Transport
The mode of transport you use on long distance travelling can really enhance your experience. Train travel in particular has its own excitement – pulling out of a city feels so auspicious, as does arrival by train in a new place. Locally, using the services of local buses, trams and metros will help you get the feel of a place. And so you learn to live like a local, and if you’re lucky, you get to meet people too. Systems can be difficult but people are so often helpful – if it’s confusing, someone will help you out. On longer journeys, the use of public transport gives you the opportunity to study the terrain at leisure, you can watch the world pass by as you move through the different areas. Busy towns give way to open fields; mountains and lakes. Stations too are stimulating places. The manic activity of bus and rail stations is great to be part of. What at first seems chaos soon becomes clear. Just sit back and enjoy.
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Characters On The Buddha Train – Part 1
We started our recent journey around South East Asia with what was effectively a “train cruise” visiting some of the most important places in the life of Buddha. During our posts we touched on some of the characters we met on that train. Here we delve a bit deeper into those experiences in a 2-part post about life on the Buddha train…. We’d never done it before, been on an organised trip like this, so we were probably the ones sticking out like sore thumbs as we tried to gauge some sort of assessment of our fellow passengers. Who would be on a “train cruise” through India tracing the story…
- Asia, Cambodia, Independent travel, Outdoor Activities, Photography, Transport, Travel Blog, World food
Kampot: A Different Kind Of Town
The train is almost definitely not our best option for getting to Kampot, given that there’s only one train per day which leaves Phnom Penh at 7am and takes four hours to do just 150km, but my love of rail travel wins and so we skip breakfast and make our way to the station early enough to beat the traffic jams which create the daily morning gridlock. An ambling train journey through drier and more agricultural terrain eventually delivers us to the little town of Kampot nestling on the banks of the Sangke River, just a few miles from the coast. The smiley little guy introduces himself as Pat as…
- Asia, Cambodia, Independent travel, Outdoor Activities, Photography, Transport, Travel Blog, Wildlife, World food
Tonle Sap: Going Off Limits & Sleeping With Toads
This next part of our South East Asia trip is one which we’ve been looking forward to with such anticipation, not just recently but before the original curtailed trip three years ago. Why? Because we do love pushing the boundaries of the comfort zone, and this short adventure will surely do that. It starts when Var, our guide and companion for the next two days, collects us from Siem Reap and we climb into the nicely air conditioned 4×4. And when we say “companion” we mean it – Var will be sleeping in the same room as us tonight. “I will explain all we are going to do” he says,…
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On To Saigon Or Whatever It’s Called
Day 35 of this trip and we cop out for the first time. Up until tonight it’s been local food all the way….Indian, Nepalese and Vietnamese dishes, local specialities, street food, even a frog on a stick for God’s sake. But Can Tho is different: the restaurants aren’t quite as inviting, the atmosphere is less accessible, and the street food we’ve tried is unpopular with locals and close to inedible. So we cop out and find an “ordinary” restaurant, The Lighthouse, which, perish the thought, does steaks and stuff. For the first time since we entered the country, we eat some non-Vietnamese food: Michaela’s is a French dish, mine Belgian.…
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To Hoi An: The Land Of Lanterns
And so we head to Hoi An, a place about which we have heard so many good things that this will be our longest stay in one place whilst in Vietnam, a full six days. Our original intention was to go by train from Hue to Da Nang and then taxi to Hoi An, but we got chatting to a guy in a cafe on the first morning in Hue who told us he can book a bus which will take us door to door for half the price of the taxi alone. Bargain. Bargain? Well, yes, but boy does the journey bring surprises. Sure enough, we get picked up…
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Halong Bay
Sunshine greets us in Halong Bay and even that one simple fact is different from the miserable days when we bowled up here before, with the world starting to close borders and the grip of a pandemic stretching its dirty fingers everywhere. Back then, this entire place was a ghost town, just us two and a handful of others about to start the mad dash home. It was a hazy grey that day with a mist hugging the silent sea and all the tour boats waiting forlornly at anchor. Vietnam was already shutting down and tourist spots like Halong (or Ha Long) Bay had been among the first to have…
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The Chaos And Joys Of Delhi
It feels good to get the backpacks unpacked as we settle back into Delhi – the first time we’ve been able to unpack in the ten days since we left England. Coupled with the sense of freedom now that we are once again independent after the confines of the Buddha Train experience, it feels positively liberating to wander out into the lively streets around Connaught Place. Gulping a first beer in eight days feels pretty good too. Even if it is Kingfisher. After majoring in Buddhism, touching on Hinduism at the Aarti in Varanasi and Islam at the Taj Mahal, our first port of call back in Delhi is the…
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Birth, Death & Border Horrors: In And Out Of Nepal
The wheels of the Buddha train are still rolling as we finish breakfast and wander back to our compartment: evidently there has been some sort of delay overnight and we finally trundle into Nautanwa station about two hours behind schedule. Nautanwa is the end of India’s railway line, the border with Nepal just a few miles away. In spite of the extra two hours to prepare, and in spite of strict instructions to disembark quickly, about ten of the Dawdlers are late, and finally – finally, after 30 minutes waiting on the coach – Little Miss Selfie, the most incorrigible of the Dawdle group, bowls up as if it’s all…
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A Taste Of Delhi, And On To The Buddha Train
“Please wear this for your identification”, he says, handing us a white baseball cap with the Indian Railway Company logo emblazoned on it. “And carry this too”. A bright yellow pouch bag. Classy. Now, we’ve always smirked at people on cruises being shepherded around sites with their colour coded labels or whatever – now here we are setting off on this adventure with uncharacteristic white headgear and an even more uncharacteristic yellow bag, all for the purposes of being in that very type of herd which we thought we’d never be part of. Well, there’s a first time for everything. But before all this, we arrive in India’s capital city…
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Ancient Homes And Shifting Sands
After the stillness of the last few days, today feels a bit more like old school February, the coastal wind bringing a chill factor which makes a nonsense of the official temperature figures, cutting in via the rib cage and exiting the body somewhere just south of the shoulder blades. In any lee-side location, the lukewarm sunshine teases with a kiss: turn a corner and your body braces involuntarily against the cold. The dark afternoon clouds bring tiny hailstones which dance across the ground like mini ping-pong balls, darting into corners where they threaten to drift but then melt away quickly without a trace. It was incredibly cold up by…
