Image by Kramesey - http://www.flickr.com/photos/krames/3701209708/

Today in Australia and New Zealand services have been occurring in town centres since dawn to remember armed services members that have fought in conflicts since the First World War.

Last year, days before ANZAC Day, Elizabeth and I visited the site of the Gallipoli Landings. It was an important place to visit. As I said in my post last year, I feel visiting ANZAC Cove it is the closest thing Australians have to a pilgrimage site.

The most moving thing for me during the visit was reading an extract from a speech Atatürk, Turkey’s commanding general at Gallipoli and later the country’s leader, delivered some years after the war was over:

Those heroes that shed their blood and lost their lives. You are now living in the soil of a friendly country therefore rest in peace. There is no difference between the Johnnies and the Mehmets to us where they lie side by side here in this country of ours. You, the mothers, who sent their sons from faraway countries wipe away your tears; your sons are now lying in our bosom and are in peace. After having lost their lives on this land they have become our sons as well.

Nice.

Lest we forget.

Exactly 20 years ago today, a 5.5 richter scale earthquake hit my home town of Newcastle, Australia.

The earthquake, which hit at 10.27 am, killed 13 people and injured 166. The inner city suburb of Hamilton and particularly Beaumont Street, with its rows of shops, was the worst hit. Also devastated was the Newcastle Workers Club, which collapsed in horrifying fashion killing nine people. Thankfully at least in the case of the Newcastle Workers Club, the earthquake hit in the morning when the venue was relatively empty instead of later that night when it would have been full to the brim with people attending a rock show – I can’t find the name of the band, but I want to say INXS.

When the earthquake struck I was jumping on the new trampoline my sister an I had been given for Christmas. An apt place to ride out an earthquake you might say. At the time I was living at 12 Sygna Close, Rankin Park, in a new subdivision. There were new buildings being built all around our house and at first I thought it was one of the new houses nearby that had collapsed. It was only later that we realised it was an earthquake after the theories of an explosion at BHP, a mine collapse and a gas explosion had been discounted by the radio we were listening to with neighbours.

At the time, my mum was working in town at the Commonwealth Bank on Newcomen Street. I remember her recalling how she felt time slowed down and her spinning around to watch the tall glass windows of the bank shaking and moving as the earthquake passed.

Thankfully I didn’t know anybody truly affected by the earthquake. Nobody I knew died, was injured, or was even forced to leave their home so that it could be demolished. Instead thankfully for me the earthquake was simply one of those remarkable life events I experienced. I was one of the ones that could say, ’5.5 and I survived.’

Fellow Novocastrians what is your ’5.5 and I survived story’? Where were you when the earthquake struck? I would love to hear your stories.

Photo by http://www.flickr.com/photos/tomhide/

Waking up and seeing the sky a burnt orange colour is a rather scary prospect.

Due to work being stupid busy this week, and needing to be in at the crack of dawn I didn’t take the time to grab my camera and take some shots, but thankfully plenty of others did. Some are below.

Luna Park by http://www.flickr.com/photos/tomhide/

Beach dust storm by http://www.flickr.com/photos/africadunc/

Looking out by http://www.flickr.com/photos/sketchesbymez/

Lots more Sydney dust storm images can be found in this Flickr Gallery.

As my colleague Ian Rumsby put it on his post about the storm:

10,000 miles away, at the very moment Sydney was waking up, the world’s leaders were waving fond farewells in New York at the close of a relatively fruitless effort by the UN to get the climate change agenda back on track. It was difficult to miss the poignancy of the news from New York whilst eating cornflakes in the middle of an orange mist.

And to think there are still global warning deniers.

Global Working Hours

Having worked overseas, one of the questions I often get asked is where do you work harder, in The UK or Australia? The opinion if it is a Brit asking is that Aussie’s are lazing on the beach most of the time and if it is an Aussie asking, they are convinced that those lazy Brits are too busy making tea to be doing real work.

Being the diplomatic bloke that I am, I typically respond that I have met Brits and Aussies that work stupidly long hours and that likewise there are plenty on both continents that seem to do very little work at all.

Now thanks to The Organisation for Economic Co-operation I have the answer.

Even though there is only an hour in it I will be sure to give it to those lazy Brits. Though the new question now, is how the Koreans found the time to respond to this survey?

via Steve Clayton – one of those Lazy Brits…

Tuk tuk riding in Bangkok

GUEST POST – ELIZABETH DAWSON

After a simply marvellous month in China our final stop was to completely shift the scenery and pace with two weeks in Thailand.

Strangely for two Australians neither of us had ever been to Thailand before with brief stopovers in Bangkok airport on long haul flights our only contact with the place. Well, we are pleased to report this time we managed to get out of said airport to take a look around!

Basing ourselves in the Phra Nakhon area at the lovely, friendly Niras Bankoc hostel we were able to strike out on foot to visit all the key sites from the gorgeous Grand Palace and assorted wats, paying our respects to both the diminutive Emerald Buddha and the enormous Reclining Buddha on our way.

The Reclining Buddha upclose

Of course no backpacker trip to Bangkok is complete without doing a few laps of the infamous Khao San Road which seems to have the highest concentration of gap-year travellers in the world sucking back buckets of Sangsom and chucking back Changs like their lives depend on it.  Obviously I never did such things when I was their age…

Most afternoons we needed to retreat from the heat with a siesta at the hostel or in the massive shopping malls of Siam Square (or it seemed in taxis trying to negotiate the jammed Bangkok traffic).

By night we were spoilt for choice, one evening taking in some muay-thai /Thai boxing bouts at Ratchadamnoen stadium. Behind the cage in the cheap seats we still had a great view of the furious flurries of kicks and punches of the bare-foot boxers and enjoy the all the sound and spectacle of the crowd taking bets and cheering on their man.

Muy Thai action in Bangkok

The next evening after fishing out the cleanest and smartest duds from our backpacks (easier said than done at this late stage) we thought we might turn beer-o-clock into cocktail hour for once with a visit to the swanky Vertigo Bar at the Banyan Tree hotel. The 360 degree sunset view of Bangkok from this roof-top perch on the 61^st floor of the hotel is simply breathtaking.

Elizabeth at Vertigo Bar

Taking a tip from our hostel we then popped into the fairly underwhelming Suan Lum Night Bazaar for a kind of pesce-pedicure. We just sank our tootsies into a tank of little fish and they took it from there nibbling off all the dead skin. They had their work cut out for them with our feral feet but they did a damn fine job in the 20 minutes we let them run riot.

After all that serenity we thought it was time to seek out some seediness and peruse the lurid attractions of Patong and Soi Cowboy in Sukhumivit and see for ourselves the remarkable skill sets with which the ladies working in this area are blessed. Not places I will be going back to in a hurry but part of the Bangkok experience I guess.

Soi Cowboy, Bangkok

So that is our guide to spending four days in Bangkok. From Bangkok we headed south to the Gulf of Thailand coast islands of Koh Tao and Koh Samui for some lazy beach time and to dive deep below the waves. Once I manage to drag myself off the beach there will be a separate post for that.

All our Thailand images can be seen here.

Chinese flag

China is changing! And you don’t need to have been there more than once to know that. The presence of construction sites everywhere, the freshness of the metro systems in major cities and the fact our 2007 guidebook had a hard time keeping up with the new streets, buildings and ever increasing prices are all clear evidence. Everywhere you get a sense of vigour and purpose, of reinvention and creation and of a people incredibly excited that the great China dragon has arrived on the world scene and more importantly that the world is paying attention and looking to China. In my opinion the next 20-30 years belong to China. I just hope in some way I can grab onto one of the dragon’s scales and be taken along for the ride.

Elizabeth and I spent a month travelling in China, long enough only to see a fraction of what this vast land and enormous body of people have to show. It was an amazing experience; one that has left in us a determination to attempt to learn some Mandarin and to return soon. As with the other countries we have visited on this trip I have compiled a list of ten observations gleaned from the visit. As I always say, these observations are my own and may be wildly inaccurate, were obtained not speaking the language and have been made after visiting a fraction of the country for a short period of time. I welcome all comments and responses to this list and where appropriate am happy to make amendments or corrections.

So let’s begin:

1. Rapid pace of change – As I noted in the intro, China is changing and reinventing itself at an enormous rate of knots. There are construction sites everywhere. Today major cities exist where less than a decade ago stood sleepy villages, malls where only a few years ago vendors gathered at small market stands and highways everywhere are replacing dirt tracks. Of course you knew this, but one could not make a list of observations and not have this listed in the number 1 spot. From the people I spoke to I get the sense that this change is an incredible sense of pride, and who can blame them. Of course like with all emerging economies the flipside of all these changes is the risk of creating homogenised cities and towns and the loss of of traditional values in the race for modernisation.
2. Excessive sharing of saliva - as noted in the first point China is rapidly changing, but this does not mean that it is reshaping itself into a western country with all the western ways. Chinese customs and habits will no doubt remain a novelty and mystery to westerners for many years to come. The one that stood out most for me was spitting. The Chinese it seems are terribly afflicted by phlegm, so much so that they need to almost continually hock at it and spit it out regardless of their location. Spitting at a restaurant, whilst waiting in a crowded queue, whilst admiring a beautiful view or on the carpeted floor of a train are all fair game. Apparently in in the wake of SARS and in the lead up to the Olympics there was a big drive by the authorities to encourage the end of this practice though seems they have their work cut out for them. Quite disgusting for us, though I am sure the behaviour we exhibit, whilst perfectly normal in our society, is equally abhorrent to them.
3. Active old folk – forget the concept of retirement homes and wheel chairs, China’s old people act as though they are preparing for the 2012 Olympics. During the morning and evening hours parks, alleyways and quiet streets are besieged by old people stretching and hitting their muscles, practicing Tai Chi, using exercise equipment or even performing dance routines in groups of 50 or more. In the rural areas it is not unusual to see a senior cit hauling the huge piles of wood on their backs or toting laden carrying poles  to sell their wares in the villages.
   

   Elderly Naxi woman with laden carrying pole

4. Online and media censorship – being a fairly voracious consumer of the internet and online media, dealing with ye olde great firewall of china was a challenge to say the least. We were in China over the auspicious 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square masacre; Hotmail, BBC, Flickr, Twitter and likely many other other sites were blocked during this period. That is of course in addition to the sites that are constantly blocked like Youtube, Blogger, Wikipedia and WordPress.com (which hosts this blog). There are ways around it (as this post helpfully outlines) but this censorship and the absence of free media are highly questionable and in my opinion should be addressed if China wants to be truly recognised as a free world power.
5. Self awareness – perhaps it is due to the size of the population, or the legacy of a socialist society, but the Chinese appeared to be less focussed on the self/standing out. Joining in and being part of a larger group appears to still be the norm in the places we visited - it was amazing to see teenagers join middle aged and elderly people to dance in the parks without a hint of self-consciousness or need to look ‘cool’.[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=shdLBqaOX6o]
6. Friendliness – everywhere we visited people greeted us with friendliness, excused our language shortcomings and made allowances for our enormous level of  ignorance. I fear the reception the Chinese receive in Australia, or for that matter most western countries, is rather different.
7. Road rules – China is the nation where car ownership is growing fastest in the world (check and reference stat). Highways are springing up everywhere and the automobile seems to be the ultimate symbol of success. However, road rules haven’t kept adapted to this change. Overtaking on blind corners, driving on the wrong side of the road, or completely ignoring traffic lights and road signs are the norm. As more and more Chinese cars appear on the roads this will surely have to change if road tolls are not to rise exponentially.
8. Local tourism – tourism is big business in China and by far and away the biggest segment appears to be local tourism. As China’s middle class has grown so to has their desire to visit and appreciate their vast nation. Tourist locations like Lijiang, The Great Wall and the Yangshuo to name a few are inundated daily by tourist buses packed to the rafters with souvenir buying, SLR camera toting locals keen to have their photos taken in front of the sites and lap up the vast attractions of their country.
   

   Lugu Lake - a top Chinese tourist hotspot

9. Food – it is impossible to compile a list of observations about China and not mention the food. Not that this was unexpected, but the Chinese food available in western countries in many ways couldn’t be more different to the food available in China. Chilli and spices feature heavily making many dishes impossibly spicy (especially in Sichuan) for our western tongues. The etiquette also takes a little bit of getting your head around. It is good manners to leave food uneaten, so as to show the generosity of the host and not only is leaving an enormous mess over the table cloth and table ok it is thought strange if you do not.
   

   Sichuan hotpot - painfully spicy

10. No nappies – nappies (or diapers for any American readers out there) appear to be non existent in China. Instead children are dressed in crotchless trousers to make for an easy evacuation. I never quite worked out how the parents knew when the time was ripe for said evacuation, but what I did work out was how to move quickly out of the way when I saw a child, being carried in front delicately, like a cocked and loaded weapon, to the toilet.

With this post we have finished our China section of the trip. With my new job and China’s proximity to Australia I sincerely hope it will not be long before I am back.

For those interested all of our China images can be seen here.

Yulong River from Dragon Bridge

The pictures in this post I believe speak for themselves. For me they capture the quintessential image of China made familiar from ink drawings and Willow pattern china plates. They were taken in Guangxi province near the town of Yangshuo. They are images that were stolen between torrential monsoonal downpours, along small dirt tracks and on the river and whilst not wiping the sweat from my forehead.

Yangshuo was our last main stop in China. The end of a one month journey that had taken us across the country and afforded experiences not soon to be forgotten. It had been a place I had been looking forward to throughout our time in China, but unfortunately like that film all your mates have seen, loved and built up in your mind; Yangshuo for me was a bit of a let down.

One traveller we met midway through our time in China described Yangshuo as the most beautiful place she has ever visited. Online blogs proclaimed its charming backstreets and our Lonely Planet 2007 China edition described it as an place where people come for a few days, but stay for a week or more. However, the reality I found in mid 2009 was none of these. The place is now filled with tourist tat, annoyingly persistent hawkers and is the only place we experienced in China where people have actively tried to deceive us, or rip us off. All a bit of a disappointment; however, thankfully as the images show the surrounding country-side is still spectacular.

All up we spent three days and nights in Yangshuo. The first day was spent acclimatising to 35-40 Celcius temperatures and 85%+ humidity, not an easy task when you have spent the last three years or so living in London. The other two days were spent on or along the surrounding rivers riding bikes or bamboo rafting down the river marvelling at the magnificent limestone rock formations that rise skyward from the ground everywhere around the town.

The peaks are incredibly beautiful, especially when the fog rolls in around the towering peaks, but sadly for me in my mind it had been it was hyped up all a little too much. If you are reading this and planning to visit Yangshuo perhaps this post will help set your expectations low – you never know you might be pleasantly surprised when you arrive.

Some other pictures from our visit below. For all of our China images go here:

Moody skies along the Yulong River

Me at the Li River

Waiting for next bamboo raft passenger

Yulong River scarecrow

Our last week or so has been spent in China’s Yunnan province, a place consisting of mountains, villages and numerous Chinese ethnic minority groups. We made Lijiang, with its cobbled streets, fresh water streams, red lanterns and hordes of local tourists our base for exploring the more remote parts of the region and stayed at the wonderful Panba Guesthouse. We had a fascinating time in Yunnan and met some interesting folk and some real characters. Let me introduce you to a few:

Lijiang weaver

This fellow, whose name I didn’t catch, spends his days working the loom to make scarves that sit piled and neatly folded against one side of his ramshackle little shop located in a narrow street of Lijiang old town. With a cigarette constantly hanging from his lip, his wife and kid looking on from somewhere out the back and a steady stream of mates dropping by to play cards we figured he had it pretty sorted. His scarves were well funky and we couldn’t avoid weighing down our packs with a few samples to bring home.

Dr Ho

Dr Ho is a Chinese doctor who is world renowned for his healing powers. We met him in the tiny village Baisha, a bike ride outside of Lijiang. Western universities have certified that his therapies have had success in healing cancers like leukaemia and prostate cancer. He requires only the payment you can provide.

He called us in from the street, as he apparently does with all visitors to the town, to give us some tea and show us the press coverage that he has achieved, which is pretty impressive. NY Times articles, mentions in guide books Michael Palin has filmed him, but most impressive he has met Andrew Daddo!

Mosu woman

We met this lady as she skippered and directed our little row boat to the Liwubi Dao island of Lugu Hu (Lugu Lake). The two blokes you can see below were also on the boat, but, given they were all Mosu, there was no doubt given she was in charge.

The Mosu people, an ethnic minority that live around Lugu Lake, are believed to be the last society on the planet to live under matriarchal rule. The rules governing the matriarchal society mean that the local people never marry, but instead remain living in their maternal family homes and take many lovers throughout their life.

From around the age of 13, Mosu girls enter adulthood and are given their own room in the family home. Within this room they invite men back to share the night, but when the morning comes the blokes return to their mother’s home to help run the household and look after the children of their sisters. Likewise their own children are not their responsibility, but rather are looked after by their girlfriend’s brothers.
In addition to calling the shots when it comes to the hanky panky, Mosu homes are passed down the maternal line and all the big family decisions are approved by the family chief matriarch.

If you’re interested in reading more about the Mosu go here

Tommy

Tommy pictured here with Elizabeth is an enormous Danish gent we met whilst hiking the spectacular Tiger Leaping Gorge. Along with his travel buddy Meriem from France we spent the middle night of our Tiger Leaping Gorge trek at the basic, but blissfully empty Five Fingers guesthouse. An absolute hoot he had us laughing away our sore legs and altitude sickness throughout the night and into the next morning.

The Tiger Leaping Gorge where we met Tommy is one of the world’s deepest gorges and is home to a series of fast flowing rapids. The hike took about a day and a half through some sometimes incredibly steep and rocky terrain. The elevation made the going all the more hot and hard going – if our puffing and panting is anything to go on we need to renew our gym memberships ASAP upon our Sydney return.

Mr Altitude

Talking of elevation, after Tiger Leaping Gorge we headed north to the town of Shangri-la (also known as Zhongdian). At 3,200 metres above sea level, Elizabeth became well acquainted with our old friend Mr Altitude who loves to turn up with liberal doses of throbbing headaches and blurry vision. A visit to a Chinese medicine pharmacy with accompanying charades soon found a way to send him on his way.

Once acclimatised we were able to take in the sights of the principally Tibetan town including a turn on the extraordinary prayer wheel (the largest in China) and chow down a yak burger or two.

Where next?

I am writing this post sitting in the airport at Kunming after a night travelling from Lijiang by sleeper bus. Once our delayed flight finally boards we will be on our way to the picturesque towns of Guilin and Yangshuo to ride bikes around rice fields, watch boats gliding along the river and plenty else.

All of our China images can be seen here

Not only am I boring you, loyal readers, with my travel stories but as of last week select posts from this blog are appearing on the Lonely Planet website. Massively stoked!

My content is being syndicated as part of Lonely Planet’s new BlogSherpa programme that displays relevant blog posts against its own editorial content.

The BlogSherpa programme works by marrying the tags I add to my posts with similiar content on the Lonely Planet website. For instance posts that I have tagged with Kyrgyzstan appear on the Kyrgyzstan page. See below.

When people click through onto one of the links they are served my original post reproduced within the Lonely Planet environment. See below:

The interesting thing is, which you can see in the image, is that there are Google AdSense ads served alongside the post. In exchange for my content Lonely Planet passes all the revenue made from these ads directly onto me.

So far I have made the princely sum of $1.73 from people clicking on the ads. Not exactly the kind of earnings that will see me driving around in a Porsche anytime soon, but interesting none the less.

Kudos to Lonely Planet for recognising the value in partnering and working with bloggers to enhance its own content.