happy anniversary! Hope you had a good day, and that the excitement wasn’t too much for you!

Liv: well done on finishing the exams, but you never see the back of them!! Do yuo reckon you’ve joined the ‘desmond’ club like me and tan?

G

Hail all,

That sounded rather on the hellish side to me jul. on the 1st you say? You are flying out on the same day as us arn’t yoou? The 6th? Well we will try to find a place to stay in the south of malasia. Will let you know soonest. Congrats and all that old hasbeens!!!! The hat looks good. Looks almost as hot as here over there. mama. do you want a thai hat as dod seems to have nicked that vietnam one???? Liv, hope it all went well. I didn’t understand my courses, just joined up a load of quotes lifter from the book with a few random words and hoped for teh best (which turned out to be a 2:2!!)

We woker up today to the welcome sighn of clouds!!!! A non broiling day.. Hazzzaaahhh!!!! WE at last found the strength to go on our planned walk to the next beach along the coast. Every other day we tried it, the sun seemed to seep all the energy out of us the moment we got up, and it was all we could do to slip down the customary morning pancake and fall into the hammock!!! (i have decided to have a western food diet for a few days to see if that gets rid of the bumps. Pancake and macaroni for me. I think it night be the soup. Probable the fish sauce or the soya sauce . we’ll se if it works. If not i will try the rice and fruit diet.)

The path was clearly market on the map fo the area to ‘bottle beach’, but we checked with the locals who were pretty cagy about the whole thing,saying we shoul dget a boat there, and that you had to know the way and all that. We scoffed at this and set of. We found the trail quite easily, and at first it was fine, and we had great fun scampering alonf between the trees and over the rocks. At times we had to use some great skills in finding the hidden path undure bushed and wot not. I, to my amazement, seem to be a little better at geoff than this. He relies to much on direction, and as he is standing there trying to calculate the lateral and vertical conections of the cliff to the sea, i found the path with little difficulty. Must get my abilities from mama!!!!

Some kindly soul had painted red markers every few hundres miles, so we were pretty sure we were going in the right direction. WE did a lot of back tracking though when one path would peeter out, and we went back to find the trail again. Much fun until we lost the path. It just seemed to come to an end. The kindly soul markinf the was sporadically had obviously given up, and we haD NO IDEA WHICH WAY TO GO. option one was to head back. we gave this up as a bad idea as the chances of finding the way home were slim i would say. The only other option was to climb down the cliff face onto the rocks be the sea and walk round the rest of the way on them,. Easier said than done!!!! Luckily the rocks aroudn here are not slippersy, and have many hand holds, but it was pretty steep. Geoff gave me the bag to carry as he was too scared!!!( i bet dod would have given it to you mama!!) It was pretty much hang on by the finget tips and toes and scuttle along like acrab until we got to a big rock. Jumped onto this and and then scaled down the side of it. liv and jul would have loved it!!!we looked back up at the vurticle cliff, and decided that the only way was onwards! WE scrambled along the rocks, sliding and climbing. Very tiring. My thighs were killing me as we were constantly on a tilt. Geoff ankles were his problem. The beach always seemed to be just around the next corner. we could see boat loads of people sailing past us to the beach. all the ocupents staring at us in amasment. Obviously not a common walk then… WE could now see the beach, but it didn’t seem to be getting any neared!!!!

We eventually arrive and collaps on the sand. Pathetic!!!! After a drink and a relax we decide that this beach is not as nice as ours!!! Loads of pepole lounging around. there si no one to speak of on ours. We opt for the boat back. It is actually a long way, and all we see on the trip back is inpenetrable jungle!!!!
It reminded me of the walks in seychelles to anse azio and anse giorgette we used to do. Much fun and adventure!!!!

Well, my feet feel pulpifies and i’m of to sit in the hammok.

Love to all,
tanya

Jul: does that mean that annika might come to bali????

Hello all,

Happy anniversary to Mama and Dod. Hope you had a good day…not too much excitement I hope!!

Bet you are glad the exams are done and dusted Liv. Take it from me though, you never really see the back of them. Just when you think that you’ve left them behind for good, they come back and bite you!!! The big question is: are you going to join the desmond club like myself and your sister?

Jul: How’s the boiling mud???
See you somewhere near Singapore. We’ll tell you where when we’ve had the chance to consult our bible.

Geoff

That sounds like the sort of enterprise Brigadier Belcher-Flint, or whatever he was called, from the Thin Blue Line, would have organised.

It’s as hot as Hades here in England, where we shelter under the buddlia eating our meals of beans and rice, or poached eggs on toast.

hail.

alls well and so forth.
in toupo at the momant shortly going to napier as the weather here is crap. just bourt a sheri s. tepper book and “Carter beats the devil” as the bookshop was selling them for rediculouse prices. i say selling but “giving away” would be more apt.
i forgot to tell what we did in rotorua. after the car fiasco we were a bit stressed so to chill out we went to the moiri thermal village, this was about as exciting as it sounds, which is to say not very. one pool of bubbling mud looks much like another and once you have potted around the ghastly buildings and checked out a steaming vent or two then there isn’t much to do really, apart that is from choking to death on the unholy stench. the gyser was cool but we were to far away from it so we sneaked into a restricted area and checked out close up. it was maybe six feet high. we had come quite late so our tiket was valid for the next day with a concert and a tour. so we went the next day. the concert was nice, untill they tried to get the audience to dance, unplesently ambarasing. it was performed by moiri’s who were mostly pale skinned, i liked the war dance(i felt a mild urge to join in.) and the pom-pom twirling was very skilled. the tour was alright but short as the place is pretty small. afterwords we sat on the insanly hot ground eating icecream and watching the village baths fill up. jolly.

the day before yesterday we decided to do the tongarearow crossing. this is an 8 hour trek across some volcano or something. the weather looked a bit dicey but we decided to chance it. we booked a bus there and stocked up on provisions, then went to bed early as we needed to be up at 5.00am. the night was hellish. at 1.00am ish, a pack of girls roamed past our room squealing like pigs and shreaking with amusement. god know’s why they did this but they kept it up for quite some time. after what felt like five minutes more sleep we scraped out of bed had a hurried breakfast and leapt onto the waiting bus. it was populated by three english oiks and three japanese of mixed sex. the bus ride took about 2 hours and by that time it seemed they bhad decided not to let us do the walk as it was to dangerous- winds of 60km anddriving rain was in evidence. as a lake district veterin i scoffed at this craven atitude. the driver took us to another area were less dangerous and 6 hour walks were to be had. every one else eyeballed the hellish weather and declined to do any walking whatsoever. repulsed by such cowerdice annika and i leapt of the bus, and set of into the driving rain. we were in good spirits made a good pace. what followed was one of the wetest and coldest experiances of my life. i was wearing light trousers, my fleece and my trusty leather jacket, annika had forgoten her raincoat and as i was so gentlemanly i gave here my kag in a bag. she also had water proof trousers so she fared a little better than me. i also had the rucksac with the food which i refused to part with as it kept a small portion of my back warm. it took maybe an hour for me to get soaked to the morrow and as we were constantly in the teeth of a violent wind, you can imagine that i was a smidgion cold. the draw distance was loughable, or to put it another way, visability was very poor. 20 foot at the most, then pure white mist. luckily the walk was well signposted, unlike in the lake district were marker cians are rationed to three per mile. the walk took us to a massive lake and past a very nice waterfall(this was nifty as the wind wipped the spray about in an impresive manner)we didn’e stay long at the lake as the freezing wetnes wich had been continualy creeping up my trousers had finaly reached my boxer shorts and i was bergining to feel the strain somewhat. the return whas a little unplesant as the right side of my face seemed to have frozen and my woolen hat purchased at grait expence, deciding to absorb the rain instead of deflecting it, continuasly dribbled freezing water down my face. this was almost usefull as when i became thirsty i could collect a good mouthfull with my tongue. we were so scared of missing the bus that we made record time and ended up 2 hours early waiting in a hellish volcano musium. we were so, so cold. i made made multiple visits to the toilet so i could warm my hand on the hand dryer, untill it stopped working that is. it is nastto walk in wet trouser so we sat down on the only seats which hapened to be infront on some sort of tv. this was showing endless repeats of a thirty second silent film on the volcano. this new horror nearly broke us. there is nothing quite as soul destroying as watching the same thing over and over for two hours. acasionaly one of us, driven beyond endurance would be forced to get up and making muffle noises of pain shuffle around the museum. unfortunatly the rest of the exibits were some billbourds with text on them and some fake lava. cursing we would shuffle back and continure to glare at the demonic volcano film, hoping against hope that the bus would turn up early.
all in all good fun. that is now that it is over.

tan: i made my flight to the first as they didn’t have anything closer to the 6th. so mayhaps i can meet you someplace outside singapore? i am yearning for hot weather, i would be glad to swap with you. try to controll the swellings, it only takes will power!

dod+mama: the flight stuff is for annika, she is getting a bit fed with the cold weather here, and wants to take a short break. i recon’ you should tone down on the excitement back at the old homestead, no need to over do it is there! congratulations and all that rot!

liv: nice to hear that you are having a jolly time! god rot all exams i say. i don’t believe understanding the course is a requiment, or is it?

julio

Wasn’t terribly impressed with Malta after my first couple days seeing as there was nothing there!!! I require epic theme parks and gereral excitements but the sights seemed to be a churches and um… stray cats.

However once you understand that it’s not a place for sight seeing and head down to one of the quality beaches, snorkel and swim with shoals of pretty fishes and chill out with a tasty Sasha then it ends up being well worth the effort and at only £345 for two for breakfast, dinner, hotel, flights, transfers well worth the money. And my usual MJ-like white as milk skin has gone all tanndified! Happy Tom 🙂