A Pair of Bruneis

I'm in Bandar Seri Begawan, now there's a mouthful of a Capital City if ever there was one (remember that for the kids at Angkor Wat), although given that the Country is actually Brunei Darussalam I probably shouldn't be surprised.

The City's tiny; barely more than a provincial town. There's only about 80,000 people living here and almost half of those live in the "water villages", stilted houses on the river. I've not been here very long and I've done just about everything there is to do. I think I'm going to spend the afternoon digging for oil.

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Just read Nick Hornby's Polysyllabic Spree, it's basically a reading list. Now there's another 17 books that I feel ashamed that I haven't read, so have to waste my time hunting them down in second-rate, Asian bookswaps. Cheers, Hornby, you big, well-read idiot.

Putting the "BA" into "Don't Fly BA"

I'm on less of a downer about Kuala Lumpar nowadays. I found Merdeka Square which is all pleasant (and has a cricket strip in the middle of it - proud to be English, what?) and Little India (which has ridiculous volumes of people gorming round it like fleshy skittles). That's not to say I like the place - I still get annoyed by the local passtime of pushing in front of you then stopping (but I guess I just have to get used to that, in the same way that anyone who does that has to get used to me hitting them on the back of the head with a monkey wrench) - I've just found things that are way more annoying.

Like BA.

For a company that was market leader not all that long ago they are laughably bad. Not saying that the actual flying bit is noticeably terrible (it's just not as good as Qantas. Or LAN Chile. Or Air New Zealand. Or Virgin) but their customer services are appalling. Trying to change a BA flight later in the year meant I spent three days lost and dehydrated in their automated phone system wilderness, it was only by chance that Jim Morisson and a friendly Indian walked past, slung my parched carcass over the back of a donkey and hauled me to safety. In the end (eight phone calls. Eight. I was exaggerating about the Jim Morrison bit. But not this. Eight!) I phoned Qantas and got them to change my BA flight for me, because they are a proper company.

Fresh Fruit Interlude

Let's take a break to try some of the local fruit, yeah? You've tried mangoes and pineapples and those unnecessarily small bananas, but what about the other stuff? Here, have a taste...

Jack Fruit are enormous - an area of rainforest the size of Wales is destroyed every time one is picked. And they've got a silly name. And they're proper tasty, in a Pringles way: one tiny piece and next thing, you've eaten the world. Proper good.

If you gave a kid crayons and asked them to design a fruit it would probably end up looking like a rambutan (Bond, 2009). They're brightly coloured and hairy, like some kind of hatchling from Monsters Inc. They're a bit like lychees only it's far easier to bite through the stone, which is woody and unpleasant. Incidentally, the second time I had rambutans I took the shell off and a plague of ants careered up my arms, they've not tasted quite as nice since.

Durians are notorious because of their impressive pong; cut one open and the whole room will smell of slightly rotten pickled onions. Inside it has a weird texture, you feel a bit like you're eating cake batter, which is never a bad thing. Durians get bonus points for looking like a medieval weapon.

When you first hear the name "dragon fruit" you think "now there's a crazy name for a fruit" and then you see one and you think "Nail on Head" (Bond, 2009). Unfortunately, I think that the whole world agrees that it's a pity that the dragon fruit doesn't taste anywhere near as interesting as it looks.

I've recently found that there are two types of tamarind; one for eating and a sour one for cooking with. The one I ate tasted very sour. Haribo Sour Mix sour. That means that the cooking ones must be caustic, the kind of flavour that leaves people looking like an Edvard Munch painting (a cynic - I mean you, Lana - might point out that it was Ellen who bought the tamarinds and she was a dumbass so quite probably bought the wrong ones). Fact geeks, it's the addition of tamarind paste that makes pad thai taste different from the common or garden stir fry that you make at home.

Why do we not have mangosteens back in Blighty? I'd not even heard of them. When I first saw the word in Lonely Planet I figured it was just a fancy way of saying "mango". They look good, like purple fimo apples, and taste amazing. Only slight criticism is the effort-to-meat ratio of the average fruit - you pretty much need a knife to get access through their armour. But, Tesco, if you're reading this, please can you start stocking mangosteens? Obviously I won't buy them, because I'm far too lazy to eat a fruit which requires tools when I can eat an apple, but it's principal of the thing. Thanks.

Putting the "KL" into "Donkey Bile"

I don't like Kuala Lumpar very much.

That's an understatement. It's like an amalgam of all the worst bits of every other city: the brashness of Bangkok; the impersonal rudeness of London; the congestion of New York; the stink of Venice; the twisty disorientation of Dubrovnik - it's even got Manchester's drizzle.

One thing it has got going for it is the Petronus Towers. Especially at night when it's all lit up. Dominating the skyline like a pair of mutant, space-age, super loofahs, surrounded by their henchman of bats and palm trees.

Seven Months, Crikey!

Seven months in. Fifteen countries. Three continents. Still all in one piece (despite my best efforts - things currently afflicting me: the second bout of unnecessary sunburn in not very long - when will i learn?; a nice scar from where i fell through the floor of a bamboo hut - yes, it was funny).

Am back in Chiang Mai now. The remainder of my time in pai was suitably pleasant, despite the lack of pies (false advertising if ever there was any. No pies and lots of pie-based puns. If anyone can sort me out with a pie hat would go down a treat. Steak and onion, please. Thanks).

I hired me a moped and snuck out into the countryside and, just when I'd got all world weary and thought I wasn't going to see anything impressive ever again, the World goes and throws me into Pai Canyon. It was a network of skinny, footwide footpaths with plunging cliffs either side. I felt like I was in a maze in an Usborne Solve it Yourself book. AgentArthurtastic.

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Given that Pai is supposed to be a cool and quirky little place, I feel as though I should be offended at the music that was being played in all bars. I understand that where there are hippies there's going to be Jack Johnson, but Celine Dion? Really?

I like Pai

Pai and I didn't get off to the best of starts. I'd heard it was a hippy town, but I took that to mean it was a bit quirky. However, on the bus on the way up here I was sitting next to a guy with long hair, a strong smell of solvents and (unforgivably) a bongo. Fortunately it seems that Off! works as effectively against hippies as it does against mosquitoes so I didn't get infected.

Went for a walk today. On the map the way to the waterfall looked like a casual meander. By the third river crossing I'd realised it was a full on jungle hike. Now I've never heard of anything bad happening to people who wander off into the jungle on their own - tigers are mythical, right?

Two hours of walking later I had wet feet and no waterfall, so I gave up. On the plus side, though, I did find gold. Or at least I found a whole lot of gold coloured metallic flakes, which is gold enough in my eyes. Unfortunately I don't have the first idea of how to extract gold (I knew I should've payed more attention in panning classes); if anyone does know what to do next I'll tell you where the gold is for a 60:40 split. Sounds good to me.

An Elephant Walked into a Bar...

That sounds like the start of a joke but it's not. Just an average Chiang Mai Saturday night. Ho hum.

Went to Flight of the Gibbon yesterday - Thailand's premier tourist attraction apparently (and tehre was me thinking it was the beaches). Spent the day ziplining through the jungle. Well gibbon. Ended up at a(nother) waterfall, it wasn't as interactive as the others I've been to but it made up for that by being ridiculously long.

Just finished a Thai cooking course. I think my blood could now be measured on the Scoville scale. Tsssss.

It's a Jungle Sometimes

Just got back from my second jungle trek of the year (it's starting to get a bit weird how many of those once-in-a-lifetime type experiences I've managed to do twice this year - yesterday I snuck in my second whitewater rafting of the year and I probably wouldn't've even mentioned it if it hadn't proved this point). It was kind of different from the Amazon one (a bit less jungly, perhaps; a few more mosquitoes; we didn't have a guide who encouraged us to eat everything) and kind of the same (we walked through trees; we didn't see any wild animals; it was pretty touristy).

The home-made, balsa-wood raft of the Amazon was replaced with a bamboo raft; the journey was equally farcical as the guides were drunk.

We went elephant trekking. Which seemed a suitably Thai thing to do. A baby elephant followed his mum on the trek - ahhh, how sweet - but when we walked back through the river it looked a lot like he was drowning. Mad staring eyes whenever he resurfaced - you know the look, right?

And a monkey ate Anna's bracelet.

In Chiang Mai now. There's a lot of temples here, I tell you. The kind of amounts that would make the good people of Kyoto nudge each other and say "I told you we should've built more" a lot.
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Shouts:
Edward T Horncastle and Lucy Loveday - Happy wedding you two squirrels.

Laos and Forever

Luang Prabang seems to be a place for the more discerning tourist, what with its hot water and its toilet paper- how very la-di-da? Then it threw me a curveball by providing the most ridiculous leg of my journey so far.

I had met people that had taken the slow boat along the Mekong between the Thai border and Luang Prabang, they'd really enjoyed it. By that reasoning I figured that the fast boat option would be really fun. It wasn't. The incredible scenery got old quite quickly and, I know this might undermine my backpacker kudos, I really was expecting a seat (ooooh, look at Pete with his fancy Western ways, expecting a seat for an eight hour journey), all I got was an 800 x 600 x 200mm box which I had to share with a Japanese software designer. Now I know that I shouldn't be all uppity because taking a speedboat through the jungle is probably more glamorous than what you did with your Tuesday; it definitely sounds cooler than getting a lift to Glasgow in the boot of an E-reg panda but, in terms of comfort levels, I know which one I'd choose in the future.

In other news, spent my last full day in Laos exploiting my post-tubing immortality by tombstoning waterfalls, as one does when they're in a city famous for its temples.

In The Tubing (sic)

Northern Laos is properly beautiful. Massive, jungle-capped, limestone monoliths jutting out of nowhere. So I've done what any self-respecting Brit would do here and binge-drunk my flipflops off.

Vang Vieng is the self styled tubing capital of the world. Floating down a Mekong tributary in a rubber ring - sounds sedate. It's not. It's possibly the most dangerous thing I've done. There are a lot of bars along the way, most of them give you free shots and they all have increasingly ridiculous ways to get back into the water. Horribly tacky. Very fun. And I didn't die. All Good.

In Luang Pra Bang now, it's the old capital, don't you know?

From the Muddy Banks of the Mekong

New country, new type of tuk-tuk. Whereas the Thai tuk-tuks were kind of like pimped up milk floats and the Cambodian tuk-tuks were motos with a trailer, these bad boys are the midpoint between a Robin Reliant and a climbing frame.

So yeah, I'm in Laos. In Vientiane (can't seem to say it without sounding a bit Liam Gallagher) and it seems to be modelling itself on Ljubljana rather than any of the more local capitals. By which I mean it's pretty far removed from the neon sleaze of Bangkok or the bazooka-a-cow bonkersness of Phnom Penh. By which I mean it's more Cheltenham than London. By which I mean I snap-judged it to be boring.

Kudos should be given to Vientiane for having Pha That Luang. After a couple of hours of dreary meandering through mediocre nothingness it was a treat to stumble across something so ferociously ostentatious. BigGoldPyramidtastic.

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I left Dan last in Bangkok last night. We completed the journey with an hour or so to spare. Cakewalk (although we did have to spend more time than was pleasant in Poipet, the moth-eaten, Cambodian border town).

Guess it's going to be weird travelling on my own again for the first time since Chile. Equally, I guess it's pretty weird that I've spent three months (over nine countries and two continents) travelling with someone who I met less than six months ago.

36 Hours to Bangkok

Dan changed his flight. Unfortunately his travel agent changed it to a day earlier than the date he wanted which means he's now got next to no time to get from the middle of Cambodian nowhere to Bangkok airport. I don't especially need to go there but it sounds too ridiculous a situation to miss out on.

Said goodbye to the orphans this morning. At the risk of making people think someone's hi-jacked my blog, it was tougher than I thought it was going to be. On the plus side I am now carrying my body weight in friendship bracelets.

The last two weeks in Takeo have been great. I guess we were a bit lucky in that there was a core group of us for the whole time I was here. It meant that we had a fair few Klang-fuelled nights and an improving volleyball team - we finally got good enough to beat Dara and his band of orphans in the last couple of days - reading that sentence back it doesn't sound as impressive as it is (the orphans were properly good and three of them were older than the youngest volunteer - I'm sure I should be making some kind of East-West, socio-political comment about that but I don't know what it would be. I digress - back to volleyball). The victory cost me a broken toe but, in the words of DPB, pain goes away, glory lasts forever (although in this particular incidence glory only really lasted 24 hours).

Our last full day at the orphanage dissolved into a massive waterfight; a bunch of supposedly sensible 20-somethings soaking eight year olds with buckets of water. I'm not convinced that those kind of shenanigans would be allowed back in Blighty.

Three times in the last week I've seen more than twenty live chickens on a moped. Given this, and the warm glowing feeling (but, let's be honest, mainly the chickens on a moto), I have a sneaking suspicion that this won't be my only trip to Takeo.