PERU Looking for Paddington Bear

G2      REAL LIVES            5 February 2004


LOOKING FOR PADDINTON BEAR

A two-month search for Paddington Bear in Darkest Peru, adventure enough for an OAP with a dodgy knee and an equally ancient wife with a pair of artificial ones. Posing as cool, grey haired, gap year students with rucksack, return tickets to fly, Lonely Planet and an email hotel booking, we set off for a couple of nights in Lima. But think of us not as backpackers, rather as Michael Palin without a time limit or a film crew, part adventure, part discovery and a lot of curiosity. Time is one luxury most pensioners have. It gives us time to look, to meet, to sit and stare, and to absorb something of completely different ways of life. Leisurely travelling suits us and doesn’t break the bank.


Where to Start? 
Even I know bears are far more likely to be found in the mountains than in the Amazon basin or the coastal desert. But we escaped from Lima via the Pan American highway, having all but run into an armed street robbery of tourists whilst searching for the bus station. Who said bears are frightening!

In The Desert!

First stop a luxury bus ride away was Trujillo where the imposing monument at the centre of the Plaza de Armas celebrates the day they threw the Spanish out in 1820. We had only intended to take a couple of days to relax before heading for the Andes, but we stayed for six. In so doing we discovered a whole new history of Peru, not the militant Incas, who only ruled a hundred years before the Spanish, but the really refined Moche who date back to the first centuries AD. We didn’t know that they had built pyramids in the desert and preserved their story for posterity in the form of wonderful pottery, textiles, gold, shell, stone, silver and copper (electroplated with gold before the days of electricity – only chemists can work that one out).


Already determinedly off track we took the advice of ‘A German from Edinburgh’ who advised us that the next city north, Chiclayo, had even greater treasures. It had, so we stayed another six nights and discovered Museo Tumbas Realas de Sipan. Opened in Nov 2002, this world-class museum is entered by ramp to the top floor so retracing the path of the archaeologists as they dug down through the levels of time.  They opened the graves of the Lords Sipan to discover remarkable funeral masks and jewellery in fine metal, as featured in the National Geographic Magazines of October1998 and June 1990. Not content with this we visited the sites of Sipan and the huge ruined city of Tucume. (Think of the earthquake city of Bam, Iran, and you’ll be on the right track.) This ruined city had 28 pyramids, long ago robbed by the Spanish Conquistadors. Not far away Thor Heyerdahl researched the migration theories that led to his Kon Tiki expedition proving that reed rafts could cross to the Pacific islands.


Bears we did not find, but there were little horses, caballitos, the reed boards on which solo fishermen have for centuries crossed the heavy surf to fish in the calm waters beyond; and smooth skinned dogs with tiny tufts of ginger hair on their heads and the tip of their tail.


In the ‘Land of the Clouds’?
Chachapoyas is reached by overnight bus without a toilet stop, unless you count a couple of chances to pee in unison over the precipice of a deserted mountain road. It used to be the capital of Amazonas when it stretched to the Amazon. Now with no such delusions it’s delightfully laid back. Except that the country people always seem to be busy. Walking idly along the road is out, so women spin thread, or knit, as they walk. What could be cooler than that!


Not too far away was the ruined mountain top city of Kuelap, where we laid claim to being the oldest visitors in 2003. Can you imagine what Machu Picchu must have been like before the property developers moved in? Yes you have it, a wonderful mountain top vista with the remains of round decorated stone houses, giving in gracefully to the cloud forest and its orchids. Just one house was restored with its tall conical thatched roof.


Buried with the Mummies?
Only a few tens of kilometres away, but many hours by taxi, were the sarcophagi, red and white burial houses set high into sheer towering cliffs at Revash and Laguna de la Condores, near Leymebamba. Revash was robbed long ago, but a recent expedition rescued 200 un-embalmed mummies from the mountain lake site. They were preserved in the foetal position and sewn into many layers of textile giving a shape reminiscent of Russian dolls. Now they reside in an air-conditioned research centre where they are tracing the ancestry of the Chachapoyas at yet another fine new museum. Paddington Bear’s DNA would be safe with them.


Land of Milk and Marmalade?
‘That was the greatest day ever in the Andes’ eulogised the young woman who had just jumped off the top of a cattle truck. Hitchhiking workers pay to ride on the top storey, with fantastic thrills and views, whilst the cattle huddle below. We knew then there was no going back. We just had to experience the hairiest East-West switchback in Peru to Cajamarca. There for the first time we would meet women in tall sombreros, compensating for their tiny stature. Trilbies followed as we travelled further south, giving way to bowlers as we neared Bolivia.


But, with a sense of decorum appropriate to our advanced ages, instead of a roller coaster ride on a cattle truck, or a bone shattering ride in a minibus, or a cramped one in the small daily bus, we decided to spend £50, ten times more, with a restaurant owner and travel all day in the comfort of his four-wheel drive. Up through the clouds, over the top and down again to Rio Maranon, then up and over the drier western Andes to a multi-coloured patchwork of fertile fields separated by cactus hedges. Cajamarca exports 300,000 litres of milk a day to Lima, whenever the Pan American highway is not blockaded, and keeps the rest to make the only decent cheese in Peru.


Thinking we had missed the bear and his marmalade we decided to retrace our steps by taxi along that same bumpy hardcore road and to search as we walked slowly back to town. We met and chatted to Indian farmers, who knew how to thresh corn by hand, how to tend sheep, and, how to winkle a favourite 10p floppy sunhat from Joan, a relic from a camel trek in India. But they didn’t get mine because they couldn’t understand my mission, or my Spanish, so the day was but a glorious failure.

In 1532 the Spaniard Pizarro, with only 160 cavalry troops, defeated Atahualpa the Inca leader of 6,000 men armed with slings and axes. The bloody battle at Cajamarca essentially completed their conquest of Peru. Atahualpa was imprisoned and held in El Quarto del Rescate. He negotiated his release for a room full of gold and two of silver. It took his followers six months to collect 6000kg of gold and 12,000kg of silver ornaments from across the country. But they killed him all the same.


Cordillera Blanca
In despair by now we at least hoped to find a polar bear or a yeti in this magical wilderness. Fifty of the highest peaks outside the Himalaya, minibuses drivers and conductors competing loudly, like old fashioned market traders, for the pleasure of taking customers to the snow line at over 5000 metres. It’s no wonder the holiday climbers love this area, for they can get straight out of a colectivo, for that’s what they call these minibuses, and onto the snow. Another 2000 metres and they’ve climbed the highest mountains in South America. Sounds easy if you forget about ‘Touching the Void’.


Even we broke our altitude record from Nepal, at 5200 metres on the glacier of Pasto Ruri, more if you believe the signpost. Mind you we did have a little help from horses. Just to support the local traders you understand! We looked in hope down into the tiny deepest blue crevasses, before stepping gingerly across.

Indian Treasure

One chance remained, a sneaky peak at the Indian’s possessions. So we were delighted when group after group, they paraded into town from their mountain farmsteads, beating home made drums, playing home made flutes and carrying sedan chairs.


Before daybreak that morning students had arrived, school by school, on their buses to disturb our night’s sleep. But we warmed to them when we realised they were intent on decorating the tarmac streets of the Plaza de Armas, chalking designs and then filling them in with flower petals and coloured wood chippings. The images were Christian, from the floor to the sedan chairs.


In the church it was standing room only, as the very Spanish looking clergy and the townie congregation in the pews were overwhelmed with Indian colour from the hills. This was their day out and they celebrated Corpus Christi in some style.


Been there, done that!
Well over half way through we had discovered an unknown northern Peru. We had seen no gap students or package tours and few other travellers, though what they lacked in numbers they made up as characters, full of enthusiasm for their surroundings.


Hope and time disappearing we did the regular circuit of the whistle stop tours. Like Stephen Fry, but with SRL rather than film crew, we looked for Paddington Bear at Machu Picchu. Next we travelled by Michael Palin’s train to Lake Titicaca, and then south to Colca Canyon, where the Condors soar to entertain the gallery of hardy tourists waiting on high at dawn.


For 50 days Joan exercised her duty of care, not on Paddington Bear but on a Spanish dancing doll. She carried her lovingly in a small plastic bag, whilst I struggled manfully with our rucksack. A little travel worn and now with only one leg, she was a present from our favourite hotel recepcionista in Chiclayo. If only Viany had known what we were really looking for!



BRIAN CORBETT     1700 words                    5 February 2004

TOO OLD for ADVENTURE?

TOO OLD FOR ADVENTURE?


The very word backpacking is a misnomer for my generation, implying as it does carrying a tent, sleeping bags, cooking gear and everything required for survival in the wild. Hilary Bradt, it seems, alone uses the word in its original sense today, to distinguish it from the easier form of trekking with guides, porters and maybe pack animals. Most of the world has adopted the Lonely Planet usage, travel as cheaply as you can, use a rucksack, but make it light and carry it as little as possible, and if you must trek then use a day-sack. So there you have it, modern backpacking offers flexible adventure travel, without undue hardship, by local transport - trains, buses, river boats, taxis, collectivos, tuk-tuks, rickshaws, horses and camels.


It’s widely known that a large number of young students use their gap year in this way, increasingly joined by those in their 20’s and 30’s who are about to embark on a career change or to settle down to family life. What is certainly less known is that there are an increasing number in the later stages of their working life, free of responsibility for their grown up families, and even OAPs like us. This summer in Peru we met pensioners Peter and Diane from the United States who were just completing a fantastic 30-month jaunt around the globe. We would miss the grandchildren too much to do it in a single block, but they were taking advantage of what they saw as their opportunity. Their middle class friends, like ours, considered them mildly mad for trading the comforts of old age for adventure.


More recently we have chosen to go a little upmarket, because we think we deserve the certainty of comfortable beds and en-suite bathrooms, not that much of the backpacker accommodation, outside major cities, doesn’t also offer this at bargain prices. Like the young, we pensioners have a good deal more time than money, so we tend to prefer the third world where it is much cheaper, and life such a colourful contrast. It certainly raises questions about our consumer lifestyle. In fact the economic conditions frequently remind us of the more austere days of our youth. Are they just fifty years behind? Often it seems so, particularly in fast developing Asia.


With enough notches on our belts already we now travel in depth rather than seek to cover as much ground as quickly as possible. I use my eyes, not a guidebook when looking for somewhere to eat. Flourishing trade, with locals or independent tourists, is almost always a good sign. Often I prefer cheaper local food cooked to order, although when craving the familiarity of western food it’s good to know that pizzas, mountains of chips, banana pancakes, beer and companionship are always available at the popular backpacker haunts.


We almost always find the company of the young backpackers exhilarating, for they have a soft spot for paternal figures when they are so far from home, and we definitely have a soft spot for them. ‘I couldn’t imagine my parents doing this’, has been said so often. ‘How old are you?’ ‘You do give me hope for the future’ said the confirmed vagabond years ago, as we climbed onto the plateau of Phru Kradung in Thailand.

For those with a little more money the backpacker technique works well in Europe at half the price of the cheapest package holidays, though public transport is more restricted because every one else has a car. So my wife and I mix and match - this year two weeks sight seeing, swimming, eating and hiking in the Cinque Terre preceded two months of adventure in darkest Peru, followed by two weeks of ‘culture’ from Venice to Milan.


In advance of such holidays there are only three decisions to be made, where to go, when to go and what to take. A little flexibility can make a big difference to travel costs, especially on low-cost airlines. In fact the same three decisions are faced daily for there is no such thing as a fixed itinerary on this kind of trip, and excess baggage can always be left in store at the last hotel or posted home. That’s the nub of the attraction, for what seems a stressful way to holiday is in fact very relaxing after the uncertainty of first couple of days. Like a place, then stay longer; feeling tired from too much travelling or site seeing, then take time out. A typical package trip to the Galapagos Islands would be a few days; the people we met this summer had been there for over a month and loved every day.


Advance research is invaluable in providing a framework, but it’s amazing how much ideas progress through on the spot learning and chance encounters. As for packing we take less each time and still bring back unworn clothes, even though today everything has to go in my rucksack, for with two artificial knees Joan is excused the heavy duties. One change of lightweight quick-dry outer clothing and multiple sets of underwear are all that’s really required, plus things to keep you warm and dry, and a good camera to guard against failing memories.


Nor is it necessary to have an extensive break. We got hooked over a decade ago whilst we were still in hectic full time employment, and backpacking became the norm for most annual holidays until we retired. That first trip to Nepal was to be an adventure, an antidote to overwork, and so we did not even book ahead for the first night, and rarely do even today, unless arriving late at night. Nepal taught us to find accommodation, organise a trek and get around by local transport without a word of the language or even being able to identify the script, simply by mastering the sound of place names from a phonetic spelling or pointing at their script in a guide book. However, with a little knowledge of their language we would have gained so much more from amazing chance experiences, so now, with more leisure time, I learn some of the relevant language first.




Only once not booking the first night caused what most would consider a disaster, but we remember with delight. We arrived in Kuching, Sarawak, on the eve of the thirtieth anniversary of their independence from Britain, having been told months earlier that all rooms had been sold for the celebrations. Refusing to believe it we toured the hotels at midnight in a taxi, the sky alight with fireworks, before admitting defeat and spending the night on the tiled airport floor. Next morning we were able to join a jubilant national holiday crowd, a seemingly never-ending fancy dress parade representing the different tribes and cultures of Malaysia, from traditional head-hunters to the modern industries of Sarawak and the provinces of mainland Malaysia. If we had insisted on a hotel booking we would have arrived the next day and missed the fun.

Before deciding on Peru this last summer we had extra concerns since it followed several years of immobility with arthritis. It was also our first visit to South America. How would we respond to the highest altitudes of our life? Was street crime and thieving going to spoil our holiday? Would the people be friendly? (Such a bonus in Asia). Was poor hygiene going to lead to the misery of dysentery? The clinching thought was that you never know your limitations until you test them. It was this year or never for we knew if we chickened out we would never try again. Two months later we returned enthusiastic backpackers once again, already planning the next trip to Cambodia, Columbia, Chile or China. Do you know your limitations? We only know we are not giving up adventuring yet.


1305 words by BRIAN CORBETT                 21 October 2003

basically as text submitted to the Independent 21 Oct 03

ACROSS USA by ROUTE 66 in 1957

See also in newspapers/indep

Dear Lucy Gillmore

A revised version as promised.
Brian Corbett

THAT SUMMER   1957         ACROSS AMERICA by ROUTE 66

An unconventional journey across the Southern States by three young engineers, who emigrated to Canada in the summer of 1956. So vivid still that the first draft was written entirely from memory, but the detail was checked mainly from the letters I wrote at the time to my future wife. Captures the period through, the racial attitudes, popular music and jazz, literature, social issues like divorce and finding the time for living, and the country itself.

Personal Notes

Pioneer in the development of computer systems for industrial process control. Electronic engineering graduate of Imperial College and Fellow of the Institution of Electrical Engineers, I was author of several international conference papers. Now I am an OAP who writes, mainly on political issues and travel. My current interests include independent travel in Europe, Asia and South America (with my wife and a rucksack); languages (both European and Asian); politics (as an observer); tech stocks; ball sports; ‘modern’ jazz and photography.

Northern Peru

We have just returned from two months independent travel, upmarket geriatric backpacking, in Peru, especially the little visited north of that country. Trujillo with Chan Chan and Huaca de la Luna, Chicklayo with Sipan and Tucume, Chachapoyas with Kuelap and Revash, Leymebamba with the mummies of Laguna del Condores, Cajamarca and the Quechua language demonstration, Huaraz with Chavin and the glacier of Pasto Ruri, Caraz with Corpus Christi and Laguna Paron. I intend to write about those experiences and back the copy with quality slides on Fuji Provia 100F film. Interested?

Brian Corbett

62 Radyr Avenue, Swansea, SA3 5DT
telephone        01792 424702  
email:   becorbett@ntlworld.com

ACROSS AMERICA BY ROUTE 66 

‘We’ll give you a car to drive, but you pay the gas’. This wasn’t the regular business of Detroit Drive Away, which was to deliver cars on a commercial basis, but it offered us a way to cross The Excited States, as we called them, for our first annual holiday in North America. Dave from Oxford, Joe from Dublin and I were three of group of twenty new graduate engineers enticed to emigrate the previous year for three times the £550/year starting rate in Britain. Our dream faded fast as we moped around Detroit waiting for a car that August 1957.

Then came the breakthrough, we were first to go to Memphis where we would get a second car to San Francisco. I, just 22, with only six months experience, drove gingerly to the first minor crossroads and nervously slammed on the brakes. We all but went through the windscreen of that brand new car, for power braking was newfangled invention I had not met before. I like to think we delivered Elvis Presley’s pink Cadillac, but in fact we were only taking the car to Indianapolis, and would have to make our own way to Memphis. The others chose to go by train, but I preferred to hitch-hike. I walked out of the city, in khaki shorts with an ex-army rucksack, an innocent abroad, looking every inch the Boy Scout I never was.


One ride I spent in fear of my life with a crazy man, who was overtook everything in sight, even when it meant crossing the brow of a hill on the wrong side of the road. Luckily he was stopped by the police, and ended up in a rapidly convened meeting with a judge resulting in a $13 on the spot fine. A laid back Kentucky painter who, having lost his city job was on his way back to his wife and eight kids, told me in a slow southern drawl, ‘I have a couple of acres so we won’t starve… some people work in the winter snow but I just sits by the fire’. The ruddy farmer whose father came from England in 1885 was on his way to the races at Ellis Park.


The black man had just returned from service with the paratroopers in Korea and Japan, he was the only person I encountered with liberal views. ‘I hate fighting civilians, there’s no point in turning people into killers’. But the overwhelming memories are questions of race. He told me, ‘it’s very unusual for a white to get a lift from a black man’, but he took me into the unfamiliar white area of Nashville to find a hotel. Next day a garage hand in a pick up truck explained, ‘there’s no rivalry between the Yankees and the South any more, we just hate the niggers’. Another expressed the hatred more vividly, ‘Nigger don’t let the sun go down’, that is get out of our nice white town before sunset. He boasted of lynching and hangings from trees outside town, which brought real context to Billie Holiday’s ‘Strange Fruit … hanging’.


From Memphis we were to return a stolen 56 Plymouth to its rightful owner. Little did we know when we stopped for the first night at Little Rock that within a month this sleepy town was to be at the centre of world news. The US Supreme Court had ruled in 1954 that segregation of schools was no longer legal and the Little Rock Central High School decided to de-segregate at the start of term on 2 September1957. The nine final year black students who presented themselves that first day were barred entry by the Arkansas National Guard acting on instructions from Governor Faubus. President Eisenhower had to send in 1000 paratroopers before the school was re-opened. The following September trouble erupted again, because Governor Faubus, ordered all three high schools to be closed, and supported by a 94% popular vote they remained so for that whole school year. It was fifteen years before all the schools in Little Rock were desegregated.


To keep our spirits up as we drove through miles of flat, treeless, monotonous prairie we sang our way through the musical Oklahoma, just released on film. ‘Oh what a beautiful morning’, and a risqué version of ‘Everything’s up to date in Kansas City … we’ve even got a sky scraper seven stories high’. Somehow the towns never lived up to the exotic images created by the songs. Towns rarely interrupted the journey, but were always preceded by miles of ugly roadside advertising hoardings.


Dave and I had a burning ambition to ‘do the ton’, which few mass produced cars of the day would reach. In spite of the 60mph speed limit these empty prairie roads seemed to offer the best chance I was ever likely to get. By the time I had wound the Plymouth up to 90 and started to overtake I saw a car approaching fast, but hung on sure of being let in. I wasn’t and the cars were abreast simultaneously, luckily all three drivers held their nerve. My target achieved, I glanced in the rear mirror only to see a car gaining on me. Knowing that could only be a police car I slowed down without braking, and braced myself for the confrontation ahead. But, ‘phew’, he merely sped by.  


Cowboy country and steaks sizzling on hot metal plates started soon after we joined Route 66, which gets to Oklahoma from Chicago. We three went into a bar in the early evening to find the only other customer was a beautiful cowgirl dressed in vivid silks of a sort we never expected to see in real life. Things were about to hot up, we were entering the Wild West.


Santa Fe was a revelation, Mexican and Indian cultures were a heady mix, hot spicy food, and music to match provided a night-life to die for. Now it is one of America’s top tourist attractions, but in those days there were none to be seen. ‘We take the time to enjoy ourselves here’ said the large Mexican waitress, hitching her belt in a few inches. We danced the night away to exciting Latin rhythms, in the same month that jazzman Charles Mingus recorded his most approachable album, Tijuana Moods. It was early morning before we rolled into our giant sized family bed, only to be later joined by two boisterous buxom Mexican women, obviously tipped off by the night watchman. Was I really the prude who stopped everyone’s fun?

Grand Canyon, with its the beautiful range of blues, greys and pinks, plus sheer size, was the first world site to exceed my expectations. Only the Taj Mahal, the Golden Temple and Machu Picchu have followed. On to Flagstaff and the brilliant white Indian trading post with Indian artefacts advertised by totem poles.


In this gambling country the barmen would offer you the chance of rolling dice; win and the drinks were free, lose and you paid double. Las Vegas seemed like Blackpool, full of cheap hotels and glitzy shows, where the Admass spent hours pumping small coins into fruit machines in the hope of making a fortune. (Admass, J B Priestley’s word, was coined in ‘Journey Down a Rainbow’ to describe the soulless advertising driven society of mass production, conformity and consumerism which was spreading over the West, and to contrast his experiences in brash Texas with his wife, Jacquetta Hawkes, writing sympathetically about the artist colony in Santa Fe and the ancient Indian cultures of New Mexico.


Finally across the first desert I had ever seen, the deserted, barren, roadside littered with beer cans, which never rusted, for the only moisture was inside occasional man sized cactus trees. We were one of a few cars crossing the Mojave that day, all the others had prepared for emergency by strapping a five gallon water can to the outside of the door.


What can be said of cosmopolitan San Francisco? Friendly - witness Ralph and Hal, newly qualified as lawyers, who took a day off work and spent several nights showing us around. Unique – the cable car; Fisherman’s Wharf with fishermen; the twentieth birthday of the Golden Gate bridge; the Japanese garden; the automatic piano museum overlooking the Pacific Ocean. Exciting – clubs on the Barbary Coast at North Beach where the verb to Shanghai (a reluctant sailor) emerged. Young Anna Massey was playing The Reluctant Debutant. Gay, in the original sense of the word, the only pubs with atmosphere outside Greenwich Village, a wood panelled basement with a large nude painting whose modesty was protected by a strategically draped red silk scarf, which swayed each time the door was opened! Vivacious girls, wonderful food, jokes with an Australian artist, who claimed to have made the Tate, at nearby Tiburon - a yachting paradise.


Leading edge - San Francisco was then the Gretna Green of still difficult divorce, with columns in the papers for Divorces Filed and Divorces Granted. It was the golden age of west coast jazz with Clifford Brown and Gerry Mulligan. We heard New Orleans star Turk Murphy in the Tin Angel, but regrettably the new trumpet star Miles Davis had just left to play in New York.


Joe and I eventually returned to ‘the old countries’, but Dave soon left for San Francisco and was never heard of again. Like me, an electronic engineer, maybe he struck it rich in the soon to emerge Silicon Valley.


1582 words by Brian Corbett - The Oldie Backpacker            27/10/03





I have some ancient supporting slides if you are interested

1) A clip of me at the wheel of the Cadillac

2) Joe and Dave at the roadside with the Plymouth

3) The Original Curio Store, Established 1603, in Santa Fe

4) The Indian Trading Post near Flagstaff

SUMATRA TSUNAMI Aceh in Perpective

ACEH in PERSPECTIVE


Imagine waking up on Boxing Day in a sweat dreaming that the Welsh coast from Anglesey to Tenby had been wiped out by a giant wave in one frightening hour, and you have a better feel for what happened to the West Coast of Aceh. Imagine too that much of the provincial capital (a Cardiff on Anglesea), had floated away, and begin to grasp the scale of what happened to the city of Banda Aceh.

For several days TV coverage of Aceh amounted only to maps illustrating that the epicentre of a powerful earthquake was nearby, but no hard news or pictures. It’s difficult to bear if you have friends in Tenby, but the existence or destruction of that town is not even mentioned.


Then five days later on New Year Eve your worst fears are confirmed by the first report of a helicopter survey of the coast south of Anglesea. ‘There were four towns of 10,000 people on this coast where ………..tower.’  You know intimately of a radio station on a high headland near Tenby, perhaps someone you know has survived.


But why does the next few days bring no further news? For the simple reason that the infrastructure has been blown away, no roads, no electricity, no communications even for mobile phones, so dependable in many disasters. But the people who survived have quite different priorities especially lack of drinking, or even clean water and pain from terrible injuries.


Individuals all over the globe are sickened by the scale of this natural disaster and cash floods in a great wave of sympathy to charities. But getting it to those in need in Aceh is a huge problem?

Only the military have the capacity in ships, helicopters, fuel, field hospitals and men. Only they can operate effectively and quickly in such an environment for they bring their infrastructure with them. Pity that it’s mostly tied up in Iraq! Then the news that the dynamic much-maligned American military have ordered ships to drop their Christmas visit to the Mediterranean and sail quickly to the effected area. Now they are stationed off the wasteland of Aberystwyth, the nearest point to the epicentre. Their helicopters are the first to ferry food, water and medicines to able-bodied groups of traumatised survivors.


Estimates of the death toll rise daily, idle speculation really because the true numbers will never be known. Now they have exceeded a magic threshold, 120,000 Welsh Nationalists are feared dead. But news emphasis remains on the identification of ten thousand Europeans lost whilst on beach holidays in spots like the Algarve and the Canaries, when the wave struck.


Then news of a kind no one needs. The Prime Minister of Western Europe has diverted his army from the relief effort to complete the ongoing suppression of the Free Wales Army, who are said to be taking advantage of the chaos.


Far fetched? Yes - dragged half way across the globe. But then Wales does roughly match Aceh in terms of area or population, and in the same way Britain does equate to Sumatra, which in turn is just one of the islands which make up Indonesia.


BRIAN CORBETT                        532 words

THREE GENERATIONS IN THAILAND 2000

HOLIDAY TRAVELS  IN SOUTHERN THAILAND

Three generations of Brian Corbett's family backpack in Southern Thailand   


'What an adventure', exclaimed a friend. 'That's a lot of responsibility', said another. I was beginning to get cold feet. What if Joe, the blue eyed, blond, three year old with a passion for exploration and no idea of fear, got lost in a crowded Bangkok market? It had all sounded so easy to Joan as we traveled in Thailand last winter and planned to retrace our steps with the whole family.


Eldest son Jim married Anne-Marie and lives in France with their two bilingual daughters Alice aged eight and Hazel aged five. Judy and Gary and have two children, Rachel aged nine and, the baby of the bunch, Joe. Our bachelor son opted out!  As the time approached the fears came flooding in. How well would the grandchildren cope with the heat, the humidity, the food, and the boredom of so much travel?


The long plane journeys were an endurance test with children, though there were compensations as when a kindly air hostess took them to the cockpit to see the dawn. 'I've been to see the pirate', boasted Joe. 'The sky was brilliant - red, black and sky blue', said Rachel.


We needn't have worried about the effect of the tropics on the grandchildren, for they adapted quickest of all. Even a six hour time shift didn't stop them falling asleep at night, or Joe from waking up at dawn! Sunburn was avoided by use of sun hats and factor twenty five sun cream. In fact the children were full of energy and radiated happiness throughout the trip.


We met the French contingent in an air conditioned Bangkok hotel. Sky train, on stilts high above the Bangkok streets, took us to the Chao Phraya river, where we boarded the Express Boat which allowed us to avoid the fumes of the chaotic traffic. Tropical fruit was everywhere on the pier at Tha Chang, the market vendors were more interested in observing the children's joy on discovering new tastes, than in selling fruit. As we left Wat Po, home of the huge reclining Buddha with a gold head and mother of pearl feet, the heavens opened. A passing monk gave Alice his umbrella. We were in the Thailand I knew, one of the friendliest places on earth.


Next day's visit to the Grand Palace merely confirmed that such sight seeing activities would bore the children. An afternoon on a fast, rolling, long tailed boat, with spray from a huge bow wave was a different matter. Exploring suburban klongs (canals) on the Thonburi side of the river was exciting for everyone.


Then an overnight second class sleeper bound for Trang in the deep south. The children sat and played around one table, constant shrieks of delight amused rather than annoyed the Thai passengers. It was obvious they would get on well with each other and the locals. English, with a French accent,
became the children's language.


We had no sooner arrived at Trang station than Samran appeared. 'Where are you going'? 'Krabi'. 'I'll take you in my car for 1000 baht' (£17 for a three hour drive). He didn't say his car was an open pickup truck! I and the grandchildren rode in the air conditioned cab for the three hour journey. The rest got early exposure to Asian travel. 'It's been fine for ten days, but it's monsoon time on the west coast and should be raining', he said, blaming the unreliability on deforestation. We were to be luckier than expected with the weather.

Krabi, a nondescript estuary town, is a personal favourite because it offers excellent food at night and makes an ideal centre for trips. Beautiful beaches like Ao Nang, Noppharathara, and the most photographed of all, Phra Nang, can be reached by coastal long tailed boat or by songtheaw, the converted pickup trucks which serve as local buses.


We had extremely fond memories of Phi Phi island from a decade earlier. Had it been spoiled by mass tourism and the film industry? True there is now a four story hotel and a new township of air-conditioned bungalows. But away from the port it is still idyllic - in summer (off-season) at least. The kids spent the whole day playing in the warm sea. Joe and Hazel took instantly to snorkeling with water wings over live coral reefs. Brightly coloured fish and eerie dark ones in the shadows, the long trumpet fish, the phosphorescent mouths of clams and huge star fish. It's a wonderful place for family beach holidays, but it isn't Thailand.


'I still want to get a feel for the country', said Anne-Marie. So we spent the third week on the infrequently visited east coast. Shared taxis (minibuses) operate between southern cities. Being a party of ten we didn't even have to wait while they filled up, so we were able to keep road journeys down to two hours. Once at the chosen destination we had only to appear on the street and a songtheaw driver would offer his services, 400 baht for half a day is the going rate for sight seeing trip of the area.


Phattalung was the first stop. The attraction was a boat trip on the nearby water bird reserve at Thaleh Noi. Early next morning we glided through narrow channels in the reed beds which gave rise to the local mat weaving industry. The birds, so numerous in November, had largely left, but the solitude, pink water-lilies, lotus blossom, and the wild buffaloes were consolations.


Travel problems were being overcome, but family meals with young children were less successful - aren't they always! Spicy food is out for them. We quickly learned that chips, unspiced chicken, fish, squid, prawns, are readily available even in Thai restaurants. In addition Chinese restaurants exist all over Asia. Add burgers, milk shakes, eggs, and banana pancakes in those restaurants aimed at backpackers. Food was not a problem. We found some fabulous spicy Thai food, through judicious use of the guide books backed up with careful observation, yet these authentic restaurants attracted surprisingly few tourists.


South again to Songkla where last winter we had met Sao as she operated the wooden cotton weaving loom at her home on nearby Ko Yoh island. Such contacts are the delight of independent travel.

The final stop was Pattani, a quiet Moslem town. At Hat Talo Kapo there is a huge fishing fleet of open long-tailed boats, all fabulously decorated and protected from the sun by shelters of dried coconut leaves. The fishermen go to sea for two days, and fish with cages and nets, for crabs, squid and fish. Sao's friend Nok, who studies English at the local university, showed us around town. A Chinese temple shrine commemorates a Chinese woman who committed suicide after failing to reverse her brother's conversion to Islam.


Back in Bangkok with Pranee's lovely family at her house in the tropical fruit tree jungle on the polders beyond suburban Phasi Charoen. (We had met ten years earlier on top of a mountain in northern Thailand.) There we experienced the traditional waterside lifestyle, where even the mail comes by canoe. 'That was the best day of the holiday', said Rachel. Perhaps she will grow into my type of traveller.


206 words      BRIAN CORBETT                                  2 Oct 2000




CAPTIONS for PHOTOGRAPHS (All except last taken by Brian Corbett)

T00-2   28     Hazel, Alice and Rachel on Phra Nang beach, near Krabi. Note the purses containing identity information for safety purposes.

T00-3   18     Early morning on Long Beach, Ko Phi Phi.

T00-4   21     Lone boatman at Thaleh Noi.

T00-6   13   One of many open fishing boats in shelter of dried coconut leaves at Hat Talo Kapo.

T00-6   35     Hazel shakes out her fortune at the Chinese temple in Phattalung.
T00-7   35     Brian Corbett, The Oldie Backpacker.

NOTES FOR 3 GENERATIONS IN THAILAND

THREE GENERATIONS OF A FAMILY EXPLORE SOUTHERN THAILAND       First notes


'What an adventure', exclaimed a friend. 'That's a lot of responsibility', said another. As T-day loomed I too was beginning to get cold feet. What if Joe, the blue eyed, blond , three year old with a passion for exploration and no idea of fear, got lost in a crowded Bangkok market.

It had all sounded so much simpler last year when my wife, Joan, and I were travelling in Thailand. Only twelve months before that Rheumatic Arthritis had turned shopping into a Motobility scooter learning experience. But a knee replacement had given what seemed likely to be one last short window of opportunity to indulge our passion for travel in Asia, before another joint packed in. Whilst we would never again be fit enough to trek in Nepal, or walk the narrow planks of Borneo, Thailand ,as expected, provided an altogether easier proposition.


For a decade we have been enchanted by the Orient, and desperate to share those experiences. Made conscious, too, of the speed with which the old Orient was disappearing in globalisation and ever uglier disparities of poverty. So why not use this window to retrace our steps next year - with the whole family. Thai people offer a real welcome to The Land of Smiles, and the south has arguably the best beaches in the world. Standards of hygiene are high, the food tasty, travel easy and well developed. Moreover I knew enough Thai to go off the beaten track. Going native not only enhances the whole experience, to me it's what travel is about, but also results in costs about 25% of those for a similar holiday in Europe.


The constraint of school holidays fixed the date to July/August, the season of the south-west monsoon, one we had previously avoided. (December to February are statistically the best months to visit). Would rain and lack of sunshine undermine the attractions? Would the wet lead to severe problems with mosquitoes? Would the grandchildren cope happily with the heat, the humidity and the mosquitoes? Would we find five rooms free on arrival at a desired hotel? Would the mounting worries never cease!

'Please don't ask us about the weather', said the note in the guest house on Ko Phi Phi, 'Maybe it will rain, maybe it will shine, we don't know - ask the Gods'. We already understood that flexibility of destination was desirable, for the east coast, in the shadow of the peninsula's mountainous spine, and planned to flee there if the west proved too wet and stormy. Security however merited thought. Although the itinerary would be fluid with only the first three nights booked, we knew several probable hotel/guest house destinations. All ten of the party carried details in Thai script as well as phonetic Thai. The grandchildren carried this, and essential identity information, in colourful wallets slung around their necks. With everyone away together we would miss our usual base for contact in Britain, so friends had these details as well. Mobile phones which would operate in Thailand didn't fit in with escapism. The obvious solution to separation,
communication via my home email, wasn't appreciated until halfway through the holiday.


The bilingual, French, side of the family flew from Paris, the rest of us flew from Cardiff, thanks to KLM's support of our local airport, and we all met up in Bangkok at the Asia hotel. Excellent buffet breakfasts, air-conditioning and a two swimming pools, softened the culture shock for the eight newcomers to Asia. But to ease them in to the new regime we took dinner at a nearby street restaurant, ordering by pointing at photographs of the dishes on offer. Two of the party who went back for a beer or two were surprised when it came disguised in a teapot!


Sky train and Express boat took us quickly and pleasantly to Wat Po, site a of a huge reclining Buddha, with a gold head and mother of pearl soles to his feet. As we exited the main Wat, a service ended and the heavens opened. A passing monk gave seven year old Alice his folding umbrella. We were already in the Thailand I knew, one of the friendliest places on earth.


Next day a similar trip took us via the market on the quays, a second opportunity to try a variety of new oriental fruit, Rambutan and Lam Yai, Jackfruit and unripe Guava, deliciously sweet miniature bananas, with stones! The sellers were thrilled to see four young European children's enthusiastic delight, showed the best ways to peel the fruit and proffered hose pipes to wash sticky hands, whilst their parents worried about hygiene. When however we reached the Grand Palace it was all too obvious the grandchildren were not to be interested in site seeing, so back to the pool.


On the third day we travelled by the normal river taxi, across the Chao Phraya river to Thonburi, up the Bangkok Yai Canal to Bang Yai and a simple quayside restaurant for lunch. The spray from the bow wave, from those fast slim long tailed boats, gives a cold shower to the passengers in the middle of the boat, with the acceleration and roll (I have experienced a 'death roll' to compare with any in my Laser sailing dinghy) added up to sufficient to keep the children excited and helpfully nervous. Not unreasonably this trip is no longer available to Europeans at local rates, coins handed back from row to row to the driver as their home is reached, but only by special ticket. Only by this means, or the inexpensive canal round trips organised for passing tourists, is it possible to get the feel for the charms of traditional waterfront lifestyles that existed in the capital before the skyscrapers, dreadful traffic jams, and fumes, of modern-day Bangkok. In the evening we boarded a train heading for the southern terminus of Trang. Our last booking, a second class, fan cooled, berth. Now we were travelling, and gaining confidence.


Trains are an excellent way to travel with children, they can move around at will, though the carriage joining systems would not pass European safety standards, so they were confined to a single carriage. The four children got together around one table and constant shrieks of delight and complex singing-clapping games, 'Oh granddad will you never learn!'. Such antics amused rather than annoyed our fellow Thai passengers, fellow European touring travellers were less amused to see us on their patch.


Samran approached immediately we got out of the train, 'I've a car, where do you want to go'. 'Yaak ca pay Krabi', I said, giving him the name of a guest house 100 or so kilometres away. 'Thawray?', how much? We settled at his asking price of 1000 baht. His car turned out to be a pick up truck, the children sat in the air-conditioned cab with me and Samran, the others were getting a taste of Thai travel sitting on the sides of the back! We got on fine, he had a good knowledge of English a welcome enthusiasm for making me exercise my Thai. A few days with him and I would have made a lot of progress, in what is grammatically a very simple language, pronunciation is a different matter, a single phonetic spelling can have up to five different meanings depending how it is voiced. If Joan and I had been on our own we would have taken up his offer to help us around Trang, a beautiful area of beaches and islands far less developed than Krabi. But we couldn't desert our vague plans on the very first day.


Yes there were five free rooms at the Bai Fern guest house, but the much better ones Joan and I had the previous year were out on long term rental for the low season. How would the newcomers react to backpackers budget accommodation, the need for mosquito repellents, cold showers, fan cooled rooms, so hot and sticky that lying awake until the early hours becomes an art form? We aimed for early rises, knowing that rising early with the sun was the gateway to the most pleasant part of the day in the tropics. But this was simply adding to the burdens of dealing with a six hour time shift. Everyone was getting over tired and tetchy, and the overcast weather and evening rain didn't help. In retrospect we should have transferred to air-conditioned accommodation and taken more time to acclimatise.


Our first visit to the beach at Ao Nang, was a near disaster. Within five minutes of being in the sea the children were howling from painful jellyfish stings. Something to look out for at high tide particularly. Had we come all this way to swelter on the beach? No, for us it turned out to be an isolated event. When we first went to Ao Nang ten years earlier there was just one entrepreneurial Thai working an almost deserted beach, armed with a sack of pineapples, a large knife, and panache.


Although the weather was largely over cast for those first few days they produced two of the more memorable outings. The first an elephant ride, now the children started to believe they were in Thailand. Then a trip by longtailed boat to an off-shore island, a tropical paradise of light blue sea and glistening coral white sands. Though as the helmsman skilfully surfed a quartering sea on the return journey he underlined why this was the low season.


A chance discussion with German family on the deserted beach lead to the recommendation of Long Beach on the island of Phi Phi. This is an example of the networking common to backpacking, the longer you stay in a country the more ideas you get, the more you reshape your plans. We had exceptionally fond memories of Long Beach Phi Phi from a decade earlier, but stories of the island's demise meant it was not part of our plans. Well it is far more developed at the port of Don Sai, a four story hotel, and bungalow accommodation far up-market of the simple bamboo style. But it's still recognisable as the beautiful island we first knew, with excellent swimming, snorkelling, and a burgeoning scuba diving industry. We stayed a week, the kids spent the whole day in the warm water and the two non swimmers learnt to snorkel, wearing water wings, over the live coral reefs. Jim tells me that I went within a few yards of a three foot reef shark. People with a long track record say they're harmless, but I'm rather glad I was oblivious to the experience! I prefer to reflect on the beautiful fish, the colourful clams embedded in the rocks and the large phosphorescent star fish on the bottom.


After an eight day side trip we had to compress our time on the east coast. Travelling was simplified by hiring door to door minibuses for all our remaining journeys, at a cost of around £10/hour, very economical for a party of ten. Shared taxis, and shared minibus, run city to city in the south. Our advantage was that we didn't have to wait till the minibus filled up.


First stop was Phattalung. We were up at six the next morning, off to nearby Thaleh Noi, a  brackish sea of reeds, water lilies, lotus flowers, wild water-buffalo, but  above all a bird reserve. Unfortunately, although the flowers were better, there only a hundredth of the massive bird population of November, but gliding between the reeds in a long tailed boat in the early light was a  lovely experience.


Next stop heading south was Songkla. In November we had met Sao, operating a simple wooden cloth weaving loom in her home on the nearby island of Ko Yoh, their traditional cottage industry. Possessions let alone photographs are a rarity in such peoples lives, so we always send copies after each trip to say thank you. On this occasion a letter came back in almost perfect English. It explained that she worked at the loom all week, but studied at college in the city at the weekend. I hoped to make contact at her home again, but in Krabi I read an email from her friend Noy, a graduate in English, which warned that Sao was unlikely to be free because she was now working at the post office. Next morning I went to the post office hoping to recognise her arrive for work, but didn't. When they opened for business I tried out my best Thai on the woman at the empty counter, 'do you know Sao, a student, who is now working right here?', I asked. She made enquiries, and Sao appeared. The clerk now revealed excellent spoken English and offered to translate. We arranged to meet them both for an early dinner straight after work leaving a couple of hours before it got dark.



Finally south again to Pattani. I hired a song theaw for the afternoon to take us to the harbour of traditional open fishing boats at Had Talo Kapo. These highly decorated long tailed boats are housed in dried reed shelters, along a stretch of open sandy beach, a truly stunning sight. Using my knowledge of Thai I was able to find that crews of three men went to sea in these open boats for two days. They showed me large traps for catching cuttle fish, small ones for catching crab and long two metre deep nets for fishing. This part of the country features mile after mile of beautiful, deserted, sandy beaches. The children went in for a swim, so did the one Thai family we had seen at lunch, they were westernised to the extent of using goggles, but bathed Thai style in full clothing. None of our party was prepared to strip off into bathing costumes. Swimming was dearly missed on such a lovely hot day, c'est la vie!


Next day Nok met us at the hotel and took us on a tour of the town. of which the visit to the Chinese shrine was the most memorable. She encouraged the children to shake a numbered stick out of a container, something to be seen in Buddhist temples, showed how the number linked to a particular sheet of paper, and then translated the fortune. Young Joe will be successful in business, we'll see. They bought bundles of tapers, lit them and then distributed them into the three receiving pots, and finally banged three times on each of three overhead drums - though strictly this was the job of the resident Chinaman. Even our Buddhist interpreter was unable to glean the significance of the threes in these last operations. Years earlier a priest at a Chinese temple in Sibu Borneo had explained the significance of three to the Chinese. We went to a park playground, many of the elaborate roundabouts apparently feature at touring festivals in France. We went to the open air university refectory for lunch, the price 25p for an excellent main course made us wonder yet again how exchange rates between the developed world and the emerging economies get so far out of line with the basic needs of living, food, accommodation and transport. Globalisation isn't doing them any favours, though it does serve to widen the gap between winners and the rest - protests from the poor and the response of those in power is forming a major part of the political debate, in Bangkok's English press at least.


We waved good-bye to Nok from the minibus which was to take us to the railway station at Hat Yai. A couple of hours later we were trying to decipher the notices at the station only to discover that the enquiry desk alone knows which platform trains leave from. To add to the confusion there was a notice in Thai script which told that certain coaches of our train were standing at a different platform. Our berths were in a front coach, which would arrive from Malaysia. After much shunting, whilst the two halves of the train were joined, we set off on our journey north. Unlike the first train which we had booked several weeks in advance the seats were scattered, not surprisingly that set up contact between us and the other passengers which added greatly to the journey. In the morning as we neared Bangkok the terrain changed from jungle and rubber plantations to mile after mile of rice fields, and so many peasants at work in this labour intensive form of agriculture. Men now plough with rotavators instead of buffalo, they are shaded from the heat of the sun by umbrellas rather than the traditional wide brimmed hats. Life is changing slowly on the land.


The adults made the most of their day shopping in Bangkok, leaving their children with the us in the hotel pool. Hazel and Joe, the two youngest were swimming, albeit with too great an expenditure of effort, not much idea of breathing and in Joe's case not much forward motion. That much at least had been gained by all that exposure to warm tropical seas. We followed a Guide Routard recommendation and ate at the .................? However we arrived so late that all the children fell asleep before ordering, ensuring a peaceful meal.


I was woken at 6.30 the next morning by the telephone. It was our friend Taniya. We agreed to meet at the home of Pranee and her sister Venus. We hired two taxis to take us to Petchkasem, soi 31, over the river in Thonburi, the original capital. From there we walked the zigzag path along concrete pathways on the polders to their house, which was situated in the midst of a jungle of coconut, banana and all the other tropical fruit trees. As usual we were made thoroughly welcome by the extended family. Our party saw traditional suburban Thai lifestyle, idyllic, pastoral, where even the mail is delivered by canoe. Thai food, sunshine and shade, jungle and canals, sitting in groups chatting and playing on the floor. Rachel was quite certain, 'that was definitely the best day of my holiday'.


That evening the French contingent left to catch the midnight plane back to Paris. The rest of us had one more day which we spent by visiting the huge Chatuchak weekend market which is reached from the Mo Chit station on the Skytrain. It is packed, mostly by Thai's, hot, with a staggering scale that ranges through household goods, material, food, china and ornaments,  then stall after stall of live pets to enchant the children. They were impressed too with the caged cockerels, until they peeked over a crowd to observe a cock fight, excited at first by the spectacle they soon shied away from the cruelty - but then we still hunt foxes!



If summer is the low season in Thailand, then why were the flights and intercontinental hotels in Bangkok so expensive. Because it of European school holidays, stupid! But it did mean there was little problem with finding accommodation outside Bangkok.



We had taken to travelling, backpacking if you like, a decade earlier, and found an antidote to the increasing pressures of work. We couldn't understand why it remained the territory of the under thirties.

Thailand 20 July 2000
 

NOTES           
8 July 2000
I am just beginning to recover from a bout of extreme misgiving about the project caused by the following:


1) Geoffrey walked away from me when I was taking him round town with a view to buying him a rucksack and some new clothes for the holiday. He doesn't take kindly to charity or to the idea that he needs new clothes. We would like to see him with the minimum of secure multi pocketed (poly)cotton trousers, a proper bathing costume, lightweight rain wear and footwear. As usual he had allowed me only a little time, so the whole exercise had been unreasonably rushed. He has been unwilling to come to talk to us about the holiday, in marked contrast to the others who talk frequently about it and ask for advice. I worry that he will do the same thing in Thailand and get separated from the rest of the party. If he can't handle it he is at danger of getting rolled and left without money, passport and return tickets. I will deposit enough money in his bank account to get him out of trouble. Also I am the one who plans to accompany him back to Bangkok and the airport. Joan thinks he will be okay once we are under way.


2) I start to worry about the grandchildren becoming separated, especially Joe who is the least disciplined. How would they cope in a land where few speak English. I immediately started to prepare printed details of the hotels we might visit so they can carry this vital information.


3) Joan is having increasing trouble with her right leg. The right ankle had begun to swell up at the end of our stay in Sicily, but we had expected that to go away once we got back home. But it didn't. The reason is that the poor circulation in her ankle is due to swelling of the knee and that is symptomatic of  the end of remission of rheumatoid arthritis, as is confirmed by swelling of her left wrist and problems with an elbow.


4) I become concerned about my own fitness. I mustn't take risks with either my damaged thumb, my left knee or my back. I therefore decide to halt work on the patio.


5) Geoffrey confides in Joan that he is not looking forward to going, because he sees every one else as being couples and fears he will be left out. He expressed the view that he would be alright if Shani was coming. I start to understand Geoff's point of view, and also his lack of contact with the rest of the family. He has already confided in Judy that he is nervous about returning home on his own.


6) I talk to Joan about my fears 6 July, in turn she expresses again her own, about the unsuitability for the kids of too much travelling, and what they will do first thing in the morning. She always preferred the idea of a hotel on the beach, eg at Cape Panwa in Phuket. We have always been concerned about the weather especially on the west coast. It appears that the east coast and Ko Samui should be much better. Things come into perspective and we both start to sleep properly again.