Georgia

Georgia is one of the most important geo-political countries in the world. Straddling Europe and Asia, it is a land full of impressive mountains, small quirky towns and beautiful sandy beaches along the Black Sea. The former Soviet Satellite has had a difficult recent history - not least because of its most famous son Stalin. It is a key link in the vital BTC (Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan) pipeline that supplies Europe with gas from the Caspian Sea. The pipeline subverts Russia - a canny move that has taken away some Moscow’s cards in the game for control of natural resources in the Caucasus.

Georgia hit the headlines in 2008 with its conflict with Russia, an inevitable clash. After Georgia gained its independence in 1991 tensions in South Ossetia and Abkhazia came to the fore. Territorial disputes have been a legacy of the Soviet Union’s collapse, but few have been more pronounced than those of Georgia’s. Located on the northern border with Russia, both areas are effectively self-governed with little power exerted over them by the capital Tbilisi. The regions are also notorious for organised crime and in the early 1990s, many Georgians were forced to leave Abkhazia during fighting with separatists and have never returned. South Ossetia and Abkhazia wish to be recognised in their own right, but neither Georgia nor the international community are willing to do so. As well as containing oil and gas pipelines, they also have busy ports and tourist resorts. It remains a point of contention with Russia, and is unlikely to be resolved anytime soon.

In 2007 I spent a few weeks in Georgia, prior to the eruption of violence. I arrived in the capital in time for the Independence Day parade through Rustaveli Street. The shimmering spectacle of tanks, helicopters, jets and troops was a clear sign from president Sakashvilli that any blows delivered by Putin’s Russia would not be taken lying down. Crowds lined the streets to watch and cheer with pride.

I watched the display whilst munching my favourite Georgian dish, katchapuri. This is the mother of all pasties and sold from street stalls. Georgian food is very heavy, but delicious. One glance at it is enough to make the arteries scream for mercy. After a day’s walking around the steep cobbled streets, it is the perfect way to relax, along with a glass of the famous local wine.

I took the bus along the beautiful road to Vani in in the west of Georgia. Here legend has it that Jason and Argonauts came to steal the golden fleece. Locals used to use sheepskins to trap gold particles coming down rivers from the Caucasus mountains. The fleeces would then be dried and the captured gold shaken out. All that remains from that time are chunks of the city wall, most of which nature has reclaimed, and a small museum dedicated to the Argonaut tale.

I continued onto Kutaisi, Georgia’s second city and a popular holiday destination during Soviet times. Now all but abandoned in favour of foreign parts, the town still retained a certain charm. A grand old dame who has lost her beauty and elegance but clings onto it. The town is overlooked by a lovely 1000 year old Orthodox cathedral, which is a world UNESCO site. Only one of the stunning wrought iron gates remain, the other having been looted during one of the city’s numerous sackings over the centuries.

My final stop before leaving Georgia was the delightful Batumi, another Soviet resort that lounges by the Black Sea. A perfect place to view sunsets, sample more of the local wine and an ice-cream or two, you can understand why Vladimir Putin takes his holidays along this coast. Batumi is also of note for an almost intact Roman fort where St Matthew is reputed to be buried. The fort was one of the most northerly outposts of the Roman empire and still holds a certain imposing majesty. The huge thick walls are now home to a beautiful garden full of roses, trees and songbirds. Tranquillity has at least reached one part of Georgia.

Armenia

One of the most interesting border crossings in the world has to be that of Iran and Armenia. Traversing over the river border from a declared Islamic republic to the world’s first Christian country offers a stark contrast in cultures. Almost like Superman, men and women are transformed from their long, dark vestments to skimpy Soviet garb, vodka in hand. Iran is literally shed like a skin, as they pile into the taxis that take them the mountainous 12 hour drive to Yerevan, the capital. As a final touch, the Armenian currency is the Dram.

Yerevan is the logical base for someone travelling to the main sites of Armenia. Located in the centre, it has excellent transport links and clean, cheap accommodation. Like most former Soviet cities, it is crammed with huge, monolithic stone museums, theatres and government buildings that surround cobbled squares suitable for communist rallies. With 1.2 million people inhabiting the city, it is fairly laid back and peppered with greenery, al fresco cafes. It also crawls with the obligatory NGO and diplomatic staff in cars that would cost what most Armenians would earn in a lifetime.

Lingering forlornly in the background is Mount Ararat, where Noah parked his ark, and the national symbol of Armenia. Formerly contained within its borders, the mountain is now in modern day Turkey as a result of a land grab during World War One. The ‘Young Turk’ government began a systematic genocide of the Armenian population and drove them east and abroad in fear of their lives. The new border, the river Arax, has never been open since. Turkey denies genocide, but Armenians estimate that 1.5 million perished. Relations have yet to thaw between the two countries.
Memories of the genocide clearly permeate today’s Armenia. The genocide memorial stabs into the skies over Yerevan like a thorn. Composed from a split pyramid, each side representing the east and west (the lost part) of the country‘s original area. This is flanked by 12 monolithic slabs of stone, each representing a lost Armenian province, whilst an eternal flame flickers at the heart.

Armenia is no stranger to tragedy. In 1988 it suffered an earthquake that claimed the lives of 25,000 and left half a million homeless, destroying entire towns in its wake. During the height of the Persian empire, they were also kidnapped and transported to other regions as they were renowned masons.

The heart of Christian Armenia is the small town of Echmiadzin, where in 301 the King was converted. The red cathedral is a beautiful mass of spires and domes in a walled square, lush with trees, grass and flowers. People of all ages congregate along the sides or perch on the benches to contemplate or observe the comings and goings of the church. Incense fills the inside of the cathedral, which mingles with the soft candle light and the singing of the choir to create an evocative atmosphere. Worshippers light candles in memory of loved ones or in prayer. Candles are available singly or in packs of 100 if you have been exceptionally sinful, and are placed in boxes overflowing with wax and supplication.
Geghard, another interesting church, is one of the oldest in Armenia, and is where a part of the spear that pierced Christ’s side is alleged to be housed. The public bus only travelled a part of the distance, so I had to hitch the rest of the way to the church. Putting on my most winning smile I stuck out my thumb and a minibus pulled over to let me on. I was greeted by a sea of small, eager faces - I had been recruited on a primary school excursion. None of the teachers were concerned about a disclosure, and were happy to find someone for their pupils to practise their English with. The pupils were on a history trip, and together we took in the intricate fusion of celtic and early Christian design. Highly ornamented crosses bedecked the walls, splintered by shafts of light. I spent the rest of the day bombarded with questions about who my favourite power ranger was, how many pets I had, and poignantly if I believed that the Armenian genocide happened.

Armenia has a strong history with other religions, and on the road north, there is a first century BC pagan temple. Perched on the edge of the vast Debed Canyon, Garni flouts its anachronistic classical Greek style. A former Royal summer residence, much of the original complex has been lost, but parts have been reconstructed to give an excellent impression of the original building. Held up by tall columns, which in turn are held by carvings of Atlantis, Garni still possesses parts of its original mosaics on the floor.
The Debed Canyon snakes up the northern half of Armenia to the town of Stepanovan. The last major post before leaving the country is named after the first Bolshevik in the area. Stepanovan the man was so revered that the local museum was built around where he lived, with this house as the centrepiece. I took a stroll along the top of the Canyon to a ruined fortress, flanked by two of the omnipotent stray dogs that roam the countryside. They were obviously wise to the soft tourist who would buy them tidbits from a corner shop for their companionship. Interestingly, as is common in other parts of the former USSR, puppies that will be used on farms have their ears and tails are docked. If attacked by wolves or stray dogs, these are its most vulnerable parts and could cause it to bleed to death. Dogs are guards here, as opposed to our pampered pooches.

Despite all their sufferings, the Armenians, and their dogs, are very kind, open and hospitable people trying to make their voice heard and to find their way in a post-communist world. With volatile neighbours and situated in a NATO expansionist area they need all the candles and prayers they can get.

Trans-Mongolian Railway

If you were to ask me who I thought was the Man of the Millennium, Genghis Khan would not be top of my list.
However, judging by the vast poster declaring Mr Khan to be just that on the side of the bus shelter in Ulan Bator, the Mongolian nation disagrees. The Mongolian capital was stop number one on my 5000-mile journey from Beijing to Moscow on one of the longest rail lines in the world: the Trans-Mongolian Railway.
Armed with a Russian phrase book and vitamin tablets (in the belief that I would have nothing but mutton and vodka to nourish me for the next month, I accordingly stocked up to stave off scurvy), I had ventured into the heart of the largest land empire the world has ever seen.
The immense grassy plains, known as steppes, stretched out with sandy, calloused fingers, as if trying to grasp their former kingdom that had once touched the edges of France. The gnarled digits were speckled with wild horses and camels, and the occasional ger camp (a ger being a round, sturdy tent, a key part of traditional Mongolian life: forty-three per cent of the population is nomadic).
Ulan Bator is not just the world's coldest capital but also the farthest from the ocean. Eager to sample some of the local cuisine, I asked the owner of the guest house I was staying in where I could try good Mongolian food. She thought for a moment, then replied, "I can tell you where to get good food, and where to get Mongolian food, but good Mongolian food? No." Thank God for my vitamins.
That evening I went to see some traditional theatre. The highlight was the bizarre, mesmerising throat singing. An essential part of ancient Mongolian shamanism, it sounds rather like a grasshopper playing a didgeridoo, and has to be heard to be believed.
The main draw of Mongolia is its countryside, and a few nights staying in a ger in Terelj National Park was on the cards. With images of me galloping across the wilds of Mongolia, I couldn't resist the opportunity to horse-ride. What I didn't count on was having the most disobedient horse in Asia, with a penchant for stopping in rivers just where the flow reached my knees. That evening, saddle-sore and giving up any dreams of being a cowgirl, I drowned my sorrows with fermented mare's milk.
Contrary to popular belief, it is not possible to hop on and off the TransMongolian/Siberian Railway using just one ticket. If you wish to stop, it is necessary to purchase individual tickets for each leg of the journey. Having decided that Irkutsk, Siberia, was my next call, I managed to procure a ticket using appalling Russian, and hopped on board the train. The carriages are divided into three classes: first class has two beds in each berth, second class has four beds, while if you opt for third class you are confronted with a forest of twitching feet, as beds are essentially placed where there are spaces. At the end of each carriage, regardless of class, there is an urn of boiling water so that tea and instant noodles can be consumed whenever the urge arises. Keeping a very territorial and watchful eye over events are fearsome carriage attendants known as provodnitsas. The train stops briefly at stations along the way, allowing you to purchase goods from swarms of babushkas, including, happily for my scurvy paranoia, lots of fruit.
Following a bureaucratic twelve hour wait at the Russia/Mongolia border, the train pulled into Irkutsk - the gateway to magnificent Lake Baikal. This behemoth is the world's oldest and deepest freshwater lake, holding twenty per cent of the world's freshwater supplies, and has a smattering of small islands. The largest of these, Olkhon, was a little beyond Irkutsk, and was where I headed to spend a few nights.
Olkhon's street lamps are ablaze twenty-four hours a day. Apparently they had been installed a mere two weeks, but no-one knew how to switch them off. Though the island is small, there are plenty of beaches, woods and mountains to explore. I whittled away many a day swimming in the pure, soothing waters with tiny catfish pawing my feet, before watching the sun, as if it had suddenly blushed at realising the hour, say a bashful goodnight.
When you think of Siberia, the first things that usually come to mind are barren wastes under metres of impenetrable snow and gulags and salt mines stuffed with pathetic exiles and convicts. However, passing from Irkutsk to Krasnoyarsk, my next stop, the train was greeted by shimmying Siberian pines, the occasional sparkling lake and waving children scampering around in the summer heat.
After dumping my luggage in a cheap hotel that smelled like scuffed old leather shoes, I went for a stroll around Krasnoyarsk - one of Stalin's favourite places to build prison camps. I was taken aback when a hand was placed on my shoulder and I was asked in English, "Excuse me, are you a tourist?" I turned around to find a man looking at me inquiringly.
Unsure if this was perhaps a member of the KGB about to accuse me of crimes against the state, I cautiously answered, "Yes." After a long conversation, it transpired that the man, Andre, spoke perfect English, and had a niece the same age as me called Olga, who lived in Moscow.
He insisted that he telephone her to see if I could stay with her in her flat there. She agreed, and said she would meet me at the station.
Clutching my phrase book and sincerely hoping I wasn't going to end up for sale as an internet Russian bride, I caught the train for my three-and-a-half-day journey to Moscow.
I was sharing my cabin with an older Russian couple who were so concerned about my travelling alone and my being the only foreigner on board that they decided to take me under their wing. With the help of my trusty phrase book and much gesticulation, Mishka, Vladimir (his name was not actually Vladimir, but his real, impossibly rhotic name was far too difficult for me to pronounce, so with a shrug he accepted "Vladimir" as his moniker) and I managed to have some decent "conversations"; yet my protests went unheeded in the mornings when, after rousing me with "Rootik! Rootsky!" (their terms of endearment for "Ruth"), they would drag me out of bed to force-feed me salad and pickled fish.
In Moscow, one of the most glamorous places in the world, I felt tinged with shame as I arrived in my tramp-like state to be welcomed by Olga, who thankfully did not sell me on eBay. Olga very kindly offered to show me around the capital, starting with the hub of the city: Red Square.
From the imposing walls of the Kremlin, to the stark mausoleum of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, to the psychedelic designs of St Basil's Cathedral (a mass of swirling colours commissioned by Ivan the Terrible - when the creation was finished, Ivan had the architect's eyes put out so that he could never create a building to surpass it) Red Square engulfs you with its history and infuses you with a sense of the place that Russia once was.
Traversin on the splendid Moscow Metro is a tourist attraction in itself. Each station is completely different, though most are ornate and grand, depicting Stalin's ideals for the Soviet state.
On canvas, the State Tretyakov and Pushkin museums house many of the greatest artistic designs ever created, and Olga and I spent hours perusing the impressive collections of original Rembrandts, Van Goghs and Monets.
Olga and her family very kindly invited me to stay in their home in the nearby town of Sergei Posad, named after the man who founded the monastic scene in Russia and who is now Russia's patron saint.
Olga's mother had made copious amounts of traditional borscht (beetroot soup) for us all, and because Olga's family are huge rock 'n' roll fans my week in and around Moscow was rounded off singing Beatles songs on the balalaika.
Waving goodbye to a new-found friend, St Petersburg - Peter the Great's "Window on the West" - was calling me. Knitted together by a snaking network of canals, this magnificent, flamboyant city bubbles with charisma and vibrancy. The Hermitage (the former Winter Palace), with its incredible art collection and regal interior, is undoubtedly the cultural high point of the northern capital, oozing luxury in a way that only royalty can.
Another vestige of the reign of the tsars is the Summer Palace situated in Pushkin, on the outskirts of St Petersburg. Home to Catherine the Great's Amber Room, the gleaming surfaces were called the largest piece of jewellery in the world. Looted by Nazi soldiers during World War Two, the palace has been restored to its former glory. It is now cushioned by a lush green park, and one could easily imagine Mr Darcy emerging sodden from any one of the elegant lakes.
For the final part of the train journey, I was sallying forth to Helsinki.
Exhausted, I fell asleep with my head resting on my hand. Waking up in Europe proper a few hours later with a Gorbachev-esque mark on my temple, I concluded that I was taking the "at one with the local culture" thing too far. The mark gradually faded. My memories of the TransMongolian Railway never will.

China Life

One of the most interesting things about living in rural China has been observing the cultural differences between here and Britain. The ultimate matutinal nation, the Chinese get up at 6am every day to do morning exercise, usually some kind of tai chi or basketball, and to clear out their lungs. Despite having an effective alarm clock, more often than not I am awoken to the distinctive call of the 'hawk' - a phenomena fairly widespread in China (though dying out under pressure formthe government). They typical hawk is worked up with a great force from the belly, with a deep voval accompaniment. There is then the briefest of pauses before expectoration in a somewhat disappointing speck on the dusty pavement. One can often track a male by his Hansel-and-Gretel trail left along the ground.

Of course, when most people think of China, one of the images is that of 1.3 billion people in streams of jostling bicycles. Though Xifeng is very small, and can easily be traveresed from one side to the other on foot, one can live one's life a little more on the edge if one embarks on one's 'mighty steed'. Most bikes have no gears, and sport speed modifiers as opposed to bona fide brakes, but as Xifeng is on a plateau, this does not pose much of a problem.
At a first glance the internal workings of motoring China seem chaotic, but there is some semblance of order. Pedestrians cannot walk on the pavement as this is reserved for parking bicycles, motorbikes and overflowing skips; stalls for mending shoes and making keys; and as a retreat for those who wish to squat, smoke, play mah jong and watch the world go by. It thus follows that the parallel bicycle lanes are the domains of ambling bipeds (usually accompanied by a fluffy Pekinese trotting behind) and donkeys lugging towering rickshaws of unspeakable weight behind them.
The intrepid cyclist must therefore utilise the road - the only remaining bastion of possible travel. The road ought to have an 'Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter' warning on it to prepare those of weak disposition for the rabble and chicanery of the traffic. Typical obstacles include intransigent green taxis, hermit crab cyclists (literally moving their house on the back of a bike, including washing machines and three-piece suites tottering on two wheels) and the loose interpretation on which side of the road to drive on. Perhaps this is why bikes tend to be occupied by at least three people. A navigator is essential on these routes. Accordingly, post-cycling odyssey, there is a sense of exhilaration when you make it to your destination unscathed.

Another peculiarity of China is the dining experience. It is traditional for the most honoured guest to be seated facing the door, and to be welcomed with firecrackers exploding at the entrance to frighted away any bad spirits. Guests also take past in one of China's national sports: speech-making. These tend to be shouted into a microphone as the audience chatters away blithely into their mobiles, assisted by China's choice of drink/window cleaner: bai jiou. The Chinese are generally laid-back about most things, but their afternoon nap is something they take very seriously. Like flocking birds, almost everyone goes home in unison for their 40 winks. This is a part of Chinese culture Britain should definitely adopt.

Thailand, Cambodia

Although the Chinese Spring Festival would seem to be a fantastic time to be in the Middle Kingdom, I had decided to flee the country for the time being. The month long celebration that kicks off with the Chinese New Year, is essentially a time for families to gather together and exchange gifts and money, rather like our Christmas. During this time China is expensive, it is difficult to get train tickets (would you want to do a 60 hour journey on a Chinese bus?), and is general chaos with millions of people jostling to go home to see loved ones. So off I went to the destination more compatible with my small VSO wage - the warmer climes of Thailand
My journey got off to a somewhat ominous start when I was tested for SARS in Xian airport after there had been a spate of outbreaks in the South-East of China. Thankfully I was given the all clear, and proceeded to Bangkok, possibly the most humid city in the world.
I headed North immediately to Chang Mai, a beautiful city resplendent with temples and surrounded by a moat and cherry blossom trees. Time being precious, I, along with two Canadians and two Italians, opted to participate in a day trip around the area which included an elephant trek, bamboo rafting and a visit to some hill tribes in the surrounding jungle. After a sojourn in the jungle on elephants, I donned my Huckleberry Finn guise and stood on a narrow raft constructed from bamboo poles, with another large pole to punt along the river. My training for this consisted of “Put your feet here”, as we swished over a gauntlet of small rapids and waterfalls. Needless to say I fell in. To my relief I noted that everyone else we encountered was in a similarly sodden state.
We then visited a Keren tribe that lived an hour outside of Chang Mai, groping through the jungle and absorbing the sounds of exotic birds and monkeys in the canopy above us. When we reached the village I felt like I was an intruder, a voyeur in some sort of human zoo. Much of their rituals and working methods were paraded before us while we took pictures. I wondered how they felt about it, recollecting that being constantly scrutinized in China because I was white sometimes irritated me. It was interesting to see though, and I admired them for their tenacity. It would be very easy to leave and head for bigger things in the city.
I decided that I couldn’t leave Thailand without having a Thai massage, so I ventured into a parlour, where a nice old woman was to be my masseuse. Well, appearances are certainly deceiving. With super human strength, she contorted my body into ways no body should be contorted into, the cracking and clicking of my bones making me feel like a human maraca. When she finished after an hour, I thanked her and hurpled on my way south to Kanchanburi – home to the infamous Death Railway and the ‘Bridge on the River Kwai’. It was a very poignant sight, particularly the appropriately named ‘Hellfire Pass’, a mountain that the Japanese has made POWs dig through using rudimentary tools in order to complete the railway line to further the speedy Japanese invasion of Asia during World War Two. There was a small museum detailing the horrors and the brutality of the Japanese. An estimated 16,000 POWs died – a life for every sleeper on the railway.
Subsequently I met up with a fellow VSO colleague, Alice, in Bangkok and we headed for the Cambodian border. On entering Cambodia we were jolted along to Battambong in a pick up truck with 31 people, including 2 balanced precariously on the cab roof. The roads in Cambodia are notoriously bad because of heavy US bombing during the Vietnam War - an effort designed to cut supplies to the North Vietnamese (the Vietcong). Due to extreme poverty and the tyranny of the Khmer Rouge, the roads have never been fully repaired, though work has been undertaken to remedy this. Alice had previously visited Cambodia in 1999, and was amazed at how much the roads had improved.
Cambodia is heartbreakingly poor, with landmine victims on almost every street corner, and children as young as four begging with their younger sibling strapped to their back. Often the only English they spoke was “postcard”, ”water”, and “dollar”, as they tried to sell tourists nicnacs, or more commonly, as Cambodia used to be a French colony, a pitiful “madame, madame, madame”, while pointing to their mouth.
Battambong has a substantial Chinese population, so we celebrated Chinese New Year there with the traditional arsenal of fireworks. Battambong is a pretty town, and we took a motorbike along the dusty trails around the surrounding villages en route to a monastery, where a young monk, eager to practice his fledgling English, showed us around. Small triangular pieces of material from the clothing from each person who died in the area during the regime of Pol Pot were hung like bunting around the monastery. It was very moving, as bunting is something one associates with joy, not with the devastation that these ‘flags’ represented.
We ventured on to the capital of Phnom Penh to see S21 – the notorious Khmer Rouge prison camp where so-called dissidents of the state were tortured and interrogated. It was a former school, and it is thought 10,499 people were interred here, though this does not include children (the number thought to be 2000). Following on from this we went out to the infamous “Killing Fields” - mass graves where victims were buried. In the center of the field was a large monument filled with the skulls of the men, women and children whose remains had been found in the pits, stacked in a 30ft high tower. All in all it made for a harrowing experience, and served as a reminder of the horrors that humanity is capable of.
Avoiding the spine shattering roads we took a boat up to Siem Reap to see the magnificent Angkor Wat, a temple complex built by the riches and vanity of the former Khmer rulers. It had been left to ruin in the 1500s, it is thought, and rediscovered in the late 19th century. This meant there were some spectacular sights where tree and temple had become as one. The two days there ended with watching the beautiful sunset over the complex atop a hill temple. The ancient site was spoiled however, by the availability of a helicopter or hot air balloon ride over the temples. Not only was this an appalling example of intrusive capitalism, but they cause physical damage to the temples - important symbols of Cambodian history.
In fact during our time in Cambodia, Alice commented that she was surprised and sad to see how much it had changed since she had been there, but she was pleased to see people prospering.
Bidding farewell to an amazing country, we headed back to China - our destination Kunming, the capital of Yunnan province in the South of China. Stopping briefly in Kunming, we paid a visit to the bird and flower market where one can buy anything and everything; and the conditions fauna are kept in would be enough to send an RSPCA inspector apoplectic.
Continuing North to Lijiang, easily the most beautiful place I have seen in China, we basked in the beauty of the goldfish-filled rivers and the strong Tibetan culture. We were fortunate to be able to witness part of the Spring Festival, a dragon parade, where a large dragon is paraded through the streets chasing a red ball (red is lucky in China), bringing luck to all the buildings it passes.
Feeling a little adventurous, a trek through Tiger Leaping Gorge, one of the deepest gorges in the world, was called for. Legend has it that a gigantic tiger leapt from one side of the gorge to another, hence the name. It was a very rewarding two-day affair through stunning mountains and encounters with local goatherds who still roam there.
Back in Lijiang, having just finished the trek, dusty and bedraggled, I decided to eat before I went back my accommodation and cleaned myself up. I was eating in a café, when the former Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien walked in with a Chinese entourage. He spoke to me briefly, asking me where I was from and why I was in China, during which I was filmed by cameras. For my moment of Chinese fame I really was a bona fide ‘Dirty Weeker’.
After an action packed few weeks it was time to take the 42 hour journey back to Xifeng and to teaching 300 students, giving me time to mull over my travels. It is all too easy to criticize the homogeneity that unfettered capitalism promotes, after seeing parts of the world where it has touched them profoundly in the last few years. English is widely spoken in Thailand, and many parts of that country are lifted directly from the West, including areas specifically catering to the British party culture that ,until recently, was unheard of in Asia. The American dollar is as acceptable in Cambodia as the Riel, as it is in Vietnam. Traditions that were once sacred, although still respected, now pander to the tourism industry, and seem lacking in the potency they once held for indigenous people. My journey in South-East Asia has opened my eyes to globalisation - it truly is a double-edged sword. China itself is slowly opening up to the free market, doing so in a controlled manner, but it has the economic and political clout to be able to withstand the pressure from actors such as the American Government, the G7, the IMF and the World Bank to implement capitalism quickly under rigid conditions. Weaker countries such as Cambodia do not have this power to say “No”, and this may prove devastating. However globalisation has lifted many of these people out of abject poverty, and though poverty is relative, things have definitely improved. Though this provides us with more user-friendly, exciting holiday destinations, the question is: is it worth the cost to the indigenous people of these countries and their lives?

HIV/AIDS Peer Education, China

December the First is World AIDS Day and Xifeng is being painted red. Not by communists or drunken revellers, but by HIV ribbons and awareness posters.
From 2005 the Chinese Ministry of Education will require that all college and secondary school students receive basic sex and HIV and AIDS education. To compliment this, part of Voluntary Services Overseas’ strategy for China is to combat HIV and AIDS though integrating it into our lessons and though peer education. Our aim is to equip students with some skills to teach this topic for when they go on to become middle and primary school teachers, and remove some of the taboo and fear surrounding it. This is crucial when you consider that there is an estimated forty million people with HIV and AIDS world wide (China alone potentially having ten million by 2010), and nine out of ten unaware that they have it. Fifteen thousand people a day are added to this tally – almost twice the population of Wick.
Spearheading VSO’s peer education initiative is the ‘Dandelion Project’. I am fortunate enough to be involved in this and attended a conference last May in Beijing to learn about it. Two of my students, Wu Ling and Lei Teng Fei also attended. The ‘Dandelion Project’ is so-called because the image of the dandelion represents the students involved in the peer education. The essential premise is that students are trained how to raise awareness about HIV and AIDS and will then spread the ‘seed’ of knowledge among their peers. By using Chinese students, the project is made more sustainable, less pedagogical (therefore less daunting), and as the lessons are in Chinese, facilitates a greater understanding of the issues around HIV.
Knowing how to protect oneself from HIV is one thing, but one of the greatest challenges to a person living with HIV or AIDS is the way that other people treat them. A key focus of the ‘Dandelion Project’ is to de-stigmatise those with HIV and AIDS. Prime Minister Wen Jia Bao recently highlighted this when he visited an HIV and AIDS clinic in China and shook hands with a patient. Additionally the Chinese Government is considering the idea of allowing HIV carriers (although not AIDS patients) to be appointed to civil service positions.
When we returned to Xifeng after the journey to Beijing, Wu Ling, Lei Teng Fei and myself trained an additional eight students (four boys and four girls) to assist us in our project. Zhang Hui, one of the ten peer educators said, “I wanted to take part in this project to help people who have HIV and AIDS. I feel it is important in my life to inform my friends and family about how to protect themselves.”
Each weekend we involve two classes, which we divide in to groups of two (altogether four groups). Each group is taught by a male and a female peer educator to encourage co-operation of the genders and show that men and women can work together to prevent HIV. So far the project has met with great success. The peer educators are doing a fantastic job and I am very proud of them. We hope to extend it to other departments in the College next term, as well as possibly to middle schools.
Education is the ultimate way of preventing the spread of HIV. Though methods of transmission, for example unprotected sex, is a taboo subject, it is essential to discuss them. Many international organizations and governments refuse to promote knowledge about contraception, but the fact is that many people, particularly women in the less developed world, have little choice about their sexual activities. Indeed gender inequality is at the heart of the HIV epidemic in developing countries. Women need to be empowered to assert their rights and negotiate relationships, and men need to be aware that this is acceptable.
If people know how to protect themselves, HIV can be stopped. Young people are the future. Working with them to give them the skills and knowledge for a healthy and happy life is imperative in the battle against the HIV pandemic. The UN Global Fund to fight AIDS hoped to raise ten billion US Dollars a year to do this, yet since June 2001 only three point two billion in total has been pledged by world governments. Apathy and denial are as big a threat as HIV itself.

Wedding, Kyrgyrzstan

We're always told that breakfast is the most important meal of the day. International experts have long recommended at least one portion of fruit, a slow-burning carbohydrate, a little protein and water to kick start the body. This particular morning my bleary eyes flitted between the three shots of vodka lined up before me, and the eager faces of the rest of the wedding party who had arisen from their comas induced by the night before. Remembering that other piece of advice, “Hair of the Dog”, my liver accepted it's fate to disintegrate into foie gras. Vitamins would just have to wait.
My friend Neil, who was visiting from the UK, and I were experiencing the day after the wedding ceremony of Umyt and Maksat (Maksat being the brother of my good friend Asel, who also works in the London School) in the small village of Kemin, a few hours outside of Bishkek. The ceremony was the culmination of festivities that lasted for one month and ran into thousands of dollars and dozens of slaughtered sheep to celebrate the beginning of a new life together for the young couple (However Central Asia also has a history of bride kidnapping - a practice that is thankfully dying out). Usually the bride moves into the family home, and over the course of the month they receive many guests bringing gifts and wishes for the future. The bride’s parents present her with a large chest of clothes and household goods, such as furniture, as a kind of ‘dowry’.
The ceremony itself was a fairly simple ritual. The invited guests gathered in the drive of the family house around the bridal car, which was adorned with balloons, streamers and a plastic wedding couple. The eldest member of the family - an nonagenarian - gave her blessing and said a prayer. She finished the ritual with the “amin”, a gesture widely used in Central Asia to “give thanks to God”, involving holding the palms out to the skies then passing the hands together over the face. After her solemn words, Maksat’s father also gave his blessing, before the happy couple and their friends packed into three cars to drive around and take photos around Kemin.
The first stop was the holy spring, so that everyone could sup in the goodness and purity before balancing it out with champagne and vodka. The wedding party gathered around the spring, and Maksat introduced everyone and toasted his new wife, before we proceeded to a memorial statue for Kyrgyz killed in the Bolshevik Revolution. Several refugees had fled across the treacherous mountain border to China seeking sanctuary from the Soviets, but alas they were not welcomed and many perished there too. In keeping with wedding traditions, the couple laid some flowers at the feet of the poignant, huddled family depicted in stone.
The final stop was a rather pretty forest with a small river running through it. The champagne continued to flow, as did the toasts. Suddenly it was decided that it would be a great idea to shoot a mini Bollywood film, so the car radios were turned to “blaring”, and the men jokingly danced through the trees towards Umyt, who was trying desperately not to laugh.
A million photographs later we arrived at the hotel for the reception. It was filled with, I suspect, the entire populous, including an ex-prime minister and two famous Kyrgyz singers. Every table was groaning with fruit, alcohol, bread and all manner of salads. Everyone stood up to welcome Maksat and Umyt as they entered the hall. They bowed to both sets of parents to show their respect, signed the register, then sat down at the top table.
During the course of the evening a variety of soups, meats, and traditional Kyrgyz dishes were served, along with an alarming number of vodka shots and toasts. This was interspersed with speeches from each table, who collectively went up to present their gifts to the newly-weds. Inevitably Neil and I had to face the microphone. I attempted the not so easy task of standing straight (my joints being rather well oiled by this stage), speaking in Russian and trying to calm my rouging face at the same time. I stuttered my thanks and best wishes and thrust the microphone into Neil’s hand. He gave a brief speech in English, and everyone politely listened and smiled approvingly at the exotic language hitting their ears, before we scurried back to our table. As a kind of wedding favour, I was presented with a book on the “Kyrgyz Steven Segal”, whilst Neil received a kalpak, the traditional Kyrgyz hat.
The subsequent cutting of the beautiful cake adorned with nuzzling swans was followed by enthusiastic dancing to a bizarre mix of new and traditional music. Needless to say my brain was operating on soft focus by this stage, and the end of the evening remains a blur.
And so I found myself of a delicate disposition on that Sunday morning continuing the liquid diet. The second day of the wedding is traditionally the day when the bride’s family visit the groom’s home to eat, drink and be merry. They started to arrive in the early afternoon, and I heaved a great sigh of relief as I saw that the majority of them were well over sixty. Perhaps I wouldn’t end up as a Damien Hurst exhibit after all. How wrong I was.
Neil and I mingled with the guests all day, and were inevitably plied with food and drink at regular intervals. Guests included one eighty year old woman who declared she never drank while necking several shots of vodka whenever the occasion arose, and a man slumped on a chair whose wife insisted he was “not drunk but ill”. The eau de vodka he was wearing seemed to contradict this, but we nodded with understanding anyway.
As evening began to fall, the whole congregation gathered around a large table laden with yet more food. The “ill” man was crowd surfed along till he reached a space where he could be propped against a wall. There was the usual toasts and gorging ourselves till we resembled satiated walruses lounging on a beach. My wedding gift to Maksat and Umyt had been a bottle of Old Poultney that I had brought with me in case such an event arose. Half way through the evening, it was used to wish everyone prosperity and happiness. Thinking of the motherland, my heart swelled with emotion and in my drunken pride I announced a toast to world peace and unity among all peoples. Everyone raised their glasses in agreement, and smiled pleasantly at the warmth that flowed from the whisky gliding down their throats.
The woman who “never touched a drop” suddenly announced that it was vital to dance outside to a loud selection of Russian pop music. We all stumbled out into the garden in the drizzling rain and boogied like there was no tomorrow. But if tomorrow did come we were prepared - there was more than enough vodka for breakfast.