By Elizabeth Johnstone
It’s Spain, Jim, but not as we know it… I visited the Canary Islands for the first time in February 2015. I booked a week’s all-inclusive package at the Clubhotel Riu Gran Canaria, Meloneras, through Thomson.
Are the islands named after the eponymous birds? It seems not. The root is canis, the Latin for dog. Apparently, they were islands from which the dogs came. The perro de presa canario or presa canario is a large, powerful dog which has the dubious distinction of being banned in Australia and New Zealand.
Although we live in Hertfordshire, Gatwick Airport is relatively convenient for us by train. We hop across the road from Kings Cross to St Pancras to pick up the Brighton train. Because of an early-morning departure, we spent the night at the Premier Inn, which I cannot recommend highly enough. Right outside the North Terminal, helpful and enthusiastic staff and very reasonably priced. I half expected to see Lenny Henry blissfully asleep in the bed. We’ve already booked for our next Gatwick overnight stay.
Security was well in evidence inside the airport. Heavily armed police officers stood at the corners of each check-in area as the explosives dogs sniffed our luggage. The buzzer went off as I passed through the metal detector arch. As the officer patted me down, I asked her if the underwiring in – ahem – a certain undergarment ever set it off. ‘Not usually,’ she said ‘Unless it’s Marks and Spencer.’ Who knew that St Michael produced weapons-grade lingerie?
The four hour flight to Gran Canaria was dull but uneventful. Las Palmas Airport is a huge operation, processing the hordes of tourists (over 10 million in 2014) desperate for some year-round sun. We were amalgamated with other Tui (Thomson parent company) customers on our transfer coach. The driver played a CD welcoming us in a variety of northern European languages. I was apprehensive at the lack of a rep on the coach but the operation proceeded seamlessly, also on the return.
We had had a taste of the all-inclusive experience, and of the Riu hotel brand, the year before in Morocco. All-inclusive is seductive, but there is a knack to enjoying yourself without overdoing it. Some time soon I will master this.
Many travellers return year after year, and you could see why. The hotel was spacious and immaculate. It had 500 bedrooms so, presumably, at least 1,000 guests. A range of outdoor pools (including a romantic infinity pool) was flanked by gardens, lounging areas, bars, restaurants and sports facilities. All dining was buffet-style, although there were specialist Chinese, grill and Canarian restaurants which required advance booking.
Alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks were available at all times. The back door of the complex led straight out on to the promenade. An eagle-eyed security guard checked for our official wristbands. The local resort, Meloneras, is small but perfectly formed, an upmarket offshoot of the larger Maspalomas. Its extensive sand dunes are a nature reserve, also featuring a nudist beach within which is a gay enclave. The ‘pink euro’ is an important source of revenue for LGBT-friendly Gran Canaria. We walked along the shoreline, as did countless others, without frequenting the nudist/gay sections as such. Suffice it say that I saw silver jewellery sported on body parts I did not know could be thus embellished. But maybe I have led a sheltered life.
We were not aiming for a high-powered cultural experience and spent most of the time pleasantly mooching around between pool, restaurant and promenade. It was simply heavenly to watch the sun set over the Atlantic, through the silhouettes of the palm trees, with a glass of something all-inclusive in one’s hand. However, I did want to see something of the interior of the island so I booked one of the Thomson excursions.
It was advertised as ‘Island Delight Premium’, in minibuses which could access the narrow mountain roads too difficult for a standard coach. Prone to travel sickness, I should have known what was in store. We were picked up from our hotels and rendezvoused with the other minibuses at Puerto Mogán whose charming flower-filled lanes and harbour location have given it the name of Little Venice. We got us a convoy! The three minibuses were linked by radio and our driver’s highly entertaining commentary was broadcast to all three. The excursion was filmed by a pro cameraman so that – surprise, surprise – we could buy our personal DVD memento of the day.
In fairness, the experience changed radically as we moved out of the heavily touristed coastal area. We wended along and up country roads, stopping for comfort breaks and photo opportunities at a series of impossibly picturesque locations. We were told about the agriculture of the island with its 63 reservoirs in an area which could be encompassed by the M25. If I say that tomatoes are a massive crop, I don’t mean that they are the size of footballs. Optimum growing conditions allow them to be
harvested three times a year. Bananas, oranges and potatoes are also important. Eventually, we reached the summit of this formerly volcanic island. Visibility was so good that we see all the way to Tenerife, over 40 miles away. You could make out the observatory on the summit of Mt Teide, the highest mountain on Spanish territory. Lunch was included, an average meal in a pleasant pine forest. Our last stop was the picturesque northern village of Teror – fortunately along straight roads – for a look at the basilica, the 15th century balconies and the Sunday market. An excellent day out, and one which we could not have done on our own.
These holidays are marketed as ‘winter sun’. We had mixed weather. The temperature was never below 18̊ and sometimes climbed into the low or mid-twenties. My husband, recently liberated from his business suit, cheerfully donned t-shirt and shorts. I was more circumspect, in jeans and cotton shirt. A sharp breeze sometimes cooled things down and, one day, the wind was so strong that all the parasols were taken down and you could taste sand in your mouth. And yet, it was a calm and sunny 25̊ on our last day. Typical!
I now ‘get’ why the Canaries are such a popular winter destination for the denizens of the cold, northern countries. I quite fancy going to Tenerife next year and looking back over to Gran Canaria from the top of Mt Teide.
Footnote: a bizarre incident on our way back at Las Palmas Airport. A Scandinavian couple ahead of me in the coffee-shop queue were buying various lunch items. As they counted out their euros, I put my drink and packet of sandwiches on the counter. The family gathered up their purchases. I paid for mine but, when I went to pick them up, the packet of sandwiches had gone. After a suitably Hispanic (i.e. over-the-top) altercation with the counter assistant – thank you, Open University Spanish Diploma – I was allowed to collect another packet of sandwiches from the display. Had they been swept up with the Scandinavians’ lunch? I fear we will never know. One for Sarah Lund to investigate!
First published in VISA 121 (June 2015)
Saturday 31 October 2015
Saturday 24 October 2015
More than Passion
by Sally
Branston
This tiny village in the Bavarian Alps, permanent population 5,300, is best known to the outside world for performances, every ten years, of a Passion Play, celebrating the townsfolk’s deliverance from the plague in 1633. But there is a lot more to this small corner of a Bavarian paradise. Every season has something different to offer and although the village has its touristy side, most of the bus parties never venture far from the main street and depart before evening, so there’s never any real difficulty in getting away from them.
On a grey January afternoon, the landscape is composed of dark, fir-clad mountains with a light sprinkling of white snow, the tops invisible under low, grey cloud. It’s a monochromatic day. But in February, two years ago, there were vivid blue skies and the snow was piled in head-height heaps at the sides of the road. In summer, when you walk along well-signposted footpaths to the village of Grasswang, the way leads you through beautiful wildflower meadows, the only sound being the tinkling of bells from the cows grazing on the hillside pastures. In September, as you walk through the marshlands alongside the river, the ground is purple with autumn crocus. Oberammergau is one of my all-year-round favourites.
The village has two claims to fame aside from the Passion Play. Because of its isolated location and long winters, a traditional wood-carving industry grew up. The town now has a wood-carvers’ school where male and female students undertake a three year apprenticeship that starts with carving mirror frames and ends with making exact copies of tiny religious masterpieces. The shops are full of their work and if you want something special for your Christmas tree or crib, this is the place to come. The other tradition is that of Luftmalerei or painted house facades. The best known are the Red Riding Hood House; the Hansel and Gretel House, now a home for children in care, and the Pilatus House. The latter was saved from being demolished to make way for a supermarket, by local subscription. The typical wooden shingled roof has no nails and is weighted down against the wind by rocks.
Except for 1870 and 1940, the six-hour performances of the Passion Play have taken place every ten years since 1634, with a local cast of 2,200. Anyone who was born in Oberammergau or has lived there for over twenty years is eligible to take part and in the run up to the performances, all the men of the town, police and military included, grow beards and long hair. Everyone participates in all the rehearsals – miss three and you’re out. Backstage, the costumes are all arranged in alphabetical order by surname according to whether the wearer is a Roman soldier, an angel, a priest or a member of the crowd. The principal performers need to be able to take leave from their jobs: if you’re in a crowd scene, you turn up at the appointed time, do your bit, then go back to work for the rest of the day. The next performances will take place in 2010 and tickets are already on sale.
When you’ve tired of Oberammergau, you can walk, drive or cycle four kilometres to the neighbouring village of Ettal to visit the amazing pink, white and gold abbey church, with its wonderful rococo interior. The adjoining monastery still contains a community of about fifty to sixty monks who run a boarding school and make a liqueur whilst following the Benedictine rule and avoiding contact with the outside world, especially females.
A little way further out of town lies the wonderful Schloss Linderhof, one of the fantasy concoction castles of the so-called “Mad King Ludwig of Bavaria” and in another direction lies his fairytale castle of Neuschwanstein. Whether the king was indeed mentally ill or merely a misunderstood eccentric remains a matter for debate, and the jury is still out on how his body came to be floating in a lake, shortly after he was deposed. It is known that his family were worried about the drain that his building projects caused on their finances and the government was concerned that he had never married or produced an heir. But he was popular amongst the people, both then and now. In the 19th century, the construction of his three castles (the third is Herrenchiemsee) provided a great deal of local employment and nowadays, they are a major source of tourist revenue for the state of Bavaria. They are a monument to a Romantic, opera-loving king who preferred his Wagnerian fantasy world to the realities of 19th century royal politics.
Another popular tourist and pilgrimage destination close to Oberammergau is the Wieskirche or Meadow Church. Lying in an unspoilt area of countryside, the simple exterior does not prepare you for the “wow factor” when you enter. A local farmer’s wife had rescued a neglected statue of Christ and taken it into her house. On 14 June 1738, tears were seen on the statue’s face and as word spread, more and more visitors wanted to witness the miracle. A tiny chapel was built to house the statue, but when this proved inadequate, the present church was constructed. It narrowly escaped dilapidation and destruction during Germany’s secularisation period, but was saved by a consortium of local farmers who converted it to a barn. The only cows you’ll see now, though, are grazing safely in the surrounding meadows.
If you have never visited Bavaria, I can strongly recommend it, at any time of year. Accommodation is of a very high standard and you’ll never go hungry. Oberammergau is only one tiny corner of this fascinating region, but it’s a walker’s, cyclist’s and cross-country skier’s paradise. All routes are clearly marked with the distances, so even the moderately unfit or novice walker should have no difficulty in leaving the car behind and getting out into the countryside. And if you’re old enough to remember what “real” snow was like - as opposed to the couple of inches that fell in the UK in February this year - get your winter woollies on and go in winter!
First published in VISA 84 (Apr 2009)
This tiny village in the Bavarian Alps, permanent population 5,300, is best known to the outside world for performances, every ten years, of a Passion Play, celebrating the townsfolk’s deliverance from the plague in 1633. But there is a lot more to this small corner of a Bavarian paradise. Every season has something different to offer and although the village has its touristy side, most of the bus parties never venture far from the main street and depart before evening, so there’s never any real difficulty in getting away from them.
On a grey January afternoon, the landscape is composed of dark, fir-clad mountains with a light sprinkling of white snow, the tops invisible under low, grey cloud. It’s a monochromatic day. But in February, two years ago, there were vivid blue skies and the snow was piled in head-height heaps at the sides of the road. In summer, when you walk along well-signposted footpaths to the village of Grasswang, the way leads you through beautiful wildflower meadows, the only sound being the tinkling of bells from the cows grazing on the hillside pastures. In September, as you walk through the marshlands alongside the river, the ground is purple with autumn crocus. Oberammergau is one of my all-year-round favourites.
The village has two claims to fame aside from the Passion Play. Because of its isolated location and long winters, a traditional wood-carving industry grew up. The town now has a wood-carvers’ school where male and female students undertake a three year apprenticeship that starts with carving mirror frames and ends with making exact copies of tiny religious masterpieces. The shops are full of their work and if you want something special for your Christmas tree or crib, this is the place to come. The other tradition is that of Luftmalerei or painted house facades. The best known are the Red Riding Hood House; the Hansel and Gretel House, now a home for children in care, and the Pilatus House. The latter was saved from being demolished to make way for a supermarket, by local subscription. The typical wooden shingled roof has no nails and is weighted down against the wind by rocks.
Except for 1870 and 1940, the six-hour performances of the Passion Play have taken place every ten years since 1634, with a local cast of 2,200. Anyone who was born in Oberammergau or has lived there for over twenty years is eligible to take part and in the run up to the performances, all the men of the town, police and military included, grow beards and long hair. Everyone participates in all the rehearsals – miss three and you’re out. Backstage, the costumes are all arranged in alphabetical order by surname according to whether the wearer is a Roman soldier, an angel, a priest or a member of the crowd. The principal performers need to be able to take leave from their jobs: if you’re in a crowd scene, you turn up at the appointed time, do your bit, then go back to work for the rest of the day. The next performances will take place in 2010 and tickets are already on sale.
When you’ve tired of Oberammergau, you can walk, drive or cycle four kilometres to the neighbouring village of Ettal to visit the amazing pink, white and gold abbey church, with its wonderful rococo interior. The adjoining monastery still contains a community of about fifty to sixty monks who run a boarding school and make a liqueur whilst following the Benedictine rule and avoiding contact with the outside world, especially females.
A little way further out of town lies the wonderful Schloss Linderhof, one of the fantasy concoction castles of the so-called “Mad King Ludwig of Bavaria” and in another direction lies his fairytale castle of Neuschwanstein. Whether the king was indeed mentally ill or merely a misunderstood eccentric remains a matter for debate, and the jury is still out on how his body came to be floating in a lake, shortly after he was deposed. It is known that his family were worried about the drain that his building projects caused on their finances and the government was concerned that he had never married or produced an heir. But he was popular amongst the people, both then and now. In the 19th century, the construction of his three castles (the third is Herrenchiemsee) provided a great deal of local employment and nowadays, they are a major source of tourist revenue for the state of Bavaria. They are a monument to a Romantic, opera-loving king who preferred his Wagnerian fantasy world to the realities of 19th century royal politics.
Another popular tourist and pilgrimage destination close to Oberammergau is the Wieskirche or Meadow Church. Lying in an unspoilt area of countryside, the simple exterior does not prepare you for the “wow factor” when you enter. A local farmer’s wife had rescued a neglected statue of Christ and taken it into her house. On 14 June 1738, tears were seen on the statue’s face and as word spread, more and more visitors wanted to witness the miracle. A tiny chapel was built to house the statue, but when this proved inadequate, the present church was constructed. It narrowly escaped dilapidation and destruction during Germany’s secularisation period, but was saved by a consortium of local farmers who converted it to a barn. The only cows you’ll see now, though, are grazing safely in the surrounding meadows.
If you have never visited Bavaria, I can strongly recommend it, at any time of year. Accommodation is of a very high standard and you’ll never go hungry. Oberammergau is only one tiny corner of this fascinating region, but it’s a walker’s, cyclist’s and cross-country skier’s paradise. All routes are clearly marked with the distances, so even the moderately unfit or novice walker should have no difficulty in leaving the car behind and getting out into the countryside. And if you’re old enough to remember what “real” snow was like - as opposed to the couple of inches that fell in the UK in February this year - get your winter woollies on and go in winter!
First published in VISA 84 (Apr 2009)
Friday 23 October 2015
Spirit at Rest
by John
Keeble
A monk is sitting in an old plastic chair in the bedroom next to mine. He is chanting, low and hardly a change in tone. On the floor, in front of him and at the foot of the bed, there are four figures - the house owner, her brother-in-law, her sister who has never been the same since the tsunami tore her 12-year-old daughter from her grip, and me. We sit, our legs and feet folded behind, our hands together in Buddhist prayer.
We are mourning a young Finn and helping his spirit on its way in a land crowded with tragic spirits from the 2004 tsunami. Three hours earlier we had watched him die, his face almost purple with some kind of seizure, his strong young body straining and his bloodless white hands gripping the air like claws.
The owner and her sister were raising the alarm as I returned. He was on his back on the bed, looking very ill, and his bag was half packed on the floor - he had been found because he had not checked out for his flight home.
As we waited, watching him, watching for help, he gave one last strained spasm and just stopped breathing.
The rest of the owner's family started to arrive, then a Scottish tourist doctor, trailing her teenage daughter, who felt for his pulse and said quietly to her daughter, by then being pushed out of the door: "He's dying." They made their escape.
Every minute, more people came, crowding the first-floor outside walkway to the three rooms. We all kept looking in at him, as if he would move, and I followed the repeated descriptions in Thai supplemented with grimaces and expressive hands, nodding my agreement.
Then the paramedics arrived, bringing their yellow trolley in expectation of a dash to hospital, but they could do nothing. A little later the hospital team arrived in their ambulance, sparkling white uniforms and an urgent air of efficiency, but he was long dead, maybe half a hour.
A policeman came next, examining the body and talking to the witnesses. A Scandinavian tour rep arrived, phoned in his report, talked briefly to one of the paramedics and to me about the dead man. He went away so upset that he had to have a look at the house for sale opposite …
Another family member and his lovely little spaniel joined the throng and the spaniel caused a panic by running off the walkway and on to a roof and then on to a nylon awning, all of us expecting him to crash through, but he made it back.
Six more police arrived, led by a clever type with scene-of-incident equipment and a standard revolver on his hip. We all took it in turns to peer in to see what they were doing... A little later, his No 2 emerged for a friendly chat with the family... he wanted to know where I was from and the family beat me to telling him. Then he asked my age, squeezing my arm investigatively and saying something that drew nods of approval.
More distant family were squeezing in and a neighbour, European or something similar, came for his five minutes and left... a small knot watched from over the road, making the most of the manicured house-for-sale lawn.
Then, gradually, the crowd thinned. One of the sisters said something - it was in Thai but it sounded, in tone, just like "I can't do anything here, so I might as well go" and a few minutes later she rode off, side-saddle, on the back of her husband's motorcycle.
Eventually, there were just a few of us and we began to melt away, the owner to seek help from the monks and me to my room, a few pages of The Nation, the English-language political paper of Thailand, in the luxury of the fan.
But then the owner's sister, a kindly woman, raked me out for the monk's service. He sprinkled holy water on the deathbed, and splashed it round the door before the final service in the room. On the corner of the bed, nearest to the monk, was a cheap plastic lighter that had belonged to the dead man... a possession that linked the living and the dead.
When the monk had finished, the young man's spirit was at rest and the bad luck had been purged from the room and the building.
"I think he would like to die here," said the owner.
First published in VISA 80 (Aug 2008)
A monk is sitting in an old plastic chair in the bedroom next to mine. He is chanting, low and hardly a change in tone. On the floor, in front of him and at the foot of the bed, there are four figures - the house owner, her brother-in-law, her sister who has never been the same since the tsunami tore her 12-year-old daughter from her grip, and me. We sit, our legs and feet folded behind, our hands together in Buddhist prayer.
We are mourning a young Finn and helping his spirit on its way in a land crowded with tragic spirits from the 2004 tsunami. Three hours earlier we had watched him die, his face almost purple with some kind of seizure, his strong young body straining and his bloodless white hands gripping the air like claws.
The owner and her sister were raising the alarm as I returned. He was on his back on the bed, looking very ill, and his bag was half packed on the floor - he had been found because he had not checked out for his flight home.
As we waited, watching him, watching for help, he gave one last strained spasm and just stopped breathing.
The rest of the owner's family started to arrive, then a Scottish tourist doctor, trailing her teenage daughter, who felt for his pulse and said quietly to her daughter, by then being pushed out of the door: "He's dying." They made their escape.
Every minute, more people came, crowding the first-floor outside walkway to the three rooms. We all kept looking in at him, as if he would move, and I followed the repeated descriptions in Thai supplemented with grimaces and expressive hands, nodding my agreement.
Then the paramedics arrived, bringing their yellow trolley in expectation of a dash to hospital, but they could do nothing. A little later the hospital team arrived in their ambulance, sparkling white uniforms and an urgent air of efficiency, but he was long dead, maybe half a hour.
A policeman came next, examining the body and talking to the witnesses. A Scandinavian tour rep arrived, phoned in his report, talked briefly to one of the paramedics and to me about the dead man. He went away so upset that he had to have a look at the house for sale opposite …
Another family member and his lovely little spaniel joined the throng and the spaniel caused a panic by running off the walkway and on to a roof and then on to a nylon awning, all of us expecting him to crash through, but he made it back.
Six more police arrived, led by a clever type with scene-of-incident equipment and a standard revolver on his hip. We all took it in turns to peer in to see what they were doing... A little later, his No 2 emerged for a friendly chat with the family... he wanted to know where I was from and the family beat me to telling him. Then he asked my age, squeezing my arm investigatively and saying something that drew nods of approval.
More distant family were squeezing in and a neighbour, European or something similar, came for his five minutes and left... a small knot watched from over the road, making the most of the manicured house-for-sale lawn.
Then, gradually, the crowd thinned. One of the sisters said something - it was in Thai but it sounded, in tone, just like "I can't do anything here, so I might as well go" and a few minutes later she rode off, side-saddle, on the back of her husband's motorcycle.
Eventually, there were just a few of us and we began to melt away, the owner to seek help from the monks and me to my room, a few pages of The Nation, the English-language political paper of Thailand, in the luxury of the fan.
But then the owner's sister, a kindly woman, raked me out for the monk's service. He sprinkled holy water on the deathbed, and splashed it round the door before the final service in the room. On the corner of the bed, nearest to the monk, was a cheap plastic lighter that had belonged to the dead man... a possession that linked the living and the dead.
When the monk had finished, the young man's spirit was at rest and the bad luck had been purged from the room and the building.
"I think he would like to die here," said the owner.
First published in VISA 80 (Aug 2008)
Sunday 18 October 2015
A (very) Rough Guide to Italy
by Sally Branston
One trip which was
very different from the expectations raised by a newspaper article was to the
Sassi Gorge in southern Italy. The writer, Graham Fawcett, takes a trip to
Basilicata, inspired by the book "Christ Stopped at Eboli" by Carlo
Levi. (I can recommend this book for an insight into the southern Italian mind
and character, and appreciation of their history and culture.) Fawcett wrote a
very romanticised account of his visit and my own experience was somewhat
different.
 |
| Cave Dwellings at Sassi |
Leaving Naples on the
Salerno motorway, we were astounded to see a working electronic information
sign. In two and a half years of living there, we'd never seen such a thing
before and its impact was so surprising that we forgot to be cautious about its
message. "Traffic flow restrictions in Angri," it read helpfully. No
problem. Our motorway route took us straight past the little town of Angri.
Except that it didn't. The motorway was completely closed and all traffic was
being diverted into a narrow, potholed shopping street, totally unsuited to
cope with this additional burden. Hence the traffic restrictions. And,
possibly, the name of the town.
There is no such
thing as a signed diversion in southern Italy. When a road is closed you are
completely on your own. We followed everyone else for a bit until motorway
signs for Salerno eventually reappeared, then found ourselves on a nice new
stretch of motorway, completely unknown to us, but which did eventually lead to
Salerno - from the wrong direction - with the loss of only half an hour's
travelling time.
On towards Potenza,
along quiet A roads through dramatic rocky scenery marred only by the concrete
shells of uncontrolled building projects with which southern Italy is littered.
Near Potenza there was another diversion and also thick fog. We groped our way
up and down hilly, twisting roads until, without explanation, we rejoined the
road we had started on. We looked in vain for somewhere to stop and open our
sandwiches and flask of coffee, but there was nowhere to pull off the road, not
even a service area, and eventually we had to settle for an uninspiring
roadside layby just outside Matera.
The diversions meant
that we didn't arrive in Matera until 2 pm, just as everything was closing for
"riposo". We found the Piccolo Albergo recommended in the Times
with only moderate difficulty and were relieved to find that it was heated.
Many buildings in southern Italy aren't heated in winter and it can be jolly
cold We and two other couples were evidently the only strangers in town on this
Saturday afternoon in January, so we were easy pickings for the locals. We were
admiring the carved doorway of the town museum when the first
"guide" approached and offered to take us round the rock dwellings or
Sassi (for a small fee, of course). "Nothing is labelled and you won't
know what you're looking at without someone to tell you." Nothing is ever
labelled in southern Italy, thus providing official custodians with a useful supplementary
source of income, and guidebooks are rarely on sale, so we know to go well
prepared and do our own research beforehand. We managed to shake him off, but
not so the two stray dogs which adopted us shortly afterwards and persistently
followed us for the next three hours, until we managed to lose them in a busy
shopping street, making me feel very guilty. They were nice, good natured dogs,
but dirty and one was limping badly.
The gorge of the
Sassi is a World Heritage Site and actually boasts a signposted tourist trail
leading down into the cave dwelling area of
the Sasso Caveoso. The path is uneven and in one place has been dug up and
replaced by soft sand. It is also littered with rubbish and evidence of passing
dogs. The trail directs you to a belvedere where you can overlook the gorge,
and this gives the custodian of the Church of Santa Lucia alle Malve chance to
home in on you. Of course you would like to come with him and see the remains
of the frescos painted on the rocky interior wall of the church (the exterior
looks like a lock-up garage in a slum). Only a small fee is involved, although
you get the hard sell when he opens the drawer containing his little hoard of
guidebooks.
We counted ourselves
lucky to escape with the purchase of three only slightly overpriced postcards,
his parting shot being to tell us not to bother to visit the other cave house
area, the Sasso Barisano, as there would be nothing there worth seeing.
In retrospect, this
was probably a mistake, as he no doubt had some personal axe to grind, but the
cold, the terrible seediness of it all; the unwelcome attentions of the dogs
and yet another very persistent "guide" were enough to dissuade us from
venturing further.
The town was just
coming back to life again, although why the South clings to the notion of
siesta in the depths of winter is a mystery to me. We found a nice bar and had
coffee, then killed time back in our hotel room by watching an endless Italian
game show on RAI in which the contestants tried to amass a very small fortune,
100,000 lire at a time. The weather report forecast fog for the next day.
According to my
guidebook, the nearby trattoria was "the best in Matera" - not
necessarily untrue. The food, nonetheless, was poor and unappetising and the
couple ahead of us commandeered the gas heater and had it wheeled to within
inches of their table. As it was the only form of heating in the place, I kept
my coat on.
Next morning there
was indeed thick fog. This, however, did not deter the average local from
wearing his sunglasses. We headed straight off to Metaponto on the coast. There
were some Greek ruins
to visit - just us, the custodian and his cats - and then, in search of a cup
of coffee, we headed to the beach resort area. The sand was beautiful and
clean, the sea flat. There was of course neither car park nor coffee bar nor
anything else open, but we left the car outside the horse butcher's and had a
brief walk on the sand to say we'd seen the Gulf of Taranto.
Following the valley
of the Agri River back towards Salerno, the road took us through miles of
orange groves alternating with rocky cliffs. Anticipating further motorway
problems at Agri, we decided to return to Naples via Avellino. We'd never been
there, as the guide books say it's not worth a special trip, but we thought we
would have a quick look as we were in the area. Big mistake. You could get into
Avellino, but you couldn't get out again. The road we wanted had been closed by
a landslide and all roads led back to the town centre again. Eventually we
asked a local. "Napoli?" he said, stroking his chin, looking up and
down the road for inspiration. You would think we'd asked directions to a
foreign country. But eventually he came up with a route that worked. As all
roads in and out of Naples seemed to be blocked at the moment, I remarked to my
husband that they didn't seem to want to let outsiders in. "No," he
replied sadly, "They just don't want to let anyone escape."
**
Yes, before you tell
me about it, I realise there are certain cultural differences at work here. I
know that many italian people prefer to be shown round places of interest by a
guide, whereas British people tend to prefer to go round alone with a guide
book. Italians prefer to take a long lunch and we prefer to snack and eat our
main meal in the evening, particularly when sight-seeing. But if you had seen
how grotty and dirty this supposed World Heritage Site was, you would have
wondered, as we did, what the point of such a designation was, if it wasn 't
going to lead to its better preservation and some sort of facilities for
tourists. And I tend to disagree with those people who say they've never had a
bad meal in Italy. I've had several - it's like anywhere else in that respect.
This article is taken
from a fuller piece published in VISA issue 44 (winter 2001), part of which was
originally published in the newsletter of ItaliaSIG.
Saturday 10 October 2015
A Tropical Anniversary
by Sally Branston
Unfortunately, due unavoidable circumstances, we didn't discover that our
holiday had been cancelled until after our return to the UK right at the end of
July. So, what to do? We'd already ruled out half the world as being too hot;
too wet; too unstable; too familiar or not special enough for celebrating our
Silver Wedding anniversary, and the combination of a week's sightseeing in Sri
Lanka, followed by a week's swimming and sunbathing in the Maldives had seemed
perfect. There was also the added complication of wanting to be in our chosen
resort on the day of our anniversary, September 4, but needing to be back in
time for my husband to take up a new post on September 10.
 |
| View from the hotel |
So, not an easy
problem to resolve at short notice in August and in the end, we settled for a
week in St Lucia, at the Rendezvous Hotel on the outskirts of Castries,
arriving home at 0630 on the very morning of the new job - not ideal and a long
way to go for just a week. However, beggars can't be choosers and in fact,
after our arrival, we discovered we'd really fallen on our feet. If there's
anyone out there looking for a hotel in which to get married or celebrate a
landmark anniversary, we can really recommend this one.
This was the first
time we'd been on an all inclusive package holiday and we were a bit wary,
being sure that a lot of "extras" would appear on the final bill. But
there were no rip-offs on this trip. The only things we paid for at the end of
the week were a bottle of wine we'd had from the wine list rather than the free
wines on offer at every meal, and a substantial packed lunch (with wine) we'd
ordered to take out one day. And we didn't really need to have spent on these
two items as the free table wine was excellent (and there was a choice) and
there was always food on offer at all hours of the day, so we could have
skipped lunch altogether and come back and scoffed sandwiches and cake at
teatime.
Included in the
holiday were the services of the registrar and a very nice hotel employee who
took photographs of us renewing our vows on the beach under a hibiscus archway;
champagne after the ceremony; more champagne in our room later; a fruit basket;
flower arrangement; cocktails with the assistant manager and two other couples
who'd just got married; manager's cocktail party and a special celebration
dinner in the hotel's a la carte restaurant. Food was plentiful and generally
very good, and there was plenty to drink (free) at all hours of the day,
including a swim-up bar in one of the pools. Interestingly enough, with all
this alcohol on sale, the mostly British clientele was very well behaved,
perhaps because it was a "couples only" hotel, the average age of the
guests being late twenties.
There were also lots
of activities on offer, rather in the manner of a traditional holiday camp, so
we could have tried our hand at beach volleyball, archery, aerobics, sub aqua,
water-skiing, taken swimming lessons or joined in the competition to mix the
cocktail of the week. Only being there for a week, though, and wanting to spend
most of our time on the beach or in the pool, we didn't have time to try any of
these out and being hit quite hard by jet lag in the first few days, nor did we
test the claim that the piano bar "only closes when the last guest
leaves".
 |
| The Pitons |
We took one excursion
to go whale watching and had a hire car for two days. The boat trip was quite
pleasant, but we only saw a few dolphins and some pilot whales who popped up
very briefly and disappeared as soon as they saw us. The hire car was quite
useful, as there are only two main roads down the length of St Lucia and the
coastal route, which gives good views, including the island's landmark Pitons,
is very twisty. So, for those of us prone to motion sickness, it was much
better to have the freedom to stop frequently than to be on an excursion bus.
However, being unaccompanied, you are much more at the mercy of unscrupulous
locals, although I gather it's not as bad as Jamaica.
If you're not involved in some official capacity in tourism or agriculture on St Lucia, I don't suppose there's much to do, but some of the local young men can be quite aggressive in demanding money to give you directions, whether you want them or not, or to act as your guide or sell you a necklace you don't want, to the extent that it makes us Brits feel very uncomfortable. We got stuck with one such guide at the Diamond Botanical Gardens and yet if we hadn't accepted his services, we'd have had to leave our car at the mercy of him and his friends in an unattended car park, so it was a difficult dilemma. The gardens were very beautiful and a photographer's dream, but we were rushed round by our "guide" and then he demanded quite a lot of money "with menaces" as a tip afterwards. I could see why some people take these all-inclusive holidays and never bother to venture outside their hotel, and I think you need longer than a week to get a feel for these situations and how best to handle them.
If you're not involved in some official capacity in tourism or agriculture on St Lucia, I don't suppose there's much to do, but some of the local young men can be quite aggressive in demanding money to give you directions, whether you want them or not, or to act as your guide or sell you a necklace you don't want, to the extent that it makes us Brits feel very uncomfortable. We got stuck with one such guide at the Diamond Botanical Gardens and yet if we hadn't accepted his services, we'd have had to leave our car at the mercy of him and his friends in an unattended car park, so it was a difficult dilemma. The gardens were very beautiful and a photographer's dream, but we were rushed round by our "guide" and then he demanded quite a lot of money "with menaces" as a tip afterwards. I could see why some people take these all-inclusive holidays and never bother to venture outside their hotel, and I think you need longer than a week to get a feel for these situations and how best to handle them.
 |
| Torch Ginger |
But the true beauty
of St Lucia, particularly for gardening enthusiasts, lies in its vegetation.
Much of the island is covered with banana plantations and you can see mangoes,
coconuts, gourds and cocoa pods growing. Every tropical houseplant you've ever
seen in a garden centre grows outside there and if you look closely, you'll see
them being visited by hummingbirds. Amongst others, we saw dracaena, crotons,
bougainvillea, strelitzia, dicksonia, hibiscus, bromeiads, chenille plant,
anthurium, ornamental bananas and ginger, many of which were growing in the
hotel gardens. One word of warning, though, you should keep a look out for the
highly poisonous manchineel trees. There were some of these in the hotel
grounds as well and they are so poisonous that you can't even touch any part of
the tree. Apparently it's so dangerous that you shouldn't shelter under one if
it rains, as the water running off can cause burns. It did rain, too, whilst we
were there - great torrential downpours, lasting a few minutes and no real
inconvenience at all.
But I think one of
the strongest memories I retain of St Lucia is the great night-time cacophony
of the tree frogs. These tiny creatures make an enormous noise in inverse
proportion to their size. I couldn't believe how small they were. And where do
they go in the daytime? The noise is terrific and makes the warm, dark nights
seem very tropical.
We barely had time to
scratch the surface of St Lucia on this brief visit, but I can highly recommend
it to anyone in search of a tropical paradise. And our experience of an
all-inclusive package holiday was highly favourable as well. Full marks to St
Lucia.
First published in
VISA issue 45 (spring 2002)
Friday 2 October 2015
Local Life, Local Death
by John
Keeble
You know what life’s like. One day, you have everything under control. The next, you have a tiger by the tail.
This was different. I had the tiger by the head. Or, more accurately, his head was in my lap and a monk was telling me: “That’s right. Stroke him. Let him know you will not hurt him.”
This was not the usual stopover in Bangkok: it was altogether more fascinating and exciting - and available just a couple of hours west of the city.
The visit
to the tiger rescue centre at a forest monastery was part of a few days that
took in the dark tragedies of the past and the rich life of today along the
River Kwai and the Death Railway route where 99,044 of the 254,711 servicemen
and Asian labourers died.
June and I, en route to Australia, flew into the City of Angels and checked into the Grand China Princess, a friendly hubbub of a skyscraper hotel on the edge of Chinatown. It has a fabulous revolving restaurant - Japanese cuisine, good vegetarian selection - on the top floor. And a double room at £22 a night makes it a bargain.
Normally, we would use public transport in Thailand but we arrived in Bangkok tired from the previous few months and chose a luxury option...staying on a raft on the River Kwai with the service including a pick-up from the China Princess.
So, at 6.00 am the next day, we were on the road to Kanchanaburi on Thailand’s western border with Burma (aka Myanmar)...by midday, we were doing a quick round of the Bridge Over The River Kwai sites - the Don Rak war cemetery in the middle of town, the museum next to it and the bridge itself. For some people that would be long enough but, for us, it was just a recce for our planned return after a few days R&R on the raft.
By early afternoon we were on a longtail boat gliding up the River Kwai - stunningly beautiful in its moods from dawn mists to the deep hues of sunset - and into the mountains and jungles until we reached the River Kwai Jungle Rafts.
The rafts - with their cabins, open-air restaurant and even a small folk theatre - stretched into the arc of a river bend, the jungle tangle above them hiding a Mon settlement that staffs and runs the services available. The trailing flowers glowed, the welcoming smiles invited us on board and the sparkle of the river spoke a language of tranquillity.
We spent three nights and four days based there, fascinated by the mists and colours of the river, the riverbanks and the people - and, after so much planning, ending up at Tiger Temple, the Wat Pa Luangta Bua Yannasampanno, famous worldwide for its rescue work... “The monastery is not only for man, but for all animals who seek the peacefulness.”
This is where the monks take in tigers, some orphaned by hunters, some rescued from people abusing them. They calm the cats and, with kindness, get them to accept people. They hope that the new generation of tigers - offspring of the rescue tigers - can be trained for the wild to help stem the loss of the IndoChinese tiger population - but the rescue tigers will never be able to go back to the wild.
Pai, our Mon guide who had organised the transport, dropped us off at the monastery entrance with an arrangement for him to return for us later and we made our way into the grounds.
Although the land was given for the purpose of building a wat, and a Buddhist abbot and his temple donated millions of bahts towards the project, there is a high cost of feeding and caring for the tigers - plus hundreds of other animals that use the monastery’s 275 acres as a welcome sanctuary. The monks have come up with an answer: they welcome visitors and the money raised, including 300 bahts (about £4) entrance fee, feeds the animals. Guess which nationalities top the list of visitors; Britons and Aussies.
We wandered through the grounds, found the temple and there met Phra Acharn Sam, a monk who helps with the temple and the tigers. He was having his last meal of the day with some novices and he pointed us in the right direction to meet the Abbot, Phra Acharn Phusit.
When the Abbot came, he was not alone. He had a fully-grown tiger walking by his side like a well-trained dog. A dozen tourists were waiting, too, so the meeting was not exactly what we had expected.
The Abbot slipped a chain on the tiger, left him lightly secured to a tree like you might leave your dog for five minutes outside the newsagents, and supervised the local village helpers letting out the four three-month-old cubs and getting ready most of the other tigers for their exercise.
While everything was being prepared, the cubs did their best to get into any kind of mischief they could.
As Abbot Phusam and others walked off with the tigers towards Tiger Canyon, he invited visitors to walk with him and his tiger one at a time. A helper took photos with visitors’ cameras.
Fifteen minutes later, this strange procession arrived in Tiger Canyon and the tigers were given their favourite places to lounge in the sun; Abbot Phusam talked to them; the visitors waited, amazed at being close to the tigers and seeing the monks and helpers even closer.
Then came the surprise for almost everyone. If anyone wanted to get up close and personal with these eight grown tigers, they could - for no more than a small donation to the fund for the tigers’ food and a little kindness to the tigers.
And, one by one, we were introduced to the lounging tigers and the village helpers used our own cameras with considerable skill to capture these priceless encounters... incredible moments of contact with creatures whose image is one of a terrible hunter.
Unfortunately, it is the tiger that is the hunted to extinction and the stories of cruelty to tigers are awful. Their numbers are dropping throughout South East Asia despite their protected species status.
At Tiger Temple, the monks have been building a 12-acre moated island to house the cubs under training. It has a new block for the tigers when they are not roaming and, over the top, a floor to accommodate visitors and academics studying them. The facility, after years of building, is due to open later this year.
We walked round it with Phra Acharn Sam, looking down on Tiger Canyon at one end and following it round to the point where the tigers live now. By the time we got there, Abbot Phusam had led the procession back... it was time to put the tigers in their night cages.
As the light faded, the other animals came for their nightly feed - hundreds of them, especially wild boars who have made it their sanctuary after the monks nursed an injured boar back to health.
Our new friend Pai had arrived in the canyon before we were ready to leave, and he was as thrilled to meet the tigers as we were... later it was dark, long after other visitors had left, before the three of us met one of the rafts’ managers who had been despatched to collect us. It was too late to get back by river, so we joined his round of business collections and then went in the back way, down the mountain trail too steep for anything but a four-wheel-drive and a very strong nerve.
Next day came the next fascinating foray into local life and death. That stretch of border has always been a killing ground for Thais and Burmese - it is where they have fought over the centuries and, as they say, it is marked with the bones of their finest young people.
But the people of the area also honour the Second World War deaths of Allied soldiers, Asian labourers and even Japanese soldiers from the infamous Thai-Burma railway.
That day, we saw Hellfire Pass, where Allied prisoners worked around the clock to cut their way through solid rock for the railway pass. They did it by hand, chiselling and with compressor drills that one held and turned and the other hit with a hammer. The Japanese put dynamite in the drill holes and blew the rock apart.
That part of the railway started on 25 April 1943, the day the bridge over the River Kwai was completed, and the next month the devastatingly brutal “Speedo” period, where prisoners and Asian labourers were forced to work harder and longer, began. By the middle of May, the first prisoners were dying of cholera … August, the rainy season with its diseases and difficulties, was the worst month for deaths but Hellfire Pass work went on until it was finished the following month. It got its name from the flames and glow of lights at night as men worked until they dropped. And for the cruelty that left 300 men dead.
June, Pai and I walked down the old track, each sleeper said to represent a life lost, as the peaceful mist lingered in the valley below and the sun struggled through the trees. As we looked ahead at the last bend, the disused Hellfire Pass stood timelessly in view... the same shapes we had seen in the sketches made when the prisoners hacked and blasted their way through.
In the rock sides, the marks of the chisels were still there... a broken compressor drill sticks out of the rock as it was left more than 60 years ago...the plaques remembering the medical heroes who saved lives as they could... and the crosses and poppies, the blood red symbols of remembrance from another continent and another war.
By the time we had seen it all, including the black marble memorial, groups of tourists were being brought in: Australians, Thais, Europeans and Americans, Japanese, dozens of nationalities, were making their awed way through the pass.
It was not until the next day that we went on the railway. The old railway was sold to the Thai government at the end of the war and closed because of fighting in border areas. Later, part of the route was closed forever by a huge reservoir.
But, in 1957, some of the route was reopened. We joined the train for 90 minutes on the way back to Kanchanaburi, leaning out of the doors for views of the train crossing the trestle bridge and to see the River Kwai far beneath.
The coach ride back to Bangkok was something we skipped. The ever-helpful and kindly river raft people dropped us off at the River Kwai Hotel and we booked in for a couple of nights... enough time to revisit and photograph the cemeteries and the bridge.
We spent much of a day at the Don Rak war cemetery, which has nearly 7,000 graves - a spacious parade of the dead, their headstones in neat lines radiating out from the cemetery’s large cross. British, Australian, Dutch... some identified only as an Allied soldier... some as no more than a soldier of the Second World War.
They were there in moving simplicity: W J Pinckney, air gunner RAF, age 21, ‘He sleeps in a hero’s grave, the son I loved so dear’... J Buurman, Dutch infantry soldier... R G Jeffrey, the Cambridge Regiment, age 22, ‘RIP until the dawn breaks and the shadows pass away’... An Allied soldier, ‘Known Unto God’... T W Rolls, 2/3 Australian Machine Gun Battalion, age 25, ‘Ever remembered’...
As Thai cemetery staff worked on, weeding and watering, the visitors never stopped coming in to see the graves, to read the inscriptions.
Next to the cemetery is an incredibly good museum: the story of the time, the stories of the men who lived through it, the stories of the men who did not survive.
A few miles away, the famous bridge still stands - or, at least, the concrete and steel bridge still stands, looking very much like the Second World War photographs despite the many times it was bombed and the six decades since. The first bridge, made of wood for use while the other bridge was being constructed, has long gone.
On our second visit to the bridge, we arrived at dawn... a quiet time before the city came to life and we explored the structure and the surrounding area, photographing, remembering.
It is a working railway, a working bridge, but in Thai style anyone can use it as a footpath despite gaps underfoot and the risk of falls into the broad river below. As we walked it, others started going about their days - Thais using it to get from their homes to their work, an elderly serene man who just walked it, hands behind his back and going nowhere except the bridge.
The whole area is open, the riverbanks as well as the railway line, shrines alongside girls selling River Kwai books and a restaurant looking along the river and up at the steel of the bridge. Pictures of prisoners bartering for food and others starving when the worst of the times gripped them can be seen in another museum, sprawling along the riverbank and full of fascinating exhibits ranging from a Japanese wartime train - made in England - to propaganda posters and weapons. And just down the road, quiet but well-cared-for, is the Japanese cemetery. The memories were there - the Japanese lost one in 13 of their men - but the visitors, apart from us, seemed to stay away.
The victims
This information, from the museum next to Don Rak cemetery, gives the nationalities breakdown and the percentage of deaths compared with the number of men working on the railway. They show very clearly that, while the prisoners of war suffered cruelly, the Asian forced labourers had even worse conditions and higher death tolls.
Tamils and Malays, 42,000 died, 60% of those forced to work; Burmese, 40,000, 50%; British, 6,904, 20%; Javanese, 2,900, 40%; Australian, 2,802, 20%; Dutch, 2,782, 15%; Chinese 500; American, 131; Aminese (French Indochinese), 25; Japanese and Korean, 1,000.
Dry season 1942-1943 American deaths: 0, Australian deaths: 27, Dutch deaths: 136, British deaths: 255
Speedo period, 1943 American deaths: 4, Australian deaths: 148, Dutch deaths: 418, British deaths: 430
Wet season, June – October 1943 American deaths: 88, Australian deaths: 1,630, Dutch deaths: 1,303, British deaths: 4,283
First published in VISA issue 68 (Aug 2006)
You know what life’s like. One day, you have everything under control. The next, you have a tiger by the tail.
This was different. I had the tiger by the head. Or, more accurately, his head was in my lap and a monk was telling me: “That’s right. Stroke him. Let him know you will not hurt him.”
This was not the usual stopover in Bangkok: it was altogether more fascinating and exciting - and available just a couple of hours west of the city.
 |
| John, an Abbot and a Tiger |
June and I, en route to Australia, flew into the City of Angels and checked into the Grand China Princess, a friendly hubbub of a skyscraper hotel on the edge of Chinatown. It has a fabulous revolving restaurant - Japanese cuisine, good vegetarian selection - on the top floor. And a double room at £22 a night makes it a bargain.
Normally, we would use public transport in Thailand but we arrived in Bangkok tired from the previous few months and chose a luxury option...staying on a raft on the River Kwai with the service including a pick-up from the China Princess.
So, at 6.00 am the next day, we were on the road to Kanchanaburi on Thailand’s western border with Burma (aka Myanmar)...by midday, we were doing a quick round of the Bridge Over The River Kwai sites - the Don Rak war cemetery in the middle of town, the museum next to it and the bridge itself. For some people that would be long enough but, for us, it was just a recce for our planned return after a few days R&R on the raft.
By early afternoon we were on a longtail boat gliding up the River Kwai - stunningly beautiful in its moods from dawn mists to the deep hues of sunset - and into the mountains and jungles until we reached the River Kwai Jungle Rafts.
The rafts - with their cabins, open-air restaurant and even a small folk theatre - stretched into the arc of a river bend, the jungle tangle above them hiding a Mon settlement that staffs and runs the services available. The trailing flowers glowed, the welcoming smiles invited us on board and the sparkle of the river spoke a language of tranquillity.
We spent three nights and four days based there, fascinated by the mists and colours of the river, the riverbanks and the people - and, after so much planning, ending up at Tiger Temple, the Wat Pa Luangta Bua Yannasampanno, famous worldwide for its rescue work... “The monastery is not only for man, but for all animals who seek the peacefulness.”
This is where the monks take in tigers, some orphaned by hunters, some rescued from people abusing them. They calm the cats and, with kindness, get them to accept people. They hope that the new generation of tigers - offspring of the rescue tigers - can be trained for the wild to help stem the loss of the IndoChinese tiger population - but the rescue tigers will never be able to go back to the wild.
Pai, our Mon guide who had organised the transport, dropped us off at the monastery entrance with an arrangement for him to return for us later and we made our way into the grounds.
Although the land was given for the purpose of building a wat, and a Buddhist abbot and his temple donated millions of bahts towards the project, there is a high cost of feeding and caring for the tigers - plus hundreds of other animals that use the monastery’s 275 acres as a welcome sanctuary. The monks have come up with an answer: they welcome visitors and the money raised, including 300 bahts (about £4) entrance fee, feeds the animals. Guess which nationalities top the list of visitors; Britons and Aussies.
We wandered through the grounds, found the temple and there met Phra Acharn Sam, a monk who helps with the temple and the tigers. He was having his last meal of the day with some novices and he pointed us in the right direction to meet the Abbot, Phra Acharn Phusit.
When the Abbot came, he was not alone. He had a fully-grown tiger walking by his side like a well-trained dog. A dozen tourists were waiting, too, so the meeting was not exactly what we had expected.
The Abbot slipped a chain on the tiger, left him lightly secured to a tree like you might leave your dog for five minutes outside the newsagents, and supervised the local village helpers letting out the four three-month-old cubs and getting ready most of the other tigers for their exercise.
While everything was being prepared, the cubs did their best to get into any kind of mischief they could.
As Abbot Phusam and others walked off with the tigers towards Tiger Canyon, he invited visitors to walk with him and his tiger one at a time. A helper took photos with visitors’ cameras.
Fifteen minutes later, this strange procession arrived in Tiger Canyon and the tigers were given their favourite places to lounge in the sun; Abbot Phusam talked to them; the visitors waited, amazed at being close to the tigers and seeing the monks and helpers even closer.
Then came the surprise for almost everyone. If anyone wanted to get up close and personal with these eight grown tigers, they could - for no more than a small donation to the fund for the tigers’ food and a little kindness to the tigers.
And, one by one, we were introduced to the lounging tigers and the village helpers used our own cameras with considerable skill to capture these priceless encounters... incredible moments of contact with creatures whose image is one of a terrible hunter.
Unfortunately, it is the tiger that is the hunted to extinction and the stories of cruelty to tigers are awful. Their numbers are dropping throughout South East Asia despite their protected species status.
At Tiger Temple, the monks have been building a 12-acre moated island to house the cubs under training. It has a new block for the tigers when they are not roaming and, over the top, a floor to accommodate visitors and academics studying them. The facility, after years of building, is due to open later this year.
We walked round it with Phra Acharn Sam, looking down on Tiger Canyon at one end and following it round to the point where the tigers live now. By the time we got there, Abbot Phusam had led the procession back... it was time to put the tigers in their night cages.
As the light faded, the other animals came for their nightly feed - hundreds of them, especially wild boars who have made it their sanctuary after the monks nursed an injured boar back to health.
Our new friend Pai had arrived in the canyon before we were ready to leave, and he was as thrilled to meet the tigers as we were... later it was dark, long after other visitors had left, before the three of us met one of the rafts’ managers who had been despatched to collect us. It was too late to get back by river, so we joined his round of business collections and then went in the back way, down the mountain trail too steep for anything but a four-wheel-drive and a very strong nerve.
Next day came the next fascinating foray into local life and death. That stretch of border has always been a killing ground for Thais and Burmese - it is where they have fought over the centuries and, as they say, it is marked with the bones of their finest young people.
But the people of the area also honour the Second World War deaths of Allied soldiers, Asian labourers and even Japanese soldiers from the infamous Thai-Burma railway.
That day, we saw Hellfire Pass, where Allied prisoners worked around the clock to cut their way through solid rock for the railway pass. They did it by hand, chiselling and with compressor drills that one held and turned and the other hit with a hammer. The Japanese put dynamite in the drill holes and blew the rock apart.
That part of the railway started on 25 April 1943, the day the bridge over the River Kwai was completed, and the next month the devastatingly brutal “Speedo” period, where prisoners and Asian labourers were forced to work harder and longer, began. By the middle of May, the first prisoners were dying of cholera … August, the rainy season with its diseases and difficulties, was the worst month for deaths but Hellfire Pass work went on until it was finished the following month. It got its name from the flames and glow of lights at night as men worked until they dropped. And for the cruelty that left 300 men dead.
June, Pai and I walked down the old track, each sleeper said to represent a life lost, as the peaceful mist lingered in the valley below and the sun struggled through the trees. As we looked ahead at the last bend, the disused Hellfire Pass stood timelessly in view... the same shapes we had seen in the sketches made when the prisoners hacked and blasted their way through.
In the rock sides, the marks of the chisels were still there... a broken compressor drill sticks out of the rock as it was left more than 60 years ago...the plaques remembering the medical heroes who saved lives as they could... and the crosses and poppies, the blood red symbols of remembrance from another continent and another war.
By the time we had seen it all, including the black marble memorial, groups of tourists were being brought in: Australians, Thais, Europeans and Americans, Japanese, dozens of nationalities, were making their awed way through the pass.
It was not until the next day that we went on the railway. The old railway was sold to the Thai government at the end of the war and closed because of fighting in border areas. Later, part of the route was closed forever by a huge reservoir.
But, in 1957, some of the route was reopened. We joined the train for 90 minutes on the way back to Kanchanaburi, leaning out of the doors for views of the train crossing the trestle bridge and to see the River Kwai far beneath.
The coach ride back to Bangkok was something we skipped. The ever-helpful and kindly river raft people dropped us off at the River Kwai Hotel and we booked in for a couple of nights... enough time to revisit and photograph the cemeteries and the bridge.
We spent much of a day at the Don Rak war cemetery, which has nearly 7,000 graves - a spacious parade of the dead, their headstones in neat lines radiating out from the cemetery’s large cross. British, Australian, Dutch... some identified only as an Allied soldier... some as no more than a soldier of the Second World War.
They were there in moving simplicity: W J Pinckney, air gunner RAF, age 21, ‘He sleeps in a hero’s grave, the son I loved so dear’... J Buurman, Dutch infantry soldier... R G Jeffrey, the Cambridge Regiment, age 22, ‘RIP until the dawn breaks and the shadows pass away’... An Allied soldier, ‘Known Unto God’... T W Rolls, 2/3 Australian Machine Gun Battalion, age 25, ‘Ever remembered’...
As Thai cemetery staff worked on, weeding and watering, the visitors never stopped coming in to see the graves, to read the inscriptions.
Next to the cemetery is an incredibly good museum: the story of the time, the stories of the men who lived through it, the stories of the men who did not survive.
A few miles away, the famous bridge still stands - or, at least, the concrete and steel bridge still stands, looking very much like the Second World War photographs despite the many times it was bombed and the six decades since. The first bridge, made of wood for use while the other bridge was being constructed, has long gone.
On our second visit to the bridge, we arrived at dawn... a quiet time before the city came to life and we explored the structure and the surrounding area, photographing, remembering.
It is a working railway, a working bridge, but in Thai style anyone can use it as a footpath despite gaps underfoot and the risk of falls into the broad river below. As we walked it, others started going about their days - Thais using it to get from their homes to their work, an elderly serene man who just walked it, hands behind his back and going nowhere except the bridge.
The whole area is open, the riverbanks as well as the railway line, shrines alongside girls selling River Kwai books and a restaurant looking along the river and up at the steel of the bridge. Pictures of prisoners bartering for food and others starving when the worst of the times gripped them can be seen in another museum, sprawling along the riverbank and full of fascinating exhibits ranging from a Japanese wartime train - made in England - to propaganda posters and weapons. And just down the road, quiet but well-cared-for, is the Japanese cemetery. The memories were there - the Japanese lost one in 13 of their men - but the visitors, apart from us, seemed to stay away.
The victims
This information, from the museum next to Don Rak cemetery, gives the nationalities breakdown and the percentage of deaths compared with the number of men working on the railway. They show very clearly that, while the prisoners of war suffered cruelly, the Asian forced labourers had even worse conditions and higher death tolls.
Tamils and Malays, 42,000 died, 60% of those forced to work; Burmese, 40,000, 50%; British, 6,904, 20%; Javanese, 2,900, 40%; Australian, 2,802, 20%; Dutch, 2,782, 15%; Chinese 500; American, 131; Aminese (French Indochinese), 25; Japanese and Korean, 1,000.
Dry season 1942-1943 American deaths: 0, Australian deaths: 27, Dutch deaths: 136, British deaths: 255
Speedo period, 1943 American deaths: 4, Australian deaths: 148, Dutch deaths: 418, British deaths: 430
Wet season, June – October 1943 American deaths: 88, Australian deaths: 1,630, Dutch deaths: 1,303, British deaths: 4,283
First published in VISA issue 68 (Aug 2006)
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