I’m not sure how it happened, but I suddenly found myself behind the wheel of a rental car speeding around Melbourne on a four-lane motorway with no map and no clue where I was going.

Well, not entirely true. I knew where I wanted to go – the “Great Ocean Road,” a highway along southern Australia that takes in some of the country’s most dramatic coastline – but the problem was in how to get there.

The Great Ocean Road takes in some of Australia’s most dramatic coast

Initially, I thought I was being rather clever. Having been exposed to the pitfalls of road trips from an early age – Mom reading the map upside down saying “well, I’m not quite sure where we are,” with dad continuing to get more white knuckled behind the wheel in search of an elusive motorway exit that we may have passed hours before - I had decided that I would be best served by investing in a GPS.

I’d seen the Tom Toms that friends had in their vehicles – fool-proof little devices that give you ample warning when you’re supposed to turn with a talking voice and a huge arrow pointing the way on a video game like interface.

It was exactly what I needed for my planned 11-day road trip that would take me from Melbourne, down the Great Ocean Road, and back to Sydney.

 So when the man at the car rental place at Melbourne’s Tullamarine airport asked “would you like a GPS with that?” I replied with an emphatic yes. You wouldn’t expect me to find my way around one of Australia’s biggest cities all by myself, would you?

So a GPS – a Tom Tom – in one hand and the key to a red Hyundai in the other, I set off into the airport parking lot to find the petrol powered piece of metal that would be my carriage for the forthcoming week.

I expected someone to come out at any minute to stop me, though. I’m not a particularly good driver, having lived in big cities (London and Paris) for the last nine years, where I’ve rarely gotten behind the wheel of a car. The last vehicle I borrowed (my brother’s) I managed to blow up, and both my husband and driving instructor (yes, I’ve been taking driving lessons in London) tend to yell out things like “don’t hit that parked car” and “look out for the pedestrian,” which does nothing for a girl’s self-confidence.

I expected the car rental man to come out at any moment and say “sorry, there’s been a terrible mistake. We can’t trust you with this expensive piece of engineering.”

But nobody came.

Australia's got some pretty cool scenery for a roadtrip, once I figured out where I was going

I got in the car, still looking furtively around for someone to stop me, and set about entering my destination into the GPS. “Anglesea,” I typed, one of the first stops on the Great Ocean Road. I waited for the map to come up and the reassuring voice of Mr. Tom Tom to start telling me which way I needed to drive: “Left – 300m or “Right – now”. But he wasn’t doing anything of the sort. “Awaiting valid GPS signal…” a message told me.

Ok.

Five minutes later - still waiting. So I did what any self-respecting techno-buff would do: I started touching the GPS screen randomly hoping to make it do something.

A new message popped up: “Weak satellite signal – are you inside a building?” I look out the car window at the airport runway, where a giant Boeing 747 was taxiing in front of me. Nope, not inside a building.

And then an idea – maybe the airport was interfering with the GPS signal? Maybe if I just started driving the little device on my dashboard would commune with the cosmos to devise a route out of Melbourne that didn’t involve countless dead-ends and the shouting of obscenities?

I fired up the car and started to drive, reasoning that I could always return to the airport if the GPS didn’t work – at least that was the theory. In practice, I drove out of the airport in search of satellites – any minute now we’d get a lock on one, I told myself – got hopelessly turned around and couldn’t find my way back to my point of origin. To make matters worse, I was struggling with the car controls: every time I went to signal “left” or “right” I would turn on the windshield wipers (they drive on the left in Australia and the controls are reversed….although technically I should be used to this having taken hours of driving lessons in London).

Cars behind me may not have known which direction I was headed but at least my front window was well serviced.

I was starting to wonder if my planned road trips – over 1000 kilometres in total - was such a good idea afterall.

It was at this point that I found myself screeching along on the four-lane motorway around Melbourne, travelling at high speeds towards an unidentified location. I didn’t know where I was going, but at least I would get there quickly.

I looked at my GPS for advice: “Awaiting valid GPS signal.”

Then, salvation. A road sign showing the distance to Geelong, which I knew to be a town on the way to the Great Ocean Road. Somehow, in all the missed turns and circles, I had ended up on the right road heading in the right direction. Pure luck, but I’d take what I could get.

By this point in time, I’d been in Australia a little over a week. During that time I’d watched a sunset at Sydney’s Bondi Beach (the type of place where television’s Baywatch could easily have been filmed), I’d visited a childhood friend in Townsville where her roommates acquainted me with classic Australian humour, and I’d gone snorkelling on the Great Barrier Reef. 

Three competing concerns kept me from really appreciating the beauty and biodiversity of the Barrier Reef: firstly, whether a rogue wave amid the five foot swells and 35 knot winds in which I was snorkelling would pick me up and slam me down on the reef (it was very rough and we’d had a number of people vomit on the boat trip over from Cairns – how come they don’t mention that in the tourist brochures?), secondly, the statistical likelihood that I would swim face first into the invisible tentacle of a deadly jellyfish, and finally, the possibility that a great white shark would fancy a nibble on my toes. 

In all, I was in the water for only about forty-five minutes and that was just to say that I’d gone snorkelling on the Great Barrier Reef.

Wallaby feeding time on Magnetic Island

The more interesting part of Australia, for me, has been the chance encounters with wildlife: a koala bear sleeping in a eucalyptus tree, a kangaroo jumping out in front of my car, brightly coloured green birds – lorikeets – trying to get a free meal at someone’s beachside picnic. Some mornings, I would wake up to the mad cackle of the kookaburra, a bird that sounds like it has watched Jack Nicholson in “The Shining” a few too many times. 

Australia’s flora and fauna had over 50 million to develop since the continent separate from the rest of the earth’s land mass, and as a result there’s some truly distinct creatures here: cassowaries (giant, flightless birds that look like a cross between the Roadrunner and an ostrich), wallabies (like a compact version of a kangaroo), goannas (giant monitor lizards – some can grow up to 2 metres long!), and platypus (a creature that looks like a beaver, but with a ducklike snout).

And the animals have evolved some interesting features. For instance, did you know that the platypus is one of the only mammals on earth that lays eggs? Early European naturalists didn’t believe it. One man spent thirty years of his career studying the platypus and came to the conclusion that the mammal did not lay eggs contrary to local reports that it did. He was, of course, proven wrong….which I guess shows you that you should probably get out of the laboratory a little more often when studying these sorts of things.

In any case, somehow, I made it down to the Great Ocean Road, no thanks to my Tom Tom (he was still looking for a satellite by the time I pulled into my hostel for the night). 

Cape Otway is Australia's oldest lightest - my navigation problems pale in comparison to what mariner's faced trying to circumnavigate the coast

I spent the next couple of days driving down the coastal road, with its dramatic limestone cliffs lashed by giant waves. This was the first coastline that new immigrants – Europeans – would have seen when arriving in Australia by boat. It was also the coastline where a number of them met their deaths – approximately 800 shipwrecks in South Australia since European settlement, according to one local history website - as their ships struck any number of submerged rock or reef.

These were people who had sailed for months, surviving the open waters of the seas around Antarctica, only to be lost only a mile or two offshore. Rather unfortunate.

My own navigational difficulties continued and despite several days of driving to different locations, my Tom Tom just couldn’t find a satellite.

So I’ve had to do what they used to do in the old days: I got a map.

We arrived at this archipelago and felt like we had somehow fallen off the edge of the earth. Strings of villages, constructed of thatch, perched on stilts out over coral in the shallow bays. Men fished from home-made wooden canoes that were stabilised against the sea swells by bamboo outriggers and protected from the sun by a thatched roof. We watched as the men would dive down and spear their catch; they were always proud to display to us the result of their fishing prowess. For some reason, it was almost always octopus. 

We floated like driftwood from island to island taking the ferries – which run irregularly and keep to their schedule like I keep to my New Year’s resolutions – from the ports of Wakai, Mallenge, and Katupat. 

The boats are the villages vital supply lines bringing with them all manner of dry goods- soup mix, noodles, potato chips and, most importantly, cigarettes. They also bring with them information as there are no phones of any kind in the inner islands (although there are masts at the two main island ports of Wakai and Dolong for nearby mobile reception). 

Even electricity only runs for a few hours every night, powered when some local man decides to fire up the village’s diesel-engined generator. While the electricity is running the villages are nearly empty as families huddle around their television sets to watch images beamed from a society that seems very far away. The majority may not have mobile phones, but many have a great big satellite dish next to their thatched huts – a technological anomaly set amidst cows, chickens and goats and behind rickety white picket fences. 

We stayed first at a place called Kadidiri, the most heavily touristed of the islands in the area. There were three resorts and a small handful of tourists. We went out diving – just us and two dive masters – to places where magnificent underwater coral formations created mountains and canyons and where schools of fish – grouper, tuna, angel, parrot, and even a giant Napoleon fish – sauntered lazily against the ocean currents. The water was a deep clear blue and the pinks, yellows, greens, and purple of the coral glowed in the refracted underwater sunlight. We almost felt guilty to have such a beautiful place all to ourselves. 

Then we went onwards to our next destination – the island of Mallenge, which was rumoured to be the best place to spot some of the local wildlife: coconut crabs (allegedly the largest crab on earth) and tarsiers (a little monkey that looks like a gremlin and is only found in some parts of Indonesia and Philippines).  We had a beach resort all to ourselves; our host Rudy told us that we were the first tourists to arrive in weeks (and according to the hotel’s registry we were only the 13th and 14th guests that he’d had all year). 

The beaches were beautiful, the resorts hardly visited, and we saw some amazing underwater scenery. But the Togeans are definitely not a vision of perfection: a legacy of the unfortunate habit of fishing with dynamite and cyanide have left their marks on the underwater environment. Large sections of the coral reef are literally blown out in places and large fish are rare to see. The locals use the sea as their garbage dump - probably have done for hundreds of years – and long snaking lines of plastic garbage follow the tide currents. 

Geography and time seemed to compress when we left the Togeans. We hopped from Sulawesi to Java, the most heavily populated of Indonesia’s islands, where we spent time among the island’s active volcanoes – temperamental giants puffing out smoke and belching sulfur.

Then onto Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia where we got to know Tung Shin hospital rather well, signing up for their exciting IV “essential fluids and antibiotics” drip experience, after a bad batch of coconut soup at Jakarta airport laid us low for a couple of days. We swum with sharks and turtles off Pulau Tioman and sang bad karaoke at a bar in Singapore (was it my imagination or did the bar staff turn our microphones down when other patrons started to arrive?).  All in all, not a bad end to the Asian chapter of our travels. 

It’s been nearly four months since we touched down at Tokyo’s Narita airport and began our migration south. We’ve traversed nine countries, taken umpteen flights, and spent countless hours on hot, sweaty buses. The journey’s been full of potholes, the occasional detour or unexpected diversion, and many discoveries. I’ve learnt not to scream when I see a cockroach, how to fall asleep on a moving bus, and why so many Asian towns are so quiet in the middle of the day (it’s too hot!). 

Jeff has gone back to continue his business course in the States, but for me, it was onwards to the land that brought us Kylie Minogue, Fosters beer, and Crocodile Dundee.   

Australia.

Planes skid off runways, boats sink and buses crashes with some regularity. A few years ago (2007) President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (otherwise known as SBY)  ordered a review of all Indonesia transport systems. And when a President gets involved in something as boring as transportation matters, you know that something’s gone seriously wrong, indeed.

So it was with some trepidation that I regarded our upcoming travel from Rantepao in inland Sulewasi to the Togeans, an island chain in the “C” shaped north east corner of the island. I figured we were statistically playing the odds on whether we became a casuality of the country’s decrepit infrastrucutre. With an expected twenty hours of bus travel plus three hours of ferries to get to the Togeans, our odds were getting pretty good that something could go wrong.

We had decided to break the long journey up with a stopover in a small town called Tentena, perched in Central Sulewasi on Lake Poso.

But our journey from Rantepao in Tana Toraja was still to be fourteen hours and it was with a sinking feeling that I noted as I got on the bus for the debut of the trip that we were to be travelling on a karaoke bus. (For those unfamiliar with the concept, these karaoke bars on wheels can be found all over Asia and its sole purpose, as far as I can discern, is to ensure that any already uncomfortable bus journey is made worse. A video screen at the front of the bus, plays  low budget music videos with flashing neon words, while speakers pump out sentimental Asian classics, really loudly. REALLY LOUDLY).

I was even more worried when I realised that a group of young men at the back of the bus were to be serenading us the long journey to Tentena.

The bus finally meandered from the station about an hour after our scheduled departure time. We drove for ten minutes, then stopped for fifteen, repeating this procedure several times as we stopped at innumerable schools, private homes, cafes, and once just in the middle of the road so the driver could have a chat with one of his mates.

Finally, about two and a half hours after our scheduled departure, and less than two kilometres from our point of origin, we finally started to pull away from Rantepao. The bus wasn’t going quickly, though, as the road wound up through the steep and winding hills. The road had been washed away by landslides in some places and the bus made slow progress through rutted tracks in the sloped mud that had replaced it. At least we were making discernible progress.

Our boisterous boys at the back of the bus continued to wail away. This song appeared to be about a boy pining after a girl. Come to think of it….almost all of the songs seemed to be about that.

The scenery outside the window provided some diversion: steep jungle covered mountains descended through the lush valley of rice fields and waterfalls. We lurched around corners, winding our way first up into the mist and then down the other side onto the plains below.

The lower into the valley we descended, the warmer it got. Soon we were sweating like cold beer bottles on a hot day. But, we had paid extra for an air conditioned bus, surely it was just a matter of getting the driver to turn it on?

As sweat beaded in large droplets on our foreheads and ran down onto our shirts, Jeff walked up to the front of the bus towards the driver. “Aw-Say?,” he asked the driver, motioning to the large sign on the side of the bus that said AIR CONDITIONING.

The driver shook his head.

Jeff figured that the driver obviously hadn’t understood. “Aw-Say?” he ventured again, this time pointing to the seat covers on the back of every single seat on the bus. There was a picture of a penguin, dressed in a hat and mitts and scarf, shivering atop a glacier. AIR CONDITIONED BUS, the seat covers proclaimed.

The driver should his head and shrugged his shoulders thing time. There was no air conditioning. Crazy foreigners, what would have lead us to believe that there was?

Jeff sat down again as the penguin on the seat cover in front of us seemed to smirk in triumph. I think it even winked at us.

The boys at the back of the bus were now hollering out what I can only surmise to be an Indonesian dance classic.

Life continued to roll by outside the window. Jumbles of ramshackle homes, soaring mosques, busy warungs (eateries), enter reality for split seconds and then gone. We pass towns that will remain nameless and faceless except for a glimpse seen from a speeding bus on the highway.

Eventually the karaoke was turned off and a video is put on. Footage from the Tana Toraja funerals. Buffalo fighting was first – the boisterous karaoke lads groaned and cheered in equal measure as the animals bashed into each other. Video of the buffalo slaughter was up next. I will spare sensitive readers further details but I must say that it was most unpleasant to watch.

We went up another set of mountain roads and then started to descend steeply down the other side. Sharp cliffs and remnants of landslides marred the route and I was very grateful that our driving was taking it slow. He had even geared the vehicle right down – I could hear the engine doing double time – to keep the brakes from overheating.

It was a little while later, once we were safely down on the plain that we realised the driver had geared down not to save the brakes, but because they were already gone.

We stopped at a warung - one of the generic roadside foodstalls found all over this country – and the driver and a few of his buddies got out. The took off the left front wheel first. The brakes had fully melted and were fused to something Jeff called the caliper (but because I don’t have a clue about car mechanics I’ll just say that brakes had fused to the thing that holds the wheel). The other side, same thing.

We had no brakes left at all.

Luckily, the bus boys had a couple of spare brakes lying around (I suspect this is not an unusual occurence). And after three hours of prolonged banging and a lot of grunting, we were back on the road.

Finally, at ten thirty at night – fifteen hours after we had left our hotel that morning – we were dumped off on the outskirts of Tentena. In the pouring rain. In the dark. Five kilometres from the nearest hotel with no possibility of onwards traffic, save for the occasional person passing by on a motorcycle.

Unable to face the remaining six hour bus journey to the ferry port the next day, Jeff and I decided to hang around town for the day. Tentena itself is a predominantly Christian area that had been rocked by inter religious (Christians and Muslims) violence between 1997-2005. It stills sees few tourists, but is a marginally pleasant town with rickety white picket fences, and perched on the fringes of the giant Lake Poso.

We were invited to speak about Canada to the local high school English class. Jeff tried to explain what hockey was to a bewildered bunch of teenagers and their even more bewildered teacher. The teacher tried to help translate, but even he had difficulty understanding the concept of a sport you play “on frozen water”. So Jeff mentioned football (soccer), which prompted big smiles and choruses of “Ronaldo” from the boys. (Although we failed miserably to educate this corner of Asia about the merits of hockey, we did at least explain to them that Canada was not a part of the United States…a misperception that we encountered often during our travels).

We eventually made the further six hour bus journey to the ferry port town of Ampana. There I promptly managed to get us on a local cargo ship rather than the main ferry. (Long story that ends in “hey, seemed like a good idea at the time.” Jeff still hasn’t quite forgiven me).

In addition, to an uncomfortable ride amid window panes, chicken wire, boxes of food and even an upside down sofa destined for someone’s living room, the cargo ship took us an hour and a half off course resulting in many extra hours travel and two additional boat transfers. (But at least none of them sank!).

After travelling all day, we finally landed on the beach at Kadidiri, just in time to see the sun sink into the sea. We had made it.

Survivors of Indonesian transport – at least for now.

We were in the town of Rantepao, a little speck on the map of the Indonesian island of Sulewasi. If you look at the Indonesian archipelago on a map you see a ragtag assortment of thousands of islands – some big, some small, and some just unnamed rocks poking up out of the water – that stretch from north of the equator until well into the southern hemisphere.

Sulewasi is the one near that centre of the chain that looks like a starfish doing crazy calisthenics and the city of Rantepao is located about two-thirds of the way up the southwest leg of the Sulewasi starfish. It’s the base for a trekking area known as the Tana Toraja.

The city, a scrappy spread out place that feels a little like an amorphous blob spread out along a river, is set amidst stunning rice terraces that cover the hill slopes in a patchwork quilt of water, green, and clay lines. Villagers tend the fields, wading waist deep in the water and pulling up rice by hand. Water buffalo lounge in the mud by the sides of the field looking like they’ve been caught doing something they shouldn’t. Rice grains dry by the side of the road during the morning before the afternoon rains start (which happens predictably everyday at around 3 pm. And when the rain starts shelter is an absolute necessity; the March rain in Tana Toraja has the force of a fire hose).

The surrounding areas have a pastoral,”lost tribe” sort of feeling to them. Villages have rows of traditional Tongukonan - ceremonial long houses with distinctive, usually thatched, roofs shaped like the hull of a boat or the horns of a water buffalo. Extensive carving decorates the exterior, accompanied by the horns of dead water buffalo.

Rough roads link the villages together, but higher up in the mountains the only access is by rough motorcycle tracks, and even these are washed away in some places by landslides.

It’s not only trekking that the area is famous for, however. It’s on the tourist map because of its elaborate death rites. Funerals take place over several days, involve the copious slaughter of water buffalo, and have hundreds if not thousands of people in attendance. The dead are buried in caves, hanging coffins (literally a coffin hung off the side of a hill), or in stone cliffs and rocks specially hollowed out for the purpose.

And so, attending a funeral is one of the “must sees” on the itinerary of any self respecting traveller. The tourist office maintains a list of all the funerals happening in the surrounding villages and can advise on appropriate attire and etiquette (you need to bring cigarettes or sugar as a gift to the family of the deceased).

Jeff and I decide to attend the first day of one of the funerals in the area, renting a motorbike and heading to the nearby village of Bori. About halfway there, I start to feel a little bit awkward. What would we say when we arrived? “Um, hello, we’re tourists come to experience a Toraja funeral. So sorry about your loss. Do you mind if we take some, uh, pictures?”.

I needn’t have worried, though.

As we pulled up outside a house where there seemed to be a great deal of activity, we were quickly waved in by the locals, who almost seemed to be expecting us. We were quickly seated and handed a very strong, sugary cup of the local Toraja coffee. The Rantepao Police Commissioner came over and introduced himself and then presented us to the family of the deceased.

We made small talk with our limited Indonesian -”Selamat Pagi” (good morning), “Nama saya Diana” (my name is Diana), and “Ayam goreng - enak!” (Fried chicken – delicious…..although this phrase had limited applicability during the conversations at the funeral) – all the while continuing to drink large amounts of strong black coffee.

Jeff and I didn’t really know what to expect from the funeral other than our guidebook said we’d feel like we’d fallen into a “cultural documentary” and the tourist office mentioned something about a procession. But so far, apart from a few water buffalo adorned with streamers and flowers, the whole thing had the air of a casual morning coffee get together. A lot of sitting around and talking. Wasn’t something supposed to happen?

Finally, a few hours later (when we were jittery with caffeine), the first hint: water buffalo handlers started maneuvering their beasts into a line. The animals lumbered begrudgingly into formation, shaking their heads to try to dislodge the colourful streamers that trailed from their horns. A line of women, clad in black and lace, gracefully emerged behind the animals. They held a long red scarf with black markings on it above their heads, the end of it trailing behind them.

Then, rather unexpectedly, I was pulled into the procession of women. A beautiful line of small women neatly dressed in the colours of mourning, and then me, large in comparison, and sweaty in a brown t-shirt and dirty khakis. I looked imploringly at Jeff to do something to get me out of the situation. He gave me a thumbs up sign and took my picture.

We walked through the village amid hoots and hollers (and it seemed a lot of laughter at the fact that I was in the procession of women), until finally we reached a large grassy field. We paraded in a circle a few times around the field before the procession dissolved and dispersed to the perimeters. Jeff regained my side and we looked at each other, unsure what would happen next. An old man, by way of explanation, made a fist with each hand and then crashed the knuckles into each other.

We didn’t have to wait long to find out what the man’s enigmatic description meant: water buffalo fighting.

It was only a bit belatedly that we realised what danger we were in.

The first bulls to fight bashed their heads together a few times to the excited cheering of the locals, before charging off into different directions. This was the dangerous bit – an enraged 800 pound beast with the IQ of a house fly, making run for freedom. The crowd (including us) stood at the sides of the field – without barriers of any kind – and more often than not were standing in the path the bull intended to take.

One bull charged the group of men and women we were standing with. (The village children had climbed the trees surrounding the field before the fighting began….that should have been the first clue that something was up). A few men beat the bull back with what were, in effect, long twigs, and diverted his course onto the next group of spectators.

Jeff and I exchanged glances. This was getting a little more participatory than expected. Mentally I ran through what I’d read about medical facilities and remembered something about the nearest hospital being in Makassar, an eight-hour drive away.

“It’s ok,” Jeff said, picking up the biggest stick he could find. “Just stay behind me.”

We watched as the buffaloes cleared paths through other groups of people. Arms and feet went flying everywhere as bodies scrambled out of the way. Then it was our turn again: a bull ran round the men, into the jungle and assailed our group from behind. We scattered everywhere. Somehow I ended up in the centre of the field with a mass of other people and no real recollection of the act of getting there.

The buffalo fighting continued like this for about an hour as I tried to convince Jeff that we should make a hasty retreat. I was starting to suspect that bull fighting was a way to ensure a steady stream of future funerals. Nothing like keeping a good pipeline of work.

Then, as abruptly as it had begun, the bull fighting was over.

“Makan,” one lady said to us. Eat.

Food quickly appeared out of ruck sacks at locations all over the field. We were served a generous helping of rice, fish cooked in bamboo with lemongrass and chilies, and glutinous rice wrapped in a banana leaf.

After lunch the first day’s funeral “festivities” were over. The following day, the second of the funeral, was expected to be a more elaborate ceremony in the lead up to the slaughter of all those water buffalo that were so recently bashing their brains together and spreading terror through the villagers.

Neither Jeff nor I were particularly keen on seeing the slaughter of a dozen buffalo, so we decided not to attend subsequent days.

Instead we set off on the motorcycle tracks to wander to some of the more remote villages, a circuit that would take us three days. Our days were spent lazily meandering through pristine traditional villages to the chorus of “hello mister” and the giggles of children who would accumulate behind us as we passed. We relied on the GPS of locals to tell us which way to go; children would often emerge from the jungle just in time to tell us to hang a right at the next fork in the path and then proceed to show us the way.

Days were warm until the afternoon rains started. We spent our nights in little villages, one night in a local hotel and the other with a family, where we fell asleep to the sound of rain on the tin roof.

It was a relaxing couple of days, and we would need every ounce of it for our next endeavour: surviving the 14-hour bus journey to Tentena, in Central Sulewasi.

However, it was with some trepidation that I was heading into town. Protests were expected that weekend.

Thailand has had varying degrees of political turmoil since a military coup in 2006 overthrew the government of then-Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra. In February of this year the Supreme Court of Thailand ruled that many billions of baht worth of Thaksin’s assets be seized, citing abuse of power while in office. His supporters – known as “Red Shirts” because of their penchant for wearing….well I’m sure you can figure that one out – were none too pleased with the court’s decision and for a variety of other reasons (including the belief that the sitting government is illegimite because the military pressured Parliament to vote for Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva in elections in December 2008) called for a series of “million man” protests to shut down Bangkok, unless Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva called for a new general election.

The protests were scheduled to begin on Friday, the day I was to arrive in the capital.

As my train pulled into Hualamphong station early that morning, I could see no indication that anything was awry. Touts milled around the station and tuk-tuks (noisy, 3-wheeled motorbike carriages) shouted for my custom. As far as I could tell, it was a scene familiar to other big Asian cities.

I spent the rest of the day wandering around: a stroll through the fabulous gardens at Lumphini Park and walked the decidedly modern Siam Square area where hip young fashion designers were showcasing their work. I found Bangkok to be a relatively easy city to navigate and a refreshing change from the small provincial towns I’d been in for the past month.

But everywhere I went, concerned Thai people cautioned me: “Don’t go near the palace…the ‘Red People’ are there.”

As I wandered the streets, meandering through back alleys and alongside canals, I suddenly found myself in front of the palace – precisely where I wasn’t supposed to be. I stopped and listened for the sound of a rally, of tear gas being fired and of general mayhem breaking out.

Nothing. A few Buddhist monks in trailing saffron-coloured robes walked by. A camera toting tourist stopped to take a picture.

 I skirted the edge of the palace, curious. Where were the promised millions of supposed ‘Red People’?

Almost against my will, I found myself approaching the Democracy monument (which was to be one of the focal points of the weekend’s protests). There were only a few riot police leaning on their shields, looking bored and smoking cigarettes.

The only red shirts I saw here were those being hawked by some roadside entrepreneurs. For the low price of 100 baht (a little more than 2 pounds), it was possible to become a Thaksin-supporting anti-government protester. I was tempted to buy one – it’s not everyday you can join a political movement just by wearing a t-shirt – but red’s not my colour and I was almost out of money anyway.

Saturday was more of the same: whispered warnings about the “red people“, quiet streets, and the occasional unit of bored policemen.

Sunday, though, I awoke to the sound of honking and shouting early in morning. I got up and strolled to the palace area, immune now to the warnings about the “Red People.”  I was curious to find out what was going on.

Thousands of people in red shirts and red baseball caps were already starting to gather in front of the palace and along the main road leading up to the Democracy Monument. Rock music blasted from some loudspeakers in the centre of a field, protesters stopped for breakfasts of noodles and soup from the many roadside entrepreneurs that had gathered to greet them, and roving groups of people (many of them having come in from towns around Thailand) walked down the street shaking noisemakers amid claps and cheers from others who were sitting in the shade to escape the already warm sunshine. A few other tourists were wandering through taking pictures and getting warmly greeted by the protesters who seemed happy to have foreigners witness what they considered to be their fight for democracy.

All in all, the atmosphere felt more like Glastonbury than a day of political unrest. If only democratic protest could be this fun all the time. (Sadly, since I was there [March 14th], the protests have continued and taken a much more dangerous turn. Yesterday (April 10th) violent clashes between protesters and government security forces left hundreds injured and killed at least eighteen people. See the related Associated Press article for more details).

Over the course of the day, the numbers of protesters surged. Throngs of red t-shirt wearing demonstrators fanned out throughout the city amid cheers and honks from passersby. It was as if Thaksin Shinawatra were a rock band and the protesters were his fired up red-shirted groupies.

The protests were expected to continue for the foreseeable future, but I wouldn’t be around to find out what happened in the ongoing drama that makes up Thai political life. The next day I was to meet up with Jeff in Singapore and head onwards to Indonesia.

It felt strange to be leaving Thailand, just when the country was starting to feel familiar: the spiky spires of Buddhist temples piercing the skies of even the most modest town, pictures of Thailand’s beloved King in calendars on the wall of just about every roadside eatery in the land, the twice daily broadcast of the national anthem (at 8 am and 6pm) when everyone stops what they’re doing and stand with their hands at the sides as the music plays, and the saffron robed monks, whose holy presence suddenly imbues the most mundane of activities - like riding the bus - with a sense of the extraordinary. 

But I suppose moving on is what the traveller does: this constant dipping in an out of countries, just long enough to sample what the country has to offer, but not long enough to assume any of its problems. We sample, we experience, we move on. Life as viewed through the window of a moving bus.

On Monday I would wake up amid the Buddhist temples of Bangkok, and, that night I would be watching the sunset with Jeff over Makassar, a port town on the Indonesian island of Sulewasi, as the sound of evening prayer spilled out from the mosques.

The wrangling over Thailand’s political future would go on without me.

“Here?” I asked, hesitant. The last road sign had indicated another seven kilometres to my destination. “Krabi?”

“You go!” he repeated, nodding emphatically and pointing to a road running perpendicular to the highway.

I descended from the bus and before I even had a chance to pick up my backpack, the bus door closed and rapidly receeded into the distance, spewing out black smoke and churning up dust, leaving me coughing as I examined where I was.

I figured I was pretty close to nowhere. A dusty highway lined with the kind of shops that tend to grow on the outskirts of towns: dirty mechanic shops covered in heavy oil slicks, dilapidated stores selling scrap metal with heaps of junk and old cars half rusting on a plot of land with overgrown grass and encroaching weeds, falling down shacks selling spare parts for household appliances.

None of it particularly useful to me at that point in time.

I looked at my watch – 3 pm. I’d been travelling since 6 o’clock that morning in various moving metal capsules that had transported me from the island of Koh Phangan in the Gulf of Thailand straight across the peninsula towards the Andaman Sea on the West coast of southern Thailand. My destination was a town called Krabi, which was rumoured to have good kayaking and excellent rock climbing nearby. But, as I walked what turned out to be the remaining five kilometres into town, along a road that had all the charm of London’s A406 inner ring road, I thought “this had better be really good.”

The town of Krabi itself, when I finally arrived, was a rather unremarkable Thai town stretched out along a river that leads out to the Andaman sea. But it was pleasant enough – in the evenings locals head out to exercise along the riverfront where there’s a pleasant promenade and an evening food market starts up in front of the harbour where delicious food can be had for cheap.

The next day I joined a kayak tour, and the scenery almost made up for the travel of the day before: rugged limestone karsts rising up startlingly out of the earth covered in the green fur of the jungle, a green coloured river snaking its way through mangrove forests, the roots of the trees like thin tentacles reaching down into the thick mud.

We kayaked for several hours through the various twists and turns of the mangroves. We explored caves that lead through the limestone mountains and out into secret lagoons, scenery vaguely reminiscent of Jurassic Park. 

We saw troops of monkeys swinging through the trees, stopping to collect the crabs along the river. Mudskippers - a very cool fish that “walks” (well actually it sort of flops around) on land – jumped around on the shoreline. And we even saw giant monitor lizards – a creature that looks like a salamander on steriods and I was pleased to be viewing them at a safe distance from my kayak.

I spent a couple more days in Krabi before taking another dusty bus ride to my next destination: Khao Sok National Park.

Here, the scenery got more stunning and more rural. The parched ribbons of commerce that had lined the highway closer to Krabi gave way to first to fields and banana palms then a more rugged landscape with rolling hills covered in greenery. As we approached Khao Sok, the hills got more erratic, more jagged and sharp in appearance until finally we were there.

The night I arrived, I was sitting on the porch of my bungalow as the sun was starting to set. As elsewhere in Thailand, I’ve noticed that the sounds of the jungle seem to rise in volume in inverse proportion to the height of the sun. That night was no exception – the electrical buzz of the cicadas sounded like a seriously overloaded transmission line as birds chattered away in the trees, geckos squeaked and gibbons (for which the park is famous) hooted, their calls echoing in the forest around the bungalow.

The resulting cacophony part of the jungle symphony I’d come to know during my short time in Thailand.

Then, suddenly, a sound I couldn’t place. It sounded like a whoopy cushion and it was really close. A frog, maybe? A lizard? A bird? I got up to investigate.

“What are you?” I asked to the air.

PHHHHHHRRRRRTTTTT. PHHHHHHRRRRRTTTTT.

I looked closely at the tree, the ground, the pathway. But I didn’t see anything.

This went on for a while, with me continuing to talk to myself, while the creature taunted me by remaining out of sight.

Then, suddenly, something fell on my head.

“Aaaarrrrrrgggghhhh!” I screamed, wiping madly at my hair. (If my neighbours in the adjacent bungalow were watching my performance warily, I think at this point they would be commenting on the crazy lady next door. “Make sure you lock the door tonight, Mabel, this one’s a little fruity!”)

A gecko fell to the floor and scampered off, pausing briefly to look up at me, as if to say “what’s all the fuss about?”.

PHHHHHHRRRRRTTTTT.

I decided to give up trying to identify the creature and trundled off to dinner and then an early bedtime, anxious to avoid anymore run ins with the local wildlife.

The next morning I awoke to the sound of scratching on the roof of my bungalow. I kept my eyes closed, ignoring it. It got more persistant.

 I opened my eyes. More scratching.

What now? I wonder groggily putting my glasses on and pulling back the mosquito netting that surrounded my bed.

Scratching again.

I look up at the roof and through two rather large holes where the roof and the wall meets, three little faces were watching me, looking as innocent as robber barons in the night.

Monkeys.

I’m wide awake now. I think monkeys are very cute little creatures. They’re very humanlike and interesting to watch…but at a safe distance. I had two thoughts in my mind: monkeys bite and they steal.

“Psssssssssssssssssssttttttttttttt,” I hissed, hoping to scare them off. The hole was big enough for them to come through.

Nonplussed, they sat and watched me. The biggest one stuck his head in further through the hole and surveyed my room. He was already casing the joint.

Okay, adrenaline kicking in now, I needed a plan. A weapon, maybe? I looked around my room for the most terrifying item I can find and grabbed my, er, bath towel. I started waving it around madly at the monkeys.

“Roar! Roar!” I shouted, hoping that I sounded like a tiger. Monkeys don’t like tigers, do they?

The three little thiefs watched me, vaguely bemused.

Ok, towel not really having the intended “instill fear and dread into the hearts of the monkeys” effect that I was going for.

Plan B: I dropped the towel and stood up tall, arms above my head, hands shaped into claws and continued roaring (this is a posture that’s supposed to work if you’re charged by certain species of bears in the wild - trust me, I’m Canadian so I know these things).

I jumped up and down loudly for good measure, shaking the whole bungalow with the weight of my stomps. (John and Mabel next door were at this point probably quaking under the covers and making a mental note to talk to the hotel manager about changing to a different bungalow later that day).

The monkeys calmly watched me. Then, yawning, the ringleader finally started moving on, as if he had grown bored with my performance.

Averted – potential theft of my valuables and the necessity for a series of rabies shots.

The rest of my trip sans Jeff has passed relatively smoothly: several long bus rides where I’ve marvelled at the skill of Thai public bus drivers who always seem to make an interconnection for me with other buses along a random highway in the middle of nowhere as I’m shunted quickly from one bus to another.  A brief and surreal sojourn into Myanmar (Burma) necessitated by the near-expiration of my Thai tourist visa where I crossed the border just long enough for the border guard to stamp me in and out of the country while touts tried to persuade me to buy alchohol.  A final stop on the coast at the resort town of Hua Hin for a final day of tourism drenched sun and sand, then onwards to Kanchanaburi to see the Bridge over the River Kwai.

Now I’m in Ayyuthaya, a temple town just north of Bangkok as I contemplate whether it’s a good idea to head into the capital as planned on Friday. Anti-government (or pro-democracy, depends on whose side you’re on) protesters plan to hold massive rallies calling for the reinstatement of Thaksin Shinawatra, the former prime minister who was ousted in a coup in 2006.  It could be more interesting than I’d expected….

I’m on a speck of an island in the middle of the Gulf of Thailand about 100 kilometres from the mainland.  The island, Koh Phangan, is one of three islands in a mini-archipelago and is positioned both in size and geography between its two neighbours, Koh Samui and Koh Tao. There are beautiful sandy beaches, a hilly interior consisting of largely untouched jungles and beautiful turquoise waters.

It’s pretty much nothing short of a tropical paradise. But today I feel like I’ve been run over by a truck. I can scarcely lift my legs as a pain emanates from deep within my muscles, and heads up my back, my shoulders and my arms. My head aches and my stomach feels queasy.

It all started when I got the bright idea to go on a bit of a health kick. My husband left for the States last week to attend a month-long business course. I thought I should take advantage of the time to better myself as well. All those years of sedentary city living and office work has taken its toll on my body – neck pain, generally poor fitness, and an evil addiction to coffee.

Koh Phangan, this lush little island in the middle of a shiny blue ocean, seemed like a perfect place to treat my body to a little bit of love and attention. The island is full of resorts offering detox diets, colonic cleanses,  parasite flushes, and what was to become my ultimate downfall…yoga.

Normally yoga stirs up visions for me of kindly older ladies in spandex doing gentle stretches. Of new age hippy types sending peace and love and positive energy into the world. Of people who eat flax seed for breakfast and use words like “joyful” to describe everyday existence. I’ve always enjoyed yoga, but it’s not what I would normally describe as a hardcore exercise.

When I showed up yesterday for the first in a series of daily yoga classes, that expectation wasn’t challenged.  Some of the other participants, representing a plethora of European nations plus one other North American (a girl from Vancouver, who told me she was missing the Olympics by design), were already there. Some were sipping on fruit shakes, others eating healthy fruit and yogurt when I arrived.

The instructor opened the class by expressing gratitude to the sun, followed by a series of breathing exercises including one where we had to picture a bright light coming in through our nostrils and down into our stomachs. (Come to think of it, maybe that’s why I was a bit queasy this afternoon – all that bright light I’ve been ingesting). 

We moved onto gentle stretches and mild body contortions that gradually increased in intensity. Eventually I ended up with my knees up by my ears, my buttocks pointed skywards and the back of my neck flat against the floor. Although I don’t know any practical reason for which I would use this particular posture in my daily life, I must say that it feels quite nice.

The class continues and then finally finishes with a meditation. By the end of it I feel good. So good, in fact, that I decide to stay for the next class.

I should have clued in the moment the next instructor walked in the door. But maybe I was too distracted by the tattoos that covered every inch of his body (he was shirtless), by the oversized nose ring that went through the cartilage between his two nostrils, the dragon earring that hung down to his shoulders and chomped up to his right ear lobe, and by his intriguing hair cut – worn short everywhere except for one long section at the very top of his head, which he had carefully curled up into a bun.

Had I looked closely, I would have noticed the exquisitely chiselled physique of this somewhat unconventional looking man. The stomach that went beyond a mere six pack and had delved into something more like a 24-pack. The gently rippling arm muscles that were neither too big nor too small, but were perfectly proportioned to the rest of his body. Seriously, Michelangelo could not have sculpted a more perfect specimen.

I should have realised that one does not get a body like this off fruit shakes and gentle stretches.

Our Yogic Adonis started us off relatively gently with a series of thrusts and kicks. But we quickly advanced into what can only be described as a series of gravity defying, muscle pain inducing, levitation of a contortional nature.

Our Adonis demonstrated the next move to us. He was balanced on one arm with his legs suspended in midair.

“All you need to do,” he said to a disbelieving class, “is rotate gently so that your arm is out and your chest is open to the sky, and then rotate back so you chest is parallel to the ground. Then without touching the floor, rotate yourself back up again.”

Keep in mind that this movement, similar to a door opening and closing on a hinge is done while balancing on one arm with legs up in the arm. Until that moment I would have thought such a thing was a physical impossibility. I should have checked his legs for wires.

As it reading our minds he added, “If it’s easier you can keep your feet on the floor.”

Then added lamely: “It’s easier than it looks.”

No response yet from the class, who, like me, were sitting in stunned silence.

“Um, Ok, so…now it’s your turn.”

I kept my feet on the floor and maintain that this movement still defies the limits of he human body. Each time (after much grunting and huffing and puffing) that I got my chest close to parallel with the floor my pivot arm would give out and I’d come down to the floor with a punishing thump, managing to do a wonderful impression of a dying fish out of water in the process.

Judging by the number of other thumps I heard, nobody else was finding this particularly easy.

We went through a series of other similar moves, whereupon I perfected my newfound “dying fish out of water” posture. Anyone who thinks that yoga is for faint-hearted new agers really needs to take a class with this guy.

This morning, I felt rather a little worse for wear when I got out of bed, but decided it would be very lazy of me not to go to class. (Afterall, I don’t have anything else that I actually have to do, other than sit mindlessly on the beach. So if I can’t get myself in shape now, what hope is there for me in London?).

After class this morning my instructor (not the Adonis – he wasn’t teaching today) tells me it’s normal to feel quite sore because yoga uses a lot of muscles that never get used and it’s part of the normal “reawakening process for the body.” So basically, I’ve got a bunch of pissed off muscles, upset that I’ve woken them out of a slumber. I understand what they’re going through – I’m not exactly a morning person myself.

Apart from yoga, my days are filled with some combination of beach, eating, checking email, reading – not necessarily in that order. I’ve discovered the joys of swinging in a hammock for hours, and am happy to let my reality narrow to a series of changing vistas outside the different bungalows that I’ve been staying at on the island.

I tell myself that next week I need to move on to other parts of Thailand – maybe to see the other coast, maybe to head up to the hills in the north. But I think I’m going to have a hard time dragging myself away from this charming little island.

In the meantime, though, I really must go and get some sleep. Afterall, I’ve got a yoga class tomorrow.

Saying good bye to Ho Chi Mihn

There were so many mysteries that I had not managed to resolve: how can a country that has experienced so much tragedy in recent history have so many karaoke bars that it would make the Japanese blush? (This seemed to be particularly symptomatic of Northern Vietnam where they belt out tunes, quite badly, at all hours of the day and night. There are literally streets dedicated to competing karaoke bars).

What was being shouted out from those cranked up, crackly loud speakers early in the morning and well into the evening and why was it being shouted? (All the small towns in the north we visited seemed to have this loudspeaker system, where somebody would be screeching out something on technology that sounded like it had been invented by the same person who had invented the PA system in railway stations in England. [You know the ones that are so incomprehensible that you wonder if they were speaking English] Was it Communist propaganda? Religious fanaticism? An exercise guru getting everyone motivated to get fit?).

And finally, why do patrons of pavement soup stalls have to sit on stools and tables so small that they look like they’ve been purchased at a kindergarten charity auction? (These roadside soup stalls are everywhere…but there’s nowhere a proper table to be had.)

Alas, the answers to such important questions as these were left behind as our plane pulled into the skies over Ho Chi Minh City, headed direct to Siem Reap in Cambodia.

We were off to the home of some of the most famous temples on earth – Angkor Wat.

The temples that people come to Siem Reap from all over the world to see.

When we landed, the sun was melting into the horizon, and the full moon was an orange-red belly button in the sky. A driver from our guesthouse met us at the airport and we got into our transport for the evening – the equivalent of a motorcycle driven horse carriage. The only difference was that this breed of a horse was a Honda. Regardless, I was grateful for the open breeze of the carriage because when we stopped, the Cambodian heat would wrap itself around us like a sweaty hug.

From the airport we drove past shiny new resorts with their bright lights caressing the dark gray sky and the froth of their fountains kissing the warm night air. Advertisements for spas, pools, dance shows, cocktails, and just about any other pleasure you could hope for, lit up our path into town.

It wasn’t quite what I had expected. This is a country that within the past three decades has had a genocide that managed to wipe out basically all its educated classes, followed by a Vietnamese invasion (although you might argue that wasn’t all that bad…they did oust the Khmer Rouge and all), and then by (both before and since) a succession of inept and corrupt leaders that have failed to provide the most basic services for its people. I was expecting a dusty old frontier town, filled with persistent touts, dishonest taxi drivers, and profiteering businessmen keen to swindle you out of a dollar.  Instead what we got was Las Vegas plunked down in the middle of the Cambodian jungle – bright lights, international hotel chains, western style comforts and amenities, and a pumping nightlife.

The next morning Jeff and I decide to rent bicycles to explore the raison d’etre of Siem Reap – the temples of Angkor Wat. These temples are over a thousand years old and spread out over a very large area – testament to the fact that Angkor once housed over a million people at a time in history when London would have been considered a small town and our ancestors were still fending off attacks from the Vikings (or were attacking London, depending on who your ancestors were).

Ten minutes into the ride and my t-shirt is covered in sweat, perspiration is beading on my scalp, and I’m beginning to wonder whether cycling was such a good idea in this sauna that masquerades as a country. It’s more than 35 degrees Celsius outside. Somebody has cranked up the humidity to max. The circuit we plan to do is about 50 kilometres. And we’ve not even arrived at the entrance to the temples.

Here's looking at you

Despite all the rational reasons to discontinue cycling and hire one of those motorcycle-driven horse carriages to take us around the temples in style and comfort, we decide to persist. Slowly, I accustomed to the heat (but not gracefully, photographs of me lumbering on the temples shows a face that’s, er,”glowing”). We spent the day cycling from temple to temple, taking the requisite photographs of us in front of key ruins and marveling at the skill and craftmanship it would have taken to construct these huge rock monuments.

We’re catcalled by vendors as we enter and exit each temple: “Laaaaaaayyyyy-Deeeeeee, you buy something? You buy from me!” they shout. Every possible need is catered to. Thirsty? Buy bottled water or cold soft drink. Hungry? Restaurants can rustle up a good soup or plate of noodles. Want to rub it in to friends and relatives that you’re here and they’re not? Postcards are available.  Or maybe you’re feeling a little scruffy today, how about a new sundress? T-shirt? And while you’re at it, how about a wooden flute, or a musical instrument that makes what can only be described as “Doy-oing” sound when you flick it against your mouth?

The capitalism isn’t perfect – this is not a true freemarket and vendors get very upset when you purchase from one but not from them. “It’s not fair that you buy from her and not from me,” we were told when we bought Jeff a t-shirt. “You HAVE to buy from me, too.”

History itself certainly hasn’t been fair to Cambodia and people here wear the past on their bodies. Landmine victims’ bands play at the entrance to temples , their musicians missing limbs claimed by one of the millions of landmines that still stalk the Cambodian countryside.Young children sell trinkets and water at the temples, when they should be at school or out playing with friends. Young Cambodian women prostitute themselves to tourists to earn a decent wage.

As a tourist to their country myself, I feel on the one hand that I’m helping their economy…on the other, I can’t help but feel that I’m seriously and gravely distorting their infrastructure. Cambodia needs doctors, teachers, lawyers, and good leaders. But what incentive does anybody here have to spend the years of study necessary to become a doctor when that wage pales in comparison to what you can earn hawking trinkets to tourists?

After two days, Jeff and I are templed out. So we decide to take what have by now become our trusty steeds – two rusty, single-speed, rental bikes – off the mapped tourist circuit and attempt to find a view of Cambodia untainted by mass tourism. We’d heard that there were so called “floating villages” where the residents lived in houses built on stilts 10-metres high. In the dry season the houses soar above the dusty ground. But in the wet season, when the Ton Le Sap floods the surrounding plains, villagers must take boats between their houses. (Luckily, we were in the dry season because I’m not sure how efficient our rental bikes would have been on a flooded flood plain.)  The villages seemed as good a target as any.

That morning, we awoke early to indigo skies, punctuated by the occasional cotton puff of cloud. We wove through Siem Reap, vaguely heading south east and taking any road that would get us there. We figured we couldn’t get too badly off track: too far south and we would hit the Ton Le Sap, too far north and we would hit the main road back to town.

The roads got progressively smaller. Pavement gave way to smooth, red dirt track. The dense buildings of the city gave way to thatch huts on stilts because of the seasonal flooding. Women lay in the shade on wooden platforms fanning themselves as their children giggled and ran after us as we passed. Everywhere we go we get smiles, and big “hellos”. Refreshingly, I don’t hear any “Lay-dee, you buy something?”.

Soon the dirt track gets smaller until we’re riding an a deeply rutted single track, amid achingly green rice paddies. White birds fly like brush stroke over the green canvas. We balance precariously on the mud track, an elevated strip of land between the flooded rice fields, as one false move would see us tumbling into the muck. Rice farmers laugh and holler after us as we pass, probably wondering how it is that two large, sweaty white tourists on rusty bikes, came to be riding on his rice paddy.

The paddies themselves are a fantastic maze of interconnecting segments. We snake our way south for two hours, then branch left to head east. We don’t stray from the main path, though, as there’s still a lot of landmines in this country and I had no inclination to use my body to test how well this area had been demined.

After three hours of riding over rough ground, I start to gain an afficianado’s appreciation for concrete and start seriously fantasizing about the sensual smoothness of a paved road.

We decided to keep aiming east, where we expect to cross a main road heading to the first “floating village”. We finally hit it, but it’s not the concrete saviour I’m expecting…it’s just a bigger version of our single track rice paddy special. Five hours into our cycle ride now – four of them on very poor road – my legs and bottom are beginning to feel like they’ve been through a meat tenderiser.  With the road ahead looking like the badly grated end of a block of parmesean, I decide to make a b-line back to town on the main road, joining the big trucks spewing out black fumes (so that’s why so many Asians wear facemasks when they’re driving…) but managing to get back to town in little over an hour. (Jeff, of course, did made it to the floating village).

The next day, we rejoined the tourist circuit and visited the remaining temples that we hadn’t yet seen (and hired a motor cycle carriage man to take us…my bottom was too sore to contemplate any alternative). I can’t help but feeling that one day of riding though the rice fields amid the gently smiling people of Cambodia, was equal to the three days spent gawking at the (decidedly impressive) ruins.

But next time I think I’d take a motorcycle with proper shock absorbers.

The overnight train from Hanoi pulled into Lao Cai station at five am and we started to make our way up the 38-km ascent to Sapa, a former French hillstation. The car’s windshield wipers provided the soundtrack to our drive. 

Rice terraces near Sapa

The gray predawn haze began to fill the valley, revealing little wooden huts dotting the steep slopes. Rice paddies enveloped in mist descended to the valley floor like ladders. 

Soon we arrived at our destination – a pleasant town on top of a ride, full of hotels and restaurants catering to western tourist.  Although it was still early – seven am – tourists in their hiking boots, gortex and cargo pants were already wandering the streets, trailed by dozens of tribeswomen dressed in colourful clothing. 

We checked into a hotel, and then, armed with a very rough map of the area we set off to find some of the nearby villages. 

As we wandered towards the outskirts of town, we gathered our own collection of tribeswomen. A colourful assortment of bright headscarves, multicoloured gum boots, oversized earrings and traditional clothing trailed behind us. 

“Where are you from? How old are you? Oh, very young! Are you married? How many children? Why not? Any brothers or sisters?” 

Each woman would run through a practiced set of conversation pieces in the lead up to the question de resistence: “You buy from me?” 

As we got farther out of the city, the trail behind us got smaller until finally there were only three tribeswomen left. Hoping to deter them from coming further we politely told them, “No shopping today”. 

“It’s ok,” one replied. “We walk to our village. You follow us.” 

There was no escaping our collection of tribeswomen

We descended into the valley with them. Down through slippery clay mud, over rice paddies, across streams. We walked with them for hours. 

Occasionally they would present us with a little gift – a fern tied into the shape of a heart, a horse figure made out of straw. 

We arrived in their village around noon. 

 ”Maybe you come to my house? I cook you lunch?” the one with the neon green and pink headscarf asked. 

We followed them through the village, past a piece of ground where dozens of men, women, and children were churning up earth – “building a new house” we’re told – up a steep dirt path between huts, until finally we were at the entrance to our hosts house. 

It was a simple hut, built like a barn – open and airy – with wooden walls with holes through which you could see glimpses of the animals milling around outside in the garden. The kitchen itself was separated by a thin wall; cooking was done over an open wood fire. 

Our charming, but persistant, sales ladies

We were seated on squat, bamboo chairs. The women’s children cowered behind their mothers, contemplating the two rather large white foreigners they had suddenly found in their living rooms. Eventually one got up the courage to come and slap Jeff on his leg, before retreating again to the sanctity of his mother’s back. 

Then lunch was ready: a minor feast of steamed vegetables, omelets, and instant noodles (“Mr. Noodles” to the Canadian among us). We dug in along with our three charming hosts. One lady kept shovelling more noodles into our bowls. 

When it was all over we sat around chatting for a little while longer before deciding it was probably time to head off again. The women looked at us and smiled. A kitten ran through a crack between the wall and the floor.  Chickens clucked by the entrance to the house. A pig stuck his head around the corner and grunted. 

“Maybe you buy from us now?” one of the women asked. 

Fourteen kilometres of walking in the rain, a lunch cooked over a wood fire, and hours spent schmoozing -  I don’t think ever before in history has so much time and effort been spent to sell a few pillow covers (which we did end up buying). The story was similar everywhere we went in Northern Vietnam:  enterprising people offering to sell us anything we could want – postcards/tours/books/jewellery/pineapples/fried bread/fruit/tablecloths and even a Vietnamese child! 

Motorcycles stare you down as you cross the road

Once a domino caught between two superpowers, today’s Vietnam appears to be a country hard at work to emerge from the weight of its history. The cities are full of the hard labour of survival and grasping to get ahead: women wearing conical straw hats walk the streets at all hours selling fruit or fried dumplings, sidewalk soup stalls appear out of nowhere to rustle up a good pho for its customers, shopkeepers are open early in the morning and don’t rest until the last chance of a quick buck has passed, and touts and motorbike drivers lounge around on their bikes offering tourists a lift or other services for a small fee.  

Walking is rather difficult in Hanoi

But it’s the streets, oh the streets, that the consequence of all this hustling is felt most acutely. The roads in big cities are a river of motorbikes, buses, cars, carts, bicycles and wading into its waters requires calm anticipation (which way will that large bus that’s barreling right for me swerve?), blind faith that complete strangers don’t want to hit you, and a silent prayer that your destiny is not to become road kill of the streets of Hanoi or Ho Chi Minh City. 

We quickly learned how to walk blindly into traffic and felt that we were almost locals by the end of our travels. We even got up the courage to rent bicycles and inserted our own bodies into the chaos that is traffic here, dodging imminent death at every turn. 

It was a fantastic way to experience Vietnam.

What's somebody got to do to get some dim sum in Hong Kong?

Jeff and I wandered into a popular looking restaurant in one of the suburbs. The place was heaving as delicious looking bamboo baskets of dumplings and plates of tasty food emerged from the kitchen and were rushed to awaiting tables. 

An officious waitress seated us in the midst of the bustle, then disappeared into the depths of the restaurant.

Five minutes passed. Jeff and I looked at the menu on the table. Indecipherable squiggles described the feasts available.

Ten minutes passed. Figuring that no English menu was coming, we wondered how we could tackle this. Surely with four years of university education, a Master’s degree, and fifteen years combined professional experience, we could figure out how to order dim sum? Perhaps we could just ask for items by name? What was the Cantonese for prawn dumpling again?

Ignored and unloved in the busy dimsum restaurants of Hong Kong

Fifteen minutes passed. Still the waitress had not made a reappearance. Tables beside us were getting piled high with food, but somehow our table was empty, unloved and ignored.

Suddenly, hope of salvation. A woman at a nearby table had noticed our plight.

“This one,” she said pointing to an item on the menu, which seemed to be a set meal. She gestured back to her table, which was piled high with bamboo baskets of dumplings, steamed buns, crispy roast goose, noodles, and vegetables.

Sorted!

With newfound confidence, we gestured wildly to get the attention of the waitress, proudly pointing to the set meal and holding up one finger to indicate our desired quantities.

Our food quickly arrived – noodles and roast goose. Where were the dumplings? The buns? The eggs rolls?

Not included on the set menu.

Disappointed but not defeated we looked around the restaurant and noticed a kindly old lady pushing a cart of food. Dim sum as it’s supposed to be. She stopped at our table and asked if we would like some. Keen to get some more traditional dim sum delicacies, Jeff gave an emphatic nod.

Big mistake.

We found ourselves proud owners of a great heaping bowl of intestine soup. At least we think it was intestine soup – is there any other meat or seafood that’s rubbery with fur all over it?

It was time to abort mission dim sum. So we ate the goose and set off, determined to get dimsum before we left the city.

Hong Kong couldn't defeat our search for dim sum

A few days later we walked into a popular looking dim sum restaurant in a suburb of Hong Kong and almost managed a repeat performance. Our saving grace was figuring out that you could go up to the area where they prepare food and point out what you wanted.  We managed to avoid any suspect looking meats and got our quota of fabulous steamed dumplings.

Hong Kong may have won the first battle but we won the dim sum war.