Bill's Travels

[BillB]

There are two journeys that we made which are strongly linked, although they took place almost 30 years apart. One was to Munich and the other to Israel. And they were, indirectly, triggered by those horrific newsreels I saw as a 7 year old showing the liberation of the Nazi concentration camps. I can still remember as clearly as if it was last week the stunned, horrified silence in which the audience sat through these scenes. Propagandists sometimes maintain that the Allied governments knew what was going in places like Auschwitz and Belsen, but the people in the street certainly didn’t.
My parents came to visit us in Germany each summer and one year I suggested for a change that we could take a trip to Munich. Just outside Munich is Dachau which is now a memorial to the thousands who died there, and my father was interested in seeing it. He never said as much but I suspected he wanted to see one of the glaring reasons why his life was put on the line. In my turn, I thought my sons were old enough to understand what had happened there. I wanted them to learn when they were being fooled by political charlatans and I wanted them to understand why I would be prepared to die fighting against evil of this nature.
We drove down to Bavaria and found a B&B in Furstenfeldbruck, which is close to the Dachau site. Our first day in Munich we spent sightseeing and visiting the Deutsches Museum. This is situated on an island in the Yser River, which runs through the centre of Munich. The museum is outstanding in its range and the quality of its exhibits. At the time we visited there was a genuine U-boat in the basement. The conning tower was much taller than the chamber which housed it, so a hole had been cut in the ceiling to accommodate it. What made this so arresting was that a visitor entering the entrance lobby was faced with the conning tower of a genuine U-boat apparently floating just above the floor. There were panels cut out of the hull so that visitors could walk the length of the vessel and get a clear picture of the interior. It struck me that life in a WW2 submarine must have been as close to hell as it’s possible to get. The rest of the museum was absolutely fascinating and to my mind ranks as one of the best in Europe.
The next day we went to Dachau. Most of the huts where the prisoners were quartered have been demolished, only the first row being still in existence. The headquarters building is now a museum, housing photos, and camp records. Dachau was not an extermination camp so the crematorium was not on the industrial scale of Auschwitz, but nevertheless the half-dozen or so ovens were a moving sight. The inmates were literally worked to death. There is a chapel built next to the crematorium and the chapel’s priest was once an inmate of the concentration camp. He was talking to a group of teenagers when we passed and we stopped to listen.
One photo in the museum is particularly heartrending. It shows a little old lady, her head covered by a scarf, walking down a street in the Warsaw ghetto while holding the hands of two little children. Behind them stands a sneering member of the SS, holding a submachine gun. I defy anyone not to be moved to tears at this image, knowing what fate awaited this little group.
The whole experience was moving beyond words. My father was almost in tears and I could only imagine the emotions he was experiencing.
In the mid 1990s my wife and I took a trip to Israel, a visit I had been anticipating for a considerable number of years. I‘ll talk about this trip more fully later, but now I’ll concentrate on one day when we were in Jerusalem. Our guide took us to Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Memorial on Mount Herzl. To visit this memorial in the heart of the country whose foundation was based on the horror the world felt at the cruelty the Jewish people were subjected to during the Nazi years was an emotional experience almost beyond imagination.
Our guide then suggested we visit the Children’s Memorial. I almost balked at this; if the Holocaust Memorial had played havoc with my feelings, what would a memorial to the children killed in those terrible times do? As it transpired my wife and I found it to be ethereally beautiful. The visitor enters a darkened chamber. All around candles burn against a black background, like stars in space. Two voices read out the names of the dead children in quiet voices. We felt that we were no longer on Earth, but floating in space. There was such a feeling of peace and tranquillity that the revulsion we felt at the coldblooded murder of hundreds of thousands of children was transmuted into wonder that such beauty could be created out of horror.

 

[BillB]

During our early years in Luxembourg we seemed to spend our holidays on various islands. We returned to one of my favourites, Guernsey. To get there from Luxembourg we had to drive to St Malo in Brittany and take the hydrofoil to Guernsey. You couldn’t take your car on this vessel so we had to leave ours in St Malo and hire one in St Peter Port. The hydrofoil stopped off at Jersey first and we all had to get off to go through immigration with our passports. While we were doing this they let on the passengers who were travelling from Jersey to Guernsey with the result that when we got back on board we had lost our seats and had to stand the rest of the way. The next time we did that journey we left my diving gear strewn over our seats and found them unoccupied when we got back on board.
Guernsey was as beautiful as always, it was just the weather that let us down. A couple of days after we arrived there blew up one of the worst storms I have ever seen. It was the storm that sank Ted Heath’s boat, Morning Cloud, with the loss of its crew. We would sit in our hire car on the cliff tops, feeling the vehicle rising and falling on its springs as the wind blasted underneath it. We could see waves breaking halfway up the lighthouse offshore. With the beach out of the question we used to drive around the island, stopping at attractions such as the vast tunnel built by the Nazis as a hospital, or the aquarium. Regular visits to the fish market turned out to be full of interest, even keeping our boys fascinated with the variety of sea life on display.
The weather didn’t improve much over the rest of the holiday, as it continued raining even after the gale itself subsided. I didn’t get to do any diving and it was almost a relief when the time came to board the ferry for St Malo.
The following year I was talking to an Italian colleague who told me about an apartment on the west coast of Sardinia that could be rented from another colleague. My wife and I talked it over and decided to rent it for the whole of August. We then made reservations on the ferry from Genoa to Cagliari. This was easier said than done as they are usually booked solid but a local travel agent managed the feat for us. Sadly, my father-in-law died the day before we were due to leave for the drive to Genoa. The rushing around that followed could be imagined. We managed to cancel our sailing and exchange it for an open ticket, then make ferry reservations on the Calais to Dover ferry. We left Luxembourg and arrived in London to make the funeral arrangements. My mother-in-law wasn’t at her best in an emergency or a time of crisis at the best of times so my wife and I had to do it all.
After we got back to Luxembourg we thought we might as well depart for Genoa and see if we could get on board the ferry to Sardinia.
We arrived at the Italian docks around 11 am but found that the ticket office didn’t open until 2.30 pm. As a result I had to stand in line for three and a half hours – although I was the first in the line. When the doors finally opened I was pushed sideways in the rush, too gentlemanly at first, but in a few seconds I learnt to use my elbows just like an Italian. I actually got to be the 3rd person served and the good news was that we could get our originally reserved first class cabin.
The rest of the voyage was uneventful and an hour and a half after docking we found ourselves settling into the apartment a few yards from the beach in the village of Putzu Idu.
Although the start of the holiday was delayed by the sad circumstances, we loved our time on the beautiful Mediterranean island. I even managed to get some diving in.
When we weren’t on the beautiful mile-long white sand beach we explored the interior. The Nuragi were particularly fascinating. These beehive shaped Stone-Age dwellings, built of shaped stone and created in settlements of considerable size are mysterious and intriguing. They’re a common sight around the island but very little is known of the people who created them.
The sea on the west coast where we stayed is crystal clear. I went diving with a brother of the colleague who rented us the flat, taking his boat out to the Isolo di Mal di Ventre (Bellyache Island, believe it or not). The water was about 60 feet deep there, the seabed teeming with life; it was a thoroughly enjoyable dive.
I have long maintained, both from my own observations and from reading, that the octopus is a very intelligent and much maligned creature and a strange little incident reinforced this belief. I was standing thigh deep in the sea, chatting to an Italian who lived in Australia. The seabed was pure sand with no marine vegetation and definitely none of those horribly spiky sea urchins. My youngest son came wading along to me and told me that there was an octopus nearby. As there was no shelter for it at all I said that I thought he might have made a mistake. He was adamant and got quite indignant so to pacify him I went along with him to the spot. There on the seabed was a rock, the only rock for hundreds of metres in any direction, and sitting on the rock was indeed a small octopus. I floated on the surface, staring down at him through my mask. I was aware of two eyes looking back at me and there was definitely curiosity and intelligence in those eyes. I put out a hand gingerly to touch his body and at the same time he put out a tentacle and laid it on the back of my hand. The feel of it was so strange that I jerked my hand back and he jerked his tentacle back, and then took off leaving a small puff of ink in the water. He jetted along for a few metres and then sank to the sand, instantly changing colour. I circled round behind him and he took off again to sit once again on the rock. I didn’t want him harmed and I definitely did not want to see him end up as someone’s dinner, so we left him to his thoughts on his lonely little rock.
The Costa Smeralda, the Emerald Coast, runs along the northern shore of the island and is famous as millionaires’ playground. We took a drive along there, just to see how the other half lives, and was quite taken aback by the sheer beauty of the coast. The sea really is emerald green there.
Another interesting excursion is to the cave known as Neptune’s Grotto. It’s situated at the bottom of a cliff and if you go down by foot it is 656 steps to the cave. Not bad, you may think, but coming back up again is one almighty trudge.
The last island is Malta, which we visited as a result of my wife carrying out some freelance secretarial work for a consultant and being paid a nice sum. She suggested that a week’s visit to Malta in late autumn would set us up nicely to face the winter, so without further ado we made reservations.
Malta has a fascinating history, dating back to the ancient Greeks. At one time in pre-history a flood had roared down a valley, carrying all living things before it – mainly dinosaurs. The thousands of dead dinosaurs were covered over by nature and fossilised over thousands of years. Comparatively recently the bones were discovered and a museum opened with many examples on display. The site is still being excavated so the number of specimens is growing constantly.
We took a boat over to the nearby island of Gozo and was once again struck by the clarity of the Mediterranean.
In Malta itself there is a domed church where a remarkable incident occurred during WW2, when Malta was pounded from the air by the Luftwaffe. The church was full for a service when a bomb fell on the dome. The bomb crashed through the dome, landed on the church floor and almost miraculously failed to detonate. It rolled around and finally came to rest against a wall. No one was hurt.
Valletta is a bustling port and was once home to the Knights Templar and the Knights of St John. There are many buildings to be seen with connections to these two orders.
On the day we were due to return, our plane suffered a breakdown so instead of departing at 4 pm, Air Malta had to charter a plane from Sir Freddy Laker, which resulted in us not actually taking off until 12 hours later. The passenger sitting next to my wife had a dreadful cold and was coughing sneezing and sniffing for the whole flight. By the time we arrived home we were exhausted from a night without sleep, and a couple of days later my wife went down with a bad cold. Two days later I got it too. So much for setting us up for the winter.

 

[BillB]

There’s been a bit of a delay but my wife decided that we should clear out the cellar and do a bit of painting down there before our Californian friends arrive in May. We leave next week for Normandy to spend a few days with my cousin and then we take the ferry to Dover to spend a few days with friends in Hampshire. Oh, it’s all go when you’re retired.
Now where was I? Oh yes.
I really ought, at this point, mention two couples who made a big difference to our lives. The first was Bob D and his wife Lois. Bob came to Stars and Stripes a couple of months after I arrived, but this was his second time. He’d done a two-year stint a few years previously. This time they arrived with their high-school twins, a girl named Shawn of stunning beauty and a boy, Timmy, who thought of little else but surfing. They moved into a flat a couple of hundred yards from us and we became firm friends with them. Bob was an incredible person of boundless good nature and an exuberant sense of humour. He was one of those people who everybody likes and wants to have as a friend. His wife Lois was a gentle redhead who tolerated Bob with rueful smiles and lots of love. After they left Stripes we kept in touch. The second couple was Dorothy and Tony whom we met on Guernsey when they stayed in the same hotel as us. Again we became friends and stayed in touch, always spending an evening with them when we were in England.
A couple of years after we met them we went on holiday together in Croatia, to Novigrad on the Istrian Peninsula. I booked an apartment via our local automobile club and Dot and Tony flew into Munich where we drove from Luxembourg to meet them before we drove to Yugoslavia.
One of the highlights of that holiday was a cruise which was going to take us to a secluded cove and then provide a barbecue lunch. Not long after we set out from the harbour the sky clouded over and became ever more dark. Eventually the clouds took on an ominous greenish hue within which we could see lightning flashing with incredible frequency. The storm bore down on us rapidly, thunder drowning out even the sound of the boat’s engine. It seemed no time at all from when we were sitting along the gunwhale enjoying the sunshine to sheltering from one of the most violent storms I had ever experienced. The rain came down so hard that it was like stepping under Niagara Falls, so heavy that visibility was reduced to a few feet in any direction. The wind threw the boat about and the thunder made speech inaudible. There seemed to be no end so reluctantly the boat turned around and made its way back to Novigrad. Just as well as it continued to rain heavily until well into the afternoon.
One of the features of Novigrad harbour was a temporary open air restaurant which barbecued suckling pigs every evening. We all agreed to have dinner there one evening so we had a couple of drinks while waiting for the piglets to be cooked crisply. When we got our food it turned out to be more bone than meat. After we had finished we were so hungry that we went around the corner to a restaurant we knew where they specialised in grilled squid with garlic butter. Now that was a very satisfying meal.
Another year we agreed with Dot and Tony that renting a boat on the Severn and Avon rivers sounded like it would be fun so we got a Hoseason’s catalogue and promptly made our booking. We picked up the boat at Upton-upon-Severn and set off upstream. This was my first time cruising Britain’s inland waterways and I confess I was absolutely captivated. Away from the towns we drifted through silent fields, exchanging greetings with the occasional boater and watching the amazing variety of wild birds and water fowl. In short, I was hooked.
When my mother died my brother and I shared a small inheritance. We put it in the bank and after a while decided that we would use part of it as a down payment on a boat of our own as it would serve two purposes: we could use it as a base when we visited the UK and it would provide some great holidays. In search of our dream boat we drove along the Medway, but found nothing that grabbed us. We moved on to the Upper Thames and after a few days searching we found just what we were looking for in a marina near Windsor. Our choice was a 22 ft Birchwood with an open plan cabin with four berths.
Deciding that spending four weeks a year sleeping in the same cabin as our sons wasn’t in anybody’s best interest we bought a small tent with the idea of pitching it on the bank for the boys whenever we moored for the night. It worked too.
But after a year I saw another boat in the marina which was much more suitable. It was a 27 footer with an aft cabin, giving us all the privacy we could wish. It also had twin British Leyland diesel engines. Two engines make a boat much easier to handle than a single engine, so that was definitely an advantage. There is also the safety aspect – it is unlikely that both engines will break down simultaneously if you’re out at sea.
You get some very strange reactions if you tell people that you own a boat – people who have known me all my life will mutter something about it being all right for the rich. Me, rich – with a wife, two kids and boat repayments every month.

 

[BillB]

As if learning how to be a skilled boat handler and studying for a VHF radio operator’s license wasn’t enough, I was also getting myself involved in music again. Somebody was producing a music hall in Luxembourg and I was asked if I could make a recording of the show and produce cassettes for all those involved. No problem, I agreed and trotted along to a couple of rehearsals to get an idea of what equipment I would need, learn the cues, and generally get a feeling for the show. I duly did the job and gave the matter no more thought until the following year when it was decided to produce another music hall. Knowing the director well I volunteered to help out backstage, but he said that I had once told him I had played drums in my youth and as they were going to try to form an orchestra for the show, would I like to play drums. Hesitatingly, I said I would give it a try and hired a drum kit from a local instrument store. I began getting my fingers and wrists in form for the rehearsals. When work on the show began in earnest I found myself joining a group of about 12 fairly accomplished musicians. I got through rehearsals and the performances without making too much of a fool of myself and at the conclusion we’d had so much fun that someone suggested we formed a dance band. Realising that things were advancing beyond my skill level I decided that the first thing I should do would be to go and enrol at a local music school and study percussion.
As a result I used to leave work on Wednesday evenings, go for my lesson, then meet my wife for a pizza in a nearby Italian restaurant. I also had to buy myself a drum kit. Pity my neighbours.
We started dance band rehearsals and I began to enjoy the experience, not least because I was now able to read the musical arrangements that were handed out to me. It goes without saying that my enthusiasm far outweighed my talent. In short, Buddy Rich slept soundly at night.
Then I was invited to meet up with two businessmen who played trumpet and clarinet respectively with a view to forming a Dixieland jazz band. One was German from Hamburg and the other was Swedish. We duly met up and played for a couple of hours and decided that we should continue. The next time we played I brought along a Danish friend from the music hall and the dance band who played guitar and banjo and later an Italian colleague joined us who played bass. We were truly an international group. After playing together several times we were invited to play for charitable events and parties.
All this time our 25th wedding anniversary was getting closer and closer so we decided to celebrate by going on a trip to Southeast Asia, an area we had never visited. I had had a yen to visit Hong Kong ever since reading a book about it in the early ‘60s, so we decided that this would be a definite part of the trip. When our itinerary was finalised we would be going first to Bangkok, then Hong Kong, finally spending a week in Bali. The travel agent called us up later and said that he couldn’t get us a flight back on the date we wanted so would we mind staying on for another 4 days. I asked how much the hotel would charge per night (it was the Bali Hyatt and luxurious). The charge was £9 per night per person. I told him at that price he could book us in for as long he liked.
We told my mother-in-law what we were planning and she must have thought it over for a while because she suddenly announced to my wife that she had decided she couldn’t take it with her so she was going to give us a really nice sum of money as pocket money on the trip. As she was not normally noted for her generosity this gave rise to a certain degree of speculation between myself and the boys. Each time my wife called her she asked when we were leaving as she wanted to send us the money in good time (she knew damned well when our anniversary was) and the boys began to lose their grasp on reality as their speculation grew more fevered. Finally, months later my wife called me at the office to tell me that her cheque had arrived. “Well,” I said. “Don’t keep me in suspense. How much did she send?” “£10,” my wife said, absolutely deadpan.
Long haul flights were not so common then, so Bangkok hadn’t yet become a hot tourist destination, and the air pollution was barely noticeable. Our plane touched down at Don Muang airport and my wife and I were bug-eyed with fascination. Growing on the airport perimeter itself were palm trees with clusters of coconuts growing on them, along with trees bearing colourful tropical flowers. A bus took us to the hotel and after checking in I went to the window in our room to see what kind of a view we had. There on the opposite side of the road was McDonald’s, the only one in Thailand. Well, they say travel broadens the mind.
We took a few tours of the city and surrounding area, but I wanted to see the Golden Buddha. This was a figure of Buddha which was created in the time when Siam and Burma were constantly at war, and the Buddhists were afraid that the Burmese would steal it so they covered it with stucco to make it insignificant to any marauders. Over the years it was gradually forgotten that the statue was originally made of pure gold until one day a piece of the stucco was knocked off and the gleam of gold shone through. They began stripping off the stucco and revealed a statue of a seated Buddha, about twice life size, in all its gleaming golden glory.
Thinking ahead enough to get the hotel’s business card, with the hotel’s name in both English and Thai we set off to bargain with a tuk-tuk driver. The price he quoted was reasonable so I was too soft hearted to haggle. We climbed into the contraption, like a rickshaw mounted on a motorised scooter’s frame and ubiquitous throughout Southeast Asia.
We arrived at the temple where the Buddha was housed, left our shoes outside and entered. The statue weighs about 6 tons (if my memory isn’t failing me) and we were the only people around. The Buddha was an astonishing sight, one pure gold hand outstretched towards the viewer.
When we left we realised that we had no idea where we were. The street signs were in Thai (naturally) and we had become functionally illiterate at a stroke. We walked around, hoping that we would see an unoccupied tuk-tuk to take us back to the hotel. There’s never one around when you need one, is there? We came to a fairly large thoroughfare where I was able to buy a street map of the city, little knowing that Bangkok streets and alleys open up, get closed off or head off in different directions constantly so that any map you buy is only a loose approximation of reality.
We came to a place called Jimmy’s Coffee Shop, so thinking we might find some aid we went in, ordered a coffee and asked the owner, a Thai, where we were on the map. He pointed vaguely to a fairly large area and said that we were there. Not much help. We set off again and after a while I decided that it was time for another look at the map, but not wishing to look too much like a dumb tourist ready to be taken for as much as could be gouged out of him, we stepped into a department store. After studying the map for a frustrating few minutes, I noticed through one of the store windows that a group of tuk-tuks was lining the pavement. Fishing out my hotel card I approached the line and asked if anyone could drive us to this address. The first driver looked at it, shook his head and looked bewildered, whereupon a second driver looked at it with the same result. Finally, one of them declared, (I think) that he knew it and told us to jump in. We took off at a rate of knots through the fearsome Bangkok traffic, squeezing between moving buses and at one point we even overtook a police car. My wife simply closed her eyes. After a while the driver turned around and asked us something in Thai. I pointed straight ahead and we carried on. The same thing happened again, and then it dawned on us simultaneously - he didn’t have the faintest idea where the hotel was so he was driving around to all the hotels he knew in the hope that eventually we would stumble on the right one. Eventually, I decided that enough was enough, told him to stop, gave him the 35 baht we had agreed on and waved him goodbye. When we looked around us we realised that we were in Siam Square, a well-known area and just a short walk from our hotel.
Did we breathe a sigh of relief when we entered the hotel’s air-conditioned lobby leaving the tumult and the sticky heat of the city outside.

 

[BillB]

The flight from Bangkok to Hong Kong was uneventful – until we came in to land at Kai Tak. The flight path took our aircraft between blocks of apartments, so close that you could see what was on the TV in the individual flats. When we touched down on the runway quite a few people on board breathed a sigh of relief.
We transferred to our hotel, the Marco Polo in a giant complex called Ocean City in Kowloon, not far from the Star Ferry terminal. After checking in and freshening up we went out for a look around Ocean City, which must have been one of the biggest malls in the world at that time. HK was very prosperous at this time so the shops were all selling high end products: Rolex watches, Gucci bags, Dior clothing. The walkways stretched for miles, with crosswalks and turnoffs all over the place.
Feeling somewhat exhausted we decided to return to the hotel to put our feet up for an hour or so before we really hit the town. Could we find the hotel? Could we heck! We wandered up and down the walkways, hoping to catch a sign that pointed the way. Eventually I gave up and suggested that we stopped in a coffee shop we could see, take a cup to revive our flagging energy and ask the way. Which we duly did. When the waitress served our coffee we asked for directions. She looked quite bemused and then said that this was the coffee shop of the Marco Polo Hotel. Was my face red.
We did the usual things that are musts in Hong Kong, crossing the harbour on the Star Ferry, driving out to the New Territories and taking the tram to the Peak.
We hitched up with another couple and on our second evening we were strolling through the streets after dinner when our respective wives stopped to look in a jeweller’s window. The other husband and myself carried on strolling to have a look in a more interesting - and cheaper - shop window. Suddenly I was approached by a very pretty little Chinese girl in a yellow track suit who asked if I would like a happy time. Thinking rapidly on how to refuse without hurting her feelings I managed eventually to say thank you, but that my wife was just behind me. Our wives were helpless with laughter when we told them.
On the day we left our plane was pushed back from its jetway and began to trundle out towards the runway. And it trundled and it trundled. There was no doubt about it. It was heading for the wrong end of the runway – to our way of thinking. In other words it was going to take off towards the city and it would be leaving on the same flight path we came in on. And it did - past all those apartment blocks and their TVs, then we could see the swimming pools on the roofs. Finally the 747 stood on one wingtip and did a sharp turn to avoid overflying Chinese territory.
The rest of the flight was uneventful and we came in to land at Jakarta after dark. Another short flight brought us to Denpasar, the capital of Bali.
We arrived at our hotel around midnight, checked in and set off to find our room. The hotel was built as three interlinked atriums (I think the plural of atrium may be atria, but never mind) will all the rooms leading off balconies running around the interior. In the centre of each one was a gorgeous tropical garden, and along the way we passed little terracotta gods, each with a real flower behind the ear. We discovered the flowers were replaced every day. Although Indonesia is an Islamic state, Bali is exceptional in that it is mainly Hindu.
We woke the next morning to find the sun shining and the air filled with the scent of tropical flowers. A meander through the gardens brought us to the breakfast room where a buffet was laid out for the guests. All kinds of fruits that I had never tasted before were on display and we tucked in.
After that there was nothing we fancied more than relaxing on the beach so that’s where we headed. The sea was crystalline within the lagoon and we could see the occasional wave breaking over the reef, about half a mile offshore. In no time flat I had my fins, mask and snorkel on and was floating around offshore, marvelling at the different varieties of coral that were growing in such profusion. Brain coral, potato coral, deer antler coral could be seen wherever you looked. Giant clams opened their shells, displaying their purple or blue mantles to lure unsuspecting fish. Moray eels were peeping out of their holes in the rocks. Fish of every colour imaginable swarmed everywhere and the whole scene was such a riotous display of exuberant colours that it took my breath away.
After a relaxing day we went off to see some of the local sights. At that time, and I don’t believe things have improved since then, the Balinese couldn’t seem to come to terms with the concept of the soft sell. Every visitor was bombarded with what can in most cases be called tourist tat. You couldn’t get a moment’s peace without someone shoving some item into your face and rattling on nonstop. Even when we went into shops the owner would follow us around telling us to buy this or that without a thought for what might or might not suit either of us. Finally, in one shop where I was hoping to buy a couple of shirts, the sales pitch was so incessant that finally I said, “Look, if you leave me alone to browse in peace, I promise I will buy something. But if you continue to harass me like this I shall walk out immediately.” The effect was magical – utter silence from the owner, and I selected some shirts. Then, of course, began the bargaining. They always quoted a price that would have been outrageous for a designer shirt in Bond Street, let alone a little shop in Sanur. The skill here was to get them down to a price that was reasonable by Balinese standards. Sometimes you win, sometimes you fall flat on your face.
Another example of this mindset occurred when we took a tour to a volcano called Kintamani. The bus stopped at a restaurant for lunch and the guide said to us that the pedlars would be waiting for us and that we should all hang on to the person in front and not to stop for any reason. Sounds a bit odd, I thought. Then the bus stopped and a double line formed between the bus and the restaurant entrance. As we got off the bus we had to run the gauntlet. People on each side were thrusting their goods into your face and shouting at you. It was a very unpleasant experience and I wondered how long it would be before they realised that they weren’t selling a single item, but that if they displayed their wares the visitors would browse and a proportion would buy something. After lunch our guide told us that we should return to the bus the same way and once on the bus, not to open a window. Why is there always someone who thinks the rules apply to other people and not to themselves? One idiot promptly opened a window and in a split second a hand was shoved through holding a carved figurine which was briskly pushed into his face.
The volcano itself had last erupted about 20 years previously and all the people living on the upper slopes had to be evacuated. When the eruption subsided they returned to their homes and discovered that the ash that had spewed from the peak was extremely fertile when planted and watered. By the time we visited they were growing coffee and were moving from poor subsistence farming to wealthy coffee plantation owners. I found Bali coffee (or kopi as the Balinese pronounced it) very much to my taste, very mild and very smooth. I drank it exclusively while we were there.
We discovered accidentally that if you hired a local taxi driver to act as your tour guide the aggressive salesmanship was never experienced. So that was how we did our sightseeing from then on. We saw the Elephant Temple, the holiest temple on the island, the Monkey Forest where not only monkeys swung from the trees, but fruitbats hung upside down from the highest branches, occasionally taking flight and flapping around before settling in the trees once more.
On our flight home we had a stopover in Abu Dhabi. Before we left Luxembourg someone had told us that Abu Dhabi airport had to be seen as the interior was inspired by a peacock’s tail feathers. And it was. Except that tiles were falling off it, the few seats were occupied by sleeping Arabs stretched full length and the toilets were overflowing with excrement all over the floor, the hand basins so filthy that no one in his right mind would consider putting his hands in one, and the towels hadn’t been changed for the last six months by the look of them. I couldn’t wait to get back on the 747.

 

[BillB]

Just got back from Normandy and the UK yesterday evening. The drive back was pleasant and surprisingly quick - not much traffic on the road so it took us 3 hours and 15 minutes from Calais to Luxembourg. Good going.
When we left Luxembourg for Normandy the weather was chucking it down. The first two hours were difficult as the traffic was throwing up walls of spray, but just as we reached Reims the rain stopped and an hour or so later the clouds began to clear and we had some sunshine.
We discovered my cousin had already arrived at the hotel in Arromanches when we pulled into the car park and he and his girlfriend came out and carried in our suitcases. I'm a lazy so and so and I left them do it with a clear conscience. :roll:
Our room overlooked the sea and the esplanade. Many of the enormous concrete caissons which formed the Mulberry Harbour through which the troops ashore would be re-equipped are still in place, forming a giant wall offshore. This is where my father's ship, HMS Frobisher, was acting as a resupply vessel when it was hit by the torpedo I've mentioned earlier. On D Day itself HMS Frobisher was anchored next to HMS Roberts and was contributing to the bombardment of Sword Beach. Anyone who has visited the Imperial War Museum will have seen the guns on the forecourt which were removed from HMS Roberts and preserved at the museum.
The morning after our arrival was wet and very windy so we set off in our car to visit the historically important sites. We stopped first Bayeux where we went to see the famous tapestry. My wife and I had seen it before, but the preentation has been improved immensely. Previously visitors were given a sheet of paper explaining some of the salient points of the tapestry, but now you are given an audio commentary gadget which leads you along the whole length, giving a very clear explanation of each scene. We drove next to St Mére Eglise where an unfortunate American paratrooper, John Steele, landed on the church roofjust after midnight on D Day, while German units in the square below were machine-gunning the parachutists as they came down.He hung there all night, slowly being deafened by the church bells chiming as a fire warning because a house on the church square was burning. As a tribute to him, the townspeople usually have a parachute and a dummy paratrooper hanging from the roof.
From there we went along to Omaha Beach, the bloodiest beach on D Day where 9,000 American troops were killed. When you stand on the beach there and look towards the cliffs where the German army was entrenched you can understand why it was such a murderous job just to get ashore. Anybody who has sat through the first half-hour of Saving Private Ryan will have an inkling of what it must have been like. We stopped at Pointe du Hoc where American rangers climbed the ciffs to attack the gun positions, only to find the bunkers were empty and the guns had been moved elsewhere. They had some heavy fighting right after this and many were killed.
My cousin left on the 3rd day so my wife and I first took a tour of the D Day Museum in Arromanches which gives a fascinating insight into the construction and operation of the Mulberry Harbour. From there we went along to Ouistreham where the Pegasus Bridge was taken and held in the early hours of D Day. In an incredible feat of flying the first glider landed just 37 yards away from the bridge. The present bridge is a replacement, but the original now stands in the grounds of the Pegasus Museum, a few yards away.
The weather was not being kind, as it was cold and very misty. As a result we decided that we would drive up the coast towards Calais, hoping to find a pleasant hotel, the next day.
Of course, when we left the sun came out and we had beautiful weather. We left the motorway at Abbeville, driving towards Le Touquet, but hotels were very thin on the ground. There were dozens and dozens of camp sites but the only hotels we passed were not at all inviting. It must be that that stretch of the coast attracts people who don't like spending money. Finally we pulled off the road and called our favourite hotel in in Wimereux to see if they had a room. They did and we booked a table in the restaurant for that evening. Their restaurant is known as far as Paris for its food.
The hotel has been doing some refurbishments and we were lucky to get a room that had just been completed. It was beautiful and very comfy, with sea views.
The restaurant lived up to its reputation as well. I had a starter of homemade paté followed by turbot and scallops in a champagne foam. A selection of cheeses was then offered (and eaten!!!), followed by a plate of fresh fruit for myself as they know I'm diabetic and a selection of desserts for my wife. We accompanied the meal with a bottle of Pouilly Fuissé. As we enjoyed the meal, the sun slowly sank into the sea, in a magnificent display of colour. Needless to say, I felt that my birthday had been well and truly celebrated.
The next day we took the ferry to Dover and spent a couple of days in Hampshire, visiting friends and doing a bit of shopping. We were somewhat shocked at the prices in Britain these days, what with the recession and everything. I feel we made the right decision to stay in Luxembourg.

 

[BillB]

One of the most fascinating trips we have ever taken was to Singapore, Borneo and Penang. We took a morning flight by Malaysian Airlines from Heathrow to Singapore, arriving around 9 in the evening. By the time we'd passed through Immigration, caught a bus and arrived at our hotel, the Melia at Scott's, we were pretty exhausted, but by the time we'd checked in and flopped down in our room it was ok to go to bed. Getting on to the local time as quickly as possible is the best way to beat jet lag. The next morning I was woken from a sound sleep by my wife grabbing me to tell me that it was 10.30 in the morning and we were wasting time sleeping when we were in Singapore for the first time. We shot out of bed, raced through the shower, had breakfast in the coffee shop and set out to explore Singapore.
If you’ve never visited Singapore, then make a point of going as soon as possible. It will give you a taste of Asia but one that is totally safe, so clean that you’ll have trouble believing it, and so many restaurants that it will make your head spin trying to decide whether to go for Indian, Chinese, Malay, Indonesian, sea food, French, Italian or virtually any other nationality you can think of.
Our hotel was just a few yards away from Newton Circus, one of the immensely popular food markets so our evenings were usually spent wandering around the market, ordering shrimps at this stall, noodles at another, satay at a third and beer or soft drinks at a fourth. Seats and tables are spread around and wherever you sit, the owner of the stall where you ordered your dish will find you. I had an experience that you may well not believe. At one stall I ordered a Sapporo beer for myself and a mineral water for my wife. The owner duly brought them over to us just as our first dish arrived. After about 10 minutes he came back, explained that he had overcharged me by Singapore $1 and gave me the dollar back. I couldn’t believe it. It never happened to me before and it’s never happened to me since.
No visitor to Singapore should omit a visit to the orchid garden. The climate is ideal for these lovely flowers and the garden is planted with such a profusion of different blooms that you’ll use up quite a bit of your camera’s capacity.
Just off the southern coast is Sentosa Island, a cross between a theme park and collection of museums. It used to be reached only by ferry but now a bridge has been constructed and access is much easier. Or you could try the cable car that takes you to Sentosa and back. The first thing you see is a musical fountain that changes its display depending on the tune being played. A monorail takes you around the island, allowing you to get off whenever you reach an attraction that appeals to you. We loved the aquarium with its displays of tropical sea fish and our greatest surprise – the Stone Museum. Now if you asked me what kind of museum interested me most, the last one to spring to mind would be a stone museum, but the one at Sentosa is so fascinating that we spent far longer in there than we intended. Basically it is a display of oddities found in and among pebbles, stones and rocks. One stone was split open and found to show a Chinese ideogram in quartz. The surrender of Singapore to the Japanese during WW2 is the subject of another display.
There are a number of hotels on the island so a visitor can stay there for several days, though if you miss out on the Singapore city experience you’ll regret it.
When it came time to leave we took the monorail to the cable car station, which was full of Japanese visitors. When the gondola reaches the Singapore side you dismount to find yourself at the top of a fairly high tower, from which you descend by lifts. Naturally enough, when a lift arrived there was a rush by the Japanese to get into the lift – definitely a case of the devil take the hindmost, with my wife and I getting elbowed aside every time. Then I noticed a projecting wall so, curious, I walked a couple of steps to see what was behind it and - lo and behold – there was another lift which no one had spotted. I grabbed my wife’s hand and we sidled round the corner. We were not unobserved, however, as a ravening horde of Japanese tourists came hurtling behind us, jamming into the lift so tightly that the overload warning buzzer sounded. The last four to enter backed out and the buzzer stopped. But before the lift doors closed they all got back in. The buzzer started up again, so they got out. Once more the buzzer stopped and I watched in disbelief as they packed themselves back in, only to hear the buzzer begin again. Yes, they all got out again! And when the buzzer stopped they all started back into the lift. I swear that if I hadn’t acted we would still be there, waiting as the buzzer stopped and started. However, in my veins flows the blood of those who built an empire. I am undaunted by herds of Japanese tourists, even though every one of them was equipped with at least one camera and a silly hat. I stepped forward, put a hand on the two nearest chests, pushed them back and shouted, ‘No,’ at the top of my voice, directly into the nearest face. Startled, they all stepped back (no Japanese would ever act as I had) and I stood in the doorway glaring at them. Finally, the doors slid closed and we descended to ground level. I’ve no idea what happened to them. Perhaps they are still there.
It’s only a short flight from Singapore to Kuching, the capital of Sarawak, a Malaysian state on the island of Borneo, a destination which is still rare among travellers. We arrived about 10 in the morning and transferred to our hotel, the Holiday Inn, overlooking the Sarawak River, and within sight of Fort Margarita. We were in the land of the White Rajahs of Sarawak.
A tour of Kuching occupied the rest of the morning and in the afternoon we visited the acclaimed Sarawak Museum, one of the best museums I have ever visited. So many aspects of the life of the Dayak and Iban tribesmen are explained by the exhibits that again you can spend far more time that you intended. I don’t intend to go into detail on the White Rajahs as they can be easily researched by putting those two words into Google. Suffice it to say that the first one, James I think, offhand, did a great service to the then ruler by ridding the coasts of the pirates that infested that part of the world. As a result, he was given a large area of the country as his own fiefdom. The Dayaks, as the local tribesmen were known, were roughly divided into two types – Sea Dayaks and Land Dayaks (the land Dayaks are also known as Iban).
On the next morning we left Kuching and took a minibus with two other couples and a guide, who also acted as driver. We drove into the heart of Borneo, through rainforest and farmland. Our guide pointed out items of interest, but there was a plant which was obviously cultivated, tied to stakes, and which grew about the height of a man. My curiosity as what this plant might be grew as we drove on, seeing thousands of them, until finally we turned off the road and jolted along a dirt track for a while before pulling over. We all got out and he led us among a plantation of these pyramidal growths. The stakes were quite hefty, but as Michael, the guide, explained, they were cut from ironwood, a tree so hard that it withstands the ravages of even the most voracious termites.
Little green berries grew all over the vines, and suddenly I realised what they were – at the same moment Michael told us that it was one of Sarawak’s greatest exports, ‘the queen of spices’ he called it. None other than peppercorns. He then walked us into the forecourt of a wooden farmhouse where three little children were standing excitedly, holding bags of peppercorns. Behind them were areas where the corns were laid out in the sun to dry. We were told that the peppercorns are dried in the sun until they harden. If black pepper is desired, they are bagged and sold as they are, but if white pepper is needed, they are then soaked in water for several days and then rubbed until the outer skin sloughs away. The white kernel inside, when ground, becomes the white pepper we all know. The little children were anxious to sell us their wares, so being an amateur cook who loves the smell of freshly ground black pepper I bought 2 kilos of black peppercorns and a kilo of white. I shared some of them out with my friends when we got back to Luxembourg – the first time they’d ever had pepper straight from the heart of Borneo.
As we drove out of the pepper farm we stopped once more beside a bush whose fruit looked familiar. Then I remembered having seen what appears to be a large nut in picture books when I was a child. Cocoa beans. Once again my curiosity got the better of me and I broke open a bean to find a cluster of white fruit inside, looking vaguely like fresh lychees. I tasted one and it was grim – a horribly slimy taste and texture which I spat out immediately. How on earth do they make something as delicious as chocolate out of this, I wondered. Michael explained: the slimy flesh is stripped away and discarded and the stone at the centre of the fruit is dried beside a fire in the sun. It is this stone which is then ground to a fine powder and forms the basis of all the chocolate products we’re familiar with.
An hour or so later we pulled off the road onto an area beside a river landing where a couple of long canoes waited for us. We climbed aboard and the canoes headed swiftly up the Skrang River. After a while we turned off the main stream and headed into a narrow tributary. The jungle closed in and our speed was reduced. 10 minutes or so brought us to an Iban village where we disembarked and climbed up the river bank to a tribal longhouse. Next to the longhouse stood a smaller version which served as a guest house. We didn’t have rooms but each couple was assigned a cubicle which could be closed off with a curtain, most of the area enclosed being the bed. The Iban live a communal life and this was reflected in our accommodation.
There’s so much to tell about the Iban and their way of life, not least the fact that they were headhunters, that I’d better close off this entry and cover the rest in the next post.

 

[BillB]

After unpacking and freshening up we had lunch, prepared by Michael. Then he invited us over to the Iban longhouse to meet the villagers. Dayaks are hospitable people and never turn away a traveller. The protocol is for a visitor to climb up the steps to the longhouse door, which is always open, and ask if he may enter. Inside, the nearest person to the door will always say yes. It is also obligatory to give a gift when you enter. This needn’t be of any great value, simply a packet of biscuits or a small trinket, but it must be offered.
In the ‘60s hippies discovered this hospitable people and regularly turn up, expecting to be housed and fed for as long it suits them, and causing real hardship to the Dayaks, who are hunter/gatherers for whom cultivation is very much a secondary occupation. As a result of this Western selfishness, the Dayaks have begun to change their customs as far as long term hospitality is concerned.
When we entered, Michael had purchased gifts on our behalf for the people, so we had been spared the problem of agonising over what to buy.
The longhouse is divided lengthways into 3, and all longhouses are constructed on this principle. On the left as we entered was an open area, which is regarded as common ground, although the area outside your own living area is treated as being a communal area but semi-private. On the left is a closed off area, comprising the living quarters of each family. Every family group has its own door into its own living area, and behind that is the sleeping accommodation. We were invited into one family’s living room, but we never saw the sleeping area.
In the open area grandparents will take care of their grandchildren, while the parents work, either hunting or growing vegetables. They also have a belief that if you take a photo of a child before he or she has grown milk teeth, the child will never grow them and will remain toothless for the rest of his or her life. I asked one elderly lady if I could take a picture of a particularly cute child and was refused but in a friendly manner.
A couple of minutes after we entered I looked around for my wife and saw that she was standing under a cluster of human heads which were hanging from the roof like a loverly bunch of coconuts. When I pointed at them she looked upwards and then blanched when she realised what these things just a couple of inches from her head actually were. The headman told us about their lifestyles, showed us how they made blowpipes out of ironwood ( not easy). Their children go off to boarding school for 10 day periods then come home for 4 days. The Sarawak government is also bringing clean water through pipes to the Iban villages, as well as electricity.
We then had the time to wander about the village to see what their everyday life was like. Another custom is that when an Iban offers you something to eat it is really bad manners to refuse. If you are not hungry, it suffices if you touch the offering with your hand, then put your hand to your mouth, saying thank you at the same time.
As we wandered around we came upon a bunch of young teenagers playing soccer. One of them broke off, went into the jungle and came back with a couple of hands of bananas. He put them down on a tree trunk and indicated that we should help ourselves. Having had lunch just prior to this we were able to show our good manners, Iban style, by touching the bananas and then touching our lips. The boys smiled as they realised we knew the ropes.
After dinner we were invited back to the longhouse for a Dayak knees-up. This involved drinking quantities of fermented rice liquor, which is pretty powerful stuff. The secret is to make it last as long as possible. It also helps if you’ve had a good meal beforehand.
The tribespeople demonstrated their dances for celebrating special occasions in their life. There was one for a successful hunt, one for a wedding; others imitated animals and birds they encounter in the jungle. They are small, delicately-built people and their dances are light, graceful affairs. Some are danced solely by women, some only by men and others when everyone and his brother joins in. Of course, the moment arrived when we were invited to dance with them, and it was a pathetic sight to see these galumphing Westerners trying to emulate the delicacy these slender people showed. The Iban were convulsed with laughter at some of our efforts. While we were there it began to rain. I had heard of tropical downpours, and now I experienced one. It was so heavy that at times the noise it made on the roof drowned out the noise of our merrymaking and the musicians who played for our dances. It only lasted for about 45 minutes, however, and was over by the time we made our way back to our room. I lay there for a while, listening to the jungle surrounding us. Anyone who thinks the jungle is silent at night has another think coming. I swear it was noisier than Piccadilly Circus in the rush hour. Every kind of animal and bird was shrieking, whistling, calling and roaring. Even the gekkos screeched (it’s why they’re also called chat-chats by the local people). The rice liquor was pretty potent, however, and I dropped off quickly enough.
I woke up at dawn, bright-eyed and wide awake without a trace of the headache I had been expecting. I lay awake for a few minutes and it was clear that I was the only one awake. I slipped out of bed, grabbed my clothes and my camera and made for the shower. The water wasn’t heated, but in the tropical heat the cold water was pretty warm, even at dawn. Feeling remarkably refreshed for such an ungodly hour I went out into the village as the sun began to rise. Everywhere I turned there some fascinating item that I had to photograph while everybody slumbered. I was the only one up, even the Iban were still abed.
I wandered down a track into the jungle, gingerly I must admit as I’m not potentially suicidal, took a photo of a pitcher plant, noticed a monkey was staring me from a high branch and drifted back towards the village, keeping a sharp lookout for snakes.
I helped myself to a couple of bananas left over from yesterday which were still where the boys left them and pretty soon people began to stir. The members of our group were amazed that I had been up for a couple of hours, already showered and was ravenous for breakfast.
One of the vegetables at dinner the previous evening and at breakfast was fern shoots. They were coiled up, just the way you see them growing in the woods, and stir fried with soy sauce and other vegetables. I have to say that they weren’t much of a revelation, being bland and virtually tasteless.
After breakfast our jungle guide arrived – dressed in full Dayak regalia with a headdress made out of a hornbill, his blowpipe and a fake gold Rolex and glasses. He was there to take us for a jungle trek, an experience that I, for one, had been hugely looking forward to.
He set off with us following him like a bunch of schoolchildren, but we soon lost our awkwardness under the demonstration of his knowledge of plants and birds. When a bird called he could tell us which bird it was and point out which tree it was sitting in; when we passed an unusual tree or plant he would tell us what it was, whether it was edible or useful as a medicine. If I was ever lost in the jungle, this was the man I wanted to be lost with.
We eventually arrived at a waterfall, hot and sweaty. The stream was just the thing to stick your head into for a cool down. I thanked my lucky stars that I wasn’t one of the National Servicemen who’d had to fight the Communist insurgents on the Malaya Peninsula during the ‘50s or the Indonesian-backed insurgency in Sarawak in the ‘60s.
Our guide gave us a demonstration in the use of the blowpipe. These are about 6 feet long with a piece of carved wood tied to the end which acts as a leaf sight. We were all allowed to have a go, and I discovered one of my hitherto unknown talents: I’m a pretty good shot with a blowpipe. I could not only hit the tree he pointed out, I could hit any leaf he pointed to. Before I could make a fool of myself and demonstrate that pride goeth before a fall, it was time to start the return journey. Rather sadly, I returned his blowpipe.
Back in the longhouse a group of us got talking to an elderly Dayak who was sitting in the communal area. Like all of the tribesmen we had met, he was friendly, smiling and willing to talk. He had two false teeth which bore the ace of hearts and the ace of spades respectively, so his smile was spectacular, to say the least. His body was covered in tattoos and someone asked their significance. He explained that to an Iban they were the equivalent of his passport. Ibans love to travel and will take off on the spur of the moment whenever the fancy takes them. When they reach their destination they have a tattoo, so they serve to remind him and everyone else where he had been in his lifetime. Just below his knee on one leg was the tattoo of a fish hook. We asked him what the significance of this was. Those of a nervous disposition should look away now, but what follows is exactly what he told us.
When they reach puberty all the young men go down to the river to be circumcised. The only anaesthetic is the coldness of the water, but given the ambient temperature, its qualities as a pain killer are not the greatest. However, the bravest elect to have a glowing ember pushed through their penis from side to side. The subsequent hole has a piece of wood pushed through and a feather is attached to each end of the wood. The wood is removed when the bearer needs to urinate, but is then replaced so that the hole does not close up.
Those enduring this procedure then have the tattoo of a fish hook made on their leg. When we enquired why he told us that the tattoo was there to show his lady friends that he was equipped to give them more pleasure than the average Iban.
The women among us looked thoughtful, the men had eyes as round as marbles and more than one was standing with his legs crossed.

 

[BillB]

I felt sad when we left the Iban village as they had an infectious joie de vivre and I found their civilisation unique. Their sense of humour was pretty good, too.
We retraced our steps, downriver and then the bus to Kuching where we picked up our luggage and spent the night. There are some things that take you so much by surprise that there’s no way you could anticipate them. Imagine, we staggered out of the jungle, sweaty and hot, stepped into the hotel and the first thing I saw in the shop was the latest copy of Woman’s Weekly, complete with recipes and knitting patterns for cardigans and sweaters.
That lunchtime I ordered Sarawak Laksa for lunch, a dish which originated in Sarawak but adopted throughout SE Asia. It was a delicious mixture of chicken, shrimps, vegetables, noodles, curry spices and coconut milk and I thought it delicious. So much so that I spent considerable time when we returned home on reproducing it in my own kitchen. I’ve given my final version on the recipes thread on this forum.
The next day we drove to Damai Beach, one of Borneo’s holiday retreats where we could acclimatise ourselves to air conditioning once more. We spent a couple of days of utter relaxation there, buying an oil painting of a longhouse by a local artist as a souvenir. It still hangs on our bedroom wall, exuding the heat and colour of that wonderful place.
From Damai we flew up the coast, over Brunei to Kota Kinabalu in the Malaysian state of Sabah. One of the excursions offered from here was a day trip to the Orang Utang Rehabilitation Centre in Sepilog, just inland from Sandakan. It was this opportunity that swung our decision to take this trip, so we signed up for it as soon as we could.
It was going to be a pretty tiring day as we had to get up at 5 am, catch a light aircraft across the northern tip of Borneo to Sandakan and then take a bus through the jungle to Sepilok. The states of Malaysia have become aware of the dangers that modern civilisation poses toward their native animals, and none more so than the Orang Utang. Sepilok was set up to rehabilitate young Orang Utangs who have lost their mothers, either to hunters or who have been taken from their mothers to serve as pets. These young, in their natural habitat, learn the art of survival from their mothers, so Sepilok was established to teach these youngsters the life skills that their mothers would otherwise have taught them.
Each youngster goes into quarantine for a period after arrival, then they are taught how to climb and swing through the trees. There is a small gymnasium (the kindergarten) where the very young ones get their first lessons. Then they are released into the forest where they are fed every day on milk and bananas. The idea is to make them self-sufficient, giving them enough food to keep them healthy, but not enough to make them lazy – they have to go and scout for any more food they want.
We arrived at Sepilok after having breakfasted at the Holiday Inn in Sandakan, were given a quick conducted tour of the facilities by one of the Rangers and then led through the forest to the feeding station. We stood on a slope, overlooking the tree platform where the food would be put out for them. In the silence we could see the youngsters hanging onto lianas and swinging backwards and forwards. Suddenly, we heard the noise of human voices, getting louder and louder, until a group of Japanese tourists rounded a bend in the path and joined us. At no time did the crescendo of their voices drop below a loud, loud, roar. The noise they made would have driven off a famished lion, if they had lions in Borneo. Nothing could get them to shut up. They yattered on and on as a couple of Rangers climbed onto the feeding platform with the milk and bananas. Not a baby came near. Would the Japanese shut up? Would they heck. Eventually one baby came cautiously into the clearing, climbed to the platform, took a drink of milk, grabbed a couple of bananas and vanished back into the undergrowth. That was the extent of our view of the babies. So never mention Japanese tourists to me – unless you want to see a spectacular explosion.
We waited around for a while after the Japanese chattered off towards their bus and then began the trek back to the Rehabilitation Centre. Then we experienced one of those magical moments that only occur by pure luck. As we walked down the path with the Ranger, a young Orang Utang came strolling round the corner, walking towards us like a little old man out for a Sunday constitutional. We stopped in amazement as he came closer, though the Ranger told us to be careful as this one was known to bite people when he felt like it. When he saw us he turned off onto a smaller trail and a few yards along it he stopped and leant against a fallen tree trunk. He started playing with his fingers, looking down at them for all the world like a naughty schoolboy who’d just been punished. Using my longest zoom lens I took a series of pictures of him, resting the lens on my wife’s shoulder for steadiness. I had one of them enlarged to poster size when we got home and it adorned my office wall for years.
The rest of the day we spent touring Sandakan, an interesting experience as it isn’t a city on many travellers’ must-see lists. We were shown the house where Agnes Newton Keith lived prior to WW2. Ms Keith was an American who married a British colonial administrator in North Borneo. Like many another, she fell under Borneo’s spell and wrote a book called ‘The Land Below the Wind’ about her experiences in Sandakan. In 1942 the Japanese invaded and the family were split up for internment. Her husband was sent into one camp, while Ms Keith and her son were sent to another. After the war she wrote a book called ‘Three Came Home’ detailing her experiences in that cruel period. It was a best seller when it was published and a film was made of it. Claudette Colbert played the author. The family had a great deal of luck in those years for, as the book title says, all three of them survived and came home. The film can still be caught on TV today, either on Channel 4 during the day or on TCM.
Sandakan also has an enormously elaborate Buddhist temple built on a hill high above the city, which also offers the most spectacular views of the shipping entering and leaving the harbour, as well as all the ships being loaded and unloaded in the docks.
After Borneo the island of Penang was a complete change. It’s much more my idea of a tropical paradise than Bali was. We stayed in the Mutiara Hotel on the northern coast where we spent a few days relaxing and driving around the island. There is a batik factory within easy walking distance and among the items we bought was a dressing gown for me. I still wear it to this day.
Also nearby is a butterfly farm where visitors can get a chance to see the enormous variety of butterflies to which Malaysia is home. The farm is divided into different kinds of habitat in which the various species live. When we were halfway through we heard an ominous chattering noise approaching. My stomach started to drop as a horde of Japanese hove into view. They were racing through the gardens like an out-of-control locomotive. Barely looking to left or right they went thundering past, From time to time one would stand to attention outside of the stampede while another took his photo. Within seconds they were gone, leaving us with the impression that we had just witnessed a mirage. From beginning to end it must have taken them 3 minutes to see the entire farm. We were in there for 2 hours.
A little further away from the hotel was a tropical fruit farm where we pitched up one morning. My wife becomes a fruit addict whenever we are east of Suez so we bought lychees, mangosteens, jackfruit and I plucked up every ounce of my courage to try a durian. For those who haven’t come into contact with durian the first thing I have to tell you is that it smells worse than the dead giraffe I once came across in Kenya. Most hotels won’t allow anyone to bring them in, and no airline will allow you on board when you are carrying one. The big but is coming here – BUT it is absolutely delicious, once you get it past your nose. It has a taste similar to a vanilla custard caramel. Chinese will travel miles to a farm they know produces the best durian. However, having eaten one take great care never to burp when other people are around. And if you are on Metformin you will probably be lynched.

 

[BillB]

I was killing time in one of the ways I find most agreeable – thumbing through travel brochures – when I came across an offer that was almost impossible to refuse. Spend a week in a certain hotel on Diani Beach, near Mombasa, and you would get a free 4 day safari in Tsavo National Park. My wife and I had been discussing possibilities for our next trip and a safari was high on our wish list. I perked up immediately and showed the page to my wife. Cutting it short, we were soon on the phone to the travel company and booking ourselves in. We opted for a couple of extra days at the hotel and duly turned up at the airport.
We landed at Nairobi, switched terminals for the flight to Mombasa, and were quickly collected and taken by bus to Diani Beach. Our itinerary was to spend that night at the hotel, pack just what we needed for the safari and leave the rest of our luggage in store at the hotel.
We were up bright and early to catch our safari jeep with camera, lenses, filters, batteries and enough film to sink a small ship. There were three couples to each jeep, two jeeps for our little group, and we set off through Kenya to the gate of Tsavo East Game Park.
We drove through mile after mile of jute fields, one of Kenya’s main products. We stopped for coffee at a small station, admiring the scenery around us. Once more underway we came upon one of those scenes which the traveller experiences without warning. At an African village a cow had wandered onto the highway and been killed by a truck. The truck had stopped and negotiations were underway as to recompense for the dead animal. It was obviously going to be a long process as stools had been brought out and people sat around discussing the situation. The whole story could be seen in a single glance, as well as the fact that the loss of a cow could spell tragedy to a poor family.
Further along the way we came to a dead animal squashed flat in the road. I had never before seen a live hyena, but there was no mistaking what this animal had been. Run over by a heavy vehicle, it had kept its natural shape, only flattened.
Once we had entered Tsavo the roads became beaten earth tracks and we slowed considerably. For the first mile or so we saw a few ostrich and a small herd of zebra browsing among the tall termite mounds. Then our driver slowed down, then stopped. “Jumbo!” he exclaimed, and immediately afterwards four young bulls came out of the bush and stopped about 20 metres away. Everybody grabbed their cameras and it was almost as if those elephants were employed by Kodak. They looked at us, shook their heads, spread their ears, raised their trunks, turned to the left, turned to the right. Meantime, we were shooting away like madmen. Here we were, just over half an hour into the National Park and already we had seen wild elephants who had obligingly posed for us. Does it get much better than that? Well, yes it does.
We drove on to Ngulia Lodge where we had been due to spend one night, but as our second night’s lodge had suffered a fire, we were going to be at Ngulia for an extra day. We checked in, inspected our room and while I was christening the bathroom my wife went out on to the balcony to discover a warthog rootling around immediately below. She came and got me and we stood there, transfixed, as we watched its activities. It’s difficult for us Europeans to comprehend at first a land where elephants, warthogs and zebra run wild.
Lunch was served in the dining room and then we had a few hours to kill before leaving for a game drive. Nothing much moves in the heat of an African afternoon, so morning and evening are the best times to go out. We passed the intervening time with a couple sharing our jeep, studying the nearby waterhole from an underground hide. Around the hide a group of rock hyrax were foraging, funny little animals, about the size of a large kitten. Brightly coloured lizards basked in the sunshine, giving me the opportunity to use my macro lens.
Our jeep left about 4 pm for a two hour drive. Five minutes away from the lodge we rounded a bend in the road to be confronted by an extraordinary scene – a double-ended giraffe. Anyone who knows the Doctor Doolittle stories will know what I mean when I say it looked like a giraffe version of a pushmi pullyu. What it turned out to be when we got closer was two giraffes standing side by side, but facing in opposite directions.
We stopped at a grove of trees which were filled with the nests of weaver birds, hanging from the branches and swaying with the breeze.
Our driver was a really outstanding game spotter; he pointed out to us a barely visible deer called a dik-dik. These enchanting little animals stand only about knee high to an adult person and look as fragile as delicate porcelain. We stopped close to a tree and he pointed out a leopard sprawled across one of the branches, snoozing. He opened one eye and lazily eyed us before going back to sleep. The animals know from experience that the jeeps pose no threat to them, but if you get out, they recognise man as their greatest predator and will either run or attack. For humans it’s a case of “Do you feel lucky, punk?”
That evening from our balcony we watched the animals come across the plain stretched out below us for water. There is a sense of protocol about the approach to the water hole. Buffalo, highly dangerous and bad tempered, will send most other animals scattering. Deer and other fast moving animals will only approach when there are no other animals drinking. The only animal who boldly marches up to the water whichever other animal is there are elephants. Even buffalo will make way for a herd of approaching elephant.
The next morning we left at 6 am for an early game drive as this was the best time to see the game. Giraffe were about in plenty, nibbling away at the highest tree tops. We came upon a dead ostrich which had been downed by a lion. A jackal was lurking nearby, waiting to see if the lion that had killed the ostrich was anywhere near.
When we got back to the lodge we made for the shower before breakfast. When I looked in the mirror I was aghast. I had caught the sun badly and my face and arms were bright red. My stomach dropped as I realized that in a short while I was going to be in agony from sunburn and it would probably ruin the rest of the safari. In the shower I let the water run over my head prior to soaping up and was able to breathe a sigh of relief. The red had washed off and was floating around my feet. What I had mistaken for sunburn was in fact the famous Kenyan red dust that had coated every piece of exposed skin.
Later that afternoon we went out again and without saying a word, our driver swung off the track and headed across country. We started to climb a hill topped with bushes and almost at the top we came upon a big male lion dozing in the shade. As we pulled in he started up in surprise, but when he saw the familiar outline of a jeep he simply settled back down. Again the cameras went into overdrive and I managed to get one beautiful shot of him, full length, gazing sleepily into my lens.
We turned away from our lion and drove on for half a mile or so to come upon a lioness, sprawled beneath a thorn bush. Our driver signalled us to be silent and we looked around in puzzlement. My wife was the first to spot it. “There’s a cub,” she whispered as loudly as she could. And as we all followed her pointing finger we saw not one, but three cubs, all peering over the rock which sheltered them to see what this strange four-wheeled creature was. They studied us then lost interest and went back to mock fighting with each other. Just at that moment a park ranger pulled up in his jeep and gave our driver a warning about staying on the track. We withdrew quickly, and the driver told us that he had been told by other drivers that there was a pride of lions with cubs at that spot. He had risked a fine just to show us.
Back at Diani Beach we collected our luggage and settled into our room for the remainder of our stay. The beach was fabulous, pure white sand as soft as talcum powder, but it was a brave man who set foot on it. I tried it on the first day and was immediately surrounded by a horde of looky-looky boys and beggars. Trying to get back to the hotel gardens was almost impossible. Eventually, I forced my way through the crowd and made it back. My wife said she thought she had seen the last of me as I vanished beneath the heaving mob. And all I wanted to do was see how warm the sea was.
There was a straw-covered walkway from the main building to the rooms and I had been walking along it several times a day when I happened to glance up. Hanging from the roof along the whole length was a horde of bats. If you stopped they opened their eyes to see what you were up to. Their pupils were bright red and if you stared at them long enough they unhitched themselves and flew off, coming back to another spot to hang out.
Black and white Colobus monkeys lived in the trees alongside the walkway, but they were not in the least interested in us and just went on with their lives. The other monkeys living around us were not so well behaved. We had been warned not to feed them and not to leave doors or windows open as the monkeys cause no amount of damage. They will open up cameras and pull the film out, squeeze toothpaste tubes until they’re empty, they will take bites out of any food or fruit in the room, turn out drawers and tear up the clothes. In short, they are a bloody nuisance. A bite from a monkey will quickly turn septic, so it’s best to keep them at arm’s length. Of course, you always find those who think the rules apply to everyone else except themselves. A couple of door down from us was a German couple who regularly fed the monkeys on their small terrace. One day, lazily lounging on a sunbed I watched the comedy unfold. The wife went walking away in the direction of the main building. The husband went inside and must have settled down for a nap, leaving the door and windows wide open. I watched a bold monkey sidle up to the door and take a quick peek inside before scuttling off again. Warily he came back again and sneaked another look. Reassured by what he saw, he vanished inside. In no time flat a horde of monkeys rushed to the door and followed him inside. After about 10 seconds a roar came from the room and monkeys came out in a panic-stricken stampede. The German came out behind them, shouting and shaking his fist. The monkeys were carrying whatever they could transport – one held a brassiere, others carried packets of biscuits, food or fruit. They dispersed into the nearby trees. The German surveyed the wreck of his room, shaking his head and set about cleaning it up. I would have helped, really I would. But I was laughing so hard I could barely move.
The food at the hotel was not particularly inspiring, and together with the couple we had met on safari we decided that we needed a break, so we booked another safari. This was to a lodge operated by the Hilton hotel chain. They were allowed to build their own lodge provided they paid for the upkeep of that area of the game park. It must have been a good deal, because the lodge was built in the shape of an African village with rounded huts – all on stilts. There were raised walkways, like tree paths to get from your hut to the restaurant, the bar, or other public areas. The first evening we went into the bar for a drink before dinner and settled down into a very cosy little area. I was sitting next to a table lamp on a side table when something close to my ear caught my attention. It was another of the ubiquitous bats, calmly hanging upside down from the lampshade, enjoying the warmth from the lamp. I looked at him for a few seconds, then he took off, flew around the bar a few times before coming back and settling on the same lampshade. Well, if he could put up with me, I thought, I could put up with him, and we totally ignored each other for the rest of the evening.
On this second safari we didn’t see any lions but we saw lots of smaller game, gazelle, kudu, ostrich, zebra and elephants. We were much calmer now whenever we came up with elephant, and only shot the best specimens, strictly with the camera, of course.

 

[BillB]

Thank you, Dermot. I’ll keep on finding the time to write as long as people are interested in it. Back in Luxembourg our musical activities were going from strength to strength. A second group had started up to produce musical shows with their first production being “Pirates of Penzance’. I didn’t get involved with this group at first as Gilbert and Sullivan was not among my interests. But I did later.
Our Dixieland jazz group was playing regularly, mostly at charity fundraisers as our trumpeter was very active in the Lions’ Club.
In a fit of alcoholic exuberance I volunteered to direct a Music Hall for the local British Club. We had a full orchestra but our previous musical director needed a change so he was not available. By the greatest of good luck I discovered a brilliant musician in the form of a lovely lady named Yvonne. She agreed to do the arrangements (she would live to regret that) and we started work. Apart from directing I also played the drums in the orchestra so my spare time was pretty much occupied for several months. However, with a lot of goodwill on everybody’s part the show was ready and we had sold a pretty fair number of tickets. Much to my relief the show was enthusiastically received and everyone’s hard work paid off.
Sadly, I hadn’t learnt my lesson as shortly afterwards I was chatting with our original musical director who said he would like to do a show where the accent was on the music, rather than the music being incidental to the action. We tossed out various ideas and kicked them around until we came up with the idea of doing a show of WW2 songs. My memories of that period are still the most vivid to me so my interest was immediately piqued. We mapped out a rough outline of a situation in which to set the show and I volunteered to write the libretto. It took me about 3 months to produce a workable script, and I ended up putting the final polish on it while we were on holiday that summer. This meant that we could start casting in September and begin rehearsals immediately.
Only when the juggernaut was picking up speed did it occur to me that if this show was a flop, or worse, an object of derision, there would be nobody to point the finger at except me.
We managed to book a theatre for February – opening night was Friday the 13th, which did nothing for my morale. On the bright side, everybody connected with the show put their hearts and souls into it. One of our sax players came up with arrangements for some Glenn Miller hits which we used as an entr’acte, our stage manager contacted London Transport and came up with signs for Underground stations. My wife, God bless her, trawling through antique shops in England came up trumps with a ration book and an original gas mask. Our costume mistress managed to get her hands on army and navy uniforms of the period, even tracking down a WW2 steel helmet, as well as a US Army colonel’s uniform.
The day of the opening dawned – to absolutely the foulest weather of the winter. A gale was howling through the streets of Luxembourg, rain bucketed down in torrents and it was bitterly cold. To say that I was in gloomy mood as I donned my DJ for the evening would be putting it mildly. Who was mad enough to turn out on a filthy night like this? I asked myself.
The answer was – everybody who had bought tickets. And we had sold out. To my everlasting relief the show was an outstanding success. When one of our leading ladies sang Lili Marlene in her beautiful contralto voice it stopped the show. The audience was cheering and applauding and shouting for encore after encore. It took some crafty stagework by the more experienced performers to bring the audience under control and continue with the show. At the end they wouldn’t let us leave the stage and the performers had to take bow after bow. Boy, was I relieved. And as a result the rest of the performances quickly sold out, with some people coming back for a second night.
Putting on shows is a bit like childbirth – in a short while you forget all the pain and remember only the good parts. Within a couple of years we had decided to stage a full-blooded Broadway musical. But we wanted to do one that had some historical significance. So we hit upon George and Ira Gershwin’s smash hit ‘Girl Crazy’.
To do a show of this magnitude justice we would have to stage it in a big theatre, with a big orchestra and, we hoped, a big audience. Once again everybody in the show worked their socks off. We put together a 27 piece orchestra and I was given the drum score that was used in the original Broadway production in 1930. The orchestra for this show was amazing as it contained so many musicians who would go on to enduring fame. Glenn Miller and Jack Teagarden played trombone, alongside Tommy Dorsey and Benny Goodman. The drummer was none other than my idol, Gene Krupa and I held in my hands the very score he used. If only my talent as a drummer had approached his only slightly I would have been happy. Sigh!
We managed to reserve the Luxembourg Municipal Theatre for three nights, which meant that we had to sell 3000 tickets. We hit it right because nothing like this had been put on in Luxembourg within living memory so tickets were selling like hot cakes. Even members of the Grand Ducal royal family came along. In fact so high was the demand for tickets that the theatre management asked if we could add another performance the following week to feed the demand. Sadly we had to say no. The cast, crew and supporters had been working flat out for months and many of them had booked holidays immediately after the last night. But it was nice to know that we had another hit.
A few years later I was playing Scrabble with my family one evening when I experienced a strange sensation just above my right eyebrow. It began as a cross between a tickle and an itch but within minutes it had increased to a painful level and spread over my right eye and down the right side of my face. The pain grew in intensity to a level of agony I had never before experienced. I didn’t want to worry my family so I said nothing, just made a mess of the game. After an hour or so the pain began to fade away fairly quickly until it left completely.
A couple of nights later the pain returned, as before lasting a maximum of 2 hours before fading away. This went on for weeks and I said nothing to my wife. The headaches would come and go at all times of the day or night, the pain so agonising that at times I banged my head against the wall. I didn’t want to see the doctor because I could imagine the reception I would get if i went complaining of headaches. But to call these attacks headaches is like calling the Pacific Ocean a puddle.
The pattern of headaches rarely settled into a routine. If I dozed off in front of the TV I would waken a while later in agony. If we went to see a film a headache could start up within minutes of the film starting; sometimes at work one would come out of the blue. The nearest description I can give is having a red hot billiard ball pushed into your eye socket. The pain would blight my life for the next 15 years. A few months after the onset of these headaches I read a novel called The Colour of Light, by William Golding, which features a character who suffers from exactly the same kind of headaches as me. I discovered they were called cluster headaches and this started me on a long journey of research into the causes, effects and possible cure. But the short truth was that nobody knows what causes them, there is no known cure and the effects can be devastating.
Finally, I told my wife and went along to the doctor. He sent me for a skull X-Ray which proved negative, then made an appointment for me to have a brain scan at a local hospital. The good news was that they discovered I actually had a brain, the bad news was that there was no trace of anything to cause this crippling pain. In the meantime my doctor did some research and he also discovered that I was suffering from cluster headaches. Sufferers fall into one of two groups, chronic or episodic. Episodic sufferers get just that, episodes of these headaches lasting from a few weeks to several months while the rest of the time they are pain free. Chronic sufferers do not experience any periods of remission but get the headaches regularly on a long-term basis.
These pains were capricious in their appearances – sometimes I could go for 5 or 6 days without one, then get three in a row. On really bad days I could get two, although I’ve heard of people who get them one after the other, five or six a day. They can last from 40 minutes to 2 hours and they vary in intensity, from mild to unbearably agonising. Because of their very rapid onset and short duration pain killers don’t help, by the time the pain killer kicks in the headache has faded away. An American sufferer drew up a scale of pain levels – from 0: no pain, life is good, to 10: suicide.
One of the symptoms is restlessness – at the first sign of onset a sufferer has an almost irresistible urge to get up and move about; in fact, it’s almost impossible to sit still.
Then I heard of the relative of one of my wife’s colleagues who had been suffering for years from migraines. As an act of desperation she went to an acupuncturist and was amazed that this procedure helped her immensely. I had nothing to lose, I thought. If it doesn’t work I’m no worse off. So with a large chunk of scepticism stowed away in my pocket I made an appointment to see an acupuncturist practising nearby. He was a Vietnamese anaesthetist who worked at a local hospital and ran an acupuncture clinic in the evenings. He asked about my symptoms and spent about half an hour taking notes on my condition. At the end he said that he thought he could help me and drew up a series of appointments, first three a week, reducing to two a week and finally to one a week.
The first session triggered a CH so it took considerable courage to return for the second appointment. This also triggered a headache, but milder this time. The third session left me feeling fine. At the end of the course of treatment I was pain free for the first time in years and stayed that way for almost four months. Then they returned. But this time they lasted only for a couple of months before I experienced another period of remission. I had gone from chronic to episodic, which was a great advance for me. In addition, the periods of remission grew longer each time while the episodes lasted about three months.
One of the things I found that helped and could shorten a headache was by taking 2 painkillers and then going for a very brisk walk, walking so fast that I grew out of breath. Almost always I would feel the pain level reducing until within minutes the pain had gone.
My research taught me that I had a pretty rare condition, that only one person in 6,000 falls victim. That’s only slightly better odds than winning a worthwhile prize on the lottery. On the whole, and given the choice, I think I’d have gone for the lottery win.
Now, my latest period of remission has lasted more than 2 years and the last episode brought only mild pain levels. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that I’m not tempting fate by writing that.
But throughout this painful period I was absolutely determined that I wouldn’t let it stop me doing the things that my wife and I wanted to do, nor to keep my itchy feet from getting on to any aircraft in sight.

 

[BillB]

Hi there, Suzi. I was beginning to wonder what had happened to you. Glad you’re back. Thank you for the birthday wishes which you probably know we celebrated in Normandy.
Moving house must be one of the most stressful experiences known to mankind, especially if you choose the well known British moving company who were responsible for our move from Spain to Luxembourg. They were the most incompetent, unreliable and unprofessional company I have ever dealt with – and that’s speaking from a lifetime’s experience of moving from country to country. It does give you the chance to declutter, or to do as we did and shove a load of boxes into the cellar where they rest to this day, full of books, travel pictures and old Super 8 equipment.
When we visited Malta it was in late October and found the weather to be perfect at that time – warm, sunny and very relaxing. The sea was delightfully warm for swimming and snorkelling. The temperatures in the summer are absolutely scorching, I’m told, so I think I’ll stay in northern Europe during those months.
But now, back to the travelling. One of the most absorbing journeys we’ve taken was a tour of Israel. We’d picked up a brochure among a bunch of them and found it was offering a tour of Israel that took in just about everything you could wish to see. A quick phone call booked us on it for a departure in February.
Our flights were with El Al, which was an experience in itself. We were flying out on a Sunday evening so we turned up at the airport late in the afternoon, as check in with this airline necessitated a long security check. The desk was tucked away in a corner of the terminal at Heathrow, where it can be isolated should any threat arise. We gave in our bags and passports and were then interviewed by a security guard who wanted to know why we were travelling to Israel, what were we planning to do, did we have any friends or family in Israel, etc., etc. Then there were the usual security questions such as had anybody given us a package to transport for them. This, of course, was in the years before 9/11 when security wasn’t as tight as now, except for passengers flying El Al. Once we were through we killed some time having something to eat and shopping, then we were called to the gate. And here we experienced another security check. I didn’t mind the grilling either time as El Al is probably the safest airline in the world to fly with. The questions the second time were pretty much what they had asked the first in the first interview so I assumed the results would be compared to see if our story changed. However, they finally accepted that an English couple in their ‘50s presented no threat to the security of Israel and let us on board.
The flight itself was uneventful. The meal was kosher, of course, but after all the trays had been cleared away a group of Jewish passengers assembled at the back of the aircraft (we were sitting in the back row) for the ceremony of thanksgiving for the meal. This was the first ceremony of Jewish worship I had ever witnessed and was absolutely fascinating for my wife and I. We watched surreptitiously, not wishing to be offensive, as the ceremony was held in Hebrew, a language I had never heard spoken before so I listened carefully to see if I could find similarities with other languages I worked with. The answer was no, I couldn’t.
We landed at Tel Aviv and were met by a driver and car to transport us to our overnight hotel. It was pretty late by then so we ate a light meal and turned in so as to be ready for our early morning start.
Breakfast in the hotel dining room was an indication that Israelis are pretty hardy people. On the breakfast buffet were large, raw spring onions. Anybody who can handle that first thing in the morning have got to be special.
Our bus duly arrived and our guide, Moshe, introduced himself and our driver. We were a pretty mixed bunch – three Norwegian couples who barely spoke a word of English between them (unusual as Scandinavian people usually speak better English than a lot of English people), a couple of Americans who belonged to a church that were great evangelicals and never gave up trying to convert us. Among the British group were an elderly couple who had never been out of Britain before, a divorcee and her teenage daughter, an airline pilot who flew 747s but whose wife refused to fly so he travelled alone, and then there was us.
We drove up the coast to Caesarea, a town built by Herod the Great and dedicated to Augustus Caesar. The remains of an enormous aqueduct are impressive as is the restored theatre that faces the sea.
We carried on northwards to Acre (Ako in Hebrew) where an uncle of mine was once a guard at the prison there in the years after WW2. We climbed the hills behind this port city to the Ba’hai temple, built to celebrate the birth of this faith here. The outlook from the temple is stunning, overlooking the entire port and a large stretch of the Mediterranean.
From there we travelled to the northernmost kibbutz in Israel, Kfar Gilardi where we were going to spend the night. If you stand facing east in the gardens of the kibbutz you can look into Lebanon to your left and into Syria straight ahead.. We ate dinner in the communal dining room with the kibbutzim who live there. My wife and I both confessed ourselves puzzled by the differing degrees of practising the Jewish faith we had experienced so far. What was the difference between the ultra Orthodox Jews we had seen and the Jews like Moshe who was much more relaxed in his faith? We sought out Moshe and asked if we could ask him some questions about his faith. He was quite willing to talk to us about it and explained that there are 613 laws which govern a Jew’s life. The ultra Orthodox Jews we had seen, easily identified by their dress and their ear locks obey all of them. Other Jews choose to obey a lesser number. I hope I’ve got this right as I would hate to offend any of our forum friends of the Jewish faith. My excuse is that it was a while ago and my memory isn’t what it used to be. I stand ready to be corrected. It is, of course, vastly more complex than I have stated here.
Life in the kibbutz is largely communal and the kibbutzim are enormously energetic so that it seems to be a bustling hive of industry. Land is turned from scrub into agricultural fields. Water is led in to irrigate the land. Crops are grown, and after their own consumption the excess is distributed throughout Israel. Children of the kibbutzim are educated and cared for in nurseries, freeing the parents to work. There are even cottages rented out to visitors like ourselves. They have even built a swimming pool.
We were given a conducted tour of the kibbutz the next morning before boarding the bus and heading southwards. First we stopped at Banyas, also known as Pan’s Fountain, where one of the sources of the River Jordan is to be found, at the foot of Mount Hermon. It was once the centre of the cult of Pan, hence the name.
From there we travelled down to the Sea of Galilee to visit Capernaum, where Jesus lived and taught in the synagogue. The synagogue that can be seen now was built over the ruins of the one where Christ taught. From there we took a boat across the Sea of Galilee to Tiberius, where we were due to have lunch. Part way across the lake the boat stopped and drifted. The atmosphere was eerily quiet and even I, a very imperfect Christian, had to admit that the feeling of awe that came over me at that moment was one of the strangest feelings of my life. Discussing it afterwards with my wife, we each discovered that the other had experienced exactly the same feelings.
In the afternoon we drove on to Jerusalem where we were due to spend several days. Jerusalem has so much history from Biblical times up to the present that it’s difficult to know where to begin. Moshe took us on an evening walk to the Western Wall, also known as the Wailing Wall. It’s the last remaining part of the Temple of David destroyed by the Romans. This is a particularly sacred place for Jews, which anyone seeing the liberation of the area from Arab control in 1967 will know, if you watched the TV at the time and were able to witness the joy of the Israeli troops as they rushed to this spot at the moment of liberation. Many Israelis were praying when we arrived and we watched from a discreet distance. Prayers were written on paper and pushed into cracks in the wall, while other people prayed in front of it, swaying back and forth according to one of the laws of Judaism which says that God must be worshipped with the whole body, not just the voice. Overlooking the square in front of the wall 6 flaming torches burn eternally, each one representing a million Jews who died in the Holocaust.
The next day we went to the Hadassah Medical Centre to view the magnificent stained glass windows created by Marc Chagall. The sheer beauty of these creations will take your breath away. In the Yom Kippur war the windows were taken out and stored in a safe place until the end of hostilities, then replaced.
We went on to Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Museum, and then the Children’s Memorial. I’ve talked about this earlier so I won’t repeat myself.
Another of our destinations was the Shrine of the Book where the Dead Sea Scrolls are housed. Once again Jewish law comes into play, as it states that scrolls that have been used must be disposed of by burying them in a particular type of pot. With typical pragmatism the Israelis did just that, by building a museum that is underground and shaped like a pot. Thus modern demands and ancient laws are satisfied. I don’t intend to go into details of the discovery and significance of these scrolls, except to say that the whole subject is complex but fascinating. Try looking the subject up on the internet – but be warned, you may start yourself on a long quest for more and more information on the religious significance of these ancient words.
There is so much more to tell of this trip that I’ll take a break here and continue it in my next post.

 

[BillB]

In Jerusalem we were following the Via Dolorosa, the Way of the Cross, the route taken by Jesus Christ to the place of his crucifixion after his condemnation. We visited the courtyard where he was tried and sentenced by Pontius Pilate. It’s smaller than one would have thought, but then that’s typical of so much in Israel. As Moshe remarked on our first meeting that the main thing to bear in mind is that Israel is a small country with a large history. How true his words are.
The Via Dolorosa that modern day visitors traverse is now around a metre higher than the original. Digging in certain places has uncovered the actual stones trodden by Christ. As it is now, the way winds through the Arab areas where stalls are set out selling mostly fruit, vegetables and other foodstuffs. At one point Ian, the 747 pilot and I managed to get separated from the rest of the group. I could see them up ahead, moving on faster than we could move. In front of me was a man in a leather jacket who was managing to block the entire path, which was narrow enough as it was. Try as I might I couldn’t seem to get past him until suddenly Ian said, “There’s someone trying to get into my back pocket.” We both spun round but there seemed to be nobody obvious behind us. And magically the human roadblock in front of me had also magically vanished. Were we the victims of an Arab Fagin, teaching his pupils how to pick a pocket or two? He was certainly cleverly slowing everybody down so that his accomplice had more time to dive into a victim’s pocket.
The walk of the Via Dolorosa brought us to the Basilica of the Holy Sepulchre where Christian teaching tells us was the site of Calvary, also called Golgotha, where the crucifixion took place. Golgotha means “skull” and it is from this that we get the word “Calvary”, from the Latin root “calva”. Inside the Sepulchre is a rocky knoll with three holes cut out of the solid rock which, we were told, are the holes where the bases of the three crosses were placed.
But there is another candidate for the crucifixion site – discovered by no less a person than General Gordon, Gordon of Khartoum. Gordon was known to be a man of strong religious beliefs and he was in Jerusalem and looking out of his window he noticed that the hill across the way looked just like a skull. Intrigued, he investigated further and came to the conclusion that this was the real Golgotha. There is even a stone tomb nearby which fits the description of Jesus’s tomb given in the Scriptures. At the base of the hill there now stands a bus station so visitors have a clear view of the hill. Indeed, it does look like a skull, with a forehead, eyes and a nose. The question that came immediately to my mind was, would the Romans have gone to the trouble to cut three holes in solid rock, a laborious task given the technology available to them at the time, for the execution of what to them were three insignificant criminals?
That evening Ian mentioned that he intended to visit the King David Hotel, which had been heavily damaged by a bomb placed by the Zionist underground movement, the Irgun, in their struggle for independence between the end of WW2 and the declaration of the creation of the state of Israel. The King David housed the headquarters the British Forces in Palestine and the Secretariat of the Government of Palestine. I can remember the newspaper headlines when this took place, although I was only nine years old.
I wanted to visit the place myself so the three of us set off after dinner that evening. According to the map it wasn’t far from our hotel but we still managed to get lost. Finally, we asked a passing lady on an empty street where we could find the hotel. She very pleasantly gave us clear directions and just as she went to walk on she stopped, turned back and said, “It’s so nice to see you here.” That’s the first time I’ve experienced something like that.
Also in Jerusalem, at the foot of the Mount of Olives and facing the eastern wall of the Old City, is the Garden of Gethsemane. The olive trees are huge, gnarled and could well have been saplings at the time of Christ’s arrest. Nowadays the olive grove is within the walls of the Church of the Agony.
Not far from Jerusalem is the Dead Sea. We left the city early in the morning, heading for the ruins of the ancient settlement of Qumran, site of the original discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls. This was where the Essene sect was based and the cave where the first scrolls were discovered can be clearly seen.
Further on we came to the Dead Sea resort where we had time for a dip in the saltiest sea in the world. Walking down into its warm waters is a strange, almost eery sensation. The minerals dissolved in the Dead Sea makes the water far denser than fresh water and it gives the body a buoyancy that you won’t experience anywhere else. As you walk, your legs want to float up towards the surface and you have to make quite an effort to keep them underwater. The effect is like wading through a half-set jelly. When you float your body lies much higher above the surface than in fresh water.
Any cuts or abrasions on your body start to sting after a while, and you must not put your head underwater at any costs. The effect of the water on your eyes can be painful, if not downright dangerous. When you climb out of the water a fresh water shower is an absolute must to wash all the residue off. Afterwards, when you have dried off and dressed again your skin feels as smooth as silk. Altogether a remarkable experience.
We had lunch at the resort and then drove down to Masada, an area I had been keen to visit ever since learning of the events there in my reading of Roman history. Masada is a plateau atop a butte that stands 1300 feet above the surrounding desert. Herod the Great had a palace built atop this great pillar of rock as a refuge in the event of a revolt against his rule. After the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem a group of Jewish rebels took refuge on the peak and were subsequently besieged by the Roman army. There were 960 Jewish rebels living on Masada and after a prolonged siege the Romans finally decided that the only way they could break into the fortress was by building a ramp to allow the legionnaires to attack the gates erected by the rebels. This was an enormous feat of engineering and the ramp is still there to this day, 2000 years after it was built.
Imagine the feeling of the Israelites as they watched the ramp advancing to their level. They had wives and children with them and knew that their treatment at the hands of the Romans would be harsh indeed. Finally, after several months, the Romans were able to set foot on the plateau, to be faced with a heavy wooden gate they had to break through. They settled for lighting a fire at the base of the gates and letting it burn all night. In the morning the gates were burnt to the ground and the legionnaires stormed into the interior. What they found still reverberates through Israeli life to this day. Every Israeli soldier takes an oath on Masada as part of his or her induction ceremonies.
All the rebels were dead. Each one had killed his own family and then in turn they killed each other. The last man left alive committed suicide. The Jewish faith forbids suicide, as does the Catholic church, and this was their way of keeping the suicides to a minimum.
When we arrived at the base of Masada we stood staring up at the great pinnacle of rock. To imagine yourself as a Roman having to attack their enemies sited on top of this great natural fortress makes one realize the daunting nature of their task.
We were advised that as it was Friday afternoon and the Sabbath began around 4 o’clock, we would be able to take the cable car to the top, but that it would cease running before we had time to get down so we had the choice, make the climb down on foot, or stay at the bottom. As Masada was one of my absolute must-sees my wife and I chose to go up and come down the hard way.
From the top you can look down onto the desert floor, 1300 feet below, and clearly see the outlines of the Romans’ camps, still there today. The roads they built to bring water to the besieging troops are as plain as the day they were built. The remains of Herod’s palaces are impressive but they are overshadowed by the events that happened when the Zealots took refuge there.
We clambered down the Snake Path, so-called because of the way it snakes down the face of Masada, turning back and forth until you arrive, pretty well puffed, at the base of the gigantic rock.
On the way back to Jerusalem Moshe pointed out a geological feature of a pillar of rock. This, he told us, was the pillar of salt into which Lot’s wife was transformed because she turned around to watch the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah.
There are many memories of surprising moments during our time in Israel – Moshe stopping our little bus and pointing to one side of the road, “There,” he told us, “stood the Philistines.” He pointed in the opposite direction, “And here stood the Israelites. There stood David and over there stood Goliath.” I was astonished that we had stopped in the Valley of Elah. There was no sign telling travellers what this significant area was. It was just a shallow valley crossed by a narrow road.
Another was a scale model of Jerusalem before the destruction of the Temple, every detail researched and perfected. Next to it is a souvenir shop which bears the sign, “The Holy Shop – a new bargain every day.”
In Jerusalem we visited the Dome of the Rock, a mosque built on one of the holiest sites in Islam – the rock from which Mohammed ascended to heaven, accompanied by the angel Gabriel. Women visitors must cover their heads and wear modest clothing. Men and women must remove their shoes before entering.
On another occasion we viewed Jericho from a distance. It’s an Arab town and it wouldn’t be wise to take a busload of tourists through the town. Where we stopped to view the vast numbers of date palms in and around Jericho was a stone tower, believed to be the oldest human-built structure on earth, over 9000 years old.
At the end of the week we were exhausted but exhilarated. We were impressed by the vitality of the Israelis and their achievements. Would we return to Israel? Like a shot!

 

[BillB]

I was beginning to fancy the idea of a fly-drive holiday somewhere in exotic climes. Shuffling through travel brochures I mentioned to my wife that a drive from Singapore to Penang sounded like fun and the price was reasonable. Since she liked the sound of it, it wasn’t long before we’d made all the reservations and come holiday time we were on the Malaysian airline 747 to Singapore.
We had booked rooms at the Shangri-La Hotel for the length of our stay before we picked up our car. It’s a luxurious hotel close to the splendours of Orchard Road and all its shops.
We always enjoy Singapore for its safety, its cleanliness and its sparkling multiplicity of races living together on a small island. We sampled the culinary delights of the city in all its varieties, strolled around the shops and malls, marvelled at the variety of flowers in the orchid garden and generally had a great time.
Somehow I was convinced that we would pick up our car on the Friday So on the Wednesday we were planning on visiting Sentosa Island for the day. However, as we were getting ready my eye fell on the copy of the New Straits Times, delivered free to your room each morning, and lying on the bed. Something about the date caught my eye and alarm bells went off in my head. If today was the 11th, how come it was Thursday? We were due to take delivery of the car on the 12th, which I was convinced was Saturday. No, I’d completely confused the days – blame jet-lag and the time difference. This was our last full day in Singapore! We decided that we’d spend the day doing a little light shopping instead of visiting Sentosa Island, so outside we negotiated a taxi for the day to drive us around to the various shops we wanted to visit and picking up the handmade shirts I’d ordered from a Chinese tailor. The taxi driver enlivened the day by giving us a commentary of the places we were passing, so the day became combined with a sightseeing tour.
The next morning we were up bright and early so we could have a leisurely breakfast and finish packing prior to meeting the hire company rep to take delivery of the car. And so it came to pass that around 10 am Bill drove with trepidation out of the hotel grounds and onto the busy Singapore streets. My wife handled the maps and navigation while I kept out of the way of the rest of the traffic. All we had to do was find our way to the causeway which would take us across to the Malaysian state of Johor. The task proved much simpler than I anticipated and I soon found myself in the line of vehicles to cross over into Malaysia.
Once over we worked out a route to Malacca with the aid of the maps supplied. This was, of course, in the days before GPS, but we nevertheless found the task an easy one and enjoyed the drive to the former Dutch port. We got glimpses of Malaysian everyday life – children waving to us, men and women working in the rice paddies, groups of teenagers listening to music on a communal radio, groups of men sitting round tables in the villages, drinking coffee and putting the world to rights. It was a fascinating insight which the average tourist never sees.
We arrived in Malacca at lunchtime, took a quick meal in the hotel coffee shop which turned out longer than we anticipated as we fell into conversation with our waiter and he gave us some good advice about our next day’s drive to Kuala Lumpur. He marked a suggested route on our map which, he said, would be much more interesting than driving along a motorway.
We asked the hotel concierge if there were any tours of Malacca that afternoon and he negotiated the afternoon hire of a taxi, driven by the friendly and helpful Mr Go. Mr Go took us all over Malacca, showing us all the sights, historical and modern. He waited while we browsed the Baba Nonya Museum which deals with the history of the growth of the native population when they intermarried with the Chinese who came to work and trade. It’s a small but engrossing museum worth an hour of anyone’s time. One of the places I wanted to see was the Christ Church situated on Stadthuys Square, a remnant of the time when the city was a Dutch colony. This bright red church is a beautiful sight, situated on a square where all the buildings are painted in the same red as the church.
We reluctantly waved goodbye to Mr Go who we left with a good tip as he had been so kind, friendly and helpful.
The next morning we set off on the route that our waiter had marked for us. We were so glad that we followed his advice as the drive was really beautiful, taking us through Malay villages, past farms, roadside stalls and alongside beautiful white sand beaches.
Approaching KL we came onto the motorway as it was the best approach to the city. As we drove along, on the left, just as in Britain, I suddenly realised that I had no idea which exit I should take. Thankfully, the traffic was thin, except for a line which was queuing to get off at an exit. After we were past that the traffic became even thinner and I began to get the uncomfortable feeling that I should have joined the line for the last exit. The only course was to take the next exit and turn back into the city centre. I found myself driving along a road similar to the Périphérique in Paris, and ready to admit to myself that we were as lost as orphans in a storm. But a few minutes later I stopped at a traffic light and, glancing sideways, I saw that the road to my left was the road where our hotel was situated. I quickly slapped on my left-hand indicator and turned in when the light turned green. A couple of hundred yards brought us to the Marriott Hotel: how lucky can you get? I quickly grew to appreciate the service offered by hotels in Southeast Asia – we just drew up outside the hotel, gave the car keys to the bell captain and went inside to register. Once we were in our room our bags were delivered to us. When we needed the car we just gave the key receipt to the bell captain and our car was brought round from the car park.
Kuala Lumpur is neither picturesque nor particularly visitor-friendly. It’s a big city with a lot of traffic and a hot and steamy climate. We ambled around for a while until the noise and the humidity drove us back to the air conditioned quiet of the hotel. We only spent that day in KL and departed early next morning for the Cameron Highlands, 174 kms further north.
As we drove along the motorway the sky became darker and darker. Off to our left we could see a range of mountains under very black clouds and the clouds were moving towards us. Lightning flashed around inside the clouds as they approached until finally the rains hit. Visibility on the motorway was reduced to about 3 feet and I reduced my speed accordingly until finally I had to pull over and stop. We sat watching the lightning and being deafened by the claps of thunder that were so frequent they became almost one continuous roar. Malaysians, with more experience of this kind of weather, trundled slowly past us in the almost zero visibility. After about 30 minutes the torrent slackened, the visibility improved and the skies cleared. The road surface began to steam in the heat of the sun and we pulled out on to the highway again.
We left the highway at Tapah and began heading up towards the Cameron Highlands. The upward road has so many twists and turns that it’s more like a roller coaster. As you climb you pass dwellings and small villages and at one point you come to a spectacular waterfall. But you carry on, climbing higher and higher, until the slope begins to flatten out and you arrive at the top.
If I should arrive in Heaven when I die and it’s not like the Cameron Highlands I shall be really, really mad. This area has possibly the best climate I have ever experienced. During the day the temperature is a balmy 25°C, dropping at night to make it attractive to be sitting around a fire with a glass of malt whisky. We were staying at the Lakeside Hotel, a Tudor style building situated, naturally enough, next to the lake.
With its equable temperature and the gentle rains the area experiences the farmers can harvest three crops a year. Further on from the hotel the road winds along the crest of the hills where the view is of the land falling away below you and absolutely covered with tea bushes – tea as far as the eye can see. The ground undulates for miles and it’s all covered with flat-topped tea bushes.
After we checked in we drove along and found a restaurant in the little town of Tanah Rata where we had lunch. The food was Chinese but with novel additions of vegetables grown in the Highlands, such as cauliflower, which is not an ingredient I’ve found in many Chinese restaurants in the west.
We ate dinner that evening at the hotel then sat beside the open fire in the bar, sampling the range of single malts on offer, while my wife kept to her favourite – a gin and tonic with lots of ice.
Our room had a four-poster bed and a view across the lake. It was comfort to the nth degree and very agreeable.
The next day we drove along to the tea plantation and enjoyed a tour of the production facilities. Women were employed to pack the loose tea, a job that didn’t look too attractive to me, once it was picked and dried. We were invited to sample several different types of tea. We spent the rest of the day photographing the splendours of this little hilltop paradise.
The next day we drove as far outwards as we could, eventually arriving at the spot where the road just petered out. We turned back and stopped at a butterfly farm we had passed. We were the only visitors and the guardian offered us some spectacularly coloured examples as a gift.
On the way back to Tana Rata we came upon a snake in the road which had obviously been run over by a car shortly before we arrived. It was writhing and thrashing about in great distress. I hate to see animals in pain so I stopped the car. Now obviously giving an injured snake the kiss of life wasn’t high on my list of must-have experiences so I decided that I was going to have to be cruel to be kind, so I deliberately ran over the snake’s head to put it out of its misery.
We spent the rest of our time in the Highlands exploring the area and taking life slowly and comfortably and feeling utterly relaxed. On the fourth day we left the hotel reluctantly and drove down the twisty road to Ipoh and then Butterworth where we crossed the bridge to Penang, that lovely island off the coast. The Penang bridge is one of the longest in Asia and it’s a toll bridge, but only in one direction. You pay when you drive over to Penang, but not when you leave Penang for the mainland.
We checked into the Mutiara, our favourite hotel on the island, and retained the car for a couple more days. After exploring the island in the car, we gave it back and spent the rest of our stay swimming, lounging, reading and enjoying the meals that the hotel serves in its nicely varied restaurants. Nice work if you can get it.

My postings for the next few weeks are likely to be somewhat erratic – our Californian friends arrived on Friday and we are showing them around and acquainting them with the area. On 11 June we will fly out to spend the next six weeks at their home in Aptos, California. In between I have appointments with my endocrinologist, my ophthalmologist and my dentist. That makes me sound like hypochondriac, I know, but I had to squeeze them all in before our departure.

 

[BillB]

Thank you, Viv. Very kind of you to say so. Long may your BG levels fall. I hope I can post this before we depart for California on 11 June, and then I’ll try to give a few posts of life as a diabetic in the Golden State.
There is a tiny island off the eastern coast of Malaysia called Tioman Island, and anyone who has seen the film of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s South Pacific would recognise the twin peaks of the mythical island of Bali Hai as part of Tioman. It has been designated as one of the 10 most beautiful islands in the world, and I vowed that someday I would pay it a visit.
Once again I was thumbing through a catalogue for a company that specialises in tailor-made journeys and decided to string three islands together in one trip.
The result was that we flew into Kuala Lumpur on the overnight Malaysian flight, arriving early in the morning. In my experience the best way to get over jet lag quickly is to get onto the time schedule at your destination as quickly as possible. Sleeping on an overnight flight doesn’t usually give you a solid night’s sleep, so to say we were feeling particularly groggy is putting it conservatively. We checked into our hotel but though feeling desperately tired we knew it would be fatal to fall asleep or even take a nap so we had to stay active. We decided to sign up for a bus tour of the city.
I’d like to say that the sights we saw are tattooed on my memory, but I kept dozing off – waking up every time the bus went over a bump. However, we managed to stay more or less vertical for the rest of the day but were remarkably early in bed.
We were up bright and early and took the bus to the airport where we caught the flight to Medan, the capital of Sumatra. Our guide, a young widow named Tutti, met us at the airport and gave us a brief tour of the city before dropping us off at our hotel for the night. Contrary to what I had imagined, Medan is not very interesting and I can remember only a few of the sights.
The next day our bus and tour guide turned up to take us to Lake Toba, the biggest lake in Asia. As we were the only passengers we got special treatment and could ask the bus to stop at any place that looked interesting. We asked to stop at a rubber plantation we came to and were able to see in close up how the latex is tapped and drips into small cups fixed to the treetrunks. When we arrived at Toba I was amazed at the size of it. Little did I know.
A small steamer hove into view and headed straight for the dockside where we were waiting. When it moored up our guide hustled up some porters to carry our bags on board and we soon headed off towards the other side of the lake. It took nearly half an hour to reach the jetty close to our hotel where we disembarked and checked in. We were staying for two nights and it seemed that we were the only guests. Until late in the afternoon, that is, when a horde of Spanish tourists descended upon us. It’s my experience that Spanish tourists are the noisiest in the world, noisier even than Italians. The Italians really know how to enjoy themselves.
We wandered around the area where there was a temple and a village of the old style with high-prowed dwellings, looking like land-locked boats. We chatted with the local people and generally had an enjoyable time.
That evening we went into the dining room for dinner to be faced with a horde of Spaniards, all chattering away at the tops of their voices. By the time they had finished their meal and had left we were slightly deaf. The meal, however, made up for it. The Indonesian spread known as Rijstafel is a feast of different dishes, with a rice accompaniment. We struggled mightily but didn’t manage to finish it. After dinner we sat on the terrace of our room overlooking the lake, enchanted by the moonlit view and listening to the screeching of the gekkos. The next day we spent afloat as we took a boat that gave us a tour of the lake, which gave me a bit of a surprise – our hotel wasn’t on the other side of the lake it was actually on an island. The island was so big that from our arrival spot it looked like the opposite shore. The full vista of the lake from our boat revealed an enormous expanse of water which proved twice as big as our first impression.
Dinner that night was without the Spaniards, leaving us as this time truly the only guests in the hotel. It was so quiet that we almost missed our Iberian co-guests. Once again we were faced with a mighty array of different dishes, once again it was superbly prepared and once again we lost the battle.
We left the island the next morning and drove towards the town of Beristagi. Part of the way was over a road built by slave labour on the orders of the occupying Japanese invaders. We also stopped at a small village where I bought some freshly picked spices – cloves and cinnamon.
At Beristagi we checked into our hotel and discovered that the floor in our room had been coated with an anti-mosquito oil. It had been applied so liberally that the floor was slippery when we walked on it. The room absolutely reeked and the nearest I can get to describing it is to advise you to try squirting a fly spray directly up your nose. Within ten minutes I had developed a cluster headache of such shattering proportions that I was almost ready to kill myself. My wife went back to reception, explained the problem and asked to change to a different room. But all the rooms have been treated, we were informed. There was no escape. They sent two young men to mop up the floor with cloths, but the smell was still overpowering. I went and sat by the pool in the shade to get away from the fumes. Two hours later my headache had subsided to virtually nothing, so as long as I stayed out of the room I was okay. After I was more or less recovered I sat studying the surrounding mountains, wondering why one particular peak always had a cloud surmounting it. Then I noticed a yellow stain at the base of the cloud and it finally dawned on me. It was a live volcano, the cloud was gases exiting from a fumaroles and the yellow stain was sulphur being deposited from inside the volcano. A cluster headache and a live volcano virtually overhead did not exactly make my day.
That evening, after dinner, I went to reception to pay up the extras we had incurred, which was just two glasses of mango juice. This sum was too small to put on my credit card so I produced a £20 note and asked if they could change it for me. The receptionist examined the note and told me that she couldn’t change it as it was marked Bank of England and England was only part of Great Britain. Thus the banknote should read Bank of Great Britain. I explained that there was no such entity as the Bank of Great Britain but that the Bank of England did that job. She wouldn’t believe me. I tried again. She was adamant. In the Asian culture, you lose face if you lose your temper, but it was a struggle to remain calm in the face of this. Finally, Tutti passed and came over to help. We explained the situation and she told the receptionist to telephone one of the local money changers and ask what a £20 note looked like. The girl made the call and was given the information required. Nevertheless, she changed my £20 reluctantly. The night spent in our reeking room did nothing for my good humour either.
The next day Tutti escorted us to Medan airport, where I tipped her generously as I would probably have still been standing at reception in Beristagi arguing without her presence. We caught a flight to KL where we changed planes for the flight to Tioman.
Our new aircraft was off at the back of the airfield and a little bus came to the terminal to transport us there. Our first view of our plane was not encouraging. The impression we both got was that it had been covered in graffiti, but it turned out that the logo Pelangi Air in letters up and down the aircraft was intentional. It was also very, very small. When we boarded there were, if I remember correctly, 10 seats, four on the left-hand side, one behind the other, and two single seats on the right-hand side. Then two double seats at the back on the right-hand side. The cockpit was separated from the passengers by a curtain which was held open. On the floor of the cockpit were a number of fruit drinks. When the plane took off and climbed the drinks all rolled off the cockpit step and headed for the back of the plane. We all grabbed a drink as they rolled past and that was our inflight refreshment. Clearly visible on a plaque situated between the pilot and co-pilot was the warning, “This aircraft is not designed for aerobatics.” Very reassuring. I thought it was also ironic that I, a child of the Blitz, was flying in a Dornier.
We headed directly east from KL, over the Malaysian rainforest, then we crossed the coast and headed out over the South China Sea. After 30 minutes flying we came within sight of a remarkable looking island - on one end of it a mountain with twin peaks soared out of the jungle. Around the shores the sea was an alluring cornflower blue. Peering into the cockpit I could see that we were heading straight for a forested mountainside. I gulped and prayed that the pilot wanted to live as much as I did. I suppose my prayers were answered as the plane began to rise and we slid over the top of a saddle in the mountain, then did a sharp turn to the right and began to descend to what appeared to be a small runway in the jungle with a hut alongside. We touched down and the plane hurtled down the runway, heading straight for a wall of jungle at the far end. Just in time the aircraft slowed down and did a U-turn, taking us back to the hut, which turned out to be the airport building. It was no more than a roof on poles with the inner area divided into two – one part for arriving passengers and the other part for departures. We gathered in the terminal while our cases were transported from the plane to us. Then after a cursory passport check we were invited to board a waiting bus, into which our luggage was being stowed.
The bus pulled out onto a fairly good metalled road, which we later found out is the only road on the island and it’s only one kilometre long.
We pulled into the grounds of a rather pleasant hotel, where the rooms were situated in separate blocks of cabins built in traditional Malaysian style. We were assigned our room and a Malaysian loaded our bags onto a golf cart and drove us to it. We were at the furthest end of the complex, which suited us fine as we enjoy a walk before and after meals in the tropical warmth and we were outside the noisy areas inhabited, once again, by a party of Japanese tourists.
We were close to the beach so while my wife unpacked I grabbed my fins, mask and snorkel and headed out to sea. This first swim was disappointing as the seabed was flat, sandy and uninteresting. There was no underwater life at all, not even seaweed. After quartering that area for a half hour I made my way back to our cabin and showered off the sea salt.
We had lunch in the restaurant and then took a walk around to orient ourselves and suss out the facilities. We signed up for a round-the-island boat trip two days hence and a jungle trek the next day. The trek was great – a few hundred yards outside the hotel grounds we came across a monitor lizard, sitting on a sandy patch of ground. Our guide signalled us to stand still so we could watch what it did. After a few seconds it began to hiss and our guide explained that this is what they do when they’re angry. He didn’t like us there watching him. Then he suddenly spun around and vanished into the forest. Further on our guide pointed out more monitor tracks when the ground was sandy enough to show footprints.
We continued on with the guide pointing out trees, flowers, vines and other vegetation of interest. We’d never seen any of this so it was all interesting to us. At one point we came to a hut in the jungle and a little old Malaysian lady was sitting outside offering us ice cold drinks. She had run a cable for a good few hundred yards and had a variety of drinks in her fridge. It was a welcome break in that humidity.
We were heading for a small coastal village but we had to cross a creek to reach it. On the mud banks at the side of the creek were thousands of fiddler crabs. You may well have seen them in nature programmes – they have one pincer that is vastly overdeveloped in comparison to the rest of the body. The pincer is white and they sit outside their holes making beckoning motions with them. When there is a great number of them, the sight of the pincers waving towards you is almost surreal.
Once we crossed the creek we arrived in the small village where we were going to have lunch. We still had a couple of hours before eating so a number of us went snorkelling. One of the features of Tioman is the rocky outcrops that rise out of the sea about 20 or 30 yards offshore. Around them are a multitude of brilliantly coloured fish and a variety of corals. The sea is crystalline and the time I spent drifting around watching the sealife is still brilliantly clear in my memory.
Lunch was Malay Chicken Curry, absolutely delicious and my introduction to this particular dish. I worked on reproducing it at home as I have a fondness for it but it is usually cooked with potatoes simmered in it, but now that I’ve been diagnosed Type 2 I have to replace them with other vegetables.
The cruise around the island departed early the next morning, shortly after breakfast and the weather was so disappointing – overcast and foggy.
We cruised along, passing little villages where you can rent A-frame huts very cheaply if you want a tropical holiday in paradise. There is no road leading to these small settlements so the only way to get there is by boat.
We stopped at one small jetty and were directed along a path that led up into the jungle. We toiled along, sweaty but curious until we reached our destination. Anyone who has seen the film South Pacific may remember that the song Happy Talk was performed beside a waterfall in the jungle. This was where we were heading. And it looks just the same as in the film.
After we rejoined the boat we sailed past the famous twin peaks which were used in South Pacific as the mystical island of Bali H’ai. Just my luck – the fog completely shrouded the mountains so we didn’t get to see them. We stopped for lunch at another small village and I found that I was really getting to appreciate Malaysian cooking.
In the afternoon we rounded the end of the island nearest to our hotel where the seabed became mostly sand with large black areas dotted here and there. In one bay we dropped anchor and were invited to flop over the side for a bit of snorkelling. Apart from the sand, the only other feature was one of the large black areas we had seen previously. At first I decided not to go in as there didn’t look much of interest to see, but then I decided that I wouldn’t get the chance again so I got changed and went over the side. What a surprise! The black area was a coral reef absolutely teeming with fish. And the fish were acting very strangely, making quick darts toward me and then fleeing. I realised that they regarded me as some kind of predator and were trying to drive me off with their threatening dashes. I stayed clear and circled the reef and the fish, though keeping a wary eye on me, carried on with their activities.
We had another day which we used to cruise some of the rocky outcrops in a glass-bottomed boat to view the corals and fish. One of the schools of fish we saw were a bunch of mean-looking barracuda – and I had been swimming in the area without a care in the world.
The day after we took our Air Pelangi flight back to KL and as luck would have it we flew past the twin peaks which were now bathed in sunshine. I managed to grab a couple of quick photos. In KL we joined our overnight flight to London where we arrived on a rainy day, leaving us with only regretful memories of the tropical paradise we had left behind.

 

[BillB]

As history buffs, the prospect of a Nile Cruise was really attractive to to us when we picked up a Thomas Cook brochure. It wasn’t just the lure of the Pyramids, but the thought of viewing this river that had been the centre of one of the world’s greatest civilizations that sang such a siren song. As is our habit we made the reservations for February of the following year, this period being the coolest in Egypt.
After all our travels, we were quite blasé about visas, as most countries will grant a tourist visa on arrival. Thomas Cook advised that we get it in advance as the queues for visas often created delays on arrival. Egypt doesn’t have an embassy, or even a consulate, in Luxembourg so we drove up to Brussels, filled out the forms, handed them in with our passports and the fee and then went into the city centre to pass the rest of the day before having dinner near the Grand Place.
Thomas Cook was the first company ever to take tourists on a Nile Cruise, so the name has certain magical qualities when you mention it to Egyptians. A bonus was that our Egyptologist met us at Heathrow, having already reserved our seats, so all we had to do was check in our luggage.
Thomas Cook’s boats are smaller than other companies, which makes the Nile experience an intimate one as you quickly come to know the other passengers. We landed at Luxor in the evening, in the dark, and transferred to our cruiser. We had a small suite on the first deck, as this was the only cabin left when we made our reservations. It was worth the extra few pounds, though, as we had a window giving us beautiful views of the river bank and the cabin facilities were excellent.
The next morning our cruiser headed downstream and stopped at Dendera, for our first view of an Egyptian temple. I was astonished to see that in areas where the surfaces were protected from the elements by their construction, overhangs, etc., the original colours were still visible. This artwork is incredibly beautiful, even after 4000 years. The viewer marvels at the structures, carved out of solid rock using none of the convenient power tools that we take for granted.
Back on the boat, we were offered a tour of the installations on board. Of course, the kitchens were closely inspected – we had certainly heard of the Pharoah’s revenge. They were spotlessly clean and we were invited to come down to have a look around at any time of the day or night. You’ve got to be pretty sure of your hygiene to make an offer like that. And in point of fact neither of us suffered the slightest discomfort the entire period we were on board.
We continued the tour of the sites around Luxor, known in the times of the Pharoahs as Thebes. The Valley of the Kings is a breathtaking place to visit, but if you want to see everything you’ll need several more days than we had. To enter these tombs of the Pharoahs, which were carved from the living rock and are hundreds of metres long with enormous side chambers, is to marvel again and again at the craftsmanship and artistry involved. We couldn’t miss the opportunity of entering the tomb of Tutankhamun, the boy king who succeeded Akhnaten. This was the last tomb to be discovered, and the only one that hadn’t been ransacked by grave robbers, so all the Pharoah’s treasure was found intact. Tutankhamun’s mummy is still in the tomb, along with many of the artefacts that were to aid his journey through the afterlife. The golden mask and many other of the golden objects can be viewed in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo.
The Valley of the Queens is also nearby, as well as the tomb of Hatshepsut, who declared herself Pharoah, the only woman ever to hold the title. The enormous statues of the Ramasseum are also nearby.
We went further upstream each day, visiting temples at Edfu and Kom Ombo, finishing up at Aswan. We visited Elephantine Island, so-named because the grey, rounded rocks resemble those pachyderms. The gardens of the island are a welcome oasis of cool and quiet and a stroll through them is very calming. We took a felucca back to the boat. These boats with their picturesque triangular sails are a feature of the Nile and a trip in one is memorable.
A beautiful place to visit in Aswan is the Nubian Museum, one of the best museums I have ever been to. Treasures from 4 millennia are on display, some so beautiful they take your breath away. We also visited the Aswan High Dam, built under Gamal Nasser’s presidency using Russian expertise. It’s an extraordinary construction, not built of concrete as we’d expected but of earth. At its base the dam is 1 kilometre wide and at the top several hundred metres wide.
Our boat then headed downstream, stopping off at other sites along the way to the Temple of Karnak at Luxor. We made a side trip to the remains of Memphis while there, but our latest visit was principally to see the Temple of Karnak, an extraordinary area of temples, columns, obelisks and hieroglyphics. Our Egyptologist led us around the temple, explaining what purpose each area served and how the current Pharoah would come to conduct the ceremonies.
A couple of nights later we attended the son and lumiere at Karnak after the sun had set. The programme leads the visitor from the entrance to the inner areas. The lights come on and fade away, the commentary explains the spiritual significance. The atmosphere is eerie, the hairs on the back of your neck stand up. Are the Egyptian gods still controlling life there? It would be a person of great certainty who could give a definitive answer.
We flew up to Aswan the following day and embarked on another boat for a four day cruise across Lake Nasser to Abu Simbel. The lake was created when the High Dam was built across the Nile, the waters backing up for thousands of square kilometres. Close to Aswan is the Temple of Philae, semi-submerged and mysterious.
We stopped here and there at tombs and temples while our Egyptologist explained the significance of the hieroglyphics. We absorbed a terrific amount of the history, the significance of certain Pharoahs and their places in history.
Our third day was spent cruising the lake with no stops. A barbecue was held on the upper deck and the whole day was a pleasant change of pace.
On the morning of the fourth day a large object could be seen, rising up apparently out of the waters of the lake. As we drew closer we could discern the shape of Abu Simbel, one of the most magnificently striking of the sites in Egypt. It was constructed by Ramses II about 3000 years ago and when the Aswan Dam was built it was threatened with submersion in the rising waters of the Nile. An enormous engineering project got underway to save the temple by taking it apart and raising it some 60 metres above its original position. Our boat was tied up so that we had a full view of this beautiful monument from our cabin window. We toured the whole site, lost in wonder at this glorious piece of work constructed of stone carved by simple tools made of bronze.
From there we flew to Cairo, checking into the Intercontinental Hotel for the remainder of our stay in Egypt. We were by now fully versed in the achievements of arguably the greatest Pharoah of all – Ramses II, also known as Ramses the Great. The temples he created, the unity he brought to the Upper and Lower Kingdoms, his sheer longevity, the guile of his diplomacy all combine to ensure his place at the forefront of Egyptian history.
A visit to the Egyptian Museum brought us face to face with him. His mummy is on show and as I gazed down at him I was struck by the thought – I’m looking at a man who spoke to Moses. It was overwhelming.
But the museum has many more treasures. Tutankhamun’s funerary treasure has a significant place in the exhibit. The gold glows in the magnificence of its setting. Every viewer seemed stunned on a single viewing.
Giza, with its pyramids and the mysterious Sphinx were the last of the great must-sees of our trip. There aren’t just the two biggest pyramids to see; there are many smaller ones nearby. Certain people have put forward the theory that aliens must have visited Earth and taught the Egyptians how to build pyramids as the Egyptians themselves didn’t have the technology to build them alone. If you believe this I know a double glazing salesman who’s dying to meet you. In proximity to Cairo are several pyramids that are clearly the first – unsuccessful – attempts to build them. The Stepped Pyramid of Sakkara is quite well known, but there’s also the ‘Bent Pyramid’ where the builders realized part way through that they had the wrong angle so,rather than begin again, they changed it and the two different angles on the sides of the pyramid are visible from miles around.
Would I recommend a visit to Egypt? Absolutely. Even if you’re not into history, the spectacular scale of achievement will grab anybody’s interest.

 

[BillB]

“These round-the-world-trips look interesting,” remarked my wife as she thumbed through a brochure. That piqued my interest as we had never gone round the world in one trip. Also, the journey offered consisted of flights and hotels, but after that the traveller is one his own. That was our kind of travel so we investigated further, talked it over to decide which destinations we wanted to visit and finally selected one of the journeys on offer. We were due to depart in mid-October and return mid-November.
We took off on a bright autumn afternoon and flew due west, chasing the sunset all the way to Los Angeles. Darkness finally fell just as we reached Bakersfield, California, at about 7 p.m. local time. As we began our descent to LAX the city below was staggering - a sprawl of lights as far as the eye could see. Trails of red or white lights followed the path of highways into, out of, and through the city. It was much more spectacular than a daytime landing would have been.
The first available taxi was a stretch limo, another first for us, and the fare to our hotel, the Marriott at Marina del Rey, was only $15.
Once we had checked in and unpacked the necessities we called room service to order an evening meal. It was our first experience of American portion control. We ordered shrimp tacos and we each received three of the largest tacos I had ever seen – stuffed to the brim with the most succulent shrimps and salsa. We managed one and a half tacos each, and that was a mighty struggle. Bloated to the gills, we fell into bed and slept the sleep of the just, the righteous and the jet lagged.
We were up bright and early and after breakfast we started investigating the sights to visit in the comparatively short time we were there. We had decided in advance that we fancied a visit to the Universal Studios theme park and wondered if we could walk there. Well, it was only two inches on the map of the city. Wrong. It turned out it was a good 45 minute drive on the freeway, and if we bought our tickets in advance we not only got transport to Universal, but we jumped the queues at the box office. That decision was a no-brainer, so we booked our tickets, grabbed our cameras and waited in the lobby for the bus.
Even for two Londoners like us, LA is so enormous that it’s difficult to conceive its gigantic sprawl. We moved along freeways, expressways and urban residential streets, thankful that we hadn’t decided to try and walk it.
The entrance to the studio is adorned with a gigantic reproduction of the Universal trademark, a globe surrounded by the word “Universal”. It turns slowly, catching the California sunshine and reflecting it back. Definitely worth a photo.
After scoping out the delights on offer we decided on a couple of attractions to start off. The first was a bus ride through setpieces from some of the studio’s greatest hits. At one point, crossing a lake, we were threatened by Jaws, bursting out of the water and opening his mouth wide, showing his rows of teeth. Makes you jump.
We also parted the waters of the Red Sea, as performed by Charlton Heston in The Ten Commandments. That was a bit of letdown as the sea is only a couple of feet deep. They showed us a house that has been burning for umpteen years, and we caught a glimpse of a film being shot on one of the outdoor stages representing a New York street.
The finale was a drive through the subway tunnel as it was struck by the earthquake from the eponymous film. We were well shaken up, then the ceiling to the side collapsed and a full-size petrol tanker fell to the platform just yards away, after which the tunnel was flooded, sending a wall of water thundering down the track toward us.
When we climbed off we took an amble around, having a look at the various attractions on offer before stopping at one of the cafés for lunch. I ordered a Groucho Burger and Jackie chose a Garbo Sandwich, both of which were accompanied by salad and French fries. Again, we didn’t get anywhere near finishing them but then, after looking around at our fellow diners who were the kind of people who help the manufacturers of XXL clothing to make a profit, we thought it just as well.
After lunch we booked seats in the Waterworld show, which is even more spectacular when seen in a lagoon specially built for the show than it was in the film. The villains ride around on jet skis, attacking the fortress in the centre of the lagoon. At the climax a full size seaplane comes hurtling over the outside wall, splashes down in the lagoon and zooms towards the audience sitting facing it. More than one person jumped out of their seat to avoid its whirling propeller, though there’s no real risk.
That evening we had dinner at an Italian restaurant overlooking the marina, which served reasonably sized portions of their excellent pasta.
We spent the rest of our time there exploring those places we had heard about – the Chinese Theatre, Rodeo Drive, the Walk of the Stars, Beverley Hills, and some lesser known ones. There is a square - forget the name – which was the original settlement where LA began. There’s a Mexican market there which was an enjoyable place to visit. I also had a long conversation with Police Officer Davis, a very large, jovial, black officer on a mountain bike. He told me that the bike allowed him to get around through the traffic much quicker than more conventional means of transport, and told me a hilarious story about chasing a felon on the bike. The felon kept running and Officer Davis just kept cycling along beside him, grinning at him. Eventually, the villain had to give up, totally exhausted, at which point he was promptly handcuffed.
We got a kick out of driving along those streets we’d heard of – Sunset Boulevard, Wilshire, Vine, etc., but we didn’t warm to LA very much. It lacked any kind of human warmth or charm, so we didn’t board the plane with any great feelings of regret – we were off to a far more exotic destination. Tahiti, here we come.

 

[BillB]

I know it's been a long time since I posted here, but after seeing our Californian friends off in Paris we've been catching up on our mail, Photoshopping all our pictures (hundreds of 'em), buying a laptop for me as Jackie put her foot down about my habit of monopolizing hers when we travel and setting it up.
So it's on to the South Pacific. En route our aircraft made a short refuelling stop where a couple of German tourists, over-imbibing the alcohol served on board, made fools of themselves in the middle of the airport by trying to dance like hula girls. Two middle-aged, pot-bellied drunks doing that is not a pretty sight, even in the South Pacific.
It was fairly late when we landed in Papeete, gathered our luggage and stepped out of the airport and onto the bus that was waiting to transport us to the Beachcomber Hotel. The journey took us about 4 minutes and I was filled with dread that our hotel would be next to the runway and sleep would be impossible because of the roaring of jets. Fortunately, we had just cut across a small peninsula so the sounds of the aircraft were pretty well masked. Also there weren’t many arrivals so my fears were totally unfounded.
Check in was quick and a Polynesian warrior in short kilt and palm leaf headdress carried our bags to our room. Jackie murmured, “I’m going to like this place,” as she watched his lithe retreating figure. The hotel was built to fit inconspicuously into the landscape, so it’s built of natural materials and divided into groups of huts. There is another group of cabins built on stilts over the sea which have a panel cut into the floor so the occupants could sit watching the coral reef and its variety of marine life. I have no idea why we didn’t pay the extra and upgrade to one of these as it didn’t cost very much and it would have added so much more to our stay.
We didn’t have long on Tahiti – less than a week – so we decided that the first thing to do was to tour the island. We arranged at Reception to hire a taxi for the day to take us around and the driver duly arrived in a Mercedes. He was friendly, chatty and full of information. He didn’t have a high opinion of the missionaries who had been arriving on the island since its discovery.
We quickly left Papeete behind, one of those magical names that doesn’t live up to expectations, being rather dull. We stopped at Bounty Bay, where the famous ship had anchored and where the events leading up to the mutiny played out. Of all the films made about these events, very few have actually been made on Tahiti itself. It’s easy to tell as Tahiti’s beaches, being volcanic in origin, are black and the films usually show beaches of crystalline white sand.
Further on we came to a blow hole, a phenomenon I had never before experienced. A small cave on the seaward side of the coast closes down at the interior except for a small tubular passageway which runs about 20 yards inland and opens up beside the road. When the Pacific rollers come roaring in, a particularly high one will pour into the cave, compressing the air inside and forcing it out through the landward hole. Jackie and I got out of the car and walked towards it, by the side of the road. Just at that moment an especially large wave hit and the air came out of the blow hole at such a speed it nearly knocked me off my feet. I’m glad I hadn’t been any closer or they might well have had to fetch me down from the top of the nearest palm.
We circled the island, stopping here and there. A botanical garden has been created in one spot though, as our driver observed, “Why do they need a botanical garden? Tahiti is one giant botanical garden.” And this is so true. At one point we were a few yards off the road, viewing a waterfall, when I looked around and was suddenly hit by the thought of what life must have been like for the Polynesians before Westerners destroyed it. In that one small area I could see pineapple, bananas and breadfruit growing in abundance as well as several fruit I didn’t recognise. A short distance away was a lagoon filled with fish and shellfish. The essentials of life were available so easily and in such quantities that the inhabitants had plenty of time after food gathering to be able to create an outstanding social and cultural life.
Paul Gauguin, the post-Impressionist French painter, spent several years here, painting the Polynesians in their everyday pursuits. They have set up a Gauguin museum, although a good many of the exhibits are prints as the originals are now so valuable that they are kept in controlled atmospheric conditions in Western museums.
There is only one road that circles the island. The interior is so mountainous that there are no roads crossing it. Any highways that branch off the main route lead only to farms inland, and Tahiti is so small that you can circumnavigate it in leisurely fashion in a few hours.
That evening we joined in the Tahitian custom of preparing dinner in a “ground oven”. This is done by digging a hole in the beach, lighting a fire in it and tending it carefully until you have a layer of glowing embers. Stones placed around the hole get hot and then a layer of seaweed is placed on top of the embers, followed by fish, lobsters, crabs and shrimps, then breadfruit and vegetables. Another layer of seaweed is placed on top of the food, then more hot stones, after which the whole thing is covered over with sand and left to cook without air for the afternoon. In the evening, the “ground oven” is opened up and the food is perfectly cooked. Contrary to what you may think, the fish is succulent and moist, not at all dried up. I confess that I wasn’t particularly struck by the breadfruit although I allowed for the fact that it may well be an acquired taste.
Another day we spent snorkelling, marvelling at the gorgeous colours of the fish and the fantastic shapes of the corals. Anyone interested in the undersea world could spend their lives here and see something new every day. Across the lagoon the island of Moorea rises gigantically out of the sea, its central mountainous spine appearing to be within easy swimming distance, but in fact is several miles away. Sadly, we didn’t have time to visit either Moorea or Bora Bora, both islands that sounded attractive.
All too soon, we were on the Air New Zealand evening flight to Fiji, landing in Nadi – which for some reason known to Fijians but not to me is pronounced Nandy.

 

[BillB]

The flight to Nadi was enlivened by a group of Fijian servicemen who proceeded to get very, very drunk. And believe it or not the seats in front of us were occupied by a couple of missionaries who talked loudly for most of the flight.
Trying to sleep in that din was a forlorn hope, and if my prayers had been answered the missionaries would have spent eternity knocking on the Pearly Gates and being refused entry. As we began our descent, the seat belt lights were lit, the Fijian drunks started getting up out of their seats and staggering around. Stewards of both sexes were shouting at them to sit down. Chaos reigned and the pilot radioed ahead to have the police meet the plane and take the drunks off. This they duly did, but in the terminal building I was astonished to see the police allow them into the duty free shop to replenish the whisky they had polished off on the flight. They were then allowed to go free. Add your own comment.
We checked into the hotel just before daylight, opened our suitcases to get out the necessities and fell into bed and into an exhausted sleep- for about 2 hours. Loud voices prodded me out of my slumbers and I finally staggered out of bed and opened the door. I was greeted by the sight of a group of Fijian cleaning ladies standing outside where the cleaning materials store cupboard was situated, just a couple of feet from our front door. having a good gossip. They stopped yelling at each other at the sight of me, haggard and bedraggled. I gave them the filthiest look I could muster, told them to SSHHhhhh, and slammed the door. They were so astonished I think they were quiet for the rest of our stay.
Fijians are not at all like Tahitians. Whereas Tahitians are Polynesians, Fijians are Melanesians. They have the crinkly hair, physical characteristics and skin tones of black Africans. They tease their hair into bushy Afros and, unfortunately, seem to be rather grumpy. They lack the spontaneous friendliness of the Tahitians, and largely they appear to lack a sense of humour. In pre-colonial days they practiced ritual cannibalism, so maybe something’s missing from their diet.
We toured the island, getting as far as Suva, the capital. The island has a spectacular beauty which had me shooting off rolls of film (pre-digital days). Otherwise we spent a lot of time snorkeling and enjoying the delights of the beach and the hotel grounds. The food was excellent, lots of seafood, cooked beautifully, so there were no complaints on that score.
On the day we were due to fly out, we packed our bags and I took our travelers cheques and passports from the room safe, which was situated high on a shelf in a cupboard. Unable to see right to the back, I climbed on a chair to check that I had left nothing behind. I caught a glimpse of something right at the back of the safe, reached in for it and brought out a roll of US dollars held together by a rubber band. I showed my wife and we counted it out. The nice round sum of $250.
Now I’ve had many different responses from people when I’ve told them this (absolutely true) story. There was no way we could keep the money in all conscience, so we took it to reception, explained where we had found it and handed it in – in exchange for a receipt, of course.
A number of people have expressed the opinion that we were mad and we should just have pocketed the money and said nothing. My feelings were that it could well have belonged to someone who was taking the one great trip of their lifetime or someone to whom that money would have meant a great deal. Jackie said that if we had kept it and anything bad had happened to us she would have automatically assumed it was divine retribution. Many people have posed the question, “But who would have known if you kept it?” Our answer to that is always, “But we would have known.”
Does anybody have an opinion on this? Were we stupid, or did we do the right thing?

 

[BillB]

As our flight from Fiji to New Zealand came in on its approach to Auckland I was struck by the beauty of the city’s setting. It lies on one of the world’s great natural harbours and from the air it looked as if everybody in the city owned a yacht. The bay was dotted with spread sails, and all the moorings filled with boats of all kinds. The city is also called the City of Sails, which is self-explanatory once you see it.
Once more we checked into our hotel, had a quick lunch and headed downtown. Our first impression was positive as Auckland is a city on a human scale – there are high-rise buildings, but they don’t loom over you and positively intimidate you. There is the Sky Tower, the tallest free standing structure in the southern hemisphere, but it is a graceful, elegant edifice which is a pleasure to gaze at. We found an agency which arranged city tours, signed up for a couple of the most interesting ones and then went off to do bit of personal exploration.
Auckland is the most populous city in NZ, with the largest Polynesian population in the world. Most of the immigrants arriving in the country settle in Auckland because of the employment opportunities, yet it didn’t seem full of hustle and bustle and the traffic flowed freely. We were never hassled by touts or dodgy salesmen and enjoyed a relaxing stroll around.
We went back to the hotel to freshen up and give our feet a much needed break and then went out to look for a restaurant. There was a good selection around so being spoiled for choice, we finally settled on a Thai restaurant where the food was exquisite and reasonably priced. We spent the rest of the evening drifting around and absorbing the sights and sounds of this most civilised city.
Next morning the bus picked us up for our tour of the city. We prefer to do a city tour at the earliest point as it gives us a good orientation and shows us the highlights, allowing us to pick out the ones we want to return to for a longer browse around.
The standout that afternoon was the Sky Tower, where we took the lift to the top. The views over the harbour and surrounding areas are magnificent: sweeping vistas of beaches, bays and sailing craft in one direction; verdant pastures dotted with sheep in another, with cityscapes of the areas close to the tower. One of the fascinations for me was the glass panels set into the floor of the upper level. You can stand on the glass and look straight down onto the street several hundred metres below. I carefully placed myself at one end of one of the panes and photographed my feet apparently suspended in the air over the traffic below, but no amount of persuading would get Jackie to do the same.
Our second day took us to Kelly Tarlton’s Antarctic Experience and Aquarium. This attraction has a history almost as quirky as its name – it began life as a sewage processing plant but when it was superseded by a more modern system it lay abandoned until Kelly Tarlton hit on the idea of turning these gigantic metal tanks into a kind of aquatic theme park. New Zealand lies close to Antarctica and has a long history of exploration so it’s not really surprising that Kelly Tarlton had his idea. There is a reproduction of Captain Scott’s hut, enclosures of penguins, including the delightful, tiny Fairy Penguins, then a train takes the visitors through a tunnel where an Antarctic whiteout is simulated. It doesn’t take much imagination to understand why so many Arctic and Antarctic explorers lose all sense of direction and vanish in a whiteout. The visit continues with a stroll through the aquarium which, with my background as a skin diver, didn’t fail to fascinate me.
We had hoped to fit in a trip to Rotorua, an area of great geothermal activity which includes geysers, mud pools and hot springs, but unfortunately it sits a little too far out of Auckland to make it a worthwhile one-day excursion. Our researches showed that we would need a minimum of 2 days there to get even a taste of this incredible area – and that’s without travelling.
When it was time to leave New Zealand we did so with regret. We had seen only a fraction of what the country has to offer, but what we had seen had impressed us. We determined to return.
So we flew out of Auckland and headed for Sidney, to see that glorious city and experience the worst hotel in the world.