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1.
It hadn't been a good night. Although the field behind the "Black Swan" in Homersfield had lovely soft grass, the lack of a camping mattress for insulation, and the relatively cold July night had resulted in a restless and uncomfortable nights sleep. Still, things looked up when I was stood outside my tiny tent stretching, and another camper came over for a chat. Although he was initially interested in my tiny bivouac tent (which incidentally i'd discovered was so small and cocoon shaped that it was impossible to put on a pair of trousers inside), we quickly got chatting about more interesting subjects.
My fellow camper was a family man from nearby Ipswich, away for a weeks summer camping trip with his two young sons (who loitered in that bored, disinterested way that kids do when their dad is talking to another grown up). After exchanging pleasantries, and our mutual appreciation for the countryside hereabouts, we got to talking about access to the countryside. My fellow camper related how, the previous afternoon, he and his sons had taken their canoe onto the nearby River Waveney for a paddle. After an hour or so of enjoyable paddling upstream, they were hailed by a man on the river bank who told them to get off his river. Unaware they had paddled onto private property, they dutifully obeyed and headed back downstream, but on reflection the encounter clearly rankled my new friend.
I expressed my disapproval of such a wonderful natural resource being set aside for the enjoyment of the few over the many (what would Thoreau think about the idea that something as alive and changeable as a river could be considered private property I wondered). As it turns out, the conversation was timely. I only discovered later that earlier in July, Griff Rhys Jones had set out to spark a national debate on the subject of river ownership in England & Wales. Whilst shooting his TV series "Rivers", he had discovered just how many of the rivers in England & Wales are privately owned, particularly by angling clubs. You can read his arguments for shared use of the rivers here http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/travel/outdoors/article6681018.ece .
I consider the network of public footpaths and bridleways across the UK to be an incredibly valuable national resource, many of which are shared between walkers, cyclists and horse-riders. And yet rivers, amongst the most ancient of byways, are bought and sold, set aside for the sole pleasure of anglers in many cases. I'm sure if there are any anglers out there reading this I will be flamed in the comments (just as Griff Rhys Jones received much criticism in the national press), but surely there is a way for anglers, canoeists, swimmers and others to share our rivers ?
2.
If you're wondering why i'm rambling on about these matters at such length, it's because the walking on the second day of my adventure was not at all interesting. The small fields, hedgerows, woodland and wildlife of 'Constable Country' i'd enjoyed on day one had been replaced by industrial scale fields - massive expanses of bare dirt or wheat reaching almost to the horizon. There were occasional pockets of woodland, but either too far off or too over-powered by the factory farming vista to be enjoyed. The only bird I encountered all morning it seemed, was a dead crow strung up in a tree by a farmer as a deterrent to others.
Despite my small pack and the flat terrain, my legs were aching and I had at least one nasty blister on the way. Having eaten my emergency snickers bar for breakfast I opted to leave the Angles Way and head into the small market town of Bungay for a break. It was Sunday, and as I limped into the market square I realised with dismay that almost everything was closed. By chance I wandered down a side street and discovered a classic English greasy spoon cafe tucked away behind the square - it was open and doing a roaring trade. This place was old school, everything was fried (probably in lard). The all day breakfast came with black pudding and a fried slice, so I ordered one. Standing at the counter, I was amazed to see a coffee machine. This was the kind of cafe where coffee usually comes out of a catering sized tin of Nescafe instant, so I was impressed to discover that the double espresso was really pretty good.
The afternoon's walking proceeded much as before. Although the path occasionally rejoined the river, I was really too tired to enjoy it. The low point of the afternoon came when I rushed a navigation decision at a footpath junction and headed off into a farmers field instead of the half concealed footpath entrance to the right. Realising my mistake after a kilometre or so, and lacking a compass, I headed on a rightward course through open fields, jumping over fences and crawling through hedgerows in an attempt to regain the path until I eventually came out at a junction. It took me ten seconds or so to realise that i'd been here before !
3.
I hobbled into Beccles late in the afternoon. Beccles, another Suffolk market town, was historically a river port, and the town now seemed to be somewhat dominated by the leisure boats moored up on the River Waveney below. The next stretch of the Angles Way involved 7 miles of riverbank walking through the featureless Beccles Marshes. With Beccles itself offering nothing in the way of camping amenities, and no prospect of any towns or villages before dark, I decided to stop for dinner at a pub on the town square, before heading off into the marshes to find a bivouac.
At dusk, I left the Beccles boat club and the numerous pleasure craft moored at the Beccles quayside behind as I wandered down the river bank looking for a bivy. The River Waveney was larger now, and the path ran alongside on a raised bank before the ground dropped away again into the extensive marshes. At first I was worried that the marshes might be too water-logged for an overnight camp, but after a short walk I came up on a deciduous wood just off the path. It was private land, but after leaping an irrigation ditch and scrambling through some brambles I was inside and the woodland floor was relatively clear. It wasn't long before my bivy tent was up and I was inside in my sleeping bag.
As I lay there I reflected on the days events, the conversation with the man from Ipswich and my own current transgression sleeping in some landowner's private wood. Despite the British governments repeated efforts to categorise trespass as a criminal offence, it remains a civil offence or, as I would say, a fundamentally civilised offence. My fleeting visit to the wood would leave no trace nor cause any damage, and surely it is better for something as special as a green wood to be appreciated by someone than to be fenced off and abandoned by all ? Further to this, don't we all have a responsibility to rail against the forces which would carve up and fence off the countryside ? After all, our wonderful network of public rights of way, and our right to roam (in the form of the Countryside and Rights of Way Act 2000 in England & Wales, and the Land Reform Act 2003 in Scotland) are not historical legacies from a more civilised past, but rather hard won victories through the efforts of the Ramblers Association, those involved in the Mass Trespass on Kinder Scout in 1932, and many others. In this context, Griff Rhys Jones call for shared use of our rivers, harks back to a grand British tradition of civil disobedience, and we can only hope that in time the English Countryside and Rights of Way Act will be modified to increase access to England's waterways (just as Scotland's Land Reform Act already has done over the border).
Flicking through Thoreau by torch-light, I discovered this gem which sums up my thoughts much better than I ever could hope to. Thoreau lived on a frontier but even he could guess that "...possibly the day will come when it will be partitioned off into so-called pleasure-grounds, in which a few will take a narrow and exclusive pleasure only - when fences shall be multiplied...and walking over the surface of God's earth shall be construed to mean trespassing on some gentleman's grounds. To enjoy a thing exclusively is commonly to exclude yourself from the true enjoyment of it."
I eventually drifted off to sleep with the sound of summer rain filtering through the leaves and falling onto my tent.
We've been keeping an eye on Typhoon Ketsana since the devastation it caused in the Philippines, and it's landfall in Vietnam yesterday. Although local news coverage is still patchy, and we're getting most of our information through the expat grapevine, the BBC is now reporting that 9 people have been killed in Cambodia's Kampong Thom province as the system tracks across the North of the country (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8281950.stm)
. The storm appears to be dissipating as it moves inland and has now been downgraded to a tropical storm. More alarming for those in the Philippines and Vietnam affected by flooding, landslides, building collapses and high winds is the development of a number of new weather systems out in the West Pacific Ocean. The first of these, Typhoon Parma, is currently tracking towards the Philippines although there is apparently a good chance it will shift course Northwards. I've found a useful site called Hurricane Zone for keeping an eye on storms as they develop which aggregates information and images from a number of official sources: http://www.hurricanezone.net/
Sapaco Tourist Busline is apparently the company of choice when travelling from Phnom Penh to Ho Chi Minh. $13 USD, 6 hours, 1 Mekong ferry crossing, and 1 Cambodia-Vietnam border crossing later should see you safely delivered to Ho Chi Minh city. Sapaco buses have all the mod-cons including aircon, TV and a toilet (bizarrely used to smuggle vast quantities of hats across the border on our return trip). On both bus rides we were treated to a viewing of "The Gods must be crazy" I & II - apparently it comes with the bus, or maybe the owner is a fan. The first installment at least is pretty funny and is worth a look if you've never seen it, the principal protagonist is an accident prone biologist living in the Kalahari Desert studying Elephant poo. Whenever something goes awry, he looks on despondently and comments "Ay ay ay...". The bigger the problem, the more "ay's" eg: landrover stuck in the river...ay ay ay. Rhino chasing him up a tree...ay ay ay ay ay. You get the idea. I've taken to doing this myself, much to Emma's annoyance. Anyway, back to the point, we got a lot more than we bargained for on both legs of our trip to Ho Chi Minh. If this rambling introduction hasn't already put you to sleep read on and i'll explain why.
I find it's best not to pay too much attention to the road or quality of driving when taking a bus in Cambodia. The drivers use the full size of the bus and the horn to intimidate and harass other road users, including driving on the wrong side of the road to force oncoming traffic into the gutter. But something happened just as we were rolling into Ho Chi Minh which really disturbed me, even by Cambodian traffic standards.
A slow moving motorbike trailer with driver and passenger was taking up the middle lane, preventing our bus from overtaking. The driver leant on the horn for a minute or so until the decrepit machine finally moved over. Instead of getting on our way, the bus driver pulled up alongside and asked the other staff member to open the door. He shouted some abuse at the driver of the motorbike trailer and then to my disbelief threw a full water bottle at him. It obviously connected with either driver or motorbike, and as we all rose to our feet we had a momentary glimpse of the bike and trailer careering across two lanes of traffic before crashing loudly into something on the road side. The door was closed and everyone went back to their seats as we barreled on towards the city. There was clearly no expectation that we should stop to see if they were alright or report the incident.
Ay ay ay...
So it was with some trepidation that we boarded for the return trip a few days later. All was going swimmingly until the Mekong ferry crossing where we ran up on the back of a very long queue of traffic, two lanes wide. After twenty minutes or so stationary, it was clear that something was going on with numerous discussions between some of the Khmer passengers at the front, the bus driver and someone outside the bus. Eventually, a young Khmer passenger came up to us and explained that the queue was very long (possibly 5 hours wait), and that if we all paid $2.50 ($100 for the entire bus) we could bribe our way to the front and get straight onto the ferry. We went with it, handed over our $5, and watched with interest as they plied their trade down the bus. I was sceptical about their chances to persuade everyone and there were a few holdouts, but eventually they'd amassed the required $100.
We didn't really see what happened next, but obviously the deal was struck. I was a bit unsure how this was going to work. The queue was very long and there were many military police dotted down the line keeping order. I thought we would need to get a policeman on board to see us through or risk getting to the front only to be turned away or asked to stump up more cash. Of course these guys are well practised at corruption and we had actually negotiated with a 'fixer' on a moto, clearly known to the police, who rode ahead of us as we overtook what must have been a 1km convoy of stationary traffic. I guess this method has the added advantage of the police keeping their hands relatively clean (not accepting cash directly and not using official radio frequencies to make arrangements). The police waved the 'fixer' through at every checkpoint with us following close behind, and we arrived at the front. The ferry crossing had descended into dysfunctional chaos and the boarding area had a real circus feel. People milled everywhere, sitting on the roadside and on top of vans watching us with a mix of resentment and envy as we drove straight to the boarding ramp. The ferry was only managing to take 5 or so vehicles at each run due to the sheer number of foot passengers and motorbikes. After a brief pause, we were pulling on and, unbelievably, crossing the river.
On reaching the other side the Khmer's on the bus clapped, presumably to celebrate their collective ability to overcome an obstacle, or maybe the power of their dollars. I was very glad not to have waited 5 hours and $2.50 seemed like a small price to pay, but I couldn't bring myself to clap somehow. We had just received an object lesson in endemic Cambodian corruption. Clearly the crossing is woefully inadequate to handle large volumes of traffic - the required bridge joins the long list of essential infrastructure projects needing investment in Cambodia. However, we had just been complicit in reinforcing the dominant view here that power and money is the way to get things done - the thousands of people in the queue had all seen us drive past and I wondered how many would now do the same with a few more dollars in their pocket, or worse still take a bribe in a position of power.
Ay ay ay ay ay...
During our visit to Ho Chi Minh, Em had organised a tour of 
some of Ho Chi Minh's micro-breweries for a birthday surprise. First up was Hoa Vien Brauhaus (28 Mac Dinh Chi, District 1, http://www.hoavien.vn/aboutus/home.php?page_lang=english). Bizarrely, this place seems to be an official consulate of the Czech Republic in Vietnam (those Czech's love their beer), and the interior is modelled on a traditional Czech beer hall. The owner clearly knows a fair bit about beer and brewing, the walls are decorated with beer paraphernalia and information from around the world...I was surprised to see a description of Adnams Suffolk Strong Ale 
(i'd visited the Adnams brewery in Southwold, 
Suffolk just a few weeks before). There were only two locally brewed beers on offer when we visited - dark and 'yellow' as our waiter in a Hawaiian shirt described them to us. The yellow was a very drinkable pale ale with a malty flavour and medium bitterness but little discernible hop flavour. The dark was a stout and slightly stronger in alcohol but not as much as the tropical stouts common hereabouts. Both beers were served in either 300ml, 500ml or 1 litre glass mugs, and take-outs were offered in both bottles and kegs. Hoa Vien Brauhaus had a great atmosphere and was clearly very popular with the locals - a table of Vietnamese guys near us looked and sounded like they'd been on the litre mugs all afternoon and there was much singing and toasting.
We were disappointed to find that the second venue on our list (Hops Brauhaus) appeared to have closed down, and we weren't sure how to find the remaining 'Lion' Brewery. Luckily, on the way home Em spotted it across the square from the opera house (11 Lam Son Square, District 1). Lion is an enormous German style brew hall, bizarrely sporting Vietnamese waitresses wearing traditional German beer maid costumes. Apparently the production equipment and all ingredients are imported from Germany, and the master brewer is also German. The beers on offer were very similar to Hoa Vien - a dark and a 'yellow'. Lion describe their yellow beer as a pilsner but to be honest it really tastes like an ale to me, lacking the crisp taste, clarity and hop flavour / aroma i'd expect from a pilsner. However, Lion also had on a 'special brew' which we sampled and although it also tasted like a pale ale, it did have a much more noticeable hop flavour and bitterness. This was probably the best beer we tasted during the afternoon but i'm not sure if it's a permanent addition to the menu. Lion were putting a lot of effort into advertising the upcoming Munich beer festival with posters and special offers.
I'm not sure if there are any other small breweries in Ho Chi Minh, but these two were both great and the beers are far more interesting than the standard lagers common hereabouts. For me, Hoa Vien wins out on atmosphere but I can recommend a visit to both.
I did quite a bit of walking in England this summer, and the brewer in me was keen to find some barley. Like many things in our convenience culture, I had no idea what my Maris Otter 2-row looked like before it was harvested, malted and sold to me in a sack at the home brew store. To my surprise, my folks knew exactly what barley looked like and that it was the 'whiskers' that differentiated it from wheat in appearance. So, below are a couple of snaps of wheat (left) and barley (right). Unfortunately, I don't know whether the barley pictured is 2-row (used for fine English & European beer) or 6-row (used for American beer and...ahem...animal feed). I also came across a traditional English folk song called "John Barleycorn" while looking for some references. The song anthropomorphises the barley harvest in the shape of a man called John Barleycorn, and the unpleasant things that are done to him in order to make beer. This acoustic version on YouTube by Traffic is worth a listen - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wml3V-maDeA
This weekend was the Khmer Pchum Ben holiday, and Em & I decided to visit Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam. It was our first visit to Vietnam, and living in Phnom Penh, the level of development and environment in Ho Chi Minh were striking - there were trees and parks everywhere, the roads were good, there were pavements to walk on, no-one drove on the wrong side of the street and very few ran red lights. Crossing the road was a joy...it's surprising how simple things can bring such pleasure.
Although we only explored the centre, I really found Ho Chi Minh to be a wonderful city. The people we met were friendly, it was easy to get around, and I loved the architecture, bars and restaurants. We had been given some great recommendations for places to eat and drink - the stand out for me was "The Refinery" (74/7 Hai Ba Trung St), a French bistro which served the best steak i've eaten in South-East Asia. I thoroughly enjoyed my birthday, which included a visit to the fascinating "Reunification Palace" and a micro-brewery tour organised by Em (more on both of these later).
Anyway, below is a random collection of photo's, and a video showing a traditional Vietnamese musical performance on the steps of the opera house, watched by large numbers of moto riders who were cruising past and stopped to check it out.
Day one of my walking adventure began at 6am in a small flat in Notting Hill. Our friend Josie had been kind enough to put us up the night before Em headed back to Phnom Penh. My whirlwind descent from frenetic London to sleepy Suffolk began with a train-ride and an emotional farewell at Heathrow. Then I was flying up the M11 in my hire car bound for Suffolk. The early start and bad traffic wasn't really getting me in the mood for a leisurely saunter, and I found myself stressing out about small things, getting lost trying to map read whilst driving, and finally sitting in a stationary traffic jam of holiday makers somewhere on the A14. It was hot and sunny, and I could just imagine the bored kids in the family saloon in front giving their parents a hard time. I finally made it to Bury St.Edmunds, and after a short spell lost again on the country lanes of Suffolk, rolled into the small market town of Diss. It was much later than i'd hoped, 1pm in fact, which added to my stress levels as i'd hoped to get a full day's walking in. I quickly located a quiet street to park the car on, and packed the few items of equipment I had into the day pack. It felt quite strange, but also exciting, to walk away from the car down the road without any clear idea of where I was going or where I was staying.
A quick pit stop in town to buy a snickers bar, 
fill up with water, and check where the Angles Way started at the tourist info office and I was away. Diss very quickly faded behind me and I was straight into Constable country, I almost expected to walk around a bend in the river to find the artist and his easel on the river bank. The countryside here was flat and pastoral with pockets of woodland and occasional church spires from distant villages, cows roamed grazing and the tiny River Waveney lazily snaked through the open shallow valley. The path mainly followed the river, diverting occasionally to cross bridges over frantic dual carriage-ways, and pass through small villages. My own rhythms gradually slowed during the afternoon as I came down from the forced high of modern life and adapted to the slow, steady pace walking along the river bank. I started to enjoy what was around me; dragonflies, butterflies, hares standing alert to see who the intruder was before bolting into the hedge, a flock of crows, startling some pheasants out of the undergrowth, eating a blackberry off the bush (it was really a bit early and the berry was very tart).
This part of Suffolk is beautiful and was exactly what i'd come in search of, despite the long distance footpath it doesn't seem to be particularly popular with tourists which added to the charm for me. I only saw a few people all afternoon; an old bloke
out for an afternoon stroll down the lane and a farmer overseeing the early harvest of his wheat who were both very friendly. Near Brockdish I was surprised to hear the sounds of jazz from across the fields. It was a wedding in a field next to Brockdish church, with a marquee and a live jazz band, and it looked like they were having a great time. Later, I was chased by an old half-blind sheepdog on a farm, and walked past a wonderful deciduous woodland running along a ridge.
As the afternoon wore on, my thoughts turned 
to food and accommodation. This became a recurring theme, around mid-afternoon each day I would start looking ahead on the map to spot likely villages which might have a pub, and woods or heathland which might be suitable for a surreptitious bivouac. It was already 7pm due to my late start, but the wonderful late English summers evening meant I had light until 10pm. I had high hopes for Mendham, I was tired as I descended through fields down to the river and bridge. There was a pub, hurrah, but unfortunately they didn't serve food, and even worse there was no real ale! So, I had to drag my reluctant body onto the next village. After getting lost again, and scaring myself in some woods at twilight (I was certain someone was behind me but when I looked there wasn't, you know the one), I finally staggered into Homersfield at 
dusk, hoping beyond hope that there was a pub, otherwise it was snickers bar and water for dinner. Homersfield came up trumps with the Black Swan. After a pint of Adnams I asked the landlord if there was anywhere to camp close by and he offered the field behind the pub for a few quid. As it was so late, and due to my exhaustion I gladly accepted, particularly as it meant I could have dinner (sausage & mash) and a few more cheeky pints before turning in. It had been a big day, starting in Notting Hill and ending up at the Black Swan, Homersfield. I'd walked 17.5 miles by my reckoning which wasn't a bad effort and probably reflected my rat race mentality early on. I resolved to take things much easier the next day.
Em & I hosted our first proper dinner party last week. We invited everyone in Em's team at work, so there were five of us all told, and I knocked up a few Asian dishes which seemed to go down pretty well. Two of Em's colleagues are Khmer, they both speak excellent English and it made for a really fun and interesting night. I thought a couple of random snippets of conversation were worthy of a post, so here they are...
Firstly, we've finally understood why tuk tuk & moto drivers are never able to locate our street when we ask for street 55. Phnom Penh is laid out on a numbered grid system, with the East-West streets getting even numbers (ascending from North to South) and the North-South streets getting odd numbers (ascending from the river Westwards). The French planners even had the foresight to start the Northern most "even" streets at 60 to allow for the inevitable expansion. This makes navigating around Phnom Penh really easy (although house numbering is very haphazard but that's another story). Anyway, it turns out that locals don't bother with street numbers and mostly don't know what they are. They prefer to use either the street name (a small number of streets have both a name and a number), or navigation by landmarks / places. It seems bizarre to use this method when there is a ready made numbering system but there you go.
Secondly, a bit more IT stuff. Whilst I was working, I realised that most of the computers had two languages installed - English & Khmer Unicode. Khmer uses a sanskrit based alphabet with (I think) 33 discrete characters. I didn't pay much attention though, as the keyboards were standard English QWERTY without any overlay's or dual language labelling. According to Em's work colleagues, they do produce Khmer language documents on their PC's, and when they need to do so they just use memory, or trial and error, to find the right keys. How hard must this be ? I really have a new found respect for them, working predominantly in English (their second language) and typing blind when producing anything in Khmer. A bit of internet research reveals that there are groups out there working on native Khmer keyboards (and dual language overlay's), but it doesn't appear as though these are widespread at all. Further to this, the massive explosion in mobile phones and texting has meant that a lot of young Khmer's in Phnom Penh are communicating primarily in English when texting - most phones don't support Khmer language natively. I can't help thinking that embracing a foreign language so readily in these new forms of communication may not be a good thing in the long term for nurturing Khmer language.
Anyway, the dinner party was a great success and we've resolved to try to do more entertaining.
I've been crook for the last week with some nasty virus. I'm better now, just in time for our visit to Ho Chi Minh City, but unfortunately I was laid up for the whole weekend of our friend Pia's visit (although I think Pia & Em had a great time judging by their hangovers on Sunday).
So, a funny thing happened when I went to the doctor (sounds like the start of a joke doesn't it ?). It was day three of feeling not so great, I was laid up in bed and suddenly deteriorated into alternate cold sweats and hot feverish periods. As an aside, fevers in the tropics are really tricky. You have to regulate your temperature here at the best of times with ceiling fans and aircon, but when your internal thermostat is loopy it makes it extra hard to work out what to do. Anyway, after some much needed nagging from Em (I get a bit surly when i'm sick) I decided to go to our local health clinic. I remembered just before leaving the house that Cambodian's are big on the hygienic face mask. This is really a very civilised habit which I think we should adopt - if you're sick or have a cold, and you need to go where other people are, you put on one of those surgical face masks to prevent coughing and breathing on people. You see people at the office wearing them all day if they're feeling under the weather.
The health clinic is just a couple of streets away, but I really could hardly walk. With Em's help, I made it into the waiting room. It was pretty quiet, just a receptionist and a few nurses sitting on the chairs - I guess they were waiting for patients. So, I fill in a form and get asked to wait. I turn around. The waiting room has maybe 20 chairs in 2 rows. There are four nurses dotted around in that kind of annoying pattern where you can't sit anywhere that isn't close to someone. So, Em & I sit down next to these two female nurses. They've obviously been eyeing up my half bent over weak demeanour, sweaty face, bloodshot eyes and mask, and decide it's time to go. They both get up straight away, walk over to the other side of the waiting room and sit down again. Then they both look at me and laugh (through their masks). And I laugh back (through my mask). It really cheered me up.
This kind of directness and sense of humour are pretty typical of the Khmer, and it's really refreshing. As it turns out, i've just had some virus which has cleared up apart from a headache (although i'm putting this down to coffee withdrawal symptoms from the treacle we drink here). Apparently I also have an amoeba which I have to take anti-biotics for, but that's pretty common.
During my recent visit back to England I found I had some spare time in the hectic visiting schedule, four days in fact, in between catching up with my family in Dover and visiting my brother in Lancashire. Emma would be heading back to Phnom Penh, and my friends would all be at work. So what to do myself ?
After a two year absence from my mother country i'd been fantasising about England. Living in dusty, tropical Phnom Penh i'd often find myself listening to the "Enigma Variations" by Elgar and day-dreaming of ancient oak trees, rolling green fields and balmy summer evenings. I hadn't any time to prepare (which is very unlike me), and I didn't have any equipment to speak of, but the idea occurred to me to go for a walk in the countryside.
Hastily researched over the course of at least two hours using my families bookshelf I settled on a walk in Suffolk. My key influences were; Roger Deakin - one of my favourite authors of the moment who lived in Suffolk and wrote very passionately about the nature thereabouts, the "Good Beer Guide 2009" which lists a great many wonderful country pubs and breweries in Suffolk, and a book on my sisters bookshelf on Constable. If the countryside here had inspired such a great painter, surely it would also fulfill my yearning for green fields and open skies. During my youth, i'd hiked, climbed and cycled all over the British Isles but for some reason had never visited Suffolk. I suppose it's flatness hadn't appealed to the climber in me as a young man, so that was one more reason to go. Finally, my complete lack of equipment would surely not be a problem in the flat lands of the fens - I might be uncomfortable, but at least I wouldn't become a mountain-rescue statistic lectured in the local paper about my lack of preparation and equipment.
So, I had my destination. Now for equipment, a small daypack, light walking shoes, waterproof, torch, water bottle, 1 season sleeping bag (borrowed), 1 man bivvy tent (purchased hastily in London before dropping Emma at Heathrow), map of Suffolk (1:50,000), notebook. The whole would fit nicely in my small day pack, allow me to be totally independent and not give me a back-ache by the end of the day. I resolved to bivouac out as much as possible, partly to save money, but mainly to try to engage as much with nature as I could. In short, I would be really walking, not like the overloaded scout hikes of my youth carrying everything including the kitchen sink. Of course there was a price to pay in comfort but more on that later.
I would take along a copy of "Walking" by Henry David Thoreau, a short pamphlet in which Thoreau proposes that we have all forgotten how to truly walk, or "saunter" as he puts it. Thoreau offers up two derivations of the word "saunter" in the first pages of the book. The first, which he prefers, relates to the Crusades. I, however, was struck by the second definition and it influenced my planning of the walk.
"...having no particular home, but equally at home everywhere. For this is the secret of successful sauntering. He who sits still in the house all the time may be the greatest vagrant of all; but the saunterer, in the good sense, is no more vagrant than the meandering river, which is all the while sedulously seeking the shortest course to the sea..."
So, I would go sauntering in Suffolk, carrying nothing but the essentials in my small pack, with no place to stay and no planned route. I decided to start my walk in Diss, at the beginning of the "Angles Way" long distance footpath, and follow the River Waveney to the sea. After that I would see...
Stay tuned for the first episode of the walk, which takes me from Diss to Homersfield, and although it seems out of keeping with the philosophy behind my adventure, i've also produced a google map for the nerds out there (and me).
View Suffolk Sauntering in a larger map
Nerd alert...for anyone who isn't remotely interested in computers, read no further.
So, i've been doing some work over the last few weeks which has given me my first experience with IT in Cambodian organisations. Of course, much here is the same as anywhere else in the world, but there are a few trends which have genuinely surprised me.
Firstly, software licensing is a flexible concept. In all forms of media in South-East Asia, piracy is rife, and software is no different. I was a little surprised to discover that even commercial companies, government, IT companies and the like all run pirated operating systems and software but in truth it would be incredibly difficult to do the right thing here if you wanted to. Microsoft don't have a local reseller in Cambodia and to be honest there's no market for them to do so unless the legal environment changed. Short of buying a new PC with an OEM license, everything else can be considered cracked (even when installed by a legitimate IT service provider), and this does cause problems with updates eg: black-listing from anti-virus vendors etc. Although it would seem as though the lower levels of investment available would lend themselves to the use of open source software, the opposite seems to be true. The most widely available and most easily supported systems are all Microsoft.
Secondly, many companies here, including IT service providers, don't seem to understand the importance of applying current service packs and critical security updates (or of keeping anti-virus software current). Windows PC's and servers are often multiple service packs behind current, have automatic updates turned off, windows firewall turned off and no or poorly configured anti-virus software. If you've ever wondered where in the world all those zombie PC's are, I suspect South-East Asia hosts a very high proportion.
Thirdly, computer hardware is incredibly expensive here. A basic spec Dell laptop which sells online in the US for $500 USD, would cost $1000 USD from some vendors in Phnom Penh. They can't be purchased online, but even considering the middle men this is a big markup. I honestly don't know whether this is down to import duty, reseller or both.
Finally, and this one really was a surprise to me, Cambodia is in the throws of a 3G revolution. The fixed line infrastructure here (like most infrastructure in Cambodia) is lacking and requires significant investment, so ADSL services are very expensive and offer low speeds comparative to services offered even in Australia for example. However, the mobile market is booming and attracting significant investment. With a very young population providing ideal market conditions, Cambodia is effectively leap-frogging fast fixed line internet access and moving straight to mobile data over 3G. The mobile market in Phnom Penh particularly is very crowded, with multiple ISP's (or should that be telco's ?) now offering fast HSDPA 3G data packages, both for computer (via USB modem) but even more so for 3G mobile devices. Even mobile Edge services offer better value and performance than fixed line DSL currently. In such a booming market, with limited regulation i've no idea how the telco's are planning to control bandwidth usage and provide QOS. QB in particular has not placed any restrictions on it's HSDPA 3G data service (ie: Skype, VOIP are all functional), and they offer an unlimited data HSDPA package for $88 USD per month. I think this model is down to the high level of competition, and a "build it and they will come" mentality, although it remains to be seen if it will pay off. Anyway, with all this competition, the Cambodian consumer will only benefit as far as I can see.
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