One last night in Asia...

So here I am back in Jakarta after a 29-hour coach ride from Denpasar in Bali. The coach ride wasn't as bad as it could have been: there were some empty seats at the back that the man sitting next to me moved to after finishing a couple of bottles of his Balinese spirit (half a bottle is enough to get anyone wasted but I guess he knew that two bottles would make the ride much quicker!) so that gave me ample leg-room; the food (included in the ticket) at the service station buffets was very tasty and filling; I chatted to two Canadian girls on their way to Sumatra, laughing at yet admiring the locals trying to converse with us in very broken Bahasa Inggris; and I was even given an old Balinese coin and a strange-looking ring from my drunken friend. Arriving in Jakarta wasn't even that bad as the Canadians, a very shy Frenchman (you could tell he was French a mile off!) and myself got a pretty cheap taxi to Jalan Jaksa – the backpacker's street – and I booked back into the same hostel I stayed at when I arrived seven weeks ago. Into the exact same room, in fact, and the owners were thrilled to see their "Thomas" back, almost as if they couldn't believe anyone would want to return there having stayed once.

Kuta was fun. I had my day in the pool of the Hard Rock Cafe followed by an all-you-can-eat buffet in their restaurant (I certainly got my money's worth!) followed by a couple of hours in their bar with the resident band and dancers, who can only be described as "diddorol-gwahanol." The sunsets on the beach were lovely and karaoke-ing the night away with a load of Aussies and Chinese in the clubs was definitely an experience – they especially liked my “Summer of ‘69” and “Green Grass of Home,” which I thought was especially apt.

And so I find myself with only 15 hours left in Asia. What do you do in that time? Well, I’ve already gone to the local record store and bought myself another five CDs to add to the five or six I already have (not only do I like Indonesian court music but its pop, folk and rock music is also very good) and tomorrow morning I’ll go and find some Indonesian fruit and sweets at the market to bring home – that’s if I don’t eat them on the plane first! After this I’ll head to the bar next door to the hostel where there’s a Rolling Stones tribute band performing, and just before leaving for the airport I think I’ll have a mini gorge on Javanese food – I’m thinking bubur (a type of porridge) to start, then soto (noodles and rice in a lemongrass soup), then sate (you should know that, it’s the one in a peanut sauce) and a whole load of gorengan (friend stuff) to finish. That should keep me going for a few hours at least!

On the coach I looked at my passport and totted up the days I’ve been away in different places. My passport now has 22 stamps, 2 visas and a sticker (That’s Japan trying to be hi-tech!). It tells me I spent a total of 23 days in PR China, 15 days in Japan, 5 days in Hong Kong, 69 days in Malaysia, 3 days in Singapore, 3 days in Brunei, 51 days in Indonesia, 4 days on a boat and (after tomorrow) 2 days in the air, making a grand total of 174 days. Wow! It’s gone fast, too, especially since arriving in Indonesia.

Whenever I tell people I’m about to go home after almost 6 months away they always ask the same question: “So, are you ready to go home?” I suppose it’s inevitable that a part of me doesn’t want to leave. I’ve learned a lot out here about the lives and cultures of the people around me and I’ve changed my mind on some important things such as politics and religion in the process; on the whole (taxi and becak drivers and prostitutes being the exception) I’ve been met with genuinely friendly faces who are always willing to try to have a chat even with their often virtually non-existent English language skills; through that I’ve learned how to understand what people are saying without words and can even just about understand the dodgy (which is putting it nicely) English subtitles on their DVDs; I’ve eaten delicious food every day (although I must say that I prefer Malaysian food to Indonesian food, there’s just more variety – there you go Shu Haur, you win after all!) and at a price you won’t find anywhere else in the world, and I don’t know if I’ll be able to taste anything at home anymore having added plenty of chili sambal to already spicy food for the last 19 weeks; and everywhere you go there’s enough familiarity to feel comfortable yet enough differences to always make the time interesting.

But I have a lot to look forward to for when I come home: having the whole family together and seeing friends in the village again; gorging on mum and dad’s delicious Christmas food (if I won’t be able to taste that then there must be something seriously wrong with my taste buds!); doing all the Christmas traditions we’ve always done – a chat and a sherry at Maldwyn’s followed by carol singing outside the village shop and hotel, plygains, sledging (if we’re lucky with the snow), playing countless board games (we should get a shield this year and start recording the winners of the tournament), watching a good film with a hot chocolate in front of the roaring fire and all the general coziness that comes with Chrsitmas; seeing my extended family and being smothered by my aunties (wait, that last one’s something I’m not looking forward to); then New Year’s in Prague and some serious catching up with ACers over a few pivos; celebrating My Dang’s birthday in Esens; a couple of days in London; then finally the Mari Lwyd in Dinas Mawddwy and a weekend in AC before I need to find myself a well-paid full time job (if you know of anything, let me know) and organise the summer project. Wait, I almost forgot the most important things of all – cheese, fresh bread with real butter, cwrw gaeaf and being able to flick through the radio or my collection of CDs and finding exactly what I want to listen to – I have my ten CDs from here, a load of Songlines and Introducing CDs waiting for me at home and a few on my Christmas wish list too, so I’ve got a lot of listening to look forward to.

So as you can see, I have a lot to look forward to. I think if I was coming home at the beginning of a miserable and boring February I would probably want to stay here at least until the summer months when things get fun at home. But as it is the bitterness of the bitter-sweet pill of leaving is going to be very much outweighed by the sweetness of being home for Christmas and seeing friends for New Year’s.

All that’s left for me to say is thanks for reading this and following me on my travels through E and SE Asia. Well done Japan for being the country you most want to visit (28%), and well done Hedd, Hedd, Hedd, Hedd and Hedd for being placed 1st to 5th respectively in the Poke-Stephen-in-the-Eye Game. This may be the last ever post on this blog – but maybe not, as I think “heddinasia” is an apt name for any blog of mine. After all, there’s always going to be a part of Hedd in Asia, wherever he is.

Quick update for Java and Bali

I have one thing on my mind at the moment - I'm thinking what it must feel like to be smothered by a sweaty Adam Jones after 80 minutes of running... it would be an experience, that's for sure! I'm thinking that because I've just uploaded his picture and finished writing the last blog post, even though I started it two weeks ago. I was meant to talk about other things I've been up to too but I've been so busy sorting out lots of other stuff and procrastinating from writing on my blog that I kept putting it off. Anyway, I only have one more short week left after 24 weeks of being out here so I can't afford to put it off any longer. So here's a very quick update on what I've been up to.

The day after Prambanan (my birthday) I got up at about 5:30 am to catch the first bus to Borobudur, and ancient Buddhist monument not too far from Yogyakarta. In fact it's the largest Buddhist monument in the world and the largest monument of any kind in the Southern Hemisphere (that's right, I'm below the equator now). As you can imagine, it was pretty massive and impressive with lots and lots and lots of reliefs telling fables and the stories of the Buddha at different reincarnations. Ffion says that her prof at uni says that they're one of the best preserved reliefs in the world. It was a good job I came early to avoid the crowds as this is Indonesia's #1 tourist destination and I managed to go around all the levels in peace until I got to the sputa at the top, by which point all the school trips had arrived and all the annoying children wanted to have their photo taken with me.

Also on the grounds was a museum about Indonesia's nautical history which had inside it the boat someone build based on the boats on Borobudur's reliefs. He and a team used it to sail from Bali all the way round to Ghana to show that transportation, trade and contact was available between the two continents all those thousands of years ago, although in reality they never sailed further than Madagascar, whose people and language are actually decended from the Indonesian archepeligo and surrounding islands. Apparently, again according to Ffion's prof, the boats were only meant to go one way (from East to West), which proves that bananas originated in Asia and were introduced to Africa rather than the other way around. Later that day I arrived in Solo (or Surakarta, as it's properly called), another royal city in Central Java, and after dumping my stuff in my room went downstairs to play some gamelan after all this time.

The hostel itself used to be a batik factory, and not only did they have a whole gamelan orchestra but also their own small swimming pool and lots of interesting furnishings. One of the people I met there was an old Dutch man who used to live in Indonesia when he was a child, his farther being the owner of the country's second largest sugar factory. He's been back to Indonesia a few times but today was the first time he'd gone back to visit the concentration camp he and his family were sent to by the Japanese during their occupation in WWII. His father and elder brother were worked and starved to death there and he was almost about to die too until he was saved by the Japanese surrender, after which he and the other Dutch had to flee back to Europe. Over a million people - Indonesian and Dutch alike - were being worked and starved to death in the Javanese concentration camps at the time of the surrender. "The bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki were terrible," he said, "they took many lives. But many, many, many lives were saved. Many lives."

I got to know a few Brits in Solo, some students studying gamelan in the arts institute there. It was good to be able to speak English for once without having to slow things down to a snail's pace and to have conversations that went beyond trying to explain where Wales is. Incidently, I've had enough of saying "it's next to England," so I now say "it's close to Scotland and Ireland" instead. Hopefully they'll know who Ryan Giggs is though, then it needs no explaination. I met these people at the various gamelan latihans (practices) and wayang kulit shows we went to, which included two all-night performances from 7 pm 'till 4 am. One of them had a very useful simultanious English translation, about which Rachel Hand, one of the Brits studying at the institute that I got to know and who's a SOAS alumn, whose an article for the Jakarta Post, quoting me in it! You can read it online - http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2008/12/03/039wayang039-with-english-a-first-surakarta.html

David McKenny, another SOAS music alumn studying at the institute, is another guy I got to know and it was good to get lots of inside information about SOAS, the music course and staff and other nit-bits to put some of my concerns away. Now that I've finally finished the UCAS applications I'm only waiting for a descision from the universities - four out of five of which are in London - but after talking with David and Rachel I'll accept SOAS straight away if they want me. I spent quite a bit of time with David and Joe Lunar, my original contact for Solo that Nikhil Dally, the gamelan teacher from AC, put me in contact with and who's played at one of the gamelan concerts in the Glass Room there.

If you're reading this and haven't got a clue what gamelan or wayang kulit is, I suggest you search them on Youtube and have a listen and a look! They're both a pivotal part of Indonesian culture, especially so in Central Java and Bali, but their styles are very different. Another important aspect of Central Javanese culture is batik - literally "many dots," refering to the technique of putting lots and lots of wax dots on cotton or silk to make a design and then dying the material so that the colour doesn't dye the area that the wax is. It's all very simple in concept but the art and application itself is very difficult, as I found out myself when I took a day course in it. In Jogja, it was very tourist-orientated, with modern wall hangings being the thing to buy, but in Solo it was much more traditional with the small team of batik makers where I was doing the course behind a clothes shop were spending the whole day just covering certain areas of sarongs with bees wax. My attempts were miserable and I was getting drips everywhere, but I had fun and managed to make a couple of Christmas prezzies along the way.

After twelve days in Solo I headed for Surabaya, Indonesia's second largest city. There wasn't much to do here though - the only reason I wanted to go was because this is where Alice grew up - but it did have an excellent zoo by Asian standards and some enormous shopping centres by anyone's standards, which meant I was able to top up on a few essentials like tissues for toilet paper and shampoo. I also watched an interesting film called 'Twilight', a kinda teen vampire film that really doesn't make much sense but it was either that or Disney.

After Surabaya I headed to the Bromo region. Gunung Bromo is an active volcano surrounded by a few other sleeping volcanoes in a large crater which is in turn surrounded by volcanoes - well, they do call this the 'Ring of Fire'! Actually, as impressive as Gunung Bromo itself was - which is the main thing people come to see and has about 240 steps leading up to the top - I prefered to jalan jalan (wander about) along the crator rims of the other volcanos. At least they didn't stink of sulphur! I woke up at about 3 am both days I was in the region, the first time to climb a mountain on the edge of the large crator that Bromo and the others were lying in (known as the Sea of Sand, for obvious reasons) in time for sunrise and the second in time to climb Gunung Bromo itself in time for sunrise. Walking along the ridges from an active volcano to a sleeping one gives a very strange scenery: it's as if you were walking through Russia at the transition of winter and spring, that is to say that one moment everything around you is barren and dead, a wasteland of sand and black rock, then suddenly you turn the corner and you're in the middle of a lush green landscape with a thick forest below. The morning mist, which fortunately didn't rise above the ground for the whole time I was walking, added a lot to the mood, and I got lots and lots of good photos. But now I want to visit the Caucasus instead to see if it really does look like how I imagine it. How about a family holiday in Georgia and Armenia this summer, eh?

What with two very early mornings and then a sleepless nightbus to Bali, I had a rather confused body clock by the time I rached Ubud, a town in central Bali that's been known as a very artsy place ever since the German artist Walter Spies moved there in the 1920s, with many foreign artists following suit ever since. So after finding a very friendly homestay and eating some honey on toast and fruit for breakfast, I slept for the rest of the day. And because it was raining I slept most of the next day too! But don't worry, by the next day I was out and about again, jalan jalan-ing through some of Bali's signature terraced rice fields and popping in a few galleries along the way. I stayed in Ubud for a week all together, trying to get as much Balinese 'culture' in me as I could before heading to the beach. So I went to a lot of museums and galleries, temples (one of which houses the world's largest kettledrum, cast in the 2nd century BC) and shows and dances. On Sunday night there was an all-you-could-eat traditional Balinese buffet at my homestay, which was really tasty and finally brought some people to the place, as it had been dead all week. All you could eat and only for 30,000 rupiah, which sounds like a lot, and for a meal that it a lot, but it converts to just under 2 pounds!

One of the best things I saw was actually in this temple with the kettledrum: the temple is a bit out of the way so I rented a push bike for the day, and when I arrived there was a ceremony about to begin. I'm not allowed to enter one but the wall was just low enough (or, rather, I was just tall enough, as I'm sure the wall is a perfectly adequate size for the Balinese!) to peek over and watch. There were girls and ladies carrying tiers of fruit on their head and putting them on the alters as offerings to intice the gods to join them in their festival, priests flicking holy water everywhere, all to the sound of the gamelan. It was just so colourful. The Balinese are an incredibly spiritual and superstitious people, and their unique take on Hinduism affects every part of their lives. When I arrived back in Ubud there was yet another ceremony in place, this time on the streets surrounding the main temple, with all the men dressed in white and all the women in colourful tops and sarongs. After being in Muslim areas for the last 15 weeks it was odd to see women praying without covering their hair at all, whereas it's the men who must partially cover their hair with a while wrap.

And that bring you up to date. I arrived in Kuta this afternoon, the most popular place in Bali, packed with Aussies and surfers. It's also the place of the October 2002 bombings that killed over 200 people. There have been warning not to travel to Bali at this time because the masterminds behind the bombings were executed by firing squad just a few weeks ago, so the authorities are a little nervous that there'll be trouble. But so far so good, which is helped by the very tolerant nature of the Balinese people. I thought I'd come to Kuta to finish though as there's still a lot of fun to be had, what with an 18km stretch of beach and the hottest place in town just down the road from my homestay - the Hard Rock Hotel! It has a swimming pool inside that's more like a lagoon with slides and a wave machine, although there is a proper waterpark not far away. Choices, choices! So I'm going to enjoy myself for these next few days before I have a 24-hour coach ride up to Jakarta on Friday and a 22-hour flight home on Sunday. I'll try to post something small for y'all on Saturday night. In the meantime, maybe you can head down to your local waterpark and see how much fun you have during wintertime!

Prambanan

I'm sitting in an internet cafe in the city of Solo, about an hour by train Northeast of Jogja. Fortunately it has a very fast internet connection and a good headset so I've been able to Skype Auntie Jan to wish her happy birthday and I'm now I'm listening to the Wales Vs Australia match using the BBC iPlayer. I'm usually not very good at multitasking: if I was listening to it on Radio Wales I wouldn't be able to simultaneously type at all so I'm listening to Radio Cymru instead. It's a little strange hearing Welsh again after all this time but luckily I'm still able to understand everything they're saying, even with their Hwntw accents! Shane's just scored a try to put us 5-0 up so it sounds like it's gonna be a good match.

The last week-and-a-half has been a very full and busy time compared to much of the last twenty-two weeks, so I'll just tell you about some of the things I've been up to. Grr, Australia's just scored a try :( And from 70 metres out, too. And I thought it was the All Blacks who were the counter-attack masters, looks like the Wallabies are good at it too.


Prambanan, 18th-19th November

I rented a push bike from someone on the little path I was staying on in Yogyakarta and made my way to Prambanan, a plain with lots of 8th and 9th century Hindu and Buddhist temples. I could have taken the 18km fume-choked duel-carriageway that goes straight there but seeing as I had a few hours of sunlight left I decided to take the longer but quieter route along a canal. The scenery was typically Javanese - rice fields in the foreground, volcanos in the background - and really once you've seen one piece of Javanese countryside you've seen it all. Just before turning back onto the duel-carriageway I reached a small village and stopped for a while to watch a primary school football tournament, much to their delight. At Prambanan I checked myself into a simple losmen (homestay), had some nasi goreng (fried rice) and a sprite for tea and made my way to a theatre at the back of the main temple complex where there was going to be a classical Javanese ballet performance of the Ramayama. The Ramayama - one of the great Hindu epics - is a very long and complicated story about life, the universe and everything, so I wasn't convinced that they would be able to tell the whole story in only a two-hour long ballet. Indeed, it was only really the skeleton of the story that they told but the overall performance was excellent: fluid dancing, colourful costumes and great gamelan accompaniment. In the summer months they do a longer four-night outdoor performance over the weekend of the full moon with the main temple luring over behind the stage but now that it's the rainy season they take it indoors which means you're a lot closer to the action.

The next day I had my requested 5 am knock on the door and started on my way to explore some of the smaller temples around the plain that hardly anyone goes to, partly because you can only really get to them by bike and partly because most people just come for the main Candi Prambanan. But, being me, I wanted to see these out-of-the-way candis. The first one I got to, Candi Sajiwan, was a Buddhist temple decorated with reliefs concerning education and the base and staircase were decorated with animal fables. It was, however, covered in wooden scaffolding. But being Indonesia and not caring about Health and Safety signs there was nothing to tell me not to climb it, so I climbed it for a good look down at the ruined mini-temples all around. Every candi had these mini-temples surrounding them and they were all in ruins but it was sometimes difficult to tell whether that was a cause of time or because of the devistating earthquake that hit the area in May 2006, killing 5,782 people. Then I went to a couple more candis, passing plenty of early morning workers in the rice paddies along the way and with the constant view of the smoking Mt. Merapi in the distance - although it was a lot closer than it looked. Mt. Merapi is Indonesia's most active volcano and the fourth most active in the world. I may go and climb it next week but what with the paths being slippery at this time of year and infested with poisonous snakes and spiders I might decide to give it a miss.

It was time for some breakfast... but there wasn't much choice. In fact, at the little roadside shop I'd stopped at to buy some water there wasn't any choice. So I settled for the only thing they had to eat: peanuts fried in batter! Now, Indonesian cuisine is very grease-heavy by anyone's standards but this really did take the biscuit. Actually, it was quite a lot like a biscuit. Oh, but it have a few strips of seaweed for flavour, so maybe that makes it a little more healthy... Anyway, I was going to need the energy because I had a steep hill in front of me to climb to get to the next candi. After about 50m I realised it was going to be impossible to cycle up so I pushed the bike the whole way and was looking forward to racing back down the other way! It was worth the effort though because this temple - Candi Ijo - had something special about it. I'm not sure what, it was just the atmosphere. There was one main candi and three medium-sized candis with ruined mini-candis beyond. Obviously I was the only visitor there but there were plenty of others around - a few gardeners weeding the lawn, a few stone masons repairing the stone wall surrounding the complex and someone sweeping away the dust they created. And here, just like on all the other temples, there were intricate carvings all over the walls and even a very cute statue of a cow in one of the smaller candis.

After some time I went back to the losmen for lunch and then to the main temple complex just across the road. After passing the hordes of people trying to sell me souvenirs for something I hadn't seen yet at a ridiculous price I was inside the grounds. The first thing you see is a board showing 'before and after' pictures from the time of the 2006 earthquake: the 'before' ones show the complex in all its majesty, while the 'after's show collapsed walls, fallen spires, disjointed blocks of stone and rubble lying all around. Given the magnitude of the quake it's fortunate that it didn't completely collaps, but it did unfortunately mean that only two of the candis were open to walk into (here they did care a little about Health and Safefy!) and one of the largest ones in the centre was covered in ugly red scaffolding. The boards also told of how they were going to repair the damage, which is going to take a long long time.

It's going to be hard to explain everything about Prambanan so I'll just go over it quickly and then if you're interested you can look it up on wiki! Basically there were six main temples in the centre square. The big ones at the back are dedicated to Brahma the Creator, Shiva the Destroyer (the biggest one) and Vishnu the keeper. The smaller ones in front are dedicated to their vehicles, or vahana - the bull Nandi for Shiva, the gander Angsa for Brahma, and Vishnu's Eagle Garuda. Garuda is also the national symbol for Indonesia, like the Red Dragon in Wales so you see it everywhere. Around this central square of large temples - the main one, Shiva's, is 47 metres tall - was a wall and beyond that there were 224 mini candis, by now all rubble. These mini temples form square rings around the centre square, the different rings symbolising the different stages of the Hinds and 'Trees of World Harmony' surrounded by birds and all sorts of other animals.u cosmos, with the main candi's, specifically Shiva, being at the centre, highest level of the universe. As is always the case, the temples were covered in intricate relief carvings on their walls. The carvings on the Shiva and Brahma temples illustrate the Ramayama story while the one on the Vishnu temple tells the story of Lord Krishna. There were lots of other reliefs and stone carvings dotted around - dogs and mythical creatures to protect the enterance

After walking around this Prambanan complex I wondered off to the museum on the grounds which had some interesting items they'd excavated and also a film about the candi's history, which was more about bashing the 'unharmonious' modern world than anything else! Then I made my way about 1km North to the final temple for the day - Candi Sewu. This Buddhist temple, along with the others on the plain, actually predates Candi Prambanan; It was build in the 8th century but the Buddhist kingdom was defeated by a Hindu king who built the Hindu temples in the 9th century. But he left the Buddhist temples intact as a mark of respect. Again, its 200 mini temples are now all in ruin and the Buddhas who used to sit in them are now all headless at the very least. The most impressive thing about this temple though is the two giant guardian statues on either side of the enterance, both fat, fierce and weilding a club. You see mini reproductions of these all over Indonesia - at the enterance of large houses and restaurants, etc. By this time it was starting to get late and drizzle so I quickly went back to where I'd left the bike and made my way back to Yogyakarta, this time along the highway so as to get there before dark. And then I went to bed early because I was going to have another pre-6 am morning on my birthday the following day!

Hurray, we won the game! Cymru 21 - 18 Awstralia. Tense few moments at the end there, mind. Well done, hogie.

The last month and a bit

Hello hello again!

It's 7:15 pm on a Saturday night. Right now I'm sitting in an interesting little cafe just outside the visitor's enterence to the Kraton (Sultan's Palace) in Yogyakarta, Central Java, Indonesia. To be honest I don't know as much about the history of Indonesia as I should, only that they were colonised by the Dutch for a long time and proclaimed their independence shortly after the Japanese Occupation, so I'm still unsure as to why the official title is 'The Republic of Indonesia' when there are still plenty of Sultans around. Presumably they're just ceremonial figures now who get money from the government but who have no actual powers. Anyway, here I am in the cafe, looking at a window with water running down from tiny fountains on top making it look like it's raining outside, waiting for a Wayang Kulit (Shadow Puppet) show to being in the museum at the end of the street.

The last month and a bit has seen my passport stamped I don't know how many times, being in Sarawak, Brunei, Sarawak again, Sabah, Peninsular Malaysia and finally Java, Indonesia. I don't have pictures any more for most of it because I stupidly left my memory stick in the computer the other day and when I remembered I'd left it there it had already gone :( Luckily most of my pictures are already up of Facebook but not my ones from Borneo, but oh well. It just gives me yet another reason to go back there! I actually have a few posters from Sarawak though, free for tourists from the tourist information centre, so at least I have something 'visual' to remind me of it, and you won't believe how difficult it was for me to find a poster-tube to carry them in. They don't seem to exist in this part of the world so I settled for a 'drawing tube' (whatever that is, presumably something to keeps drawings in...) I found in a massive stationary shop in Miri.

Anyways, I'm deviating a bit here. So yeah, the last month and a bit. Well, I'll just quickly jot down what I've been up to, saying what snippets of memory come to mind first from each place and then later do another 'A Day in the Life of Hedd in Asia' sorta entries. OK, well, I went to the Niah Caves, which were very very big and very interesting. After my first few steps into the cave I slipped on some bad poo and cut my hand, which wasn't good because I'd left my mini first aid kit in the lodge thinking "what harm could come to you in a cave?" Luckily with a bit of spit to wash it out it didn't get infected. Inside the cave there was even more bat and bird poo and, as you might have guessed, quite a lot of bats and birds too. A little further in I saw a lone bird's nest harvester right at the very very top corner of the cave. Well, actually all I could see was the light from a candle but from that you know there must be a man up there too. Wait a second, I'll look on Google for some pics to give you an idea... there we go. So I went through a whole network of caves which were all inhabited in prehistoric times and at the very end I saw the famous 'death boat' painting, prehistoric paintings of their funeral rituals. Pretty interesting stuff. Then I waited for dusk for the 'changing of the guard', which is where all the swifts fly back into the cave to sleep and at the same time all the bats fly out to hunt for the night.

I got to Miri by bus the next day and guess who drove past the bus stop while I was standing there... the two guys from Chester I'd met in the Orangutan centre in Kuching! So they stopped and gave me a lift to their place for some tea and biscuits. They were heading off to Bario in the next couple of days and were in Miri patching up their Land Rover and meeting some old church friends. They were staying with a Chinese couple from their church, the husband of which used to work for Shell. That isn't surprising though - most people in Miri seemed to work for Shell as that's where the company was founded. A long time ago there was a guy who made a living buying fuel from abroad and selling shells in exchange. Then one day he hit an oil well on the hill behind Miri and created the company there and then. There's not much to do in Miri itself though, it's basically just an oil city with lots of big shops (although none of them, however big, sold poster-tubes) and garages to patch up Land Rovers. I stayed in a hostel run by an indigenous woman who's married to the man who used to fly the planes into Bario from Miri so the guys from Chester knew where to drop me off after the tea and biscuits because he used to fly the plane when John, the old doctor, worked there. Not that you'd need to know that... like I said, I'm just jotting down random memories that come to mind.

I went to Brunei for the weekend, which consisted of no less than four different buses and a boat ride. But it was definitely worth it. As soon as you cross over the border you know you're in 'oil capital' with the entire sea up to the horizon covered in oil rigs and on land there's nodding donkeys on every bit of free space between the roads and buildings. It's no wonder the country's so rich. They say money doesn't make you happy, but after being in Brunei I'm not too sure because the people there all seemed very happy and are without a doubt the most genuinely friendly strangers I've come across yet. I stayed in this strange Youth Centre place which was, well, strange but comfortable. Doing a bit of 'Jalan Jalan' (wandering around aimlessly) in BSB (the capital, which is where I stayed) is easy and all the 'sites' are within walking distance, although there really isn't much to see. There's this huge and very impressive white marble mosque with a golden dome, a water kampung (village) where most of the residents live, which is basically a huge crowded bunch of stilted wooden houses build on the river all crammed together. It's funny, because most of the houses in the country were huge (sorry to use the word so many times, but it's the best word to describe things in Brunei, apart from the country itself!) except for these ones in the kampung but it's not because the people living there are poor (it doesn't seem like there's any poverty in the country at all, unless you count the house servants, but then they're given everything they need by their employers) but because they just like the life there so carry on living in run-down houses but making a fortune at the same time. And what do you do if you're rich and live in a run-down house on a river? Play about in powerboats all day!

The country is completely dry (Islamic law) so there's no night-life at all. The Ex-pats who live there usually go to Miri for the weekend if they want a drink or to go clubbing, so in Brunei the only things that are open until relatively late (1 am latest) are the cinemas. I watched a film in this (sorry!) huge shopping centre. It was called Butterfly Lovers, and it was basically the story of Mulan for the first third and Romeo & Juliet for the rest. It was a good laugh though, one of those 'new-style' Chinese films with a mixture of soppy love, jokes, kung-fu and pretty scenery. There was a lot of hype about it there though because the main actor was from Brunei (on the right in the picture), the first from the country to appear on the big screen. In fact, the premiere of the film was in that very cinema only a few days before. After it had finished I needed to make my way back to where I was staying. It was a few miles away and I'd gotten the bus there so was a little stuck as to how to get back. So I asked a guy sitting outside a cafe how to get there and he offered to give me a ride, free of charge, which I gladly accepted. It's things like that that doesn't happen anywhere else I've been to, they'd usually always want to squeeze some money out of you but in Brunei they don't seem to care about that. Oh, I haven't talked about the palace! Well, I didn't see much of it as it's mostly hidden behind a load of trees but it's - you guessed it - HUGE! I mean, this really is huge, I think it's actually the biggest palace in the world or something. And all around the fence were these posh lamp posts all covered in gold leaf. So to sum up Brunei: small country, big buildings, lots of money, happy people. It kinda reminded me of St. Petersburg... well, the building at least, all big and covered in gold leaf. But Russia's a big country... and the people didn't seem awfully happy either...

Four buses, a boat ride, a swim in a public pool and a flight later I was in Kota Kinabalu, the capital of Sabah, Malaysia. Here, I met Felicia, a friend of Elaine from college, whom I would be staying with for the next two weeks in her kampung in the jungle. I learned Kadazan-Dusun karaoke songs, rubber-tapped, made rice wine, went to a Christening, cleared an undergrowth-covered hill-side with a machete to later plant fruit trees there instead, had my hair cut by the native chief's son, swam in the river, chilled with youths at a Christian camp, sang 'Y Sguthan,' 'Gaseg Ddu' (the old version) and 'Ar Gyfer Heddiw Bore' to everyone's delight, watched Malay and HKese DVDs, cooked ayam sambal, went to the village's Catholic Mass (don't tell Auntie Jan!), drew with the neighbour's kids, tried to teach some girls to Salsa, ate dog (and very tasty it was too), chatted with the village sergeant and the visiting pig-seller... lots of things I wouldn't normally do basically! Everyone was very friendly and accommodating and, in true Asian style, offered you food (too much to mention) and drink (either 2nd grade rice wine, 1st grade rice wine, distilled rice wine or beer...) when you went to visited which, along with me being polite enough to finish everything put in front of me, meant my relatively flat stomach I had when I arrived what with all the walking I'd done in Sarawak and Brunei was, by the end of the two weeks, very much visibly fatter. And it wasn't unhealthy i.e. fried like most food out here, it's just because of the sheer volume of food and drink and the fact that, besides what I mentioned above, we mainly just relaxed on the veranda to take shade from the sun all day. Some of the food was absolutely stunning and I felt quite privileged to eat some of it. For example, one night when we went to the neighbour's house I was given, as always, a whole array of little treats. One of them I remember in particular though. It was a stew with only four ingredients: a jungle deer you catch using a bamboo trap so as to keep it fresh; a fruit you have to climb the highest tree to pluck; and a type of chestnut and mushroom only found deep deep in the jungle. And that's it, it was all boiled together and it tasted delicious. Apparently it's only allowed to be eaten by men to make them strong but it just goes to show how much effort they put into making their food and how they can totally depend on their surroundings.

I flew from Kota Kinabalu with the very comfortable budget Air Aisa back to where I was nine weeks previously: Kuala Lumpur, the capital of Malaysia. I got the SkyBus to the KL Sentral then a local train up north to Petaling Jaya, one of the districts of KL I'd gotten to know quite well after staying with Shu Haur. I went to a sate restaurant, ordered a lycee juice and waited for somebody I'd never met but had heard a lot about - Alina, my mum's dorm mate from when she was in AC. Lots of you might not know that my mum, my sister and I all went to AC... that's right, we're an 'AC legacy' family (!) but I tried not to spread it about in AC. Well, now you know. Anyway, my mum went to AC from '75-'77 and lived in the castle. Back then the dorm mates were all co-years. I'd met one of her other dorm mates a couple of times before, Marit from Norway, but not Alina. It was going to be interesting to get to know her, and who knows, maybe I might be able to dig up a few secrets from my mum's past at the same time! It turned out that Alina was very cool (I asked my mum if she was 'cool' in AC, she said she supposed she was but they didn't use that word back then!) but very worrisome! She was constantly afraid something bad would happen to me but I tried to explain that after being out here for about 18 weeks I knew what I was doing. I was staying in her auntie's house with lots of her family members who were all typically accommodating (i.e. in a very good way) and they all insisted I persuade my mum to come and visit one day soon. Well, I said, when Air Asia starts flying direct from Europe to KL, which they plan to start doing this next year, then it might be a real possibility. Alina was working the next day so I spent it with two of her sisters and their families around the sleepy Malay district of Shah Alam. With the first sister and her step-granddaughter we did what Malays to best: shopping! We went to the biggest shopping centre in the whole of Malaysia and it was very, very... you know what the next word will be! But not being the best shopper in the world (or, if you want to save money, then you could actually call me the best shopper in the world!) I only bought a Christmas present for my dad. Later, with Alina's older sister, I had a good ol' chat about SE Asian politics with her and her husband (they're convinced I'm an under-cover policeman hunting down political opposition members because!) and later visited the - OK, I'll use a different word this time - enormous blue Sultan Salahuddin Abdul Aziz Shah Mosque, Shah Alam's landmark. With my sarong and kufi and a little lying to the guard that I was thinking of converting (again, don't tell Auntie Jan!) I was able to go right inside to the prayer hall, and very impressive it was too. She remembered mum from when she came to visit Alina in AC and, again, insisted she came to visit Malaysia. The next day we drove to the airport and, after reminiscing about the old AC - James Mendelssohn, rubbish food... things never change - I was on yet another plane, this one bound for Jakarta.

I was appalled to find out lots of people don't know where Jakarta is - yes, you know who you are! If you're reading this and you don't know where it is then shame on you! What's the capital of the most populated country in the world? Beijing. The second most populated country? New Delhi. The third? Washington D.C. And the fourth? Well, that'll be Jakarta. Indonesia, the 4th most populated country in the world and the 16th largest country in the world has a population of 235 million, and Java, one of it's 17,508 islands where Jakarta and its other major cities and where I'll be spending about four weeks traveling from West to East, is the most populated island in the world. And you can feel it, too. It lives up to its reputation: fume-choked cities and beautiful volcano-laden countryside. Jakarta, formally the Dutch centre of it's East Indies colonies, is chock-a-block with building, cars, motorbike, buses and people. I came to Indonesia hoping for some culture - music, dance, puppet shows. There were a few good museums in Jakarta but not much else, which gave me much needed time to catch up with people after three weeks of being without communication and to finally sort out my university business. Oh, and I watched the new James Bond there too, which I thought was OK but some of the scenes were virtually exactly the same as the last one only with a different girl and in a different country. And I also went to the Indonesian National Mosque which was - yep, you know already. But this really was, as you can see from the picture of inside the prayer hall. The guards were more than welcoming to visitors here and although I didn't really want to take a picture while they were praying mine almost forced me to! I've kinda taken a shine to mosques after being here, it's just such an important part of life here. You hear the call for prayer four times a day (and once at night if you're unlucky!) so you know you're always close to one and they're normally very impressive both outside and inside and the guards are usually very friendly and welcoming to visitors. There are some things I'm definitely going to miss after coming home, not least the food and the weather, but the mosques are also up there, as are other temples. I mean, after you've seen twenty Chinese temples, Hindu Candis and Muslim mosques in one week you're kinda fed up of them but I can see myself after a couple of months at home wanting to go to the mosque in Birmingham or something just to see one again!

After Jakarta I went to Bandung, the 'Paris of the East', which was another business city but it did have a certain charm about it and a very good geological museum. Then it was on an eight-hour train ride off to Yogyakarta, the cultural centre of Java, where I could finally hear some gamelan and watch some wayang kulit, which I've already done and can't wait for this next installment. But more on that later, I'm sure you've all had enough of reading for now! Next time I'll tell you about Prambanan, which I'll go to in a few days, and Borobudur which I'm saving for my birthday before heading to Solo, another cultural capital where I'll, at last, have a chance to play some gamelan myself after all these months.

'Till then,
Enjoy.

First two weeks in Borneo

So far in Borneo in the two weeks I've been here I've seen proboscis monkeys, langurs and bearded pigs, pitcher plants and the world's largest flower, giant squirrels and tufted ground squirrels, black naped terns, metallic pigeons and white-rumped shamas, glow in the dark moss and fireflies, more lizardy-dragony-things than you'd find in the Millennium Stadium on match day and so many species of palms that not even Mum's, Grandie's and Auntie Mary's minds combined would be able to identify them all. I've seen primary rainforest, mangroves, the remains of bush fires, weird volcanic-like plateaus and even weirder sandstone structures. I've lounged on beaches, hiked up hills and dragged my way up waterfalls. I've seen the only species of stingless bee, been spat at by a cobra and I've shaken a pot of salt over my left buttock to persuade a leech to let go. I've watched countless DVDs (non-pirated ones for once) and gorged on toast and jam. I've visited supposedly the best museum in southeast Asia and found a lovely internet cafe that's genuinely and internet cafe.

All this while staying in the best hostel so far, Borneo Seahare, run by the uber friendly Wesley and Teresa. I and the other two guests even went with them to Teresa's family's homes for open houses to celebrate Hari Raya. Open house is where people open their houses to family, friends and in theory anyone passing by and they provide them with food and drink. Muslims here do it for Hari Raya (the end of Ramadan), Christians for Christmas, Hindus for Deepvali and Buddhists for Chinese New Year. We only went to two homes to eat and I was already full bus Welsey and Teresa used to go to fifteen in one day when they were younger! I get the feeling that Sarawak is a lot more racially mixed and tolerant than in Peninsular Malaysia: Welsey, for example, is half Iban (one of the native tribes), half Chinese bus it Christian and in the houses of Teresa's family we visited there were Malays married to Chinese and all sorts of combinations. Of course you find this all over Malaysia but especially so here in Sarawak.

The city the hostel was in, incidently, is Borneo's largest city but you could easily walk from one end of the city centre to the other in fifteen minutes. It's called Kuching, meaning 'cat', so named as legend would have it because when Rajah James Brooke first arrived on his yacht he asked his guide what it was called. Thinking he was pointing to a cat the guide answered 'Kuching'. However, it's more likely that it's a corruption from the Indian word for 'port' - 'cochin'. Even so, the city is full of giant sculptures of cats as well as plenty of real strays running about the place. The souvenir shops are all filled a third with T-shirts, a third with local tribal woodwork and a third with cat-related things. There's even a cat museum, the world's first.

Kuching is the capital of Sarawak, one of two Malaysian states in Borneo (the other being Sabah), with Brunei and Indonesian Kalimantan making up the rest. Sarawak itself has a pretty interesting history having been colonised not by the British but by a single man, James Brooke, and later by his nephew then by his nephew's son. It once all belonged to Brunei but when James Brooke arrived in 1841 there were many bloody tribal disputes going on. The Sultan of Brunei told him that if he would settle these disputes in a certain area then he would give him that land as his own to govern. He set up a special legal system that proved so effective that he was basically given nearly all of Brunei and made it Sarawak. The British didn't like this and never accepted Sarawak as an official British colony (although the Brookes wanted them to). When they took it over after the Japanese Occupation during the Second World War they banned the Brooke family from returning and exiled them to Australia, one of which came back to lead an unsuccessful rebellion against the British. Nowadays though the Brookes are looked upon like royalty by the Sarawakians and are invited back for official celebrations because even though they were colonisers they were the ones that actually formed Sarawak for Sarawakians.

Seeing as I've been up to so much I couldn't possibly talk about it all so I thought I'd just choose one day: my encounter with orangutans at Semenggoh Nature Reserve. I woke up early on Monday morning and after lying in bed doing nothing for a while in a very Hedd style decided to get up, get ready, eat some toast with jam (supplied free in the hostel) and get to the tourist information centre by the waterfront in time to catch the minibus to Semenggoh at 8 a.m. There, I met Germaine, a Belgium/Italian woman in her sixties also staying at the hostel who had the spirit of a young backpacker, a Danish and a Texan woman and the driver, a jolly Malay who knew anything and everything about the nature reserve.

We got to Semenggoh about forty minutes later, walked over a sheltered bridge and to a small area with a large tree, some planted pitcher plants, some caged crocodiles, the vetenary centre and a few other buildings. We waited here until 9 at which time a warden in the jungle was leaving fruit - bananas, papayas, coconuts, all the things they'd eat in the wild - on a feeding platform. The head warden was radioed that there were some orangutans there that had come for some breakfast so we all (about 50-odd all together, most had come as one big French tour group) followed him in along a planked path into the jungle. There, we saw a large feeding platform about forty metres away and on it was an orangutan eating away. Or rather, he wasn't really 'on' it, more like leaning towards while balancing spread-eagle on the surrounding vines, gripping lightly with three of his hands (they have hands instead of feet) and using the other to shove the fruits into his mouth. In the trees imediately above were a mother and her child, only a few months old, waiting for the male who was eating to leave. And in the far distance you could see trees swaying and bending like pendulums and then suddenly spring back as orangutans moved about the rainforrest.

After about half an hour they'd all mosty gone apart from one adolecent female who was waiting in the trees just above our heads. She obviously wanted to go down to eat but for some reason wasn't, maybe because she was shy in front of all the spectators, maybe because of something else. A warden went to the feeding platform and had a look down to see if there were any snakes around that might be scaring her off. Whatever it was she was starting to get angry and she started to tear branches off the tree she was holding on to and throw them down, then she began weeing above the observation platform, wetting some of the spectators. Then a pair of tufted ground squirrels climbed up the wooden legs and onto the feeding platform to eat, and it was these the warden said that must have been scaring her off coming down.

By this time nearly all the visitors had left as their tour busses were leaving at ten. The minibus I took was leaving too but I'd arranged to stay in the centre and take the same minibus back when it returned for the afternoon feeding. It was only me and a group of four people from near Chester who were left. The husband of one couple in the group had worked for many years as a doctor around Bario, deep in the Heart of Borneo close to the Sarawakian-Kalamantan border and had been to the centre many times. The wife of the other couple had worked in the apes section in Chester zoo and so was thrilled to see some semi-wild orangutans. "Things like seeing them swinging from one tree to another," she said, "you just don't get to see that in the zoo."

We left the jungle and after chatting with them for a while I took a break by learning more about Semenggoh Wildlife Centre (sometimes it's called a Wildlife Centre, sometimes a Nature Reserve). For the past few decades it has been a centre where orphaned or recovered orangutans came to be rehabilitated and taught how to survive in the wild. When they'd completed their training they were let out into the surrounding forrest, and food palced on the platforms twice a day if they wanted to come back to eat. They start by coming back regularly (then classed as semi-wild) and then less and less until they feel comfortable enough to be completely wild and never return. So in a sense the fewer orangutans that come to feed the better. Nowadays the rehabilitation training goes on in a seperate wildlife centre but Semenggoh is still the best place to go in Sarawak to see them up close.

I had a good four hours or so to burn so I thought I'd wonder around the centre and enjoy its other attractions that most people never bother visiting. As well as being an orangutan centre it's also a botanical centre with many gardens and a seed bank. This is the part of my travels when I wish someone like mum was here to explain all the different plants; I've seen enough David Attenborough programmes to recognise most of the animals's calls and to understand their behaviour but plants are still pretty alien! I got to the first garden, an exotic fruit garden, and meandered up and down its slopes reading the wooden labels by the trunks of the trees thinking I might have a better chance to know what type of tree I was looking at if I could understand Malay or Latin... having a couple of fruits hanging down would have helped too but every tree in the garden, although covered in leaves and very much alive, was fruitless.

So I continued onto the next garden - a bamboo garden. This was much more fun as it meant I could pretent to be super strong by effortlessly shaking a structure metres and metres tall and seeing its leaves russle high above me as I did. I walked deep into this garden, testing each different species of bamboo to see which had the best shake-factor, until I saw something on the dirt track that I knew would keep me occupied for a long time: a trail of ants. It's become something of a favourite pasttime while trecking through jungles out here to take a break by a trail of ants. I try to see where they're coming from and where they're going to, watch them eat whatever they're eating or fight whatever they're fighting, put little leaves in their paths to see how they overcome the obstacle or collect them on a stick and put them down somewhere else and see how long it takes for them to get back on track... I'm sure I could play with them for hours but the trail usually ends and they've all moved on within about half an hour.

I left the bamboo garden and found a third garden along the road, this time a Chinese herb garden. This one was much more landscaped than the rest with a small lake in its centre and some benches all around. When I entered I saw one plant that must have been a type of cactus, tall and completely covered in a deep green waxy coat with needles sticking out of its fleshy branches. I wondered if it might be an aloe plant or something (again, a lack of Chinese and Latin didn't help) so I snapped a tiny bit off and smelled the white goo oozing from the flesh. It didn't smell of anything so I squeezed some of the goo onto the back of my hands and rubbed it in to see if it could be used as some sort of moisturiser. It turned out to be very sticky though and wouldn't come off when I poured water all over it. In fact the water seemed to make it even more sticky. By this time the sun was shining very brightly so I found a bench in the shade and got out my 'A Short History of Malaysia' book. I read about half a page about the Johor Sultanate after the Portuguese had driven them from Melaka and, as always happens when I start reading the book, felt sleepy, lied down on the bench and had a nap.

When I woke up it was time to go back to the orangutans for the afternoon feeding so I made my way there trying not to scratch the back of my hands which had by now come out in a bright red rash! My jaw and the back of my elbows were also tingling, places I must have touched with my hands in my sleep. When I got to the small area with the tree and the pitcher plants there were three orangutans there: the same mother and baby that was in the morning session and another adolescent who's the older sibling of the baby. They were only a few metres away from us so I could see their actions much more closely than in the morning. Orangutans are generally a little smaller than humans but they're about 6-7 times stronger than us, something you can find hard to believe until you see them effortlessly bite a coconut in half and pour the water into their mouths! The older sister was enjoying herself too, for example when she dropped a sweet potato she was eating the head warden picked it up and streched his arm offering it back. The orangutan took it from him but it 'slipped' out of her hand, so the head warden offered it again and again it 'slipped' out of her hand. The third time it was offered she took it and threw it away as far as she could!

There weren't any orangutans who had come to eat in the main eating area in the jungle so we stayed around these three until suddenly everyone started running over the sheltered bridge to the entrance to the jungle. There stood Delima, a veteran of the centre who usually always turns up for food, and she started walking towards the croud and then onto the sheltered bridge, where she climbed up onto the bench running along one side of the bridge. I was lucky enough to be on the bridge at the time and sat on the bench on the other side of the bridge sitting virtually opposite her only a few metres away. As if this wasn't amazing enough we then saw something tiny clinging onto her hairy chest that you couldn't see at all when she was walking on all fours - it was her new baby born only that morning! This was the first time anyone had seen it and given that they have a newborn at an average of only one a year the wardens were all excited and overjoyed while us spectators just looked on in awe. This was Delima's fourth and probably her last child, and the fact that she'd just given birth to a healthy baby boy on her own in the jungle is proof that Semenggoh works.

Delima carried on sitting on the bench for a while tucking into fruit from a bucket placed down beside her. She was obviously very hungry after the birth and it was fascinating to watch her just sitting there peeling bananas and papayas and showing off her suckling baby to everyone. Then she got up and slowly walked back over the bridge and up the road, posing for pictures (unfortunately by camera ran out of batteries in the morning! gutted.) along the way and shoving fruits into her mouth to keep for later. Suddenly it started to drizzle so Delima with her baby boy climbed up a bank and into the thick jungle to find shelter and to rest in her nest. Like always out here, within a minute the drizzle had become a heavy thunderstorm and our minds went from running after orangutans to running back to the busses. I was able to buy a set of photos and postcards along the way and then we (this time me, a couple from Twickenham and the same driver) were on our way back to Kuching, soaked but feeling very privelaged.

Right now I've just tucked into a delicious laksa Sarawak and a laici kang after taking a 12-hour bus journey from Kuching to a town called Batu Niah in northern Sarawak who's economy is dependent on birds nests and bat poo from the million or so swiftlets and bats living in the caves close by. The caves are also the most important archeological discovery in SE Asia as they contain the remains of the earliest known homo sapien inhabitants in the region as well as cave paintings depicting their 'death boats'. Then it's off to Brunei for the weekend to see the palace of the man who earns £5,000,000 a day then back into Sarawak to visit Lambir Hills National Park, the most bio-diverse place on the planet where I'll see some wild orchids and maybe even a hornbill. All this before being out of contact for a fortnight while living like a local in the jungles of Sabah. Wish me luck!

Exciting Stuff

When I was Skyping Ondra in Langkawi he asked me a question to answer the next time we spoke: what's the most exciting thing I've done over here. I've been thinking about it, and although I've seen some amazing things, stayed with and met amazing people and eaten some pretty amazing stuff I wouldn't necessarily call much of what I've done "exciting". Then I went to the Perhentian islands... I arrived at D'Lagoon Chalet by speed boat and you could see from the boat the clarity of the turquise water, something I didn't have in Langkawi. There were lots of us on the boat when we left the mainland but by the time we reached the last stop - D'Lagoon, a tiny secluded lagoon with one chalet right at the very North of the smaller island - it was only me and a Finnish couple. I checked into the dorm for four nights (only three of us in the twelve-bed dorm, a little fuller than the ten-bed dorm in Kota Bharu I stayed in on my own, and here in Kota Terengganu I'm all alone in a five-bed dorm. Brilliant!), got changed into my swimming shorts, rented some snorkeling gear from the desk and took my first paddle in the lagoon.

With the bright sun shining down the water was as clear as anything. I wasn't expecting too much in the way of coral and wildlife, thinking most of it would have died from seeing all the skeletal debris on the shore, but after swimming out only a few metres it was obvious that the lagoon was very much alive. The colours of the fish and coral were quite spectacular and it really did feel like I'd entered an entirely different world. Even after looking down at this new world for hours I was still seeing new corals and new fish, getting up close to them and spending enough time to get to know their personalities: the territorial ones, the shy ones, the curious ones... and with my underwater camera I snapped away at it all.

I spent a long time in the waters around the islands, sometimes in the lagoon, sometimes off the beach the other side of the island and once off a beach on the other larger island after kayaking there. Over there there was even more coral, even more fish and two things I'd been looking forward to since arriving: turtles and sharks! During my good three hours in the water off this island I only saw one green turtle and although I saw plenty of black-tip reef sharks they were all juveniles. There are some big two metre-long ones that come to the beach a short walk from the lagoon for about an hour in the morning and although I tried to see them twice I'd failed both times.

I was talking to my dorm mate Steve from Northumbeland and a couple from Germany and Finland while we were eating some barbarqued squid they'd caught earlier about what the most exciting thing I'd done would be. I said that I wanted to see the big sharks just so that I could say I'd seen them, becuase that would definately be something I could catagorise as "exciting". But then they pointed out that seeing turtles & small sharks in the beautiful water, having monitor lizards running about the chalet freely on their way to and from the surrounding jungles, having geckos crawling about the dorm (one of which woke me up in the middle of the night as it clambered down the windowsill to the floor via my face), catching squid for supper (which I tried to do but didn't even get a bite!) and waking up to look out the window and finding yourself a mere twenty metres from the sea with only coconut trees, sand and hammocks in your way is all pretty exciting stuff. And they were right.

And when the excitment got too much, I found a hammock underneath the coconut trees and slept . Oh, and I wrote a song about lying in a hammock underneath the coconut trees, which the other guests and locals seemed to like when I sang it in one of the nighly sessions, accompanied by goat-skin drums and brass gongs. I'd have rathered steel drums and a couple of trumpets, but there we go. And on the last day, just to protect my back that had seen enough sun during all my time spent head-down in the water, I stayed in the common area and watched all five Harry Potters. Man, I love being able to do whatever I like!!