The End of an Era

Singapore

So, one of the reasons for the delay in this blog is the ever-present lump in my throat at the demise of the Asian leg of adventuring. No matter how many days go by, the thought that I shan’t be returning in the visible future doesn’t get any easier to digest. One of the key features of this meta-emotional indigestion is linked to the £5 baby-beer I just bought with my £12 dinner... Australia is not going far out of its way to facilitate my transition back into real-life it seems. But, for now, allow me to fight through a tear distorted monitor and tell you about the final 4 days of Asia and Singapore in one unifying swoop.

In the form of a very brief blurb of the 4 days... Not much was accomplished in the form of productivity. We were fresh out of our Borneo £2.50 digs, and Ben’s Dad had selflessly and (if I may be so bold) heroically, given us the benefit of his Hilton loyalty points and booked us into luxury for the 3 nights during which we so badly needed a roof to escape the minimum £50 a night realm of Singapore. The hotel was just as nice as you’d expect, with its finest feature being our 15^th story view over the, rather impressive, Singapore skyline (although on a personal note, the free daily teabags came a close second). It was a combination of these two features, along with some ludicrously comfortable beds which led to our catastrophic downfall in productivity... Yes I was weak, but the strength of men is only so strong! Therefore, the first evening was limited to a saunter down to Little India which, as the name suggests, is the hub of the huge Indian community within Singapore. We treated ourselves to a, surprise surprise, curry and bought a few bits of the usual crap which proves to be truly irresistible once it has a small number stuck to the bottom of it. One of the best features of Little India are the Hawkers that form the nucleus of all the Indian communities, they also form the only affordable venue for drinking within a heavily taxed predominantly Muslim society. The Hawkers are, very basically, huge halls with two stories; one for market stalls selling clothes, jewellery and some potently smelling cooking spices and ingredients, with the other being used for food, drink and socialising. I imagine the overly stretched and utilised metaphor is that of a beehive, and it truly is the most accurate that springs to mind. No matter what time of day, the Hawkers are always busy, loud and on the move, I’ve never myself been to India, but from now the image of it shall be that of the Hawkers.

The second day was one far from within character; it was a day of “retail therapy”, although to this day, I can’t remember why... Singapore struck me as a city where every 3^rd building was a hotel and every two in between are malls, so I suppose it just seemed to be a suitable way to kill time. So, I’m not going to waste my energy or, more importantly, your time regaling you with stories of my purchases, because, to put it bluntly, they were not exciting... Day 2 concluded! However, in the evening, we decided for a brief switch of culture and to head to China Town which, if you apply the same formula used with Little India, should have a rather easily deduced theme. I have no idea how accurately each area portrays its community, but if they are one and the same, it appears I am a man better suited to China than India, China Town was fantastic. The food was delicious, service as good as could be expected and the market stalls sold artefacts so dusty you just knew they had to be genuine.  But, as for day 2, aside from a rather meandering walk back to the hotel (which was not in any way due to a poor combined sense of general direction...) was one of Westernised materialism, not one to be proud of, but I suppose you can never truly escape your roots!

Day 3, in many ways, was actually our last day in Singapore due to an awkwardly placed flight the next day, and was one I think we did proud. With an early start under our belts, we headed to Singapore Aquarium on INSERT NAME Island under some pretty hefty recommendations from everyone we had talked to. The trip itself, as it turned out, was almost as memorable as the aquarium. The island is accessible by a few methods of transportation, but we decided to go for the most luxurious (and well hidden...), the cable car! The trip over the bay was a pretty breathtaking one, as with all areas in Asia near the equator, all the water is a clear turquoise tint and the Bay itself was home to a couple of gigantic cruise liners, some yachts and speed boats. You then come down into to the island over and through some dense rainforest and settle down, back into the equatorial heat, making some pretty drastic haste for the air conditioned aquarium. Facebook is already armed with the pictures of the aquarium, but as a list of highlights which I enjoyed we have the Giant Pacific Octopus, underwater shark tunnel, jellyfish exhibits and giant spider crabs (although, the word enjoyed will have to be omitted for this particular nightmarish scar upon evolution). But, without contest, my favourite part was the well hidden turtle exhibit outside with some of the most endangered species of turtle on the planet, along with a few old favourites; they truly are some of the most watchable animals you’ll ever find! We then decided that to compensate for our lax standards of productivity the day before by heading into the city centre to walk around the National Museum to try and learn a little bit more about the country which, until only a few weeks previously, we had thought was the capital of Malaysia (always room for some British ignorance after all!). Unfortunately, the walk across a city in 80% humidity and 40°C heat doesn’t do much for natural energy reserves, so by the time we managed to stumble across the starting line, we were already beginning to flag. Therefore, we engaged in the Harrison-based speed-reading influenced speed tour, ignoring any bits we deemed uninteresting enough for our vast intellects (read uncultured personalities) and managed to do our best to at least learn all bits connected to England, looking out for our personal interests at heart of course. Luckily, the museum was a rather good one, so much was learnt and we even both noticed the museum, by the end, had lifted our energy reserves, which surely is worth a museum-based award in itself no? To finish off our day of backbreaking exploration and, ultimately, our Asian leg, we decided to make haste for a supermarket and buy their second-least expensive bottle of wine, and their third least-expensive slab of dark chocolate and celebrate the end of the era from our oasis of Hiltonian decadence, a good end to a great day, and a great day to end a great continent.

So now, if you’ve pieced the puzzle together correctly, you’ll note we are firmly Down Under. In fact, not only have we set up base camp at Dad’s in Brisbane, we’ve also rented our Stationwagon, covered a seriously slab of Kms down the East coast, met up with Bob and Keegan in Sydney and camped within the valleys of the Blue Mountains.... But that, I’m afraid, is for another time. But, whilst I’m within my usual poetic entrapments of a conclusion, I feel it’s time to break the bad news.... The blogs will, most likely, be coming to an end within a month. I have no idea if I have any right to use such dramatic prose for such an innocuous piece of news, I fancy it’s mostly down to my upset at losing one of my favourite new found hobbies, but sadly I fear weekly updates of “what I did at work today” will lose some of the intrigue in comparison the material I’ve been so fortunate enough to deal with over the last 5 months. So, I’ll endeavour to give a detailed rundown of the Great British Eastern Coast Roadtrip, and I’ll also do what I can to paint the picture of our trip down from Cairnes, via Great Barrier Reef and into Brisbane, but with that final destination, also comes my re-entry into the real world, and a working week... Dull eh? But for now, I have to leave and go back to making the memories that will form the blogs. Can’t end without a climax now can we...?

R

A Jungle.... on a Beach.....

Hey readers, I write to you from Singapore and within one night, we can't help but notice the massive hike in prices. But that's a little bit too much of a boring detail to go into, besides, it's still cheaper than England! But with Singapore also comes the realisation that we've entered our last country in the Asian leg of our tour, truly emotional times! But, the beauty of this blog is that it allows me a slow motion replay feature, so I can relive Borneo and escape my impending post-Asian depression! So, our Borneo adventure started on the 29th April, which even now may ring bells for people at home, and on that day we joined a very small minority of Royal Wedding viewers in Kuching Airport, however, I'm going to avoid the "water-cooler" conversation of what I thought of it. Generally, I thought everything that most of you thought, that's the way these things go! From there we went to our new home for the next week, the Tracks B&B, for a reasonable £2 a night we managed a private room, air-con and free breakfast, quite the contrast to a Sheraton existence though I can guarantee that... I'm not going to lie, first impressions of Kuching were pretty poor. It was our first taste of a predominantly Muslim community, this won't turn into a philosophical analysis of the pros and cons between and across religions, what does matter though is that most bars are not permitted to sell alcohol.... Savages! And aside from that rather worryingly painful realisation, it also influences the rather drab architecture, less than friendly people and quite bland traditional food. And lastly, it appeared we'd arrived in the middle of a 4 day long National holiday, hence all tour operators were shut along with the majority of restaurants and supermarkets.... So, we got off to a bumpy start!

However, once we'd found our feet we decided the best way to truly enjoy the wonders of Kuching, was to leave it. The first trip we did was to Semenngoh National Park to see an Orang-utan rehabilitation centre. The centre itself is a huge batch of protected rainforest which is home to 90 or so Orang-utans which have been rescued from numerous families keeping them as pets, as well as some subpar zoos and poaching grounds. At the park you get taken to a small clearing where one of the wardens uses their Orang-utan calls and lays out some food for them. You then sit and watch in total silence as some distant trees begin to bow from side to side accompanied with some distant whooping noises. After a minute or so you catch your first sighting of a flash of orange as one swings in between a gap of trees for a second, and then finally, one by one, they saunter down numerous vines and branches and settle themselves down on a viewing platform for a bit of food. They truly are incredible animals. Even just watching them hang on a vine with one foot and an arm whilst cracking open a coconut with their teeth, you get struck with the awe of the situation in which you've found yourself. In total we saw about 12 different Orang-utans along with two rather small baby Orang-utans (although you shan't hear an "aww" or the word "cute" coming from this hardened battle veteran). We even got a preview of some intimate sexy Orang-utan action, which was... unique. Try to think less Titanic, Di Caprio/Winslet and more Chris Brown/Rihanna....

Before the next activity, I have to give you a quick meteorological recap of an average day in Borneo. So far, everyday had consisted of about 50% equatorial 38 degree heat and 50% thunderstorms, rain and cloud. All very tropical, but very difficult to plan for and, although the rain was great fun and rather beautiful, the cloud got tedious and you truly did miss the sun. So, our next day trip to Bako National Park marked a turning point in our fortune, and was the start of a new pattern of sunny equatorial 38 degree heat for all but 30 minutes of a thunderstorm, which was a significant improvement! Bako National Park is an island of jungle and beach (hence the title) which is home to numerous species of snake, monkey, lizard and bird. You can buy a guide, but we decided to skimp on the outgoings and explore around ourselves. The first day we trekked with a couple of Brits and a Dane and headed out on one of their longer treks over and around the mountain in the middle of the island, this was a hot and tiring day.... The trek though was beautiful, the finest point was sitting on an overhanging boulder over the cliff and taking a look back out towards the mainland, over the coast and down to the beaches and jungle where we had started. The second day we headed through the jungle, past some mangrove swamps and onto the beach, it was this day we saw the famed Probiscus monkey, or "monkey with the big nose" as it's more commonly known. Definitely worth a Google because, despite the fact we were only a few metres away from a gang of them, my camera let me down with it's ability (workman blame tools etc etc). The island itself was an awesome place to hang around for a day, I was really struck by the variety of environments that could exist on such a small island. As I said on the second day we were only trekking for 3-4 hours and passed through dense jungle, into a rocky forest, then flooded mangrove and finally tropical beach. There were also flat rockys terrains higher up the mountain, small creeks with mosses and irony orange water and flat grassland areas with boars and deer. Apparently it's this very versatility of environment that Borneo is famed for, and I think the Bako National Park is probably a very good example of this. It was the very best area for trekking we've had so far, and by far my favourite trip we went on.

It was after the second night that we found our calling for the evenings... Karaoke! About 10 minutes away from our B&B was a mall called "Springs" that we decided to explore to avoid spending any unneccesary non-sleeping time in our hostel. And within this wonderful building we found, in ascending order of awesomeness:

5) Taiwanese Teashop with unlimited tea refills
4) A cinema showing Thor (Truly cool film! "We ate, we drank, we made our ancestors proud!")
3) A shop that sold real whiskey and beer in Muslim territory
2) The finest doughnut in the world ever, full stop, with no room for argument
1)... Cheap karaoke

I honestly don't understand why these things haven't caught on in England. You book your own private room, they bring you free beer (x4) and then any booze you fancy after that point. You then sing. And that is it! I'm going to say, on record, we got really good towards the end of the evenings (and it had NOTHING to do with the whiskey and beer!). We nailed some pretty good duets, some pretty high notes and some pretty teary ballads, it all ends with a very late night, a sore head in the morning, a ropey voice for 3 days and a damn good evening all round!

Our final trip was a kayak down a river through jungle territory. We had a guide who may or may not be the manliest man we have ever met. As a taster, this is a man who hunts Anaconda because it has enough meat to feed his village, shoots flying bats (VERY difficult shot) because it's a nice treat for his family and climbs mountains without harnesses because "it's not bad for exercising". A true hero to the end, he may even compete with the reputation of Thor as far as my comparisons go! The trip was great fun, it lasted 5 hours ish in the end, with three stops, one for a waterfall, one for a swim and one to take a look around his village which was (if this makes sense....) so overly authentic that it felt like a film set. The highlight was about 4 hours in when the sky erupted with the most ferocious thunderstorm that I had ever seen. We kept going down the river for 15 minutes or so before our guide found a small bat cave for us to paddle into until the rain relented. After 5 minutes we decided to abandon the kayaks and go for a swim, the cold water with the humid air and warm rain was fantastic, all worries about river anacondas aside.... So, as you can see, Borneo in the end turned out to be one of the most naturally impressive areas we visited on our trip. The island itself though is the third largest in the world and is owned by three separate countries. We went to the area that is famed for it's Orang-tans and jungley National Parks. Other areas are famous for their diving (which I'm quite gutted to have missed), some areas for their mountains, some for their headhunting tribes (!) and some for their beaches. In retrospect, to truly see Borneo properly I think we'd have to have dedicated a month to the island entirely, a week didn't quite do it justice... But that's for another world trip I fancy! So now, the metropolitic Singapore is our home for three more days and then we're heading Down Under to see my very dear friends Bob and Keegan. Am looking forward to it immensely, we've made some damn good friends whilst we've been away and met some pretty cool and crazy people, but in the end, it's going to be refreshing to see some old faces. Unfortunately, what they are not yet aware of, is that they are solely responsible for picking me out of my post-Asia depression... What ever you do, don't tell them... ;-)

R

The Langkawi Award Ceremony

Hello readers, I feel like it's been quite a while? I can confirm that we have now left the warm protective environment of luxury and have stumbled back into the dark cold wilderness of backstreet B&Bs, it's a hard life! Langkawi, ultimately, was a total and undeniable success! I think it was the perfect combination of being perfect for my Dads week long holiday and a seamless addition to our year long itinerary. The highlights are grand and many, but i think that a Top 5 shall suffice in the, most likely wayward, pursuit of conciseness. For the sake of my limited cognitive facilities, these Top 5 shall not be presented in any order what so ever, I will have a hard time selecting a mere 5 memories out of the whole bank, let alone deciding which ones are more or less worthy of being on the list than the others. In fact, to save even the association of rank order, I'll resist the urge to use 1-5 and instead issue prizes for different categories for each of the 5 memories.

So, in the ground-breakingly titanic food portion category we have the Langkawi Mantis Prawns *pause for applause*. We found a restaurant along our local high street of sorts that was always busy and, therefore through the passage of infallible logic, somewhere that sells great food. Our logic did not betray us! The food was incredible, I believe I told you last time that I ordered a Golden Promfret (big fish) from the restaurant, the second time, Dad, Ben and myself all went for the Mantis Prawns.... We were not disappointed. The prawns themselves are approximately 10 inches long and with our order of three each, amounted to a pound or so of solid prawn meat. For those that don't know, I have somewhat of a passion for seafood and needless to say, I'll be ruined for the rest of my life concerning any future prawn experiences (Sidenote; Future Prawn Experience, great name for a concept band.). So, the winner of the turbo-speed water activity category, we have the Jet-ski island hopping trip. I fancy I may be a little bit late to the party concerning this one, but jet-skis are awesome fun! We set off from Langkawi beach and made our way across the Andaman sea to three separate islands each about 30 minutes from each other. The first stop was to Pregnant Maiden Island, not named as some may think for it's gruff, large and uncouth appearance with rapidly changing weather based mood swings (He's getting bold....) but instead because it truly does look like a rather pregnant lady lying down.... Simple as that! But the island itself consists of a network of inner limestone caves which are unstable and therefore deemed unsafe for tourist exploration, but the main feature is the giant freshwater lake in the middle of the island surrounded by forest and mountain landscape. It was truly very beautiful and a nice spot for a bit of sunbathing, swimming and general gawking. The second island was a small sand beach island that, in there opinion, was a great location for snorkelling, however, I'd raise the point that a haven for speedboats and jetskis with little to no aquatic life is perhaps better suited to other activities aside from snorkelling. We left there hastily with our lives and backs intact for a loop around the last deeply forested island, and headed back to mainland. With this memory, it needs to be said it's the first, and perhaps only, one which is most memorable for the transition between these islands, the jetskis were... incredible!

So, the third memory in the category of animal which escaped the confines of my nightmares to spring into reality and, thus, promptly back into my nightmares (should I start using acronyms?); The Giant Flying Squirrel, or as it's affectionately known by the locals, the Flying Cougar.We found it for the first time as we were leaving our bungalow and walking towards the carpark when a giant swooping beast hurtled down from the heavens (yes, you're hearing the dramatic version) and clung onto a tree. Upon closer inspection, we could confirm it did have the eyes of a murderous beast, the wings of a dragon and the claws, nay talons, that ensured we kept our distance. Some may accuse me of exaggeration, and I'm afraid my photos won't do the nightmare justice, it kept you on edge past nightfall from that evening on. And much like the brand new car phenomenon, once you'd seen one you couldn't help but see quite how many of them there are out and about. This is one element of Langkawi I have no concerns with leaving behind! So, the next category is the award for outrageous dedication to watching Champions League football against all the inherent adversity of a countrywide ESPN shortage. Barcelona/Madrid was a match which we had earmarked as a must watch, but the problem started when we realised the Sheraton was lacking in the ESPN department. Unphased we proceeded to explore the local bars and restaurants so that we could find somewhere to rest our weary legs, perhaps enjoy a flagon of ale and watch the football in good company! Our ambitions slowly came down to ground when we realised that ESPN appeared to have priced itself out of the market for the entire island of Langkawi. We were on the verge of giving up when we took a taxi to go back to the hotel and talked to the taxi driver about our predicament. He said that he knew no bars that had ESPN, but that the taxi rank where the on call taxi drivers for the island sleep and eat had the channel and that we could watch it there if we wanted. So, at 3am we set off on mopeds, and had by far, the most enjoyable evening I've ever had, and perhaps ever will have, in a taxi rank. We made friends with some local drivers, made our predictions and settled down to one of the most unique football match experiences I've ever had, in the end, who needed a bar?!

The final award for Langkawi is a bit of an overly emotional one in so much as the award for finest addition to our travelling cohort and best company of the entire trip. Me and Ben had a great time hanging around with Dad and I guess a geneticist would have something to say about the fact that it was by far the smoothest induction to our group which we've had! As a group we managed to go to sleep with little to no idea as to what we'd be doing the next day, let alone the for the rest of the week, yet we always managed to wake up and find something to do which was worthy of another Langkawi award. At the end, we'd managed to achieve a rare combination of a very busy and packed week filled quite intensively with many memories, but with no feeling of exhaustion and in fact, the the contrary, a very relaxed departure to the airport and onto the next destination. All in all, it does nothing but bode well for the impending Australian adventure, and I think perhaps we've got enough time for one more award ceremony just yet.... In the mean time, stay tuned for a Borneo update within the next few days, and then, prepare yourself for a rather depressed update within the next week as our Asian adventure is coming to an end in 6 days time. It's still beyond all belief that we're now in our fifth month of a travels, with the horrid prospect of a halfway point in sight. Still, that does equate to 7 months left... You'd think there's a few more memories to be made in that time wouldn't you?

R