Homeward Bound

My last week in Dubai seems to have flown by. When I left England back in November last year, I thought that coming home would be ages away but I can't believe the trip is at and end and I fly home tomorrow morning. When I look back at my trip, I really have done a lot but I am looking forward to coming home and seeing everyone (especially Vernon) and as I am spent up, it is about time I earnt some money!

True to form, my mum and I spent rather a lot of time this week in the shops buying jewellery (she didn't, I did). Anyone who knows me well will know that I am an avid jewellery wearer and for some reason, when I come to Dubai, I can't resist all the designs, especially the diamonds and the Italian jewellery. There is a shopping centre called the Gold & Diamond Park near where my parents live and my mum has been there so many times to buy for herself and with her friends, that she gets very good discounts (about 70% off the price). I am surprised they don't give her commission for the anount of business she brings their way. When you factor in the discounts and the fact that everything is a lot cheaper than the UK, I just can't resist! My dad thinks I need to go to shopaholics anonymous and when it comes to jewellery - I think he must be right!!

We also went to have a pamper session in the week - a manicure, pedicure and a facial. The woman doing the manicure and the pedicure was very good but the woman doing the facial must have thought she was ploughing the fields, as she was very rough. At one point I thought she was going to lascerate my face with the blackhead remover. Then she had the nerve to say it hurt because I had never had it done before. She was from the Phillipines, so I think that maybe their idea of pampering is different to mine.

I have done my fair bit of eating out too - Dubai is cheaper than the UK for eating out, but not as cheap as South East Asia. The quality of the food is very good, especially in the hotel restaurants. On Thursday my mum invited some of her friends around for dinner and I cooked Thai food which I learnt on the cookery course in Chiang Mai back in January - tom yum soup, yellow curry and chicken and cashew nuts. I had to apologise in advance for the soup, as it nearly blew everyone's brains out for being so hot (I only put three chillis in, so I don't understand why it was so hot). I like it with a bit of a kick though.

When I came back to Dubai (having last been here at Christmas 2006), there were a lot of new buildings and roads and some of the shopping malls had also been extended. Some of the malls are quite quiet and it is a blissful experience going around them compared to the nightmare of Oxford Street. Dubai must be the biggest construction site in the world - it is staggering how much building is going on. Today we went to have a look at Dubai Sports City, where they are building a Manchester United Sports Stadium, an Autodrome and various sports academies. We went to have a look at some of the villas which were being built on the site and they are absolutely huge (and you get a separate room for the maid). Each bedroom has its own ensuite. That site alone is 50 million square metres. Most of the buyers of properties are foreign investors who snap up whole floors from the developers and then sell them off individually on the secondary market at a profit. Great if you have a load of spare cash.

I do love Dubai - apart from four months in the summer when it is unbearably hot, it is sunny. It is very liberal in certain respects (you don't need to cover up as in other Muslim countries) but it is also quite behind the times. For example, I read in the paper the other day that a couple (Indonesian I think) who were living together had a bust up because the guy farted (the paper said he "broke wind") in bed. The woman was so incensed that they had an argument and it resulted in a punch up. The police were called but they were charged with having an immoral relationship, as they were living together but not married (which is against the law). They had to pay a hefty fine. Not a very bright couple, if you ask me. All this from a country which is building the tallest building in the world, the Burj Dubai, which at today's count, has 156 floors (no one other than the builders know how tall it will eventually be). I also heard yesterday that the government was thinking of building a giant city suspended in the air in a helium balloon. Someone has more money than sense somewhere (environmental issues are not a big concern here).

By the time some of you read this I shall be on a plane home - my last experience of living it up in business class. I hear the weather has been cold, so good job I have some thermals to hand!

Key to photos (from left to right):

1. Burj al Arab and Jumeirah Beach hotels - view from Palm Island

2. View from my parents' flat

3. Largest mosque for foreigners's use

4. Another view from my parent's flat

5. View of the pool from my parents' flat

Magnificent Maldives

I really did not know what to expect from the Maldives, as I had never been there before, other than there are a lot of posh resorts on a number of islands. The Republic of Maldives is a chain of around 1200 islands stretching 750km across the Indian Ocean. Apparently the exact number of islands varies according to the season and method of classification - the islands come ad go depending on the wind, waves and currents.

The islands are geographically grouped into ring shaped reefs called "atolls" and there are 26 atolls. An atoll encloses a central lagon with a flat, sandy botom at a relatively shallow depth of 40-100m. The outer reef, which forms many of the islands, is often broken by deep channels which allow oceanic water to flow into and outof the central lagoon. Inside the atoll there are numerous smaller ring shaped reefs and tillas.

Of the 1200 islands, only 200 are inhabited by local Maldivians and over 90 islands have been developed as tourist resorts or inhabited by locals and the Government has ruled that there can be no combination of the two. The Government has granted new licences to islands and many of these are under construction. It is expected that an additional 30 new resort islands will be built in the next two or three years.

Not much is known about the early history ofthe island people but the language and some archaeological finds of Buddhist relics indicate that the early settlers were fom the southern Indian continent and the Buddhist Singalese from Sri Lanka. The current 240,000 population is entirely Muslim, after Islam was adopted in 1153 after the visit of a Muslim saint. Between 1513 and 1649, the Portuguese made many failed attemps to take Male, the capital. The first survey of the islands was undertaken in 1835 by the British Admiralty under the command of Robert Moresby and the country was gien the status of a protected state in 1887. Entry ino the United Nations was given in 1965 and in 1976, the British completely withdrew all forces from the South of the country.

My home for the week was the Sea Spirit liveaboard operated by Madives Scuba Tours, an English company. My friend Julie, who lives in Amsterdam and whom I learned to dive with met me out there and was my buddy. On a typical day we had the first dive at 7am, then breakfast, the second dive at round noon, then lunch and the final dive in the afternoon. Neither of us knew what to expect from the diving and after the first two dives when we didn't see that much, we both started to think that the Maldives was not living up to its expectations. Things got better over the next few dives. We saw loads of sharks (hammerheads, grey and white tipped reef sharks), turtles, moray eels, eagle and other rays and the usual tropical fish. There is some rather spectacular table coral. A lot of the coral was decimated as a result of El Nino in 1999 but the recovery of the coral has been very quick and has been completely regenerated.

February is the time of year when a lot of manta rays can be spotted but over the last few weeks the current has not been flowing as expected (it usually travels from East to West but it is now travelling from North to South through the atolls), such that mantas are being spotted where they are not normally found at this time of year and they are absent from the usual sights. Julie and I had almost resigned ourselves by Wednesday that we would not see any of these magnificent creatures but by the second dive that day a huge female came gliding along like a Boeing 747. We were diving near the manta cleaning station but after checking us out, it decided to carry on into the ocean. We were very excited indeed and were lucky to spot another manta on our last dive on Saturday morning.

We had a very special night dive earlier in the week when we saw about 12 white tipped reef sharks and a giant barracuda (Erasmus) about 1.5 metres long. A few times I tried to peer at something lying on the reef floor and when I moved to look a few inches away, the bloody great barracuda was right in my face. I was diving with one of the guys who had a really bright torch, so the barracuda and sharks kept following us, to use the light for hunting fish. A couple of times I held onto my buddy for dear life and he kept peering at me as if I had gone mad!

The Maldives are also known for their strong currents and some of the reefs were certainly challenging. On Thursday, Anne-Marie, our dive instructor gave us a briefing on a dive which was known as "The Swirling Vortex of Terror", due to a whirlpool about 100 metres after the drop off site. We were told to stay below 20 metres to avoid it, otherwise we would suffer the washing machine effect andfind ourselves going from 20 metres to being spat out at the surface (at which point you should immediately descend and carry on with your decompression stops).

We descended to 28m metres and hooked in on the reef to watch the action but the current was raging quite a bit, such that I got neck ache every time I turned my neck 90 degrees to see what was floating out in the blue (sharks and rays). After about 5 minutes, Julie and I unhooked ourselves to carry on the dive, hoping that the current would ease off. We drifted around the corner and suddenly found ourselves in a downcurrent away from th reef. I looked at my dive computer and the depth gauge was showing 25m, 26m, 27m, 28m and 29m. We were both finning as if our lives depended on it but we were still sinking. Luckily one of the guys on the boat had told Julie the night before that he knew someone you was caught up in a down current when the tsunami happened and he inflated his BCD. A little voice told her that air in BCD would be a good idea and she then signalled me to do the same. I think I must have put a large gust of air in my BCD and shot up, at which point my dive computer told me to SLOW a number of times. We seemed to yo you a bit and when we levelled out at 19m, we aborted the dive. We came to the surface quite shaken, wondering where we had gone wrong.

When the rest of our group came up, we found out we had all had the same problem - luckily, though, we had missed the whirlpool but others had got caught up in it. Our dive instructors apologised profusely and said that they had never currentl like that in that dive before and that if they had known what it would be like, we would not have dived it. It is a very popular site and several other boats had dived it. Thankfully all our group (most of whom were experienced divers) emerged shaken but unscathed. We put it down to a good learning experience, glad that it hadn't been worse.

On Saturday afternoon, after the last dive of the day, I went to have a look at Male. There is a fish market and a fruit market and I found the local ice cream parlour. Other than that, Male is pretty uninspiring and the souvenir shops sell souvenirs which come from Thailand, but at five times the price.

On Sunday morning I flew to Dubai, where I am currently with my parents (and have finally managed to update my blog, although more photos to follow). I was a bit sad to leave, as it finally dawned on me that I will be home in less than a week. I have had a really fab trip but it has gone by quite quickly. I will be glad to see Vernon and everyone else but also to get back to work as I have spent up! As you will notice from my blog, I have shopped till I dropped and I imagine this will continue in Dubai. Most people know that I love my jewellery and I hadn't even been in Dubai for 24 hours before I made my first purchase. Some diamonds!! Still, a girl has to spoil herself once in a while.............

Pictures above as follows (from left to right):

1. One of the many islands in the Maldives

2. Our liveaboard, the Sea Queen

3. Sunset from an uninhabited island

4. Vew towards Male, the capital

5. Hawkesbill turtle

6. Table coral

7. Two giant moray eels

8. Manta ray

9. Bearded scorpion fish

10. Clown triggerfish (with spots) and red toothed triggerfish (blue one)

11. Two clownfish (Nemo)

12. Reef octopus

More temples but back to Bangkok

The temples visit continued in the morning on Thursday 21st February, when we headed to the oldest temple, Banteay Srei, which is about 25km from Siem Riep (see first and third photo). It was built by Jayavarman V and finished in AD968. The complex comprises several buildings and has some fine carvings in pink sandstone. We also visited a much smaller temple, Banteay Samre, as it was not far from where our guide lives and which was very pleasant, as it was pretty much tourist free.

At the temples children bombard you at every corner trying to sell you all sorts of things - fruit, books, cheap jewellery. You also see a lot of men with a leg or an arm missing - victims of Cambodia's landmines. About 6 million land mines were laid in Cambodia over a period of 40 years, so a trip to the Landmine Museum was obligatory. The Museum was set up by Aki Ra, a former child Khmer Rouge conscript, you lay thousands of mines when he was in the Khmer Rouge. When the Khmer Rouge were toppled, he fought for the Cambodian Army and he then helped the United Nations to clear the land mines. Over the last 15 years, Aki has cleared about 50,000 land mines and has collected various bombs, guns and shrapnel, which are now housed in the museum. Aki Ra is doing fantastic work but there are 27,000 victims of land mines in the Siem Riep province alone and this figure rises daily. He estimates that it will take up to 50 or 100 years to find and clear every land mine.

In the evening four of us took a tuk tuk out to Lake Tonle Sap, which is the largest lake in South East Asia. Each year during the rainy season, the swelling Mekong River backflows into the lake via the Tonle Sap River. During the dry season, the lake's surface area is 2,500 square kilometres but expands to 10,000 kilometres. Our guide told us that it would cost US$ to get to the lake, but what he forgot to tell us was that the boat ride would be an extra US$15-25 (I quote that range as the group of four who went earlier than we did were told it would cost US$25, whereas we were told US$15). We bought tickets through gritted teeth but were really glad to do so. The trip includes a visit to the floating village of Chong Kneas, which gives an insight into life on the lake and homes in the Cambodian countryside. We went to the crocodile farm on the lake where children as young as seven or eight had snakes wrapped around their necks. I am not sure if they were alive or not but quite a bit of time was spent avoiding them, as the kids had a tendency to run after you with snake in tow! The sun setting on the lake was spectacular, with red and orange hues illuminating the fishing boats (see photos).

In the evening I had an incident with the washing, which I had dropped off a day earlier at the local laundry around the hotel. The laundry was recommended by our guide and I discovered that a very nice skirt which I had bought in New Zealand had either been misplaced or stolen. I did not get very far with the owners, as they spoke no English and the guy working at the hotel didn't speak very good English either. Unfortunately our guide was pretty useless (as he has been for a lot of things on this trip), so I ended up having to deal with the problem myself. The next day, though, our guide told us that he had a few things go missing at local laundries and the first thing to go missing were ladies' bras. I was absolutely livid and nearly thumped him one, as what was the point telling me after the event that things go missing?!! He could have at least warned us not to put things we really like into the laundry on the basis that they go walkabout. I don't think Blair really has a clue about being a good tour guide.

On Friday 22nd February (my brothers' birthday - Happy Birthday!), we had early start to take the bus back to Bangkok. The state of the road to the Thai border is a bit third world and the bus spent ages avoiding large pot holes in the road - in the meantime, the bags and cases were being thrown around all over the place. The road won't be tarmacked until 2009.

It was quite nice being back in Thailand and it felt very modern in comparison to Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia. The group went out for our final dinner, and we then headed with our drinking heads on to the bars on the Kao San road (where the backpackers stay). Just our luck that the Thai elections were taking place that day and on the Sunday, as most of the bars stopped serving beer at 6pm! After a long trawl, we did find a bar which was serving alcohol - buckets of vodka, whisky, gin and mixers. They must have had an effect, though, as I challenged a very good Irish guy to a game of pool and proceeded to pot 5 balls in a row. He did beat me by a couple of balls and breathed a huge sigh of relief, happy not to have been embarrassingly been beaten by a girl. Men! We also sampled a Thai disco, or a local meat market, where all the Thai girls were throwing themselves at Western men. It was quite amusing. It is a sight you see quite a lot in Bangkok - Thai women with Western men old enough to be their fathers.

The trip ended on Saturday morning and it was quite sad. Having spent 29 days with the group, we all gelled very well and had a great time (crap guide notwithstanding). I bought so many things on this trip and had to ship 11 kilos of purchases home. The post office was a dodgy counter in a shopping centre in Chinatown near our hotel, so fingers crossed it arrives home. I also managed to squeeze in a final two hour Thai foot and body massage before heading to the next leg, diving in the Maldives.

Siem Riep

Phnom Penh is overrun by thousands of children (up to 20,000) living and/or working on the street or begging. We were encouraged not to give money to the children, as it means they are likely never to life their life off the streets. Many have to work to support their families and miss out on getting an education. On Monday evening we visited an organisation called Friends (Mith Samlank). Mith Samlanh is a Phnom Penh non-government organisation working with street children every day. Its objectives are to meet street children's essential needs in accordance with the Convention on the Rights of the Child, to support street children to move away from life on the streets so they can go back to their families, to public school, into vocational training and into rewarding employment. We had dinner at the Friends restaurant, which trains street children to be chefs and all profits of the restaurant and of the shop (which sells handicrafts produced by the children) go towards helping and training the street kids in the capital.

On Tuesday 19th February, we took a 45 minute morning flight to Siem Riep, which feels a lot more crowded than Phnom Penh, as it is the gateway to the great temples of Angkor. The name "Siem Riep" actually means "Thais defeated" to reflect the various times when ownership over Angkor fell to the expansionist Thai kingdoms and was subsequently retaken by the Khmers. Located at the north west edge of Tonle Sap Lake (also known as the Great Lake), civilisation at Angkor relied on the resource rich lake to assist with the construction of the temples. Most of the town's development occurred in the last 10 years, as the various wars and political instability instability have kept travellers away until recently. In 2007 there were 2 million visitors to Siem Riep. There are a lot of western restaurants there but you can also eat some very good local cuisine (the curries are delicious). There is a fantastic night market which sells very good quality handicrafts (most of the day and night markets we went to on this tour have been very good and there is an abundance of things to buy for the handicraft lover). A lot of the handicrafts which you can buy in Laos (weavings) and Vietnam (lacqueware) can also be bought in the market as well as buddha statues galore. I had my first taste of a Cambodian massage in the evening - it is not as brutal and rough as a Thai massage and involves a lot of chopping and slapping with the hands.

Cambodia's unofficial currency is the US dollar, which makes it more expensive than Thailand, Laos and Vietnam but for smaller amounts, you can use the local currency, the real (4000 to one US$).

In a 40km radius around Siem Riep there are 216 temples and over 2000 temples in Cambodia. They were built between the 8th and 13th centuries and range from single towers made of bricks to vast stone temple complexes. There are two main sites where the Khmer temples are located - the first is at Roluos, which is about 10 miles southeast of Siem Riep, and was the first Khmer capital in the Angkor area where only a few of the earlier temples were built. In the late 9th century, Yasovarman I moved the capital to the immediate vicinity of Siem Riep and this is a much larger site where the majority of the Khmer temples are located. It is officially known as the City of Angkor. There are only so many temples you can see before temple fatigue sets in (or ruination by ruins!). Most of the temples were Hindu temples, built for the Hindu gods - Rama, Shiva abnd Vishnu.

Angkor Wat is the biggest and regarded as the supreme masterpiece of Khmer architecture. It is an impressive pyramid temple built by Suryavarman II between 1113 and 1150. It is surrounded by a moat 570 feet wide and about 4 miles long. On Wednesday morning we set off at 5am (a ridiculous hour!) to watch the sun rise over Angkor Wat, which was pretty impressive (see photos), but probably only spoilt by the vast amount of tourists thronging about the place. There are lots of carvings on the walls depicting the Hindu gods and heaven and hell. The temples are now largely Buhhist temples (they became so when a new Buddhist king ruled Cambodia).

After breakfast we took a 10 minute balloon ride (a fixed ride) which had great views of the surrounding area and a view over Angkor Wat (although it was a bit hazy for our liking - see photo). We then visited nearby Angkor Thom temple complex to see the Terrace of the Leper King and the Terrace of the Elephants (see photo), which also had intricate carvings. There is a large temple, the Bayon (see photo), which was built by Jayavarman VII between 1181 and 1220 and features 3,936 feet of superb bas-relief carving and mysterious Buddha faces carved on the towers.

After another Cambodian massage in the afternoon (I am addicted), we headed to Ta Prohm, a very large complex enclosed by a moat. It has not been restored but has been left surrounded by jungle. It was built by Jayavarman VII in the late 12th century and parts of the first Tomb Raider film (starring Angelina Jolie) were filmed there. The most impressive parts of the temples are the huge trees whose roots have penetrated the walls of the complex (see photos).