Texinturkey

Hi everyone,

I’m getting into the groove of some aspects of Santiago, and have even got into some conversations with people in shops…but more of that later.

The means of using public transport is the Bip! card that you get at any Metro station, and load up with cash. You touch on when you get on the bus or metro station, and the machine goes …yep, you guessed it. There is a single, very low fare (about $1) for any length trip. It’s so much simpler than the Byzantine MYKI card that Melbourne is saddled with. The trains and buses are very regular and frequent, and the network extensive.

On Friday I used it for a trip out to the Baha’i Temple which nestles halfway up the foothills of the Andes, about an hour from the centre of town. There is a half hour walk up an at times steepish road to get to it, although you could drive or take a taxi. I was pleased that I had trained multiple times on the 7 flights at my accommodation.

The temple is spectacular

You aren’t allowed to take pics inside, but it is a most serene and light filled place, the translucent ceiling swirling upwards, and the space surrounded by glass at floor level looking out to the gardens. The air is cool and crisp and clean.

It is a place for all people to spend some time, and the custodians are all charming and welcoming. I spent a half hour chatting with one guy (in English) who explained that they believed that every thousand years or so another prophet arises to set humanity back on the right course for the times. He explained how Jesus had renovated Judaism, and Islam had developed to revitalise Christianity, but all had solidified into power structures where the initial philosophy had been progressively distorted with mythologies and rituals, and had become enmeshed in the ruling state, until they were no longer fit for purpose. Crowd control features like heaven and hell, creeds that you have to believe in or you are doomed, and frankly unbelievable supernatural accretions are the barnacles to truth…in their opinion. For them there are no angels, demons, miraculous births, resurrections, transubstantiations…just a communion with a God …the God who is unknowable, but is the foundation of existence. For them, other religions are not wrong, just outdated and corrupted, and everyone is welcome to come to the temple or be part of the community.

The scene looking over the polluted city from the purity of the temple is perhaps a metaphor for their approach…

Nestor is away in Colombia for two weeks, so I have the place to myself. It is nice that he has trusted me to be here…I could make off with a truckload of star wars toys and never be seen again!

There are quite a few shops selling bongs and other drug paraphernalia.

I asked Nestor about is, and whether dope was legal here. He said that it is ok to smoke it, and to grow up to five plants for your own use…but not to sell or buy it. He conceded that that left a bit of a grey area in the law, but that there were plenty of those here.

The entertainment in the Plaza continues to be fun. Here’s the gold man getting golden…

and the drummers

I realised just recently that the ‘look time‘ when you pass by someone in the street here is the absolute minimum. In Italy the continued stare could go for several seconds, giving you a chance to smile or react, the same in Turkey or Bali, but here a few milliseconds is all that transpires. Even if you give way to a local the response is often ignorement or very occasionally a ‘gracias’ without a smile. Maybe any connection with a gringo or extranjero is not on the menu

I went to the Museum of Memory and Human Rights which is in a swish modern building, and looks at the military coup which brought the dictator Pinochet to power, and the horrors that went with that regime. There wasn’t much in English, but I could follow most things in Spanish. This is one bit that was in English.

There were lots of handwritten letters and newspaper articles. One wall detailed the different tortures that the regime did to dissidents and opponents. I couldn’t bear to read more than one.

This says, outside a room which recounted the brutalising of artists and singers and writers, ‘how dangerous can a song or a book be?’

September the 11th, 50 years ago was when the coup started. Nestor told me that right wing Pinochet supporters are still around, but up till now they have kept a low profile, but with leaders like Trump, Erdoğan and the right wingers that have come out of the woodwork (many of them nice people according to that orange fellow from the USA) in Europe and here in South America, the supporters are surfacing from the underground. He, Nestor, advised me to stay off the streets on the 11th.

This street art caught my eye as I was walking to the museum. The peeling is unintentional I suppose, but it does make a statement about the impermanence of many aspects of existence, and the need to ‘gather rosebuds while we may’.

Another is of one Jorge Salvo. Why the bung eye? you may ask. He was at a demonstration and a security person fired a teargas canister right at him, blinding him in one eye. He later became massively depressed and ended his life under a train in the metro.

There is another museum on the Plaza de Armas. It’s a social history of the country, with quite a bit about the independence struggles in the early 1800s. And of course there are paintings of Bernardo O’Higgins, hero of the revolution. Here he is after the dust had settled, and as supreme ruler wanted to bring in changes in the structure of society. However conservatives wanted to keep them, so they forced him to abdicate. Here he is doing it…

And a closeup…

He does look a bit more Irish than Spanish.

There was quite a bit about the Coup as well. It figures bigly in the Chilean consciousness.

So how about my interaction with shop people?

Here, if you have a non Chilean phone, and a Chilean SIM, and if you are here for more than a month, you have to register it. If you don’t, the phone gets locked and you can’t use it. There is lots of advice on the internet on how to do it, and lots of rubbish as well. I tried following some of it, sent off emails with the appropriate documentation, but got no response. So I girded up my linguistic loins, and headed to a phone shop to get some advice. The girding entailed lots of role play, developing the structures and vocabulary to cover the communication I was after. Unfortunately I prepared only from my side, and I was prepared to wing it as far as understanding the replies was concerned.

The first place was ok, I did my spiel, and got the news that I had to have the invoice showing where I had bought the phone…in Australia…three years ago!!! I guffawed in an appropriately Hispanic way, and projected the idea that I thought that was bs. No, he replied, it’s true, but for 20 000 pesos (around $36) his technician could do it for me without the invoice. Holy cow I said, that’s a heap of money for a procedure that the internet tells me is free. OK, he said, then 15 000, but it is ‘muy complicado’. Hmm, muy ripoff I surmised. So I made a dignified retreat, and went into another shop.

The guy there said that there was a website, forms to fill in, and Carlos is your uncle. He gave me the address, and off I went…filled in the forms, screen shot every aspect of the phone and of my entry into Chile…and now I await the response.

All of those interactions were in Spanish. I was very gratified that I had something to say even in novel situations: whether I made any sense is another thing.

Well…enough for this letter…too much you may say, but you don’t have to read it all, just look at the pics!

Hasta luego mis amigos.

T

The weather here continues to be Kerangesque, even though the nights may be a bit cooler. The city will look a lot better when spring gets into full gear and the deciduous trees which are everywhere in the parks and along the street get green.

I have started to know my way around, helped by the rectangular grid that the place is based on…so different from Ho Chi Minh City or Varanasi. But still, google maps does get me home safely.

This weekend I did a couple of hilltop excursions.

Just around the corner from where I’m staying is the Santa Lucía Hill. It’s about 70 m above the surrounding flatness and is so named because it was on Santa Lucía’s Day in 1540 Pedro de Valdivia, the coloniser who set up the city, won it from the local inhabitants in battle. Soon after there was a chicken pox outbreak, and the priests used the summit to get closer to God to beg for an end to the spots.

It’s a nice climb up on winding paths and fairly treacherous steps, through gardens and trees in a fairly wild state.

At the start is this fountain…

A rather splendid staircase…

And further up a sepulchre for a writer, poet and politician of the early 19th century…

It’s quite a jolt to come across such names here: Bernardo O’Higgins, someone called MacIver…the list goes on.

At the top is a nice view of the city, the mountains.

Later in the day I went to the Fine Arts Museum, which has a collection of 19th century marble statues, and a heap of highly political installation pieces. The main hall is a stunner…

One statue that caught my eye was this one…

Who was this clearly distracted bloke, immune to the charms of the undistracted chick? It turns out that this is Odysseus, the clever, crafty, eloquent hero of Homer’s Iliad. He had the idea of the wooden horse.

After the war had ended he set out for home, but the gods weren’t all that pleased with him and he ended up in a 10 year…er…odyssey, getting blown past the sirens, kept captive by Circe, the enchantress who turned half of his men into pigs, then an episode on the island of the one-eyed giants named the Cyclops. One of them, Polyphemus, asked Odysseus his name, to which the clever tyke answered ‘nobody’. When the Greeks later blinded the giant in his one eye he screamed out that ‘Nobody’ had blinded him, and the other giants ignored him!

The episode depicted in the statue is when our hero is shipwrecked on the island of the minor goddess Calypso. She has the hots for Odysseus, but all he can think of is getting home to his magnificently faithful wife Penelope. Calypso does manage to have her wicked way with him (hmm how the tables are turned) but after seven years of trying to break his desire more completely, she lets him go.

The sculptures in the exhibition are mostly late 19 century works. I’m constantly amazed at the skill of the artists who do it.

On Sunday I went to the hill of San Cristobal, a much higher mount than Santa Lucía’s.

It’s about 300m above the city and takes an hour or so to walk up the road to the top…or you can get the cable car, or the funicular. I decided to go one way up on the cable car and walk down. There was a big cycling day out, and on the road up, and down, there was a plethora of Lycra and sweat.

The views from the top are huge…

and the statue of the Blessed Virgin at the top is colossal.

In the nice chapel at the top there was a fair bit of supplication going on.

The walk down was pleasant, although being buzzed by the ciclistas who were getting their reward for the effort of getting to the top, put a little edge on the possibility of being a target while ambling on the roadway.

There are all sorts of entertainments in the street near the Plaza de Armas. This golden bloke has done his thing every day that I have been in the plaza. Drop some cash into his box and he’ll give a wink and move. I did drop some money in the hat in front of Odysseus and Circe, but there were no winks there!

One doesn’t have much eye to eye contact with people in the street here, but there have been exceptions. While I was walking along the street a few days ago I was eyeballed by a hatchet faced woman who spat out ‘gringo’ with a beautifully rolled r, and about as much venom as could be injected into a two syllable word. I thanked her for her interest, although she was well past by the time I had regained my composure. It was clearly a term of disparagement, but why? Did she think I was an American?

So I researched.

Very early on, in Spain, it may have been a a development of ‘griego’ meaning Greek, ie a foreigner who spoke another language, as in ‘It’s all Greek to me’. Another couple of guesses come from the time of the US vs Mexico war (a dispute over the border when Texas was admitted to the Union) around 1850, where the Mexicans may have shouted ‘green go home’ in reference to the opponents’ green uniforms. Or a reference to the US soldiers singing ‘Green grow the rushes O’ as they marched along. Whatever the origin, I’m pretty sure that the woman was giving me a hard time for being American(!), as Wikipedia suggests that it mostly applies that way in Chile. In fact the USA is sometimes called Gringolandia! Where have I heard ‘go back to where you came from’ before? Nothing much changes eh?

On Monday the museums were closed, so I strolled in an area know for its muriels and graffiti. I may have missed the majority, but some were interesting…

I don’t know if the tag came first, or the face. Hmm.

That one is more correctly a mosaic.

I wandered into one church on Saturday afternoon where a small string ensemble was playing Vivaldi’s Four Seasons. That was a treat…

Tomorrow is Tuesday, so back to the museums.

All the best to you all

T

Santiago (named for the patron saint of Spain, the one we call Saint James the Greater, and they call sometimes San Diego, San Jacobo or San Jaime) was founded in 1541 when the Spanish Conquistadors arrived and announced to the local tribes that they were setting up a city. Sounds familiar doesn’t it.

The locals fought back, earthquakes and floods gave the foreigners a hard time, but the place survived and when the war of independence from Spain was won in 1818, (the revolution, led by the wonderfully named Bernardo O’Higgins), it took off. The main drag, a multi lane raceway with gardens separating the lanes, is named after him …

The city now has 7 million people, a massive smog problem, and occasional glimpses of the snow capped Andes which half ring it to the East.

While the main drag is pretty stressful, there are tons of little streets off to the side where there are restaurants, boutiques, where arty stuff sits but little seem to be sold, lots of atmosphere, buskers and relative quiet.

There are churches everywhere, as you might imagine in a predominately Catholic country, and the cathedral, sitting at the centre of town, in the Plaza de Armas and built in 1800 or so, is one of them.

It’s very restful inside, with the remnants of incense to stimulate the nose, piped Gregorian chant to do the same for the ears, and the riot of colour and pious objects doing it for the eyes.

Here’s the facade of the cathedral in the Plaza outside, named Plaza de Armas because it was here in the early days where the inhabitants could congregate to get arms if the city was attacked.

There was lots of rain up to the day of my arrival, so I got fairly wet navigating my way from the airport to the Airbnb I had booked, a few hundred metres from the Plaza de Armas. But since then it has been splendid weather, much the same as Kerang’s. This is not all that surprising as both places are on the same parallel of latitude, although Kerang is 79 meters above sea level while Santiago is 520 metres and has the massive Andes behind it.

There is a river that passes through the city called the Mapocho. In earlier days, when the city was started, it was probably a pristine waterway, fed by the snow on the surrounding mountains, but now it is a sad drain…

The text of the graffiti says ‘because the revolution is necessary, the revolution is possible’. There are lots of graffiti around, most of it ugly…

but occasional muriels delight the eye…

In the early years of the 20th century there was a democratic socialist government led by Salvador Allende, which came at the end of 40 years of stable government. The USA supported a right wing military coup in 1973, whose leader Augusto Pinochet, took over and ruled a repressive dictatorship until he was ousted in 1990, when democracy was restored.

The USA has a history of interfering in countries in the region, engineering coups, preferring dictatorial corrupt governments over any that smell of socialism.

There is a pedestrian traffic light system here, as in other places too, which is rather quaint. As the green clock ticks down, the green man walks briskly…but with 5 seconds to go he puts on a burst of speed,

I have spent several days just wandering and looking, and have noted the number of demonstrations and ceremonies at the memorials in in middle of the Avenida Libertador Bernardo O’Higgins. Here’s a lone brass player waiting for the show…

The pointed hat and spurs are interesting.

Food is pretty much the same price as in Oz, so eating out is a bit expensive. Fortunately I can use the kitchen in the Airbnb.

The guy here, named Nestor Lopez, is a psychologist and is good fun. He speaks English and has a collection of Star Wars etc stuff which dominates the living room.

The tv is bigger than the fridge, but I guess the connexion with boganity doesn’t work here.

My room is pretty small but has a basin and toilet ensuite. The bed is fine.

I called in to the school where I’m going to study Spanish later. They were very friendly there, and I chatted with one of the students who turned out to be a Turk. I managed to stutter out some Turkish pleasantries, but then reverted to Spanish, then gratefully to English. I get the feeling that the place will be fun.

The roughly 24 hours spent getting from Melbourne to here, via Sydney and Auckland, was a bit of an ordeal, but I seem to have suffered little jet lag. Maybe the 14 hours I slept the first night helped.

I did have a moment of panic when I rocked up to the passport control. I had printed out the visa, and had it beautifully laminated, and handed it over to the woman…but no, she required the original email with the QR code. Bloody hell! As the queue behind lengthened I fluffed around on the phone trying to locate the original, my sleep deprived brain barely able to act logically. Soon she suggested that I get out of the way, find the document and join the end of the queue, which I did; but by now the line was 150 people long, and moved at a barely perceptible speed. Lesson #1 always print the originals.

Bread here is pretty woeful. In the restaurants where I have eaten it has done a good job of impersonating a wettex, and the baguette I got from the supermarket wasn’t much better. So I went to an artisanal bakery where for a bit more I got this one…

which was much tastier. The keto diet has largely got out the window.

People here in shops and restaurants have been very friendly. There is very little English spoken, and even my confession that ‘no hablo muy bien Español’ seems to modify the rapid-fire response only marginally. I nod a lot and smile…it seems to work.

There are 7 flights of stairs to get to the Airbnb, and the lift doesn’t function. I am developing thunder thighs as we speak.

That’s probably enough for the first few days. I am enjoying it greatly, and the feet are holding up well.

Hasta la próxima vez amigos…until next time

Adios amigos.

T. (I have to be careful when I say my name. If I say t as in English pronunciation,they think I’m saying Cherry. So I have to say a Spanish t, which has the tongue between the teeth, almost like a th.) It seems to work; better than being called Cherry!

Hi everyone,

Here’s the intended details of the two month trip to Chile and Peru. Given the random changes to my most recent trip to Malaysia and Bali, you may feel that making any plans is a fool’s errand…but you do need something written down so that deviations have significance.

Do remember that if you have any response to these blogs you can leave a comment in the appropriately named comment box. I suspect that everyone else can read them too, so keep that in mind.

Wednesday 23rd August: fly to Santiago capital of Chile, via Sydney

Wednesday 23rd August: arrive Santiago totally wrecked after 15 hour flight. stay at an Airbnb for 2 weeks.

Wednesday 6th September: go by bus to Valparaíso. Stay there for a week in an Airbnb. Valparaíso is on the coast directly west of Santiago. Not a big trip, but it seemed a good idea at the time.

Wednesday 13 September: back to Santiago at the same Airbnb for 3 weeks while I go to the Bellavista language school to study Spanish…90 minutes of one on one conversation per day. Gasp.

Thursday 5th October: fly north to Lima, the capital of Peru, stay in an Airbnb for two weeks.

Tuesday 10th October: have a side trip of 3 nights to Cuzco, the ancient capital of the Inca empire, until the Spanish Conquistadors did their dirty work in the 16th century.

Friday 13th October: back to Lima until 17th

Tuesday 17th October: fly back to Santiago for one night

Thursday 19th October: fly back to Aus, leaving at 12.35am, (!) stopping in Auckland, then Sydney then Melbourne on the 20th at 2.35 pm. I then get the afternoon train to Kerang.

This site gives a potted history of Chile…

https://kids.nationalgeographic.com/geography/countries/article/chile

And Peru…

https://kids.nationalgeographic.com/geography/countries/article/peru

If all this appears to be mansplaining, feel free to ignore.

I imagine that the passion to write should hit every few days, so check now and then if you are interested. If not, don’t feel obliged.

Hasta luego amigos. = see you later friends

Hi all.

In the last letter I had the plan all set out, nothing could go wrong: I would be discharged without a problem (no need for another pcr, poq or anything; the WHO had decreed that I was non infectious after 10 days of isolation), stay at a hotel, already booked, fly out on Sunday

I had intended that the last letter was to be the last, but a few more quasi disasters, well, no, just bowel tightening events, have happened since then.

Well…Saturday morning, I’m all packed up, the doctor has come in again, had a chat, shaken hands, almost gave me a hug, the cannula is finally taken out, the nurse has given me a sheaf of papers to sign, all in Indonesian so I had no idea what I was agreeing to, and sat …and sat….and sat….

Then a text came from the finance department of the hospital…’we have sent the bill (almost $7 000) to the insurance company. Can you call them and rev them up about the Guarantee of Payment?’ So I did, and the chica on the line said that, yep, the assessment team is working on it now, and then they will send it to the management and we will email the hospital asap.

OK. ‘Do the management work on weekends’ I tentatively asked. ‘Yes, I think so’ was the comforting reply.

So I sat and sat and sat, and …….4 hours later the guarantee came through. What a relief! I was seeing myself in some sort of Kafkaesque reality loop, stuck in a Balinese hospital with a lovely nurse, never getting out because each extra day’s bill had to go to the team, which wouldn’t reach a decision until the next day…….

But once the final email hit the finance office I said my fond farewells to the lovely nurse, and hit the road.

As there was no mirror in the hospital room…why? I have no idea, I didn’t shave for about 2 weeks. As a result I looked like some bush pig that had come out of the undergrowth.

When I finally got to the hotel Episode (what a name!) I started to shave, but the razor couldn’t cope, so I looked pretty much as though I tried to shave without a mirror. Later I bought a packet of disposables which ripped through like a whipper snipper.

The Episode hotel is a great place; very comfortable and quiet, with a balcony overlooking the pool…

After 10 days of pretty bland food, and no real appetite for days before that, I splurged out on a splendid meal at the hotel. Splurged is scarcely the word to use, as food is so cheap. The meal, a delicious fish steak on a bed of spicy veg…

…a crème brûlée of captivating unctuosity…

…a large Bintang beer. It was so good to have really tasty and stimulating food after the blandity of the hospital’s.

I also hit a spa and had a foot scrub (transforming feet that would make an elephant’s foot seem silken smooth, into something resembling a baby’s bum) and a glorious massage.

I got to and from the spa place on a Grab bike. This is like an Uber, but you get on the back of the motor bike, grit your teeth and join the throng of other lane changing, risk taking bikes, driven by exceedingly skilled young men, who weave in and out, and manage to slip through gaps between cars that, like Homer’s clashing rocks, threaten to close well before the back half of the bike has made it through. But all was fine, and the wallet, as well as the body, was barely scathed.

The plans for the flight home went into disarray at 9 in the morning on Sunday. The flight was to leave at 12.45, getting to Melbourne at a respectable 8.10 pm. What could go wrong? Well, consistent with Jetstar’s appalling record of punctuality, the flight was delayed until 3pm. They of course are very sorry, and their thoughts and prayers are with us, and they know we will understand!!! Bloody hell!

The people here are amazingly polite and friendly and welcoming. The receptionists at the hotels, the security guys outside, the people in shops, random people in the street. There are wonderful smiles and greetings. The grab bike guys gave such sun eclipsing grins when I thanked them in Indonesian, and uttered the other words I know ‘bagus sakali’ (that’s great, for those nonpolyglots.)

So I headed off on another grab bike, toward a barber that the Internet swore was open on Sunday. Not true…so the driver and I trolled around finding that barbers here do have Sundays off, and beaten and unshaven we returned to the hotel. Moments later I was in the supermarket buying the disposable razors.

My Dad used to say ‘by goose’ when something was good, and I thought it was just one of the many words that he made up and used often. I gather that he picked it up from the locals when he was in Indonesia during the War.

Now the final step, flying out. Getting through passport control was easy enough, and the three hour window that they advise could easily have been less than two, but it’s better to be safe than missing a flight. It seems Jetstar is closing its check ins earlier in an attempt to get more punctual. It didn’t work in this case. After all of the security checks, there was one last one, where the staff rifled through the hand luggage. It was pretty cursory, but if it stopped even one terrorist from blowing up the plane I guess it was justified.

The flight home was as good as one could expect.

So, that’s it from texinturkey for this holiday.

Kendine iyi bak as the Turks say…look after yourself.

Ciao

T

Not many pics this letter as I have been locked up in the isolation ward…

But this is the view from the window looking out…

And from the window looking in (not that I was)

I was very convinced (can you do that? I was!) that I would be covid negative after a pcr test after 5 days isolated. I’d rescheduled the flight home, got the train ticket back to Kerang. All was looking good, the doctor appeared to have little doubt that I had recovered, and all was hanging on the result which he brought on his daily 10 am visit. Even the financial department in its correspondence with insurance company (cc’d to me) was seemingly in agreement. You can’t get better than that.

The stay here has been ok, except that the thermostat on the a/c doesn’t work, so the choice is icy blast or nothing, the food has been edible, but rarely, and the clock on the bloody wall has stopped.

The nurses are delightful; I wish I could see their faces. The masks, leaving only pairs of eyes visible, anonymise them, and it’s only through the questions they ask that I have a chance of deanonymising them.

A standard treatment in cases like mine is to give a daily injection of anticoagulant in the fatty bits of the abdomen. I guess this is to prevent the clots that some people have had in the past history of covid, or dvt. The side effect on me was some injury to the bladder or prostate. So rather alarming blood in the urine, and then effective closure of the whole apparatus. I shat. I also told the nurse, who told the doctor (who told the cow with the crumpled horn…) who instructed: no more anticoagulant. Within the day the blood ceased and slowly slowly I’m ceasing to impersonate a guy in a prostate television commercial. A relief, I can tell you.

The insurance company has been great, providing reassurance that they will cover everything.

What did the doc say? I hear you ask…

Well, according to the pcr test I’m….still….positive.

Buuuggggger

So this means I stay in this room for another 5 days, eating, or not eating, crap food , and looking forward to doing something enjoyable like a 5 1/2 hour flight in a jet back to Melbourne, or stabbing myself in the eye with a red biro.

I get discharged on Saturday morning, stay in a hotel on Saturday night, then get the plane on Sunday.

I’ve been wrestling with the payment system with Jetstar, finding universal rejection of my credit cards, as well as my sister’s. The last gasp is to ring a real person and do it over the phone. The first few times I rang they were having technical difficulties so it really appears that gods have it in for me! But finally a real person,who implied that it really wasn’t her job to deal with me, but I think was mollified by the confected desperation in my voice, came on and she shunted me to a robot, who took the cash. I rapidly checked my bank a/c … she had. Now I wait for the itinerary to appear in my inbox.

So here we are, the end of a great holiday, with some enforced relaxation at end.

With any luck I’ll be back in Kerang on Monday afternoon.

Take care all of you.

T

Bali airport is a very pleasant space, especially away from the visa and security area. There is a trap for first timers, two traps actually. The visa on arrival fee is published as $50, but on arrival I found that it was actually $54. I had carefully packed a crisp 50 spotter, thinking I was crossing all the ts, and breathed a sigh of relief knowing that I had also packed a crisp $5 note. Whew. And I got the change in rupiah…all 10 000 of them.

The next trial was the customs declaration. I had downloaded an app to produce a QR code, but the first page was in Indonesian, so I thought I’d wing it. Nah. So I joined the queues at the computers, filled out the forms online, which were now in english, got my code and I sailed through.

The reason I’m here is that my splendid sister Jennifer, in order to celebrate her 70th birthday took her three children, spouses and offspring, and me, for a week of fun at a splendid resort called the Bali Gardens. It’s right on the beach looking west, and is the most stunning place. Here are some of the gardens enclosed by the place…

Pretty luxurious rooms, with a bed in mine that you would need a GPS if you strayed from the edge. The staff were super polite, friendly and helpful.

The beach was pretty nice to look at, but I didn’t venture in, partly because of the state of my knees.

On the Saturday night we had the big dinner on the waterfront while the sun went down, and the gentle breeze wafted.

It was a super evening, and some fireworks across the bay joined in

The levels of boganism in the street didn’t seem all that great, but perhaps they come out of the woodwork at the clubs and bars. There are the occasional wrecks of humanity stomping the streets in shorts and t shirts, but I suspect that more often than not it was my reflection in the shop windows

One excursion we all went on was to the zoo, headlined by the ‘breakfast with the orang utans’. And that’s what it was…we all fed our faces from an extensive smorgasbord of stuff while they, untethered, sat on platforms a couple of metres off the ground and nibbled at some leafy stems.

All of them seemed to show a healthy indifference to their evolutionary cousins.

There were elephants up close too

It was a great trip, with lions, tigers, gibbons, assorted ungulants and others. The gardens were laid out interestingly, with the jungle shading the walking tracks, and most of the enclosures being fairly humane.

I had some very delicious meals, particularly at a place nearby the resort. This seared tuna and salad bowl was excellent…

During the zoo trip a sore throat, cough, fever that had started earlier became steadily worse, so I checked to see if the worst had happened…

Bugger.

So here I am in a hospital’s isolation room, filled with more drugs than I care to remember, attached to a drip whose cannula has come out a couple of times, necessitating more reinsertions in different veins than I want to recall. I’m on the antiviral drug which has two doses 5 days apart, so it means I get out on the Monday, 3 days after the intended departure for Australia day. I was pretty dehydrated, and the pneumonia initiated by the covid infection (words of the doctor) was fairly severe. The heavy bouts of coughing resulted in protesting abs and back muscles, but fortunately the coughing has lessened bigly since the miracles of modern medicine have done their dirty work.

The nurses are excellent and cheery, and constantly apologise for causing pain. On one occasion, in the quest to get some arterial blood, for whatever secret rite, from my wrist area, the poor dear had to probe around with the needle, trying to nail down the slippery artery. It took four goes before the mother lode was struck. I had expected some mighty bruises the next day, but none eventuated. I suppose if no blood vessels are broken then no bruises happen.

There is a long path, called the boardwalk, running along the edge of the beach. It’s great to walk along, interacting with locals who are willing. There are some huge statues along the way…

There are some areas where the surfers congregate, and seem to be doing a fair amount of sitting…

And the odd sign to lighten the day…

So what’s the plan? They will let me out when I’ve had the second dose and am covid negative, one of which will occur on Sunday; both of which I hope. I’ve rerouted my return to Tuesday, flying direct to Melbourne.

This holiday could be seen as a series of disasters, but there is something to gain from everything, and the good times have been great.

I have been very impressed by how easy getting into the airports is now (in my experience) compared with three years ago. It seems, and maybe I have been fortunate, that the interminable queues of the past are gone, and two or three people ahead for the passport control or security is the norm. What a relief.

The last few days in kl seemed to go very quickly. The pain session with the Pakman went by enjoyably, the visit to the doctor to have the stitches out (this time by a slender, elegant and clearly spoken Indian woman) had a pleasing outcome. The cut on the forehead has healed so as to be almost undetectable (so there goes the story of a duelling wound that I had been inventing) and the mega scabs on the knees are becoming smaller, while still looking like a serious case of the plague.

I went to a splendid Chinese temple, the Thean Hou temple, just a km or so from the central station. It’s on the top of a hill, surrounded by jungle and bathed in the sounds of birds, supported by the dull roar of the traffic on the nearby freeways. With a little imagination one could self delude into thinking it was the distant ocean.

It’s a pretty elaborate affair, and mightily peaceful.

It’s a great place to visit.

It’s dedicated to the Chinese sea goddess Mazu, and a few other goddesses and was opened in 1989.

There are a few signs and company names that have unintended suggestions in English. This one summed it up well…

The flight to Bali was effortless, I didn’t have to flap my wings much at all, and apart from bureaucracy at the immigration, it was all good.

Look in next time for what happens in Bali.

T

At the end of the last letter I was wallowing in a sea of woes, but my self pity has lessened somewhat, even though the scabs on the knees still resist any flexing.

I went back to the clinic on Friday to get it all looked at, and was dealt with by the same doctor, who seemed to be a bit happier with life than he was on the previous Wednesday night at 9 pm. I still found his speech a little difficult to decipher, starting as it did with a fairly heavy accent, then traversing the face mask and finally being only half heard on account of my deficiency in the hearing aid department to the tune of one.

Still, he undressed the wounds, applied unguents, gave instructions and out I went. He appeared a good deal more at ease with the world than last time. He even enquired about my travel insurance, and offered to write an account of the consultation. Nice of him to initiate that.

The wounds have sparked all sorts of nice encounters (and plenty of advice about taking care) from random people. While I was waiting for a pedestrian light to change a young guy of middle eastern appearance on a motorbike, who was waiting also, asked me what had happened. I went through the whole story again, he sympathised and in response to my question told me he was from Pakistan…and then offered to give me a ride back to the Airbnb. I declined, citing the necessity of keeping moving, but I was most impressed.

I went back to Pakman, the blind masseur, for another session. His name is actually Getman, or maybe Get Man, which he maintained was a Chinese name. The pain was much the same as before.

On Saturday I flew to Kota Kinabalu on Borneo to spend a few days with my good friend Andika and his family. Just like the progress through the security and passport control in Melbourne, this was a breeze, and it was all over in 5 minutes. But the assumption that I would be able to get some breakfast around the departure area was sadly mistaken…so I survived the waiting time and the 2 1/2 hr trip on some cashews that I bought from an old guy who wanted to know the saga of the scabs.

Andi and the family met me at the airport, and the older kid, the little Terence, whom I haven’t seen for over 3 years, came bounding up and hugged furiously. The second one, the 3 1/2 year old bounded up for another hug, but when I gave Camellia, Andi’s wife, a hug, the new little toddler she was holding got a fright and started wailing.

I stayed in a hotel, about 30 minutes from their place in the village, in the nearby town of Kota Belud. So in the evening Andi picked me up, and we negotiated the potholed roads, the wandering groups of cows, the stray dogs and the narrow roads to have dinner together. The food was great, and the kids played nicely together. But still little Nur was terrified.

On the way here from Kota Kinabalu there was torrential rain and lightning, but it all stopped by the time we got to the destination.

Andi drove me around the area to look at the sites, the nearby mountains, the lush tropical jungle, the villages where super mega mansions lie next to shanties, and the rather nice beaches.

The next night we had another meal of splendid little sardines, broccoli and spicy eggplant…

Little Nur started to relax a bit, and when I was leaving, and the boys were giving hugs, she joined in.

Whew, what a relief. I guess I must have looked a bit fearsome with a wounded head and black eye…

I have managed to shave off the gravel rash on my cheek, but the Great Red Spot still remains.

On Monday the little T was off to school. They start at 6.30 and finish at 12.30. It sounds a bit extreme, but Borneo is a long way east of Kuala Lumpur, so the sun is up very early. We picked him up at 12.30 and he seemed to be pretty tired…

For him then, he had an hour and a half at home, then off to another school to learn Arabic for 2 hours. Crikey.

At night Camellia had prepared another splendid and tasty meal of spicy fish and Bok Choy drenched in spicy sauce.

The whole family and I had breakfast together on Monday morning, then we travelled the 2 hours to Kota Kinabalu and the airport. Andi’s car is a pretty much clapped out affair, and the twisty, sometimes potholed highway provided a knuckle biting experience. Closer to the capital the quality improved greatly.We stopped for a drink along the way…

As we were walking to the drinks place little Terence held on to my hand which was nice.

We got to the airport, had the obligatory photo session, into the departure lounge then flying back to kl.

It was wonderful to see them again after 3 years of not.

Well…I stay in kl for a couple of days ( a visit to Pakman, a visit to Dr Optimist to get unstitched), then on Friday back out to the airport to fly to Bali.

See you later

T

Hi all,

It’s bloody hot here, with temps in the mid 30s and no refreshing thunderstorm at 4pm…the ones that are so welcome at other times of the year, provided that you have an umbrella, aren’t in a hurry or don’t mind getting drenched.

The Airbnb is an apartment in a huge tower that also holds a swish hotel. It’s very comfortable and spacious, but could do with some modernising here and there. Very quiet and clean, and the only view is into the apartments in the adjacent towers. I’m on the 22nd floor and still have to crane the neck to see the sky.

The place is a little out of the way, but I’ve got used to the different rail services, one of which is nearby, but whose timetable is designed for komuters, so service outside rush hours is a bit sparse. The monorail which is a better source of travel for the places I want to go, is a 15 min walk away, but once you know the route the time passes quicklier.

I’ve also become used to using the Grabcar system, like Uber but much cheaper. You just dial up on the app and watch the little car move on the map until it gets there. Youse who use Uber will not need that little bit of mansplaining I expect.

I’ve had a few massages from my regular guy Mikey from Myanmar, and a return to a BlindMassage place near the Central (or sentral as they more rationally spell it) Station. There are quite a few of these places in that area, and the guys who work there are blind, and are trained in an Academy specifically established to provide such skills…a bit like piano tuning courses for blind people, in the past anyway, in Australia.

My guy was a shortish, but muscular, ChineseMalay named Pakman…or maybe I’ve morphed his name into something else! He is partially sighted, from birth, and seemed to have a sixth sense, or would that be 5 1/2 th sense in his case, to find the smallest tense muscle and deal with it. There were times when I thought a medieval torture rack might have been preferable, but when it was all over the bod felt great. He did say that I would be aching a bit the next day…little did I know he was predicting the truth but for another reason. See below.

I find that I don’t eat much here…breakfast at a basic joint nearby…

…where I have the usual egg roti…

…and orange juice and very sweet coffee. You can see in this pic the layer of condensed milk that has yet to be stirred in…

My keto diet has gone out the window.

The blokes at the place now give a smile and a chat, so that makes it fine. I got talking to the owner one day…he a big Indian with long curly grey hair. The conversation was a bit one way but pleasant, and he donated me the breakfast.

The Estana Curry House that I used to go to has closed, as have the street of fake-watch, runners and sunglasses, along which I used to find blokes to talk with in the past. The epidemic has caused a lot of casualties.

For dinner at night I’ve been to an Indian joint next door to the breakfast place. After two visits the waiters were all on for a chat…and an extra service as well…see below.

Here’s one meal…

The salad was carrots, olives and cucumber, as well as chilli. it turned out to be around $10.

I went to the zoo, choosing to go early, but forgetting the hat, so after 2 hours of seeing obsessive big cats and monkeys in sad cages, I called it a day.

Some of the areas were ok, and the lush tropical jungle for us to walk in softened the awfulness of such places.

I took a side trip to Georgetown on the island of Penang. It took a fast train journey of 4+hours, cruising at 140+km/jam (jam is the local word for hour) through jungle and small villages.

I didn’t get really thrilled by Georgetown, it was massively hot, and most people and shops seemed to be a good deal smarter than I, and stayed closed up.

I did investigate a splendid Chinese Temple…

…whose front lawn was like a billiard table…

There were some interesting streets…

So what about all these continuity clues that I’ve been dropping?…….

On Wednesday evening I was cruising along the street heading toward the Indian place for dinner, when, in the shadows and encountering a bit of seriously degraded footpath, I tripped and hurtled down the slope and headbutted the wall at the bottom. Shoot…I thought I had had it. Passers-by stopped and helped me up, and a waiter from the restaurant came out with a bottle of dettol and some serviettes…I was a client of the place after all. He dabbed away at the wounds. A very delightful woman, an international student from Djibouti, took charge of getting me to a clinic despite my protestations that it was only a flesh wound. She was super charming, and bundled me into a Grabcar which took me to the clinic.

Soon I saw the doctor who washed the blood off, disinfected, and ultimately sewed up the gash in the forehead. He was a chubby guy, and he braced his belly against my shoulder as he sewed away. It was strangely comforting to have a warm mass to lean into in my hour of need. I hadn’t realised that I had blood all down my face, so I must have been a sight when I arrived.

Here I am when most of the cleaning was done…

Here are the wounds after…

Really just a flesh wound.

The next day the wounds were ok, but the body was very sore. Another massage might ease that out…any excuse will do.

At the doctor’s I realised that one of my hearing aids had come off, probably in the midst of the drama..I went back to look the next day, but not there. It was a bit infra dig searching around the gutter; even though I’m often in for a dig and anything’s better than only hearing at half pace. Ah well, maybe the government will give me new ones even though I’m not due for replacements until next year.

Tomorrow I am going for another blind guy massage, and if I can still walk, to the clinic where the dressing will be taken off and replaced. Next week the stitches come out.

And on Saturday I’m flying to Borneo where I’m staying with my favourite family there…Andi and Camelia and the three little sprogs that I haven’t seen for 3 years.

That’s about it for now.

Take care

T