Papua - Stone clubs to karaoke clubs

Dear family and friends,

Steam was rising from the fifteen fire pits, each about 8 feet across, filling the air with cooking smells. They were not necessarily the normal cooking smells I am used to; rather it was a bit like steamed spinach mingled with the smell of boiled wieners, too long in the pot. Some 1,500 to 2,000 of the locals were sitting around, eagerly awaiting the opening of the pits.

Kopi Luwak

Dear family and friends,

I don’t think there is anything that we associate more closely to Indonesia than coffee. We even call our coffee java, for crying out loud. Quite beyond the beans we get from Java, most of us now look for coffee from other parts of Indonesia, including Sulawesi, Sumatra, and Bali, even Papua. I know coffee originated in Africa, and it is hard to beat Central or South American beans, but where would we be without Indonesian coffee? Today, names such as Sumatra Mandheling, Sulawesi Kalossi, Java Jampit, drip off the tongue of true coffee cognoscenti as easily as most might say “Nabob regular grind”.

 

What's Sumatra With You?

What's Sumatra With You? 

"The Wild One" at Lake Maninjau

Dear family and friends,

And so I carry on, from New Zealand, it was on to Malaysia, first Kuala Lumpur, and then Melaka (Malacca). There is little to be said about Kuala Lumpur other than it is just a great big, hot and polluted city. Melaka on the south west coast of Malaysia is much smaller and a lot easier to take. I spent about three days in each city, and as always, the noise, clamour, traffic, heat, and smells of Asian cities are a shock to my senses. Durians are being sold and eaten everywhere, and the pungent, slightly sweet, rotting smell of this popular fruit competes so well with the smell of open sewers. It’s great to back in SE Asia!

Upside Down in New Zealand - Travels 2005

February 2005

Hello everyone,

“Horse Poop, $1.50”, read the sign by the side of the road.  

A Sign That Says It All

Lorraine and I had just arrived in Kerikeri, in the heart of one of New Zealand’s principal tourist areas, the beautiful Bay of Islands, near the northern tip of the North Island, but this was a sign that could hardly escape our notice. We were to stay for five days in Kerikeri, at the Linton B&B. Tourism is unquestionably a very important industry in New Zealand, the second most important, I am sure. In 1960 only 36,000 tourists came to New Zealand. Last year, New Zealand, about one-fourth the size of British Columbia but with equivalent population at just under four million persons, played host to over two million tourists.  

But if one has any doubts as to what is their most important industry, that sign says it all. New Zealand is one big farm. Everywhere I have been since I arrived three weeks ago, it has been one continuous vista of farms, some with sheep, or cattle, or horses, sometimes deer, ostriches, or alpacas; others have hay or corn fields, while others are orchards or vineyards. Some of the farms are on rolling hills, others are more open range, but always they are pictures of pastoral beauty, unblighted by industrial plants anywhere, belching smoke or otherwise. Our hosts at the Linton B&B were Lynn and Tony, a retired ‘dry stock farmer’. (We would call a ‘dry stock’ farmer a rancher, whereas a ‘wet stock’ farm we call a dairy.)

Philippines - Travel 2005

Boracay Sunset

January 2005

Dear family and friends,

Hello everyone. This is the fourth winter in a row in which I have headed to the Southern Hemisphere as an escape from Vancouver/Savary winters. Again this year I will be recording some of my travel thoughts and experiences. These scribblings will, in turn, end up plugging your inboxes, even the inboxes of those of you that I haven't heard from in awhile. I hope they are of some interest. Anyway, as always, I spent a minimum amount of time planning my trip and I am ever late in booking flights. However, when I headed back to Savary in mid December, I noted some graffiti in the men's washroom at Earl's Cove. A series of astutely observant weathermen had recorded the following conditions:

Oct. 13 wet and foggy

Oct. 23 cold & scary

Nov. 3 wet

Nov. 6 raining

Nov. 24 snowing

Dec. 2 f***ing cold

Dec. 7 pissin' rain

Hey, I didn't just fall off a turnip truck. On reading that, particularly "cold and scary", I pretty much knew it was time to book my flights and get away. When I got to Savary, I did just that, booking a flight to New Zealand with a stop in Manila on the way there, and a stop in Kuala Lumpur on the way back. The general area, Southeast Asia, and New Zealand, were easy choices given I will have a chance to connect with Lorraine in Auckland for a few days on her way back from Australia. I have never been to New Zealand and it has crept up my list of places to go as it is unfailingly raved about by all who have visited there. Other details of my trip are to be decided as I go, but I hope to visit some of the eastern Indonesian islands and possibly Papua New Guinea.