Hi and welcome to my travelog. On here you will find some useful travel tips and advice from places I have visited and lived, as well as stories and personal opinions together with images I’ve taken.

I’m Nick Barrowclough, 24 years old from a little town in North Wales called Rhyl. I studied at university in Liverpool where I graduated with a building surveying degree. Since then I’ve had several jobs in Asia, teaching English in South Korea and working as an IT technician for a high tech company in Bangkok. Now I’m project manager for that same company. My works allowed me to travel far an wide, from Bangkok to Singapore, Malaysia, Germany, USA, Honduras and now Philippines. As well as work based travel I try and visit as much of an area as time and finances allow when I am there. So far I’ve visited over 20 countries and plan to add many more in the coming months and years.

I like to think of life as a book. If you don’t travel you only read one page. For those of you with a sense of adventure and curiosity about this world I hope you find my blog interesting, and maybe invokes memories of places we have both visited. For those yet to be bitten by the travel bug, I hope that my images and stories go some way to capture in your imaginiation and stimulating you to explore this world we live in.

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So yesterday there was flagellating in the streets and today it was a full on re-enactment of the crucifixion. After talking with some connections I found out the location of the event and drove over. Turned out it was less than 10 minutes drive from my house. There was a lot of people present, and the event seemed less spiritual and more a publicity event. The banners showed it was sponsored by the Angeles City Tourist Board, and there was somewhat of a carnival atmosphere in the streets around the field rather than a somber religious feeling.

Event advertisement

To stand in the field was free, but as I will probably not attend this event again I decided to pay the 300peso to get a “ringside seat”. Alona waited for me in the crowd and I went up onto “crucifixion hill”.

The event starts with a horse mounted guy dressed as a Roman soldier who rides up onto the hill. This is followed by the guy dressed as Jesus as well as the two other criminals he was to be crucified with. Some flogging then takes place with them being beaten with palm leaves. I would like to add this is not staged, the guys doing the flogging really go for it and it was quite obvious the three “prisoners” were in real pain. That together with the Jesus character wearing a long wig, in the heat of the Philippines summer I’m sure they were more than a little uncomfortable.

The three crosses

Horse backed Roman guard

Nailed to the cross

After the flogging has taken place the nails are taken out and proudly presented to the audience before being sterilized with alcohol. The nails are quite slender and sharpened to a very fine point, I guess this helps to ease the pain a little. The crucifixions start with Jesus, first having his arms bound to the cross with ropes (I guess this stops him running away should he decide to change his mind!?) and then the nails are place simultaneously through the hands and just enough so that they bite into the wood of the cross. They are not hammered tot he hilt, I guess that would just be cruel, this is only a re-enactment afterall! However, the nails are real, and they do penetrate all the way through so I am sure that it still is very painful for the volunteer.

The nails peirce the hand

After this the cross is hoisted up for all to see and the same is repeated with the other two “volunteers”. There is very little blood at first, the nails enter and the guys didn’t seem to show much sign of pain. However, when the nails were taken out that is when it seemed to hurt the most, and there was a fair amount of blood.

I’m glad I went to witness this event as it’s rather unique tot he Philippines. I think similar re-enactments take palce in Mexico, but I’m not aware of any other Catholic countries participating in this over the top show of spirituality.

Infact, the catholic church strongly condemns such events, and I did not see any priests or any sort of religious undertakings at the event. There were police, hired security and even the Philippine army patrolling the area with M16 machine guns. There was no prayer said, or religious sermon given, instead the local police captain with a megaphone telling people to stop pushing.

Nailed to the cross

I felt that many were there for similar reasons as me, curiosity, and because as it’s a public holiday everything is closed and there is nothing else to do! As far as religious significance goes I would say there was none. The event was made to seem even more staged when I found out the volunteers recieved 15,000 peso each (bearing in mind the average monthly wage of a Filipino is somehwere between 6-8k per month). Although the volunteers I am sure were not just doing it for the money and I do not doubt their faith and that it is a truly spiritual experience for them.

For more photos checkout my Flickr feed http://www.flickr.com/photos/nick_barrowclough/

The bloody finale

Sorry not written much lately. After arriving back in Thailand from Honduras via Pittsburgh and LA, I arrived in Philippines August 2008.

It’s now April 2009 and it’s Holy Week, Easter. I had heard of some of the strange rituals that are undertaken that include self flagelatting and voluntary crucifixtion. Today, the day before Good Friday I went out armed with my camera to capture this unique event.

Self Flagellating

It didn’t take me long to see groups of men flagellating themselves in their local area. Waste ground at the sides of Barangays had groups of people congregated to watch or to participate by whipping the volunteer. However these small gathering seemed rather private and I didn’t want to intrude with my camera and cause any upset. A little later and after some driving around on the main highway I found a parade of men flagellating and carrying crosses. This parade along the busiest road in Angeles seemed a lot more public event and so I didn’t feel so intrusive with my camera. Infact the people coordinating the parade even seemed happy that I was taking an interest.The whips are home made with sharp pieces of bamboo on the tips.

Lenten Rites Parade

Tomorrow in nearby San Pedro Cutud there will be some people volunteering for crucifixion for a few moments nailed on a cross. All of this they believe brings them closer to Jesus by feeling the pain and suffering he did it also helps them to repent for their sins. However, the Catholic church strongly condemns this self flagellating, and I believe it is even illegal in the Philippines, although a blind eye is obviously turned to this.

Self Flagelatting

So my 3 months in Honduras is nearly at a close, I’m down to hours not days!

I would say Honduras is both the worst and second best place I have visited (best would be Nepal). I say that because inside San Pedro Sula it is the pitts. There isn’t much to do, there is high level of crime and I rarely went out at night. Whether the danger was perceived or not, I regularly heard shootings from my room (and I live in a nice neighbourhood apparently) drugs and gangs are rife and it’s not that pretty a palce to look at. Regular power cuts in the rainy season, roads that turn to mud and have pothole large enough to loose half your car and endless fast food restaurants are just the start.

However, get otuside of San Pedro, into the countryside, visit Copan De Ruinas, it is very beautiful country. The steep jungle clad mountains, the Carribean coast and the Bay islands are fantastic. There is an abundance of wildlife in the jungles and some great lakes.

If you like mountain scenery then I recommend visiting the El Florido border area. Travel over the border to Guatemala and down the road a few km’s and you get some great views! I was driving my own car registered in Honduras and so onlky had to pay a small amount to take it across. I met some French guys who had a car from outside of Honduras they had to pay more. There are chicken busses you can take, I don’t know the details on these but plenty of other website have information.

This weekend I decided that I really needed to escape from San Pedro Sula again. This town really sucks! So despite the advice that driving in Guatemala, or jsut being in Guatemala or maybe even flying over there, or possibly saying the word is likely to mean I am going to get held up at gunpoint by a group of armed bandits, I decided to drive 7 hours through bandit territory to the Northern part of Guatemala to the Jungle border area iwth Belize. Why you ask? Wlel to visit the magical Mayan city of Tikal. Since I was a kid and I saw pictures of Tikal in an encyclopedia I imagined going there, so I was quite excited about the adventure.

I set off from San Pedro in the dodgy company car first goin East to Puerto Cortes, and then back West tot he border crossing at Corinto. Once across the border (bribes mandatory of course) you pick up the CA13 highway following signs for Guastemala City. Soon you pick up signs for Tikal and turn to head North. Continue North for 4 hours and you will arrive in Tikal. Simple huh? You may want to breka the journey up and stop at Rio Dulce, which looked veyr nice to me as it flashed past my car window. Total driving time including border crossing from San pedro to Tikal was 7 hours.

 

In Tikal I can recommend styaing the night. It’s well worth the expense of the hotel inside the national park, or alternatively you can do as I did and sleep in a hammock at the jungle lodge. Very cheap, comfortable, but don’t expect much sleep as the jungle is noisy and alive with sounds at night.

Definitely hire a guide. My guide was great, cost 50 USD and he was very knowledgable. Make sure he speaks decent English and is an official park guide before hiring him. My guide took me aorund the temple complex, explained thins to me, knew shortcuts through the jungle off the mian trial We saw all manner of wildlife including wild Tucans and Makaw Parrots. If you are fit and energetic then climb to the top of temple number IV for a view across the jungle canopy.

The following day I took a drive to Flores on my way back to San Pedro. This looked like a cool place. I didn’t stay loner than an hour or two as I wanted to get back to San Pedro before dark and I had a long drive ahead. If you are flying to Tikal and not driving then you will fly into the airport at Flores. Here you can pickup one of te many Tikal tours that run between Flores and the jungle site of Tikal.

After a week in San Pedro Sula working and one very boring weekend in the town I decided to risk the company car on a road trip to the West of Honduras. Here, near the border with Guatemala you can find the ancient Mayan ruins of Copan. Designated an Unesco world heritgate site it is well worth teh visit. Famous for it’s Mayan alters and sculptures. It may not have the grandiose pyramids of Tikal and Chichen Itza but it definitely worth the visit.

       

3 hours driving from San Pedro Sula saw me to a coffe farm 20 km away from Copan. The Welches coffe farm on the main road between San Pedro and Copan is well worth the stop. I had a private guided tour around the coffe plantation on horseback by a very knowledgable guy, and then you leave the horses behind and follow a nature trail down into teh jungle and into some primary jungle (rainforest) before stopping for lunch and then onto the coffe processing plant.

     

From here, 20/30 minutes driving and you will cross over the bridge onto the cobbled streets of Copan De Ruinas. This palce is great, one of the nicest backpackers, tourist towns I have visited. It’s not a major tourist trap for the masses so it has a more friendly feel about it than some major tourist destinations. There are cheap and expensive hotels for all budgets. I stayed in a great hotel, mid budget opposite the museum near the town square.There are many small bars and restaurants around the centre, many catering for tourists and offering tours and travel services.

The real reason people come to this quant colonial town however is to go to the Copan Mayan Ruins. It’s a little bit pricey, a ticket for everything, the ruins, tunnels, museum, will set you back aorund $45. The tunnels aren’t anythin too special and not really worth the extra cost in my opinion, but if you got the moeny and want to escape the hea of the outside for a while they provide a cooler alternative to the jungle! I am not one for liering too long around places but I would suggest 2 hours in plenty of time to have a general look around. If however you are very itnerested in Mayan history etc then you could easily spend many more wandering around. There are also some oher sites close by that you can walk too if you are interested in those.

I was lucky enough to bump into a couple of people who told me about some Indian village in the mountains behind Copan. So I set off for a 1/2 hour hike up into the jungle to the Indian village. The track was steep and in the heat of Honduras’s summer I looked like a drowned rat. I am sure the villagers were very amused by the sight of me stomping into their village! It was quite nice, gave some nice scenery and was a real step back into the past and a view of how life was many years ago for the Honduran indigneous people. What was nice was that, unlike so many other toursit places, there was no feleing of falseness about the place. It wasn’t put on for tourists, it wans’t reconstructed to make some money. It’s a real living community of Indians living the way they have for centuries.

  

From Copan I drove another 40km to the West to El Florido. This is the mountain border crossing post into Guatemala. I payed my relevant bribes (despite it saying all border crossings are free in a big sign) and drove across into Guatemala. After a few minutes the scenery becomes quite amazing, with soaring jungle covered mountains and remenants of previous volcanic activity. I was running low on time and driving in the region isn’t too safe at night so after 30 minutes in Guatemala I turned the car around and headed back to San Pedro Sula.

So after 10 fantastic months working and living in Bangkok I was assigned the task of coming to Honduras to help sort out the management of the factory here. Not speaking any Spanish and never having been to Latin America before it was quite exciting to be coming to another aprt of the world I had yet to explore.

It all happened quite fast, the decision was made and I was waving goodbye to Bankok and on the start of a 30 hour journey from Bangkok to San Pedro Sula. The flight here is a pain in the ass from Bangkok. First fly to Taipei, then onto LA, then to Houston, overnight there, and onto San Pedro Sula.

So now here I am in Honduras ready for 2/3 months work and exploration here.

Songkran, the Thai new year festival. This was my second Songkran, but first in Thailand. Last year I was celebrating with the staff from the Royal Thai Embassy in Seoul.

Songkran is a 3/4 day official holiday but can be celebrated by Thai’s for a week or more. The streets of Bangkok come to a standstil and it’s impossible to walk 100 yards without getting covered in water and powder. Head to Kao Sarn road or Patpong/Silom for the big party.

So I decided I would venture out to participate in teh festivities. Under the advice of some Thai friends I went to Kao Sarn road. It is absolutely packed, it seems to be where the majority of Bangkoks youths head to cover each otehr in water, powder and party. It’s also the primary backpackers area so there are many other farangs hanging around there.

There’s not much to say about it other than be prepared tog et wet, very wet. If you are a girl and want to keep some dignity then dark clothes are advisable. Don’t wear anything that you don’t mind getting trashed. You will also need a zip lock waterproof bag to keep your money, cellphone and camera in. Everyones a target at Songkran, don’t expect leaniancy just because you are holding a 20,000 Bht phone! If you wanna really join in then I also recommend a water pistol or two. I found two useful as it meant I could longer without having to re-load.

My other top tip would be, rent a tuk tuk when you leave kao sarn and head to SIlom. Be prepared for running water battles with other tuk tuks and have people at the road side emptying buckets of water over you. Even ambushes and road blocks where you will be powdered and watered before being allowed to proceede. Even the police are targets at Songkran and wrap their guns in plastic to protect them!

Well as I am living in Korea it makes sense to try and learn to read what all them funny signs and symbols mean right?? I mean it makes sense so I can actually order this in restaurants and find places if I can make sense of them strange looking symbols. I got fedup of having to point at other peopels dishes in restaurants to show what I wanted!

So, despite their strange look, surprisingly easy to master. It may look like Chinese to the untrained westerners eye, but it’s totally different. Chinese uses pictographs, or symbols, that are highly styelized pictures. A good example is the chinese character for “middle” 中 pronounced “zhong” a square with a line through the middle. Get it?

Well Koreans different, it uses an actual alphabet and groups those characters together to form sounds. If you want to write middle in Korean it is 정 pronounced the same as the Chiense version, as Korean is a derivative of Chinese language, but written totally different. here we have three alphabet letters, ㅈ (j), ㅓ(o), ㅇ(ng), making, ”jong” same as Chinese “zhong” (in CHinese the zh = j). So ehre is the Korean alphabet in all it’s glory :-

ㅂ(B), ㅈ (J),ㄷ (D), ㄱ (K), ㅅ (S), ㅛ (YO), ㅕ(EO), ㅑ(YA), ㅐ(AE), ㅔ(OE), ㅁ (M), ㄴ (N), ㅇ (NG), ㄹ(L/R), ㅎ (H), ㅗ(O), ㅓ (O), ㅏ (A), ㅣ(I), ㅋ(KK), ㅌ (T), ㅊ (CH), ㅍ(P), ㅠ(YU), ㅜ(U), ㅡ (E)

These characters have to be grouped according to certain rules. I am no expert, but basically you have to start with one of the none vowels, and if you can’t do that you start witht he “ng” character, which if it is first in the grouping is silent. For example if I wanted to write “A” it needs to be grouped with “ng” making 아 but the “ng” character in this case is silent. If it write 낭 in this case it makes “nang” the “ng” is not silent as it is last in the grouping. Make sense? So now you can write English in Korean characters.

My name, NicK, very easy, one syllable, ㄴ(N), ㅣ(i), ㄱ(k) =   닉

The characters are grouped into syllables. So one syllable means one group of characters. Easy huh?

So what’s hello in Korean? Hello in Korean language is “ann-yong”. This is two syllables so we need two character groupings, ann and yong, making 안냥 simple huh? So now you don’t need to wonder what them symbols mean. Just learn the Korean alphabet and its’ simple. Unlike Chiense which needs you to learn around 5,000 characters to be able to read a newspaper! I found elarni to read Korean was a hlepful way to pass the time spent on the hour journey from ym home into Seoul. I just learnt by comparing the signs to the English written underneath.

 This signs says “No-rae-bang” bang means room, No-Rae singing. So what does it mean? singing room, yup it’s karaoke! you see these all over Korea you can’t walk downa  street without finding one of these. Great fun with a group of friends and cheap. Even got ym sister who had never sung karaoke before to like them!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bu (부) -Pyong (퍙) station sign. This was the station next to my home. THis signs written in Korea, Chinese and English. See the difference between Korean and Chinese?

So as my sister was visiting me in Seoul I thought I should do some ofhte touristy stuff with her that I was yet to do anyway. Today we took a trip to the worlds last real communist frontier, as well as the front lines of a war still ongoing. Sounds delightful doesn’t it!?

Actually this is a common tour for tourists from Seoul. You can only go with a guided tour group and you have to sign some waivers signing your rights away that shoudl you get killed it’s not the UN or US or Korean armys fault. THis sounds better and better!

The day started early as we had to get to the bus pickup in Seoul for 8am and I was living a good hour by subway from the area. So we hoped ontot he great Seoul public transport system at Bupeyong station and went to Yongsan station from there it’s a hsort taxi ride to the outside of the hotel in Itaewon area that we were being collected from.

You are taken by bus through the city and to the outskirts. The concrete jungle slowly gives way to rice paddy fields, ginseng fields and small towns. After this you enter the 4km wide De Militarized zone. Passports are checked by a Korean army guard (who’s gun was uncomfortably close to my face in the confines of the small bus). Now hte landscape is very different. This zone has been un-inhabbited since the demarcation line was drawn seperating the peninsular, effectly making South Korea an island. Nature si reclaiming this ground, but not toally. many of the fields and the sides of the road are lined with landmines and anti tank barriers. Above the road are concrete “bridges” that are charged with explosives. Should the North invade these can be detonated sealing off the roads from tanks coming through.

You eventually arrive at the small UN peace treaty town of Panmunjeon. Here you are met by a US army official who briefs you on what you are and are not allowed to take photos. Warns you what to say and not say and not to point or make gestures towards the North Korean soliders who you will soon be coming face to face with.

 

You will be shown the bridge of no return. The only bridge that crosses the border and used for prisoner exchanges and for the ocassional family reunions that happen.

After the briefing and short historical talk about the war and the events preceeding it you are taken to the blue buildings that straddle the North South divide. Inside these buildings there is a table where peace talks and negotiations take place. Inside this building you can momentarily cross over into North Korea, albeit within the confines of the building.

From here you are taken to an observation post where you can see across to the North Korean propoganda village. Here there is the worlds tallest national flag pole where the North Koreans kept trying to outdo the South by adding to their flag pole to make it higher than the Souths. This village is empty. The houses fileld with speakers which ocasionaly blast out communist propoganda to the South Koreans.

 

After this our tour package took us to one of the infiltration tunnels dug by the North Koreans. These tunnels go deep under the border and would allow the North Korean army to transport troops and tanks underground avoiding the landmines and anti tank barriers that line the roads of the DMZ. 3 tunnels have been uncovered, there may be more that nobody has found yet.

OK so I didn’t “really” visit North Korea, I crossed line on the floor in a room, but it’s certianly wet my apetite for a trip to Pyongyang someday.