Thailand, and a bit of colour

Suddenly our senses got another shock. This time, it was the sheer overwhelming colour of the place. A fair bit of it gold.

Perhaps we were feeling better, perhaps the rest and recuperation had done us good, or perhaps Thailand was just more colourful than China.

We went to see the world’s largest reclining Buddha. We’d already seen the largest sitting-on-the-top-of-a-hill Buddha in Hong Kong. In fairness this one was pretty big, lying indoors, and I managed to only get dark pictures of his toes…

Wherever we went there were colourful shrines, always decorated with flowers, incense and candles. Everyone had a shrine in the front of their house, and fed it daily. We saw dancers on the street and people generally wore bright clothes. There were bright window displays of colourful silks, opportunities to buy blingy jewellery and a huge number of offers to view very colourful activities involving ping-pong balls.

Our time in Thailand included the end of June, July, and a few days of August 1991 (when my sister, Cath, and her boyfriend made an appearance). During our Thai-time we visited Bangkok a number of times, trying to get to the bottom (no pun intended) of the recurrent illness that I was experiencing. We went to visit a doctor and his wife (probably to the dismay of the travel insurers) who completed a raft of tests, and gave me more meds to try, before going off on trips then returning for results.

Bangkok itself was a busy city – lots of people and horrific traffic congestion. We returned from one trip sitting on a bus for two hours just getting beyond the city limits. It would have been quicker to walk…

There were things going on everywhere though, and it was a pleasant place to explore. There were lots of monuments (different again to anywhere we’d been before) and they were colourful and opulent.

It was fairly easy to travel around and people were friendly – that was such a difference after being treated so suspiciously in China. Thailand had a reputation for having the smiliest people – and for the most part that was what we experienced. Sometimes you did get the impression that the ready smiles were partly fuelled by the lure of the tourist dollar (or Bhat).

It was good to explore some of the city waterways by boat, just to get away from the busy roads.

From Bangkok we travelled to some of the holiday islands. We had a week in Koh Samui, just reading, eating well (the abundance of fresh fruit and fresh bread) and enjoying the company of other travellers. It was pretty basic accommodation – we had a hut with a straw roof and were allocated a bucket of water each every day.  Whilst we were there I think we had thunderstorms every night. Lots of rain and a straw roof didn’t work too well together…we slept round the puddles. And caught up with any sleep we’d missed during our lazy sunny daytimes. It was a beautiful, quiet island with idyllic beaches until the weekend when the young professionals from Bangkok danced in the next bay until the early hours. We suffered greatly those nights when we had to walk on the moonlit beach and sit on the rocks watching the stars.

After this trip we tracked back to the doctor and I reported being so much better from his prescribed medications – wanting to give him some credit, even though this was a recurrent pattern. It was at this point that he said he needed to treat me properly as I had typhoid. Typhoid!! Like really!! And I’d had the travel jabs – was typhoid one of the ones that had really made me ill when I’d had it? We took his advice and paid him huge sums of cash for a nice cocktail of drugs to be taken for a month. Each day I needed to take 16 tablets of 3 different antibiotics. Oh fun!!

I had never been too bad at taking tablets, but some of these were monster-sized. I have fond memories (not) of the struggles that I had being unable to get them down me. Suffice to say that the only way to take my meds was to sit in a public place – I could not run round a restuarant chucking them back up.

Another trip out was to a town called Nakhon Ratchasima (now often known as Korat – can’t imagine why that is preferred). It was a very quiet little town, only accessible by rail or bus in those days,  where we had the hottest (spice) food we had ever experienced. This so soon after the doctor had suggested plain foods…

It was also a town favoured by some American Vets who’d been there since the Vietnam war, and we ate with them in the Veterans of Foreign Wars cafe on a number of occasions, and one night watched them as they downed numerous beers. They’d clearly been doing the same since they’d demobbed. Not a bad place to do it I imagine. We also were ‘adopted’ by a Thai English teacher, Mona Lisa (yes, really), who introduced us to her students and we had a really funny evening and traditional dinner with them. It was weird though because at the end of the evening they all left together and suddenly – apparently it wasn’t what we had said, rather the Thai equivalent of Coronation St was about to start!

Nakhon Ratchasima has a number of significant historical and religious sites around that you can explore, as well as silk-producing factory shops (more like factories than our understanding these days of factory shops).

 

Chiang Mai was another trip out of the big city. It’s a small (or it was then) city in the northern mountains of the country.  We hired a motorbike for some exploration of the nearby countryside. I am not a natural – and this photo is a real example of the camera lying.

We did make it up to a temple in the hills, after a minor argument with a ditch (I was not a great pillion passenger either as I tended to lean the wrong way…).

We also had a trip to a number of factory shops – but as ever we were never good shoppers – and preferred a day-trip to the zoo.

From Chiang Mai we flew on a tiny little plane to a hillside town called Mae Hong Son where we found a very rustic place to stay – all wood and palm leaves. It really was out in the middle of nowhere – and we could see the landing strip from our garden so Mark was happy going out each day to watch the landing and take off (of the one plane a day).

We trekked up to the top of a hill to see a temple – and the views of the green valleys.

We took a day trip to the Burmese border. There were a few of us in the back of an open jeep. That day it really, really rained, so not only did they need chains on the tyres to get a grip of the road surface we needed a makeshift roof (plastic sheet). This was at the height of my medication too – and it made me feel sick and burpy (not great for travel-sickness) – so I poked my head out in the rain anyway! As you can see I was not that impressed.

I remember on the way down the driver appeared to just get each tyre in a rut on the wet, muddy road and slide down…

At the border there was a small village, and we could see how people lived out there in the rural outposts. Not dissimilar to so many of the villages we had been to in Nepal.

Rain was a feature of that day and a few others in Thailand. Typical of those months there I assume. Back in Bangkok for a few days we found ourselves walking around the city centre during one of the most dramatic rainstorms I have ever witnessed. It was so sudden and so heavy that the road suddenly became a river and although we still had reasonably dry feet walking on the raised pavements we were joined by thousands of cockroaches and then rats out of the flooded drains… We moved pretty quickly back to our accommodation that day – didn’t want a scared, panicking rat assuming our legs were drainpipes or something.

I think you could do a day-trip to Kanchanaburi from Bangkok, but we spent a couple of days there. It was a sobering place where you could visit the allied war cemeteries, the great Bridge over the River Kwai and a museum detailing the building of the death railway. As in many other places the hostels and cafes showed the relevant movies into the evenings.

As an antidote to the sobering information around us we enjoyed some respite in the coffee shops and had ‘friends’ join us.

Thailand is well-known for its islands and beaches, so off we went to another holiday spot. This time to Krabi and a nearby beach called Phra Nang.

We had to get onto one of the long-tailed boats, and precariously off at the other end, carrying a huge backpack…I’m sure there was no awareness of health and safety back then. Phra Nang was a relatively busy (for travelling types) beachy-place – and again we found ourselves in a tiny thatched hut (cottage would have been too grand a term). Mark had his birthday whilst we were there…and this is our celebration cake! (I clearly hadn’t mastered the flash (or procuring birthday cakes) etc but it gives an idea of our accommodation).

We also went on boat trips to visit the famous islands and caves.

The area had particularly sprung to fame 15 years earlier with a James Bond boat chase. As well as the secluded islands and caves we visited this beach, where you could buy your James Bond tat and paraphernalia.

A treat was to stay overnight on a floating island. As soon as the boat trips finished the place was quiet, just a few tourists and the locals. It was a real community – a fishing (and tourist) village. The floorboards making up the streets didn’t always feel entirely secure, and some of the walkways needed you to jump between the boards.There was  no traffic though…and below you was just the briny.

We spent our last few Thai-days with my sister back in Bangkok – sorry Cath, I have no photos of that time…they do exist but must have been on Mark’s camera!! We  went on trips to places we’d already seen and explored places we hadn’t. I remember some fun times at the night markets with them haggling for t-shirts (which they got at great prices but gave us the next day as none of them fitted). We ate well with them and were reminded of the kind of opulent luxury that you could find in places when you weren’t travelling on £5 a day!!

 

 

We’ll work in Hong Kong

Imagine spending the best part of 4 months in a couple of the world’s poorest countries, then taking a flight and landing suddenly in one of the world’s richest. Culture shock!!

I think that’s probably how we felt after our flight to Hong Kong at the end of April 1991. From previous blogs you will have noticed that we had relaxed into ‘travelling’ gear, consisting of T shirts and flowery trousers. We arrived in Hong Kong where everyone seemed to wear suits and designer gear. Low level buildings had suddenly been replaced by vertiginous glassy high-tech sky-scrapers.

We met my brother Pete, who’d been working there for a while, in one of the huge (upmarket) sparkly hotels on the waterfront. He was wearing a suit too – was that just to show us up…?

He took us back to his place on an enviable commute on one of the regular ferries out to Discovery Bay, Lantau Island. It was a short, but very sweaty (suddenly so humid) walk up the hill to his shared apartment on the 10th floor. Lantau was in the early stages of building on any reasonably flat land and Discovery Bay appeared to be a recently-built community, with a small shopping area and leisure centre with buildings all around. Some were fairly low level and others were tower blocks. We spent some happy hours watching people from the balcony – it was the early days of karaoke and people in nearby flats were dressing up and singing in the privacy (or so they perhaps thought) of their own apartments.

Our plan was to stay a few days, find jobs and accommodation and earn a bit of cash to continue our travels.

We settled in for a few days on Pete’s couches, exploring a bit and updating our wardrobes and doing essentials like getting haircuts. We booked an appointment for a job interview with an English language school and looked at cheap accommodation. I think that shocked us as much as the sudden change in the culture around us, and the sobering thought that days spent in an English-speaking booth would only just cover the rent. Whilst we wandered this alien place we had a sudden idea: “Let’s go to China”.

So that is what we did…

We explored the idea of going up the Pearl river by boat to Canton/Guangzhou and a couple of days later we were settling into an overnight bunk in a weirdly open-plan boat with hundreds of bunks. Certainly ‘cattle class’.

We woke up the next morning in another alien place. We moved into a Youth Hostel and wandered about the city, fascinated by the huge groups of people in parks doing their Tai Chi.

Memorable moments included the city market where everything that you could possibly imagine was for sale, and plenty more, including snakes, frogs, hedgehogs and monkeys. There were flattened roasted pigs faces everywhere.

Mealtimes were fascinating. And challenging. Restaurants were generally huge, multi- storey buildings with huge tables and we were just allocated places on these tables, often to the bemusement (or amusement) of the locals. One had indoor waterfalls and streams that you could sit by. Ordering food was fun. We had a guide-book with some basic pictographs of foods. We tried that. Some limited success. Sometimes we wandered around pointing at other peoples’ food. That worked pretty well. Generally it was a lot of gesturing and pot-luck what you actually ate in the end. Good job we weren’t very fussy back then. We stayed in one hotel where a starter always arrived first – either small slippery mushrooms or peanuts – all to be managed with chopsticks – that always entertained us until the main course, and perhaps the waiting staff too.

Some days we became lazy and broke our rules about eating local and representative of where we were. The American Colonel appeared to have taken up many prime real-estate positions and was preparing his famous chicken (that appears in buckets) and we occasionally succumbed. These places were also popular with the locals judging by the queues.

People-watching was one of our favourite past-times (nothing new there). Again people were interested in us. It was so different from India and Nepal though. People wanted to chat, but didn’t feel safe talking to us. We often had the experience of someone sidling up to sit or stand near us, and then talking to us, without ever looking our way. Some told us they couldn’t be seen talking to foreigners, others told us that they secretly listened to World Services.

There were always people out and about at the tourist sites. The difference in China, that we noticed, was that everything was pristine. The monuments had all been restored to look brand-new, and the people were mostly out and about in their best clothes. We found this really amusing because at that time pop-socks were the obvious height of fashion along with frilly and lacy tiered dresses. We found ourselves highly entertained by the ‘fashion victims’ who were out and about enjoying the sights – and taking it in turns to be photographed by their friends (this was very much pre selfie-stick days). This amusement may well have been us feeling inadequate in our recently bought t-shirts and jeans (a change from our Indian traveller gear).

Everywhere was busy and we found refuge from the busy streets in quiet(er) parks where we enjoyed endless cups of tea. (OK, I know I don’t drink tea, but Indian chai and Chinese tea are different – and perhaps when travelling, I too, am different).

After a few days in Guangzhou wandering its parks, where strangely we met up with someone Mark used to work with, we headed off for another adventure. This one was an eye-opener from the moment we arrived at the train station. There were huge waiting rooms for each train. We waited in ours, listening to the canned music and chat that was a constant everywhere in China, until there was some announcement. At that point everyone (apart from us!) raced for the doors…we meekly followed once the doors opened…and the stampede continued down corridors and to the train. It was an incredible spectacle of seething humanity. I am amazed that people were’t killed in the crush. the funny part was that all seats and bunks were numbered anyway and those of us that were slow getting to the carriage and our bunks still got our places…

We had 2 nights on that train…I remember sleep being elusive due to the other 5 people in our bit of the carriage (triple bunks) and the ubiquitous canned music and what we imagined was regular propaganda updates over the speaker-system. I suspect our travelling moods were strained by being stir-crazy in that weird tin-can situation. Train food was served up in a very impressive restaurant car, comfortable and calm with waiters, tablecloths etc…and these irritating travellers wandering up and down the carriage pointing at other peoples’ food!

Beijing was our destination. We did get there eventually and settled into our usual occupation of exploring the streets (still shocked to remember that in one area where we strayed into the public toilets at the bottom of a tower block there was no running water and they were presumably the toilets for that block – just imagine that night-soil image) and the tourist sites. We watched the dressed-up locals out enjoying themselves and we were shocked more by just how sanitised everything was. Objets d’art in The Forbidden City were labelled as being thousands of years old, but were clearly either heavily restored or replicas.

The Forbidden City was huge, but also was a bit repetitive – lots of similar buildings with artefacts in each of the buildings. I may just be a bit of a heathen and lacking appreciation of culture! I think I was also annoyed by having to join in a tourist queue and pay significantly more than Chinese tourists.

Sitting in Tienanmen Square was way more interesting. It was 2 years, almost to the day in early May, since the Massacre. People slyly talked to us as we sat watching the world, and their kites, go by. Some talked about what had happened. Others were less forthcoming. We went to one of the hotels near the square (good places to get a drink and a cake!) and read some of the books available in English. Apparently a massacre did not occur. The students rioted due to American propaganda, and the army moved in to help them with food, tents etc, then helped them to leave. There were many attacks on the army by the students, and there were gory pictures of the injured and dying. One caption read ‘This soldier was carrying a machine gun but preferred to die himself at the hands of the protesters to using his weapon on innocent people’. Interestingly no protesters were killed but many soldiers were. The book was produced by the government. Very different stories from the ones we’d heard before.

We also went to the zoo whilst in Beijing to see the giant pandas. We were quite upset by the poor conditions that all the animals were kept in, and didn’t stay long. There were large areas of gardens for the people…

Whilst in China there was one thing that we had to see. The big wall. Being the cheapskates that we were (OK, still are) we went to the local bus station and booked a tour (not via one of the big westernised hotels…). So we found ourselves on a bus, obviously the only non-Chinese, and bemused by where we were at each stop… There were a few stops: the Ming Tombs; an underground palace; a strange underground chamber of horrors and waxworks and then the wall. Or not…Instead a weird folk museum of Mongolian History and Genghis Khan’s attempts to unify Mongolia. We began to wonder if we were on the wrong trip…

Then we got to a hugely crowded place, with so many tat-and-trinket souvenir shops. We knew we’d made it! Crowds walking and jostling on the wall up to a high point, then lots of posed photos, awarding of certificates and return journeys down. Except for the intrepid few…Walk on about 25 m from the top-spot and there was no-one else. We had a lovely walk along this amazing monument and had our bit of peace – and no certificates! A Chinese day out to remember.

Our last stop in China was Shanghai after another one of those interesting train journeys (though luckily not quite as long). They are not my most positive memories of travel! I do like to sleep beyond 5am and am not keen on having no choice but loud piped music! Shanghai was a busy city and accommodation was in huge dorm rooms. We met a girl who’d been travelling with a group of Chinese art students that she’d met on a train. Since arriving in Shanghai the teacher suddenly was no longer able to meet with her and she was worrying that he had disappeared as his students had complained that she had joined them.

Shanghai was a very beautiful city to wander along the river-front, The Bund. The buildings were elegant and the people were out in their Sunday best. I imagine this scene has changed massively since 1991.

We spent a lot of time just wandering and people watching, and also managed to find an office in one of the buildings for a shipping company who were sailing back to Hong Kong, and had room for up to 18 passengers (hardly a cruise!!).

Our last night in Shanghai was at a Chinese circus. It featured a lot of acrobats which were pretty good, although not quite as perfect as we’d hoped with a couple of injuries! I also wasn’t happy as there were elephant balancing acts, some monkeys riding bikes and the finale of a panda riding in a cart tossing a ball and supposedly blowing a trumpet. Bizarre. Bizarrely too the whole audience just got up and headed for the door as the whole troupe came back to bow.

The ‘cruise’ was a great way to travel back to Hong Kong, initially along a very polluted area where there was so much industry and smog on the river. Then out to sea.

We had our own port-hole, bunks and bathroom and spent the three day cruise reading, sleeping and chilling on the deck. One of the other passengers wanted to engage us all in deck games..but I drew the line at a bit of a swim in the tiny deck pool.

On this cruise I also discovered that eels for breakfast are not my favourite things. That morning was the last that I went for the Chinese breakfast and the other two I went with the toast and jam option.

We arrived back in Hong Kong in the midst of a wild electric storm. We had what looked like a laser and fireworks display from the boat. The following morning we were able to disembark and head back to Lantau.

Mark had a week or so back in the UK for his sister’s wedding so I stayed put. I have memories of making the most of the leisure club in Discovery Bay (with a borrowed entry pass…) and then meeting him on his return.

I went to the airport and watched the unbelievable landings of the jets. This was prior to the new airport being built on reclaimed land on Lantau. The old airport jutted out into the sea and the planes descended almost between tower blocks.

Our last few days on Hong Kong included walks around the green, hilly island of Lantau.

A new giant Buddha had recently been built and we went to see. It was a quiet and untouristed part of the island. Things are very different now as we discovered last year.  Worship of various kinds…

 

Then it was time to move on again. It’d been an interesting journey for our first foray into the far east, although it doesn’t strike me as my favourite part of the trip. Looking back I think we were shocked by the difference in wealth, after our time in India and Nepal.  China didn’t seem quite real to us either (perhaps partly as we only saw cities and the bits of cities we were allowed to see). Everything was pristine, artefacts had been fixed and there seemed to be a huge disparity between what we were told there and what we’d read before. People were friendly but were also very wary, and it was difficult to get a really good picture of what ‘normal’ life was like.

Perhaps we were a bit jaded from our earlier travels, exhausted by our trekking, and possibly a little lacklustre due to our underlying health condition (which we discovered later). It was probably perfect timing that we had had the opportunity to chill a bit in the comfort of Pete’s place before moving on. Thanks Pete!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Monasteries, monkeys and more…

Sha Tin monastery. Another trip on the underground up into the New Territories. And another monastery. This one is famous, in these parts at least, for it’s 10000 Buddhas. And wow! In typical Hong Kong style it’s extraordinary.

The monastery is way up on a hill. Steep pathways meander up the hill. All steps. And alongside the steps are the Buddhas. Gold ones!

They’re all different too… From the ordinary and expected…

to the unbelievable, and frankly, weird.

At the top are the temples, scattered at different levels.





Inside there are walls full of small Buddhas.There are also other rooms respecting the elders with pictures of Buddha on a myriad of tiny doors. People kept coming along, some wielding step-ladders, and opening the doors to reveal pictures of relatives. “My father” one of them told me. She then lit a handful of incense sticks and prayed in front of the big temple.

There was a lot of incense burning and people praying.








Lots of offerings of fruit, flowers, gaudy windmills and bank-notes.
The monastery no longer houses any monks, but clearly welcomes worshippers and tourists, warning us all of the chances of imposters…

It was a good place to visit, albeit slightly faded from its glory days with the gold paint peeling and in places the hillside clearly needing to be restructured…










We found a different way down, with more statues, but more excitingly some monkeys! They were just playing on the steps, the fences, the lamp-posts and the roofs. Unbothered by us…






















More underground rides and excitement as we ventured onto a bus! So easily pleased! Not just any bus either… We attempted to use the small local bus to get to Aberdeen. Easy to get on but less easy to pay… So off we got, saw the price on the bus stop and got back on again! It’s so difficult as many people, including that bus driver, couldn’t communicate with us. We were possibly put off by a notice we saw previously which said it is illegal to communicate with the drivers!
However fare paid and we were whizzed down to the fishing village. ‘Village’ is of course a misnomer as it is a massive town of sky-scrapers.












This was a fascinating place to wander along the edge of the natural typhoon harbour. There were lots of tourist signboards explaining the history of fishing there.
There was also a historic shipbuilding area, still working… In a traditional way. There was a pathway along the edge… with signs to deter the fainthearted…










The pathway was made of planks… Presumably recycled ships… Didn’t really feel overly safe, but not because of the dogs!








After piggybacking on some WiFi outside some American conglomerate restaurant we managed to figure out our next stop, and found a hidden bus stop. A princely sum of £2 took us to Stanley, over an incredible bendy headland road. There were some lovely bays along the way..




Unfortunately we arrived in Stanley as the market was closing for the day, but we had a bit of a wander. The bay was looking good and we had a bit of a clamber over Stanley’s rocks.








The bus back over the island was incredible. It winds up the most difficult roads and there are sheer drops down to the water. Coming back down the city side you find yourself, in the bus, higher than those illuminated buildings that we’ve been admiring from afar.

So that was another day done!

One of today’s fascinations was with face masks. Here you’re never far from someone wearing one. Some are very simple medical masks others more substantial-looking affairs which look as though they are made from neoprene. I can’t work out their purpose. Maybe there are a few.
Are they protecting the wearer from germs in the air, the chance of picking up a cold or something from airborne bacteria /viruses? Are they protecting the general public from the disease of the wearer?
Or are they reducing the ingestion of pollutants and dodgy particles?
Maybe there are other explanations.

It interested me to see a mum wearing a mask carrying a baby who wasn’t…?
Then there was a man in a wheelchair who removed his mask to smoke a cigarette..?

Lots of supermarket checkout staff wear them, and bus drivers.
People are clearly germ phobic – someone covered her mouth with her hand to walk down the aisle of a bus today and removed it as she sat down. Hmmm, I can’t see that that would work when you then sit on the bus for an hour or so!
Mind you, there are hand sanitisers everywhere, often just outside of shops. Not sure if you should use on the way in or out?
Lots of places specify that surfaces are specially designed to not harbour bacteria (escalator handrails) and are sanitised regularly through the day.
It’s good to be aware I guess… And generally the place is clean and tidy and there is little litter, there are recycling bins and people do seem to use them.