Thursday, May 12, 2005

asia no more

Yup, day 269 in the Big Brother household and we're nearly done with Asia. Tomorrow we fly from Georgetown, down to Singapore, and then, 12 hours later, it's goodbye to Asia as we fly to Vancouver.

Almost exactly 7 months ago, October 13th, our train from Moscow pulled out of Europe and into Asia. Since then it's been rice, rice, noodles, rice. Clearly there have been ups and downs (it'd be nice if, when you asked someone how much something was, they just told you rather than quoted a price 16 times what it should be and expected you to spend the next god knows how long arguing over it), but, by and large, it's been a ball...

Crossing the dateline tomorrow evening poses considerable problems. As everyone knows, we are working to a strict daily budget. But somehow we'll get on the plane at 10am Saturday, fly for 20 hours and then it will still only be 12pm on Saturday. 1 day becomes 2 days! Fear not though as, proving I will still be an asset to the London accountancy world, I have it covered. We have one daily budget for the part of Saturday in Asia, and another full daily budget for the part in Canada. Genius. Is this interesting? This is the chat that Courtney has to put up with most of the time...

Now, what with the ingenius double budget, you might think we could stretch to a celebratory Singapore Sling cocktail in the famous Raffles Hotel - according to Courtney, the perfect way to end 7 months in Asia. Think again. Suspecting that it would a) be needlessly expensive and b) very touristy, I set her a test. Name any of the ingredients in said Sling, and we could go for one. You can guess the rest.....

Anyway, we'll have to see what the final outcome is on that one, but, after Vancouver, it's 3 weeks with the out-laws, followed by another 6 weeks on safari in Africa and then, finally, London and the end.

I'm sitting in the railway station, got a ticket to my destination...
Posted by Hello

ticking asia off Posted by Hello

and the fat lady sings

First an admission. Due to a hideous oversight on my part there are no photos of the speedos. Who could have imagined you'd want or need a camera at the local pool?

Now back to the task at hand. After KL we journeyed north to the Cameron Highlands, which Pr**k from the Crystal Palace debacle kindly told me were a bit crap... see he was a prick for more than one reason!

The Cameron Highlands are the place where Malaysia tries to get in touch with its British heritage. They are full of cool rolling tea plantations and faux mock-tudor high rises (there was even a red phone box), interspersed with some very Asian jungle. We did what tourists there do and went for jungle walks two days running, followed by cream teas. The walks were lovely, the teas (to be brutally honest) needed a little work. In our quest for the perfect scones we went into 3 restaurants on the main street. It wasn't until we recognised our waitress from the first restaurant in the third one that we realised they all shared the same kitchen - hence the uniformly second rate baked goods. And to think I had to eat my way through no less than 5 scones to figure that out (plus 2 more in the nicer place down the road... good god, now that I count, that's a lot of scones for a 48hr period).

Scone issues and high rises aside it was very nice, and NOT crap! Seeing as we've called him Pr**k throughout I guess I'm glad we never gave that guy the website address - but part of me wishes he could just read that it wasn't as bad as he said.

After the Cameron Highlands we bused it to Georgetown, on an island off the west coast. Although this city is also supposed to be a 'celebration' of Malaysia's heritage, this time it seems to be more focused on the Chinese bit of history. Doing our bit to celebrate Chinese history we've toured the British fort and eaten at a curry house! Oh yeah, and we also had the longest tour EVER of a famous Chinese mansion (which is also a hotel) - where the guide spent most of her time telling us the details of the bar fridges and room rates. I personally think the best bit of Georgetown is the incredibly photogenic ramshackle Chinese shophouses. Pete may tell you otherwise, as outside the Georgetown Starbucks he staged his incredible backgammon comeback... and here I was thinking I could rest on my 4 game lead and claim the title 'Backgammon Champion of Asia'. Just like the Premiership.... it's all to play for now.

defeat fatigue Posted by Hello

tucking in Posted by Hello

been caught stealin' Posted by Hello

mirror mirror on the wall Posted by Hello

georgetown Posted by Hello

looking for ufos Posted by Hello

brighton Posted by Hello

stop me if you think that you've heard (seen) this one before Posted by Hello

presents for gran (a packet of tea each, generous eh?) Posted by Hello

what? Posted by Hello

tea tour Posted by Hello

me Posted by Hello

her Posted by Hello

tea plants Posted by Hello

tea bags Posted by Hello

jungle Posted by Hello

i'm in the phone box, it's the one across the hall Posted by Hello

big caterpillar Posted by Hello

Monday, May 09, 2005

birthdays

Happy birthday for tomorrow, 10th May, to Liz. 30 years old indeed!

And happy birthday also, for sometime around now, to the lovely Mrs SuperTheo, Juanita.

Sunday, May 08, 2005

wasting away again in margaritaville

Out of necessity (elections, football) we decided to spend 4 days in a city that seemed to only have 2 days worth of attractions. Nevermind - we thought - we can just do 2 things a day, we can sleep in, we can play backgammon... we can walk really, really slowly (it is bloody hot afterall).

Our first day in KL we decided to visit the colonial part of town (20 min), the tallest flagpole in the world (2 min), the national monument (4 min). There was also a Bird Sanctuary (off limits as Pete is scared of flying creatures) and a Butterfly Sanctuary (apparently too expensive - but I think it might have had something to do with flying creatures). So after 26 minutes - even with really slow walking and the occasional sit down - we were kinda running out of things to do. Cue, Pete Wylie, the ideas man, "let's go swimming". Perfect. So off we trundle to the local outdoor public pool.

Things were looking up, the pool was 100m from our hotel in Chinatown, it cost about 50p to get in, and was olympic sized! However, we didn't reckon on their ridiculous rule stating that swimming trunks (as opposed to speedos) were not allowed - a rule that was probably designed to keep the Aussie surfing riff raff out. Pete was not allowed in, and you can imagine not happy.

In the resulting fracas he tried to argue that his shorts WEREN'T trunks to 3 different (uncaring staff). Finally we claimed our entry money back and got ready to storm off... but then... we have nothing to do, we NEED to go swimming, but I hate those people, but I don't want to rent shorts, but, but, but I'm bored, maybe we could just sit here for an hour? 25 minutes of soul searching later and I was back buying our second set of tickets and renting some speedos for Pete (he was too embarrassed to do either after the scene he made).

Our next day, thankfully, we were kept occupied by the election coverage until early afternoon. Leaving only time to visit the KL Tower - Malaysia's answer to the CN Tower (but not quite so tall I was happy to read). It was only out of sheer desperation that we listened to all 12 stations on the audio guide (Pete doesn't do AGs). And still it only took 30 minutes.

By 4 o'clock we were back at the pool and I was renting speedos for the second day running.

Saturday, finally. In the morning we decided to visit a sight that, rather inauspiciously, neither of us had actually noticed the first few times we read the guide book. This time it was OUT OF TOWN, requiring a bus journey to and from... Perfect - commuting doubles the time! It was actually quite nice to just make our way over to the bus stop, pay the driver and go on our way. Reminded us of London.

Our destination, the Batu Caves, KL's biggest Hindu religious site, were (I hate to say it, but I am sure you are not surprised) less than thrilling. But at least there were 272 steps up to the cave entrance, adding at least 13 minutes to the visit time. There was also a nice man with a huge snake who we stared at for 11 minutes before climbing down. 41 minutes later waiting at the bus stop, Pete sagely said 'I don't want to see another Hindu temple for at least 4 years'. I second that.

In the afternoon we thought about swimming, but then the airconditioning gave me a cold and we had the perfect excuse to take the afternoon off from keeping ourselves busy.

Miraculously I was better in time to go to the football that evening (and drink 2 jugs of beer - how did that happen?).

adam and eve

Yup, more football waffle.

Firstly the match. Alex Ferguson reckons that Manchester United like to do it the hard way, well he should try managing (or supporting Palace). Still, at the start of the season we'd have happily settled for going into the last Saturday (or even Sunday) with a chance of staying up. All is not lost.

Secondly, us. Once again our viewing of the great game was not without difficulties. All started well, the chosen bar had several screens, wasn't that busy and there seemed little that could wrong. A minute before kick off we were joined in our corner by another English guy. Now, we never did find out this guy's name but let's just refer to him as Pr**k for the rest of this story (rant).

We exchanged pleasantries and Pr**k soon launched into a series of mind numbingly dull stories. He told Courtney that the 2 best things about Malaysia (he lived there) were that everyone could speak English and you could use English style plugs! Then, despite us telling him we only had another 6 days here and had already decided where we were going, he started listing his top 243 destinations in Malaysia. You could even catch a speedboat to one of them. Anyway, all this I could cope with, especially as Ms Love was having to nod politely at most of it while I watched the game.

What really pushed things over the edge was a combination of factors. It transpired that Pr**k was actually, in common with us, a season ticket holder at Selhurst. Furthermore, like us, Pr**k also had friends at the game itself who could text him the score. Still no problem. That is until Star Sports decide to show the game on a 5 minute delay meaning that by the time anyone scored on the screen in front of us, our various contacts at Selhurst would already have sent us the score.

Realising that this somewhat detracted from the excitement of watching the game, Ms Love and I turned our phone off. After all, if it was only the result that counts then I'd support a team that occasionally wins and not Palace. Pr**k declined to do the same. On the positive side this meant that come the first Palace goal, I was able to refrain from dancing round the bar wildly, because Pr**k had already told us that we were about to concede a penalty minutes later. Courtney even went to the toilet, safe in the knowledge she was missing both goals.

I couldn't believe (adam and eve) it. Finally we'd secured a prime spot in front of a tv, we had sound, there wasn't the slightest chance of a powercut and even if any losers came in wanting the rugby on there were plenty of other tvs for them to use. This was what we'd spent the last 8 months searching for. And then along came Pr**k to spoil the fun.

He declined to turn the phone off, apparently he was expecting lots of other vitally important texts from his mates. Instead he offered to 'not tell us' if he got a message. As I pointed out, it somewhat detracted from the tension if everytime anyone attacked you knew they wouldn't score as Pr**k hadn't got any texts for the last 5 minutes.

Come the second half, and despite the fact that a) we'd been in our seats for 2 hours prior to Pr**k showing up, b) there were 2 of us and only 1of him and c) he was a Pr**k, we, and not him, moved seats and screens to one where we couldn't see him. This worked well and I'd almost forgotten he existed. That was until he appeared at my shoulder. "Don't worry, it's not a goal, just look at this". Mate Of Pr**k had texted to say "Freak has been sent off'. So we spent the next 5 minutes waiting for Crouch to be sent off.

Anyway, by now Pr**k had finally got the message and didn't interrupt for the tragic final denoument,. He even apologised to us on the way out 'if I may have spoiled it slightly for you'., I honestly think he was an imposter sent from above to torment me, he certainly didn't seem upset at the turn of events and I've never seen him in SE25.

And so we move onto Vancouver next weekend for Dowie's Last Stand. Eagles....

bye Posted by Hello

if only it had stayed this score... Posted by Hello

Ventola heaven Posted by Hello

football fatigue Posted by Hello

temple fatigue Posted by Hello

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