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Our First Big Around The World Trip 2002/3
We became digital nomads in 2002 when we took the Jobs Abroad Bulletin on the road. Every month we set ourselves up in an internet cafe to send hundreds of vacancies to our subscribers, introducing each issue with a little of what we had been doing during the previous month.
First Issue
June 2002 – UK to Peru
This is the first issue of JAB produced on the move, using I-net cafes. After a few days in Lima, JAB moved down the coast to Pisco, and over the Andes to Nazca before renting an apartment in Cusco with a view of the mountains.
The physical part of JAB is the laptop; this delicate piece of equipment, which we call Mr Benn, has already crossed mountains and deserts, flown in a light aircraft and ventured into a speedboat to view seals and seabirds in the Pacific Ocean.
Unfortunately, such was our rush to move flat and pack our rucksacks, Mr Benn lacked vital pieces of equipment for his trip and until fairly recently we have had difficulty accessing the web and no way to collect our main email. This has limited our activities some what and created a backlog of site work to do and emails to answer.
But thanks to help from our neighbours Cusco Weekly we are able to get JAB out this month, receive emails and work on the site. The only thing we can’t do is send email but we should have that problem solved shortly.
Cusco Weekly, by the way, is a new weekly English language local paper for Cusco and Peru. Their website at www.cuscoweekly.com is worth a look if you are headed this way or merely want to find out more about our new home town. Another of our neighbours, South American Explorers (where Deirdre is helping out voluntarily), kindly lets us use their facilities which includes advice, trip reports, maps, guidebooks and discounts.
We need to make some money to finance the trip. This website is in effect our working holiday so please forgive us if the site and JAB contains a few more commercial areas and advertisements than previously. We are not going to go money mad though and will only accept advertising from organisations that offer genuinely useful services to travellers and those intent on working abroad.
We hope our experiences make PAYAway a better website and JAB a better newsletter. The tips passed on to us by the many travellers we have already met and will meet will be passed on to you via these pages and in JAB.
Inca Trail
July 2002 – Peru
Hello. The Inca Café where we post JAB is going to shut soon so I’ll make the intro short and sweet this month. We’re still in Cusco, Peru, catching up with the backlog of work created by our email problems (which seem to be solved). We’re also tweaking the site a little and next month we hope to produce a special Latin America Supplement to JAB. Adios.
August 2002 – Peru
Hello. We’ve begun to get off our butts and go places rather than just eating and drinking our way around the pubs, restaurants and clubs of Cusco. The cosy apartment with a heater has been replaced by hostels again and Deirdre has left South American Explorers but still pops in to help out and blag lunch.
We have recently returned from the Inca trail: described, accurately in our view, in Lonely Planet as “the Inca Trial.” Perhaps the four day trail was a bit ambitious for our first ever hike. We’re hardly ancient, but we felt as old as the ruins themselves as we puffed and panted our way up and down the mountains, lagging behind the eight young, experienced hikers that made up our group. Next time we hike, it’ll be with a group of fat old people – and I’ll leave my cigarettes at home.
Machu Picchu is worth it though; It’s a fabulous place to poke around and one could spend days investigating all the nooks and crannies of the site or taking in the views.
In an hour or two we will get on a bus to the Bolivian town of Copacabana, to visit the islands on Lake Titicaca and get out of Peru before our stamp runs out on Saturday.
Cusco is beginning to feel a little like home whenever we come back from somewhere and we will be back again in a few weeks to do some much needed maintenance on the website before heading to La Paz. Speaking of site business, I had hoped to do a Latin America Supplement this month for JAB but it’ll have to wait now until the September issue as time has caught up with us again.
Lake Titicaca
September 2002 – Peru & Bolivia
Hello. We are back in Cusco after renewing our stamp and crossing the border (twice) into Bolivia to visit the islands on Lake Titicaca. I lost my Peruvian immigration card and didn’t get an exit stamp from that country so the Bolivians sent me back ($5 fixed the problem with minimal time and inconvenience). Dee got through easily, with a cheery shout of “Ireland for the Irish” from the border official.
We hung around Copacabana, a laid back lakeside town popular with ageing hippies, before hiking across the Isla del Sol. The guidebook states that the walk across the mountainous island should take three hours but we, as usual, took longer and ended wandering in the dark with failing torch batteries, chasing dropped apples and giggling in the rain, until we were rescued by small boys.
Puno, back in Peru, provided the base for visiting Taquille and the floating Uros Islands; made of reed and springy to walk on. Then, after a few days reunion with Mr Benn in Cusco, we took off to the jungle town of Quillabamba, ate lots of cakes and ice cream, got savaged by insects (tip: spray repellent, don’t count them) and hitched lifts on trucks.
In between, we managed to get some work done and finish the Latin America Supplement that we promised an issue or two ago. Next month we should be back in Bolivia, to La Paz, before deciding whether to head for Argentina or Chile.
The Border
October 2002 – Peru, Bolivia, Chile & Argentina
Hello. We have left Cusco for the last time and made it to La Paz. So goodbye and good luck to Fiona, Shawn, Marlo, Guillerme and Jane at South American Explorers, Andy and Tatiana of Cusco Weekly, the bar staff at Paddy’s, the Irish pub, and Gary, our landlord in many guises.
In La Paz we investigated the many markets of the city, witches, coca, and made time to shove lots of ice cream down our throats. Travelling south, we enjoyed a railway service that puts British Rail, or whatever it’s called now, to shame before heading to the spectacular reflective salt flats of the Salar de Uyuni, crossing mountains and deserts into Chile.
Our time in South America is running low; we spent most of our recent time in San Pedro de Atacama enjoying the sun and trying to get to Argentina. We managed this with a journey from Hell. A ten hour delay, without food, at the border in the middle of nowhere; tyre blow outs, and overheated engines virtually tripled our journey time to 24 hours. For the most part we, and our six other unfortunate travelling companions, spent the time ripping the piss out of our increasingly nervous driver and guide Erich.
Marty, an Australian, and I, the two worst Spanish speakers of the group were sent on foot down to the border post with a note requesting permission for our Chilean guide to enter Argentina without papers; to use their phone and find out where our connecting bus was. Returning up the hill with another note we hitched a lift in a truck where Marty took over the wheel and drove up the twisting dirt road to the surprise of our friends.
The Argentine police and customs, after initial gruffness, invited us in, fed and watered us and eventually, once our bus arrived, waved us off with smiles and kisses blown to us. Overall, a surreal, exhausting, but rewarding experience that has allowed us to see a gentler side of the authorities. We are now in Salta, a hot and charming town, enjoying European comfort at developing World prices (for example: two Italian meals, garlic bread, a bottle and a half of wine, and two large orange juices for less than a fiver), and about to get on yet another bus to the Igazu falls.
Despite all this travelling, we have relaid out the site, though with minimal I-net time and, at times, electric, there are still a few inevitable errors to correct. I’ve also fallen a little behind with emails, so apologies for this. Elsewhere on the site, I wish to do a long overdue issue of the Working Traveller soon and add outstanding listings and links. As for JAB, the October issue is in danger of being published in November so the next issue will be short and sweet and sent to you all in a week or two.
Leaving LA
November 2002 – Paraguay, Brazil, Uruguay & Argentina
Hello. It has been a busy and at times exhausting couple of weeks since the last issue. We have left Salta, in the North of Argentina, and travelled quickly across the country to Paraguay. I can’t say the capital of this country, Ascuncion, has much going for it; the city seems to shut down at eight in the evening and is run down with deteriorating buildings.
Many South American cities have slums and shanty towns, but nowhere have we seen any on such prime real estate: by the river twenty yards from the parliament building in the centre of a nation’s capital. The people though seem both honest and helpful. Twice I gave a taxi driver the wrong note (ten times the fare) and twice he handed it back.
Though with little else to change our minds about our original plans not to stay very long we crossed the country to the livelier smuggling town of Ciudad del Este and from there took in three countries in one day.
Hiring a taxi, we travelled from Paraguay through Brazil and back into Argentina. We visited both the Brazilian and Argentine sides of the spectacular Igazu Falls, returning soaked from both the efforts of the unmissable falls and a mischievous inflatable motorboat pilot.
Sipping champagne and reclining in fat seats, we treated ourselves to some luxury for the twenty hour bus journey to Buenos Aires. As a mark of class the bus company didn’t show any films starring either Jean Claude van Damme or Jackie Chan. We have been on a lot of buses in the past five and a half months but this was the first time JCVD didn’t rear his karate kicking features.
Finally we’re in sophisticated Buenos Aires, where we order Irish coffee and receive free pizza, bread, cakes and biscuits. The streets are wide and the banks covered in graffiti and new, but bashed, steel plate. Despite their problems, the people are well dressed, intelligent, hospitable and friendly.
We are due to fly this evening to Santiago and then across the Pacific Ocean to New Zealand. We didn’t really know what to expect when we first arrived in South America, the continent was one of the least known to me, but it has been a pleasure to travel around all of the countries we visited in the region. We stayed over twice as long as we originally intended, mostly in Cusco, and would recommend a visit here to each and every one of you.
Flush and Queue
December 2002 – New Zealand & Australia
Hello. We have crossed the Pacific Ocean to New Zealand and landed back in the English speaking World. Some of our old South American habits died hard and we spent a few days marveling at toilets that can handle toilet tissue and at people queuing in line. Shocks came with the price of cigarettes, transport, rooms and, well, everything really compared to SA.
We spent a short time in New Zealand, travelling to the sunny Bay of Islands area and to sulphurous Rotorua before flying out of Auckland to Sydney on the day of a Papal visit. It wasn’t JP2 though. Another Pope, the head of the Coptic Church in Egypt – the oldest Christian Church in the World – had decided to visit the land of the long white cloud.
In Sydney we did the big tourist things; Bondi, the bridge and the opera house before popping down to Bellambi, near Woolongong, to see a Scottish friend from home.
Nursing hangovers after enjoying their considerable hospitality we raced up the coast via Byron Bay, Hervey Bay, Airlie Beach and sailed and snorkeled around the Whitsunday Islands.
The mining town of Nhulunbuy, on aboriginal land at the Top End, is where we are currently at, visiting another couple of friends that we knew from back home. Tomorrow we’ll throw a couple of prawns on the barbie, open a couple of cold ones, and enjoy Christmas in 95 degree heat.
Site wise we have had a few email problems and have fallen behind with correspondence but hope to catch up soon. Finding an Internet café that accepts laptops has also been difficult in Australia and New Zealand and that has meant that JAB is later than we would have liked. Next month we’re will probably be in Indonesia and hope to produce a special Australia and New Zealand Supplement for the Jobs Abroad Bulletin.
Special thanks this issue to Helen, Peter, Tony, Carolyn, Rebecca and Jessica, among others, who have made us feel very welcome in their homes and to David Toner of Wanderers Travel and the crew on Ozsail’s yacht Mandrake, Gerald, Stacy and Sara.
Happy Christmas
OzSail
http://www.ozsail.com.au
Christmas Dinner & Bombs in Bali
January 2003 – Australia & Bali
Hello. We haven’t done a great deal this month. Mostly, we’ve loafed around our friends, Helen and Peter’s house in Nhulunbuy, in the Northern Territory of Australia, enjoying the comforts of home.
Christmas dinner was fish and prawns this year. The Barramundi we caught ourselves on a fishing trip in the Azafura Sea in Peter’s tinny – well, I didn’t catch the fish, but I was in the boat when it was landed so I consider it a moral victory over nature. A stickleback remains the biggest fish I’ve ever caught. Either way it was quite unlike the usual roast dinner we enjoy at home but there at least Tesco can slaughter my dinner for me.
In the evening we enjoyed another dinner at Mark and Natalie’s house, friends of our friends, that consisted of more hunted food: goose and salmon. Lovely.
I could talk about food, and what you have do to get it if you don’t have a supermarket nearby, for much longer but the I-net café will close soon, as will all the restaurants (back to food again). We’re in Bali by the way, in Kuta, not far from the wreck of Paddy’s and the Sari Club.
The bombs that devastated these establishments also devastated business on the island too. It’s not fair – the hospitable Balinese do not deserve their present fate of being a tourist Mecca with so very few tourists.
We haven’t been doing too much other than eat our way around the town as we have been catching up with work and this issue comes accompanied by the Australia and New Zealand Supplement that we promised last issue.
Thieving Monkey
February 2003 – Bali & Thailand
Hello. After finishing the Australia and New Zealand Supplement and Tramp News last month, we treated ourselves to seeing something of Bali. Dragging ourselves away from the coast, for the first time since Rotorua in New Zealand, we headed inland to Ubud, the cultural centre of Bali. Highlights included forest monkeys and Balinese dancing, including some vigorous firewalking, performed by a religious group that included our homestay owner.
My camera, as usual, quit on me during the dancing, only to work again seconds after the performance ended but plenty of cheeky monkeys were caught in megapixels; including a tiny one that chose to attack anything four times its size while its mother held on to its tail. It reminded us a little of our favourite pub back home (leave it Dave – he ain’t worth it).
Dee managed to pick up quite the impressive collection of bruises in Bali. After falling down a drain, covered by rainwater from one of the daily downpours, she fell off a bicycle and was fortunate not to go over a cliff. A monkey ran off with her bag too.
We reluctantly said goodbye to Bali and all the Weyann’s, Madi’s Joman’s and Kutut’s (the four names everyone on the Island, male or female, is given) and flew to the Asian mainland, to Bangkok.
Chinese New Year wasn’t the best time to arrive and after getting knocked back by several hostels, and assisting a drunk Spanish robbery victim, we decided to drink to well past dawn with a French Canadian and a Swede. Similar nights followed including a pool party without a pool.
It’s too early to say if we like Thailand as we haven’t left Bangkok yet. The Khao San Road is good for vibrant boozy fun, the river is a great way to travel and the Wats impress. However the “land of the smiles” seems in reality a triumph of good press relations, we’re living in a cupboard and we’ve encountered as many con men and theft victims in one week than in the past eight months.
We’ll have plenty of time to make up our minds as we’ll be in and out of Thailand several times before we fly home. We were due to visit Cambodia but because of uncertainty over the border situation we’ve decided to postpone that for a couple of months. Instead, we’re off to some islands today for a bit of sun and fresh air before heading to Malaysia and Sumatra.
Islands
March 2003 – Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia
Hello. After a longer pause than usual here is this issue of JAB. Our recent travels have reminded us that travelling and working are not always compatible; we’ve either been without power sockets to plug in Mr Benn (the name for our laptop) or Internet access has been a boat and bus ride away from our accommodation.
The closed Thai-Cambodian border led us to change our plans and head south to Ko Samui. Staying in a quiet part of the island, Mae Nam, we loafed about on the beach and hared around on a moped. I haven’t been on a bike for years: the first and last time I was on two wheels, in Ibiza, I crashed into a stationary milk float within seconds of mounting the bike and later nearly broke both wrists after going over the handlebars.
Older and wiser the bike rides were more successful this time and we made it around the island unscathed apart from an unintentional wheelie flinging Dee onto the floor and the bike into the air, and a brief but interesting excursion up a one way street (“These people are very friendly, look they’re waving at us.”)
After two weeks of sun, sand and shifty salesmen we moved on to welcoming and hassle free Malaysia, to Penang. In that culturally diverse city we did the tourist thing before crossing to Sumatra.
First stop Bukit Lewang, famous for orangutans, magic mushrooms and tubing down the river. All great fun. Lewang should be the sort of place that is tucked up in bed by 8pm but this one horse town is livelier than some capital cities. Pulau Samosir, positioned in a lake formed by a collapsed volcano, is a more sedate place with nothing much to do but sit, stare, swim and chat to cat eating descendants of cannibal converts to Christianity. The stores are staffed by six year old children and you can hail boats like taxis.
We are presently back in Malaysia, in Malacca, trying to finish JAB before heading to Singapore tomorrow. Taking advantage of some of the sleepy places we’ve been at in the last five or six weeks we’ve put some photographs of our trip online and have finally completed a new issue of The Working Traveller. This issue of JAB is also accompanied by a repeat of the Travel Security Supplement from last year. The next issue of JAB hopefully will be sent to you in a couple of weeks as I want to get it out of the way before (if) we head to Cambodia and we don’t intend to go with Mr Benn.
Lastly, apologies if you’ve got in touch with us and we haven’t got back to you. Our email backlog has got completely out of hand and I don’t expect to catch up until we get home in a few months.
Cheesecake & Whiskey
April 2003 – Singapore, Malaysia & Thailand
Hello. This will probably be the last issue of JAB produced on the move. We bring this issue to you not long after the last one because, as mentioned above, we intend to tuck away Mr Benn while we toddle off to Laos, China, Vietnam and Cambodia.
Last issue we mentioned we were off to Singapore where we stayed a couple of days, saw Raffles and avoided SARS, before heading back to Malacca to pick up our handy Catch 22 travel safe which we had left behind.
Leaving the heat we made it to the cool Cameron Highlands and stuffed ourselves with steamboat, strawberries and cheesecake. Rik, a pleasant and informative South African veteran of over four years of continuous travel, persuaded us, over a litre each of whiskey, to add southern China to our itinerary and, after a brief stop in Bangkok, we are now in Kanchanaburi on the river Kwai while we wait for our visas.
The famous bridge is still crawling with hundreds of Japanese while the thousands of British, Dutch, Australasians and, let’s not forget, Asians that built the original bridges lie dead in the immaculately kept graveyards in town.
It does feel like we are nearing the end of our travels but we still have a lot to fit in, probably too much, that we will tell you about next issue. That issue, I’ll repeat again, won’t be sent until the end of May because our bags are being lightened and the laptop is being put away for a while.
Lastly, the usual apology if you’ve got in touch with us and we haven’t got back to you. We’ve got some emails ready to be sent but at last attempt they didn’t go for some reason so if they don’t reach you in the next day or two they won’t go for another seven or eight weeks.
Another New Year
June 2003 – Thailand, Laos, China, Vietnam, Cambodia, UK
Hello. Observant readers will have noticed that there wasn’t a May issue so we intend to have two June issues this month to make up for it. We’ve been back in the UK a couple of days, recovering from the shock of receiving nearly two months email in one shot, and are trying to find a home and get back to reality.
Immediately after we sent the April issue to you, we headed to Chiang Mai in the north of Thailand before travelling down the Mekong to Luang Prabang in Laos. A traveller’s revolt – led by Deirdre – over an insurance scam and two floating dead bodies added (subtracted?) to the river and bankside scenery.
The next four days were spent getting wet as Laos celebrated its new year with buckets of water and water guns – neither the police or the monks were spared a soaking. The western contingent armed themselves to combat each other, the locals – both kids and adult – and the drive-by water shootings.
The highlight took place on a sandbar in the Mekong: an orgy of water, flour, dye, alcohol, bamboo fireworks, sandcastles and throwing the local children in the river.
Laos and the Laos people must be amongst the best in the world but we had to say goodbye to them and all our boat friends and travel north to China. China without a guidebook and any Chinese is a rewarding challenge. Our reason for heading there, the old city of Li Jiang, was, though undeniably beautiful, a bit too chocolate box and characterless so we spent most of our time in the walled city of Dali.
The Chinese in Yunnan are pleasant and will bend over backwards to be helpful but they can’t get their heads around the fact that you cannot speak or read their very difficult language. A simple task like buying a bag of crisps is both amusing and frustrating as someone trying to help points to the Chinese writing as if to say, “Look it says there what flavour they are.”
Vietnam came next. Both beautiful and stressful the country leaves mixed feelings to most that travel there. Sapa has both gorgeous mountain and jungle scenery and hill tribe women following you around trying to peddle drugs and bangles. Hanoi is vibrant and stylish but you’ll want to smack at least one or two postcard sellers in the mouth as “no” repeated a dozen times won’t cut it. If you don’t spend every last dong in this so called communist country on a hawker’s goods you risk offense. The south is better though.
The Mekong once again carried us towards a lovely country, this time to Cambodia. Phnom Penh is a city of contrasts – expensive houses and sheep grazing in ruined buildings live side by side and elephants stroll around downtown. Mighty fine happy pizza too. We saved the best of our trip to last: Angkor. One word: fantastic.
Now we are back there is a lot of catching up to do, both with email and to get the site back up to scratch. Shame we can’t go around the world again.
Now we are back in the UK it is time to end the introduction we included in every issue detailing our travels: I’m confident you don’t want to hear how we’re loafing around my mother’s house, looking for a new home and trying to persuade friends to help us move.
Adios
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