Travels

December journal + Hanoi photos

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Sunday afternoon, and I have a hangover.

A fitting state perhaps to welcome in the start of the festive season, although the combination of last night’s beers, 5 hours sleep, Martha wailing like a banshee, and Florence enthusiastically using me as her personal drum-kit, was not quite the ideal scenario first thing this morning in terms of remedying a sore head.

I used to love December back in the UK.  It can be the most indulgent month of the year, and also the most random in terms of habits.

On the social side, for example, people start warming up their red wine and adding in fruit. More pastry gets consumed in one month than during the whole of the rest of the year.  For some reason, we also decide it important that we simply must meet up with certain friends for Christmas drinks, often people we haven’t seen or heard from since the previous year when we committed to do the same, but one of us bailed out due to being “crazy at work”, “down with the flu” or “double booked” for the night. Continue reading →

Cup of tea anyone?

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I’m at the Galleface hotel in Colombo, Sri Lanka’s capital, and halfway through my latest work trip.  Various meetings and seminars brought me out here, but I was lucky enough yesterday to be taken “up country” to visit some of CARE Sri Lanka’s project work in the country’s tea plantations. 

I have stayed at the Galleface before, and find myself again fascinated by its heritage.  Built in the 1860’s there are many original features, including one of the doormen, called Kuttan, who is one of the longest serving employees – possibly in the world.  The first car Prince Philip bought sits in the hotel’s museum.  The Prince was a young midshipman serving in the Royal Navy in what was known then as Ceylon, in 1940, at the time he bought the car, a 1935 model Standard Nine.  The car cost £12, which is about the price you’ll pay in new money for a meal for 2 in the hotel’s restaurant, 71 years later.  

The signage here is particularly good.  Inside the bathrooms: “Guests are asked not to bathe outside the bathroom”, and at the top of the stairs: “Galleface respects your decision not to smoke in the hotel.  Why not take the healthy option of the stairs, it’s only two floors down.” Continue reading →

Food glorious food

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Dark green forests and plantations, rolling hillsides dotted with the metallic roof tops of local sugar cane farms and homesteads.  Uneven tarmac, and battered shop awnings displaying adverts from bygone eras for hot chocolate, soap powders and cigarette brands.  School children, immaculately dressed, walking hand in hand along the roadside, taxis, bicycles and spluttering trucks whirling inches past them.

I could be back in Uganda 15 years ago, but in fact am in the Philippines city of Davao.  

It is the largest city in the world in terms of sheer geography, but where I am, more towards the outskirts, you do not feel much of the effects of urban sprawl, and the comparables here with the sights and sounds recalled from time spent in Africa are striking.  

The tropical latitude shared by the Philippines and the part of East Africa that I know best, mean that from the moment you step off the plane in Davao (located in the south of the country, an hour and a half flight from its capital, Manila, in the north) you experience the uplifting smell of equatorial life, its warmth, moisture and its connections with nature.  A permanent background noise of birdsong and grasshopper symphony follow you about, day and night. Continue reading →

Incredible India

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There is nowhere quite like India to make you appreciate living life in the present tense.  Cherishing the moment, and worrying not what tomorrow might bring.

This appears to be the case at all levels of Indian society (in general, sweeping terms) and plays out 1.2 billion times a day in the words, actions and exploits of the second most populated country on the planet.  It is also why writing this post whilst I am still in India seems apt.

It is currently Tuesday 13th September, and I am at Chennai airport awaiting my flight to Bangkok.  My mission here for the past 9 days has been to partake in discussions about CARE’s future role in India, and to visit CARE projects in rural communities.

On this very same day, 5 years ago, I walked into CARE’s offices in London and started work that would take me to various countries in Asia, but none so bombarding on the senses, and so dichotomous in every aspect, as India. Continue reading →

CARE Project Visit, Sóc Trăng

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I was fortunate enough to be taken on a CARE project visit this week, 5 hours drive south of Saigon, into the heart of the Mekong Delta Region to the Province of Sóc Trăng.

CARE have been operating in Vietnam since the end of the Second World War (for the fact seekers amongst you, the very first “CARE packages” were sent from the USA to war torn Le Havre in France, on May 11 1946, which I make to be 65 years ago this week…) 

After 14 years out of the country, following its Reunification in 1975, CARE returned to Vietnam and, for the past quarter of a century, has supported interventions designed to improve the lives of thousands of vulnerable and marginalised communities in many of Vietnam’s provinces, Sóc Trăng included. Continue reading →