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Mar

A cautionary tale of lentils and the Jammu Mail train

I’m having a flashback to Russia – the a second-class train sleeper (with air-con!) is an open affair of double-decker bunks that double as seats in the daytime. Before we borded the night train, the station platform was full of hungry travellers queuing for Aloo McTikka burgers from McDonalds, so it was round to the second window, serving Chinese and Indian, where I got my takeaway delights of lentils and chapatti. I have eaten a lot of lentils of late. Lucky I like lentils.

It was a crushing affair to leave the comforts of the Taj Mahal hotel in New Delhi. The bed was big and soft, the butler service immaculate (“Madam, you are tired. Please let me run you a bath with soothing salts.”) The trade-off is I’m on the road, gunning it to Dharamsala on the Jammu Mail train. The name suggests she’s not a cannon, and in the first few minutes, she’s lived up to her name.

It’s a real Canterbury Tales brew of folk: there’s a young couple from Moscow whose baby, fat-cheeked, milk white and happy, was born here in India. A vast family of Indian diners using my bed as a dinner table. A mid-50s couple from somewhere north of Vancouver (“Is this your first time on a train?” they ask before regaling me with tales of crushing humanity and waking up beside Indian men who thought two-to-a-bunk is perfectly acceptable). And a Ukrainian coffee fiend who also turns out to be a Master of Darkness.

“I have spent 52 days in a dark room, meditating, and I want more,” says Yuri, who is, incidentally, the happiest Ukrainian I have ever met. As everyone settles down for bed, he regales me with tales of group energy exchanges, extreme yoga and 80s tantric universities. It’s exactly the conversation I had hoped to have on the train up to Dharamsala, exiled home of the Tibetan living god, the Dalai Lama, and therefore a drawcard for every yoga-loving, om-chanting, fishermans-pants-wearing, dreadlocked westerner.

Yuri, Master of Darkness, is sleeping in the bunk above me, a silent Indian man in the one opposite and a stocky old Tibetan man, whose wife carefully makes his bed with the Indian Railways issue of sheets and pillow, in the opposite upper bunk. This is no pyjama party, it’s sleep with your clothes on, your shoes safely tucked away and your passport by your skin. I have bought a shoddy Indian lock and chain for R40 (about a dollar) so I can chain my laptop and camera bag to the bed.

That night, the silent Indian man proves not so silent, and snores raucously through the journey, then begins the day with another, less special but equally loud, bodily cacophony. I wake from a heavy sleep in the early morning, stretching my legs to nudge something soft and impenetrable at the end of my bed. It’s the old Tibetan man from the upper bunk. And he’s chanting his morning prayers. He doesn’t seem to notice that I’ve just stuck a toe in his ribs, and continues his deep, rumbling chant, counting on his sandalwood beads.

I flag a cup of tea from a passing chai-seller then stand to see Yuri on the upper bunk, eyes also closed in a spot of early-morning meditation, then the Canadians, super-chirpy in a Ned Flanders fashion check to see that I’m awake, and we grab gear and fall out of the train.

Ashok, my driver, is waiting with a printed sign and air-conditioned 4WD, and my last view of the older Canadians is them piled on a bicycle rickshaw, bags thrown behind them as their little man starts picking up speed. “See you!” their words float on the morning breeze as they pass. “We’re travelling in styyyyyyyyyyyyyllllllllllllllle!”

Mar

All that glitters…gold and the gate

I don’t know what I was expecting, but I didn’t expect there to be so…many…saris. Here, women glitter – literally, with richly decorated saris. In the afternoon sun, the gold spangles on their clothing flash and shine, as does the gold in their ears, on their noses and occasionally, studded on their foreheads.

Early this morning, I walked to the nearby India Gate to take some morning shots. The gate commemorates soldiers fallen for the glory of India, in France, Mesopotamia, Persia and also in the 3rd Afghan war, to mention but a few battles. Scattered round the massive gate were sleeping dogs, comatose in the morning sun. One adopted me and we went for a walk together, him howling and chatting and occasionally lurching too close to my ankles for comfort.

We passed two women grubbing in the dirt for what I assume were seeds or roots, a girl who, though a series of practised, though complicated moves, was bathing in the public ponds and a few taxi drivers in gleaming Ambassadors, parked outside my hotel, the Taj Mahlal (naturally). One driver was from Dharamsala, up north of Delhi.

“Aaah, Dharamsala!” he moaned nostalgically. “Very nature. Very greenery madam. Not like here.”

I’m taking an overnight train there, so will report back.

Mar

Bollywood movies and butter chicken

The fabulous Hong Kong has come and gone in a flash. Now, on an Air India flight, I’m having a few qualms. Not least because the toilet doors don’t lock and three hours into the five-hour flight, there has appeared to be no food apart from unsalted peanuts.

The movie, broadcast on a pull-down communal screen, is a film of a 40 year old hulk with shocking bags under his eyes, who plays the bad boy to the village’s beautiful 18-year-old good girl. Their love thwarted by corrupt police, it ends him saving her one last time (he does it quite a lot) from being ravaged by the bad local mafia boss who has the coppers in pay, and he rips off his shirt to reveal not only an astonishing oiled body that doesn’t burn even when flames lick his skin, but also that he’s an undercover cop, then takes on 10 at once, killing them all. There are quite a few dance scenes with some pretty raunchy dancing, and lots of almost-kisses. Pure Bollywood.

Ooh, but wait! It’s the drinks trolley. And now the food is being wheeled down the aisle, great steaming piles of it with buckets of yoghurt, and strong wafts of onion pervade the cabin. After three days running – literally running – through the streets of Hong Kong in the name of work, I need to eat. Weird, considering I ate myself a doppelganger on the sea cruise. Oh god it smells good. My first Indian meal in India. Well, possibly Indian airspace. The moral of this story is: India is a waiting game.

Although I’ve never been to India before, its food smells more familiar than last night’s meal in a Hong Kong hole-in-the-wall diner that recently earned a Michelin star. Yes, a Michelin star for the smoked chicken, the deep fried logs of 1000-year-old egg and pickled ginger, and the pomelo peel, cooked to a flaccid, taro-like consistency and dressed with a glutinous brown sauce scattered with dried shrimp, to make what’s known as poor-man’s abalone.

Bollywood movies and butter chicken on the flight? Bring it on, hostie.

Mar

The price is (not) right in Hong Kong

The hottest story in Hong Kong right now – after the discussion about the unseasonal smog on the city this month – is about its property prices.

Yesterday, the real estate market broke all records with the most expensive sale ever, a three-storey house on the Peak (the hill with cable car that overlooks the city and harbour) for HK$280m. That’s about US$40m, or HK$60,215 (US$8,500) per square foot. Hong Kong talks about real estate in square feet because it sounds sooooo much better than in meters, doesn’t it?

“And the square feet includes the communal corridor and sometimes the lift,” swore an HK expat the other night. Well, my apartment’s measurements include the balcony, I said, but when a HK resident raised her brows at the very idea of a balcony, I knew we were talking different planets.

The cost of a home here is now the second highest in the world after New York, beating Tokyo, Mumbai and Singapore. Frighteningly, real estate prices went up in the tiny district nearly 21% last year, and suck up, on average, 37% of a family’s income.

Remind me to stop moaning about Melbourne’s real estate spike…

Mar

Feeling low but seeing Hong Kong on high

Ohhhhhhh the comedown. I am in a hotel in Hong Kong, and all in front of me I can see the harbour and my lovely ship – which is sailing tonight without me! Booo!

The Grand Hyatt is on Hong Kong Island, looking over to Kowloon and the Ocean Terminal where my other address when in HK, aka the Seabourn Odyssey, is champing impatiently to head off to Vietnam. If only the pollution were less thick, it would be the most perfect view. The locals say that it is getting worse every year as mainland China builds yet more factories manufacturing flat screen tvs and plastic toy guns.

So all the cruise-ship white is packed and it’s back on with the city black wardrobe.

Yesterday was a whirlwind of packing, a quick trot through Mongkok’s Ladies’ Market, where market traders mutter, “Hello cheap designer handbag watch sunglass look look this way lady look look ,” in one breath as you pass, then dinner in the hot highrise restaurant atop the gleaming Upper House hotel.

Can I say three words, people: pear & rosemary martinis. Hong Kong’s new drink of choice. Sensational. Worth a 10-hour flight (or a 12-day sail) from Australia.

Mar

Snoozing and cruising on the Seabourn Oddity

Today is the last day before we reach Hong Kong, where something like two-thirds of the ship gets off. There are about 130 world cruisers – those travelling from go to woah – from the USA to the final destination, Greece – and the poor things now have to make new friends with the next batch of guests coming on board for the next leg through Vietnam, China and so on, which sounds fabulous.

Last night was the traditional black-tie dinner, where the men dusted off their tuxedos and the ladies their evening gowns and pearls. Despite all the wrangling on board about dress code (the hottest topic at the card tables as the Old Guard demand jackets in the restaurant and no shorts in the observatory bar after 6pm, while the New Guard would rather leave their swimmers on, come what may) the black-tie affair was lovely to see.

And today? Snoozing and cruising on the Seabourn Oddity, as per the captain’s orders.

Mar

Brunei and the logistics of eating

Well, here they are: the gold domes of Brunei’s Sultan Omar Ali Saifuddin mosque with its gold domes, in the country’s capital, Bandar Seri Begawan (BSB for short). With its obscenely wealthy sultan and a population that doesn’t pay tax, Brunei’s residents have free education and health care, living in their steamy hot little country on the island of Borneo which, amazingly, is split amongst three countries: Brunei, Malaysia and Indonesia.

Having said all that, the lavish mosque sits in front of a water village, corrugated iron slums on stilts that hover above the water. It’s a bizarre juxtaposition.

Like its neighbor, Malaysia’s Kota Kinabalu, (KK for short: apparently if you say ‘Kota Kinablu’, the locals know you’re fresh off the boat, and should have your wallet nicked), Borneo’s fridge magnets were dreadful, truly dreadful, featuring the pervertedly ugly proboscis monkey, the one whose fleshy nose hangs down in front of its face like a tumor. Poor things.

We followed the ship’s executive chef, Bjorn, through the fruit markets which were, like most of what we saw in Brunei – clean and orderly. He delighted the traders by buying all the bananas and chillies in the market: “Yes, I’ll have 50kg, please.” Word has it that the floods in Queensland made restocking the larders in Sydney and Darwin near on impossible, to the extent he was dashing into the Darwin Woollies and saying, “100kg of cauli, 100kg of broccoli, thanks.” The man obviously brings joy wherever he goes, snapping up barramundi in Darwin, chardonnay in Sydney, red snapper in Borneo…

Mar

Cruising in the South China sea

The longer you stay on a cruise ship, the harder it is to get off. Champagne and corned beef hash at breakfast? Why not? Not me, but I’ve also seen at least three tables sporting bottles or tubes of Vegemite, the black breakfast spread most of us are addicted to.

You’d think that being on a cruise ship, I’d be blogging daily. But no. There is too much to do, not including lying by the pool. By the time breakfast is finished – a prolonged affair involving too many pastries, eggs and myriad juices, it’s time to nip down to a lecture on, say, espionage, and then, suddenly, it’s lunchtime. After lunch each day, I promise myself a good, hard loll by the pool. But lunch turns into a gasbag with one of the interesting people on board, be it a magician or a former political mover and shaker…

The other morning, I made time for a lecture by the jeweller whose gorgeous shop is on board. Rodney Rahmini talked us through rare gemstones of the world, such as star sapphires and cat’s eye christoberyl, mined from the troubled grounds of Sri Lanka and Myanmar. And ladies, I have found my new career – jewellery model.

I came over all Delvine Delaney (for those of you formerly addicted to Sale of the Century) and had several thousand dollars worth of rubies draped on me. The catches all seemed to be broken, because I couldn’t get them off after an hour. But that’s ok, the police pried them off and no charges have been laid against me…

Today we stopped at the Malaysian city of Kota Kinabalu. Not the most exciting of ports, but I should have taken a tour. It’s a weird part of the world: Chinese clothes shops sit beside Muslim restaurants – Hong Seng and Bismillah side by side, with of course the ubiquitous KFC and a ribs house called Texas.

There were many markets: the wet, the dry, the handicraft, the night, the Sunday… Malaysians love a good shop, obviously.

But it was not enough, it appears.

“We’ll see you back on the boat in an hour,” said one cruiser, who was returning to the boat on an early bus this morning. I get the feeling many are just waiting for Hong Kong, when the real fun begins, and the countries include Egypt, Israel and then Europe. I’m heartbroken I’m leaving at HK…

Mar

Equators, evil spirits and the power of silence

We’ve just crossed the Equator, and people, can I tell you, there was no red line.

I think that might be an oil rig on the horizon, but other than that, no fanfare. There is some sort of traditional hi-jinks on this afternoon to celebrate, but for now, it was a quiet event at about 4am, somewhere off the coast of Malaysia, as we head to Borneo and the nearby Malaysian port of Kota Kinabalu.

Our day trip to Bali has spawned a new flush of batik clothing on board, snapped up from voracious traders, and people are still talking about the stick-like-glue beggars and their hour-long $10 Balinese massages (compare with the $150 deals on board), proving that even the wealthy love a good bargain.

I joined a cycling tour from Mt Batur, in the north, riding 25km down to Ubud to counteract some of the serious eating happening on board the Odyssey. About 14 of us whizzed through rice paddocks and tiny villages, kids waiting with outstretched hands that we slapped as we passed, like slightly wobbly Tour de France pros.

Our route was lined with enormous paper mache monsters, about 10 meters high, grotesque dolls being made by the villagers in preparation for Silence Day, the only Hindu celebration recognized by Indonesia’s predominantly Muslim government (bizarrely, Bali is a little Hindu island in the world’s largest Muslim nation).

The government has to recognize this day: no Balinese will work the airports, sea ports, drive, cook or even venture out doors. The belief goes that once a year, these enormous grotesque dolls are paraded from one end of the village to the other, scaring out all the bad spirits, who leap, terrified, into the air.

So, the whole of Bali goes quiet for 24 hours to fool the spirits, who are now flying angrily across the skies, into thinking the island is deserted. Thus deceived, the evil spirits dive back into the seas from whence they came. Hence the day of fasting, with no work or play – just silence. I was in Bali on this day a few years ago, and all I could hear from the hotel I was staying in was the tinkle of bells tied around the farm animals’ necks as they grazed peacefully on the jungle foliage.

Well, room service has just delivered breakfast, but here’s some more food for thought: Bali’s evil spirits are underwater, and we’re on the water…

Mar

Maidens at sea: Seabourn Odyssey

The Indonesian island of Bali has just slid into view, complete with halo of puffy clouds. As you might have guessed, we’re not in Australia anymore, Toto.

Sorry for the silence on the blog: life in Australia is never dull, even more so when you leave. At the moment, I’m cruising with the sparkling new Seabourn Odyssey. She’s on her maiden voyage around the world, after leaving Fort Lauderdale, Florida, two months ago. In another two months, she’ll reach the Greek port of Piraeus, travelling via Hawai’i, Australia, south-East Asia, India and Egypt. I’ve snagged a cabin on the leg from Darwin to Hong Kong.

Somehow, she’s called a yacht, even though there are 11 decks, 450 guests and almost as many staff again. But compared with the super cruisers, who have up to 3000 guests, she’s small and personalized. People remember each other’s faces at the breakfast buffet, which is nice when you see the same people at the spa, or by the pool.

The boat’s got things like personal shoppers for each port, market shopping with the chef, a nine-hole putting course, rare tea tastings, movies under the stars, bath menus, and allegedly a beach barbecue, with staff in full uniform delivering champagne and caviar from the ship by surfboard. There’s also a diamond showroom which I desperately need. But just in case you thought they were getting too far above themselves, the Odyssey still has shuffleboard, that old-school deck game of bowls for ships that would have kept many ten-pound Poms from going insane on their long sea journeys to Australia. Hell, this ship even has shuffleboard Olympics.

There’s also daily trivia, enrichment lectures from foreign correspondents and explorers, the guest magician is doing a chat on Houdini, you can learn to tango, make jewellery, do daily yoga, play bridge till your cards melt or become a gym junkie.

Let me tell you about our suite, one of the Owner’s suites. We are at the front of the ship, one deck below the bridge, where the captain and his mates hang, so my little laptop has a bird’s eye view of where we’re heading. There is a walk-in wardrobe, two flat-screen TVs (one for the bedroom, one in the lounge), a main bathroom with full-sized bath as well as a guest loo. There is a kitchen with a little espresso machine (which, weirdly, doesn’t let you do the whole steamed milk thing, so it’s short blacks only), and mixers for your drinks. There are champagne glasses, sink and stools to pull up to the little kitchen, as well as a dining table with fresh fruit, where we sit to take our tea each morning, delivered early by room service.

My one surprise is the size of the bedroom area – I understand most people are travelling with their spouse, but for those of us who might have, say, their mums with them, split into two twins, there’s some pretty up-close-and-personal sleeping going on…

The prices might be six-star, but the service is also stellar. There are just two Australian members of staff on board, and they’re both girls in the spa, the rest are a jumble of Europeans, South Africans, some Americans (I think) and the ubiquitous and charming Philippinos.

The captain is a chatty Englishman who has just interrupted to give his daily midday update to tell us that it’s 29C, we’ve travelled 733km since Darwin and Bali is the fourth island on the right, where we’ll anchor tomorrow morning.

Today, the itinerary includes a facial, yoga, a little stop for coffee in the chic little café that stocks the most luscious little cakes, fresh from the kitchen, and, if you were so included, a visit to the bridge to see the ship’s steering wheel. Busy day, I’d better hop to it.

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