Travel Plans, Travel by Others

I’ve not left town for three weeks, save for a quick trip over the hill for a beer and spicy chicken burger, so don’t have any travels to write about. I do, however, leave tomorrow for an overnight in Sidney before I head north to Nelson for their annual beer festival, Marchfest.

Longer term, I have two trips booked. Last year, before the election and feeling confident about its outcome, I booked a $NZ650 flight to San Francisco on United. I’ll go to Auckland for its Writers’ Festival before flying over in May. The plan is to spend most of the time in the Pacific Northwest and Canada - but I don’t know how northwest I’ll get, because travel into the remoter parts are expensive. I’d also like to do the train trip to Churchill from Winnipeg, and hang out in Halifax again (I spent several weeks there on sabbatical). Plans are far from firm, but I have booked my homeward flight - Fiji Airways out of, er, Dallas (also $NZ650). Yeah, I know, a long way from where I’ll be, but I’ll sort it out.

Jetstar had a bit of a sale on, so I jumped on a flight for near the end of November: $NZ270 from Christchurch to Singapore. I want to do a bit of a circle - up through Malaysia and Thailand to Laos, into China on the train (maybe going west as far as Chengdu and Chongqing (both have been developed remarkably since I was last there), then back across to Hong Kong and down into Vietnam. Quite a lot of familiar ground, but that’s the point of going back to Malaysia and Thailand. I’m on a mission to go into new places in both countries - maybe even into this small town near Kuala Selangor where they bake Beggar Chicken - this video gets right into the process.

One thing I do a lot of is watch YouTube videos - I first came across Flora and Note for their videos about living in Thailand, but they have recently been in Guangzhou, visiting parts I didn’t (Liwanhu Park and Xihua Road) making it look really good. Their next video is also from Guangzhou, with a visit to the only Michelin place in town. Even more recently, Kiwi couple Thomas and Sheena have been making videos about cheap eats - this one is from the Yuexiu District. I think they are still there.

I recently read Reginald Hill’s Antipodean Express - published right here in Dunedin! It’s helped ignite an interest in revisiting Phnom Penh - he and Anne also go through Vietnam and China (I like the sound of West Lake in Hangzhou), among many other places.

Their journey has some similarities to my own last year, and over the years I've travelled on several of the trains they did, even stayed in the same Bangkok hotel they did (across the wee river from Hua Lamphong Station). Unlike me, they left with a definite goal in mind: to visit the spot directly opposite their Wellington home, a wheat field in a fairly unprepossessing Spanish town of 1300 people. They also had a time limit - Anne had to come back to work, so they gave themselves 89 days. This may be why they did so much planning, or maybe they are just that sort of people, but they had each day planned before they left, with guides and nice hotels booked.

Their trip started in Wellington - they caught the Northerner to Auckland, flew to Australia for a train to Adelaide and the Ghan to Darwin, with another plane to Indonesia. I’ve never been, but it’s becoming increasingly likely: these two could catch trains the whole way from near Bali to near Singapore (they jumped that gap in a ferry). From there, it’s trains all the way, including a grand detour into Tibet, except for the occasional bus. Because their trip was in 2019, they were still able to go across Russia before catching a non-stop train to Paris and turning left for Spain. I can only remember one effort at a joke, but it made me laugh. Thanks to all the intellectuals being exiled to Irkutsk, it became known as the Paris of the East - so when they get off the train in France, Reginald dubs it the Irkutsk of the West.

Each day is presented as a separate chapter, with plenty of pictures. The writing is pretty straightforward. I liked reading about life on the train, but it was good that they got off and looked around, rather than making this a race. They visit galleries, classical music venues (they are classical musicians themselves), churches, undertake a few physical activities and, very importantly, visit restaurants - I got quite hungry reading about many of their meals. For many of the places, there’s a brief history - not so much they over-burden the narrative.

The place they visit that reads as the most magical is around Lake Baikal - somewhere I have long wanted to go, but can't in present circumstances. They spent three days on or near lakeside, find a steam train, eat wonderful food: the way these chapters are written makes me wonder if they were a highlight for the author as well.

Back to New Zealand: when I was driving around with my brother in January, he was dead keen for us to drive the Skippers Canyon Road, near Queenstown. It was built in the 1880s at the height of the goldrush - it is very narrow, often carved out of sheer rock faces, with steep drops to the Shotover River. Rental cars are banned, otherwise I think we might have gone in in the Hyundai. I’ve started watching Neil’s videos - he’s a four wheel driver, and in this video, he drives the Skippers Road. It doesn’t look too bad to drive, although the thought of meeting others makes me a little cautious - he says he met 10 vehicles on his way in and out but luckily at spots no one had to back up.

You probably can’t go past Irish and German couple Glen and Mado for a detailed look all around New Zealand - they left quite recently after spending nearly a year here, and made 136 videos: this is the first. They visit almost the whole country, and are very friendly.

Last up, I also watch car videos - obviously there is scope for them to overlap with travel. The most recent example is a sequence of six videos about two blokes driving in to Uluru - the thing that makes them car videos, is that they do it by borrowing cars, in one place, reviving one from a scrap yard!

Cheers!