San Francisco

What would you guess the population of San Francisco is? 5 million? 3 million? Well, it's actually just over 800,000. Yes, I was surprised too. This is a pretty small city that punches way above its weight in the world.

Although it's in the same state as Los Angeles, it really feels very different indeed. There is a friendly, personal, relaxed but lively vibe here, and it's the USA's most liberal city - George Moscone, the city mayor assassinated at the same time as Harvey Milk (see below), claimed that it was the fact that all different sorts of people have learnt to get along together in San Francisco that makes it the greatest city in the world. Well, I'm not totally sure about that (and I'm not sure how widely Mayor Moscone had travelled in Western Europe!), but San Fran is definitely a great city to hang out in for a while.

The core of the city is pretty much walkable (with a bit of stamina), and there is also reasonably good public transport. In addition to the MUNI system of rail-cum-tram lines and trolleybuses, there is also the BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) metro system which is one of the more interesting transport experiences I've had - it's very obviously of late 1960s/early 1970s design and build, and with streamlined stainless steel trains and platform tiling of that era, must have looked very futuristic when it was first opened. Now it, er, doesn't, but with plushly upholstered and carpeted trains, it's remarkably comfortable, and strangely fun to walk into what the future used to look like!

To my surprise, I've found myself a big fan of the North American system of numbering streets rather than naming them. Essentially, provided you can remember which way the numbering goes (e.g. in the Civic Center and Mission areas, 'Streets' run in descending order from 1st to 32nd, north to south like rungs of a ladder), it makes it impossible to lose your bearings. With my woeful sense of direction I don't usually like to venture anywhere unfamiliar without carrying a good map - but by just remembering the order of the numbering, I very happily went out to the Castro on my first evening from my hostel from the Mission without carting my guidebook with me and with no prospect of getting lost.

One thing I hadn't appreciated before coming to San Francisco is that it has a peculiar climate which is not what you associate with California at all. I'd been distinctly puzzled by a brief conversation I'd had with San Franciscans in New Zealand when they said something along the lines of "Oh it's great you're going to San Francisco... but the weather's quite cold in summer". And alas they were right, sort of. Bounded in on three sides by the Pacific Ocean, the city has an extremely temperate climate and also plenty of fog on many mornings which is slow to clear. This means that real cold in winter is virtually unknown, but real warmth in summer is by no means commonplace, and September and October are actually the warmest months. On average it's the coldest major city in the whole USA (Wikipedia tells me) during June, July and August. I just about managed to sunbathe briefly one afternoon, but my jacket was a welcome companion throughout the day for most of my stay - and walking along the waterfront towards the Golden Gate Bridge, the cool winds were positively bracing...

...But don't let that put you off going to the Golden Gate Bridge, San Fran's icon. It is some way out of town with limited (but do-able once you've worked out how) public transport. However I'd suggest leaving it till the way back and walking there along the waterfront (but do take some layers of clothing!!), because by doing so you discover the bridge's wonder slowly - as from afar it doesn't look all that impressive, but it really is. Up close you feel completely dwarfed by the immensity of the engineering achievement and in awe of the superb aesthetics - finished off by the orangey-red colour which may seem like a strange one, but somehow works really well. As an added bonus you get to see Fort Point, the impressive American Civil War-era fort which the Golden Gate Bridge was redesigned to span over rather then demolish.

 

The Golden Gate Bridge [picture pulled off Internet]

The city's other famous stellar attraction is Alcatraz, the former prison island for the highest-security inmates in the US penal system, decommissioned in the 1960s. I hadn't realised it's only 1½ miles away from the mainland by ferry crossing; this apparently made the (impressive) view across unbearable for some prisoners, because they couldn't bear seeing how close but unattainable free life was. But the distance was generally sufficient, due to treacherous currents and mostly icy waters; some would-be escapees who made it as far as the water drowned, while others actually gave up and swam back! The island is now a national park because it features substantial habitation by rare wildlife; however the main attraction is the truly excellent guided tour of the former, perfectly preserved jailhouse. Ít's all done by an electronic audioguide which runs constantly, telling you exactly where to walk to see the next point of interest, with narration by former inmates and former wardens - I haven't come across quite such a system before (i.e with a constant commentary and walking directions) but it was superb, much better than tagging along in a large annoying group trying to listen to one human guide. The actual cells, which were tiny with no privacy, are still in tact - including the punishment block which meant soiltary confinement in complete darkness - and you get to see mock-ups of how cells used to look with and without prisoners' personal effects. You also get to see an escape tunnel dug by prisoners with a stolen improvised electric drill (only used during music hour) and a spoon - they escaped the island, but drowned while swimming across; and the exact key sites during the "Battle of Alcatraz" armed escape attempt, in which two guards and three inmates died.

 A cell at Alcatraz [picture pulled off Internet]

Unlike for the most part Los Angeles, San Fran seems to do public space well in the form of both parks and civic squares. Golden Gate Park (slightly away from the city centre but handily a MUNI line runs its entire three-mile (!) length) is the city's flagship park - it's huge and heavily covered in trees, to the extent that you could probably lose yourself in it for an entire day, forgetting you're in a city. It attracts lots of outdoorsy types for all sorts of activities, but it's also justifiably popular for picnics and general lounging around. In the city centre, between the Mission and the Castro, Dolores Park is also a very pleasant and popular spot for hip 20- and 30-somethings to lounge around or maybe have a kickaround - if you're fortunate enough to actually get June weather warm enough - and it seemed a great spot for people-watching. By way of squares, Union Square is a pleasant place to take a rest (or use as a meeting place), lined with department stores, even if it seemed a little soulless compared to some of the great European plazas. Probably more impressive is the Civic Center area which notably includes the United Nations Plaza, with monuments and engravings marking the formation of that organisation in San Francisco in San Francisco in 1945

The centrepiece of said Civic Center area however is City Hall. I wasn't particularly expecting to be blown away by the building's architecture, but I truly was - it's absolutely vast, with (I read later) the fifth largest dome structure in the world, and incredibly grand in a Beaux Arts style. It's equally impressive and imposing inside, with lavish marble walls featuring ornate classical carvings and a grand main staircase, and you're free to walk in and wander around. It's a genuine must-see on those grounds alone. However of course the original reason for my interest is that it was the site of the assassination of Harvey Milk, the world's first openly gay politician to win elected office (as a City Supervisor, the equivalent of a city councillor in British terminology) and gay rights hero, as well as Mayor George Moscone, by a mentally ill fellow Supervisor. There are statues commemorating both inside. (If you don't know the story of Harvey Milk, go and see at once the amazing and essential film "Milk" with a fantastic lead performance by Sean Penn.)

 San Francisco City Hall [picture pulled off Internet]

The Castro is of course San Fran's main gay district, doubtless made much better known (including to me) by thel film "Milk". It's a very concentrated one at that - the 'scene' there is concentrated into about three blocks, albeit that there are houses all around with predictably gay-heavy populations - and it has more of a sense of physical gay community than anywhere else I've wandered. There are public noticeboards full of gay-related posters, and the site of Harvey Milk's camera shop which became the unofficial gay community centre is currently empty but commemorated with a full windowfront display. The various shops in the area included the inevitable sex shops but also a huge and rather wonderful gay bookshop, and what appeared to be a shop for gay dog-owners. Honestly. Lately on my travels I've managed to blag myself a few free gym trials by lying through my teeth about my residence status ("Yes I'm a resident here... I'm a university student, studying International Relations") - in SF I got myself into a gym on Castro Street, which belongs to one of the major chain providers but is blatantly a gay gym. I've never seen so many tight-fitting designer gym outfits. :-) It's also the only private gym where I've seen a noticeboard with posters exhorting you to get a syphilis test... and with one open communal shower area, complete with signs telling you not to have sex in there. I won't miss that last bit.

This sense of gay community was certainly evident at the San Francisco International LGBT Film Festival, which was taking place while I was in town. I saw a compelling Norwegian film, a gay teenage coming-of-age story, called The Man Who Loved Yngve - this has won multiple awards elsewhere and I'd definitely highly recommend it. I also saw a documentary called Beyond Gay: The Politics of Pride which examined the partying and the issues in staging Pride festivals in both liberal and less liberal parts of the world. It showed footage from Rio de Janeiro where there are a staggering 2 million participants; but also from Warsaw where anti-gay protestors virtually outnumbered marchers; and from Moscow of an organiser getting his head kicked in by a baying mob, in this city where all permits for Pride marches are rejected by the Mayor and attempts violently suppressed by the police - they eventually managed to march about 20 metres [sic] with a rainbow flag in an anonymous part of town, which they considered a relative triumph. Plus we met the Jamaican gay activist who's seen 13 of his friends homophobically murdered. It was a sobering but deeply inspiring film.

San Francisco is also a city that defines itself heavily through its art scene, with several major museums  and plenty of small galleries, and I'd recommend MOMA, the one I had time to get to, as somewhere to spend a morning.

SF also seems to be one of those places where you can expect to see strange, random things. On Powell Street, there was an aged busker playing several verses of, er, "God Save the Queen", on a peculiar hand-made stringed instrument wired up to an electronic speaker. In the plaza outside City Hall on a weekday morning, I observed a large open-air step aerobics session. And one early evening, a rather inebriated but perfectly friendly elderly local guy struck up a conversation with me about the tolerance of San Francisco and life's ups and downs - I could forgive his untimely drunkenness as he was heading home from a wake for his best friend's son who'd been murdered. OK, so that last detail darkens the happy anecdote somewhat...

One slight surprise is that San Francisco does not seem to be much of a 24-hour city. My observations and those of fellow travellers from my hostel were that generally both bars and clubs (even on Castro Street) seem to be closed by 1.45am, if not earlier. Mind, if you want to be able to go out at all, for goodness' sake make sure you take photo ID (which for me has to be my passport as I have no driving licence) - one night I forgot, and got both myself and my two friends thrown out of the bar we'd gone to as soon as I tried to order. The fact that I'm really obviously well over 21 (the minimum drinking age), and that I only ordered a soft drink, both cut no ice. Well, they always have been much more uptight about drinking on this side of the Atlantic.

I really liked San Francisco for sure - I'm not certain that I really loved it though, even though this feels like a heretical thing to say. As I've discussed with other cities, it's often hard to pin clear reasons to your emotional reaction to a place, although I suspect that there was something about the Americanness of the city which just doesn't quite do it for me like the top European/Asian/Australian cities I've been to, even though it's fascinating to have seen it. I'll let you know though what I think of the US cities I'll be visiting on the eastern side - watch this space...

Lastly, some more general observations of California:

• Generally speaking the customer service is superb, in shops and even on buses. I suppose it makes sense that you get this in the home of capitalism...
• LA and San Fran are both seriously ethinically diverse places. Both .cities have non-Hispanic whites as a minority population, and in LA whites full stop are a minority This is probably something that negative stereotypes of the US regarding its lack of worldliness overlook - like many national stereotypes globally, probably based much more on perceptions of small-town than big-city life.
• The "soccer" World Cup is significantly more visible than you might expect. Some of this is clearly due to the loyalties of immigrants (or their descendants) from places better known for their interest in football - when Mexico defeated France, Mission Street outside my hostel came alive with multiple cars hooting continuously with their cheering occupants waving flags - but not all of it. At breakfast one morning three Americans were gripped by the USA v Slovenia match, even if one of them did think the opposing country was named "Slavia"...
• Something that I found mildly infuriating is that prices are almost always quoted exclusive of the sales tax that is normally payable. Apart from deceiving you into thinking things are cheaper than they are, most prices are round figures exclusive of sales tax - this means that the inclusive price is rarely a round figure. You therefore quickly accumulate large quantities of small change - which you can't even prepare to get rid of with your next purchase because you don't know exactly what you'll need to pay until you get to the checkout...
• Oh, and banknotes are all the same size and colour. This is less difficult to deal with than confusing coins - except for visually impaired people, who I believe I heard a little while back have won some sort of court order against the Federal Government that this infringes their rights. Good for them.
• It is a challenge to be a backpacker here and not put on weight - portions of food-to-go and snacks tend to be large to say the least. And California has the healthiest population in the US...

Freezing in New Zealand

New Zealand in wintertime is cold, windy, dark and often thoroughly wet. Obviously I knew this before deciding to spend one week of my round-the-world trip there, but perhaps what I hadn't appreciated is how important acclimatisation, or the lack of it, is. One of my Scandinavian friends once told me that they cope with their winters because each day/week is only a little colder and darker than the one before over a period of several months, so they get used to it. The New Zealand climate is more British than Scandinavian, but the trouble was that it hadn't been long at all since my prolonged exposure to constant heat of anything between 30-odd and 44 degrees C in Asia. So it felt absolutely bloody freezing to me. And I think also that sudden loss of hours and intensity of daylight was also a shock to the system. I'm not saying I wish I hadn't gone to New Zealand, but to anyone else considering a round-the-world trip, the impact of travelling through wildly different climactic conditions is something to bear in mind!

I limited myself to the North Island, which earned me incredulous looks from a couple of other travellers on the grounds that South Island is supposed to be prettier. However it's also that much colder in winter, and would have left me spending too much of my week in transit given that my onward flight across the Pacific needed to be from Auckland, towards the north of North Island. So, I went to the two major cities of Wellington and Auckland, and in-between to Rotorua. Travelling between these places by bus was very scenic, albeit in a largely English-style way, definitely part of the experience.

Major world cities Wellington and Auckland are not; bear in mind that New Zealand has only just over 4 million inhabitants, and they're generally a pretty understated sort anyway. Around a quarter of them are in Auckland; Wellington is the capital however due to its more central location, but it has a population of barely 200,000. I only counted one tall tower block there. While Auckland does have the tallest building in the southern hemisphere, the Sky Tower (aptly described by Lonely Planet as looking like a giant hypodermic giving a fix to the heavens), it seems to have a reputation for having a largely dull and generic city centre. A few points of interest included a modest, modern square commemorating New Zealand being the first country in the world to enfranchise women, and the surprisingly bold 1926 Art Nouveau University Clock Tower; however overall I didn't see too much to disprove the reputation. What charm there is in Wellington city centre seems to come largely from the bohemian cafes and live music venues around Cuba Street - although the whole city only boasts one rather provincial, albeit reasonable, gay venue, Club Ivy. Wellington city's main architectural claim to fame, the modernist concrete government office building called the Beehive, is a bit of a monstrosity.

Wellington. Alas not my photos in this article or the next couple, for reasons explained a bit later on - and not quite the weather I experienced there either!

What both cities certainly do have however are impressive natural settings. Wellington Airport is right on the shoreline of the Cook Strait, the narrow stretch of water between North and South Islands - it looked like my plane from Melbourne was landing on water until dry land of the runway became visible at the very last moment (not entirely a great minute or two for this slightly nervous flyer!). Wellington is built on enough of a slope, with some reserves of forest still standing between the very modest buildings up the slopes, to make for a famous and very picturesque view from the waterfront. Auckland is built on a very narrow strip of land between the Tasman Sea on one side and Pacific Ocean on the other; it is called The City of Sails for the fairly staggering 135,000 pleasure boats that live in its waters. It's also built on an area of volcanic activity, and the Auckland Museum tells how an eruption is inevitable sooner or later - albeit there have only been 19 in the last 20,000 years.

Auckland, with the Sky Tower towards the right [picture pulled off Internet]

Unfortunately the weather was just too inhospitable in the very limited time I had available for extensive exploration of either city. The Auckland Museum, with social history and design galleries as well as Maori anthropology, is a good way to spend a wet afternoon. Also in Auckland I did enjoy an (admittedly rather overpriced) visit to Kelly Tarlton's Antartic Encounter and Underwater World - my first opportunity to see penguins! Attractive but strange creatures, they are well worth seeing. When I first saw some near the venue's entrance I thought for a good few seconds I was looking at plastic models, so rigid and statuesque are they when stood still. Then when they do walk, it is really rather comical - they are fairly rotund with their layer of blubber but their legs are virtually non-existent above their big orange webbed feet. They therefore look very much like they are waddling, but also like they are extremely unstable on their feet. However, when you are able to observe them swimming in the water, there is no doubt that they look efficient and extremely graceful.

The definite highlight however of my trip to New Zealand was Rotorua. It's a fairly small town (deader at night than almost anywhere I've seen in my whole life), but it is the country's number one tourist destination. The large, rather beautiful and serene Lake Rotorua, upon one side of which the town is built is a substantial attraction; however the main draw is that this is an area of geothermal activity.

Plumes of hot steam rise up from drains and even solid ground fairly randomly all over the place. Notoriously, there is a pervasive odour of sulphur in the air throughout the area, although I found it faint enough to be just amusing rather than offensive, and it seemed to come and go (perhaps it is stronger in still summer weather than in breezy winter weather). There are bubbling pools of hot mud in various places - and the undisputed highlight, geysers which periodically shoot up torrents of boiling hot and steaming (98C) water many metres into the air. When in full flow it is rather like watching an upside-down waterfall, and with rough limestone rocks below the geysers the overall effect is disinctly unworldly, like you've stepped into some underworld or onto another planet. I strongly recommend seeing them or other major geysers (eg in Iceland or Yellowstone National Park, USA) if you get the chance as I found it a unique and memorable experience and so clearly did other visitors.

Welcome to Middle Earth... Or the geysers at Rotorua [picture pulled off Internet]

This natural endowment is also tapped by man. At my hostel in Rotorua I was initially fairly horrified that the front door into the lounge was propped wide open, allowing the chilly winter draft right in, while the heating was on high. I took an opportunity to gently point out to a member of staff how horrible this must be for the environment, who replied that all the heating was geothermal! Oops.

Rotorua also has the country's largest Maori population. The traditional Maori area of town Ohinemutu features some charming carved wooden Maori architcture, but the general impression was one of integration. A local guy Michael (brother of my work colleague Anna) I'd done lunch with in Wellington told me with some pride that there is much less of a legacy of injustice, tension and separateness for New Zealand's indigenous population compared to Australia's, and my limited observations seemed to bear that out. For example I was slightly surprised to find that the shoreline of Ohinemutu has a church which is unmistakeably Anglican, but with Maori art on the walls and Maori inscriptions on the stained glass windows - it seems that many Maoris, at least in Rotorua, converted to Christianity in the 19th Century pretty readily. This church also has a huge clear glass pane looking out onto Lake Rotorua - plain except for a carving of Jesus, who thus appears to be walking on the lake behind. It was touching, even to this committed atheist.

Ohinemutu [picture pulled off internet]

While at the park containing the geysers, the full Maori name of which is Te Whakarewaretanga o te ope taua a wahiao (The uprising of the warriors of Wahiao), I was also able to take in a traditional Maori concert. This involving a scantily clad troupe (I don't think they're particularly supposed to look sexy, but, erm, they kind of do) dancing and playing various traditional musical instruments, and sometimes sticking their tongues out while wide-eyed, which is one of their traditional ways of expressing hostility to outsiders. They gave us a run-through of the haka, the war dance made famous of course by the New Zealand rugby team, then pulled all the guys out of the audience to practise it ourselves! It was too rushed to really get the hang of it but I'm sure I must have looked all manly and terrifying to any would-be invaders, honest. ;-) Another one-off experience anyway and pretty good fun too.

Also at Te Whaka (as it's unsurprisingly shortened to) is an indoor sanctuary for Kiwi birds, the national emblem of New Zealand but sadly critically endangered; they had few predators until European colonisation in the mid-19th Century brought in new threats such as dogs, ever since when their numbers have been in catastrophic decline. They are flightless with curiously long feathers and exceptionally long bills - they're really quite endearing in a funny sort of way. They pair off for life, and females lay eggs which are quite exceptionally large for their size (getting all the women in my tour group wincing); they require an extended rest after laying one, meaning that it's up to the male to raise offspring. However, the females are so territorial that the father has to literally force the offspring off their patch, never to return, before the mother recuperates and gets back on her feet - at which point she would kill it as an invader. A good reminder that it takes all sorts to make the kingdom of nature!

I think I can now, with a little concentration, reliably distinguish an Australian accent from a New Zealand one. The Kiwi accent is just a little amusing at times to this Englishman - it is like somebody has taken a vowel pronunciation chart and totally jumbled it up. Their way of saying "fush and chups" is quite well known, but I also thought a local guy I met named Matt had said his name was Met, and that another was asking me if I had a pin (pen) to write with. This is surely also the only country qualified for the football World Cup which, a few days before it started, was still leading its sports bulletins instead with the build-up to a routine rugby international (against Ireland).

From the New Zealand winter it was on, with a certain amount of gratitude, to summer in California..

Malaysia

Malaysia's tourism slogan is "Malaysia, truly Asia". What they are getting at is the fact that there are three major ethnic communities - Malay, Chinese and Indian - who co-exist all over the country. They are united by the Malay language, but it seems that co-existence is more the norm than real integration, with cities having a Chinatown and a Little India where those respective minorities are concentrated. It can't be helped by the incompatibility of cuisines - the Malay majority are Muslim and thus don't eat pork, whereas pork is the staple meat for the Chinese, meaning that Malays will not go near Chinese restaurants. But back to my travels...

After having tired myself out rather too much with pretty much non-stop activity on my trip thus far, I figured I needed a few days of doing nothing on a beach! For a while I was looking at doing this in southern Thailand, but what I was hearing from fellow travellers about the Southern Thai beaches did nothing to endear them to me - apparently a lot of tat and a lot of hassle is pretty well unavoidable, at least when travelling on a budget, and the gay scenes in those parts sounded decidedly missable too. There was also the substantial consideration that travelling overland from Thailand into Malaysia is considered unsafe by the FCO (due to ongoing Islamic insurgency in Thailand's Deep South which I believe is only loosely related to Bangkok's problems). That meant that to get from Chiang Mai to southern Thailand and then into Malaysia would have required booking two separate flights at appreciable extra expense.

Langkawi on the other hand, off the north west coast of Peninsular Malaysia, sounded like a much less tatty and hassly destination, so there I headed instead. I flew from Chiang Mai into Malaysia (Kuala Lumpur to be precise as that's where the flights were to) and headed straight up by coach to Langkawi from there. That was a decidedly long haul (but the point is, a safe one), not helped by the fact that the main bus station in Kuala Lumpur (KL) is closed for renovation and its temporary replacement is an overcrowded, unpleasant and confusing hole. I had little choice but to stay overnight in Alor Setar, a stay enlivened pretty much only by the obviously gay waiter's gentle but blatant flirting with me. Remember Malaysia is a conservative Muslim country where homosexuality is illegal, and Alor Setar is a particularly conservative Muslim city! (This wasn't my only observation in Malaysia of local gay boys being more obvious and less inhibited than I might have expected...)

When I made it to Langkawi I was soon struck by the way in which it has everything you need on hand (at least on the main strip), but seems to have avoided becoming too over-developed, tacky, or bustling. Granted it was 'low season', but as far as I can tell the climactic differences between the seasons this close to the Equator are pretty small. There are some package tourists - I randomly got introduced to a family from Yorkshire who had been transferred by their travel agent from their planned trip in Thailand but barely seemed to know or care which country they were in - but the main strip at least also has plenty of proper independent travellers. 

The beach is truly beautiful - near-white sand, turquoise seas and smaller tree-lined islands visible in the water - and not over-crowded at all (at least when I was there). I have to say that the humidity was a bit of an issue, enough of one for me to avoid the beach in the middle of the day, and there is precious little shade once the sun gets high unless you're paying for beach-side accommodation. However in the earlyish morning and lateish afternoon/early evening, with the sun and temperature lower, it was blissful. Maybe (or probably) my tolerance of tropical conditions is just fairly low, since the lovely English travel buddy I made here, Marian, was very happy to go to the beach at lunchtime and stay then for several hours!

 Langkawi beach, as beautiful as it looks

There are other activities on the island, which is actually pretty large (you can drive around it and explore), and I'm very glad Marian persauded me to share a taxi to the cable car which takes you up into the island's hills, some 700m above sea level. As well as giving you pleasant respite from the heat and humidity, there's a viewing station there complete with a dramatic steel bridge crossing a yawning chasm. The views of the greenery across the islands and of the sea beyond, with the odd wisp of misty cloud passing below you, was beautiful - there are photos on Facebook which don't do it a lot of justice. Broadly, if you think you can cope with the humidity, I highly recommend Langkawi as a tropical beach getaway destination.

From Langkawi I caught a direct ferry to the other major island off North West Peninsular Malaysia, Penang, to stay in the major traveller destination town of Georgetown. Apparently the town is more or less the archetype of "traditional meets modern" in Asia, although if this is true the modern bits are mostly hidden away from the areas of town of most interest to sightseers. Major sights that I checked out included: 

• The Colonial District, featuring some moderately impressive 19th Century British Empire architecture such as the Town Hall and City Hall (the local government geek in me would have liked to know why there are both of these, but I still don't know).
• The town's Little India which was atmospheric and interesting - if featuring much more calm, more space and less traffic chaos than any commercial area I've seen in India itself!! There I discovered truly gorgeous milky Indian fudge... mmm mmm.
• Khoo Kongsi, a benevolence organisation for members of the Chinese community with the surname Khoo - apparently a ubiquitous and important part of the support network for people of Chinese descent in other countries. This clan is prosperous successful and they've built a large and impressive temple to make it obvious.

I also had a very random encounter with an oldish Indian man who was drinking on the street at 2pm, who said he has worked and travelled in many foreign countries and seems to genuinely like talking to foreign travellers and trying to educate them (albeit he did ask me to buy him his next drink at the end!). He told me that while everyone assumes the dragons on the corners of the roof of every Chinese temple (there was one down the road) are there to ward off evil spirits, if you look closely their extended tongues are made of copper... so they are actually there as lightning conductors. He claims that no Chinese temple has ever suffered lightning damage! He also flummoxed me with a language riddle, taking great delight in doing so given that I'm an educated native speaker. Question: how can you construct a grammatical, logical English sentence with the word 'because' appearing three times consecutively? Answer: "You can't end a sentence with 'because', because 'because' is a conjunction." You learn something every day, but I learnt two things there in about 20 minutes. :)

Penang is world famous for its food, including street food... I took the plunge and particularly remember eating delicious noodle soup with shrimp dumplings in a Chinese food court where I was the only non-Chinese person.

I have to be honest: Georgetown was pleasant but I wasn't compelled. What certainly didn't help, and what caused me to cut my stay short, was the particularly shitty and almost unsleepable (thanks to the heat) hostel accommodation I was staying in, with a little Internet research failing to turn up a convincingly better available alternative. Also, this trip is confirming what I already knew, that all other things being equal I am much more of a "big city" boy than the "relaxed town" kind, which seems to make me somewhat unusual (surprise surprise) for a backpacker, at least in South East Asia. If I had my time there again I might have used it instead to go to Taman Negara in the jungle, which I regrettably didn't find time for.

From Georgetown it was on to Tanah Rata in the Cameron Highlands. I count myself decidedly lucky to have made it there in one piece, having booked a seat on a minibus run by my Georgetown hostel-cum-travel agency (not the sort of thing I usually do but the public transport option on that occasion would have been problematic). The minibus driver drove in a totally demented fashion, driving at anything between 140 and 155 km/h (in a minibus!) on a motorway where the speed limit was 110 km/h; then once on the narrowish windy roads in the Highlands, he regularly took semi-blind bends quickly while driving on the wrong side of the road. I was thankful to have the company of a nice Scottish couple who were equally scared; we chatted in order to distract ourselves from noticing the driving!

One major reason to spend some time in the Cameron Highlands is that at around 1500m above sea level, it is wonderfully cool and fresh compared to the rest of sweltering Malaysia. This was my first time in a mountainous region and I loved the lush scenery... and the background noise of crickets! (Just like the background sound effects on dodgy 1980s TV...) I was staying in an excellent hostel (for 2 pounds per night!), where my dorm was a converted Nissen hut, a prefabricated structure of corrugated iron constructed for use by the British army during World War II. Bathroom and shower facilities were particularly basic, but on this occasion it was almost part of the fun. :)

The area was first developed in British colonial days because it was perfect for growing tea; there are massive tea plantations there to this day. I took a minibus tour which centred on a visit to the tea plantations - across undulating ground they are surprisingly beautiful to admire (photos now on Facebook). I also got a guided tour of a tea factory where we saw the different stages of preparation... and the tasting room! We also saw a strawberry plantation - they are grown hydroponically in greenhouses, all year round, which is of course entirely different to the British way.

Tea plantations in the Cameron Highlands

The number one attraction however in the area is hiking, albeit that many of the routes are apparently either pretty treacherous, in a state of disrepair, or both. Nonetheless I really enjoyed myself doing a gentle(ish) hike in the pretty unspoiled mountain terrain around Tanah Rata, admiring falls and the muddy, fast-flowing river surrounded by lush and extremely dense tropical vegetation.

My visit here coincided with the British general election; I'd given up on being able to follow the results, which started at breakfast time out here. However miraculously I located an Internet cafe which was both open early and had a fast enough connection with good enough machines to watch the BBC live video stream. In retrospect (given the outcome on the night and thereafter) perhaps I shouldn't have bothered, but I wouldn't have been able to focus on anything much else if I'd missed it!

My last stop in Malaysia was the capital Kuala Lumpur. Rather like Bangkok, I’d heard and read little positive and quite a lot of negatives about KL from other travellers, who seemed to consider it worthy of a brief stopover only. While it's not going to rank in my 'top destinations' list at the end of my trip, I do think this negativity is rather misplaced as overall I rather liked it.

There are some contradictions very much in evidence. KL seems to manage to be a very green city with lots of trees and public open space, at the same time as it is a concrete jungle, severely marred both aesthetically and practically (from a walking point of view) by indiscriminately placed highways. The bits that are pedestrian-friendly, such as around Bukit Bintang (where I was staying) and up from there towards the Petronas Towers, felt great. However I found trying to walk around sometimes very time-consuming and frustrating - albeit I should probably have been prepared to make more use of taxis which are particularly cheap here. The city's metro and monorail lines are great once you're on them but they're very poorly integrated, all being owned by separate companies who haven't even arranged through ticketing, let alone proper interchanges. (Trying to get from the Sentral railway station to the Sentral monorail station was particularly trying as they're some way apart and there isn't even proper signage from one to the other.)

Sights are quite limited - one flick through Lonely Planet makes that quite obvious - and I was underwhelmed by some of what there is. The National Museum is largely dull. Batu Caves, a little way outside the city, seem much celebrated - they are heavily populated with cute and amusing monkeys, and they are used for Hindu shrines which is mildly interesting, but the caves were unremarkable compared to caves I've seen in several European countries (albeit that the underground section of the caves was disappointingly closed without explanation when I visited). The Petronas Towers are KL's signature attraction, twin towers which by one measure were the tallest buildings in the world when they opened in the 1990s, and tickets to go up the towers are free which is great... However the tickets are extremely limited and you have to show up early in the morning, queue up for some time and then get a timed ticket for later in the day. When the time arrives you are forced to sit through a corporate guff promo movie for Petronas (a multinational oil company) before you can go up; you get very limited time and you can only go to the Skybridge (the crossing between the two towers) which is less than halfway up and obviously offers much less than a 360-degree view. It's "the thing you have to do" in KL but I couldn't help thinking it was a slight disappointment.

In fairness, going up the towers is probably the least interesting aspect of the twin tower experience. From the outside they are remarkable - with a partially Muslim design they look very different to any other modern urban towers I can remember seeing. They also house an incredible shopping mall called KLCC, full of every international top-end brand you can think of - sometimes Westfield in London seemed like Elephant & Castle Shopping Centre in comparison! The modern art gallery there is free and well worth a visit too, although the science museum Petrosains which concentrates on oil production was too focused on the geology and technology of oil production to excite me. Round the back there is also the large KLCC Park, pleasant for a wander if rather too artificial for my taste.

Also on the positive side I was pretty well captivated by Merdeka Square, KL's large main square where independence from the British was proclaimed, and the Malaysian flag flies from what is supposedly the world:s tallest free-standing flagpole (although I'm very doubtful of that based on my memories of extraordinarily large national flags all over Jordan). On one side you have the Royal Selangor Club, a mock Tudor building that has served as an elite social club since the 1890s - it looks rather like a posh cricket pavilion which is unsurprising as the square was originally a cricket field, and a large area of manicured grass remains. On the other side across the thoroughfare is the Sultan Abdul Samad Building, a grand and majestic structure with copper-plated cupolas and a blend of Victorian, Moorish and Mogul architecture (yes, I've looked that up!) which was built for the British Empire administration and now houses the High Court. With the Petronas Towers and various other modern tower blocks visible in the distance providing contrast, I thought the square was stunning. It was however pretty well deserted, suggesting that tourists don't descend in droves, which seems a great shame.

Merdeka Square, Kuala Lumpur

While I was in KL, I was lucky enough to get a night-time driving tour from one of the Couchsurfers I met up with, Edward. The city definitely knows how to do night-time illumination of its many high-rise towers, with the Petronas Towers looking particularly spectacular. This is probably the best time of day to see the city. You could easily make it the only time of day you see the city, since there is a remarkable number of high-end shopping malls around the city (KLCC is just one of them) and I met at least one Brit whose primary activity in KL seemed to be clothes shopping... In fairness there are good markets too such as Central Market which is pleasntly arts and craftsy without being tatty.

KL was one place I felt I didn't manage to get into as much as I would have liked. I could have done with a day or two extra there as things turned out; however available time was shortened by the incredible tropical storms that appear to descend regularly in the afternoon. The first time it started to rain, it didn't look so heavy so I stepped out of Central Market intending to walk to my next destination, not really noticing the fact that most locals were hovering within the doorway... They knew and I didn't know quite what it would be like 10 minutes later! An extraordinary ferocity of rain which is never seen in the UK, and even with an umbrella I got myself pretty much drenched. Another storm coincided with me being in a car on the motorway,  and to say that visibility and driving conditions became dire would be an understatement - traffic has to slow to a crawl.

Thanks once again to Dushyan for enabling me to stay at his fantastic place in KL and to be hosted by his lovely mum. :) I hope my difficulty in finishing the whole crab at dinner has been forgiven!

My best culinary memory in Malaysia was eating local fish served with... er, banana, at a Malay restaurant Neil recommended to me in Langkawi (thanks Neil!) called Champor Champor - not a combination I'd ever have thought of whipping up myself, but it was absolutely delicious. And eating lots of cheap Chinese food as I did around Malaysia is something I'd happily carry on doing for a lifetime.

From KL it was on to Singapore by coach. Malaysia has the most incredible long-distance coaches I've ever seen - there are only three seats in each row rather than four, much more legroom and seats which recline much further than any coach I've ever seen in Europe. It was better than first-class train travel, more like first-class air travel. They were stupidly cheap as well - each hop of several hundred miles cost 8 or 10 pounds. Included in that en route to Singapore there was even complimentary cake, mineral water and newspapers!

Indian summer

"We have now landed in Delhi. The local time is 3.45am and the temperature outside is 30 degrees celsius." If I hadn't already known what climactic conditions to expect in northern India in April, that announcement from the pilot of my flight in from Amman would have given me a bit of a clue. It's more or less impossible to do a substantial round-the-world trip and get favourable weather everywhere along the way - you just have to accept that and go with your plans anyway. However daytime temperatures consistently up around 42C, with sweltering humidity which diminishes only partially and very slowly in the evenings, have been a bit of a challenge. (October to February, or possibly March at a push, is the more hospitable time of year to go.) As if India wasn't a challenging enough travel destination to start with...

It's difficult to know where to start really writing about India. Even though this was my second fortnight-long visit (the first was early last year, with my partner at the time Matt, to Mumbai, a rural wedding outside Mumbai and then Goa) I'm still not sure I'm in a position to write any very coherent reflections or narrative about this extraordinary country, so this is likely to be more of a random brain-dump. I wrote some reflections on Facebook after my first visit and I won't attempt to cover all of the same ground this time, so if you are interested enough please read the two pieces in conjunction with one another.

The organised group tour I've been on with Intrepid Travel, titled "Classic Rajasthan", taking in Delhi, Agra and an assortment of destinations in the tourist hotspot state of Rajasthan, was definitely a very different way of travelling compared to the independent solo backpacking I'm doing everywhere else. Frankly I didn't realise how much I was valuing the independence and freedom of my travels until I temporarily lost much of it (this trip was always going to involve learning about myself as well as the world); but on the flipside I've experienced a number of memorable things (see below) which I couldn't have hoped to access on my own, generally been looked after and organised by our decidedly efficient local tour guide Lucky, and enjoyed the fellowship, camaraderie and banter of a lovely and diverse bunch of fellow travellers (6 other English, 2 Americans, 2 Australians and 1 New Zealander, ranging in ages from mid-twenties to fifties). From the time with the group I'll particularly remember the musical sing-alongs, strongly worded letters and silent cheers (probably best not to ask!), together with the wind-ups by Lucky - I was the sucker late one dark night getting slightly nervous at the insinuations that my room in the historic Castle Bijaipur was notoriously haunted, while a certain other group member was slowly but definitely persuaded that in India diamonds grow on trees! The other 11 group members included five couples; as the one other single traveller was female, Intrepid could only allocate me a single room throughout, which was a substantial bonus (especially when I was ill) as the trip is supposed to be based on everyone sharing twin or double rooms.

The tour started and ended in Delhi. Alongside the utter traffic chaos, the first thing that strikes you about this sprawling metropolis of a mere 12 million people is the woeful air quality; even in the middle of the night the polluted haze was immediately obvious to the eyes, the nose and the lungs. While as I wrote last year I really took a liking to Mumbai, I'm afraid it's difficult to say the same about Delhi, and I can't really recommend spending more than maybe one day here. I'd been sceptical about the warnings I'd received that Delhi is much more chaotic and stressful than Mumbai, as I doubted that was possible, but regrettably it's true. There are a handful of remarkable sights, topped by the truly beautiful Humayun's Tomb, a large and majestic 16th Century Mughal red-and-white construction set in stunning grounds, with Jama Masjid, India's largest mosque, and the India Gate, commemorating the 90,000 Indian soldiers who perished in World War I, not far behind. Immensely claustrophobic though it is, the streets of Old Delhi are also fascinating, fun and full of surprises.

The stunning Humayun's Tomb

Back street in Old Delhi

However, unlike Mumbai, these sights are pretty scattered amongst a mostly undistinguished and fairly illegible, unliveable (to my eyes and senses) and filthy sprawl, and the hassle quotient from hawkers and scammers pushes towards intolerable (to be fair, mixed with some local people who just genuinely seem to want to help and/or say hello - but if you can reliably tell the one from the other, you're doing a lot better than me). It doesn't help that the city centre, Connaught Place, is a building site at present to an extraordinary degree (without anything like cordons or alternative road crossings to help keep you safe), partially in connection with the forthcoming Commonwealth Games and extensions of the (remarkably and incongruously shiny and impressive) city metro. In a few years' time the area could conceivably be impressive and almost pleasant, but I wouldn't hold your breath.

Welcome to Delhi, the world's largest building site

Without a doubt the most optimistic slogan I've ever seen anywhere...

After Delhi came Agra, home to the Taj Mahal. This is one attraction which really does live up to the hype, despite the inevitable crowds - it is just incredible, incomparable and a real take-your-breath-away moment. It isn't just the utterly extraordinary building itself but the beautiful, perfect grounds which generate the whole unforgettable experience. It says a lot about the potential power of the human emotions of love and grief that one man was inspired to commission something like it solely for his dead wife. I believe it is regularly voted the best building in the world, and really I would take a lot of persuading that it doesn't fully deserve this accolade; I am pretty sure it was my best sightseeing experience ever. If you ever get a chance to go, you really must.

A large part of what Intrepid Travel seek to offer with their tours is authentic grass-roots local experiences, and I can only give them full credit for fully succeeding. These included: 

• Seeing a working high-end carpet factory in Agra where virtually everything is done, painstakingly and incredibly repetitively, by hand, with beautiful results;
• Staying in a rural fort and then in a converted palace, with traditional Indian music and hospitality.
• Seeing several of the forts and palaces for which Rajasthan is most famous - the best of these was Udaipur City Palace, apparently the setting for the James Bond movie Octopussy (really not my thing I'm afraid so I wouldn't know). The scale, opulence and attention to detail (seen in ways such as the engravings, interior decoraton and sometimes incredible miniature paintings) instituted by the different royal families in the region is certainly impressive, and if this is really your thing you could probably base a whole holiday around touring the many such sites.
• Going on safari in Ranthambore National Park - the chief attraction is tigers which unfortunately we didn't see (only pawprints) despite lengthy waiting around, but we did see deer, lots of monkeys and a couple of crocodiles, all in a beautiful setting.
• Seeing genuine rural Indian life including family homes - fascinating, humbling and possibly a little bit perspective-changing for good. Seeing families living in one room (complete with mini-temple and grain store), collecting water from a communal pump and bringing it home in pots on their heads, sorting through grain, and just chewing the fat and watching the world go by with the strength of family and community ties self-evident, somehow makes the ridiculous 'pressures' of modern Western life (domestic, financial, career etc) seem a little bit less essential and all-consuming.
• Seeing a traditional Indian show of music, dancing and puppetry, with the by-now familiar panache, skill and riot of colour - including what came surprisingly close to a gender-bending and camp element, and the incredible sight of a woman performing tricks as she balanced water pots on her head, starting with one pot but building up to a scarcely believable and breathtaking ten pots.
• Going camel riding in the desert - particularly good fun once you get over the initial moment or two of terror, and not quite as uncomfortable as you might think. I would have preferred that my guide hadn't randomly decided to get the camel jogging for several hundred metres without bothering to consult me first, but I didn't come as close as all that to falling off. I found camels strangely lovable despite the dubious noises they're inclined to make and the quantity of poo they randomly produce.
• Eating home-cooked dinner on the rooftop of a local family home, off big silver plates while sitting only on mats.

A partially unintentional (I suspect) local experience came when we travelled by train in what I think was third class without reserved seating. Firstly my tour guide had to have strong words with a local guy who was unwilling to uncurl himself from sleeping across a row of three seats so that I could sit in one of them; a little later he came back and unceremoniously shifted my rucksack across to the other luggage rack to clear the one above me so he could curl up and sleep there instead! When we got off the train, the stop was so short that several of our group hadn't disembarked when the train started moving again; everyone just about scrambled off but our tour guide was visibly annoyed. It took me a few moments to clock that he was annoyed not with the train driver for pulling away so quickly, but with members of the group for not grasping the seriousness of his warning that we really needed to be ready to all get off the moment the train stopped!

I can't really tell you anything about the city of Jaipur, because our time there coincided with a very unpleasant burst of 'Delhi belly'; I was out of action for around 48 hours, including 24 where I couldn't hold in any fluids - the ensuing dehydration was not fun in the ferocious heat. A doctor came to see me and two similarly affected other members of the group, and the treatment comprised of a cocktail of pills and an injection in the bum - nice. But maybe the total detox did me some good somehow.

As well as the ferocious heat and humidity limiting how much sightseeing you can do in a day without contracting heatstroke, a couple of our destinations, Udaipur (supposedly Rajasthan's most romantic city) and Pushkar (a major pilgrimage site due to its Brahma temple, one of only a few in the world, although really nothing to write home about from a tourist point of view) were not looking their best because their famous lakes have mostly dried up - the monsoon is due in a couple of months and it was poor last year. A bit of imagination does wonders - but there may well be a message here for anyone reading this about choosing your time of year carefully for visiting India.

I've mentioned how trying it becomes when you are constantly hassled by local people wanting your money in some way or other. Predictably the best way to get away from this and to encounter (somewhat) reliably genuine warmth from Indian people is to get off the beaten tourist track. We did this at times; walking through the small town of Bundi was especially genuinely pleasant because people only wanted to say a genuine hello and to find out where I was from. While being driven in jeeps or a minibus through the countryside many, many people (often but not always children), clearly not used to seeing white people, waved at us enthusiastically and warmly. (By the way, the genuine warmth and delight in the faces of these many dozens of children totally exposes the insinuations of any moronic bigots that there is anything natural or innate about racism or xenophobia...)

As I've mentioned before, constant financially motivated hassle in any given place inevitably leaves you less open to anybody offering a genuine welcome - one of my sadder experiences was being greeted on the street by a local guy in Jaipur who simply asked me balefully (with no ulterior motive I could discern) why European travellers were so closed off against approaches on the street by local people. I did my best to explain tactfully and I think he sort of got it, reluctantly. Also I can only assume that Only Fools and Horses is popular on Indian TV, because my answer of London to the frequent "Where are you from?" questions frequently elicited a smiling response of "Lovely jubbly!" 

The huge polarisation of Indian society hits you frequently, particularly in cities, where you see the likes of adverts for exciting financial investment opportunities one moment, and shocking destitution and poverty the next. (I wrote about the poverty last time; although it's difficult to know what new there is to say about it, it doesn't stop affecting you deeply.) Even in the countryside we were shown a community which for historical reasons of religion and culture eke out a rudimentary, traveller-style living outside and very separate from the relatively well-to-do village itself. And although it's less visible to foreign tourists, you don't have to read or listen much to be reminded that the effects of the Hindu caste system are still alive and well.

It's fair to say that I'm ready to move on now (there's an obvious but rather true joke that after travelling in India you need a holiday), but as I've hopefully started to document here the experiences and memories count for my two weeks here has been very considerable. I have an overnight flight tonight from Delhi to Hong Kong, which one way and another I expect to be a pretty different proposition...