Remembrance

I arrived eleven minutes late to the shrine.

The guns already fired, with poppy wearing figures making a slow return across the Yarra.

When the first shot fired I was  half across a bridge. I'd stopped over a railway line and took off my cycle helmet in awkward reverence, ignoring the endless rattle of the city.

A man near by stopped and looked at his watch, to check his silent pause was on the dot.

I've had less than half an hour of minutes in my life to remember.

As a child it's explained, but now it's understood. Almost.

I arrive and sit on grass near by as a brass band plays 'Waltzing Matilda', somehow somberly.

A smile creeps across my face.

Fast jets shoot by, flaring smoky promises to founding future shrines.

As the jet trails fade, I queue to enter the inner sanctum.

At midday, on the eleventh day of the eleventh month the sun shines on the word 'love', to help us remember.

I hope I can remember this for more than an hour.

To the lighthouse, with a twist.

Today I visited somewhere I've wanted to visit my whole life. You might have already guessed it's a lighthouse. For Virginia Woolf fans [spoiler alert], the twist is that I finally made it.
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I have fond memories of growing up in Loughborough. As more distant memories do, they blur into one. When I think of being 6 or 7, my memory is of walking home from primary school. In my head it's usually autumn, and my pockets are full of conkers and other clichés . There was a certain part of the path walking home that always seemed to have a big puddle, and busses would always splash you.

So I'd get home, the central heating would be timed to be on already. A loving parent would be preparing dinner, and, if my sister permitted or was absent, I would get the spot by the radiator and hold my legs against it to dry them out.

My sister and I would sit there, hour after hour, year after year, watching children's television.

Growing up in England as a child your television was either home-grown or American. That was basically it.

However, in the early nineties a new show appeared where everyone had Australian ascents and it always seemed to be sunny. It was called 'Round the Twist'. The music was catchy, the story lines were hilarious, occasionally supernatural, and usually with a firm (but not patronising) moral message. And it was always good. And they lived in a lighthouse.

Ask anyone who grew up in the eighties/nineties if they watched this show and they will sing you the theme tune. It was repeated solidly for over ten years and I think it's probably the best children's' show that's ever been made.

My sister bought me the box set a few years ago and I've watched a few of them recently. They're genuinely still really good and often, much much stranger than I remembered.

This show was my first glimpse at life in Australia. Before it, I knew very few things about the place. For example, the only fact I knew about Australia from the age of four until 11 was that they had bum-biting spiders. From 11 onwards I genuinely thought 'Waltzing Matilda' was the national anthem until I was in my twenties.

I remember that 'Neighbours' was always on after kids TV, but the few times I did stray into it, it was just adults sitting around talking and schools girls in gingham uniforms gossiping. I never lasted more than five minutes.

But 'Round the Twist' was great, and it got me into Paul Jennings (it was based on his books). I devoured his books and also read 'Misery Guts' (by Morris Gleitzman) about an English family that run a chippy that burns down and they decide to move to Australia. It was also made into a great TV series and I guess it was at that age that the seed of the idea of moving to Australia as an escape was sowed.

It's a well trodden narrative and films as recent as the 'Inbetweeners 2' still peddle the idea of it being a sun-soaked heaven on earth for British people.

So today, Alicia and I were driving our car along the Great Ocean Road to the lighthouse from 'Round the Twist'.

As for Virginia Woolf [no one has used square brackets more effectively than her], her book 'To the lighthouse' popped up in my head today for a couple of reasons. It's set during the Great War and paints a painful picture of the good life, just out of reach, and interjects short and powerful reminders throughout [usually in square brackets] that men are being mown down just across the channel. Without meaning to spoil the book, they always talk of going to visit the local lighthouse, but never get round to it. For me, the lighthouse represented the promise of the good life.

On the way to the lighthouse today, we drove through the memorial arch of the Great Ocean Road and were reminded that the road we were driving on was built by returned veterans from the first world war [to give them work] and it is the world's largest war memorial.

Alicia and I took it in turns to drive, so we could both gawp freely at the amazing views and spectacular waves.

And then, in the distance, the lighthouse appeared. A familiar sight from my childhood that has come to represent Australia in my mind.

As I drove there, I decided that not only is the Great Ocean Road the biggest memorial, it's also the most effective. I can't think of a better way to honour those murdered by war than to build a road that doesn't need to exist, just so it can remind you how beautiful life is, and how bloody lucky we are [have you ever, ever felt like this?].

So in wet trousers [by a radiator in England] I set out on a journey and arrived at the lighthouse.

What's app doc?

This is the story of how I used my phone to protect my balls from harmful radiation in Vietnam.

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It's no exaggeration to say that ever-improving technology has improved almost every aspect of travelling during my life.

I’m old enough to remember post-cards being sent unironically, long distance phone calls that cost more than a good meal and waiting four weeks to realise you had your thumb over the lens.

In Vietnam, for the first time ever when travelling, I brought a local sim and enjoyed unlimited access to the internet on my phone.

Of all technological progress, being able to access the internet anywhere really has changed everything.  No need to worry about storing maps offline, hunting out wifi hotspots to share your latest digital brag or losing irreplaceable photos if your phone should be suddenly snatched from your hand by a thief on a motorbike.

However, of all the online tools, the most unexpected thing which has really come into its own has been translation.  I downloaded Google's translation app (a babel-fish clone) for a bit of fun while bored in a station. I was astounded how far this technology has come.  It quickly became indispensable.

For those unaware, not only can you use text translation, you can also speak into it in a range of languages and have it read out the translation back to you. In some languages, you can just point your camera at signs and the phone quickly tells you what it says. Hopefully.

It is on the whole quite accurate, with a few hilarious exceptions. We tried to strike up a conversation with a friendly waitress with limited English skills. We hit a conversational hurdle so I whipped out my phone and she told me that she loved the smell of my milky cobra thighs. We still don't know what she meant.

The translation tool came into its own one day when I wasn't feeling well. Too much sleeping with the air conditioning on had given me a chest infection and I'd been in bed for a day or two. I generally try to avoid doctors when travelling but after coughing up a bit of blood one morning, I thought it was time to get checked out.

A local doctor was sent for. His English was limited, my Vietnamese stretched to two or three words.

Out came the phone, I quickly explained and he quickly diagnosed and said I needed a chest X-ray. He charged me less than two US dollars. Almost nothing to me, though a huge amount to some I’m sure.

Our hotel receptionist offered to drive us to the hospital and come along with us. I'm so grateful she did, as she did more than a translation app could do. She took us to the better, less crowded university hospital and also negotiated the 'local' price for me, which tourists don't usually get.

On entering, we walked past a trolley with a man who seemed to have been in a car accident and was bleeding heavily. I tentatively sat on a nearby bed and told Alicia to touch NOTHING. My trusty alcohol gel was poised. Within a few minutes, (after some more successful translation) I was given blood tests and the results within one hour and waited almost no time for an X-ray (unlike some of the poor local people).  

I walked into the room and was greeted by an X-ray machine that looked older than me and still used a film plate. I was asked to take my shirt off, stand facing the wall and prepare to be probed. By photons.

I suddenly remembered something was missing from all this and got slightly nervous I was about to be accidentally sterilised. Being able to say 'do you have a lead plate so I can cover my genitals’ is a phrase I’m convinced I wouldn't know had I been taught Vietnamese for years.

So happily, my phone was able to translate and I stepped into a lead plate harness-thingy which happened to be hanging next to me, as the radiographer had forgotten about it.

So don’t let anyone ever tell you that keeping your phone in your pocket is bad for your balls!

Beer fishing in Ha Long bay

Alicia and I were squid fishing one evening off the back of our boat.  We were staying on a small cruise boat to explore Ha Long bay. The day was taken up with exploring the world heritage bay, but the evenings offered little activity unless you fancied jumping ship and joining a Korean karaoke party on a neighbouring boat.  So we fished in the evening to pass the time.  

We weren't having much luck.  The technique involves putting on a bright light at night off the back of a boat and gigging a bright green lure off of a bamboo pole about six feet down. Not the most interesting kind of fishing.  The sky was black and the full moon was concealed by cloud.   So when we saw a small women-powered traditional bamboo boat coming towards us with lights on, it caught our interest.  Although the turtle shaped boats (about the size of a double bed) are a common sight in the bay, this one was coming right at us.  

'Cold beer' she shouted from 40m away. 

'Khong, cam on' we replied (no, thank you).

We had cold beer on our boat you see.  

'Cheaper cold beer' she said. 

Suddenly, we were interested.  Why pay 50p a can when you can pay 25p? Although we felt a bit naughty buying cold beer off the back of our boat, we justified it by saying we were supporting the local economy.  Quite what that economy is, or will become though, we weren't sure.  

It became even less clear the next day.

[The rest of this post is about the community of floating fishing villages we saw and my ponderings on why I was able to buy a beer off of the back of the boat.]

The next day we did a kayak 'tour' around a small floating fishing village - it was like something out of 'Waterworld'.  A strange mixture of traditional subsistence living and tablet computers.   

It was interesting to look around but I'm always uncomfortable taking photos of people's lives in a very direct and obvious way.  I'm not a national geographic photographer (yet...) capturing a disappearing culture, I'm just a visitor to a country where people are living their lives. 

But I was interested to learn more about these people who lived in floating villages though.

It seems that people have been making a living from fishing in this bay for thousands of years, with a culture stretching back into pre-history.  Traditionally, communities of less than a hundred would live around a small central barn like-structure, with families living, cooking and sleeping in their respective boats. 

When the site became a world heritage site, the single party Government decided that these scattered communities needed to be centralised and they 'rehoused' people.

They have been housed in floating metal shacks and everyone seems to have a private generator. They are laid out in more centralised and larger settlements. Having visited the Ethnology museum in Hanoi, there seemed to have been little attempt here to preserve some of the traditional architecture or layout, or even to recognise the people as part of the environment and keep them in the bay.

So now, they buy in water and fuel with the money from selling fish and in return, the Government doesn't tax them. The Government collects litter and empties septic tanks and evacuates them when a typhoon is coming. There is even a floating bank with a cash machine.  In addition, an Australian university built a school.   These are surely good things.  Education is always precious in any form.  

That said, you sense a certain way of life is being lost, but there is no point pretending it wouldn't have changed anyway, with new technology and materials available.  Bruce Parry explores this in his series 'Tribe'.  As a visitor, the worry is that you become part of a planned exploitation, where people become an exhibit, as if they are part of the natural history tour.  

The Government are considering rehousing all the people from the fishing villages in the city to work.  Aside from wondering who might catch the fish for the people in the city (other than trawlers) I wonder who thinks this is a good idea, why, and who has a say in a non-democratic system.  No one seems entirely sure. 

Trying to see both sides of this, clearly there needed to be some change.  Aside from the huge numbers killed every time there was a typhoon, there were issues with poverty and access to education.  In addition, the Goverment likely feared that the environment of the bay and therefore the status as a world heritage site would be threatened if people were living here and polluting. As in so many other parts of the world, cultures and communities that were once in balance with the environment now pollute as they make less and import more. 

As Bruce often concludes, it's just changing.  

They say the children here can row bamboo boats before they can walk.  I hope they have the choice to be fisherman as well as anything else they want to be, not just put into an economic position where it makes most sense to adapt fishing boats to row tepid beer around the bay for the whim of tourists. 

An Awkward Ending in Hanoi

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Rags to riches

It always strikes me how money is a mercurial thing and wealth is very much a state of mind. 

In England, I had more than I could wish for including good friends and good health, so I felt wealthy. However financially, we were very comfortable and happy, but I wouldn't use the word rich.     
Once you've travelled places where there is real poverty (or even just seen it on a screen), you once again reevaluate your own position. 

This is the case in Hanoi. 

Here, relativetly, we are rich.  You are reminded of this by the hope in peoples eyes when you look at things they are selling. 

But, we didn't feel THAT rich.  I've got a handy little application on my phone which lets me work out any currency into any currency (should you want to know how many dong a bitcoin costs, for example). 

Yet our first day here, everything seemed a bit pricey.  For example, I was looking for a post flight massage and it was 30 quid.  Not going to break the bank, but you'd think twice.  And this happened with everything all day.  Not expensive, but not cheap.  I was starting to worry our budget might not last.  

Then, when buying some quite cheap sunglasses, I realised that in fact they were very cheap.  I had been converting all the prices from chinese yuan, not dong (to be fair the flags look quite similar with jet lag- I didn't switch it back after a quick stop over in Guangzhou). 

Suddenly everything had dropped in price by 90%. Suddenly we were rich again!  

  I'm writing this while drinking a beer with Alicia with chicken pecking at our feet and motorbikes weaving and beeping past an old french railway. 

Right, that's quite enough of this. I'm off for a massage.  Or ten...

Let me begin

So I find myself on the first leg of a long journey.  I'm leaving London and moving to Australia with my girlfriend Alicia.  Although we are currently rattling our way down the piccadilly line and it all feels quite normal, we hope to travel from here around Viet Nam and Cambodia before starting a new chapter in Melbourne. 

I will write this blog as we go, for friends and family who want to see what we are up to and for anyone else who might be thinking about moving down under but has got as far in their plans as reading blogs. 

So that's all for now!