Beggars can choose - up to a point

There's always a downside, eh? You might think, regular 😁 reader, that being given free travel is pretty cool - and so it is, I agree. But it does have its disadvantages, the main one being that it's hard to plan this sort of thing very far ahead. And on Wednesday night, I got my best/worst experience of this: an invitation to take up a cancelled vacancy on Silver Wind, sailing from Tower Bridge, London, on a 13-day cruise along the Channel and circling Ireland, and finally returning to Tower Bridge again. Sounds great, huh? But the departure date? SUNDAY!

So it was action stations, getting flights, accommodation, house/cat-sitter organised, and ourselves to the airport on Friday for the 27-hour journey. As well as getting some current work out of the way, leaving the house tidy, that sort of thing. This was a route that one of us was particularly keen on (and I was pretty eager too) - not many ships are small enough to sail that far up the Thames and under Tower Bridge - so there was no turning it down, of course.

So, here we are, settled into The Tower hotel on Saturday afternoon, in a room that's located at the end of miles of confusing corridors, but with a splendid view of the Bridge, right there, just outside the window. I went out to explore it, joining a long but fast queue to go up to the walkways above the bascules and admire the views, read all about the construction (only in 1894, 10 men died, it took 4 years), take my turn on the glass panels looking down at the roadway 40m below, and then trail down to the engine room. Of course it's all electric now, operated by a tiny joystick, but the original coal and steam-driven machinery is there, and marvellously huge and neat and well-oiled. There were people everywhere, enjoying themselves, especially at a food-truck South American event at the other end of the bridge. 

Our (pretty expensive) room came with bar and canapé privileges, which turned out to be not very exciting, but there was a lovely view from there, on the other side of the hotel, over St Katharine's Dock, which I'd never heard of, and looked gorgeous. So we went for a stroll and, in the wonderful way of this great city, casually came across the Gloriana, the Queen's Barge from the Jubilee, moored just there - plus lots of boats, apartments, restaurants and cafés, and a pub of  course, the Dickens Inn, looking splendid all festooned with colourful hanging baskets.

We ate early, watching a stream of guests to an Indian wedding arrive at the hotel (the fabulously ornately-dressed bride and groom had their photos taken in the lift lobby on our floor, which was odd, but fortunate for gawpers like me). And then we went to bed, setting the alarm for 11pm to watch the Silver Wind arrive at the bridge, to pass through and moor alongside the Belfast just the other side.

Faded grandeur is still grandeur

I was here in 1980. That was just the [pause for finger-counting] 39 years ago. Thirty-nine years! That was the last time I was in Singapore (passed through once or twice maybe since, but never left the airport) which means I would probably literally not recognise the city now. Like you, regular 😃 reader, I've seen the photos, of those amazing huge artificial trees all lit up, of that improbable three-legged hotel with the infinity pool way up on top, the interior shots of all those fancy restaurants. But if you were to plonk me down in the streets, I'd be lost, despite having spent about a week there in 1977, and then another four days three years later.

And yes, I was actually here - at Raffles Hotel, which has just been re-opened after another renovation, which is why it is featuring in the NY Times, from which I stole this photo. Looks splendid, doesn't it? And the interiors are equally spiffing. It wasn't quite so flash when we stayed there - though I would say it felt very authentic, if it's the Kipling/Somerset Maugham vibe you're after. Things may have been a little worn, not to say a touch scruffy here and there, but it sure did have atmosphere - in the Long Bar, full of cane furniture and potted palms, where of course we drank the Singapore slings that were invented there; and in the billiard room where a tiger (escaped from a circus, poor thing) was once shot under the table. The Tiffin Room had white-painted cane furniture, green cushions and a ceiling three storeys above. Our room was spacious but not fancy, and noisy with traffic rushing past right outside the shutters - no doubt it's all triple-glazed these days. And air-conditioned, naturally - when we were there, all they had were ceiling fans lazily circling, everywhere.

We ate well there, in the Elizabethan Grill, with its dark wood-panelled walls, starched linen table cloths and orchids, and where waiters wheeled a huge roast of beef to the table under a great silver dome (which had been buried in the garden for safety when the Japanese invaded during the war, and duly dug up again afterwards). The waiter removed it with dramatic flourish and then carved thick slices for us right there, hovering discreetly while we ate, ready to pounce on any imperfection. I watched with fascination as a waiter whipped up butter, cream and several liqueurs in a frying pan on a trolley nearby and then flambéed it all with great drama. I was still trying to guess what the dish was when he poured the sauce over icecream and placed it in front of me: my cherries jubilee! Yum.

My obsessive diary of the time records what seems to me now an incredible - and disappointing - quantity of shopping, rather than the diligent sight-seeing I would do these days. We were up for a bit more of the nightlife though than I could cope with now, including goggling* at the transvestite sights on nearby Bugis Street. So, even more incredibly, we overslept and missed breakfast several times - but finally, by dint of setting the alarm on the clock we had just bought (Imagine! Needing to buy an alarm clock in order to be sure of waking for flights and so on! Imagine!) we made it down in time to have, with great triumph, kippers for breakfast on the last morning.

It was all rather splendid - and very different from the other, so much grottier, hotel I dossed down at in 1977 on my first, solo, visit, where the walls didn't reach the ceiling, the staff slept all over the floor in the corridors at night, and I got bitten by bedbugs. Yes, by the looks of the Times photos, Raffles is a thoroughly modern 5-star now. But I'm glad to have seen it in its 1980 incarnation.

* Isn't it strange to see that word now? Aren't you itching to correct it to 'Googling'? 

Travel, then and now

Yesterday I was asked for a contribution to a newspaper feature about travel scams and, happily, had nothing to offer - apart from the story behind this photo, which pre-dates by decades the very word 'scam'. I wrote about it a couple of years ago here so I won't bore you with the details again, regular 😃 reader.

Looking it up though in the 1977 travel diary I wrote religiously and amazingly copiously at the time, I got sucked into reading a large section of it and, amongst many other amazements that include how innocent I was, how emotional and open - try scaling those walls today, reader, and brace yourself for the boiling oil - it was the sheer old-fashionedness of travel then that astonishes me now.

Yes, yes, the letter thing is an obvious one - such a slow and antiquated way to keep in touch (also, so time-consuming, writing those things out by hand). But, given the abysmal state of the postal service today, it was actually remarkably efficient. I kept anal account of all my letters written and received - using POSTE RESTANTE, people! - and noted that one of them, from NZ to Singapore, took only two days to arrive. Phenomenal. Plus the Poste Restante people would forward mail to the next address when you moved on.

As a counter-balance, though, telephone calls had to be booked at the PO or International Telephone Exchange, and cost money as soon as someone picked up the (landline) receiver at the other end, even if it wasn't the person you wanted to speak to. And when I changed my travel plans and sent a telegram ahead to my aunt in England, twenty words (I would be more succinct today) cost me over $20! That is Singapore dollars, though - US$8.50. But still plenty for me then, when I could buy myself dinner for S$2.60.

There's a lot in the diary about money. How expensive things were (and also how cheap), how I was always running out of cash - it wasn't always easy to find someone to cash a traveller's cheque even then - and lots of dithering about presents. Choosing, buying, wrapping and posting them took so much time and money, totally out of proportion I'm sure to the pleasure they gave to the bemused recipients back home. That's a weakness I haven't succumbed to for a long time - when I first started travel writing, I soon trained even my kids not to expect pressies when I came back, for exactly those reasons. I know. Harsh.

I had downtime in Perth, when I thought I'd try to catch up on news from home. I had to go to the State Research Library and request the latest newspaper they had, at the desk - and was given a copy of the Auckland Herald that was ten days old.

There are a couple of sad comments about seeing things I would have liked to photograph, but had run out of film; and a wondering comment about buying a couple of 36-exposure films from an in-town duty free store, and being given them in a sealed plastic bag to take away with me. That was the opposite of sending a postcard at the GPO in Jakarta, where I watched the stamp stuck on with glue at the counter and then was directed to carry it through into the cavernous back region to witness it being franked, so it wouldn't be literally ripped off - before being thrown into a huge and overflowing sack. I still have no idea if that one arrived.

Buses, trains and planes were polluted by smokers - even with pipes! - and you had to pay to access headphones to watch the movie that was shown on a big screen at the front of the cabin. On the other hand, when I bought a 20cm long sharp bronze paper knife during a stop-over in Bangkok, I was able to carry it back onto the plane...

But one thing hasn't changed. I still lose track of the days.

Getting the hump about cricket

In a novel turn for me, who lives a life of enviably self-regulated ease with a complete lack of work-related stress, I had to eschew my usual leisurely morning routine in order to meet an urgent deadline. I know! So unreasonable.

It was my own fault, having spotted a hook for a story, and pitching it to one of my editors. (Does that jargon make me sound like a proper journalist? Ha! Fooled you.) She then took me up on it and wanted it straight away, since the subject was actually news, of sorts: that the Hump Ridge Track in Fiordland has been added to the golden list of New Zealand's Great Walks. 

Regular 😃 readers will recall that I did this walk a few years ago and was lucky enough to strike lovely weather - by no means a given, in Fiordland, where annual rainfall is literally measured in metres. It was a really enjoyable tramp, starting with a helicopter ride across the bay and including two lodges, wine, venison, hot-smoked salmon, a hand-knitted hot-water bottle cover, 20km of much-appreciated boardwalk, lots of birds, spectacular views and some wonderfully picturesque sculpted tors reflected in still tarns. As well as lots of walking, scrambling, climbing, puffing and sweating, natch. It fully deserves its new status.

Sadly, though, it pipped the also-gorgeous Queen Charlotte Track to the title. Regular etc will remember that I did the first day of that tramp not so long ago, and was most taken with it - though the chance and, in NZ highly unusual, meeting with a couple of deer made it especially memorable. (Today's connection: the only other time I've met deer was the young white tail I surprised on Stewart Island on a ramble around the bays - where I went on the very same trip that I did Hump Ridge.)

Driven by the deadline, I worked solidly and filed the story, plus its images - always the most time-consuming bit of the whole process, by the way, since I've never yet had the self-discipline to sort my photos on return from a trip, so that they're selected, edited and captioned all ready to go when I need them. Yay, all done. And then the editor emails back: er, sorry, no room on the homepage today, something to do with cricket...* Sigh.

* Cricket World Cup, dear reader - strictly speaking, Men's Cricket World Cup, since the women's one has been and gone already. NZ v ENG at Lords, two draws and a subsequent debatable (and inevitably much debated) ruling giving it to England. The mere fact that I - me! - am writing these words at all tells you everything you need to know about the super-saturation this event has received here, despite taking place in the middle of the night.

UPDATE: Finally!

Blatantly, and - ideally - chillingly, entitled

I like to think that my stories are pretty easy reading, and I feel particularly comfortable about being able to write an opening that sucks the reader in, but - titles? Mine just suck, full stop. I find it really hard to write something apt and catchy, frequently succumbing to the nudge, nudge, wink, wink of alliteration, and they rarely make it past the subbing process. Usually the editor, much more practised at such things than I am, comes up with something heaps catchier. But not today, for my Viking Sun story in the Sunday Star-Times.

Sun - eclipse: yes, I see that of course.  But even though It's obvious and pedestrian and absolutely the sort of thing that I might eventually have come up with myself, all inspiration sapped by producing the story itself (my only possible excuse), I would never have written it - because it's just not true. One full day on a mid-level ship sailing between Auckland and Wellington? Yes, it was nice, and they did everything properly, and I didn't write anything I wouldn't stand by, but... "hard to eclipse"? Yeah, nah.

Sorry, Viking, but I've sailed with Silversea, to Alaska, to Montreal, to North Cape,  to Antarctica! All those destinations are what I call properly hard to eclipse - so hard, in the case of Antarctica, that it has actually kind of sapped my enthusiasm for any subsequent cruising. You can keep your Mediterranean, your Pacific Islands, even your Caribbean. The only thing that would really er, float my boat these days is deep Arctic - Svalbard, Iceland, Greenland, northern Canada. And I would want to do it on a smaller ship even than Viking Sun's 980 passengers. Half that is the maximum, thanks, preferably even less. Not fussed about fancy restaurants, big shows, pillow menus, all that - just a bit higher standard of living than I have at home will do nicely, plus cold and spectacular scenery, please. 

And *cough* for free, natch. Because I've just sold my SEVENTH Silversea Antarctica story to a fifth publication/website, bringing the total readership/coverage up to around 2.5 million. I think that's a decent return, don't you, Silversea/Seabourn/Windstar/National Geographic?

R D Robinson for God (unquote)

I've just finished reading When Running Made History by Roger Robinson. I'm not a runner. I was pretty fast as a kid, but that was very long ago, and now I rarely do even the downhill jogs that were an integral part of my morning routine until Tom Cruise ruined that for me (if you want to hear that story, you'll have to ask, regular 😃 reader).

No, the initial reason I read the book was purely because RDR was one of my lecturers at Canterbury University back in 1974, and the one who made the greatest impression on me during the whole four years I was at varsity. He was different from the others: English, droll, effortlessly learned, but also lean and fit. He made academia seem glamorous. It also helped that the subject was English III - The Novel, and he was lecturing us on Vanity Fair, Wuthering Heights, Middlemarch, Tess of the d'Urbervilles, Our Mutual Friend and North & South, amongst others. That sort of brilliance would reflect well on anyone. But Dr Robinson was so comfortable in those writers' company, so familiar with them, so clear-eyed about their failings, and also so honestly admiring of their achievements, that they all merged together, members of some enviable club of literary greatness which we mere students just peered in at through the windows. 

I wasn't the only one smitten. I know of others who worked tenuous references to The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner into their essays about the narrative role of Nelly Dean, or didacticism in nineteenth-century literature, in the hope of ingratiating themselves with a man we all knew ran marathons. I never stooped so low. So I've never forgotten going to his office to pick up my marked (handwritten!) essay and getting a grin and a "Super-good!" as he handed it over. And I kept the essay, warmed to the core by the margin comment about my style, and the final one about my cogent argument and fluent writing. The sliding off-topic criticism, not so much; though it was, and still is, accurate, I'm perfectly comfortable with admitting. I've made it my thing, actually.

Anyway, the book. I'm not going to review it properly, because that would be stretching the remit of this blog - but it is entertaining, and interesting, and very readable, and much more relevant to non-runners than you might expect. RDR (can't call him Roger. Or Robinson) traces the growth of running as, originally, an eccentric past-time/obsession mostly through his own lifetime but with historical references, right up to the present where it's both an unremarkable everyday habit and an important sport. He shows how running links with, demonstrates, even drives, some important social changes during that time. What really makes the story riveting, though, is his fortuitously - or possibly not - being on the spot for a number of major events - not just world record-breaks, but internationally pivotal things like the fall of the Berlin Wall, 9/11 and the Boston Marathon bombings.

So that's interesting whoever you are - but, for me, there's the extra enjoyment of so many of the places he mentions where he's run, or reported on running, being part of my life experience, too. From Wellington to Ross-on-Wye, Central Park to Hyde Park, Rome to Sydney, Kenya to Christchurch - every couple of pages, there was a ping! of recognition, and instant mental transportation. And that, of course, is what this blog is about, eh: connections.

Seoul, Day Four - A long walk and then a long sit

With thanks to Air New Zealand for this famil.

Saturday today, so we got off to a later start – the shops don’t open till 10am at weekends here. We drove north again, along wide avenues and past some amazing buildings, including one big silver job that was all curves – a stadium of fashion, apparently. It was a high-end area with some very fancy shops, but our aim was Insadong market, a pedestrian street with offshoots – arty, quirky, colourful. There was a private Toy Museum with a life-size Homer and Marge outside, and small models of Wallace and Gromit inside amongst thousands of others. We passed a takeaway cocktail stall, a handmade traditional porcelain doll studio, lovely individual fashion shops (tailored exclusively for those with waists, sadly), bags, shoes – and, our first stop, a cat café.

Of course these are everywhere now, even in Auckland, but it turns out variations on this are a big thing in Seoul – there’s a sheep café, a raccoon one, reptiles, puppies and, we discovered a bit later, meerkats. We had a look at that one, and it wasn’t good – their raccoon was missing his tail, a lemur in a cage was agitated, and the meerkats were penned in a glass room. This cat one was nice, though – prettily decorated and inhabited by about a dozen mostly bored cats, some rescued, some donated. There was a munchkin, a hairless one, various coloured shorthairs, and one immensely fat cat who, they told us delightedly, weighed 7kg. That was a bit confronting, since mine at home recently weighed in at 7.5 – but he looks nowhere near as fat as this one. It’s all muscle!

We stroked and gave ear scratchies, drank our coffee, and moved on. I think the cat cafés are ok, knowing cats, but can’t approve of the others, which are just too unnatural. We carried on wandering along the streets and alleys, past an extraordinary number of skin-care shops where masks were the big thing. Not just face masks, but masks for lips, feet, thighs, bellies, buttocks and even breasts. We were given samples of face masks made from snails, even. Not sure that stuff would ever wash off.

We passed through an area of big glass buildings, street sculpture, neat landscaping, and it was all immaculate, despite there being no litter bins anywhere – honestly, I carried a paper wrapper for an hour before finding somewhere to leave it. We crossed over a small river that runs below road level through the city for about 14km, that long ago was built over, until one forward-thinking mayor decided, against strong public opinion, to resurrect it at huge expense. Now it’s just lovely – a natural-looking shallow river bubbling along over rocks, fringed with trees and well-used paths each side, and everybody loves it, especially in summer when they come down for a cooling paddle.

All that walking had got us a bit peckish, so Sue took us into a very ordinary café for dumplings. We should have realised from the long queue for takeaways outside that it was a little gem. We squeezed inside and around the worktable where people were kneading, rolling and shaping dough, up a steep wooden staircase and into a small room crowded with Formica tables, almost every place taken by women. They shuffled along though and we were able to sit down and wait for Sue’s choice of our dumplings to be delivered – which they were, very quickly.

There are few things less appetising, to my eye, than Asian dumplings: pale and sweaty: they never look cooked, and are totally untempting. Also, tricky to handle with slippery stainless steel chopsticks – but turns out it’s worth the effort. They were so yummy! Just the right level of spicy, and the fillings really tasty. We all ate far more than we’d intended, and Simon actually said it was the best food he’d had all trip – which was a bit of an insult to Dosa, the Michelin-featured restaurant, and the famous Bamboo House, but there you go. The people's food, eh? Hard to beat.

We kept walking, and eventually emerged from the maze of shopping streets back at the big avenue, by a gateway pavilion and section of the old city wall, and in amongst the traffic again, where faithful Mr Kim was waiting in the van, summoned by the super-efficient Sue. She was so good, friendly and well-informed and organised, she really did make our brief flit to Seoul feel like a proper visit, and gave us a proper handle on the city. But her job was now over, so we hugged and said goodbye back at the hotel.

The others were beginning their IATA conference stuff, so I sloped off to check out the reptile café – tortoises, lizards, a snake, check – which looked like more of a pet shop really, and then got sucked back into the Starfield mall beneath the COEX centre.

It’s vast – wide, airy halls past endless shops, many of them Western, and busy with well-dressed people. I went back to the free library Sue had shown us on the first day, and the art installation that was then draped in white plastic was now on display: shimmering rainbow panes in a big circle. Very lovely. As were the cakes in the little shop up on the mezzanine. There were people there to watch a grand piano recital but, truly, most were either doing homework at the desks or simply sitting reading books. It was good to see.

I also caught a K-pop concert near the food hall: two groups, one boys, one girls, doing all the moves to that catchy music, watched by tiers of fans. That K-pop thing, it’s so much more than the music – it’s an industry. We saw band names and faces everywhere, advertising everything from biscuits to face masks. I understand that exploitation of the artists has been/even is, a thing in some cases. The companies behind them are huge.

And then that was that: time for me to head home. Mr Kim picked me up, and we had a good run out to the airport, 1hr 10, and I enjoyed seeing those magnificent bridges again in the evening sunshine. Not so impressed to notice a Trump tower this time. My flight with Singapore Airlines left promptly at 11.45pm, and I slept despite being in a restricted-recline economy seat. Five hours later at Changi I triumphantly secured my tentatively-promised business class seat, and spent the Air New Zealand flight home in my own little lie-flat pod, mothered by the friendly cabin staff. I ate lunch, afternoon tea and dinner, all of it very nice, had a sleep, watched a boxed set of The Good Place, and arrived back in Auckland safe and sound at 10.25pm.