Random memories from Asia...

Some more random small memories from travelling in Asia which I probably didn't mention first time around...

• The 50-something American guy in Amman talking proudly about how much his diet has improved since his heart attack - talking while chuffing away on a cigarette at least every 10 minutes
• Asking at reception how much the Amman hostel charged for wi-fi access, hearing the American guy behind me complain that he'd been charged twice as much, and the Jordanian receptionist shoot straight back that because he was American he must be able to afford it!
• My Couchsurfing hosts in Tel Aviv being amazed that Queer As Folk wasn't originally American
• Locals in Petra shouting offers of "air conditioned taxis"... meaning camel rides
• The barber in Chiang Mai who after cutting my hair (in a domestic garage) insisted that I take a swig of mouthwash
• Being beckoned over then groped by a 'woman' on the street at night in Kuala Lumpur who I realised only too late was a ladyboy and a prostitute

Health and safety greatest hits:

• A minibus driver in Jordan smoking a cigarette while operating a petrol pump on the forecourt
• Pedestrians in India ducking under the level crossing gates which had just come down
• A family of six, including one small child, riding on one ordinary-looking motorbike in India

The delights of budget backpacking:

• The little old lady on the hostel reception in Hong Kong who spoke virtually no English but seemed to think if she talked long and loudly enough in Cantonese I'd understand... And finally generating enough understanding with her by pointing
• The hostel in Chiang Mai with signs in toilets instructing you not to flush toilet paper down the bowl because the pipes are too narrow, but to put it in bins instead - bins which were tiny and usually overflowing. You imagine the rest...
• The hostel in baking, steaming Singapore which told me flatly they won't switch on air conditioning in dorms before 10pm, and that if I wanted it during the day I'd have to pay for a single room
• ...and then that if I left my big rucksack at the hostel on the morning of my departure without being there at exactly 10am to tell them, they might throw it away
• The hostel in Tokyo that charges for use of the showers

...All the sorts of things which make the trip! :-)

Geishas, art and bum-warming in Japan

Since I got to Australia (yes, I'm a little bit behind with this blog), pretty much everyone I've talked to about my travels has widened their eyes and gone something like, "Ooh, Japan, what's Japan like??" I've found it pretty difficult to give what I'd imagine to be an intelligent answer to be honest. I think as a Westerner you could probably spend months there and still only form a pretty patchy impression of what Japan is like; I only had one week there which was barely time to scratch the surface - not that it wasn't a hugely enjoyable week!

I went to two very different Japanese cities, Tokyo and Kyoto. Tokyo was bombed pretty much flat during World War II, so it's an overwhelmingly modern city. Kyoto however was spared the bombs, and having also been the capital of Japan for centuries before Tokyo took over, has dozens of traditional temples, making it a major tourist draw.

I think I had been nervous that Tokyo in particular might be a difficult place to travel, what with the notorious lack of command of English of most Japanese people and the obvious differences to Western culture. However in reality it really wasn't very difficult at all and I felt very comfortable very quickly. Things are logical and efficient, enough signage is usually provided in English, and, charmingly, those people who do speak English will often ask you if you need help if they see you looking lost or confused.

Tokyo is huge, with a population of around 12 million. There is a comprehensive metro system, albeit that the scale of the city means it takes considerable time to get around on it. Getting in from Narita Airport or back is pretty time-consuming also. The city doesn't have one centre or focal point, which probably explains why nowhere felt overwhelming or oppressive, but pretty much everywhere felt lively. Possibly the nearest to a focal point is Shibuya with its famous Shibuya Crossing across the major crossroads there, apparently the busiest pedestrian crossing point in the world. Japan is a place where rules are obeyed, so a mass standstill becomes a sudden huge surge of humanity every time the lights turn green.

Shibuya Crossing

A good place to start sightseeing is Tokyo National Museum, in the rather lovely (albeit relatively Western-feeling) Ueno Park. It showcases Japanese art forms such as sculpture, pottery and costume down the ages, and much of it is truly beautiful. The Japanese aesthetic is charmingly delicate and probably often a little feminine (for want of a better word) by Western standards, but in no way lacking in ambition or impact. Photography was mostly allowed so there are some photos in my Facebook album.

I found my dabbles into the contemporary art scene particularly impressive too. Mori Art Museum is widely recognised as world class, and the installations there varied from beautiful to energetically zany and hilarious (if you didn't know that a car and assorted household objects including a food blender, Coke bottles and stuffed pandas could be "remixed", you do now!) to political. At the same site in Roppongi Hills is a viewing tower offering magnificent views over the city in all its vastness, but giving an impression of order and substantial green space. The Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography was almost equally stimulating, and I'll now be keeping a keen eye out for any future exhibitions by the excellent Japanese-born but Austrian-based photographer Seiichi Furuya.

At Shibuya is the charming Hachiko statue, of a small dog owned by a professor in the 1920s. Every afternoon the dog would wait at Shibuya station for its master's return from work. Sadly the professor died in 1925, but the poor dog continued to faithfully wait at the station every afternoon, until its own death 11 years later!

Hachiko statue

As a city heavily rebuilt after the war, architectural interest in Tokyo (as in Berlin) seems often very limited. However, one place that is well worth a good walk around is Tokyo Bay, the docklands area where there is (relatively speaking) plenty of space, a modern light rail system and plenty of hyper-modern glass-and-steel architecture - yes, not completely unlike London's Docklands, or the equivalent area in Amsterdam whose name escapes me. However I was disappointed with the National Museum of Emerging Science & Innovation there which I didn't find very accessible - very possibly I'm not science-minded enough by Japanese standards.


The Tokyo gay scene was an interesting experience. Tightly concentrated in one triangle in Shinjuku, it is apparently quite large but varies in its accessibility and openness to foreigners. A typical Japanese bar of any colour is, as I understand it, very small and you won't necessarily find that any locals will talk to you nor that they (or even the barstaff) have the English to be able to. (On those grounds, based on the very limited info turned up by Google, I decided not to bother venturing anywhere gay in Kyoto.) However in Tokyo the reasonably large bar Dragon Men is known for being foreigner-friendly, as is the darker and more claustrophobic club called Arty Farty (!). The latter plays predominantly Western pop music and got unpleasantly overcrowded on the Saturday night I was there. Frankly, my impression was that Japanese gay boys have an attitude; dressed and groomed to the nines with a bit of a swagger, they will strike up friendly but flirty conversation with you in an instant, but then disappear without a word in a flash, never to return. Now I'll never bitch about Swedish boys again! (Well OK, I probably will...) In fairness, take that assessment with a huge dose of salt as doubtless you could get a negative impression from a solitary night on the London scene too, depending on which establishments you happen to pick. :-) And later in the night I did meet a 20-year-old Japanese virgin who was endearingly free of any attitude (or worldliness!) whatsoever.

I took the shikansen, aka bullet train, over to Kyoto; this is quite an experience in itself. Not only does it attain speeds of up to 310 km/h, but it's pretty much always exactly on time, there are up to 11 services per hour, you can rock up to the station and make a seat reservation for the very next train, and it's beautifully comfortable. It really does feel like the future. One trick that I missed in itinerary planning is that for barely more than the (admittedly very high) cost of going from Tokyo to Kyoto and back, you can obtain a week-long rail pass for the entire country - so it would have been more cost-effective to stay maybe 11 nights in Japan instead of 7 and to have added a couple more stops before heading back to Tokyo.

Kyoto's railway station is a huge, comtemporary and rather impressive construction, and it does still possess a large, buzzing commercial heart occasionally indistinguishable from Tokyo. However, Kyoto really is all about the temples, and once you get out of the centre it can feel more like a small town. Japanese temples are probably most remarkable and distinctive for their rooves, constructed out of wood, and often painted in two-tone colours that emphasise the intricate geometric carvings. The biggest roof I saw had no fewer than four separate tiers to it - quite remarkable.

How many tiers on that roof?

There are literally dozens of temples in Kyoto; a handful of them attract busloads of tourists (actually more of them Japanese than foreign), which make the surrounding areas shop-filled melees. Ginkaku-ji is one of the several which has World Heritage status, and was remarkable for the sculptures in the gardens made from what looked like sand but was actually many thousands of small pebbles - but to be honest such were the crowds that any wider appreciation (aesthetic, let alone spiritual) seemed pretty well impossible.

 

Really, this is made from thousands of small pebbles

I found that the real pleasure was getting off the beaten track, which with so many temples to choose from is not difficult at all. My pick was Eikan-do, the headquarters of a sect based around a peculiar legend of the temple's Buddha statue coming to life, walking and talking. There was a real sense of space and calm there, and particularly beautiful gardens and lake.  Also thoroughly worthwhile was taking a short hike into the dense hilly forest to the east of the city, where there's a lovely small shrine in front of a modest waterfall.

I also managed to take in a couple of genuine Japanese major cultural experiences while in Kyoto. Firstly, I went to an onsen, a Japanese thermal bath - there are hundreds of them nationwide. They're generally inexpensive; you don't have to take anything other than your birthday suit, and make sure you enter before getting into your first tub (not doing this is very poor form). The tubs vary from pleasantly warm to (to me) uncomfortably hot. One of them appeared to have some kind of weak electrical or electromagnetic charge, which had me getting out pretty rapidly! Upstairs was a sauna (considerately fitted with a TV) with a tub of ice-cold water outside. Truly when I finished my session I felt absolutely fantastic, at least as good as after a particularly good gym session.

The second experience was seeing a geisha dance. Apparently Japan's famous geishas normally only give private performances which are prohibitively expensive and in any case largely inaccessible to Westerners. However in Kyoto a few times a year they also put on seasons of public performances in theatres, and I was lucky with my timing. The performance featured dialogue and some sort of plot (it seemed to involve a male samurai kidnapping one geisha), so a working knowledge of Japanese would have helped. However I was able to appreciate the supreme elegance of the geishas' costume, make-up and dancing, as well as the intriguing (and decidedly non-Western) music from the live orchestra. After a relatively sedate second half, there were loud gasps from the largely Western audience when a curtain rose to reveal the finale of the whole 18-strong company dressed in their brightest, most elaborate costumes complete with fans. It was a captivating show and I feel very fortunate to have experienced it.

One of the things Japan is probably most associated with by foreigners is cutting-edge technology. Well, the Sony Building in central Tokyo is considered attraction in its own right even though it's basically just a Sony showroom, featuring 3D HDTV (rather dubious I thought), the dinkiest laptops I've ever seen, incredibly high-end cameras and strange 'life planning' software. Vending machines are on virtually every street, selling wide ranges of bottled and canned drinks and cigarettes. Also, many fast-food restaurants (a misleading description as they often sell proper, nutritious food, just quickly) require you to insert money into a vending machine, press the button labelled with the dish you want, take a ticket and go to the counter only to hand over your ticket. Another 'application' (misapplication?) of technology is the common provision at the side of toilet bowls of electronic buttons: one to warm the toilet seat, and a second to activate a spray of water to wash your rear end (and on unisex models, a third button to spray water into female parts). Talk about solving problems that the rest of the world never thought existed...!

Japanese Internet cafes are a remarkable experience also. There are not all that many of them - Japan is not exactly a society where most people don't own their own technology. Those that do exist do much of their trade overnight; as far as I can tell there is no night-time public transport at all even in Tokyo, so if you go out and stay out even moderately late, can't walk home and don't want to take an astronomically priced taxi, you need somewhere to spend the rest of the night. Each user gets their own private cubicle, and you can choose a 'flat' leather seat that you can stretch out and sleep on. There is a huge library of 'manga' (Japanese comic) DVDs, a PlayStation as well as a PC in each cubicle, and unlimited free hot and cold drinks - and ice cream! It's all expensive, but very pleasant.

Unfortunately smoking is still permitted in Japanese bars, cafes, restaurants etc... but it is banned in parks and on the street! The logical consistency of that escapes me somewhat...

It's just a shame that Japan is such a closed, mono-ethnic society. Just about the only non-Japanese people I saw working anywhere were African men working as touts (aggressive and slightly intimidating ones) for individual venues on the city's busiest nightlife strip in Roppongi - an activity that city council signs in the vicinity made clear is illegal. Several times on metro trains I noticed that local people would rather stand than sit in an empty seat next to me; as I have continued to wash while travelling, I can only assume that this was because I was a foreigner. A fellow traveller I've since compared notes with had exactly the same experience in Korea.

However, an overarching impression of Japan was of a respectful, polite society. A middle-aged Indian immigrant to London visiting Kyoto got talking to me at a temple there. He was obviously depressed by his perceptions of anti-social and disrespectful behaviour in London, but expressed jealous wonderment that (a) groups of Japanese schoolchildren visiting temples on school trips were conspicuously quiet and orderly, not rowdy and misbehaved as you might expect, and (b) vending machines can be widely provided on ordinary streets without getting vandalised or stolen from. Fair points both.

Japan is an expensive destination - even if you sleep on a thin mattress on the floor in a run-down 'hotel room' all of about 6'6" by 5', as I did in Tokyo. However, I'm very grateful to the friends who persuaded me that I couldn't possibly miss Japan out of a round-the-world trip, as it was worth every penny, and I'll be looking to go again for a longer trip when time and money allow.

Singapore - more than just a stopover

I only booked three nights in Singapore, mostly because everyone I know who's been there seemed to take the view that it's basically only somewhere you should stop over for a short period, three nights maximum. However, I have to ask those people - why??? I really really liked it, didn't want to leave at all, and could easily have spent at least a week there as there was easily that much to see.

Singapore is a reluctant country; it desperately wanted to be a state within Malaysia when the latter gained its independence in 1963. This initially happened, but Malaysia then threw Singapore out a mere two years later due to racial tensions perceived to threaten Malaysia's stability (Malaysia is majority Malay, but Singapore is three-quarters Chinese). This left Singapore's Prime Minister publicly sobbing. According to Wikipedia it's the only country in modern history to have become independent against its own will. 

Singapore has prospered to a remarkable extent, becoming rich by global standards, easily the richest in the region. The narrative told by the National Museum of Singapore is that this has come about through unglamorous hard work. There seems to be a relative lack of ostentatiousness about the city - Singapore is definitely not Hong Kong. It doesn't have the stunning natural backdrop of Hong Kong either, albeit it does have a patch of untouched primary rainforest. As I understand it much of the wealth has come through industry and technology rather than finance, and the Central Business District is small (albeit surprisingly pleasant and atmospheric).

What it is rightly well known for is being remarkably clean and well organised. Roads are organised on a grid system, with plenty of space everywhere, and the public transport is seriously impressive - I imagine it is a bit of an urban planner's dream city. But if that sounds uninspiring, it really is better than that. There is plenty of British colonial architecture still intact (again, unlike in Hong Kong), such as the world-famous Raffles Hotel and the more outwardly impressive Fullerton Hotel. The city centre has a very pleasant and impressive waterfront, as well as a river running through it, with many dozens of riverside spots to hang out in. I was impressed by the fusion of traditional and modern, there are also distinctly modern structures such as the Esplanade Theatres which look a little like giant metallic pineapples, and there is also notably a lot of modern (sometimes hyper-modern) street sculpture pleasantly dotted around the city centre.

Giant metallic pineapples... oh sorry, Esplanade Theatres

Orchard Road is the main shopping street and I can only describe it as bizarre. I've shown surprise at the number of huge shopping malls in several other Asian cities, but Singapore really takes the biscuit - Orchard Road is a whole street, probably a good two kilometres or more in length, that is just one huge mall after another. I didn't try to count them but it must have been somewhere around 15 or 20. Some of them make remarkable architectural statements too. A little soulless, almost certainly, but actually the overall effect was highly interesting and not quite as grotesque (or JG Ballard-esque) as you might imagine. And, you can literally step off Orchard Road onto Emerald Hill Road, an immediately quiet, tree-lined street with delightful bars and cafes giving way to gorgeous private Mediterranean-esque townhouses.

Emerald Hill Road

The National Museum of Singapore is a very good (and remarkably high-tech) museum with a welcome focus on social history. Don't bother with the disappointing Singapore Art Museum, but do head to the lovely Fort Canning Park, one of the loveliest and most peaceful city centre parks I've seen. The park contains a number of attractions, including the Battle Box - the military bunker used by the British Army during World War II, in which the humiliating British surrender of the island to the Japanese in 1942 is superbly re-enacted with the help of robotic waxworks (!).

By night, I had a lot of fun at the excellent gay club Taboo where the music was good (think Lady Gaga, Madonna and commercial house) and the atmosphere even better. I have to say that if you want to feel attractive as a Western gay man, going to gay joints in Asia seems to be an excellent way of doing it - simply because a lot of Asian guys seem to like white guys. Ahem. I'll be happy to discuss further over drinks when I'm back in London! Tantric, the gay bar nearly opposite, is also a decent venue although you probably need to be in the mood for the distinctly cruisy and posy feel. There are two or three other gay venues I could have explored with more time. Homosexuality is in theory illegal in Singapore as in Malaysia. However whereas in Malaysia they seem to still mean it, in Singapore I was led to believe that it's more that they haven't quite got round to changing the legislation yet but the authorities will turn a blind eye as long as you don't really rub it in people's faces. From what I saw, Singapore is definitely a pretty good destination for gay nightlife.

I really do hope to spend more time in Singapore at some point. Does it sometimes have a slightly sterile feel? Maybe. I should also warn that it seems to be far from well set up for backpackers and I spent too much money staying in a decidedly unimpressive place which Lonely Planet seemed to think was amongst the best available. But is Singapore an interesting, cultural, exceedingly comfortable place? Definitely, and with English as the primary language, I could even see myself living there without too much trouble.

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!

A couple of things about Thai people...

A couple of brief points I forgot to write last time about Thai people:

• I had a couple of minor slips and bumps witnessed by local people... who laughed at me! Thankfully I'd already read in the Traveller's Bible, sorry I mean Lonely Planet, that this is not in any way mocking or uncharitable behaviour. In Thai society the concept of "saving face" is extremely important; when you embarrass yourself in public like this, making levity out of it, laughing 'with you', is considered the best way to help you save face.

• Thai people consider pale skin more attractive than tanned skin, and they find it very odd that Westerners believe the opposite. For this reason (i.e. forget any moral/religious considerations), they will tend to stay more covered up than we would expect in sunny weather. I was also astounded to see in a local Superdrug-style store that the vast majority of the men's skincare products, including the Nivea and Loreal, supposedly had a 'lightening' or 'whitening' effect...

Elephant kisses and monk chat in Northern Thailand

Many people head from Bangkok straight to Chiang Mai, Thailand's second city and travellers' magnet, directly by plane or overnight sleeper service, but I decided to break the journey with an overnight stop and morning in Sukhothai. The attraction there is the historical park encompassing the ruins of the capital of the Sukhothai kingdom in the 13th and 14th Centuries. There is a large number of temples there, all ruined to a greater or lesser extent, but assorted impressive tall spires remain in tact. Covering quite a wide area (you need to hire a bike and give yourself a couple of days to cover the entire park, but you can do the centre in a couple of hours) and quite tranquil thanks to the space and relative lack of visitors, it's a stop-over I'd recommend if you have time. 

 Sukhothai

Everybody, but everybody, who's been to Thailand told me that Chiang Mai is amazing. I figure there are three reasons for this:

• the assortment of temples (which are beautiful, but in truth there's nothing much to add to my comments from Bangkok); 
• the amazing range of things to do outside the city - in particular the area seems to be one of the best backpacker playgrounds on the planet, with almost every outdoorsy activity you could possibly think of available (e.g. whitewater rafting, skylining, trekking, rock climbing etc etc);
• the shopping - all sorts of high-quality artisan shops and a remarkable weekend night market.

At the risk of being slightly heretical, I couldn't really work out what there was about the city itself other than the temples and the shopping which was very appealing, but maybe all the hype I'd heard had just lifted my expectations a little too high. Also, counter-intuitively there seemed to be more hassle here, primarily from tuk-tuk drivers, than in Bangkok - perhaps because tourists are a much higher proportion of the population on the streets.


While I'm not the outdoorsy adventurer type to take up all the exciting activities I listed, I did have a lot of fun on several ventures out of town:

• to a hill tribe village, albeit not a terribly 'untouched' or 'authentic' one, where I bought some nice hand-crafted knick-knacks, got a photo taken with 'locals' in traditional dress (inverted commas because I'm unsure of the authenticity!), and admired some spectacular rain-forested hill scenery; and then to the famous and rather beautiful Wat Phrathat Doi Suthep temple up in the mountains (after climbing some 306 steps), also offering some impressive views which countered the risk of becoming a little templed-out! 

 

At the hill tribe village - not necessarily 100% authentic, but pretty cool nonetheless

• to Chiang Mai Night Safari - the concept of "night safari" appears quite common in this part of the world. In this case at least this is basically a zoo, but a drive-through one rather than a walk-through one, which (as far as I could tell) means the animals are kept in much less confined and more open/natural conditions. The collection of animals I saw was exceptional... highlights included [deep breath] lions, cheetahs, rhinos, hippos, giraffes, elephants, zebras, hyenas, antelopes, buffalo, wolves, bears, tigers (including Bengal whites) and pumas!
• to the Elephant Nature Park, a sanctuary set in national parkland for over 30 elephants (aged from 1 to over 80) who have been rescued from assorted forms of mistreatment. Just in case you were in any doubt: elephants are amazing and utterly adorable! A day trip there offers the opportunity to feed elephants, help to bathe them in the river, get up close and personal with babies, and, er, get kissed by one! The amount they eat is incredible - the size of the basket that each one of them gets through in just one mealtime is enormous, and they put it away at an incredible speed. And other than the youngsters, they eat their bananas unpeeled - yum! It is possible to volunteer at the park for a longer period and get to do much more with them, something I kind of wish I'd had time to do as the day was a real highlight of my trip.

 

Being kissed by an elephant!

The day at the elephant park also included being made well aware of why its existence is necessary. A century ago there were 100,000 elephants in Thailand; now it is no more than 5,000. This is due to habitat loss for wild elephants as rampant deforestation has occurred; and when this practice was finally banned, many working elephants used in logging became redundant and were abandoned with no means of survival. Among the population that survives, there are a number of elephants made to walk the streets of Thai cities (including Bangkok and Chiang Mai) to beg for money from tourists; this is quite incredibly cruel to the elephants because it is so far away from their natural habitat and lifestyle. In particular, the traffic noise and vibrations put tremendous stress on them, since their feet detect every slight tremour - necessary for their self-defence in the wild, but unbearable in the concrete jungle. We saw footage of one street elephant rocking back and forth as a stress response. They are also often not fed enough by their owners.

One of the female elephants at the park is profoundly blind in both eyes. She used to be a working elephant; she was carrying a baby which she miscarried. Grieving for her loss, she started refusing to work; her owners therefore fired slingshots from point-blank range into first one eye then the other to try to cajole her into getting back to work. And having blinded her, they continued to force her to work on the grounds she was still young and otherwise fit. The sanctuary managed to buy her from the owners, as it has had to do with many of its other elephants. 


It is apparently very little known, even in Thailand, how elephants are 'tamed' and 'domesticated' in order to be put to work in the first place. Well, at a young age, while still naturally totally dependent on its mother, the elephant is driven into a tiny pen where it is locked up for at least three days, up to a week if 'necessary'. It then has ropes tied round it, and a load placed on its back for the first time, and is pulled as if being led by a human owner. When of course the elephant refuses, or tries to shake off its load, it is constantly beaten day and night by a large team of villagers, poked with sticks with sharp nails on the end (resulting in horrid wounds), and deprived of food and sleep. At great length, after fighting and roaring defiantly against the brutality and enslavement, its spirit is finally totally broken; it submits to being pulled around without resisting and 'learns' that it has no option but to become submissive to human enslavement. This is considered entirely normal in outlying Thai villages and public concern is minimal. The footage was shocking and heartbreaking to watch.


Also in Chiang Mai I took up the opportunity to have a chat with a Buddhist monk - offered by a number of temples to spread understanding while allowing monks to practise their English. As well as discussing the worrying political situation with him, I learned that he gets up at 4am every day for chanting and only ever gets five hours sleep, but doesn't feel tired (I guess while the typical Westerner spend much more time in bed than this, the clutter in their mind compared to a Buddhist monk means that the quality of sleep is much lower...). If I understood correctly, they have to go knocking door-to-door every day to essentially beg for food, but this is an accepted practice in Thailand that ordinary people feel obliged to respond to. Having been a monk since the age of 10, he expects to need to give up soon to care for his elderly parents (no welfare state in Thailand to do any of it for you), and his only apparent regret about being a monk is that he doesn't have any money to travel the world! 


And to end this post on a thoroughly low tone, is it just me or is the low-slung way Buddhist monks wear their orange robes, leaving bare one shoulder and a fair amount of chest, strangely sexy? Ahem...

Temples, tat and terrorism in Thailand

I've been decidedly fortunate that Northern Europe hasn't featured in my region-hopping of late. En route by plane from Hong Kong to Bangkok, I met two separate travellers who were completely screwed by the aftermath of the Icelandic volcano. One needed to get from Hong Kong home to Germany, but was now flying via Sydney (Sydney!) in the hope that a flight to Europe would be available a little sooner from there; while the second had had her flight from Bangkok to Switzerland that day, 20th April, cancelled and been advised that the earliest flight she could be rebooked onto would be on... 15th May. Her German friend had called the German Embassy and been told matter-of-factly that they could offer no assistance whatsoever.

Anyway, Bangkok seems to be a place with a remarkably poor reputation. The advice I got from fellow tour group members in India was that I'd pretty much just want to pass through it, while when I told the traveller who was stranded in Bangkok that I planned to stay at least three nights but maybe more, she looked at me as if I was a little mad and said, "In Bangkok?" disbelievingly. Even the Lonely Planet guide to Thailand, astoundingly, gives the distinct impression of not really being very fond of it, with various snide comments. But actually, I kind of liked it and I ended up staying four nights; if it hadn't been for the security situation (more on that later) it might have been more.


I figure a lot of the negative reputation stems from the notoriously steamy climate. It's hot and very humid all year round; while I was there at one of the less desirable times of year climactically I believe the seasonal differences are relatively minor. It does make you physically tired for sure after walking around for a while. However, two things you have to say in its defence: (a) they do air conditioning exceptionally well just about everywhere (from branches of 7-Eleven upwards), so you pretty much just have to step inside to get some relief, and (b) just when the humidity was starting to become a really serious problem while I was there, there was a short thunderstorm which freshened things up substantially. And it was a lot more bearable than northern India in April, when it doesn't rain at all.


What I really hadn't realised is that large parts of Bangkok feel like a distinctly modern, Westernised metropolis; in addition to all the air conditioning, you have lots of gleaming towers, shiny shopping malls, and some very 21st Century public transport in the form of the Metro and Skytrain (albeit they're limited in geographical reach) and abundant cheap and relatively trustworthy modern taxis. This supplements the traditional but useful and pleasant boat services up and down the river. Road traffic also seems calm and sensible if heavy. Oh, and fans of 7-Eleven take note - they're absolutely everywhere. :)

However, there are a few basics that the authorities don't ever seem to have thought about. Perversely, despite the apparent safeness of the way people drive, I felt more endangered crossing the roads in Bangkok than anywhere else I've been. Why? Because main roads commonly have five lanes in each direction and - unbelievably - crossing lights for pedestrians are virtually never provided. So you just have to take your life in your hands whenever you guess that the traffic flow is at its most favourable. At major intersections it's not fun at all. I also didn't see a public litter bin anywhere in the city, nor anything like a bench. These are hardly insoluble problems, so maybe by the time anyone reading this plans a visit some of them might have been resolved (assuming there continues to be any functioning government in Thailand that is of course).

The main conventional sightseeing attraction in the city is its Buddhist temples, the best known of which is Wat Phra Kaew, also the site of a major royal palace. I'm happy to say that I've found Buddhist temples probably the most beautiful religious buildings I've seen, as well as the most peaceful and calming. (I will declare a bias there; while I'm an atheist I have practised a little bit of Buddhist meditation as a relaxation aid, and was very happy to have the opportunity to meditate just a little bit in the temples I visited; I'm also pretty sympathetic to Buddhism as a philosophy if not as a faith as such.) The prominent colour, amongst variegated precious stones, is usually gold. I am usually someone who finds gold vulgar in the extreme, and I would sooner die than wear it or allow it to furnish my home - but somehow in the temples that I visited it usually just seems to work and create an overall effect which is remarkably tasteful, even beautiful, as well as striking. Wat Phra Kaew itself, the most sacred site in Thailand, was probably a little overwhelming - there are an extraordinary number of monuments in a really very small space - at the same time as it was breathtaking. I was therefore pleased to also explore the much lesser visited (and much cheaper to get into) Wat Pho with its enormous and rather extraordinary Reclining Buddha, some 46m long and 15m high.

 Wat Phra Kaew

The other real must-see, if you are in the city at the weekend, is Chatuchak Weekend Market, one of the biggest markets in the world. It's definitely one of the best markets I've seen anywhere, selling just about everything you can possibly think of (from designer T-shirts and quality home decorations through to fish in plastic bags and er, used trainers). It's popular with tourists but not touristy, and also popular with locals. It was great to just wander round; I could only really stay a couple of hours but I'm certain I would have stayed amused all day if I'd had it to spare.


There is some hassle around the city from people who want to sell you things, but thankfully it doesn't seem to be in the (seemingly slightly reserved) Thai temperament to persist once you've said no once. What has stuck in my head is the call of "Thai massaaaaaaage!" whenever you walked past most of the many massage parlours, which often carried a rather comical (to a native English speaker) lingering high-pitched stress on the second 'a' of "massage" - no doubt because Thai is a tonal language whereas English is not. There are several well known cons tried on tourists too, but provided you're forewarned about them (just read the section in Lonely Planet) they seem easy enough to spot and avoid.

It almost goes without saying that there is plenty of sleaze as well. This is most notably in the form of go-go bars, as I understand it, basically a slightly sanitised access point for escorts and prostitutes, female or male (around the gay scene there were an entertaining number of balding, fat 50-something men parading young, lithe Thai boys). In addition to that on the infamous Khaosan Road amongst other places there are also plentiful stalls selling obviously pirated CDs and DVDs, and fake driving licences, degree certificates and so on (some of the ones on display were laughably poor quality fakes), as well as bars advertising their "very strong" cocktails (the tourist equivalent of a plastic bottle of cider from Asda?). Even amongst all of that though you can still find the odd tasteful chill-out bar, and great street food such as fresh mango with sticky rice and coconut milk which may, without exaggeration, have been the best dessert I've ever had. (Possibly the highlight of a very happy culinary time in Thailand - lots of lovely food, all very cheap too... And thankfully not a hint of a stomach upset either!)

I couldn't spend time sweltering in Bangkok without submitting myself to one of the aforementioned Thai massages. It was, er... a memorable experience. During a one-hour session which cost about £7, a typically small Thai lady yanked and shoved me in deeply unnatural directions, and gouged into areas of skin and muscle I barely knew existed, kneading them like dough. It was really pretty painful at times, and I was in not inconsiderable fear that some vital part of my body was going to be broken, ripped or dislocated. However, at the end of the session, I did feel remarkably fresh and relaxed! But to be honest, I think I'm going to stick to Swedish-style massages once back home! It could have been worse - I didn't have the appetite for the widely available "fish massage", which involves sticking your foot in a fishtank for the fish to literally eat the dead skin off between your toes and on the soles of your feet...


I've mentioned the gay scene which is reasonably extensive and impressive, albeit not quite as large or in-your-face as I'd imagined it could be. It's difficult not to observe the difference between this country whose principal religion, Buddhism, doesn't preach on sexual morals much beyond (if I've learnt correctly) 'treat people with respect', and other Asian countries where much more socially conservative religions hold sway. Bangkok's leading gay club DJ Station, set over three levels, mixes a mostly Western soundtrack with a distinctly Thai (and maybe slightly shy by Western standards) nightly drag show - quite good fun, and I can personally vouch for the fact that there are at least some genuine Thai guppies (gay professionals) who are neither go-go boys nor 'moneyboys'! 


It may not have escaped your attention, dear reader, that there has been some political instability in Bangkok of late. I'd had fairly limited time to research and fix where in the city I was going to stay, and I consequently managed unwittingly to pick the edge of the district, Silom, where the trouble is centred. Furthermore, the vast majority of Bangkok's gay scene is located pretty much just round the corner from Lumphini Park where the 'red shirts' were camped out. However, certainly for the majority of my stay, the atmosphere seemed really pretty normal, and the advice from the FCO (British Foreign & Commonwealth Office) at the time was just to avoid the immediate area around Lumphini Park which I tried to do. Yes, there was the small matter of large numbers of armed soldiers and riot police all around, and the odd barbed wire barricade to navigate round. I also saw a small counter-demonstration, clearly being encouraged by soldiers, of people waving yellow - not the greatest of signs for future stability. However, people were going about their business and trading of every kind (to locals and tourists) appeared to be continuing normally. Normality is a relative concept after all (something that travelling around Asia definitely heightens your awareness of), and there's been regular unrest in Bangkok to a greater or lesser extent for some years now, so it would be more surprising really if people weren't getting on with their lives.

 Red shirt demonstrations at a major traffic intersection, which closed down two major shopping malls

However, a series of bombings occurred during my stay - grenades launched from Lumphini Park, some of which landed substantially further away on Th Silom than I (or I think the FCO judging by its advice at that point) would have anticipated. If I'd been out on the gay scene that night, which I wasn't, I would have been walking through the area where it happened. 

Because I was in fact nowhere near the area at the time, I didn't actually realise till the following afternoon exactly what had happened. The morning after I'd blithely hopped into a taxi and asked to be taken to Sala Daeng, the nearest pronouncable landmark to where I wanted to go next, but (I didn't yet realise) the exact focal point of the bombings - I didn't really understand why my taxi driver who spoke minimal English was getting quite so agitated in response! Oops. Suffice to say where I eventually got turfed out was a little distance away! Train stations in the area were closed in the aftermath as were most of the gay venues in the affected area the following night. (In hindsight I possibly shouldn't have gone looking, but it's harder than you might realise to assess these things when you're caught up in the middle of them... and I did have a good night at one of the few places that was open.) Also the FCO promptly changed its advice to warn against all non-essential travel to Bangkok. I took all of those as pretty good signs I was right to plan to leave the following morning. It did take me several slightly panic-stricken seconds to realise (from the comfort of my hostel lobby) that the start of a thunderstorm that morning wasn't something much worse!

A fellow traveller I met in Chiang Mai who had been in Thailand for seven months predicted that within a year the country will be in civil war. The Bangkok-born-and-bred friend I made said that it was freaking him out and making him wish he lived somewhere else. I've no idea how much credence should be given to either of those comments - let's hope againt hope they're both worrying needlessly - but just maybe from a travelling point of view (for however little that should actually matter in the grand scheme of things) I got to see this intriguing city just in time.