Published by Johnny on November 06, 2010
The one recurring feature of a long backpacking stint (aside from dirty laundry and malnutrition) is public bloody transport. As any traveler can testify when you get the option of taking any other mode of transport rather than another long distance bus, you grab it with both hands. When that mode of transport is a boat, you’re in for a real treat…
I’ve taken boats up the Nile, down the Mekong, across Japan, Korea and China, from Ireland and France and I can’t get enough of them! Here are the 5 reasons why I think traveling by boats beats any other mode of transport, no contest:
1) Space. With you knees jammed somewhere up around your chin in another cross-country bus, you truly begin to appreciate the luxury of space that boats can afford. In fact, I revel in it so much that I often run to the centre of the deck and burst into spontaneous starjumps simply because I can. Seriously, you can walk around at your leisure, even sometimes order food and drinks and spread out and sleep if you really need to.
2) Leisurely pace. Some may argue that this is a negative aspect but I beg to differ. Boats are not lightning fast, far from it but this is another aspect I enjoy. You meander across an ocean or down a river at a leisurely pace, giving you time to genuinely appreciate the journey that you’re on. You can plan your next steps with all the free time you find yourself with and kick back, read a book and sanctimoniously think of all the people around the world darting to and fro in their fast-paced jobs while you, unhurriedly, enjoy the rolling of the water.
3) Cheap. This certainly applies to the boats that I take although I fully appreciate this isn’t always the case. As a budget traveler, luxury yachts and cruise-ships aren’t my haunt at all but cargo boats, slow ferries, feluccas etc certainly don’t burst any tight budgets. If you choose wisely and are in no rush, boats can be the cheapest mode of transport. You don’t (can’t) spend too much money while you’re onboard, the tickets often include accommodation and food, you can bring your own booze and snacks on board – all in all, a bargain mode of transport.
4) Exciting. Don’t even bother trying to tell me you didn’t dream about sailing boats as a kid, following in the footsteps Christopher Columbus or Vasco De Gama or chasing pirates in the high seas. This lets you (discreetly!) relive your childhood dreams in the most traditional long distance transport available. Land Ahoy!
5) Social. Possibly the best aspect to traveling by boat, certainly for a backpacker, is the social side. You’re stuck on this vessel for a long-time with a finite group of people to converse with, before too long you’ll be swapping stories like old friends.
 taking a cargo boat down the Mekong river So there you have it, I’ve nailed my colours to the mast (genius!) and made it clear that boats are far and away my favourite form on transport. If you get the chance to jump onboard a ship any time soon, do it and I guarantee you won’t be disappointed. Happy travel =)
Tags: Backpacking, boats, burma, buses, cheap travel, China, egypt, japan, korea, laos, malawi, Mozambique, myanmar, Thailand
Published by Johnny on September 21, 2010
From Senga bay we headed to the capital, Llongwe. This was more of a transit point than anything else as we headed to Nkhata bay in the north, the last stop on the ‘tourist trail’ really and as we move northwards from here the backpacking numbers dwindle and dwindle. Nkhata bay proved to be a very intriguing place, not least because I ended up sitting outside a prison speaking to the convicts about how they ended up there!
Nkhata bay is effectively the last stop as you move north towards Tanzania so I ended up spending 3 nights here before the disgusting 2 day bus journey to Dar Es Salaam. It’s a very laidback place, with a couple of great hostels. I stayed in Big Blue for about $5 a night and with free wifi and big portions of food, I’d recommend it highly =)
I was walking around the town taking pictures carefree until I apparently took one too many and got confronted by a very scary AK47 wielding soldier who looked straight from Blood Diamond the movie! Turns out I was taking photos of Nkhata Bay prison and naturally that’s not exactly inline with acceptable behaviour! He was of course very nice about it after and didn’t even bear the huge machete he had shoved down the waist band of his trousers 
Over the next couple of days I ended up becoming quite friendly with a couple of the prisoners (who were allowed to conduct their daily work outside the front of the prison). They were very amiable indeed and were living testament to the new zero-tolerance attitude that the new Government is demonstrating. Snoop dog (below) threw one drunken punch and got 7 years in prison! :S Anyways, they were cool guys and after throwing a few bits and bobs their way they made a really cool copper ring for me with the Malawian sun carved into one side of it – it sits proudly on my backpack as we speak =)
The last day in Nkhata bay was spent with the local witch doctor! For $5 he showed us around his village, went through his various ‘potions’ (for want of a better word), showed us around the fields were he collects his remedies and generally enlightened us to the world of local doctors here. He was a cool guy and the stuff he showed us was mind-blowing although never have I been happier to be a recipient of Britain’s National Health Service!!
Just before I bid farewell to Malawi I had time for a quick trim in the local salun (sic). She was adamant that she had cut a white guys hair before but judging from the industrial paper cutting scissors and botch job she did on my golden locks, I remain unconvinced! Still for 35p what do you expect
Tanzania here I come….
P.S The internet in Ethiopia (where i am at the moment) is terrible, hence the lack of uploaded pics! Sorry, ill update it when i can! But considering my next stop is Somalia, it might be a a week or 2!
Tags: Backpacking, cheap travel, malawi
Published by Johnny on September 16, 2010
From Cape Maclear there is a great way to get out – the LLawa ferry (and i loooove boats!). Anyone who has ever been on a longterm backpacking stint will know all too well the endless hours you spend on packed buses, sweating, head bobbing, starving longing for your destination. This is why when offered the chance of a boat – you HAVE to take it! And so we did…
The ferry runs once a week from the bottom of the lake to the top of the lake via an island in the middle. If I had time I would definitely have headed to the island but alas that’s for another trip, so if you have the chance then grab the opportunity and set sail!
As I mentioned in previous posts about Malawi the transport is somewhat unpredictable so from leaving Cape Maclear leaving at 5am and arriving at Senga bay around 7pm I managed to sit in the back of a pick-up truck, was wedged into a minibus, took a slooooow ferry, jumped on the back of a push-bike taxi, broke down in a van when the petrol was so low that going up a hill the petrol ran from the tank, hitched a ride with a crazy English women in a saloon car alongside her considerably younger Malawian husband and finally arrived in Senga Bay with my life intact. Having spent a grand total of $6 on transport all day, I realized just how cheap Malawi can be if your willing to rough it a little bit.
Senga Bay is an interesting little place. Much more removed from the tourist trail that exists in Malawi (and therefore your Malawian Kwacha stretches much further) it certainly feels much more like ‘real Africa’. We stayed in a very local guesthouse for a dollar a night in the middle of an African village which was certainly an experience in itself.
The town of Senga Bay does have a couple of hostels, and in true shoestring style, we stayed in a cheap place and spent our time in the nice place! The hostels offer a few great watersport activities and all for less than $15 so save some money on food and accommodation and go crazy on the lake all afternoon, still ducking under that $30 a day budget that most people go with.
 
Be aware however, that there are no ATMS here that work (in fact that goes for a lot of the country!) so stock up on cash in Llongwe or Blantyre if possible.
I had done that, luckily enough, so when I saw some disgusting brash pink tshirts seemingly for sale I made a beeline to them to make my purchase. There was a lot of activity surrounding the event, with hordes of locals surrounding the pink bus with the Tshirts so I moved a little closer to find out what was going on. Big mistake. Before long I was at the front of the crowd with the guy and his microphone publicly enquiring as to how to get one of these tshirt. “$9” he said. I was shocked by the price considering we were in Malawi after all but the public pressure got to me so I decided to see the purchase through to the end, I tried to then buy the shirt for the $9 but apparently I had got the whole thing wrong. This pink event was being run by one of their phone networks (Zain) and I had to buy a phone and simcard for $9 and if I was lucky I may win a tshirt along with the tshirt. A bit of fraudulent activity by the guy on the microphone and soon I was the lucky winner of a tshirt and a proud new owner of a Zain mobile phone. The crowd seemed entertained at least, if a little skeptical!
Time in Senga Bay was up, off to the capital….
Tags: Backpacking, cheap travel, malawi
Published by Johnny on September 15, 2010
So we crossed the border from Mozambique to Malawi and it didn’t quite go according to plan – by that I mean, I got bloody ROBBED!! Arrrrrrrgh! I thought with my crazy travel experiences I was now immune to scams, conmen and hustlers…. Apparently not :S
I got stamped out of Mozambique and swaggered through no-mans land before the Malawian border and got approached by a few money changers, standard practice…
I played them off one another until I got the fairest rate between the 2 currencies but through my promotion of capitalism I had gathered a rather large crowd of money changers and the tables turned. One of them wedged the agreed amount into my hand, took my money and when I looked at the money he had given me it was only half the agreed amount! Queue their well rehearsed routine.. they started switching positions faster than a Karma Sutra flip book so I couldn’t keep track of my guy and when I grabbed one and demanded my money back, it wasn’t him. They dispersed immediately and I was left with the worst exchange rate transaction imaginable so BE CAREFUL WHEN YOU CROSS THE BORDER GUYS!!
Ok rant over and frustration purged! We jumped in a van and headed to the industrial town of Blantyre which is the largest city in Malawi (that’s not saying much though). Blantyre is a pretty cool I guess but not a lot to do. Naturally, it’s likely to be your first stop in Malawi so seeing Malawi in full flow can take an afternoon itself. I wandered around here for the afternoon and aside getting accosted by a lunatic middle-aged Malawian who publicly accused me of being a member of the CIA, then the KGB then confessed herself to being a member of both, then asking me for money so she could escape all the, and I quote, “bloody Africans” – naturally with her being an African herself I found this quite odd, Blantyre was indeed interesting.
NOTE: For any UK backpackers reading, there is a place in Blantyre that you absolutely must visit. It stockes everything from our childhoods! Doubledeckers (personal fav), wham bars, millions, coco pops, kinder eggs, wispas, double-dips etc it is an oasis of sugar in a continent void of delicious sweets! It is however pretty pricey, but what price pure, unadulterated pleasure?!
 Succumbing to temptation I would recommend getting yourself over to the Carlsberg brewery for a couple of hours which offers free tours once a week, I missed the tour unfortunately but after a taking the MD on a guilt trip about me being a beer connoisseur coming all the way to Malawi to see the brewery and a cheeky 50 cent bribe to the store man, I found myself with 2 friends in the store room with effectively free reign to ‘sample’ their beers. I don’t remember much more of the afternoon.
With a groggy head and a doubledecker in tow, I set off for Monkey Bay and Cape Maclear the following morning….
Tags: Backpacking, cheap travel, malawi
Published by Johnny on September 11, 2010
Transport in Malawi is, erm.. rather unpredictable. After a 10 hour bus journey, shared with some noisy chickens, stopping every 4 minutes for people to buy unimaginable things from street vendors, we approached Monkey Bay. An overloaded pick-up truck with literally 25 people on it started honking its horn with vigour until our bus stopped beside it. Apparently they had spotted Mazungus (white people) in the bus, got excited, and thought we might be going to Cape Maclear (and therefore be able to get another fare or three), unfortunately they were right and the 25 people became 28 with us on top of the cargo, on top of the people, on top of the pickup…
Amazingly we made it with only one breakdown. My body was aching and i was hoping it would be worth it, when I got off but what a sight to disembark to…
Lake Malawi is stunning. Beautiful. Gorgeous. Insert adjective here. Seriously, we arrived just around sunset and it made the journey worthwhile in an instant. Found a cheap dorm (around $4 per night) and watched the sun go down over the lake with a smile on my face. Cape Maclear is another one of those places where you need to plan to leave in the next couple of days or you’ll find yourself still there in a month or two. This is not fictitious hyperbole, but what happened to two separate people I met here. One weird Canadian guy who had planned to travel around Africa for 5 months but had been on the continent for 4 months yet had only seen Cape Maclear! So be warned Still, it’s easy to see why people stay around…
There are a lot of things to do, the food is good, the scenery is tiptop and the people are great. I spent my couple of days here trying to dust off the cobwebs from the exercise gene. I rented a kayak and kayaked around the lake, went for a swim around one of the islands and generally had a great day (aside from the sunburn: damn this pasty Irish complexion!). Another day, I hired a dude from the local town to take me for a hike in the surrounding mountains where he insisted we would have a beautiful viewpoint off the whole bay, he wasn’t lying
WARNING: I came down from the trek and heard about bilharzias, a water-borne disease rife in Lake Malawi. Where, to avoid contracting it, it is recommend not to swim in the lake, eat local food, shower in lake water or generally involve yourself with any water – oh shit! So, odds on I have the disease – however you can rid yourself of it by taking drugs (which we got from the pharmacy asap) 2 months after exposure. So im still waiting to take them, in the knowledge that there may be creatures living inside my body. Lovely.
Cape Maclear – thanks for the good times, and the disease, I’m off North…
P.S if you’re hungry while you’re there, stop in for a bite at the local Macdonalds for your western fix..
Tags: Backpacking, cheap travel, malawi
Published by Johnny on September 07, 2010
Goodbye to the Portuguese-flavoured Mozambique and on to a whole new world – hello Malawi! I hate to repeat myself time and time again but Malawi is yet another amazing country (thinking about it, maybe it’s the traveling that’s always amazing and not necessarily the country!?, who knows – anyways, suffice to say i had an awesome time here that’s for sure =)). The country is dominated by the breathtaking Lake Malawi and with endless towns situated on the coast, you can’t fail to take Malawi up on its seafood and lakeside activities and enjoy every second of it..
Malawi is one of the poorest countries in Africa and, as is often the case, this seems to bring a sincerity and generosity out of it inhabitants so it’s tough not to fall in love with the place. Naturally, through its poverty, Malawi is a cheap place to travel and because of this you can end up staying much, much longer than you anticipate!
I’m going to just give a quick run-down on the basics for travelling in Malawi, from a budget perspective:
Budget: Can easily get by on $20 a day (lay off the Carlsberg Elephants though)
Transport: Varied, uncomfortable, entertaining, cheap and eventful! You’ll spend time in overcrowded buses (for sure), on the back of pick-ups, on the back of cargo on the back of pick-ups, on push-bike taxis, kayaks, steam boats and dhows etc..
Accommodation: If you want to rough it, you can sleep for cheap! Let’s face it, you don’t need more than a clean sheet, a mattress and a mosquito net – do ya?! if that’s your only prerequisites then $2-$5 rooms are easy to find
Food: Eat local and you’ll eat well. For pittance. Stay away from the eateries featured in your guidebook and you’ll wallet will reap the benefits! Food here is distinctly average regardless of how much you spend, so you might as well spend $1 for an average meal than $10!
Entertainment: Lots and lots and lots. Generally focused on the lake – scuba, snorkeling, kayaking, lounging on the beach nursing a hangover, watersports. Stuff is pretty reasonably priced and for $10 you can try your hand at water-skiing, banana boating etc.
 $5 well spent in Senga Bay on the 'sling-shot'! The general route north: I arrived via land (standard) from Mozambique in a horrible dalla-dalla, which is a minibus designed for 12 people although I’m not sure if the driver was aware of this as he squeezed the 27th person in the van for the 4 hour journey!…
From the border you can jump in another minibus to the industrial city of Blantyre, spend a day or two there. Head north to Monkey Bay or Cape Maclear for a few days chilling with your fellow backpackers. From here you can get an awesome boat up the lake which I recommend highly. If not, head to the capital for a day or two. Then onwards north to Senga Bay and finally onto Nkhata Bay.
2 weeks gone in a heartbeat, guaranteed. Your bank account will love you, as will your sense of adventure! So get to Malawi, asap – i’ll fill you in my the details of my trip in Malawi in subsequent posts…
Tags: cheap travel, malawi, travel guide
Published by Johnny on August 21, 2010
Maputo Maputo Maputo – cracking city! We arrived after an arduous journey from Swaziland crammed into a minibus with 20 Africans across a road bumpier than anything I had ever come across. I had traveled into the country with 2 Candian chicks I had met, over a less than delicious $5 box of South African rose wine, in Mbabane (Swaziland) and they had already booked themselves into a $100 a night hotel across the Maputo bay in an area called Catembe. When we pulled up into Maputo city centre the girls (in my skewed opinion) clearly wanted us to escort them to their hotel, which he gladly did.
On the ferry we jumped to cross the bay, grabbed a beer en route and sailed across towards their hotel. We disembarked, made less than 200 metres progress until we met a guy called ‘Trouble’, he looked, walked and talked like a gangster but a nicer guy you’ll struggle to find. We walked the 200 metres and stopped by a shack at the dock ran by a old rasta lady know as ‘Mama Marley’ and what a cool ladt she was. Trouble, Adrian, Mama Marley and the 2 Candian chicks (Rachelle and Melissa) proceeded to polish off a fair few Lorintinas until 8pm became midnight, the girls had failed in their attempts to offer us room and board and we were, in all honesty, pretty drunk by Maputo dock with nowhere orgainsed to sleep that night and our bags perched by the shack :S Luckily enough, Mama Marley took pity on us and we stayed at her place – Queue the scene of me walzing into this local ‘house’ with a 50 year old rasta woman by our side singing “don’t worry… about a thing… ‘cos every little thing’s gonna be alrite’!! And you know what – I think Bob might have just got that right =)
Day 2 was equally as unpredictable – ah the beauty of travel. So Mama Marley’s place had no running water (naturally) and the awesome Canadian girls came up trumps and sent their personal driver (Jorge) from their swanky hotel to pick us up from Mama Marleys that morning. Apparently she’s somewhat of a local eccentric celeb. Jorge obliged and before we knew it we were showering both in the glory (and hot water) of the girls’ 5* hotel!
We spent a day wandering around the beautiful city of Maputo, eating copious amounts of prawns and other seafood for dirt-cheap prices and soaked up the old Portuguese flavour that permeated from every old building. Nighttime soon arrived and again we had organized nowhere to stay (some people never learn) but a few cheap beers put paid to our concerns and before we knew it we had 4 people rammed into the back of a single tuk-tuk against the drivers initial wishes but a 50 cent bribe soon persuaded him otherwise and off we went…:
with Shakira’s Waka Waka blasting out of the the driver’s makeshift stereo on 10000 decibels we weren’t the most inconspicuous traffic on the road but we made it in one peace without any police involvement and before we could say ‘free accommodation’ we were in the girls’ posh hotel’s hottub with 4 bottles of cheap wine
A few hours later we were awoken by the girls in their hotel room, apparently a few of the guests had complained of raucous, rowdy behaviour and the room (with ALL its’ inhabitants) had been fined $50 – we paid up and made a sheepish escape, eagerly trying to avoid any other guests or staff members :S Not a good impression!
3rd and final night in Maputo didn’t get any less crazy, well maybe a little. We wanted to catch an early bus to Tofo the next day at silly o’clock so we tried to find a youth hostel in the city centre – full, full, full – no room at the inn. So we ended up having to rent out the penthouse (a 3 room suite) of a hotel straight from the 1940’s for the grand total of $40 for the night. The night was spent and the alarm went off at 4.00am (whoever said traveling was an extended holiday was most definitely wrong) and before we knew we were off to Tofo, naturally a couple of hours late though – Mozambique is cool but it’s still Africa when it comes to timetables
 Tags: Backpacking, cheap travel, malawi, Mozambique
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