5 Reasons why Traveling by Boat is Awesome

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

Backpacking North Through Mozambique

Published by Johnny on August 26, 2010

Having now been in this crazy continent for a few months I can say that Mozambique is Africa with a safety net. It’s awesome of course but there’s certainly a distinct tourist trail as you move north from one beach town to the next. Having said that, the food is amazing, the Indian ocean is warm, the beaches are long and the people are very friendly so perhaps that safety net is no bad thing

From Maputo I’d say the main route (if you’re not heading into the sparse north-east) is to head to Xie-Xie then off to Tofo (cool beach town – loads of tourists), then to Vilanculos (even cooler beach town and much fewer tourists). From there then on to Chimoio (horrible transit town), onto Tete (even more horrible transit town) and then onwards towards the Malawian border.

Mozambique is a great bridge to Africa as you discard your western wants. Maybe you have come from South Africa by land, like me, or flown straight from Europe or North America – Mozambique is the perfect place to land =) Enough other tourists around so you don’t get hit too hard with culture shock but a few minutes wandering down another former Portuguese street and it’s like the Africa you imagined 3 months ago when you were planning your trip.

Geographically alone, it’s a wondrous place. The whole country stretches up the east coast of Africa, allowing itself endless beaches littered with scubadiving centres, water skiing opportunities and a whole host of other water sports. The food naturally focuses around what can be garnered from the sea, and what a feast it promises to be:

Generally the deal is – go to the local market and buy what you want to eat later (normally for a full-on seafood FEAST it’s about $3 per person). Bring it to a local eatery, by local I tend to mean disgusting cheap and probably horrible unhygienic yet what it lacks in basic sanitation and cutlery it makes up in personality and atmosphere! Here is the place we found, note the cardboard box menu:

I wish I was back there eating that! At the risk of sounding uncouth, Africa’s food isn’t exactly michelin starred so when u get an opportunity to gorge on this delicious grub in Mozambique, do it, savour it and do it again!

So Vilanculos was probably the highlight of my time in Mozambique, partly because I stayed at a place called Complexo Muha, run by a guy called Muhammed. To cut a long story short my friend and I were the only people staying at this local-ran place, we stayed for a fair few days and ended up becoming quite good friends with Muhammed. He seemed to take on our advice about renaming his place, remarketing his place, repricing his place, redoing his menu so when we returned from an afternoon on our last day there he had made some wholesale changes to his entire complex! Massive new signs, new pricing structure , new food options all off the back of our advice =) I can only hope it has proved successful for the man. Naturally should any of you guys end up in Vilanculos please pay him a visit, you won’t regret it.

The safety net I described earlier doesn’t extend itself to the transport however! You will be crammed into buses (only big enough for an average family) alongside 26 other Mozambicans who seem surprisingly unperturbed by the whole lack of personal space thing! A tru backpacking adventure in Africa isn’t complete until you’ve had a few sweaty bodies perilously close to your face – and you’ll have this on regular occasions!

Just before I sign off mozambique and have a chat about Malawi I think it’s only appropriate to whack in a few of the beautiful beach shots that you can’t avoid if you spend anytime here – awesome country, awesome people, awesome food, awesome flag (have u seen the AK47 on the flag?!), awesome beaches:

Tags: Backpacking, long term travel, Mozambique

Backpacking in Mozambique – My time in Maputo

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!

3^rd 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