Of wearyness and other woes...

Well this point had to come, and to be fair I knew it would come around now.  I am shattered.  Knackered, exhausted, pooped and brain-mashingly tired.  Arriving into Auckland at midnight is one thing, having to turn round and check-in for a second flight at 7am the following morning does kind of feel like pushing it a bit. (I should add at this point if you're keen on pix, you might want to skip this blog post - I haven't got the energy to sort any out!)

And doing it solo does, in all honesty, make it a little harder.  No-one to make you laugh, or remind you that you're on the trip of a lifetime so bloody spark up; no-one to say - have you checked the safe (no, so I left my passport in it...) Or, have we double-checked the room (no, so I left my credit card in it...) or, maybe you should screw the top on that bottle of bright blue nail varnish a bit tighter (I didn't, so it leaked all over my sponge bag).

Travelling solo is daunting and rewarding in equal measure.  You meet people more, you chat, you interact in a different way - from the lovely car hire man who paternally told me I 'clearly had too much on' to the sweet customs guy who reassured me I wouldn't get arrested for taking a half-eaten bag of peanuts through custome.  You reach into yourself to find resources you didn't know you had.  Arriving at my hotel to find there's a dinner planned with half a dozen people I don't know isn't exactly my dream scenario right now, but where there's an iron, some lippy and a large glass of white there's always a way.

For anyone considering a solo trip I would say do it, absolutely.  It's a great feeling to be thousands of miles away, knowing that you got yourself there under your own steam and that you're having an adventure all of your own making.  My main advice would be to remember that you see places much quicker when you're travelling solo - particularly cities.  There are no long lunches, no lazy afternoons, there's no-one to lie on the beach with, so you tend to get round places much quicker. Four days in Sydney was plenty to get in the main sights; by the fifth day I felt almost as if I was hanging around for my flight.

Try and keep your arrangements simple too - two flights and complicated car hire and insurance docs in 12 hours made for a mass of paperwork and admin.  You are more likely to forget things when you're travelling alone - so keep it simple.  And use social media and email with care - its a huge plus in terms of eating alone - the iPad is the solo diner's best friend - but if you spend too much time in touch with peeps at home, it can make you feel even more on your own.

But enough with the prosaic stuff, back to the travels.  I haven't seen a huge amount of NZ yet, just the small town of New Plymouth, dominated by the huge Taranaki volcano (picture isn't mine, its grey and rainy today).

It feels agreeably frontier town-ish and the flight up from Auckland was a soothing 40-minute glide over lush agricultural landscapes that looked almost English.  I'm looking forward to tomorrow, saddling up my shiny SUV and heading for the hills.

Time for a bit of a siesta I think, before the whole dinner shebang kicks off.  But the stresses of the morning have been soothed away by a long walk along New Plymouth's beach promenade, watching the waves glide in towards the rocks.  It's the one constant in travel, for me at least; whether Bondi or Brighton or the black sand shoreline around here; reassuring and peaceful - the perfect antidote for a very tired mind.

Of hotels...and other Sydney stories...

Somehow, it's time for online check-in again (one of those things that's supposed to make things easier, but never does.  What's the point, when you have to check your bag in anyway, like normal check in?  Sigh.)  It's been an interesting few days in Sydney, quite work focused, punctuated by wide, windswept beaches, some really great food and a LOT of hotels.

Hotel World fascinates me. It's more competitive than professional sport and more full of Nathan Barley-esque 'strengthening the brand' nonsense than you would believe.  I visited a hotel a couple of days ago where the bowler-hatted door-girls were actually called the 'Directors of Chaos'.  Yes, really.  I've drunk cocktails pulled out of glass domes of cherry-oaked steam.  I've seen hotels converted from wool factories and department stores and been in a suite where Princess Diana stayed (this isn't a rare thing, that girl got around).  It's been quite a weekend.

In some ways Hotel World is a world full of nonsense and hyperbole and quite a lot of complete b***ocks, but the upside is that hotels are generally staffed by genuinely charming and interesting people.  You can't work front of house in hotels - at any level from reception to GM, without being good with people.  Usually a dinner with anyone from a hotel is good fun, even if it is a bit like a wierd work-y blind date.  And if they're a tad indiscreet (which the best ones never are, sadly) its even better.  You realise  just how much people who work in the hotel industry known about all of us, particularly celebs.  Discretion is clearly one of the key skills in their line of work.

But inbetween the hotel visits, what will I take away from Sydney?  The opera house for one; I booked myself a cheap ticket to Tosca on Saturday night and it was an absolute highlight of the trip so far.  The seat, supposedly restricted view, was great, the opera had subtitles so even a complete novice like me could understand the plot (which was fab; love, betrayal, sexual blackmail, murder - it was like Corrie with singing) and just to be in that amazing building, glass of bubbles in hand, so far away from home...was a really intoxicating feeling.

I hadn't expected Sydney to be such a mix - the predictably gleaming modernist towers of Downtown, but loads of grand Victorian buildings

and also old frontier-style frontages that remind you how recent the city's history is.

  The city is dotted with statues of men (always men, predictably) who founded a settlement, or started the wool trade, or did some other 'first'.  It made me think how little there is left for us to achieve or explore or discover.  I s'pose that's why Richard Branson's always barking on about space travel.

This is a hearty, outdoorsy city; on the weekend I couldn't understand why everywhere was so quiet - until I went to Coogee Beach and realised that was where everyone was.  Teeming with people, I put off visiting Bondi until a weekday - hoping it would be quieter.  It was - and it's a stunning beach - white sand, huge rollers

- but it did make me homesick for the undeveloped beauty of Devon's Croyde Bay - quite possibly my favourite beach in the whole of Britain.

From a travelling point of view, if I'm honest, it feels less of an adventure than my time in Asia. There's plenty to see and do in Sydney, it's an easy city to like, people are really friendly and the food is fantastic.  But I'm looking forward to saddling up my drive in NZ and heading out into some serious countryside.

Ironically, I did find a little bit of Asia in the heart of the city this morning, in the Chinese Garden. I'll leave you with a pic of it.  It really was lovely.

Letter from the other side of the world

So the two-week mark approaches.  A third of the way through already.  I've left Asia behind and now Saturday morning dawns in sunny Sydney.

 A good time to take stock, reflect and take an honest look at the whole travelling business, as promised in one of my first posts.

The first thing that needs saying is on a trip like this you have to pace yourself.   When we fell off the train at Singapore after two nights of very broken sleep we were completely knackered.  And so we spent a day pottering gently rather than whizzing round the city, and the evening watching telly on You Tube in our dressing gowns.  However much there is to see, it will all be there tomorrow. Tiredness is a real killer; it dampens down the joy of exploring and makes things feel more of an effort than they really are.

Secondly, do your research thoroughly.  This avoids the moment when you pitch up at the airport and and hear the immortal words; 'your boarding pass won't print because you don't have a visa.'  It simply never occurred to me I'd need any kind of visa for Australia.  The lesson is; never assume.  It's sheer luck that the Qantas desk was open and I could buy a a last minute visa (thirty five quid, rather than free, if I'd done it in advance).  Otherwise this would have been an extended post on the joys of Changi airport.

The whole food thing is an interesting one.  Eat the street food, everyone always tells you.  And we did - plates of rice and stir fries in hawker markets, fragrant bubbling fish on Yarowat Street in Bangkok's Chinatown.  Did we suffer for it?  A little, to be honest, but nothing serious.  But it can be a bit daunting - no-one wants to spend any of their precious time away unable to leave the bathroom.   The old advice that if you can see it being cooked, and its fresh off the flame then it will be fine - is good.  But if you're still unsure, join a locally-run food tour, which offers the reassurance that the stalls picked will be a good bet.  Or swerve it altogether if it you're not sure - travelling shouldn't be about feeling pressure to do things you don't really want to.

I guess the final lesson is - talk to people.  I'm lucky - a lot of this trip is for work, so I'm constantly having coffees and lunches with people.  Last night I had a fascinating evening, learning about how the Sydney coffee shop siege affected the city, and the love-hate relationship the Aussies have with New Zealanders.  In Singapore, talking to local workers gave an insight into what life in one of the world's most pristine cities is really like.

The girl I was chatting to last night works in tourism, and she was saying how differently people travel.  According to her, Chinese visitors tend to travel in a 'tick it off' kind of way - a picture of the Sydney Opera House is enough, on to the next thing.  For me, travel is about getting under the skin of somewhere, getting little insights into what makes a city or country tick.  Even going to the launderette - this morning's glamorous adventure - gives a little snapshot of a city going about its everyday life.

It does feel quite a thing, though, to be on the other side of the world. Coming face to face with the opera house yesterday was quite a moment; face to face with something I'd seen hundreds of times on TV and films. I've just booked a ticket for Tosca, (and will do my best not to fall asleep, as I did at the Met in New York) and can't wait to sweep up the steps (not in a street cleaner kind of way).  Here's a pic.  Happy Saturday.

Singapore in pictures

I'm not sure I've ever  been anywhere as sorely underestimated as Singapore. Bland, sterile, sanitised - it's regularly called all those things, and yet for me its a fascinating mix of futuristic business hub, colonial outpost, and an ethnic melange that means you can eat dim sum for breakfast, daal and chapati for lunch and meze for supper all within strolling distance of each other.

It's a truly crazy city; 5.5 million people squeezed into 760 square kilometres - just slightly more than twice the size of the Isle of Wight, with  85% of the population living in high rises.  Part Manhattan, part Asia, it's anything but bland.  But rather than me wittering on, better just to let the pictures do the talking.

First up, the city's spectacular $1 billion Gardens by the Bay.  They make the Eden Project look like my back garden.

Fabulous display for Chinese New Year ; 2015 is the year of the goat, thus the, er, flower clad goats...

Outside the Supertrees - 25-50 metre high vertical gardens are like something out of a sci-fi movie

and overlooking it all the mammoth 2,000 room Marina Bay Sands hotel complex.  Check out the boat-like level on top - home to a huge alfresco infinity pool, bar and restaurant - the right-hand end is the largest overhanging structure in the world.

Away from the futuristic bay area, different ethnic communities have their own areas of the city.  In Chinatown, the streets are gearing up for Chinese New Year (19th Feb)

while Little India feels like being in a completely different country

sadly I was too busy scoffing meze to take a pic in the Arab quarter.

Eating out is a huge part of Singaporean life; from hawker markets where dozens of different stalls offer ethnic food of every variety (Lau Pa Sat Below) to Blumenthalesque eateries serving up cheesecake pills and truffle polystyrene (yes, really).

And on every street corner, spilling from every building, are plants, flowers, trees, shrubs - lush greenery that softens the gleaming angles of the office buildings and apartment blocks.  It's not the polite-potted-plant version that dots English cities, but towering palms, rich clusters of banyan trees - you get the sense that if it wasn't controlled, the plants would quickly just take over the city, wrapping around buildings, draping the malls in layers of greenery.  A kind of tropical Day of the Triffids, only without everyone having to end up on the Isle of Wight.

For someone who loves gardens, flowers, plants and all forms of greenery, it's the dream city.  But check-in is calling and Sydney beckons.  Just time to add a last picture; of Singapore's national flower, the orchid.  Beautiful.

The Bridge on the River Mae Klong

As a little adjunct to yesterday's blog on the train, here is something I wrote on the first day of our rail journey, after we had visited the infamous Bridge on the River Kwai (actually incorrectly named, the bridge is on the river Mae Klong).  It didn't seem right to include the dreadful history of the Thai Burma railroad in all the jollyness of the previous blog, but it was also such a moving, place to visit that I didn't want to not write about it.  So here's how it felt...

It's been a sobering morning (Saturday).  The picture above is of the Bridge on the River Mae Klong - made famous by Alec Guinness and William Holden in the well-known film  Bridge on the River Kwai.  Different river, in reality.  Different just about everything else too.

This morning's visit to Kanchanaburi was the first stop on my E&O train journey from Bangkok to Singapore.  It was early when we reached the bridge; off the train at 8.30 am, thankfully before the tourist coaches arrive (and they surely do, there is a huge number of restaurants around the riverside).  For those whose knowledge of  Asian Second World War history is as scanty as mine was, the Thai-Burma railroad was built by POWs to enable Japan to get military supplies and forces into Burma without having to go round Singapore and the Malacca Straits, where their ships kept getting sunk.  Under truly hideous conditions, thousands of Brit and American POWs - and even more conscripted Malay, Burmese and Indians - were forced to build the railroad.  The conditions were unthinkable; tens of thousands died.

It's always odd visiting somewhere that has been a scene of real suffering, and yet gradually morphed into a tourist attraction.  I felt it most recently in Mostar, Bosnia, where the rebuilt streets teem with hordes of cruise trippers, browsing the tourist-tat stands that line the cobbled streets.  In Kanchanaburi, the silent bridge straddles the slow-flowing river, with just the odd boat drifting quietly along on the water.  A monument in itself, flanked by an ornate temple on the far side of the river, and a clutch of ramshackle tourist shops and the waterfront restaurants on the other.

At first it feels hard to comprehend the hardship that took place in these tranquil, beautiful surroundings.  A trip to the Death Railway Museum, clearly a life's work for its creator - made it easier to imagine; a careful, detailed analysis and explanation of life for those who built the railroad, and their captors.  It made me think, not for the first time, of the sheer unbreakable will that somehow motivates people to keep on going, even in the most unimaginable conditions. 

The visit ended with a visit to the war cemetery; neat lines of polished stones, each marking a life that ended thousands of miles from home in the blistering heat of the bewildering Thai jungle.  I read a few of the headstones, but I had to stop.  Too many lives lost, too many people hurt, bereaved and damaged.  Nothing more to say.

Murder on the E&O Express

Was it the champagne-guzzling ex-pat couple from Hong Kong;  loud, and overly-pleased with themselves?  The cute Hawaiian couple, all ex-Californian charm and wide smiles?  Or was it the neat German husband and wife, hiding a writhing hostility behind their smiley chattyness?  At 3am this morning, it would have been me who committed murder, as the train bounced and lurched and groaned on Thai tracks that probably hadn't seen any works since the day we were laid.  I clung to the upper bunk and wished fervently I hadn't drunk so much water with dinner; a scramble down my four-rung ladder to our tiny ensuite was challenging enough when the cabin was lit, let along in the pitch dark with the train likely to leap the tracks at any moment.

Come the morning, all was forgiven.  You can't stay cross in surroundings like this for long.  The E&O train is the glitzed-up offspring of the Orient Express - only twenty years old, all gleaming wood and black ties at dinner, plying its route from Bangkok to Singapore and back again.  Three nights to make it the 1,830 kms through rural Thailand,

 the highlands of Malaysia and the traffic-studded entry to Singapore...without an ounce of wi-fi on the way (thus no blog post until now).

I love train travel, and as someone who's done their time sweating the unpredictable vagaries of Southern Rail - a touch of luxury feels due.  Ironic, really, as it's just like cruising on rails - dressing for dinner, early-morning excursions, the same affluent, post-kids-we're-retired-so-why-not-spend-the-inheritance-ha-ha crowd that you find on the more highfalutin' cruise ships.  And yet while a week on a cruise would probably drive me insane, train travel is...somehow glamorous.  I indulge in my own private fantasy that Cary Grant will swing by and flirt a little, as he did with Eva Marie Saint in the Hitchcock classic, North by Northwest.  On the E&O the brushed velvet sofas and antique table lamps of the bar car hit the spot, particularly with the delightful Peter spinning jazz classics out of the piano, reminding me of my Dad, singing in a voice that was half Satchmo, half Animal from the Muppets.

And all the while, outside, another world is whizzing past.  On the way out of Bangkok the tracks ran past serious squalor; long-limbed kids in bright cotton frocks waving frantically, surrounded by piles of clothes, car parts, rubbish, bins, food containers and house walls of corrugated iron that were slowly falling down.  How do you not feel awkward, gliding past in a train that's redolent of wealth ? I guess all you can do is put some of your money into the local economy and make sure that it doesn't ALL go to international hotel companies and luxury providers. 

What's striking, is how markedly different rural Thailand is from Malaysia.  We went to bed in a third world country and woke up in a first; ramshackle villages replaced by neat housing estates with tarmac roads holding gleaming cars rather than beaten-up scooters with entire families balanced precariously on top.  In a way, I suppose, Malaysia is like the halfway house between Bangkok and Singapore; more moneyed but not entirely sanitised.

The surprise hit was the couple of hours we had in Penang; an island smorgasbord of races and
culture, with the raffish charm that clings to port cities,  where one street held a spectacular Chinese temple,

gleaming mosque and CofE church, and the air was filled with mingling scents; Indian street food, burning incense, bitter coffee. 

 And on every corner, ornate monuments to its colonial past; so different to Thailand, which somehow escaped the likes of Stamford Raffles and Frances Light and their messianic belief in the need to cloak Asian cultures in British bureaucracy.  Back on the train we swept through vertiginous hills blurred bluish in the hazy dusk, neat-roofed villages clustered at their feet.

After another night of clinging onto my upper bunk while the train rattled and rolled, its something of a culture shock to find myself among the towering skyline of Singapore. Looking back, it's the beauty of Thailand and Malaysia that lingers; great swathes of palm trees backlit by hazy blue skies, pea-green paddy fields dotted with scarecrows and latticed with slim, quiet roads, empty save for the odd scooter puttering along.  It was a real adventure.  And now it's time to get some sleep.

The Chaotic Charms of Chinatown

Piles of egg fried rice.  Check. Prawns in mouth-blasting chilli. Check. Fresh greens in enough garlic to put off Dracula.  Check. Crispy fish in hot and sour sauce, bubbling above a small flame.  Check. Oh and crispy shrimp cakes and bowls of steamed rice we ordered before we got food envy for the table next door and had to order the egg fried.  Dinner in Chinatown, with fuschia taxis, jade-green tuk-tuks and bright orange buses - neat lines of heads framed by the open windows - all rushing past, is not for the faint-hearted.

If Bangkok is hectic, Chinatown is...hmm, I'm actually kind of lost for words.  If this was a movie trailer it would be something like; in the land beyond frenetic, only the nimble-footed survive.  Or at least that's how it was during our first visit of the day, when we whizzed down on the MRT after breakfast, stopping off at another blingily-beautiful temple before heading into the madness.

What's interesting about Chinatown is how incredibly untouristy it is.  Walking up the main street, Yaowarat Road,  was a bit like an over-heated steeplechase; piles of rubble here, stalls selling New Year decorations there, lines of cream-faced ladies undergoing mang ming -  hair whisked from their faces with thin lines of cotton. Down dimly lit sois, or alleyways, grey-haired ladies bent their faces into steaming vats of soup and dim sum, scooters disappeared into the gloom, scarlet paper chains hung limply off grimy walls.  And instead of the usual gaggles of tourists you see in other Chinatowns around the world, it felt like we were the only farangs around.

Keen to get off the main drag we escaped east and found ourselves in Kampang market - a vast Chinese souk, where a thin stream of bodies wove between stalls and shops jampacked together, a mind-boggling array of shoes, bags, jewellery, kitchenware, stationery, anything, everything, and more of it than you could possibly ever need.  Every so often a side alley would cross the main artery and the human traffic would slow, while scooters and delivery carts growled at each other, negotiating for space.  I feared for my toes, constantly.  And of course somehow, squeezed inbetween the shops were more food stalls; battered pans and make-shift fryers serving up steaming broths and noodles, slurped down by the footsore and the bag-laden..

We'd been told that Yaowarat Road really came alive at night, so we headed back for dinner, to find the street ablaze with bulb-lit food carts and makeshift trestle tables set up for restaurants that really put the pop into pop-up.  We settled into Lek and Rut Seafood, where table-clearing consisted of scraping the remains of the previous diners' meal into a bucket beside our feet - and ate like kings.  Or queens.  Or like two slightly over-excited girls.  Which was exactly what we were.