SmurfsAbroad- 3

Travels to New Zealand and Singapore inNovember and December 2013

Bill Cairns

TheStorySoFarJill and I (with Patrick and Grace next door) woke

up on Tuesday 3rd December in the Perak Hotel in LittleIndia, Singapore. By now we had been travelling for

more than two weeks and had endured three ten hourflights. Jill and I had travelled from Auckland to

Christchurch by road (bus), sea (ferry) and rail. Patrickand Grace had covered a fair part of New Zealand'sSouth Island by car and had then played bowls or

performed the harder job of managing a bowls player. Bynow we were pretty tired of travelling.

But there is a lot to see and do in Singapore ...

What has already happened is described in thefirst two episodes of Smurfs Abroad.

I slept very well despite waking up a fewtimes. Jill complained that she had not slept well:she was cold (surprising to be cold in Singapore,but the monsoons were monsooning and it was abit chilly at night), the bed was hard and so on.She tickled my feet at 08h00 and told me that itwas time to get up. As it was 13h00 in NewZealand, I am sure that she was right.

I ran out of razors a couple of days ago. Notvery smartly I only brought one disposable razorwith me and so I have been using a razor of Jill's.It is not the most appropriate razor but it isvaliantly struggling with my beard.

Down we went to breakfast which was eggand noodles. I had an omelet and no noodles butbefore that I had toasties and yoghurt and fruit.

Off we went to the Singapore Flyer which isa huge big wheel like the London Eye except it isbigger and is in Singapore and not in London. So

we went by MRT to Dhoby Ghaut and changed toPromenade and ended up walking a kilometre orso to the Flyer. We walked up the stairs to theentry and then took a lift down the stairs to changethe vouchers that Patrick got in the airport. Thesystem is obviously designed to cater for longqueues of people waiting to get onto the Flyerbecause one passes through a museum sort of

thing obviously designed to keep you happy whileyou wait and wait. Fortunately we did not have todo any of that and only had about a ten minutewait right at the end.

The Flyer is certainly an interesting bit ofengineering. Perhaps the most fascinating thing tome was that the capsules do not hang from thewheel like the seats on a Ferris wheel but aresomehow hooked to the big wheel and turn as thebig wheel turns. I did not quite work it out. It wasalso interesting that the big wheel is turned by 24(I think) little wheels about the size of normal truck

wheels and using what looked like normal trucktires.

In we went and up and up and to the top andthen down and down. The capsules are spaciousand we could walk around freely takinginconsequential pictures of everything we couldsee. The view is incredible and we could seeclearly across the straits to Indonesia and up the

Tuesday 3rd December 2013

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View north from the Flyer

Seated in the Flyer and off we go

The gardens and the harbour

View north east

coastline to Changi. The straits were, as usual,packed with shipping. The wheel is close to to thenew gardens and we had wonderful views of thetwo huge domes.

After our flight we had a cool drink in a cooldrink place below the wheel. I had a drink madefrom bitter gourds, apple and pineapple whichsounds strange but which was excellent. Jill had

lemon and orange and that was also good.Refreshed, we took a “Hippo Bus” to the

River Safari. The River Safari is also a new sight ofSingapore that has happened since I was lasthere. It is next to the Zoo and the Night Zoo whichwould be helpful if I had the slightest idea wherethey are. But the Hippo Bus took us there withoutus needing to know where we were. (The HippoBuses are tourist buses that run a hop­on hop­offservice in competition to Singapore Airlines andalso run other buses to tourist attractions. Theyalso run amphibious “Ducks” that drive on theroads and dive in the river. One day I might go on aDuck).

The River Safari is the newest of the fourwildlife parks in Singapore. There is also theJurong Bird Park (some distance away in thewest of the island), the Singapore Zoo, and theSingapore Night Zoo. Patrick and Grace bought adiscount ticket that gave them access to the NightZoo and the Bird Park as well as the River Safari,but we decided that the Night Zoo would be toomuch to do today and that we would skip the Bird

Park this time around.So into the River Safari we went. The whole

exhibit is dedicated to the ecology of the majorriver systems of the world – the Congo, Nile,Amazon, Murray, Mississippi, Yangtsi and so on.

In a way I was a little disappointed although Iam a bit at a loss to explain why. There arecertainly a lot of positives: there are high qualityaquariums throughout; there is a fantastic varietyof fish, amphibians, reptiles, mammals and evenbirds; there is a lot of information telling you what isgoing on. My criticism? Well, it shares with the BirdPark the fault that the information they give you issuperficial, frequently childish and almost alwaysinadequate. I see a tankful of beautiful fish takenfrom the Congo River: what are they? (Sometimes

they had a key, often they didn't). Why areCongo fish different from Nile or Amazonfish? What is the distribution of thesefishes? Why are some so colourful andothers so drab? And so on.

And then I suppose that I felt a bit cheated ina way. I was expecting the River Safari to be on

Aquarium in River safari.

Red panda

Adjudant stork

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Panda

the river and to spend most of my time on a boat.Instead of which we walked and stood and lookedand walked. I must confess that we missed the trip onthe Amazon (it had been undergoing repair and wasjust being put back in service. We got to that part ofthe trip in the rain and decided to run for cover!)

I can't blame the park for the fact that it pouredand poured with rain when we reached the half waypoint. The weather had been threatening and therewere drops of rain during most of the first part, but thedeluge started when we were in the Squirrel monkeyenclosure. That was a pity: one is allowed to walkright into the enclosure with the monkeys. They arevery cute and fun. What should have been a highlightended with us dashing for cover in one direction andthe monkeys dashing for cover in another.

There were other highlights:­ Dwarf crocodiles. I did not know that such thingsexisted but they live in west Africa as far asGhana and perhaps even Nigeria. They look likeproper crocodiles but only grow to a maximum of1.5 metres.

­ Manatees. There were lots of them in a hugeaquarium. They are strange, huge, ugly, butremarkably graceful animals that ooze aroundand around.

­ Giant otter. He looked like any other otter but wassignificantly bigger. He was very fast andenergetic and very graceful too. He was in one ofthose aquariums, that I have always wanted tosee, where you actually walk through a tunnel ofglass in the aquarium itself. I think that the tunnelwas a bit wasted on the otter.

­ Polar bear. He was not actually part of the RiverSafari but belonged to the Zoo which borders onthe safari where there was a window onto thebottom of his pool. He swam around and around

and was remarkably ungraceful and looked like abig dog paddling underwater. He was alsofrighteningly big and I would not like to meet oneof his cousins when I was walking through thetundra.

­ Adjutant storks. I have heard about Adjutantstorks (usually scary stores about themwandering around battlefields after the killing isover), but this was the first time that I have seenthem. They look a bit like Marabou storks but areslightly smaller and don't have so much colouringexcept for a dirty grey head and a yellow beak.They are just as ugly as a Marabou.

­ Red pandas. They are very pretty, cuddlyarboreal animals apparently quite unrelated to theGiant panda. They have a lovely red fur and Isuspect that their fur was a targeted trophy in theold days.

­ Giant pandas. Giant pandas are fantastic. Theyare cuddly, very big, much more bear­like than Ihad imagined, cute and their strange black andwhite markings are very attractive. They wereworth the whole trip to the River Safari bythemselves. (Although I never quite gatheredwhat pandas have to do with the River Safari!) atfirst we saw the one male sleeping away and, bymeans of CCTV, a female hiding in her den. Butafter we had had our lunch we saw the male lyingon his back eating his bamboo and the femaleprowling around.

­ Sea eagle. The sea eagle was not part of anyexhibit but just happened to be living in the lakenext to the safari. He looks just like an Africanfish­eagle, but does not have the same distinctivecry. We were very happy to see him.

We had lunch in a restaurant near the pandas. We

Sea eagle

Jaguarundi

ManateesPage 5 of 13

had Chinese snacks – chicken nuggets, won­tons,spring roll and stuff like that. Jill and Grace shared aPanda Bun which was a cute dumpling painted like apanda. Unfortunately it was rather tasteless. Not badfood on the whole but not fantastic and it wasexpensive. (John once pointed out the basic lesson ineconomics that can be learned from the Singaporefood scene: where there is competition, as in the foodcourts, prices are low and the food is good; wherethere is a monopoly, as in the River Safari, the food isexpensive and the quality mediocre).

Jill and I abandoned Patrick and Grace at the pandasand wandered our way further. We saw our sea eagle, ajaguarundi (a big pussy cat from South America) and hadour shower with the Squirrel monkeys. We spent some timewith the otter and the manatees before leaving the parkand looking at the rain still belting down. So we decided tostop for a cup of tea and a cup of milo at a tea room at thegate (for $14 – see John's comment above). We did notknow how to get back to our hotel and thought that wewould take a taxi and stood in a line for some time. The linewas long and the supply of taxis was limited and it seemedthat we could be there for ever. Jill thought that she wouldinvestigate the Hippo bus but couldn't find anything. I wentup to the bus stop where we had been unloaded on arrivaland found that there was a different shuttle bus service thatwould take us to Little India for $5 each. So we left the taxiqueue and came home on the bus instead. It took about anhour to get home because it stopped at a number ofdifferent hotels on the way, but it eventually dropped us offat the Little India Arcade.

It was still raining and we did not feel like going toofar for supper so we ate at the little restaurant around thecorner: dal makani and tikka chicken which were verygood.

Jill and I woke up at about 06h00 butdozed away nicely for another hour beforegetting up. We found a note from Patrick tosay that they had only got home from theNight Zoo after midnight and that they wouldsee us at breakfast after 09h00. Jill and Iwent down and had our eggs by ourselves(Jill had baked beans too but I am not thatadvanced).I needed money so I asked the nicechap at reception where I could find a moneychanger (I still had some New Zealanddollars) and where I could find an ATM. Hetold me that money changers only opened at10h30, which was too late for me, and saidthat the closest ATM was at the Sim LimTowers at the bottom of Dunlop Rd. Iconfused Sim Lim Towers with Sim LimSquare (the electronics mall) but managed tosort myself out and drew $300 which is a lotof rands.Back to the hotel again and we metPatrick and Grace having breakfast and hada cup of coffee to keep them company. Thenit was off to our cooking course with CookeryMagic and Ruqxana. Go to KembangenStation (that was easy) and go over the road(which road? The nice enquiries at the stationpointed us in the right direction). Take bus 42.that was not so easy. We sat and waited atthe bus stop for about half an hour and twobus 42s came in the wrong direction and onecame zooming past us with his ears back ashe raced for home. Eventually I flagged downa taxi and we all piled in just as the right busarrived.Ruqxana's new home is very smart andset up well for her cooking classes. There

were only the four of us (really only two of usbecause Jill and Grace were being observersand quality controllers while Patrick and I didthe cooking) and a pretty Japanese girl (whowas not called Ginger but something close).Ginger was going on honeymoon to SabiSabi in a couple of weeks time.It was fun having a class with Ruqxanaagain. She taught us how to make a fish patething that one cooks on a braai except inSingapore you cook it on a barbecue. Sheshowed us how to make ours withmushrooms rather than mackerel. Then wecooked Indian Mee Goreng (fried noodles)and banana fritters. The pate was not really asuccess, but even I liked the noodles (and Iam not a great noodle fan) and the bananafritters were excellent. (The Malay for abanana is a piesang as is the Afrikaans.Interesting.)We finished our cooking class about13h30 just in time to catch the bus number 42back to the station. We took the train on pastLittle India and to the Gardens by the Bay. Myback was beginning to hurt when we gotthere and I nearly gave up and went back tothe hotel, but Jill managed to convince me togo and see the two big domes that formconservatories as part of the garden. So

Wednesday 4th December 2013

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Patrick and Grace split off by themselves and wepaid $2 for a ride on an overgrown tuk tuk thing.(Confusion because the ticket said it was good forone journey and then said it was a return ticket. Idid not understand and decided that I did not needto understand.)There are two of these domes and they aremagnificent. Firstly they are huge. I have no ideahow huge is huge but they are certainly big enoughto play a few games of cricket and to have a modelairplane flying competition. They are made of steeland glass and are air­conditioned inside. Secondlythey are beautiful and very well done.The first dome was the best. It is called theFlower Dome and is an indoor garden of vastproportions. It has a South African garden, aMediterranean garden (with ancient fully grownolive trees), a baobab garden (with fully grownspecimens of all seven species of baobab). Iwished that my back was not hurting and that Icould just walk around and around and admire theplace. It was certainly number 1 on our visit toSingapore.The second dome is the Cloud Forest. A

“cloud forest” is a very special ecozone. It is amontane forest right up there in the cloud belt. I didnot know there was such a thing and am still notquite sure why it is so important that it has a wholedome devoted to it. This dome was a bit moregimmicky that the other: the first thing you meet onentry is a huge waterfall four stories high whichobviously raises the humidity of the whole dome toa desired level. (The Jurong Bird Park used toboast of having the highest indoor waterfall in theworld. I don't know if this one has now taken thathonour.) This dome is high rather than wide andthe centre is a sort of tower that lets you get rightup into the clouds that billow all over the place.There is a walkway that takes you right out intospace, and only people like me who have no fearof heights could possibly stand walking out there.We met Patrick and Grace on one of thewalkways, said hello and went our different waysagain.We found our shuttle tuk tuk again and foundout that although our ticket was only valid for oneride, if we had paid to get to the dome there wasno charge to go back again. No I don't understandit either.Back to Little India on the MRT and wewalked back to the hotel and did nothing for quite along time until hunger drove us forth.We went to the Little India food court and thatplace is really typical of Singapore and different toanything in South Africa. The court is on the 1stfloor of a huge barn­like building; the lower floor isa parking garage; the upper floor is a sort ofclothes market. There must be over 80 food stallsand a few hundred people eating. The idea is thatyou get (or order) your food from one of the stallsand take it (or they bring it) to a communal table toeat. Being Little India, most of the food stalls wereselling Indian food but there were a smattering ofother cuisines – Malaysian and Indonesian and at

least one Thai stall. There were even a few stallsselling Chinese food. I think I know a fair amountabout Indian food but there were a number ofdishes advertised that I had no idea what theywere and a few others that I have heard of butnever seen.We were not very hungry and had somesamoosas ($4 for six BIG samoosas) and $5 fortwo mango lassis. A huge drop in price from ourlittle restaurant around the corner – and wethought that the prices there were quitereasonable.Next door to the food hall is a largeSingaporean food market with stalls selling meat,fish, vegetables and spices. Even though it waspast 20h00, the market was still open with abouthalf the stalls still selling.We got an SMS from Grace to say that theywould be late. We went home to sleep.

Inside the flower dome. Note the baobabs Inside the cloud dome

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We all slept late and met up for breakfast at08h00. Patrick and Grace wanted to go to the BirdPark while we decided to go on a boat cruisearound the harbour.

We took the MRT to the Marina Bay stationto find that we were sort of in the middle ofnowhere: the Marina Bay Hotel (the silly one withthe boat on top) on the one side and nothing but aconstruction site on unclaimed land on the other.We wandered around lost for a bit and eventuallytook a taxi to the boat terminus. Fortunately therewere lots of taxis at the hotel. Jill originally said thatwe wanted to go to Clark Quay and I knew thatwas wrong (that would be for a river cruise) so welooked it up and found we had to go to the MarinaSouth Pier. So the taxi driver took us there.

We went and bought our tickets for theDragon Boat and had to hang around for a bitbecause we were early. We eventually boarded at10h15 and set sail at 10h30.

It was a fun cruise and relaxing too. Thewhole Singapore port area is huge: one of thebiggest ports in the world, one of the biggestrefineries in the world and the straits with surelymore ships parked in it than anywhere else in theworld. The cruise went past Sentosa Island whichmust be some of the most expensive real estate inthe world with apartments built right on the seafront with their own marina full of expensive yachtsbehind.

As usual, the passengers were as interestingas the scenery. There were a bunch of youngladies who sat together at a table and talked non­stop through the whole voyage. I don't think theylooked at the scenery once. There was a Chinesechap accompanying two women, possibly his wife

and daughter. They were interested enough inwhat was going on, but he talked non­stop on hiscell phone for the whole trip. I suppose that it istypical of Singapore that he had cell phonecoverage. More interesting were an Australiancouple who were on their way back home. He wasa surveyor and they had lived for a few years inPretoria and also in the wilds of Namibia in acaravan.

The ship landed on Turtle Island and thistime I decided to rush off to see the shrine on top

of the little hill on the island. The shrine isdedicated to three Muslim saints who arevenerated by a Muslim sect and whose venerationis strongly disproved of by more orthodox Muslims.

So I climbed up the 154 steps to the shrinewhich is sort of perched on stilts on top of the hill. Itwas rather depressing: not so much run down asnever been up – rather cheap and poverty stricken.It is a wooden stricture all painted in yellow. Thereare paper posters stuck up on the walls asking for

donations and promising success in exams and inlove life. There was writing in a script that I did notrecognise. [Later research has suggested to methat this might be the Pallava script, an old Indianscript that was common in Malaya and other partsof South East Asia]. I could see why an orthodoxMuslim would strongly disapprove of the shrine;there was much that was not Muslim at all andobviously synchronistic with Taoist practices. Forinstance there was what looked like a wind driverprayer wheel and they were giving away (askingfor donations of course) yellow ribbons for luck. I

Thursday 5th December 2013

Our ship ­ The Dragon

Singapore from the sea

The Kramat ­ shrine

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thought that I could do with some good luck took ayellow ribbon and gave a donation, butimmediately lost the ribbon. Perhaps theydisappear once they have given their luck.

Down the hill I went again and heard anoriole calling in the forest but could not see him. Jillheard him too. Jill also saw a Spotted dove and aHouse sparrow. A strange absence of any kind ofsea bird on the whole voyage; I have noticed thisbefore in SE Asia.

The ship took us back to the Marina SouthPier again. We did not know how to get home fromthere, but there was a bus taking some of thepassengers (including our chatty girls) somewhereand, as they were not charging, we climbed onboard on the principle that they must be goingsomewhere close to an MRT station. I tried to talkto the driver to ask him to drop us off at a stationbut he could not talk any English. Fortunately therewas an English couple on board who told us thatthey were getting off at Orchard Road and weknew there was an MRT station there. So we gotoff and caught a train home.

We had lunch at the food court (we shared anice curry) and went back to the hotel for a quickrest. Back onto the MRT and off to City Hall andthe Singapore Cricket Club.

There we met Mary Lim, whom we had metin Christchurch representing Singapore. Mary tookus for a quick tour of the Singapore Cricket Cluband it is a very larnie place indeed. It is one ofthose late Victorian or Edwardian buildings withlots of wood and fans in the ceiling and silverwarein the display cases. It reminded me a lot of theVictoria Club in Pietermaritzburg.

Soon Mary's husband, TQ, appeared and wemet an Australian, Roger, and his wife Pak Tsee

(and I am sure that I am spelling her wrongly!) Wehad a fun game of bowls with me playing second toRoger and Mary playing lead, against Patrick, TQand Pak Tsee. There were lots of internationalplayers in the game and I was completelyoutclassed. But Roger played like a genius andmanaged to compensate for my incompetence.Mary apologised for the state of the green. It wasfar too slow she said. Actually I did not admit that itwas about the speed of a normal Kokanje greenand that I should therefore have the advantageover the other players. After 16 ends I asked TQhow many ends we were going to play and heexplained that they normally played on until hisside was ahead.

In the end we played 18 ends (we were onlyplaying with two balls, so the game was fast). Wehad been 14 all after 17 ends and Patrick was lyingtwo when Roger drove with his very last ball andwe won a three pointer. Twice in ChristchurchPatrick had lost matches on the very last delivery.

While we were playing, Bernard Foo who hadalso been at Christchurch arrived with his girlfriendJo.

Bowls over, we had a beer and a shower andthen dinner. It was a good dinner as one wouldexpect from a very posh club like the SingaporeCricket Club. I was brave enough to have the fishhead curry, Jill had braised pork belly. We werevery royally treated by some very nice andgenerous people. TQ is an excellent raconteur (heis a retired High Court judge and they tend to beexcellent raconteurs) and he told us somewonderful stories. I particularly liked the one aboutthe Singaporean Pastor, who, like many Chinese,could not pronounce the English “ng” sound. Hisparishioners used to love to hear him say, “Let usstand and sin together.”

TQ making a point

View from the Singapore cricket club. Thecricket team is having a practice in the mid­distance. Note the lawn tennis court

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After the meal, late though it was, Bernarddropped us off in Orchard Road so that we couldsee the Christmas decorations. The whole streetis lit up with white bells and curly things andfancy stuff while the sides of the roads haveSanta Claus and reindeer and sleighs andChristmas trees and so on all flashing away. I didnot say “Bah, Humbug!” and said that I thought itwas very good.

We were home very late and went to bedlong past my bedtime.

Smurf about to deliver

The bar at the Singapore Cricket Club

TQ and Smurf telling their skips what to do

Lights on Orchard Road

Dinner: Pak Tsee, TQ, Grace, Roger, Jill,Bernard (partly cut off poor chap)

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St Nicholas Day.We woke at about 08h30 and packed and

met Patrick and Grace for breakfast.While we were having breakfast we watched

the news of CBS and learned of the death ofNelson Mandela. The end of an era and goodbyeto a very great man.

All the signs were that it was going to be along long day and the fact that it was pouring withrain did not make it more attractive. We had a lot oftime to kill before our plane left at 02h00 tomorrowmorning and it would have been much easier tothink of things to do had it been clear and sunny.

We started off by leaving our luggage in the hotel storeroom and asking them to book us a taxiat 21h00. Then we all walked down to the Sim LimSquare to check out all their electronics andespecially to look for a GPS for me. We met a verynice and helpful salesman who was exceedinglyun­pushy and who showed me that I really wantedthe big brother of my old GPS, the Garmin Map62S. But the asking price was $430 (another shoponly wanted $420) and my calculations said that,even after recovering my GST, if I paid customs onthat I would be paying an amount that I was fairlysure would be more than the thing would cost athome. So I dithered and argued with myself but inthe end did not buy anything except a few trivialodds and ends for presents.

We said goodbye to Patrick and Grace whowere going off on their own and went back to thehotel to get the Singapore Airline boarding cardsthat we had left in our luggage by mistake. Wethen walked just around the corner and jumpedonto the Singapore Airline Hop­on Hop­off bus.

First the bus took us down to the Singapore

Flyer and we had to get off because that was theend of its particular circuit. We climbed onto thenext bus and stayed with it as far as Clark Quaywhere we decided to have lunch. We sat down in afairly average looking restaurant, ordered a drinkand looked at the menu. The prices were like NewZealand prices and so we decided not to eat thereafter all. We paid for our drinks and moved on.

Meanwhile it rained and it rained.This time we stayed with the bus all the way

to the Botanical Gardens and decided that thiswould be a good place for lunch. Jill had a hotchicken salad that looked very good while I had a“Chilli crab toast” which was a slice of bread withsome egg mush and a crab sauce. It tasted worsethan it sounds. In fact it was absolutely disgusting.I had to get my nutrition from a Tiger beer.

The birds were good. There were lots of whatwe later identified firmly as Tree sparrows andthere were also lots of Spotted doves which look abit like large laughing doves. There were also a lotof Java mynas: we have found out that they are an

Friday 6th December 2013

We were told quite often that, becauselicensing a car in Singapore is so expensive, itis not worth driving an old car. However, wesaw this Volksie (and another very like it)parked in Little India every day. I suppose theirowners have to be real Volkswagen fanatics

Sim Lim Square

The view from the restaurant in Clark Quay.The abominable Marina Hotel dominates theSingapore landscape

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introduced bird and are putting the indigenousCommon myna under pressure. We certainly donot want any of them in South Africa – not a birdthat is more aggressive and successful than theCommon myna!

It rained and it rained. It stopped rainingbriefly and we thought that we might have a shortwalk in the garden, but it started raining againalmost as soon as we stepped off the verandah.

Hop­on to the bus again and on to OrchardRoad and we walked quite a long way to theKinokuniya bookshop in the Ngee Ann building. Itis a magnificent bookshop and, as always, therewere many books that I wanted to buy and takehome with me. But in the end I didn't buy anythingwhich shows remarkable restraint. Actually I wasnot convinced that the books were any cheaperthan they are in South Africa and now, with eBooksand Internet shopping and all, books are just aseasily available at home as they are here. So welooked and liked but did not buy.

We went down to the food court in the NgeeAnn building and had a very nice fruit juice there.This was a very different food court from the one inLittle India: this was an upper class place with lotsmore variety but of course much higher prices. Theplace was so packed that our choice of where toget our fruit juice (I had originally thought of a cupof coffee) was largely determined by where wecould get a place to sit.

A long walk back to the bus stop and hoppedon again and off at Little India. We went to therestaurant next door and met Patrick and Gracethere. We had the non­vegetarian meal again.Patrick and Grace had spent most of the afternoondrinking lunch with an old friend of the Griffiths whonow lives in Singapore.

The taxi came and fetched us at 21h00 andtook us to the wrong terminal – our fault not his –so we had to take the Sky train to terminal 2.

We still had a long wait for the plane. Jillspent her $40 voucher on some presents fordaughters­in­law and a book. We found some freeinternet and checked out Facebook. We had a Miloand the worst cup of tea that I have ever drunk –pure tannin – and I had to have a coke to take thetaste out of my mouth.

Our plane left from gate F60 which was asfar as you can get from where we were. The planewas full – largely of a swarm of South African kidswith tennis rackets. I presume they have beenplaying tennis but did not learn any more aboutthem.

A long flight home – by now it was tomorrow.I did manage to get some sleep.

Saturday 7th November 2013John Meaker very kindly came and fetched

us at the airport. He brought his baby, Devon, too.Devon was very well behaved until he foundhimself next to a strange and ugly great­uncle andthat was enough to get him yelling.

We picked up the Tazz – which now hadsome new tires – and had an uneventful drivehome with a stop for a cup of coffee at thePetroport.

It is good to be home.

Java mynas

The Ngee Ann food court

Can we go home now?

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I wrote this diary the old fashioned way with apaper notebook and a ball point pen. I was ratherconscientious most of the time and the diary wasusually written within a day of the events described.When I got home and was reunited with Zita, mydesktop Linux machine, I rewrote the diary usingLibre Office. This capturing was not just a word forword transcription of the original but a free rewritingof the original adding things that I remembered andleaving out things that I did not want to remember.

The pictures were all (well nearly all) taken withmy old Kodak Z740 camera. I think that it did a goodjob (it has a better lens than my more modern andmore expensive cameras), but it only takes 4Megapixels and so my opportunities for cropping andblowing up were limited. I did use the Gimp programto sharpen the and enhance them a bit. The pictureswhich I did not take myself include some taken withJill's Galaxy smart phone and some taken by Patrickor Grace using their Nikon. The picture of the Tui wasfound on the Internet and is fully acknowledgedwhere it occurs.

The final version of the diaries was compiled byusing the Open Source publishing application,Scribus.

Open Source is pretty comprehensive – LibreOffice + Gimp + Scribus are as good as theircommercial counterparts and a lot cheaper (togetherthey cost nothing!)

The pdf files are intended to be viewed on thescreen and (to keep the pdf files small) the picturesare not of a high enough resolution for printing.

Bill Cairns ­ 6th January 2014

That's it folks!

A page of the original diary