Blogs from Asia - page 14767

I wake, sprawled out, tired, where was I last night? - out partying again? I extract myself from the tangle of sarong, pillow and mosquito net that my bed has become during the night. My wooden beach hut, now my home, an upgrade from the shed in the jungle where the mosquitoes won the nightly battle for territory. I open the door look out across the kilometer long beach, through the coconut palms, and over my hammock... another hard day as a divemaster trainee begins. It's 7:30am the beach is still, the boatman and local cleaning lady from the fisherman's village are making their way from the sunlight speedboat through the water to the restaurant, "Selemat Baggi!" - good morning! I've been a scuba diver since 2002 when in Honduras I found that I was near ... read more

Sawat dii, Well Hello from Thailand. Such a beautiful country. On my train trip over the River Kwai (Death Railway) I got to have a jant on an elephant. Even better, I got to bath one in the river, or should that read she bathed me :) Magnificent creatures. The group spend a night sleeping on a raft house, and then a boat trip up to the infamous bridge. You can see where the allies successfully bombed two sections, which are now rectangular in shape compared to the original oval sections. There were numerous WW II graves for the 20,000+ soldiers / POW's who died, plus the 100,000 enforced labourers who also died during its construction. Got to check out the 'Tiger Temple', where some monks raise tiger orphans (hunters killed the parants for the skin). ... read more

My last night in Ko Tao I ended up celebrating the Dutch holiday of Queen's Day until very late in the morning. In fact when I got home I realized I had to wake up in less than three hours, fortunately my watch has three seperate alarms, all of which I set. The next morning I woke up to sun streaming into the room, I rolled blinked a couple of times and reached for my watch with a growing sense of foreboding. There was a reason I was nervous, I had slept through my alarms and had 20 minutes to dress, pack, check out and make it to the ferry that was taking me to the island, Ko Samui, that I was to fly to Singapore from. I packed faster than I had ever to date ... read more

We joined about 1.5 million other visitors on a Chinese national holiday to explore the Forbidden City in Beijing. It was a blistering hot and insanely busy day, but despite it all, it was still fascinating to see. Still, at times I was confused as to what people were really more interested in seeing, the Forbidden City or a group of foreign people. Today we became the subjects of so many family photos I couldn't even begin to count them! It started out innocently (or so I thought)...a mother saw me comment on her daughter's cool holiday hat, and then asked me to join them in a photo. As time passed, some more people approached and asked to take pictures...I started thinking this was a little weird. Then I noticed that some people who were just ... read more

The final of the three J's of my Rajasthani experience was the best of all - Jaisalmer. Situated on the edge of the Thar Desert, near the border with Pakistan, Jaisalmer is a magical little desert town. As in Jodhpur, the town is centred around a fort, although Jaisalmer's fort is nowhere near as imposing and dominant as Meherangarh. From a distance, it looks a bit like a beach sand-castle. Ninety-nine circular bastions, (just like the ones kids make with little beach-buckets), form the perimeter of the fort, which is perched atop a steep-sloped pile of pale-yellow sand. Just about everything in the fort is built from the same yellow sandstone, which seems to glow a little in the early morning or late afternoon light. It's an amazing and atmospheric place to explore. One of the ... read more