Hallow Jack

It is perhaps the easier solution to raise your hand and say no to the people trying to sell you postcards, t shirts, trays and something called a lungi (probably the wrong spelling) which is the sarong type garment that men and women wear in Mynamar.

These people, many children, some very young,  are a persistent but polite and try hard to engage. Some we met spoke 4 or more languages as they tried their hardest to find some common ground to enable to make their pitch.

Almost uniformly on being told that we were English their response was ‘lovely juberly’ in a pseudo cross between an English and Indian accent. 

One group followed us on cycles as we transferred by horse and cart to see a pagoda, targeting a particular cart and asking people on board to buy their wares.

‘You buy from me? When you come back I remember you…. You remember me, yes? When you come back you buy lungi for your lady…yes…I have pretty colours…she like’

To be fair virtually all of them were not interested in hand outs, they wanted to sell us something. 

We took horse and carts through various tracks and in amongst various ancient pagodas to a small hill in the middle of nowhere to watch the sunset.

Within minutes of arriving a young woman arrived on a small motor bike and wandered over to see if she could sell us something.

Persistent yes, aggressive no.  These are people full of smiles… Wonderful smiles that light up their faces.

As you wander around the ancient pagodas, encounter monks going about their day and watch people toil in the fields using the most basic of tools and the skills passed from generation to generation over many decades if not centuries you can’t help to wonder about the long term impact of tourism on these gentle people.

Sure tourism will bring greater prosperity…but dancing with the devil has real dangers. I hope they are successful. I remember them. I very much doubt they will remember me.

We are aboard a Qantas Airbus 380 crossing into Europe, the bulk of our journey home is done. We left the hotel in Auckland at two in the afternoon on Monday (one in the morning in the UK). We will land at Heathrow just after half past twelve Tuesday lunchtime via Melbourne and Dubai…. A tough ask for any traveler.

This time my ‘cunning plan’ to book window and an aisle seats actually worked. My simple logic was by booking the aisle and window no one was likely to volunteer to place themselves in the middle and someone would only end up there if the flights were busy. The shortest sector Auckland to Melbourne we volunteered to ‘give up’ the window seat to a lady travelling alone. On the two longest sectors no one was placed in the middle so we had a spare seat…. Result!

The last few days we spent in New Zealand’s metropolis, Auckland. A sizeable and quite pleasant city with a waterfront that provides the option to catch a a downtown ferry to reach a variety different communities including the wine producing island of Waiheke. On balance we liked the city although the increase in the number of people living on the street did generate an edge to the city which was a little unwelcome.

Auckland is certainly the most sharpish of the New Zealand’s cities and towns we visited with service levels much quicker and a sense of people being switched on a lot more.

So our journey is all but complete. I have certainly enjoyed my visit to this visually stunning country and to meet such warm and kind people of many nationalities…

I have always liked to travel to new and interesting places, to see how different peoples live, to understand their histories, culture and to enjoy everything such countries have to offer. This has been a longish trip by my standards , I left the 6th – today is the 24th, and as the plane crosses the skies of Europe towards London i have the same recurring feeling. I am very fortunate to have had the opportunity to travel to many different countries over the years and despite having seen and experienced so much each time I travel it is always so good to come home.

Probably this is a good time to close this piece and avoid (any more) cringing sentimentality….

And so for New Zealand 2015 that is wrap….

You may have gathered my last post was largely crafted after I had left Wellington, as this one is being written in the metropolis of Auckland.

Taupo is very similar to Queenstown a largely unreal collection of restaurants, bars, shops and activity outlets all of whom are exclusively focussed on the visitor rather than the resident.

Staying in Taupo was actually felt good. There were less coaches than Queenstown and fewer groups with face masks and cameras…. If you know you know….

The one example of being stuck in two worlds that I forgot to mention last time is that they still have video/dvd rental shops here…. The only word I can think of is ‘quaint’….

We drove from Wellington up Highway 2 to Napier. The scenery is simply stunning.

Napier is an interesting town, very oddly wedded to all things ‘Art Deco’ for some reason we didn’t fathom during our short stay. By the time we got there we only experienced the tale end of that curse of mass tourism…. The cruise ship passenger – on shore… We came, we saw, we walked along the beach a little, had an ice cream and went again.

The landscape on North Island is less dramatic than the South but we took a chair lift to the snow line, saw an active volcano, saw the power of some amazing natural falls, delved deep into caves to see thousands of glow worms clinging to ancient rock roofs and cruised across a huge lake… Not too bad for the middle bit.

Peter