Maybe you think I’ve written enough about piracy already. Yes, but I haven’t said enough.
Read more ..
Archive for the ‘Cultures’ Category
Dumb as a Brick? – to the Med at All Costs.
Tuesday, March 1st, 2011Cruiser’s Paradise Lost? – The Maldives
Saturday, February 26th, 2011
1,200 tropical islands – 1,000 of them uninhabited, crystal clear water, abundant marine life, great weather and very friendly people.
A cruiser’s paradise, you may think? Not entirely so, unfortunately –the government of the Maldives does not encourage private cruising in their archipelago.
Read more ..
Send in Jack Bauer
Sunday, February 6th, 2011If you wonder who Jack Bauer is, don’t read any further, this story is wasted on you.
All we need is Chloe directing satellites on all motherships used by the pirate groups. Then Jack can either be dropped paragliding from high altitude or popped from a submarine. He takes out the ships one by one and in 24 hours this ridiculous situation will be over and the Indian Ocean a safer place.
Wishful thinking?
What a Waste!
Sunday, December 12th, 2010Using waste, Swedish city Kristianstad stops its fossil fuel use, according to NY Times. But not by substituting old technologies by solar or wind, instead it generates energy from a motley assortment of ingredients like potato peels, manure, used cooking oil, stale cookies and pig intestines!
Having spent much of the past 18 years in the developing world and seen an enormous amount of garbage, I think that re-use of trash might be one of the most over looked strategies for a more environmentally sustainable change. Garbage recovery slows climate change, reduces the burden on landfill sites and saves raw material resources.
Unfortunately people in most developing countries show, in general, absolutely no interest in keeping their neighbourhoods clean and tidy. Trash is literally thrown out of the windows on one’s own back yards.
There has to be an incentive for recycling. When I was a kid in the 1950-60’s, paper recovery was an enormously popular hobby. We ran around the town collecting piles of used newspapers. Everybody participated, particularly kids and housewives. You got paid per kilo and when you had enough reward coupons you could claim your rewards. The English Meccano engineering toy kits were particularly popular among us boys, but there were much else on the price list, things like watches, dolls etc.
The Meccano. Image sources: eng-tips.com and waveneyvalleyblog.com
A Finnish ad for paper collecting
Image source: paperinkerays.fi
Why couldn’t a similar program be successful today, when some cities are almost drowning in litter? I doubt that even China has any national garbage recovery scheme, but I hope I’m wrong.
Plastic, bottles and metal cans are the most depressing items. In Finland I think almost 100% of cans and bottles (glass and plastic) are recycled. That’s because there is a relatively high deposit on these. Here in Phuket, Thailand, were people mostly drink bottled water, there must be millions of small plastic bottles consumed every year. They all end up in the dump, but worse, a large number is just thrown away on the streets and on the beaches.
Image source: swamplot.com
I guess landfills in the developed world are in general well run operations. However, landfills are the oldest form of organised rubbish disposal and a terrible waste (ha-ha) and should be decreased by waste reduction and particularly recycling. Problem with the developing world is that a large amount of the trash doesn’t even reach the dump and even the part that is brought there is not separated.
Image source: on.ec.gc.ca
In the Bay Islands of Honduras we saw trash being loaded onto a large barge, which was then towed about one cable length (less than 200 metres) from shore and all trash was dumped in the water above the pristine coral reefs – one of the best diving locations of the world. Bahia de Caraques, a town in Ecuador, calls itself the Eco City because it has two kinds of trash bins. They are of different colours, one yellow and one green. We were never able to find out what the rules were and we never saw anybody separate anything. However, we put our organic waste in the green and plastic, cans and bottles in the yellow – until we one day saw the pick up by the garbage truck: both bins were emptied in one heap on the platform.
I remember the father of one of my old friends, a wealthy man, whose hobby was to collect empty bottles in the parks of Helsinki. He always carried a plastic bag in his pocket in case he would come upon a thrown-away bottle anywhere. All the proceeds of this hobby he donated to his badminton club, and over the years the donation grew to a considerable amount. He could easily just have written a check, but the recycling aspect made the whole project more rewarding for him. (But I’m sure he wrote those checks also.)
Recycling is educational. When people have the incentive to participate they will gradually clean up their micro-environment and realize that is a win-win activity, helping to save the world. And I wonder how many boys were inspired to take up technical careers because of the Meccano set they earned by collecting paper for recycling?
The Visa Run
Saturday, November 27th, 2010Our 60-day visa was expiring in a few days.
Thailand makes it hard for people who wish to stay in the country for longer than just a few weeks. If you enter Thailand without a visa, you will receive a 30-day permit. You can get a visa in advance from Thai embassies and some consulates, in which case you get to stay 60 days (note: 30 days and 60 days, not one and two months).
Before your permit/visa expires you need to leave the country, then you turn around and return. That’s why it’s called a Visa Run. And there doesn’t appear to be any limits to how many times you can do this shuffle, so many people probably do it regularly, thousands of them every day of the year.
The Visa Run is a big business in Thailand. There are numerous organized Visa Run Tours by bus all over the country, every day. From Bangkok the tours are generally made to Cambodia and in Chiang Mai to Burma. Here in Phuket there are two main options, both by bus – a one-day tour via Ranong to Burma (1,700 Baht = 42€) and a two-day tour to Penang in Malaysia (4,000 Baht = 100€).
Some people fly privately to Penang, Kuala Lumpur or Singapore and return the same day. My plan was to drive our rental car the 300 km from Phuket to Ranong and then just cross the border, stay one night in Burma before returning. It’s supposed to be a scenic drive up there and one night would give us a chance to see at least a little bit of life on that side of the border.
Reliable information concerning the rules are difficult to obtain. If you ask in 5 places you will usually get 5 different answers to the same question. I had heard somewhere that, if you enter with a 60-day visa (which was our case), you can apply for a one month extension, but I couldn’t get this confirmed anywhere. One tour operator told me that you only get a 15-day permit when you return from Burma at Ranong, but in the marina office they said that it might be possible to get a 15-day extension, not more, at the immigration office in Phuket. The marina manager, however, recommended that I should indeed drive to Burma because that way I would definitely receive a 30-day permit. Go figure.
In the morning of the Monday we hade planned to drive to Ranong, I decided to try to get an extension in Phuket, after all. I asked the marina manager to write a letter to immigration supporting my application for a one-month extension of our visas. As the reason for the need of an extension I told them that our boat projects in the yard had been delayed because of much rain.
I presented the letter in the immigration office in downtown Phuket, and, the days of wonder are not over yet; only 30 minutes later I was sipping a beer, with a one-month extension stamped in my passport. It turned out, that with a 60-day visa, you always get one extension of one month (for 1,900 Baht) – no explanations required! At least it was the rule of this particular day.
But it would have been interesting to see Burma. Maybe we’ll go when this extension is consumed? Our plan is to sail away before that, but who knows?
Our Seven Seas
Tuesday, November 23rd, 2010The expression “Seven Seas” is probably one of the best-known maritime idioms. But which are these 7 bodies of water really, and what is the origin of the phrase? According to Wikipedia, there are several definitions of the phrase Seven Seas, starting as far back as the Sumer civilization in Mesopotamia in 2,300 BC.
I think the expression Seven Seas demonstrates “all seas you have to cross to get far away, and return”, and will vary depending on the home port and the time in question. Therefore it will be different for, say, a 9th century Viking, on one hand, and a 12th century Polynesian on the other.
The number seven does not necessary indicate that there are as many (or as few) as 7 seas involved; this number has mysterious meanings, particularly in many religions. There are numerous tales and phrases built around the number seven: 7 Sins, 7 Wonders of the World, 7 Dwarfs, 7 Brothers (the name of a great Finnish novel by Alexis Kivi). Not to mention that according to the Bible, the world was created in six days and on the seventh, God rested. Those 7 days were the first week.
The Clipper Ship Tea Route from China to England was the longest trade route in the world. It took navigators through seven seas near the Dutch East Indies: the Banda Sea, the Celebes Sea, the Flores Sea, the Java Sea, the South China Sea, the Sulu Sea, and the Timor Sea. Therefore, if someone had sailed the Seven Seas it meant he had sailed to, and returned from, the other side of the world. (We actually sailed across all these seas last season).
In Medieval Arabian literature the Seven Seas also demonstrate the passage to China: the Persian Gulf, the Gulf of Khambhat, the Bay of Bengal, the Strait of Malacca, the Singapore Strait, the Gulf of Thailand, and the South China Sea.
Consequently, fore me the Seven Seas are represented by, in chronological order: the Baltic Sea, the North Sea, the Atlantic Ocean, the Mediterranean Sea, the Caribbean Sea, the Pacific Ocean, and the Indian Ocean.
Some modern geographical classification schemes count seven oceans in the world: The North Pacific Ocean, the South Pacific Ocean, the North Atlantic Ocean, the South Atlantic Ocean, the Indian Ocean, the Southern Ocean, and the Arctic Ocean.
For us aboard Scorpio, on the last leg of our circumnavigation – and having already experienced Our Seven Seas, as indicated above – there will, unfortunately, remain an additional Eight Sea: the Pirate Sea, which (in modern times) is the area between India and the Red Sea, and even as far north as Egypt.
We trust that the number will remain safely at seven, with no pirates involved.
Living in the yards
Wednesday, October 27th, 2010We are presently in the Boat Lagoon hard standing area in Phuket, Thailand. Since we started our serious world cruising, in 1992, we have been hauling out Scorpio in 17 different shipyards or marinas – in almost as many countries. Only once have we visited the same yard twice (this was in Deltaville, Virginia, USA). Every time we have to go through the same process: evaluate the shipyard/marina, find the reliable contractors in various technical areas, hardware stores, marine chandlers etc. Everything is new, people as well as the culture. This is a complicated process but, at the end of the day, very rewarding: you really get to know places and cultures in a completely different way than tourists do.
We are definately no tourists in the usually accepted sense, trying to get our floating home maintained and improved and dealing with local small businesses. Just as an example, if you are in a yard at, say Costa del Sol, don’t buy your paint in the marina store, go to the hard ware store on the third street from the waterfront (where the local fishermen go).
There is usually also a lot of dealings with officialdom; customs, immigration, health inspections, agriculture, harbour masters etc. And usually you have to find these offices in different parts of the cities. Clearing in or out of a country may take a few days sometimes. Sometimes it is an additional challenge trying to explain why you want to leave your boat and fly home for a while (“you are not selling it here in our country are you, in that case you would have to pay tax for importing it, just to make sure we will want a bond while you are away”). And remember, the language barrier is often pretty high, they are not spelling it out as clearly as I’m doing here, and there are usually no written guide lines (as you would have arriving on a commercial jet).
But the bottom line is, that along the way we have met many wonderful people and even if we are getting poorer every time we haul out, we are so much richer with experiences – every time.
Severe body piercing in Phuket
Saturday, October 16th, 2010
Click on photos for large versions
We got caught right in the middle of it all. No, it’s not the riots in Bangkok starting again. This is a scene today in the centre of Phuket during the annual Vegetarian festival.
The festival is a 150 year old tradition of refraining from eating meat, drinking alcoholic drinks, engaging in sex, quarreling, telling lies or killing. The procession walks trough the city and several persons pierce their tongues, cheeks, and other parts of the anatomy with sharp implements. Apparently they feel no pain, and show little sign of real injury, although we saw a lot of blood on their clothes.
Unfortunately I had a problem with my camera, so the photo of the man with both a sword and a garden scissor through his cheek is not sharp.
If you are not one of the faint-hearted, take a look at photos from last year’s festival in Session Magazine.
Lindblom Tunes
Wednesday, August 25th, 2010My grandfathers grandfather was Carl August Lindblom, one of the best known musicians in middle Sweden between 1850 and 1880. His son Malkus Lindblom emigrated to Finland in 1880, which is why most of my relatives, myself included happen to live in Finland.
A couple of weeks ago we organised a gathering in Rejmyre, which was Malkus’s last place of residence in Sweden before his emigration. One of the high lights of the gathering was a performance by four Swedish traditional musicians, who played music by Carl August and told us stories about him. The piece on the following video is the finishing number of the concert: March number 31 by Carl August Lindblom. The musicians are Arne Blomberg, Margareta Höglund, Brita Ehlert and Kurt Ehlert. The event took place in the church of Rejmyre.
Finalist dies in Sauna contest
Sunday, August 8th, 2010In an attempt to educate and amuse my cruising friends all over the world I sometimes write posts about Finnish events. A couple of weeks ago I wrote my first bit about bizarre Finnish sporting contests, and I didn’t even mention the obvious one: who can withstand a hot sauna the longest.
Yesterday, the annual World Sauna Championships in Finland ended with the death of one of the finalists, a Russian. The other finalist, a Finn who has won the last 5 World Championships , was taken to hospital after collapsing.
The Russian on the left, the Finn on the right.
All competitors need to sign in to the competition with a doctor’s certificate. At the start the temperature is 110C. Then half a litre of water is poured on the stove every 30 seconds, last man in the sauna is champion.
(Source: news.bbc.co.uk)
The championships have been held in Heinola (138km north of Helsinki) since 1999. This year they had over 130 participants from 15 countries. According to the organisers there will be no more championships in the future – this was the last time. However, I do not believe that the sauna championships are over. The Finns are unable to resist this kind of events and the sauna is almost a national symbol.
Until somebody starts the World Sauna Championships again, we have to make do with other crazy “sports”, why not try the sitting naked on an ant’s nest?