South-east Asia Blog

2008-01-24T22:30:00.000-08:00

Phnom Penh - Thursday. I flew down from Siem Reap this morning to go to an interview with the Australia Centre of Education (ACE) here in Phnom Penh. It was not planned but with the 9-week journey about to end, it was time to come home with something.

The interview went well and I was offered a position provided my credentials are genuine. No problems - but I could not take up any offer while Honey is still alive and needing me around. Well, that's the feeling at the moment.

Siem Reap is an amazing town and, still amazing, Janet and I will have spent nearly two weeks in total at the Angkor Hotel and still have not been out to see the world-famous temples and archeological sites. Janet is on intimate terms with about 20 books and the hotel's huge swimming pool. I am just busy waiting on her.

This is a town where I feel most alive. The people, for a start, are wonderful. We have made so many friends with hotel staff and done things for them that we are part of their family. The morning's attendance in the dining room is the closest I'll ever get to being considered royalty. There would be over a dozen people come to express their enjoyment (or amazement) that we are there once more and we really feel warmed to the core - this even before 8.30 am. I shall miss them very, very much.

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Just some indelible memories of our journey:

In Saigon, I saw from my taxi, across the boulevard, an old person in a wheelchair, pushing in the compacted traffic, with a collapsed body of a young teenage boy lying across his lap. What does one do? The scene receded and I lost sight. Looking at it, even for those few moments, was painful. But what can one do? It reminded me of a sight my friend John recounted a few days ago after he came back from Dhaka. He said he walked past a youth, probably again a teenage boy, lying half on the gutter, his right foot missing and his left leg suppurating from massive infection. The boy was in septic shock, lying in the sun, crying softly to Allah, nearly unconscious. People stepped over him as they hurried about. John was new to the city and looked back, wondering what he should have done. This, I think, will haunt him.

In Taipei, we went to what was recently the tallest building in the world - constructed in an abstract design resembling bamboo and rising 101 storeys. Of course, on the day we visited it was raining and cloudy.

In Bangkok, we went to the state tower at the sun set and viewed this glorious city at a height of 61 storeys. Bangkok is unbelievable at any time, but with the city lighting up and the colours of red and black, it was sheer magic.

In Hanoi, the 36 streets of the Old Quarter provided more magic as streets swarmed with tourists from around the world. They competed with motorscooters for space on the roads as the sidewalks were blocked with locals eating. Someone will bring a portable light, some plastic stools, a gas-fired wok and some food, establishing an instant kitchen. Locals stop to eat, chatting to each other or the cook and feeding themselves from her cooked meals for as much as $2.

In Siem Reap, a local took me to his favourite eating place where laminex tables, fluorescent lighting and paper strewn all over the floor gave no hint that two very tasty fruit smoothes, a large plate of beef stew and fried rice as well as soup, could be purchased for $2. Of course I was stared at - Westerners do not eat at places like this, or even know about them.

At the elephant camp an hours' river taxi from Chiang Rai, I was feeding an elephant with sugar cane when four other Thai elephants, said to be the most gentle of their breed, caressed me with their trunks. It was like the Day of the Triffids. Their trunks were seemingly controlled to exactly within an inch of where they wanted them to be.

In Kuala Lumpur, the home of the spectacular Petronius Towers, all glittering, twinkling and shimmering at night, I visited a modern food market in the basement area, only to see the locals clustering around a particular shop and ignoring the wonderful Malaysian food. The shop was the doughnut specialty shop.

Janet has had the most amazing overall: from manicured fingers and toes, each painted a frosty pink, to her new Gucci glasses, to her wonderful dental work, to her new rusty red hairstyle, to new clothes and suntan, she looks gorgeous.

No place disappointed, except for Saigon but we were both sick there. We've met marvellous human beings and our affection for them is such that it has been painful to walk away. We are concerned for their country, their politics and their futures.

If you've got this far, thank you for your patience and dedication to reading events we thought were worthwhile recording and despite the varying quality of reporting, the people we left behind were all mentioned at practically every stop. Now, we look forward to seeing you and not discussing our break as you know as much as we do about travel, surviving, and launching ourselves into this incredible part of the world - South-east Asia.

2008-01-18T18:25:00.000-08:00

Chiang Rai - Friday

We are really enjoying this far northern part of Thailand. The weather has been within a perfect range, with crisp mornings and cool evenings. Even at midday, it's very pleasant with sunburn only if hats are not worn. In the evening market, which is where we will be in an hour, summer evening clothes are sufficient or a light wrap.

I was sitting on my elephant this morning, in about 2-3 metres of river water, when my hat blew off. It was one I detested, being a horrible brown cotton thing that made me appear demented. Just at that moment, my bull elephant released a dozen coconut-sized spheres of dung. My mahout suddenly noticed my hat floating past us (we were moving slowly downstream) and called out. There was no hope the elephant would catch up to the hat, now looking more like dung in the water than the real thing, so he called out to Janet's elephant, about 30 metres ahead. "Mai pen rai!" I called out instinctively, "Don't worry. It's nothing." My mahout swung around and grinned, "Mai pen rai" and made it a question. "It's OK," I said in English. "It's OK." By then, thankfully, the hat had sunk. I would not have kept it anyway after it was by now indistinguishable from half a tonne of elephant droppings. But it did give me a reason to buy a 75-cent lovely straw hat, thus helping immeasurably the local economy.

Six huge pythons were in their cages at this up-river outpost-village this morning. they are a tourist attraction. Their skins are as exquisite as jewels, their bodies as thick as thighs. But they are deprived of all the sensation of sliding through the jungle because, being captured, they lie on linoleum inside wire-netting cages, curled up and never having their own kind to lie with or communicate. They move silently, slowly in these prisons, endlessly searching for escape. You could use the same argument for the elephants, an endangered species. They are either tethered or have the mahouts on their back riding them. At least they communicate as they jostle around each other, competing with long trunks for the 20 Baht bunches of bananas and sugar cane sticks tourists are urged to buy for them. It's a strange sensation to feed these sticks to an elephant while those behind curl their trunks around me all wanting to be fed. I had five elephants with their trunks trying to wrestle sugar cane sticks from my hands, all at once and very gently, but I had to fight the urge to holler for help.

The longboat we hired took about an hour to reach the village. It's a speedboat built on traditional shallow-draft lines but powered by an LPG-driven small car motor engine and a long drive-shaft that zooms it along at a speedboat velocity. The owner waited while we did the elephant thing, including our half-hour ride and the river walk on the way back, then the shorter ride back as we were with the current. I had vowed never to have another elephant ride after the tortuous experience of seeing old elephants at Chiang Mai painfully climb a 30 degree slope. In metre-deep mud, their lumbering, puffing, relentless plodding, depressed me for such a long time.

But at this village, the elephants walked on paved roads with virtually no slope and the promise of a walk in the river on the way back. But I guess that doesn't remove the guilt of exploiting such a huge, sensitive animal. It's confusing.

Now, Janet wants to go to the night market to buy a few presents for her grandchildren. We are overloaded with weight problems at each airport so the metre-long wooden marionette horses just may get a miss.

2008-01-16T21:30:00.000-08:00

It was bye-bye Bangkok this morning as we went off to the airport for our 13th flight on this south-east Asian expeditionary mission. Chiang Rai is in the Golden Triangle area, surrounded by Laos and Burma. We are at about 580 metres altitude and it's cool at nights, down to about 13 degrees. Chiang Rai is a lovely little city, clean air and relatively unpolluted, compared to the smoke and fumes of Bangkok and the cities in Vietnam. Most of the signs are not given an English translation, which is so common in tourist areas, and I've not yet seen a sign advertising a school at which you can learn English. The internet site, however, says the native-English-speaking teachers earn about 1/3 as much as if they were in Bangkok, and that's not saying much. Thailand is the place so many wish to live in SEA as it is relatively stable with a patchy but high degree of sophistication (just take a day to wander around Siam Center with your mouth open at the luxury!). Also, the Thais are just wonderfully warm people, quite the contrast to Saigon, in our experience.

We've had our ride around town in a tuk-tuk, 250 Baht for half-an-hour. Although there are open fields in the built-up area, there's not the piles of rubbish we've seen elsewhere. The roads are quite good and lots of work is in progress. The native area of town, where the tourists do not go, is well-kept and relatively prosperous. But the centre of town seems to have massage shops every second doorway or, strangely, opticians. A strange combination but something must be sending the population blind.

Tomorrow, Janet says we must explore the river. Not the exploring done by the dozens of younger people intent on trekking, but something sedate. Or maybe the food festival which commences in the morning at the old airport. New places are always fun and Chiang Rai does not have attitude, but, where's the excitement?

2008-01-14T23:15:00.000-08:00

We said Sayonara Saigon on Saturday, 12 January. Not sure we'll be back. The amputees, the deformed, the beggars, the scooters, the poor, the noise, the dangers, the crowding, the grab for the dollar... It was very sad because we had half-hoped that Vietnam would be the place to start teaching. However, there is always Hanoi and friends were made there. Quaint, cooler, more Party politics (the street loudspeakers broadcast their propaganda for 20 minutes, about 4 times a day) and the police are more in evidence. I could teach in Hanoi but Janet just wants to be out of Vietnam.

So, here we are back in Bangkok. Nok Air have twice daily flights (or "frights" as the booking clerk explained) from Hanoi to Bangkok, at $45 for each person. Considering that Bangkok Air is charging $400 return to Siem Reap from Bangkok, which is about one-third the distance, it's a bargain.

Back home, I said to Janet. Yes, she said, back home. Everything is so familiar. People know us, we know the streets, the transport system, the best shops, the markets... We have breakfast under the trees with goldfish swimming underneath the tables. A lazy breakfast (where I have mentioned the price fluctuates daily). This morning, after reading the two excellent Bangkok papers, it was 10:30 before we rose from the table and decided to go into the city and perhaps buy a book.

Yesterday, Sunday, was apparently a holiday but nobody seemed to know why. At 10:45 am, the streets were largely deserted. The train stations were practically empty. Hardly anyone anywhere. The sky was blue, there was no pollution and it was even quite cool. This couldn't be Bangkok. But at the magnificent Siam Center, where 880 shops sell everything from Prada to Porsche, it was packed with those with money. Dozens of restaurants, the place buzzing with the sounds of happiness and food and people talking over each other's heads. True gourmet foods, apples for $5, so gorgeous they probably each had names. Movies in a dozen theatres (Janet saw Elizabeth with Kate Blanchett) but you stand when they play the King's anthem, otherwise you are asked to leave.

Here were the thousands missing from the streets and, as we watched and ate, bought books, browsed for colognes, we felt as much at home as we would in the Sunshine Coast. Bangkok, it is some great city!

2008-01-11T21:45:00.000-08:00

Last month a Vietnamese fisherman hacked a large piece out of a cable to sell as scrap metal. It was one of the two internet connections into the country. As yet, it has not been replaced and explains the very slow internet speed and the frequent hang-ups we have encountered here.

Saigon, I have mixed feelings. Getting to a destination is nerve-racking. Today, we were in a taxi that collided with a cement truck. Imagine being in a swarm of bees but each is a motor scooter, car, truck, pedicab, bicycle, truck, bus, pedestrian. Crossing a road is a skillful exercise. I'm not sure of the death rate but I read tonight that in a 2-day period over Christmas in Thailand, 118 road deaths were recorded.

Could we teach in Saigon? Possibly, as there is work available. Hourly rate is OK and rents are reasonable, although the houses are small and squeezed together. To get to work, you learn to ride in the traffic swarm, where it is rumoured that road rules existed once long ago. Nobody drives without having their hand on the horn button. At least, in Hanoi, there was a special horn for people in close proximity: a kind of burble or 5-note soft cadence. Not so evident in Saigon.

We wandered through some lovely old streets about one kilometre from this tourist area. The old homes look like very stately senior citizens who have not moved from their sickbed for some years. Grand, decayed, with memories of colour and mystery, architecture that, to us, is so totally foreign in design and construction.

We dodged dozens of local dinner-time gatherings on the footpaths as we walked slowly back, slow because the footpaths are treacherous. Sometimes beautifully tiled, mostly torn up, their former glory merely a memory of when the French had so much influence. Some grand avenues still remain but destruction is everywhere you look.

Destroyed people also. At the Military Museum this morning, an armless but well-dressed beggar, speaking good English, bade me to sit with him. He had postcards for sale but so does everyone, postcards or sunglasses or photocopied books. This beggar was nearly blind, his right eye missing as was his right leg. His story was that an American landmine exploded when he was a child. He asked whether he could give me a hug and then opened up his two soft pincer-like remnants of arms to hold me. I wondered how he would manage going to the toilet - the same thought I had when approached outside Notre Dame cathedral in Saigon, also this morning. This beggar had tiny, baby-like arms sticking out the front of his shoulders, looking practically useless but that's all he had.

The Military Museum was a paean to the resilience of the Vietnamese against the imperialism of the United States. Dozens of large photographs of tortured men, women and children. Atrocities, cruel devices, body parts, phosphorus burns victims, "tiger cages", a French guillotine that saw lots of service here in Saigon, the museum walls were full of heart-wrenching sadness. Once you have had your fill and can take no more, you leave, only to face more beggars outside with their gross deformities, twisted thin limbs, pathetic faces.

Suddenly, I find I could take no more. The crazy traffic, the continual beggars, the poverty always evident. But how much do the locals actually see as being a problem? In the tiny lane next to this hotel, so thin that nothing more than two motorscooters side by side would fit in it, is the entrance to the interior of the block. Out in the street, there are nice hotels and travel agencies - down this non-descript colourless lane is the path that leads to many dozens of families with their living rooms open to passers-by. As we use this path as a shortcut to a major street parallel to our hotel street, we brush by the locals eating, playing, gambling, sleeping, lazing in this alleyway. Their homes open as we walk past and, in the centre, a local policeman sits on a plastic chair, watching everything.

Local police are fed information about strangers in the area. This keeps the crime rate low in the poorer areas. Apparently, it is forbidden for Vietnamese to spend the night in other bedrooms. People report this to their local policeman and a reminder is given that citizens must spend their night in their own houses. This makes it very difficult for Westerners who are used to the freedom to move as we wish. But, on the other hand, safety of a kind comes with this restriction.

There are hundreds of oddities here in Saigon, from the crowded park before dawn with everyone exercising, to the vast number of cripples, pregnant mothers lying in the street with their children, to the sadness that many will never have a hope in hell of escaping life-long poverty. At the moment, I see Saigon as having an overwhelming sadness that has now permeated my bones and I am anxious to leave. When I get it into perspective, I may be back.

2008-01-07T17:30:00.000-08:00

With all the wisdom of nearly 66 years on this planet, I am no match for these Vietnamese. Hundreds of centuries of surviving have honed these people into the incredible personalities we see daily. For example, today I bought a newspaper up at the rich end of town. It was The Australian for last weekend - about $6 - but I ended up spending nearly $30 on powdered infants' milk formula as well. Looking back, if only that kid who should have been at school had not been there, I would not have looked into those painfully sensitive eyes of his and I would not have bought one of his Saigon postcard packs. But, as quick as a flash, he thrust the money back at me and asked me to buy some milk instead. His mother was around the corner, he quickly explained, and she would take the money for herself so he could then not buy the milk he wanted. "I just want you to buy me some milk. Will you do that?"

It was starting to get a bit bizarre and that creeping feeling was emerging that said to just get out of this situation, but I could not let a slight Vietnamese kid with remarkably good English see he'd won so quickly. I smiled and said, "What now?" "Please sir, that is the supermarket over there on the third floor of that plaza. That is where I can buy the milk." We got past the guards, who apparently keep kids from the streets out of the Louis Vuitton and Rolex shops in the centre, and he guides me up to the third floor and to the tins of infant formulae.

"That is the one I need," he whispered. It was a large gold tin, looking very self-important on the shelf, and it was priced at 469,000 Dong. A little flustered by the speed of all this, I calculated the cost to be, oh, I don't know - maybe $10. But at 16,000 to the US dollar, I suddenly realised this was no cheap exercise. So I obviously said, "This is not cheap, you know." He looked at me quite puzzled. "Please sir, it is for my sister. She is only one year and one month." I paid at the register. He shook hands, literally jumped onto the escalator, and I stood there bewildered. But I learned something from all this: bizarre situations require the conservative traveller to flee the scene. This prevents anything interesting from happening and encourages healthy sleep and appetite, whereas forsaking our usual cautions often turns out to be colourful entertainment. In fact, not often but every time.

Distances from our hotel on the main small-hotel drag opposite the park, are measured in Approaches. If you go to the right, the best cafe is 7 approaches: that is, 3 selling sunglasses, 2 selling wallets, one selling wooden horses and something that looks like a lottery. Getting a good drink is 11 approaches, for it is half a block further. You have to add a few sellers of guide books, cigarettes and lighters, and feather dusters. If I bought anything, it would have been a feather duster.

To even sit in a cafe is to invite hawkers to come in. Merely sitting down somehow indicates I am ready to be purveyed shoeshines, amulets, more sunglasses, paperback novels, small bottles of something and packets of something else. The shopkeepers generally do not get them to leave - that is understandable - so the wise traveller finds truth in that ancient maxim: the higher you go the fewer you get. Eating at the second floor of a restaurant virtually ensures peace and quiet.

To the left of the hotel is rather sad. It's 3 approaches to the ATM. That is one gentleman missing his left leg followed by someone looking up from the pavement, then the old lady in yellow whom I presume is a nun, holding an ancient aluminium pot with rosary beads in it. They all get a dollar or two, so lunch can be quite expensive if you venture far from the hotel. On the way back, they do not hassle again. In fact, we are treated like lost friends, with big smiles. Most days now, I get to the front of the hotel and dash across the street, looking neither right or left. Yesterday, I ran straight into a mother holding a tin in one hand and a baby in the other. "Please sir...." I panicked. An old woman was sitting on her left and grinning at me, and to the right was a group of men holding a sign and staring. I made my choice, turned immediately around and dashed back to my hotel, buying only a packet of scented Kleenex on the way.

Saturday 5th January already

2008-01-05T18:25:00.000-08:00

Hello to all blog readers from Janet

Richard is down with a chest infection and head cold, so is flat on his back for the second full day running- in fact ever since we arrived in Saigon. I think he is a bit better today, but it is going to take a couple more days for him to regain energy.

I managed to find a pharmacy - no easy feat - and got him some antibiotics made in Austria. The ones from China are mostly made of chalk, so hopefully they will help him to recover.

Saigon is a place to be experienced first hand. The traffic is way beyond anything I have ever seen anywhere. It seems like every one of the 22 million motor bikes in Vietnam is arriving at the same time. To cross a road, even a little one takes divine intercession, sublime courage and a lot of luck. Basically you stride off into the traffic, close your eyes, and hope everyone will miss you. What I try to do is to get on the lee side of a local and go across with them.

I would like to go shopping in the markets, but the pressure is so great from all the girls trying to sell T shirts etc., that I can't stop to look. Yesterday I found an up-market department store so was able to buy some fruit, and fruit juice At the same time I was able to have a look around without being harassed which was great.

I don't think anybody in Vietnam eats at home - everybody is busy on the pavement, eating, cooking, playing checkers, and in Hanoi, combing one another's hair for lice, doing their feet and talking on the mobile phone. Every three steps you take, literally, you are accosted by a cyclo driver, a motorbike driver, a beggar, a bookseller, a newspaper seller, a taxi driver, or somebody wanting to sell anything from hammocks, to sunglasses and wallets. Mothers with babies are a common sight, usually trying to sell some moist Kleenex in little packets.

Nothing has a price on it, except in the department store. Normal ratio is 100 for a local and 1000 for the tourists if I want to be cynical.

For the benefit of my sister in Canada, no Richard has not had his computer stolen, and she could write me a bit more than 1 line.

With love to all the patient blog readers, Janet

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The taxidriver brought us to the wrong hotel yet again but the room is quite nice, overlooking a long, thin city park. The constant roar of scooters and cars under my window reminds me that when Janet is out on her own, her successful road-crossing is entirely dependent on some local wearing a straw cone hat who does not harbour her a grudge. The city park opposite, at 5 am, has scores of citizens strolling, jogging, doing tai-chi, stretching, standing and taking their dog for a walk. This is well before dawn and it is still dark when they turn off all the street lights.

My enjoyment primarily comes from meeting the locals and so far it's been the two who clean the room and make the beds. Under the circumstances, Saigon has not attracted us but I know it is our fault for not getting out and about. Hanoi, despite being more Communistic, was most enjoyable eventually. The large red flag with its golden star is very much in evidence in Hanoi but, including the airport, I've seen nine since arriving in Saigon. This should be a more exciting city but so far it's not and that's mainly due to a respiratory infection that's lasted 3 days with little sign of abating.

Now, it's time to have a sneezing fit.

2008-01-02T20:40:00.000-08:00

We arrived in Ha Noi on the 26th December and did not like it. The comparison between Cambodia's personality and that of North Vietnam was too great. Red flags with large golden stars symbolise the regime that was once very cruel, so vicious that tens of thousands took to unseaworthy boats to escape Uncle Ho's simplistic lifestyle philosophy which stripped assets and individualities from the citizens.

We met a Vietnamese woman visiting from her new country, Australia. She'd come back to see relatives who had not escaped. As she described the time she remembered as a child, she began to weep. Unlike Cambodia, where stories of Pol Pot's cruelty and partial genocide are available everywhere, North Vietnam does not allow its citizens in literature to discuss the early days.

But human nature, being selfish and competitive, began to find ways to disobey the doctrines of Uncle Ho (and the Chinese are genetically inclined to act commercially, secretively and ensure their own best interests). Socialism, I would suggest, will die out in Vietnam in time. There is just too much going against it.

Tourists are bringing in the sought-after dollars. Prospects of trade bring in more. This has unbalanced the Communist philosophy of equality and sharing. Like other countries in South-east Asia, the populace has learned how to grab those dollars. It was explained tonight by a Vietnamese university student that the austere and reserved Vietnamese personality shies away from revealing any emotion to Westerners. Yet we have found that once you are trusted to perhaps see their side, they will talk and explain their position, occasionally touching us on our arm in tentative ways, as if it is completely wrong to engage physically with us. Once we respect their background, or in the words of someone more modern - knowing where they're coming from - the Vietnamese become noticeably very sweet people, generous, intelligent, communal and hard-working.

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We've been in Ha Long Bay for two days. One thousand, nine hundred and sixty nine separate grey rock formations slumber in the sea not far from the mainland, 190 kms east of Ha Noi. Some of these formations are sheer vertical cliffs, hundreds of metres high. A few are large islands where roads have been built, but the overwhelming majority are fascinating geological formations, nearly all with trees clinging where possible.

Just like those faintly abstract Chinese paintings that show pine trees impossibly adhering to rock, these 1,969 formations prove such beauty exists. We cruised past them in our tourist boat, eating lunch, sleeping on board, motoring almost silently past them as we wove a path, our 23-year old skipper lounging in his Chinese hut wheelhouse, looking like any other kid in the streets of Ha Noi in his American windcheater and jeans.

On board, we met three young Muslim university students from Singapore. Hazi, Matt and Aly are credits to their faith and country, for they conducted themselves without flaw in the two days we spent with them. Aly is half Chinese, half Indian and he looks like a Thai film star. Matt has the widest and whitest smile I've ever seen and such a warm personality. Their friend, Hazi, does not wear the Muslim veil, but is strict in her beliefs and, at 19, is treated as the kid sister. They made our time on board very happy and our homes are theirs if they come to visit.

We also met a Californian woman, a biologist aged 30, who has travelled the world for 10 years. Her philosophy was interesting - self-reliance but allowing for personal attachments. There was a 23-year old radiographer from Melbourne, her boyfriend; a French film-maker and her partner; university students from French Canada; an Irish teacher of English in Korea and her friend; and Maarten and his friend. Maarten, from Holland, is well-travelled and exceptionally streetsmart although his happiest times are trekking, well away from civilisation. We welcome them to the Sunshine Coast when they pass through Australia. Being with these people on our highly polished old boat was like living on the finest foods in luxury for two days but in truth, the food was cafe quality and the bunks were rough. However, the people, coupled with the majesty of Ha Long Bay gliding past us, gave us a happiness too hard to describe. Maybe Cambodia has met its match.

2008-01-01T06:30:00.000-08:00

It's 6.30 am in sleepy Ha Noi, not the usual sounds of scooters and car horns punctuating the air. Revelries were in full swing even at 1am as the streets were full of very happy people.

Madame and I are already up and lightly packing for today we are going to Ha Long Bay, a world-famous scenic attraction, to live on a boat until lunchtime tomorrow, lazily moving between the thousands of rock spicules spearing up from the ocean floor and creating wonderful scenery. The caves, we are told, are spectacular.

When we get back, on Wednesday evening, we pack everything because we are about to say, See You Later Hanoi. We're off to Saigon! But before we go, I hope to tell you a little about what we experienced.

But for now, Janet and I wish you all a Happy New Year and Increased Prosperity.

2007-12-30T22:40:00.001-08:00

Xuan is a handsome teenager who can be seen from our hotel lobby for most of the day. He smiles constantly for his brain is quite damaged from dioxin, as are the brains of his uncle and sister who live with him down the lane. Xuan paces, stares at the unending traffic, turns around and faces another direction, still smiling and then gets ready to pace again. He has remembered me and waves each time before turning back to stare at the cycles and cars, still smiling with a secret delight.

Vietnam has well in excess of a million or so similarly affected by dioxin. Huge areas in the middle of the country are still contaminated, where having a deformed child is the risk with each pregnancy. Hanoi's streetscene is the living museum to dioxin and to the resentment felt towards Westerners. The smiling Xuan is my outstanding memory of Hanoi, forever delighted by the sight of moving traffic.

We walked past Xuan last night and into the jam-packed streets in order to see the water puppets. When Janet has recovered from her trauma, she may write about them. On the way home, at the crowded market, someone slit open her cotton shoulderbag and relieved her of the burden of carrying an Oroton wallet, credit cards, cash and prescription glasses. We did not notice the loss for about five minutes, at which point, Janet came close to being sick from the shock.

Today, the cards having been cancelled last night, we had to attend the police station responsible for the night market area, in order to report the loss. This took over four hours as we visited one police station after the other, each pushing us towards a different station. Nobody could be bothered with us - tourists were trouble.

At the last police station, ironically the closest to our hotel, the captain was playing draughts in the squalour of the station, which possibly doubled as a garbage bin when unoccupied. He scowled, leant back in his collapsible chair and barked in Vietnamese to the poor cyclo driver who had brought us to him. Someone from our hotel had to appear to fill out the forms in Vietnamese. The cylo driver hung his head and nervously wrung his hands. The captain was not pleased at having his game of draughts interrupted by stupid foreigners who could not look after their belongings. We felt the anger.

A petite girl from our hotel arrived by scooter about 20 minutes later and, with remarkable bravery, strode in and showed no fear as she took instructions from this bad-tempered uniformed man who was as unpleasant a man as ever I want to meet. Later, she confessed, it was close to terrifying for her, as the poorly paid police are renowned for corruption and they now had her name and address. It's the wish of all Vietnamese to be invisible to authority and we had unwittingly exposed her to police attention.

An hour passed and finally all the documents were done and stamped. Janet was left in a fragile state and we walked back to our hotel with the petite girl. In all, the exercise took most of today, lots of talking last night until the early hours, and much soul-searching for what had gone wrong. We were disturbed by it all. Xuan would have just smiled and turned to check out the traffic again, not comprehending a thing. In fact, I'm not so sure I understand what happened myself.

2007-12-28T18:25:00.000-08:00

Hello to everyone - Janet speaking

Today I have been on a five hour walk through Hanoi. First off I was aiming for a lake which is about 500 meters from here. "Ho," said I to myself, looking at the lying map - "turn right at the top of the road, turn right again go straight ahead, I can't miss it." I did arrive there a couple of hours later.

Richard got some money out of a teller machine yesterday - "How much did you get?" said I. "Millions."
he said. We worked it out, and he had got $12.95, so he had to go back and have another go.

The underwater marionette theatre is opposite the fabled lake, so I joined a throng waiting for tickets. There was quite a long line, and progress was very slow, so after about half an hour, it was my turn. There was a tiny sign which said "Sold out for today - Buy ticket for tomorrow" The group behind me had to leave tomorrow, so were unable to see it - they were not happy.

Walking along today, I came to a battered old shop. It had a loudspeaker out at the front, and in the back of the shop was a wizened long haired old man, who would have weighed four stones wringing wet, playing a decrepit piano which was new when Beethoven was a boy, horribly out of tune, but he was playing Bach's No. 1 prelude. I don't know why but I was reduced to tears.

After that I went to the Ho Chi Minh Museum, which is an imposing humourless pile of Stalinist architecture. On top of that it was closed, but the good thing about it was that I met a French couple on the steps, with whom I spent the rest of the day. She had worked in Moscow, and they were both so interesting. His name happens to be Christian Barnard, and they described being in South Africa, and news of his name getting out, so they were hounded by media people for interviews. That must have been quite a while ago, because I don't suppose many young people today would even remember who he was.

As Richard has said - there is a vast difference in the people. They are all after our money, which is understandable, but it seems that they have lost any joie de vivre, and even seem to be abrupt with one another. We had breakfast this morning in a nearby cafe - it took us over an hour because the passing street parade was so fascinating, and a Vietnamese woman on a motorbike came up to another Vietnamese woman with bananas (which looked fine), in two baskets at the end of the pole over her shoulder. The motorbike woman, picked a hand of bananas up, inspected each and every one so carefully, then promptly put them back, and without a word - drove off.

More anon after the marionettes.

Love from Janet

2007-12-28T12:00:00.000-08:00

Today marks the halfway point in our time away from friends and family.

It's cool, not drizzling but not far from it. Misty, overcast. Many are wearing padded jackets. The streets are noisy and trumpet horns sound continually from early hours until after midnight. Not five seconds would elapse without irritating blasts in the tiny streets outside the boutique hotel, six flights and no lift, something like being in a lighthouse plunked into a noisy soup kitchen.

Wooden-shuttered windows, cooking smells from the street, people always calling out, cries from those selling wares as they walk along and every morning and afternoon, loudspeakers broadcast propaganda in Vietnamese for 15 minutes to everyone in the streets. The hotel staff said it is a police message. Others said it was the usual broadcast from the government. It is delivered calmly, routinely. Nobody seems to listen.

We are in the old quarter of Ha Noi. Also called "36 Streets" after the ancient town on this site where each street, or part, had the same goods for sale. Tinsmith street, Gold street, Puppet street... Streets changed their name according to what they were selling. Quaint and perpetually crowded in main areas, we never know what to expect in the next 10 seconds.

Footpaths are used to store goods, to eat at, to park motor scooters, to block with tiny booths for preparing food and selling goods. Those walking are forced onto the road, which is already crowded with cars, trucks, coolies carrying baskets on bamboo poles, scooters, and cyclopeds for the tourists. Vehicles shoot past, missing each other by millimetres. Everyone warns of their presence with horn blasts, the noisiest city I've ever been in, but I've not yet been to Sai Gon.

I've begged off going to the markets with Janet, wanting time to myself. The fall at the pool at Siem Reap has left her in some pain with sprained intercostal muscles. The ride to Para's hometown on a long dirt road full of pot-holes, has bounced her even more, but she's a trouper and little ever throws her.

Janet has the most enquiring mind I know, always has interesting questions to ask and always reading, chatting to everybody. Janet loves communicating, but today I would like silence and time just to be with me. In that she understands this mood, I am so grateful.

I like to sink into a torpor, trying to connect with something unique at each place we visit. Those who meditate really have a tremendous gift and if it is a ladder of 100 steps, I feel I still have both feet on the ground but maybe with one toe raised. To be at one with your surroundings, with no barrier between you both, is the goal. It takes immense strength and time to achieve, but first, one must have time alone.

______________________________

It is not so pleasant here. I miss Cambodia and its people: those dark, warm-skinned people who tumble over themselves to please and provide delight. You catch their eye when driving past them in your tuk-tuk and they burst into glorious smiles. I wave and they wave back. They want contact, and the poverty there encourages communities and liaisons and mutually helping each other. But here, in Communist North Vietnam, there are not the smiling faces so much and not the enjoyment in practicing English and not the desire to make contact. Americans, I would suspect, have damaged the image of the white man, for bombing their city has left deep-seated bitterness. I could be paranoic about this but I feel there is a resentment that will not easily be extinguished.

Janet gave some informal English lessons at the hotel in Siem Reap. They were just to a few staff members, especially the duty manager who slipped away to sit with her. Mr Boung Lai, whom we called Mr Moonlight as his name sounded like that, came especially close and he brought his young wife in on our last full afternoon to meet us. Janet and he were very close and leaving him was her saddest experience on this journey.

__________________________

And now, for some obscure reason, I will go to the Museum of War, maybe by taxi. It's marginally less dangerous than on foot and, besides, with an overcast sky, I get lost quickly. I'm wearing my favourite long-sleeved $8 Target's grey jumper, the sloppy one, thick black jeans, woollen socks and RM Williams boots. Just about right for the temperature. In Siem Reap, soon to be named Angkor City, it was three-quarter length shorts, sandals, T-shirt and a hat. Fruit smoothies all through the day and people saying hello, would you like to ride in my tuk-tuk. Here, they scurry past carrying their double baskets of fruit and goods for sale, looking like overburdened human scales of justice.

The thought occurred to me this morning to pack up and go back to Cambodia this afternoon, leaving Ha Long Bay and Saigon and the Vietnamese to themselves. Probably the wrong thing to do, now that we are here. But in Cambodia, I felt most like the person whom I would like to be.

The interminable noise is getting to me. The greyness, the claustrophobia of these tiny, over-packed streets and the remoteness of the people. Maybe Sai Gon will be a happier experience but that's not until next Thursday. Apologies to all if I sound miserable but I'm really not - too many strange things at once, I suppose, and not enough dark-skinned natives with ear-to-ear grins, wanting to say hello.

2007-12-27T08:20:00.000-08:00

Hanoi, Thursday. It was a short flight of 100 minutes from Siem Reap but what a contrast! The large red flag with giant golden star at the airport was the first reminder of being in a communist country. Janet was not relaxed. It was very cool and drizzled. It took an hour to go through immigration and three simultaneous flights emptied their luggage on to one conveyor belt so it was an hour before we went in search of a taxi in the rain and dark.

A tout offered the half-hour ride into the city for $20 but I'd seen on the internet it was usually $13, so I kept looking until an official looking man (well, he spoke English) said $13 was correct and he would find us a taxi van. Where did we want to go? I said Prince #1 Hotel. One appeared very quickly and we were loaded.

The young driver spoke no English and drove furiously, bipping his horn repeatedly every few seconds all the way into the city, clicking on and off his turn indicator. It was non-sensical to keep sounding the horn so I wondered whether he was on drugs or just agitated. He went down some dark streets and suddenly stopped outside a tiny hotel which he said was Prince #1, the hotel where I had booked on the internet months earlier. But this was not Prince # anything - it was the Blue Lotus or something. A young man jumped in, showing me a tattered business card with Prince #1 Hotel printed along the top edge. He was trying to convince me most volubly that we were at a subsidiary of Prince Hotel. I would not budge and neither would he get out. The driver started up and we drove to another tiny hotel which he said was the real Prince Hotel. This was the Green Dragon or something. Again I would not budge and was becoming angry and very determined. Suddenly, he opened the taxi door and exited. After that, the young horn-happy driver took us to Prince Hotel #1 where he had no change for $20 note.

I would not pay until he brought the bags into the hotel but he would not budge from his van. A hotel staffman helped us and in the foyer I found $13 and took it to the driver parked in the street. He was clearly frightened of something. A hotel man told me they have to try to move tourists to the tiny hotels and their jobs are on the line if they can't convince the tourists the change was genuine. This kid was not going to earn anything much for the night. I gave him a dollar tip and the change was instantaneous - a huge smile and thank you.

I would not relinquish the passports and while details were copied, Janet struggled up three flights of narrow stairway into a shuttered, marble-floored room. Air-cond, cable TV, wifi (I have my laptop), good beds, separate bathroom and fridge. All for $25 a night, and overlooking a busy little streetscene with constant honking motorbikes. But now it's time to go to street level in the drizzling rain and look for something to eat.

2007-12-26T17:15:00.000-08:00

Siem Reap Airport - Wednesday afternoon.

This may be hurried as we take off in about 30 minutes for Vietnam, our first visit to a Communist country. Having read recently a book by Warren Fellows who was jailed for 12 years in a hell-hole in Thailand for smuggling drugs, airports have assumed a certain dread, even though my most potent medication, paracetamol, lies securely hidden from sniffer dogs. Janet and I joke about certain individuals at the airport who look suspiciously at us. I fact, they look quite normal but since reading that book...

Another bout of food poisoning. This time from an Indian cafe and a bowl of vegetable soup. Gurgles through the night and a sudden dash to the bathroom at 3am. I was going to spend part of next day, Christmas Day, at Raffles Grand Hotel in their splendid bar, sipping pink gins, as suggested by a friend in Bangkok. But Lomotil and alcohol don't mix.

Today, we went to Para's hometown, a village about 30 kms out from Siem Reap. The last 15 kms was over a road with foot-deep pot-holes and depressions. Janet's ribs have still not recovered from her fall earlier this week and she emerged at Para's mother's house nursing herself.

The house itself is basically a wooden room on stilts with entrance gained by climbing up a wide ladder. There were no furnishings in the room, just a few mats and a piece of string over which clothes were hung. There was a kitten and a broom, no electricity. The toilet is any convenient tree at a safe distance from the house. The kitchen is a room at ground floor and it is surrounded by dozens of scrawny chickens and their brood. A few featureless dogs lay around and a dozen or so neighbours came to see people with blond hair for the first time in their lives. Lots of kids, a deranged uncle, toothless women holding babies, shy schoolchildren sent home to look at the aliens. I filmed them with the camcamera (or rather, Para tried with mixed success) and they stared and stared at them while we stared at them.

Para's mother, widowed in April this year, brought out photos of her late husband and a coloured photograph. He was a handsome man, much bigger and taller than Para, and a leader in the community. His fight with hepatitis B and subsequent hepatoma devastated the village. The pictures taken at the funeral and the preparation of the body were very moving. He had been washed before cremation with suitable fluids, Para said. "What were they?" I asked. Para replied they only had tea and gasoline so that's what they used. At least the fire was spectacular.

Time to board. Speak to you from Hanoi.

2007-12-24T14:15:00.000-08:00

With some embarrassment, we admit to not having gone out of town to the fabled Ankor complex of temples. Our excuses are paltry: (1) We did it before and we still recall the exhaustion, and (2) Janet has discovered an exercise called ""lying around the side of the pool reading a book." And I have discovered shopping at the new market, the non-tourist one, where designer shirts are $5 and tailor-made trousers are $9.

Janet slipped while walking around the pool yesterday and hit her head. She strained her right-sided intercostal muscles and right pectorals. Some Panadol and a good sleep have seemingly fixed her up. My stomach trouble, totally incapacitating me for two days, came from contaminated chicken in a Khmer soup at the hotel. I mastered simultaneous diarrhoea and projectile vomiting with an ease that was entirely unexpected. If I hadn't just wanted to lie down and die, I think I could have been very proud of this accomplishment.

The Prime Minister of Cambodia was in this dusty town over the weekend so things have been cleaned up. Two days ago, police were everywhere. Black uniforms, khaki uniforms, blue uniforms. At every street corner there was a cluster. Roaring through the market town with sirens and whistles was the Police Commander in his large Camry sedan, the words "I love you" written in the dust on its back window. Now things have settled down but everywhere you look, there is activity: people working, talking, laughing, sleeping, vacantly staring, selling, eating, driving, riding, walking, shopping. It's like an ants' nest and I love it. Bits of theatre in every direction, exotic smells, bargains, cheap food and lodgings, friendly people, huge smiles, adorable kids who light up when we say hello. Everyone wants to practice talking, for tourism means money and the average wage is about $30 a month.

Para brought his friend to meet me - Sovann. Mr Sovann, as Para calls his best mate, was orphaned in early infancy. At three, he fell from a cow and fractured his left elbow. This was never set and today, at 21, his left arm is rotated so that the hand faces the front and is useless. He has no home, little education, one shirt and one pair of old blue trousers. What he has got is spirit, an enormous smile and an ability to see that life is wonderful, in his words. Mr Sovann was taken to the new market and we bought him some shirts and a pair of trousers, thongs, underwear, a blanket and food. I'll see about the $US100 he needs for a year's schooling in English. Para lets him stay over but Para's circumstances are not so great. He was sleeping and studying at the pagoda but the monks require those lodging there to learn an ancient script, Pali, which is useless outside the religion. Para rebelled and now lives underneath a one-bedroom traditional raised house with no bathroom or electricity.

We bought him a hammock and supports, a mosquito net, clothes, food, books. Para's English has improved dramatically as he spends time with us each day learning our language. He and Sovann came to the hotel yesterday and although I was cautious that these two young men were not going to attract criticism from other guests, hotel staff actually welcomed them and told them in their own language how lucky they were. As we sat beside the pool with our grammar book, trying to work out whether "A lot of employees is good" or "A lot of employees are good" the scene looked so incongruous among those Europeans and Japanese who lay in the sun getting browner while these skinny dark happy young men talked about how they feel bad because their skin is not beautiful, like white man.

And I guess that's a part of what I like here. The usual ways of judging people just don't work - at least, a lot of the behaviour and attitudes we have in Australia look so different here. Everyone lolls against each other, people touch all the time, smiles are almost a permanent feature of their faces. You can spit and nobody notices. You can wear any combination of clothing and, again, nobody notices. The standards for acceptance are a soft voice, smiles, kind words, handshakes, a bowing with hands clasped together and the head slightly bowed. The hotel staff have got to know me and always make a point of singling me out to ask about the day. I use the few Khmer words I know and their faces light up. The appreciate gentle men and women who meet their eyes and smile.

Now, it's time for my tuk-tuk driver to return. He's been waiting for an hour (at about 50 cents an hour) ready to take me back to the hotel where Janet is giving an English lesson to some unsuspecting barman. As I walked in, I was offered the usual massage price list - $8 for an hour seems reasonable and not a bad way to spend this Christmas Eve afternoon before we dress for dinner tonight at the hotel for their $18 Christmas Eve Special Dinner. Dressing for dinner means replacing lighter-coloured thongs with darker flip-flops and trying to encourage the Japanese teenagers not to wear T-shirts in the dining room that read "I think I will flick" you. Actually, the front message made Madame blush under her rather beautiful tan and quite blonde hair. "Would you like to look like that?" I asked. She was torn, I could tell.

2007-12-21T20:00:00.000-08:00

Hello to everyone from Seam Reap .

Two days ago we visited Geraldine at the Orphanage. The place has a wonderful relaxed feel to it. We again met Michael who has been there for over a year - his visa will last until next April. He is desperately trying to adopt a little Khmer boy of eighteen months, but because of the constitution of the Sunrise Children's Village, this is proving very difficult. The little boy's parents both died of AIDS and he has no other relatives, so it seems to be very much a case of a rule to be broken. The two of them have a wonderful rapport. The staff at the orphanage were so afraid of contracting the disease that when he was born they would not pick him up without masks and gloves, but Michael had no such worries, and perhaps for that reason, the two of them have such a bond. The wonderful news was that, although the baby had the AIDs antibodies, he does not have the disease.

The kitchen, to which so many people contributed so generously has been designed and will be installed early in the New Year.

Richard has taken some wonderful movies of the children, and hopefully he will find out how to put these on the blog, or send them out through the internet. All that is beyond this technophobe firmly stuck in the eighteenth century.

The orphanage has expanded since we were here, and more than twenty new children have been taken in. Although Geraldine's policy is that she does not accept disabled children, this has been bent a bit, and a little girl which a disease which renders her bones very fragile has been included. I will have to ask Richard for the technical term for this. A bone breaks, and so she has to have an operation to insert a pin or plate, and lives her life in a wheelchair.

Geraldine invited us to lunch with the children, and then later, for afternoon tea in her own home. It is a beautiful teak Khmer house, donated to her by Han Sen in recognition of her work with Cambodian orphans. It is constructed above a very shallow lake, so from the verandah which runs all the way round the house, there is a magnificent view in every direction. There are no windows or screens, - instead there are shutters. Geraldine is very much at home there, and it is decorated in true Asian style which is so effective, and in her words - "They will have to carry me out of here."

I asked about rats and mice, (nobody knows about my phobia), and she said that yes there are mice, and pulled out a Buddhist mouse trap. It is a plate with a special type of glue. The mouse runs over it and becomes stuck, then in true Buddhist style, the mouse is extracted the next morning and sent on its way back to the field.

Michael said that the only disadvantage of Buddhism in his mind is that, as they believe in reincarnation, anyone who is disabled is thought of as being punished for their sins in a previous life.

Cambodia seems to have progressed a great deal in the year since we were here. I don't know if part of this impression is because I am becoming more used to the Asian way, but I am sure there is less garbage in the streets than there was - though to our eyes there is still a lot. Seam Reap is in the middle of a land boom. More and more 5 star hotels are being built to cater for the increasing tourist numbers. Because catering is so labour intensive - particularly here, where it seems that there is at least a member of staff for every guest, there has to be a trickle down effect. English is of paramount importance, and as staff go up the scale their English has to be so much better.

Our very best wishes for Christmas and New Year, and we will write again next time from Vietnam.

Janet

2007-12-19T09:15:00.000-08:00

Phnom Penh - Wednesday. We are flying out of this fascinating city in a few hours' time, bound for Siem Reap. Para, whom I am sponsoring for English lessons, came down by bus, a dusty five-hour ride, but we are flying him back with us - his first time on an airplane. He's had a great time and is loaded with grammar books and readers, all so unbelievably cheap. A huge Khmer-English dictionary, hard-cover, about 4" thick and put out by Oxford, is $21. Books we use for teaching English that I have bought in Brisbane for $47, are $7 here. Not photocopied but original. Dozens of high quality books on grammar for $2! Power-saving fluorescent globes are 80 cents, a new desklight was $3. Why? Surely taxes and freight to Australia cannot be that much.

Janet is going to write about the orphanage when she can put down her reading material. She has just devoured book after book on this journey but has also seen the sights. Strangely, I've not done all the "sights" that the guidebooks dictate MUST be seen. I like wandering, shopping at the markets, getting lost, meeting the locals. I always feel as if I am going to return in the near future and maybe see the sights then.

Last night at The Sugar Plum, an up-market, authentic Khmer restaurant, 200 m from this outstandingly beautiful guest house, inbetween the Khmer grilled fish with soy beans and the shredded beef in ginger, the city was plunged into darkness. Maybe it was the gin and tonics or just that we are becoming so laid back, but we toasted yet another facit of Phnom Penh. Same thing this morning in the middle of retrieving emails.

Janet has some wonderful tales of her discoveries and seeing Geraldine Cox out at the orphanage and for dinner on Monday night. Geraldine hates the hair-raising drive from the orphanage into the city, a distance of 15 kms, and says she has to have sufficient gin and tonics to give her courage to drive back home. Her jokes and stories were strong enough for Para and his 24-year old uncle, Mao, not to be understood but to leave Janet spluttering with embarrassment.

Siem Reap in a few hours and we'll be there for Christmas Day, which the Khmer think is our New Year festivity. Luckily we'll be in Vietnam by then so we don't have to explain why we celebrate it all again a week later.

2007-12-16T20:55:00.000-08:00

Somewhere there is a posting from Phnom Penh floating in the i-ether. Here's the second attempt.

The Pavilion is a beautiful old French mansion next to the Royal Palace. Floodlit tropical gardens and long pool, continuous food supply next to the pool in an open counter (but with Western prices) and a wonderful feeling to the whole experience. A verandah with table and chairs overlooking a pagoda, a third bed and lounge area are available for $US80 (ask for Room 15). Pretty well sheltered from the local noise and hustle, I came to regard it as an oasis in a city in which road rules do not exist, garbage is everywhere and probably the nicest people on earth exist.

Certainly, this is true of Para and his 23-year old uncle, Jake. They have been like mischievous chipmunks. No wonder Janet fled to the temples and palaces to get her fill while I took the boys downtown and bought some English textbooks at prices that were rock-bottom.

Phnom Penh's tuk-tuk drivers have a complete disdain for personal safety (and that of their passengers), making U-turns into the face of traffic thundering along 4 lanes straight for us. Unbelievably, the tuk-tuk driver then decides the centre lane of this oncoming wall of traffic belongs to him and what looks like certain death becomes exhilarating as the traffic parts, cruising past us on both sides and regrouping. Tired of living, the tuk-tuk driver then decides that a road he has past on his right, or left, is where he should be so, with no warning, we turn to be at right angles to traffic from both directions and present such a resentment to the swarms in every direction that you can only throw your hands and fate to the winds, hoping for a quick death and not be made into new road surface material.

Tomorrow, it's to Geraldine's orphanage if we can get the driver we were told knows the way so far out of town. His phone was not answering tonight, but who cares, nobody seems to worry about anything in this tropical steam, punctuated with ice-cold drinks, swims in the pool, beautiful smiles, sadder and more beautiful eyes than Arctic sea pups, and all set into a backdrop of golden temples, exquisite women, garbage overflows, tooting traffic, a constant carpet of motorbikes and strange vehicles pushed by thin Khmer survivors. It's a city I adore. Para and uncle Jake hold on to me as if I were being escorted back to the shock therapy room, laughing at my discomfort. Janet has them convinced she's a person of great importance as they respectfully bow before her and shake her hand. She has the theatrical presence suggesting she's quite used to this behaviour, even in Australia.

2007-12-13T21:35:00.000-08:00

We left Penang with some regrets. Despite the rats in the open deep gutters, sometimes covered with grilles, Janet actually enjoyed the discoveries: not knowing what she was going to find as she wandered around the streets of Georgetown. Her happiness today was so evident - the pink opalescent toenails, the two new pairs of sandals, the colourful bag, the new Tissot watch... this lady opened the purse a fraction of an inch and never lost consciousness for a moment. Tonight, in Kuala Lumpur, she even bought yet another book. That makes about 25 we carry with us.

It's a short flight of 50 minutes from Penang to KL's commuter airport (we'll actually use it on Saturday when we fly to Cambodia) but the drive into the city took twice as long as we were in the air. I'm intrigued by the captain's messages in flight. Today, I'd swear he read a long bedtime story in Malay to the passengers, then switched to English to say, "Welcome aboard. We will be arriving in Kuala Lumpur soon. Thank you for flying Air Asia." What about a bedtime story for English-speaking passengers?

Lots of Islamic people here and lots of Christmas carols playing in the shopping malls and hotels. Why did they stop playing carols in Adelaide? Because the Islamic people were likely to take offence. Well, not here in the heart of Islamic country.

Petronius Towers during the day look as if they are made from stainless steel but at night they are pure, mysterious, fascinating, wonderful architectural gems in silver and lights. Janet was over-awed. I didn't look long because I want to film them tomorrow night and see it all afresh, getting the emotion just right.

And now, I'm sorry we are staying here only 48 hours, there's so much to see and the people are, in the main, better looking and far more prosperous than in Penang. Fewer Chinese, it seems, and more Malays. The Indians don't like the Malays, I'm told, but the Indians are in the minority here and run food outlets and drive taxis. I should learn Malay, so much of the language is a corruption of English so it's generally not hard to see what they are saying. The dictionary, for example, is Malaya to Eenglishe, or something like that. Janet and I love language and want to try to speak words in the local tongue but that will mean, in the next few weeks, Vietnamese, Thai, Malay and Cambodian and maybe Lao. I love the sounds of these languages; to me they mimic water lapping against the side of a rowboat.

It is said that one of life's most romantic moments is to have a lover talk to you in their native language, where you don't understand the words, just hear the sounds. And in this journey, I've embraced the lap-lap of watery syllables I'll never comprehend. I just close my eyes, even smile to myself as I am slowly led into new territory.

2007-12-12T23:44:00.000-08:00

Hello from me Janet for the first time but not the last.

What amazing families we heard about today. The Khoo family of Penang. They are a Chinese family into their 43rd generation. Their wealth, influence over the whole world, and educational achievements are legendary. Their personal temple was destroyed by the Japanese in World War II, but has been completely re-built, slightly different from the original one to appease the spirits.

Every Khoo who travelled overseas and obtained a university degree is commemorated on a golden plaque in a special part of the temple. Many of them studied to become barristers, doctors, businessmen, scientists, musicians, etc, in London, Australia, Singapore, New Zealand and USA.

On their death a gold plaque is inserted behind glass in the memorial. Oldest generations at the back, and the younger ones on steps towards the front.

Their private temple is guarded by two stylised stone lions, one a female with a lion cub, and the other a male holding a rod between his paws. on which are the Chinese coins. The amazing thing is that each lion has a completely spherical granite ball in its mouth, the size of an orange. As the ball is larger than the mouth opening it had been carved inside the almost-closed mouth, through the narrow slit between the jaws. The whole mouth cavity had been carved out from between the clenched jaws!

Beyond the lions are two more statues before the entry to the temple. One is of a rich man who is happy, and the other of a poor man who is not. The Chinese really appreciate wealth. Behind the happy rich man are coins inserted into the wall.

The second family is much more recent and it is the family of Cheong Fatt Tze, who died in 1916. On his death, he was so highly thought of that the Dutch and British authorities ordered that flags be flown at half mast. He arrived penniless from Guandong province in China at the age of 16. He was eight years old before he could speak and today would probably be described as intellectually challenged. However he went on to create a huge commercial empire and built one of his many homes in Penang. It was his favourite and where he felt at home. It is called the blue house because he was a dealer in indigo which he purchased from India and so he painted his palatial house blue. The house has 38 rooms, 5 courtyards, 7 staircases and 220 windows. The plumbing for the rain water is a fascinating study. It was collected from the room, then into guttering, from their into pipes and so into the courtyards, which it cooled the whole house by running under the floors from the lower portion of the courtyards. The water as it dries rises through the walls and is evaporated by the sun on the walls, again giving a cooling effect. For this reason no modern acrylic or oil paints can be used, because they would peel, so the house remains today still treated with the indigo which allows for this cooling mechanism. In the same way as colonial homes in Australia, the doors have carved openings in a semicircle above the doors for the cross ventilation of the house.

He appears to have designed the house to make it unsaleable because he wanted it to be kept in the family. He therefore built a row of five houses opposite it, which in fact overlook it, a feature not liked by the Chinese. Incorporated into the house are many features from Europe, for example the windows have some beautiful blue lead lights and the floors are tiled with ceramic tiles in a complex pattern bought from Stoke-on-Trent in England.

Towards the end of his life he wanted to go to a meeting in New York. He was travelling with a German friend and two other Chinese business men. Back came the tickets, one first class for the German and three second class for himself and his two Chinese friends. He out-manouevred those who insulted him by creating a new shipping line with first class service for everyone and undercut the opposition by 50%. The original shipping line conceded defeat and thereafter gave him first class tickets and also made them available to all nationalities. A good story in the year 1914.

KL tomorrow. Goodbye from Janet and Penang and Richard.

2007-12-12T22:44:00.000-08:00

Bye-Bye Penang, We'll come back sometime. Today was better and we found the locals more friendly. Janet's new pink opalescent toenails were a hit on Penang Road and in our two-hour rickshaw ride, people stopped to admire her feet. Naturally, that required buying two pairs of shoes and, as we were in a shopping plaza, Janet bought a new Tissot watch. I bought her a colourful cloth bag and she has been so happy.

The watch people said they could spot my fake Tag Heuer from across the showroom floor. God, I thought, they'd say anything to get customers to buy a watch from them. I almost fell into the trap of buying a new watch except that we will be in Cambodia on Saturday and I'm likely to lose an arm in the streets if I have a genuine Tag Heuer watch.

Today, as I have said, was the rickshaw ride. This old Indian pedalled behind us, imitating Peter Sellers, and telling us of the stroke he suffered and his slow rehabilitation. He wandered all over the road, missing lamp-posts and buses coming straight for us, oblivious to Janet and me clutching each other and becoming all religious. He said that he had the right of way. At that point, Janet just turned and stared at me.

He took us to some amazing Chinese temples, ancient waterfront houses, places of interest we would never have found and, at the end, stood silent with his hand out. How much, I asked. Whatever Sir thinks it was worth. Janet again turned and stared at me. Finally, he cycled off, richer by $US33, still cursing the Malays who get so many handouts from the Malaysian Government but none for the Indians.

I had lunch - Chicken fillet Gordon Brew - and later some Chinese sweet and sour. Tonight we had dinner at the open market place where the total cost was $US4.54 plus two bottles of beer. Janet drinks from the bottle - some childhood habit she's never overcome. Then the night market lost its electricity supply and we called it quits, but the music in the streets continues. On Friday and Saturday, it stops at 3 am. At the moment, just after 11 pm, at least four musical events are competing for attention - same every night we've been here. Oh, who cares?

Now, to get ready for our departure after breakfast. Penang used to be the capital of Malaysia but since the 1950's it has been Kuala Lumpur, home to the Petronios Towers, recently considered to be the world's tallest building. The flight is only a matter of dollars and our hotel will be post-Kremlin style until we fly out on Saturday for Cambodia and to meet up with Para, the 18-year old schoolkid who met us at Angkor Wat in January, and who is travelling down from Siem Reap to greet us at the airport. Para has adopted me since his father died this year from liver cancer, leaving his little ricefield, a wife and four children to battle on their own. Almost daily emails through this year have encouraged Janet and me to try to do something to help and, of course, there's Geraldine, whom we will be seeing next Monday. Bring Para, she said, and we'll have lunch together with the kids.

Janet is going to write the next blog. She's going to talk about the amazing blue-indigo Cheong Fatt Tze mansion here in Georgetown, Penang, and the equally amazing Khoo dynasty which has put descendants into power all over the globe.

2007-12-11T23:15:00.000-08:00

I think I know what's wrong: I'm missing the Thais. The pollution, the rubbish in the streets, the traffic jams, the whole disorganized mess - it never mattered to me because the people were just beautiful. They would catch your eye and instantly give a smile brighter than Hollywood could manufacture. I remember having dinner outdoors at Lumpini Park in Bangkok. This is a night market but it has some great permanent restaurants with classy decor. Not exactly champagne ice buckets but not far from it. Janet and I were being served by some Thai kids, probably college students working at nights at this restaurant when two big German tourists wandered in. The Thais were so sweet and waied respectfully, however the tourists looked around, ignored the Thais who were offering peace and respect (as you do when you wai someone), gave a look as if they were being invited to inspect garbage and moved their big hulks out of there. One of the Thai girls twisted around to face us, put her hand up to her mouth and giggled. That's how they cope - they try to find delight in this world, and that's what I miss for the people of Penang I've passed by, do not engage with us in any way. We don't exist and we don't relate and we don't matter. Somehow, I feel it more on this visit to the East. Maybe we'll get it back in Cambodia and Vietnam in coming weeks.

Penang is a great island but inhabited by Thais, it is not. About 65% of the population are Chinese, the remainder is then mainly Malays but a healthy percentage are from India. Malaysian schoolchildren have to learn three languages: Mandarin, Malay and English. Malay is not so hard, many words are just a corruption of their English equivalents. For example, you hail a teksi from your hotel and you avoid the polis because 90% of them are supposedly corrupt. I'm sitting in my hotel room underneath an arrow nailed to the ceiling above me. This is where the translation fails me for it says OIBLAT - possibly obligation - for it points to Mecca so Islamic guests know where to face during their daily prayer sessions. My carton of fruit drink has zero kolesterol but 25 g of karbohidrat.

Today, we went by a small tourist bus to various temples, buddhas, pagodas and indeterminate places of worship. I loved the monks chanting, the temple gongs, the joss stick smells and the overall richness, but I was more impressed by nature's display from the top of Penang Peak, some 650 metres up and cloud-shrouded. This cool tropical garden is reached by funicular rail, the trip taking 30 minutes. We are watched by monkeys in the jungle trees as we ascend to the vantage points where much of Penang lies beneath. That was some view!

The minibus driver, the other male passenger (an Indian who has lived in Massachusetts for 30 years) and I were the three men in this bus today. All of us Type II diabetics. The Indian family were delightful people and they had their 25-year old daughter with them. She's a twin, the one suffering from cerebral palsy; the other daughter is doing her Master's at university.

Later, Janet and I went shopping together for some new feet. We found a pedicure shop at an up-market centre where there were basically only rich Chinese wandering around, all talking to each other on their mobile phones. For the first time in her life, Janet had a pedicure treatment that lasted for 90 minutes, topped off by having her toenails painted pearl pink. She must have checked how beautiful her feet looked every 10 paces for the rest of the night.

Having survived the double rat drama yesterday, Janet is now ready for the butterfly farm tomorrow, the pedicure girls assuring her that the insects do not actually bite. Nevertheless, Janet is so jumpy that anything bigger than a postage stamp will startle her if it moves suddenly or creates a sharp sound. Try it when you next see her.

2007-12-10T11:22:00.000-08:00

Penang, Monday - We arrived yesterday at this very pleasant island, once an English outpost and a stone's throw from Butterworth airfield on the Malaysian mainland. It's another currency and another electrical connection, this time they copy the British three-pin. Someone in Customs is going to query how much electrical wiring, plugs and connections I have to carry around.

I was sad to leave Bangkok with its familiarity and lovely people, always ready to smile and always trying to avoid offending. Here, in Malaysia, the predominant ethnic group appears to be Indians and quite a lot of Islamic people. Janet is not too impressed by the Indians, two of whom ran the first hotel we stayed in here.

It is billed as a heritage site and I booked as far back as May, 2007. It was the home of a famous scholar and administrator over a 100 years ago. I had visions of a large room with dark polished floor, lazy ceiling fans, shuttered windows, teak everywhere, maybe even mosquito netting. Instead, we were shown a closet with two thin beds pressed tight together, no room to open a suitcase and the toilet only inches from the beds where one was to sit on the toilet to use the primitive hose shower. All this for RM100 (3.25 RM to the American dollar) a day. Janet was so tired (we were up at 4.30 am) that we agreed but while she slept I booked us in at a modern hotel opposite and later I negotiated to pay part of the booking. This is how a two-star hotel appeared to us as a five-star hotel by comparison.

The Malaysian Hotel, from our 8th floor window, looks out over Georgetown and the strait between us and the Malaysian mainland. It's a stupendous view, with a separate bathroom, good beds, air-conditioning and breakfast. Despite all that, it is really an old girl now but very welcome in the circumstances.

Janet's phobia for rats and mice, which I presume is well-known for she screams if she suspects a rat is anywhere within miles, was well-tested on our walk to the plaza last night, for there were rats in the streets. Janet's scream was so piercing and chilling that several rickshaw drivers upended their passengers in alarm. Luckily, Janet only saw two large rats but there were more. Now, she says she will not be comfortable at the Butterfly Farm in case one alights on her skin. This British lady reduces me to tears of laughter, unfortunately, with these reactions to tiny furry creatures, even yelping at the squirrels in the parks in Taipei.

Now we are off to explore Penang during the daylight, for Janet won't venture out at night anymore (wait until she gets to Hanoi!).

2007-12-08T11:45:00.000-08:00

Janet has already gone out for the day. We had breakfast under the trees, as usual, with the goldfish swimming in ponds under the tables. Every morning it is the same breakfast and every morning it is a different price. We spread the two excellent English-speaking papers and while I read the news, Janet reads the stars and does the crossword. We mumble to each other over the sliced fruit slices, mandarin juice, omelettes, toast and tea. The Burmese waitress is very gentle and almost apologetic as she waits on the table.

I was reading in The Nation this morning that Burmese refugees were being very badly exploited; the author described a 14-year old girl as being the family breadwinner, working at top speed peeling prawns all day long for a wage of 100 B. That's about $3. The minimum daily wage, by law, in Thailand is 189 B. Employees at the numerous 7-11 stores earn 25 B per hour with an extra 4 B per hour at night. Taxis, as I have mentioned earlier, have a 35 B flagfall and that includes the first 2 kilometres. The price has not risen for 10 years.

You would wonder who can afford to shop at the luxurious Siam Center complex with its 800 designer shops and restaurants. It's amazing to see world-class brand names, one after the other, with rarely a customer, but someone has to be paying the rent. We had dinner there last night at the Vietnamese Pho (soup) restaurant. Big bowls of shrimp soup, a beer each and 10 spring rolls, all for 504 B ($15).

Then off to the night market to find a replacement for my sunglasses that I lost in Chiang Mai. I bought genuine Ray-Bans for $12. Well, the girl said they were genuine. Dior, Police, all the top names were there. They start off at 850 B, shown on a calculator, slowly dropping the price until you stop laughing. Lumpini Market had a great free song show and with a 90 B bottle of beer, I sat for an hour to watch, then went to have an hour-long foot massage for 250 B ($7.50). I spoke a little Thai, which pleased the masseur, and got a bonus 20 minutes of back and arm massage. A generous tip followed.

Today, we pack up all the things we won't need for the next month as we are about to depart at 5am tomorrow for Penang, Cambodia and Vietnam. I'll pick up three days' washing and ironing now (50 B) and maybe go to the markets for some cocoanut icecream. Wish you were here but the real adventure is about to start tomorrow.

2007-12-05T22:30:00.000-08:00

A quick visit to Lumpini Night Market. This is a quality night market, not your ma and pa holding a baby while cooking dead chook and a domestic pack of dogs looking on.
No, Lumpini is full of nice things and nice people. They sell quality, like the genuine Tag Heuer Cararra watch, I bought there tonight. Normally they sell at, maybe, $10,000, but I managed to bargain a seller down to $75. Janet swore I was being taken but men know these things and I was on to something hot.

However, after an incredible dinner for about $15, we kept shopping and the same watch appeared at other stalls. It was a period of great triumph for Janet as she discovered my watch could have been purchased for exactly half the price at most other places. She produced not so much a prolonged laugh but a victory bray and carried a smirk that suggested she had lost either her mind or her moral compass.

Her greatest moment of the day was when she waied (formal hands-together bow) to an 18-month old little Thai boy and he waied back to her, his fat little hands clasped together as he gave a solemn nod. After that, Janet was in heaven. The kids are so beautiful, so cute. Parents lit up when showing them to us and we smiled and talked happily with them, usually in exaggerated mime.

My saddest moment was watching from a taxi a beggar who had lost his arms. He held a plastic cup in his mouth, bobbing his head to passers-by to solicit coins. Nobody put any in, from where I could see over a line or two of traffic. Moments later, I saw a man lying on the edge of the footpath, one arm outstretched and also holding a cup for begging. Janet saw others at the markets on Sunday, one covered in scars from acid attacks, his face barely recognisable as a face and his body a mass of scar tissue, all pink and peeling as he sat haunched up in the full sun. I guess we had better get used to all this before we get to Cambodia and Vietnam, as it is full-on in those countries.

2007-12-05T12:30:00.000-08:00

It's the birthday of the world's longest reigning monarch today in Bangkok. King Bhumibol was born in Massachusetts on this day in 1927, close to where his father was studying medicine at Harvard. He's the only monarch ever to be born in the USA. He is dearly beloved by the people and every day or so, when the King is mentioned, we are asked whether we love the King. There's no other answer, Yes, we say, we love the King. He is a very good man. The taxi driver or the shop assistant or the hotel clerk then settle back with a grin from ear to ear. "Yes, he lovely man."

There is genuine admiration for this wise old monarch. Without saying too much to those who upset him, he manages to settle grievances. Thakskin, for example, the Chinese-Thai political leader (now ex-) was said to have started each audience with the King kneeling on the floor with his forehead touching the carpet.

Whatever the King wears is watched slavishly by the Thais. For example, when he was discharged from hospital on 7 November after a minor stroke, he wore a pink collarless shirt with pink blazer. He revealed recently that despite being an old man, he likes to wear bright colours to remove the stuffiness of his position. On that day, he wore pink. Fully a quarter of the Thais now wear pink polo shirts, ranging from a very delicate hue, almost white, to sunburnt watermelon.

The poloneck shirt I'm wearing today has the royal crest surrounded by pink but the shirt itself is daffodil yellow, the colour for Monday, the day of the week when the King was born (you can wear purple on a Saturday to show affection for the royal dog, Tongdaeng, which was a stray, or red for the day many of the King's closest relatives were born). Yellow is the most popular colour and is especially to be worn on Mondays. The streets today are awash with yellow - it is a veritable sea of daffodils. Even Janet is wearing her yellow shirt, for to wear anything else is to suggest that you do not love the King. Nothing will be done about that, but I like to show respect to this man, as does Janet, although I heard her grumbling at breakfast under the trees this morning, something about "toadying".

Streets are blocked off and oceans of daffodils are there waving their Thai red, white and blue flags. The daily papers are collector's items and the long speech given in one of his palaces yesterday, when the King's unscripted and very detailed examination of Thailand and its position in the world was televised, was very impressive. At 80, he talked for over an hour about problems and strengths and how Thailand should approach various situations, all with a comforting sense of Buddhism by never losing perspective that we live in increasingly challenging times. He is concerned about climate change for many reasons, not the least being that Bangkok is only a metre or so above the high tide mark and has a very flat terrain.

So, what do we do today? The television is showing the routes the King will travel but the roads are blocked off. We don't want to get into the cycle of eating, sleeping and doing little else but today the public transport and streets are crowded. It's also a public holiday so much is closed.

Janet is ploughing through a book a day, the present one being written by an American woman who lived in Thailand and fell in love with the place and the people. Strangely, she writes with great humour and very palpable affection. Janet laughed aloud when she read about the pet monkey that periodically chewed through its leather strap and escaped, running around inside the house, once being found sitting on the toilet reading a comic book upside down.

Tomorrow, I pick up our visa for Vietnam and book the train journey for the last excursion we will have in Thailand in January, the colourful trip down to Hua Hin, the seaside town that was once very pretty and has the King's summer palace. It's a three-hour journey in an air-conditioned carriage. The price is about $14 return. After that, it's a day or so in Bangkok and then the flight home.

Geraldine is back in Phnom Penh and thinks we are seeing her on 15 December but we don't arrive until nightfall from Malaysia and I also don't like the idea of walking the streets to find transport or be brought home in the dark streets at night in that mysterious city. The tragedy of Pol Pot's murderous regime seems to hang over the country like a black cloud and the soldiers of Pol Pot are now middle-aged citizens, thousands with the blood of tortured countrymen still on their hands. But that's another story. Today, we are daffodils with a touch of pink.

2007-12-02T09:50:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, we said goodbye to Chiang Mai after a great 3-day holiday there. The weather gets quite cool at night, enough for a light woollen sweater. The locals, who are so used to higher temperatures, were wearing padded jackets. Even the staff in the Indian restaurant wore jackets, one with a fur collar. The night market is very high class and well-lit but there are the cheaper night markets for $3 polo-neck T-shirts.

A quick $30 flight from CM to Bangkok, then Janet said we should catch the local bus rather than the 380 B taxi. What seemed like several hours later, we arrived at our hotel, having to come the last dozen kilometres by taxi as we had no idea where we were when the bus stopped and we were told we could get out now. Bad idea, Janet. Not that mine are better as I got lost yesterday when venturing out without a keeper or responsible adult. I didn't take much money and found that I had 50 B left and still god knows where I was.

The decorations are beautiful in the city for the King's 80th birthday bash on Wednesday. Trooping of the Colour on television last night was said to have been spectacular and it was heart-warming to see the King looking good on the front pages of the papers this morning. Breakfast for two was outrageously priced at $A6.90. We have it under the trees on tables that astride ponds of goldfish.

Today, it's housekeeping. Janet is on the internet to business people in Australia and I am trying to confirm flight details for next Sunday to Penang, but English is such a difficult language for them. I find airport very stressing, intially very sexy but quickly it becomes stressful. They take themselves so seriously with AK-47 sub-machine guns, X-rays over and over again, ridiculously long queues, pressure to have everything exactly correct and then you feel that you must mortgage your house to buy their coffee which is undrinkable. You shuffle on board, cover yourself in olive oil and squeeze into a seat built for a child and try to read, hunched over in a modified foetal position until they help you off at the other end. We have 16 flights, and that translates into many hours on the massage tables later.

2007-12-01T19:00:00.000-08:00

Janet is around at the massage parlour at the moment. I had an hour-long massage at 5pm after coming back from the elephants so, on my recommendation, Janet unsprawled herself from the king-size bed and moved a tonne of newspapers, books, fruit knives and magazines, and meekly went around with me a short while ago to get herself oiled up.

Today, most of our energy returned. After buying some clothes this morning, we purchased some durian fruit, ate a bit when back at the guest house and threw out the rest. It's an acquired taste, somewhat like heavy metal music, but just as unwelcome to us both.

The elephant's show was scheduled for 1:30 pm so we hired a driver and car for the afternoon for $14. It's the guest-house owner's son-in-law, and he was very patient with our dawdling with the elephants, even denying himself a sigh of exasperation when we went for a 30-minute ride on the back of an old female elephant after the show.

The path taken by the mahout was frightening and involved really steep climbs in a narrow jungle path where the mud was up to half a metre deep. The lead elephants had squashed huge footprints way down into the mud and I think our elephant just used the same footholes. The slopes were at least 30 degrees, if not more. We were in danger of sliding out of our little seats and under the safety bar, with the mahout thinking this was all wonderful fun. In fact, it was.

I practically exhausted the battery on the camera (Clem shouted me a long-life battery for the trip) and some great footage was taken, the highlights being the soccer match, the elephants doing their paintings and the intial exposure to them when they were wallowing in the nearby running river.

On the way back, our driver took us to an orchid farm and we took more pictures and talked to a Chinese photographer who spoke excellent English (self-taught, he said) who was from UN and up for the weekend from Bangkok. As light was fading, we pulled ourselves away from his interesting conversation because he had thousands of dollars worth of camera gear and professional tripod and talking instead of indulging in his hobby.

Now, Janet should be back in 30 minutes and then we'll get a tuk-tuk to the night markets to an Indian restaurant, recommended by our masseur. All dishes, he said, were exquisite (I've forgotten the Thai word) and each was around 40 B - maybe $1.20. Everywhere, there is cheap food - just point in any direction and there's something to eat for sale.

2007-11-30T03:46:00.000-08:00

Today, we were supposed to be on the Ping River, lazily drifting along, flowers in the water, weeping willows along the banks, etc. But we were both still mending and the day was wasted apart from walking a few kilometres. This city is ancient and has a crumbling, still beautiful, city wall and moat, about 2 kms square, around the older city. When I get the skills, I'll post some photographs.

The day started beautifully, a cinnamon-coloured sky slowly changed into apricot by 6am and then a glorious blue. I had my massage by a blind woman in a little shop across the soi (laneway). The manager, also blind, told me that he has two shops in Chiang Mai and his dream is to train blind people to earn a living by massaging, even having an international centre to train other blind people from south-east asia.

It was a gentle massage, not the traditional Thai, where this woman presses for about an hour on muscle groups and knots. It was not painful so I wondered how effective it would be. I'll compare it to a Thai massage that I hopefully will have tomorrow. But I'm 50% better than yesterday with health and Janet is about the same although she is still lacking energy and sleeps a lot during the day.

We had a wonderful breakfast for $6 in total, fruit drinks, tea, bacon, hash browns, toast, eggs, sausages, tomatoes, etc. All on a sun-drenched verandah surrounded by tropical plants and flowers. Janet said it was the slowest breakfast she'd ever had in her life.

The problem with money is that we can't estimate how much we are spending. With about 30 baht to the dollar, something that is 20 baht seems to have no price at all. It's all to do with there being so many to the dollar - a perception that it is like monopoly money. Gradually, we are seeing that 500 Baht = $15. It is going to be harder in Cambodia in two weeks' time for there the exchange is about 4,000 riel to the dollar, so is 2756 riel much money? How about 46,500 riel? Luckily, they use American dollars for items over $1 and their own money for change. But when we go to Vietnam on Boxing Day, the exchange rate jumps to about 15,000 dongs to the dollar. Is 90,800 dongs a good price for breakfast? Who can tell when you are disorientated?

Now, we are off to have dinner. Last night we could hardly move afterwards and it came to about 260 Baht, which I imagine is close to $9.

Tomorrow, the elephants playing soccer and painting pictures, all on high-definition movie.

2007-11-29T16:30:00.000-08:00

I'm trying to will this nasal/throat infection away. It's robbing me of excitement and I'm not concentrating. Today, we nearly missed the plane to Chiang Mai. I misread the departure time from BKK, seeing instead the arrival time at Chiang Mai. So we blissfully set off for a 1115 departure, however on the way to the airport I casually looked at the times and saw the plane was to leave at 1000. We just got there with a lot of assistance from ground staff.

My friend from university days in the 70's, John Mountbatten, lives in Bangkok for 6 months of the year. In fact, John introduced me to south-east Asia a few years ago. On Tuesday night, he took me to a very laid-back tropical restaurant across the road from Penguin House, were Janet and I are staying. It is run by Ek, John explained, who was formerly a no-hoper and quite rebellious. Ek is good-looking and this may explain why B. "adopted" him, taught him English and accountancy, fostered Ek's interest in art and cooking, got him through university with a degree in fine arts and helped finance this great little restaurant. Along the way, Ek picked up awards for painting, including the prestigious King's Award, and developed a talent for hard work. With B and another friend, Ek now has a 12-room hotel in the centre of Bangkok as well as a restaurant and works 16-18-hour days, going between the two. He's only 30 and quite tough, although he looks like a choir boy. In Bangkok, you keep moving or sink to the bottom.

Now, late in the afternoon and before we go to the Blue Diamond for dinner, I'm going to book in next door to the blind masseur. This establishment highly recommends him for travellers' knots and stiff back and sore neck. After all that, it's the night market; travel is 40 B down the main street by tuk-tuk.

2007-11-28T10:00:00.000-08:00

Bangkok, Wednesday. Unlike Taipei, where I never saw an internet cafe, Bangkok has about half a dozen in this laneway near my hotel. It is such a switched-on country and accelerating like mad. It can take 15-20 minutes to cross a road here, with thousands of motor scooters and cars descending on the traveller from every direction.

I have picked up the usual sore throat in Bangkok. Every time I come here, I get this raging hot throat with a swollen uvula. I brought some antibiotics with me from Australia so have started on them this morning. Janet is laid low, arriving in Bangkok yesterday with me and immediately wanting just to sleep. She didn't join me for dinner last night and left straight after breakfast to return to her room. She says she's exhausted, nothing more, and needs a lot of sleep. So, I'll wander off into the city and regain my confidence in using the public transport system and language again.

The taxi ride from the airport yesterday was in an illegal taxi and much more than I am used to paying. I still can't work out why, except that Janet was insisting on getting a bus into the city and it felt like I was being nagged a bit, so when some tout said 1000 baht, I argued down to 700 B and he accepted. The real taxi fare is about 300 B so god knows why I said yes. The driver was hitting about 125 kph on the 80 kph expressway and I was muttering "chi chi" which I thought was Thai for slow down, but my friend John says it is "cha cha" with a downward inflection. Anyway, the teenage driver took no notice of us huddled down on the back seat, fearful of a crash. Maybe the bus next time.

Breakfast was toast, bacon & eggs, tea, juice, etc, all for 90 B ($3) and taxi rides are 35 B for flag fall and that includes about 3-4 kms. Not bad for $1.20.

I went to Pantip Plaza yesterday where software is very cheap. The whole plaza is devoted to computers and phones, hundreds of stores selling the same things. I bought a small calculator with world times, etc, for 200 B but it doesn't work properly. Is it worth taking a taxi back into the city to get a new one?

24 sugar bananas for 20 B (60 cents) and other unbelievable prices for food - this is one cheap place to live. Three days' washing + shirts ironed for 40 B. The hotel is about 800 B a day but tomorrow we fly to Chiang Mai where accommodation is even cheaper.

Now, back to the hotel to check on Janet.

2007-11-26T19:00:00.000-08:00

Monday, November 26, 2007

Taipei - Monday,

A flight of 8.5 hours, very cramped for Westerners when several thousand people are sharing a 330 Airbus, still left us excited to be in Taiwan. We caught the express bus into the city, a trip of some 30 kms for $A4 each, then a taxi to the Dong-Wu Hotel. Charlie Tai, a friend of ours, had obtained the Chinese script address and without that we would have had problems as English is really in the minority here.

But what an amazing city! Apartment blocks as far as the eye can see in all directions and shops everywhere. We went for a stroll last night and on Sunday night there was a lot happening, from haircutting to shops open for any kind of purchase. We had Chinese soup at one of 50 cafes open in our street, again at bargain prices - maybe about $1.30. Rich chocolate cakes, New York Baked Cheesecakes - large slices and beautifully cooked - for the same price. Our hotel, with wifi, breakfast, top service, is only $US105 a night. And it's right in the middle of everything in this city we really are enjoying so much.

Today, we went to the tallest building in the world (this is always disputed by those in Dubai or Kuala Lumpur) - Taipei 101. It is designed to resemble a bamboo shoot, with 8 segments (that is a lucky number in Chinese) and giant coins stuck to the sides at level 24 to 27. The view is supposed to be spectacular as it's far taller than the New York World Trade Center, but today the top was covered in mist as rain pelted down almost non-stop. It's still an amazing building and is located close to the Old Taiwan, but rain stopped us from exploring much further. The incredible Taipei Museum is closed on Mondays so we really couldn't take a trick. Janet was tired and so we came back to the hotel and now, it being 7pm, we will take a pick of the sidewalk cafes for dinner.

It's too interesting a city to do quickly so we have resolved to fly back for a week in 2008 and travel to the interior by train, said to be a beautiful journey. The people have all been helpful and try to understand what we say and are exceptionally courteous. It's the first day of the trip and it's been a great introduction to the Taiwanese people. Incidentally, Kevin Rudd did some of his Mandarin studies here and even appeared on stage in Chinese Opera, according to his Mandarin teacher who was interviewed for the local paper. That's a first for an Australian Prime Minister-Elect.

Tomorrow, we leave early to catch the plane to Bangkok and I hope we've recovered some energy as tonight, our personal batteries are in the red zone.

South-east Asia

2007-11-20T10:30:00.000-08:00

Tuesday - It's five days to the minute before we board the aircraft to fly to Taiwan. This last week has been packed with things to do before leaving on this 66-day journey, for example, tomorrow is the morning tea put on by Probus members who will be wishing Janet, their President, a safe journey. Probus is an organisation very close to Janet's heart and the morning tea is an especially welcomed event.

Janet has already packed but it seems she's omitted language, guide and general reading books, duplicate travel documents, maps, camera equipment, alarm clock, warm clothes (it's winter in some places we travel to) and all the things I want her to carry. Half her suitcase is empty, so far. Asia Airlines only allow 15 kg of checked in luggage so sharing will be necessary.

Lots of arrangements have been done by now. Nearly all our accommodation has been booked (16 separate occasions, 5 times to Bangkok for example) and nearly all the flights. There's a train journey to Hua Hin in Thailand we have yet to arrange and visas to Cambodia and Vietnam.

It pays to make many of the arrangements ourselves and this can be done on the internet. Nok Airlines, for example, has a flight from Hanoi to Bangkok for only 9 cents a journey (plus $US45 tax and charges). You can compare that to Thai Airlines which charges the earth for the same trip. And it's fun to search on the Net for boutique hotels or lodgings, then correspond with the owners themselves who write back in English, surely one of the most complicated languages in the world. My usual hotel in Bangkok wrote back to say "Mr Richard, So happy to miss you..."

The many, many highlights should make this a journey to remember. Bangkok is always exciting; we will be going into the foothills nearer to Burma to see the elephants; Penang Island is a first for both of us; the orphanage in Phnom Penh (for which a lot of money was raised); Angkor Wat at Siem Reap, where we will be for Christmas; Hanoi and Halong Bay, where we may stay overnight on a junk in the South China Sea; Saigon and surrounding areas where the Viet Cong fought from tiny tunnels; Chiang Rai in the north of Thailand; Hua Hin on the coast and site of the King's summer palace, etc.

Of course, on this visit we will be celebrating with millions of Thais the 80th birthday of their King, a much respected and loved monarch. He is frail and it is to be hoped that on 5 December, he's still around to give his blessings on his people. Thailand will be alive and so festive for December and it's always a pleasure to be with these wonderful people.

However, much of the time we will be in Vietnam which resembles Thailand 15-20 years ago and still retains an old-fashioned charm (and price structure).

So, we are going to basically have a look at where we would like to teach and where we found we could live for months at a time. I don't believe we will do anything more than look around, talk to local schools, suss out the various places and do some sight-seeing. I hope to take movies with my new HD camcorder and basically put together my own small travelogue so we can re-live the atmosphere and times and try to decide where we felt most comfortable and useful.

We'll talk about the highlights when we arrive in each place and maybe tell you something that may persuade you to visit. But for now, that's it, and back to the packing.