Football in the mountains...

Playing football in the foothills of the Himalayas in Nepal, Macchapucchare's snowy peak in the background. Running in jeans with borrowed, ragged boots, 2 sizes too small, on a pitch that was more swamp than grass, thanks to the monsoon. At least they said i looked like Cantona, even if i obviously don't play like him. And we had to (illicitly, i suppose) climb down a large drain to get into the field - reminds me of those good old days in Malaysia =)

The Nepalis, like the Indonesians, like to "buang" (clear) the ball from defence, punting it up for their strikers, who seemed to have mastered the first touch, pushing the ball instantly past you at an awkward angle and then sprinting after it. And boy are they fast.

We lost - i think the score was 2-0, and i played terribly - after too many steak and wine evenings on Lakeside, i suppose, but everyone had fun, and it was good exercise prior to tackling the base camp trail. I really was in terrible shape - the "triathlon" with my Dutch friend up the World Peace Pagoda, just on the outskirts of the lake - a challenging row, climb, and (almost) swim (if we had flipped the leaky wooden boat...) approach left me stoned and half-dead on top of the hill - polishing off Shantaram, sharing a smoke and talking with a wizened old Nepali farmer, who it seems, had a brother in Malaysia - which instantly makes you their new best friend, like cool (or was it the smoke). And then us rushing back again before 3 - the official time when the skies open, punctually, and inundate everything in sheets of water. Its funny, one of the first question everyone asks when they first arrive in Nepal mid-monsoon is do you think it will rain tomorrow. The answer, invariably: Yes. 3 o'clock. Why? How do you know? Guy points to the sky, wobbles his head and smiles. And tomorrow, at quarter to 3, when you smile to yourself and think ah but he is wrong, (damn i wished i had went paragliding today) the sky empties. Without warning. No thunder, no lightning - just sheets and sheets of (alpine) water sweeping down over the town, over Pokhara, creating so many silvery ripples in the flat-mirror surface of the lake and falling leaves....

Long termers count the number of monsoons they have been through. My neighbour, the Russian (with his cute 2 year old daughter) is a 5 monsoon-er. I am now a one-monsoon guy. And i absolutely loved it, the rain, everything. It was magic.

Loreena McKennitt - Nights from the Alhambra

Caravanserai. Raglan roads. The mystic's dream. Cymbeline. Marco Polo. Dante's prayer. the Bonny Swans. Huron 'Beltane' Fire Dance.

Putting the CD on, lying down on my bed for a siesta on a hot, timeless Malaysian afternoon, the last orange rays of sunlight permeating in a warm glow from the drawn curtains, somehow, too sweet, already cold but nevertheless great teh tarek on the battered wooden desk where i used to assemble my plastic scale models, attracting armies of ants (black, tiny, and acrid-smelling when you squish them). Its funny but this is what i think of, of Malaysia, and home, when i am abroad - that cosy room that is too hot (and orange-y) in evenings, the call to prayer at 5 in the morning just as i start to get into bed, having fun making supper at 2 a.m., pasar tanis (morning markets) with my father, the chilly morning air on my face, driving, picking greens...

***

I had let my thoughts wander and it instantly, always, runs back to magical Nepal, a flood of memories - that night in Belahiya, getting drunk on Royal Stag whiskey and coke, celebrating "graduating" India (What happens in Belahiya, stays in Belahiya), strolling the lakeside at Pokhara with a few really cool guys and gals, staying on for 2 weeks, lazy late breakfasts at the Pumpernickel Bakery's pretty garden by the lake, a 10 day journey up into the heart of the Annapurna Range, an awe inspiring amphitheatre of ice, snow and giants rising out into the sky. The route up was psychadelic, from the Macchapucchare base camp (i hope almost a year after Nepal, i can still spell this right. I used to pride myself for being able to spell, and pronounce it correctly, instead of the lazy ol' "fishtail", as it is also known.) on, walking through the shifting clouds, swirls of mist dancing around tors, a sea of flowers, red and yellow and purple and pink, and me, walking/floating through it all, no end and no other person in sight. Psychadelic, amazing, breath taking - its what i only use those words for now.

Above: My home in the clouds - notice the little cabin, bottom left... Taken 9 June 2008, Macchapucchare Base Camp - which isn't really a base camp cos you arent supposed to climb it. The locals consider it sacred, the abode of Gods. It wasn't hard to see why.

Above: Macchapucchare looming magnificently right in front of us. See the tiny people at the bottom of the photo? The awe, the grandeur... 9/6/2008


Above: A beautiful dream. Through the clouds on the way to Annapurna base camp. 9/6/2008

And also legendary Kathmandu, the end of the road for me, and the hippies who made it, 30 years ago, overland, from Europe. A fanless room at the south end of Thamel, next to Thamel High School (???) and breakfasts at Helena's rooftop - 99Rs (a dollar and a half for 2 eggs, sauted potatoes - which are the best, ever, and a banana, grilled tomato, sausages, toast, jam, butter and tea/coffee...), going for those long walks out of town into the Kathmandu valley, to the Swayambunath monkey temple, Patan, Pashupatinath...


p/s - the CD was bought for 30 Nepali rupees at a music shop in Pokhara, near Camping Chowk.

The hobbit

It has been one and a half years of travelling and blogging - I thought a change would be refreshing, hence the new layout (themed the hobbit - kinda reminds me of my adventures, leaving my little, cosy hobbit hole with a rucksack and thats all and heading out into the world. Just a kid with his rucksack on his back. (and Sting. No, of course not =)).

So adieu boxy 90s template that i've had for the past one and a half years - it has been a great time, but its also time for a new start. Just to be picky the font is a bit on the small size, and there are perforated lines around all my pics, for some reason. Other than that i quite like the clean new interface and the pasture-green (is this a colour? i mean, since peach is a colour...) background and the font.

Mission: Istaanbul

Just 8 months ago i was in a dingy Delhi guesthouse room suffering from (appropriately enough) Delhi belly flipping through some glossy magazines - and this caught my eye. Suave. =) I wished i could go to Istanbul - just the name itself sounded magical, exotic, faraway.

And its barely 3 months now before Istanbul. Mission begins 8 May 2009.

I will be doing the classic Istanbul to Cairo route, and then back again, in about 7 weeks. And i have circumvented my Israeli problem - apparently there is a ferry from Aqaba in Jordan to Egypt, Nuweiba, where i will make my way through the Sinai to Cairo, and then take a looong ferry ride to Cyprus and then on to Turkey. Or as my friend suggests, do the long way round by flying to Germany for a coffee (and free lodge) with some friends and then flying back to Istanbul, inexplicably cheaper at 150 euros or less than to fly direct for 20. Weird. And the best part: I just realised i don't need a schengen visa!!! How cool is that? I mean, the whole application can take up to months, even a full year, so i realise how lucky i am. (and how lucky us Malaysians are not to be slapped with a visa requirement for the UK even though we are not exactly a rich "first world" country...)

Oh and as an aside i really want to get Rory McLean's Magic Bus to relive the "magic" (in more ways than one) journeys in the 70s that started in Istanbul all the way to paradise in Nepal, but i don't think it's available yet here. Oh well, i might just have to get it online. Check out the journey here.

Current things to do:

1. Get a (real) ISIC card. I had wanted to get one in Bangkok (Oxford law faculty) along with a false passport to placate those dodgy guesthouse owners who insist on safekeeping your passport in case you do a runner (who probably have a lucrative sideline forging "books")...

2. That tetanus jab that has been postponed for years owing to my very manly fear of needles.

3. Renew passport - darn lucky i checked and found that Turkey has recently imposed a 1 year validity requirement for all visitors. Wouldn't want to end up with a Pasport Kecemasan (emergency passport) and pissed off embassy staff.

You know you have been in rural Southeast Asia too long when...

1. You instinctively hesitate, just for that split second, before throwing the piece of toilet paper into the toilet. Should i or should i not? A lesson learnt from overflow(n) toilets in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos, where the pipes don't digest toilet paper too well and choke on it. The result, a wet floor which further (desperate) flushing in the hope of clearing the system only aggravates.

2. A patch of overgrown grass and you think to yourself "Achtung minen". And then smile stupidly (ah those fond memories) to yourself while other people stare at you as you try to take the safe way across by skirting the overgrown clumps and stepping on the worn bits, walking in zig zags with a silly self indulgent smile on your face.

I can't believe it

Was just surfing the web looking for flights to Mongolia and pulling my hair out thinking of ways to circumvent China's visa rules (i needed a double entry - i figured i'd tell them i was visiting Hong Kong/Korea where i'd go by train to Mongolia instead, come back to Beijing and then continue down the railroads across the Himalayas to Tibet). It sounded like a great trip - except for the Chinese visa, and the costs of the flight to Ulaan Bataar. Which was like 1200 SGD. I then checked Malaysia airlines - 404 dollars to Beijing, not bad, but id have to spend a day at Peking international playing terminal man. Which i really wouldnt mind - for 300 dollars since the Air China flight to ULN tomorrow was still a shocking 500 dollars. Anyways i reminded myself of that time i slept at Agra Fort train station - sweet dreams with cockroaches running around the dusty, sticky concrete floor pasted in decades of split chai. Peking was going to be a breeze - that was, until i found out, taking the virtual tour of the airport, that the passport control (along with the veterinary inspectors) were right outside after you exited the aircraft, and the way to the transfers area involved an immigration check, ticket check, health check etc etc (in that order, as specified, no, kindly reminded).

So that leaves the 1200 SGD option of the (notoriously late) Air China flight to ULN, with a one hour transit in Beijing. Definitely not a good plan, and at that price i wasn't going to play around. I went back to the Malaysia airlines website. Bored. Played around, tried flying to Jeddah, Buenos Aires etc etc. And then i clicked Istanbul - a magical name, the 70s Istanbul-Cairo hippie trail comes instantly to mind, the pudding shop, the blue mosque, cheap Istanbul fleapits. And the price - 700 SGD to IST. I almost fell off my chair. With all the plus pluses it was still a 1800 return trip, much more bang for my buck than 1300 a pop to Mongolia. I clicked, entered my data and clicked. The MAS website lagged. My mom called - hey have you checkd out Qatar Airways? I googled. 1400 dollars return. I saved 400 dollars because MAS had some problems with their website. Thanks MAS for the lag, though i was really looking forward to flying with my national carrier for the first time, but nevertheless, WOO HOO! Turkey here i come!

Thinking of overlanding to Cairo, the famous Istandul-Cairo route (and back) but there is just the small problem of Israel being most inconveniently between Jordan and Egypt, last time i checked my map. I will either have to swim, or go via the Saudi Arabian desert - which im sure is pretty tough too. But the good thing, small distances in the Middle East as opposed to China/India. And the best part yet - i'm going! Oh God this is amazing. Just a day ago i was shit bored thinking of ways to get my Chinese visa permits and how dreary the whole China big smokey industrial city idea of an adventure was. I don't think i'm gonna sleep tonight - it's 3 now and i'm too happy. (and i have a class tomorrow morning).

2 months later...

How long has it been since i returned here? 2 months almost. wow. a bit discouraged from continuing everytime i log on to see that somewhat.... narcissitic post.

But 2 months. What has happened? Been to the Nam, met some great people, travelled down Vietnam together, had a splendid Christmas on the sand at Phu Quoc (the Eden - which as the night went on begun to resemble a hospital with the casualties hobbling in from the sea), came back, started a new term, back to routine....

Vietnam was... a bit predictable. Like, same same but (not so) different. It didn't feel so different, so unique, like Laos and Cambodia had - that edgy, gritty, cool feel. Vietnam was mostly just another string of big cities - with Topshop, Calvin Klein's, Gloria Jean's coffee, and millions of motorbikes rushing to the (capitalist) future. Maybe it could easily have been Bangkok, Malaysia (Kuala L'impure, as Theroux mentions) in the mid 80s. Especially Saigon - with the high rises, seedy Pham Ngu Lao, commerce, snaking telephone pylons, hordes of motorcycles, sad little pho shops by the roadside with old men drinking beer and staring at you late at 2 a.m. in the morning...

It wasn't really a fascinating, eye-opening, jaw dropping trip, the way India-Nepal was - more of a holiday, actually - it was more a matter of "ok, so this is Hue..." rather than "god. i can't believe i'm here" - which i felt more than a few times around India and Nepal, going up the Himalayas. This trip was mostly taking things slow, i remember walking in Vietnam's big, fast developing, and obviously affluent cities - mostly faceless places like Da Nang (it takes your soul away - so sad, at night, the concrete buildings soaring skywards into the night, the lights, the casinos, the neon signs, and no one), depressing rainy Hue (2 obviously foreign enclaves, an ancient citadel with the hammer and sickle draped over it), the gleaming new concrete wonderland of Ha Long city...

It is not meant to be so depressing - and it wasn't, but Vietnam, i probably remember more of the company, my friends, rather than the places, although some were really nice, soothing - i liked Cat Ba island, much better than Ha Long bay, its like staying at one of those rocky karst outcrops that jut into the sea in the perpetual fog-mist that hangs over the boat (which is, in brutal honesty, a diesel chugging, overcrowded wooden monstrosity that ploughed its way through the karsts on the way to Cat Ba to drop us off before making a U-turn back to Halong city). It was really, riding into the town in the evening, Jurassic Park - like taking a trip back through time across the island's wild and untamed, gorgeously rugged and raw scenery. So far away.

And there is also peaceful, tranquil Tam Coc at Ninh Binh, where i remember banana trees by the water's edge, a flooded paddy, and little stilt houses, the sea of luminescent green weeds under the boat, swaying noiselessly, fluidly, as we glided down the water. Alongside were the towering, rocky karst outcrops - a surreal, pastoral Halong bay on the rice paddies.

I will also not forget Hoi An - anyone who has been to Malacca will see the similarities right away. The straits chinese houses with the broad wooden shutters that open up into the street, the fading yellow facades, distinctly tropical vegetation - frangipanis, banana trees, leafy palms, and a river neatly dividing the town into 2, where the merchant ships used to come in and trade.