Kids watching the flag-folding ceremony at Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum, Hanoi

Barefoot toddlers and pre-schoolers run around in circles, dads hoist kids on their shoulders, and moms guard strollers, teddy bears and surplus clothes.

Shrieks of laughter fill the night air, a pleasant change from the impatient beep-beeps in the background from motorbikers on nearby Hung Vuong Street

The Ho Chi Minh mausoleum, which holds the embalmed remains of the former president, is lit up in pinkish red, like an empty opera stage just before a performance.

Kids and parents playing at the Mausoleum on Friday night.

Suddenly a whistle blows and the crisply-pressed white uniformed guards move into action, gently clearing the square of toddlers and their parents and pushing the crowd back into the grassy area.

But they don’t leave. On a path parallel to the square, the kids sit down and their parents stand behind them, all in a row, all clearly waiting for something to happen.

Martial music begins to play, and the adults sing along. Then from the left, a troop of the white uniformed guards marches three-by-three across the square toward the giant flag in front o the mausoleum. The flag is slowly lowered to triumphal music and folded away by one of the guards.

The crowd slowly drifts over to the motorbike park, and dad and mom drive off with their little kids squashed between them on the back of the motorbike. The square empties quickly and Ho Chi Minh is left in peace again.

(Posted April 17, 2012 by Alison Bate)

Local rowing with his feet in Lan Ha Bay, Vietnam (Pix by Alison Bate, March 2012)

Colorful boat in Lan Ha Bay, Vietnam (Pix by Alison Bate, March 2012)

Travelling in Lan Ha Bay, near Ha Long Bay, Vietnam (Pix by Alison Bate, March 2012)

A quick break from kayaking in Lan Ha Bay (Pix Alison Bate)

Flying the flag in Cat Ba harbor, Vietnam (Pix by Alison Bate, March 2012)

A fine mist filled the bay, as we went kayaking near Cat Ba Island in northeast Vietnam. Most people go to see the spectacular vertical mountains dropping into the sea, but actually I spent more time looking at the boats.

Cat Bay harbor itself is full of colorful wooden boats flying the Vietnamese flag, and in Lan Ha Bay, I enjoyed seeing this guy rowing with his feet. It was also a lot less touristy than nearby Ha Long Bay.

We also saw loads of fish farms, each with a little hut on it and a long pier guarded by yapping dogs.They guard the crop while the family is out fishing, often overnight, and seem to harvest lots of mussels and other shellfish and catch giant jellyfish.

(Posted by Alison Bate, Marhc 24, 2012)

Sufi dancers in Omdurman (Pix: Alison Bate)

More Sufi dancing in Omdurman (Pix: Alison Bate)

The pounding beat got louder as we walked to the edges of the circle and saw what they were all watching: green, red and leopard-clothed mystics swirling and dancing in a hypnotic fashion in the middle of the circle.

Their faces told the story: blissful is the only way to describe it. The bumpy ride forgotten, all things forgotten but the compelling dancing, chanting and smiling faces.

It was Friday evening in Omdurman and I’d never seen the Sufi dancers before, despite living in Sudan for five months in 2007. At the time it seemed too touristy, and a long way to go on my one day off a week. Big mistake.

If you go to Khartoum, it’s definitely worth taking the tour arranged by the Acropole Hotel every Friday from 3pm. You don’t have to stay at the hotel to go, but pay about 30 Sudanese Pounds and you’ll see lots of sights and, most importantly, end up at the Sufi dancing in Omdurman.

To learn more about the Sufi religion, I enjoyed reading this post: Sufism in Sudan, Part One. Here’s an excerpt about the ceremony:

“The Hamad al-Neel cemetery—a vast, dun-colored cemetery in Omdurman—is the headquarters of the al-Qadiriya order in Sudan and was founded by sheikh Hamad al-Neel, who is buried at a nearby mosque.

“The expanse serves as an attraction for tourists and photographers due to the nature of the order’s rituals, which combine African heritage, dance, music and colorful attire.

“On Friday at 5 pm, the cemetery fills up with people of all ages, ethnicities and walks of life who come to be a part of the rituals, while tea sellers and pamphlet vendors surround the area around the tomb site.

“The dervishes are dressed in red and green, patchwork, leopard-prints or flowing white ‘jellabiyas’ and ‘immas’ (turbans). Some sport dreadlocks, amulets and talismans, and others don on colorful hats and enormous strings of prayer beads.

“Standing barefoot above the sand and under the heat of a sizzling sun, a few men pick up the rhythm on their ‘tambours’ (drums) and chant ‘zikr’ melodically while the crowd swells palpably, grooving to the rhythm.” ((Continued in Sufism in Sudan, Part One)

(Posted by Alison Bate on Jan.1, 2012)

The old and the new in Khartoum (taken from Omdurman).

By Alison Bate

The capital of Sudan feels a little lost and empty these days.

The distinctive Dinkas – the impossibly tall, thin Southerners – and their fellow compatriots have mostly left Khartoum for their new homeland and the deadline for the rest to leave is just months away.

After April 9, 2012, any southerners remaining will become stateless or, if they are lucky, have to get work visas like other foreigners.

The new country of South Sudan, born on the 9th of July, has taken with it the biggest chunk of Sudan’s oil revenues and Khartoum seems totally unprepared for the loss of all that money.

It will have to find new ways to make an income and meanwhile the residents of Khartoum and its sister cities of Omdurman and Khartoum North are hurting as prices shoot upward.

“Everybody want to leave Sudan. Why you come to Sudan from Canada?” asked one resident, only half-joking.

The price of a sheep shot up to between 400 and 700 Sudanese Pounds (SP) for the Haj earlier this year – the religious occasion when every family buys a sheep.

Translating this into US dollars is not even easy, as there’s a huge gap between the official exchange rate and what you can get on the black market.

Officially, $1 US equals about 2.75 SP but on the black market, $1 US will buy you more than 4SP. That’s a huge slump compared with four years ago, when I last visited Khartoum, and $1 US was worth 2 SP.

So, oil has gone, the southerners have gone, and the UN has also largely left town. The massive bureaucracy of the UN Mission in Sudan (UNMIS) has shut up shop in Khartoum and there are fewer fancy white SUVs with their monster UN logos charging around town, and fewer well-paid jobs for the Sudanese: about 4,000 Sudanese who worked for the UN in Khartoum have lost their jobs.

In the process, UNMIS has morphed into UNMISS and headed south to Juba, the capital of South Sudan.

Paradoxically, Khartoum itself is full of new gleaming buildings, roads and bridges built with oil money. But it seems like a shell city.

Whether this is the end of an era of new growth or simply a lull before the next wave comes in remains to be seen. But right now is certainly not a good time to be a resident of Khartoum.

(Posted Dec.16, 2011 by Alison Bate)

1. Take lots of US dollars in cash, in fact everything you’ll need, as none of your western ATMs or credit cards will be accepted.

Kassala resident near the Gash river

2. Change money on the black market, not in banks or official exchanges. As of Dec.1, 2011 you’ll get about 4.2 Sudanese pounds to $1 US on the black market, compared with only about 2.75 SP to the dollar officially.
To change money in downtown Khartoum, the moneychangers’ area is near the Al Kabir mosque, on the northeast side, where they also sell cellphones, ones that likely fell off the back of a truck. Just wander along and you’ll hear plenty of murmurings of: “Change dollars?”

3. If you are travel light or backpacking, don’t bother with a big towel (you’ll dry quickly without one) or lots of soap, toothpaste etc (all readily available and cheap).

4. If you like reading, bring a few books or your e-Reader as pickings are pretty slim for English books, and more likely of the deadly “Elements Of English Grammar” kind.

5. If you want to meet up with local people, everyone uses a cellphone in Sudan and they’re really useful. A cheap cellphone is about $10 US, then pick up a Zain SIM card for about 5 SP ($1.25 US) and a 10 SP top-up card (about $2.50).

6. Don’t freak out too much over the scary travel advisories for Sudan. Khartoum is one of the safest cities you could be in, as well as northern and eastern Sudan. For real advice, check out the Lonely Planet’s Thorntree Forum page on Sudan.

7. But don’t rely on LP’s guide to Sudan (very limited). The only one worth getting right now is Bradt’s Guide to Sudan.

8. You have to register on arrival within three days. If you want to do it by yourself, you can, but the one time I did, I waited in the blazing heat for about three hours in a massive line-up and ended up paying a “special rate”. This last time I stayed in a hotel and they did it for me for a modest fee. My total registration fee was 160 SP (about $40 US).

9. If you are in Sudan and want to go to South Sudan, there are loads of flights. But if you have a single entry Sudan visa, as I did, it’s difficult to get back to Khartoum. If Juba’s on your list of places to go, it’s much easier to arrange to fly out of Juba to Addis Ababa or Kampala.

Village just outside Kassala, East Sudan

10. I thoroughly enjoyed Kassala in East Sudan (see my post “Coffee and lamb fright in Kassala”. First, get a travel permit via either the Acropole Hotel, Global Tours (Tel: 09122 53484) or take photocopies of your passport (front and back) and a passport photo to the tourism office. A first-class bus cost 58 SP ($16) from Mina Bary bus station in south Khartoum. It’s best to buy your ticket the day before as they fill up. Buses leave early morning between 6.30 am and 7 am.

(Posted Dec.9, 2011 by Alison Bate)

Drinking Ethiopian coffee in Kassala, East Sudan

I’m in a hot little internet café up some very narrow stairs, so narrow I had to squeeze sideways to get up here, helped marginally by a wobbly rail.

The internet in Sudan is sometimes very good and sometimes very bad and slow. The connection keeps dropping, and I’ve just managed to switch out of Arabic and change the direction of type. But the owner, one of many Eritreans living here in East Sudan, has very kindly just lent me his portable, with an mDSL internet stick…much faster.

I went to look at the striking Taka Mountains yesterday, but as is the way in Sudan, never quite made it, sidetracked by friendly people at the street cafes.

I’m in a cute little town next to the mountains called Kassala, a long, eight-hour bus ride east of Khartoum. The bare mountains that rise up suddenly out of the desert pull you toward them automatically. I was heading there when I saw a store selling all kinds of luscious desserts. So I bought a Sudanese baklava, which you order by weight (so I couldn’t just get one), and sat down to eat them.

This town is very close to the border with Eritrea and Ethiopia, and there are many people from those countries living here, bringing their coffee customs. Many fled here as a safe haven during war in their countries.

I was admiring the coffee, which comes in a tiny individual Turkish-style coffee pot with what looks like dried grass coming out the top, when a lone tourist joined me. Victor, a young Swiss guy backpacking around Sudan, has come down through Egypt and is now on his way to Ethiopia.

“You want coffee?” they asked Victor, bringing out just one coffee cup. I was seething. The men had been chatting happily with me, but once a man joined me, I ceased to exist. I understand it is the culture – not polite to talk to a woman when there’s a man with her – but it was still annoying. Victor must have picked up on my vibes, as after drinking two cups, he offered me some.

It was dynamite: very strong and tasted almost like Irish whisky..I learned later they put ginger in it, which gives it the strong, smooth taste. And the grass? It is used to filter the coffee.

Victor and I were then invited for supper by a Sudanese guy who lives in the U.S. some of the time and has a very posh villa in Kassala. We learned a lot about the history of the region, about when it was occupied by the Italians, and more recently, the fighting just over the border in Eritrea.

I’ve also eaten at a local restaurant, but must admit I wasn’t brave enough to try the “Lamb Fright” or “Barbecue Problem” in the English menu. However, I did have some really neat shish kebab and fresh orange juice.

And maybe I’ll make it to the mountains tomorrow.

Posted Tuesday Nov. 29, 2011 by Alison Bate

I ‘ve just arrived in Khartoum after a four-year gap, and this morning between 5 a.m. and 6 a.m., it was pretty magical.

Khartoum shepherds feed their flock in the early morning

After a sleepless, jetlagged night, I went up to the rooftop of the Bougainvilla Guest House, where I’m staying.

It was still dark, the moon and stars were out, and a cool breeze swept across the patio. Four or five mosques started competing with each other, and the mullahs’ prayers bounced all around the darkened city.

I stayed up there until the skies began to lighten, and the sun landed on the concrete buildings below and little birds with fanned tails flitted around the dirt streets. Khartoum by day is a hot and dusty city, so it was neat to see it this way.

No one in the city seemed in a hurry to wake up. A donkey cart and driver ambled across the dirt square below, and the air smelled of burnt sand. I wandered along one of the streets, where a few sleepy people were heading to work.

And after breakfast I’ll have all the fun of sorting out registering with the police and getting a SIM card.

(Posted Sat. Nov.19, 2011 by Alison Bate)

I can pack a backpack or suitcase for a trip in under an hour, but deciding what tech toys to take is another ballgame altogether.

I spent a ridiculous amount of time researching cellphones and agonizing about whether to take my beloved Macbook with me.

I’m meeting various friends in Khartoum, and everyone uses cellphones there. But of course, many Canadian cellphones (sigh) – including my own – don’t work outside North America. The cellphone with my Telus account doesn’t even have a SIM card, and I foolishly gave away my old unlocked FIDO phone, which would work overseas. I toyed with buying one of Future Shop or 7/11 ‘s unlocked phones, but all the online research drained my limited shopping energy.

So while in Bahrain on a second tedious eight-hour stopover, I bought a $27 US Nokia 1616. Hopefully, it’ll work with a Sudanese SIM card. I’m sure it will – the Sudanese seem to do cellphones better than Canada.

As for my MacBook, I couldn’t face worrying about losing it (and all my pix and personal data). So two days before leaving, I bought a cheapo HP 10.1” Intel Atom N455 Netbook for $249 plus tax from Nanaimo’s Future Shop. Asked them to load Skype and VLC to save time, and set up the Arabic version too. My friend David kindly installed a spare copy of Microsoft Office, and I was all set to go.

My other toy – definitely an indulgence – is a Zoom H4Ns digital recorder that cost $319 plus tax from Tom Lee’s store in downtown Vancouver. It replaces my fancy Sony minidisc recorder, which is basically obsolete after four years of minimal use, and had annoying proprietary software that never worked. The new Zoom seems to download MP3s easily via a USB port. Thank you, Zoom.

And, of course, when I got to Khartoum (just last night) all I wanted to do was write longhand in a ruled notebook . . .

(Posted Saturday, Nov.19, 2011 by Alison Bate)

May 30, 2011

If you like looking at pictures of ships, which for some obscure reason I do, it’s always fun to pop over to some of the photography and ship-tracking websites and see what’s around. I was trying to avoid writing recently, and stumbled across this photo of a ship I sailed on a few years ago.

Photo of the 800-foot CSCL Felixstowe by Philip Gilston (See his website at http://pgilston.smugmug.com/)

I was asked a ton of questions after I returned from sailing across the Pacific on the CSCL Felixstowe. Here, in no particular order, are some of my fond memories:

1. What was the food like?

Wonderful, if you like curries. Fortunately, I do. Chief cook Ignacio (Nick) Villanueva had an exhausting job, cooking for 25 of us every day, helped only by messman Lorenzo (Laurence) Ramos.

Nick often ended up cooking separate meals for the Indian officers and Filipino crew. Indian officers don’t eat beef and some don’t eat pork, while the Filipinos didn’t like spicy Indian curries.

A typical lunch for the Indian officers included a freshwater fish called Tilapia, potato and cauliflower curry, rice, salad and melon. Meanwhile, the Filipinos had grilled beef, rice, bitter gourd and melon.

On Sundays, Jina Noronha, wife of first officer Rodney Noronha, often helped out by cooking biriani for the Indian officers, along with raita, a delicious yoghurty dip.

“We measure our time left in birianis. I’ve got two birianis left,” said Capt. Alfred Gomez, who was signing off shortly.

2. Did you drink every night with the Captain?

Capt. Gomez was a staunch Catholic who discouraged drinking and held Sunday prayer meetings with rip-roaring singing to boost crew morale and camaraderie.

“I see it as the only way. Instead of getting soaked in alcohol, you are getting soaked in God’s word,” he said. To this day, I can’t hear “This is the day that the Lord has made” without choking up.

Rum rations for the crew are long gone, replaced by strict anti-alcohol and drug policies. Although beer was allowed off-duty, it was quietly frowned upon. I drank three beers while on board, and even then felt guilty.

The best tales from the captain’s table came during lunchtime, when the captain, chief engineer Anil Sharma and third officer Praveen Prabhu traded stories.

The Suez Canal is nicknamed the Marlboro Canal, and if you don’t pay the pilot with cartons of cigarettes, they won’t move the ship. One time the captain finally got a pilot who said he didn’t take cigarettes.

“I’ll just have coffee,” he said, then but then promptly added tea, butter and a huge list of other demands.

“Better you take the cigarettes,” said the captain, finally.

3. Was it risky, a woman sailing with all those men?

Rodney and Annette Noronha on the bridge

The two wives, two kids and myself were all Supernumeraries, an archaic-sounding word also applied to actors who appear on stage but have no lines to speak. Pretty accurate, in this case. I was the Fifth Supernumerary.

4. How long did the trip take?

The ship was pretty fast, with a cruising speed of 24 knots (nautical miles an hour), so it only took 11 days to sail from LA/Long Beach to Qingdao in northeast China.

We sailed the Great Circle route, skirting the Aleutian Islands off Alaska before arching across the Pacific to Qingdao – more than 5,800 nautical miles in all.

A Super Hurricane northeast of the Philippines delayed us a day and at Qingdao, we hit fog. So we arrived in Shanghai at dawn 13 sailing days (14 days by date) after leaving Long Beach.

5. Did you get seasick?

Streaming across the Pacific

The worst times came southeast of Japan, as we hit the aftermath of a Super Hurricane called Dianmu. That night I was lying in my bunk sweating and headachy as the ship pitched back and forth like a bucking bronco. Winds at the time reached Force 8, but we missed the worst of the hurricane.

6. Can I sail on a containership, too?

Containerships don’t usually take passengers, so I was very lucky. The crew is too busy most of the time to look after passengers and there are also insurance complications.

Bulk carriers have more leisurely schedules, and are more likely to take passengers, but they are still not cheap. Several companies cater to freighter travel, though. Check out Freighter Travel and Seaplus.

7. What cargo did you carry?

Actually, a lot of empty 40-footers! We left California with 1,768 empty containers and just 225 full ones, carrying mainly waste paper and scrap metal.

The transpacific trade is notoriously imbalanced: ships loaded with consumer goods arrive in the U.S. from Asia and often return empty.

8. What did the crew do all day?

Second officer Praveen Menon and third officer Praveen Prabhu

Typically they’d slump exhausted or bored watching DVDs or listening to music in their cabins. A hard-core of pingpong fanatics got together regularly in the little on-board gym. My personal memories are of playing the Memory Game on the bridge with little Annette.

Time and again, as we sailed across the Pacific, my desire to idealize the crew’s way of life received a cold dose of salty water from those that lived this life daily. I was looking for adventure while the captain and crew were looking for their floating office to run as smoothly as possible.

Second officer Praveen Menon laughed when I asked if being at sea was a romantic life. “No, I don’t think so. Maybe in a passenger ship, but not a merchant ship. They have the atmosphere to be romantic, but here the atmosphere is not romantic at all. It’s purely work.”

9. Did the crew speak English?

Yes, they all spoke English. Captains and officers are required to speak English if they trade in international waters, and the Filipino crew had learnt English at home.

10. What flag did the ship sail under?

It was all very convoluted, but typical for international shipping. I sailed with 20 Indian officers and Filipino crew on a ship built in South Korea, registered (flagged) in Cyprus, owned and managed by a Canadian company and operated by a Chinese state shipping line.

“Do you dare to wear it?”
– 1974 advert for Bint el Sudan perfume

Mar.22, 2011

By Alison Bate

It was my last day in Khartoum, the dusty desert capital of Sudan. I lay spread-eagled on my bed, trying to keep as cool as possible, and planning the day ahead.

I’ll visit Omdurman Souk, I decided, follow on my grandfather’s trail. After all, it was thanks to Grampy and his “expert nose” that I was in Africa at all.

The original Bint oil perfume (non-alcoholic)

Eric Burgess, known in the style of the times as E.E. Burgess Esq., was a traveling perfume salesman for W.J. Bush & Co. of Hackney, East London.

His mission? To sniff out new markets for exotic perfumes. Like his father before him, Eric Burgess started at the company as a youngster and stayed with Bush for 50 years. It was a family tradition: his grandfather and great-grandfather also traded in chemicals of some kind. And as an export manager and buyer, he travelled all over Africa, the Middle East and Europe, often in very remote areas.

“He lived at a time when you could have real adventures,” his younger daughter Elizabeth – my Mum – recalled.

As a young child, she remembers him flying in a small plane over their garden in Kent, waving a large white hankie out the window as he headed across the English Channel on yet another long trip.

I grew up listening to my grandfather’s travel tales at his home in Kemsing, Kent – the cozy English village he lived in for 60 years.

NOTE: A shorter piece, “The Bint Factor”, was published by Reader’s Digest Canada in December 2009)

Grampy’s home was full of elephants: ivory tusks carved with a row of elephants; book-ends with ivory elephants at each end; and a carved wooden elephant stool on the landing near the top of the stairs.

His wife Ann died when I was only eight, so my memories are of him living alone, but very comfortably, in the same grounds as Auntie Pat, Uncle John and our cousins Simon and Roger.

Travelling with my grandfather in France

He’d tell of his adventures with an infectious chuckle, bushy eyebrows twitching, glasses at the end of his nose, and a cigarette with a full inch of ash wedged between his fingers.

My brother Tony, sister Gill and I would watch fascinated, wondering when the ash would fall off, as we listened to how he’d had to shoot a man in Africa or helped toss a dead thief off a train.

Grampy told one of his stories in the company’s Albright magazine in February 1965, shortly after he retired.

Journeys overseas took months in his early days, sometimes more than a year, and he was a regular on the Continental long distance trains. Late one night in the Balkans, he was in a sleeper when he heard a noise in the corridor:

“I left my compartment and saw the attendant bending over a fellow lying on the floor. Apparently the guard had caught him stealing, the thief had drawn a knife and the guard had shot him,” he recalled.

“I asked what he was going to do about it and he said quietly: ‘Give me a hand to shove him out’ – and we did, out of the window”.

In another interview, this time with The Sunday Times of London, Eric Burgess recalled an unplanned six days in the desert.

“We crossed the desert from Damascus to Baghdad in a fleet of Cadillacs with enough food for a week in case we got stuck with the rain coming. But we reached one patch of mud 25 yards across and it took us two hours to get through it.

“We all fell flat on our backs and I arrived in my office in Baghdad covered in mud. I caught sight of myself in a mirror and, good heavens, I realised I hadn’t got a tie on.”

Grampy (right) riding in Africa

Bint is born

It was on one of his early expeditions that Bint was born, after Eric Burgess set out for Abyssinia (now Ethiopia) and Sudan in 1919 with several large leather cases and a strong trunk, tightly strapped.

As he told it, one blazingly hot day a group of 14 Omdurman merchants “looking like brigands” crowded into the small office used by the company representative in Khartoum.

After squatting on the floor and drinking several cups of thick strong coffee, as was the custom, they produced a large number of exotic essences, including jasmine, lilac, lily of the valley, musk and amber.

They asked my grandfather to use them to make the perfect perfume for Muslims. Strict Muslims don’t touch alcohol, so the perfume had to be oil-based, a more expensive process.