Versive

I was reassured about it all, I can tell you.

There is a land, beyond the sea, and you're all so goddamn lucky, as I almost just wrote a poem. You might consider this versive salvation, pardon the pun.

This is a tale of paradise islands, undersea exploration and warm, clear seas full beyond imagining with incredible creatures and fantastic natural visions and even a teeny tiny bit of adventure, too, although it will please you to hear that I still managed to have a terrible time on one of them. It's these assurances that I have an understudy called misery that keep you lot warm at night, I know.

So after a brief and easy two days in Nadi (which is pronounced Nandi in Fijian, the letters d and g are always sounded with an invisible n- beforehand, the latter much like the initially off-putting Vietnamese tendency to start nouns with Ng-, as with Nguyen, the immensely popular surname equivalent to our Smith) I boarded a small 18-seater plane and we took off for Taveuni, the third largest island in the Fiji group although a midget next to the first two.
We actually weren't to be on Taveuni at all but another island that can only be reached by boat, which I took to be a good sign. It was, as the beach and locale for our first stay was close to being perfectly idyllic. I later learned, however, that we had spent those 6 days on the second, large island after all, just on an almost inaccessible little bay on its Southeast coast that was only practically acheived via Taveuni.

So from the little airstrip where our plane (of the type Twin Otter, a fellow passenger volunteered when I interrogated him. He looked as if he'd done this sort of thing quite a lot) set down in glorious tropical sunshine, a car met us and took us to the boat and, after a little break for Fiji Time to fully be satisfied, we crossed the channel and arrived, wherever the hell it happened to be in the end.
The Fiji Time thing is taken very seriously here, which rather defeats the whole point but there you go. It's doesn't even seem that things are simply relaxed, more that there HAVE to be small delays in everything, as if it was some kind of code all true Fijians live by or that they all insist on doing it to humour tourists. I know there was absolutely no reason to delay getting on board that little boat and crossing the water, for example, but still we were sitting around for half an hour after loading our bags and being fully ready to calls of `Fiji Time!` and big broad smiles from all around. So it goes. It was pretty early in the day still anyway, so it hardly mattered.

Anyway we arrived, were greeted on the beach not just by the owners but by what seemed to be every other guest - all three of them - as they rushed to take our bags and shake our hands n that most excellent of Fijian traditions: supreme hospitality. It runs out that two of those who met us were training for further rather advanced dive qualifications, those of Divemaster which is about as impressive as it sounds, and had been there for about 10 weeks or so. They were a Swiss couple and were friendliness itself, as were, in fact all those present including the crowding masses that arrived a day or two later (at one point later we had as many as 10 people eating at the table, including the owners. Being so cramped up together in that airy paradise was a tough ordeal, I can tell you).

And apparently we had come here to Scuba dive, or so it didn;t seem for the first day or so because I only just about managed to snorkel that first afternoon and could not for the life of me get my head underwater or dive. Water is a scary old thing, after all, as anyone who has nearly drowned will tell you. It might be said in my defence that I had not been swimming for 6 months and had not been snorkelling for a little over 10 years, and it was terrifying then as that was the first and only time I had ever done so, so my experience of masks and breathing with one's head underwater and, in fact, the sea in general is very limited. I'm just not a water person, you see.

Thankfully the next morning I went out for a Discovery Dive with Roland, the co-owner and head instructor honcho and being very calm, very helpful and absolutely professional I was happy to do it all and, three days later I completed a Scuba diving course and you are now looking at (but of course you're not, just play along) a PADI-certified Open Water Diver, having completed it under a certain amount of pressure because we had to go after 4 days and I had to finish the course there or not at all, and then we had to go earlier (although we didn't really, calculation error and for once it wasn;t me ) as it was thought we were the victims of an early flight on the Wednesday, so getting over my fear of drowning, fear of deep water and fear of being eaten by things with pointy fins and pointy teeth, I did it in a little under 3 and a half days altogether (fairly quick in anyone's book, I believe) and, to my great surprise, didn't get a single thing wrong on the written test or during the practical.
Yes, I'm wearing my smug pants again. I deserve them

The underwater world - woah, what a sight! What a place! Fiji is famous for its soft corals, those that sway in the current and generally don't threaten concusion or laceration should the unlucky diver come into them at speed - althoguh this of course is a cardinal sin as the reef should never be touched. We'll never trodden on anyway, lightly touching many corals is fine although, and this kind of goes witout saying really, you really ought to know exactly what it is you are touching. There is a very good little saying in the diving world that covers many underwater thrills and dangers and beauties: If it's either very pretty or very ugly, or doesn't run away from you, don't touch it under any circumstances.
Good advice for all of us, perhaps

Among the things I saw in 4 open water dives and three or four `enclosed` dives - actually just taken in the sea straight off the beach rather than out in the channel from a boat - were thousands of fish of all kinds that I couldn't possibly begin to recount, except perhaps the elephant-nosed fish that I tried in vain to get pictures of in Melbourne Aquarium, and have now seen for real; a large purple sea star (starfish); a huge rock lobster with waving antenna maybe two feet or more in length; vast anemones covering maybe half a square metre; purple frilly corals; corals that change colour when you touch them (making sure to get the right ones); a real genuine stingray; a good-sized tuna of maybe 50lbs; a huge wrasse or maybe 200lbs, mercifully a good distance away as like the groupers they are stupid and occasionally take dimly casual chunks out of divers; several moray eels in their caves, an amazing sight for me although apparently incredibly common here; and of course gigantic panoramic reefs swarming with thousands of fish and with an unbelievable display of colour and life and beauty.

Most incredibly I managed to do it all and love every minute of it, even though getting into the water from the boat (seated back roll entries, just like in the movies one sits on the edge of the boat and falls backwards into the water with all the gear on) were at first pretty scary - I just don't like falling over backwards without looking, and some of that fear of open water came back pretty strong for a minute - they were actually a tiny thrill in themselves in the end.

And of course no mention of this place - called Dolphin Bay Diver's Retreat in case you fancy looking it up - would be complete without a line about the dogs, one of which was large and evil and we were all warned against stroking him before we had even got off the boat - he is the guard dog, and will cheerfully streak up the beach growling like a meat grinder (which, essentially, he is) at any new arrival to the island if they are not also greeted by the existing residents. He has yellow eyes of ure malevolence, althoguh I did feel sorry for him near the end because the poor guy never gets any affection or attention from all the people. All that is saved for Boxer, a smaller and immeasurably cuter little mongrel, although of good average size he is somewhat dwarfed by boxer, and so he makes up for it by being friends with everyone.
He has the world monopoly on puppy-dog-eyes I reckon, there's just nothing you can do when he sidles up to you in a chair and casts his eyes upwards and soulfully transfixes you, thereby instantly granting him a full ten minutes of ear-scratches and belly rubs, the cunning devil.
Still, he was a lovely old thing and the ideal kind of dogfellow to have on an ultra-relaxed secluded private tourist beach.

-

Rather less than fluffy is that I had, as mentioned, to go a seperate way from Lisa as we just got on each other's nerves after all my hopes for an easy stress-free trip. I have learned an important lesson about traveling with other people though - make sure a) that your travel partner is equable and open-minded and b) agree that if one of you leads, they lead. If they wanna swap, no worries. Traveling before with Greg for what must have been about 8 or 9 weeks altogether, one of us would be in charge of the plans and the other could pretty much relax without needing to know much of the details. It usually wasn't me because the Yankee was generally keen to get on, and anyway, he had the guide book. Whether you do this or share the responsibilities out it is important to work it out before you go, and avoid any problems down the line.

As a result we both got to the second island, Ovalau, after three flights in the same day, and I elected to peel off and go to a different hotel. Still just about speaking to each other we parted ways, and as it was I felt much more at home in my choice of residence rather than a lovely but decidely crummy hostel as mine was a genuine surviving colonial hotel - indeed the only such place left in all of Fiji - with the atmosphere and architecture to match, both of which fantastic in their own way.

We were set down after a bumpy twilight ride from another remote and miniature airstrip in the old capital of Fiji, a town called Levuka on the eastern coast of Ovalau that was formerly one of the roughest towns of British colonial times, a sort of Wild West-by-the-Sea with architecture to match, much of it still preserved, to my delight. The Royal Hotel is a marvellous place, even if it is under-lit and the service can only be described as idiosyncratic. The challenge is first to find any member of staff with which to check in, or maybe even mention the idea in passing, to see perhaps what they thought of the concept, because the whole hotel is vacant and its vast wood-panelled and ornately ballustraded rooms appear to see less activity than the Pope's pants.

Once done and a room has been cracked open and dusted down for your repose, you are confronted with a polite and slightly weary insistance on doing things their way, or not at all, which isn't exactly odious, it's just a bit strange, such as when you order food and take a table in the otherwise deserted dining room only for it to be served at another table across the way. The Ladies of the Royal will put food where they think you should be eating rather than where you think, and with a gentle "Eat over here" or something similar you will bemusedly take your meal wherever their whimsy dictates. Sometimes you are served food in the lounge when you are actually sitting in the dining room, not five feet from the counter although that counter is, of course, devoid of employees, begging the question of how exactly the Ladies expect you to eat or whether this food is for cunsumption at all, or maybe whether they are simply a few coconuts short of a palm tree.

These minor distractions aside, the difficulty of getting what you want when you want it arises most times when you go to the office - if you can find it - for things like a voucher for the internet or some soap for the bathrooms or, if the worst comes to the worst, a member of staff.
It almost became annoying although never quite got there as you just cannot be angry with a Fijian, so far in my experience. Finding out as much does get close to taxing though; a small passage leads off from behind the check-in desk (deserted around the clock, naturally) and through a small garden, takes a detour through what looks like a maintenance area and the office door, unmarked of course, stands closed on one wall next to some nondescript and inevitably obscured windows.
On the serious plus side though they have a full-size 12-foot long by 6-foot wide snooker table, and the cloth runs beautifully. Better yet, there is an antique coin-operated contraption for the lights and there was even a full set of cues including a timeworn but still serviceable 8-foot-long cue and rest for reaching over the huge table. And the cool thing? All of it except the balls and the baize on the table are over a century old. A genuine antique, and it still plays like a dream.

Unfortunately the Royal Hotel is about the only thing in Levuka worth seeing, unless you are diving which, with one thing and another and not wanting to risk a murder after being around Lisa all day (mine or hers) I could not do. The cost as well was grating on me, as I had somehow failed to do my accounting properly and was desperately short of money, not wanting to use up reserves unless absolutely necessary. It has now become very necessary to use at least a bit of them, but diving on Ovalau would have cost me another £700 or so and I could well imagine a lot of arguments thrown in free of charge would have somewhat tainted the experience. Plus, the weather was rather shit for the first three days, a total contrast to the beach off Taveuni where I had just been, and while it matters not so much under the waves there would still be more in the way of strong currents than usual (and the surface weather affects undersea conditions more than you might think in this relatively shallow coastal water) and the outside world was a pretty dismal place to start one's day.
My mood was not helped by the fact I felt terrible in myself almost the whole time I was on that island, with being disappointed things didn't work out with my former travel buddy and coming down further with the cold being constantly tired as a result, most of my energy apparently going towards unceasingly manufacturing bucketfulls of unseemly goo to be issued forth from the various holes in my face.

Personally I find it quite difficult to see value in anyone after travellin on my own for a while, and find it hard to meet people because, well, because I've become a terrible snob and very often can't see any reason to invest any time in anyone any more. Maybe this cold (still here, funny story, I'll tell in a minute) is getting me down a bit, maybe I have just graduated to another level of cynicism and am about to bond with the lingering spectre of Diogenes or something weird likie that, I don't know. All I know is that to be my friend this week you gotta be pretty fucking spectacular, that's all I'm saying

But my, that cold thing with the diving and the ears and the bursting and the pain with the stabby-stabby sharpness and owwey! oysch!! (Professor Frink rides again). Yeah, it wasn't that bad for diving in the end despite a couple of painful descents and due ascending correction procedures, but the upshot basically was that I was deaf in one ear for about 8 days including the whole diving course, and the fact I can still de-auralise one side of my head at will even now just by twiddling a finger in my ear, suggests to me it could almost be permanent, for all I know. It hasn't fully left me in about 12 days now, which could be improved given the run of an ideal world (and has no-one perfected one of these yet? Lazy scientists...).
It is a bit of a bugger being around people a ot of the time althoguh I'm feeling vastly more sociable since getting back to the mainland and this new, ultra-posh backpacker's resort and my complaints seem to have moved internally as I simply feel sick and unwell all day now. At least I am talking to people however.
Perhaps the illness and deafness are fuel for my arrogant social policies at the moment, because I sometimes cannot hear what folks are saying, to me or anyone else (bit of a drawback on the dinner party circuit) but a great deal of what I hear these days seems to be meaningless twaddle anyway. There are only so many times you can listen to the same set questions and not go a little bit mad: where are you from; where have you been; what do you do back home; where are you going next: as if everyone who is traveling about wants to go over the same little story again and again at every place they go to!

I have begun, in my head, compiling definitive lists of answers to these, one designed to charmingly ward off any further enquiries while not really answering the questions, and one is a do-not-fuck-with-me,-pal set for when I'm feeling particularly antisocial and ill, designed to ward off any further speech lest murder happen.

`I'm from the south of England. Can't you tell by my plummy accent?` *affect even more plummy accent*

`I've been around a fair bit of Asia, Australia and New Zealand.`

`I worked mostly in a small company in the construction trade, it's hard to explain and you'd be bored by the time I did anyway!`

`I'm in New Zealand for the next year working, doing anything that pays!`

or if they seem to deserve it:

`I come from the farthest reaches of the universe and I'm basically here to kill you all and take your planet. Eat laser.`

`I have been to India, Sri Lanka ( ), Laos, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, Singapore, Borneo, Java, Bali, Malaysia ( ) Australia, New Zealand and now Fiji. Before that I went to the Czech Republic, Italy twice, the Netherlands and Greece, and many many more places in England, Scotland and Wales. Would you like a list? Would you like it carved on your forehead?`

`Back home I did many things, mostly I killed people like you for pleasure because just couldn't take any more stupid, but somebody actually paid me to exploit rich people and sell overpriced goods that were poor in quality through the medium of appalling service and almost completely lacking in accountability, and the funny thing is that many people, being morons, like you, absolutely lapped all this up and came back for more again and again. Would you like some old bricks, perhaps a mouldy piece of timber? Don't hesitate to give me your credit card details, you can trust me.`

`Oh fuck off. Actually next I'm going to your Mother's house....`

I hope not to have to use the latter set too many times Actually this place is rather nice, if totally artificial.
More soon.

"A good traveler has no plans, and is not intent on arriving."
Lao Tzu, C.550 BC-ish.

Dotted around the walls of YHA hostels in New Zealand are little quotes and apparent axioms from various adventurers, sports stars and philosophers and other such inspirational characters we seem to put so much stock in, usually ignoring their circumstances and often their literary ability. Many of them may be cornier than chicken feed but some of them are actually appropriate (A favourite of these is Edmund Hillary's "It is not the mountain we conquer, but ourselves" which is a great little saying even if Sir Eddie-baby did have the physical advantage only 6'5" of non-smoker can bring to bear, not to mention the time and burgeoning class to become a mountaineer in an age when gentlemen almost exclusively did such things) and when going out to jump off a bridge attached to little more than a big rubber band they are pretty good stuff for girding the loins. No-one's really a critic when their underwear is in danger of needing a second wash.

YHA Christchurch Central even goes so far as to have the above proverb from the itinerant Taoist made up in a decal and slapped on one of the doors in reception, and although at first I scoffed at it with much scorn and tincture of scoffing I'm now beginning to rather believe the old boy. Whenever I can't give two bits whether I arrive on time the journey is great, and every trip spent agonising about a schedule or obsessively planning necessary deeds becomes an intense irritation both to me and others. So let the word of the day be `chillax`, even if it is more useless than the sayings of anybody, except perhaps Yogi Berra.

I could have tried to enforce this sort of view on Lisa over this trip, possibly with carpet tacks, a hammer and a big indelible pen, but we have gone our seperate ways in order to not kill each other and have to anser any difficult questions. So it goes.
And I didn't even have to nail a sign to her forehead telling her to relax - I think she just got a bit crazy with not getting her own way any more

I made it to Fiji two days before her, and man, the beach, the people, the weather: it's way too hard to get stressed about anything at all. I could lose a leg to sharks in this water (and I could, I'm not just filling out a paragraph) and not particularly care.
The only slight frustration at this point was that I came here to learn Scuba diving, which you cannot do if you have a cold due to the depth/pressure/ears & sinus thing, and it looked like I have the first real cold of the year starting just the day before I was due to get to the Scuba school. With just 5 full days on that island - my flights being booked up well in advance - this seemed to be pushing things a little.

-

I am now putting up my collected and belated thoughts fom the last week or more, so you may have to bear with me on tenses and timings a little

-

The way to the little island nation was a bit hectic so I felt I deserved a reprieve once I finally got there. A delayed bus eventually met us for the trip from Queenstown back up to Christchurch, only to be told that the driver was himself waiting at our hostel specifically for us and our labours and time had been pointlessly wasted. Thank you, oh booking staff, your sign at main desk lies to us indeed ("Friendliest hostel in NZ!!!!" which I could have swallowed had I not come from Christchurch Central where the staff are plated with gold).

My flight from Christchurch boarded and left in perfect time, yet my fellow passengers seemed to take umbrage at the hour which it did so - 6:20am from Christchurch arriving at 11:45 in Nadi, the sole international airport in Fiji despite it being neither the capital nor a nice place at all.
Quite why my comrades in aviation were so touchy I am not sure, but there was much gnashing of teeth and chastising of family members at both customs areas. The flight itself was likewise marked by an unusual number of complaints regarding seats, temperature, in-flight entertainment (it's Economy class for Christ's sake, we're lucky not to be sitting on mailbags), noise, in-flight food and the like (when you expect good food on a plane it is time to start writing your will while you can still claim sound mind. When you ask for it in Economy class it's time to just give up your life's possessions to the first relative you find and practice your dribbling) which is quite strange behaviour even for tourists. Small children seemed especially fond of complaining at their extraordinary luck in sampling this paradise, their parents exhibiting equal testiness re: the ungrateful little shits, and even showed irritation with Fijian immigration officials (who were, let me state here, the friendliest I have yet met. They seemed almost like human beings) at their hapless fellow passengers, and at any God one might care to mention.
I sat gleefully smirking at nothing the whole way. I'm a git like that.

I probably had a good excuse to have a moan if I wanted, but there was nothing further from my mind. The day before I had slept for just two hours until 3am, and whiled away the pre-dawn morning writing up the last article-entry-post thingy. That night after no further sleep and a 7 hour coach ride I took a cab to Christchurch International, marvelled at the ease in which one goes about getting a plane even when a little bit tired and a large part stupid, and then 4 hours dozily smug flight over the Pacific and another taxi ride later I found myself checking in to a charming little place with some of the friendliest staff ever, and dialled up the smug yet further. I really can't help it. Perhaps it's all these drugs I'm taking (I'm joking! Unfortunately.)

The best thing about Fiji (okay, not the best at all but the best I could do in a passable hotel in a lacklustre town while awaiting bigger and better things) is that they have a cultural drink that, not to put too fine a point on it, gets you quite spectacularly out of your tree if you have enough of it. It is called Kava, and it's rather lovely even though you do have to sit around and sample it in small doses.
There is a protocol to taking it and it's ritualised into a fairly informal little ceremony; basically you have to be in a group of some size and each person has a bowl of the stuff in turn, and generally has to acknowledge receiving the bowl (the all-purpose Fijian greeting/affirmation/thank you "Bula!" works here) and after drinking eeach recipient claps three times. It's enough silly ritual to go through every time you have a drink because it makes you feel a little bit high and a little bit hazy, and is soporific in better quantities so a good night's sleep is assured after a night on the Kava.
Best of all it is completely hangover-free, the worst you can experience is a little more dopiness and lethargy than usual for the first few hours afetr waking. In my case it's very unlikely anyone would ever notice, and since I have a self-imposed lifelong ban from operating heavy machinery (including cars. Especially cars) there is no reason not to have a little as often as I like. I am, of course, trying to find out at the moment if I can export a nice big parcel back to England for when I return.

Aside from that the brief stay in Nadi was pretty unproductive, although I did meet Johnny and Graham, a couple of Yorkshire lads staying on the same small beach area North of the scanky town centre and was cheerfully sipping Kava with them all night (I tell ya, if they're not Irish they're Yorkshiremen, it's crazy. I think I've met about as many of the latter so far around the Pacific as I did living in Hull). In the grand scheme of things the few days there amounted to very little, but they did do so so very agreeably

I was a little bored and a lot awake at the wrong end of the day, so I decided to go to Fiji as a bit of a distraction. It's a tough old life, eh.
Sitting around the comfy television room, comfier still for the fact the TV wasn't switched on, in the friendly YHA hostel in Christchurch at 5 O'clock one morning, and having just that very hour countered an unfortunate nocturnal habit thanks to a tactical dose of sleep and red wine the night before, I was ambushed by a squeaky Austrian friend of mine called Lisa. She's my current co-traveler and she is very squeaky indeed, although it's actually somewhat charming even if passing dogs do stampede into the windows.

I had not even thought about going anywhere else yet and was stuck in a morose spiral of thought concerning my funds, or rather the enormous gaping vacuum in the universe where money belonging to me had no right not being, and so was perhaps of a suggestible nature, which Lisa ruthlessly exploited to her own purposes, bless her. I was also reflecting on the habit people back in England have of telling me how dashed hot the summer is, often as I returned from a New Zealand winter snowstorm, and the thought of a tropical island seemed appealing somehow. I can't quite put my finger on it, but there was something about the way I only felt 60 percent of my body 40 percent of the time that was becoming a little tiresome.

And so I became a woolly-haired (and -minded) little lamby stooge, and happily so. In the space of 3 minutes spent listening to Lisa's plan for the Fijian islands and her lament that she would be traveling alone, I elected to do my social duty and keep the poor wee lass company during her trip, also to sit around on beaches in 33-degree sunshine. A day or two later I heard myself also agreeing to board a bus for 9 hours and go down to Queenstown with her, to while away the week before setting off into the tropical Pacific in the world capital of extreme sport. It is such a tough life I lead, I tell you.

-

I'm here now, I made it and I do believe I'll be coming back when the Fiji trip is all over - there is just so much to do you see, even for those like me who are too cowardly to bungy jump or do a canyon swing. If you have not heard of it before then a canyon swing is a device designed by the forces of darkness to scare you into the icy clutches of an early death, or at least into the icy clutches of new underwear and a strong deodorant. It is a truly massive reinvention of the regular playground swing with the novel new dimension of sharp pointy rocks below and all around you, and a 300-metre arc of motion/terror as you whistle witless, jettisoning weight through your bladder, into a heartless ravine.
There is, as you may have guessed, no squishy pink tarmac.
It will propel you, if you have abandoned all sense and agreed to do one, at a very terminal velocity straight off the edge of a cliff while attached to a glorified bit of string, which is, it almost goes without saying, tied to a point on a bridge some 75 metres away by sadistic cackling demons in the shape of the swing staff and your friends. I do not believe I will be having a go just yet.

I've done a couple more sedate things; a cruise on Milford Sound, hangliding from Coronet peak, jet-boating; and have plenty left to devour but less than one day left here on this visit, which is probably for the best considering the price of all this stuff. A canyon swing is $150, not that I'll be doing one until I manufacturer some stronger intestines, hangliding cost me $180, the Milford Sound trip was $109 although they did thoughtfully throw in another 9 hours of coach travel free of charge - hooray - and if I recall correctly a half-hour or so on a jet boat raided my wallet for $89.

And that is the cheaper stuff; a skydive from 15,000 feet will remove $400 of your lovingly forged folding stuff, and a trip in the stunt plane, the thing I really want to do for the sake of not having to do any dieting for a month is going to be about $300 or thereabouts. Technically it is a lot more dangerous and even more `extreme` (as the kids say these days) than canyon swinging or bungy jumping, but has a key ingredient to make sure that I can do it; once I'm strapped in it is completely out of my control. I cannot escape or chicken out even if I wanted to. This is the kind of terror I have a chance of knowing.

As far as boredom goes you'll have to go somewhere else to find it, at least for the first few months of your stay, as Queenstown is home to more activities, adventures and sports than anywhere else on Earth. Among the ways to pass your days, and this is just a tiny list of the things a weak little brain like mine can retain, are such things as, of course, bungy jumping, skydiving, canyon swinging, hangliding and jet-boating, but bear in mind that every one of these can be done in about a half-dozen different places with, for example, different heights and locations to bungy jump, different companies with varying river routes to jet-boat along, and with skydiving there is a neat little cliche regarding the possibilities that pretty much says it all.

Also there are all the Winter sports too numerous to list but they can all be done here, from snowmobiling to ice skating, and apart from the daily adventure tourism activities there are also the possibilities from a handful of golf courses, an international cricket venue, lake cruises aboard a steamcruiser, the gondola and luge - both misleadingly named for we of an English persuasion, trekking, hiking, bird watching, fishing, Segway trails and tours, a visit to a Maori Haka ceremony, horse trekking, the ubiquitous visit to Milford Sound, hot air ballooning, helicopter rides, wildlife safaris and also various festivals, goldmining tours, vineyard visits, race meetings, sheep shearing stations and sightseeing tours taking in the raw natural beatuty of the valleys and mountains for scores of miles around.
And the adventure tourism stuff includes, among much else, parasailing, white water rafting, river surfing, mountain biking, abseiling, quad biking, motorcross, 4X4 rally-style jollies, clay target shooting, an adrenaline-crazed stint in a stuntplane, your own flying lessons (loops and barrel rolls optional), kayaking, rock climbing, proper mountaineering, ice climbing on your friendly local glacier, sailing, heli-skiing and vertical drinking. Pack your action pants and don't dare ever tell anyone you are bored.

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As a town, this place called Queenstown is set in just about the most beautiful sort of setting you can imagine, on a par with any tropical paradise or mighty rainforest. Ringing the town in all directions are magnificent mountains, a huge lake borders one side of the and the signs of settled humanity, also known as buildings, streets and discarded McDonalds wrappers pepper the ground at the foot of a chunk of rock too small to call itself a mountain but really far too tall and dramatic to be known as a hill. The central part of the place is all for the tourists, dozens of souvenir shops, dozens more sports retail outlets and food and drink in a hundred flavours, yet this is clustered in a very limited area itself right in the very middle of the already small commercial centre.
Off this by a street or two are the drinking strips, three of them, full of bars and pubs for those hard-earned boozing sessions after a day on the slopes, dangling from a bridge, or flying in some fashion or other through the atmosphere, and on mostly one side the arms of suburbia stretch modestly about the gentler ground around the base of the mounthillthing providing all the real people (those that exist in terms of queenstown for longer than 30 days at a time) with places to hang their hats.

Nightlife is key for most people who come here on those brief visits, and most people who come here are young and more `extreme` than I, also they seem to be a bit younger and the novelty of drinking until you can't walk or of talking absolute bullshit with people you wouldn't like when sober inside dark, noisy rooms seems not to have worn off for them yet.
I'm all in favour of the former stage, although I am getting tired of even this to be honest, and the latter I am still a fan of at the right time with the right place, but I have had it up to the eyeballs - right up to the tips of my fucking hair, in fact - with the people and things that occur in pubs and nightclubs. Call me a farty old bastard, but I do not want to listen to any more dribbling macho nonsense from drunken egomaniacs as long as I live, nor do I wish to be involved with any massed whoops and cheers and "wahay!"s from small armies of holidaying townies.

The second most important part of the Queenstown experience are the various snow-based, gravity-fuelled activities done with various planks of wood. Yes, I lack a certain romance of the soul with this and also any real hope of a sense of balance, which explains why I can't tell you anything about snowboarding and skiiing except that other people are able to do it and seem to enjoy it, which is both admirable and great and not just because it leaves me with more space to myself elsewhere during the daytime. There is a snowfield in at least two directions out of here and certainly one on Coronet Peak directly behind the launching spot for the hangliding company, just ten minutes away by road.

On the deeply impressive mountain range directly in front of the lake and subsequently right out the window facing the stony beach immediately outside our hostel here, there seems to be a vast snowfield a dozen or so miles away that must yield some amazing excitement and plank-based entertainment, if that's your thing. These mountains are called the Remarkables, and fittingly so.

Most peaks and ranges around here are worth an eyeball, and these are more grand, glorious and majestic than most of these. They are also the backdrop for a few key scenes and locations from the Lord of the Rings movies, notably one side of them which we saw on the way to our jetboating shindig is where the Helm's Deep sequence was filmed, with the fortifications, elves, kings, dwarves and ten thousand or so orcs were digitally dropped in front of it near a huge valley at the front of thing, where two peaks run to the same level of ground across the front of one another.

There are a few places I've seen from the movies now, none of which I had to go looking for and at least two of which being places I deeply longed to see for myself, so I'm quite the lucky boy really. One of these was the pass used for Helm's Deep, and the other was the Fords of Isen where Liv Tyler (known at the time as Arwen for narrative/contractual reasons) summoned some elvy-witchy hocuspocus, and summoned forth the lustral magicks of the Numenorean ancients and wrought a mighty reckoning thus rending the forces of evil in twain 'neath a very cavalcade of waters and ensmashened the fell Nazgul 'twixt water and stone. Also smiting and beards.

The place where this happened in the movie (the Fellowship o.t.r.) is called Skipper's canyon back on Normal Earth, and I can smugly say that I have travelled both up and down the river right where the scene was filmed wherein the equine-tinted flood came crashing downriver to beat up those nasty nazgul, ooh, if only their Mother's could see them they'd get such a hiding.

And in the gap between that paragraph and this I managed to go to the top of a mountain, because I'm just that damn good. I did use their gondola (cablecar, again) I must admit, but I also managed a little shopping and some parasailing research, which counts for something. The views from the mountain-top are, well, just damned spectacular as you might expect. More to come in the eventual and ensuing photo posts.

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Living in these hostel dormitories is of course a pretty unusual way to go about it all, life and the living of it I mean, in part because nothing is ever really your own. Sadly this seems to extend to your food as well, because people have a nasty habit of stealing it if it looks nice and/or they are feeling especially cheap.
Really I wouldn't mind much but last night I spent 3 hours making a double portion of toad in the hole, made to a recipe by Jamie "Pukka" Oliver including an onion gravy that took the whole of that time to reduce and infuse with good rum, among much else. The half I sealed against spillages and marauders and labelled and stashed in the back of a fridge last night was gone this morning, and honestly that is just fucking low; when just about everyone in the hostel is eating pasta with sauce or fried chicken and rice every day, and then some bugger sees something a little, dare I say it, superior to all that and steals it when you turn your back and go out for the night, it is time to either move on or take action.
Good job I laced it with strong laxatives before I went out. At least I wish I did. Next time there's gonna be a garnish of laxatives and bleach on whatever extra I put away.

Another little thing that happens is the instinct to make large meals anyway, even if you are traveling alone or just haven't met people to share it with. I think this may stem from both a misguided optimism that you will also want to eat tomorrow morning what looked so good to your drink-adled brain tonight (a rare occurrence, except in the presence of cold pizza) and also a survival instinct evolved over many millenia to reduce collective effort, and feed your whole family or tribe in as few sittings as possible. This could explain why I force food down my throat by the shovel-load as if I was competing with a dozen starving relatives. Or I could just be a big greedy pig, one of the two.

And althoguh the subect of late night noise has already been brought up, here we are again except this time with the snoring situation which is, of course, an obvious fact of life that needs dealing with in a dormitory. This time because I have to note an item of sheer mindless stupidity that almost had me laughing like a hyena one night, when someone who could not sleep started actually telling a snoring person to stop being one and let them get on and get some rest.
If there are only two things that it is certain of in the entire universe when someone nearby is snoring, they are that 1] the subject is alive and 2] the subject is asleep and cannot process your futile mewings. It cannot be taken on board due to the inescapable fact that the person is not of the conscious world and is likely to be very much asleep in a deep and meaningful way, thereby being beyond the sounds of mortal man to the degree of anything much quieter than a gunshot, and it's just time to suck it up and deal with it, and get some earplugs from the reception desk first thing in the morning like everyone else. People complain after several nights of this too and that is just retarded: Fool Me Once, Shame On You; Fool Me Twice, Shame On Me.

I've been unable to sleep before on my opening night in a new place, because of a hearty nasal workout from people who apparently insufflate warm tarmac for a giggle, or by rigorous activity from a room-mate and their new best friend(s) although most memorably by snoring that sounded like a pig being buggered in a sawmill, and so if I'm without the earplugs and can't even get some then, well, it's just time to resign ymyself to reading in the common room or cruising the interweb until dawn or something, like I am doing right now, in fact. Meh.
And never for a minute go thinking you have never been that person yourself

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Of all the activities here besides the mindlessly reckless and the inane (so bungy jumping, canyon swinging and wine tours need not apply) I would say that the one most prized by us all, even me, would be the skydive.
Many more that are in my line of things; hangliding, parasailing, being twisted to the point of madness in a stunt plane; seem to suggest that my natural element is the air. Would that it were so, because I think I'd look bloody smart with a gigantic pair of wings and/or a Gulfstream private jet all to myself.
Strangely I'm also becoming drawn to water, which is very much against all previous evidence and inclination. I don't even know the name for it but the thing with the speedboat and the powerboat and the parachute, where you are towed along behind the boat hundreds of metres in the air attached to a parachute, well that appeals to me a lot, maybe because you are up there on your own rather than being strapped to an expert (skydiving, parasailing, hangliding) or bunched up with a load of other folk (rafting, jet-boating) and thereby have the chance to alone with your fear

Also perhaps this aquatic leaning comes about because I've let myself be persuaded to learn SCUBA diving in Fiji, get myself a PADI certificate and everything and go mooching among the reefs with fish and rays and sea snakes, like a proper tourist to the South Pacific ought to do.
Honestly, I can just tell I'm getting all your sympathy this morning

Anyway before I leave Queenstown, as I'm scheduled to do this afternoon at about three, I hope to be doing another little thing I've been waiting for for a long time: I'm gonna go shooting, only targets though, unfortunately.

I just couldn't find any drunk townies to stand against the wall

I've been holding off writing anything about this, the first city in New Zealand I've been to for over a week now, really for over two weeks. I would love to say that I've been collecting information, doing wild things and assimilating my notes into a an epic tour de force of such literary brilliance as to set the very sky aflame, but I'd not only be unneccesarily flowery if I did so but also a big fat liar. I have been mostly wasting time, really. By all accounts it happens a lot here.

I have spent time catching up with photo posts and the like, and also I have definitely been taking a break from all that busy shuffling activity and traveling, but I have lived a strange life this past week and all of it thoroughly non-productive. It's easy to do, with the prospect of being in one country for a whole year.
It is also possibly a dangerous mindset, as it isn't exactly getting me up and at 'em every day, rather the opposite.

But what the hell; it is such a nice place to relax in. My first few nights were spent utterly indulgently, languishing in a small upmarket hotel rather than the crowded and impersonal hostel I've been ever since, and the hotel, where I had the luxury of the second smallest yet probably the best hotel room I've enjoyed yet on this trip, was amazing in every respect. The lifts worked quickly and efficiently and even I could not make them break down, despite a continuual and many-faceted campaign.

I have to heartily recommend this place and although it wasn't cheap, comparitively speaking (at NZ$80 a night whereas a hostel bed is $25) this still only works out to £32, a good price for even a manky old English hotel, and for the facilities and fancy touches, a small gym and 24hr sauna (24hr sauna! Why the hell I didn't use I can't imagine!) most especially in the room itself, Hotel SO deserves a highly honourable mention.

They seemed to have consulted the best people when it came to lighting, and far be it from me to pretend to know about interior design but it was sheer brilliance largely because it was anything but that tired old system of internal illumination, if you follow me, and made more difference than I would have thought possible.
There is only one light you ever directly see and that is hidden from you and has no switch, whereas the main illumination for the place is a series of maybe 30 small white-light bulbs all hidden behind a shoulder-high rail that encircles the walls, so all practical light shone from the edges of the room straight up to the ceiling turning the walls themselves into the light source. Very swish and fancy and the foundation of a delightful ambience. It may get a bit flowery just here, I admit.

The little en suite was in the shape of a quarter-section of a circle in one corner of the room, and all in frosted glass with a likewise section-shaped sliding door to match, so the mood light just inside the outer wall diffused through the frosting and gently lit the entire room. A dial next to the bed chose which of 6 colours or none at all you could have, as were all controls accessible both by the bed and by the door, making the little space customisable for whether you want to relax, feel a little bit proactive and awake, or of course if you have opportunity to while away your nocturnal hours with agreeable company

Second best was the blue light that stayed on all the time underneath the bed - you could switch it off, of course, but there was no reason to as you can't see it in bed so it doesn't disturb you. The genius of it being positioned as such being as soon as you get out of bed and your point of view crosses the perimeter of the mattress, say in the middle of the night to use the en suite/go get more beer from the 24-hour boozery/, you can see the floor and enough to do what ya gotta do and go back to sleep without ever seeing white or yellow light, and virtually without being woken up at all. The blue gives you the right type of light to see enough and not be overstimulated.

Best of all was the alarm system, set by the control panel next to the bed, you just hit the buttons and pass out.
Come morning-time, when activated the system begins with an overhead `sun light` that fades in from nothing, and brightens over the course of 15 minutes to about half-intensity, whereupon the television silently switches on to the `wake` channel and a time-lapse view of verdant wild fields and heather-strewn moors, backed by snow-capped mountains with springy white clouds forming and drifting across the landscape casting their shadow up and down the folds and foothills. The sound fades in from nothing to a gentle calming ambient track, and after another quarter of an hour the sun light is on full whack and the television switches to the rolling semi-tropical surf of a North Island beach or a rainforest canopy swaying and whistling (although that's probably the birds not the trees) both to more upbeat ambient music, leaving you gradually awakened as if by sunlight to see a beautiful natural scene to a calming and uplifting score. Best alarm clock ever.

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After that a hostel, no matter how wonderful, just ain't gonna be the same, although this one tries very hard. Like almost everything else in New Zealand so far the hostel, and especially the staff (like nearly all the people everywhere) are made from a near perfect mold.
Really, these guys are great, and in a way it's a pity there are so many travelers here because they are a depressing bunch by comparison! And it's not often you'll hear that about a youth hostel.

I have managed to spend two weeks and two days here in the city, and seen and done very little. This okay by me, because I've met some nice agreeable people and done a couple of cool things, but strangely for a city of such eminence in this country, there is amazingly little to see and do, within the city at least.
Most to blame for this initially was the weather, as the East coast of this island has been battered by a series of storms and the streets, already freshly chilled to about 8 degrees, were lavishly endowed with lashings of rain for the first week, and the wind that came through was fierce and, unless you were wearing plastic underwear, highly personal.

I went nocturnal for nearly a whole week as well, after a Saturday night that went on to become a Sunday afternoon thanks to the company of some determined Germans, Austrians, Irish and Americans and a couple of bars that don't close until the last customer rolls bloated and senseless out the doorway, and after that found myself sleeping until nightfall and hitting the sack only minutes before dawn for a while.
Recovering eventually I booked myself a tour on Lyttelton harbour to go dolphin spotting, and despite the recent disturbances in the weather we all did, indeed, all 60 or so random tourists, get to see a half-dozen or so of the tiny Hector's Dolphin, the smallest species of said mammal in all the world.

Measuring a maximum of only 1.4metres; 4ft 7" in real money; it is indeed a tiny wee thing of a dolphin but wow, can they move! It amazes me still to see just how fast marine animals can swim - I would dearly love to see for myself a marlin or swordfish or, better yet, a sailfish going at full tilt - because the motion required, with fins a-pumping and tails a-swishing and the whole damn body a-oscillating like a dervish, although mostly because I can barely whip up a speed of half-a-knot myself even if you put me in the same tank as a militant Christian armed with fins and a harpoon gun.

They are amazingly playful creatures, and I found out just why they love to accompany boats and follow alongside them; one of the chief playtime hobbies of dolphins is wave surfing, would you believe, where they position themselves in bottom of the wave as it is about to break and get pushed up and along as it crashes along. Of course as a manmade boat goes about its business it is constantly creating a fairly large wave on either side and dolphins just love to cruise along and play in this wake.

Lyttelton harbour is a pretty scenic place overall, and venturing out of it and into the Pacific ocean is exhilarating, especially standing at the bow of the boat on the lowest public deck going at maybe 30 knots into the wind Very cool, very cold, and worth the price of the ticket alone.
Included was a ride in the Christchurch Gondola - no, not the type that goes on water.
This was a revelation to me as well, but the word gondola in new zealand is for what we Europeans would actualy call a cablecar, and the Christchurch GondoCable is home to a nice little musuem with silly little history ride (it's for the kiddies, I was the only one on it of course when I went, it being far too childish for todays kiddies *much rolling of eyes*.

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Other than that I have had few adventures, aside from going on one little date with a girl tending bar in one place on a drink-fuelled bender (surprising she was actually as I remember which goes against the stereotype of these hazy encounters, regrettably the drink must have instead fuelled my sense of her sense of humour or some other such thing, and nothing is to come of it) and on that same said night getting into the backrooms and afterhours haunts of various other nightclubs - maybe there's some unspoken idea about giving the English a tour behind the scenes of the nightlife around here.
Some utter pillock Irish bloke materialised at one point on this night and proceeded to try and make me feel bad for conquering the Irish, invading India (with the help of an Indian guy in the pub he introduced us to each other then pointed at me and said to the other guy "He invaded your country, like he invaded mine" to the cringing of the Indian guy and the obvious bewilderment of me.
He couldn't take a joke himself, so if I see him again I'll go the cultural exchange route and just break his knees like an English footie holligan. It might make him feel better in his wild accusations to have something to really complain about

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There is a delightful river, some botanical gardens and a series of lovely old buildings, especially the college and the cathedral, and that, mostly, is Christchurch folks. I went to Queenstown yesterday and am off to see Milford Sound in just a few short minutes, and after that it's party time and the odd bit of faux-adventure sporting. I plan to go hangliding or parasailing while I'm here and get a proper taste of it.

You may however keep bungee jumping, thanks all the same.

In Phnom Penh (or HoChiMinh, it is hard to remember) I detached myself for a day and had a look around the principal attraction of the cty, whatever it was called, which was the royal enclosure housing the major governmental and spiritual buildlings of the country.
Now if I could only remember which one it was...

There were, as you can see, a lot of very large and impressive things to see. All in one walled estate, and this was just the stuff not in official use that was open to the public!

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This was the golden pavilion or some such similarly holy thing. The huge ornate thing in the middle (generally the largest building in these pictures is the silver pagoda, and if they had allowed photography inside I could show you how it got the name: the entire floor is paved with silver tiles, each at least coated with with some of the precious metal.
When I was there they seemed to have an overabundance of carpet, but it's hardly surprising.
The clergy probably flogged all the tiles in the centre of the room centuries ago

And yes, it must have been Phnom Penh because there was this model of a fully complete Angkor Wat in the grounds, remember the scale of the place and that the real-life distance from each of those oposing walls is a good quarter of a mile or something, the length of that vast causeway leading up to the main gates the same again and more:

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The National Museum was next, the outside of which was beautiful itself:

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The inside of which contained a water garden, fully enclosed in the central courtyard, and home to bookish visitors, some highly keen fish, and a little colourful flora, too:

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Elsewhere in the city there were a large number of hotels in the quintessential backpacker's area (we were staying elsewhere, in nicer digs ) most of which on the West side of the street were projecting out over a very large lake:

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And just a few other things frm around the city:

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Almsot finished Cambodia! Now I really can't remember - did I show you the Dead Fish hotel in Siem Reap, the crocodiles in the bar and all that?
Well it wasn;t lit very well but I did get a couple of photos. I did rather chuckle at the way the staff thought of their security policy re: the fact that had a dozen or so angry reptiles at their disposal -

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Okay that actually was it for Cambodia; Most of Vietnam has precious little to represent it here, unfortunately. But still;
here we are
from park and bar
the state revealed
of traveler's field;

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Yes it's that silly half-beard again:

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And I do believe the next stop is Singapore