A Very Sandy Christmas

In the UK, the cold and rain conspire to make Christmas weather a bit miserable, or to give it that little 'let's huddle in front of the fire sipping mulled wine' frisson, depending on how you look at it. This year, in Australia, it was sand that was a constant Christmas companion.

Our Christmas only really got going on Xmas day. Mid-December, we went to a Xmas Carol concert held down the road from our house, a local affair run by one of the Borough Councils. In the UK, you'd take 10 minutes getting your coats and scarfs and maybe even your wellies on before braving the chill, here we skipped down the road in our shorts and t-shirts. There was an ice cream van, and everyone was sat out in the evening sun sipping red wine. They'd put fairy lights in the palm trees. I have to say the singing wasn't really up to much based on the numbers, many people being content just to sit there and watch the show, like they were at the cinema. Father Christmas turned up at the end, after 3 shrill shouts from the army of kiddies. And this was where it did take a decidedly English turn, because Santa turned out to be from England. He hadn't quite mastered the Santa role, with a very poor beard and a general confusion about his role in the repartee with the guy with the microphone, not too sure what to make of the suburb of Bayswater (“It seems, urrm, very nice, and urm...”) and not really exhibiting the decisiveness needed to take charge of hordes of Xmas-addled kiddies wanting their lollies (“shall I start on the left?” he asked). The whole thing degenerated into a farce as the choir sang a disastrous version of We Wish You A Merry Christmas with half of them 3 lines back, then the MC closed the concert, then someone reminded him that the Best Costume prize that he had been bigging up all evening had yet to be awarded, for which Santa was then duly dragged away from the hordes to present, then there were a few lost children – with one parent seemingly not knowing what their child looked like and going to claim them only to realise it wasn't them at all, and we left with the MC having to close a concert he'd already closed and bumbling along wonderfully. It was clear they hadn't had time to practice the ending.

The choir sings to the heavens with their sunglasses on

The next day we went for the work Xmas do, held in the garden of one of the managers. As it was free booze and we haven't been able to drink too much because we wouldn't save any money, we entered determined to 'drink for England'. Unfortunately we were out of practice so I don't think the makers of Corona will be very worried about their stock running out. And we managed to get a bus and train back home at 10.30pm, to give Perth public transport some credit.

Jo falls asleep laughing at the work Xmas do

The Xmas activities were coming thick and fast and so the next day...we went to the cricket. We drove down to the WACA and watched the South Africans beat Australia in the first test of the current series, and we watched a bit of history, as it was the 2nd highest run chase in Test history. It was all glorious sunshine and good to see the Aussies get beat in their beloved sport, as they can get a bit carried away.

Brett Lee of Australia bowls to A.B. Villiers of South Africa at the WACA

On Christmas Eve morning, we played tennis. It isn't unusual for us to play tennis then, but it was unusual for us to play it in 28 degrees heat.

Xmas day arrived bright and sunny. We went down to Scarborough Beach and were lucky to catch the last half hour of the volunteer lifeguards shift, as the sea had a treacherous rip, but it was clear and relatively warm. 48 hours later there was a shark attack off a beach to the south of Perth and a man unfortunately lost his life.

The volunteer lifeguards of Scarborough Beach

In the middle of the afternoon on Xmas Day we sat down with our housemates and had a very nice Xmas dinner, complete with an Aussie putting a shrimp on the barbie, oysters and some German potato salad. That afternoon and evening we did indeed 'drink for England'. We did Secret Santa, Jo got a cookbook and I got a CD I really wanted because there was some mistake and Jo got me in the draw.

Sarah throws another shrimp on the barbie, hurrah

On Boxing Day we drove out to the Turquoise Coast, the coastal area around 200-250kms north of Perth, which should be named the Windy Coast on account of the constantly buffeting winds wherever we went. We stopped at Lancelin, hired some sand boards and went out to the huge white dunes nearby to try out sandboarding. I have to say I was fairly underwhelmed with it, the speediest it got was when we sat on the boards instead of standing. Unfortunately the sandboarders have to share the dunes with some quite frankly idiotic motorbike and quadbike riders whose idea of a good time seems to be how far up a dune they could ride in a straight line whilst making the most amount of noise possible and spraying up as much sand as possible. What should have been a lovely peaceful environment was ruined by the ear splitting noise of exhausts and groups of men gathered around with their bikes, cars and dogs, making the dunes seem more like some kind of refugee camp. It wasn't just limited to bikes, people in SUVs and vans seemed to have this unhealthy fascination with driving up a big hill of sand. What are these people trying to achieve, what kind of life skill is this they are trying to learn? Do they know something about the end of the world that involves the need to drive your car up a sand dune?

Jo picks up some rare speed on the sand

The big draw of the Turquoise Coast is the Pinnacles Desert. Pinnacles is 250km north of Perth on the coast and is a barren sandy area of around 400ha dotted with thousands and thousands of statue-like limestone rocks. Scientists can't explain precisely how they were created, the two main theories being that they are the calcified remains of trees that were buried in sand and then revealed when winds blew the sand away some 500,000 years ago, or that they are the remains of the plants that anchored the Pinnacles Desert dunes. It is an amazing sight, this army of yellow rocks stretching into the distance and the sea, and in the early morning the stones cast long shadows and you can hear a pin drop, it's so peaceful. As one of the top tourist attractions in Western Australia, it has a very spangly visitor centre, and well laid out walks.

On our drives round the Turqoise Coast, we had our first brushes with the kangaroos. We'd heard a lot about their propensity to bounce out in front of cars, to only drive from dawn until dusk, and we thought it would be a problem on the drive east in the new year. However, driving from Jurien Bay, where we had cooked on a barbie by the coast in a Force 5 gale, to Cervantes, near the Pinnacles, at about 7.30pm (dusk being 8.30), a medium sized kangaroo bounced out in front of us, from right to left, narrowly missing the left hand corner of the car. And then, the next morning, at around 7am (sunrise at 5.30am), we saw at least seven kangaroos standing by the sides of the road, one pair waiting for us to pass then bounding over the road behind the car, which by now I had slowed to a crawl, not knowing what they were going to do. So the principle of dusk until dawn seemed to be a bit skewed here, because we were driving after dawn and before dusk and encountering lots of kangaroos. Slightly worrying.

A kangaroo shows us a clean pair of heels

We meandered back home from Pinnacles, stopping off at Hangover Bay where a lovely beach was spoiled by people driving along it in their 4x4s, some not actually getting out to enjoy the beach, but, incredibly, turning round and driving back along it and out. And some of them looked like backpackers in hired SUVs, shame on them. It was at this point that Jo and I went through a long list of what we disapproved of, which I won't go through now, but suffice to say this was pretty high on the list. I for one rate highly the feeling of sand in my toes, but these buffoons seem so disconnected that their preferred experience is sand in the tyre grooves.

A family enjoy the beach from their 4x4. Maybe it's their version of a place by the beach.

Then we stopped in the delightfully named town of Gingin, which seemed very English with its green parklands and water wheel. Curiously, the only shop open in Gingin was the Liquor store, which makes me wonder where the Australians' priorities lie. You can't get any milk, or bread, or cheese, but you can get a 6 pack of beer. I suppose it is Xmas.

When we got back, we shook out half a beach-worth of sand from our hair, clothes and bags.

Perth on a shoestring

We start this blog on a festive note, with a picture of the Western Australian Christmas Tree, snapped at our recent visit to Kings Park Botanic Gardens:

I read in today's newspaper that Perth-ites get their Xmas trees from Britain, although I think this would look rather fetching with some tinsel and lights? Xmas celebrations have begun in our houseshare, we now have a plastic tree, but it is very difficult to get into the festive spirit when it's sunny and warm. Although, Western Australian has had a fair bit of rain, which has ruined the grain harvest, making our place of work very quiet. I've been getting into trouble at work with pronunciation of Australian place names. They pronounce their 'a's as 'ah's, so Avon as you and I and the rest of the sensible world pronounce it becomes Ah-von, Albany becomes Ah-lbany, and Malaga becomes Mah-laaaah-gah (with a stress on the lah). The grain depot we work at is pretty big, in fact it deals with 40% of the grain harvest in Australia, which I usefully found out whilst on hold to the IT support helpdesk. They have lots of big grain silos, and trucks drive in here from out in the country to drop off the grain that the farmers have grown. This grain gets put into the big silos and then is later sent on to the port where it is shipped out to whoever has bought the grain. It's quite a seat-of-the-pants business to be in, this company we work for has similar grain depots around Western Australia, and for the 9 months when the harvest isn't happening, they plan which areas of the state they think will have the most grain and plan the storage at their sites accordingly. At any time, bad weather can decimate the crop in an area, so the company no longer needs the storage there, but the crop may be better than expected somewhere else, so they have to move all the gear to that area, and that could be 1000kms or so. As it happens, the entire grain harvest has been hit by a very wet summer, so the harvest hasn't really got going properly yet, it's happening in fits and starts and with lots of trucks bringing in damaged grain.

Jo and I are two essential cogs in the 2008/09 grain harvest machine: I weigh the trucks and Jo empties them. The other cogs are an interesting bunch. Amongst others, there's Murray who used to drive trains and who has a nice line in put downs of the management, Michael who has a very cool camper van which he and his Dad converted from a passenger bus and who goes out prospecting for gold at the weekends, big Bruce whose other career is shearing sheep and brings in to work oranges for us all, even bigger Ben who is a very good Aussie Rules Football player one rung away from the top level who has the most enormous lunches thanks to his Mum, Stuart the very hard working youngster who drives a funny yellow car, Kate the cat who has nine lives and can make countless mistakes, lie, cheat and deceive without getting fired, David who drove buses and once blockaded his depot with one, Glen the manager who has worked here for 17 years even though he is only 32, and Sally who I once mistook completely and entirely and for quite some time for another girl. Then there's all the assorted truck drivers, a very diverse bunch whose names I can't remember and whose occasionally colourful comments I'd rather forget. Jo has seen cats and dogs in their cabs.

Jo comes home covered in grain dust – she tells me oats is particularly itchy. The grain gets everywhere: I wake up in the night to find small balls of canola (oilseed rape to the Brits) in the bed!

A truck gets emptied at the grain depot.

There are two shift patterns, days (6.30am til 3pm) and nights (3pm til 11.30pm), and we alternate every week, which is stupid as you can't get into any sort of groove. We don't like the day shift as you have to go to bed at 9pm to get any reasonable shut eye, and it also means we are doing the same hours as all of our housemates so we can't get any peace. Most Australian houses are massive bungalows, and ours is no exception, although the fact that there are 10 people in it, whilst making me feel better on my positive contribution to population density, means there is no peace and quiet. We have an eclectic mix of housemates, Ben the gentle kiwi giant who usefully works at an off licence and can frequently be found asleep on the sofa at 2am, Fabienne and Carolin from Germany who, also usefully, work at the gourmet salad bar in the mall and who on one of their only day trips out of Perth came back as red as beetroots from sunburn, Phil and Katie from southern Ireland whose accents I have just tuned into after 5 weeks and who have seemed to take a curiously large amount of smart clothing on their travels with them, making us look decidedly dowdy, Cecile from France who has just gone home, and Sarah and Andrew from Australia and Canada respectively.

Despite our very limited funds, we have made a good go of spending most of our weekends out and about doing something. Perth Zoo have proudly bought two tiger cubs into the world, so we went to see them, but they did a very good job of hiding from us. As did the numbat, the animal emblem of Western Australia, very endangered and by the zero sighting at the zoo you'd think they were already extinct. We weren't leaving without some kind of picture, so here's one from outside the numbat enclosure:

The elephants were great, here's one having a pedicure:

We also drove out to Dwellingup, about 70 kms south of Perth. On the way we noted the high number of ridiculous personalised number plates, things like 'black car' and 'old aunty'. It must be cheap to get these plates for such lack of thought to be put into naming them. We knew that Dwellingup was a nice area of forest and a famous walking track passes through, and were happy to discover the Lane Poole Forest Reserve, managed by the WA Department for Environment and Conservation, which had camping set amongst the forest and the Murray River, which we swam in in the morning – a bit chilly but nothing on English rivers! You wouldn't believe how noise-free this place was, it was like it was just me and Jo there in the forest. It also had some of those free-to-use gas fired barbecues that we'd seen in every park, beach, and just about anywhere else out in the open. We'd come prepared this time, so we trotted down to them with our snags (Australian for sausages) and beer, but unfortunately these were the only barbecues in WA with no ignition switch, and we didn't have any matches or a lighter. One other couple were unsuccessfully trying to light the gas with a mosquito coil which they'd lit from their car lighter. Luckily for everyone, a lady came by with some matches, and we gleefully got on with our cooking. The other couple were warming up some home made Thai Tom Yum soup, which I thought was a very good idea and will be trying soon, you can't have sausages all the time, can you! Can you?


Not quite MasterChef, but just as fun

Last weekend we rode to Kings Park, which is right next to the CBD. All the Aussies at work were aghast that we'd ridden, it was quite a steep hill up there but I can't understand why they were making such a fuss. Maybe they thought we had ridden all the way up the steep hill, when actually we pushed our bikes. And we pushed them down again too, not trusting our brakes. It's nice to find a place like Kings Park so close to the city centre, it had some great views of Perth.

There was also a guided tour of the Botanical Garden led by an expat Geordie called Dorothy with a wry sense of humour. On the odd occasion she would pick a flower or leaf off a tree, then whisper that she shouldn't really do it, which I thought odd, but then maybe she was trying to give us as good a tour as she could. She wasn't a huge fan of the guy belting out Nesson Dorma for the free concert, and I had to agree. I think he should have used a little imagination and sung some songs which mention trees or birds, how about 'Tie a yellow ribbon' or 'Blackbird' (Beatles)? But then, maybe he was singing what he was told. After the tour, we got on our bikes and rode around the park, stopping off at the DNA Tower:

Last week we went to see the film Australia at the cinema, at the end we were surprised to hear the Aussies in the audience all clapping! Very patriotic I thought, I couldn't imagine a British audience doing that for a British film (notwithstanding the fact they don't make British films anymore). But then, there was clapping at the end of an American film we went to see last weekend, so the patriotism jury is out on that one so far.

We have lots to look forward to – an Australian Christmas, driving from Perth to Sydney, the Australian Open tennis, seeing various parents and siblings, and, of course, our flights to New Zealand at the start of February. At the moment, despite the grasping Australian tax man, we've saved enough for about another month of travelling, the plan being to work until just after Xmas to earn us enough money to travel for 2 months. Unless we drink it all one weekend.

10 funny things about Australia

1) Bookshops, bookshops everywhere

There are more bookshops in Perth (Australia?) than you can shake a stick at. The first second hand bookshop I found I got excited and noted its location so I could go back there. Then I realised there are bookshops absolutely everywhere, including second hand bookshops in the suburban shopping mall! On a walk through the Perth CBD I passed 7 bookshops in as many minutes, including two second hand, one specialist, one discount and three mainstream. Bibliophiles buy your plane tickets now!



This bookshop is on a main shopping street in Perth CBD

2) Locks (and indicators) are weird

For some reason (maybe because we're upside down(!)) locks seem to go the wrong way round here. This means every time I unlock a door I have to turn the key TOWARDS the door jamb which to me is counter intuitive. I get it wrong every time, especially in the car, although Steve has mastered the lock. He has not mastered the indicators though which for some reason (despite having a right hand drive car (like in the UK)) are on the opposite (right hand side) of the steering wheel. I've lost count of the number of times the wipers have gone on when we want to turn right!

3) The law on sale of alcohol is all wrong.

The licensing laws here are weird, you can't buy alcohol in supermarkets or even anywhere other than bottle shops, but you can buy alcohol in "drive thru" off licenses. I can't get my head around that as driving and alcohol is pretty much the only no-go area for alcohol sales in the UK (no alcohol is sold in service stations) and it seems like the Ozzies are being prudish about selling wine with food in supermarkets only to be careless about drink driving!

A drive through off-license...

4) Charity shops are commercialised

When buying some much needed clothes in "Salvos" a big charity shop over here I noticed that the shop assistants seemed remarkably professional and, well, non-retired. I couldn't resist asking if they were salaried, and yes, they are - so all the charity shops are run like businesses over here and I reckon they are a big improvement over the UK versions, well run, lots of good stuff, staff who know what they are doing and most importantly, a brand that is well respected.

5) BBQs are free!

Woo-hoo! Just take your snags (sausages) to the park and fry 'em up on the free gas powered BBQs the council has generously installed. Maybe Hyde Park should think about doing this, it certainly prevents those blackened patches of grass where everyone runs their disposable barbie!

6) The Ozzies are schizophrenic about water conservation

So Western Australia is very short of water and they are trying to conserve water, (every toilet has a full and partial flush setting for example) but on the other hand they have sprinklers to water grass on roadside verges, and the radio tells you when you're going to need your sprinkler, which seems silly for a country with a water shortage...

7) Cheque, savings or credit anyone?

For some reason when you go to the ATM or use your Ozzie bank card to buy stuff you have to select what type of account you want to use: for some reason we have been told to select savings in the shops and credit at the ATM, but as far as we know we only have one account. If anyone can tell me why we have to do this I'd love to know.

8) Everything is supersized!

As they say, a photo speaks a thousand words... Those are tyres from a monster truck, compare to the normal sized truck carrying them and the guy standing alongside. How big must the truck be...! They use those trucks in the opencast gold mines in Kalgoorlie.




















No, it's not a can of paint, its a tub of feta cheese!

9) They love surfing so much they even cast their waves in stone!

Here we are at Wave Rock, WA. It's formed from granite by some kind of obscure erosion. It's a good 3.5 hours from Perth, through 350kms of endless wheatfields and small towns, like Corrigin, where there's a dog cemetery, a fluorescent yellow salt lake, and Wickepin, where AB Facey comes from (good book: A Fortunate Life was written by him).

We stayed in the bush overnight sleeping in the car, but were completely unprepared as we had no cooking equipment so were forced to drink beer and eat chocolate for dinner. It's a hard life ;-)





















Cowabunga!!!

The salt lake near Corrigin


10) And finally a joke, courtesy of Murray from work

Did you hear how there's no television in Afghanistan?
They've had a total Telly-ban.

Boom boom

Sign in a shop window in Wickepin (pop. 679) reads "Grandma-in-law said, 40 years ago in 1958, Every bride should have a little brown jug in her cupboard."

Back to reality (for now)

Bye bye baby

With heavy hearts, and even heavier bags, we boarded the plane in Bali bound for Perth. It was a night flight but we didn't sleep much. There was a bit of drama on the plane as an elderly lady felt a bit ill, although reports that she had been wheeled down the aisle on a stretcher proved to be a bit wide of the mark, or they'd done it so quickly I hadn't noticed. We arrived into Perth airport and then paid the equivalent of one person's day budget in Indonesia on 2 bus tickets from the airport to the city centre.

The last supper in Denpasar, Bali, and more importantly, the last Bintang beer for a while.

It was about 730am by the time we rocked up at the hostels without any reservations. Unfortunately we were still in the 'open all hours' mindset of Asia, but here in Perth everything was closed until 9am. So we had to sit on our bags on the pavement waiting for the hostels to open. For the briefest of moments we had nowhere to go: no bus to sit on, no train to catch, not even a waiting room to sit in. We were homeless. Then the hostel doors opened only for us to find that Perth was chock full of travellers so there was a bit more humping around to do to finally get a room. The room was about twenty times more expensive then we were used to, but unfortunately not 20 times better. It had a lurid green shag carpet which didn't look like it had seen a hoover in 30 years, a shower that couldn't decide if it was hot or cold and a collapsed mattress. The hostel was run by two kindly old women, sisters, who were stuck in some kind of 1960s timewarp and were still running the hostel as such, like some kind of museum of what hostels in bygone days looked like.



Steve and the Mighty Boy, an early forerunner of the Smart car. I'm not sure how useful that roof rack is.

Our house

It was hard being back in a hostel competing with all the other inmates for the limited supply of cooking equipment, so our immediate priority was to secure work so that we could get somewhere to live. The harvest job we had set up eventually came through but not without lots of phone calls. Once that was secured we looked for somewhere to live. Not many landlords are looking to rent out their places to people for a couple of months, so we didn't have many options. We settled on a place about a 20 minute drive from work owned by a kiwi called Richard with a very interesting past and a useful skill in reading people's palms. It took a while to break the ice with a few of our numerous housemates - when we introduced ourselves one of them ran off!

Get your motor running

We couldn't get to work without a car, so we got one. All the cars in the classifieds were a long way away, so we plumped for a look around a local garage. This local garage turned out to be a 75 minute slog along the pavement-less dual carriageway being tormented by Perth's fly population. It seemed big cars were the order of the day if you wanted to drive it around Australia, as we did, with some truly scary fuel consumption figures. But the idea of breaking down in the middle of nowhere didn't appeal too much, so we got a 3 litre V6 beast of a Toyota Camry wagon, then spent the next few days watching the petrol needle sink at an alarming rate, finding niggly little faults, and losing the petrol cap.

On the job

6 days after arriving, we went for our induction at CBH, a grain company who basically store grain for farmers and then ship it out to food companies who then process it to make breakfast cereals, bread, beer etc. In fact, you may have eaten something today that me and Jo looked at or even touched!!! Don't worry, CBH have VERY stringent hygenie standards - but look out for the ear plug Jo dropped into the canola yesterday ; ) It certainly was a shock to have to get up early but luckily our not being told to bring lunch shortened the session. 2 days later we were back even earlier, a 7am start no less, for a meeting to kickoff the harvest season. I'm not sure how, but we survived 9 hours of corporate spiel (our favourite soundbite being 'let's cascade those ideas up'), mindnumbing discussions of safety procedures led by big men with mullets, and stupid questions such as what does D.R.A.F.T. stand for and does a line through 'No' mean no or yes? Jo particularly enjoyed the discussion on timesheets. But I have to say their approach to looking after their staff was good, not just the health and safety, but educating their employees on how to eat and live healthily.


Our office

All work and no play...

So our first week was basically spent organising our lives. But we did manage to do some fun stuff. We went salsa dancing with our landlord Richard. We looked completely underdressed with everyone in their dancing shoes and us in our travelling clothes and walking boots. That was the night I parked my car the wrong way round, I'm still not sure if this was Richard winding me up or not, but all the cars on the street had to be parked facing the same direction, and I hadn't, so I had to do a 3 point turn in the street and park the same as everyone else, otherwise I might have got a ticket. We went to the Red Bull Air Race which was ok but not as good as motorbike racing in my opinion.


Planes do a kind of aerial assault course over the Swan River in Perth

We went to the recycling centre and got some knackered old bikes for four pounds each which Jo did a grand job of doing up, then on our test ride she got attacked by a bird which must have mistaken her cycle helmet (compulsory over here) for some rival male. We went out to the beach at Fremantle, and marvelled at the communal free gas powered barbecues everywhere. We drove out north to Yanchep National Park and Koala sanctuary, and more communal barbecues (although we still haven't coordinated things well enough to actually use them - we'll let you know when we have).


Ahhh

Western Australia has seen three gold rushes in the 1800s and 1900s, the last one being the biggest gold rush in Australia. We saw a gold bar being made at Perth Mint, it has to be heated up to 1300 degrees C and to show how hot that is, the guy picked up the bar and his gloved hands caught fire.


Jo with the gold bar I bought her at the Perth Mint - no wonder she looks so happy!

Onwards and upwards

We'll probably have more to report when the first paycheque is in the bank... until then... toodleoo!

The End of Indonesia

From Bromo we'd been convinced by a silky talking bus tout to take a combination bus ticket all the way to Denpasar in Bali. As regular readers (all one of you, Mum) will know from previous blogs, we don't get on too well with combination tickets (see "Scamming the Scammers") so we made doubly sure we'd be ok this time by checking repeatedly with the tout that it was one bus all the way from Bromo to Denpasar, that actually got on the boat and off again with us on it. Satisfied with his reply after checking three times, we bought the ticket (160,000 rupiah (about 10 pounds)) and set off. Straight away the company conspired to make us suspicious by forcibly removing the receipt which said Probolinggo - Denpasar and replacing it with one which says "Akas Karcis Bus Patas" and some other phrases in Indonesian, but nowhere on it does it say Probolinggo to Denpasar.

At the port, what a surprise, and despite our protestations we were ushered off the A/C bus we'd been promised would take us all the way to Denpasar and hustled into a bemo (converted minibus). The company decided to make themselves look as much like cowboys as possible by switching touts midway through this process but Steve manfully watched the second tout like a hawk to make sure he didn't run off the ferry before it left.

We finally made it to Denpasar at about 10 pm after a journey in yet another of those cramped bemos with no leg room, bemused by the fact that the company which obviously was intending to take us all the way to Denpasar felt the need to made themselves look as shady as possible. If they would just wear uniforms to distinguish themselves from the myriad genuinely dodgy characters, or give us a ticket in sections (bus 1, boat, bus 2) it would be simpler but as it is travel in Indo is always a gauntlet as you never know who to trust until it's too late.

Our first stop in Bali was Ubud. Someone we met later in the Gilis said they were going to Ubud as it was "not touristy". My mouth dropped open when she said this as I don't think I've ever been anywhere less touristy! The town is nice, though it merges with Denpasar but it's just a strip of cafes, temples, dance performances, art galleries, and of course a lot of touts, as well as bus loads of middle aged package tourists. I was feeling like death warmed up this day (8 October) so Steve found us a lovely room overlooking rice terraces and I stared at the duvet for the rest of the day while he beetled around making all sorts of clandestine arrangements for my birthday, when, fortunately I was feeling much better.

In the morning there were flowers outside the room, and then we went out to do a batik course which I can highly recommend if you go to Ubud. It's not cheap (for a traveller) but for 360,000 rupiah (just over 20 pounds) you get to make and take home your own batik painting. Steve's was a psychedelic representation of Mt Merapi erupting and mine was a toytown version of a Batak (Sumatran) house. Needless to say they're not that professional but we had a lot of fun making them. In the evening Steve had arranged a birthday cake in a restaurant, all in all if I hadn't been feeling a bit rough it would have been one of my best birthdays ever.










From Ubud we thought we'd do a spot of surfing. We took a taxi to Dreamland, a famous surf spot. It dumped us there and immediately retreated, at which point we discovered there was no accommodation there, it was 4pm, we had all our bags, and a taxi cartel wouldn't come below 120,000 rupiah (8 pounds) for a 30 minute taxi ride back to Kuta which we knew shouldn't exceed 50,000. Undeterred, and unwilling to pay their price we set off walking back to the main road. It's about 3km and with our bags we eventually gave up when we saw a 1km long hill ahead.

Camped out by the roadside to Dreamland about to be rescued by Daniel

We had by then shaken off the taxi touts who followed us convinced we would eventually pay their ridiculous price. Fortunately we were rescued by a local Balinese guy called Daniel and two friends who were delivering cargo to a golf club and hitched a ride with them in their pick up for 60,000 (down from their starting offer of 200,000!)

After being dropped in Kuta, Bali's tourist ghetto (the Australians' Ibiza they call it) we walked for another 2km with bags before we found an overpriced budget room (125,000 - everything is overpriced due to naive tourists from Oz overpaying for things) and collapsed.

Surfing in Kuta was fun. As some of you know Steve and I have done a bit of surfing and we found the waves here to be ideal for advanced beginners like us. We both caught and stood up on virtually every wave. But then... the waves disappeared, we both paddled out too far and got totally wiped out by 8 foot waves. The boards were vertical in the breaker and we were catapulted over the top of them - fortunately both us and the boards were unhurt though we were a bit shellshocked after that!

We were a bit shocked by Kuta as it's the kind of place we would normally avoid like the plague - all touts, pubs and loud tourists so we decided to upsticks to Gili Trawangan off the coast of Lombok. The Gili islands (incidentally Gili means Island in Sasak so backpackers have been visiting the Island Islands for 30 years!) are three tropical islands popular for diving and just relaxing. We met up with Cilia from Borobudur and briefly partied like it was 1999, but we were really here for the relaxation, snorkeling and diving so most of the time was spent on the water.














Partying like it's 1999 with Cilia

Steve failed to hire flippers for the snorkeling trip and so couldn't keep up with the guide when he was chasing turtles, and spent the rest of the time vainly looking for more of them. I was more lucky, spotting one when snorkeling off the beach, and another diving.

Steve unfortunately couldn't dive due to asthma (there was no dive doc on the island to assess him) so I went alone for a fun dive. The amount of time you get to dive is dependent on how fast you use the oxygen and I was so nervous down there that I used all mine up in 35 minutes, whereas the other beginner with me still hadn't used hers up after 50. But, I got to see a sleepy turtle, white-tipped reef sharks (only babies though!) three octopi, moray eel, lionfish and lots of lovely nemo fish (clownfish).










The rest of our time on the Gilis was spent relaxing, spending too much money (captive audience on an island you see) and visiting the Bird Park on Gili Meno where friendly parakeets and lorikeets sit on you.














Steve and his new bird

On the way back to Bali we took our last combo ticket, and despite misgivings and a long wait on the ferry while the one docking port was cleared of the previous boat, we made it back to Denpasar, where after a final day looking around the city (surprisingly leafy and full of temples) we catch our first flight (sorry purists, we tried) to Perth to hopefully start a labouring job in Western Australia.

Mount Bromo

After the mud volcano of Sidoarjo, we travelled south to the more conventional volcano of Mount Bromo. We had a truly awful train journey to Probolinggo, where we stood in the smoky, 32 degree heat of the vestibule of economy class for 4 and a half hours. But I suppose that kind of thing happens in the UK sometimes (although one is a developed nation and one isn't). We had planned to get to Bromo the same day, but because of the train delay we had to hole up in Probolinggo, where the only highlight was Jo ordering 50 chicken satay sticks instead of 15.

We were now off the beaten track, so no trains or big buses to take us up to the village outside Mount Bromo. We had to get on a reggae bus, which, as you'll know from our blogs about getting through south Sumatra, aren't my favourite form of transport. We jammed our poor legs (well Jo did, I pulled a neat stunt of jamming my legs down the aisle so no one could put a stool down there) into the non-existant leg room at the back and stewed for 20 minutes while the bus crew waited for more passengers for an already full bus. Eventually, a lady sitting next to us shouted through the window something about tourists, I don't know what she said but it was pretty effective and the driver got in and off we went. Then about 10 men jumped out of the bushes on the side of the road and swung through the door of the bus. It really makes me mad that they can't do this earlier as then the bus would be full and we could leave!


Two guys sat on the roof, their feet dangling down past the window


One of the best cared for mullets we've seen so far; jet black with streaks of orange, and silky smooth

A couple of hours later we got to the top. The roads were fearsomely steep and this bus seemed to have some kind of engine nicked from a Formula 1 car, such was it's throaty roar as the driver booted it up the hill.

Our hotel was pretty expensive for what it was, but its location couldn't be beaten, right on the side of the massive crater that Mount Bromo sits in. You see, before I got there I was getting confused, because guys were offering us tours where you drove along the crater bottom at Mount Bromo. This sounded pretty amazing but I couldn't get many details. Now that I was there, I could see what they were talking about - Mount Bromo sits at the bottom of a huge crater with walls 30 feet high, so you don't drive in the bottom of Mt Bromo, you drive in the creater that it sits in. I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw this crater, a massive expanse of dusty, desert-like plain stretching for miles. I haven't been to the moon, as many of you probably know, but I imagine this is what it is like. I think I said the same about the Gobi Desert, so it was a bit like some parts of the Gobi. Either that or I'm getting confused about what the surface of the moon looks like. But this was pretty barren and there wasn't much animal or plant life.

We walked across the crater, shuffling through the grey sand. Indonesians are so obsessed with their motorbikes that dozens of them were trying to ride them through the sand that was about 10cm deep. Mental. You could see their back wheels sliding out, then they would get off and be pushing it through the sand while their co-passengers jogged alongside. Others took horses, which were a bit faster. All in all, I think Indonesians are allergic to using their own legs to get them anywhere.

Mount Bromo loomed up, a big wide column of steam belching from it's very wide crater mouth; it's not the classical conical shape of Merapi, nor is it as green, everything is grey and dusty. There are steps up the side of Bromo, and at the top a set of bars running about 100m, so no-one falls in while they throw in their bunch of flowers offering, or the cows and sheep and goats during the Festival last month. A dad and his toddler were dressed like it was the Arctic, with fleeces and gloves, even though it was probably about 18 degrees C. The toddler looked shocked, like he'd been plonked on another planet, and it didn't help matters when us foreigners walked past with our strange alien-like faces.

It looked like you could walk around the crater, although clockwise looked easier than anti clockwise, which had a ribbon-like path of very small width. Needless to say the authorities hadn't extended the safety rail beyond the top of the steps. For the first third the path was nice and wide, then the next third was steep and tricky.

A third of the way round the Mount Bromo crater, steam from the vent on Jo's left hand side

Halfway round, the Bromo crater backs on to another huge crater. Jo climbed down to write our names with rocks, so if you're ever passing, have a look. Then we passed 2 young Indonesian guys, (not on motorbikes, using their own legs as transport for a change, don't worry I looked for evidence of wheel tracks but found none) one of which asked us if we had any water, at this point I thought we might be the first victims of a robbing on the crater walk of Mount Bromo. But we weren't. For the last third, the rock was very crumbly, and the path would give way under our weight. The following picture was taken on the last third.

Careful Jo

By the time we got back to the hotel my trousers had about 3 layers of thick volcanic dust on them and were practically walking around the room on their own.

The next morning we got up at 4.50am and watched the sun rise over Bromo. A blanket of thick white cloud 20 ft high covered the bottom of the crater. There were jeeps driving through this, and some people walking, and later we found out from some people that they had got lost walking through the mist (you couldn't even see a volcano in it obviously). But they were German, and they're always getting lost.

Inglorious Mud

Jo felt that if she didn't do Borobodur she'd regret it for the rest of her life, and it was in a Lonely Planet top 5 SE Asia must see things, so that sealed it. It was an early start to catch the sunrise and the hotel wake up call didn't materialise - down in the bar a man with no t-shirt on was fast asleep on the floor, perhaps he was supposed to do it? Our driver looked like Penfold from Dangermouse, in a zany batik shirt. When we got there it was frightfully early and there were no other cars in the car park or any shops set up. We had a clear walk into the ticket office and on to Borobodur.

Borobodur is built in the same stone as Angkor Wat, and they were actually built around the same time (800 ish AD). Borobodur has 9 levels and is shaped a bit like that child's toy where you build up the circular layers of a pyramid. It was fun to do the Buddhist thing and walk clockwise around each level. The naughty Muslims went anti-clockwise!

The buddha's foot

Buddha in his spaceship

We couldn't spend long on the top level as it was chock full of people all wanting photos with us.

Our adoring fans pose with Cilia from Denmark

So we walked back. They had separated the entry route from the exit route, and the exit route took you on a tortuously long slog through the stalls selling Borobodur key rings and the like. When we came out of the exit, we didn't know where an earth we were. There were now a million cars in the car park, and about a thousand stalls had been set up. The place looked nothing like it had when Penfold the driver pointed out where we should meet. We were a bit lost, but after a bit of blundering around, including Jo falling over in our haste ("Look, it went right through my trousers", she exclaimed later), we caught sight of our fellow Borododur traveller, Cilia from Denmark. Penfold obviously had no faith in us and had gone off to look for us a full 5 minutes before the designated meeting time.

We then rocked the boat a little on the way back when we didn't want to go in the smaller temples. As a punishiment, the driver made us swap cars and we had to drive back in a very feminine car with fluffy cows everywhere and a driver who thought he was still riding his moped such was his over ambitious idea of what kind of gaps in the traffic he could squeeze through.

We had a train to Surabaya to catch that evening, so we spent a long day skulking around the mall foodcourt as it was the only place to sit and wait, because all the cafes are closed for Lebaran. On the way to the station a big SUV ran over my bag! I know, dear reader, I couldn't believe it either!! But there was no lasting damage, except in making me briefly insane with annoyance and nearly getting me run over by a horse drawn cart in my mad dash to get to the station and get the hell out of Yogyakarta!

Sidoarjo, a town about 30km from Surabaya, is the site of a natural disasaster where, in 2006, a naughty oil company drilled for gas and punctured rock strata deep down, releasing huge torrents of mud which to this day continues to pump forth every day at some rate. It's now the world's largest mud volcano and is on Wikipedia under Sidoarjo mud flow if you are interested. I only came across this reading National Geographic but it is the most awesome sight, the scary thing is that the experts think the mud will continue indefinitely and that it has reactivated some ancient fault line and some of the town will cave in.

Yes, those really are the remains of someone's house.

The locals have made not one, but three, very dubious looking DVD documentaries in Indonesian and some of them got angry when we didn't buy it, although the droves of Indonesian tourists didn't seem to be targeted in the same way, so we had to leave. A special mention to Andreas, a cool local guy who we met at the train station and who came with us out to the mud volcano, we would have really struggled otherwise. He'll be reading this, so cheers Andreas!

Our friend Andreas and me at the Sidoarjo mud volcano. He asked if we were from Greenpeace.

I can handle noodles for breakfast (just about), but not COLD chili tofu and onions in a curry sauce.

Ramadanadingdong

Swimwear in Jakarta - the Burkini - head to toe coverage for
swimming


Now I know why muslims celebrate Eid-ul-Fitri - they get a good night's sleep after a month of deprivation!

We finally made it to the end of Ramadan and following it is Eid-ul-Fitri (Lebaran in Indonesia) - the muslim world's equivalent of Christmas. You can imagine what it would be like spending Christmas in the UK without any family to spend it with in a hotel - you'd be stranded in the hotel, it would be cold, it would probably be raining, there would be nothing open at all except service stations... Over here there isn't much happening, all the tours have been cancelled and many cafes and restaurants are closed, but the touts are still operating, telling us where to go and what to buy. And it's hot, so at least we can jump in the hotel pool. We think we must look rich, the touts are always focusing on us and pulling us towards expensive clothes shops and art galleries, Steve says I should wear shorts more to make me look less rich, but then I don't like to expose too much flesh over here as it draws a different kind of attention... I can't win.


So Java so far has involved sleepless nights - Jakarta was very hot and sticky but a lot more pleasant than we expected. There was very little hassle on the whole, apart from the inevitable battles to cross the road. You eventually have to force your way across holding up a hand to stop the traffic (we call it "the magic hand"). We tried to go to a puppet show but guess what - it was closed for Ramadan.

We spent several days trailing around Jakarta in search of a thermometer (the number of times we've wondered how hot it is...) and ended up in the flashiest mall I've ever seen, with the biggest plasma screen I've ever seen - 103 inches and supposedly the biggest in the world. We found an inner ear thermometer and a baby's bath thermometer but no run of the mill atmospheric thermometer. It took a bog standard supermarket in a small city to find the equivalent of Halfords and finally, a thermometer. It seems to be constantly 32 degrees out here, for those who are interested...


The biggest plasma screen in the world - 103 inches.

Our next stop was Cianjur where we were visiting a homestay programme. Arriving at the bus station to get the bus out there we hit the touts big time. One literally jumped onto the taxi and rode it into the station to try to get our business. One tout spoke quite good english and kept pushing us towards a bus and saying "why don't you trust me?" as we tried to find the company we wanted and futilely resisted his demands. Eventually we followed him and waited for the bus, which did show up as he promised, but then he asked for Steve's sunglasses "for the memory" of the wonderful time we'd spent together at the bus station.

In Cianjur we stayed in Yudi's homestay, literally in his house. It was in some ways absolutely wonderful and in some ways incredibly stressful. The great bit was that we met loads of locals, including a group of schoolchildren who we helped with their english lesson. A group of them were involved in a hip hop dance group called Asmaterz and invited us around for Gado Gado (the local dish) which they worryingly prepared by chopping vegetables on the kitchen floor and washing vegetables in a bowl next to the toilet... Anyway we didn't have any ill effects, it was delicious and I know how to make it (and don't worry future guests, my hygiene is a bit better than theirs)!

Steve takes to the stage with Asmaterz to do some hip hop and the veggie chopping session on the floor at Angie's house


The stressful thing was that we slept incredibly badly. During Ramadan night becomes day since muslims fast during daylight hours and cannot eat or drink. So at 2am local children parade around residential areas playing drums and singing loudly to wake everyone up. One night they made three circuits of the block outside Yudi's house, just to make sure no-one could sleep through it! The idea is everyone gets up to cook their Nasi Goreng (fried rice) for breakfast before prayers at 4am. Then at 4am comes the call to prayer, and then the sermon, which one morning lasted for 2 hours with a crazy imam laughing dementedly at his own jokes (no-one's told him it's bad form to laugh at your own jokes, obviously!) So you can imagine how little sleep we got.




Yudi and family

It can be difficult to eat or drink during the day during Ramadan as many of the restaurants are closed. McDonalds, though, is open throughout, but screened with Ramadan curtains to protect fasters from the sight of infidels (and pregnant women) scoffing their faces during the holy month. We found it really difficult to find hot food in certain places, particularly Bukittingi and Medan, although bizarrely during Ramadan we couldn't get into a Pizza Hut in Jakarta at lunchtime as it was completely full!



The Ramadan curtains at McDonalds

After Cianjur we stopped in Bandung, a big city of 2.7 million with a famous volcano, Tengkapan Perahu (a name which means overturned boat after a local legend) nearby. We stocked up on donuts and tackled it. We are debating whether Dunkin Donuts exists in Europe - can anyone fill us in? We are eating a lot of donuts over here though, good for powering you up volcanoes. At this particular volcano there is tons of tourist paraphernalia, like touts selling eggs to boil in the bubbling pools (it didn't work very well, much to our disappointment, despite sitting in boiling water for 15 minutes the eggs were still soft boiled). After the volcano we popped into a nearby hot springs resort which actually had a hot waterfall.





An Indonesian girl who wanted a photo with Steve (no-one is interested in me!) - we insisted she returned the favour!


We're now in Yogyakarta and holed up for a couple of days in a hotel with a pool - bliss. We went to the Ramayana night ballet at Prambanan temple, a huge temple reminiscent of Angkor just outside Yogya. The Ramayana is a classic account of good and evil acted out in dance form, although to be honest I think Sita was a bit dippy and if I were Rama I wouldn't have bothered taking my kingdom to war over her! Here we are with the monkeys (Steve) and giants (me).

At the Ramayana Ballet

We have just been to see Mt. Merapi, a very famous active volcano, at dawn. It was a great experience to see a beautifully conical volcano and it brings our volcano bag total to 3. Next up: Mt. Bromo.

Me at Mt Merapi, 6.30am 2nd October