Carol & Vic's travels 2009 Far East, NZ & Australia

Its been a busy 2009 so far – here is a note of our ‘mini’ world tour! We had nearly 3 wonderful months from Jan to March 2009.

Carol and I started off by flying to Singapore to see my son, James, where we stayed for a few weeks. It was great to see him and he invited us to a special lunch for Chinese New Year with his office colleagues. A great time! Very good to meet everyone. The lunch is called Lo Hei (click to see photos) and is meant to celebrate good luck for your money & finances. The ingredients of the meal all mean something with regard to this good fortune and are mixed in turn, each with an explanation for its inclusion. Then the guests all join together and toss the ingredients in the centre of the table in a big bowl, using their chopsticks, making a wish.
We also visited the Chinese New Year celebrations with James and had a great time visiting restaurants and places in Singapore. Many of these places still retain the atmosphere of the early 20th century, notably, the 'shop houses' which were a shop on the ground floor and a living accommodation for the merchant on the first floor.

Our pictures of Singapore are here:

Singapore with James at New Year 2009

Singapore - more places & scenes

From Singapore we made a very memorable trip to Hanoi and the nearby Ha Long Bay. Hanoi is a bustling city which still retains some of the charm of the steet chaos and shops from days gone by. Ha Long Bay is a World Heritage Site and consists of 773 limestone islands in a beautiful sea which sometimes was jade coloured and sometimes turquoise. We took a trip on a junk and stayed overnight on it. This is certainly a most beautiful place.

After leaving Hanoi we travelled to Cambodia and visited the temples of Angkor Wat.
This was a lifetime ambition of mine, having first read about them in the National Geographical Magazine when I was a boy in about 1960! These temples were all built over many square miles in the jungle in the period of about 850 AD to 1400 AD.
After this time they fell into disuse and gradually the jungle took over. They remained hidden until a French explorer in Henri Mouhot rediscovered & popularised them. These temples are fascinating and I can only suggest you go there and see them.

Here is a selection of our photos Cambodia

Our guide was also a fascinating person and I have written about him on this blog. He also took us to the floating village on the Tonle Sap lake in Cambodia. The lake which take a who day to navigate by fast power boat along it's length connects with the Mekong further down the country. It is an enormous lake and at one end there is there is this village, entirely floating on bamboo floats and other more modern platforms. These people live on the lake for their whole life; there are schools, community centres, shops, etc.

We returned to Singapore and then made a visit to the island of Lombok and had a very pleasant week at a super hotel on the beach at Senggigi. Our photos are here: Lombok. Whilst there I had a very interesting conversation with a young Russian businessman about politics in Russia - see my blog. Lombok is next door to Bali and sadly is somewhat run-down. It looks as though various developers have tried to start new businesses and restaurants in the villages along the coast but, for some reason, they have given up and the buildings are left empty and decaying. I guess they must have suffered economically after the 2002 Bali bombing.

The next leg of our journey took us to New Zealand where we spent nearly a month travelling through the country in a campervan! We really enjoyed travelling this way and nearly a month later we were still talking to each other! Shortly after arriving we met up with friends Bob & Val from the UK who were on there year long travels mostly camping!

New Zealand is a beautiful country with stunning 360 degree views and wonderful landscapes. It is hard to explain or capture it on camera. The air is so clear; you get the feeling of space and timelessness. The South Island is certainly the most beautiful. Whether you are next to one of the glacial, turquoise lakes near Mount Cook or in the Fiordland national park enjoying the incredible scenery of Milford Sound or travelling through the ancient cool temperate rainforests, you cannot help but be constantly amazed. At night the starry skies were really something to behold. For example, at our camp site at Milford Sound we were able to see the Milky Way stretching across the night sky in a band of twinkling stars from horizon to horizon. I have never seen the Milky Way like this and it just shows you how polluted our skies are here in Europe.

We didn’t manage to travel throughout the North and South Island completely and I should say that the North Island is beautiful too. One of the examples of this beauty is Hahei Beach on the west coast facing the Pacific. I swam every morning and afternoon in this crystal clear water. We could mention many places, but something we found quite fascinating was camping at Waikite with its own thermal pools set in a scenic valley where the steam running down beside us steamed with hot water! That is something you don’t get in England!

We have taken lots of photographs and some of these are on my Facebook. Here is a selection:Vic's NZ Photos.I have also put some on Panoramio so you can see the places we went to.

The food was excellent everywhere – we were eating their home grown avocados; buying grapes on the roadside and eating green lipped mussels so fresh they just melted in your mouth.

We certainly want to go back but it is a long way to go. Our month wasn’t long enough. We should have allowed three months so we could take in some of the wonderful walks and dwell longer at some of the beautiful places. Just before we left Auckland we met up with friends Richard & Aileen. They are from the UK but working in NZ - they love it!

We went on from Auckland to Sydney and visited Carol’s friends Duncan & Gail, staying at their lovely home. As we flew into Sydney we had beautiful clear skies and were able to take our first look at this splendid harbour with its many inlets, wooded hills and sandy beaches and right in the centre of this is the city itself, spreading out further to the south, away from the harbour. From the air we could clearly see the iconic Sydney Harbour Bridge and the Opera House. Even from the air we could see the Sydney Harbour and Port Jackson busy with shipping and yachts. We spent five wonderful days there visiting beaches such as Coogee and Manly which have perfect sand and wild surf from the blue ocean. At a number of beaches there were both natural and man made sea water pools which makes this coastline the perfect place to enjoy the sea. Our friends had a yacht and we were lucky enough to spend the day sailing on sparkling blue sea. No wonder so many people have sailing boats here! Sydney is certainly a city to be visited. We enjoyed eating out, and strolling along the harbourside near the Opera House. What a perfect way to spend an evening!

Here is a selection of our photos: Sydney!

Russian Democracy!

A brief insight ........

I have always wanted to talk to a young Russian and find out why there is such unequivocal support for Mr Putin. My opportunity came whilst staying at a beach resort hotel in Indonesia.

We were in the bar enjoying our happy hour drinks overlooking the sea and got into conversation with a 33 year old young Russian business executive and his wife. He was from the north near the White Sea. He looked very English but she was from much further south, a pretty Slavic girl. Quite soon, my wife & Egor's wife left us to our conversation of of politics and democracy.

His English was quite good, having spent two years at Newcastle University. He was a sales manager working for a very large coal company responsible for dealing with eastern Europe and some western companies like EDF. He asked me to be quite frank about my questions so I asked him, “why does he, and so many young Russians support Putin when so many of us in the west fear his motives and his tactics?” I said that I had been to Latvia some years ago and had heard about Mr Putin being an ex KGB colonel and that the Latvians feared him very much.

He dismissed the Latvian view, saying that people in power in Latvia were not democratic and that the country was just being controlled by a few powerful businessmen.

I asked him about what will happen in the future. He clearly accepted that Medvedev was a caretaker president whilst Putin still held the power and that Putin would return to power in four years' time. When I queried the tactics being employed against the opposition parties in Russia he just simply answered that in the presidential elections in the USA 4 years ago that Al Gore got more votes than George Bush, but did not win. I tried to explain that the vote was very close and the Electoral College system could lead to anomalies in such cases. He didn't seem to be prepared to discuss the intimidation of opposition leaders and journalists in Russia and that this was very undemocratic.

I queried him on the apparent control of the press by Mr Putin and he simply answered by saying that the BBC was a mouthpiece for the British government and that Russia didn't get a fair hearing.

We parted good friends but the conversation certainly troubled me. For instance, Egor at one point said that Mr Putin was the best leader that they had had for a hundred years and he was the best leader in the world, by far.

Ho hum! What hope is there for real democracy?

(PS: I have kept his real name confidential)

A Cambodian Story

In February Carol & I visited Cambodia to see the wonderful temples at Angkor Wat (a UNESCO World Heritage site) . In the process we met a very interesting man who gave us his personal account of the recent history of the country and the terrible effect of Khmer Rouge and wars. Quite strangely as I write this (Tues, 17th Feb 2009) I hear the BBC report that the long-awaited UN-backed trial of a former Khmer Rouge leader in Cambodia has opened at a Phnom Penh court, 30 years after the murderous regime fell.

Travelling gives you the opportunity to meet people and some of the people you meet have a fascinating tale to tell. This was the case on our visit to Angkor Wat in Cambodia.

Our guide for three days was Dee* a man in his thirties who knew a lot about the temples, the Hindu and the Buddhist religions and history. However, his own story was even more fascinating, if tragic. Of course, everyone will know about the traumatic recent history of Cambodia and of the death of millions wrought by Pol Pot, the leader of the Khmer Rouge.

When Dee was four years old both his father and brother were brutally killed by the Khmer Rouge. Between the ages of four and about ten there were terrible times of poverty and during his childhood he managed to get some schooling but secretly and in short bursts.

When Dee was about ten, the Khmer Rouge regime fell to the Vietnamese and many children were taken into the army and given guns and uniforms. After a few months he managed to run away, running literally for his life. His best friend was killed by a land mine as he ran at his side and a few feet to the other side another child was shot. He ran and ran and made his escape and was taken into a Buddhist monastery in Phnom Penh where he was educated and learnt English, even though that was not allowed by the Vietnamese.

Finally, the Vietnamese withdrew and the UN arrived (about 1991). Dee was in the right place at the right time and as he had studied English he was able to get a job working for the good guys as an interpreter. Some time later he returned to Siem Reap to find his mother. By the time he did this he was about thirty years old. At first she didn't recognise him. She had been told long ago that he was dead and had even held a special funeral for him. It was only by Dee showing her a childhood scar above his knee where he had fallen off a pedal bike his aunt had given him that she was able to accept him again.

Dee now lives in Siem Reap with his mother who is 86. He supports her in every way he can. She has had such a hard life, losing her husband and sons and being conscripted to build a dam by Pol Pot's army, carrying heavy stones back and forth which has left her with a chronically bent and painful back.

Dee praised Princess Diana as she had come to Cambodia on a mission to get the land mines cleared – at one time these were planted across the thousand of acres of fields that border Angkor Wat. These have been cleared but there are still many areas yet to be dealt with. These were planted both by the Khmer Rouge and then also by the Vietnamese.

Dee's story is both tragic and one of hope and success. What a pleasure just to meet him.

Historical & Contextual Notes:

* This is the name I have chosen for him, to protect his anonymity.

The Khmer Rouge came to power in 1975 and in 1979 lost power to Vietnam. though the Khmer Rouge maintained control in some regions until 1998 when their final stronghold, in Anlong Veng District, fell to the government.

Under the leadership of Pol Pot, the Khmer Rouge imposed an extreme form of social engineering on Cambodian society — a radical form of agrarian communism where the whole population had to work in collective farms or forced labour projects. Khmer Rouge believed parents were tainted with capitalism. Consequently, children were separated from parents and brainwashed to socialism as well as taught torture methods with animals.

Vietnam's victory wasn't the end to hostilities. It continued on into the 1990s. In the 1980s millions of landmines were sown across the countryside. Despite the clearing of mines they still cause casualties today.

According to a recent BBC news item the Khmer Rouge was responsible for the deaths of an estimated 1.7 million people through execution, torture, starvation and forced labour, (Population est. to be 7.5 million in 1975). In the last 30 years since the Khmer Rouge fell from power the population has grown to 14.7m (UN: 2008). For more information see the BBC web site profile of Cambodia.

Pol Pot died on 15 April, 1998 having never been put on trial for the terrible atrocities. Quite strangely as I write this (Tues, 17th Feb 2009) I hear the BBC report that the long-awaited UN-backed trial of a former Khmer Rouge leader in Cambodia has opened at a Phnom Penh court, 30 years after the murderous regime fell.

Research for these notes have come from Wikipedia and BBC web sites.

Carol & Vic's World Travels 2009 - SE Asia

Well, we are now two weeks into our adventure. James has entertained us royally in Singapore and we have just come back to Singapore from a week's trip to Vietnam and Cambodia. Hanoi was fascinating - hectically busy streets with its pavement level street markets and myriad of small shops. At night the oriental lunar new year decorations and lighting enhanced the magnetic atmosphere.

In Vietnam we also visited the World Heritage site of Ha Long Bay on the coast. This was featured in the James Bond film 'Man with the Golden Gun' this is made up of about 700 pillar type islands set in turquoise waters. We spent two days on The Imperial Junk which is obviously the only way to see such a beautiful area.

We then flew to Camodia and visited the temples of Angkor Wat which were discovered by a frenchman in about 1860 - they were then completely covered by jungle. One is still partially covered and this was featured in the Tomb Raider film! You can only appreciate these temples by going there - they cover many square miles spread throughout the jungle.

Our last visit in Cambodia was to the floating village on Lake Tonle Sap - ramshackle bamboo houses (not slums) even a floating church, temple, mosque, schools and a floating baseball court.

All through our visit we were accompanied by our guide Dee (see my blog about his story) who not only told us about the places we visited but explained the recent troubled history of Cambodia and his involvement in it. Hopefully it is all now in the past.

I have travelled a lot in my job and, although the hours have often been very long, I have found the most rewarding thing is meeting people. Now that I am in Rotary, I find the same the thing happens. I am meeting people. Today, I met Kim who is from another Rotary club and in a short conversation I found myself on a journey full of interest. I asked him what he did and he said he was the Deputy Head of special school (which provides education for children with special needs - another interesting subject). But then he went on to tell me he was off to Egypt in 2008 to take up a teaching position in a school foundation where again he would specialise in teaching children with special needs. His accent led me to think he is from South Africa and indeed he is. He was in a Rotary club which borders Zululand. When apartheid ended they found their membership severely cut as many of the members left to go to Australia rather than stay in a multi-ethnic country. What did his club do? - they opened it up to all races and now that club has a majority of black members from different groups including the Zulus. He said it is a most exciting club and has a very open world view supporting Rotary International on its initiatives. In the club in Lewes he led the way to open the membership to women and, although a group of people left at the time of this change, he was firm in his belief that he was taking the right decision.

What an inspiring man, gentle of nature, quietly spoken but firm in his beliefs.