New Year's in Japan

After Fiji it was a shock to return to Northern Hemisphere winter, but also a welcome change from backpacking to being hosted, guided and looked after so well by Yoshi's (Alice's sister in law) family. A week is hardly enough to take in one of the most varied, eccentric and subtle cultures in the world, but we certainly did our best!

Visiting Tokyo at New Year brought a double bonus - we were able to celebrate amongst family, and experience the capital during one of the most important festivals of the year. At midnight, we made our pilgrimage to the local shrine and queued up with the local residents to make our New Year's wishes, eat snacks from the many impromptu stalls, drink sake and huddle round the fire. On New Year's Day, we followed the crowds to the presidential palace to see the president appear with his family and address the nation.

Along with the traditional culture, we also experienced Tokyo's more eccentric side, including a lunchtime trip to a maid cafe (where the waitresses dress like characters from Japanese anime cartoons, and the highlight of the meal is to get your photo taken with them in the pose of an animal of your choice - no really!), Alice's unreal photo session in Harajuku, and of course the obligatory karaoke session.

Just before leaving we managed to fit in a two day trip to Kyoto. We made the journey on the spectacularly quick (300km/h) and efficient Shinkanzen (bullet train), which was an experience in itself. The old part of town was a beautiful mixture of tranquil temples and gardens and narrow streets lined with wooden shuttered teahouses. We were even lucky enough to catch a glimpse of three geisha disappearing through the door to one of the teahouses.

Despite the obvious similarities associated with the lifestyle of the developed world, Japan felt in many ways the most different culture we have experienced all year. The amazing food is one example, but nothing better epitomises the Japanese than such idiosyncracies as electrically-operated heated toilet seats (found universally in every cafe, restaurant and home), the crazy TV game shows (like Banzai on every channel) and the fact that nobody will even consider crossing a road until the green man appears (even when there is no traffic in sight).

From Tokyo we made a gruelling and very indirect 2 day trip to Vancouver, lightened by a day's stopover in Fiji, where we managed to get out to one of the islands for some last sun and sea before our ski season (life is tough!). We have now settled in at Whistler and done our first few days of skiing. While the weather has been beautiful, we are now praying for some more snow - apparently it's coming next week...

Fiji

Whilst Alice was back in England preparing for her teacher training interview,which led her to get a place at teacher training in Wandsworth, Ross was settling into life in Fiji.

The time in Fiji has been a complete contrast to the previous 6 months travelling in almost every possible way. Working in a local NGO as the only non-fijian has afforded me a great insight not only into a very different kind of working environment but also a real glimpse of rural village life on visits to project sites, which would have been impossible to gain as a tourist. At times the pace of work and the impact of 'Fiji time' caused frustration but it was really rewarding to work with people who really cared about making a difference to the communities in which they were working and also to see the impact of this work in the fundamentals of community life, such as food and water supply,transport and education.

Through the projects I have been able to see the huge variety that makes up Fiji ranging from coral farming on a desert island paradise to ensuring a school has a reliable water supply in the old colonial capital Levuka, to visiting a fijian community in the interior, which required a 5 hour journey in the back of a truck, followed by a two hour walk just to reach it.

Fijians are also the friendliest and happiest people I have met all year. Everywhere I have been I have been greeted by cheerful cries of 'bula' and welcomed around the kava bowl as guest of honour. This traditional fijian drink, known to locals as grog, is made from a pepper plant, is mildly narcotic, looks like muddy water and makes your tongue go furry though unlike alcohol significant quantities are needed for any real effect.

'Home life' too has been different. I have been living in a guesthouse with a few other volunteers, most significantly younger than me, and while at first this took a bit of getting used to, by the end I was enjoying alternate nights of partying and playing poker, reflecting (when I had the chance) with some amusement that while I was happily regressing to my university lifestyle, yet more of my friends at home were getting married and having babies.

Alice arrived in Fiji 3 weeks ago, via a whistlestop tour of Hong Kong and Sydney. En route to Hong Kong, she experienced the modern day silk route, travelling from Zurich with a plane full of fashion and material traders. This was further emphasized by a forced emergency landing in Urumqi (China), itself a former Silk Road city. This stop carried with it a deep sense of irony, as this would have been our first destination in China, had we been able to get the visa in Bishkek. At least one of us now has a Chinese immigration stamp.

We had an amazing Christmas with an indian family on a sugar cane farm in northwest Fiji. Christmas dinner was goat curry, freshly slaughtered on Christmas morning. We are now heading off to Tokyo to meet Rowland, Yoshi and Milly to celebrate New Years. We are just hoping we will be able to adjust to the cold weather!

Good country, bad government!

Well amazingly, 6 months of our trip is nearly up, and the travelling phase, which has taken us through 10 countries, is drawing to a close. We are seeing it out on the beautiful Thai island of Koh Tao, getting some well earned rest, and a decent amount of sun, despite it being the rainy season here.

The previous 3 weeks we spent in Myanmar (Burma), which turned out to be a perfect substitute for Tibet - a land with half a million Buddhist monks, very few tourists, and one of the friendliest peoples we have ever experienced. Sadly the other thing it shares with Tibet is the suppression of the local people by its government.

Historical highlights included Bagan, a massive temple site with 4000 stupas built at the height of the Bamar empire (11th - 14th centuries), fantastically rundown British colonial buildings in Yangon (Rangoon), and the old capital Mandalay with its myriad temples, monks and monasteries.

But, as ever in places which see few tourists, the highlight was the people. From the town of Hsipaw in the mountainous Shan state, we made a 4 day motorbike expedition into the surrounding country with a local man, driving along narrow, muddy, almost impassable dirt tracks and staying with local families in the hillside villages. In these places, white faces are such a rarity that crowds of children would swarm into the streets to stare at us as we passed. Alice's blonde hair in particular was amazing to them. The hospitality was incredible, and the experience one of the best of our travels to date.

Even in cities, as we walked through the streets, everyone waved and shouted hello. Many were keen to know what we thought of their country and share with us their frustrations about their government. We were not expecting to find such openness somewhere so repressed, and the fact that we did is testament to the spirit of the people.

But at times it was frustrating. From hilltops you can look down on mansions, golf courses and airfields, reserved for the sole use of the military, and many told us good jobs can only be obtained by family connections or large bribes. But the political corruption is the hardest to bear: the leader of the opposition party was put under house arrest in 2007 for the third time since her party won a landslide election victory in 1990. Of course they have never been handed power. We met a lady whose husband has been put in prison for 10 years on made up charges because he is viewed as a political threat. Even to get our tourist visa, we had to sign a document stating that we would not interfere with the country's internal affairs! Perhaps most frustrating of all is that despite all that this government has done to its people, the Chinese and Indians continue to keep it afloat with huge amounts of trade (nullifying the effect of sanctions imposed by western governments), and the international community at large seems largely disinterested in applying any pressure to change the situation. It is remarkable that under the circumstances the people remain so friendly and happy on the surface.

From here, we now go our separate ways, Alice back to England for her PGCE interview and Ross on to Sydney, and then Fiji to begin 2 months of voluntary work.

A Tale of Three Visas

We have little of interest to report from the last two weeks! Since our last update, we spent 2 days in the small Kyrgyz village of Tamga, on the shore of Lake Issyk-Kul, after Titicaca the second largest alpine lake in the world. The setting was stunning, with a backdrop of snowcapped mountains, and the weather was even warm enough for us to spend a day on the beach (in our clothes!), and swim in the lake. We also visited a fascinating yurt factory, where a very talented and enterprising man provided the only employment in the area, as well as producing yurts which are sold all over the world.



Following that, we spent a rather frustrating week in Bishkek. After several phone calls to China, much trekking backwards and forwards to the embassy, and despite assurances that everything would be ok and a valid letter of invitation being flown in to Bishkek from Urumqi for us, the consul turned round after a week and said no anyway!



This forced an abrupt change of plan, or in fact two changes of plan. First the Indian embassy told us that processing our visa would take over a week, which kicked plan B into touch. So, two days after being refused the Chinese visa, we were on a plane to Bangkok, where we have been for the last 3 days, relaxing, reorientating and making new plans. Tomorrow, having finally made a successful visa application, we leave for Yangon and 2 weeks in Burma, before what will be a well earnd rest on Thailand's beaches.

Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan

From Dushanbe it was a bone-shaking 17 hour drive along the worst road we have so far encountered, we eventually reached Khorog at 2 o'clock in the morning. From here we spent three days hiking in the Geisev valley, a lush green oasis only accessible by foot, containing three tiny villages, one of which consisted only of one family. Remarkably even here there was someone who spoke english.

We then took a three day road trip through the remote and beautiful Wakhan Valley, which is shared with the Afghanistan enabling us to peer across the valley at the afghan farmers going about their business.

As we continued along the Pamir Highway to Murghab the scenery changed abruptly from lush green valleys to dusty barren desert-like landscape. Once in Murghab we trekked over a pass to our first yurtstay conveniently situated by some hot springs. On our return to Murghab we managed to meet up with Andy Davis, which was wonderfully random given the fact that there was no internet or phone reception.

From here it was a gruelling but spectacular 14 hour jeep ride over the Ak-baital pass (4,655m) into Kyrgyzstan. We were particularly pleased with ourselves as this time we stood firm at the border crossing and refused to pay the bribe. In Bishkek we celebrated Ross' birthday in style, splashing out on a mid-range hotel (which even had a swimming pool!) and a gourmet italian meal (they even had italian wine!).

Since then we have spent our time in the mountains and lakes both horse riding from yurt to yurt across the wonderful green jailoos and trekking in the alpine valleys around Karakol. The one black cloud that remains is the issue of our chinese visa. Will we get it or won't we......who knows! We'll update you on our next blog.

Uzbekistan

Since our last update we have travelled eastwards through Uzbekistan's Kyzylkum Desert, stopping at the famous Silk Road cities of Khiv, Bukhara and Samarkand to admire the turquoise tiled domes and towering minarets of Timurid and Shaybandid mosques and medrassas.

The staggering number of French, Italian and Spanish tour groups swamping these small sites made us feel rather les adventurous than we might have hoped in Central Asia's 'bad boy' republic, but we did manage to hitch a ride in the back of a transit van from Nukus to Khiva to slightly make up for this!

Our stay in Samarkand was prolongued by a nasty attack of food poisoning which had both of us out for a few days, but we are now happily on the road again, having spent the last week in Tajikistan.

Our introduction to this poorest, most remote part of the 'Stans' was not good. We had to bribe the border guard to let us into the country (because he chose to fabricate a problem with Ross' visa) and then later we were charged a huge premium (because we were foreigners) and put on a bus which stopped 10km short of the destination we had paid for.

However, since then things have improved dramatically. We were rescued from the roadside by a friendly local who found us a bus going the last 10 km then another villager on the bus invited us to have dinner and stay at his house. We spent the next 4 days trekking in the beautiful Fan Mountains, with a donkey to carry our bags, surrounded by snow capped peaks and turquoise lakes. In every village we passed, locals waved a friendly welcome and invited us to stop for a cup of tea or even lunch with them. Camping higher up cooking was by collecting wood and making a camp fire, a first for us! We met a lovely man from Duschanbe who invited us to travel back with him and stay in his home. In fact we have been in Tajikistan for a week and have not yet paid for a nights accommodation.

From here we begin our adventure to the Pamirs, which will take us along the highest road in the world and to the remotest part of the country. No internet access here, so when we write next, we will (hopefully) be in Kyrgystan.

Turkmenistan

Our introduction into Central Asian bureaucracy was swift in coming. It took us 2.5 hrs to cross the border into Turkmenistan without any problems. We have spent the last week travelling with a guide, which is a condition of being granted a visa in Turkmenistan. This is a way of travelling we are not used to but the air-conditioned 4x4 came in handy as the average daytime temperature was between 40 and 45 degrees, the hottest day in the desert was pushing 50.

Our whistle stop tour included several ancient sites, one of which dated back to 3,000 BC this was in start contrast to our time in the capital, which is all about bling! Most of the significant revenue from oil and gas sales seem to have gone on an astounding building project, which has transformed Ashgabat to a city of white marble buildings, mostly housing government departments. The piece de resistance is the gold statue of the ex-president on top of an arch, which rotates to ensure that it is always facing the sun. This combined with the deserted streets gave the feel of a model town or film set, all be it a very impressive one.

After Ashgabat we headed off into the desert and spent the night camping next to the Davarsa gas crater. Noone knows how it was set on fire, burning enough gas to fill to supply a town of 30,000 every day. Although not great for the environment this was truly spectacular, you feel you are standing at the gates of hell.

We are now in Uzbekistan and have decided to take a trip to Moynac, which used to be a thriving fishing port, but now stands in a desert 150 km from the sea. The sea has dried up due to the soviet initiative to divert the river water which supplied it into canals, which continues to irrigate coton fields in Turkmenistan's desert.

After a few more days of this heat we will head to the cooler climates in the mountains.