What's Next?

A rose by any other name...

2012-02-13T15:23:00.000+08:00

I am technologically challenged, no doubt about it. But I try, and somewhere in amongst the trying I sometimes succeed, although not always without parting with more money than I needed to.

When it comes to the internet, and any technology relating to the internet, I can reliably inform those people beyond our antipodean shores that us Aussies pay a premium for everything. We pay 50% more for iTunes songs, movies and videos, some of which aren't even available here for months after their northern hemisphere release dates. Similarly we are locked out of American online stores for purchasing software, like Photoshop or Lightroom. Little wonder that Australians (with a meagre 22 million population) are the second biggest pirates in the world. Apparently 5 million Australians are at it as I write this!

Unfortunately, I'm so dumb that I haven't worked out how to diddle the system, and my own pirating efforts have been limited to purchasing cheap DVDs in Bali. Yeah, I know it's wrong but if they made it fair for us Aussies to purchase at the same price as Americans for instance (especially as our dollar is so strong) then less of us would be tempted. I've completely given up buying books in Australia, even purchasing hard copies and getting them shipped using Amazon is cheaper than going down to the local bookstore. But since I got the Kindle, paper copies are now redundant. Amazon, unlike Apple and Adobe, doesn't restrict access, meaning I can purchase from both the American and UK online stores. Thankyou Amazon, who cares if you want world domination, it's OK by me.

Another area that I think I've been diddled is custom domain names. If you cast your eye up to the internet address line you may just notice that I have changed my name. No longer am I a blogspot address, I've graduated to a dot com. Pretty cool hey?

Now I didn't realise that I could get a dot com domain name for just a few dollars a year, and unfortunately went and purchased myself a domain name from an Australian internet domain name company at some ridiculously overinflated price. Stupid me. Of course I didn't purchase a dot com au address, that would be sheer financial lunacy, as it's twice as expensive. Owning a dot com au is such a liability, I mean I know us Aussies think we're pretty exclusive but Geeezus!!

I've learnt my lesson, and when it's time to renew I'll jump ship to somewhere cheaper. At present I'm staying on Blogger, because they're hosting me for free after all, and I have absolutely no intention to turn my blog into a money making venture (like I'd ever be successful at that anyway?). Though it's gratifying to see a lot more people visiting my blog than just my mum! Even people I don't even know!!! Hi, nice to meet you.

So nothing has changed on the blog, just the name, but even if you are still using the old address, blogger will redirect you here anyway. Just so you know. And can congratulate me and all that.

I do love a good plan

2012-01-30T14:46:00.001+08:00

I'm so excited. Having made the decision to take the second six months of this year off, I'm already in planning mode. I've mentioned before that I really enjoy the research stage, finding out as much as I can about a place before hand, and then starting to come up with a plan.

My plans are not what other people call itineraries. No way would I commit to actually booking stuff ahead of time, aside from an airfare that is. My reasoning is, that if I have enough knowledge about a place I can estimate an approximate amount of time I might spend there before moving on, thus working out what might be feasible within the time span of my visit. I kind of end up with this massive amount of information about my destination, from which I can pick and chose.

I travel slow. Sometimes when I read on a travel forum or in someone's blog about a projected itinerary I begin to get a head spin. Seriously! Probably the most annoyingly tedious part of travel for me is the incessant packing and repacking, and so I usually plan to stay at least a couple of nights, often much longer, in most destinations. I also find that it isn't really practical to spend more than 3-4 hours doing sightseeing in a day, and that I like to factor in a heavy dose of aimless wandering, chatting to locals, exploring markets and experimenting with new foods. All of which can take me in any number of directions.

Because I plan for a snail's pace, I sometimes find I am running ahead of schedule. In which case it's nice to be able to pluck a destination out of the research hat and run with it. That's what happened to me in Java in 2010, when I headed off to Madura, a fairly sizeable island just off Surabaya, home to some of the friendliest people I've ever met. Not to mention great food and nice beaches. And no mass tourism whatsoever. Yeah, most of you have never heard of it right?

My two countries of choice for this upcoming trip have many similarities yet are also vastly different. I'm not talking about New Zealand. I'm just going there first for some alpine hedonism but perhaps I could rebrand it as pre-trip training and acclimatisation. Because I'm going high altitude trekking in China!!

Everybody goes to Nepal and India to trek the Himalayas, and one day I'll probably go there too. But China has Tibet, not only the Tibetan Autonomous Region where independent travel is no longer possible, but also the neighbouring provinces of Yunnan and Sichuan. Here there are spectacular glaciers, high altitude lakes and pastures, Tibetan monasteries, yak herders, and some of the most biodiverse environments on the planet. Not to mention a rich cultural heritage and the ability to travel relatively unhindered by the government authorities.

Researching a destination like this is so important. Being abreast of the politics means being aware of recent local uprisings and the extreme sensitivity of the Chinese government. Since the March 2008 uprising in Lhasa there have been sporadic protests throughout the Tibetan milieu, causing the government to restrict access to certain areas, even some outside the TAR, during anniversaries of these events. Last year much of north western Sichuan was closed to Westerners for more than a month after a protest at one of the monasteries. And each year in March the government suspends all western permits to visit the TAR whatsoever. I do wonder whether the response by the government is somewhat counterproductive, as few tourists speak the language so our access to knowledge about what was going on on a day to day basis would be extremely limited. Publicising it through restricting access not only legitimises the protest, but puts it on the radar for longer than it might have otherwise been.

Prior to March 2008, access to Tibet wasn't so restrictive, and so there's some excellent books around on trekking the region, including areas outside the TAR. There's also a handful of informative websites advertising numerous trekking options within Sichuan and Yunnan, aside from the famous Tiger Leaping Gorge. I'm eternally grateful to whoever left that trip brochure behind in a guesthouse in Berastagi, North Sumatra, because it was in that brochure that I first heard of TLG. It was that dream that got me to Yunnan in late 2008, a visit that made me fall in love with China, and make me want to return to explore further. Well, 2012 is shaping up to be the year!!

At present I'm hoping to spend 2-3 months in China, doing a number of expeditions into the hills. No extreme mountaineering, just trudging along, crossing a few passes above 4000m ASL, camping in alpine meadows, visiting remote monasteries, some glaciers, and generally gorging myself on spectacular mountain scenery. I've found at least five or six possible 2-3 week treks I could do, so I'm accumulating lots of options. I'm also planning to include some tourist sights, I mean a visit to Sichuan is hardly complete without seeing the pandas is it? There's also an all important assignation with the local food specialties, like hot pot. Years of watching Iron Chef means I'm looking forward to trying some hot Sichuan pepper dishes!! And then there's dumplings for breakfast, I'm salivating already....

I'm going to look for company for these treks - besides local guides - amongst friends, along the way, and also out here in the world wide web. I've had mostly fantastic travel companions in the past, and have learnt from the bad ones how to work out whether a prospective travel companion will be compatible. I'm a journey woman, not a destination junkie, and I now know how to tell the difference.

If you are at all interested in doing some China trekking with me, between September and November this year, then drop me a line. All comments are moderated, which means I can delete your contact details prior to comments being published.

As for country number two? Well I mentioned it in a previous post: Myanmar. More on that next.

Planning the next adventure

2012-01-26T15:52:00.000+08:00

Happy Australia Day. Or should I say: Happy "made in China" Day. Ever since Sept 11, this obsession with flying the Aussie flag has gone crazy, and no day exemplifies it more than Jan 26, the day the First Fleet sailed in to Botany Bay and began appropriating this land as a penal colony. It seems appropriate to note that two things Australia Day is known for are excessive flag waving and more arrests for aggressive drunken behaviour than any other day of the year. Hmmm..

I have been agonising over the retirement issue, and have at last decided not to pull the plug completely but to exit my working life slowly over the next few years. I think this smacks of total cowardice on my part to not just take the plunge. But there's still too much uncertainty in my life, particularly the financial situation and Hazel's health, to make finishing up in July just a bit too daunting.

I have noticed a certain fatigue starting to re-enter my life, and after falling into such a spectacular mess back in 2008 I know what I'm facing if I don't listen and do something about it. I am who I am, and the fact is that my work life sees me continuously taking on more and more responsibility and I am forced to say no to people. I no longer feel guilty about saying no, but I do feel angry that people keep asking, particularly when I have bared my soul, told people that my mental health is precarious and that I use protective strategies to keep sane. I work part time for a reason, accept it!!

I talked to the boss, and he is open to me taking extended leave without pay as long as I give him enough notice to get a locum. This leaves the door open for me to come and go from my job, a pretty envious position that few people get the opportunity to do. Being an Australian trained doctor who has worked exclusively in Aboriginal Health for the last 14 years actually makes me a very rare commodity, so I've earned it.

I have work commitments till July, due to my responsibility to supervise a new training doctor in the practice, but beyond then, the rest of the doctors can take responsibility for any other trainees. I also have some volunteer positions I'll need to extricate myself from, which may be a little trickier, but the fact that I'm not planning on leaving indefinitely makes it easier to negotiate. Now I just have to decide how long and where I'm going! How exciting!!!!

I'm definitely going back to NZ in July for a ski trip. I've already bought the tickets, well a one way ticket to Queenstown at any rate. I'll stay at least a month, then make my way back across the ditch to visit mum in Canberra and hit the embassy circuit for a visa or two. At this stage it's a toss up as to where I'll go, between China and Myanmar. Or maybe both?

I've been contemplating a trip to Myanmar for a long time, but have been caught up in that political conundrum of whether to visit or not. I have a colleague at work from Myanmar, who has given me some advice on places to visit, and can possibly give me some in country contacts. Unfortunately the military government (no matter that they've just had that recent rigged election) is paranoid, and there are spies everywhere, so my friend has to be careful not to risk endangering family members and friends living in Myanmar. I've thought about where I'd go, what I'd do, and have decided that with my low comfort needs when travelling I'm unlikely to be heavily supporting government enterprises anyway.

Researching Myanmar it appears to be possible to direct most of your money to private enterprises, but there do seem to be a few areas where sticking with principles would be counterproductive. With appalling roads and a limit of 28 days in the country I think a couple of domestic flights seems a better option than spending a week on buses. Entrance fees to famous sites may well go to the government, but they aren't a lot, unlike the huge fees that everyone pays to the corrupt crony ridden Corporation that runs Angkor in Cambodia, or into tourist sites in China, and the Chinese government is hardly blameless when it comes to human rights abuse. I actually find the contempt with which the Lonely Planet authors speak about paying the $10 to see Bagan (for as long as you like) a bit excessive given the number of tourists to Myanmar is minuscule compared to the millions visiting Angkor and propping up that government. As much as I hate how people may be treated in some countries, I'm not convinced that Myanmar stands above all the others as the worst, and therefore I shouldn't visit it. Seems to be more a case of political correctness gone awry.

It is possible to fly between Mandalay and Kunming in China, so I'm thinking about combining both countries. September to December are great times to travel in the region, so I'm currently researching my options, flights, itineraries etc. This should take me a few months I reckon.

Links, ideas, advice - all welcome.

Rediscovering music

2012-01-21T14:06:00.000+08:00

A few months ago I bought a Macbook Air. Remember? Well we are still head over heels in love, still discovering each other, and I'm continuously amazed at the new and exciting things I can do with my new beau.

Last weekend, whilst sweltering in a typical summer heatwave, I decided to rip all my music CDs into MP3 files, using Apple's iTunes. Then I can get rid of the CDs, and the stereo, in my attempt to declutter prior to heading off on a prolonged trip. Thing is, I really haven't been listening to music much over the last 10 years or so, I tend to tune into Radio National on the car radio, and rarely go out to see live music anymore. My CD collection has a rather weird datedness to it, it sort of stops in the mid nineties. There's an eclectic mix of jazz, classical, world music and classic 80s rock anthems, not to mention the ABBA boxed collection! How can anyone survive a long road trip without belting out a few Abba tunes I mean seriously???

Since getting the new boy, I've been lurking over in iTunes. And I discovered podcasts, and lots of free music downloads. OK I bought a few things too, but only with the cunningly purchased iTunes gift vouchers I got at a discount price using Target vouchers I'd redeemed from credit card rewards. Lost? Don't worry. Suffice to say I am now the proud owner of some NEW!!! music as well as my dated collection of 80s and 90s classics. And an iPod Nano to listen to it on. All for free, clever ain't I??

Now some of you may not know that a Macbook Air doesn't have a disc drive. One of the main reasons it's so slim and light. So how the hell could I rip my CD collection? Believe it or not, easy peasy. See my new beau is a darn clever communicator and he talks to all my old boyfriends, even the old flasher. Mainly because the old flasher has a perfectly functioning optical disc drive that we'd like to use please.

So, I simply load the CDs into OF*, rip them and share them using WiFi between the 2 computers, my modem and the internet. Awesome hey?? Next step DVDs.....

Now that I have many gigabytes of music at my disposal it really obligates me somewhat to actually listen to it. I already had a cheap, rather pathetic, MP3 player that had an unusable menu and kept chewing up batteries. You know the old saying about pay peanuts you get monkeys? Enough said! So the iPod Nano (free purchase remember!) is my newest wee toy.

So there I am with mountains of music, over 1000 (yes I got a tad carried away!) podcasts and a tiny 8Gb piece of perfection to clip to my clothes. Where do I start? Do I listen to the music album by album, do I create playlists? That will take forever. But hang on, there's a solution.

One word: GENIUS!

I love it. You just pick a song and iTunes analyses your music library and puts together some really interesting playlists. You end up with lots of songs down the back catalog of your albums, as well as the classics, that you haven't heard for ages and often didn't notice much in the past anyway. Sometimes when I listen to an album the whole way through I find myself tuning out after a while. This way I seem to be continuously rediscovering old songs. I'm having a great time. And enjoying listening to music again. Eureka!!

I'm also enjoying some great podcasts. Some are new music releases, others are comedy, others are my favourite Radio National shows. The absolutely best so far is a wonderful series with Wendy Harmer and Angela Catterns called "Is it just me?". These two women (I'm not calling them girls or ladies, listen and you'll know why!) talk about day to day issues, bringing up kids, their opinions about varied topics, all with the wonderful self deprecating humour that us Aussies are good at. It is the ultimate show for cackling out loud and rolling around the floor in hysterics. I challenge anyone not to find them hilariously funny. Unfortunately the shows are no longer being produced, but the podcasts of 30 odd episodes are available here.

Enjoy! I am...

*OF = Old Flasher, my ex, see this past post

The whys and hows of travelling wisely

2012-01-10T23:00:00.001+08:00

I read a blog the other day about a girl who has been travelling for 18 months and hit the wall. She's burnout and heading home, but I think she'll be stronger and wiser for it. One thing she found hard was the continual need to travel on a very low budget, and the supposed competition amongst other travellers to do it on as little as possible. Well that just sounds plain exhausting to me, and probably about the worst reason to travel I can think of.

Her honesty inspired me to write a little philosophical post about travelling wisely. It's not about prescribing a particular path, but about people deciding their own path, planning accordingly, and most importantly, keeping things in perspective.

Budget for your comfort level
Everybody has different comfort levels. If the thought of camping, or staying in a place without aircon gives you the heebie jeebies, then it's a good idea to plan your holiday around a budget that allows you those creature comforts. It's not a crime to want comfort, but it's also a good idea to be flexible, to occasionally have a go outside your personal comfort zone and see how you cope. After all, travel is about new experiences, isn't it? It really isn't cool to expect a champagne lifestyle on a beer budget, so if you can't afford the creature comforts, either save up more money before you go, or travel for a shorter period.

Before my last big trip in 2008/09 I gave myself a list of things I wasn't going to do anymore now that I was older, and had the cash. I wasn't going to do long overnight bus trips and I was going to stay in places with hot water and ensuites. I quickly discovered that some of the locations I ended up in didn't have the latter, and sometimes the rooms with the best character and views didn't either. Having my own bathroom actually stopped mattering very quickly, and I soon got used to sluicing myself with cold water from a bucket in a room down the end of the corridor. As for the buses, well in China they have sleepers, and I'm short enough. I still flew when the alternative was a 24 hour bus trip, and as far as I'm concerned, it makes me no less a bonafide traveller than the next person.

Know why you travel
There has to be a reason beyond building a list of countries seen. When you get jaded with travel it usually means you've lost sight of why you left in the first place, or that the reason has changed and you need a new one. I travel to experience other cultures, to enjoy spectacular scenery, and to push myself physically. For this purpose I try and learn the language, eat the local food, go to the local markets, couch surf, and frequently end up spending almost all my time hanging out with locals, not with other backpackers. My trip to Java in 2010 was exactly that sort of experience. I also combined it with a bit of walking (not as much as I had planned), and an expensive sunrise tour of Borobodur. I got the sunrise photos I wanted, isn't that why I travel, to follow my dreams?

Take time out
Experiencing new things gets exhausting, especially when it's day after day. I don't exactly plan them, but from time to time I find myself encamped in a backpacker ghetto for a few days. Here I don't need to worry about wearing modest clothing, or drinking far too much alcohol, and I can use the internet to catch up on the rest of the world. It's also when I take the time to upload my photos, write a few blog entries, do the internet banking, do all the "housekeeping" so to speak. These little oases of familiarity the world over allow me to chill out, recharge my batteries and head on to my next adventure. When I'm ready.

Travel at a pace that suits you
Some people love setting up in a place for a while, others spend a different day in a new town, and the nights travelling between destinations. And the rest of us are somewhere in-between. At different times you'll find the pace right, at other times it isn't. If it isn't, change it, it's your trip. If that means saying goodbye to a travel companion, so be it. A grumpy travelling partner is no fun whatsoever. If it means forfeiting a flight, it's your call, but it means you're planning too far ahead and you need to stop and have a rethink. Only leave when you're ready, even if it means a few visa runs. That sort of discontent over doing things too quick can be quite hard to shift once it sets in, so stop! And go back to point number 2.

Contribute to the local economy

Spending money is really important for the economy and if you spend wisely, then the locals reap the benefit. This is particularly important if planning to visit countries where the politics are suspect and the government highly corrupt, like Myanmar. Finding out whether the transport and accommodation is government owned or not and spending wisely will make a huge difference to the people. Booking ahead via the internet usually means a lot of middlemen, and possibly not locals, will be getting a cut. If it isn't necessary to book, then don't, because you'll almost always find as good accommodation as those on the internet, usually at cheaper prices. As my comfort needs are quite low, I also don't need to rely on chain hotels etc, and can stay in family home stays where the money stays local. Spreading the rest of your budget around also makes sense. I remember explaining to a driver in Bali one day why I wasn't going to book him tomorrow: because I wanted someone else to get a cut of my tourist dollar. It's also a damn good reason for trying different street stalls and restaurants, and for avoiding places run by expats. Finding a local guide is never difficult, almost always dirt cheap, though quality can be hit and miss, but then the fee usually reflects that anyway.

Sometimes you meet people who get a kick out of spending as little money as possible, and are rarely much fun to be around as they can't seem to afford to accompany you to see the sights, have a beer or a meal etc etc. I can't quite see the sense in this myself, and I certainly wouldn't want to emulate them. Some even steal, cheat and take advantage of newbie travellers. An English guy I met in Hanoi had got a young Australian girl enamoured with exciting stories of his travels, and of his life as a travel writer (unsure whether this was true). Over the course of 3 days she "lent" him money and paid for all his meals and drinks. At one stage he invited a group of us to eat at a "great restaurant", we all got ready and headed out, and then when it was time to pay the bill, well he'd somehow forgotten to bring any money hadn't he? Once this girl left, he then honed in on the next one.

On the other hand there are people like Roman, a Czech lad I met in 2008 as my first Hospitality Club (this preceded couch surfing) guest. Roman had been travelling the world by hitching, camping and staying with locals through Hospitality Club and similar organisations, as well as through people he met when hitching. He went out of his way to cook meals, help me in the garden, and show me some of his awesome photography. Roman slept under trees in the outback one night, the next bought and cooked an exquisite chicken roast dinner for his host. He didn't contribute much to the economy, but he didn't take much either. I doubt there is a person out there who met Roman and wasn't spiritually enriched by the experience. After 6 years travelling, Roman had his last few dollars stolen from him on a truck ride through Iran, and arrived home penniless. He's now writing a book. Check him out.

Maintain perspective
Everyone gets scammed from time to time. Almost always you can learn from the experience, be smarter and wiser for the next time. But if it was just that you paid more than you should have, remember you were happy to pay it in the first place, and it's only in retrospect you feel cheated. You could have walked away and not paid. You probably hadn't done your research, didn't know what the price should have been etc. In this internet day and age of so much information, almost every well known scam anywhere in the world has been written about on numerous travel forums and even published in guidebooks. Your hotel/hostel/guesthouse concierge is also a good source of info about local prices and will happily keep you informed. Just ask.

Similar to the scam is the double tiered pricing where you pay more than the locals. There are ways of getting around this, but if you haven't found out how, just try and look at it as still dirt cheap anyway. Why ruin a trip arguing and worrying about a dollar or two? If you find yourself thinking this way, remember how much a cup of coffee costs in your hometown....

Another area where us westerners need to maintain perspective is around cultural differences, hygiene standards, rubbish etc. Come prepared for public toilets with your own wipes, desanitiser, whatever you need, ask the guy spitting on the bus to spit somewhere else rather than on your bag, understand that it's someone's livelihood to sort the rubbish and reuse it, to collect the money at the public toilet, or whatever. That there may not be a social welfare system, or a tax system that provides public infrastructure. We have nice roads and working amenities in our countries because we pay taxes and our governments are slightly less corrupt. It isn't the fault of the bus driver that the bus is falling apart, he's just earning money to feed his family, and he'd prefer not to be driving a death trap either.

It is not a competition
Anyone who plays the one up-manship card in my book is a rather insecure person who needs attention to feel worthy. Or is looking for a fuck. We are all out there trying to achieve our individual personal goals. Unless yours is child sex tourism, who am I to criticise how and why you travel. The person who has been to 100 countries is no better a person than the person who's just arrived for their first week ever of overseas travel. Particularly if said traveller brags about it. 100 is just a number. So what? And do I care how little or how much you spent? No, I just want to know that you had a good time, and what you can recommend of a particular destination.

Listen to yourself
One thing about travel is you spend a lot of time with yourself. You get the opportunity to become attuned to not only your body, but your moods, and I can highly recommend taking notice. Travel isn't a job, where you've got to force yourself to get up to go to work every day whether you feel like it or not, so let the right brain rule and indulge your intuition, your feelings for space, time and place. And when the mind and body say you've had enough, you've had enough. Accept it. If that means going home, so be it. I mean friends and family are hardly going to do anything but welcome you back with open arms. And it doesn't have to be forever right?

I've done 2 big overseas trips, one for 20 months and the other for six months, and a number of shorter trips. The first was in my mid twenties, and a year in I started to notice the jaded long term traveller, who'd been on the road for years, had no real attachments, had lost contact with family and friends back home, and had had experiences that people back home wouldn't understand anyway. They didn't really fit in with the bright young things like myself who had short term plans to travel for a year or so then return to an education or build a career, and they rarely had work skills that they could translate into something well paid should they return home. All their friends would be settled into careers and families, and here they were still chasing young backpackers' tails and doing drugs. They seemed lost to me, and I decided I never wanted to be like them. So when I was ready to return home to continue my career, I did.

My second trip I could have continued longer but my house/dogsitter was moving on and I needed to come home. I could have found another sitter, but returning to a depressed dog broke my heart, and I'll never travel longterm again till she passes on. Then I will indeed head off for longer. But I'll listen to the inner demons, and react accordingly.

Giving back is easy
It's all too easy to feel a lot of guilt for having so much when you see the poverty that exists in the world. I don't think it's particularly wise for individuals to give to a school or an orphanage in a poor country because it just encourages a type of institutionalised begging, as I saw in Cambodia. Spending your money locally is a better way to help that economy help itself. I regularly donate to Oxfam, an organisation renowned for providing sustainable community development programs throughout the world.

An important way to give back is by respecting local custom and speaking to people with courtesy and respect. This gives the message that overseas tourists are nice people, who value other cultures besides their own and aren't as crass and rude as they appear to be on Jersey Shores! Unfortunately I often see rudeness rather than courtesy, and it only reflects poorly on all of us.

Because of exposure to Western popular culture there is a danger that people will aspire to ours and devalue their own. I don't want the places I visit to lose their unique cultures, I want them to know that I value them. That's why I eat their food, follow their customs, take interest in their handcrafts and textiles and try not to impose my personal standards on others. In that way I give them pride in what they have. It's not a lot, but it's something.

So there you have it, just my thoughts on travelling wisely. Feel free to leave your thoughts too.

Don't knock it till you've done it

2012-01-07T12:48:00.001+08:00

Before I headed down the beach, I was recalling my travel to China back in 1989. I left you in Guilin, on the River Li, about to take a ferry trip to Yangshuo.

As an obsessive travel forum/ travel blog lurker, it seems to me that the ferry trip from Guilin to Yangshuo is these days denigrated as a bit of a tourist trap, and that only the lower reaches are worth the expense of jumping on a boat to glide along a river surrounded by karst peaks. I've also read similar things about numerous other boat trips along rivers throughout Asia, and basically, there's no consensus really. There's those that put down any trip that includes the more middle class package tourist, unless it's possible to see the real estate by a more "real' method. This was the logic around the well heeled tourists taking the tour boats, and the backpackers taking the felucca down the Nile in Egypt. Then there's those like me, that realise that the real estate is what we've come to see, and that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. If a person is more concerned about the comfort, or lack thereof, of their chosen mode of transport, then I suspect they won't have the inclination to enjoy the spectacular scenery they are floating through. So live and let live.

Anyway, back in 1989 I can assure you the River Li cruise was already a tourist trap. But I kind of get a kick out of this anyway (I clearly recall us all doing brown eyes from our felucca at passing cruise boats all those years ago!), as I enjoy watching other people and how they deal with a different environment and culture. And the whole touring palaver was new to me back then, everything fascinated me. In fact it still does.

The cruise was spectacular: karst peaks, mist, clouds, moody river, verdant green paddy fields, and occasional fishermen. There were at least 10 ferry boats, and there was lots of hooting of horns and possibly some racing shenanigans going on between boat captains. We were the only westerners on our boat, the rest being from Taiwan and Japan and after considerable jostling, the boats set off. The first part was thick with peaks surrounding us on all sides, the middle section was undulating pastures, then the peaks returned as we approached Yangshuo. Arriving in this small town we were shocked to see so many tourists alighting, the numerous signs in English and to realise we were in some sort of different place to anywhere we'd been before. Yes, this was our first backpacker ghetto.

Over the next day and a half mum and I were left to our own devices. We were installed in one of the better hotels in town, although the room was damp, the toilet didn't flush and there was no hot water. Or electricity a good deal of the time either. We checked in and headed out, passing The Hard Rock Cafe, Charlie Chaplin's Bar and the Sheraton Hotel. We had a wonderful giggle at the Chinglish and had a first encounter with the ethnic minority people of Southern China. Little did I know that 20 years later I would spend over 3 months exploring these interesting cultures of SE Asia, absolutely fascinated with their textiles and needlework.

Next we did some money changing. In 1989 foreigners could only exchange their western currency for Foreign Exchange Certificates, or FECs. The people's money, Renminbi (RMB), could not be exchanged into foreign currency, and could not be used in the government owned Friendship Stores to buy overseas consumer goods, like TVs. Funny to think that back then everything wasn't made in China! The locals were very keen to get hold of FECs, and tourists were keen to get hold of Renminbi to pay for day to day expenses, especially as the exchange rate was about 1.8 RMB to 1 FEC. The only way to get RMB was to use the black market, often small private stallholders selling tourist souvenirs. Whilst mum rode shotgun, I did the deal, and we emerged with a fistful of real chinese money. Boy we were proud of ourselves!!

The difference between these two forms of currency meant both sides had the opportunity to get a good deal. As both FECs and RMB were in "Yuan", the official currency, shopkeepers would bargain in Yuan but expect FEC. Imagine their disappointment when the tourist gives them RMB instead. Score one to the tourist!! And if the tourist travelled using RMB the cost of living was so cheap. It wasn't totally all on the tourist's side though, because transportation and entry prices to tourist sites were much more expensive, and often only accepted in FECs. When the Chinese government finally discarded the two tiered monetary system they also outlawed different pricing tiers as well. But that combination of fear, danger and joy experienced when playing the black market for the first time is an experience I will always cherish.

Next morning we decided to head out of town on bicycles to explore the countryside. Mum's newly acquired asthma had resolved by now, but it appeared that the saying "just like riding a bike" isn't totally to be believed. I am sure my mother has ridden a bike in her youth, but do you think she could manage to stay upright on a bog standard Chinese bike? No way Jose, she needed trainer wheels, not an available extra option at the bike hire place outside the Yangshuo Hotel. What to do?

We'd been in China for at least a week by now, and had not failed to notice that riding a bike is rarely a solo affair. Mum, dad, three kids, two chickens and a pig could be easily accommodated on one rusty Chinese treadly by the average peasant, so why were we getting all hot under the collar that the old lady couldn't ride her own bike? Admittedly the steel carrier rack would not have been all that comfortable, but mum cheerfully perched herself sidesaddle behind me and we peddled off into the countryside. Let me tell you, when a westerner cycles past with a more senior western lady perched behind her, Chinese style, on one bicycle, most peasants fall off their bicycles themselves. A few westerners did too! We laughed a lot that day, both with and at the locals, saw some beautiful scenery, and only once ended up in a ditch when mum tried to move her weight to get a little more comfy.

That evening we visited one of the backpacker bars for an Irish Coffee, discovered banana pancakes for the very first time, and had my first exposure to the loud fat arrogant American tourist.

The next day we drove back to Guilin and prepared to fly on to Xi'an, home of the terracotta warriors.

My first windsurfing video

2011-12-29T15:03:00.001+08:00

http://vimeo.com/34318948

click on this link to see how I spend my summers. you don't get many better days than this down at Coros.

Enjoy.....

Coronation Xmas

2011-12-27T12:06:00.001+08:00

The culmination of my year is the annual camping trip to Coronation Beach. Coronation is my local windsurfing spot, and is only a mere 15km north up the beach from where I live, but it feels like a million miles away.

The world comes to us over summer, as Geraldton, and Coronation Beach in particular, is a fixture in the lives of many international wind and kite surfers, who travel here every year for our consistent wind and waves. Visitors who don't know, when they venture down the hill to see up to a hundred sailors out on the water often ask if there's a competition on. No, we explain, just a lot of people having fun. And us locals like to enjoy our time up here at the beach as well.

I brought the camper up 2 weeks ago, and initially I commuted to work daily, returning for an evening sail, but for ten days over Xmas and New Year I get to camp up here full-time and go sailing all day. It's a great time to just chill out with mates, spend lazy hours swimming, sailing and drinking copious cups of tea. Communal Xmas dinner, washed down with cold beer and a few glasses of red, after a day of wind and waves is what it's all about.

The solar setup is working fantastically, in fact there is little need to rotate the panels to the sun as there are so many hours of sunlight here that my battery stays topped up easily. Lights, fridge, shower and computer, with no concerns whatsoever. I've had all the men, and some of the women, come over to check out my handiwork, and leave suitably impressed, some even requesting advice.

The most fun we've had so far this holiday is filming with our Gopro video cameras. Kate has two cameras and I have one, so we have been having a whale of a time chasing each other around on the water trying to get the money shot. I've managed some nice aerials and wave riding footage and with Nicky on the kite filming with the third camera we are hoping to put together a fun little film. Stay tuned!

The Bradley kids arrived last night, and will stay a few days, though I had to ring home this morning to order more food, snorkelling gear, boogie boards, and Carter's toothbrush and thongs. And games, and jumpers - it can get cold here at night when the wind's blowing a gale till after midnight. They've timed their stay quite well, as it's looking like hot troughed out weather for the next couple of days. This is perfect for just lazy beach days, which I'm not averse to after 6 days straight of sailing. A little recharge of my batteries is in order.

And I've a little video editing to do….

A necessary evil?

2011-12-19T21:59:00.001+08:00

Backpacker ghetto.

A location, often in a large city, but it also can be a small town or village which has taken on this role. It is usually only a small area, bounded by a few blocks only, but with a very high percentage of cheap hotels/ backpacker hostels and small restaurants, cafes and bars. And lots of tourist agencies selling bus and train tickets, local tours and more.

Within said location the population is almost exclusively foreign, except for those working in the businesses which flourish on the trade. The customers can be easily identified by their frequently revealing clothing, or lack thereof, their dreadlocks and fisherman's trousers, their tattoos and hair braids. The cafes and bars seem to be overly inspired by rastafarian themes, with reggae music blaring out into the street from midmorning till the wee hours. There are five or six tattoo parlours, knockoff CD and DVDs for sale on every corner, and there's usually a yoga studio or two. The breakfast menu always includes banana pancakes and a selection of smoothies, and the day menu offers pizzas and hamburgers for those times when the local cuisine becomes all too much. There's usually a few local dishes on the menu, but they've been modified greatly to suit the tastes of a much less sophisticated clientele. And there is always beer, unless it's run out. Of course there are other, unmentioned, substances for sale, it is merely a matter of asking and a young man will be sent off on a motorbike to source you a supply.

It's heaven on earth. A place where you can be surrounded by your own kind, eat food you understand, spend your time in an altered mind state, and not have a care in the world. All around you are cute young things who are only too happy to let it all hang out, have a wonderful time, sex, drugs and rock and roll. Bliss!

These places exist all over the world but my experience is primarily Australasian: Khao San Rd (Bangkok), Kuta Beach (Bali), Koh Phangan/Samui/Tao (Thailand), Chiang Mai (Thailand), Gili islands (Lombok Indonesia), Vang Vieng (Laos), Cairns Esplanade (Australia), Goa (India), Airlie Beach (Australia) and Yangshuo (China) just to name a few. Some come and go, like Tuk Tuk on Lake Toba (Sumatra, Indonesia) which is a mere ghost of it's past glory in the 90's, and Dahab (Egypt) which has succumbed to high rise and the middle class tourism of divers and windsurfers. But others go from strength to strength, becoming bigger and bolder and more foreign with the years. Thailand, the most visited SE Asian country in the world probably has the monopoly on the backpacker ghetto, although I suspect Mexico and Central America have their fair share as well. And then there's Vang Vieng….

I am not a fan of backpacker ghettoes, but I can see their usefulness. Foreigners arriving in a new locale like to know where they can go to find reasonably priced accommodation, food they can eat without burning their insides, and people who speak their language who can help them with travel plans. And most importantly, where they can meet like minded fellow travellers to have fun with! These ghettos bear no resemblance to the people or culture of the country or city in which they are located. In fact their resemblance to each other is almost uncanny. A piece of familiarity the world over.

A backpacker ghetto's usefulness is in its familiarity. It isn't home, but it's a place where you don't have to feel pressured by the local social norms to cover up from head to toe in blistering heat, where you can relax and not attempt to speak a foreign language all day, where you know the bar will have beer and your favourite banana and mango smoothie, and you'll have an endless supply of new friends to party with. You never feel lonely in a backpacker ghetto, you're amongst your own kind.

The spread of these places across the planet means it is almost possible to travel from one ghetto to another without stepping outside into the actual culture of the country you may be travelling in. Thailand in particular has almost made this seamless, with private minibus services between tourist hot spots that make taking government buses quite redundant. So much easier than schlepping out to a bus station and trying to understand all that squiggly script. East Coast Australia from Sydney to Cape Tribulation - a breeze!

I am not immune to the advantages of the ghetto, but for me it's a chance to relax, recharge batteries (literally and metaphorically), and contemplate my next adventure. I'm also not a fan of the western food on offer, as it isn't food I'd eat at home anyway, so I'll usually venture out a few blocks back into the real world, find a street stall frequented by lots of locals and tuck into whatever the popular cuisine is. I really do miss noodle soup for breakfast...

The problem with the ghetto, is that some people feel so at home in it, they manage to travel the whole world without often leaving it. No real fault of the ghetto after all. It's really just a place that employs a lot of locals to look after poor bastards who are far too scared to get out there and really see the real world. Without the coterie of their own crowd. Without a common language. Or the benign palate of banana pancakes and gado gado.

You know the best bit about the ghetto? It's become a tourist attraction. Seriously. Khao San Road for instance is a very popular place for young Thais to go and have a laugh at the dreadlocked westerners trying to be hippies and buddhists for a gap year. Yep, we've become such an entrenched part of that city that the locals want to see what it's all about. Perhaps it's cross cultural exchange, but I don't think so, not from what I've heard. It's pure voyeurism.

Fancy that, go travel the world and become a tourist attraction. A cliched one at that. No thanks.

Were we a front?

2011-12-11T12:15:00.001+08:00

March 1989. A fledgling democracy movement is spreading its wings. In less than 3 months time tens of thousands of young students and pro democracy demonstrators will be brutally gunned down by the Chinese Army in Tienanmen Square, the rest will be rounded up and imprisoned, the ringleaders tortured and summarily executed. But today that shameful episode in Chinese history fails to rate a mention.

Our Chinese tour company was China Youth Travel Service, government sanctioned, with most of our guides being recent university graduates with good English language skills. But there were only 3 participants: Mum and myself, and Alex, the sleazy geologist from Perth. In China we had a national guide, "Michael", and in each location we had a driver and local guide. And Alex only joined us for 10 days, so for the final 8 days mum and I had our own private tour. Not bad hey?

We wondered about that. Why did the trip go ahead with such a small group? It was an expensive trip, especially in comparison with the cost to travel independently, and perhaps everyone was making enough of a cut anyway? But mum's theory, made later, after the June massacre, was that we were a front, a way for our guide to legitimately travel without drawing the attention of the Communist Party spies. It certainly explains the all night meetings with "other students" wherever we went. And the number of times we had to wake Michael up in order not to miss our plane. I often wonder what happened to Michael, whether he died alongside all those others on that fateful day in June, or ended his days in front of a firing squad or maybe managed to gain asylum overseas....

The train from Hong Kong to Guangzhou was uneventful. It was packed with Chinese taking consumer goods - electrical equipment mostly - to the mainland, and then they bought up all the duty free grog and cigarettes on offer as well. We spent the trip watching the scenery change from washing hanging off the balconies of every tenement block in densely populated Kowloon to modern apartment blocks in the New Territories, also heavily festooned with laundry. Once across the barbed wire and sentries at the border the land changed to intensive cultivation, interspersed with shoddy half built houses which increased in number and shoddiness as we approached Guangzhou. First stop lunch, our first experience of authentic Cantonese cuisine, and our first experience of the sheer horror of the Chinese communal toilet.

For the benefit of those who are yet to experience this wonder of Chinese ingenuity, Chinese public toilets have door-less partitions approx 2 feet high with a long gutter running the length of the establishment. You go into your partitioned area, straddle the gutter and squat down to do your business. You try not to look at everyone else, because yes, you can see who else is busy crapping, and whatever you do, you don't look down. That's where the overwhelming stench comes from, where all your and everyone else's excretions for the last two hundred years is fermenting away, a few feet below you. Plus the ones that didn't quite make it! If you are extremely lucky someone regularly hoses it out, but more often than not, luck is not on your side. As a general piece of advice, it's best to go to the toilet BEFORE a meal, if you get my drift...

Those squat jobs still exist all over China, particularly in rural areas, where they'll hang over an irrigation channel so your waste contributes to the next crop, but in the big cities they've installed a lot of nice normal loos, even Eco loos, and almost all hotels have western toilets. Here's my favourite: it was pristine, and when you stood up it bagged your crap, blasted a bit of cold air around and made ready for the next user. Not sure all that plastic was environmentally protective though....

Toilets aside, the joy of China is indisputably its food. Our days revolved around it. Sumptuous breakfast followed by some sightseeing, followed by a huge lunch of countless different dishes, a bit more sightseeing, then time to stuff ourselves yet again. It was difficult to work out where we'd fit in time to actually see some sights, as our guides were always making haste to get us to the next restaurant. We would taste a little of every dish, they were all so delicious, but we were bulging at the seams! We did once have a tense moment over one of the dishes, after spying dog meat in the market.

Even with all those meal stops, we managed to spend 3 days cycling in Guangdong Province, along quiet roads with little traffic, where we were a very new sight for the locals. We visited Seven Star Crags, where we took a boat trip through an underground river, played the black market and got to buy and let off an obscene amount of rockets and firecrackers. Then we went back for more! Kids in a candy shop, only a little more explosive...

Following our leisurely bike interlude, mum staying firmly rooted in the van, still wheezing away in the dank humid weather, we flew to Guilin, home to the mist shrouded karst scenery immortalised on numerous tacky Chinese paintings the world over. I believe Guilin has changed a lot, so here's a panorama I scanned and edited from some original photographs taken from one of the hills above the river.

Next we take a ferry to my first backpacker ghetto: Yangshuo.

Let's start with something easy!

2011-12-09T18:12:00.001+08:00

I'm 24 years old. I've never been overseas before. My only travel experiences as a child and young adult have been road trips in Australia. I'd stayed with friends and family, I'd done a lot of camping, I'd frequented quite a few backpackers' hostels between Sydney and Cairns and I'd even done a few weekends in budget holiday cabins. I'm feeling pretty nervous.

Alongside me is my mum, veteran of two odd years travel back in the fifties, when she'd taken the boat to England, worked a few jobs in London in order to travel through Britain and the Continent, then spent a further year working in Canada. Mum's not fazed at all.

I was leaving Australia to travel the world, with no return date. I had a one way ticket to Hong Kong, then onto Bangkok. There I planned to find a cheap ticket to Kathmandu, where I would join an overland tour to London. But first on the agenda was China.

Yes China! Mum had wanted to visit China back in her journeying days, but back in the fifties China was closed to the outside world. Then in 1979 she opened her doors to the West, and a steady stream of international investors and tourists began to arrive. Travel was difficult. The trains were rundown, the road system was almost non existent, the planes were Russian and the Chinese Communist government continued to restrict where tourists could and couldn't go, where they could stay, and what currency they could use. By the time we arrived in 1989 there were less restrictions, but it was still a very difficult thing to navigate the bureaucracy and get where you wanted to go.

For all the above reasons we decided to book a tour, using a tour agency based in Sydney, which arranged guides, accommodation and transfers. For 18 days we were to join a fully supported tour to visit Guangzhou, cycle through the Guangdong Province countryside, fly to Guilin and travel down the river Li to Yangshuo, visit Xian then on to Beijing. After 4 days in Beijing seeing all the sights, we were to add on a further 10 days of self guided travel. Aside from our accommodation and transfers, we'd find our own way around for a further 4 days in Beijing, 2 days in Shanghai, and a couple of days each in Suzhou and Hangzhou. Then we'd fly back to Hong Kong and mum and I would head our separate ways.

China back then was really hard work. Very few people spoke English and Caucasian tourists were a huge tourist attraction. Chinese people have little concept of personal space so they touch you anywhere, and take your possessions to inspect and pass around to their friends whilst laughing and talking in a language you don't understand. We felt like prize zoo exhibits in a very cramped enclosure, and when we left China after a month we were so glad to leave. It was only when I returned to China in 2008, to a very different place indeed, that I realised I had in fact been deeply traumatised by that initial visit, and was kicking myself that it had taken me so long to return. China today, although not as easy as places like Thailand, is a fairly easy place to travel in, now that most of those past restrictions have been lifted. And although the cityscapes and people's clothing have westernised, China continues to be a place of amazing beauty, fascinating history and friendly people. Though a lot less "in your face" than back then.

The morning we leave Sydney my mother develops her first ever asthma attack. She boards a plane feeling wheezy, short winded and very unwell. And when we arrive in Hong Kong she throws her cigarettes away forever. My first job is to get us to a hotel, because we've been delayed in Melbourne 5 hours, and we arrive in Honkers at 2am. No friendly tour agent to meet us at that time, so we jump in a share taxi and make our way to HK Island via the tunnel and a drop off in Kowloon. I'm on red alert. My mum's wheezing like a steam train and that flag fall was 30HKD when I'd heard it was only 6.50. So when we get to our destination I refuse to give our man more than 50 dollars (plus tunnel toll) and successfully avoid my first overseas scam. But at the time I thought even that was a ripoff.

Later that morning I find mum a local health clinic and doctor, get her loaded up with antibiotics and puffers, leave her back at the hotel and head out to purchase a new pair of spectacles. I'd heard that optical services were cheap in Hong Kong, so I took my prescription in and a few hours later picked up my new purchase. And I did all this within 24 hours of arriving in my first overseas country. But it was only Hong Kong after all.

Back at the hotel mum's getting cold feet and thinking about going home. Well she is having a rather hard time breathing! But her daughter's a doctor and assures her that she'll get better with medication and time, and this trip has been so lovingly planned. We agree she probably won't be doing any cycling, something I later discover was never on the cards anyway. She acquiesces to the bullying of her able bodied travel companion and joins me in meeting our one other tour participant, a geologist from Perth called Alex. He's a nice friendly guy, and over the next 10 days becomes increasingly desperate to win my affections. Mum and I unfortunately gang up on him, poor chap, as he really wasn't my type, and far too old at 42. "Yuck!" I'm only just out of nappies remember!

From Hong Kong, we take the train to Guangzhou, where we are met by our Chinese tour guide.
That's the next story.

Tales of past travel

2011-12-08T20:48:00.001+08:00

I'm in a quandary at the moment. I'm not really sure whether I'll have enough money to pull the plug totally next year, so have been thinking about probably staying in the workforce a little longer. No doubt the uncertainty in the financial situation worldwide makes me somewhat jumpy about the viability of living on investment income for the next fifty years, but hopefully within the next six months we'll all know whether we are totally up shit creek without a paddle, or not. I'm thinking the smelly option myself...

Realistically though, when I travel overseas in developing countries (I do like a good euphemism) I have an uncanny ability to live off the smell of an oily rag (don't mind a cliche or two either!). I'm continuously surprised when I read other people's travel blogs to realise that my comfort requirements whilst travelling are extremely low. People post pictures of "the worst ever room" they stayed in, and I look at it and am reminded of that wonderful Python sketch involving the Yorkshiremen: "Luxury!!" And I also appear to be in the less than 0.1% of the western population that can not only eat it, but adore Durian! Ok I'm weird, get over it..

But I wasn't always so easy going in the travel department, and I'm also totally able to lush it up when the situation arises, though I'm not sure I could ever totally stomach first class air travel unless someone else was footing the bill. I prefer to travel on the cheap because it gets you much closer to the people and culture in which you are visiting. But there's the crux, I don't do it 'cause I have to, but 'cause I want to, and I don't mind the discomfort. Then again, I love camping and sleeping out in the great outdoors. If you have never slept out under the stars in the Aussie outback in a swag, then put it on your bucket list.

Since all this technology hasn't actually been around all that long, I've got a lot of back stories of travel that I wrote in journals, and took pictures of using a film camera, with only 36 pictures per roll. Yes that's right, back last century!!!

I thought I might start to revisit them, pull out the old diaries and write about my travels from back then. On this blog. Sort of a blast from the past while I'm waiting for the future. Plus I've got to do something to keep myself amused whilst I'm camped up the beach if the wind doesn't blow. You bet I've got a 12 volt charger for the computer!! And there's mobile coverage on top of the sand dune, so internet's possible as well!!

In 1989 I left Australia and went travelling for almost 2 years. The first place I went to was China, then through Thailand and Nepal and overland to Europe, including the Middle East. I went to Petra before Indiana Jones! I remember this because when I saw him hooning up the siq on that horse at the end of the movie I was so jealous. We'd tried so hard to get the locals to let us loose galloping their horses through that narrow passage and they'd flatly refused. The rich American actor got to do it, not fair!!

When I got to the UK I bought a bicycle, and aside from the time I spent doing a little work around the NHS hospitals of England and Scotland, I spent the remainder of my travels on that bike, touring Ireland, Scotland, England and finally the European continent. The latter was in the summer of 1990, not long after the Berlin Wall came down, and I got to visit the east before the crowds and the cynicism set in. It was a truly remarkable time.

So I'm going to delve through my personal archives, scan some old pictures, and start blogging again about past travel tales. I hope you enjoy them.

This one's for you mum

2011-12-03T12:54:00.001+08:00

Just a quick few shots of the camper being aired prior to being packed and taken up to Coronation Beach, possibly next weekend. I've almost finished the painting - well all that I'm going to do this year anyway - and the wiring is finished and happily solar charging as I write this. Mum hasn't been over since the overhead power lines were removed, so she hadn't seen the unobstructed view.

I've just put up the shade sails this week: the big one to protect the house from the afternoon sun, and the smaller ones for the vege garden. Bit of a mish mash, but they do the job.

Another hot weekend forecast....

We need to talk about Hazel

2011-11-29T16:25:00.001+08:00

No, Hazel has not recently killed off the family next door and must contemplate her remaining senescence in doggy jail, but I haven't mentioned her for a while, and I've noticed that friends I haven't seen for a while also fail to mention her.

Hazel and I are kind of inseparable. She's been my furry best friend since she was a mere 8 weeks old and now she's heading into her fourteenth summer and slowing down alot. Hazel used to come out on my bush trips, in those seven years when I travelled around the Murchison two weeks a month providing mobile clinics. She was as much part of the team as the rest of us, and probably taught an entire generation of young aboriginal kids that dogs could be friendly and fun. For a post about her younger years, click here.

But these days she hangs at home and she has a bit of a routine going. When I leave for work she's often still sleeping on the bed, but then she heads next door to lie on the sofa in the sun most of the day. The kids say she wanders back home a bit after 4:30pm, so that she's there when I get home just before 5. Then she makes a big fuss, as only a Staffy can do, and expects to be taken for a walk. But a walk these days is more a slow meander, hence why I now find other ways to exercise that don't include walking the dog!

The reason we are having this talk is because Hazel has now got to that age when everyone expects she will be no more. When you've had a doggy companion for years, when so many people associate you with your dog, they start to get a little circumspect, fail to ask how Hazel is, you know, JUST IN CASE..
Thing is, I notice it, so I make a big effort to inform everyone that Hazel is still alive and kicking, if rather lethargically so.

Hazel has some pretty bad arthritis in her legs, meaning she can't jump up into the car, or onto my bed. Solution: I sold the bed and have moved to sleeping on the much lower futon bed, and she gets lifted in and out of the car. I now sleep so much better now that I'm not woken by a whinging canine wishing to snuggle up on the doona. She also has to watch herself going up and down the stairs, something she fails to do on occasions when she gets overexcited over a visitor or an impending excursion. Then she falls down the stairs. Not funny! You'd think she'd have learnt by now....

Hazel has always had a neurotic streak, and got quite depressed when I went overseas for 7 months despite being lovingly cared for by Cate, my housesitter. Recently I noticed that every time I hosted couch surfers she gets all shaky and starts wetting herself all over the house. I can only assume that she associates strangers arriving with luggage with me leaving her. Poor dear, I think she deserves my undivided attention so I've ditched hosting for the time being.

But she's generally pretty happy, if the sound of gentle snoring by my feet is any indication. She loves her beach walks, groans her appreciation of a good belly rub, and still loves accompanying me everywhere in the car. And I'm sure she'll enjoy spending her fourteenth summer camping up at Coronation Beach next month.

I have a spot in the backyard I've earmarked for her final resting place, but I think we've still a while to go. As long as she can still get up and down those stairs, keeps up her appetite, and bugs me to go for a walk I reckon she's not in too much pain.

She's just given me the hurry-up bark and is now doing the deep sighing that precedes the whinging that means she really would like to go for a walk soon! OK, we're off for a gentle meander down the beach, ciao!

I'm a bloody genius!

2011-11-26T12:52:00.001+08:00

For all of you following my foray into 12 volt electrics, thanks for following along. The battery has been secured, the wiring has all been done, and as I write this the battery is being charged successfully by my new solar panels. And today you get pictures!

This is the CTEK dual charger, with the battery housed in the box underneath. This charger cost about the same as a smart solar charger but has a few bonus extras. The red cable that you can see on the left hand side attaches to an Anderson plug coupling which connects the trailer to the car's alternator (I haven't got the car cabled yet), allowing me to charge the battery whilst driving along. The charger itself is a five stage charger, which means that it is fast and very efficient at getting the battery charged almost up to 100%. Many chargers are unable to charge batteries fully due to the small voltage differences at near capacity, thus reducing the actual amperage available to be used. However, with this sort of charger, combined with an AMG battery, I'm able to achieve 100% capacity when fully charged. The CTEK uses MPPT when solar charging, meaning that this also is highly efficient. My only disappointment with the CTEK is that it just has a few lamps to tell you charging is happening, whereas a small digital display telling you how charged your battery is would have been nice.

The cable crossing across the bottom, and you can see it again in the lower right corner, is the cable attached to the solar panels. I gained a new skill this week, as I had to join the panels together with some hinges, so I learnt how to use a hand rivet tool. Piece of cake you say! Not totally I say, because the hand tool is quite large for a small handed girl, and at one stage I managed to catch a bit of flesh in it. Ouch! Bruise now fading..

The small black square towards the top of the picture is a cigarette lighter socket, so I can run a light, or a 12 volt shower. This circuit is directly connected to the battery without a fuse.

The red and black cables disappearing off the bottom of the picture are the cables which connect the battery to the fused circuit box up the back of the trailer. I still have to mount the board onto the sidewall, but this is what it looks like. At present I've only got two loads running off the circuit board, the fridge and the triple cigarette lighter sockets. As I only want to run a couple of lights, that's all I need at the moment, but I've room to add more if I want.

Here's what it looks like all connected up. And right now it's happily charging up my battery. And yes, it all works brilliantly. Aren't I the genius?

Now that the electrics are done, I just have to finish derusting and repainting the trailer, a job I hope to have finished by the end of next weekend. It's not that difficult to fit in an hour or so before work each morning putting a coat of paint on, but the use of noisy power tools to remove rust at 5:30 in the morning might be a bit un-neighbourly, so that's left to the weekends.

But the wind is now blowing from the south, there's a bit of swell out there, so it's time to hit the beach for some windsurfing.

Why go to Perth when you don't have to?

2011-11-20T15:42:00.001+08:00

Geraldton now appears to be big enough that you can actually manage to find what you want without the 900km round trip to Perth. In fact, it turns out that for solar stuff, prices are very competitive, plus I've got somewhere local to go for advice. Especially when the steam starts erupting from my ears once the brain totally overheats. Nah, it's not that bad.

Trouble was, I'd left all my ski paraphernalia in Perth, and I really had to go pick it up soon, as Lil and Hans' place ain't exactly a mansion and that stuff sure is bulky. But then, due to good ol' Facebook, one of my friends messaged to say she was in Perth and very kindly schlepped over to pick up my gear and bring it home. All I had to do was venture south to Wandina and retrieve it, thanks Sharon you're a legend!

So, back to the local suppliers, where I managed to procure two 85W panels and a 120Ah AGM battery, all the required cabling and connectors, plus a few weird tools as well. And when I bought the wrong sized fittings (yet again!) I only had 10km to drive to exchange them. Big advantage!

Back at the ranch I began the serious job of designing and making a "state of the art" battery box which fits snuggly in the front toolbox, and drilling appropriately sized holes for the cabling. Seriously, do not underestimate the amount of mental concentration involved in nutting out just where and how all this stuff fits together, developing a game plan so that you buy enough - not too little or too much - cable, and that you run your cable through before (yes before!) you connect the end lugs.

And then you notice that there's another little job that you just might think of doing before you put the cabling through....

Yep, good old camper trailer maintenance. The trailer has a fair amount of surface rust - kinda goes with the territory when living on the coast - and I figure it'd be a whole lot easier if I touched up those areas where the cabling is going BEFORE everything is tied down and sealed. This is a job I started last summer, but it went on the back burner for the year so there's a wee bit of catching up to do. But I'm pretty handy with the drill and the wire brush attachments these days, so with safety gear donned, it's not such a bad gig.

Then the wind blows. Really blows. Like 30 knots plus, and a 3.5m swell. And I gulp down lunch and head up to Coros for a wild session in maxed out conditions. Clean waves, a 3.5m sail that keeps me in control, and when I get airborne (frequently) I seem to float for ages before landing. And I get some sweet rides with 2-3 bottom turns per wave, not bad given the power of that wind! Awesome fun, but today I'm knackered. Totally.

It's blowing 30 knots again today, but as much as I think I should get back out there I just can't hack another session, so I'm wimping out at home writing this blog. I'd rather put another coat of primer on the trailer and fire up the drill for some more rust busting!!

The wind looks a bit more reasonable for tomorrow, more around the 20-25 knot range, though the swell is dropping.

I may lose my "Nugget" pseudonym with this kind of talk, though after yesterday's session Kate decided to change it to "Hell-chick". I think I can safely keep the latter even if I take a day off...

There goes another gust - is that a roof top flying by??

Solar challenge part one

2011-11-07T20:14:00.000+08:00

It's November. A mere six weeks till Hazel and I take the camper on it's annual pilgrimage to Coronation Beach for a month of chilling out, windsurfing, and catching up with friends. You'd think I would have got my act together, but what with working full-time throughout September and October I now find myself scrambling to get the solar project finished in time. Here's hoping.

Last year I got so pissed off after flattening my car batteries yet again. My 60 Watt solar panel just isn't enough to keep the batteries charged while running the Engel fridge as well as some lights, so I did a massive amount of research and resolved to get my camper well and truly wired. And to do it myself.

Step one was research, which I talked about in a previous blog, then a trip to Perth to discuss panels, batteries and cables with the guys at the 12 volt shop. I bought a connection box and some sockets, but put off buying the big ticket items until I'd planned just exactly where everything would fit. Which is what I did this weekend. With help from a friend we discussed where and how to drill holes for the cables, how to secure the batteries, and other such mundane things. I should have headed down to Perth to finish off the shopping, but instead I measured up and headed out to the local stores to sort out the load wiring first.

This really taxed me. Getting the right sized cable and connectors might have helped, but no, even though I had written down the right size, I stupidly bought the wrong sizes, so had to go back into town and do some swaps, netting me a 90 cent refund! Then I drilled a big hole for the cables, wired up the connection box to a 3 socket outlet, and also rewired the external Engel connection, which had never worked since I bought the trailer. Not surprised really, given the original wiring setup. Cutting and crimping wire isn't difficult, but the right sized crimping tool makes all the difference, something that took a little getting used to via a few over squished connectors that had to be trashed. Thank goodness they aren't expensive, and at the end of the day I'm very happy with the results.

Next step is a trip to Perth for the batteries and some thick cable, and some more solar panels. Wiring up the batteries, solar regulator/charger and panels should be fairly straight forward, though I may need to get a professional to crimp lugs on some of the cables. Then I'll just have to mount the connection board, secure the batteries and I'll be done.

Sounds easy right?

Love is in the air

2011-11-06T16:44:00.000+08:00

I'm head over heels in love.

I'd been thinking about dumping my old flame for some time. Even though fashionably dressed, strong and invincible looking, he was showing signs of age and really slowing down. It was torture waiting for him to get going, in fact any time I wanted just a quicky it wasn't worth the effort. I thought I caught a whiff of the rotten smell of corruption, but when he started flashing at me, or anyone who went near him for that matter, it was time to let him go. I've thought of sending him to rehab to see if they can get him back to normal, but sometimes it's just time to cut and run and find oneself a nice new buff young thing.

Being on the lookout is one thing, taking the plunge with a new love is quite another. I'd liked what I had with the old guy, he was comfortable, knew what I liked and what my favourite things were, but I wasn't happy about his weight. You know how it is, how he's slim and groovy when you first meet him, but after a year or two the gloss fades and he lets himself go. And all around there's these new kids on the block, with their funky looks and come hither attitude, it's pretty hard to resist the temptation.

I stood on the sidelines for a while, watching the hubbub of others falling in and out of love with these cute new boys, and asking people what they thought. There's even websites you can go to for advice, how about that? But in the end I had to decide which young man was for me, and hope I'd made the right decision.

It's early days. We're just getting to know each other, and he's been trying to get the ex to give up a few of his trade secrets (like what my favourite things are), but the ex is being a bit protective and not giving in too easily so I may need to stay on friendly terms with the ex for a little longer. But my new babe is just gorgeous, he's super slim, got amazing staying power, and I reckon he's a keeper.

He's a bit different to the guys I've had before, uses different methods to get to the action, but that's OK by me, I'm flexible. He's also less disease prone, doesn't need to take vitamins and shit to stop getting viruses and that, and he just looks so good. People look at me with envy when he's on my arm, they all want to touch him too.

He's good with photography and videos, which means we're well suited, and will make a perfect travel companion, to share my adventures with. I'm enjoying cuddling up with him in bed watching a movie, or listening to some music, and just chilling.

Yep, I'm in love all right, with my MacBook Air!!

At long last the wind blows!

2011-10-28T18:29:00.000+08:00

It's almost November and today I got my first proper sail of the season. Southerly gusting to 30 knots, very small swell, quite a few tea baggers as well as a good crowd of local and international windsurfers. And there's a few more days of that wind yet to come. Can't say the swell forecast looks very promising though.

I got a couple of good ramps for some big air, and managed to grab a few bottom turns on the very occasional clean wave. But it was very choppy and the waves were almost non existent. If it wasn't my first day out it would have been very average indeed.

Best thing about the windsurfing here is catching up with friends. Lots of locals that I don't see the rest of the year, but also those from other parts of Oz and overseas who come to our little piece of paradise for the warm water, consistent winds and, ahem, waves. We have actually had some pretty massive swell recently, it just hasn't been paired with a ripping southerly. Unfortunately the elements don't always make our dreams come true.

My ribs are still giving me grief. My waist harness takes all the strain right through that part of my rib cage that I walloped with a rock, and the pain is pretty intense. May need to take pre sailing analgesia! And just grin and bear it.

Doesn't exactly put me in the mood for attempting loops though...

Sourdough and stickydate pudding

2011-10-22T13:33:00.000+08:00

It started about three weeks ago when I decided to have another go at making sourdough. For those who don't know, sourdough is made by creating a starter from flour and water that ferments from natural yeasts in the flour and you feed it every day, a bit like a tomaguchi (remember them?). After a week or so, the starter is fermenting nicely, and doubles in size within 24 hours of feeding, smells like overripe fruit and is full of bubbles. Then it's ready.

Next step is to combine your starter with more flour and water, and a little salt, then allow it to prove through some gentle stretching, folding, shaping and resting, over the next 5-6 hours. Then in what is turning out to be the hardest part, you transfer the gluggy mess onto a pre heated ceramic tile in your oven, having quickly slashed the top to allow the bread to "spring" and sprayed the oven to get steam happening. And then you wait for the magic to happen.

So far, I've made one loaf that I'm proud of. It looked both good on the outside, and the crumb was light and edible. The rest? Well flat and dense might be the most apt description, but some were still edible, usually after toasting first. Ho hum, practise makes perfect.

In the middle of my sourdough epiphany, I also signed up for the Oxfam Gather to Grow Campaign. This involved hosting a meal for friends, who were asked to donate what they would normally pay for a nice meal out. The money will go to the East Africa Food Crisis, which the federal government has agreed to match, dollar for dollar, any donations to registered charities like Oxfam. I had sixteen takers, of which 3 were kids and 3 were coeliacs. So the meal needed to be gluten free.

I decided that I wasn't yet ready to tackle gluten free sourdough, but the main course was easy. After my success with roast lamb for a crowd in NZ, I ordered up a couple of large baby baa legs from the local butcher, and proceeded to slow cook them over 4 hours in oven bags, using a combination of my oven, the kettle barbie, and the gas barbie. This provided me with more temperature options and more space, as I also had alot of veges to roast as well. And the whole meal was ready by the time the final straggling guest arrived at 7:30.

I'd set up tables on the verandah, having some friends do a mad dash, musical cars type escapade to get a large tabletop delivered and tables set, whilst kind of watching the semifinal between the Wallabies and All Blacks. I've been in NZ when the ABs lose a big game, and with the recent oil spill disaster, the Christchurch earthquake, and a really shaky economy, I was actually pretty happy that New Zealand won. That country really could not cope with another catastrophe. Seriously, losing the World Cup for NZ will be like 5 Christchurch earthquakes all at once. Then again, I may be underexaggerating...

The lamb, if I say so myself, was delicious. It fell off the bone, and melted in your mouth. And the veg were just right. Yep, the compliments were flying. And then came dessert....

I make a really good tira misu. Seriously. I've never had tira misu in a restaurant anywhere that's as good as mine. I use genuine ingredients: mascarpone, sponge finger biscuits, strong espresso coffee, Kahlua, and not too much sugar. And people loved it - the non coeliacs that is! But TM wasn't enough, and I still had to please the gluten free crowd, so I made a mulberry tart, using gluten free pastry mix and home grown mulberries, topped with double cream, which apparently was yummy too.

Inspired by a bad dessert experience in NZ, and a cooking show on Friday night, I'd just found a wicked recipe for sticky date pudding. So I decided to cook it, double the recipe quantity, which involved getting the ingredients all ready pre dinner and baking it on the fly whilst we were all hoeing into the lamb. Sticky date pudding is OK warm, but it's awesome hot, straight out of the oven. Somehow I got the timing spot on, and well, the silence was deafening. In between the oohs, the aahs and the scraping back of chairs in the mad dash for second helpings that is. With all that butter, cream and sugar, you bet it was awesome!

By the end of the night my wonderful friends had helped me raise a grand total of $750. Kate apologised profusely for all those snide putdowns she's been making for at least 3 years regarding the infamous post windsurfing session roast dinner disaster, and others were overheard using nice words that included lots of superlatives. If my Fiji friends had been there I'm sure there would have been some "best evah!"s.

I have to do this again. A great dinner with friends, and we raise money for a cause. Everybody wins. And I get to eat leftover stickydate pudding all week....

God forbid I have to talk to the locals!!

2011-10-03T15:54:00.001+08:00

Hey guys,

My girlfriend and I are looking into traveling in Sumatra for most of Jan and Feb. We are just interested in knowing if there will be a steady flow of other tourists for us to meet. We get along famously but meeting other people is important to us. We are not worried about spending some time alone but it would be preferable if there is always a good chance of meeting other tourists. If it helps we will probably spend most of our time in places such as....

Thanks in advance!

Last year I posted a thread on Lonely Planet's Thorn Tree forum about my impression that many people seem to go overseas with the intention of travelling within a well insulated bubble of other westerners. In fact, I would hazard a guess that the vast majority of so called independent travellers rarely seek to engage with the local population aside from purchasing goods at a market, taking photographs, or participating in a conversation with a fellow passenger. In fact, even the latter is rare, due to the custom of the western tourists sticking together, making it near impossible for a genuinely friendly local to get a look in.

Due to various scams, that sadly exist in high numbers in heavily touristed areas, many travellers develop a complete mistrust of the local people. Personally I think this completely unfair, as outside tourist areas the local people are invariably extremely friendly and hospitable, and are just as interested in my culture, as I am in theirs. Painting everyone with the same broad brush means missing out on some fantastic experiences. Like being invited to people's villages, into people's homes, being taken sightseeing, fed meals, shown sights not in any guidebook; the list goes on. And all for free.

How do I do it? Firstly I'm open to the experience. I'm not looking for a free ride, but I'm showing

a genuine interest in the people around me. Because I walk everywhere nosing around, usually with my camera out, asking if I can take photos, I often find interesting little markets, housing compounds, or farming practices and from there it starts. I'll want to taste the food being cooked, or ask what's in it, or see how hard it is to thresh rice with your feet and a couple of sticks in the middle of a paddock. And before I know it, I'm dancing with the family at a wedding and being invited home to the village. It's that simple.

It's not that simple if you have alot of luggage, or have high personal comfort needs, because hanging out with the locals might mean some seriously weird culinary experiments, and a stick may be needed to fend off the pig while you do your business!! After you've walked five hours over two mountains to get there that is. But at least there'll probably be no shortage of home made liquor!

Flexibility is of course the key, because when an offer comes up you need to be in a position to accept it. It's one of the reasons I don't plan too far ahead, or book accommodation ahead of time, because these offers are always spontaneous, and sometimes it just breaks my heart that I can't take up an offer because a visa is about to expire, or a plane has to be caught.

And do I get scammed? The short answer is no, but the longer answer is that if I'm wandering around Yogyakarta and a friendly man comes up to me and starts walking alongside me and starts to tell me about the place, then he's almost certainly going to expect payment for his service. So I have to decide right there and then whether I allow him to continue to accompany me or politely say no. If I accept his company and he provides a good service then he'll get a good payment, otherwise he'll get a mediocre payment, but I'll still pay him. I'm not stupid / naive enough to expect he's just a nice friendly guy who likes to show tourists around for free in a really heavily touristed part of Indonesia. On the other hand, when a group of young school students ask to practice their English with me in a small provincial town, then agree to accompany me to a traditional village, give me their phone numbers and invite me to visit them in their village, there's no financial payment at all.

If people go to a country to learn about the culture, how come so many hang out in backpacker dives with other backpackers, don't eat in local restaurants or even try the local food, and say horrible things about the locals? In fact, why do they leave home at all?

I got a bit of abuse on the Thorn Tree forum, which made me think I may have hit a bit too far below the belt. I mean, people travel for all sorts of reasons and as long as it's legal who am I to judge? But when people claim to be interested in the culture yet their actions contradict this, I'm just here pointing that out. To experience the culture of a place you've kind of got to step out of your own just a little. It's like getting into a hot bath, it starts with dipping a toe in first. And then it gets easier.

One person responded to my post with a frightening explanation: that travel these days has become yet another consumer commodity. One travels to add destinations to one's CV, one expects the same level of luxury as at home, and the culture, food, and people of the destination are really beside the point. I think there may be something in that.

As for the quote above which is lifted from Thorn Tree, I have no idea what these two want out of their holiday in Sumatra, but they sure as hell want to make sure they are surrounded by their own kind while they do it. The way it reads you'd think Sumatra was unpopulated....

Oh wait, it's got orangutan!!

Things I hate about travelling

2011-09-24T18:36:00.001+08:00

Having described myself as a travel tragic, I need to be honest and say that, well, some things about travelling just suck. Here's my list of pet hates about travel:

1. Transit days

Sure the journey is supposed to be more important than the destination, but in my mind the journey has a start and an end point, and that point isn't when I walk outside my house with a packed bag and head to the airport. No matter how hard I try, I just can't build up enthusiasm for the drudgery of multiple airport transfers, overnight stopovers, bad airplane food and sleeping overnight in airport lounges to get to my destination. I do my research, I know which airports have what facilities, where the best spots to sleep are, and where to get the bus into town from, but those days are just grim. It's only when I get to my budget room with fan and shared bathroom in some flea-pit in the city of my destination that I can breathe a huge sigh of relief, relax, and head out on the street to start my adventure.

Maybe I just hate airports.

2. The crying poor

When I travel I like to see and experience what life might be like in the countries in which I travel. So I travel cheap, take local transport, sleep in basic accommodation, eat at street stalls and walk everywhere (you find so many more treasures round hidden corners when you walk). I totally acknowledge that I am perceived as rich by those people in developing countries who live on a few dollars a day and never in their lifetime will have the chance to have leisure time, like a few weeks holiday or the opportunity to travel overseas. Sure some of them treat me like a walking ATM, but far more of them show me what real hospitality is. I've been invited to share meals, stay the night, driven around sightseeing, bought presents, all by people materially so much poorer than me, yet so much richer in their hearts.

A typical refrain I hear from many budget travellers is how all the locals are ripping them off, how they are appalled at having to pay a tourist price rather than a local price. At how the locals look at them in disbelief when they try and explain that they too are poor. Sure, you're trying to travel without working for a whole year. But you're travelling on the amount of money it would take that shopkeeper a lifetime to make, or longer. Perspective guys, a dollar more to you might be a lot more food on the table for the week for a malnourished family.

Alot of budget travellers aren't cheap travellers anyway. They'll shell out for expensive alcohol, aircon, hot showers, burgers and pizza in a backpacker cafe, yet complain about being ripped off 2 dollars on a bus trip. I'm not saying that people should travel outside their comfort zone, but just quit the "poor me" refrain OK? You're not!!

3. Transportation complaints

When travelling in poor countries the local transportation is usually downright dangerous. The vehicles frequently break down, fall apart, malfunction and are driven by maniacs. Not to mention all the other unpleasant stuff like blaring techno music in the middle of the night, the noise and smell of accompanying livestock, and your neighbouring passenger regularly throwing up for the entire journey. But you kind of knew all that before you got on said transport, and somebody also probably told you it would take quite a few hours as well. But it's so cheap, like you couldn't even buy one Big Mac for the price of that 5 hour bus trip!

What some people fail to realise is that local transport has to be cheap, or else the locals couldn't afford to use it. Simple things that we expect in our countries, like safety standards, road rules, and not spitting in public, are really just expensive luxuries. But the whingeing westerners complain from their eyrie on the back seat of the bus at how uncomfortable the suspension is, at how this bus shouldn't be on the road it's so unsafe, at how they are going to miss their next connection, ad nauseum. I try to ignore them, as I'm sitting with the ladies down the front, on the shaded side, where the suspension is much more comfy, and sharing snacks. I realise that time is very fluid and once you add in contingencies like breakdowns you've got to expect any long distance travel in local transport to take at least twice as long and be twice as uncomfortable as you envisaged. And for god's sake, never sit up the back where the suspension will throw you around even more.

And if you can't hack the local transport discomfort, hire a car, take a plane, just quit whingeing about it OK? What the hell did you expect at that price? A stretch limo???

4. Diarrhoea days

I have some really funny stories about some of these days, and I read a really hilarious account on someone's blog (here), but at the time they aren't too pleasant. Actually it's not fair to call this a hate, but when you've experienced the dreadful sensation of a wet fart when you aren't wearing knickers, I can tell you it wreaks havoc with the psyche. Being holed up in your chosen accommodation, rushing to the toilet every time some flatulence needs to be expelled, just in case it's accompanied by more solid contents, feels like a nasty trap. Will you ever be able to fart without fear again? The answer to that is yes, but in the meantime you'll probably spend one more day staying near public conveniences while you trial farting with freedom again. Diarrhoea days can really stuff up your travel plans, particularly if you've limited time.

5. Exploitation

It's really hard sometimes to see the exploitation of children and the poor when you travel. To see young kids begging, appalling work conditions in sweat shop factories, and hear how some western companies pay a pittance for a product that they sell in the west at a 1000% markup. I try hard when I travel to locate the people who make the handcrafts I purchase, to not buy things at "tourist markets", and to be happy that the price I pay is good value for both me and the vendor. Doesn't mean I'm not a hard bargainer, but I won't quibble over what is only a few cents for me. Sure I've sometimes paid far more than I should have, but I've also paid considerably less on a number of occasions when I've ventured far off the tourist trail and purchased direct from the producer. And the journey has always been worth it. But I get so angry about the kids being exploited by adults for money, like the little girl singing in the bus near Surabaya for a few coins, or the kids requesting money for an orphanage outside a temple at Angkor. It's simply not right!

6. Going home

I always enjoy being home once I get there, but the realisation that a trip is over and that I'm going to have to endure one or more of those dreadful transit days to get home is definitely a pet hate. There's only one solution to this one, and that's to become a perpetual traveller.

Soon.....

A makeover

2011-09-18T20:07:00.000+08:00

Thought I'd play around a bit with the blog's appearance. This is mainly influenced by me doing some serious trawling through other people's blogs and thinking mine could be a bit easier to navigate. Like a better link to my photo page on Picasa, and a more interactive way of linking to older posts.

I'm a slow learner on the tech stuff. I'm not stupid, just lazy. Anyone with a good looking website has either paid a professional to do it or has spent alot of time making it look good. Sometimes I wander over to Blogger Help but mostly I find their advice a bit scary, especially when it suggests adding code in somewhere. That stuff looks like it could blow up my OS, yeah I know it won't but what if it does? OMG I've got a phobia to computer code!! Wonder whether that's got a name yet? Luddite and technophobia are too broad, I'm just scared of the funny language with the << and >> all over the place. I've mastered emoticons though ;) And a few weeks ago I learnt how to SMS using interpretive text. OK, maybe I am stupid....

Anyway, I did pop over there yesterday and discovered Dynamic View. This was after I discovered I could put page links at the top of the blog and could then post the photos link there as well. I'd also spent about 2 hours trying to make something interactive on the pages through some rather tiresome cut and pasting of web links, when I finally discovered Dynamic View. If you haven't noticed, I like Dynamic View. I hope you do too.

Go on. Click on the link above and see what happens.

No, your computer will not explode, I promise.

Impatience

2011-09-16T16:08:00.000+08:00

There's been a bit of soul searching going on this week for me. About 2 years ago I made the decision to retire when I hit 50, which is still a while away, and go travelling. Although my job is challenging and fulfilling, I'm also totally over spending my working life having to make what are often quite stressful decisions about
people's health care. I doubt I am alone in this, as many GPs are having to make increasingly complex decisions about patient care. The average patient seen by a GP these days has more chronic health problems, takes more medication, and requires more complicated management than the average patient 15-20 years ago. That's how far medicine has improved, people died of lots of things back then that we now manage to keep them alive with.

Let's not exclude the worried well. The ones who don't actually have anything wrong with them but have seen something on the internet or television that they need my advice about. You get fairly good at fielding these ones, but it's still a strain, as you still have to use caution to ensure you aren't missing something. It's quite an art to walk that line between over investigating and trusting in your knowledge and clinical experience when faced with a demanding patient.

Every job has its fair share of stressful decision making, and although the fantasy of being a checkout chick at Woolies has great appeal, I'd rather bypass the boredom, save up the dollars, and give the whole game away. Of course I can always do some short term locums, but it isn't quite such a rosy idea when you realise that my costs (registration, insurance etc) start at $6000 per annum for the privilege of working. Now I can spend 6 months travelling in Indonesia for that!!

Returning from my six week ski trip, I discovered that my succession planning regarding an Australian trained doctor in the practice had fallen through. Funnily enough because the aboriginal wife of this doctor doesn't want to bring her kids up near the bad influence of her own family in Geraldton. Yep, that's how screwed up some families are around here, and I totally support her doing the best by her kids. At least our doctor is going to work in Aboriginal healthcare somewhere else, not totally lost to the cause, and maybe they will return to Geraldton one day. And it's made me realise that in the end it isn't my responsibility to try and get home grown doctors in the practice, and that I shouldn't delay my departure accordingly.

So that leaves me with only 2 provisos on the retirement plan: money and Hazel. Although she's getting quite deaf, and the arthritis limits her activities a bit, she's happy and healthy for a 13 year old staffy. She may get through this summer, but I doubt she'll make it through another - age has a nasty habit of catching up with us all and I just thank how lucky I am that she's still in my life.

Which leaves us the M word. Just how much is enough? I can't even access my super till I'm 60, so I have to be self supportive at least until then, which leaves me needing a mixture of savings and investments. Well I'm doing OK on both those fronts, but having decided to move forward the retirement date, I thought it might be a good idea to start earning more money now. I've been part-time for the last 2 1/2 years and this week, after all the agonising, I decided to go back to full time. On a six week trial.

It's going to be an interesting ride, having really enjoyed the freedom of part time work, but as a short term option it doesn't feel so daunting. I'm pretty sure I'll go back to part time over the summer (so I can get lots of windsurfing in), and if my mental health holds out I'll do some extra hours again next year. In that way I can fill up the coffers quicker, and maybe take a year off the retirement date.

And because I don't have to supervise said doctor after July, I've already pencilled in a 7 week trip to the NZ ski fields for next year. Why not??

Wading through the jungle

2011-09-10T11:27:00.000+08:00

6 weeks away from home. My meteorological predictions were completely disproven this year, because whilst we weren't getting much precipitation over in NZ, it's been raining regularly back in Geraldton and the plants have been growing. Alot. So much rain that the driveway is covered in 2 foot high weeds!! And the vege patch? It's a jungle!!

It's been a colder than usual winter in Geraldton, or at least it's had lower temperatures for longer. I'm surprised to be needing to wear a jacket or jumper even during the day at times, but the biggest surprise is to return to an aphid free garden. For the first time in years I'm able to enjoy home grown broccoli in September, without having a single aphid infesting the plants and making them inedible. My neighbours have been cropping the veges as they mature, but there's still heaps left for me. Once I've waded through the tomato plants, found the lettuce and capsicum growing underneath them, marvelled at the new growth on the banana palm and dragon fruit vine, and removed the oat grass and other undesirables, I then need to start on the driveway. Perhaps I should take in WWOOFers....

A six week holiday does wonders for the psyche. Friends are keen to see you again, work doesn't seem half as hard as usual, and even Hazel didn't give me half the basting she usually does. I think that's because she considers the neighbours part of her pack and only one member (me) was missing so it was almost business as usual. She so adores sleeping on the couch in the sun on their verandah during the day, whether I'm home or not!

The persistent colder weather means we haven't yet cycled into the summer sea breeze pattern. Until the land warms up, those easterlies will be cold and we'll all be hanging out for a sail. There was a light souwester on Monday, but I have to admit that my injuries are still debilitating enough to probably keep me off the water for another week or so. Whether I cracked a rib or not, I'm unsure, but I sure as hell bruised 'em bad.

So it's rehab in the garden pulling weeds for me this weekend. Sweetened by home grown strawberries. Yum!

Wanaka Photos link

2011-08-31T13:46:00.000+08:00

Have been taking the occasional photo, mostly off mountain, of some of the scenery around Wanaka and antics back at the hostel. Video footage up on the mountain needs to be edited first so stay tuned, but here's the link to the photo page.

Not quite out for the count

2011-08-30T09:14:00.000+08:00

Now mum when you read this please do not get upset. Shed a tear or two but I don't want to hear any of that advice along the lines of maybe I should give up a sport where one minute you're having a lovely time and the next you are careering over the edge of a cliff and rolling down a hill into a rock. OUCH!!!

After my collision last week I took it easy for a couple of days, hit the swimming pool for some self managed hydrotherapy, and then got back on the slopes. Kel and Janet are here for 9 days, so I joined them at
Cardrona on Saturday for a cruisy day on much flatter terrain than Treble Cone. It was quite a revelation to realise that my skiing has improved massively and that I wasn't bothered heading off piste to find a few patches of untouched snow after a 10cm dump overnight. One of the troubles with Treble Cone is that the terrain is so steep, often narrow, and frequently full of bumps, so you work hard for your enjoyment, and I haven't had that feeling of being in control very often. The trip to Cardrona really improved my confidence in my skiing ability.

And then calamity struck!!

The cat tracks linking the different ski valleys at Cardrona are really flat, so flat that you can't get any speed up on them and often have to pole or skate to get across. As a result they seem to get a few parallel grooves in the snow, which can be nasty if you catch an edge on them. I'd been very careful when using the tracks, but on the last run of the day I must have been a bit too blase, caught an edge and just careered sideways straight off the edge.

Unfortunately the lovely thick soft snow I fell into was peppered with rocks, and my chest bounced off one of them, causing me to be temporarily winded. Kel helped rescue me and my ejected skis, which were half buried in knee deep snow at jaunty angles. I climbed back to the track, we inspected the somewhat amusing skid marks, then popped back into the skis and skied back to base before the pain became so unbearable that I'd need professional help.

The trip back to town in the car was painful, as have been the last few days. Finding a comfortable sleeping position has been a challenge, given my left chest and right shoulder are both sore, but after a visit to the local medical centre I now have enough codeine and tramadol to start my own illegal laboratory!! Laughing is lethal, so joining friends for a comedy at the local cinema would be bordering on masochism. If I stay in one position I'm fine, but any sudden movements and a massive spasm down my left side leaves me in tears. Have you any idea how painful a burp or a hiccup can be? I was lying in bed last night thinking if I don't move soon I'll have pressure sores! Between a rock and a hard place (pun intended)!!

I am getting better every day, but whether I get in any more skiing before I leave is a moot point. I'm not that fussed, as the weather is quite warm here now, and I've made a few friends to while the time away with. I am hoping I'm better enough to survive the trip home, fingers crossed on that one.

And soon there'll be seabreezes!!!

Goddess wipes out snowboarder BREAKING NEWS

2011-08-24T12:14:00.000+08:00

It was fast, it was furious and that fucking snowboarder should learn not to traverse straight across a minor slope at such speed. There I was skiing leisurely down the left hand side of a wide slope, small turns, minding my own business when out of my right peripheral vision comes scooting an out of control snowboarder right in front of my path. Nowhere to go, I just plowed right into him, toppling him ass over tit, losing my ski, bending my pole and leaving me with a rather sore right shoulder. Bugger!!!

With a lesson booked for 10 that morning, I was just warming up, but now I was down for the count.
The snowboarding crew helped me back on my feet and into my ski and I cruised painfully down to the base. A quick inspection of the shoulder revealed no deformity or bruising, just a little redness. I could move my arm in all directions, but boy it was painful. Short trip to the medical centre for drugs and snow-in-a-bag, a postponement of my lesson, then a few coffees in the cafe before one of the locals gave me a lift home after lunch. And the shoulder is feeling better, thank goodness for anti-inflammatories....

Kel and Janet have arrived for 9 days, after me badgering them for at least 2 years to GTFOH rather than only ski the piddly slopes of Perisher. And at 70 they get to ski TC for free so why not? Am looking forward to skiing with them, and maybe even going heliskiing if my shoulder comes good. Pushing myself up out of thick snow with a sore shoulder...... don't think so!

The goddess is into her final two weeks, so is hoping to get out to a few more restaurants while her Sydney friends are here. The restaurant scene in Wanaka has definitely improved, even since last year, with some really good eateries. Pricing is about comparable with Geraldton, or cheaper once you factor in the squishy NZ exchange rate but there's a severe lack of BYO opportunities. The food quality is a cut above Gero though, but that's hardly a complement. Tonight it's lamb shanks and sticky date pudding at Kel and Janet's lodge, will go down nicely with the Central Otago Pinot Noir I bought today. Goddess turned snotty food critic!!!

Well I must pop up to the pool for a little personal hydrotherapy. All doped up, the shoulder is definitely feeling alot better.

And as for the snowboarder? He was big and burly and I hardly left a scratch. Damn!!!!!!

Powder maketh the goddess......fall over!!

2011-08-21T13:11:00.000+08:00

I arrived in a blizzard, then after 3 weeks of fairly benign weather a huge cold front hit NZ again and brought most of the country to a standstill. Roads and schools were closed, the garbage trucks failed to turn up and news reports said that up to 3/4 of the country was under snow. Even snow flurries in Auckland, pretty impressive stuff. And powder fell in the mountains, yippee!!

Back in sleepy Wanaka, I've moved into flash digs while Marko (a friend from home) joins me for a week of skiing. He's much better off piste than me so I have sent him off to enjoy himself whilst I torture myself trying to master the mountain. Unfortunately a persistent chest cold has worsened since he arrived and he is now under the weather and not able to take advantage of the awesome conditions.

The last few days have been marginal on the mountain, with dreadful visibility which makes for exciting times when confronted by ice underfoot, then a soft pocket of pow, all in the space of a few metres. My ability to ski in whiteout conditions is non existent, due to debilitating attacks of nausea, dizziness and a quite distressing propensity to just fall over in a crumpled heap! Thankfully I have discovered that seasickness tablets work well, and that this ski goddess has presciently brought some with her. But today the sun came out and it was time to find those freshlines and join every person in the South Island who could get up to Treble Cone in tracking out the powder.

Now I am a total powder novice, so I cunningly recruited myself the services of young Heidi again for a morning of bouncy turns and queue jumping on the saddle quad. And what can I say? Powder is lots of fun! And wonderfully soft to fall into, and hilariously funny, albeit inconvenient, when boot ejections happen. And if I can just bloody well get my upper body to stop that bending like a banana thing, I might just nail it. So I've booked a few more lessons so Heidi can crack her whip and push me down the black runs and massage my psyche just a little. Ok, a lot!!

And yes, I got some freshlines today!!!!

Goddess on ice

2011-08-09T18:32:00.000+08:00

After a wonderful 2 weeks of fantastic snow conditions we are now experiencing some rather nasty freeze-thaw weather combined with high winds which have turned the snow fields rather icy. Bad memories of the top of Thredbo come to mind... but never fear, more snow will arrive soon enough and I can stop freaking out at the grating noise of skis skidding across what feels like a skate rink.

The good news is that after a week of really hard work and the combined efforts of Guenther and Heidi I can now find an edge on my skis and actually make it across the rink, down the steep slopes and carve my way somewhat stylishly into the queue line without making a complete arse of myself, or land on my arse for that matter! Let's just say things are on the up.

The hostel crowd are a fun bunch and last Saturday I cooked a roast dinner for 13 people. Two legs of lamb and a massive pile of veges. Went down a treat and I even converted a few people to lamb. The secret is the slow cooking, something certain windsurfing friends will never forgive me for after cooking a roast once after a big day out on the waves and we didn't eat till after 10!! We drank a hell of a lot of nice bottles of my red wine that night though....ungrateful wretches.

Have run into "freestyle John" a few times, but since he skis Cardrona and I ski TC we haven't seen alot of each other. He did pop over to TC on Sunday when Cardies was closed but I only did one run with him because ice skating just isn't my thing. Call me a piker, but I came here to enjoy myself, not break another bone!! Apparently there were people windsurfing on the lake in the freezing winds on Sunday - these Kiwis sure are a hardy lot!

With just less than 4 weeks to go I think I'm on track to achieving my goals for this trip, so tomorrow, once the ice melts a bit, I'm hitting the bumps.

I will try not to break anything.....

Ski goddess gets her legs

2011-07-29T10:13:00.001+08:00

After 12 months off snow, and 11 months bloody hard work in the gym, Monday morning dawned to overcast skies and the chance to see just how the legs would cope back on the steeps of Treble Cone. After picking up the newly tuned skis it was onto the bus, driven by the irrepressibly French ex ski instructor and erstwhile photographer Thierry, who had sent me a Facebook message a few days prior to tell me the snow was "good". Good?? It is awesome!! Top to bottom cover, in fact well below the access road, of lovely soft, even dare I say it, powdery snow!!

I eschewed my usual pattern of toilet, cafe latte then ski slope by skipping the coffee and getting straight onto the piste. With NZ school holidays still in full swing, the queues were crowded but soon I was up and away in windy below zero temperatures to the top of the six seater. After three runs, the planks on the ends of my boots started to feel like they had a reason to be there and it was time for my first coffee in the TC cafe. And at $1.50 off the usual price I'm sure to get my season pass savings back in no time!!

The rest of the day went by in a whirl. The weather was bitingly cold, around 8-10 below zero, but with great visibility and lovely soft snow to turn on it was fantastic. And by lunchtime I had achieved goal number one: NO JELLY LEGS BY NOON!!! Goal number two is quite another story.

With strong southerly winds, The Saddle stayed closed but for a few hours most of this week, and the one time I got over there I managed only one run down Bullet before the chair closed and had to return via Magnum in the powder bowl. This was during a lesson yesterday, with my new bestest instructor Heidi, who did an excellent job of removing some rather nasty little cobwebs working on my psyche. I can actually ski quite well. I just have to believe I can, and after hurting my knee the year before and breaking my arm last year, it's a little psychological hurdle I just have to get over. So Heidi took me down the steeps, through the chutes, over the moguls and well, showed me I could actually do it. As long as I bloody well stood up tall and stopped bending in the middle like a soggy biscuit.

For those waiting on photos, with my little point and shoot lost in action, you'll have to wait a little longer. If skies are clear tomorrow I might take the video cam up, but today is a rest day, as on Sunday I start a week long all day ski camp. And hopefully Heidi will be my instructor. Can't wait.

The Ski Goddess Arrives

2011-07-29T08:56:00.000+08:00

After a more than usually traumatic day of travel I arrived in Wanaka last Sunday evening. Here's a recap of the adventure to get here.

Alan and Demi kindly dropped me off at the airport for my 4pm flight, which arrived as planned and then didn't leave. A small matter of some sort of engine problem, so the plane was grounded and we had to wait for the happy news that a replacement plane and crew would take us down to Perth at 7:30pm instead. Enough time for my midnight connection, but no time to catch up with friends Jane and Sally in Perth, see Sally's new house and enjoy a home cooked dinner of beef bourguignon washed down with some nice red wine. Bummer!! But Rhonda came and picked me up and me and the kids took Hazel for a final walk before back in the car and back to the airport.

The Perth departure lounge was surprisingly quiet for a Saturday night, and at least one TV monitor was tuned to SBS for the penultimate stage and ultimate decider of Le Tour de France. Unfortunately with no sound. To the sound effects of some crap on a commercial station, a fair handful of stalwart bike fans cheered our Cadel to his awesome victory with a fantastic individual time trial that made little Andy Schleck look like a common cycle commuter. And then Cadel cried, as we all expected him to do, in true Aussie sports tradition. My prediction: Cadel for Australian of the Year next year, us Aussies just can't resist a tearful triumphant sportsman.

Onwards to Sydney on the redeye, where news of Cadel's victory hadn't reached the eastern shores as they had all been sleeping and it was too late for the morning broadsheets. A planned breakfast date with my sister Vanessa didn't eventuate after she unfortunately slept in after only getting to bed at 4:30am. How she can party that late at her age is beyond me! We had a good chat over the phone anyway, then into the next departure lounge, where I scouted around for a likely ride to Wanaka. I got lucky, finding a couple with a 4WD hire who were happy to give me a lift. All sorted.

It didn't end there. As we approached Queenstown the pilot informed us that there were snow showers and a fair likelihood that he might not be able to land so just not to panic if we suddenly revved and headed up again. But we were lucky, and with snow covered hills all around, we came down through the valley and landed first go. Then looked out the window to whiteout. Lots of snow, all over the ground, actively snowing, very pretty. What a nice entree to a ski trip.

Not quite. A snowstorm which is pelting snow down on Queenstown isn't exactly a regular event. We had arrived in the middle of a huge cold spell and storm front, which over the next 12 hours covered the entire South Island, including Christchurch and Dunedin, in up to 20cm of snow that ground whole cities to a standstill. Unbelievably, we were the only plane that managed to land in Queenstown, the earlier flight from Melbourne hadn't made it, and other airports were similarly closed. Somehow, we got in, then the heavens closed.

Whilst my new friends organised their car, I had a chat to a few locals and bus drivers, to discover that the long road through the gorge via Cromwell wasn't passable due to a "bus blockage" and that the only way we would get to Wanaka was over the Crown Range. With chains, in a 4WD, through a snowstorm!! The Crown Range is very exposed, and can be extremely treacherous with a nasty switchback which was totally covered in snow, but my friends knew no better and were up for it, so we schlepped our bags across the snow covered carpark to the 4WD, made sure we knew where the chains were, and headed slowly on our way. As guide and the only one who'd ever put chains on before, I well and truly earnt my seat, and 2 1/2 hours later, with frozen fingers and wet muddy knees, we were in Wanaka dropping the ski grear in for a tune up before saying our goodbyes. At last I had arrived.

I'm staying again at Wanaka Bakpaka, which has comfy warm rooms, a great kitchen and a fantastic common room looking out across the lake. And when I went into town to go shopping, who should the first person I bump into be? John Rendell, one of my Coronation Beach windsurfing friends, and apparently two other friends are staying up at Cardrona. Small world.

And then it was time to sleep, because the skiing begins on Monday!! Bad luck about the snorer in my dormitory....

These guys are amazing

2011-07-21T23:04:00.001+08:00

I am not naive enough to believe that Le Tour de France is completely clean. This is afterall the premiere race in the world, and it has a very dirty history of drug abuse for the purpose of getting athletes over the mountains and trails for a period of three weeks. But I do believe that the public expects the tour organisers to do everything they can to make it as clean as possible, and drug cheats will be ostracised. As a result I think it very unlikely that the majority are using perfomance enhancing drugs, but I don't think it is 100% clean, there's just too much money riding on it (pun intended).

If you are an elite athlete, who wants to excel, there is always the temptation to use whatever it takes to get you there. Now that would be OK if everybody had the opportunity to use those drugs, and that those drugs were safe for you and didn't end up affecting your health in the long and short term. But if you decide that you don't want to use something that could reduce your life expectancy, could cause you to have a premature heart attack or stroke, then it's just an unfair advantage, so yes, I support the position of a drug free sport.
Whether it's ever possible is a mute point, keep up testing guys and keep on excluding and dumping. Actually do it better guys than you already are, the public demands it.

So coming from the view that not everybody has entered this race using drugs, it's an amazing feat for the fact that there are definitely some people that finish 3 weeks of incredible hardship within the time limit and haven't used them, For them. I salute. For anyone else, I hope some day you get caught. In the meantime, I have to just hope that some of those up the top end of the field are doing it without the drugs, And let's face it, they're being tested much more too. So I have to throw away the cynicism and just enjoy the ride.

This year's Tour has been a great duel, because none of us know who is going to end up with the maillot jeune. The race through the alps has at last brought us some excitement after 2 weeks of speculation around the main contendors. Cadel Evans has performed exceptionally well, the Schlecks have been rather disappointing until now, and Contador has only recently started to show his usual form. The excitement is at last on.

The internet is a cruel thing

2011-07-17T09:14:00.000+08:00

I am green with envy. Too much salivating over the webcams and posted videos of Treble Cone's opening day when a pristine white mountain got shredded. If I didn't have this access to all that information I'd be none the wiser and would just be looking forward to my ski trip without all the extra excitement. Frankly, the anticipation of skiing for six weeks on a well covered mountain when I'm seriously ski fit is almost killing me.

if you want to know what I'm talking about,
check this out: http://vimeo.com/26414896

Meanwhile, back at the ranch the rain keeps falling and my garden looks awesome. The paddy melon got evicted soon after my last post, and the broccoli have begun to flower. Whether they grow enough this week for me to harvest any is an unknown. I swear some plants triple in size overnight!!

My new 9000L watertank is full, the gutters have been cleared of debris and I've just to resurrect the fence where the small watertank buckled it so the neighbours can put in their veges. If the rain keeps up for a few more days I'll have two full tanks! I like this rain, I'm sure it'll be heading over the ditch in a week or so as snow after it's rammed into antarctica and kicked back up to the west side of the south island. Well I'm sticking to my metereological theory anyway, it worked mighty fine the week before!!

I'm all packed so now it's a matter of getting through all the last minute chores, updating my facebook page on the daily countdown till I leave, and somehow struggling through one more week of work. Uggggh!!

2 weeks to go

2011-07-10T13:08:00.000+08:00

After anxiously perusing the webcams, weather forecasts and ski forums for the last few weeks, it is extremely refreshing to now see beautiful white snow covering the mountains rather than brown tussock. The mother of all storms has hit the south island of New Zealand, and Treble Cone has received over a metre in 3 days! In order that this new snow doesn't just slide down the hill in an avalanche, the punters need to wait for it to pack down and for the ski patrol lads and lasses to deem the mountain safe. But with gale force
winds and more snow forecast for the next few days, any Aussie school holiday skiiers look to be spending half their trip by the fireside instead. Thank goodness I delayed my usual departure by a week, I'm hoping for bluebird days and great snow conditions by the time I get there. Can't wait!!

Another advantage of my cunningly timed trip (I usually book for after the Oz kids go back to school) is that watching the TDF live from NZ just isn't possible due to the time difference. WA time is just perfect: 8:30pm start with an 11:00 to 11:30 finish. Admittedly I'll miss the final day but it's usually all over bar the champagne by then anyway and the sprint up the Champs Elysee isn't really my cup of tea. Plus we know Cav's gonna win that again, ho hum.

I must say that at this point I am going to have to eat my words because Cadel is riding fantastically. And his team are providing admirable support, but whether they can do it in the mountains?? Am unsure whether Alberto has been avoiding steak recently, but his few little surges so far seem a little weak. We shall have to wait for Le Tourmalet where we will all be looking for the Schlecks and Contador to make their move. And for Cadel to stick to their wheels like the tenacious little bugger that he is. I'd love him to make his own break, and he actually looks strong enough this year to do it, but I'm no tactitian...

Back to Geraldton, where the weather has turned positively glacial and I am tucked up by the fire, with occasional forays outside for gardening jobs. The self seeded "cucumber" is starting to look like it isn't a cucumber and looking more like a paddy melon!! Haven't pulled it out in disgust just yet as I haven't totally confirmed it's a toxic weed. Soon, just waiting to see which way the fruits go. The broccoli looks great, but unlikely to flower before I leave so the neighbours can feast instead. Not bad payment for dog sitting I reckon. But the snow peas are producing, and I've lots of greens, a few capsicum coming on and a surplus of chillis. Hot chunky vege soup straight from the garden, yummo!!

After 11 months of regular gym work, I took a holiday last week, only venturing in for my regular Monday PT session. No runs, no squats, no core work, just pure unadulterated sloth!! I feel quite invigorated after the rest and will be back into it again for the next 2 weeks till I leave.

And then it'll be time to unleash the ski goddess...

It's on its way!

2011-06-25T20:03:00.001+08:00

I don't know anything about weather, but have been anxiously perusing the NZ weather sites for any signs of impending storms and snow. With only 4 weeks till I become a ski goddess again I'd like to see whiteout rather than brown grass on the ski resort webcams. Soon, very soon!!

I've noticed that WA rain cycles seem to coincide with big snow dumps on New Zealand's southern lakes region, where I go when I ski. When I say coincide, I mean we get a big mob of rain and a few days later
NZ gets snow. And when we have a dry winter (like last year), they do too. I know, no proof whatsoever, but we did have lots of early rain in May then nothing much till September last year (so did they), and the year before we had lots of rain all season (so did they). This season we've started out pretty dry, with not alot of rain and last night guess what: biggest rainfall dumped in June for 3 years!! So look out New Zealand, there's some serious snow coming your way.. And apparently they're predicting more rain here on Tuesday, so NZ's looking good for the start of July.

Of course I've looked at the weather charts and I know that the weather patterns we get don't ever get to NZ coz they kind of drop off the map south into Antarctica. But I reckon something funny still happens. My theory is that the WA rain gods and the NZ snow gods are in cahoots, plotting their little plans together to trick and torment us mere mortals who rely on the weather to indulge in our favourite pasttimes. I'm a real sucker, coz I need snow in winter and those glorious seabreezes in summer to keep me in adrenaline fueled ecstacy. So as a true worshipper, I am totally prepared to do a snow dance in faroff WA just so the gods can be appeased and some white stuff starts floating down from the sky. No, not floating, dumping down please!!

The final four weeks will blitz by, mainly because from next weekend I will be spending every night falling asleep on the sofa. "The greatest tour in the world" begins next Saturday, and I just can't wait to live and breathe the lycra, sweat and scenery that is Le Tour de France. Though mostly I watch the start and middle, fall asleep 5km before the finish line and just wake up in time for the jersey ceremony. But I'm not that into the stage winning sprinters anyway, I'm more into the team strategies and the yellow jersey race. I'm glad that Lance Armstrong has at last retired, and I'll be keenly following those Schleck boys this year, having somewhat gone off last year's winner who has a drug slur over him. As much as I'd love Cadel to get up, I think his time has been and gone, but then they said that about Lance didn't they? Not that I think Cadel, or anyone for that matter, has the drive, cunning and team support that Armstrong had. He's got a big heart and sexy dimples though, Lance never did it for me!!

So I'm just off to do one more snow twirl then it's time to start reading up on the teams before the flag falls in the Vendee next Saturday. Vive le tour!!!

It's a cucumber

2011-06-19T20:51:00.000+08:00

Another lovely week has gone by in Chez Drummonds. The unknown self seeded plant turns out to be not a zucchini, but a cucumber. Am very happy about that, but am still transplanting more tomato plants which have also self seeded, shall be a spring of cooking tomato puree methinks. Might try drying a few too.

We have had a nice mix of a bit of rain and a bit of sunshine. Today we had a planting day down on the sanddunes, with a reasonable amount of locals turning up to help out. 1300 seedlings planted in less than 2 hours, a few sandwiches and drinks, and I still managed to go for a one hour run in the arvo. And scoff half a bottle of red wine and toast marshmallows over the fire.

The fitness regime has been notched up. With 5 weeks to go I'm in intensification stage. This is about increasing my aerobic fitness as well as doing some very ski specific exercises. I'm pretty sure the whole ski experience this year will be well within my comfort zone for the first time ever, but now I'm addicted to the endorphins I just can't stop. I know it won't be a struggle this year, but I can still see room for improvement.

Of course, it's got to snow first......

Trip preparation

2011-06-16T19:36:00.009+08:00

Let's face it, half of the joy of travel is the planning. Deciding where you want to go, and what you want to do when you get there. Deciding what to take with you, whether to prebook or just do things spontaneously. Deciding on your budget, and saving up for it, or living life on the edge with limited funds. Everyone does it differently, some plan down to the minutest detail, others just jump on a plane, boat, bus or train, or stick out a thumb, and see what opportunities arise. Some people do some pre-travel research, others prefer to arrive with no preconceptions whatsoever.

My trip preparation depends on the trip.
For a backpacking trip I'll usually buy my return tickets if I've a fixed travel period, otherwise I'll simply buy the first ticket and let my next destination arrive when it does. I'll do meticulous pre travel research so I have an idea what's to be seen, but then I'll try and find out more once I get there, and let my discoveries dictate the direction I travel. I love being flexible enough to take alternative routes, avail myself of spontaneous offers of hospitality, and not feel too trapped into a fixed itinerary. I rarely prebook accommodation, unless I'm aware that it's limited.

My next trip is not a backpacking trip, but a six week foray into the hopefully snowy southern highlands of New Zealand, for the sole purpose of indulging my ski goddess persona. I've been working on my fitness for 10 months, and it's now less than six weeks till I jet off, so I'm champing at the bit to be gone. Trouble is, although there's snow in Australia, there isn't a skerrick of the white stuff to be seen across the ditch. I'm scouring the long range forecasts and starting to get nervous.

Preparing for a ski trip is pretty different, mainly because there's lots of gear and lots of expense. Luckily I've only recently replaced my boots (2009), my skis (2010) and this year upgraded my faded old fuschia ski jacket for a lovely new one, red of course! Flights were bought last year, a season ticket bought at early bird prices, and a dorm bed at the backpackers booked. Now there's just ski field transport, ski lessons, food and incidentals. Which this year just might be a heliskiing trip or two, or even a short sojourn sightseeing in Fiordland. Boy this is gonna be an expensive trip....

I'm also taking my Go-Pro video camera with me, which when clipped to my helmet should provide some fun footage to share. If I can find software to edit it that is.

All this gear makes keeping under the 23kg luggage limit almost impossible. I don't travel with alot of clothes usually, but even with a limited wardrobe I'm struggling. Purchasing a few extra kilos may be the best option, or wearing lots of clothes in transit!! It'll feel like the old days, when I weighed an extra 6kg but it was fat!!

The trouble with the latter option is that I spend over 24 hours in transit and move across quite a large temperature zone. When I leave Geraldton it's likely to be 20 degrees centigrade or more, I have seven hours in transit in Perth, a redeye to Sydney, then the final leg to Queenstown, where the layers probably will be needed, though by then I'll be a stinking sweaty mess. Finally, a ride over to Wanaka has to be arranged. I'm tempted to book a car, spending another 3 hours in an airport waiting for the bus will be torture. I hate transit days.

So now that I've done all my trip preparation, all that's left is to pray for snow. And pack the bags, and get those friends of mine thinking about joining me to commit. Less than six weeks to go....

Taming the behemoth!

2011-06-13T13:20:00.002+08:00

I did it!! Aided with great valour by my neighbours Rhonda and Alan, the bougainvillea has at last been heavily pruned. I say valour, because we are all nursing hundreds of scratches and puncture wounds from those beastly thorns. Despite long trousers, long sleeves and heavy duty gloves I have wounds under my fingernails and even in one of my ear canals!

But the beast has been tamed.
We chopped and pulled, tied rope around it, attached it to the car, pulled some more, broke the rope a few times, chopped some more, pulled some more, and at last it toppled. Then we had to chop it up small enough to roll it past the garden beds, between the entrance trees and onto the verge. And today the council cleanup lads loaded it in their truck and took it away....

I am so happy. I now have more sun in the house and an even more expansive ocean view, but the main thing is a huge feeling of relief that the jungle has been removed and I can now keep it under control. Unfortunately I inherited the mess when I bought the house 10 years ago and have always struggled to keep on top of it, but now at last I can keep it within the boundaries I wish.

Note to self: NEVER allow this to happen again!!

Garden notes

2011-06-06T12:39:00.002+08:00

I swear at this time of year if one closes ones eyes for more than a minute, the veges double in size. After spending the summer months just surviving the daily wilt, plants at this time of year take on a vigour suggesting some sort of performance enhancing drug. Sure I've dug the beds over a bit, added some manure and blood and bone and the rain has been falling steadily and frequently for a couple of weeks. It's such a joy to behold lettuce growing in such abundance, squash flowering and fruiting, and the snow peas making their way up the climbing frame. It's gratifying to see that the lemon tree has transplanted well, an unplanned for necessity after the old tank bed it is in has now rusted beyond repair and needs removal.

The water tank stand, part two, has not been a success.
After appearing to stay in place for 3 weeks, the stand has begun to buckle, has knocked the fence down again, but the 3/4 full tank is still upright but on a dangerous lean. Part three will need to be either buckets of concrete, or a newly engineered solution altogether. The joys of trying to make do with recycled objects I guess.

The main water tank has started to spring a few leaks, and since that's plumbed in to the house, I'm going to have to get that changed this summer, hence I'll need another tank again to take the excess water for my summer needs. It's a pity all our rain happens over such a small period of time, so one needs to harvest as much as possible to get through the other 8 months when there's no rain at all. Sure I can use scheme water if I have to, but in the interests of being organic and sustainable, and also responsible for keeping my stormwater on my property, I'd rather use rain water. And the veges prefer it too!!

So what's in the garden at present? In the picture above there's capsicum, basil, tomato, banana, dragonfruit, lettuce, lemongrass and coriander, plus a self seeded ?zucchini. That's a surprise. The next bed has tomato, snow peas, asparagus, squash and strawberries. Over past the lime is more squash, red cabbage, beetroot, lettuce and broccoli. Next is the bay tree bed, where seedlings are being eaten by something, though the chives thrive under the frangipani and lettuce has self seeded. Past the now rusting bed, is more beetroot, the replanted lemon, more chives and more broccoli. I expect lots of self seeded parsley in here as well. The final bed (the top picture) has lemongrass, a few different chilli plants, tomato and a kaffir lime, plus land cress. The fig has lost its leaves for the winter, the passionfruit is growing wildly, the lemon is flowering, and the lime and bay are putting out lots of new stems.

All's well in my garden, just a little issue pending on water harvesting.......

Fitness blues

2011-05-28T19:54:00.000+08:00

I have been toying with running for quite a few months. Some of you may remember that I used to have a very negative attitude towards people who ran and have had to humbly swallow my words as I have begun to engage in said activity.

From the treadmill, I have now progressed to the real world, helped along by a few too many trips to Perth in the last 2 months and a need to keep fit whilst spending far too many hours in a car. So from my first 20 min run in the real world, I've progressed to 40 min runs most mornings this week.

I've a mere 2 months till I arrive back in NZ for six weeks of skiing, and I am determined to be seriously fit. The fact that my body is now stronger and fitter (and skinnier!) than it's probably been in the last 20 years is beside the point, I want to be REALLY fit. Sharon, my PT, has put me on an endurance program with my HR monitor where I run and walk for 40 min keeping my HR within a narrow range around 70% maximal HR. This way I build fitness and endurance, and one day my legs will stop being painful. I figure if I do this now, I won't have to experience the daily pain and exhaustion I normally feel on a ski trip. Well that's the plan anyway.

Hazel has been very good about it all, helped by the fact that if she was so inclined to join me on a run through the neighbourhood in the freezing cold dark at 6 am she can't, because I lock her in the bedroom. After the first day of protest, she can now be found comfortably snoring on the bed when I arrive home after my exertions. She gets her gentle walk along the beach in the evening and she's happy.

All this disgraceful exercise (I'm still doing strength training at the gym as well!) has meant that I now have to be very careful what I eat. In particular I have to make sure I eat enough carbohydrates. Driving to work trying to stop myself falling asleep, sitting at my desk feeling somewhat weird and not quite there, I reached across and calmly tested my blood sugar level. With a father who had type 2 diabetes I am acutely aware that I have to watch myself as I get older. But a high sugar is the least of my problems: there I was having my first ever hypoglycaemic event! Nothing an apple and a carrot couldn't fix. And the following day after my run I made sure I had a nice big bowl of muesli for brekkie!!

So here I am, gym junkie, jogging enthusiast, diet wanker, what next????

Couch potato

2011-05-22T21:04:00.001+08:00

I blame it on the Kindle. A few months ago I decided to buy one, then proceeded to trawl through the websites that allow you to download ebooks for free. Alot of these books are quite old, and amongst them I've found some great travel literature. I'm thrilled to have found Alfred Russel Wallace's book, which means on my next Indonesian trip I'll be able to take it with me. It and the other few hundred books I've so far loaded.

I've also found some great travel literature from China, much of which I've had to borrow through the local library. Having discovered Peter Fleming (he's Ian Fleming's younger brother) I've had a wonderful time reliving his rather superficial forays through Russia and China during the early to mid 1930s. He has a wonderful way of writing about the people he meets, especially the other westerners, mostly missionaries, and what he has to say about travel wouldn't seem out of place on an internet travel forum. Having travelled overland through the Stans and Mongolia to Peking, he then joined force with a Swiss lass called Ella Maillart (nickname Kini) and they attempted an amazing cross country trip in 1935 skirting north of the Tibetan plateau trying to reach Kashgar then on to Srinagar in India, all the time avoiding/ misleading the official authorities as foreigners had been denied access since civil uprisings in Xinjiang had occurred in 1933. Seems nothing much has changed!

The best thing is, both Peter and Ella wrote a book each about their trip. Both were travelling as "special correspondents" for European newspapers, both essentially had sweet talked editors into paying them in order to fulfil their individual desires to travel. Both were fiercely independent solo travellers, but they had no trouble getting along well with each other. And so I sit there with both books in hand, reading alternate chapters from each of them, and feel like I'm having a lovely chat with two intrepid travellers, recounting a fascinating trip.

It sure makes the travel we do these days seem like a walk in the park. Very few roads, railroads were still being constructed, and the Communists were fighting the nationalist government of Nanking. And we think negotiating the local buses is being adventurous! Ha!

Must get back to my mates Kini and Peter.....

(For those interested the books are: News from Tartary by Peter Fleming, and Forbidden Journey by Ella K Maillart)

Waves in May

2011-05-06T17:59:00.000+08:00

Well it's actually pretty normal to get more swell in the autumn and winter, but it isn't usual to get a seabreeze. Good old climate change, wreaking havoc with the normal weather patterns...

So there I am, pretty well recovered from my injury, have put the gear in the garage till next season and have commenced the major garden chores. My mind's off windsurfing now, and into major garden renovations. In fact over Easter I resurrected the tank stand and this weekend I fill the tank and see what happens. Hopefully not another catastrophe!

I get home at lunchtime and look out on big rolling swell, whitecaps and rattling windows. That means only one thing: time to go windsurfing. Ring Kate, load the car and head out to Coros for an awesome session with the girls. Only 6 windsurfers and 4 kiters out, all mates, no ringins from elsewhere and any wave you want all to yourself. Awesome!! Got seriously worked on a huge mast high wave that broke over me just as I headed up into the top section after a sweet deep bottom turn. Rollercoaster of whitewater and breathholding and a very long swim to retrieve the gear. But still back for more.

Days like today are to be savoured, especially when you aren't expecting them.

Happy days...

Travel pangs

2011-04-04T00:12:00.000+08:00

My couch surfing profile describes me thus: "I'm both a travel tragic and a homebody. One goes into hibernation while the other takes centre stage. At present there's a little conflict happening, but we are trying to reach an amenable compromise." It's actually a pretty accurate assessment of my conflicted attitude to my life.

My recent injury, thankfully on the mend though it shall be a week or two more until I have full movement and strength back, saw me spending a little time at home loaded up with pain killers and very little to do besides elevate and rest. So I started reading and internet surfing, and well.... travel sites are a favourite troll for me. And before I knew it, I'd let the cat out of the bag.

In a little over 3 years I plan to retire and go on an extended travel extravaganza, for maybe the next 10 years or so. I'm restrained from doing it now by 1. money, 2. Hazel, and 3. a work commitment to get an Aussie trained doctor in the practice before I leave. All three of these considerations are well progressed, but it's a bugger waiting (yes I do feel a wee bit guilty about looking forward to Hazel's demise but it's nothing personal - unless she manages to live to 16 and then it might get tough!!) and beginning to plan for my escape is a pleasant distraction. Only it's torture!!

Those of you who may have followed my travel tales will know that I fell in love with China, having visited her the first time in 1989 with mum a few months before Tianenmen Square, and a second time in Dec 2008 when she well and truly got under my skin. It's an interesting phenomenon that can't really be explained as it's more a feeling than anything else. A compulsion to return and delve deeper, explore further, learn more. And let's face it, you can't knock the food! (and I am afterall my mother's daughter!!)

So I have been doing my usual research: a mixture of travel guides, internet searches, travel writings of those who've passed through, and forum trolling, and have decided to continue on from where I left off on my last trip. I'm fascinated by the ethnic minority tribes of Asia, and have decided to dedicate my next trip to travelling through the Tibetan regions of China that don't involve the ridiculous pandering to permits and high tour prices that visiting the "official" Tibet requires. Mind you, anything can change in 3 years. Including my fancies...

My trouble is I don't like to do stuff the easy way. I'm looking at how much of this trip I can do by foot, crossing 4000m plus mountain passes with a pack on my back and staying in small villages with locals, employing local guides as needed, and taking local buses otherwise. Visiting out of the way lamaseries and enjoying the splendid scenery that western China has on display. And enjoying yak butter tea - yes I really do like it.

I may be peaking just a little early, but beginning the plan for the great escape can't begin too soon I reckon, even if I do need to put a new roof on the house and landscape the backyard if I'm ever going to rent the place out. Yep, that couchsurfing profile sums me up perfectly, it's just a matter of compromise....

(an explanatory note: my mother is an unabashed sinophile, tai chi expert, taoist enthusiast, bonsai afficionado....)

Collision course

2011-03-13T10:10:00.000+08:00

After over 20 years of windsurfing, the last 15 almost exclusively in waves I had my first ever full on collision. It was, of course an accident. Continuously on wave breaks you cross paths going in and out, but generally wave rules prevail and the person coming in gives way to the person going out through the break.

Unfortunately I struck a newbie, a very nice chap from New Zealand, visiting for a few days on hire gear, who was having his first experience of wave sailing and was pretty terrified of the whitewater coming at him when he had to contend with me coming in as well. A game of "chicken" ensued where I turned to get out of his way, he turned the same way, down wind, up wind about 3 times before I made a big down wind turn at exactly the same time as he did and WALLOP!! I got hit at velocity by his board and kit. I had about half a second to realise I was about to be history and then something very hard and painful whammed into my right side and I was in the water, trapped under the gear trying to find my way back to the surface.

Luckily I've been in enough sucked down situations before so I didn't panic, made it to the surface and was immediately grabbed and held up by my very upset attacker. I was in alot of pain, from my right arm, and am eternally grateful that Mike only thought of me and completely abandoned his kit to keep me afloat and get me back to my board and kit where we could assess the damage. My arm had swollen up immediately, with a huge golf ball like swelling just below the elbow, and although I was in alot of pain it appeared I could move and grip things. But I couldn't sail back in, so Kate came to the rescue and sailed my kit in with me holding on at the back and being body dragged. Others rescued Kate and Mike's kit, and when I got to shore others again helped with ice, Panadol and derigging my kit. It's a great community of windsurfers and kiters we have here, I am really grateful to them all.

After lying down in Kate's camper for an hour or so, the Panadol and ice seemed to have worked their magic and I drove slowly home to Drummonds (yeah I know I probably shouldn't have done that) and then got Rhonda next door to drive me in to the hospital for an Xray. And somehow, I managed not to break anything.

I've also a huge bruise and swelling on my right thigh, but aside from being unable to straighten my arm or lift anything, I'm fine. Poor Mike, who was absolutely horrified about hitting me, has a bingled board and a broken boom. I lent him my old spare boom and insisted he keep sailing, and they popped in later to return it and see how I was. That was when I learnt that he and his mate were complete newbies, but hopefully now they know the wave rules they'll know that the person coming in gives way, so they don't have to as well. That way collisions can be avoided!!

I am so glad I'm not back in plaster......

No more jelly legs

2011-02-12T23:02:00.003+08:00

It's hot and steamy here in Geraldton, and we've had an appalling six weeks since Christmas with very little wind and almost no swell. However I can't really blame the conditions for my lack of progress on the forward loop front - as I haven't really been trying hard enough, and nor has my partner in crime Kate so we're not doing a good job of egging each other on either. But there's still time this season, if only all these cyclones would just settle down and stop buggering up the weather!

It is now six months since I began on my get fit oddyssey, and it's a mere five months till I jet off again to The Land of The Long White Cloud to indulge in my ski goddess persona. At which time I hope to be super fit and totally capable of conquering that mountain without getting jelly legs by noon. So how am I going so far??

Firstly, I am indeed a fully fledged gym junkie. I go to the gym Monday to Friday unless there's decent wind, in which case Wednesday and Friday get ditched for some wave (or lately: flat water cruddy chop) action. I use a heart rate monitor and diligently keep myself in the right training zones so I can improve my fitness and endurance, as well as doing interval sessions for strength and endurance. And I find exercise programs to target the sort of improvements I need for skiing all day - there's some really cool ones I found on the internet involving balancing on Bosu balls which I did with my personal trainer and had us both in stitches. Let me tell you, there's a massive difference between a squat or lunge on stable ground versus trying it balanced atop half a gym ball!! Then add weights for even more hilarious fun!

I'm actually totally surprised at myself for keeping it up so long, and for now being totally addicted to burning calories. I do try to keep it interesting, helped out by having a personal trainer who keeps coming up with new ways to torture me on a weekly basis. But there's something in all that endorphin stuff - it sure can become an obsession. So on weekends, I rest, unless there's wind of course!!

I have also totally changed my diet. It's been a long term aim of mine to eat a really healthy diet, and my current intake is fairly simple. I now eat almost exclusively whole foods, which allows me to indulge in some wonderfully fresh vegetable dishes and salads, along with copious amounts of meat, nuts and seeds. I have become a wee bit of a food Nazi I have to admit, but I'm still chilled enough to be able to eat out and indulge in beer and wine so I'm not totally whacko..... yet....

My body has fundamentally changed. I've lost centimetres from everywhere, meaning at some stage I am going to have to start buying new clothes that fit me, but in the meantime I'm just throwing out the "big" clothes and shimmying back into those dresses I used to look so good in 10 years ago. Yes it's nice that everyone notices when you've been working so hard at it.

You know you're fit when you have a race with the kids next door and you manage to keep up with them, if not beat them. And you're not even puffed!! Then, in hushed voices they exclaim with incredulity that you can run really fast!! Presumably old fogeys like me don't usually put on a spell of sprinting like that in front of impressionable teenagers, let alone almost beat them. Just wait till I shock them by doing just that!! Work in progress....

You know you still have a way to go when the young chappie at the gym puts you through a punishing training session that leaves your legs sore for days. Jelly legs sore. You unkindly inform your usual personal trainer that she's a "puddycat" in comparison, which means from now on I'm in for more punishing and more pain.

If I can get to July with legs of steel and fitness to boot I'll have achieved my goal. If I can ski top to bottom down the powder bowl or cloud nine I'll know it's all been worth it. Who would have thought a broken arm was all it needed??

Fried brain

2011-01-30T11:33:00.003+08:00

After my two weeks or so up at Coronation I have decided to get serious about updating my camper trailer to include some electrical components. Currently I run my fridge from a dual battery system in the car, topped up with a solar panel, but there are a few problems with this.

Firstly, the fridge sits in the car, in the sun, meaning it has to work harder to keep things cool. It's in an insulation bag, and I've also given it an extra foil reflecting blanket (an old windsceen shade), but the fact is it's a pain to have to keep walking to the car for fridge supplies when you are camped up in the same place for weeks.

Secondly, my solar panel, an excellent quality Solarex 60W, is far to inadequate for the task of keeping my auxilliary battery topped up, especially if I run a fluoro light as well. Which means I flatten my battery in 2 days, not good for even a good deep cycle battery.

Thirdly, and the most important factor, my cabling is far too thin for the job required, meaning I lose most of the voltage before it even gets to the battery from the solar panel. Not only that, the cable connecting to the fridge also loses voltage, meaning the fridge cycles more often, for longer, draining more power. And I paid to have that cabling put in!!

Apparently this cabling mismatch is not uncommon. Whilst researching solar panels on the internet, I've come to the conclusion that pretty well every one of those portable setups being advertised at ridiculously cheap prices on ebay and elsewhere comes with cabling too small for the job. Which means built-in inefficiency from the outset. But now I'm onto it I shan't be fooled!

So after more research - including talking it over with friends and acquaintances, buying a book specific to the topic, looking for info at the hopelessly inadequate local library, and of course hours trawling through internet sites - I rang the 12 Volt Shop in Perth to have a chat with some real experts. And they suggested going even thicker again on the cabling!!!

The cabling problem arises because the descriptions of cable size are not uniform. I need 4 B&S cabling, which is 25sqmm copper wiring, not size 4 autocabling, which is 2.5sqmm of copper. BIG DIFFERENCE!! Guess what I've got??

The reason the cable has to be so thick is because of the distances it must travel to power or charge things. From the battery under the bonnet to the car fridge is approx 4m, which is 8m conductor length. And there's similar distances again for the trailer. Less resistance in the cable over such lengths means less voltage drop. The bigger I go the better. And who knew you were getting a tutorial on basic 12 volt electrics?

So I've decided to both upgrade the wiring in the car - probably by a professional - and completely wire the trailer with it's own standalone system that can be charged by either solar when camped for long periods, or the car alternator when travelling or if solar is inadequate. And I'm going to do the trailer myself.

Most fortuitously, I've found a charger that is both a top quality solar regulator and a voltage step up charger, meaning that I can get very efficient battery charging all in one unit. It's about the price of the solar regulator I was looking at buying, but without quite as many monitoring functions, but does 2 jobs in one. Am very pleased with this find, and it's not even Chinese!!

I've worked out my power requirements - the fridge, some simple fluoro lights, a water pump and occasional battery/laptop charging - and worked out what size battery I need and how much solar wattage is required. And the 12 Volt Shop chap told me I was spot on!! I have built in a fair amount of redundancy, and have allowed room to expand so I'm pretty well ready to start spending.

But not quite yet. I've just been forced to buy some new sails, after my 4.5m kind of disintegrated on me last week, so I am holding off on any big purchases - like solar panels and batteries - for a month or so till my bank balance looks a little healthier. And I've a trip to Perth in March for a conference, so I think I might hold off till then and have a real proper chat with the guys in the shop before I purchase my cable.

So after putting this down in my blog for posterity, having drawn a bunch of circuit diagrams, saved squillions of articles on my harddrive, and effectively fried my brain (I'm even staying awake at night thinking through circuitry options!), I'm putting the paper bits into a little manila folder and packing them away. It's time to let all those ideas coalesce and for me to do something more immediate.

Like the laundry!!

Calling All Women (by Ruby Dee)

2011-01-09T23:00:00.001+08:00

Calling all sisters. Calling all Righteous sisters. Calling all women. To steal away To our secret place. Have a meeting Face to face. Look at the facts And determine our pace.
Calling all Women. We want to reach – first and second And Third world women Come together!
Women in and outside the power structure –

Working women, Welfare women, Women who feel alienated and isolated Women who are all frustrated Women who have given up – women – women Questioning women – women

Unpolarized and unorganized. Ostracized. Tired of being penalized Come help us start to bridge the gaps Racial, cultural, or generation We want some action and veneration.

These men, these men they Just ain’t doing it. They’ve had hundreds of years Now they ’bout to ruin it.

Kitchen, office, ex-prison women Old and young and middle-aged women Make this scene

Oh yes, and bring your lunch!

Problems, problems common problems That we make and cause each other Sister, daughter, old grandmother Female child you can bring your little brother

Take the subway, grad a cab Saddle your mule Bike it, limo Take a choo-choo, fly Or pick ‘em up and lay ‘em down.

Socialism, capitalism, communism Feminism, womanism, lesbianism Here-and-now or futurism We just can’t afford a schism

We got to get together or die.

Now is the time for an evolution Let’s all search and find a solution For how we’ll make it to the next revolution

Or die.
Oh yes. And don’t forget your lunch!

Silly season post mortem

2011-01-07T15:48:00.003+08:00

Welcome to 2011! Or perhaps it should be farewell 2010 and OMG another year done and dusted.

I managed a quick trip over to Canberra for Xmas, spent with mum, Matt and his family. Matt's two girls were awfully excited to have Auntie Na come to visit, who did her best to undermine any discipline their parents may have wished to impose. They are such chalk and cheese : Princess Bella and Wicked Liddy. I think Wicked Liddy is more my cup of tea, though I didn't get to see the infamous tantrums I've heard so much about, but Princess Bella's narcissistic tendencies and attraction to reflective surfaces is I hope just a stage she's going through - Auntie Na just doesn't do glam!!!

The extension to the National Gallery was on my hit list, so mum and I went there on Boxing Day to see the newly housed Aboriginal Art collection, which is extensive and a must see for anyone visiting the National Capitol. A lack of explanations, apparently artistic curators believe the art should speak for itself, means that visitors who know little about the Aboriginal Art movement or history would miss out understanding some of the cultural importance and context of many of these very exceptional artworks. A visit to the National Museum, housing an exhibition about the Canning Stock Route and the painters from that region, provided a different approach to the artwork where it is put into it's spiritual and cultural context. Different approaches......

My return home via Sydney included a lovely hour catching up with my sister Vanessa at the airport - she'd braved the filthy rainy weather to schlepp out on the train for a quick chat over coffee in the departure lounge, for which I am extremely grateful as I don't get to see my siblings much these days. Then the long flight back to Perth, on to Geraldton, pick up Hazel and drive out to the camper at Coros. Thank goodness my camper had been up since before Xmas or no way would I have found a spot!

The yearly retreat to Coronation was somewhat watered down this year, due to some very unseasonable rain. Unlike poor old Carnarvon and the Gascoyne region, we didn't get flooded out, but it did mean the campsite was deserted till just before Christmas, when the hoards descended in droves and you couldn't move for campers or kids. When the wind at last put in an appearance 3 days before New Years, there wasn't a spare car space to be found. Now that's quite a feat given half of the Geraldton windsurfers were camped there and not actually using the day use carpark at all. We can only blame the floods again, for stranding those who couldn't go further north to Gnarloo, making Coros more crowded than I've seen for at least 6-7 years. At times we counted over 60 sailors on the water, not to mention at least another 30-40 on the beach. But me and my mates just headed down to Windmills and had some awesome waves all to ourselves.

So I enter 2011 having not yet conquered the loop. I blame the lack of windy days, and some awesome clean waves that made riding down the line a much more attractive option than putting my body on the line. However I didn't make it through without incident, returning to work with a slightly black eye and an enormous arm bruise after a wee altercation with my boom. Unfortunately I wasn't doing anything spectacular at the time, the biggest bruises always have the least interesting origins.... even my broken arm wasn't done with any style!!

So now I'm back at work, we're understaffed, and there appears to be a sudden spike in summer upper respiratory tract infections. Jeezus guys it's a sore throat, why do you have to visit a doctor for that?? Ah well, pays the wages...

Productive weekend

2010-12-06T18:43:00.002+08:00

One thing to be said about a wind free weekend is at least it means I have the time and energy to do other projects. We had a lovely cool two days which meant I could have a very productive time working on the camper trailer. First it gets attacked with the wire brush, then the rust kill, then a coat or two of red primer, then up to three coats of "hammered steel" finish. Not to mention a complete overhaul with a new stove setting and storage space created by yours truly out of leftover pieces of wood and detritus from my garage. My years of hoarding have borne fruit and my carpentry skills are improving if I say so myself! I may well vie with Rose this year for best camp kitchen, even if her fella owns the local camping store!!

The painting has done my head in though. Today I had a personal training session at the gym using the group fitness room, which is carpetted with a grey carpet flecked with red. There I am doing some seriously hard ab work, and I'm thinking that the undercoat is still showing through and another overcoat of grey paint is needed. Seriously.....this is the carpet I'm talking about.......

It's only two weeks till I take the camper down to Coronation Beach for the annual Xmas/New Year session, when I hope to get enough time on the water to crack those loops. I will, however, be jetting over east to spend the actual day with mum and any other siblings in town, but not for long when there's wind and waves to be had. Kate has chucked her job, so she'll be keen to put those loops to bed as well.

One more weekend to go....

Procrastination

2010-11-28T11:02:00.002+08:00

We are having a hot few days and the house is all closed up trying to keep that hot easterly wind from turning the inside into a sauna. With limited success unfortunately, but I can always chill out downstairs.

The garden is holding up quite well, though I'm planning to erect a bit more shade cloth and wind barriers to give those tender greens a bit more of a fighting chance. The Lebanese cucumbers are beginning to fruit so that's one more thing I no longer need to buy at the market.

The Farmers Market on Saturday is really going strong now. They are into their second year and there's lots of good produce available grown without sprays and chemicals, as well as grass fed goat and lamb which I'm now enjoying on a regular basis. Most meat you buy from the butcher here is grain fed, but these guys have planted perrenial grasses, which maintain their stock of Demara sheep and goats quite adequately without the need for chemicals etc. Bit more expensive, but not excessively so. Then there's the Vietnamese market gardeners, who are now selling all their unique asian veg that you just can't get at the supermarket. Like freshly cut kangkong, a leafy green that is scrumptious shallow fried with butter, garlic and chillies. I'm now finding out how to grow it - twice daily watering according to the lady who sells it.

I've been working on derusting the camper trailer, a job I am supposed to be doing right now rather than blogging away, as the surface rust is getting quite extensive and I'd like it done before I take it up to Coro camping over Xmas/ New Year. There's a lot of joy to be had with a wire brush connected to an electric drill working the metal back to clean, but it's a bugger doing the paint job. Oh well, must be done....

I have been dreaming again, encouraged by my recent purchase of some books on trekking in Tasmania, and have decided to plan to do the Overland Track in February 2012. My sister did it back in the 80's when it was still mud up to the thighs, but now it's better maintained, with boardwalks and more modern huts, which means it's not an extremely arduous journey like it used to be. But I'm planning a few sidetrips and a few peak bags, so it won't be an easy stroll. Just need to find a few like minded people to come with me.

Well I'm sweating too much sitting here by the computer. Better stop procrastinating and go and do something!

Perhaps a cool dip in the ocean at the end of the street....

Loop practice, Day One

2010-11-07T16:31:00.002+08:00

It transpires that whilst I was waiting for Kate to get back from Exmouth before beginning the loop challenge proper, sneaky Kate had availed herself of a new "how to" video and had been secretely practicing by herself. No accounting for the competitive spirit, as I said to someone today, I don't care who gets there first, just if we can motivate each other to keep trying.

Anyway, the new video breaks the spin loop down into four steps, turning the exercise more into a series of techniques to master, rather than the usual testosterone powered Nike inspired slogan, "just go for it"!! And mostly the technique is mastered in underpowered, off the plane speeds, meaning hitting the water doesn't hurt. For us two lasses, this is right up our alley.

Now both of us are very good sailors. We jump big ramps for big air, we ride waves down the line, including in cross-on conditions, and have no trouble keeping up with the lads. But the forward loop is the move that shows you've really made it, even if it's more about guts than technique.

When learning to windsurf, once you can get going with some speed you learn to use a harness and footstraps so that you can use your body as a fulcrum and conserve energy. But during this delicate stage of learning to "hook in" you get your first taste of the pain of being catapulted forwards over the handlebars into the drink, at speed! And sometimes you fall on your kit. Either way, it hurts. So you spend alot of effort making sure you don't get catapulted ever again. Yes, ever again!!

Then you progress further, you're gybing and tacking, then you learn to carve gybe and then you enter the waves. It's time to learn jumps, to work out how to turn on waves and ride them in and then it's time to start doing some fancy stuff. Yes, it's time to loop.

Back loops are harder technique wise, but nowhere near as scary to do. Most people master them before the forward loop. I've even done a couple myself, but neither was planned and I didn't sail away so they don't really count. But the forward loop, well that's about balls.

Remember the catapult you were never ever going to do again? Well a forward loop is essentially a controlled catapult, with your feet still strapped into the board so the whole kit and caboodle comes around with you as the wind flips you through it's eye and out the other side. At speed! Off a wave! Possibly at height!! Sounds scary doesn't it??

Kate's new video, however, makes it alot less scary, and today I had my first try of the off planing gybe in the footstraps technique which is stage one. And no, it doesn't hurt when you hit the water, it isn't even scary. I'm pushing my front arm forward, my back arm is sliding down the boom and sheeting in and I'm even looking behind me. And around I go, sans board, and land without pain on the other side of the board. It's a revelation!!

But it's important not to get too cocky, coz if you try too hard, and then try with a bit more speed, well it does turn into a catapult and yep, the slam of a helmetted head into the drink at speed gives the brain a mighty fine shake up. Whoa my head hurts!!

Time to give up for the day before I lose my bottle.

Coitus interruptus

2010-10-30T12:06:00.002+08:00

I have an aquaintance who is keen to visit Western Australia to see our lizards. In particular he wants to see a live bobtail, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiliqua_rugosa , as his previous experience has only been flattened road kill, a not uncommon sight on most of our roads. I'd told him that bobtails are so numerous here in Geraldton that they live in our gardens in great numbers. But I wasn't quite ready to arrive home yesterday afternoon to find two young bobtails making out on my front doormat!! Unfortunately, the arrival of a large noisy 4WD within metres of their amorous activity caused a rapid rush for cover....

I'm very fortunate to still have quite alot of native trees and vegetation surrounding my house, which brings in lots of cheeky birds and even the occasional Bungarra (Aboriginal word for Gould's monitor) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sand_goanna . Sometimes it can feel like a zoo!

The willy wagtails must be nesting as they've been swooping Hazel something rotten, but she just stands there totally ignoring them as they swoop and click within centimeters of her head and mouth. She used to have a wild old time running up and down chasing them but these days she behaves like a grand old dame and just pretends they don't exist.

I've discovered that Hazel has fashion sense. Well I don't quite know what to call it, but she is able to look at what I am wearing and know what activity will then occur. Like if I put my cycling top and knicks on she gets very upset and runs away next door or down to the beach because she knows I'm going cycling and she doesn't like that at all. But if I just put on normal clothes, or work clothes, there's no reaction at all. I'm still leaving her for the day, but she doesn't mind!! However if I put my swim wear on, she gets really excited because she knows we are going to the beach. There's little difference between swimmers and a normal bra and nickers, but she can tell immediately and begins making all sorts of impatient noises to jivvy me along. It's fascinating to see just how much association a dog can have to a visual cue - and how predictable I am....

We've had some spectacular windsurfing this season, nice 4.5m weather, rolling swell, nothing too big, and then we had yesterday!! Blistering winds gusting well over 30knots made holding on a challenge. But excellent for big air!! The weekend isn't looking too good with mostly easterlies, so I shall have to molly coddle the garden instead, and rest some tired limbs that haven't had a day off for 2 weeks between windsurfing and gym sessions.

I am slightly embarrassed to admit that I am now a fully fledged gym junkie, and have even started to run!! Now those people who know me may have been privy to my opinion on running: that it's a ridiculous way to bugger your joints whilst doing something totally unenjoyable. Like how many people running have you ever seen looking happy? Mostly they look miserable! So for me to swallow my words and start running is, well, humble pie.

It's actually my personal trainer's fault. I did protest, but since she's the boss during my PT session I had to aquiesce, and yes it is a good way to get the heart rate up. And yes it is addictive, all those happy little endorphins coursing through my veins.... So now I happily do a 15min run on the treadmill 2-3 times a week as warmup. Bloody crazy I am!!

Of course all this gym junkie business does come with great bonuses. I'm getting really fit, I'm losing weight and I'm getting so nicely toned I'm actually enjoying looking at my body again. No longer do I have those flabby "tuckshop arms", I've got discernible muscle! And my legs and bum: phwoar!!! Aah I do like a healthy dose of narcissism!!

Must go and admire myself in the mirror again....

The heat is on

2010-10-16T15:47:00.003+08:00

Mid October, mid west coast WA. Those big highs are in and the land is warming up fast. We've not had much rain this year (the eastern part of Australia has had its wettest year on record, but over here it's our second driest ever!) which means the garden needs some extra TLC, and the early erection of the shadecloth to finish off the spring harvest.

We had a cold winter, which probably explains the bumper crop of snow peas, but the early heat brought on the aphids, who unfortunately demolished the broccoli before the ladybugs and aphid wasps could do their work as friendly predators. I got a few flowerettes, but the rest got pulled out in disgust!

Working out what grows when is such trial and error, as the usual suggestions on the back of the seed packets or in gardening books just don't equate to this crazy weather we get here. There is no way we have the same growing cycle as Perth and the south west! The two cucumber plants I grew from seed sat at two leaves for about 2 months, then with the sudden warmth they've begun to grow and flower. Whereas the squash - same family - has had a lovely time in the cooler weather but now is getting awfully squeamish with this heat and curling up with mould and expiring. Some of the tomato plants have gone great guns, others are taking their time - it's nice to have an ongoing harvest of tomatoes anyway so I'm happy with this development.

It's asparagus time!! Oh how I love fresh asparagus. I'm also harvesting lots of yummy lettuce greens for awesome organic salads, and the chilli plants are fruiting madly, meaning I've almost got all the ingredients I need for an Asian feast. The kaffir lime is growing well, and I've lemongrass clumps everywhere, and I just purchased another curry leaf plant as my current plant isn't thriving at all. Apparently they like friends.. But the fig tree is fruiting, awesome!!

After the water tank stand disaster the backyard has been left somewhat neglected, resulting in huge weed growth in the deserted chook pen that I'm rather scared of clearing up. You see it's snake season, and the average slider around here usually packs a nasty bite of venom, so caution is the best policy. Pottering around in shorts and thongs isn't really recommended though I am stamping loudly to let them know I'm coming... So far so good.

The windsurfing season has commenced, with some ripping winds and quite a few nice days of rolling swell. My season was delayed a bit as I had to get strength and mobility back in the forementioned broken arm, but with all that time in the gym, I'm now stronger and fitter than I have been for years. And yes I'm still turning up for some gym torture when the wind doesn't blow. Kate gets back from Exmouth this weekend, so it's time for the great forward loop challenge to begin! I'm feeling sick just thinking about it....

Hazel has been unwell, with considerable pain and weakness in her left shoulder. She gets an XRay on Monday to find out if it's anything sinister, until then it's more anti-inflammatories and the most excruciatingly slow beach walks imaginable. It's heart wrenching to see her hobbling along, but she so enjoys her rolls in the sand and weed that I think there's more good than bad. She's still eating and happy enough but walking is a huge effort for her, poor thing. All that gymwork at least makes me strong enough to carry all 20kgs of her when necessary. No, she hasn't lost any weight!!!!

It's starting to cool down now, time to get an hour or so out in the garden before friends come round for dinner. I've just cooked BBQ pork, Chinese style with Char Siu sauce which I'll serve with rice and cucumbers. But now it's time to unfurl the shade cloth...

Dreams, dreams, dreams...

2010-09-19T15:23:00.002+08:00

After I returned from the big trip 18 months ago I knew I had let the travel genie out of the bag and there was no way that itch was ever to be suppressed again. So I hide it in liberal dosages of home improvements, work commitments and summer windsurfing, with the hope I can just keep it under control for a while, until Hazel moves on and I've trained up another few Aussie docs at the practice. But in the back of my mind is that in 2014, when I hit the big half century, I'm pulling up sticks and heading outta town!

Doing the tax return is a stark reminder that I have less than four years left to get my finances in order so I can live the dream of a self financed retiree (50 may be the new 30, but "retiree" sure doesn't sound anything but old does it?) and do what I like when I like. By then there'll be a big port at Oakajee being built and I'll be able to rent out the house here for a fortune. Certainly enough to live on whilst I swan around Asia for a while.

So I recline in the hammock dreaming about just where I'll go given no restrictions on time, or hopefully money. Although I've done my fair share of exceedingly expensive luxury holidays, I'm just as comfortable travelling solo on a very low budget. I'm able to juggle the best of both worlds: pay for comfort when wanted or needed, but mostly I neither crave home comforts nor resent not having them when it's not available. I'm very lucky that my personal needs are few - provide me shelter, food and water and I'm happy - and that wherever I am in the world I find it incredibly easy to feel totally at home.

Should I head around Australia again visiting those places that I couldn't go with a dog? Should I spend a summer at Gnarloo riding the perfect wave? Head off to New Zealand for a ski season then the summer tramping and cycling? Or back to the Indonesian Archipelago to explore further afield before heading off through the rest of Asia and beyond? Since all of the above are on the wishlist, it's just a matter of working out where to start!

But it's all mere dreams right now, thank goodness dreaming doesn't cost anything - more money for travel!!

The grind

2010-09-10T17:55:00.004+08:00

I do love my job, but sometimes it just feels like an endless process to get from one end of the week to the other. And I only work part time!!

The real problem is that the adrenaline high from my ski trip has abated, and I'm yet to start the summer windsurfing season, so I'm in a bit of a dip at the moment. How to get out of it?

It hasn't been helped by the broken arm, though I'm now out of plaster and gaining strength though there's still a little healing left to do on what ended up being a rather more complex fracture than I initially realised. Although not displaced, I actually managed to break the bone both across and longitudinally which I reckon is a pretty impressive effort for what I thought was just a face plant and a sprained wrist!!

As threatened in previous posts I have finally joined a gym and got a personal trainer to torture me on a weekly basis. I've nicknamed her "the witch" so that she doesn't go too easy on me - I've told her I expect her to make me work hard so she can earn her moniker! Apparently lots of people go to gyms and are too scared to actually push themselves, even with a PT, go figure?? But thank goodness the 80s days of leotards are over....

I spend alot of time at work trying to encourage my patients to do more exercise. Many think that doing housework and walking around the house is all the exercise that they need, others don't even do that much!! Getting them motivated can be a real struggle, and I'm no different really. Although my fitness levels are much higher than most of my patients, I'm still not as fit as I'd like to be and carrying more flab than I'd like despite a pretty healthy diet. It took a broken arm to get me in a gym.

The scenario in my head:

go skiing for 2 weeks in NZ having done a modicom of exercise prior but nothing really regular, allowing fitness to lag somewhat.
have goal to get comfortable skiing off-piste (that's the lumpy, non groomed parts of the mountain for any non skiiers) on admittedly a rather difficult mountain to ski (Treble Cone).
get new skis - you beauty!!
on the third day skiing, take my new skis for their maiden run down a couple of groomed slopes then head over to ski down a rather difficult part of the mountain called cloud nine. Discover approx 2/3rds of the way down that I am not all that fit, that I am not quite up to this palaver and decide to slowly traverse across and down to the bottom - instead of just bloody skiing properly, idiot!!
this is where I come a cropper, being too careful - castigate self severely.
looking on bright side, at least it wasn't my knee, I could still ski with a broken arm, and the snow cover was pretty atrocious for off-piste skiing most of those two weeks anyway.
return home hyped up after two fun weeks feeling motivated to keep active. Hit brick wall realising my usual options are limited by arm in plaster - feel very sorry for self.
self flagellation at how I got myself into this stupid mess in the first place - if I'd been fitter in the first place I wouldn't have done what I did, broke my arm etc etc etc...
be honest with myself that I just have to bite the bullet and get significantly fit if I am to maintain the types of physical activities that I enjoy, particularly as I am not getting any younger ( too hard to ignore latter fact these days).
be even more honest with myself that I'll need a personal trainer to push me coz if I just join a gym I probably won't turn up.
take about 3 weeks to come to this realisation! That's alot of self pity and navel gazing in there, and that good old standby - procrastination!!
take action! And yes I've been turning up almost daily, spending at least an hour pushing my body doing all sorts of exercises, stretching well afterwards and then taking Hazel for long walks along the beach. You can almost see the halo....

So now that I've revealed my inner neuroses and you've all had a good chuckle at my expense, I'm off to celebrate a friend's 50th and stock up on carbs for next week's gym onslaught.

Cheers.

Sweet sixteen

2010-08-21T11:40:00.003+08:00

The call came last night. An anonymous number on my mobile phone that I didn't answer in time. Two hours later I checked the message bank. It was J, whose message sounded ominous. I knew deep inside before I rang her back that this wasn't going to be good news, and I suspected the worst.

M was the oldest, stubbornly post dates and refusing to be born despite curries, vigorous sex and all those other attempts to move things along, but at last she arrived to be named after her maternal grandmother. As a first child she bumbled along but at 13 months her development faltered and it quickly became obvious that something was wrong. A search for a diagnosis began, and the endless round of physiotherapy, occupational therapy, speech therapy and sign language, special schools and other interventions began. J and G struggled on, helped by J's mum and sister and a small group of dedicated friends. And into this family arrived two more kids, smart happy boys who fiercely loved and protected their bumbling big sister from the vagaries of a modern world.

Then M developed seizures, which took a long time and alot of medication to get under some sort of control. She entered her teenage years, with all the hormonal torment that entails, and the extra concerns that put on her parents. And she began to learn a new way to communicate, which was helping M to be less frustrated and dependent on others.

Last Tuesday she turned sixteen. A wonderful age, and she had a wonderful day at school and with friends before arriving home happy and heading off to bed. On Wednesday morning she was dead.

No-one expected it, (it appears she had a seizure), and it happened far too soon for J, who has only recently lost her dear mum, and her father a year or so before that. But M's life was a happy one, in a family that adored her, and had the financial means to provide her with good care. And M had a great capacity to do some really hilarious things, born out of her lack of understanding of acceptible norms.

Like lying on the floor open mouthed to let Hazel give her big sloppy pashes. Climbing up onto the roofrack of my 4WD and refusing to come down. This was during her climbing stage, I also remember her climbing up onto the shed and leaving a little warm brown memento up there. Finding my facecream and spreading it all over the living room floor like a piece of postmodern art. In fact she loved drawing, with anything, anywhere.

We'll all miss M, sweet sixteen, and endlessly kissed.

Deja vu

2010-08-09T20:25:00.005+08:00

Last year I rediscovered my inner ski goddess, after a hiatus of more than 5 years whilst I'd engaged in scuba diving holidays on some of the most biodiverse tropical reefs of the world, not to mention my six and a half month sojourn through SE Asia. This year confirmed for me the incredible attraction of hurtling down a steep mountain only to climb back up and do it again! Bob described what keeps him skiing as that sudden acceleration at the start of a turn that's like a jet taking off. Others talk about making those first tracks in virgin snow, known as freshlines, for others it's the sheer joy of enjoying fresh snow, even better when it's powder, in a beautiful environment.

I'm not good enough yet to appreciate freshlines, but I do know what Bob means. But it's more than that.

I've been to New Zealand skiing 4 times. Twice I did a group tour visiting Mt Hutt, TC, Cardrona, Coronet Peak and The Remarkables. These are the mainstream resorts on the South Island, but there's also numerous smaller commercial and club fields that extend from Arthurs Pass right down to Queenstown that rely on rope tows, t-bars and the notorious nutcracker (I've seen the bruises!!) to get you up the slopes. It's also pretty common in New Zealand to do a bit of walking to get to the top of a run, and back country touring is extremely popular. But when I decided to come to New Zealand last year there was only one choice: Treble Cone.

The first two times I came to TC they still had the t-bar in the Saddle, and it was a long traverse to get over to the chutes. I have fond memories of my second trip when I took a private lesson with Thierry, now the Mon-Thur bus driver but back then my ski instructor, who taught me to stop thinking, keep my head up and just feel my turns, as he led me relentlessly down those halfpipes time and time again. Lara, my instructor last year, taught me to breathe. Funny little detail that one, but quite useful!

What has me wanting to return again to TC is:

1. obviously the skiing. It's steep, challenging and relatively uncrowded, mainly because it doesn't have much beginner terrain, which keeps the riffraff away. Too many times have I been broadsided by out of control snowboarders on the slopes of Thredbo and Perisher, such that I get a bit nervous around a group of them. I'm hoping this paranoia can be lifted by a few more visits to TC, where the snowboarders are awesome riders, and a pleasure to watch doing their thing.

2. location, location, location! That view over the lake, from anywhere on the mountain, plus the views over the back country to Mt Aspiring from the summit and from the view point at the top of the Matukituki runs, is priceless. You get to ski all day surrounded by spectacular beauty!

3. the coffee. Seriously, it's really good coffee...

4. the people. Every year I make a few more friends amongst the locals, who are incredibly friendly and justifiably proud of their mountain. Nancy, who I skied with a bit last year, was unfortunately away overseas this time, but I expect I'll ski with her again next year. And hopefully with my new friends from this year. I also like that everyone's a bit daggy, there's no fashion parade going on here, unlike the pretentious mob that frequent Thredbo Village. Peter (one of the Friday schooldads) and I spent a bit of time chuckling about this, only for me to find out later just what Peter did for a living!

5. the town of Wanaka. Small, quaint, quiet and friendly, with all the facilities I need, plus the best cinema in the southern hemisphere. Those cookies are to die for!!

6. great instruction. I've always had lessons at TC, and I've always had great quality instructors. And my skiing has improved accordingly.

I was explaining all this to one of my friends, who noted the similarity to what it was like visiting Geraldton every year on windsurfing holidays. For five years I came here every year, made more and more friends each summer, and then eventually moved here. As did every other windsurfer in Geraldton, we're almost all blow-ins from elsewhere!

But that's where the similarity ends. No way am I moving to Wanaka!!

The secret to happiness

2010-08-07T12:07:00.006+08:00

Well I'm not the Dalai Lama but I think I know one or two things about the subject.

I had an interesting talk with Jitka, one of the staff in the sports store I mostly frequent whilst in Wanaka, about friendliness. For sales people or people working in the hospitality industry it's part of their job, but for me it's part of my life. It's actually something I consciously do: I smile, I greet people, I make jokes with strangers and I try to genuinely feel compassion for my fellow beings. Now the important word here is genuine. I'm not being fake, I'm not trying to impress or play games, I really do want to be your friend, even if it's just to share a funny moment in time.

I started this habit some time after I left Sydney. In fact I remember that moment in time all too well when I flew back to Sydney mid windsurfing holiday to do a lucrative shift in Wollongong Hospital, spied the uptight drivers in their cars whilst I sat on a bus going somewhere, and said to myself: "Time to get outta this place". A few years later via 3 years in the NT, I'm ensconced on the beach at Drummonds, doing a job I am incredibly passionate about, and can't be happier. And when I return to Sydney for visits (not often!) my absolute favourite past time is to smile at people!!

Now this is what gets me: people are incredibly suspicious of people who smile at them or are friendly towards them. Obviously people who do this are either mad, on drugs, or crazy hippies. Or worse, emotionally needy! What people forget is that just maybe that person is happy, and wants to share a bit of it with you. Go on, try it right now, smile broadly and you just can't help but feel a buzz of the happy juices flowing.

Actually, there's some pretty good research confirming the positive effects of smiling and laughing on the psyche (I'm far too lazy to include links so feel free to google for them yourself). So it must be good for you! I've also found, learnt through my practice of meditation, that holding one's mouth in a gentle Buddha type smile (Mona Lisa does it too!), is as effective. And if you are feeling too stressed to smile? Just take a big breath, and let it out with the loudest deepest sigh you can make and VOILA!!! See how easy it is?

Another tip to happiness is the "live each day at a time" philosophy. If you don't spend time reliving the past or worrying about the future, but live in the moment, you haven't got much to upset you. Of course if you are hungry, have no job, no roof over your head or are in physical danger it might be a little hard to feel happy, but my travels to poor parts of the world reveal that probably what makes people most happy is their social wealth ie their connections to other people, not their material wealth. In fact, worrying about material wealth appears to be a recipe for unhappiness.

I'm going to add a caveat here, because I know those who know me may protest that it's easy for me to say these things when I am financially secure and have the ability to travel anywhere in the world on a whim, and engage in expensive sports like skiing, windsurfing and scuba diving. Sure, but that has never stopped me from being able to see the world through other people's eyes. I am incredibly lucky to have a huge dose of empathy ( I always cry in movies, and am sometimes moved to tears by the chaotic lives of my patients) which somehow allows me to learn from the many people I have met all over the world. And from the numerous couch surfers I host, who continue to enrich my life with their stories and experiences. Not to mention the incredible aboriginal people I work with and for, who have taught me a hell of a lot about social capital. One day I'm going to write about some of them.

I might also add that I am not always smiley and friendly. I can be a total grumpy bitch at times, but I'm working on it - that's where the meditation comes in. And I love spending time by myself, having never been a person who needs others around to make me happy. I never have got that idea, other people don't make you happy, it comes from within. And if you're happy, it feels great to share it.

Now I'm going to finish with an anecdote. Being a doctor, and an advocate of evidence based therapies, I just want to say that this is merely a story, a true one, to illustrate my point. In December 2008 I met a Dutch woman in northern Laos who told me her story. She'd been diagnosed with breast cancer, had the usual treatment, and a few years later it recurred, with spread all over her body and no hope of cure. Her doctors told her she had only months to live, so she and her husband went travelling with what time they had left. With so little time left, she made a conscious decision to live each day at a time. Every morning she got up and was thankful for being alive one more day.

Well day after day she did this, and began to feel better. So they travelled more widely, and she continued to feel healthier and healthier, and continued to live a day at a time. 18 months later she returned to see her doctor, who could find no evidence of the cancer that had ravaged her body. He was understandably amazed, and now that she was ostensibly cancer free, he could no longer give her a poor prognosis.

So here was her dilemma. With a limited future she had embarked on a day to day existence, now that that future was no longer limited should she plan for it? She actually asked my opinion on what I would do. I said I'd keep going, continue to live day by day and just enjoy the ride. She had, of course, also decided to do just that. And I'm sure she's still enjoying a quiet beer somewhere in this wide wonderful world.

So drink a toast to His Holiness, cause I'm pretty sure he knows a thing or two about happiness too!
Cheers!!

Back in Paradise

2010-08-04T18:33:00.005+08:00

It's hard to believe it's winter when you live here. After 2 weeks all rugged up, I returned to Geraldton, stripped down to tshirt, shorts and bare feet and went for a glorious walk along the beach with Hazel. This is the life!!The trip back was the usual horror: a walk through the rain from Wanaka Bakpaka to the busstop with too many bags and not enough hands, scenic bus ride to Queenstown Airport (gorgeous rainbows the whole way), quick checkin, board the plane, then spend three hours waiting on the tarmac as the wild winter front was blowing the wrong way for our plane to be able to take off. Found myself sitting next to Lauren, who had done the ladies' week course that I had had to cancel from, and spent the next six hours trying to work out where we knew each other from (both of us had found the other familiar on meeting earlier in the week) and discovered we'd both gone to the same kindergarten, though that isn't the connection. Strange world.

In Melbourne it was a mad scramble to collect luggage, clear customs and load onto the Perth connection. So sorry to the lady who I ran over with my trolley, it's bloody hard steering at speed at the worst of times, let alone with one arm in plaster. Huge sigh of relief once boarded, and 4 hours later arrive in Perth to be picked up by Lil and Hans whose home I crash in for the night. Next morning Hans drives me up to Scarborough to pick up my car. Scarborough has far too many stop signs and roundabouts, my god I was happy to get onto the open road and not have to do all those gear changes. Not painful, just plain awkward. 4 and a half hours later I am home at last and giving my girl a big cuddle.The garden is luscious, with lots of big juicy extra greenery which needs pulling out to let the other veges flourish. I always say Gero winters are more like English summers, warm days and cool nights, and glorious rain. Currently it's blue skies and temps in the mid 20s, but all the water tanks are full so there's been a bit of precipitation while I've been away. The broccoli is nowhere near ready, so I suspect that that'll be doomed by the warm weather and those pesky aphids, but I've buckets of Tuscan cabbage, bok choy, snow peas, tomatoes, beetroot, salad greens, eggplant and soon zucchini. Nothing like picking fresh produce straight from the garden to the kitchen!!I'm really chuffed to see that the fig has started to put out leaves, as I was worried I'd bought a dud. I am soooo looking forward to fresh figs next year. If I manage to keep it alive through the coming summer that is!! The mango, however, appears doomed, though the pawpaw is happily fruiting, and the mulberry, after being heavily pruned this year, is putting out lots of new shoots.

Great mirth at work on seeing my cast. I'd promised them I wouldn't break a leg - delivered!! Bertel says I'm too old to ski (like as if!!!) and dear Noreen brought me in a delicious Indian curry so I wouldn't have to cook. The best thing about a broken arm: no pap smears!! Fanny checks are an occupational hazard for a female GP, so the chance to get out of them for 4 weeks is fantastic!! Email to reception: please do not book me for any procedures, eg pap smears, Implanon etc. Yippee!!

Bad things about having an arm in a cast: I'm pretty helpless regarding doing any heavy work around the house. Came into sharp relief yesterday when I discovered my car tyre was flat and there was no way I could change it. Especially not on my brute of a 4x4! The boys at work helped out but it doesn't feel good realising that if that had happened on the drive up from Perth I would have been f$%^&ed!!

Am also upset that I can't get back on the bike. Certainly not the road bike, but might pull the mountain bike down and see if I can get my hand around its handlebar. My god, I might have to take up running, or join a gym!! Can still do some yoga though. Can't go swimming....

Should have called in sick and just kept skiing in New Zealand. At least I can do that with a broken arm!!

Meet Bob

2010-07-30T15:13:00.003+08:00

Rest days do all sorts of wonders to one's muscles, along with a genuinely good deep tissue massage, so Thursday saw me back on the slopes having an absolutely awesome day churning down "Bullet" which is one of the many natural halfpipes in The Saddle. With lovely soft snow, and nice smooth sides I was soon making it top to bottom without stacking and ending up with a bucket of snow up the insides of my jacket. Can't say it was stylish, but it was lots of fun!! With my new-found confidence and bright red cast, I even headed off-piste, but that was a bit of a mistake, so I booked in for a lesson Friday as it was time to hone some skills. I appear to have reached a plateau in my skiing, somewhat similar to the windsurfing plateau one reaches at the gybing point (or my current impasse regarding forward loops!), where I am really struggling to finish off perfect carve turns, so I subjected myself to some good old advice from an expert.

Having received a recommendation to book a lesson with "Canadian Heidi" from a woman I met in the cafe, I fronted up at 10am to discover Heidi was off for the day. After an apology suggesting dire circumstances for whoever wrongly booked me, Mr Eye Candy introduced me to Bob Campbell, a fellow Vermont USA Instructor with the promise that Bob was "awesome".

Well Bob's a bloody legend I reckon. Knocking 70, Bob's blind in one eye with a hip replacement, and a veteran of over 40 years teaching. Not only has he been teaching skiing for all that time on weekends and school holidays, he's only recently retired from fulltime primary school teaching, including the last few years working with kids with behavioural problems. At a loose end after separating from his wife of 40 years, his colleague (Mr EC) suggested he come and do a season in TC.

Well lucky us! Bob's like the Pied Piper, taking the school kids on lessons every Friday (if you go to school in Wanaka, Friday is sport day, equals skiing in winter!) and has an incredible passion for kids and teaching. He has such a wealth of experience and for 2 and a half hours he was free to provide me with some help with my less than perfect carve turns. Not only did he have me working really hard on getting that pressure going through the terminal part of my turns, he had fantastic historical stories about the origins of the exercises, as well as great nuggets about boot fitting, ski tuning, orthotics and about making sure you " face the walley"! It was just the sort of advice I needed, although I can't say the legs were in quite the condition of yesterday!

But Bob's best nugget came late in the lesson, when he told me what caused the large mass of rock to form which is such a dominating part of the landscape when looking down from TC to the lake. Apparently it is the result of two glaciers, which merged at this point as they came down the valleys on both sides. The sediment of the glacial moraine was forced together then compressed by a few tonnes of ice, apparently forming the largest structure of its kind in the world. It amuses me hugely that it takes a curious American to discover this fact. God love him!!
So I've one more day left, in which I shall try not to injure myself, then it's back to the sunny west coast. Next year I'm determined to come longer, because I've got to get more time on the mountain if I'm ever going to master those turns. My god this is sounding so similar to my windsurfing obsession isn't it?

Talking about which, one more month till the sea breezes should start kicking in and then: well if I can break an arm and still keep skiing, I can bloody well do a forward loop right????

And the coffee's great too

2010-07-28T12:37:00.010+08:00

Wanaka, in the southern alps of New Zealand, is spectacularly beautiful. Surrounded by mountains, many snow capped at this time of year, and bordering a large lake, you can't help but be viscerally moved by the serenity, the clear bracing air and the gobsmackingly gorgeous vistas around every corner. My trip in the bus every morning up to Treble Cone skirts the lake for 20km, crossing cute one lane bridges and with views over to Mt Aspiring. Then as you climb up the gravel road to the ski field, the view over Lake Wanaka opens up in all its splendour. I can't get enough of this place, just sitting having my morning latte in the cafe looking over the lake makes my day!!Today saw me having a rest day as it was time to check in with the doctor, get the official XRAY report and choose the colour for my new fibreglass plaster. Not surprisingly I went with red, but not before taking a few photos of the extensive bruising still present, and am now set with a rock-hard cast that just might see me pulling the brake off a little for my final three days of skiing. Might even let the boys in red squeeze me for a private lesson!! Mind you, those nut brown eyes could squeeze me out of anything!After a yummy baked pumpkin risotto for lunch, and one too many lattes, I headed out along the lake for a walk to Beacon Point. The views are stunning, including a chance to see TC from the Lake. Yep, that's why the view's so good back down again!So now I'm suitably chilled it's time to get a massage. Tomorrow it's back to the slopes!!

Here's all the rest of the photos

"Ski with your legs, not your hands!" *

2010-07-25T15:22:00.010+08:00

After breaking my arm on Day 3 I took one day off to allow the swelling to go down then returned to the slopes of Treble Cone with a massive XL mitt over the offending plaster to see if I could still have some fun. The thought of spending another day under an inversion (this is when a thick layer of cloud sits over the lake but it's blue skies and sunny up on the peaks) filled me with dread so despite some pain I headed up the mountain regardless. Now I fully admit that this is totally reckless behaviour, but I reckon my skiing is good enough now to at least keep me upright on the groomed runs. I also needed to see the guys at the ski school to cancel my lessons.I've always wanted to do a week long ski school with a group of like minded skiiers, but rarely come to the slopes during the peak ski season when these classes are held. The groups are usually small, and in particular they run ones for women, seeing as women ski differently to men. Bit like windsurfing really, us gals do things with style whereas the lads just use brute force!!

Anyway, this year TC had a ladies ski improvement week for the final week of July, which fitted perfectly with my trip and didn't clash with Neen's week with me either. Neen's now returned home to hubby and gorgeous kids so I'm back to shared dorms and working out ingenious ways to cook dinner with only one serviceable hand!! But the best laid plans....

The boys in red at the ski school have been fabulous, organising a refund, and encouraging me to get back on the slopes. I've had to play the helpless female a few times to ask people to tighten my boots for me, though I'm not sure that "helpless female" and "crazy woman skiing with a newly broken arm" are totally compatible statements! Who cares, I'm having fun!!

I've conquered the green slope (there's only one) and today discovered that "Main Street" doesn't seem to be as steep as I remembered it, so it may be time to hit The Saddle. The boys were right, who needs arms??

*Thanks Russ for the kind words of encouragement, and to everyone else who has written fun things on my cast.

Minor mishaps

2010-07-22T11:47:00.003+08:00

After the freezing weather of late June and early July (we even had a frost in balmy Geraldton, shock horror!!) we at last got some rain and the water tanks are all filled.

Mishap number one: build a new water tank stand but don't cement the legs in. Load empty tank onto stand, fill with water and slowly watch the legs begin to sag. Accept the inevitable and clear the way for the big event. Some time in the night I am woken by a loud creak, and a heavy thump. Check out the damage in the morning: tank still upright though now on the ground, still full, at jaunty angle, but not damaged. Tank stand in pieces, neighbouring fence buckled. Noone injured. Lesson learnt: Cement the legs in next time!!

Mishap number two: last year I went skiing in New Zealand, where I rediscovered my inner ski goddess. So I booked myself another two weeks in the white stuff for this year, and even managed to convince a friend to join me for a week. Now the snow hasn't been that great so far, but Monday night it began to fall and we had a wonderful day at Cardrona in the soft stuff till the poor visibility forced us in to the cafe. Then yesterday we returned to my spiritual home at Treble Cone, with my brand new skis and a mountain covered in lovely snow. Neen went off for a lesson and I headed over to The Saddle to try out my new "Lotta Luv"s in the soft bumpy stuff on Cloud Nine. Almost at the bottom and I hit a small depression and well, stopped!! Thrown forwards my boots released and I face planted into some nice soft snow. Thank goodness for goggles and helmets.

But hang on a sec? My hand feels a bit sore, actually quite a bit sore. Must have sprained it. Shove a bit of snow on my wrist and get myself organised, clear the snow from my goggles, get back into my skis and get down the rest of the hill. Take chairlift up to the top of the Saddle, nursing what feels just a little worse than a sprain, OMG, could I have broken it? Decide to be sensible and ski back down to the base so I can visit the medical centre for an XRAY. No XRAY facilities, but on inspection there is some rather suspicious swelling happening around my distal radius. Me and the doc are pretty sure I've bingled it, so into a backslab I go, and an appointment is made for an XRAY down in Wanaka that evening.

And yep, I am now the proud owner of a nice POP cast due to a small distal radius fracture. More a buckle really, no displacement, though the doc has sent off the films to the orthopods as there's another line he's not sure about (I think it's just a blood vessel). But it has kind of cramped my style a bit. And made fitting into a ski glove an impossibility!

Neen also had a fall yesterday, and has a sore right shoulder, so between my left arm and her right shoulder we're a sad and sore pair!! But Wanaka is a delightfully pretty place so we aren't exactly bored, though I will be after a few days. Awesome sunset the other night too. So I'm now off to buy myself a mitt. Something that'll fit over the plaster and get me back on the slopes. As I said, only a minor mishap!!

That green time of year

2010-05-31T17:56:00.002+08:00

You gotta love it when the rain starts falling and within a week or so everything begins to turn green. The farmers are busy seeding, and I've filled two of my new tubs with yummy soil and planted them up with veges. Now I just have to wait a month or two to start eating them!!

I can pretty well say that I have finished the landscaping and planting in the front yard although there's still some sort of paving to do outside the bifold doors but that can wait, so my attention is at last being drawn to the rear of my property. This area is affectionally known as "the bush" because it's remnant scrub that has evaded mulching by the council simply because it's on private property.

This bit of my block is on a sanddune, with a vertical drop of about 4m from the top of the property down to the house pad. The only reason the sand dune isn't flowing into my house is all that vegetation has kept it stable, so disturbing it will require some care.

I actually have some big plans for this area, including a pond, an alfresco area with pizza oven, and maybe even a japanese inspired zen garden. And that's only on the bottom tier! In line with my ideas of reuse, I'm thinking of terracing with old car tyres which are then rendered, and making seating from old windsurfing boards. And doing just a few more cosmetic renovations on the house.

I'll try and get some pictures up to illustrate the enormity of this task, then again, not as big a job as my plan to tackle that bougainvillea. Which, by the way, is flowering spectacularly at present and still the monstrosity it has always been. A very pretty failure that I can't possibly feel bad about....

Busy days ahead..

Recovering from my holiday

2010-05-07T21:50:00.002+08:00

My Java holiday was a blast, but I have to admit that it was also at a pace I don't really enjoy. I like being in a place long enough to greet the regular vendors at the market, have a go at exhausting the local cuisine and know the becak drivers parked outside the hotel all by name. But of course there needs to be enough to do in the meantime, it isn't all about the food.

Talking about which, I only met one vegetarian on this trip, mainly because I met few foreigners and spent most of my time with local people. But a surprising amount of my meals consisted of rice, a vegetable curry, tofu and tempeh. Afterall, you can't eat goat, chicken, duck, beef, bunny rabbit at every meal. No I don't go in for western breakfasts whilst away, there are far too many excellent eastern breakfasts to trial. I reckon that Soto Madura in Sumenep was my favourite breakfast for this trip.

Somewhere in Java I picked up a headcold, which caused me some amusement in a minibus where my sneezes and noseblowing were causing a mild panic for the other occupants. With deaths from avian influenza having occurred only recently in East Java I could understand their concern, but I didn't quite have the language skills to explain it was only a cold, and anyway, I've had the jabs (ok, not for avian, but how could I explain swine flu?).

By the time I arrived in Bali I was on the mend, but my 3-4 days of relaxation seemed more like a rush to get all the christmas and birthday shopping done (I do hope my brothers have stopped baby making), catch up with friends, try and co-ordinate a birthday dinner, and still manage a massage or two along with the obligatory manicure and pedicure. I did get to have Durian on my birthday though, and almost die laughing watching my fellow share taxi passengers fail the taste/smell test!!

Bali is booming. Tourism is back to the good old days and the prices are roughly double what you'd pay on Java. Almost everything is imported so it's not surprising. The people are friendly, but it's more the friendly face of tourism than the genuine friendliness of a strange face in town. Not that us westerners are a strange face, and recently my fellow aussies have been making a bad face, with drunken brawls and generally uncouth behaviour. People are blaming the cheap airfares for encouraging the bogan element, but that's crap, bogans have been going to Bali for years, look at Chappelle Corby!!

I managed a week back at work before I succumbed to a secondary bacterial throat infection that had me bed bound on antibiotics. The speed and ferocity with which this lurgy floored me indicates I just might have overdone it, but my week in bed has restored my strength, and given me the chance to make a dent in my recently topped up DVD collection!!

Now it's time to go gardening!!

Leaving the best till last

2010-04-23T16:10:00.009+08:00

My final destination in Java is Kawah Ijen, a colourful crater lake set amidst coffee plantations and remnant rainforest. It's quite a hassle getting there via a combination of bus, minibus and ojek, but not particularly difficult if you charter your own vehicle. I, of course, do it the hard way, but make a few more friends in the process. My trip begins with a bus from Probbolingo to Bondowoso, passing the massive coal powered power plant on the north coast before ascending through verdant green hills and down to Bondowoso. Here I must take another bus to Wonosari, where I change to a minibus for the climb up the potholed road to Sempol. There I negotiate an ojek to Pos Paltuding, where I take a room for the night.

The next morning I begin the walk up to the crater rim in the dark, occasionally passing sulphur workers carting baskets weighing up to 100kg of sulphur cut from the volcano vents. The track down from the rim to where the men are working is steep and treacherous and given my history of falling over during descents I decide to stay on the rim and just take a few telephoto shots of what looks like a hell of a job. There are 350 workers, each hauling sulphur twice a day, which they have cut from near the vents. They get 600Rp a kilo, thus making over 100,000Rp per day. This sort of money means it is a popular job, even if breathing poisonous sulphur fumes is the occupational hazard. They also try to sell sulphur souvenirs, some carved into animals, others natural crystal formations, to the hoards of tourists who arrive every morning to also view the spectacle. This really is a beautiful spot, with views right along the east Javan coast for miles in all directions.After returning to Pos Paltuding I pack my bags and begin my walk down to Banyuwangi, or at least to where I can get some public transport. The walk is brilliant, through tropical forest with tree ferns everyhere, birds singing, butterflies... I'm in heaven. From time to time I am passed by jeeps full of returning tourists, some stop and offer me a lift but I am having a far too good a time to take up their offers, this scenery is beautiful!Not long after lunch I emerge from the forest into plantations of coffee, large trees, and beehives. The road continues to descend at a much more reasonable gradient for a few more kilometres to Jambu, where I am hoping to pick up some public transport. This isn't the case so I soldier on to Licin. I have now walked 21km downhill, after my 6km round trip to the crater. I can safely say I am buggered!!

Here's all the photos.

A young boy offers to take me down to Banyuwangi for a ridiculously cheap price so we career downhill at a ridiculously fast pace. It is then that we pass all the Durian sellers. I was really looking forward to buying some Durian to finish off my stay in Java, but I stupidly didn't ask the boy to stop, so we continue wheeling on to Banyuwangi.

A word of advice to anyone turning up in Banyuwangi late afternoon. Best to stay the night there, as the buses crossing to Bali early evening are few and far between, with most of them not arriving till much later at night. Unless you are already on a through bus that is.

From Banyuwangi I took another ojek (now that's a funny story about the very friendly young man who stops to tell me in English that an ojek will charge me at least 50,000Rp to take me the less than 10km to the ferry port just after I've negotiated in Indonesian with another man to pay 15,000Rp for the trip!) to the port of Ketapang where I board the ferry for the short crossing to Java. For an incredibly narrow patch of sea it's a 2 hour crossing: one hour in real time and another as I turn my watch forward an hour as I cross the timezone. Going the other way you lose no time at all!!

I have had a glorious 3 and a half weeks in Java. Yes the place is incredibly crowded and the cities are loud, dirty and congested. But the food is varied and delicious, the people are genuinely friendly, incredibly generous and are mostly just getting along with their lives. And there are still some areas of genuine wilderness for those of us who like walking in the great outdoors. Yep, Java has been a revelation!

Before I have even left the ferry port I meet my first Balinese tout. I've been to Bali a number of times before, but after being ignored for weeks the touts in Bali really got in my face. Yep, Bali lives on its tourism, Java doesn't. So smile, ignore, and if you must, say sudah!! (means "already", as in I've already bought a sarong, had a massage, had a manicure, hired a car, seen the dolphins, etc etc ad nauseum). And enjoy that cold beer or three that wasn't so easy to find in Java.

Cheers!!

How friendly can you handle?

2010-04-16T19:28:00.009+08:00

I've just arrived in Surabaya, Java's second largest city, which has a very organised bus station, I'm impressed. After some lunch it's time to take my next bus. I enter the wall of bus touts asking me if I want to go to Probbolingo (I've just come from there), Bali, Jogja, Jakarta, Malang..... they are running out of options and starting to sound confused. I shake my head, smile and say Madura. There is shocked silence then they point me on. I am laughing as I board my bus for Sumenep.

A young man asks if I will sit with him as he wishes to practice his English. This is the first of many encounters with the locals who have got to be the most friendly people I've met anywhere. In fact they can be so in your face it can be overwhelming. Agus chats away, and even invites me to stay with his family. But he doesn't live in Sumenep, and I am keen to base myself in one place for a few days, plus I'm far too tired to be sociable. I continue on to Sumenep, check in to a hotel, and am asleep within minutes.My hotel is cheap, but super clean, and one of few hotels I've stayed in in Java that I can be absolutely sure they change the sheets between guests. Breakfast isn't included, but a cup of coffee awaits me each morning, and the staff are super friendly and helpful regarding usual prices for becak, and what's on around town. I head to the tourist office to visit the kraton, where I am given the full guided tour for the grand price of 15 cents. I also recieve a free brochure and 2 CDs, one with local Madurese music, the other with tourist information. I am also invited to accompany the tourist office boss out to Slopeng Beach to see a boat which is being built. Arrangements are made to meet at 3pm for the trip.A bunch of school kids have joined our tour, and they accompany me back towards my hotel, peeling off in ones and twos as they themselves go home for lunch. Just as I am almost home I am accosted by another man on a motorbike who wants to practice his English. I say accosted because after I had a very short conversation with him and indicated that I didn't wish to spend longer talking to him, he continued to follow me. In fact later as I headed over to the mosque he continued to stalk me, so I sought refuge in the women's section. Here I met a lovely lass Nur, who I later accompanied back to her family's small shop, still being followed by this incredibly persistent young man.At no time did I feel threatened by this man, it was simply a cultural misunderstanding. He wanted to talk to me and I didn't want to talk to him. He didn't seem to respect my right to say no, ignored my request to stop following me, and appeared bemused by my refusal to talk to his friend on his mobile phone. Even after I'd left Nur's shop he continued to shadow me, but my next destination was the tourist office for my trip to Slopeng, and after that I never saw him again.

Back at the tourist office we take a quick trip to the market to look at Batik, before heading out to Slopeng. Here they are building a traditional Maduran ship, in partnership with a Japanese organisation, which they plan to sail to Shanghai Expo 2010. They'd only been building for 20 days, and the model shows it will be one impressive ship when it's finished in 3 months time.Madura is famous for it's sate, so I find a nearby sidewalk warung to indulge in the local specialty. It is indeed delicious and the stall holder becomes yet another new friend. On my second night there, a fellow diner pays for my meal "because I don't have a husband". Poor chap feels sorry for me!!The local market is excellent, and becomes my preferred breakfast location, having found a nice place that serves Soto Madura. The nearby ladies selling roti are pleased as punch to see me returning, and the market people are keen for me to take photos of them. One lady in particular is a natural.My last morning I am picked up by the tourist office boss and taken to see Kerapan Sapi. This is the bull racing that Madura is famous for. Although the races are held during the dry season, they have practice sessions in Sumenep each Saturday morning at the local stadium. Kerapan Sapi is definitely a bloke's sport. Boys and men flock around the beasts, who are tied two abreast to a wooden "chariot" on which the driver holds on for dear life. Actually he hooks his foot around the chariot and holds onto the bulls' tails, somehow managing to whip them with a barbed stick. To make sure the bulls are even more in the mood for running fast, they tie a piece of leather to their tails that has little barbs on it to irritate the bull's anus. Not really a place for those with concerns about animal welfare... They do run mighty fast and it is quite a spectacle!I have been blown away by the friendliness of the Madurese people. Around Sumenep you'll find fine beaches, great food, pretty countryside, a huge vibrant market and the city itself is sleepy and peaceful. The guys at the tourist office seem to bend over backwards to ensure you see everything there is to see, and think nothing of giving you a lift there as well. I'm giving the place a big endorsement because it really does deserve more tourists. But just be aware, these guys are very friendly!!

After taking the bemo down to Kalianget I discover there is no afternoon ferry afterall, so I return back to Java by road. We take the ferry back to Surabaya, just in time for a spectacular sunset.I brave the bus touts a second time and continue on my journey to the eastern tip of Java.

Here's all the pictures.

Bromo, I will return!

2010-04-16T17:51:00.012+08:00

It's really a piece of cake to get to Ranu Pani from Malang, though it does require a little patience and the ability to be squashed into a microlet with 20 other people and their possessions for a hot sweaty ride uphill. Not to mention the poor lady chucking her guts up...There's a bit of a transport mafia at Tumpang, I suspect led by the dwarf (should have asked him if he had any sisters looking for jobs as I know a midget bar in Bangkok looking for dancers!!) who try to convince me to hire an entire microlet for 200,000Rp as the others are full. I tell him I'll simply wait for the next one to be ready and go and have some lunch at a nearby warung. It is afterall the middle of the day and there is a lively market going on, so it is almost no time before I am being called over to be packed in like sardines with the locals for the drive up to Gubug Klakah. From here my options are limited to walking, hitching, or taking an ojek. I opt for the latter, after a little negotiation over price, and away we go. The road is sealed all the way to the crater rim, travelling through beautiful pine forests until we near the village of Ngadas. Here the hills are completely clad in a patchwork quilt of vegetable plots, and the locals are busily weighing and loading cabbages (thanks Neen!!) onto trucks. At the crater rim the road deteriorates a little as it winds around the top, with views down the caldera to Bromo ruined by low cloud, then descends on a good asphalt road to Ranu Pani. I left my hotel in Malang at 10 am, I am at Ranu Pani by 1pm.Ranu Pani is gorgeous, a quiet town beside a tranquil lake, with vege plots as far as the eye can see. The people are incredibly friendly, all very eager to greet me and some to stop and chat. The climb up Mt Semeru is unfortunately closed due to the bad weather, and even the walk to Ranu Kumbolo is closed. I have no choice but to continue my travels across to Bromo, but I'll chill out in Ranu Pani for an evening and tackle that tomorrow on foot.Up early to clear skies and a view of the mighty Semeru before I breakfast, pack my bag and head uphill. It takes me a good one and a half hours to reach the crater rim again, to find the view even worse than yesterday. The clouds engulf the entire caldera, I am not in luck. But the upside is overcast conditions definitely make walking alot more pleasant.The descent into the caldera feels like I am Dorothy following the yellow brick road, as the caldera is covered with heather and an assortment of purple, yellow and white flowers. I meet a sole horseman who offers me a lift, as well as a small but steady stream of motorcyclists, and the occasional truck or jeep. I am the only walker! Soon my yellow brick road disappears and the track continues as a black dirt track interspersed with large puddles. I'm really enjoying myself pottering along but am noticing that those clouds are getting lower and it looks like rain. No sooner do I hit the sand sea than the rain descends. I must really look a sight with my white poncho trudging across a black lunarscape!It's time for lunch, but there's nowhere dry to eat before I begin the ascent to Cemoro Lawang. I have to admit to being a little tired so decide not to climb up to Bromo but leave that for tomorrow. I find a tree to give me some shelter and devour my rice and tempeh before finishing the climb. It's actually not much of a hill, but I definitely needed that carb injection to get up it. I find a damp but cheap room with some pretty dire toilets and have a rest before checking out one of the more salubrious establishments in town for a beer. I also opt out of serious physical activity tomorrow and book a jeep seat for the Bromo sunrise spectacular!

So much for spectacular! Cemoro Lawang reminds me very much of Sapa in Vietnam, with cold misty weather but without a bunch of decent pubs, no market and no colourful ladies trying to sell me handicrafts. Come to think of it it's nothing like Sapa actually, except for the crap weather! And my sunrise spectacular? Well it wasn't that far removed from the view from the top of Fansipan, but minus the rain! Yep, total whiteout, nary a thing to be seen.The jeep tour continues with a convoy down the mountain to the Bromo carpark where a couple of hundred horsemen try to cajole you into purchasing a ride up the mountain. The price drops from 150,000Rp to 100,000Rp within 5 steps of my jeep, drops a further 50,000Rp within a further two steps, and if I walk a hundred metres to the Hindu temple the price is now 20,000Rp. These boys really are desperate for business, as they only get one chance a day as all the jeeps pretty well arrive at once. By 8:30am almost everyone has returned to their hotels and the place is deserted. Certainly was the case when I passed through at lunchtime yesterday.

The climb up Bromo is easy, as the final part is a flight of steps (the horses leave you at the bottom of them so you still need to climb yourself), and the view down into the steamy crater is pretty impressive. But the clouds keep obscuring the view, and entrepreneurial chaps circulate attempting to sell pictures of Bromo when it's sunny!I see no reason to dally in Bromo with it's misty weather and no fun pubs or colourful characters (I don't think the occasional man selling scarves and hats really compares with my adorable Sapa ladies) so I jump on the overpriced Colt to Probolingo. I am definitely going to return to Bromo, not just to see the sunrise for real, but because the sunrise is the main attraction, the park is very poorly utilised the rest of the day. There's some great landscape and trekking opportunities here and I do want to visit Semeru afterall. Yep, Bromo, I will return.

Here's the rest of the pictures.

I'm way ahead of my original schedule, and I'm not ready yet to hit Bali, so from Probolingo I'm off to explore a little bit off the beaten track. You could have heard a pin drop when I told the bus touts at the bus station my intended destination....

Hanging out with a famous rock star

2010-04-11T18:29:00.006+08:00

My arrival in Malang was not pretty. This was my first crowded bus and I wanted to get out. But the bus driver won't just stop along the road to let you off so I have to wait till we reach some preappointed spot before I can alight. Next I must jump on a microlet to make the journey back down the same road I have just travelled. Perhaps I have not had enough sugar today because I am fuming!! We sit in the microlet whilst the driver packs it to the rafters, plus a couple more, before we head off. I am travelling blind with little idea where we are going and at some point decide it's time for some fresh air and escape!

Now I am beside the road in a busy city, no idea exactly where I am as my map is woefully small, and I have no idea where the accommodation is. I am not ready to engage the services of a becak as I don't even know where I am going. I cross the road and head up a side street, get to a T-junction and am stumped, do I go left or right? I pull out my map again and contemplate which of those less than desirable characters sitting over there shall I ask? Then along comes my knight in shining armour. I look up to find a friendly man on a motorbike asking me if I am OK as I am looking very confused. I explain my dilemma - I ask him where I am and even he can't find it on the map - and he offers to take me to a hotel. I pluck a name out of the guidebook, Hotel Helios, and we go there, only to find it is full. I also discover that they only take foreign guests, so I am glad I'm not staying there anyway. We go to another homestay, which is also full, and at last find a third hotel which has rooms. The staff rarely, if ever, have foreign guests so I am a bit of a celebrity.

Nonot turns out to be a local celebrity himself. He plays in a popular heavy metal band (four albums out), has a music studio nearby, lectures in music at the local university, is a published songwriter and is the leader of the Malang Indie Community, a collection of a few hundred independent bands and musicians in Malang. Everywhere we go there are smiles and waves from the adoring populace....

Later I visit the studio, and then we head off to the government radio station where Nonot is helping a young band who are performing live on radio. I then become a minor celebrity myself as the sight of a lone foreigner in the studio audience means the girls announcing notice me and ask me my name and where I am from. Apparently it makes Facebook later that evening!!

The next day Nonot takes me out to see some nearby temples - I have to admit to beginning to get temple fatigue - and on the way home we have Durian. At last I am enjoying this great fruit again, I even take a quick sniff to try and work out why people don't like it. I still don't get it, smells like Durian to me! The following morning I negotiate the bizarrely lettered microlets into the centre of town to watch the locals feeding the pidgeons and old men playing badminton in the alun-alun, before wandering through to the bird market, not quite as colourful as Jogja's, and flower market. Then I find a small market to take more photos in before jumping on the wrong microlet back to my hotel. Luckily I now know where I am so I simply walk the rest of the way. A quick shower then it's time to make my way to Bromo via the back door.

Here's all the photos of Malang (forgot to take a piccie of my rock star friend but!).

More temples and how to ruin a pretty piece of scenery

2010-04-11T18:08:00.005+08:00

My extensive research had told me about Mt Kelud, a tranquil crater lake easily reached by vehicle, which had erupted in 2007 leaving a steaming lump of ash where the nice pretty lake used to be. Since it was so easy to get to - admittedly on the back of a motorbike meaning one sore bum for me - I included it in my tour of the area around Blitar.

The approach from Blitar is through rice fields, green as green can be, and as we ascend we get sugar plantations interspersed with fields of pineapples. And the occasional bullock dray as well. This is rural Java at it's best, but I'm on a tight schedule to get back to the hotel before 1pm so I don't dally. The climb up to the crater is steep, but my bike today has more grunt than Dicky's scooter, so we make it up without stalling. Then it's an easy walk along a path and through a long unlit tunnel into the crater. And there is this big lump of steaming ash!! Seriously, it looks like someone dumped it there, more like a piece of environmental vandalism than the result of a natural phenomenon. A nearby stall has pictures and even a VCD of the three day eruption, but I've already seen it on the internet, so sorry guys... I have to remind myself that I am currently standing in the crater of an active volcano, and less than 50 metres from me is the evidence. No, they wouldn't let you do this in Australia!!Down the mountain we return the same way and detour to visit Penataran, the largest of the Majahapit kingdom temples, and quite unique as it is East Javan in its architecture and carvings. This place doesn't get the visitors it deserves, as it is no less impressive, although smaller, than Prambanam. Then again, it's not quite as easy to get to as Yogyakarta either. I really like Penataran, something about the place really appeals to me.I return back to my hotel in time for a quick shower before heading off by bus to Malang.

For Kelud and Penataran, click here.

Hill temples, rain, and altered plans

2010-04-11T17:40:00.009+08:00

Candi Sukuh and Candi Ceto are two Hindu temples on the slopes of Mt Lawu near Solo. They are the product of the last remaining group of Hindu worshippers who were being driven out of Java by the encroaching Islamic kingdoms. And they are completely different to anything that preceded them.Candi Sukuh in particular is built more in the style of an Egyptian pyramid, with terraced sloping stone walls rather than the usual block stone walls. There also seems to be a return to more animistic motifs, and both temples play considerable homage to fertility rites. The stone lingga at Ceto leaves nothing to the imagination!!Dicky has taken me to these temples on the motorbike, which stalled a number of times trying to get heavy old me and my backpack up steep inclines, meaning a few small walks. But the downhill run is a breeze, and then it's off to the hill resort town of Tawangmangu where I will stay the night. But first we have Sate Kelinci, a particular specialty in the mountain areas. Yep, Kelinci means Bunny Rabbit, I can hear the gentle refrain of "Bright Eyes" as I tuck into what is quite succulent meat. "Eh, what's up doc?"Here's the temple photos.

I do hope Dicky got back to Solo before the heavens opened, because that evening it poured. Although the wet season is officially over, there is still alot of rain around, and anyway, I expect a bit up here in the mountains. But the consistent evening rain is making me rethink my plans to climb Gunung Lawu the following day, as I don't have either a sleeping bag or a tent and it doesn't look pretty. My mind is made up next morning when by 8 am the clouds are already gathering: I'll skip the climb and head further afield. I take a Colt up to the start of the mountain climb at Cemoro Sewu, and begin walking down the road to Sarangan, the hill resort for the residents of Madiun. I'm also now in East Java. The walk is lovely, there's very little traffic through this mountain pass, and the surrounding trees are covered in epiphytes and the birds are singing and all is right with the world...Coming in to Sarangan the forest clears to vegetable plots, and at Sarangan itself there is a tiny lake with more speedboats for hire than looks practical. Who said anyone cares about safety here?The next part of my trip includes a number of bus trips. First I take a colt to Magetan, then jump on the waiting bus to Madiun, but a conversation with some men at the station (this is where I'm glad of some local language skills) sees me jumping on a Surabaya bound bus instead to Nganjuk, where I hop on a Blitar bound bus. Although I have to jump buses in Kediri, I at last arrive in Blitar at 5pm. I get a room in a hotel and arrange a tour for the morning. That's next.

Here's the rest of the photos.

Gourmet food, Solo style

2010-04-11T16:56:00.009+08:00

The train between Yogyakarta and Solo is a simple commuter train taking about an hour. There I am met by Dicky, the brother of my couch surfing hostess Popy, and taken home to meet the family. Ibu (mother) is one cool chick, who spends her days sitting in a cool spot in the breezeway watching the daytime soaps in between doing the household chores. Aside from attending gym three times a week that is! She doesn't speak a word of English so I am getting to practice my Indonesian instead. Dicky is studying law, and is in the middle of midterm exams, but he still has time to show me around during the day whilst Popy is at work.Popy works in a bank full time, then is a radio announcer on the weekends, so she's pretty busy. But that doesn't stop her being a fantastic host, taking me to all the best local restaurants to try the Solo specialties. Over the following two days I try many different dishes, from fried duck to a dish similar to gado gado, Nasi Liwet - rice cooked in coconut milk and served with side dishes, Nasi Gudeg which is another jackfruit dish, and a rice pudding with a salty sauce whose name escapes me. There's a great night food market at Galabo which has all sorts of offerings. I have Thengkleng Kambing, which is ex President Soeharto's favourite dish, an assortment of fried goat's bones with a small amount of meat and fat on them. The sauce, however is superb. Before that we'd eaten Pisang Owol, which is baked banana topped with chocolate sauce and grated cheese. Yes cheese! I'm yet to grasp this particular combination which is very common in many Indonesian sweets. It's actually very tasty, also very filling!!

Dicky's tour guiding duties commence after he has sat his morning exam. He seems completely unconcerned and Popy tells me he'd probably spend the time playing Playstation anyway! We go to the Kraton Mangkenegaran, a smaller but better maintained sultan's palace compared with the larger more dilapidated Kraton Surakarta. I particularly like the lovely tropical garden surrounding it, and spend a few minutes trying to teach the pet cocky a little aussie slang!We also visit a batik museum and factory, where I begin to get an understanding of the meanings around the designs, but the hellish workshop in the back of the plush air-conditioned museum premises shows that this is big business, where people slave away in appalling conditions and only get paid by the piece. Yes they are skilled artisans, but that doesn't equate with decent wages. Not that I can do much about it...In the evening Popy takes me to see Wayang Orang, which is the acting out of old Javanese tales, Hindu and Buddhist tales, a few songs and lots of ad lib and audience interaction. This acting troupe performs every day of the year, whether there is an audience or not, and are really very amusing. Unfortunately I fall asleep midway through so we leave early - and I paid all of 40 cents to see them too!!

The following day Dicky takes me up into the hills to see some temples and I get to try sate bunny rabbit. On our way we stop to take a quick picture of an Islamic school which has produced more than its fair share of terrorists....Here's all the Solo pictures.

Pleasantly surprised

2010-04-07T10:11:00.014+08:00

Funny place Indonesia. Unlike anywhere I've been so far, this country continues to defy my expectations. Yogyakarta is well and truly on the tourist map, so I expected it to be trashy and full of insistent batik salesmen etc and basically a real pain in the arse. Admittedly I'd been advised to stay in the Prawirotawan area rather than in the main backpacker area near the train station, and I didn't venture north of the Kraton to where the bulk of the hard sell occurs, but aside from the usual becak drivers wanting fares I found Yogya hassle free.

Prawirotawan is quiet, and has a great local market at the corner of Jl Parangritis. There's a high speed internet cafe nearby, and a surplus of good local food outlets, as well as some higher class western restaurants for those so inclined. It's within walking distance of the Kraton, and best of all my homestay has a pool! I'm in heaven!! There's some quite interesting street art/ graffiti in Yogya, which I can enjoy whilst walking the streets. As usual I am looked at with incredulity for not only walking everywhere, but also for being female and alone. Somewhere along the way I am picked up by a guide, who explains things in a mix of mostly Indonesian with a smattering of English. To my great surprise I am understanding him quite well and he is a pleasant enough chap so I decide to let him show me around for the day as it certainly makes negotiating the labyrinth of the Kraton area a lot easier.We go to visit a puppet maker, where the young man making the puppet explains in incredible detail about the meanings behind the shapes and designs incorporated into the carvings. As if that isn't enough, there is further meaning attached to the colours it is painted, with different colours indicating different emotions. There are over 350 different puppets within a wayang kulit collection, which means lots to choose from if buying one. I buy two and am given a very flattering commentary on the good quality of my character for choosing those particular puppets. I struggle not to be cynical as to whether this is just sales pitch hyperbole, as the young man really is quite earnest! An explanation of the meanings of the puppets I have purchased will be sent to me by email.Next it's off to the Sultan's palace, where there is a display of dancing and gamelan to watch, before touring the museum full of artifacts and photos of the beloved 9th sultan, the current sultan's dad. The current sultan only has daughters, so I'm unsure who takes over next. There are some lovely large ceramic platters from China that I wouldn't mind absconding with, and the batik collection opens my eyes to the fact that some Batik is actually quite nice. I've unfortunately seen only crap stuff before, typical me, I only like the good (read expensive!!) stuff.... It's now noon, and rather than have something to eat I am taken to the bird market where there are not only birds for sale - I even saw an eagle - but lizards, snakes, dogs, cats, bats, mice, fruit bats, rabbits, guinea pigs and monkeys. Then there's ant eggs, crickets, caterpillars and worms to feed your new pet, though the mammals and reptiles are usually eaten for medicinal purposes. I am no longer hungry... After the bird market we visit Taman Sari, which is a vast water park designed by a Portugese architect for the Sultan's folly. It includes an airy spot on top of a hill, an ingeniously designed underground mosque, secret tunnels and underground canals that allow the sultan and family to travel in and out of the city by boat or foot undetected, and a very flash set of bathing pools. One of the pools is for the use of the Sultan's wives (the current one only has one) and the Sultan has a tower that he can sit in and look down on his ladies cavorting. Strange weird fact: in the corners of this pool enclosure there are two graves for the Sultan's horses!! Hmmm... It is now time to bid my guide fare thee well, and although he has offered to take me to see a wayang kulit show tonight I decline as I am planning to see the Ramayana Ballet instead. He decides to accompany me a little way in order to steer me into a picture gallery, where I am given a cup of tea and regaled with the story that this is a school of art etc etc. I have a look but am not interested so we leave and soon my guide is also finished with me. I give him a generous tip - I have afterall enjoyed his company - and bid him adieu and return to my homestay to enjoy a welcome dip in that lovely pool. But first I have the best Bakso evah from a little "kaki lima" - the name given to the portable street food sellers, meaning five legs - just next to the market. Yep, I'm enjoying Yogya. Here's more pics.

The Ramayana Ballet is alot of fun. I opt for seeing it at the local theatre rather that going out to Prambanam. I have seen the story performed in Bali, but this one is of course done differently and is quite funny at times. In particular, the band of monkeys are played mostly by kids of all different ages, including one who couldn't be more than 3 or 4 who completely steals the show. A great night out I can highly recommend. The pictures are here.The following day I hire a bicycle and take to the crowded streets of Yogya before finding the quiet canal path that takes me almost the whole way to Prambanam. The main temple complex of Pawon is Hindu, with individual temples devoted to various deities, but there is also a Buddhist temple, Candi Sewu, which is currently undergoing major structural repairs, complete with workers in no safety gear climbing the temples without ropes or harnesses and smiling happily for my camera.The Prambanam plain has scores of temples, both Buddhist and Hindu, with some only recently discovered. Candi Sambosari is one such temple only discovered in the 1980s when a farmer uncovered a carved stone and subsequent excavations revealed a temple which had been covered in a huge layer of ash from one of the many eruptions of the nearby volcano Merapi. I cycle back to Yogya, arriving just on dusk and enjoy a lovely cooling dip in the pool before joining a Dutch lass for dinner.

The Prambanam pictures are here.

Tomorrow I head to Solo.

Why I came to Java

2010-04-04T19:03:00.006+08:00

My fifth time in Indonesia and at last I make it to Borobodur. It's a quiet little village which just so happens to have one of the largest Buddhist monuments in South East Asia. As a result it attracts it's fair share of tacky souvenir sellers who have a steady stream of tourists to pester with their wares. Welcome back to the main tourist trail.Most visitors to Borobodur come on a day trip from Yogyakarta, so staying a night not only affords you an early entry at 6 am, but for $40 (a small fortune in Indonesia) you can be one of those to gain an entry before dawn to watch the sun rise from the top of the temple. It's a wonderful experience, and visiting the temple before the heat of the day really sets in is a must.I can't really describe Borobodur, it's like a massive mandala with numerous terraces carved with bas reliefs of the stories of Buddha and Buddha's teachings. In alcoves everywhere are statues of Buddha looking out over the landscape and the upper terraces have stupas with buddha statues inside. I dutifully reach in and touch Buddha's feet, which honours me with good luck.Let's hope so, as next stop is the tourist jungle of Yogyakarta, but first I visit two more smaller temples, one with 3 Buddhas inside and the site of a meditation centre. I am now suitably chilled and it is time to hit town... I make no apologies, there are lots of pictures of Borobodur here, and for pictures of the smaller temples of Pawon and Mendut, here.

Dieng rocks!!

2010-04-04T18:07:00.006+08:00

Dieng Plateau is smack in the middle of Java, a boggy volcanic caldera where almost every patch of dirt is cultivated for the growing of vegetables. It's also quite cool and rains alot, so mornings are the best time to appreciate the beautiful scenery before the clouds close in.This is volcano territory, with a number of lakes coloured green and blue by sulphuric hot springs, and a few bubbling craters of hot mud. I was particularly taken with Kawah Sikidang, with its waves of boiling mud and sulphurous steam emanating from a hole in the middle of a lunarscape. Nearby is a geothermal power station giving off an even larger amount of steam. But still we have blackouts...Dieng is also home to the oldest Hindu temples in Java. I have a little go at some long exposure night shots but am interrupted by a loud crowd of local tourists so return to my homestay to slaughter the boys at Scrabble. The boys running the homestay are Scrabble addicts and insist on numerous games so they can learn English. Having become quite addicted to Facebook Scrabble myself, I introduce them to all the two letter words that none of us know what they mean. Later they play with some Dutch tourists, who don't believe the words they come up with. And with neither being native English speakers, it's an impasse!! Next morning I am up very early to take a motorbike ride to Sembungan to climb Mount Sikinur to watch the sunrise. My god this place rocks! I take a massive amount of shots that should create a fantastic panorama after some photostitching in photoshop. Later I head up to the summit proper for some more views of nearby volcanoes and the view over the small lake to the village of Sembungan, supposedly the highest altitude village in Java.Then I walk all the way back, via one more hill to get some stunning shots of the coloured lakes. There are many more craters and lakes to see in the area but I am on a fairly tight schedule so after a hot shower I am packed and on the first of a series of three buses that will take me to one of the great monuments of the world: Borobodur.

Here's all the rest of the photos of Dieng.

Bugger the temples, I came for the view

2010-04-03T20:23:00.004+08:00

I arrived in the rain to a complete whiteout. Reminded me of a certain mountain summit in Vietnam: wet, cold and no view. But this time I arrived in a car and I didn't have a river flowing through my boots! And there was a hotel to stay in - no rice wine though....Gedung Songo means "nine buildings" in Javanese, although there are only five temples still standing, remnants of a vast Hindu empire which used to rule Java some thousand or more years ago. But as the title says, you don't really come here for the temples, it's the views across to all the mountains that makes this place special, plus the fact that it's not stinking hot up here in the hills. And the next morning, the weather is clear and it delivers..Here's the rest of the pics.

Along the north coast to Semarang

2010-04-03T18:50:00.004+08:00

Well let's face it, transit days are crap! There you are, eager to start your holiday and, well, you've got to get there first. Airports for the budget traveller are crowded, noisy and there's a lack of comfy seats - they do that deliberately to stop people staying the night. But I can report that the LCCT at KL has some nice cafes (that strawberry frappe went down just fine) and a pretty mean noodle shop, not to mention an english language bookstore where I could get a novel to read en route. I was disappointed to discover that my onward flight to Jakarta had been rescheduled to leave an hour or so later, meaning any real chance of escaping the capital was now unlikely. Nevermind, Damri do a fine bus service in to town, where I got to enjoy Jakarta by night (definitely an improvement on its daytime appearance) and an interesting rendition of loud belches from the lady behind me who had a serious wind problem. Aaah I do love that about Indonesia, no pretences about bodily functions.

So a night was had in an air conditioned rat hole in the backpacker district of Jakarta and the following morning I jumped on a train to Cirebon. Cirebon is on the north coast of Java, and is known for its Kratons (Sultan's Palaces) and its prawns. In fact the town hall is literally draped in them! Prawns that is.The Kraton is an interesting mix of javanese, chinese and dutch architecture and also houses a really weird chariot or two.There's also a mighty fine market where yours truly enjoyed herself yet again with the locals and somehow resisted the durian stalls - perhaps it was a little early in the day.Photos of Cirebon here.

After Cirebon I took a bus to Pekalongan, a smallish town which is the centre of Batik. It appears that most of the designs for new batik all come from here, even if they are made in different parts of Java. Not being a batik fan, I completely failed to take advantage of my location but instead spent the afternoon playing Uno with my hospitality club host Anna, and her colleagues, a collection of young German lads and lasses working for a German NGO. Well it was raining!!Anna works with homeless kids and she had just finished an art project with them. That morning they had a little art gallery opening where the paintings were being displayed at the house of her Indonesian family hosts. Anna had only just moved out into a small boarding house and this extremely generous young lady gave me her bed to sleep on whilst she slept on a mat on the floor. It's really great to meet people dedicated to making a difference and dear Anna is certainly doing her bit. We went to visit the gallery the next morning, and I also got to try the local delicacy of Nasi Megono - a jackfruit dish not dissimilar to green papaya salad served with rice.

Pekalongan pics here

One of Anna's friends, Mega, was visiting from Semarang, and she offered me a lift there on the back of her motorbike. "That might be fun" will have to go down as one of those unforgettable quotes, because let me tell you three hours on the back of a motorbike is far from fun. One numb bum later I am in Semerang at a friend's house when a friend of a friend offers to take me up to the old city. This young lass is Detya, 24 years old with her own small business and studying communications part time. Before I know it I not only have a tourist guide, but an invitation to stay the night. The deal is I help Detya with her English and she helps me with my Indonesian. Win win situation or sama sama enak !! Detya is unbelievable, not only does she take me around the old Dutch part of the city, but out to Demak where the oldest mosque in Java is, gives me a bed for the night and breakfast, takes me around Chinatown and to the temple (where I get my fortune told, apparently all is well but I am to be careful if going to Jakarta), and then takes me all the way to Gedung Songo in the middle of a huge thunderstorm. Detya has a nice car, her father is a policeman and has seen far too many motorbike accidents to let his daughter ride one. I am very grateful to Detya's parents for this!!Here's the photos of Semarang, I'm now back on my own and ready to explore some temples.

Countdown to Java

2010-03-22T21:38:00.002+08:00

It's a mere 3 more sleeps till I take an evening flight down to Perth then an early morning Air Asia flight to KL before connecting on to Jakarta. My domestic leg takes one hour each way but costs more than the entire international leg combined. You've got to love these budget airlines, even if some of their flight times are unsociable. I don't want to think about my carbon footprint though...

The trick to budget travel is to expect that for that price, you can't expect any semblance of comfort. That way you will not be disappointed, but might be pleasantly surprised. One of my biggest bugbears when travelling is listening to western travellers whingeing about the quality of bus/ train/plane travel when they've paid less than the price of a McDonalds burger for the seat. Perhaps I exaggerate, but guys: shut it!! Or pay up for comfort.

I'm fully packed with my tiny backpack well under the max cabin size and weighing right on 7kg, so I'll be doing carry-on only on this trip. I've a number of couch surfing and hospitality club contacts who have offered to host me and I'm at saturation point with my Indonesian language lessons. Yep, I'm ready to go.

And to top it off we had rain this weekend, awesome!!

Hot hot hot

2010-03-12T17:59:00.003+08:00

I do recall whingeing about all those rainy cold fronts coming through late last year, but now that we are into our third week of stinking heat I could really do with some respite. Admittedly we did get a couple of days last week when the temperature dropped below 35 degrees C, but on some days that only happened overnight!!

It isn't often I turn on the aircon, usually I try to utilise passive solar techniques, but with no breeze except a hot one, and no effective overnight cooling, it has been impossible. Nevermind, at least I've tried.

The garden has stood up to the heat onslaught remarkably well, I'm sure helped by my decision to shade the vege patch, and almost daily watering. I've lost a few things but it hasn't been the usual summer massacre. I suspect I'm getting better at plant choices too.

My papaya tree, after being in situ for about 4 or 5 years, has at last produced its first fruit. Admittedly it is only the size of an orange but at least it didn't do its usual fruit drop. I've just planted some more papaya seeds so am hoping I can get something a little more productive happening, as long as I plump up the poor sandy soil with lots of muck.

The mango tree continues to limp along, having been successfully rehabilitated from near extinction following my overseas jaunt. It is only in retrospect that one realises that asking a housesitter to keep up the water to your garden when their own garden experiences are in high rainfall tropical Hawaii was perhaps a little presumptious and I should have provided more detailed instruction. Lesson learnt!

It's a couple of weeks till I head off to Indonesia for a month through Java, so it's all systems go getting the new vege beds filled with soil so I can start planting on my return. And making sure the retic is working as I don't think this heat will be abating for another month to six weeks.

The tropical Javanese weather, not to mention the bracing mountain temperatures, will be a welcome relief after this...

Toraja 2007

2010-02-24T17:27:00.020+08:00

In June 2007 I decided to combine a diving trip to Lembeh Strait in North Sulawesi with some topside culture. My first 2 visits to Indonesia had been on exclusively dive oriented excursions, exploring some of the best the region had to offer, staying on luxury liveaboard boats and at purpose built dive resorts. But with 2 visits under my belt it became bleedingly obvious that there was a vibrant cultural landscape above the water that I was missing out on.

Now when one is into dive tourism the concept of travelling light is akin to purple pigs flying, particularly when also packing underwater photography gear (in my case video). You develop cunning schemes to avoid paying excess luggage costs, and pretend that your three bags of cabin luggage are feather light (yes I have been known to balance a 10kg full pelican case on my little finger as if it really was!) and not at all capable of knocking out a fellow passenger if it happened to fall out of the overhead locker! I'm sure my travel insurance includes public liability cover...

Anyway, with all that gear it is just not practical to negotiate public transport, not to mention the security risks involved. So for my first topside cultural experience I headed off to Tana Toraja in South Sulawesi on a one week trip I had organised through a friend. My package included a car and driver, as well as an English speaking guide, who turned out to be the best guide I have ever used anywhere. They picked me up from Makassar airport (yes me and all that clobber) and we headed north.

Here is how it went:

DAY ONE

Early wake up call in Bali, cup of Balinese coffee, taxi to the airport, nasi goreng and more coffee before boarding the one hour flight with Garuda to Makassar. Coming in to land I am thinking “slow down” and am hoping the runway is long enough for the plane to brake in time. Is it just my imagination or are Garuda pilots rev heads?
Safely landed, I pick up my gear and emerge to meet Andre, my guide for the next 7 days, and Udin our driver. Luggage stowed we set out on the 7 hour drive to Toraja. We stop for lunch at a beachside restaurant in Pare Pare - seafood and yes more coffee - before heading inland. This is the last I will see of the ocean for the next 6 days as I immerse myself in mountain culture.
Soon it begins to rain, despite Andre assuring me that it is now dry season and he expects no rain. Within minutes it is pouring, as in full on tropical monsoon weather, water flowing in huge streams down and across the road. Udin is not hindered by mere rivers flowing across our path, as he drives on with gay abandon. I have always remained fairly immune to the reckless overtaking and heavy use of the carhorn that is a hallmark of travel in Asia, figuring that Udin’s experience is what matters. Udin does not disappoint and we arrive safe and sound.
Along the way we stop for some sightseeing at a spot rather euphemistically named “erotic mountains” due to the ridges on a nearby mountain bearing a strikingly accurate resemblance to female genitalia. But mostly the mountains are obscured by clouds; there is a “Lord of the Rings” feel to the place and I use my new camera to take some mood shots. We enter the gateway to Toraja land and soon it is too dark to see anything.
I arrive at my hotel rather tired, but ready for a day of sightseeing tomorrow.

DAY TWO

I am staying at Hotel Indra, a rather downbeat hotel in Rantepao with a nice restaurant overlooking the River Sadan. Unfortunately it also comes with an electric organ player who sings woeful songs. Or worse, a female singer who is completely out of tune! Thank goodness for earplugs.
After breakfast I meet up with Andre and Udin for a full day touring Toraja land. We start with a quick walk around the local Rantepao market, a small affair compared to the big market held every six days. Then we head off in the minibus for Lemo, to view the Tau Tau in galleries on the rockface in front of their burial holes. Torajans believe that the burial site is a sacred resting place for their dead, so often bury valuables with them. Unfortunately this has led to looting, and to the stealing of the tau tau as well, forcing some communities to put iron gates up to guard against theft. After Lemo, we head through scenic valleys and rice fields towards a site where babies are buried in a tree in a bamboo forest. We detour to view a site where a new Tongkonan is being built. Tongkonan are the large wooden houses in which Torajans traditionally lived. They are on stilts with a huge roof in the shape of buffalo horns. The lower structure of this new tongkonan was mostly finished but the roof construction had only just begun. The roof is the heaviest part of the structure, and must be built very carefully in order that it doesn’t collapse. Bamboo is used for scaffolding as is so common throughout Asia. The baby burial tree was in a serene setting within a bamboo thicket. These trees are for babies less than 6 months old, who are buried in a vertical position so they can climb the tree’s ladder to get to paradise. So as not to cry, a bamboo “nipple” is placed in the baby’s mouth. The burial holes are covered with a fibre matting to prevent water or rodents entering, or odours escaping. The tree we visit has had many recent burials, due to an outbreak of diarrhoeal illness in the village. It is an incredibly moving experience, not only of sadness, but also of complete safety and tranquility within the gently bowing bamboo forest. Following a large lunch consisting of local specialties including hot Torajan chillies, Kalua pork, Bamboo chicken and red sticky rice, we head to Kete Kesu where there is a village which is very traditional, with its Tongkonan and rice barns all aligned north to south and still with the original interwoven bamboo roofs. Many villagers have replaced their roofs with corrugated iron so it isn’t often that you see a whole village intact. Of course they are also wired for electricity and satellite TV, so one has to get creative when composing photo shots. Kete Kesu has a number of talented woodcarvers, I buy 2 wood carvings here but could easily have purchased the whole shop. We also enter one of the houses, where an old man is living alone in very spartan conditions. Behind the village is a cemetery, with both new concrete mausoleums, and traditional hanging graves, consisting of wooden coffins perched on terraces constructed out from the cliff face. Here, tau taus have been locked away behind an iron gate due to problems with looting.The morning had been fine sunny weather, but by afternoon it has begun to rain, so we head to a valley where the sun is still shining. Our final stop for the day is at Marante, to view more Tau taus on a cliff face, and to chat with local children who enjoy mugging for my camera. One youngster even obliges by jumping from a suspension bridge into the river, and happily repeats the effort for a second set of photos. Local women are returning from the fields with their rice harvest, which they carry in bundles on their backs.
Returning to Hotel Indra, I get to endure a second night of appalling singing on a par with really bad Karaoke.

DAY THREE

A change of plan as today is market day, so instead of heading off on an all day trek, we go to the huge market at Rantepao, in particular to see the buffalo market. People proudly parade their buffalo and the buyers wander around bargaining a good price. The white and black cows are the most valuable, and can cost more than 10,000 USD! The reason buffalo are worth so much is because of the creation legend of Torajan culture. The story goes that "God" asked man to go down to earth from heaven and man agreed. But to get there he needed to ride on the back of an animal. Man asked many of the animals if they would take him, but all refused, until he asked the buffalo. The buffalo agreed, but only on the proviso that when the man died he would take the buffalo back with him to heaven. So in Torajan culture buffalo are revered, they are not used for labour in the fields but are pampered "pets". The more buffalos that are sacrificed at a funeral then the more auspicious it is. And interestingly, until the christian missionaries came to the region and began converting the populace, the buffalo meat was left for carrion, and wasn't eaten by the people. Unable to convince the Torajans to discard their animist ways, the missionaries did convince them that the meat should be eaten, no doubt improving the overall nutrition of the community in the process.

Now back to the market.
The pig market is rather barbaric, with the pigs trussed to bamboo poles for easy carriage home. But there is lots of colour to be seen, not just amongst the cattle and pigs. We taste some local foods, I meet some members of a local leper community who make exquisite straw hats to supplement their income, pay a lady chewing an enormous wad of betel 1000Rp to take her portrait and buy some vegetables for our dinner.After the market we go to see some megaliths, standing stones erected to tie the buffalo to for sacrifice. We see another baby tree grave, and some more burial tombs. We then head to the village of Sa’dan, known for its weaving of Ikats, where we have lunch overlooking the river. I experiment with my camera taking photos of the rushing water with longer and longer shutter times. The learning curve with the new camera is enormous. After lunch Udin drives us up into the hills where we walk to a village which is beginning a funeral ceremony. The first day involves buffalo fighting, quite a spectacle to watch, both the fighting and the crowd reaction. And also to keep out of the way of wayward buffalos. After a very enjoyable spectacle, we head up into the village, to view the preparations being made for the funeral, and to visit the dead person. The dead person is wrapped in a kapok mattress and lies in the Tongkonan until the funeral ceremony takes place, which can take many years, until families have the finances to afford it. We walk down the mountain, along small tracks to meet up with Udin, who then drives us up another mountain to Batutumonga, where we will stay overnight. My room is a Tongkonan, looking out over the valley down to Rantepao. I am particularly looking forward to waking up to the view, as it is dark when we arrive.
After a hearty dinner, watching a very funny soap opera on Indonesian TV, I head to bed.

DAY FOUR

Breakfast over, Andre and I walk further up the mountain to Batutumonga village to take in more beautiful views. There is low cloud so very atmospheric. We chat to local people, pass some people processing coffee beans for market, and see a blacksmith’s shop. The best steel for the knives is made from recycled car leaf springs!After an hour or so we head back to our hotel, grab our rucksacks and head off down the mountain and across onto another ridge and slowly down the mountain. We are heading for Palawa but our morning walk leaves us somewhat behind so Udin meets us further up the mountain (with lunch) and we head down the final 4km by minibus, on roads I would have been happier to walk on! Palawa has a Tongkonan with a huge amount of buffalo horns on it, but there is also a funeral preparation going on so the front of the Tongkonan is obscured by the house for the coffin. The wife of the dead person invites me in to view the body and decorations and allows me to take a photo of both her and him. She then tries to sell me some interesting knickknacks that would look more at home at a car boot sale! I buy a trinket for an exorbitant price but I figure I am also paying for invading what is a very personal time for this lady.We then drive back to Rantepao, and check in at Hotel Indra again, where I enjoy a very welcome hot shower. I have managed to convince Andre that I am not averse to eating in local establishments so Andre takes me for dinner at a local warung. The food is far more tasty than that at the hotel. I am becoming quite addicted to rice and fresh sambal, quite to the surprise of both Andre and Udin, who have never seen a westerner eat chili with such enthusiasm!

DAY FIVE

A long day spent traveling. We leave Rantepao just after 8 o’clock and drive back down the mountains to the lowland areas. We take a shortcut across to Polewali, where we have lunch in the only restaurant in town. Apparently there are a few warungs but no proper restaurants besides the rather characterless one we eat at. I am told that the predominantly Moslem people of the area prefer to eat at home. Our meal is so bland and tasteless I don’t blame them.
Andre continues to order far too much food for me. I have told him I am perfectly happy with one normal Indonesian serving of food, but I am often confronted with 3 – 4 plates of different food, plus rice plus soup. It reminds me of our trip to China many years ago. I am sampling everything, but am still eating far too much. At lunch he tries to order me a second dish and I have to insist he doesn’t.
After lunch it’s a right hand turn and off into the mountains again. The clouds are very low, so few views are available. The road is unbelievably rough, with numerous mud holes, landslides and village people perched in tiny shacks on precipices along the narrow valleys and ridges. Udin’s driving is fantastic, and we arrive at the hotel a little before dusk, all in a trip lasting 10 hours!
The cottages I am staying in are known for their hot springs, with the water in the rooms coming from this source. The pressure however is very poor, so the alternative is a dip in the hotel pool. By now it is dark, and the mossies are out in force, so I decide against this option and instead just wait for dinner.
Dinner is again a massive effort, with four or five different dishes, including soup, then fruit and a Chinese sweetbread for dessert. Andre explains that anything I don’t eat the staff will have, so I feel a lot better about the huge display of food on offer. I was looking forward to a cold beer, but only warm ones are available. After putting some in the kitchen freezer I at last get to sample a slightly cool beer, which I share with Udin. Andre doesn’t drink, and is quite a devout Christian, saying grace before each meal, sometimes twice if there is a delay between soup and mains!
A group of 10 Japanese tourists arrive tomorrow, so as a result there will be a local exhibition of dance tomorrow night at the hotel. I think I will crank out the video for this.
I head off to bed, armed with mosquito coils and Udin’s lighter borrowed for the night. They stink awfully, but I feel a lot happier about reducing my risk of malaria.

DAY SIX

Wake up with the sun, read for a while then have a very mediocre shower before heading down to breakfast. Although I had requested nasi goreng for breakfast.....… nasi goreng it is, plus toast and all accompaniments, plus 2 fried eggs, plus mie goreng, plus pisang goreng. The display of food is ridiculous. I eat the nasi goreng (though not all the rice) have an extra egg, but don’t touch the toast or mie goreng. I can’t resist trying one piece of the fried bananas which turn out to be spectacularly tasty. As usual I am stuffed – or sama sama as they say here. Hopefully me not touching half the food will give either the staff or Andre a clear message that I do not need the breakfast of three people. After breakfast, Andre and I head off on a walk through some of the villages and down to Mamasa town. We see some of the old Tongkonan as well as some new ones. The Christian missionaries successfully managed to suppress most of the traditional culture here in Mamasa, which is similar to Torajan culture but also includes a few celebratory festivals – like harvest, house raising and wedding ceremonies - as well as funeral ceremonies. There is also a heavy use of horses here, so the figurehead on the front of the houses is not a buffalo head, as in Toraja, but a horses head. The house carvings are more elaborate, depicting stories rather than just abstract designs as seen in Toraja. We happen upon women dehusking and winnowing rice, so I too have a go. Everyone is very friendly in Mamasa, more so than in Toraja where people are a little more used to tourists. In Mamasa town we visit the markets and sample a couple of the local sweets, before buying a packet of “gula gula” (small sweets for the kids), have a quick lunch in a local warung, and head off on an afternoon trek. We visit Tedong Tedong, where a number of wooden coffins have been preserved under a roof to present some culture for the tourists. The visitors book is woeful, showing a huge drop off in tourism since the late 90’s. The last visitor before me was 6 months ago! Off into the hills for a lovely trek along ridges, overlooking rice fields, through small villages and across a suspension bridge back to the main road and Udin. We stop to watch a lady weaving an Ikat, which takes her a week to do if she does little else. The Ikat cloth is 5 metres long and she will get 150,000 rupiah for it. Materials cost 60,000, so that’s a profit of 90,000 rupiah, or $12.50 for a weeks’ work. The lady’s family offer us coffee so we sit for a while with the family, talking about various things. One of the men is a local school teacher, they have 117 kids in six classes. Not sure how many teachers they have though!I notice some bamboo in a palm tree, and just after we walk past we meet the man who is about to work the sap for the day. The sap in the palm is collected to make palm wine, but requires preparation where the palm frond is swung from side to side and tapped quite hard with a wooden tapper to get the sap flowing. Apparently they also sing a mantra as well. They do this twice a day for a week before cutting the frond and inserting a bamboo gourd to collect the sap. We end up taking a short cut as I am taking a long time with lots of photographing, including some of the flowers and orchids. A local suggests a shorter route as it will probably be dark if we continue our original route back to the main road. Of course shorter routes mean steeper hills, straight up the side of the mountain!! There is a nice village at the top with a rice barn to sit on and rest while I get my breath back. The rest of the way is downhill, past one more village where I offload the last of my gula gula.
Exhausted, we return to the hotel where I have a hot bath in the hot springs. Couldn’t care less about mosquitoes now. Nice and relaxed I join Andre for dinner. The traditional dance is scheduled for tonight and I can hear them practicing nearby. But the Japanese tourists have not arrived and it is a 12 hour drive from Makassar airport, where they arrived from Bali this morning. Some French tourists have arrived however, and after dinner and further waiting, the dance commences. It is a mixture of local and regional songs, performed by school students, so you can imagine how tired they are! It is very entertaining, and after they finish I head off to bed. The Japanese tourists arrive about 11:30 pm, but I don’t hear a thing, sleeping like a baby.

DAY SEVEN

Udin is sick with a fever, he missed dinner last night, but says he feels OK today. Today is a long drive down to the coast then another 4 - 5 hours to Makassar. First we stop at an Ikat shop, where I buy two of the local sarongs for 130,000 Rp each, that’s less than 20 AUD!!
Then off down that horrid bumpy road to Polewale, but at least it is sunny today and the views spectacular. After a bush toilet stop, Andre and I walk for a while just to stretch the legs and take in some fresh air, before jumping in the van for more pummeling.
We continue on from Polewali to Pare Pare for a late lunch at the Kibu Beach Restaurant, before the rest of the drive down to Makassar. Udin is driving like a man possessed, I figure he desperately wants to get home as he is still feverish and unwell. Luckily I have a view that local drivers know what they’re doing and I just sit back and enjoy the mayhem of overtaking and squeezing in and honking horns etc that goes with the territory. Anyone else would have been scared shitless!! When we get to my hotel, Udin apologises profusely for his daredevil driving and for the fact that he now feels so unwell he is physically incapable of getting out of the car to help me with my luggage. I assume he either has Dengue or Malaria and suggest he go straight to see a doctor (I also make sure he has enough money to do so). I am, afterall, quite capable of balancing my luggage on my little finger, so I'm sure I can make it to my room without mishap!!

The hotel in Makassar is 5 star, on stilts over the water. I enjoy a lovely hot shower before meeting Andre and accompanying him on his motorbike to meet his sisters and mother. Andre had been asking about New York (the home of our mutual friend), and since I was carrying a DVD of a video I had made in New York last year, I show him and his family. I also show them last year’s Lembeh video, and they are blown away by the amazing critters to be found in their oceans. here's a link to the videos.

for more photos click here

The next morning I flew to Manado for more critter diving in Lembeh Strait.

Preparing for my next trip

2010-01-30T08:42:00.005+08:00

I have to admit to being obsessed with travel preparation. I don't mean having my entire trip fully planned and booked pre-departure, having every immunisation known to man and having a medical kit larger than my clothes allowance. In fact quite the opposite.

I will spend hours, adding up to many days and weeks, doing research on my planned destination, trawling through hundreds of internet sites, cutting and pasting what interests me into individual files based on destinations. I'll also use published guidebooks, and avail myself of the advice of other travellers on forums such as Thorn Tree. In the end I can become so knowledgable about a place I have to stop myself offering advice to others because I haven't actually been there yet!!

All this knowledge gives me an understanding of what to expect, particularly in regards to accommodation, climate and availability of products to hire or buy. Therefore I can pack much less stuff in my bag and travel lighter and quicker. It doesn't make sense to pack stuff "just in case" unless I am really going into the back of beyond, but with my next trip to the highly populated Indonesian island of Java it would be ridiculous.

After my big trip last year, in which I did a number of long treks staying in local villages (the longest being 8 days in NE Vietnam) I found I had used every item I had brought at least once. The only exception was the medical kit, though I did manage to offload the blister kits to some very grateful hikers in China! The trouble was that many items were only used very infrequently, like my sleeping bag, and most times I could have hired one locally for a camping trip and saved myself the joy of lugging it around Asia. I would certainly never recommend anyone doing a classic tour of SE Asia take a sleeping bag, but I was planning to do many mountain treks when a sleeping bag would be necessary. Now that I know I can hire one in most places for a small fee, I won't be taking my own unless my trip is more than 50% camping.

The next best way to minimise weight is to be really strict with clothes. This is an area that I'm prepared to spend money on, to have lightweight, high tech clothing that dries easily overnight allowing you to travel with very little. No longer do these clothes have to look like you are on African Safari, they now come in all sorts of colours and trendy styles. There are times when you have to be prepared to wear the same clothes for days at a time (just like your guide and the local villagers will be doing) and it isn't really a hardship. As long as one gets the chance to change underwear that is! The treks I did taught me I didn't need much, so next trip I'm only taking the bare minimum: two trousers, one tshirt, two short sleeved polos, one long shirt, one sarong and one warm jacket and beanie for those dawn summits! And if I get bored enroute, I can just buy something new and give away the old.

My biggest weight problem is my camera gear, as I pack an SLR and extra lens, plus external hard drive and battery charger. My hard drive runs on the same batteries as the camera and the charger is very lightweight and compact. The hard drive is alot smaller and lighter than a laptop, an item I am yet to be convinced should become an essential part of my luggage. As much as I'd like to edit my photos enroute, I also know how much time that would take from my sightseeing or sleeping budgets!!! I'm no professional, I'll leave editing till I get home. And with internet cafes almost anywhere on the planet....

My other little headache is my tripod, an item I have used countless times, including on summits, and consider an essential part of my travel kit. I continue to be amazed when I read debates on photography sites from trekkers who believe tripods are just not needed, but I doubt they get sharp shots with expansive depths of field when they snap their landscapes. Horses for courses I guess. Anyway, I ended up spending pretty big on my tripod so I could get something light and sturdy. It's still somewhat bulky but it fits easily inside my backpack, or else strapped to the outside for easy accessability. I keep looking at the gorillapods but I still haven't worked out how you get height if there isn't a tree or rock in sight...

Choosing a pack is a nightmare. Last year I travelled with a 55L trekking backpack which took a bit of getting used to as far as the harness (even though it was adjustable) was concerned. With a short upper body I find getting a comfortable harness very difficult. I walk everywhere, so this is a high priority. But in March I'm only going for a month, I've revised what I want to take, and that 55L bag is far too huge, and weighs over 2.5kg empty. Plus I'm using alot of local buses and smaller is definitely better!

Last week I ventured down to Perth with all my planned luggage, to get myself a smaller pack. I needed to see whether what I was taking would fit, and whether I could find a comfy harness. And I wanted something lightweight. Of course there is a tradeoff on durability, but I'm prepared to shave off a kilogram for the risk. I'm again talking high tech, with a not so cheap price tag, but I should be able to rely on good workmanship at least. As a result I have on order a 33L pack weighing a mere 920g. That's before I fill it with my 3L Camelbak bladder!!

My new pack will be small enough to take as carryon on airplanes, an experience I am really looking forward to. Most of those freaks who go on about this topic seem to be obsessed with the risk of losing their checked in baggage, but for me what I'm looking forward to is breezing straight off that plane and straight out the door without having to deal with the porters, trolleys and waits for the baggage carousel to start up. And my baggage always seems to be the last off the bloody plane, which means the queue at customs and immigration is enormous by the time I get there! But I'm also looking forward to not struggling to get into a bemo because of my bag, and not paying for it on said bemo as well, to not having to pack my bag on the roof of the bus, to not having to separate my valuables from everything else ad nauseum. To being able to go sightseeing somewhere in the morning then move on to my next destination without backtracking for luggage. This will be fantastic....

Since I'm off to Indonesia again, and because I love this country so much and expect to visit it many many more times, I am back learning the language. I am extremely happy with Shaun and Cici's language program, which you can find at http://www.learningindonesian.com/, because it is so easy to follow and relevant to my needs. Shaun needs to work a little on his pronunciation though....

The trip to Perth and back allowed me to get through many hours of revision lessions, but there's still lots more to get through so "sampai nanti!!!"

Summertime, and the living is easy...

2010-01-11T16:36:00.002+08:00

Happy New Year to all and sundry, though New Year celebrations will never be the same for me after my experiences in northern Laos last December. This year's events were a very quiet affair, amongst friends camping up at our usual windsurfing haunt of Coronation Beach.

I took the camper trailer down a week before Christmas and spent a bit of time commuting before the holiday proper. Even though I already live in a beachhouse within 150m of the high tide, it's very relaxing staying in the camper, with no mod cons, and getting up with the sun for long walks along the beach, paddling over the reef at low tide spying small fish and the occasional octopus, and getting lots of windsurfing in. It's great for getting that early session in before the hoards from town arrive, and to enjoy the evening session just before dusk when the waves smooth out and the wind turns offshore, knowing a hot shower (courtesy of the good old solar shower bag) and a cold beer are only a few steps away. It's a great crowd of regulars who do the Xmas stint at Coronation, so it's also very social.

The kids from next door joined me again. Maddie and Demi stayed five nights but Carter only managed 2 nights before he missed mum too much, though I suspect he probably missed his computer games even more! The girls relaxed once they didn't have little bro' to look after and just chilled for a few days. The highlight of the trip was when we strategically placed a toy rubber snake across one of the paths leading from the beach to the camping area. Six hours of fun was had as successive campers were confronted by what looked to be a possibly poisonous snake obstructing their passage, and we laughed hysterically at their responses. Then further mirth occurred after the girls decided to slip it under the wall whilst people were showering! The occasional gasp of disbelief was thankfully not followed by the sight of a frightened naked bather, and mostly there were bellows of recognition as the same snake made a second appearance amongst now much wiser campers.

But after another week of commuting I at last packed up the camper and headed home, to a house which has had mice free ranging for a few days unchecked, and the death of my last chicken by what looks like a fox. I've still got the neighbours' three, who roost high up in the bougainvillea where no fox will get them! They've even been known to lay eggs in there!

Hazel has loved being up at Coronation, so much so that she has been extremely reluctant to return home on those days when I've had to come in to town to work. Her rebellious nature has raised its ugly head a couple of times, with one day where she ran off down the road to the beach and then slipped out of her collar and ran back down again after I'd hauled her home. I think I'm reading her body language pretty accurately when I say she is not happy about being home. Bah, she'll get used to it!!

Summer 09

2009-12-19T08:35:00.003+08:00

It's frightening to realise that we are about to start our second decade of the 21st century and still the powerbrokers of the corporate world have such a stranglehold on our polititians that no real gain has been made on tackling climate change. What future will there be for our grandchildren and further generations, let alone the dwindling populations of "lesser species"?

But doom and gloom never got Eeyore anywhere, and it's summer time in my little neck of the woods (only the woods kind of disappeared millenia ago if they ever existed here at all!) so it's all about ocean swimming, lying around in hammocks reading books and sipping cold refreshing drinks, and contemplating torturing my body with more aerial acrobatics out on the waves.

We've had a strange windsurfing season so far, with little in the way of decent swell, but some pretty blistering winds. I cannot quite believe it myself, but on Wednesday I was out in 35-40 knot winds, with Thursday being just a bit lighter at 30-35 knots!! Yes the muscles are complaining, but I am still upright, although highly prone to collapsing into said hammock! And no, I haven't been trying any forward loops this week - holding on has been the main achievement..

Every year at this time I pack the camper and take the kids up the beach for a few days camping. We survive on BBQ sausages and cups of hot chocolate, go for long walks with Hazel, snorkel around the reef, and build elaborate sand fortifications, which usually involve burying a kid or two in the process. I'm taking all three this year (they are the neighbours' kids, I haven't suddenly produced a gaggle overnight!) which shall be quite interesting, as the only way I've been able to command total obedience over the youngest little mite is through pure terrorism tactics. Nothing a good dunking can't sort out!!

I'm surprised, but gratified, that the fourteen year old still wants to come, as I thought she'd find a few days up the beach with the younger siblings too, YAWN, boring!! But no, she's as keen as the others to leave mum and dad on their lonesome for a few days and hang out with yours truly. I guess it's the novelty of not being with mum and dad, or the lack of rules, but I feel really fortunate that they want to come, and that their parents trust me with them! OK, there are 4 rules: get up when it's light, go to bed when it's dark, eat when you're hungry, and no swimming when I'm out windsurfing. If the final rule gets broken, they go home! It's worked for the last five years, let's see how we go with our little tearaway....

Now it's time to go up there and get a good campsite before the hoards from Perth arrive..

Of mice and maggots

2009-12-12T14:55:00.003+08:00

It's the time of year when we are visited by the wrath of (insert your preferred deity). Not only must we endure stinking hot humid days when the mercury veers well over 40, often accompanied by a wind straight from the furnaces of hell, but it's also time for the annual mouse plague!

Once the wheat harvest is in those hungry mice leave the fields and attack us in our homes. I wouldn't actually mind so much but they stink! My sensitive nose always knows if there are mice around, which in this case means throwing the karma out with the baby and laying down bait. Now if they didn't leave their filthy droppings everywhere and learnt to smell nicer....

I am also being visited with an attack of the guilts, having only just realised in the last week or so that I haven't seen mum since before my OS trip, which means about 18 months, and that I probably should have gone home for Christmas this year. "Home" is Canberra, and since all the siblings also live on the eastern seaboard there's little likelihood I'll ever be hosting the family gathering. I've now left it too late to get a half decent airfare, and I've already promised the kids next door a camping trip, so sorry mum, maybe next year. We're on the phone to each other all the time anyway...

The garden is thriving since I erected shadecloth over the vege plot and am keeping up the watering. I'm harvesting lots of salad greens, some yummy strawberries, and some equally delicious cucumbers. The tomatoes are continuing to produce, with new plants nearing ripening whilst old ones shrivel. All self seeded too!

Sally and Sheridan came round last weekend to erect the large shade sail, which protects the front verandah without compromising the stunning ocean views. And keeps the interior cooler by 5-10 degrees. I also snaffled an old Holland blind from our local Freecycle group, cut it to size and dressed the bathroom window. This blocks out a massive amount of heat hitting the eastern walls in the morning and makes showering in summer less like enduring a sauna.

Then there's the blowflies. Ah yes those hot easterlies are laden with flies looking for new homes, laying their little eggs in amongst the chook droppings and giving the girls some added protein in the form of huge succulent maggots. I'm actually quite enjoying mucking out the laying boxes to find small handfuls of these delicacies to feed the girls with. I'd rather them than the mice!!

We've actually had an excellent week of windsurfing, with howling winds all week, though the waves have been a bit small.... I've had a few half hearted attempts at trying forward loops, but maxed out winds are perhaps not the best time to try flinging oneself over the handlebars!! Back to watching the video methinks....

I have meanwhile been planning my next Indonesian odyssey, this time a mere month of travel between Jakarta and Bali in March/April next year. I'm keen to visit not only the famous Hindu and Buddhist sites of Java but also some of the less visited temples and (oh surely not!!) climb a few more mountains and volcanos. Java has quite a few to choose from besides Bromo in the east so I've got my work cut out for me to bag some more mountains. Damn, I'm going to have to start hill training again.....

Following from my previous post, we are now being amused on a daily basis by Tony and his bunch of troglodites suffering from severe foot in mouth disease. Did Tony really think he could get Barnaby to pull his head in?? And didn't Tony's mother tell him to think first before he opened his mouth?? It's certainly making me laugh anyway..