Here is Brian, wandering down the Chew Jetty to see for himself how the Chinese clans live in their tiny homes on stilts over the water.
Decoration on the top of a Hindu temple in Penang.
Burning incense at a Chinese temple round the corner.
Not to be outdone, Muslims file into their mosque a few hundred yards away.
Houses on the jetty, colonial splendour in the background, modern highrise and new-build - different eras all jostling happily together in whatever space is available.
Just one of the many gracious colonial buildings in Penang.
A simply lovely teahouse on a side street in Penang. Now how do I crop the parked car out of the shot?
The creepy and scary Snake Temple, where uncaged snakes really are permanently in residence. You wouldn't catch me on my knees with my eyes closed in here, that's for sure. The types of snakes include vipers and cobras, ie, killer snakes. I'm not sure if the eggs were an offering from a worshipper or snacks for the snakes.
Make up your own punchline for this taxi shot.
Who'd have thought this was where David Beckham got his hair cut? (Enlarge and look at the photo on the right)
At the beginning of our trip, back in July, we'd intended to spend some time at an orang utan sanctuary in Sumatra. When we discovered there was an orang utan centre in Malaysia however, we decided to visit that one instead of making the long ferry journey to Sumatra. This was a good decision, as a ferry to northern Sumatra was sunk by a cyclone around the time we would have been travelling there.
The orang utan is not indigenous to peninsular Malaysia, and the people at this sanctuary are developing a breeding programme. Here are two of the babies, still in intensive care but doing very well.
These are 'teenage' orang utans, youngsters who fend for themselves within the confines of Orang Utan Island. (The island lies on a large lake, not in the sea.) These youngsters were by far the most interesting age group to observe, maybe because their antics reminded us of our own children.
This is the king orang utan, the big daddy who's not to be messed with. (Kids, don't fight back and say who HE reminds YOU of.)
We liked this sanctuary because the animals were free to roam across many acres, and the visitors viewed them from a fenced walkway - it made a change for the humans to be the ones in the cage.
Just a few shots from the old town of Melaka - - - - - - - - - - -
Crumbling monument with flower-bedecked trishaw in front. (Trishaws are everywhere in old Melaka, and blare out very loud music from ghetto-blasters day and night!)
View of the riverside in old Melaka. All rivers in Malaysia look murky.
This party of school children were fascinated by our hats, and asked if they could have their photos taken with us.
ATM, Melaka-style?
This enterprising hotel managed to get a banner printed in time to welcome the President of China.
At Butterworth in northern Malaysia we drove over the bridge to the island of Penang, skirting the capital, Georgetown, to spend our first night in a small seaside town called Bukit Feringhi. Spotting a Hard Rock Cafe, we decided to call in for a well-earned drink before finding a room for the night. (Look, some people like Irish bars when they're abroad, I like Hard Rock cafes, ok?)
We couldn't help noticing the gleaming new Hard Rock Hotel next door, opened just a few weeks previously. After a couple of drinks I went and enquired how much a room for the night would cost. We decided it was way beyond our budget, and agreed to settle for another drink before moving on. After another drink, we checked in. (Sorry kids.)
I can't tell you how much I enjoyed my one night in this palace of luxury - Elvis was in the bathroom, the Beatles were above the amazingly comfy bed, and great music played all the time. The ground floor rooms led straight from their patio windows into the pool, the pool lay next to a manicured beach; what luxury!
After one night in Bukit Feringhi, we moved on to Georgetown to a cheaper, more sedate, but well-appointed traditional hotel where we made ourselves very comfortable for four nights.
Georgetown was a noisy, crowded, chaotic place, and we loved it. Although the sun was very hot, we forced ourselves to go out each day on foot to absorb the sounds, sights, and even the smells. Colonial buildings reflected the former glory of the British Empire years, and you couldn't turn a corner without stumbling on another colourful Hindu or Buddhist temple, a stunning mosque, or even a Christian church. Like Melaka, Georgetown has World Heritage status, awarded in part for the ability of its citizens, over hundreds of years, to live in racial and religious harmony, with its places of worship side by side. We particularly enjoyed our walk one morning along the old Chinese jetties, where different clans live happily the way they've lived for hundreds of years, in wooden one-room homes on stilts over the water. Never mind sanitation, their main concession to the twenty-first century seemed to be a motorbike in every yard and a satellite dish above every door. Our routine in Georgetown became so pleasant we were reluctant to leave, however Cambodia was calling, so we drove to Kuala Lumpur airport, gave back our hire car, and caught our flight to Phnom Penh.
We set off bright and early in our hire car on Malaysia's north/south expressway, which to our surprise was as good a road as any we've travelled on in the last four months.
Kilometres get eaten up much quicker than miles, and after a few hours we left the main road to begin the ascent through the Cameron Highlands and into the centre of Malaysia.
The road was hewn through the densely forested mountains, and this was real Rudyard Kipling tropical jungle - tangled creepers, rushing waterfalls, trees and undergrowth that allowed no light to penetrate, and no human being to pass through without a parang (or a strimmer I suppose).
(Just an aside - when did jungles become rainforests? Was it about the same time as the Third World turned into Developing Countries?)
Anyway, we loved this journey. We spotted the shanty villages of the mysterious hill people, and couldn't recognise most of the exotic fruits and vegetables for sale at numerous stalls by the side of the road.
As the road climbed higher the jungle gave way to tea plantations and their gentler but still spectacular scenery, and we relaxed with a pot of our beloved Earl Grey at a roadside cafe.
The towns of the Cameron Highlands, however, were a bit of a disappointment. We had expected genteel hill-stations, and the chaotic, scruffy, over-crowded settlements we passed through didn't tempt us to spend the night there.
In the end, we drove on till dark and pulled into an hotel that looked ok from the outside but turned out to be the Islam version of Fawlty Towers. The boy on reception didn't speak much English, and couldn't understand why I wanted to look at the room before I agreed to stay there and pay for it. When I finally got my way and inspected the room, taking it even though it wasn't great, I touched the wardrobe and its heavy door swung open hanging only on one hinge. A sign said the restaurant was on the ground floor, but after looking for it for five minutes someone told us was on the second floor!
After all that driving, we couldn't get a much-needed beer in the hotel as its licence didn't permit alcohol. We had to go into the Chinese restaurant next door, where none of the smiling, bowing staff could speak a word of English. Luckily, we've made it our business to learn the word for beer in every known language of the world, and "Tsing Tao" shouted loudly several times produced the desired result.
The giggling girls also brought the menu, but we had no intention of eating from a menu that didn't include an English translation - we knew for a fact that fish head curry and pig's bladder soup were delicacies in Malaysian Chinese restaurants and we weren't taking any chances.
Instead, we crossed the road to what looked like a brightly lit parade of shops, all open-fronted in the style of hot countries everywhere. Each shop, and there must have been at least a dozen, sold nothing but pomeloes. (If you didn't know, a pomelo is a green citrus-like fruit, about as big as a football, tasting like a cross between a grapefruit and an orange.) The pomeloes were stacked into towers, hanging from rafters, and piled into boxes. Who they were going to sell them to was a mystery.
At the end of the row of shops we spied an open-sided cafe with lots of men sitting drinking at tables. Aha! we thought, a bar at last! Maybe we can get something to eat and another beer. But no, when we got closer, we saw that they were all sipping Milo. I swear that Milo, the famous malted chocolateconcoction, is the national drink in Malaysia. People sip it everywhere, either hot or chilled, all day long. Supermarkets stack it on offer at the entrance, in industrial size tins, the same way Tesco offers Stella Artois. Weird.
So, it was back to Fawlty Minarets if we were going to eat that night. Our Malaysian Manuel wore a black suit that was almost as old and dusty as he was, and all the while he chatted pleasantly, describing the food on offer, he absent-mindedly scratched his crotch. Charming. I was determined he would not touch so much as my plate, so I chose the buffet and helped myself. Brian meanwhile, made of stronger stuff, risked ordering a steak, which arrived with gravy on but was pronounced edible. With no ill-effects from our strange evening, we continued our journey north the next day, taking a leisurely look at the towns and cities we passed through. Our favourite was the royal city of Kuala Kangsar, home of the Sultan of Perak. We visited the opulent former royal palace, now a museum housing royal memorabilia, and were surprised to learn that the Sultan was educated at Nottingham University. Just across the road we admired a beautiful white and gold mosque, where a kindly worshipper gave me his bottle of water because there was nowhere to buy any on this very hot and humid day. Shortly afterwards a torrential downpour sent us scurrying back to our car, and on to the temptations of Penang.
I called this post Historic Melaka because I was horrified when the first thing I saw as our bus pulled into town was a Tesco Express. Good grief! Luckily, we were staying over the bridge in the old town which has Unesco World Heritage status, and I quickly calmed myself as the lovely old terracotta and ochre buildings came into view. Melaka was exciting and very different to anywhere else we've been on this trip. Signs were all in an unknown tongue, and English wasn't as widely spoken as elsewhere on our travels, so we really felt as though we were in unfamiliar territory at last. Despite the punishing heat, we made sure we did our share of rubbernecking, and our five-a-day in Melaka was ancient monuments and museums, not vegetables. One morning we visited a shiny new mall in the newer part of town, supposedly to buy essential toiletries etc, but really to escape the heat and bask in the air-conditioning for a while. We allowed ourselves to be lured into a fish spa by a tiny cute Malaysian girl who giggled as she handed out leaflets to unsuspecting passers-by. Although I didn't know anything about fish spas (and for all I know English cities might be full of them), they are BIG in Malaysia. We later noticed at least five more in Melaka alone. The deal is, you leave your shoes at the door, sit on a cushion at the side of a pool of water full of black fish, then voluntarily put your feet in the water and scream your head off when the fish nibble all the dead skin away. We nearly laughed ourselves senseless (it's a very ticklish procedure), and would thoroughly recommend it over a pumice stone. I mentioned the heat, but it was also the rainy season, and we enjoyed a couple of spectacular tropical storms as well as regular downpours of monsoon rain. On our last day in Melaka a curious thing happened. Our landlady told us that the President of China had announced that he would be making a surprise visit to Melaka the very next day. First the American President was expected in Singapore the day we were leaving, now the same thing was happening with the Chinese President! Again, we wondered whether to delay our departure for this momentous event, but I couldn't find a "Free Tibet"banner anywhere, so we decided to stick to our schedule and leave early in the morning as planned.
Singapore has been described as Disneyland with the death penalty, and to some extent we could see why as we drove from the airport after dark. The neon-lit skyline was aglow with more than the colours of the rainbow, and this island, a city-state smaller than Nottinghamshire but with five million inhabitants instead of Nottinghmshire's one million, seemed to be reaching up to the stars.
Our taxi-driver told us about the strict laws in place to maintain law and order, and we were amused to hear that spitting and not flushing the toilet were amongst many offences punishable by a hefty fine.
Great swathes of the city have been cleared to make room for more and more glitzy shopping malls, and Brian couldn't find the Singapore he remembered from his visit with the British Army 35 years ago. Luckily some of the lovely old colonial buildings and Chinese shophouses have been spared, and we managed to get a glimpse of the old Singapore when we scratched the surface.
I was drawn to the Raffles Hotel as if by a magnet, and although we couldn't afford to stay the night we splashed out on the sumptuous buffet breakfast there one morning. Oh, how I mourned the passing of the Empire as I sipped my Earl Grey tea (made with leaves of course) and tucked into perfectly poached eggs and exotic fresh fruits. This was the life I should have been born to.
Singapore's surprise for us was the sensational National Orchid Gardens, where we spent a wonderful morning wandering through what must be God's own backyard. Every colour, shape and size of these gorgeous flowers had been carefully collected, described, and displayed with love - pictures will follow soon! While we were in Singapore we heard that President Obama was due to visit for the APEC meeting, and as a result the Christmas lights on Orchard Road were switched on early, just in case there wasn't enough bling in evidence.
They tried to talk us into staying for an extra day, but Prsident or no President, we had our itinerary to get on with and we had to head to Melaka.
We flew from Alice Springs, which was very hot, dry and dusty, to Darwin in the north of the Northern Territory, which was very hot, dry and humid.
We had allowed a week in Darwin so we could visit the national parks, however I knew I would scream if I had to trek in 39 degrees of high humidity to another awesome waterfall, and we felt a change of plan might be necessary.
Mindful of our children's inheritance, we had booked into the youth hostel at Darwin, but after two nights in our big austere room there, with a fun-size airconditioning unit that couldn't keep us cool, we checked out and moved into modest but comfortable apartment (sorry kids) with a pool. Both the Rough Guide and Bill Bryson are on record as suggesting that the residents of Darwin need to go to Charm School, so we were pleasantly surprised to meet the friendliest most laid back inhabitants of Australia. There was nothing we didn't like about Darwin, a city of 200,000 people and 65,000 crocodiles, 211 of which have been removed from public beaches so far this year. We were impressed by the stylish modern museum which houses samples of all God's scary antipodean creatures, and has a fascinating memoir of the 1974 cyclone which devastated the city in Australia's worst-ever natural disaster. The museum and its smart cafe just happens to be located next to an achingly beautiful beach. Splendid. Once again we sampled the delights of open air movies, this time in a clearing by the beach at the Deckchair Cinema, where fireflies danced and bats swooped in front of the screen. I've said a lot in previous posts about the gorgeous beaches fraught with peril, and now I'm going to tell you why Darwin is such a brilliant place and deserves to be voted the best resort in Australia. Someone had the bright idea of clearing some swampy croc-infested land near the harbour and building a massive open air swimming pool with a wave machine. The waves in this pool have rip-tides which crash on to an artificial beach, and if you fall off your boogie board or inflatable ring (all provided free) the worst that can happen is a grazed knee on the simulated non-slip sand. For three dollars each we had the best fun since our seaplane adventure; it was the business! Just one thing; no-one has told Australian men of a certain age that Speedos and pony-tails are over.
Following our expedition into the Red Centre we returned to the youth hostel at Alice Springs. We hadn't expected Alice to be the dusty, fly-blown town described by Neville Shute in his novel all those years ago, and neither had we expected it to be the silent, soul-less place we found on our short stay there. The indoor shopping mall in the centre of town was almost deserted at 3pm on a Saturday afternoon, and the only people around were a few tourists; like us, aimlessly wandering and wondering what to do. Groups of aborigine women sat chatting on grassy areas, while the aborigine men seemed to prefer drifting alone, usually holding a 'stubby' and sometimes asking for a cigarette or a dollar. It was difficult to make eye contact with these indigenous people, and easy to feel threatened, especially when abuse inevitably followed a refusal of cash. Could these be the same aborigines whose fascinating lifestyle, history and customs we had seen described in the culture centre at Uluru? Anyway, I wasn't there to ponder assimilation, integration, or racial harmony, so I went and sat in the open courtyard of the youth hostel and enjoyed the film 'Australia' on a big screen under the stars.
We knew before we left England that our trip to Australia wouldn't be complete without a visit to its Red Centre. We flew from Cairns to Alice Springs, then took a three day 'Safari in Style' to the red heart of this vast continent, to see life in the outback at Uluru (formerly Ayer's Rock); Kata Tjuta; and King's Canyon. The road in the picture was quite exciting when we began our journey, but six hours later we were hot and bothered, relieved we had arrived at our camp at last, and ready for a cold one.
This is the 4 x 4 bus in which we and our fellow explorers bumped and baked across the desert.
Click on the picture to enlarge, and you will see that these are toilets for 'Sheilas' and 'Bruces'. I've told you before that Aussie toilets can be a joke, and these were no exception.
Here it is, Uluru, Ayer's Rock, in all its glory, photographed from the viewing area reserved for coaches. Thousands of people turn up at sunrise and sunset every day, and the national park is very well organised to recieve them. For once, we didn't mind sharing the experience with many others, as most of the tours, including ours, provided bubbly and nibbles for us to enjoy while we waited for the sun to sink.
This is our luxury tent at Yalara, the accommodation village specially built to take all the tourists who want to stay at Uluru overnight. It may not look much, but we had very comfy twin beds, a lamp, and a fan - what more could we need?
What nearly did for us though was the early morning starts. We left Alice at 6am on the first day, rose at 4.15am for the sunrise on the second day, and had a lie-in till 4.45am before our trek across King's Canyon on the third day. It was particularly hard for Brian, who hadn't realised previously that there were two four o' clocks in the day.
This is a sunrise shot. Although we were awed to see Uluru for ourselves, we were a tiny bit disappointed that we didn't see magnificent skies at either sunrise or sunset on our visit.
Enjoying a glass of the very respectable sparkling 'Yellow Dog'.
This is a shot of Uluru taken when we walked round the base (about 9km) in the early morning before the sun became too hot. The rock was very different. much more beautiful and interesting, when seen up close and personal.
Indiana Carmichael setting out on his latest expedition.
Flies, damn flies! We laughed when someone warned us about the nuisance of flies in the desert, but luckily we took her advice and bought insect nets just in case. I would surely have gone crazy without mine, as the flies, though they didn't bite or sting, were a constant aggravation.
Another desert view, this time with a salt flat in the distance. Although the earth was unrelentingly red, we were surprised at the number of small trees and shrubs we saw. These provided shade and shelter for a variety of wild creatures including kangaroos, wallabies, emus and dingoes.
What looks like a white line running up the side of Uluru is in fact a chain, which you hold on to if you are foolish enough to want to climb to the top in 40 degrees. The aboriginal custodians of Uluru prefer tourists not to climb the rock, and that was enough of an excuse for us to decline. As it happened, no-one in our party was tempted to try to scale the 380m (or thereabouts); we were all content to walk round the base.
This is King's Canyon, where we took a 7km walk on our third day. This was a more arduous walk than the base of Uluru, and took about three and a half hours to complete. It began with a steep climb up over 300 steep steps roughly hacked out of the canyon side, then a clamber over the plateau and different levels of the canyon sides. The views from the top were impressive, and though it was 35 degrees we were blessed with a slight breeze for all but the last twenty minutes of the walk.
A typical small town we passed through on our drive up the Stuart Highway.
See, I wasn't exaggerating about the dangers of the coast.
A typical look-but-don't-touch beach.
Australians like their gambling, and pokie machines (one-armed bandits) are everywhere. In Port Douglas they take their betting to new levels, where the entertainment is cane toad racing. I didn't take part, as kissing the cane toad before the race starts is a condition of entry!
Life's a beach!
Beautiful Lake McKenzie, where the only fearsome creature in the water is me.
Brian camouflaged in the rain forest, searching in vain for platypus!
Teatime for the larrakeets.
An inquisitive Joey at a beachside campsite.
Approaching Whitsunday Island from the air.
Taken from the seaplane - see the heart shaped reef?
Stop laughing - these are our stinger suits - required attire to protect us from the deadly jellyfish!
This is the life - sipping bubbly after arriving at Whitehaven Beach on our seaplane!
A wombat rescued after a road accident - see the scar? It's quite distressing to see the road kill as you drive along the highways; big creatures like kangaroos and wallabies lie on the roadside as if they are sleeping, when they have actually been struck by fast-moving vehicles. Lorries don't stop when they hit a creature, though a wallaby can write off your car, so small vehicles are quite vulnerable.
More cute koalas!
This bird, the cassowary, is about the size of an emu. It is naturally aggressive, and stalks the tropical rainforests of North Queensland. If annoyed, it will run at you and attack with a flying leap, unsheathing its razor-like claws with a possibly deadly blow to your jugular. The horny thing on its head is also quite a vicious weapon. We were relieved we only came across cassowaries in the safety of a wildlife sanctuary.
An evil crocodile smiling in anticipation of unwary victims.
Here we are, all innocent at the start of our journey, not knowing what lies ahead!
Here is Brian, wandering down the Chew Jetty to see for himself how the Chinese clans live in their tiny homes on stilts over the water.
Burning incense at a Chinese temple round the corner.
Houses on the jetty, colonial splendour in the background, modern highrise and new-build - different eras all jostling happily together in whatever space is available.
The creepy and scary Snake Temple, where uncaged snakes really are permanently in residence. You wouldn't catch me on my knees with my eyes closed in here, that's for sure. The types of snakes include vipers and cobras, ie, killer snakes. I'm not sure if the eggs were an offering from a worshipper or snacks for the snakes.
