Photos of Laura in the different places we've been

Laura waiting for our transfer to Singapore in BSB airport, Brunei

Plastic trees in Dubai International Airport

Hilarious warning sign in Singapore.  I didn't manage to get any of the Brunei / Indonesia signs showing trespassers being shot with assault rifles - although I did note that Indonesians shoot you in the front, whereas the Seria garrison guard force promised to shoot you in the back.

Raffles Hotel, Singapore.  We didn't stay (£600 per night!)

Petronas Towers, KL.  A must-have photo

The Cameron Highlands have a huge stock of Land Rovers.  This ones door was held shut using string....

The Cameron Highlands Rose Garden

Jungle in the Cameron Highlands.  I was particularly impressed by the safety rope preventing visitors falling several hundred feet.

Laura taking afternoon tea at the famous Boh tea plantation, again in the Cameron Highlands

The author.  Taking tea.

Model of a traditional Malay house, built by the hotel manager

Classic dictatorship architecture in Jakarta.  One dictator started it, the deposer finished it.

The Borobudur temple complex in Java.  The largest Buddhist temple in the world.  Raffles "discovered" it too....

More Buddhist temples.....

Afternoon tea at the Borobudur guesthouse we stayed at.  First place we observed chit chats in significant numbers

Laura throwing pottery.  Shortly after this photo was taken, I stood on the example piece (by accident).

Laura on a bike.  Taken by the author (also on a bike, hence the face)

Laura inside a small temple.  No Buddha here.

Quick western detour before taking the ferry to Bali.

A stray kitten that a tourist had rescued and taken back to our hotel in Lovina Beach, Bali.

Javan dance performance at the Ubud Palace, Bali.  

Local Dali-type Catalan character's house.  Odd.

More Ubud Palace (we stayed here)

Laura in the first palace we visited on our travels.

Laura trying to keep up whilst walking around the Ubud area.  Shortly after this trip a local charged us £10 for a fresh coconut.  Joker.

Tombstone termite mounds in the Northern Territory, Australia.  Amazing.

Just to give you an idea of scale, I saw around ten times this many alongside the road we were using.

Laura in a rock pool.

Jumping crocs on the Adelaide River, Northern Territory

Traditional Australian beach wedding, prior to launch.

View from our Singapore hotel.  The waterway is one of the multiple reservoirs the island maintains.  You cannot trust those pesky Malaysians to send you water if they get grumpy, so it's all about self sufficiency.

Bruneian mosque in BSB.

 BSB Istana.  Another one is being built opposite for the Crown Prince.

Laura on Seria beach.  Lots of non-deadly jellies washed up here.

More Seria beach...

Reading my Kindle on the mess veranda.  

One of about five outbuildings at The Empire Hotel and Country Club.  This is the one we stayed in.

The only decent restaurant in Brunei, according to the junior officers - Kaizen Sushi.

Bizarre photo in the Brunei Museum.  I had to get Laura to pose.

7 star luxury to finish our month long honey moon!

We're now back in the UK after a fantastic end to our honeymoon in Brunei.  For me an absolute highlight was watching proboscis monkeys eating in the trees in Bandar Seri Bagawan (the capital) from a boat on the river.  these monkeys are only found in Borneo and have distinctive long noses and pot tummies so we were really lucky to see them.

Brunei is unlike any of the other countries we visited on the trip which made it quite an eye opener.  We experienced the opulence of the 7 star Empire Hotel on our last night (bless them - not only did they supply a birthday cake for Dave that I'd paid and booked in advance, they also treated him to a complementary birthday cake!) to long houses home to 5-7 families deep in the jungle.  The influences of the West were not at all felt in Brunei making it and its jungle one of the reasons I'm keen we go back!

On Thursday we did a scuba dive.  For various inexplicable reasons I was a complete wimp about the whole thing and had to be cajoled down but it was fantastic once we were down to 10m (and not 7 as Dave has put!) - bright blue fish, jelly fish and zebra striped fish were all there.

Dave with proboscis monkey!

 Surprise birthday cake!

 We're in a royal palace!!

Borobudur - world's largest Buddhist temple.

Fantastic end to a wonderful 4 weeks.... next job now is to convince Dave  a permanent move to the far East is required!!!!

Back in Blighty!

Hello avid readers!

Laura and I landed at Heathrow at 0620 this morning, having taken the overnight from BSB via Dubai (30 minute stop over).  Brunei was short of internet terminals, hence no blog posts from there.  The good news is we can put all our photos up now. 

Brunei was an illuminating experience.  It would be hard to claim that the country does anything other than pull oil and gas out of the ground, selling it on to the Japanese, Koreans and Europeans.  If there is a tourist industry, we arrived at pretty much the worst time of the year - during a festival called Hari Raya, which marks the end of Ramadan - so everything was closed.   With one exception.  The Sultan's main palace.

We did a quick river tour on the evening we arrived (20th), where we saw the water village and proboscis monkeys.  I managed to slip on the steps down to the river and spent most of the journey bleeding out!

Next morning we were up relatively early to go to the estana (palace) in BSB for the three open days.  The Bruneians say there is nothing to do in Brunei other than eat an shop - and this was borne out on our estana visit, where we were fed then made to sit in an enormous room waiting to meet the sultan (in my case) and the third queen (in Laura's case).  Unfortunately they both went for lunch and we ran out of time - although we did see them drive in as we left, in a flash new Porsche.

After the estana we picked up a hire car and drove the full length of the country, not using the new motorway(!).  It took 90 minutes. 

We booked into the Officer's Mess in Seria, the young mess orderly totally confused as to who we were and what we were doing - but we managed to get a VIP flat out of him!  The mess is as I remember from the '86 (?) Christmas concert.  Nothing else familiar was visible for the whole trip - the young officers in the mess didn't know of any houses fitting the description of the one I remember.

There has been a huge amount of building in Seria - primarily housing for resettled indigenous people.  It's a bit "Lego Land" unfortunately, but the Sultan pays for it all (via the Shell joint venture I suspect!) so I suppose the locals are relatively happy. 

The mess service was excellent - there was five full time staff looking after 10 live in officers and Laura and I, so there were no excuses for anything less!

We went into the jungle for a walk up to the waterfalls - it was very hot, and we didn't see anyone else until we got out - more Europeans.

On Wednesday afternoon we went down to the border with Sarawak, then back to the garrison swimming pool which was very nice.  When we got back to the mess Laura took us both for a run along the beach.

On Thursday we got up at 0640, settled the mess bill (£39, full board, two people, two nights!!), then drove back to the other end of the country to Muara for a morning's scuba diving with a major operator there.  Again, end to end of the country (this time on the motorway) took 90 minutes. 

The scuba was great fun once we got out to the coral - we got ourselves to seven metres deep by the end of the dive, and saw lots of colourful fish, as well as a large red jellyfish at the end of the dive.  The best description of the seabed (in my opinion) was "like a chinaman's deli" - sea cucumbers were absolutely everywhere.

After the dive we headed to the seven star Empire Hotel and Country Club - built by the Sultan's brother because he was a bit worried there was far too much money in the country's bank account.  It was unbelievably swish.  I had a birthday massage at the club, and Laura wandered the seven on site restaurants.  I also got given two birthday cakes - one from Laura and one from the hotel management.  We had to bring them back to the UK there was so much cake!

Friday morning we swam in one of the many pools at the hotel, then headed to the airport via Jerudong Park (now desolate - another "too much money in the bank account" project - a theme park this time), the old British Consulate, and the main museum (20% about oil and gas, the rest about the country's fauna and cultural history).

The flight back was very easy, and this morning we are both quite fresh.  Laura says we have to go to the gym now to work off cake, but i'll post the photos quickly.

Australia behind us!

L and I are standing at our departure gate in Singapore;s Changi airport, with no sign of the royal Brunei plane outside (it takes off in 30 minutes!).

As with pretty much all international airports, there is free wifi and Internet terminals. Except in Australia, where there wasn't a sniff of Internet for five days.

We took a late night flight out of Bali's main airport, Denpasar, landing in Darwin at 0300.  Our last day or so in Ubud was quiet enough, with no further monkeys or Dali-alikes.  We mainly walked around paddy fields and saw the sights.

Darwin turned out to be an airfield surrounded by a town - we soon found out that it is THE frontier town in Australia, having been bombed by the Japanese in the Second World War (and possibly invaded, depending on what history book you read). 

The main effort in Darwin was Nell and Greg's wedding, where Laura was one of two bridesmaids - so the first thing we did on arrival was head out into the Ulu in a Chinese (Great Wall?!  Probably manufactured using Rover's old equipment - it certainly had the build quality ;)) and Japanese 4 wheel drives.  We moved across country and through rivers to Litchfield National Park.  One night in the outback, seeing the famous "tombstone" termite mound areas and swimming in the rock pools.  It was pretty awesome.  I also found out I was the only person in the group with formal training in off road driving - something the second party, arriving later in the evening, could have done with (having got bogged in and soaked for fifteen minutes, in the pitch black, in a croc-infested creek).

The second morning we went to see the saltwater crocs in the main river, which performed acrobatics for buffalo steak (or possible the intern, depending on who you listened to).  There's a particularly big brute there called Brutus who is sans-right leg from a fight with a shark - you can look him up elsewhere on the web!

*/*/*it's just been announced that we are on a thirty minute delay - no plane unfortunately!*/*/*

I managed a trip to the local reservist recce unit, where i met the adjutant and achieved my aim of an open invite for the HAC to train with them.  They mainly recruit aboriginal men, who would (of course, knowing no better) delight in a reciprocal arrangement to train in Sennybridge.  Poor fools.

The third day in Darwin was the wedding day - I spent a morning driving around running errands, with Laura "busy" having her nails filed, hair done and makeup applied.  I did sneak a visit to Darwin's new military museum which is built on the site of a post war coastal battery (another amazingly short-sighted piece of Australian defence policy, it was obsolete about a year after it was constructed).

On arriving, I got my ticket and entered the first gallery, where I was met by a volunteer guide.  "You aren't from Australia" says I!.  "No", says he, "I'm from Hull".  He emigrated in 1982 having worked on the trawlers, but the accent has never been fully erased.

The museum is all Darwin bombing and evacuation - interesting enough for a couple of hours.

The wedding itself passed without hitch.  Laura looked beautiful, as always; on this occasion she was wearing blue.  Oddest moment of the evening: the ice cream van arriving at 2215!

Next morning we left the rented house reasonably early and got up to the surf club to take down the wedding paraphenalia.  Then on to Nell and Greg's new place to sit with feet in the pool and read my Kindle.  I've now read two Flashmans, two Pratchetts, two Iain M Banks, and a copy of the Economist. 

Last night we arrived in Singapore and checked into a city centre hotel, had dinner then went to bed.  I ate all I could eat from the breakfast buffet, then we headed back to Changi by MRT.  And here we are.

Picked up the good news in the airport - Blackpool have started the Championship season with a 2-0 away victory at Millwall.  And Matty Philips is refusing to play because the club wont sell him to Southampton for 5 million.

Next post will be from Brunei!

Croc jumping and wedding

We're now back in Singapore after an amazing 5 days in Darwin with Nell and Greg.  After landing in Darwin at 3am on Wednesday morning, we got a few hours sleep before heading down to litchfield with Nell, Greg, Sarah, Graham and Chesh to see termite mounds, swim in rock pools and camp under the southern hemisphere stars at Surprise Creek.  Around 10am Lauren, Sarah and James arrived after a dramatic river crossing where their 4 x 4 had got stuck in the river and they'd had to push themselves out of the river avoiding the crocs!  Thursday we swam in surprise creek pools and then watched crocodiles on a Croc tour.   Mindil markets finished the evening off after a game of ultimate frisbee!  Saturday was the big day.  Nell looked absolutely stunning and Greg choked back the tears during the ceremony.  an awesome and beuatiful wedding at Darwin's surf club.  Dave and I flew to Singapore last night and about to board the plane to Brunei where jungle trips, villages on stilts and diving awaits.  Happy honeymoon days :-)

Day two in Ubud

Apologies for the radio silence - we have been moving around a bit the last couple of days!  Currently Laura and I are installed, side by side, in an internet cafe overlooking the sports field in the middle of Ubud in central Bali.

We made our way down through the island by local bus service two days ago, having gone to sea at 0600-0800 to see the dolphins.  Us and about 100 other small boats!  We did see dolphins, which made the early rise worth it.

The bus down through the island was full - and we met it on its return to the Singaraja bus station, having found a village further up the road impassable due to a funeral / festival (depending on who you spoke to and how much money they wanted in order to solve your life's problems).  We met a young french couple who had already spent three hours on it and got nowhere.

The journey itself was about 90 minutes of diesel engine straining in order to get up a hill, the aisle of the vehicle blocked with twenty 15kg bags of rice that  had also been loaded, followed by 90 minutes of downhill which seemed to cover about three times as much ground.  We got off the bus in Ganyar, where the french couple had a blazing row with the driver and conductor of the bus, followed by a row with the minibus driver.  In both cases it was because they believed they were being charged twice as much as the locals (I am convinced they were right - but it was 15 minutes spent arguing about a price difference of 2 euros).  I had to stay and watch.

Our first night in Ubud was spent in a hotel - we ate in a vegetarian restaurant (a novelty everywhere but Ubud).  I hadn't bothered to learn Indonesian for "no meat, no fish, AND no chicken (not meat or fish apparently)", but English was working well enough thus far.  After dinner we went to a dance performance in the royal palace - it was excellent.  Laura liked the butterfly dance; I was more a fan of the "forest demon who realises he is alone in the woods and can play".  I think 'demon' may be a poor translation of 'sprite'.

Yesterday we moved to our second lodging, which is the royal palace - we are spending two nights there.  After moving, we walked down to the temple complex with the monkeys - I was climbed all over my macaques whilst Laura took photos.  I'll post these when we get to Australia.

After the monkeys, we went on a long walk, then visited the Blanco museum.  Blanco was a Catalan who was a Daliesque figure who died in 1999.  He seems to have got on with the successive presidents, as well as Michael Jackson.  We had a look round the galleries, prior to which I was climbed on by parrots (photos to follow!).  We finished the day with dinner at a local restaurant, followed by watching the Olympic boxing.

Today we've done a Balinese (vegetarian; no, shrimps are fish too) cooking course and now know how to make five different dishes.  After the course, we've walked into town and into this internet cafe.  Next is yoga.

Tomorrow we have a third day here, catching the local bus to the airport at 1800.  We fly to Darwin at 2200. 

I have heard, on the grapevine, that Yorkshire has achieved more medals than Australia.  I will be sure to mention it to the antipodeans when we arrive.

Balinese curry

We're in Bali in a cultural centre called ubud. Lots of tourists but this morning we escaped the centre of the town to have a balinese cooking lesson.  yummtastic.  Best of all was caramel bananas for pudding.

We're staying in the Ubud royal palace where apparently the royal family live but I've yet to catch a glimpse!  yesterday we explored the monkey sanctuary adn Dave made friends with lots of monkies after which we took a walk round the rice paddies ending up in the house of Blanco - a Spanish artist who came here and brought the world to Ubud and Bali.

Tomorrow is yoga and more art before we catch the plane to DARWIN for wedding fun!

Bali at last

We arrived on Bali at 0545 today, having caught the night train from Surabaya.

Booked into our accommodation a day early having skipped Bromo - it was becoming mission impossible based on the public transport scheduling.

Tomorrow we'll be visiting hot springs and a waterfall!

Borobudur day one

We've just drawn day one in Borobudur to a close. The most immediate piece of news, in part explaining the brevity of this entry, is that we've linked our Kindles to the hotel wifi and are using the experimental browser.

Hotel's nice, temples impressive, lots of commerce intwined with poverty. Another day exploring tomorrow then on to Bromo!

borobuder paradise

Dave and i have come to a beautiful hotel retreat nestled amongst rice paddies and traditional javanese homes.  iisabsolutely stunning and feel it is the type of place that we should arise at 5am for yoga!Tomorrow to the largest buddhist site in indonesia and world heritage site borobudur.  i am super excited!

Jakarta at last!

Laura and I arrived in Jakarta at 0800 this morning courtesy of Air Asia - Malaysia's answer to Ryanair.  We stayed in a hotel near to KL's aiurport, but didn't take into account the fact the flights seem to be 24 hours a day - so we didn't get much sleep!  I did get a head start on watching the waterpolo though, so I was able to look aghast at Laura when she asked where the players' sticks were (!!!)

No John in Jakarta unfortunately - he's got a new job which is taking him all over the country.  I think he's some kind of security consultant, but I am not entirely clear!

We've checked into a very western business hotel in the centre of town, about 15 minutes from the station.  You can see the country's past quite clearly - I've seen a military policeman in British DPM sitting in Dunkin' Donuts, and there are a lot of beret-wearing private security guards wandering around (less berets than Malaysia though, and less impressive).  I considered showing the MP some pictures of my troop and I, but then thought that the only outcome would be trouble.  The most fascinating guys though so far have been these, wearing what look like genuine steel helmets (stock photo!!):

Tickets for Yogyakarta were bought this morning.  If you think the British are bad for train administration, the Indonesians take it to a new level - you have to fill in a form, prior to approaching the ticket booth to buy a ticket.  We were, however, quick to latch on to this (everyone else holding bits of paper - we had no bit of paper).

I've finished two books so far - The Truth by Pratchett, and Use of Weapons by Iain Banks.  Now to more serious stuff: On War by von Calusewitz.  Once read, I will be able to correct all the pseudos (it's a "continuation with additional", not an "extension by other").

0800 train tomorrow, then three nights at the site - looking forward to it.  Laura's now vetting the Facebook photographs I post, so there's not one for today!