Blogs united

Last weekend I travelled to Haddington for my first ever meeting with Evee, whose blog I have had a link to for a long time (and vice versa). Not only were we readers of each other's blogs though: Evee has been very generous in providing some valuable financial support for the Nepal Women's Development Trust and their NMV school in Kathmandu. It was high time that we met! So last weekend we met for lunch in Haddington (near Edinburgh) and then went for a tour of Lennoxlove House on the outskirts of the town. This is a fine old Scottish mansion house, currently the home of the Duke of Hamilton and his family. Evee does a great job of telling the story of the day on her blog, and so I won't attempt to give another version. We chose Lennoxlove because my Edinburgh neighbour, Fay, is a guide there and I had long wanted to take up her invitation to have a look around. It is certainly a special place and probably not as well known on the tourist circuit as it deserves.
This is a picture of the Fay, Evee and myself on the lawn after our tour. Thank you ladies for a really nice day - and to Evee again for all your support.

Back in Glasgow

I've been safely back home in Scotland for a couple of days now, but haven't seen any of that rain yet. The photos are from the Botanic Gardens here (just round the corner) and as you can see it has been sunbathing weather for the locals: i.e. about 16 degrees C.

My nephew Douglas has been looking after the flat and I'm pleased to see that he has kept the place in good shape.

I have some mixed feelings about my earlier than planned return, but it is a good time to be here, with the West End Festival about to begin and the Edinburgh Festivals not far away. And aside from that, I have plenty to keep me busy for a while.

Thank you to those who have tuned in here from time to time. And a special thank you again to those who provided a donation to the NMV cause. I will be in touch with our little network of supporters to discuss the next moves.

He came, he saw, he did a little shopping!

Well it's my last day in Thailand for the time being. My return flight leaves Bangkok at 20 minutes past midnight, and so I have a bit of time to fill after my late checkout and before I have to head for the airport. I have done a little bit of chilling by the pool here as planned, but it seems that I have spent much of the time in Bangkok browsing around some of the gigantic markets here - mainly Chinatown, Chatuchak, and the Kao San Road. I was on a mission - to get one of the anti-mosquito electric tennis racquets I'd seen in China - and I finally found what I was looking for in Chinatown here. On the way I seem to have picked up a few odds and ends that weren't on any list. These places are something else and certainly put the Glasgow Barras in the shade.

Yesterday Ayumi departed too - for Chiang Mai in northern Thailand, and I look forward to staying in touch and hearing about her progress.

Here are a few pictures of the Chatuchak market, Chinatown, a view from the riverbus, and a farewell drink with Ayumi, Jean and Dadao. And that's me with the new mosquito racquet. It won't be long now before I can test its effectiveness against the Scottish midgie. If trials are successful I anticipate a lucrative new import business!

So long for now.

Decision made

The main news today is that I have successfully managed to rearrange my return flights. I will be returning to Scotland on Monday the 8th of June - yes in just 4 days from now! The change cost me a return visit to Bangkok airport yesterday as well as the inevitable charges, but I'm pleased to have made the decision and to have got the arrangements made. My reasons for coming home early are rather varied. First of all the Chinese enforced a change of some sort because of their attitude to Tibet visitors. Vietnam was always part of the plan and I'm very happy with my time there. But this is not the best time of year to be a tourist in the Indochina region. It is very hot and humid, with the monsoon approaching. I didn't think I'd ever say this but I think I miss the typical Scottish summer weather. Maybe I'll come back to this part of the world in 6 months time or so.

I don't expect to have anything very interesting to report over these last few days - as long as everything goes according to plan that is. Ayumi is making her own plans - for visiting Cambodia, southern Vietnam, Laos and northern Thailand. This morning we met a new Japanese character in the form of Saiki. He has been in Thailand for the last 5 months, much of that time in hospital as a result of a mototbike accident. He is pretty well recovered now, but with a rather damaged shoulder. The whole episode has cost his insurance company US$4 million so far!

To close today here are some pictures from our Perfume Pagoda visit - courtesy of Masako's day with my camera.

Hanoi to Bangkok

I'm successully installed at the Rambuttri Village Inn in Bangalamphu -- the same place I stayed for a few days last year. It has the special benefit of a rooftop swimming pool, where I hope to chill out a bit over the next few days. Later today I will be checking out what the chances are of changing my return flights. Ayumi is in the nearby Merry V, but we are still travel buddies and had breakfast together this morning before a walk along the local riverside.
Our last day in Hanoi turned out to be very enjoyable. Our new friend Trang showed us round the museum of Vietnamese ethnology. She and Hien have both been extremely kind and helpful in many ways these last few days and have helped leave us with a very positive view of the Vietnamese people.
PS. Congratulations to Air Asia for another flight where they simply take off on schedule and land 10 minutes early - without blowing any fanfares!

More Hanoi

It is Monday evening and I'm just back from an excellent street food meal with Ayumi and Masako - another lady fom Osaka who A. met the other day at Halong Bay. The three of us have been today to the Chua Huong "Perfume Pagoda" on a day trip - complete with a long river-boat journey in the hot-hot sun. It is a very special place and I hope to file some photos another time. I loaned my camera to Masako for the day - because hers disappeared on the Halong Bay outing.

It was good to see Hien again here, and she helped us get a great value deal on this outing.

Yesterday Ayumi and I visited the Van Mieu temple of literature (an ancient Confucian centre of learning) - with Trang and Chien as guides. They are a very pleasant and helpful young Vientamese couple I met a few days ago and who wanted to be our hosts in return for the chance to practise their English. They even provided the transport - in the form of fairly exhilarating motorbike rides through the city!

I have now decided on my next move, and will fly to Bangkok on Tuesday. My BA return flight to the UK is booked from there (on the 17th July) and I will be investigating the possibility of cutting my trip short by going home a lot sooner. BA's website doesn't want to allow me to make a change online; so I will have to leave my investigations till I'm at BKK. They don't have representation in Hanoi. As it happens, and for entirly different reasons, Ayumi has decided to make the same journey. We are turning into quite a travel partnership, and I remain very grateful for her good company.

I attach some photos from the Van Mieu visit, including an impresive old statue of Confucius.

Hanoi

I'm in Hanoi for a few days, enjoying the hectic atmosphere and contemplating what next. The bus journey from Sapa was very enjoyable for the scenery, but pretty painful in other ways - because of the overloud and almost constant Kungfu DVD movies and Vietnamese pop videos.

On arrival we were fortunate in quickly meeting up with Chris from Australia and Hugo from France, who helped us get settled in to an acceptable hotel and head out for some good food. The "street food" here is just about the best there is - and of course it is also the cheapest option.

The photo is of me and Ayumi with Kenji, our new Japanese friend, at last night's fine street meal. This was followed by the discovery of a similar place which sells the local beer at 3000 Dong a go (that's about 10 pence each). Needless to say I rose slightly later than planned this morning.

Toda Ayumi and Kenji are on separate trips to Halong Bay.

I'm hoping to meet up later with Hien - someone I have kept in email touch with since my visit last year and she rated a blog mention as a top travel agent!

Sapa

This is my 4th day in the village of Sapa in northern VietNam. Blog access is possible again, but photo editing software is still rare. Thanks to Moira for pointing me at some websites which help.
The overnight bus journey from Kunming to Hekou was pretty uncomfortable, but it successfully delivered us to the border with an hour to spare before it opened for the day. Here's a picture of the border crossing (a bridge across the Red River) before opening time.

It was here that I met Ayumi, a nice young Japanese lady who was heading in the same direction - for Lao Cai and then up the 40km or so to Sapa. This is a really nice old French colonial "hill station", just by VietNam's highest mountain, the wonderfully named Fansipan (at 3143m). The air is great, and we seem to be constantly surrounded by rolling clouds. Ayumi and I have teamed up for a couple of one day treks in the hills, generally through rice paddy terraces and communities of various hill tribes - esp. "Black Hmong" and "Red Hmong". She has been great company, and we plan to make the (9 hour) bus journey to Hanoi together in a couple of days before going our separate ways. For Ayumi it is Laos, then Cambodia, Thailand, India. For me I need to do some new planning after my early exit from China!

My other pictures are of some of the local scenery and people - and of me and Ayumi at the start of our first trek.

China update

Well at least an update on my visits to Chengdu (in Xichuan province) and Kunming (in Yunnan).
I would have stayed much longer in China if the authorities hadn't seriously reduced my entitlement to stay in the country. I had a visa issued in Edinburgh for 2 x 60 day visits - based on my openly declared plan to enter from Nepal and travel through Tibet to other provinces. In Nepal I had no choice, though, but to relinquish this visa (and the ukp45 cost) in exchange for a travel permit to Tibet and then just a few days to exit the country. There are apparently ways to get this extended once in the country, but these are quite prohibitive (involving opening a Chinese bank account and depositing quite a lot of cash).
All this seems nuts at a time when the Chinese are apparently aiming to grow tourism dramatically and to help Xichuan in particular recover from the effects of last year's earthquake.
I know that this blog site is banned in China - which means that some officials will probably read it. My message to them is that they should lighten up and work on encouraging their visitors to stay a lot longer.
Undoubtedly China is a fantastic country in many ways, and I would have loved to be able to stay longer and explore the place properly.
But I was happy with what I was able to see and do. Chengdu and Kunming are bustling modern cities (huge by Western standards), each with their own interesting histories and places of serious interest (e.g. the Jiuzhaigou, Dali, "stone forests", as well as the pandas of course!).
I like the way the cities are laid out, with nice wide roads, plenty room for pedestrians and bikes of various sorts. There is a surprising number of electric bikes and scooters as well as push-bikes, which result in pollution being much lower than I had expected (certainly a whole lot better than Kathmandu).



Finally for now, I'm adding a link to Sam's Guesthouse in Chengdu - a really excellent place run by 5 lovely and very helpful ladies. Sam himself seems to have retired but obviously has some good common sense in letting these ladies run the place for him!

My pictures are of myself with the 5 star ladies at Sam's - and with a random (friendly) Chinese girl in front of the Mao statue in Chengdu's central square, the entrance to a Zen monastery there and part of teh interior, and of course some young giant pandas after a night on the bamboo - and a bonus red panda.
Oh, and an "opera" extract.

Belated Tibet update

A few words about my visit to Tibet, now that I have access again to my blog (from Sapa in northern Vietnam).
It seems that the Chinese authorities prevent any access to the blogger or blogspot websites (for reasons that I'm sure we will never really know). Facebook is tolerated though, and I've made a few notes there in my blog absence.
First of all I'm disappointed to report no obvious yeti activity. Maybe it was the wrong season, or maybe we just didn't get high enough. At any rate the Tibetans seem to be much less interested in their (possible) fellow inhabitants than the Nepalis.
In fact most of what we saw of Tibet is really high level desert which is hardly capable of supporting any kind of life. It is a gigantic place though and we only saw a fraction. There are some more fertile valleys towards Lhasa and beyond, especially around the Bramha Putra river. The views across the plateau to the Himalayas and other surrounding mountains are fantastic.
The Tibetan people have a very different identity to their Chinese colonisers, but they seem to more or less coexist happily enough these days. Maybe it is something to do with the very obvious military presence.
Lhasa is, of course, something very special, with the Potala palace/fort/temple complex dominating the town, and many ancient monastaries nearby. Shigatse and Gyantse were our other significant stops, also with very impressive cultural histories. At Gyantse is seems that the British have still not been forgiven for an attack in 1904!










As a PS I have now managed to upload a few photographs - but I know these don't do the experience justice. The people at the bottom are some monks in their debating hour, and our whole group at a Lhasa monastery.

Made it to Lhasa

I was wrong about the numbers but everything else about the trip to Tibet is going more or less according to plan. There are 32 of us, in groups of 4, each with our LandCruiser and driver; so we have been in a convoy of 8 big 4WD vehicles speeding across the special world of the high Tibetan plateau. I'm afraid that I won't be able to describe it all very well in just a short space here, but it has certainly been an excellent experience so far.
We arrived in Lhasa this afternoon and the hotel seems just about perfect - a fine old place in the ancient part of town. Although I am very happy with the trip, I have to say that it has been quite tiring - e.g. with some early starts and late finishes to avoid roadworks. On the first day we were held up for hours before we could continue our journey at 10 pm (after the roadworks had finished for the day) and then after 4 hours sleep we had to be up at 5 a.m. to get through the next section before it was closed for the day. And that was after the tortuous process of Chinese immigration control, which is complicated further with lots of medical checks because of the flu scares!
But the scenery of course has been the best, the people are great, and it is all giving me a bit of an education. Oh, and the group is good fun too - a mix from all over the world. My own foursome includes David from France (but also speaking Mandarin), Uiske from Japan, and Kim from Singapore but living in Australia.
The plateau is mainly high altitude desert surrounded by mountain tops - including some of the best in the world. The view of Everest and its neighbours is completely uninterrupted - very much contrasting with the Nepal side.
The population is very sparse, but the Buddhist culture is fascinating. Lhasa has the richest heritage of all and I'm looking forward to exploring it over the next few days. The Chinese have managed to turn it into quite a burgeoning boom town by all appearances, but I'm reserving judgement on whether that is a good thing or not!
Sorry I can't add any photos for now. I'll try to fix that tomorrow.

Leaving Nepal

If all goes according to plan I'll finally be moving on from Nepal tomorrow - on a 6 a.m. bus for the border with Tibet and then transferring to a Landcruiser for the rest of the 5 day journey across the Tibetan plateau to Lhasa - stopping for the first overnight at the village of Nyalam. This is an organised tour for a group of 6 - 8 people - because this is just about the only way to travel in Tibet. When we get to Lhasa the package includes a couple of days sightseeing there.



Lhasa is at 3700 metres and the route is pretty high all the way, going up over 5000 metres at some points. It will be interesting to see how the body acclimatises simply by driving to these altitudes. But I'm sure that the scenery will compensate for any little difficulties on that front.



Of course I have some mixed feelings in moving on. There are many things I like a lot about Nepal and the Nepalese people, and I have made some good friends here. I'm not going to make a long list of pros and cons here, but I won't be sorry to leave the Kathmandu traffic and power cuts behind!



When entering Tibet you also need to have an exit plan (and booking). In my case I've gone for a flight to Chengdu in Sichuan province. After that the plans are still pretty vague, but will almost certainly involve some rail travel for a change, probably taking in Kunming or Naning in the south before heading into northern VietNam. I have no idea what the internet access will be like in the remote parts of Tibet. Probably pretty poor I suspect, but I will post an update when I get the chance.

NMV update

I've been pretty busy with the NMV these last couple of weeks, mostly either trailing around the computer shops or teaching English (or preparing my lessons - which is actually the hardest bit).
We have managed to buy some suitable IT equipment, and my lessons seem to have gone down quite well. On top of all that the trustees and staff have been working hard to promote the school better in the local community with some quite positive results. I won't say any more about the NMV here, but I have prepared a more detailed update (and financial statement) for those who have generously supported the cause. Thank you all once again!
The photos are the handover of a bunch of IT equipment to Chuda and Kaushila (NMV Principal), and me with my English class.

This coming week I'll be spending more time at the school - to help to get the equipment set up and to do some training in its use.




Then it will finally be time for me to move on from Nepal. There always seems to be an air of uncertainty about any plans for travel to Tibet, but if all goes according to plan I'll be heading for Lhasa starting next Saturday (the 9th may) on an overland trip which should take about 5 days.

C.U.2

I'm still ticking over in Kathmandu. On Monday afternoon I have to give the first of my English lessons at NMV, followed by more on Wednesday and Friday. I'm reasonably happy with my plans for these but it is just slightly daunting that my students are more or less all teachers (from NMV and two other schools) and high amongst their stated aims in attending is "to learn some new teaching methods". What do I know?
After her Annapurna trek, Jan has been back in Kathmandu these last few days, but she left today for South Africa. Thank you for your company and your teaching advice Jan , and best of luck on the next leg of your world tour!
Chuda came by the hotel today with his family (Purna and sons Abbal and Aviral). We discussed the computer etc. options for the school and will be at the shops again tomorrow looking at refining the shortlist. Very many thanks again to all those who have generously contributed. We have exceeded my initial expectations on this. I have to confess that it will always seem that there is more to be done, but I guess that is just the nature of these things.
The high altitude cricket expedition appears to have been a big success, after the early bureaucratic difficulties, and has received some front page coverage in the local newspapers. An excellent bit of (English) eccentricity, which has raised a lot of money for some good causes as well as achieving what will have to be a very long-lasting record!
My plans for moving on to Tibet are beginning to fall into place, despite a few obstacles. More on this next time I think.
Today's picture is of Abbal and Aviral with their new C.U.J. hats. I knew they would come in handy sometime!

C.U. Aamod

Nepal schools are still officially on New Year holiday at the moment. This is equivalent to our (UK) summer holidays - a longish break which marks the start of the new school session. But the Sauraha women's school continues - with smaller numbers. On my visit yesterday I found 3 Irish girls teaching English in separate groups, including a "nursery" class for children that some of the women had brought along. As you can see, everyone sits on the ground underneath a grass-roofed shelter. The whole thing has been built by local volunteers on land which has been provided by a local farmer. The improvement plans are to make a proper mud floor and maybe to build a wall or two. The teachers are mostly local volunteers with a few foreigners at local schools giving up some more of their time (like yesterday). The main subjects are about basic Nepali literacy and mathematics, but also on matters of nature conservation - something which is crucial to Chitwan.

I don't really know yet what the best way for me to help them would be, and I haven't made any promises. Besides, I don't feel it would be right to give them a portion of the funds which I have collected specifically for the NMV in Kathmandu. No doubt I'll be giving it some thought.

I did finally find a good use, though, for one of the C.U.Jimmy hats and a red nose which I had stashed in my luggage. Young Aamod was pleased with the both and has been entertaining his neighbours even more than usual. My reward was dinner (dal bhat of course) with Ishwori and his family yesterday evening. Ishwori and Aamod came to see me off at the bus park this morning (for my return to Kathmandu). Aamod was still wearing the hat and raising lots of smiles!

For once the bus journey went more or less to schedule, and I'm back at the Encounter in Kathmandu. Over the next few days I expect to be trying to finalise how to use the funds in NMV's best interests - as well as developing some better plans for the English lessons I'm due to give next week.