A Childhood Craze Gone Large!

Do you remember when you were a kid and you used to get those toys where you assembled the car/truck/whatever it was then carefully studied all the stickers supplied to work out where each one should go?! Fun wasn't it?! Sticking stripes down the side or a red cross on the back doors...

Well, let us tell you the sticker craze is alive and well in Indonesian Java, on a large scale! As we made our way the short distance, taking a long time at an excruciatingly slow speed, from Surabaya to Probolinggo we passed endless rows of shacks selling all kinds of necessities, and every so often we passed a sticker shack. On first glance they almost look like a saree shop from India, with shelf upon shelf of rolls of brightly coloured material. I took in the bright and often luminous colours and the men sitting out front with scissors in hand. Then i saw the vans with macho drivers carefully applying something to the side of their truck above the clothed version of a page 3 girl on their massive mudflap...and I realised THEY ARE STICKER SHOPS!!

It appears it's quite the rage to have your sticker made to order and applied to your vehicle...that and whatever flashing neon concoction your local neon dealer can do for you, keeps the roads looking lively I guess!

From Asthmatic to Advanced

 

I have asthma, or so a doctor said 100 years ago one day in his GP surgery. For years I have wanted to scuba dive, I've asked before...in fact every time I see an opportunity, just in case, and the answer is always "NO". I knew the would be loads of opportunity to dive while we were traveling so I explained to my GP how I really don't use my inhalers and how my lung capacity is great and could it be possible I no longer have asthma because I would like to dive...."NO" she said. Grrrrr.

So, you can imagine my surprise and total delight when I asked in Koh Tao, Thailand, if I could dive even though I have a history of asthma and the answer was "shouldn't be a problem, go see the local GP".  So off I went to the local GP on this dive centric island to find out if I could be declared safe to dive. It took just a few moments in his surgery with a few listens to my chest, some questions and a grand old fee of £3 to be told "good to dive". It was so easy! 

Delighted, I mean reallly delighted and at the same time just ever so slightly nervous that all of a sudden after years of being forbidden to dive I suddenly could, I trotted back to the Big Blue dive centre to sign up for the introductory "open water diver" course.

I had a ball. With my fantastic instructor Ros who kept me reassured, my great "buddy" Artur from Germany and the entertaining couple James and Breda from Ireland, I learnt how to dive. It was a jammed packed four days when I got addicted to pizza post dives, had great banter with the other divers during our "surface intervals" and drank a lot of mineral water. By the end I was addicted, I felt like I had just had a taster and I wanted more!

Six years before John had learnt to dive in Australia, doing his open water and then attempting his "advanced" course. Unfortunately, on one of the dives John couldn't equalise his ears and had to abandon the dive which meant he couldn't complete the course. It didn't take much to convince us to stick around Koh Tao for a bit longer and do our advanced course there.

So off we went, with Ros again instructing us, Breda and James, the soon to be infamous Irish couple, a Scottish guy and an American called Joe. Some of this diving was frustrating as it focused much more on improving skills underwater but other parts were amazing, like the chance to deep dive (to 30m), dive a shipwreck and do a night dive. But the absolute (unconventional) highlight of the advanced course was on our last dive of the course when....

We all went down underwater as normal, in our buddy pairs as you always do. After a while our instructor Ros looks round and signals to Breda "where is your buddy? Where is James?". Breda looks round, apparently realising for the first time that James isn't there. Breda starts to panic. "stay here" Ros signals while she briefly looks nearby for James, he can't be found. There are procedures for when this happens, it's ok. We just all need to surface which is where James should be since he has presumably realized he is lost! We all head up, abandoning the dive, and get to the surface. James is nowhere to be seen. Breda starts panicking more. I understand why, we're still new to diving and she just lost her boyfriend! We wait a while looking for him but he hasn't come up. Breda is fairly near to hyperventilating. I am also starting to think where is he?!! Eventually his head pops up "there he is there he is!!!". Breda and James have a domestic. Everyone calms down and we decide to go back down to finish this dive.

We all go down a second time, swimming around the wreck while James and Breda take photos with the (expensive) camera they have rented. Ros indicates to us when it's time to go up. It's important to do this when you are told, kinda matters when you are under water how long you are down there. So we begin to head up and realize that James and Breda aren't. "What are they doing?!" I think, "they need to come up"...James and Breda seem to be frantically swimming around until they are forced to come up. When we reach the surface we know something is wrong...they have lost the camera...a certain kind of mood descends upon the diving party as the potential cost of paying for the lost equipment weighs on Breda and James. Incase you are interested, Breda gave the camera to James but James never received it. Hmmm.

We all floated back to the boat unable to show any signs of cheer and sullenly climbed aboard. They don't really even know where it was dropped. Then, out of nowhere against all probability the camera pops up right beside the boat!!!!!! An instructor sees it and shouts "I'll get it" as she dives into the water. Breda sees it and shouts "THE CAMERA!!" and recklessly jumps into the water...with her WEIGHT belt on and no BCD (flotation equipment). Ie. She will sink. "BREDA!!!!" shouts Ros "TAKE YOUR WEIGHTS OFF!" which Breda thankfully manages. We get the camera and Breda safely back on board. We laugh a little, with relief. Then to put the icing on the cake we look over to James, who has been engrossed in sorting out his equipment the whole time and we ask him does he realize his girlfriend nearly drowned and by the way we found the camera. He just looks up blankly and says "Breda? Is she ok?" hahaha how you can be completely oblivious to several people frantically shouting your girlfriends name beats me, but it is proven possible! What a dive! We won't forget James and Breda any time soon. 

Perhaps this offers some explanation for it all: James and Breda are Irish.

We fun dived for a few more days on Koh Tao and loved every moment of it and as we have moved down through Thailand and into Malaysia we have dived again in Koh Phi Phi, Koh Lanta, Perhentian Islands and now in the revered and respected world class dive sites at Sipidan in Borneo. Every dive is different and we have seen such wonderful underwater life; turtles, sharks, sea horses, puffer fish, box fish, frog fish, octopus, sea snakes and so so much more! And we still have Indonesia and the Great Barrier Reef to come! Bring it on! :-)

The open water crew: me, Artur, Breda, James and Ros

Back at school to do our advanced diving course, biology like text book in hand...but it's all ok, the classroom setting is much better than the old school days!

Another kind of school!

Enjoying the big blue in Thailand

Giant Moray Eel

Blue and Yellow Fusiliers and the funky Trumpet Fish

Seal Faced Puffer Fish - cute!

A Turtle and a Shark!!!

The oil rig we stayed on while diving the beautiful waters of Sipidan, Borneo

The Moustache Brothers

Comedy, freedom of speech, freedom to choose whose photo you tac up on your wall, freedom to pursue or develop your interests and hobbies, the freedom to entertain whoever you wish...we have a lot of freedom really.

In Burma, freedom isn't something there is a lot of and certainly not in the case of any of the above, but in a small house tucked down a street in Mandalay live three quite astoundingly admirable men who simply refuse to sacrifice the freedoms we take so for granted.

With a sense of anticipation we made our way along the streets to the infamous house where one could hear comedy (in Burma?!!)...as we walked along looking for some sign a man shouted and waved us over "moustache brothers?" he asked, we nodded and were ushered into a small living room directly off the street. A single row of old chairs lined the wall and a few tourists were there already. In front of the chairs was a space about 2 meters deep which was the "stage". The walls were adorned on one side with traditional burmese puppets and on the other with photos of Aung San Suu Kyi - a woman whose photo it is forbidden to display in Burma, and photos of the brothers themselves.

We received a wonderful welcome from the brothers, who have paid very very dearly to stay in the comedy scene...6 years of imprisonment for two of the brothers to be precise in addition to being banned from performing in their own language or for Burmese people in any way which of course was once their source of income. Now they can only perform for tourists, in English, and even at that their aged mother sits outside the house every night while they perform watching out for government spies who would jump at the chance to arrest them again.

It was a wonderful evening. Plenty of wit, hilarious dancing and a lot of laughter. Like most comedy it pointed to the truth of the regime under which the Burmese are forced to live...and although they hold Aung San Suu Kyi in the most high regard these men do disagree with her stance that tourists should boycot Burma. For them, tourists are the only people who can take their message out and help people to understand what is really going on under this brutal military rule. We are so glad we got to see the moustache brothers...what a laugh!

War and Waterfalls

To fill a few days in Thailand we went to a place called Kanchinaburi, a relatively small town close to the border of Burma (Myanmar). Our main purpose was to visit the very famous and very beautiful 7 tier waterfall. The town has a very dark past as one of the many POW camps that were created to construct the Burma - Thailand railway that the Japanese desperately needed to supply their war effort against British India. A very famous bridge was built here and is commonly known as the Bridge over the river Kwai. The bridge itself isn't actually over the river Kwai, but over a tributary that joins the Kwai about a mile down stream, one for QI there.

Anyway, the waterfall was a 2 hour bus journey away so we had a day to kill and decided to take in the WWII sights. The quality of what was on offer varied hugely, but then so did the entrance fee's. The conditions in which the American, British, Australian and various other soldiers from the British colonies were kept were extremely basic. Sleeping on bamboo cots that were either infested with lice or splinting causing sores and infections. All this coupled with long working days of hard labour in tropical heat, dysentery and malnutrition rife among the population and periodic abuse from their Japanese guards. You can get a picture of life for these men, who were assured prior to being sent here that conditions would be far far superior, but were in fact basically fighting for survival.

The Japanese were desperate to have this railway built as their navy could not defend supply ships trying to head to Burma via the Andaman sea. Massively unrealistic goals and deadlines were imposed on the engineers in charge of the build who, in turn, put pressure on the guards and foreman to make these goals a reality. They responded by working the men harder, quite often employing brutal beatings and torture to achieve this. The result when combined with the working conditions described previously led to men literally dropping down dead. The guards quite often had to be persuaded to allow the men to be buried, or even moved from where they fell. It was at these times of grief that the soldiers remained alert and secretly buried records of the people who had died with the bodies and has led to a remarkably accurate picture of how many people died, when and where.

One of the most moving parts of Kanchinaburi was the WWII cemetery. It is like most around the world and beautifully simple with each grave identical, decorated with a few flowers and the name of the person buried along with his regiment.

In a caotic place such as SE Asia it was also beautifully kept with a permanent caretaker, a real tribute to the men who died so needlessly.

During our travels there has been a steady stream of Japanese tourists on their AC buses to all the beautiful sites as we make our way there by the cheapest means.

We did not see one single Japanese tourist while we were in Kanchiniburi.

There is something we British are very good at and that's accepting our past, understanding that sometimes we've made terrible mistakes and committed terrible atrocities against groups of people. We don't tend to hide away from it but are genuinely interested in our history, sometimes learning from our mistakes, sometimes not. Sadly not all countries have the same attitude and deliberately avoid confronting or even apologising for actions in the past but I feel the UK is one who has.

The 7 tier waterfall was fantastic, one of the most beautiful places we have been. We spent all day dipping in and out of the clear turquoise water as fish nibbled away at our feet, something which costs a fortune in Silverburn shopping centre!!

And of course the bridge (kinda) over the river Kwai was a very short bridge in the end. We had to step aside while walking across it as a train (only 2 a day) trundled over. The bridge was bombed and re-built 3 times during the war but it's still standing today, another tribute to the men who built it.

A Bangkok taxi journey.

We liked the taxi's in Bangkok! You got in them, told the driver where to go, they put on their meter and drove you to your destination. We then paid what the meter said, got out and went on our merry way.

"But that sounds like a normal taxi journey" we hear you say. Alas in South East Asia, or India or generally anywhere we have been taxi or Tuk-Tuk journeys can involve 5 minutes of haggling followed by a journey around the most expensive tourist shops and travel agents which conveniently pay big commissions to the drivers. We inevitably pay more than we should and frustrates us beyond belief at times.

So when we got into a taxi as we left Bangkok to head south we were in a very confident mood. We asked the driver to take us to the train station and even showed him our Thai instructions written out for us by our hostel. He looked at it, appeared to understand, handed the note back and pulled out into the traffic. We sat back and chatted away and then realised that there were two things wrong.

1. The day we were leaving also happened to be the Thai Queens birthday which meant lots of traffic.

2. We were going the wrong way!

We took out the map and had a look. He appeared to be taking us on a long loop around the city centre, sticking to the motorways, which were moving a lot faster than the city traffic which was worse due to the good ol' queens celebrations. We calmed ourselves and we had left 1hr 20mins to do a 15-20min, 6km journey so there was still time.

We started to get a little worried when the road seemed to go on for ever and we still were not heading back to the city. Eventually we did but then the driver pulled over and pointed at a sign as if we had reached our destination. We insisted that this motorway slip road wasn't the railway station to which he gave us a confused look. We looked up the Thai for train at which point we all began to realise that there had been a serious mis-communication. To make matters worse the driver then refused to take us to the train station, giving us some excuse that he did not have enough fuel. We pleaded with him to move ASAP as it was now 1825 and our train was leaving at 1830 but to no avail. We just got out and hailed another taxi, this time making sure our destination was crystal clear and headed back into the heart of Bangkok.

The next 45 minutes basically passed in silence as both Louise and I sat in the back of the taxi praying for our train to be delayed. Our new driver seemed to sense our stress levels as he probably broke a few traffic laws getting us there as quickly as possible. Eventually we pulled into Hulumphong station, we hurriedly paid our driver, ran into the station and BEHOLD!!! Our train was still on the board, we rushed to the platform and it was still there having been delayed for 40 minutes, exactly how long we needed it too.

Some of you probably don't believe that God exists, or that prayers are answered, or even that God cares about the little things.

We do!

Burmese Days

We always saw Burma, or Myanmar, as a possibility in our travels and really didn't know up until about two weeks prior to going that we would definitely take the plunge.  It was all

a bit of a mad rush in the end with queueing outside the Myanmar embassy in Bangkok to secure the visa, shouting at the computer screen because the flights had jumped significantly in price from the day before and co-ordinating all of this while trying to see the sights of Bangkok.

So we eventually found ourselves on an early Air Asia flight to Yangon, formally known as Rangoon, almost not believing that we were doing it.

We didn't know what to expect having read a whole load in the news about the military regime and also being a little perplexed in our travels from what we have now dubbed the 'Rosy Planet', our travel guide, which sometimes gives a false impression of a restaurant/city/country.  It was very British weather when we

arrived with drizzling rain and overcast skies, the stifling humidity was a bit different I'll admit but there you go.  We jumped in a taxi to the bus station to book our onward journey to Mandalay, a bit of bargaining later we had managed to book our bus in US Dollars rather than the local currency as that was all we had.  What followed was probably the best example of the amazing generosity and friendliness that defines the Burmese people.  We had no local currency which we needed to pay the local bus driver, we asked if they would change some money for us but instead of doing that they just gave us some money and told us where we could exchange

money in town.  Needless to say we were very taken aback and although we tried to refuse he insisted with the words "it is a gift." We re-paid him when we returned but it was done with such humility it was in itself truly humbling.

The Burmese people have been through a torrid few decades, just Wikipedia Burma and have a read through the history and you will see what we mean.  They have been ruled by a military regime who restrict everything from the state run media, any 'official' places of national interest (which of course have a fee for foreigners) and basically anything that makes money internationally.  This can be anything from natural gas sales to Thailand, joint venture expensive hotels with Japanese, Chinese and Korean chains and pretty much any natural resource

e.g. gold, coffee, timber.  The result is that all the significant money is controlled by the government, quite often going to line the pockets of the generals at the top of the hierarchy.  We soon became very clear is the local population was quite often abused in the process.  

One of the most spectacular sights on our trip to Burma was to the temples of Bagan, a massive plain beside the Irrawaddy river full of cathedral like temples that have been constructed over a thousand years ago.

The local population used to live in place called Old Bagan which is situated slap bang in the middle of the temples.  In the early 1990's this population was literally picked

up overnight and dumped 4 miles down the road in an undeveloped, utility free area called New Bagan.  The people were then left to organize basic needs such as sanitation and roads while the Generals built expensive hotels with the support of joint venture companies.

Another tale we heard from a fellow traveller was a gold mine being sold to a Chinese company.  They then employed the local male population and paid them a relatively low wage alongside importing cheap alcohol and opium.  Consequently they all got addicted and spend all the wages back into the hands that gave it to them through the alcohol and opium.  The consequence is a ruined community who's men have all become junkies and can't even provide for their families, the regime is laughing all the way to the bank and the Chinese company is selling gold at $1600 an ounce.

Traveling for Burmese people is basically not possible for the vast majority of the population.  To obtain a passport you need $1600, about a £1000, when a government office worker earns about $65 a month you can see it is a most unlikely ambition.  Quite often people haven't even been the few places we managed to make it to on our two week trip.  So you can see that quite often they may feel trapped and unable to do anything about it.

I'm sorry if this seems like a tale of sorrow and I hope you are not too depressed, we just want to help you understand the plight of the Burmese people before we go on.

Ok, so as I was saying earlier we experienced a fantastic example of generosity on our first day.  We even struck up a conversation with a local man who turned out to be a Christian and invited us to his church, before we could stop him he paid for our meal and left with a big smile.  It was at this point we said to ourselves that we were going to enjoy Burma.

After a relatively comfortable journey up to Mandalay we spent a couple of days viewing the ancient cities.

Mandalay and it's surrounding counterparts used to be the capital of Burma and the evidence can be seen with pagoda's sprouting up everywhere.

ancient  The children were especially friendly, although they tried to sell us postcards from   the moment they laid eyes on us they soon responded to our questions and we had a lot of fun with them.

One of our more successful ideas was to buy some modeling ballons and give them to some of the kids we met.  

From Mandalay to Bagan, Inle Lake to Yangon they managed to draw a lot of attention.  There was even one point while we rested in the shade of a temple in Bagan that adults were requesting one of our slightly deformed ballon dogs which we had presented to some of their kids.

 The excuses came far and wide and it was always for their child/brother/sister and never for them.  It provided quite a comical half hour as I struggled to blow them up quickly enough.

Everywhere we went the people gave us huge smiles, quite often taking time to chat with their limited English.

 Several times we started conversations that could not be finished for one reason or another, quite often about what we thought about Myanmar and maybe leading towards their political situation.  A lot of you may have heard of Ang Son Su Chi who is the leader of the opposition in Myanmar.  She has spent much of the last 20 years under house arrest and it is forbidden to mention her name.  Quite often she is refered to as 'the lady' or just not at all.  She is currently free from house arrest and there seem to be some softening of the hardline approach to her but only time will tell.  People were just genuinely happy to see you and to be honest we were happy to see them.

Our time seemed to just fly by and before we knew it we were back in soggy Yangon preparing to fly back to Thailand.  Our trip had taken us on a tour from Mandalay to ancient Bagan, to the cool plains of Inle lake and back.  We really enjoyed our time, making good of our invitation to church and managing to make it to the service and enjoy some great fellowship.

We left Burma with some very fond memories of the people and a greater understanding of the situation there.  Some people say not to go as you are condoning the government and regime that ruled before it.  We would definitely say the opposite, you should go and meet the people who want to meet you.  Of all the money we spent we estimate about 12% of it went to the government, but 88% didn't, it went in to the hands of the people.

20 Hours in Bangkok

Our first day in Bangkok was quite an introduction to the city. It began by being dumped off our “sleeper” bus at 5am at what can only be described as a dark and completely random intersection, in a city the size of London, with no idea of where we were. We negotiated and navigated our way to the hub of budget accommodation and quickly found a room. 6am. We were planning a trip into Burma in the next week or so and to get the visa we had to visit the embassy in Bangkok. Being already awake, and not keen on the idea of an early morning the next day, we decided to fight the tiredness and head straight to the embassy. We took the early morning river taxi and then the sky train, both full of commuters and school children. In the queue, while John went off in search of a local newsagent who very wisely provided all the visa forms and helped you fill them in for a wee fee, I got chatting to a fellow traveller who, would you believe, lived in Kersland Street in the same years I did! The whole process went very smoothly and we left our passports with the staff (apparently all military intelligence) hopeful that our visas would be granted.
 
Next we walked our way to the main post office and picked up a parcel post restante. After marveling at the fact that it arrived at the post office in Bangkok only 3 days after being posted in Northern Ireland we sought out the ancient public telephones nearby. We are, or at least I am, risk reducers. I like risk, but I also like to have some knowledge and even control over the level of risk I am taking. So, when we planned our trip, we took all the necessary precautions in terms of our health and got jabbed up to our eyeballs with anti-everything. After four months of travelling, we were sent a letter by the NHS kindly asking if we would return to the clinic to have one of our jabs re-administered as the drug company had recalled the batch of injections we had had due to it not providing sufficient protection. We felt it a little unusual that, since the NHS had on our medical records that we were away for a full year after getting our injections, that they felt a casual letter to an address we weren't at was sufficient communication. After much deliberation and quite a few phone calls to the clinic at home we decided we were best to get a further injection while away. Bangkok was the place to do it. We phoned around some of the nearby hospitals until we found one which stocked the vaccine we needed. What followed was something so far from any NHS experience that it was actually quite a treat! (I must counter before I move on that I honestly love the NHS. I genuinely think that we haven't a clue how fortunate we are to have a health system that is available to us no matter what goes wrong and that our treatment options are not, like many countries on this earth, determined by the size of the cheque we can write.) However....
 
What was so different?
 
After locating a hospital which had our vaccine in stock I asked if we could make an appointment. “When would you like to come in?” I was asked....”eh, today?” I offered very hopefully. “Yes, and what time would suit you?”....”Would 30 minutes time be ok?” ...”Certainly, that is your appointment made, when you arrive please go to the registration desk.” Eh, ok! That was, well easy!
 
We took a taxi, and smoothly drew up outside the hotel...oh sorry, I mean hospital, with it's glitzy signs and well tended bushes. Before we could say “we're here” the concierge staff had gently opened the taxi door and said “good morning”. As our taxi drove away and the next car drew up the driver passed his keys to concierge and strode in leaving the staff to worry about getting a parking spot, just like NHS hospitals...hahaha.
 
Inside the futuristic air conditioned building were beautiful desks behind which dainty staff clip clopped about handing new, slim, non dog eared and neatly marked manilla medical folders (NHS staff will appreciate these observations!) to one another. At the main reception desk we were gently directed towards “registration” and it felt more like I was joining an exclusive private health club than a hospital register. After a few moments of waiting we were presented with our new hospital cards, beautiful golden plastic cards bearing our names and the hospital contact numbers, then we were escorted to a waiting area for the international travel clinic. Here we were welcomed with smiles and “good morning”'s from the nurses, all looking about 27 and like a flash back to the 50's...dolled up to the nines with a proper wee paper nurses hats and all! Our bums barely had time to hit the well polished chrome seats before we were called in, early, for our appointment.

The clinic room looked nothing like an NHS clinic room. It was bright, well laid out, had soft sofa like seating, beautiful pictures on the walls and everything laid out in a precise and pristine manner. Our nurse slided a patient agreement form towards us to sign, declaring we were aware of the risks and side effects of the injection we were about to receive. That, considering she had told us zero about the side effects of the injection, and the fact that I had to suggest closing the clinic room door, means I cannot be unequivocally full of praise of this experience. But still, it was nice to be given bandages after that matched our oufits.

Of course one of the last differences between the NHS and this one off experience which none of us would like was being shown to the cashier at the end...although even in this I'll say that it was cheaper than what we had to pay on the NHS for the same thing! After ringing through our bill we headed back out where concierge called a taxi up for us and told the driver where to take us leaving us to simply sit back and relax, giggling at the differences in the healthcare experience we had just had and what we get at home.

Keeping on what we had started, on a very Bangkok day, we headed next to the malls. A taste of the urban parks that middle class Bangkokians frequently roam. I had a hair cut and we ate in the food court before heading back to our hostel via a big bad traffic jam.
 
Ah, time to sleep!