat: yesterday we used the pool of a posh hotel (it was completely empty - it's heartbreaking how quiet things are here, only the backpackers are here) and today we went and swam in the lake, although it's very shallow so it felt like taking a hot bath.

For various reasons, both financial and personal, I may have to shorten my trip down by a couple of months, and this is something I have to decide in the coming weeks. I seem to be unable to make a firm decision, though, so I have decided that I am going to travel one day at a time and let the decision make itself. So far I know that I am going to Semuc Champey tomorrow, and after that I have idea. Down to Panama, but fast, skipping Honduras and Costa Rica? Straight from Guatemala to South America? What about Cuba? And do I want to go back up into Mexico since I didn't get there this time? All suggestions, educated or non, welcome.

Kabuki

2009-04-02T14:07:00.000+01:00

Amongst other things today, I took a trip to the theatre to see a Kabuki play. It's something that I'd wanted to do before I got here, despite the obvious language issues of seeing a 17th century play in Japanese. Kabuki plays last for around 4 hours, with 3 acts and a long break between each to enable the Japanese to do some more eating, but thankfully for the Western tourists' patience and wallets, it is possible to turn up on the day and get a ticket for one of the acts, lasting about an hour or so. I went to the second act of the second show today, taking my seat right up in the gods for 900 yen (about 6 pounds or so). It was possible to buy headphones that would translate the whole thing, but I thought that might slightly negate the point of being there, so I just bought an English language programme instead which explained the plot of each act. The acts aren't related at all, so you don't miss out on anything by not seeing the whole play.

The rather flimsy plot told the heart warming story of the son of a rich Osaka merchant who had fallen in love with a courtesan and been expelled from his father's house. Dressed as a pauper, he goes to the tea house where his amoureuse lives and works, but as he is dressed so badly they don't recognise him and won't let him in. After a fair bit of wailing and running around, he manages to convince them that he is actually the rich merchant's son, and he is allowed in to see the courtesan. Unfortunately she's a bit busy with her 'patron' at the time, so he peeps through the curtains into the room where she is entertaining said patron, and becomes insanely jealous that she doesn't love him anymore. There then follows about 20 minutes of wailing, screaming and dancing about, before the courtesan manages to convince him that she does love him. They are happily reunited, but cannot marry as he is so poor, until... surprise surprise, a messenger arrives from his parents' house to say that he is forgiven and can claim his fortune again, so the lucky pair can get married, she can give up working as a courtesan (anti-social hours, I've heard) and the entire cast can have a big party involving lots of foot stomping and more wailing. It was almost exactly like a comic opera, with the same non-existant plot and farcical ending, except that the actors are all male, even the ones playing women (the Japanese are reluctant to let go of their traditions), the actors don't actually sing, as there are musicians on stage that do that for them, and everyone on stage is wearing ridiculous amounts of white face make up and the most extravagant costumes I have ever seen. I was somehow reassured by the plot being on such a universal theme: Japan was closed off from the outside world at around the time the play was written, yet still all anyone really writes about is thwarted love.

Aside from the gallery, where all the people who just go for one act have to sit, the theatre was full of evidently wealthy middle aged Japanese, with most of the women wearing kimono. Although it was very like opera, it did differ in some ways. The audience applauded whenever someone entered or left the stage, but there were no encores. Whenever there was a silence for more than a second or two, lots of the male audience members would shout something at the stage. My trusty programme explained that these people were Kabuki experts, and that they were shouting either their Kabuki name, or oblique references to the actor's performance in another play.

There's been a Kabuki theatre on the same site in Ginza, right in the middle of Tokyo, for centuries but the relentless progress of the Japanese skyscraper has meant that this one will be the last, as it is to be torn down in the next few months. It's a beautiful, traditional Japanese building on the outside, but a very average looking theatre on the inside, having none of the gilt and ornamentation of a London theatre.

On my way back to my hostel from the theatre, I popped into an izakaya to get some food. Izakayas are a bit like tapas bars, and until now I hadn't found the courage to go into one alone, as they have no menus and generally seem a bit local. For some reason, today I felt like I could go in, so I did. I had no idea what to order, so I asked for what the people next to me were having, which turned out to be teriyaki swordfish, yaki soba and edamame. Result. I started talking to the couple whose food order I had copied, and like rather a lot of Japanese people, their English was secretly very good. We talked about Japan, and England, and the bloke talked about the football, and as they were leaving they gave me an almost full box of Japanese sweets, because they thought I should try them since I'll try anything, and 'because they wanted me to like Japan'. Yet another example of how incessantly nice Japanese people are, for no reason at all.

I love it here. It really makes me wonder why people in London and Paris are so rude: Tokyo is bigger and crazier, yet people are still polite, still queue and still have time to help lost tourists. What is wrong with us? It really feels like most of the world is full of nice people but where I live and call home isn't. On my return to London I am going to make a concerted effort to stop tutting at people that walk slowly, to let people through doors first, to smile more, and to generally be a bit nicer. So there. And you can all remind me of writing this the next time I shout at a slow walking American on Oxford Street.

Watching the Sunday gang in Harajuku

2009-03-30T14:33:00.001+01:00

Ah, I've waited so long to be able to write that as a blog title!

So many things have happened in the last few days in Tokyo that I'd have to blog every half an hour to have any hope of writing about it all. I'm still not used to the fact that something new and amazing happens every single day when you're travelling, but in Japan something new and amazing happens every five minutes.

I spent two nights in Kyoto, but because accomodation is so hard to find in Japan I had to stay in two different hostels. The first one was incredibly sterile and dull, with a curfew and lots of crazy rules, but the second was brilliant: a really cosy place in an old Kyoto building, with Japanese fold out beds on tatami floors and a big heater right above my head that kept me warm all night! I really loved Kyoto, and although it was freezing cold, I went at the right time of year as the cherry blossom was out and everything looked like a picture postcard version of Japan. On my last day, after having visited more temples than I can remember, I headed for the Kyoto International Manga Museum as an antidote. The musuem itself was interesting, although as you all know I'm not the world's biggest manga fan, mainly because of the teenagers that were hanging around in the grounds of the museum, all dressed as various manga characters. The effort that they had gone to was incredible, and in true Japanese style they were happy to pose for endless photos.

I took the shinkansen back to Tokyo on Saturday night, but unfortunately I slept the whole way so didn't really get the chance to take it all in the second time round. I was also running a little late for my train, so didn't have time to buy any of the frankly fantastic food that is on sale in Japanese train stations: bento boxes and noodles and dumplings galore, and it's all fresh and tasty. I just stared at other people's food instead.

The reason I sped through Kyoto in 2 and a bit days was because I was determined to get back to Tokyo to spend my Sunday shopping in Harajuku and Shibuya with more crazy Japanese teenagers. After the manga of Kyoto, I was actually a little bit disappointed with the outfits on show; most of the kids there looked like goths rather than anything more extraordinary, but in every other way Harajuku is a brilliant part of town. Looking in all the shops but trying not to buy was torture, but I did manage to come away without breaking the bank. I stocked up on useful things like ziplock bags in the 100 yen shop, but because this is Japan, they're Hello Kitty ziplock bags. I'm going to look pretty cool waterproofing my stuff in Central America in Hello Kitty bags. As some of you may know, my hunt for the perfect trench coat has been a long and as yet fruitless search. In England trench coats only seem to be made for people with giant shoulders, so I look like an orphan each time I try one on. In Japan, however, there's no way that could be the case. Or so I thought: I tried on dozens of coats, and they were all too big! I was a) so cold and b) so focussed on the acquisition of a trench coat, that I was prepared to pay a fair amount of money for a coat that would hopefully last me a lifetime, but as it turned out, after trying on several in the 50 to 100 pound range, I found my very own new coat in a vintage shop just off the main shopping street in Haraujuku for only 15 English pounds! It is very slightly too big, a little too long, and the buttons will need changing on my return, but I have a trench coat! Words cannot express how happy I am to feel warm again, and to feel less like a badly dressed traveller. It will come in useful in Colorado, and then I'll send it home so it will be ready for an English winter on my return. I also saw a fabulous watch, of the sort that only the Japanese could make, for about 30 pounds, but I haven't bought it yet. If it's still on my mind on Friday...

After my afternoon's shopping, I'd arranged to meet Elaine at 7 in Shibuya. Ian and I met Elaine and her friends when we were doing karaoke in a gay bar in Hong Kong. She is Cantonese Australian, but has lived in Tokyo for 8 years, so offered to show me around when I got here. The evening started with dinner in a very hard to find restaurant 2 subway stops from Shibuya, where we ate endless varieties of fish, cooked and uncooked, and drank shochu and sake. I had the freshest sashimi I've ever had, tried tempura eel (was crumbly,tasted like white fish), fish guts (surprisingly good) and octopus. It made me very grateful to be able to eat anything put in front of me - being here and not being able to try the amazing food would be a sin. After dinner we headed for karaoke. Some but not all of you will realise that the opportunity to do karaoke in Japan, with Japanese people, was about the most exciting thing that has happened to me in, ooh, a week, and I'd been looking forward to it greatly. Elaine and I did English songs, I did some French songs with one of the Japanese girls who spoke a bit of French, the others did J-pop and various ballads, and we all drank wine that we'd snuck into the karaoke booth as drinks there were prohibitively expensive. I sang Abba, Madonna, the Beatles, the Bangles, Edith Piaf and France Gall, but the piece de resistance was the final, hands in the air singalong version of 'Do Re Mi' from the Sound of Music, with me as Julie Andrews and the Japanese as the children. I think I can actually die happy now.

By the end of our two hours, I'd managed to miss the last train back to my hostel in Asakusa, so instead we headed to another bar, where we played some random drinking games which always seemed to involve me drinking shots of vodka, then went for some very late night noodles and gyoza. Elaine was kind enough to let me stay at her flat, as a taxi would have cost about the same as crossing the whole of London in a black cab in the middle of the night would cost: too much. I've spent today feeling very very tired, but very glad that I went out. The only disappointment of today was that I had arranged to meet one of Elaine's friends, Aimi, at Shibuya station's West Exit at 4.30pm, as she's a hairdresser and was going to cut my hair. Unfortunately, Shibuya station doesn't actually have a West Exit, so I wandered around but couldn't find her... I was really looking forward to my Japanese haircut too! Still, I can wait until LA. I ended my day by going to Roppongi and climbing the Mori Tower, which is Tokyo's tallest building and has stunning views from the observation deck on the 54th floor. I got there just before sunset and stayed until it was dark: I know that I do this in every large city I visit, but I do genuinely love the view from up high!

Right, this post is too long. Those of you that are still reading now must be really bored at work, huh? Tomorrow's plan involves going to see some Kabuki theatre, so I shall try to get myself to a computer soon to relate it all!

Due to lack of inspiration, let's just call this post 'Kyoto'

2009-03-27T10:53:00.002Z

So here I am in olde worlde Kyoto, and very nice it is too. I left Tokyo on Thursday, taking the shinkansen (bullet train), which was really cool. It gets you to Kyoto in 2 hours and 40 minutes, which is scarily fast given that it's rather a long way. It's a monument to Japanese efficiency - they never break down, are never late, and arrive to the minute that they're due in. Dad, you would have loved it. I took some pics.

I ate some lovely okonomayaki on my arrival, then wandered around a bit, but I was so unbelievably cold that I decided to seek refuge in a passing Irish bar for a warming glass of wine. I went in there intending to stay for an hour or so, but ended up in there for 5 hours talking to all the anglophile Japanese people that were hanging out at the bar. They were all so darned nice! I haven't met a not nice Japanese person yet. I do really love them.

Today I have been touristing to the max, visiting dozens of temples and shrines and taking photos as much as I humanly could. There are loads of tourists here, but they're all Japanese, so lots of photo taking was done by all today. You see the odd 40 something European couple, but hardly any other travellers. I'm enjoying the solitude and isolation after the crazy partying of South East Asia.

The only clouds on my happy little horizon are a) that I am still freezing to death, and b) my camera has finally met its end. It won't switch on 4 times out of 5, and the battery now lasts for all of 30 minutes. I've managed to take some photos today, thankfully, but I can't use a camera that only works for 30 minutes at a time for the next 7 months. Tokyo camera purchase here I come... In some ways if it was going to pack up it's good that it happened in the land of futuristic electronic gadgets I suppose, but it is still a bit annoying.

And on a final note, some Japanese randomness for your reading pleasure:
- The toilet seats are heated!
- There's a button in public toilets that makes a flushing noise to disguise other noises
- Lots of people wear surgical masks on their faces when they walk down the street
- Queuing is an art form; perfect lines of people on subway platforms, at rush hour. Amazing.
- Packaging is also an art form. Everything, even the crepe you buy on the street, is absolutely amazingly wrapped.
- Japanese women could teach us a thing or two about walking in heels all day long

Big in and on Japan

2009-03-25T13:11:00.001Z

I'm so proud of that title. I tower over people here, yet I love the place with my whole entire being. I'm still realising that I'm actually here; unlike Thailand, Laos etc, Japan is somewhere that I've wanted to visit since I was about 14, so much so that I almost studied Japanese at university instead of regular old French and Spanish, so being here can genuinely be described as fulfilling a life long ambition, which I suppose doesn't happen all that often. And although I've just reread that sentence and winced at how cheesy it is, it's completely true so I'm leaving it in!

I got myself up pretty early this morning and headed off to Ueno station where I booked some seat reservations for the bullet train to Kyoto and back, then headed for Shinjuku and Shibuya to do some window shopping and people watching. I didn't have a massive plan for today, I was happy enough just being here and taking it all in.

Every social interaction here has been an absolute joy; I try a few words of Japanese, they try out their English, we nod and bow a lot, and somehow manage to make ourselves understood. I love Japanese people. Three different people have come up to me in the street and started a conversation simply because I'm western, and I've caught two people taking photos of me when they thought I wasn't looking. Tokyo is so far from being a world city; it's so Japanese! I hardly saw any other foreigners all day and lots of people stared at me, in a really fascinated 'oh, look at the gaijin, she's got curly hair' sort of way.

I've negotiated the subway and the trains without any problems, bought myself sushi for lunch and some more sushi for dinner, and managed not to get lost or have any of those 'Lost in Translation' moments that people say you'll have. Still, I do have 9 more days so there's plenty of time.

It's 9pm now, and I'm back at my hostel utterly exhausted by a whole day in Tokyo; my eyes hurt from all the wide eyed staring I've done, my feet hurt from all the walking, and I'm still shivering from the cold. Itis incidentally only 8 degrees here, that's 30 whole degrees colder than Thailand, and I am soooooooo cooooooold! I'm wearing all my clothes at the same time, so I look ridiculous, but I am still cold. I think I might actually buy myself a coat here to avoid freezing to death. Any excuse to shop, non? If I get out of here without ruining myself financially it will be a miracle; it is as horrendously expensive as everyone says, and the clothes are quite simply amazing. It's like going into a shop full of all the things that you have a picture of in your head but can never actually find in an actual shop in the UK.

Despite the cold and the tiredness, I've been so excited about being in Tokyo today that I had to stop myself from crying this morning as I was so happy. I had a wave of 'I'm the luckiest person in the world-ness' come over me and it all got a bit much. I'm very glad I stopped myself as I think the poor Japanese people would have been very concerned. They are so polite, I dread to think what they'd do with a crying, shivering girl.

I'm heading to Kyoto tomorrow, and coming back to Tokyo on Saturday night in time for a trip to Harajuku on Sunday to watch the crazy fashions. Yes, I am cutting short ancient capital and home of the Geisha time to make sure I don't miss watching some teenagers dressed as anime characters, but that's my choice and I'm happy with it.

And after that I will still have 6 more days in Tokyo - bring it on!

Hong Kong

2009-03-23T11:09:00.002Z

Not a very original title for a post, admittedly, but that is exactly what I shall be writing about, so...

Ian has just left, and I'm in an internet cafe where I'm supposed to be uploading photos, but fate doesn't seem to want me to so I'm blogging instead. Hopefully Japan of all places will have computers with USB and CD drives...

Hong Kong is an absolutely amazing place, a really cool mix of East and West, with incredibly friendly people and great dim sum! Ian is seriously considering moving here, which I am encouraging him in as then I can come back to visit.

I actually feel like I've had a weekend for once, rather than all days being the same, we went out on Friday and Saturday nights, had a tired and not very challenging Sunday, and have spent today in Central HK surrounded by people in suits.

Predictably, we ended up in a gay bar doing karaoke on Friday night, serenading the poor locals with renditions of 'Total Eclipse of the Heart' and 'Voulez Vous'. They loved us: we made lots of new friends and the whole bar said goodbye to us when we left. Somehow we'd ended up staying out until 4am although both of us had been travelling for hours. Probably something to do with the Thai Red Bull that I still had in my bag...

On Saturday we shopped a little, but the main event of our day was the evening, as Louise had excelled herself as ever and put us on the list for a club called Volar, which apparently is hard to get into, especially for foreigners. We had some dinner and a cocktail at the top of a skyscraper first (Ian was very scared) then headed into Lan Kwai Fong, where all the bars are, for some pre club drinks. That may have been the point at which we both decided we could live here - it was packed full of people from literally all over the world, and made London seem monocultural. We only headed to the club at about 2am, me unhappily wearing my Primark plimsolls as their strict dress code forbade my beloved flip flops. We danced, Ian bought 2 champagne cocktails for 37 pounds, we danced some more, then some friendly people started chatting to us and pouring vodka into our mouths, and then very quickly it was hometime, as poor little Ian was feeling a bit worse for wear!

We wandered around a bit yesterday, then went to the night markets in the evening, which were lots of fun and good to see, but not a patch on Bangkok if you actually wanted to buy anything. We went up to the Peak today, as it is apparently an essential thing to do in Hong Kong and it's our last day here, but unfortunately given the rather overcast weather we could see nothing but the inside of a cloud. I imagine the view must be amazing when the cloud isn't there. Another reason to come back!

I'm absolutely exhausted after all the travelling to get here and the partying once here, and have a morning flight to Tokyo tomorrow. I am incredibly excited about Japan, but also a little bit scared, as my Japanese is still limited to about 5 phrases. Wish me luck!

Did someone say the travelling was supposed to be hard?

2009-03-20T10:53:00.003Z

This post is written from an internet cafe in Hong Kong, where I arrived this afternoon and am now waiting for the arrival of Ian from Delhi. I'll be in Japan on Tuesday, I woke up in Thailand this morning, and this time next month I'll be in Mexico. I love my jet set life. Can I please do it forever?

I believe that the last post I wrote was from Koh Phangan on the day of the Full Moon Party, which was less than two weeks ago, but now feels like ancient history. I'm really glad I went to the FMP - the timing was perfect, and it was brilliant to meet up with so many other travelling peeps there, but frankly FMP itself is more like a night out in the Bigg Market than a night in Ibiza. Maybe I'm just getting on a bit, but the music was the same awful commercial tripe you hear everywhere in Asia (I cannot take hearing 'Beautiful Girl' by Sean Kingston ever again), and the crowd was mostly composed of drunken English and Swedish people on 2 week holidays being sick in the sea. Still, Nasrine and I did manage to stay up until 7am and watch the sunrise, and I did do at least 4 solid hours of dancing, so it was far from a bad night.

I took my hangover away from Koh Phangan the next day and got the night ferry to Krabi. I had heard that the night ferry is usually like one big slumber party of sociable travellers, but since everyone on it had been to FMP the night before, I don't think I heard one bit of conversation for the entire 8 hours. You get a proper lie down mattress and a pillow - I slept like a dead person. It was ace.

I'd arranged to meet my friend Jo, who was in my hostel in Bangkok, in Krabi, but as it turned out in the 'everything in Thailand is easy' way of things, she was actually on the same bus as me from Surat Thani to Krabi. We headed straight for Ton Sai, which is a tiny place next to Railay beach that can only be accessed by boat. Ton Sai is cheap, as there's nothing to do there, and chilled, as it's full of climbers. Our bungalow only cost a bargainous 150 baht (that's 3 pounds) each a night, which is pretty amazing given how expensive anything near a Thai beach has become. I spent 3 nights there, sunbathing and chatting and reading, and generally catching up on my sleep. The sunsets there were more beautiful than any I've seen so far, and I've seen a lot. There was a storm every day during my Andaman side beach time too, and watching them come in over the sea was almost as amazing as watching the sunsets.

Last Sunday, after a solid month of trying to meet and missing each other, Marcella and I managed to reunite ourselves in Koh Phi Phi. I got the boat in from Ton Sai, she flew into Phuket and got the boat into the same pier, so I just waited for all of five minutes before she turned up. Too easy! I readily admit that the 4 nights we spent on Koh Phi Phi weren't hardcore, grown up travelling in any way: we were on holiday. Accomodation there is famously expensive, and our aircon, tv, hot shower, no mozzies room that we got for 10 quid each was actually a bit of a bargain. Again, you don't really do much at the beach; daytime sunbathing followed by night time drinking and dancing on the beach is pretty much the size of it. I had intended to go diving whilst there, but sadly had to bin that idea when I realised that it costs 50 pounds for one half day's diving. That's twice as much as Koh Tao! I did venture from the beach once, to go on an afternoon snorkelling and sunset watching trip. We were taken to Maya beach, where 'The Beach' was filmed, which is suitably beautiful and unspoilt, but would be more so were it not filled with camera toting tourists every single day.

As I write this I've been travelling for 24 hours, and I can't believe that the South East Asia portion of my trip is already over. It's too depressing to think that I have no idea when I'll be able to go back. I'd really got used to being there, and it still hasn't sunk in that I won't see my travel buddies again (at least for a long long time) and can't just go out and eat pad thai from the street once I've finished writing this post.

Still - I'm in Hong Kong, Ian is on his way, I really can't complain. As with all huge world cities I've been in, I bloody love the place already. The people seem really nice for big city folks, and each and every one of them speaks fluent English, so I'm going to have huge long chats while I can before I spend a mute 10 days trying to remember my Japanese - eek.

This is my island in the sun

2009-03-10T05:58:00.001Z

I have no idea how I am going to relate all of the amazing things that have happened since I last got round to writing anything, which was in Phnom Penh all that time ago, but I shall try.

A brief version would be Phnom Penh - Siem Reap - Bangkok - Ko Phangan but I shall try to elaborate a bit on that without writing a dissertation.

Phnom Penh is the sort of place that you have to visit, as you have to go through the grief of it all, but you also have to leave as soon as you possibly can afterwards to avoid going insane. It's not a nice city. Siem Reap, on the other hand, is beautiful. It is the Luang Prabang of Cambodia - very wealthy and full of older tourists, which makes for good food, clean streets and free wifi all over the place. I stayed 4 nights, going to Angkor Wat, then timed my return to Thailand to have 15 days before I fly out again.

I loved Cambodia, but I have to admit a certain sense of relief at returning to the flat roads and 7-Elevens of Thailand: everything here is so easy.

I was so incredibly happy to be back in Bangkok, as it really felt like coming home. The weekend that I spent there was possibly one of the best of my life so far - I went with the intention of shopping, and did, a lot, but also met some great people and had several brilliant nights out. On Friday night I went to a ladyboy show with people from my hostel (how do men have curves? how?) followed by a day at Chatuchak market on the outskirts of the city. It's the size of 5 football pitches, and I bought lots of great clothes for very little money. Beautiful 2nd hand dress for 2 pounds anyone? On Saturday night Chloe's cousin Serge invited us to the 1st birthday party of the bar he works in, which is inside a very flash hotel. We knew that it was 500 baht for free food and drink all night, but we didn't know that the drink was wine and the food was cheese and charcuterie. I was so happy I nearly cried, and that's without mentioning the bar made from ice, the very expensive vodka brnads and the minted expat clientele. Sunday night was my last night in Bangkok, so my friend Jo and I decided to go to have an expensive cocktail at one of the rooftop bars at the top of a hotel. We chose the Vertigo bar at the top of the Banyan Tree, getting there about 30 minutes before sunset. You all know I love heights, but it was incredible by anyone's standards. Jo and I ended up talking to two English guys that were staying in the hotel, and they ended up not only paying for our drinks but also inviting us to dinner with them in the restaurant at the top of the skyscraper. I ate mozzarella salad and sea bass and drank white wine for the price of about 50 of my regular meals here. It was long term backpacker heaven. Once this trip is over I'm all about first class travel I tell you.

I'd left it too late to get a bus ticket to get down to the islands for the Full Moon party, so I had to fly from Bangkok to Koh Samui instead. It only came to 60 pounds, and the ease of taking a one hour flight over a 12 hour bus and ferry made it worhwhile. I think. Anyway, here I am in Koh Phangan, waiting for this evening's Full Moon Party on the beach with about 5,000 other people who have descended on this tiny island for tonight. We were down at the beach last night, and it was relatively crazy with only a few hundred people around, so heaven knows what tonight is going to be like. It all feels a bit like a Saturday night at Glastonbury with everyone going to see the main headline act and no one else. A lot of people that I travelled with in Laos are all reconvening here today, so I'm pretty excited about tonight. We're staying in a brilliant bungalow for only 700 baht between two, despite just turning up without a reservation yesterday morning. Everything in Thailand is so easy!

I leave for Krabi on the other side of Thailand tomorrow night, and plan on doing absolutely nothing on a beach between then and my flight to HK next Friday. My trip is taking me to much more difficult destinations than Thailand, but I'm over any feelings of guilt about that now, and I readily admit that all I am doing here is having a damn good time.

Running late in Laos and Cambodia

2009-03-01T14:09:00.002Z

All those of you that told me that 2 months in South East Asia was more than enough were all wrong - 2 months here is only barely scratching the surface! I've got just less than 3 weeks left before flying to HK, and I'm going to have to rush through Cambodia if I'm to have any Andaman side diving time left at all - oh woe is me.

I'm writing this from a very hot and sweaty internet cafe in Phnom Penh. Since I last managed to find an internet connection worth connecting to, I've been from Vang Vieng in Laos, through Vientiane, then overnight to a place called Pakse, where we stayed for precisely 30 minutes before heading to the 4,000 Islands on the border with Cambodia, where I stayed doing precisely nothing for four whole days, before attempting the 12 hour Laos - Phnom Penh bus yesterday. Phew.

I spent a little bit more than the planned 2 weeks in Laos, but I'm glad that I did. Laos has developed and changed a lot since the rest of you did your travels all those years ago, and it's now a very heavily backpackered place where you meet a million people and lots of drinking happens. Or it is when you follow the route that I did anyway. There's still a lot of poverty, chilled out Lao people and bad roads, but there's also an awful lot of Beerlao. Excitingly, whilst in Vientiane, I met up with Chris Mastaglio from school, who has lived and worked out there for 3 or so years, which was brilliant as he is a veritable fluent Lao speaking local now and could answer all my random Lao questions.

I only really have one week in Cambodia, as I am planning to be in Bangkok again by next weekend, so I'm heading to Siem Reap tomorrow, for the obligatory Angkor Wat visit. My first impressions of Cambodia were coloured by the truly awful bus journey from Laos to here: 23 USD for 12 hours of non-aircon oversold bus with people sitting on plastic chairs in the aisles and backpacks piled up everywhere, complete with unnecessary 2 hour stops, much confusion, changing bus to a minivan for the final leg of the journey and then being subjected to Cambodian pop for the last 3 hours. Not the best start, especially as I was very happy in my hammock in the 4,000 Islands.

Happily, today was a brilliant day. This is the first day I have spent entirely alone since Chiang Mai I think, but I really must do it more often - I hired myself a moto driver for the day and took in the S-21 prison, the killing fields, the Russian market, the Royal Palace, and lots of other random stuff. My driver was called Ron, a 2nd year medical student who has Sundays off and drives people round the sites to earn some more money. His English was perfect and we had lots of great chats about Cambodia, our respective families and the health care system in the UK. He was a star and wouldn't even let me pay for lunch. The traffic in Phnom Penh is petrifying, with no traffic lights or order, just horns to remove the random pedestrians, pushbikes and cows from the path of speeding motorbikes. I was riding on the back of the bike, without a helmet, obviously, but I got quite into it after the first roundabout crossing and was disappointed when it was over!

I think I might have lots of time for the Cambodians - they all seem very enterprising, somehow their English is almost always perfect, and they smile and laugh all the time. They've really been through the mill too; the Khmer Rouge killed about 25% of the population between 1975 and 1979, including anyone that could speak a foreign language or wore glasses. I've overdosed on Khmer Rouge today with the prison and killing field trips, as well as buying a copy of a book called 'First They Killed My Father'; a pretty famous book about a young girl's time under the evil regime. I bought it this afternoon, am half way through, and will most probably have it finished before I go to sleep this evening. It's quite strange reading about something so hideous in the place that it actually happened only 30 years ago.

I shall soon be back in Thailand, where my Thai mobile will work, wifi exists, and internet cafes are on every corner, so I might even upload some photos from there if you're lucky.

Laos Part 2

2009-02-21T05:43:00.002Z

I was a little unsure about Laos the last time I wrote, but I've been here over a week now and I really love it. It's a fascinating place; you can almost see it changing every day, with new roads and hotels and bars everywhere. Apparently 5 years ago there were no major roads. Now they do have some, although potholes are common and they twist and turn in a vomit inducing way for hours and hours up and down various mountains.

I left Luang Prabang after a few days, and I'm now in Vang Vieng, about to take a bus to the capital Vientiane this afternoon. Luang Prabang -Vang Vieng -Vientiane is the major tourist route, and I don't know whether I can honestly say that I've seen the 'real' Laos yet, but I am going south through the rest of Laos after Vientiane, so perhaps I will then. I'm feeling much braver now that I've had a week here. We've been travelling in a group since Chiang Mai, have met so many people, and have had ridiculous amounts of fun, but I'm striking out a little bit more on my own now. Although I do know 4 other people taking my bus. You really do never travel alone when you travel alone!

There's so much I could write about the stately beauty of Luang Prabang, the Mekong, the good food, the Frenchness, or the incredibly expensive everything. Or about Vang Vieng, and the tubing on the river, the drinking, the awful food, the sleep deprivation, the euro house soundtrack, the amount of English people, or the endless fun of it all. Or more about Laos and the Lao people, and the poverty and the super fast change, the curfew and the government and the currency that makes you feel like a millionaire. Or even about travelling, and all the people you meet and talk to about all the places you've been and are going to, but I'm not going to write about any of that as my bus is coming in a few minutes and I need to buy a cheese sandwich for the journey. Will write more soon!

Oh, and yesterday my camera got wet when we were tubing on the river, so I may be photoless for a while unless it miraculously dries out... Hong Kong camera purchase here I come.

Slowly getting to Luang Prabang

2009-02-14T08:36:00.002Z

My last post was written from Chiang Mai in Thailand, and this one is written from Luang Prabang in Laos, after a 6 hour overnight bus ride, 5 hours sleep in a hotel room, one short ferry across a river, a border crossing and 2 days on a slow boat. Of the various ways to get to Laos from Thailand, the slow boat is definitely the one to go with: it is admittedly cramped and uncomfortable, but the views along the Mekong are stunning, and the whole boat is full of travellers all doing the same thing (Laos people take the 11 hour bus) we met loads of like minded people and swapped all the usual traveller stories about where we've been and where we're going. The other water based option was the speed boat in 6 hours. Everyone warns you not to do it as it's really dangerous and uncomfortable, but the true horror of it escaped me until we saw the tiny speedboats flying past us, with 5 or 6 people curled into tiny balls and wearing crash helmets and life jackets. 6 hours like that would have been hell - I'm glad I could take 2 days over the journey.

The boat ride includes a one night stop at a tiny village called Pak Beng, as it obviously can't continue down the Mekong in complete darkness. Pak Beng is, to be honest, a pretty crude introduction to just how poor Laos is. Within a second of getting off the boat, a small child spotted the packet of pistachios in my bag and started begging me for them, and another asked Marcella for her bottle of Coke. They got both and looked so genuinely pleased about it that I spent the next hour or so feeling terrible about all the money I've spent in the last couple of weeks. The average yearly wage in Laos is 1000 USD a year, and I've spent more than that since leaving London 4 weeks ago. Pak Beng only has electricity between 6pm and 10pm, and there's technically a 10pm curfew, although they don't really enforce it for tourists. Post the Pak Beng stop, day 2 on the boat was more subdued than day 1 - we all read and listened to music and idly watched the scenery - we were on the darned thing from 9am to 5pm and our games of hangman and making lists of the best James Bond films didn't entertain us for long.

Luang Prabang is beautiful - it is apparently a UNESCO World Heritage site. It's full of backpackers, but also lots of older people travelling in tour groups. Heaven knows how they get here, as I wouldn't put a 50 year old on that boat for 2 days. There doesn't seem to be a whole lot to do here apart from wandering around, eating, drinking coffee and seeing temples, but I really like it. The boys that we are travelling with are already bored though, and will probably head to Vang Vieng tomorrow. Vang Vieng is backpacker drinking central, where you can take an inflatable tube down the river whilst stopping at lots of bars. I will inevitably go there, as it sounds fun and is on my route south, I just don't know when yet. Our room is the nicest so far since the Ko Samui luxury - 5 pounds a night for hot water and clean white sheets and wooden floors. After 2 days on a boat, all that stuff is genuinely exciting.

Laos is very different to Thailand: it's much poorer, there are no scams, and each place has a curfew. In Luang Prabang it's midnight, although last night we broke it to go to the bowling alley, which is apparently the only place open after midnight in the entire town. It was full of Brits (so many English people everywhere, it's insane) and it was lots of fun if a little bizarre. I got a strike, for the first time in my entire life. Twas a shame none of you were there to see my triumph. I'm not sure what happens to the tuk tuk drivers who break curfew to take us there and back. Or how people survive here when the daily wage is 1USD - less than the price of a can of BeerLao. Or how they remain so content when they see travellers everywhere flashing money and gadgets that they will never have. Maybe I'll work it out in the next 2 weeks.

All Laos suggestions from those of you that have been here before much appreciated: Lonely Planet is officially useless and I'm going on other people's advice for the rest of my South East Asia time!

Thailand is...

2009-02-10T05:01:00.002Z

- the land of the unpronounceable language
- my frustration at not being able to pronounce the language
- a 7 Eleven on every street
- a noodle seller on every street
- buying Chang beer at the 7 Eleven and drinking it with noodles from the street seller
- learning the next day that it's worth spending the extra 10 baht on Singha beer rather than Chang
- everyone saying 'same same but different'
- trying to eat spicy food at breakfast and giving up
- eating lots of tiny meals every day and never feeling full
- being eaten alive by mosquitoes
- wondering whether I really need the perfect fake red Ray Bans on sale at the night market
- a really gory kick-boxing match featuring 2 six year old fighters
- a small bottle of Sangsom rum from the 7 Eleven with a bucket of ice and Coke bought in a bar
- learning to accept slow internet connections
- meeting lots of people, all the time
- the easiest place in the world to travel
- so many services for travellers and backpackers that it's impossible to travel like a Thai
- where I am for the next few days but I must eventually leave for Laos
- not as beautiful as it would be if all the people I miss were here
- but still beautiful

Chiang Mai - 2 day treks and real live elephants

2009-02-08T11:00:00.002Z

I realised very quickly almost as soon as I left Bangkok that the reason I was so lethargic there was because of the crazily heavy pollution, which coupled with the humidity, makes it really hard to do anything at all. Bit of a relief not to feel like that anymore as I was fearing the onset of glandular fever.

I took the night bus from Bangkok to Chiang Mai, spending 11 hours on a freezing cold bus listening to people snoring whilst I got no sleep at all. As you can imagine I wasn't happy. We were picked up on arrival in Chiang Mai by people from the Nice Place guest house, who took us to their hostel and gave us coffee whilst trying to get us to stay there and buy their trekking packages. It's apparently very common for this to happen when you get a tourist bus: your ticket is really cheap but you've already been sold into a guest house in your destination. As it turns out, the Nice Place is well named - I'm sharing a big room with another English girl for only 100 baht (2 pound or so) with hot water, it has a pool, and I've met lots of good people there, so it wasn't so bad to have been pre-sold. As you all know, at 6am I'm not capable of making a decision on anything, so I'm glad that taking the easiest option of staying there and taking their trek has worked out well.

After a day hanging out in Chiang Mai (read making up for lost sleep), I headed off with a group of 8 (2 Aussies, 2 Italians, 2 Israelis, a Swede and me) to spend 2 days and 1 night trekking in the mountains. We drove for about 3 hours north of here, ending up at a village that was only a few miles away from the Burmese border. We were pretty near Pai, if that means anything to anyone. We were fed and shown round the village, then went off trekking to the village that we were to spend the night in. We only walked for about an hour and a half, but it was right in the middle of the day and was really really hard work. I was trying not to be pathetic and start whimpering and wanting to go home but I don't know how successful I was.

The village that we stayed in belonged to a hill tribe called the Lesu people. I was expecting them to be an ancient Thai tribe, but actually they've only been living there for 35 years since they fled Burma. I felt slightly cheated!

It was more than a little strange spending the evening with them. Trekking was similar to diving - I did it because it's a cool thing to do when in Thailand without really thinking about what it actually entailed. The village people have trekking groups staying with them every night, and it crossed my mind more than once whether they would actually be doing their 'traditional Chinese New Year dancing' if we hadn't been there. A fair few of the village teenagers looked really bored by it, and seemed more interested in playing 'Wonderwall' for us on their guitars. Our guide cared most about the Liverpool score. Still, I'm really glad I did it, as it was really beautiful up there in the mountains, and because Day 2 involved elephants.

After a crazy 7am start to avoid the heat, we trekked off again, this time climbing a few mountains in a couple of hours, before a stop at a (freezing cold) waterfall, where I was hoping to get some food but was not in luck, them a few hours more trekking before we got to the hotly anticipated elephants. We rode them for a whole hour, and it was so incredibly peaceful just padding through the jungle watching the world go by. Klaus the Swede and I got a proper seat on the daddy elephant, but one of the unlucky Aussies had to sit on his neck and grab hold whilst suffering leg cramps. Daddy elephant kept hitting him with his ears and didn't seem happy at all. It seemed like the elephants were pretty well treat; we didn't see them being hit and they were free to stop and eat when they felt like it.

Post elephants there was yet more trekking, which was again painful as by this time it was pretty hot, before being driven to the river where we were taken bamboo rafting. We went on some rafts down a river, they were made of bamboo, it was quite peaceful but we all got soaked. This was the last part of the trek, and by this time I was so hungry I could have eaten the bamboo. I find that, although I really like Thai food, my body just can't cope with the lack of protein (there's tiny amounts of meat in the dishes) or carbs (rice just not as good as pasta!), so I have to eat Western food every couple of days. At the end of the trek all of us were craving pizza, steak and chips. I'm here for months, and hunger pangs are winning over keeping it real.

We've been lazily hanging around Chiang Mai today, doing washing and sitting by the pool. We wandered around some markets for a bit, but today is frankly not a day to do very much. I'm going to an all day Thai cookery school tomorrow, then heading off into Laos at some point in the next few days, where I will be for a few weeks.

I'm enjoying writing this blog, but the internet connections here are so slow, and will only be slower in Laos, so I may not write for a little while. I hate slow internet connections about as much as I hate bad grammar and being patronised, which is a lot, but hopefully the fact that I'm having an absolutely amazing time comes across when I write, rather than my frustration at the advertised 'super fast connection' being a blatant lie. I fear I haven't quite let my London self go yet.

Learning to do nothing much at all

2009-02-04T09:07:00.002Z

I'm still in Bangkok but heading up to Chiang Mai on the overnight bus tonight. I haven't been using my last day in Bangkok time very productively though - I've been sat in a cafe reading (Russell Brand's autobiography, quite the page turner, incidentally) since I checked out of dingy hostel this morning. I'm fighting the guilt pangs that I'm getting from being so lazy; I'm so used to doing so much stuff every day in London that it's hard to get used to doing so little. Part of me feels like I should be out there seeing every last drop of what Bangkok has to offer, but during the day it's so hot and humid that I can't really move about much during the day. Poor northern little me just can't cope with this heat - so so tired...

Knowing I'm on such a long trip doesn't help either - it's not that I have 2 weeks off work so I need to make the most of every minute - I have 10 months stretching ahead of me, and given that I haven't even been away 3 weeks yet, that seems like a very very long time.

Some of my laziness might also have something to do with being in Thailand, or South East Asia, rather than somewhere less relaxed. People here are really laid back, even in Bangkok, and the urge to do not very much is quite infectious. Also, since I can't communicate properly with Thai people, which is still annoying the hell out of me, there's a limit to how many people I can get out there and meet, and as beautiful as the temples are, they are all remarkably similar once you've seen 10 or so. All in all, being lazy seems to be the way forward. I'm still beating myself up about it though, despite all that justification. Probably the Catholic guilt again.

I've met some cool people in Bangkok - mainly English teachers who've been here a couple of months but are still living in Khao San hostels rather than having their own apartments. I've gone from hating Khao San on sight when I frist arrived to actually quite liking it - I had it described to me as a permanent version of Glastonbury, which in some ways it sort of is. I think as long as you accept that it is nothing more than a few streets where everything is geared towards backpackers, and not some exotic place where you go to find yourself (or similar Thai inspired hippy drivel) then it's a perfectly nice place to spend a few days.

More Bangkok. But a bit more Thai.

2009-02-02T14:58:00.004Z

2 posts in 2 days - get me.

I'm still in Bangkok, and still don't know when I'm leaving - I'm dragging my heels about making any plans to go north as I really like it here. It's a bit of a curse being a city girl - I'd have so much more money to travel with if I felt happiest in small mountain villages...

I've just got back to the backpacker ghetto after a brilliant day out in proper Bangkok. Philip Sweeney and his really lovely wife Naline (I think that's how it's spelt) took me out today and showed me loads of cool stuff that I wouldn't have otherwise even known about. We went to a tiny island north of Bangkok called Ko Kret, which you access by river ferry after a big taxi ride. There are no cars on the island, but lots of temples, and all you could hear was dogs barking and birds singing. We walked about a bit, had some amazing food, and I had lots of things pointed out to me that I would otherwise have missed, like what each of the different fruit trees are, and why the Buddha statues at the Wats (temples) have different poses. I believe Ko Kret to be in the Lonely Planet, but there were no other farang (that means foreigner) there at all.

Once we'd gone round the island once, we got a taxi back into central Bangkok, and went into one of the totally amazing and better than the UK shopping malls for some much needed air conditioning and coffee. Just outside the shopping malls are a few Buddhist shrines where shoppers go to pray to the saint of love, or work, or probably lots of other things. It's a brilliant sight to see people with bags full of clothes going to buy incense and flowers and spending a few minutes praying before going shopping again. The shrines look beautiful as they are almost entirely covered in flowers, and the smell of incense is overpowering. I took some ace mall/shrine juxtaposition type pics.

We then got back into a taxi - lots of time has been spent in taxis today, but they are super cheap as long as the driver uses the meter - and went to Chinatown for food. Phil and Naline took me to this tiny place where we ate some of the best seafood I've ever had in my life, France included. We shared barbequed prawns, oysters, crab and sea snails - mmm. There was then time for a quick wander around the streets of Chinatown with me gawping at the gory food you can buy and the amount of gold shops there are, before coming back up here to relate all this on the interweb.

I feel like I have a much firmer grasp on all things Thai now - I've had food, the monarchy, politics and religion explained to me today, and for that I am very grateful. I just need to get over my inability to learn any darned Thai. Have I mentioned that I *hate* not being able to make myself understood? My brain keeps trying to break words down the way that you do when you're learning a European language, which is obviously useless with Thai. Lord knows what I'll be like in Japan.

I'm exhausted now and am off for an early night before doing the tourist essentials tomorrow. I feel a bit guilty for having been here for 3 days without having been to the Grand Palace or any major temples yet, so that is my task for demain.

PS - Lovely to talk to you today Mum xx

Diving in Ko Tao and dancing in Bangkok

2009-02-01T09:32:00.002Z

I realise I've been very bad at keeping this up to date, so this is probably going to be a very very long post...

Since I last wrote over a week ago, I've managed to pack in more things than I would have in a whole month in the UK. I left Ko Samui on Sunday and tried not to cry as I said goodbye to Ian, then got the ferry to Ko Tao. The whole island is set up for people learning to dive, but I signed up with a school on a recommendation and I'm really glad I did. They all offer about the same deal - you got 4 nights accomodation and tuition to become an Open Water diver for about 200 quid.

The school I went to was run by a French/English guy and most of the instructors, dive masters and students were either one or the other. I met loads of really genuinely nice people, most of whom came to Ko Tao for a couple of days and ended up staying years. I can understand why: Ko Tao is still really quiet and much less package touristy than Samui.

The Open Water course was brilliant - I was lucky enough to be the only student of my ace instructor, Dave, and although I did freak out for about 5 minutes before I had to go *into the actual sea* for the first time, I was a lot less rubbish at it than I had feared. I didn't realise that diving was a) incredibly tiring and b) incredibly rewarding. I think I took the course because it's something that you're supposed to do, without really thinking about what the diving itself entailed. I'm so genuinely glad that I learnt, and hopefully will get to do a lot more over the course of my trip. You feel like a fish!

As an aside, some of you will be unsurprised to note that I have now added 'in the sea' to the inexhaustible list of places that I've been sick: a 7.30am dive, no breakfast but too much coffee, a rocky boat ride - it was always going to happen.

As tempting as it was to spend the rest of my SE Asia time hanging out on Ko Tao, I made the move up to Bangkok on the Friday night overnight ferry/coach combo. My 'sleeping absolutely anywhere' skill kicked in on the 10 hour bus ride, and I arrived in Bangkok at 5am feeling like I'd had a proper night's sleep in a real bed. Given that it took me (with the help of a lovely Irish couple) an entire hour of wandering around the Khao San Road and its surrounding streets to find anywhere to stay at that time in the morning in high season, it's pretty fortunate that I had a good 8 hours sleep on my side.

As a result of this late arrival, I'm staying in a less than amazing hostel, but it is very cheap, my room does have air-con, and I'm gradually getting used to the prison cell style decor they've gone for.

I wandered around Bangkok a bit yesterday, going on the river ferry and the up in the air Skytrain. I'm really happy to be back in a city again - Bangkok may be full of backpackers but there are at least some actual Thai people here rather than just Westerners as there are on the islands. I think I understand Ian when he said he could live here - it's Asian and western and traditional and modern and super tolerant all at the same time. I don't think I've ever felt so safe in a city of 16 million people.

Last night I was invited out by Chloe's cousin Serge who lives and works as a dj/promoter out here. He'd mentioned that it would be a good idea for me to get back for this Saturday as there was a good night planned, but I hadn't realised that he was actually talking about Bangkok's biggest dance music festival, with 10,000 people going crazy for lots of flown in from Europe djs. It was heartening in a way that these events are pretty similar across the entire world - same fashions and music styles. The only difference was the utter absence of the cooler than thou attitude that is so omnipresent in London. The Thai crowd were endlessly smiley and accomodating, and I didn't see any agressive drunken behaviour from anyone at any point, even as I was scrambling for a taxi at 4am. I did lots of dancing, met some lovely people and was really glad to see a side of Bangkok that I probably wouldn't have known about had I not been invited by Serge.

Predictably I don't feel up to doing much in the sweltering heat today, so I am reading and blogging in an air conditioned cafe... I'm being shown around some Bangkok sights by Philip Sweeney, who some of you will know went to school with us, and lives out here working as an English teacher. I can't wait to pick the poor man's brain with a million Thailand questions.

I still don't know how long I'm going to stay in Bangkok. I imagine I shall be here for at least a few more days as I haven't done any of the big tourist sites yet, or sorted out any of the things I need to sort while I'm here. After BKK, I think my trip will take me north, via Chiang Mai through Laos and Cambodia, before coming back to Bangkok or perhaps having a few days beach time before leaving for Hong Kong. But I may change my mind - who knows.

It's pretty hard to believe that I've only been here for 2 weeks - I've done so much and it already seems hard to remember what life is like without a backpack, a big guidebook and a mango shake 3 times a day. I can't let myself think how much time I still have left of my trip, as it scares the hell out of me, so I'm trying to just concentrate on my SE Asia 2 months for now.

I don't feel that I've really seen much of proper Thailand yet, and I'm hoping that will change in the next few weeks. I'm learning 2 new Thai phrases every day (today's are 'I understand' and, more importantly, 'I don't understand'). The taxi driver that drove me out to the festival site last night was trying to explain what's going on in Thai politics to me (one of the main roads was closed for a pro Thaksin demonstration) and I could only catch half of what he was saying, between the Thai words he was using and the heavily accented English, and it *really annoys me*!

Apologies for the enormous post, and well done for getting this far. I could write so much more, but my internet money is running out, so instead I shall pledge to update this more than once a week, meaning that you'll get much more managable blog chunks from now on!

I am the whitest person on this island

2009-01-24T08:59:00.002Z

Today is both mine and Ian's last day in Ko Samui: I'm getting the ferry to Ko Tao tomorrow to take a PADI diving course, and Ian is flying back to Delhi. I won't be able to hide from the reality of what I'm doing without the company of someone I've known forever and the shelter of a 5 star resort hotel, but in lots of ways I'm really excited about going it alone. After Ko Tao I might go to the beaches on the Andaman side, or I might make my way up to Bangkok if I'm all beached out, which to be honest is quite likely.

Ko Samui is really really quiet - everyone is saying how unusually empty all the resorts are and we feel like we're the only people in our resort. I didn't think what happened at Bangkok airport last year would have had an effect on people's holiday choices, but coupled with le famous credit crunch, it obviously has. I don't know whether backpacker type places will be similarly empty...

In the five days we've been here, we've done a lot of messing about in the pool and general loafing, with the exception of Thursday, when we hired a motorbike for the day and went all round the island. We had initially planned to hire a bike each, but I tried riding one round the car park and completely freaked out after 30 seconds, so I rode on the back of Ian's for the day. We ended up going right to the top of one of the mountains inland as there was a zipline thing through the trees. Unfortunately for the stupid unresearched tourists that we are, we took the dirt road route up instead of the nice, safe concrete one. Whole sections of the 'road' were potholes, and our little bike couldn't make it up the steep hills with both of us on so I kept having to get off and walk. At one point we lost control of the bike and it went careering across the road, thankfully without us on it. Two German blokes with proper bikes that had helmets and everything were coming the other way, and gave us a strict German style lecture about the importance of wearing helmets and not driving fast, then said that the road got lots worse and we'd never make it to the top. We kept going anyway, as we were more scared of going back down than carrying on, and did eventually make it to the zipline place. There were 10 ziplines in the trees that we were taken through by a lovely Thai lass, and it was actually worth risking death for: the views were amazing, and I really loved being so high up in the trees. We made it back down on the normal road, then went on a tour of the whole island on the road that rings around it, taking in lots of stunning views out to sea and the Big Buddha statue on the north side. We each had rather smug 'we are still alive, we rock' style massages when we got back to tourist central in Chaweng, and I made a mental note never to go up a mountain on a motorbike ever again.

Ian and I have both taken hundreds of photos of all of the above, and mine will be duly Facebooked and/or Flickred once I get round to it. I'm a little reluctant to upload lots of them, though, as the one thing that stands out in the photos is how incredibly white I am compared to absolutely everyone else here. I've met ginger haired Irish people here that are more tanned than me, and I haven't changed colour at all since arriving despite a fair bit of sunbathing. Curse that Scottish and Irish heritage.

Andrea, I pure loved your comment. I think we drove through where you lived, but I hadn't seen your comment so I didn't spot your school or above noodle shop house. Ko Samui is so incredibly beautiful once you get even the tiniest bit away from the built up bits; I can understand why you liked living here. That restaurant sounds amazing - we are debating hiring another bike and going there tonight but the tropical rain that is currently falling may limit how far we can go...

Thailand - land of opulent resort hotels

2009-01-21T18:12:00.003Z

Hi. This is to be the first of probably millions of blog posts while I'm on my travels, but as I don't really feel like I'm actually travelling yet, it seems a little strange to be writing, but hey, I'll give it a go. I should do some sort of travel blog beginning: 1 girl, 1 backpack, 10 months, too many countries and a hundred flights etc etc, but it all feels wrong when I'm staying somewhere this flash.

I'm in Ko Samui with Ian, staying in a quite frankly stupidly expensive and opulent resort. Ian gets it free with all those air miles, and it is beautiful: we have a private villa with our own pool, the resort has a private beach, the pool gives onto to the beach, the staff are far too subservient and all you can hear is crickets (and easy listening versions of Leona Lewis songs from the pool bar). To be perfectly honest, I'm having an amazing time! But I am trying to remember that I probably won't be able to stay anywhere like this ever again in my life, especially not in the next 10 months.

So far I really love Thailand: it's so easy to move around, nothing is a problem, the people are all smiley and the food is ace. The only thing that jars slightly is the amount of sex tourism that we've seen in Ko Samui - it's all old fat European men with beautiful young Thai girls, and it feels bit wrong. I'd been told that it would be like this, though, and I probably won't be in big resorts like this from now on, so it's ok to see it in a voyeuristic sort of way.

It's quite late now and we just got back from a night out in Chaweng, which is the biggest and most touristy beach resort. We've had a really cool night out sat at a bar on the beach drinking cocktails and watching people set Thai lanterns alight, surrounded by obligatory old white man/young thai girl couples. It was all a bit like the bit in 'The Beach' where they have to go to the big resort to get food.

I should probably write about how great my flight was (watched Vicky Cristina Barcelona on the plane), how much I loved Bangkok airport and lots of other stuff, but it's late, and I feel like I need to get back into the habit of writing this thing before I start to write long rambling posts...

So I'm just lazy then

2006-06-19T19:31:00.000+01:00

Oooh, I was getting a little self indulgent back there. I'm not very good at this updating blog business really am I? I'll feel better about myself and have a vague sense of achievement if I write something now, even if this is just going to be about the World Cup and the sunshine. Oh, and me and Ron maybe going to Japan next year on our hols, and that we are slowly but surely turning into old people by going to buy geraniums at the flower market on Columbia Road early on Sunday morning.

This pic is my favourite from Mexico by the way: every time I look at it I feel like I'm in that juice bar with a licuado de mango watching the France - Mexico pre World Cup friendly.

And she woke up and it was all a dream

2006-05-30T23:23:00.000+01:00

I got back last night, was very pleased to see Reinaldo, unpacked, went into work today, came home, went for a very painful run, and now it's like I was never away. How can you fit so much into 3 weeks in Mexico but so little can happen in 3 weeks in London?

I've just uploaded all the photos I took to Flickr (click on the photos badge on the right). Some are good, some are bad, some need explaining. I'll go through and add comments to the wierder ones, and take the less than amazing photos down after a while. There are 400 or so of them and they're probably nowhere near as interesting to you as they are to me...

My last day in Mexico City was great. I went to the Anthropology Museum for it opening at 10, had the place to myself for a bit, had some lunch from one of the foodstalls in the Bosque de Chapultepec - I knew it was going to be my last bit of Mexican food for a while so I ate loads - went to a market and spent loads of money, went to the Alameda Central and ate mango with chile, sat about and watched the world go by over a coffee, then had to go back to the hostel before getting my taxi to the airport. I was actually almost on the verge of tears!

The hostel I was staying in had their own driver who takes people to the airport and the bus stations. I was the only passenger in the van, but Alan the driver had brought along his mum, her sister, his sister-in-law and her son for the ride as the airport was on their way home. I had a really funny chat with them all about not really leaving Mexico and (randomly enough) how much they'd all like to speak French. The little boy had just learnt the word 'pobrecita', so every time I mentioned not wanting to leave Mexico he piped up with an 'ay, pobrecita' from the back of the van. It was very cute from a 7 year old.

Airport was fine, suitably airport-esque with lots of shops. I don't ask for much, I like airports as they are. Flight also fine, slept 9 of the 10 hours, and chatted to a French-Mexican for the other hour. None of this seems particularly important though; all the important stuff happened before I arrived at the airport.

It's really hard to feign interest in work and get excited about things that I find wholly unexciting. I'm sure it'll wear off after a couple of days, and I think my dear colleagues completely understand as they've taken time off themselves and doubtless felt the same. It seems strange that I was so focussed about getting a Project Manager job in April. I probably will be in June too, but at the minute it all seems a bit irrelevant. Good job that there isn't a vacancy at the minute as I'd be way too horizontal in an interview to get the darned thing...

The Final Countdown

2006-05-28T14:31:00.000+01:00

This post may be short as I actually wrote a huge post on arrival here in Mexico City last night detailing all the crazy things that happened and how sad I will be to leave Mexico, but blogger.com cleverly went down and lost the whole thing - hmph. The Isla Mujeres stories will have to wait.

I´m so glad I came to Mexico City: as soon as my taxi started getting nearer the city I felt like I was going home! I think I may just have to accept that I´m a city girl and won´t be happy if you take me away from noise, dirt, pollution and 25 million people for too long.

My flight leaves at 8.30pm so I have the whole of today to fit in as much as humanly possible: Anthropology Museum, Chapultepec, tequila purchases, having my last mango, last dose of tacos, a drink from a bag, hanging about in some more churches, going crazy with the photos...

I´m really happy and really sad at the same time; Ive had an amazing time and I almost can´t believe that it´s only been 3 weeks as I feel like I´ve packed so much in. I really don´t want to leave; I´ve loved meeting Mexicans, how colourful and busy and noisy everything is, how beautiful the cities and the ruins and the mountains and the coast are and how everyone smiles, all the time.´

I´ll write more if I can find an internet cafe at the airport, if not - see you when I get back!

Last night I dreamt of some petrol, just like I´d never gone I knew the song

2006-05-26T22:36:00.000+01:00

I just changed my plane ticket, so will be leaving Isla Mujeres for Mexico City tomorrow morning and spending my last night in the big city. I think I´d regret it if I didn´t, as there´s so much I still have to do there. I barely saw any tourists in the 4 days I was there, and I could really do with a final dose of the real Mexico before leaving. I´ll be staying in a different hostel to last time that has been recommended by loads of people that I´ve met along the way.

Yesterday and today have been really chilled, as you would imagine a few days in the Caribbean would be. Apart from getting a bit more lively at night, there´s not much point in being anything other than tranquilo round these parts.

As predicted, I really don´t have that much to write about that will fascinate you. I´ve been eating great seafood, swimming a lot and drinking lots of piña coladas in the bar in our hostel whilst playing backgammon and talking to lots of different people. I really feel like I´m on holiday, rather than ´travelling´, but it´s been loads of fun. This would be a really great place to come for a week´s holiday with friends if you got a cheap charter flight to Cancun: the sun is hotter than the Mediterranean and there are less drunk English people being sick in the gutter. We have Americans to do that here.

I´ve been starting to think about coming home and making mental lists of things that I can look forward to: the World Cup, the Race for Life, seeing Jaboc again, London in the summer, festivals, finding someone that I can speak Spanish with, running, Berlin for a weekend, planning more trips, sitting on a sofa, wine, cheese, curry, tea, gin and tonic, barbeques, illegally downloading lots of Latin American music, cracking open the passion fruit flavour mezcal I´ve been carrying since Oaxaca, going clothes shopping, not wearing the same clothes for 3 bloody weeks, being a few shades darker than alabaster this year...

Things that go bump in a cenote

2006-05-25T16:22:00.000+01:00

Without meaning to make any of you spontaneously vomit up your Marks and Spencer prawn mayonnaise sandwiches that you are eating in front of your PC as the rain lashes by outside, the view from this internet cafe stretches all the way down to the spotless white sand and turquoise water of the Caribbean. I´ll nip down to the beach in a bit, but there´s no rush; I´ve got a couple of days of the same old beach to go, and I don´t want to over exert myself by doing too much. Already my plan to write a blog entry before going to the beach and reading seems like quite a demanding schedule...

Sorry, facetious paragraph over now. I got to Isla Mujeres from Tulum yesterday, to be greeted on my arrival in the hostel by almost everyone I´ve met on my trip so far, including most people from the hostel in Tulum who I knew were here, but also Fliss, Jo and Helen that I left in Palenque. How can the world be that small? Admittedly, there are only 2 hostels on Isla, and the Poc-Na where I am staying is really famous and sought after, but for me to be here at the same time as everyone else is still quite random.

This trip has been ´travelling alone´ only in the most technical sense: I haven´t spent a full day on my own since my birthday in Mexico City, and every time I´ve said goodbye to a group of people and been slightly apprehensive about being by myself I´ve found a new pal as soon as I get to the bus station or the hostel. I knew I´d meet people, but not this many. Wierdly enough I´ve met other people travelling alone that haven´t met anyone else the whole time apart from in passing, so I must have chosen my buses and hostels well.

I´m very happy with the world today, as yesterday was a bit of a freaky day. My snorkelling in the cenote that I did in the morning before leaving Tulum turned into an embarrassing and scary experience when I whacked my head against a stalactite after having breathed in underwater. We were supposed to put our hands up before coming out of the water to protect our heads, but I was so desperate to breathe (and let´s face it, so crap at snorkelling) that I forgot. I felt totally fine until I saw all the blood seeping into the water around me and freaked out. The instructor nearly had a heart attack and got us all out of the water, up the ladder and back to the car, whilst I dripped blood the whole way. Luckily enough for me, the only other person doing the snorkelling with me was Luke, the handsome Australian doctor from my hostel, so he cleaned me up, got rid of the blood, found the gaping wound which is actually only a graze, and doused my head in copious amounts of burning alcohol. If he hadn´t been there the instructor would have dragged me to a Mexican hospital because he was so paranoid about me suing him, which would have totally scuppered my last couple of days here. Anyway, I´ve now learnt that doctors travel with half a hospital in their backpacks; after a lie down and a shower to get the blood out of my hair I left Tulum on the bus I´d planned to get with antibiotics, disinfectant, bandages and a list of things to do if my head starts to hurt or go red. You´ll doubtless be relieved to know that I feel completely fine, I have a small bump on my head but it doesn´t hurt and I haven´t felt faint despite having lost about half a litre of blood. I´m geet hard me.

Mum, Dad, I contemplated not writing about this, but for the purposes of blogging integrity I don´t want to leave important things out, as this is a record of my trip for me as well as a way for you to find out what I´m doing. Sorry if you´re worried: don´t be - I´m fine. Anyway Pops, I seem to remember you saying that I should come back with lots of stories, and all my stories up to this point had been far too trouble-free.

Fliss, Jo and Helen are going snorkelling today but I think it may be tempting fate to join them, even though there are no stalactites in the sea. I´d probably hit a boat, so useless am I at this snorkelling business.

I am still to decide whether to change my flight or not. Today I´m so happy to be on Isla with a million people I know having a big backpacker party and watching sunsets that leaving here on Sunday seems like the likely option, but I may get bored by tomorrow, which is when I have to decide by.

Isla Mujeres is still great, Chloe: yes, it´s touristy, but in a young person backpacker type way, and there´s a lovely chilled atmosphere about the place. I don´t think there are many other Caribbean islands where the beach is so free of expensive hotels buying up the best bits of sand.

Tulum is much more touristy and already well on the way to becoming an exclusive 5 star resort. Jude Law and Sienna Miller have already stayed in one of the ´cabáñas´ on the beach that have 24 hour electricity, a spa, hot water and other luxuries that mean that they´re not cabañas at all. The beach is still beautiful but it´s not for people who can´t pay London hotel prices...

I don´t know how much I´ll have to write about over the next few days, but I´ll try to come along and bore you all with tales of tan lines and frozen margaritas as often as I can.

Retrouvailles

2006-05-24T04:03:00.000+01:00

Good suggestions Matt and Chlo - thanks. I think the lake is called Lagos de Montebello and I´ve met some people here who´ve been and loved it. It´s a good 12 hours on a bus from here tho. I´ve decided to go to Isla Mujeres tomorrow after I´ve done some snorkelling in a cenote in the morning, and then decide when Í´m there whether to change my flight back to the D.F. to Saturday or leave it as Sunday. If I go back on Saturday I´ll get the evening there plus the whole of Sunday to go to museums for free, if I stay at the beach I may come back with a better tan...

I think I was having a little trouble chilling out and calming down when I wrote the last post; today was a really cool day and I´m pretty happy at the beach now. Most of the crazy drinking Magaluf people have left the hostel now, which is cool.

For the non-French speakers reading, the title of this post means ´reunions´. I have called it so as this morning I had a really unexpected reunion with one of the people that I was in Oaxaca and Mazunte with (who was also on the famous deserted beach). I was just emerging for breakfast this morning and she was just checking into the hostel after a night bus trip from Palenque. It´s amazing how close you become to people when you travel with them - it felt like I was meeting a long lost friend. It´s been brilliant today hanging out at the ruins and on the beach and catching up with what everyone that I met in Oaxaca has been up to. She´s called Andree-Anne from Montreal, has a really funny Quebecois accent and is damn cool.

My change of mood has also been helped by the sun coming out: it´s been overcast since I got to the beach but today the sun was shining like it should and it all looked so much more beautiful. I get the deal with the Caribbean now! We all got a little burned at the beach today (me less than the others as I´m so obsessive about sun cream) so sitting and moving is generally painful for all of us.

I´m using the free internet access in the hostel and only have 30 minutes, so my time is up. I´ll write more from Isla Mujeres m´dears; looking forward to seeing you all again, although I´d rather you all came here than me having to come home...

England and Israel by the sea

2006-05-22T23:37:00.000+01:00

I ended up doing much more with my day in Merida than I had originally planned: instead of going to the cinema I went for some beers with an Israeli bloke that was in my hostel, then by the time we´d had a few it was 8pm and all the streets became closed to traffic in preparation for some open air concert type thing. We watched some cheesy Mariachis, some Yucatecan dancers (which looked just like Irish dancing to me) and most excitingly of all, 2 contestants from a Mexican reality tv show who are up for eviction tonight and played to try to get enough votes to save themselves. I wouldn´t have voted for them - they were short, fat, bald, out of tune and wearing gold costumes. Unfortunately for them they only had the chance to wow us with one and a half songs before there was a huge powercut across the whole city (which I later found out was across the whole of the Yucatan peninsula) and everything was plunged into darkness. It was quite fun trying to find the way back to the hostel in the pitch black, then trying to clean my teeth and get ready for bed with only the pathetic light from my alarm clock to help me. I cleverly managed to put my alarm on for 5.30 in the afternoon instead of 5.30 in the morning because it was too dark to see the screen, and slept until 8 and missed my 6.30 bus to Chichen Itza...

I ended up getting a 9.15 bus instead, with the Israeli who by this point was really getting on my nerves going on about how much he wanted to meet other Israelis and how everyone in the world is an Anti-Semite. I offered him one of the little cakes that I´d bought for breakfast and he took the whole packet and ate them all. I was too shocked to say anything, and have thus unintentionally perpetuated the myth that English people are endlessly polite.

Chichen Itza was actually a real disappointment: by the time I got there at 11 it was full of tour groups of Americans from Cancun and Playa del Carmen, and I couldn´t get anywhere near the ruins for fat people. The ruins themselves were quite disappointing after Palenque too, and the people that were selling stuff were quoting their prices in dollars, not pesos. It made me quite sad and I was really glad to leave - I felt like I´d actually left Mexico already when I was there.

I got on a bus to Tulum from Chichen Itza and arrived here yesterday at the end of the afternoon. I randomly followed some other backpackers to the hostel I am staying in now, which is in the town rather than a cabaña on the beach. It´s called the Weary Traveller, and is the filthiest stinking place I have ever been to, but it is also the most sociable, `fun` place I´ve been so far. It´s full of English people and Israelis that have been at the beach for months, between here and Isla Mujeres, and haven´t done anything of the people / culture / Mexico type things I´ve done. It´s kind of refreshing to hang about with them but I sense that I might lose my enthusiasm for it pretty soon... I didn´t do much today apart from going to the beach with the English/Israeli posse (I swam in the Caribbean! It was warm!).

I actually feel at a bit of a loose end: do I stay at the beach for the last week, drink lots of beer and not do that much, or do I change my plans and find my way back to proper Mexico? I´ve bought a flight from Cancun to Mexico City for next Sunday, but part of me wants to change it and go back to Mexico City early, because then I could go to Teotihuacan and all the other things I missed out on. Am feeling very indecisive - any suggestions? Perhaps the scumminess of the hostel is skewing my thoughts - I probably should go out and stay at a cabaña here for at least one night before I leave, but since the Lonely Planet Tulum section was written everything has tripled in price and it now costs $25USD a night.

I´m planning on going up to Isla Mujeres on Thursday or Friday (I want to go snorkelling in one of the cenotes, which are underground caves, before I leave Tulum), which will be another beach and beer drinking backpacker type place, where you can do lots of snorkelling. The trouble with Yucatan is that once you´re there there´s very little to do apart from swimming and sunbathing, and for some reason I don´t feel like spending a week doing just that. I was almost bored at the beach today! It would be so different with a big group of friends, or if you were here Ronaldinho, but on your own it´s pretty dull.

One thing I need to mention, although I know it will make certain French people want to vomit: I´ve lost count of the number of French people I´ve met, and every single one of them without exception has thought I was French until I told them otherwise. Similarly, loads of Mexicans have presumed that I was Spanish, so authentic are my Catalan vowels. I think my paleness confuses them though - they ask if I´m Spanish because that´s what my accent says I am, but my face has ´pasty Northern European´ written all over it.

Happy Birthday for tomorrow Louise!

Moving faster than a Japanese tourist with a day to see Europe...

2006-05-20T15:26:00.000+01:00

here I am in Merida, very early in the morning.

I left San Cristobal on Thursday with my 3 Londoner pals after having bought the Zapatista dolls, getting on a 6am bus to Palenque.

We decided within about 30 seconds of arriving that Palenque town was a complete sh*thole, so we decided to stay in El Panchan, which is a traveller´s hangout with lots of basic cabanas in the middle of the jungle on the road to the ruins. We got a really good deal on a cabana as there were 4 of us; 75 pesos each for private bathrooms, towels, hot water, soap - we were very excited. I loved staying in the jungle - watching the glow bugs buzzing around as we were having dinner being woken up in the morning by the howler monkeys was fab. I haven´t been taking any malaria medication, so was a little paranoid about getting ill right in the middle of nowhere, but I didn´t get bitten once. There was a giant spider in the shower though that was looking at me very menacingly as I invaded its space - I faced him down.

I did all of the ´things you need to do in and around Palenque´ in a day yesterday, going to the ruins in the morning, followed by the waterfalls at Misol-Ha and Agua Azul in the afternoon.

The Palenque ruins are really amazing; I thought I was getting ruined-out but the setting in the middle of the jungle is so beautiful and it was really quiet apart from the crickets and the monkeys. I didn´t have enough cash to pay for a tour guide so I just looked at the pretty pyramids without knowing what it was all about, and read up on it when I got back. I said goodbye to Fliss, Jo and Helen (for that is their names) at the ruins, as they too have more time than me and were staying another night in the jungle, and headed off on my tour for the afternoon.

Misol-Ha was pretty much like a waterfall would be, and I was slightly underwhelmed because you couldn´t do much apart from look at it and take photos along with a million other people all trying to take the exact same snap.

Agua Azul was much better; we had 3 hours there and it was so hot and you can swim in them and the water was almost glowing blue and I ate mango and sunbathed with some Canadians and it was mint.

Agua Azul is right in the middle of Zapatista country, and we drove past lots of villages with `you are now entering a Zapatista town´ signs - I wanted to stop and take a look but the driver wouldn´t let us. I´m getting really fascinated with the old Zapatistas - I´m going to have to find a book on it because I have only the vaguest of ideas about it all (although I have been called on to tell at least 4 different people about it - shocking lack of general knowledge! Australians, I mean you)

Once again, I really felt how little time I have here; you can go on 2 day treks into the jungle and stay in Lacandon Maya villages, go horseback riding in the mountains, go to Tikal in Guatemala... Instead I got a night bus to Merida last night, arriving here at 6 am this morning.

There were quite a few other mochiladores (what the Mexicans call backpackers - I have also heard ´backpackeros´ a few times) on the bus, and we all got accosted by people trying to get us to go to their hostel as soon as we stepped off the bus. It´s low season and we have all the power; it´s positively rude not to negotiate on hostel prices. We got a free taxi ride to the hostel that I´m in and it seems decent enough and very clean although the bloke that runs it seems a bit anally retentive - no more than 2 beers per person per night for heaven´s sake.

Merida is a big city that for some reason really reminds me of Montpellier. I´m only planning on spending one night here before getting a bus to Tulum on the Caribbean coast tomorrow morning, where I am going to base myself for a fair few days. I fear I may be the whitest person in all of Mexico and am scaring small children, so I need some beach time. With my one day in Merida I´m going to the Anthropology Museum, and given that it´s so godamn hot here I may go to an air conditioned cinema this afternoon to watch The Da Vinci Code in v.o.

I do feel like a Japanese tourist trying to fit everything into a small amount of time, but I also really enjoy the travelling aspect of, er, travelling. I think I´d have been so bored in the same place and it`s really fun waking up in a new place every couple of days.

Everything about the trip so far has been great - I´ve met different sets of really cool people, spoken lots of Spanish and seen lots of very beautiful things, but the best thing about it all has without doubt been the Mexicans and the Mexicanidad of it all. I´m looking forward to the Caribbean but I´m pretty sure I´ll meet hundreds of European backpackers and no Mexicans, which is a little bit sad.

Also, some pre-travelling myths dispelled: I am hard and can carry my backpack for miles, even now that it´s full of tat that Í´ve bought, I prefer 2nd class buses to the freezing air conditioning of the 1st class ones, I haven´t caught any parasitic evil diseases from having ice cubes in my drinks and brushing my teeth with tap water, nor have I caught Montezuma´s Revenge from eating in roadside taquerias. Mexico is such an easy place to travel in - bring on Guatemala and Nicaragua next time!

The story of the Tzotzil people and the Coca-Cola

2006-05-17T21:19:00.000+01:00

After spending yesterday hanging about in San Cristobal, and going for Thai food with the 3 Londoners last night (I know, but it was so nice and I´ve had so many quesadillas), I got up really early this morning and went on a trip to two of the indigenous villages about 15 minutes from here. I was really glad I went on a tour rather than getting a colectivo bus up there on my own, because our guide was really cool and explained loads of things that we could never have understood. There were a couple of English girls and an Australian on the bus too, as well as a German couple that I saw in a museum in Oaxaca. San Cristobal is really small and you see the same travellers everywhere.

We went to two Tzotzil villages, Zinacantan and San Juan Chamula, and it was really super touristy but fun. We went into someone´s house in Zinacantan and saw an old woman sewing rugs and a younger woman made us tortillas that we could try. All I could think about was how wierd they must think we are, sitting watching them do what they do every single day and taking lots of photos of really basic things like their fire and the mud hut they cook in.

It was when we went to San Juan Chamula that I was glad I was on a tour; the people there are really religious and have had bad experiences of tourists taking photos in their church and generally being disrespectful, so they were quite suspicious of us.

San Juan Chamula is famous for it´s church. You´re allowed in if you´re on a tour and have asked at the tourist office first. Our guide very usefully told us about a German tourist who got hit by a policeman´s truncheon for taking photos inside after having been asked to stop, and said that we shouldn´t look at the people praying inside too much, just at the walls. The church had no seats, just grass on the floor that women were sitting on, and about 15 shrines to different saints with candles in front of them. The women were all drinking fizzy drinks and burping heartily every few minutes as they think that burping is removing the devil from your body. It was fascinating and really funny but very hard not to look or laugh. Everyone here will tell you that the man that owns the Coca-Cola franchise has the biggest house in San Juan Chamula because they drink so much of the stuff there - I don´t know whether that´s actually true...

The little girls that try to sell you woven bracelets on your way out of church say ´maybe later´ in English because that´s what lots of tourists say. They think that white people lie because they come to their village and say they might buy something later, but get back on their bus without ever buying anything. It´s sad that people probably say it to be nice but actually are being more hurtful than if they´d just said no. I bought some stuff but felt so guilty about having to barter with them for what is essentially a couple of pence difference that I didn´t last long.

Matt, you´re as ever completely right about the Zapatistas - there are villages you can´t go to but that´s because the Mexican army have check points outside them and won´t let outsiders in, not because the Zapatistas themselves will kill you.

I have the rest of today left in San Cristobal before I catch another bus to Palenque tomorrow morning, so I´ll have time to buy your bloody Zapatista dolls!

I´ve done a fair bit of shopping up here; yesterday I bought a hammock!

Dolphins - yay! Mosquitoes - boo!

2006-05-16T17:39:00.000+01:00

So our little 3 day jaunt to the Pacific was interesting, in lots of ways: the ´deserted beach´ was literally that - no water, no toilets, no shade, nowhere to sleep, no food. The Mexicans that were running the trip were so completely unprepared that we ended up eating at a local family´s house and sleeping in a half constructed tent on the beach, in the rain. In retrospect it´s quite funny but at the time I was having a major sense of humour failure. It made our group really pull together though; there´s nothing like hardship and a couple of good bitching sessions to form friendships. Oh, and we didn´t get to Hierve el Agua because we didn´t have time.

The second day was much better; we had freshly caught barbequed fish for breakfast at this tiny palapa on an almost deserted beach (the almost counts for so much) then went off and climbed some sand dunes that had a great view out to sea. I couldn´t take any photos because the only way to get to the sand dunes was to swim, but if I had they would have been fab.

The tour then drove us to Mazunte, which is a really chilled fishing port that is near Puerto Escondido but nowhere near as touristy. We had a go at the tour guides, negotiated a great discount (we paid 500 pesos, which is about 30 quid, for food and transport. They wanted 750 from us - ho ho), who then drove off and left us happily in Mazunte.

We stayed in this great place overlooking the beach for only 40 pesos a night (2 pounds) then went out on a boat trip with some fishermen in the morning and saw turtles, and went snorkelling, and swam with dolphins right in the middle of the Pacific! It was literally one of the best things I have done in my life up to this point. The fishermen couldn´t guarantee that we´d see dolphins, but we ended up being right in the middle of a huge shoal of them, and were able to snorkel with them and see them looking at us curiously and hear the sonar. Once the boat started moving again they followed us for a bit, jumping and diving around the boat and generally being dolphin-esque. We had a bit of a ´Jaws´ moment when 2 of the people got bitten by jellyfish and we all started screaming like little kids and swimming for the boat, and nearly capsizing it by all trying to get on the same side at the same time. It turned out that they weren´t poisonous stings though, they just hurt lots.

I spent the afternoon in a hammock overlooking the sea, then caught a bus to San Cristobal de las Casas overnight last night. I was sad to leave Mazunte and my new friends, but they all had a lot more time than me and were going to stay there for another couple of days. And in any case, I was getting eaten alive by mosquitoes, sand flies and all manner of beasties.

The bus trip was 12 hours, and was absolutely *freezing* cold. I slept pretty much all the way, and am sharing a very cheap but impeccably clean room with 3 girls from London that I met at the bus station who are travelling around too.

San Cristobal is really high up in the mountains, and is really cold compared to Oaxaca and the coast. It´s in Chiapas, and has a much more noticable indigenous population than anywhere I´ve been so far. I´m planning on staying here until Thursday, taking a trip to some of the villages that you can visit as a white person without being kidnapped by the Zapatistas, then going onto Palenque. I don´t think there´s that much to do here, there just seems to be lots of travellers with dreadlocks hanging around being at one with themselves.

I´m really loving being in Mexico; it´s the most friendly place I´ve ever been, I feel really happy and content here and really wish that my trip was for longer. There´s so much I´m not going to be able to see and do! Ron, me and you - we´re coming back.

I´ve done so much and met so many people over the past few days that this post feels like it´s really skimming the surface, but it´s already too long so it´ll just have to do.

If you don´t hear from me for a while...

2006-05-13T00:34:00.000+01:00

that would be because I´m off to a deserted beach on the Oaxaca Coast tomorrow with people from my hostel. I have gone from being alone to being surrounded by millions of really cool people and we´re all off to Hierve El Agua (Matt! me too!) tomorrow and are then spending the night camping on the beach at a place called Bamba which is apparently really tiny and not on the map. The people that run our hostel (2 Oaxacan brothers who are musicians) are starting up a tour company and we are their guinea pigs. Basically, we get 2 days food and accomodation in Bamba then Puerto Escondido for the price of a regular bus ticket to Puerto. So even though I was going to San Cristobal de las Casas tomorrow, I really couldn´t turn it down. And we get to have a beach party on our own little beach!

Also, our hostel has gone from being Frenchified to being Australian; there are 12 of us going tomorrow - me, 5 Australians, 2 Americans, a French Canadian girl, an Argentinian, another English bloke (who incidentally is 35 and is travelling the world for 3 years after having made a killing on the sale of his house) and a Swedish girl.

I´ll let you know how it was when I get to Puerto Escondido...

Otherwise, I´ve just been hanging about in Oaxaca, which is now officially one of my favourite cities. I went up to Monte Alban yesterday right at the end of the day and it was soooo beautiful - the light was really amazing and hopefully the photos I took will manage to convey quite how beautiful it was.

Had a couple of cold beers with my new friends last night (still hot - need rain) and today I´ve just been doing a bit of shopping in the Market, going into millions of churches and hanging about in the Zocalo drinking cold drinks.

I had mole poblano (A Oaxacan speciality - a sauce that´s kind of chilli / chocolate / lime that they use with chicken) for lunch in the market today and a little girl who must have been about 8 and was sitting next to me patiently explained how I should eat it by using the tortilla to mop up the sauce and the refried beans. Eating in a market is a bit of a food poisoning risk generally, but Oaxaca´s market is so busy and full of amazing cheap food that it´s worth it, and as yet I haven´t had any nasty toilet incidents. Sorry if that´s an information overload kids. I spent ages in the Market afterwards talking to people and trying various things. I ate a grasshopper that had been cooked in garlic - yum.

Sorry for not explaining what all of the places I mention are; if you´re confused, www.wikipedia.org is your friend!

Thanks for the offers of usb help - I haven´t brought it with me because I know it doesn´t work here, but I will keep trying. Matt, it cost a fiver, doesn´t have a brand, and worked sin problema on my Mac and Reinaldo´s laptop at home.

Thanks also for the comments and email and stuff. I´ve bought some of the chilli that they dip the limes in (along with salt) before having them with beer, so we can have a Mexican barbeque when I get back!

Hammocks, and more French people

2006-05-11T18:07:00.000+01:00

I got to Oaxaca yesterday after a 6 hour bus ride from Mexico City on a really posh air conditioned bus. I feel slightly naive for wondering how Mexico can be a Third World country when they have Starbucks after having seen the miles and miles of shanty town that you have to go through to get out of the city. It´s quite alarming how long it goes on for; millions and millions of people must live like that...

Oaxaca is everything everyone says it is - really beautiful and chilled and safe. And incredibly hot - 36ª in the middle of the day. My hostel is really basic but lovely, all the rooms are round a courtyard with hammocks round the side, and there are about 6 really nice dogs that live there. I´m in a 6 bed dorm with 5 other French girls. Is there anyone left in France?

I went out with 2 of them last night and had a really funny time. We met a Oaxacan called Juan (who studies politics here, is from a village 5 hours away in the mountains and speaks an indigenous language called Mazateca at home) and went to a bar for a quick drink. A few too many later it was 9pm and one of the French girls was joining the live band on stage singing Cuban and Brazilian songs. She had a really great voice and know them all off by heart as her Colombian grandmother taught her. It was all very random and we ended up eating tacos al pastor (like a Mexican kebab) at 2am in some bar somewhere or other with the band, who were Oaxacan, Cuban, Argentinian and Colombian. You get a real feeling for there being such a thing as a 'Latin America' here - every knows Brazilian and Argentinian songs and talks about ´mi pueblo´ and ´ser Latino´ all the time.

I hadn´t been particularly hungry since I got here, but all of a sudden my appetite has returned and I´m eating like a horse. I just had chilaquiles for breakfast, which are like nachos with spicy tomato sauce, cream and cheese on top; Mexicans eat great breakfasts, huge plates of meat and eggs and amazing coffee. The food here is loads better than in Mexico City.

I´m staying here until Saturday and there are internet cafes all over the shop, so I´ll try to write something every day. Still no darned photos but will keep trying.

Chloe, I can read the comments that you leave here!

Happy Birthday to me...

2006-05-09T22:58:00.000+01:00

So today I am 27, and I have to say it´s been quite a wierd birthday; I don´t expect many people spend their 27th birthday completely on their own!

Since Sunday when I last wrote, I´ve changed hostels as the one I was in had accidentally double booked a load of people. It was a shame to leave, but the one that the girl that ran the old hostel recommended is really nice. They´ve even given me my own private room for the price of a dorm bed, which is very sweet but made sense when I realised that *there is no one there*! Which makes meeting people a bit of a chore.

I tried to go to the Anthropology musuem yesterday but it was shut (everything is shut on Mondays, but all open on Sundays, wierdly enough). Happily I met some other people on the steps that thought it was open too, a Mexican photographer who was showing his Swedish friend around the city, his sister and her little girl. I ended up going for some jars with them (the little girl got taken home obviously) in Condesa, which is a bit like the Mexico City equivalent of Islington. We had lots of random conversations about autism, philosophy and (predictably) how much everyone hates America. They invited me to a house party but it was miles away in their part of town so I turned them down, and cleverly retraced my way back to the hostel.

Yesterday was also the day when I successfully negotiated the metro, the metro bus *and* the complicated pesero buses, that are private and just have a little hand written sign in the window saying where they´re going - I´m quite proud of myself!

Today I was up super early (I´m waking up early from time zone changing I think) and went to Coyoacan where Frida Kahlo lived with Diego Rivera. It´s a really cute middle class part of town that used to be a village with a really lovely market and lots of school kids running around in uniforms. Frida Kahlo´s old house has been made into a museum, which has more personal objects and furniture in than pictures, but is still really worth visiting as it´s a really tranquil place to hang out for a bit. I took loads of great photos but once again the usb key that I´m using to upload photos to Flickr isn´t being recognized by this PC. Help!

Just round the corner from Frida´s hoose is that of Trotsky, who was exiled in Mexico and had an affair with Frida Kahlo until he was killed with an ice pick to the head by a Stalinist Catalan. You can go round his old house, which is pretty much unchanged since the ice pick incident, and see loads of old Communist memorabilia. I learnt loads about the Revolution and why Stalin and Trotsky fell out, but the place did freak me out a bit; you can almost still see the blood splattered on the walls.

One thing that I´ve found strange since I´ve arrived here is how few Americans and British people there are around the place. There are millions of French people, though, which is comforting (bizarrely more so than if everyone was British but I can´t explain why). Another thing I´ve noticed is how suit wearing middle class Mexicans look at me with a sort of 'take care of yourself, gringa' type look, but apart from that I really don´t get that much attention or hassle.

Mexico City´s been brilliant but I´m happy to be leaving tomorrow; I haven´t come all this way to be in a city where it takes 45 minutes to get anywhere, London´s bad enough already, and Oaxaca, where I´m off to early tomorrow morning, is a sixth of the size (yet still has a population of 5 million people - argh). Every single person I´ve met has said that Oaxaca is really beautiful. I´ll let you know whether I agree when I get there!

I´m missing people quite a lot today, the combination of birthday and solitude I suppose, so I just wanted to say hi. Reinaldo, check your emails - gmail.

Proper wide awake post alert

2006-05-07T20:04:00.000+01:00

First things first: hangover + jet lag = bleurgh. Now that the bad stuff is out of the way, I can concentrate on all the good stuff...

Last night we went to a bar run by French people near our hostel which was full of trendy and attractive Mexicans and was lots of fun. I got drunk on $2.50 caipirinhas, and suddenly remembered how to speak Spanish. I was so happy to be able to communicate that I don´t think I shut up once. Chloe, I have no idea how you managed here without speaking Spanish - so brave!

Although last night´s fun has resulted in today´s hangover, I´ve done a surprising amount of things. Bosque de Chapultepec first, which is a massive forest Central Park type place in the middle of the city. It was full of Mexican families on Sunday outings and was really cool. I climbed up the hill there to the old Presidential Palace at the top and took some pretty photos of the views (photos pending - this PC isn´t recognizing my usb key). Then I went on a massive walk across town and ended up in the touristy old town bit where all the museums and monuments are. Went up the Torre LatinoAmerica and took more high-up photos from the viewing terrace, then walked back to the hostel. Mum and Dad, you would be so proud - the distance I have walked today really is miles by anyone´s standards.

I had my first proper meal in a chain called VIP´s - they have them in Spain too I think - and it was fine. I had enchiladas with lots of greasy cheese on them and am not dead!

Cool things I have noticed about Mexico City and Mexicans:
- Everyone was wearing red t-shirts and jeans today. Like, about 70% of the people I saw. Why?
- Everyone smiles, all the time
- Even though this is an enormous city, today I saw massive butterflies and humming birds aplenty
- Aren´t I supposed to be in the Third World? There´s a sushi bar and a Starbucks round the corner from the hostel for heaven´s sake
- I was expecting lots of hassle in the street but in fact it´s nowhere near as bad as Paris can be - yay!

It´s still early now but I´m having an early night to get rid of the jet lag and will be up with the larks tomorrow to do loads more cool Mexican stuff!

Mexico!

2006-05-07T04:03:00.000+01:00

And all of a sudden here I am on the other side of the world!

I´m slightly overwhelmed but totally happy - so much to tell but so little time as I´m about to go out for a drink with the other people in my super cool hostel. 4 French blokes, 2 Danish girls and a Uruguayan girl - all sat round talking a random French/Spanish/English mix. It´s so much fun!

There´s free internet access here so I will write what will hopefully be a proper post and not a postcard....

Let's start at the very beginning...

2006-04-23T18:17:00.000+01:00

Very soon, lots of pretty pictures and inspiring words from my trip to Mexico will appear here. I'm using my trip as an excuse to start a blog; I fear that my daily life, fun as it can be to me, may not be worthy of the internet, so I thought I'd cheat and write about something slightly more exciting than the joys of the 205 bus and whether I bought some shoes this week or not. If I manage to make jungle cloud forests and lost temples sound as gripping as my weekly shop in Sainsbury's, do let me know and I'll gracefully hang up my pen.