Vancouviér Calling
Friends,
It has always struck me that the problems with the English speaking bits of Canada could be solved overnight by giving them French sounding names. It is in this spirit that I write to you from the picturesque western city of Vancouviér (as in Cartier), formerly boring old Vancouver, from where, once again, your intrepid Aussie traveller has cheated death. But more of that later.
By the way, all photos can be enlarged by clicking on them and all videos can be viewed by doing same.
This edition of Gardy’s Excellent Blog™ is a rip-roaring tale of close scrapes and high adventure. In fact, the close scrapes started early…. very early. Things started smoothly enough with the flight from Sydney to Singapore aboard one of Singapore Airlines new double-decker A380s. I was seated near the back, just in front of the cork-screw staircase at the very rear of the plane. Common sense tells you that the staircase goes to the second deck of seating upstairs, but with a couple of cheeky merlots onboard I did start to wonder whether there wasn’t something more ethereal going on; who was really up there? Marilyn? Elvis? God? Liberace?
I resisted the temptation to find out. After all, the A380 has an in-flight entertainment system that needs to be seen to be believed. There really was no time to waste and with my new noise-cancelling head-phones there was the new Metallica record, plus a host of others, to get through. Heaven, upstairs, could wait.
I spent the night in the Changi airport hotel to save myself a couple of cab fairs. Not cheap but nice sheets on the bed (always important) and a selection of personal grooming products in the loo to bring a smile to the face of even the most discerning traveller.
And yet, it could all have ended there. In the morning I walked out of the hotel back into the airport and proceeded to check emails on one of the many internet terminals dotted around the joint. After a while, I walked down towards my departure gate and, seeing another computer terminal close by, began to dash off a couple of last minute epistles. And then time stood still. I remember the moment perfectly. I stared at the screen in the complete and certain knowledge that I had left my passport and boarding pass sitting on the first terminal I had used some 20 minutes ago.
I know what you’re thinking. However, friends, the panic that accompanies a moment like this cannot be imagined. It cannot simply be conjured up out of thin air or well meaning sympathy. Oh no. You definitely have to experience panic of this kind to understand it. One feels the blood drain out of the face only for, a moment later, adrenalin to take up the spaces where the blood used to be.
I didn’t need to check my bag, I knew it wasn’t there. Suddenly my legs were running. No, sprinting. It was definitely a sprint as I knocked old ladies out of the way, desperate to get back to the screen on which I had begun the morning. Legs pumping, mind racing, I stopped at a point where, if anything, my panic increased. I was lost. I had taken a turn thinking I knew my way back but I didn’t. I was sans passport and, now, lost. I stood there cursing and thinking how long it would take to get a replacement passport. I wasn’t going to Vietnam after all. I was going to be in Singapore for… how long? A week? Two?
I headed for the nearest information desk and started to explain the situation, hardly able to get the words out. Then something else happened. I realised that the time for panic was over. I was now stuck in Singapore and that was that. I began to talk more slowly, resigned to my fate. I remembered that there was an amusement arcade near the computer I had used and the information person was able to direct me back there. When I got there there was no sign of passport. I then walked over to a different information desk. The first person I had spoken to said that she would begin checking with all the other counters so when I got to the second counter the person knew about me (the shame of it all) and, you guessed it, the passport had been handed in!!!!
So, friends, somehow I managed to make that flight to Saigon. It scarcely needs to be pointed out how lucky I was, but somewhere out there is a person who saved this trip before it had really begun.
Saigon. What to say? Well, the most obvious thing is that the Socialist Republic of Vietnam knows a friend when it sees one. The bloke at immigration took one look at me and said “Gardy! We’ve been expecting you. In you go, me old China!” Certain other Western countries, take note.
Having caught a taxi from the airport through the oceans of motor-scooters, I checked in to the very gracious Mai Kim Loan Hotel where, once again, I was greeted like an old friend. It is fair to say that Saigon does have the odd hotel, but potential visitors could do much worse than Mai Kim Loan which is small, cheap, comfortable (see piccie)
and close to the centre of town. I asked for and got a room high up with a balcony, giving commanding views of what I take to be a fairly standard Saigon streetscape (pic below).
I spent the next three days trying to take it all in. Luckily, I had some precious insider’s intelligence courtesy of Sasha Stubbs, Saigon resident and part of the Murphy/Abbott clan. Of course, there will be travel purists who say you should simply explore new places with fresh eyes in a state of blissful, childlike ignorance without being told where to go or what to see.
This is all very well, but I was hungry and had a fist full of dong (local currency) to splash around. Yes, eating was high on the list of priorities and, thanks to Sasha and her scooter, I ate in a pretty incredible open-air alleyway restaurant, with long tables and nary a Westerner (save your faithful correspondent and Sasha) to be seen. This particular culinary excursion produced too many highlights to list, suffice to say that I chowed down on the biggest prawns I’ve ever seen (check ‘em out!) and ate everything wrapped in leaves with my hands. Very liberating. Beer very cheap too.
In fact, given my extensive experience (four days), Saigon seemed like a traveller’s paradise; cheap, safe, great food and super-friendly people. Yes, one is harassed to buy things, but ever so gently. Wandering around on my first afternoon I was constantly offered tours of the city by scooter drivers. One particularly persistent purveyor of joy rides was ‘Dae’ who mysteriously appeared in front of me on three consecutive corners. Was there more than one of him? Eventually I decided to pay him for a photograph and asked him to tell me about his life. Oh yes. Regular Margaret Mead, me. My point, though, is that regardless of how you think Westerners should be treated in countries that have been pulverised by Western bombs, I don’t remember feeling this relaxed and safe in a ‘foreign culture’, ever.
There are surprises on every corner, of course, but can I humbly recommend the Vietnam War Museum to future Saigon visitors? As well as apparently being a propaganda and education vehicle – the entire bottom floor is devoted to pictures and exhibits denouncing ‘wars of aggression’ and the atrocities of the invading forces – it deals with the period before the war and the ongoing legacy of it; landmines, birth defects and the process of documenting war crimes. There is even a terrific section devoted to all the Western journalists that were killed in the war. The photographs here are electrifying.
Sasha also directed me to Saigon's premier coffee joint. I got there late on my last night in town. I think it shows.
Ok, at this rate six weeks is going to stretch to War and Peace dimensions, so let me wrap up Vietnam by saying I left feeling nourished on a number levels (just one more food picture!) and now know – for sure – that you can get four people on one scooter…. easy.
I then flew to Bangkok and completed the 11 hour flight to London on one of Thai Air’s circa 1985 747s. It is at times like this you realise just how far airline seats have come and, more to the point, how one has come to rely on in-flight entertainment systems. So, here I was, 11 long hours stretching out in front of me with one measly projector for each cabin section and a video selection consisting of precisely three movies, played consecutively. Call me spoilt, but it was a long bloody flight.
I spent a couple of edifying days in a gloriously summery London, made all the better for meeting the glamorous Joan Philip for lunch and a bit of church spotting. Such a good sport, Joan.
It was then on to Bristol for a conference being held by the University of Western England. The conference organisers put me up in the tip-top Bristol Hotel, by the canal in the city centre. Only spent a few days in Bristol but it looked fun and the local accent gets me all gooey, although this does happen a lot with me. I met a bloke by the canal on my first afternoon there who was getting around on his trusty treadly, so we got talking bikes, naturally. In the course of the conversation he revealed, without a hint of self-consciousness, that Bristol was such a great place that he’d never actually travelled anywhere. Couldn’t really see the point. Oh for such clarity of purpose in life!!
Thanks to colleagues at the Centre for Appearance Research in Bristol for a great short stay, in particular Emma Williamson, Emma Haliwell (apparently no relation of Geri), Nicky Rumsey and Helen Malson, who generously entrusted her spare room to the dodgy colonial.
Birmingham next. Once again, the hospitality was exemplary, this time courtesy of my new best friend, Symeon Dagkas and Richard Bailey at University of Birmingham. In exchange for giving one (admittedly damn good) seminar I was wined and dined to within an inch of my life. Symeon is a force of nature and if ever he does come to Australia I will need to take out a small personal loan to keep him entertained in the manner he did for me. Thanks Symeon.
The final English leg of the tour took me back to the thriving metropolis of Loughborough where I stayed with my friend Laura Azzarito, partner Kim and Fonzi the beagle. Staying with friends who own a dog is always a delicate business because, as many of you know, I am the dog whisperer and invariably the pooch wants to come with me when it’s time to leave. I explained to Fonzi as best I could that Ireland has very strict laws against the importation of fugitive beagles (I left out the bit that I didn’t need another immigration infraction against my name). He looked confused and close to tears, but eventually I convinced him that it could never work between he and I. Thank you to Laura and Kim for a great stay and, please, don't hold it against Fonzi. He's only human.
As well as Loughborough’s many geographic and cultural charms, I also had a chance to catch up with friends Louisa Webb, Emma Rich and John Evans. All were in fine form if still somewhat in collective denial about their desire to move to Australia.
So. Next stop Ireland. Leaving London on the morning of my departure I talked myself out of a cab, took the tube, got to Heathrow, stood in the check-in line for 30 minutes, got to the front of the queue, only to be told that the flight had closed two minutes ago. I guess if I had thrown myself on the floor, tore off my clothes and started chewing the ankles of other passengers they may have let me on. I had work to do and there was another flight in a few hours, so I settled for making a few smart ass comments and then bought what passes for a coffee in England and waited it out.
In Dublin I made the spur of the moment decision to take a bus – rather than the train – to Limerick on account of the bus being about to leave. Classic case of where fools rush in. This thing went everywhere. No sooner were we back on the freeway following the signs to Limerick when we’d turn off again for some unpronounceable village in the regularly misguided belief that there might be someone waiting for the bus there. However, one can’t help be charmed by the fact that an Irish bus driver will drop you where ever you want to get off and not, unlike grumpy Australian drivers, only at ‘designated stops’. One of our final stops was in Nenagh where there was meant to be a driver change.... except there was no driver. Well, he arrived eventually by which stage my annoyance I had disappeared under the (strictly anthropological) profound recollection that Ireland does have the prettiest redheads in the world.
By early evening I was delivered into the welcoming arms of my friend Ann ‘Foxy’ MacPhail, whose sumptuous Glaswegian accent I first encountered in Loughborough in 2000.
As some readers will be aware, my purpose in going to Ireland was partly to do a spot of bike riding. I rode from the 1st to the 11th of July, starting in Ennis (County Clare, thanks to Eimear Enright for the lift), heading south to Kilkee and then working my way north. Amongst other things this meant a couple of nights in Lisdoonvarna, traditionally the match-making hub of Ireland and now home to ‘Europe’s biggest singles event’ every September.
Apparently Lisdoonvarna really was the place where farmers used to come once a year to get fixed up with a suitable (or not so suitable) squeeze… er wife. A local told me that during the singles event the town is awash in young folk and Irish style country music and this – not a word of a lie – is considered romantic in a weird Irish kind of way. I heard some of this music. I can confirm that it is Irish and it is kinda country. This is all I’m prepared to say on the matter. I can also reluctantly report that, true to form, I did not find love in Lisdoonvarna. My search for a farmer goes on.
I then travelled by ferry out to Inishmore, the largest of the Aran Islands where I spent a gorgeous day riding, took my one and only Irish swim (water cold enough to kill a man).....
and checked out what are probably the Islands main attraction, a number of bronze age stone forts. I’ll keep this brief, but I trudged out to one of the forts – Dun Aengus – and walked through the outer wall. Eventually you find yourself in a large semi-circular opening with a stone wall perimeter behind as you stare out on the, now, grass covered space.
At the edge of space was a raised stone plinth and beyond that what I took to be a small drop. As I walked towards the edge of the plinth I noticed that there were people lying at the end with their heads over the edge. I froze in my tracks. There were no signs, no warnings, but right up to the moment when I realised what these people were doing, I had actually been walking towards a 100 metre cliff top, with nothing but a sheer rock face and the ocean below. What if those people hadn't been there? The thought still fills me with dread. I learned later that the site actually loses a couple of people every year, taken by sudden up-drafts to a not so sudden (think about it, you’d have plenty time to consider your mistake from that height!) demise below.
As often happens when travelling in Ireland, at moments like this you realise that the Irish are both behind and in front of us in so many ways. The relative absence of litigation culture means that the place is not polluted by ‘Beware! Danger! This means you stupid!’ signs. This is both refreshing and unsettling and, one imagines, cannot last as Ireland becomes more affluent and less, well, Irish.
I’ll not bore you with bike riders tales of head winds and nasty climbs, and just say that in about 800kms I saw a huge variety of country side, stayed in some superb old B&Bs and reacquainted myself with Irish Guinness, the real thing. My day in ‘The Burren’ (County Galway) was superb. During his much written about time in Ireland, Oliver Cromwell is said to have described this rocky, barren, spectacular region thus: “Not enough wood to hang a man, not enough water to drown him and not enough soil to bury him." I, on the other hand, had more pressing concerns, as the attached video shows.
The trip finished in Westport (County Mayo), home to some gorgeous early 19th century buildings (I stayed in one, my room was right up on the fourth floor loft, decorated pink and purple) and some equally edifying drinking establishments, where the music plays every night of the week.
At a pub called the Porter House I somehow got myself in a shout with a boran player who, I learned, had married two Spanish women (not simultaneously, mind), both of whom he’d had two children with and both of whom now lived in Spain. At one stage this looked like developing into quite an intense, not to say expensive, conversation. I managed to extricate myself but only thanks to a 34 verse folk tune during which time the boran player was suitably distracted and engaged.
I caught the train back to Limerick for a few final terrific days in Ann and Deborah Tannehill's delightful village of Ballyna. Thanks in particular to Deborah for her good company and for having the good sense to suggest I pay for a proper sports massage to straighten out the knots collected from 10 days in the saddle. I ain’t kinky, but a proper deep tissue massage on a body with lots of tired muscles is proof positive that pleasure and pyrotechnical pain are separated by a very, very thin line. I laughed, I cried, it was better than cats, as my friend Will would say. Thanks also to Mary O'Sullivan for dinner at her spectacular new home.
I also caught up with my guide in all things Irish, Eimear Enright. Thanks again, Eimear, for the lifts, the lunches and the heart stopping walks across University of Limerick’s ‘Bridge of Death’.
All too soon it was time to leave, and this meant a seven hour flight to Toronto and then five more hours to Vancouver…. er, sorry, Vancouviér. I only spent a day here before jumping on the ferry to Victoria on Vancouver Island, where I had a couple of nights, and then another ferry to Galiano Island in the gulf between Vancouver Island and the British Columbia mainland. I had done months of extensive, in depth research and then chose Galiano Island because of my affection for Galiano and ice. Galiano is gorgeous and I stayed in a superb cabin on the north end of the island.
No edition of GEB is complete without a near death experience. On my second last night on the island I was overtaken by a burning fever, uncontrollable shivering and general lethargy. I got through the night but was no better the next day. Getting medical assistance was not a straightforward matter, the island's medical clinic being closed that day for 'software upgrades'. I jest not. Anyway, I finally contacted a doctor who said he couldn't rule out malaria. Hmmm. I thought it over and within a couple of hours I was on the ferry back to the mainland, caught a taxi to the hospital at the University of British Columbia, and then spent the next fours in emergency. Long story short, blood tests were negative for malaria and by the next day the fever had lifted, only to be replaced by rather traumatic events south of the border, so to speak.
Luckily, all this was not enough to prevent me from attending a great little two day workshop held by University of British Columbia's Department of Anthropology. I can't thank Amy Salmon, Darlene MacNaughton and especially Kirsten Bell enough for organising such a great event and for going to so much trouble to get people from all over the place there. A dead set highlight, it was.
Even in the dying moments of the tour there were still moments of drama. My late night flight from Vancouver to Sydney was held over till the morning and there was no Metallica anywhere to be found on the in-flight entertainment system once we actually got in the air. Travel, it's hell.
And so endeth another edition of the multi-award winning Gardy’s Excellent Blog™. Bet you didn't know they give out awards for blogs. Come on team! Get with it! GEB has, in fact, won the 'Most Gratuitous Use of Dull Photographs' category three of the last four years. Not bad for an old jock, huh?
Love yous all
MG
It has always struck me that the problems with the English speaking bits of Canada could be solved overnight by giving them French sounding names. It is in this spirit that I write to you from the picturesque western city of Vancouviér (as in Cartier), formerly boring old Vancouver, from where, once again, your intrepid Aussie traveller has cheated death. But more of that later.
By the way, all photos can be enlarged by clicking on them and all videos can be viewed by doing same.
This edition of Gardy’s Excellent Blog™ is a rip-roaring tale of close scrapes and high adventure. In fact, the close scrapes started early…. very early. Things started smoothly enough with the flight from Sydney to Singapore aboard one of Singapore Airlines new double-decker A380s. I was seated near the back, just in front of the cork-screw staircase at the very rear of the plane. Common sense tells you that the staircase goes to the second deck of seating upstairs, but with a couple of cheeky merlots onboard I did start to wonder whether there wasn’t something more ethereal going on; who was really up there? Marilyn? Elvis? God? Liberace?
I resisted the temptation to find out. After all, the A380 has an in-flight entertainment system that needs to be seen to be believed. There really was no time to waste and with my new noise-cancelling head-phones there was the new Metallica record, plus a host of others, to get through. Heaven, upstairs, could wait.
I spent the night in the Changi airport hotel to save myself a couple of cab fairs. Not cheap but nice sheets on the bed (always important) and a selection of personal grooming products in the loo to bring a smile to the face of even the most discerning traveller.
And yet, it could all have ended there. In the morning I walked out of the hotel back into the airport and proceeded to check emails on one of the many internet terminals dotted around the joint. After a while, I walked down towards my departure gate and, seeing another computer terminal close by, began to dash off a couple of last minute epistles. And then time stood still. I remember the moment perfectly. I stared at the screen in the complete and certain knowledge that I had left my passport and boarding pass sitting on the first terminal I had used some 20 minutes ago.
I know what you’re thinking. However, friends, the panic that accompanies a moment like this cannot be imagined. It cannot simply be conjured up out of thin air or well meaning sympathy. Oh no. You definitely have to experience panic of this kind to understand it. One feels the blood drain out of the face only for, a moment later, adrenalin to take up the spaces where the blood used to be.
I didn’t need to check my bag, I knew it wasn’t there. Suddenly my legs were running. No, sprinting. It was definitely a sprint as I knocked old ladies out of the way, desperate to get back to the screen on which I had begun the morning. Legs pumping, mind racing, I stopped at a point where, if anything, my panic increased. I was lost. I had taken a turn thinking I knew my way back but I didn’t. I was sans passport and, now, lost. I stood there cursing and thinking how long it would take to get a replacement passport. I wasn’t going to Vietnam after all. I was going to be in Singapore for… how long? A week? Two?
I headed for the nearest information desk and started to explain the situation, hardly able to get the words out. Then something else happened. I realised that the time for panic was over. I was now stuck in Singapore and that was that. I began to talk more slowly, resigned to my fate. I remembered that there was an amusement arcade near the computer I had used and the information person was able to direct me back there. When I got there there was no sign of passport. I then walked over to a different information desk. The first person I had spoken to said that she would begin checking with all the other counters so when I got to the second counter the person knew about me (the shame of it all) and, you guessed it, the passport had been handed in!!!!
So, friends, somehow I managed to make that flight to Saigon. It scarcely needs to be pointed out how lucky I was, but somewhere out there is a person who saved this trip before it had really begun.
Saigon. What to say? Well, the most obvious thing is that the Socialist Republic of Vietnam knows a friend when it sees one. The bloke at immigration took one look at me and said “Gardy! We’ve been expecting you. In you go, me old China!” Certain other Western countries, take note.
Having caught a taxi from the airport through the oceans of motor-scooters, I checked in to the very gracious Mai Kim Loan Hotel where, once again, I was greeted like an old friend. It is fair to say that Saigon does have the odd hotel, but potential visitors could do much worse than Mai Kim Loan which is small, cheap, comfortable (see piccie)
and close to the centre of town. I asked for and got a room high up with a balcony, giving commanding views of what I take to be a fairly standard Saigon streetscape (pic below).I spent the next three days trying to take it all in. Luckily, I had some precious insider’s intelligence courtesy of Sasha Stubbs, Saigon resident and part of the Murphy/Abbott clan. Of course, there will be travel purists who say you should simply explore new places with fresh eyes in a state of blissful, childlike ignorance without being told where to go or what to see.
This is all very well, but I was hungry and had a fist full of dong (local currency) to splash around. Yes, eating was high on the list of priorities and, thanks to Sasha and her scooter, I ate in a pretty incredible open-air alleyway restaurant, with long tables and nary a Westerner (save your faithful correspondent and Sasha) to be seen. This particular culinary excursion produced too many highlights to list, suffice to say that I chowed down on the biggest prawns I’ve ever seen (check ‘em out!) and ate everything wrapped in leaves with my hands. Very liberating. Beer very cheap too.
In fact, given my extensive experience (four days), Saigon seemed like a traveller’s paradise; cheap, safe, great food and super-friendly people. Yes, one is harassed to buy things, but ever so gently. Wandering around on my first afternoon I was constantly offered tours of the city by scooter drivers. One particularly persistent purveyor of joy rides was ‘Dae’ who mysteriously appeared in front of me on three consecutive corners. Was there more than one of him? Eventually I decided to pay him for a photograph and asked him to tell me about his life. Oh yes. Regular Margaret Mead, me. My point, though, is that regardless of how you think Westerners should be treated in countries that have been pulverised by Western bombs, I don’t remember feeling this relaxed and safe in a ‘foreign culture’, ever.
There are surprises on every corner, of course, but can I humbly recommend the Vietnam War Museum to future Saigon visitors? As well as apparently being a propaganda and education vehicle – the entire bottom floor is devoted to pictures and exhibits denouncing ‘wars of aggression’ and the atrocities of the invading forces – it deals with the period before the war and the ongoing legacy of it; landmines, birth defects and the process of documenting war crimes. There is even a terrific section devoted to all the Western journalists that were killed in the war. The photographs here are electrifying.
Sasha also directed me to Saigon's premier coffee joint. I got there late on my last night in town. I think it shows.
Ok, at this rate six weeks is going to stretch to War and Peace dimensions, so let me wrap up Vietnam by saying I left feeling nourished on a number levels (just one more food picture!) and now know – for sure – that you can get four people on one scooter…. easy.
I then flew to Bangkok and completed the 11 hour flight to London on one of Thai Air’s circa 1985 747s. It is at times like this you realise just how far airline seats have come and, more to the point, how one has come to rely on in-flight entertainment systems. So, here I was, 11 long hours stretching out in front of me with one measly projector for each cabin section and a video selection consisting of precisely three movies, played consecutively. Call me spoilt, but it was a long bloody flight.
I spent a couple of edifying days in a gloriously summery London, made all the better for meeting the glamorous Joan Philip for lunch and a bit of church spotting. Such a good sport, Joan.
It was then on to Bristol for a conference being held by the University of Western England. The conference organisers put me up in the tip-top Bristol Hotel, by the canal in the city centre. Only spent a few days in Bristol but it looked fun and the local accent gets me all gooey, although this does happen a lot with me. I met a bloke by the canal on my first afternoon there who was getting around on his trusty treadly, so we got talking bikes, naturally. In the course of the conversation he revealed, without a hint of self-consciousness, that Bristol was such a great place that he’d never actually travelled anywhere. Couldn’t really see the point. Oh for such clarity of purpose in life!!
Thanks to colleagues at the Centre for Appearance Research in Bristol for a great short stay, in particular Emma Williamson, Emma Haliwell (apparently no relation of Geri), Nicky Rumsey and Helen Malson, who generously entrusted her spare room to the dodgy colonial.
Birmingham next. Once again, the hospitality was exemplary, this time courtesy of my new best friend, Symeon Dagkas and Richard Bailey at University of Birmingham. In exchange for giving one (admittedly damn good) seminar I was wined and dined to within an inch of my life. Symeon is a force of nature and if ever he does come to Australia I will need to take out a small personal loan to keep him entertained in the manner he did for me. Thanks Symeon.
The final English leg of the tour took me back to the thriving metropolis of Loughborough where I stayed with my friend Laura Azzarito, partner Kim and Fonzi the beagle. Staying with friends who own a dog is always a delicate business because, as many of you know, I am the dog whisperer and invariably the pooch wants to come with me when it’s time to leave. I explained to Fonzi as best I could that Ireland has very strict laws against the importation of fugitive beagles (I left out the bit that I didn’t need another immigration infraction against my name). He looked confused and close to tears, but eventually I convinced him that it could never work between he and I. Thank you to Laura and Kim for a great stay and, please, don't hold it against Fonzi. He's only human.
As well as Loughborough’s many geographic and cultural charms, I also had a chance to catch up with friends Louisa Webb, Emma Rich and John Evans. All were in fine form if still somewhat in collective denial about their desire to move to Australia.
So. Next stop Ireland. Leaving London on the morning of my departure I talked myself out of a cab, took the tube, got to Heathrow, stood in the check-in line for 30 minutes, got to the front of the queue, only to be told that the flight had closed two minutes ago. I guess if I had thrown myself on the floor, tore off my clothes and started chewing the ankles of other passengers they may have let me on. I had work to do and there was another flight in a few hours, so I settled for making a few smart ass comments and then bought what passes for a coffee in England and waited it out.
In Dublin I made the spur of the moment decision to take a bus – rather than the train – to Limerick on account of the bus being about to leave. Classic case of where fools rush in. This thing went everywhere. No sooner were we back on the freeway following the signs to Limerick when we’d turn off again for some unpronounceable village in the regularly misguided belief that there might be someone waiting for the bus there. However, one can’t help be charmed by the fact that an Irish bus driver will drop you where ever you want to get off and not, unlike grumpy Australian drivers, only at ‘designated stops’. One of our final stops was in Nenagh where there was meant to be a driver change.... except there was no driver. Well, he arrived eventually by which stage my annoyance I had disappeared under the (strictly anthropological) profound recollection that Ireland does have the prettiest redheads in the world.
By early evening I was delivered into the welcoming arms of my friend Ann ‘Foxy’ MacPhail, whose sumptuous Glaswegian accent I first encountered in Loughborough in 2000.
As some readers will be aware, my purpose in going to Ireland was partly to do a spot of bike riding. I rode from the 1st to the 11th of July, starting in Ennis (County Clare, thanks to Eimear Enright for the lift), heading south to Kilkee and then working my way north. Amongst other things this meant a couple of nights in Lisdoonvarna, traditionally the match-making hub of Ireland and now home to ‘Europe’s biggest singles event’ every September.
Apparently Lisdoonvarna really was the place where farmers used to come once a year to get fixed up with a suitable (or not so suitable) squeeze… er wife. A local told me that during the singles event the town is awash in young folk and Irish style country music and this – not a word of a lie – is considered romantic in a weird Irish kind of way. I heard some of this music. I can confirm that it is Irish and it is kinda country. This is all I’m prepared to say on the matter. I can also reluctantly report that, true to form, I did not find love in Lisdoonvarna. My search for a farmer goes on.I then travelled by ferry out to Inishmore, the largest of the Aran Islands where I spent a gorgeous day riding, took my one and only Irish swim (water cold enough to kill a man).....
and checked out what are probably the Islands main attraction, a number of bronze age stone forts. I’ll keep this brief, but I trudged out to one of the forts – Dun Aengus – and walked through the outer wall. Eventually you find yourself in a large semi-circular opening with a stone wall perimeter behind as you stare out on the, now, grass covered space.
At the edge of space was a raised stone plinth and beyond that what I took to be a small drop. As I walked towards the edge of the plinth I noticed that there were people lying at the end with their heads over the edge. I froze in my tracks. There were no signs, no warnings, but right up to the moment when I realised what these people were doing, I had actually been walking towards a 100 metre cliff top, with nothing but a sheer rock face and the ocean below. What if those people hadn't been there? The thought still fills me with dread. I learned later that the site actually loses a couple of people every year, taken by sudden up-drafts to a not so sudden (think about it, you’d have plenty time to consider your mistake from that height!) demise below.
As often happens when travelling in Ireland, at moments like this you realise that the Irish are both behind and in front of us in so many ways. The relative absence of litigation culture means that the place is not polluted by ‘Beware! Danger! This means you stupid!’ signs. This is both refreshing and unsettling and, one imagines, cannot last as Ireland becomes more affluent and less, well, Irish.I’ll not bore you with bike riders tales of head winds and nasty climbs, and just say that in about 800kms I saw a huge variety of country side, stayed in some superb old B&Bs and reacquainted myself with Irish Guinness, the real thing. My day in ‘The Burren’ (County Galway) was superb. During his much written about time in Ireland, Oliver Cromwell is said to have described this rocky, barren, spectacular region thus: “Not enough wood to hang a man, not enough water to drown him and not enough soil to bury him." I, on the other hand, had more pressing concerns, as the attached video shows.
The trip finished in Westport (County Mayo), home to some gorgeous early 19th century buildings (I stayed in one, my room was right up on the fourth floor loft, decorated pink and purple) and some equally edifying drinking establishments, where the music plays every night of the week.
At a pub called the Porter House I somehow got myself in a shout with a boran player who, I learned, had married two Spanish women (not simultaneously, mind), both of whom he’d had two children with and both of whom now lived in Spain. At one stage this looked like developing into quite an intense, not to say expensive, conversation. I managed to extricate myself but only thanks to a 34 verse folk tune during which time the boran player was suitably distracted and engaged.I caught the train back to Limerick for a few final terrific days in Ann and Deborah Tannehill's delightful village of Ballyna. Thanks in particular to Deborah for her good company and for having the good sense to suggest I pay for a proper sports massage to straighten out the knots collected from 10 days in the saddle. I ain’t kinky, but a proper deep tissue massage on a body with lots of tired muscles is proof positive that pleasure and pyrotechnical pain are separated by a very, very thin line. I laughed, I cried, it was better than cats, as my friend Will would say. Thanks also to Mary O'Sullivan for dinner at her spectacular new home.
I also caught up with my guide in all things Irish, Eimear Enright. Thanks again, Eimear, for the lifts, the lunches and the heart stopping walks across University of Limerick’s ‘Bridge of Death’.
All too soon it was time to leave, and this meant a seven hour flight to Toronto and then five more hours to Vancouver…. er, sorry, Vancouviér. I only spent a day here before jumping on the ferry to Victoria on Vancouver Island, where I had a couple of nights, and then another ferry to Galiano Island in the gulf between Vancouver Island and the British Columbia mainland. I had done months of extensive, in depth research and then chose Galiano Island because of my affection for Galiano and ice. Galiano is gorgeous and I stayed in a superb cabin on the north end of the island.
No edition of GEB is complete without a near death experience. On my second last night on the island I was overtaken by a burning fever, uncontrollable shivering and general lethargy. I got through the night but was no better the next day. Getting medical assistance was not a straightforward matter, the island's medical clinic being closed that day for 'software upgrades'. I jest not. Anyway, I finally contacted a doctor who said he couldn't rule out malaria. Hmmm. I thought it over and within a couple of hours I was on the ferry back to the mainland, caught a taxi to the hospital at the University of British Columbia, and then spent the next fours in emergency. Long story short, blood tests were negative for malaria and by the next day the fever had lifted, only to be replaced by rather traumatic events south of the border, so to speak.
Luckily, all this was not enough to prevent me from attending a great little two day workshop held by University of British Columbia's Department of Anthropology. I can't thank Amy Salmon, Darlene MacNaughton and especially Kirsten Bell enough for organising such a great event and for going to so much trouble to get people from all over the place there. A dead set highlight, it was.
Even in the dying moments of the tour there were still moments of drama. My late night flight from Vancouver to Sydney was held over till the morning and there was no Metallica anywhere to be found on the in-flight entertainment system once we actually got in the air. Travel, it's hell.
And so endeth another edition of the multi-award winning Gardy’s Excellent Blog™. Bet you didn't know they give out awards for blogs. Come on team! Get with it! GEB has, in fact, won the 'Most Gratuitous Use of Dull Photographs' category three of the last four years. Not bad for an old jock, huh?
Love yous all
MG
posted by MG at 12:41 AM
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