Cast away that bottle of Bintang, scrap sun-baking on the beach and get your blood pumping at a Balinese wellness retreat.
Located at the heart of the island at a village outside of Ubud, a restored Balinese bungalow will be your home as you spend a week working out. You’ll earn that sweat streaming down your back getting active in the ‘jungle gym’, where the trainers utilise coconuts, bags of rice and bamboo apparatus.
Other sessions involve jungle runs, crawling through muddy rice paddies and hauling logs upstream. Rise at 3am to trek Mount Batur by torchlight, summiting its peak as the first rays of light catch a wisp of volcanic smoke. The early start is rewarded by a trip to natural hot springs to soothe those weary muscles. There’s also plenty of down time for massages, reading, napping and shopping in Ubud, and the meals are prepared using the freshest local produce. And, yes, you can have banana pancakes for breakfast.
Learn how to bend an iron bar and smash bricks with a single fist studying the ancient ways of the Shaolin kung-fu masters.
Always wanted to master the martial arts? The Maling Shaolin Kung Fu Academy in China exposes students to the 1500-year-old traditions of kung-fu with an intense training regimen that subscribes to the ‘no pain, no gain’ principle.
Whether you’re an experienced martial artist or just opening up to the challenge, the academy will help you realise your dreams of becoming a great kung-fu master.
The humble ways of the Shaolin are entrenched in the experience, which is based on ancient Chinese tradition. After months of training, students learn the Mandarin language and graduate to other types of martial arts, including weapons training and sanda (Chinese kickboxing).
When modern-day life is getting you down, it’s time to retreat. At Kamalaya Koh Samui, a luxury spa retreat on the popular Thai island, take a step back, indulge in holistic healing treatments and come out the other side feeling like a new you.
Kamalaya has a number of programs designed to help overcome stress and burnout, but we love the sound of Asian Bliss – when in Rome, after all. For between five and 10 nights, turn off your gadgets then exercise, eat well and be nurtured by treatments taking in Chinese Traditional Medicine, Ayurvedic practice and traditional Thai therapies.
Each day there’s a schedule of complimentary yoga, pilates and tai chi classes, plus there’s a fitness centre, swimming pool and steam cavern if you want to stretch out on your own.
Feel like you’ve got stress levels under control? There’s a whole raft of wellness programs including detox, weight-loss, exercise and yoga programs. As far as the resort goes, the entry-level rooms are cosy and chic and surrounded by trees; others overlook the ocean, some have private plunge pools or there’s the opportunity to book a beachfront villa. Just those views are likely to make knotted muscles unwind.
Nestled among the alleyways of Singapore’s old red light district in Chinatown, the New Majestic is a one-of-a-kind hotel with rooms given names such as Pussy Parlour and Fluid.
Each of the 30 rooms – some individually designed by emerging artists – is just as wacky and risqué as its name suggest. Think ‘floating’ beds, high ceilings, bold murals and art installations, cast-iron garden bathtubs and rain showers, as well as an eclectic mix of vintage and designer furniture.
My young Filipino guide, who a few moments earlier had been full of jokes, lowers his voice as we approach the oldest balete (banyan) tree on the island of Siquijor.
“Local people never point straight at the tree,” he tells me gravely. “And they always ask the spirits for permission before they touch its bark.”
It’s not hard to see how such a huge and knotted tree, its tangles of roots dangling like a witch’s hair, could become the focus of superstition. Even the way the sunlight filters through those roots is somehow sickly, like a scene from a horror movie, the one just before the doomed teens enter a cabin in the woods.
Fittingly, I’d first heard about this island a couple of months earlier when watching a Filipino film called Siquijor: Mystic Island, a rather tacky affair involving curses, plenty of fake blood and acting that was more wooden than the balete.
Of all the 7000 islands in the Philippines, the small island province of Siquijor in the Central Visayas region has the most persistent reputation as a place where witches roam and spirits hold sway. As I travelled through the country, several people warned me in all seriousness about Siquijor. If I really had to visit, they said, I should make sure that it was only during daylight.
All this had piqued my interest in the mystical island, even if I didn’t really put much stock in the tales of black magic rituals amid the palm trees, or curses invoked by wizened sorcerers. What I did know was that people travelled to the island from around the country in search of traditional remedies, potions and amulets. I heard about a rare technique called bolo bolo in which the healer blows through a straw into a glass of water held close to whichever part of the patient’s body is troubling them. As the liquid grows mysteriously dark, the sickness is supposedly extracted.
Surprisingly, most of the island’s traditional healers consider themselves to be devout Catholics. Brought to the archipelago by the Spanish in the sixteenth century, Catholicism is as deeply rooted in Siquijor as anywhere else in the country. Early in my tour around the island, I had visited what is claimed to be the oldest convent in the Philippines. A long, squat building on the main road that runs through the dusty southern town of Lazi, it was constructed in typical Filipino fashion, with stone used for the ground floor and wood on the first floor. Its huge corrugated iron roof was coated in decades of rust.
In keeping with their mix of Catholic faith and older folk beliefs, the high point of the Siquijor magicians’ calendar is Easter weekend, when spirits are said to walk the earth during the time between Christ’s death and his resurrection. Sorcerers and healers converge on the village of San Antonio on Good Friday, and spend the next couple of days mixing up sumpa (potions) in cauldrons. The ingredients are straight out of a gothic horror tale and include insects and wax collected from church candles. The resulting potions are said to be particularly potent and are treasured by Filipino visitors.
Outside of Holy Week, you need to make an effort to seek out healers if you want to experience their work – despite the island’s reputation, you don’t just see magicians hanging around in the street. Out of interest, I made casual inquiries at my hotel, on the northern Sandugan Beach, and the best they could offer was a traditional massage. The small number of foreign tourists that make it to Siquijor tend, on the whole, to be more interested in the island’s beaches and its scuba diving than any local magic.
Diving had been the first thing on my own agenda when I had arrived on the island a couple of days earlier. I’d only recently received my PADI Open Water certification in Boracay, the most famous holiday island in the Philippines, and I was enthusiastic about getting some more experience. I’d never been anywhere near a wreck, though, so I was slightly apprehensive as we headed out to dive around a Japanese ship that had been sunk by the US army during WWII.
As we descended from the surface the water was much murkier than I had experienced so far in the Philippines. I had just come from nearby Apo Island, where the wall diving was truly world-class and the visibility was phenomenal. Here, thanks mostly to run-off from rivers churning things up, I could see only a short distance ahead of me.
As I followed the outline of the dive master into the gloom, it was clear that sorcery wasn’t necessary for things to get a little spooky, and I could barely make him out as we progressed slowly along the sea bed. And then, seemingly out of nowhere, loomed the skeletal form of the shipwreck. As a beginner, I didn’t enter the wreck, but swimming over the rusted and coral-encrusted ribs of the hull watching out for lionfish – their beautiful fans of spines bearing a potent venom – was a distinctly eerie experience.
Back on dry land, Siquijor has plenty of appeal as a beach break destination, with some lovely stretches of sand – some developed and others pleasingly untouched – along the island’s 100 kilometre coastline. Most of the tourist accommodation is either dotted along the west coast, where Paliton Beach is a peaceful highlight, or on Sandugan Beach, where I’m staying. In the southeast, Salagdoong Beach is popular with day-tripping families and local teens flinging themselves into the sea from the rocks.
The road around the island is well surfaced by provincial Philippines standards, so hiring a motorbike to explore is a popular option. Local tricycle drivers also arrange tours, doubling up as guides, and that’s how I decide to get around. Taking the main road down the east coast, we pass vivid green rice fields dotted with scarecrows made from palm branches. Several appear to be wearing orange jumpsuits, giving the slightly odd impression that escaped convicts are watching over the crops.
We stop for a few minutes at a spot overlooking a rickety old wooden house, which my guide says is the oldest building of its kind on the island. The owner lives alone and there are rumours, apparently, that she has supernatural powers. She sits rocking in her chair on a balcony overlooking the sea, while I watch from the road and try to imagine how the place might appear creepy under the right conditions. The pink flowers growing outside the house, together with the bright sunshine, make it difficult.
Deep in thought, I’m startled when an elderly farmer, standing unnoticed right behind me, greets us in the local language of Cebuano. He looks stern and I think we’re being asked to move along, but actually he is welcoming us to the island. It’s only later, when looking at photographs, that I realise he was wearing a baseball cap bearing the logo of a school just a few miles from where I grew up in the UK. It must have been part of a charity package or the rejected product of a Filipino factory; just a coincidence, of course…
I spend the day visiting beaches, swimming beneath waterfalls and exploring the convent – and an accompanying coral-built church – in the town of Lazi. The last stop is the old balete tree, where, in hushed tones, my guide tells me about some of the creatures linked to such trees. According to Filipino folklore, there’s a panoply of malevolent entities waiting to prey on the unwary. Among the most feared is the aswang, a shape-shifting vampire that preys upon unborn children.
Of course, our guide says, he doesn’t believe in such stories. Not really. He’s a young, modern man. And of course, if we wanted to stand inside the hollow of the balete tree, to get the full benefit of its spooky atmosphere, then we could. But he’s not going to do that himself and, besides, it’s getting dark and shouldn’t we get going?
It’s true – the light is growing dim. All the way round my guide has been hinting that it would be a good idea to be on the west coast by sundown, and now he’s getting positively insistent. As we race towards Paliton Beach it becomes clear why, with the sky starting to take on the most phenomenal, fiery orange and red that I’ve ever seen. The sky, the sand and the sea all morph into glorious technicolour. This Mystic Island, it turns out, is truly bewitching.
As the plane approaches Yangon, the knot in my belly tightens. A trip that began as a flight of fancy is about to become reality, and I’m not sure if I’m ready for it. Burma is my last Southeast Asian frontier, the grand old dame of independent travel. I had put off visiting this part of the world for years for fear it was exactly the sort of place popular opinion portrays it to be: dour, ugly and sad. I knew a bit of the history, and I’d listened to plenty of tales of woe from other travellers, some built on a sandy foundation of truth and others conjured from the mist.
My mental picture is bleak. I picture protests at the Shwedagon Paya; monks setting themselves on fire in protest at the actions of the military junta; the shifty eyes of tourist-talking soldiers. I’d always imagined Burma was the saddest place on earth, and now I have two weeks to find out.
My luggage hasn’t followed me through to Yangon. It’s in Saigon, Singapore or Seoul. The airline has no idea how long it might take to track down my stuff – if it can be found at all. I’m welcome to conduct a thorough search myself, though, says the deliriously cheerful customer service agent who meets me in the arrivals hall. In the meantime, she encourages me to enjoy a complimentary Star Cola. Suddenly I’m very unhappy.
Burma is not the sort of place you want to lose your luggage. Not that you can’t easily replace everything in your kit – Yangon is home to a few shopping malls, some excellent street bazaars and an avenue peppered with camera shops. The problem is that the entire country runs on cash; there are no ATM machines and nobody accepts credit cards. If I blow what cash I came with on new knickers, I could wind up starving in the jungle. To compound matters, I have to exchange my dollars for Burmese kyat – a currency that may or may not even exist – on Yangon’s infamous black market.
A man named Zin Min leads me from the Sakura Tower to his makeshift shop in a dusty parking lot, where two of his comrades are waiting to trade. I don’t want any funny business, I declare. I know the going rate of exchange, and I want a fair deal. Zin Min takes my money and arranges it on the counter in front of his boss.
“I want 700 kyat on the dollar,” I demand. The boss behind the counter shakes his head. “I’m sorry sir, this will be impossible,” Zin Min says. “That is the rate from last month, and it is too low. We must give you much more.” To seal the deal, Zin Min offers me a Star Cola.
Perhaps the night will bring on something more sinister. I make my way down to the Botataung Paya where, under the glow of generator-powered fluorescent tubes, willowy wisps drift from one street vendor to the next, filling baskets with gold leaf bananas, wooden puppets and thanaka, a cream used by Burmese women as a cosmetic and sunblock. The chit-chit-chit of the bamboo juicer sets the soundtrack for this ethereal dance party, as children release balloons into the air and street peddlers drape fragrant garlands around the necks of female visitors. Though I’ve lost my luggage, I’m still wearing my dancing shoes. I join the ghostly apparitions as they dance along the Yangon River promenade under the cover of darkness. Everyone is smiling. I’m having a brilliant time.
I’m clearly not finding unhappiness in Yangon, so I need to look someplace else. The photographer in me is drawn to the great set pieces of middle Myanmar: Bagan’s ancient pagodas, Amarapura’s legendary teak bridge, Inle Lake’s mythic floating markets. I decide to look for a revelation in the heart of Burma’s tourist country.
I arrive at Nyaung Shwe, Inle Lake’s main development, in the dead of night. Booking myself onto a boat tour, I wonder aloud if the notorious Nayar, a mythical dragon with four legs, still stalks the waters. An old man sat next to me on the bus ride from Yangon to Inle fills our 13-hour odyssey with tales of Nayar and the Magan, a man-eating crocodile that patrols the murky depths of the lake when the sun goes down. I don’t consider myself superstitious, but in Burma I’ll believe just about anything. I tell my boatman as much.
“Now you’re starting to understand our country,” he says, winking at me as he captains us through the dark. I assume we are in the middle of the lake because I can no longer see the glint of moonlight off the tin roofs of the stilt houses that line the lakeshore. The engine dies and we sit for a moment. My boatman hands me a small package wrapped in banana leaf; he tells me it’s a mix of fermented rice and kneaded fish. I imagine eating it would make me unhappy, so I do it with gusto.
Out of the mist, with the first rays of dawn pouring over the eastern hills, a fisherman appears. He’s trawling across what appears to be a thin sheet of glass, one strong leg propelling his slender canoe while he hefts a massive cone-shaped net above his head. The Intha fishermen, members of the Tibeto-Burman ethnic minority group that make their homes in stilt houses on the lake, are self-sufficient fisherfolk and farmers known for their unique one-legged rowing style. With the sun up, Inle’s water world slowly reveals itself, from pagoda-spiked coves to the green islands of vegetation that float atop the water.
As the sun climbs to its zenith, we motor through thick hyacinth beds to the floating market at the Alodaw Pauk Pagoda. Local villagers are out in force – Intha, Shan, Danu, Kayah and other tribal people are busy trading fruits, vegetables, spices, fish and tall tales. A vendor talks me into chewing paan for the first – and only – time in my life; the areca nuts nearly shatter my teeth, and I don’t know what to do with the red goo oozing from my mouth. Another young lady talks me out of my tattered shorts and into a longyi, and I begin to feel like I’m fitting in.
A longyi is a long tube of cloth worn like a skirt by people throughout Burma. The Burmese are so comfortable in them they can ride a bike, kick a football or run up and down a flight of stairs without skipping a step. I can barely walk without stepping on the fabric and exposing myself to the world. I feel like a mighty Scot in my bold tartan, nigh-on invincible as I crash through the jungle west of the lake. I think I look pretty cool until I meet a guy on a buffalo. The buffalo rider encourages me to try and climb on, so I try – and fail, much to the delight of the band of merry villagers that has joined me on my trek.
I realise then I have made a tactical error – this is one of the most beautiful places I have been in all my life. I’m as likely to find unhappiness here as I am to find the Nayar playing water polo with Moby Dick. I have to eschew my photographic designs and get deeper under Burma’s skin. I bid the scorched central plains goodbye and head back down south.
Stowing away aboard a passenger ferry I depart Mawlamyine and land on Ogre Island, a place where I assume nasty characters will abound.
However, exploring the island’s ethnic Mon settlements reveals a kinder, gentler side of Burma. Horses clop along dusty roads as children build castles out of sand, and the sweet smell of coconut wafts from inside stilt houses built over unending pitches of cereal grains. A stout old lady waves me into her hut, where she proudly displays her collection of handmade coconut teapots.
I roll deeper into the countryside, where farmers in straw hats herd lazy cattle, and messenger boys ramble past on ramshackle bicycles. It’s all very happy. Suspecting the heat may be playing tricks on my mind, I seek solace at the top of a tree with a local palm harvester. As I sit, some hundred feet above the ground, I look out over the past and fall in love with the strangeness surrounding me. My climbing partner, Htay, has been scaling these towering trees since he was a boy, harvesting the fruit that is then sold in Mawlamyine’s Myine Yadanar market. He hasn’t fallen out of a tree yet, and that makes him happy.
On the return ferry I meet a monk who welcomes me to Burma and asks after my trip. If anyone is going to show me unhappiness, this is the man. Monks have driven the engine of dissent in Burma for generations, speaking out against everything from government corruption and social malaise to the price of betel nut. I ask the monk how people remain so optimistic in the face of such tremendous government oppression. The monk smiles as he unfurls a laminated poster. “Because we have hope,” he says, revealing the visage of a young Aung San Suu Kyi. “But I do know someone who is sad,” he continues. “I think you would like to meet the saddest monk in Myanmar.”
I have one last crack at unhappiness, and I’m giddy with anticipation. Returning to Mawlamyine, I immediately chart a course for Shampoo Island, the home of the unhappy monk. During the brief life of the Ava Kingdom, a royal hair-washing ceremony was conducted using water from a well on the island. This is Shampoo Island’s singular claim to fame – for this reason, it has been called the most boring place in Burma.
But Shampoo isn’t bland, nor is it boring. It is a quaint, quiet place, where nuns in pink robes tend to beautiful gardens and giant tree snakes lay in repose in the canopies overhead. I enter the Buddhist meditation centre, where I come upon a three-tiered fish tank filled with happy-go-lucky goldfish. Standing nearby, staring at the tank, is a tangerine-robed monk. He holds a small net in one hand and a dead goldfish in the other. But he doesn’t seem sad at all.
I’m not naive enough to think that Burma is all sunshine and lollipops. This is, after all, a country still ruled by one of the most brutal dictatorships the world has ever known. Yet the Burmese have inspired me with their wanton refusal to accept the realities of their socio-political situation, and the way they embrace hope for the future. I’ve been struck by the natural beauty of the countryside, and mesmerised by the plethora of ancient wonders, but it’s the people I met on my travels that changed me.
Squash seven million people into a mere 1104 square kilometres (yes, that’s 22,000 people per square kilometre) and you have the fourth densest conurbation on the planet. So how is it exactly that a city resembling a bundle of chopsticks up-ended in an eggcup has a great outdoors?
Contrary to popular opinion, behind Hong Kong’s neon-lit skyscraper skyline, the monotony of high-rise apartment blocks and an overdose of air-conditioned malls there is a substantial chunk of nature waiting to be discovered. In fact, nearly 40 per cent of the region of Hong Kong, or 415 square kilometres, is designated country park or nature reserve.
Those willing to veer away from the main built-up areas of Hong Kong Island, Kowloon Peninsula and the New Territories will witness the urban terrain morphing into the kind of natural habitat befitting of an archipelago just south of the Tropic of Cancer. What’s more, even the most remote areas offer a taste of Hong Kong’s history and culture at no extra cost.
Walking & Hiking
The MacLehose trail, stretching a hundred kilometres across the New Territories, is the antithesis of what you would expect to find in a city where leather-soled work shoes and Jimmy Choos are more common than trainers. Named after Crawford Murray MacLehose, Hong Kong’s longest-serving governor and a keen hiker, the trail traverses beaches, scrubby bush escarpments, local villages and mountains including Tai Mo Shan, Hong Kong’s highest peak. In the months leading up to November, Hong Kongers kitted out in the latest hiking gear infiltrate the winding dirt path to train for one of the city’s biggest outdoor events, the Trailwalker, where participants attempt to complete the 100-kilometre trail within 48 hours.
Given that the trail was formerly used as a training run for Gurkha soldiers, completion of the Trailwalker is no mean feat, and tales abound of over-zealous competitors giving up the ghost in the first 15 kilometres. If that deters you somewhat, Hong Kong’s other major walks – the Wilson (78 kilometres), Lantau (70 kilometres) and Hong Kong (50 kilometres) – are shorter but equally scenic. All four trails, the MacLehose included, have been divided into smaller sections so that the more sedate among us can pick and choose how hard and how far we walk.
The start of the Hong Kong trail, with its show-stopping view of the city, is one of the easiest segments and one of the most impressive, given its proximity to the city centre. It starts mere metres from one of Hong Kong Island’s busiest tourist destinations, the upper terminal of the Peak Tram. Visitors can sidestep the throngs of snap-happy mainland tourists and follow the Peak Circuit signs for a nature-lovers’ walk along a tree-hugging footpath, with interpretive signs detailing the local flora and fauna.
The Hong Kong trail views are nothing short of spectacular. Towards the southwest, the watery expanse of ocean is dotted with cargo ships, docked before making their way up the Pearl River Delta to mainland China. In the other direction, the skyscrapers rise almost as high as the Peak Circuit itself. The most prominent edifice is the 2IFC, tickling the clouds at 415 metres.
The views don’t abate as the trail continues. At the other end of the Hong Kong trail is the eight-kilometre Dragon’s Back, so called because it extends along the undulating ridge of a mountain range. It has been dubbed one of the world’s best urban hikes. Hong Kong’s only Aussie Rules club uses the route for training, but if this sounds like it could generate more sweat than enjoyment, three hours is probably time enough to take it in your stride. At the peak of the trail, walkers have a bird’s eye view of Shek O Beach on one side and Clearwater Bay on the other, before the trail descends through a canopied path to end in the back alleyways of Big Wave Bay.
Beach Bumming
Did somebody mention Shek O and Big Wave Bay? For a region with 260 outlying islands you’d want to hope there are plenty of beaches worth bumming on. Hong Kong doesn’t disappoint. Shek O and Big Wave Bay are two of the nicest and most accessible – a short ride in one of Hong Kong Island’s cheap red taxis will get you there in half an hour. The laidback beach of Shek O is one of 41 Hong Kong beaches fastidiously staffed with lifeguards and secured with a shark net. It is also a hangout for boardshort-clad Hong Kongers who have shed the shirt and tie for some leisure time. The easygoing atmosphere of the local seaside village, with its maze of meandering alleyways, makes it the perfect spot for a post-swim beer or bowl of Thai-Canto noodles.
Around the next bend is Big Wave Bay, which shares a reputation for good water quality with Shek O but wins hands down when it comes to swell – especially when a typhoon is imminent. (Hong Kong is geographically located in an area known as Typhoon Alley.) When a signal eight typhoon flag is raised, schools, public transport, government departments, offices and even the stockmarket close down. Sane folk usually head home to batten down the hatches but eager surfers, waveboarders and bodysurfers make a beeline for the beach and a chance to catch the kind of waves you would expect in Hawaii.
On calmer days village shops in Big Wave rent surfboards and there’s a beachfront cafe that provides the ideal spot to watch the waves roll in. A short walk across the white sands to the rocky peninsula reveals 3000-year-old Bronze Age rock carvings laboriously chiselled into the stone. The carvings symbolise the ancient gods and tribal totems of Hong Kong’s earliest settlers, who relied on the sea for their livelihood. Similar carvings, some dating back to Neolithic times, can be found on nine of Hong Kong’s outlying islands.
Hong Kong beaches tend to improve the further afield you go. The half-hour ferry from Central on Hong Kong Island to Lantau Island stops in Mui Wo, where Silvermine Bay Beach has pristine water and plenty of restaurants to satiate an appetite for Western fare. Better still, for a measly few dollars punters can jump in a cab and head to Pui O Beach. The palm trees send shadows across the white sand and give this strip of beach its tropical-island ambience. If it weren’t for the herd of water buffalo and the incense emanating from the little temple amid the trees, you would be forgiven for thinking you were in Fiji.
Pui O has a campsite for anyone keen on a weekend getaway, and those with more time on their hands can drop into Po Lin Monastery. The monastery, atop a hill overlooking the South China Sea, is the home of Tian Tan, at higher than 30 metres, one of the world’s tallest seated bronze Buddhas. It got pipped for title in 2007, but that doesn’t undermine its stature – some people swear they can see it from as far away as Macau on a clear day.
Further still from Hong Kong, but equally worthy, is Sai Kung town in the eastern part of the New Territories. From this laidback little township, old-fashioned Chinese sampans ferry daytrippers to Hap Mun Bay, Hebe Haven, Trio Beach and a number of deserted islands dotted in between. Flotillas of sailing boats, unspoiled beaches and clear water make this one of the most scenic destinations in Hong Kong.
But perhaps the real beauty of this excursion is the opportunity to top off a hard day on the beach with a delicious local dining experience. Along the promenade in Sai Kung, outdoor restaurants with lazy susan-style tables specialise in seafood, the likes of which you might not have seen before. Each venue has dozens of bubbling tanks crawling with fish, crustaceans and other denizens of the deep. Be warned, it’s not for vegans or the faint-hearted. Diners eyeball their selected catch then discuss in stilted Cantonese how they want it cooked. Before you can bat an eyelid it gets whisked from the tank. Within fifteen minutes it’s on the dinner plate.
Camping Crusoe-style
Tell a city local that you are going camping for the weekend and they will likely scoff at you. In fact, Hong Kong has 39 designated campsites, not to mention a handful of places where rough camping is an option. The ‘easy’ designated sites for beginner campers have mod cons such as barbecue pits, running water and toilet blocks, while the ‘experienced’ sites might require a bit of legwork. Chances are if you hike in you’ll have the whole campsite, not to mention an entire white sandy beach, to yourself, Robinson Crusoe-style.
If a tent isn’t high on your list of things to pack (and carry), you needn’t despair. Hong Kong’s most adventurous rough campsite requires little more than insect repellent, sunscreen and a good book. Head to Tai Long Wan, one of Sai Kung Peninsula’s natural wonders, and trek from there to the local campground where tents, camping mats and sleeping bags are all available onsite.
One of the few villages on this expansive natural reserve is Ham Tin, a tiny town in the scrubland. In the 1950s Ham Tin had a thriving population, but lack of transport, communication infrastructure and education saw the younger generation depart for the urban areas of Hong Kong or to foreign lands. Today, the village is almost deserted save for the few villagers who occupy a cluster of pre-war houses and the handful of tourists who can be bothered making the journey. From the village cafe’s shady tables, campers can feast on noodles and fried rice or sip on a cool beer with a view to their tent pitched right on the beautiful white sandy beach. Ten minutes over the next hill, the gentle swell is ideally suited to surfers getting their sea legs – no need to wait for a typhoon.
Watersports
Hong Kong has only ever won one Olympic gold medal and it wasn’t for table tennis or badminton. At the 1996 Atlanta Olympics Lee Lai-Shan from Cheung Chau Island took home the gold medal for windsurfing, becoming one of the city’s few sporting celebs. Twelve years on and the golden sheen of her sporting prowess has not dimmed. With just the right bay wind conditions, Cheung Chau, Hong Kong’s largest fishing island, is regarded as the place to windsurf. Lai-Shan’s family run a cafe on Tung Wan Beach, a serene little bay where you can hire kayaks, rowing boats, windsurfers, umbrellas and deck chairs or book in for a windsurfing lesson.
For those who prefer wakeboarding or waterskiing, there’s no shortage of options. The ideal way to get involved is to combine the activities with a junk, one of Hong Kong’s timeless social institutions and a form of networking par excellence. It is basically a daytrip out among the islands on a fully catered boat with staff oh-so-eager to top you up with cold beer all day. Though the name derives from the Chinese sailing vessels that originated in the Han Dynasty, today’s junks are motor-powered with a contemporary fit-out. Even so, the sight of these huge wood-hulled boats cruising the waters around Hong Kong still harks nostalgically back to a time when real junks, with sails aloft, could be seen on Victoria Harbour. Junk daytrips may require a very organised friend with the nous to book a boat, send out the requisite email and collect cash on a per-head basis. Most of these daytrips involve putting down anchor in the middle of nowhere and lapping up the scenery. Those skyscrapers couldn’t be further away.
“What about the soul?” inquires my young student. Pleased to finally be establishing some rapport with my new Lao pupil, I explain that the soul is our core consciousness, the immortal part that never dies, the essence of a person. He is as silent as a wooden Buddha, clearly stunned by my knowledge of such existential matters.
Encouraged, I press on, explaining the meaning of phrases like soul mates, soul food and good for the soul. I may have even quoted spiritualist Deepak Chopra. When I pause to catch my breath, he leans forward, points to his dusty foot and whispers, “Miss Kerry, I meant, how do you pronounce the word sole?”
I’m at Big Brother Mouse in Luang Prabang, a grassroots literacy program operating on the outskirts of town. I’ve always been keen on volunteer tourism, but I’m hopeless at building things (my teaching skills aren’t much better, apparently) and I don’t have six months to dedicate to one cause. Big Brother Mouse offers an alternative: a daily drop-in centre where visitors can volunteer for two hours in the morning or evening to help young adults practise English.
This is my second visit to Laos in two months. Luang Prabang is the kind of dusty, dirt-track Asia I love best. On my previous trip, I started with just one English student, shy and earnest Noi. On the second day he brought his mate Kye, and by the end of the week I had a gang of four. Each morning these young men would sit and wait for me at the end of my street, hoping I would keep my promise of, “same same, tomorrow”. As I rounded the bend their faces would light up like four beaming sunflowers.
On my final day they gave me a bag of fresh mangoes as a gift and showed me around town – me on Noi’s bike, and two of the students doubling on another. We rode past golden temples framed by scarlet bougainvilleas, white-washed French colonial buildings with brightly painted shutters, and traditional two-storey Lao homes. Afterwards, we climbed the 355 steps to the top of Phousi Hill, where we slurped on mangoes and watched the sun surrender to the night.
Today, I have two pupils, students from the nearby high school, who now know more about a westerner’s musings on the human soul than the intricacies of the English language. I change tack and take our chairs out to the sidewalk, practising vowels and verbs as the daily rhythm of life unfolds around us. Our lesson is interrupted when two cyclists collide. One crashes into a tree and hits the ground. He gets up, dusts himself off and says to the cyclist responsible, “Bor pen nyang,” meaning, “I forgive and forget your actions.”
“You’ll see this patient, caring nature right across Laos, but especially in Luang Prabang,” Paul ‘Popeye’ Wager, an Australian photographer who has lived here since 2004, later tells me. Wager runs photography tours in the city, encouraging people to photograph locals with respect and dignity and to adjust their pace to Lao time. “Expats joke that Laos PDR (People’s Democratic Republic) stands for Please Don’t Rush,” he says.
Indeed, no one rushes in Luang Prabang. The following morning I wake at 5am to watch one of its most sacred traditions – the morning ritual of tak bat, or alms-giving. Dawn breaks with the sound of drums. A rooster responds in protest, indignant at being beaten at his game. A dog yaps, a baby cries. Then silence. In the distance a line of monks materialises from the darkness, unfurling like an orange ribbon, draping the ancient streets in gold. In single file they glide past, as silent as an apparition, pausing at intervals to collect alms from the faithful.
The practice of offering food to monks is common in Theravada Buddhist countries like Laos and Thailand, but arguably only in Luang Prabang, with its cluster of 32 temples (one for each village) and network of ancient streets, is the ritual so spectacular.
I avoid the main drag, Sakkarine Road, where bus loads of camera-toting tourists swarm like moths to a saffron flame, opting instead for a quiet backstreet where the jungle still intrudes and the aroma of frangipani lingers. As the light changes from blonde to gold, it becomes apparent I’m the only visitor. I watch quietly as locals kneel in rows, handing out sticky rice from their cane baskets, as their ancestors have done for centuries. It takes a village to support a monastery.
It is this willingness to help others, perhaps a result of the country’s troubled past, which comes to define my visit. After the seat of power was transferred from Luang Prabang to Vientiane in 1545, Laos was invaded by Siam (Thailand), ruled by the French, occupied by the Japanese and bombed by the Americans. As part of the Vietnam War effort, US forces unleashed more explosives on Laos than were dropped during the whole of World War II.
Today, this UNESCO World Heritage-listed town, occupying a narrow peninsular at the confluence of the Mekong and Nam Khan Rivers, is a place of beauty, gentleness and devotion. I see it in the smiles of fisherman as I take a long-tail boat up the mighty Mekong to the Pak Ou Caves. The two-hour journey meanders past misty mountains and soaring limestone cliffs until we reach a set of steep steps, which leads to the Cave of One Thousand Buddhas. Here devotees have, for centuries, placed wooden sculptures of Buddha. It is estimated there are more than 4000 all together. Some are relatively new, but many are hand-carved from timber or crafted from tree resin. Their endurance, like the villagers who hid here during the Vietnam War, is an act of grace.
On another day I take a tuk tuk to Kuang Si falls, 30 kilometres south of Luang Prabang. The series of tumbling falls and blue swimming holes is reason enough to visit, but it’s the adjoining bear rescue centre that has me enchanted.
The Tat Kuang Si Rescue Centre is run by the Free the Bears Fund, a not-for-profit charity founded in 1995 by Perth woman Mary Hutton. The sanctuary is home to 24 animals, a mix of Asiatic black bears and Malayan sun bears, all of which were victims of the illegal wildlife trade. I spend hours watching the bears at play; their lumbering forms hanging in hammocks, rolling like rissoles and sleeping like babies.
My last few days pass all too quickly. I take a cooking class at Tamarind, a weaving lesson at the Ock Pop Tok Living Craft Centre and a daily massage at the Red Cross centre. Then it’s time to bid farewell to Luang Prabang and my studious pupils to board a plane to the capital, Vientiane.
Vientiane is a pancake-flat city on the banks of the Mekong River, a stone-skip from Thailand. Where Luang Prabang is modest and understated, Vientiane is something of a cheeky and unorthodox big cousin.
There’s a victory arch commemorating Lao soldiers, built unwittingly by the US in the 1960s. The cement was intended for the development of a new airport, but the people of Vientiane had other ideas. The Patuxai arch, which looks like the Arc de Triomphe with Buddhist embellishments on top, is now referred to as ‘the vertical runway’. Then there are the peculiar shop fronts. On one block alone I spy a Cat College, Perfect Man Gym and Yummy Business Centre.
The quirks extend far from the city centre. About 25 kilometres south of Vientiane lies the Buddha sculpture park (Xieng Khuan). Occupying a ratty field on the banks of the Mekong River are more than 200 bizarre concrete Buddhist and Hindu sculptures.
Built in 1958 by an eccentric yogipriest-shaman, Luang Pu Bunleua Sulilat (Venerable Grandfather), the park resembles something Dr Seuss and Tim Burton might dream up over a bottle of Beerlao. While some sculptures are recognisable (like the reclining Buddha), others, like the giant pumpkin sprouting a tree, leave me mystified. I make a mental note to ask my pupils about it when I come back. In return for all that spiritual wisdom.
I am an ichthyophobic. I have an acute fear of catfish. With a gaping maw, angry eyes and more whiskers than an Akira Kurosawa samurai film, the catfish is every bit as ugly as it is terrifying. I fear them and I don’t trust them.
With some trepidation, I am in Vinh Long, Vietnam – the heart of the Mekong Delta, deep in catfish country. I came here with my travel companion, Adam, to journey from one side of the south to the other, and experience the Vietnam that travellers usually only dream about. Most visit from Saigon on a two-day package tour, rarely leaving the comfort of their air-conditioned buses or venturing far from the delta’s collection of tourist stops: textile warehouses, fisheries and conical hatstands. But we rambled into Vietnam from the Cambodia side, through a border crossing used to seeing only cattle farmers and fish tenders, not a couple of western boys with a yearning for something unique.
It takes us a few hours to make it to the delta backwater of Chau Doc, where we find ourselves a floating restaurant. We pop the tops on a few watery Saigon beers and laugh about the nine hours we spent rumbling over broken country roads listening to Cambodian pop music and dodging overloaded ox-drawn carts. I’ve wanted to sink my teeth into Vietnam for years and I don’t plan on easing into things. I ask our host to bring me something exciting and altogether delta to eat. Adam orders a hot dog.
Empty bottles pile up on our table like a flotilla of fishing boats. Our host returns with a bubbling hotpot, filled with tofu, chillies and assorted vegetables I don’t recognise. “This is wild boar,” he says. I wink at Adam, a smug expression on my face. I mouth the word “authentic” at him because I know he hates it. Adam looks at his hot dog, looks at my hotpot and orders again. “Bring me the wildest thing you’ve got,” he says, knocking the neck of his bottle against mine and filling up on liquid courage.
Eating boiled boar takes a bit of getting used to. It’s not the texture that bothers me – somewhere between ostrich and python, with an insulating layer of rubbery fat – but it’s the inch-long hairs that are firmer than toothpicks and get stuck between my teeth. When Adam’s amuse bouche arrives I feel much better about my own choice. A large Mekong oyster of dubious freshness looks back at him and smiles. Adam sprinkles a little salt over it and slurps it from the shell.
We meet Nguyen Trong Hoang after lunch. Hoang has just helped his uncle load a small boat full of bananas at Chau Doc pier and now he’s ready to navigate the delta causeways back to An Binh Island. Tomorrow, Hoang will deliver his payload to the floating market in Cái Bè, a destination considered by many to be among the most beautiful in all of South- East Asia. We ask if we can hitch a ride. Hoang does us one better and invites us over for dinner, but he doesn’t tell us that we’re going to have to catch it ourselves.
We ride high on a pyramid of bananas onto the delta, fighting off the scorching sun with our conical hats. When the water level gets too low, we hitch a ride the rest of the way to Hoang’s place with some local ladies. It would have been easier to organise the entire thing at the tourist information booth in Chau Doc, but it wouldn’t have been half as much fun.
We arrive at An Binh Island and Hoang’s stilt house, a quaint three-room chateau bounded by mangrove swamps, deep canals and low-hanging coconut palms. It is my romanticised vision of Vietnam brought to life. A gracious host, Hoang shows us his floating speak-easy and offers us a drink. Many delta households continue a tradition of distilling their own alcohol, and Hoang has become adept at crafting ruou de, a Mekong moonshine made from rice. Over a few glasses of ruou de I admit my childhood fear of catfish.
Hoang immediately forms a plan to become my very own aversion therapist. I probably should have explained to him the severity of my symptoms – how I shudder when the water ripples and how the thought of slick, slimy, scaleless flesh makes my stomach churn.
We dine on fresh fish and tell tall tales as the daylight wanes. The sun sets and we sink into our hammocks, time slipping away from us like silt between our toes.
But it’s too late. Of all things, Hoang invites me to try fishing for catfish with my bare hands – a practice known as noodling. I accept the invitation, to be polite and because my judgment is impaired by the ruou de. “The Mekong giant catfish is a member of the shark catfish family,” Adam says from a hammock where he’s sipping moonshine. “You’re essentially fishing for sharks. With your bare hands.” I tell Adam that his drink could be more than 80 per cent alcohol by volume and that he may be blind in the morning, but this doesn’t slow him down. “Sharks can smell fear,” he says.
“Catfish eat algae and plants,” Hoang laughs, encouraging me to dig a little deeper into the mud with my toes in search of a catfish burrow. “But these fish can grow to more than 200 kilograms,” Adam responds.
So I begin noodling, searching for my nemesis lurking in the mud. I don’t know whether I’m over my fear or thrilled at the prospect of the hunt. The only thing I can think of is coming up out of the water with a trophy fish. I feel a prick at the end of my fingers and I dive. I thrash wildly in an effort to corner the gargantuan beast and I sink closer and closer to the bottom, deep into the catfish burrow, with my net spread wide. I can’t see through the silt we’ve stirred up, but I know that I’m on the verge of a discovery. Finally, with nothing between me and the bottom but triumph, I strike, thrusting my net against the earth. I kick hard off the bottom and return to the surface, holding my catch exultantly in the air. I haven’t caught a catfish, Hoang tells me, but a brightly colored bass. It’s still big, though. “Maybe even two pounds,” Adam says, laughing.
We dine on fresh fish and tell tall tales as the daylight wanes. The sun sets and we sink into our hammocks, time slipping away from us like silt between our toes.
After our adventures in the delta are through, Adam and I commandeer an old Chinese pick-up and a wild-eyed driver to take us out to the coast, some 400 kilometers from Chau Doc. East of Saigon, rising out of the earth like a dragon’s backbone, are the arid sand dunes of Mui Ne, Vietnam’s east-coast curiosity. It’s a natural wonder where monolithic mounds fall directly into the ocean, like someone has decided that the desert and the sea should no longer remain mutually exclusive. On our trek into the dunes we meet a young boy of about 12 years old. He wants to sell me a ride on a magic carpet. It involves putting me on a sheet of blue plastic and shoving me down the dunes. It sounds like a fun trip – safer than surfing, more thrilling than fishing.
Steeled by my noodling triumph in the delta, I know what I must to do. The storm whips sand into my eyes and the turbulent South China Sea creates the perfect cerulean backdrop. I hand the boy a dollar, take the plastic carpet from his hands and launch myself out over the sand. The journey is remarkable in its brevity, tremendous in its scope. I make a few runs, Adam a few more. We empty the contents of our wallets into the boy’s pockets for the chance to race up and down over the dunes, losing track of time and how many times we have to dig each other out of the sand. The final time I brush the desert from my teeth the sun is setting and the light is right. We are here alone, the three of us, kings of the Kingdom of Sand.
We follow the dust out of the dunes and into Mui Ne’s oddly named Fairy Stream. Mischievous local village kids join us on our slog through the muck. We trek the canyon and hike up along the muddy ridges where Adam plays the kids a song on his guitar. From our vantage point we can see the red and white dunes and the lights of a thousand fishing boats beyond Mui Ne harbour, each hoping to return to shore with a heavy load of squid. We know where we need to be in the morning.
At daybreak the sun climbs over the hilly peninsula and illuminates the fishermen on the beach, hauling their long nets off the ocean floor. Scruffy dogs fight for the scraps that shake free from the net, while a boatman in a coconut skiff makes sure the net comes out of the sea straight and true. By the time the light allows us to see the entire beach we realise we’re the only foreign folk out here.
I know that when you pound sand hard enough it becomes glass; I didn’t know that the longer you stand in the sand the more magnetic it feels, drawing you deeper into new experiences. Vietnam is imbued with a visceral energy that inspires travellers to step out of their comfort zone and try new things. Eating raw fish when you know you shouldn’t, getting into a boat when you don’t know the destination, noodling, sandboarding and handing yourself over to chance are part and parcel to the essential Vietnam experience.
Fly through the Bokeo jungle on a zip line to your unique Gibbon Experience tree house, nestled in the forest canopy. Spend the day hiking around the forest, exploring Nam Kan National Park and zip lining from mountain to mountain. In the evening, once you’ve flown once more to your overnight home above the trees, enjoy a bird’s-eye view of the jungle and wake to the whistles of playful gibbons. It’s a night’s shut-eye you will never forget. The drop toilet however you might want to!
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