peregrinations – Red Branch Chronicles

A Short Walk in the Sarawak Highlands* – Part One

He awoke with a start, knowing he was already late, his breath still beery from the night before as he rinsed his mouth with warm water. He grabbed his backpack, ready and packed in anticipation of a late start. The whole idea of this jungle trek was to break out of this humdrum life he had been leading recently. What better place to do that than the Borneo hinterland? he reflected wryly. A hired car at Brunei Darussalam’s Airport, an overnight stay in Bandar Sri Begawan overlooking the water village opposite the sultan’s massive palace, too many beers in the yacht club and then this drive south, the road hugging the coast, his head still pounding from the night before.

Better take it slowly, he cautioned himself, down the highway past Seria and on to Kuala Belait where he could return his car and catch the ferry over the Belait river. He strolled on to the rusty, clapped-out looking ferry for the five minute crossing. No sign of the guides who were meant to meet him at 8:00 am. Mind you, it was nearly 10 at this point, but what the hell, they were paid for! Maybe they’ll be on the other side of the river but there wasn’t much else there – no taxis, buses, or cars, only a bunch of smirking, lounging, idle louts in tight blue jeans and basketball Reboks. Still no sign of the guide.

A short walk down to the Brunei border and Immigration and it’s almost a breeze through except for the one question,

“What car you in?”

“Oh I didn’t take a car, I just got a lift.”What number your car?”

“I don’t have a car, actually, I just got…”

“OK, what number your car?”

“I’m sorry I don’t have a … oh never mind, KC 3201”.

“Oklah”

And on to the Malaysian Immigration and bingo, through. Back into a taxi and a quick rush down the ten mile strip to the crossing of Baram river on the other side of which he could get an express ferry up river to Marudi. The line of cars begin to move and they rolled onto the ferry, not much better looking than the previous one. Before the taxi driver could slam on the handbrake, bottles of local perfume, oil, or is it rice wine, bundles of firewood and crude parangs were thrust in through the window for his approval. His headache slowly dissipating, allowing him to shake his head in polite refusal, he began to feel that the trip was beginning to look up. The ferry’s departure was so smooth that they were almost on the other side before he realised that they had left. The boat nudged the bank and the taxi lurched off. Still no sign of the guide.

Unlike the short-haul car ferry across the Baram, the riverine express boat was shaped like a narrow cigar with dirty polythene windows. Powered by massive diesel engines, entrance was through a narrow portal at the bow giving the ferry the sobriquet of ‘coffin boat’. It was due to leave at 11:30 for Marudi, so he went off looking for a phone to call the agency to inquire about the guides. No phones in Baram, though, so he settled for a cup of coffee. The cup arrived with a coffee bag! No phones but coffee bags instead! He washed the tepid stuff and decided a beer seemed like an excellent idea and enquired if they had cold ones. Emphatic nods of the head from the fat Malay lady in the grubby sarong and dirty t-shirt. Multiple shoutings backwards and forwards between the Malay stall and the neighbouring Chinese one and a glass filled with muddy-looking ice and a tin of warm Heineken beer appear. Not good enough for him as he wanted them to go. Off to the shop across the road and two beers are fished out of the ice-chest and it was time to get on the boat.

A punctual departure and the boat was three quarters empty. The seats were built for midgets whose legs had been amputated. He sat as far back as he could from the video screen – non-stop world wrestling – and as far forward from the roar of the engines and the stink of hot diesel. Two slatternly looking girls, one with a rather bruised and battered looking face, de-nitted each other’s hair and then proceeded to make each other up, with lots of coy looks and fluttering of wire-like false eyelashes in his direction. He smiled politely and gazed at the riverbank, piled with rotting logs, the banks stripped of vegetation, the river the colour of stale coffee with milk. Logging was big in this area, or was until there was nothing else to log. So why don’t they do something with all this stuff stacked up on either side of the river, he wondered. Maybe it’s seasoning or something. He stretched out over two seats and used his sleeping bag as a pillow, slid off into an beer enhanced snooze until shaken awake at Marudi nearly three hours later.

He stumbled off the boat and looked around for the guides. Maybe they would be waiting for him there! Nobody stepped forward to greet him except grubby touts for cheap hotels. A van for “The Grand Hotel” pulled up and something about the name rang a bell so he wandered over and asked if they knew anything about the Borneo Adventure Agency.

“You Mr. Mac?”

“Yep”

“Ah yes, wait a while. You maybe take a coffee over there. My hotel has a booking for you”.

That sounds fine so why bother to “wait a while” he thought. Never mind, so over to the Chinese coffee shop, garish with large gold characters on a rich red plastic background. Inside, wide bladed aeroplane propellor type fans lazily stirred the flies from the formica marbled tabletops. Cups of coffee with a quarter inch of condensed milk sludge at the bottom of the cup and a generous portion slopped into the saucer appeared and then the van man reappeared with the van but now it’s his turn to “wait a while”, and he did.

Driving off to the hotel, the van man gestured at a row of shabby shop houses, half hidden behind raggy, blue canvas sun shades,

“Borneo Adventure office there”,

and then, tyres squealing, he swung the van round the corner past the Foo Chow Association building and they were at the hotel. He signed the proffered registration card and was given a key. Pleasant airy room, bathroom, TV, air con, cigarette scarred desk, view out of the dust coated louvred window of a barren, naked outcropping. Probably a good place for the local roosters to perch and wake him the next morning. No fear of oversleeping again!

Off to see the Agency finally. Perhaps it was time to find his guide, collect his air tickets and discuss the itinerary, of which he was completely oblivious. A friend had taken the trip recently and had sworn about the beauty of the highlands, the hospitality of the traditional longhouses of the Kelabits, different in all ways to the coastal Ibans and Dyaks, so much so that he had offered to arrange the whole trip for him. All he knew was it involved several river ferries and then a flight up to Bario in the central highlands of Borneo close to the border with Kalimantan and from there he would walk to neighbouring longhouses in the area. At the time, the details hadn’t seemed important and he had imagined a streamlined process that would deliver him to Bario where all he had to do was accompany the guides and porters his friend had already arranged.

Back past the Foo Chow Association building and The Las Vegas Pub, sidestepped the bicycles and crossed over to the row of dingy shop houses. But there’s only an open fronted barber shop, a hair-dressing salon (same management?) a bicycle repair shop and a shop that smelled indescribable, but was thankfully boarded up with rough hewn planks. Off to the fancy Zola Hotel on the opposite corner to ask directions. Two immaculately coiffed and painted smiling girls led him out onto the street and pointed back at the row of shop houses with the tatty blue awnings that he had just left.

Back again and peer carefully into all the shops and, sure enough, in the back of the barber shop, behind a withered looking creature lying full length on a chaise lounge having hair snipped from his nostrils, there was a hand drawn sign for Borneo Adventure on a sheet of Manilla card. The door in the shadowy back wall is unlocked but there’s nobody at home. He was about to leave a message when a girl and a child arrived. The child solemnly switched on the aircon in the stifling windowless “office” and sat down behind the desk, all business like. Ignoring the child, he explained to the girl that he’d booked for the highland tour and he’d like to meet his guide and collect his tickets for tomorrow’s flight.

“Ahh, sorrylah, Richard not herelah.”

Who’s Richard? That’s the first he had heard of him. He thought his guide was called Noah. Off again, led by the girl and child, down the main street, the child leading and kicking mangy mutts out of our way, past the Zola Hotel, and over to an obviously empty, spanking, new, white, two storey building.

“Richard office there”, the girl announced flatly and then, tugging the child by the hand, walked away. Might as well have a look at Richard’s office, even if he’s not there, he thought. Up rough stairs, still coated in loose, concrete dust to a door with a printed stencil sign for Borneo Adventure. This door was locked and there was no answer when he knocked. He was about to walk back down the gritty stairs when the door was opened by a sleepy, tousled looking girl in a t-shirt and a sarong. No, Richard wasn’t here, but she had his tickets and she could phone Richard in Miri, if he wanted. He did want, and the line was surprisingly clear, and Richard seemed quietly confident. They arranged to meet that night at the hotel at 7:00pm. It seems like an ideal time to have a cold one to celebrate the success of everything.

A surly looking Chinese slapped down a large bottle of iced Carlsberg, and a Guinness stout glass with a daub of identifying red paint on its base, on a rickety wooden legged table with a genuine, chipped marble top. Chinese opera boomed out of the in-house video and he settled down to the beer and to watch the world idle past in this sleepy little riverine port of Marudi.

Richard turned up promptly. A small man of indeterminate race – Iban, Malay, Chinese, mixture of more that that?- in a rumbled open necked shirt and baggy blue jeans. He had the tickets so they went across the street to a hole in the wall to have more beers and to discuss the trip. 8:30 pm and a rather foolish expectation of the “last hamburger he’ll have for a few days” and off they went to the posh looking Zola Hotel on the corner. Posh it might look from the outside, but the menu still consisted of those old Chinese favourites of braised sea slug, sizzling liver, drunken chicken in a clay pot and ox hearts. He settled for boring old sweet and sour pork ribs, kangkong belacan, sweet corn soup, sizzling deer meat and chili prawns.

After dinner, a stroll round the sights of Marudi – young men, with jeans rolled to the knees, were hosing the concrete dust off the brand new, all weather, main road, stalls and shops are fitfully illuminated by flaring pressure lamps, street hawkers offer flattened pieces of fried chicken and fish, nail clippers and bottles of home medicine.

He saw a book shop and wondered if he should buy something to read. The only English book they had was a Mills and Boon romance which he bought after protracted haggling over the mediocre price and then decided on the Las Vegas Pub. Up a flight of dark stairs and into an even darker room with a bare concrete floor, scattered tables in the gloom and a small stage with a microphone at one end. It’s a Karaoke bar, apparently. A few people sit around and a hostess, the only woman in the place, brings him, unasked, a large bottle of Anchor beer, a bowl of nuts, a cologne-soaked paper napkin wrapped in plastic and a song menu.

“Excuse me, my name is Frankie, you like to join us.?”

A scrawny, earnest, bespectabled Chinese youth, wearing a white sleeveless singlet with the slogan “Let’s Make Waves” across his chest, asked. He stood up and was introduced to his companion.

“This is Andre, you know Andre the Giant? He also work for the government with me in the Forestry Department.”

Hand shakes all around and smiles, and then Andre is called up to the stage to croon the song Carol, while an enormous video screen displays topless beauties lolling on a Southern California beach. The words to the song appear on the bottom of the screen, changing colour as the song progresses. Frankie is up next dedicating the song to him while more beer arrives, this time in a large glass jug. Frankie then does a duet with Andre of “Hey Jude”. It’s his turn then, and sweating with embarrassment, he croaked his way through a shaky version of “The House of the Rising Sun”. Frankie and Andre cheer wildly and pound their glasses on the table in approval while others double up in laughter. He came back to the table ridiculously pleased with himself and wondered what other song he dared make a mess of.

More beer, and more songs – they were all enjoying themselves and Frankie could really sing while Andre specialised in the “Close the eyes and just belt the words out” method. Later on, multiple exchanges of addresses took place amid promises to look each other up next time he’s in Marudi, and then Frankie and Andre lurched off into the night and he couldn’t help feeling that the holiday was off to a great start.

The next morning, breakfast in the open air market, spongy bread, burnt at the edges with “jem rasberri” and a bowl of noodle soup containing unidentifiable meaty tubes of some sort! Off to the airport then in a van and not only was his bag weighed but so was he too! Stomach sucked in, just to make sure they didn’t refuse him. The DeHavilland Sea Otter roars in and bumps to a stop fifteen feet away. The door drops down and he picked up his bag and walked out to the plane, just as Frankie arrives to wish him “Bon Voyage and Have a good trip.” He insists on buying a beer, nonchalantly claiming that the plane will wait.

Inside the plane, the seats – all 19 of them – were collapsible and in a few minutes, along with a basket of live chickens, a few machine parts, lengths of plastic piping and some sheets of corrugated iron, already rusty from the humidity, he strapped in and prepared for take off to the fabled highlands. No roads exist and the only way to Bario is by plane or a 10 day jungle trek. The engines roared into life and through the open door of the cockpit, he saw the whole instrument panel quiver and shake. Lights flashed on and the Indian pilot fiddled with some controls on the panel above his head, and they lurched down the airstrip. He hoped they hadn’t miscalculated the weight as the plane lifted off and the mountains appeared around them. The plane bucked violently and then reared up on its tail as it hit the updraft from the mountains.

Across the tiny aisle from him, a leathery looking little man wearing a haircut that looks as if someone jammed a small rice bowl on his head and then trimmed off all the hair sticking out of it, his ears, pierced with a hole big enough to hold a fat cigar, pendulous and stretched down to his shoulders, calmly went to sleep. Visibility was good, he was assured by the pilot, grinning back at him over his shoulder through the open cockpit door. It better be, he thought, as he gaped open mouthed at the jungly mountains just below them as they laboured up for height. Dropping down quite steeply, he felt, the plane buzzed the hollow that had magically appeared in the heavily jungled mountainsides, before swooping in for a bumpy ride in what appeared to be a small paddock of some type.

Bario ‘airport’ was on a grassy strip about the size of a small football field. In places the ground was reinforced with sheets of metal, and logs laid side by side, in one section, giving a corduroy effect to the field. The place is definitely weird. If he hadn’t just landed there, he would not have believed that this is an airport. The terminal was an open lean-to, while the control tower had a peculiar lopsided look to it, and was made of plain chipboard.

With apologies to Eric Newby for copying part of his title – A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush (1958)

Saigon memories

I used to claim that even the hardest traveller only needed a minimum of four weeks to get used to (a new) culture shock and a new world. Of course a life is really needed for that, but a month or so will usually suffice to get you by and it was certainly that way when I moved from Australia to Hong Kong in 2000 where I quickly got used to the convenience and ease of shops and transport, the closeness of friends, the mobility a car affords, a semi-English speaking environment, the diversity of country parks and beaches and the cityscape.

That all changed when I moved to Saigon aka Ho Chi Minh City in 2012 and I have to admit it took me a bit longer than the blasé four week mentioned earlier but I did get used to a new way of life here, albeit slowly. Saigon was certainly a different world to everything I had experienced before. Everything seemed strange and either ludicrous or just plain crazy. Traffic, for instance, was no doubt governed by laws, but what those were remained unfathomable to me.

One-way streets, traffic lights and pedestrian crossings appeared to be the merest suggestions without any serious compliance expected. Crossing any street was as fraught with as much excitement and danger as playing a computer game like Call of Duty as attackers” (motorbikes) could come at you from any direction and at any time without any warning whatsoever while lumbering buses and trucks made no allowance for either motorbikes or pedestrians. Pavements and sidewalks were fair game for motorbikes and the rule appeared to be that if you could stop your bike sideways on the pavement or in the middle of your living room, or even the road, why then, it is perfectly parked!

Shortly after I arrived, it was much bruited among the ex-pat community here that the Saigonese police were about to initiate one of their regular crackdowns but this certainly would not involve stopping bikes rushing through red lights or going the wrong way up a one-way street or driving on the pavement; instead, it would be more of a crackdown on pedestrians in that if a pedestrian were involved in an accident, it must be the pedestrian’s fault!. Similarly when driving at night, why run the risk of running your battery down when you can simply turn off your headlights at night and drive just as well in the dark.

Notwithstanding all that, my partner decided that, despite neither of us having any experience whatsoever with motorbikes, we had better get into the spirit of things and rent our own personal motorbike and for reasons best known to others, it was decided to rent a motorbike on the far side of the city to where we actually lived. I made the rather tentative suggestion that we rent a scooter with automatic transmission – having spent at least a total time of less than one minute “practicing” on a Honda Airblade in Cambodia. This would obviate the need to change cumbersome gears with the feet while attempting to maintain eyes forward, sideways and backwards and at the same time weave with the fluidity of a dust mote in a beam of sunlight, through the woof and weft of roundabout traffic. This suggestion was quickly rebuffed as it is a well known motorbikes with automatic transmission are too powerful and have a tendency to “run away” with you if you twist the handlebar throttle too much! Instead we settled on a Honda 110cc with manual gears because then “you can start it up in 2^nd gear and it won’t run away on you”.

All well and good and the one-eyed tout renting the bikes appeared to have no qualms about renting a bike to a pair such as us who blatantly had no knowledge of where to even put the ignition key or whether to use the left or the right foot for the necessary gear changes. A one-minute tutorial in Vietnamese (unexplained to me) and a 5 minute practice ride in, through and around the flower beds in a nearby public park sufficed and the keys were quickly handed over for a million dong or so (about $65 Australian).

The immediate problem that presented us was two-fold; neither my partner nor I felt sufficiently confident to give the other a back pillion ride and, even if we were, neither of us had the slightest of idea how to circumnavigate the city to get to our far-flung district.

Bit of an impasse, until a malleable plastic 50,000 dong note (about $3.5 Australian!) was slipped to the assistant of the one-eyed man and he drove my partner home, using the bike as a XÊ HỐM ̣motorbike “taxi” or literally “hug machine” as the passenger is often obliged to hug the driver to avoid being jolted off the back as the rider careens over kerbs, potholes and the occasional bricks casually tossed onto the road. I then spent the rest of the afternoon hunting for a bus which would go within reasonable distance of where we actually lived.

By the time I got back home, of course it was too dark to warrant venturing out onto the tangle of streets surrounding us so all we had to do was pay the gate-keeper where we lived another small fortune in well used plastic bank notes to allow us to park the bike under his supercillious nose.

The next morning, after the apparent ritual of handing over another bunch of crumpled plastic bank notes to the new gatekeeper which allowed him to retrieve our bike from wherever his colleague had hidden it the previous night – we took it in turns – “remember to start the bike in 2nd gear” – to cruise cautiously up and down our local street, rented helmets with greasy, sweat-stained linings slipping down over our eyes, our arms extended stiffly on the handlebars, eyes flickering nervously down to our feet and then belatedly up to scan the street for the unwary chickens which patrol it haphazardly, tentatively trying out the horn (an absolute must for any aspiring driver here) and the indicators and stalling the bike in our attempts to bring it to a graceful stop actually in front of the street cafe rather than on top of one of its small tables.

Suffice it to say, after a week or so, the bike remained safely parked in the basement bowels of our building, our helmets mouldered in a cupboard, and, since our arrival at this address, the local taxi mafia set up a permanent taxi-rank outside our front door. Enough said about traffic and bikes, I feel, although there was some talk that we might return the bike and exchange it for an automatic one as, apparently, they are easier to drive! Hmm, said I, non-commitedly.

Noise is a constant factor with motorbikes, buses, trucks and an increasing number of private cars having carte blanche to blast their klaxon-like horns constantly, mingling with the incessant noise of daily life on the streets – people crouched on tiny stools over rickety tin tables, sucking down noodle soup at all hours of the days or night while small “cafes” simply appropriated the space before a closed shop or office and set up their stools and tables there. Along with eating on the street, there are all the concomitant activities that go with it – obviously, cooking over an open charcoal fire on the pavement is perfectly normal, as are washing the dishes in a tub of greasy lather while it is perfectly acceptable to sprawl on the pillion seat of a motorbike with your bare feet propped on the handlebars while a foot massage or pedicure is administered.

Why stop there, of course? The street is a perfect place for a barber to attach a chipped mirror to the railing and set up a barber’s chair, and while you are at it, you might as well bathe the naked children on the main street as well. Need a toilet, well there is a perfectly good tree that you can hug and pee away to your heart’s delight. Feel like a nap? Just stretch out on any semi level piece of ground and snooze away.

Shopping was another new experience. Supermarkets were few and far between and the ones that do cater to western tastes – i.e. selling such delicacies as Kiwi shoe polish, Cornflakes, baked beans in tomato sauce, long-life UHT milk imported from new Zealand and Australia, pasta and P.G. Tips tea bags – are few and far between as well as being outrageously expensive.

Instead, Vietnamese life centers around the market – usually a maze of narrow alleyways where fruit, veg, fish, meat and live poultry are haggled over down to the last dong. Don’t feel the need to have an actual stall?

Fine, just spread a torn sheet of plastic on the muddy ground and pile your veg there. Want a nice pig’s tongue or a bucket of toads, or a basin of slippery eels? No problem, just scoop them up into the ubiquitous plastic shopping bag and slaughter away in the convenience of your own home.

Nothing pressing to do today? Well then, sprawl in a plastic garden chair and drink syrupy black coffee with ice, or, for a real taste buster, load up the glass – cups are rarely used – with sweetened, condensed milk, top up with a thick syrupy coffee and then dilute the dregs with the complimentary glass of iced jasmine tea, flicking your cigarette butts (Craven A – pronounced CARavan A) at pedestrians’ feet as they stumble past on the cracked and uneven pavements between the parked and zooming motorbikes, while fending off the legion of cripples and maimed selling lottery tickets, sunglasses, feather dusters, zippo lighters and manicure kits from a sandwich board contraption they sling over their deformed shoulders.

Ah, yes, different to HK, as I say.

However, it WAS an experience and I coped quite well, I think. I enrolled in a Vietnamese language school and signed up for an elementary class with other would-be aspirants, but I was the only student and had the undivided attention of a pretty, charming, superbly fluent and patient 24 year old teacher.

I signed up for 35 hours at the monstrous price of 4,000, 000 dong (yep, 4 million!) and have already completed 12 hours, most of which has been spent grappling with the tonal aspect of the language as well as learning to write using the correct tonal signals along with the assorted diacritics that the Vietnamese alphabet of 29 letters uses.

A “D” not surprisingly, is not, of course, pronounced “Duh” but instead sounds a bit like a “Yuh” while the (new to me) letters such as Ă, Â, Ê, Ô, Đ, Ư and Ơ still retain that aura of mystique. Add the tones then on top of those letters and it becomes even more baffling as in Ầ or Ẩ or Ẫ while a simple and important word like “wine” becomes unrecognisable in RƯƠỤ – notice the all important dot under the final U!

However, having whinged about all that, to my rather modest surprise, I appeared to pick up some of the language fairly quickly. My class was from 10:00 – 11:30 (but then again it might just be from 10:30 – 12:00 noon) three mornings a week so after the lesson I used to wander around and get lost in this sprawling city and finally, in a sweating, red-faced, sodden mess, I would attempt to squeeze my bum into a plastic chair clearly made for kindergarten kids and slurp coffee – (Cà phê) – while mumbling such phrases as I believe I had mastered only to later discover that I had just told the waitress that “her mother is a beautiful grave”!.

Then the wearisome search for a bus home would begin. Saigon is a maze of one way streets and while this is blithely ignored by motorbikes and small utility trucks powered by oily, smoke-belching, ancient motorbikes engines, buses here do tend to follow the standard traffic direction. So, getting off the bus and carefully noting the stop – all bus stops are conveniently identified with XÊ BỨYT stencilled in faded letters on the road itself – is all to no avail as the street apparently is a one-way street and the return bus would not just simply chug along on a parallel street but perhaps take a more tortuous route several blocks away. My several attempts at asking directions in my newly fluent Vietnamese had one gentleman hawk a gob of spit at my feet while a rather prim lady blushed and pulled her paisley-patterned surgical-type mask firmly over her face and stalked off without a word.

Apparently, it is not just the beach that can make a lady’s skin dark. It is, rather, the mundane situation of being anywhere outdoors between dawn and dusk. Here in Saigon, of course is the added problem of “the dust” which necessitates every single female between the ages of 11teen and 90 wearing a plain or haute-couture designed face mask, much like the style favoured by bank-robbing cowboys.

Those particularly concerned with the “whiteness” of their features would additionally opt for the more comprehensive cover of a gorget or wimple. Along with the face mask, covering everything from below the eyes, a floppy hat is also de rigeur. Add to that, elbow length evening style gloves, similar to those worn by Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany’s and, finally, as a finishing touch, wear fish-belly grey knee length stockings with a convenient cleft between the big and first toe, all the more suitable for slipping your foot into the ineveitable thongs / flip-flops that many ladies here seem to favour.

However, to make up for everything, we had a rather nice apartment in the Bình Thạnh District (notice the dot under the “a” again!). It is bright, clean, airy and spacious – much larger than our former apartments In HK. We have two large bedrooms, two loos and two balconies with a reasonable view of the city and a glimpse of the snaking Saigon river. By motorbike taxi, less than 20 minutes into the city centre, perhaps 30 minutes by public bus, so all in all, not too bad.

I mentioned the figure of 4 million Dong – the Vietnamese currency – recently for my Vietnamese lessons and while I was vaguely familiar with large amounts – I remember once my peculiar joy at being both a millionaire and simultaneously broke while living in Italy in the late 70’s – but it is the excess of the numbers here that put the heart sideways in me– I just couldn’t get used to dealing in millions for relatively simple purchases. The first time I ever came to Vietnam, back in 1996, I needed a plastic shopping bag to carry the cruddy paper bank notes around. Now, a semblance of sense exists and the notes are all the new, shiny, plastic bank notes, originating, I think from Australia. The largest note is a 500,000 dong note, followed by a 200,000 and then a 100,000, and then down the scale at 50,000, 20,000, 10,000, and the rather lowly paper notes of 5,000 2,000, 1,000 and finally the rather pitiful 500 dong note (approx. $0.02 Australian or Euro cents !) How easy it was to confuse a zero here or there and (usually) end up being massively overcharged.

Islands in the Sun

I love islands and island life, possibly because I was born on the far flung western isle (Ireland) or maybe because my childhood was suffused with island adventure tales – Enid Blyton’s Famous Five’s escapades on Kirrin Island (and the slightly more mature Adventure series – The River of Adventure, the Mountain of Adventure and, inevitably, the Island of Adventure with Philip, Jack and his parrot Kiki, Dinah and little Lucy-Ann) – and followed up with R.L. Stephenson’s Treasure Island and R.M. Ballantyne’s The Coral Island (which was the first book to ever make me cry when Bloody Bill, the pirate, died!).

Then again, perhaps it was the magic of flying on a two engine Fokker Friendship prop plane from Dublin airport to The Isle of Man with my parents for another childhood holiday. One time we flew from Collinstown, later to become Dublin International, and once, more exciting, left at midnight from one of the city’s quays on a ship that seemed to loom immense in the glare of lights. Magical gardens and bridges where a fairy toll is ‘demanded’, cats with no tails and a unique ‘Q-Celtic’ Manx language – sadly now extinct, the last native speaker having died in the mid seventies – Manx was related to Scottish Gaelic and Irish as opposed to the ‘P-Celtic languages of Welsh, Cornish and Breton. I still remember the buzz and roar of the annual TT motorbike races around the island and the excitement it generated.

On the other hand, it may have been the summer picnics to Dalkey Island² (the closest

island to where I lived in Dublin as a child) which seemed to require such advance planning on the part of my parents. The No. 8 bus from the heart of the city would go past our house on the corner of the Monkstown Road and on through Dun Laoghaire, Sandy Cove and eventually the terminus at Dalkey and from there the walk, lumbered down with tartan rugs, picnic baskets, flasks of hot tea, buckets and spades, to the harbour at Coliemore from where my father would bargain with brawny men to row us across to the uninhabited island of Dalkey Island* crowned with a Napoleonic era Martello tower. Uninhabited except for a few goats, a Martello tower, a freshwater spring and a ruined church. Family picnics, diving off the small, whitewashed rocks where the rowing boat left us off and picking up fresh mackerel for dinner on the homeward trip.

Whatever it was, it seems that those most magical times have extended into my adult life and have all been centred on islands. Simple man, simple dreams³, I suppose. By horoscope, I fall under Cancer – a water sign – and in the Chinese zodiac I am a (water) snake and despite having enjoyed myself in mountainous regions worldwide – The Himalayays in Nepal, the Andes in Peru, the Caucasus Mountains in Georgia, the Pyrenees on the Spanish-French border, I feel my strength and vitality are at their peak when I am close to water, especially salt water!

With so many thousands of islands in Indonesia I have explored so few, Bali ages ago and more recently, the Gilli Islands off Lombok – an easy four hour direct flight from Perth here in West Australia and then a 90 minutes taxi ride to the port at Bangsal from where the public boats set out for the islands. Bali is a subtle blend of festive Hinduism and local traditions, Denpasar and Kuta being over commercialised but it is still easy to escape to central Ubud and the black sand beaches along the north shore at Singha Raja. Everybody seemed talented – whether it was in dance or performance, wood and stone carving, music or hospitality and fluent in so many ways. I had to buy extra bags in Bali to accomodate all the carvings and knick knacks I acquired the first few times there. I recently came across a few thousand rupiah from that time and when I produced them in Lombok last week, people laughed in incredulity at my crumpled bills. They have been out of date for almost forty years! I headed off initially to Trawangan, the party island, with plenty of bars and loud music and the furthest out from Lombok but after two nights of drinking cheap cocktails – two for the price of one – made with local spirits – I had a vicious headache and decided to try the delights of Menos, the middle or the ‘Robinson Crusoe’ island, the smallest and the quietest the three. Beautiful, semi unspoilt islands – no cars or motorbikes only bicycles and little pony and trap carts and a sunrise on one side and a sunset on the other side of the island. Three days on Menos and, with my time running out, I spent the last three nights on Air, the island closest to Lombok itself. All three islands were unique in their own way and were small enough to stroll around in less than two hours and all offered scuba training and day and night dives and probably excellent value if that is the kind of thing you like. I’m a bit different – I just wanted clear, deep water and that’s where the islands fell down for me as, for a hundred metres or so around all three islands, the water was shallow and while appearing to be sandy, was, in fact, made up of dead and broken white coral shards which made getting into and out of the water difficult and painful. Coral cuts tend to fester easily and reef shoes – which, of course I didn’t have – would be an absolute necessity. As it was, the water was so shallow that trying to swim overarm out to deeper water my finger tips brushed the broken coral with each stroke. Not ideal unless you want to lounge by the swimming pools most of the resorts provided.

A relatively new ‘discovery’ for me, Lombok is the large island next to Bali and, in theory, should be just as beautiful. Certainly a fantastic ride from the airport skirting the capital and rushing past small villages and up over a jungle clad mountain with monkeys on the roadside, attracted by heaps of durian on sale, glimpses of the coast as we head down to the port. I am sure there are gorgeous beaches there too but I was set on new island horizons, the three small islands off the north west of Lombok.

Samosir, on the other hand, was almost an island, in the middle of Lake Toba, near Medan in Sumatra, practically the far end of the Indonesian archipelago from Lombok. My son fell, fully clothed, off the dock once we arrived and I had to jump in after him. That’s all I can really remember except for some really ratty accomodation.

So, on to all my favourite islands and how to rank them – by cost? (Rottnest island off Perth in WA is hideously overpriced); by beauty? (most S. E. Asian islands); by ease / difficulty of access? (although that has changed with airports springing up everywhere); by people? (all of them!). A listing in no particular order and with distinct memories of times past and present.

Lamai Koh Samui — Lamai Beach, Koh Samui

Ahh, Asia, every other island paled into significance once I came across Koh Samui, Koh Phangan, Koh Tao and Koh Samet. Those tropical paradises, first visited in 1981, originally by slow, flat-bottomed overnight ferry from Dongson to Koh Samui before a pickup truck ride to Chaweng or Lamai or Bo Phut beaches still represent earthly paradise to me. Back in the early 80’s, I’d pay something like a nightly 30 Baht for a beach-side hut on stilts and have banana pancakes for breakfast, Tom Yam soup for lunch and barbecued fish

for dinner, all washed down with icy Singha beer in cold frosted glasses and Mehkong whisky and soda water. Beautiful sandy beaches, relaxing beach massages and a gentle shelving beach so that you could run and dive straight into crystal clear waters. Now you can fly from most places into Ko Samui airport – one of the most appealing airports I have ever been in. Prices of course have gone up since my first visit and many beach side resorts also offer that abomination – a swimming pool! Koh Phangan was, I think, the ‘party’ island north of Koh Samui – the originator of the full moon parties? Koh Tao consisted of three tiny rocky islands connected by sand banks at low tide. I swam around the largest island once. There used to be just a handful of beach huts and a restaurant; now I believe it is packed but it must still be beautiful. All I remember of poor old Koh Samet are mosquitoes and ants!

I lived in Malaysia for three years and evocative names in Penang like Batu Fennenghi and Jalan Chulia where I bought my first ever SLR camera still stir me but it was off the east coast of northern Trengganu that the real tropical paradises of Perhentian and Redang lay. Deserted, at the time and used only by local fishermen for its fresh water supply – hence the name ‘Perhenti’ / Stop, in Malay. I used to hire a local fishing boat from Kuala Besut, where I lived for three years and would make almost weekly trips (on a friday) to the island and come back to the kuala, sun-burnt, salt bleached and dehydrated to revive myself with large bottle of cold Anchor beer, served from metal tea pots into heavy ceramic cups in the only Chinese cafe in the kampong. I camped on the island for nearly a week once while trying to study for my Graduate Record Examination into an American university, thinking I would have no distractions! Even further out than the Perhentian islands lay Redang. it was once used as a detention centre for Boat people in the aftermath of the Vietnam war. I much preferred the Perhentians where I swam with sting rays, turtles and small (leg-long) sharks in waters no deeper than three or four metres. Gorgeous!

A fast ‘coffin boat’ from Brunei Darussalam would bring me to Labuan, a duty free island off the coast of Malaysian Sabah in Borneo – an absolute haven away from alcohol-free, strictly Islamic, Brunei. I used to treat myself and stay in the golf course hotel. Alternatively, I’d go over with some friends in their boat, depart Brunei legally, arrive in Labuan, stock up with up to 50 cases of beer (ballast, we used to call it) and return to Brunei illegally after dark when the customs had closed, off load the beer on a deserted beach where other friends were waiting and then report to Brunei customs the following morning, claiming the Evinrude engines had been giving us trouble and we had only just arrived! Another world, another time!

And then, of course, there is Hong Kong and with this view from my rooftop, what more could anyone ask?

Lamma island, just off the bottom of HK’s

MINOLTA DIGITAL CAMERA — Fish farms off Sok Kwu Wan, Lamma, HK

southern bottom, was such a laid-back spot off frenetic Hong Kong. ‘Draw-string pants, mismatched socks and guitar music’ I once heard someone describe the lifestyle there compared to HK’s bankers. One ferry from HK Central would arrive at Sok Kwu Wan on the north east side of the island with its fish-farms and quayside restaurants. I used to walk from there to the other side of the island with its ATM, bars and more seafood restaurants and a different ferry from Yung Shue Wan back to HK.

Lantau Island had the big Buddha (the biggest, seated, outdoor, bronze Buddha in the world,) as well as a great South African barbecue beachside restaurant with jugs of Margaritas. Cheung Chow, One of Hong Kong’s favourite suicide spots for some bizarre reason. Punters would rent a small chalet, close the doors and windows and light a charcoal barbecue and suffocate themselves.

Phu Quoc, off the most south westerly tip of Vietnam, looks closer to Cambodia and was fairly unspoilt and quiet when I was there about 20 years ago. So much so that the ‘resort’ I was staying in offered to sell itself to me after a night’s drinking with the owner! I choose what I would like to eat the following day from an ‘oral menu’ and he would make a trip to the local market just for me! The island boasted of its famed peppercorns and fish sauce which, locals zealously informed me, could not be brought on board an airplane lest the bottle break and its pungency imperil all on board!

Singapore was definitely my first ever S. E. Asian island! Gaping, like some yokel from the sticks, I went shopping along Orchard Road and bought my first – and only – portable typewriter – an Olivetti – there back in 1981. Do those things still exist? The incredible humidity in the air – like walking into the bathroom after somehow had a long, very hot shower with the door and windows closed and the coolness of the Long Bar, in the Raffles Hotel, surrendering to Singapore slings, was a blessed relief after the turmoil of shopping!

I did an MA in the State University at Stony Brook, half-way out on the north shore of Long Island, a long spit of land reaching out into the Atlantic from New York City and did my drinking in places like Setauket and Port Jefferson and my swimming in the creek on the northside and in the Atlantic on the south side.

I worked one summer on the island of Sylt, the jewel of the ‘German Riviera’! I was ‘ein nacht portier’ at Hotel Ursula in the main town of Westerland. Long, windswept sandy beaches where elderly people played volley ball in the nude and where I was eventually fired when it was discovered that I didn’t really speak any German but it took nearly three weeks before that was discovered!

The Île de Noirmoutier is not really an island as it is connected to the French mainland by a causeway flooded daily by the incoming – and fast – tide. Famous for its new potatoes, I remember it for lazy afternoons drinking white wine with a touch of Cassis with old friends.

Slow, laid back, very patchy wi-fi, Cuba offered differently aged Habana rums(apparently Bacardi sided with the Batista government forces against Castro and so signed their death warrant on the island) in generous mojito cocktails. Music in the bars at night – and everywhere – extravagantly old American cars lovingly tended (or rusted out heaps beyond repair), fat women squeezed into tight lycra and old men and women smoking cigars the size of a baby’s arm.

From Puno in Peru I went out to the amazing floating islands made of bundled reeds on Lake Titicaca, part of the border between Peru and Bolivia.

Trampoline-like under foot, the reeds were used for their shelters as well as their boats.

Half an hour by fast ferry off Fremantle in West Australia, Rottnest island is clearly visible from the mainland and like the Gilli Islands, there is no motorised transport – just bicycles and beautiful beaches, fresh octopus and, the island specific, quokkas (a type of small, short tailed wallaby). While beautiful and charming, the island is, in my opinion, mega expensive for what it offers..

Hainan island is China’s most southerly port and submarine base and I stayed in the same hotel where the Miss World beauty contest was once held in the southern city of Sanya. Parts of the beaches were cordoned off by the military, as I discovered when I ignored shouted warnings strolling along a sandy beach. Only the clunk-clunk of a pump-action shot-gun being cocked brought me to my senses.

Macau casinos held no

attraction for me but Portuguese food and wine certainly did in the area around the old harbour as well as crumbly old ‘Fawlty Towers’ type hotels. I’d return to HK laden with chorizo, olive oil, tinned anchovies and bottles of a slightly sparkling white wine.

Almost directly opposite the Chinese mainland city of Xiamen is Penghu County, a drab island claimed by Taiwan and reached by a three hour ferry trip from Xiamen itself. One of the most heavily shelled / bombed places after 1949 when the Nationalists retreated. The main culinary delight seemed to be oyster omelettes!

Next up, after the Thai Islands mentioned above must be Puerta Galera in The Philippines. A half day bus trip out of Metro Manila down to Batangas and then a ferry over to Puerto Galera on the island of Mindoro. Fantastic! I stayed at the end of a rocky promontory with a floating bar a 100 metres away. Cold San Miguel beer cheaper than a coffee or a coke, mellow Tanduay rum, tiny, bitter little calamansi limes, green skin, bright orange inside with slippery pips, friendly people and crystal clear, deep water – perfect.

In late December, the sun rose around twelve noon in Reykjavik, Iceland and set again at about four pm. Ideal in some ways – use your imagination – the hotel in the small town of Hverageròi where I ended up for some reason, was overheated and I pushed the window open to let some air in and the window froze open overnight, as did the lens of my camera later that day. Amazing to come across hot houses growing bananas and tropic plants benefitting from underground thermal power.

So, a retrospecive look at islands sparked by my recent trips to the Gilli Islands, Indonesia.

¹Islands in the Sun – Harry Belafonte

https://www.last.fm/music/Harry+Belafonte/_/Island+In+The+Sun

² Dalkey Island Photos – Niki McGrath

³ Simple man, simple dreams – Linda Ronstadt‘s Asylum album released in September, 1977.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QLk90r2sJMc

Yerevan and Environs

During the Yalta conference towards the end of the Second World War when the three Allied leaders, all with a penchant for booze, (Winston Churchill favoured champagne and brandy, Franklin D Roosevelt enjoyed martinis while Jozef Stalin, a native of Gori in Georgia, indulged in vodka and – to the detriment of the Georgian wine industry – super-sweet red wine), met to carve up post-war Europe, Armenian brandy was served which, apparently, won over Winnie’s heart. Good enough reason for me to relinquish the delights of Georgian wines for Armenian brandies.

The overnight train from Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia, groaned in past grimy, dis-used lots, abandoned factories and unfinished, ugly concrete slab buildings – an air of neglect, lovelessness, and dilapidation, dismal and decrepit. Not the most welcoming entrance into Yerevan, the capital city of Armenia, sandwiched between Georgia, Turkey, and Azerbaijan.

It was early morning and still cool so I decided to walk from the, admittedly, statuesque central station to the hostel I had booked at random before leaving Tbilisi but the walk didn’t change my initial opinion of the city despite the plenitude of park benches and drinking water fountains. Overall the impression was one of grey, concrete drabness. The hostel was small, cramped but cheery with two Filipina girls laughing and cooking breakfast in the tiny kitchen but only a small, top bunk was available and I decided to move on.

Untended vines, the thickness of my thigh, sprouted from broken pavements, climbing above fashionable shops on the ground floor, masking the ugly, squalid looking apartments two, three, four and five stories above while a dusty church topped a small bare hill opposite a Carrefour supermarket. I was beginning to regret having made the sweaty overnight trip here until I turned a corner and ended up in the English Park, a shady, fountain filled park with a cafe and bar in its centre beside the big screen showing the latest matches from the 2018 World Cup. Just around the corner from my new hostel was an elegant and upmarket food hall leading to a broad, pedestrianized avenue with a stream of fountains running down the central area, culminating in Republic Square. Massive, monolithic buildings of naturally coloured tufa, a rock made of compacted volcanic ash, in various shades, ranging from light pink pastels with a hint of orange formed a semi-circle around the Central Bank, and the National Art Gallery and Museum, almost completing one arc around the huge central fountain – musically choreographed and floodlit by night, as I was to discover later.

Fountains, parks, churches – Armenia was the first “European country” to become Christian in something like 330 A.D. – almost a century before St. Patrick arrived in pagan Ireland in 432A.D – and grapevines seemed to crowd the city, which I could look down on after climbing the endless steps known locally as ‘the Cascades’ to the multi-level Cafesjian arts centre, named after the Armenian-American who funded the completion of the former Soviet era construction.

Cold beers – I loved the Name ‘Zadecky Goose’ – and lamb kebabs in the English park, watching the world cup matches at the convenient time of 4PM followed by classical concerts at the National Concert Hall with brandy chasers afterwards began to pall and it was time for a change of scenery.

I have spent twenty-odd years living in Asia and during that time visited most of the ruined and fabled lost cities and temples – Pagan in Burma, Angkor Wat in Cambodia, Ayutthaya in Thailand and My Son in central Vietnam, so I decided to do something similar here in Armenia.

Garni is the only pre-Christian structure remaining in this devotedly Christian nation. Built by Tirdates I around 77A.D., with reparation payments of 50 million sesterces along with Roman craftsmen provided by Roman Emperor Nero, the classical Graeco-Roman style building may have been a tomb, thus explaining why it escaped destruction during Armenia’s militant Christian past. Possibly

a temple dedicated to Mihr, the sun god in the Zoroastrian mythology, the massive colonnaded building, perched on the edge of sheer cliffs, would have been a perfect spot from which to hurl sacrifices! Huge steps led up the front entrance, forcing me to scramble up, practically on my hands and knees, proper style for entering a pagan temple, I thought.

A twisting road lined with cherry and other fruit trees led to a spectacular monastic settlement at Geghard a few kilometres away. Established in the early 4th century by Gregory the Illuminator, on a former pagan sacred site, inside a cave with a freshwater spring, and surrounded by towering cliffs and tumultuous drops on every side, the incredible monastery huddled in the rock face where ascetic monks must have eked out a precarious existence in caves in the cliffs reached only by ladders or ropes, ‘adding prayer to shivering prayer’* and exposed to the elements. Apparently, the old monastery had, along with the monks’ quarters, churches, shrines, a seminary, an academy of music and, of course, a manuscriptorium where, presumably Gregory hung out. And all this was all just as the Armenian alphabet was being invented! To add gloss to the whole place, relics included the original spear used by the centurion to pierce Christ on the Cross, brought here by St. Jude – known, inexplicably here as Thaddeus The spear pictured here was just the case for the relic now kept elsewhere in Armenia, – as well as a chunk of wood said to be from Noah’s Ark!

Lake Sevan, about 70 k outside Yerevan and at 2,000 metres, promised cooler weather from the city’s stifling, hot summer where daily temperatures seemed to always be north of 38°C and the idea of bathing my feet in a local lake rather than Armenia’s beer, wine and brandy appealed to me. No-one could call Sevan a pretty town and on the advice of another passenger on the bus, I skirted the town completely and headed out towards the Sevanavank monastery, founded in 874 A.D., built on the southern shore of a small island, which, after the lake was drained during the Stalinist era, transformed into a peninsula at the north western shore of the lake.

The lakeside was more appealing with a smattering of fashionable hotels clustered around rusty shipping container-like ‘rooms’ offering cheaper rates and massage to gawking tourists, many of them from neighbouring Iran, judging by the head-scarved women wearing what looked like voluminous dressing gowns.

Determined to watch the World Cup games, which my hotel was not showing, I ended up with a taxi driver, willing and smiling to my demands for ‘fussball’ and beer, who obligingly drove me around from betting shop to betting shop inm Sevan town before throwing up his hands in despair and taking me to a micro brewery on the edge of town where the staff were either unwilling or unable to turn the channel to the impending Australian Vs. Peru game. The taxi-driver – grinning maniacally – seemed happy to wait on the opposite side of a two lane motor highway while I gulped darkish beer and gnawed on tough lamb / goat bones before sullenly returning to my lakeside hotel and back to Yerevan the following morning.

Another day to stock up on Very Superior (VS); Very Superior Old Pale (VSOP); and Extra Old (XO). brandy and then the clunky train back to Tbilisi.

* ‘adding prayer to shivering prayer’ is a line from the poem September 1913 by William Butler Yeats, Ireland’s first Bobel Prize winner for Literature.

Trains and Boats and Planes

With the exception of balloons, submarines and helicopters, I have tried most major forms of transport – yes, even camels, elephants and horses – but I have to admit that trains are my favourite mode of travel – especially long distance ones, with a sleeper and a restaurant car, hurtling me through time and space.

There have been disappointments of course. One time, on a short trip from Dublin to Cork, I treated myself to a first class ticket, but warm cans of Guinness from a ‘bar-cart’ – not even a bar-car! – detracted from the overall experience.

I was looking forward to different train trips in the Caucasus but unfortunately there were no trains along the southern shore of The Black Sea in northern Turkey which I covered in hops and leaps in very comfortable, intercity coaches but I was really looking forward to the overnight train from Batumi, just over the border from Turkey, in Georgia to the capital, Tbilisi.

Because of prior difficulties regarding statehood, nationality, form of government and current strains of economics and global trade, the entire region seemed to be unhappy with its immediate neighbours. ‘Turkey has no friends,’ lamented one young professional who had taken her masters at a Dublin university and that story was echoed in one way or another in each of the countries I visited.

Tbilisi would be my hub and from there I could get an overnight train to Yerevan in Armenia and to Baku in Azerbaijan. The only problem was that since none of the countries permitted inter-travel, I would have to retrace my steps to Tbilisi each time before heading off again. While I could enter Armenia from Georgia I couldn’t continue on to Azerbaijan. I’d have to return to Tbilisi the same way and then take another train to Baku on the shore of the Caspian Sea.

Similarly, I could take a train from Tbilisi to Baku but I couldn’t go from Baku to Yerevan in Armenia. What that all meant was a lot of overnight train trips from Tbilisi throughout the Caucasus.

Impressed with the modern Stadler train which whisked me effortlessly from the brand new looking station in Batumi to Tbilisi, I expected, foolishly perhaps, something similar on a longer, overnight, cross border experience.

Despite starting in Georgia, the train was Armenian and didn’t look remotely like the sleek brute that had delivered me to Tbilisi a few days previous. This particular train looked like trains did in Hitchcock movies so, pre-warned there was neither bar nor restaurant car on the fifteen hour trip between the capital cities, I stocked up on red wine and brandy accordingly. Thank God I had because the only amenities provided turned out to be a box of sugary jellies, a bottle each of still and fizzy water along with a fresh pillowcase and sheets.

I handed over my first class ticket to the burly blonde guarding the steps outside my carriage who glared uncomprehendingly at me when I greeted her and asked her name. ‘Lana’ she growled before ushering me up the steps impatiently as if the train were just about to depart.

Strolling up and the down the narrow corridor outside my compartment – there was another twenty minutes before the train was due to leave – the only differences I could see between the carriages was mine had the top two bunks removed, leaving only the bottom two.

The window in the compartment was sealed shut and masked with voluminous drapes of bleached out nylon. Only every third window in the carriage corridor outside opened partially. Not a major issue if the air conditioning worked, but when I found Lana, brewing coffee in her private ‘office’, and made panting sounds, mopping rivulets of sweat running down my face and neck and pleaded for the air con to be turned on, the brutal blonde overseer of the first class compartment seemed not to notice the 37 degree heat and only reluctantly turned the a/c on low, only to turn it off every time the train crawled into another small, sun-baked station.

When I tried to open the half window in the corridor outside my compartment to get a breath of air, she bustled bossily down and shouted at me, along with emphatic hand gestures, to close the window.

“Well, turn the bloody a/c on again” I retorted peevishly, the sweat stinging my eyes and my shirt sticking like a wet rag to my streaming skin.

My initially chilled beer was almost tepid when, glaring at the sugary jellies and the bottles of water I opened it.

Usually, the regular clack-clack of the train would lull me to sleep but this time, seeming to compound the heat, the train groaned along, accompanied by what sounded like extended and sporadic heavy machine gun fire from the iron wheels. I had already finished the wine and was about to dose myself with the brandy when immigration marched down the train, collecting passports and then disappearing with them for a worrying length of time before returning them just as the train ground to a noisy and shuddering halt at the border with Armenia. Surprisingly – and pleasingly – smartly dressed Armenian officials came down the corridor with laptop computer scanners and handed back my passport within a minute of collecting it.

Dawn broke as I panted by a window I had furtively opened – no sign of the bossy Lana – looking at a high white cloud before eventually realising it was the snow-capped peak of Mount Ararat towering over the plains. Arrival time rolled around and the train still trundled noisily over flat, dusty plains with no sign of an imminent city. Questions to Lana about the expected arrival time were dismissed with a brusque hand gesture and a shrug and it was a good four hours late before the train finally shuddered to a halt in Yerevan itself.

I was here, that was the main thing and Armenia is famed for (among other things) its brandy – the only brandy Winston Churchill would drink, apparently – so what could go wrong? And there was the return trip to look forward to and to compare with the overnighter to Baku later on.

Georgia Reconsidered

A big red M outside Tbilisi’s main station marked the entrance to the city metro – probably the longest, deepest and fastest escalator I have ever been on and, like the bus fare from the border to Batumi which cost something like 30 ct, the trip on the metro were priced similarly or even cheaper.

The Georgians I met – generally local punters in a bar or café or wait staff in the same places – were all terribly proud of being Georgian and were especially keen to distance themselves from anything Russian, having finally extracted themselves from the sphere of influence wielded by Imperial Russia, Soviet Russia and The Russian Federation. Armed only with red roses, protesters demonstrated for twenty-three days outside the Georgian parliament in November 2003 in order to bring about peaceful change and a new slant towards westernisation.

A waiter or waitress’ recommendation from the local menu invariably followed the same line, ‘this very, very good, this very good, this very good, this … Russian, this very, very good’.

This ‘turning away’ from their former rulers led to increased tensions with Russia, culminating in the brief 2008 war where the Federation forcibly backed two separatist revolts against the Georgian state. One night in a small bar half way up a hilly side street near the Opera, a fluent speaker of English confided in me that he hated the Russians. They killed his brother during the war in South Ossetia.

Popping up from the metro two stops away from the main station – again an incredible ascent – onto Shota Rushtavelli Ave I was amazed to see how fashionably modern Tbilisi was. I don’t know what I was expecting – perhaps something slightly less developed than a Western capital, perhaps something slightly shop worn – but what I got was an amazing melange of old and new.

Opposite the Opera house where I was staying, it was only a short walk past the parliament buildings and down to Liberty Sq. and from there to the old town where crumbling buildings and shaky balconies edged fashionable pedestrian areas and parks.

Flea markets selling Russian junk crowded the bridge before a maze of small streets leading back up to Liberty Square in which the centre plinth was so high that I couldn’t actually make out what stood on top.

And then, as if this wasn’t enough, there was a cable car connection to the old Persian fortress overlooking the city and the hot spring baths with fashionable wine-bars and restaurants spread out below in inviting pedestrian areas and squares.

Despite having lived in Milan for almost three years, to my shame I never once went to La Scala, one of the most famous opera houses in the world. This time, staying opposite the Tbilisi Opera and Ballet State Theatre House on broad Shota Rustavelli Avenue, all I had to do was take the underpass and the Opera house was right there.

I saw the premiere of one of Verdi’s little known (certainly to me anyway) operas – Simon Boccanegra – an opera with a prologue and three acts with one intermission, the brochure informed me. A Google search of the plot baffled me but the splendour, the lighting, the colour, the drama and the music and the voices had me entranced – although the only word I actually heard was ‘Maria’ – and I became an opera lover overnight!

But time to leave the capital and explore the Kaheti wine region, the major wine growing area in the southeast. After all, in this part of the world, Neolithic farmers were making, drinking, enjoying and worshipping vitis vinifera 8,000 years ago so I assumed they knew how to make a decent drop.

And then there was the idea of hiking in the Sveneti – the mountains region up in the northeast, rubbing shoulders with the breakaway state of Abhazia.

More of that later.

2 Georgian Lari = about $1.15 Australian cents

3 Georgian Lari = about $1.70 Australian cents

Georgia – First Impressions

A mini bus from Trabzon, on the far north east of Turkey’s share of the Black Sea, snaked past a long line of trucks queuing up to ender Georgia, many of which were backed-up in one of a string of tunnels leading up to the Turkish exit border post at Hopa. The bus could only go so far before we all had to get down and walk across the border through creaking, makeshift corridors of bare plywood and on into a no-man’s land where a very impressive Georgian border post, sparkling white in the sunshine, waited. No visa is needed for Georgia but my passport was scrutinised lengthily by a serious faced official before being smudgily stamped.

Out into Georgia proper and there’s a waiting, but already packed, minibus on to Batumi, Georgia’s premier port that I decline clambering in with a backpack. I wait for another emptier mini bus to materialize. One does and I scramble in along with another horde of people crossing the border and off to Batumi, all for about thirty Australian cents!

Asia or Europe or Asia Minor or even Eurasia? I couldn’t tell. The people didn’t look Asian the way people in Vietnam, Hong Kong and Malaysia looked Asian – they all seemed fair-skinned with blue eyes and dark hair, although many girls dyed their hair blonde. Caucasian or Circassian?

I suppose Batumi, the bustling seaport where the mini bus from the border dropped me off, had a hint of Asia with its grubby street market where spices, fruit – cherries and raspberries – veg and cheese were loudly hawked from stalls and barrows. Grimy Thai massage parlours, decorated with twinkling fairy lights, were shoulder to shoulder with casinos and slot machine joints. The beckoning and giggling girls in the doorways were definitely Thai – I stopped to chat to some of them – but their business was mostly with Turkish men who come over the border for a bit of fun. Where in God’s name is there any border with a town on either side where one side always appears better / more attractive / cheaper /more appealing than the other (and where there are truckloads of cross border trade)?

Pick anywhere on the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic (Irish butter was always cheaper over the border in N. Ireland), or the border towns north of Khota Bharu in Malaysia and Sungai Golok and Narathiwat on the Thai side, or Hong Kong and Shenzhen, or Tijuana in Mexico and some place in Texas, and Temungong in Brunei Darussalam and Limbang in Malaysia but you get the idea. Oh, let’s not forget the overland border crossing from Saigon into Cambodia. Border towns worldwide always seem a bit seedy but all have that same frísson of excitement on first arrival.

Anyway, away from the market area and into a beautiful cloister-like square (Georgia became a Christian country in 301 C.E.) with restaurants on three sides. A pretty red-haired waitress dressed like a flight attendant with a jaunty blue hat, served me my first and excellent Georgian beer. I don’t know the name of the beer because it was written in the Georgian alphabet, which, to my eye looked unintelligible, full of squiggles, radii and what looks like badly written numbers.

What I did like about Batumi in particular were the mosaic style cobbled streets, the Botanical Gardens overlooking a muddy and uninviting Black Sea, the Cable Car that went to nowhere – well, there was a cafe and below that there was an empty, church tower – the musical fountain near the Ukrainian restaurant that had a dress code (I was not allowed to eat up on the balcony) and the somewhat gaudy buildings, the impossibly tall column of Medea (of Jason and the Argonauts fame),the excellent craft beer – although I meant to drink Georgian wine specifically! But what really bowled me over was the certainty on the part of everyone I spoke to that the Georgian language was directly related to the Basque language and that in the past Georgia had been called Iberia and that just proves it! Fantastic. Yes, I know this bottle does not say Iberia but then aagain I find it hard to believe Georgian and Basque languages are related.

The Black Sea Silk Road

Evocative, far away places and names like The Ho Chi Minh Trail and The Silk Road are, perhaps unintentionally, misleading, as they both seem to imply a single trail or route. In actual fact, as the Americans discovered, the Ho Chi Minh ‘trail,’ parts of which had once been primitive footpaths that had facilitated trade for centuries past, was a vast and complex network of routes and roads.

Similarly, I discovered, the ancient Silk Road was the first intercontinental pathway in history for facilitating the exchange of trade, science, art, cultures and ideas through a myriad of trade routes between its empires and kingdoms.

One obvious route into the fabled East must have been along the southern shore of the Black Sea (Kara Deniz), inhabited by ‘hostile tribes,’ not least among them being the Amazons, according to Homer. With that in mind, I decided to start in Istanbul and travel east along the Black Sea before heading into Georgia and its neighbours. Trabzon, on the far south east corner of the Black Sea, would be a major focal point where the overland, intercontinental Silk Road divided and extended eastwards to the ancient commercial centres of the Caucasus and the great oasis cities of the Central Asia and on into China proper.

Once I started to look at Google Maps, it began to seem a bit more complex. Istanbul looked a long way from Trabzon, almost on the border with Georgia. This was going to involve lengthy bus trips, sadly, no trains here along the edge of the Black Sea. But first I had get out of massive Istanbul and cross the Bosporus!

Following the curving tram tracks from Gulhane, the first ferry terminal I came to on the sea front was closed but a terminal further down had an old steamer crossing the Bosporus to the rather appealingly named bus station of Harem.

From there, apparently, I could catch a shuttle bus to somewhere else from where I could get the other bus to some place further down the coast.

Well, that was as much as I could understand, given my knowledge of Turkish.

However it all turned out well, a shuttle bus arrived more or less promptly and wove a tortuous route out of the city to a massive Metro bus station on the eastern outskirts. Into a sleek and modern coach which, no sooner had it pulled out onto immaculate highways, than a conductor was pushing a trolley down the aisle offering tea, coffee, soft drinks and a choice of three snacks! Six hours later we rolled into Bartin only it wasn’t Bartin exactly as I was bustled off the coach and onto a waiting mini-bus that raced off in the opposite direction to another part of Bartin where another mini bus finally took me to Amasra.

According to Homer, warriors from Bartin fought on the side of Troy against the Greeks. Certainly Amasra, known as Sesamos when it was founded by the Miletians in the 6th century BCE, would be worth fighting for its elegance, beauty and location on a peninsula made up of two inlets joined by an ancient Roman bridge.

My hotel room overlooked the harbour where a few beers, a fried fish dinner, a bottle of wine (190 New Turkish Lira!), raki and a cup of coffee restored the inner man after the travels of the day.

Back to Bartin days later, only one mini bus this time, and another mini bus out to the bus station and off to Sinop, reputed to be the happiest town in Turkey. Dropped off suddenly from the coach, I was rushed across the road and into a mini bus (again), which eventually dropped me off on Sinop ‘neck,’ the birthplace of the 3rd century BCE philosopher, Diogenes the Cynic.

Apparently, some time like 335 BCE, Alexander the Great was intrigued by the philosopher’s eccentric habit of living in an empty wine barrel, paused on his conquest east to ask if Diogenes needed anything.

‘Yes,’ the philosopher replied. ‘Move away, you are blocking my sunlight.’ (Fairly brusque, I would have thought myself, given he was speaking to a proven conqueror.)

A solid castle, with a cafe on its top ramparts overlooking one of the most beautiful natural harbours of the Black Sea, served cold beer while a small quayside restaurant provided a magnificent feast of over 50 small dishes (mezze) for brunch. No need for a dinner after that!

Tasty lentil soups for breakfast, along with tea and then later coffee with a sweet, tart glass of cherry juice, a little date and walnut snack and some weird, white, sticky mastic goo in a glass of water.

On to Samsun in a smallish but comfortable coach. Compared to my previous stopovers, Samsun seemed huge, a modern, industrial city that has served as a port for centuries. Its other claim to fame is that Kemal Ataturk landed there on 19 May 1919 to organise the defence of Anatolia.

The Fiesta Bar, around the corner from the first hotel I saw when I got off the coach, was dark and gloomy inside and I seemed to be the only customer besides two sad looking elderly staff who hastened to turn on disco lights just for me in an attempt to enliven the place. The beer was cold but tasted bad and I put it down and picked up a kaleidoscope-like tube from several crates stacked near my table. Idly I twisted the tube and with a bang, the bloody thing ‘shot’ me in the thigh, not hard enough to tear my pants but hard enough to leave an angry mark on my leg. Time to leave, thinks I and I did, leaving an unfinished beer behind.

Frustrated that the Fiesta was the only bar in town, I took a taxi to what was gaily proclaimed as “Bar Street” about 10k from the hotel where the first ‘bar’ there didn’t serve beer but the Olympiad next door did. Back to the Fiesta only to find that it had an open, airy but empty rooftop, which I hadn’t noticed before, so it was definitely time to move on to Trabzon.

The procedure at the bus ticket office was now comprehensible – buy a ticket, wait for the shuttle to the bus station, board the large, black Metro CIP bus – premium economy class this time! – and relax. Within minutes of pulling out, a pretty steward served a meal and I snoozed on a very pleasant trip to Trabzon.

First impressions however were of a grimy city, well used by generations of occupying Assyrians, Miletians, Persians, Romans, Goths, Comnenes and Ottomans but more importantly perhaps, it boasted an easily accessible roof-top bar, Gunnes, which actually had people in it, drinking too. More lentil soup and succulent charcoal roasted lamb and it was time to move on away from beer and into the birthplace of wine in Georgia.

Jelly Wrestling

I have just come back from eight weeks, mostly in Eastern in Europe, some of which I spent walking about 600K from Sopron in Hungary to Trieste in Italy.

I brought my iPhone with me and the idea was that I would blog stuff to my website as I wandered along. I think I did it once. So much for that idea! I suppose other things – drinking super cheap beer and dealing with blisters and blackened toe nails – got in the way.

I had a wonderful and memorable time and I kept thinking how boring my home in Australia is when compared with the sights and scenes throughout Eastern Europe.

I returned home last week and I went down to my local – boring – pub for a quick pint before dinner. In recent years, the place has been tarted up so that on one side is the “family-oriented bistro” and on the other side is the so-called “sports bar” joined to the TAB or betting shop where a few elderly men hang out, watching the races or footy on the large screen TV’s.

This night the car park was unusually full and I thought there might be a “skimpy” serving the drinks as they usually drum up custom. As I walked up the back steps to the sports bar, I overheard some guy on the phone excitedly explaining why he couldn’t leave just yet because of the “jelly wrestling”! What?

Inside, the place was packed with tradies, still in their work boots and hi-vis clothes of yellow and orange, talking animatedly and drinking up a storm – it was Friday night after all.

In the middle of the floor was an inflatable child’s paddling pool filled with blue, gelatinous, soft, squishy beads. In the pool itself were two bikini-clad girls grappling with each other, slipping and sliding around in the blue goo.

Whenever one girl managed to “throw” the other, the victor would mount the victim and cursorily simulate sex with a few thrusts of her glistening hips, to the uproar and applause of the watching men.

Well, I never saw that in the country towns and villages in Slovenia or Croatia for sure, I thought to myself. I just wish Australian beer was as good and as cheap as it was there!

Footloose & Fancy Free or Footsore & Weary

Started this European Peace Walk — this is me on the first day – on Tuesday July 04, from Sopron in Hungary and ending in Trieste in Italy, passing through Austria, Hungary, Slovakia, Croatia, Slovenia and finally Italy. In Croatia now and about half way there but the blisters are mounting. So far, great food, interesting people and cheap beer. On the down side, I am sick of trudging through muddy, ploughed up corn and wheat fields and getting lost in dark forests where I am a main course for voracious insects and fair game for stinging nettles!

In Krapina, Croatia, letting the blisters heal. Seems like a fantastic little kip – loads of bars and cafes and there is even a museaum devoted to Neantherthal Man!