Backpack Storybook

On the move

2008-06-19T21:45:00.004Z

Backpack Storybook has moved to www.bpstorybook.wordpress.com

I've got my passport back and the new Euro adventures have started. Check out recent trips to Berlin and Scandinavia at the new address.

Czech cuisine

2007-10-31T11:20:00.000Z

Bohemia Bagel. Recommended

Prague, Czech Republic - The Lonely Planet described Czech cuisine as revolving around pork, dumplings and cabbage.

Not sure if that somewhat boring description is true for the rest of the country, but in Prague it was a case of all that and a lot, lot more.

I had perhaps the best breakfast, ever, at Bohemia Bagel in Mala Strana. So good (and so big) I didn't need to eat until that evening. The secret was the cold cream cheese contrasting with the hot scrambled eggs. Delish.

As I mentioned in the last post we were surprised to find a Vietnamese food stall in the markets serving authentic pho bo. We sat on rickety wooden benches amongst the other Vietnamese stall holders and slurped to our hearts content. I even surprised the owner by throwing out a "cam on" when we finished.

Jacq, Hany Bany

Lunch at Hany Bany near Old Town was also an enjoyable way to spend an afternoon. Admist the tourist traps was a real bohemian bar with dim lights and smoky atmosphere. We joined office workers and students on the mismatched tables and chairs for a meal of sausage and dumplings washed down with turkish coffee.

This Holesovice restaurant even had a bowling alley upstairs

After a hard days sight seeing dinner was eagerly anticipated and the cafes around Holesovice didn't disappoint. For just a few pounds we ate huge plates full of pork or grilled chicken with vegetables, all topped with thick sauces bursting with the flavour of garlic and butter.

Trams, castles and beer

2007-10-30T17:07:00.000Z

Old Town street, Prague

Prague, Czech Republic - Recently we had just two days and two nights to enjoy the fairytale city of Prague. We did our best to see, eat, drink and experience as much as possible.

But was it a holiday? Kind of. More like sight seeing in fast forward sometimes.

After getting acquainted with the delicious food, cheap as chips beer and smoky atmosphere of the neighbourhood cafe on the night we arrived, on our first morning Jacq and I grabbed the number 5 tram down from the suburb of Holesovice in the north, crossed the river and stepped off in Prague's delightful Old Town.

I soon realised that riding these trams was a blast. We bought a three day travel card for just 200 crowns (£5) at the airport and after that it was a piece of cake to hop on and off any bus, metro train or tram vaguely going in our direction. Reliable and inexpensive. Nothing like London's public transport really.

Not that we didn't do a lot of walking. With camera around my neck and Jacq in tow I'd be scurrying around the side alleyways and poking my camera at the scenes unfolding around every corner. A four hundred year old synagogue in the Jewish quarter. An old man shuffling past a toy shop that sold real wooden toys. A group of students hanging out in a cafe, smoking like chimneys.

Prague was both compact enough and yet filled with enough sights that we walked around for almost two days straight and comfortably saw all the major attractions without having to retrace our steps.

We attended National Day celebrations outside Prague Castle (which was closed to the public for the event) and listened to an enormous cannon somewhere nearby fire off a 21 gun salute at the end, the boom from the shots echoing around the square for seconds afterwards.

The next day when the castle was open we enjoyed a stroll through the Royal Gardens and past a changing of the guard ceremony before entering the castle gates. As the largest castle in Europe it was certainly impressive up close, especially inside the enormous St Vitus cathedral with its amazing stained glass windows.

But to get a real sense of the size of the castle you had see it from a distance. One evening we climbed the Old Town Hall tower at dusk and looked out at the castle on the hill, lit up by flood lights. It seemed to stretch across the entire ridge of the hillside.

With the castle on one side of Prague and the historic Old Town on the other, divided by the Vlatva River, it was Charles Bridge that was the most popular crossing point for tourists. After walking through the deserted back streets of Old Town early one morning I remarked to Jacq that it seemed like we had the city to ourselves. But that was shattered when we came to the bridge, which was buzzing with hundreds of package tourists photographing the numerous statues lining the bridge. In between were buskers, caricature artists and stall holders selling souvenirs and photographs.

The force of tourism was also in full swing in nearby Wenceslas Square, a long up hill boulevard that ended with National Museum. As Richard from our hostel described it, the square was not too bad during the day but awful at night with Brits on stag parties lurching from one British theme pub to another.

Down the hill from Wenceslas Square I photographed the famous Dancing Building, also known as Fred and Ginger, the Crushed Coke Can or the Drunk Building.

After a full day of walking, each evening we looked forward to returning to our quiet neighbourhood to the north for a few beers and a meal. Thankfully most of the local cafes near our hostel had English menus and the staff spoke some English as two days in Prague had done nothing to educate us on the tongue twisting language.

However, I managed to receive a full education on the beautiful Czech beers. For less than a pound I could enjoy a big handle of Staropramen or Pilsener Urquell. Served cold with a frothy head. Again, nothing like London!

Check out the Backpack Storybook Prague photo album here.

Backpack Storybook tip: We stayed at Sir Toby's hostel in a double room for about £38 per night. Just ten minutes on the tram from Old Town. A great place.

Walk to work

2007-10-26T21:26:00.000Z

Peak hour in the pedestrian lane

London, United Kingdom - Coincidentally, after riding the London Eye recently my new route to work takes me right past the big fella each morning.

I've heard a saying that London is the world in a city and sometimes it's easy to see why. There are world famous landmarks around each corner, even during a 'boring' old walk from the train station to work.

And the train itself takes me through suburbs home to people from Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe and yes, even Kiwiland.

Big eye

2007-10-25T20:31:00.000Z

"Erm, I think that's Embankment over there."

London, United Kingdom - Hot tip for all you future London tourists out there.

Definitely, definitely make sure when you pay £13 to ride on the London Eye that the weather is going to be fine.

Jacq in the pod

Or at very least, not raining. Otherwise, as Jacq and I found out, you might not see very much at all. And therefore spend 30 minutes in a glass pod with a bunch of bored kids and exasperated parents.

About the best photo I could manage

Time of the season

2007-10-22T22:05:00.000Z

Wandsworth Common

London, United Kingdom - If there's any good to come of England's slow, inevitable march into winter, I suppose I would reluctantly suggest that the change of seasons here is pretty spectacular.

The enormous trees in the common up the road from our house have finally turned yellow, orange and red after a summer of stunning deep green.

I made myself get out of bed early on Saturday morning (it was still dark at 7am) put on a couple of layers, my gloves, jacket, mask and helmet and cycled up the hill to shoot a few frames of the colours of autumn.

It won't be long before they lose all their leaves and go back to resembling the skeletal trees that we saw when we first arrived in London almost 12 months ago.

Back then in late January, Jacq and I cauught the early morning train from Heathrow into the city and sat staring out the windows at a place shivering in the frost. For miles there wasn't a tree with leaves. A far cry from tropics of Thailand we had just left.

Anyway, it's not too cold just yet. Last week in early October I was able to ride about during the day in just shorts and t shirt. This week its gotten a lot colder but still bearable at around 15C during the day and about 5C at night.

Right now I'm on the hunt for warm clothes. This winter I don't care what it costs, I'm going to be warm. A proper winter jacket, beanie, scarf, thermals and gloves are on the list.

I mean, I've moved on since last winter, when I wore socks on my hands for a couple of weeks because I didn't have gloves.

Estates

2007-10-14T21:10:00.000Z

The Barbican estate

London, United Kingdom - One of the more eye opening things I've encountered in London is the housing estate.

Unlike Australia where the term 'estate' tends to mean shiny new McMansion homes in boring but nice outer suburban subdivisions, here in the UK they are typically ugly blocks of flats for poor people.

In the first few weeks of my first job in London, one day I had to accompany two councillors and a couple of photographers on an inspection of one of the city's worst estates. For an Aussie lad brought up in a big backyard, it was a pretty depressing experience to see the drab conditions that thousands of young English kids had to endure.

The estate was made up of several very long, high rise blocks of flats. I was told it had been built by English architects back in the 1950s but it really did look like something out of Communist Russia. In the corridors things like smashed windows, broken doors and and even a poo-smeared wall added to the sense of disrepair and despair .

The lift worked intermittently, meaning when it was on the blink residents had to use the stairs - some all the way to the seventh floor.

On the ground floor things weren't much better. The play area was a rain-soaked concrete pad with a few old bits of play equipment. The imposing blocks funnelled the cold wind straight through, making it even colder than the March weather at the time.

Teenagers in hoodies rode around aimlessly and in the far corner of the estate older lads took it in turns to ride a scooter along the footpaths, scaring the few residents about.

I was so interested about this depressing age of architecture and social policy I even hunted down a book on the subject, Estates - An Intimate History, which Jacq and I both read. It's hard to summarise the why and how of the housing estates, but it to be brief it involves a few of the following: early 20th century slum clearance, post-World War II rebuilding, architects with a love of concrete and governments set on building thousands of homes very quickly with little thought for quality or how humans might happily live in them.

One of the estates mentioned in the book is the Barbican, a large estate in the inner east of London almost right next to the City. It's quite famous for its Brutalist architecture (yes, it's an official term apparently). Out of curiosity Jacq and I made a pilgrimage over there recently to check it out.

It's almost futuristic, in a kind of menacing 1970s view of the future way with brown-grey concrete everywhere, a series of walkways in the sky and hard, unforgiving angles.

But it's also quite pretty. Almost all of the balconies are alive with flowers and greenery. A large conservatory houses palms, cacti and fish in several ponds. The Barbican arts complex attracts people to the centre of the estate by the man made lake and water-side cafes.

It's not necessarily so pretty that I'd ever want to live there. But it was definitely interesting and a lot more positive experience than that horrible estate I visited all those months ago.

The Guggenheim

2007-10-05T07:23:00.000Z

Jacq and the Guge

Bilbao, Spain - Somehow I got the flight times wrong and we bussed it out of San Sebastian two hours earlier than we needed to.

But it was a positive in disguise as it gave us the chance to spend half an afternoon in Bilbao, where we were flying out from to London.

Having seen the amazing Guggenheim Museum on our way into Bilbao four days previous, we didn't need to think twice before setting out towards the famous building.

Unfortunately it was a grey, overcast day in Bilbao so the photos don't really do it justice. But just being in the vicinity of a structure so bold, adventurous and well, crazy, was a great experience.

From some angles it looked like a giant sailing shipped docked beside the river. From others a bronze Sydney Opera House. Up close it was a mind-bending series of lines and curves.

We spent so much time walking around the outside we had no time left to go inside to look at the art treasures within. We'll have to do that next year I suppose.

Surfing San Seb

2007-10-04T21:02:00.000Z

San Sebastian, Spain - I might have raved about the food, the wine, the culture of the Basque Coast a little in the last post. Alright, a lot.

But the other reason Jacq and I decided on San Seb for a holiday was the chance to enjoy the beach one last time before the northern hemisphere winter set in.

The semi-circular bay of Playa de Gros was just a ten minute walk over the river from our pension. Armed with tide charts, swell predictions and hourly wind reports, I was absolutely committed to getting as many waves in the four days as possible.

Unfortunately, the swell didn't entirely cooperate. It was small for the first three days. The big tides made it essential to be in the water at the right time - just as the tide was pushing in, giving a bit if extra oomph to the small but fun waves peeling down the sandbank.

Of course, on the last day the swell came up. But by then it was too late. Jacq and I were packed and had to start our four bus, one plane, 12 hour trek back to London.

But it was fun to get back in the water. Sometimes with surfing you actually surf better after being out of the water for a period. I've experienced that before with injuries.

But I've never been out of the water for nine months. And it was embarrassingly obvious. The mind was willing but the legs were doing their own thing. There's a few Basque surfers out there that are just glad I managed not to run them over.

Eat, drink, sleep

2007-10-03T20:23:00.000Z

Cold beer, nice wine, great food.

San Sebastian, Spain - I am totally impressed with Europe.

After a couple of trips to the continent this year - and just recently back from four days in San Sebastian - I'm digging their approach to food, sleep, style and life in general.

Which raises serious questions about the UK I reckon. How does a country separated from Euroland by a small ditch turn out so different. I mean, Toad in the Hole? Warm beer? Wet summers?

Team Backpack Storybook escaped these nightmarish things for four days last weekend. We flew into Bilbao and took the A8 Autopiste an hour south to San Sebastian, a delightful little place on the North Atlantic Coast with a great Old Town, a reputation for awesome food and ... waves!

Our home for the long weekend was a cosy little pension in the heart of the historic Parte Vieja. Narrow lanes shaded by four and five storey terraces. Home to numerous bars, grocers, restaurants, shops and tourist pensions.

Due to a hectic travel schedule that saw us leave our London home at 2:30am and catch four buses and one plane, by the time we got to San Seb mid afternoon and checked in we were in bad shape. We needed coffee and food. Stat.

We tumbled into the first bar we saw. Smoked hams hung from the rafters. Locals enjoyed their afternoon wine and snack. And on the bar top were at least two dozen plates of pintxos, the Basque version of tapas. Order a drink. Get a plate, pick one two five pintxos, pay the barman and away you go.

We soon learned that the Basque way of doing things was to enjoy a drink and one or two pintxos at a bar and then move onto the next. On our first evening we did just that, using my appalling Spanish and some sign language to order tumblers of beer and wine and a selection of snacks which ranged from seafood shishkebabs to mini baguettes bursting with bright red ham. I even tried gulas - baby eels. Tasty and cute.

Apart from breakfast, I don't think we ate one sit down meal during the four days. It was too easy, and tasty, to go for the tapas. Even when we caught a bus down the coast to the fishing village of Getaria for a seafood lunch, we popped into a bar for a quick drink. Half an hour later we rolled out with stomachs bursting from the pintxos we hadn't been able to resist.

To see the Backpack Storybook Basque photo album, click here.

Backpack Storybook tip: We stayed at Pension Amauir in Old Town for three nights at around £36 per night. Just about the nicest guesthouse we've stayed in, ever. Ask for Paulo.

Freewheeling

2007-09-25T21:04:00.001Z

The main straight, St James Park

London, UK - Not sure what the state of play is back in Australia, but here in London the capital's drive towards all things green is quite impressive.

Sure, some of it is lip service (high street stores seem to think we can spend our way to sustainability), but for the most part its quite surprising to see massive recycling schemes rolled out across the city.

The Mayor, big Ken Livingtone, is also a bit of a bicycle fanatic. During his watch there's been a big increase in the number of people cycling. something like 100% since 2000. There's more bike lanes. More bike parking areas.

On the weekend just gone he put on the London Freewheel event, which saw main roads between Buck Palace in the west and London Bridge in the east closed to traffic all day. More than 30,000 cyclists turned out to reclaim the city for a day.

I rode in solo from Earlsfield to check out. Ironically, I got stuck on an incredibly busy dual carrigeway road coming into London, couldn't get across the speeding lanes of traffic and overshot the event by a couple of kilometres.

If ever there was an argument for reducing cars, and traffic speed, in the capital, I had just experienced it.

I eventually got onto the closed loop through the city and enjoyed a leisurely ride past Westminster, down through the Embankement, over the Thames and then back almost the same way to St James Park near the palace.

It was good fun but I couldn't help feel it was more an event for those not already cycling, or people with young kids.

After a few Critical Masses (where anything goes) and several months of battling traffic to and from work, I thought riding the Freewheel track with its fences and marshals and absence of traffic was a little, well, boring.

Mind you, I almost got squashed by a bus riding home, so maybe an hour or two away from traffic was a good thing.

Sailing Croatia - a tale in three parts (Pt 3)

2007-09-21T19:32:00.000Z

Dubrovnik Old Town

Split, Croatia - I don't know what I was expecting of Croatia before we arrived. In fact, aside from swimming and drinking cheap beer, I actually hadn't given it much thought.

Spending most of the daylight hours on the top deck as the Penelopa chugged along gave me an unhurried look at the Dalmatian landscape. I was surprised at how rocky and mountainous the coastline between was Split and Dubrovnik.

Small towns and their accompanying olive groves and vineyards had squeezed themselves into the narrow, habitable space between the rocky shoreline and the steep, treeless mountains towering above.

Islands such as Hvar and Korcula were slightly flatter and featured acres of pine forest.

The port towns we stopped at each night were amazing. I always felt a little rushed that there was only an evening or perhaps half a morning to explore. I'd try and be among the first off the boat, Nikon around my neck, racing off to frame the narrow alleyways or capture the afternoon light falling on the moored fishing boats and the sandstone buildings.

The Old Towns of Dubrovnik and Korcula were absolute wonders to walk through. I could have spent days or weeks shooting among the streets, markets and town squares. Dubrovnik in particular was a highlight. Once inside the walls that guarded the city we explored its harbour, markets, narrow alleys, central square and even got up on the 2km long wall for a birds eye view of the town.

With the memory card almost full and the sun setting, Jacq, Chris and I strode off to a bar perched among the cliffs between the sea and the city wall.

Half of the Penelopa had the same idea. We grabbed a drink, a seat and watched the sky turn from pink to orange and then fade to dark blue...

And then we all went out into the town and ate and drank and burned up the dancefloor until 4am.

Sailing Croatia - a tale in three parts (Pt 2)

2007-09-19T19:52:00.000Z

Jacq and friends, somewhere between Hvar and Split

Dubrovnik, Croatia - It really didn't take long for an easy routine to set in on the Penelopa, our home on the Adriatic for a week.

A simple breakfast of bread, cereal and juice was waiting for us when we climbed up from our tiny, dark cabins sometime after 8am. Hangovers were compared and stories swapped about the night before.

The hard working crew made sure we had a swim stop to recharge the batteries mid-morning or around lunchtime. It was often quite funny to watch the passengers go from relaxed sun bathers to a hive of activity as soon the anchor was dropped. We were on a reasonably tight schedule so when we stopped to swim, we swam.

At one stop I was one of the first to jump over the side and I swam to a nearby island. I looked back at the boat to see an amazing sight. Kayaks were being unfastened from the top deck and thrown over the side.

Blokes were back flipping from the railing. Snorkels and fins were fastened and people were going over the side. From around the back of the boat came Donche, the mustachioed tour leader, piloting the little inflatable tender and towing someone about on a body board at high speed.

In about a minute the quiet bay had gone from uninhabited and tranquil to some kind of crazed, aquatic circus. And then the lunch bell would go and we would all climb back aboard, anchor up and away we would go.

I wrote in the previous post that I was a little apprehensive that the cruise would be a Contiki trip on water. Me, being the intrepid, independent traveller, is obviously far too learned to lower myself to that sort of thing. But the group on the boat were a really cool bunch of people.

There were the three Kiwi boys who were at the end of a van tour through Europe and were so keen to get on our already full boat they bargained with Donche to sleep on the deck behind the wheel house. Which they did. Through storms, bright morning sun and the roaring boat engine.

There was Matt, who came across as quite a polite young Aussie when I first met him but by the end of the first day had revealed himself to be some sort of faux-camp extrovert that loved gimp masks and dance-offs.

Another Aussie bloke soldiered on despite getting a bunch of stitches in his lip after coming off second best with a Croat in a bar in Dubrovnik. The Croat hadn't seen the funny side of our man's dance floor shenanigans and punched him out with a right hook so fast he didn't know what had happened until he realised he was lying on the floor.

Yep, we were a regular bunch of weirdos, alcoholics and ne'er do wells. We probably drank more than a Contiki tour too. And I loved it.

For more photos, see the Flickr Croatia photo album here.

Sailing Croatia – a tale in three parts (Pt 1)

2007-09-17T18:22:00.000Z

Lazy days on the MV Penelopa

Split, Croatia – I think my favourite moment came quite late in the week-long cruise between the two towns of Split and Dubrovnik on the Adriatic.

It was on the dancefloor of the Verandah night club up on the hill overlooking the port of Hvar. The Euro techno was pounding, the Karlovasco beer in my hand was cold and thirty of my new, best closest friends whom I met just five days ago were busting some serious dance moves.

At the the start of the holiday we had assembled from all corners of the globe. The lucky ones were on extended travels through Euro-land and saw the seven day boat cruise as a relaxing, boozy break from endless sight seeing expeditions and grimy pension accommodation.

Many others, including myself, my girlfriend Jacq, my sister Meesha and my faithful touch rugby go-to man Chris, had escaped London and were looking forward to sun, swimming and not having to catch one goddamn tube train for the whole week.

I have to admit, I had my doubts on what the cruise would be like. It was reasonably cheap; almost exclusively made up of Aussies, Kiwis and Saffas; and had been billed as a holiday for “like-minded twentysomethings”. Translation: loud, obnoxious antipodeans getting shit faced in the sun before coming ashore to terrorise the local population.

But you know what? It wasn't like that at all. Or at least not before 8pm.

Before the end of the first day more than thirty people who hadn't known each other from a bar of soap were getting along famously. The jars of Lasko beer poured by Deni the deckhand almost as quickly as we could drink them helped a bit. And so did the warm Croatian sunshine and the lazy chug of the Penelopa's diesel engines.

By the time we pulled into port for the first night at Makarska, we were chilled, tanned and ready for whatever Croatia had to offer.

As it turned out, that night Croatia offered an affordable steak house that did a mean risotto, litre bottles of wine and much later on a nightclub inside a cave on the waterfront.

For more photos, see the Flickr Croatia photo album here.

Too much Touch?

2007-09-05T23:01:00.000Z

Team Canada

London, United Kingdom - I've been saying for sometime now that it seems I've replaced surfing with touch rugby since I arrived in London.

I seem to be playing it an awful lot. Six games a week at some times. Four games on Saturday and playing with a a couple of different teams during the week. It's bloody addictive.

So it's no surprise that when a local magazine advertised a World Cup of Touch Rugby to celebrate the start of the real world cup later this month, I was interested. I even won a free team registration and put a team together for the one day competition.

The forty or so teams were each allocated a country and dutifuly played their pool games before playing off in the finals. We were given Canada, and did about as well as their team does in real life too: three losses and one draw.

Hard to believe, but there's touch players out there even more talented than me.

It was a tough day actually. The rock hard turf caused a few injuries. My knee has been a bit sore since and some of the boys have complained of tweaked ankles.

The worst injury was a girl in my team who fell over backwards onto her elbows. She emailed later in the week to say she had two fractured elbows and was in a double sling for six weeks. Ouch.

Massing in London

2007-08-31T22:40:00.000Z

Soho, London

London, United Kingdom - It's the last Friday of the month, it can only mean one thing: Critical Mass.

Earlier this summer, before I had a bike of my own, a good friend organised for me to borrow one to take part in this 'organised coincidence'. Every last Friday of the month a couple of hundred cyclists meet near Waterloo Bridge in South Bank and at 7pm ride off into peak hour traffic of central London.

After my first Mass I promptly went out and bought a bike. Since then I've been riding to work most days and tooling around town on the weekends too. Beats the hell out of catching the tube or train.

This month's mass was a pleasant ride through the heart of London. Past Holborn, down Tottenham Court, Piccadilly Circus and beyond.

And it had it all: the sound systems on bikes, irate taxi drivers, impatient scooter riders and a lot of cyclists with big smiles on their faces.

An hour in the procession was enough for me. After a week of riding to work at full speed, solo, the slowish pace of the Mass left me a little impatient. Somewhere near Piccadilly I and a couple of friends from work peeled off, locked our bikes and enjoyed a pint in a nearby pub.

London landmarks

2007-08-29T21:57:00.000Z

A famous face

Back streets E-Type

National Gallery

Horse Guards

London, United Kingdom - I never thought I'd say it, but I'm slowly getting a feel for London.

It may be a city of seven or eight million, but it's not always impenetrable or overbearing.

On the recent Bank Holiday I took a ride into town early on the Monday morning and snapped a few frames of the famous landmarks before the tourists and traffic became too much. Being on a bike, it was easy to flit between, say, Big Ben, and Trafalgar Square in a matter of minutes.

Free and easy.

Carnival!

2007-08-28T21:29:00.000Z

Weird and wonderful, Notting Hil Carnival

London, United Kingdom - Like a lot of Aussies living in London, sometimes I feel like my life is ruled by some sort of invisible 'to do' list.

There's things on it you just have to do because you're in London. Whether you really want to or not.

The Walkabout on Australia Day. Portobello Road markets. Wimbledon (although don't get me wrong, it was great fun, just a lot of fucking about to get there).

This weekend it was the Notting Hill Carnival. Everyone I'd talked to that had been before said they were glad they went, but that they wouldn't go back in a hurry.

Apparently it got so jammed packed with people you could hardly walk. Just getting to a tube station took hours. Gangs of youths terrified the crowds and pick pocketed people.

With that sort of recommendation weighing on my mind, and knowing my aversion to crowds, I enlisted back up in the form of my girlfriend Jacq and two mates from touch rugby and off we went along with the hundreds of thousands of people to west London.

You can read about yet another of my sister's right-time right-place experiences here. She went on the Sunday, supposedly the more sedate Family Day.

We arrived bang in the middle of adults day on Monday of the Bank Holiday. A spicy fog of barbecuing jerk chicken hung in the air. Reggae beats boomed from the (often home made) bass bins of the infamous sound systems on every second corner.

Freaks, weirdos, rastas, tourists, middle class gawpers, home boys, white boys and police rubbed shoulders along the many side roads. Entire streets of shops were boarded up with plywood like they were expecting a hurricane. Which they were, of sorts. A storm of people.

Instead, residents had set up temporary shops at the front of their terraces. Beers for £3. Chicken, beans and rice. Whistles and horns. Everything you need for a day out among London's Caribbean population.

The Carnivale-style parade is what links the event together and gives it its purpose. It arrived mid afternoon almost unannounced while we were ambling along, bellys full with jerk chicken and Red Stripe beers.

I tell you what, the rise of the digital camera has something to answer for. As the colourful dancers strutted past a thousand sets of arms shot into the air to record the scene for Flickr, Facebook and every other website (Backpack Storybook included).

The steel drums were my favourite, their Calypso rhythms getting my hips moving where the brasher reggae tunes simply resonated my entire rib cage with their volume.

And then the parade was past. With work the next day on the back of our minds and feet getting tired, we repaired to a near by pub for a beer and then beat the crowds (and much later, the stabbings and shootings) to Paddington train station, bound for home.

Out with the old

2007-08-26T21:13:00.000Z

London, United Kingdom - It's been almost two years since I bought my first camera - a Nikon D70s. I saved up for a year. Spent hours researching it. And when it finally arrived in is huge, golden Nikon box it was almost the happiest day of my life.

Before the D70s I never really had a camera of my own. I learnt the basics with the old Pentax K1000s in high school and then used my father's SLR or borrowed from friends (thanks Dave!)

The D70s was a great piece of kit. It made me get up early and stay out late for sunrises and sunsets.

Travelling through Asia last year it pushed me to explore places I otherwise would have ignored - the thought of capturing an amazing picture always egging me on.

But shortly after arriving in the UK the sensor on the D70s developed a bright red dot with a red line bleeding from it. A hot pixel. Same place, every image.

Not so noticeable when shooting busy street scenes or colourful objects, but it rendered portraits and landscape shots unsalvageable. Even with Photoshop it was at best time consuming, at worst impossible.

So recently I went online and dropped £500 for a Nikon D80. Picked it up in Wimbledon the next day too. No fanfare or anticipation. I just realised I needed a camera to capture my travels and the current model wasn't doing the job.

Welcome to the age of disposable digital cameras hey? I wonder how long the new one will last.

Photo expo

2007-08-19T18:52:00.000Z

The power of photo journalism eh?

London, United Kingdom - Waking to another coolish, rainy day today, I figured summer was probably over for this year and so set about finding something indoors to occupy my Sunday.

After consutling my sister's Time Out magazine, I rode out to Waterloo to check out the World Press Photo exhibition.

I had already seen the 2006 winner, which you can see here, previously in a photo magazine and was quite interested in the discussion it generated. Apparently, a lot of people were provoked by the fact these victims of war drove convertibles, used mobile phones and dressed in nice clothes.

I saw some awful images of the world's war zones, including Iraq, Afghanistan and the West Bank. A woman shot through the head. A dead child on a mortician's table. That sort of thing.

But its funny how the mind works. While I thought these were provactive, powerful images, the one that gave me a lump in my throat and, if I had not been in the company of strangers, amost a tear in the eye, was the one above.

Darren Lockyer, captain of my home team the Brisbane Broncos after winning the 2006 NRL Grand Final.

Perhaps the best Rugby League player in the world, celebrating among the fans after the match. God, I'm all choked up just writing about it now.

Not so reliant

2007-08-18T16:17:00.000Z

Lonon, United Kingdom - Seen on a recent ride home through Clapham.

A Reliant Robin, the infamous three wheeler seen in Mister Bean and being rocketed into the sky on Top Gear, was tipped on its side and burnt out at an intersection.

It's probably not so surprising that it flipped on its side. Its hardly the most stable vehicle. I just can't work out whether it was deliberately torched by its owner immediately afterwards as an act of frustration.

Howzat!

2007-08-12T21:22:00.000Z

The Oval

London, United Kingdom - Thanks to my sister's impeccable connections in the corporate hospitality world, I was lucky enough to check out a test match at The Oval today.

I cycled up to Kennington in inner south west London to meet her and check out the fourth day of the England versus India test, the final one of the summer. After a cracking opening innings by the tourists it seemed the Poms, predictably, were in dire straights.

From our £65 (£65!) row four seats it was great to soak in the atmosphere of a truly traditional test match in the home of cricket.

But I noticed a few differences between watching cricket in England and the couple of matches I had been to back home in Australia.

The overall standard of dress seemed better. No yobboes in singlets, shorts or thongs. But plenty of urbane types in collared shirts and chinos. They wouldn't have lasted an over at a match at The Gabba before the booze soaked yobs tore them apart.

It got worse. I even saw men drinking...champagne. And apparently looking quite relaxed about it too. They're a strange lot, these English.

And the cricket? Quite slow, even for a test match. With India having built a decent lead and batting for the second time, they didn't seem to be in much of a hurry to do much. Example? Rahul Dravid took 96 balls to make just 12 runs.

Great for the purists but a bit too slow for me.

Beer garden

2007-08-11T22:44:00.000Z

Friday afternoon scene, Westminster

London, United Kingdom - I wrote about England's fondness for spilling outside of pubs and drinking on the footpaths and streets back in April.

Now, in August, I've got used to it a bit more. But I'm still amazed that the police and publicans are okay with patrons virtually taking over an entire footpath and most of the road for an afternoon boozing session. I suppose it says something about this country's priorities.

I had a cheeky pint after work this Friday at the Red Lion, supposedly the favourite haunt for political types, their advisors and journalists.

Didn't see many of them today. Mostly American tourists with fanny packs. I guessed the hardcore pollies are drinking it up by the beach in Cornwall or somewhere during their summer recess.

Halls of power

2007-08-08T22:35:00.000Z

Big Ben, as seen from Parliament Square

London, United Kingdom - I recently started a new job just down the road from Number 10 Downing Street.

For an Aussie scraping by on a Working Holidaymaker Visa its sometimes quite surreal to be working for the UK government.

Even more so is the giant theme park outside my office. Just the simple act of buying lunch and eating it in the sun in a park often takes me past Westminster Abbey, Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament.

I quite often sit there and become mesmerised by the hundreds of tourists who buzz around the area, dwarfed by the massivenes of something like the Abbey. All they can do is crane their necks, hold up their digital cameras and hope the lens can capture the scale of the place for the folks back home.

I'm still determined not to take any of this for granted. So I make myself lug my camera into work and spend lunchtimes walking around shooting some of the sights. It's certainly a step up from my old workplace, with its abundance of fried chicken joints and housing estates but not much else.

Day at the beach

2007-08-05T20:43:00.001Z

Brighton Beach

Brighton, United Kingdom - If I had have known there was a swimmable beach just an hour from London, I think I may have visited Brighton long before today.

As it were, the English weather hasn't been all that flash this summer so I haven't missed too much. But on the day the temperature reached the high 20s I was glad I was on the train south with my friends to enjoy a day at the beach.

The first thing I had to get my head around was the pebbles covering the beach. Or rather, they were the beach. We wore thongs to the shoreline, kicked them off and gingerly waded in for a swim in the coolish water.

At 11am we almost had the beach to ourselves. For hundreds of metres empty sun lounges lay on the beach. Optimistic, I thought.

But after visiting the maze of alleyways that make up the 'Laines', for lunch, and returning for another swim, I could no longer see the chairs for the crush of people. In fact, I could no longer see the beach, the shore nor the first 10 metres of ocean.

There must have been thousands of Brits down there, all enjoying the weather by stripping off and quickly going pink with sunburn. And none of them seemed too bothered by it.

Living in London

2007-08-03T23:01:00.000Z

Sunset over Earlsfield

London, United Kingdom - Sometimes here in London its easy to get caught up in the everyday grind of living in a big city.

Wake up, go to work, come home, have a beer, cook, go to bed.

Now that I've bought a bike and ride to work it feels like I'm getting out into the fresh air a little more and noticing my surroundings and things like changes in the weather a bit better.

But sometimes its easy just to plop down in front of the laptop when I get home. Which is where was when I noticed a strange light outside about 9pm. I grabbed the camera and shot a few frames. There's no hills or straight views of the horizon around where I live so I rarely look for the sunset.

But tonight I finally saw a good one.

Beach party

2007-07-30T20:51:00.000Z

Clouds, but no rain

London, United Kingdom - I threw caution to the wind this weekend and decided to have a beach party in our backyard.

We were celebrating my 28th birthday from earlier in the week. It was a risky move as this summer is apparently England's wettest on record since they began taking note of such things in the late 1700s

After scouring the BBC, MetWeather and rain radar web pages every few hours all week, I was a little nervous with heavy rain predicted.

Somehow, we got lucky and the sun came out and we had another great arvo by the barbecue in Earlsfield.

Lovely weekend

2007-07-23T22:51:00.000Z

Lovebox, Victoria Park

London, United Kingdom - I experienced my first UK festival this weekend as I took the girls - my sister and my girlfriend - out to Victoria Park for the Lovebox Weekender.

The last time I went to a festival of this size (about 40,000-odd) was the Big Day Out in Perth, Western Australia. Back then I had to line up in ridiculous queues to buy a drink ticket, line up again to actually get a beer and then stand behind a chain link fence away from the rest of the crowd while I drank.

Thankfully London doesn't see the need for any of this drinking apartheid crap and the friendly crowd could buy their cans of Red Stripe at one of a dozen bars and drink them wherever they wanted.

The easy going vibe extended to the great selection of food stalls, art and even a chainsaw demonstration.

But we hadn't come for the culture. We were there for the music.

A stint at the reggae stage among the blue clouds of spliff smoke got us tapping our feet before we headed into the circus tent to watch Sydney outfit The Presets rev up the crowd. We then had a look in on a few DJ sets (including perhaps the most boring 20 minutes of my life courtesy of Layo and Bushwacka. A drum machine could have done a better job) before getting ourselves organised for the main event.

Groove Armada do a really nice turn as DJs, but we'd come to see them with their big band. The sun had set, the blue sky of twilight was upon the park and there was no better time for GA's set with thumping drums, percussion, live horns and tag teaming MCs.

A great day out in the park.

Postscript: The only downside was having to leave half an hour early to beat the crowds back to the only tube station for miles around. Typical London eh?

Heading west

2007-07-18T12:58:00.000Z

The Green

Richmond, United Kingdom - Jacq and I rode out to Richmond this weekend for a friends' birthday party on the banks of the Thames.

I'd always seen the name on tube maps and thought it was just another high street. But after about an hour of pedalling we were surprised to reach a great little village out there in Zone 4.

In the middle of town was a big green where men in creams played cricket while lazy day punters sat around the edges drinking beer and generally having a relaxing time.

We didn't get much time to explore the streets as we wre late enough already for the party. But we'll be back.

Bike market

2007-07-14T12:53:00.000Z

London, United Kingdon - Like the Tulip craze in Holland in 1637, or the red hot stock market in 1927, the second hand bike industry in London is totally over-heated

Unfortunately, unlike the first two examples, its unlikely there’ll ever be a crash in prices. Demand for second hand bicycles in this city seems insatiable, with a constant stream of disgruntled tube commuters, immigrants, greenies and itinerants like me keen to get in the saddle.

I’m in the market for a bike. Something cheap, second had and without the disc brakes and front suspension that would make it a target for thieves.

I had a sniff around the notorious Brick Lane markets and the cheapest bikes I saw were still about £60. That was for a clapped out racer looking about 20 years old.

I hate to start sentences with “back in Australia…”, but honestly, back in Australia this bike would be worth more like $60, not the equivalent of $144.

Buying second hand also means having to deal with almost every junkie, thief and scumbag in greater London. Normal, well-adjusted people may indeed also sell bikes, but I haven’t met any yet.

Case in point. This weekend I went out to the north of London to check out a newish Specialized model advertised on Gumtree. It took me two tubes and ten-minute wait to meet the seller. A rail-thin bloke with bad teeth arrives, puffing like he’d never ridden a bike in his life, making some excuse about selling it because he’s moving house. I shrug my shoulders and I take it for a ride.

Bicycle expert Andy, who I’d brought with me, points out that the bike has special locks on the wheel nuts. Each bike has a unique key to undo the locks. Without it you can’t change the tyres, adjust the seat or replace the handlebars. Where’s the key mate?

“Oh yeah, the key. Ahhh, it’s in a box somewhere. I’m moving so I don’t know where it’s been packed. But I’m honest. I’ll give you a call after I move and I can post the key to you.”

Yeah right, I think, as Andy and I head back to the tube for the long trip home, bikeless once again.

Postscript: A couple of days later I walked into Recycling at Elephant and Castle after a hot tip from Andy and picked up a blue Ridgeback for 90 quid. Easy peasy.

Six months

2007-07-10T21:30:00.000Z

London, United Kindom - What a difference six months makes. Today marks half a year since Jacq and I lobbed into London in late January looking every bit like the backpackers we had become.

We were wearing a uniform of nylon, goretex and cotton, hefting backpacks and toting plastic water bottles.

We jostled with the white faced, red-nosed commuters on the Piccadilly line tube into central London and somehow barged our way out of Fulham Broadway station with our packs back and front providing padding against the crush of people.

For the first few days our only response to the fierce January cold was to wear every item of clothing we owned, including socks on our hands as a substitute for gloves.

Looking back its amazing how we seemed to survive in such a big, busy city. I secretly feared I'd be eaten alive. 8 million people! I thought Brisbane was daunting at peak hour with 2 million. But I suppose after the chaos of Bangkok or Saigon London looks positively civilised.

My favourite experiences of the past six months have been the sense of achievment I feel whenever I see a major landmark. Walking past Tower Bridge on my lunchbreak. Passing St Paul's on my way to an interview. Popping into the National Gallery at Trafalgar after work. Just when I get lost in the grind of the working week I pass Big Ben or similar and realise, "hey, I'm in London".

The not so favourite parts seem to be becoming more numerous. A lot of friends talk of enjoying London once you break the painful three month mark, but I dunno. The crap weather, the constant slog on public transport and the total absence of surfing are issues that, rather than diminishing over time, seem to be on my mind more and more.

Still, I may only get one bite of this London cherry so I feel I should experience, photograph and try to enjoy as much as I can while I'm here. In the scheme of things, another six months is not such a long time. It's only 240 individual train trips to work. Or 168 litres of after work beers. Or, at my current rate, another 5760 minutes of touch football.

Two wheels

2007-07-08T18:40:00.000Z

Warm up ride through Tower Bridge, London

London, United Kingdom - Wow, what a line up. Tour de France, Wimbledon, the British Grand Prix and Live Earth. All on in London on the same weekend.

Sometimes it's hard to not to think of this town as anything but the centre of the universe.

This year was one of the few times that the tour started outside of France and an estimated 2 million people turned out to watch them cycle from London to Canterbury in the south east of England. I caught up with bicycle fanatics Andy and Gabrielle to watch the tour roll past near Tower Bridge on their way to the start of the first stage at Greenwich.

We got settled in a reasonably good location just before the last turn leading up to the bridge and waited for the action to start.

Sponsors cars zoomed past. Then English police outriders. Then French outriders. A couple of team cars with bike frames on the roof. Then more sponsors cars.

After a bit more waiting, we heard the commotion in the distance. The pack was approaching. I set the focus on my camera, slowed the shutter speed a little for a nice blurred effect and blazed off a dozen shots in quick succession as the riders sped past.

And then it was over.

We wandered down to the Tower Bridge itself to see if we could catch the riders at the pre-arranged photo shoot point, but the crowd had the same idea and it was all over by the time we got down there. They were off somewhere towards Greenwich and by late afternoon they'd be well out into the country towards the stage finish.

Just as well we hadn't camped out in the French Alps days in advance to see the race. As Andy later remarked, the tour is probably best watched on TV.

A day out at the tennis

2007-07-07T08:03:00.000Z

Winding up for the serve, Wimbledon

London, United Kingdom - It's been a bloody awful start to summer in England this year. Up until today it's been raining for almost a fortnight.

So I felt particularly lucky this afternoon when I popped into the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club after work to check out some of the action. It was a little breezy, but the rain had given way to intermittant sunny patches and it was quite a nice evening down at SW19.

While its a bit of a shitfight to get decent tickets to see the big matches, the club only charges £10 for a general admission ticket after 5pm. Perfect for cube farmers on a budget like me.

After making it through the airport-style inspections at the gate, I was free to roam about the complex. I stood on 'Henman Hill' and watched the ladies on Court 1 battle it out on the big screen. At court two I felt like a real Aussie-in-London when I cheered on the two Woodies in a doubles match.

At the smaller courts I was amazed at how close you could get to the action. With just a low wall separating crowd from court it felt like you were right in the thick of it.

Some of the junior doubles matches were quite entertaining. The fiery young blokes from Spain or South America had yet to be turned into boring tennis clones and didn't mind doing a bit of screaming or shouting when things didn't go their way.

Of course, this being England, one aspect that was quite noticeable was the sharp division between the average punter and the upper crust. Throughout the grounds there were some absolutely fantastic bars, restaurants and viewing areas. And alot of them seemed to be off limits, whether due to sky-high prices or membership requirements.

I mean check out the what you need to do just to join the All England club: four existing members have to nominate you, and two of them need to have known you for three years. I think I'll stick with the Miami Beach public courts on the Gold Coast thanks.

Vintage scooter

2007-07-03T08:53:00.000Z

Behind Waterloo train station, London

Weekend washout

2007-07-02T19:03:00.000Z

Imperial War Museum, Southwark

London, United Kingdom - A rainy weekend and a renewed committment to saving money for future travels saw Jacq and I scratching our heads to think of fun and free indoors things to do this weekend.

We realised we need to make a list of all the sights we want to see and the activities we want to do. Because I suspect if we haven't done them by next year when we leave London, its unlikely we'll be back here on holidays again. A year or so in this place ought to be enough for anybody really.

Sunday morning. Out of bed, into the rain, onto the train and over to the Imperial War Museum. Like many museums and galleires in London, its housed in a fantastically ancient and imposing building. Formerly the Bethlem psychiatric hospital (known as 'Bedlam', apparently).

Inside the cavernous building rickety Tiger Moths, bruising Mustang P-50s and fearsome German World War Two planes were suspended from the roof in a kind of stationary dog fight.

A variety of efficient killing machine, from tanks to V2 rockets to a model of the Little Boy atomic bomb were arranged throughout the two levels. Further back in the halls were some of the best war museum displays I've seen. A little less gruesome than some of the heavy shit we saw in Vietnam's museums, but very nicely presented all the same and without the Communist propaganda.

We tubed it across town in the afternoon to pay hommage to the ultimate in consumerism and busy, sharp-elbowed shopping - Harrod's. I don't know what I was expecting, perhaps something as grand as its exterior suggested, but inside I quickly realised it had become a parody of itself. A must see stop on every open top bus route. Something to be ticked off by any and every tourist to London.

And so by letting in the riff raff, like me, they seemed to have killed off any air of tradition or significance. It had a decent range of goods, if Eurotrash style is your thing, and the downstairs food court was interesting for its enormous range, but I found the whole experience underwhelming.

Until we discovered a side street next door to Harrod's that was being used as an informal car park for the store's heavy hitting customers. BMWs, Range Rovers and Bentley's were parked bumber to bumper down both sides of the street as well as the middle. All dripping in a uniform of high gloss black or midnight blue paintwork. And standing beside them were the owners. Be-suited, well fed Africans and sharp cheekboned Eastern Europeans, all reeking of misappropriated cash and dodgy dealings.

The number plate on one Bentley parked prominently in front? 2P0SH. Fantastic.

Touch rugby

2007-06-22T18:03:00.000Z

Three up and then go wide

Rhys, looking for the winger

Victory! (all photos by Jacq)

London, United Kingdom - The parks and gardens aren't the only things to burst into life once the weather finally warms up in late spring in London.

Touch football leagues also shoot up everywhere. I'm not sure if its just my area in the south west, because it tends to be home to a large antipodean population, but London has embraced touch in a big way.

Muck and Raul, my mixed touch team at Wimbledon, played in the grand final this week. Against the only team we lost to all season, we started off extremely shaky, throwing the ball around and making stupid mistakes.

We got so frustrated some of my team ended up having it out with the ref, who responded by sending our captain off. Which I kinda thought was fair enough.

In the second half we went back to basics, the tries started to come and we won by a decent margin.

Conference madness

2007-06-21T17:44:00.000Z

Royal Baths, Harogate

Harrogate, United Kingdom - Harrogate is an old spa town, a bit like Bath, and in attracting wealthy English types in the nineteenth and twentieth century it became characterised by some pretty impressive architecture.

Actually, if pressed, I would say Harrogate is even nicer than Bath. It has a Stepford Wives feel in that the town seems too nice. Manicured gardens, light traffic, pleasant people and beautiful homes.

It doesn't appear to attract as many tourists as Bath and so somehow feels a little more real.

What is does attract, however, is suits. When the spas lost their pulling power after World War Two Harrogates leaders decided to aim for the then bourgening conference industry.

I was in town for a big conference and sometimes it seemed Harrogate was populated only by people in business attire with delegate badges hanging from lanyards around their necks.

After the conference ended each day the quaint, historic hotels around the site would be chock a block with suits networking at cocktail parties.

The streets would be briefly quiet while this was happening and then around 7pm the suits would flood back outside again and migrate to the next event, generally some sort of business dinner.

Again the streets would be safe. But only until ten pm when the restaurants closed and the diners, flush with all expenses paid booze and food, would stagger over to the Majestic Hotel, famed for its late opening hours and turning the other cheek at suits wearing ties around their heads and dancing badly.

In between work duties I managed to walk around with my camera and snap a few photos, stroll through the enchanting Stray gardens in the middle the town and pick up a tin of darjeeling tea for the girlriend at the famous Bettys tearooms.

Up north

2007-06-20T17:21:00.000Z

Brewery Wharf, Leeds

Leeds, United Kingdom - This week I was lucky enough to spend a couple days in the north of England around Leeds and the small town of Harrogate for work.

It's always nice to get out of London. After living in the big smoke most other places seem a little calmer, friendly and less expensive.

It was hard to form a strong impression of Leeds though as I was only using it as a base while working up the road at Harrogate. Nevertheless, it seemed to have a pleasant yet slightly edgy vibe you sometimes get in university towns.

One evening I trekked through the city looking for somewhere to eat dinner. After trawling the pedestrian malls and finding nothing but Subways, MacDonalds and Greggs bakeries chain stores, I stumbled on the regenerated Brewery Wharf area.

It was almost as though it was a secret. I had to walk out of the city centre, behind the markets and take a right through a slightly dodgy lane way past a homeless guy.

Here I found a decent bar and tucked into a plate of lamb chops washed down with a pint of Carlsberg while I eavesdropped on the table of uni students behind me, gabbing away in that fantastically amusing accent they have in the north.

Canal cruising

2007-06-10T22:06:00.000Z

Town Bridge over the River Avon

Bradford-on-Avon, United Kingdom - If I wasn't so rigidly adhering to the role of the tough Aussie male used to blazing hot summer temperatures, then today I would have had a good old fashioned whinge about the heat.

Backpack Storybook was on another Backabush hiking day trip. Leaving from Hammersmith tube station mid morning, we ventured west to Bath to start a 10 mile hike along the Kennet & Avon canal.

The first part of the walk was in the midday sun and I soon found myself working up a sweat. I was a bit embarrassed, considering the temperature had yet to top 24C, and so every chance I got I exclaimed to anyone that would listen that it was "nuthin like an Aussie summa, mate".

By mile number two most in our 50 strong group were ready for a pit stop, including me, and the cool, low-ceilinged pub on the canal seemed just the ticket.

An hour or so later we emerged back into the sunlight and, fuelled by wonderful English pub food, strode briskly down the tow path that followed the canal from Bath to Bradford-on-Avon.

It was easy to get caught up in the romance of the narrowboats moored along the canal at regular intervals. The idea of living simply and self-contained on a boat in the quiet countryside appealed to most of us who were on a 12 hour escape from greater London.

For many of the narrow boaters, it was a way of life. Whole vegetable patches were grown on rooftop potted gardens. Logs were stacked beside them for heat. The lack of a sizeable outdoor deck area meant many families simply relocated to a shady spot on the canal bank for the afternoon, cooking and strumming and chatting the afternoon away.

The architecture behind the canal system was also a sight to behold. Locks, swivel bridges and u-turn areas dotted the canal at regular intervals. And, quite weirdly, we even found ourselves walking alongside a canal over a bridge that spanned a river below. Quite a sight to see a boat chugging past with the valley 30 metres below.

Five hours later our destination of Bradford-on-Avon offerd a choice of pubs by the river. Unfortunately, we chose the one with the warm beer and I suffered through a whole pint of warm Fosters. But it was almost worth it to be able to sit there, relax and watch the boats float past, patiently queuing up to use the lock.

Summer barbecue

2007-06-09T23:15:00.000Z

Ice cold

Vegie kebabs

Three chefs

London, United Kingdom - A warm June evening. 10pm and the sky is still showing traces of light. Shorts and t-shirt weather. Sitting in a courtyard finishing the last tube from a four pack. London in summer.

Ireland road trip - Day 3

2007-05-28T17:11:00.000Z

O'Riada's Pub, Kilkenny

Kilkenny, Ireland - Kilkenny is a great town. It had an upbeat, lively feel to it, helped in part by the number of pubs in the town. One for every 300 inhabitants apparently.

After arriving in the town the previous afternoon, we walked around a bit before our thirst got the better of us and we ended up at a somewhat touristy pub with a live band playing semi-traditional Irish music.

You could tell it was packed with tourists even from the outside as you could hear the swish of Goretex rain jackets and the squeak of brand new hiking boots.

We got talking to two blokes who were a great double act. The first thing Willie, the shorter of the two, asked me was where I was from.

"Australia," I replied.
"Good," he said with relish, "we hate the English!" And he threw his arm around my shoulders and steered me to the bar so he could buy us a drink.

Willie and his mate Derek were great value. They were passionate about their country, saddened about its past and optimistic about its future - representative I thought about the Irish as a whole.

Kilkenny was our last destinition in what had become a too-short visit to Ireland. But we certainly made the most of our time in town. I tasted perhaps the best beer in my whole life, a pint of fresh Kilkenny at Mike the Millers pub.

We took a guided tour of Kilkenny castle, which guards the town from its position high on the hill overlooking the river.

And we spent hours walking through the maze of alley ways, past olde pubs, around frightening gothic churches - all that make this place so special.

Ireland road trip - Day 2

2007-05-27T15:41:00.000Z

Near Annestown, County Waterford

County Kilkenny, Ireland - After a hearty Irish breakfast of bacon, sausages, eggs, grilled tomatoes and homemade bread, Jacq and I squeezed ourselves into the hatchback for another day on Ireland's roads.

Our route took us south east to the coast at Arklow. Here we found a gorgeous stone harbour with sailing boats sheltering from the howling wind and high seas.

A quick spell on the motorway got us safely from Wexford to Waterford in the south east corner and then we found the coast again at Dunmore East, another delightfully historic fishing town with a harbour out front and thatched roof cottages along the main street.

Like Wicklow, the south coast was another highlight of the trip. The coast road took us high along the cliffs and then down steep hills to the sandy beaches below. Just past Annestown we spied a tiny, isolated anchorage with boat ramp. A few boats crowded into the lee of the harbour walls. It was one of the prettiest places I had visited.

It was soon after Annestown that we turned north and set the compass for Kilkenny, our destination for the night. We had wanted to go all the way along the coast to Dungarvan, or even Cork, but our progress on the curvy Irish roads was slower than I had expected.

We had probably only covered 80 or 100 kilometres but with stops for photos and lunch it had taken us well into the afternoon.

Jacq was doing an admirable job of navigating too. Although she did take a little while to warm up to it. On the first day, as I was driving us down the motorway at 120kph, holding the steering wheel with white knuckles while trying to work out what the road signs said and which exit we should take, I asked Jacq anxiously "what did that one say? Should we take it?"

"Oh, maybe I should start paying attention," she said leisurely before reaching down to pick up the discarded map from the floor.

And it was the prevalence of place names starting with Glen or Bally or Kil that had her stumped. She often couldn't recall the name of the town where we had been, or for that matter, where we were going. Only that it began with a Kil something. Kildare? Killarney? Kinsale? Kilkenny?

Ireland road trip - Day 1

2007-05-26T22:10:00.000Z

Avoca, County Wicklow

County Wicklow, Ireland - Sometimes you get a real sense about a country as soon as you arrive. Like when the heat and smell hits you like a wet punch in Bangkok. Or you see the the stark trees and brown houses of London in winter.

Ireland wasn't like that. Bombing down the M50 motorway past Dublin in our little green rental car felt like driving on any city highway in Australia. Generic roadside shrubs. Wide lanes, crazy drivers.

But just a few kays from the city outskirts it changed. We started the ascent into the Wicklow Mountains to the south of Dublin and almost immediately found ourselves on narrow country lanes. Ancient stone walls surrounded us either side, the trees arched over us in a rich green canopy, the hills rolled away into the distance.

Wicklow was a highlight of our flying three day visit to Ireland. Unsure how far we had to travel to reach our accomodation that night, I put my foot down and zoomed past many of the sights I now realise we should have stopped at. We saw black-brown hill sides scored from centuries of peat farming. Alpine flowers in white and yellow swayed in the breeze on long, lonely stretches of road out on the top of the mountains.

On the otherside we came down into Glendalough (pronounced Glenda-lock), a valley of twin lakes that was the site of a monastery built in the eight century. Just before the rain set in for the afternoon we toured the ruins and I composed a couple of photos of the famous 110 foot-high round tower, built about 1000 years ago. The valley, the lakes and the stone buildings all combined to make Glendalough quite a special, picturesque area and I got a real sense that we really were in Ireland now.

The rain continued for most of the afternoon but we didn't mind so much as it seemed to add an authentic edge to our Irish holiday. We sped through the winding roads, me occassionally wrenching the wheel to the left when surprised by an oncoming car. The roads really were narrow and it seemed that having two wheels on the roadside vegetation was the only way to pass by safely. Well, 'safely' in terms of avoiding a head on collision.

It was at Avoca, population 500-odd, that Jacq and I experienced a B&B for the first time. We were rapt with the hospitality that Jackie at Ashdene provided during our night there. Within minutes of arriving we found ourselves in her sitting room, drinking tea from a china cup balanced on a saucer on my knee. It was very civilised. And Jackie didn't seem to mind that I as clashing rather badly with her tasteful furnishings with me in my torn jeans, trucker cap and home boy-style rain jacket.

With the rain and polar-like temperatures getting worse, there was nothing for it but to head down the hill to the pub. Fitzgeralds offered a warm atmosphere and cold(ish) beers. Like all good Irish pubs, it was not just a drinking house but a loungeroom for the locals to meet and have a chat.

But geez it was small. Standing at the bar waiting to order my first ever Guiness the punters could barely squueze past me and my camera bag. Bloody tourists eh?

Critical Mass

2007-05-25T22:23:00.000Z

Andy, Trafalgar Square

London, United Kingdom - This evening I had planned to catch up with my mate Andy for a beer somewhere in London. Last night he emailed me to ask if I was up for something a bit different. I said I was. And that's how I came to be riding past Buckingham Palace on a purple ladies bicycle with a couple of thousand other cyclists.

Critical Mass operates in cities all over the world. As you might know, the basic idea is that a bunch of cyclists get together (usually the last Friday of the month) and ride through the city. It's been described as an 'organised coincidence', a protest ride or just a good bit of fun.

It's also controversial as the procession of bikes often holds up traffic in the city in the middle of peak hour. But as the London Critical Mass group says, "we aren't blocking traffic, we are the traffic".

This Friday's ride was a big one as earlier in the week the police had a win in the courts, overturning an early ruling that said the ride was legal. The new ruling found that under the Public Order Act of 1986, organisers of any procession must inform the police six days in advance of the date, route and name of the organiser of the event. If they didn't they'd face prosecution.

The only problem is the ride doesn't have an organiser.

We set off from London Waterloo around 7pm and followed a meandering path over the Thames into the city, past Trafalgar Square and on to Buckingham Palace. The route is decided by whoever happens to be at the front at the time. Hence the lack of an organiser.

I spent most of the ride in open mouthed amazement. For the first time in four months of living in London I was able to properly take in the sights, the buildings, the streets, all without being stuffed inside a red bus or dodging pedestrians on the footpaths.

The pace of the ride was leisurely enough that there was plenty of time to stop and take in the atmosphere. I took photos from the hip. Tourists and students on the footpath took photos of us.

At the palace we rode around the giant roundabout for a bit and then continued down to Westminster where we stopped outside Parliament, completely overtaking the normally busy traffic square with cyclists. There was much bell ringing, hooting and hoisting of bikes in the air. This seemed to be the most provocative, protest-orientated part of the ride.

I couldn't be sure, but it also sounded like a car was trapped in the sea of cyclists somewhere down the front. There was a horn sounding and then the revving of the engine, rising to a fever pitch. More cyclists crowded over to the scene, meaning what little chance the motorist had of escaping in his car was now gone.

The interactions with motorists was perhaps the most entertaining part of the evening. At the first roundabout a cyclist rode provocatively in front of a black cab and stopped him from going further, allowing us to ride past in one long group.

This scene was repeated continuously throughout the ride. Police or a cyclist would stop in front a line of cars and hold them. Often you'd hear the cyclist calmly saying "just wait five minutes and we'll be out of your way". Typically the taxi driver or motorist would be half out of his window, face beetroot red, screaming something in return.

But without driving over the cyclist there wasn't much they could actually do about it. As Andy said to me, "cars are pretty useless in situations like this".

As if to prove his point, we soon rode past a jet black Lamborghini Gallardo stopped in its tracks. A £100,000 car capable of 0-100kph in four seconds that wasn't going anywhere. Cyclists had crowded around it take photos and jeer at the driver.

After the second lap of Trafalgar Square it was definitely time for beer and Andy and I peeled off towards Old Street on the east side of the city. We passed a long line of traffic that was being held up by a group of cyclists dressed in traditional cricket creams bowling a few overs in the middle of the street. As we passed the batsman hit a ball way up in the air and it was caught by a passing pedestrian.

We rode on with the sound of an enormous roar from the crowd at our backs, propelling us into the night.

Return to Brick Lane

2007-05-20T21:54:00.001Z

Drumming and tap act, Brick Lane

London, United Kingdom - I think the fact that I voluntarily spent almost a whole day at the markets today says something about me being at loose ends on the weekend now that my two favourite past times of surfing and watching rugby league are temporarily unavailable here in London.

Nevertheless, it was another great day over on the east side (see last fortnight's entry on Brick Lane here). After a week of coldish, overcast days the sun shone and and the sky was mostly blue.

I chaperoned Jacq and my newly arrived sister through Spitalfield markets and then we continued on to Brick Lane to have lunch at some of the fantastic food stalls in the undercover market area.

Later we bought large cans of Red Stripe beer from the off license and stood on the street and watched a band and then drumming-tap crew perform.

More photos can be viewed at my Flickr page.

Package tour - guest post by Jacq

2007-05-14T14:07:00.000Z

Sharm el Shiekh, Egypt - This is my first package deal, and I am a little on the apprehensive side.

Sharm el Shiekh is a tourist resort town on the Egyptian coastline that meets the Red Sea. I knew this. However, nothing could have prepared me for the extent to which this region is developed for tourism.

The entire culture, landscape and authority changes for Sharm, to enable tourists to visit in the manner to which they are accustomed. For example, you don’t need a visa within Sharm. You can drink alcohol despite this being illegal in Egypt. You can wear as little clothing as you like, or nothing if you please, despite the religious requirement for modesty. And lastly, there are no women living here. The men commute to Sharm for work.

Having said all this, Sharm is constructed in such a way that you would be struggling not to enjoy yourself. Everything is opulent. For five nights and six days, I did not have to think about food, drink, water, entertainment. The package deal takes care of everything.

There is something luxurious about being the tourist lazing by the pool, stretched out on a sun lounger, sipping a tequila sunrise. At 11am in the morning.

I have always laughed at such travellers. Held them in that place in my mind reserved for naïve teenagers and pompous affluent bourgeois aristocrats. Well, count me in.

Just around the bay from infamous Naama is Shark Bay, a sandy stretch of beach speckled with grass umbrellas, soft round pebbles, sun lounges and shiesha bars; where the crisp blue of the Red Sea meets desert cliffs descending steeply to coral reef. This is some of the best diving in the world, and it lives up to reputation.

You can’t help but breathe in really deeply. And relax.

Contrast this with a camel ride through desert like no desert I have ever seen. A light brown coloured dusty landscape that is arid and vegetation free. Absolutely flat ground is disrupted only by steep, jagged dark brown and black rocky cliffs that rise ad hoc like sentinels marking fallen soldiers in an ancient battlefield. It has not rained here since 1997. At all.

My week in Sharm el Shiekh was one of the most relaxing weeks of my life. Not such an enriching cultural experience, but a beach resort holiday, for the first time affordable on a backpacker's budget.

Sharm el Sheikh photo album

2007-05-13T13:00:00.000Z

Jacq, camel jockey

Shark Bay reef

Taxi driver

Shark Bay

Sharm El Sheik, Egypt - For the first time in a long time, the core two-person Backpack Storybook team of Jacq and Rhys split up for solo adventures.

I stayed in the UK and navigated my way through the perils of working in London's depressed inner south while Jacq escaped to the Red Sea for some sun, sand and camels.

Photos by Jacq (Fuji disosable camera) and John (Konica Minolta DiMage).

Three days in Paris

2007-05-07T23:52:00.000Z

Jacq, La Rotonde Cafe, Montparnesse

Paris is a difficult city to explore in just three days.

I naively thought we'd have time to see all the major sights as well as take some kick ass photos and spend long, long afternoons at cafes getting drunk and talking existential shit.

But man, it's a big city. Just walking from the Eiffel Tower across to the Arc de Triumph and then down that famous causeway known as the Champs Elysees to the Concorde and then beyond to the Louve took the best part of an afternoon. And we didn't even stop for food.

We thought the Eiffel Tower was best climbed first thing in the morning, but most of the other long weekend tourists had the same idea and large queues had formed under the giant structure long before the 9:30am opening time.

Once we did get to the top I was buffeted all morning by ruthless Chinese tour groups. The only clue they gave of their impending stampede was a faint rustling of their beige nylon jackets and then they were upon me, all sharp elbows, squawking voices and blinding flashes as they hurried to the guardrail.

The narrow streets around St Germain and the Latin Quarter on the Left Bank were a personal fave, although it was hard not get a feeling that tourism had irreparably altered what once made these suburbs interesting.

But I felt a sense of delight at seeing the cafe chairs arranged side by side in pairs facing out onto the street, something I had seen in guidebooks long before this trip and always thought of as typically French. As Jacq said, sitting on the footpath is all about seeing and being seen, so the French are just making it easier for this to take place.

I thought the area around Republique, where we were staying, was a neat little place. There were some tourist hotels about but it seemed quite French, more authentic.

Next door to our hotel was a little bakery that had apparently recently changed ownership. The young baker was hosting an opening party one evening and as we walked past he invited us to try some bread. His guests were aghast when Jacq said she had a gluten intolerance.

We got talking to one girl, in English, who kept asking what Jacq could eat.

“No bread?” she asked.
“No,” Jacq replied.
“But croissant, yes?”
“No.”
“Baguette?”
“No, no bread.”
“No? But what is there left to eat?”

Riots, baguettes and roast duck

2007-05-06T23:46:00.000Z

Jardine des Tuileries, Paris

Paris, France - It came to me as we sat at our table on the footpath, side by side French style, enjoying an evening drink.

Behind us in the smoky cafe the music had been switched off and the TV turned on, showing a news channel which was broadcasting the latest results from the French presidential election. Parisians walking past would stop in their tracks, peer into the cafe to see the latest vote count, shake their head and walk away.

Minutes later, when right wing candidate Nicolas Sarkozy had been declared the winner, the first of the police vans speed past on the road, sirens shrieking, stuffed full with tough looking riot squad police.

The French weren't having it. They were showing their disgust in Sarkozy's plan to do away with the 35 hour working week and bring France into line with Britain and America by taking to the streets (in fact, just two blocks down from where we sat), looting shops and throwing rocks at police.

It was then I realised the French way of life was worth defending If that meant tying a bandana around your face and acting like a hooligan, then so be it.

And if my magnificent honey glazed roast duck with fried potatoes hadn't just been served up in front of me, I probably would have run down the street and joined them.

After three months doing hard time in England, it was a rewarding feeling to go across the ditch to Europe for a three day weekend. The mainland had been enticing me since I arrived in London. The UK was exciting, sure, but it was a similar culture to Australia. I felt like I had stopped travelling.

Getting to Paris was a doddle. Early on Saturday morning we caught our local train up to Waterloo station and then hopped onto the Eurostar. Two and a bit hours later we pulled into Gare du Nord station in central Paris and we were out onto the streets to find our hotel.

At first glance Paris seemed like London, or any other big city. It had the regulation busy roads, roaring traffic, grimy sidewalks, endless shop fronts and above them, apartment blocks.

But after just a few hours of walking around I realise the French do things a little differently, and I liked it.

The emphasis on good food was awesome to see. They apparently bake bread four times a day in Paris and not once did I see an empty patisserie. There was always a line at the counter for a crusty baguette or something sweet. Supermarkets and convenience stores were scarce in the inner city. People bought their food from individual stores and it was fresh and it was good.

If not buying food they were chatting at cafes. I can't recall seeing one person rush past gulping coffee from a styrofoam cup, London-style. And why would you when you can take a break for 30 minutes and enjoy a a shot of coffee, or a glass of wine if it was past 11:30am, and some unhurried conversation with a friend?

The city and its residents were aesthetically pleasing. The terraced apartments with their tall windows, petite balconies and white shutters gave the streets a sense of openness and softness. So pleasant compared to the squat, mean brown buildings of London.

Parisians sashayed past me like they had been dressed by a stylist. Nothing over the top, its just that they wore clothes that were effortlessly stylish. The people who squeezed into too-tight black jeans or, god-forbid, fleece jackets, were tourists. And those wearing fanny packs were American.

As I chewed thoughtfully on my roast duck and watched Paris go about its business from my table, I wondered how anyone, including a hard nosed politician, would want to change a thing about this place?

Backpack Storybook tip: We stayed at Hotel American on Rue Charlot right next to Republique metro stop. It was walking distance from Gare Du Norde and a 20 minute hike down to the Seine and the centre of Paris. Newish rooms and nice staff. Highly recommended.

East end

2007-04-29T23:44:00.000Z

Brick Lane

London, United Kingdom – An old school friend dropped in to London this weekend, just another stop on his route from Korea to Japan to South America on to Ireland and then back home to Australia.

Or at least, that's how I think it goes, I couldn't keep up with his convoluted travel schedule no matter how many times he explained.

It was also good chance for some of my Western Australian friends and I to catch up for an afternoon beer. Perth seems to be one of those smaller cities or towns that spring boards its young people off to the brighter lights of Sydney, Melbourne or London for a few years after university.

If we're all away living and travelling in different parts of the globe it's sometimes easier to catch up on the other side of the world in a global city like London. There's a good chance many of us will pass through here at one stage or another.

The venue for the catch up was the Vibe Bar on Brick Lane in London's inner city east. It's not an area I go to much because I don't work there and its a bit of a hike from my south west London home. But I'm glad I tore myself away from the laptop on a warmish Sunday arvo because Brick Lane was doing a good job of collecting all that is good in London in one place.

Along this famous stretch of markets hemmed in by centuries old terraces I came across a group of enthusiastic, bookish types who had set up an advice stall with a card table and typewriter outside a book shop.

The usual outrageous characters of homeless, scammers and drunkspatrolled up and down the footpath.

Shifty types sold bicycles in the great Brick Lane bike yards. I wondered what percentage of them was stolen but realised I had no way of telling. Apart from the bikes with the U-locks still bolted around the frame.

Further up I passed a bunch of stalls selling bric a brac. Either all the good stuff had long been sold or it had been crap all along, but some of the stuff for sale was optimistic to say the least.

Retro is obviously very cool right now in London, but I couldn't understand why anyone would want a late 1990s Nokia mobile phone. To recent to be ironically cool, too brick-like and heavy for anyone to consider actually using it.

All this window shopping was making me thirsty so I retired to the beer garden of the Vibe for a pint of Becks to talk about old times with the assembling crew from high school.

Much later when our stomachs began rumbling with hunger we walked back up the street for a famous Brick Lane curry. The waiters touting for business reminded me a little of the touts in Asia, but with one obvious difference: the UK touts actually took no for answer.

Soon the offers became too good to refuse and we chose the restaurant who promised us two free beers each and 30% off our bill. Still thinking of the Vietnamese touts, I was sceptical about how they were going to make up for such a generous offer and still turn a profit.

To their credit, they did it with minuscule meal portions and £2.60 (roughly AUD$6) for rice, rather than (blatantly) ripping us off by fiddling with the bill.

Cotswolds photo album

2007-04-22T21:59:00.000Z

Bourton-on-the-Water

Backabush crew

Wheatfield

Wool church

Cotswolds, United Kingdom - A day trip to the northern Cotswolds, north-west of London.

Drinking in the sun

2007-04-21T21:33:00.000Z

Jacq, sipping Pimms by the Thames

London, United Kingdom - One of the things I've been enjoying in England is the more relaxed approach to drinking. London is not quite Europe, but it does seem less uptight than Australia about having a beer.

You can buy booze in supermarkets and off licenses (corner stores) and it seems to be reasonably priced too.

The biggest surprise for me was seeing people drinking outside pubs on the street. Now that the weather has warmed up nicely in spring, its not unusual to see punters buying a pint inside the pub and then drinking it outside in the sun.

And I'm not talking about a beer garden. Jacq and I visited Putney Bridge on the weekend and found ourselves having a quiet drink on the footpath about a block away from the pub. Drinkers were lined up along the riverside walk enjoying their bitters and Pimms from plastic cups.

Its a great solution to the fact that most English pubs are great in winter but in warmer weather seem like stuffy, dark little holes. The 'beer garden' is usually just a couple of picnic tables outside on the footpath.

What I haven't worked out yet is how the English change from well behaved street drinkers in the afternoon to rowdy, sometimes violent puke machines once pubs close at 11pm.

Fights break out, pot plants are overturned and the pavement is sprayed with salmon-pink vomit. Its a totally different world.

I suppose thats the difference between pint number two mid-afternoon and a tenth pint at 11pm.

‘Cue season

2007-04-16T20:46:00.000Z

London, United Kingdom - England has been enjoying some outrageously good weather recently. To celebrate, we thought we’d organise a barbecue for Sunday, the hottest day of this week’s mini heat wave.

We’re lucky enough to have both a backyard and a barbecue, so it seemed a shame not to use them as much as possible.

But first we had to mow the lawn, which looked like it hadn’t been cut since last summer. We borrowed next door’s mower. Strangely, it was an electric model. Plug it into the wall and away you go.

Initially I was sceptical. As an Aussie I’m more familiar with the smoky two stroke Victa models. But apart from the blades slowing down slightly in the tough stuff, it did an admirable job. And there was no need to stuff around with fuel and struggling to start the bastard like you have with the petrol mowers.

After that it was a matter of getting the barbecue organised. Again, I'm more familar with the gas-powered barbecue and flat hot plate common in Australia. But my Seth Efrican flatmates had bought a more traditional braai that used coal.

It was a dirty, hot and sweaty business getting the bitch going. And I could never tell if the pile of charcoal was about to extinguish or spark into a roaring fire. It just sat there and stayed black. And then went grey.

People arrived. We sat in the sun and drank tubes of beer that quickly went warm. The girls made waaay to much salad.

I manned the braai and burnt the sausages to a crisp while the coals were too hot. By the time the steaks went on it was too cool and they took ages to cook.

Nevertheless we all tucked into the feast and then laid around some more. A couple of blokes even had an arvo snooze in the shade.

Later still we went down to the local park and played cricket. A group of local ten year old toughs milling in the middle of the park complained we were playing on 'their' pitch. They kicked their ball at us a few times but we mostly ignored them until they sicced their overweight Mum onto us. Not wanting to get into the sort of knife fight with a bunch of hoodies that seems to arise from relatively harmless beginnings in this city, we moved on to the private sporting fields across the road.

As we left for the fields, they called out that we weren't allowed to play there either. Nor did they make any attempt to restart their game of football.

After a couple more overs a drinks break was declared and we all repaired back to the backyard for another round. Good times.

Bath

2007-04-10T22:11:00.000Z

The Circus

Bath, United Kingdom - My first glimpse of the town came from my seat on the train we took from London’s Paddington station into the countryside of south-west England.

After miles of rolling paddocks and occasional villages populated by semi-detached homes, Bath appeared as a shining, golden town, its sand-coloured terraces stretching away along a green hillside.

Closer up it looked no less impressive. Jacq and I strolled through the town on our way to the YMCA and were captivated with the layout, the architecture and the views across the valley.

The town had managed to keep its sense of history. Centuries old terraces line the streets. Sure, Sainsburys, Starbucks and other chain stores inhabit some of the buildings, but by the looks of things they’ve not been allowed to build the prefab shops that had sprung up in the other towns we’d passed. Instead they (mostly) blend in.

Bath is also conveniently compact. Between the train station, our room at the Y and the river were all the major tourist sights. In two days we saw the Roman Baths, the Pulteney Bridge and weir, Bath Abbey, the Circus, the Crescent Costume Museum, Assembly Rooms and half a dozen other historical sites.

And these were just some of the attractions. Most of the museums charged between £5 and £12 for entry so we only saw a couple.

Of course, the Roman Baths is a must see in the town. After watching the queues stretch around the block on the Sunday, we arrived early on Monday to get in before the tour buses arrived from London.

Many of the attractions in Bath had a free audio tour for visitors. At the baths we were treated to the slightly absurd sight of dozens of people shuffling around with a mobile phone-shaped set clamped to one ear. You could choose between the official commentary, a children’s version or a guest tour by Bill Bryson.

The Roman Baths are a museum piece now. The blue-green water and the ore-stained brick work around the pools are just for looking at. The real bathing happens at a flash day spa around the corner. But we were able to get a little bit hands on in the Pump Room after the tour by tasting the spring water. Served warm and frothy from calcium encrusted taps, Jacq likened the taste to a glass of water with dissolved aspirin.

My favourite part of the trip was a midday hike up the eastern hills into the farms overlooking Bath. We came across some rather posh cows, who, unlike their curious Australian relatives, showed no interest in us.

On the walk back down we came across one of the many canals that dot the English countryside. Long, narrow houseboats lined up moored to the banks. Their owners seemed to be a mix of nomadic retirees or gypsy ferals.

I decided there and then a fitted out narrow boat on a Gold Coast canal should be my next Australian residence.

Bath photo album

2007-04-09T21:56:00.000Z

Statues, Roman Baths

Bath Abbey

The Crescent

Pulteney Bridge and weir

Bath, United Kingdom - I shot about 3GB of images during our two days in Bath, a bit of a PB for me.

Like Luang Prabang in Laos and Hoi An in Vietnam, Bath makes it very easy to take hundreds of frames. The historic architecture and pedestrian-friendly lay out means there's a photo op around every turn.

I shot in RAW format for the first time. It's been a bit of a learning curve figuring out how to process the large files on my computer afterwards, but the pay off in terms of detail and quality is amazing.

Check out more Bath photos here.

Kew gardens

2007-04-06T22:04:00.000Z

Flowers outside the Palm House

London, United Kingdom - Backpack Storybook is off to the historic town of Bath this Easter. However, because we were only able to book accommodation at the Bath youth hostel for the Sunday night, we found ourselves with a couple of spare days up our sleeves.

While Jacq met friends at the Tate Modern art gallery today, I took the train waaaay out west to Zone 4 to Richmond to visit the Kew Gardens.

Alongside seeing Buckingham Palace (see here), visiting Kew was another "I can't believe I'm in London" moment.

Back on the Gold Coast in Australia, while working as a PR, I wrote several media releases about my organisation's involvement in an international project with the gardens. At the time I remember thinking how prestigious, how historical and how interesting the Kew appeared. And how far away from the Gold Coast it seemed.

So it was with a small sense of personal satisfaction that I got to stroll around the 300-odd acres of gardens today. The sun was shining, the mercury was topping 20C and the English were slowly going bright red from sunburn. Basically, it was a great day to be outside.

Some of the gardens were amazing. I walked among small tufts of flowering alpine plants whose survival depended on stainless steel funnels constantly blowing cool air onto their leaves.

At other displays I had a sense of deja vu. In the enormous glass palm house I dodged other visitors marvelling at the palms and tropical plants in the humid air. It was kind of impressive, given that we were in England

But it had none of the lushness or smells of rich, rotting compost that we encountered in the real jungles of Laos and Thailand.

At the Chinese pagoda I strolled past without barely raising my camera while tourists went nuts. "It's got nuthin' on Angkor Wat," I thought.

Instead, I lost my mind over the English rose gardens and neatly ordered beds of plants in the Duke's Gardens. It was all so terribly English!

Meanwhile, the locals walked past these attractions without a second glance. There's no pleasing some people, I suppose.

A bit common

2007-04-01T21:39:00.000Z

Hampstead Heath lake

London, United Kingdom - Today Jacq and I ventured over to the north side of London to Hampstead Heath.

Apparently, this is the rich area of London.

When shoebox size flats regularly go for £350,000 around this city its sometimes hard to believe London actually has non-wealthy areas. Perhaps its easier to think of the different boroughs as being either rich or richer.

Anyway, as far as suburbs go, Hampstead was very enjoyable. Well kept terraces lined the quiet streets and Londoners flocked to the cafes and bars along the high street to enjoy the rare spring sunshine.

We were there to check out Hampstead Heath, a large park. London is around 33% parkland and there are large open areas, usually called heaths or commons, all around the city.

In our area alone we have Clapham, Tooting and Wandsworth commons. They're great spaces for kicking the footy or, come summertime, sunbathing in our underwear. I've heard its very popular among the English.

Hampstead was fairly unique in that it had a steepish hill in the middle. For the first time since arriving in January we saw the horizon. We were able to look to the south west and see the city skyline from afar - rather than being in it.

The sense of space and fresh air was energising. Then we caught the tube back into south west London and had a pint with our old room mates in a smoky pub.

Thanks for reading

2007-03-28T19:13:00.000Z

Abandoned mini shoe, Burntwood Lane

London, United Kingdom - This post is Backpack Storybook's 100th. We've come a long way from our humble beginnings on the Gold Coast, Australia, more than six months ago.

Since then I've updated this website from my mother's swish new laptop in the family home in Western Australia, in a searing hot internet cafe in Phnom Penh, on a computer that gave off electric shocks in Hoi An and an internet cafe terminal with a brokenspacebarinLaos.

These days the updates are written on my new Ausus laptop in my temporary home in Earlsfield, south west London.

How things change eh?

To market

2007-03-24T13:40:00.000Z

Borough market

London, United Kingdom - Markets are a big deal in London.

The worst ones are tired, scabby events held in scungy lanes with dodgy types selling stock that might have fallen off the back of a truck.

But the good ones sell a great selection of food and interesting clothes. They're more like the markets of Vietnam and Laos in that they sell goods you actually need or can't find anywhere else. They exist to sell fresh produce or unique clothes, not just to offload the same goods you can buy in any high street.

Like Camden, Portobello, and Borough markets. They have some great stuff on show, but they're also very, very busy.

We braved Brough market first. We popped in after the Tower of London (see here) for something to eat and spent half an hour simultaneously being jostled by sharp-elbowed Londoners and trying the amazing selection of cheeses and cold meats.

Later we jumped a tube with Andy and Gab, two old friends from Perth, and travelled north to Camden Town. This is probably London's most famous and busy markets. A lot of the guidebooks describe it being as past its prime but I quite enjoyed the people watching aspects of the place.

Goths, punks, emo kids, tourists and other freaks buzzed around stalls selling some pretty outlandish clothing and trinkets. Jacq and I especially liked Cyberdog, which sells rave t-shirts with flashing display panels sewn onto the front.

You know you're getting old when you look at the clothes teenagers wear and shake your head.

Towering with the tourists

2007-03-24T13:20:00.000Z

White tower, Tower of London

London, United Kingdom - After a break of a couple of weeks Jacq and I were back among the tourists this weekend with a visit to the Tower of London.

We'd been told it gets very busy so we managed to kick ourselves out of bed and arrive at the Tower Hill tube station not long after 9am.

We were rewarded by viewing the Crown Jewels with only a handful of other people about. But I suspect it gets jammed packed at other times as there were rows of zigzagging barriers to corral the tourists in the movie rooms and a travelator to take you past the famous jewels.

We also took an hour guided tour with one of the Yeoman Warders, or Beefeaters. As well as learning about the history of the buildings within the tower walls, we heard about some of the strange traditions - which almost seem compulsory for any self-respecting, traditional English institution.

Like the need to keep seven ravens on the grounds at all times. Without the birds the tower - and the monarchy - would fall.

I don't know about that but I do know those big black birds scared the shit out of me. They're enormous. They make crows look like caged budgies.

Mini trip to Clapham

2007-03-19T21:23:00.000Z

Earlsfield cemetery

London, Earlsfield - I decided to give myself a break from sight seeing this week.

A fairly impressive set of blisters on my feet from four consecutive games of touch rugby at Tooting Common on Saturday meant I wasn't too keen to spend the rest of the weekend walking around anyway.

My travel buddy, Jacq, came down with a London flu on Sunday. And combined with some fairly ordinary weather (bitingly cold winds, sleet etc) I was happy to hang around the house in the central heating.

On Sunday afternoon when the sun came out briefly I practically dragged myself out for a couple of hours. I ventured one train stop north to Clapham Junction to buy some underclothes. I also did some window shopping and tried to see as much of Clapham's high street as I could.

So I suppose I did do a bit of touristing.

However, I soon got caught in the previously mentioned sleet and ran for my life back to the train station. Back at Earlsfield I stocked up on my favourite beers - cans of Kronenbourg 1664 - and started the longish walk back home.

The sun came out briefly. Since I had lugged the Nikon all the way out to Clapham and back but never got close to shooting a frame, I thought I'd wander through the Magdelene Road cemetery and see if I couldn't find something to shoot.

Sightseeing in Sussex

2007-03-11T20:16:00.000Z

Bodiam Castle

East Sussex, United Kingdom - After a bright, sunny day in the English countryside recently I've got to admit I felt a little flat upon returning to the traffic and busy streets of London.

Even my home of Earlsfield, one of the nicer suburbs in this city, looked a little cold and austere after the rolling hills and winding country lanes of Sussex.

Our grand day out of London began in the early morning. An old friend from Western Australia picked Jacq and I up in his Vauxall (what luck - a car!) - equipped with GPS navigation (even better luck) - and we sped south through the outer suburbs and used the M25 ring road as as slingshot into the south east.

Our first stop was Bodiam Castle. It's somewhat renowned for being a 'typical' English medieval castle. Squarish with turret towers on each corner and surrounded by a moat. The sort of thing you'd expect to see in Robin Hood or any other movie set in medieval times.

We climbed the steep spiralling stairs to the top of one of the turrets and I tried hard to imagine how the castle must have looked in its hey day of the 14th century. Apparently it was just one of several castles in the area forming a string of fortifications in south east England.

Today it sits among farms and is so popular it requires parking attendants to direct you to a car park and an information centre that charges £5 for entry.

Continuing south we took back roads all the way to the coast. I was amazed at just how 'English' everything is. Two metre high hedges line the narrow roads between paddocks. Fluffy white sheep dot rolling green hills. Red-cheeked farming families were out on morning walks, dressed in gumboots and with a border collie following loyally behind them.

Rye is supposed to be one of the nicest English seaside towns. It certainly looked it but we had arrived shortly after a hundred or so bikers from London had. This, combined with the normal tourist traffic, made for a busy little town so we didn't stop for long. However, I did spy some remarkable old wooden houses stacked together all the way up the hill. They overlooked the network of canals and low-lying paddocks at the bottom of the town that led to the sea.

Nearby at Winchelsea I saw the ocean for the first time in England. It was as depressing as I imagined an English beach would be: cold, windy, churned brown water and pebbles covering the beach. Almost the exact opposite of the last time I saw the ocean: six long weeks ago in Ao Nang, Thailand.

After that we got stuck in a weekend traffic jam in Hastings, a thoroughly unpleasant seaside town that seemed to have gaudy amusement parlours and fish and chip shops but not much else to write home about. We managed to get out of there and, by this stage desperately hungry but not wanting to settle for any old stodge, high tailed it to the town of Battle where we found a decent enough pub still serving lunch.

English pubs are a huge source of wonderment for me and I'll probably write about them in more detail in the near future. But briefly, The Chequers was everything you'd want in a public house. Low ceiling, blokes playing darts and half a dozen real ales on tap.

We grabbed a table out in the beer garden and sunned ourselves while tucking into some typical pub food. Steak and kidney pies, roast of the days, baked potatoes, sandwiches with ham and cheddar. That sort of thing. I washed it down with a pint of warm, flat ale and couldn't have been happier.

After our late lunch the chill was starting to return to the air and the shadows grew longer so by default it was time to return to the warmth of the car and head home. As we headed north back to London I began to remember just how big and busy the city could be. Even 40 miles out the weekend traffic was clogging motorways and B roads

Like clockwork

2007-03-04T21:54:00.000Z

View from the Observatory down to the Queen's House and River Thames

Greenwich, United Kingdom - 21st century travelling is anything but simple. The amount of technology I have to cart around with me just to record my adventures in full resolution glory and keep in touch with friends and family is astounding.

To ensure my digital camera, Mp3 player, mobile phone, laptop, wristwatch and work mobile are all in sync, I took the whole lot out to Greenwich today and set them to GMT.

You can't get much more accurate than that. Straight from the horse's mouth, so to speak.

Despite being almost inner city London, Greenwich has a great village atmosphere to it that makes it an ideal day trip destination.

The Cutty Sark (a famous tea clipper sailing ship from 1869) had been removed from its dry dock for restoration. But we did check out the excellent Maritime Museum. Despite guide books indicating there would be an entry fee, tickets were free.

Free entry was also on the cards for the magnificent Painted Hall. A kind of English Sistine Chapel, the place took 15 years to paint. And no wonder, the artist James Thornhill was apparently paid by the yard. I would have painted the ceiling too.

But the Observatory was what I, and my AUD$4000 worth of equipment, had come for. I hiked up the hill ,got my ticket and unceremoniously stepped over a puddle at the front gate - and the Prime Meridian.

Without even meaning to I had stepped from the Eastern to the Western Hemisphere.

In the old observatory, which is now a quirky museum full of ancient telescopes and intricate clocks, I joined the other pilgrims to with their mobile phone and watches at the ready.

At the sound of the next beep, the time will be...

Planet Chelsea

2007-03-03T17:32:00.000Z

The old Battersea power station

London, United Kingdom - With our London sightseeing now mostly restricted to the weekends, Jacq and I decided to make the most of our Saturday by heading into the city's well-heeled inner suburbs for a look around.

Strangely, the red double decker bus we hopped onto must have inadvertently slipped through a worm-hole somewhere past York Road because it delivered us to a strange land that, although it looked very much like the London I know, it was in fact very, very different.

I'll call this place Planet Chelsea.

For starters, the Chelseans look almost the same as you and me. Except they have a very particular uniform that they all wear.

The men can be identified by the designer blue jeans, pointy Italian leather shoes, a shirt with a collar tall enough to almost cover their ears and a slim blazer.

The women also favour jeans, but they prefer them skin tight and tucked into stiletto boots that were last fashionable on Earth in 1987 (and isolated pockets of Europe and Australia in 2006). Enormous black goggles shade their eyes. Very large leather bags hang from their shoulders.

The terrain of Planet Chelsea must be very formidable. I say 'must be' because the part we visited was well and truly urban.

But the number of enormous four wheel drive vehicles in the vicinity made me think that just behind the high street the roads must be rutted, pot-holed tracks impassable to anything but the most high-end European sport utility vehicle.

They also communicate differently to how we might on Earth. I'm unsure whether its because of a biological limitation or that they're governed by a strange social convention, but Chelseans communicate exclusively by portable telephone.

While they may appear to be enjoying a social occasion with other Chelseans, such as drinking coffee at a cafe, no one will be talking directly to anyone else nearby. Instead they are forced to communicate via their telephone with people who are not even there!

It sure was a strange world. Full of unusual fashions and conventions we could never begin to understand. Luckily, we eventually managed to catch a red bus back through the worm-hole and home to Earlsfield. Where people drive sensible compact diesel vehicles and talk to each other.

Except the shop assistants. I don't care if you're in London or Chelsea, they don't talk to nobody.

Country air

2007-03-01T20:37:00.000Z

It's just so typically English

Sawbridgeworth, United Kingdom - I’ve been in London for a month now and until last weekend I hadn’t ventured beyond Zone 3, let alone made it out of this city.

An old friend from school invited us out to his home near Sawbridgeworth, about an hour north west of London.

We took the train out there. The tightly packed Victorian terraces and blocks of flats quickly gave way to industrial parks, then suburbs and finally rolling green fields, quaint towns and canals.

It was typically English. I saw grand-looking halls and mansions surrounded by acres of woodland. We ate dinner at a centuries-old pub with low ceilings. They served ploughman’s lunches and real ales - the kind the barman has to pump into the glass.

At first I was a bit taken aback by my beer. It really was warm and flat. That old antipodean joke about English beers was true.

But you know what? I quite liked it. Now I just need to master the taste of their god-awful pork sausages

Earlsfield photo album

2007-02-25T19:08:00.000Z

This is about as close as I' ve got to our backyard since moving in. Can't wait for summer though.

One of two roads from the bus stop to our house.

The Leather Bottle. What a great name for a pub. I was stopped by the Met Police soon after taking this photo. They thought I was taking photos of a nearby police station (that was their excuse). I showed them my ID, they took down my details, we had a quick chat and then they left.

Earlsfield train station

Vandalised bicycle near the train station. The amount of of bicycles that go missing in London is amazing. And if they're not stolen, its not uncommon to see them like this after they've been kicked and torn apart by passing drunks.

London, United Kingdom - I dusted off the D70s this afternoon after a couple of weeks of not taking photos and explored my new neighbourhood between passing showers.

Duke of Earlsfield

2007-02-24T19:04:00.000Z

London, United Kingdom - Backpack Storybook is now coming to you live from Earlsfield, a tidy suburb in London’s south west.

This area is about as typically English as it gets. Rows of Victorian terrace houses give the suburb a homely character. A busy high street has a decent selection of pubs, off licenses and Asian food stores. It’s reasonably close to a train line and two tube stations.

Home is a very agreeable existence. I share it with three professionals. We have wireless broadband installed. I shower each morning in a renovated bathroom with a power shower. I cook each evening on a marvellous gas range built into a groovy kitchen island bench.

But Earlsfield has some funny English quirks. Across the road from us is a great expanse of playing fields and several tennis courts. However, it is all fenced off from the community and apparently you need to be a fully paid up member of the sports club to use them.

Each evening I'm taunted by the shrieks of delight from horsey-faced, knobby-kneed middle class English kids as they complete their private tennis lessons. What I'd give for an hour on one of those well maintained courts.

Further along our road is a block of of land divided into individual vegetable gardens, each with a little potting shed. I'd love to get my hands on some arable land to grow herbs this summer. I wonder if anyone would like to sub-let to me?

Lap work

2007-02-20T22:17:00.000Z

London, United Kingdom - I joined my local gym recently. It's part of my strategy not to turn into a fat, pasty white slug like the other Aussies here in London seem to have done.

A signature on a form and a promise by the gym to deduct money from my account each month was all it took before I was free to use their lap pool.

I should say here that my experience of lap swimming in Australia is of crystal blue 50 metre Olympic size swimming pools. Eight lanes of pure swimming clock work. The women sleek and lithe as seals in their one piece outfits. The men churning the water with their powerful strokes.

In contrast, there are just four 50 metre pools in the whole of England and just two in London.

The Tooting Leisure Centre is not home to one of them. Instead, it has an odd-shaped 33 metre pool with three wider than usual swimming lanes.

The right hand lane was the 'slow' lap lane. In there a variety of very white, whale-shaped people did a fair impression of nearly drowning as they crawled up and down the lane. I gave that one a miss.

The left hand lane was reserved for public swimming. A couple of unathletic teenagers made their way up and down the pool by clinging onto the side the whole way.

I thought the 'fast' lane in the middle would be for me. But on closer inspection, it seemed little better than the slow lane. One man looked to be paralysed from the waist down as he dragged himself along in a cumbersome freestyle. Another was so slow at freestyle, as I found out when I jumped in, I overtook him while doing a very leisurely breastroke.

Two eagle-eyed lifeguards sat on chairs at each end of the pool. At first I thought it was an overkill, but I soon realised it was a very real possibility someone would drown during the evening.

Who knows, with this sort of clientele, perhaps someone already had?

Working class man

2007-02-12T10:01:00.000Z

Chelsea backstreet

London, United Kingdom - I've joined the black-clad masses in London and become a worker ant.

Each morning I stamp off to the train station with the other workers. Dressed in a black suit and black coat, black shoes and black gloves. The uniform of the commuter.

I have an MP3 player in my ears and a thousand yard stare on my face. All the better to avoid interaction with anyone else on the journey.

When I get to the platform I look left and right and try to pick which side is less crowded. When the train arrives I move in front of the doors like the rest, making it almost impossible for anyone inside to alight. But at least I'll get on.

I stand in the crush near the doors while the aisle standing room remains uncrowded. Nobody asks the aisle dwellers to move down, we just press tighter against the people near the doors as more step into the train.

At Waterloo station everyone alights and sprint-walks through the cavernous station. No one sticks to the left. Or even a consistent path. I'm constantly dive bombed by kamikaze workers cutting across from the left and right. I try to pick a bloke with big shoulders to walk behind and let him clear a path in the madness.

The office, despite being just a few minutes from the centre of London, is well and truly in a rust belt suburb. Ominous projects - those failed social housing experiments of the 60s and 70s - guard the entrance to the main street. If you're not dysfunctional when you move into one of those flats, I reckon you soon would be after a week or two. I'd lose my mind just based on the depressing architecture of it all.

But its good for me to get out of my London comfort zone. Until last week I inhabited a narrow strip between the pleasant, cafe-lined residential street I'm living in and the city. I wondered if all Londoners lived in charmingly renovated Victorian terraces, parked their Porches and VWs out the front, worked in the city and ate out every lunch time.

Now I know they don't. Some live here where the main street is lined with off licenses, charity shops and fast food stores. Fried chicken is apparently a big hit among the large West Indian population.

So are the elaborate hairstyles. The women walk down the high street with braided, brightly coloured hair frozen into intricate patterns piled on their heads. Like a sticky toffee or an icecream cake - all pink and brown and caramel colours.

The males here aren't quite as colourful. Hoods up and pants way down, they shuffle and pimp-roll down the footpath challenging grandmas and kids to get out of their way.

Come the early evening and they lose their menace among the sheer mass of the people in black. Commuters file out of their offices on the dot of 5pm and swamp the footpaths as they march towards the bus stops and train stations, sweeping everything in its path along with it.

Paper work

2007-02-11T18:24:00.000Z

London, United Kingdom - After only three weeks I'm already realising living in London is not something you can do on a whim.

I might be trying to keep the free spirited traveller groove going from Asia, but this city forces you to bend to its staid, bureaucratic will.

Just the basics of getting a bank account, job, room in a sharehouse and access to basic medical services is a nightmare of paperwork.

A bank account requires a trip through a circular hell. The bank wants to see a utilities bill for proof of address. You can't supply that because you don't have a home until you get a bank account. You can get a job but they can't pay you until you get an account. And round and round it goes.

In an unfamiliar city you'd think that using commission-hungry recruiters to find a job for you would be the way to go. But it means endless rounds of meetings with them as they "get to know you".

Then the phone calls start as they ask permission to send your CV to companies followed by another round of interviews with employers. Or as they say in London, "informal chats". With three strangers behind an imposing desk. All taking notes.

We've just started the hunt for accommodation. Thankfully we've been spared the weeks of trekking out to over priced shitboxes whose bathrooms are pulsing with mould and to be interviewed by potential flatmates who have yet to master basic domestic skills such as Taking Out the Rubbish Before Maggots Breed or Doing The Dishes When the Stack Reaches the Ceiling.

Spared because we found a room at the second sharehouse we looked at. New kitchen, gas range, wireless internet, backyard, barbecue, done.

Now the real hassle begins. Dealing with real estate agents who see you as total scum clogging up their office while they make enormous profits on the booming London real estate market.

London sight seeing

2007-02-03T18:11:00.000Z

London Eye on the River Thames

London, United Kingdom - The Backpack Storybook team’s been busy sight seeing in our first three weeks in-country. Here’s the highlights:

Buckingham Palace
My first “I can’t believe I’m in London” moment. A place that previously only existed in text books or on TV and there I am standing in front of it, wondering if the Queen’s at home. After the elaborate wats and temples of south east Asia Buckingham Palace is a little staid and conservative with its large gates and acres of paved or gravel-lined grounds. Still, the guards and their slightly disconcerting wind-up toy-like goose-stepping is a sight to behold.

Trafalgar Square
Up the road and through the arch from the palace and we come across the bustling Trafalgar Square. Dozens of ubiquitous red double decker buses and black cabs shuttle around the ring road presided over by Lord Nelson on his sky-high column. At ground level large, black marble lions guard the square. We sit on the steps amongst the pigeons in the weak winter sun and catch a glimpse of Big Ben through the buildings, glinting in the sunlight.

St Paul’s Cathedral
I’m exiting Manson House tube station on the way to an interview and bang! I spot an enormous dome rising above the uniform concrete office blocks. It’s huge and ornate at the same time. Standing in its shadow I find it hard to pull myself away from it to get to my interview on time.

Tate Modern
From St Paul’s a long walkway leads through the office buildings to the Millennium Bridge, over the Thames and to the Tate Modern. This gallery of modern art inhabits an old power station. It’s brown brick slab-sides seem at odds with the rest of the landscape. When we visit on a weekend its empty. The Unilever ‘art’ installation featuring steel slides, some as high as five stories, is ours for the taking. We come back on a weekend and its packed to the rafters. We check out some famous pop art, including Warhol’s Marilyn Monroe piece and the Campbell’s Soup box.

National Gallery
Free entry, a couple of sets of stairs into the basement and I’m looking at original Monets, Cezannes and Van Goughs. It all seems to easy. Like I’m an imposter. People pay thousands of dollars to come to this city for their vacation and see sights like this. And I’ve wandered in off the street because I have an hour to kill. Past the rooms filled with paintings of elaborately staged biblical scenes I find my favourite. A Da Vinci. What that man can’t do with light and form is not worth painting. Amazing.

Westminster
A stroll in the late arvo sun along the Thames takes us past the London Eye and the Globe Theatre up to Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament. Big Ben is smaller than I imagined, although it’s still huge. Yet the detail and intricacies in the tower and clock are amazing. I could have stood for hours. The concrete barriers and machine gun-toting police surrounding Parliament can’t dampen my enthusiasm for what is an elaborate, gothic palace. I wonder if the architects who designed this hall over the centuries ever thought the threat would come from within Britain? Across the road is Westminster Abbey, a little less impressive after craning my neck at Parliament and Big Ben but still outrageously old.

Monopoloy
I bump into them without trying. Old Kent Road. Whitechapel. My bank is at Pall Mall and I can’t help stifle a laugh when they send me down there to sign a form. The three ‘green’ streets: Bond, Regent and Oxford. Park Lane. But no sign yet of the purple or brown streets. Must be in the north or east of London where I’ve yet to venture?

Mean streets

2007-01-31T08:41:00.000Z

London, United Kingdom - They may speak English, have white faces and eat the sort of food I'm familiar with, but even after a week in the country I get a sense the Britons are a bit, well, different.

Example: customer service. Or total lack there of. In Australia I might have bitched occasionally about sales assistants greeting you as soon as you walk into the store and asking about your day like they actually cared. But at least they acknowledge you. Here, it's not uncommon to be totally ignored until you're right at the counter, trying to thrust money at the salesperson to complete your purchase.

The unfriendliness continues on the street. A simple exercise such as merely walking down the footpath is fraught with danger. It seems to be okay for Londoners to walk two, three or four abreast on the sidewalk and make us get out of their way. Even 70 year old pensioners wont so much as deviate from their path. Occasionally I try to walk beside Jacq and see if on comers will move slightly to let us pass, but it always, always results in a hip and shoulder collision.

But what scares me the most is the children. In a week I've yet to see a polite, well behaved child. They're all mean looking gremlins with shaved heads and harsh accents. The press here call some of them hoodies for the way they wear their hooded jumpers and congregate at shopping malls, scowling at everyone. They actually terrify me and I try my best to avoid eye contact, even with the eight year olds for god sakes.

London observations

2007-01-26T21:26:00.000Z

London, United Kingdom - It's surreal sitting in the front seat at the top of the red double decker buses. The city of London, especially at night, looks like a set from an English play. Quaint old buildings, black taxis rushing around. Londoners rugged up against the cold, walking along the footpaths in an endless stream.

The trees are just black, spindly skeletons against a grey sky. No leaves for another few months yet.

Different accents to the tune the ear to.

The sing song voices of the Caribbean ladies who staff the supermarkets. The hard cockney accents of the scary toughs at the train station. The fast-running Indian and Pakistani sentences from the Asian proprieters who must own or run most of the convenience stores in London.

The wealth is impossible to ignore. Porsches parked in every second street in Fulham. Restaurants and bars with astronomical prices.

After four months of spending money without a second thought, here in London every pound is passed over reluctantly.

With no job, no place to call our own and the crushing exchange rate, Jacq and I feel like outsiders. We're unable to join the Londoners at the cinema or pub. At least not yet.

Arrival in London

2007-01-24T21:18:00.000Z

Fresh off the plane and into 3C temperatures. We're stoked because we found our flat.

London, United Kingdom - The signs may be in English, the people mostly Caucasian, but arriving in London has caused almost as big a culture shock than when I first touched down in steamy Bangkok all those months ago.

Jacq and I were like veritable newborns on the first morning here. We didn't know how to catch the tube nor how to hail a taxi and. Once we arrived at the flat we barely left as we didn't have a map nor any idea where anything was. We didn't even know how to turn on the central heating!

Much of the problem was that instead of arriving on a weekend, as we had planned to do, missing our flight in Bangkok meant we arrived on a weekday. Our good hosts, Jacq's cousin Tim and flatmate Christof, were at work and wouldn't be home until 8pm.

Fortunately a kind neighbour dropped around to turn on the central heating and give us directions to the nearest Sainsbury's. We got totally lost and it took us four hours just to gather a basket's worth of groceries from a supermarket less than a kilometre away.

The biggest shock has been the cold. We arrived with just light jumpers and jackets - enough to get us through the northern parts of Laos and Vietnam. But they were no match for the fierce English winter, which included a rare day of snow. At first Jacq and I were a little unsure what it was. I've never seen the white stuff before and even Jacq wondered if it wasn't 'just heavy dew'.

It took us another day and a half to round up the two boxes of clothes we had posted ahead of us. We spent hours in tube stations and walking through unfamiliar suburbs just to collect jackets and woollen jumpers. But it was worth it. We're finally warm.

Backpack Storyook tip: Get an Oyster card as soon as you arrive in Heathrow. It's a handy transport card that can be used on buses, trains and the tube. It gives you half price or better off normal fares. Load it up with cash and use it as a pre-paid card. Or put a weekly travel card on it (currently £23.20 for two zones) for cheaper travel if you commute a lot. We did.

Looking back on what to pack

2007-01-23T16:57:00.000Z

In researching this trip around Asia, I spent a little time reading blogs written by people who followed a similar path. I scanned their posts for tips on crossing overland borders, how not to be scammed and even what to pack.

In the spirit of giving back, I've compiled a short evaluation of what I packed for my four month backpacking trip and what was useful and what was a dead weight. Read on...

Clothes
1 x cotton jumper - Essential for cold nights in nth Vietnam and Laos but a bit heavy.
1 x nylon rain jacket - Essential for rain storms and cold winds. Light and foldy.
1 x pair jeans - Useful in cold weather but too heavy in the backpack, particulary for the first couple of months in Thailand, Camdbodia and Vietnam where they stayed unpacked the whole time.
1 x pair cotton trousers - Too hot for warmer climates, too cold for nthn Vietnam. Lightwieght travel pants would have been better.
1 x pair walkshorts - Useful for storing things in the pockets when in cities.
2 x boardshorts - Essential. One to wear swimmng, a dry pair to change into.
2 x t-shirts - Useful but quite hot in warmer climates. Maybe spend the money on sweat-wicking shirts?
1 x singlet - Essential. If not for the fact the exposed arms made me prone to sunburn and mozzie bites, I would have worn this the whole time.
1 x long sleeve collared shirt - I made the mistake of taking my polyester/cottom shirt. Waaay too hot in the warm climates and a little redundant when it got cold. I'll go with cotton next time.
1 x short sleeve collared shirt - Again cotton polyester, but it felt a little cooler. Useful in warm weather.
1 x krama - This traditonal Cambodian scarf picked up for US$1 in Siem Reap was indespenible. Great for keepng the sun off my neck when on the motorbike and as a scarf in cool weather.
1 x hat - Essential
4 x socks - A combination of thin ankle socks for during the day and long socks for evenings. Also picked up thick socks in Sapa as it was so cold there.
1 x pair cross trainers/trekking shoes - Not quite sneakers, not proper hikers. The thick soles were great on rocky paths and kept me out of the puddles and crap on the street.
1 x thongs (flip flops) - Essential. I spent 90% of my time in these babies.

Tech
1 x Nikon D70s digital camera - Dropped it, covered it in sand, connected it to a computer that gave off electric shocks and even and left it behind briefly at a Hanoi coffee shop. Still works like a charm.
2 x Nikon lenses - An 18-70mm as a walk around lens and a longer 70-210mm for candid portraits and some landscapes. But it was too dusty/hot/dangerous in most places to be changing lenses in the middle of the street so a good, versatilke lens in essential.
2 x camera batteries - Essential to have a back up.
1 x Giottos air rocket - Essential. For cleaning dust off the camera's digital sensor.
1 x Creative 8GB MP3 player - Essential for long bus trips.
1 x Creative TravelSound 400 portable speakers - A lot of weight in my backpack, but it paid off when we stayed somewhere for a week or more. It made our guesthouse room more homely.
1 x USB drive - Great for storing IrfanView (photo editor), CVs, photos, travel notes etc. Now riddled with third world internet cafe viruses.
1 x calculator - Essential for currency conversions. Don't wear it hanging off your shirt like one backpacker did. Jeez.
3 x electrical adaptors - Before we left I paid $10 a pop for these, and the SE Asian one didn't even work. For 50 cents we bought an adaptor in Cambodia and it also worked in Thailand, Laos and Vietnam.

Other
1 x silk sleeping sack - Essential. A dead wegith for most of the journey, it was useful when we hit some particularly filthy hotels in Hanoi, Vientiane, and Bangkok.
1 x towel - Go with a proper towel. Unlike those small travel towels, I used my full size one for sitting on the beach, sun protection and as a pillow. Douglas Adams was onto something.
1 x camel back water bladder - Useful. Made it easy to sip on water when on the motorbike or trekking. But it did add a lot of weight to my daypack.
1 x rugby ball and pump - Essential (in my opinion). Never did get a game of touch rugby going on the beach though.

Useful
1 x LED mini torch - Black outs are frequent in this part of the world. And those caves in Laos are dark.
1 x roll of duct tape - Repairing backpacks, covering blisters etc
1 x bike cable lock - Great for locking bags to furniture in dodgy guesthouse rooms and train carriages.

Good bye south east Asia

2007-01-22T10:47:00.000Z

Jacq & Rhys, last day in Hanoi, Vietnam

Bangkok, Thailand - So long you crazy region. After four months I've come to really like you. The smells, the countryside, the poverty, the heat, the noise, the scams, the food. Oh, the food!

Perhaps the biggest lesson I've learnt about travel on this trip is not to rush it. So often I've spoken to people who only have four days to see a country before speeding off to the next one, the whole region 'done' in two weeks annual leave.

My advice is to save up your money and holidays (or just sell it all and go) and give yourself as much time as you can in a country. Vietnam needs a month, minimum. Two if you can. Cambodia as long as you can stand it. Laos? Two weeks for the north alone.

That's a wrap

2007-01-22T10:00:00.000Z

Bangkok Thailand - In farewelling S.E.A., I give you the Backpack Storybook wrap up:

The good
Pho bo - We became so addicted to this awesome soup we ate it two or three times a day in Hanoi. Spicy, hot, sour, fresh - so much in such a little bowl.

Motos - Hands down the best, most exciting and outrageously dangerous way to get around south east Asia's towns and villages.

Children - Cambodian, Lao and Vietnamese kids are the cutest you'll find anywhere. We wished we could take a couple home with us as souveniers like Angelina Jolie did.

Bia hoi - I can’t give this concept a big enough rap. Take one keg of fresh, preservative free beer, serve it for a couple of cents a glass from your shop or living room and seat the punters on miniature plastic seats and tables. Can chen!

Fruit shake - My favourite was the mixed fruit shake. No more than 5000 dong (about AUD$0.50). Fruit, warm ice and sweetened condensed milk. It cuts through the tropical heat like nothing else.

Ca phe sua - The act of serving this strong Vietnamese coffee with condensed milk is almost as special as drinking it. Wait for the little perculator to drip the coffee into the layer of milk at the bottom of the glass and stir. Better than crack cocaine and about as addictive.

Green papaya salad and sticky rice - Hot, hot hot! Even asking for "no spicy" meant a dish sure to clean the sinuses out. We lived on this (for lunch) in Vientiane and Koh Lanta.

Hoi An - What's not to like about this quaint riverside town in central Vietnam? Good food, cheap moto hire, great photo opportunities and the gateway to some awesome surf.
Banh mi - What the Vietnamese and Lao can do with a French baguette is amazing. I'd come back here just for this alone.

Luang Prabang - It's easy to like Asian towns when they're not choked with traffic and rabid hawkers. Add French colonial architecture, awesome food markets at night and cold beers by the Mekong and you've got a very pleasant place to stay for ten days.

Laid back living - Want to sell beers from your front room? Rent motorbikes to foreigners with no license? Drive the wrong way down the street? No problem, go for it!

The people - Big smiles from the Thais. Light hearted bartering in Vietnam Sing song "sabaidee!" greetings from the Lao.

Biere Larue - Asian beers are damn good anyway but this was my fave. Served in generous 500mL bottles in bars around Hoi An, at 3.8% it didn't have the punch of stronger Viet beers. Perfect for drinking all afternoon and still being able to pilot the scooter home afterwards.

Bad
The hassle - No prices posted anywhere. Offers for transport at every corner in big cities. Double pricing for foreigners and locals. Touts and hawkers always trying to sell something.

Longtail boats - Its hard to find something good to say about something so noisy and crude. In Ao Nang in Southern Thailand they formed an endless procession of boat traffic, turning a potentially tranquil beach into a roaring, headache-inducing place to sit.

Bus trips - No matter how short the journey, a trip always took a day. The tour companies and drivers always found a way to stretch it out with stops at commissioned restaurants. Incessant use of the horn. Cramped. Often without air con. Cheap though.

Bathrooms - Whoever decided it'd be a good idea to mount the shower on the wall in the middle of the bathroom should be shot. I spent four months of tip toeing throughing cold puddles and wiping toilet seats down everytime I went into the bathroom because having a shower the night before has saturated everything.

Bangkok, again

2007-01-21T10:38:00.000Z

Long tails on the Chao Praya River, Bangkok

Bangkok, Thailand - It's like ground hog day.

Arrive at Suvarnabhumi Airport at night. Hike from the plane to the baggage collection. Wait an eternity for our bags. Down the escalator to the taxi rank. Give the attendant the address of our shitty Banglamphu hostel.

Speed down the expressways at a million miles an hour. We'd never survive a crash at this speed so seat belts are unnecessary. Which is why there are none.

Turn into Soi Rambuttri. Every kind of backpacker is illuminated in the taxi's headlights as they walk along the road beside us. The filthy man in fisherman's pants who's been here too long. The sunburnt English girls. The lost couple lugging their packs up and down the road in a vain attempt to find a room.

Check into our room. No window. Dim fluorescent light. A large air conditioning unit that knows only on or off. Hot or freezing. Quiet or roaring.

Lock up and head out for a beer and a pad thai on the street. Then back for sleep.

Doh!

2007-01-20T10:23:00.000Z

Ao Nang, Thailand - Due to a bit of confusion about whether 12:35am actually belongs at the start of the day or very late at night, Jacq and I missed our flight from Bangkok to London.

As I know now, 12:35am occurs right at the very start of Sunday (ie still Saturday night if you think about it). Unfortunately, I thought I had all day Sunday to enjoy in Thailand before flying out that night.

I realised this wasn't actually the case about 10:30pm on Saturday night, just three hours before we were supposed to fly out. Unfortunately, I was in my underpants reading in bed in Ao Nang in Southern Thailand, many hundreds of kilometres from Bangkok's Suvarnaphumi Airport.

It's an amazing feeling to suddenly realise what you thought was true was actually false. Even more amazing as you plotted what the mistake meant in terms of cost, stress and possibly losing accommodation in London.

Mind you, we've had a pretty good track record so far. Of all the buses, tuk tuks, trains, mini vans, motos, boats, ferrys, longtails and canoes we've caught, we've never missed one. before this.

Backpack Storybook tip: If you're going to miss your flight, I highly recommend calling the airline or airport in advance and cancelling. We cancelled with one hour notice and then emailed our failthful STA travel agent the next day. She was able to get us on a flight to London two days later. We only paid a $AUD50 penalty fee each. Phew.

Killing time

2007-01-18T09:53:00.000Z

The author, liberating a coconut, before his descent into Lord of the Flies style madness

Koh Jum, Thailand - It was only when the ferry had departed, we'd checked into our uninspiring accommodation and tried to swim at the rocky beach out the front that Jacq and I realised allocating 24 hours on the island of Koh Jum was perhaps about 18 hours too long.

We'd taken the ferry north from Koh Lanta, where we'd spent the past week in island bliss. A great bungalow on the beach, a moto to blat up and down the length of the island each day and lots of swimming characterised our time there.

We needed to move on though, our flight to the UK looming on the horizon. So we looked at the map of southern Thailand, dotted as it is with islands and bays, and picked one almost at random.

Getting there was a bit of fun too. The ferry slowed in the calm ocean just off the coast of Koh Jum (about halfway between Lanta and Krabi on the mainland) and a fleet of longtail boats came speeding towards us, their distinctive rooster tails of wash kicking up at the rear from the angled props. They swarmed alongside the ferry and practically dragged us onto one of their boats.

So there we were. 9am and depressed about being stranded on a tropical island.

After that things improved. We rented a moto - perhaps the single best solution to any problem in south east Asia - and explored the island. On the southern tip I borrowed a tomahawk axe from a villager and took half an hour to open a coconut. And it was almost worth the effort too. Sweet milk inside and tasty, soft flesh.

At the northern tip we took the moto out on the low tide beach and tested its soft sand capabilities. The Honda Wave is no Hilux 4x4 but it impressed nonetheless.

At one of the island small villages we stopped for lunch and ate white rice noodles with a sweet curry sauce. Extended family and neighbours dropped by for their lunch and we had a great old time communicating in sign language and generally embarrassing ourselves.

In the afternoon, wiped out from the heat, we fell asleep on the soft grass under palm trees near the beach for an hour and only woke in time to huddle in a thatched roof shelter when a tropical storm swept through.

All in all, a day that was thoroughly enjoyed. And rather than catch the late boat the next day, we were out of there first thing the next morning. Short and sweet.

Big blue

2007-01-15T23:13:00.000Z

Koh Ngai lagoon

Koh Lanta, Thailand - One of the 'must do' activities on Lanta is a tour out to the southern islands.

We booked a day trip on a long tail boat for about 600THB. There is also the option of a speed boat for a couple thousand baht, but apart from seeing one extra island, it didn't' seem worth the expense.

The longtail is the real deal. Its how the fishermen get around the waterways and oceans of Thailand. Its loud as hell and bloody crude too. The boat builders in this part of the world take a car engine, strap it onto a swivelling platform at the back of the boat and rip the muffler off for good measure.

In the hour or so it took to get across the straight to Koh Ngai Island I had forgotten about the chainsawing noise from the back of the boat. Instead, I took in the beauty of the white sand beach, the crystal clear water of the lagoon and the swaying palm trees. It really was like a postcard.

At another island, little more than a limestone cliff rising out of the ocean, we snorkelled around its base in the green water. Inquisitive fish buzzed around us in their hundreds. I felt like that deep sea diver figurine you find in aquariums sometimes.

At another island, Koh Muk, we swam with our guide into a dark cave which eventially opened out into a hidden beach.

I use the word 'hidden' creatively. When we arrived there were another two or three tour groups sunning themselves. By the time we warmed ourslelves in the sun and swam back, the procession of tourists emerging from the gloom of the cave onto the beach was almost constant.

Nevertheless, a great day out. I mean, you can't expect to have Thailand to yourself in January.

Island time

2007-01-13T10:18:00.000Z

Koh Lanta sunset

This little fella wasn't feeling too flash. He chucked up after I took this shot.

Koh Lanta general store

One bungalow, one towel, one bike - all you need in Koh Lanta

Jacq, lazy hamock afternoons

Kantieng Bay

Koh Lanta, Thailand - Tourists swarm this island on motos like angry bees. Locals run on island time. Bungalows beside resorts on the beach. Waterfalls, bays and jungles. An island of contrasts.

More images at the Thailand photo gallery.

Backpack Storybook tip: We stayed at Iyalangka Bungalows on Klohng Nin Beach, just south of the shops at the highway turn off. Great Thai-Japanese bungalows and the best bathrooms in all of Thailand in the sub 600THB bracket.

You know you've been travelling in south east Asia for a while when...

2007-01-10T02:54:00.000Z

...you step out of the air conditioning at Bangkok's airport and don't notice the heat or humidity.

...you can say "no thank you" in four different languages.

...you judge how cheap a country is by the price of a) its local beer and b) a bowl of noodles.

...you consume drinks with ice in them, eat salads and enjoy unpeeled fruit, with no ill effects the next day.

...in border towns you can pay a tuk tuk driver in three different kinds of currency, and still keep track of it all in Aussie dollars in your head.

...you think fishermans pants are cool

On the beach

2007-01-08T08:46:00.000Z

Life is so fucking hard right now

Ao Nang, Thailand - Ao Nang is the stereotypical southern Thailand beach. Limestone karsts rising out of the turquoise water, coconut-tree lined beaches and colourful longtail boats. So beautiful it looks like a postcard come to life.

But we have arrived in peak season and I'm not ready for the full force of European tourism. Luxury resorts, upmarket restaurants, bright pink Scandanavians everywhere and even a - gasp - MacDonald's.

We're lucky to find a street vendor selling pad thai for 30THB a plate because otherwise we almost couldn't have afforded to eat here. A tall bottle of Leo Beer from the 7-Eleven completes the night's meal as Jacq and I make plans to escape to the islands in the morning.

Tiger temple

2007-01-07T08:14:00.000Z

Human and tiger bond in the tranquil surrounds of the Wat

Kanchanaburi, Thailand - A friend of Jacq's had recommended a temple in Kanchan called Wat Pha Luang Ta Bua, run by monks who have taken in orphaned tigers and those rescued from poachers. It sounded like a tranquil place to observe monk and tiger going about their daily business.

However, as we got closer and did more research on the internet, a few things started to make me think it wouldn't be quite as we thought. Rumours of drugging the tigers to make them placcid around the tourists. Questions about whether it was right to keep them in cages and only let them out for a few hours each day. That sort of thing.

We actually considered not visiting. Neither Jacq and I were the type of people keen to pay to see animals locked up. But in the end we thought we should check it out and make up our own mind.

300THB (about AUD$12) bought us the chance to pose with three or four different tigers while having our photo taken. All up we were next to them for about one or two minutes. We were among about 50 Western tourists in the enclosure, which is a canyon or quarry. About another twenty handlers were there and one monk.

The tigers seemed happy enough, mostly laying about. They wore collars chained to concrete blocks in the quarry. I was led by the hand to various tigers and instructed to sit or crouch behind the animals. The guide took photos of me and then we moved to the next one.

At the end of it I think I was more disappointed that the exercise was just one big photo opportunity. I didn't get to see the tigers in any sort of natural habitat.

In fairness, the temple does claim proceeds are going towards building a large enclosure for the animals with space to roam around. When that will happen they didn't say.

Banana pancakes and the Death Railway

2007-01-06T00:05:00.000Z

Allied soldier graves, Kanchanaburi

Kanchanaburi, Thailand - We came for the tiger monks but accidentally stumbled across the Bridge over the River Kwai.

That about sums up our trip to Kanchanaburi, or Kanchan, about two hours west of Bangkok.

You can read more about the tiger temple here. It was just one of the sights we visited during our three days by the River Kwai.

Almost immediately after checking into our riverside bungalow, we rented a moto and sped off to check out the lie of the land. A few minutes north of town we came across the infamous bridge built from back-breaking POW labour in World War Two. It's a story that we would read about and see many times over in Kanchan.

The original wooden bridge was bombed to shit in WWII but a new iron and concrete structure spans the river today.

More than just the bridge, this town is about the Death Railway. Fittingly, it has two large cemeteries for Allied soldiers, three war museums and half a dozen sights just up the highway, including Hell Fire Pass.

Once Jacq and I took in some of these sights, which we did on a moto in about a day, I was ready to leave. The travel fatigue that had set in in Vientiane was still with me. The hot weather and the inability to swim anywhere (the river looked fairly dirty) made me irritable.

And after the smells and sights and foreigness of Vietnam and Laos, the main road of Kanchan was a disappointment of internet cafes, Western restaurants serving banana pancakes and sunburnt tourists.

On the move

2007-01-04T08:07:00.000Z

Jacq, still managing a smile

Bangkok, Thailand - Tuk tuk to Vientiane's Talat Sao bus station. Sold out for the 11:30am border crossing into Thailand. Instead we get another tuk tuk to the border. Exit stamps. Bus over the Friendship Bridge into the land of smiles.

Visa stamps. Bus to Nong Khai markets. Tuk tuk to bus station. Big bus to Udon Thani bus station. Tuk tuk to Udon Thani Airport. Flight delayed. Finally board at 6pm.

Arrive in Bangkok at 8pm, too late to strike out for Kanchanaburi, two hours away. Instead taxi to Banglamphu. Farang everywhere. Wasn't this busy when we first arrived in October. Hotels and guesthouses are full. 9pm and starting to get worried.

Finally find a room in Soi Rambuttri. An air conditioned room with a window opening into the internal stairwell. We take it.

Eat on the road and watch the freak show walk past. Do these people voluntarily stay here? Or are they just en route like us? Some look like they are in no plans to leave. Crazy.

Travel tired

2007-01-03T07:57:00.000Z

Patuxay, Laos' national memorial

Vientiane, Laos - A cramped mini van ride fromVang Vieng down the dusty highway brings us to Laos's quiet capital city of a few hundred thousand people.

My first impressions are that its similar to Phnom Penh. A city on the river with the usual bars and restaurants on the foreshore and along the river road. Various wats and monuments throughout the city.

Enough of an NGO presence to suggest a dirt poor country trying to improve its lot with foreign aid. Like PP none of it is spectacularly beautiful or colourful.

Unlike PP, it's not dangerous nor dirty nor crowded.

We're here for a few days before crossing the border into Thailand, just down the road.

Already I think that'll be enough time. I'm a little tired after New Years. The accomodation options in this city are depressing. It's hot but there's no where to swim.

One saving grace in Vientiane is the river bank. On the shore of the mighty Mekong, Jacq and I spend the evenings sitting on cushions at low tables under the stars, ordering cheap Lao dishes and gazing across the river to the twinkling lights of Thailand.

We wonder if there are a bunch of Thais, or even travellers like us, sitting on the river bank over there, tucking into a cheap meal and wondering, like us, what's going on over on the other side of the river.

I suppose we'll find out in a couple of days when we cross over.

New Year's in Vang Vieng

2007-01-02T13:39:00.000Z

The big swing and riverside bamboo bar

Jacq, Alex and me, as photographed by Miranda

Tube hire, Nam Song river

Vang Vieng, Laos - If my New Year's Eve was a little quiet this year, I'm confident my New Year's Day more than made up for it.

After a long day spent freaking out in caves (me) and fighting a tummy bug (Jacq), NYE was a quiet one for the Backpack Storybook team.

At around 9pm we walked across the bamboo footbridge into town to see what VV held in store for us. We didn't expect a great deal after seeing the dusty, soulless main street the day before. And in the end not much was delivered.

At one stage we were having a quiet beer in a concrete beer garden and we could hear four separate songs being played by four separate bars. All at full volume.

Our venue had Blondie. Two across the street had driving dance music. A Lao bar had two guys on a keyboard and a microphone. With a stack of speakers five high. I'll give it to the Lao, they may be among the poorest nations in the world, but they sure like a decent sound system.

In bed before 11:30pm in our bungalow across the river, we were bright eyed and bushy tailed for the next day.

As I described before, tubing down the Nam Song River is a right of passage for most travellers in this area. And despite the eye rolling and cynicism this activity usually brings about on the backpacker trail, it was damn good fun.

US$4 buys a tuk tuk ride a couple of kays up the river and tube hire for the day. They drop you off, you walk to the river's edge and jump in. Peace of piss.

We passed bars selling Beer Lao. They were little more than bamboo platforms with an esky but they had studied the river's flow and realised the current would push customers right past them.

We avoided most but it was impossible not to stop at the two biggest bars for a few hours. Booming dance music, private bamboo platforms, giant swings out into the river and a hundred-odd boozed-up Westerners created a surreal Ibiza-meets-Waterworld vibe in the middle of the quiet Laos countryside.

Jacq, myself and Alex, a Queenslander we met on the tuk tuk, gave the small swing a go. At 8 metres it was quite exciting jumping off the platform and swinging about over the river before letting go and splashing into the green water. I'm not sure if I was shaking more before or after the jump.

But the big swing was all Jacq. Alex and I made various excuses for not jumping but she climbed the ladder to the rickety 12m platform all by herself. Swing in hand, she almost jumped and then hesitated. And then froze. And then had to give the swing to the next in line.

To her credit she had another go - and hesitated again. On the platform below I was almost rolling around the floor with anxiety. I was torn between yelling out "do it!" and "come down!".

She had a third go. Which by now every tuber in sight was watching, most yelling "jump, jump, jump!". And she did. She swung down, out over the river and up, screamed, came back and let go into the water. The crowd cheered and I relaxed again.

Accidental spelunking in Vang Vieng

2006-12-31T08:25:00.000Z

Jacq sizing up the mountains outside Vang Vieng

Vang Vieng, Laos - VV is both as ugly and as beautiful as the guidebooks and the travellers grapevine suggest.

Ugly because it seems to be a town built in a style merely to succeed in its two functions, without a thought for aesthetics or decoration.

And its two functions? A) Deliver re-runs of 'Friends TV episodes at full volume to backpackers in the various TV bars around main street and B) send the same backpackers down the Nam Song River in tractor inner tubes and fill them with Beer Lao.

But it's also beautiful. Just 100 metres from the dusty, treeless backpackerland main street is the shaded river bank with its quaint bamboo bridges and small market gardens. A couple of kilometres over the river are the magnificent limestone karst outcrops - home to a natural wonderland of caves, lagoons and streams.

Jacq and I turned our back on the town, rented a moto and explored the karsts for a day.

At one cave entrance a young boy greeted us at his stand which featured a row of headlamps attached to bulky battery packs. We paid our 5000kip entrance fee and followed him into the blackness. Apart from exchanging our names, he never spoke during the rest of the adventure.

The first section of the cave was relatively easy. We saw a buddha and marveled at the stalactites. But the deeper we went the more it became a struggle to squeeze through the passages. I had a camera bag and battery pack to balance on different shoulder straps. Jacq had our backpack.

But it got tougher. The shaft became so small even our guide had to crawl on his belly. Jacq took the pack off and pushed it ahead of her. I did the same with my camera bag and watched in horror as it got coated in mud and dust.

I also started to get a bit nervy about the small tunnel. With Jacq and the guide ahead of me, and another couple with their guide behind, I was feeling a little hemmed in and quite fucking keen to turn back. A sentiment I shared with Jacq in increasingly urgent whispers in the half-darkness.

But we crawled on. Just when I thought I was at melt down stage somewhere deep underground with thousands of tonnes of rocks above me, Jacq announced "I can see sunlight". And it was true.

We had come full circle and swung back to the cave entrance! As I clambered out into the light I felt a little foolish about wanting to turn back when we were so close to the exit.

But to their credit, neither the young guide nor Jacq gave me too hard time about it.

Through the mountains

2006-12-30T07:48:00.000Z

Bus break down somewhere on Route 13, Laos

Northern Laos - Travel is a little bit like life. It has its ups and downs, the exciting parts, the sad bits and the times where you just have to put your head down and get through it to enjoy what lays on the other side.

Yesterday we left Luang Prabang and travelled south through the mountains to Vang Vieng, a journey of about 180kms that took six long hours.

The Lonely Planet warned that those who suffered motion sickness should take precautions as the route was a winding, bumpy one. I felt a little worried as I sometimes get sea sick, but I was confident that us spending the extra money on the Special VIP bus would pay off.

Not quite. The bus was a very shabby around the edges, the suspension worn and it had an interior fitted out like an Arabian tent. Curtains covered the top half of the windows, including the windscreen.

It meant that as we started to take one lurching hairpin turn after the other through the mountains, all I could see out any window was the green landscape rushing past first one way and then the other. Deep breaths out the open window and a packet of ginger motion sickness tablets were my saviors during the trip. Even then, it was real "please God, if I make it through this I'll do anything" sort of stuff.

Jacq, normally a rock of stability on buses, was also looking a little green.

Queasiness aside, the journey was still interesting. At some points we crested a hill so high it brought us above the other mountain tops. It felt like we were creeping through a thin space between the sky and the mountain ranges.

In the aisle of the bus a young Lao sat on a plastic stool, an AK-47 assault rifle slung over one shoulder. He looked like any other young twenty something bloke. You know, blue jeans, sneakers and a black band t-shirt. He just happened to have a very fucking serious looking weapon on him.

I guessed he was our security detail, hired by the bus company to protect its Western customers who were weighed down by bundles of US dollars and electronic goods. The LP guidebook had warned that banditry was once a problem on Route 13 and I wondered if perhaps it still hadn't been entirely wiped out by the police.

He was diligent, I'll give him that. He only put the rifle down once, and that was when the bus blew a tire and he got out to help the driver's offside change it. He simply stuffed the dull-grey ammunition clip in the back pocket of his jeans and got to work.

Small highland villages dotted the roadside of Route 13. In many places the terrain was so steep the villages were actually inhabiting the small shoulder of dirt beside the road, it being the only piece of flat land for miles. Apparently a metre or two of gravel is enough for a wooden two storey house.

Small, fat pigs snorted around in the dirt under the houses. Chickens, chicks and a surprising number of puppies also foraged around the homes. Dirty faced children stopped playing to watch our bus rumble pass. The adults barely looked up from their work of cutting wood, cooking or arranging bunches of what looked like rushes.

We rounded one tight corner and surprised a young boy squatting on the side of the road, his pants around his ankles. He looked up, saw the bus and barely had time to jump backwards over the drainage ditch and lean against the side of the cliff before the bus shot past. Not even enough time to pull up his pants.

Christmas in Laos

2006-12-25T06:27:00.000Z

Tat Sae waterfall, near Luang Prabang

Luang Prabang, Laos - Spending Christmas in Laos has got Jacq and myself, and the international crew we are hanging out with, pretty confused.

The five from the northern hemisphere are used to cold weather, hot drinks and maybe a decent dump of snow to make it a proper White Christmas.

Jacq and I, on the other hand, have spent all our Christmases baking in the Australian summer. Swimming. Drinking cold beer and eating cold meats and salad.

But December in Laung Prabang has disappointed everyone, at least weather-wise. The day time temperatures, while warm, aren't quite hot enough to allow me to strip off and paddle about the Mekong with a beer in hand. The nights are bloody freezing, according to Jacq and I. The Euros just shrug and reach for a light jacket and reminisce about spiced wine and roaring fireplaces.

We all spent Christmas Day at the Tat Sae waterfalls, reached via a half hour sawngthaew (truck) ride out of town and then a quick punt up the river in a tiny wooden boat. An amazing place featuring numerous waterfalls pouring into aqua-blue pools.

The water was cold, but with a fortifying bottle of Beer Lao in hand, we braved the icy pools and I got my wish to spend Christmas swimming and drinking.

New country, new smells

2006-12-23T02:31:00.000Z

Rhys and friend, LP main street baguette stall

Luang Prabang, Laos - Leaving Hanoi earlier this week created mixed emotions. I'd finally be leaving a city which had frustrated me no end with its maze of streets and unrelenting hawkers.

But I'd be leaving behind its delicious pho bo and super-cheap bia hoi. Could Laos compete in the culinary stakes?

The initial answer is yes. Yes, yes, yes. On my first morning in Luang Prabang I discovered the Laotians like chicken and salad rolls just as much as I do. Walking through the main street, I passed a dozen stalls set up to fill the stomachs of hungry tourists with bread rolls.

10,000kip (about AUD$1.20) buys an enormous baguette (and solid too, not the airy fairy ones they sell in Vietnam) filled with roast chicken, lettuce, tomato, onion, huge slices of cucumber and a spoon of mayo. On top they pour on two kinds of chilli sauce and a dab of soy. Beautiful. They're so filling I'm doing without lunch right now.

In the evenings Jacq and I make for the night market. Stalls sell whole barbecued fish on bamboo sticks, laap (a traditional Lao dish of minced meat, fresh herbs and lettuce cups) and vegetarian buffets. For 5,000kip they give you a large bowl and you help yourself, loading up on fried rice, noodles, curries, spring rolls and vegetables. Then you simply sit down at one of the communal picnic tables next to other travellers and steam into it.

I've been washing this incredibly cheap and tasty meal down with a bottle of Beer Lao. They weigh in at a whopping 640mL. It feels like drinking out of a wine bottle. No matter how big a drink from these babies I take, or how frequently, they always seem only half empty. Its hard work to get through a couple in one night.

Which is just as well, because at 5% they can do some real damage.

Laid back Luang Prabang

2006-12-21T02:10:00.000Z

Monks in the LP main street

Luang Prabang, Laos - I've yet to meet a person, or read a guidebook, that's got a bad thing to say about Luang Prabang.

Laid back and relaxed is the most common description. And its not hard to see why. After travelling through the kind of busy, batshit crazy cities and towns common in the rest of Asia, LP looks good simply by default.

But it has its own charms to make this a must see stop on the trail. This town of 30,000-odd is dotted with wats and great bakeries. It's provided with flashes of colour by the monks in their orange robes and the colourful hill tribe people.

The options to explore and be active also seem limitless. The tour companies and travellers cafes along the main road offer trips to the waterfalls, mountain biking, climbing, caving and white water rafting.

In the build up to Christmas the boats and buses have been delivering ever increasing numbers of backpackers. Each evening we see them dazed and confused and with their giants packs on, looking for a rare spare room in one of the guesthouses.

Luckily Jacq and I are already set up in a little guesthouse down near the Mekong River. Its located in a quiet lane way in what is already a quiet town. The only problem is the rooster outside our bedroom window. But apparently there is no escaping them in LP. Their strident calls ring out across town every morning from 4am.

So long Vietnam

2006-12-19T04:21:00.000Z

Peak hour in the Old Quarter, Hanoi

Hanoi, Vietnam - It's hard to believe I've been "in country" or two months. It feels like it's been both a short and long time.

Short because I've enjoyed it so much. We kept on the move just enough to see a good part of this long, thin country on the South China Sea, but also had enough time to explore the areas we really liked. A visa extension helped as well.

It also feels like we've been in Vietnam for ever, that this is my life. I guess the culture shock of this country, and travel in general, has worn off.

It doesn't feel weird to eat most meals on the street, to cross the road as scooters weave around us, to bargain before every purchase.

But there's some things that I'll never get used to in the Nam:

- Rubbish. Seeing people simply throw wrappers or plastic bags onto the ground, wherever they might be. In Hue, someone simply stopped to take off their plastic poncho and threw it into the river.

- Hawkers. Picking up my laundry in Hanoi yesterday, I fielded three offers in 20 seconds. Walking back to our guesthouse, I was offered books, bananas, lighters and a moto ride, all in the space of 100m.

- Motos. The stuff the Vietnamese are capable of loading onto a moto scooter is unbelieveable. I've seen (on separate occasions) a family of five, three full size pigs, a queen size mattress, a large gas cyclinder (not tied down) and a bundle of barbed wire.

Highlands trekking

2006-12-15T09:59:00.000Z

Near Cat Cat Village, Sapa

Sapa, Vietnam - This morning, despite the poor visibility, we decided to do a mini-trek down the mountain to the village of Cat Cat, about 3kms away.

Sapa is famous for its trekking, but a day-long hike was unappealing in this weather so we decided on quality rather than quantity.

On the slippery, steep walk down the road to the village, we were regularly passed by scooters and motorbikes who silently coasted down the incline with engines off, riding the brakes to slow their descent. The drivers ply this road regularly, gathering in groups at both the top and bottom of the walk and ferrying tourists who are too tired to make the steep walk back up to their hotels in Sapa.

They reminded me a little of birds, circling high in the sky until spotting their prey down below and turning and picking up speed as they swoop down and down.

We made the round trip unassisted, which wasn't too hard on the legs and lungs. However, despite making the walk down wrapped up in jumper, jacket, scarf and a couple of t-shirts, by the time we reached the top three hours later we were stripped to our singlets. Those making their way down looked at us curiously.

Cat Cat village was just below the cloud line and for the first time we could see some of the vistas Sapa is famous for. Whole hillsides, some with inclines of around 40 degrees, were terraced with rice paddies. It appeared harvest had just been completed as pigs and chickens rooted through the dried stalks in the mud.

As usual, the children were cute as buttons. Jacq and I often talk about how Vietnamese babies must be the cutest in the world. It was hard not to blaze away with the camera every time I saw them, but I also felt a little guilty about being just one of many, many tourists who have come through their village just to have a sticky beak.

But there were other scenes that captured my interest. A waterfall at the bottom of the village threw up yet more mist. A farm dog chased a herd of goats along a path towards us, forcing Jacq and I to step to one side to avoid being run over. A deep stream, blue-green in colour, that was so clear I could see each pebble at the bottom. I almost tumbled off the side of the cliff trying to set up a time-exposure photo of that one.

Village in the sky

2006-12-14T09:57:00.000Z

Taking the pigs for a walk, downtown Sapa

Sapa, Vietnam - Even after six weeks, this country continues to surprise me.

Before I left Australia for this trip, I thought of Vietnam as a hot, humid country covered in rice paddies and palm trees.

And it is, in some places. It's also been a tropical paradise, a temperate highlands, a neon-lit beachfront, an ancient town and a mean, grey capital city.

And now, here in Sapa, it's a chilly, fog-shrouded village in the sky.

Jacq and arived in Sapa in the early morning after an overnight train journey from Hanoi to Lao Cai in the north-west of Vietnam on the Chinese border. A quick mini van ride up into the mountains brought us to Sapa (elevation 1600m) and into the grey-white mist that has rarely left this town since we arived.

The views from our hotel room at Cat Cat Guesthouse are apparently spectacularly, but we can only see about ten metres in front of us.

The cold is suprising too. It's equal to the coldest I've felt in Australia, which is probably about 10C or 15C during the day. I tried to liken it to Europe in the winter, but Jacq says it gets even colder. I find that hard to believe but I suppose I'll find out in a couple of months.

To keep warm we've reverted to wearing just about everything in our backpacks. Most of the travellers here seem to be doing the same thing, Vietnam not being the sort of country you'd pack a warm jacket or mittens for. Jacq has also had to buy a pair of gum boots and thick woollen socks to keep out the cold and the mud that seems to coat every road and path in Sapa.

But this town is a nice change of pace to Hanoi. We spent last night in our hotel room by the log fire, ordering room service and drinking beers. With no fridge in our room I simply left the two bottles of Tiger beer I bought earlier from a shop out on the front step. They seemed just as cold when I drunk them an hour or two later. Amazing.

Also amazing is the presence of the minority hill tribe, or montagnard, people in town. I'm no expert on them and have trouble distinguishing between the H'mong, Black Thai and Dzao people, but regardless, their dress and customs are fascinating.

While we tramp aound in hiking shoes and jackets, they make do with plastic sandals and leggings. A simple woven basket is their backpack to transport food to and from the Sapa market.

But that's not to say they're traditional or outdated people. They offer their embroideries and bracelts to us with almost as much gusto as any other Vietnamese hawker we've come across.

And they apparently play a mean game of pool. Having a quiet drink in a bar in Sapa last night, I watched as a group of teenage montagnard girls cleaned the table against a couple of Frenchmen. Still wearing their traditional dress (save for sneakers on their feet) and standing no taller than about 5'2", they vigorously accused their opponents of cheating, criticised their lack of skills and generally had a grand old time. After they had soundly beaten the French, they got down to a game of cards and gambled with fistfuls of dong. Very surreal to say the least.

Moments in time

2006-12-13T06:07:00.000Z

Tourist junks amid the beautiful limestone karsts of Halong Bay

Halong Bay, Vietnam - Every once in a while on this trip through Asia Jacq and I get to sit back, forget about the traffic, upset stomachs and money and really enjoy what travelling is about.

Visiting Angkor Wat and surfing at China Beach were two such moments. And so was visiting Halong Bay.

Our guide, Tintin, said many Vietnamese believe if you haven't visited Halong while in this country, you haven't really visited Vietnam.

Cruising the 2000-odd limestone karsts on a wooden junk is a far cry from the Vietnam we know of moto scooters, street stalls and incessant noise. But it makes sense to leave all that behind and visit a part of this land that is exciting for its natural rather than man-made attributes.

A highlight of our three day, two night tour of Halong Bay and Cat Ba island was a two-hour kayaking tour of the karsts. With luck the tide was low enough to allow us to scoot under a limestone cliff through a low cave. It opened up into a circular bay bounded by 100m high cliffs, totally cut off from the rest of the world. It was completely silent. Not even a sound from the wind or water.

Sitting there on the double kayak with Jacq, I hoped then that I would remember the moment for the rest of my life.

I better, because for once I didn't have my camera with me.

Hanoi hassle

2006-12-10T04:38:00.000Z

Hanoi, Vietnam - After two days in a new city in South East Asia I've usually done enough miles on foot to have familiarised myself with the streets and I can put away the Lonely Planet.

Saigon was easy enough and Bangkok not too hard. But Hanoi, which is smaller than both, has proved a real challenge. The Old Quarter where we are staying is a maze of narrow streets. It roughly follows a grid pattern, but there's just enough alley ways and six-street intersections to throw us off balance. More so after half a dozen glasses at Bia Hoi junction!

So we are constantly referring to the Planet, which has a great map of the area. Unfortunately, every tout, cyclo driver and hawker in town knows that the scarlet-red cover of this book means 'tourist' and it's not long before they have us surrounded, trying to sell us things or promising to drive us where we need to go - even if it is just 50m down the street.

The other day we were caught a beauty by a tout. Having checked out of our second hotel in two days (broken toilet, unlockable doors, etc), we were walking through town with our big packs on with the Lonely Planet in hand. I had studied the map before and knew exactly where to go, as long as I concentrated.

But out of a side street came a young Vietnamese bloke in a leather jacket clutching a pamphlet for a hotel. Dspite telling him we had a hotel booked and a deposit paid, he insisted we check his. After the usual "no thank yous" and "kawm gam erns" failed, Jacq and I tried to ignore him. But he was a persistant little bugger and stayed with us for a couple hundred metres, demanding to know why we wouldn't consider his hotel.

He would hassle me and then drop back to get in Jacq's face. A couple of times we tried to force him into a parked scooter as he walked beside us, but to no avail.

Soon I realised I had no idea where we were. Concentrating on ignoring this guy meant I had lost track of the street names. I realised we would have to do what I had tried to avoid in the first place - looking at the Lonely Planet.

We pulled it out and looked at the map. The tout could smell blood. We were lost. He had us. He tried to get in close to point at the map, no doubt to tell us how far away we were from our hotel. I swung my giant pack at him. Instead I caught Jacq and nearly pushed her over. With two backpacks on her small frame, she'd never have gotten back up if she went down.

When I saw he had his hand resting on one of her packs (a big no no for us, security-wise), I finally snapped. I conjured up my biggest scowl, yelled "hey!" and pushed his hand away. He stepped back a bit. I went back to consulting the Planet.

Perhaps sensing defeat, he stepped towards Jacq one final time. "Fuck to you," he said in a low, very serious voice, and walked off.

Left alone on the street corner, we noticed an old man sitting on a scooter laughing at the scene. We laughed too. I asked him where Ma May street was and he pointed us on our way.

Grey Hanoi

2006-12-09T01:58:00.000Z

Ho Chi Minh's mausoleum, Hanoi

Hanoi, Vietnam - I must admit Hanoi met all expectations when we arrived early Friday morning after an overnight journey from Hue on the Reunification Express.

A thick, grey cloud had descended over the city. The black streets were wet from recent rain showers. The buildings a grimy mix of French colonialism, Soviet practicality and Asian ramshackle. Exactly the scene I was expecting after looking at countless images from our Lonely Planet guidebook and other traveller's blogs in researching this trip.

After checking into the first hotel we saw (Thuy Lam Hotel, air conditioning, no window, perpetual darkness), we were straight out onto the street to find the necessities for life: breakfast, coffee and to drop off our laundry.

We soon came face to face with Hanoi's curious Old Quarter and its streets that are home to specific merchants and guilds. We walked through chicken street, past the stationary street and beyond the button street. In total I believe there were 36 different guilds who set up in the Old Quarter, each with their own street.

We found a little pho bo stand tucked in a filthy alley way. Despite the terrifying lumps of meat on display at the stall, the bowl of noodles the old lady served us was among the best we have tasted yet. Coffee was drunk on the sidewalk among a group of elderly Vietnamese men, some wearing berets and sporting goatees.

We spent the morning walking through the city, trying to orientate ourselves in the maze of streets and alley ways. Even Saigon wasn't this difficult. At almost every street corner we had to consult the Lonely Planet's map to find our way - making us prime targets for cyclos and touts wanting to sell us something.

Hanoi is not a city I'm initially enraptured with. A couple of days here to see the sights will be enough for me. However, it'll also be the launching pad for trips to Halong Bay and Sapa, so a few extra days in between these trips will probably be necessary.