Please take a little time to read this one - it’s far more important than my rambling travelogues.
Have you ever wondered where the money you donated for the tsunami went to? Well, the Sri Lankans are wondering the same thing. The NGOs have done some basic work but I think the bureaucracy and the sheer amount of money they are dealing with is slowing them down so nothing seems to be getting through. The Sri Lankan government is a bug bear to EVERYONE I come across – they seem to be giving their people no money although there is plenty sitting there to be spent. It seems to be up to the people to get on with their lives as best they can.
The charity I am working for is purely Sri Lankan led. The guy who founded it had his beautiful house completed devastated by the tsunami but his village was totally wiped out so he has decided that he will not rebuild his house but will turn it into a centre of excellence for the young people in the village. I have never come across someone so motivated and someone who has touched so many people’s lives. Kushil has already done an amazing job at rebuilding his village without government help but with hard work, generous sponsors and a good heart.
..and it shows in the people. Today I was chatting to 10 year old Samanmali who lost 4 members of her family last December, but she was smiling and happy and wanting to play games. The older kids are finding it harder – Dilan who lost his brother finds it hard to talk about but they are starting to open up and they need help to get their lives together again.
If you would like to help and see exactly where your money is being spent, this is a great place to donate to. The best thing you could do is sponsor a child so that they get a chance of an education and maybe some kind of a life. Check out the website if you would like to help, and let me know if you do as they usually send photos, updates, etc and I can take photos of any kids sponsored too. Go to www.unconditionalcompassion.com, click on ‘how you can help’ and scroll down to ‘children’s needs’. (in monetary terms 1000 Rupees is 5.5 pounds, 1500 Rs is 8.25 pounds and 2000 Rs is 11 pounds)
If you can’t afford to donate but can send some stuff to me here that would be helpful too. We are organising a competition for Universal Children’s Day on 1st October and will be giving prizes out, so anything branded that they will recognise could be fun to give to them – BBC pens, etc., etc.. If you can send anything let me know and I’ll send an address to send things to.
Thanks for listening.
A Charitable Plea!
Part Two: Rivers and Seas
A cruise down the Yangze' sounds quite luxurious doesn't it? A trip down river to see the beautiful landscape before the controversial 3 Gorges Dam floods it all out. However, the reality was a little different although still a great experience. We may have made a slight mistake in opting for the Chinese tourist boat rather than one full of Westerners. Surely that would be a more genuine way of seeing a bit of China about to become history? I guess it was, but a boat of 250 Chinese tourists was an experience we probably wouldn't repeat!
Also on board were a great couple from Cornwall - really interesting folk who'd spent a year in South America and 6 months in India with their kids (before they grew up)... and a couple of brothers from Norway - nice genuine lads. So the 6 of us put up a united front and mucked in with the Chinese tourists trying to ignore the retching and spitting, pushing and shoving. We even joined in the nightly Karaoke ritual after a beer or two. It's quite comical to look back on, particularly the boat itself. Each morning a loud Chinese voice would bawl out of our air con system at 5am, 4am and 3am respectively! There was no switch to get rid of it and it started to feel like a Chinese prison camp, but after half an hour of pointing and acting out 'speaker' scenarios I managed to find someone to switch it off. The early wake ups were pointless too, it seems the Chinese need to wake up about 3 hours before we actually were due anywhere. Despite the early alarm calls, the total lack of English and the filthy Yangze river it was actually an interesting trip. We cruised through stunning scenery one minute and big industrial towns the next. The 3 little gorges and 3 big gorges had some breathtaking moments - all to disappear in 2009. They are predicting the project to be a disaster with the Yangze becoming one big waste dump as the river flow slows down when it's all flooded. What we saw of the dam was impressive though, and we dropped an incredible 70m down river through vast imposing locks. We arrived in Yichang 3 days later feeling battered and bruised and in need of some TLC.
Next stop was Guilin - a brief couple of days in a beautiful city and another river cruise! 4 hours up the Li River, very different to the Yangze. Stunning rural scenery - farms, workers, water buffalo, quaint villages all lining its banks. What's more, there was finally a little English spoken and Mum and I spent a pleasant couple of hours chatting to a student whose parents were local farmers. It gave us a view of the new generation of China which was very interesting.
After our whistle-stop tour of China we decided we needed a little luxury starting with a fantastic vodka cocktail at the top of the Mandarin Oriental in Hong Kong and moving onto a very luxurious couple of days at the Shangri-La in Bangkok. Bliss...
So finally I get to Thailand after years of avoiding it due to my prejudice about noise, hassle and backpackers! I'd pictured streets full of constant hassle but China seemed to be the place for that more than Thailand. There we got endless shouts from stalls and shops of, "just looking.. looking.. looking", and here we just get the odd "madam" but with no aggression or pestering so Bangkok seemed much more civilised than I'd imagined. I enjoyed my brief few days in Bangkok topped with a tour of the canal streets there with rickety houses on stilts and the hustle and bustle of life within them. After that, a sleeper train up to Chiang Mai - a rackety, rolling ride which left us feeling quite dizzy when we arrived. Lovely scenery though and Chiang Mai is a great place to spend some time. We stayed in a beautiful hotel on the river - very homely with gorgeous gardens and delicious breakfast! Chiang Mai is full of goodies - silk, silver, cotton, teak, umbrellas, massages, food, massages, food, massages... a good introduction to Thailand, its life and people. A day of Thai cooking was the icing on the cake (or should I say the lemongrass in the stir fry?) - so be prepared for some Thai curries, stir fries and salads when I return!
After the goodies of Chiang Mai it was time to leave the rivers behind and head for the sea. Mum had wanted to return to Koh Samui after some 12 or 13 years, however since then it has become a bit of a tourist hell. After initial disappointment and spoilt daughter foot stamping we found a really nice place to stay on a quiet end of the beach and we actually had a lovely relaxing week swimming, reading and eating. It all went too quickly and after 5 weeks coping with me it was time for Mum to head home and for me to move on. So a sad goodbye and then I moved on... to the next island, not exactly far compared to Mum's trip to London!
I've given in to the back packer life for a few days. Staying on Thong Nai Pan Yai on Koh Phangan - it's a beautiful setting. As I write I'm swinging in my hammock outside my cosy bungalow overlooking the sea. Somehow I managed to get one of the best spots on the beach and I'm taking full advantage of it at 5 quid a night! It's a wonderful tranquil beach by day and party place by night. There really is no choice here but to join the madness of it all. After a fairly quiet 6 months my body has had to deal with the odd 4.30 and 6.30am mornings as I wander back from the bar, along the beach, to the bungalow.
The partying was fun but it's once again time to move on. Today I head to Sri Lanka where I will be volunteering for 6 weeks in a village called Seenigama, running a youth activity programme. The village was completely devastated by the tsunami and the charity is doing some fantastic work to rebuild the village both physically and in spirit. (Check out 'www.unconditionalcompassion.com' for more info on it). I'll be in touch from there...
Part One: From Whale Sharks to Shark Fin Soup
When I last wrote I was challenging Ningaloo Reef, on the West coast of Australia, to beat the Great Barrier Reef in terms of its marine life. It’s one:nil to Ningaloo! I’ve snorkelled in some great spots around the world but never somewhere with so many fish – it was like being on the set of Finding Nemo. As the week went on the bigger the fish got. Parrot fish, cat fish, angel fish, laser fish, box fish, comedy cod, little sting rays, white and black tipped reef sharks, turtles …and that was just day one - snorkelling right off the beach in beautifully warm sea and a stunning setting. The highlight was at the end of the week when I went on a Whale Shark trip.
You may remember them from wildlife documentaries – big spotted fish with huge wide open mouths eating up the plankton in the water. They dozily swim along with little fish eating at their mouths, and bigger fish swimming under them catching the dregs and seemingly sheltering. Whale Sharks can be up to 18m long, though the biggest I swam with was a mere 8m long. There were 4 of them the day I went, and it was exhausting jumping in and out of the boat to swim alongside them, probably equally weird for them with all these odd humans gawping at them with snorkels and masks and big wide eyes - the experience really was awesome. Almost as spectacular were the Manta Rays swimming up to you out of the depths with their big wings like angels in the sea. To top that, at lunch time Hump Back whales were swimming alongside the boat flipping their huge tails out of the water. Wow!
After all that marine excitement I spent a wonderfully chilled week in Perth with friends (huge thanks to Ads and Kiera) and then a lovely w/e back in Sydney. A fantastic goodbye to Oz was had by a day out on a boat in the harbour with luxuries like prawns, champagne, BBQ fish and great weather (big thanks to Jen and Tracy). Then time for a culture change as I headed to Hong Kong and China.
Mum had bravely decided to do this part of the trip with me and it was great to meet her in Hong Kong and spend a solid amount of time with her. However, no matter how hard one tries not to, when you travel with a parent somehow you tend to regress into spoilt child mode, so poor Mum had to cope with some of that! On the other hand you have a bit of role reversal in that you become the organiser and to an extent the protector – so whilst stamping my foot and wanting my own way, I also felt a kind of parental responsibility for us both. Interesting.
Anyway, back to the travels… Landing in Hong Kong in the day time is a little like landing in Lego land with all its tall skyscrapers, I’d only seen it at night before which is always spectacular. It was the start of my Chinese food diet here. So many people had warned me of the terrible Chinese food saying that I’d come out a stick insect. This I was quite looking forward to after the amount of weight I've stacked on travelling. However, they were all wrong! The Chinese tend to pride themselves on their cuisine. Yes, they did have some dodgy stuff on the menu such as turtle, snake, pig intestines, star fish and shark fin soup, but aside from those their food was delicious and very, very cheap. From night markets, to streets lined with food stalls, to restaurants – it was all fantastic stuff.
Aside from our introduction to Chinese cuisine Hong Kong was really just a meeting point and after a couple of days we flew into China proper starting in Beijing. Beijing was a good introduction to China as barely anyone spoke English there and only a few signs were in Roman script whereas outside of the city no-one spoke or understood English and all signs were in Chinese writing! Somehow we managed to get by. Most hotels, hostels, and tourist places were very surprised and a little inconvenienced by the fact we were independent travellers and not part of a tour group. Our first challenge was to book all our internal flights around China (of which there were many) – after being served by about 6 people we got there, it took all morning! Public buses were a bit of an issue too but thanks to our Lonely Planet bible we either had a bus number or bus stop location to help us get the right one. Cities with metros were a blessing and easier to navigate. They also had air con, unlike the hot sticky tube back home, which was much needed as China in summer time is incredibly hot. It’s also their rainy season – so you see why people thought Mum slightly mad to join me on this bit of my trip! However, despite severe floods over the whole of China while we were there, somehow we missed them. We had lovely sunny days with only one morning of rain. It was 38 – 40 degrees though which I don’t mind but there were times when I thought Mum would melt away! We spent a good amount of time walking through hot city streets avoiding a mass of brollys – the Chinese have umbrellas to keep the sun off them, it’s a status thing – the whiter you are the wealthier you must be. Umbrellas were prodding people out of the way on the pavements, umbrellas on bikes, umbrellas, and indeed whole families, on mopeds!
Back to Beijing… a huge flat city stretching about 165k from North to South and quite ugly except the historical Hutong areas. Old community alleyways with houses, food stalls and little shops, which they are now knocking down and replacing with new monstrosities. We were lucky to stay in a hostel in the Hutongs – a little bit of history soon to disappear no doubt. There’s a lot to see in and around Beijing – The Forbidden City, lovely old Chinese architecture still in amazing condition probably due to the fact that it was closed to the public for 500 years. The Summer Palace outside the city with its quaint canal street, big lake, temples and peaceful gardens. Tiananmen Square where all we could think about were tanks and people being shot. Then 2 hours out of Beijing the spectacular Great Wall of China. We went to a quiet spot on the Great Wall and had it almost to ourselves for a few hours. It really is a stunning sight to see stretching 100s of miles across ragged mountains, very steep in places, an amazing construction and almost impossible to describe – go there!
We seemed to bounce from site to site – next stop the city of Xi’an and the Terracotta Army. The Chinese call it the 8th wonder of the world and it is a truly spectacular sight to see and still being excavated. There are 3 different sites all enclosed and near each other with different army formations. The terracotta figures are a little bigger than life size with incredible detail – they believe that the craftsmen used their own images on the soldiers so they are all individual and quite different. Rows of soldiers, horses and some chariots - quite breathtaking at first view. Part of me was amazed and part of me thought it all too perfect to be true. So I’ve come to the conclusion that it could be a fake, which would be a bit of a scandal! It makes some sense though – the Chinese think status and wealth more important than anything so I reckon they built the terracotta army ‘unearthing’ it in the early 70s claiming it to be a historical wonder and therefore getting world status. It would explain why the excavations don’t seem to be progressing too readily as there would obviously be nothing to excavate! Yes, maybe my brain got a little frazzled in the heat…
Another place we visited near Xi’an was the Huashan Mountain. This captures all the beautiful pictures you see of rocky, sheer, ragged mountain ranges in China. Another stunning spot. It was hard work though, climbing steep rocky steps in 40 degree heat was difficult enough but added to that was the challenge of negotiating thousands of Chinese tourists like ants crawling up the mountain with their brollys! Also hard to endure were the men with their awful habit of rolling their shirts up above their nipples and walking, nay strutting, around like that all day. They do have large egos and think they are god’s gift – but it’s the women that seem to get on with it and do all the work. Everywhere we went men just ignored our pointing and bartering and it was always the women that would (begrudgingly) help.
After the heat and the pushing and shoving in crowds it was time to head to the Yangze River. More in part 2 …
