China 2: Getting around by train and bus

China: a really great, interesting place to travel and vast enough to challenge even the most ambitious.

All in all, we travelled about 4000 kilometres within China by train and bus and had one internal flight of 1200km. We enjoy land travel as it keeps us orientated and allows a sense of continuity and connectedness with the land... yes, it takes a loooong time and is a little less comfortable than flying... but there were compensations provided by the numerous incidents, cameos and (mis)adventures on our train and bus trips!

Train stations in China are run almost like airports - designated departure waiting rooms, departure gates and access to platforms strictly controlled, platform officials allocated to every carriage. Stops at stations are short, punctual, and it all works very efficiently. Range of service is wide – from excellent 300kph express trains all the way down to the 6-berth hard sleeper accommodations with way too many people packed into very small spaces and that brought our western sensibilities face to face with local practices!

However, the first trick is to buy tickets. Sold at the station of departure only on presentation of passports (locals also need to present ID documents). So...

Hangzhou railway station: we want train tickets to our next stop, Suzhou. A giant hall, reverberating with noise, absolutely jam-packed with people getting tickets to any of a huge number of destinations. About 30 counters, each with a queue of 40 passengers, each counter sells tickets only to specific destinations.

The huge electronic information boards are very useful if you read Mandarin Chinese. There was not a word of English, neither on the information boards nor that we could find amongst the thousand or so people there! The iPad had been loaded with an English-Chinese translator... we do eventually find the right queue and finally get our tickets, then find our designated waiting room - one of 8 such vast chambers, allowing us a few hours to watch this different world go by and try to learn something about the people and practices in our host country.

Our first two train trips: Hangzhou to Suzhou and later to Beijing - amazingly comfortable, clean trains travelling at 300kph. These express trains are first class travel and the quietness of almost zero track sounds accompanied by incredible speeds is fantastic. Scenes of intensively farmed lands and excellent infrastructure sped by.

Then came the train to Datong from Beijing. Bit of a shocker, this one –and caught us by surprise. So impressed by the previous trains, our expectations were high....

But. Being assigned (without option) to a 6-berth hard-sleeper compartment should have warned us; we had been advised to always try for the 4-berth soft sleepers. And anyway this was a day-time trip for heavens' sake, departing at 9:00 am... A sleeper compartment?? However, the tickets had been booked locally for us way before the time, so we thought carriage 10; seat numbers 16-18 sounded okay for the four of us notwithstanding that two of us appeared destined for seat 16.

In fact the carriage is open-plan: a narrow passage along one side, with sleeping “compartments" open to the passage; each "compartment" wall supports 3 bunks on each side, tiny tables between the two vertical rows and tinier tables in the passage, flanked by minuscule flap-down seats. About 60 to 80 people per standard carriage at capacity.

The carriage, when the four of us got on, was at capacity, it seemed. There were people sleeping, sitting, standing around; we had no idea where the train had come from, but they had already been on it for 24 hours, and this was evidenced by the state of the bedding. On finding ‘seats’ 16-18 we realised that each number applies to a vertical threesome of bunks. A Chinese character adjacent to the seat number allocates you to the lower, middle or upper bunk. We ended up with 16 lower and 16 mid, 17 lower and 18 lower in the adjacent compartment.

Imagine the worst bedlinen in the worst crumpled mess, and it is not yours... But then, horror, it IS yours! Our beds were all occupied and it is uncertain who was more shocked: the foreigners seeing the state of their ‘seats’ or the locals seeing their settlements disrupted – and by whom.

So people found that they had to leave "their" accommodation and the foreigners acclimatised themselves (in Rolf's case, by rolling up and removing all the bedding and pillows; the exposed mattress cover with its dirt of ages, old Pokemon cards, flattened cigarette stubs, etc. being altogether preferable to the warm 24 hour-soiled linen of others).

Books came out, eyelids drooped, Irene on 16 mid (sarong draped gracefully over her piles of bedding from both bunks) tried to remember not to lift her head more than knee height or she would knock herself out on the top bunk; we listened to the sounds of other peoples' coughing and eating and radios and hoicking (and imagined where the rich product from those lungs and throats might end up).

Limited discussion here of the toilets (memories of a Vietnam train, but then at least we had a Pringles container....).Turns out hoicking and discarding of fish and other food remains happens in and near enough to the toilet and the solitary washbasin, and also more generally on the floor in the vicinity. (The windows do not open – and we suspect this is to protect people outside the train?).

As mild horror gave way to wry acceptance, the flat Beijing industrial lands gave way to harsh dry craggy mountains; through many tunnels to flatter land again; we had a glimpse of the Great Wall: delighted to see it in its natural state hundreds of kilometres from the tourist site north-east of Beijing. Then came industrial areas with coalfields and belching smoke stacks and polluted atmosphere. So the trip ended and was chalked up as an adventure - and with a wonderful accompanying sense of being part of the land of China as it developed and changed along the way.

The overnight train to Pingyao, two nights on, was better.... 4-berth soft sleeper, compartment door unlocked for our arrival - pristine.

Then came our last train trip, a 10hour overnighter to Xi'An, 6-berth hard sleeper again. Fore-armed by our previous experience, we were steeled for the worst, and so it was not quite as bad.

But the three snoring men in very close proximity in their bunks opposite Irene, Rolf, Sonja (top to bottom) were less than endearing, Delwin’s feet were used as steps to reach the top bunk on his side, and we were pleased to reach Xi'An intact, not refreshed but with increased knowledge of how some of the world turns and temporarily with less enthusiasm for Chinese trains.

PS No, just because Irene is wearing the same clothes in each pic does not mean they are taken on the same train trip... these were the travel clothes, ok!? Backpacks are small... and heavy...

A local airline carried us from Xi’An to Lijiang, and provided good perspective of the dramatic change from flat lands to mountainous terrain, but we missed the sense of slowly discovering the land which is best gained from bus travel.

The next three journeys in SW China were by bus: generally more comfortable than the trains (we did stay away from the notorious sleeper buses) they do however offer a bewildering range of comfort from luxury air-conditioned coaches with reclining seats all the way to cramped hard seats designed specifically for very small people and to give every passenger backache within minutes and no space for luggage except on your (already compressed) lap or piled between seats.

However, the price of relatively more physical comfort was a lot of fear and trepidation, on several occasions, whilst making our way along narrow passes with perilous drops unprotected by barriers of any sort.

Spectacular scenery, with worrying views of where you will be in a few minutes.

Bus travel also provides passengers with first-hand, and often intimate, knowledge of local traffic conditions and driving habits. We read somewhere that the vehicle population in China increased from 10 million to 70 million in less than 10 years. This means inter alia that the driving experience of most drivers sharing the road is measured in months rather than years! Lane discipline – including for oncoming traffic lanes – is not particularly understood.

Road construction (except for the recent wave of superhighways) did not provide shoulders and with the intensive land use, farm vehicles use the arterial roads for access to fields and simply stop when they wish to load / unload or simply stop! – instant traffic jam and two way traffic reduced to the single remaining lane.

In towns / villages this is exacerbated by street hawkers setting up their stalls ‘within’ the lanes – the sidewalk having been taken up by the shopkeepers extending their space to the edge of the road. Yes, this photo was taken from inside our almost-moving bus; we had to wait while street-stalls gave us a little more street in which to proceed.

Going nowhere slowly is great for people-watching, and in fact for listening: we heard the squeals of piglets being transported past us in a lady's back carriers!

Some of the vehicles that occupy the lanes are bullock carts or people-drawn carts resulting in the speed of the vehicle traffic being reduced to the pace of the burdened bullock / farmer (and similarly burdened wife), until he turns off the road.

Therefore notwithstanding that departure times of buses are meticulously adhered to, arrival times are generally less precise – by an hour or two or more! We learned to let that go and enjoyed watching the world passing by.

China 1: Moments, memories and impressions

China: 28 days, 10 cities; magnificent historical and cultural and scenic sights.

Our trip encompassed so much that is so different from our other experiences, and it all reverberates in our heads: there is a need to write and share. So this is how we have done it - this blog is China 1: a quick overview and array of odd and interesting stuff; China 2 talks about our travelling experiences on trains and buses, China 3 looks at three-wheelers (? yes!) and China 4 will give a quick photo-story of our trip.

China Overview

Every iconic picture we had in our heads of China, we saw....

Magnificent lakeside parks with pagodas, tea houses, people flying kites (here, Hangzhou West Lake), dancing, individuals / groups doing tai chi and other sports;

in every city, card and Mahjong players (here, Dali); wonderful and curious displays of crafts; calligraphers and artists at work.

Amazing huge historical and cultural places: one feels an astounding sense of history and cultural heritage here… and a sense of the huge egos and tyranny of imperial rule attached to many of the historical sites, temples and palaces.

Mega cities… the contrasting architectures of old and modern cities, and evidence everywhere of the construction underway for the projected urbanisation of tens of millions of people: roads, tower cranes, apartment blocks. But still tiny villages which modernisation has passed by, homes and lifestyles as they have been for generations.

Architectural features and lovely rooflines… so different from what we know, and so distinctive in different parts of the country. Here, a courtyard home in a Pingyao village and a typical solid Tibetan house in Shangri-La.

Traffic is undisciplined and chaotic; streets are clean (with rigorous programmes of street washing and sweeping), whilst the air is dirty. Outside the cities, intensive use of the land for agriculture (even tree farms intended to claim back the Gobi desert and stop the terrible sand storms) but lack of mechanisation currently (there are lots of bodies to provide manual labour).

Meanwhile, what often lives on are the little incidents and observations that form remarkably sharp memories.....

No English here

A constant thread through the trip: our lack of understanding of what the people / menus / signs were telling us. And hopeless inability to communicate our needs! Almost no English is spoken in this country (slightly more than none in Beijing). There are 1.3 billion people in the country: there is a lot of Mandarin spoken!

What to do? Have all that you need written in Chinese before you arrive: Hotel names and addresses; places you need to get to (e.g. train station, park, south gate); needs (more toilet paper, fresh milk, no MSG please).

All difficult to predict, so we loaded an English – Chinese translator onto the iPad and off we set. Option 1: Write it down; it translates. Lesson: before you use this, translate back from the Chinese to see what the thing is telling the Chinese reader! Initially we could not understand why the translations of our polite and informative and complex sentences elicited reactions ranging from bewilderment to outright panic. It was only after we tested the machine by getting it to translate its Chinese effort back into English that we gained new insight into ‘lost in translation’ and counted ourselves lucky to have escaped arrest. The very easy “Please fetch us at 5am outside the hotel” became, on re-translation back to English “We are out of the hotel, please”. Imagine the potential for mis-translation!

Option 2: hold down the microphone button and speak; what you have “said” gets printed in English and is then translated; all done and dusted then! Or not: Irene’s verbal request to the taxi driver for “sixty”... became “sexy party”… which caused the iPad cover to be closed in a flash, and alternative ways of communication to be chosen (like: arm waving, louder speaking, counting fingers and toes; we had to get his involved in this too, of course).

Photographing the Westerner

Western tourists apparently add curiosity value to the lives of locals. We frequently found ourselves the focus of attention, were photographed (sometimes surreptitiously, sometimes not), and were sometimes approached to be photographed with the owner of the camera (once requested to please wait while she fetched her Mom for the photo too).

This often provided its own challenges, as we invariably had no idea what the person was trying to say to us. Suzhou railway station: a lovely lady spoke fervently and passionately to Sonja and me, and we understood not a word. She repeated it (we suppose) and we decided it was time for the voice translator. It worked! The lady was asking determinedly if she could have her photograph taken with us.

Food and drink.

Peking (Beijing) duck: delicious… The most memorable meal. In a month we consumed many lovely meals: good meat, fresh vegetables, delicious flavours. In the south we got to enjoy yak meat and yak yoghurt, the street dishes of the minority groups and everything threaded on a stick and barbequed. Everywhere, we appreciated the endless cups of Chinese (flower) tea that start hydrating you from the moment you sit at the table.

Of course, there are VERY strange things on Chinese menus, from the perspective of a westerner. In this vein, we passed up opportunities for dry deep fried haretail, worms and insects, all the odd parts of beasts (like coriander cow tendons, and “clear cooks the bulls penis” in this menu), and of course all dishes with abalone or shark fin.

Small cafes with only chalkboards and menus written in Chinese were intimidating, best approached by pointing at other patrons’ dishes (and always showing the Chinese “no MSG” card). Shopping for backpack snacks in supermarkets was entertaining and we avoided many packets of dried-but-soft fish or other protein snacks; nuts were always safe and wonderful while we resisted "Strange-Taste Horsebeans": it just did not sell itself! Fruit and veg stalls were always marvellous and reliable.

But hold on: Peking duck the most memorable meal? Correction: a meal at a local Datong café near the railway station gets that award.
The menu had no English writing but had photographs of the dishes so what could go wrong? Rolf ordered what looked like a meat dish with tomato and greens; Delwin a chicken stew. There was a variety of emotion in the café that night: mirth and delight of the locals as they saw the horror then chagrin then mirth of the foreigners when receiving their sheep’s head (complete with brain, eyeballs and poor dentition) and stewed chicken (feet and rooster head, particularly the cocks’ comb as most-delicious-morsel).

Cold beer? No way. Beer is room temperature (except in touristy spots). In one restaurant, observation of the lack-of-frosting-and-condensation on the beers on the table led us to shake heads and point to the Tsingtao (great local beer) in the fridge nearby. The waiter shook his head but at our insistence eventually gave up and brought us the beers from the fridge. Did not work. Lesson: fridges in China are not switched on, and are simply a means of storage.

The sounds of China.

This is, unfortunately, lusty hoicking and spitting.

Also hooting. When it comes to things that should WARN you by their noise, they don't... Like electric motorbikes in Beijing.

No nappy rash here.

Chinese babies (particularly in less modernised cities) do not wear nappies from very early on, to promote early toilet training. Instead, they wear crotch-less pants (a slit from front to back) with nothing inside at all; this little Beijing baby is moving unhampered by fat nappy and revealing the baby jewels!

Whistling and other noise techniques are used to encourage them to go, they are rewarded, and soon learn to identify the need and go.… all very easy!

Toilet walls

On the toilet topic, this may look like an odd one, but we think it remarkable that people can write graffiti on toilet walls whilst in the squat position.... (the toilets are eastern type squat pans). There are some gifted multi-taskers!

It must be said, however, that there was no graffiti on the walls of those bus-stop "restrooms" in which the toilets were long narrow slots in the concrete (‘long drops’) with half-walls at the sides and no doors at all. An inspired technique to thwart the graffiti artists as even they are in a hurry to finish up in these circumstances.

Another notable point on this shitty topic is that one always pays for these loos, absolutely certain that the facilities will be of the most basic and completely un-serviced. And there is never, never any toilet paper.

Big brother is watching

Cameras are prolific: they watch over streets, restaurants, hotels; driving along the highway your photograph will be taken many times. There is a large police presence, not all in uniform, but they are not in any way intrusive or threatening.

Attempts to get to facebook or blogs (ours or friends’) were futile: there is a stranglehold on social media sites, although apparently China has its own sites of this genre… strictly controlled.

Questions to do with politics, posed to guides, were deflected neatly and left unanswered.

The South African R10 note

Situation: rural restaurant near Pingyao, the only foreigners, regular stream of people coming to peer at us through the windows.

Sonja was searching her purse for money and took out a South African banknote. Within seconds there were people surrounding her, fascinated by the banknote. It took us a while to realise that they were fascinated by the picture of the rhinoceros on the R10 note and its aphrodisiac properties. Such a great horn…

They were unimpressed by the elephant, lion, or buffalo on the other banknotes.

Bed linen, towels and carpets

Ok, so it is our fault for choosing to pay as little as we do for our accommodations. But still: surely they could replace the sheets and towels once they have indisputably become rags! And cleaning the carpet once every ten years would have no adverse impact on the profits…

Nonetheless, we had some good accommodations, sometimes in old courtyard homes that had been converted to hotels. In one of these, we slept on a kang bed: a traditional brick/clay sleeping platform that takes up half the room and has an interior cavity that takes the flue from the stove… thus heating the bed. The photo does not show the torn linen, and anyway the cover was artfully placed!

Entrance fees

Speaking of money: in general, we were happy with the places we stayed at in the US$25 – 30 bracket (the linen was at least reasonably clean, albeit torn / mended / frayed); food was inexpensive; if you want to buy clothes you could afford it ($1.00 for three T-shirts near the Great Wall!?); meter taxis were cheap but... aaaargh…. entrance fees to tourist sites were astonishingly expensive. These cost us far more than our accommodation; go prepared. (South Africans: take lots of R10 notes and auction them to raise funds!)

Superstition


Chinese people have many superstitions and those to do with numbers appear particularly powerful.

Task: buy a Chinese sim card for the cell phone. At this stage in Beijing, we had a local guide and asked John to help us. Complicated by the fact that he has never apparently bought one and did not know where to go, when we had overcome this hurdle (by telling him to shut up and look at our Thai sim card – Chinese people speak in long paragraphs!) he enrolled the assistance of a man from our hotel and we walked the streets.

Easy: a tiny store selling anything-you-like and including China Mobile sim cards was nearby. We were asked to select a preferred number from a list, and said it did not matter; when pressed fervently to choose one, Irene pointed at one. All of this was accompanied by incessant and increasingly heated conversation between John, the shop owner and hotel guy, none of which we understood. We made ourselves heard and pointed out our “chosen” number, the shop owner went to get it and to our surprise John and hotel guy burst out in fury and strode out of the shop, gesticulating in heated conversation. We were dumbfounded, and raced after them, asking what the problem was. They ignored us in their heated discussion, until we physically restrained them and insisted they speak to us.

John was unhappy with the store as it did not offer either a big enough selection of numbers or numbers that were auspicious, and this would be bad luck for us (and, probably, him too, as the introducer). Oh, my word!

We drew the incident to a close eventually by returning to the shop and choosing another number, which we assured John would be lucky for us. It was 15210264587. He undoubtedly does not understand the thinking of these foreigners; the Chinese believe the number 8 to be lucky (the pronunciation of the number eight and the word for prosperity are similar) and 4 to be unlucky (its pronunciation is similar to the word for death), but this number gave us no trouble at all!

Finding the hotel

We are left with the impression that taxi drivers do not know their way around their areas of operation (particularly when it comes to finding accommodations in the ancient cities) and we have discovered that on-line booking agencies give you incorrect addresses.

Put these two together, and it sums up to two exhausted old venturers struggling along for miles with their backpacks trying to locate home-for-the-night. This despite the fact that we always had the document that gave the name and address of the hotel or guest house in English and Chinese.

So, this may be a blog about moments, but there are memories of hours of foot-slogging; generally involving a search for someone who could speak enough English to understand our predicament and phone the guest house and get help from the (non-English speaking) manager.

Our searches always provided us with opportunities for sight-seeing, contact with local people and of course good exercise (the photo above masks how steep and uneven the streets of Lijiang!) and the only aspect that caused us real irritation was the fact that the street numbers provided by agencies were wrong on at least two occasions… but who knows who is at fault here: maybe the owner of the guest house changed his street number for one which was more auspicious!?

Anyway, we have luck on our side as a couple because Rolf is only two years older than Irene (if there was a 3 or 6 year age difference it would have been unlucky, apparently) and we feel very lucky to have taken this trip to China and enjoyed such a sensational journey together. It really was fantastic…. And there are more tales to come, so watch this space!

Bangkok fun ... But visa woes.

Greetings from Bangkok! We are supposed to be in Hangzhou, China now: but obviously things have not gone according to plan. Arriving here last Saturday with Sonja (Rolf's sister) and Delwin, this was a 5-day stop-over to organise our China visas. Our Thailand visa expired yesterday (Thursday 5 April); we had flights booked for 4pm and had given ourselves 4 working days to obtain the China visa, planning to use the more expensive get-it-in-a-day option. All most organised, we thought....

So we set about enjoying Bangkok: we love this city! Based first in the Banglampu backpacker area, the vibe was relaxed and fun and it was easy to get to huge Chao Praya River, appreciating the busy river traffic (ferries and long barges pulled by tugs) and enjoying a longtail trip down the klongs (canals) to see how people live alongside the river.

In most cases these homes were underwater in the 2011 floods; it is sobering to hear the tales of the extent and effect of the floods on flat, low-lying Bangkok and wonder how the city will be 20 years from now. This is a normal "street scene": the street poles supported by concrete pillars.... so this is not a floodwater picture; the streets are waterways.

Two days covering the river, the magnificent Grand Palace

and chaotic Chinatown is a sensory overload!

But occasionally the close Chinatown streets reveal tiny Temple scenes down alleyways that give one respite..

We then overloaded our senses further... In contrast to this experience of old Bangkok, we moved to Soi 8, Sukhumvit Road: uptown; frenetic traffic; tall concrete buildings, bridges, and overpasses; incredible retail centres and high-end hotels. All this acts as a backdrop to the masses working in the streets - cooking, selling, tailoring, massaging - and the throngs making their way through and around it all, either (like us) enjoying and sampling the variety, or jostling their way through it on their way to work.

The contrasts in downtown Bangkok are extraordinary and stimulating, and we hit the jackpot. A visit to Erewan Shrine (beautiful, revered, constantly bustling with people praying and requesting Thai dancers for special routines as blessings) is always awesome:

this is a haven of Buddhist devotion in the midst of downtown cacophony, flanked by exceptionally busy 6-lane roads and rail overpasses, and dwarfed by the Erewan Hyatt Hotel and huge shopping malls.

On Wednesday we had the opportunity to witness a sacred golden image of a revered Buddhist monk being transported through the city in this area. Its passage was preceded and heralded by chanting and supported by a procession of over a thousand monks from Wat Phra Dhammakaya: a river of orange robes, they walked 16km barefoot on that day, one of a three-day pilgrimage.

The monks walk the entire route on red mats laid down by countless devotees who spread rose petals on the mats, kneel alongside them and bless one another and the passing monks.

It was an exceptional privilege to have local people explaining to us, giving us bags of fresh rose petals, helping us to understand what was happening and telling us how to participate... All the while telling us that they were privileged to have us there. The experience was extraordinary and awe-inspiring.

So what about the visa? Early Monday morning found us at the visa office, joining many others staring at locked doors and notification that the office was closed for three days due to Chinese public holidays; it would then open for one day (Thursday 5 April) then close for several Thai holidays.

Some, flying that afternoon, had come for passport and visa collection. Others, like us, knew that they would not be able to organise visas in time to fit in with other plans. We had flight tickets for Thursday, our Thai visa expiring on the same day. So Monday was spent (that little word used in this context to mean: many many hours of chasing around Bangkok by taxi and on foot; large chunks of money; and our condition at the end of the marathon day) getting Thai visa extensions and new tickets, to fly on Saturday. No mean feat in a huge city, where communication is not easy (hint: if you need the department of Immigration, say "passport"), location of offices is completely unknown and modes of transport good but also not well known.

The China visa had to be obtained on Thursday: we had no options. Leaving the hotel at 6:30 we found about 50 already ahead of us at the visa office building. By the time the doors opened at 9:00 there were hundreds of people, queues wrapped round the building twice. Our application was in by 10:30 and we were told to return at 3pm. A small breakfast/lunch topped up the tanks and we decided to return at 2:00pm - thankfully! Again we were quite forward in the queue; but the staff were so snowed under that the doors only opened for collection at about 4:15pm. At this stage the mob was unruly and we were pushed and shoved forward, with fears that the glass doors would break. A saga but all ended well and the visas are in our passports: here, Rolf stands happily at the end of our process; on the steps alongside seemingly unstructured crowds but actually in orderly queues of those still waiting to go in and collect their visas... ever hopeful!

We fly to China tomorrow!

North from Phuket - into the Quiet…and learning dive lessons

The mostly-busy, usually-touristy world of Phuket was left behind us to head north and find quiet and peaceful anchorages whilst exploring Thai islands on the way to Burma.

There is a way to travel into new terrain to try to catch its feeling and grasp how local people experience it. That way is to do it slowly. So doing, we sailed up the coast and along quiet waterways between small islands and the mainland, seeing urban environments recede and nature take over: a green, green strip separating water and sky.

There was time to enjoy the colour of the water changing with the time of day, with the wind, with the sky; and seeingthe panorama of the sky presenting the sun, moon and stars to us with no interference from ambient light and only filtered by screens of patterned cloud. We anchored just off the mangroves, lime-green and regular, with the tall trunks and dark green mass of the prolific jungle trees swathed over every inch of the low islands’ slopes behind the mangroves.

Across the waterway was the Thai mainland, many distant hills and mountains interwoven in blue shades and partially screened by mists and cloud.

This space we shared quietly with fishermen. They hunker down and drift, lines trailing, then stand and putter along in their longtail boats, to repeat the process further down. At night their lights blink and flash unobtrusively white, green or red; our flashing anchor light at deck height says we are here too. The background sound of birds at dusk, then again at dawn is punctuated by the odd jumping fish… there seem to be few of these caught by the fishermen, however, including us,and tonight for us it is ribs on the braai.

Moving on, we must find an appropriate beach to set up a hair-dressing salon: Rolf is getting annoyed with his curlylocks! The perfect spot: off a tiny beach on one island in a circle of several. The binoculars indicate a dinghy landing will end in tears as the beach is protected by a barricade of rocks, but Ketoro is within swimming distance and there seems to be a gap in the rocks so in we swim, tools of the stylist’s trade pushed ahead in a dry-bag.

Our entry to the beach proves interesting: the waves have even more force than we assessed, first pushing us forward over the rocks (fingernails digging into a small gap in the rock to retain some control) then receding and pulling us forcefully out (still holding tightly - now to the other side of the rock!). With damage only to our dignity, we land on the beach: it is awesome! Tiny beach area, soft white sand, shaded... a great salon site: the deed is done, all the while planning our exit by assessing the waves, counting the sets, finding the pattern. With this knowledge, we identify the last (we hope!) of the strong waves of the set and fling ourselves into the sea, swimming out furiously. Success! Back at the boat, we enjoy sunset while watching an eagle on a branch nearby, devouring a snake (or eel?).

Ko Phayam

We head for Ko Phayam, an island about which we had heard a little: peace and quiet and expect no cars. It takes a while to get the feel of a place, in our casethree days in which we anchored off and explored two of the beaches, and rented a scooter to explore the island.

Long beach: just as its name implies, but at low tide it should be re-named Wide Beach… particularly noticeable when you park your dinghy on the beach at high tide and return to it at low. A very exhausting task it is to pull our heavy dinghy 100 metres back to the water…

Ko Phayam boasts any number of Bob Marley bars, rustic eateries and café-restaurants selling home-made yoghurt, chocolate brownies, Burmese curries, Thai and German dishes.

It is fun to explore on a bike, and the 10km x 5km island may be covered in a flash… if you resist the urge to stop off and eat, have a coffee or fruit shake, investigate thelow-key beach-side resorts or have a massage.

This tiny island has 5 main mesh-reinforced concrete “roads” criss-crossing it: each wide enough only to allow two bikes to pass each other (and very few guys are manly enough to be happy with a pink scooter… the hire lady was most surprised at Rolf’s lack of concern!). The only four-wheel vehicle around is a tiny tractor and trailer that supplies everyone (residents, shop, café- or guest-house owners) with their 20litre containers of fresh water. To get to all the little rustic hut or cottage resorts dotted along the beaches, take one of these roads (which are more like sidewalks) then bump down the rough track that serves the resort.While a large number of the residents are Burmese, as well as local Thai, there is considerable German influence: many of the resorts and cafes are German-owned, and (hence?) many of the tourists are German.

Ko Chang

A mere 2-hour sail north (careful not to stray toward the pretty islands on your port side: this is Burma / Myanmar territory), gets you to Ko Chang. An island smaller, even less developed and more pretty than Ko Phayam, to explore it you must walk as there are no bikes for hire. However, 2 hours got us across the island: Irene remembered the jetty (pier) area of Ko Phayam to be an interesting place to watch life go by, and assumed the same of the main new pier at Ko Chang; what’s more, she was determined to eat a Burmese curry before leaving the area.

The pretty island is wooded and very, very steamy; however, streaming rivulets down backs did not detract from island exploration: rubber tapping and cashew nuts appear to be main crops (getting those cashews to the state you would like to see them takes these people a long time!), while breadfruit, banana and mango trees supply smaller needs and pineapples grow wild.

Blisters between toes from the hard, cracked, cheap plastic shoes (always kept in the baking sun in the dinghy) became very noticeable after some time and particularly painful when Ko Chang’s new pier was finally reached and turned out to offer nothing but…. Well… a pier!

We retraced our steps and were thrilled when the rain came down on us, then more thrilled to find a small eatery: beer, 2 squid meals, 2 coffees for just over SA R50!

Surin Islands

It was time to leave the “developed” island world and get to the marine world of the Surin Islands. A 10hour sail SW from Ko Chang, we reached the Surins at 5pm, not a good time for entering an area where coral bommies shoot up suddenly from depth to the surface: you need to be there with the sun overhead and good visibility. Several mooring buoys are provided, however, and we tied on with only minor mishap (just a gentle keel-scraping when heading from one buoy to another. Still an unpleasant incident).

The Surins (two main islands and a few smaller) are magnificent. The islands rise up steeply from about 30m below sea level to a height of about 300m; steep sides above water are clothed in a dense jumble of greens allowing no space for beachesand below water they provide steep drops or walls with good coral and fish-life, great for snorkelling and diving.

The sea is clear, clean and shows wonderful hues of blue, home to a variety of healthy, colourful corals and fish, different colours from that seen in many places. We had some good sightings. A massive moray eel, huge mouth agape as he was cleaned by a tiny blue-flash wrasse, watched us watch him from 2m away. Then he disappeared and we went round to see the hole he had gone into… when he re-appeared on the side we had originally been: that would have been a shock! We played peek-a-boo with a large porcupine fish under a big table coral, and basically steered clear of the titan trigger fish that were all indeed titans! While the big fish at the Surins were huge, there were millions of tiny living creatures that were fascinating, and huge nurseries of juveniles.

We got our quiet: at most anchorages, we were alone with the birds and jumping fish while underwater we heard only the knocking of the coral-eaters with their hard beak-like mouths and fused teeth. It was calm, peaceful, and a feast for the eyes…

… and a great backdrop for the daily chores!

However, the last night at the Surins was the one in which fewest stars were to be seen: due to excessive ambient light! Turns out the fish life of the Surins attracts the fishing boats, and this night there were more than two dozen in our view, fishing lights blazing (notwithstanding that it is a marine reserve). We left the Surins bound for a last dive at famed (amongst divers in the area) Richelieu Rock. The surface of the sea for miles is unbroken, as shown in this chart, with land 40m below, when suddenly five rock pinnacles shoot up steeply, to just break the surface over a small area.

We knew of a mooring buoy that we could tie the dinghy onto, and dive down the line, slowly savouring the beautiful under-water environment. Well, the underwater environment was magnificent, an amazing sight… particularly incredible soft corals, millions of fish, and a circling shoal of parading barracuda, some of which looked as though they had been eating well here for many years; and so ended our two-week foray into the quiet, far north of Phuket.

But the Richelieu Rock dive itself was a horrible experience.

And so the add-on section below is a bleeeecccchhh-get-it-out-there splurge about diving from your own boat, and our experience at Richelieu Rock. Read it if you dare / care / have interest / have time available / think it is all fun-in-the-sun-drinks-on-deck. We just wanted to have a rant….!

Diving from your own boat

Let us summarise what it takes to dive off the dinghy; this is so you can picture the process, and also to show that we have worked a little bit hard to pay to enjoy the beautiful underwater scenes…

1. Kit up

First, aboard Ketoro, put together 2 sets of everything (dive boots, fins, masks/snorkels, weight-belts, dive tanks kitted with the BCDs and system of hoses and regulators that will help us breathe underwater!). Somehow transfer all of this to the dinghy, EITHER with it bobbing or jumping behind the boat on the water (depending on sea state at the time) OR with it still secured to the boat davits, but then things must be lifted UP into it. Either way, we work like demons: much of this is bloody heavy (also we are getting old and weaker!), especially Rolf’s weight-belt (in SA, the DMs used to laugh and ask if he actually wanted to come up again!) and our tanks which are good old-fashioned steel things. When it is all in the dinghy (and we are sweating profusely - dressed up in dive gear doesn’t help) we then need to somehow get ourselves across and into that square centimetre which is our space in the dinghy.

2. Get to the dive spot

Next step is to take ourselves to wherever we think may be a good spot to drop down, and tie the dinghy to something (the very best is a mooring buoy intended for this purpose; sometimes it is a water bottle tied to a rope that we are supposed to know is IT! Sometimes we see where commercial boats were and copy-cat). Now comes the hard part. In a small dinghy, two people wrestle their way into their BC jackets, tanks and fins, and don weight belts and masks. It is a relief to fall backwards into the water…. And dive!

Oh, but before we do that we need to have a plan about how we are to approach the dive. Two considerations: a) get back up with a safe quantity of air still in your tank; b) get back up near the dinghy again. Both of the above are difficult because we do not have any prior knowledge of the dive site and also one becomes disoriented under water; it is almost impossible to figure out where you are relative to your drop-down point. So we generally agree on the direction to swim after dropping down, and to turn around and retrace our steps when our air is half used.

The strategy has always served us well… sort of. Of course, when we get to the surface we are always some distance from the dinghy (once, we could not even see it! But a wave lifted us high enough to survey our area…) and then begins the swim. Hence the need for left-over air and/or snorkel.Also for remaining energy and enthusiasm.

3. Finish it off

We swim to the dinghy all loaded with our kit (it feels light when you are underwater; for the rest, it is a real burden) and then we need to get our kit and our bodies into our little bobbing / bouncing dinghy, return to Ketoro and get our kit and our bodies from the bobbing / bouncing dinghy onto the boat. Everything gets heavier as the day goes by!

Oh gosh, and then it all gets sorted and cleaned and dried and put away…. And did Irene mention that then Rolf has to lift the 90kg compressor out of the locker, onto the deck, re-fill the scuba tanks, carry them to their stands at the back of the boat and put the compressor back? Do I sound tired just writing this all down!?

It really is an exceptional privilege to dive from our boat. We have dived some absolutely awesome places and take nothing for granted. We just love every minute of it. But it is bloody hard work! (For old ballies!) Bring on the crew! Bring on the help! Someone get our stuff together, someone just drop us off there and fetch us afterwards and tell us about the dive site! Next time you dive with a dive operator and DM and have such service… appreciate the privilege that is giving you, too.

4. It can go pear-shaped

So we do love it all, but we also do worry every time, aware of things that can go wrong. And then there was…

Richelieu Rock

Chatting to the National Parks man at the Surins in charge of diving, we were told the shape of the rock face, where the buoys were for Ketoro to tie onto (the surrounding area is too deep to anchor practically) and where the buoy was for the dinghy; it would be easy to tie the dinghy and drop down the buoy line onto the dive site.

We set off at 6am to get there early, and tied Ketoro onto a buoy; the only small yacht amidst three big dive operators.But there was a big live-aboard dive boat on the “dinghy” buoy, and the currents appeared strong (we saw a dive group from a big dive boat being collected by their crew about 300 metres from the site – pinnacle sites are not supposed to be drift dives!);nonetheless we went through preparations (as described above) andapproached the diving boat on our dinghy.

The friendly, hospitable dive master on board invited us to tie on to his boat and come on board where he showed us a sketch of the dive terrain, warning us of areas of strong current. We returned to the dinghy and put on the gear, then fell into the sea and swam to the buoy in order to drop down the line. The sea was a bit rough, so every process had been exhausting, (with the complication of the dinghy being right alongside the big boat and in its wash and lurch and engine discharge water) so we had to wait to get our breath first; we then dropped into a spectacular world of awesome soft and hard corals, gold, purple, russets in the main; fans, waving tendrils, tabletop corals; all manner of corals were the backdrop for shoals of an excellent variety of fish.

But this was a different experience from those we have encountered so far.

The dive site is itself not difficult or dangerous – but the currents on that day were horrendous and unpredictable. Calm behind some of the underwater structures and accelerated phenomenally around others. At one stage Rolf was caught in a current and being swept up the face of the rock at speed and completely out of control – and in danger of being popped to the surface from 15 metres in a couple of seconds (exceptionally dangerous), followed by being swept away on the surface in the middle of the Andaman Sea (which would definitely have finished him off). Fortunately he was wearing gloves and with apologies to nature lovers simply grabbed onto coral to try to slow down – then held tight at the top of that pinnacle and eventually dragged himself back downwards to a safe depth… and Irene, who had lost her “buddy”. However in the process the prolific growth of soft and hard corals, while providing life-saving handholds (and a colourful, scenic backdrop to the action), did each impart their little dose of toxins to unprotected arms and legs.

The next 24 hours were bad – Rolf could not hold down even water; painful cramping of chest and abdomen; restricted breathing; fever and congested, swollen face and lymph glands – a real joy! And of course not knowing whether this was the extent of it or simply the start of something worse. We made our way about 30nm to the mainland and anchored the night at Kao Lak, coincidentally near a Thai naval depot that wouldat least be within reasonable distance of help. Irene did a superb job as resident physician dispensing antispasmodics, corticosteroids,antihistamines and of course repeats of these as quickly as they were brought up;bronchodilators, and TLC. Amazingly we actually had internet coverage from the proximity of Kao Lak and the naval base which enabled some internet based research to supplement the on-board knowledge, and our medical kit had what was necessary. The following day, after initially suggesting a day to stay still and recover, the Admiral decided it would be better to get us to Nai Yang, an area that we knew and would find it easier to get help should it be needed. We set off and got into Nai Yang at dusk supported by a massive storm… lightning, huge winds, torrential rain, little visibility; but it was safe and felt like home.

However Rolf likens himself to a pet mongrel dog we had which was not a picture of robust health and regularly went off colour – but was always able to recover within a day or two with little more than fresh water and a pat on the head! Rolf is now fine and (almost) back to drinking beer.

The lesson learnt? Probably that in view of the effort in setting up for a dive, there is a great danger that the decision to abort a dive, when circumstances indicate, is not easily taken.