Blue sky thinking...

I scribbled a short piece in the Observer this weekend, a sort of special edition of the regular column of yore, to celebrate my getting airborne again in the airship last week (the spectacular pictures of which you can see here). The article as always is here on the Observer website, but I've also cut and pasted the text below for those of you who are too lazy-assed to click through!

It's been a good few weeks for freelance work too with another interview I did with the heroic Mark from www.seat61.com whilst we travelled in style to Brussels and back courtesy of Eurostar (with Mark sitting in the famous seat number that gave the website it's name). You can find out more about the man and story behind what is undoubtedly the world's best independent rail advice service by reading my full article on the Green Futures website here.

The Slow Traveller, Observer 20.7.08

He went around the world without flying, but thanks to a new airship, last week Ed Gillespie finally got airborne

The gondola rolled gently to one side in a lethargic motion and I swayed uncertainly along with it. No, I wasn't gliding along a Venetian canal, instead I was floating lazily up into a cloudless sky above an Essex airfield. My craft was a bloated blimp captained by the charmingly excitable and exceedingly posh Katharine 'chocks away!' Bord - the world's only female airship pilot.

After returning a few months ago from our global circumnavigation without flying, it was a strange experience for me to be airborne again, in what felt like a posh minibus (it had leather seats) slung beneath the belly of a vast aerial whale. It had been more than two years since I had been on a plane for work - for a five-week climate change assignment in China - and almost six years since my last holiday flight. But the sedate, serene and indeed graceful way in which our balloon rose into the air was a far cry from the rumble, roar and G-force-inducing thrust of your average climate-stewing jet.

'I hog the airship,' trilled Katharine, explaining with genuine passion her affection for the vessel and her reluctance to cede control to her co-pilot. Was it a lucrative occupation, I enquired, as she waxed lyrical about the joy of being paid to 'float around the world', her energetic and enthusiastic delivery in stark contrast to the apparently lackadaisical movement of the balloony beast we were travelling in. 'Well, it keeps me in boots and handbags,' she said.

Similar tourist airships are being launched in several cities around the world, and as London lolled beneath us in the hot July sunshine I pondered the potential of airships to play a genuine transport role in a carbon-constrained future, perhaps offering an alternative to fuel-hungry aviation. Tomorrow's passengers would surely relish the sightseeing potential of airship travel - and it would be a damn sight faster than any cargo ship.

Sadly, my research tells me, in the short term this is not to be. While breathtakingly spectacular, this glorified sightseeing trip over the capital was, frankly, pretty pricey. Like it or not, airships are also still at the mercy of the elements, making their use on regular point-to-point journeys too unreliable to make business sense. It would be a perverse irony indeed if the return of this low-carbon form of flying were to be ultimately scuppered by the very increase in climate turbulence it might do so much to alleviate.

Star Over London's sightseeing flights run until 21 August; trips cost £185 for around 30 minutes (020 7183 3911; www.staroverlondon.com).

Flying on a wing and a prayer...

Well there's yet more corroboration today for some of the issues I've been banging on about in regard to the climate impacts of aviation as reported here on the BBC. The news item covers a report issued by the UK's Sustainable Development Commission on the future of aviation called 'Breaking the Holding Pattern'.

The essence of the report focuses on the 'over-egged' economic justifications for airport and aviation expansion and how much these really benefit the UK and casts doubt on the ability of technological innovation in the aviation industry to reduce carbon emissions in the face of wildly spiralling demand. Crucially however it cites the massive gap opening up in the UK economy due to the 'tourist deficit' whereby fuelled by the growth in cheap flights UK holidaymakers spend £18 billion more abroad than incoming tourists spend in the UK...a huge drain in the context of the current credit crunch. It would seem that 'Buying British' while holidaying on our wonderfully diverse set of islands is not only good for the country its good for the whole planet.

Logs and salty sea dogs...

We arrived in La Paz in the rain. La Paz, Baja California that is, NOT Bolivia as one of our travelling mates thought. They accused us of flying in the process as they’d (probably correctly!) concluded there’s no way we could have got there overland in a week from northern Baja. Me? On a plane? On this trip? With my reputation?

To enhance the damp ambience La Paz’s main street was being resurfaced creating an obstacle course of wet cement, open man-holes and drains, piles of new metal street furniture and the odd dangling electrical cable to add to the excitement. Ravenous we ate a spicy ‘sopas mariscos’ in a very local cantina, complete with obligatory blind guitar player strumming away in the corner. The soup later repeated slightly on us and our Spanish travelling companions but it wasn’t as odd as the meal the following night - ‘Pollo Perchuga’. Which consisted of half a deboned chicken, stuffed with spinach and goats cheese then liberally smeared with what looked and tasted like half a jar of apricot jam. Just plain weird.

Many years ago one of the books that inspired me to become a marine biologist was John Steinbeck’s ‘The Log from the Sea of Cortez’. It’s about a trip he made with his friend the legendary American marine biologist Ed Ricketts, in the days when field work was all about catching bizarre new species and shoving them into glass jars of formaldehyde. Being in La Paz and gazing out over the same azure blue waters I wanted in. However as I haven’t dived in a decade and can’t tell an ‘O’ ring from my arse-hole we went snorkelling.

Our boat took us out to Los Isolotes, a series of pinnacled crags jutting out of the sea and home to Baja’s biggest colony of California sea-lions. The rocks were red but topped by a thick white crust of dried guano – ‘shite-washed’ by the resident sea-birds. We could hear, and smell, the sea-lions as they honked away at us like marine dogs from beneath the cliffs.

In the water they effectively demonstrated the millions of years of evolution that separate us from our marine mammal cousins, gliding elegantly around our flailing limbs in mutual curiosity. The sleek young pups swam right up to our masks, barked in our faces, bit our mate Laia’s blonde dreadlocks and generally swam, sleek rings around us. As well as the sea-lions the water teemed with a kaleidoscope of coloured parrotfish, surgeonfish, groupers and jacks. Whilst on the rocks above massive bull seals aggressively defended their harems of breeding females from adolescent males attempting to sneak in for a crafty shag.

We shared the boat with a group of Spanish divers and in the afternoon they did a wreck dive that was too deep for us to snorkel down to. The ‘Fang Ming’ was a Chinese people smuggling vessel that the Mexican authorities had intercepted, impounded and then sunk deliberately to form an artificial reef. One assumes they removed the cargo first.

From Dawn till Dusk

As we chugged into the port of Ensenada, Mexico the Pacific was oily calm and the first rays of dawn were breaking over the dark craggy hills of northern Baja California. Our Mexican naval escort had failed to materialise (we had some radioactive cargo onboard) and the harbour seemed a microcosm of Mexico itself, extensive development of new facilities on one side, rusting hulls of half-sunk ships protruding grimly from the water on the other.

In town we checked into the ‘Ritz’ hotel, which was trading libellously on the reputation of it’s, ahem, ever so slightly more prestigious London namesake. Eager to get our lips around some Mexican nosh after the dire meat and mash monotony of the cargo ship we ate dirt cheap Quesedillas from a cheap, dirty and hygienically challenged food stall. As a result I enjoyed an almost instant bout of ‘Las Turistas’ within hours of making landfall, the first time my bum has exploded in nine months of travel (this is probably too much information).

You could hardly walk anywhere in Ensenada without tripping over a Mariachi group. Splendidly moustachioed geezers in leather jackets and Stetsons armed with guitars, violins and oh so portable double basses conducted musical guerrilla warfare by ambushing unsuspecting tourists with their folk classics and close harmonies. With the sound of ‘La Cucaracha’ ringing in our ears back at the hotel we wrestled the grubby cover from the bed as it seemed to be providing an attractive dancefloor on which the song’s eponymous beasties might shake a leg or six.

Exploring the town further the next day we strayed a couple of blocks away from the well-trodden cruise-ship tourist route. There was a creeping realisation we were suddenly out of our comfort zone as we became aware of the dubious loitering characters and working girls. We passed a hard-faced bloke preparing to inject outside a seedy brothel cum bar that was eerily reminiscent of Rodriguez’s ‘From Dusk till Dawn’. ‘Maybe he’s diabetic’ Fi offered rather charitably.

After acclimatising for 48 hours we were keen to head south so caught a bus towards El Rosario. We’d barely left town when the drivers pulled over to replenish their already ample waistlines at their favourite taco stall. As we left the outskirts we entered a parched, dusty landscape strewn with glass and plastic rubbish. Impromptu fences of wooden palettes and old tyres collected wind-blown debris and divided the dirt into graveyards of decaying vehicles, abandoned buildings and piles of unkempt junk. Scrawny and perceptibly mangy dogs prowled through the filth and I was starting to wonder what the hell we were doing in this apparently joyless and derelict destination.

Baja ha ha ha ha...

Ten days into Mexico and we're already in love with the place, embarking merrily on a torrid if dusty affair with the horizontally laid-back people, wild, weird landscapes and grappling with our survival Spanish. I'm having a writing day today so more news will follow, the final Observer column from New Zealand was published today however so as usual there's a link to the Grauniad website here. I've also pasted the full text below with some appropriate pics. Speaking of which there are also the full New Zealand photo galleries and a few more cargo ship snaps in the photo archive for perusal.


20th Observer Column

In Queenstown, on New Zealand's South Island we made preparations for 'tramping'. This has nothing to do with unfortunates of no fixed abode but is the quaint Kiwi term for wilderness trekking. Many of the 'Great Tramps' were closed due to the threat of avalanches following late-season snowfalls and a recent earthquake. So we opted for the relatively benign Greenstone Track - a three-day route used by early Maori to collect pounamu, the revered jade-like rock found on the west coast.

Leaving under the threat of a severe wet weather warning, we were blessed by sunshine and cloudless skies as we hiked carefully along a crumbling cliff-side track high above a rain-swollen river. Around us stood impossibly dense, fertile ancient forests. Thick trunks of long-dead trees decayed swiftly in the moist air, supporting a carpet of lustrous lichens and mosses. The logs provided a growing platform for tiny saplings, the young replacing the old.

That night we shared the smart trail hut with an assortment of other trampers. A feral cat prowled around outside. 'Needs shooting,' read a terse entry in the visitors' book. Judging by the large pile of well-thumbed copies of Rod & Rifle magazine on the table, some hut guests would be only too happy to oblige.

We woke to the promised cool, wet weather front. Six hours of bedraggled tramping later, through bleak, river valleys, over precarious wire bridges and along paths criss-crossed by knotted, slippery tree roots, we made it to the second hut.

The interior resembled a Chinese laundry as a motley crew of clammy trampers tried to dry their kit over the pot-bellied stove. As darkness crept in and the temperature dropped, the rain turned to snow. Suddenly the door swung open and a sodden Irishman strode in. 'Anyone mind if I bring my dog in?' he barked. We'd probably have objected more if he'd left the poor beast outside in the freezing deluge.

A camaraderie built up as the fire burnt down. The purely medicinal bottle of whisky I'd lugged for the last 18 miles did the rounds - an excellent way to make friends and get people under the influence. Which was good, given that nearly 20 of us were sharing four giant communal beds. Before we retired the full moon popped up from behind the dark mountain ridge above, beautifully illuminating the delicate icing sugar dusting of snow on the trees of the upper slopes. We slept in neat rows, the air damp from drying clothes, scented by fetid socks and rent by the Irishman's buzz-saw snore.

After another day of soggy slogging we took a rejuvenating overnight cruise on the tranquil waters of Milford Sound. Vast cliffs of black, shining granite, their faces sluiced by whitewater cascades, plunged almost vertically into the depths of the fjord. 'What's the daftest question you've ever been asked?' I probed Leah, our dreadlocked nature guide. 'What is the sound of Milford Sound?' she dead-panned. At dusk, the ship moored for 'water activities', a choice between a trip in a motor launch, kayaking or, for the brave, swimming. Still shivery and drenched from three days' tramping in the icy rain our 'water activity' was a hot shower.

These days you can't write about New Zealand without mentioning the Lord of the Rings. The films are as much a paean to the wondrous scenery of the country as they are a recreation of Tolkien's Middle Earth. Inspired, we bagged a relocation deal on a camper van for two quid a day and headed for Tongariro National Park, location of Ngauruhoe which director Peter Jackson chose to represent Mount Doom.

We approached the still very much volcanically active area at dusk with some trepidation. The last eruption in late September had sent several lahars - rivers of liquid mud and ash - surging into the valleys below. To our concern, the hillside above appeared to be glowing red. 'Is that lava?' I asked nervously. Around the next corner we were confronted by a column of smoke and ash, billowing from behind the roadside vegetation. We both inhaled sharply, then the source revealed itself. A steam train. The first time that slow travel has actually scared me.

Bottom of the planet...

Well we're on the nether regions of the planet now, not that there's anything particularly anal about New Zealand - glorious bungy twanging, Tolkienesque land down under that it is. I'll be blogging more about our stupendous adventures here soon, but you can read about our cargo ship journey here in my latest Observer column here. I've also just posted some new Australia photo albums on our Photo Archive here. Not enough? You can also hear an interview I did with New Zealand National Radio in a downloadable podcast here. Finally, as if this multimedia onslaught wasn't enough this blog has also just been featured on National Geographics Intelligent Travel blog which you can see here. There's also a rather cute film of Fi trying to wriggle (ultimately successfully) into a thick orange neoprene immersion suit on the cargo ship across the Tasman - embedded video below. Enough already?! So there's also a photo of me covered in volcanic mud to titillate. Enjoy.

Opera, Oprah & sex with goats…

On our last night in Sydney I booked a block of tickets for 8 of us to go and see Daniel Kitson’s show ‘C-90’ at the Opera House. Kitson used to compere the Brixton Comedy Club night so it felt appropriate for us to catch him on the other side of the world. On arrival at the Box Office to collect our tickets the cashier looked at me archly with a raised eyebrow. ‘You’re early’ she said coyly, in typical style I’d booked us in for the wrong week. Thankfully she very kindly exchanged them for practically the last spare seats in the house.

With everyone arriving separately at the venue there was a chaotic few minutes immediately prior to the curtain going up as I ran around like a headless chicken trying to leave spare tickets somwhere for the late-comers in our gang to collect. We then confidently all marched into the wrong auditorium and attempted to expel the confused and politely indignant occupants from seats that were quite rightly theirs. When we eventually found the right theatre and took our seats the show was a corker – Kitson adding to the humour mid-way by confessing that he’d split his trousers and requesting gently that we try not to cop a look at his underpants.

The next morning a coach took us deep into the parched New South Wales hinterland to visit our friends Brian and Leonie, whom we’d met in Vietnam, in sultry Wagga-Wagga (so good they named it twice). En route we had a refreshment stop in Goulburn, a handsome old town that was inexplicably deserted and shut at 4pm on a Saturday afternoon. It was like walking through an abandoned film-set or the site of an en masse alien abduction.

We drove out through arid countryside to visit their daughter’s farm. The crops were shrivelled and dying in the fields due to the failure of the rains for the seventh year running. On the side of the track to their property lay the battered carcass of a highly venomous red-bellied black snake that Brooke their daughter had run over the day before ‘About 50 times in 4-wheel drive – just to make sure’. The homestead was a huge wooden building surrounded by a low dry-stone wall, allegedly built by an elderly one-armed Englishwoman. Judging by the size of the slabs you wouldn’t have wanted to arm-wrestle her.

I rode in the Ute with Chris their son-in-law as we toured the property, bombarding him with questions about the farm. He alone looked after 3000 sheep and 300 cattle on 4000 acres of undulating hills ‘8000 if you rolled it flat’. This ‘hands-off’ approach meant they expected to lose 3% of their stock each year to disease and injury. We talked about climate change (of course!) and the impact on the farm. ‘You know Opera?’ asked Chris. ‘Opera?’ I replied quizzically, momentarily wrong-footed by his cultural query and wondering what the hell it had to do with climate change and agriculture. ‘Yeah Opera, the black Sheila with the TV show’ Chris clarified, explaining he’d seen a guy interviewed about global warming on the programme. Well, we all have our sources.

Before leaving the next day Fi and I took a bike-ride round the hot, dry and dusty streets of the town that complied with Brian’s assessment of being ‘a nice place to live but not to visit’. It was great to see a corner of Australia a little off the beaten track, catch up with mates and understand the challenges that these thirsty outback borderlands face.

I have to leave the final word to Brian though. We were discussing (somehow?!) the Tyneside incident in the UK where a guy got caught having sex with a goat. He was rumbled by passengers on a train that had stopped on the rails above his allotment d’amour. Caught in flagrante the judge had castigated him for his weakness, misjudgement and foolishness that would ultimately ‘taint his character and reputation forever’. Never mind the cruelty to animals and the suffering of the poor beast involved. ‘I don’t know’ said Brian, giving the clearly disturbed chap the benefit of the doubt ‘you lead a good life, all your life and then you have sex with one goat…’

Signs of bigotry...

Warning: This post contains foul language. For those readers of a nervous disposition or who are easily offended here’s a link to the Tellytubbies site.

Whilst driving through the country we developed a soft spot for the directness of Aussie road signs. “If you drink and drive you’re a bloody idiot” read one, “Belt up or suffer the pain” another. I wondered what it would be like if a similarly blunt approach was applied to other signage. “Walking on the grass? Then you’re a twat” or perhaps “Press buzzer for assistance or stand there like a bleeding drongo”. I gave a climate change communication masterclass at the Centre for Sustainable Leadership in Melbourne last week where one of the groups adopted this tactic in the promotion of a hypothetical ‘Car Free Day’ for the city. “Don’t drive your car into Melbourne fuck-face” read their slogan. I suggested they might want to tone it down a little. “We already have” came the reply “it used to say cunt-face!”

In Sydney we stayed with good friends Scott and Karin, who had emigrated back to Australia in 2005. They’d lived and worked in London for a few years before the poverty of quality surf along the Thames lured Scott back to his Aussie origins. Freely fecund they now had two fantastic kids, Sophie (nearly three) and Finn (8 Months). We were ill prepared for exactly how relentless the burden of child-care can be, and initially struggled to adapt to the arduous routine of early mornings and constant vigilance. We saluted Scott and Karin for their patience, energy and laid-back parenting skills. Secretly dreading our own inadequacies in this department for the future.

Their home was in Manly, a slightly shi-shi harbour suburb that lived up to the ‘white supremacist middle class utopia’ tag. Cosy, comfy and a little cool the seafront was busy with bronzed, blonde surfers and beach volleyball players with knotted stomach muscles you could do your laundry on. On the main shopping drag, ‘The Corso’, a sign warned against a whole plethora of anti-social behaviour. There were the obvious ones: ‘No fighting, No drunkenness, No drugs, No offensive language etc’ but the good burghers of Manly had then got on a bit of a roll and seemed unable to stop themselves, with the full list covering a ‘Top 10’ of ‘no-no’s’ including ‘No drink-spiking, No urinating in public and No threatening behaviour’. Did people really need reminding these were unacceptable? ‘Sorry officer, I hadn’t seen the sign’ I envisioned some feral type protesting, ‘I thought Rohypnol, pissing in the flowerbeds and baiting other members of the public were all allowed here’.

We rented a beautiful, battered old 1960s chalet up the coast at MacMasters Beach where the kids were in their element. Sophie marched off to explore the rocky headland whilst Finn satisfied his voracious appetite and contributed to the problem of beach erosion by shovelling fistfuls of sand into his mouth. There’s nothing like having a bit of roughage in your diet. Though the next day he had a sore, pink arse and a nappy full of gritty, cement-like poo you could grout a bathroom with.

We also took a trip up into the cool, Blue Mountains, where the essential oils that evaporate up from the eucalyptus trees lend a hazy, purplish hue to the air. This phenomenon, as opposed to the kinky customised-leather fetish shop we spotted in Katoomba, is what gives the rocky, arboreal plateau its name. We stayed in a lovely wooden house appropriately named ‘Treetops’ in the village of Blackheath. ‘Drop the ‘B’ and the ‘H’ and you get ‘lack heat’ cracked the barman at the local hotel, referring to the relative chill of the area.

‘Team Marshall’ (Scott, Karin and the kids) joined us and we tackled what in hindsight was a rather ambitious walk through Porter’s Pass with the kids in rucksacks on our backs. The track wound down steep, stone steps through a dark, moist, fern-lined gulley then along the base of a sheer sandstone escarpment with ‘breath-robbing’ views of the valley below. The uneven path made it rough going underfoot and the slope dropped away in wincingly steep fashion beneath us. Its hard to be too gung-ho when you have one of your best-friends precious offspring strapped to you.

Pausing for breath beneath a rock overhang Karin suddenly shouted ‘Oh my God, move on, move on quickly’ a nervous tremor in her voice. We’d managed to stop directly underneath a huge hornet’s nest, the inhabitants thankfully too engrossed in their construction tasks to bother with the sweaty homo sapiens blundering about below.

That night we sat out on the veranda with a star-peppered sky twinkling down on us through the tree canopy. After a few red wines Scott was coming up with incentives and mechanisms to encourage slow travel. “What about really big clown shoes? How about a ball and chain? Or maybe extremely tight trousers?” he suggested not entirely helpfully.

We also visited ‘Govett’s Leap’, a spectacular viewpoint over a deep chasm, named after the assistant surveyor William Romaine Govett. According to the memorial he ‘first came upon the spot’ in June 1831, which was rather more information than these plaques usually convey.

On the train back down to Sydney we were ‘treated’ to a display of possibly the most sociopathic bigotry I’ve ever come across. A couple of builders boarded the train at Parramatta, heading into town ‘to a brothel’ as one loudly and boorishly informed the whole carriage. The guy was a genuine psycho, pontificating obnoxiously in sexist, racist and misogynistic style, while his mate (let’s call him Doormat), perhaps embarrassed but afraid to challenge him, supplied a half-hearted series of “Oh yeah” responses. The filth that spewed from this man’s mouth was unbelievable. Here’s a choice selection:

Psycho on women: “If they didn’t have cunts you’d stone them to death” (Doormat: “Oh yeah”)
Psycho on his ex-mother-in-law: “I’d shoot her. No, I wouldn’t waste the bullets – I’d beat her to death” (Doormat: “Bloody oath”)
Psycho on Australia: “This country’s fucked, the sooner we go third world the better then we’ll see how quickly these cunts leave” (Doormat: “Oh yeah”)
Psycho on politics: “I don’t vote, never have. I wouldn’t piss on them [politicians] if they were on fire” (Doormat: “Oh yeah”)

I ground my teeth wanting to say something to curb his offensive rantings, but this would have been precisely the response he was trying to elicit. So I fumed in frustrated silence. Their conversation revealed they both had ex-wives, kids they never saw and anti-social behaviour restraining orders on them. “I’m done with women” Psycho concluded “It’s the brothels only for me now”. “Oh yeah” Doormat agreed. “It’s a shame they’ve taken themselves off the market” commented Fi “as they’re clearly such catches”.

Enter the Tasman...

Well, blink and you'll miss it but we've been in Australia for over a month now. Our french cargo ship 'Latour' to New Zealand sails tonight (Thursday) from Melbourne...into the notorious Bass Strait between Oz and Tasmania then across the turbulent Tasman Sea. So I'll be offline for a few days - unfortunately missing all the rugby world cup quarter finals (dammit). But you can check the sea conditions of our voyage via this rather natty website: Ocean Weather. According to this the significant wave height (the average height of the highest third of the waves over a 12 hour period) is around 6-7m. Should be fun...

; )

It's a Wicked world...

Our inaugural cargo ship sojourn ended in the Port of Brisbane. We edged our way gently through Moreton Bay escorted by a pod of dolphins as the sun tore a spectacular crimson sunset across the sky. The weird-shaped crags of the Glasshouse Mountains created surreal silhouettes along the horizon.

Above us the shadow of the earth edged into the creamy moon as an auspicious lunar eclipse welcomed us to Australia. The romance of this moment was only slightly undermined by our obliviousness to this celestial alignment – we thought it was just a thick cloud until the Aussie customs officer pointed it out later.

Our hulk loomed along the ‘runway’ of harbour lights guiding us up the deepwater channel to the wharf, the closest thing to landing an aircraft we’re likely to experience this year. A tiny fishing boat was heading straight for us unaware of our 30,000 tonnes of danger bearing down on them in the darkness. ‘Give them a blast of the horn’ ordered the Captain. The thunderous boom that followed unsurprisingly sent the small, startled vessel scuttling swiftly to safety.

So we’d reached Australia without the aluminium sausage. Like the convicts of old we’d arrived by sea and it had taken us six months! It didn’t feel real – how could we get here without an airport? This sense of unreality wasn’t helped by the fact that I could hardly remember a thing from my 6-month stint living in Brisbane a decade previously. I failed to recognise anything or even recall the district in which I lived, let alone the address. ‘I can’t believe you were actually here!’ Fi exclaimed as I fumbled uselessly around in the dark, empty room of my memory. It was at this point I began to suspect I had been drunker during my last stay than I thought.

Two days later we headed north in a ‘Wicked’ converted panel van with an oh-so-subtle ‘Smurfs’ motif spray-painted on both sides. The legend ‘All I ask is a chance to prove that money can’t make me happy’ was scrawled across the rear end. What would have actually made us happier was a van that worked.

To prevent twatty tourists destroying the aged van’s engines through overheating in Australia’s oven-like climate Wicked fit a warning buzzer. When this sounds you’re supposed to pull-over and allow the engine to cool before proceeding. As we left Brisbane an occasional ‘tweet’ emerged from the dashboard, like a cute animal was trapped beneath. An hour into our journey we hit our first steep climb and the ‘tweet’ rapidly became an ear-splittingly loud twittering shriek as if something was eating our small cute animal alive. We were forced to stop with the radiator boiling and bubbling noisily beneath our bums.

Three hours later a replacement van arrived, this one was adorned with a pneumatic woman against an azure blue sky on the left hand side and an equally pneumatic woman amid roaring flames on the other. As we were registering at our campsite the old guy on reception asked for the vehicle registration. I glanced down at the key fob where this information is usually found for hire-cars, ‘Er, Heaven and Hell’ I replied hesitantly. ‘A Wicked van eh?’ he smiled.

(You can see a video of our van being spruced up with it's Angel/Devil paintjob on YouTube, as posted by www.wickedcampers.com.au by clicking this link.) Or below...

Karaoke cruise...

My latest Observer column has been published today and there's a live link to their website here.

I've also been updating the Google Map and the Photo Archive - adding more pictures from Cambodia,Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore and the good old MV Theodor Storm.

Life on the ocean wave...

It was with some trepidation that we’d boarded our container ship the Theodor Storm for the ten day voyage from Singapore to Brisbane. We were the only two passengers on the 30,000 tonne vessel, joining a crew of Russian and Ukrainian officers and Fillippino merchant seamen. Relations amongst the crew seemed entirely amicable but tensions on a voyage at the end of last year led to the Fillippino bosun killing the Russian second engineer. ‘He wouldn’t have died’ noted Pavlo the Ukrainian second officer who had joined the crew since the incident, ‘but he was left injured for several hours unreported’. Nice.

We sat on the ship for 36 hours in Singapore whilst loading was completed having been encouraged to board somewhat prematurely by the enthusiastic shipping agent. Instead of sipping cocktail slings in town, we had an extra day and a half on the ship watching cargo being loaded. Hmmmm.

Once at sea we quickly found a routine based around mealtimes, at which we were fed within an inch of our lives, which combined with our slightly sloth-like existence threatened to swiftly undo the travelling weight loss of the last six months. To stave off the return of looming fatness we embarked on a regime of intensive table-tennis sessions, deck walks and avoidance of the tempting lift, instead making the effort to walk up and down the six flights of stairs between our cabin and the galley. Well, some of the time at least.

Other recreational activities included learning Spanish from the gravely tones of a series of Michel Thomas CDs, whale-watching and extended drunken sessions of karaoke with the Fillippinos. The music was inexplicably accompanied by what looks like home videos that sought to enhance the audio-visual pleasure of the experience. The film for KC and the Sunshine Band's ‘Please don’t go’, starred a spectacularly be-mulleted Lionel Richie look-alike who mooched about imploring his girlfriend not to leave. The video then cut to footage of his beloved looking mournfully through a wire mesh, apparently trapped in the chicken run at the end of the garden. Weird.

We found it fascinating talking to the crew about their lives and how spending months away at sea at a time affected them. Pavlo showed us some pictures of his historic hometown of Odessa on the computer on the bridge, discretely skipping the mouse over the folder entitled ‘Playboy Calendar Album’. For the Filippinos a life at sea was comparatively lucrative if ‘very boring’ rued Rene, who was 30 but looked 20. ‘When we go home we say you are ‘Millionaire for a day’’ laughed his friend Lito, ‘You make a big party with all your family and friends. After that you must be careful’ he smiled ruefully. ‘When people come to the house and ask for me I tell my wife to say ‘He is at sea!’’ he chuckled, thus avoiding acquiring a retinue of hanger-ons. ‘This is a good ship though’ observed Rene, ‘Much better than an oil tanker’ he said referring to the terrible hydrocarbon fumes and vapours that pervade those vessels. ‘We call that ‘Killing me softly’’.

They earned around US$1300 a month but at some cost to their relationships, especially their reproductive cycles. Rene once went to sea for a 15 month stretch and came back to a wife and year old daughter he’d never met. Other seamen had problems (or semen problems) conceiving during their short stints at home and some vow not to return to sea again until their wives are pregnant.

Whilst english was the official language of the ship, the range of accents aboard (Ukranain, Russian, Fillippino and Fi’s Scottish brogue) made for some entertaining pronunciation and comprehension challenges. On a previous voyage one of the Fillippino crew had suffered a serious accident at sea and the ship was met in Brisbane harbour by an ambulance. ‘Don’t worry mate’ said the Aussie paramedic ‘we’re taking you to hospital today’. Instead of the expected reassurance the poor invalid immediately began to panic. Misinterpreting the Australian twang he’d heard that he was being ‘taken to hospital to die’.

We were given a tour of the ship to familiarise us with our new home. The vast engine room was hotter and noisier than a dark drum and bass club. Afterwards it was clear why the Russian engineer who worked in this mechanical nave was so quiet at mealtimes, 12 hours a day in 3 four-hour shifts in this punishingly loud and uncomfortably hot space was hardly conducive to being ‘chatty’. We stood on a metal grille above the massive spinning drive shaft, all gleaming, greasy copper before it passed through the ship’s hull to the propellor. Spinning the blades at a bewildering number of revolutions per minute the brutal behemoth of an engine burnt through a monstrous 100 tonnes of diesel a day. So much for low carbon travel*.

The ship ripped along at over 22 knots, or just over 25 miles an hour. This may not be enough to arouse Jeremy Clarkson but you can waterski at this speed. Having seen the titanic jacuzzi effect of the huge propellor at the stern I’m not sure you’d want to attempt it. At the bow we enjoyed the sensation of speeding through the water in almost total silence as the engine was a mighty 170m behind us. However just being on deck felt like getting buffeted in a gale, as great blustery gusts ripped across the water. Despite this wind whipping the waves stayed mercifully low and gentle, unlike our queasy first crossing of the Bay of Biscay.

All the crew seemed to have Bay of Biscay anecdotes, calling it ‘The Ship’s Graveyard’. Alec, the Russian Chief Officer described one storm where ‘We lost 22 40-foot long containers over the side, with another 20 broken loose and shifting dangerously around on deck’ he reminisced. ‘A gangway was ripped from the side of the vessel and repairs took over a week. It was lucky no-one was hurt’ he added with considerable understatement. ‘The best thing was one of the damaged containers was full of chocolate! And all the crew…’ he grinned gesturing cabins chocka with contraband candy.

Our pacific (with a small ‘p’ before some smartarse points out we were actually travelling through the Arafura Sea) passage was thanks to those millions of unselfish shellfish and coral beasties that make up the Great Barrier Reef. This pile of dead chalky animals and it’s living crust, along with the conveniently placed archipelagos of Indonesia and Papua New Guinea meant our whole passage from Singapore to Brisbane was excellently (say this in a Monty Burns voice it sounds better) sheltered, almost approaching millpond status.

A pilot joined us close to midnight near Booby Island in the Gulf of Carpentaria. His job was to steer us through the treacherous tidal reefs, narrow channels and shallow shoals of the Torres Straits between Cape York and Papua New Guinea. ‘What are you doing here?!’ he expressed in surprise when spotting Fi in the darkness of the bridge. ‘What’s wrong with the plane?’ came his response after we’d explained. The following morning he pressed me further about the climate change angle of our trip ‘Is it happening?’ he probed sceptically. As a marine pilot I would have hoped he might be a little more aware of rising sea levels. ‘I think it is just another way to make money’ he concluded, ‘like drinking milk, they told us to do that too!’ I hesitated to point out that failing to tackle climate change will probably have more serious repercussions than not imbibing enough cow-juice and that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change might be just a little more venerable and august an institution than the Milk Marketing Board. ‘I went home to Poland at Christmas’ he continued in appropriately ruminative fashion, ‘and there was no snow to go skiing! It was all grass!’ he exclaimed. Go figure Einstein.

For more pictures of our cargo ship journey click here.

*Note; The UK Department for Transport recommended figures on carbon emissions for bulk carrier vessels are 0.63g/CO2/passenger/km. In contrast a long haul flight emits 210-330 g/CO2/passenger/km (short haul flights emit between 330-460g/CO2/passenger/km – these figures include radiative forcing effects) i.e. travel by bulk carrier is up to 500 times more carbon efficient than flying.)

Time Travel...

Just to confuse and further befuddle everyone who is bewildered by our apparent ability to move more freely through time and space than a heavily greased geezer from Gallifrey here are the links to my latest two Observer columns:

Mud-wrestling in Dalat - 26.8.07

Old Malaysian Dying Farts - 9.9.07

There was a minor hiatus in the publication of these articles due to a clash of content when the above piece on Dalat somewhat overlapped with a feature article also on Vietnam by Lynn Barber. To avoid Vietnamese overload my column skipped a week, creating a bit of a backlog. The column is thus about 3 weeks behind where we are now, the blog content about a fortnight and the Google Map almost up to date. All clear? Probably not, just enjoy the content and don't worry too much about the chronology...

Thai me up, Thai me down...

At the Cambodian/Thai border we swapped our dusty, rusty bus for a rather swanky new mini-van, the relative prosperity of Thailand compared to its impoverished neighbour immediately apparent. Brick and concrete houses replaced wooden shacks, there were shops instead of stalls and large numbers of bigger, newer more expensive vehicles thrummed along smooth, surfaced roads. The driver whizzed us along at a cracking pace, our nerves only tested by his repeated and unsuccessful attempts to snatch a mosquito from the air whilst doing 120km an hour.

But as we hit Bangkok the red mist descended. Mr ‘Cool, Calm and Collected’ became ‘Captain Exasperation’. Swerving in and out of the thronging lanes of Traffic, constantly seeking the tiniest advantage in the motor vehicle melee, it was hair-raising stuff as he tutted, sighed and noisily vocalised his frustrations. We flew along raised highways that snaked through the city skyline, then plunged down amongst the gaudy tuk-tuks to roll along tree lined boulevards dripping with fairy lights past gold-roofed palaces.

Avoiding the overt sleaze of the Khao San Road we found ourselves a room a few, much quieter, streets away in the Banglamphu Guesthouse. Run by a very sweet old lady, a retired teacher called Saiyout, the room was bare apart from two orthopaedically hard beds and a fan. We also had a midnight curfew. So much for us running wild in Asia’s city of sin.

We rode the river ferry into town. Carving through the choppy grey waters of the Mae Nam Chao Phraya was a great way to travel. Smaller, dart-like vessels sliced past, powered by what looked like enormous cappuccino milk frothers, churning the river into white foam in their wake. Hopping off at the Harbour Department we asked a security guard the way to Hualamphong Station. Thai men seem to have a penchant for extremely tightly tailored uniforms lending a slight homoerotic air to their outfits, or maybe that’s just me. Maybe if American policemen were issued with similarly snugly fitting attire they wouldn’t get so fat.

Thai hospitality and helpfulness are legendary and they’ve practically turned smiling into a national, cultural art form. We were completely disoriented on the way to the train station as no fewer than four different smiling people offered us entirely unsolicited but welcome directional assistance. The station itself was all calm, clean and orderly, completely unlike every other station we’d been to in Asia. Where were the people lying on the floor? The ragged sacks of belongings? In the air-conditioned ticket office we took a ticket from the machine and waited our turn beneath a sign promising ‘Hearty, Speedy, Quality Service’. That summed it up ‘hearty’ (defn: sincere and expressed in a cheerful and enthusiastic way). When was the last time you got service like that in a British railway station?

In ‘Little Arabia’ we tucked into falafels and hummus, washed down with fresh watermelon juice and hand-quiveringly strong Turkish-style coffee. Stubbled men in dark sunglasses smoked sheesha pipes at neighbouring tables and a group of burkha-clad women ate their meals through a sort of ‘food flap’. ‘Excuse me sir, but what is in your flask?’ asked the waiter of my metal water-bottle ‘Its not alcohol?’ I was slightly insulted by my implied ignorance, ‘No’ I replied, just stopping myself pointing out the hipflask full of fine single malt whisky in my bag. The laidback tolerance of the rest of Bangkok suddenly felt a world away.

That night we went for a voyeuristic gawk on the Khao San Road. Tiny mobile bars sold cheap cocktails and blasted out music through distorted speakers as overstretched as the bargirls skimpy outfits. They were touting for business outside less salubrious establishments while under the naughty neon lights a carnal carnival procession filed past. Hawkers and hustlers hassled, shifty types shuffled and improbably matched Western/Thai couples sauntered along amongst the stalls selling streetfood and tourist tat. I did however spot possibly my favourite t-shirt slogan of all time adorning the chest of a slim Thai girl it bore the legend ‘Fat people are harder to kidnap’. So that’s the American anti-terrorist abduction strategy explained in full then.

We were trying to swap some books for our forthcoming cargo ship journey, not wishing to be caught in the middle of the Timor Sea with nothing to read. We managed to sell a cheap Vietnamese photocopy of Graham Greene’s ‘The Quiet American’ to one stallholder who wouldn’t swap or buy our other slightly larger than standard paperbacks as they ‘wouldn’t fit on his stall’. In another bookshop we tried in vain to establish whether there was a filing system of ANY description. The stock was so effectively jumbled it could not have been simply random and must have been the work of an evil, maverick librarian. The available titles were also dismal. Chick-lit, Tom Clancy, self-help and pseudo-religious mysticism predominated. ‘Books are a load of crap’ as another maverick librarian Philip Larkin once put it. In this shop they literally were.