Where-ever I lay my hat

Steve’s birthday – 18 December – started in the airport terminal in Kuala Lumpur then a 6-hour flight to Dubai, 4 hours in the airport terminal at Dubai, and another 6-hour flight to Vienna. As we arrived in Dubai the pilot warned us that it was a very chilly morning in Dubai at only 18°C! The terminal is being rebuilt and is an architecturally stunning, if somewhat disturbing, huge worm. We got to see the famous Dubai hotel and the palm shaped island from the air as we flew out. Although there was snow everywhere from Iran north by the time we got to Vienna there was none to be seen from the plane. On the ground there are little bits of snow and cars that haven’t been driven have some on the windows but basically there’s none, which is a shame, as we’d felt so hopeful of a white Christmas seeing all the snow from the plane. It felt great to be in Vienna, or at least back in Europe, and finally felt Christmassy. This is the way things are supposed to be – its cold outside – 0°C at midday – the trees are bare except for mistletoe and your breath makes fog outdoors. We got a bus to the hostel and checked in and the first thing I did was snuggle under a duvet for a while which felt great instead of desperately trying to cool down. Then we went for a walk in to the closest Christmas market, which is the Stiftsgasse market and is the oldest and most authentic in Vienna. It is on little cobbled streets and has lots of stalls of gluwein and food and handcrafts rather than lots of tacky Christmas decorations. We had a gluwein and a erdapfelpuffer, which is really delicious especially when you spread the extra fat and salt on it after its been fried! We walked as far as the market at the Rathaus (town hall) and it is huge and very pretty. We started looking around but I decided I was too tired to enjoy it so we went home to bed. It had been 42 hours since we got up on Monday in Kuching and I hadn’t been in a bed and had only had 3 hours sleep and 2 1-hour naps on the flights. Those numbers and me really don’t add up at all.

It was 13 hours later that we woke up on Wednesday feeling somewhat better and although I still have a bit of a cold and sore throat, I actually have my own voice back. We had a very lazy start and after Steve went to the supermarket to get cereal for breakfast we got organised and left the hostel at 11am to go strolling about town and visiting Christmas markets. We managed to visit 5 and it’s interesting how each of them have slightly different characters. The first was MariaHilferStrasse and looked like they are just trying to establish it, as most stalls were not occupied. The second was Maria TeresenPlatz and was a lovely setting in the square between two museums. We tried the gluwein and jagertee and had some roast chestnuts while we strolled around the stalls that were not especially special. Then we strolled through the Hofburg palace courtyards which are really grand but in a friendly kind of way rather than an imposing way. We stopped at café Demel for coffee and cake. It was a lovely café and the whole experience was very nice. Even though it is one of ‘the’ posh café’s of Vienna the staff were friendly and helpful to a couple of grubby looking tourists who don’t speak much German. Actually their English was impeccable but they spoke to us in German as it must have been clear we wanted to try in German because other tourists they spoke to in English. The cakes were great and the coffee also good and they have a view into the kitchen so you can watch the bakers creating beautiful things like gingerbread houses and chocolate elephants. We are working on the European art of having coffee and managed to take an hour over one coffee and cake and it was extraordinarily pleasant – mind you the cake was too rich to eat very quickly anyway. It’s quite a change from the Asian eating culture where everything happens fast, and also from the NZ eating culture but I think the European art of eating is something that should be mastered. Then it was on to more Christmas markets. It was just getting dark enough for the lights to be switched on so the city became prettier as we walked. The first was the altwiener market with was a lovely market with more handcrafts and slightly less of the mass-produced things. There were a couple of particularly lovely stalls and they were a bit cheaper than anywhere else we’d been so we got a couple of pretty wooden decorations. The next market was a lot more food orientated with a few different wineries and cheese stands and truffle oil so it was interesting too. Lastly we made it to the Rathaus market, which is huge but fabulous. The lights are gorgeous and the Rathaus is all lit up and there are lights in the trees all around. There is also a children’s workshop in the hall where children can be left to make Christmas decorations and gifts and it was really well organised and fabulous. Then there was a children’s amusement park around the outside with a wee train and merry-go-round and a few stalls with singing puppets and moving Christmas scenes. We had a bratwurst and gluwein (and just didn’t take the cups back for our deposit because they are very pretty and make great souvenirs). Then we strolled home via the WMF shop where we spent far too much money on some cutlery from our set that has been out of production for several years but they had quite a bit. Although it cost a lot it means we don’t need to start over and get a new set because we didn’t have enough. Dinner back in our room was a light snack of pumpernickel and Brie and a mug of red wine followed by another early night.

Thursday morning we woke a bit earlier and go moving slowly, with a few chores to do and getting packed up to move on to Bratislava – and another new country. We got the tram to Sudbahnhof and couldn’t work out how to pay for it so got it free. It appeared that most of the population did the same so we weren’t too worried. The train to Bratislava left on time as European trains always do and was only an hour. There was a bit more snow out in the countryside but still really none. The border patrol came through the train looking very stern and imposing and checking passports but once they looked at our passports and smiled and said thank you they seemed less imposing. The countryside got a bit less tidy once we were in Slovakia and it just looks like life is a bit tougher out in the countryside. However Bratislava is tidy and clean and very beautiful. Its also very small and we walked across half of it to get to the hostel. On the way we saw the end of what looked like a changing of the guard at the presidents palace. The hostel is just off the main shopping street and very clean and tidy but has no soundproofing between rooms and we only have one small light. We went for a stroll to the tourist office, which was pretty unhelpful and then to the Christmas market. It is a gorgeous market in the central town square, which is lit up prettily. The market has lots of local handcrafts and things we haven’t seen in Christmas markets before as well as some of the staples but much cheaper than other places. There’s quite a medieval feel to the market especially with the architecture round it and some of handcrafts in hand-carved wood and metalwork. There are beautiful bells in all forms – like hand bells, cowbells, and doorbells. Wooden stirring sticks also seem very popular. I have been looking for a hat and finally found a lovely white fluffy hat but it turned out to be a real arctic fox fur hat so we weren’t having that. There seems to be a lot of fur here and it is very beautiful but mostly real. Most places you can assume that fluffy stuff is fake but here I think it’s mostly real – I haven’t looked at the prices though.
The food is fantastic and although each stall is much the same there are variations on the theme. You can have a huge chunk of bread with huge chunks of thinly sliced pork or chicken, or huge sausages. Then there are crepes with a variety of fillings including cabbage, goose liver, goose fat, walnuts and various others. There is also cabbage soup and a couple of other cabbage dishes, various different breads, sweetcorn and chestnuts. I’m not quite sure why cabbage and sweetcorn are the traditional things to have at Christmas in Slovakia but they are both really good. For dessert there are various different strudels and a few crepes and to drink hot white or red wine or a local drink called medovina which is a hot alcoholic drink made from honey ginger and lemon juice. It is fabulous and would just about put me off gluwein except that it is too sweet to drink a whole cup. It’s definitely one I need to find a recipe for and try to make myself. We tried a sausage in bread, goose liver and cabbage crepes, sweetcorn, medovina and hot red wine, and took a couple of strudel home for dessert.
The architecture is lovely and a combination of pompous Habsburg style and solid medieval style that works well together and gives a nice feel to the place. There are pretty old lanes winding between streets with all sorts of hidden things in them and also lots of statues around the streets. There are a few particularly famous ones – like Cumil – the head popping out of a manhole, a paparazzi photographer and a model, and Schoner Naci – a kindly old gentleman tipping his hat.
We strolled down to the river, which has yet another name here – Dunaj – but it is still the Donau, and then went back to our room for a quiet evening with a bottle of terrible local red wine that cost just under £2 and the strudels.
We had a terrible night after I spent the first three hours coughing – probably due to cigarette smoke in the room – and managed to get moved rooms in the middle of the night after which we got some sleep. We decided on Friday morning to just have a couple of really quiet days in Bratislava rather than rush off to Budapest. So we had a very leisurely breakfast, chilled for a while then headed off to the castle about 11am. The castle was really interesting but very stark. It is a real medieval design with a huge square keep in the middle but the keep has a central courtyard. It is perched on the hill with various layers of wall protecting it but is outside the town walls. It is largely undecorated although it looks like at one point there were some decorations on parts of the walls that have since been covered over. It has a couple of museums in it and we went to the archaeology museum, which is a small but fantastic collection of artefacts from ancient Slovakia. The best was a Dona figurine or Venus, which is a mother figure/ fertility symbol and is 25000 years old! Anyone who has read the Clan of the cave bear series would be interested in this figure found along the Donau as its some of the historical basis for the books. The other fantastic thing was a silver Roman bowl that had what looked like Mithras (Roman Bull god) on it. There were also lots of Celtic coins and an amber necklace with a fine metal chain from 1500BC. The museum cost us $NZ1 to get in and was one of the best collections of things I’ve seen. It finally started to snow but I think only managed about 30 flakes during the day and I resisted the urge to behave like a Japanese tourist and get excited about it. It had been –2°C when we left our room but was certainly colder up at the castle with an icy wind blowing and looking down over the Donau it looked like a sheet of flowing ice. We walked along the town wall and back into the Christmas market to get some lunch, which was another huge sausage in bread and some medovina to warm us up. We had a bit more of a stroll around town and into the old bishops palace. It has a collection of tapestries that tell a love story that we couldn’t work out – it looked like a series of various different people going skinny-dipping while someone on the ban k looked distressed. There was also a hall of mirrors, which was slightly disturbing to see ourselves over and over again, and a pretty wee chapel, all with far too much gold leaf. We went into a few shops and a market – where I got a new hat – then went back to the room for a rest for a while and to get some laundry done. We went out again for dinner – to the Christmas market – and had more sweetcorn, sausages in bread and medovina and Christmas punch. There was a concert on of a group that did folk-pop music and it was mostly really nice. They seemed to start each song in traditional folk style and gradually make it more ‘pop’y so it was quite a weird style but fun. It was pretty cold standing still and watching them although it had only dropped to –3°C. We had some handmade nougat for dessert, which the man had to get off the big block with an axe, and it was really delicious. We listened to Christmas music and watched our Christmas slideshow while we ate dessert in our room. Looking at the pictures of Christmas’s with friends we were feeling a little sad that we’d be on our own this Christmas since we hadn’t been invited anywhere but we are happy to be exploring Christmas markets and seeing new places just now.

It completely failed to snow overnight and Saturday was another quiet day. We strolled around a bit in the morning along the shopping street, the next-door market and to the presidential palace to see if they were going to change the guards again but nothing happened. We went to a Slovak pub for lunch, which was great value and a fabulous atmosphere. It’s actually a student pub and they boast about being the only pub in Europe to give free soup for an A in your exams. Unfortunately I only got a B so we had to pay for our soup but it was still great value. We had a garlic soup in a bread bowl and a Slovak cabbage soup with sausage. We also had a local sheep’s cheese on bread and a couple of local beers and wines and all of it was fabulous and ridiculously cheap. After that I just chilled out in our room, still feeling worn out form being poorly and still having a bit of trouble breathing. Steve went for a bit more of an explore around town and saw the Franciscan monastery. Then we had a quiet evening in and reflected on the important things about Christmas. Although we have really pined for a white Christmas again it’s actually not really just about that. And all the hassle stuff that everyone complains about – like shopping and wrapping parcels and preparing food and all those stressful things are actually an essential part of the build-up and without them life just carries on as usual. It did start snowing just a little in the middle of the day but nothing to speak of again.

There was a very thin layer of snow on the ground when we woke on Sunday morning and after we got packed up and checked out it was –3°C and snowing lightly as we walked to the station. The train ride was unremarkable and the landscape very flat which kind-of surprised us. We’re not sure what we were expecting but it wasn’t flat. There was a brief time when we came near the Donau (called the Duna here) when there were hills around and it was rather pretty. By the time we got to Budapest there was no snow on the ground anymore but it was still –3°C and snowing lightly. We found our apartment quite easily and were met by Zita who answered all our questions and set us up for the few days. The apartment is gorgeous and really spacious and hard to believe it’s slightly cheaper than the hostel room in Bratislava. We have a spacious lounge, a kitchen, 2 toilets, and a bedroom and it’s really close to the centre but really quiet. We went out and did some grocery shopping, as everything will be closed for the next few days and we don’t want to starve. We got a few treats for Christmas and some local things. Then we strolled down into town to the Christmas market via the tourist information, which was extremely helpful, which was a nice change. The market was really busy with long queues for all the food and hot drinks although that wasn’t surprising as it had certainly cooled down a bit from earlier in the day and I started to see the value of real fur. I’m feeling this little moral debate happening about what the difference is between fur and leather anyway. It doesn’t mean I’m going to buy anything fur although it certainly is very beautiful and very practical in this environment – but I only have 3 more days in this environment. There were some performances on at the market and lots of lights so it was really pretty. In fact there are lots of lights in the whole of Budapest and it is just gorgeous. It’s also very friendly and easy to manage in English – I guess because it’s much bigger and more cosmopolitan than Bratislava. While I do believe that its rude just to expect everyone to speak English, I’m not sure where its appropriate to draw the line because I can get by in German, French and Spanish and I don’t think its reasonable for me to have to speak minority languages like Slovak and Hungarian in order to visit the countries. However we are trying to learn a few basic words like please, thank you, hello and sorry. I’m having a few interesting moral dilemmas here! We had a snack at the market of some black pudding sausage and some gluwein to warm us up and then headed home for a very comfortable evening in and planning our next few days.

Monday 24th (Christmas eve and the main celebration here) we managed to get going fairly early to head to the pools. Budapest is a spa town and has at least 10 different hot pool complexes. We went to Szechenyi pools and walked down the world heritage street – Andrassy Utca – to get there. The street was pretty impressive with all the old buildings and although it seems excessive to have a whole street as a world heritage site (actually the whole castle area on the other side of the river also is!) its clear what would have happened by a few newer buildings that clearly got built before the world heritage status. It’s a shame there isn’t a clause that means those have to be pulled down. Many of the buildings are badly in need of renovation though and in 50 years it should be truly stunning. We went through Heroes Square, which has some pretty cool statues and is very much like the Place de Triomphe in Paris including having the grave of the Unknown Soldier and a completely insane road around it. The pools are in a fantastic old building in a big park area. The pond next to the building was also steaming and had a much greater population of ducks than other ponds although lots of others were frozen over. The pool complex itself was stunning, with old rooms with elaborate décor and pillars and stone vases and railings. Each room was different and the pool in it also different and we tried most of them. There was also an outdoor complex with three pools. The nicest was the first one which was 38°C which also had a couple of spouts coming into it and some jets in the walls as well as chess boards set up with the old men playing. It was pretty steamy and in the middle of the pool you couldn’t see more than a few feet so navigating was interesting. It was great to sit by the edge and watch the clouds of steam part and reveal the gorgeous building from time to time. We chatted with a Hungarian man who now lives in the USA and he was very interesting. We talked about the fact that Hungarian people don’t really chat with anyone they don’t know and he said that the culture is still very distrusting as there are still very clear communist and democratic factions. It was noticeable particularly in the sauna and steam rooms, which in Germany and Austria are very social places where even language is no barrier and everyone just chats. The other outdoor pools were a lane swimming pool, which was cold, but we swam to the other end and back to get to the third pool, which was more of a play pool with a river ride, and bubble jets that would pop up all over the place. We spent about three hours at the pool and then strolled back into town to the Christmas markets. One was just closing up but the main one was still going and much more pleasant than last night as it was less crowded. It was also mainly tourists there as all the locals had gone home to celebrate Christmas. So there was a lot more English and German being spoken than Hungarian, which also made it a little easier. We had a gluwein each and a special Hungarian bread that is wrapped around a large stick before being rotisseried and caramelised. It was delicious. It is also interesting that the only choice of hot drink here seems to be gluwein whereas in Bratislava there was also Medovina, hot wine and a couple of variants of Christmas punch and in Austria the list was endless. It was lovely to stand at the market stall drinking gluwein while it was snowing which it had finally started although still relatively feeble and only just to dust the ground.
We spent a quiet afternoon at home having a lovely Christmas celebration, playing the Malay stone game with nuts and all the small bowls and cups from the kitchen, watching a DVD of Ratatouille, and eating too much. We had platters of local meats and cheeses, pretzels, sweets and crisps and traditional Hungarian Christmas fish soup (from a tin), and a dish like cassoulet with beans and sausage. I firmly believe that beans are one of the most divine foods in the world and most cultures have great dishes involving beans – the French have cassoulet, the Mexicans have frijoles refrito, the Hungarians have Kolbasszal but all the British can manage is baked beans! They also do stunning sausage here, as in Bratislava, which is some of the best in the world and yet so cheap in comparison to lesser sausages in other places. We had Austrian Mozart yogurt desserts and some Mozart kugeln to finish off with a very bad bottle of Hungarian Tokaji. Its reassuring that every good wine has its really bad local equivalent because Tokaji has such an exclusive reputation elsewhere.

The 25th was a similar day except that we spent 5 hours walking around the town before our afternoon of relaxing and eating. We woke to a small layer of white on the ground but only enough to make it look pretty and not difficult to walk about in. We walked across Szechenyi Ianchid Bridge to Buda (we are staying in Pest) and up the hill to the castle. Its defences are pretty neat with winding paths up the hill between the layers of defensive wall. The castle itself is pretty but the statues and other buildings around it more interesting. There is a ‘fish bastion’, which looks a bit like a series of sandcastles and is rather stunning. The area around the castle is the old town of Buda and has a nice feel to it with pretty old buildings. The Mathias cathedral is also very pretty but is hiding behind scaffolding. Then we walked back down the hill at the other end and along to Margaret island. It has a tram stop in the middle of the bridge and is a huge recreation area with athletic stadium, pools, casino and lots of parkland to run, walk and cycle through. We just wandered around the tip of it and then carried on to the parliament buildings back on the Pest side. They are very impressive parliament buildings and the largest building in Hungary and the largest parliament building in Europe. The architecture is very elaborate and more like a cathedral. Next stop was the Basilica, which was probably the most elaborate church interior we have seen anywhere. There was tonnes of gold and delicate carvings and beautiful paintings. Finally we stopped at the Christmas market for a gluwein to warm up. There were a few chores to be done when we got back to the apartment before we could relax – like washing. We do our washing by hand in the basin and it is drying really quickly on the heaters here because it’s so warm. The apartment is very comfortable to relax in and its only down side is that it was supposed to have wifi but we can’t get it. There is no reception and the people just meet you to check you in and then to check you out again so we are hoping to get access when we check out. Its been a bit of a problem because not only could we not call anyone for Christmas but we have a flight booked into Bristol that arrives midnight on the 26th and we haven’t been able to look for somewhere to stay so it has been pretty stressful. We had booked the flight as we were leaving Bratislava because we were checking fares and they were going up and up as we looked until the only flight we could find back to the UK was this one, which is far from ideal.
Our second Christmas meal was much the same but we had a salad and a stuffed egg thing to start then goulash soup for our main with some gnocchi – not a traditional combination but pretty good and very filling. We played some more of the Malay stone game and just sat and chatted and had a lovely relaxing afternoon and evening.

Boxing day started off with chores – dishes to be done, tidying, packing, writing job application letters, and then checking out at 11am.

To be continued... (we have got somewhere to stay in bristol though)

Boxing day started off with chores – dishes to be done, tidying, packing, writing job application letters, and then checking out at 11am. We still couldn’t get Internet access (this is becoming an obsession) so had to go out for the day still with no accommodation in Bristol. We walked along the main shopping street, which was pretty but all closed, to the market hall, which was also closed but pretty. Then we crossed the river again to Buda and realised we should have brought our swimmers and spent a relaxing day at the pools rather than walking aimlessly. However we continued walking aimlessly back up to the castle and to see if the Hungarian wine museum was open, which it was not. The marzipan museum was however – who ever heard of a marzipan museum!!! We had a look around and even Steve enjoyed it. The things they had created out of marzipan were amazing and included scenes from fairytales and modern stories like the Flintstones and Shrek. There were also replicas of lots of Budapest buildings including the parliament and the basilica. We strolled about the castle area a bit more then had coffee and cake and walked back across to Pest and to an Internet café. We managed to find a few places but couldn’t book anywhere because we needed to phone so finally at 6pm we went to collect our bags from the apartments office and their Internet was working. It was about the 9th place we phoned that would take us and not very cheap but at least we had a bed. We got a taxi to the airport where wifi access was easy so we got a few more chores done and a few phone calls made which all felt a lot better. Wifi and Skype are wonderful things when they work but can make life fairly stressful when they don’t and you’re as dependent as I am! The flight was unremarkable and the man from the B&B picked us up at 12.45am and we got to bed just after 1am. It was a big change from Budapest where it had never got above –2°C to be 5°C at midnight! It felt positively balmy.
The B&B is pretty grotty and overpriced because its near the airport. We are just in a room in the family house and were asked to be quiet because their daughter is sleeping in the room next door. Our room seems to be the storage room for all the excess old furniture and is rather cluttered and small. The bathroom is the family bathroom with their towels and junk all over the place and the smallest shower cubicle I’ve ever seen. It is out in the countryside and it was nice to look out the window in the morning and see a pheasant in the field next door. The breakfast was also pretty decent and they dropped us back at the airport to catch the airport bus into Bristol. On the way in on the bus we decided to try and stay in Bristol for a few days and see if we could find work.

Fortunately it had cooled down quite a bit and become overcast and damp which was a huge improvement on clear and humid so it was more comfortable sleeping and Tuesday morning was pleasant. We had to head to the airport again so got all packed up again. The day was largely uneventful, the flight from Sydney to Kuala Lumpur long (8 hours) and the descent rather too quick. We dropped 6000m in less than 5 minutes, which was a bit uncomfortable. Then we had a wee unexpected transfer to the low cost airline terminal. It felt a bit like being back in Mexico with pretty dreadful bus terminal and the low cost terminal was also like a Mexican bus terminal which made it quite odd to see a plane pull up outside. Dinner consisted of a peculiar bastardisation of a raisin Danish involving cheese, which must be uniquely Malaysian but clearly not very popular as it was the only food left in the café. The actual flight on Air Asia was pretty good and they were roughly on time so we arrived in Kuching and met Ying and Mao just before midnight. We went straight to sleep and even at that time of night it was pretty hot.

The weather in the morning was lovely and we went out for breakfast with some of Ying's colleagues from the hospital which was really interesting both from the food and company points of view. I learned a lot about the health system in Malaysia, which is quite hierarchical and its more important who you know than what you know (that’s for staff trying to achieve anything new). They are just setting up a rehab service which is outside the normal culture for both patients and staff so is slow going. People just expect if they have a stroke they go to hospital for a few days then go home and the family looks after them. They don’t expect to have health professionals able to help them. They don’t have any idea about physio as they just do any old exercise to get better. And occupational therapy makes no sense at all! Of course the heads of the health service also belong to this culture so setting up a rehab service has a few barriers! The food for breakfast was great – we ate popiah, which are like spring rolls but not deep fried and filled with vegetables and nuts then you dip them in chilli sauce. Steve wants to just keep eating them all week.
After breakfast we went to look at the new community health centre where people come n for the day for a rehab programme and it is a fantastic facility and really interesting to see. They have some good funding for it (somebody knows the right person) unlike the hospital based rehab service even though the same people run them.
Then we went up the civic centre, which is a tower near the centre of Kuching and has great views over the city and right out to the mountains. It was great to get my bearings and figure out where things were from above rather than taking ages to do it from on the ground. There was also a really pretty Chinese cemetery just near it.
Apparently then it was time for lunch, for which we went to the new 24hour food court and had a selection of really interesting foods – dumpling soup (yum), lui cha - vegetarian bowl with rice, spinach beans, nuts and some other salad type things (yum) with a bitter herb soup (yuk) that you mix into it, beef noodles, cha kueh – fried cake made with rice and vegetables (yum). After lunch we drove out to the Orang utan sanctuary. It was brilliant. Orang utan is a Malay name that means man of the bush and the sanctuary is part of a rehabilitation and protection programme. The orang utans are basically in the wild but they feed them every day at 3pm so for a while before that they start wandering in the direction of where the food will come to as part of their daily path around their territory. We saw a mum with baby on her back first although the baby looked far too big to be still carried and they disappeared off into the bush again quickly. They were followed by a couple of young males who hung around in the trees just near us and came down to one of the feeding platforms to get fruit that the keepers put out for them as snacks. Then one of the older males started coming through the bush towards us and he looked big and hairy but apparently we made too much noise (that was the rest of the yabbering tourists not us specifically as we knew we needed to be quiet) and he turned around. Then from the other direction came the dominant male – Ritchie. He was huge and very imposing and you could feel the anxiety among all the people as he came near us. He had huge cheek pads, which apparently only the dominant male develops and is very attractive to the females. He did not stop at the snack platforms unfortunately but lumbered on over the bridge and through the bush to where the proper feeding platform is. We got to follow him there and then watch him moving off through the trees. All the orang utans are fascinating to watch moving but Ritchie in the trees was amazing. He’d go up a thin tree until it bent far enough over for him to grab the next tree. It was certainly not silent creeping through the jungle and probably caused quite a bit of devastation to the trees! There was also a mum and young baby there feeding and we watched the baby playing for a while too, which was really cute. It started to rain (it is monsoon season) and it really rained. We took shelter for a while and were chatting with an English girl who is writing the rough guide for Borneo. Then we braved the rain and paddled back up river that earlier was the road and drove back to town. Afternoon tea was coconuts and coconut and sugar cane drinks and shaved ice with red beans and coconut milk.
We had a rest back at the house before going out for steamboat for dinner, which is a hot broth in the middle of the table in which you cook anything form the buffet table including fish balls, dumplings, mushrooms and other fungi, Chinese greens, quail eggs,
There was also a grill around the side of it to cook fish and beef of several varieties. There were also other dishes like spring rolls, lamb curry, fried rice, cockles and lots of prawns and crab. We ate far too much but it was all delicious. Dessert was papaya and ice-cream and the ice-cream flavours were interesting! There was sweetcorn ice-cream, chocolate rice pudding, and a couple of others that we couldn’t identify. The setting was lovely sitting outdoors by a pond and just all lit up very pretty. When we got home we had a taste of Durian, which is the famous very smelly fruit that people either love or hate. It has a hard spiny shell and is really big but once you break it open there are bits of yellow fruit inside mostly white shell. The yellow fruits have a big seed in them too so there isn’t a huge amount of fruit. It tastes like a rich egg custard so is really quite nice but the aftertaste is not. We both said we liked it but didn’t, but in retrospect have no desire to eat more. It doesn’t smell as bad as I’ve heard but I also have little sense of smell and did smell that there were some nearby the next day once I knew what the smell was.

On Thursday morning we got going about 8 and had curry for breakfast. It was really interesting that we can’t drink coffee in the morning because it makes us too hot but eating curry in the morning was fine. It was actually mostly Indian breads (roti) with small bowls of curry to dip in. we tried all the different breads to see which we liked best. There was roti chanai (a loose flat bread), roti bom (small round with many layers), roti thosai (a thin crepe like thing), chapati (dryer flat bread), murtabak (omelette with corned beef) and roti tissue (sweet with condensed milk drizzled over it and a much more western flavour for breakfast). After breakfast we headed out to the Sarawak cultural village at Santubong. It has a traditional house from each of the seven main ‘races’ that live in Sarawak with traditional crafts or cooking happening in each. We tasted sago cookies from the Melanau, and tapioca cookies from the Orang ulu longhouse. We saw both of these being made and also the sago palm being ground and made into flour and sago balls. We played congkak - a cool stone game in the Malay house which was naturally air conditioned by being off the ground and very open to catch any breeze. The game involved moving stones around a board of 2 rows of 9 holes to get the most stones into your ‘home’ hole. When you land on an empty hole you turn ends and the winner is the one with the most stones in their ‘home’ at the end. The houses were all really interesting. We went to the show as well which was at least cooler inside and was very interesting. A man in warrior costume shooting blowdarts invited me on stage, but I declined which was very fortunate because his next shot missed badly.
Then we went to Santubong resort when Ann Ann had a room for the night so we used the facilities and went to the beach and soaked in the pool for a while, which was lovely and refreshing. We had dinner at seafood restaurant in a tiny fishing village called Kampung Buntal. It was a very pretty little village on a nice beach with big nets set just offshore. We a huge feast again including steamed pomfret fish, butter prawns with caramelised oats (very yum), salted prawns, curried bamboo clams which are like Orcadian spoots or razorclams, midin - fern fronds cooked in wine (yum), oyster omelette (yum), and 2 noodle dishes. Dessert was egg tart when we got home again that Mao had bought from the best place in town.

Friday was a much quieter day and we went for a look around Kuching city. Kuching in Malay means cat and it is named after the Kuching river which had wild cats living along it but now the symbol of Kuching is a pussycat and there are lots of statues of cats around the city. We strolled along the waterfront, which is really quite pretty and has a nice gardened promenade. There are pretty little boats that go across the river for 30 cents and the views across the river of the palace and new assembly buildings. There are food markets along the port area of the waterfront and further in shopping streets with cloth and souvenirs and jewellery. There is an interesting contrast between traditional Chinese and Malay shops and English colonial architecture. There are a huge number of cafes and food stalls everywhere and most people eat out for most meals. Its actually easy to see why as the amount of work in preparing a lot of the food is huge and it would be more expensive to prepare yourself as well as very time consuming. In addition eating out gives you lots of variety and no dishes to do and all the food is really tasty. If you choose carefully – or have a good guide! – the quality of the food is also very good and quite healthy. We had lunch in a Taiwanese restaurant and had bubble tea – which has sago balls in it (yum), Taiwan beef noodles, sesame oil noodles – which were quite like satay, herb dumplings, tofu and preserved eggs and Taiwan sausage fried rice.
The afternoon was nice and relaxing back at home just staying out of the sun and heat for a while. Steve and Mao had a game of badminton before dinner which was simple rice porridge with lots of things to add to it. We had a drive along the riverfront to look at the lights on the way home.

Saturday was a long sleep in before breakfast at the green noodle house where we had green noodles, green dumplings and cha keuh. It was delicious as usual. Then we did some shopping for electronics with were pretty cheap and tried to find some shoes for me but apparently I have bigger feet than anyone in Asia. Ying had been at work for the morning so we picked her up and drove out to Bako to visit a beautiful Chinese temple in a Malay village. On the way we stopped at the coconut farm for a look around and saw lots of local vegetables and tea growing. The temple was on a hill above the fishing village and had lovely views to the mountain and was also gorgeous in itself. There was also proof beyond all doubt of what I have long believed - that umbrellas are dangerous weapons - the 'gods' guarding the temple door each were weilding their sacred wepons - on eof which was an umbrella! We had a rest back at the house before going out to the Sunday market – I know its only Saturday but the Sunday market starts on Saturday evening! – It’s a weird country. We strolled around the fresh food markets for a while and then the cooked food market and bought lots of bits and pieces to try. We ate some snacks along the way like fish crackers, chickpeas and peanut pancake things. The rest of the food we took home and sat on the balcony and ate which was extremely pleasant.

Sunday was a very quiet day when I finally decided the bug that I had been fighting for two days was going to win if I didn’t relax a bit more. We slept in then went out for brunch and had a look at a few shops for some more bargains then went home and Ying and I spent the afternoon just gossiping while the boys went out to look at wine shops. We had long discussions about the culture here and differences between western and Asian cultures. In some ways there are a lot of differences but in some ways they are very similar. The discussion started because we are uncomfortable with the fact that we can’t pay for any meals – everyone wants to treat us. They are equally uncomfortable if we try to pay. Eastern culture has an expectation that the host looks after the guest in every way. It is considered a matter of pride to ensure your guests are fed well. When it involves eating out that makes us uncomfortable but eating out is more normal because of how easy and cheap it is. However, western culture is similar in that the host often cooks for the guest and I certainly understand the whole thing about pride and feeding guests. It becomes different when there is money involved. We concluded that the major difference is in the attitude to money although its not really more important in western culture but perhaps more significant. The Malaysian people certainly are very open and generous people and we saw lots of examples of this including being offered accommodation next time we visit by a Muslim couple we met in the airline queue. The people are generally friendly and can queue in a civilised fashion and are generally much more civilised than western cultures – until they get behind the wheel of a car. Then chaos reigns. It is perfectly acceptable to drive straight across three lanes of road even when they are full. They change lanes whenever they feel like it regardless of if someone else is already in the lane. Motorbikes – whose riders wear their jackets back-to-front to protect from sun and wind and impair their reaction speed – zip through gaps that are not there and pass things from one to the other mid flow. There are frequently 3 cars and 3 motorbikes all trying to get into one small piece of lane – just like the pictures of big cities in china! A couple of other things that amused me about the culture is the thing where people always take their shoes off when going indoors. That in itself is not unusual but the skill with which they walk out of their shoes without even slowing their stride is fascinating. I also suddenly understand the Asian obsession with showering several times a day. It just gets so hot and a shower cools you down although not for very long. I guess that’s more of an issue at the moment as its monsoon season so really humid. The monsoon rains are also interesting especially the management of them. The monsoon drains are huge and run everywhere and you really don’t even see them after a couple of days but when it rains it really rains and they fill up pretty quick. The ground is saturated and any grassy area is a complete bog.

On Sunday evening Ying’s mum wanted to take us out for dinner and we went to a Thai seafood restaurant, which was pretty good. The prawns we had were more like crayfish or lobsters and the soft-shell crab was fantastic. There was also another fern frond dish, which is proving one of our favourites. The dishes just kept on coming because they wanted us to try everything. We made a valiant effort.

Monday was a quiet start again, as I had not slept well and was still feeling a bit poorly. Also we had planned to go out to the organic farm and it was raining. We went out for roti chanai and roti tissue for breakfast again and Steve had a couple of curries too, then we chilled out at the house for the afternoon until we got a test to say the flight had been changed again and was now later. That caused a panic that we wouldn’t get our connection to Dubai. The panic continued the rest of the day and by the time we got on a plane we had made two trips to the airport and the flight we were on had been at 5 different times. The check in queue was huge and we going to check in then go to dinner but the queue took over an hour so we had to say a rushed goodbye in the airport, which was unpleasant. The flight was late too but with a few minor hiccups and some incredible changeover by air Asia we actually made it to the international terminal and onto our flight to Dubai.

We got up at 4am on Saturday 8 December to get to the airport for 5am and our flight to Sydney was on time and uneventful. Michelle, Chris and Lachlan met us at the airport and we went into Sydney for the day. We strolled through the botanical gardens dodging bat poo and trying not to be labelled instantly as tourists by taking photos of ibis which are considered pests here rather than exotic birds. We did the compulsory wander past the opera house and harbour bridge and the whole area there is really buzzing. There was a really good didgeridoo player who was great to listen to and was doing fabulous animals and interacting with passers by through the didgeridoo. We went to the Rocks market and tasted some interesting chocolates like kakado plum, gum leaf and lemon myrtle. Then we went to the fish market for lunch, which was great. There are lots of fish shops and the prawns particularly are stunning – there are so many varieties and colours and sizes. We had lunch at Doyles, the famous Sydney fish shop and had whole deep fried snapper and flounder and fish cakes and prawns. It was really great. After all that we were pretty exhausted and headed home and decorated the Christmas tree. Lachlan has a great time tipping baubles everywhere and dismantling things. We had a lovely Paella for dinner and then I went to bed rather early, completely exhausted from the last few weeks, not to mention being up at 4am, and I slept for 10 hours and felt much more human.

We had a great breakfast sitting outdoors on the verandah although it was pretty hot. The need for coffee to wake up and get going had to be balanced by the need not to overheat. By 10am when we were strolling round the market in Windsor it was 31°C and the humidity was awful. Fortunately we had a spray bottle and Michelle just kept spraying me with water. The market was pretty neat with lots of interesting crafts. After the market we packed a lunch and headed up the Hawkesbury harvest farmgate trail and were eexpecting to have a lovely time tasting and buying fruit. Unfortunately there was no tasting, just a series of stalls without much variety and without much interest in service. So we decided to go for a picnic lunch and took the ‘shortcut’. It turned out to be a 4-wheel drive track and the ‘road’ progressively deteriorated. If we hadn’t been in a town 4-wd we would have turned back cos it would have been completely impassable and we certainly had a few hairy moments. It all got a bit serious when it suddenly started to rain and the visibility was poor and the road deteriorating by the minute – not to mention the thunderstorm overhead which scared me witless. However we made it out the other side, although it was too wet for a picnic and the picnic spot involved a creek crossing which we decided nto to attempt after the amount of rain in the last 40 minutes. So we had a picnic under a bridge and then went to a couple of wineries. The first was in a lovely old stone building in a beautiful setting by the river but the wine was pretty average. The ssecond was really interesting as the guy was a bit of a collector and had lots of interesting bits and pieces including a 2 million year old footprint from a alligator type creature that they had found when they were excavating their cellar. The wine was also much nicer. Then we headed home and after Lebanese coffee and cake with the neighbour, set about making dolmades for dinner and sipping pina coladas. They were excellent and great to know how to make.

Monday morning was still hot and after breakfast we decided to head for the Blue Mountains where it would be cooler. On the way we stopped for tasting at Go-Shu sake factory which was very interesting and we learned lots about the process of making sake. We also decided to have a Japanese banquet for dinner so we could drink some sake. Up in the mountains it was certainly cooler and a bit drizzly. We stopped in Leura main street, which is very pretty, for a stroll about the shops and a coffee. There were some really nice wee shops and if we could have carried anything I could have spent a lot. Further into the mountains at Katoomba it was clear why they are also called the misty mountains and what should have been a spectacular view was just mist. However we went for a walk down to rock formations called the three sisters which were pretty stunning and the bush was lovely and quiet and cool with plenty of birds and mist rolling around the gum trees. It was well worth the journey and when it cleared a little we got a hint of the view and also could see why they are called the blue mountains. Apparently the various hues of blue as you look into the distance is to do with the oil from the gum trees. It’s a different shade of blue to what you normally see looking to distant mountains and very pretty. On the way home we saw plenty of wild kangaroos and there have been lots of sulphur crested cockatoos all over the place. Japanese banquet was fun although we had to make our own sushi as all the sushi bars were closed, then the tempura took to attacking us and we had a wee drama when some boiling oil got me in the eye and down my face and chest. After that Chris took over the tempura dressed in his samurai warrior suit and protective goggles – it looked hilarious. We also had a few other dishes and dessert so were rather full by the time we finished. We were fascinated that Lachlan liked the sushi and sat and munched quite a few pieces.

Fortunately it had cooled down quite a bit and become overcast and damp which was a huge improvement on clear and humid so it was more comfortable sleeping and Tuesday morning was pleasant. We had to head to the airport again so got all packed up again. The day was largely uneventful, the flight from Sydney to Kuala Lumpur long (8 hours) and the descent rather too quick. We dropped 6000m in less than 5 minutes which was a bit uncomfortable. Then we had a wee unexpected transfer to the low cost airline terminal. It felt a bit like being back in Mexico with pretty dreadful bus terminal and the low cost terminal was also like a Mexican bus terminal which made it quite odd to see a plane pull up outside. Dinner consisted of a peculiar bastardisation of a raisin Danish involving cheese, which must be uniquely Malaysian but clearly not very popular as it was the only food left in the café. The actual flight on Air Asia was pretty good and they were roughly on time so we arrived in Kuching and met Ying and Mao just before midnight. We went straight to sleep and even at that time of night it was pretty hot.

The goal of this trip is to learn as much as possible about living with and from the land. Along the way we hope to also learn more languages, more recipes and cooking ideas, and more about more cultures. We are mostly interested in wine (of course), olives, nuts, bread and cheese, and hope to learn a lot more about all of these in Europe including how to make them and what to do with them once made. We want to learn about organic farming principles and practicalities. Unfortunately along the way we need to earn some money to live off and may have to be a bit creative about how we do that.

After a bit of a rocky start (the driveway disintegrating when the truck delivered the container and having to be completely rebuilt) things just kind-of fell into place. We got all our belongings into the container and packed in the way I wanted them. That involved a few times of moving a lot of stuff out, moving around and then moving it back in again. By the middle of our last week in our flat in Christchurch we were a day ahead of schedule and managed to do our final move out on Saturday 1 December. So anyone who thinks you are making life difficult for yourself if you move house a week after a thanksgiving dinner and big cocktail party, just hasn’t seen me pack! We had a lovely thanksgiving and the cocktail party the day after was our farewell party and was really good fun. We moved out to Rangiora for the week before we fly out and got to soak in our Jacuzzi in the evenings again as it is being babysat there.

There was still a bit of work to do on the land – still trees to be cleared around (our grass grows very well) and mulch mats put round them to minimise the competition from the grass. Everything also needed a bit of water as Canterbury is apparently in for a nasty drought this summer. Our trees have had a good start since it was a fairly wet spring but are now rather dry and a couple of days of drizzles didn’t make much difference.

Our final week went rather quickly and we ended up going to the land nearly every evening to do something or other. We got some windbreaks for some of the trees and put them up, got some straw to mulch the nursery plants, and of course had the final packing and organising of the container to do.

I finished work on Thursday and that was fairly sad. It has been a great job with a wonderful team and I have really enjoyed work for the last three months which has been lovely. Steve worked Friday as well and we had his work Christmas party on the Friday night at Orana park which is an African safari park.It was a really nice evening and the people he works with are very nice. They also seem to like him as much as he likes them so it was lovely. We got a tour of the park and saw the cheetahs have a run and got to feed the giraffes which I loved. They wrap their tongues around a branch and pull hard and just strip the whole branch. They were having willow which is their favourite and its realy cute with the little ones when they wrap their tongue around your finger by mistake too but not so cute when they catch you with their teeth. After feeding all the animals we also got fed and it was a pretty good meal – much better than the usual Christmas party stuff so we both had a very enjoyable evening.