Morocco 101

Spain on left, Africa on the right

The first few days in Morocco have flowns by and it's been a great experience with lots of learning about a different way of life. Leaving the ferry terminal was really the end of Europe and since then we've (myself and the two other Australian motorcyclists, Craig and Jenni, I met on the ferry) have quickly been learning things are done differently in Arabian Africa.

First stop was the town of Tetouan about 30k south which is where we got our "Morocco 101". We only pulled into get fuel for the bikes but within minutes are taken in hand by a local tourist hustler (starting with the obligatory where are you from? to establish which language to use - but then following the reply somewhat bizarrely with "lubbly jubbly" a phrase I haven't heard since watching Alexi Sasyle in the Young Ones in the eighties). After helping us get fuel he passed us on to his friend who offered us secure parking and then the next one who offered to guide us round the lanes of the Medina (traditional walled market and housing area with labyrinth lanes only a few feet wide - enter without a guide and you will be quickly lost), followed by someone else to try and sell us the obligatory carpet and souvenirs, someone else to sell a meal and so on. We quickly learned that in Morocco there is always someone immediately available to help you with your every need. Of course everyone wants paying  - but it's very little; that first few hours in Tetouan cost us each less than $15, well over what we probably should have paid, but still a bargain to have the bikes guarded, to be fed and guided and well informed about the history and working of the Medina over several hours.

From there we continued about another 100km south to Chefchouan to stop for the night. The experience above repeated itself for finding a hotel and parking for the bikes, though after the first experience we now (probably falsely) felt a little more in control. Chefchouan is famous for the picturesque nature of its Medina where for some historical reason I never understood, is painted predominantly in blue.

From there it was on to Meknes to enable a visit to the Roman ruins at Volubilus - an amazing 40 hectare site where it is still write possible to see the overall structure of the city which functioned for five hundred years from 200 BC onwards. What was amazing about it was not only the state of preservation but also the unfettered access you have just to wander around with only minimal barriers and restrictions

One week in France

Currently on a ferry and in three hours, all being well, I finally enter Morocco - both an exciting and slightly intimidating thought. The past week has been a fast trip down through France.

Start of the week saw me arriving in Cherbourg from where it was a short ride into Normandy where I stopped in Bayeaux one night intending to see some of the D Day beaches and sights and the famous tapestry . The former was successful and very thought provoking, the latter unsuccessful as the tapestry museum, like many in France as I later discovered, was closed for January (in fact the whole of the north of France gave a feeling of being closed for the month). Bayeaux cathedral also turned out to be a magnificent sight.

My My hotel for the night 

Arrowmanche beach and remains of the Mulberry Harbour

After that it was a quick trip cross country,avoiding the auto routes and using the backroads so I actually saw some of the towns, to Lyon where I caught up with Duncan.

 It was ingreat seeing him again after 6 months or so. We spent the first night wandering around the town and then next day hopped on a train and went to Geneva in Switzerland. Duncan really wanted to see the exhibition at the Large Hadron Collider ( Google it) there and since it was only two hours away it seemed to good an opportunity to miss. The exhibition was good but do was just wandering around the edge of Lake Geneva looking at the Alps in the background, all together a great day.

The next day we both headed down to Marseille (him by train, me on the bike) where we meet up again for another two days. We both really liked Marseille - it had a really lovely feel about it with energy that had in winter been missing elsewhere in France.

 It was a great four days that I spent with Duncan and I think we both were sorry that it came to an end to quickly but we both had our separate plans. He was seeing of to hitch to Spain, hopefully Barcelona, and I for Morocco.

Having used up a week getting across to the south of France, I decided to abandon my original plan of riding down to the tip of Spain to do the crossing as that would have used up another week and instead have taken the weekly ferry that runs from Sete, two hours west of Marseille, direct to Tangier. It's a thirty hour trip, but it's been smooth and comfortable. It's also passed quickly as there are two other traveling motorcyclists onboard, also Australians, and so we have spent much of the time comparing notes and plans and it is likely we will now travel together for the first day or two.

Wish me well in Morocco.

Morocco - hereI come

January 2014 was supposed to be the start date of a trip down to Morocco, but with the bike begin stolen in the UK before I even got going it never happened. Fortunately it was recovered a few weeks later, but somewhat worse for wear so that trip never happened; now one year on with it fully (he says with fingers crossed) repaired I'm having another go.

Yesterday I left my father's house in Swansea (where the bike has been hibernating in his garden summer house) and made it to Poole on the south coast of the UK. Today I'm on the ferry - next stop France and riding on the wrong side of the road.

The plan is a couple of days in Normandy looking at some of the D Day memorials and then down to Lyon in mid France to catch up with Duncan my youngest son, who is currently hitchhiking around Europe, then I'll ride on down into Spain before catching the ferry into Morocco. Unfortunately I'll only have about 3 weeks there before I have to head back to the UK to park the bike again as I've promised to be back at work in Australia in late February.

However this is only a taster - the plan is to come back in the second half of the year and start my long talked about trip down the length of Africa - and if that works onto the America's. You've got have dreams!

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.