Moderate excitement is the order of the day at Chez Flashy. I have a brand spanking new job (not the one I wanted, but hey) and I have been informed that I have had a photo I took at Gaudi's Sagrada Familla chosen for an online guide to Barcelona. It's actually a crappy photo but I'll take what I can get right now. Ima be rich soon, I expect.

See it here:
http://www.schmap.com/spain/churches/#r=none&mapview=Map&tab=Places&p=72407&topleft=46.64944,-8.10791&bottomright=33.32135,4.24072&i=72407_2.jpg

Go me.

Maybe I spoke too soon. But it's messy so we shall see. Also, a bit gutted right now.

Ladies,
Flashman is officially single once again. Form an orderly queue and be patient as there is plenty of Flashy to go around.

F.

Meh.

I have an urge to take a very long walk. I'm thinking I would like to walk either from Le Puy in France to Cape Finsterre in Spain, about 1600 km, or do the first half of the Appalachian Trail in the U.S, also about 1600km. I simply can't afford either of these walks as they will take about eight weeks to complete and both require me to spend up big on airfares and the like.

I'm thinking I could probably pull some kind of writing gig to offset a reasonable chunk of these costs. I have some ideas as to who might like to pay for such articles or essays but I'm happy to receive any input my adoring public might choose to provide in terms of who might buy the work or some other ruse I might undertake to defray my costs.

So your starter for 20 points, no conferring, is this: How might Flashy get other people to pay for his travel sickness?

Go!

Mandalay

Contrary to what you might have guessed from popular songs, books and movies the road to Mandalay is not a cheery magical mystery tour. In fact the road to Mandalay sucks balls. Approximately 650km from Yangon a bus ride to Mandalay will take somewhere between 12 and 30 hours depending on a range on variables. Ours was ok in that it was only about 16 hours but the horror was fairly full on. First off, the buses are chinese and have narrow seats. I'm not narrow and nor is Scott. For once in my life having broad shoulders and a freakishly large head was a drawback. As were my clown-sized feet and longish legs. By the end of the trip I had a swollen right knee, a big bruis under my right thigh (from hanging over the edge of the seat onto the chair adjustor) and a crick in my neck that is still kind of sore.

You might be tempted to say, 'So Phil, it was uncomfortable- deal with it you big wussie." Sure, I agree. But the horror was only beginning. Burmese pop music is saccharine, inane and thoroughly awful. Take Western teen pop and dumb it way down but turn up the irritating intonations and cliched musical motifs and your getting somewhere near it. It's much worse at 200 decibels, especially when these are being generated by a single speaker on the bus...right above your seat. I have never been so happy to see a Jean Claude Van Damme movie being put into a DVD player as I was that night. Oh God, kill me please!

Anyhow, the next morning at around 9 am we rolled into Mandalay, engaged the services of a taxi driver ( a young guy and his fairly old Dad) and and rolled into Manadalay at about 20 km/h as their ancient little Mazda pickup was incapable of going any faster. We asked to be dropped at a clock tower in the centre of town and then the trouble started. We pulled up out the front of a guesthouse- not the one we had in mind- and without a clock tower in sight. This fairly routine move by cabbies and innkeepers is not something I usually let bother me too much but a combination of a shit night on the bus and a little leftover India angryness led to a shameful display of yelling and arm waving on my part. 'Do you see a fucking clock tower? Why the fuck are we not at the fucking clock tower? What the fuck is this place you fucking prick. Fuck fuck fuckitty fuck" and so on. I was way over the top; Joe looked embarrassed and Scott finally told me to calm down...which is Scott's polite way of telling me to stop being an arsehole. Then the young guy did something a tout has never done in my presence. He apologised and told the truth. "I'm sorry sir but we really need the business." I was still too angry to see that he was genuinely upset over my outburst and he looked really sorry. We trudged off and walked the whole block and a half to where we had planned to go. By then I had cooled off and felt a total dick. I thought of going back to apologise but after the performance I gave I just couldn't face the guy. Dammit.

Anyway, the Nylon guest house is nice and is directly across the road from the Nylon Icecream shop. Nope, I have no idea why either. We did some chores and set out to see what the fair town of Mandalay had to offer. One thing it has to offer is some really good Shan food, more fine eateries than you can imagine and hordes of lovely people. It also has the horrible fort in the centre of town (rebuilt with prisoner and other forced labour only a few years ago) which is a military site for the most part and basically acts as the menacing, glowering evil heart of this otherwise fine town. Those fucking Generals!

Mandalay Hill

Put simply Mandalay Hill is a hill...in Mandalay, with a big Buddhist thingy on top. I think it must be a Pagoda cos it seems too big to be a stupa but really, who can tell? Anyhow, it is a 250 metre climb up to the top of the bugger and the view of Mandala by night is actually pretty cool. For those of you in Brisbane it's like going to the top of a hill in Ascot and looking across Brisbane as it would have looked about 50 years ago. Pretty. After haggling with rickshaw and taxi drivers we finally took a rickshaw back to the Nylon Hotel. Scott and Joe cleared out a show by the famous Moustache Brothers and I piked and watched Uma's bazoomas in Dangerous Liasons on HBO.

The following day we booked a car and driver for the day (U.S.$25) and went for a run through the ancient cities of Amarapura. These sites are about a 30min drive from Mandalay and have some really striking things to see. Amazingly enough there were Buddhist Stupas! Many of them...who could have expected such a thing? Our driver was a good old stick named Mr. Ong who gave us quite a good running commentary on what we were clambering over and warned us about the 'business monks' up on Saigaing Hill who would try to make us pay to look around (they did, we didn't..maybe Joe did, I cant recall). For me the highlight was U Bien's Bridge, a 1.2 km long teak bridge that spans an area of lake. The bridge is really ramshackle and wandering but walking across gives you a birds eye view of the locals decimating the local fish population, enormous nets being the order of the day rather than rod and reel. I'm sure this will end badly but to be honest it isn't my problem so whatever.

Across the far side of the bridge you can find a couple of little monasteries and once again take your shoes off and walk clockwise around a structure that will have far too many buddhas in it. The great find of the day was a guy sitting on some shaded ground out front selling water colours of monks walking across the bridge and fisherfolk doing their thing and such. I think between me, Joe and Scott we pretty much cleaned out this guys little stall...happy times for all. That night we had a slap up meal at Mandalay's answer to Mrs. Miggin's Pie Shoppe and rolled out the following morning on another too old for words bus and the six (actually nine) hour haul to Bagan. Bagan was fab and I shall write about that sometime soon when I get a chance.

Mandalay is good, go there sometime.

Yangon: The happiest junta.

As long-term military dictatorships go Myanmar is actually a pretty cruisey and rather cheerful place. Yangon is all a-bustle with activity; there is a soulful muezzin in the mosque up the road from where we stayed, lots of novice Buddhist monks walk about singing and the store keepers are really nice. The whole county is teeming with German and Swiss tourists but they are quite good fun on the whole. The harbour is packed with small and medium sized Chinese freighters bobbing up and down at anchor. The local currency (Kyat) changes at about 1300 per dollar which makes you feel like a gangster as you carry around huge wads of notes in your bulging pockets. Food is super-yummy and dirt cheap. A good slap up mean in a noodle house with a bottle of soft drink can be had for about $1.30. Cheaper still are the hawker stalls on the street. Beer is about $1.20 for a tallie. Fags are about $0.70 per pack. An aircon room with a very good cooked breakfast is yours for about US$6. The fruit is abundant and fresh and whole pomelos, skillfully peeled, can be had for about $0.50. Oh God the food was good.

The centre of Yangon is marked by the Sule Paya, a Buddhist pagoda/stupa around which a roundabout has been built. It's not bad but really hasn't that much to offer. At evening the place to be is on a rooftop terrace to gaze upon the Schwe Dagdon Pagoda while sipping Myanmar Extra Strong beer. Schwe means 'Gold', Dagon is the name this part of Myanmar had before it was called Rangoon, and Pagoda means...um, Buddhist stuff. Everything is schwe in Yangon, so much so that you start singing the old ABC hit all the time: "You are schwe! (Schwe!) Always believe in your soul..." and so on. It's catchy. The Schwee Dagon Pagoda, which we christened the Swear to God Pagoda to make it easier to say, is really something to see at night. Yangon is a fairly dark place after dark with minimal street lighting. In the distance this golden pagoda of about 98 metres, lit up like a Christmas tree, oozes a golden haze into the night sky. It's rather spectacular. When you make the trip to the Swear to God you realise that there is a lot of gold leaf on the thing, it's really tall and there are numerous other pagodas, stupas and such which surround it. Too many in fact, it all gets a little overwhelming. There are also many of those electric Buddhas which have the "Wheel of Fortune" style flashing halos. Noice.

Met two bunches of people there that are worth mentioning. The first are a group of three Swiss travelers we called 'The Swiss'. Marcus, his Polish wife the beautiful Magdalena, and their friend Pascale became more-or-less traveling buddies the whole way through Myanmar. Just to challenge Swiss stereotypes Marcus works for a drug company and Magdalena works in a bank. I wondered if maybe Pascale worked in hiding Nazi gold or making chocolate but it turns out he works in the concrete industry. How very Swiss they all were. We really liked these guys and had dinner with them on a few occasions and generally kept each other company. They were great. Magdelena and I spent one whole dinner bitching about Ph.D programs and how fucking shitty that scene is. Brilliant.

The other notable meeting in Yangon was another Swiss couple. These guys were older, around 70, and still doing the backpacker thing. The guy, whose name I forget, and his lovely French wife Clara spend about five months of the year in Alaska deep-sea fishing on this chaps boat. Then they go to Mexico for a few months and fish from his other vessel which is based there. The rest of the time they travel about to places of interest and meet up with their children, one of whom just happens to be a marine biologist working at UQ's Lizard Island project! They had beaten us up the Kinnaur Valley and the death drop roads by a couple of years. Respect.

We asked how a Swiss guy ends up a deep sea fisherman. His answer? He was a disillusioned economist who left Switzerland and traveled for an extended period before finding his life's work and meeting his beautiful wife while tooling about Paris on a Lambretta in 1962. He hasn't looked back. Disillusioned economist? Traveled around looking for...something? Found beautiful French wife and life's work?

Are...are you my Daddy?

Bottoms up!

Burma's bumper bounty of bodaciously bootylicious babes both boggles and beggars belief. There, I've said it. They aren't short of devastatingly gorgeous women here...it's the one thing they run a surplus in. Added to this is that everyone wears these skirts named lungyis. Lungyis are ace and I have bought myself a couple. Would it be immodest of me to say that I look totally hot in my Lungyi? Well, I do. The Lungyi that the women wear is made of a lighter fabric than the gents skirt and has this habit of clinging to bottoms and thighs in a most distracting manner. And everyone here seems to have a great bum. It's like moving to Butt Town. I've bought a couple of ladies lungyi for distribution to those of you with the best bums.

The China town area is the normal million miles an hour food-a-thon it is in many cities but with nicer skirts. The main market, named after Bogyoke Aung San, the independence hero and father of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, is actually worth shopping at. The money changers on the streets are dodgy but you manage. There is only minimal begging and the touting is fairly laid back. The cars are an odd mix of left and right hand drive cast off from Japan and they are never retired. I have seen so many Datsun 120Y it isn't worth talking about. Old Corollas? Got 'em. Clapped out Skylines? Check. A sprinkling of old Austins and Fiats? Covered. The buses are really leftovers from the 50's...seriously.

The whole city needs a new roof and a fresh coat of paint but given that it would be a handsome old colonial town nestled by a snug little harbour with a lot of excellent bummage to be viewed as you sip teas in the footpath tea stalls. The people are lovely, the sights are interesting but the government is a horror story. The Generals essentially run the country as a racket; they have a direct and very lucrative involvement in the massive drug trade out of the country. They also have the gas and forestry contracts with China (which exercises an inordinate influence in Myanmar) all tied up, and they have spent each year since 1962 making sure the country is this year a little more fucked up than last year. If you get a chance to do something that harms these snakes grab it with both hands- people with big smiles and fantastic arses are in peril!

You can get around Myanmar without the government laying their filthy hands on your money by not staying in government guest houses, not using government transport services (bus lines and the dreadful Myanmar Airways) and by making sure you spread your dollars among the shopkeepers, inn keepers, restaurants and so on. If any business claims to be a government concern give it a swerve. Tip liberally- it's still laughably cheap. I feel pretty good about it to be honest.

Yangon: it's fab. Get yo'self there

The roads up to the Kinnaur Valley are scary beyond belief. Sooo very scary. Our first stop in the Kinnaur Valley was a place called Rekon Peo, about 250 clicks north east of Shimla and only about 50-80 clicks from the Tibetan border. High country. Bat Country. And, as it happens, apple growing country with little orchards tucked away in between the trees and the staggering views. Reaching Peo took about 10 hours on a very old bus, largely due to the dodgy and winding roads. Of course at the end of this journey you can say you are in the Himalayas so that is some consolation. The bus was like...remember the Partridge Family bus? The one that Mrs. Partidge, all the other Partridge kids and that Reubens chap travelled on? Yeah, a lot like that. Same age too if appearences are anything to go by. One difference was that the first 20% of the bus is sealed off for the driver. Is this a security thing we wondered? Then the GangaMaster hit on the answer: the drivers need so much room to contain their truly enormous balls. Honestly, it's the only plausible answer there is. This is also where we met "Hungarian Kya". When we boarded the bus in Shimla he asked us what we paid for our tickets. We told him. His answer? Screw his face up and mutter, "I dont like to be cheated." That was it. No explanation, no context. He "doesn't like to be cheated"and is perhaps the world's most bitter man. You might hear more of Hungarian kya as we go along.

The death-drops are everywhere. To your left...death drop. To your right...death drop. Above you...large rock overhangs that could crush you like a beetle. When I say death drop I mean many hundreds of metres down. On a narrow road no more than about 8 metres wide. Unsealed and very bumpy. We travelled at night for the last 2 hours of the journey. In the Partridge Family bus. Driven by the guys with gigantic stones. I nearly kissed the ground at the end of that trip. But it was beautiful. Very beautiful. Extremely so.


After a night in Peo we awoke to the sight of Kinnaur Kailash, a six thousand metre snow-capped mountain across the valley from Peo. Amazing. We were at about 2500 metres- we looked across a huge valley and then straight up to the peak of this bugger. Just amazing how big it was even at the distance we were from it and given that we were already some distance up. I wont forget that in a hurry. But no time for lingering as we had to go to Kalpa. Three hundred metres directly above Peo, Kalpa is reached via 13 km of winding, death-droppy roads. We hitched a ride with some locals who were going up for a wedding, graciously declined their offer to attend the wedding and settled into Kalpa.


Rakeesh is your go-to guy if you are ever in Kalpa. Rakeesh runs a small store more-or-less on the main...um, alley,I guess, of Kalpa. Rakeesh can sell you what you want (in the Reverend's case lots and lots of Fanta)' send young local boys off at night to secure you local apple wine ( a cross betwen metho and paint stipper but waming in the cold of night) and suggests some great walks around Kalpa. Rakeesh also told us that some Hungarian guy had asked if he knew where the four Australian guys were staying because he didn't want to stay there! Rakeesh has strong views on many issues. In terms of places to visit everywhere except Kalpa is, and I think I'm quoting, "Bullshit place". Delhi? "Bullshit place". Varanassi? "Bullshit place" The Moon? "Bullshit place!!!" I liked Rakeesh.


The first of the walks Rakeesh recommended is probably the best, most scary and overall the most memorable walk I have ever taken. It's only about a 10KM walk from Kalpa to a little place called Rohgi but the roads are waaaay high above a huge valley with the Sutlej river roaing away hundreds of metres below. The wind howls down from both below and above with a sound like banshees on a bad day (though I didn't see Souxie). At times the wind threatens to drag you over the edge (not really but it feels like it when you are terror-stricken). It is the kind of place where as you round a bend you half expect to see Sherlock Holmes and Moriarty locked in mortal combat. Like old-time cage fighters...in coats and old hats. Beside the edge of the abyss are these large concrete bollards to let unfortunate drivers know they are about to have a terrifying death. You can walk up to these and kneel, hold on with all your strength and gaze down into the valley below. It was fun in a pant-pooping kind of way. Roghi itself isnt much to talk about.


The second walk was to a place called Pangi. Pangi is ok but this walk just didn't measure up after the walk of the previous day. Still, it was a nice 12km walk in the mountains so no real reason to complain. From Kalpa we managed to score a cheap lift to a place called Sangla. Sangla is a few hundred meters higher up but much further along the valley and takes a good few hours to reach. This is easily the most scary bit of driving I have ever done. It was all the terror of the previous days driving but with even higher death-drops, worse roads, and one or two vehicles that didn't make the turn to be seen down various ravines and such. From Sangla we grabbed a local bus to Chhitkul (Pop 610) which at 3400 metres and change is a fair way up. Guess who forced his way onto the bus just as we were leaving? Yes, the Cheated Hungarian bringing his unique brand of cheer to proceedings. He may not like to be cheated but he certainy likes to be seated; he stole the GangaMasters chair. I also managed to join the cheated hungarian to double-dick the GangasMaster- from front and rear- in the very crowded aisle of this bus.


Chhitkul really makes you gasp; partly because it is 'sit down and gaze upon it for hours' pretty and partly because the air is really thin. I was really feeling the altitude by now and had a fairly big headache and no real desire to romp in the hills Sound of Music style. And it was very, very cold also. The Reverend's dodgy thermometre called it at 7.9 degrees at five in the afternoon. the Hungarian shuffled off to another roonm in the only motel in the villiage never to be seen again. We had an early night because it was too cold for anything else and slept soundly till four in the morning when one of the locals decided to park his truck next to our rooms and do a little revving of the engine. Bastard! Had yummy breakfast with town dog at our feet and a curious cow looking through the door of the breakfast room. Chatted with the locals, drank chai, hung out and waited for our ride back to Sangla.


It turns out Sangla is actually pretty nice but nothing really happens there. No nightclubs, no latin dance parties...there is a billiard room and it's where you can get on, if you know what I mean. A few hundred metres lower made the headache go away so I was happy to be there. Hmmn, Sangla. Nice people, great scenery but a little dull to be honest. Apart from the vicious brawl in the street we saw the night we stayed; some of the local young guys can really go at it. We went back to Shimla the next day in a four wheel drive which basically reproduced the white-knuckle terror of the death drops but this time in reverse- like a carnival ride. Got to Shimla, found a bed, went to Domino's.

Kinnaur Valley- I'd go back I reckon.

Varanassi

Varanasi: dirty, not overly attractive from some angles, and closed. We arrived in Varanasi on election day so the centre of the city was in lockdown and we couldn't get any transport. We walked about 4km into town in the blazing heat with local journos taking photos of us for the 'Election Transport Chaos!" stories to be printed for the following morning edition. It was okay.

I mentioned to the Reverend that the city had a menacing edge, a nasty vibe...not outright hostile but like a sullen dog that hasn't decided whether or not it is going to bite you. A quick read of the papers the next day explained all this. A few days before the election a popular candidate had been murdered in the streets by gunmen hired by a jailed and very much feared local mafia Don. On election day- the day we arrived- a bomb had gone off, police had exchanged fire with persons unknown on the streets, and groups of protesters had been broken up by police in charges with large canes (lathis) used to whip on protesters. So, you know, it wasn't the cheeriest of towns when we got there but it all seemed to simmer down fairly quickly.


I did get to see my first real live bullfight in Varanasi. In the main street no less! Two bulls set to it on the main drag...people gather to watch the bovine gigantimachy. Police used their lathis to keep another bull and a cow from becoming involved (they were having a spell from caning protesters and shooting at folks) and everyone forgot their election day cares and just hung about watching the bulls knock heads. When two fully grown bulls clash head-on you can feel it through the roads from metres away. Horns, snotty nostrils, cuts from horns...it was pretty brutal stuff. One local gleefully informed me that this was something of a treat and that bulls only do this about once a month in town and I should count myself lucky. I did. I also took some photos, got a bit scared of being crushed once or twice, and ultimately got bored and wandered off. Go figure.


The main attraction of Varanasi are the ghats that line the Ganga as it winds along beside the town. If you die here I think you get a pass on the whole endless cycle of rebirth and reach nirvana instead. Maybe it's just if you're cremated here? Who knows? Whatever, people's bodies are burnt alongside the river on piles of burning wood- I saw one and it seems a pretty fast process. The ashes are then fed into the already foully polluted Ganga to be stirred in with all the other bits of bodies and the millions of tons of raw sewerage that are pumped into the river each day. I had laundry done while we were in Varanasi; the dhoby wallahs take you clothes, dunk them in the river and then beat the everloving snot out of them against rocks lining the shore. They do an ok job but I'm not sure how I feel about my shirts and smalls being washed in a mixture of Aunty Doris' pancreas and 'Big Sanjay's' morning dump.


We had a sweet billet overlooking the ghats and did a fair bit of the old wandering along being pounced on by boatmen, jewelry sellers and drug dealers. I have never been offered this many drugs in my life. I have never been offered this many boat rides either for what it is worth. Or jewelry. If only some of them offered a pleasant smile and a heaping helping of silence it would be so much nicer.

I got sick of the ghats pretty quickly and spent most of my time wandering the alleys of the old city. This is the hidden jewel -keenly priced and of the highest quality- in the crown of Varanasi. These alleys wind everywhere, pass everything and are a cool, shady and relatively calm respite from the frenzy of bullshit on the river. You push past all sorts of people and goats, cows and, I shit you not, buffalo. I had a scene with a big black and white cow in a narrow alley where the cow wanted to turn but couldn't on account of being cow-sized, I wanted to go past the cow but didn't want to get crushed against the walls by the silly moo. I'm a terrible inexperienced cowpoke on account of being a city boy. Result? Me gingerly slapping the cow on the arse saying " Shoo cow! Shoo!" while hoping that no-one was watching. Anyhow, it worked out and both me and the big moo cow got on with our lives.

We did make the effort to wake up at stupid o'clock to take a boat ride on the river at sunrise. Yep, that was pretty nice. It's the only time of the day apart from sunset when the city really looks great. Our guide had no English so I have no idea about some of the stuff I saw but I have some sweet photos.

All in all I would rate Varanasi a go-to place. There seem to be heaps of Hindus doing religious stuff all over the place which just leaves me cold but if you can look past the God guff it's a nice enough town on a foully polluted river that really can get you cremated in record time if you have an unfortunate accident.

Try to not go during an election.

W00t, a new Anabel set! Yum!

My life is complete. Sort of.


Also, I noticed last night when out for an Australia day drink that all the bogan kids seem to have joined the National Front. When did this happen and why wasn't I informed?