Entries about beer

I got out of bed at 5am after about four hours sleep. I am always amazed at how easily I wake up and how energentic I am in the mornings when I travel but back home mornings are just pure misery.

I woke up so early because I had an 8:20am flight to catch. I packed all my things within half an hour, made an awful cup of instant coffee in my room - I'll do anything for a caffeine hit - and went down to the lobby to check out and catch the free hotel airport shuttle van at six o'clock.

The van arrived on time, I and other guests boarded, but the van just sat there, the South Asian driver arguing loudly with another employee. The driver than disappeared into the hotel for a long period and finally re-emerged after ten minutes, then we were on our way.

The van joined the main road, turned right, turned right again, turned right yet again and then we were back at the same hotel. The driver disappeared inside again without any explanation and ten minutes later came back, there were some straggling guests who missed the six o'clock departure. We were all getting very antsy. I had an 8:20 flight, others had an 8:10 flight, and we were openly wondering whether the driver would ever leave.

Finally we set off again at 6:25 and the driver put the pedal to the metal on the motorway to the airport while tailgating, moving three lanes over at once without indicating, and looking at his mobile phone. The van arrived at Hamad International Airport at 6:35.

Immigration and security aren't as time-consuming when leaving Qatar; and check-in is all self-service so there were no queues. I needn't have worried, I reached my gate for Qatar Airways Flight QR199 at seven on the dot with twenty minutes to spare before boarding commenced. Kingsford Smith Airport could learn something from the Qataris. My gate was one of those stupid gates where you have to board a bus that takes passengers out to the plane waiting in the middle of the apron hundreds of metres away from the terminal.

I climbed up the stairs onto the Airbus A330 and we departed on time. The plane was lightly loaded; only three of the eight seats in my row were occupied, and only four in the row in front of me. To avoid forbidden Saudi airspace the plane went northeast over the Persian Gulf and Iran. Enormous bald brown mountains kilometres high soared into the sky directly from the waters of the Gulf coastline, with row upon row of mountains behind it. Occasionally there was a hydroelectric dam in the steep canyons between the treeless Martian mountains, and the higher elevations were capped with snow. I had no idea that Iran looked so magnificent.

The A330 continued over the azure waters of Lake Van in Turkey, then over the Black Sea (it's not bkack at all but just as blue as any ocean! False advertising!), the checkerboard steppes of Bulgaria, the bald mountains of Transylvania, and began its descent to Ferihegy airport just east of Budapest. The plane did a big U-turn over Budapest with great views of the Danube, Buda Castle, Parliament and Heroes Square.

QR199 landed on time at 12:55 and immigration for me was swift. It was surprising because in front of me were two other passengers. One was an African lady and the immigration officer was putting her through the third degree. After about ten minutes she finally got her stamp. The next passenger was a Chinese man and he got the Perry Mason treatment too. After a small eternity he got his stamp. Then I prrsented my passport. The officer quickly looked at the photo to verify it was me, scanned the passport, flicked through the pages far too quickly to actually read the stamps, and then stamped me and waved me through. It took about twenty seconds. I know that immigration officers go harder on visitors from countries whose citizens are more likely to overstay or work illegally or lodge baseless asylum claims, but it was still shocking.

There was a very long wait for my backpack, the baggae claim carousels broke down for about twenty minutes resulting in hundreds of people jn a cramped, airless hall waiting with no sign that the carousels would start working again. Finally the belt started moving, I grabbed my backpack, withdrew some Hungarian forints, bought a five day transport pass for 4,550 ft. (note: 1 Australian dollar equals 203 Hungarian forints. To convert to Australian dollars, put a decimal point to the left of the second last digit and halve the result), and caught the 200E bus to Nagyvárad tér, the temporary terminus of the M3 metro line while a section of the line is being rebuilt.

I tooķ the crowded M3 train to the major interchange of Deák Ferenc tér. The M3 was built in the 1970s and every station on that line was just pure communist dreariness. I changed to an M1 train and was pleasantly surprised. The M1 is the oldest underground railway on Mainland Europe, opening in 1896. Trains are tiny yellow three-car things, basiczlly glorified trams, and run every two minutes on a line under Adrassy Avenue where the stations are only about three blocks apart. As my train pulled into my station I burst out laughing! Awww, look at this cutesy-wutesy widdle baby twainy-wainy pwaying with the big boys!

The stations were marvellous specimens of Art Nouveau architecture too, all brown and cream tiles and inlaid station names and brass balustrades and large semi-circles. I alighted at one of them, Vörösmarty utca, strapped my backpack on, and walked two blocks to my guesthouse in the upmarket, almost Parisian suburb of Terézváros.

It was advertised as a guesthouse on Booking.com but is actually an apartment, a five-bedroom flat with the owner living in one room and renting out the other four. I checked in at twenty past three and chilled out for a while. I hadn't had much sleep and even though five-and-a-half hours isn't that long a flight, it still takes the wind out of me, especially when you factor in getting to and from the airport at both ends.

It was about six o'clock when I went out hunting for dinner, I just grabbed a felafel plate from a kebab joint in the neighbourhood, and then I caught the M1 to Széchenyi Baths, the most famous mineral spa in a country renowned for hot springs. After a long and tiring journey a restorative soak in mineral-rich waters were just what I needed. The baths are located in a large Baroque Revival palace in City Park. I had brought my swimmers and a towel, but had left my thongs (what Australians call flip-flops) in my backpack in my room. Thongs were compulsory and I could have bought some for 3,000 forints but I decided to save my money and come back on another day.

So I caught the M1 to its city centre terminus at Vörösmarty tér and went for a long evenung walk along the Danube. Wow wow wow wow wow wow wow. This will test my ability to put my wonder into words, but here goes: imagine a wide river crossed by several bridges that aren't just utilitarian methods of transportation but serious works of art in themselves. All along the river are major landmarks - an enormous neo-Gothic Parliament with domes and vaults and buttresses, a massive castle on top of a very hugh rock, a concert hall, statues and monuments, all lit up in a pleasing gold colour. Imagine all of this reflected in the shimmering black river. Add bright yellow trams going up and down the promenade on each bank every couple of minutes. What an amazing walk.

I crossed the river on the relatively modern Elizabeth Bridge, went down as far south as the patina-green Liberty Bridge and walked back up the right bank past the interesting Széchenyi Chain Bridge as far as the Margaet Bridge, one of the more unusual bridges I have seen because it's a three-way bridge with an intersection and tram stop in the middle of it that connects Margaret Island to both banks of the Danube.

I caught the tram back to Terézváros and stopped in at a hipster pub across the street from my room. I enjoyed two decent Hungarian beers, very well-deserved after such a lengthy walk, and I was surprised that the pub was playing Australian indie rock songs from the early 2000s like "Black Betty" by Spiderbait and "Are You Gonna Be My Girl?" by the Jets. What, did I step into a teleport by accident and get transported throigh the space-time continuum back to King Street, Newtown circa 2004?

Iranian mountains

Lake Van in Turkey

Budapest from the air

Cute little train on the M1 line

Vörösmarty utca station on the M1 line

Buda Castle

Elizabeth Bridge

Liberty Bridge

Széchenyi Chain Bridge

Queen Elizabeth statue

Hungarian Parliament

Margaret Bridge

Soproni beer

Colombo, Sri Lanka
Friday, 1 February 2019

On previous overseas holidays, I have rushed around from place to place like a madman. On this holiday I intend to slow the pace a few notches on my locomotive throttle. So I spent much of the morning in my hotel room updating my blog and searching for accommodation a few destinations hence.

Whenever I travel I pack a Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.3 that I bought in 2014 before my trip to Malaysia, Taiwan and Korea. To call this tablet a buggy, glitchy, crashy, laggy unadulterated piece of crap would be a charitable statement. Programs crash constantly, both web browsers freeze, the tablet refuses to charge when I plug it into the wall or my power brick, whenever I switch between apps it forgets everything I did in the first app so browser fields are cleared or unsaved edits are deleted, and the only reason why I bought this Samsung tablet was because it has an SD card slot that makes it easier to upload photos. But now that my camera screen is busted and I am just using my iPhone to take photos and videos, I don't even need the SD card slot anymore.

I had fallen behind on my blog and I was tired after yesterday's massive public transport adventure so I decided just to chill out and update my blog and book some hotels. But the Samsung Galaxy Tab refused to cooperate. I do believe the whole of Kollupitiya may have heard me scream sundry obscenities at the blasted thing. This stupid piece of dog poo is so bad that I am considering just using a pen and a notebook to record my adventures which I will type up when I get home.

In the end I gave up and went to search for brunch. As much as I love spice, I am still a Westerner and therefore my gastro-intestinal tract does need a break from time to time. There is a Burger King close at hand on the other side of Galle Road, a roaring, shadeless four-lane one-way traffic sewer where the stream of buses, trucks, cars, motorbikes and tuk-tuks is ceaseless. Galle Road has even less charm than Parramatta Road in Sydney, and that is saying something.

I eventually managed to cross the road by finding a clump of people also desiring to participate in the simple act of getting to the other side, and I crossed with them at a time when the traffic was thinner and consisted mostly of tuk-tuks that can go around everyone. I went into the Burger King and ordered my Whopper with cheese value meal with Pepsi for the drink.

"I'm sorry, we don't have Pepsi, only 7-Up and Mirinda," the girl at the counter said.

"But I see Pepsi on the post-mix machine there."

"Sorry, but we don't have it. Only 7-Up and Mirinda."

"OK then, I'll just have a Mirinda then."

"OK." And just as she was dispensing my cup of Mirinda, the customer at the cash register next to me ordered a Pepsi, and his server went to the post-mix machine and poured forth a gushing brown stream of delicious, caffeinated Pepsi into the other customer's cup. This kind of thing happens a lot in Sri Lanka. It feels as though nobody in this country is capable of giving a direct, honest answer or accurate advice about anything. Nothing, NOTHING, makes sense here.

After eating my brunch without the caffeine hit I so desperately needed, I took the plunge and did something I had promised myself I wouldn't do. I hailed a tuk-tuk. These things are basically motorbikes with two rear wheels and a boxy shell-like cover covering the driver and the passenger who sits on the rear seat. There are no seat belts and there are no railings to keep you inside the shell in the event of an accident. The tuk-tuk drivers are also absolutely fearless and reckless. These buzzing little fart machines swarm everywhere like mosquitoes with wheels, and any white person who walks along a road will soon encounter a tuk-tuk stopping every thirty seconds with the driver beckoning you to get on board.

The reason why I chose to take a tuk-tuk was because I was going to the National Museum, about half an hour's walk away. I am not averse to walking, but Colombo is hot and very, very humid. It isn't much worse than Sydney this time of year, if anything it is a litle bit more bearable here because the sunlight isn't so oppressively harsh, but it is still unplessant and sweaty to walk around in Colombo even in flat terrain. Also, finding maps and timetables for the bus system is impossible and I have no idea which buses will get me to the museum. So I hailed a tuk-tuk.

Oh my goodness, what a scary adventure. The tuk-tuk driver darted down the narrow interstices between moving buses, weaved at speed through throngs of pedestrians crossing the road both ways, and a thousand other things that in Australia would see his driver's license suspended for decades. I found that the world took on an ethereal dream-like quality, like I was watching a movie or imagining something that another person was talking to me about. Psychiatrists have a word for this experience - "derealisation", and it is apparently a common defence mechanism the brain produces when in traumatic life-threatening situations.

The tuk-tuk cost about Rs. 60 - about fifty Australian cents - and I disembarked only to find that the tuk-tuk driver had delivered me to the street behind the museum, not in front of it. It was still a good half a kilometre via a circuitous detour to get to the front of the National Museum.

At least there was plenty to look at. All along the road running behind the museum, Green Path, dozens of local artists had set up stalls selling their paintings. Some of it was talented stuff and I would have bought one or two of the paintings if it weren't for the practical troubles of how to get them home to Australia.

The National Museum is an imposing alabaster-white palace in Cinnamon Gardens, Colombo's most elite suburb full of spacious parks and embassies and important cultural institutions. I paid my Rs. 1,000 admittance and went into the cool, dark exhibition halls. The National Museum is concerned chiefly with Sri Lankan archaeology and the halls are full of statues, figurines, bas-reliefs, agricultural implements and shards of broken earthenware accompanied by dense, dry, earnest interpretative texts intelligible only to those few people who have written PhD theses in Oriental Studies. I found the texts incomprehensible being so unfortunate as to only have an Honours degree in surveying and mapping so I got rather bored.

There were some highlights though. Pride of place is taken by the Royal Throne of the Kingdom of Kandy, Sri Lanka's last indigenous kingdom. The Portuguese had only colonised the coastal areas, and when the Dutch kicked the Portuguese out they didn't expand too much into the interior, leaving the Kingdom of Kandy in the hilly inland regions largely intact. It was only after the Dutch were kicked out by the British during the Napoleonic Wars in 1796 that the Kingdom of Kandy was finally conquered by the Redcoats in 1815, subjugating the whole of Sri Lanka to European colonial rule for the first time.

The golden throne along with the Kandian crown and royal sceptre is reverently displayed in a glass cube. The throne was donated to the Kingdom of Kandy in the seventeenth century by the Dutch United East Indian Company in a spectacular act of diplomatic brown-nosing. It is still a wonderful sight.

I also enjoyed the working models of the irrigation systems developed by the Anuradhapura Kingdom in the first millennium AD. The Sri Lankans were world pioneers in irrigation, even today the countryside is dotted with dams called "tanks" built in the Anuradhapura period. Palaces, temples, cohesive bureaucracies, giant irrigation networks spanning the entire island - the Sri Lankans had an advanced civilisation at a time when my Britannic ancestors were presumably chewing on wooly mammoth bones in a freezing cave while communicating with each other using monosyllabic grunts.

After two hours at the National Museum I ambled past the modern Nelum Pokuna Mahinda Rajapaksa zThestre, an imposing entertainment venue shaped like a scalloped flying saucer, and then through Viharamahadevi Park, a large dusty park with patches of welcome shade under sprawling fig trees. There is a golden Buddha statue in the park opposite Colombo City Hall, a large white domed palace built in 1927 that could easily be relocsted tl Washington D.C. and not look out of place.

Another tuk-tuk ride with another episode of derealisation brought me to Fort, the historic commercial centre of Colombo that dates to the Portuguese era. There are many stately Edwardian buildings dating from the British era in the early twentieth century; department stores, shipping offices and the faded grandeur of the Grand Oriental Hotel. This place must have been amazing in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries when Ceylon, with its commanding position off the southern tip of India, was the linchpin of the British Empire. All shipping routes and submarine telegraph cables connecting Britain with its Pacific and Far Eastern possessions passed through Colombo. Generations of immigrants from the United Kingdom to Australia passed through Colombo.

The southern portion of Fort has less historic buildings and more modern architecture such as the striking Bank of Ceylon tower, a soaring white cylinder. I headed west to the Galle Buck Lighthouse which at a distance looks like an ancient stone beacon but in reality is a cement aggregate tower built in 1950. I climbed the small knoll up to the base of the lighthouse which is soon going to be pretty useless as it is now stranded inland by a gargantuan land reclamation project currently underway. When it is finished, Colombo will be extended several kilometres seaward.

All that walking made me a little exhausted and sweaty. I went to the Dutch Hospital, built as a healthcare facility for Dutch colonists in the seventeenth century but now a restaurant and entertainment complex oriented towards tourists. Its courtyards and colonnades were full of Western tourists enjoying themselves and I joined them. I grabbed a pizza and a few Lion beers at a sports bar with satisfyingly frigid air conditioning. The icy air was delivered through small vents in the floor that looked like bath drains. I pulled up a seat at the bar, strategically placed the seat adjacent to one of the vents so that the cold blast went right up my shirt, and enjoed a few restorative brews while watching Qatar cream Japan in the Asian Cup football final. Beer snobs might look down on pale light lagers - I should know, I am a beer snob much to the disgust of my late father - but let me tell you that such lagers like Lion are made hand-in-glove for countries with humid tropical climates and spicy food.

A few hours later and I tumbled out into the stifling evening air and into the warm embrace of a waiting tuk-tuk.