Kim and Seb Trip

In Malaysia.

The year of the rat started for us in Singapore. It featured a lot of red lanterns and a lot of incense.

In a single day it wouldn’t be unusual to use 8 forms of homemade transport.

Here are some Jeepneys:

Check out the Batman-pimped windscreen.  I wanted to bring one home but it probably wouldn’t pass its MOT.

Also typical are hubelhubels (motorbikes with an unfeasible amount of stuff/people on them):

…and tricycles, which are the Filipino answer the Tuk Tuk… they’re a motorbike with a load of metal sheets banged together around them to make a cabin.  Here’s a view from inside one:

There are also loads of boats.  On ferries, they start each voyage by playing a DVD of a dove flapping its wings, with some peaceful music and a prayer to Jesus asking for a safe journey.  Here are some little boats called bancas:

Jungle, beaches, sunsets, diving, spiders’ webs.  Lots of really friendly people with huge smiles.  An unfortunate (for a vegan, at least) obsession with cockfighting, however.

We lost two friends in January, both artists.
Joe Ruddy was a comic artist, gentleman scholar, and husband and father-to-be.

Della Purves was a botanical artist, a naturalist, a lover of apes, a wife, and a mother.

Both were exceptionally talented, but more importantly, they were both that rare kind of person who was completely and totally nice, with zero conceit or artifice. We miss them both and are thinking lots of their families.

In the space of about 4 days I managed to jump into a pool of salty water with my phone in my pocket, and leave our camera out overnight in the monsoon rains, leading to no phone, and no camera.   So I borrowed a camera for a few days.  Here’s two random shots from it.

This is Kim trying to get eggs from under a broody hen using one of those grabber stick things.

And this picture is best without an explanation:

The good news is that the camera is miraculously working again.

We’ve lodged ourselves in one spot for three weeks as guests of Dan and Netanella and Bes.

A highlight was Kakadu National Park, full of amazing scenery and rock art (and mozzies and sweat).

This bloke is a spirit who hits women with yams before devouring them:

On the way home we found a truly memorable piece of cultural heritage, Charlie the water buffalo from Crocodile Dundee (dead and stuffed and standing in a pub). That’s the one Mr Mick Dundee hypnotises with a kind of rock salute pointy gesture and a hum.

For Christmas we went with Dan, Netanella and Bes to a hippyish kind of cafe in Darwin where there were loads of people avoiding their families, drinking beer and playing music. The monsoon started for real, and a half-naked man alternately shouted and played the flute.

Here is our esky full of stubbies:

And here is us eating lunch:

Sydney seemed pretty nice despite the weather being a bit British.  The giraffes kept getting in the way of our photos though.

We came over all arty at the Opera House.

We stayed with Esteban Cortes, a friend of a friend, in an old adobe farm built by his grandparents.  Esteban Cortes means “Steve Polite”.

Steve Polite is spending a year cleaning up the place and living in the middle of nowhere learning how to make wine out of the vines that still grow there.

Steve was very chilled and interesting and the place was beautiful.

We nearly burned down the whole valley trying to make a sweat lodge (photo prior to firestarting):

…and Kim saw the biggest, hairiest spider yet:

Santiago is a bit too nice… everything is clean and new and easy.  It is making us feel a bit wierd.  Luckily we have our new friends Bilz and Pap to unharsh our mellows:

The best Spanish we have learned ever is “vivir en el mundo de Bilz and Pap” which means “to live in cloud cuckoo land”.