Off to Asia

The rains have come to Pemba, but not quite to us. Thunder booms and rumbles to our south. The sky is filled with heavy clouds but the sun beats down on us relentlessly. We have officially closed. Our last guests, a splendid pair of birdwatchers from Canada departed this morning.

We have started packing up and the dive centre and kayaks are all inside the building. Stuart has been pulling gearboxes off engines, in the hope that we can find out what has gone wrong with the cooling systems of all our 60 horse power Yamaha engines. Eventually the last hidden bolt came out and the box slid off. In the last few weeks the Zanzibar Government has been hounding us for small issues, and more unpleasantly for non issues. The pressure has been building up and up and I suspect that soon requests for the hideous cash will follow. Letter after letter to Government has gone unanswered, and in response we are bombarded with letters saying that we have not complied with some building regulation. All of this is tosh of course, and when we try and point this out, we are shouted at.
“are you trying to make a fool out of me?”

In despair, I flew to Dar es Salaam and asked for an interview with the British High Commission. I explained our plight and they very politely listened and gave us sage advice. (which is double top secret and cannot be repeated here!!!). They then very politely asked me if Pemba was a nice place and whether the spate of armed robberies had ended. I said that seeing as I had two constables with assault rifles on the premises I was not desperately bothered, but yes, the robbing had died down. (Shame that the robbers had not died down, but sometimes life is not that simple).

And so I returned to Pemba a much happier man. I may live in one of the most corrupt countries in the world, but I had shared my burden and we all know the saying that goes with that. The last few weeks however have clouded my judgement. I do not want to drive across Africa anymore. I do not want to deal with broken shock absorbers, bent policemen, hideous roads and the fact that life ends at sunset. So I got my map of the world out, and had a think. Cisca joined me and we immediately ruled out all countries that use the Euro, or are linked to the Euro or price in Euros. Thankfully this was not too many countries. Then we ruled out Africa. Then we had a think. Money was the major issue here. Eventually we ended up deciding to fly to Bangkok, and head over to Ankgor by plane or train, and then to go overland from Angkor Wat to Beijing taking as many trains as possible. Stopping off in Saigon, Hue, Da Nang or is it Na trang?, the DMZ , Hanoi and Sappa. After some time in Yunan, (the hilly bit of china which meets Burma, Laos and Vietnam, we hope to train it up to Shanghai and Peking for tea and medals with our friend from Monkey Swine, (www.monkeyshrine.com)

Our voyage will be chronicled on this website as we go along. We look forward to many things about asia and less forward to others. But as I said recently, nothing is quite what it seems. We also look forward to any of you joining us for short sections thereof.


Yours ever
Raf

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