Category: Asia (Page 1 of 6)

Sri Lanka – Part 4 – East Coast and Kandy Rail Trip

June 26, 2025 /

Day 13 (June 18) – Polonnaruwa and Pasikuda Beach – Today we changed location, moving to the central east coast at Pasikuda Beach. Along the way, we stopped for a significant tour of the ruins of the ancient city of Polonnaruwa. Built between the 10th and 12 centuries AD by South Indian invaders, then later re-occupied by Sinhalese, it was the capital of the Sri Lankan Kingdom. Centered around a vast man-made lake that fed a huge irrigated area, the ruins consisted of a palace, royal audience chamber and a great many temples. The earlier buildings were the most remarkable, being of carved stone with perfectly interlocking pieces. The later buildings were of brick. The scale of the city suggested a major civilization, and Sri Lanka was known as a major trading and exporting nation at that time. Excavations of the ruins have found Chinese coins, showing the extent of the trade. By the 14th Century, the city had been abandoned, the capital moving closer to modern day Colombo as a more defensible location against the threat of Tamils from the North and Southern India.

The weather was hot and the sky cloudless, a far cry from other days on the trip. We hadn’t packed hats, an error that had not bothered us to date, but today we needed them. There was a hat stand near the entrance to the palace ruins and the bargaining started. We rejected $2500Lk ($12.50) opening bid for each poor-quality cap on offer and countered with 1000Lk for two. After a bit of two and froing, we decided to walk in the shade and set off through the gate, the hat seller still calling offers after us. On our return, we had fresh bids, but we ignored his right up until we got in the car and he was tapping on the window accepting the 1000Lk ($5) offer. Nilanker was well amused. He probably knew we were still robbed. Christine was even upset with me because I got a red “Adidas” cap that she thought looked too much like a MAGA cap.  A few days later on we saw hats at several stalls priced at 450Lk each, about $2.50. Nilanker liked that.

The tour of the ruins was interesting but we were just about done with ruins and temples. It was also very expensive at $US30 a person, as most tourist sites are for foreigners. The site would demand a great deal in terms of restoration and maintenance and it is clear the Government sees tourism as a way of financing the task. Even so, it has been a topic of discussion amongst the few other tourists we have managed to talk to. Sri Lanka is regarded as expensive compared to other SE Asian countries.

We reached the coast and found our accommodation, bearing the promising name of Blue Sands Resort. Tripadvisor rates it as a 9.1 with wonderful stuff said about the staff. The “staff” was one person and he was very nice and helpful. We were the only guests once again and the room gave beautiful views of the beach, only separated by a scrubby field filled with goats and cows. We had access if we walked down a nearby laneway. Once again, the TV didn’t work because the bill had not been paid. It is a common thing when the tourist numbers are down.

The ”resort” did not have any restaurant facilities other than breakfast but two nearby options were given, Laya Waves just a few doors down and the Cinnamon Café. Nilanker took us 4 kms or so back into town to a “foreign beer” shop where we stocked up on a bit of beer and even a bottle of wine, a Chilean Red. Alcohol in any form is a luxury item here.

The beach near our hotel.

Later, we wandered down to the beach, a broad expanse of white sand and clear waters. A sea breeze was in, cooling things slightly but making the sea a bit too choppy for swimming. The only things on the beach were dogs and boats, colourful things with outriggers (not the dogs). After a cooling paddle, a couple of locals herded 20 or so cows onto the beach to move them along and graze them in the land in front of our resort. It looked to be some kind of common for grazing. We strolled into the Laya Waves Resort, flashier than ours with a nice pool to enquire about dinner for later. It had a nice looking restaurant but the only person we found to ask about dinner was at reception. She assured us that dinner was on.

The Blue Sands Resort (well almost)

In the evening, we enjoyed a couple of beers on our balcony, watching the palm squirrels play then headed back to Laya Waves Resort. The restaurant was in darkness. We should have taken this as a warning. The receptionist scurried around and dragged a man away from playing on his smartphone so he could turn the lights on. Not a good start. We should have left.

We ordered a chicken dish each and Christine asked about wine. What was she thinking? However, he went off for ten minutes or so and returned with two bottles, a rose type thing and a Spanish white that Google said was a cab-sav of reasonable quality. The price was only around $14, so we took it. It was bad, really bad, gone off type bad. We relocated the bottle and the glasses to another table for the hour it took for the meals to arrive. Mine consisted of dice sized chunks of chicken that had been roasted for the entire hour we waited. They were hard, so hard it was difficult to tell the flesh from the bone. Christine’s was slightly softer but in large chunks. She had butter rice, which was truly horrible. My French fries were just passable. The waiter took the hint about the wine and did not charge us.

Day 14 (June 19) – Polonnaruwa and Pasikuda Beach – The next morning we enjoyed a good breakfast at the resort and got Nilanker to drive to the Pasikuda Beach, about a kilometre away. This beach is also beautiful but more developed, with a string of high class hotels, most with pools out front, some bars and eateries and an offering of water sports. We spent quite a while in the perfect temperature water, just soaking. We exchanged pleasantries with a woman who asked where we were from and then we asked her. The eyes lowered and she paused before saying, “Russia”. We let that go and had a conversation as much as her English would allow. Her expression was a give away, or perhaps she had experienced negative comments before. Later, when we walked along the beach, we noticed that almost everyone other than locals were Russian. Nilanker says the Russians only come for the beaches and almost never travel to inland tourist locations.

Lovely Passikuda Beach

We did talk to a pair of New Zealanders, part of a group of six travelling in a minivan with a guide. That would be a good way to go because the costs of tours like safaris would be better when shared. They too had the experience of staying in hotels with no other guests.

We ordered a chicken burger and hamburger at a beachside bar, probably our first burgers ever in Asia. They were relatively cheap ($7) and absolutely delicious. After a good afternoon nap and catching  up on emails etc, we waited for the heat of the day to ease and headed off to try the Cinnamon Café, the other nearby restaurant. What a contrast to Laya Waves. The lights were on, a few other people came and the food was beyond comparison. We ordered a whole grilled mullet (which was a wrasse, not a mullet) and Sri Lankan Style Cuttlefish. Both would have graced any restaurant anywhere. The fish, while far from the best species, was saved by the way it was cooked, coated in a rich spicy gravy. The cuttlefish was so tender and the curry filled with many different spices, but with the chili held back so it was edible and all the flavours could be appreciated without a volcano going off. All in all, the stay at Pasikuda Beach has been very enjoyable. It would be better to spend the extra money on one of the 4 or 5 star hotels right on the main beach and then it would be absolute heaven.

Day 15 (June 20) – Trincomallee – We drove the 100km to Trincomallee, mostly close to the coast. Almost all the land we travelled through is “dry zone”, with lower rainfall and low thorny scrub. Cattle were common in largely unfenced lands so we had to wait at times as they strolled across the road. In one place, a large herd of buffalo were relocating so we had a long wait. The presence of heavy electric fences in some parts were an indication of elephants and warning signs on the road were common, but we didn’t see any. A few significant rivers enter the sea on this coast, including the Mahaweli Ganga, Sri Lanka’s longest, which we had last seen in Kandy. Large mangrove lined inlets are common and the size of the fishing fleets suggested they were productive.

Beautiful views from various points around Fort Frederick

Trincomallee is a large natural harbour that has been a focal point for shipping and trade for millennia. Like most ports in Sri Lanka, it had been occupied by the Portuguese, Dutch, French then the British. It was the home port of the British naval force in WWII after the fall of Singapore. We visited Fort Frederick, the Dutch-built fortress that had a commanding coverage of the harbour. It was very hot and walking around visiting the various gun points and places of interest was sweaty work. The views out across the harbour were spectacular, a feature being the beautiful turquoise water, very deep under cliffs, but crystal clear.  We visited the Hindu temple, quite crowded due to several large school groups who had come from as far away as Kandy to visit. The Hindu Temples certainly dazzle with the artwork and myriad colourful sculptures. We did note, however, that this was to be our last temple for the trip. We were soaked with sweat and quite happy to leave and get to our hotel.

The Hindu Temple at Fort Frederick and views of Tricomalle from an old gun emplacement

The Blue diamond read up really well on the web, beach access,  private beach, restaurant, swimming pool etc. Hhmm! Our third floor (no lift) room had good views of the water but….. beach access was restricted because we had to go through another hotel and they were embroiled in an ownership dispute with the court had locked the grounds. The security let us through on one occasion but rejected us the next time. It was a bit of a walk around through the fishermen’s area, smelly and with snarly dogs. The private beach bit was pure fantasy. To enjoy any kind of facility at the beach we relied on the good graces of another hotel, which was obtained by spending money there. It was ok but not optimum. The beach itself is beautiful, white sand, clear water and swaying coconut palms.

The beach near the Blue Diamond Resort

We enjoyed a nice meal at the beach hotel and the proprietor kindly walked us home through the fishermen’s area and past the snarly dogs. He wasn’t even after a tip. He said we reminded him of his mum and dad.

Day 16 (June 21) – Trincomallee and Nevelli Beach – Nilanker took us north about 10km to another beach area, Nevelli Beach. It is a bit more touristy, and even quite full of locals given that it was a Saturday. Many boats lined the beach to ferry people out to Pigeon Island, a National Park about 3km offshore. It had been on our itinerary to go there for snorkelling but we canned it, after reading the reviews on Google. It seems that much of the coral is dead and turtles and reef sharks are the main marine life. We figured that spending over $100 on a mediocre snorkelling experience with all that we have to offer back home was not good value.

However, we enjoyed a wonderful swim in the clean water and low surf, watching the boats come and go and soaking in the 30 degree water.

The Blue Diamond Hotel, Trincomallee

Back at the hotel, we met Anna and Martin, a UK couple who are at the start of a 30 day or more stay in Sri Lanka. They were happy to pick our brains for the things we had found on our journey. They have finished up a lengthy working stay in Zurich and decided to just spend some time trying to live cheaply in SE Asia. Later that evening, we headed out with them to a wonderful eatery called Black and White Kitchen. They served a large variety of Sri Lankan food, some of it quite new to us. It was ridiculously cheap, the four of us spending 2,700Lk ($13) all up. When we got back to the hotel, we headed to the little restaurant for a beer. There was a game set up called Karen Board, a snooker type game but using round counters flicked with the fingers instead pool. Martin and I tried it, slowly getting the rules right under the direction of the staff. Then we sat down for a pairs competition with the two staff. It was great fun and something really different.

Day 17  (June 22) – Negombo – The day was a long drive, by Sri Lankan standards, some 260km across the island east to west and back to our starting point, Negombo. It was interesting watching the vegetation change as the climate became wetter to the west. Although we followed a main arterial highway, the traffic was heavy with tuk-tuks, motorbikes, trucks and the dreaded buses. We seldom got up a full head of speed because of the amount of slow moving traffic. The only exception was a 40km section of high speed toll road that allowed 100km/hr and was devoid of tuk-tuks.

Nilanker did drive a little faster than normal as we neared Negombo. The lure of seeing family again must have been an incentive. We found ourselves back at the Optimum Residences, with some nostalgia. It remains the best accommodation we have encountered, and we were warmly greeted by the staff as returning customers. The big surprise was that it was quite crowded, with several families and couples in residence and playing in the pool. It made for a pleasant change and suggested that the predicted tourism influx in July was starting.

Day 18 (June 23) – Colombo – The Optimum Residences have a wonderful breakfast. We now know that it is a showcase of much of Sri Lanka’s street food favourites, and they are now ours. The string hoppers, coconut sambal pancakes, potato curry and lots of other delicious things we normally wouldn’t dream of eating for breakfast. We followed that up with a swim, having the morning to wait before moving to Colombo.

The drive to Colombo was not an improvement on the last time we did it, heavy traffic, crazy tuk-tuks and streets cluttered with goods of all descriptions. The driver found Central Street and motored down towards 132, the location of the City View Port Hotel. As we got closer, we didn’t get warm vibes. It was in an area of commercial warehousing with no shops or restaurants in evidence. The hotel proved to be good enough and worthy of its 3 stars, but the location was a shocker. Trying to walk around the neighbourhood was an exercise in dodging trucks unloading pallets of goods.

We needed to go to the rail station to pick up tickets to Kandy. How hard can it be? Go outside and hail a tuk-tuk. The lady at reception suggested it should cost 200Lk to the station. We finally got a tuk-tuk, gave him instructions and settled on 300Lk. We logged the trip into Google maps and watched in dismay as we headed in the opposite direction. The issue was that the driver had almost no words of English, to match our zero words of Sinhalese. We got through to him that he was going wrong so the solution was simple, throw an immediate U-turn in front of all oncoming traffic. We got him back on track and after several more U-turns and incredible near misses, we arrived.

Chaos reigns supreme in the streets of Colombo

A nice man at the station took us in hand and verified our on-line bookings, activating them so we could use digital tickets the next day to go to Kandy. The next step was fighting off the tuk-tuk drivers and T-shirt sellers that surround the station. We escaped over a bridge and headed into the depths of downtown Colombo. What an eye opener. The streets are chaotic and the difference between sidewalk and roadway is blurred. We navigated through many different types of streets before we returned to the hotel.

Having established that there were no decent restaurants near-by, we sought out a wholesale sweet shop and bought a packet of potato crisps and some wafer biscuits. The wholesale part didn’t mean bulk. They will take anyone’s money. The crisps were combined with a can of beer each at the hotel and that was dinner. We figured we probably had calories in reserve anyway.

Day 19 (June 24) – Colomb to Kandy – We lodged our main luggage at the hotel and caught a tuk-tuk to the station. This time, there was no problem and we went roughly the right way, with only one U-turn in front of oncoming traffic. The train was easy to catch, largely because there was a nice man who targeted all foreign looking people and made sure they got on the right train and found their carriage. Everything was done with gestures. Once settled on the train, the man appeared again and put a paper in front of us saying that he was deaf mute and represented a charity group, along with a list of people who had donated 1000Lk. A good Samaritan or a good scam? We’ll never know but we paid up.

Fort Railway Station (Colombo)

The train trip was everything we had hoped. The first 60% was interesting enough, with small towns and villages seen from a different viewpoint than when viewed from the road. However, once we started the climb into the mountains, the scenery became really spectacular. Fortunately, we were on the right hand side of the train and had a commanding view of the mountains The forests were thick and jungle-like, with a big variety of ferns, vines, and palms.

Some of the wonderful mountain scenery from the train

We arrived at Kandy and once again negotiated a tuk-tuk to the hotel. This time, the hotel we had chosen was in a retail part of town with an abundance of restaurants. The hotel itself had a roof-top bar and a flash restaurant on the ground floor. It was a good choice. After settling in, we took a walk around the streets, hoping to see a market to buy some T-shirts for the grandkids but there was a complete lack of tourist stuff in evidence. We did come across the Queen’s Hotel, the equivalent of Singapore’s Raffle back in the days of the Raj, but now looking a little worse for wear. Still, we enjoyed a couple of beers while soaking up the old world charm of the building and admiring all the memorabilia. We chatted at length to a British ex-pat now living in Sri Lanka and listened to him extol the virtues of life on the island.

The Queens Hotel, Kandy

Walking around Kandy is much easier and more pleasant than Colombo. The streets are wider, have sidewalks that aren’t covered with goods and ramshackle shops, and the population is much smaller.

Kandy Lake, old government offices and a Sri Lankan curry meal

We ate a lovely dinner of Sri Lankan curry back at the hotel and even managed some rare reasonably priced wine to go with it.

Day 20 (June 25) – Kandy to Colombo – We had travelled light up to Kandy, but had packed bathers in anticipation of a swim. However, the weather put us off, with grey skies and mild temperatures. We lazed around after breakfast before checking out and wandering the streets, We went a different way and found a big market with many T-shirts on offer. Of course, we were attacked as soon as we neared the market with offers of “best price” and “superior quality for you madam.” Eventually, we haggled our way through buying five T-shirts and made our escape, filled with the knowledge that we had paid too much, but at least we had put up a good fight.

We stopped at a bakery called Ceylon Tea House and had, of all things, a hot dog and lime juice to ready us for the trip down the mountain on the train. The tea house was another piece of old Ceylon, with many wonderful old photos adorning the walls. As we neared lunchtime, it filled with locals.

Another tuk-tuk bore us back to the train station and we found our train and seat without the aid of the deaf man. This time, we had 2nd class, meaning no air conditioning and the windows open. Air conditioning is not necessary, but the noise as we passed through tunnels and cuttings was deafening with the windows open. We still enjoyed the trip immensely. It is a 3 hour train trip we highly recommend.

Outside the rail station, we tried for a tuk-tuk and gave him a card showing the hotel. Of course, few tuk-tuk drivers can read but he nodded wisely and set off. Soon it was clear we were badly off course. We got him to change direction and went for a while with us giving him turn instructions from Google Maps. Finally, he pulled over and surrendered. That was it. No more. We paid him 300 or the promised 400Lk and set off on foot. Fortunately, we knew the way from the previous walk and found our own way home.

We retrieved our bags, used our booked room to shower and relax before getting picked up by a car for the trip to the airport at 9pm.

The trip has been amazing. The advice we received that it is too hard to do Sri Lanka without a tour is largely correct. Tourism is simply not that well established and what there is largely caters for local tourists or Indians. The Russians come in numbers but are only interested in the beaches. I do think that having a private car and driver gave us more insight into life in Sri Lanka than we would have gained as independent tourists and the cost was roughly similar to going on an organised tour. It is our first experience of touring with a private car and driver and it is well worth considering.

 

Sri Lanka Part 3 – Central Area

June 21, 2025 /

Day 8  (June 13) Ella – Looking at the itinerary, we thought we were in for an easy day, after the rigours of the safari. We had three tours, and all three were just local sights to view. Easy. Not so!

The Nine Arch Bridge on the Kandy-Ella Railway is one of the iconic sights in Sri Lanka and a mecca for train spotters. Built in 1912, it is a stone bridge of 9 arches (surprisingly) over a deep ravine. To access it, we parked on the road and walked down. “Just a little bit more..” was always the answer to “Are we there yet?” Eventually, we emerged from the rainforest walk onto the bridge to join many others, including a large school group. Some had come from the other side by tuk-tuk ride, from a place that cars could not access very easily. We took our pictures and a train arrived, also stopping on the bridge for a while to allow passengers to alight and take photos. It is a beautiful bridge by any count.

The Nine Arch Bridge

I was worried about Christine’s ability to climb back up. The steps are killing on the knees going down but the climb up is physically demanding as well. We set off and got to the point about 40% of the way up where there was a tuk-tuk waiting. For $5, it was a bargain. Nilanka couldn’t fit in and the tuk-tuk had no hope with three in it, it barely made some sections with us two. It was the best $5 we have ever spent.

Then it was off to Little Adams Peak to take in the views. Just a easy walk for 2kms then some steps. He actually meant 650 steps, each one felt about 1 metre high. Christine stayed at the end of the 2km walk where there was a restaurant to keep her happy with a lime juice. Nilanka and I ran to the top. It was brutal. I kept having thoughts like “there are no medivac choppers here” or “I can always Google the view”. Once at the summit, the view was amazing and the fact that I had done it was rewarding. On the way down, I mentally assessed each person coming towards me as a “fail” or a “maybe”. Nilanka and I had icecreams as a reward for our effort.

On top of Little Adam’s Peak and Ella Rock in the background

Flesh eating fish

The final spot was at least easy going. A small pretty waterfall is considered a good swimming spot. We couldn’t be bothered with bathers so we elected to just paddle in the lovely pool. Nilanka said there was a better pool and another fall accessible by a climb up the hill but we both voted down any idea of more climbing. Instead we paddled. The small sucking fish came out in force. These are the same fish sold for aquariums as “algae eaters” but they are quick to target the dead skins cells on people’s feet and we soon had them all over us. Christine hated it and escaped to a rock, while I didn’t mind it and happily let them chew all the old rotting flesh off my feet.

Once back in the town we sought out a restaurant and had a Vietnamese banh mi and an Italian Milanese roll just to spread the love around food wise and had a much needed afternoon snooze.

Downtown Ella

Day 9 (June 14) – We packed up and after breakfast, Nilanka took us to the Ella Railway Station. A cricket ground is situated next to the station and 6 teams were lined up listening to the opening speeches for a cricket carnival. The ground looked brutal, with the bare earth pitch situated so close to one boundary that bowling was only allowed from one end.

We waited for the train and watched the crowd grow larger, a mix of locals and some tourists, mostly European. Finally the train hove into view and we scrambled to find ur carriage. Fortunately, we did not have luggage, with Nilanka driving to our destination, Nanu Oya. The whole thing is about the journey, with this one of the World’s great journeys, offering spectacular views and a climb over the mountains at around 3000 meters. On advice from tourist blogs, we skipped the air conditioned 1st class and opted for the 2nd Class Reserved seat. This allows the windows to be open for a better view. Down in 3rd class, the young backpackers even hang out the windows and doors for speccy photo opportunities but those days are over for us. The views were both interesting and spectacular, with deep ravines, soaring forest covered mountains, rice paddies, vegetable gardens and small villages. We made a few stops at stations along the way during the 3 hour trip. The final half hour saw the weather start to close in, with thick mist turning to light rain. The temperature dropped too, signalling the higher altitude of our destination.

Ella to Nanu Oya

Once off the train and back in the car, we drove a short distance to the town of Nuwarra Eliya, where we did a hurried walk of the town in the increasingly heavy rain. The market was a highlight. The vegetable grown in this highland region are the finest I have seen anywhere, and they are grown in small plots in people’s yards or small holdings. A huge variety is grown and everything looks amazing, with not a plastic wrap in sight. As we walked, we noticed that most locals were dressed in puffer jackets, and some with scarves and beanies. They knew what was coming. The clothing stores tried hard to sell Christine a jacket, because she still just had a blouse on and nothing warmer.

We left the town and drove up a steep hill to our accommodation, selected to give commanding views over Lake Gregory. Alas, all we could see was white. Once settled in to our room, we headed down stairs to the lounge to watch the AFL and relax in comfort. We were the only ones staying in the guesthouse, which was a beautiful building with rave reviews on Trip Advisor. This has been common for us, such is the depth of the “off-season” and the general decline in tourism in Sri Lanka. Even the proprietor was away, leaving one poor young man to be everything, receptionist, cook, housekeeper etc. He was a very friendly little guy with three and a half words of English but Nilanka managed for us.

We caught up on stuff on our computers and watched the Dockers make hard work out of beating the Kangaroos as the temperature steadily fell away. We both started to shiver badly. The problem is we had no real warm clothing. We asked for a heater, and a small oil column heater was trotted out and soon had us managing. Outside it was near gale force wind and hammering rain, along with a mist that meant that maximum visibility was less than 50 metres. Welcome to tropical Sri Lanka. We had planned to go out for dinner, but the weather rules that out so we order in a Pizza Hutt. Amazingly, we had a choice of that or Dominos and the cost came out at something like $15 delivered. Not only that, it was really delicious. We crawled off to a very early bed after securing extra blankets. It was one of the crazy nights where it got warmer as the night went on.

Day 10 (June 15) – Kandy – We were not sorry to see the back of Nuwarra Eliya, given that the visibility was not much better in the morning, although the temperature had risen a few degrees. Our drive took us steadily down, dropping around 1500m to Kandy. Most of the drive consisted of switch-back hairpin bends, negotiating around the tuk-tuks and motor bikes, which are restricted to 40km/hr. We were allowed 60km/hr and Nilanker never exceeds any speed limit, nor passes on an unbroken line. Most traffic is the same, a far cry from Australian drivers. The police are a very visible presence, and the on coming cars flash lights to warn of the police ahead. The buses are an exception. Their aim seems to be to get from point A to point B as quickly as possible. Any slow down of traffic ahead earns a loud blast of their twin horns. Nilanker’s skill in negotiating all this is amazing. There is no way I would contemplate driving here. I love it when someone decides they are going the wrong way. Simple. You do a three point turn on the highway. The cars that can get around you do so, the others stop and let you perform the action. No one gets out of their cars and bashes your windscreen in or kicks the front fender.

Kandy on a Sunday is very crowded, especially as the road we came in on is filled with international colleges that specialise in upskilling secondary students so they can get a better university entrance score or secure an overseas student visa.  The sidewalks (and road verges) were teeming with young people heading too or from classes and progress was very slow, even though the police had taken control and directed traffic.

Eventually, we made our way to the Temple of the Tooth, Kandy’s most famous site. Kandy was the capital of the Kingdom of Sri Lanka before the British took over in 1815. The temple was the previous palace of the Sri Lankan King. Now it is a Buddhist Temple that houses the most famous of relics, a molar from Buddha himself. The relic has been a well documented symbol of Buddhism in Sri Lanka for many centuries, and its possession meant power. Many times it was taken and many times it was hidden away from threat. Even in modern times, it was endangered in 1998 when Tamil separatists known as Tamil Tigers, bombed the chamber that housed the relic. Now it has been moved deeper within the temple and is subject to very high security. Even entering the temple grounds, we had to enter through separate male and female gates so we could be frisk searched.

The temple is very grand, reflecting its former role as a palace. It displays a well presented history of the tooth relic and a great many items associated with its history. It is a very sacred place for Buddhists, as meaningful as the Vatican to Catholics and the collection of murals and ceiling art is on the same level.

From there, it was off to our lodgings, Jack Tree Lodge. Once again, we were the only guests in a very beautiful guesthouse. The people were so friendly and accommodating, but a few more guests would be nice. The other great thing about the accommodation is that it is perched on a high ridge, so amazing views are gained on both sides. We lazed around for a couple of hours before heading out to a Cultural Dance Show. Such shows are to be endured. The content bares an amazing similarity right across SE Asia, and usually involves much drum banging and elaborate costumes. This one was no exception, topped off with some impressive fire dancing, and it was actually very enjoyable. We sat next to a UK couple around our age who were just starting their own tour, in the opposite direction to us.

Nilanka took us up to a restaurant high on the hill with excellent views over the city. We paid a bit more than our usual conservative meal budget but enjoyed a wonderful meal in beautiful surroundings.

Day 11 (June 16) – Sigiriya – We left Kandy with the sense there was more to explore and made the decision that it would be our return destination at the end of the tour. We have built in some time to free explore and we will take a train from Colombo to Kandy to soak up a bit more of this interesting city. The drive out of Kandy was another very   long switchback descent for 50kms or so before emerging onto the plains, still dotted with isolated mountains. It was three temple drive. We keep saying we have seen enough temples but each one is so very different they are worth seeing, a bit like a cathedral tour in Europe.

A large Hindu temple in Matale was a working temple, although under reconstruction. The amazing array of colours and ornate decorations were worth seeing and to have some explanation of the workings from Nilanka was useful.

The second temple was an archaeological site a fusion of Hindu and Buddhist influences dating from the 9th Century AD. It was very well preserved, probably because the huge stone blocks were carved from a hard granite-like stone rather than the usual softer sandstone.

The third temple was both a working temple and an archaeological site, probably the most famous in Sri Lanka. An enormous rock overhang high on a hill contains numerous buddhas, including three huge reclining buddhas. Unfortunately, to reach it we had to climb. Christine elected to take us by the cobbled pathway rather than the stairs but I’m not sure which was worse. The old legs are starting to protest more on each climb. However, the temple was worth the pain, a glorious testament to the importance of faith to mankind. The cave walls are covered with a staggering array of paintings, many depicting stories from the life of Buddha. Again, it is reminiscent of some of the great cathedral ceilings of Italy. I did find myself wondering if the original painters 1100 years ago found themselves painting over neolithic artwork from prehistory. The overhang is so huge it must have support early human life.

The Cave Temple

Our accommodation is called the Goddess Gardens, sounding more like a house of pleasure than a homestay. It is actually well named, with gorgeous gardens over a large area, beautiful pool and large well appointed rooms. Nilanka had not been there before and we joked about what we might find as we bumped our way across paddy fields and farmlands to the hostel. For once, we weren’t the only ones staying, with one other room occupied. We lazed away the afternoon with a swim and a snooze, before electing to stay in and eat at the hostel.

Goddess Gardens

Day 12 (June 17) – Sigiriya – Today was one of the highlights. We had a booking with a Sri Lankan Village tour. On the way, we stopped at various places to take in views of the famous Sigiriya Rock, or Lion Rock, a towering slab of granite that looks like it is the plug of an ancient volcano. It is amazing to think that a fortress and rock temple was once constructed on the top. You would have to pity the workers.  It is possible to climb it, but the fee is high and so I elected to climb the slightly smaller neighbouring rock called Pidurangala later in the day.

Sigiriya Rock

The village tour is highly touristic but still a wonderful experience, the lunch being the highlight. First, we were loaded into a cart being pulled by an ox along a dusty track to a nearby lake. The ox was a large brahman type bull with horns so ingrown they crossed over. The yoke simply sat between his head and the large hump that they have on the rear of the neck so the keeper ensured that we sat in the right spot to balance the load and put a slight pressure on the neck. The cart was wooden and unsprung, so it was not the most comfortable of rides. The connection between the keeper and the ox was wonderful, the beast looking over often to get directions, and receiving affectionate pats for good work. There was no tugging of leads or touching with sticks at all.

Ox cart rise and wetlands safari

From the cart, we off loaded onto a small catamaran pontoon paddled by two young men. They paddled us around the wetland lake for some time, working hard in the stiffening breeze. We spotted a good variety of bird life, the highlight being a pair of eagles nesting in one of the trees. They one made  Christine a beautiful garland out of a water lily while I was fashioned a weird hat out of a lily pad.

Eventually, they dropped us off on the other side of the lake to a pair of girls who took us into a traditional village house. The half walls were earth/brick while the long pitched roof was made from plaited coconut fronds. It was cool and comfortable. The kitchen was at the rear and consisted of a wood fired earthen stove with holes at the top for placing pots in. As heat was needed to different areas, the burning sticks underneath were moved around. It was highly efficient.

Preparing traditional Sri Lankan food

They demonstrated a variety of cooking techniques, getting us to join in with some of the preparation, while they prepared potato curry, sweet potato curry, an amazing coconut sambal, coconut roti, fried snake beans and, my favourite, a wonderful dish made with wild mangoes, which were little bigger than roma tomatoes and very flavoursome. They used hand grindstones to grind millet and flat rock with a round rock to grind ingredients for the sambal. The fish was river fish, Tilapia, cut into portions and deep fried with a rich herb coating.

Finally, we sat down with Nilanker to a meal that  would grace any top restaurant anywhere, such was the variety and quality. That all this was done on a simple wood stove with very basic cooking equipment was amazing. It was a highlight.

After a bit of a snooze back at the Goddess Gardens, I left Christine to swim in the pool and headed out with Nilanker to climb Pidurangala Rock. I was not confident that I would complete the climb, the reviews saying it was very difficult. They weren’t wrong. The steps were steep and very narrow, requiring a sideways foot placement at times. I rested quite a lot to keep the breathing under control but eventually the steps gave way to a broad ledge containing the ruins of an ancient buddhist monastery. Remains of stone walls showed where small cells were constructed under the overhang to house the monks and a earth brick and a mortar covered reclining buddha dates from the 5th Century AD.

From the monastery, the path was mostly a matter of climbing over rocks, sometimes with the aid of a stout rope. There were quite a few tourists on the rock, climbing late  to catch the sunset view. I was pleased to see that most were a lot younger than me.

Monastry ruins. View from Pidurangala Rock across to Sigiriya Rock

Emerging from the rocks onto the top was one of the “Oh wow!” moments as the full vista was exposed, the glorious Sigiriya Rock not far away and the backdrop of other peaks and mountain ranges. A couple of other Aussies of retirement age picked up on my West Coast Eagles shirt and we exchanged a few comments. They apologised for being Collingwood supporters.

The climb down proved much easier and I reached the bottom feeling a lot better than I did with the Little Adams Peak climb in Ella.

The Sigiriya area is very beautiful and rightly holds its place as one of Sri Lanka’s key attractions.

Sri Lanka Part 2 – South Coast

June 17, 2025 /

Day 5 (June 10) – Galle – We stayed at the Finlanka Hotel in Hikkaduwa, about 20 km north of Galle. It is a pretty place with lovely gardens and nice pool, a thing that seems to be the norm even in cheaper hotels in Sri Lanka. Once again, there were few, if any, other guests.

The night was interesting. The close presence of the Colombo-Galle rail line was not a real issue, just the Earth shaking every hour or so. Far worse was the lovely lights wrapped around a tree in the garden outside and set to blink on and off every 7 seconds. The curtains did not cover the top portion of the windows so it was bloody annoying. Fortunately, we both had sleep masks.

We also awoke to rain, the first so far. Today was a special holiday for the full moon. A holiday is celebrated every full moon but this was special because it celebrated the coming of Buddhism to Sri Lanka. It also meant that most restaurants were closed and those that opened would not serve alcohol. We pretended that it didn’t matter.

At breakfast, the owner apologized for the lack of the usual full Sri Lankan breakfast due to the holiday and proceeded to bring us separate plates of more food than we normally eat in a week, fruit platters, eggs on toast, hot dogs in buns, cakes, muffins, fruit smoothies, a pot of tea. It just kept coming and we hardly made a dent in it.

We headed off to Galle, with the holiday meaning that the roads were even more crowded than usual. Along the way we saw numerous long queues of people. These were places serving free food as part of the holiday. It seemed to be a lucky dip as to what you got. Some dished out bread and bananas, while the next had curry and rice, or even icecreams in cones. The lines showed just how well free food pulls a crowd.

First stop was the Japanese Peace Monument, an enormous Buddhist stupa donated by the Japanese after the tsunami. The Japanese gave a lot of support to Sri Lanka following the event and the gratitude is obvious. The location gave wonderful views over Galle Harbour. Inside the temple, people were asked to pray for peace between the Ukraine and Russia. Hard to argue that one.

Next, we headed down to the Dutch Fort. This is the amazing fortress that overlooks the Galle Cricket Ground, the scene of two test matches with Australia earlier in the year. We got used to the sight of people sitting on the walls of the fort watching, and little wonder, given the small size of the ground and the expense of the tickets. We had imagined we were seeing the remnants of the fort. Far from it. The fort is a large walled town, still complete and still working within, much as with places like Dubrovnik in Croatia. The walls are constructed of limestone, coral and earth ramparts, so thick that no cannon could ever have hoped to do any damage. The fort served to protect the Dutch interests up until the British take-over in the early 19th Century, which was largely done without a shot as the Dutch had been conquered by Napoleon at the time. As a fortress it is very impressive. As a focal point for the local population and social gathering place, it is equally so. This was the place to be, even in stormy weather.

Dutch Fort, Galle, ext to the cricket ground

The crowds were out and about on the walls of the fort. We enjoyed a walk of three sides, Nilanka meeting us with the car at the three quarter way, a good idea because the heavens opened shortly after. Driving through the town, we stopped at the Dutch church, a building showing all the austerity of the Dutch Reformation compared to the Catholic churches of Europe.

With few eating options, we did manage a couple of rolls with interesting fillings from a bakery before getting home. The afternoon was spent with a well earned rest and a swim. In the evening we wandered down to the main road to find the one establishment open for food service, a hotel, and had a wonderful Sri Lankan Pork Curry. Of course, we couldn’t wash it down with the usual beer and had to make do with watermelon juice (true).

Day 6 (June 11) – Being the only ones in the hotel, a full buffet breakfast was not served. Instead, plates were brought out every few minutes. A big plate of diced paw-paw, watermelon and two bananas came first and we just started into the shared plate when mine arrived. The first one was Christine’s. Before we had made a hole in that when two types of pancakes, banana and egg, arrived, along with coconut roti and curry dipping sauce. There was also a plate of string hoppers, little saucer sized things made of fine noodles. We were working hard, trying to show our appreciation by consuming stuff when four spiced sausages arrived and distracted us from anything else remotely healthy. This was washed down by a pot of tea, along with a paw-paw and banana smoothie. I was bursting at the seams, but Christine still managed a piece of vegemite toast. I felt guilty so I had two pieces of tea cake. All this and we actually refused the eggs and omelet offering.

Most of the day was spent driving. We only covered around 160km in total but progress is slow. Speed limits away from actual motorways are low, 40kph for tuk-tuks and motorbikes, 60kph for cars and trucks, 250kph for local buses. The buses are terrifying. They come at you, lights flashing, horns blaring and suspensions collapsing. They rule the roads. The police were very much in evidence, with pull-overs seen every few kilometres. Our driver is very conservative and we like it like that.

Along the way, we stopped at a lovely lighthouse, the southern-most point in Sri Lanka. There were a couple of young boys flying a kite in what was close to gale force winds. They appeared to be struggling with the spool of heavy fishing line. I held the line to feel the strength and it was similar to a 4 or 5 metre tiger shark grabbing a fish and taking off. They were slowly making ground with their hand spool so we left them to it. We climbed a slippery slope to the beautiful Coconut Hill lookout, a wonderful view of the coast from a precipice totally lacking in guard rails or walkways. Welcome to the real world.

Once we arrived in the Tissamaharama area, we traversed a long earth causeway with a large lake on one side. This is part of an elaborate irrigation system constructed around the 3rd Century BC by the Tamil Kingdom of Ruhana. There are five such lakes dotted around the area with an intricate system of canals to create a large irrigated area. It still being a festival holiday, the canals were filled with people of all ages, bathing, cooling off or simply finding a good place to socialize.

We visited the Tissamaharama Raja Maha Vihara, an ancient Buddhist temple from the 3rd Century BC, a colossal structure built from tiny bricks.

The road sides held a lot of small stalls, with one or two tables and piles of shallow earthern ware pots piled up. We stopped at one and sampled their product, little tubs of a curd made from buffalo milk covered with palm honey, the sap gathered from the flowering of a local palm. It was a complete 10/10 taste sensation. The honey is becoming less common as bees honey displaces it, probably making more money. The curd has a slight tang but is a very fine yoghurt by any standards.

Then it was the afternoon at the hotel, a very nice resort called the Pahalage Boutique Villas, which would have been fine except that it was very much in off-season rebuild mode. Many rooms were gutted and there were workers around, the only staff seeming to be the one manager. We were not impressed, despite their every effort to accommodate us. We had to ask for such simple things as a second towel and a kettle. Yes there was on-line TV where we could have watched the cricket. No, they hadn’t paid the subscription so no TV. We chose a meal each from the menu, no doubt so they could use Uber Eats to order in (yes, they have Uber Eats in Sri Lanka). It was not a big issue because we were only staying the one night but it was annoying, and messaged the tour company to tell them, saying we wanted to be assured that all future bookings were in hotels that were fully functioning. They came back within twenty minutes saying they had changed our next hotel in Ella. According to our driver, the off-season has the advantage of not having to fight crowds at all the attractions but the hotels are in go-slow mode.

Day 7 (12 June) – Tissamaharama to Ella – It was a very early start at 5:45 to head out to Yala National Park for a safari. Having located a friendly ATM to stock up on huge piles of cash to pay for the experience, we rendezvoused with our guide and his slightly beaten up Toyota Hilux with a six pack of high seats mounted in the ute well. It all looked like overkill until we saw the state of the tracks. A 4WD is definitely needed with a driver sufficiently experienced to negotiate the huge holes and ruts in the track. We hadn’t even reached the park entrance before we saw a tree full of monkeys, gray langurs, and a large (even by Australian standards) crocodile in a roadside pool. Once in the park, the utes spread out across the tracks, each jockeying for position to find the best animals. There was no shortage. Every water hole held buffalo, the excitement of a mongoose snuffling along by the side of the track soon became commonplace, herds of deer graced the grasslands and many pools harboured more large crocodiles. Both the Estuarine Crocodile (like ours) and the Marsh Crocodile are in the park. It looked like the Marsh Crocodile had a slightly shorter mouth. The highlight, of course, was a family of elephants coming to a waterhole to bathe and feed on the lilies. No bulls were in sight, all mothers and calves, but a couple of the mothers were huge beasts. The bird life too, was amazing, with some enormous hornbills, hundreds of beautiful bee eaters, bright iridescent blue kingfishers and a fantastic display of water birds.

Marsh Crocodile, Spotted Deer, Russet Mongoose, Water Buffalo

We spent four hours being thrown around in the back of the ute, but it was worth every minute. We couldn’t help but compare it to the wildlife safari in Borneo where actual wildlife was very scarce, even birdlife. We saw more each hour than we saw in 2 weeks in Borneo. The nature of the park helped. Yala is dry land bush, with low thorn scrub and a few large trees. There are wide open grass areas so spotting the animals was easy. None of the animals had any fear of humans at all. We did not manage to find either a leopard or a bear. The lack of leopards was puzzling because Yala has the highest concentration of leopards anywhere on the planet. Oh well, we can always Youtube it.

Bud uruwagala Rock Temple

After a quick shower and change back at the hotel, we hit the road again heading north into the mountains to Ella. The dry land country changed back to the rain forest as we climbed. Along the way, we stopped at another archeological buddhist site, theBud uruwagala Rock Temple, with an enormous 7m high carving of Buddha, along with some smaller carvings of Hindu Gods. These dated to around 700AD.

Near Ella, we stopped at a roadside lookout to take in the beautiful Ravanna Waterfall, a drop of around 25m and quite spectacular. There were lots of tourists here, and we watched in amazement as people left a handbag unattended right next to a red-faced Langur monkey who looked ready to steal everything it could. Don’t people watch Youtube? Why would you have anything to do with a monkey?

 

Ravanna Waterfall, Ella

Our hotel proved good enough, at least it was populated with people and a few guests. Best of all, it was only a short walk to the main street of Ella. Ella is the first full on tourist place we have seen, the magnificent views and walks bringing people here. The climate is wonderful, with mid 20s and cool nights. We are over 2000m in elevation and it helps. The main street is all bars, restaurants, health spas and curio shops.  We don’t find the same hard sell you get in other Asian places. Even the many tuk-tuk drivers are quiet and take a polite “no thankyou” as final.

Sri Lanka June 2025 Part 1

June 11, 2025 /

Day 1 (6 June) – Perth-Singapore-Sri Lanka. It is back to the international travel for us, off to Sri Lanka this time. The whole thing went very smoothly, with a bus and train trip to the airport, which is the first time since the train line opened that we have left during civilized hours, and a very quick flow through the formalities of immigration and security. Christine did get carted away for an extra scan because she had a knee brace on, but she didn’t get the full body frisk she was hoping for.
The Singapore Airlines flight to Changi was as good as any economy class can be with a good standard of food and a very generous red wine serving. The in flight movies are becoming tiresome though. As we have found with other airlines, you get around 3 minutes of ads before a show starts, which means if you surf through a few choices before settling on one, you can be subjected to the same pointless set of ads each time you change your mind. Then the announcer keeps interrupting the movie to advertise their in-flight duty free shop. It helps to have a few backup things on your own device.


Negotiating our way through Changi airport was easier than many other times because we were true “transit” and didn’t have to do immigration. It was only a short walk to the skytrain link from terminal 3 to Terminal 2 and we were soon settled in for the 2 hour wait for the next plane. The aircraft was big, but packed to the brim and many passengers had 3 or 4 items of hand luggage. How does this happen? We are always so careful to follow the rules but we are a minority it seems. With a time change coming up in Colombo, we adjusted our watches and tried to ignore the fact that we would really get there around 3am and had a small meal on the plane, refusing the main offerings. Then it was more dozing, watching stuff on the seat back screen and being aware of a gradual but persistent loss of mobility and feeling in the legs. Somehow we made it and got through Sri Lankan immigration and customs with no issues. They make a big thing of having an Electronic Travel Authority system where you have to go on-line and fill out lots of stuff only scammers should know. The main part is paying the $US52 each. Of course, Australians are visa free entry, you just need the ETA. The guy at the immigration counter didn’t even read it.
We were met by our driver, Nilanka, and taken a short drive to our stay in Negombo, the Optimum Residences. It was very late when we got there so we were shown straight to our room and we collapsed in a blissful sleep.

Day 2 (7 June) – Negombo – We expected to sleep late but ended up being first to breakfast at 8am. Able to scope out the surroundings in daylight, we found the Optimum Residences to be composed of two buildings of rooms and one large family home and office all set in beautiful gardens. The breakfast lounging area is next to a lovely swimming pool, with another outside our room. The rooms are basic, clean and comfortable. Breakfast was a wonderful buffet of mostly local foods and fruit, with enough variety to satisfy most tastes.


With breakfast out of the way, Nilanka arrived and we planned our day. Still needing some catch up sleep, we opted for afternoon excursions and we spent the morning in the pool or dozing. We were surprised to find the AFL matches on TV via ABC Australia so we watched Geelong demolish Gold Coast.
In the afternoon, it was off in the car to find an ATM. All our money is on a card (Wise) which has international currency exchange built in. We had very little in the way of Australian cash and no Sri Lankan Rupees. Concern set in when we got knock backs from three ATMs, uncertain as to whether the fault lay with our card or the ATM services being offered. Finally, we found a money changer and changed a $A50 note to give us something. Then we tried a supermarket where we could try out the card with purchases. No problem. Just cash withdrawal did not work.
Moving on we went down to the beach area, quite crowded it being a Saturday, and tried a restaurant with the card. Again no problems and they suggested that we try the ATM down the road, which was probably more tourist oriented. To our great joy, it issued us some cash. The bulk of our purchases will be with card, but cash is still needed at times.


We spent a lovely couple of hours at the beach side restaurant, sampling some delicious cuttlefish, a not so good but still filling local dish called kottu, like a noodle stir fry but with sliced up roti substituting for the noodles and, of course, quite a bit of beer to wash it all down. There was a lot of activity on the beach, with volleyball games and food trucks. The sea was quite unsettled but there didn’t seem to be much interest in swimming. As the restaurant began gearing up for live music and young people, we found our driver and headed home, happy that we were solvent again.

Day 3 (8 June) Negombo – It was a very early start with Nilanka arriving at 5:45 to pick us up to go to the fish markets. The early start is because they only run until around 7am, to ward off the heat of the day. They were amazing markets, with a lot of quality fish on display, all recently caught. Most fish were the same or very similar to our own northern species. There were a lot of bonito displayed and a few very large yellowfin tuna. Prawns were also a feature, from tiny river shrimps to large fresh tiger prawns. We saw no squid at all, but a great many cuttlefish. Apart from the obvious smell of fresh fish, the place not difficult to put up with, as many Asian fish markets are, probably due to the lack of dried fish, which is at a different market.


We walked onto the nearby bridge to watch the local fishing. It was well organized. The tide was running out hard and each fisherman had a little container attached to a cord to hold their live baits. Most used rods and reels with a simple rig to run a live bait down into the current. We saw one happy guy cart off three very large mangrove jacks towards the markets and there was also a beautiful barramundi around a metre long tied up on a cord and swimming in the current to keep it alive and fresh. It is a sign of a healthy fishery, with so much available in the markets and still available to catch locally.
Then it was back to the guest house for breakfast. We have researched many of the offerings that were unfamiliar and we found that much of the breakfast was made up of Sri Lankan street foods, pan roll, string hoppers, pittu and sweet pancake. Everything we tried was delicious and not too spicy, although I think the chili had been wound back a bit for the international guests.
The rest of the morning was spent relaxing in the pool before the Eagles – North Melbourne match. We watched the first half in our room then moved to the restaurant for lunch and to continue the game. The staff rushed around to get the TV working and to place an air con unit in front of us. We were in heaven, despite the eventual score. We feel like royalty sometimes. The staff can’t do too much and always with a big smile.
In the late afternoon, Nilanka picked us up and took us to Angurukaramulla Temple, a large Buddhist Temple complex that had an amazing visual display depicting the life of Buddha and the growth of the religion. Negombo is largely a Catholic city, but Buddhism will be dominant as we move on.
Next, it was the site of the old Dutch fort, much of which is now used as a prison. The original fort dated from the 1600s and built by the Portuguese, destroyed and rebuilt by the Dutch then taken over by the British. It is a story repeated throughout Asia.


Nearby is the fish drying area, where a big expanse of flat beach is devoted to drying fish on reed matting. It is heavily salted and sun dried, before packaging for distribution around Sri Lanka and beyond. There were anchovies, scad, mackerel and tuna being dried. Remarkably, the smell was quite bearable. I was amazed that the whole thing wasn’t a mass of birds feasting on the fish, but apart from the odd egret wolfing down some, the crows left the fish alone and there are no gulls anywhere in sight. I think it is the only place in the world I have been without gulls of some form.
We cruised the beach area again, very crowded on a Sunday evening, with many locals out in their finery. We stopped at a restaurant called Fish and Chips, partaking in a wonderful prawn curry and crab curry each. The main dish was supported with bowls of sambal, fried onions, potato curry and another sauce we couldn’t identify. Very, very delicious and rather messy to eat. We left feeling full. The evening was spent watching the Men’s French Open Final.

Day 4 (9 June) Colombo and Hillanka – We are on the move. The decision to stay three nights at Negombo was a good one. While the city itself is not a “must see” place, the chance to really relax after a very hectic few months has been good and the Optimum Residences is a fantastic place to stay.
It seemed to take an age to get out of Negombo, fighting tuk-tuks, motorbikes and pushbikes all the way. The lines on the road seem to mean nothing. It is not uncommon for several vehicles to make a new lane straddling a double white line. It isn’t a matter of the odd near miss, everything is a near miss. We have not seen any actual contact to date. Once on the motorway (toll), the 30 odd km to Colombo soon disappeared.
Colombo is a mix of old, messy, crowded and grubby, along with ultra modern stunning high rise buildings and wide open plazas down on the beach front. Our driver took us around all aspects. At one stage, we got caught in a traffic jam due to a Hindu parade, part of a festival. We toured the Huge Gangaramaya Buddhist Temple. While the many carvings and buddhas were stunning, the thing of special interest was the collection of donations made over the years and stored for display. People donated something of value as an act of devotion. Nothing is sold, but everything is displayed. There were a couple of 1930s Rolls Royces, numerous mounted elephant tusks, some mazing ebony furniture with ivory inlays, a whole showcase with Rolex watches just piled in and a ridiculous amount of jewelry. There was even a case of guns that looked like a weapons buy-back program.


The Colombo Museum was interesting. It is laid out in a chronological order, starting with pre-history and working through to British colonialism. What I learnt was the extent to which the Dutch rule had an influence, lasting over a Century and having a significant impact on architectural styles and furniture fashions still in use today. We stopped briefly at Independence Square, a monument to the end of British rule in 1948.


Getting out of Colombo and heading south proved harder than Negombo. The traffic was insane but eventually, we made it to the Ahungalla area on the beach and stopped at a Turtle Conservation Project. There are many of these operating and appear to be a tourist thing at first glance. However, the logic makes sense. Five species of turtles nest regularly along the open beaches of the coast. The eggs were hunted for food to the extent that actual hatchings and natural attrition due to predation could not keep up and all species were threatened. The system now is that there are many hatcheries set up along the coast, and people can dig up the eggs when the nesting is observed, take them to a hatchery and get paid for them. The hatchery places them in temperature controlled sand pits and releases the hatchlings in darkness to promote survival. As well as this, they take in injured turtles until ready for return to the sea. It was interesting to see fifty or so day-old hawks bill turtles all on the seaward side of their pond trying to satisfy their natural instinct to reach the ocean.

We stopped for a short while at a monument built by the Japanese in memory of those lost in the Tsunami of 2004, which resulted in over 30,000 deaths in Sri Lanka alone and many more in Indonesia and Thailand. The site was where a train was inundated. The pictures on display brought back memories of those very sad times.

 

 

A short distance away was the Madu River mangrove complex, a huge expanse of shallow water teeming with life. We took a “boat safari”. These tours annoy us. They are always horribly over-priced and we see far less than the average day in Shark Bay. However, this was a surprise. Within minutes, we were up close and personal with a large water monitor swimming across the river. Then we started spotting the numerous brilliantly coloured kingfishers, being lucky enough to see one snaffle a fish from the water. We saw many white-breasted sea eagles, darts, egrets and amazing tiny terns, that followed in the boats wake and dived to grab any small fish disturbed by the propellor. It was all action. The boat stopped off at an island where cinnamon is grown. We always thought it was the outer bark taken, but it is an inner layer of bark that is carefully sliced off, as demonstrated by an old man. The smell is amazing. Another interesting feature is that the river is criss-crossed with large ropes strung at the water level. These act as speed bumps, because the boats are forced to slow and raise their outboard motors to get over them, thereby reducing the wash that causes bank erosion. All in all, it was a fun tour and worth the money.

By the time we settled in the Finlanka Hotel in Hikkaduwa, we were all in. We dragged ourselves to the beachfront two hundred metres or so away and ate an unsatisfactory meal (our first poor meal in Sri Lanka) at a waterside restaurant and consumed a very satisfactory beer. Early to bed.

Sabah, Borneo 4-14 September 2024

September 15, 2024 /

Perth to KL  4-5 September

We felt like we were participants in the television reality show “The Great Race”, where contestants always seem to be running madly around in circles with their heavy backpacks on, trying to solve cryptic clues and receiving lots of knock-backs.

Our contest began as we drove to Perth Airport Long Term Parking through continual rain. These days, we do relatively little night driving, there being little need, but the conditions made the traffic on Tonkin Highway challenging at times. We made the dash for the shuttle bus stop, gained the sanctuary of the shelter and saw the read-outs of flight times. “Delayed” by two and a half hours. Our Malaysian Airways flight was scheduled for 1:25, but now listed for 4:15am. We were comfortably early at 10:45 but we now faced a long wait of either staying awake or somehow sleeping in an airport seat. There was also the worry about meeting our connecting flight to Sandakan in Sabah on time.

Already a tad irritable, the blood pressure rose when faced with a $13 a glass charge for a red wine and then copped the cheek of a “eftpos only” sign accompanied by a 1.6% surcharge on eftpos. I later found that the practice of charging a surcharge when no cash option is offered is illegal, but then the girl behind the bar is not the owner of the business, so what can one do?

The flight at least took off on time according to the new time and they had the good sense to delay the serving of a meal and darken down the plane so everyone could get some sleep. Christine slept quite well, I managed an hour or so between movies and the time passed tolerably well in the cramped economy class conditions. Breakfast was served with the rising of the sun but, it being Malaysian Airlines, chicken rice for breaky is a bit hard to take.

We had been told to head straight to the transfer counter at KL. We weren’t the only ones missing transfers, with another couple looking for a London flight and another now heading to Singapore to try to get a Hanoi connect. We eventually found help and were told they were holding the gate for us at B9. We were in building C so we had to find our way down to get on a bus to take us to B Block. All this time, we had still not entered Malaysia, a point that worried me. We were rushing from place to place, getting on buses, asking for lots of help. The system seems to be that you only ever give someone 60% of the answer, enough to make them think they know what you mean but leaving 40% unanswered. That’s how it was. We went from one place to another, finally coming to a point where going through immigration was inevitable. “That flight has gone,” we were told. I wasn’t surprised. We entered the country, and found yet another help desk.

The Malaysian Airlines people were very sorry and helpful. Within minutes, we were handed vouchers for more meals than we could eat, accommodation at a 4 star golf resort and transfer vouchers, along with boarding passes for the Sandakan flight the next day. Armed we these, and what we though were clear instructions for locating our luggage, we headed off again. The luggage proved a bigger puzzle, until we eventually found another very helpful girl who told us to go to carousel G, where our luggage was. After 20 minutes at Carousel G there was no sign of our two blue bags, even though our Tile Tracking App told us they were right close by. Finally, we walked right around the huge carousel to see them sitting off to the side, waiting for us.

We followed the instructions to find the transfer to our hotel, getting it 60% right before having to seek new instructions and then waiting an hour after missing a coach by mere seconds. By the time we arrived at the hotel, we were wrecked, happy to indulge ourselves in the luxurious surroundings and expansive buffet lunch.

View from our hotel window over the gold course

KL to Sandakan, Sabah – 6 September

We rose early, had an over-indulgent breakfast then were taken by private car to KL Airport. The formalities went without a hitch, boarding was on time and things were looking up.

At Sandakan, I was surprised to find we had to pass through immigration once more, despite it being a domestic flight, but the authorities had their reasons. This too went smoothly and we found a driver waiting for us on the other side of customs. The tour company had arranged for us to have a private tour to make up for some of what we had missed. Our guide was wonderful, an older man who used to be a guide may years before but now did free-lance driving. He still had the knowledge to make the afternoon really enjoyable.

We visited the Sepilok Orangutan Rehabilitation Centre. This facility is dedicated to caring for sick, injured or orphaned orangutans and allowing them to return to the wild. Some animals choose not to leave, and continue adult life in the forests around the centre, benefitting from the food and medical availability. The success rate of a wild return is 66%, and since opening in 1964, the centre has catered for 760 orangutans. The first thing that struck me was the incredible height of the timber in the rainforest, with huge ironwood, ficus and teak trees abounding. The understory was almost impenetrable but we had the benefit of an elevated boardwalk.

We watched one female orangutan at a feeding platform doing her thing with the assortment of fruits and vegetables before heading to another area, that acts as a nursery area for the young ones or nursing mothers. This was a highlight, watching the juveniles play, and the obvious loving bonds between two females, one which had a young one and the other that seemed to want a bit of a cuddle. We could have sat for hours and just watched the family interactions.

The Sepilok Orangutan Rehabilitation Sanctuary

Walking back along the boardwalk, we encountered a female orangutan with baby walking towards us. On instruction from staff, we just kept to one side of the boardwalk and the pair passed by quite happily.

From the orangutan sanctuary, we made our way to the Sandakan Australian War Memorial Gardens. The gardens are set on the site of the POW camp, and although little remains, there were a few bits and pieces scattered around, each documented for its significance. It was from here that 2,434 POWs were sent off on the infamous “death marches”. Three marches were organized late in the war to carry supplies to embattled Japanese troops in Ranau. Only six survived, and only because they escaped. The rest were so malnourished that they could not complete the marches, or died shortly after reaching the camp in Ranau.

I found the site particularly emotional, because my father had been stationed here after the liberation. As a Japanese interpreter, he had a part to play in the interrogations of many that were later convicted of war atrocities. He was never one to talk much about it but I was always interested in the story. I can recall seeing a photo of him on the beach at Sandakan but its whereabouts is now a mystery.

Sandakan with a view from our hotel window

We checked into the Hotel Elopura (the ancient name for Sandakan). This proved to be a 2 star hotel trying to be a 4 star but not making the grade. Still, the shower was hot, the location excellent with street markets one side and waterfront eats the other. The food on the street is incredibly cheap. The challenge is to find a place that has acceptable food and cold beer. We are in the heartland of muslim Malaysia, so alcohol is not readily available. We found a seafood restaurant that sold beer, so we skipped the food and had a relaxing cold Anchor Beer. The menu was tempting, a whole mud crab in chilli sauce only costing 35Rt or $A10.50. Where in Australia could you get that? In the end, we had our beer and moved down the boardwalk to Bistro 88, where we had a huge bowl of fried squid, followed by a plate of pepper sauce chicken wings, with a few more Tiger Beers for 57Rt, less than $A20.

Borneo Natural Sukau Bilit Lodge – Sept 7,8

It was another early rise (getting sick of them) for breakfast overlooking Sandakan Harbour before getting on the tour bus for the trip to the rainforest lodge. Along the way, we stopped at a proboscis monkey sanctuary. These strange looking creatures feature a large overhanging fleshy nose, making for a really comical appearance. I am not sure to what extent it was an actual sanctuary rather than a tourist orientated feeding situation although it did provide for a population of monkey whose habitat has been largely destroyed by palm oil plantations. The monkeys typically live in a mangrove forest on the edge of rivers and the boardwalk out to their living area was alive with birds, mudskippers and insects. There were also long-tailed macaques, a very common type of monkey that has no fear of humans at all and are well known to steal what ever they can.

The Proboscis Monkey Sanctuary

We pushed on and arrived at the rainforest lodge, situated on the edge of the Kinabatangan River, Borneo’s longest river. The lodge consists of a large open communal area and numerous individual chalets, all built on stilts and connected by high wooden boardwalks. The all-timber chalet was spacious, air-conditioned and equipped with a good ensuite bathroom. It was very comfortable and quite charming, set amongst rainforest with its resident population of mischievous monkeys. At times, the monkeys would descend on the eating area trying to steal food. Despite the pleas of the locals, some silly tourists insisted on leaving food where the monkeys could get at it, thereby encouraging their behaviour. The food was one thing, but phones, cameras and wallets are a bigger concern. They take anything.

TheNatural Sukau Bilit Lodge

The main activity consists of getting into long boats and being driven along the river spotting for wildlife. The main targets were long tailed macaques, red leaf monkeys, proboscis monkeys, hornbills, crocodiles, orangutans and elephants. We managed most, but failed with the elephants. There were a total of three cruises scheduled, but we begged off the 5:45am start and slept in. When there was word around of a herd of elephants some 30km down river, an afternoon trip was organized. We travelled at high speed down the river, entered a small quiet tributary and cruised the banks. A group of fishermen gave us the news that the elephants had moved on. We would have been happy to shrug our shoulders and say “C’est la vie” but the guide tried to make up for it by subjecting us to another hour and a half of cruising the river, occasionally stopping to watch yet more monkeys play.

Searching for wildlife on the Kinabatangan River

The food at the lodge was all local, and incredibly good. They did have difficulty managing the concept of “COLD” Tiger Beer but were very obliging when groups of Aussies basically commandeered the icecream freezer to chill drinks.

On the second day, we drove to the nearby Gomantong Cave System. These are not so much a cave system in the normal sense, but rather enormous cavernous overhangs, with several pothole entrances in the roof. The caves are heavily populated by bats. Swifts also return every year to build nests along the walls and roof and there is an age-old tradition of harvesting the nests after the young are raised for bird’s nest soup. The nests sell for over $1000 a kilo so the dangerous practice of climbing long slender ladders to get to the nests is justified.  The place just reeks of toxic bat droppings. The ground literally crawls with huge cockroaches and the walls are home for big centipedes with extremely long legs. Some of the ground is moist and home for small crabs. We watched one dragging the body of a baby swift way as its prize. Fortunately, we were forewarned and wore helmets for the bat droppings and mask coverings to make the smell bearable. The boardwalk to reach the cave was more of a highlight, with the rainforest harboring beautiful insect life, some amazing butterflies and a lovely family of red-leafed monkeys. We also saw an eagle return to a tree clutching its prize of a bat.

The Gomantong Cave

Afte the cave, we returned to the lodge. The lodge was a wonderful place to stay, even though the whole nature wildlife experience was rather underwhelming. For some reason, bird life is scarce by Australian standards and I missed the constant chatter they create. Excluding a number of monkey species, there is little diversity of other animals and a river cruise does not compare with a similar cruises along a river in the NT. Another very upsetting aspect was the rubbish in the river. There were plastic water bottles everywhere. At one point, where a major snag had created a raft of branches, I estimated more than 500 bottles had been caught up. The local people claim to protect the natural forest for tourism and part of their cultural connection. They need to do something about the rubbish.

On the second day, a group of young travellers arrived, most with various European accents. I took notice of quite a few of the young girls, for all the wrong reasons. They had come to a local community where all the women are dressed to cover up and they chose to parade around in skin-tight two piece fitness wear. It must have been insulting for the local people, and I certainly found it very disrespectful. Not all of our Australian tour group were seniors like us, but everyone dressed respectfully and in keeping with the needs of the day’s activity. Being Australians, we did rather insist on finding a way of keeping beer cold, a challenge the locals seemed happy to help us with despite their own lack of alcohol.

Kinabalu Pines Resort – Sept 9

We both woke up with the good old Bali belly, or at least the Borneo version of it. I was only affected in the bottom end but Christine worked both ends. We had some Gastro Stop, which stayed the runs and another guest supplied some anti-nausea meds so we were able to pack and take to the bus in a reasonable condition. The day consisted of lots of driving, around 6 hours of it, taking Route AH150 across Sabah towards Kota Kinabalu. On the Malay Peninsula, intercity roads are extremely good, usually dual carriageway and formed to smooth out the hills. In Sabah, they are working on it, but the main arterial route has a long way to go before it is finished. Travel is slowed by the 50 kilometres of roadworks and the ever present palm oil trucks, not to mention the large potholes. We bumped our way eastwards, stopping a few times at road houses for toilet breaks or snacks. The bus refuelled at one point, everyone amazed at the 75c per litre. Apparently, fuel is subsidized by the Government. As we headed east, the country became increasingly mountainous, slowing our progress. The palm oil plantations gave way to thick jungle, making one huge green carpet around the chain of mountains that leads to the imposing Mt Kinabalu.

Our first real stop was at the Sabah Tea Plantation under the shadow of Mt Kinabalu. Here we had lunch, something that did not interest us much, apart from a bit of soup and tiny tastings of the five courses offered. The heavens had opened, the first rain of the trip, and it made up for the rainless days, pouring down in a true tropical downpour that lasted half an hour or so. We did buy some tea from the shop, being very impressed with all the tea we had sampled in Sabah, so much so that I have turned to drinking my tea black.

Sabah Tea Plantation

The tea house was in a district called Ranau. This was the end point for the infamous Death Marches, and there are several memorials around telling the story of those who suffered and died. Later, we shared a dining room with a tour group of Japanese, and I found myself wondering whether the tour programs are adjusted for them or whether there is the same focus on the atrocities of WWII.

After the tea house lunch, the plan was to visit a “Fish Spa”, where people dip their feet into the river and have all the old and loose skin eaten away by fish measuring up to a foot long. We questioned whether this would actually be fun, as did most of the others on the tour, and so none of us seemed upset when we were told that the heavy rain had caused localized flooding and the experience was off the agenda.

We settled in the evening at the Kinabalu Pines Resort, a series of chalets and a restaurant offering magnificent view of Mt Kinabalu. At 4050m, it is a serious peak and forms a strong part of the local cultural beliefs. Although shrouded in cloud, we got enough of a view to give great promise to the vista in the morning. The temperature too, is much lower, with the resort being around 2000m above sea level. It is strange to see hydrangeas, lilies and portulaca growing in the garden beds after so much jungle growth. Our room was not even air-conditioned and didn’t seem to need it.

The Pines Lodge and Mt Kinabalu

Dinner at the restaurant was a huge disappointment. Feeling much better and ready for something substantial to eat, we found the food to be terrible, the first bad experience we have had in Borneo. Even the steamed white rice was unpleasant. The Google Reviews backed up our opinion. Nice place, poor food.

Kota Kinabalu  10 -13 September

We had a later than usual start at 9am, heading off to the Ranau Death March Memorial. There are four gardens, Australian, British, Bornean and Contemplative, each dedicated to one of the three groups that suffered so much under the Japanese occupation of 1942-45. We sat and watched an old Channel Nine report on the death marches, back when a group of Australian men and women re-enacted the same march of 260km in 2005. The footage included interviews with two of the only six people to survive the experience and it brought tears to everyone’s eyes. The tissues were out in force.  After the film, we inspected each of the four gardens. It was a moving moment. Everyone felt the same way, a sense of shame and disappointment that more is not made of this terrible event back in Australia. Perhaps it is because it was part of a stuff-up on the part of the Australian and US leaders. There was a clear opportunity for a rescue mission early in 1945, but it was abandoned after some wrong intelligence that said the prisoners had already been moved. General Blaney blamed MacArthur, General MacArthur blamed Blaney. More than 2,500 Australians and around 500 British died.

Ranau Death March Memorial

From the war memorial, we headed to the Kinabalu National Park for a walk through the Botanic Garden. With over 250 orchid species growing, it would  be an amazing place in flowering season, but despite the lack of colour, it was still extremely beautiful, with some of the fern and moss communities on the streamside boulders being truly amazing. Our guide, Sarah, was quite an expert on the flora of the area and especially knowledgeable about the medicinal properties assigned to many of the plants through the old tribal cultures. Sarah is obviously very proud of her culture and has done a terrific job of promoting her people throughout the tour.

Mt Kinabalu National Park

Lunch was at a mountain-top restaurant, which proved to be a big improve on the Pines Resort, especially a deep fried mushroom dish, a some delicious crispy skin chicken. There should have been a wonderful view but the heavens opened once again, reducing visibility to mere metres and making for a mad dash back to the bus. It was a long slow drive down the mountains to Kota Kinabalu, with a brief stop at a souvenir market outlet.

Kota Kinabalu is a  medium sized town of around half a million people. It is modernizing but still has big areas that look like the 1970s, interspersed with modern blocks of offices , hotels and residences. Unlike the areas we have travelled through, Kota Kinabalu has a heavy Christian population (Catholic) and a large ethnic Chinese Malay community, so food offerings and entertainment is more diverse. It has a healthy tourist trade, with a number of top hotels and resorts. Ours is the Shangri-La Downtown, and claims to be 4 star but is definitely only a 3. It lacks a swimming pool and even a dedicated bar. Quite a number of people in our tour had issues with their rooms, demanding changes, but not always getting complete satisfaction in a highly booked hotel. To not have working air-conditioning in this climate is not on. We had no complaints though, other than the organization of breakfast being a bit of a shambles. There are usually three to four tour groups in and to try to service them with one egg chef is crazy. There are big bottle necks in the self serve process around the single toaster that requires two passes to brown the bread. I assume it has been this way for a long time and it is a fairly simple fix.

Views of Kota Kinabalu

Around Kota Kinabalu

The first day of activities in Kota Kinabalu was a boat ride out to the tiny Manukan Island, around 8km off shore. We set out in two open boats, each holding 14 people and motored into a choppy sea in 15 knot breezes. In no time at all, we were totally drenched, some even resorting to donning a mask and snorkel. The water kept coming aboard, the only saving grace being that it was at least lovely and warm. Most had opted to wear day clothes with a change of bathers. We needed to have boarded in bathers.

Once at the island, we found a pretty little resort with a nice sand beach, and marked off snorkelling areas over extensive coral. However, the on-shore breeze stirred everything up and made a low surf line across the beach, so only swimming was really feasible. Once in the water, the sand gave way to a rock rubble bottom, so the best idea was to swim out to deeper water. The water was around 30 degrees and most of the group enjoyed a good swim. Before long, the looming threat of a thunderstorm appeared and we made for the shelter of the restaurant to have a beer, which being the only place on the island, cost more than double what it did elsewhere. The wind increased, shutting down the beach, but the rain skirted us, leaving us free to enjoy a good lunch of barbecued skewers, satay and seafood. After lunch, a second squall arrived and near horizontal rain poured through the open air restaurant area, making us evacuate to an indoor area to await a boat home.

Manakn Island

Our guide had arranged one boat with more cover, a very good sea going powered catamaran. It would not take the whole group so 8 people opted for the open boat again, in much bigger seas. They probably fared better, because the skipper of the small boat took it slow, while the catamaran skipper opened up both engines and people seated on one side still got drenched. We were all able to laugh about the whole experience.

On our second day in Kota Kinabalu, we visited the Mali Mali Cultural Village up in the foothills of Mt Kinabalu. This proved to be the highlight of the tour. It is a living display of the old lifestyles of five of the tribes of Sabah, with reconstructions of the houses and long-houses used in older times, although some still exist today as part of a preferred lifestyle. As we were introduced to each tribe, there were people present to demonstrate cooking, making of rice wine, fire making, rope making and other traditional skills. Despite the fact that most of the 2 hour tour was spent in heavy rain, it was informative and entertaining. Much was made of the head-hunting lifestyle of the past, which, in some cases, did not completely disappear until after WWII. One of our guides said his grandfather had been a head hunter and still retained his heads. The head hunting was a way of life, attacking other groups within the tribe as well as other tribes. A man could not marry unless he had proved his strength by taking heads, with a desirable bride demanding as many as 20 heads. Some tribes only took male warrior heads, while others took any head, man, woman or child. They were dangerous times.

Mari Mari Cultural Village

The final tribe was the Murat, the most feared of the head-hunting tribes. As we approached their hall, I was sent out to greet the head man, with instructions to keep my hands at my sides and speak directly, telling him where we had come from and why we were visiting. If he was feeling generous, he would spare our heads. I must admit, this guy looked fearsome. It was a laugh.

The tour finished with a cultural dance display. These are never our favourite thing, but this display was entertaining, the music being quite infectious and the dance skill amazing, especially the last one where warrior men moved their feet incredible fast across a grid of clashing bamboo sticks.

Mari Mari Cultural Dance

The meal the followed was all local traditional food and was delicious.

We had a few hours each day of free time in Kota Kinabalu. It is much like any Malaysian city, with a few shopping malls and a great many small shops. On the waterfront, there is a restaurant/bar strip that saw most of our group gather together each evening, much to the delight of the owners of the one spot we had somehow settled on. We even found ourselves buying pizza, a welcome relief from curry and rice, which proved to be a first class pizza by any definition.

The fresh markets are often a place to be avoided in Asian cities, but Kota Kinabalu’s was very clean and lacked the pungent smell of others. The fish market was filled with very fresh looking fish of all types, along with a wonderful assortment of equally fresh looking shellfish.

Overall, the experience has been a positive one and certainly represents one of the best value tours one could hope for. Some of our tour had bad experiences with Malaysian Airlines, with return flights cancelled and new flights occurring two days later with a return to Sydney via KL then Hong Kong. The extra two days was at the travellers expense and Malaysian Airlines told them to use travel insurance. Some people were critical of the tour operators, Trip-a Deal, but we found them to be very helpful and more than accommodating with us. Their responsibility for flights ends once the flights are booked, they are very clear on that. However, in our case, they laid on a private tour to make up for what we had missed by being a day late. Malaysian Airlines too, treated us very well to accommodate us in KL.

Sarah, our guide, and Muss, our driver, were both first class. Sarah had an encyclopedic knowledge of the various cultures of Sabah and a great sense of humour. Muss was a very careful and patient bus driver in some very difficult conditions. He also went out of his was to assist us all with storage of cold drinks in eskies and stopping at the best places to purchase alcohol, very necessary when looking after Aussies.

Sarah, our guide and Muss, our driver

The tour was very busy and rather full on. A complete relax day in the middle would have been good. The guide was worried about the day we had to drive almost right across Sabah, a whole 280kms. However, it did take 6 hours but no one seemed overly bothered. We noticed that the tour operates in either direction. We came to the conclusion that it wouldn’t matter which direction you went, if anything, having the knowledge from the Mali Mali Cultural Centre early in the tour might have been a plus.

The group we were with was a diverse one, with mostly couples around our age or slightly younger, as well as a few young people and even one teenager. We found that there was a lot of mobility with no one forming little sub-groups and a lot of social mixing in the times we had to spare. We were all Aussies, from every state bar the NT and SA, and we were the only Western Australians.

The biggest disappointment was the lack of wildlife. Sabah is promoted as a wildlife destination, and it has some of the last remaining rainforest communities on the planet,  but sighting wildlife in the heavy jungle is difficult and a waiting game. To be honest, we see far more wildlife floating down a river in the Kimberley or NT than we did here.

The flight home went without a hitch, with only a 2 hour transfer in KL and an arrival in Perth around 1am.

Would we recommend it? Yes. Great value for money at $4600 for 2 people which included all the airfares, accommodation and most meals.

 

 

Singapore 27-31 July 2019

August 1, 2019 /

The stark differences between Singapore and Bangkok struck us as soon as we exited the aircraft and entered the incredible world of Changi Airport efficiency. The Immigration lines were a fraction of the length of those in Thailand, the processing twice the speed and the signage clear and informative. The only small inconvenience we experienced was that our MRT cards had expired and we had to purchase new ones. One was so old that we could not retrieve the $13 credit on it but the other was replaced and the credit transferred. Then it was away on the MRT with a change of trains to the Downtown line at Expo and an easy 30 minute ride to the riverside area and the Robertson Quay Hotel.

The Robertson Quay Hotel is superbly located right next to the Singapore River and surrounded by wonderful eateries and incredible ambience. It is quiet by day except for the steady stream of fitness types jogging along the river paths and vibrant at night. What would have once been a smelly, busy and somewhat shady part of the old colonial city is now one of the chic places to be seen. Unfortunately, the prices reflect that and grabbing a beer and a snack can hit the hip pocket quite hard. The hotel itself is very moderately priced by Singapore standards in a city where anything around $100 a night is a bargain. It is basic, lacking in glitz and glamour but clean, does a very basic but edible breakfast and even has a small comfortable pool. Strangely, the foyer is the least glamorous part of the hotel, with the actual rooms presenting better than the public face of the place. It’s usually the other way around.

Around the Robertson Quay Hotel

By the time we had checked in and stowed out luggage, it was around 8:30pm and too late to move too far away so we explored around, settling on a great bar that had affordable beer and an exciting range of tapas dishes. We were already missing the luxury of endless food and drink at the M Club in Bangkok.

Over the next three days, we re-acquainted ourselves with our favourite eateries. We have not visited Singapore since 2010 and had heard tales of how the place is now too pricey as a holiday destination. We actually did not find this to be the case, but then we know where to look. What has changed in the last twenty years is the lifestyle of many Singaporeans, whose increased income and improved living conditions has produced great change across the city. The riverside area is a prime example, full of eateries selling Italian, Spanish, Mexican, Japanese and Korean foods, rather than the traditional Hokkien and Nonya foods of the past. The old choice between a Tiger or a Carlsberg beer has now morphed into a bewildering array of craft beers with prices to match ($12 pints are the norm). Wine, once a rarity, is now everywhere, although a deep wallet is needed with a tiny glass of the cheapest red running at $8 to $10.

However, once away from the riverside, marina or downtown areas and back to the more traditional food stall concept the prices drop away to what they were twenty years ago. We visited the very touristy Newton Circus where prices have always been $1 to $2 dearer per dish than the more local places but things were still affordable, with many dishes available for $4 and a large 700ml Tiger Beer selling at $7.50. It is fun to watch the hawkers pounce on first time tourists with the outrageously expensive seafood menus with a bit of pressure selling soon making the bill mount. More savvy visitors will look around to see which stalls have the longest lines of locals, because that is where the good food is. We basically came back to Singapore just to sample some local favourite dishes that somehow are never as good if cooked elsewhere in the world.

Our favourite, Murtabak, is a genuine Straits special and one stall at Newton Circus produces the best. It is a pancake filled with cabbage and mutton then fried and chopped into slices. It is served with a wonderful curry sauce for dipping. Delicious.

We also savour the Singapore Oyster Omelette, not a real omelette in the French sense but fresh oysters fried quickly with a mixture of beaten egg and flour. It takes on a light but partly crusty texture with the plump oysters dotted throughout. It’s hard to beat.

Another favourite is Carrot Cake, not a real cake in the usual sense and neither does it contain carrot in the usual sense. The “carrot” is actually a white yam and it is diced and fried up in a similar mixture to the oyster omelette. The yam is soft and fluffy if done well. It is a wonderful flavour.

Food stalls, Murtabak and even the Fremantle Seafood Market (very up market)

We also ate at the old People’s Park in China Town where several floors of food stalls in the old tradition still exist. Inside the complex can be hot and steamy at times with enough spices and cooking aromas to overcome the hardiest of western senses but when things are quieter or near the outside of the complex things are easier to handle. Here, most dishes will be had for $3 or $4. The range is not quite as big as in some places with Hokkien dishes predominating but it is the place to get lots of good cheap BBQ duck. Christine finds in very hard to go past duck while I feel the same about wontons and the broad flat rice noodles used in Hor Fun or Kwaey Teow.

Because we had to take some time off from eating, we did a couple of excursions. Just down the road a bit from our hotel was the Fort Canning area, once a British fortress and barracks but now a beautiful nature park spread across a 50m high hill. Fortunately, a series of escalators keeps the climb to the top civilized. It is worth the walk to take in the magnificent trees that grow on the slopes of the hill, splendid tropical species adorned with all manner of staghorn and bird’s nest ferns. The hill is thought to be the ancient site of a palace dating from around the 14th Century when a kingdom called Singapura was prominent. We visited an archaeological site where a dig has exposed some old walls and layers of pottery shards. We also toured a spice garden where an impressive range of Asian spices are growing. It was a really worthwhile place to explore. It was interesting to note the lack of trees on the photographs and lithographs of Fort Canning in the old days. I guess there is not much point in having a fortress full of guns but surrounded by forest so cutting down all the trees makes some kind of sense. All the wonderful towering giants we admired must have dated from after the time of the hill being used as a fortress.

Fort Canning Park

At the base of Fort Canning is the Singapore National Museum, which we last visited over twenty years ago. These days, it is a modern and captivating display of the history of the island nation, each era being beautifully represented with a mixture of old artifacts, photographs and hi-tech electronic displays. It is well worth a couple of hours. One section was dedicated to the tribulations suffered by the locals during the Japanese occupation, a part of history that is often overshadowed by the story of the interned allied soldiers. The Chinese Singaporeans in particular suffered terribly at the hands of the invaders with more than 5000 being executed. It was a bit of an eye-opener.

Every time we visit Singapore it has changed, always for the better. For those who bemoan the lack of markets stuffed full of pirated goods and stores packed full of cheap electronic goods remember that the life of the average Singaporean has improved enormously in the last three decades. While extreme wealth is very much in evidence, it is also clear that the growth in wealth has been shared to a much greater extent than some SE Asian countries. The population is relatively stable but with an ageing profile, leading to a shortage of local labour. The nation relies on importing labour to maintain utilities and growth. The Singaporeans seem to have found a marvellous balance between modern growth and first class facilities while maintaining a strong sense of the past and their heritage. It is clean, safe and still very affordable. Most importantly, everything seems to work and work well. People obey laws and behave well towards each other. We love it.

Project Vietnam – Phong Nha – March 2017

March 26, 2017 /

9 March 2017 – Perth to Saigon via Kuala Lumpur

An early flight on Air Asia saw us heading off to Kuala Lumpur and a 2 hour stop over before going on to Ho Chi Minh City. Ahead of us was a two week sting on a Project Vietnam work site in Phuong Nha, a small town in the mountains inland of Dong Hoi on the Central Coast. We looked forward to a comfortable flight  because we had been granted an extra seat for the small payment of $24. However, when we boarded the plane we found that there were so few passengers that we could have easily had as many seats as we wanted without paying the extra. It was a 300 seat aircraft and I estimate there were about 120 passengers. So nice to be flying outside of school holiday times.

We passed the time with watching movies, reading, snoozing and eating the tiny little meals that they serve you. The flight across from KL to Ho Chi Minh City was a bit of a sardine tin squeeze but fortunately it was a shade under two hours. The luxury of a pre-booked car at the airport got us into the Saigon traffic jams quickly and easily and the next 45 minutes was spent being surrounded by motorbikes. I really don’t understand why we rarely see any form of collision but somehow all the vehicles avoid actual contact. Later, we did notice that a lot of the young back packers around had serious bandages on legs and arms, signs of less fortunate experiences on motorbikes. With so much at stake and the state of the hospital services here, it defeats me why the young people do it yet they continue to think they can manage like a local. The fact is that most can’t.

We stayed at the iPeace Hotel in the Pham Ngu Lao district, or “Backpacker Street”. It has been 5 years since our last visit and little has changed. There are definitely more tourists but the chaotic streets and pushy street vendors are still a feature. The cheap eats and beer are still available but the variety has increased, with more western food and pizza type things invading the scene. Across in the central park, a big new shopping mall and modern food hall has opened, a far cry from the old Ben Thanh Markets where Asia’s most aggressive sellers still ply their trade.

With bags dumped and our thirst driving us, we hit the streets, only to discover Brendon, Roger and Anne-Marie in the Bee Saigon Restaurant. They were to head off to Phuong Nha the next day so we spent some time catching up and downing a few beers, some excellent chilli squid and a plate of amazing tempura vegetables. A trio of young German girls provided further entertainment before we returned to the hotel to crash for the night.

Our day in Saigon was mostly spent just wandering the streets, seeking the odd refreshment, buying some SIMS for our phones and relaxing. We continued to run into Aussies, including a couple from Bruce Rock, so proving that the World is a rather small place after all. A trip to the Ben Thanh Markets was the usual run of the sales girls, “I have shirt for you Mista. We have shirts. How many you want? Etc etc”. We were actually looking for a cheap Chinese fitness watch, like the $22 one I am wearing. Christine has a nice Garmin job on her wrist but somewhere in an airport transit it vanished. It was probably ripped off while putting on a backpack. However, it seems that the “FitBit” craze has yet to hit Vietnam and there was not a fitness band to be seen anywhere.

For our airport transfer we used an airport taxi service again, this time organised by the hotel. We paid them and were given a voucher for the driver. “Pay no more,” said the hotel girl. The said taxi arrived at the appointed time of 6:15 am and we set off, having a limited conversation on broken English. The driver was incredibly skilful, he had to be or he would have killed a great many people the way he drove. For some reason, we took a maze of back streets and alley ways, quickly being swallowed up by the teeming masses of life away from the tourist areas. One tends to forget just how many very poor people there still are in the big cities. The car came to a grinding halt and a plastic bag appeared through the window. The driver grinned and we set off again as he explained that he had diverted to pick up his breakfast from his “good wife”.

Approaching the airport, he asked us if we would pay the toll for him as a way of tipping him. This was a bit rude because we had already paid the toll in our fare but since the 30,000d ($1.80) was not going to break the bank we agreed. The cheeky guy then proceeded to park outside the airport control and walk us into the domestic area, meaning he got to pocket both the toll supplied to him through our fare and the “tip” we had given him. It’s called enterprise.

Arriving at Dong Hoi

The flight to Dong Hoi was uneventful, if one discounts the extremely violent landing that had the aircraft slewing sideways for a while. There was much gripping of seats and many white faces, even though most passengers were of an oriental colouring. However, we all survived and our little group of six PVI participants were met by a driver and we were soon off into the mountain area. Here the mountains are not high, but very spectacular, being more in the nature of rugged heavily weathered limestone pinnacles called Karsts. Our destination, Phong Nha, is nestled on the banks of the Song River deep within the mountain system. The limestone system house a number of cave systems, the largest of which was discovered as late as 2004 and has proved to be the World’s longest cave system, clocking in at a little over 35km long.

The town is basically a one street affair, between the mountains and the river. The single street houses a  great many small hotels and guest houses, along with the usual collection of restaurants and bars. However, the incredible beauty of the town’s location provides a  completely different aspect. The surrounding karsts loom over the village and in the morning, charming mists thread their way between the peaks.

The caving attracts backpackers, which in turn downgrades the cuisine on offer from delightful local to “Western and chips”. However, if one is discerning, some good little eateries can still be found. The PVI contingent of around 33 was booked in at the Paradise Hotel, a newly refurbished but basic establishment. The staff proved very accommodating and the rooms were basic but clean and comfortable. We spent much of the weekend catching up with friends from past projects and getting to know the newcomers. A fair bit of effort was also put into sampling the food and beverage of the surrounds.

Around Phong Nha

The PVI Project

Our work centres around a small school in the hamlet of Thanh Binh, about 7 kms down river from Phong Nha. The original plan involved the demolition of the two room school, which is very prone to flooding and the building of a replacement. However, the project has proven much bigger than anticipated, with the new structure now being a two storey building on an upraised platform. This will need a lot of work before it is ready for our team and a lot more money than we anticipated. Hence, the plan has now changed into a two or even three year plan. This year, PVI will pay for the major formwork and structure to first storey level and next year aim at completing the rest. Meanwhile, we will renovate the old structure using our extensive labour resources so that it can be used over the next three years or so while the new school is being built. As a team, we are good at renovation, which in this case will involve lots of scraping, painting and cleaning along with the installation of ceilings and a full electrical upgrade.

Because we have a large team of 35, we have also agreed to renovate the kindergarten at another nearby school. It is basically in good repair but could do with a damn good lick of paint. Later in the project, we took on yet another job, repainting a block of four classrooms at a primary school a kilometre of so from our main job.

Each day, both teams pile into a couple of mini buses and bump our way across a winding mud filled road to the work site. The road generally follows the Song River, which provides rich growing opportunities along a narrow flood plain. Numerous houses are strung out along its length, surprisingly modern and well constructed. Remnants of the old bamboo and woven grass structures can still be seen but new structures abound. The area is strongly Catholic and we pass several huge churches, one with an incredible blend of traditional and an oriental architectures.  Beyond the road, the country generally rises steeply into forested mountains with few houses.  Once on site, we are pretty much stuck out there for the day.

We work hard, have plenty of laughs, and somehow manage to communicate with the teachers and local construction workers. The kids are relentless with their waving and calling out “Hellooo”. There are just so many times one can reply. You can be engrossed in a task to find a child at your elbow who will announce their presence with a “hello”. This will be followed a few minutes later by another greeting, then another and so on. The children who used to come around the kindergarten site were lovely and even joined in the work at ties, painting and using the “Gerni”. The local security man was far less tolerant of children. He would chase them around with a stick, sometimes dabbed in paint. The children fled in all directions when he appeared. The kids up at the primary school were different. They seemed to act in a pack and mobbed us on several occasions. Their demands for money were the first I have ever heard from children in Vietnam. The staff at the kindergarten were wonderful, full of good cheer and laughter. They often worked with us and liked to cook us some little treats for afternoon tea. Up at the Primary School, the children were still in attendance while we worked and so the teachers were still busy, yet they seemed more distant than the kindy staff.

After work, most people head for the comfort of a warm shower before moving around the town to shop for supplies, find a place to catch a drink or sometimes just find solitude with a book for a bit. We had a few favourite little establishments where we would have a beer and chips or spring rolls. Our favourite haunt was the Tuan Ngoc Restaurant, named after the couple who own it. The food was enjoyable but the most pleasure came from talking with them and learning a little about life in Phong Nha. Tuan had been raised here and Ngoc had come from nearby Dong Hoi. Tuan work overseas in Taiwan, Thailand, Kuwait and Qatar to raise enough money to start a restaurant. Both speak good English and expressed the gratitude of the local people for the work that PVI is doing in the district. I was horrified when Tuan told me that flooding is an annual occurrence, with five floods coming through last year, two in October and three in December. They get a little warning, with around a day and a half of rain being enough to cause flooding. Last year, he cleared out the restaurant, moving everything to a multi-storey hotel across the road. The floods filled the restaurant to a height of about 1.5m. He cleaned up, brought everything back, put out the open sign, then the next lot came. The resilience of the people is amazing.

As the evening wears on, people head out to eat in small groups, although one time twenty of us descended on a small place that probably only catered for four or five. The panic was on and it looked like an episode of “My Kitchen Rules” as a young girl ran around trying to keep up with orders and the Aussie demand for a beer supply. They handled the episode remarkably well and the food tasted great. There were certainly plenty of smiles at the generous tips that were thrown around.

After dinner, the more adventurous ones on the team head down to the “Backpackers”, the Easy Tiger Pub, where beers are double the price of a restaurant but Happy Hour offers 2 for the price of of 1. Some go to dance, some (like us) go to dance by proxy, and others go to listen to the music, which is average but buoyed up by one of our team members playing on a drum with great finesse. We always went home before the headache stage arrived but some, both young and not so young, failed in this regard and occasionally over-indulged.

The work went well enough to be able to afford time off on the middle weekend. Most went caving, completing two or three caves over two days. We had done three of the caves last year on a visit here from Hue so we elected to head to Mooc Springs for a swim. A strong stream of clean and clear water issues forth from the base of a cliff face, suggesting the presence of yet another un-explored cave system within. The first part of the springs opens into a good sized pool that has been developed for swimming. The stream flow is strong so wearing of life vests is compulsory. A suspension bridge hangs across the pool at a height of around 4 metres but the middle part of the bridge is missing, meaning that one has to jump. A surrounding net ensures that being swept downstream on surfacing is prevented. I climbed up to have a go and to my absolute dismay, Christine followed. Somehow, she managed to negotiate the suspension bridge, a feat made all the more remarkable by the fact that the foot rungs were spaced about two feet apart. I was even more amazed when she made the jump after only a small hesitation. This action signified the end to around 5 long standing phobias. Next up – skydiving! Because I was in the water, I couldn’t video the event so she opted to take another jump, followed by yet another when I found my video effort had failed. Truly an achievement.

Views of Mooc Springs

Click here for Video of Christine Jumping

The work went well, completing more than we set out to do. We left three schools with bright and fresh buildings and the work on the new flood-proof school is well advanced. The completion of the new building and its fitting out will form a large part of next year’s project. Everyone seems enthusiastic about the prospect of more work in Phong Nha, such is the friendliness of the people, the importance of the work and the exceptional beauty of the area.

View of the Song River from the work site.

Dong Hoi

At the end of our time in Phong Nha, we opted to spend a night in Dong Hoi, from where we would catch a flight back to Saigon. Dong Hoi is a small city of around 100,000 people situated on the mouth of the Song River. The ocean side sports some glorious white sand beaches and the locals hope to develop a tourist resort industry. The city itself is mostly low-lying, quiet and relaxed. Little of old Vietnam remains. The city was levelled by the US in 1965, with the only four structures remaining being a church bell tower, two gates to the old walled citadel and a clock tower.

Dong Hoi Views

We stayed at the Nam Long Hotel near the river front. The area provides a good variety of eateries and even a little night-life at the nearby Buffalo Bar. We walked the length of the foreshore to the local markets but the smells and odours of the vibrant wet market had us moving on before long. Dong Hoi is unspectacular but a lovely little spot to rest up and take it easy without the hustle and bustle of either Hanoi or Saigon. Quite a few tourists were using it as a base to visit the caves at Phong Nha but it would be more economical to stay in Phong Nha itself.

Saigon

Our final days of the trip in Vietnam were spent back in Ho Chi Minh City at the Bee Saigon Hotel in Phạm Ngũ Lão. It is impossible to get sick of the attractions of the “backpacker” part of this bustling city. The street vendors, the bars, eateries and market stalls add a colour and vibrancy that almost rivals Hanoi. Unfortunately, for us it is the only part of Saigon that is exciting. The rest is just hot, busy and unremarkable by Asian standards.

Tomorrow, our European adventure begins, with a flight to Frankfurt in Germany via Moscow. The excitement is building.

Phu Ly Station

Nanning, Hanoi and Phu Ly – China to Vietnam

August 31, 2016 /

Nanning is a modest Chinese city at with a population of a mere 8.5 million, around the same as Singapore. It has a decidedly tropical climate and is situated in a large basin amid surrounding mountains. Situated on a picturesque river, the city is quite pretty, sporting the usual array of high rise buildings. Traffic is bad, with many cars and a lot of motorbikes, which tend to park all over the footpath in places and make walking difficult. E-bikes are less common than further north for some reason. A subway system is currently under construction and should ease some of the traffic issues.

Shanghai to Nanning Map

The long train trip from Shanghai was comfortable enough, although I had to put up with a small boy behind who liked to slam the footstool (which was attached to the back of my seat) and another young man who liked to put his feet against the back of my seat and push. The scenery was more reminiscent of Vietnam, with small rice paddies on terraced hillsides and lots of small hamlets dotting the countryside. The regular appearance of a smoke spewing coal fired power station burning vast amounts of Queensland coal kept the atmosphere grey and clogged. Our arrival at Nanning Dong Railway Station was quite late, around 10pm and with another 40 minutes of driving into the city centre ahead of us we took the rare step of using one of those private car services.

The Vienna Hotel

The Vienna Hotel

One job we had to do while in Nanning was to pick up the train tickets to Hanoi, something one can only do in Nanning and Guilin. We had pre-booked them online through www.chinatripadvisor.com but still needed the tickets in hand. We showed a taxi driver the address but it didn’t register too well so he rang and sorted it out with them. After negotiating many traffic jams, he stopped and pointed to a shabby high rise and indicated that the journey was done. We paid and got out to search further, trying a number of places before being directed around the side alley to the rear of the building, through a security gate and into a small and very smelly lift, along with more people than the lift was ever designed to carry. Our destination was Room 1616 so we sailed up to floor 16 of the 32 and got out, followed a dimly lit and grubby corridor for a bit to Room 1616. Luckily, the door was open and two girls sat at desks, both beaming at our sudden appearance. They produced the tickets and all appeared in order but the whole thing was quite creepy.

View from our window

View from our window

We wandered the fashion area of the city for a while and decided to do Japanese for lunch, having come across a nice looking sushi restaurant. Negotiating the menu was almost impossible, with no less than three waitresses pointing at things and trying very hard to communicate without luck. It took 10 minutes to order two beers with the girl writing down 1 every time we indicated that we wanted one each. When they did come, two ice cold mugs of Asahi, we noted with dismay that the bill still had a 1 on it. Finally, we realised that one bottle served two mugs. Of course, this meant that we were entitled to another. Choosing the sushi flavours was harder. Google Translate kept popping up things like “golden lady bent pipes” so we gave up and just pointed and hoped. Each order came out as two pieces of sushi arranged like a work of art on the plate, artistically plated with amazing dressings and delicate toppings. It was a shame to disturb them but the taste was sensational. We ordered another round.  One waitress persisted with us and hovered a lot and when Christine produced a little kangaroo keyring for her she was beside herself and rushed off to show the others what the crazy Americans had given her.

All around our hotel is market country, with wonderful vegetable markets and seafood displays. The usual pungent odour of wet markets is absent and wandering around and looking is a delight. Most of the seafood is sold live, including the crabs, prawns and lobsters, all existing in large troughs with recirculating filtered water. When I see a large live coral reef fish like a coral trout swimming in a tank far inland in Southern China, I find myself wondering just how many people and how much effort has been involved in getting it there. One hopes that the poor village fisherman who caught it in the first place was well compensated.

Street food Collage

The street food in Nanning is excellent and we made a habit of buying out and eating in. Our favourite was a large flat pancake type thing with a few spicy toppings, much like a pizza without the cheese. One stall sold these but then used them as a wrap around lettuce, chicken or other less identifiable ingredients. They were delicious in any form. One night we went to a small eatery in a lane near the hotel and picked out what we thought was a single pork dish. Instead we received a big plate of roast duck, a claypot of pork belly in a rich onion sauce, a huge plate of delicious greens and two bowls of rice. We felt obliged to eat it all, much to the delight of the owners and the other diners. One gets used to having an audience during a meal.

Farewell to China.

Farewell to China.

Getting onto the train to Vietnam was a long drawn out affair. Nanning Station is near a street where subway excavations are going on so the taxi ride was slow. Access through the usual security screening was also slow, made more so after they found a knife in Christine’s backpack, the same knife that has been through countless other screenings but this time it was confiscated. Then we sat around Waiting Room 2 before eventually re-reading the main board and moving to Waiting Room 3. Finally, we boarded the train at 6pm, along with what looked like several hundred other people. We shared our 4 sleeper compartment with a Vietnamese girl and her father, both returning from a business trip to China. Nga Mi spoke excellent English and was obviously gifted that way because she could also speak Chinese and a smattering of some other languages. She entertained us with stories of her time in China, including the year she had spent living there to learn the language.  She now works for her father, who has a business selling and supplying equipment for presentations and shows.

Nanning Hanoi Map

We all settled down to sleep quite early, knowing that we would be woken before midnight for border formalities. The first stop came around 11 pm (Vietnam time) and it was a matter of taking all luggage and our passports off for Chinese immigration to exit us from China. Then the train sat around for ages, before moving off once more and then stopping at the Vietnamese Immigration and Customs about an hour later. These processes were a lot quicker than they could have been, because most of the other passengers had left the train earlier in China and only one carriage of passengers remained for the crossing.

Once through and in Vietnam, the train rattled on and continued south towards Hanoi. This was not one of the ultra fast, smooth and quiet bullet trains that we had been using in China. This was the old type of compartment carriage with a single diesel locomotive. The carriages jolted and banged along the tracks but we had very little trouble getting back to sleep and even had to be woken by the guard as we approached Hanoi. The track finishes 10 km short of Hanoi itself at Gia Lam because that is as far as the Chinese standard gauge goes, the rest of Vietnam using a narrower gauge rail.

Fortunately, we had done our homework on taxis from Gia Lam and we steadfastly refused the demands for 300,000VND to take us into the Old Quarter of Hanoi, holding out for the 100,000VND we knew it was worth. Of course, it wasn’t a real taxi anyway, it was just a young guy with some stickers on his car and a great sob story about he is studying law and his grandfather is still working to support him. He looked so forlorn at being beaten down to 100,000VND that we gave him 200,000VND anyway and let him drive off with a smile.  

By the time we arrived at the 3B Hotel in Hanoi, it was barely 6am and the night staff were still clearing away their floor mattresses so we dumped our bags and went off to join the early bird crowd exercising around Hoan Kiem Lake. This is a sight to behold, hundreds of people of all ages performing all manner of exercise routines, some to music, some in groups and others just doing their thing. A few pelotons of the brightly coloured lycra set rode bicycles, one of the few times of the day it would be possible on the normally crowded roads.  We contented ourselves with a brisk circuit of the lake, enough to shake off the train journey.

Dawn around Hoan Kiem

Dawn around Hoan Kiem

Back at the hotel, we had a spot of breakfast, actually feeling hungry for the first time in weeks because we had not had any food on the train. Somehow, I think we had plenty of reserves. The 3B Hotel is a small boutique hotel that we have not used before, but our usual stay in Hanoi has changed ownership and gone a direction we don’t like. This one seems wonderful, with very chatty and friendly staff, who happily made some arrangements for us to use the hotel as a transit point and then arranged a car for us to head south to Phu Ly, where we had spent time some years back working on building projects with Project Vietnam. The main reason for going was to catch up with our young friend, Van Quynh. The drive south showed the developments that have taken place since our last visit, back in 2013, with a fast efficient expressway replacing much of the old Highway 1.

P_20160825_141924We booked into the Hoa Binh Hotel, which felt strangely empty without all the other PVI members there with us. The weather was hot and humid, hardly conducive to wandering around on foot much but we went for a short walk and found the town has changed considerably in the last few years, with an abundance of electronics stores and a definite air of prosperity. There were a lot of cheery “hellos” on the streets and smiling faces, a far cry from our first visit when we were stared at or even avoided.

The Bia Hoi (Beer Hoi) in Phu Ly, an old friend.

The Bia Hoi (Beer Hoi) in Phu Ly, an old friend.

Van arrived later on her scooter, a modern beautiful young woman who has grown and developed so much from when we first met her as a young student. Now she displays a strength and confidence that has taken her to a position of manager at her work. We were thrilled for her when she told us that she was now expecting and she looks very much the healthy mother to be. She took us to one of her favourite coffee places, where we revisited the excellence of really good Vietnamese coffee over ice with condensed milk. It is unbeatable.

Phu Ly is famous for its flowers and Van brought some for Christine..

Phu Ly is famous for its flowers and Van brought some for Christine..

Travelling around Phu Ly with Van is a great experience. We sampled some wonderful street food and had an amazing breakfast called Bánh cuốn chả, a dish made from a thin, wide sheet of steamed fermented rice batter filled with a mixture of cooked seasoned ground pork, minced wood ear mushroom, and minced shallots with the dipping sauce which is fish sauce called nước mắm. and a vinegar based beef soup, not our usual breakfast fare but it really worked. The version we had was a true Phu Ly speciality. We felt honoured.

Ah! Street food in Phu Ly

Ah! Street food in Phu Ly

We visited Van’s parents’ restaurant, the one that the PVI members used to call “The Rice Restaurant” and everyone was pleased to see us. It was also a chance to meet Van’s husband, a very nice young man who works as a policeman in Phu Ly. He is the cook in the family and jumped in to help cook up a wonderful meal of fried rice, beef, quail eggs and delicious slices of fresh coconut. He had to eat and run, however, as he was on night shift so we headed out with Van to eat a little more in the form of Bahn Xeo, wonderful crispy pancake sliced and rolled with lettuce inside a rice paper sheet. They are very tasty. We strolled through the streets down to a large lake, Hồ Chùa Bầu which is the site of a large Buddhist Temple. In the lingering heat, the shores are a popular spot to seek some cooling air and we sat outside at an excellent coffee shop and had some delicious smoothies, finally leaving feeling very full indeed and catching a taxi back to Van’s restaurant. She and her husband have their own house in Phu Ly but she tends to stay with her parents on nights that her husband works.

Our two days in Phu Ly were wonderful, bring back many fond memories of our projects there with PVI. Even better was the time spent with Van, who was an excellent guide to her home town. Wandering around a foreign city with a local guide really adds an extra dimension to the experience. With Van’s baby due in April next year, we have an excellent excuse to make sure we return.

We caught the train back to Hanoi, a pleasant trip of a little over an hour. Van came to see us off, bringing with her some amazing baguettes (Bánh mì) filled with sliced vegetables and fine slices of pork in a spicy sauce.  They were amazing, but then we have come to expect the amazing when it comes to food in Vietnam.

The famous restaurant at 69 Ma May St, Hanoi, now the Blue Butterfly

The famous restaurant at 69 Ma May St, Hanoi, now the Blue Butterfly

Our final couple of days in Hanoi were wet, very wet at times, with persistent tropical rain soaking everything and spoiling the night markets. At least it was warm and we found ourselves without a raincoat or umbrella. Ignoring the many offers to sell us something, we just put up with the downpour and walked the streets while getting soaked through. Along the way, we managed to catch up with another friend from previous visits, a man named Qyngh who works at a souvenir stall on Beer Hoi Corner. He works hard to support his family and we always like to catch up with him.

We love catching up with Qyngh.

We love catching up with Qyngh.

An early morning drive out to Hanoi Airport gave us a scare when we realised after setting out that the hotel still had our passports. Fortunately, the driver understood the problem and managed to turn around in time, the early hour helping with light traffic and we retrieved the passports with enough time left to make the flight. It did give us a scare to think of the consequences of reaching the airport without a passport. It is the stuff of nightmares.

A seven hour layover in Kuala Lumpur was too much for us so we organised a room at the Tune Hotel, a budget location attached to KLIA2. It is joined to the massive Gateway Shopping Plaza by a covered walkway, which takes some finding but provides easy access to an almost endless variety of shops and eateries. We booked at night but checked out at 10pm but at $62 it was money well spent and we got on a midnight plane feeling relaxed and refreshed instead of exhausted and grumpy.

The final boarding

The final boarding

Another indulgence was a couple of tickets on Air Asia’s Premium Lie Down Seats, a Business Class-Like seat that gives full flat out accommodation at a fraction of the cost of other airlines.  It meant we slept the whole way to Perth in comfort. Landing in Perth at 5:45am was a bit of a shock with a 4 degree temperature but our back neighbour Julie was there to pick us up, a great end to a fabulous month. TIme to see the family!

Shanghai

August 23, 2016 /

The train from Yi Chang to Shanghai involved an 8 and a half hour trip setting off at 6:40, which meant a 4:30 hotel leave, never much fun. However, the hotel had arranged a taxi for us before hand and with no traffic on the roads it was a quick trip to the Yi Chang East station. It is hard to really describe the modern Chinese railway stations. They all have one thing in common, they are HUGE, bigger than some international airports we have used. They have enough tracks and platforms to cater for a great many trains at once and, unlike the usual train travel experience around the World, the whole system works like clockwork. The older slow train system still operates, although we have found it tends to get booked out rather quickly because it is cheap compared to the high speed jobs. In some cases, the high speed train is around the same cost as air travel but the train is about the same speed (counting wait time) and much, much more comfortable.   The current High Speed Rail network stands at 19,000km (more than the whole of the rest of the World combined) with 30,000km planned for 2020.

Our trip went really well up to a point. The landscape outside was unremarkable, mostly flat Yangtze floodplain covered in rice fields or smoke belching power houses. We passed the time with sleep, easy because the seats were super comfortable and the train whisper quiet and smooth, or watching movies on our tablets. The crunch came when we got an email from Booking.com to say that we had left a wallet in the hotel back in Yi Chang. We both had that “Oh shit!” feeling. The said wallet contained a few useful papers but also over $1000 in notes of various currencies, US, Vietnam Dong, Malaysian Dollars and a healthy chunk of Aussie Dollars. Christine looked so grim I didn’t have the heart to blame her, although the opportunity was clearly there. Christine spent the next hour emailing and phoning the Guo Mao Hotel in Yi Chang until she finally managed to get a good dialogue going with a very helpful girl who promised to package it up and send it on to the Novotel Hotel in Shanghai. No mention was made of the contents of the wallet but we were hopeful.

Once an Shanghai Hongqiao Railway Station, we donned the pack packs again and set off to master the Shanghai Subway Network. It gets easier every time, mostly because the subway systems are the same China wide. We had pre-planned our route, which only required one interchange and negotiated the 40 minute trip with ease. The strange thing about arriving in a strange city and travelling from the rail station or airport into the central city by subway is that you enter the system on the outer edge and finally emerge into the daylight in the middle of a huge metropolis, and you don’t get much bigger than Shanghai. We stepped out of the subway tunnel and were surrounded by the super city that is the Pudong bank of Shanghai, an amazing sight by any standards. No Chinese city has excited me to date but Shanghai is a very beautiful city, sitting astride the Wangpo River and sporting more surrealistic skyscrapers than the average person can even imagine. No one wants to be ordinary here. Everything has to be outstanding and unique. It is a visual feast.

P_20160819_123639

Our hotel, the Novotel Atlantis

Our hotel, the Novotel Atlantis

We settled into the Novotel Atlantis, a nice spot giving wonderful views of the river. A great street jammed pack full of little local eateries was opposite and the subway only a short walk away so we were set. We chose one eatery at random and a couple of dishes with almost as much care. What we got was two absolutely wonderful dishes, one a chicken thing with lots of rich sweet gravy and the other a noodle dish with bok choy that was full of amazing flavours. It was good to get away from the hot and spicy flavours of Sichuan that we have had for the last couple of weeks.

The next morning we set off on the subway and headed for the People’s Square, a large green park in the heart of Shanghai. The temperature was already hitting the high 30s and the shady greens of the park were a welcome retreat area. We wandered around admiring the gardens and the ponds for a half an hour or so. Emerging, we bought a couple of 48 hour passes on one of the double decker “hop on hop off” busses that tour the city. These are popular everywhere in the World but the service varies from city to city. This one promised a regular 15 minute service with an option of four routes and an English commentary. They were dreaming! We got a 30 to 40 minute wait time at each stop, a disjointed commentary on one of the routes we took and rude and disinterested drivers.

The dreaded red bus

The dreaded red bus

In fact, much of the day was spent waiting for a red bus to appear or trying to find a red bus stop on the dodgy map they had given us. We got very hot, very thirsty and very annoyed along the way. It was made even worse by the regular sight of an opposition red bus company cruising past. Ours was the “Spring Tour” mob but we should have been with the B BUS group I think. At one point, with a huge ugly thunderstorm looming and no shelter immediately obvious, we decided to just get in a cab and go home, but after 20 minutes of trying to get a cab, we gave that up too. As soon as rain appears, cabs are in high demand.

Although moving around the city was a chore, we did see some some great things. The famed pedestrian shopping area of Nanjing Road is fun and colourful. Christine proved her bargaining skills by sticking to the rule of starting out at a quarter of what they originally quote and actually walking off when you put in your final offer. They always call you back.

Part of the old Bund

Part of the old Bund

The Bund is a must see strip of wonderful old stone buildings dating from the early 1900s, when Shanghai was the European controlled financial powerhouse of Asia. These days, the buildings remain and can be seen in all their glory from a long viewing walkway that borders the river for several kilometres. Enough of the old charm remains to feel a sense of what it was like back when Shanghai was the “Paris of the Orient” yet the surrounding glass and steel towers seem enhance rather than detract from the scene. Everywhere, the streets were filled with tour groups, each one led by a guide sporting a colourful flag on telescopic pole. We were glad not to be part of a group. This is a place that just wandering around by yourself brings its rewards.

Dark clouds looming over Pudong

Dark clouds looming over Pudong

The thunder storms came and went with lots of lightning and noise and a moderate fall of rain. Fortunately, we had managed to get back in a red bus by the time the rain fell so we avoided a drenching. Having finally made it onto a red bus, we were determined to just sit and do the circuit, but the driver thwarted us by stopping on the Bund and ordering everyone out, before driving off, much to the dismay of all.

The Yuyuan Tourist Mart. This is what shopping centres should look like

The Yuyuan Tourist Mart. This is what shopping centres should look like

Eventually, we made it around the bus circuit to the Yuyuan Tourist Mart, a vast collection of market stalls and shops all surrounding the City God Temple. We sampled a few of the many food offerings, actually rejecting some, including some spring rolls. Who ever had a bad spring roll? These were awful, with some horrible musty tasting vegetables of some unknown origin spoiling the whole effect. Christine did her thing with the bargaining again to pick up a few things at the markets but we probably lost our savings by paying too much to put more data on our phones. At one point we went off to consult a wall map to locate a toilet. A seemingly noice helpful man came along to assist, but it was soon obvious that no one in a market area helps for nothing. He then proceeded to follow us around talking about “buy a shirt” or “I show you jewellery”. Every time we thought we’d lost him, he would pop up again. He was relentless. I wonder if there is a course one can take to learn how to be so obnoxious. Eventually, we found the entrance to the subway and escaped.

Oriental Pearl Tower

Oriental Pearl Tower

Gluttons for punishment, we spent another day out in the searing heat. It is really quite uncomfortable, very much like the Kimberley in the wet season, with temperatures in the high 30s and thunderstorms never far away. This time, we stayed on the Pudong side of the river and roamed around the new area, characterised by more amazing high rise buildings. Our Hop On Hop Off bus lived up to expectations and proved useless once again because the one we hopped on was just a shuttle from the central shopping area to the ferry wharf. The driver said he would sit at the ferry wharf for about 20 minutes (in sweltering heat) so we decided to jump on the ferry and take a ride across and back for the hell of it, especially as it was included in the bus ticket. After 15 minutes waiting in a long line with no sign of any ferry moving anywhere, we left and returned to the bus, catching it just in time to be shuttled back to the shopping precinct. We were quite over the red bus thing.

The heat drove us off to a huge shopping mall and the shelter of the air conditioning. Being a Saturday, the crowds were up and everything was crowded. Just as as we were about to enter, we got a phone call from the concierge at the hotel to say that a package had arrived for us from Yi Chang. Hooray! Our lost wallet full of foreign currency! However, the courier was waiting to be paid and he wanted us to return immediately. Eventually, Christine managed to convince the concierge to pay and we would reimburse him. We tipped him well when we got back to the hotel and to our delight, all the currency was in the wallet.

The Shanghai Tower, second tallest building in the World

The Shanghai Tower, second tallest building in the World

Shanghai is a city worth visiting, at another time of year. It is easy to explore on foot or by subway but with the heat that we experienced it is not a lot of fun. With a bit of looking around, some cheap and very good eats can be found and the city itself probably rivals Singapore for visual spectacles. The English problem is not quite as big as in some other cities and we even saw the occasional westerner on the streets.

From here we hit the trains again to Nanning, deep in the south of China and not far off the border with Vietnam. It will be an 11 hour trip on a fast bullet train, a long haul and a good test of just how comfortable the Chinese trains are.  

 

The Yangtze River – Chongqing to Yichang

August 20, 2016 /

It had been our intention to catch a train from XiAn to Chongqing, a 650km trip south to pick up a Yangtze River Cruise. However, it seems as though all the trains are timed to cater for the business people, either leaving around 6pm and arriving around sunup the next day, with a couple hitting Chongqing around midnight. Arriving in an unknown city at either time is a very bad idea so we decided to fly instead, a flight of only just over an hour. However, add to that the formalities of getting through all the security and screenings and it still works out to be a big thing. We left the hotel at 10am and arrived in Chongqing at 3pm, with just an hour spent in the air.

We caught a taxi to our lodgings, an apartment sharing service. Taxis in Chongqing are a set price and union controlled so it means the usual touts and thieves don’t thrive. Taxis are also one of the main forms of transport owing to the mountainous nature of the city, ruling out bicycles and e-bike travel that is now so dominant in the plains cities like Beijing and XiAn. The taxi ride was absolutely terrifying. On the one hand, the driver was good to us, and rang ahead to the lodgings to ensure that someone could meet us on arrival, there being no formal reception area. On the other hand, he shouted in deafening tones into the phone while driving at breakneck speed on a crowded freeway. He was a frustrated rally driver, pushing his battered old Hyundai Excel to its limits and reached 125km/hr down a huge hill. When any car got close to him, he would either cut it off or come up behind it and “give it the horn”. All was forgiven in the end because we survived the ordeal and he was successful in making sure there was a charming young girl to meet us when he deposited us outside our apartment block.

Chongqing is a very beautiful city, at least the parts you can see through the thick pall of pollution. At around 30million, it is China’s largest inland city, both in area and population. It surrounds both the Yangtze and the Jialing Rivers, which means there are a lot of very impressive bridges. It seems they have explored most bridge building methods and each one is on a massive scale. The towering buildings of the CBD complete the picture, especially at night when the light displays are spectacular.

View from the front window

View from the front window

Our accomodation, named the Injoy Hotel, Nambin Branch, is actually a set of managed apartments. We got a spacious apartment with a kitchen, bathroom and washing machine for around $35 a night on the 15h floor of a 26 floor tower. However, the kitchen lacked a fridge and any form of cooking equipment beyond a gas stove and there were no pans or even cutlery, making the facility rather useless.

The view out the kitchen window

The view out the kitchen window

Outside was a ritzy strip of hotels, the Hilton, Sheraton and Marriot up the hill behind, so it wasn’t the place to find cheap street eats. Food was restricted to a strip of restaurants that were well beyond our travelling budget. We walked several kilometres to find affordable food that we could identify. The street behind the apartments, up the hill, was full of “Hot Pot” restaurants, all selling the cook your own experience with a local spicy broth bubbling away in a cut-out in the centre of the table. This form of dining is a Chongqing specialty but is better suited to a group and we probably couldn’t handle the heat either, pepper and chiili being thrown into the pot in equally large proportions.

Finally, after several kilometres up and down, we came across a little place with plastic stools out the front, a sure sign of good food, and a family of smiling faces. We sat down and looked at the menu, no pictures, just characters. The family appointed their daughter as interpreter and her English was about as good as my high school French. We played with Google Translate, which fascinated the watching crowd before finally settling on one dish because the girl said “potato” and another because it had “chicken”. We hit the jackpot on both counts. The potato thing was fried in slices with ultra tender pork belly strips and spring onions with great spices while the chicken thing was chicken diced fine with veges and lots of whole peanuts. There was no way we could finish all the food. There was much smiling and laughing as we joined in watching a soapy on TV before the family sat down to their meal. All this with two cold beers thrown in and the bill came to $12. The girl was rewarded with an “Australian Koala Keyring” which was actually made in China anyway but at least bought in Perth. A few nights later, we went back for more delicious food and were welcomed like royalty, the girl proudly displaying her koala hanging from her smartphone. We watched a movie with them, a Chinese version of “Inspector Rex” and managed to enjoy it, even though we couldn’t understand a word. That’s the sign of a good movie.

Great food, friendly family

Great food, friendly family

Moving around Chongqing was a problem for us. Our accommodation is poorly located Metro wise and walking is difficult due to the hills. We used more taxis here than in the whole of the rest of the trip but at least they are cheap and honest. We do our homework before getting in and always have some Chinese text on our smartphones to show the driver. He stares at it, mutters a few words, grunts and goes. Only once have we ended up in the wrong place and that wasn’t a bad mistake.

We took a taxi to the cruise wharf area to scope out what we would have to do to catch our boat on the Yangtze and found a jumbled disorganised collection of ticket sellers, floating pontoons and workers. Nowhere was there any English signage but after getting help from an English speaking woman and making a phone call to the Internet based travel agency that sold us the ticket we managed to feel confident enough about the boarding process. The wharf facilities speak volumes about the flood levels of the Yangtze River. It is a long climb down from the walkway to the river itself, via steep steps that line the river bank. At walkway level, a massive concrete embankment reaches upwards and flood level indicators, marked in metres, record possible water levels. They go over the 200m mark. Since the building of the Three Gorges Dam, the river levels are measured as a height above sea level, peaking at around 175m in Winter and dropping down to around 100m at the height of Summer. By any stretch, this is a huge water rise and fall.

Part of the many steps down to the boat

Part of the many steps down to the boat

The area in front of our apartment is a large open space opposite the river and it fills with families each night. The evenings are hot, around the 30 degree mark and crowds of tiny children play in the large water fountain area, similar to the one at Elizabeth Quay. Others ride bikes around and a little electric train does the rounds carrying the kiddies. It is great to see.

 

Colourful nightlife outside our apartment

Colourful nightlife outside our apartment

In the three days we spent wandering around various parts of Chongqing, we did not see another European, even at the cruise boat port. This is very unusual and we are actually hopeful that there will be a few English speaking people on our cruise. Conversing with others through a smartphone interpreter is getting tiresome. Obviously, the locals do not see a lot of Europeans because they aren’t shy about openly staring. I have been stared at while eating a meal, while Christine tends to attract pointed stares from men. Once, on a subway, I played a game by suddenly looking at a young girl seated opposite. I knew she was watching me so I kept catching her out until she finally relented and smiled back.

Now that we have been here for a while, other aspects of life are also becoming tiresome. The pollution is terrible. Although the negative health effects are not immediately felt, it must take its toll. High rise living behind many layers of security access is also not my style. Everywhere we go we have to take our card and swipe it to move around the complex of apartments and facilities. The Internet is blocked to many sites, most annoyingly all Google sites, which means we have to handle not only WiFi log-ons but also connecting to VPNs (servers located outside of China that route our Internet for us). It seems that most people in China also use VPN services so I’m not sure why the Government bothers to monitor and censor in the first place.

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The day of our cruise on the Yangtze arrived. Unfortunately, boarding time was advertised as between 6pm and 8pm, leaving us a whole afternoon to kill with the burden of our bags. We caught a taxi to Chaomienten Port around 11:30 and, after a bit of searching, found the Yangtze 1. All the boats advertise as having extraordinary levels of comfort and service and ours proved to meet this claim but the service only seems to start once you have made it to the boat. Access is down a steep road towards the river, followed by many series of steep concrete steps. In 36 degree heat with full packs on our backs, this proved to be a bit of an ordeal and we reached the ship with a full sweat up. Our hope was that they would store our baggage until boarding time but to our delight they booked us in and gave us the electronic pass to our cabin. We were free to come and go as we wished. The seductive power of the air-conditioning won out and we abandoned plans to go to the zoo and chose to laze around instead. Zoos tend to disturb me at the best of times anyway and the oppressive conditions outside were almost too much.

The Yangtze 1

The Yangtze 1

The boat is beautiful. The Yangtze 1 is not as flash or  as big as some others on the river but at $US329 each for four days it is considerably cheaper than most. Our cabin was bigger than some of the hotels we have stayed in with excellent facilities. The dining areas and bars are beautifully appointed and with 103 staff for 250 passengers the service is excellent. By this time, we had gone three days without seeing an other European so we were hopeful.

Leaving Chongqing at night

Leaving Chongqing at night

The boat sailed at 9:30pm, giving us an incredible view of the lights of Chongqing as we headed downstream. We watched the banks slide by, fascinated at one point by the huge container loading facility that was bigger than the one in Fremantle Harbour yet a thousand kilometres inland. Cars were pouring off an enormous multi-storey car ferry, having arrived from some point down river. Eventually, we left the sights behind and headed for bed.

Meeting the new neighbours

Meeting the new neighbours

We awoke to glassy conditions anchored off the city of Feng Du. We opened up the curtains to the balcony to admire the view and started our preparations for the day in various states of undress when a huge ship suddenly slid alongside and made ready to raft up with ours. This put our balcony cabin directly opposite another, and the occupants were on their balcony so it was a hasty retreat to close the curtains and find some clothing.

The meals were a lavish affair

The meals were a lavish affair

When we got to breakfast, we found there was another similar ship on the other side of us. All the dining rooms were on the same level so it looked like one enormous space. The English guide on the boat introduced himself and filled us in on the various features of the trip and optional tours. The only other westerners aboard, were two British girls, and a German girl but they didn’t get to breakfast, a common thing with young people everywhere. Later, we met the British girls at the pool area. All three are on a tour of China, Charlotte having just finished Uni and Hannah a teacher on summer vacation while the German girl, Sofia is having a “gap year”. Over the course of the four days, we enjoyed the girls’ company although they often went separate ways as they are part of a package tour.

We lazed around while some other passengers went off on an optional tour. These tend to be quite expensive and we have decided that the packaged tours will suit the budget more. We have one packaged shore excursion each day and once a day in the extreme heat is enough. We toured the Shibaozhai Pagoda, an amazing structure perched on a rocky outcrop overlooking the river.

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The surrounding town is small by Chinese standards and lacks the collection of concrete apartment towers that most sport. The whole town dates from between 1998 and 2006, having been built by the Government to house the inhabitants of the river bank villages that were flooded when the Three Gorges Dam was built. The highest flood waters also threatened the pagoda with the building of the dam so a huge concrete caison was constructed around the base of the pagoda to protect it. It was a 1km walk in 40 degree heat to the pagoda but we spurned the offers of a car or motorbike ride and walked with our guide, a nice young man who called himself Travis. There were also a couple of brown and wrinkled old men who shouted forcefully at people to encourage them to climb into the wood and canvas chairs that they carried on their backs. I can’t think of a worse experience. Our walk took us past the inevitable line of stalls selling all manner of goods. It is the only real work in the town, with no industry around these parts. Many of the house remain empty because most young people have left to find work.

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The access to the pagoda itself was via a long suspension bridge, and Christine struggled to control her language on the crossing, failing on a few occassions when treading on a loose plank or two. Travis did warn her that the bridge was known as the drunk’s bridge. Then we began the climb into the structure. The Shibaozhai Pagoda is the tallest wooden pagoda in China and is built entirely of interlocking timber pieces without the use of nails or other fixings. It leans up against the rock cliff for support, a remarkable feat given that it is nine storeys high. The wooden steps inside are more like ladders and I was surprised when Christine ascended to level 7, a level that gets you to Heaven. I pushed on to level 9, assuring me of a place in Super Heaven. Travis explained all the history and the meaning of the various relics and icons along the way. Fortunately, a series of steps lead down, alleviating the need to carry Christine back down the ladders and we made our way back down through the village, pausing to make a couple of small purchases (our first in China). By the time we reached the boat, we were completely soaked through with sweat.

Sofia's dance

Sofia’s dance

The evening entertainment on the boat promised a “Talent Show”, which we took to be a Talent Quest. Sofia, the young German girl, signed up to perform a belly dance, something she has practised and performed for ten years or so while the rest of us begged off, although we did make sure we got front row seats to help support Sofia. The “Quest “ part proved wrong and the show consisted of the boat crew performing various traditional dances and a few other acts, most of which was entertaining. Sofia was definitely the hit of the night, with an amazing and mesmerizing performance. The Chinese crowd seemed appreciative as well, with the cameras out in force.

Later, when the host called for three male volunteers, I knew I was doomed, being the only non-Chinese male in the room. Along with two other unfortunates, I was made to sit front and centre in a chair, while a “volunteer” female tied a bib around my neck and hand fed me beer from a baby’s bottle and teat. Naturally, I beat the other two guys hands down. I’ll do anything for a free beer. The prize for participating was an ultra sweet green cocktail. The evening culminated with us being forced to get up and dance the Macarena, Birdy Dance and YMCA with the boat crew and the three girls. It was bizarre!  

There are many towns spread along the 700kms or so of the Yangtze that we traversed. All of these are new towns, the original ones having being demolished and rebuilt at Government expense. In all 130 million people were relocated to cater for the rising waters, all in the space of a 7 year period. The flooding has also brought more consistency to river traffic and an increase in fishing output. There were some losses however, with two species of animal becoming extinct, the Yangtze Dolphin and a type of crocodile. Silting of the river and erosion of banks is also a major issue, and everywherre on the river we could see dredges at work and barges carrying silt away. A lot of work is going on upstream in the catchment areas and the problem is rapidly being brought under control. The Chinese have a lot of very serious environmental problems but I saw a lot of evidence that they are working hard on finding solutions.

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The beautiful Shennong Strream

The beautiful Shennong Strream

The entry into the Qutang Gorge, the first of the three actual gorges was beautiful, the river narrowing to at least a third of its former width and being bordered by towering sandstone hills and cliffs. Houses and tiny hamlets still cling to any piece of land that isn’t vertical and it is amazing to see the extent to which the Government has gone to provide electricity to even the most isolated of properties. Before the dam was built, the gorges created dangerous conditions for navigation, with low water levels, numerous rapids and uncharted hazards. On our trip, we passed through the Qutang Gorge, the Wushan Gorge and half of the Xiling Gorge. The last, was disappointing due to the poor visibility, with the smog from the industrialised areas between Yichang and Shanghai being out of control. Other areas were good, especially around the famed Shennong Stream. This is a side river gorge and we were offloaded into small craft to cruise up into the gorge. Having walked, swum and boated through many gorges in the north of WA, we thought we knew gorges but this was something else again, with the cliffs rising 800m or so from the stream. The sides of the gorges were covered in lush green vegetation with large landslide scars exposing big areas of bare sandstone to create some stunning vistas. This is the stuff of many a Chinese tapestry. A visual splendour.

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Hannah

Hannah

Charlotte

Charlotte

Yichang is a city in the middle of the Xiling Gorge and marked the end of our cruise. Yichang’s main claim to fame is as the site of the Three Gorges Dam, the largest dam project ever undertaken anywhere in the World. The main dam face is over 2km in length. The dam is also the World’s largest power station. At the time of its construction, between 1996 and 2006, it was widely criticised by the rest of the World as an environmental disaster but many benefits have arisen, the most significant being flood control and improved river navigation. We took a short tour of the dam, probably the only tour on the whole of our trip we hated. It was hot, crowded and boring. A good video would have been better. On the other hand, the access to Yichang was via the dam’s ship locks, an amazing 5 lock system finished in 2015. We entered the first lock at 10:30pm, watching in amazement as the ship fell about 35m in only 10 minutes or so, before moving into the next lock. We watched a couple of locks operate before heading to bed. There is a double lock system, allowing for both upstream and downstream traffic, truly a piece of modern engineering genius. An enormous volume of shipping now passes through these lock, most carrying container freight of fully laden trucks to the upper reaches of the Yangtze far inland.

The massive set of locks

The massive set of locks

Entering a lock

Entering a lock

 

 

 

 

 

We left the ship at Yichang and spent a couple of days in the Guomao Hotel doing very little. Yichang itself is unremarkable but the relatively small population of 1.3 million meant that moving around the city centre was easy. We slept, ate, walked and watched the Olympics (with Chinese commentary of course). From here, it is an 8 hour train trip to Shanghai.

 

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