Is happiness a moment or a state of mind?

We went to the beach yesterday, for the first and probably only time after getting back from England this summer. We met our friends there, and our four children played together beautifully.

After lunch, the light changed slowly from the harsh, raw energy of midday to the most beautiful, gentle, silvery haze, with the line of the horizon almost invisible but for the metallic glint of reflected sunlight, and the sea swelling lazily and occasionally producing fierce flashes of the dying light. We took turns watching the children and sitting on the sand, and as my little daughters played happily and I took a last dip in the sea, it was so easy to stay in the moment, to feel my own happiness, to remember why we live here, so far from our families.

 I've been questioning that decision recently, as I do all my decisions, endlessly, and the carousel of thoughts always stops at the same place; practically, there is nothing to go back for, and emotionally, whatever problems we have don't have geographical solutions. I think happiness probably is a momentary thing, but contentment is a state of mind, and probably reached far more easily by conscious control of one's thoughts than it is by changing the externalities of one's life.

Beginner sewing projects: Drawstring Bags

I can't remember if I was looking for them or stumbled across them, but some time ago I bookmarked a whole lot of tutorials for a simple sewing project for beginners: the drawstring bag. The idea was to make something quick and easy to gain experience and confidence.

Well, I 've certainly gained some experience and confidence, but I also managed - through a kind of hooplehead alchemy! - to transform 'quick and easy' into 'long-winded and complicated'. Da-daaah! Still, I suspect that that is the fate of all beginners of any skilled activity. I do wonder if others find the same things difficult as I do, though. Like when I learnt to drive and of all the things to struggle with, I chose steering, which you'd think would be pretty simple.

The thing I find probably most difficult of all is accurately cutting fabric. I only have an ironing board to work with, and although I have a cheapish rotary cutter, which has helped a lot, I find that getting/keeping the fabric straight along both grains is hellishly difficult, while cutting perpendicular edges and maintaining straight lines while having to move the whole piece mid-cut is a real struggle.

So anyway, here is the finished result. I didn't bother taking pictures of the messy chaos I created as I went along, mainly because a far better, more detailed and clear tutorial would be the one I actually used. So thanks very much to Ashley Connelly of The Creative Place for the fantastic, helpful post!

Of all the tutorials I bookmarked, I went with Ashley's because I found her way of explaining and her photos very clear; also, I wanted a contrast piece at the top, and for the bags to be lined, as these are for my daughter's nursery so they'll need to be a little more robust than gift bags. However, the other tutorials I found also looked really good and I will definitely incorporate aspects of them in future:
there's a backpack-style one from (a different) Ashley at Make It & Love It, a square-bottomed one from Destri at The Mother Huddle, and a nice detailed one from Kitty Baby Love.

Here's to a long and happy life for these babies!

Getting Stuff Done - Spice Racks As Child's Front-Facing Bookshelves

I am a hopeless procrastinator. I am also prone to getting wildly enthusiastic about doing lots of different things, in different areas, requiring different skills and different equipment, often costly. This is a very bad combination indeed.

However, here is one of the first things I have actually got done: front-facing bookshelves for mah chile's books.

IKEA spice racks...

..and picture rail. I also used a longer 1-metre one (the top one in the photos below), but just put that up without modifying it.

I had an awkward pillar bit on the wall, so I sawed the rail in half...

...then sanded and painted the ends, just with primer.

I drilled new holes a few centimetres from either end; I had to drill them from back to front, as the rail doesn't allow you to get the drill in the right place, but as long as you remember to tuck the exploded-out bits under the screw as you screw it in at the end, it looks fine.

I filled in the old screw-holes with putty stuff,

 

 and the rail comes with little white stickers that you can put over these holes,

 

which obviously leaves the new ones exposed, but they're hidden by what's on the rail anyway so it doesn't matter.

 

 

 

She loves them. 

21st SEPTEMBER 2004 - Close your eyes and imagine I'm in Russia...

With my usual slick efficiency, I've managed to, er, be home for five days before sending my last update. Brilliant, eh!? But I'm sending it anyway, to say hello to everyone in London, and that my mobile number hasn't changed, and that I'm looking forward to seeing you all, if I haven't seen you already.
And thank you and goodbye to all my travelling companions, distant and recent, and do stay in touch, especially if you live in a city worth visiting ,o)  It was great meeting you all, and more than made up for all the tossers we met as well!

CHINA
China apparently invented both flushing toilets and feng shui, but we didn't see much evidence of either during our time there. Perhaps it was the Cultural Revolution that did away with all those bourgeois concepts of aesthetics and harmony, because modern China is disfigured by hideous decaying concrete tower blocks, a permanent grey haze, and unspeakable filth everywhere you go. Even in the countryside.
It was also unbelievably hard work - the language barrier is funny at times, like when you don't understand what they're shouting at you, so they start banging on their notices written *in Chinese* (as if to say: Can't you read? GOD) - but when every single transaction or contact involves five minutes of gesturing or drawing pictures (and is often interrupted by the taxi driver or whatever just driving off shaking their head - this once happened nine or ten times in a row), it just gets exhausting.
The tourist attractions are overpriced and overrun, and make no concessions (eg dual-language signs) for foreigners, despite often charging twice as much. They also tend, as with the Terracotta Warriors, to be embedded deep within vast labyrinths of irrelevance - exhibition halls full of photos of visiting Chinese dignitaries, for instance.
We'd been looking forward to cruising down the Yangtze River to see the Three Gorges, a trip that will be impossible in a few years when yet another controversial dam project floods the area. But the river is so blighted by moulding, water-stained concrete buildings congealed in clusters along its banks that you just come away thinking 'best thing for it'. Especially, and I'll try not to go on about this as it sounds terrible (and I did it already in my last email!), having spent several days on a boat along with hundreds of spitting, chain-smoking locals. Almost everyone smokes here, sometimes even alternating mouthfuls of dinner with puffs on a fag, and the results are continually hoiked up at top volume and spat on the floor, regardless of where they are. True, it's their country, but it's still a bit stomach-turning at five in the morning (after having been ordered out of bed by the ships' steward; they knock on the door and bark 'You! Get up! Now!' - it's actually quite funny... in hindsight...).
So when we got to Beijing, we heaved a sigh of relief at the impressively clean and modern city. It's built on a vast scale (Tiananmen Square is *huge*), but it's flat and has wide, leafy cycle lanes on every road, so that hiring push-bikes is the best way to get around. In fact, we were just starting to like the place when some bastard stole our bikes. It was clear that China was just not for us, but it held us in its clutches for another week, via bureaucracy, broken buses and border closures, before we managed to get to Mongolia by bus, train and taxi.

MONGOLIA
After China, we weren't expecting too much, which is perhaps partly why Mongolia was so overwhelmingly wonderful. Ulaan Batar has a strangely Eastern European feel to it, but we only stayed one night, so merely registered our first glimpse of blue sky in three weeks (see haze above) before hiring a jeep and driver and heading off into the unknown for six days on a tour. The three of us were joined by a girl called Carmen, who comes from Germany, although I'm sure that that had nothing at all to do with the fact that she knew, and liked, most of the god-awful Eighties pop music our driver played.
Mongolia is beeeeee-yew-tiful. The place is so unspoilt, even the roads stop a few hours out of town and are replaced by dirt tracks over the valleys and hills, so it feels as if you're skimming across the surface of green swells that surge as far as the eye can see.
The Mongolians reminded me of the Vietnamese in their dignified indifference to tourists; they're not unfriendly (although not as immediately smiley as the SE Asians), but it's very obvious that their lives are unaffected by your presence, which was great because that's what we'd come to see. And they're so dashing! The men ride everywhere in their big sash-tied overcoats, battered hats and boots, slouching casually in their saddles but looking quite capable of pillaging the entire known world before breakfast. Our driver, Zana, was great - he fussed over us almost as much as his beloved jeep, and eventually took us home to meet 'Mummy', who served us salty yak's milk with dinner, and several shots of her best vodka afterwards.
After a couple of days of jolting about and stopping every five minutes to take pictures, we arrived at the idyllic White Lake and were given a ger to ourselves, a round white tent with a round, glowing stove in the centre and wooden, hand-painted beds around the inside. That first night we sat round the table with bowls of vodka and had to restrict our raptures about the place to once every half hour, we were so excited.
We went riding in the morning on the hardy Mongolian ponies with Khishgee, a cute Mongolian guide with intriguingly ripped jeans. It was Monika and Carmen's first time, so they were led, Mischka was content to amble along looking the picture of elegance as usual (the old trout), and I got a lively, nervy horse that only needed the slightest encouragement to take off across the grassland. It was bliss, galloping in huge circles around the others in the cold bright sunshine and the spectacular scenery... and we were only half a mile from home when my horse swerved sharply for some reason and, distracted by the view, I landed on the ground a split second later. It hurt so much I didn't even care what an arse I'd looked, which was lucky really as I was doing a kind of theatrical writhing thing (think 'injured' WWF wrestler) for a minute or so before the others turned up.
As my original horse had run for the hills, Khishgee brought a replacement, which regarded me sympathetically out of its big brown eyes. Or so I thought, before the bastard kicked me in the leg. Fervently hoping it would end up as Pritt-stick, I revenged myself in the meantime by giving it a couple of gratuitous whacks with a rope-end once I was safely on its back.
We were gutted to have to leave the next day, but the scenery was a major compensation, as was stopping for a picnic lunch in a particularly stunning valley. This being Mongolia, there was no wicker hamper or Pimm's, just a plastic bag full of dismembered marmot and a couple of raw onions. We weren't too fazed by this; lunch the previous day had been the same, except that the bones had looked as if someone had already had a pretty good go at them. We were soon up to our knuckles in marmot fat, an experience not to be missed, unless like Carmen you're a vegetarian - lean pickings for her there.

RUSSIA
Leaving the next day on the Trans-Sib, it felt really weird to be without Monika for the first time in three months or something. However, a pair of Mongolian guys ensured we didn't brood for too long over our loss, by stealing my purse and Mischka's Walkman as soon as we got on the train. It was a weird journey, five days in a little compartment crossing thousands of miles of steppe with only instant noodles and the occasional bottle of vodka for company, but we survived and got to Moscow, where they have the most hardcore winos on earth. You know how drunks always hang out around mainline train stations? Well, these made even the scariest Scottish alkies look like perfumed girls' blouses - the smell would make your eyes water from twenty yards away, and the range of facial injuries had to be seen to be believed.
The underground itself was seriously impressive though, and so is the architecture in both cities. We spent our last few days trailing round museums and so on (OK, and 'Irish' pubs), so I won't bore you with all that.

Thank you and goodnight!

PS Oooh - how could I forget our favourite China story when it sums up the whole godforsaken hellhole for us...!? We were travelling from Guilin to Chongqing, which was supposed to take 18 hours, but had lasted 24. The bus driver dropped us on the outskirts of town, telling us we'd have to get a taxi into the centre - we protested that they should drop us at the bus station, but he, and several passengers, said no, taxi ok, taxi ok. You can't argue if you don't speak the language, and we were knackered anyway, so we gave up and got into a taxi. Imagine our surprise when we arrive in the town centre to find... we're still 130 km from Chongqing! As we were the only three people going to Chongqing, they'd obviously decided to make up for lost time by not bothering with it. Genius!

9th AUGUST 2004 - Laos, chaos and pay-offs

Yes, I know how lame that was, but you try rhyming -aos..!

OK: last time I wrote, I was in Northern Thailand, about to cross the border to Laos and travel down the great Mekong river for two days on the world's most uncomfortable boat...

Laos was great, although I'm not really sure why; it just blends into its neighbours in my memory. We saw a wild elephant on the banks of the great grey-green, greasy Mekong, and Luang Prabang was crazily hot but had amazing restaurants, and Mischka's questionable monk fetish reached new heights when she actually got a genuine orange-robed specimen as a pen-friend... um, what else? Oh, we did an excellent side-trip with four girls in a minibus to Phonsavan (in the west) to see the Plain of Jars, which is... well, I'll leave you to work it out.
Despite Laos not being officially involved in the 'Nam War, the Yanks still dropped staggering amounts of bombs in the Phonsavan area, basically because they couldn't be arsed to carry them home. This has resulted in thousands of personal tragedies and a landscape like the surface of the moon. It also turned me into a bit of a ghoul; I was embarrassed to find myself doing a quick limb count of everyone we passed along the road.
Laos' other salient feature is a complete absence of ATMs. Strange, true, but possibly not that interesting (unless you're there and cashless). I just thought you might like to know.

People go on about Vietnam being full of scammers, and their Cambodian neighbours seeem to despise them for this reason, but I really loved Vietnam. It's got a different vibe to the rest of the region. Although they're pretty forward-looking (and Newsweek says this, not just me!), they are also justifiably proud of having kicked America's arse in the war, and they just seem to have a strength and certainty of their own identity that contrasts with the 'roll over for the Western tourists' thing that Thailand has going on. Laos is just very poor and backward, which makes it a lovely place to visit but, sadly, not to live.

Hanoi was quaintly beautiful, with tree-lined, sun-dappled streets and a million billion motorbikes which all honk more or less continually. It was so mental I just couldn't resist hiring a scooter (against the advice of the hotel and the Lonely Planet) and had a lovely day literally playing in the traffic! Sadly, I didn't realise you aren't supposed to leave them out overnight, and woke to find the police had impounded the damn thing and I had to pay a fat bribe to Chief Wiggum's oily-haired Vietnamese double to get it back. Thanks to the almighty pound, though, it only worked out at seven squid. Hurrah!

We just didn't have time to get off the beaten backpacking track, so our next stop was Hoi An, famous for its bespoke clothing. A significant percentage of Next's hardback Directory sales must be to these tailors, as they all have copies and you can just choose whatever you like to have made. Visiting this place with three other girls was a bad idea, as we went into a collective feeding frenzy and staggered out of town three days later having seen nothing except the inside of shops. Oops.

Carrying on south, we did a bit of diving and wallowed in evil-smelling mud in Nha Trang, where I spent an afternoon scooting off alone to a beach up the coast. I rode under massed grey clouds, through paddy fields turned a luminous yellow-green by the late, low sun, past staring peasants in coolie hats and indifferent, head-tossing buffaloes... and returned happy, only slightly sunburnt, and with a profound hatred of bus drivers in general and air horns in particular. It was just beautiful, one of those memories that'll sustain me when I'm back behind a desk, I hope.

We finally got to Saigon, where we only had time to visit the American War Remnants museum and the Vietcong tunnels at Cu Chi. The former used to be called the American War Crimes Museum, and frankly, that was a much more appropriate name. From the highest-ranking people involved (Nixon carrying on the war just because he didn't want to be the first American president to lose one) to the lowest (grinning GIs holding up severed heads for the camera, piles of little fat dead babies after the massacre at My Lai), it was a catalogue of unpunished cruelty and ongoing suffering; the birth deformities still caused by dropped chemicals alone were enough to haunt your dreams.
...OK, I feel a rant coming on, so I'll skip the tunnels as it'll only set me off again... I did skip actually climbing through the tunnels anyway, as the tiny space immediately became too much for me. And this is after they've been widened quite a bit in order to allow what our guide gleefully kept referring to as our 'fat Western arses' through... God knows how the Vietcong didn't all pass out from claustrophobia.

After those two sobering trips, we almost immediately found ourselves in Cambodia, scene of Pol Pot's grand insanity. We visited just one of the many 'killing fields', at Choeung Ek near Phnom Penh, and the prison that supplied them, notorious Tuol Sleng, where terrible tortures were perpetrated.

But it's actually impossible to fully comprehend tragedy on such a huge scale, for me at least. The rows of cracked skulls at Choeung Ek, the rows of living dead staring out of photographs at Tuol Sleng - I couldn't really get my head round it. It was the little details that touch your heart; the young guide telling me he could only work at the Killing Fields for a few days at a time before being overwhelmed by sadness, the cheerful, softly-spoken taxi driver still keeping the little tin that used to hold his family's starvation rice ration, so as never to forget.

Thank god, the final stop was Angkor Wat, a vast ruined city of temples in the forest near the pleasingly-named town of Siem Reap. There were no echoes of past tragedies here, just tumbledown castles and huge stone faces carved into pillars and giant trees growing up through temples where ancient kings once prayed. It reminded me of the Narnia stories, and Atlantis, and Eldorado, and the whole thing was so photogenic that you'd all be advised to invent urgent appointments if I ever mention showing you the pictures.

Finally, it was a mad dash to Bangkok to send loads of stuff home and get ready to fly to Hong Kong. Our last night was a big goodbye to most of our travelling companions and left me with the worst hangover I've had since Christmas Eve, but we made our plane. We also brought along Monica, our little fox-coloured Italian, who made a snap decision to come and see China with us.

So now there's three of us to be bewildered by the language and startled by the flying greenies and repulsed by the stench of public toilets with waist-high partitions and no doors (yes, really). China's going to be a challenge, but I think I've gone on enough already, so I'll let you know how we're doing in a couple of weeks.

Just one last thing (honestly) - I haven't had a chance to email much recently, and may not for a while - it's been a struggle finding Internet access and will likely get worse. So sorry if I owe you a reply... but all too soon I'll have loads of time to reply :o(  - in between looking for jobs, of course!

PS I'm not joking about the greenies. Old and young, male and female - there seems to be an ongoing national competition to see who can hawk up the loudest, fattest green oyster, and charmingly, one of my neighbours at a nearby terminal has just spat out a prize entry. Nice.

23rd JUNE 2004 - ROOOOOOOOOOOO-naaayyy!!!

I think my last despatches left us in Malaysia, about to cross to Thailand. I'm happy to say that apparently the Thai separatists didn't feel that kidnapping two already-quite-pungent English girls would further their cause at all, so any of you that are sick of getting these emails can take it up with them.

Our first couple of weeks in Thailand featured a few clouds on the horizon, literally and figuratively; first torrential rain, then I got my handbag nicked. We started off in Krabi, near Phuket on the west coast. It was surprisingly touristy after Malaysia, which is actually a godsend when you arrive late and tired and all you want is a menu in English and all the amenities within walking distance. The sad part is that with English-speakers everywhere, the locals inevitably get relegated to the periphery of life; taking food orders and giving change, and the smiles are professional rather than spontaneous.

Still, we rediscovered the joys of crappy little mopeds, and spent an entire day out riding with three lads to the nearby beaches, feeling like a chapter of Hell's Angels and sounding like a platoon of hairdryers. The weather was crap and it was coming up to the full moon though, so we headed over to Koh Pha Ngan, off the east coast, for the famous Full Moon Party. We ended up at a resort owned by a complete stoner who distributed spliffs from a Pringles box-full every night, thus ensuring that none of the guests ever left. This got a bit boring, actually, despite the beach and gorgeous weather, so we hired scooters again and, coming home one evening, I stupidly left my handbag in my front basket, so the two men who came up behind me with their lights off only needed to lean over and deftly snatch it before speeding off. I stopped chasing them when I realised I was more likely to crash and die than get my bag back. Still, every cloud... I've bought a much nicer camera in anticipation of the insurance! The most annoying thing is that I lost an excellent video clip of Mischka drunkenly singing along to 'Hey Ya!' on her Walkman, and attempting to dance along while lying on the bed in her nightie.

The Full Moon party itself was rubbish. I assume it gained its reputation in the days before crackdowns by Thai police meant that most people's stimulant of choice is sang som, the local death brew (some relation to whisky, but supposedly hallucinogenic), which is literally sold by the bucket on the street leading down to the beach. The predictable result is Faliraki-style scenes of unattractive chaos, with sunburnt teenagers passing out on the beach and p*ssing in the sea to the accompaniment of standard dance tunes and Euro-pop.

We moved on swiftly to Koh Tao, where I did my advanced scuba diver course and we spent the evenings watching suspiciously recent films at local bars, giggling at the frequently audible laughter from the original cinema audience and the occasional large, moving black area where someone had obviously stood up in front of the video camera. The diving was good, although the obligatory night dive, which I'd been terrified about, was actually quite dull, as you can only see within a small space illuminated by your torch.

Our arrival in polluted, cheerfully chaotic Bangkok more or less coincided with the start of Euro 2004. The first two England games made us wish we hadn't stayed up till 1-bloody-45-AM to watch, the France one for obvious reasons and the second because of an embarrassing episode involving a couple of drunken English boys doing their noisy best to pick a fight, for a good half-hour and to the dismay of all the locals, with a tall Australian who admirably refused to rise. The third match, of course, entirely made up for the previous two! We watched it here in Chiang Mai, (Northern Thailand) in a bar where, sadly, there weren't many English people. Luckily, a large Irish contingent were there to good-naturedly cheer us on, while a lone, dessiccated-looking Scot provided a contrast by sitting in the corner, muttering the standard spiel about not hating England, but... to the largely indifferent people within hearing distance.

We're off to Pai tomorrow, so we decided to go for a massage today, something we've been intending to do for ages. We thought it would be relaxing, so we were rather surprised to be nearly beaten to death! In serious danger of getting the giggles, I desperately avoided Mischka's eye as I was bent agonisingly back, almost double, at one point, and in fact we only just made it out before starting to laugh... shakily. My masseuse was a girl who clearly likes her pies and at one point, when she was kneeling on my back, Mischka swears she heard my ribcage creaking. Still, any aches and pains I had before have disappeared entirely, replaced by new ones and probably a fine set of bruises.

Chiang Mai is old and beautiful, full of wats (temples) like Bangkok, but within a much smaller and more relaxed area. There are orange-robed, shaven-headed monks to stare at on every street, and the wats are so ornate, they could have been designed by Liberace (or Versace, for my younger readers ;o) ). And we've been hiring scooters again...!

That's all from me for the moment. I thought I'd better get this off while I'm still in a good mood, ie before tomorrow's game with Portugal. I hear the weather's good back home, so I hope you're all enjoying it!

19th MAY 2004 - Australasian antics...

We didn't get to see that much of Australia in the end, just three cities, because we were short of time. Syney is lovely, like London but with sun; I stayed with my friends Ness and Sinead and played 5-a-side football with them (excellent!) and drank a lot, and was jealous of their lunchtime-surfing lifestyle.. apart from that, we didn't do a huge amount, although we did go to a play which was chiefly memorable for a nude scene in which a rich, curious, Lady Chatterley-type lady orders her servant to strip... and he did, but... facing away from our side of the stage, goddammit! We waited impatiently for him to turn round, only to be disappointed when he did and it was apparent that the poor man must have been suffering from acute stage fright... 'an acorn sitting on a squash ball' would be a generous description, frankly. ;o)

Moving on swiftly... we didn't have time to do the whole East Coast, so we flew to Cairns, where I did the PADI Open Water scuba dive course over five days while Mischka got through several Isabel Allende novels. The Barrier Reef was fascinating, not as much live coral as I'd have liked but hosts of crazily-coloured fish and I saw a few turtles and even a little shark! It was asleep, and I wanted to go and prod it with a stick, but thought better of it.

Our final stop was Darwin, where we only stayed because we couldn't get a flight out of it for five days, but we hired a camper van and spent them in Kakadu National Park, which was great fun. We saw loads of crocs (they're everywhere, so despite the heat you can't swim anywhere - they ate a German tourist a couple of years ago...) and some wonderful scenery. I often wonder when I look across valleys or whatever, what they'd have looked like a million years ago - well, here it felt as if that's what you were seeing. The camper van was cute and ran very well, our only problem was the mosquitoes and the flies. There was one hideous incident where thought I'd swatted a massive one, only for Mischka to notice that the bastard had not only come alive but - oh god - was squeezing out maggots! This freaked me out so utterly that I was no help as she valiantly got the disgusting thing out of the van, so big-up to her for that one!

After that, we were relieved to get to Singapore, where everything is, well, orderly. Not the most original comment, but it's true, it's the first impression you get. Apart from that, the people are tiny, the traffic is terrible, but orderly compared to elsewhere in Asia, and the food is stunningly good.

We crossed the causeway to Johor Bahru in Malaysia and stayed with Mischka's relatives, who were hospitable to the point of sadism. Even breakfast consisted of at least three curries and was accompanied by cries of 'finish it!!!' whenever we looked like laying down our forks. It was so hot that all we did was eat, sleep and sweat... actually, it was very pleasant, and we could have stayed a lot longer had the prospect of turning into Jabba the Hut not prompted us to leave.

We carried on up the coast via Malacca to Kuala Lumpur, more relatives, and the kind of sweltering, enervating heat that falls on you like a wet towel the moment you venture outside. Two days of that was enough, despite the family being absolutely lovely, and we came to Penang, from where we took a side trip to Sumatra, Indonesia to see orang-utans in the wild. Indonesia is poor in the same chaotic, friendly way as South America is, with the most suicidal rickshaw drivers on the planet (surely!), and had the same lovely, friendly vibe you so often get in these places. There was a huge flood at the orang-utan sanctuary last year, which destroyed all the infrastructure plus everyone's homes and belongings, and you could really see how they'd helped each other get back on their feet without even thinking about what was whose.

The orang-utans were great; seeing things in the wild is often a bit disappointing because you can't get anywhere near them, but these were feet away from us so we could see just how ugly the buggers were! The babies, clinging on all over their mothers, were adorable but some of the older males were so hideous, they even sparked a stampede among their own females when they came near!

Right now we're back in Penang, heading across to the Perhentian Islands tomorrow to do a bit of diving and snorkelling, then on to Thailand, hopefully avoiding falling into the clutches of mad Muslim separatists. Oh, I turned 29 the other day, but it's just too hot to go crazy, so we had a few beers and that was it - the less said about being nearly 30 the better, I think...!