Welcome, Marhaba, Ahlan wa Sahlan, Selamat Datang…

Standing Buddha at Bamiyan, Afghanistan, now destroyed by the Taliban

This blog showcases my travel writing and photography, and shares experiences, images and anecdotes more frankly – and more immediately – than commercial print media allow.

My independent travels began in 1960s Tasmania, then took off with the Seventies Asian overland thing – now they call it a gap year – a consular posting in the United Arab Emirates and a stint as an adventure tour guide in South East Asia.

Moving on

From now on, I will be posting over on Blogspot, which has completely revamped its layout to become much more reader-friendly than WordPress. Life’s too short to wade through hundreds of layout themes, so please join me over there instead.

Bruny Island too brave for Avis

Bruny Island, southeast Tasmania, is a delightful retreat, a sleepy island community of tiny towns and empty beaches. Sweeping beaches, craggy capes and secluded inlets are the hallmarks of these two half islands joined by a spit of sand. The holiday villages hold fond memories for generations of Tasmanians. Chugging down the Derwent, the beach picnic at Dennes Point and the long grind home on the ferry were pieces in the jigsaw of a Hobart childhood.

But the islanders are not standing still, with boutique cheesemakers and confectioners, holiday cottages, launch cruises and other small-scale, tourism-oriented businesses mushrooming. Bruny is a 15-minute car ferry ride from Kettering on the Tasmanian mainland. But it’s a journey too far for Avis Car Rental, which arbitrarily bans its customers from taking cars across. Other companies do not seem to have the same hang-up; Tasmania has plenty of back roads more remote or less well-maintained than those on Bruny.

I’ve asked why, but haven’t yet heard back. I’m sure the local tourism operators would be curious to know why a multinational car rental operator wants to cut them out of the loop. And ditto for Kangaroo Island, South Australia.

BTW, more pix of Tasmania are here.

Botswana: In search of the next Precious Ramotswe

Leave aside the luxury safari camps of the Okavango Delta, with their promise of ‘Big Five’ game sightings and sybaritic indulgence under star-lit African skies, and you are not left with many obvious reasons to visit the sprawling, semi-desert republic of Botswana. Indeed, Lonely Planet suggests that less-affluent travellers might better spend their time in neighbouring countries.

At the Broadhurst Mall, Gaborone

However, since Scots author Alexander McCall Smith introduced the charmingly unaffected Precious Ramotswe and her No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency to the world of books (and subsequently, film and TV) even the dusty fringes of Gaborone, the capital, have drawn glimmers of interest from McCall Smith’s growing army of fans. I’d arrived in South Africa with no fixed plans, but soon chafed at being warned not to roam the streets at night. A bus ticket across the border to Gaborone seemed an easy choice.

I didn’t find the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency (after all, it is a figment of the author’s imagination) but in Mochudi, the dusty overgrown village where our unlikely heroine spent her formative years, I took note of the Giggles Hair Salon, Nix Business Services (Company Formation, Biz Consultation, Funeral Programs) and the Club Triple Zero Nightclub, all doing business from tin sheds or mud-walled cabins. More entrepreneurs in the making… (and here are some more pix). And BTW, I did make it by hook or by crook up to big-game country.

To go or not to go

I’d love to visit Yemen and see the towering mudbrick skyscrapers of San’a and the ancient towns of the Hadhramaut; to experience a culture where men spend most afternoons spaced out on a homegrown weed called qat… In the Seventies we overlanders traversed Afghanistan; I relished more recent visits to East Timor, Burma and the Solomon Islands. Lots of once-suspect destinations warrant a closer look, including some on Dubya’s ‘Axis of Evil’.

Herat, Afghanistan (1974)

But you won’t find me in Yemen just yet. There are just too many reasons why not, including the suspicion that will surely attach to independent travellers returning from an apparent nest of terrorist sympathisers. I’d rather not build up a case file with hyped-up security agencies.

Nigel Brennan had no local contacts or expertise when he set off to make his name as a freelance photojournalist based in strife-torn Somalia, which has no credible government and a fearsome reputation for famine, piracy, conflict and kidnapping.

The ethics of giving to beggars: an expat’s dilemna

Another despatch from my Jakarta-based friend Kevin…

I’ve been thinking recently about the ethics of giving to beggars.

A couple of days ago I was walking past an old woman sitting on the bridge outside a bus station, holding a plastic cup. So I reached into my pocket where I thought I had a 200 Rupiah coin and a 2000 Rupiah note, and was very generously going to place it in the plastic cup. Except that when I started to put it in, I was horrified to see it was a blue 50,000 Rupiah note, so I quickly pulled back and left just the 200 Rupiah coin (that’s 2c to you). Fortunately she was sitting on the ground, and I was mobile, so able to quickly walk away and hide my embarrassment, and presumably her scorn.

Shantytown, Pasar Ikan, Jakarta

What is a measured response to beggars? People here would very rarely give more than 1000 Rupiah and beggars usually don’t acknowledge the donation, which is a necessary routine to observe Zakat, a Muslim’s religious obligation to give alms. Many local people say the beggars are rounded up by by Fagin-type characters who give them food and board if they sit around all day and beg.

During Ramadan there was a bit of debate about the official announcement that 2.5% of annual income was the expected amount to be donated.

Push along to Pushkar, this November

For a week at the full moon of the Hindu month of Kartika – this year, 2-10 November, a dusty throng of camels and their nomadic owners joins Hindu holy men, pious pilgrims and spectators from far and wide as they descend on this desert outpost in Rajasthan for the annual camel fair. Beyond the fairground the desert tribespeople camp out with their camels, flanks freshly branded, and tricked out with pom-poms and flower-bedecked harness.

For more than two thousand years pious Hindus have come to Pushkar to worship Lord Brahma, the Creator, and to seek absolution by bathing in the sacred waters of the Tank. This is the only surviving temple dedicated to the Creator of the Hindu universe; elsewhere, his cult his given way to the worship of Vishnu the preserver, Shiva the destroyer and other deities.

Toothless Tiger

A cold, squally day here in The World’s Most Liveable City, so I thought I would dust off this unpublished 2008 story. The recent grounding of Tiger Airways’ Australian operations adds a new dimension to this sorry tale.

It’s pure Abbott and Costello: Tiger Airways’ big bird is parked outside and would-be passengers watch as a pilot pushes open the cockpit window to poke his head out and gesticulate forcefully at the mechanics milling around.  It would be funny had we not been standing in the boarding queue for three quarters of an hour – no explanation, now or ever – waiting to take to the skies in the same aircraft.

Branded water tower identifies Melbourne's Tiger Airways terminal

You can’t help wondering about safety when maintenance appears to be so hit-or-miss fashion.  Nor is it reassuring to encounter cabin crew who can barely sell you a drink in English, let alone deal with any emergency.

If you thought Jetstar were mean in making you pay for dinner, wait until the Singapore-owned Tiger gets its claws into you.  “May I have some water please?… Two dollar.”

“Tiger disallows own food” the notice declares (once on board) and, amazingly, “don’t deprive our staff of their commissions”. 

Jettisoning Jetstar

Black sheep of the family

Am I the last person in Australia to find out the hard way that Jetstar charges each passenger $30 for the privilege of making payment for a round trip – double that for two pax paying together? For this short-hop journey, that’s almost a 20% loading on the base fare. (And no, for many passengers there is simply no other way to pay, depending on their bank). Their only serious competitor, Virgin, does it for $9 each or $18 for two – less than a third.

World’s least luxurious cruise ship?

What a beauty! As reported by AFP, North Korean interests have apparently refurbished – as best they can – a rundown 39-year old vessel to operate cruises to and from the Kumgang Mountains, a famed beauty spot. Running water can’t be guaranteed, and some passengers aboard the Man Gyong Bong have to sleep on the floor. Perhaps a bit of foreign know-how might help things along, but then again the Democratic Peoples’ Republic of Korea typically goes it alone.

Panmunjom, Demilitarized Zone

Visiting odd corners of unloved nations can be rewarding, if onerous, but this may be the nearest I’ll ever get to North Korea, a hair-raising experience in itself.

Inter-island freighter, Solomon Islands

However, I think the good ship Bikoi, which shuttles Solomon Islanders back and forth across that island archipelago, is a worthy contender for the no-frills cruising award. Onboard catering consists of instant noodles served in a paper cup – just add hot water.

An expat in Jakarta

My friend Kevin has been living and working in Jakarta; he finds that 99% of people are incredibly polite and welcoming, although it’s not an easy place to live for various reasons. Daily life as an expatriate provides quite a different perspective from that of the itinerant tourist or traveller, so I plan to share some of his observations with you.

Waiting for the bus in Blok M, Jakarta

Kevin writes: ‘‘Twas the night before Christmas…” well, actually not, but it feels a bit like it. It’s the day before Idul Fitri here, and probably more like Lent but more serious, because most people have been fasting from dawn to dusk for a month, and it finishes tomorrow. Not everyone of course, there are all sorts of exemptions: kids, pregnant women, sick people and so on.

An alternative reality

Recently I flipped through a gushy feature story on Istanbul in a glossy British travel magazine which somehow washes up on Antipodean newsstands.  (I can’t give you a link – you have to be a subscriber to read the online version).  The writer seemed to frequent a different Istanbul altogether from the one I so much enjoyed recently.

Grilled fish sandwich coming up

Of around 35 points of interest marked on the accompanying sketch map, nearly all were dotted across the modern Beyoglu business and shopping district, beyond the Golden Horn, and many of these appeared to be bars, restaurants, shops and hotels of decidedly un-Turkish name or appearance. The great sights of Sultanahmet rated one or two points on the map, the stores and eateries another couple, at best.

I suspect this piece was probably as much about ‘style’ as about travel, ‘style’ pre-digested for the sort of people who prefer to carry their universe wherever they go, like a tortoise with its carapace.

The lost Lake Pedder

Once upon a time, a beautiful tea-coloured lake lay unspoilt and largely unnoticed in a far corner of southwest Tasmania, reached only by well-equipped walkers or by those landing their light planes on its wide, sandy beaches.  Even the Tasmanian aborigines usually found this wilderness too hostile to linger in, and so it remained after European settlement and right up until the Sixties. Only a few intrepid outdoor types ever saw Lake Pedder and the Serpentine Valley with their own eyes.

Then along came a state administration fixated on hydro power projects, intent on developing the Island State as a hub of energy-intensive industry (which never happened).  A protest campaign sprang up to challenge the planned transformation of the Southwest. Photographers like Olegas Truchanas and Peter Dombrovskis led the way in capturing images of the wilderness at stake, but the battle was lost.

Ironically, the first stages of the Gordon River power scheme brought the Lake within easy reach of a newly-constructed road, and so it was that more Tasmanians trekked in to see what would soon be drowned. Amongst them, Sidney Game and his eldest son, whose Easter weekend hike in 1968 was recorded in these colour slides (remember them, kiddies?).