On the road again...

I've made references to traveling companions in previous posts and the bonds formed with complete strangers when you find yourselves in bizarre situations or moments of extreme beauty in strange places. Thats where I met Mat (previously known as 'The American') as we bussed out of Beijing on a cold clear December morning towards the Great Wall of China.

The day we spent walking the wall was truely awesome. On countless occassions during the hike I had to remind myself I was in the middle of China standing on one of the wonders of the world in beautiful sunshine. Its an experience thats been hardcoded into my memory, and its a memory that Mat and I will always share.

Mat was in Paris when I was in Argentina but we'd promised to try to travel again together at somepoint and so dates were set and flights booked for an Irish roadtrip rendez-vous.

The last time I was in Belfast was back in 1995 when the Troubles were very much apparent. I remember driving up across the Newry checkpoint which resembled a war zone with armoured tanks and rocket launchers lining the road and I clearly remember the night I spent in the Stormont hotel looking out over the city as it burnt and wondering if the streets would be opened again by morning so that I could get to my meeting. Belfast was a broken city; divided and explosive with no sign of peace in sight.

When I arrived in Sarajevo back in 2001 SFOR were doing their best to keep the fragile peace but the tensions between the ethnic groups were all too tangiable and the violence bubbled up regularly in pockets around towns and on the borders. It felt like war and it felt all to famililar - it felt like Belfast. I've resisted the urge to go back to Sarajevo as i'm afraid nothing is going to have changed but since 1998 things have moved on in Belfast and the city I discovered was vibrant, booming and basking in good weather with students sunning themselves in the parks and sidewalk cafes spilling out into the streets.

There are still sparodic tensions (old habits die hard) and the wall that divided Catholics from Protestants is still in place and closed each night, but these days Belfast is celebrating its future whilst remembering its past and marketing its history in the form of black taxi tours - not to be proud of its Troubles but so as to learn and not to forget. The 90 min taxi tour that Mat and I took was truely a whistle stop tour of the history and geography of Ireland and Belfast, much of which is emblazoned on the buildings and walls in murals and it gave us a very broad and yet very real taste of what the city has been through, and how far its come in the last 12 years.

Next morning with the wind in our wheels we drove North to the Giant's Causeway and to explore the Northern Irish coast.

Back thousands of years ago when giants roamed the earth and the moon was made of cheese Fin McCool (the local Irish giant) built this causeway to Scotland so as to fight his Scottish nemisis, Benandonner. Since then some clever scientists have debunked this legend claiming that the huge hexagonal stones were formed when basaltic rock from volcanic eruptions cooled into these regular shapes. Either way, giants or volcanoes, the causeway definitly is cool and we had a great couple of hours clambering over the columns and up the stepped cliffs.

Although the main area was quite touristy armed with the Lonely Planet's 'Hiking in Ireland' guide book and picnics in our daypacks after only a short walk along the clifftops we pretty much had the place to ourselves and after lunch found the perfect place to snooze in the sunshine. This had become a bit of a habit; hike, picnic, snooze and if anyone from Lonely Planet is reading i'd be happy to contribute a couple of entries to the 'Napping in Ireland' guide book when its published.

The perfect spot for a snooze.

The other habit we feel into all to easily was that of frequenting Irish pubs...

Irish bars are legendary, quite literally the world over, for their hospitality and music, and none more so than in Ireland itself where going to the pub is almost a full body-contact sport when the band is playing and the place is jumping.

The good weather had left us and the usualy Irish showers and rain returned so next morning we jumped in the car, threw away the map, pulled out the compass and headed West until we hit the water.


This is the stuff that great road trips are made of; stunning scenery, good music, twisty winding lanes and nothing but the open road and the unexpected ahead.

What we'd certainly not expected was to find the small town of Ardara in which every pub and bar on the high street was hosting (inside and out) a band, group of fiddlers, flautists and whistler players for their weekend music festival.

It seems every kid in Ireland is born with an instrument tucked under their chin or in their mouth and even the most timid of 8-year olds in pink sweatshirts armed only with a junior sized accordian is capable of getting an entire pub up and jumping or singing. Like all good road trips our Irish jaunt needed a themesong and with 'Dirty old town', 'The gambler' and 'Molly Malone' being bashed out in every pub we set foot in we had plenty to choose from and hearing any of them ever again is sure to bring back the memories of that spectacular day.

Our final days were spent in Dublin wandering the town by day and the bars by night (cue 'Dirty old town'...) with some Irish friends Mat had made back in Thailand.



The next morning I picked up the headlines in the Irish Times to find that the country had completed its troubled journey and jumped into a new phase of peace with the end of control from London in Northern Ireland and power sharing agreed between two previous enemies, Ian Paisley and Martin McGuiness. History completes its cycle in Northern Ireland and I hope someday i'll see the same cycle run its course in Sarajevo. For now though our little roadtrip had run its course and Mat and I went our seperate ways at Dublin airport knowing our travels will probably cross again sometime, someplace now that we've some great Irish memories to tack up alongside those great wall moments.

Paris of the East

It was only on my way back from Paris that I realised my visa for China was going to expire before the end of the month and so within a couple of days of landing back from Paris I was on a flight to the 'Paris of the East, otherwise known as Shanghai.



I came into town late at night and was overawed by the skyline. Shanghai was certainly a city of light with the whole Bund and Putong area alive with neon.

Beijing had been a bit of a backpacker weekend for me but i'd decided to lux it up a little for this trip and booked into the Peace Hotel on the Bund, a beautiful old Art Deco haunt of Hemmingway and Noel Coward. I had an enormous room (suite), with an even bigger tub and promised each night to treat myself to some of the best restaurants in town but during the day I planned to hit the city streets, walking and exploring as much as possible to see what the city really had to offer.

The difference between Shanghai and Beijing is stunning. Whilst Beijing has the Forbidden City, Ti'anaman and the Temple of Heaven everything else is being buldozed to make room for the Olympics. Shanghai in the meantime has gracefully morphed into a pulsating metropolis embracing both its past and future so whereas Beijing lacks soul, Shanghai has plenty of soul and character to go with it. Its possibly to be wandering through dark hutong alleys one minute and then pop out on to a teaming street lined with glass and steel skyscrapers the next. Its a city of contrast be it architecture, food, art, or fashion, Shanghai has some stunning examples of the best of the west and the east. At times I felt like I was in Berlin wandering through areas of old factories and storage sheds that had been converted into galleries and cafes. By night its was difficult not to imagine being somewhere in the US, Las Vegas perhaps thanks to all that neon, but then there are times that are most definitly Shanghai. Its difficult to describe but the city definitly has a vibe and you dont need to scrape too far beneath the surface to find it.


I'm going going to ramble on more but instead let the pictures speak for themselves. I'm not overly impressed with them (the grey weather didn't help) but I hope they'll give you a taste of this fantastic city. Slide down to the bottom of the screen for the link and take a look.



x

Down and out in Beijing

So having been sick for most of last week with the help of Mixie-san I dragged myself on to a plane Thursday afternoon and jetted off to Beijing. I really could have done with some R&R however theres just so much to see and do that I felt obliged to cram in as much as possible, and besides, with the sub-zero temperatures and biting cold winds I had to keep moving in order to keep warm!

Friday was spent exploring the Forbidden City in the centre of Beijing. Home to the Ming & Qing dynasty at a mere 720,000 sq metres is makes my Parisian pad look pokey and the wealth and beauty in which the Emporers and Dowagers lived is stunning. The architecture of the buildings (all 800 of them) is stunning, with the attention to detail really making the difference.






On leaving the Forbidden City and heading South you enter Tiananmen Square, the largest public square in the world and one that its impossible to mention without conjuring images of tanks rolling towards students back in 1989. An extract from the Thirty-Eighth Group Army 'Accomplish the mission, conscientiously complete the Martial Law task' report to the Central Military Commission in June 1989 states:

'Before they cleared the square the various movements of the group army's 10,800 officers and soliders and 45 armoured vehicles crushed the blazing arrogance of the riot elements, smashed their lines of defense on the west and struck fear into the hearts of the diehards who were entrenched in the square'

Today the square is calm although still a mass of people although now they're taking photos, flying sites, waiting for friends or queuing to see the body of Chairman Mao and whose photo overlooks the space. Personally I didn't want to be photographed with the man but Mixie saw this as a perfect opportunity and insisted...




Friday, much to Mixie's disgust, I dragged her out of bed at 6am and we bundled ourselves into a mini-bus headed NE out of the city. The Great Wall of China is only 110km away from the city however with the bad traffic conditions it takes over 4 hours to reach it but its definitly worth the trip. I was expecting the place to be pretty crowded with tourists however upon arriving there was practically no one there, in fact I was luck that there were an Italian and an American on the bus planning on walking the same section of the wall as me otherwise i'd have been all alone (Mixie can be distant at times).





The Wall truely is awesome. Its big, strong and very long and yes, can be seen from space. Try it, look on Google Earth! For me the thing that made the wall impressive was the surrounding scenery. The area is tree-less with hundreds of small hills and peaks, that like the wall go for as far as the eye can see. Along with the Italian and American we followed the wall on foot for about 20km, at times having to scramble and climb un steep steps or carefully tread over broken sections of lose stones. Building it truely was an enormous project and i'd question the logic behind it ('a wall is only as strong as the people that guard it' remarked Ghengis Khan...) however it is remarkable and even though parts of it are tumbledown the fact that so much is still standing demonstrates its brute force.

Mission Impossible

After just 3 days training the new team between 9h-15h, then working with Paris between 1530h-22h, before clocking in another 3 -4 hours of preparation time for the next days training its pretty clear that this isn't just a large project, its pretty much Mission Impossible given that i'm running it as a 1 woman show.

My life has been stripped down to the absolute minimum. The minimum amount of time it takes to have a shower, the minimum amount of time in which an email or phone call can be handled, in order to maximise the possible amount of time left in which to sleep. At the moment i'm managing about 4-5 hours of sleep a night and so needless to say i'm exhausted.
Its also obvious that i'm not going to be able to keep this rhythmn up for very long so i'm hoping someone in Paris is right now hooking up with those Christian Scientists and getting Tom Cruise choppered in to help me out.


When i'm really stressed and/or tired its a long hot bath that usually helps me put myself back together again and so all week i've been dreaming of this:



so I dragged myself out of bed this morning in order to spend a huge amount of money on a 3 month spa membership promising a range of relaxing and repairing baths, massages and treatments. This is the first time i've ever spent this much on such a luxury, but i'm hoping the financial investment will force me to at least partake in at least an hours pure R&R once a week.


I also managed at somepoint this week to pop by the People's Republic of China Resource Building and pick up my 3 month visa:


all I need to do now is find time to go!


There are two other things i've been trying to slot in around all this work:

a) Learn Cantonese... I've only spent about 30 mins with the CDs and the book so progress is almost non-existant.

b) Continue with Riddley Walker.
Here i'm doing better than with Cantonese in that i've probably managed a page or two each night before I fall asleep. The language is tough but its roughness help add to the imagery of the post nuclear planet and communities.

Its funny also in that Friday turned out to be a pretty nuclear day.
I drempt about a HK post 'the big 1' (no doubt influenced by Walker). Then during the day I read about how the USA had posted on the web documents from Iraq that could be used to build an atomic bomb (very smart those Yankies).
Finally whilst eating dinner I watched a programme about a guy who'd photographed atomic bomb shelters.
He explained that some states and countries were so paranoid about the A-bomb back in the 80's that they built more than enough shelters to house all their peoples. Therefore if you do ever find ourselves in a Riddley Walker-esque world its very likely your fellow survivors will be the Isreali's, the entire population of Switzerland, most of Texas, Cheney, Bush and the cockroachs.
Personally in the event of all out nuclear war i'll follow the advise of the SAS survivors guidebook:

a) dig a hole
b) stand in it
c) put your head between your legs
d) kiss your ass goodbye

I just hope I get to get my money's worth out of that spa membership before either Korea or Iran finish downloading those docs !