Sri Lanka Revisited
We are more than a little surprised to find the Hunt returning to Sri Lanka so soon, having been here in 2010. Not immensely disappointed (though we were secretly hoping for Bhutan), since we enjoyed our first visit here and had though it would be good to see more of the country, at a relaxed pace. Well, I guess we get one of our wishes....
Late evening arrival in Colombo, and we're staying at the same Hilton as before. It has not improved, and is now an even shabbier Motel 6 equivalent. Still, we won't be spending that much time here. After breakfast we convene and hear that we will have 2 1/2 days (3 nights) here. As before, the scavenges take teams out of the city, and are designed to make them choose between heading north or south. Last time we went north, and while the northern route looks more promising points-wise, for us it is a no-brainer to check out new sights. Strategically, our previous experience would likely be of some benefit, since most of the scavenges are repeats from before, but we really don't feel like rehashing. Sadly, the opportunity to take an overnight hike to the top of Adam's Peak is not an option. So within an hour we find ourselves on a southbound train en route to Galle. It lies at the southern tip of the island and was one of the areas hard hit by the Christmas tsunami in 2004. We are supposed to find some evidence of the disaster, and see lots of new buildings that replace those that simply disappeared. There are commemorative stone markers where houses (and families) once were. Almost everyone we talk with lost some family member that day, and many report that only by chance were they spared by being out of the city.
We explore the old fort (first Portuguese, then Dutch, then British), enjoy a drink at Mama's rooftop restaurant and plot our next move. Two scavenges involve visiting parks (one a nature reserve, another a wildlife sanctuary). The elephants at the latter are appealing, but we decide that the time committment ( a 5 hour drive each way) is excessive. So we taxi to the Singaraja Nature Reserve, a mere 2 1/2 hour drive away. Our driver claims that he can get us to the park before it closes (that would be good), and drives like a maniac to fulfill his promise. It's a very windy 80 km drive up into the hill country, passing through multiple tiny towns and sharing the narrow road with a steady stream of tuk-tuks, mopeds, and trucks. We're in tea country, and the fabled green colour of Sri Lanka here comes from tea plantations (and rice paddies). Trucks loaded with burlap sacks of tea leaves become more frequent as we drive north, and up. A family can make a modest living here with only 2-3 acres of tea shrubs, though it's very labour-intensive farming.
We arrive at the reserve at about 5:30 to find that while the park is still open, ticket sales cease at 4:30. Fortunately our driver knows "someone" who is busy at a wedding, but who in turn knows "someone" and they have pre-purchased our tickets. Our driver had phoned ahead to set it up! Like much of the far east, Sri Lanka has embraced the cell phone (Nokia signs everywhere). We get a short tour of one of the hiking trails from the "someone" who is actually a park guide and very well informed. We decide that it would be a great place to return to some day (though that idea will change). Back in the taxi and back (a little more sedately) to Galle. En route, Kit notices a cut on her arm that won't stop bleeding. Our driver suggests that it's probably a leech bite (common in the park). They are tiny caterpillar-like leeches (note to self - when we get home, check out tropical diseases transmitted by leeches). Back in Galle we consider returning to our paid-for Colombo hotel but are dissuaded by the 5 hour bus ride to get there (with the Hunt ban on overnight travel). So we check into a hotel in the Fort. Spartan for our $20 per night, but it has Wi-Fi - Sri Lanka has modernized immensely in only 2 years! Undressing, I find my own leech bite, to go with Kit's three.
Early departure from Galle on the bus - the quickest way to get back to Colombo. Our next target is a visit to a Boy's School, which turns out to be a home for "developmentally delayed" kids, although one "boy" we meet is in his 70's. Turns out, it is holiday time, and only 4 of the 30-odd students are there - those without homes to go to. We tour the grounds, play a rousing game of cricket with 2 of the boys, and chat with the Director who keeps asking if we have Canada pens for him (we assume he got pens from the other teams that have visited). After 2 hours, he offers to call us a tuktuk and we gladly accept as the rain has begun. 45 minutes later, he informs us that the tuktuk is only 15 minutes away. We decide to walk to the main road and find our own just as the skies open. In 5 minutes we are drenched and no tuktuks/taxis/buses in sight. Eventually we flag a tuktuk willing to take us the 45 minute trek back to the hotel. We literally pour water out of our shoes as we enter the lobby, and spend an hour drying our passports with a hair dryer.
We had planned to visit another school that day, but our experience with the empty boy's school and its rather creepy director leaves us extremely discouraged. Other out-of town choices are now too distant. So our only option is to complete the Colombo area scavenges. Since they are mostly unchanged from the previous visit here, we had not planned to repeat them, but now they are our only option. So the afternoon becomes a soggy round of: tuktuk to a location, complete 1-2 tasks, find a new tuktuk and repeat. Fortunately, our modest familiarity with the city (or at least the scavenges) stands us in good stead, and we are even able to correct our drivers when they arrive at the wrong spots. Three hours later we are about a dozen scavenges to the good. We have explored the Pettah Market, found spices and gold merchants, Hindu temples, churches and mosques. We've found out how St. Lucia lost her sight and what St. Anthony is patron saint of. We've shopped at Cargill's, found batiks, and walked on the Galle Face Green. We reward ourselves with a drink or 3 (a beer tast test) at the Galle Face Hotel, a famous Raffles-style hotel that has been the haunt of politicians, writers and celebrities for decades. A couple more temples, including one with a resident elephant and a collection of antique cars, and we've earned dinner at "the Mango Tree". Home to bed with a half day to go.
Another sit-down breakfast as we try to create a plan. Slim pickings left in Colombo so we decide ^%*&^ the points, let's do something fun. We tuktuk to Nogombo, a fishing village north of Colombo. Way too few points for the hour trip (each way) but it's the most enjoyable thing we do on this leg. Our driver does an amazing job of creating tuktuk space from nowhere as he weasels his way (at top speed) through the jam-packed streets. We have a quick explore of the fish market: tables covered with silvery sardines, bigger fish of surprising girth, and lots of cats helping themselves to a meal. We would love to linger, but we must fit in a ride on an outrigger canoe on the lagoon. That done, we tuktuk back with another driver with similar aspirations to drive Formula 1. Half an hour to spare before check-in at noon, so we sample a wood apple beverage and then we're done.
Lunch today is included (to mark the half-way mark?) then it's off to the airport for our flight to.....
Oman!
Friday, April 27, 2012
Sunday, April 22, 2012
6 hours in Bangkok
One day in Bangkok and the world's your.......?
From 30,000 feet over the Bay of Bengal:
After a short and atypically eastbound flight out of Yangon, we regrouped in Bangkok and our leader informed us that we would not, in fact be staying there, but only had a 9 hour lay-over. How to pass the time? How about dashing into the city for lunch and a massage? Maybe take in a Wat and a market. Take at least 3 forms of transit and elicit the nicknames of 3 complete strangers? Do all that and get back in time for our 7:30 flight and we will win a trip to....
Colombo.
6 hours and a train, subway, tuk-tuk, longboat, and ferry ride later, full of Pad Thai and wonderfully supple we all reconvene at the airport, ready to head to Sri Lanka.
From 30,000 feet over the Bay of Bengal:
After a short and atypically eastbound flight out of Yangon, we regrouped in Bangkok and our leader informed us that we would not, in fact be staying there, but only had a 9 hour lay-over. How to pass the time? How about dashing into the city for lunch and a massage? Maybe take in a Wat and a market. Take at least 3 forms of transit and elicit the nicknames of 3 complete strangers? Do all that and get back in time for our 7:30 flight and we will win a trip to....
Colombo.
6 hours and a train, subway, tuk-tuk, longboat, and ferry ride later, full of Pad Thai and wonderfully supple we all reconvene at the airport, ready to head to Sri Lanka.
Myanmar Madness
Myanmar Madness
We land in hot and steamy Yangon (Rangoon) after a 4 hour flight from Taiwan. We are feeling a little tired after the 4 am wake-up at our Taipei hotel, so the splendid Governor's Residence Hotel with its shaded grounds and immense pool is a soothing delight. Sadly, our scavenges will immediately send us off in all directions. We start with a taxi ride into the local market to arrange in-country travel. So many choices: Mandalay, and/or Bagan/and/or Inle Lake, but no flying allowed between them. Ground or river transport is possible, but glacially slow (e.g., 18 hours by train) so quite the challenge. An equal challenge is that while US dollars are widely used, the bills must be absolutely pristine. Microscopically torn or dog-eared bills are firmly refused, as are any bills that have simply been folded! We soon discover that our fund of US money is about half the size we thought. Oh, credit cards not usable, and ATM's don't exist here. We later hear that almost all teams ran out of money on this leg. One additional challenge: we arrive during the New Year's holiday, so many many places are closed for the week that we are here. Imagine trying to get a last minute flight across Canada on Boxing Day, or use a bank, store or post office on New Year's Day. But the massive Shwedagon Pagoda is open, so we walk around it at sunset, watching its jewel encrusted spire sparkle red and green. We return to our hotel to discover a happy group of teams in the bar. Joining them we get far better aquainted over beer and dinner. This looks to be one of the most convivial groups we have had on these scavenges: I suspect that we will sample many more local beers with this bunch.
So, having learned all that, we head off at 4 am to Mandalay vis KGZ air ("flying you beyond expectations"). We worry this means that we will land somewhere other than Mandalay, but 90 minutes later we arrive in the new but austere Mandalay airport. We find a taxi to take us to to the iconic U Bein bridge in Amarapura and walk across it. Then, a stop via ferry at Inwe, a former capital of Burma, but now a rural village where transport is by horse cart (at least for the tourists - a few motorcycles and satellite dishes are visible around the grass mat huts. We are dogged by a few small children peddling trinkets, and figure that subsequent tourists will encounter larger crowds of hawkers as tourism increases here. One more pagoda stop in Sagaing, then on to Mandalay and our hotel. A quick check-in, then we are off to find Mandalay Hill, a pointing Buddha, the world's largest book, and a monastery covered in fabulously carved wood panels. It's now sunset, and our energy is flagging despite the boost we got from chewing betel nut. Fortunately, the red stains on our teeth have faded so our hotel doorman doesn't laugh at us as he escorts us directly to the bar. The waiter brings Tiger beer, and keeps refilling our glasses the instant they empty, so we soon feel much better. Shower and dinner and bed beckon, after only 8 hours of sleep all told in the previous 2 days.
At 4 am, after 5 hours sleep, we are wide awake. Our bodies are clearly still in another time zone. Breakfast sitting down! Taxi through the bustling streets of Mandalay crowded with vehicles of every type: trishaws, mopeds, motorcycles, carts, hoodless trucks spewing exhaust fumes, and all blaring their horns as they go. The sidewalks are lined with food vendors and tiny shops selling everything one can imagine. We go in search of pancakes, then reach the ferry "terminal" on the bank of the Irrawaddy River. There is no pier, just boats rafted together or pulled up against the bank, with access via gangplank (usually a rail-less 2x6 plank balanced unsteadily on the gunwale. We head upriver to Mingun to climb a giant pile of bricks - the remains of a massive stupa built by a megalomaniac king. Rephrase that: hot bricks in the hot sun, barefoot. Nearby, a massive bell (world's largest uncracked bell) is our second scavenge, then we repeat our river cruise, downstream this time, to Mandalay. Our flight to Yangon is in 2 hours, so after only a brief stop to find some "to-moh", we "taxi" in the back of an open pickup truck to the terminal. It's dark as we arrive in Yangon, and apart from the odd pagoda, most sites are closed, so we find a hotel. Kit cleverly found and booked it online, so that it could be prepaid with a credit card, thus preserving our precious and rapidly dwindling cash supply.
Our final day here, and we decide to deal with numerous Yangon-area scavenges. We've arranged to visit a boy's school (orphanage) so swing by the local market first to buy footballs, pricing out some rubies, sapphires and jade at a nearby jewelers (for us, of course, or not). We arrive at the school to hear the loud sounds of an unmistakable Kiwi accent leading about 40 small boys in a rendition of Mary Had a Little Lamb. It's Shane, carrying on like Robin Williams on speed, and the boys are loving every minute of it, and him. We and a couple of other teams help Shane out with more songs and play Statues (the boys are very, very good at this) and then go out into the blazing sun and humidity for a rousing hour of football. Everyone has a great time, but we're all relieved (and soaked with perspiration) when the teachers say it's time the boys went back to class.
A few hours left before this Myanmar leg is shut down, so we cruise around town, find a couple more pagodas, check out the Buddha's hair, ride the circular train as it crawls through the city, sample samosas and biryani, and check out the fresh meat market. A very much-needed pause at the Sakura Tower for both the air conditioning and the view, but mainly the beer. Heading towards our hotel (the colonial Strand) we finish by taking the Dallah Ferry across the river. It is rush hour, and the ferry is packed with passengers headed home to dinner. One fellow cradles a live chicken in his arms like a beloved pet, but we suspect that its hours are numbered. Merchants from the market carry vast bundles of unsold goods, small boys try to peddle food and drink, and all manner of boats, from punts to longboats to freighters negotiate the river. We perch on child-sized plastic chairs on the deck and watch the commotion as twilight descends. This is a fascinating country, on the very brink of massive change, though the locals we encountered have been on the brink of change before, and have seen it change for the worse. But still, they smile at strangers, perhaps unable to anticipate what may come if the doors to the outside world open fully.
Back to the hotel for shower, laundry & beer (not in that order) before the check-in time for this leg. Our bus will leave at 7am for the airport and a flight to ..........
Bangkok
We land in hot and steamy Yangon (Rangoon) after a 4 hour flight from Taiwan. We are feeling a little tired after the 4 am wake-up at our Taipei hotel, so the splendid Governor's Residence Hotel with its shaded grounds and immense pool is a soothing delight. Sadly, our scavenges will immediately send us off in all directions. We start with a taxi ride into the local market to arrange in-country travel. So many choices: Mandalay, and/or Bagan/and/or Inle Lake, but no flying allowed between them. Ground or river transport is possible, but glacially slow (e.g., 18 hours by train) so quite the challenge. An equal challenge is that while US dollars are widely used, the bills must be absolutely pristine. Microscopically torn or dog-eared bills are firmly refused, as are any bills that have simply been folded! We soon discover that our fund of US money is about half the size we thought. Oh, credit cards not usable, and ATM's don't exist here. We later hear that almost all teams ran out of money on this leg. One additional challenge: we arrive during the New Year's holiday, so many many places are closed for the week that we are here. Imagine trying to get a last minute flight across Canada on Boxing Day, or use a bank, store or post office on New Year's Day. But the massive Shwedagon Pagoda is open, so we walk around it at sunset, watching its jewel encrusted spire sparkle red and green. We return to our hotel to discover a happy group of teams in the bar. Joining them we get far better aquainted over beer and dinner. This looks to be one of the most convivial groups we have had on these scavenges: I suspect that we will sample many more local beers with this bunch.
So, having learned all that, we head off at 4 am to Mandalay vis KGZ air ("flying you beyond expectations"). We worry this means that we will land somewhere other than Mandalay, but 90 minutes later we arrive in the new but austere Mandalay airport. We find a taxi to take us to to the iconic U Bein bridge in Amarapura and walk across it. Then, a stop via ferry at Inwe, a former capital of Burma, but now a rural village where transport is by horse cart (at least for the tourists - a few motorcycles and satellite dishes are visible around the grass mat huts. We are dogged by a few small children peddling trinkets, and figure that subsequent tourists will encounter larger crowds of hawkers as tourism increases here. One more pagoda stop in Sagaing, then on to Mandalay and our hotel. A quick check-in, then we are off to find Mandalay Hill, a pointing Buddha, the world's largest book, and a monastery covered in fabulously carved wood panels. It's now sunset, and our energy is flagging despite the boost we got from chewing betel nut. Fortunately, the red stains on our teeth have faded so our hotel doorman doesn't laugh at us as he escorts us directly to the bar. The waiter brings Tiger beer, and keeps refilling our glasses the instant they empty, so we soon feel much better. Shower and dinner and bed beckon, after only 8 hours of sleep all told in the previous 2 days.
At 4 am, after 5 hours sleep, we are wide awake. Our bodies are clearly still in another time zone. Breakfast sitting down! Taxi through the bustling streets of Mandalay crowded with vehicles of every type: trishaws, mopeds, motorcycles, carts, hoodless trucks spewing exhaust fumes, and all blaring their horns as they go. The sidewalks are lined with food vendors and tiny shops selling everything one can imagine. We go in search of pancakes, then reach the ferry "terminal" on the bank of the Irrawaddy River. There is no pier, just boats rafted together or pulled up against the bank, with access via gangplank (usually a rail-less 2x6 plank balanced unsteadily on the gunwale. We head upriver to Mingun to climb a giant pile of bricks - the remains of a massive stupa built by a megalomaniac king. Rephrase that: hot bricks in the hot sun, barefoot. Nearby, a massive bell (world's largest uncracked bell) is our second scavenge, then we repeat our river cruise, downstream this time, to Mandalay. Our flight to Yangon is in 2 hours, so after only a brief stop to find some "to-moh", we "taxi" in the back of an open pickup truck to the terminal. It's dark as we arrive in Yangon, and apart from the odd pagoda, most sites are closed, so we find a hotel. Kit cleverly found and booked it online, so that it could be prepaid with a credit card, thus preserving our precious and rapidly dwindling cash supply.
Our final day here, and we decide to deal with numerous Yangon-area scavenges. We've arranged to visit a boy's school (orphanage) so swing by the local market first to buy footballs, pricing out some rubies, sapphires and jade at a nearby jewelers (for us, of course, or not). We arrive at the school to hear the loud sounds of an unmistakable Kiwi accent leading about 40 small boys in a rendition of Mary Had a Little Lamb. It's Shane, carrying on like Robin Williams on speed, and the boys are loving every minute of it, and him. We and a couple of other teams help Shane out with more songs and play Statues (the boys are very, very good at this) and then go out into the blazing sun and humidity for a rousing hour of football. Everyone has a great time, but we're all relieved (and soaked with perspiration) when the teachers say it's time the boys went back to class.
A few hours left before this Myanmar leg is shut down, so we cruise around town, find a couple more pagodas, check out the Buddha's hair, ride the circular train as it crawls through the city, sample samosas and biryani, and check out the fresh meat market. A very much-needed pause at the Sakura Tower for both the air conditioning and the view, but mainly the beer. Heading towards our hotel (the colonial Strand) we finish by taking the Dallah Ferry across the river. It is rush hour, and the ferry is packed with passengers headed home to dinner. One fellow cradles a live chicken in his arms like a beloved pet, but we suspect that its hours are numbered. Merchants from the market carry vast bundles of unsold goods, small boys try to peddle food and drink, and all manner of boats, from punts to longboats to freighters negotiate the river. We perch on child-sized plastic chairs on the deck and watch the commotion as twilight descends. This is a fascinating country, on the very brink of massive change, though the locals we encountered have been on the brink of change before, and have seen it change for the worse. But still, they smile at strangers, perhaps unable to anticipate what may come if the doors to the outside world open fully.
Back to the hotel for shower, laundry & beer (not in that order) before the check-in time for this leg. Our bus will leave at 7am for the airport and a flight to ..........
Bangkok
Friday, April 20, 2012
Taiwan,Taipei,Trains and Taroko
After a suprisingly pleasant trans pacific flight (not too full, so room to spread out), we landed in Taipei at 6 a.m. local time. The opulant Taipei Regent is our home for 2 nights.
Our scavenger here cover 2 separate days, so we all head off at 10 a.m. with a list for the day. We opt to get out of the busy, noisy, smelly city and take a 2 hours express train ride south to Hsinchu City in search of an ancient gate and a site called the "City of God Temple". A good view of the countryside, mostly rice paddies (even in the cities). We find both scavengers fairly quickly and easily, both are pretty unremarkable, though the temple is full of torture instruments. The City of God dispenses justice. We return to Taipei by a slow local train via the town of Yingge, famous for its pottery making along "the old street". Unfortunately a downpour more than dampens our appreciation of the area. We find temporary refuge from the monsoon at Granma's - a tea house that takes "presentation is everything" to new heights. Back in Taipei, we visit one of the many city night markets in search of "small bites" to eat, and a very special massage that involved precussion with meat cleavers (the sharp part)!
Day 2, different challengers and 10 hours to do them. We decided, based on the high recommendation of a Kiwi team to go to Taroko gorge. Another train ride, this time down the east coast. A speedy taxi ride takes us up a staggeringly spectacular river gorge with 1200 foot high walls. One could hike here for days, but not this trip. Our cabbie, with as much English as we have Chinese dropped us off for a short walk to a view point, then is nowhere to be seen when we return. After a half hour of rapidly increasing panic we discover her on the back of a moped, searching for us. We hustle back to the train and our 3 hour trip back to Taipei. We quicly check out different noodle types, have some Boba tea and turn in our score sheets.
After about 5 hours sleep we will be off to.....
Burma
Our scavenger here cover 2 separate days, so we all head off at 10 a.m. with a list for the day. We opt to get out of the busy, noisy, smelly city and take a 2 hours express train ride south to Hsinchu City in search of an ancient gate and a site called the "City of God Temple". A good view of the countryside, mostly rice paddies (even in the cities). We find both scavengers fairly quickly and easily, both are pretty unremarkable, though the temple is full of torture instruments. The City of God dispenses justice. We return to Taipei by a slow local train via the town of Yingge, famous for its pottery making along "the old street". Unfortunately a downpour more than dampens our appreciation of the area. We find temporary refuge from the monsoon at Granma's - a tea house that takes "presentation is everything" to new heights. Back in Taipei, we visit one of the many city night markets in search of "small bites" to eat, and a very special massage that involved precussion with meat cleavers (the sharp part)!
Day 2, different challengers and 10 hours to do them. We decided, based on the high recommendation of a Kiwi team to go to Taroko gorge. Another train ride, this time down the east coast. A speedy taxi ride takes us up a staggeringly spectacular river gorge with 1200 foot high walls. One could hike here for days, but not this trip. Our cabbie, with as much English as we have Chinese dropped us off for a short walk to a view point, then is nowhere to be seen when we return. After a half hour of rapidly increasing panic we discover her on the back of a moped, searching for us. We hustle back to the train and our 3 hour trip back to Taipei. We quicly check out different noodle types, have some Boba tea and turn in our score sheets.
After about 5 hours sleep we will be off to.....
Burma
Saturday, April 14, 2012
The City on the Bay
Well, in a total break with tradition, after we met our fellow travellers last night (they seem to be a great bunch) we fully expected to be heading to the airport after dinner for 13 or 14 hours of hell on board a plane to somewhere in Asia. Instead we spent a wonderful sunny day running around San Francisco. We were handed our scavenge books at about 9 a.m. (a pleasantly civilized hour) and a half hour later we were on our way. We started by plotting a route that began in Chinatown where we found our horoscope signs in Chinese. We learned that "Du Pon Gai" means Grant Street and that St. Mary's Square has a statue of Sun Yat-Sen. We found a "lonely meter" off the Filbert street steps. It's a parking meter that does not have a parking space attached to it - there's a park bench instead. Not sure if you're supposed to feed the meter while resting after the steep climb up to the Coit Tower! We visited Washington Square (which is not a square at all but a trapezoid), checked out some haunts of the beat poets, and were back at our hotel by 5 p.m. to hand in our score sheets and to find out that we are flying to Taipei at about 1 a.m.Sunday morning. We have 10 teams this year. Besides Team MadDog, there is a team of sisters (Katrina and Fiona) from Sidney, Australia, and a couple of teams from New Zealand, as well as a single traveller also from N.Z. who has been paired up with a fellow from New Orleans. There's a couple from Wyoming and a father and son team from California. Then of course there is the Littlepage-Booth contingent: Rainey and Zoe (the reigning champs) along with David and Natasha who are repeating and Rainey's daughter Emily with her guy Angel.
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