Eureka, and other water

Now that the All Blacks have trounced the Wallabies, who've succumbed to the Eden Park hoo-doo once again - the choke's on them! - the focus has turned back to real news and proper English words.

Progress has been made on the Rena, with salvors (another new word we've been introduced to) on board the nerve-wrackingly, and noisily, shuddering wreck, and the fuel oil is being removed using an Archimedes screw - because it's of the consistency of Marmite, and can't be pumped without being heated, which is impossible in these circumstances. It's a long, slow process and there's more weather on the way to interrupt it, and we've been told there will still be a spill when the ship, as it must, works free of the reef.

Hard work by many hands has cleared some of the sandy beaches, but there's still a lot of oil amongst the rocks, and fears of what will happen to the wetlands have led to a pre-emptive strike, trying to capture as many dear little NZ dotterels as possible. There are only 1700 of them in the world. That means abandoning their eggs, and having to wrestle with the new problem of looking after them till it's safe to return them to their territory - whenever that might be. And soon the godwits, and the lower-profile but equally doughty red knots, will be arriving from the Yukon and other incredibly distant places. Sigh.

Meantime, Thailand is disappearing under flood water making its way downstream to Bangkok, lying either side of the Chao Phraya River, which is both immensely wide and amazingly busy with boats and ferries constantly buzzing along it. One thing all tourists do when they visit is to take a long-tailed boat cruise through the khlongs, or canals, that wind like back streets through areas where people live in often fairly rickety wooden houses on stilts. They wash, fish and get about, in the water: it's part of daily life there, but they're very vulnerable to it, and any rise in height or increase in the current is going to make things extremely difficult, as well as threatening many fabulous and ancient temples. Tch, haven't we already had enough floods this year?

Excited mixer...

...is excited, looking forward to the fledglings coming home for brunch. Eggs, bacon, baked tomatoes and mushrooms, pastries, all sorts of fruit, juice and this time a lemon cake with marscapone frosting. Yum.

Lovely to see them both and catch up with their news, even if the reporting was all one way (we aged parents aren't expected to have news of our own). And brunch is the perfect, casual, free-wheeling kind of meal for this type of gathering. It's also the opposite of grazing: one good brunch will keep me going all day.

Oddly, the slightly scaled-down version that is a hotel breakfast never seems to last as well, even when I've managed to get outside an entire panful of super-hospitable Renee's sweet and more-ish appelskivers at Abendblume just outside Leavenworth, Washington; or prowled round and round the chefs' stands at Indigo Pearl in Phuket, dithering over freshly-cooked crepes or stir-fry or noodles or omelette or waffles, at the same time dazzled by the huge range of pastries, fruit and cereals. Or toyed with the idea of a Buck's Fizz at the Grand Hotel du Lagon in Reunion (first time I've seen an open bottle of champagne on the breakfast buffet).

But it's not all groaning tables, I'll have you know: in Peru, the standard breakfast was a saucer of (one) dry scrambled egg, two slices of tomato and a cup of coca tea. Yet, strangely, I didn't hanker for a larger helping...

Premade? Still working on this version.

Well, fancy that. Thanks, Google Alert! It's kind of exciting, to know there's a Sim with my name - and what are the odds that she's a traveller? She's also described as tan (nup), thin (hah!), Pisces (Scorp), brown-haired (who knows?), single and normal - but her eyes are grey and she aspires to Knowledge, so that's near enough. As for living in a 'secret sub-neighbourhood called Exotic Destinations' - well, how about Bay of Fires, Tryphena, Ningaloo, Koblenz and Paris? And that's just the first half of this year. (Sorry: but this blog is called TravelSKITE.)

I'm not so sure about the 'visiting foreign hotels' bit though: that sounds suspiciously like what's depressingly titled 'site inspections' in the trade - something that travel agents get saddled with when they're whisked overseas for what other people assume is an exciting, exotic free holiday. While we travel writers see ourselves as in an entirely different category from agents, I've been caught up in some of these myself on group famils, and also heard true horror stories of having to be shown round 20 hotels in a single day. It's madness: you can't distinguish them from each other after about the first four, so it's a total waste of time. But mainly, how tedious and dispiriting, to be shown some fabulous hotel room all marble, 1000+ count linen, balcony overlooking turquoise bay dotted with islands, and dazzling bathroom, and have to focus on the fact that the bath-tub is too high for elderly clients to climb into.

What they should do is give the agents video memory sticks of what's available, and then let them just enjoy the hotel they're staying in, which they will then remember both vividly and - hopefully - fondly. Like Indigo Pearl on Phuket, with its classy industrial-chic theme; or the Hong Kong Peninsula's 6-room suite with TV over the bath; or the Raj Palace in Jaipur's croquet lawn and super-attentive staff; or the roses and hand-made chocolates in the Plaza Grande in Quito; or the intricate pattern of bougainvillea petals on the bed at Legends in Mauritius; or the fireplace in the bathroom and the Inca walls at Hacienda San Augustin de Callo at Cotopaxi in Ecuador; or the over-water villa at Lagoon Resort on Aitutaki; or the rustic four-poster in the tent at Kangaluna in South Australia; or the 16th century longhouse in Anglesey that smelled of lilies and hay. See? I remember them all perfectly - and I'd recommend any one of them, totally (almost).

Coco loco

I can see the signs as well as anybody: two coconut references in the last post, and then I just read a warning about coconuts in my Mauritius guidebook. So coconuts it is today, then.

The warning was not to lie underneath one. Well, duh! I've been cautious about falling coconuts ever since I saw one in Tahiti drop out of a tree into a shallow pond at the base with the most spectacular splash. It was like a scene from The Dambusters. Noise, white water, small tsunami: the thought of my delicate noggin being underneath something like that has left me terminally cautious about the potential irony of the Tree of Life actually being an Instrument of Death.

That's what they call it all through the tropic zones, you know, because they use every bit of it. I have, myself, sat on a coconut palm stump on Atiu in the Cook Islands, drinking from a small polished coconut shell cup bush beer brewed from fermented orange juice and hops - a tradition since the early missionaries took a dim view of the original tipple of choice, kava. (Bush beer is so much nicer than that muddy, mouth-numbing disgusting drink anyway.) Custom is, to have it with a coconut milk chaser.

I've also drunk fizzy fresh green coconut milk there ("Tastes just like Sprite!" said Birdman George, who shinned up the tree to pick one for me - and so it was, sort of). The he cut a spoon from the outside with one slash of his machete and I used it to scoop out the soft, delicately-flavoured meat from inside ("Baby food," said George). Then he cut some fronds and plaited them into plates to serve our fruity lunch on at the beach, where freshly-grated coconut and a squeeze of lime juice made pawpaw and starfruit into something memorable.

I've been given a polished bit of shell with holes in it to keep my sarong secure, and a woven-frond hat to keep the sun off. I've eaten fish cooked in coconut milk in the Loyalty Islands near New Caledonia; as well as coconut crab which looked hideous, but tasted divine, thanks to its exclusively coconut diet.

I've sheltered in Thailand under a cococut palm leaf-roofed hut, on a coconut palm leaf mat and watched a trained monkey romp up a coconut palm tree to twist a nut free, and seen the meat boiled up in a vast wok to extract the oil - and then tasted the glorious caramel-y residue that's left afterwards. I've made a pig of myself on Aitutaki with rukau - tender green taro shoots baked in coconut cream. In fact, I've eaten a whole swag of foods cooked in or with coconut, and loved them all, ruinous though they are to the waistline.

And none of this is to mention how coconut trees are used in building, for roofing, for drums, for clothing (including the infamous coconut shell bra, all sizes) ... It's a marvellous plant. Just don't sit underneath one.

Out of character

Bad news from Thailand, and such a shame to see pictures of violence in a country that is really so friendly - and where so many of its people are so dependent on tourism. While I wouldn't fancy going there myself right now, I'd be happy to visit as soon as the riots are over, as they will be. Even big, noisy, dirty Bangkok has plenty of beauty and peaceful places to enjoy. It's a bit of a cliche, but only because it's so enjoyable, to go for a tour in a long-tail boat through the khlongs, or canals, and putter past everyday life going on there as it has for ages: children in crisp smart school uniforms trotting home, mothers with toddlers watching us watching them, dogs relaxing, men fishing right from their verandas, big houses with floating gardens, rickety stilt shacks with satellite dishes...
And outside the city, the people are even friendlier and more cheerful, and never seem too busy to stop for a chat beside the road or at the stall selling fragrant flower garlands or brightly-coloured rice or short, fat bananas. I do hope they can go back soon to their peaceful, contented lives in their beautiful country.

Not the only way to go

Air travel in the news: child flight controllers at JFK, a recidivist drink-driver piloting Air NZ aeroplanes. The staff in New York suspended, the pilot here in Auckland staunchly defended by the airline - "He's a model for the programme!" they say. "He's done so well!" Yeah, right, that really fills me with confidence, a recovering alcoholic with a history of deceit in charge of hundreds of people 30,000 feet in the air. Cabin staff, by the way, are out of a job after one offence. Hmm, I wonder why there's a double standard?

I'm feeling a little jaundiced about Air NZ after my recent flight to the Cooks. I paid for that flight personally (well, with airpoints - but still, it was a working trip) and the cheapskates wouldn't bump me up to business, even though they had spare seats, even though I'm giving them publicity in the story factfile, even though it's only a 4-hour flight, even though they do have competition on that route.

Compare that with Cathay Pacific, who's welcomed me into their sybaritic business class on more than a handful of 12-hour flights, wafting me to my destination in super-comfortable seats, on lie-flat beds, with a big personal TV, excellent meals that just keep coming and attentive but not sycophantic service. Or Air Tahiti Nui's delightful business class - just saying the words, I can smell the tiare flowers now - a wonderful little airline, repeatedly voted the World's Best Small Airline, a fabulous way to fly straight to New York (to ahem, JFK) bypassing that whole prison-camp LAX unpleasantness. Or LAN, roomy and comfortable, gracious and efficient all the way across the Pacific to South America. Or Thai's royal welcome that makes you feel you're there already. All fabulous, all generous with their business class, all fondly remembered.

But Air NZ? Nah, go down the back and eat the nasty brown smear we call shepherd's pie, we can't afford to spring for real food for you, we've got boozy pilots to support.

UPDATED: Ok, feeling a little embarrassed now at having spat the dummy there. On the whole, I'm glad Air NZ is supporting its pilots now - so much healthier a way to run a corporation than falsely blaming dead employees when something goes wrong (cough *Erebus* cough). And when I've been away for a while, it's always like coming home to see the koru on the tail and get on board and be surrounded by that distinctive cheerful, open, practical and unfussy Kiwiness (which appeals to non-Kiwis too, judging by the repeated Best Airline awards). And the entertainment system is The Best: that four-hour flight to the Cooks? Not long enough to watch everything I wanted. And being able to watch from the moment I get on board? Priceless.

Hooray for CaCO3

I'm not ignoring the disaster in Haiti, but there's nothing I can add to what's been said. I haven't been there or anywhere in the Caribbean, but I've seen poor people living in shanties in South America, India, South-East Asia, even Australia, and I can imagine only too well how it is for them, already amongst the world's unluckiest, to have such devastation visited on them. I've donated what I can, and I hope you have too.

Moving on.

Today's post celebrates the pleasure that calcium carbonate gave me last year: specifically in the form of limestone karst. This is because I'm writing a story about The Burren in western Ireland, where the hills look as though they've been spread with silver icing. It's actually a layer of limestone, combed through by deep parallel grooves, that has been exposed by glacial action. In European geological terms, it's young, but the human history there is ancient, with standing stones erected five thousand years ago - that's older than the Pyramids. In spring, the rock bursts with flowers, 650 species, but when I was there in autumn, it was bare, gleaming pewter against the rust of the heather.

It was lovely to see the limestone in its natural form, having already enjoyed it made into the drystone walls that edge the green-as fields; and processed into the building blocks of the many child's-book castles we traipsed over in Wales; gloriously carved on the soaring cathedrals of Gloucester and Lincoln: and, on a domestic scale, made into the beautiful honey-coloured cottages of the Cotswolds.

But it was most spectacular in Thailand, in Phang Nga Bay off Phuket, where the turquoise sea lapped an astonishing sight.

>>> ...Limestone always puts on a good show, but what Phang Nga Bay has over, say, Castle Hill in Canterbury, is the drama of 40-plus water-sculpted islands rising high and sheer out of an opal-coloured sea. Hung with trails of vegetation and undercut by wave action, these craggy karsts seem to teeter precariously; and when our boat moored close to one, we were shown that some are even less solid than they appear.

Transferring into inflatable dinghies, we were rowed beneath the overhang where we found hidden tunnels scoured through the stone by the waves. The tide was high, making the roof so low that we had to lie flat in the boat as it squeezed into the dark, where our torches picked out tiny bats dropping from the ceiling to fly ahead of us. It was like travelling through a funnel: as the roof came down, the sides pressed in so that we had to fit our fingers into the pock-marked rock to pull the dinghy along. The surface felt rough, and just as the thought was forming that sharp edges and inflatable boats are not a happy combination, we heard a sudden hiss. Alarmed shrieks were followed by loud sighs of relief as we realised the air-letting was deliberate so that, slightly slimmer, the boat could slip through the tunnel to the secret lagoon in the centre formed by the collapse of the cave roof.

Called ‘hongs’ or rooms, these doughnut holes are magical places: as we emerged from the dark, a snowy white egret lifted from the gnarled roots of a leggy mangrove growing in the middle and flew up into the circle of blue sky where a sea-eagle was already soaring high above us. Primitive-looking amphibians, mud-hoppers, crept out of the still, quiet water onto the tree roots and it felt like the beginning of the world...

[Pub. Press 13/7/09]

Happiness is warm nuts

Here we are at Auckland airport, home again, home again, jiggety jig, waiting - and waiting - for the First-Born to pick us up. Not that I'm ungrateful, but after the smooth efficiency of Cathay Pacific's service all the way from Delhi via Bangkok (unexpectedly) and Hong Kong, it is a bit of a let-down. Or maybe just real life again.

Cathay did us proud, with upgrades to their fabulous business class on every sector, and on the two long ones we had the wonderful cosy pods with lie-flat beds, feather pillows and duvets, fold-out big TVs and great food served by charming and attentive staff.

From the warm cashew nuts before dinner, through the lady who ushered us more than a kilometre through Hong Kong airport, through security, on several levels, in lifts, on travelators and even a train from arrival gate to departure in just 20 minutes, to the speedy arrival on the carousel of our priority luggage, it's been a breeze and a pleasure.

Ups to Cathay!

Sky high

Coffee today with Martin, who's retired at the great age of 42 from press photography and who came along on the trip earlier this year to Thailand - and whose grab shot of this amazing bar in Bangkok was SO much better than mine.

It didn't help me to concentrate on getting my settings right that there was a man in a suit calling "No photo! No photo!" from the bottom of the steps. The official reason was that people had tripped and fallen while doing what I had, but what do you think - minutes later, camera safely tucked away, we were drinking cocktails and hanging over that simple glass balustrade with the street 64 storeys below and nothing in the way of a safety net other than a bit of wood and chicken wire.

But it was certainly spectacular, watching the sun set over that huge city, the wide brown river cutting a swathe through the temples and skyscrapers, and all the lights coming on. Plus there was a delicious dinner, live music from a dramatic dame up even higher, her gown trailing behind her in the breeze, and good company. Well worth a few baht (or more) - Sky Bar, Sirocco, State Tower.

Breakfasting like royalty - sometimes

There was no milk for breakfast this morning. I'm happy to say that this doesn't often happen in our house - but that does then mean that it's even more ruinous to the morning routine. The First-Born kindly went to the dairy when it opened and brought some back, but by then the pattern was shattered and the day already dislocated.

Breakfast to me is tea and cereal, currently porridge, both with lots of milk. To do without it was to re-live some of the worst breakfasts I've eaten, most notably in Peru.

In our three-star experience there, breakfast was invariable: a saucer with one dry-scrambled egg on it, some slices of tomato, a sliver or two of avocado if we were lucky, and a stale bread roll with jam washed down with a cup of coca tea (or feeble coffee). Every morning, the same. It's just as well the country itself is so colourful and fascinating, because those breakfasts were nothing to get out of bed for.

Joana, our local guide, was inured to it, but Chuck from St Louis found it a tough row to hoe. I think his experience with saucers was previously non-existent, particularly when used as a main course plate. It was a (heartlessly) comical sight to see his disappointment at this restaurant where we had brunch after an early start, when he ordered eggs and bacon and got the usual saucer of hackingly dry scramble with some diced ham sprinkled sparingly over the top. It drove him to drink, hence his frothy pisco sour at 11 o'clock in the morning. He didn't like that either. Bless him, he tried to stay cheerful, but he went home half the man he was when he arrived. (He did look the better for it though.)

I've had other horrible breakfasts - the hard-boiled eggs and Fanta in a Moscow hotel are still memorable after 30 years - but there have been excellent ones too, even just this year. Duck hash at Hapuku Lodge in Kaikoura was inspired and delicious; and having the waiter on the Silverseas ship Silver Whisper trail behind me back to the table carrying my choice from the buffet was a novelty - but best of all was at Indigo Pearl Resort on Phuket, Thailand.

The resort's decor is industrial chic - iron, concrete and bolts combined with super-fine sheets, silk throws and richly polished wood - which was a nice change from the usual bamboo. The restaurant kept the theme going with cutlery like spanners and so on, but it was the food that blew us away, especially the breakfast buffet. Every sort of tropical fruit, juice, cereal, pastry and bread, a toaster (yay!) and friendly staff standing behind little stalls just waiting to whip up our choice of eggs, or waffles, or crepes, or noodles, fried rice or congee... And tables outside under palm trees with manicured gardens full of bright waxy scented flowers, peaceful fountains and immaculate lawns. Now that's the way to start a day.

Two wheels bad

I spoke too soon about the boy next door: vrrrm, vrrrm, it's the throaty roar of his motorbike again, the sound bouncing off the wall of his house straight at our living room windows, just a few metres away. I'm hoping that he'll soon decide that he's fixed whatever he thought the problem was, and turn it off - although I suspect he really just wants to rattle his teeth with the noise, and that could take much longer.

I spent many years of my youth clattering around Christchurch on a Vespa 90, then on the back of a rattly Triumph 500, and then whining around Gloucester on a Honda 50, so I'm not totally anti-bike - although my experience in Bangkok earlier this year did leave me feeling a little jaundiced.

>>> ...Although the SkyTrain on its elevated track snakes efficiently through the city’s CBD in a futuristic, streamlined world far removed from the snarl of traffic below, no visit to Bangkok is complete without a hands-on tuk-tuk experience. The hard-edged clatter of so many two-stroke engines is cheerfully familiar, recalling the heady days of my newly-independent teens when I buzzed around Christchurch on an elegant Vespa 90; but the machines that duck and dive along these clogged city streets are no-nonsense work-horses compared to that show pony. With three wheels, a roofed cab and seating for three slim passengers — or, obviously, just one of me — it’s only the scooter handlebars, the unmistakeable noise and the cloud of blue smoke trailing behind that give away the tuk-tuk’s origins.

Hovering hesitantly on the footpath, I’m daunted by the prospect of hailing one from the horde barrelling past, but another Thai characteristic comes to my rescue. Friendliness is endemic, even in the big city, and a smiling lady stops to ask what I want, beckons a tuk-tuk out of the throng, bargains with the driver for a fare to my destination, and sees me settled on the slippery plastic seat before waving me on my way. Hardly have we gone a hundred metres, however, before it all goes horribly wrong: tilting to one side, we lurch drunkenly off the road, where the driver sighs and tuts over his flat tyre and I guiltily remember all those marathon dinners I’ve eaten, the extravagant breakfasts, the sweet, gaudy cocktails and the glasses of Singha beer. Popping a button after over-eating is one thing: bursting a tyre is in another category altogether...

Pub. Press 13 July 2009

Shake, Rattle and Roll

There was an earthquake last night, down near the bottom of the South Island, a 7.8 - proudly described on the news as 'the world's biggest this year' - but we felt nothing up here in Auckland. Though these are sometimes called The Shaky Isles, the last/first earthquake I've felt was the 7.1 Inangahua one in 1968. I was in bed at home in Christchurch, woken early on a dark winter morning by my Venetian blinds swinging and banging against the window frame, and by all the neighbourhood dogs barking as my bed rolled and shook. It was quite a thrill.

We used to have earthquake drills at school, when the teacher would suddenly yell "Drop!" and we would all have to scramble under our desks. Once we had it in history, and the sight of short, squat, roly-poly Miss Oliver compressing herself under the teacher's table was much more memorable than any of the dates she tried to teach us that year.

After last night's quake, a tsunami alert went out in places like Tasmania and Sydney, but they didn't notice anything much - thank goodness. Even five years after the Boxing Day tsunami, the images are still vivid.

I was in Thailand earlier this year, and spent some days on Phuket. It was hard to connect what I saw with what I remembered from all those wobbly phone camera videos.

>>> After a lovely day out in Phang Nga Bay, on the way back home our boatie stopped at a deserted beach on another island and we floated in the bath-warm water, trying to imagine how it must have been in 2004 when the tsunami swept through this area. It was an impossible exercise, partly because there's no visible evidence, and partly because Phang Nga is so beautiful that death and destruction simply won’t fit into the picture.

It was the same back at Patong Beach, on Phuket itself. We sat in Baan Rim Pa, a fine and famous Thai restaurant where we enjoyed a magnificent multi-course dinner at a table on the veranda, looking down on local families fishing from the rocks below. Out in the bay, lights looped through the dark where the squid boats were working, and a warm breeze made our candles gutter in their holders.

Where we sat savouring fresh seafood cooked to recipes once prepared for the royal family in Bangkok’s Grand Palace, where the polished teak glowed warmly in the lamplight and the brass fittings gleamed, a wall of water had swept through on that terrible morning. There was nothing to show for it. Glasses clinked, people chatted and laughed, there was live music from the bar and the air was scented with jasmine and spices. In Phuket today everything is civilised again.

[Pub. The Press 13/07/09]