hello.

tan: will give you annika’s address in an e-mail as possibly she would rather not want it blogged for all the world to see.

liv: i was standing behind him and if he had tried any funny business i was quite prepered to give him a vulcan death grip!

as to character building, yes i defenatly felt a level up! a bit more xp and i will be able to use firaga spells and take on mid level bosses.

exercise is what they need mama! get them doing daily pressups like i am now joyusly partaking off!

still in ubud. annika is having a massage and a milk bath.

julio

August is the equivalent of February here; and going south in NZ is like going north in this hemisphere:ie, it gets colder. Mind you, your spring is just around the corner, whereas we are getting near the end of our summer, curse it.

Hi all, not much time to write as rushing around like blue ased flies!!! WEll, in Taupo at the mo and it is freezing cold. There is a free camp pit down by the river, and the temtation to camp there is great, but the actual fact that we might freeze has persuaded even eoff to go to a cosy cabin in a camp site. we might venture into the wild coldness when it is just the two of us and we can squeese in the car for warmsth. All a bit dame and raiy here at the mo. we did a great caving thing the other day which i shall enlighten you about another time, and are heading skydiving on te morrow conditiond prevailing!!!

Jul – Geoff is proud of you!!! Sounds most character building to me – the no pay angle always seems to work. At least it is not freezing over there. A shame about the locals and their anti friendlyness, but hey hum, all part of the great web and all that. You could gve me annika’s e-mail so that if we are ever around the same area we could meet up and even offer a lift!

Dod – I signed in again to the balster nationwide thing as i couldn’t rcall me data!! you should get a letter in the post with details shortly

Mama – thanks for the mal, i will write in greater detail whan have a mo. sounds like those two need a good shaking and should have to do a bit more work round the place to wake them up!

Love Tanya

By my calculations, the difference between 40,000rp and 50,000rp is around 80p. Still, it’s as if the train to London stopped and the driver appeared saying it was further than he thought …

I just watched Johnny English again. Great stuff.

Dashed fine show! Don’t take any funny business from these natives! British don’t you know.

Well that sounded fairly hellish. What would you have done if he had produced a large machete when you started quibling about the price… 😉

haha. he laughed, a mirthless and bitter cackle of derision. we went to nusa lembongang and it was a pest hole. the people were unfreindly, the beaches looked plesent and white from a distance, but close up the were revieled to be spread with chunks of sharp corral and nasty rocks just below the water line. the water itself, when not flecked with green scum was crystal clear and quite nice. so after giving it two days we left for senur and got a bemo from there to ubud were we leapt intop the place we stayed at before with sighs of relief. something of interest. in senur we fixed a price of 40000rp with the bemo minion and set off. about half way there we were startled out of our reveree by a loud groin from the minon and a mutter of “so far!” or something simmiler. i though nothing of it and we pootled onwards. a bit later he struck up the courage to speak again. he gibbered something to the effect that he had not realised that ubud was so far away and that he wanted 50000rp. this got annika to the boil and no mistake. i calmed her and stated loudly in my best commanding manner that we would pay the agreed price. and the we left it. later we reached the outskirts of ubud, and there we stopped. we had made it very clear when agreeing the price that we wanted to go to the center of the town and the bloke had agreed. but now he had the crust to demand that we get out here a good km from our place and to pay 50000rp. annika was frothing at the gills in anger and i had about as much as i could take. i lunged to the front, gratified that he twitched slightly backwards, and gestured at the map “we will go here and we will pay you 40000” i said calmly thinking of what dirk struin would do in this situation. he said no. i changed tack. “you take us there, or we get out here and pay you nothing!” this seemed to move him as he kept bleating that i was “no good man” but i was unmoved by his blather. and repeated myself. i found i could look him in the eyeball and course him to wilt. after much grumbling and cusings under his breath, he drove on and took us to the place. ofcourse dirk struin would have got out and then not payed the blighter, damn his insolence. but we gave him the 40000.

anyway ubud is nice. we think we will go back to kuta and try and find somewere nice to stay without quite so many cockrouches as last time.

i shall inform annika of cherry picking possibilties, as she will want toil when she returns and it sounds preferable to manderins which flay you alive with there thorns and privalidge of being payed a couple of bent pennies.

my word the tale is looking a bit good. much confusion. i badly want to write something but havent the time. curses.

has anyone else noticed a thing to the left which says “photos” it apears to contain derrigiographic images of liv and some other humans! i shall investigate further.

julio