Delhi

I am going on holiday to India to escape the Vietnamese Tet holiday, it,s a bit like Xmas but without the snow.  Most people leave to avoid the near total shutdown and I have chosen India.  I've never really been there apart from a short trip to Delhi for a recruitment fair so this is a big adventure for me.
I'm flying with Air Asia, the local budget carrier and so far it,s been good.  The food and wine was fine and the aircrew were lovely so this is not the easy jet of the east.  The airline even have their own terminal at Kuala Lumpur airport for budget travellers where the beer at nearly£4 a glass is nowhere near budget but hey, I'm on holiday.
I've booked a hotel near the central train station for three nights and then a train ticket to Jaipur on Sunday morning.  You can do it all online, no wonder Thomas Cook went bust, who needs them now.

I'm planning to spend three weeks in Rajasthan travelling by train, bus and hopefully camel and visiting palaces, forts and deserts.

I'm going to blog about my experiences on my boring old blog that I have neglected for the last four months and I can do that using my lovely new iPad that I have brought along for the ride.

My hotel is in a dusty lane full of other backpacker type hotels and my room is a bit cell like but it does have a flat screen tv and a shower.  After a long day on planes it was nice to savour the atmosphere of the city. Dogs barking, fires burning and people wandering about wrapped in thin blankets against the cold evening air.  The air is a shock to my system. Anything below 30 degrees seems cold to me now.  I need to look in my guide book and plan tomorrow's sightseeing.  The red fort sounds colourful so that could be on the agenda and there are plenty of other attractions.  The underground system should take me to most of the places I need to go as long as I can work out where places are.

  The people out in the street have been cooking bread over charcoal tonight so that's going to be breakfast but now for sleep after a slurp of dutyfree whiskey.

Time to get a new belt

I’ve been away, in England and Scotland, for an annual visit.  I’ve been to Brighton where you think that any two men seen together are gay  ( probably they are ).   The town is full of red faced street drinkers and seagulls.  It deserves it’s reputation for supporting an alternative lifestyle and is full of characters.

I’ve been to Portsmouth where every other shop is a take-away.  It’s one of the most densely populated cities in the South with more people, take-aways  and tattoo parlours per square mile than any other city I’ve ever known.

I’ve been to Surbiton where the Travelodge runs a hotel with no staff.  It’s totally automated and allowed me, for a very reasonable £19, to spend a comfortable night.  TV, kettle, even a bath included. WiFi was 8 pence a minute for the unsuspecting inmate but free in the pub next door.

I’ve been to Northampton where you can buy a 3 bedroomed house for under a hundred grand.  1 hour from London, about the same to Birmingham and less to Milton Keynes.  With all  those easy commutes why don’t people move out of London and buy a house in Northampton.  Something dark must be happening there!

I’ve been to Wakefield where you can visit the new Barbara Hepworth museum and the Yorkshire Sculpture Park.  Wakefield is the Portsmouth of the North.  Barbara had the right idea, she moved away to London and then Cornwall.

I’ve been to Edinburgh where the clouds come down to the ground.  This weather happens often and they have a special word for it.  It’s still a great place to see though, with its castle and parks and squares.  There’s a  nice view from the adjacent hill too, at least if the sun shines.

And now to the belt.  I’ve been criticised for my belt before.  It’s old and has lost it’s gloss.  The worn notches on it show the expanding and contracting of my  waistline over the years ( no, I’m not fatter than before )  but it still holds up my trousers. But you know when it’s finally time to get a new one.  The security man at Heathrow stopped me at the scanning machines and held it up for closer inspection.  I thought for a moment that it was now illegal to wear belts on aeroplanes but no, he just wanted to say how old and worn it was.  I felt like saying “it’s a bit like you then” but stopped myself in the nick of time.  After all, with the current state of the security laws, he could have me rendered to Guantanamo Bay for a spot to water boarding for a remark like that.  Instead I smiled weakly and headed for the duty free. 

Early one morning

I don't like to get up early in the morning.  Most days I'll lay in bed reading the paper on the internet and drinking coffee for a couple of hours.  Nine seems a sensible time to move out of bed and onto the sofa.  Not today, as a friend from work said he gets up at four thirty every morning and was planing an early trip into town.  Stupidly I said text me before you go.  Staying healthy has a whole new meaning in this part of the world.  Back home some of these people wouldn't look out of place in my local mental hospital. The results of this mad jaunt are here.

Some say this is a bit voyeristic but I all I know is, it's a fascinating socio-cultural phenomenon.  

Tomorrow I'm staying in bed 'til noon.

Rain

The sky goes grey, the light goes dim and the rain smacks to the ground and bounces of the window ledge, through the open window and into my room.  The ground outside the window has turned into a wide brown puddle of mud and battered down vegetation.  Only the frogs enjoy the weather, spending the evenings croaking to each other.  The insects have been smacked to the ground and the bats fly pointlessly around searching for food.

Even the never ending stream of motorbikes slows a little as the drivers stop to put on their rain covers.  Tropical storms are supposed to come in the late afternoon to relieve the heat of the day.  These come whenever they like.  I can watch the clouds rotate around the city until they head in my direction and drench my suburb.  But somehow the ground soaks it all up and drains it all away.  If the sun can creep through the roads and paths dry off and the children come out to the play park outside my building again for their evening’s playtime.

I’ve got some protection against the weather.  I have a collapsible umbrella suitable for a London commuter and so almost useless here and a large plastic cape that the university gave me.

This particular storm, the second of the day, came and went quickly so now the clouds are thinning a little and the remains of the day’s light has returned just in time for dusk and what might turn out to be a spectacular sunset.

And its going to do this until November. 

I've been playing with my video camera

Green Grass Jelly Drink

Previously on my blog I have extolled the virtues of grass jelly, the healthy alternative to raspberry or strawberry with their artificially enhanced red colour and synthetic taste.  Grass jelly was sure to be a big improvement on those with its ‘green’ environmental agenda.  But I understand that there’s a drawback and that was the lengthy cooking process that grass jelly in a packet required.  The instructions on the grass jelly sachet expected consumers to add the contents to water and boil them for three minutes.  This may well be too much for the modern consumer with their busy lifestyle.  It was certainly too much for my daughter Charlotte to whom I sent a packet ( on request I may add ).  When I asked her what it tasted like she informed me that she hadn’t even tried!  And that, after the lengths I went to to send her some.

Well now it’s all different because new, convenience grass jelly drink is available in cans.  I was excited by this find in my local supermarket so bought a can and rushed it home. The ideal mixer for one of my weird bottles of rum or fake gin I thought.  But now I’ve checked the ingredients and found synthetic sweetener and synthetic green colour and synthetic flavour listed on  the side of the can.  In fact, if you remove those from the list all you are left with is water and something called ‘gelian gum’.

So it seems that you can’t beat the traditional method if you want the real taste of grass jelly.  It looks like I won’t be rushing off to the post office with a consignment of canned grass jelly drink any time soon.  Sorry Charlotte.

A long weekend

Ho Chi Minh is a big, sprawling city full of motorbike noise and people squeezed onto pavements so, from time to time it’s nice to get out and see something of the countryside.  Last weekend was a long one, a bit like England the week before, but for us it wasn’t a wedding it was May Day coupled with the liberation of Saigon on 30^th April.  We had Monday and Tuesday off, so to make my escape I joined three other teachers  on a two day trip to the Mekong delta where the towns are smaller and the air fresher.  These trips are cheap and easy to arrange from one of the many travel agents in the backpacker ghetto of Pham Nu Lao in the centre of the city.

The highlight of the two days came early with a boat ride from the Saigon River through the city down murky waterways cutting through the surrounding countryside to the town of My Tho.  For once this was a comfortable boat ride in a speedy boat.  Most of my other boat experiences in South East Asia have been long, noisy and involved hard wooden benches crammed with too many people.  This one whizzed across the murky water even going past the university on it’s two hour journey to the delta.

The truth about the Mekong is that there really isn’t much to see.  They take you to every small scale production facility doing things to the local crops that they can think of.  So we visited a coconut candy factory, a nice noodle factory, a plain rice factory ( which was closed ) and a fruit orchard complete with folk singing locals.  On day two they delivered boatloads of tourists wholesale to the floating market to eat pineapple and watch the river traffic go by.  But the towns are small and quiet, with fewer motorbikes and cleaner rivers.  It’s cheap, relaxing and simple and very well organised.  We all came back happy and thinking about the next weekend away with the tour guides.