Continental Underground Travel - of the fantastic kind!

The river trip was extraordinary! The boat was some sort of power barge, with people squeezed inside four-abreast sweating, or perilously balanced on the roof, burning! At least those on the roof didn't need to endure a constant looped barage of Japanese Karaoke, subtitled into Korean, dubbed into Khmer (Cambodian), and lustily sung by everyone barring me in the cabin (around sixty travellers). It was painful!!

After six hours of this we landed close to Siem Reap, and transferred into tiny fishing boats. An hour of very serene chugging brought us to the harbour; a muddy, dead-fish strewn slope that stank unbearably in the 40+ degree temperatures. It was wretched! Thankfully there was a taxi driver waiting for me. This was both surprising, as I didn't order one, and unsurprising, as I'd already met his counterpart in Phnom Penh. He promptly took me to a hotel of his choice, and then to the hotel of my choice when I refused to pay him! Welcome to Siem Reap.

This place is nice and laid back. Surrounded by the most fantastic 'temples', Siem Reap is the perfect base for a relaxing exploratory break. Once you've got there, and as long as you don't mind a lot of clambering around, you'll be well rewarded by the countless stone sculptures, friezes and buildings. The accompanying picture is that of Angkor Wat, which is possibly the most well known of the Khmer 'temples'. Temple is perhaps the wrong term; maybe palace would fit better, as they were built more for the Gods than mortal people. Some of these palaces are extremely tumbledown, such as Angkor Thom, which stays upright due to the trees that have grown through it. The trees themselves are so old that they are in turn propped up by the delapidated buildings. You can see this in some of the pictures on this blog.

More on Siem Reap soon, along with Alan's Tale...

Flying into Cambodia necessitates changing planes in Bangkok. If you're wise that is. I have a friend who we were due to meet up with in Siem Reap, Cambodia's second city. Let's call him Alan, because that's his name, and get to his tale a little later.

Once any sane person has changed planes in Bangkok, there then ensues a rather uncomfortable two hour flight to Phnom Penh, the capital city of Cambodia. The plane takes off and doesn't stop climbing for an hour, wherein it begins it's descent into Phnom Penh, Pochentong airport. Anyone who's taken a short flight knows the drill; stewardesses shove their trolley's uphill to dispense drinks and plastic food, and then try to prevent the same trolley's from disappearing through the front of the plane as they grab the empties. But this is a little different as the plane climbs so steeply for so long and the planes that ply away between these two South East Asian countries are designed for slighter frames than the average chubby European!

We landed and disgorged during the rebuilding of the airport's reception area and followed people who had no idea where they were going. When finally we were herded into the correct temporary shelter, we were confronted by a sinister looking row of officials who strained through dark glasses to peer at us and then at the passports that had been swiped from us on the plane.

Everyone sweated, not only due to the 80% humidity, but also because of the projected guilt that we all felt as though we'd had our foreheads tattooed with 'I done it', 'It's a fair cop', or some other suitably Sweeneyesque slogan. It was like Midnight Express! Honest!!

Next, fresh meat was called forward by one official or another by means of a pointed finger and a sharp grunt. My turn came and I was asked a few questions, which I neither understood or could possibly have answered adequately. Shockingly, I was ushered away con-passport and exited the building through the Exit tarpaulin...into the heaviest rainstorm I've ever encountered. Even worse than the one I'd encountered in Hong Kong a couple of years ago, which nearly washed me down the Mid Levels. I managed to bag a taxi, or rather, the taxi driver managed to bag me, and we set off for the city. The place was packed with people calmly sheltering from the deluge anywhere they could, smoking to pass the time. This meant under bridges, doorways and quite worryingly due to the proliferation of lighted cigarettes, underneath petrol station forecourt awnings.

It's a little known fact, but if you get into a taxi in Cambodia, the driver owns you! He'll take you to a hotel of his choice even though you state your own preference, and will be waiting to pick you up in the morning to take you to the river harbour, whether you want him to do so or not! I did, so that was OK. The hotel to which he took me not wholly against my will as I was knackered. It was however a very scary place; screams, chain-dragging-on-floor noises and knocks on the door came free of charge most of the night.

Thank God for the morning, the waiting taxi driver and the escape to the river harbour...

River journey, the wonders of the Siem Reap region and Alan's Tale coming soon.

Four days in Hong Kong. Just right!

I'm not going to preach about what's best to do, just how I like to spend my time there.

The Jade Market: This is a fanastic place, full of nick-nacks and friendly stall holders who are eager to haggle over their wares. You can spend hours in this place and never get bored.

Hong Kong Park Aviary: Sounds dull - isn't!! This place is fantastic, especially if you're looking to chill out and recover a little from jet lag. It's the size of a football field, drops down some thirty feet (ten meters) from the walkways, is chock-a-block with fully grown trees, and is entirely covered with a semi-permeable roof that allows the rain, light and breeze to pass through it. The birds flutter around the place and probably don't even realise that they're incarcerated in this huge capsule.

I love to spend a couple of hours here, just standing or sitting around while the most unbelievably gorgeous birds and small dear go about their business. It's quite usual to be stood in a spot for a quater of an hour and then notice a bright orange bird sitting a couple of feet away right in front of you.

OK, so it's possibly not everyone's cup of tea, but I'm no twitcher, and this is fab.

The Night Market: Vibrant, busy, massively interesting! The Night Market is in Kowloon (just over the bay from HK proper) and is a must to visit. It's open every night, and stretches a mile or two right up Temple Street. Even if you don't want to buy any of the fake labels or latest technology out of Japan or China, it's thriving with entertainment and food stalls. Just the atmosphere alone makes it worth a visit. I do, just about every night that I'm there!

Hong Kong Science Museum: Great fun if it rains...or doesn't actually! There's tons to do here, loads of it being interactive and not at all focused on kids, although they love it too. Rather than me bashing on about it, /www.lcsd.gov.hk/CE/Museum/Science/eindex.php">have a look for yourself.

Just walking around in the city is a treat. It'll take you an hour or two to walk straight through Kowloon (via a 15 minute ferry trip) and get to the other end of Hong Kong; longer if you have your eyes open and want to do things! The street markets are great; livestock, clothes, watches and jewellery for sale - everything. There's no need to catch a taxi or bus or tube, or anything if you don't want/need to - the ferries are a good idea though if you don't want to get wet!!

OK, not the usual list of things to do in Hong Kong, and not exhaustive either, but possibly something different to consider if you're lucky enough to get out there.

Flying into Hong Kong always gets me excited. I love the place and drop in for a few days every time I travel out to Oz or NZ. The place has a massive atmosphere; it always smells of...something. It's usually just that 'Hong Kong smell', but every now and again it changes to something fantastic, and on rare occasions to something not too hot!!

As I was moving up the east coast of Asia, I thought I'd show that area of the map. Sorting out the coast and islands such as the Philippines was no real problem, but when confronted with the heavily populated areas of China it became a bit of a nightmare. I can't remember how many 'first' drafts of this area I went through, but I nearly gave up; especially when I realised that the whole of Asia would be similarly difficult to de-construct into underground form. The problem was the lack of natural barriers like the ocean that more or less corral the cities into logical lines. The Asian interior is just a jumble of places without any formal linear structure (no offence intended interior Asian folks). Just look at the sketch of eastern Asia:



After hours of frustration, it finally came together into a cohesive, believable format. Hallelujah, I was happy! Needless to say, the featured sketch isn't the final version (it's a mess), but it shows some of the difficulties involved.

The next step in my journey was the homeward stretch, but as I like Hong Kong so much I'll plug it a little more. The next part of the map was western Asia.

I'll be writing more soon.

This finished artwork from an Asian viewpoint, 'Asiocentric' is available to buy at Amazon: Just click the image!

All my artwork is available to view and purchase online @ gallerisation.co.uk

[Online gallery artwork is necessarily small in order to avoid reproduction]

Wow, if there's ever a good place to see in the New Year, Sydney's got to be right up there with it!! The city's busy but not so much as to get jostled; everyone gets a good view of the proceedings and all of the proceedings are in one good view. It's fairly perfect - oh, and it's T-Shirt weather too. Compare this to sub-zero Yorkshire, England avoiding leary would-be-kissers, beer drenched clothes and foot-treading aplenty...I think I know where I'd like to be!

Anyway, the featured area of this article is South East Asia. I'd pondered getting straight to work on Europe, but being a European I figured (rightly as it turned out) that that Continent would be the easiest to define as an underground map. Better save that to last then - especially seeing as I was looking forward to doing that bit the most.

Here's the South East Asia sketch below. As with all the areas of the world (yes, even Europe), it took hours and hours of trial and error and atlas scanning before I was happy with the end result.



This isn't the sketch that was produced on the plane from Auckland to Sydney, but it was this area that was featured - in a much rougher format at that time.

Back in Sydney, and England were fiddled out of the Fifth Test as Steve Waugh was out around three times before the umpire finally gave him out. The Aussies were in a bit of a panic as Andy Caddick and Steve Harmison set about them, but they scraped home in the end to put the seal on a good old fashioned drubbing. Still, Sydney's a nice place!!

More incursions into Asia next time.

This finished artwork from an Antipodean viewpoint, 'Antipocentric' is available to to view and purchase online @ Gallerisation Just click the image!

[Online gallery artwork is necessarily small in order to avoid reproduction]

By the time I'd left Melbourne, Melbourne was on the map, and before I'd touched down in Auckland, that city was also represented. A rudimentary plan of the area took shape on the plane, but there were questions to be addressed:

• Should the lines go under the oceans? Yes I supposed so - this is a fantasy underground map after all.


• What should constitute a station? Should it go on city population or general area population? A great deal of Canada would suffer from severe stationlessness if either of these became the rule, so a mixture of both with a dash of common sense and aesthetic licence was to be employed.

One of the first sketches is shown here:



As I was in this part of the world it seemed like a logical place to start. I reckoned that a line covering east coastal Australian cities might do well to carry on through Papua New Guinea and up the Eastern Asian seaboard, a line could take in Alice Springs and Darwin before moving into South East Asia, and another could cut across to the west of Oz before moving up into India. As it turned out, Perth was the last stop on that line as the Darwin line took in India.

This part of the map was a joy to create along with many other parts; many regions proved to be a nightmare!

More soon

Artwork available to view and purchase online @ gallerisation.co.uk

[Online gallery artwork is necessarily small in order to avoid reproduction]

It's December 2002 and I've just witnessed England's demise at the hands of the Australians in the 4th (cricket) Test match. There's another Test due to start in Sydney in a few days and I'm off to see my friends in Auckland after that, before flying home via Hong Kong. Home's 11,000 miles away in Yorkshire, England and it's new year. Wouldn't it be great if it were possible to just jump onto the World Tube, pop home for new year and then pop back to watch the 5th Test?

Artwork available to view and purchase online @ gallerisation.co.uk

[Online gallery artwork is necessarily small in order to avoid reproduction]