It’s been a bit of a roller coaster ride since getting to Brisbane. I guess the most significant thing for me has been getting to know the workings of the Royal Brisbane Hospital pretty well. I’m doing fine now and it wasn’t too serious but for a while there the hospital was the bit of Brisbane I was most familiar with.

My visa situation entitles me to medicare which I appreciate enormously and the health care was second-to-none. I also had lots of caring medical professionals around me when I wasn’t at the hospital, which was fortuitous. Sam and Nicky, two good friends, are both doctors. Sam’s, dad, also a doctor, was on the phone to me regularly. Mireia, a nurse from Barcelona, moved into our block of flats at the same time we did. They helped me to know the right questions to ask the doctors and I’m very grateful to them.

Six weeks on from surgery I’m on the mend and almost back to normal.

Other than the excellent health care here in Australia, the main things I appreciate about being settled in one place are cooking our own food and having plants to water. We have 2 little balconies and they are slowly being filled with plants. I’ve also been staggered by the beautiful trees, plants and flowers that grow everywhere in the city. It’s an absolute joy to walk down the street. Brisbane is a really green place with lots of space given over to parkland. You’re never too far from some greenery.

It’s been just great to get to know Pete’s friends and family a bit better. We can now go to Sunday evening dinners with Tom, Jack, Annie, Dave and Geoff, instead of Pete calling them from England for a chat.

When we arrived in Brisbane it was hot hot hot, but it’s starting to cool down now. The peaches and plums are past their best, though I enjoyed them thoroughly while they were with us. I’m not sure I’ll ever get used to March, April and May being autumn. Even at that the leaves don’t really fall off the trees, They’re green all year ’round I think.

I’m happy here and making the most of it I reckon, but I miss everybody back in Europe – my family and friends in Ireland and friends in England. I carry you all around with me all the time, so, infact, you never feel too far away.

It’s almost a year ago to the day since we left Leeds and Dublin on our trip. It’s been a fantastic year. We didn’t kill each other and in fact we’re closer than ever – quite an achievement if you ask me. Now we’re ready for more adventures…

We have a spare room amid Brisbane loveliness for anybody who can come visit. We’d love to see you!!!

So, we’re at our final destination before hitting Brisbane. Part of me will be sad to stop traveling. But part of me is really ready to settle in one place for a while. I’m also really keen to get stuck into a job – not really looking forward to actually hunting for one though.

Anyway, back to Bali. I love the way lots of people in Bali put small offerings in front of the buildings and shops in the morning and the evening. They place things like flowers, incense and sometimes sweets and rice in a little plate made of banana leaves. I also like the way the statues in the temples are covered with sarongs and all the temples are built out of beautiful orange coloured bricks. It makes for a lot of beauty. I imagine 30 years ago or so, before Bali became super touristy, it was a magical place. It seemed busy with tourists to me, compared to Java and Sumatra, but the Balinese themselves complained that the numbers of tourists were so low.

We’ve been in three destinations here in Bali. First off, we stopped for a few days in Lovena, on the north coast. From Lovena we went to Ubud in the centre of the island. While there we visited a couple of beautiful art galleries. One in particular was set in a big mansion. This housed the work of the Spanish/Filipino artist Antonio Blanco, who settled in Bali during the 1950s. The gardens which surrounded the gallery had some beautiful tropical birds. We even saw a toucan there.

From Ubud we headed to Sanur in the southeast and are spending a few days just lazing on the beach. A happy ending to a fantastic journey.

I’ve been looking forward to visiting Java again and showing Pete around a bit. I lived in Jakarta for 5 months in 2000 and have visited a few times since. It’s not a city that’s easy to love, but it was our first stop in Java. We stayed with my friend Jacky and it was just great to see her again too. We even cooked food in her kitchen which was a treat because we’ve not cooked for so long.

Jakarta had a real buzz about it and for me, not having visited for a few years, I thought that things seemed to be on the up. One of the noticeable improvements is the new busway system – modeled on a system in Bogota, Columbia according to Jacky. We tried it out and took a trip to the old colonial centre of town, Kota. It worked pretty well and the nice new silver buses were air conditioned and flew past the traffic in their (mostly) dedicated bus lane – other traffic’s not supposed to use the bus lane, but some of it can’t resist. We also visited my favourite bit of the city, Sunda Kelapa. This is the old port and I don’t think all that much has changed here for a hundred years or more. On the day we visited there were lots of big wooden ships from Sulawesi being loaded with bags of cement – all the loading done by hand. It was amazing to watch the men walk up the gangplanks to the boats high above with bare feet and bags of cement over their shoulders – all done in the sweltering heat of the city.

Our next stop in java, after a 10 hour train journey, was the cultural capital of Yogyakarta. We made a trip to Prambanan (the most important Hindu temple in Java) and other ‘hidden temples’ nearby. We were shown around by Gale and Wiwit, two lovely friendly guides.

Gale told us lots of stories from the Hindu tradition – about Siva, Ganesha and especially Siva’s protector, Kala. We saw his image everywhere. Kala was a creature who in order to show loyalty to the god, Siva, ate himself – all of himself except his head. After proving his loyalty Siva allowed him to be his protector and so many of the temples we visited had Kala over the main door, protecting Siva and bringing doom to those who came with evil intentions.

We learned more about Indonesia’s religious traditions in Surabaya – our last stop in Java. We went there so that I could visit a Chinese mosque which is built in the shape of a Chinese temple. The Chinese in Indonesia are mostly not Muslim, so this was a special place. The ethnic Chinese in this area are descended from the Hui who have practiced Islam in China for centuries. The people who work at the mosque were super friendly and we even got to meet the Imam. The mosque is called Mosque Cheng Hoo after the Chinese Muslim man, Cheng Hoo who traveled to Southeast Asia in the fourteenth century and is said to have been among those who introduced Islam to Indonesia. There’s a relief of Cheng Hoo painted onto a wall of the mosque with Cheng Hoo in a boat and the hills of China in the background.

We also visited another mosque in Surabaya, mosque Ampel. Sunan Ampel was one of the holy men who originally brought Islam to Indonesia and he is buried at the mosque. We weren’t allowed into the mosque or into the tomb area, but the people at the mosque very kindly showed us around and told us a little bit about the history. Really interesting stuff.

After a long wait in Nias for a boat, then a long overnight boat ride and a ten hour bus ride the next day, we eventually got to lake Maninjau. The drive to the lake was stunning. There were 40 hairpin bends on the descent down to the water and the lake shimmered and sparkled like silver. Once we got there – walking through the rice paddies to the lakeside – we basically didn’t move very much for a few days. We had a nice little bungalow and we’d just have to walk a metre or so to the little restaurant for some delicious food. A lovely English couple called Rod and Helen were also staying there so we’d sit chatting to them for hours drinking tea. The local Imam also came by for chats – sometimes with his friend, an english teacher. It was lovely to sit still for a while after all the moving.

From lake Maninjau we had a shortish journey to Padang. After saying that Chinese culture in Indonesia was pretty much lost, we found a lovely Chinese temple in the city. There were lots of old painted tiles on the inside walls and a brightly coloured mural outside featuring Taoist gods.

After a few days in Padang we had a whopping 30 hour bus journey to Bandarlampung right down in the south of Sumatra. We took a super executive bus, the best we could get. It had nice big seats and wasn’t too smoky. I managed to sleep a bit and we stopped for food from time to time. It wasn’t as bad as we feared it might be.

In Bandarlampung we’ve treated ourselves to a swanky-for-us hotel with hot water, cable tv and buffet breakfast. Tomorrow we’re on the road again, heading to Jakarta.

After our boat trip from Malaysia, our first port of call in Indonesia was Medan – a city that gets not one iota of a positive comment from any guidebook we’ve read or any tourist we’ve met. It wasn’t all that bad though. So, there are big holes in the middle of the footpaths with murky, sludgy water below, rubbish littering the streets and lots smelly, noisy traffic, but we ate yummy food, went bowling, the people were really friendly and we managed to meet up with Pete’s good friend Don, who came over for a short holiday from Brisbane.

I was interested in trying to find Medan’s Chinatown. I’d heard that there was quite a big ethnic Chinese population in Medan and in the past I’ve done some research on the ethnic Chinese in Jakarta. We found the streets that were supposed to be Chinatown, but it didn’t look like Chinatowns you’d find in other cities in the world. There were a few tattered Chinese lanterns hanging outside the odd building and I saw one tiny alter with incense burning in it – otherwise the streets looked like any other street in the city.

Chinese culture has been repressed – pretty much destroyed – in Indonesia. It’s still written on the customs declaration forms that you’re not allowed to bring Chinese language materials into the country, even though that law was softened years ago. Indonesia sadly lacks the bustling, interesting Chinatowns of Malaka, Georgetown or Bangkok and a lot of the history of the Chinese here has been lost.

From Medan we headed to Lake Toba, a crystal clear volcanic lake with the island of Samosir sitting in the middle. This is an absolutely beautiful place, well set up for tourism, but unfortunately for the people who live there, hardly any tourists. We had a resort to ourselves, with rooms right on the lake front and we paid only 6 US dollars a night for the privilege. Every restaurant we went into had no customers, but the food was always amazing. The people of Samosir were friendly and grateful for the business. Apparently, before the economic collapse in the late nineties, tourist numbers were high. Now, with government warnings not to visit Indonesia, among other reasons I’m sure, tourist numbers are down and the people are suffering.

Our third destination in North Sumatra was Nias island. A place which has also suffered catastrophe. The 2004 tsunami hit here and in 2005 an earthquake destroyed the main city of Gunung Sitoli. Nias had a harsher atmosphere than lake Toba: the people were pushier, smiled less. Maybe they’ve suffered too much or maybe it’s the surfers that give it the tougher edge.

Me and Pete sat in hammocks or on the beach while Don surfed and in the evening we ate our fill – including one night when we ate a barbecued tuna fish almost the size of me – well the size of Pete’s forearm at least.

Georgetown – the provincial capital of Penang – has lots of gorgeous old buildings and a lot of them are in great condition. The city has just recently won UNESCO world heritage status, which it seems very happy about. We were lucky enough to stay in one of these fine old buildings. While wandering down the street with our back-packs on, feeling the afternoon heat and looking in need of a place to stay, a couple of people pointed us in the direction of the Old Penang Guesthouse. It had lovely tiled and wood floors, high ceilings with big old fans and shuttered windows.

Another amazing building (this one we just visited) was Leong San Tong Khoo Kongsi (a clan house). It was used as a temple and meeting hall for Chinese people of the family name Khoo. It’s the most ornately decorated temple I’ve ever seen. There are elaborate sculptures on the roof and every conceivable surface is decorated with lions and dragons and all sorts of symbols of success and money and happiness.

We also had a tour around a mansion built by a very successful Chinese businessman called Cheong Fatt Tze. The house was painted indigo – a fashionable colour in the nineteenth century, when the house was built. We learned a little bit about all the Chinese symbolism in the house (and there was lots of it) from stained glass windows in a pineapple design – because the Chinese world for pineapple also sounds like the word for happiness – to 28 steps in the staircase because this was considered an auspicious number. Another nice sign of the Chinese in the city of Georgetown were the terraces of shop-houses, still functioning to this day.

As well as Chinese there are of course Malay and Indian communities in Penang. It was Deepavali so there was lots of activity in Little India. We spent a lot of time eating fantastic food in this part of town, dancing to some fab music, and resisting buying beautiful saris in the many clothes shops. As well as shops there were also stalls set up along the streets selling incense and many kinds of sweets and cakes for the festivities.

We got out of the city for a few days too and headed to the national park and the beach on the west of the island. On our first day there we spent an hour or two walking through the national park to get to a gorgeous, quiet beach where we spent the day dipping in and out of the water. On our second day it rained all day, so we went to the butterfly park and saw some colourful butterflies. It was amazing to see them so up close. We also saw incredible camouflaged insects, such as the butterfly that looks like a leaf when it closes its wings, the toad that looks like dead leaves all joined together to make a toad, and two leaf insects, one looks like a green leaf and another looks like a dead leaf. We went back to the beach on our final day and then back to Georgetown for some more yummy food.

It has been great to be back in Bangkok. Lucky for us, we’ve both been here before, so we didn’t rush around trying to see all the sites. I enjoyed just wandering around the streets and trying out the fantastic food. We had the best Pad Thai I’ve ever tasted the first night we arrived. We were tired so just went to a simple, cheap place near where we were staying. There was some lime to squeeze over the noodles, chopped peanuts to sprinkle and some chili oil to dribble (as Nigel Slater would say).

Another great food experience we had was in Little Arabia. We went there in search of food one evening. The place had a great buzz about it with night markets, brightly lit restaurants and bars and men dressed in flowing Arabian attire around and about. We choose a quiet Lebanese restaurant and had fantastic falafel, creamy humus (almost the best humus I’ve ever had, but not as good as my friend Julie’s), smokey baba ganoush and tangy tabbouleh, all scooped up with big slabs of pita bread.

This is a bit of a strange thing to do in Bangkok perhaps. I’d never been to Khao San road before – the part of town where backpackers invariably stay – so we took a trip to the area. The place was full of westerners at 3 in the afternoon. People were sitting in bars drinking beer, some deep in conversation and some just watching the world go by. There were Nepalese men walking up and down trying to get tourists into the tailoring shops they worked at and women dressed in minority head-gear were selling cheap jewelery. Also in the mix there were street stalls selling all manner of food from noodle soup to satay. We had a drink and watched all the activity.

I’m sure I’ll be back to Bangkok because my friend Tam is moving back here very soon. Unfortunately we just missed each other this time. I look forward to coming back again.

I’m still reading a book about recent Cambodian history and although I’m learning a little about the country, it’s all a bit doom and gloom. One thing that comes through the pages loud and clear is how rubbish the governments here have been. They don’t seem to have cared about the ordinary people for a very long time.

I was thinking about this as we were in a tuk-tuk being taken to see some Battambang sites along a bone-rattling ‘road’. It was the worst example of a road I’ve ever seen. The tuk-tuk driver commented on the state of it too. He said that he didn’t know what his government was doing, though he didn’t show any signs of anger or frustration. Maybe he was feeling frustrated inside but didn’t want to show it to us. This is the second-largest city in Cambodia – with such bad roads it’s very hard to believe.

Another sad thing is the begging which continued in Battambang, but less intensely than Siem Reap or Phnom Penh. When I first arrived in Cambodia I wanted to give money to everybody. Now I find myself getting tied up in knots over it. I don’t want to encourage people to stay begging, On the other hand, when you’re faced with people who seem so poor – many are missing limbs so I imagine it’s hard for them to find work – they’re impossible to ignore. Like with the roads, the government just doesn’t seem to be doing very much to help the people who seem to need help most.

Despite the terrible poverty and the ‘roads’, it has been interesting to spend some time in an ordinary Cambodian town, and it’s not all miserable. We’ve eaten some yummy Khmer curries, visited a few of the local temples, and wandered along by the river watching people doing aerobics and children having a great time at a funfair. At the moment food stalls are being set up along the river and people are getting ready for a water festival which starts tomorrow. Apparently there will be canoe races up and down the river for the next few days. Unfortunately we’re leaving so won’t be around for the festivities.

When we got off the bus in Siem Riep we were mobbed by a mob of tuk-tuk drivers shouting for us to go with them to the centre of town. We chose a quiet guy who was sitting in his tuk-tuk and not shouting in our faces. His name was Banlong. We liked him and so for the next couple of days we got him to take us around the temples of Angkor Wat.

I had a few favourites from all the places we visited in Angkor. The riverbed carvings at Kbal Spean were stunning. They’re about 35km from the main temple of Angkor Wat – that gives you an idea of how big the place is. Kbal Spean is called ‘the river of a thousand lingas’. Lingas are phallic symbols of the god Siva and were considered sacred during the Khmer Empire. They also related to the power of the king because the kings at that time were considered god-kings, human manifestations of Siva. There are also carvings of Vishnu and other Hindu gods. All of the carvings along the riverbed were made around the 11th or 12th centuries. I’d never seen anything like them before. We had to walk and climb for about a half-hour through the jungle to get to them.

Another favourite was the walled city of Angkor Thom. It was built in the 12th and 13th centuries and was the capital of the Khmer Empire. The gates and some of the buildings have faces built into the stone. Some people say that the faces are of King Jayavarman VII who started the building of the city. Others say they represent Buddha. Yet others say the faces are both – that god-king thing again.

Outside every temple there are hordes of people selling things. You certainly wouldn’t starve or die of thirst at Angkor. As well as food and drink there are children selling everything from books and bracelets to postcards and wooden flutes. We tend to not buy things from the children though because we don’t want to encourage them to miss school in order to make money. It can be really difficult deciding who to give money to – the poverty and desperation that you see around the temples is terrible. As tourists we don’t know anything about the people or their lives and giving some money to some people in a random sort of way seems very inadequate really. Pete is great at chatting and joking around with the kids – they often have really good English and they generally know how to play rocks paper scissors. One group of children could count to 10 in loads of different languages, including Irish! Just amazing.

I’ve been a bit nervous about visiting Cambodia. I don’t know that much about the country’s history but I had heard about the Killing Fields and the land mines that still litter the country and continue to maim people.

A book I’m reading at the moment also paints a grim picture. The book is called Cambodia: Report from a Stricken Land and I bought it from a land-mine victim who was selling them at the central market in Phnom Penh. It was published in 1998, so is ten years or so out of date, but it paints a dreadful picture of a paltry health-care system, little schooling for the population and disastrous governance from power-hungry, money-hungry leaders who care very little for the people of the country.

Despite the tragic history and the poverty, a Canadian man we met, who has been living in Phnom Penh for the past 5 years, told us that the city is a dynamic place to be at the moment. The economy is developing fast, tourists are on the increase and international organisations are putting a lot of money into Cambodia. I hope that at least some of the money gets to the people who really need it.

Sitting in elegant grandeur in stark contrast to the surrounding poverty is the Royal Palace which dominates the skyline along the river and is where King Sihamoni now lives. We visited a pagoda in the palace with a silver floor, a solid emerald Buddha and a solid gold Buddha covered in diamonds. There was also a throne room with more golden statues of kings and queens past and golden thrones for them to sit on.

However, the place that totally dominated my visit to Phnom Penh was the Tuol Sleng Museum. It started out as a school but between 1976 and 1979 it was used as a prison and torture place by the Khmer Rouge. The minute you step off the busy, bustling street and through the gates the atmosphere changes and you can feel the grimness and misery of the place. The buildings seem to have been left in a similar state to when it was a prison. On the lower floors there are rooms with a single wire bed and a gruesome photo on the wall depicting an unfortunate person who was a prisoner there. On other floors there are small cells where prisoners were also kept.

The most extraordinary thing about the place are the photos of the people who were prisoners. There is room after room of photographs, some people looking scared, some smiling a little, some with there hands tied behind their backs and some with cuts and bruises on their faces. Wandering through the looking at all these photographs you know that out of the 16,000 or so people who were imprisoned here there were only 12 known survivors.

The Khmer Rouge considered the people who ended up in this gruesome place to be the most dangerous people to the regime – people who supported the previous regime, Khmer Rouge supporters who turned on the organisation and class enemies such as wealthy people and intellectuals. Actually they included children, people who had been framed and ordinary people who were in the wrong place at the wrong time. It is hard to understand how people could be so unspeakably cruel to each other. I imagine the Cambodians are also still coping with that question.