Photos now on flickr

I have added photos on flickr for the first part of our trip
at:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/keithuk/sets/

luang prabhang

     The ancient city of Luang Prabhang is set on a misty, mystical, promontory surrounded on three sides by deep river valleys, then in turn by range after range of pale mountains rising to ever greater heights.  The whole landscape is suffused with wood smoke and a feeling of peace, calm and dare I say spirituality.  This is helped by the monks who are all over town, on mysterious missions.  Old monks and young monks, some maybe only 7 years old, in their orange robes or yellow robes – each wat has its own subtly different design – walk calmly on the roads with their forage bags over their shoulders.

     The town, a world heritage site, has been for the most part carefully managed, and has many small French colonial buildings, and new buildings are very much in the style of – verandahed and tile roofed and white painted, never more than two storeys – so that the wats still dominate the view.  It does still have the feel of a real town, with chickens running everywhere, cocks crowing, rice and chillis drying in big wicker bowls in the sun, though inevitable tourism is taking over.  In only two years since my last visit there seem to be more and larger hotels in the centre.  Once it was almost entirely very small family run businesses – a few rooms above a shop house.   

     We stay in a small Australian owned hotel, which is mostly new built (although our huge and stylish room is part of an older house incorporated into the rest).  It’s built round a small courtyard, shaded with big-leaved shrubs and bushes.  Great for breakfasts and afternoon cooling drinks.  The staff are very pleasant and eager to chat, working on their conversational English.  Almost all of them are studying part time, English or hotel management.

     In the evenings, the sun sets over the Mekong, sometimes spectacularly, as the tourists sip their cocktails at the improvised little open air bars.  The dark descends and there is an almost reverential hush around the town, even in the tourist streets.  The lights are dim, the stars shine out clear in the black sky.

     4am and there is a distant rhythmic drumming. The monks at the nearby wat are being roused: still pitch dark outside. 

     4.30am: a cock crows.   

     5.00am: sounds of pots and pans being briefly banged together.  It’s time for the daily food giving.  I peep out of the shutters.  The old ladies from the houses opposite are kneeling beside the road, in their traditional Lao long skirts, with bowls of sticky rice, and the procession begins.  Groups of monks from each wat pass them in single file, and into the metal bowl carried by each, the ladies place a handful of sticky rice.   

     Each group, in their bright orange robes is led by a senior monk, but most of the rest are juvenile with seemingly the youngest at the rear.  The robes are slightly different to mark out each wat: about 10 or 12 from each wat.  All done in complete silence in the grey predawn light.  There are lots of wats and the process lasts some minutes: then suddenly it is over and the ladies are packing up for another day.  Back to bed for me and perhaps a little peace until breakfast time.

     Is there a danger of a place like this becoming a victim of its own success?  The peaceful little dawn ceremony is nowadays punctuated by camera clicks and flashes.  More of the real inhabitants are pushed out by newer, bigger hotels.  The guidebooks tell you to do this at this time, that at another time.  As a result these particular experiences become overcrowded and the wonder is lost.   

     The eternal travellers’ dilemma: am I destroying the thing I came to see?   

     At sunset, the guides advise a trip to the temple at the top of Phou Si, the steep hill in the centre of the peninsula.  So everyone troops up there.  At the top is an important religious site, That Chomsi, but the tourists are oblivious; they turn up in their singlets and bikini tops, they talk loudly and take endless pictures of each other for facebook, they chat about where the cheapest place to get drunk is; and all the while in the background the sun sets sedately behind line after line of smoky mountains fading into distance.  The sun sets and instantly the tour guides raise their flags and the larger parties are off.  We stay behind to see what is in fact the best bit, as the sun’s final rays highlight each layer of cloud, higher and higher through orange, red and then finally to grey.  The sky continues to glow long after, as the few lights in the landscape flick on, the barbecue fires send up their offerings, the stars start to emerge in the rapidly dimming sky, the air becomes still and distinctively cooler.  This could have been a spiritual experience, but almost everyone misses it.

chiang mai 2

      Chiang Mai’s ugly modern hinterland continues to grow, but its old centre continues to retain its attractions.  A big square moat and remnants of its walls form a rectangle, filled with little lanes and temples, while outside the moat runs a major racetrack road which draws most of the traffic away.  I suppose the centre is now almost entirely given over to tourism, apart from the temples of course, but it still retains its charm.  There are little boutique hotels, spas, second hand book shops and coffee houses.  Some of the best of the wats are the oldest ones.  This was once the capital of the northern Lanna kingdom, and at its centre stands a huge, ruined, but still impressive chedi in one of the larger religious compounds.  These places are an odd mix of the spiritual and the banal.  The ancient carved teak temples contrast with the cafes and school rooms and car parks found within the walls. Monks chant and drum long into the night; or tune in to their ipods in shady corners in the heat of the day.  People make fervent obeisance before a golden Buddha image; or give packages of foods wrapped in cling film to the monks; or chat loudy and raucously; or try to sell you postcards. 

     It’s a great town to walk around at random and just see what you come across, and there’s a calmness about the place (now that Loi Krathong has ended!).  There’s also some great countryside nearby, once you get past the ribbon development along the arterial roads.  Looming over the city is the great mass of Doi Suthep, with its golden temple and royal palace.  We hired a car and drove a great loop round behind this mountain, to the beautiful densely wooded hills  and eventually to the pretty village of Samoeng.  It’s poor and relies entirely on agriculture, but the people obviously take a pride in the place.  There’s a very well kept public park and unlike many Thai villages, an air of tidiness.   

     Another day, we took the trip to Doi Inthanon.  Travelling out of Chiang Rai towards Lamphun along a road lined with mature trees (which is much more pleasant than the other routes into the city, lined with car repair workshops and furniture showrooms), you cross fairly unexciting agricultural land until you turn off the main highway.  Then suddenly you are into the national park and rising continuously mile after mile towards Thailand’s highest point.  This is also a rather sacred place for Thais, and has been heavily invested in with projects to help the local hill tribe populations.  There are lots of market gardens amongst the forested hills, and roadside markets with fresh salads and dried fruit.  Passing the pair of modern chedi dedicated to the king and queen, you eventually approach the summit.  The temperature here is almost chilly, perhaps 20C less than in the plain below.  The trees moss encrusted and wizened, often in cloud, and you come to the little altar with a plaque announcing the height above sea level (accurate to 1/10 of a millimetre!).  They grow good coffee up here too and we sample a cup at the Vatchirathan waterfall, just as the rain starts to pour down for a brief spell.  Suddenly – the chill and the mists and the rain – you could be in the Pennines!  Although the banana trees are a bit of a give away. 

     So back to the city for a meal at one of several old teak houses we visited, set in its own gardens – pleasant food under the stars and the moon, now past full and on its back, recuperating no doubt from the earlier festivities. 

chiang mai 1

        It’s Loi Krathong and the entire population of Chiang Mai has gone mad.  I’ve always said the Thais know how to party, but this?  My understanding is that Loi Krathong – or more correctly called Mee Ping here in the Lanna Kingdom of the north – started as a gentle propitiation ceremony for the water goddess, where people placed little bamboo rafts bearing candles and incense on the river, to take away bad luck for the coming year, at the time of the full moon.  How this turned into a violent fireworks party where smiling parents let their little kids light rockets in their bare hands and chuck them across the river I have no idea.  Throw in an assortment of bangers, any number of much bigger more formal star shells, some of them aimed directly at the buildings opposite, and thousands of sky lanterns, so that the sky is filled with moving constellations of orange lights all over the city, and you get the idea.  Sorry, Lewes, you really have to try harder. 

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        Health and safety is not the Thais’ strong point.  Having fun is what it’s all about.  To be fair most of the hand held rockets are tiddlers that fizzle and sputter a few seconds then die; but you have a few thousand people all simultaneously lighting armfuls of them one after the other, swinging them round and round by their sticks until they start to sizzle, then launching them overarm into the air (or often missing and having them whizz across the street or under the wheels of a car, to great hilarity).  We got into the spirit of course, and launched our gaily decorated little bamboo raft out onto the grey waters of the Ping, attempting to piously wish away our bad luck, while occasionally ducking to avoid a stray rocket.  Then we joined the crowds on one of the main bridges and launched our own sky lanterns.  These are paper and bamboo miniature hot air balloons that have a paraffin wax cylinder inside that you light, so that the hot air lifts them sedately into the sky after a minute or two.  Another fire hazard of course, as they jostle up amongst the overhead chaotic live wires and timber eaves of the houses – but it’s all good fun. 

        Back for Song Kran next year?  This started out as a celebration of the Thai new year every April, where as a mark of respect for elders a ritual libation of holy water was gently poured over them by young people.  I hear that water trucks and high pressure hoses are now involved…

chiang rai

        So to the far north of Thailand.  Chiang Rai is a sleepy trading post with not a lot to recommend it, except a night market with as at its heart a huge open air food court.  I suppose it would once have had an exotic air, with mysterious hill tribe people trekking for days to bring their produce: village-grown coffee, tea and herbs –  and maybe opium under the counter; leggy chickens, floppy-eared pig heads and unknown species of river fish; ethnic clothing intricately woven from vegetable dyed yarn.  Some of this you can still find, but now it’s mostly tourist nick-nacks, and for the locals, car parts and rip-off DVDs.  Still lots of mysterious hill tribe faces though, Burmese and Tibetan and Chinese: tiny, ancient, shyly spoken ladies in gaudy bonnets, and edgy looking young men in bobble hats sharing a large bottle of Chang beer. 

        But we have elected to stay in a resort style hotel a little way from the centre, very upmarket but cheap at this unseasonal time of the year. As in the south, the rains are lingering on much longer than normal, so the weather is distinctly mixed with some huge downpours but mostly dry and calm.  It’s not bad enough to keep us away from the layered pool, dropping down, infinity edge after edge, down towards the muddy river Mae Nam Kok.  The gardens are immaculate and the hotel buildings have been built around two huge old jungle canopy trees that shade the courts.

        We decide to explore further and drive up into the mountains near the Burmese border, passing through some of the corrugated iron roofed villages high up on the ridges that run through this area, the last knockings of the Himalayas.  Not a scrap of flat ground: it’s all hills, mostly wooded, but some clearings with steeply sloping tea plantations in neatly clipped rows, others with a few terraces of hill rice, scraping a subsistence living.  Ridge after blue smoky ridge ahead of us: the infinity edge of Thailand.

jomtien, thailand

So Ian and I start on this year's Asia jaunt. Expect a few more random jottings as we go.


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Just arrived in Thailand ahead of President Obama and Secretary Clinton. They are off to Cambodia too. Maybe we can hitch a lift on Air Force One.

We got to Jomtien just down the coast from Bangkok, but it’s been raining quite a bit in a wild tropical kind of way.  I like those big old drenchings with warm water, rain drops the size of nuggets and a complete soaking just from crossing the road.  The thunder has been rolling around all day and the lightning providing a constant light show at night, momentarily lighting up the great stacked clouds from different angles, up over the distant horizon.  Not ideal for a beach venue but we have no agenda so it’s fine: just relax, eat and sleep in our small comfortable resort style hotel, run by Madame Jim, our lovely drag queen host from Stirling.  Lovely with the guests, but no doubt runs the show with a rod of iron behind the scenes.  Anyway the staff all seem happy, which is a good sign.

I had my hair cut in a very traditional barbers.  They really give you the works here: facial and head massage as they shampoo you; very careful cutting, advancing inch by inch over the sparse terrain, then standing back to consider the next sortie.  The guy was all smiles but didn’t speak a work of English.  However there’s not many options in my case and little chance of going wrong.  Suddenly, I find myself flung back in the chair with a cooling towel over my eyes and being scraped with a very sharp cut-throat.  I haven’t been shaved like this since two teenage boys were let loose on me in Jaisalmer.  I realize that the tune This is the tale of Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street is going through my head.  Then he’s clipping away at my nose and eyebrows – all the places hair starts to sprout where it shouldn’t, just as it stops growing where it should – and poking strange devices into my ears.  But I lived.

the languedoc

I float in the pool.  All I see is the sky, an unbroken china blue; pure white cotton balls of airborne seeds floating across; and the black silhouettes of swallows diving and weaving in screaming squadrons.  Perfection.

We have reached our main destination, the little guest house in the village of Roujan in the Languedoc.  The rain is behind us and we have just this clearest blue and the heat of summer, like all those French films of family vacances in the ancestral home.

This was a family house once, but our hosts, the very handsome Alex and Gregg, have taken it and subtly modernised it to provide rooms that are comfortable and efficient, a blend of ancient and modern.  They have a unique proposition.  The rooms are self catering with full kitchens, allowing guests to go out and find the best of local produce, and cook themselves, but with all the social aspects of a well run guest house.  And here they excel, taking immense trouble to make everyone feel at home, spending time to chat or to fix any minor problem, and even inviting us out to the local social scene.  In the eight days we were there, we were taken to three local events: an evening wine tasting in the shadow of an old chateau and its spreading oaks; a jazz concert in a new performance space created from an old barn; and a special dinner at a nearby B+B.

We travelled around the area on several days.   The local villages are built tight and winding, the houses huddled tightly and defensively together in this once fought over area; seemingly  unchanged since medieval times.  And close by to the north are the outliers of the Pyrenees, cut through by astonishing deep gorges such as the Gorge d'Heric, and the valley of the river Orb with its villages clinging to the hillsides.  The coast along here is a little disappointing: though there are good long beaches, they are very exposed, with no natural tree shelter behind. There are beach clubs which provide more comfortable environment - but we preferred the garden and pool at our guest house. 


Several days we spent just lazing there, and getting to know some of the  lovely other guests in this little heaven under the blue Languedoc sky.

pau

A short drive across the border takes us to Pau.  Now this is a town with a fascinating history. Set on a high ridge with a huge panorama of the Pyrenees, 50km away (apparently - it was too cloudy for us to see!) this was a castle that was turned into a little jewel of a royal palace for the kings of Navarre, and by Henri IV who became king of France (a good king!).  It's on the turn between gothic and renaissance and now beautifully restored, a white limestone jewel still dominating the dense little streets. 
The city later, in the time of Napoleon III, became a fashionable resort with Europe's elite, especially the English, who no doubt came to inhale the clear mountain air when London got too much.  Or maybe the casino and the steeplechase course were more of a draw!  Well, Pau eventually lost out to Biarritz and has been on the slide ever since.  Faded grandeur is taking over the once grand Empire-style hotels along the Boulevard des Pyrénées.  This promenade, with te mountain view, stretches along the whole south side of the town, and was once filled with grandees in boaters and ladies in bustles.  Many of the hotels are now turned into apartments, and many shops in the old medieval streets are dying or empty. 
The funicular still rises as graceful as a grand duchess, from the station up to the promenade, but there are no belle epoque passengers now.  Instead, Pau seems to have more than its fair share of alternative yoof - think matted hair, tattoos and piercings in unusual places, and nervous looking dogs on lengths of rope.
It's still a beautiful town though, and well worth the visit.  We did find a great restaurant near the chateau - the Henri IV - with good regional specialties and a friendly waiter.  The days of surly service, with a refusal to understand your rusty French, are gone.  Nowadays waiters seem glad to practice their English, or indulge your attempts to dig up that O level phrasebook from some suppressed mental recess. 
Thunderous rain in the evening and quite cool.  But still better than arctic London over the jubilee weekend.

bilbao

And so we arrive in Bilbao.  This is a spectacular city, busily trying to reinvent itself.  It was once one of Spain's great manufacturing cities, but most of the industry has been swept away and replaced with modernist masterpieces - there seems to be a consensus to produce whacky and wonderful buildings, many a product of Spain's mad property boom.
Gehry's Guggenheim Museum, of course, has pride of place, beside the river. 
Bilbao is built in a gorge, steeply rising on both sides, with little level ground to build.  So it squeezes everything into a tight space along the valley bottom, with many bridges across the river.  There is a tight little medieval centre with one of the pilgrimage churches on the route to Santiago de Compostela, a grid of narrow, shady streets with high stone buildings, like Barcelona's old city. Most of the rest of the city is either from the late 19th century, the time of the industrial boom, or is very recent.  All around are the green slopes of the mountains on either side, rising up with terraces of villas.
We were lucky to arrive on an evening when there was a festival.  Somehow I always manage to do this in Spain - or maybe there are just a lot of festivals!  It was to celebrate the midsummer and buildings were specially illuminated.  The theatre had a projected son et lumiere that cleverly used the features of the building - a bit like the recent Buckingham Palace concert.  There were street performance all over the city.  We saw a local choir perform miscellanies of Beatles and Abba songs, rather well, in the porch of the medieval church.
Next day we walked and walked all over the town, taking in the very well looked after park and finishing at the Guggenheim.  Of course this has a spectacular presence within the town, but its interiors are also very spectacular, and good for large scale modern 3 dimensional art display.  With some exceptions, the permanent collection is not so interesting as the building, sadly.  Though we did take in a David Hockney exhibition (recently seen in London), which at first I thought was a bit banal. but grew on me as I went into it more.

bay of biscay, june 2012

I've been neglecting the blog lately, and now time for a catch up. I an and I are on a trip to the south of France by car.  Maybe I will add some notes on earlier trips this year, shortly.

We set off from a dreary, drizzly London, having arranged to take the car by ferry from Portsmouth to Bilbao, then driving across to our main destination in the Languedoc.  The Cap Normandie, run by Brittany Ferries, turned out to be much better than epected, and feels more like a cruise than a ferry crossing.  There were loading problems and we set out late, but as we pulled from port the sun broke out for a bit as we sat in an open deck watching the ship's wake unroll, rounding the Isle of Wight and off for open water.  A relaxing way to travel.
The menu was surprisingly adventurous and well prepared.  We had fairly low expectations based on shorter cross channel crossings, but they really seem to try here.  Even the self service food is a cut above average.  For dinner I had rack of pork slow-baked in hay, which I have vaguley heard of but never tried.  It was a revelation.  I am not normally a big fan of pork but this was meltingly delicious, served with a sage and onion sauce and wok fried vegetables.  Must get the recipe. 
The rooms on board are somewhat spartan but have everything you need, packed into a minimal space.  Soon after going to bed we hit the Bay of Biscay and things got pretty rough for a few hours. I was glad to be lyoing down because it felt like standing up would have been an effort.  The ship was pitching violently forward and back, and at times rolling too.  Sometimes it felt that the whole ship was being lifted and dropped into the next wave trough with a huge crash.  Eventually I got off to sleep and things seem to have calmed down.
By morning it was a lot easier, though still pitching up and down so that as you walked forward or aft you were alternately weightless and double weight, like some NASA astronaut training programme.
We pulled into Bilbao's port about 24 hours later having avoided a full day's driving. All in all a good way to get down there.