I had always been obsessed with sailing boats on family trips to the sea and holidays, I bought little toy boats, sailors, gazed wistfully at the sails, read nautical tales and studied pirate stories. But I never thought that sailing was an activity within my reach until a chance encounter during my last year at university. Read more…
Background
One of the reasons I started this blog was to record some of the experiences from our time between jobs. I have worked as a lawyer in London for over six years, my girlfriend Anna doing the same, and we decided that we wanted to work abroad. Being a UK lawyer is quite a fortunate position as (a) English law is often used in contracts worldwide; and (b) English common law is the basis of law in many Commonwealth/ex-Commonwealth countries. This means that our training is transferable and we can work in various jurisdictions with various degrees of retraining. Read more…
The final month of our six month travelling was to be China. We originally planned to spend a few days in Hong Kong with an old friend of mine and then a whole month in mainland China. However, travelling through Southeast Asia we were hit by a wave of negativity about travelling in China, no one seemed to have had a good time there; no one spoke English, everyone was rude and would take advantage of you, there was no toilet paper (even Bill Clinton’s security staff had been unable to locate toilet paper), scams were common and you had to check every item on restaurant bills, hostel rooms would be bugged by the Government, the overnight trains were cramped, damp and cold pits, everyone stared at you wherever you went and the only thing more dismal than the weather was the welcome… Read more…
As part of our Africa Overlander with Acacia, we had a few days working down Lake Malawi. This involved a three night stop, including hog roast and fancy dress party, at Kande beach.
Lake Malawi apparently provides a phenomenal proportion of the fresh water fish for the world’s aquarium’s and Jay, our guide, was taking the chance to learn to dive. However, Lake Malawi is also home of a snail which lays Bilharzia worms which apparently will swim up the urinary tract and lay eggs that can lead to internal bleeding and brain lesions through Schistosomiasis (I’m not medically trained but the two paramedics on our trip made this sound like a pretty bad thing to happen…). Apparently this happens most commonly when urinating in the water but can just happen from exposure in the water and so, travelling with a couple of paramedics who seemed to know a lot about these things, I was a bit nervous of spending an hour underwater in their company. Read more…
As the conclusion of our travels, we had decided to go to China, booking a flight home from Beijing. Planning to come up from South East Asia, we decided to spend a few days in Hong Kong first, in its traditional role as gateway for China but also to take the chance to catch up with an old friend of mine who had moved out to Hong Kong six years before and also to catch up with some current friends and old work colleagues who were also out there. We were struggling with how to get Chinese Railway tickets in advance and this explains how we did it… Read more…
Whilst wandering downtown during our visit to Pnom Penh, Cambodia, we happened upon the Pnom Penh office of Scuba Nation (www.divecambodia.com). We were considering going to Sihanoukville, where they were based, but we were not convinced that the visibility would be that good and so decided to pop in and quiz them. We were pretty certain that we were going to head to the Thai islands later on in the trip for Anna to learn to dive but I quite fancied getting a Cambodia stamp in my dive book. Read more…
Camping in the wild
As part of our Africa Ultimate Overlander with Acacia, we had a number of safaris throughout Africa. In both the Masai Mara and the Serengeti we camped “in the wild”. In the Mara we had a fence around us (although the gate looked a little decrepit) and permanent tents that had en suite toilet and shower and we were greeted by monkeys so locking the tents was a real must. Both trips took place in little trucks that actually took us on Safari (they had roofs that lifted up so that we could stand up and see out). We stayed in the same camp in the Mara for two nights and used that as a base for two afternoon and two morning drives whereas in the Serengeti we stayed one night in the wild in the middle of the Serengeti and another night in wild on the rim of the Ngorongoro crater.
The first campsite (apologies for the low exposure at night...)
The campsites in the Serengeti and on the crater were much more open and as a consequence we had more opportunity to experience the wildlife. Jay (the guide who had left the truck to take us on the smaller trips) warned us not to camp to close to the cooking huts (those and the shower/toilet block were the only permanent structures) but not to get too isolated from the group. As a result Anna and I pitched our tents right next to Jay’s tent and we have at least lived to tell the tale… Read more…
On our Africa Overlander trip with Acacia we had three nights to ourselves in Zanzibar. Happy with the group we had fallen in with we opted to stay in the accommodation organised by Jay, our tourleader. This comprised a large double room top floor bungalow at Sunset Bungalows for a steal at group booking prices, a lovely place but made even more amazing by the recent tenting.
As Anna had visited Zanzibar only the year before and stayed in Stone Town, we headed straight to the beach with several other couples while those less travelled-out/singles opted for a spice tour and a night in Stone Town. Perhaps I should one day learn more about spices but as we sank into the warm, clear, azure blue sea after an hour in the minibus we felt a degree of smugness about our ignorance.
Still, two days on a beach would require activities. We booked onto a group snorkelling trip, a booze cruise for Jay’s birthday, played volleyball, frisbee and took advantage of the $10 beach massages, but I also decided to take the chance to dive. As we were on a longer trip I had really dallied over the idea of diving in Zanzibar but had heard such great things and thought there was little chance of me returning imminently so I should take the opportunity. Read more…
Having spent a relaxing couple of days in Four Thousand Islands we headed back to Pakse, hardly a delightful spot but unfortunately the transport hub for that region.
After a taste of independent travel (well, three hours gentle cycling in Don Khon) and almost four months of hopping on and off tours and being shepherded round by taxi and tuk tuk drivers we fancied a change of pace.
I have always enjoyed the freedom of hiring rental cars in different countries, travelling at your own pace and stopping only at sights that interest you with no guilt that the driver (me) feels that you are being uncultured by ignoring a feature of national heritage (it has to be done sometimes). Hire bikes are more the deal in Asia, so we decided to take a spin with that… Read more…
PADI recommends that after learning to dive you dive again within six months or take a refresher course, then diving at least once every year. Some view the refresher course as a PADI moneyspinner but really it seems like a small price to pay to ensure that you don’t mess something up that could seriously endanger your life!
After doing my advanced open water in November I was keen to get out diving as soon as possible, both to avoid the refresher but also to just experience a fun dive without any lessons. Al, my training buddy, had really taken to diving and completed a further ten dives while visiting home (the Philippines, lucky devil) for Christmas, complete with pictures of a shark and the contest that he would become a Master Diver before me. Nevertheless, he was happy to join me on a weekend away, but the trick was where… Read more…
Tubbyman Tales 