Singapore

God I love Singapore. Let me count the ways. There are footpaths, it's clean, the street food is safe, no one cares if I buy anything, they have trees, and grass, there are no wild dogs or cows, they have public transport, they have a functional government, most people speak good English, clear signposting, nothing smells bad, no one urinates in public, the zoo doesn't make you feel guilty...

So anyway suffice to say Singapore is the anti-India, and long may it continue. We landed early in the morning and after retrieving some cash and filling the void with some Mickey D's we took the metro into town. We checked into a wee hostel next to Chinatown, just three strip-mall shops joined together, but very well run and terribly clean.

We proceeded to wander the streets of Singapore which are of course terribly clean and more tree lined than you might expect. Although there was still a lot of leftover barriers and light scaffolding around from the recent Singapore Grand Prix. Unfortunately the streets were also terribly hot so we tried to make as much progress as possible while wandering through the numerous gloriously air-conditioned malls scattered around town. We visited the famous Merlion statue on the waterfront, although as fas as icons go it is fairly underwhelming.

But of course Singapore is a bastion of not only good manners, but culture so visits to the Asian Civilizations Museum, and the Art Museum were executed. The Asian Civilizations museum in particular was outstanding with excellently presented displays from all over South East Asia, including the immigrant cultures that make up so much of Singapore and Malaysia. The Art Museum was good as far as my appreciation for art stretches, but I think our favourite display in the whole place was the enormous light fitting in the stairwell. Although we could tell it was definitely an installation as every time we tried to get a close look at it a loud buzzer sounded and we had to jump away lest we earn one of the infamous Singaporean instant fines.

Actually fine posters seem to make up a large percentage of the modern Singaporean psyche, not only were they everywhere: No Littering $500, No Smoking $1000, No Chewing Gum $1000. But they got quite specific: No Durians (on public transport) $1000, No Urinating in the Elevator $1000. And of course then every tourist that wasn't wearing an OK-la T-shirt was wearing one with the full set of fine posters so it was actually pretty easy to remember to behave ourselves.

We got a chance to head out to Singapore Zoo which we really enjoyed despite the afternoon drizzle (it was a British colony remember). The zoo was incredibly lushly planted with tropical vegetation which went a long way to making it seem much more like a well-organised jungle than a zoo. The highlight for me was the proboscis monkeys which were much bigger than I had expected, and even managed to maintain some self respect despite their ridiculously large floppy noses. Obviously I have a thing for animals with odd noses as we also spent quite a while peering at the shy Malayan tapirs. Unfortunately pygmy hippos seem to be just slightly too large to keep on in the bath-tub so I may have to get a spa. They also had a walk in enclosure with a large family of bats, strutting brightly coloured birds, ring-tailed Lemurs, and the odd large rodent which all took turns darting out across the path or appearing a few feet away at head height.

Food in Singapore is incredibly cheap, both absolutely and relatively, with most people seeming to head to one of the hawker centres for every meal. The hawker centres are just large low rent food courts decorated with innumerable ceiling fans where you can buy pretty much any 'Asian' food if you look hard enough. There were two right besides our hostel so I don't think I actually managed to digest my way down to hungry before it was time for another meal (although the heat did certainly help to suppress our appetites).

Chinatown itself just seemed to be a collection of small street stalls and restaurants with nothing much to differentiate it from the rest of town, but it did host a beautiful, and very popular Buddhist Temple which was ridiculously clean and shiny (all Buddha's should be shiny) despite the bus loads of Chinese package tourists (complete with flag-waver and identical baseball caps) who arrived throughout the day. Its always hilarious for us to creep round one of these temples trying not to disturb anybody only to have a bus load of full volume Chinese tourists tramp past us occasionally pausing to light incense.

After our long delay in India we were feeling the need to move onward, so after just a couple of days we took the bus the oh so convenient (and fast) bus up the coast to Malacca in Malaysia.

India: Hates You

Having finished up our time in India we jumped into a taxi to Chennai airport eager for all the civilization we could handle in Singapore. But alas fate had other things in store for us. We successfully negotiated the armed guards at the door that demand to see your tickets before you are allowed in, then look stunned at the temerity of someone actually using electronic tickets in this day and age, and just ask you again as if you will suddenly have sprouted tickets as part of the natural ageing process.

But we made it inside, checked in, and waited for the emigration queue to wind its way forward. At last we reached the desk and the disaster started to unfold. It turned out that contrary to what the Jordanian Indian Embassy told us, the Visa we had was not valid for three months from date of entry but three months from date of issue so we were about a week overdue having spent only six weeks in India. At this point things still seemed OK but it should have been obvious that this is not the kind of country where you make any kind of mistake. Unlike say a modern open nation like Myanmar where overstaying a tourist Visa is punishable by a 3USD/day slap on the wrist, the Indian government in its infinite wisdom saw to the heart of the matter and decreed that overstayers shall be punished in the most dreadful way imaginable. By not being allowed to leave.

They pulled our bags from the plane and told us to go visit the Visa office in Chennai on Monday. Of course they couldn't even get that right as we had to wait from Saturday night till Tuesday morning for the office to be open. Then it was a matter of completing the Indian bureaucracy scavenger hunt. We had to provide a bank cheque for the hefty fine, because obviously the Indian government would not be able to accept something as ludicrous as Indian cash as a means of payment. We had to provide a letter stating why we had overstayed which makes a small amount of sense in a schoolyard "say you're sorry" kind of way. We had to provide a signed letter on hotel letterhead from our hotel confirming where we were staying, cos if it was the wrong place we definitely couldn't be allowed to cease staying there. And of course new passport photos and photocopies of passports and visas, because that's what all the cool countries ask for, right?

So another day lost to the scavenger hunt, then another day for 'processing' and we had a hopefully unique half page stamp in our passports and there was only the ritual shaking of dust from our feet (well my feet, Jacquie is more forgiving) before we jetted off to Singapore, and let me tell you organised authoritarianism never smelled so sweet.

PS: Luckily I still love India due to every second ad on the telly during our stay in Chennai being paid for by the Indian Ministry of Tourism.

PPS: The Singapore Airlines staff in Chennai are awesome helpful people, who never gave us an ounce of crap though they definitely could of.

India: Ooty to Mahabalipuram

Continuing our ascent we reached Ooty (that's short for Ootacamund which is short for Udhagamandalam). Ooty was one of the hill stations that the British retreated to, when the lowlands got too hot for them. Getting into the mood of things we started splurging immediately and checked into Kings Cliff Hotel way up one of the hill sides. Once I saw it had an actual bona-fide shower cubicle I couldn't walk away. Of course it also had a fireplace in the room and was about three feet away from a great restaurant so we were pretty happy (except for when it was really cold and we tried to actually use the fireplace and we were completely smoked out so that we had to open the windows and let the cold back in (but that was just a blip, honestly)).

We did a government run tour around the near by lake and hills etc. Not only was it cheap but it was also very cheap. Attractions included driving around various hotels for an hour picking up people who weren't ready yet, visiting pungent lake Watapu (not its real name, but terribly descriptive), and trawling around some hills covered in tea and trees and the occasional botanic garden. The last bit was actually really fun, as tea plantations (and hills) are naturally very scenic, and watching all the middle-class Indians on the tour take photos pretending to be borderline poverty stricken tea picking Indians was fairly amusing (apparently 75% of bollywood filmi music videos have at least one scene in a tea plantation).

With the lack of insufferable heat (and occasional genuine cold) we found ourselves doing strange things like walking places (we walked the half hour from our hotel to town just for the fun of it), and being able to buy bag loads of home-made chocolate which they gleefully sell all over town. Of course the second bag made us sick (the Indian kind, not the ohh I just ate two bags of chocolate kind) but it was probably worth it just to get Jacquie a much needed fix.

Regretfully we had to make our way out of the hills to Kochin for the next leg of our trip. But in a fit of unprecedented oarsomeness the Indian government laid on a steam powered rack rail train down the hill. The cars were old-school (with no internal access), dinky, and packed. So much so the guards reallocated our seats so they could pack another partition with additional (fun-sized) locals. Having been moved we found ourselves sitting opposite another couple of NZers, and proceeded to jam a large amount of kiwi catch up into all the bits of the journey where I wasn't hanging out the window looking at the steam train or trying to take photos of the hilly tree-clad panoramas sweeping past on our right.

But of course all good things come to an end and we had to catch a bus, spend the night in grubby old Coimbatore and then catch another (dull diesel) train to make it to the port city (and old Portugese colony) of Kochi. We found quite a nice hotel in the new town and set off to explore the old town aka Fort Cochin. Getting there we got to take one of the local ferries which puttered us sedately across the harbour in half an hour but gave us a great view of all the various inlets, small islands, and waterfront buildings.

The symbol of Kochi are the numerous 'Chinese' fishing nets lining the waters edge. These large wooden contraptions involve big square nets being pulled in and out of the water flat-wise by long cantilevered poles and a team of half a dozen men. I was tricked into helping them out for a few catches, hauling on the ropes and acting as twice the ballast of any of my co-workers. Apparently they only operate the nets just so tourists like me can give them miserly tips, as there aren't enough fish most of the year to make up for their trouble. After this I needed a little bit of a sit down, so we pulled up a tree root and watched a lively game of cricket contested by some local lads. Jacquie even tried her luck as the international umpire in a contested run out, although I'm not sure they believed that tourists should know anything about cricket.

The other thing Kochi is known for is its Antiques shops. A long way back there were a whole lot of Jews in Kochi and being Jews they did very well for themselves, but with the creation of the state of Israel the vast majority of them packed up shop and headed for the holy land. Only there is only so much shop you can pack, so many house loads of high-grade furniture and artifacts were offloaded onto the local market and continued to be onsold for many years afterwards. Of course all the original items are long gone but the shops remain and were a wonderful source of things that were much too heavy for us to buy, although we did find a few small things. We also got to visit the local synagogue which was the first one we've actually been allowed into throughout the whole trip. And it was worth it as it had a very informative display on the history of the Cochin Jews and the synagogue proper was tiled in very nice hand painted blue-on-white Chinese tiles, which made for quite a cultural contrast.

We had much better tour luck in Kochi and took to the back waters behind Kochi with a random assortment of other foreigns and even another kiwi. We took to the big wide waterways on the perfectly flat water and headed out amongst the islands, not that you could tell what was an island and what was the main land. It was all uniformly flat and palm tree laden. We had to navigate around old men is small boats carefully scraping small shellfish from the river bottom with long dustpan like devices. We soon arrived at our first destination, a combination palm sap farm and lime factory. The aforementioned shellfish are way too small to eat, so they just burn them to lime. The palm sap is entirely more interesting as someone would shimmy up a tree, whack a hole in it, and then set a clay pot underneath to catch the sap. The clay pot is important as if the sap is placed in anything else it starts to ferment and six hours later you have palm toddy (and a little while after that you have yucky palm vinegar). So of course we bought some and immediately lamented that six hours was far too long to wait for my tree blood to become an intoxicant.

Soon we were divied up to two smaller boats and started cruising the the tiny canals that criss cross the area. This was actually quite the wildlife trip as despite motoring past a lot of homes, we saw kingfishes, lesser racquet tailed drongos (according to Jacq), and even an itty bitty water snake. We also got a demonstration of coir rope making. Coir is the hairy husk of a coconut and its the fibre that typifies the brown hairy door mat. The rope is made with a small motor which the rope makers feeds a few strands into and then backs away feeding strands into the end of the growing rope as the motor twists them all together.

The main culinary feat of Kerala as far as I'm concerned is Meen Pollichathu. I discovered it by accident ordering pretty at much random, and it is a fantastic dish of steamed fish flavoured with tamarind cooked in banana leaves which makes it fantastically soft and aromatic. I will definitely be on the lookout for a supplier on my return to Auckland.

Further down the coast is the traveller ghetto of Varkala. Just a collection of hotels, restaurants and used book stores perched on cliffs above the ocean. There is supposedly a good beach here, but the huge surf must have washed it away (as it had part of the promenade). I managed one swim although Jacq didn't make it all the way in, it was like Piha on a biggish day with very shifty sand and no life-guards. So mainly we put our feet up, read, ate, and caught up on our feed readers.

By now we were feeling the full effects of the rubbish buses in South India. It took us the whole day to negotiate the three different super-slow buses to get down to Kanyakumari, the Cape Reinga of India (but all upside down). Unfortunately it lacks the hills, and the mixing oceans, but it does have a 40m statue of a Tamil poet-saint built onto an offshore islet. We got shuttled around between that island and another temple-clad island by a very dodgy old ferry and spent most of the time trying to work out which bits of rock had been out of the sun the longest and were therefore the coolest.

Heading back north again and we had an even worse run with buses with huge waits for buses to just start moving. But we got to Madurai a few hours after nightfall and stumbled our way into a somewhat decent hotel that somehow managed to seem entirely disreputable. It wasn't the accommodation, which was classic Indian two-star, clean, dull, and basic, but all the staff seemed to pause at odd times during conversation, trying to pay for breakfast caused all kinds of confusion, and we never allowed to use the lift by ourselves. We were in Madurai to visit the enormous and of course very old temple with its incredibly detailed brightly painted entrance towers. The towers are 40-50 metres tall, and consist of layer upon layer of various plasterwork Hindu deities, making for quite an eye boggling spectacle. We managed to show up on the day of a major festival so the place was packed and we (as non-Hindus) were barred from quite a large amount of the temple. Although this is quite normal for the larger temples in India where there is usually a more holy enclosure in the centre reserved for the devout, while a larger area surrounding it is open to all and (appropriately dressed) sundry. The outer area in question this time had a music and dance performance stage, bangle shops, and children running all over the place, while others prostrated themselves before, burned incense for, and circumambulated various idols. Oh and there was an Elephant.

Temple Elephants have got to be the very bestest part of all Hindu religion. The deal is basically that you search the temple your in until you find an elephant. It may be hiding behind a pillar or another statue of an elephant (or an elephant shaped deity). You ensure you have correct change, elephants do not give change. You join the back of the queue and shuffle up respectfully (queues in front of elephants are the only ones in all of India that follow the traditional western notion of a slow moving single line of people). Upon reaching the front of the queue you offer your money to the elephant. The elephant takes your money with the tip of its trunk which though circular has a top and bottom (or front and back) that can easily grasp things much like a person wearing mittens. If your offering is a coin it slips the coin backwards slightly into the pile of other coins it is holding in its trunk-hand. If your offering is a note it will surreptitiously hand off the note to its trainer. Then the elephant taps you on the forehead and you are bless-ed. What could be simpler.

Actually it gets better because the elephant is even kid-friendly. If you were to guide a terrified looking two-year old towards the elephant it will lower its trunk to the childs level, and then very gently and slowly accept its coin (with and almost audible "taa") and perform a gentle head tap, and then its back up to speed for the next applicant.

Bla bla bla, monstrous buses, bla bla bla, Thanjavur. Thanjavur was a quick stop to have a look at the old palace grounds which were not very palatial but did have an extensive collection of Chola bronzes and a tower. With a whale in it. The bronzes were, well bronze and they were mostly of a lady with many arms standing in a circle. I understand people who are knowledgeable on such things could probably break it down a lot further but it was hot and Hindu art was starting to run together a little. So we climbed a tower, it was big and square and breezy with tiny little stairways and on the third floor there was a complete whale skeleton. Maybe 20 metres long and looking a little lost.

Pondicherry next. An old French colony it promised access to middle quality baked goods and a certain sea-side charm. It got there on the baked goods but the sea-side was pretty barren, and no french charm was in evidence. In fact we had another odd hotel experience, after trying hard to choose one of the few that was not associated with the nearby Auroville commune we indeed wound up at a lovely boutique hotel with the least friendly manageress ever. If in fact I cared what a hotel manager thought of me, I would have been quite offended by the disdainful looks and the look of disappointment when we announced that we were quite happy to stay in a non-smoking, non-drinking establishment and would even promise to take off our shoes at the door. OK I was actually a little offended, but I stayed there and paid for it just to spite her (and yes I am sure that was an effective retaliation).

Mahabalipuram is actually quite nice, even if it is largely unpronounceable. Its claim to fame is having been a stone-carving mecca for many hundreds of years. The town is tiny, about eight streets in a grid but has all kinds of stone monuments scattered about allegedly as advertising for the work of the previous occupants as the town is not at all sacred. So we had a good time, paid our 500 rupees a piece to see the famous shore temple, and then had a good time looking at all the stuff that is in the local park.

India: Goa to Madumalai

Crikey. We went to India. Again. For quite some time.

It started with the flight into Mumbai and procuring some onward tickets to Goa from the airport. I'd never bought tickets from an airport before, who knew people that weren't criminals or travel show contestants did that sort of thing. The prospect of dealing with the swirling maelstrom of Mumbai had overwhelmed us and we decided that what we were much keener on relaxation than fighting for train tickets or worse yet succumbing to the windy overnight bus trip. So pretty soon we arrived in the mostly military airport at Dabolim and headed out to our old stomping ground at Benaulim beach.

We had arrived during the tail end of monsoon season and our taxi driver had to make several calls before we established that none of the hotels at the north end of the beach were open yet. On a whim we ducked into the Royal Palms resort for some comparative pricing and were offered an apartment for a mere 1000 rupees a night. (~30NZD). Little did we know we weren't actually staying at the resort but in an unoccupied privately owned apartment, but once we got through the confusion and the language barrier, it seemed that as long as we didn't bug the pool boy for towels we'd be fine.

There are many fine beaches to stay at in Goa, each catering to a different set, there are big five star resorts and beach shacks with the menus printed in Cyrillic. There are hippy markets and villages notorious for their chemically amplified British revellers. But Benaulim is pretty sleepy tucked in the middle of it all, and during monsoon it is even sleepier (and quite a lot wetter). Half the restaurants weren't open so we ended up at the same places repeatedly tucking into the fresh fresh and feeling my way around the Indian classics I'd forgotten about. Jacquie of course was lamenting both her inability to tolerate spicy food and Indian chefs inability to implement simple "No Chilli please" instructions, but with food so cheap most of the time we could get more than enough to please both of us.

I'd picked up an all in one copy of Lord of the Rings at Mumbai airport and this was a great aid to our initial relaxation. As was the good sized pool where we both practised our swimming to the point of sore shoulders (not particularly hard to achieve for me). The only hindrance was the complete lack of tolerable internet, the computers were from the 90s, and the shops only opened for a few unusual hours each day. But pretty soon we accomplished our goal of doing absolutely nothing for several days and even joined the dinner circuit making friends with an Indian-American and his English wife who we ate with several times.

Soon though it was time to start moving a little and we hired a couple of scooters and took to the streets. Not only did this give us access to some more restaurants up the beach but we explored nearby Madgoan town (busy and dull), raided the local used bookshop (a lot emptier when we left) and generally tooled around the tiny lanes between palm trees and decaying Portuguese cathedrals.

Of course all this zipping around could only lead to the inevitable monsoon downpour montage. We had driven about half an hour from home when the sky's opened with a ferocity, we sheltered for a bit but the rain really had set in for the afternoon so we proceeded to drive back to the resort through the rain. It was slow, and it was very very wet, wet to your undies wet, there is no distinguishing you from someone who just walked into the swimming pool fully clothed wet. But for obvious reasons Indian money is waterproof, and the camera was looked after, the only casualty of the incident was Jacquie's 20 year old pocket alarm clock which now tells time much more cryptically than before with only about 75% of its liquid crystals, umm crystallizing.

After our vacation we headed off for our adventure into the real India. A long train ride with a fantastic view of the waterfalls in Eastern Goa took us up to Hospet, the town near the Hampi ruins. The various temples and things that make up the Hampi site are spread over a large area and while we walked a lot we ended up taking several rickshaws around the place. Some of the temples are very well preserved and/or restored but they all seem to have that great blight of archaeological sights everywhere: the jigsaw puzzle section. This is the area located suitably out of camera shot where all the random bits of intricately carved stone that the archaeologists can't stick back together reside. In Hampi the areas were extensive but were much loved by the local population of squirrels and lizards. All the regular indistinguishable greyish-brownish lizards were there but we were also treated to to seeing a couple of glossy black topped red undersided foot longs which looked very poisonous but probably weren't.

As for the rest of the site there were atmospheric sunken and half-flooded temples, kilometre long boulevards of pillars, holy cisterns of scary green water, elephant stables and the occasional tiny palace-lets for hanging out on the lawn without touching the lawn.

Unfortunately on our first day at Hampi we discovered that our battery charger had burnt out due to the continual power cuts in Goa and none of our 3 batteries actually held any significant number of electrons. So we were forced to merely enjoy the sights with our eyes.

While we really enjoyed Hampi, Hospet the town where we were staying was that 'Real India' I mentioned before. The night we arrived it had rained and the streets were slick with a layer of cow-poo-mud, a very special mud made from the poo of cows that survive on a diet of rotten vegetables and concert posters (seriously all the poster covered walls have the posters ripped off to cow head height). There were no footpaths to mention, and the road space was crammed with cantankerous trucks, downright dangerous buses, cows, rickshaws, wild dogs, cars, and a whole lot of people. Needless to say I had a fairly good bout  of culture shock and needed to go hide in our hotel for a bit. Luckily on this trip to India we have roughly tripled our accommodation budget and we were staying in a fairly decent $40 a night humourless business hotel complete with glorious working A/C.

It wasn't until we arrived in Bijapur that I could address the problem of the busted battery charger. The town is pretty weird for somewhere the size of Hamilton it seems to be built along one long dirty road lined with all manner of small shops. Luckily fairly early on I found a shanty electrician. Tucked into a corrugated iron shed about 2 metres square a couple of small Indian blokes ran a shop re-winding starter motors, repairing VCR's and generating huge amounts of unclassifiable spare parts. I was a little worried that he had any idea what I was asking him to do through the language gap but once he whipped out his prized multimeter I thought I was on to a winner. Then when I returned that afternoon he showed me very clearly that the heart of my old charger had actually physically cracked in two with a teeny-tiny crater in the middle, it was fairly obvious why I hadn't had charged batteries for a while. He then explained that he had gone down to the market to try and find a replacement part but they were unavailable, and he had bought me an entirely new charger.

At this point all my conman warning bells went off, I was gearing up to listen to speech about how hard it was to get such western luxuries in India and how his services were in high demand etc. etc. and wondering how little money I was going to be left with by the end of the day. But instead I was presented with the enormous contradiction that is India. In a country where you have to crack heads to get checked into a hotel, and can't walk anywhere without a hundred people trying to sell you stuff you don't want, this guy wanted me to repay him the $5 dollars he had spent on the charger at the market several kilometres down the road and then leave him to winding his starter motors. Of course he wouldn't accept the (somewhat larger) tip I tried to give him either without some serious coaxing, but that seems to be par for the course too.

The reason we were in Bijapur was to look at their big dome. Gol Gumbaz is the tomb of one of the old shahs, and its about as minimalist as it comes. In the middle of an enormous large dome there are some some graves. There are doors and some towers you can climb to the gallery at the top of the dome. That is all.

We were blessed with a terribly moody sky for our other archaeological stop in town. I don't know its name. It's just those ruins behind the market as far as I'm concerned. But once again NZ shows its deficit by the fact we were easily amused for a half an hour wandering around the broken arches, occasionally spotting a crow or a squirrel.

We arranged an overnight sleeper bus to Bangalore, and were whisked away in what passed for quite a high level of comfort. The bus was divided into two levels of beds, singles on the left, doubles on the right. Air conditioned well and with decent curtains blocking out the lights we both slept pretty well all the way to Bangalore where suddenly you have to wake up at 6 in the morning and try and work out where you are and where your desired hotel is. Not surprisingly this is a very good time of day for taxi drivers.

We didn't actually end up doing much in Bangalore other than eating at fine western chains stores such as Pizza Hut, Cafe Coffee Day, and The Donut Baker. But we did visit the Lal Bagh botanical gardens with its Crystal Palace-esque glass house.

Mysore is famous for its sandalwood product and its "Bob Marley" cafes if you beleive the shady young men who made a havit of introducing themsleves to us as we wandered the streets. We visited the huge Palace in the centre of town, with its colonial era relics, fantastic stained glass and beautifully painted walls (a whole room was taken up with paintings of different elements of the royal Dasara celebration procession).

We intrepidly took an actual public bus out of town to the old fort at Srirangapatna. Notable for being the place where Tipu Sultan was finally overwhelmed by the Britsih in 1799. The old fort, built on an island in the river, still contains several temples, a lot of walls, a mosque and the old summer palace. The palace was very shabby-chic set in large half maintained grounds and with its paint peeling badly on the outside. But inside it was all historic murals of battles, and portraits of dignitaries and was well worht a wander.

Not far from the fort is Rangantittu Bird Sanctuary on the same river. We paid our officially inflated foreigners prices and waited for our row boat to fill up and then we were whisked out amongst the birds by yet another tireless 40 something kilo Indian. As far as birds went there were a whole lot of black faced ibises perched smongst the trees of the wee islands, and not a whole lot else. But hiding carefully in place sight were four marsh crocodiles sunning themselves on the rocks. All though they didn't appear harmless in the slightest, our boat-wallah certainly treated them as such and rowed nice and close so we could all get some good photos.

Heading into the hills we stopped for the night in Madumalai National Park. Famous for its elephants we saw one right by the road into the village from our extremely shoddy local bus. Further transport and several hours 'netted' us only one more elephant but a whole lot of monkeys, spotted deer, and some bison. Far better than all that driving around was feeding time at the local elephant camp. Home to about a dozen working class elephants we first got greeted by a thorough snuffling from the three year old. At about 5 and a half foot it was far too big to hide behind its trainer, but it still tried in-between bouts of sniffing and fondling people with its trunk. The true baby that had recently been found in the bush was kept a little bit away from people but it too seemed very interested in us, resting its head on its window sill and sniffing at us with its disproportionately short trunk.

The big boys (and ladies) didn't disappoint either. They all lined up for dinner behind a spindly railing and shuffled around looking bored and hungry till their trainers bought them two or three footballs worth of sticky rice with extra elephant nutrients. Each ball made only a mouthful but apparently they also browse most of the night in the forest by themselves.

We couldn't really stay in the government run hostel more than night, as though we had paid for a room with a private bathroom, all the water was sourced directly from the river and was much much browner than I was. So we got another infinitely slow public bus and bounced our way up to Ooty.

Bulgaria

Sofia is just one long bus trip from Istanbul. While travelling from one big city to another is not much of a way to see the sights we were only after a diversion to soak up some spare time before our flight to India. What we got was a lot better, and so different from the rest of our trip. Bulgaristan (as the turks refer to it) is a recovering ex-communist country with a huge amount of history and culture, and also very cheap beer.

We traveled through a good portion of Bulgaria to reach Sofia and the countryside was green and pleasant and seemed quite empty. Only occaisional towns appeared on what seemed like a fairly major highway from the maps.

Our first impression of Sofia was of the contrasts of new, the old, and the older, the shiny new bus station led out onto a decaying sunken plaza and across the road to the industrial dirty orange gothic trams which traverse the city streets screeching and dropping the sparks. But some of the streets the trams traverse are lined with beautiful classical architecture and gold tipped russian orthodox churches. Our first choice of hostel was noisy with young backpackers when we arrived and busily serving the free pasta dinner. Needless to say nothing pleases young backpackers more than free pasta dinner and there was no room at the inn. So we walked north and eventually found our second choice, perched on the first floor of an apartment building. It felt like all the walls and floors were suspended plasticated faux-wood, built inside the original concrete walls but we were gladly received by the enthusiastic manager, and proceeded to occupy the three bed dorm. Three bed dorms are awesome as you almost always get smiled on and the hostel will leave that last bed free till the last minute to avoid disturbing you, and if you do have to share if you have a distinct home ground advantage.

I should mention the two different blokes that shared the running of the hostel fell into certain Eastern European stereotypes all to easily. You could easily imagine both in wife-beaters, sprouting stubble as soon as they turned away from the shaving mirror. But like many people we met in Sofia they were both verging on sweet, very warm and welcoming and made a huge effort to work around their limited English to get across all the things we needed to know and several pleasantries besides.

The are we ended up staying in was fairly residential and fairly light on restaurants, but eventually we found our local and over several nights worked through the menu of fried cheeses, sausages, salads with cheese and/or sausage, and all manner of fried and casseroled meats (and did I mention the cheap beer). Suffice to say, we were comforted (and occasionally tipsy) and looked forward to the two meals we could squeeze in each day.

Our first big tourist attraction was the stunning St Alexander Nevsky Cathedral, occupying a large stately round-about surrounded by genuine handicraft stalls run by authentic middle aged peasant women (the kind that I imagine proudly replying "Da! Me Peasant!" if queried). The cathedral itself is not as impressive close up  as the wikipedia photos look but the inside is incredibly painted covered with soot stained orthodox iconography and is just incredibly striking and moody.

We moved on to the nearby Natural History Museum not expecting an awful lot but were fairly stunned by the massive collection of stuffed and displayed wildlife. While they lacked the enormous exhibits of British Natural History Museum (notably the fake whale), I think it actually does better on depth and breadth and we spent a full afternoon wandering through several floors of exhibits. The geology exhibits too were much smaller and therefore more interesting than wading through the cases and cases and cases and cases of rocks at British version.

The Art Gallery we visited too surpassed my expectations hosting the finest collection of Indian sculpture I have seen (including our subsequent second trip to India). It seems to be one of those odd maxims that often you will see the best pieces from a region outside that region.

By this time in order to survive we had rapidly taught ourselves Cyrillic pronunciation as signs and maps are almost exclusively in the native tongue. But luckily many words are borrowed from either English or Spanish (or maybe the original Latin who knows) so we could often decipher menus by just sounding out the Cyrillic. Of course all that learning has completely faded now and all I can remember is that R is P and P is N (or is that vice versa).

On our last day we made an epic trip by tram and bus to Boyana Church in the wooded hills of the city outskirts. The church is about a thousand years old and beautifully painted but its so small that we ended up waiting for nearly an hour for our number to be called for our brief look inside.

Near by is the enormous edifice of the National History Museum. With its bunker like exterior and a random helicopter gunship parked outside it certainly evoked a sense of the communist past right from the outset. The inside too was filled with exhibits from the archaeological to the recent past, and more than giving me any sense of what Bulgaria has been like just made me think that it would actually require a whole lot more time learning about Eastern Europe in general before I'd be ready to come to grips with the expanse of Bulgarian history.

While I've written mostly about the older stuff in Sofia, it has a distinctly modern side to it as well. With several streets of ludicrously expensive high fashion stores, western fast food chains, and several malls about town. Also gone are the crappy old Ladas that Nick remembers from his trip to Sofia.

So we headed back to Istanbul and managed to spend a whole day catching up on Internet consumption before flying out to Mumbai and beyond...

England

With a some spare weeks up our sleeve we picked up some nice cheapish EasyJet tickets from Istanbul to London. After a little hick up where the immigration absolutely would not let us in without a contact address, but did not care whatsoever what it was. It's incredible just how backwards and proud (of it) first world nations can be.

On making our triumphant entry onto British soil we were met by Jacq's long lost cousin Ben (who never quite made it home from his OE), and were whisked away to exotic Woking. I think I would have to be have been born there to work out in which contexts Woking is part of London and in which its not. I think its mostly not as there are a lot of trees and the sense of green is very pervasive, but with decent train service its only a half hour from Waterloo so not nearly so far removed as say Torbay.

We spent most of our time there in good old whanau time, catching up/getting to know Ben, his wife Trixi, and their two kids, breaking only for me and Jacq to run outside and stare at the first rain we'd seen since Morocoo. On Friday we squeezed everyone into Ben's sensible family car and went out for a look about Windsor Castle but with an almost twenty pound price tag for entry we decided we could make do with a look around the outside and a poke around the ships and down to the river Thames for a spot of swan feeding.

The next day was Saturday and Ben, Jacq and I headed into the city to watch an ill-fated game of rugby at the pub. Jacq and I were both terribly excited as the most rugby we had had all year was a highlights package in Bolivia, and the occasional snippet on BBC World. But with a poor showing from the AB's we were left a little bit mopey but went put and visited the queen anyway. Buckingham Palace is actually not that exciting but I quite enjoyed the statue in the roundabout (aka the Queen Victoria Memorial) with its Greco-British angels (in gold or white marble) was quite fantastic not to mention that most of it was covered in people just hanging out on their favourite lion or hippogriff.

Sunday we transferred into Stu and Leah's lounge and then we all rushed off to Yum Cha with a whole bunch of people I used to work with in Auckland (and associates). Yum Cha was pretty good and was served on a floating restaurant in the old Dock district and certainly brought back old times. This was then followed up by a trip for spaghetti shaped ice-cream over at Leicester Square.

On our own on the Monday we headed off to the Natural History Museum along with every other Mum and child in London. The queue was convoluted but involved more exhilarating rain, and was entirely worth it as the (free) museum was pretty damn awesome. Dinosaurs skeletons, life size whale models and stuffed large mammals make for a very good day out. And then to top the whole day off  Jacquie made her world famous lamb cous cous, all be it with inferior British lamb (all the supermarkets proudly declare that they only stock 'fine' British Meats), and we went out for another remarkably green walk around the local park which of course was the residence of  the bishop of London for 900 years, history, history, etc, etc.

The next day we hit up the (free) National Gallery and I tried very hard to make up for 30 years of complete disinterest in art by forming opinions on many fine classical works. I officially like Van Eyck, and some French bloke called Seurat, both of whom must have been teased horribly at school.

We also took the opportunity to spread the misery of hosting us around by turning up at Thomas' flat and we immediately astounded at just how small a flat someone can live in and still be generous enough to let two people crash with him. The flat was built into the attic space of a big old townhouse and so had only one vertical wall with the rest being the inside of the roof and therefore pitched at about 45 degrees. While perfectly adequate to the needs of a young bachelor about town it was a pretty tight fit to get the inflatable mattress down in the 'lounge'.

We made it out the to the British Museum over a couple of days. It is gargantuan but luckily its free (seeing the theme yet) so you can take it all in bite sized chunks. We immediately sought out the supposedly superior Egyptian artifacts but they were pretty similar to what we say in Egypt (I'm not sure why I thought they would be), but the Babylonian stone gates were awesome, I particularly liked the fact that the winged horsey centaur things had extra legs so that no matter what direction you looked at it from it appeared to have four legs.

The subtle problem we found with London was that as the temperature was quite cool we could quite happily walk for miles without passing out from heat exhaustion, unfortunately this meant that we soon learnt we had been avoiding walking in the foreign heat and subsequently had quite sore legs the whole time. The upshot of this of course is that London is a cool town to just wander round, lots of little churches, old buildings, random monuments and the occasional interesting shop too.

Our last couch stop in London was with Mike, another old software development friend of mine. We very generously had a whole bedroom to stay in, and were very impressed with the view from most of the way up a rather lonely apartment building. One thing we had never realised about London is that while it may be densely built up the vast majority of buildings are under 5 storeys so we could see London laid out before us pretty well.

The last cultural edifice on our list was the Tate Modern. I was quite keen as I quite like some modern art but it's fair to say my tastes are not nearly modern enough for the curators and I was lift pretty unsatisfied with the days visit. I was in fact slightly more impressed with the building itself, some kind of old warehouse with a vast space left open for no apparent reason.

We finally had a chance to meet up with some of Jacquie's friends on our second weekend so we packed some filled rolls and headed off to Greenwich. It has a large park as well as the small Royal Observatory which had some very interesting displays regarding the race for accurate time keeping couched in terms of Britain's naval superiority.

Having worn out our welcome in London we took a bus out to Oxford to see Jacquie's old uni friends Shane and Mel and their new boy. We spent our time fairly evenly between just hanging round and talking, eating, and wandering the lovely green lanes of Oxford. With a little side trip into Christ Church, one of the largest colleges that make up Oxford. It was pretty much as advertised, old Gothic stone architecture, and beautiful lawns with the odd hurrying student who stayed too long in yoga class and was late for lunch. Unfortunately with lunch on we weren't allowed into the dining hall which they used for all the Harry Potter movies and is apparently quite something.
Jacquie reminded me that my other first while in England was getting stung by a Wasp. We had been walking by the canals when a large bug had flown into Jacquie's hair which of course fell in my manly sphere to remove. Unfortunately it turned out to be a Wasp and I now know that I'm not allergic and that it is quite a good idea for me to immediately remove my wedding ring from the affected finger as I got quite a good swell going on.

Thanks a heap to all the folk that put us up on our stay. Ben & Trixi, Stu & Leah (and flatmates), Thomas, Mike, Shane and Mel for all putting us up while we were there, we had a fantastic time.

Turkey

Our border hop into Turkey was really quite short (at least if it wasn't for the sloooow Turkish authorities) and soon we arrived in Antakya (aka Antioch). Antakya is a pleasant small town built on a river nestled amongst nicely wooded hills, and with plenty of kebab shops ready to supply us with required nutrition. The main drawer in town was the small museum specialising in roman mosaics before moving on. The museum was quite something as every floor and wall was covered with relocated genuine roman mosaics, naked gods and goddesses, animals and plants were everywhere, all in delicately shaded patches of stone about 5x5mm. The other highlight turned out not to be the courtyard of randomly stacked amphorae and assorted roman column bits but the gloriously air-conditioned inner room with a fantastically carved roman marble sarcophagus. With hunting scenes intertwining in 3D around the outside, while a full-size likeness of the occupant reclined lazily upon the lid.

After Antakya we made our way into the heart of Turkey heading for the little village of Goreme in Cappodocia. The place has been a bit of a tourist mecca for years due to the unique 'fairy chimney' rock formations of the region. But getting there turned out to be a real mission. We caught a nice overnight coach most of the way from Antakya , but the idea that anyone would like to get any sleep seemed to be really foreign to the staff as anytime one or two people got off, they would turn all the lights on and wake up the entire bus. When it was our turn to get off it was about 4am, and we were both supremely shattered. We were put off at a junction with a massively overpriced roadside diner (no one does locational overpricing like the Turks), and left to flag down any passing bus headed in our direction, luckily we didn't have to wait too long and as the sun was coming up we squeezed onto a luxury coach, only to have to alight and take yet another bus to finally get to Goreme.

We decided to shake off our morning fog and walk up to our chosen hotel, where we were shown to our very own lovely cave room. The town is famous for its pointy rock formations and all the cave houses that past owners have chipped into them so the most natural thing in the world for all the local hotels is to continually dig themselves new rooms. It was quite pleasant as several feet of rock is remarkably good for keeping the room cool, although the ceiling above the shower had a habit of disintegrating on me which was a little worrying.

The main tourist spot in town is the so called Open Air Museum. This is a cluster of preserved cave dwellings and temples built by early Christians to hide away from the authorities (before the Byzantine empire eventually became officially Christian). A couple of the caves had some very good paintings of saints and the like although most of the art was in fairly poor repair (look this good when you are 1600 you will not).

We headed all the way back to the coast pretty soon and stopped in a small seaside vacation town called Kizkalesi. We arrived in town and wandered through the narrow streets trying to find a recommended hotel and ended up asking directions from another hotelier. He didn't speak English but immediately summoned a nearby shopkeeper we had the best room in the hotel with a view over the castle in the harbour for a 40% discount and were left feeling quite confused by the sudden outbreak of hospitality. The following day we got to explore the landward castle and had a very good time exploring the ruins alone except for some local tourists who kept reappearing from unexpected directions.

We broke up the trip along the coast to Antalya by stopping in Anamur, but were so confused by the local buses and distracted by high quality internet provision that we couldn't even be bothered going to the beach (but we did have good kebabs). Our trip really did need breaking as the coastline is incredibly windy but incredibly picturesque. It's steep hills crashing into Mediterranean waters with the occasional town surrounded by miles of banana greenhouses for variety.

Antalya is a big tourist town and quite developed, but manages to remain a certain amount of charm with a relaxed old town by the remains of a roman dock. We just wandered the streets for a fare while before venturing out to find some of life's little comforts (namely Internet and Burger King).

Where I really started to enjoy myself in Turkey was when we arrived in Olympos. The day was looking dire after another three bus mission in Turkish heat, involving confusing Antalya buses to the mall outside of town, and then discovering that the mall was enormous and that the required connecting bus stop was at the far corner (perceived pack weight is directly proportional to ambient temperature). But two cheap bus trips later we were in the tiny seaside village of Olympos and things were looking up. The accommodation in the village is divided between backpacker oriented party hostels and more turk oriented camps. Always wanting to avoid the party crowd we found ourselves a wee free standing cottage in the camp nearest the beach and immediately rejoiced as the breakfast and dinner buffets we had bought with our accommodation were fantastic.

Getting to the beach at Olympos is a bit of a walk beside a small river between two hills scattered with ancient Lycian tombs. We did have a proper explore later but on our first day we headed straight down to the pebbly beach for a dip in the water. Quite unlike anything at home the hot stones make for hard walking, and the water is incredibly calm and clear. So after finding us a spot on the packed beach we immediately jumped in for a cool off. Not being much of a swimmer at all I'd been trying to practise whenever I've had the chance on this trip and I can't recommend the Mediterranean enough for learning to swim, calm and buoyant it made my life very easy and by the next day when we took a day cruise out to some of the nearby islands I was able to do short bursts around the boat balanced by a lot of lying on my back. The cruise itself was great, pottering around the bays and islands and anytime it was getting too hot it would be time to jump in the water again.

The other thing we did in Olympos in the five days we ended up staying (other than swimming and eating (a lot)) was a trip around to the next bay to the eternal flames at Chimaera. After a hike up a decent sized hill with the rest of our van mates we could eventually smell sausages and just after we arrived at a barren patch of ground from which foot high flames spurted. The quite believable story goes that these methane fires have been present in more or less the same spot for at least the last 2000 years. And sure enough some enterprising turk had brought a long fork and a pack of pre-cookeds and was proceeding to have a cook up.

Next stop was the larger town of Fethiye where again we booked a day cruise and headed out into the islands. My swimming had improved to the point where I was quite relaxed in the water now and could swim back and forth between boat and land pretty happily (although both of us were left with pretty sore shoulders the next day). Again it was a great day although we had less luck with our boat and ended up on a bigger and much more crowded vessel.

We did two more day trips out of Fethiye. One out to Saklıkent Canyon where we joined the crowds wading past the freezing clear water springs and up the rocky canyon river. The other was just over the hill to a nearby swimming beach. The odd thing was that our bus passed through a quite sizable British holiday enclave plastered with signs like "£5.50 Chinese buffet", and "Every FA Cup match LIVE". The british seemed well entrenched but our bus driver often wouldn't even stop for them as they obviously annoyed him immensely seeming to expect to be able to pay for everything with British coins and for the bus driver to speak perfect english. Turks are helpful and generally want to understand you when you mispronounce the name of your intended destination, but most of them don't speak any English beyond basic counting. Once we got to the beach the cultural contrasts continued with a bunch of skinny english girls gleefully wandering around topless. The Turks quite rightly pride themselves on their tolerant secular society, that is to say almost all of them are observant Muslims but don't expect other people to be, but when one of the aforementioned girls plonked herself down next to a motherly Muslim women covered head-scarf to ankle I thought there was at least going to be words exchanged. But instead the women just turned her head and looked incredibly embarrassed for the young girl and waited for her to leave before going back to splashing her feet in the water.

Further up the coast Bodrum, is the party hard version of Fethiye. The hotel that we checked into immediately announced that they were just across the road from the loudest disco in Europe and then proceeded to demonstrate the sound deadening powers of their double glazed windows. Also home to the former wonder of the ancient world, the Mausoleum of Mausolus unfortunately most of the mausoleum was recycled into the fort guarding the harbour and now just a hole remains. The fort itself was worth a look though as it had passed hands so many times, it was quite rambling and had one tower built by each of half a dozen different European nations. But apart from just strolling amongst the the square white houses overgrown with Bougainvillea (they apparently have very strict building codes) there was not much else for us here and we soon headed further north.

Northwards was the small town of Selchuk and the ruins of the roman city of Ephesus (as in Paul's letter to the Ephesians). Selchuk is small and actually quite friendly, we had very pleasant hoteliers and the general tone was quite good but by this point we had seen so many roman ruins that the great city of Ephesus (largely talked up as the greatest roman ruins around) was a little underwhelming.

Which was OK as our next stop was a short look around the Gallipoli peninsula and all the emotions that entailed. We stayed at a nearby town over the Dardanelles from Gallipoli and took a morning ferry across to join up with our tour group. The ferry was so busy that the crew abandoned the attempt to collect money from walk-on passengers and just focused on the traffic. About midday we set off around the peninsula under the guidance of a young local turk who did a very good job of explaining the history of the area to everyone. Most people on the tour were Australian, Kiwi, or British but somehow a middle-aged West Virginian couple wound up on the tour too. They seemed completely confused the whole day as not only did they have no idea what the tour was about (they had been to Troy that morning and thought it was more of the same) but they had absolutely no idea what our guide was saying at any point. I won't say much else about the day except that I really felt it was worthwhile and that I can see exactly why everyone has been advised to stay away on Anzac day, there really isn't a lot of room (it's hardly the kind of a place that suits a crowd) and any more development will just further degrade the site.

After Gallipoli we made our first of three trips into Istanbul. I will write about them all here rather than chronologically for my own sanity. Our first visit we stayed in a dorm room downtown in the old city right near the Blue Mosque and the Hagia Sophia, but it was really quite unnecessary as Istanbul has a good public transport system with regular trams with connecting funiculars (cable cars) along the normal tourist route. And if we had wanted to go further afield we could have taken one of dozens of overworked ferries across the harbour (to Asia), or up the river.

As it turned out my aversion to dorms was again proved well founded as we had a very interesting night. Jacquie and I were sharing one bunk in a twelve bed dorm with me at ground level. As the night progressed the person I was sleeping head-to-head with gradually advanced their arms and their pillow into space I was fairly fond of keeping my head in. But with plenty of spare bunks I decided to just relocate rather than excerpt my territorial claims. Crisis averted right? Several hours later the door I was now sleeping next to opens and in wanders a young shirtless man who proceeds to have a slow wander round the dorm and then started interfering with my pack. Needless to say I was less than impressed and hauled him bodily out of the dorm and into the reception where the startled nightwatchmen had to try and make sense of the whole business. The interloper claims he was trying to go to sleep in his bed (which had been issued to me earlier in the day) but luckily he was erratic enough for the nightwatchmen to simply pronounce "You don't stay here more" and I could return to bed for a few hours sleep.

The Hagia Sophia itself was damned impressive. A huge enclosed space with an enormous dome, and also quite impossible to photograph properly. It was under renovation when we were there (as it must be most of the time) and so unfortunately there was a neat blue scaffolding structure built inside the dome about 15 storeys high complete with elevator. The Hagia Sophia started out life as the chief cathedral of the state church of the Byzantine empire back when Istanbul was Constantinople. But shifted over to use as a mosque in the 14th century when the Ottomans took over. It was converted to a museum by Ataturk soon after the Turkish republic was founded, to ensure its accessibility to all Turks but with Muslims never being particularly shy about where they down their prayer mats it seems to still get a lot of use by the local Muslim population. The upstairs mezzanine allowed a great view of the structure as well as some of the gold leaf covered Byzantine mosaics that had been restored so far. Apparently the whole inside used to be covered with them but when the building was converted to a mosque they were just plastered over rather than being destroyed, an enlightened principal that would have gone a long way amongst the early Egyptian Christians.

The Blue Mosque facing the Hagia Sophia across the park, is still however very much a mosque. We were allowed inside to have a look but the majority of the space was roped off for use by the local parishioners. But we got a good look at the fantastic Islamic tiling and plaster carving that decorates the interior. The rest of town is pretty lively and we managed to spend quite a bit of time just walking around the harbourside and through the near by shopping areas.

We had a spare three weeks up our sleeve at this point so we flew to London and back, and did a bus loop out to Sofia in Bulgaria too but those are the topics of other posts.