Ovation (f)or UnCruise: a review

Ovation of the Seas made its first visit to Auckland yesterday, causing a bit of a stir and having to moor out in the harbour because we haven't got a wharf long enough. It's only the fourth-biggest in the world, but it still has almost 6,500 people on board, including 1500 staff, and it's 20m longer than the Sky Tower is high. Sounds like hell to me, and I wasn't one of those rushing to see it up close: this distant (but still imposing) view of it departing that afternoon was quite sufficient.

I don't do big ships. The largest I've sailed on, by far - if you discount the SS Orcades and the RMS Mataroa that I did a round trip to England on, back when I was three - is Silversea's Silver Spirit, which takes just 540 guests. To contemplate something so big that it offers sky-diving, surfing and a 90-metre hydraulic arm with an observation pod on the end for me is to recoil in horror. Someone writing about it said, "It feels more like a floating city than a ship." So, what's the point, then?

No, give me the smaller ships, where you know you're at sea, where you can get to know - or at least recognise - your fellow passengers, and which can take you places (like, ahem, Queen's Wharf in Auckland) that the monsters can't fit into. Silversea has taken me right into the centre of Shanghai, into the shallows of a St Lawrence tributary to visit the extraordinary Saguenay, up close to the Hubbard Glacier in Alaska, amongst other treats. That's my sort of cruising.

And that's part of the reason I so much enjoyed my recent UnCruise Adventures outing recently, around four of Hawaii's islands. The ship is very small, just 44 metres long, taking 36 guests (in fact, only 24 on my cruise) - but still has 16 eager crew members to look after us all. So the service is personal, friendly, enthusiastic but very professional, and unfailingly patient and helpful. They call the Safari Explorer a boutique yacht on the website, but it's an expedition ship really - not luxurious, but comfortable, all needs met with as much elegance as they can manage.

There are several grades of cabin: mine was Commander, which meant slightly bigger; but they all had a window and glass door, room for a king or twin beds, an ensuite, a basin in the room, and a wardrobe. It was nice enough. My toilet had a bit of a niff, and the shower was very snug - but the water pressure was excellent. There was nowhere to stow the suitcases, which was a nuisance, but the beds were comfortable, which is really all that matters - on a cruise like this, you're only there to sleep anyway. All the rest of the time you're in the lounge, on deck, or away on an adventure.

The lounge/bar/dining room was welcoming and comfortable with nice touches like a piano, games, books and maps - and mugshots of everyone on board, named for (in my case) constant reference. Thoughtful. All drinks are included, by the way - and barman Donnie (from N'Orleans, y'all) was happy to whip up any cocktail you fancied. The food was excellent and varied, beautifully cooked and presented, and almost too much - there was really no need for an irresistible dessert at lunch as well as at dinner. The chef, Kerri, was though perfectly happy with serving up variations and half-portions - or, alternatively, double-portions if you couldn't deprive yourself of one of the options. Pastry-chef Dawn was also a magician - from bread to Chelsea bun, it was all glorious.

Amanda was in charge of Wellness, which boiled down to pre-breakfast yoga sessions on the top deck - no mumbo-jumbo, just good stretches and pauses to appreciate the dawn - and one included half-hour massage, which I enjoyed. The captain, Rod, was relaxed and approachable, the bridge being open most of the time (and an excellent place to whale-watch from). Our main points of contact, though, and the real stars, were expedition leaders Dai Mar and Mitch, who both had extensive knowledge of the area, history, culture and wildlife, and were likeable, cheerful, funny and professional.

Apart from the small size, UnCruise's other proud point of difference is to take you places other ships can't, getting you into local contact, and its programme of activities (though that's not obligatory, and more sedentary other halves are catered for too). So we were the only ship welcomed on Molokai, where we spent a day with locals who generously shared their culture; and we did some spectacular snorkelling, as well as kayaking, with several opportunities to swim off the boat as well, when we were encouraged to jump in from the second deck.

There was plenty of wild (sea) life, and a relaxed attitude to the itinerary that allowed for detours and delays when there were, for example, whales to watch. I especially liked that the crew were as keen on all this as we were, and joined in where possible (Marqus the steward actually somersaulted from the top deck).

Though at the end he let slip that the real reason he wished we were on board for two weeks instead of one was so that he wouldn't have to learn a whole new lot of names, I did feel that the crew genuinely enjoyed our company as much as we did theirs. We were a good bunch, I think - mostly active, positive people, interested and interesting, from all sorts of backgrounds but with a common attitude that transcended age (from 55 to 73). That's probably UnCruise's best feature: that it attracts this kind of guest. Not the sort to spend all their time in thrall to a robot bar-tender on the Ovation, then.

China, again.

Bunnies. Soft, fluffy bunnies with floppy ears and big brown eyes. They're up there with pandas and kittens and polar bear cubs in the aww department. And yet, I learned today, angora rabbits - even softer and fluffier than your bog-standard bunny - are having their fur torn off every three months by workers in China to supply the demand by fashion houses in the UK and presumably elsewhere in the western world. Ripped out, by hand, while the rabbits scream, and are then shoved back, totally traumatised, into their little cages. According to SumOfUs, companies like H&M and Topshop have stopped stocking angora garments from this source, though Zara, to its shame, still sells them.

With China's long history of abuse of human rights, it maybe seems a bit trivial to bother about the rabbits. It's not as though there isn't plenty of horror in the clothing industry in many other countries as well; but I'm particularly attuned to Chinese abuse of animals, both direct and indirect. Of course there's the indisputable fact that China, closely followed by Vietnam, is the major market for rhino horn. It has been for a very long time, as a traditional medicine (odd, how the Chinese, so clever at so much, haven't sussed that keratin does nothing for fever or anything else. It's fingernail, for goodness sake!) - and now, with increased affluence, the demand is even greater. Having been to South Africa and been literally awed by seeing rhino in the wild - so immense, so ancient, so inoffensive - and meeting some of the people who risk their lives daily to protect them from the poachers, I'm thoroughly disgusted that in the 21st century this is still going on.

The rhino will all be gone in 10 years at this rate. And so, I read elsewhere yesterday, will the elephant, currently still in large numbers but being poached so much faster that they too are doomed. Again, so the Chinese demand for ivory can be sated. It's all about money, of course, all along the line from poacher to purchaser. But it's not just the greed that's so dismaying: it's the total disregard for animal rights that incenses me. When I was in China, I saw no wild birds, but plenty imprisoned in tiny, tiny cages - in Macau, I came across some left on the grass in a park, for the fresh air, I presumed, that I was really tempted to let fly free. But in Qingdao, even worse, I found a man selling baby goldfish sealed alive inside small water-filled plastic pouches attached to keyrings. As a symbol for Chinese (dis)regard for animals, I think that's an image even more powerful than a screaming rabbit.

What a laugh, eh?

I'm still mopping up Canada/Alaska material - no, on the contrary, I'm squeezing out the last unused bits, turning them into uncommissioned stories that I will have to send out alone into the world to make their fortune (actually, mine, and for 'fortune' read 'pittance'). It's Vancouver I've been focused on today, specifically the Art Wheelers bike tour I did, that for about 3 hours took me around the city's main streets, cul-de-sacs, sea wall and parks, discovering all manner of interesting artworks, and hearing a bit about their creators and their history.

It was what I believe is called an eclectic collection, including deliberately gob-smacking works like the lovely LightShed, a baby boathouse that looks like silvered wood but is actually cast aluminium, perfect in every tiny detail; and the rock Inukshuk that was the symbol of the Winter Olympics. But there were also fascinating sneaky things like four circular platforms with benches and potted trees on them, that revolve v-e-r-y slowly, disconcerting those who've sat down for a quiet read of the paper; and even manhole covers beautifully cast in a native design of tadpoles. In between there were all sorts of things, some of them interactive, some of them buildings, some of them street art. It was a lot of fun, and interesting, and a very pleasant way to spend a sunny afternoon.

I was intrigued, though, by the familiar look of an installation of 14 bronze larger-than-life Chinese men, in different positions but all identical and all laughing. It was A-maze-ing Laughter by Yue Minjun, and I'd never seen it before, but I knew the face. Today, I've made the connection: at the Beijing Dirt Market in 2009, I saw a painting of these laughing men hanging at one of the stalls. I can still envisage the place clearly (helped by all the disgusting hoiking and spitting that was going on all around my thankfully shoe-shod feet - it was an early morning market) with all its huge variety of stuff laid out. Chairman Mao ornaments, ivory (tch) carvings, heavy shiny furniture, beautiful paint brushes, porcelain and pottery, statues and fabrics...

There is a huge Chinese population in Vancouver, about 30% of the total, so really it shouldn't be surprising to come across a connection like this. But we were in China on a Silversea cruise in 2009, and why were we in Canada in 2013? Yup, Silversea cruise.

Diddly-dee, diddly-dum

As I write, there are a lot of disgruntled commuters in Wellington getting to work late after a derailment this morning - less dramatic than the recent one in Connecticut, but hugely disruptive nonetheless. Not a good day for KiwiRail; though the Firstborn returned yesterday after travelling back from the capital on their Northern Explorer on a perfect blue-sky day with fabulous views of the mountains, lucky thing, and was deeply impressed by the long-distance rail experience. I became a member of the Rail Fanclub even earlier than her - in 1975, when I travelled around half of Australia on an Austrail Pass (look at that groovy 70s font!) most notably on the old Ghan from Adelaide up to Alice Springs.

No-one could call that an efficient trip - I remember standing on the open-air platform at the end of a carriage watching ants stream along a parallel rail faster than we were moving; and in the relatively recent past the train had got stranded for so long that the guard shot a camel to feed the passengers - but it was full of character and polished-wood elegance. It was also the first time I ever ate Bircher muesli, and that was a life-changing revelation. The new Ghan is much smoother and more reliable, and in its Platinum incarnation much more luxurious, but it hasn't the personality of the old one (though it still has great stories: the idiot American backpacker who nearly froze in an outside stairwell on my actual trip just one of them). I also, in 1977, crossed the whole of Australia on the Indian Pacific, at the start of my epic 16-year OE.*

I love train travel - it's lovely to be able to move about, eat at your leisure, and watch the landscape pass by. It's wonderfully relaxing. Well, my latest train trips have been, moving effortlessly around Europe, taking the Northern Explorer myself recently - though I do remember a hot and crowded trip long ago from Jogjakarta down to the bottom of Java to catch the ferry to Bali that was all hard seats, blazing sun and packed people; and getting grit in my eyes on a steam train from Delhi to Agra. Those trips were memorable though more for the experience than the discomfort, and for the views and insight into how the locals live and get about. Vivid. At the other extreme, there was also the Maglev at Shanghai, slick, futuristic and amazingly fast - just the 434km/h.

Within the next month, there'll be four more: the Coastal Classic from  Anchorage to Seward, the Rocky Mountaineer from Vancouver to Banff, Via from Jasper to Vancouver, and the Sea to Sky from Vancouver to Whistler. They'll all be civilised and comfortable, but the spectacular scenery they travel through guarantees that they'll be memorable. Can't wait. Toot toot!
*OE = overseas experience

Miranda means admirable, you know

We took a drive south to Miranda today, to have a look at the godwits before they depart in a couple of weeks' time for their long, long journey all the way to Alaska to breed in the northern summer. The world is full of mysterious, idiosyncratic and perversely long migrations of birds, but the bar-tailed godwit has been shown to make the furthest non-stop journey of any bird: 11,026 km from here to the Yellow Sea in China, in 9 days. Later, a tagged female, the inspiringly-named E7, was recorded as flying for 11,680 km from Alaska to the Firth of Thames - but, of course, that's downhill, so pft.

It's the most astonishing journey for these otherwise fairly nondescript waders to make, and it's really hard to imaging them flapping and flapping for so long and so far, over all those seas and the Pacific, through wind and storms and baking sun, without stopping. And that makes it so heart-breaking to read that China is so busy expanding and reclaiming land and building on it that they are destroying the wetlands where the birds stop for their desperately-needed rest and refuel before resuming the flight to Alaska. Sigh. The godwits, and other migratory birds, do have their champions there, but it's a very one-sided battle.

We sat in a hide and watched them, out on the flats in their thousands as the tide slowly pushed them closer towards us. It was another hot day, and it was very pleasant to sit there with a warm breeze in my face, bringing the smell of the sea and the sound of the waves beyond the cockle-shell bar, and waving the bunny-tails growing along the edge of the beach. All neatly facing into the wind were gulls and oyster-catchers, some herons and a pied stilt, a black-backed gull and lots of red knots in amongst the godwits, prodigious migrators themselves, despite being half the size. And I think I'm a traveller.

In-gene-ious

Here's a first: this week's NZ Herald Travel containing my (cut) Easter Island story on page 5 - and then, on page 10-11, the Firstborn's account of her junket last year to China. Yes, yes, she has stories in the main paper all the time, and frequently on the front page, but that's what she was trained for. It takes a different set of skills to write as entertainingly and informatively as this about a destination, and that's why I'm unfairly claiming some DNA-based credit for her story about channelling her inner shopper in Shanghai.

I have been to the city myself, but only for half a day at the end of our cruise with Silversea up the coast from Hong Kong, so the visit was tinged a little with regret at leaving behind the friendly luxury of the Silver Whisper. It was also shortly before the city hosted the World Expo, and it was full of road diversions, bamboo scaffolding and the smell of wet cement as it raced to get ready. Even so, it was an astonishing place, especially to arrive at along the river one murky morning, under elegant suspension bridges and past all those bizarre skyscrapers on the Pudong side (so many of them now, and so heavy, that apparently the ground is cracking under the weight - which hasn't stopped construction on the Shanghai Tower, to be the second-tallest building in the world after the Burj Khalifa).

We just had a quick look around and visited some character buildings, and then caught the Maglev train out to the airport. That's as in 'magnetically levitated' off the rails so there's no friction slowing it down. We waited for the boring 300kmh train to go so that we could catch the fast one, that went 434kmh at its fastest - so fast that by the time I got my camera trained (ha!) on the indicator, it had already started slowing down again. It was super-smooth, quiet, really tilted on the corners, and got us to the airport in just 7 minutes. Shame the flight home couldn't have been equally quick.

Happy New Year to you, of course

It was always going to happen. You get taught how to do sabrage, so when New Year's Day arrives with its various bottles of bubbly, who could resist showing off with the big kitchen knife and an audience? Not me, that's for sure. (The secret is in the realignment of the wire.) It was time to see off the sundry gift bottles of wine dutifully brought home from the hotels I stayed in last year, when sisters came round with, amongst other entertainments, stories of horrendously un-PC teachers at Mairehau High School (totally the reason why I went to Avonside GHS - and encountered pretty much the same there. Times have changed SO much!) as well as family put-downs and complaints about the sunshine and the furniture.

Suffice it to say, the table on the deck was moved out of the sun twice and into it once, three of the NINETEEN year-old director's chairs (one of which I mended only today) finally succumbed to wear, one 21 year-old champagne flute was broken (mea culpa), real Roquefort and Brie were eaten, a dozen freshly-caught snapper were filleted on the lawn, and two visiting dogs drank from the bowl that was dearly-departed Fudge's most precious possession. Agreement was reached that instead of waiting for Twelfth Night, it was much more Kiwi and appropriate to have a NY Eve party at which marshmallows were toasted  in the back garden over the blazing remains of the Christmas tree. Altogether, it was a cheerful beginning to what I, and everyone else, hope will be a better year than last.

And travel connections? Well, TV footage tonight, viewed one-eyed (as is this post - you wouldn't believe the back-spacing) of midnight fireworks from Sydney, Myanmar, New York, Shanghai, Dubai, London and Paris. Tick, tick, etc. The Burj Khalifa looked very splendid swathed in smoke and sparks, and the Eye, and the Eiffel Tower. One day I would like to spend New Year's Eve in Sydney where they have the ideal set-up for a wonderfully show-off fireworks display. Auckland has the same props, but lacks the $8 million disposable income to squander on 20 minutes (sadly, the maximum period of time that flibbertigibbet people are prepared to devote to appreciating money literally going up in smoke) of upscale sparklers and bangers. As I say, one day...

Shaken to bits

Well, I don't want to go to Istanbul now, not since James Bond broke all the tiles by riding someone's motorbike over the roofs of the houses near the Grand Bazaar, and wrecked the market and everything. I suppose we should just be grateful he left the minarets standing. Skyfall was very entertaining throughout its afterwards surprising length, but my goodness there was a lot of smashing and breaking and general destruction. I seem to have become my father, who could never see a car on TV driven over a cliff without muttering, "What a waste of a perfectly good Vauxhall" or sucking in his breath in disapproval when one roared along a beach with salty, rusting seawater spraying up underneath.

All the other Skyfall locations - London, Shanghai, Macau, Scotland - were places I have been, and it was fun to see them on the screen, some of them looking so much more glamorous than they were in reality. Sensible shoes and a backpack are no competition for a slinky gown and tuxedo, of course, but all those aerial nighttime shots of Shanghai really showed off its fantastic buildings to their best; although that flash casino in Macau with the Komodo dragons? Never saw that: it was clearly way beyond the pale for humble travel writers on group famils. Glencoe, though, really is that huge and barren and inhospitable -

As for London, it was fun to see so many familiar places, looking so ordinary: Temple tube station, the Eye, Trafalgar Square, the National Gallery... Leaving aside wondering about the daunting logistics of filming in such busy places, and controlling such quantities of extras, I'm back to the thing about being distracted from the action by the locations. Of course it's a James Bond specialty to film in famous, glamorous places all over the world, but still - all that effort put into the special effects and stunts and so on to convince the viewers that it's all real, and yet so very many of them will have one part of their brains keeping up a running, and distancing, commentary about the scenery: "Look, I've seen that painting, I've driven along the A9, a pigeon crapped on me next to that fountain..."

Seems like a bit of a shame, from the creative angle; but with the first Hobbit movie coming out soon, the trilogy made with such generous tax concessions from our government, we'll be hoping to see a nice boost in tourism income from millions of viewers doing just that: taking notice of the background, and deciding to come here and see it for themselves.

Silver's gold

Today I broke free from the sofa to get a typhoid jab at the Travel Clinic, which was remarkably full of jeans-wearing Baby Boomers studiously equipping their medical kits before heading off overseas on all sorts of adventures; and where the doctor, who has perfected the art of both reading and - more unusually - writing upside down so his patients across the desk can follow his annotations to the Clinic's rather daunting list of vaccinations, scrolled through his email inbox to show me how many people had been in touch with him recently having been bitten - by dogs, mainly, but also by monkeys. "And one man wasn't even a tourist!" he said, clearly thinking this was a dirty trick by the dog in question. "He was there on business!" But it's too late for me to get vaccinated against rabies, so I'll just have to spend my time in Viet Nam whirling like a ninja, fending off all the rabid mammals.

Then I collected our family photos from the North & South office, where they've been scanned ready to be laid out for the November issue with my Stalag Luft 3 story, which I'm really looking forward to seeing. We chose November because of Remembrance Day then, which was never much of a thing for most of my life, but has now become a minor Anzac Day here in New Zealand, with poppies and all. Interesting how the further away we get from the War, the bigger it has become: I wonder if the Vietnam War will ever stop skulking around at the back? And then I picked up my passport with its Vietnam visa, the first entry in its pristine pages.

Finally I trotted off to the the O'Connell Street Bistro for a very nice lunch indeed, thank you, hosted by Silversea and thoroughly enjoyed by a roomful of editors, and me. It was Silversea standard dining, which is high praise, because Silversea is the best type of ocean cruising you can do. Small ships - well, small enough to fit under Tower Bridge, but not so small that it feels at all cramped, and certainly not in the suites, which have walk-in wardrobes, a seating area and marble bathroom as well as the big bed - with around 300 guests. Compared with the massive, ugly cities that they're building these days, the Silversea ships are canoes. Canoes with personal butlers, bottomless champagne in the rooms, waiters carrying your breakfast buffet selection to your table for you... it goes on. The week I spent on Silver Whisper, from Hong Kong to Shanghai by way of Beijing's port, was pretty much the definition of sybaritic - with class. Happy to repeat anytime, Silversea!

Costa packet, probably

My goodness, that scurrilous Schettino, captain of the liner Costa Concordia, is such a cliché Italian coward that he's single-handedly revived all those old wartime jokes like the Italian flag being a white cross on a white background, and Italian tanks having four reverse gears and one forward in case of attack from behind. So thank goodness for the doughty coastguard captain Gregorio De Falco, ripping into him in such a robust fashion: the man's a hero, and more than cancels Schettino out.

From the details that are emerging of the organisation of the ship, and even its design, Italian cruisers are going to struggle to recover from such bad publicity - but the one I've travelled on, the Silversea ship Silver Whisper, was excellent. Small but perfectly-formed, it carried only 382 passengers, so it was nothing like the vast white bricks - like the Concordia and worse - that seem to be the trend these days, where you could spend a week without sighting the sea. We got on in Hong Kong, a splendid port to sail from, and were cosseted and pampered for the following week until we left the ship, reluctantly, in Shanghai - also an impressive port to sail into, which we could, being so svelte, right into the centre past all those extraordinary buildings.

The captain was Italian, not that we saw much of him, but the cruise director, whom we did, was too, and had such a comically thick accent that the Trivial Pursuit afternoons were especially challenging as we struggled not just to think of the answers, but to decipher the questions in the first place.To hear him mangle Don Quixote into 'donkey shoty' was to be totally flummoxed. But it was all good fun, and the ship was so friendly and luxurious, and the food so good, and the complimentary wine bottomless, and the bed so superbly comfortable, I would happily cruise nel modo italiano again - as long as it was with Silversea. So how pleasing that in a couple of weeks I'll be having lunch on board a sister ship, Silver Shadow, when it visits Auckland. And what a bummer, that directly afterwards I'll have to disembark again.

Before the event

Another of my Downton Abbey stories is out today in the Christmas issue of Next magazine; and in the travel section is a story by another writer about Copenhagen, with the photos showing all of the things I saw, except in a rather better light. The weather was the main disappointment of our visit there - that, and the timing, just a week too early for the Christmas markets, sob - and it would have been lovely to have had some blue sky and sunshine to bring out all the colours. It was lucky, at least, that our first afternoon had a decent gleam of sunlight; and the last morning was getting better again.

Photographing the Little Mermaid against even a watery sun wasn't as easy as I would have liked, though. She's been decapitated twice, poor thing, and has a noticeable scar around her neck. She's got about a bit though: she was in Shanghai last year for the Expo, and I was there too, just before it began, when the city reeked of wet concrete and there were traffic barriers, cranes and big machinery all over the place as they rushed to get ready. It was the same in Delhi when I visited just before the Commonwealth Games - and no doubt it's how London is going to be next year when we go there a few months before the Olympics. It's getting to be a theme.

Back to Copenhagen: despite the whingeing, above, there is still something to be said for misty, moody days, and the view from the hotel across the harbour was positively Turner-esque when the sun rose:

People power

My regular walking circuit includes, just before the dreaded 132 steps, a flat concrete bridge across a small creek that drains mainly stormwater from the hill behind. It's an uninspiring affair, usually clogged with pine needles and leaves and other vegetable detritus which is overlaid each high tide by junk from the inner harbour which includes a dispiriting amount of plastic. The creek opens onto our only beach, which scarcely deserves the word, since it's more mud than sand and is constantly being colonised by mangroves, which get hoiked out now and then by the Sea Scouts whose hut stands over the water.

There are, um, prettier parts to my neighbourhood. But that may change, because this morning there was, head down and hard at work, an Asian man dressed in spotless white shorts and tshirt, busily raking debris out of the bed of the creek. He'd already worked along the scant stretch of sand at the edge of the beach, and made small piles of leaves, pinecones and other untidy things. I was delighted to see such public-spiritedness, even though I imagine he's probably just moved in nearby and is wanting to improve his outlook. I told him what a good job he was doing and that myself, I probably wouldn't have worn white to do such mucky work. He smiled cheerfully but clearly didn't understand much of what I'd said, so I waved and went on my way.

Asian people and rakes: such a busy combination. And so effective! If you include brooms and besoms too, there's nothing they can't leave looking better than they found it.In China we saw them scratching away in parks, public monuments, streets and building sites where here we would break out something macho with a motor, or at the very least an electric plug. It's good to be reminded of what people can achieve with simple tools, if there are enough of them - or even one man, if he's persistent. I'll be trotting down that hill tomorrow, to see what he's accomplished.

(I must say though, I was astonished in Xiamen, a big modern port full of skyscrapers and fancy new cars, to see a trail of little old men with shoulder yokes carrying rubble out of a building that was being altered, and dumping it in a pile on the footpath. Would a chute from the window into a truck have been too high-tech? (And none of this is to mention India, where women roadworkers still carry tin bowls of gravel on their heads.))

Great Expectorations

The travel memories in this blog are stirred by all sorts of things in my everyday life: a news item, the weather, work, a chance remark. Today's madeleine however is a touch unsavoury, taking the form of the noises coming from the bathroom this morning as the Other Half performed his ablutions.

I was transported straight back to China. To Beijing, to be precise: the Dirt Market. That's the name we were given, though guide books more colourfully call it the Flea Market, or Panjiayuan. 'Dirt Market' refers to the goods originally being laid out on the ground, but it was gentrified five years ago and now the stall-holders have proper stalls under a roof, with a concrete floor.

You still have to watch where you put your feet, though, if you go in the early morning as we did because if there's one thing that Chinese men in particular are expert at, it's clearing the tubes - despite the warning signs put up no doubt by the tourism people. Honestly, I'm not squeamish, but it was revolting, especially at a time of day when I'm less robust than usual. You had to be nimble, I'm telling you.

That apart, it was colourful and interesting, and well worth visiting. It's a great place for souvenirs, if that's your thing: a little china (ha ha) Chairman Mao, maybe, or a strange painting of people with rictus grins, or a jade elephant, or some lanterns, or beautiful paintbrushes or an embroidered jacket.

I took photos instead, but there was a lot of vigorous bargaining going on as items were unwrapped from newspaper and put out on display, either on the stalls or outside for the big things like statues of horses and roly poly Buddhas. It's as interesting for the traders as the goods - I spotted Mongols with furry hats - and pretty much a must-see. Just be sure to wear closed-in shoes.

Our soles

Good grief, it's raining again. We've had such a long and very wet winter, and though there are lots of flowers out, the birds are singing, it's generally warmer and officially spring, winter just can't seem to let go of us. Down south they're having a terrible time with snow and freezing winds, and so many lambs have perished, poor little things. Up here we've got strong winds and rain, rain, rain.

I wouldn't mind so much if my shoes didn't leak. My old faithful winter shoes, the blue ones, the black ones and the brown ones, have all sprung leaks. The cobbler laughed in my face when I took them in for resoling, and I can't replace them because the shops are full of summery sandals. Trying to avoid puddles as I walk, but ending up with wet socks anyway makes me feel as though I'm in a Dickens novel.

Shoes are a them and us sort of thing. Have you noticed national preferences? Like the Chinese preferring to shuffle along in scuffs? Or the universal jandals throughout the Pacific? Or the elastic-sided boots by Blundstone or RM Williams they favour in the Australian Outback?

In Peru it's sandals made from car tyres. The soles are cut to shape and rubber straps riveted on, and they last almost forever. There's no support or precise fitting, of course, which makes it all the more amazing that they're what the porters wear on the Inca Trail, trotting up and down that steep track with its uneven steps, huge loads towering over their heads, while we soft tourists lean back against the mountain to let them pass to go ahead and set up our lunch table, all of us togged up in fancy tramping boots with collapsible aluminium sticks and ergonomically-designed day packs to carry our cameras and snack bars.

And when the sandals finally fall off the owner's feet, they're still not thrown away. They begin a whole new life as, for example, a gate hinge. And we in the west fondly think of recycling as a modern notion.

Parky

Cold, cold, cold last night: frost front and back this morning, ice on the hens' water and the trees full of hungry birds. Nothing, of course, compared to the winter they had in the northern hemisphere this year, or even the snows down south, but for us thin-blooded Auckland types, it's pretty brisk. Emphasis on the pretty: clear, crisp, sunny, sharp edges to the trees and their shadows, blue sky and saturated colours. Lovely.

But not much fun for the birds, who fell on my beak-gluing mix of oats, dripping and fruit juice even though it was still steaming: silver-eyes in first, then sparrows, blackbirds, starlings, mynahs and doves.

The silver-eyes are so bold (or hungry) that they flock down before I've even got back through the gate, twittering and squabbling as they feed: it's so pleasing to see them flying free, after finding their poor relations trapped in tiny cages in Hong Kong.

It's really no different from budgerigars: we're so used to seeing them in cages, but in Australia, if you're lucky, you can see them flying in great flocks of flashing bright green through the orange, olive and blue of the Outback. I did once, years ago, from the old Ghan, when it was stuttering its way along one of the many dodgy sections of the track in those days: it was a revelation, to suddenly realise that the ordinary old budgie is originally, and still, as wild and free as a lark.

Though they're rarely tuneful, Australia's birds are certainly colourful, and I was delighted at the Alice Springs Desert Park to see so many of them going about their business right outside the aviaries where I'd just walked through and learned about them.

Grass parrots. Such an imaginative name, don't you think?

Fish and feathers

Every morning, the same: feed cats, feed goldfish, fill wild bird feeder, feed hens - except now not just chucking the chooks some wheat and mash, but dosing each one with a ground-up antibiotic tablet dissolved in Powerade for the canker that so far only one has got. That meant weighing each one to determine the dose (lidded bucket plus suitcase scales) and now grabbing them one by one twice a day for a week to squirt it down their throats. Good fun.

The hen with canker is Titch, the oldest: a bantam who came strolling down the road one day about 6 years ago and was never claimed. Like all bantams, she has attitude, but she's cute and very chatty - or was, till this nasty growth attacked her throat. Now she's settled in the house, in the cat basket with a fresh tin of Fancy Feast every day and looks pretty comfortable, though it's too soon to say if she's getting better.

All this nursing fills in the time while the breakfast porridge is cooling for the doves, silvereyes, mynahs, starlings, sparrows and the once more lone love-bird sitting in all the surrounding trees like a scene from Hitchcock's The Birds. Before I understood the difference between native and endemic, I thought silvereyes (or waxeyes) were only found in New Zealand, but they're also native to Australia and some Pacific islands - not China though, so it was a surprise to see so many of them in cages at the Bird Market in Hong Kong.

From what I could see, the Chinese are very fond of caged birds - the market is big, colourful, and clearly a lot of the birds and fancy cages are pretty expensive. There were crowds of men taking a deep interest in everything on display.

I'm not keen on caged birds but, after 10 days of ships and cities, when I was walking through the suburbs of Qingdao, which were pretty and of obvious German heritage, but not big on gardens, it was lovely to hear one singing in its cage hung outside in the sun (even though it was probably saying "Get me out of here!")

It was impossible though to make any allowance at all for the hideous cruelty of sealing live baby goldfish inside the plastic globes of novelty key-rings being sold down on the pier.

Sailing

Unlike what seems these days to be the rest of the population of the western world, I've only been on two cruises - oh, hang on, three: I was forgetting the fancy catamaran up the Gordon River in Tasmania for a couple of nights. But that's in another class entirely from what most people think of as a cruise these days - and so was my first time really, on a small ship through a few of the Fiji Islands, which was pleasant and comfortable, but, you know, small.

Cruise ships are getting bigger and bigger: 'floating cities' may be a cliche of ad-speak, but it's also totally accurate. And they're already past the point where the destinations are the main focus - really, they could just be moored in some immense swimming pool and most of the passengers would be so caught up in the eating and shopping and entertainment on board that they wouldn't even notice. The latest Disney cruise ship has virtual portholes in the inner suites that are more in demand than those with real views over the real sea, because these ones come with interactive Nemos.

I'm thinking about cruising because my sister's just returned from 10 days in the Pacific with P&O, with what I think are horror stories: a punch-up in the guest laundry over a dryer, with one woman laid out cold; someone stealing an evening gown, wearing it, and challenging the gobsmacked rightful owner to prove it was hers; a family off-loaded in Port Vila after a noisy domestic; teenage lads ditto after tomfoolery in the life-boats and giving the captain an earful. Plus obese passengers super-loading plates at the buffet; and having to miss a port because the swell was a bit too big to risk these top-heavy passengers transferring into the launches. Sounds like hell to me. (And P&O is still struggling to shake off that murder on board a few years ago.)

I've been on board the Cunard liners - not, alas for a cruise, but for a tour and a fancy lunch, and they are very classy, if slightly absurd (waiters with white gloves - how impractical!) Even the new ones, like the Queen Mary, are designed to have an aura of mid-20th century elegance and exclusivity that hopefully discourages inelegant behaviour amongst the guests. (Probably most of them are too old to do more than clash Zimmer frames anyway.) The ships are certainly beautiful to look at, inside and especially out, with those classically raked bows - nothing like the glaring white bricks of the modern jobs.

The only proper cruise I've been on was on Silversea's Silver Whisper, a small ship (maximum 380 passengers, and it was only 2/3 full) and even though I'm still not a convert to cruising per se (too much about the journey, not enough destination, so not very productive for stories - also, very fattening), this was a great experience. Again, there were absurdities - ranks of waiters hovering to seize our filled plates from us at the breakfast buffet to carry for us to our tables, the whole dining room seething with these mini-parades - but besides being very luxurious, it was friendly too. And the bed! Twelve centimetres of pillow-top plus gentle rocking from the ship = best sleeps ever.

Perhaps though what made it seem so very welcoming and comfortable was that the cruise was along the coast of China, and the ports we called at delivered such an overwhelming dose of foreignness that it was a huge relief to return each time to familiar surroundings and cheerful staff who knew our names.

UPDATE: At the risk of discrediting this whole post, I've just remembered the fabulous cruise I went on through the Galapagos Islands - but again, it was a small ship, and it was all about the destination, rather than the on-board facilities (which were great).