Monday, June 19, 2006
Long Live The King
..... no not that one, the King of Thailand! Well that is what it said in virtually every shop window, car, TV programme and even on those hideously annoying plastic bracelets. We are not sure how well this event was publicised around the world but it was certainly big here in Bangkok. King Rama IX is the worlds longest reigning living monarch and it was at the time that we arrived in Thailand that the party to celebrate his 60th anniversary of his accession to the throne was really getting started. He seems to be adored by virtually every Thai person as his picture was posted on almost any flat surface available (including 15 stories high on a building) as well as huge monuments at traffic lights and road junctions. Traffic in Bangkok is notoriously dreadful but add in several road closures into the equation as the climax to the big event was held and you are lucky if you can even get to the end of your street. As we moved out of Bangkok the story was much the same, flags and banners everywhere. This is definitely one big event where everyone wants a ticket to the party.There was also some kind of unwritten rule, or maybe a new law that has been brought in especially for the occasion!, that required you to wear yellow although we declined as it doesn't show off our complexions well!!!! One particular day we were the only people wandering around on the streets that weren't wearing a yellow polo shirt emblazoned with the king's 60th anniversary crest.
One fact that may not have been well publicised outside Thailand is that the King is a keen photographer. Most pictures we have seen of him on more casual occasions when he isn't wearing all the royal garb, he has a camera hanging round his neck (Oh what a product placement specialists dream!). So, if ever there is a photographic exhibition of his work, remember, you heard it here first.
A few more pictures in this set.
Sunday, June 18, 2006
Tuk Tuks and Stuff
It really did take us a couple of days to get used to the way things work here. Websites and guide books had all given us advance warning about the little scams and things to look out for, but it's only when we arrived that we realised that these things would be fairly unrelenting for the next couple of weeks. EVERYONE is trying to sell you something here, and if they haven't tried to sell you anything yet it's only because they haven't got to that bit!Tuk Tuks are the cheap local transport, part motor bike part milk float. Most of them look like they have been welded together from numerous other vehicles, but you just have to ignore that and get in! The concept of meters or fixed fares are totally alien here, so upfront negotiation is the order of the day. The biggest problem is that the drivers all seem to get commision (in the form of a fuel voucher) from local traders if they bring you to a store, most likely a tailor. So even when you've negotiated a price and destination you may still find that the driver is keen to take you to the store where there is of course a "sale" on.
The other thing we found to beware of were friendly members of the 'public' who spoke to us outside temples. On at least one occasion we got into a conversation with one of these people, who after a brief conversation about football (world cup is still on) would help us negotiate a deal with a passing Tuk Tuk to get us to our next destination. Unfortunately, some of these people seem to be the 'sales reps' for the tailors shops. So we think that the Thai conversation that they have with the Tuk Tuk driver is along the lines of "offer these two a cheap fare, but make sure you take them to XXXX tailors on the way where you'll get your petrol coupon".
So we soon learned that 100 Baht was the 'standard' fare the driver first asked for. This is only about £1.50, but when you consider that 20 Baht can buy you a decent curry on the street it isn't cheap. Then there was the 30 Baht fare, this was far more realistic but would almost certainly involve some kind of side trip that we hadn't asked for. Most of the time we managed to avoid the shopping experience, but we did end up with one persistent guy who eventually refused to take us any further unless we went into the shop he had stopped at, so we just walked off and left him there.
Taxis are supposed to be much easier. They all now seem to have meters, and have signs on the roof identifying them as metered taxis. Getting the driver to actually use the meter isn't always that easy though, some will just refuse to turn it on, others will just claim that it's broken (it's amazing how many broken meters there are in Bangkok!). So we soon learned to just shut the door and move on to the next one.
So what the books tell you is all true, you definitely have to look out for the scams, but we actually decided that it's all part of the fun of being here and you just have to be prepared to walk away when necessary. If you get really annoyed then you can always report them to the Tourist Police, but since we weren't always certain that the Tuk Tuk driver was the same guy as the one on the licence photo I'm not sure how much good that would do!
Saturday, June 17, 2006
Bangkok
Our Asian journey so far has been a bit like traveling through time, backwards. Japan was super modern and super efficient. Hong Kong was equally modern in most places but it was more organised chaos and with a glimpse into it's past at the street markets. And then there's Bangkok. We stepped onto a plane at Hong Kong's 21st century airport and stepped off it again at the soon to be replaced Bangkok airport, parts of which look like they had any kind of funding removed years ago! (Although for the golfers amongst you we discovered that there is actually a course right in the middle of the airfield. Photos: 1,2,3)The World Cup was well under way by the time we got here (and England were still in it) so there was much excitement amongst the football mad Thais. As it happened our hotel had a big screen TV in the breakfast area so of course we had to be there at 2am for the big games, particularly as happy 'hour' at the bar was 6pm-6am during the competition. Fortunately we'd given ourselves a few extra days here to make up for the lost sleep that would occur!
Since we'd decided to steer clear of the most dodgy (and cheapest) backpacker accommodation we weren't all that close to the main tourist attractions, this meant numerous rides in Taxis and Tuk Tuk's (but more on that later). We used the river boat service quite a bit to get around as well, this is very cheap but you definitely don't want to think about falling into the river. It's apparently not always this bad, but because we were about during the rainy season the river was a fairly unpleasant brown colour.
The Grand Palace is the big attraction here but there are many temples around as well. The architecture of Buddhist sites has been constantly changing throughout our trip. In Japan the temples are mainly wooden buildings and are generally quite dark and plain in their colouring. In Hong Kong there was much more colour and more stonework. In Thailand things are different again, but the number one rule seems to be: Make it BIG, give it a pointy roof, and paint it with as much gold as you can lay your hands on!
More photos from around Bangkok here.
Wednesday, June 14, 2006
The New Territories
The New Territories is the part of the mainland between Kowloon and the Chinese border and is actually a much larger area than the city itself. Although there is a great deal of housing development and 'new towns' the area still has quite a lot of real countryside, which like the beaches on Hong Kong island may come as a surprise to some people. Whilst it is possible to get around on public transport or taxis we eventually decided to book an organised tour. On our first attempt to get around on our own we almost ended up in China (or maybe custody!) by accident. We went to the last train stop inside Hong Kong as instructed by our guide book, only to discover that the rules had changed and that the only way to leave the station was to go through Chinese immigration. Almost anyone can get an entry visa at the border, unless you have a British passport, in which case it's much more difficult and you really need to have applied back at the embassy first, so Plan B it was.The first thing we noticed on our tour was that we remembered how much sympathy we had for every other tour group we've seen over the past year, as they are relentlessly driven from place to place with only a few minutes to take photos before being herded back into the bus. We had quite a good day though, unlike our guide who seemed to either be having an off day or just generally regretting his career choice. Up in the hills there are quite good views back across the city and you can even go walking if you have time (although significant quantities of mosquito repellant would have be required on the day we visited). Some of the old British army sites are still around, it's just that the Chinese have moved in and (quite literally) just changed the signs over the door.
There are still 'walled villages' here which are basically filled with very narrow streets of very small 'houses' town which are really just one room in most cases. In the past these were homes to many families, although it sounds like things have changed over the years. Now it seems that the families have moved outside the walled area to the new town that has sprung up. And the tiny little houses? well they've become the local equivalent of 'Starter Homes', rented out to young couples who can't afford anything else. From what we were told it also sounds like the owners are hanging onto every bit of property that they can in preparation for a house price boom that they expect when (or if) there is a future opening or relaxing of the Chinese border.
The last place we were taken to was quite sad really. It's a waterfront area of land where there is a fairly large collection of house boats, there are more of them than in Aberdeen and it all looked a bit smarter. However, right on the waterfront is a huge development of luxury apartments (which seems to be nicknamed Beverly Hills). The apartments are still not finished but the lots were sold several years ago and (according to our guide) many have already changed hands several times as the prices climb. Unfortunately (for the water dwellers) the purchasers of the apartments were promised an idyllic waterfront view which clearly didn't involve a fishing village, so the current local residents are being 'rehoused' to ensure that the rich folk can have their fantasy "Waterfront Living" lifestyle.
New Territories photos are here.
Monday, June 12, 2006
Macau
Seeking yet another stamp in our passport we headed off on the fast ferry to Macau. It's actually not that far away and there are something like 12 ferries an hour. However, this means that it takes less than an hour on the ferry..... followed by about 40 minutes in the zoo (sorry, immigration hall) which is constantly refilled by the next bunch of Hong Kongers pouring off the ferry and eager to get gambling.Yes, that's right, Macau is rapidly turning into Vegas. In my vague memories of my last visit here there was a casino, now there are many casinos with several more under construction (they've even reclaimed land to make more space for them!). Most of the men who 'own' Vegas seem to be moving in here, the Wynn Macau is almost open (and is taking bookings if you're interested!), the Venetian is under construction, and judging by the amount of construction the whole gang will be here soon.
There is more to Macau than losing money though. There are of course a few temples and shrines to be seen, and the old town centre still shows its Portuguese past. We had another great guide book dining tip for the town centre but unfortunately the European influence on the town seems to have extended to the restaurants taking a siesta in the afternoon. This left us with a choice between wandering aimlessly, eating some dangerously unidentifiable dead stuff from market stalls..... or those curiously familiar looking golden arches..... So MacDonalds it was (sorry, we just had to do it!).
After lunch we got brave with the local buses and headed off to the two smallish islands which are linked to the mainland by bridges. The first one is where 'Asian Vegas' is being built, but the second still seems relatively sparsely populated. About as far as you can go on the bus is the small village of Coloane. Besides a couple of temples there were really only two things to do in Coloane. Firstly, you can stand at the waterfront and look across a narrow stretch of water into China. There's not much to see, but that's not the point, it's China! (OK, so Macau technically IS China, maybe we were desperate for excitement!).
Then when you've finished looking across the border you can walk around the corner to the bakery. Huh? Yes that's right, you're in a fairly remote part of a former Portuguese colony that is now Chinese and the place to eat is a bakery run by an Englishman that sells custard tarts. Such tarts seem to be a Macau speciality, but these are apparently the ones to have, so we did.
The return journey seemed very simple, just find the same bus going back in the other direction (on the map it seemed to go towards the ferry port). So we boarded the bus and showed the driver the map and where we were headed. He nodded, but then seemed keen to explain something to us. Being good British tourists we had no idea what he was trying to tell us so we sat down and looked out at the rain. It all started off well, but then we arrived at the airport (where we hadn't been before) and then proceeded to pick up so many construction workers from the new casinos that there was standing room only on the bus and we could barely see the driver, and when we eventually arrived at a fairly large bus stop area we really had no idea where we were. It all worked out OK in the end though as it seemed like the driver had gone out of his way to take us to a stop where he'd find a bus company employee who spoke enough English to explain our mistake and direct us to the correct bus, proving once again that even when you don't speak the language it often seems to be easier to use public transport here than it is back home!
Sunday, June 11, 2006
Ocean Park
Although Hong Kong now has it's very own Disneyland it also still has Ocean Park which has been there for many years, so we opted to visit this rather than the Mouse Kingdom. Although it does have it's share of theme park rides the main attractions are actually real live creatures rather than part-time students in furry costumes. There are pandas, a bird show, and an aquarium (yes Andrea, it has sharks!) but the star performers are the seals and dolphins who perform in front of about 4000 people at a time. This may not be Disney but the big show definitely has a very high 'Cheese' content, complete with pre-recorded American-accented voice over throughout. We managed to get some pretty good photos of the show though. Thursday, June 08, 2006
Off To The Beach
Although the southern coast of Hong Kong island seems to be becoming more heavily populated it's still relatively quiet, and probably the last thing you'd expect to find if all you've ever seen are photos of skyscrapers around the harbour.Our first stop was at Aberdeen, home to the 'Jumbo' floating restaurant which really is as large as it sounds. The harbour is also known for having many of its residents living on house boats. I think there are far fewer houseboats than there used to be but you can still go out on tours which will take you out so you can have a peek into people's lounges and kitchens. The boat trip industry must have been having a quiet week when we were there because the boats seemed to outnumber the tourists on the day we were there. We were 'adopted' by one woman as soon as we got off the bus, and she proceeded to keep cropping up in front of us somehow (how do they do that?!) trying to sell us a boat trip.
I guess that the real reason for people moving ashore is probably something to do with the increase in the size of the fishing boats and the building of tower blocks of apartments within walking distance. However, another good reason would be that it's really not very pleasant out there, the big fishing vessels and the many tourist boats have resulted in some fairly foul looking water, and we didn't really want to think about what the houseboats use as a water source!
From Aberdeen we went as far southeast as Stanley. The island really isn't very big, so the total journey time from Central to Stanley is about 45 minutes on the bus and costs about 40p. Stanley is known for it's market, although what was once a small village now seems to be spreading up the hillside quite quickly. The market basically sold much of the same stuff as we'd already seen in Kowloon but on a weekday lunchtime it was much quieter and easier to move around. Of course this made us even more of an obvious target for the traders. Also, if you want to get your Beijing 2008 Olympics merchandise early this is the place to come (can't guarantee how genuine they are of course!).
Between Stanley and Aberdeen are the beaches at Deep Water Bay and Repulse Bay so we stopped for a look on the way back. There's not much to say about Repulse Bay really, it's a beach, although it's not a bad beach and it does have some pretty impressive looking lifeguard 'huts' as you can see in the photos.
Monday, June 05, 2006
Kowloon
After a couple of days of relative luxury we moved across to Mongkok in the heart of Kowloon on the mainland side of the harbour. It's much less 'westernised' over here, so this is where you'll find the day and night streetmarkets, and of course the tailors. Wandering around Kowloon I felt as if everyone on the street was trying to sell me a suit, not only that but they seemed absolutely astonished when I told them that I didn't want one. I mean, it's 32 degrees and 95% humidty, how could I possibly not want one?!?!We stayed at the YWCA in Mongkok (yes they do allow men on some floors), which was pretty good but did have a rather curious breakfast menu. Another guest gave us a tip to avoid the 'English Breakfast' so we eventually got used to fried egg and sausage on top of a bowl of noodles!
My first experience of Mongkok was on a Saturday afternoon, when I discovered that it's so insanely crammed with people that they just shut the roads around the shopping streets to make things easier. It's not much different at night, when three whole streets are closed off everynight, including the one which is home to the famous 'Ladies Market'. No, you don't buy Ladies here (although the number of hourly rate hotels in the area would suggest otherwise) it is so named because they used to sell clothing, bags and other such items of interest to ladies. They still sell those items, but they pretty much cater to everyone now.
We soon got used to the calls from every stall we passed: "Here missy, you want handbag?" or "Sir, copy watch sir?". So if you need a Prada handbag, Rolex watch, or an England football shirt for £3.50 this is the place to come. The football shirts were actually very good, although we did see a poster of 'Wayne Roonry' so you may wish to check the spelling. NOTE: The intervening weeks may have caused the market value of Mr Rooney's merchandise to have plummet somewhat!
There are plenty of other markets to choose from around Kowloon. The food markets are exciting to look at, with products ranging from the vaguely familiar to the "please don't tell me what that really is". There is also quite a large flower market and a bird market. The birds all seem fairly happy in their cages, although they do seem to be crammed in a bit!
The town of Sha Tin is technically in the New Territories, although there's no real gap between it and Kowloon anymore so I'll include it here. Our first weekend here coincided with the annual Dragon Boat Festival. We missed the first day of events which are actually in the harbour so we had to trek out to Sha Tin on the train to have a look. It all sounded fun and we collected our free tickets from the tourist office. Unfortunately the directions were a little vague, the 'short walk' from the station turned out to be about 1.5km, and we ended up on the opposite bank of the river from the 'stands' and facing another 1.5km walk to get to the bridge. So we watched from a fair distance and probably missed out on much of the excitement!
Sha Tin is also home to 'Snoopy's World', which is basically a childrens play area attached to a shopping mall which has giant models of Charlie Brown and Snoopy (whose career is alive and well in the far east in case you were worried about him). This really isn't a very exciting attraction, and unsurprisingly it isn't mentioned in our guidebook, but after our disappointment at the dragon boats it almost seemed bearable!
Sha Tin is also home to the 10,000 Buddha Temple, which might sound like an exaggeration until you learn that there are actually 13,000 of them. The guidebook explained how there were several hundred steps up to the temple, so we were delighted to discover that someone had now built a series of escalators to ease the journey. We got to the top and found that it didn't seem quite right, there was the odd Buddha, but quite where the other 12,999 were hiding was a mystery. After a while it was explained to us that we'd actually found what amounted to the local crematorium and associated temple complex, and would we mind awfully taking ourselves a little further up the road to the correct temple. This was all explained to us in fluent Cantonese by one or two locals, but we eventually got the message from the shaking of heads and arm waving (the international sign language for 'you're in the wrong place you bl**dy stupid tourist').
The actual 10,000 Buddha Temple doesn't have any escalators, but it did seem to have about 10,000 small, flying, biting things defending the steps (so go armed with insect repellent). The climb turned out to be worth it though as the pictures will hopefully show.
Saturday, June 03, 2006
Hong Kong Island
Most of the impressive photos you'll see of the Hong Kong skyline will have been taken from the Kowloon (mainland) side, looking across the harbour towards the island. We started off in the Causeway Bay area, which is way over to the lefthand side of those photos. If that all sounds a bit confusing, here's a map which should help.The island side of the harbour definitely seems more 'western', so it's here that you find the big banks and offices in the area known just as 'Central', and of course big shopping malls. Yes, if you want to come to Hong Kong to shop then Causeway Bay is definitely a good place to start! The shoppers amongst you will be even more excited when you discover that the sales tax in Hong Kong is a nice round zero. The people here seem to be expert shoppers and the malls are rammed full at pretty much any time of day.
We quickly learned that the rules here are very different to those in nice, polite Japan. Oh yes, if you want to get anywhere here you have to be prepared to muscle your way through the crowds because nobody is going to make way for you if you don't! The odd thing is that in spite of all this busyness quite a lot of people seem to dawdle at an inordinately slow pace as soon as they step into an MTR (underground) station. All the signs telling them not to run for trains seem to have had too much of an effect and we were constantly having to take care not to trample people in stations!
Another change was on the trains themselves. The Tokyo metro seems almost silent at times as everybody sits quietly, not making eye contact, certainly not talking on the phone and anyway all phones are without exception set to 'silent'. By contrast stepping onto an MTR train here is like walking into a busy nightclub. Sometimes it seems like everyone is on the phone, there is hardly anyone who isn't talking, and the volume of musical ringtones only makes everyone talk louder!
The Noon Day Gun is one of the main tourist attractions in Causeway Bay and is still fired at noon every day, and we were fortunate to be staying directly opposite. The hotel actually did a 'guided tour' to the gun. We excitedly book ourselves on and presented ourselves at reception at the correct time. The tour turned out to involve one of the hotel staff guiding us out of the door, through the underground car park, and up the stairs on the other side of the road where he proceeded to point out the gun and then leave us. Hmmm, we must be really hardened travellers by now because we probably could have managed that on our own!!
Just behind Causeway Bay is the Happy Valley race course where we managed to go and check out the last evening race meeting of the season. I think were told that horse racing and football were the only things that the locals are allowed to gamble on, and boy do they take it seriously. It only costs about 70p to get into the general admission area, and half of the punters seem to then spend the entire night inside the air conditioned betting area watching the races on TV. Outside the locals seemed to be almost outnumbered by a combination of tourists and expats (for whom it seemed to be a place to be seen). Unfortunately we didn't win any money, although to be honest our chances would probably have been significantly higher if we'd actually placed a bet. We did managed to win two t-shirts and a key ring by throwing beanbags at a sideshow though.....
The main tourist attraction on the island is probably the Peak. You get to ride up on the incredibly steep Peak Tram (the steepest in the world) and then once you are at the top you get a spectacular view across the island skyline and the harbour....... unless you come in June, in the rainy season, like we did. We tried going up on the first night that we arrived and all was looking good until the last 20 meters or so of the tram journey when we entered the clouds! Over the next two weeks we saw very little clear sky but we did manage to get up there and get a few pictures just so we can prove that we were actually there.
Friday, June 02, 2006
Hong Kong
As we've recently established Nikky is less keen than I on big, busy cities..... so now we've come to Hong Kong! I have been here before, but since I was only 9 at the time of the last visit my memories are a little hazy, the main thing I can remember is that I have always wanted to come back. After 3 weeks of rather inconsistent weather in Japan we arrived to some nice steady rain. Lovely. But then it is the rainy season.We're here for two weeks so we have decided to stay in more than one place, so we have a few days looking at one side of the famous harbour view, a few days looking at the other side, and about a week in between staying in the heart of Kowloon (that'll be the cheap bit to offset the cost of the harbour view!!).
Thursday, June 01, 2006
Sayonara to Japan...
Including Japan in our trip was my idea and I think to begin with Nikky just played along because it seemed so far in the future. Nervousness increased when we started reading the guidebooks in New Zealand, and it seemed like we were going to leave the laid back easy life of the South Island and travel to another planet rather than just another country.One of the reasons I wanted to come here was to see the huge contrasts between the old and the new, and Tokyo certainly gave us plenty of opportunities to see them. We visited very old, quiet, peaceful temples and shrines but we were never very far from the madness that is the rest of the city, and I definitely enjoyed the 'new' more than Nikky did.
We were never short of an old temple or three to visit, and one of our tips for anyone else coming is definitely to make sure that you plan your itinerary to try and avoid 'Temple Fatigue', especially in Kyoto where it's hard to see anything else at times.
Almost everywhere we have been since leaving home we have been amazed by how friendly and helpful people are to the bumbling & illiterate English visitors and Japan has been no exception. Our attempts at a few basic words of Japanese (we never really graduated to anything that could be called phrases!) were well received and never really failed to help us get what we wanted or find our way around. Aside from the school trips we encountered numerous other people who spoke some English out on the streets, and the combination of their willingness to both help us and practice their English skills were very useful on occasions (especially when trying to interpret timetables at bus stops!).
We'd read all about the politeness and relative formality of lots of things in everyday life, but it still surprised us a little until we actually got used to it. Walk into any small convenience store and all the staff in the shop will turn around and call out a greeting to you (of course I can also imagine how this might become a little irritating after a while!). We eventually trained ourselves to hand over money or credit cards in shops with both hands as is polite, and by the end of our three weeks I found that I was instinctively joining in the bowing that seems to mark the end of any transaction or meeting. So if you notice that I'm still doing this when I get home then I can only apologise!
After a while the politeness, the bowing, the funny little cartoon characters that appear everywhere (even on quite serious building site safety signs!), the fact that absolutely everything seems to run perfectly on schedule and all the other little things that are just different from home..... well you might start to think that it's all just a bit scary, but somehow it isn't.
Back in New Zealand we met a fellow English traveller who'd only just left Japan and was hugely enthusiastic about going back, then at Tokyo airport just before we left we met a Hawaiian guy who was back for his 4th visit and was equally enthusiastic to be back (we never did get his name, but the Hawaiian chocolates he gave us were great, so thanks!). Having now spent three weeks here I can understand what they mean, it's a strangely addictive place and I'm definitely looking forward to coming back some time.
We have managed to come up with a few 'Top Tips' for Japan as well, so here we go with:
"Three Things You Need in Japan"
1) Wads of cash
Although Japan is not half as expensive as you might think if you’re careful where you shop and eat, one thing that isn’t always easy is getting money. Not all ATM’s accept foreign cards (although this is apparently improving), which means that you usually have to find a Post Office or Citibank ATM to be certain of getting money. Some of the ATM’s also close down at 9pm, and may not be available at weekends!
The other unexpected problem is that, although Japan is just as high tech as you think, there are still many places where you can’t use credit cards. Many restaurants, hostels and even some hotels do not accept cards. So you need to make sure you’ve always got enough cash to cover yourself for a cople of days unless you want to keep going out of your way to withdraw more.
2) Tokyo Bilingual City Atlas
I read about this before we arrived and it’s been very useful. It doesn’t look all that detailed but that's mainly because of the Japanese system of addresses doesn't really rely on anything as simple as road names! However, everything is written in both languages, so if you get lost you can show the bus driver/taxi driver/friendly member of the public where you are trying to get to (although even the taxi drivers are not famous for knowing their way around). They also do a similar book for the rest of the country.
3) Japan Rail Pass
Actually, this is something you need to have before you get to Japan. It’s only available to foreign tourists and you must buy a voucher outside Japan and then exchange it for the pass when you arrive. You can then travel on almost all of the trains and buses operated by the Japan Railways group (including all the bullet trains except for the most direct services that only stop at major cities). It may not look cheap, but it does save you money even if you only do one lengthy return trip from Tokyo and it doesn't restrict you to off peak trains or anything like that so you can pretty much travel when you like.
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