Author: jacalata_blog_admin

My plan in Thailand was a night train to Surat Thani, then a ferry to Koh Phangan where the resort would collect me at the docks, then return me there three days later to get the ferry back and take another overnight train to Bangkok and fly straight out to Hong Kong. It went perfectly!

I left Penang on the train at about 3pm, an hour behind schedule. In my row of seats was a pair of Polish friends, where the guy didn’t speak any English, and a Buddhist monk who shared buckets of fruit with the guy but maybe couldn’t touch/speak to women?  We stopped at the Malay/Thai border for about an hour, long enough to be served dinner (good news! They took Malay ringgit so my failure to exchange money didn’t matter!) and eat it and have it cleared away. The (I think Thai?) girl in front of me had some kind of trouble with Thai immigration and ended up going away with an officer, after she was pointing out several stamps in her passport – no idea what was going on! Mine was pretty quick, no problems.

There wasn’t a huge difference in the countryside over the border, but the Thai side seemed poorer somehow, more shanty-like buildings. Lots of fields with little shelters in them, or houses standing alone. Fires burning in the backyard of a few places (campfires, not accidents) and one bonfire in the middle of a harvested-looking field.

There was an incredible looking sunset out the train window – it barely seemed worth trying to take photos of the sunset from a moving train with my phone, but here’s one anyway 😀

Just past Hat Yai I saw some kids playing soccer-volleyball, I’ve read about it but forget the name.

At ~7.30 the attendant went through and made all the beds so the Polish pair and I moved to the restaurant car to continue our iPad game of Cash Flow, which was an interesting concept with a strong element of luck. The beds were so cool, I am so happy I booked a sleeper car even though it was totally unnecessary for a trip ending at midnight.

The dining car closed at 9pm so the staff could all spread out bedrolls on the floor under the tables, didn’t look super comfortable!

I woke up about half an hour before my station, even before the alarm I’d set. An attendant came by but only about two minutes before we stopped so I wouldn’t want to rely on that for my waking and being ready to jump off! Surprisingly, there was a ticket window open at the station although it was almost 2am, so I bought my onward train right then – I picked the 8pm train but the woman said that one was slow and often late, so I should take the next one at 9pm, which turned out to be the one recommended on seat61 so good. The station was full of people including a ton of backpackers clearly waiting for another train, which made me feel good about my plan to hang out there for several hours in the evening on my way back.

Touts at the station asked where I was going, did I want a cheap hotel, and said ooh, Queen Hotel very bad, don’t go there, which I ignored and found Queen Hotel (which I’d prebooked online) unimpressive but completely adequate for my 7 hour stopover. In the morning I went and got some cash out and bought some shitty 7-11 style food, some hotdogs (labelled spicy but not) and a chicken dumpling roll. Then at about 8am I walked down to the station, where a guy at the front asked where I was going and pointed me towards a bus helpfully labelled Lompraya. A woman checked my ticket and I sat down and had some tea, with about three of us waiting. At 8.30 we loaded on the bus and suddenly another 30 people turned up, maybe from a well timed train? A funny set of backpackers, some of them scruffy in yoga pants, and as a strong contrast two guys who had spent either a lot of time or a lot of product to get their hair looking so ‘done’ that morning. I feel like all this travel has just made me more aware of how unadventurous I am, like the feeling of relief I get when a bunch of other tourists shows up and it’s like OK, this probably is where I meant to be and it’s probably quite safe. And we were off. I looked up some Thai phrases, decided I should aim to use thank you and the polite sentence ending (I noticed someone, maybe the lady I bought tea from, using -kah on the end of her English sentences).

We went past several temple sales places, like nurseries but just rows of miniature shrines/temples and at one of them also small ornamental pools. You could see these temples outside lots of houses and shops, seemed like there was usually one short one and one tall one.

The countryside was just so green. Things growing everywhere, brick fences almost hidden under vines, thick healthy looking grass, banana trees, palm trees…other trees :p We also passed a random cleared section of land with bright red dirt, and went past Surat Thani Palm Oil Research Center, owned by the ministry for agriculture (according to the big signs).

My feet were freezing on the bus, with air con on. I picked up a sore throat in Penang, and I blamed the air con – constantly going from heat into cold. I also wondered if the slightly moldy smell in my hostel might have been a sign of problems, or the hazy air blanketing the city for a couple days. Fortunately it seemed to be going away on its own pretty rapidly. Eventually we came to a big wide new turnoff towards the ferry – obviously a popular route!

I got an email while I was in the ferry saying my pickup would be a little late – I think they were pretty optimistic hoping that I’d see that, I hope they had a backup plan! So I met them at the 7-11 as requested, the ferry was late anyway so I was waiting less than five minutes. It was a friendly young man with limited English driving a literal pickup with the Bottle Beach logo on the door which was helpful. We drove around heading out of town and stopped at a random house where he dropped some computer parts off, then drove out of town, through another town, then through emptier and emptier territory until we turned into a dirt road/track that must be the source of the online complaints about the rough ride to get there – although it would have to be a much worse ride for anyone worth knowing to complain so I don’t know, maybe in busy season it gets torn up more.

Finally we turned into a village-looking area which is probably where the workers for the resort live, maybe for all three bottle beach resorts. We drove through that to the resort proper, which was straight up amazing. The weather was perfect, warm but not humid. The reception area was an open shelter, next to a gorgeous pool. After checking in (and handing over almost all the cash I had on me as a key deposit, lucky I went to the bank!) I was lead to a beautiful beach side bungalow made up with two beds – I can’t remember what I booked exactly but I wonder if I got upgraded because the place is so empty. There was an in-room safe so I figured I might as well out my passports in it so like an idiot I put them in, entered a code and closed it. Which, obviously enough in hindsight, locked them in with the last code someone had set. I had to go to the front desk and ask them to unlock it for me, feeling, again, like an idiot.

I was feeling mildly out of sorts with my sore throat and very tired, so sat around in the hammock on my verandah reading books for the afternoon, broken up with a short swim, washing some clothes in the sink (after which i realised that they will wash a whole load for me for $2, so probably i should just get them done properly!) a late lunch and finally dinner. The food prices are quite reasonable, which is a relief – although I think they’re fairly expensive for the area so lucky I didn’t have time to acclimatise to local costs! It turns out their internet went down in a storm last night and might be fixed in a couple of days, but it was so nice I didn’t even mind. A couple of days of sleep, swimming, spicy soups for my cold and massages is exactly what I needed – this is what I wished Tahiti would be like.

Anyway I read two books from the shared bookshelf and, appropriately enough, finished the Tahitian short stories, which just got more unacceptably Ian Fleming with each story until the final title story was a thinly disguised rant about how feminism (“invented by alcoholic dames and lesbians in the New York suburbs”, quote) is destroying the world and women these days are disgusting and need to fuck off out of the workplace already.

There appear to be about a dozen guests that I’ve seen, where the place could hold many times that number. Excellent! Among then was a couple who arrived just after I did, and asked how much the hotel pick up would have cost. Apparently they paid a taxi 1600 baht, instead of the 200 per person the hotel would have charged. Oops!

Tuesday: woke up a few times in the night hearing very heavy wind. At 6am it was raining so I went back to sleep, but at 9am it was just spitting and by the time I’d finished breakfast it was clear. I tried playing some iPad games and then did some programming interview questions on paper, including that stupid regex question that I’m determined to be able to do in my sleep now (ed: I never got that good at it. WTF parsers). At 1pm I had a massage booked, then I did some more reading and programming, checking my paper solutions in my shitty little iPad JavaScript environment because it was too much effort to pull out my laptop. It’s probably good practice for me to be typing in a notepad equivalent anyway, no auto completion or even a console to check how things are running :/  I did have a swim as well! At dinner I picked up a Dan Brown book because their library, while quite decent on first glance, was almost entirely in German when you looked closer. The most annoying books were the ones that still had an English title! And then I took some laundry to reception to be washed and that was the end of my busy day. They ask you to pay your tab each day, but their credit card processing is down along with the internet – hopefully it will be back up before I go but not sure? So I just signed acknowledgement of the charges I’d run up so far, about $30 for the two days.

Thursday

When I checked out, the credit card statement at the resort was still down with their internet, and I didn’t have enough cash in me – so we said I’d pay the tab when I got dropped at the pier, where there was an ATM. That worked smoothly and then I bought my ferry+bus ticket to Surat Thani train station, leaving me with a couple hours to kill. I left my bag in the ferry office and  wandered around town a bit, looking at souvenir shops – also, a bookstore I picked up a couple books at 😉 You can tell how touristy the island is by all the restaurant signs saying they offer “Thai food”. I had some rice and pork before going to catch my ferry, although I was a little nervous about the waves. This time I was travelling on the car ferry, which being much larger than the passenger ferry I took last time, was a much smoother ride. Glad I decided I’d be OK eating before the trip! I arrived easily at the train station, found a seat and hung out reading a book among lots of others. There was some confusion about where the train carriages were lining up (and by confusion I mean opposite instructions from two different staff) but I made it into my carriage and found everyone heading to bed, at about 9pm again. I read for a while and facebooked excitedly before getting to sleep at a reasonable hour like midnight – unfortunately I discovered that everyone sleeps so early in the train because they’re all awake at 6am and the beds get put away again. I had about 80 baht left on me, bought a coffee from one of the outdoors who got on the train for 20 (barely worth it except for the novelty factor, a shit glass succeed serving of instant coffee and milk powder). We slooooowly pulled into Bangkok, the last few miles taking forever including random long stops to sit on the tracks – I can see why online advice is to get out at the first Bangkok station and catch the subway instead if you’re in a hurry! But I wasn’t, so I just enjoyed it. If I had been in a hurry for the airport I should have gotten off at the first Bangkok station (Bang Sue) which is actually closer to the airport, instead of staying on to loop south to Hua Lamphong. I used the time to check out other ways to get to the airport (bus 29). I think there was literally only myself and another backpacker left on for the last stop, smart locals all got off before we sat on the tracks for 20 minutes.

I could see a new rail line being built alongside this one as we entered Bangkok, and there was a brand new looking station we stopped at (don’t know what it was called). Then a touristy looking line of shops by the train tracks, cafes, a shop with a confederate flag in the window? Inside Bangkok the area along the train line looked pretty grimy – tiny little shops, racks of a few clothes for sale, a skip with rubbish bags piled for ten metres around it, the slimiest looking creek I’ve ever seen with houses backing onto it. Curiously enough graffiti seemed to be mostly in English.

We finally pulled in to Hua Lamphong station, a lovely old building. Jay had asked for some local coffee which made a good goal for my ~3 hour free time at the station before heading to the airport, I decided it was worth paying to store my bags for a bit so I could wander round properly. First I had to find my way out of the station, past the taxi touts to a street with lots of noodle places and so on, picked one for breakfast and it was just what I needed.

I decided to go to the Siam center, a shopping mall about half an hours walk away. First I took the MTR one stop just to try it, bought a ticket at the window and got a little black disc as my temporary card – neat! The tracks were blocked off from the platform with glass walls and there was a little sign saying “trains leave this station after being checked by security staff” (presumably because we were at the end of the line). As a train approached a security guy walked along saying something in Thai, then stopped between me and the other two white women with his hands out in a stop sign. When the doors opened and everyone was off, the other two tried to board anyway because super oblivious? A random guy near them said “wait one minute” in English. The train was super modern and smooth.

Off at the next station, I walked through Chulalangkorn university and found a market selling everything from snacks to clothes to puppies and kittens. Eventually I got to the mall, but the only place selling coffee beans was Starbucks and I decided against buying them :p It had taken me longer than I expected to walk, so I hailed a cab back to the station, picked up my left luggage and walked out just in time to see my bus to the airport pull up. I had read that taxi drivers didn’t want to go the airport, and it seemed to be true because all the guys yelling “taxi taxi” at me would ask where I was going and when I said Don Meung they would point over to the bus for me. Very helpful!

Traffic was pretty terrible, and it was only noon on a Friday. We sat completely still for five minutes at a time. It didn’t help that my phone had suddenly decided it didn’t have a sim card (bullshit, became an ongoing intermittent problem that I discovered could be fixed by turning off location services…wtf) so Google maps couldn’t tell me where I was at any point. It took us half an hour to get from Hua Lamphong to the Victory Monument, which I found worrying. Then I remembered that besides allowing an extra half hour for the bus, I had allowed an extra hour at the airport so I was probably going to be fine, so I relaxed to enjoy the scenery. We went past the Volunteer Defense Corps, whatever that is, then the Sam Sen philatelic museum, sounded fund! The last section of the trip on the arterial out of town went past the in progress train line and there was lots of graffiti on the concrete pillars, heavily featuring cute cartoon characters saying “no hope” or “hopeless” – a little odd…

The airport stop wasn’t obvious but a couple people on the bus made sure I got off at the right point, then I took a pedestrian bridge over the road into the airport. I had a shitty airport meal where they told me I could pay by card if I hit $x, then when I went to pay they said oh no, policy is minimum $2x for cards! I wasn’t about to spend twice as much on stuff I didn’t want so I waited for the Australian guy next to me to ask for his bill and asked him if I could pay it by card and he gave me cash, which worked fine. Then I was off onto the plane to Hong Kong to see Tracy!

I’d booked one night in a nice hotel to stop over on the way to Thailand, but by the time I’d walked to the hotel off the ferry, wandering past a half dozen cafes, random street art and bakeries, I was regretting my onward plans. When I got to the hotel it was adorable – built in the old servants quarters (“mews”) of the townhouses along the street. It was an awesome room, delightful verandah with nice seating areas…and then I read the tourist info in the room, with maps to the best street food and the murals around town…definitely wanted to stay longer!

I’d gotten the number of the South African girl I met on the ferry and suggested we go to the night market at Batu Ferringhi together, and she texted me as I’d finished making a plan off these maps, so I headed out to eat before meeting her – but ran into her outside my hotel as I left! We wandered around for a bit and I went into a little noodle place to get lunch (she’d already eaten, so I wanted something quick). Due to communication failures, I ordered two types of noodles and managed to eat my way through some delicious curry noodles and some more bland mee goreng, with a refreshing drink of lime and plum juice. We got down to the jetty and found the (closed) train ticket office, then noticed the free city bus and tried to catch it but were probably at the wrong stop. So we walked to Kompac, the local tallest building, to try and go to the viewing platforma but it was closed for a couple months of construction. So we caught a bus out to Batu Ferringhi instead, since it was almost 7pm anyway.

The market was much larger than I expected, but not that interesting – tons of handbags, wallets, watches, tourist t-shirts. We did buy some nice watercolour postcards eventually, and stopped for dinner in a food court filled with western tourists presumably staying at the resorts surrounding it, quite funny to see a dozen elderly (OK, middle aged!) Australians around a table. Far more concentrated tourism than I’d seen in a little while, as well as many more Australian accents! Both of us being decrepit elderly backpackers ourselves, we caught the bus back and were home by 10pm 🙂 I enjoyed sitting in my glamorous hotel room and then slept well on an incredibly comfortable bed.

Friday

So Friday morning I was planning to get up, try and call the Thai resort I’d booked and change my reservation, and if they would then stay here. Turned out I couldn’t get through on the phone but decided that worst case I’d be out $50 and I could handle that. So I walked down the street and looked at a couple places offering rooms for about $10 and picked one – I ended up picking a place with an air conditioned dorm room that I had all to myself (bonus of travelling in the off season, frequently paying dorm prices for a room to myself!) It was surprisingly nice with a common area cooled by fans and a pool, free breakfast, lockers in the room and free coffee always on – and a small shared book collection 😉 Downside was that the air-conditioning in my room felt a little stale, but oh well, I’m sure it wasn’t dangerous?  I hung out at my original hotel for a bit then walked my bags down the street to check in and headed out to buy my train tickets for Sunday. I stopped at a bakery for a delicious chicken floss bun and egg tart, and taking random pictures, then successfully bought my ticket. It was steamy and hot so I meant to find somewhere cool to sit, and stopped in a food court and tried  the local dish chee cheong fun, a sticky rice noodle with sweet sauce – interesting, but not a new favourite. I planned to go to the 2pm tour of the Blue Mansion but as I mentioned, it was stupidly hot so I sat in the lounge of my new hostel and read one of their books until the 3.30pm tour instead.

Blue Mansion

Entertaining tour guide, like with his story of a kung fu master identifying the central energy point of the house for him, which is supposed to be the center of the main courtyard. The whole house is carefully built on feng shui principles – like the front of the house is lower than the back so that you are always ascending as you enter the house as you want to ascend in life. People who live in low places will have poor luck in life (never live underground!). The central courtyard allows light into the house which is positive energy, people in dark houses are unhappy and sick. It also cools down the house by allowing hot air to rise out! They also have indoor plants and pools to help with this. The house was actually noticeably cooler and less sticky than outside! What about rain? (Here he mentioned that it was going to rain in a couple hours) Well, water represents money (probably a symbol from farming days when it was a real link). So its good to let the water fall into your house! In fact, the roof here was designed to channel all the rainwater into the courtyard through a system of pipes (shaped like some special symbol, I forgot) and drain out through a small hole to symbolise that much money is coming in and only a slow flow is going out.

Interesting that even this very Chinese house is built with Scottish wrought iron and English stained glass windows. Apparently it was built partly as a symbol of Chinese power in what was then a British colony, it was the Chinese embassy (the owner being the ambassador, built it with his own money). The servants quarters were across the road – according to the story, he bought the houses across the road to make sure the government could not tear them down to build a road (seems like this was pretty common at the time, I saw some streets named for the houses they replaced).

The owner, Cheong Fatt Tze, sounded like a pretty interesting guy. When he was refused a first class cruise ticket because he was Chinese, he bought the shipping company. He was richer than China. He grew up in Indonesia, married the boss’s daughter and became a tycoon across Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia and China. He spent a lot of time with Westerners – the Chinese pigtail used to be a symbol of loyalty to the Emperor, so you couldn’t cut it off, but to appear more Western he used to sometimes hide it wrapped under a bowler hat. One thing I didn’t understand is why would all the British colonies go to half mast for his death? He did a lot of charitable work, but that doesn’t seem like enough reason. When he died, the house was left in a trust so it could not be sold until all his children were dead, I think the idea was that the children couldn’t just get rich off it and the grandchildren would have an inheritance. But the house was left to become a ruin, after ‘the war’ (which war?) it was a slum housing about 200 people (including our tour guide’s mother!) It was finally sold in the 90’s when the last child died, and purchased by an architect to restore.

The restoration project was one of the first of its kind and was done using original techniques and materials, hence the recognition by UNESCO. Meanwhile around it, a 1980s government modernization project in Georgetown called Komtar was leading to the destruction of many old buildings until the ’97 recession saw more attention to tourism and revival of interest in the old town heritage.

The original lions from outside the house are now in Australia (Melbourne), taken with one of the sons against advice that it would be terrible luck to remove them from the house. Nobody is sure where the lions went because he died the day he landed.

And for some trivia, The Blue Mansion features in the Catherine Deneuve movie Indochine, which is ahem not suitable for children.

On the way back I stopped in at the Camera Museum, mildly interesting display of actual antique camera models since before I knew they had cameras, and a knowledgeable tour guide who explained how they all worked.  I also noticed some abandoned street car lines on Penang road, wonder what happened to that!

The South African girl I’d met texted to say that she and two other girls were going to look for a nearby night market for dinner so we arranged to meet at the nearby shopping mall first. When we found the market it was just food, not souvenir stuff, which I think disappointed the others. I grabbed some hokkein mee, which was OK but more spice than flavour – the others had apparently eaten recently so didn’t even get anything. Then we headed home, stopping at McDonalds so they could all get icecream. It turns out McDonalds in Malaysia serves a spinach pie, perhaps instead of the apple pie? Weird.

After the others had got to their hostel, I  walked past a Chinese festival on Armenian St, firecrackers and dragon dancing, didn’t see any women (even locals) in the crowd so felt a little uncomfortable. I noticed tons of little burnt offerings on the side of the street, then I saw police directing traffic and a fire truck and realised that various incarnations of these fires were probably why we had been seeing firetrucks around all evening. I got a little turned around and so ended up at another night food market and bought some delicious pork dumplings for supper, totally successful evening.

And some of the street art I saw on my way home:

Saturday

One of the two German girls had mentioned she was heading to Loh Kok Si temple this morning, so I’d arranged to meet her at the bus station at 9 to go with. I was a bit late, but she was still waiting for a bus! I saw a while family in a motorbike – dad driving with mum and two small children. She said she’d gotten an iced coffee for breakfast and it was served in a plastic bag, not as cup – later I saw an old man on a bike carrying a similar drink. I noticed that the bus stop ads were in English, curious –  I had read that many schools teach in English and people generally seem to speak it comfortably. We went past a couple schools with lots of kids in sports uniforms, one looked like a house sports day, one perhaps just regular Saturday morning sport? Made it out to the suburbs down streets with big nice houses down one side and sad fibreglass shacks on the other. Quite a few nice cars outside dilapidated houses though.

The temple was quite impressive, fantastically detailed decorative work in a large complex. We took the lift (more like a funicular? Ran diagonally up the hillside)  to the giant buddha statue and you could see the ruins of the old staircase underneath it, would have been a pretty tough climb! In the garden at the top there was atmospheric monk chanting coming from a stereo cleverly disguised as a rock. At each temple area within the complex there were lots of wish ribbons for sale with various sentiments like “reading smart” or “happy working conditions”, about 20 options? Interesting to see what got its own topic!

Headed back to the hostel for a midday break, decided against a nap and read a book instead. I feel like I’m coming down with a sore throat, for which I blame the musty smell in the room. Hmm. On the bright side, I heard back from the Thai place and they have no problem with changing my dates, so I’m only out $17 for a ferry ticket for my sudden stay in Penang. Worth it!

I decided to leave the state museum for tomorrow morning if I wake up early, and went to find a couple more postcards, street murals and a Chinese house museum. Successfully walked through a couple of streets with souvenir stalls, managing to even buy stamps off one guy, and then found the Chinese house, Khoo Kong Si. It’s a clan house, and contained a small museum talking about the history of the clan from about the year 1500, and specifically the branch that came out to Penang and funded this house. Interesting way to learn a little more about local history, and a pretty stunning building.

When I came out I stopped to see if there was anywhere particular I wanted to eat nearby, and realized I was standing in front of The Owl Shop.

I walked into the cafe across the street hoping for some tea for my incipient sore throat, but it was 8 ringgit and I was trying to live off about 30 ringgit for the next three meals so no. I wandered a little further, meeting an old woman who told me I should visit a designer souvenir shop nearby that I’d seen signs for around town, and when I was a block or so from the tourist attractions stopped in a cafe for some asam laksa and a cup of tea and some nonya kui for 8 ringgit instead. The nonya kui was delicious and I’m sorry i didn’t try it earlier! It’s basically a boiled rice dessert with different colouring for different flavours (I assume), mine was blue and came with jam on top. I chatted with the guy running the place for a bit about how long I was in town and where he’d travelled to – his last trip was to Siem Reip and he thinks his next major one will be to Rome.

Then I went by  the little designer souvenir place and went in to look – it was actually quite nice stuff and i caved in to buy a T-shirt. (I thought about a coffee cup but nope too heavy). The little old lady I’d met earlier turned up while I was paying and was very happy to see I’d come, it looked like she worked there.

I had thought I’d have time to go to the chocolate and coffee museum, but all the wandering aimlessly had taken too long and it was closed, so I dropped my new T-shirt at the hostel and went back to the Red Garden Food Paradise and Night Market that I ate at last night. I’d read about a great roast duck place here and when I saw it it did indeed look appetizing, so I got a taster plate of duck, chicken and pork with rice. The chicken had a bit of a weird sauce, basically not BBQ when that’s what I was expecting, but they were all pretty good. I really wanted to try some other dishes, since there’s so many delicious looking ones, but I was kind of full and thought I’d save the cash for a nice lunch before getting in the train, so I headed home. It was raining slightly, and as I got to the hostel the sky cracked open and poured rain – very satisfying to have beaten that!

 

Here are some cat pictures I collected around town over the couple of days:

 

 

Sunday morning I (surprise) did not get up early and go to the musuem. I went for a walk before checking out to find somewhere to exchange my money for the train, but hadn’t thought about it being Sunday – and all the money places were closed. I got some chicken korma and a roti for an early lunch and figured that with my water, a couple of oranges and a bag of candy I could survive a 12 hour train trip…

I arrived at a tiny little airport, similiar to Easter Island in many ways! As I’d read online, I paid for my taxi at the booth at baggage claim and then just showed my coupon to the taxi guys outside – I think the system is to avoid unlicensed cabs? My first impression of Pantai Cenang (lit: Cenang beach) is that it’s a pretty built up little strip of a town, looks like lots of new development happening. I got dropped straight at my hotel and settled into a lovely big room with air con. After unpacking and chilling for a minute, I finally crossed down to the beach – nice! Flat, white sand, but tons of people, including a stand selling jet ski tours every 20m. Not super awesome. And this was at 7pm when they were all about done for the day…see these two pictures taken at the same time facing different directions 🙂

 

Ate dinner of fried rice and chicken with Milo for 10RMY, or $2.50. I love Milo everywhere! I do keep forgetting to avoid drinks with ice in them though, hope that doesn’t come back to bite me :/ It got dark about 8pm so I walked back to the hotel and chilled (literally) in my room for the night – I thought I’d be asleep pretty quickly but instead stayed up looking at all the maps and things to do on the island. I got the impression that this is an actual case of tourism spoiling the place – its a UNESCO heritage area for the nature areas, but they’re in danger of losing it because of large numbers of tours running through the wetlands on jetskis and motor boats with a wash that ruins the banks, organising to feed the animals and destroy their diets/ability to hunt, and leaving litter everywhere. I did want to go snorkelling out in the marine national park but since (a) you have to do a whole day out there and (b) it sounds like it’s crowded and increasingly grubby, I decided to skip it. Instead I will rent a bike and ride an hour or two to the seven wells waterfall, have to leave early so it’s not too hot!

 

Monday

I woke up at 8am, before my alarm and while the sky was still colorful with sunrise (! But I did go to sleep at 1) and went to ask the front desk to call and get me on a kayak tour at 10.30, which worked. I went for a walk to try and exchange money to pay for it but not much was open, and all said they’d be open at 10 or 11. The beach was pretty deserted, guys just starting to set up stalls for jetskiing etc.

The hotel I’m at (picked online for good reviews on hotels.com/Expedia) was very friendly. They lent me cash to pay the kayaking tour I went on, and when I was sitting waiting for my pickup one of the guys who hadn’t even made the booking for me noticed it was about ten minutes late and called them for me. When I made the kayaking booking, and forgot I meant to ask them if I could extend, the woman at the desk asked me if I was staying longer and said I could move to a room further from the reception (where breakfast was cooked basically outside my door) to the same room but cheaper, for the walk-in rate instead of online rate. I hadn’t noticed any problems but cheaper sounded better! So I left my bags packed in the room to move later.

Only a little late, my bus arrived to head out on our tour. We drove around picking up the rest, and then headed across the island to Kilim Karst Geoforest Park. Once we were all collected there was a group of a dozen of us, two on our own, an English girl and NZ guy who had met at the aquarium the day before, a Swedish guy and German girl who were on exchange together in Singapore, a Japanese couple, an English couple and two Chinese guys. Seems like the vast majority of numberplates start with KV, I wonder why? Perhaps they are district based? (Langkawi is in Kedah, I can see that turning into KV )

The first natural phenomenon our guide pointed out to us was the leaves of the Babuta tree – getting sap in the eyes causes blindness, in food it’s a laxative where 2 drops is medicinal, 10 drops causes hospitalization. A hardcore tree!

We walked through the bat cave, which was pretty impressive – hundreds of bats hanging a couple feet above us.

 

The guide said there used to be thousands but the tourism was driving them away. He explained the limestone stalactites and why you can’t touch them (acid on your hands), and  then we sailed (motored) up the river to the restaurant. We put in lunch orders then headed out on kayaks – they were all plastic molded, with an interesting setup so you could either seat two people or one in the middle. I was very glad to be on my own, watching some of the pairs flail around! We kayaked up the river to the eagle gathering place, where he explained what was wrong with the tours feeding them (is a bad diet, destroys their ability to hunt and make them dependent on humans) but said that it wasn’t tourists fault they didn’t know this, and it wasn’t the boat operators fault they followed orders since most of them had little schooling and no alternative jobs, so it was necessary to educate tourists while they were on the island or even before if possible. He also said some of the boat operators would secretly keep or throw out the meat instead of feeding it all to the eagles, which was good. We saw a half dozen eagles circling high up, and a couple dived low enough to identify a brahmin kite and a white bellied sea eagle.

Around another corner he said that we were at a good spot to swim, so about three of us jumped in – most of the others didn’t want to get that wet! The water was lovely, salty enough to float in, and right about body temperature, maybe a touch cooler to feel refreshing. After a short while we got back in and continued into a mangrove channel.

 

Here we had to single file and he said only one person in the doubles should paddle. Peoples lack of steering meant you could constantly hear kayaks hitting each other and the bank. He warned us that snakes liked to hang out on the mangrove branches over the river so we should keep to the middle where possible, which for a lot of people just wasn’t. He went first to spot any snakes, and pointed out a couple of vipers that we went past – we had to give them a wide berth since they could jump a metre off the branch if aggravated. After a while we had to stop as the channel narrowed and he talked about the mangrove trees and uses and how they handle the salty water, which was pretty cool. While he talked I could hear rain on the mangrove canopy above us, but we hardly got a drop since the canopy is so thick. On the way back we spotted one more snake hanging over the river that we’d all missed the first time past!

Unfortunately, once we’d turned around and got out of the channel, it started tropical bucketing. All of us were completely soaked through (some people now regretted not swimming earlier) and my dry bag must have failed since I found a centimetre of water in it after this, was worried that my phone might be dead for a while! We paddled much more quickly back to the restaurant, with some decent winds making it a little more of a challenge, and most of us regretted not having a spare change of clothes. We ate lunch – rice, fried chicken and tom yum soup – which was delicious, and were half dried off when we got in the boat to head back. Everyone was pretty exhausted and about half of us were asleep on the bus.

When I got back, I was shown my new room – functionally the same but off in a corner and with three singles instead of one double  – and, I later realized, with no wifi connection :(. I had to go out and get cash to repay my loan, so wandered down the main street for a bit. Something about being in the tropics apparently makes me think “oh I should totally get one of those nice little sundresses! It would look so relaxed! They’re only $10!” And then I get closer to a shop and realise that come on, it would look like a cotton sack in some random colors and I would literally never put it on again. I had the same internal conversation in Tahiti. But I did explore some gift shops and found that they have a bit of a thing for owls, bit odd as I haven’t seen any mention of them being a local animal.  I kept looking for somewhere to eat dinner, a little hampered because apparently 7pm is too early so all the restaurants were just opening and had nobody in them – except one that I’d heard of which had an actual line at the door. But I didn’t feel like expensive so I kept walking. Then I spotted a little sign for Melati’s Food Court and walked into what turned out to be a nice little co-op space; a half dozen independent places with one guy co-ordinating, who I think was from the Melati’s Female Dorm at the back, which I’d read about. He was very friendly, sat me down, brought over the six menus, took my order, and chatted with another pair of women that arrived while I was eating. I had a delicious lamb shish kebab and a Vietnamese caramel pudding for dessert and a grape soda, for about $5.

So once again, by 8pm I’m settled in my air conditioned room to relax and this time, probably sleep early! I was trying to plan what I’d do for the remaining two weeks. I was very tempted to hire a scooter and go visit the nearby falls – some of the others on the tour had talked it up, and the falls sounded pretty awesome, and how hard could it be on a scooter? Eventually I decided that it definitely failed my “would I feel stupid for dying that way” test, as well as probably not being even a little bit fun if a downpour like that afternoon hit! Similar concerns applied to riding a regular bike, so I decided that if I was going there it would be in a taxi.

 

Tuesday

Works up at 6am to heavy heavy rain, feeling grumpy. Woke up again at 8am, same thing. Woke up again at 11am to sunshine, feeling great! I had a stale chocolate croissant and a carton of Milo in the fridge so I had that for breakfast, and internetted in bed for a couple hours until it was definitely too late to hire a taxi to go visit the falls. I went out to book one more night and settle up, and had them book me a snorkelling trip for Wednesday and confirm that I could catch the ferry Thursday morning no trouble, since its offpeak season and so advance booking is unnecessary. Then I went to change more money and look for a yoga class I’d read about. Walked along the beach, lots of planes landing, a boat on the horizon the size of what the fuck is that?? (Probably a container ship, looking outsized among the sailing boats and tiny islands). Although it was mid afternoon, the beach was pretty empty – perhaps we’re way offpeak and so there’s nobody here? That would explain why there seem to be so many more people selling everything than tourists anywhere, and orders of magnitude more hotel space than people in them. Or perhaps because everyone who was there was indoors hiding from the intermittent rain, wusses.

Looking for the yoga was cool, because I ended up finally going off the main street into some of the side paths, which turned out to contain a ton of hotels, restaurants and stuff – I don’t know why I didn’t realise this earlier when my own hotel is down one. From the main road they all kind of just look like driveways. I didn’t find the yoga but ate a late lunch at a nice place (some quite spicy tom yum soup and black coffee), and then on my walk back was joined by an iraqi guy who made the normal traveller conversation (where are you from, how long, what are you up to while here) and then went to “I am 40, make good money, single, you are so beautiful?” so I said I wasn’t single and then there was my turnoff. Perfect timing, as I arrived back at my hotel the thick grey clouds were finally beginning to drop some rain. Not intense rain though, so I decided I should push through it…

So I went out to the beach, it was raining but not too hard. Felt pretty awesome going for a swim in warm water with warm rain, I was almost the only person up my end of the beach (the swankier resort area). There’s an island not too far offshore that looked like you could swim to it – I thought I’d swim out to the edge of the buoys (markers for swimmers vs jetskis, I think) and reassess. It wasn’t far, maybe 50m, but in that short time the rain came on fully and visibility decreased so it was hazy just looking at my beach, you definitely couldn’t see the island beach! I gave up on that idea and just swam around. The rain cleared pretty quickly and soon it was a delightful afternoon again, and a few more people wandered out. I also saw the first dogs on the island, a pack of about 15 wild dogs out for a run down the beach while it was empty. I was out of the water walking alongside it when all of a sudden I heard barking and the dogs had surrounded me and were circling closer, it scared the shit out of me. I yelled and they jumped back, so I kept yelling and then made some throwing movements and they cleared off a bit. There were a few guys on the edge of the water about 100m from me, looking over,  so I walked towards them while looking behind me but the dogs didn’t follow. One of the guys asked if I was alright and said the dogs were just marking their territory – later when the same thing happened to him he seemed to engage in a protracted staring contest which may have gone on forever if his friend hadn’t got bored and yelled the dogs away. I am not sure how much of a dog expert he really was.

Decided I had done enough swimming (and *finally* having done most of a proper stretch routine!) I went home and had a rewarding shower, but then realised that despite the still ominous sky, I was going to be hungry again and needed to go for dinner. I went back to the restaurant of the first night, because it was both cheap (10rmy/$2.50 for dinner and a drink) and close – with lightning and thunder already rolling it was sure to rain soon! While I was in there we did get another short torrential downpour, and I waited that out watching Thailand v Iraq (football) come on TV, and ordered a drink of asam, or sour plum juice, to pay for my spot (although I don’t think they cared). As I left, Iraq scored the first goal at about the 40th minute. Right after I stopped watching to go pay for my meal, in fact. Typical.

I’ve been noticing the cats, since Tim pointed out how almost all the cats in Jakarta have fucked up tails. Here too, the tails often seem kinked or short. Today I saw one that almost looked like it had been tied in a knot – I wonder what happens to them? Is it people?

Wednesday

I woke up bright and early to be ready for my snorkelling pickup at 8.15 – greeted by the sound of pouring rain again, and a slight queasy feeling in my guts. I started wondering how much fun snorkeling would be in these conditions, and how likely it was I was actually getting sick. I decided it was just early morning hate again, made my instant noodles and had a couple slices of banana bread. As I was getting dressed there was a knock on the door – the girl from the front desk was here to say snorkelling was cancelled due to weather. I thanked her cheerfully, and considered going for an early run on the empty beach for all of half a second before I remembered yesterday’s dogs and went back to bed guilt free.

After snoozing and then reading/internetting happily most of the morning (turns out I was fine, it was just my stomach telling me not to go snorkelling earlier), I went out and got the front desk to call me a cab to go see this waterfall. I had read that you should get the cab to stay, as its hard to get one from there – I asked the woman at the desk and she said no, that would be silly, there are plenty of cabs there. 30 ringgit and half an hour later I was dropped off at the gate to the falls – the cab driver asked if he should stay and I said no. He looked doubtful. It was raining lightly. I said nope, thank you! And he left. About 50 steps up (out of 700) it began pouring tropical buckets. That’s cool, I thought, that’s why I put my towel in a plastic bag. Maybe I should out my phone in it too….And it won’t last long, maybe j can shelter under this tree. It had lasted long enough that even under the tree I was soaked through, so I decided to keep climbing. I passed some other people going down in ponchos and umbrellas. Then I saw the turnoff for the base of the waterfall and thought I’d try that. A short way along that path was a section about three meters long and three inches under water, with a heavy stream running across the path and down the mountain. It was impressive just how much water was falling out of the sky! I decided to take a rain check on this route (get it? Get it?) and headed back to go straight up to the top. There was a drain cut alongside the steps, running a steady stream several inches deep, and occasionally bursting into the path – overall the infrastructure was very well built and either quite new or well maintained.

Finally, after a couple short breaks in some pretty nice shelters along the steps, I reached the top exactly as the rain cut out. It was…nice. Not the kind of spectacular I’d walk through a torrential downpour to get to. I think there was too much water to appreciate it – the place is called Seven Wells because the top section runs through seven rockpools that people swim in, but the water had risen so high you could only see one and you’d be stupid to get in there. There was a hiking path you could follow to the top of the mountain (a real hike away)- but the trail began on the other side of what was now a foot of rushing water, so I passed on exploring it. Oddly enough there were people camping up there, tents erected inside the picnic shelters. I’m not sure if they were broke locals or cheap visitors, but they looked like nice tents so I think the latter – perhaps hoping to hike the mountain but put off by the rain?

After a couple photos, I headed back down. Hoping it had dried off a little, I tried the track to the waterfall again, and found the path only an inch deep in water for a meter, so quite passable. The view from the base of the waterfall was far more spectacular and totally worth it. Even here, you could see that the water had broken its normal banks – concrete steps down to a bank showed at least one step flooded and possibly more invisible steps underwater.

Back down to the entrance, there was a collection of mostly closed shops. I stopped in to buy some food, tempted by the pot of buttered sweet corn – delicious! I also picked up a plastic looking pizza roll – as I carried it away from the store, a monkey ran up and jumped at me, making a grab for it and then circling around behind me for another go. Smart but irritating! I put it in my bag to get away and walked off looking backwards a lot. I didn’t see any cabs, so I walked a km or two down the road to the Oriental Village we’d gone past on the way up. When I got there, I weighed up the idea of visiting Malaysia’s Largest 3D Art Museum, but caved and just got a cab from the well-populated Taxi Rank outside. Home again, a warm shower and I felt great – plus so smug for having made all that effort! When I decided that I had to go out again for dinner it was still raining, so I stopped at the nearest nice-looking restaurant and had the butteriest butter chicken I’ve ever seen, with literal butter swimming in it, which was quite good actually. It was an Arabic/Indian restaurant featuring an Arabic food menu and an Indian food menu, a bit odd, and not that amazing for costing 4 times as much as my other dinners nearby. Much nicer looking place, I guess.

Thursday

I got up bright and early for a hotel breakfast before catching my cab to the ferry. Breakfast turned out to be a decent omelette with some hot snacks like a curry puff and some kind of rice roll. The drive into town took about 45 minutes – I hadn’t really understood that there was quite a decent sized town on the island, I’m glad I stayed where I was in the small beach town! It got quite built up, then less so again as we got out of town towards the ferry. I missed the big sign saying Penang on one of the ticket windows so had to ask someone and get helpfully directed towards it, then successfully purchased my ticket, walked past the Customs checkpoint that couldn’t care less, and waited for my ferry. When everyone got up and went to board I followed, although it was not yet boarding time – turned out it was for another ferry leaving first, but this is how I met Natalie, a South African woman who is travelling around South East Asia before going to stay with her sister in London who is having a new baby. Neat coincidence, huh? 🙂

 

Things I wanted to do but didn’t get around to:

Go to Waiheke (wineries! Swimming! Villages!) or Rangitoto Island(volcanic scenery! BYO food and water)

Kayak on the bay , or kayak from waiheke, or go across to Piha beach – swimming, rainforest

Sunday morning I was up at 7am to head to the bus station the other side of downtown. The bus didn’t leave until 10am, but it said boarding was at 9.30am, and I’d heard the station was a bit confusing and also over the last ten years I have been going through a fundamental personality change that means I would prefer to be an hour early to important things than five minutes late (I have to admit that so far that category has pretty much only included “travel departures and job interviews” but baby steps).  The mother in my host family offered to come with me on the Metro in case I got confused, which was very nice of her although I like to think I am not too easily confused by public transport! We left at about 8am and she saw me along two buses, a metro train and then onto the final train, where she turned around and headed home.

The station actually was pretty confusing, but I had 45 minutes until boarding so didn’t get too stressed. There were also lots of people around looking official to give directions – some women who told me I was at the wrong station (there’s one directly above the Metro station, then the main one a block along that I wanted), a guy standing next to the information booth directed me to the Andesmar window off to the side of the main concourse, and the Andesmar woman told me the bus would leave at 10, boarding at 9.30, from somewhere in spaces 40-49 (seems like this is the regular area for it, from my online reading). About 9.15 the bus pulled in with a Mendoza sign in the front, and people started lining up. First the driver checked tickets and passports, then you lined up to have your luggage loaded and get a tag for collection at the end. Everything I read said to tip a couple hundred pesos, so I did, looked like everyone else was as well but the guy didn’t ask for it.

A French backpacker couple in the line ahead of me didn’t have the tourist entry paper in their passports, and it wasn’t clear to me if the driver was going to let them on. They told me they’d rented a car and dome a day trip over the border, and didn’t get a new paper on reentry even though it was taken on exit. Talking to them was incredibly hard, I kept using Spanish words or French words conjugated in Spanish.

The bus was quite cold to start – I thought I was just being soft until I noticed I could see my breath in the air! It got warmer as we went, but it probably would have been worth having an extra layer on for that first hour.

About 10 minutes after we left, the bus assistant (technical name given in the introductory video that was played) came by with a small packet of cakes/ cookies and instant tea/coffee options for each passenger, then came back with a Styrofoam cup and poured hot water for us, very nice! They also put a movie on, unfortunately it turned out to be American Sniper which (1) why? (2) ugh.

After drinking most of my coffee and spilling a little over myself, I tried the bathroom. I had to ask where it was because there was no sign on the door. There was no toilet paper, but I try and always have tissues on me for that scenario so it was fine. There was handtowel paper anyway, and soap. There was a sign saying that the toilet took liquids only, separate to the ubiquitous “no toilet paper in toilet” signs. Seemed perfectly clean and usable, overall.

Right near the border, not only was there graffiti on the rocks next to the road (very motivated local kids or dickheads stopping on the way through?), but I saw a guy running down the mountain by the side of the road, wearing a bright yellow running shirt, a balaclava and shorts. What the fuck. Just past him I saw another cross and memorial next to the road, and a spot where the barrier next to the road had been knocked down the cliff. Um.

The switchback section was crazy and only an idiot would drive that. I took a video – you can see it on dropbox, start watching at 45 seconds (PS any recommendations on video editing software? Turns out I think I’ve never done it).

For professional pictures of this, check out Google Images.

We got to the border at noon, not even log enough for the movie (American

Sniper) to have finished. There was a fairly large collection of trucks waiting to go into Chile, presumably slowed up by the customs slowdown?But we drove straight past that and on for a few minutes until we joined the end of a slow moving line of vehicles through a tunnel, then passed them and continued. I saw a hostel and a number of shops advertising sandwiches, artisenal stuff, etc – for workers? For people stuck at the border? We didn’t stop there either I saw a train line which looked abandoned, I had heard that there used to be a train across the pass, such a shame. Destroyed now by avalanches and rockfalls it looks like. By this point the sun had come out and it SAS quite warm. We’d gone past a sign saying Welcome to Argentina, and were clearly heading downhill – where was the border control? I finally saw a sign saying “control integrado 2km”, about half an hour after going past the Chilean side (if thats what it was). We pulled in literally as the movie credits rolled, which I thought was pretty damn smooth. While there wasn’t much of a line at all, there was a small collection of restaurants which presumably get all their business from the people who aren’t so lucky…

Passport control seemed pretty quick to me, but I was at the front of the line and could go to the bathroom and sit on the warm bus while everyone else went through – it may have seemed slower to others! The French couple who didn’t have tourist entry papers were fine, the bus driver talked to the Chilean passport control for them.

About an hour after arriving at the border, the bus drove another few hundred meters and we all got off with all our bags, and waited while they scanned (xrayed?) all the hold luggage then manually checked our hand luggage. Seemed pretty low key, more like looking inside, poking the outside once and done, for me at least. There was one guy who apparently had lost his laptop on board?? So the customs guy asked him if my laptop was his. That would ruin my day, poor guy. Hopefully he had an idiot moment and left it at home? He was still looking sad when everyone collected their bags at the end of the trip so I guess he didn’t find it on the bus at any rate.
I chatted a bit to the girl next to me in line. She said ” I’m from Austria” and I said “oh, I’m from Australia” and she said “No, Austria”. I clarified and she apologised, said she gets a lot of people being confused!
Finally, we pulled away an hour and a half after arriving, could have been worse. It was pretty cold standing around inside the building, which was more like a giant garage than a real building, but with the sun coming through the bus windows it was nice and warm. As we left, they handed out lunch (a sandwich and coke). I had bought a loaf of bread in Santiago in case we were hanging around for hours, but that turned out not to be necessary.

The scenery from the border to Mendoza was just incredible, some of the best landscapes I’ve ever seen.  Mountains and lakes and railway tunnels and mountains and mountains. I took a billion pictures, and even with my cameraphone a lot of them turned out pretty nice. Sadly although I was at the front of the bus, the big front window had a polarising film over it so I couldn’t take any pictures through that.

 

And all the rest are at https://www.flickr.com/photos/jacalata/sets/72157653961237642 – I haven’t really had time/patience to go through and delete the shitty ones so there’s a bit to wade through.

Scenes by the side of the road, which I’m not fast enough to get pictures of: a woman and small boy, looked like they were perhaps hitchhiking towards the border? A ruined building with two fresh Mexican flags on handmade poles. Several storage crates with “Pizarro rafting”. A group of people and cars picnicking next to the river. A couple groups of motorcycles. Shrines – either to the Virgin Mary, or sometimes marking crash locations. An unexpected giant lake, about an hour out of Mendoza. A pair of young men with backpacks trying to hitch towards the border outside Mendoza. Somehow those same motorcycles now ahead of us again? Two police stops on the road in about 2km going through wineries/outskirts of Mendoza.

Once we arrived in Mendoza, I got my bags (tipped in Chilean pesos because ??? was I supposed to have picked up some Argentinean money before going? How does that work? I gave him a note at least so hopefully he can do something with it).  I’d looked the map and theoretically it would be a 40 minute walk straight along the main road to my hostel, but in practice it was warm out and nope gonna take that $3 taxi. I had read before arriving that I should try and change my American dollars on the Blue Dollar rate, and there were plenty of guys around offering “Cambio? Cambio?” so after setting my stuff on a bench to unobtrusively pull out my wad of American twenties, I asked one of them his rate. He offered 12.5 pesos/dollar for a US $100 note, or 10.5 for a smaller note – I should have brought 100s! I changed $40, enough to get by on until I learned if I could do better, and walked out the main door of the station to the taxi rank. A short and pleasant taxi ride later, I was at the hostel by about 5pm.

On Wednesday after class I caught the metro into town – although it was 2pm, presumably not a peak period, the carriages were packed full with people pressed against each other. Apparently the trains had been closed that morning, perhaps that explained it? I was heading in to visit the Museum of Memory and Human Rights, which records Pinochet’s regime and the massive human rights violations that took place. Pretty brutal stories – I opted not to get an audio guide as I thought I could get enough detail from the exhibits. It reminded me a lot of Holocaust museums like the one in Berlin, or some of the museums in Prague that recorded similar incidents under Communism. It’s a very well put together place, pretty new and well designed.

I took a couple hours wandering through, and then walked towards downtown – the suburb I walked through was very rundown, lots of abandoned buildings and graffiti, including tagging, street art, and political messages – one clue as to how abandoned the area was that I saw a big sign up for ’30 years ago – we do not forget’ and another one for ’31 years ago’, both presumably referring to the coup, which is now almost 32 years ago.  I stopped in the square in front of the Palacia de la Moneda, which I’d seen in pictures of the coup at the museum, and ate some dessert I’d brought with me and relaxed for a while. I had planned to visit the National History Museum as well but spent longer than I’d expected in the Museo de la Memoria, so instead I went straight towards the Feria Santa Lucia to do some tourist shopping (I’d asked my host where was the best place to go and she said here – prices were about 2/3 as much as the similar stuff I saw at Cerro San Cristobal). The market is right next to Cerro San Lucia, which looked like it would offer a very nice view but it was almost 7pm so I decided I’d rather go home than climb it. I caught a bus that was stuffed so full the driver could barely close the door behind me – about ten minutes in some poor girl needed to throw up, so we pulled over to the side of the street, a bunch of people got out of the way, she got off, and then we all piled back on and kept going.

On Thursday in Conversation class the teacher asked what I’d done yesterday, and I said I’d gone to the museum. He asked the other two if they knew what it was for, and while the Brazilian was clearly familiar with the topic, our college kid representative knew only that she was going to it tomorrow with her class, and her teacher said it was important. The teacher tried to explain a bit about it, that during Pinochet’s reign many Chileans said they had no idea what was going on, and the Museum was part of an effort to make sure nobody could continue to claim ignorance or forget.

In the afternoon, we had a planned trip to the Mercado Centrale, downtown – however a student protest was schedule for that evening, and apparently marches and traffic disruptions had started that morning and the school decided not to send anyone downtown. I was going to go over to the General Cemetery to see Allende’s grave instead, but the admin staff told us that while the cemetery itself would be fine, getting there and back would probably be a lot harder than normal with traffic already disrupted. So instead I bought a book and went home and read about Mendoza 🙂 My host got home slightly earlier than usual and said that she’d left work early and taken far longer than usual to get home. I could hear and see traffic blocked up on the street outside our apartment for most of the afternoon, starting at least by 4pm. Glad I decided not to go anywhere!

Friday was my last day of classes. Afterwards I went for a short run (at about 2pm – poor timing, with the sun out and all the people walking around to and from lunch) and then met a woman from my classes to walk to the Cemetery. It was about a 40 minute walk from the school, we spotted a Palestinian restaurant along the way which Laura will have to try! When we got there, it was totally worth it – the graves include a ton of insanely elaborate marble vaults which look like any one of them is worth more than the entire surrounding suburb. (And also rows and rows of what looks like just a wall with coffin-sized vaults inserted into it). We walked through perhaps 10% of the place, far enough to see Salvador Allende’s grave – probably spent about 40 minutes in there? Some of the monuments were collapsing, I noticed one of them that said something like “renovated in 1998 by X for her parents Y and Z” so presumably some ongoing spending is required. Overall it was just incredible, well worth the visit. We took a different route back to the school and happened to walk through La Vega market, the “locals market” (as opposed to the more touristy Mercado Centrale, which is just across the highway from it).

Saturday I got up bright and early to be at school at 8.30am for our hike to the Andes, and when I got there only Laura was there because it was actually an 8am departure and I had been misled, as had she. Very fortunately for us, the bus had had to loop around to drop off a staff member, and arrived back at 8.35am! We got on the bus, got laughed at, and headed off. After stopping in a small town for people to buy water and extra food (lunch of a sandwich and juice box was being provided) we got to our departure point around 11am. The hike wasn’t too hard – a steep uphill section to start with, a bit of a stiff cold breeze, but mostly an easy fairly flat path. The mountains around us were just amazing, I’m pretty sure none of my pictures really do them justice! A map of the route we hiked is available at http://es.mapmyride.com/workout/1007516279 – if you zoom out, you can also see the town we stopped at, San Jose de Maipu. On the way back we stopped at a random bakery and all had empanadas made to order, pretty good. Then I slept most of the way home.

 

As usual, all the photos I took are on Flickr: hike pictures, Santiago

The weirdest thing about Chile is that you are not supposed to flush toilet paper, but put it in bins next to the toilet – everywhere. Apparently the septic system is quite fragile? I quite like Santiago (check out my random photos), I’ve decided so far that it rates “would visit again, would take a temporary transfer to here, would not move myself permanently”. The big drawbacks are the pollution/haze and the general feeling of being slightly less developed/more obvious poverty, both of which are not things I want more of in my life.

Thursday was a holiday in Chile, celebrating “some war with Peru or Bolivia I think”, to quote someone at school (turns out it was The Battle of Aquique). Apparently it’s also the day when the president gives a big speech every year explaining what the budget has been spent on and how any big government projects are coming along – and so, traditionally, there is a protest about whatever is unpopular about current government/policy. The protests this year apparently included people angry about two students killed last week during another protest about student fees – one of the teachers at school said there are a lot of protests and anger about university fees because Chile has one of the highest ratios of average salary:university fees ratio in the world (many numbers in this slightly dated article).

I went for a run at about 11am and found the streets close to deserted, similar to my (much earlier!) Good Friday run with Dad a month ago. In the afternoon, my host family took me along to a big mall (Costanera) – my first trip on the metro! They gave me their spare metro card to use, each trip costs about $1. They explained that there were some great sales on, and although both of them hated clothes shopping, you have to do it sometime and this was a good day. I wandered around a little on my own looking for a charger cable for my Fitbit (I seem to have lost the stupid tiny proprietary thing somewhere since Tahiti, rendering my actual fitbit completely bloody useless) – unfortunately none of the stores I went into had anything. I gather someone should sell them in Santiago, but I’m still looking. At the mall, we saw a protest outside Starbucks (there are lots of Starbucks here). Apparently the workers are in some places on a strike (although at this one the store was open) and there is a court case on? My Spanish is definitely not up to reading about labor disputes! If yours is, try reading this article.

Friday morning, in our conversation classes natural ‘what did you do yesterday’, this led into a fairly wide-ranging discussion of Chilean politics and immigration – there are many Peruvian immigrants, who have been around for a decade or more, and lots of more recent Colombian and Haitian immigrants who are seen as more violent/aggressive/uneducated and are less popular. I didn’t know it, but it turns out Chile is a powerhouse economy of South America. (I have realized that I really knew embarrassingly little about the country before I arrived!) It was interesting to see the reaction of my English (of Jamaican background) classmate, who was shocked to learn that many of the Haitian immigrants didn’t speak Spanish, and asked why they didn’t go ahead and learn it if they wanted to move to a Spanish speaking country. The teacher said something like “well, most of them can’t afford to take classes like this”.  For some reason, although I don’t think there are many Chinese immigrants, there are many many Chinese restaurants. I haven’t been to one to know if they have Chinese staff or not.

Friday afternoon I decided to check out some more of the city, so I walked from the school along through the Parque Forestal  (very nice! Some sweet kids playgrounds, a few joggers, lots of couples hanging out) past the Museo de Bellas Artes and down to the Plaza de Armas, where I took a few pictures of sculptures and giant churches, and bought some books (one English, one Spanish!). Then I successfully caught a bus home by myself (Google Transit does directions in Santiago, so it wasn’t that impressive of me) and hung out at home watching Game of Thrones. Not sure about how that’s going, but I’ll probably keep watching to see how different the story gets from the books now.

 

Saturday I had signed up to go on a day-long excursion to Isla Negre and Valparaiso with the school. We met at 8am at school, with one of the admin staff, and then everyone slept on the bus for most of the two-hour drive to Isla Negre, where we were going to see Pablo Neruda’s house by the sea. We were there pretty early, so we hung around for a bit and had a coffee in the nice café (with a ship-shape outside bar. Heh. Hehehehe.)

During this time, our staff lead (Astrid) may have been in line for us? As we got our coffees she came to tell us all to get in line, and we collected our audio guides and went in as a group of ~15. Like La Chascona, it’s fairly well organised – the audio guides are the kind where you press a number and get that recorded snippet, and the numbers are posted around the house in order. Also like La Chascona, there are no photos allowed while inside, so I only have photos of the outdoors. The house included a room decorated with a dozen or so shipfigureheads, a table made on a giant wagon wheel, a collection of ships inside bottles, etc.  There are photos of the interior (of all the houses) available on the Foundation website.

Going through the house took a couple of hours (when we came out, I saw a sign saying “current line wait time = 2 hours”!!!) and then we went back to the bus to drive to Valparaiso, about an hour away. The countryside was fairly dry with some impressive hills, not terribly exciting, and most people had another sleep. When we arrived in Valparaiso, traffic was terrible – our driver said it was just regular weekend traffic, because Valparaiso is a very popular short getaway location. We started with lunch at a restaurant by the port – kicked off with a shot of Pisco Sour (very sour), we had some miniature cheese empanadas (I do my bit to bust gender stereotypes by being the person to take the one left over, on a table of mostly military guys), then choice of grilled or fried fish with rice and fries, with icecream cake and a shot of some kind of digestif, a cross between amaretto and cough syrup. I chatted to some of the guys next to me, they were in a group studying for a few weeks immersion, sent from a Defense school in California. Apparently they’d all been studying Spanish full-time since January – they seemed decent, but not nearly as fluent as I would have expected just by knowing that, I guess it’s no FSI! Two of them were under 21 so aren’t allowed to drink while over here even though the drinking age is 18, because they are “here for work” and “semi-on-duty” and so on.

After lunch Astrid took us on a guided tour through Valaparaiso. First we checked out the view from Paseo del May 21, a mini tourist market next to the Naval Museum at the top of a cliff (I bought some delicious dulce de leche), then we went down to the port and took a Funicular up to the top of a hill and walking down through a ton of winding streets covered in murals and brightly painted houses. It was pretty spectacular! At random intervals there were also small street markets selling Tarot card sessions, food, toys, etc. A few photos here, a whole album on Flickr!

After walking for a couple hours, we got back down the bus and piled in for a quick drive across to Vina del Mar – this is today’s cool kids spot, with high-end restaurants and shopping, glitzy hotels and bars. Valparaiso apparently skews older and artsier, though still pretty expensive. After driving down the main street and jumping out to look at the beach and city skyline, most people got some coffee (I don’t know why, when they all went straight to sleep on the bus!) and we headed back to Santiago.

I got home about 10.30pm and a few family guests were still there, for the end of get-together for the one-year anniversary of the death of my family’s dad/husband. I was pretty tired so as the evening wore on I pretty much lost the ability to follow the conversation, I probably should have given up and gone to bed before 2am! A couple days later my host semi-apologised for the loud and vehement arguing that the gathering had involved, saying that she knew from her time in New Zealand that a lot of Australian/New Zealanders were uncomfortable with that kind of discussion. I said it was fine, I was just too tired to understand people talking so fast/over each other, but my family dinners used to be just like that, our friends used to say it was very intimidating!

Sunday I slept in, and when I woke up around 11am I thought about whether to go for a run or not. Eventually the decision was made for me when I realised my running gear was freshly washed and on the line – I am supposed to do my own laundry outside the house but I think the cleaning lady who came on Friday just picked up my pile of dirty clothes (neat pile! Waiting to build up until I took them out to be washed!) and put them in the laundry, so they got washed. (Apparently laundry has been a frequent source of problems for host family relationships, so now the school just says the student must do it themselves outside the house, cost me about $7 to wash all my clothes when I arrived here). So after a leisurely breakfast, I decided to do something active and go walk up Cerro San Cristobal, since the weather seemed fine and clear and the views were supposed to be pretty awesome. I strolled over and once I found the start of the walking path up the hill I think it took me almost an hour to get to the top – it really was a pretty steep hill, I think it was a rise of about 1m in 15? There was quite an extensive layout at the top of the hill – a church (where John Paul II said Mass when he visited Chile), a kind of open-air amphitheatre, a small area filled with candles for prayers next to the giant statue itself at the top, a restaurant and two open air plazas with cafes and touristy sales. I wandered around for a bit and decided I didn’t need to funicular down, it would be easy enough – and it was much easier on the way down, but still a 45 minute walk. At the bottom I rewarded myself with a mote con huesillo, very traditional Chilean drink which I’d heard about and was available at approximately half of the market stalls at the bottom. Then since it was 5pm and I hadn’t had lunch I had a (very traditional) sandwich ‘chicken italian’, which means ‘with avocado mayonnaise and tomato’ (get it? Like the colors of the flag?). It wasn’t bad, although a slightly odd combination. I then went for a stroll through Bellavista, which is well known for its artsy café style and murals all along the streets. I took photos of a bunch but stopped when some old man kind of yelled at me as he walked past – I was getting out of the touristy area towards the run down deserted area, where I’m pretty sure the murals were painted/organised by shop owners simply in the hope of escaping the otherwise endemic tagging. Guidebooks say that Bellavista is not somewhere to walk around alone at night, and I can believe this – would be tricky if you wanted to attend any of the some dozen large nightclubs I saw right on the edge of that rundown area! More photos on Flickr

Monday I stayed up unreasonably late Sunday night (again) so was pretty tired. After class I walked to the shopping mall to look for a fitbit charger again, but although I found a shop that sells fitbits (the Mac store. WTF?) they said nobody sells chargers/replacement parts so I’d have to order it online. Oh well. I ate lunch at the food court in the mall, at a restaurant called Dominos which I had read was a decent, widely available source for a Chilean hot dog. I ordered the Brasilena, featuring cheese and avocado – it had a huge helping of both, and I have no idea what kind of cheese it was, a very odd melted texture. It was ok but a little bland, I think I might have been supposed to select some add-ons? (http://www.domino.cl/productos/1568-agregados.html) When I got home I had a short nap, which was brilliant, before being super productive with homework and reading and trip planning, and then headed to a barbecue at the school which had some 50+ students, the vast majority of whom were in some large groups that had just arrived from America – a group of random students from Wisconsin, and a teachers school in Buffalo (thankfully, based on their level of Spanish, they aren’t going to teach Spanish, just looking to be able to communicate with non-English speaking kids). The barbecue was delicious and I talked to quite a few other students, probably the most I’ve done since I got here.

Tuesday (today!) I was still tired, for similar reasons, which made me really impatient with the general confusion displayed by a lot of the new students. You don’t have to speak Spanish to understand when the room is taking turns reading line by line and you’re next, you just have to pay attention!  So I had a less productive afternoon of grumpiness, but at 6pm the school had organised a soccer game at a nearby park. We split into four teams (I found it interesting that although the group was about 60% girls, the guy organising us picked four guys, including one who didn’t play soccer, to be the ‘team captains’ and by interesting I mean backwards and irritating). We were playing on a basketball court, 5 minutes or first team to 2 goals, then the losing team goes off and another team switches on. We went for about two hours and not only did I not injure anything (although I think I have a few bruises on my shins that will show up tomorrow) but I also scored about three goals and set up a bunch – my team was pretty good at passing to me, but the usual tactic of ‘be a girl so defenders ignore you’ worked on some of the opposition, which helped. We won about two thirds of our games, I think? One of the girls was really interested to hear that I’d been running in Santiago and wanted to join me, which would be fun, so I’ll try and schedule that in my remaining few days! She was a bit concerned when I said that I went for a run last Thursday morning, until I explained that it had been a holiday and I had no intention of running before our 9am classes!

Today I also finished reading Isabel Allende’s “My Invented Country“, translated into English. When I looked up Chilean books I should read, the list was basically her and Pablo Neruda, so I picked up a copy last week when I found it in English. I enjoyed it and will probably re-read, but it was a bit of a strange book. It’s a memoir, but she’s already written a full memoir and this is more a memoir of her thoughts and feelings about Chile than her life story, although that is the background structure of the book. Some of what she says about Chile seems almost like secondhand knowledge, and since she’s lived in California now for some 20 years, perhaps it is. A couple of the stranger facts that were mentioned I looked up out of interest, and they were not-quite-wrong (eg: she mentions that no alcohol can be sold the day before Election Day, but apparently it’s actually the day of) – perhaps these were translation errors. There were a few jarring references that made it clear the book was actually published in 2003 (mention of Pinochet still being alive, for instance). Somehow I got an overall feeling of only a superficial familiarity with Chile of today, or as a specific place, but under or through that was an impression of very deep familiarity with Chilean culture and history – and this impression felt like it matched perfectly with her self-description as having been gone from Chile for so long, and so much of her childhood before her eventual exile, that she had created a country out of her own reading and unreliable memories. In the end, I wished I’d read this before I arrived in Santiago, and I expect I’ll read it again mostly for the thoughts about travel and where ‘home’ is once you’ve ever moved to somewhere new.

Now I’ve finished that, the only book I’m reading right now is The Walking Dead Comic Volume 1 – in Spanish! I picked it up back at Powell’s in March and I’m really enjoying it (I’m much more interested in horror stories in book form!). I’m thinking about reading the whole series but that will add up to a fair bit – I did find a random set of the other volumes in a bookstore the other day, so I think if I find the next one in the series I will get it. Wait, I just looked at the prices in that link I found and there are 50 volumes?!! At about $17 each?!?!!1? Yea, I’m not going to read the whole series. Maybe in English, I assume it costs much less!

I also finally booked my bus tickets and hostel for Mendoza, leaving on Sunday morning and returning on Friday to overnight before flying to Lima. My plan is to drink wine, eat steak, do some web dev and do puzzles from The Code Book so I am finished before I get to London and have to give it back to Mum! I decided against taking more Spanish lessons because I want to stop waking up at 8am every morning!!!

–posted at 2.22am 🙁

 

 

 

I’ve been in Santiago three days now, and it’s going pretty well. The flight on Sunday was quite nice – we were on a DreamLiner with a pretty good entertainment selection (I watched McFarland, I’m a sucker for inspirational sports movies) and a neat window I’d never seen before – instead of a physical shade, you could press a button to make the window darker or clear. It meant that they didn’t have to ask people to raise or lower them, too! Despite the flights having been late every day that week, our flight actually landed about 40 minutes early, and I got my pre-arranged shuttle to my host family’s house. They’re in a pretty central area, Providencia – a very nice residential area, 15 minutes walk from the school my Spanish classes are at. Maria, my age, speaks English well (she worked in New Zealand for several months last year and her brother is now off on a round the world trip going the other direction to me!) but her mother doesn’t, so there’s some positive pressure to speak Spanish in the house which will be good for me.  It’s very relaxing having a proper house to stay in, although I do get pretty tense being a houseguest, especially with the language barrier! I get breakfast and dinner at the house each day, which works well because I can go for lunch with other students during the day or just grab a sandwich. They’re very nice and have taken me grocery shopping and we’ve been eating dinner together. I’ve been eating a fairly sugary cereal called estrellitas, or little stars – I thought it was going to be like corn flakes but it’s way more processed and has a sticky sugary taste. Saying that makes me want Nutri-grain!

I had my first lesson Monday morning, placed in the beginner class with three others – I’m in the middle of the range. It was quite a bit of effort doing Spanish for four hours first thing, but I think it’ll be a solid learning experience. I think I was ready for some more structured time, and this will work pretty well with school in the mornings and afternoons off. I walked around a bit the last few afternoons and the city is quite hazy, it feels like there’s dust in the air, but nothing like Beijing. The tall building in this photo is maybe six-ten blocks away?

The haze is much worse in the afternoons – as I walk to school in the morning I can see a mountain quite clearly (turns out it’s one of the Andes!) and in the late afternoon it’s almost invisible. Despite this, there are tons of bike commuters – the city seems very flat, and there are separated bike lanes along the street, which both help. Traffic is pretty terrible too, walking along at ~6pm there are just cars sitting still for minutes at a time. There’s an Israeli woman in my class who moved to Santiago to live with her Chilean boyfriend, on the outskirts of the city somewhere, and it takes her one-two hours to drive in to school in the mornings, depending on traffic!

I’ve been taking a mini thermos of instant coffee to school every morning (thanks Mum!) A couple people have complained that the coffee in Chile is terrible, and it’s true that the instant stuff at the school is horrific. I went with Rona (the Israeli woman) to a cafe across the street from the school today and tried an espresso, it was ok but (sigh) not as good as the ones Pat makes. Later, after the visit to Pablo Neruda’s house, we stopped at Starbucks, and again I had a drinkable but not great espresso – then in the evening I went out to a cafe with my hosts and had a coffee with a mix of chocolate, condensed milk and something else I didn’t recognize (maizan? manzar?). Nice but turned out too sweet for me! I’m not really a coffee connoisseur, as most people would probably agree – I’m generally happy to just put enough sugar and milk in to cover up any flaws, so it seems fine to me. Some other students mentioned how all the milk here is UHT and they hate it, but I hadn’t even noticed – of course, I have been buying UHT milk for a couple years now in a fairly hopeless attempt to stop it going sour in my fridge before I finish the carton.

The classes I am taking go from 9am-1pm every day – although this week it’s 9am-2pm and none on Thursday, because it’s a national holiday commemorating a war. Most of the students are actually my age or older, which is great – I feel like some of them could still stand to put more effort into speaking Spanish instead of English, but that’s mostly their problem and I’ll just avoid them outside class, basically. The classes are very small, only three of us usually, which is pretty good. Amusingly enough the English guy in my class wishes we did more grammar and less conversation practice, which wouldn’t suit me at all – but of course I have a huge advantage in already speaking French and knowing all the grammatical concepts like reflexive verbs, different tenses, etc. I like the teachers, and I think I’m understanding the pronunciation rules (they’re very straightforward, just different to English and so take a bit of remembering). I keep reaching for French words when I don’t know the Spanish, which works just often enough to encourage me! I should be doing more practice outside of class, but I think after two weeks even without extra practice I’ll be able to get by for the rest of my trip. This week we are only using present tense, I think next week we’ll learn past tense.

Today (on an organized trip with the school) I visited Pablo Neruda’s house – or at least, the one in Santiago. It was really cool – reminded me of some Gaudi architecture in Barcelona. There was a short movie about him at the house, and I had no idea he was such a prominent politician as well as a poet – I might really have to pick up some of his stuff. On Saturday the school has organized a trip out of the city to his two other houses, in Valparaiso and Isla Negre. My host family both said separately that the Isla Negra house is their favourite – I’m looking forward to it! We weren’t allowed to take photos inside the house, but here’s some of the outside (it’s really three houses connected by stairways and terraces). 

 

Tomorrow for the holiday, Maria is going to show me around a little, check out the Metro and nearby shopping center, etc. I’ll also try going for a run – I want to go in the morning because it gets much hazier later in the day, but I’m not planning to be up early enough to go before classes at 9am!