One for Wendy.... Kanchanaburi, Thailand 

We were in Kanchanaburi for Christmas eve and then took the train to Bangkok for Christmas day. It was busy, but we managed to enjoy Christmas day, we chatted to our families over skype and I even managed to track down some mince pies and ice cream at an ex-pat bar, yum :) Not as good as my mum's, but they'll tide me over until we get back. Unfortunately we couldn't have a 'big one' as we were booked onto the 5am bus to the airport for our morning flight to Denpasar.

What would it be like travelling without gadgets? Well, it probably would be all fine to be honest. But not half as much fun. Here follows Mike's guide to portable geekiness. Hang on to your hats!

Lenny the Laptop

When we were planning the trip (and I use the word "planning" in the loosest sense) I wasn't intending to bring Lenny the laptop with us. But in the event I'm glad that I did. Having a laptop has meant that we can write emails and blog posts while offline on long train journeys, back up our photos to the cloud as well as its hard drive, listen to tunage in our hotel rooms, and get online in cafes and restaurants for free instead of having to pay in an internet cafe. Free Wifi is getting pretty prevalent - across Europe, even in Asia. And one of the nice things is that even when I have to pay I can just hop online for a few minutes to sync everything up and then work offline. I use a ThinkVantage Thinkpad x60s - with a 12.1" screen - and with the added 8 cell battery I can get four or five  hours  out of a charge. It's almost 2 years old but still perfect for travelling, tiny and light. I've seen a number of people travelling with ee-Pcs though and I'd be lying if I said I didn't have a little gadget envy!

Firefox with ReadItLater is perfect for downloading a load of web pages and reading them offline. The latest versions of ReadItLater have a fixed timeout on the web page downloads which is too small for the connection speeds I've been getting in Asia, so I've had to downgrade to version 0.9820 until that is fixed ("soon", apparently!). I'm using Windows Live Writer for knocking out blog posts by the beach and Thunderbird for writing emails offline and syncing up with our Google Apps for Domains accounts. Passpack is an amazing tool for generating, securely storing and using passwords, and I use their "one-time-use" password feature in wifi spots I'm, um...  less sure about :) Passpack offline is a life saver now that I don't remember my passwords in my head any more. Overall, though, I've been trying to check email less and less often. When we did the Annapurna Circuit I didn't check email and had no mobile phone access for 17 days, probably the longest..... well, ever. But I still only had about 80 emails to read by the end. No family members had been afflicted with serious injury, no one had died, and no financial institutions were threatening to take me to court unless I called them within 24 hours. Not that that is the sort of thing that happens to me on a day to day basis, you understand.

er.... Eric the E71

Actually my phone doesn't have a name but I shall call him Eric from now on. I only bought this thing a few months ago but it has blown my mind slightly with the amount of functionality Nokia have squeezed into such a tiny case. I bring him out to quickly find wi-fi enabled cafes using HandyWi, play chess (from ZingMagic) on long bus journeys, make cheap phone calls home over the internet using fring and skype, and send cheapo txts to the UK over the internet using FreeTxt. This last guy has to be the best of all, given the extortionate price we pay for texts abroad, it must have saved me £10 or more in the time we've been away. I've also got Google mail installed for the times I don't want to lug out the laptop, and using the AGPS with Google Maps is amazing, and saved us when we were completely lost once in Istanbul, although of course I did have to pay 80p or something for the bandwidth. Also I completely recommend goosync for syncing up my google calendar and contacts with my phone, completely worth the money, although my calendar over the past few months has been fairly empty :)

Carl the Camera (no pic for obvious reasons!)

My camera is a slightly dull Canon Ixus 70. He does the job, is tiny and light. The only thing is the flash is pretty poor, but it's a small quibble. I've seen people carrying digital SLRs around twice the size of me (slight exaggeration) but neither of us are into photography enough to be bothered with anything bigger.

George the GPSMap 60CSx

George is better than Eric at keeping a GPS lock (although not as fast at getting one) and doesn't use any bandwidth. He only has two drawbacks compared with Eric the mobile phone:

1. He's big - probably something like 6 times bigger than my phone, although he is lighter.

2. He's expensive. The 60CSx doesn't come with any decent maps on it so you have to subsidise Garmin by buying their expensive maps. We have the British topographical map (which is alright but you still need the paper maps as well for a walk of any length), and the Garmin City Navigator Europe NT 2008 which is great, but probably overkill for our train journey. Thankfully there are people selling cheap or free maps for other countries, but they vary in quality. Even if we don't have a map though, George has stopped us from getting lost on our urban orienteering adventures on numerous occasions.

So why not just use the phone then? Well George has some serious advantages:

1. He doesn't use any bandwidth - I have pretty much as much mobile broadband as I want as part of my contract in the UK, but abroad it's a different matter. And at up to £6 per Mb, I don't want to be using mobile internet unless I really have to.

2. He works fine, even in a bag or a pocket.

3. He uses standard batteries - meaning I could use him while we're trekking, even though we have no electricity.

We've been using George a little for fabulous geocaching excitement, but I'll blather on about that in another post.

Warning: this post may contain a small amount of exaggeration. However I stand by every single one of the general principles herein, oh yes.

This is the second 'trip of a lifetime' we've been on together.... and Helen's fourth in total. I like to think that we're getting pretty good at getting the most VFM (value for money) out of our guesthouses these days. Here are our fantastic tips for getting the best VFM. Some people may think that we go over the top slightly BUT REMEMBER for every £1 we save on accommodation we can splash out on an iced coffee by the beach. AND ALSO when we are walking up the hill at midnight in the pitch black fumbling with our head torches, stepping into random mushy bits and trying to work out which of the thirty nondescript concrete buildings might be ours we remember that the whole experience is CHARACTER BUILDING for the future. Ignoring the snide comments of the local boys hanging out on unlit street corners is INTERACTING WITH THE LOCALS.

1. We will get dropped off by our driver in the centre of town, in the "tourist bit", often with enough neon around and about to put Blackpool to shame. Our driver will LEAP out of the car\bus, and be very keen to carry our bags into the nearest guesthouse, which will look warm and inviting after our seven hour journey on unpaved roads. This is because he will get 20% commission from the guesthouse for taking us there. This means that we will pay 20% more. We have found that trying to get the driver to stay away from the hotel (and therefore pay 20% less for our room) does sometimes work, but it's much easier to just go in, be shown around the hotel, , make some "mmmm mmmm" noises, and then turn around and walk out. This gives us an idea of what we should be paying in town. The driver won't be bothered following us around - for all he knows, you might be looking for hours.
2. We'll look at a number of guesthouses as we walk along the tourist strip, away from the neon. As we go, some general rules will apply:
   • Any guest house that is in "the book" (i.e. the Lonely Planet) will be more expensive.
   • The further you go from the neon, the cheaper it will be.
3. Our knowledge of the two rules above will result in us wandering down side streets and unpaved paths with all our gear on our backs, looking for the best deal. Don't UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES say that you like the room, smile, or look happy, even if you do/are - it destroys your bargaining power. In fact the best idea is to go in with a balaclava on and put on a French accent. This way, your emotions won't give you away when people announce their price to be 1/4 that of the last place. English is now the official international language and the person showing us the room will speak it, to a greater or lesser extent. As we don't have the advantage of knowing another language well enough to talk secretly among ourselves we resort to grunts and mumbles under our breath to indicate what we really feel about the room. I've tried to promote a sort of code with Helen ("What do you think about the shower?" "The last one was more orange than this, but perhaps has a firmer texture" etc. etc. ) but it hasn't caught on, not sure why.
4. Bargain hard. If you are staying for more than one night say so. If you don't need air con, say so and get the rate reduced. If it's 3am and no one else in their right mind is going to be coming by any time soon, say so.
5. Get up early the next day and spend all morning walking even further out looking for an even better deal. Eventually you will end up with something like this:
6. Get up early the next morning for the bus to the next town and repeat.

Now for the second part in my eagerly awaited review of "pretty much every restaurant in Stoke Newington". Yey!

	Nando's - Booo! The evil franchise invades our beloved Church Street! This place was subject to protesting squatters before it was transformed, then much hate and an attempted boycott campaign when it opened as it was thought it would change the 'independent' character of the street. It always seems to be full though so I suspect they are doing just fine. We boycotted it as we lived directly behind and they kept us up all night with their carpentry when they were making the place. I complained via their website but didn't even get a reply. Shame 'cos I like chicken.
Clicia - good food, done well! I like it here. Wifey not so keen, I'm not sure why.
	Booths - we've tried this place a couple of times and it's always been average at best. Want good pizza? Go to Il Bacio down the road.
Il Bacio Express and Pizzeria - best pizza on Church St. Express is more than a little cramped, so we often used to get a take out.
	The Sea Cow - This place opened, then shut down within a couple of months. Serves them right for serving me cold chips, I say.
Rasa - there are two premises, across the road from one another - the smaller place does veggie only.... so popular with the good veggilites of Stoke Newington that we've never been able to get a table without booking. The omnivore version has great service and food though. Don't go expecting your standard indian curry, these are subtle flavours and the staff love to advise what goes with what.
	Anglo-Asian Tandoori Restaurant - This place is always really popular, probably because they give you free things at the end of the meal! I've never been a fan of the food though.
Lemongrass - This has always been our favourite Thai restaurant (if you exclude Ryan's Bar). Although Yum Yums is far more popular, we find the atmosphere a little more relaxed here. Great grub. Ostrich on the menu, but we're too tight to have tried it.
	Camia - Not really a restaurant, but notable because the staff are always really, REALLY *REALLY* grumpy. Why so glum, Camia staff??? Also Helen might have seen a mouse in the window one evening, but we probably can't mention that on here for legal reasons.
Royal India - The first time we went in here we thought that we had been rendered temporarily invisible. It took 15 mins for us to get a menu, and another 1 hour to get our food. When it arrived though, the food was GREAT! The best Indian food on Church street in my opinion. Just don't go if you're in a hurry.
	Absolutely Scrumptious - I've only ever been in for a coffee, but it was very nice. Seems to have strange opening hours. Or perhaps it is just closed Sunday, I dunno.
Shamsudeen's - Alright food, interesting menu, different to anything else you'll see in the area, worth a try. I remember the interior being a little strange though, makes you feel slightly on edge. A little bit like eating at your Granny's.

Next time... .we finish off the end of Church street and pick out a few of our favourites on the High Street. Stay tuned for more fun and mildly slanderous statements.

In Chitwan, southern Nepal...

It came as a bit of a shock to us when got our first experience of the striking culture here in Kathmandu... we'd been in the country only about 24 hours on 20th November when we turned a corner and saw about 10 or 12 teenagers marching through the street, each grabbing stones from the street floor and stopping to throw them every so often. There was no way back and the road was narrow, we would have to either turn and run or walk past them. Thankfully we could see that they weren't interested in the tourists who were around and about, instead they were concentrating on breaking shop windows. As the mob moved forward, shopkeepers would swiftly close their shutters and anyone who was too slow got a slew of stones through their windows. Opposite us was a relatively upmarket hotel with gardens and a gate, and it got a particularly long barrage of stones - it must have been quite scary if you were in the hotel at the time.  Accompanying them were a host of hangers-on including one person brandishing a huge tv camera and two policemen, who seemed to be making no attempt to stop the stone throwers but did try to get them to move on from the hotel. We later found out that this wasn't an isolated incident, indeed there were gangs of youths all over the city shutting businesses down. They were demanding that there be an investigation into the deaths of two youths whose bodies had just been found. In order to put pressure on the authorities they had announced a general strike and were attacking businesses that dared to open as usual and any traffic on the roads. The next day an investigation was announced.

In Pokhara on the 15th December there was another strike, as the day before some kids had set fire to a campus because they disagreed with some of the policies of the principal (!) We never worked out whether the strike was in favour or against the arsonists but most people seemed to see it as an opportunity for a bit of a holiday; with no traffic the roads filled up with people walking five abreast or playing frisbee, hacky-sack and badminton. As there were no buses running people were walking about, some hauling huge loads in Winnie-the-Pooh (or 'Happy the Bruin' here) plastic bags.

We're heading back to Kathmandu on the tourist bus a couple of days earlier than we strictly need to, because we need to make sure we catch our flight back to Bangkok; if we were unlucky with the next strike we could get stranded.

I had wanted to get some decent mountain biking in on this trip, and after asking around Pokhara lakeside ("your bikes are no good! Where are the good ones please??") we managed to find the one place in town with decent imported mountain bikes. They suggested that I fly back half way up the Annapurna trail we have just hiked down, to Jomsom, with a guide and bikes. From there it would be a thrilling downhill biking journey of wonderment back to Pokhara. Unfortunately it didn't work out quite like that.

After checking in in the dark, we almost missed the flight (due to the guide having a ciggie), and had to franticly wave to attract the attention of the mechanics trying to start the engines and get them to stop. Then as I'm sat wedged into one of the seats at the back of the plane waiting to go (a 19 seater, I'm the only westerner) the air stewardess wants to know if I'm reading the Dali Lama's autobiography because I'm a follower of him. I say no, but I think he is a very good man. This wasn't the right answer as the stewardess thinks he is very big headed, mainly it seems because he is "always fighting with the Chinese", hmmmm. I don't fancy getting into an argument with the purveyor of mints and ear plugs on our 16 minute flight and so keep quiet.

After ten minutes or so of attempting to start the engines it becomes clear that we aren't going anywhere. The stewardess mutters something to me about it being "too cold" and having to "fly an engineer in from Kathmandu" and we leave the plane and sit and wait in the airport and buy overpriced water and tea and sit and wait for the inevitable message an hour or so later that they aren't flying today. What is to be done?

So instead of a thrilling biking journey of wonderment I have an uphill biking journey of exhaustion, climbing about 800m on offroad tracks to Sarangkot, where we tried Paragliding the day before. I'm used to biking but not so much mountain bikes and the climb nearly killed me. The downhill was pretty cool though, we overtook loads of motorbikes, one car and a herd of mules.

The next day we got food poisoning from eating fish (bad tourist! forgot to be vegetarian!) and spent most of the day in bed.

There were two options from Bangkok - the reliable but very expensive Thai airlines or the expensive but um.... "having a poor reputation for reliability" Royal Nepal Airlines (no longer Royal since the Maoists took power and sacked the king) so as we will shortly be Scottish we decided to go with Nepal Airlines. And.... they were great! The flight was only about a third full though, which kinda makes me wonder for their long-term viability.

But ANYWAY. We are now SUPER FIT!

....cos we've finished walking the Annapurna circuit in Nepal. 16 days of trekking took us over the Thorong Pass and back, all the way around Annapurna and its sister mountains. No blog posts during this time unfortunately.... I did think of doing one but balked at the price of an internet connection (£3 for 10 mins) and instead spent my Rupees on Apple Crumble.

As you walk the circuit there are "tea houses" of various standards where weary trekkers can spend the night, and get fed. Each has their own menu, but they are all pretty much identical, consisting of their idea of what westerners want (chow mein, enchilladas, pasta - all very nice actually) and standard Nepali fare - which 99% of the time is Dal Bhat - Dal, Curry, rice, pickles, and popadum. Dal Bhat is usually the sensible choice, as if you finish your plate you can ask for more for nowt! My record was three plates of rice, but that was nothing compared with what we saw our porter get through - and he was half the size of me! (Yes, yes, we employed both a guide and a porter, but the porter was carrying only Helen's shoe collection). Each menu proudly proclaimed how it was "authorised" by the "local tourism sub-committee", perhaps a by-product of the country's current bizarre dichotomy of democratic communism.

At this time of year there is only daylight from about 6pm to 6am so there was a lot of sleeping being done! In fact pretty much all we've done for the past 16 days is walk and sleep.

Here on the right is us just crossing the high point on the pass - 5416m above sea level. Not quite the highest we've ever been, but certainly close.

On the whole the walk was enjoyable and not all that hard, but the 14th day nearly killed us - we climbed up 1700m of unrelenting mountain path from Tatopani to Ghorepani. We're currently in Pokhara resting our tired muscles and trying to find some scales to record our new official weights :)

Helen Climbing up... and up, and up and up...

A scary-looking rope bridge. We crossed over dozens of these:

One of the tea houses we stayed in.... as this is now the off season (the pass will close soon due to snow) in 90% of the tea houses we stayed in, we were the only guests. As we got higher up the mountain, more and more luxuries were shunned. This place didn't have a shower at all (you could buy a hot bucket of water for about 80p) and no electricity. But it was perhaps our favourite place because of the view out of the window....

Prayer wheels and prayer flags everywhere....

As we walked with we were sharing the path with people who used it as their main "highway" to and from the rest of Nepal. Everything needs to be shifted around by foot... or by mule train.

Nepal has some things in abundance - like natural beauty and friendliness and speeding busses and water buffalo and um, general strikes and rubbish - but one thing it has trouble with is electricity. Power cuts seem to be both scheduled (twice a day) and unscheduled (two hours or so, starting when you're about to press "send" on that 500 word email). It's funny how you don't notice having the electricity until it's not there... The electricity board have recently announced an increase in the number of hours without electricity as well - to 70 hours a week! A significant proportion of the power is imported from India, and the lines out of the country are often out of action. I'd imagine given their landscape they could be self sufficient with power from hydro electric dams, but they would need foreign investment to make it happen.

However, their biscuits are seriously kwality...