recessionsession

Philippines

2009-10-20T04:51:00.059+01:00

Im now 6 months behind updating my blog! Its the eazy breezy ozzie life i have to blame really settling in well here!

So now back to the travels!!! My plan to meet Dave in Manila nearly didn't happen due to a massive Typhoon hitting the city. The airport was closed the day before we were to arrive but what could we do but just wait and see. We eventually both made it to Manila and met up a few hours later at a dingy yet quite expensive hotel in the center with an exceptionally hideous 'vomity' yellow colour painted walls.

I was aware that having been in Asia for almost a year at this stage i was pretty used to the daily maddness of rickshaw drivers, and smelly markets, people calling you to buy stuff all the time, rubbish and general maddness that i kept forgetting that this was all new to Dave and he would be having some culture shock similiar to my 1st few days in India!

Manilla was not the prettiest of cities, very grey, dull, deralict looking buildings and bridges, heavy traffic and due to the typhoon many people were even more homeless than before trying to salvage any rubbish so they could to make some sort of shelter before the next typhoon was to hit in two days time. Jesus my heart really went out to them. The roads were knee to waist height in dark, sludgy water in places.....one time i stepped into a puddle and ended up hip-height in dirty water! I was both laughing and shocked at the same time people just carrying on with their work not noticing a helpless foreigner has fallen into a big hole!

Anyway we found it hard to explore Manilla with the constant torrential rain, we had planned to spend time in the beautiful mountains in the north but the roads had been destroyed by a landslide so we had to cancel that. The poor folks in Manilla were having a food crisis as deliveries of fruit and veg from up north couldnt get past the landslide and prices of food had soared. We found a cheap flight to a more southern island where the weather we hoped would be better and in less than an hour we landed in Dumaguate domestic airport.

This was the cutest little airport i ever saw, the plane landed just a few metres short of the sea and all around were beautiful mountains and a clear blue sky! Oh how lovely after Manila!

We had a very sweaty little room that night but it didnt matter too much as we were heading off the next day to a picture perfect place called Sugar Beach via a village called Sipilay. Dumaguete was a great little town, very friendly and it had a shop for just about everything you could need not to mention brilliant fruit markets....i was craving vitimans!!

We had a delicious super cheap meal from a street food place, stuffed ourselves with fresh fruit and sat back to watch some concert that was being preformed with super-talented kids dancing and singing..although the focus turned to us two foreigners sitting on the grass!

There didnt seem to be anything like pubs here, the people sit at plastic garden furniture tables and chairs outside the little shops that sell alcohol. We spent that evening drinking beer with a mad indian man. The beer is so strong 9% i think....god bless the Red horse beer!

The next day a very long journey to Sipalay (with red horse beer hangover...nasty). I'm definately a public transport girl (in asia anyway!) and was well used to bum numbing, squashed, sweaty journeys but it think this one almost pushed Dave over the edge of sanity. The roads were shocking, fair play to the bus driver this was really hard-core dirt track driving!

Sipalay was definately not a touristy spot. It seemed like every one of the 100 or so people living there stopped what they were doing to have a look at us! Poor Dave again was panicking a bit but after a day or two here and plenty of Red horse drinking with the locals he was really starting to get into it!

brum brum!!

We attracted a big crowd of boys (and lady boys) one evening while sitting on the beach. They loved to chat. I loved to look at how pretty the lady boys were with their manicured long nails, and perfect eyebrows. Its a funny but cool culture to be able to express themselves so freely. I'm not sure if Dave was loving the ladyboys as much as me (they really took a shine to him)! This was also the beginning of being called Mam-Sir (one word!). This is the most polite way to address a man and woman everyone in the town called us mamsir!

Beautiful sunset on Sipilay beach

Next morning we were woken up by really load hip-hop music! There was some sort of concert that lasted the whole day. I loved it! We had a little bounce in our step all day, had breakfast to Beyonce and dinner to..well.. Beyonce! So funny i cant imagine this being allowed in Ireland!!

We went for a long walk one day through the little surrounding villages, the sound of the crickets was almost deafening! Very jungly feel to the place and extremly humid. Lots of friendly smiley faces.

It was time for our daily fix of Red horse so we stopped in a little bamboo hut bar and my god just in time as within 5 minutes of sitting down a crazy storm erupted. The guys had to pull down big plastic sheets over the little bamboo bar. The place shook and rain dripped down onto our table. The owner put on a really stupid but funny movie so we chilled out with about 10 locals trapped in this little cosy bar with well....very cheap Red horse so no complaints!

Next morning there was ANOTHER concert this one was to celebrate 'old people's day'.

There seemed to always be some sort of band or concert wherever we went here. We even saw a bus go past with a full brass band inside banging their drums and playing away on the trumpet how funny!! We had learnt some of local lingo used only in this area from the ladyboys on the beach so we surprised the old people by greeting them in their local lingo! It was so sweet to see the massive smiles on their faces!

The rain was getting heavier but we thought we'd head on to Sugar beach anyway maybe it would clear up and i had seen such beautiful pictures of the place...sugary white sand, turquise blue water etc!! Well this is once you don't go during typhoon season!! The sand was more like brown sugar and the sea like a cup of tea! Anyway we found a cosy little bamboo hut in a lovely garden set back a little bit from the sea.

This place had just the BEST restaurant!The food was so delicious (and did i mention they had Red horse beer??) the weather started getting really bad so we just kicked back and chilled out!

Not far off irish summertime weather....

After a day or two we played every board and card game to death so we decided to go for a walk. I put my camera in a bag and off we went!

The sea was churned up like frothy tea, big branches and chunks of trees floating about. You know its great when you have no worries, nothing to keep dry, no shoes etc you can just jump in the puddles and mud like a kid and its brilliant!!

not a very 'sugary beach'

We wandered around little farm houses and ran through rice fields with the water up to our thighs! Some kids took us on a little adventure to caves you would never have imagined could be hidden behind the trees. They were only about 5 years old running about with big knives to cut open coconuts! just picture 5 little kids running towards us with machetes!

And soooo good to have a warm shower and a hot chocolate in our cosy guesthouse after that! There is no doubt that Typhoon season on this beach is the best time to visit!

Cute little geckos in the bamboo hut...

And huge ones also!!

After the typhoon we decided to make a move...

The beach was a mess after but the locals said its great because they use all this wood to make a big fire for New years eve so this saves them having to collect it! Now thats good positive thinking!

Eh yeah...thats the road not a river....i had the worst dead leg ever during this squashy, bumpy trip ill never forget trying to get the blood flowing back into it!

Very long journey back to Dumaguete and my god how did we manage to have a hangover again for it!! Next we caught a boat to the island of Bohol not too far away.

The local transport are 'jeepneys', old army trucks used as public transport very very cheap but you have to wait until the thing is completly full...i think we waited about 2 hours! Dave almost wanted to murder this guy that for the entire two hours tried to sell us sunglasses. This thing is pretty dangerous on the road though the guy drives it as fast as he possibly can!

We hopped out (well due to being so squashed we more kind of squeezed out like you might squeeze a splinter out) and had a bit of a walk and a descent of about 200 steps to get to a guesthouse that was totally worth it! For anyone in Bohol its called Nuts Huts. It was a row of darkwood huts on stilts, in a garden full of pink flowers and baby goats?! with a green river flowing past all in kind of a jungly setting...ahhhhhh heaven!!!

Geckos drinking Dave's coke

The owners were all into healthy living (hence the steps!) the food was all organic and healthy delicious stuff, they encouraged swimming in the river and they even had coconut food massagers!

You walk barefoot on these upside-down coconuts, quite painful actually.

Good weather also woo-hoo!!

We rented a motorbike and took off around the island. I was totally in awe. Lovely old churches all over the place.

We visited a centre that has some endangered little Tarsiers...cute but alien-like little fellows.

We discovered beautiful lagoons and waterfalls. Water so clean and clear and a crazy turquise colour i never saw anything like this before.

Gorgeous green lagoon

LOOK at that water wow wow!!! Dont you just want to jump in right now!!

What a refreshing swim. We were dry in about 5 minutes and saved me having to wash my clothes!...ah the joys of being a smelly backpacker!!

We visited the 'chocolate hills' ..chocolate?? lets go!

They are unexplained mounds of land thought to be mounds of coral from when the sea covered the area and in the dry season they turn brown and look like hersheys chocolate drops....What...no real chocolate??? damn conned again!

Another day on the bike we took a wrong turn, drove for ages and ended up in remote villages that i'm sure haven't seen many white folks! They kind of just ran away or stared when we started asking around trying to find petrol! These guys live a really simply life they were so far away from any kind of sealed road or town! It was so so hot and the roads were really bad i had to get off the bike and walk the last little bit i couldn't take the pain anymore!!

Unfortunately time was running out and we really wanted to do our diving course so having found a place that was hopefully typhoon free off we went to the island of Cebu!

We caught a boat down the green river beside our guesthouse to the main road. This guy rowing the boat was so lovely!

Our boat arrived in Cebu, the Philippines 2nd largest city. Again there was really heavy rain we were not holding much hope of being able to do our diving course. We had a bite to eat then another long and fairly uncomfortable bus journey to Moalboal and something new for me in Asia..there was a BAT on the bus!!It was flying about, big shiny eyes, everybody screaming trying to get it away....ahhh asia is brilliant!

We were in luck the weather cleared up!!! We found a very funny, chilled-out German man who was our scuba-diving instructor. Many many German men with young Philippino wives here...it was a bit strange to get used to. But not as hard to get used to as our instructors extremly tiny SPEEDOS!! (or as i have learnt in Oz they call them budgie smugglers he he!!) Oh good god with the beer belly hanging out over he just breezed about the place as if...he wasnt wearing the worlds smallest speedos!! i burst out into uncontrollable laughter and tried to cover myself with slapping Dave on the shoulder saying 'oh that joke was so funny!!!'...Dave and instructor just looking at me puzzled! Ah dear...speedos....enough said!

Anyway this guy was an excellent teacher, very chilled-out man that we had a few beers with after each evening and we soon had the hang of the whole diving thing. It was much easier than i thought it would be and much more amazing under the water than i could have imagined!!

Beautiful coral and fish , the water was so clean and clear. Oh i loved it.

Between diving we rented a motorbike again and drove around the surrounding area we found some more nice waterfalls that i had to jump in to. Very cold water compared to the sea.

Really now..look at that water amazing stuff so beautiful...

We climbed a little mountain too thanks to our 'guides'... locals that insisted on coming with us. Nice view and nice to have a little climb since we couldnt make the mountains up north.

We relaxed on 'white beach' on our last evening before heading back to Manila. We ate a big bag of mango's 80c for a kilo....yum.

Dave hated these little girls as they always convinced him to buy a necklace from them! So hard to resist!

So that was Philippines....goodbye to Dave...

And goodbye to Asia for now...next stop...Oz!

Indonesia Java & bali

2009-09-30T08:44:00.038+01:00

Well i think its about time i updated this thing! I am in Australia at the moment getting re-acquainted with the western world (and western prices boo!!!)

So i decided again (because my life is so hard right now!) that i deserved some chill-out time at a tropical beach...ie Bali! But of course going by land is the most interesting way! I stopped for a night in the city of Bandung and i will never forget this place as i had the most comfortable bed EVER!!! Wow i just sunk into its cosyness as it melted away all the pain from my achy post-mountain climbing muscles! I actually stayed another night or two in Bandung just to sleep in the bed again!

There was something here that was so unusual to the other asian cities....the beggers and homeless people just kind of got on with their life, i didnt get asked once for money even when i said 'hallo' to them. Oh this was brilliant, i decided that the people here deserved some money for not harassing me so i went around like a little fairy giving out a few pence here and there....probably about E5 in total but so much to these folks.

One homeless family, there was the grandmother minding a baby and the mother trying to dry their clothes by hanging them on a bush, and all of their belongings in a little bundle on the ground. I walked past them and said 'hallo' and the lady gave me a tired smile and well i decided they were going to get the star prize of 20,000 rupies!!! (....thats about E1.50) they were so grateful and happy about this it made me super happy! What a good day that was! I also bought myself an indonesian-english dictionary as i had learnt the basics in the mountains in Sumatra i was dying to say some new words!

So enough of the citylife, i hopped on a bus to a place called the Dieng Plateau. I had great craic chatting to everyone on the bus using my dictionary! It was a long, long journey though, after about 14 hours i just had to hop on one small bus that looked a bit like a rocket to get to the village i was going to. This man came over to sit beside me and started asking me in a Barry White kind of voice ....'do you like to make luuuuurve?' , so i said 'Yes with my HUSBUND'. Oh jaysus this didn't deter him in the slightest, he was singing to me and asking would i like to make luuuurve with him for the whole damn journey. It was funny to a point, he asked me was i scared of him, i took out my dictionary and explained no im not scared, just bored of him. This was a little more effective.

Anyway this place was feckin brilliant!! The whole plateau is filled with volcanos and hot springs and beautiful lakes....ahhhh i was in heaven! It was also quite chilly which was a welcome relief from the last few months of hot and humidness. It was lashing rain when i arrived so i threw my bags into the only guesthouse and i decided that i would just think about the state of the place later! Off i went for a little walk.

Chickens trying to shelter from the rain

I found some nice temples almost hidden in the mist that was covering the plateau, it gave the place a really eery, mystical feel. This place was also full of the funny, mad people i have found to live in mountain areas in asia. One woman with the worst sun/wind burnt lips i've ever seen kept grabbing me by the arm and kissing my cheeks EVERYTIME i walked past, thanks to the ole dictionary i was able to chat away to this woman and she loved that i had sunburnt lips too!

Misty temples

It was so strange...this place really reminded me of Dharmasala...a lovely place in the mountains in North India then i came across this......co-incidence or what!

This area was just covered in these gorgeous trumpet flowers, they smell so fresh and sweet and the smell just fills the air.....ahhh nature is great!! The locals also informed me about its psychadelic seeds and how many locals have gone a bit mad (madder?) from it.

This temple is right opposite my guesthouse and as it is still Ramadan in Indonesia there was chanting going on here 24 hours a day. There was this one chant that went from 8-9.30pm just one man singing, without a break it was amazing and it put me into a deep sleep everynight!

Just for the craic i put my scarf around my head like the muslim headscarf and everyone was so interested to know if i was really a muslim?? Great folks in this little village a very, very friendly place and just a little bit mad....exactly how i like it!

Later that day i walked to a volcano crater....now tons of steam was pumping out of it so i wasn't sure how close i could safely go...was there lava inside or what!? Oh i just had to find out....well i decided in the end it was better to live than find out as when i got close it was actually a bit frightening, an extremely load boiling sound, and steam blowing all over the place, and the strange feeling you might just 'fall-in' if you go too close! Anyway here's a pic to give you an idea of it!

The other super-amazing thing i saw in this area was the 'colour lake'. So because there is so much sulphur around here from the volcanos lots of it seeps into the lake making it a bright turquoise.

This lake also had bubbles coming up all over the place!

The highlight of my trip to this village was to see the sunrise view, across the mysterious plateau to the volcanos. This required a 4am start, a friendly local fellow assured me 'oh no not too misty!' so off we went.

Now before you get excited this is what it SHOULD have looked like....

For me unfortunately it was a little on the misty side....i could barely see the end of my arm for gods sake!! Anyway he promised to bring me up again the next day, possibly better view

The forest all around the place was sooo cool though! Very mystical

After this he brought me to the hot springs!!! Well i became addicted to hot springs in a little village in India called Vashist (which i stayed for a month just because of them!!) so i was very excited about this. Also the cold, dampness of Dieng was starting to get to me, i had no proper warm clothes and i after a few days i was feeling the cold in my bones!

The hot-spring was just bang in the middle of the mountains, oh it was SO SO good to soak in here just listening to the birds. I felt so clean after....but one problem i stunk of sulphur oh noooo! This was terrible. I was avoiding the ice-cold shower in my guesthouse but eventually had to grit my teeth and just get on with it....brrrrr!!!

The next morning i was up again at 4am to check out the amazing promised sunrise..............

Well here we have a little bit more success that yesterday if you look very closely you will see a tiny white dot and this was the sun. He offered to go next day again at 4am but i think i was happy enough not to try again!

The end of Ramadan - Idul fitri, was coming and this is the major event of the year for Muslims...think xmas & new year combined so i thought it was best to get to a city for a few days as i had enough of starving during the day (no food allowed during ramadan until sunset) i didnt want to risk not being able to get food over the celebrations as many folks celebrate this at home with their family.

I headed to the city of Jogjakarta. After getting up the last 2 days to see the sunrise on my first morning there i woke at 4.30am so i went for a little wander. It was so calm and peaceful and you realise what long days the streetfood guys have, starting work by 4.30am and you can still find them at 11pm. By 10am though the place was manic! Crowds of indonesians come to this town to celebrate Idul Fitri so the the place was pretty buzzing with every type of market you can imagine.

I moved into to Jaya's house for a few days. A nice couchsurfer guy who was from Borneo but lives now in Jogjakarta with his two supercute, happy dogs! Its great to meet someone who loves dogs as much as me especially in a muslim country where dogs i have been told are seen as dirty so there are not many around. Jaya was a supercool guy who managed Indonesias most famous band! His house was a haven of peaceful music and happy dogs. We rode around the city late at night on his 1970's scooter, he brought me to the most delicious indonesian restaurant and we chatted for hours and hours about funny travel stories....this guy has inspired me a lot for my future adventures!

Since i was in the area I visited the famous Borobudur temples, that everyone raved about. Indeed they were a nice set of temples but i realise now after all the travels im all temples-out...no more for a while!!!

Here is Buddha having a look over the plains

Some wasps living at the temple

Busking on the bus!

Some cool grafitti around Jogjakarta

My visa was running out only 6 days left time to go to Bali!! Coming up to almost a year in asia im certainly a hardeded woman when it comes to asian public transport but this was the WORST train journey of my entire travels...19 hours in a sweaty oven where there wasnt even room to make your way to the toilet! I felt very sorry for myself. I kind of went into a sweaty, dehydrated, hungry, tired trance where i stared out the window and switched off my mind even to the pins and needles in my legs from not having any space. Nice sunset though.....thats a very active volcano in the distance.

At first i didnt like Bali too much! I settled for a day or two at Lovina beach on the north of the island. Most of the people here come to Bali for a nice 3 week holiday where they pamper themselves and spend, spend spend! For me right now i was on a very tight budget and after almost a year in asia im so used to the silly stories locals use to get toursits to pay stupid prices that i didnt feel Bali was for me. I think i had become a bit too hardened by all this tough travel!

Lovina beach was a bit of a dump, sewage pouring into the sea beside the guesthouses...

However i walked a few km along the beach and did find some much nicer spots with black sand. I was so proud of myself to be able to speak a bit of indonesian as instead of shooing away the ladies selling stuff on the beach i was like 'come here til i practice my indonesian on ya!'. The ladies were so sweet giving me free fruit while telling me all about their lives. I love this.

Nice Lovina beach sunset.

I decided that even though my budget is supertight i could definately afford to splash on a luxurious place for a night and so i did!! I headed inland to the town of Ubud...supposedly a big spiritual, crystal hugging, hippy spot! A tiny balanese woman picked me up on her motorbike and she drove recklessly (pretty tame by indonesian standards!) to the hotel. Ohhh it was paradise indeed!! My room smelt of fresh flowers and opened onto a pool, surrounded by a garden filled with chirping birds and hindu god statues. I could easily get used to this!

Ubud was a nice spot, pretty much a tourist town. I did a very intensive yoga class and couldnt walk for a day or two after, i walked around a lot, and generally just chilled out in nice cafe's chatting about yoga and mediataion before retiring to my humble abode!

My last stop in Bali was Nusa Lembongan a nice island away from all the maddness! It was a really lovely chilled out place that i could certainly have spent more time in. Just along the beach were about 10 guesthouse and behind this were many many little bamboo huts where the locals lived. This place was famous for its sea-weed and there were huge bundles of the stuff all over the place drying out in the sun. One evening i got chatting to a local woman who took me into her little bamboo house to show me her baby and the room was stacked high with seaweed while the little baby hung from the cieling in a crib.

I hung around with Scott an american photographer who lived in Mumbai. We chatted all about funny, great Incredible India.

Here Scott and I compare our cameras!

Nice sunset on mushroom beach

One morning as i was having my brekkie i got chatting to a friendly surfer guy from the states who had been on the island for 6 months!! He was heading to a little secret beach later that day so a bunch of us rented scooters and off we went. We spent the day snorkelling then chilling out on the beach all to ourselves!

He told me a few weeks ago there were huge waves that washed all the sand away.

Sunset on the island.

Last but not least...the indonesians are crazy about cock fighting. Its their national sport and the locals are very proud of their fightin hens. I was wondering one day why a guy was washing his hen in a bucket of water, gently cleaning his face and feet! He was getting it ready for a big fight!

Some roosters here ready to fight!

These men are chatting about the upcoming match between their prize roosters. The insisted i hold one, very strong birds i have to say!

Woah look at this fellow! I would be scared of him if i was another rooster....

Anyway it has been over 2 months since ive been in Bali so this is about all i can remember! Time now to head to Philippines to meet Dave my wonderful friend from ireland......... I will have to come back to Indonesia again.

Indonesia- Sumatra

2009-09-07T10:46:00.041+01:00

Im really enjoying this travelling business! REALLY VERY MUCH!!

On the road now almost a year!!Time flies!...indonesia is the 21st country of this trip!

Indonesia first impressions are certainly of a country a little more edgy than civilised Malaysia! After the boat journey from Melaka, Malaysia to Dumai, Indonesia we bundled into a mini-bus for the 10 hour journey across the country. There was a lovely irish girl on the bus and we chatted for the whole 10 hours without a break! We both admitted that it was excellent to chat in our own lingo without having to worry about being misunderstood. She was from Cork and i had picked up a raging cork accent by the end of the 10 hours!

The road was so bad in places there was actually a truck that fell into a pothole and was stuck!! Many times we stopped for a minute and the driver handed out money to people at the side of the road who seemed to either work repairing the road, people who put bundles of rubble on the road to make you stop or just beggars with nothing to do with road repairs standing there with open hands. At one stage in the middle of the night we were stopped by a group of boys with headscarves on covering all but their eyes looking in at us!! Jeesus i was a bit worried!! The driver gave one boy money they argued a bit, he gave him a bit more money, then eventually we were let continue....phew!

Its very exciting waking up the morning after arriving at a place in the dark....i had no idea what was out there!! It turned out to be a lovely little mountain town on the very west on Sumatra. It was nice to be a little bit chilly at night....arctic temperatures of late twenties! Chilled out in this town for a day or two with the lovely Irish girl Rae and also the excellent Sam who i met in Melaka the day before leaving Malaysia.

Rae is a teacher for deaf people and at one street food place we went to she noticed that one of the little fellows working there was deaf and it was amazing how easily she communicated with him, he was so delighted that someone could communicate with him properly, and Rae was quite upset to see that he never learnt sign language, he just communicated how i do in some situations with actions and pictures often not getting the point across.

It was possibly the first time he came across a digital camera and had great fun taking pictures of everyone and everything. It was a few days later while he was playing with my camera that he managed to press the 'delete ALL' button. I managed to grab it off him just as it said..'deleating 95%....96%....97%....' ahhhh i almost cried....every picture since i arrived in Bangkok in May gone and sure i could hardly strangle the little fellow he had no idea what he did. Anyway sure i cant take them with me when i die....... im more over this than the dog stealing my good shoes in Dharmsala, India!!

Local characters...

Bukkitinggi, a very eclectic town, everyone just builds what they want whatever style they think of...very nice!

Just off Bukkitinggi (which means tall-tinggi, hill-bukkit) there is a lovely canyon and foresty jungle surrounding it. Of course i had to explore this!!

All through the canyon there are miles and miles of caves built by the japanese during WWII. Not very interesting tunnles but nice and cool!

As i was heading into the canyon a friendly local fellow decided he was going to accompany me, and he turned out to be the best free guide ever! His grandfather lived most of his life in the canyon and taught this guy all about herbal remidies from plants and whats edible in the forest. I really love all this stuff and every 5 minutes he was pulling something off a tree or out of the ground for me to smell. He gave me a flower to chew that made my whole mouth numb...it is used for toothache....i do prefere the more irish method of a few whiskeys!

This is a friendly bark-eating beetle its the male that has the...eh hem...horn

Such a great day walking for hours, there are plants that when you touch them the leaves fold up like a manuscript and in one place when he started whistling the sky became full of hundreds of bats!!

We took a little break when we reached the top of the valley. There were some very curious water buffalo about that came to have a look at me! I explained to the guy that this is what its like a lot of the time being a foreigner, he found this quite funny! Its very true though especially here in indonesia and in india...cant sit down for 1 minute without having an audience! (see Jaipur blog entry!)

After a few minutes they got bored and headed back to more important things like eating grass and well....eating more grass!

View from the top of the canyon.

After Bukkitingi i caught a bus to Mananjau where a beautiful lake had formed inside a volcano crator. Amazing that millions of years ago this was a big volcano spewing out lava!

I had a feeling i missed Mananjau village but thought i'd just wait and see what happens! I was completly right, i had passed the village by about 10 miles. I hopped off the bus in the middle of beautiful nowhere and wondered what to do! I decided i just start walking the direction of Mananjau and im sure somebody will give me a lift.

A man sitting at his porch started shouting 'Hey where you going!!' mmmm what to answer.....im walking to Mananjau 10 miles away?? This guy had excellent English and it turned out he was the chief of the village and i ended up staying with him, his wife and son for a few days. This chief guy was so cool, he had such random knowledgable facts and knew more about Irelands history than i did! He reckoned i must have spent about 10 million dollars on my trip so far....mmm Im not sure my bank would be so generous!!

As it is Ramadan (the month where muslims fast during sunlight hours) there is no food available during the day. This can be a total pain in the ass but the chief was not taking part in this, he informed me the gods will be angry but he cant be bothered fasting! I was well fed! He also didnt like hot rice so would stand for about 20 minutes with his plate infront of the fan to cool it down..funny man.

One day while walking in the area i met a friendly local girl called Joana that invited me back to her house for tea. She had about 5 words of English but with great enthuasiam to learn and we got on very well with the help of a dictionary! She invited me to stay so i moved from the chiefs house to hers for another few days!

Had an excellent time there with her and her husbund Mr chon, such lovely people. She lived in a really basic wooden house, cooked over a fire out the back and the toilet...well this was so funny! It was in a little wooden shed that was built over 'fish swimming pool' as she called it. So you squat down over the hole in the floor and ohmygod loads of fish practically jumping out of the water to get 1st orders! Their big mouths wide open, sticking out of the water...so when you finally did 'feed the fish' they go mental splashing and thrashing about in the water until there is no trace left! I loved this! I miss the fish swimming pool...

I caused a big stirr in the village that there was a 'christian' in town!! Well i didnt want to go down the path of explaining athiesm! I assured them that i like muslims and i have a very good muslim friend at home....they thought i ment i want to be a muslim...which is fine also whatever makes them happy!

It was great to have Joana as a translater for me...as we walked around where she lived the locals were asking all about me, most importantly am i married (yes) where is my husbund (working in Jakarta) religion (christian) children (no but soon) give them money? (no). Everybody asks these same questions and soon i was able to pick up the words to answer myself which resulted in big hugs and sloppy kisses on my cheeks from the locals!!

The locals also have no idea about banks or ATM's so they presumed i have all my money with me (10 million dollars!) they asked was my bag...ie backpack full of money!.....i wish!!!

This lake is so beautiful imagine 360 degrees of mountain with fluffy clouds resting on the top, a sparkling blue lake in the middle and the land all around was rice fields with a few little houses. The water was almost too warm to swim in!

I learnt a lot of Indonesian with Joana and it was the best thing i ever did! Its an extremly easy language to pick up the basics for example verbs dont have tenses and me, i, mine etc is the same word also...so for i went, i go, i will go....Saya pergi...all the same....excellent!

The first evening, to make sure i was comfortable, Joana insisted i wear the local womans dress, it was indeed very comfy. We went to visit her husbunds mother such a tiny cute little lady about 100 years old, sitting on a bed, just a little wrinkly face popping out from layers and layers of white headscarf material. She wondered how much money i was going to give her. Its tough not to take offence at this...they believe all westeners = millionares and probably always asked any westerner they saw for money. Joana was mortified and was worried i thought she wanted money also. The old lady took no offence when i said no and continued grabbing my arm and squeezing my cheeks as 100 year old ladies like to do!

After a day or two here it was time to move on, i was sad to leave 'hotel Joana' no way to keep in touch...no email, phone or address for post! I took a few pictures of Joana in my rainbow dress and some of the two together and printed them out for her to keep.

This was so different to couchsurfing as the people i stay with from couchsurfing are at least clued in on modern things like internet....joana and chon live a very simple life and although we were the same in many ways also so very very different!

I headed back to Bukkitinggi that night to be ready to climb mount Merpai in the morning with Sam that i came with from Malaysia, and a friend of a friend...Arius. Had terribly little sleep that night due to sitting in an internet cafe for hours trying unsuccessfully to restore my pictures and running around trying to find some food for the next day as yes thanks to Ramadan there was no chance of getting breakfast!

Here we are full of energy and ready to go! Merapi is an active volcano about 2850 metres high....ive never really climbed a big mountain before was hoping i would be able for it!

I LOVED IT! It was very much like all the trekking ive done myself in forests over the last few months.

The first few hours was pretty straight forward climbing up steps made from roots while listening to monkeys going crazy!

Fair play to Sam such a sence of adventure and persistance and excellent to chat to someone about the joys of eating fruit and feeling healthy!

Now and then we had to crawl through little tunnles...

A few hours later the climbing got a little harder, roots turned into mossy rock made from a previous lava flow.

After about half an hour of this we were eventually near the top hurrah!! Mossy rocks turned into loose rocks.

Quite a view!

And after about half an hour of scrambling over loose rocks i finally reach the top wooohooo!!!

I had to stop myself looking down! Without the cover of the forest it felt like i might 'fall off' the mountain if i didnt hold on!

Unfortunatey Sam and Arius didnt make it right up to the top so i was up there on my own, complete silence just the sound of my breath and the rocks moving when i walked. Really eery! I clambered along on hands and feet looking for the crater that was up here somewhere! At this point it may have been useful to have a guide with me! Anyway all of a sudden the wind picked up and the clouds swept in very fast. Within a few minutes i couldnt see even a metre in front of me. I was going as fast as i could along the top of the mountain but the crater could have been anywhere, in the end i decided it was best to head back down and find the others it was a big pity not everyday i have the chance to look into a volcano crater but there will be others!

I was so full of energy the whole climb and even on the way down i didnt feel tired. I think it was my apple and chunky peanut butter supply! I did however realise yes i was a little tired when i sat down for the first time! We ended up climbing down for about an hour in the dark with just light from fireflies and supercool glow in the dark mushrooms!!

This is the view from the mountain we were climbing to the mountain directly opposite. They are both roughly the same height.

I was really an excellent day, im so proud of myself for climbing a big mountain and not finding it too difficult.

Bright and early the next morning i jumped on a bus to take me to south Sumatra where Krakatoa volcano was hopefully erupting a little bit!

I was told the journey will take 25-30 hours! Well thats not too vague is it?! During the day on the bus i started to feel the aches in my leg muscles from the climb and being so inactive for the long journey everytime we stopped for a break i was like an old woman getting on and off the bus...big problems!!

When i finally got to Bander Lampung there was a taxi waiting, and i thought oh i definately deserve this! The local transport to where i was going costs 2,000 rupies, the taxi man said 'lima' 5,000....no worries, well worth it. Anyway a few minutes into the drive i though mmmm this is not as big a rip off as usual, this is too easy...just thought i'd double check...Mr taximan you mean Lima-5000 or Limapulu...50,000....of course he ment 50,000!! Leg ache or not this was a total rip off for a 2 minute journey so i shouted stop stop!! He wouldnt let me out and i told him i'm not paying 50,000 so he said 'ok police!'. Fair enough Mr....lets go!

I was so tired and hot and sweaty and painfull legs that when i saw the policeman in his 'village people' style uniform...big beer belly, wearing a one piece way too tight suit with knee high boots....ha! Couldnt take him seriously at all, just laughed and laughed. I was not worried in the slightest as the policeman knows this is a total rip-off but of course sided with the taxi man. Fumbling with my dictionary i tried to say....you greedy man just want money because i am tourist! Well a big crowd was gathering so enough is enough i gave him 20,000 and hopped onto my bus....in the most dignified way possible considering i could hardly bend my legs!

I stayed in Kalianda a lovely little village on the very south of Sumatra just a stones throw or 3 hours on a little fishing boat away from Krakatoa volcano...how exciting!!! All the little kids here say 'hellooo Meeeester'! I had a gang of cute kids following me around, a homeless man come up to kiss my hand and the kids erupting with laughter and many 'are you married, where is husbund, what religion' conversations!

The next morning i headed off in a little boat with two lovely south african fellows. We chatted a lot about south africa...sounds like a fairly dangerous place to live! They live in a special compound for white people, surrounded by huge walls and had big security. You cant just go for a walk at night unless you dont mind it possibly being your last, about 20 people murdered daily!! You have to be so carefull 24/7 i asked why do they choose to live there! But as they were born there they said you get used to it....no not for me!

Krakatoa in the distance. (of course) the boat men assured us smoke was pouring out of Krakatoa but...emmmm....do you see the smoke? Anyway no worries we cant control nature!

I have to say i found this a tough ole climb just due to still having aching legs from climbing mount Merapi. The ground was roasting hot and just loose black sand with some stones thrown in.

Look at that! A stone that had been fired out from the volcano during a recent eruption! Maybe its a good thing the volcano is all quiet...although it would have been some experience!!

This is Krakatoa in the distance, the active one we climbed is called Anna Krakatoa....a little volcano that was made from one of Krakatoas eruptions in the late 1800's.

EXTREMLY hot here my god!! Not allowed to climb to the top

Gettin me a souviner rock!

One of the south african guys was wearing sandles and couldnt make it up the volcano as the black sand was THAT hot it just burnt your feet. We stopped and had lunch under some trees at the base of the volcano and laughed heartily at some tourists just arriving in a fancy speed boat from Java wearing flip-flops, bikinis and speedos!! good luck to ya!!!...serves you right anyway wearing speedos in public!!

Hopped on the boat again and after an hour or two we reached a lovely little unhabited island and dived straight into the water to cool off! Oh it was so lovely! The island was so clean and untouched with shells like this just lying around!!

The fishermen boys found some coconuts and chopped them open so we could have a little drink

I was WRECKED when i got back to Kalianda, i had to go to an ATM and the young boy working at the guesthouse offered to take me on his bike...yeah ok why not! Took me all around first, giving out cigarettes to anyone he knew so that he could 'show off' the foreigner girl on his bike. After the ATM we went to eat...he spoke no english and kept repeating some word to me....repeating it didnt make me understand it any more than not repeating it! He presumed i would pay...and pay for cigarettes for him....ok its not the end of the world but i dont like people presuming because im a tourist...etc.etc....

I was wrecked so i told him i wanted to go back to the guesthouse. I knew he wasnt going the right way but what could i do...i looked up at the clear, starry sky as the bike wizzed along. Next thing he stops at a little shop to buy some sweets and a candle. Mmmm ok so maybe he has no electricty in his house...too tired to care. He gives me a few sweets and puts the rest in my pocket. Any touching like this is seen as very sexual over here so i had a feeling his intentions were not pure. I starting insisting we go back, he turned around the bike and instead of heading guesthouse direction turns down a little lane and stops outside a deralict house. In front of the house was a big room filled with about 50 woman standing straight, dressed head to toe in white cloaks and chanting away their prayers...i knew if worst came to worst i'd run over there.

He opened the door of the house and walked into a room in the back...there was a bed there and he set the candle on the ground...ahhhh ha haha!!! Really what did he expect!! He was about 16 years old, about 5 foot nothing tall and i couldnt have spoken more about my lovely husbund. I made a 'peure show' of him (as we say in mullingar!)....ie embarassed him by shouting I AM MARRIED!!! all the women turning around looking at him.

Bloody indonesian men!!! you cannot even slightly be friendly and they think you want to hop into bed with them! Anyway sure wont i miss it when im no longer a celebrity!

Alright off the next morning to Java....Indonesia's most populated island!

Malaysia & Singapore

2009-08-29T10:17:00.026+01:00

Well Malaysia began very well indeed with being asked on a date by a security guard at the border...excellent stuff! The second thing i thourally enjoyed was when i asked a guy where can i change some money, into his walkie-talkie he did the 'Scatman' song!!....as in the first few seconds of this....http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y2wMsnE2cvI Malaysian is a very different language!love it! A noticeable difference also mainly that all the women are wearing headscarves and most of them also the long cloak dress thing. I settled in the town of Kota Baru for a few days, found myself a cheap room and headed off to find some even cheaper food.

Which is dirtier? Feet or cieling/walls?....the joys of a shoestring budget!

Absolutely loved it here, my kind of town...one thats walkable, friendly and loads of cheap and tasty street food. Also i was a celebrity here once more, girls asking could they take my picture all the time, boys not asking, just catching them pointing their mobile phone at you while hiding behing something!... and while i was trying to buy new underwear i had a group of school girls following me around asking me questions like how old? married? How many countries ive been to...etc etc....friendly banter but distracting when trying to accomplish such a boring but (after one year of the same stuff) very necessary task! I had to laugh though it was mostly just massive 'granny pants' for sale and the brand name was 'alluring'!!

Other funny things i noticed when shopping were the hilariously bad english translations on t-shirts...for example 'how many flapper on your heart move silently' ????

Anyway the funniest thing by far that i came across was this!!!!No need to explain i hope! In such a strict muslim town i was not expecting the likes of this! Malaysia is full of surprises!

A meal and a cup of coffee at the market was so cheap..3.5 ringgit...about E0.70 and the food was delicious, kind of curries with a touch of indian style spices. Everytime i walked past a place with some men drinking coffee they would wave for me to come join them even though they didn't speak a word of english! It was all very genuinely friendly here a big change from being escorted out of a shop in Ko Tao for attempting to bargain!

Eating at the market

Its very easy here to satisfy any sugar craving you may have as the supermarkets and food stalls sell mostly junk food! For example you have to dig through butterscotch, chocolate and sugar bread before you can find a loaf of plain old slicepan! It is no wonder most of the adults in this town were on the very hefty side, well i suppose if i was wandering around in a big floaty gown all the time a few extra pounds wouldnt really show...also there are seperate queues in the supermarket for familys, women only and men only...so even though the family isle was empty i had to join the queue for women only! And probably not the most healthy are drinks sold on the street in big containers full of ice and in all the colours of the rainbow...i tried one the colour of this car...it tasted like the delicious antibiotics that i had to take when i was younger...you know the yellow or pink liquid thats kind of delicious?! No?...ok never mind!

One other excellent thing about Malaysia is that for the first time since May i'm in a country that uses the same alphabet and not just squiggles, so if i see a word written..for example Nasi Ayam, at a food stall i know they serve chicken and rice. Malay is also quite easy to pick up, it is not a tonal language like Thai and Laos....where each word has 6 different tones, so by using the wrong tone they dont know what your talking about. Its more or less pronounced as its read. I also found out for plural in Malay you just say the word twice! And for things like Nasi (rice) and Air(water) NasiAir means rice soup easy enough to guess if you see it written at a food stall!

Really enjoyed my first taste of Malaysia and even a little overwhelmed by the genuine friendliness of the folks here....just have to get used to their style of throwing a tea bag in with the coffee!! After a day or two in Kota Baru trying to adjust to EVEN more humid and hot weather than thailand i decided that yes...i deserved some relaxing on a beach again! I teamed up with a really lovely English couple and a friendly Australian guy and we headed to the Perinthian islands off the east coast of Malaysia. I had heard these islands were the best in Malaysia for snorkelling and that the water was as clear as a swimming pool i'm getting very addicted to snorkelling now at every opportunity!

We headed off ridiculously early to get the 1st boat to the island as it is high season in Malaysia right now and we heard there is a bit of accomodation crisis on this island!

Sunrise at the pier

On the boat to Pulau Kecil the smaller of the 2 islands

LOOK AT THE COLOUR OF THE WATER!! Amazing! It was so clear you could see the sea floor from the boat even quite far out into the sea!

Also above water there were many huge motinor lizards...i saw ones at least a metre long...here's a little baby i couldnt get the camera out fast enough!

And here is a massive gecko in a friends room

One day i went on a snorkelling trip, where a guy takes you out on a boat to a few different locations and you jump into the sea and have a look!

WOW!! I jumped in and was surrounded by hundreds of striped black and white fish swimming all around me, some even seemed to stare into my goggles to say 'who are you!' when i looked down there was just an amazing view of hundreds of colourful fish and corals...i couldnt stop saying wow!!

My ole camera isnt the best at underwater pics but here's one that came out slightly...it cant explain the beautiful stuff i saw though! Just imagine hundreds of these black and white fish swimming all around you with bigger fish and baby sharks swimming below you and barracuda(maybe?) swimming above you. At another place, looking into the water from the boat about 10 metres down we could see a big turtle so we jumped in and swam down to it. Now and then it came up for air and one time i was swimming right beside it the whole way to the surface and was just a few inches away from its face when it came up for air...it was soooo not bothered with us...infact it seemed almost bored at tourists coming to look at it daily! Big turtle though over a metre long.

An othertime we jumped into what seemed like just a boring patch of sea but below was amazing coral with loads of fish and manta rays hidden! The english couple taught me how to swim down deep and it was a whole new world for me when i could do this, just see a bit of hole in some coral and swimming down to have a look in!

What an excellent day!

I saw 2 shooting stars one night here and you know there is just something really different about the sky here compared to at home! Maybe its being so close to the southern hemisphere?

On the boat leaving the island

I didnt really have a plan where to go next so i caught a local bus to a town not far called Kuala Terranganu, the 'main' cheapy dorm room place here was full so i went into a slightly dodgy looking place next door and was instantly captured by this cute little thai lady, she looked up at me with these big sad eyes so i could not, not stay there! It was kind of like a guest house in progress but it was fine. Of course being Thai she referred to me as 'Falang' to her daughter....ahhh thought i had escaped that although im sure they'll have another word for me in Malaysia!

She INSISTED on cooking all my meals, washing my clothes and taking care of my injuries! It was quite nice to have someone insist in taking care of you when you are so far away from your mammy!..Although nobody can come close to my own mammy! xxx

Anyway it was actually a little bit hard to leave the guesthouse! She was very lonely, her husbund died a few years ago so she just spent her days sitting in the guesthouse waiting for guests and when she got one she didnt want to let it go!

One day i made my getaway and walked for miles and miles in this town, found some strange mosques...i would think this would suit a swimming pool better!

A seriously friendly, happy, easy-going kind of town, i found people were either extremly good at english and wanted to show it off to me or they didnt speak a word so i would start jumping around doing my charades. The only english one fellow could say was 'Hello Darlin!' in a cockney English accent...funny!

I wasnt sure here if, because the women are all covered up that the men would be very frustrated and feel the need to touch a foreigner like in India...so just out of interest i decided i'd spend a little time checking it out! I deliberately stood close to men in shops and walked past men closely on the streets and they all behaved very well keeping their hands to themselves....go Malaysia again!! Later i sat down to cool off in the shade under a tree while guys going passed on motorbikes shouted 'helloooo how are you!!!' and cars stopped, blocking the road so the occupants could find out about me! How could you not love this place!

Ladies in their headscarves watching the sunset

Terangganu mosque at dusk

My last night here I had quite a 'Yes man' moment..you know where you really couldnt be arsed (bothered!) doing something so usually you would say no but you make yourself say yes...who knows what will happen!

Anyway the dear old Thai lady invited me out 'for song' one night, i presumed it was karoke and i was not really in the mood but went with her anyway as i thought i was doing this lonely lady a favour by being some company! Well how wrong could i be! Sure she had a great bunch of pals, most were Thai that were living here now and some crazy chinese people! First we watched a very funny (for me anyway!!) chinese concert...oh it was so tacky!! A man and woman jumping up and down in yellow costumes kind of singing to each other to music which sounded like an fairground ride! It was in the heart of china-town so drinks were flowing freely and although more people seemed to be looking at me than the stage they settled down a bit when i joined in the drinking games! My god people say the irish can drink but the chinese were just wolfing the stuff down...inhaling it as someone i know would say... like there was no tomorrow!

Me and the sweet Thai lady...yup she's had a beer or two bless!

The chinese people at the table were just so funny, it was like a rehersed comedy show, they all had cheeky answers for each others remarks and they insisted i stay at their houses when i come back! Everyone had a glass in front of them full of beer and how it went was that you just get on with your night having a chat but whenever someone raises their glass to give a toast to you, you must clink glasses and finish it in one go! And before i had a chance to finish it they were already filling my glass up again! Poor Thai lady was driving back so after a few she certainly was on the giggles so we headed home! It was a great night i was glad i said YES!

Tack!!

There was an island off the coast not far from Terranganu so i thought ah why not take a boat out to the island see whats there! Well it was a great decision. Malaysia keeps getting better!

At the crack of dawn (which was actually too early by about 3 hours!) i headed down the road to a village called Marang where i caught a passanger boat out to these islands...the kapas islands.

Very nice mosque on the way to the harbour!

As i was waiting for the boat i noticed a cat clawing at some glass trying to get into a shop and its little kitten must have been trapped in there all night trying to get out...but as i looked closer i noticed something was not quite right with the cat!!

The cats here have many strange defects due to interbreeding!

Well forget all the 'paradise' islands i went to before this one was heaven...well nearly!! An almost deserted island with just a few guesthouses, crystal clear water, jungle all around, and a really friendly chilled out vibe. I stayed at an excellent guesthouse ...if anyone ever makes it there..Captains longhouse run by a really cool retired Malay guy. It felt like i had my own private beach as there was nobody else around and this is high season in Malaysia!

I got bored of sunbathing after about 5 minutes so after a bit of snorkelling and reading on the beach i decided to head into the jungle as there was supposedly a bit of a path running through where you could eventually reach a beach on the other side.

I followed the path and there was a choice to go left or right...mmm so i took the left and the path soon disappeared! Well i carried on anyway following a river to make sure i didnt get (too) lost! I was really enjoying myself all alone in the jungle just me and nature!

Big trees

My guideline river! The water was red and it was bubbling with mosquitos.

There were HUGE lizzards in the jungle..MASSIVE! Sometimes it sounded like a person was running away very fast from the noise they made.

It had occured to me that i wasnt going in the right direction of the beach on the otherside when i had climbed to the top of a hill and could see nothing around but jungle. I guessed by the sun roughly what direction was east (the side i was trying to get to) and headed off in that direction!

When i found myself a bit lost this guy was laughing at me!

Just as i was thinking about giving up as i was starting to get quite tired, i saw the sea! All i had to do was climb down a small waterfall!

This beach was completly deserted, just mostly rocks, odd shoes...

...and more smiley faces!....am i spending too much time on my own?!

The water here was crystal clear, i wanted to jump in have a look around as i brought my snorkelling mask but it was just a bit risky as it would have been quite hard to climb back onto the rocks to get out, so i just had a rest and a look in from the rocks.

On my way back i found this tree with some markings on it. When i asked the owner of my guesthouse what it was, he said he was the one that had marked it as the roots of the tree are an aphrodisiac! Yet another advantage of the jungle on your doorstep!

I found this little fellow one morning at the guesthouse

Hellooooo!

And this guy clinging onto my mosquito net with its two little hands!

The nights on this island were really beautiful...starting with gorgeous sunsets......

..and if you went up to the line where the water meets the sand at night you could see spots of green and blue glowing very brightly. This was the algae and if you danced around on the spot you got a big bright area of glowing! WOW WOW!! I remember my friend Gerry told me when he was diving at night and had turned off his light, when he swept his hand through the water the algae would light up! Wow! you really do learn something new everyday.

Next, i caught a night bus to Singapore. A very funny random guy at the station on showing me where to wait for the bus brought me over to a group of well-groomed group of men saying 'make friend he he!!'...how funny!...I also kept finding money this day..excellent!

The bus was FREEZING!!! Why do they turn on the air-con so high?Everyone on the bus was suffering, curling up really tight, trying to keep warm, luckily i had all my belongings so i added enough layers to keep warm....even wore socks for the first time in a long time!

Arriving at sunrise

Singapore was how i imagined, superclean, superorgansied and signs everywhere for what not to do. As a funny Malaysian guy said to me the other day, Singapore is a 'fine' city...you get fined for everything! Luckily i escaped being fined but i did get told off for eating in the subway and jay-walking!

I stayed in the 'Little India' area and absolutely LOVED it!! It was soo indian...without the ass-grabbing and occasional rotten urine smell! The shops sold all the indian stuff i used to buy, the restaurants food tasted exactly like when i was in india, the women wore saris and traditional indian clothes and funniest thing for me was that the men all had EXACTLY the same stupid style as in india...tight, flared trousers with a tight,often shiney shirt...its amazing how they havent adapted to the more modern Singapore style! The men also walk around holding hands as they do in india...its really lovely that this area is really indian brought back memories of good times in india!

Slightly scary statues in a Hindu temple!...just ripping out somebodys intestines and eating them....

It was all too easy to get lost in shopping centres....i mean Plazas! I would walk in just to have a quick look and hours later still be looking for an exit! The library was about the size of an airport! I walked around this city most of the time just looking up!

Its not all skyscrapers and plazas though, there were many pretty old colonial style buildings around....just with skyscrapers and plazas around them!

Singapore at night

Yes us Cavanaghs don't just make manhole covers in Ireland!

Having had enough of the city i went out of town a bit to a place called East-coast park and spent a lovely day chilling out in the peacefull area, renting skates (and not getting yet another injury on my legs can you believe it!) and buying myself a pair of glow-in-the-dark poi.

I found Singapore a place where you could walk all day totally enjoying the sights but still never making it to the one thing you planned to see! I didnt get around to visiting any of the attractions, maybe next time! Apart from way to cold air-con, Singapore is a nice break from Asia!

So it was back onto the arctic experience bus to Melaka in Malaysia to spend a few days before heading off to Indonesia...the 21st country of my trip!!Melaka is a really gorgeous place with architecture from the portugese, dutch and the brits as well as modern stuff and a dolled-up for the tourists china town. The city makes a huge effort to put together museums to tell every detail of the history of the town...i have to say a full exibition on kites was a bit boring, as was the one on spinning tops....but the aircon was very nice...Just maaaaybe this is for tourists!!

I found the most excellent guesthouse here it felt so much like a home i stayed there much longer than intended. I really did need a good break from any kind of movement! I met some lovely folks there, here we are all out for a meal and the owner doing the typical 'indians dont smile in photos'! It was so great here, Steve the owner was a member of a gym in a fancy hotel across the road so almost everyday i went to the gym and relaxed in the steam room and jacuzzi after and you know i didnt even find the sauna too hot...i really must be getting very used to the hot weather!

I ate many strange things here also. This one is called century egg...the yolk is green like mould but its very tasty!

I also had Black chicken...didnt really like this one, it had a lot of black skin with the remains of feathers in it and the meat was like tuna. I also ate a fish eye!! Well i just swallowed it whole to be on the safe side...next time maybe ill be more adventurous!

Picturesque Chinatown

Well Chinatown at night was another matter altogether!! Hilarious stuff just as in Terranganu lots of drinking, some very dodgy lion dancing clubs and even dodgier karoke! I have some great videos but cant seem to upload them to this. Anyway this is the lion dancing club...

This guy pierced through a coconut with his finger that looks like a big thick, bent witches finger...very interesting to watch and a very handy talent...never be stuck for a can-opener...or wine bottle opener!!

I was just getting all my stuff packed to catch a boat the next morning to Indonesia when i was very lucky to get chatting to a lovely Swiss girl who had just come from Indonesia and she mentioned it was a pity the visa is only 30 days now...ahhh nooooo when i checked this before i left ireland....ok so that was a year ago!..it was 60 days..and since Im flying out of Bali in October i decided to kill a few days in a forest not too far from Melaka where i stayed in a little wooden hut.

Well everything happens for a reason and im very glad i ended up going here. I was the only person staying in the park and certainly the only foreigner who had come there in a long time! The park ranger guys were very kind and awful concerned that i would be frightened staying alone here without my 'husbund'. I really loved having my little wooden house in the middle of the forest waking up to monkeys and the almost deafining sound from the insects, there really is nothing like a refreshing walk in the forest after you wake up!

I was confused by this...so you can touch flowers but...something not allowed with a flower on its own, i think the next one is put rubbish in the bins and lastly...no arm around your girlfriend in the forest!

As it was in no way a tourist area there was no accomodation for people who were not fasting during the month of Ramadan just one guy outside the park with a stall selling meatballs on sticks for passing non-muslims. Thank god i brought a bit of food as im not a huge fan or meatballs on sticks for brekkie! The nearest village was 20km away and im sure the options would not have been much better until after about 6pm when everyone can eat again. It was not a huge problem anyway.

Nature is amazing

He was a big fellow...

I really loved this forest!

Ok now to Indonesia...no idea what to expect!

South Thailand

2009-08-24T15:12:00.002+01:00

It was great to get back to Thailand i cant believe it has been 2 months already since i left the place. I took the supercheap non-tourist train to Bangkok and was instantly rewarded with the curiousness of local folks to a 'Falang' on the train. Its little things when you take the cheap local transport that i love about travelling in asia for example the old lady sitting beside me, after studying me for a bit, pointed to my earings which have gone all rusty. I don't know what she was asking but i said ' very OLD', then herself and her all pals replied in choras '...vely..OOOOOLD'! So funny i could get them to repeat anything, i pointed to her earings and said NEW! they all repeated it...maybe i'm loosing it a bit but travelling has made me find the silliest things very entertaining!

I got to Bangkok with the intentions of staying a day or two, i just checked out of interest the times for the train down south to the beach ...it left in 2 hours...well i got too excited at the thought of being on the beach the next morning so i had a shower in the train station (surprisingly good!) some excellent thai food (i had missed this!) then hopped on the train. 10 hours later i was in Ko Tao a lovely tropical island off the east coast.

I decided to couchsurf here with a guy from El Salvador who had given up his business, stressfull unhealthy life (and wife!) to travel the world and settle on Ko Tao sure isn't he dead right! There was also an Austrian girl called Bianca staying...the guy neglected to mention on his couchsurfing page that we'd all be sharing the one bed! It was no problem as i hadn't slept a wink on the train except that 2 minutes after falling asleep a massive thunder of a snore started coming from the guy! It shook the room! Luckily i had my ear plugs handy which deadened it a bit. Poor Bianca though didnt get much sleep though!

Ao Leuk beach through Max's legs...

The next day while trying to figure out an information sign i met a very lovely friendly german fellow called Max who had one of the biggest smiles i've ever seen! I invited him up to couchsurfer guys apartment that night for a few beers.

The couchsurfing guy was friendly and sure went out of his way to make sure i had everthing i needed but I wasn't sure if i could stick the snoring everynight! I was thinking about sleeping outside on in the hammock on the balcony when the guy announced he had to go to Malaysia for a few days to renew his visa and would we mind if we were on our own in his apartment!!! He gave me the keys to his motorbike too.....EXCELLENT STUFF!! He also welcomed the German guy to stay too if he liked which was very trusting of him! So for the next 3 or 4 days the three of us chilled out at this apartment, drove to the beach, snorkelled, had a beer or three while watching the sunset....it was just what i was looking for after all that hard meditation! I have to say thank you Sameer for being so trusting!!

The snorkeling was amazing...WOW!!! As anyone who knows me a long time will know when i was younger i loved all things under the sea including Disneys 'The little Mermaid' (as we have the same colour hair!) so wow wow when i looked down into the clear tropical water to see hundreds of multi-coloured fish, huge yellow fish that swim in pairs, big sea slugs, corals that look like brains or have kind of an aztec design, hundreds or thousands of tiny shiny fish all swimming closely in a group, turning at exactly the same times, baby sharks, fish that crunch coral then spit it out, swimming after but not being able to catch a fish, i kept saying 'ohmygosh!!' to myself!

I bought a little bag that i could put my camera in to take pictures underwater, not great pics but it will give you an idea....

It was heaven, i spent hours just looking down! At one stage i looked up and it was lashing rain! I hadnt noticed at all best to keep looking down so!

Some nice sunsets....

Its not all snorkelling and sunsets in ko tao...some other items of interest.....

Strange trees...im so confused about this!

A VERY fat dog!

Ko Tao bowling alley...where a guy sits behind the cones to replace them each time! Excellent cheesy music.

Ko Tao was also quite an expensive island there was no way i could have stayed there as long as i did without couchsurfing. The Thai's living there were extremly sick of tourists, i havent encountered such hatred of tourists in Thailand before, it was actually funny! For example one day i was looking at something in a shop, bargaining is the way of life in asia so of course i just mentioned ..well in Bangkok its only whatever price so maybe you can give me a better one?...Well the woman grabbed my arm, escorted me out of the shop screaming 'Well go to bangkok then!!!'. Such anger...i was a bit shocked at being thrown out but i have to say i found it quite funny!

Here i am with in my new rainbow dress and my battered legs!

THEN if things couldn't get any better my brother and friends arrived on the island!! As i haven't seen any of my family in almost a year this was strange at first but soooo great! We chilled out on this island for a day or two snorkeling, bowling, drinking, dancing then headed to the neighbour island called Ko Phangnan for the famous Full Moon Party!

The party was EXCELLENT! i lost my brother and friends during the night, i lost my shoes but i made loads of friends and before i knew it the sun had risen i don't know where the night went!

Very lovely friendly happy vibe there except I do remember at the start of the night i saw someone wearing the same rainbow dress as me, so i went up to her to say 'oh lovely dress!'...i ment it as a friendly joke! Well ...this didn't go down well at ALL she basically told me where to go and started screaming obscenities at me!I suppose it is true that some girls get really offended if someone is wearing the same thing at a party!

This island was also very beautiful and as i was staying on the other side to the full moon party it was so calm and relaxing we had little bamboo huts to ourselves set in a nice garden just beside the beach...with ducks!

We spent the day after the day after the full moon party looking for waterfalls but they had all dried up but we had a great day buzzing about the island on our motorbikes.

No luck there with the waterfall but we did climb up a hill to find a nice view point. Me and Brian

As my brother and friends didnt have much time left in Thailand and for a change from beaches we headed over Khao Sok national park on the west side of south thailand for a bit of trekking, nature and waterfalls that hopefully had some water in them!

Leaving the island

It was almost 3pm when we arrived there so it was too late to head into the park, instead we just had a little wander then thought we'd go for a drink in 'reggae bar'. This bar played reggae for about an hour while the dread-locked guy was doing his utmost to 'look cool', after a while the music changed to old stuff we used to love and hadn't heard since before we were legally able to drink so we ended up settling into the bar very well and leaving at god knows what time!

Also in the middle of our drunkeness we came across some fire poi!! Lenny spins fire poi a lot at parties...he even was spinning away at the full moon party! We asked the guy to get us some kersoine and off we went spinning away!

Lenny

Darius

Myself

Can i just advise not trying this for the first time after large quantities of whiskey!

Next, after reggae bar closed we found another bar where my brother entertained us all playing the guitar and we found the resident frog that Lenny licked in the hope it was psychodelic!

Keeping an eye on all the tomfoolery

Woo-hoo im flying!

Anyway after very little sleep we got up to check out the national park before my brother and friends had to catch their bus!

Hungry...

It was after raining really heavily all night so the place was ridden with leeches...YUCK!! As i have no shoes at the moment i went in my flip-flops...not ideal trekking shoes but at least i could catch the dirty feckers before they get too settled...disgusting though feeling it burrowing in between your toes and trying to pull his squishy body out while he's trying to get a better grip! Also i kept loosing my flip-flops to the deep mud...it was certainly a challenge!

A big leaf

After our little trek my brother and friends had to catch a bus to Phuket for a flight. I was very sad indeed to see my brother go...sure im not sure when ill see him again but anyway it certainly brightened up my travelling in south thailand!

Brian, Lenny, Gerry & Darius

See you Brian!!

Back on my own again i spent a night in Hat Yai before heading to the Malaysian border. I splashed out on an air conditioned room ( about E10!). I was utterly confused as to whether the hotel receptionist was a girl or a boy...he/she was not all dolled up like a lady boy just in normal clothes....but a really happy, cheerful person nonetheless!

There also was this row of shops/restaurants that everyone was sneezing and coughing outside, i went to ask advice about a bus to the border and as soon as i went near the shop i started sneezing and coughing like crazy!!How strange!

Bye bye thailand!

Cambodia

2009-07-26T04:11:00.024+01:00

Just like Laos was incredibly different to Thailand, Cambodia was equally as different with just a few miles over the border the place became strewn with litter and the landscape became completly flat with rubber farms replacing rice fields.

I had been advised to take a direct bus (ie tourist bus) from Laos to Cambodia as there is often problems with the border. Anything tourist related around here involves some scam or other. The mini van crammed in way more people than could comfortably fit (and it was actually quite amusing hearing the girls in the back screaming...AAhhhh i cant survive 10 hours like this!!!) the guy wouldn't turn on the air-con (i don't care too much about air-conditioning but we payed for it!) and he pumped really crap gangster music on full blast for the whole 10 hours. My head was beside the speaker and all i could hear was the blaring fuzzy base sounds it was not fun! The bus also stopped for many leisurely hour long breaks along the way.

Now crappy conditions and long breaks might seem ok and really i'm an expert on uncomfortable travel by now!! But the point of it is to make you tired and irratable by the time you get to Phnom Pehn so that when this young fella jumps into the van as we arrive in the city we all just agree to check out his guesthouse...its in the cheap guesthouse area anyway (he promised us the most AMAZING dream guesthouse ever for just $3!!this could only mean its a complete dump!) The place was a ...hole! Ive never seen such a horrible guesthouse and my god they were running down the street after me almost dragging me back so i would stay there! Even after the horrible journey i had the strength thank god to carry on the search!

My start to Cambodia was kind of how the rest of my time was in tourist places. The competition for the tourist $ is so high that you are seen as a piece of meat with no purpose but to extract $$$ from. Thailand and Laos are not this bad...i dont even remember it being this bad in India. There is always a bit of fun or compassion with these but in Cambodia its cut throat.

This will help you get the picture...i'm the green beetle and the ants are the moto-drivers, guesthouse owners etc

Huge street kids population too. If i sat down in any tourist cafe i would have a swarm of kids coming up to sell stuff. One boy about 15 pointed at the cut i had on my knee, when i said 'ahh motorbike' then he pointed to his foot...from the tip of his big toe all along the side of his foot had gone gangrene...swolen and completly black, he said a car had ran over it. He didnt know when he was going to the hospital just that 'yes doctor going to cut off'. This is the tip of the iceberg to the horrible stuff i saw and i dont know how it didnt effect me so much in India but i could not sit there and do nothing!

This just consumed me while i was in Cambodia ,i let it consume me too much and got angry at how most of the other tourists are so oblivious just only concerned with themselves..i even saw some joking with the gangrene toe boy, pretending they were going to stand on his foot and the little fellow laughing and playing along so he could hopefully sell some books.

Anyway i spent about 10 days in Phnom Pehn working with an agency to help street kids and visited a few orphanages. Even buying a bag of rice for an orphanage was a scam, my guesthouse guy brought me to a local place near the orphanage the 40kg bag of rice cost $40 i found out it should only cost $20....i could have bought 2 if someone wasnt being so greedy!!

However on a lighter note i did have a lot of fun here too. One night in a bar i recognised a girl from couchsurfing...i had ment to send her a mail asking could i stay with her but didnt get around to it. She was a bloody hilarious scottish girl and we got on very well. The rest of the corruption in Phnom Pehn was sooo currupt you just had to laugh! For example if your house has gone up in flames the local way to call the fire brigade is to shoot a round of bullets into the sky!

I just noticed now the baby on the driver lap...anything goes here on a motorbike! Ive even seen a newborn baby in the basket!

So if i wasnt depressed enough about the street kids i took a trip to the 'killing fields' an area where innocent Cambodians were brought and murdered during the pol pot regime. This was where after the Kymer army got America out of Cambodia they started kind of a holocost, they wanted to destroy anything americanized (or modern). So anyone who was a teacher, doctor, if they spoke english or had any type of education was killed! Smart people knew to act stupid but the army checked their hands for callisus...from hard outdoor work...so if you had fairy washing-up liquid soft hands....goodbye! Farming people with no education where left alone. What a sick game!

This is some cloth coming out of the ground from one of the bodies in the mass graves. Its crazy this was so recent you just have to speak to anyone who is over about 35 years old and they will tell you of their parents made to work like slaves in fields or of people they know who were killed.

You dont see this sign everyday!

Cambodians also have a shocking similarity with a certain type of women from north Dublin when it comes to dress sence....Pyjamas that take you from night to day! This fashion came by storm to north dublin a few years ago...i think possibly by a picture of a celebrity doing her shopping in her pyjamas, so many women now wear a full face of bright orange make-up and walk about Tesco at 4 in the afternoon in their zebra stripped pyjamas with fluffy pink slippers! Its very very funny and to see the same style here (without the slippers) over the other side of the world ...well im sure you're very impressed with this!

Phnom Pehn central market...pyjama heaven

Heavy monsoon rain...again similarity to ireland.....summertime in ireland that is

After Phnom pehn i went to a little village called Komphang Chhnang and clearly not many tourists make it here! Not the prettiest place ever....like india unfortunately Cambodians throw rubbish all over the place....but this was without a doubt the friendliest place ive ever been!!

Non stop gangs of kids running to their doorways jumping up and down to say Hallo! People waking up sleeping children to see the foreigner, everybody had either a stunned look on their face or a big smile and a hello, people stopping their motorbikes in the middle of the road to turn around and have a look at me! It so funny to me still that i can cause so much shock by just being a foreigner!! So much shock indeed that i had the power to stop a child crying by just looking at it! Soooo good to be out of Phnom Pehn!!

This friendly lady took me on her boat for a little tour of the floating village.

People here live either in a bamboo house on stilts or in one of these floating houses....usually just a house tied onto two small boats!

Many houses were very fancy indside some even had big soundsystems! And from every house i got a Hello or a stunned face that sometimes if i said hallo and waved enough they broke into a smile!

I was a celebrity here for sure!

So peaceful here

Bit of a raunchy mermaid to keep the fishermen motivated

This was very strange!It was kind of a platform that went across the river at first i presumed it was a bridge but its actually so you can wash your motorbike!

One day i wasnt sure what to do with myself so i hopped on the local boat to a village...somewhere! I had no idea where the boat went to. It stopped at a dirty market village, bamboo huts on stilts and a few shops made from wood and corregated iron. I got a young fellow to take me on his motorbike for an hour or two. He had not a word of english except '2 dolla!'

Off we went through little villages virtually untouched by the western world, the only advertising to be seen were 'Cambodian Peoples Party' banners, no electricty or piped water, just very simple life. He took me up the top of a hill to see some temple ruins, on the way down he started pointing to his lips. What's wrong with him i was wondering...until eventually i realised...oh he's looking for a kiss ha ha!!I just pointed to one of my rings saying 'Married!Married!'

Back on the bike again and i think he brought me to his family and told them i was his girlriend as his mother...i think she was....started hugging me and pointing to the guy and talking in Kymer, when you get to really rural places they dont understand why you dont speak Kymer when sure doesnt everyone they know speak it! Next some shaved headed old ladies arrived and were absolutely astonished with this foreigner sitting there! Im sure they never saw a westerner before, one took my face in her hands and just stared at me while i stared back into her eyes that had gone grey blue from old age while the other ladies were pulling at my legs laughing!! When it was time to go i hopped on the back of the bike and the mother motioned for me to put my arms around the boy ha ha...noo...instead i made sure i put my bag between us!

That was an unusual day!

Lovely sunsets on my last evening in Kompang Chhnang i highly recommend anyone going to Cambodia to get away from the tourist trail!

Next stop Battambang where i had a day or two to kill before going to a day 10 silent meditation course!!

Shocking karoke on the bus to Battambang....it was so load i couldn't concentrate on my book i even had my mp3 player on at full blast pressing the head-phones hard into my ears and still could hear the horrible karoke!!...how can this make for a relaxing journey!

Anyway! Carol you would like this statue...this is the fellow Battambang is named after aparently he dropped that stick in his hand and Battambang means dropped stick....that'll bring in the tourists!

They might work harder in Phnom Pehn but in Battambang the moto-drivers work CLEVERER! On arrival i was met by a well spoken man who handed me his CV!!! So funny i was not expecting a CV! It gave details of his previous jobs working at a water treatment plant etc....not a very good indicator as his quality in being a good moto-driver but i had to choose him just for the effort!

Again to do with the Pol pot regime there are some 'killing caves' not far from the town. Here innocent people were just thrown into a really deep cave and if the fall didnt kill them DDT...kind of like lime i think...was thrown in on top of them to finish them off and help their bodies decay....my god these people did nothing wrong!

Apart from the area where the people were murdered the hill with the killing cave was filled with beautiful little temples with people playing music, massive Buddha statues, gorgeous nature...flowers..trees etc i loved the place.

Making a mountain out of a molehill...the landscape in Cambodia is generally really really flat!

Oh my god so cute!

The most attractive Buddha statue ive seen!

Many many beautiful sights

After a few hours at these caves i visited some ruins of a temple up a gruelling 350 steps that are almost vertical...and it was very hot and humid! Little girls run up and down the stairs fanning the un-fit westereners then looking for payment!

I melting here...sooo hot!

The temples look like just bundles of stones roughly stacked up. This one is about to fall down!

I spent the rest of my time in Battambang doing a Cambodian cooking course....very good....at last found out the ingredients of the delicious local food and also met a friendly Dutch guy and Australian girl which i spent my last evening pre-silent meditation drinking plenty of beer and talking A LOT!

Monks collecting their alms....they live on charity and so each morning they do the rounds collecting food from locals. I asked is their any significance to the different colour robes...no.

I was quite nervous on the way to the meditation centre but ready for the challenge! I was put in with all the old Cambodian ladies and they were hilarious. I had just dumped my bag when an old lady came to the door with 2 limes in her hand....snake....bite! she said and motioned for me to throw them on the floor...i named her the snake lady and as the days of silence went on i had names and stories for them all! There was the woman who looked like she should be long dead, worried Hally Berry, the comedian (like Rosanne), Old lady who had a very startled expression on her face and who walked in a permanent half squatting position, The Mammy, who looked like a real mammy...she always took a 2nd helping of rice, The one who looks like a man and my direct neighbour looked like she had great potential to be a funny old lady however she let herself down a little....i highly amused myself with these old ladies!

My room

Day 1: 4am....oh my god whats going on!! Yes 4am starts everyday took some getting used to! We had to try and concentrate only on the breath coming in and out of our nose. Sounds easy but it was impossible to stop thoughts and songs coming into my head, i had no success on the 1st day

Day 2: Same...impossible to concentrate for longer than a second we had been told your mind is like a wild beast that you are going to tame so i kept shouting at myself in my head..TAME THE BEAST when my mind wandered....it helped a little

Day 3: Moving on to concentrating on any feeling you can find in the area between your upper lip and bottom of your nose, i found this a bit easier, found i could concentrate for about 3 seconds....progress! I was started to get really bad pains in my hips...i was wondering if i was going to be able to sit cross legged for another 7 days

Day 4: I had a bit of a breakdown this day, it didnt help that i had 'Alice, Alice who the F**K is Alice in my head when i woke up....why oh why?! The pain was getting really bad, i couldnt eat, couldnt concentrate on that damn area between my nose and lip, we were told that after lunch we would be starting vipassana meditation and this would involved sitting still for 2 hours...2 HOURS!! The pain in my hips was so bad and i just couldnt concentrate...i spent about half an hour crying in my room...What will i do!!! Snake lady came to the door, put her hands on her hips and did a little wiggle for me then walked off....i love these ladies! I realised it was me who really wanted to do this, nobody put me in here and i really only had 2 choices to quit or keep trying...there is no easy way to do this and there was no way i was quitting! I went back in after lunch and with tears still rolling down my cheeks i did it, i sat still for 2 hours and i managed to concentrate.

It got interesting this day, we had sharpened our mind by concentrating on that small patch underneath our nose, we were told to then move our concentration to other parts like hands and shoulder and oh my god i could feel a small tingling sensation when i concentrated on a part!...success!

Day 5, 6, 7: Spent concentrating on the tingling sensations, we had to start at the top of our head and work down to our feet and try to feel the tingling in each part so we could get a flow of tingles from top to bottom. I wasnt hugely successful and getting a flow of sensations but i was getting there, i also managed to tame the beast! Having many hours in a state of extreme relaxation in my mind where at the same time my mind felt sharp and awake. I even managed sometimes to reach a lovely meditation place where i could concentrate on the sensations AS WELL as chatting to myself and listing to music in my head!

Day 8: Apart from feeling desperately stiff from all the sitting down i was doing well and feeling good from the pure food and early nights! The old women were so funny...no code of silence for them...oh no plenty of chatting, they also were determined that i take some of their coffee in my hot soya milk at breakfast time that they had snuck in under their belts!

Many many memories of my past came into my head so clear it was scary sometimes the things i was remembering, how they were in my head and im sure would never have crossed my mind again if it was not for this. Little tiny insignificant things that made me smile sometimes i even burst out laughing from a memory. Aparently the patches on our body where we cant get a flow of sensations are tied to bad memories or thoughts in our mind and when we eventually get some sort of a sensation these thoughts are released. Im not sure how much i agree with that im still processing how i feel about the course but i cant argue with it, indeed i did have some strong not so happy thoughts and i felt they were released and gone forever at the same time that i felt i was getting better at feeling the sensations.

Day 9: For some reason i thought this was the last day of 'serious meditation' thank god it was very intense and i was getting to close to having enough, and enough of the 4am starts! I couldnt concentrate at all this day i was too excited about the course being over so i sat down and relaxed letting my mind flow to whatever thoughts and songs i liked and a big smile on my face.

Day 10: Realised ....oh dear...must be one more day of concentration. Could not...or more would not concentrate for most of this day i had had enough.

Day 11: EXCITED!! After the morning meditation we were allowed to talk again! It was so strange even though i had been having conversations with myself A LOT recently i could not get the words out to speak to others. This was a day to allow us to 'get back to reality' and i see now why this day was needed! It was strange to see the old ladies chatting ruining my names for them! It was also so great to be around local Cambodians and get to know them so well and them treating me just like one of them rather than getting over excited at a tourist. Its strange how i 'got to know' so many of the ladies from their mannerisms over the last 10 days. Wow it really was an experience! This day was spent with just small meditation periods and i strangly found myself craving silence and calmness in my head again!

Where i spent the best part of 10 days!

It took a day or two to get my head back to being sociable, i headed to the world famous Angkor Wat temples for my last few day in Cambodia. Siem Reap, the town nearest the temples was another total mess of a place due to tourists being seen as the only way to make a $ i didnt like it here at all, possibly the 1st place on my travels i can say i really didnt like, it was a lot to do though with it being a massive shock to my head having people shouting at me all day to get in their tuc-tuc/shop compared to 10 days in silence! Despite this the temples were certainly worth a visit.

This was my favourite one...where nature is taking over!

WOW!!!!

It was so hard to get a picture without anybody in it!

The place was actually packed with chinese and american tour groups....PHOTO PHOTO!!

This carving stretched down a wall a few 100 metres long and they were carved 900 years ago! 900 years and in such perfect condition! Its so hard to even imagine what people were like 900 years ago...this was amazing

Hello boys!

Angkor Wat

Now back to Thailand for some beaches....really looking forward to it!....sure dont i deserve it!

South Laos

2009-07-02T07:29:00.019+01:00

After a final goodbye meal to celebrate completing 'the loop' and me not being charged too much for the extensive damage i did to the motorbike!! I fell into bed soooo tired and had a great sleep.

I headed off the next morning to the last big town in the south of Laos (the last ATM in the south!) for a night or two before a few days on one of the famous '4000' islands in the very south. So in Ireland we take snacks like fruit or crisps onto a bus here they eat 'foetus egg' on a stick or dig into their bag of LIVE cockroaches!! I like to try new and exciting foods but i will just pass on these two!

Had a nice relaxing time here, catching up on sleep, trying to catch up on this blog and as the cut on my knee and a bad burn i got off a motorbike exhaust were starting to go a bit euugghh i went to a doctor. She took one look, said euuuggghh! Gave them a good clean and gave me a massive bag of medicine to take my god!

I randomly bumped into Johfra that night, one of the guys from the motorbike trip and so we headed together the next morning to Champasack street! (it cant possibly justify being called a village!). There is some government building that blares out government radio all over the area with really annoying pipe-based Laos music for everyone to hear- whether you want to or not. It was so irritating we couldnt eat our noodle soup fast enough!

The reason to stop at Champasack is that it has a beautiful set of temples on the outskirts...of the street! The place is completly in ruins but you can just imagine how it looked and the people were who lived there in its glory.

It really was a steaming hot tropical humid day! It was just a short climb up to the temple but hard work.

This is a view of the ruins.

An ancient elephant carving

I was really excited about getting down to the 4000 islands I heard it was a lovely chilled-out place, a perfect end to my time in Laos....i have to say it was a slow start but i've warmed to this country immensely.

First we took a special boat across the river that carried cars, trucks and tuc-tucs across. The boat was made from a few small boats tied together with planks of wood on top and it works grand!

Little old lady with her stash of......mmmm ive yet to find out what these are

We went to the island of Don Det and found a lovely friendly guesthouse, not to mention super-cheap room with hammock looking over the Mekong. No electricty here so when i chose a fruit shake from the menu one of the girls had to run down the road with the blender to a place with power!

The poor buffalo was terrified of this little boy who fired at him with his sling-shot whenever he saw him!

Electricty isnt really that necessary here though. Laos people get up early and go to bed early and you get into the habit of doing the same. It took me about 2 hours to walk the perimiter of the island, really lovely just a few guesthouse and restaurants and rice fields.

I never gave a pig a little rub before...this fellow LOVED it! What a really chubby face just a big handfull of fat....i wouldnt mind having one of these for a pet in the future

Myself, Johfra and one of the girls from our guesthouse called 'Oy!' took bikes and cycled to a near-by island thats connected by a bridge. There was a huge waterfall there, called something like the Devils...claw basically because if you go for a swim it may be your last!

I wouldnt really recommend crossing the bridge either!

Later we saw a sign that said 'beach & nice view 300m' so that was clearly the direction to go! We got chatting to a friendly guy who took us on his boat for a friendly price to see if we could find some of the very rare dolphins that live in this area.

It was a really lovely boat trip, very refreshing after all the cycling. Im sure the boatguy was very drunk! He hopped off the boat into bamboo traps that had been left by fishermen to catch fish and in one he found one 3 inch fish and one bigger but half eaten/rotton one. 'COME ON WE HAVE BARBEQ!!!' Yes why not, we had no better plans!

Our friendly boatman

He took us to a little illegal bar on the Cambodian side of the river where we payed $1 for the pleasure of sitting there. Out came the massive bucket of Lao-Lao rice whiskey, and the Beer Lao, and the Ankor beer, and the Anker Beer, and....mmm oh yes the horrible pineaple licquer! And then the moment we were waiting for...the barbequed half eaten/half rotten fish!! I pulled a little off (incidently it was still very liquidy!) made sure he saw me eating it and how delicious i found it but that i was feeling quite full.

We had ANOTHER barbeque and more Lao-Lao when we got back to the other side of the river, for sure he was not fit to drive the boat and the same could be said about us getting on the bikes! Johfra's tyre exploded so myself and Oy! cycled along slowly beside Jofra the singing at the top of our voices the whole way home!

We passed some kids jumping into the river on the way home and with that much Lao-Lao in me there was no way i wasnt jumping in too! The water was so fresh and warm i jumped in about 5 or 6 times before the others were getting a bit bored/hungry it also started extremly heavy rain.

Myself and Johfra had started a fascination about where does rice actually come from?? Everywhere here, in Thailand, India you see people working on the rice fields but you never actually see where the rice comes from. Is it from the flower? the seed? Oh we were utterly confused!

Sooo Johfra had the idea...why not ask our guesthouse people could we help them out for a day or two on their rice fields! We got up at the crack of dawn for our first lesson!

It was really tough work! You plant these in a very specific way while you are in deep very warm muddy, squelchy water, wait 3 months, then you dig up some of it to re-plant and harvest the rest for rice. Which is the seed of the plant. It really made me realise just how much work goes into a bowl of rice!

I had to cover myself with mud to stop getting burnt as it was SOOOO HOT the sun cream just slid off like putting butter on a pan. The mud was very effective sun-block and the laos people found it even funnier that firstly some 'Falang' want to work in the rice fields but also that they are covered in mud!!

Im not sure if we were a help or a hindrince to the rice-planting but i sure learnt a lot about it. Laos people say 'uuuhhhhhh' for 'yes' sounds a little like a caveman and i'll never forget the woman i was working beside in the rice field. I was asking her....is this right? She would look over and say 'uuuhhhhh' such a caveman noise for such a tiny, pretty laos lady!

Heavy monsoon clouds....love them!

So farewell to Laos for me, i have to say it took a little while to get used to the culture here but once i did i certainly made the most of it! On to Cambodia now for some Vipassana meditation!

Here are some lovely sunsets from my hammock on 4000 islands

Central Laos

2009-06-25T07:29:00.031+01:00

Sooo after the north of Laos I spent a day or two at the touristy town of Viang Vieng. Its a strange little spot! All the restaurants have beds instead of chairs and TV's playing friends 24 hours a day! I have to say i spent an hour or two just lounging about watching friends it was very nice as i haven't seen TV in god knows how long and i'm happy enough to be without it now after 'Friends' overdose!

The other thing to do here is Tubing where you hire out the inner tube of a tractor tyre and float down the river all day stopping off where you like and jumping off really high platforms into the river! A very fun day, soooo good to be able to cool down and i have to say and got away lightly with the injuries!

Worship me!! My god look at this fello!

Next stop, Vientiene, the capital of Laos. It was soooo good to be in a city at last after all the ruralness i was craving it a bit! Had many things to sort like some iron tablets NB!!! and get on the internet a bit, and of course have plenty of good cheap street food! I have to say i really liked this city but didn't meet many others who agreed!

Vientiene's victory monument aka vertical runway....made from cement donated by the USA to construct Vientienes airport, however the Laos decided to use it to build their monument another foot or two higher so that it was taller than the french's Arc de Triomph. This was to say 'HA' to the french as they came to Laos and left when it suited them without doing much good at all for the country.

This was a real lived in city, with just a little bit of everything that you need, no Starbucks or Mcdonalds, excellent street food and markets, nice temples, chill out by the river at sunset and carry on to some bars after just what the doctor ordered!

I spent my time in Vientiene walking constantly about 6 hours a day its such a great city to walk about my ole 20 rupie flip-flops from Calcutta still in one piece! Apart from endless walking i took a visit to Buddha park about half and hour from Vientiene.

Well what a strange place! It was made by a cave dwelling hindu-buddhist hermit. Its so strange, trudging along on the flimsey local bus through a tiny village and all of a sudden this crazy park pops up!

When you go in the mouth (see above!) you reach the inside of a strange room with very strange and slightly creepy things!

Hallo!

I had a little wander about loosing my flip-flops in the squishy mud. Really strange things here....would you worship this guy?

Anyway enough of the city, with my vitimans sorted i headed down south to the town of Thakek with a friendly Dutch guy i met at the Cambodian Embassy. I had heard that all around Thakek there are lovely caves and waterfalls and you rent a motorbike for a day or two to explore them.

We ended up making friends with a cool Japanese couple and a very humurous English guy, we discussed the travel plan that evening over many Beer Lao with some Laos policemen who where ridiculously drunk! So drunk their eyes where glazed over then they hopped on their motorbikes and clumbsily drove off only to come back half an hour later to drink more! When we asked are they ok to drive?? Their friends saying 'ahhh yes they the police!'

It really is quite vague here what the police do! I met a 13 year old boy driving a motorbike who said he started driving with when he was 12, he told me the legal age is 18 but its ok with the police!

The next morning the 5 of us head off on our motorbikes!

Within a few minutes we were back in very rural, rice land and mountains, beautiful scenery.

We couldnt find the 1st 3 caves marked on the map, a lot of the area was flooded from the heavy rain and the caves werent sign-posted. After a few random, unsuccessful treks to find a cave we EVENTUALLY found one!! you had to hop over a fence through a farmers ricefield to get there....and it was flooded, we couldnt go in.

BUT everything is possible!! We found some kids...or well some kids with a dodgy looking boat found us and offered to take us into the caves for a look. Very smart kids, my god children that age....about 8-12 years at home wouldnt be able for this at all!

As you can see the boat was more suitable for tiny Laos people!

The caves where really beautiful inside, it was a huge open area with lots of seashells!

I thought them how to make a whistle out of a blade of grass and they loved it!...i was very happy with myself! Dont usually know what to do to amuse kids

Do not touch this fluffy guy....poisoness!

After this we headed back on the road again to find more caves, unfortunately all were flooded even worse than this one so there was not much we could do but the adventure was fun! We were getting a bit hungry so we pulled in at a little roadside market.....somehow our hunger pangs faded a little!

Fancy dead bird for sale.....what in the name of god would you do with it?? Eat it? Stuff it?

Oh Yummy a snake!! Very popular in Laos aparently tastes a bit like chicken

All the women at the market were having a great chat about us. In Laos they use the word Falang for foreigner so as soon as you hear someone say 'ohhh Falang!' you know they are talking about you! We in turn had a good chat about them, one of the guys amazed them with being able to touch the cieling all the little women no taller than 5 foot!

We just happened to be driving like this when alex took the photo!

After spending about an hour sheltering from CRAZY thunder and lightning storm we headed off again cave searching and what a really cool one we found. We climbed about inside for over an hour, thank god everybody but me thought of bringing a flashlight!

Johfra

Magic?

There was no doubt that we were all completly knackered by the end of that day!! We decided to head for a little village called Mahaxi just about 6km away. The roads to this place were very muddy and the town itself had been turned into a mud pit from churning motorbike tyres and heavy rain. We found a place to stay at a 'homestay' and went on the search for food...well noodle soup is the only option! When we arrived back at the house to sleep the guy there explained that his mum had come home so we'd have to now share 2 single beds between 5! did it matter...NO! I was so tired before my head could hit the pillow (my bag) i was unconscious!

Mahaxi Petrol station

Noodle soup for breakfast and off we headed....not a coffee to be found in the town imagine that! I realised that maybe i am quite addicted to my morning coffee!

What we did that day i cannot remember (maybe due to no caffine!) however we stopped at the last village for the night before a notoriously 'bad patch'of road that we figured would be best after a good nights sleep in a bed and plenty of caffine in the morning.

Thalang really was in the middle of nowhere, there was nothing in the village just a few identical wooden houses on stilts and pigs and cows wandering around the place.

Lovely sunset....

We slept in a house on stilts and it was quite relaxing as it swayed in the wind a little like being in a rocking hammock!

After our breakfast of sticky rice and strips of chewy beef (and buckets of coffee) off we went!

Ge-cko!

Everything was going fine until...nooooo i crashed the bike! I had been using the handbrake all the time....didnt even know about the footbrake! So when i came to a sudden big hole in the road i tried to slow down but the surface was very gravely so off i slid.

No major injuries thank god just wasnt really in the mood to get back on the bike and the worst stretch of road ahead...if you can even call it a road!! Well my god almighty i dont like using bad language but it was a SHITTY SHITTY road!!! Really massive and deep muddy puddles that the bike was going all over the place driving through it and the water up to my knees, steep downhill rocky roads where i was so afriad to brake since thats how i fell and general sharp turns and steep ascents and decents and plenty of livestock.

This is the tip of the iceberg in terms of the bad condition of this road!!

Many times i just stopped when we got to an obstable say...having to drive along a really narrow strip of mud about 3 inches wide i would stop the bike and wish i didnt have to do it!! But thanks to Jofra he really pushed me to drive through all this, sure couldnt the little 12 year old kids do it! I realised that i was well able to ride the bike before i fell off it, the day before i had enjoyed driving though little streams and up and down steep muddy roads....it was just fear that was making me forget how to ride it! It still was a nightmare...all 3 hours of it...but i learnt lots of things about myself and getting over fear! If ever i met a 'Yes Man' it was Johfra.

Alex delighting us with his rendition of AHA 'Taaaaake onnnn meeee!' at a no-name eating place, Nahin

I almost felt like kissing the ground when we passed under the red and white barrier to signal the end of this terrible road...very dramatic i know but it was awfully stressful at the time!

We arrived that night at my favourite village of the trip called Nahin. It was kind of a truckers stopping point kind of a village in the middle of nowhere but we found our home in a friendly restaurant with Karoke! It was very nice every evening after each long day driving we all had a few beers over our dinner and a great laugh! We all seemed to get on very very well and although i wasnt that keen on riding the motorbike at the time i didnt want this little adventure to end!

The most impressive caves of the ones we saw were these ones, the Kolonor caves. The are hollowed out by a river that goes on for 7km before reaching the opening at the other side. Some locals use this as a short cut between villages!

Supercool boat trip, it was so hard to get my head around how huge it was inside and the shadows where playing tricks with my eyes! A few times we entered an area where the roof was so high up and black i was convinced that it was night-time sky and we were on a river surrounded by some high mountains!

As we were travelling back through the caves on the way back the litte boat i was in with Alex and Jofra started to make spluttering noises....sure hadn't we run out of fuel! So the boat stopped in the middle of the huge pitch dark cave. It was very nice actually to have a break from the noise of the engine and if it wasnt for Johfra pretending to tip the boat over it would have been very relaxing! We certainly got our money's worth as the poor little 10 year old driving the boat had to paddle us the whole way back!

On our final stretch of road we went on the hunt for some 'cool spring' we had heard about...how nice to cool down in this!

This may have been it but we didnt jump in with the Buffalo!

group photo!

Our final stretch of road was 140km of mostly straight, flat and livestock free road....it still took us all day due to many really heavy thunder storms we had to shelter from.

When we saw the clouds like this we knew it was time to look for shelter ASAP!

About the 4th time we had to stop because of the rain.....so close to being back at thakek yet so far! Card games and sweet supply exhausted

This was certainly a litte adventure that i wont forget. I drove the bike around the riverside in Thakek after we had returned to just have a last look around and enjoy the nice sunset.

Next day off to southern Laos. This is the 'egg-on-a-stick' mob!

Big thanks to Take and Aska for fixing up my many silly injuries all along our little adventure, to Alex for motorbike crashing empathy and of course to Johfra for without him i would never have completed one of the most challenging and stressful things so far in my life!

North of Laos

2009-06-11T05:11:00.024+01:00

Just a quick idea of north Laos very little internet here!!

Wow its crazy how different one country can be to another with just a 5 minute boat journey across a river! Immeditially poor looking and underdeveloped...i realise i had gotten very used to Thailand which was pretty luxurious after India! Sorting the visa was no problem, i had no plan at all what to do next though! It seemed like every other tourist there was taking a slow boat down to Luang Phabang which takes 2 days, 2 days on a boat on a wooden bench! I didnt want to do what every other tourist was doing so instead i hopped onto a bus to Luang Namptha about 6 hours north east and decided to spend a week or two up north in the mountains.

The boat from Chiang Kong in Thailand to Laos

All there was out the window the whole way to Luang Namptha were little bamboo hut villages and green jungle nothing else! Really rural stuff i hadn't really prepared myself for it! The houses were all bamboo huts with roofs made of leaves, people washing in the rivers or knee deep in water working in rice fields and pot-bellied pigs and chickens running about all over the place.

I rented a bike that day, the road was just a dirt track, so bumpy that i could hardly see where i was going when i went downhill! I felt quite uncomfortable actually, like a big rich american tourist, there was just too huge a gap between myself and the locals here. Instead of all the little kids running out to say Hallo!! they ran back into their house or just stared thinking what is this big white person!
Its crazy to think that most likely the folks here have no idea how the developed world is that this is their life! Its one thing when you see extreme poverty but i found this much harder to get my head around that these guys live like this! I could just imagine trying to explain stuff like internet cafe's, metros, plastic surgery...sure its a million miles away from them!

The next day i headed a bit more north to a little village called Muang sing. I was starting to relax a bit with feeling like the big tourist and just saying 'Sabadi!' to people regardless if they said hi back or ran/stared! This town was like the hole in a doenut surrounded by mountains and all the way up to the mountains there were rice fields shining with the reflection of the clouds.

Seems that in India i became really aware of sunrise and sunsets, here as the rainy season is really kicking in its clouds, and they hung very low in the sky covering half the mountains...never saw clouds like that before...beautiful stuff. It was just unbelieveable relaxing and peaceful here. As a crazy french guy i met in Chiang Mai said ..'violently relaxing'! Meaning it really forces you to relax! I hadn't realised it but i had been rushing around like crazy the last few weeks and i was actually quite hyper despite thinking i was relaxed, this was just the place for that!

Love it!!!

There really is 'nothing' to do here tourist-wise, no temples or sights to see just a calm, friendly village and amazing scenery. I really loved this so much, i walked for hours down little muddy lanes which ended in rice fields, met nobody, took pictures of cows and ducks, went to a smelly market selling all types of animal body parts and insects...mmm maybe later!

Oh dear two fattened up pot-bellied pigs just having a snooze.....beside the market....sweet dreams guys!!

Next i went East to Nong Kiaw which i was told has the best scenery in northern laos! It was a long old journey so i stopped off for the night at a town called Oudxami which is apparently a big chinese sex-tourism town! Well i loved the place, ok my hotel room was incredibly seedy with more than enough packets of condoms on the table!!! Had a nice wander, enjoyed the sunset, spied on the monks and slept well.

This is a penthouse size bamboo hut...or else many, many people live in there.

Look at this big fellow i found in my room!

The mountains are very different in every country i've been to and here is no exception, i've never seen mountains like them! Tall and narrow, pointy ones covered in thick, green jungle.

Sunrise on the river, view from my bamboo hut.

Little cloud wrapping itself around the mountain

I went for long walks here but i never came across anything. The roads just go on and on for miles through the forest. When i came across some old ladies walking the same direction i was going (and i had been walking about 2 hours already and found no trace of civilisation!) i had to wonder just how far do they walk everyday, i was ready to turn back! They where so sweet, grabbing my hand and very happy to say hallo, times like this i wish i had learn't a few more words of laos.

I've never seen a wild scorpion before unfortunately this guy was the flattened type!

Indian-style spelling on the menus...love it!

Took me ages to figure out what the hell this one was about! Toilet surfing? noooo!

And this is the little fellow i adopted while i was there, so cute when i threw a stone for her she'd go really hyper running around in circles through noodle stalls and under cars. Dogs here are just dogs not pets (maybe dinner i don't know yet!) so the locals found it very funny when i was playing with my little friend!

Sure butter wouldnt melt!

The icing on the cake for north laos for me was a little place called Muong Ngoi 1 hour on a boat from Nong Kiaw. Its not PUBLIC transport in Laos its more like SHARED transport, meaning that the driver wont leave until there's enough people to make a profit...and there was me turning up almost an hour early for the boat!

On the boat.... its strange to me that in India the women wear traditional sari's doing the most modern things like walking the dog in a posh area of Delhi, whereas here the guys wear Adidas while working in the rice fields...strange for me!

Just look at this place! It felt like your own private bay, surrounded by gorgeous mountains at either side. Got myself another lovely room for pennies. Electricty here just 6-10pm, no phone signal, no internet...i loved being totally cut off from the world this is the life!

More long walks here, boy it was so humid, just like holding your body over the steam from a pot of boiling water, it was really tropical! It amazes me how different climates can be around the world! I like tropical but the humidity can be a killer! this place had areas FULL of butterflies, black, red and yellow ones, maybe attacking me, but certainly fluttering all over me...so amazing!

This little fellow started puffing himself up when i was taking the photo.

That evening i joined in the villagers cooking a pig! It was more fat than meat but quite tasty! I met some friendly people from England, USA and Switzerland and we had great chats over Lao Beer and the rather potent home-brewn Lao Lao - rice whiskey- aka paint stripper! One of the guys there had been to India and bought a sitar so he played away at that...i LOVE the sound of the sitar. Had big plans to go fishing the next day but i realised i had just enough money to get me to the nearest ATM....in Luang Phabang....1 hour on a boat, 5 hours on the back of a truck and 30 mins in a tuc-tuc away!

Sunset

Heavy clouds in the morning

I spent a few days in Luang Phabang, probably the country's 2nd biggest city, its a very pretty place, you feel like you are in a pretty little village in the south of France. It was SO good to eat well for very cheap at the night market....and i layed off the noodle soup for a few days!

Next stop a touristy place called Viang Vieng....maybe i wont ask this tuc-tuc driver to bring me there!

Umphang & the Mae's

2009-05-19T08:16:00.041+01:00

Weird...i had this blog entry almost written, went back to finish it off and the blog had put '%20' everywhere i had a space and converted my photos into codes that ment nothing so had to re-do the whole thing! How annoying...ahhhh computers!!

From Ayutthaya i travelled up to the north along the Burmese border.

It was an awful journey to Mae Sot. I caught the overnight bus from Ayutthaya. My seat was at the very back beside the window. I saw that everyone who had been on the bus since Bangkok lying back with the seats reclined almost to horizontal...ohh this was going to be so cosy!! BUUUT when i tried to put my seat back it just wouldnt go very far at all!! There was a big, empty plastic bucket behind it and the bucket was pretty well stuck in there! It made some very load squeeking noises against the back of the seat everytime i moved it an inch. Everyone was grumbling and waking from their cosy reclined sleep thinking what the hell is that squeeking noise down the back and me in the back of the bus standing on my seat trying to pull the bucket out just laughing at what a silly situation this is!

Eventually i got the damn bucket out and flung it across the floor so the driver could see in the morning it was not appreciated where it was! I went to recline the seat and GOD DAMN there was a fire extinguisher attached to the wall behind the seat so i couldnt put my seat back further than an inch or so and i find it very hard to sleep at night sitting upright!

Anyway could be worse i thought at least im not sitting at the back of the bus on an indian road!! Well then some poor girl started violently vomiting for the rest of the journey. Oh the smell of vomit was so rancid, as it was an airconditioned bus you couldn't open the windows, it was airtight, im sure you could almost see the green-yellow haze in the air. We were stopped in the middle of the night by the army who where checking if there where any Burmese refugees on the bus and the poor officer nearly fell off the step from the smell of the vomit! His facial expression was so funny we kind of exchanged 'yeah its bad isnt it!' looks.

Arrived before down, had a little wander about waiting for things to open. The monks wander about in the morning collecthing offerings from people who stop what they are doing and put a bit of rice or some food into the monks bag and thats their good deed for the day. I just chilled out that day i was very tired after the journey and sure everything smelt of vomit!

I did next to nothing in Mae Sot, its a nice little town where you can get anything you need, nice markets and friendly folks, had my teeth cleaned at the dentist for E6! I decided to rent a bike (with basket just like my one at home i spent many many hours on!) and cycle to Burma! It wasn't far i have to say just a few km, after i got to the friendship bridge to Burma instead of crossing i took a left and just kept cycling and cycling for hours through the thai countryside and unlike cycling in india here was like a magic road, so straight and smooth and seemed to always be sloping down slightly!

I've never experienced so many insects in my room before this guesthouse. On one hand i'm thinking why are people in general so scared of these little fellows they cant exactly do much harm...but on the otherhand i don't like them in my bed harmless or not! It seemed like they where coming out of thin air just dropping from the ceiling. One day i was lying on my stomach and i felt something about the size of a cigarette lighter drop on my back...it was a big cockroach! Harmless but ahhh i dont like it!

There where hundreds of flies wriggling about on the floor in this guesthouse just above the stairs, i dont know if they where breeding or dying or wha! Their wings had come off and were all over the place and very tiny little fellows wriggling about around them, i guess this is where they had thier babies then thier wings came off! Anyway there was a container of insect spray in the bathroom so i sprayed it all over this swarm of dying/breeding insects...they're going to look for revenge now arent they!!

I really wanted to get off the 'tourist trail' so i headed to Umphang a nice little village in the mountains 6 hours or so south of Mae Sot in one of these trucks! Called Sawnthaws they are used for the little mountain roads. Its amazing how many people you can fit in one of these, with the men allowed to sit of the roof, including a chain-smoking, redbull drinking monk! Lots of vomiting again on this journey but at least no windows to keep in the smell!

No tourists here and so little english, i havent had a conversation since i was in Bangkok and loving it!

Little shops, the roof made from leaves

I wasnt sure exactly where to go here, i spent the first day just walking for hours down endless country roads, when i decided to rent a bicycle i ended up renting a motorbike! I had learnt to ride a motorbike in India so it was a piece of cake here! The only thing was that i'd only driven an automatic in India they only had the one with gears here, it was a bit of a struggle getting used to the gears at first, the bike was making some shocking noises, i wasnt sure if it would last the day, but i got the hang of it after a little while.

Umphang

I was trying to find the nice waterfall i had heard about but i guess you had to go more off the beaten track to find it and the locals got very shy when a 'falang'- foreigner, approached them saying 'nam'- water, then doing 'swishhhh' noise, and actions of water falling. They just kind of giggled and ran away.

Big rain filled clouds following me!

At one stage the road turned into a dirt track and i was struggling a bit with the bike. There was a tractor up ahead, a little girl hopped out and started running towards me, she was about 12 and hopped on the bike, put it into 1st gear and off we went up the hill no problem! I decided if the little girl cold do it so can i! Anyway i was stuck now up the top of the hill and had no choice! I drove on for another few miles along this dirt-track looking for some turn off for the waterfall but when i heard a few claps of thunder i decided better start heading back!

Look at this heavy rain just in the one spot!

Many many insects again at this place. The sound from the frogs, geckos, crickets, flies at night where so load! There is one in particular that sounds exactly like the dentists drill....a warning to wash and floss or else!! I have never been so surrounded by insects! There was one really stupid massive beetle that was flapping about on his back. I helped him up and a few moments later i heard a noise like a little plane flying past...it was him! He did about 3 laps of the room each time crashing into the light and on the 3rd lap he crashed a bit too hard and fell on his back again. At this stage i had to flick him out the door, along with an absolutely massive millipede!

This is for scale....and i have big hands!

One insect i love is the firefly! So amazing how they light up as they fly, and once i saw one i realised they are all over the place.

Next day it was back on the sawngthaw for a long twisty journey back to Mae Sot then another one onto Mae Sariang. Im very behind in writing this soooo memories of Mae Sariang was that nothing major stood out about the place but it was nice and very friendly.

I rented a bike again as i heard there was a waterfall. Sooo hot i kept stopping at every 7-eleven store i passed to get some air-conditioning! I ended up in the middle of nowhere, cycling around little country roads, there was even a guy lying on a bamboo table getting his dental work done in a little hut in the forest!!

The Sariang River

Anyway after a few hours of cycling in the heat i was just about to head home disappointed i couldnt find the waterfall, when....i saw a big golden buddha statue far away in the hills. It was my mission to go there!! Oh it took ages and a very steep climb with the bike to get up to the top but so worth it!! It started lashing rain then so i called it a day and headed home.

The stairs up to the big fella, the dragons are to keep the bad spirits out

On the opposite side of the scale a tiny tiny little puppy, resident in my guesthouse

Next stop is Mae Hong Song. I got up extra early to catch the 1st bus. After a few hours we stopped, everyone got off and i saw this sign 'Welcome to Mae Hong Song'. I checked with the driver by asking 'mae hong song?' and pointing to the ground he was like oh ya ya. So off i headed with my back pack.

Confusing....yes!

I realised after about half an hour walking that something was up! This definately wasnt Mae Hong Song, again i tried to check this with some locals but they where just so shy they giggled and ran away! Nothing was in english so i thought i better head back to the bus station! I found out i was in a little village in the middle o' nowhere and would have to wait another 4 hours for the next bus. Ah dear, got up early for nothing!

The bus came and off we went. About an hour later it broke down though and we had to stop for an hour or two but go Mr bus driver, stripping off, pulling up tiles from the floor and yanking out various parts of the engine. Off we went and at last i got to Mae Hong Song just before dark!

The lake opposite my guesthouse

I had another struggle trying to find this lake where there were guesthouses. I couldnt find anyone who spoke english and i was sooo hungry! This time i said the word for water 'nam' and made a big circle with my hands....surely you would know that means a lake?? I eventually found a hotel who gave me a map, found a nice guesthouse, shower then much needed food! I was thinking my god what bad luck so far getting to Mae hong song it can only get better!

And so it did. I took a motorbike and had the best day of exploring! I was told there were some 'fish caves' so i went the rough direction. I passed some buddha statues in a forest so i hopped off there and went to explore. Behind the statues was a trail which lead to a cave ah this must be fish caves! The cave went down very deep, it was a very damp cold inside and very dark the further in i went.

This was obviously a very sacred place with statues of buddha and pals inside and fresh offerings of red fanta laid out for them. The caves went quite deep in and it was so dark, i tried to make myself go further into the caves but i just couldnt! I was thinking what a chicken i am not to be able to muster up the courage to go into the fish caves that everyone was talking about!

After i left these caves sure 2 minutes down the road didnt i see a big sign for fish caves!! and they werent scary at all.

Behind this sacred Buddhist cave was jungle so i went for a little unexpected trek in my flipflops! Oh it was really cool! The sounds and the smells where just like i imagined a proper jungle to be! I was all by myself here so i went a bit mad swinging from big vines yes like tarzan so cool!

There where huge big bamboo branches that had fallen down and are totally hollow, i noticed that there where many many red beetles but they ran away soon has they heard the leaves moving, i was trying to guess what animals the sounds were coming from, birds? frogs? insects? impossible to tell. I eventually got to a part that i couldnt find an easy way up with flipflops on so decided better to start making my way back down.

Confused whether to keep trying to go on in flip-flips or not

Sawadeekaaaaaa!- Hello!

Delighted with myself and my little jungle trek, sweaty work!

When i came back out of the jungle part, and past the sacred (not fish caves!) there was a monk sitting there, i tried to catch his eye to say hallo but he was avoiding me, there was also another monk carrying some water who made a huge detour to avoid me also. Mmmm i think i definately shouldnt have been in those caves but delighted i was!

The sun was almost setting so i headed back to Mae hong song town to climb the temple there on the hill to catch the sunset.

View of M.H.S from the temple

It was a really unusual 'toothpaste' white temple with statues of white lions around it. The reflection of the clouds on the temple was really gorgeous.

You couldnt see the sunset but nice clouds.

I was just about to head to Pai when i got chatting to a nice polish girl over breakfast. It was a good thing i did as we decided to rent a motorbike again and find the waterfall! 3rd time lucky for me and i was well worth having another look for it! We ventured a little away from the path along the waterfall and found huge geckos and vicious red ants that you felt the biting and had to actually pull them off i literally had ants in my pants! not pleasant!!

So beautiful here though, i dont think i've been to a waterfall before. We found a pool, stripped down to underwear and went to a refreshing swim, soooo GOOD! I was in heaven. The water was just a little warm and crystal clear.

Next stop Pai, quite a touristy place but very chilled out and friendly vibe, a little like some parts of Goa. The minute i arrived i saw my friend Gerry from India go past on a motorbike small world! My first night i also met some lovely Irish girls who i spent my time in Pai with.

After Pai it was a quick hop to Chiang Mai, kind of the capital of north thailand. Just as in Bangkok great street food and lots going on. We had a lot of fun there and if anyone is in Chiang Mai the sunday market is amazing! Im in Chiang Khong now which is a small town on the border with Laos which im going to in the morning. So for now goodbye Thailand...i really dont know what to expect in Laos but im looking forward to it!

Ayuthaya

2009-05-15T08:20:00.020+01:00

This is a short entry...im melting....tooo humid for an irish girl!

Seriously pimped up busses in Thailand! I sat at the back of a plush mini van which crused along a smooth road in silence...definately not in india anymore...i didnt become airborne not even once! Found myself a super guesthouse, i had my own balcony looking onto a garden with nice fountains etc. I was the only person staying here.

This place is FULL of temples, back in the day this place used to be the capital of Thailand but the Burmese army wrecked it leaving it to decay in the jungle so most of the temples are just bundles of bricks with plants growing out of them but some built more recently are still in great condition. I took a bike and went sight-seing! Thailand is very bike friendly, flat, evenly paved roads that takes no effort to cycle...little bit unlike india's pot-holed dirt-tracks with cows in the way...ahhh but i still miss indian craziness!

Very very beautiful temples, and a VERY VERY hot steamy humid day probably about mid thirtees degrees and about 90% humidity. Oh i was melting after 5 minutes on the bike too much for an irish girl.. come on the rain!! This place had yellow silky cloth wrapped around the temple and the stone Buddhas that where outside around it, quite a nice decoration but it must have some meaning. The poor girl at the front desk was utterly confused by my charades trying to find out about why the yellow silk! Well good old google, it means there is some active worshipping taking place.

When i was cycling around the grounds of the temple i turned a corner and ohmygod the biggest collection of rooster statues ive ever seen! Hundreds of statues of them in all sizes from actual size to enormous. I later found a few shops in the little town that sold them...even the huge ones! This is because the king who had the temple built, according to google 'had a passion for roosters'. How funny if his passion had been pints of beer or prostitutes!!

I was tempted to steal one of the little ones for memorabilia not worth lugging it around for the next few months though!! Already lugged around a frying pan for a while (with some stuff written and a face painted on it) as memorabilia from a very, very funny night/day with couchsurfer Julie in Lyon many months ago! Ha ha i even got the frying pan through the airport hand luggage come to think of it...and im sure they took my bottle of water off me....makes perfect sence...isnt the frying the classic comidy weapon?

Huge!

After hiding in the shadows for a bit i headed on again on the bike to a more ruined temple. Just bundles of bricks but really spectacular stuff.

The buddhas sitting around this temple were all headless

One of the monks asked could he take a picture of me when i was sitting at the top of the steps...yes no problem sure its a monk...they take an oath of chastity dont they? cant be like the young indian boys reason for wanting 'one snap'! can it? Im sure ill find out in due time!

I figured since i was the only person in my guesthouse no harm in going to eat in the place lonely planet recommended as the most popular traveller 'hangout' . It was a lovely looking bar for sure, but i think i was the only tourist in the town! I had the worst most expensive watery and way too spicy at the same time food! I think from now on i'll definately stick to the street food in thailand so with that i headed off on the bike to find the night market.

Really excellent food here i bought loads of fresh fruit and sushi so cheap and sooo good! Loads of mad food on sale here though that i had absolutely no idea what it could be...oh ill get around to trying it sometime!

Next day it rained pretty early which was nice as it cleared the humidity for a while. I find that during the monsoon it seems to rain heavily at least once a day and maybe another shower or two later. Its not that big of a problem travelling during the monsoon apart from more mosquitos i really like the rain! And ive seen some amazing thunder and lightning storms.

So anyway, just after some heavy rain i cycled through this park and found another few ruined temples. This one was so gorgeous the setting sun turned it an orangy brown.

A little past this as i was cycling a CROCODILE ran across the path into the pond! He was very heavy and you could hear his feet slapping against the wet concrete. How cool!!

The last place that i visited was this palace maybe? (didnt do a lot of research just a lot of cycling!) Very fancy, ornate, chinese style place with a massive gold buddha inside.

Off to mountains i think to escape this heat!

Bangkok

2009-05-14T13:00:00.010+01:00

Hallo from Bangkok! Well what a culture shock indeed! I arrived about 6am checked into a guesthouse near the notorious backpacker area called Ko San Road then went for a coffee with a friendly German guy i met on the plane. The two of us had spent months in India and its really quite funny just how much you get used to that crazy place. I felt strange, very overdressed, all the girls (and a few ladyboys!) where wearing hotpants and hight heels, there where some drunken fellows stumbling down the street, roaring and singing to each other with bottles of beer in their hand, the place was spotless clean, flashy lights, smelt like perfume....we sat and people watched. It was nothing at all like my life the last few months....must buy hotpants!!!! .....joking!

The cute little dog from my guesthouse

It was EXTREMLY hot and humid here almost to the point of being unbearable a shower just did no good you where already just as wet from sweat before you got yourself dried. I couldnt sleep at all, i was a little bit of an insomniac until the monsoon kicked in.

Sooo wow the food in Bangkok is the best thing ever!! It possibly has a lot to do of months eating dhal and chapattis, oh i was in heaven just to get some plain steamed rice, some lightly steamed vegetables and some chicken with a light spicy sauce...so good!! The fruit here is delicious too for 10 Bhat (about 20c) you get a bag of melon, or snow apple (my new favourite) chopped up with a little bag of sherbety stuff to dip it into. The street food is so good and so cheap that it would be a sin to eat in one of the tacky restaurants on Ko San road.

Over the week i spent in Bangkok i tried as much new foods as possible often i had no idea what it was (this may be a good thing!!) some straaaange things in soups and strange things wrapped in leaves. So good to have such a selection...ok starting to miss India less and less! Oh yes i also ate CRICKETS, big ones!! It took a lot of courage but they werent that bad and although they werent that bad i am finished trying them!

Away from the touristy streets there are so many cool places to see. Bangkok has lovley little rivers running through it, it also has the tackist things for sale that ive ever seen!

As i was walking around this Chinatown area i couldn't help singing to myself...'I wanna take you to TACKY TOWWWWNNNN!' Check it out....where would you be going??? False teeth for sale on the street!

Tack

Chinatown tack

As the sex industry is quite big in Bangkok there are also many stalls selling 'love drops' and 'man pills' along with some dodgy looking aparatus!!

Its so organised and easy to get around here. Very patient driving not a car horn to be heard. I almost got hit by a motorbike as i am used to waiting to hear the horn when im walking then i move out of the way, here they just drive responsibly....will take some getting used to.

The Thai people are also growing on me, very funny people, great and very different sence of humour to the Indians. I went to visit the reclining buddha one day and met a very funny security guard who shoved some smelling salts container up to my nose while i was collecting my shoes after! Why i dont know!

This reclining Buddha is amazing! His smile is 5 metres long...what a smile!

45 metres long

I had my first encounter of a young thai boy trying it on at this temple. I noticed a guy following me REALLY obviously following me. I was doing circles of a pond just to check... it was funny making him do circles too! Well it was only my 2nd day in Thailand so i really wasnt sure did he want to mug me or what the hell! Well eventually i sat down outside and he sat beside me and asked did i have the time. I had no watch so he just sat there i knew he was waiting to ask me something so out of curiousity and to get it over with i asked him was he looking for something. I couldnt understand his english very well so i smiled and nodded for a bit then said thanks byeee!

He followed me when i walked around the back of the temple, i told him dont need your help thanks i like to be alone to look at the temple, he started saying 'Oh you sexy!' i wasnt sure if i heard right so ignored it. He asked if i was married i said ' eh....soon husbund!' goodbye! He was just following me. I left the temple and asked ok which way you going? He pointed right so i said ok byeee im going left. Well he kept following me! I asked again ok which way? He pointed left, i went right, same thing! I didnt want to loose my temper and it was nothing more than just damn annoying. I eventually got rid of him by standing like a mother pointing to a child who is in big trouble like the go-to-your-room point. Everytime he turned around i pointed again until he turned the corner. Ha ha ha how strange! Next time i will remember to say Yes im married! Gosh only out of India 5 minutes and forgetting about my husbund!!

Another funny things about Thailand is that they LOVE the king. A geeky looking fellow in a brown suit. Every restaurant has a poster of the king, and often a photo of the owner holding the poster of the king! Aparently the worst thing you can do here is disrespect this main man.

There just happened to be a Free Hugs campaign going on while i was there, organised by a guy from couchsurfing so why not join in! There is no point to it except to give out hugs on the street, its a nice gesture i suppose, cheered a lot of people up, made a lot of people laugh/run away/join in/buy us beer! There where the few people who were just too cool to get their free hug, many who kept coming back, i have to say it was a lot of fun, very rewarding when you gestured to a really bored shop lady to give her a god free (free hug in thai!) and whose smile just lit up! The expressions on peoples faces where priceless. You can imagine this guy in the picture above going for a free hug with an unsuspecting thai man...funny! Very sore arm muscles the next day!

There i am as pasty and white as the day i left ireland!

We went to a party afterwards in a place called the Overstay, run by another couchsurfer guy who converted an old brothel to a bar and a very cheap place to stay. Really cool place, great music, we lit a fire, someone cooked potatoes and smothers them in really good butter mmmmmmm. Just as we were heading to the party at the overstay I happend to bump into a guy called Peter that i used to work with years ago in Dublin! Oh it was sooo great to eat our potatoes and chat about Bertie Ahern, the north strand road and just good old irish banter! We certainly share a certain sence of humour us irish!

Goodbye now to Bangkok, excellent city that i could spend months in, and hallo to countryside!

delhi, varanasi, calcuta and goodbye india!

2009-05-06T10:41:00.024+01:00

Hallo! i have been awful lazy with the blog i know. It is a lot of work with super old indian computers that break down at the thought of cutting and copying an image not to mention slooooow internet connections! My camera also caught a terrible virus and i couldnt upload pictures but thanks to a very helpful Paul in bangkok for sorting that out for me!

Soooo ive left india i cant believe the time went so fast and i never imagined i would have had the adventure that i did!!! But for now here's how my last few weeks went....

Leaving the mountains at last!!! Myself and my friend from liverpool, Joe stopped off in a lovely town called Mandi before catching the night bus to Delhi. This place was really really lovely! Strange mix of mediterranien feeling buildings along narrow cobbled lanes with the odd colourful temple and right in the centre this big white clock tower.

A very un-indian feeling place...except for the state of some of the poor dogs and of course the terrible mis-spellings!!

We decided it was well worth the extra 100 rupies to get the 'luxury' overnight bus to delhi. Well its true it was quite comfortable, nice soft reclining seats but we soon learnt that no matter how comfortable the seat is (or bed on my bus journey pushkar to jaisailmer) that if you're at the back of the bus you may forget sleeping!! We spent most of the time in the air, smashing back down hard onto the seat at every bump. I couldnt even get the water bottle to my mouth the bouncing was so bad! We just ended up so tired there was nothing we could do but laugh at how incredibly crazy the bumps were!

We got to 'delhi highway last stop!!' at 5.30am. This actually turned out to be a great time to arrive, there were very few people about and easily found a nice hotel room. Oh by nice i mean it does the job, its cheap and has a certain 'character'!

Small, nice hole in the wall to let in light and a TV something i havent seen in months!

Indian electronics

Bit crazy but it works! Kind of how India seems to be!

I really liked Delhi. I dont know if it was because i was at this stage pretty used to indian maddness but i didnt think Delhi was as crowded, dirty, chaotic as people had said. I actually thought it was quite a chilled out place!

This was my favourite place in Delhi the lassi wallah guy....just 15 rupies for almost a bucket size cup of the most delicious coconut lassi! (lassie is milk and curd...like natural yogurt mixed together...yum!)

Delhi was also our first taste of hot weather after about 6 weeks in pretty chilly weather. I couldnt get enough liquids in....bucket loads of lassi, sugar cane juice, fresh fruit juices, milk, water you name it! It was hot there...really hot! I found the only way to sleep was to dip a colourful sheet i bought in Goa into a bucket of cold water and wrap it around myself so i could be cool enough to sleep. It feels very wrong wrapping something wet around yourself but it really did the job!

We visited Lodi gardens in Delhi one sweltering hot day. This place really was an oasis in the middle of a city. Lush green plants, lakes and right in the centre there were two really lovely buildings that had been the home of the guy the gardens are named after (king Lodi i think!) I was so surprised to find such a calm, almost revitilising place like this in Delhi! This place also seemed to be where the young indians went 'courting'! There were many many young couples hiding behind bushes having a little kiss, one girl and guy having a chat while the girls friend was pacing up and down waiting. It was very cute i have to say, it really is very very innocent here when it comes to this kind of thing.

Beautiful or what! This was voted the best park in Asia

While we were sitting down we were treated to some young indian boys doing cartwheels and tumbles in front of us...for our benefit im sure as the only foreigners in the park! Even after so long in india everyday your mind has to process new sights! For example there was quite a chubby, middle-age indian woman in a sari with white Nike runners throwing about a ball for her dogs to catch, for me its still quite something to get used to seeing women in sari's doing really modern things!

Time to make a move from Delhi.....visa running out!!!

The compulsary cow pic...this guy is just picking out some fabric for a suit i guess...

Next stop was Varanasi the holiest place in india for a hindu. After another (very very crazy!) sleepless train journey we arrived very early in Varanasi, found a nice guesthouse and while we were still a bit hyper from lack of sleep we went for a wander.

Aparently this is one of the oldest living cities in the world, meaning that people have been living here a long long time. Its full of narrow winding streets often blocked by a cow, the buildings are all crumbling, electric wires hanging down dangerously low across the streets, always a smell of inscence. This is really old india!

A priest brought us up to the top of a viewing tower to watch the preperations of the bodies before burning. I guess its not much different to having someone cremated at home just a lot more religion, tradition and rituals tied to it. The burning Ghat (place beside the river) is called Manikarina Ghat. The story is that the indian god Shiva dropped his earing (manikarin) into the ganges at that point, and it was stolen by some brahmen people. It is the decendants of these people that are the only ones allowed to handle the dead bodies for burning. Women are not allowed in this area something to do with their crying will stop the body having a pleasent passage to the next world.

The body is wrapped in shiny golden material all apart from the head and it is laid on a bed of wood. Sandlewood powder is poured onto the body along with some other powders and then its set alight. The burning goes on 24 hours a day...i will always remember this smell of sandlewood.

Varanasi really is a very special but also very very crazy place. Even after all the adventures i've had here with mad indian people this place takes the biscuit! There was not one occasion where myself or a friend would pop out to get something and not come back with a story of this mad person we just met!

The main focus of Varanasi is the ganges river. Its a very nice walk to go from one end of the Ghats on the river to the other. There are places dedicated to burning, swimming, washing, boats and water buffalo bathing.

People were actually washing the water buffalo, scrubbing them with soap!I guess they must be as sacred as the cow, an awful lot uglier though!

We took a boat ride at sunset along the river. This was our rower and guide! This place is so far away from 'reality' (ie ireland, if you can call a place reality!) that its hard to process that this is the normal life for people here, this maddness for them is normal!

Behind the ghats was the city....

Clay pots are used to serve chai, yogurt, milk, and afterwards you MUST smash them on the street otherwise very bad luck! To serve food you get a bowl made from leaves, it might be an ancient city but they have got some things right! Varanasi had powercuts more time than they had power, everyday people were dying from the heat and from generaters exploding on the street. Aparently the government cuts off electricty from the town every afternoon at the hottest time (between about 2 and 4) because people arent paying their bills. Of course businesses that wanted to stay open at this time had to use battery generators...that either exploded or broke down!

One evening i was on the internet (maybe writing this blog!) when the electricty went completly, the town was in total darkness. I had a strange journey back to my guesthouse, along the narrow streets, i could feel the other people brushing up against me, just touching the walls to feel your way around. I was more concerned about getting my ass grabbed that getting mugged! So unusual in this day and age to be in complete darkness. I could just about find my way home from the candles flickering in the little shops. It really makes you realise how dependant we are on electricty!

So they eat this then we drink the milk.....

This is Shiva the main man in terms of indian gods he is the most worshipped fellow and quite a cool guy even if he does look a bit like Alannis Morisette in this painting! It is not unusual in india to see a man dressed up as this god walking down the street. He is basically a dedicated shiva worshipper and is highly respected. I often wondered if a foreigner dressed up as shiva, trident and all would the same respect be there...i think so!

Extremley cute dogs in Varanasi. From the rooftop of my guesthouse you could see the monkeys slipping out of the window of someones house with a chapatti or something else stolen in their hand! Clever things.

I spent about 2 weeks in Varanasi, everyday was different! I grew to really like this place but i have to say after 2 weeks i felt a bit tired from the constant maddness of the people and the 46 degrees heat! With only 4 days left on my visa i caught the train to Calcutta. It was a sweltering hot 25 hour journey, the train had run out of water, the air was so think and hot i couldnt sleep. It was a horrible journey so when i arrived in Calcutta i though right im going to an air conditioned hotel!

This was the BEST idea ever! After all id been living in the cheapest of cheap accomodation for months and this place cost E15. It was so good to have a hot shower and sleep under a soft blanket and i really did feel revitalised after one night there.

Before i came to india i have to admit that Calcuta was the one city i had decided i'd never go to. I had visions of street kids with arms and legs missing crawling all over me looking for money, and the whole place being just one huge big slum and falling apart buildings. WELL i couldnt have been more wrong. I wish i would have had more time here this is an amazing city. It is extremly modern and has great charm. It has a lot of english influence with a Big Ben style clock tower, old style yellow taxi's and very un-indian style buildings. You could be in the middle of new york when you walk down the posh Park street.

There was also a lot of places to go here to have some space. This park was great, people flying kites, families sitting chatting, men going around selling chai and ice-cream. The fad here were dancing monkeys. A man came up to myself and my friend Gerry with two monkeys on chains, he was looking for 'baksheesh' for the dancing monkeys. The poor monkeys had little dresses on. The man said 'Look, dancing dancing!!' and he whipped the chain around so the monkey was dragged into doing a back flip. Even the wealthy indians were like 'look look dancing monkey!' I guess very different views on animal cruelty here!

One of my very last indian chai's...sob!

We sat in the park until sunset when the musical fountains started. In vegas style and in the height of the dry season the fountains sprouted up water to the sounds of chill out indian music with corresponding colours. So lovely! Now you cant avoid Calcutta when it has something free like this every evening! Every place ive gone to has surprised me but in terms of previous expectations Calcutta won me over! It has such a bad image of poverty and hopelessness and of course i saw many many things here that shocked me as much as my first day in india but this place has great character and so much to see and do!

I spent my last few days in Calcutta in this lovely place and i met some great people.

One of them was Eric from Scotland, who was cycling from Aberdeen to Adelade for charity! Of course i am crazy about cycling so i was very interested in his story! What an excellent (and very very funny!) man. He had covered 14,000 miles already, survived minus 38 degrees in the mountains in turkey, had to be followed 24 hours a day by army in Pakistan, and had been hospilized a few times with food poisioning in Pakistan. If you want to read his blog its http://Aberdeen2adelade.blogspot.com. The first night i met him a few of us on the roof top of our guesthouse chatted for so long the next minute the sun had risen and the birds were singing. we decided lets go find some chai and so went for a walk along the streets about 5.30 am.

Such a lovely atmosphere in Calcuta. The chai guy was sitting in this lungi and singlet shirt brewing away the chai served in clay pots. We had a strength competition to see if it was possible to break the clay pot with just one hand, the indians found this quite funny! The next night, again we all stayed awak until dawn and that was my last morning in India!

The view of the sun rising over bangkok from the plane

I have to say i think i am a changed lady after india, but changed for the better. I always felt i knew what the important things in life are but when you live without the unimportant things you realise this all the more! Ive learned to laugh heartily especially in bad situations, i certainly havent learnt to spell any better! I made such good friends for life and had experiences i never thought i would have had. India really is an amazing and very crazy place that suited me down to the ground!I could go on and on here but...now i have Thailand to explore!

Oh yes and here is the song that will always remind me of my last few weeks in india!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nDnamSM3Z3s

Manikarin

2009-04-26T08:54:00.018+01:00

Manikaran is another mad little place. but one i will never forget! It was lashing rain the day we left Manali a perfect day for spending on a bus. AND my first bus journey with lifestock! An hour or two into the trip we were joined squashed in the back of the bus with a very unhappy sheep. The poor thing was bouncing up and down we had the bars on the seets infront to hold ourselves down with but the sheep? ....it was funny.

Not a happy fellow

And not long after the sheep arrived the little fella looking down at the sheep that you can see from the picture, started vomiting all over the back of the bus, then the sheep started relieving himself all over the place. Next thing 2 policemen hop on and make a beeline down the back of the bus to us the only two tourists...oh the amount of contraban we must have!!!! He motioned that he wanted to search my backpack. It was a tough squeeze getting the bag out from between my legs, across the vomit and sh*t, over the sheep and around the people. He took one look at the bag approaching him, asked me What Country? I said Ireland, he replied with 'Very good country' handed the bag back and off we go again!

The bus to Manikarin drives down, down, down deep into a valley a little bit claustraphobic compared to open views of the mountains but it felt like we were entering a little hidden village. We arrived pretty late and were so lucky to find the best place ever! Why? Well it had its own PRIVATE hot spring bath!!!!! Oh wow heaven!! I planned to be in there more than out!

Check it out!Snazzy or wha!

The tiles in the room were a dindgy green, and the floor a marble chessboard. You locked the door and basically had the room to yourself. The one window (glassless) was covered meekly by a sheet of grandmother-style cloth that you hoped somebody wouldnt peel back from outside to have a look in at you. The guy changed the water everyday so some days it was roasting...a bit too hot...somebody told me the water naturally is 80 degrees. BUT on 2 occasions the water was just right...just like a little bit too hot bath you would run for yourself at home. When it was like this i spent at least an hour on my back floating, doing little laps of the pool etc etc... so good!

Ok sooo wow. There is a Sikh temple here, which basically means its run by the Sikhs who as part of their religion believe 'if you earn a decent living you should share this with others'. So just as in the Golden Temple in Amritsar the sikhs supply free accomodation and food. That first night we arrived we checked out the temple and what a bizzare place it was! A temple lit up by green and red christmas lights and with steam coming up from underneath it it really did look like something that should be in Disneyland.

Inside was dank, dark marble place underground with little corridors and iron bar gates, leading to the 'hot caves', the hot baths or the eating area. Its hard to exlpain the place! On one side it feels a bit scary, nobody is really talking, its just barely lit enough to see and as its situated on top of the hot spring the place is filled with steam! The hot caves are two rooms that are built around massive rocks that are very warm to touch. You crawl in through a door the size you would find in a childs playhouse and people are huddled in there, mostly in silence soaking up the heat.

There were pools with men everywhere, it was such a labyrinth of corridors that i couldnt find the womens pool but then...well .. sure didnt i have my own private one! Upstairs i heard the clattering of metal plates and we were just peeping in at the people lined up eating when a very friendly old guy escorted us into the place not taking no for an answer.

Oh the food here was the best indian food ive eaten so far AND this place gave out massive cups of chai. Compared to the Golden temple, nobody here spoke a word of english and despite that it felt so personally welcoming! I was tucking into my first meal there scooping the rice and dhal with my hands (ive mastered it im so happy to announce!) when i notice oh everyone is looking at me AND nobody seems to be eating with their hands doh! Well it seemed that everyone looking at me was just the usual and maybe its just the posher sikhs that eat with a spoon i found others eating with the hand too. I really like eating with my hand, scooping sloppy rice in and catching lumps of curry with chappatti, there is something very lovely ive realsied about touching your hand to your mouth to eat rather than with a metal fork. ANYWAY mmm it was delicious. I have been thinking about doing a tour of the Sikh temples next time i come to india! And of course even when you were eating you could hardly see a thing as the place was full of steam...crazy!

We went on another little adventure the next day, an extremly long walk accompanied by a very chilled out dog that didn't bat an eyelid when all the dogs from the villages we walked through came out from hiding to attack him! He just strolled on so cool and calm i never saw a dog like it before!

We walked for ages, through forest and random little villages, a man hearding a really wierd looking cow and the odd car or motorbike going past, apart from that there was just us and the beatiful valley. There was a strange ring around the sun that day we couldnt explain it.

After a few hours we stopped at a tiny little wooden hut in the middle of nowhere asking if he had any food. Inside were two young boys and an old man who couldnt speak. He kind of huffed and puffed and used hand movements to explain things. The walls of this place were covered with news paper i pointed at a picture of the Dali Lama and the guy went mad! I dont know if it was an exciting good story or an adventurous bad one that the dumb guy was trying to tell me about Dali. I though he was going to collapse with the amount of huffing and straining noises he was making, i had no idea what he ment but nodded along anyway while i finished my omlette and chai.

Random Shiva Temple on our walk
The local foliage

We realised we'd walked almost 12 k to the next town Pulga and decided although it was still early there was the whole matter of getting back again! IT was a long, tiring but really lovely peaceful walk, my last one in the mountains in india for now.

Manikarin main (only) street - to the left people are boiling rice in the hot spring water

For the next few days it rained which was fine since we were pretty settled in our nice guesthouse, going to the temple to eat, chilling out at our hot bath and sitting on our balcony watching the river go by with good conversation, a lot of laughs a just a little bit of tripping... I also made the 2nd best purchase of my time in india (the 1st clearly being the yak/rabbit photo!) I bought super cheap speakers for my mp3 so over the noise of the river we could just about hear it. The songs seemed just perfect for the situation and the sights.

Look at this guys hair! this was a holy man bathing across from our balcony

Beautiful sunset from our balcony

We tipped back on the cheap plastic garden furniture chairs and enjoyed the last sunset i'd have in the mountains...so lovely!It really was time to get going, after almost 2 months in the mountains there wasnt long left on my visa so off to hot, crowded, dirty Delhi for a few days...maybe it wouldn't be so bad! Goodbye mountains!

Manali

2009-04-24T07:40:00.028+01:00

Manali seems another world away...as there is almost sweat dripping from my eyelashes and im sliding around the seat in an internet cafe in Varanasi...its about 45 degrees....it is taking a little getting used to! Maaaybe i take it back when i said the desert was hot few months ago...

awww look at those mountains!!

We got up before dawn to board the 10 hour local bus to Manali. I thought by getting the seat beside the entrance at the front of the bus i'd be able to stretch my legs out a bit over the bar in front (no leg room as my dad would say!!!built for little chinese men!!!!) . This however was not comfortable at all!!! With the bumpy road, manic driving and the bus stopping at every turn to pile more people on, it was not until about 8 hours into the journey that i got a seat to myself at the front and stretched the old legs out. As i was stretching i gripped onto something behind me, oh was having the most wonderful stretch when BANG! someone slammed the metal door of the bus closed hard on my fingers....X*&%(#&%.... ouch!!!

Anyway cradeling my brusied and throbbing fingers, sitting on my numb and yeah probably bruised ass i was still thinking that bus journeys...mostly the last hour or two are really still quite very lovely. With the train its the last hour when your arriving to the station thats boring and dull but with the bus wow the place you are arriving to begins to emerge, the excitment begins and apart from wondering whether my fingers were broken or not the uncomfortable journey is forgotten. It was amazing here, the mountains in Dharmsala were lovely but here it all seemed more rustic or something along those lines. The clouds on top of the mountains looked like there was a forest fire without the fire. The rain was just starting as we pulled into Manali bus station so i hopped onto the roof and pulled my bag down before it got too wet as i was too stubburn to pay a guy to do it even though i could hardly use my squashed up fingers.

We were met there by some friends Mel, Julien and Frank, that i had known through Goa or the Bollywood movie. This was the view from our guesthouse..... i know your jealous...its ok....feckin amazing view!

Frank (asleep), Julien, myself and Lydie

It was a little more chilly and torrential rainy here than i had expected so my first night out in the town in manali i was dressed in absolutely ALL of my clothes on at the one time. Voila! Ament i a sight for sore eyes. Well i didnt care at all. Call it survival instinct...

Oh yes and theres my less than 1 Euro, very dodgy cooker on the floor that i made many a hot porridge on!

The place we were staying was in a little village called Vashist a walkable half hour or so from Manali. There were natural hot baths there. My friend Frank was off to the hot baths every 5 miniutes and i really couldnt see what the appeal was except well being hot! They were public hot baths (seperate women and mens areas) so you stripped off outside in the cold first! It wasnt until about my 4th day there when the sun came out that i decided to brave the hot bath.

WELL....

After that i was totally addicted! Come rain, sun, snow, whatever, i was in there 2 or 3 times a day. I loved sitting on the hard warm stone floor, scooping the scalding water over me, getting a great lather going with the shampoo, one that you just cant get with cold water i'd been happily using the last few months in india. There was a lovely social aspect to the baths too. Women of all ages washing each other, old ladies screaming at their grandkids to wash their backs! The water seemed to warm your blood and cleanse you completly. I was lucky enough to have the place to myself a few times when the rain was utterly torrential. I dont know if i will ever again experience such a cool thing as neck deep in very hot water, lashing rain on my head, the place all to myself, almost totally dark and with the temple bells ringing beside me....heaven.

This is about the best picture i could get, one of the nights i had the place to myself.

I actually became so addicted to the hot baths that i became like an indian instead of asking everyone 'where you from?' i was asking 'have you tried the hot baths!!!'

People washed everything in the baths, the water was so hot i even saw people running the hot water from the baths into pots full of eggs to boil them! this is the mens bath, no way, thank god, would the womens one be so exposed!!!

The weather was quite tempramental. One minute the sun would be shining and the next heavy, torrential rain and quite cold. It seemed to be one day of sunshine to 2 days of rain. Not a bad ratio if you compare to Irish weather but not too good if all you have are clothes for the beach. I splashed out on a yak wool hat, gloves, a 2nd hand jumper and a pair of cheap 'tracking shoes' to replace the ones the dog stole in Dharmsala (im over it now!woo hoo in boiling hot Varanasi the last thing i want is a nice warm pair of shoes)

This place was so lovely, you could just decide, 'ok ill go there' and walk up the mountain beside your house, or along a river for as far as you liked, uninterrupted by traffic or touts. It was very chilled out and anytime there was sunshine i ended up on unexpecdatly long long hikes! The first was when i was walking along a river one day i met a friendly israley girl (jeesus excuse the spellings in this blog!!) . We walked for about an hour up the river and came across a bunch of school kids holding banners, making a little protest.

It was an anti-pollution protest so we happily joined in, marching about the most pristine little indian village ive ever seen and chatting to these boys about it. The villagers where like ' stop walking across my garden!!' I found it funny that the school were trampling about such a lovely clean village with their anti-litter campaign....or maybe it was this pristine little village that was doing the littering elsewhere and thats why it was so clean mmmm. After this my god, myself and the isralie girl took an adventurous route to try and get back to where she was staying in the area of Old Manali. Instead of taking the road we were climbing along the mountain, at one stage the surface was smooth rock and almost vertical down, not such a huge drop but we had to carefully slide across on our ass to get past this bit. We had long run out of water and were so thirsty when we found a lovely little waterfall filled up my bottel and splashed our faces. I love that you can drink the water in the mountains....especially fresh from the waterfall. That was a cool hike i had with this girl and i was happy that i had invested in the cheap 'tracking shoes' (emmm im sure its supposed to be trecking shoes!)

You see mum i would have no problem with my bad spelling in india!

And look who i saw on a pack of mens boxer shorts....none other than our good friend Salman Khan the main guy from the movie we worked on! Wow isnt he a stud.

About a week later i had enough of my mad landlady who kept stealing my food and fed up of shivering myself to sleep every night in my stone room that i decided a change of house was needed! I had met some lovely french folks a few days before who brought me back to the place they were staying. It was called My House and it was excellent! Wooden floor and walls much warmer than concrete, previous owners had made nice and strange drawings on the walls and the best thing was that there was a tandoor cooker (kind of a little stove) in the centre of the room! Oh i had big expectations for this cooker!

Here i am making tea maybe?
This is the dog i adopted while in Manali....so cute.

The walls were a little bit shoddy as my friend Gerry who was in the room next to me, is kindly demonstrating.

Gerry with the dog Poochie-momo

Here i am cooking away, i have to say the novelty wore off a little when i realised how much time and effort it takes to start and fire and keep it going long enough to cook some porridge! Supercool place to stay though, very shanti shanti as the owner said at every opportunity.

Cute little things beside our guesthouse...i really wanted to keep one

I hopped on the bus one day to visit a little village called Naggar that was supposed to have a nice castle. The bus station in Manali was quite funny, donkeys, staring into space just standing there completly motionless. Unlike the cows who clearly have a lot going on in their mind, these guys had an utterly blank expression. The type im sure i had during many a lecture in college.....

Anyway, Naggar was a nice spot, i passed a sign that said, THE CASTLE, but it looked like a restaurant. I was walking up and around little villages for about 2 and a half hours when suddenly i noticed there was quite a breeze around my legs. To my horror the indian lady style trousers i was wearing had split right from my ass down to my knees on both sides. These are kind of tight trousers and all i had was my bag to conceal myself! Considering showing a bit of shoulder can be seen as erotic i was sure it was going to be an adventure getting back to vashist drawing minimum attention to the situation.

Here i am in Naggar just chilling out wondering the best way to cover up for the long walk, then bus journey, then another bit of a walk before i could be home! Anyway all was fine, indian men can be disasterously immature but compared to the movie shoot in Jaipur this was a breeze getting home! Naggar castle was a bit of a disappointment though..i was expecting some turrets and medievalness...

Another little adventure with a friendly Liverpudlien guy took us to the middle of the forest where we found this nice temple. We had to move fast as there were too many request for 'one snap please'! and we werent really in the mood to have our photos taken.

One very funny and quite entrepreneurial thing i must say thats in manali is that there are groups of women (and the mountain women are a bit mad!) holding fluffy white rabbits. When i arrived first i was sure i was going mad that i'd seen the elderly lady walking around with a white fluffy rabbit. Anyway rumour circulated that the rabbits hair was used to make clothes, that it was a photo opportunity or that yes maybe i was going a bit mad! Well i have to say it was the best 40 rupees i ever spent...along a quite forest path we came across a mad woman with the white fluffy rabbit AND a mad man with a big mountain Yak, freshly washed and brushed ready for one snap!

I felt 'at one' with nature. Actually i really didnt want to give the rabbit back it was very soft and fluffy and extremly passive to the point i wondered were these women feeding the rabbits the local charas...

Here they are lining up with the rabbits waiting to get the photo taken! Its not just me is it? This is quite funny?!

A little bit further on the path we came across an indian fair ground. It was funny and quite cute at the same time.

Next im not sure what the plan was but we ended up in the middle of a valley and we figured if we could just cross the river we'd be able to make it to old Manali then home. A lady in a house in the middle of nowhere in the hill said Yes Yes Possible to cross river!!!! and pointed some direction. So we climbed down a fairly steep valley to get to the river. Wow it was such a cool little treck down to the river. We chilled out first on a rock, looking at how far we'd come and listening the the craawing of a crow who was staring at us before going to cross the river. Well what a surprise, it just wasnt possible to cross the river! The water was moving fast and it was just that little bit too deep to wade accross. Thunder and rain was starting so we decided to head up stream and surely we could find a spot to cross where the river was narrower. There was a lot of climbing, gripping onto bits rocks, clothes getting ripped (and i didnt wear the tracking shoes oh dear!) we were a bit under pressure to cross before it got dark and very stubburn not to climb the whole way up the valley again!

We tried to find a spot, even to wade across holding onto each other with big sticks to support us but it was almost dark and in the end we had to give up and hike all the way up the valley....keeping an eye out for the lady to thank her for the advice about crossing the river....

Anyway as im way behind in writing this blog, thats kind of what my time in Manali was like, one or two sunny days spent on random little adventures and the rainy ones spent not so active at all i could say! Mostly hanging out at our cool little house with the tandoor, or swapping stories with other travellers at the rainbow cafe...or zorbing...that is being pushed down a hill in a big plastic ball....necessary...no...fun...VERY!

I realised i had spent an awful lot of time here in Vashist but i had become awfully attached to the hot baths making it very hard to leave. I managed to sort this dilemma out by heading to a smaller village this time in the bottom of a different valley with....yes...hot springs!

I really really love the mountains

Dharmsala

2009-03-24T08:23:00.012Z

(my camera has gone a bit psychadelic for some reason so some of these pics look great!)

It was a long journey to Dharmsala but a lovey picturesque one. The landscape became more and more mountainous i couldnt take my eyes off it. The roads here are pretty bad i worked it out that although the bus seems to be driving recklessy fast it only covers about 20k an hour!

Inside of the luxurious indian local bus

Little villages on the way...and you think there's not much happening in Mullingar??

We got there just after sunset...the whole day on the bus....numb ass, numb ass!

We arrived in Dharmsala pretty late, myself and 2 others Courtney and Gardiner headed to a house on the hills where we were couchsurfing. The nice thing about arriving when its dark is that you can relax that night when you arrive and when you wake up in the morning there is a huge surprise waiting for you of whats outside! The view from the couchsurfers house in the morning time was unbelieveable. It was just of mountains to one side and a valley in front. The mountains were huge a covered in snow and just right beside the house! We decided we must buy a house here in the future!!

Not a bad view from your KITCHEN!!!

A 'cute' spider we found walking back to the couchsurfers house one night, he jumped off the wall when the camera flashed we jumped a little!!

We got up very early the next morning for the Dali's lama's speech which was in the next town called McLeodGanj....it was founded by a scottish lad as far as i know hence the very non-indian name!

This is Dali Lama's house

The speech was set in a temple beside where Dali lives. They had it decorated nicely inside with prayer flags. We took a seat on the ground, Dali's speech was in Tibetan so we couldnt understand a word but he had a very catchy, funny laugh so when he burst out laughing we all burst out laughing and it looked like we were laughing at the same thing! I will always remember it was such a beautiful clear sunny morning with fresh air blowing, not too cold not too hot i was in heaven especially after the long, cramped bus ride the day before. I decided i was really going to like this place!

It was very different here to the other places in India that ive been as the people here are mostly Tibetan and Tibetan monks at that so it doesnt really feel like being in India at all, which in a way i felt a bit sad about because im really growing to love this country! The one advantage with monks all around the place is that for sure there is less chance of getting a really horrible ass grope from a dirty indian man!

There are prayers written on these wheels so when you spin them clockwise you are saying your prayers how handy!

I dont know if it was more for the tourists benefit but there seemed to be some sort of 'free Tibet' protest everyday.

Forget the protest look at those mountains!!!!

The really lovely thing about here was that you could just go for a walk for hours and hours which i dont think you can comfortably do in the busier cities and towns and i LOVE walking! I had filled my mp3 player with indian type music with the citar and flute so i just floated through the forests listening to this, the exercise and the fresh air was a big change and so good!(although cancelled out a little but the food here which was also too good!) Although you still get every indian man stopping his car or motorbike hoping you would like to be picked up, it feels safe and the views are so great i walked for hours there.

Unfortunately the morning we were packing up our stuff to move from the couchsurfers house to McLeodGanj i could only find one of my shoes outside. My really really good shoes!!! It turned out one of the local dogs probably took it in the middle of the night to play with. I wish the couchsurfers could have told me not to leave my shoes outside!!! I was DEVASTATED, such excellent shoes and probably the most valuable thing i owned. I was incredibly pissed off that day as i couldnt go hiking in flip-flops. Anyway i suppose the positive thing is that there is nothing i own now of much value so im getting even more detached from having material things....still though...how annoying!...ok ok im over it (writing this a month later!!)

It was a co-incidence that i saw this sign soon after at a temple..

Right....moving on!

Here is a strange little fellow that we found chillin out at a temple on the main st

And of course the obligatory cow picture in every blog entry...just chillin in the middle of the road the car beeping its horn like crazy....only in india!!

Here is something stupid you didnt need to know. I thought i'd post these pics of some Dharmsala restaurant toilets!

There is a water shortage in this town but..yeah a bath..wishfull thinking!

And when i asked the shopkeeper did he have a toothbrush for sale i was presented with this box of ancient toothbrushes!!

The day after Dali's speech was Holi festival! Its where everyone throws toxic paint on each other woohoo! I did have an extremley boring very long explination of the reason behind the festival where i drifted in and out of listening to a song in my head, i think it has something to do with the death of winter i could be horribly wrong. Anyway we put on some old clothes (ha ha they're all so old by now..) and head off into the street for some paint throwing.

I got a nice facefull of pink from this guy with the totally green face! It was quite a friendly Holi festival i had heard that in the big cities it can get really out of hand but here the people were like...oh can i put some paint on you!! I got a good unexpected slap of the coloured powder when i turned a corner, it was all in my mouth and nose such a musty smell, i got those guys back with all the pink powder i had left. It was like if you already had some paint on your face then it was a licence to be ambushed and if somebody was totally clean you asked oh happy holi can i put some paint on you!

We were having a coffee afterwards when the lady in the cafe pleaded with me to wash the paint off asap as its so toxic, easier said than done in a town where there is only water for one hour in the morning!!

The next day myself and Lydie went on a hike to find the waterfall that was nearby. We stopped 5 minutes later to get some delicious ice-cream off this guy, then back to the hike!

We almost stopped again 10 minutes later for tea! why push ourselves...and poor me in my sandles not my lovely shoes...

It was a nice walk, the waterfall was a stream of water falling down a hill into a small pool at the bottom.

The clouds were starting to get very heavy, we saw this sign in the middle of the hill so we followed a track up to a cool cafe in the middle of the mountains. We got there just in time as it started very heavy rain, thunder and lightning! There was no better place than a cosy cafe, sipping hot sweet chai and having a chat with some locals and tourists that had spent maybe too much time in the area!

I had a few games of this carrom board with a one-eyed tibetan guy who spoke no english and me obviously no tibetan but there was no problem in understanding! He had played this game a lot and slaughtered me every time with his fancy moves! I also got chatting to some indians here and i realised how much of an inferiority complex the indians have about themselves. They were saying 'oh no we're not lucky at all, life isnt good for indians' i was saying to them 'guys look where you are!on holidays also in a cool cafe in the middle of the mountains...what is there to complain about'! But the guy insisted that indians are just not as cool or good or as up to scratch as westerners. Well this is obviously just his opinion but i have to say if only he could know how much i love india because of the amazing people ive met! The people here really are one of a kind they are so easygoing, funny, caring, generous, kind, massive personalities, that for me is more important than any amount of material things....even nice shoes.....

Before i left Dharmsala i had promised my mum i would call into a convent nearby. Her aunt was a very famous nun in India...a lesser-known mother Theresa type lady and she was the head nun of a group of schools around india and was known as 'mother'. The convent was set in the middle of a nothing type town, but after i entered the gates i was blown away by the beautiful gardens. The nuns were so so excited that 'mother's grand-niece had come to visit, they were telling me all about how much they admired her. I had to say they had a great sence of humour and very on the ball! The nuns fed me although i had to force it down i was already so full, they gave me sweet stuff and nutmeg to take home. There was also a lot of load explosions outside, when i asked where they doing up the garden they said no they were making their graves.

I had met a few irish people here, the first irish i think that ive met since coming to india and as it was coming up to St Patricks day we decided to organise somthing for the event! I was trying to get hold of some green paint from Holi festival to decorate ourselves with but i never got around to it...as was the general scene of things here! We had a little shindig in a cafe where the Tibetan lads working there had lived in ireland for years and had a super strong Dublin accent! They cooked traditional irish food without the beef...oh it was delicious, we washed this down with cheap indian whiskey then while there was an irish guy on a guitar, a tin whistle and an irish lady who was excellent at playing the flute, i was dragged up to perform the worst irish dancing you ever could see in your life. Not only was my stomach a big bag full to the brim of food and whiskey i really just cant do the irish dancing! Anyway it was a good effort and a fun night and i felt proud to be irish!

You could hear the liquid sloshing about my stomach as we did a frantic jig for about 20 mins!

Next off to Manali.....

Dalhousie

2009-03-18T05:40:00.010Z

Dalhoosie is a mad little village in the middle of the mountains in the middle of nowhere where the indians go for a holiday. There is a very different feel to a place thats a westerner holiday place. Its nice though! Funny!!

Its was a nail-biting 6 hour bus trip from Amritsar i had to stop myself from looking out the window of the bus, the driver was going too close to the edge for comfort!

The first thing i noticed was the wolliest sheep ive ever seen. This might have given some indication that it was going to be cold there! We walked about 2k until we got to the main st and found a very dindgy cold room but it did the job!

Well it was freezing cold, we were not prepared one bit in our winter clothes. I put on absolutely every piece of clothes i owned including the 'Jasailmer Camel Safari' hat i was wearing in the desert. I finished off my outfit with a colourful blanket as a coat. We were the only non-indians walking down the main st, in our mad outfits to keep warm! You can imagine the indians were like 'what the hell is this!!!'. Dalhosie seems to be a real calm honeymoon, or family type place so they just all dropped what they were doing to see these white folks prancing along the streets wearing layers and layers of summer clothes!!!

Fer-eezing in the room!

They were going mad to take photos of us holding up their mobile phones pretending to write a message while clearly taking a picture! We went to eat in a tiny little fast food place. All of us in all our clothes practically took over this little place. My god the food was amazing!!

Halfway through eating our food the 'pretending to text on the mobile' but really taking a picture of us started again. I asked the guy 'Hey do want to take a photo of us???' We noticed that everyone on holidays here was dressed to the max in designer suits and their best sunday clothes. This guy that was taking photos of us had his hair all slicked back, wearing a snazzy grey pinstripe suit, black shirt and playboy bunny earings!!

I dashed out of the fast food place to try and find a toilet when i was stopped again for more 'snaps!'. First with the father, then the mother, then one with the aunt, then with the kids then one with the whole family....and me in my 20 rupie camel safari hat and blanket!!! Very lovely friendly people though and very nice to go to an indian holiday spot, its a real taste of the indian culture and i love it! This place as unspoilt and had beautiful mountain views. The air was so clean and crisp and it was very cold but sunny.

Off we headed the next day to Dharmsala where the Dali Lama would be making a speech, it was great to visit such a little town like Dalhoosie...hope its a little bit warmer in Dharmsala!