Miles in London - Part 5

In general, London has still been great, the weather is holding up for the most part, there have been patches of rain but enough blue skies that I would still call it summer. The temperature here never really gets about 25, so between 20-25 is a nice 'warm' day. Its weird to talk like that right, cos in Sydney if its not above 25, its definitely not summer. I guess you do adapt quite quickly...

I know I've said this before, but London when the weather is nice must be one of the best cities in the world. The parks here are quite nice, we have Hyde park, regents park, even clapham common is nice enough on a summers day. People really make the most of warm weather and the parks are full of people lying about 'sun tanning' or just having a picnic and a chat. It will be interesting to see how this all changes dramatically come the winter time. We've been to quite a few more places since my last update and had a few visitors as well, but i'll get to those in time.

I think the first thing that happened since my last update was I went to Royal Ascot - the Melbourne cup of London. Its quite the day out, with Ascot being about 1hr out of London by train and people really dressing up for the occasion. I've never been to the races in Sydney or Melbourne so it was a new experience for me. This is how it works here: There are 3 types of tickets you can buy:

Silver ring (30 pounds) : gets you into the grass area, pleasant enough in the dry, but when it rains, like it was on the day we went, it can get MESSY. Shoes were ruined, and gumboots were not an uncommon sight and I'm sure those girls wearing the gum boots were very glad they did. After a while, the smell of the churned up mud, the damp, and the portaloos starts to become unpleasant. The people here are dressed quite well, guys are in suits, girls are in dresses, but its a slightly more casual affair, with picnic mats where the ground was remotely dry, plastic chairs and tables under temporary pavilions and temporary stalls. Pimms is the drink of choice.What ticket did i get? The silver of course! Mostly BYO food here, with some food stalls also. Thanks to T for providing us with an amazing picnic spread!

Grandstand: (50 pounds): gets you into the actual facilities, through a proper ticket gate, into the grounds where there are gardens, a outdoor screen, and into the lower levels of the actual building - which is in line with the finish line. This is traditionally where you would imagine people to be when they go to the races, with the concrete steps where you stand and cheer for your horse, then throw you losing stub on the ground in disgust. Food here not that much better actually, there were pizza stalls, fish and chips but at least they provided tables and chairs (sometimes plastic also) but at least you were in a building. Thanks to NV, who snuck Ben and I into this area for the second part of the day, out of the mud and away from the commoners! Top hat and tails are sometimes seen here.

Funny incident: when we tried to get into the grandstand area using other peoples tickets that NV had smuggled out for us, they wouldn't work through the machines because she hadn't scanned them out when she took the extra 2 tickets so it said 'double entry'. At this point the ticket guy said accusingly 'Have you actually scanned these out?' To which i then said to him in my most outraged tone whilst waving the tickets that weren't ours: 'Mate we just came out of here before, we didn't scan out because you just let us out without scanning, LOOK AT THESE PEOPLE!' as i pointed at several people leaving by the gate. The ticket guy apologetically let us in through the gate :) My friends, it is all about the delivery.. you have to make him believe!

Royal Enclosure: This is in the upper levels of the buildings - unfortunately i couldnt find a way to talk myself into this one, you needed a badge and almost all the guys were in top hats and tails - hard to fake. I can only imagine the pure decadence that exists at this level...

So gamblingwise - let me just state that i hate horse racing, its pure lottery and I don't believe anyone knows what they are doing. So I win my first race, doubling up and lose the next 5, being down aboud 60 pounds for the day. Thats my first and last attempt at the races. In fact, I had one of those cliched races where the horse i randomly chose led, all the way from start tothe last 1/2 lap where everyone else overtook him and he came last....

Unfortunately Nancy as unwell and wasn't able to come to Ascot, so maybe i'll have to go next year anyway..

Stoney and Nara came to visit! Due to the South American volcano, they didnt make it to south america but did manage to come to London. I even scored a nice meal out of them! Thanks guys!

Viv Arrives in London - where she turnsup at our doorstep in a jacket and s scarf and asks 'this is summer?' and then goes straight to the much warmer greek islands! Shes back now and hopefully settling in nicely in her new pad!

Helsinki and Tallinn - Alby's birthday on the 25th, and Linda organises a trip to Helsinki and Tallinn to celebrate his and kind of my birthday! Quick observation about Helsinki:

- It doesnt get dark dark in Helsinki till about 11pm, and hten gets light again at about 3am
- We went during some kind of public holiday so it was very quiet lost of restaurants were closed
- I over ate during our first breakfast which basically affected my ability to eat for the rest of the trip... I know that just because its 'included' doesnt mean I have to over eat. I just can't help it.
- Soumellina was quite nice - its a fort that the russians/finnish/swedish occupied at various points - the walls seemed kind of low to me to be a 'fortress' and i believe the only time it came under attack, the commander surrendered anyway...
- Our guide at Soumellina was cute - and apparently her name was not Guida - i just say the first 4 letters of her 'Guide' tag and assumed....
- Doable in a day, maybe two if more things were open. Not as expensive as I thought it would be..
- Church in the rock was pretty cool - and there was a guy playing piano there - shame we couldnt stay longer to relax, but we had to go catch our...

Ferry
- First time on a proper cruise liner
- Couldnt feel any movement, the ship was massive
- Cheap booze and tobacco..
- Stayed over night in quite cramped sleeping arrangements and in the morning we got off at :

Tallinn
- Capital of Estonia where supposedly, the most beautiful women in the world are from
- Women were OK - not amazing
- Old town is nice, they play up the whole medieval thing a lot there, cobblestone streets
- There is some evidence of stag weekends here, with a few gentlemens clubs around the town
- Free walking tour by an enthusiastic uni student guide - recommended
- Food highlight - our meal at Olde Hansa, where we had Bear (Good), Elk (Very good), wild boar, sausages, duck and various other things. Novelty factors include roleplay by the staff - including the owners son, owners daughter, serving wenches and a menu written in 'ye olde english'
- Soviet bloc country until the 80s - visited a hotel the KGB had set up on a top floor that 'didnt exist' and had bugged all the rooms. Interesting insight into communist and soviet life, and how they wanted to be portrayed to the rest of the world.
- 1 day for the old town is OK, but 2 days allows you to do a few more things and take it easy...

Back in London for my birthday - thanks for all the birthday wishes on facebook - i know that if facebook hadn't told me,most of you (except Mindy) would have forgotten! Had a quiet night in - Nancy cooked despite not feeling great and spent the night watching come dine with me and just chilling out.

Went to L'entrcote (BIG fan of this place!) for Ming's birthday on the 29th and had my first karoke session in London - they use a touch screen to choose songs, but other than that its quite similar to Sydney, Had a good old sing, particularly for a school night! Went to Bar Boulud (of Daniel Boulud of 3 Star Daniel of NYC fame) to have one of his famous burgers - supposedly one of the best in London for my kind of birthday dinner on saturday, unforunately quite average. The 'porkie' burger that I had was 12 pounds (18 AUD) and had an overpowering horseradish taste, which drowned out everything else. The pattie was quite thick, and I ordered minemedium rare which didn't quite work in this context. The pattie WAS cooked correctly, but I don't know if having a rare burger really adds to the burger experience. I found the burger relatively flavourless, not like a steak tartare for example which is heavily seasoned and the only difference was the texture, which was interseting with the raw mince inside. I think I rated this burger a 4/10, not because it was bad tasting, but because it was so expensive for what it was, and the taste was average , and barely that when you factor in the horseradish...

Africa Day 1 Part 3

Wow - part 3 just for day 1, I didn't think I'd have this much to write about, but I guess it was a very eventful day.

Finally, I want to make some final notes about Kampala, this is exactly what I wrote down in my diary on the night of day 1:
- Uganda is very dirty, rubbish everywhere, shacks
- Uncivilised!? Goats and Chickens in the street.

I want to draw your attention to these points as I don't feel that I have made clear what my impression was. The 'city' was a dump. Rubbis WAS everywhere, and even 1-2k from the city centre, it would be common to see a goat eating grass on the side of the dirt road, or chickens just walking around in the street. It really was a third world country, in hindsight, for a 'capital' it was one of the worst I came across..

I finally arrived back at the Red Chilli Hideaway - where my 70 day tour of Africa would start.

By the time I got there the bus had already arrived and the hostel was quite busy. The way the tour works is that there are several main areas that you can hop on and off e.g Nairobi, Kampala, Victoria falls, Dar Es Salaam and Capetown being the ones on our tour. The bus basically does continuous laps and people start and stop wherever they wish. At this point in Kampala, everyone on the tour had joined in Nairobi, except for Jaime who joined at Victoria falls and had come north.

I met Tanya our tour leader, an Aussie from northern Queensland who had been on the job for about a year. She had been a customer on a tucan tour herself and loved it so much that she decided to stay in Africa and be a tour leader.

Tanya was friendly and approachable, and the first few minutes were spent on logistics, handing over kitty money, filling our forms etc. Let me quickly talk about the people on the tour and my first impressions/thoughts - i'm sure you'll see how these perceptions evolve (or not!) throughout the next 70 days...

The people joining in Kampala:

David and Mary - an older couple from Australia, David was ex Telstra and retired, with adult children back in Australia - they told me about the need for a Rwandan visa

Katie Stirling - first impressions: tall, ranga, easy with a laugh, friendly. I didn't actually talk to katie much on the first night, I seem to remember her doing a lot of drinking with other people in the hostel...

James - Canadian, customs officer, middle aged. Seems quite conservative and a bit quiet. Stayed in a room (as opposed to a tent) on the first night

Bahn - at this point still MIA (Ruban is my mate from highschool who would be on the tour with me)

Me - What more do I have to say!?

The people who joined in Nairobi (about 5 days before):

Deb - Italian, but living in England. Slim, pretty, friendly. Honestly, on the first night I thought there might be something going on between here and....

Rich - from Liverpool, really nice, funny guy. I may have thought there was something going on between him and Deb.

Sangee - Aussie Indian from Canberra. Doctor. Hair in braids, pretty, ready with a laugh, popular with the african boys :)

Kelly and Judy - Couple from New Zealand. (Kelly is an asian guy, Judy is white - i'm not racial i just want to paint the right picture..) A bit older as well, probably in their 50s, have adult children

Chris and Ange - Couple from UK/Australia respectively. Really friendly, clearly very nice people. Really seemed to suit each other, even from the start.

From Vic Falls - Jaime, from Adelaide, also from customs. As the longest serving member of the bus, she seemed to be in charge, running the cooking, and packing up as she knew where everything went. A little bit more serious than the others but still friendly and helpful.

Our Driver was Joash, a Kenyan who had been driving tour groups for many years - first impressions was that he was very quiet, and kept mostly to himself, not really talking to many people on the tour. Joash almost always sleeps in the truck...

A lot of the future posts will be about these people so I won't go into them any more at this point.

The first task after admin, was to pitch our tent. This was the first time in my entire life that I had to put up a tent and suprisingly, it wasn't that hard. It works best if two people do it together and I think James helped me put mine up.

The tents basically look like this:


This is a photo I took the next day.

After setting up tents I helped a little to make dinner - it seemed very confusing at the time, I had no idea where anything was, cooking facilities were outdoor campsite style and our equipment was basic - just various sized pots and two pans, one large and one regular size...

Dinner tonight was Spaghetti Bolognaise with Garlic bread which was well underway by the time I wandered down to meet the guys who were already on the tour. Spag Bol was made in the expected way, sauce separate to the pasta, and garlic bread was bread rolls with butter and garlic seasoning, placed on a hand held grilling rack and held over a gas flame and regularly turned..

The meal was good, as you would expect spag bol and garlic bread to be. The pasta, that Deb was in charge of was 'al dente' of course, and there was plenty to go around. Afterdinner, everything is packed away - something that seemed amazingly complex, with Jaime the only person who seemed to go which boxes things went into and howthey were to be placed into the truck. There were about 7 large boxes that the kitchen equipment and ingredients were packed into, and they all had to be placed into the truck in a certain way - it was hard to remember... and there was a lot of 'where does this go' being asked of Jaime and Tanya

At some point after dinner, Bahn arrives and we make small talk with the rest the group, asking where everyone was from, what they'd seen so far (Rhinos - which us Kampala joiners wouldnt see for a while...). We catch up as I hadn't seen him in about a months as I was in Japan. Not realising that a tent actually does not do ANYTHING to block sound, you might as well all be sleepingin a large room in sleeping bags.

Mid conversation, we get a 'Can you guys keep it down!' from Kelly I think... and we learn our first lesson about tent and group sleeping etiquette....

We shut up and I lay in my tent, marveling at the fact that I actually was in Africa. I was in a tent, sleeping on bed roll n UGANDA, thousands of kilometers from home, from Nancy and about to start off on a great adventure. I think it was the first time all day that I had time to reflect , and it was at that point that it all really hit me. I had 70 days to experience a continent that was a whole differnt world. I had made it through the city and I was hoping to have a life changing experience. I was really looking forward to the weeks to come.. i was hoping the our slogan was true - that this would be the adventure of a lifetime..

Africa Day 1 - Part 2: Kampala, Uganda

It's been a long time between blogs, but I feel like this should be finished, for my own sake if nothing else so that I have something to look back to in 10 years time and understand how I saw the world in 2010. Africa was a special place and I did actually write a physical diary for all of it so I might as well do this.

I'll probably put my england emails/updates on this as well which should be interesting..

Maybe someone will even read it!

So back to Uganda...

Day 1 - Kampala Continued...

Looking back, the trip to the hostel was completely uneventful, and perfectly safe in every way. It just didn't feel like it at the time. Arriving at the hostel, I still remember feeling out of my depth, the first time in a long time when travelling. I was alone, the people didn't really speak english, it was Africa and I had no idea where I was, i didn't even have a lonely planet!

I don't know if I have written much about the tour, but its time to give a bit of a plug - The tour was with Tucan - over 65 days from Kampala to Cape Town. Total costs was about $5800 for the tour and if you take the options I did, plus all the discretionary spending its probably another 2-3k on top. The tour is quite basic - some of the comparable tours have cooks - we didn't, and we spend about 60 of the 65 days camping in tents (as opposed to staying in a dorm).

The last time I had camped in a tent was probably in South America on the Inca trail.. now I don't consider myself a princess, but camping isnt my first choice option, and I had no idea how I would handle sleeping on the ground for the next 2 months..

I arrived quite early, about 9am and so I put my bag into the 'luggage room' which was basically like a small concrete recess - about 2m x 2m x 1m crammed full of bags and dirty, secured by a metal door with a padlock.. This Is Africa (from now on known as TIA.) I sat down for a 'big breakfast' very average eggs, beans toast and sausages... it wasn't exactly brunch at Bills :D but even though most of you think im a food snob, i actually eat pretty much anything so eat i did..

In the dining room was an older Couple - Dave and Mary who seemed quite nice and turned out to be on the same tour - i was a bit suprised cos these guys must have been at least 60 - they seed fairly fit, but I thought the tour was sposed to be for 18-45? Anyway, we get to talking and they explain their plans for the day, which involved going to some museum... but more importantly, Dave told me that to get into Rwanda I needed a Visa (yes Bahn, you did try to warn me to look more closely into this) which I didn't have.

So after about 2 hrs in Africa, I had my first major scare - if I couldn't get into Rwanda, I can't go to see the Gorilla's which was a major reason for coming to Africa in the first place.. So when Dave and Mary decide to hop into a cab (when I say cab, its more of the same, just a random guy with a car who turns up when someone gives him a call..) which turns up outside our guarded gates and takes us to the Rwandan embassy - I have no idea where we are, but I don;t remember going through the city... I get off and promise to pay Dave and Mary back (i actually never did ... oops!) and head into the embassy where I'm told I have to leave my passport there for a few days... now, i'm not that stupid so I asked if there was another option - they said there was a form I could fill out online and they could get me a reference number that I could use use to get a visa at the border...

So I walk out of the embassy - which is not in the city itself, in fact its just a large building next a dirt road.

I am now in an interesting situaton.. I need to get to somewhere with intenet (it wasnt working in the hostel - TIA). I have map, but there are no street signs and the embassy isnt marked, I have no idea which direction the city or the hostel is and there are no taxis. All I know is that you can catch these vans (toyota hiaces) which are called 'mutatus' which you just hail.. but they don't have signs as far as I can tell, don't runon a fixed route, have no preorganised stops, and don't speak English.. So.... I start walking... hoping I'll hit something useful.. a hotel, some shops, the city, a street sign.. anything...

So here I am, a random asian, clearly a tourist with a backpack, walking randomly in the outskirts of Kampala, Uganda... I head into a few shops/buildings, try to work out which direction the city is or where i can even get Internet.. I have no idea if people understood me, but I got some contradictory responses... I eventually end up in a kind of shanty market, where something resembles a street with small shops on both sides.



I walk into a phone shop (there are lot of these in Africa, and are the same as in Sydney, just a shop with phones, accesories etc, but obviously they arent selling iphones..) where I get the first useful information of the day.. there is a mutatu that comes up the street that goes into the city...

they look like this...

So I stand outside the shop for about 10 minutes and a mutatu comes by which I hail.. it pulls over and i say 'City?' to which the man nods and slides open the door for me... at this point there are already about 6 africans in the van - there are 7 seats, and I take the last one, right in the back right corner. There is no payment, I can only assume you pay when you get out..

As the bus lumbers down the street, I can only hope they are actually going into the city.. but after about 15mins it doesnt seem like it... I ask the passenger next to me - 'city?' to which he nods.. so i'm reassured.. slightly.... When it begins to get busier (more traffic) i am a bit more comfortable, at least I'm heading into town...

Along the way I've been trying to work out what people are paying to get out and what the process, and it looks like a 1000 shilling note, and someone says shouts something a minute or so before they want to stop, they pass the guy at the front some money and they may or may not get change...

When the mutatu stops in some pretty serious traffic, the guy next to me gets out, and i assume that this is close enough to the city (i have no idea what the city is supposed to be like). I hand the guy a note - and get a coin in return, I can only assume I haven't been ripped off .. the total trip cost 500 shillings. (25cents).

I'm not quite in the city but I'm fairly close... so after wandering around for a few minutes I get to an area that looks appropriately busy and after randomly asking people for the internet, actually manage to find an internet cafe... but the internet isnt working.. apparently the national ISP is down.. TIA.. and they arent sure when it will be back.. Its about midday at this point, and I don't have to be back at the hostel to start the tour until about 7pm.. so I wander around the main city.. and walk into a photo shop.. (because i realise that I don't even have spare passport photos for visa.. and i figure i should get some) i guess the best way to describe what they do is that they take photos and frame them.. mostly wedding shots i guess and they do photo passport photos. The most important thing about this place is that it was run by Chinese! The first Chinese I have seen in Africa.. They speak mandarin - which I don't really but we manage to communicate through a mixture of really poor cantonese on their part and really poor mandarin on my part.. They are a really friendly group - they invite me to have a lunch with them, which is rice with some sort of chinese style chicken stew and who am i to turn down a free meal from my fellow countrymen!

At this point i should mention that during our broken conversation, i gathered that they werent in Africa by choice.. and that some of then couldnt go back to China.. i'll let you guys work it out.. they gave me the combination

Several funny things happened here at this store...(besides our lack of understanding of each other often causign misunderstandings)..

1. They treat their customers badly - they kept telling these guys to wait saying they were busy but all they were doing was having lunch and chatting to me...
2. They had this safe which they couldnt get to work, it just wouldnt lock.. and they asked me to help.. - i promised that i would forget it..considering what I had assumed about their past...3
3. They had like a quasi receptionist, who was a local girl who made me write down the name of her baby and her phone number and promise to take her with me when I went back to Australia..Im pretty sure I was non commital.. but i still have her number in my diary if anyone wants to adopt an african child named 'brandy'.

I went back to the internet cafe and lo and behold, the internet was working, albiet extremely slowly. I managed to apply for my visa, and hoped that it would be enough..

I went back to the photoshop, hung out with the boys for a bit and took this photo... and made promises to drop by when I was next in Kampala.. or when they came to Sydney...



(actually, one of the guys - vincent - second from the right, emailed me yesterday! he's returned to China, and the shop is closed.. they are doing 'other business' whatever that means...)

The receptionist walked me to the area where the mutatus stopped and found me a mutatu that supposedly went in the right direction...I tried to explain where my hostel was.. I thought that the driver understood, and they even gave me the front seat.. At this point it had statarted to rain... so off we went... I was quite paranoid about being lost and going to the wrong place and crawling through traffic for about 30 mins I realised that I saw road sign that told me I was going in the wrong direction.. so I hopped off the mutatu at a biggish intersection and wandered towards the motorbike taxis, where you pay the rider and sit behind him and he takes to specifically where you need to go...

I walked up to a group of about 10 riders and told them where I wanted to go, and the price - I think it ended up being like 2000-4000 shillings.. i was in a rush after all.. and one guy accepted.. It was actually quite scary.. the pick was small - probably in the range of 125cc and it was raining, slippery and wet. Keep in mind the roads dont have tarmac on them so its just slippery mud and I was seriously concerned we would slip and fall off.

To his credit, we made it back in one piece to the hostel where i was extremely grateful and just in time for the Tucan tour meet up... where I would meet the rest of the group....

This has become way longer than I expected, it was quite the eventful first day.. So i'll continue this in the next post where I introduce the cast of characters that I would be spending time with over the next 2 months...

Stay tuned...