Reecey & Fletchie's Humble Wanderings and Accidental Adventures

To the beach!

2012-01-01T03:26:00.000+10:00

“Vamos a la playa! Vamos a la playa!” Reecey chanted.

We had reserved two seats on TicaBus, which offered a coach-like services from Granada to San Jose and the promise of a swifter clearance through the Nicaragua-Costa Rica land border. Next time we’ll take public buses again for 5% of the price.

The Nicaragua-Costa Rica border, heaving with people in the sweltering pre-Christmas rush, was now dusty and quiet as we made our way back to Costa Rica. It was there that it became clear we will never book on TicaBus again:

A three and a half hour journey inexplicably took six and a half hours.
The bus assistant struggled to understand that he was not an immigration officer (“Passports, passports”) but a bus assistant - who should therefore probably assist with bus-related matters such as the location of the bus stops.
The remake of Jaws, followed by its mutant-crocodile sequel, is not the best DVD option for transporting holiday-makers to the beach.

This was particularly the case given our friend in the local swamp.

But the Costa Ricans were happy to let their toddlers play twenty metres away while they took photos of el crocodillo no more than five metres away. (I was happy to look down from the safety of the bridge).

We arrived at Liberia, a regional town in Costa Rica’s northern plains, in time to catch a 6.10 pm bus to Nicoya, the gateway to the Pacific beaches. The two hour journey set us back 1200 colones each - a much more reasonable $2.40 a pop. For two hours, we bumped along the Costa Rican countryside under a clear, starry night, our packs sitting on our laps as BYO airbags.

A little boy sat on his mother’s lap next to Reecey and looked fearfully at her with all her bags.

We arrived in Nicoya too late for the onward bus to our beach, Playa Carillo, but not too late to catch a taxi. Our taxi driver was one of 20 children, which we both thought was incredible, until we befriended another Tica on New Years’ Eve who was one of 23 children. It was black but we could still hear the waves when we arrived at La Tropicale.

The owner, Arno, had already gone to bed but came out to greet us in pyjama bottoms and a warm welcome. He had reshuffled the rooms around due to our late (and doubtful) arrival, so we got to sleep in his spare bedroom, usually reserved for visits from his mother living in France.

The house, designed by Arno, is beautifully decked out over two levels with a loft, surrounded by trees and with wide balconies making it a perfect set for a Robinson Crusoe remake.

The next morning, Arno greeted us with fresh fruit, fresh coffee and toast with guava marmalade. Arno must be Playa Carillo’s most interesting character: he speaks a mashed dialect of English, Spanish and his native French. He was trained as a dancer and previously ran a guesthouse in Morocco, where he also worked for the King as a painter, until he “Just fell in love with Costa Rica darling!” His enthusiasm for his “project” and inherent gift as an attentive and engaging host, combined with a hint of traditional French snobbery, gave life to La Tropicale.

Kuku, Arno’s pet macaw, was the star of breakfast. “Hola!” he would mutter, then “Arno!” Reecey made friends with him when she let him pinch a piece of her marmalade toast.

Playa Carillio itself is beautiful, a bell-shaped beach lined with palm trees, clear blue-green water and playful waves. We swam in the mornings and watched sunsets in the evenings.

We spent New Years Eve with Arno and his friends (including Kuku, asleep in the tree) at La Tropicale. (Confession time - we had a nanna nap between 7 pm and 8.30 pm so we were awake for the festivities!)

We watched the fireworks from Arno's balcony, comforted Arno's startled pet dogs and wished our Mexican party-goers Feliz Ano Neuvo and promptly went to bed!

Happy New Year!

Reecey's Costa Rican Boyfriend Bit Me

2011-12-28T06:31:00.009+10:00

"Hola!" he says to anyone in his croaky Latino voice.

But Kuku is exclusively a ladies man. Kuku wasted no time flirting with my wife at breakfast at La Tropicale, just up the hill overlooking the beach at Playa Carillo.

I tried to make friends, even offering him some of my watermelon offcuts. Then he bit me. Twice. I have the scars to prove it.

Volcanoes and lakes

2011-12-26T10:59:00.017+10:00

Boxing Day 2011 will be remembered as the day we swam in a volcano crater lake and peered into an active (and stinky!) volcano!

Laguna de Apoyo is short minibus ride out of Granada, and we joined the hordes at The Monkey Hut hostel who were kicking back and relaxing in the aftermath of Christmas. The lake is perfect for swimming in (no sharks, only crocodiles) and the good folk at The Monkey Hut have stuck a couple of platforms off shore for the gringos to amuse themselves with.

After a swim and something that passed as pizza, we headed off to visit Masaya volcano. Our tour guide cheerfully advised us - as we were standing on the crest that overlooked the craters of two different volcanoes - that Masaya is active, but the smaller volcano is more dangerous as "the active ones, we know it has all the pressure released every day, but it is the not active ones like this one that we must be more worried about, because the pressure build and build until one day, any day, it will explode! Bang! Now...who want me to take a photo?". We had just passed a withered old sign that stated "Danger - do not pass" ; hardly reassuring!

The view from the top of the crater was amazing, but the stench of sulfur was just unbearable - much worse than anything that weeks of rice and beans can create in a human body. I climbed down from the lookout pretty early on, with eyes and throat burning, but Fletch managed to put up with it long enough to get some awesome photos. Enjoy!

Feliz Navidad!

2011-12-25T10:54:00.000+10:00

Happy Christmas to all of our family and friends!

We spent Christmas in the beautiful old colonial town of Granada, Nicaragua. After arriving in town late in the afternoon on Christmas Eve, we enjoyed a sangria from a sidewalk bar on La Calzada, before heading to a restaurant called El Zaguan for a Christmas dinner, Nica style!

El Zaguan is famous for its tasty wood-fired steaks (we were recommended to go there by our taxi driver in Isla de Ometepe) and the steaks sure were tasty, but the fun-loving dude cooking them really made our evening!

After Christmas dinner we went for a stroll around Granada, which after a brief but heavy downpour late in the afternoon was recovering its Christmas cheer. The central plaza was lit up with Christmas lights and a huge glittering tree.

We found our way into the beautiful old cathedral just in time for Christmas mass to start, where we joined the locals as they celebrated Christmas, complete with exploding firecrackers on the street outside every few minutes. We still aren't sure whether or not the firecrackers where timed to align with the most exciting parts of the mass, but they sure did heighten the emotion and made us pray a little harder. At the conclusion of the mass the whole congregation lined up patiently to kiss a baby Jesus doll.

We enjoyed the next few days wandering around the cobblestones streets of Granada, sampling the local coffees, posing in front of brilliantly coloured walls, watching the horses and carts trot on past and enjoying the atmosphere of the local markets.

Isla de Ometepe

2011-12-23T06:11:00.000+10:00

Freddie led us to our mountain bikes. “You go here," he pointed up the dirt road, "Then turn right, go eight kilometres, then look for the signs.” “What will the signs say?” asked Reecey. “Ojo de Agua.”

Isla de Ometepe is an island formed by two volcanoes spearing up through Lake Nicaragua. A lava flow from the smaller volcano many years ago created a land bridge between the two.

As we pedalled out from our little place at Chargo Verde, the Nicaraguan countryside meandered past, mostly fields and banana plantations carved out of the rainforest. We were always close to the scree-covered slopes of Conception, the larger volcano whose peak was clouded over for our stay. Conception commanded its own weather patterns. Even when the rest of the sky was a brilliant blue, the winds from the east would form clouds as they coasted up Conception's eastern slope.

To the south, the countryside sloped away into the lake, and then on to the silhouette of the small volcano, Maderas, whose peak was also covered in cloud.

We cycled uphill into a warm breeze. Reecey’s bike had no brakes. Out of a possible 21, mine had two gears, which were unhelpfully 8 and 10 - useful for a flat road but challenging when we started the uphill climb.

I walked my bike uphill. Reecey walked hers downhill.

Reecey made some friends along the way, as I made some running repairs to my bike.

Ojo de Agua means “eye of the water”. Spring water bubbles up into one small round pool, which then flows into a larger pool, surrounded by deck chairs.

The water was almost viscous to swim through, but still very clear. Perhaps a little too clear.

Second take.

We watched as a group of young Ticos swung from a rope, attempting to kick (or head) a soccer ball before splashing into the pool.

The next morning, we paddled into Lake Nicargua in kayaks to get a better view of the volcanos and the island. Our kayaks were (fortunately) in better condition than the mountain bikes.

Rather than paddling to Granada - which we could have done - perhaps after some serious training - we decided to catch this very festive bus named Blue Bird. It was Christmas Eve after all. Feliz Navidad!

Una gran aventura - Border hopping from CR-Nica

2011-12-22T09:10:00.002+10:00

The very idea sounded ludicrous. With the TicaBus and the TransNica bus - our two options for a comfortable, hassle-free journey from Costa Rica to Nicaragua - both booked until the 27th December, the travel agent in Monteverde had just delivered our only option for travel across the border. We could get on a local bus at 4.25am, get off two hours later at some random point on the PanAmerican Highway, flag down any local bus heading north, change at Liberia for another local bus to Penas Blancas, cross the border, and get a local bus on the Nicaraguan side. Our final destination was to be Isla de Ometepe, which would require a ferry and another bus before we would finally (hopefully) arrive.

With so many variables, and not being so keen to stand on a highway at 6.30am trying to flag down buses, I needed reassurance from the travel agent. Would we definitely be able to get a bus to stop and pick us up from the highway?

“Sure,” our Tico amigo replied. “Maybe it take you 4 hours, maybe it take you 10 hours. But sure, a bus will stop. No problem!”

We asked some local taxi drivers how much they would want to drive us to the border. The lowest bidder was US$200 - that’s a pretty expensive cab fare.

So that is how we found ourselves waiting for the 4:25am bus out of Monteverde, bleary-eyed but ready for the epic journey north to Nicaragua.

We boarded the local ‘chicken bus’ with a handful of other Costa Ricans, and bumped our way over the dirt roads and out through the darkness. Our bus driver was an amicable chap who stopped every 100metres or so to pick up a new passenger. There is no need for a bus stop in Central America, as buses stop anywhere along the road to pick up anyone, even - as we soon discovered - if the bus is already packed to the brim with people sitting and standing in every available space. It is like a Dr Seuss poem;

There is always more room!
Move up, move down!
Move left, move right, move right around!
That arm can go here,
Her leg can fit there!
Hey look - you’ve only got 4 in that chair!
Your bag will do nicely
Up here on your head,
And you, sir, can sit on the dashboard instead!
Can you do yoga?
Twist your elbow, your knee,
More people can fit, just wait and see!
Squash in, squish out,
Squash through the door,
There is always, always, room for some more!
More people can fit,
And here is the proof:
It looks like its time to make room on the roof!

As the sun rose, the darkness out of the window gave way to a gorgeous view of rolling green mountains dotted with cows and horses. At least, this is how Fletch described it (I was fast asleep - not even the chicken buses can cure my vehicle-induced narcolepsy). Christmas trees stood proudly on the front porches of the little cement houses along the roadside, their windows twinkled with fairy lights in preparation for navidad.

The bus dropped us off at 6:30am at La Irma - basically a service station and a bus shed on the side of the highway. We were in good company, with about 8 other locals and an Israeli backpacker also destined to wait for the bus heading north. For 30 minutes, we watched an endless parade of buses headed south whiz past. Three Costa Rican men gave up and jumped in a taxi. Somewhere in the distance, a dog barked. I yawned. And then - a bus! To Penas Blancas!! I jumped up and hauled my pack on my back, then flagged like a maniac at the bus. Closer, closer…..and there it goes. The bus didn’t stop - it was packed so full that the driver had made the regrettable and very uncharacteristic decision; no more passengers. Dr Seuss would be sad.

Fortunately, another bus passed about 15minutes later, and this driver was happy to squash a few more people on. We climbed aboard, and stood in each others’ armpits for the next 72km to Liberia bus station. Here, the operation became a little easier. As soon as we got off the bus, we heard the holler of ‘A la frontera! To the border!’ from a neighbouring bus and followed the sea of Nicaraguans aboard for our last leg in Costa Rica. We even scored the last seat! To celebrate, we opened a packet of fried plantains doused in lemon and salt for breakfast. Mmmm que rico!

We had been warned that there would be many people at the border crossing. Thousands of Nicaraguans have immigrated to Costa Rica for work and they’re all headed home for Christmas, and we had chosen the busiest day of the year to join them. This is the reason that the direct TicaBus and TransNica services were booked out. This is the reason that all of the buses headed north were full to bursting. And this is the reason why it took the Heinemanns just under 4 hours to cross the border between Costa Rica and Nicaragua.

The wait on the Costa Rican side was bearable; the queue was only about 200m long and we were mostly in the shade. When we finally arrived at the window, the disinterested immigration official stamped our passports whilst talking on her mobile phone, without so much as a glance at our faces. With this precious stamp, which we had waited an hour for, we were free to leave Costa Rica.

A proud Nica on the Costa Rican side had assured me, “The line is not so long in Nicaragua. There, they are more organised. They have more officials. It will be very quick.” His patriotism was endearing, but he was wrong.

We trudged through about 800 metres of no-man’s land, full of mud and sludge, as we approached the Nicaraguan post. Scores of trucks waited idly, stuck between the two countries and stuck in the mud.

We showed our passports several times to various officers, as we were herded closer and closer to the immigration booths. And then we saw the line.

It stretched past the booths and around the perimeter of the car park, before snaking back towards the entry to the facility. The line was about 500 metres of Nicaraguan excitement, it was moving verrrrrry sloooowly, and we tacked onto the end of it. If the immigration line is anything to go by, Nicaragua is definitely the place to be this Christmas.

The border post was a veritable carnival. There was a stage set up with children performing traditional dances, and speakers pumping out reggaeton tunes at full volume. Hawkers plied the queue, selling everything from watches to sandals to Christmas CDs. People paid a few cordobas for someone to fill in their immigration form; we paid a few cordobas for them to give us a blank form so that we could keep our passports. We bought a chocolate ice cream from the ice cream man, and a Gatorade and 2L of water from the lady selling drinks. At lunch time, a stall appeared selling fried chicken and corn chips, right next to the man selling souvenirs. And still we waited.

We made friends with Ronnie, a cheeky 14 year old kid in front of us with excitable eyebrows. Ronnie was heading back to Nicaragua for Christmas, loved to play baseball and had the same haircut my brothers had in 1995 (crewcut around the side with zig-zags carved into it). He was the epitome of Nicaraguan cool.

Ronnie tried to guess our age;
“How old do you think Fletch is?”
“Umm..38?”
“No! Lower.”
“Umm…21?”
“No! In the middle”
“Umm….39? He is old!”

And he tried to guess where we were from;
“Germany?”
“Nope.”
“USA?”
“Nope.”
“England?”
“Nope.”
“Europe?”
“Nope. Try Asia-Pacific..”
“Ahh. Russia!”

Despite having questionable numeracy and geographical skills, Ronnie was a great kid, and we enjoyed his company for a good hour or so until he mysteriously disappeared, possibly in pursuit of the dancing Nicaraguan girls.

Finally, we found ourselves at the window of the Nicaraguan border control, where we paid US$12 to finally get that stamp in our passport. Hooray! We then squeezed past the crowds, crossed the road and joined another line to enter the bus stop. We had quixotic intentions to travel on the local chicken bus to our next destination, until we realised that the chaos of the border had merely relocated to the bus we were about to board. It looked like this:

So, we cheated. We jumped in a taxi with some random Americans who were headed to the beach, forgoing a $1 bus ticket for a $10 taxi ride with the assurance that our bags were safely in the boot and not on the roof. In actual fact, the taxi was really just some guys’ car with a sign in the window, and the boot didn’t close properly, but it still seemed a better option than this:

We weren’t headed to the beach, but the advantage of our detour was that we got to see a glimpse of San Juan del Sur from the taxi window. It looked like this:

At about 3:30pm, we arrived in San Jorge, to jump on the ferry across to Isla de Ometepe. It was precisely this time that Fletchie lost his sense of humour. When I tried to take a photo on the boat, he looked like this:

The ferry lurched for an hour across Lago de Nicaragua towards Isla de Ometepe, an island formed by two volcanoes rising out of the lake with an isthmus connecting them. If there’s one thing we have learnt about volcanoes, it is that you really only ever get to see half of them as the top half is nearly always shrouded in cloud.

The ferry dropped us at Myogalpa town, where we squeezed onto yet another chicken bus headed towards our final destination - Charco Verde. Finally, just after 6:00pm, more than 13 hours after we left Monteverde, we ended up at our home for the next few days. And the journey had been worth it, because our new home looks like this:

Our Friends in Monte Verde

2011-12-21T08:24:00.000+10:00

Monte Verde sits in the highlands of Costa Rica. We crossed Lake Arenal, with its namesake volcano covered in cloud behind us, and swapped from our boat into our "jeep" - which was actually a minbus that struggled up the steep dirt roads.

Monte Verde sits just to the west of the spine of the highlands, looking over the bay of Nicoya, the Nicoya Peninsula and onto the Pacific Ocean. We were lucky enough to arrive, after a dusty, bumpy couple of hours, just in time to catch the sunset.

We stayed at the Monte Verde Inn, five minutes out of town, because of its incredible position and the lure of its own hiking trails.

The trails were very quiet, and we met some of the locals.

Unfortunately my Spanish is not great so I couldn't ask their names. Please help if you can.

Monte Verde Friend #1 - likes guava.

Monte Verde Friend #2 - likes fruit loops

Monte Verde Friend #3 - likes bark and leaves

Monte Verde Friend #4 - likes Reecey

Monte Verde Friend #5 - likes sleeping

La Fortuna Waterfall

2011-12-19T07:46:00.052+10:00

We had booked in a jeep-boat-jeep transfer from La Fortuna to the mountainous Monte Verde, but had the morning free to visit one of La Fortuna's most spectular waterfalls.

The water falls about 70 metres, but it is the volume of water and the way that it spurts out of the rainforest, itself occasionally veiled in a swiftly-moving mist, that gave it its charm.

At the base of the waterfall, winds gusted in different directions. There is a sign at the entrance that says "Beware swimming under the waterfall as currents can suck you under and cause drowning." It is not until you hear the volume of water hitting the pool and see the immense churn that you accept that swimming in this pool is not such a good idea.

A smaller pool below was much more inviting, and still provided good views of the main attraction.

Actividades Dia!

2011-12-18T06:34:00.165+10:00

This year, Christmas came early.

Reecey had signed us up for an activities day that promised excitement and a few nervous moments. We were staying in La Fortuna, a small tourist town at the foot of the Arenal Volcano. "This side of the road is where the lava came to last time... this side was OK," our bus driver told us.

The volcano, while active, is not producing much lava at the moment, which must have caused Mr Lava Lava Man, a local Tico, some problems when Lonely Planet was reporting that he would guarantee anyone taking his tours would get to see lava.

One of Reecey's many charms is to sign up for things that would scare a monkey out of its tree. And so our day commenced with abseiling down from a wire bridge into a waterfall:

We then climbed down further into the canyon:

Reecey then stood in a puddle of chilly Costa Rican rainforest water:

But we were very happy:

The red-helmeted Ticos running the ropes had a cheeky sense of humour. Just when you thought you had everything under control in a graceful descent, they would yank a rope and the limbs of the yellow-helmeted tourist would flail like a puppeteer's doll.

Exhibit A:

Exhibit B:

The Costan Ricans have a saying - pura vida - the pure life - which they seem to use as a cross between "cheers" or "no worries" or "all the best". There were some young Americans in our group from New Jersey - with all the stereotyped macho characteristics that comes with that area. Our guides gave them some lessons in Costa Rican Spanish by teaching them to say puta vida - the whore life - much to our amusement.

Before lunch - because there is no way you would want to do this after lunch - we were clipped into a tarzan swing and launched into the rainforest. But this was no ordinary swing - as we found our when we were flung out through the trees and above the valley below. This is not just a picture of trees - I am on the end of a very long cable out there.

After lunch, we played on the ziplines, whizzing through the rainforest. This is Reecey travelling on the 150m line.

But the highlight of the day was the 750m "Superman" cable. This required (1) a pretty red safety suit; (2) a climb up a tower that was blood-pumping enough before launching yourself off the top; and (3) belief in superman.

This is my brave wife before it.

This is my Superwoman wife at the end:

This is our Israeli friend Dani getting strapped on to the cable - there is nothing over that edge - well not for a couple of hundred metres or so.

The supermanning itself requires very little skill, but Dani does a good job for the camera.

We had one final zipline back to the starting point, where Reecey and I had a race. All my training (beer-drinking) paid off with my superior hold over gravity and inertia winning the day.

To end the day, Reecey had booked in a dinner package at Baldi Hot Springs, a couple of kilometres from La Fortuna town. We figured the hot waters would cure any frayed nerves.

There were a couple of waterslides in the complex, which was decked out resort-style with swim-up bars.

Lulled by the warm water and promise of drinks at the bar, we slipped down the waterslides. However, what we couldn't see in the dark, was that these waterslides were very, very steep - and what we didn't know until approximately 20% of the way down the slide, was that this was going to be the scariest activity of the day - and the only real wipe out. Pura vida!

Rafting on the Rio Reventazon

2011-12-17T06:56:00.001+10:00

“Whoa! Vultures… how scary!” said the tourist in front of us.

“No not scary. They clean our country.” The Costa Ricans have a sense of humour.

And with this, our bus pulled into the white water rafting centre. Our original plans to raft on the River Pacuare were cancelled due to an "incident" the day before. So we were happy enough to be re-scheduled onto the Rio Reventazon (for rafters aged 9 - 55) and let the vultures have a quiet day.

Some clever Costa Rican has devised a system where you get to go rafting and then get an onward bus journey. Buses arrived at the white water rafting from San Jose, Porto Viejo and La Fortuna. We were making our way to La Fortuna, and the white water rafting adventure was a perfect (and very good value) interlude during our three our minibus ride.

Our raft was captained by Ricky, a poker-faced Costa Rican with all his teeth in the right places - a good sign in a competent white water rafting guide.

We shared our raft with two gay couples ("You would love Porto Viejo - you can sunbake naked there all day long...") who duly produced the theatrical "whoas" when the water got a little choppy.

Reecey contrived to fall out - despite the lack of rapids at the time - and by saving her paddle, earned herself a promotion to steering the boat from the back seat.

Ricky thought it would be funny if he let me float down the river and then give the command "forward" so that I would be left behind.

Fortunately my new friends were there to lend a hand in the rescue operation.

Tikal - Guatemala

2011-12-15T08:36:00.000+10:00

We took the ‘Spanish’ rather than the ‘English’ option for our guided group tour of Tikal ruins, primarily because the ‘English’ group was full of monkeys (and not the kind of monkeys we were hoping to see). Our minibus was scheduled to pick us up from our hotel in Flores at 4.30am for the 90minute drive to the ruin site. When the bus finally arrived at 5:15am, due to one of the monkeys having slept past their alarm, we decided that it would be best if we kept us much distance as possible between us and said monkeys.

Our guide was Raul, a proud Guatemalteco who was full of interesting facts and figures about Mayan history and the construction and destruction of the Mayan empire. He also spoke very quickly and used many colloquialisms, which meant that I wasn’t entirely confident that I interpreted all of the facts and figures with complete clarity. So, depending on what was or wasn‘t lost in translation, we learnt that either:

a) The Mayans used to deliver ‘volunteer’ sacrificial children and women to the God of Corn by drugging them with an hallucinogenic plant, removing their hearts with a stone whilst they lay on the altar, and placing the heart on the very top of a stone temple, or;
b) The Mayans were the first to invent deodorant, with one of their kings called Rexona (hence the modern-day brand).

And

a) The Mayans constructed the city of Tikal and the enormous stone pyramids without any metal tools, any horses or the use of the wheel - ie. they cut the stones blocks with other stones and dragged the huge blocks on top of each other using sheer manpower. Pretty impressive! Or;
b) The Mayans would have huge hardware stores where they could go and get their stone blocks cut to
size, with free home delivery.

And
a) The Mayans were amazing astronomers, who, like the ancient Egyptians, built their pyramids in alignment with the stars and used them to measure precise distances and equations. When the sun rises, the peak of the main temple casts a perfect shadow to the base of the main worshipping temple. They built several temples with over 50km of dense jungle in between, yet the top of the temples line up exactly with each other to form a mirror image of constellations such as Orion’s belt. Or;
b) Orion was a Mayan dude, who had a nice belt.

Despite what we did or didn’t understand from the tour, we had a great day in the steamy jungle, climbing up and down the Mayan ruins and enjoying the view from the very top of the temples.

We didn’t see any more monkeys, except this one:

The good news from Raul is that the world is not going to end on 21st December 2012, despite the Mayan calendar ending on this date. What the Mayans predicted will happen when their calendar ends is the start of a new world - one free from famine, war, and disease. And, Raul hoped with a grin, a world where Guatemala would finally win a FIFA World Cup title.

Casa Del Mundo

2011-12-15T01:02:00.001+10:00

Every night, Casa Del Mundo would host “family” dinners. The tables, set out café-style during the day, were rearranged to form one long table.

Before dinner, Reecey waited patiently while I played with the sunsets.

We shared our dinners with Brian, a photographer from San Fransisco who shared our love of travelling in China (and the associated mayhem) and Ralph and Christina from Nuremberg in Germany.

The food was muy rico (very tasty), as was the Gallo beer (la mejor cervasa - the best beer) and Chilean wine to wash it down.

The Mayan Villages

2011-12-13T00:11:00.000+10:00

Sebastian took his machete from its leather holder and checked the blade.

This was the start of our hike from Casa Del Mundo to the surrounding Mayan villages. Sebastian, the son of the owner of Casa Del Mundo, is in his mid 20s, with curly black hair, and bearing a strong resemblance to my good mate Grant.

We had learned from various sources that some of the hiking paths were favourite haunts for muggers. As we hiked up the hillside, Sebastian hacked away at undergrowth encroaching over the path, but I suspect the machete was there primarily for its deterrent effect.

The hike itself was a good couple of hours’ exercise, with the path constantly switching back on itself and steep enough to engage some otherwise underused leg muscles. Despite the steepness, most of the land is farmed, which gives the side of the hills a patchwork effect depending on the crops planted. Land is owned individually and a particular type of palm is used to designate boundaries. The steepest slopes were planted with corn and maize, while the flatter parts were planted with coffee in the undergrowth.

Falcons floated in the updraft, watching us as we climbed further until we arrived at a small village called Laguna Seca. Laguna Seca means “dry lagoon”, which is a nifty piece of marketing for what could have equally been dubbed “nice patch of grass”. The village consisted of no more than a dozen little buildings and a nice patch of grass. We met some of the more inquisitive locals - the village dogs, turkeys and baby goats. A Mayan girl, in colourful traditional dress, peaked behind a doorway at Reecey. Three young boys up a tree watched us from their prime position. A farmer took a break from hanging up Christmas lights.

We left Laguna Seca… and returned 10 minutes to collect the forgotten machete. Our tour took us to Solola, a pretty market town overlooking the lake. It was here where I first met Pollo Campero, the popular, forever-smiling, sombrero-wearing chicken, famous for his array of chicken burgers and chicken pieces. (Reecey had a cup of fruit from the markets, but was seduced by Pollo Campero a couple of days’ later).

From Solola, we caught a chicken bus (no relation to Pollo Campero) to Panajachel. The chicken buses are ex-school buses so brightly and colourfully painted that they would not be out of place in a circus. Sebastian told us that they had been souped up with new engines to cope with the Guatemalan hillsides, but it was more than the brakes we were interested in.

Lago de Atilan

2011-12-12T23:43:00.000+10:00

From Antigua, we caught an early bus to Panajachel through a countryside of recently-harvested corn crops. The road wound up and around the hills. A number of times, kids playing on a clearing on the side of the road would stop their game and wave to the bus. We later found out that this was an optimistic attempt by the kids to get some lollies which impressed my lolly-connoisseur wife.

After about three hours, our bus struggled up one last hill before giving us a glimpse of Lago de Atilan. At mid-morning, the lake was only a slightly darker shade of blue than the sky, with the sunlight catching the ripples on the surface. Two volcanoes rose from the lake shore, with only their very peaks concealed by small white clouds. But looking closer, one of those volcanoes is actually three volcanoes lined up one behind the other. The whole of Lago de Atilan is ringed by either volcanoes or equally steep hilltops.

A twenty-minute long-boat ride brought us to the pier for our hotel, Casa Del Mundo. Casa Del Mundo, built into the side of a cliff, only needs a couple of turrets and a fire-breathing dragon to fit into a Disney movie.

Reecey made friends with a hammock overlooking the lake and the volcanoes and was joined by two kittens, for a which a hammock is liking chasing a hundred pieces of string at the same time.

Fletchie the Payaso

2011-12-12T02:12:00.010+10:00

When I was 18 I spent a year in Paraguay as an exchange student. I remember fumbling over new Spanish words and expressions, using my hands and facial expressions to compensate for my poor vocabulary and grammar in an attempt to communicate. This display never failed to make my host mother laugh encouragingly, and she would affectionately call me a 'payasa'. Flicking through my dictionary, I discovered that she was calling me a 'clown', and no doubt my flailing arms and desperate mime acts I performed to express a phrase as simple as, 'Where is the shower?'or 'Do we have milk?' was quite comical for anyone watching.

Fast-forward 10 years, and I am strolling with my husband down a scenic street in La Antigua, Guatemala. It is late afternoon and we are headed back to our guesthouse, with the promise of an ice-cream on the way home and the hope of a scenic sunset from our rooftop terrace. As we turn the corner to 5a Avenida, the street which boasts El Arco (The Arch) - one of La Antigua's tourist drawcards - we see a crowd milling on the sidewalks, pointing at a commotion going on in the middle of the street. Intrigued, we head over to see what all the fuss is about.

The man attracting the attention is a Guatemalan payaso - a mime artist busking in the centre of the street. He oozes charisma; tourists put down their maps and pick up their cameras, and local Mayan women dressed in their traditional colourful skirts flash their gold-toothed smiles as they find a spot to settle in the gutter with their children, already engrossed by the payaso. Dad, wearing his guacho sombrero, riding boots and tight jeans, relaxes alongside and forgets about his macho image as the clown's trance washes over him. The shoeshine boys and street vendors selling bubblegum, Mayan handicrafts and icecreams take a break from their work as they, too, are drawn to the performance. All eyes are on the payaso as he juggles firesticks, wobbles on a unicycle and flips a yo-ho diablo into the air, precariously close to the local kids who remove the lollipops from their mouths just long enough to 'oohh' and 'ahh' over his tricks.

Suddenly, the payaso puts down his tools and scans the crowd. Through the lens of his camera, Fletchie sees the payaso's finger pointed at him.

"Yo?" Fletchie asks. The payaso nods. Fletchie smiles. "Okay!"

Fletchie passes me the camera and makes his way to the centre of the street. The excitement in the crowd grows as we realise that the gringo is going to join the performance - Fletchie the Payaso! The routine - thankfully - does not require the juggling of firesticks or the balancing on unicycles. I'm not entirely confident that our travel insurance would cover such activities, should an accident occur.

Instead, the payaso and Fletch perform a skit that involves Fletchie attempting to flick a hat from his foot to his head and catch coloured balls in said hat. Such a simple trick that brings so much laughter to a crowd of people on a little Guatemalan street! Fletchie the payaso has just as much charisma - if not more - as his tutor, and the kids finally forget about their lollipops. Instead, their mouths fill up with giggles and gasps at the funny gringo. The language and culture barrier shatters as Fletchie mimes and gestures his way through the performance, to the delight of the crowd - much like the way another payasa fumbled her way through the communication barrier in a little Paraguayan town 10 years ago. Around ten minutes pass as Fletch and the payaso clown around on the cobblestones. Fletchie comes tantalisingly close to catching the hat on his head and the crowd goes wild with laughter and applause. Approximately 100 Guatemalans have just joined the Fletchie fan club.

The original payaso is not stupid, and he knows that a gringo payaso - especially one as talented as Fletchie - is going to bring in more money than he ever will. The hat that almost landed on Fletchie's head is given back to him and the payaso gestures that he wants Fletch to pass the hat around. With a grin, Fletch obliges, and makes his way through the crowd. People reach deep into their pockets and purses for spare change, and both Fletchie and the payaso seem delighted at the amount of quetzales being thrown into the hat. Small children chase him and shyly tug on his shirt for the chance to give some money and get a 'gracias' from the gringo payaso.

Slowly, the crowd disperses. The kids pop their lollipops back in their mouths. The Mayan women hoist baskets and bundles back on their heads and continue on their way. The street vendors go back to pushing their icecream carts and searching for shoes in need of shining. The tourists pick their maps back up and discuss which part of La Antigua town they will wander to next. And I'm the lucky one who gets to wander back to the guesthouse with my payaso, to watch a beautiful sunset.

Antigua, Guatemala

2011-12-10T13:40:00.000+10:00

Day one we spent sleeping.

This was until about 9 pm, then we were wide awake. Reecey read her entire trip's reading material in the first night.

Our time-disorientation wasn't helped by a nearby rooster who started crowing at 1 am and then 3.30 am, and then missed sunrise altogether.

In an effort to join the right timezone, today we concentrated on eating and drinking. We found a little cafe around the corner with old-school coffee cartoons, decent coffees in cute espresso cups and the ancient Guatemalan breakfast of crepes laced with nutella, strawberries, banana and icing sugar.

Antigua is wedged in a valley between three volcanoes. This makes for some pretty views, and along with the earthquake activity, a God-fearing culture. They hedge their bets here, a result of Catholicism imported from Spain being allowed to incorporate traditional pagan worshipping.

Antigua is a colourful place. All of the walls - both inside and out - have been brightly painted with a sponge-effect where if you can look hard enough you can see faces.

Check out Lois Lane in the picture below. Not that picture - that's Reecey! Lois in on the right. She is wearing a snail hairclip. Hopefully she gets along with the Virgin Mary and bird-God sharing the same bedroom.

Tomorrow we have booked a tour of the nearby villages. Hopefuly we get on this bus.

10 hours in LA

2011-12-08T12:01:00.000+10:00

The holiday begins!! We have made the most of our brief stopover in Los Angeles. We arrived at 11am and were let into the USA despite some confusion at the border as to Fletch's occupation (a solicitor in America is not an attorney, but rather the guy that goes door to door selling steaknives).

As we couldn't check into our 10.30pm flight to Guatemala until 4pm, we grabbed a taxi and headed to the beach for some fresh sea air and to stretch our economy class legs.

We spent the next 5 hours meandering from Santa Monica Pier to Venice Beach, enjoying the beautiful LA winter sun and giving our shoulders and backs a decent introduction to carrying our packs. Along Venice Beach we dodged rollerbladers, hemp-toting hippies and buskers with varying degrees of talent before settling in for our first (and thankfully our only) oversized American meal of onion rings, nachos and hamburgers. Even the seagulls are oversized!

We kept Fletch's occupation on the quiet...

Just waiting for our flight to Guatemala, and then the Latin adventure begins.

Tiger Leaping Gorge

2009-12-07T23:01:00.001+10:00

According to legend, a tiger was fleeing from a Naxi hunter. The tiger paused. He had reached a rocky outcrop. Below him, the Yangtze River - referred to as Chang Jiang downstream but known as Jinsha Jiang in these parts - roared and foamed. The tiger turned and saw the snow-capped peak of Haba Shan glistening behind him to the north. To the south, the shadowy cliffs of Yulong Xue Shan rose vertically in front of him.

Without a backwards look, the tiger leapt across the rapids to the opposite bank. His pursuer baulked. With twenty-five metres of murderous Jinsha Jiang churning between him and his quarry, the hunter retired to his village, with nothing more than a story to tell. The stone from which the tiger leapt was called "Tiger Leaping Stone" and the gorge between the villages of Qiaotou and Walnut Garden acquired the same name.

According to my recollection, we were fleeing from the Lijiang to Zhongdian bus, or more specifically, from the old Chinese lady two seats in front of us retching into a plastic bag. We got off the bus at Qiaotou and paused. We had reached the start of our three day trek through Tiger Leaping Gorge. At the main gate to the Tiger Leaping Gorge Protected Area, a smartly-dressed official presented us with a single sheet of A4 paper, with a short notice in Chinese and English.

The English translation read in part: "From 1 December 2009 [today], the Tiger Leaping Gorge Scenic Spot is closed due to rehabilitation of the road. You are not permitted to enter. Should you choose to enter, you do so at your own peril."

"Xie xie ni," we thanked the official and pointing to a café not far ahead of us, said "Women qu chifan." We are going there for lunch. Without a backwards look, we leapt into the Tiger Leaping Gorge Protected Area and onto the High Trail. The High Trail is a goat-track - in the most literal sense - that passes through traditional Naxi villages, It is a world away from the "rehabilitation", a euphemistic reference to dynamiting, of the Low Road, but not without its own perils.

Confucius says...

2009-12-06T22:45:00.001+10:00

Man who spends RMB 10 on a haircut in the morning, will need to spend RMB 5 on a pair of scissors in the evening.

The Quest for the Elusive Naxi Sandwich

2009-12-01T23:51:00.001+10:00

The Naxi people settled in the northwest corner of Yunnan province, on a plain nestled against the eastern foothills of the Himalayas, in the third century AD. Between the tenth and thirteenth centuries AD, the Naxi people evolved from livestock breeders to an agrarian based society. At some point, they started making sandwiches.

Not more than a month ago, we had been bitterly disappointed that Qingdao's reputation as the kebab capital of China was wholly undeserved. Warmed up vegetables in pita bread does not constitute a kebab.

It was therefore with some trepidation that Reecey purchased her Naxi sandwich at Sifang Square in Lijiang's Old Town. Old Town restaurants have a wholly deserved reputation for being overpriced and we were not surprised on that count. More disheartening for Reecey though, was the alarmingly yellow egg and frankfurter perched between two slices of stale, white bread.

"Naxi sandwich" said the young Han Chinese waitress. The Naxi women, all wearing steel grey aprons and blue felt caps as if they were about to drive a steam train, were too busy trying to sell maps to the hordes of Han Chinese tourists to cook up an authentic Naxi sandwich. We left the overpriced Naxi sandwich untouched, vowing to find the authentic version.

The next morning, after peddling for ten kilometres towards the cloud-covered peak of Jade Dragon Snow Mountain, we found Bai She village, the ancestral heart of the Naxi culture. Once again, Reecey nervously ordered a Naxi sandwich. She was not disappointed. The Naxi sandwich was served on "bread" baked somewhere on the spectrum between pizza crust and pancake. It was topped with fried goat's cheese, two slices of tomato, fried egg and hashed-brown-style potato.

The cook, a middle-aged Naxi woman, nodded to us as we left. "Xie xie ni-a," we replied, hoping that she would never give up her restaurant job to sell maps in an Old Town Square.

New picture links

2009-12-01T22:42:00.001+10:00

Picasa is telling me that we have too many pictures in one album. So we now have two albums, one for November and one for December. The two hyperlinks are below.

Our travels for November - Hangzhou, Shanghai, Qingdao, Beijing, Pingyao, Xi'an, Chengdu - are here: http://picasaweb.google.com/fletchheinemann/ChinaNov09.

Our travels for the last couple of days of November (in Chengdu) and December are here: http://picasaweb.google.com/fletchheinemann/ChinaDec09

Welcome, Giant Pandas

2009-11-30T23:16:00.000+10:00

As a prelude - and to explain the joke in the heading - in Madagascar, the best animated film of our time, the pompous King Julian, lord of the lemurs, greets his visitors from New York with:

"Welcome, giant pansies. Please feel free to bask in my glow."

At Chengdu's Giant Panda Sanctuary, the roles are reversed. We are welcomed by the giant pandas - with a nonchalance that King Julian would be proud of - and spend the next couple of hours basking in their glow.

The youngest "giant" panda was curled up in an incubator, weighing in at a precious 122 grams on day one. Three cubs played in a wooden cot, two metres by two metres. Two twins, five months old, spent most of their time wrestling with each other, only to be interrupted from their minder to sit in plastic bucket on a set of digital scales - Weightwatchers for pandas. The third cub, almost three months old, spent all of her time trying to play with the older two, but was having difficulty getting traction on the polished wooden floor of the cot. She spent most of her time on her stomach, feet splayed wide, a plump, cuddly Chinese version of Bambi on ice.

Outside, in the mid-morning Sichuan mist, the adult giant pandas had a late breakfast of bamboo. Each day, the gastronomically-confused "carnivores" munch through nine to fourteen kilograms of bamboo shoots. It's no wonder that they spend some of that eating time lying down.

Unfortunately, all of this eating seems to affect the pandas' libido, making it difficult for conservationists to increase the captive population in Chengdu. In the name of "science", the male pandas have been shown videos of other pandas mating (i.e. panda p*rn) and some have received trial doses of Viagra.

We have been mesmorised by the pandas' laconic mannerisms and (literally) laid-back attitude. With their teddy-bear good looks, it is hardly surprising that the giant panda found itself in a diplomatic position in the 1970s, smoothing tensions between China and the US in the détente period of the Cold War (the so-called "Panda diplomacy") as well as the mascot for the World Wildlife Fund (WWF). In the spirit of modern Chinese capitalism, these days each giant panda leased to foreign zoos earns a cool US $1 million a year.

It is incongruous that such laid-back bears are such diplomatic and economic dynamos. After all, in the words of King Julian, "They are just a bunch of pansies."

King Julian is here: http://www.entertonement.com/clips/bzhstzsycb--Just-a-Bunch-of-Pansies

Our photos, including the pandas, are here: http://picasaweb.google.com/fletchheinemann/ChinaNov09

Two warriors walked into a pit...

2009-11-22T23:22:00.001+10:00

Time: 209 BC.

Scene: Under the shadow of Lishan (Li Mountain).

Two warriors wait patiently as the ranks of an army swells around them.

Warrior 1 (T): Hi.

Warrior 2 (W): Hey. How's it going?

T: Not too bad thanks. There are a lot of soldiers here. Do you know what's going on?

W: I heard that there's a battle brewing. The emperor has called in 8,000 of us infantrymen. Then there's another 100 chariots with 400 horses. There's even 300 cavalry horses - can't stand those pompous riders - you watch, they will be prancing around on the battlefield, not wanting to get their feet muddy.

T: Who are we supposed to be fighting against?

W: No idea. Could be anyone. Emperor Qin has his fair share of enemies.

T: My name is Te Re Co Ta, but my friends call me Tere.

W: I'm Wo Re-a. But call me Wazza.

T: Good to meet you Wazza. I'd shake your hand but my elbow's awfully stiff.

W: Tennis elbow?

T: What's tennis?

W: Never mind. What's with the bow tie mate?

T: I thought the summons said black tie. Apparently, Emperor Qin just rides under a black flag. Besides, it never hurts to look one's best, even in the thick of battle. I like what you've done with your hair. How do you keep it up like that?

W: Sorry mate, can't share those secrets with you. Otherwise, everyone will be wearing their hair like mine.

T: Oh come on, I promise I won't breathe a word of it to another soul.

W: Well if you must know, it's the clay from further upstream - it's much finer, so there's less volume. It's so much more manageable. But sshhh! OK?

T: Yeah OK. Why are you holding your hand out like that?

W: I'm waiting for my beer, but with service this slow, it'll take about 2,000 years.

T: Geez, what's that stench?
W: Smells like rotten fish.

T listens to a conversation in front of them.

T: Did you hear that? That officer just told his battalion that Qin Shi Huang is dead.

W: There you go. You learn something new every day. Dead emperors smell like rotten fish.

T: No, the rumour is that his eunuchs kept his death a secret for three months, but he started to get a bit on the nose, so they carted around loads of rotten fish to disguise the smell.

W: Why not stinky tofu? That stuff reeks.

T: Dunno. Maybe they were worried the villagers would eat the stinky tofu and that would be the end of the disguise. Or maybe the stinky tofu would have just made everyone want to gag.

W: All a bit strange for my liking. Guess Emperor Qin never found his elixir of immortality?

T: Guess not. I heard he sent off 1,000 humans to look for it. They never came back. Rightly so too - Qin would have executed them if they came back without it. He liked to rule with an iron fist and a sharpened sword. Hey, what are those humans doing up there?

W: Looks like they have massive timber beams. Ahh, they're building a shelter for us. Bless their mortal cotton socks. I hate it when my armour colour runs in the rain.

T: I'm not sure it's a shelter Wazza. We're in a pit. How are we supposed to get out?

W: You're right you know. They're covering the beams with reed mats. What's that thudding sound?

T: Clay and earth. They're piling it up on the reed mats. Confucious help us! What will we do? They're burying us alive!

W: Take it easy mate, we're not really alive anyway. It's going to be a bloody long wait for this beer though.

When size does matter...

2009-11-20T23:27:00.001+10:00

The room phone rang. We exchanged confused glances. Fletch casually reached over the bed and picked up the phone. We had checked into Xi'an's the Super House Inn (another

www.elong.net find) only a few hours earlier. Zhe shi shei? Who is this? We have been thinking in broken Chinese for a while now. Ni yao shenme? What do you want?

Our little room in the Super House Inn was very clean, cosy and critically - after being in a state of perpetual frostiness in Pingyao - came with 'independent temperature control system', otherwise known as reverse-cycle air-conditioning. We washed off the remnants of last night's overnight train trip - in a steaming hot shower - and wandered aimlessly through Xi'an's old town - a Muslim Quarter.

We lunched on tasty, although unidentifiable, street food. I gave the young boy cooking our lunch a brief English lesson. "Potato," I said, pointing at the white chunks frying fragrantly in his monstrously oversized wok. He threw in some chillies, cumin and coriander.

"Po-ta-to", he practised dutifully, tasting the new words in his mouth for the first time. "Pota-to. Potato!" I gave my new student the thumbs-up sign. He gave me a toothy smile and a steaming hot plate of "po-ta-to" in return. It only took one mouthful to realise that we were not actually eating potato at all, but a jelly-like substance that borrowed all of its flavour from the spicy sauce around it.

But I digress. The receptionist was on the other end of the phone to Fletchie, talking quickly, excitedly and very loudly in Chinese.

"What's she saying?" I quizzed Fletch. He shrugged his shoulders.

"Dui bu qi, wo ting bu dong," he told the girl on the phone. Sorry, I don't understand you.

The girl continued to talk just as loudly and excitedly, but slowed her pace.

"I think she's asking us if we want another room," Fletch said to me, his eyebrows raised with this new hypothesis.

I then overheard the English-speaking manager cut in: "Hello, you want room upgrade? We think, this room to small for you. We give you deluxe room." If only he knew that last night we slept in bunk beds designed for far smaller bodies than ours.

Our new room features two beds (one which we assume is considered large enough for us - it's a king), two tables, three coffee tables, a sofa, two armchairs, four lamps, a mini-fridge, a kettle, a king-size bed, a single bed, a big flat screen TV (which we lack the skill to turn on), six coat hangers, a spare pillow, four pairs of slippers (enough for Flatuch as well), one shoe shine cloth, two big windows to gaze out at the melting snow, a sign in the bathroom advising 'Electricity hot water - shower time last 40 minutes' and - critically - our very own freestanding 'independent temperature control system'. Now we just need to wait 24 hours for our deluxe room to reach the 'tropical' climate setting.

In the Ming Style

2009-11-19T00:47:00.001+10:00

Tonight, we are resting in Pingyao, a small town in snow-dusted Shanxi province. Our guesthouse has been decorated in the "Ming Style". We concede that, despite our interest in Chinese culture, we have not yet gained a true appreciation of the "Ming Style". We now understand the "Ming Style" to mean that:

… your bed is a huge mattress, the equivalent of two double mattresses side-by-side, placed on a shelf that takes up half your room. Due to space constraints, your Ming Style mattress also serves as your Ming Style lounge chair, Ming Style luggage rack and Ming Style coffee table.

… your room light is red and embroidered with flowers.

… your wall is garnished with a poster that resembles a 14^th century Chinese version of Where's Wally? and four red lanterns hanging from the ceiling.

… your heating only comes on at 6.00 pm (the Ming were so advanced to have digital clocks back then), at which time you can curl around the hot water pipe rising from one corner of the mattress.

… your television and air-conditioning unit are, in the Ming Style, historically accurate because neither of them work.

… your "hot" shower dribbles out of the showerhead, requiring you to jog on the spot (as practised by Ming soldiers) to maintain your core temperature while in the shower.

… you have no need for a refrigerator because your beer has frozen on the journey home.

Further (and possibly more historically accurate) things done in the Ming Style are here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ming_Dynasty.

A Kind of Beijing Opera

2009-11-19T00:42:00.001+10:00

In the early afternoon, at Beijing's Grand National Theatre, we were marginally disappointed that there were no shows on that evening.

We contented ourselves with a visit to Laoshe Tea House, which promised all manner of entertainment, but apparently not much of each, as the show was advertised to go from 7.50 pm to 9.20 pm. The programme listed a piece of Beijing Opera - Fairy Throwing Flowers. The Opera itself lasted perhaps fifteen minutes, during which time we seriously contemplated whether the green tea they were serving contained hallucinogens. It was Priscilla Queen of the Desert meets Austin Powers - a female character with long flowing sashes (played by a man) in front of digitally-projected flowers spiralling on the curtain behind. The fairy's voice screeched and wavered, prising out each note as slowly as a drunk implores a bartender for just one more drink. Fifteen minutes of this particular fairy was enough.

The other acts were more palatable to our western sense of entertainment. But the three girls sitting on our table stole the show when the Kong Fu exhibition started. The girls had chattered away to each other all night, with only a passing interest in the events on stage. It took the final act, with five young men flinging themselves about, until their attention was glued to the front. They looked at each other pointedly, This is what we have come to see. All three girls sat wide-eyed, literally perched on the edge of their seats. In a particularly acrobatic movement, the boys' shirts flew up revealing well-toned torsos, and almost simultaneously, one girl's hands moved into the prayer position. We both knew what she was praying for.

The Buffet that is Beijing

2009-11-19T00:41:00.001+10:00

The

staples of Chinese food in the western world - sweet and sour pork, honey chicken, beef and black bean sauce, fried rice - are conspicuously absent in Beijing. From the street vendors selling snacks from their tricycle-mounted hotplates to neighbourhood restaurants and finer establishments, we have discovered that Beijing, just like the Colonel, keeps its secret recipes… well… secret.

Strolling out of our neighbourhood hutong and onto the main dajie, we sauntered down the line of local restaurants and street vendors. The smell of barbecued meat came out of the brightly lit restaurant on the corner. A couple of doors down, the windows of another restaurant were dripping with condensation as hot pots steamed away. Next door, a doona-thick curtain kept out the arctic winds. Inside, baozi - steamed buns - were kept warm in circular bamboo steamers. On the footpath, you could buy a kebab in a kind of toasted pita-bread with pork, cabbage and onion for three yuan (A$0.50) or a folded pancake number (with eggs, sesame paste, chilli, cabbage and a crushed up waffle-looking item) for about the same small change.

In restaurants, we discovered that there's wisdom in following the waitress' recommendations. We had lunch in one restaurant near Beijing West Railway Station, which evidently does not see many foreigners at all. Our waitress was not happy with the food we were selecting (from the pictures) and assumed responsibility for our ordering. There were snow peas tossed with garlic and bacon, eggplant sautéed in soy sauce and steamed dumplings. It was our new favourite meal (but we both knew that the record probably wouldn't stand for long). Along with two beers and too much green tea, we paid 56 yuan (A$9).

We stumbled across a lively little restaurant while waiting for the opening of a theatre session one night. It's specialty was duck. The chef wheeled an entire roast duck out to us for our cursory inspection, before wheeling it off towards the bar, but still in full view, and started carving it up. The crackling was brought out first, which our waiter indicated should be dipped in sugar. A couple of minutes later, our waiter returned with strips of breast meat, which he gestured for us to dip in the garlic sauce and thick soy-sesame sauce. It was all highly indulgent. At the end of the meal, the chef returned with his trolley, this time adorned with a duck carcass - as evidence of our gluttony. The waiter returned one last time, with a colossal bowl of soup, flavoured with the broth of our duck bones.

At the end of the evening, walking home to our little hutong, we would pass the street vendors and wonder if we didn't have enough room for maybe just one more baozi.

Beijing Subway

2009-11-19T00:39:00.001+10:00

Tiananmen Square is icy. There is literally ice on the concrete. A northerly wind blows from the Artic Circle, over the mountains of Inner Mongolia into the plains of Beijing, through the Forbidden City, past Mao's portrait hanging from the Temple of Heaven and straight through our jackets.

In the distance, there is an understated sign with the letter D in a circle. D is for ditie - subway. In these conditions, every subway station becomes a little oasis. Descending into the underground world, we meet our first current of warm air rushing the other way. The stations are clean and efficient. Touch screen vending machines dispense tickets for two yuan (A$0.33) each, regardless of how far you want to travel, which - since the Beijing Olympics - includes all of Beijing's treasures (except the Great Wall, if you want to include that in Beijing).

The trains are even warmer. A twenty minute journey across town is just long enough for us to thaw out our fingers and toes. Digital screens show footage of Chinese tourists enjoying Harley Davidson rides around Uluru or saddling camels in Kakadu… all wearing T-shirts and shorts. It's well-targeted marketing. We almost forget that it's -10° C outside.

And to complete the cosiness, the light symphony from Amelie* accompanies the train's rhythm as it accelerates to the next station. It's hardly surprising that half of our carriage is snoozing.

*If you have not seen the movie Amelie, starring Audrey Tautou, shame on you… but you can listen to clips of the soundtrack here:

http://www.myspace.com/ameliethesoundtrack. The Beijing subway plays the La Valse D'Amelie Symphony.

Simatai - China's Best Great Wall

2009-11-14T00:30:00.001+10:00

The flags lining the avenue to Simatai proudly proclaim "China's Best Great Wall". Semantics aside (China has only one Great Wall, even if strictly speaking it is not one continuous wall), it was a bold claim.

But after a sunny, blue-sky day on a snow-dusted wall - free from the repairs and renovations that have tourist-ified other parts of the wall and with vast sections of the wall to ourselves - Simatai might just be "China's Best Great Wall". Its charm is that it is rustic, wiith original bricks and mortar, remote and wild: some parts of the wall look over a deep abyss. Ther watchtowers are in various states of disrepair and the wall itself is steep (and in the snow, slippery), prompting one particularly high and perilous section to be dubbed "Stairway to Heaven".

Enough words, please check out the pictures here: http://picasaweb.google.com/fletchheinemann/SimataiNov09.

Snowy Beijing

2009-11-12T01:32:00.001+10:00

Beijing has turned on its winter magic. We arrived on the bullet train from Qingdao, a smooth five and a half hours to cover 888 kilometres. About halfway through the journey, the snow that the arctic wind had been threatening in Qingdao but had not quite delivered was blanketing the fields of Shandong Province.

Beijing had its makeover for the Olympics and it shows. The train station is airport-sized and spotless. Thanks to a user-friendly subway, we were across town and into our hotel within 30 minutes, for two kuai each ($A0.33), even if we did have to listen to an English accent tellling us to "Mind the gap".

The good people at www.elong.net suggested that we might consider staying "old style" in a courtyard hotel in Beijing. And for RMB 320 (A$50) a night, we figured we couldn't go too far wrong. The place has been beautifully decked out in Ming furniture, the foyer has a pastel-blue painted ceiling, and the reception desk sits in front of a magnificent screen of painted Chinese ladies. Our room is no less interesting, with a cute China tea-set, dark polished furniture and red and gold furnishings. The basin in the bathroom is a (replica) Ming vase. And I will have to write a separate entry about the slippers. In fact, the only things that are not historical are our speedy broadband connection (broadband in China makes Australian access feel like dial-up) and reverse cycle air-conditioning.

Just on the corner of our Hutong (alleyway) is a little restaurant, where we feasted on kebobs, duck skewers, a tofu-number described as "Stir and Mix Cloud Silk as it Happens" and three tall beers. The nearest street is Jiugulou Dajie, which is lined with fruit shops, street stalls selling all sorts of barbecued skewered numbers, a hot pot restaurant and a Chinese chemist with an aisle marked "Not Medicine". We met a middle-aged couple from Xinjiang Province (far north-west of China), who loved Australian beef. It must have been the topic of the day, because a man selling street maps of Qingdao was telling me that there were lots of sheep in Australia.

Pictures of our first night in Beijing are here: http://picasaweb.google.com/fletchheinemann/ChinaNov09.This includes the sort after bum-slit picture.

The good news is that tomorrow it will be snowing and somewhere between 0 and -8^C.

A good yarn...

2009-11-12T01:30:00.001+10:00

Dongjiadu is a three-floor building near Nanpu Bridge, in the west of Shanghai. A sign on the door - which is largely ignored - asks visitors to abstain from smoking inside so as to avoid a disaster should thousands of metres of fabric incinerate. It's English name - ironically more difficult to remember and trickier to pronounce than the Chinese name - is The South Bund Soft Spinning Silk and Textile Market. We call it, 'The Cloth Market.'

Outside, a few hopefuls hawk their wares on mats lining the roads; an eclectic jumble of cheap jewellery, packs of cards and faux antique figurines. Men with little white caps - members of Muslim Chinese minority groups - sell dried fruits and nuts from side carts clinging to their rusty bikes. Across the street, Westerners sip coffee in the T-Café as they share tales of new clothes and good bargains.

But it is inside that the real action is taking place. Dongjiadu contains around 400 fabric and clothing stalls, all competing with each other to snag the next customer. Waiguoren wander the aisles, getting lost in the maze of stalls and disorientated by the endless reels of textiles on offer. You can buy off the rack, choosing one of the pre-made pieces of clothing hanging off the mannequin models, or - more commonly - let the small Chinese lady attempt to wrap her tape around your girth , take down your measurements, marvel and tsk at your enormous size, and finally return a few days later to retrieve your made-to-measure outfits. .

With thousands of items of clothing on display, its one of those places that makes you think, 'Hmm…maybe I really would look good in a pair of tight, bright red Chinese silk pants with dragons and flowers embroidered down the sides…I might get some made". The entrepreneuring stall holders only fuel your desire, proffering everything from suits to socks as they call from their stalls;

"Beautiful jackets in here, Miss!'

"Sir, you want suit? We make you good suit, very nice."

"Chinese silk scarf, for you Miss!"

"Come in, just looking, okay, we have scarf for you, jackets, suit, coat, tie, pants, gloves, skirt, …."

The invitations, however, were a waste of breath when directed towards me. I was a woman with a one-track mind as I marched past stall after stall. I knew exactly what it was I wanted. Clutched in my hand was an oft-folded picture I had printed off the internet back home, and in my mind I was conjuring up secret images which I could not reveal to Fletch. My mission? Getting me a wedding dress.

After scanning all 3 floors to find the one who would be offered the privilege of being my personal tailor, I decided to hedge my bets and contracted two different stalls, arranging for a different designed dress to be made at each. Shop 302 promised me they could recreate the dress on the picture that I had brought from home, and Shop 361 convinced me to get one made from a magazine they had in store. So, whilst Fletch was away organising some shirts and pants to get made for himself, I was busy bargaining for a price and getting measured from top to toe

It is really lots of fun to get measured by a personal dressmaker, and it is also quite easy to forget that lots of small details can be lost in translation when an Australian girl is dealing with a Chinese lady. Alarm bells should have started ringing when Shopkeeper 302 had finally finished measuring me up. "Wedding dress - very special" I had repeated to her, subconsciously imploring her to do a good job I had already gone through my essential requirements with her several times - white dress, not puffy, no sequins, beach wedding, etc. I thought our understanding was mutual.. She smiled back at me. "Okay, wedding dress, very good. Now, what colour? Red?"

Shopkeeper 361 was a young, smiling woman who was heavily pregnant and, in hindsight, I think she had a serious case of baby brain . I was drawn to her stall by her big belly and big smile - she was so friendly and enthusiastic about making my wedding dress, I felt I couldn't let her down. After flicking through page after page of dresses in the magazine she had, we decided on one and I - stupidly - verbally requested a few small changes to be made to the original design. After lots of nodding and smiling, for the second time that day I mistakenly believed we were each on the same wavelength, and left the tailors to weave their magic. I found Fletch sitting patiently waiting for his bride-to-be on a flight of stairs between levels 2 and 3, gave him an enigmatic smile and left The Cloth Market with my hopes in the sky.

However, it wasn't meant to be. Two more subway trips out to Dongjiadu - one for a second fitting and one to pick up - and I am now the proud owner of a sequinned potato sack, and a cupcake-like fairy godmother dress.

I am convinced that 361 made me an entirely different dress to the one we picked out in the magazine - the straight sections of the dress were okay, but evidently the sewing machine couldn't turn corners. Then, against the rules, they went and put sequins all over it. Lesson number one: do not get a wedding dress made by a shop with embroidered tablecloths as their headliine product, however pregnant the shopkeeper may be.

Shop 302 - while slightly closer to the mark, presented me proudly with a cupcake dress and then admonished me when I dared tug slightly on the skirt to ease the puff. I almost asked if they could make me a wand to complete my dress up outfit. Lesson number two: do not allow the shopkeeper to convince you that 'just a little bit' of tulle under your dress would look "very beautiful".

Fletch, of course, was considerably more successful - his 3 new shirts and pair of pants fit perfectly and look very smart. Lesson number three: Fletch had the right idea - give them something to copy, and they can't go wrrong!

But even with the disastrous dresses, our experience at the South Bund Soft Spinning and Textile Market was lots of fun, and it was certainly worth a try! In reality, its not all bad - we are now on our way to Beijing, where the temperature is dipping well below zero degrees. I'm going to need as many layers as I can get - and my sequinned potato sack and fairy godmother dress might just come in handy after all!

Shanghai Shenanigans

2009-11-10T23:31:00.000+10:00

Reecey's debut appearance in Shanghai and Fletchie's encore performance had the following acts:

1. Shanghai World Circus

Four Chinese girls climb out of a three foot high vase. Six Chinese boys contort their bodies to leap through hoops. One man, the only of the entire acrobat troupe who has eaten a cheeseburger in his lifetime, catches a massive Ming Vase on the back of his neck. One boy on stilts backflips off a catapult-see-saw-type apparatus. Another boy on a pogo stick manages the same. Then there are the motorcycles in the wire cage. We're not going to spoil the surprise. Go and see it.

2. Shanghai World Circus... Fletchie & Reecey Version

One Australian boy takes the skipping rope from a Shanghai local on the third floor of the Fake Goods Market (this is not its official title). One Australian girl performs amazing feats of skipping over the rope backwards. The entire third floor of vendors crowds around to see the two Australian skippers on their international tour. At the presentation ceremony, the winning skipper (Reecey) is given a beautiful bottle of Nong Fu Springs Water 600 ml (retails at RMB 1.5 or A$0.25). Fletchie declines to buy the skipping rope because its counter is broken. (He is secretly upset that he lost the skipping competition). No need to go and see it.

3. The Shanghai Shoe Box

FH (to Receptionist 1): Can we have a non-smoking room please?

Receptionist 1 (to Receptionist 2, in Chinese): Do we have any non-smoking rooms?

Receptionist 2 (in Chinese): No, we don't have any non-smoking rooms.

Receptionist 1 (to Fletchie, in English): OK, no problem sir.

We lasted one night in our "non-smoking room", which smelled suspiciously like it had been declared a non-smoking room approximately two minutes before we opened the door. It had no window. No internet. No flushing toilet. And was about 30 degrees inside. We had booked six nights, but armed with serious faces and a story of a sick friend in Suzhou, we were out of there by 9.00 am the next morning. Our new apartment on Yan'an Road West was, for the same RMB, infinitely more comfortable. We decided that the moral of the story was that when booking a room on www.e-long.net avoid the "discount room". It is sometimes mistaken for the cleaner's closet.

4. A Poignant Reminder...

On our second night in Shanghai, we had dinner with Ava, a former colleague of mine at Deloitte in Shanghai. Ava was exceptionally pleased to meet Reecey, and interested to learn that she was not in fact Thai, despite having taught in Thailand for a good eight months or so. We may have also cleared up some of Ava's misconceptions that Thai ladies are 5 foot 11, blonde haired, green eyed and teach English to Thai children.

Over dinner, Ava checked off a list of names that had left Deloitte. It was good to be reminded that, while working in Shanghai was a great experience, it definitely had a used-by date.

5. Number 5 on the Bund

I had heard on the grapevine that Number 5 on the Bund, my favourite Shanghai lunchtime haunt, had closed its doors for the last time some years ago. Reecey and I went to pay our last respects to the fine basement establishment that offered RMB50 (A$8) lunches - soup/ salad, pizza/pasta and a soft-drink plus all the games of pool you could play in your lunch-hour - to discover to my amazement and excitement that Number 5 was still open for business, albeit with some construction works going on in the building above.

The happy hour drinks' special was Buy 2 Beers Get 1 Free. Our ever-helpful waiter could not quite grasp the concept that we wanted our three beers brought out in succession, rather than all at once. We kept him on his toes though... by playing the indecisive couple that could not decide what beer they wanted next until they had finished their current one.

Over the last three years, the pool table has become a bit worse for wear. It has lost two of its pockets, so the entire bar knows when a ball is sunk in either of those pockets, as the ball crashes on the timber floor and the crack reverberates through the bar. It's lucky that Shanghai has shrugged off its gangs culture, otherwise Number 5 would be full of highly-strung patrons.

6. We Love Haibo

Shanghai will host World Expo in 2010, with the result that the city is currently littered with construction works. On the brighter side, Haibo, the World Expo mascot, now makes an appearance at almost every public place. You can meet Haibo here: http://www.goshanghaiexpo.com/node/44. He's blue. He's happy. He looks like a blue, happy dish cloth.

7. The Bullet Train from Shanghai to Qingdao

Pros:

1. Seating that would give any airline's business class a run for its money and more coat-hooks than you could possibly own coats for.

2. Announcements in English, which is particularly courteous given that there were only two non-Chinese on the 16-carriage train.

3. Great facilities. But bear in mind that Chinese aren't hugely keen on refrigerating drinks.

4. Top speeds of 250km/ hr, which is particularly useful when the vista of the countryside is obscured in smog.

Cons:

1. Passengers three seats in front of you decide that a ten hour train journey is the perfect opportunity to eat crabs, which due to its fiddly nature would otherwise consume too much time in one's day.

2. Passengers two seats in front of you decide to check out their mobile phone's store of polyphonic ringtones. At maximum volume, which is the only volume setting for phones in China.

3. Passenger one seat in front of you speaks on his mobile phone as if he is trying to speak to someone in China... oh wait, he is in China... as if he is trying to speak to someone in Australia.

Zaijian!

By golly...

2009-11-10T01:24:00.001+10:00

Our feet were aching. I reckon we walked 13 kilometres through the streets of Shanghai. Reecey reckons 18. Dad says 29.

The Cloth Market (officially titled South Bund Soft Silk and Textile Spinning Market, but known only as Lujiabang Lu to taxi drivers) was heaving with waiguoren (foreigners), getting measured for shirts, suits, jackets, coats. A girl gave her best Narcissus impression, gazing at her image in the full-length mirror, surrounded by fabrics.

We sat on the steps of the third floor, waiting for Reecey's dress to arrive from the tailor, surveying the interactions between waiguoren and locals.

A young Chinese lady trendily clad in a hot-pink tracksuit top walked towards us.

"Ni hao," we said in unison. She nodded and smiled politely, lips pursed together. She continued to walk towards us, stopped abruptly in front of a large green rubbish bin, and head down, unhurriedly let a giant golly fall from her lips into the bin. Her immediate task now completed, she beamed a smile at us: "I'm fine! How are you?"

Snoozing on the Shanghai subway

2009-11-10T01:22:00.001+10:00

As some of you might be aware, I'm afflicted with a chronic condition which I call MVIN - or Moving-Vehicle-Induced-Narcolepsy. I've fallen asleep on planes, trains, cars, taxis, buses, ferries and tuk-tuks all over the world. More precisely, I find it virtually impossible to stay awake. My greatest achievement to date was to fall asleep on a very brief sawngthaew trip in Thailand, hugging my big backpack as I shared the hard wooden bench seat with about 20 locals, some chickens and a wild boar .

So now I found myself, blissfully, in China - a land where it is perfectly permissible to fall asleep anywhere, and at anytime. You can fall asleep whilst waiting for your lunch to be served in a restaurant. You can fall asleep whist waiting for some customers to come into your shop. It's okay to pull over slightly to the side of the road , apply the handbrake and snooze in the front seat of your car. The Chinese have discovered that parking your motorbike on the footpath and reclining on the seat is, indeed, an ideal way to catch a bit of shut-eye. Buses and taxis provide endless opportunities for locals to catch up on some sleep before work, or after a long day at the office. I have fallen in love China's embrace of the humble kip.

A sign at the Jjiangsu subway station proudly proclaims that spitting, smoking, urinating and dropping rubbish are all forbidden on the subway; a welcome oasis from the sanitary standards of greater Shanghai. At 3RMB a pop (AU$0.50), the subway is a clean, air-conditioned, efficient and hassle-free way to get around town. When Fletch was in Shanghai in 2006, there were 2 subway lines - that has since expanded to 8 lines which stretch like a cobweb to every corner of the massive city. The subway was our primary means of transport during our 6 day stay in Shangers - the two waiguoren joining the millions of other Shanghaiense traversing the city's underground network. During peak hour, I would often 'lose' Fletchie amongst the heaving crowd, fortunately he is a tad taller than the average Chinaman so it didn't take long to 'find' him and swim towards him again.

But back to the snoozing. There are only about 20 seats lining the walls of the subway trains - unless you're one of the lucky few, chances are that it'll be standing room only for your entire journey. The inside of the carriages resemble a kid's jungle gym, with steel bars assembled in various directions for travellers to grab onto as the train lurches through the subway like an snake with a limp. People rush on and off as the doors slide open impatiently at each station.. The brakes squeal around bends, passengers jolt and sway in an awkward dance, and there is always someone who wants to try out every single one of their mobile phone's polyphonic ringtones at top volume. It would seem an utterly impossible place to sleep. Unless you are Chinese.

The challenge was set by Fletchie on our final subway trip in Shanghai. I had watched in awe, trip after trip, as passengers nodded off all around me as they stood clutching the cheese graters , their knees slightly bent to enhance their balance, their heads drooped into their chests, their eyes closed peacefully and their breathing the slow and steady rhythm of someone who is deep in sweet slumber. Fletchie and I would often chat in hushed whispers, so as not to "disturb the growing grass". Shhhhh.

"Reecey - we have 7 stops 'til we arrive at Jiangsu station. Bet you can't fall asleep standing up?"

It was all the motivation I needed to attempt the impossible. I linked my fingers around the top of the jungle gym, allowed my body to relax and gently closed my eyes. For the first time in my life, I had to actively will myself to fall asleep on a moving vehicle. A few minutes passed, and despite the efforts of Fletchie as my anti-cheerleader ("Sleep Reecey, sleep! You can do it Reecey!") I slipped slowly out of wakefulness. The background noises merged into an incomprehensible mumble, and I became oblivious to the human baton change occuring as we stopped at various stations. I even grew delightfully ignorant of the waft coming from armpits of the handsome man next to me, which were a bit on the bugle (sorry Fletchie!). And it took me more than a few seconds to react when that same man pinched me on the bottom, dragging me from the periphery of consciousness to let me know that - miracle of miracles - two seats had become available!!

I stumbled across and plonked down in the seat next to Fletch. Now, this was child's play. With still 4 stops left until we would arrive at our destination, I rested my head against Fletchie's shoulder and snoozed soundly on the Shanghai subway. I even had a little dream about flying, which ended abruptly when our plane - errr, train - slid into the station and Fletch woke me up with a nudge. We had arrived at Jiangsu station, and I had achieved the unachievable!

I may have been slightly fuzzy- headed, but I swear the little old lady sitting next to me gave me a slight nod of respect as we squeezed past her out of the train doors. Or perhaps, she was just nodding off to sleep.

The 7 Most Wondrous Treasures of our Fickle Friend Hangzhou

2009-11-02T22:38:00.001+10:00

(Running joke, please see previous post)

1. Steaming Hot Steamed Buns

Nothing beats four piping hot pork steamed buns (zhurou baozi) for breakfast (Y6 = A$1), along with some sort of biscuit number (Y1 = A$0.16), enjoyed al fresco style on the West Lake.

2. University Students Practising their English

En route to dinner on a crowded bus, we met a 19 year-old university student with grand plans to study in America ("Do you think I should study business or engineering?" he asked us). His father had spotted us as a useful target for his son to practise (or show off) his English. After 10 minutes, we asked how close we were to our intended destination. "I'm sorry," he said, "The West Lake is... ah... ahhhh... ehhh... how you say? Op... Opp... Apposit..." "Opposite?" we asked. "Yes, opposite direction. If you want to go to West Lake, you must... ahh... ummm... (pointing in the other direction) get off!"

3. Paparazzi

Our stroll around the beautiful West Lake was graciously recorded by the local Hangzhou folk. Digital cameras and camera phones, overtly and covertly came out to record our presence. The shy ones pretended to check their text messages at eye level. The braver ones would approach us with camera in hand, "Keyi ma?" It's OK? "Keyi." Yes, it's more than OK for you to photograph us. Our question is, however, where are these pictures ending up? Is someone posting these on MySpace (Facebook is interneta non gratis in the PRC) with the status update of "Met the foreigners, anyone know which movie they are from?"

4. Accidentally Walking into a,,, how you say?... Gentlemen's Club

(In Chinese) FH: Can we come in?

Chinese Hostess: You, OK. Her, no OK.

5. Accidentally Ordering Rat

Well, we're not exactly sure it was rat. But we went through the alphabet for all forms of small mammals and birds. It could have been a squirrel, but we stopped at "R", the circumstantial evidence was that great. Whatever it was, it eye-balled Reecey disconcertingly enough to get covered in green beans. Next time maybe we will spend more time with the pictures on the menu.

6. Line Dancing

It was no longer Halloween, but the 500 strong troupe of line dancers boot-scooting their stuff in the darkness that enveloped the shore of the West Lake by 9 pm on a Sunday night was comical, and just a little scary.

7. Reecey's First Encounter with the Jumpsuit Bum Slit

The Chinese response to toddlers' toilet accidents is ingenious for its simplicity: remove the seat of their pants. It was a bracing 8 degrees walking around Hangzhou today, and the poor kids, rugged up like little Chinese Michelin Men, had their @rses hanging out in the breeze. What a great incentive to learn how to use a (squat) toilet.

Email in a bottle...

2009-11-02T00:45:00.001+10:00

Or maybe here: http://picasaweb.google.com/fletchheinemann/ChinaNov09# (with the asterisk at the end). Our apologies, but we cannot access Reecey & Fletchie's Humble Wanderings and Accidental Adventures (RAFHWAAA) from China. We can only send an email to an anonymous automated recipient and hope that it posts it with the rest of our ramblings. It's a bit like a message in a bottle, just 21st century style. In a similar vein, we can upload photos (and know how many have been uploaded), but cannot view the uploaded pictures. Eh, mei wenti (no worries).

Dreamy Hangzhou

2009-11-02T00:38:00.000+10:00

"Lingering snow on the broken bridge", "Autumn moon over calm lake", "Orieoles singing in the willows", "Leifeng Pagoda in evening glow", "Precious stone hill floating in rosy cloud" are just some of the names of the sights around Hangzhou's Xi Hu (West Lake). And while we didn't see any snow, orieoles or hills floating in rosy clouds, it is hard to go past the natural beauty of Xi Hu. Our photos are here: http://picasaweb.google.com/fletchheinemann/ChinaNov09

Malaka's Local Brew

2009-10-30T17:19:00.000+10:00

Kickapoo Joy Juice - no caffeine, Halal approved, incomprehensible cartoon, but surprisingly refreshing.

Try one at your friendly local Melaka swimming pool cafeteria today.

More photos (not of the same Kickapoo theme) are here on Picasa: http://picasaweb.google.com/fletchheinemann/MelakaOct09

A Few Words From Flatuch

2009-10-18T14:30:00.001+10:00

For those of you who have not met Flatuch, he is our pet dog. His hometown is Warsaw, Poland, where he lived happily with my good friends Kris and Mag for many years. One time when I was visiting Kris and Mag, Flatuch asked if he could come travelling with me. (I admit that we may have had this conversation after a few too many vodkas).

The upshot was that Flatuch became my travel buddy. And so he has seen the old town of London, the Pyramids of Egypt, the Great Wall of China, the Greek Islands, the lights of Hong Kong and Singapore and the beautiful beaches of Malaysia. He lived with Reecey in Bangkok, where he loved her stories of the elephants in the streets. In short, he is a very well-travelled toy dog.

He is also a bit of a poser. To wit:

White Water Rafting

2009-10-16T14:26:00.001+10:00

"If the raft capsizes, of 11 people, maybe one or two will be trapped under the raft. No worry. You will have air. Just sing a little song. But you must then get out from under the raft. You cannot stay there all day - or you will end up in the South China Sea." He mimes getting out from under the raft. "You go like this. Be like Spiderman."

We are standing on railroad tracks in the early afternoon heat, huddled around a yellow raft, armed with deep red lifejackets, blue helmets and yellow paddles.

"Now to hold the paddle. Like this. Top hand always on top of the handle. Otherwise, your handle can hit your friends. In the eye. In the nose. In the teeth. We have no good dentists in Sabah." He flashes a white smile. His two eye teeth have been knocked back.

Amin in our rafting guide. His nickname is "Black". In the high season, he spends every day on the river - and it shows - in his deep Sabah tan and his knowledge of the rapids. "All the rapids have different names," he says, "The Washing Machine, Scooby Doo, La Bamba, Headhunter…"

"Why is it called Headhunter?" Reecey asks. I can see in her face she has conjured up images of whitewater rushing over razor-edged rocks. Amin recalls an historical story of a band of native Sabah headhunters that took on the rapids… and lost.

Our crew may not have looked the part for rugged whitewater rafting - with the beanpole accountant from Melbourne, the slight Japanese girl and her white-gloved mother and the terrified Chinese girl who could not swim - but there is nothing like a raft being tossed down a set of rapids to build a team. But never judge a book by its cover. The first set of rapids saw our starboard paddlers swiftly dunked and then tossed up off their paddling positions. If it wasn't for our "seatbelts" - the crew that sat in the middle of the raft clinging onto the life jackets of the paddlers to their left and right - the accountant and I would have been in the creek. The heroines were the tiny Japanese girl and her white-gloved mother.

Reecey experienced life as a "flying fish", perched on the bow of the raft while the rest of us crowded the back third. The weight at the rear caused the "fish" at the front to fly up and down as the whitewater waves lured us to a crest and then plunged us into the next trough.

The excitement of the rapids was interspersed with times when we would float serenely down the Padas River, its silty brown water carving its way between the lush green of the tropical jungle that rose steeply on either side. In the smaller rapids, Amin encouraged us to "do body-rafting".

Reecey and I jumped into the Padas and buoyed by our lifejackets, rolled onto our backs and drifted down the river.

Another raft crossed our path every now and then. Amin would invariably shout "Fire in the hole!" this command seemed to mean either splashing the other raft with our paddles or, if proximity allowed, attempting to capcise the boat by lifting their ropes or crossing the ship's rail in an attempt to seize their boat. However, their guide was an experienced captain and thwarted our attacks. To my mind, that left one option: we must take out their captain.

With the rafts alongside each other, I passed my paddle to Reecey and in two steps, leapt onto their boat and tackled their captain. "Kill him!" Amir cheered cheekily. "Get him!" I never was a great tackler and ended up tackling not much more than the air where he had been a second before, flying horizontally over their boat into the river. I managed to get a hold of his arm on the way through, but it was too difficult to drag him into the river with me. After a short struggle, my grinning heroine arrived. Reecey crept up behind their guide and after tickling him in the ribs, lifted him over the side of their raft high enough for me to pull him in. The battle over, there was nothing left for us to do but smile, lie back and let the Padas River wash us downstream.

Beauty & The Beast/ Reecey & The Ranga

2009-10-15T14:50:00.005+10:00

Hey spunky!

Hey Reecey!

How are you enjoying Borneo?

I love it here! Today it's beautiful and sunny. We have snorkelled with colourful tropical fish at the nearby marine park, enjoyed ice-cold Tiger beers on the Waterfront and even visited some of your cousins!

Did you meet my Cousin Gaya?

Sure did. At the Shangri La Rasa Ria resort. He was pretty cute - swinging from his ropes and into the trees, enjoying some fresh fruit and even a massage from his human minder.

Not as cute as you though Fletchie! You can see the pictures of your extended family here: http://picasaweb.google.com/fletchheinemann/BorneoOct09?feat=directlink

They sure look like they're having fun!

Did you enjoy the Shangri La Rasa Ria resort Reecey?

I sure did. It was incredible - I had a wonderful birthday there - with flowers and a spa treatment and then a Happy Birthday serenade over dinner. The staff there were wonderful. Next time we are going to go horse-riding on the beach and sail on a hoby cat.

Next time hey?

Yes, we loved it so much that we will be back next October for our wedding!

As for this time though, we have plans to have dinner tonight as the sun sets over the water, a full day's whitewater rafting tomorrow (I am being extremely brave and signing up for the grade II to grade IV rapids even though I haven't passed grade I yet) and then on Saturday, we have a more leisurely cruise along with the river to watch the proboscis monkeys (their noses are a bit rude!) and fireflies.

Speaking of rude, shouldn't you have pants on Fletchie?

Whoops! Sorry Reecey.

I'll make sure I buy some for next October.

Sparkle Sparkle

2009-10-13T15:50:00.000+10:00

Due to popular demand, Reecey & Fletchie's Humble Wanderings and Accidental Adventures (RAFHWAAA) are proud to present a picture of Reecey's bling. I mean ring.

The Shangri La Rasa Ria

2009-10-13T01:19:00.000+10:00

The Shangri La Rasa Ria welcomes you with a Red-Faces style gonging, lilting xylophone tunes and a glass of iced peach tea. Its check-in process is a sit-down-in-the-lobby's-cane-lounges type affair. Hours later, after you have swum in the pool, walked across its private white sandy beach, played petanque and table tennis and enjoyed one-too-many cocktails, it kisses you goodnight. (Reecey has fallen asleep with her reading light on, novel fallen to the floor).

Our pictures are below and there are some better ones here: http://www.shangri-la.com/en/property/kotakinabalu/rasariaresort. The heavens permitting, the gazebos below will transform into our bar and beach dance-floor, flanking the wedding reception tables and buffet, which will look out to the setting sun over the water. Reecey is pleased that she will be able to choose (among other things) her flowers. I am pleased that we can get (literally) barrels of Tiger beer.

It's beautiful. Fancy joining us here in a year's time?

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Borneo pictures

2009-10-12T00:04:00.007+10:00

Our photos of Borneo are here:

http://picasaweb.google.com/fletchheinemann

Yes we are wearing matching white sunhats. We know it's not in fashion. Yet.

Kota Kinabalu

2009-10-11T23:23:00.011+10:00

Kota Kinabalu is buckets of fun.

We spent Saturday coming to terms with the fact that we were in Asia. This made sense because it was humid outside and air-conditioningly chilled inside. But Kota Kinabalu (or KK as it is called here) has a real country town feel to it. The streets are wide. The driving is remarkably un-chaotic. The occasional hawker selling Rolex watches and Armani leather belts is good natured (along with everyone else). Markets are filled to the brim with knock-offs. No surprise that the zip on my new "DIFSEL" laptop bag did not last the afternoon.

Reecey made some friends at the indoor soccer ground on the pier.

“Did you just play soccer?”
“Yeah.”

“Did you win?”

“Yes!”

“What was the score?”

“21 - 20.”

“Wow! So close!”

Were there any goalkeepers in this game? My guess is that the boys would play 20 minute halves, so that would be a goal-a-minute. Defence must be on this week's agenda at training surely, Coach Damo?

I was enjoying a beer or two on the Waterfront while Reecey enjoyed a massage. Young Jude introduced himself with an A4 piece of paper with maths homework and two handwritten words. “Excuse me, can you help me with this?” he asked. His English was confident and he looked university-aged, but his mannerisms gave away his youth. He told me he was 14. He was reading the English version of one of the Twilight books. The words he was asking about were “arbitrarily” and “overtly”. I discovered that “arbitrarily” is not a word that is that easy to explain to someone with English as a second language. I also discovered that year 10 maths is not something that you can just pick up 15 years later. So we talked about Shakira and Green Day instead.

Culinary mishaps in Kota Kinabalu

2009-10-11T22:40:00.006+10:00

We should have known better.

The sign on the entrance read "Eat all you can. Leave nothing on your plate". One could be forgiven for thinking that this was nothing more than a well-meaning but grammatically-challenged Malaysian Hot Pot BBQ restaurant encouraging its patrons to indulge at the buffet. That would only be possible before reading the warning: "3 RM for every 100g of cooked food left on your plate".

The waiter poured two tall plastic cups of cold jasmine tea. It was drinkable when we suspended our taste buds by not breathing while we were drinking. The Hot Pot consisted of an old electric fry pan with a silver bowl full of water perched in the middle. "Self service. OK?" our waiter said. "OK" we nodded. It turned out that it was not OK. An hour later, we had been spat on by an angry frypan, scalded ourselves with steaming water, eaten raw corn and concocted a soup that simultaneously managed to be too spicy and utterly tasteless. And during all this time, the threat of uneaten cooked food loomed over us. We wondered whether we would get charged for the undrunken broth as well.

The restaurant wasn't all bad. It was family-friendly. "Children under four foot eat for half price. Children under three foot eat for free." Maybe we could palm off our inedible soup to someone's kids if they were immune from the penalty rates. It was so draconian, we thought. Surely even attempting to eat our inedible dinner was punishment enough. In the end, we took a deep breath, calculated that the extent of our penalty would be 9 RM (A$3) - assuming the broth was included in the measuring - and paid the bill. The waitress never charged us the extra 9 RM.

We walked into a waft of donuts. That would fill a hole, we agreed. The sign at the donut shop said "Self-service". But the only way you could serve yourself would be to hurdle the counter and the perspex display case and push the plump pimple-faced Malaysian girl out of the way. And she looked like she took her job seriously. There were too many varieties to choose from, but a quick decision was required because the girl was recommending a pink-glazed one. I chose "Chococino". So did Reecey. While the girl rang up our purchases, a sign on the counter informed us to "Please choose your donut carefully as no exchange or refund will be given." We had never thought an exchange or refund of donut could be necessary, but that was until we tried "Chococino". The icing was cooking chocolate with the consistency of a runny egg. Somewhere hidden in the middle of the donut was a chunk of coffee in whipped cream. We now know why donuts should have holes in the middle. It's so that you can eat a whole one without wanting to gag.

Wandering home, we concluded that our evening's culinary experience was all very confusing. Even the storekeepers seem confused. One proudly proclaimed: "Home recipes. Serve no pork". It may have even been the name of the restaurant. It's neighbour had no such ethical qualms: "Fresh grilled pork. Be tantilised."

Knowing your enemy

2009-03-12T08:50:00.000+10:00

Our guide stops abruptly. I have learned he is a teacher and that his favourite football team is Liverpool. His English is marginally better than my Lao. We have trekked all day, up and down forested hills, and have not seen another soul, but his tone is hushed. “This …” he pauses, not for effect, but to search for the English words, “is Akha village. Akha people, they anamees.”

I must have misheard. Our enemies?

We follow a dirt path crowded with pigs, chickens and mangy dogs. Women watch us from outside wooden huts, which are interspersed with animal pens fashioned from bamboo. The women give us hesitant black smiles, teeth and lips stained from chewing beetle nut. The Akha village sunbakes on top of three dusty hills, surrounded by rainforest, and open only to the pastel-blue sky above. An apparatus made of four tree branches balances together on the top of the first hill like the shell of a tepee,a rope hanging from its apex. A toddler looks at us, curious, before he flees down the hill to the heart of the village.

As we wander into the heart of the village, a band of men use machetes to hack at roughly cut beams of timber. One looks up at us through protective eye goggles, which seem out of place “Halloooh,” he calls. Dust cakes his trousers from the knees down, his maroon shirt unbuttoned and darkened with sweat.. After some reciprocal gesticulating, my girlfriend finds the machete in her hands. She hacks at the timber in the same style as the village men and displays, to my relief, the same level of dexterity. Her efforts are rewarded with smiles, excited chatter and temporary possession of the eye-goggles.

Across the path, a villager wanders out from his hut holding a knife and something resembling a passionfruit. He slices the fruit in quarters and holds it out to me in the same hand as the knife. My cheek muscles contract with the sourness of the fruit. He laughs at my involuntary reaction and invites us into his hut where a selection of seasonings are laid out in stone bowls. I recognise one as salt and one as crushed chillies. We duck under the dried palm fronds that keep the heat off his verandah and sit on dwarf-sized stools. He talks in an animated manner, and I think I learn Lao for: “you like?”

Just now, a group of school children, the eldest no more than six, race down from the other hill, a cloud of dust in their wake. A couple of them sport round black knitted headwear and all carry identical hessian satchels around their necks. They stop in their tracks when they reach us. My girlfriend, a school teacher at home, spontaneously claps and starts dancing a little jig. The children giggle and, forgetting their initial shyness, join in the dancing. As the sun sets over the three hills in Nam Tha province, we join our guide. I have to ask. “Why are the Akha people our enemies?”

Kham pauses. His expression is deadpan. “They anamees. They worship animal spirits.” A knowing smile comes across my face as I understand the confused pronunciation. The Akha people are animists – pagans – and not our enemies. The evidence finally stacks up.

Rolling the Dice

2008-05-30T18:24:00.004+10:00

I tried to focus my eyes on the clock on the wall. It showed ten minutes to four in the morning. The second hand crawled around the face as if every second was an effort. I sipped my sugary coffee, watching the ice-cubes bobbing in the glass cup, hoping that it would soothe the knot that was twisting in my stomach.

The inside of the cafe was flooded with florescent light, which spilled out onto the footpath with an assortment of plastic tables and chairs. I had flitted into the cafe ten minutes earlier, crossing an unlit road to avoid the figures huddled in doorways and a group of young men that sat talking on their motorbikes. Down a sidestreet, silhouettes of two girls in short skirts and high heels were cut against a red neon light. Their cigarette smoke curled into the warm night air.

I had rolled the dice at Singapore’s long distance bus-station, with the vague intention of seeking a white-sanded, palm-tree-clad beach in Malaysia. “You want to go to the east coast”, a colleague had told me, so I scanned the list of destinations at the bus station against my creased print-out map of Malaysia. Kuantan. The name was smack in the middle of Malaysia’s east coast and there were islands sprinkled to the north and south. I checked the board. Departs Singapore 10.00 pm. Arrives Kuantan 5.15 am. Perfect.

A couple of years earlier, I had played this game at the central bus station of Trieste in northern Italy. I had bought a ticket for an overnight bus to Dubrovnik in Croatia for no other reason than the bus was leaving in half an hour. The bus had wound its way along the Croatian coastline all night under the stars.

It was not until early morning, with the sun shimmering off the deep blue harbour under a cloudless sky, that the bus pulled into its terminus at Dubrovnik only a couple of hundred metres outside the old city walls.

There was no sign of the sun in Kuantan. The cafe owners were closing for the night - an odd business decision I thought given that breakfast was only a couple of hours away - so I slinked back to the bus station and its flock of taxis. “Hello. Where do you want to go?” a driver said to me in as he leaned against his car. English. Excellent.

“I’m trying to get to an island,” I replied. His expression was blank. I mimicked swimming and then pulled out my print-out of Malaysia and pointed to the sea.

“Oh. OK. I take you to boat. Two hour by taxi. Then boat to island.” I was sceptical of his plan, but given the dearth of options, I climbed in.

Amir flew through the gears as we sped through the deserted streets out of town and into a countryside speckled with palm trees. Amir’s high-school English was good enough for me to learn that he had two wives - I never found out if one was an ex - and thirteen children. Amir had been busy over the years. I contemplated Amir supporting thirteen children on an income of cab fares and decided that the fare we had agreed on was going to a good cause.

Amir had phoned the ferry terminal from his mobile en route to confirm the departure times to Pulau Tioman, the island he had selected for me. “It’s OK,” he said, “We have time.” I paid Amir, but he gestured for me to follow him. He purchased my ferry ticket and, content to see me in the midst of a Chinese tour group heading to the same place, smiled and nodded goodbye.

Two hours later, the ferry slid into a wharf announced over the tinny loudspeaker as “Tekek”. It was a stark concrete structure sitting awkwardly between the clear water of the shore and the rich green of the tropical forest that climbed the mountain behind. There was only one road in Tekek. Someone had thoughtfully erected a painted wooden sign with the symbol of a hut promising accommodation along the road to the south.

The bitumen was steaming with the mid-morning heat. “Hey!” a curt voice called. I looked around to see if it was directed at me. “Hey! You want a room?” It was. A plump young woman in jeans, thongs and a blue polo shirt stared at me from the shade of a verandah which was apparently doubling as the reception desk in the heat.

“Yeah? I questioned.”

“We only have one left.” Her tone was so abrupt. But a week later, I thought Anna was an incredibly friendly and helpful hostess. “Sea view. You want to see?”

“Sure.”

I followed the portly Anna up one flight of stairs to inspect her room with the sea view. She turned the key and opened the door. There it was. Two palm trees framed a view that started with light blue waters over gold sand and ended with the deep blue of the South China Sea enveloping a nearby island. I could just see the hazy outline of the mainland where I had come from that morning. Anna told me the price. “That’ll do just fine” I said. I was ready to roll the dice again.

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