Lazy afternoon in Lima

Milaflores: a good place to launch our three weeks in South America

How long does it take to get the true measure of a city? Can you get a feeling for a place in a quick stopover? A three-day city break? Or does it take much longer? Three months in Saigon certainly gave me a select knowledge of the place, just equal to my experience and intuition, but it was a place of constant surprises – even towards the end.

London’s the same – it’s so immense and changes so quickly that 30 years are not equal to knowing every crook and cranny. I won’t bother with the oft-abused Dr Johnson quote about the place, but certainly if you are bored in the UK capital, it says more about you than about the amusements on offer.

Give a tourist just 18 hours in a city, then, and they’ll be next to useless if you asked them to define its character. All they can get is a feeling about the place, which may well be way off. In London, such a length of time spent in Bermondsey, Mayfair or Stoke Newington would reveal three very different sides to the city. Likewise Hollywood, Bel Air and Downtown LA, or Mitte and Tiergarten in Berlin.

So this Sunday, which found me in Lima at the start of a three-week Gringo-trail jaunt around Peru and Bolivia, I decided that – with just 18 hours to see everything – I and companions Katie and Jo (henceafter las gringas) would be better off enjoying a little bit of the city, rather than trying to see everything and seeing nothing.

The trusty LP warned that Lima is a ‘No thing of beauty. A sprawling desert city clinging precariously to dusty cliffs, it spends much of the year marinated in a perpetual fog that turns the sky the color of Styrofoam. It is loud, chaotic, and gritty; much of its architecture is bulky and gray”.

It told us the place is prone to petty and sometimes violent crime and warned us not to wander anywhere with our bags, especially not after dark, so after our 24-hour trip from the UK, we didn’t head out onto the town but simply dropped silently into bed, keeping up a snore chorus until morning.

Our hostel, the Loki, is a notorious party-type, with beer pong, cocktail nights, and australasians who bed down here for weeks but can give no tips on things to see, so we were treated to a night of singing, banging and carousing, but couldn’t complain as it’s always been us before. Is this what 30 feels like?

Apart from the noise, we slept like ingots and, after ‘Monaco’ instant coffee and free buns with lemon marmalade, we were ready to hit the town. We weren’t alone. Our jaunt along the clifftops of the Liman suburb of Miraflores, passed every man and his dog out for a Sunday constitutional.

Welcoming comparisons with Barcelona, Sydney, or Tel Avv, the presence of the sea by this clifftop city seems to make the residents get out and do: there were joggers and cyclists, dogwalkers and people using the cliff-side gym equipment (we had to have a go). Far from feeling threatened, we shared nods of “Buenos Dias” with all manner of local: dog walkers, Christians on their way to Mass, nuns serving ice cream outside a whitewashed church, teens hanging outside the local KFC.

A light breeze and bright sunshine was just the tonic we needed after London and we lapped it up, strolling along the promenade, enjoying little sculpture gardens and chilling out watching the pigeons over the seaview.

Before heading back to pick up our bags at the hostel and get a taxi to the bus station, we stopped for lunch at Azul Blue, a back-street seafood joint, tucking into huge mounds of cerviche and tortilos with sweet potato, banana chips and giant, GM-looking corn. With the exception of the scary corn, it was delicious, and we regretfully asked for La Cuenta, without having the time to finish it.

After that it was just a frantic hop and a skip into an overlaiden taxi and onto our luxury Cruz del Sur bus heading to Cuzco. We took away with us bags of fruit and cereal bars from the Miraflores supermarket and the impression that Lima is a busy place, with a tumbledown mismatch of architecture and no shortage of superhighways, and a thriving surburban fitness scene along a stunning seafront promenade. But – after just 18 hours in the place – what do we know?

Volunteering memories

Hardly a week goes by that I don’t think about my little friends at the Christina Noble Children’s Foundation in Vietnam, so when the folks at new gap-year website Gap Daemon asked me to write a piece about my experiences, I jumped at the chance (click the screen to read my piece).

I really would go back tomorrow, but I know all the kids would have changed so much – and I hope many of them have found happier places to be by now.

Anyone who’d like to know more about volunteering for CNCF, visit www.cncf.org. You won’t regret it!

Global local

You don’t know what it’s like to be a man until you’ve walked a mile in his shoes. Or in other words, done his commute.

Working in an office in Hong Kong for a month gave me an insight into the things most travellers don’t get to see.

They’re not always the most thrilling sights and sounds. Waking in one of Kowloon’s battered old high-rises, to the sounds of pans clanking and rapid Cantonese yakking. Standing shoulder to shoulder with an army of sleepy suits heading down into the efficient anonymity of the Central business district. The endless health and safety announcements on the MTR, repeated until the Chinese words are stripped of all meaning, the singsong sound of them forever framed in your brain.

Living like a local isn’t about the food that you eat, or where you sleep, it’s those moments when the exotic becomes familiar, even to the point of boredom. When someone else’s routine becomes your own.

Like any rituals, the morning moments in HK tell you a lot about how the people live now. They queue for steamed buns and croissants at bakery chains, grab orange juice at Seven Eleven, coffee at Starbucks.

It might not be sailing on a junk, eating dim sum, or a pretty picture of a ‘typical’, ‘traditional’ Hong Kong, but my abiding memories of the city are of my way to work: intrigued by the local culture of the morning, awed by the everyday bustle of a global powerhouse.

This blog has been entered for the Grantourismo HomeAway Holiday-Rentals “Living Like Locals” travel blogging competition (www.homeaway.co.uk, http://grantourismotravels.com/2010/11/10/grantourismo-travel-blogging-competition-november)

Travelling: do you go it alone?

Tom Hall, travel editor for Lonely Planet, reportedly said today that lone travellers get more out of their travel than those who travel in pairs or groups.

Have you ever taken the plunge? I did last year for the first time and it was as scary as it was exhilarating, as life-affirming as it was fun (and it was lots of fun).

But it’s hard, especially for the shy – that’s at least 40 per cent of us – to get to know new people. Even confident people may struggle when out there on their own for the first time. So, here are my five top tips on meeting people for those looking to travel alone for the first time.

1. Take a tour
Some people have a fundamental mistrust of the organized tour – whether a day trip or the full-on three-week-long Intrepid numbers. But there is no better way to get chatting with new folk than experiencing some of the world’s top spots together or bonding over a bottle of the local beer.
But: Be sure to choose trips that are right for your interest, fitness and age level or you may find yourself aboard a charabanc of energetic pensioners.

2. Share
Yes, your mother always told you that nice children share and when you’re travelling you’ll prove that it’s true. If you pass round whatever you’ve got that you can spare – sweets, cigarettes – people will like you more. Not just for the simple economics and bribery of it, but it starts a conversation.
But: Don’t feel downbeat if they turn you down; they might not be hungry/a smoker/a reader. Also, Drinks, seats and beds should be shared with caution; generosity is a plus, but make sure you retain your personal space/ dignity.

3. Talk
Memorise these three phases: “Is this seat taken?” Did I hear you say you’ve been to…” and “Is this bus going to…” These three are the diamonds in the tiara of lone traveler conversation, valuable currency for introductions that don’t make you look like a loser. They can jump you straight into every one’s favourite conversation while travelling: planning the next move. Extra buddy points if you’re full of admiration for their advice.
But: Don’t try this at home. Complete strangers will think you’re crackers if you use “Does this bus go to Leytonstone?” as an excuse to be their friend.

 

4. Learn
Every day’s a school day, so they say, and travelling is the best case of this. Formalise the process from time to time by indulging a bit of self-improvement. Whether your passion lies in local languages, picking up cookery tips from the country you’re in or a martial art or activity, taught courses are an excellent way to meet like-minded folk.
But: Make sure your interest is genuine. People tend to take learning as an adult a lot more seriously than in the school days and won’t appreciate a class clown attitude. Especially in an ashram.

5. Smile
Not to sound too like Oprah but even if you don’t want to approach people yourself, a smile works wonders for reassuring people you’re friendly and approachable. Spending much of your time alone when traveling can do odd things to your social skills – I caught myself talking to myself; a friend was so long in remote Indonesia that she forgot how to speak – but a big happy grin will encourage people to approach you.
But: Do try and summon some words and chat to people from time to time. After all, meeting new and different people is one of the reasons we travel. Good luck and have fun!

No Sex and the Holy City

For a London netball team, Jerusalem held the key to a special kind of girl’s weekend (my entry for the Guardian Travel Writing Competition 2010)

Girly breaks are usually more about the party than the piety – you never have to cover your head on the Costa del Sol. But when my social netball team from London were deciding where to go on a group holiday, we somehow ended up in Jerusalem.
Lugging suitcases of fluff and accoutrements, we arrived at Damascus Gate on a Thursday evening in May, heads immediately swathed in the city’s scent – a mix of oil, chickpeas and herbs that smokes out from ubiquitous falafel stands.
Bunk beds in our hostel room brought back memories of school trips, but we were just pleased to be in the heart of the old city, with a courtyard on the roof that overlooked the unmistakeable gold Dome of the Rock.
The sound of the Adhan (call to prayer) filled the evening air as we relaxed there before dinner in the evenings with card games and chat.
During the day we wandered. Sightseeing in the old city’s quite a sport – we spent our time slipping around on marble streets smoothed with the flurry of ancient feet.
Mostly, though, we watched the people. Pious Muslim’s scurrying to the mosque; long-robed orthodox Christian priests in their mitres striding the Christian quarter’s courtyards.
One afternoon we joined a group of Franciscan monks who walk the Stations of the Cross, chanting as they go. Whatever you believe in – or don’t – it’s a powerful buzz to walk the steps of Jesus, and for the most part we were awed into silence, although there was a group giggle at station number four: ‘Our Lady of the Spasm’.
On Friday we followed ultra-orthodox Jews in hats that looked like giant fur lampshades down to the Wailing Wall for the start of the Jewish Sabbath. The atmosphere there is intense: the loud machismo of the men’s side, soldiers dancing with machine guns, yodelling. And yet it didn’t feel threatening to us: just joyful.
The combination of heat and history in the city should be oppressive, but this is no open air museum. Instead it’s a warren of conflicting sounds, smells of spices and leather, cool passageways twisting under and over each other.
I think some among us had worried about going somewhere so religious would mean there’d be no fun – but far from it. After a day of padding around the inner city, we headed outside the walls to find a beefy, Mediterranean vibe was well in evidence – open-air restaurants and cafes, trashy euro dance in the discos. All modern life is here.
And yes, we danced our socks off. We made it to the Dead Sea, too – where we bobbed like happy, mud-covered corks for hours. But, unlike your typical girly holiday, the experience was multi-dimensional and – at times – sobering. One day we visited Yad Vashem, the Holocaust memorial; on another we crossed the wall into Palestine, visiting Bethlehem and Jericho.
Not your usual city break, it’s true. But for our happy band of netballers, Jerusalem was a real result.

Sumatran Memento

Sitor shows me how to carve the Batak way...

Sitor is a woodcarver. His father was a woodcarver. Carving, he tells me, is what the Batak men do.

Sumatra’s Lake Toba and its island of Samosir are famous for this carving. The Batak people’s totem poles, masks and houses – which have horns to scare off wild spirits – are reminders of the wild days of cannibalism and tribal wars. Nowadays tourists buy mini versions for souvenirs.

When I first met Sitor yesterday in his workshop-come-showroom overlooking the lake, I was awed by his work: intricate portraits of his ancestors and local characters of myth, all honed with just a knife and a hammer.

I asked if he would teach me, and this morning I returned to find a small slab of wood and sharp knife laid out for me. It seems inconceivable at first; that my clumsy hands can do as he does, that my feet can grip the wood like his do. But he’s patient and kind, gently guiding me. After half a day’s companionable whittling the wood starts to take shape.

I finish it with boot polish, applied with a toothbrush, and leave it to dry in the sunshine. “Now you can carve like the Batak,” says Sitor, as he pours out cups of black tea. If only that were true, I reply, delighted with my treasured carving – so much more than just a souvenir.

On the left Sitor's example...on the right my humble copy : )

This blog won second prize in the Grantourismo HomeAway Holiday-Rentals travel blogging competition (www.homeaway.co.uk, http://grantourismotravels.com/2010/10/07/grantourismo-travel-blogging-competition-october/)

Ceroc (‘n’ roll my eyes)

“Girls, I’m afraid for this you have to let the man lead,” quips the smiley, smiley man on the stage, for whom a Butlin’s Red Coat is clearly either a past or future reality. “But, after the dancing’s over and you go home, it’ll swap back and you can be the boss again, don’t worry.”

It’s two minutes into my first ceroc class and I’m already inwardly groaning at the tired repartee. I turn to face my first dance partner of the night only to find a middle-aged woman with henna frizz and a velvet cape. Yes, a cape.

London Ceroc’s Halloween party was never going to be the coolest event I’ve ever attended (that prize might well go to Hong Kong Fashion Week) but I wasn’t expecting it to be quite so much like a terrible school disco. Although possibly worse, as school discos don’t tend to be full of middle-aged people dressed as something out of the Phantom of the Opera.

Even without the Halloween costumes, I think I would have spent my first ten minutes cringing. I remember thinking that ceroc seemed to be the dance version of bingo – a perma-tanned young man shouting through a microphone, while grannies and chavs on the floor stamp out numbers.

But I was being mean, obviously. It wasn’t that bad. In fact, I had quite a good time in the end – the dance is very easy to pick up and the people were friendly. And – for a dance class – there was a good man-woman ratio: cape-lady was one of only three women I had to pair up with. Some of the men were even handsome (if you’re reading, David…)

Of course, I did have the unfortunate luck to be one space behind a woman who looked like a young Zsa Zsa Gabor – all tits and teeth – who encouraged such lingering looks from the menfolk that I pretty much always missed out on the first few bars of attention for my bit.

And, of course, I was also wearing an 100% acrylic snowflake jumper-dress, which – although “bang on trend” for high street, according to co-workers – was a mite on the sweaty side for dancing.

But by the end of an hour I was taking cues, following leads and actually dancing, which for me is quite a feat. And – to this cynic’s surprise – I even found I’d had…what’s that non-ironic word again…oh, yeah: Fun. 

Angkor under threat

Cambodia’s famous ruin complex, Angkor Wat, is being “overrun by tourists”, according to the conservation group Global Heritage Fund (GHF).

“Hundreds of thousands of visitors climb over the ruins of Angkor every year causing heavy deterioration of original Khmer stonework,” said the group’s Saving Our Vanishing Heritage report, released today.

This report doesn’t surprise me in the slightest. When I visited the ruins myself ten months ago, I was amazed by the numbers of tourists – reputedly 2.4 million last year – many of whom had no problem with running their fingers over ancient friezes or carvings. Some of the women even wore high heels, which is stupid if you love your feet, but far more stupid if you have an idea of what they do to thousand-year-old stone work.

Possibly an even more serious threat to the ruins’ long-term prospects is the growing infrastructure needed to support these tourist hordes. Hotel irrigation systems and other heavy water use in gateway city Siem Reap, which is growing quickly to keep up with tourist demand. Cambodia is a country with a huge seasonal disparity in water levels, and “the nearby sprawl of hotels and restaurants is sapping the region’s local aquifer, which has caused the Bayon Temple’s 54 towers to sink into the ground,” the report said.

Angkor is a fascinating place – when London had only 12,000 inhabitants the Cambodian city was a mega-metropolis of millions – and in the last ten years it has joined Macchu Picchu and the Pyramids on a ‘bucket list’ of must-see ruins. But, with tourist numbers increasing 188 per cent since 2000, something must be done to protect the temples from harm.

With visitors paying $50 for a three-day pass, this money could be used to lay protective surfaces, build viewing platforms or employ docents to police conservation guidelines. But this is Cambodia, not Cambridge. Money that comes in goes to a government that is poor and filled with pockets of corruption – like pouring water through Swiss cheese.

At the time of my visit I wondered how much of the profits – reputed to be $1 billion annually – gets ploughed back into the upkeep of the site. A huge visitor centre was recently built – in itself a moneyspinner. To a large extent, however, the site is left very much alone, to the extent that there are big potholes around the main temples of Angkor itself; there are signs of negligence that endanger tourists and contravene who-knows-how-many health and safety laws. If these aren’t being fixed, then what hope is there that someone has thought beyond the immediate future?

I left without much hope – and, today, the GHF report has only confirmed my suspicions that this wonderful place is doomed, if controls on visiting (like has been done for the Inca Trail and Macchu Picchu) are not put in place. The report concludes in seemingly mournful capitulation of the truth that “loss and destruction is the status quo” for many global heritage sites in developing countries.

What can responsible travelers do to change this status quo? Should we not visit these places at all? Petition the governments? Answers on a postcard…

Spivs and Gamblers

Vince Cable is my hero. What a guy! Yesterday’s speech, where he shone “a harsh light into the murky world of corporate behavior” felt like the final moments of a John Hughes movie, where the nerdy, geeky boy stands up to the school bullies at last.

His attack on the “spivs and gamblers who did more harm to the British economy than Bob Crow could achieve in his wildest Trotskyite fantasies, while paying themselves outrageous bonuses underwritten by the taxpayer,” was delightful.

A person in power admitting that the bankers had screwed us all royally? Brilliant. Some idea that something must be done? Wonderful. But what can one nerdy, geeky chap do against the dark forces of capitalist greed? Essentially, we’re no closer to figuring out the solution to the right royal mess we’re still in. In fact, things are getting worse.

Any financially minded bods reading this must excuse my ignorance but I’ve only recently discovered the existence of High Frequency Trading (HFT) where computer algorithms control which stocks are bought and sold. By buying and selling in the blink of an eye, investors can make millions in minutes. And this isn’t just a small thing – according to Wikipedia: “as of 2009, high frequency trading firms account for 73% of all US equity trading volume”.

So why is this a problem, I hear you say? Money is getting made – that’s a good thing, surely?

Yes and no. I, like many people, thought that the stock market crash in May – when markets tumbled to 10% of their worth – was the result of the Greek economic bomb, but it has recently been in the papers (I read it in The Week – where else?) that this in fact was caused by computer algorithms. These are set to sell when the market dips, so when one sells, the next goes – the comparison with dominos is obvious – and suddenly 10% of the world wealth is wiped out. Woah.

This is the future of banking, apparently: a destabilised, terminator-esque dystopia; our futures in the cold, metallic hands of the machines.

It would be nice to have some reassurance that this is not the way it’s going to be. That – after the debacle of the last three years – that someone is going to put a kibosh on the obvious lie of a self-regulating market. It seems not.

Last night I attended the Tom Olsen Memorial Lecture, which – this year – took the form of a conversation between the Archbishop of Canterbury and Guardian columnist Simon Jenkins on the topic of “Prosperity and Morality: can we have both?” Confused by these issues, lost and looking for guidance, I thought one of these respected figures might have a clue as to how to help.

Yet both were so sewn into their old, outdated modes of thinking about these issues that they couldn’t even discuss with each other what was best to do with the bankers. Should they be punished? Controlled? Thrown in the Thames (as Jenkins suggested at one point)?

Archbishop Williams, stuck to the apriori – the last reserve of any clergyman – his soporific voice pounding out common sense like a chocolate hammer. His argument (morality is the common good, prosperity is the common good, in Christian doctrine) was so obvious, so entrenched and so totally useless for the current crisis of greed that Jenkins could only needle around the edges and beg for more guidance.

Jenkins’ own position was just as hopeless, a fledgling idea of punishment for the naughty boys, while still being deeply in love with the free market economy (his own religion of sorts as an entrenched skeptic) and somehow suggesting that things will right themselves in self-regulating system. Well, I’m afraid they won’t, Simon.

And so, let down, slightly disgusted and more than a little bored, my friend Sarah and I left before the end to go and eat chips and have a proper conversation, no more enlightened, sadly, as to how to stop the rise of the machines or these bad people gambling with our futures.

So, who is going to stop them? Who is going to say no? Cos, God love you Vince (and I do), your school boy naysaying just aint going to be enough.

Learning to walk

The traffic in Saigon might seem like madness, but – as Sarah Warwick soon learned – there’s a method in it. (Column for Tiger Tales magazine).

Talk to anyone about the traffic in Ho Chi Minh City and they are sure to use at least one of three words: “Mental.” “Crazy.” “Insane.” Sometimes they’ll use all three.

Before I saw it for myself, I thought: “They’re exaggerating. I’ve been to Delhi, Katmandu, Bangkok, LA: no amount of traffic’s going to scare me.” And yet, as it turned out, I hadn’t seen anything yet.

The streets of Saigon are so mental-crazy-insane that they need a new word to describe them. So bonkers that if someone from the US government took you to one side and explained that this was where they’d brought the aliens from Roswell, you wouldn’t be surprised.

The xe om (motorbike) drivers look like aliens, or worse. The helmets, shades and masks, the long gloves they wear to hide from the sun – it’s like a Michael Jackson look-a-like contest.

Then there’s the sheer volume of it. Streets are jammed with bikes, like one organism made up of many million snarling parts. It’s impossible to know how many vehicles there are – because so many are added every day – but at a guess I’d have to say a gazillion-bajillion-pasquillion. Or thereabouts.

Additional madness is added by the drivers’ competition to see who can break the most road rules. ‘Wrong’ and ‘right’ sides of the road are alien concepts to most Saigonese drivers, as is the idea that pavements are for pedestrians. While back in the UK yellow hatched boxes mean ‘Don’t stop here’, in Saigon they seem to mean ‘Bundle in’.

Trying to cross the street is an experience too. Bikes won’t even stop for traffic lights most of the time so they’re certainly not going to stop for you. Guidebooks recommend: “Step out with purpose, stay aware, and walk slowly and confidently”. Yeah, right.

“Oh God help me, I’m going to die!”: my first crossing was spent in half-prayer, half-despair, my face a screwed-up ball of pure fear. I shuffled out, winced when vehicles came close, and – shamefully – let out perhaps a dozen involuntary squawks.

It was only after I made it across five or so times that I stopped mentally making out my will while crossing. After a dozen more I proudly stepped out without flinching, and by the end of a month-long stay, I was confidently crossing like a local, barely aware of the bikes as they swerved around me like a shoal of fish gliding around a stone in a river.

After a while in Vietnam you understand that – like the worship of children and a love for eating duck foetus – the traffic in Saigon isn’t really crazy, it’s just Vietnam. It may look mental to outsiders, yes. But everyone gets where they’re going eventually, and most of them in one piece.