Comments

Also, I got my very first comments! This is exciting. And very helpfully:

 - Zed linked to Hospitality Club, which I haven’t had time to check out but which seems to operate on the same principle as Couchsurfing; and

- Marina linked to Siklatemplom, a cave church in Budapest! Awesome. I love that sort of thing. Perhaps I should have a ‘caves’ tag.

Australia/Sudan

So I am off to Australia on Monday. It’s not really a holiday - it’s my best friend’s wedding, at which I’m bridesmaiding; I’m visiting my grandmother in Tasmania, and while I’m not doing either of those things, I’m going to be sat in the Mitchell Library researching Novel #2, and dashing about seeing friends. But my friend Sophie has recently lent me Lonely Planet’s Guide to Aboriginal Australia (which I;m trying to find a link to on LP’s site, but no luck - perhaps they don’t publish it any more?), and if I were to have more time while I’m in Sydney, I would definitely be checking out some of these exhibits/programmes at the Botanic Gardens, because they look awesome.

I’ve also been trying to find out more information online about the Eora Star, an Aboriginal-owned boat on Sydney harbour that offers Aboriginal culture tours, but no luck. Though I did find this site pulling together Aboriginal tour operators in Australia, which seems fairly comprehensive. I do wish sometimes that I could visit Australia completely as a tourist, rather than always being primarily visiting friends and family, because there’s so much to see and do that I never get around to.

Other useful sites for Aboriginal Australia:

- Gadigal Information Service

- Koori Net, at the University of Sydney, and

- A fairly comprehensive-seeming list of links here.

***

On a different topic, as part of my PhD work, I spend a fair bit of time on Gurtong, which styles itself as a website for the Southern Sudanese diaspora (’gurtong’ apparently meaning ‘broken spear’, and as such being a symbol of reconciliation). I noticed today that they seem to have expanded their travel section, with information on requirements for travel, how to get there, and, possibly of most use from my point of view, accommodation: finding somewhere to stay in Southern Sudan is generally a nightmare, and exorbitantly expensive, so this could be a really helpful resource.

Also, check it out: Southern Sudan Airlines! Apparently they are ‘the spirit of liberty’; that may be a bit rich, but it’s bound to be an easier way of getting around than trying to stow away on UN flights. 

I feel an obsession coming on…

So, Belarus, eh? I’m always fascinated by countries with little to no tourist industry, and Belarus, with its only claims to fame being a) quite close to Chernobyl, and b) having a rather unpleasant president (though with a very dapper moustache) has piqued my interest. Anyhow, it turns out that Belarus has all sorts of stuff!

- Dudutki, an open air museum! WIth windmills!

- Jewish history! (Lots more here.)

- Castles!

- WWII memorials!

- Slightly scary-looking eco-tourism!

- Health tourism! (In German)

- The town of Mogilev! (I particularly like its shiny green bridge.)

Actually, this site is fairly impressive. And actually, perhaps I should take back what I said about the Lonely Planet site, because I do respect their dogged determination to sound positive about anywhere, including Belarus.

Bits and pieces

1. Way way back in 1997, when I first discovered the magic of the internet, the first site where I actually spent any time and interacted with people was the Lonely Planet site. It’s not as good as it used to be, as far as I’m concerned - they used to have much more destination information up there, before they presumably realised that if they put all that information on the website, no one’d bother buying the books any more - but there’s still a lot of interesting stuff - I particularly like their section on responsible travel, and this article (on showering on the Trans-Siberian railway) made me laugh, especially as I will be Trans-Mongolianing next month. On the other hand, they seem to have changed their accommodation booking interface to something infinitely less useful than it used to be (no information about pricing on the front page? Pah), so I will be booking my Budapest accommodation here instead.

2. Good lord, Oz-Bus. While the very concept fills me with snobbish, misanthropic horror, encouraging overland travel can only be a good thing, right? Maybe?

3. Due to my obsessive reading of the Observer’s weekend travel supplement, I have finally found the answer to one of my burning questions, i.e. ‘what is there to see in Belarus?’ Answer: Berezinsky National Park. It’s got bison! Now, if only I could find out what there is to see in the Central African Republic, I could die happy.

(Not really.)

Oh, here you go. I still don’t know anyone who’s been there as a tourist, though.

Sleeping in airports

I think I am getting old. Back in the day, I used to be happy to save a bit of cash by sleeping in an airport rather than paying for a hotel or hostel, particularly if I had an early morning flight. This isn’t unusual - www.sleepinginairports.net is an entire site devoted to the practice. A night in Heathrow is best not repeated, but I’ve managed to get a comfortable couple of hours in Stansted (early morning flight to Berlin: pleasantly quiet, dimly lit, few middle-of-the-night flights mean it’s not busy and there are few loudspeaker announcements), Melbourne (several hours between arrival from the UK and departure for Auckland: fairly comfortable); a number of south-east Asian airports (Kuala Lumpur, Bangkok and Singapore, overly-long layovers between the UK and Australia), and even a fairly decent few hours’ kip in Pescara train station (late-night train from Bari after all-day ferry from Albania, and 9.30am flight: met an insomniac in the train station around 5am who gave me an early-morning tour of Pescara and then a lift to the airport, which was fairly miraculous). Back in 2002, I had an early morning flight to Nice, got a late-night train to Gatwick and remember having a very comfortable night there, in a warm, dimly lit, comfortably furnished upstairs area, and so it was with high hopes that, the weekend before last, after a Sunday wedding in Bournemouth, a lift back to London and the 2.22am train from East Croydon to Gatwick, I walked into the airport anticipating a couple of hours’ sleep before I had to check in for my 6.20am flight to Glasgow. Sadly, the comfortable, dimly-lit room of my memories was nowhere to be found, and instead I had to lie down on a marbe floor, under neon lights, with the constant interruption of one of those mechanised cleaning trolley things going past every fifteen minutes or so. Needless to say, I was not best set up for a full day’s work when I got back to Glasgow.

Anyhow. The 6.20am Easyjet flight from Gatwick to Glasgow International is a godsend, as it allows me to get to work on time on a Monday morning after a weekend of London-based revelry, and so it’s a flight I’m going to be using a lot in future; however, old as I now am, the idea of spending more nights on the floor in Gatwick fills me with horror. In just over a month I’ll be taking the AirBaltic flight from St Petersburg (via Riga) to Gatwick, arriving on Sunday evening, and then the Gatwick to Glasgow flight on the Monday morning, and so it’s with great excitement (along with a lingering feeling that I’ve sold out) that I’ve booked into the Yotel at Gatwick South for the night. Yotel! Little pods! With en suite, and comfy-looking beds! I am very much looking forward to seeing what this is like. You can book in four-hour blocks - my block of eight hours cost me £45, and will give me enough time for a disappointing airport dinner in Garfunkels or similar before checking in at 9.

I’m actually suprised that it’s taken them this long to start something like this. Years and years ago - in the late-’90s, I think - I was flying back to Sydney from London, and had a horrendous 15-hour layover in Bangkok, which was made infinitely better by the existence of a little hotel-like thing within the airport itself, so I didn’t even have to go through immigration. I think it was all of $50 US - or possibly $100 for eight hours - and I got to sleep in a pitch-dark, windowless room, have a shower, and watch a load of bilge on CNN, meaning that I was a hell of a lot less jetlagged and grumpy on arrival in Sydney than I would otherwise have been. I still think they’re missing a trick by not having more backpacker-style accommodation at airports - even back when I was happy to sleep in an airport, I would’ve been even happier to shell out £10 or £15 for a bunk in a dorm room - but the Yotel is a good start, and its Living In The Future aesthetic on the website is very exciting; I hope it lives up to it.

I’m obviously not that much of a sell-out, anyway, as I am also browsing www.couchsurfing.com. I’ve never actually used them before, and I’m sad to find that they don’t have anyone in Ulaanbataar, other than a couple of travellers passing through, but it might be useful for meeting people and possibly even cadging free accommodation in China. We’ll see.

In other news, is not Pestiside a fabulous name for a What’s On website about Budapest?

Glasgow things

This is obviously much too late, and nobody’s reading this anyway, given that I haven’t actually promoted this blog anywhere. But still! On the subject of close-to-home tourism, this weekend’s Doors Open Days in Glasgow, where all sorts of interesting historical stuff’s going on. There are details on the Glasgow Building Preservation Trust website here, and actually there’s a whole load more interesting Glasgow/Scotland-specific links on their website here. 

Particularly recommended (by me) is the Glasgow Slavery and Abolition Movement walk - I went on a practice version of this today, going through the Merchant City, and there was some really fascinating stuff mentioned, particularly for someone as new to Glasgow as I am. My favourite piece of information learnt was about the Ramshorn Kirk, and the fact that when Ingram Street was widened, the bones in the graveyard weren’t disinterred, meaning that several eminent Glaswegians are now buried beneath a zebra crossing.

Ooh, lots of information about sites in Glasgow’s Merchant City here.

I’m off to a wedding in Cheshire next weekend, so sadly I’m going to miss almost all of the Merchant City Festival, which will include a giant maze in George Square. Ah well, maybe next year.

Edinburgh food

Across to Edinburgh on Wednesday night for dinner with friends. Given that I can’t realistically spend my entire life travelling, I try to take advantage of the mini-travel opportunities available close to home, and I’m the idea of going to a whole different city for the evening still has its novelty value for me.

Anyway, we ate at the awesome Calistoga, which claims to offer Californian cuisine, though I don’t really know what that means. In any case, I had Indian-style gazpacho (no idea what that meand either), followed by sea bass, and artisan cheeses, and it was all excellent. (Heh, I notice from their website that they’re associated with a wine shop called Sideways, next door.)

My trips to Edinburgh always seem to be gastronomic successes, actually - last time I went across we went to Wok & Wine, which does, I suppose, modern Chinese - I had some sort of delicious mushroom and squid arrangement (this is why I am not a restaurant reviewer). I haven’t had the chance to try fine dining in Glasgow yet, due to my brokitude over the summer, aside from a lovely evening of blintzes and vodka at Cafe Cossachok, which was ace.

Budapest

Planning a trip to Budapest for Christmas, trying to take advantage of a) the fact that my office shuts down between Christmas and new year, so I have actual time off (small miracle, as I am using up all my allocated leave over the next month, until next April), and b) the fact that Ryanair has just started flying from Prestwick to Budapest (no, of course those super-cheap fares don’t apply to the Christmas period, but it’s still cheap). I haven’t been to Budapest since 2002, and this will be the first trip Tom and I have taken together, so I am excited!

Anyhow. I am trying to find out whether Budapest completely shuts down for Christmas, which will obviously make the trip slightly less fun. I haven’t been able to find specific information on opening hours, etc., but I did find details of Budapest’s Christmas market, which is at least an indication of some sort of activity over that time.

Actually, the whole site (www.budapestinfo.hu/en) is suprisingly useful for a generic tourist information site. The last time I was in Budapest my companion was a city-hater, so we didn’t stay long (it was part of an extended jaunt around Hungary and Slovakia), and there’s loads of stuff I haven’t done. I’m particularly keen on the whole Turkish bath thing, and look, there’s a whole site devoted to them! Given that I spent last Christmas and new year in Turkey, wallowing in the hammams, I feel that this could become a rather excellent Christmas tradition (though I’m not sure how long I could carry it on for.

The accommodation service on the budapestinfo.hu site seems quite useful, too, as it’s got the option of apartments - which might be good, given that Tom is a vegetarian, and Central/Eastern Europe tends to be the Land Of Meat, so having cooking facilities might be helpful.

On the other hand, the Happy Cow lists a number of veggie places in Budapest (some even vouched for by vegetarians), and wait, there’s also www.budaveg.com! Awesome. Linked from http://vegetarianguides.co.uk/links/index.shtml, which is an excellent resource for veggies/those travelling with veggies. Hurrah.

Another possibly useful Budapest guide at www.budapestagent.com.

Also quite keen, while I’m there, to head up to the Danube Bend region - Szentendre (website only available in Hungarian, seemingly), Visegrad (in English! Rather quaintly phrased…) and Esztergom (again, only in Hungarian) - which I didn’t make it to last time. And a return visit to the Statue Park, which remains one of my favourite things I’ve ever seen while travelling.

Edited to add: OK, why did no one ever tell me that Budapest has caves?

The ethics of cruises

Listening to the recent programmes on Radio 4 about ethics in the international cruise industry has been interesting. The programmes don’t seem to be available any more on the Radio 4 website, but the gist of them seemed to be that the international cruise industry was a gigantic machine designed to make as much money as possible with as little outlay as possible; workers tend to be appallingly paid and work in very bad conditions; there’s very little positive impact on the countries visited; many companies have a negative environmental impact; and there’s a tendency to register vessels in developing countries (often Central America and West Africa) in order to circumvent labour and environmental laws that would ordinarily bind the vessels.

Anyhow. Cruising isn’t something I’m particularly interested in - it’s one thing if we’re talking about the sorts of small-scale cruises that are necessary to reach specific places, like the Galapagos or Antactica (though there are ethical concerns there, too) - but the whole ‘floating hotel’ concept kind of fills me with horror. However, in my burning quest to go ABSOLUTELY EVERYWHERE, I sometimes wonder whether perhaps cruising could be a more ethical alternative to, say, booking flight after flight after flight to visit the smaller islands in the Caribbean or the South Pacific. (Yes, it would be more ethical to let go of my obsessive compulsion to see everything in the world. Shhh.) So is there such a thing as an ethical cruise?

A quick googling brought up www.oceancruises.com, which seems to be a fairly comprehensive guide to worldwide cruising, but there’s nary a mention of ethics to be found on the site. Searching a bit more, I came up with the code of ethics of Royal Caribbean, the world’s second largest cruising company, which made a very bad impression in the Radio 4 documentary, and as expected, the code of ethics is incredibly vague, and far more catered to protecting the assets and image of the company, than to protecting the rights of the workers (shipboard or shoreside) or even the guests. The only company I could find with a clearly stated and publicly available policy on social accountability is Costa Crociere (www.costacruises.co.uk), an Italian company that claims to be the first cruise company to attain B.E.S.T.4 certification, which, apparently, is “an integrated system of voluntary certification of our compliance with the highest international standards in the areas of social accountability, environmental protection, workplace health and safety, and quality”. Details are here, though I notice that they haven’t updated their reports since 2005. Still, it seems like a good start.

There’s also a fairly comprehensive discussion of the environmental ethics of cruising at biz/ed, if you can get past the slightly irritating layout. It notes that the cruising industry is dominated by three gigantic conglomerates (Carnival, Royal Caribbean and Star), which isn’t a particularly good start for anyone who wants the money they spend while travelling to go to the places that they’re visiting, rather than to a multinational. It details the polluting offences of some of the companies (”over a six year period in the 1990s, cruise ships were involved in 87 confirmed cases of illegal discharges of oil, rubbish and hazardous waste” in US waters alone!), and it seems to be cheaper for the companies simply to pay the fines incurred rather than developing some sort of sustainable environmental policy. So yeah, I have no immediate cruising plans.