roganjosh

Yesterday I got to hang out with 30 elephants at the thai elephant nature park outside of Chiang Mai. All of the elephants have been rescued - some because they were too abused or injured to work in the logging or trekking industry anymore, some because they were orphaned. The stories of where the elephants have come from are pretty sad, but the park itself is fantastic and all the elephants seem to be happy to have the free run of their new home. Every day tourists and volunteers turn up to meet and feed the elephants, who are remarkably fussy eaters! You can hand a piece of pumpkin to one of them, who’ll curl their trunk around the food, chew it a little and then toss it aside to reach out for some delicious watermelon or cucumber!

The feeding was pretty hands (and trunks) on, but the highlight of the day was when we followed all of the elephants down to the river to wash them! We splashed in to where the elephants were lying down, threw buckets of water over them and then started scrubbing them down with brushes. After enjoying that for a while the elephants haul themselves out of the water and back up the banks to get good and dirty again in the mudbath! The mud keeps them cool though, and acts as a sunscreen for them. The younger elephants are just like enormous puppies, jumping on each other and barging their way around the pool. The elephants are so quiet when they’re walking, and we were so close to them, that if you concentrated too much on taking a photo you’d suddenly here someone saying “look out” and turn around to see a one ton elephant about to brush past your shoulder.

Seeing the elephants playing with each other and their mahouts was fantastic, and so much more fun than going on an elephant ride where your only interaction with the elephant is to be sitting on them. Most of the elephants have suffered some major trauma in one way or another, but it’s great that the park’s founder, Lek, has managed to find a place where they can enjoy life and they’re cared for. Visiting for a day was great but I think next time in Thailand I’ll be signing up for a week’s volunteer work! It’s hard to think of a better day out!

(Chang is thai for elephant)

I had so much fun in Bellingen that I’m now a year older than I was! I spent my birthday wandering around a rainforest, which was a novel celebration, and the rest of the time just swinging around in a hammock or floating down Bellingen river on an inner tube. It was nice to get out of the city for a bit, and see some countryside - and there was plenty of it on the 8 hour trip north!

Took the overnight train back down to Sydney and I’ve been betraying my backpacker credentials by staying in a posh hotel on Coogee beach. The beach is lovely - much smaller then Bondi and much more laid back. Nice to get up in the morning, shuffle down to the sea and go for a swim in the rock pool before breakfast. The beach side living has got to be the reason so many people love living in Sydney - I think they built the harbour bridge and the opera house just to keep the tourists off the coast.

Speaking of the opera house I went to a performance of Verdi’s “A Masked Ball”, mainly just so I could get a good look around inside. Of course you can do that if you just go on a tour of the building, but I figure if they went to the trouble of building an opera house then it must be worth seeing some opera inside it! Trouble is, opera is, well… silly! People throwing their arms around and melodramatically glowering at each other while tra-la-la-ing their hearts out. This opera seemed particularly daft, with a plot against the King, a fortune teller, the King’s best friend’s wife trying to find a herb that will make her forget her love for the King. It all ended with some stabbing though, which was VERY DRAMATIC, and the music was good. Being inside the opera house is pretty cool too, sat up high looking down you get the feeling that you’re inside a shell. Why the people sat next to me felt the need to send text messages during the performance is beyond me though! These seats weren’t cheap!!

So that’s pretty much that for Australia - I’m heading for the airport this afternoon, then a flight to Bangkok, a night in an airport hotel, and another flight in the morning to Chiang Mai! I really should pay more attention when I’m booking these things.

So it turns out that they’ve built an airport and resort near to Uluru now, so there was no real need for me to fly to Alice Springs and then travel on a bus for four hours there and four hours back, but I actually enjoyed visiting Alice so everything worked out. It’s a strange town, properly in the middle of nowhere, populated by aboriginals, australians and tourists, none of whom seem to notice the existence of the others. It’s like three different ghost towns laid on top of each other. The atmosphere was a bit edgy on the whole, but I had a pleasant evening there when I arrived, and saw a beautiful sunset from Anzac hill.

The next day I was up at 5am to meet my tour bus for the epic drive out to Uluru. It’s well worth the trip! The rock is just awesome. This enormous boulder just erupts out of the surrounding, flat landscape; so smooth that you’d think it was a sculpture. It curves and flows like it’s melting in the heat, but it is just enormous - and old. At sunset it changes from a brilliant orange to a greyish purple, and standing around watching it do this while drinking champagne was very pleasant!

So after my brief visit it was back on a plane to Sydney, which I can’t quite get a handle on. It’s a beautiful city, the weather is fantastic and everyone is laid back, but I’m not entirely sure what there is to do here when you’re just visiting. It has shops, and art galleries and all that, not to mention the bridge and the opera house, but I’ve seen them before! I have been having fun though. Spent yesterday exploring the graffitied walls of Newtown, followed by a visit to the Sydney Dr Sketchy’s, and today I went to the Archibald prize at the art gallery of New South Wales. The Archibald is the national portrait prize of Australia and on Wednesdays the art gallery is open late, and it’s always nice to see the mixed crowd of art lovers that the offer of late night opening and a bar draws out.

Tomorrow I’m off to the countryside up north for a bit, to a place called Bellingen. Hopefully there are some adventures to be had up that way! see ya.

I’ve been kicking around in Perth for a little over a week now, did some snorkelling on Rottnest island, had a few barbeques, celebrated some birthdays. Yesterday I went down to Cottesloe beach to take a look at some sculptures by the sea - a yearly art exhibition of statues set up in and around the sand. Wandering around appreciating art while schoolkids learn to surf and people laze around in swimming costumes is much more fun than being inside the white walls of a gallery somewhere. Some of the sculptures were amazing, and my favourite was maybe a line of tall thin mirrors set up in front of the sea, and offset slightly so that standing in front of them you couldn’t see your reflection, but as you walked away you might catch a glimpse of yourself. As with most works of art the fun was in watching other people’s reactions to it, as they tried to sneak up on themselves. It confused the hell out of the seagulls too, who would attack and then cower from their mirror image.

If you stand still for too long though you might never start moving again, so today I’m going to be flying in to Alice Springs for two nights. Just enough time for a day trip out to Uluru before jumping back onto a plane and flying to Sydney! So, I’ll see you on the other side…

A lot of people say about London that, although it seems to be this sprawling metropolis, once you get to know the place it’s really just a load of little villages that have all squashed together. Camden is distinct from Spitalfields which is a world away from Clapham or Stratford. The same is true of Tokyo, except that in Tokyo’s case each of the little villages that make up the city is itself a vast urban world of skyscrapers and neon that makes London look pokey and quaint in comparison. And while, like London, the Tokyo metro shuts down at midnight the city itself really does never sleep. I’ve walked around Holborn at 11 o’clock of an evening and not managed to find a place where you could get a drink. In Tokyo the bars wouldn’t think about closing till 5, and even then it’s just a polite request that maybe, once you’ve finished your drink, you might like to move on to the next place.

Also like London, and countless other cities around the world now, Tokyo has a Dr Sketchy’s night, a life drawing class in a bar featuring burlesque models! Drawing clothes is always tricky when you’re more used to classic life drawing, but luckily the models tend not to wear too much. I’ve been to a couple of the classes in London which are on a Sunday afternoon, when most of the people involved are hungover, but the session in Tokyo took place on a Tuesday evening in Shibuya - in fact my last evening in the city, which was lucky because it should have been held on the Wednesday, but the venue was booked up. There was plenty of drinking, drawing and chatting and it’s the most sociable art class you could ever go to! I even won a prize for one of my drawings, but since the prize was two shots of tomato juice, tequila and tobasco I would have been happy for my good fortune to have been shared. Still, you can’t look a gift horse in the mouth, and it was a top evening out! I recommend The Pink Cow in Shibuya to any future travellers.

So what else did I get up to in Tokyo? I met up with my Fijian-wife Annette (When I was in Fiji it ended up that we were the only two people staying in the dorm accomodation, so everyone assumed we were together on honeymoon) who now lives in Sendai, but pops down to the big city when she can. We drank the night away in Yokohama and checked out all the love hotels in Shibuya looking for the ones with Hello Kitty themed rooms (We didn’t find any!). I laughed at the girls in Harijuku, all dressed up as punks or nurses or goths and posing for photographs with tourists. I found Godzilla!*. I saw Mount Fuji from the Fuji building in Odaibo - That mountain is huge! It just looms over the city on a clear day, even though it’s maybe 100 kms away. I even managed to go to the Studio Ghibli museum before leaving Japan, which was a little bit disappointing, but probably amazing if you’re a kid. The bulding was very cool at least, lots of bridges, spiral staircases and child sized doorways. Apart from that I was mostly just wandering around, eating great food, gawping at stuff. The usual activities!

So I flew to Australia the other day, and it was a full fifteen minutes from leaving the airport before I head Men At Work’s “Land Down Under”, so I guess my plane must have landed early. I flew Qantas which was okay, but I had to ask for a beer three times before they remembered to bring me one, and then it was a Fosters! Is this really the spirit of Australia?! Anyway, I’m here at my cousin Tom’s getting used to the heat (it was 37 degrees the other day) and trying to work out what I’m going to do next! I’ll let you know how I get on.

* The small statue of Godzilla that is, which for some reason no-one ever reveals the precise location of when they describe it. I think the search is an integral part of it, so suffice to say it’s in Ginza, near Hibiya park, next to some people having a cigarette break