Travel Notes from Laos

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October 20, 2014

Abbey Road: Monks on their daily procession to collect food in Luang Prabang

Visiting Laos is a bit like going to Vietnam 20 years ago before that country’s “Open Door” policy showed that Communist countries can extract Capitalist dollars just by offering a few decadent luxuries to overseas travellers.

Laos still relatively less developed, in terms of tourism. But the scenery between Vientiane and Luang Prabang is stunning and the people are very friendly, if a little shy.

Luang Prabang

Luang Prabang is a city of about 50,000 people in North Central Laos where the Nam Kahn river joins the Mekong. It has dozens of monasteries but still retains a considerable French influence in both its architecture and cuisine.

There are excellent restaurants but the local food tends to be a little blander than either of its neighbours, Thailand and Vietnam. There are very lively night and day markets, cafes and spas, but not much of a night life per se.

As far as restaurants go, you’re spoiled for choice but the Ock Pop Tok Silk Road Café just outside town on the river gets rave reviews and the Tamnak Lao restaurant, set in a fine old French Colonial former residence is also a cooking school

The Bear sanctuary

The Free The Bears sanctuary, set up by Perth woman Mary Huton, is just outside Luang Prabang and you can read about my visit HERE. It is very close to the fabulous Kuang Si Waterfall where you can cool off with a swim in its pools.

Vang Vieng

Vang Vieng is a backpacker haven where until recently they were averaging about 10 tourist deaths a year a year because of “tubing” – tourists ride car tyre inner tubes down the river and grab ropes thrown from riverside bars where they are serve “whiskey” literally by the bucket. Tourists get drunker as they proceed down the river which once had 40 bars but now only has four after a government crackdown. The riverside restaurants encourage tourist to lie down while they eat and drink (as they’ll probably end up doing that anyway) and they show episodes of Friends and The Simpsons on endless loops.

Vientiane

The capital Vientiane is well-ordered and relatively quiet compared to other S.E. Asian cities. It has the fabulous Pha That Luang temple or “Great Stupa” which is one of Laos’ best known landmarks. About an hour outside of town is the strange Buddha Park which was built over several years by a self-styled “holy man”. On the way you can see factories turning out very colourful spirit houses and animal statues for garden ornaments.

Restaurants there include the Kualao Restaurant which is in a former French colonial villa (and where Paul and Anita Keating dined when they were there to open the Mekong River bridge to Thailand). It has traditional dancing and is a bit touristy (but some people like that).

As a complete contrast, you could go to the Vangthong Evening Food Market where you can work on the principle that if you can see it being cooked, it’s probably OK. And there’s the Makphet training restaurant which trains streetkids and serves delicious Lao food.

In the evening, go down to the Mekong shore where there a free open-air evening “pump” class for literally hudreds of people, led by two or three instructors at a time. There’s al;so a clothes market nearby which has a few food stalls too.

A week in Laos

If I had a week in Laos I would spend a couple of days in Vientiane, then travel via Vang Vieng to Luang Prabang which is only 300 km away. On the way I’d check out the working salt mines at Ban Keun, and Tha Heua, a small village that specializes in dried fish, which you will see hanging in front of the houses.

Vang Vieng isn’t all drunken louts there’s the beautiful Tham Jang cave that makes it worth breaking the journey there and the town has some great views of the Nam Song River and the valley.

You could spend a night there and then drive on to Luang Prabang, possibly stopping at at Koe Kuang local forest market, offering edible snakes, rats and assorted reptiles! There’s another market at Phou Khoun and a couple of very picturesque villages along the way.

In Luang Prabang, as well as the temples and royal palace, there are lots of cafes and restaurants – the former royal chefs have left an influence here – and you can cruise upstream on the Mekong River, to Pak Ou, two caves set in a limestone cliff facing the river crammed with thousands and thousands Buddha statues of various shapes and sizes.

But beware, there are lots and lots of steps. If I had more than a week, I would just chill out for a few days in Luang Prabang and kid myself I was writing a novel.

The natural environment

The area between Vientiane and Luan Prabang is very mountainous – the geological formations are Karsts (the dome-like mountains you see rising out of the water in Halong Bay – only without the water) which means there are also a lot of caves.

Adventure holidays

Companies like Tiger Trails do trekking, kayaking and cycling holidays (with optional elephants). Community Trekking is a kind of ecotourism where you walk with a guide to a variety of villages, often in national parks, where the villagers are trained in basic hospitality. If you like walking and meeting people from different cultures, this is for you.

As part of the trek you can stay with families in a village homestay which is pretty basic. Your accommodation probably won’t have electricity but you will have a western style outdoor toilet. Washing may be in the river.

Is Laos a cheap holiday?

Laos is very cheap but, of course, the more home comforts you require, the more expensive it gets. A six day TravelIndochina small group tour with 4 to 5 star accommodation will cost about $1650 excluding flights ($400 less for cheaper accommodation). And you can, of course, design your own tour which will be a bit more expensive.

How to get there?

I flew from Sydney to Vietnam and then to Vientiane on Vietnam Airlines and had a small group tour in a minibus which I would highly recommend (through TravelIndochina who are not the cheapest but they are very reliable and experienced). We flew from Luang Prabang to Hanoi and then home.

Hotels in Vientiane:

LUXURY

Settha Palace Hotel www.setthapalace.com (From about $250 a night)

Lao Plaza Hotel www.laoplazahotel.com (similar – Laos’s first five-star hotel. Presidential suite about $1000 a night)

BUDGET

Family Hotel www.family-hotel-vientiane.com (from about $37 a night)

Hotels in Luang Prabang

LUXURY

Three Nagas www.3-nagas.com (From $290 pn. Not the poshest hotel in Luang Prabang but a very stylish boutique hotel in old French area, with a great restaurant and monks come right past the front door). Warning – they have free wi-fi but a “no TV” policy

BUDGET

Villa Chitdara www.villachitdara.com – in the same area for about $63 pn.

Work for free to free the bears

By

Jimmy Thomson

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March 5, 2014

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The old moon bear is not for sharing. A cracked open coconut has been tossed into his enclosure and he is alternating chews with muffled growls as the younger bears sidle up . If they get too close, the cute bundle of fur turns into a snarling flurry of fangs and claws. This is no teddy bear.

But the youngsters are smart and fast. While one of them distracts their grizzled companion into a threatening lunge, the other snatches the coconut and races off with it, leaving the old timer to moan quietly at his misfortune. The law of the jungle applies even in the safety of the Tat Kuang Si bear rescue centre just outside Luang Prabang in northern Laos.

You feel sorry for the old chap, until you remember what brought him here. Tat Kuang Si is home for 26 moon bears that have been rescued from various horrors inflicted on them. The lucky ones were simply caged outside restaurants or the homes of the rich and the powerful, for the amusement and amazement of guests.

Others had tubes brutally driven into their stomachs and permanently fixed there, to harvest the bile so highly prized in Asian traditional medicine. You don’t want to think about the horrors they endured to immobilize them and render them harmless to their heartless captors.

So, all in all, they are better off here, even if someone has stolen their lunch. Over in the distance, a female bear hobbles gamely through her paddock on three legs, the fourth having been amputated. It had become infected following her paw being cut off to make bear paw soup. Now she’s getting around just fine.

We shouldn’t dwell on the human capacity for cruelty to other animals – this centre is all about compassion and caring. And the best news is that if you truly care about the fate of these animals, you can do something about it, much more directly than just sending money.

Tat Kuang Si and its bigger equivalent in Cambodia, Phnom Tamao, are leaders in “Voluntourism” – schemes where you spend a couple of weeks working for a charity and pay for the privilege too. Run by the Free The Bears organization, this is the most Australian of oversees experiences.

It’s just over 20 years since Perth woman Mary Hutton saw a TV documentary about the plight of Asiatic bears, kept captive in appalling conditions while their bile was drained and the paws amputated. From raising a petition outside her nearest shopping centre, Mary’s involvement and soon grew into the Free The Bears charity.

Helping Australian businessman John Stephens to relocate bears he had rescued from Cambodian restaurants led to the creation of the Phnom Tamao centre – now the world’s largest sanctuary for sun bears and, crucially, providing vital education for today’s children in the hope and belief that they will grow up to build a world where these cruelties are no longer acceptable.

As her charity’s influence spread, Free The Bears has been instrumental in rescuing hundreds of animals in South-East Asia and an amazing 500-plus in India. When we visited Luang Prabang, one of their workers told us that a weekend sweep of a nearby jungle area had cleared more than 100 bear traps.

So what can a voluntourist expect? Well, you won’t be cuddling many bears, for a start. These are wild animals and the closer they can be kept to their natural state the better.

But you will be feeding them, cleaning up their habitats (when they’re not in them, of course) and getting to know them much better than a bus trip to the zoo could ever provide. You’ll be kept busy – either on general duties or on one of the specific tasks such as maintaining or building enclosures and other tourist and education facilities.

Accommodation is going to be clean and comfortable – about or better than the standard of a decent backpacker hostel. You will be expected to clean your own room, make your own bed and cook your own breakfast. Lunch can be bought at the sanctuaries but dinner, local food cooked by your housekeeper, is provided.

Many travelers will see this as a way to really get to know a local culture just by being in it but there are others for whom simple foreign cuisine may be a sacrifice too much, even for the bears. In that case, Free The bears provides a list of ‘necessities’ such as diet soft drinks and breakfast cereal you would be advised to being with you.

Both of Free The Bears centres take groups, couples and individuals but you may have to be flexible with your times, depending on demand.

“For Cambodia we have a maximum limit of 6 volunteers per week, the idea being that with smaller numbers we can offer a better experience,” says Free the Bears CEO Matt Hunt. “However, we do occasionally break this rule for people travelling in larger groups.

“For Laos, we tailor specific trips throughout the year – about three per year – the programme there is smaller and the trips are based on specific projects that we would like to accomplish during volunteer trips.

“There is no waiting list, but there are periods of the year which have already been booked out by other people. We usually try to accommodate more people, but more often than not volunteers are flexible with their dates and join us on another day. And we do get return bookings.

“On average our volunteers tend to be 21 – 35, but we have had a whole range of age groups visit. The minimum age is 21, the maximum is unlimited as long as the volunteer is able to physically cope with strenuous work in tropical climate.”

That’s a point worth making. These trips are not like some Voluntourist holidays where you spend your time faffing around taking selfies with ‘grateful’ locals. Free The Bears is a working holiday where you are expected to work.

The Luang Prabang reserve, though smaller, does have the advantage of being 20 minutes from one of the most picturesque and largely unspoiled cities in South East Asia. And two minutes from spectacular waterfalls and rock pools where you can go for a cooling dip after a hard day’s bear-freeing.

Your weekends are your own at both reserves so you will get the opportunity to do the regular tourist thing too. The dawn procession of monks in Luang Prabang as they collect their food from local people (they are not allowed to cook for themselves) is a sight worth seeing.

But the bears are what you’ll be there for, and it’s your memories of seeing these beautiful animals up close and imagining the horrors they have endured that will last as long as the shelters and fences you help to build to protect them.

They may be fenced in but, partly thanks to you, the bears are free.

This article first appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald ‘Traveller’ on March 1st, 2014. You’ll find the published version, with more pictures, HERE

Glasgow’s hidden gems

By

Jimmy Thomson

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January 12, 2014

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It’s 3.30 on a fairly typical Glasgow Spring afternoon, and I am standing in horizontal freezing rain in the midst of a fake Neolithic stone circle. Behind me, a 20-storey apartment block – which is actually older than the stone circle – is being nibbled into non-existence by a giant drill.

“Look,” says Dr Kenneth Brophy (above) of Glasgow University’s Archaeology department, gesturing with undampened enthusiasm at empty bottles, used condoms and the remnants of a small fire. “This is how it would have been. Rituals involving alcohol, sex and fire, just like the real thing.”

“But it’s not the real thing,” I mumble through teeth chattering too much to grit.

“Not real, but authentic,” chides Dr Brophy, who blogs as the Urban Prehistorian. Apparently the stone circle, built under a pre-Thatcherite job creation scheme and halted by the Iron Lady herself – who had been interred that very week – is under threat again.

Not satisfied with hosting the Commonwealth Games next year, Glasgow is bidding for the World Youth Games in 2018. This is where the accommodation will be and the stones, as well as the gnawed-at block of flats behind them, are in the way.

It’s a typical Glasgow wrestling match; the past, present and future in the kind of tag-team tussle that keeps the city alive and kicking. As it gears up for the Commonwealths, and all the great games beyond that, Glasgow embraces the future with a brand of gusto they call ‘gallus’ around here.

There’s no shortage of existing sporting venues. The city already boasts three world-class football stadia but there’s plenty of room to build new facilities in post-industrial Glasgow, as the Emirates Arena (and Sir Chris Hoy Velodrome) in the East End has shown.

The brand new Hydro music arena opened this week (Sep 30^th) with a series of concerts by Rod Stewart, interrupted by his attendance at an even bigger event – his beloved Celtic FC playing Barcelona in the European Champions League.

However, the best bits of Glasgow are often a little less obvious. The handful of buildings designed by Charles Rennie Mackintosh are scattered as if for an architectural treasure hunt. The world class art galleries and libraries, even the shops, are, well, open which is more than you can say for many British towns’ retailers. The music and theatre scene is unmatched outside of London and there is a buzz about the place.

But don’t expect this city to take itself too seriously. The statue of the Duke of Wellington outside the Gallery of Modern Art in the city centre has a traffic cone permanently on his head. Edinburgh, just 70 km away, is regarded with smirking disdain; the tram-strangled capital’s monolithic Festival runs for a few weeks in summer, but Glasgow is ‘on’ all year.

This is a young city. With three major universities, a world-famous art school, a music conservatory and several colleges, about a quarter of its population of around 600,000 are in tertiary education. That’s a lot of young, smart people so it’s no wonder that it has more live music venues – including the legendary King Tut’s Wah Wah Hut and The Arches – than Edinburgh, Dundee and Aberdeen combined.

This is what will surprise visitors who come for the Commonwealth Games, or any other reason. The industries that made this once Britain’s second city may be dead and gone but 21^st Century Glasgow is alive!

Dr Brophy reckons the night life attracts a lot of students, and he would know. But Scott Taylor, Chief Executive of Glasgow City Marketing, says the lure may be something even more fundamental.

“There’s a café, restaurant or bar for every 1000 people in Glasgow. That’s a lot of jobs for kids who are trying to get by on student grants or loans,” he explains. It also keeps the cost of eating out relatively low. “There’s a limit to what students will pay and that keeps the prices down for everyone.”

All of which leads to that blend of old and new Glasgow, that mock Jock, self-deprecating, Nouveau Weegie* attitude, embodied in places like the sandwich bar called Piece. The word ‘piece’ is traditional Scots for a sandwich but this place takes the concept of what you can put between two slices of bread to new heights.

In surroundings reminiscent of an old-fashioned grocer shop, the walls gleaming with white tiles, a ‘plain loaf’ has been replaced by bloomer, ciabatta and baguette and the coffee tastes so good it’s blasphemous. I recommend the ‘Dirty Fat Boy’ – thick cut ham, free range egg, garlic mayo, cheddar cheese and a gherkin – although the Urban Prehistorian bemoaned the lack of a ‘piece and jam’. There’s no pleasing some people.

Glasgow is changing. The famed Clydeside shipyards are mostly silent now and even the buildings that replaced the slums are being demolished. But the ‘wee hard man’ reputation of No Mean City refuses to die. The day after I visit, Glasgow is named the most violent city in Britain. This is progress – the last time I was here it was pronounced more violent than New York. Even so, you still have to be careful where you are when you ask for a Dirty Fat Boy.

That night I went to the Curler’s Rest (a bar, not a hairdressers) in Byres Rd, in the city’s shabby chic West End. Alert for wee hard men, I overheard two pavement smokers discussing how one of them had been knifed in the back. A little disappointingly, it turned out they were referring to unsatisfactory dealings with a television producer.

Inside, four smart young women sat in the corner guzzling beer, cider and wine … and knitting. Knitting? In a pub? In the city of the “can yer mother sew…” razor gangs?

There were boutique beers on tap and a virtual Eurozone by the bottle, but no raised voices, no blaring music, no distracting TVs or pokie machines. What have they done to the Glasgow pub?

Byres Rd is one of Glasgow’s great “eat streets” with the legendary Ubiquitous Chip sitting cheek by jowl with the Ashoka, a restaurant that helped give Glasgow its reputation for the finest curries north of … err … Bradford. Across the road the allegedly Vietnamese Hanoi Bike Shop sells faux pho that they tell you is pronounced ‘fuh’. It’s not, so I have to wonder what the H stands for.

The Merchant City’s honeyed sandstone buildings, just the other side of the city centre, has a more sophisticated appeal with up-market eateries like Café Gandolfi offering modern Scottish fare alongside a few trad faves like Cullen skink (a smoked fish soup).

Earlier that week I’d eaten at Jamie Oliver’s Italian restaurant in George Square – it was quicker to fly to Glasgow than queue in Sydney. My family mocks me for craving macaroni cheese whenever I am ‘home’ and, lo and behold, there it was on the menu … only with crab and capers involved too.

The simple pleasures of the past met the sophisticated indulgences of today, right there on my plate. And in the same way, Glasgow with its snazzy sandwich shops, artisan bakeries, boutique breweries, trendy restaurants and pre-GFC prices is similarly going back to the future.

The outrageously stylish new Riverside Museum – a building that looks like a heartbeat with a twist – houses ancient trains and boats and planes in the most modern of spaces. This is what Glasgow is about for me.

Whatever sporting triumphs and tragedies next July brings, the main game in Glasgow is finding its hidden gems, like the not-very-Neolithic stone circle. Hidden gems and semi-precious stones? That pretty much sums the city up.

*Weegie = Glaswegian.

A FEW HIDDEN GEMS

To find out the places Glaswegians have discovered in Glasgow, there’s a Facebook page called greatlittleplaceglasgow which is well worth a visit.

To read more about the Sighthill stone circle, go to theurbanprehistorian.wordpress.com

Meanwhile here are a few other jewels in Glasgow’s crown:

Demijohn, 382 Byres Road, is a ‘liquid deli’, selling mostly British liqueurs, whiskies, wines, spirits, olive oils and vinegars stored and displayed in massive glass demijohns. Tasting encouraged. Web: www.demijohn.co.uk

Piece, 1056 Argyle Street, described as serving ‘the sandwich as an art form’. Web: www.laucknerandmoore.com

The Curler’s Rest at 256-260 Byres Rd boasts five real ales, 19 specialty beers and three ciders on tap, a restaurant and even a wine club and tasting nights. Web: thecurlersrestglasgow.co.uk

The Riverside Museum, housing Glasgow’s transport history, was designed by architect Zaha Hadid Web: glasgowlife.org.uk/museums

FAST FACTS

Getting there

Emirates and Qantas offer connecting flights direct to Glasgow out of Dubai but it is quicker (and often cheaper) to fly to London and then fly British Airways from Heathrow to Glasgow.

Staying there

Glasgow has more than 100 hotels at all levels from the $267 a night Blythswood Square luxury hotel through the mid-range, ubertrendy citizenM (subs: correct) at about $115, to the cheap and cheerful Alexander Thomson hotel from $75. There are even cheaper options and obviously prices will rise and availability will fall during next year’s Commonwealth Games.

Blythswood Square Hotel, No.11 Blythswood Square, Glasgow, G2 4AD. Tel 0141 248 8888
Web: townhousecompany.com/blythswoodsquare

citizen M Hotel, 60 Renfrew Street, Glasgow, G2 3BW Tel. +44 203 519 1111.
Web: citizenm.com/glasgow/

Alexander Thomson Hotel, 320 Argyle Street, Glasgow, G2 8LY Tel. +44 141 2211152
Web: alexander@rmghotels.com

Scenes of the crimes

By

Jimmy Thomson

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January 11, 2014

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By Jimmy Thomson

The elegant woman along the counter had seen better days and worse nights, judging by her sad eyes and “step away” glances. Another lost soul at the Gumbo Pot.

“Tourist?” Her question was delivered with a smile but arrived like a threat. I tried to look amused, rather than busted. “It’s just, tourists stare … At everything.”

“Sorry,” I said with a hint of a bow. “For staring. I’m working. Staring comes with the territory.”

She slid closer. “Everybody’s working here, mister.” We were in the Farmer’s Market in West Hollywood and all around us were people having lunch, or drinks or shopping but also working – on a script or a pitch or an idea or a connection. Working on their dreams.

“If you’re looking for celebrities, that guy in the suit who just left?” she offered. “That was the famous Detective Harry Bosch.” OK, I had registered a careworn middle-aged white man in a suit that was one size too small and five years too old. But Harry Bosch?

“Really?” I mocked. “The fictional hero of Michael Connolly’s novels? I know he eats here in the books but, like I say, he’s made up … not real.”

“He was real, awright.” she mocked. “You saw him.” And she spun on her seat and left, trailing a slipstream of knock-off designer perfume and taking my breath with her but leaving me her tab. That’s what you get for staring in this town.

“Harry likes the jambalaya,” the waiter said, as he kept the change, uninvited.*

Welcome to West Hollywood, one of those corners of the world where fact and fiction blend in equal parts, where the story-teller is king and fictional characters walk among us.

Most tourist guides tell you which “mean streets” to avoid. But this is Los Angeles where they sell you maps to celebrities homes and Raymond Chandler coined that immortal phrase “Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid.” (And all this time, thanks to Bobby De Niro, you thought it was New York, right?)

Since Chandler’s day the meanest streets have moved to South Central LA and beyond, from New York to New Jersey and even to other cities like Baltimore. And now you can (reasonably) safely return to the scenes of your favourite crime writers’ crimes.

When Detective Bosch isn’t getting a taste of the bayou at the Gumbo Pot, or at Bob’s Coffee N Donuts, also in the market, you can see if he’s grabbing a sandwich at Phillipe’s diner in Chinatown or noodles at the Chinese Friends Restaurant at Elysian Park.

You can even cut out the middle man and scour eBay for a copy of the rare Harry Bosch’s Zagat’s Guide to LA. Or you could go to any number of easily accessible spots, such as Santa Monica Pier to look at the carousel where the odious Gladden surveyed his potential prey in “The Poet”.

In LA, every crime novel – whether it’s Connelly, Robert Crais, James Ellroy or Don Winslow, is a tour guide because the city is often another character in the stories. But if you don’t want to read with a map in your lap, organised tours are perfect for those who like a bit more fact with their fiction.

One company, Esotouric, specialises in weekly tours based on writers, poets and musicians – like Charles Bukowski and Tom Waits – as well as true crimes such as the notorious Black Dahlia murder.

There are two separate Raymond Chandler tours. The Bay City tour looks at his middle novels such as Farewell My Lovely and Lady In the Lake while In A Lonely Place, focuses on downtown, Hollywood and his decline. The tours last half a day and include video clips on the bus as well as well-informed and quirky commentary.

There are two Chandler tours scheduled for April 11^th and 25^th, a James M Cain tour slated for May 30^th and lots of other oddities – like Pasadena Confidential with Crimebo the Clown – in between. Tours are US$58 for a half day. Check their website. www.esotouric.com, for reviews, times, dates and bookings.

Crime travel isn’t the sole province of LA alone. You want Mobsters? New York’s your place but be aware that the availability of set-jetting tours (visiting the locations from movies or TV shows) are determined by what’s on or been on TV or the big screen most recently.

Through On Location Tours, you can book a four-hour Sopranos tour which takes you round more than 40 New Jersey locations from the TV series, including the Bada Bing strip club and the diner where Chris was shot. You can even sit in the same booth where Tony Soprano in the very restaurant used in the final enigmatic scene of the series. The tours cost US$44 and you can book through the website www.screentours.com.

For a Goodfellas tour, best to hit the sidewalk yourself with real life Mafia informant Henry Hill’s “Goodfellas Guide To New York” which promises to be “your personal tour through the Mob’s notorious haunts, hair-raising crime scenes, and infamous hot spots.”

Other bullet-riddled self-propelled tour books are Infamous Manhattan by Andrew Roth and New York Notorious: A Borough-By-Borough Tour of the City’s Most Infamous Crime Scenes by Paul Schwarzman – both are designed to guide you round the city and the latter comes with maps. Just be careful not to get trampled underfoot by women on the “Sex And The City” tours – those Jimmy Choo heels can kill.

If you’re looking for a tour of Godfather locations, fly to Sicily where there are a number of tours to locations used by Frances Ford Coppola in Godfather II and III.

Back in NYC, literature Professor B. J. Rahn of New York’s Hunter College organizes occasional tours of New York related to Edgar Allen Poe and Dashiell Hammett. But Professor Rahn goes a lot further, in every sense, acknowledging the influence of British writers and English female crime writers in particular in establishing and developing the genre.

Considering a couple of the murders in Dorothy L. Sayers’ novels happen during walking tours, it’s only fitting that Professor Rahn leads literary walks through Bloomsbury, London where Sayers lived and worked from the 1920’s to the mid-1950’s.

“I’m especially fond of the Sayers tour because I live across the street from the flat in Bloomsbury where she wrote her first detective novel,” Professor Rahn told us. “Her novels are rife with Bloomsbury landmarks. Gaudy Night opens with a description of a tennis game in Mecklenburgh Square, which Harriet Vane observes out her window, i.e. Sayers’ window.”

Professor Rahn also does tours for fans of Agatha Christie, Margery Allingham and Sherlock Holmes (of course). But you’ll have to keep an eye on her website (crimecritic.com) for details and arrange tours by email.

“I don’t have a set schedule of dates and times,” she explains. “I book them by appointment. I usually do them for literary societies or groups of students, writers, etc. “
On the subject of Agatha Christie, when it’s not calling itself the English Riviera, the 35km of Devon coastline from Torquay to Brixham, likes to be known as Christie Country.
The local tourist association provides information for both self-drive and walking tours as well as guided Christie tours around the area. And there’s an annual week-long Christie festival, to be held this year in the third week in September.

Back in London there are regular Sherlock Holmes tours that start every Friday at 2pm outside Covent garden Tube station, run by London Walks, a company that’s reckoned to be the best walking tour company in the world.

Their “In the Footsteps of Sherlock Holmes” tour, every Friday, takes Holmes fans through Charing Cross, the Strand and Covent Garden ending at the re-creation of Sherlock Holmes’s study. There are other Sherlock Holmes walks that will come on to the timetable after Easter and all walks are UK £7 per person with discounts for pensioners (or ‘super adults’ as they call them).

For a more contemporary taste of fictional crime, head north to Edinburgh where Rebus Tours – an independent company that has author Ian Rankin’s blessing – helps you follow the footsteps of the recently retired fictional detective who redefined the word dour.

Rebus Tours has three trips round Rankin’s Edinburgh. The first, Hidden Edinburgh starts in Rebus’ favourite pub, The Royal Oak, then takes in the classic Rebus locations like St Leonard’s Police Station and The Meadows with readings from Set in Darkness‚ Dead Souls and Question of Blood.

The second two-hour walk, The Body Politic, takes a morbid turn via the City Mortuary, Canongate Cemetery and the Royal Mile. It includes a reading from Fleshmarket Close near the laneway from which it took its name.

The third tour, New Town, Old Crimes starts and finishes at the Stockbridge Bookshop and supplements readings from The Falls‚ Strip Jack and Hyde and Seek with the works of even more famous Edinburgh authors such as Muriel Spark and Robert Louis Stevenson.

The tours are usually on Saturday and Sunday afternoons at 1pm for two hours. They cost UK£10 (UK£9 conc.) and you are advised to book in advance (www.rebustours.com).

If that’s not enough, grab a copy of Ian Rankin’s own “Rebus’s Scotland”- which in words and stunning pictures gives an insight to the author, his characters and his country. And while you’re in Edinburgh, you may as well drop into BOTH cafes that claim they are where J K Rowling wrote the Harry Potter novels.

In the bar of the Royal Oak, a local worthy looks at me with bloodshot eyes through the building fog of an impending hangover. “If yer lookin’ for the detective, he’s deid,” he mumbles, edging his empty glass closer to mine in the hope of refill, if only by osmosis. “Rebus is dead?” I ask incredulously. “Rebus?” he replies with contempt. “No. He’s fine. He wiz here earlier on. It’s Taggart that’s deid.”

Originally published in the Sun-Herald, Sydney, in September 2011. Tours and prices (below) may have changed. *This was written and published before the excellent Titus Welliver started showing up on TV in the role of Harry Bosch in the Amazon Studios series.

CRIME TRAVEL

RAYMOND CHANDLER (Los Angeles): Esotouric, US$58 for a half day. Web: www.esotouric.com

SOPRANOS ( New York): US$44 from On Location Tours. Web www.screentours.com/tour.php/sopranos/. Phone: Zerve (212) 209-3370 . email: service@zerve.com.

GODFATHER (Sicily): SICILY LIFE – Via Salita Branco 1/8 – 98039 Taormina Tel: + 39 3284137533. Fax: +39 3471293107 Web: www.sicily-tour.net. Email: info@sicilylife.com

EDGAR ALLEN POE etc (New York)
and
DOROTHY L SAYERS etc (London) Professor B. J. Rahn – tours by arrangement. Web: www.crimecritic.com. Email bjrahn@crimecritic.com.

AGATHA CHRISTIE (SW England): Web: www.englishriviera.co.uk/agathachristie/home

SHERLOCK HOLMES, London Walks UK£7pp. PO Box 1708, London, NW6 4LW. Phone 020 7624 3978 or 020 7794 1764. Recorded Information 020 7624 9255 . Web: www walks.com.

REBUS (Edinburgh), UK£10pp (UK£9 conc.) Web www.rebustours.com. During Edinburgh Festival time (from June) you have to book through the Fringe office (www.edfringe.com).

Vietnam caves get under your skin

By

Jimmy Thomson

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January 11, 2014

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paradise-cave-tour-phong-nha-3 — Paradise caves, Vietnam

I seem to have a thing about going underground in Vietnam. If it’s not the Vietcong tunnels at Cu Chi it’s the escape tunnel from the Reunification (formerly Presidential) Palace in Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon).

I even get a thrill going through the new road tunnel under the Saigon River, wondering if there was much slapping of foreheads when the city planners realized the answer to their future traffic needs lay in their recent past.

But these are all man-made holes in the ground and even with their military significance or civil engineering prowess, they don’t come close to subterranean wonders of the caves in Phong Nha-Ke Bang National Park.

This UNESCO World Heritage Site, about 60 km northwest of Dong Hoi city is where you’ll find the Paradise Caves. Near the west branch of Ho Chi Minh Highway in Quang Binh Province, this is where Vietnam is at its narrowest and it’s only a couple of hours driving from the coast to the Laos border.

At 31 km long, the Paradise Caves or Dong Thien Duong, to give them their proper name, forms the longest cavern system in Asia. Until recently they were also one of the most ancient secrets on the planet – having only been discovered in 2005 by a local man.

An exploration by the British Cave Research Association shortly thereafter revealed that the largest cave in the chain reaches up to 100 m high and 150 m wide. Seven years later, with a lot of thought and investment poured into the project, Paradise Caves are eminently accessible if you are reasonably mobile.

After an easy drive into the mountains along good and remarkably traffic-free roads, you switch to electric carts that whisk you up the last steep incline to the cave’s entrance. Then it gets serious with a fairly strenuous climb of more than 500 steps to the narrow entrance in the side of the mountain. It’s no walk in the park but, even as 100 wooden steps down to the cave floor mock your aching knees, standing at the top is an out-of-body experience.

If the climb hasn’t taken your breath away, the sight before you will; you are closer to the roof than the floor of the caves and the dim lighting is just enough to let you see the massive extent of this underground wonderland. The cave is huge – bigger even than any imagined Hollywood confection – and it’s beautiful.

As you descend to the wide and sturdy boardwalk (mostly) tasteful lighting reveals massive, mind-boggling rock formations that are the physical manifestation of time standing still. Some of these massive stalagmites look more like ancient religious statues, mounds of yawning skulls, or the gaping maws of spellbound dragons.

The 1km timber walkway winding through these astonishing rock formations take you to a viewing platform from which the caves seem to go on forever. The 120,000 Dong entry fee (that’s about $6) includes a guide with ‘Madonna’ microphone and little speakers attached to his or her belt so there’s a multicultural smorgasbord of languages as you pass tour groups, each listening to descriptions in their own tongue.

Even so, this is an incredibly peaceful place and you can always find a corner for some quiet contemplation, something the size and beauty of your surroundings naturally inspire.

Amazingly, Paradise Caves aren’t even the largest in the area. Nearby Son Doong, or Mountain River Cave, is now recognised as the largest cave in the world at more than 200m wide and 150m high and almost 10 km long, making it twice as big as Deer Cave in Malaysia, the previous title-holder.

If caves are your thing, there are believed to be between 150 and 300 in the area although only a couple are open to tourists. Keen cavers can take a three-day tour from Dong Hoi including two nights camping and six hours cave exploration with local guides, porters and forest rangers. A two-day tour can also be arranged with one night camping but only three hours in Son Doong.

A much more leisurely expedition is to the Phong Nha Cave where you go for about 1500m along its underground river on little boats that take ten tourists at a time.

There are tours to the caves from Hue and even Hanoi but the closest base for your adventures is the seaside town of Dong Hoi with its spectacular beaches and classy Sun Spa resort, a genuine five-star hotel right on the beach.

As in just about every half-decent hotel in Vietnam, the Sun Spa has free and reliable wi-fi in the rooms which are spacious, clean and comfortable and the flaws are quirky rather than catastrophic (the bath didn’t quite reach the wall so every shower was a flood).

It has several eateries serving Western dishes (if you must) as well as authentic Vietnamese food or you can hire a bike and cycle ten minutes into town where there’s a lively market and a riverside beer garden selling freshly grilled squid.

But it’s the caves that are the big attraction – in fact, they don’t come any bigger.

Jimmy Thomson travelled as a guest of Vietnam Airlines. He also organizes author tours related to his book Tunnel Rats (see www.tunnelrat.com.au).

FAST FACTS

Vietnam airlines fly daily direct to Ho Chi Minh City from both Sydney and Melbourne for around $1500 return. Travellers can also get a “half-and-half” deal allowing you to fly to Vietnam economy but return (overnight) in Business Class, from $2,000.00 plus taxes (about $430.00 but variable) to $2,225.00 plus taxes, high season. Internal flights can be added for $50 per leg. Australians require a visa available online from vietnamembassy.org.au. Vietnam Airlines flies four times a week between Ho Chi Minh City and Dong Hoi.

Staying There

Rooms with breakfast at the Sun Spa in Dong Hoi range from 2.25m Dong per night (about $105) up to 48m Dong ($2250) for a three-bedroom villa. However there are special offers on the hotel’s website sunsparesortvietnam.com. Next best hotel in Dong Hoi is the Saigon-Quang Binh, in town on the riverside, where discounted rooms range from $69-$81 B&B.

Cave Tours

You can organize an all-inclusive Paradise Caves tour from the Sun Spa hotel for $2.23 million Dong (approx. $104) per person, or add in Phong Nah caves for an extra $20 or so. There are budget tours from Hanoi including an overnight bus trip from under $50 and one-day tours by bus available from Hue.

Stop the bus: Confessions of a tour guide

By

Jimmy Thomson

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January 10, 2014

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“Stop the bus!” The only time you usually get to say that on an organised tour is at a time of disaster: Someone’s been left behind, last night’s dinner turns out to have been as suspicious as it was delicious, or you’re on the wrong bus completely. Unless, of course, you are running the tour.

It was the first full day of my new role as a tour guide and we were trundling through the small town of Long Phuoc, between Ho Chi Minh City and Vung Tau in Vietnam when, out of the corner of my eye, I noticed a statue (pictured right).

Not just any statue – Vietnam is littered with them – I had seen a picture of this one in a newsletter from a Vietnam Vets’ organisation. I was keen to make a good impression on the 10 people I had persuaded to join my inaugural Tunnel Rats book tour (with co-author Sandy MacGregor), so I made my charabanc stopping call.

“This is Duong Van Manh,” I said authoritatively to everyone gathered around the statue. That’s what it said on the statue and I assumed it didn’t mean “keep off the grass”. I related the story, cribbed from the newsletter, of how Manh became a hero of the Vietnam war by working out how to steal and recycle anti-personnel mines for use against Allied troops.

“He then travelled all around Phuoc Tuy province and taught villagers and other Vietcong,” I said, gesturing authoritatively to the statue. “The result was devastating for Australian troops who suffered more casualties from their own landmines than from any other single source.”

Sandy and Tam (centre) talk to the ‘Troops’

Standing in the grounds of a small temple in the morning heat, my small, captive audience seemed rapt. Australian troops suffered almost as many casualties from American “Jumping Jack” mines as they did from Vietcong bullets. It was the first morning of the tour and they were already learning stuff they’d never heard before.

It was all going tremendously well until Tam, our official tour guide, sidled up to me. He and the local guide Trang had been deep in conversation throughout my impromptu presentation. “Is wrong hero,” he said with a shy, apologetic smile. “This hero fought in French war, not American war.” Trang nodded her confirmation.

The statue was definitely the one in the newsletter – that much I got right – and there was a hero who worked out how to recycle land mines. But the person in the story wasn’t the one on the plinth. I ushered everyone back on the bus, my newly-minted reputation as an ace tour guide already in tatters.

Having avoided organised tours for most of my travelling life, running one didn’t come naturally to me. But Sandy and I’d had our Tunnel Rats book published the previous year and that September I went to Vietnam to see the places where Australian Army Engineers had been stationed. That’s when it occurred to me that this might make the basis for an organised but informal tour.

As a young captain back in 1965, Sandy had led the original Tunnel Rats who were the first to explore the Vietcong tunnel systems, and I knew he could tell the stories that didn’t get into the book. I would look after the day-to-day stuff and talk a bit about modern Vietnam, the writing process, and anything else to while away the journeys between the various Tunnel Rat locations.

We contacted a tour company and they worked out the logistics for us so we didn’t have to look after the money; when it comes to being a debt collector, life’s too short and so am I. We set a minimum of 10 paying guests and a maximum of 16 and gave ourselves four months until the middle of January to round them up.

We made our ten and they were quite a mixture: two twentysomethings who’d never been out of Australia, their Dad, a Digger making his first trip to Vietnam, a couple in their 60s whose friends and family had begged them not to take such an arduous trip, two keen hiking mates, a military historian and an old friend of Sandy’s – an intrepid septuagenarian who took the daily adventure in her stride.

Despite my misidentification of the wrong hero from the wrong war, by day two things were going surprisingly well. We were seeing even more than we had planned, including Vietcong caves that we hadn’t realised we’d be able to explore and an amazing military museum in Vung Tau created by a millionaire expat Brit, displaying weapons and uniforms that went back 1000 years.

We tried to stay away from tourist restaurants, much to Tam’s irritation, and my “naughty but nice” tour of Saigon’s nightlife erred on the ‘nice’ side, including encounters with ballroom dancers in the park and chatty locals who simply wanted to practise their English.

Our first tour – Sandy and I meet Vietnam Army public relations officers (by chance) at Cu Chi

Thankfully, rather than being alarmed by our ‘informal’ approach to schedules, everybody seemed excited by the sense of adventure.

On my solo journeys, or travels with a friend, I have often remarked that there are a lot worse things that can happen than being lost in a strange city. This is where you find the the hidden gems that regular tours can’t include as well as the people who are not jaded by the daily parade of overseas visitors chanting the local variation of the “No souvenirs, thanks” mantra.

But a group of tourists is an organic beast that is already out of it’s comfort zone and it instinctively seeks safety and security as much as it wants excitement, entertainment and edification.

So we gently nudge, encourage and explore. And, in the spirit of the Tunnel Rats, occasionally discover something entirely unexpected and amazing.

Tunnel Rats and its sequel A Sappers War are published by Allen & Unwin and are available in print and as ebooks from a variety on online sources.

Night and day in Luang Prabang

By

Jimmy Thomson

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January 10, 2014

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Wandering around the streets of Luang Prabang in northern Laos, trying out some new settings on my newish Nikon, I came across this. Two European backpackers escape the heat of their hotel rooms and make the most of the wi-fi (which is everywhere in this ancient city). The light from their laptop screens meant I could use natural light and the frame of the window was just a lucky bonus.

Here are some more of my Laos pictures. Click to enlarge: