Just what are the fickle demands of tourists that relegate Bangladesh to the bottom of the tourist league in South Asia? People tend to respond to negative news but the country’s media profile has sunk into such a quiet backwater, that even the bad news, so demanded of media outlets, has been left on the international news margins, unlike India, Myanmar and Thailand, with the inherent risk to tourist numbers. In fact it’s never had enough of a profile to…
If the pub can be said to be at the heart of British social life, the same can be said of the tea house in Myanmar. Both may have a male focus but the tea house has none of the drunken bravado of its counterpart, as Buddhism tends to frown upon a lack of sobriety. Sweet, milky tea is dispensed to the masses from the early morning, usually to some time in the afternoon. It is where tales are told,…
The most useful characteristic for a traveler that is rarely mentioned, is having a nice fat arse. Not for any reasons of sexual allure but to provide cushioning on substandard public transport. Staying within the confines of the guidebook routes in Myanmar is demanding enough on the posterior as it is but never was a point so sorely made than after twenty-eight hours on a motor boat up the Chindwin river, in the north-west of the country. If you are…
The Asian traveller’s most common affliction is without doubt temple burnout, even a couple of days of shining stupas and beneficent buddhas can be enough to get you running to the nearest bar for a cooling bottle of Chang and chat about football or sex, anything that’s not too culturally enlightening. Once you’ve seen a few ruins and a couple of operating temples, admired the ornamentation and smelt the incense you pretty much have got the picture. However, every now…
When you are going in search of the soul of a city, it’s no good walking down boulevards, across grand squares or into great buildings. These echo with the voices of the rich and powerful: kings and bankers; generals and religious leaders who have forsaken their beliefs for a slice of power. You need to meander down the back streets and alley ways to meet the people whose city lineage goes back generations. It’s when the plan view of alleys seemingly…
As if the gore splattered meat market in Tomohon wasn’t enough fun, the extra curricular entertainment of cock-fighting is also available for your edification, so I put on my sports correspondent hat to check out a match for you. It is popular throughout south-east Asia and is well over a thousand years old in Indonesia, so hardly a cultural practice to be ignored. If you only watch for a few minutes in the early stages, you could be forgiven for…
Passing through the many villages scattered over the hills of Tana Toraja in the central Sulawesi highlands, you soon begin to wonder why they have so many bus shelters, sometimes several in one village. Some may be modest affairs but many are decorated with bright colours and patterns, clearly built with love and care. Even the design of traditional homes and rice stores is replicated for some. In reality the function of bus stop is just a fringe benefit, for…
Well! that’s certainly the first time I have been welcomed at an airport by a man wearing only a gourd on his cock. Admittedly, when I say airport, the structure at Wamena in the Baliem Valley, West Papua tends more towards the idea of a cow shed than what you would traditionally imagine an airport to be. This however, did nothing to make the experience any the less superb. Plenty of destinations around the world would benefit from having more old men’s…
The niggling possibility of getting hacked to death by axe wielding terrorists has, for some strange reason deterred some tourists from coming to Xinjiang, so the streets of the region’s capital Urumqi were hardly awash with foreign faces. Locals are obviously made of stern enough stuff to not let such a trifling matter interfere with their daily routine and for many this means going to the park. In Urumqi the security concerns for patrons of the People’s Park were subtly…
IMPORTANT NOTE – in the many years since writing this piece my understanding of the situation in the region has evolved somewhat. Although I stand by the basic issue of the destruction of history here, I hope to resolve the issues with a future visit to the region but until then I am content to leave this here to receive any constructive comments I arrived late in Kashgar, about ten years late, to find two thousand years of history bulldozed…
