A careless whisper

Naughty Leos defying Odi by taking a lion-esque photo

A driver picks Erin and me up at the Amit Jaggi Memorial Hospital in Agra late in the afternoon, and we sail past the Taj Mahal in the distance as we leave the city – me, having never made it there in person. “Aggra-vating,” I mumble – totally intending the pun – but the joke falls flat, even on myself.

Erin tries to comfort me: “Lucky we could see it from the window of our hotel that first night!”
“Yeah,” I sigh.
“And awesome that we had a poster of it at the foot of our hospital beds!” she jokes.
“Yeah, awesome,” I try, not finding it funny just yet. It will come, I think, remembering a Brotip about bad experiences slowly turning into funny stories and then happy memories. All in good time.

We knock on the door of the Pearl Palace Hotel room of the others when we arrive in the "Pink City" of Jaipur, and get a great reception from Harriet, Clare and Pete, hugging like long, lost friends – having been parted for just over 24 hours. We head to the rooftop restaurant for some dry toast and antibiotics for dinner, and check out the lights of the city, planning the next day’s outing.

In the morning, we meet India’s most annoying tour guide, Odi, who insists we stick to his regimented plan and will not answer any questions outside of his script, which he delivers in a particularly grating sing-song manner. We visit City Palace and the neighbouring Jantar Mantar, a collection of architectural, astronomical and “jod-ee-ark” (zodiac) instruments and sundials built by the Maharaja (king) in the 1700s. Odi then proceeds to tell us exactly what we must take photos of. “You take photo NOW,” he instructs authoritatively. The antibiotics I’m on are as nauseating as Odi, so the whole sightseeing fiasco doesn’t go down too well. Mercifully, we release Odi from his services in the afternoon and I sleep the rest of the day away at the hotel while the others walk around the Pink City taking photos of whatever they would like to, and not what Odi says they must.

The Blue City and its fort

We leave Jaipur at 6am the following day, and travel the long, straight road filled with more cows and now horses, to Jodhpur, the "Blue City". We arrive at lunchtime to a similar-looking city to Jaipur (only with everything painted blue, not pink), with wonderful views of the city’s fort from the rooftop of our hotel. There’s definitely a set formula for these cities in Rajasthan – paint the buildings all one colour, tick, build a fort, tick.

We head out for a walk up a steep road to the fort, but I don’t quite make it to the top, nearly fainting on the way – this does not bode well for our Everest Base Camp trek in just 10 days’ time. Instead of jostling with the crowds at the fort, Clare and I find a quiet spot on the adjacent hill with monuments resembling Stonehenge, perched above the Middle Eastern-looking city. We fall asleep on some rocks in the sun, listening to a brass band rehearsing for the following day’s celebrations for India Republic Day, the same day as Australia Day. It’s not quite Advance Australia Fair or Walzing Matilda I’ve heard on the 26th of January for the past few years at the Australian Open in Melbourne, but the traditional Indian folk music is played just as passionately and patriotically.

We have another 6am departure from Jodhpur, and after a quick phonecall to Dr Jaggi back in Agra, I stock up on anti-nausea meds he recommends, still trying to shake off the side-effects of the E.coli-fighting drugs, days after leaving hospital. On our journey to Jaisalmer, Vishnu swerves at random to avoid donkeys and camels, and of course the customary cows that roam the highways. As we pull into the “Golden City” of Rajasthan (again – choose a colour, build a fort), people are dressed in their Sunday best outfits and school uniforms for Republic Day, and a shambolic parade is taking place. We drive through the town in the Tourist-mobile, as we’ve dubbed our ever-so-obvious mode of transport, and almost become part of the parade. We certainly are a star attraction; strapping King Peter (with his four princesses in tow) receives a lot of stares.

Contrary to popular belief, Erin and Barn are not conjoined

The manager of our hotel is extremely excitable and, most unfortunately, has a lisp. He tells us about the “Jaithalmer dethert fethtival” that we won’t be around for in February, and he says one of the highlights is a “tharee” (sari) tying” and turban-wrapping competition between the locals “to thee how fatht they can tie them!” he enthuses. We tell him we’re keen to do an overnight camel safari, and he happily points us in the direction of Adventure Travel, recommended by our friend Cassie. There, we meet the German office manager, Martina, possibly the most helpful person we’ve come across on our travels. Being a rare European citizen of Jaisalmer, we ask how she came to live here, and she smiles and says, “My heart.” We’re not sure if she means she loves the place, or someone in particular here, but she tells us she lives six months of the year in Jaisalmer, and the other six months in Britain, and she seems to make it work. Martina gives us the ins and outs of overnight trips into the desert and shows us the thick swags we’ll sleep in on the desert sand. We head off in very high spirits, eager for our safari the next day.

We walk up to the fort and buy birthday presents for Barn, whose birthday was almost forgotten last week in the blur of the Agra hospital visit. Us girls have decided to surprise him with a camel safari birthday party in the desert, and we go all out – Clare and I buy him a bronze camel statue, while Erin and Harriet purchase a fancy Maharaja (king) shirt, a wooden recorder and plastic party whistles. We also pitch in for a cake from the German Bakery, and ask them to write “Happy Birthday Peter” on it, before changing our minds and asking that they make that “Happy Birthday King Peter” – as much to the owner’s amusement as our own.

Jeep ride into the desert

The following day Harriet’s not feeling well at all, and waits until the last minute to decide that she will still come on the camel safari – not letting King Peter’s birthday celebrations be postponed again by illness. We board a jeep for a 50-minute ride into the desert, and meet our camels and their ‘drivers’ (trainers). I’m a little nervous of the large animals, having not “got back on the horse” after being bucked off one at El Rancho camp in Waikanae as a 10-year-old. Noting my apprehension, Lalu the camel driver appoints me “Babbu Bhai”, the smallest and best-behaved of all the camels, he promises. The camel drivers wrap our turbans on our heads, and after the initial terror of climbing on the camel and lurching forwards then backwards as it stands up, we trot off in a row, and it is actually quite fun. In our colourful camel-print pants and rainbow of turbans, we feel very Sex and the City 2 – well, the girls do anyway. Barn doesn’t have a bar of it.

Sweet ride

We ride the camels for just over an hour into the desert, stopping along the way at a local village in the middle of nowhere, with huts made of dried camel dung, mud and water. Children mob us when we climb off the camels to have a look around, and Lalu tells me all about the people of the village. He was brought up in a desert village like this, and he’s never been to school; “I learn my English only from the tourist,” he admits. I tell him his English is very good, and he blushes, shrugging it off. “The children here now are verrrrrry luckeeeee,” he reckons, as they get picked up by buses each day to go to a desert school.

Home for the night

We continue on our camel safari, and after another short ride we arrive at our spot for the night – untouched dunes with sand swept across them in neat waves, like freshly groomed powder of ski-fields. We arrive just in time for photos in front of the sunset, and Clare helps Lalu and his cooks make a large pot of deliciously sweet Indian cardamom tea. As the cooks make dinner by the impossibly dim light of their mobile phones and the flames below the pot, we chat and aimlessly dig our feet into the still-warm and silky sand. A young Indian guy from Delhi, Sagar, is also on our safari trip – the only one not from our travelling group – and he’s much more in the know with the Indian desert, managing to get the camel drivers to source some suspect-looking desert alcohol made from the cactus plant. He becomes chattier after a few swigs of the stuff, and asks us what kind of music we listen to, before pulling out his BlackBerry and generously playing a few tunes aloud for the group.

Clare's culinary skills put to the test in the desert

We stifle grins when he blasts WHAM!’s “Careless Whisper” – somehow I don’t think it’s on the Top 25 Most Played lists on any of our iPods. It couldn’t be a more inappropriate tune for the occasion, but it’s a nice gesture, nonetheless. Barn is the only one of us game enough to try the vodka-like desert drink, but he’s quick to give me a slightly more careful whisper to let me know it tastes like paint-stripper. Under the moonless sky, he’s able to rid his makeshift cup (a Fanta bottle with the top sliced off, care of Sagar) of the drink on the sly. As if on cue, George Michael belts out, “Now that you’re gone, now that you’re gone,” from the BlackBerry, signalling not only the end of the song, but mercifully for Barn, the end of his foray into dodgy desert alcohol.

Flooded streets and flooded eyes

For the next two weeks, it’s just me and Pete (aka ‘Barney’). Our shuttle picks us up at midday on New Year’s Day, just as rain starts to fall on the revellers of Koh Saumi. We make our way to the other side of the island, and board a bus which drives onto a ferry and then takes us over to the main part of Thailand. By the time we get there, torrential rain has set in, and we get drenched running from the ferry back to the bus, to then be taken to Surat Thani, a city of 130,000, near the mouth of the river Tapi on the Gulf of Thailand.

According to Wikipedia, and also now according to me and Barney, “The city offers no major tourist attractions in itself, and is thus known to tourists as a transfer to the nearby popular Koh Samui Island.” The place is dead when we arrive and check into the Thai Rung Ruang Hotel – two mattresses on the floor and what was advertised as a bathroom, for 500 Baht (about $20 NZD).

Nowhere seems to be open for dinner, but we find a coffee house advertising spaghetti. We were rather hoping for Thai cuisine over Italian, and assume that the use of the word ‘spaghetti’ is a mistranslation of ‘noodles’. But when we look at pictures on the menu (a godsend for international travellers), it does actually look like bona fide pasta, so we enquire as to the availability of a green curry. The owner of the café doesn’t speak a word of English and enlists the help of another customer to assist with translation – to no avail. A couple of minutes later, we get an, “Ahhhh!” lightbulb moment from the restaurateur, who then walks over to his computer and types in ‘www.google.com’. Success.

By the time we’ve had our green curry and found an internet café to print the following day’s train tickets, the previously-dead town is, strangely, buzzing on a Sunday night. Street markets are alive, and parents, children, teens and the elderly are everywhere. It later dawns on me that Monday is a public holiday here in Thailand, too.

Part 1: The flooded streets

The next morning, the rains have well and truly set in, and we can’t find a taxi to take us to the railway station. Instead, we commandeer a tuk tuk to get us to the bus station which we’re promised by the lady at reception will have a bus going to the Surat Thani Railway Station. It does, and we hop on board, pay the driver, and wait. And wait. And wait some more. I ask how long it’s going to be. Ten minutes, he says. Ten minutes later, it’s going to be another ten. The train we’re meant to be catching is the first of three connecting trains to get us to Kuala Lumpur in two days’ time, so we’re getting more anxious by the second. We’re screwed if we miss this.

No taxis are in sight, the tuk tuks are reluctant to take us in this weather. Barn eventually finds one (for a price) and the driver takes us through the torrential rain for about 15 minutes, before slowing down and finally coming to a stop on the side of the road. Saying, “Sorry, sorry”, he gestures for us to get off the back of the tuk tuk and onto the street which is now a shin-deep river of muddy water. Pete has his jandals on, but wanting to avoid slipping on the tiles this morning, I’d donned my new Nike trainers.

There’s no way I’m stepping into that water in shoes, so I’m left with no option but to pull them off and wade barefoot down the street. The tuk tuk driver tries to wave down another vehicle for us, but dozens pass us by – including, I think, the bus we’d got off in the first place – and the flood waters drench us even further. This is the first time I’m grateful for the 16kg pack I’m lugging around on my back, as opposed to my usual wheeled trolley case.

Eventually a Thai man driving a late model ute pulls over, gives us a sympathetic smile and gestures for us to jump on the back of his vehicle. We’d been told the whole journey to the station from the hotel would be around 15 minutes, but after the unsuccessful tuk tuk ride, we endure a further 15 minutes on the back of the ute in the most driving rain I have ever witnessed. Soaked to the skin, he drops us off at Surat Thani Railway Station and humbly refuses our offer of a 100 Baht note. We arrive after our train should have departed, but the flood waters have caused delays, and mercifully the train is late.

We spend the next two hours on platform 3 at the Surat Thani train station shivering, and comparing what was going through our heads as we were squatting down holding on to all of our belongings on the back of a ute driving at 100km/h through torrential rain and flood waters. Barney admits he initially thought we were being taken into a remote paddock "to be butchered”. A comforting thought. He’d clearly been quite serious, as he followed this up with: “I was actually planning our escape route. I was thinking we would have to do the ol’ traffic lights bolt.”

Personally, I was more concerned about getting my new camera wet and about what my Dad would have to say about me not wearing: 1) a seatbelt, 2) a helmet, and 3) a life jacket (considering the extreme weather conditions). Still on the platform, we chat to a local who’s drinking beer at 9 in morning. His personality grows at the same rate his beers disappear down his throat, and he gradually works up the confidence to come and talk to us. He tells us that the even drunker man swaying his way over the tracks is trying to get to Bangkok with no money. The friendly beer-drinking local has just given the guy some cash to go and buy something to eat – which explains why he’s dancing over the tracks, headed towards the food stalls on the other side. He asks where we’re from and he seems to have heard of New Zealand. Our new friend wishes us good luck, and the train eventually arrives.

Chilled to the bone, I open the bottom of my pack to pull out some of the merino clothes I’d reserved for Base Camp, and make my way to the toilet on board to get changed. I hover around the squatter, desperately trying to not get my dry clothes wet, as the window is wide open and everything in the tiny bathroom is drenched. And it reeks. Like, really reeks. This is less of a high point of the trip so far, but I make it back to my seat, narrowly avoiding hypothermia. I look out the window and see people navigating their scooters through the flood waters; some are steering with one hand while holding an umbrella in the other – a novel alternative to possessing a vehicle with a roof.

The flooding along the way is heart-breaking. Villages along the sides of the tracks washed out, homes and schools ruined, livelihoods destroyed. Four hours after leaving Surat Thani, we chug in to a scorching hot Hat Yai, in southern Thailand, near the Malaysian border. On the way in, we pass kilometre upon kilometre of rusting corrugated iron slums, and I could swear we're already in Mumbai.

We’re told our next train to Butterworth, in the Penang province of Malaysia, has been cancelled due to the lines being washed out. There hasn’t been a train to KL for two days, and they won’t be going tomorrow either. We dance with the idea of a flight and a travel insurance claim, but happen upon a travel agent down the street who says he can get us to Butterworth in a minivan for 650 Baht. We sign up, and then have a look around Hat Yai, before spending the next four and a bit hours in the back seat of a van with German tourists, me trying to use my seven years of Deutsch lessons to decipher what they're saying. We cross the Malaysian border at Betong and go through the palaver of passport control and having all our luggage x-rayed – the last thing we can be bothered doing after a total nightmare of a day.

We arrive in Penang at 9.20pm and check into the Ryokan Chic Hostels, a newly-build Japanese hostel in George Town, the capital of Penang Island, just in time for a Penang curry – the sole reason we made a stop here in our itinerary. But Mum had texted me earlier asking if I’d checked my emails lately; I hadn’t, and curiosity gets the better of me, so I quickly log onto the free wi-fi before we head out for food. Nothing on gmail, but I open Facebook to find a private message from my cousin Sarah who I grew up with (the one we met up with in Singapore on the way here), who’s more of a best friend than just a relative.

Part 2: The flooded eyes

Sarah's message says, "Bec! I have been trying to get hold of you but it seems I cannot call you. Some Thai woman gave me a spiel about your phone being out of range. This is MOST inconvenient as I have some news to share which would be way more fun to share on the phone." I skip to the next paragraph pronto.  "Mark proposed this afternoon! And I said yes!" 

She and Mark are engaged! My baby cousin is getting married! I’m squealing at the top of my lungs in the small hostel room, and with a tear in my eye, try to call her straight away. Much excitement ensues (from Barney too, as Sarah was at Knox with us, and is a good friend of all of us on the trip). I get hold of her and we discuss details of the proposal and the ring via an erratic phone connection between London and Malaysia.

By all accounts, it’s a “big dog” of a ring (her words), and Sarah was in a mixture of laughter and tears during Mark's proposal on the Thames. Dinner later is punctuated with choruses of, “Oh my god, Sarah’s ENGAGED!”, “Oh my GOD, Sarah’s engaged!” and “Oh my god, SARAH’S engaged!” Poor Barney laughs and humours me by responding with an, “I know”, each time. We finish the evening with some Tom Collins gin cocktails on Upper Jalan Penang, the Courtenay Place of George Town, to toast the newly engaged couple. A most brilliant end to a most horrific start to the day.