Training Log Archive: blairtrewin

Something which happens a bit to me on longer trips (with a long period without regular calf massages) is that my Achilles gradually goes backwards. On Monday it warmed up. Today it didn't - hopefully this won't be the start of a pattern. (Bangkok may have been a good place to get a massage, but I wasn't especially confident that in a foreign language that I could get across that I wanted a massage and not a "massage").

Penang wakes up a bit earlier than some of the other places I've been to, which is a little surprising when it doesn't get light until after 7 (Malaysia is a time zone ahead of where it should be).

Took advantage of the hotel's pool for plan B. Not quite as good a view as it was in Bangkok, but still not bad (over the straits to Butterworth), watching clouds build over the mainland but show no sign of moving onto the island. (The forecast had been for rain most of the day, so I was quite happy for it to be wrong).

Spent quite a bit of the day going to Penang Hill - an 800m hill in the centre of the island with good views and a reasonable amount of rainforest (probably not pristine but still looking pretty good). There's a funicular railway to go up. Decided to walk down to the Botanical Gardens, which I'll file in the "it seemed like a good idea at the time" department - I'd envisaged a walking track but it was in fact a paved road with some (if limited) traffic, and extremely steep in places - walking down a 30% gradient on pavement isn't a lot of fun. (Driving a truck up it would be even less fun). Getting public transport out of there was also a bit of a seemed-like-a-good-idea-at-the-time item - after waiting 40 minutes for a bus, the driver helpfully informed me that I was standing on the wrong side of the road, bus number two's driver waited around for a few minutes on his phone and smoking a cigarette and then drove off without acknowledging my existence (perhaps he thought that white people should be using taxis?), and I eventually got on bus number three.

(At this point I was reminded of an episode in my school years when, during an industrial dispute, our school bus was cancelled and the leader of the union involved said something about all of the Grammar students getting chauffeured. We had a good laugh about this a few years later when he was chasing my vote in an ACT Assembly preselection ballot).

The food continues to be excellent; just a bit disappointed that none of the places I've been to offered laksa, one of the local specialties. Laksa, served by one of the few establishments in those days near our office open in the evenings, fuelled many a spell of late-night number crunching for the original version of the Australian long-term temperature data set (perhaps they knew this because the place closed down two weeks after the data set was released).

C • Penang Hill 3

The train was a bit more basic than the last one but I think I probably slept better this time, notwithstanding that I was traversing a bit of Thailand that DFAT thinks Australians shouldn't be going to (the British Foreign Office advice, which tends to be more specific, explicitly excludes the railway line - the actual trouble, in the form of a long-running and rather nasty separatist conflict, is further east towards the other end of the border). Woke up to a greener setting, mist and the odd rice paddy - definitely more equatorial than what I've been through. Crossed into Malaysia mid-morning, discovering in the process that, although quite a lot of countries these days make you give them fingerprints on the way in the Thais make you do it on the way out too (authoritarian regimes everywhere seem to be enthusiastic consumers of the latest in security technology), and continued on to Butterworth to get the ferry across to Penang in the afternoon.

Today's session was on the stationary bike in the hotel gym, not too exciting but allowed me to turn the legs over. I'll take to the streets (as a run) tomorrow, having already done a couple of bits of wandering through what looks like an interesting city. The food here also has a particularly good reputation (especially the various hawker markets) and so far I haven't been disappointed.

One familiar name which popped up en route in northern Malaysia was Alor Setar (previously known as Alor Star). A staple of mid-high school geography exams was a set of questions based around interpreting a topographic map - as you can imagine, I tended to do quite well on this section - and one year Alor Star was the map (not quite sure why - perhaps Australians mapped it because it's fairly close to the old RAAF base at Butterworth?). Presumably not there in the mid-1980s were the Malaysian McMansion equivalents on the northern edge of town, or the 165-metre high tower.

I was staying opposite the National Stadium complex (which I don't think is the real national stadium these days - the main stadium looks like it would have a capacity of maybe 20,000 and there must be something bigger than that), so thought that would be a good place for an intervals session - at least there was a reasonable prospect of finding a sufficient traffic-free distance. Took a couple of reps to (a) find somewhere good to do it and (b) get up to a reasonable pace, but once that was achieved it went quite well - ended up getting through what I consider a full set (10x1 minute) for the first time since mid-year.

Didn't do a great deal else in the morning other than deal with a few practicalities (like getting my watch battery fixed) at one of the nearby enormous multi-storey malls, then headed out of town in early afternoon, on the overnight train towards Malaysia.

Warm-up and down. Achilles a bit sore early on but warmed up OK - was no longer a problem by the time it came to the start of the sprints.

Didn't sleep that well on the train, and after a hot day doing the rounds of the temples, I was feeling pretty tired by the time I eventually checked in properly to the hotel in mid-afternoon. With effectively free nights of accommodation before and after, I decided to splash out (figuratively speaking) in Bangkok, which meant I was staying in a place with an 11th floor infinity pool - which I took to after a hookup with the OA governance working group (the pleasures of sporting administration...). This was great for doing a workout with a view of the sun setting over the city; unfortunately, there was a bit too much sunset and the pool wasn't very well lit (I didn't help matters by bringing my darker goggles), and after banging into the wall a couple of times I decided to cut the session short. Still nice to get into the water.

The temples were indeed impressive, although the Grand Palace and surrounding complex were a bit too overrun by tour groups (a hazard of major tourist sites, I guess). The city generally wasn't as chaotic or as polluted as I was expecting, although I'm aware that it's a Sunday so tomorrow might be more revealing on that front. Managed to avoid any solicitations from tuk-tuk drivers (some visitors feel they need to do it once for the experience, but having already done that in Luang Prabang and Nong Khai where they're the only transport option, I felt no need to do it in Bangkok, which has a decent public transport system, and proper taxis if you want one).

Naturally, this was my session earworm. (Can anyone who was there remember how it came to be the theme song of the 1996 Victorian Schools trip to Tasmania?).

Out to and along the road paralleling the river in Vientiane (not the riverfront as such; there's a few hundred metres of floodplain between the road and the river), a route chosen mainly in the name of minimising road crossings - only had a couple of significant ones to get there and didn't have too many dramas. (Also only saw three stray dogs, all placid). Ended up as a decent run; no issues apart from a bit of early Achilles soreness, and humidity wasn't too bad for the tropics (probably the last time I'll be in a position to say that for the next week).

Left Vientiane today, discovering in the process that some things are the same the world over when the woman across the aisle was keeping her toddler entertained by using her phone to play "the wheels on the bus go round and round" and "Baby Shark". Border crossing was painless. Spent a few hours hanging around the Thai border town of Nong Khai, including some very nice food at a very unpretentious spot near the station (I suspect my tastebuds are going to enjoy the next week), before picking up an overnight train to Bangkok.

C • Baby Shark 1

C • Picking up 1

Another long day in transit - the bus trip from Luang Prabang to Vientiane. It may be less than 400km but it was scheduled for 9 hours, and the word was that this was optimistic. I hadn't been able to get a ticket for the "VIP bus" (i.e. a normal bus) - and haven't yet gone sufficiently native to enquire as to whether there was space available on a stool in the aisle, standing in a stairwell, hanging out a door or on the roof (all of which I've seen here, the first three in vehicles I've been in) - so was booked on a minibus.

My objective was fairly basic - get to the other end in one piece. I thought it was going to fall apart at the first hurdle because I thought the bus left at 8 and the tuk-tuk pick-up circled so many places in the town that we got there at 7.59, but it was actually supposed to be an 8.30 departure (and ended up being more like 8.50). Bags went on the roof (but no motorcycles, something I've also seen here), and there was a substantial crack across the windscreen, but I snaffled a seat and it didn't seem excessively crowded - at first. What I didn't know was that this bus also stopped at random places en route to pick up locals and their assorted goods (including bags of food for markets, although no chickens), and that there always seemed to be room for one more, somewhere - I think we peaked at 31 people on what was nominally a 22-seater bus.

Progress was made, slowly but steadily, through countryside more mountainous than Wednesday - a couple of climbs and descents which must have been in the order of 1000m, and almost continuously winding for the first 150km out of Luang Prabang. Stopped at the bottom of the first big descent to have water sprayed on the bus; I probably could have done without hearing that it was to cool the brakes down (the driver seemed more cautious on the second descent). The numbers gradually thinned out in the second half of the trip, and the terrain got easier, although the overtaking got no less crazy (of the several hundred overtaking manouevres on this trip, the number that I would have done myself could probably be counted on the fingers of one hand). I was almost relieved when we hit a traffic jam coming into Vientiane. Ended up about an hour late.

It's beautiful country, but I'm glad I don't have to do any more long-haul bus trips like this - from Vientiane it's a short hop across the border to pick up the train on the Thai side.

Somewhat to my surprise, Laos's road death rate is actually somewhat below the average for southeast Asia. Thailand's per capita rate is one of the worst in the world (only behind four African countries) - although they fare less badly when counted per 100,000 motor vehicles (which is another way of saying that some countries which have lower death rates also don't have many vehicles). It's probably still as well that almost all of my travel in Thailand will be on trains.

Set out around the peninsula which makes up the Luang Prabang old town. Back was very marginal today and I probably wouldn't have pressed on beyond the opening minutes on another day, but thought I'd at least make an attempt to do some sightseeing. That mission was more or less accomplished. Unsurprisingly, it was a fair bit quieter on the streets than it had been yesterday evening, there weren't too many wandering dogs, and those which were there were placid (something to be aware of in a place where getting bitten means go directly to Bangkok for rabies treatment, do not pass Go). I've heard they're more of a problem in Vientiane.

The morning was spent going to the waterfalls about 30km out of town (as beautiful as expected). I'd expected that getting there might be tricky but in fact there is a dizzying array of minivan operators prepared to offer their services (although the imbalance between the number of people in the vehicle and the number of seats in the vehicle was a bit disconcerting, and provided a strong incentive not to be the last one back). Did some wandering around the old town in the afternoon, and the night markets in the evening - although my view of shopping is as a practical exercise (which is why I was disappointed that none of the large number of very nice pencil cases were big enough to take a 30cm ruler). I did like the idea of the bracelets made out of old bomb casings, though.

C • Bomb casings 2

C • Laos 1