Bali - is this a vision of the future?

I last came to Kuta Beach, Bali thirty one years ago. It was a tourist place then, but low key and with charm and I have fond memories of that visit.

Now the reality is the beautiful beach and the friendly people that made it so attractive are still there but buried under commercialism; thousands of stalls selling the same mass produced tat, much of it aimed at the lowest common denominator of taste and a marketing philosophy of getting as much cheap alcohol into people as possible.

In case you haven't worked it out, definitely not to my taste.

Fortunately if you can get away from the tourist strip (which takes quite an effort given the horrendous traffic) the center of the island is still lovely, the scenery, especially the tiered rice paddies climbing up the hillsides and some of the small villages, are in places stunning and the people still friendly. I hired a dirt bike and a guide one day and seeing the small villages with him, and meeting his friends and family, was the highlight of the ten days here.

Phnom Penh (Dec 10)

I wanted to go to Phnom Penh for a variety of reasons, not least the exoticness of the name and all it conjured up of the far East and stories I read when I was young. But there is another side which those of us who grew up in the seventies think of, and that this of course is the association with the Cambodian civil war and the Khmer rouge. They came to power in 1975 and in the three and a half years until they were ousted by the Vietnamese killed either directly, or through starvation, a quarter of the countries population - a level of atrocity I find hard to imagine. What I also find incomprehensible is that despite everyone knowing what they'd done, the Australian, UK, American and many other governments continued to recognize the Khmer rouge as the "legitimate" government for ten further years in a perverse refusal to recognize the communist government of Vietnam could actually done something good. That ten years meant more people died in guerrilla warfare before the remenants of the Khmer rouge finally self destructed. Something I'll try to remember next time I hear my government trying to justify the indefensible.

During the morning I went to visit one of the Khmer rouge jails that has been preserved in the city and also one of the " killing fields " where 9000 bodies were disposed of in mass graves. Profoundly depressing. I took very few pictures at these places and i won't put any of these, except the one of the preserved sign, because they all tend to make the places look prettier and more pleasant than they should ever appear.

The afternoon Megan and I spent walking around the city, mainly taking time in the rather grand Central Market but also walking up the banks of the Mekong river (from whence you can get a boat to Vietnam - now that's definitely something to do in the future)  and watching Cambodians out enjoying themselves.

To Phonm Penh

From Siem Reap it's a claimed six hour bus journey to the capital Phomn Penh, but the reality is more like nine. Not to worry I like local bus journeys, looking out at the scenery, watching life happening at the roadside, looking out the front window and watching the truck approaching head on in the other direction and wondering if one of us is going to pull in in time - certainly never boring. Driving in Cambodia initially appears really anarchic, but once you watch for awhile you realize there is quite a sophisticated system working around you. Rule one is only ever worry about what's in front of you, rule two blow your horn everytime you overtake to let those concentrating on rule one know you're there, rule three always let the overtaking vehicle back in - no road rage here despite the massively overcrowded roads and vast disparity in vehicle speeds, and it all seems to work remarkably well. It's also noteworthy we saw no accidents whilst we were here, and virtually no vehicles with signs of accident damage.

The journey itself went well, with only one unexplained stop whilst they did something to the engine but like everywhere there are quirks; in Cambodia the buses need to be thoroughly washed off all their road grime immediately before entering Phnom Penh - never discovered why, but it made a nice half hour interlude on the journey and a place to buy our (late) lunch.

Siem Reap again (Dec 7 & 8)

So why did we come back to Siem Reap again? Two reasons, mainly to see more of the temples but also so yesterday I could only in the Angkor Wat half marathon.

Running this half marathon was one of those things that looked like a great idea at the time - it was on at the same time as when we are in Cambodia why not do it? As always I thought there was plenty of time to train for it, and as ever I let things interrupt those plans, so come race day I was definitely under prepared. As it was it didn't go to badly. It was the hottest and most humid half I've ever run and I can use that as a partial excuse for my slowest ever time (2 hours 12 minutes), but at least I made it around without stopping.  Irrespective of the time it was a great event to run in, partly because of the  beauty of the course as it winds it's way around the temple complexes, partly because of the enthusiastic locals who lined the course are (and especially the kids who " high fived" so much that my arm wasdo,s worn out as your legs by the end) and partly by the size of the field you run with. I hadn't realized that this was part of a circuit keen amateur runners do, and there were about 1500 people doing the half marathon and another 6500 doing a shorter 10k or 3k course - a good half or more of these runners being foreigners like me.

The run had started at just after six and we were back at the hotel by nine so in theory we had a whole day in front of us to use productively- instead I used post-run recovery as an excuse to been around all day drinking beer and watching movies - this is meant to be a holiday after all.

Today we did get back to doing the tourist thing, visiting some of the more outlying temples. Below is a picture of our transport for the day, and (hopefully) some video footage of the fun on the roads out here. As ever for me the traveling is at least as important as the destination.

The first temple we visited was the very tumble down Beng Melea - Megan first saw this complex ten years ago when it was very overgrown and so unvisited that for several hours she had it all to herself. Today it's somewhat different, whilst still relatively unvisited compared to the temples close to town it still had half a dozen large tourist buses at the entrance when we arrived. Fortunately it is large enough (just) to absorb the current crowd.

As you walk into the site a big sign says the standard things like "stick to set paths", " don't climb things"  etc. We quickly discovered that because this not part of the main complex it is not actually very controlled and the local guide we hired (or more correctly attached herself to us) obviously hadn't read it and soon had us scrambling up rock piles and around ledges to see the interesting stuff. She also fortunately had a smattering of English;enough to explain all the important stuff but not so much that she bored you to tears with facts that you are going to instantly forget. As we followed her around it was obvious she had a limp but it didn't seem to hinder her to much and we didn't pay any attention to it. It was only at the end did she reveal she actually had an artificial leg having lost one to a mine explosion- an instant reminder of the countries bloody recent history. Below are a few shots from the site.

From Being Melea it was another two hours of rural travel to see "The river of a thousand linga's" (linga = penis, I kid you not). The Hindu religion is a bit fixated on these, Freud would probably had a field day.  The location  was very beautiful though.

And finally as we would or way home from a long day, Bantaey Srei, which whilst small has exquisite carving on its stonework.

It's only after you've been here a short while do realize what a variety there is in the Khymer temples and how the style developed over four or five hundred years of the empires peak. You also realize how priveliged you are too see it all within a short distance; it's the same as if all Europe's key cathedrals were within 50 miles of each other.

Battambang and back to Siem Reap

Battambang turned out to be a lovely little town, untidy, chaotic but great fun to just walk around and watch life happening.

Outside town though is one of its real attractions the "bamboo railway". The pictures below explain it better than wordsNow  can do, but in essence the rolling stock, and I use that term loosely, consist of nothing but two axles, a basic timber and bamboo platform and a lawn mower sized engine driving through an old fan-belt. These are all built as lightly as possible so that if two meet going in the opposite direction, the lightest loaded could quickly be lifted off the track to let the other go through - what a simple solution to a single track railway! Apparently for awhile in the eighties and nineties these were quite common in Cambodia as a simple way of moving goods up and down the countries badly damaged railway tracks. Now most have gone but Battambsngs lives on (though by the looks of it 100%as a tourist attraction rather than as a load carrier).

Riding on it is as much fun as it looks; they jolt around terribly because of the condition of the track, but still manage to hurtle on at (reputedly) up to forty kilometers an hour. Hopefully there will be a video link in this post to give you a bit of a feel for it.

After a couple of nights in Battambang we headed back to Siem Reap by luxury coach - seating arrangements were interesting.

Actually, just kidding, this was only a local bus that took us the first few k's from the town center to the bus station proper. The coach we had for most of the journey whilst tired was much more normal in its seating layout and quite adequate.

Cambodia (1- 3 Dec 2014)

The next few weeks posts won't, for once, be about a bike trip. More of that is coming soon but in the meantime I'm going to use this blog as a place to record other travels.

Years of living in Australia but mostly holidaying in Europe has always let me feeling slightly guilty that I'm not visiting my own backyard of Asia more frequently - in fact my only real trip there was in 1983 on my way to Australia. So I've vowed to travel there more often in the next few years and this is the first step - three weeks split equally between Cambodia and Bali.

December the first saw Megan and I step onto a plane at Sydney and less than 24 hours later, after a brief overnight in Kuala Lumpur, arrive in Siem Reap, Cambodia.

Why Siem Reap? Well its the town that sits beside Angkor Wat (and as I soon discovered many other equally, but differently spectacular temples), somewhere I've wanted to visit for many years. Megan has been here before but for me a complete new experience. We spent our first day in town doing the temples; up early to see sunrise at Angkor Wat then on to some of the other key ones. The scale of the place is what blows you away. Angkor Wat is supposedly the largest individual religious building in the world, and it's just one of many other huge structures- all superbly crafted out of stone; different to the European cathedrals but equally stunning. When you start reading about Khmer history you realize just what a limited view of the world we learn at school - in the twelve centuary they had a city of a million people when the population of London was just fifty thousand. Anyway here are a few photos just to whet your appetite.

On to Battambang (Dec 4)

After only a day on Siem Reap we're on the move already to visit a small provincial town of Battembang. When I was planning the trip the main attraction for going there was the journey to it by boat - reputedly the most scenic in the country. Well it fully lived up to it's billing; seven hours of travel across lakes and down narrow waterways where you could really see both the natural beauty of the country and the basic lives of many of the people. Cambodia has the lowest average income in Asia at under $3000 per year and you could see the reality of this on the poor riverside communities we passed through- but balanced against this were the smiles and waves from everyone.

 Shall we sayloading standards are interesting

Suddenly Ireland's almost over

Hard to know where the time has gone. We've been here nearly three weeks and in two days this part of the trip is over and it's off to the IoM for the bike races.

Is been a fantastic trip overall. The usual little trials and tribulations of two people traveling in close company and one big one when we managed to drop the bike whilst Megan was getting on to it. Unfortunately she ended up the bottom of the pile, with me and bike on her and consequently had a very sore and stiff leg and knee for the last two weeks. It's now being better but so slowing her down a bit - but she's taken it amazingly stoicly.

The trip itself has been predominantly a tour of the Irish coast heading clockwise from Rosslare where we landed to our current location of Derry. The only significant inland excursion was in the first few days of the trip, when we visited Glendalough, site of a seat of Irish learning in the 9th to 12th centuries, and more importantly for us the name of the farm in Australia that Megan (who is proudly of Irish descent) grew up on and has (until very recently) been in her family for several generations. A few pictures of Glendalough (including of a circular bell tower that are very typical all over southern Ireland) below.

Catch up photos

Just a few photos. For various reasons I haven't been able to be as organise with either my blogging or photography as I would have liked for this trip. You'll just have to accept that Ireland is an incredibly beautiful country and has wonderful scenery around most corners. The trouble is a lot of its panoramas which really don't photo well. Also whilst we've been reasonably lucky with the weather with only a few really wet days there have been a lot of overcast ones - which has also not helped the photo count.

The trips beginning

Well bike is successfully reassembled, and after a 500k test ride I'm reasonably happy it is running OK and is likely to be able to do a few thousand more over the next few weeks without too much risk of problems. Fingers all crossed as I write that.

More importantly my girlfriend Megan has arrived safely in UK. We spent a few days together in Bath and Swansea so she had a chance to get over jet lag and also to meet my family. In fact she got the full whammy of family in one go as both my sons are currently in the UK as well as my father, brothers and their families.

I have to admit some worry at the start of the trip. I don't normally carry a pillion even at home; here on a fully loaded bike is going to be an interesting learning experience. In also in awe of Megan being brave enough to choose to come on this trip with me, given she's only known me a few weeks.

Getting ready for Ireland

Suddenly late April is here and I'm back in the UK for another motorcycle ride. 

The main purpose of the trip is to rebuild the bike post its theft recovery and then give it an extended ride  to see if it's survived  well enough to do another longer trip later in the year. It's also an excuse for me to cross an item of my bucket list by going to Ireland and then on to the Isle of Man for the TT races.

This trip is also a bit different to the past in that I have a girlfriend and hence passenger with me.

The bikes been stolen!

Title says it all.  Woke up this morning ready to load the bike for the big off.  Repairs all complete nothing else left to do; world is good.  Looked out the window and there is the cover and my tank panniers on the ground complete with a cut chain but no bike; world is suddenly bad.

 I'm now over the shock and doing what I can to get it back - but the odds are long. I've contacted the local press and local radio has put a story on the hourly bulletin (thank you Swansea Sound) and that has led to one sighting in Swansea city centre (the Australian number plate is a give away) so there is some hope.  Also hoping the local evening paper will run the story and photo's tonight.

So if you are in Swansea area please keep a look out for the white, green and blue bike featured in this blog and last seen with an Australian number plate NSW 37.  it is also missing its windscreen as I have picked that up from the road near the house - presumably ripped off as they hot-wired it.

Part 2 starts - re-building the bike.

10th December 2011 I finished my last trip - Vladivostok to the UK - and I remember the mixed feelings of the day.  Elation, I had made it by motorcycle over twenty six thousand kilometres and five months of wonderful experiences, but depression - it was all over.  On that day somewhere in the rain in north Wales I made a pact to myself that it wasn't finished - that it was only the end of part one.  Well part two has now arrived and I've decided to head to north Africa for a couple of months.

To let this happen, and to also to allow for future parts 3, 4 where if all goes well I'll finish looping the world, over the past four months I have completely reorganized my life. I've resigned from my job, sold my family house and generally sorted things so most commitments keeping me in Australia are removed. All this has been helped a bit by both my sons, Jack and Duncan, also now being impacted by the wanderlust bug and being off traveling the world and generally doing their own thing (thanks boys!).

First task has been to reactivate my travel bike. After the last trip it had been left covered in my father's garden in the UK, but about a year ago during a brief work trip that took me to the UK I stripped it down and shipped the engine and frame back to Australia so I could rebuild a very tired engine and reactivate it's lapsed Australian  registration.

With the engine re-built and registration sorted out the bits were shipped back to the UK.

 

 

 

And then with the kindness of my father, whose car was evicted out of his garage to stand outside for a week in some very wintry Welsh weather the bike has been fully re-built and is now running beautifully.

 

 



 

 

My actual departure is about a week away since whilst the engine rebuild appears to have been successful the one part of the bike that hasn't survived the layup is the front brake - a perished hose making performance decidedly dodgy- a new one is due soon which should then make future rides less "interesting".

 

The plan originally was to do a full trans Africa, north to south trip, but a few issues many to do with my under-estimating the time and stress in selling the house and doing all the other preparations has made that difficult to achieve this, so now we have a modified two part plan: part 2A (this trip) should involve:

• A week or so of January 2014 looping parts of the UK to make sure the bike rebuild is truly successful and making sure I have brought all my gear.
• France, Spain (and maybe parts of Portugal) .
• Catching the ferry to Morocco for a bit of unstructured exploring.
• Return to UK late February or early March to layup the bike again for a few months
• Back to Australia for 3-5 months to sort out a few things and save some money
• Then Part 2B - a full trans Africa trip.

Hopefully this blog will be updated regularly during the trip so you'll be able to find out how I get along (the hopefully mainly refers to the fact that I am trying to do all this via a tablet rather than a laptop and it is proving a slightly trying learning experience).