J-walking with the locals

Singapore is boring, they say, you get fined for j-walking and littering and there are too many rules about everything. In other words it's a bit like Perth. And like Perth, everyone ignores the rules and does what they want anyway. At least that's been our observation as we've crossed the streets with the locals after checking to the left and to the right for oncoming police officers.

But to concentrate on that is to miss the fact that, firstly, its been that way since the early 19th century, so shouldn't be too surprising, and secondly (and much more interestingly) the food is fantastic. Hot southern indian food, vegetarian indian food, chinese food, malay food and nonya food - it's all here. Perth friends can feel free to sign us up to any weightloss programmes they think appropriate, commencing immediately we arrive.

And we should arrive soon, if the winds are favorable on the high seas, as early tomorrow morning our container ship leaves Singapore port to take us to Fremantle. For fear of seasickness we have with us fresh ginger, preserved ginger, ginger tea, ginger mints and ginger nut biscuits.

Big tropical raindrops

We did find somewhere to stay, eventually, which allowed us to get down to the important Bangkok task of eating lots of Thai food.

But we couldn't stay long - we bought tickets for our last overnight train of the trip - from Bangkok (Hualampong) to Butterworth in Malaysia where there was more eating to do. We discovered that Thai trains are the most comfortable and roomy of all. We also discovered, in Hualampong station, a friend, Ram who we'd met in Ulan Bator and who was one of our companions for our Mongolian road trip. We'd last seen him in Beijing shivering under a beanie in the barely heated Leo Hostel telling everyone what a great and warm travel destination his home of Malaysia is. He invited us to stay with his cousin's family which was a lovely change from our usual accommodation.

After Butterworth, we stayed in Georgetown, Penang for a couple of days wandering around the crumbling colonial streets, dodging rain storms and drinking iced tea by the bucketload. We discovered that Mandarin is widely spoken among the Chinese population there, which would have been really useful if we'd bothered to learn any ourselves.

We took the funicular to the top of Penang Hill (800m or so) where there was a huge tropical rain shower occurring. We waited out the storm in a cafe which sold iced tea for about 20p, then went for a walk in the jungle and watched a family of wild monkeys going about their business in the canopy above.

The next day we took the most luxurious bus in the world to KL where we were meeting Ram again. Our guidebook (actually his guidebook) advised taking a blanket on the bus, as passengers are considered to be perishable goods in need of refrigeration - it was true. In KL there was a huge tropical rain shower occurring. We waited out the storm in a Starbucks which sold us tea for much more than 20p.

no room at the inn

High season in Bangkok, and Khao San Road is jam packed with tanned, relaxed looking travellers. So jam packed that when we arrived yesterday evening, it took quite some time to find accommodation that wasn't full. Not our favorite situation to be stomping around the streets with our packs, particularly as everyone else looked like they were having such a good time.

Then as time wore on we spotted a few more people who, like us, were lugging their packs around trying to find somewhere to stay. We started to recognise them. We started trying to get ahead of them. We started to read the looks on their faces as they were turned away from yet another reception desk.

The crowds milled, people sat in bars sipping fruit shakes and beers, and amongst it all was what looked like a conga line of tortoises.

Goodbye to China

English for monks

Wonderous Laos, with its effortless mix of Lao and French gracefulness, its jungles and bendy roads. A few days is way too short to fully appreciate all this, and we're already trying to work out how soon we can come back again.

On Saturday we caught a bus from Jinghong to Mengla with a bus driver who used his horn as a kind of force-field - as long as he was tooting it, there was no way anything could go wrong, and overtaking around blind corners or over blind crests was therefore perfectly safe. As it turned out, he was right.

From Mengla, where the square was full of people doing Tai Chi early the next morning, we took a bus to the Chinese border. The Chinese border guards practised their english on us, then cheerily waved us goodbye. We took a taxi to the Lao border where the visa guy had a long conversation with us about his sister who lives in Sydney, then put stamps in our passports and waved us on our way. We ate 'pho', Lao noodle soup for early lunch and changed our Yuan for Kip then hung around in the breezy bus shelter and listened to the cicadas singing in the heat. Even waiting in a busstop in a desolate construction site in the jungle made us want to stay forever.

We made it all the way to Udomxai, as we'd hoped. The last time we were here, we camped in the nearby jungle, staying in the town no more than 20 minutes. This time we were pleasently surprised to find the town was quite charming - we visited the local wat and watched the sun set from the hill.

The next day, to Luang Prabang, World Heritage town and star of many recent Sunday travel supplements. It has filled up with stylish hotels and cafes since our last visit, and the river side is bursting with places to buy a papaya shake, but it is still beautiful, and so relaxing. And papaya shakes are a treat.

Unlike last time, we could actually see the nearby mountains. Later in the season there is too much smoke.

And for the privilage of hanging around one of the 53 wats in town, a monk got chatting to us and asked us to help out that evening with his english class. So there we were, standing at the front of a class full of novices dressed in orange robes, reading out lists of nouns and hearing them repeated back in Australian accents.

On the bus again, and the further south we went, the less old jungle we saw, and the more regrowth. This clearing, we gather, is where the smoke comes from. This driver was careful to avoid chickens, pigs and people, but seemed less concerned about massive buses and trucks. He seemed to be having some kind of race as he tested his machine to the limits - bearings crunching as he threw it into the bends. Stopping only to buy some motion sickness bags for his passengers, and ironically, for lunch, he got us to Vientiane in record time, even beating the 'VIP' airconditioned buses which were supposed to be faster.

And now, kicking and screaming, it is time to leave.

Blue trucks

We're currently chilling in the mountains of southern China after spending a few days (and nights) travelling from Guangzhou. The landscape has changed along the way, and we are now in thickly forested hills in 30 degree heat!! On our way here we passed many terraced rice (and wheat and canola) fields cut perfectly into the hills and slopes in beautiful contours.

There are tell-tale signs we are nearing Laos and Thailand - the temples are different, the food is different, signs are written in a scrip similar to Lao (actually called Dai), and you can buy t-shirts saying 'Thailand'.

Yesterday we hired bikes and went for a leisurely tootle around town and some nearby villages - it is so nice to be warm! Today we spent a relaxing day in a huge botanical garden in Jinghong where we're staying, full of sago palms and rubber, mango and jackfruit trees. As this is the most 'rural' we've been in China, it is also interesting to observe a lovely phenomenon we haven't seen in the urban areas - siblings. Apparently the one child policy does not apply to rural areas and minority ethnic groups.

As we near the end of our stay in China we have a few thoughts. (Those not particularly interested in our thoughts can stop reading here.) Firstly, Chinese characters, which looked so incomprehensible to us at first, have actually started becoming recognisable as you stay here for a bit. We probably know about 25 by now, so there's only another 5575 to go before we can read a Chinese newspaper. And a few thousand more if we want to be well educated.

Secondly, we have felt very safe here - for some reason the places which would seem seedy in other cities do not seem seedy here. This is a marked contrast with Russia, where sinister vibes seemed to lurk everywhere.

Watching someone make handmade noodles is a great way to spend a lunchtime. Getting a haircut, hairwash and full head, shoulder and back massage is the BEST way to spend an afternoon - and is embarrassingly cheap.

Finally, is it REALLY necessary for 90% of the trucks to be the same shade of blue?? Big trucks, little trucks, old ones and new ones....always blue. I don't know why that's so annoying, but it is.