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Wednesday, June 30, 2004
The shock of being home
After a fortnight, we’re starting to get used to the shock of being back in England. Things like the cost of everything. After living for a year on a budget, it is a bit of a shock to pull into a motorway service station, and pay a week's food budget for a meal and drink. It's been an expensive time in other ways too - we've had to buy two cars, one for me to get to work, one for Sarah at home. The other thing that we have been trying to resolve is a place for Charlotte back at her old school in September. When we applied in January, we were turned down because we didn't live in the village at the time of the application. But the school told us to lodge an appeal, which was just a formality, and we'd then be able to get a place for her. Ah, they said, don't worry about timing - you can lodge your appeal when you get back to the UK. So we have. And it looks like the appeal isn't going to be heard until after the new term has started in September. Call me naïve but I'd assumed that the panels that decide this sort of thing would want to meet in time to allow children to go to the right school at the beginning of term. Instead its looking increasingly likely that Charlotte will have to go to a different school for her first week or two. So instead of both Emily and Charlotte walking to school, we may have to send Charlotte 6 miles to the other nearest school. We know this will get sorted out in the end (we hope), but its one completely unintended consequence of our trip. And compared to how few problems we'd had with the rest of our trip, it seems like Murphy's Law that things start going wrong the minute we get home! Thursday, June 24, 2004
Newton School, Chester
Today we travelled up to Chester, to visit Newton School. A few months ago, one of the teachers had emailed us to ask if we'd take part in their ICT lessons by email. They'd read about our trip in one of my columns in the Times Educational Supplement, and wanted us to exchange emails with their Year 3 classes. The class all looked at this website, and then each sent us an email. At the time, it meant reading through 60 emails, and then sending a group reply to the class, which the teacher then showed on the electronic whiteboard for the class. But the highlight for Charlotte was when they invited her to visit the school when she got home. After her disappointment at only getting one email from her own school during the year, she was even more excited to visit them.   But she probably hadn't expected this! After meeting crowds of pupils in the playground at break time, the two Year 3 classes got together in one classroom. They'd prepared questions to ask us all, so we started by showing them our video of the Canada part of the trip, then answered their questions for half an hour. We finished by showing them some of the videos from this website - they loved the bit where we had to pull over from the beach on Fraser Island so that a plane could land. A year ago, I'd doubt whether Charlotte would have had the confidence to go to a school that she didn't know, and answer a barrage of questions from a large group of pupils. But now, after a year away from school, but surrounded by so many different experiences, she was a natural. After she'd got over her initial nerves, there was no stopping her.  At the end we were amazed to see their wall display about our trip, with a map of our route, photographs taken from our website, and printouts of our emails. It was another of those spooky feelings - there we are, off on our little trip, and because of the website, people we didn't know were following what we were up to from afar. During school lunch, Charlotte and Emily were both crowded by pupils who wanted to look after them - show them where to sit, and how to get their lunch - and Sarah and I both got grabbed by boys that wanted to ask us questions, and show us their European Cup medal collections.After lunch we were back in the classroom, this time with a group of 70 pupils from Years 4 and 6, going through a similar Question and Answer session. Emily had been quietly drawing at the back of the classroom, but then really got into the spirit of it when she was allowed to join in the PE lesson at the end of the afternoon, running around and under the parachute on the field. After such a positive and happy experience, we're unlikely to have problems getting Emily to school on her first day. Although Charlotte asked whether we could move up to Chester so that she could go to school at Newton School next year. Sunday, June 20, 2004
Look Mum, I'm on telly
Last night, we sat down and watched the Bangkok episode of the Holiday programme. Now we knew why people said we looked tired on it. We did. We looked absolutely worn out. And we sounded it too. The thing is, it didn't square with how we were feeling about our travels. In fact, the week after filming, we'd all decided to go for an extra month in Asia, so that we could see Cambodia again, and Vietnam and the orang-utan sanctuary in Borneo. But we'd realised during the week of filming that the director wanted to make a film about how tired we were, and how we missed home. And after 5 days of filming in blistering heat in Bangkok, with starts as early as 5am, we were tired. And the children were both tired and irritable. And so we gave the director exactly what she wanted, sadly. But if you want to know what its like to take a family around the world, then read this website through and through. You'll find a very different story to that presented by 8-minutes of edited Bangkok highlights. Wednesday, June 16, 2004
Hmm...is it really only two days since we left Asia?
 I don’t really believe this myself, but today I went to work! After almost a year of not working, it was a bit of a shock to get up at 5 o'clock in the morning, drive 4 hours up to Leeds on the busy M1, and sit down at a desk in an office. For the minute, I'm only doing a fortnight's work, but when we come back home permanently, this will be a feature of my life - at least for the next six months. Two days a week in Derbyshire, for a small software company, and three days in Leeds, for another one. You may think I'm mad for choosing to do this - the firms are 3 and 4 hours drive from our home - but I couldn't imagine coming home and going to the same office, and sitting behind the same desk as I left a year ago, and wondering whether that's it until retirement. Instead, I've opted for a six-month contract, and that's going to mean spending quite a bit of time on the M1. But at least I won't be able to complain of boredom. And after the last year of never being separated from the children, I'm sure they'll like it a lot...to start with. After my early start, I was encouraged to leave early too, so I made it back home at 8pm. Okay, it was a 15-hour day, but I spent it sitting in an air-conditioned car, on a smooth motorway, or sitting on a comfortable chair in an office. Compared to 16-hours on a single hellish 200 mile bus trip on the world's worst roads in Cambodia, it was a pushover. The spookiest thing about today? Everybody I met in the office seemed to know a bit about me - they said things like "Oh yes, I remember you from the Holiday programme" or "I've seen your picture on your website". You could imagine that would be quite nice, but its actually a bit odd. I keep thinking about this website - what have I written or what photos will they have seen? What have they specifically remembered? Every time I try to have a serious work conversation, will they remember me as a rickshaw rider in Vietnam, or in a fairground in Cambodia, struggling to get out of the tunnels in Cu Chior with a python around my neck in Australia? And as for "I saw you on telly" - well, they're one step ahead of us. We haven't even seen the programme made in Bangkok yet, as the video the BBC sent to us was damaged in the post, and we've yet to see another copy. Something for the weekend then! Monday, June 14, 2004
Flying home - by bus
And so the adventure draws to a close...well for a couple of weeks at least. But before we can get back to England, we've still got a fair bit of travelling to do. From Kuala Lumpur we're booked on the express bus down to Singapore. This departs at 12.00, but we nearly don't make it, as the taxi has a hard time squashing all of our luggage in - and the bus driver has an even harder time! Apparently 'executive coaches' aren't meant to be carrying people with serious luggage, and we only manage it by putting our rucksacks behind our seats. The uneventful 5-hour trip was interrupted by the coach breaking down at a toll-gate on the motorway, where it sat for 25 minutes while the driver tried to coax it back into life. Although we had loads of time spare, we couldn't help but wonder if this was a bad sign, and what we could do if it didn't start again. Hitch (with our luggage hidden in the verge)? Call a taxi from the nearest town? Fortunately, after a lengthy application of the hammer, it started again, and onwards we went, further south. It got a bit fraught when we had to carry all of luggage across the border at Singapore - loads of stairs and queues, but no trolleys. Somehow the little things we'd accumulated as we travelled had filled out two sturdy bags. With my rucksack on my back, and the two bags in my hands, I was carrying and dragging more than 120 pounds of luggage. If I don't get fit from this last bit of the trip, then nothing the gym can do will make any difference!  And finally, around 7pm, we checked into our flight at Singapore's Changi Airport. If there's ever a place to check in four hours early for a flight, this is it! Good food, nice shopping, great play areas for the children, and for S$8 (about £3) a post-luggage-workout shower. In fact, there seemed so much to see and do, we had to rush to the gate when we heard the last call for our flight. Although it was midnight, the girls stayed awake to eat their meal, watch a film on the seat-back video, and only then did they crash out, and sleep until we arrived over Europe.And then, suddenly, it was all over - 11 months ago seemed like only yesterday, as we came through immigration and had a joyful reunion with Sarah's parents and brother. We'd been having breakfast on the plane, as they'd been getting up at 4.30 in the morning, to get to Heathrow for 6am to meet us. Made us feel like we'd had a lie-in! But its not actually all over yet - we're home in England for a couple of weeks, but then we're finishing off our trip with 2 weeks in France. And only then will it be "over", and we'll be able to move back into our own house and pretend that we lead normal lives again. Sunday, June 13, 2004
Carry on up the Petronas Towers
 There's not a lot that we can say about our time here in KL - we've been shopping, we've been to the cinema, we took the lift up the Petronas Towers (well, it was free), and most importantly, we've booked our bus tickets down to Singapore on Monday morning. We fly home at midnight, so we've got an evening to kill in Singapore airport. Sarah's almost as excited about 4 hours shopping as she is about getting home!Thursday, June 10, 2004
Happy Birthday to me
 After a speedboat and flight, we've arrived back in Kuala Lumpur, and have installed ourselves back in the Pan Pacific hotel. Yes, I know it’s a cop-out, and we should be tramping the streets searching for our usual standard of flea-pit, but, hey, what's £40-a-night going to get us back in England? Might as well treat ourselves while we can! And the staff are wonderful - when the girls said it was my birthday they rushed around and produced a chocolate birthday cake. And I got a pile of Happy Birthday emails. Aaah.Wednesday, June 09, 2004
I don't believe it...
  This is it. Last day on a beach for a very long time. The last 2 weeks have been idyllic, but at the back of our minds there's the thought that this isn't just the end of a beach-holiday, but also the end of a year travelling. And that next week we'll be back in England, starting to pick up the pieces of our lives. Being normal. Not getting up in the morning in some alien culture and asking the "Where are we going to go today?" question. (To which the inevitable answer in the last fortnight has been "the hammock").Although we'll miss it, we're also all excited about going home, to see everybody that we've not for the last year, and to have somewhere more fixed to live. To have some time alone (for all of us!). And to have a bathroom that is really clean. Oh yes, there's plenty to look forward to. But in a month or two, I bet we'll be looking back a lot! Tuesday, June 08, 2004
Goodbye Perhentians
 This is it - our last full day on the Perhentians. Tomorrow we'll spend the afternoon packing up, and then we'll be going to bed early to catch the 8am boat back to the mainland on Thursday, to catch our flight back to Kuala Lumpur. We came here on the 27th May, looking for somewhere to have a rest and recharge our batteries, ready for our trip homewards after this coming weekend. We'd chosen it mainly based on our memories of the Perhentians from 11 years ago. Then the island was undeveloped, with just a few chalets dotted around, and few visitors. Now it is much busier, with big groups of Malaysians visiting for weekends and the school holidays , and more backpackers, drawn by the stories of good diving and snorkelling. Our first impression, when we arrived, was of a place that had been over-developed, with too much of the beachfront destroyed by unsympathetic development. But now we've been here longer we can appreciate it for what is good about it still - the jungle backing onto the chalets, the chalets looking straight onto a good beach, and low-level development. Although the first resort with a pool has just been finished, and there's a new 3-storey building going up, most of the resorts consist of wooden chalets and small restaurants. And it doesn't take a long walk to get a beach to yourself.It may not be the same tropical paradise it was 11 years ago, but it is still a tropical paradise, and it will certainly seem like one in a week's time, when we're back in England, and wondering where all that traffic has come from! (And I still haven't had to put my shoes on all fortnight!) Sunday, June 06, 2004
Cyber Café, Perhentians-style
 Wherever you go in Asia, there's normally an internet café within a stone's throw. And despite their simplicity the Perhentian Islands are no exception. On our beach it's housed in a hut roofed with palm fronds, and its equipped with a brand new HP computer, a generator and a well-used backup battery. But unlike the rest of Asia, where everywhere seems to be blessed with broadband, it has to cope with an antiquated radio telephone system. It hooks up to the Internet by modem, at a blistering 19,200 Baud - about 1/3 of the normal speed of a modem, or 1/30 of a basic broadband connection. And in return for this fragile, slow connection, we have to pay the most we've paid anywhere - £4 an hour. So while you sit there in your nice cool office, think of us, paying through the nose and updating the website on a steam powered computer!Friday, June 04, 2004
Abduls Chalets, Perhentian Islands
  We've now been here at Abdul's Chalets for a week, and we're definitely living life at a different pace. The simple wooden chalets, with shutters where there should be windows, and unfortunately screw holes where there should be door handles, are right on the beach, so it takes ten strides (14 when the tide's out) to be in the sea in the morning.Hmm, perhaps door handles would be good - we were down the beach snorkelling and Charlotte managed to lock herself into the bathroom yesterday just by pushing the door closed. One of our neighbours had to let her out! The Perhentians have a range of different beaches and chalets - Long Beach for cheap and grungy; Flora Bay for the divers and the Malaysian tour groups; Perhentian Island Resort for the rich; and Abdul's for families and people who can live without beer. We're paying 80 Ringgit (£11) for a family room with two double beds, and the best beach view we've seen this year. There's nowhere else that we need to go - Abdul's has a restaurant serving great food, including whatever fish the boat brought back at the end of the day (shark, kingfish and barracuda yesterday), and a small shop renting out snorkelling gear. Today we wandered 50 yards down the beach to snorkel over the reef outside the marine protection headquarters. After an hour we'd seen scores of different fish, giant clams and a 3-foot turtle! Wednesday, June 02, 2004
Barefoot beach life
 This has got to be the way to live life. For a week now, I haven't put my feet inside a pair of shoes or even flip-flops. We're living on the beach, with sand outside our front door, and an outdoor restaurant on the beach. And because we're all taking the chance to recharge our batteries, we haven't even bothered with doing much other than reading, sleeping, eating and admiring the view. And padding through talc-soft sand has got to be the best form of pedicure around!Tuesday, June 01, 2004
Marketing in Malaysia
Read back through our travel diaries
The classifieds section of the New Straits Times makes interesting reading. Alongside adverts from parents searching for wives for their sons ("Parents of Malaysian Telugu professional fair looking gentleman seek sincere Hindu God fearing professional ladies in view to marriage. Must be willing to migrate to UK."), there's the "Domestic Help/Foreign Workers" section (funny, don't remember that section in the Banbury Guardian). What caught my eye was a photo advert, showing a happy Indonesian maid looking after two smiling Malaysian children, with the headline "Free Replacement 12 months for runaway". After reading the Malaysian newspaper headlines over the last week of the maids that get beaten by their employers, or worse ("Scalded by a Red Hot Iron" boasted the NS Times today), I guess it must be quite an attractive selling point if you're looking to hire a maid and then treat them badly. For all the similarities of Asia to Europe, it's a very different world sometimes.
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