The Drifters

The purpose of this blog was to keep our friends and family updated on our whereabouts. Halfway through, I unexplainably (to me) stopped making the effort. I hate unfinished business and will now continue, and pretend nothing happened.

Fortunately we could continue by our favourite mode of transport, traveling further south, to Sydney in New South Wales.

By European standards, the buildings in Australia could almost be referred to as contemporary. This obviously does not go for its native culture and art, with rock paintings potentially dating  50 000 years according to current research. This beautiful art deco building might not be that old, not even a centenarian (Kirk Douglas is!), but is nevertheless impressive.

The art deco splendour is mixed with older terraced houses with filigree ornaments on breezy, leafy streets, giving it a flirty southern belle atmosphere.

Other buildings might draw one’s mind to the wild west or gold rush era.

The most famous building of them all is undoubtedly the iconic opera house. The last time I was in Sydney, I did not get its glory, but this time I appreciated the 60’s sci-fi connotations. Unfortunately, there were no tickets that we could afford, but next time we come to Sydney I hope our budget is less stringent. Admiring natural wonders is fortunately free, so we left for the Blue Mountains for a few days.

They surely do look blue, whether it simply is because of the Rayleigh scattering effect or if the vapoured Eucalyptus oil contributes to its haze – some say it does – but I am not sure how evidence-based that is.

What I do, however, know is that the mountains are filled with beautiful silver hued eucalyptus trees. Something that I strongly associate with my childhood in Uruguay, where it isn’t a native species, but was introduced roughly a century ago.

And and abundance of curiously cocky cockatoos!

I am certainly not cocky when hiking in Australia. I make fun of Joen and his snake phobia, but in New South Wales they have the deadly funnel-web spider, that can bite through boots!!! A spider that can chew through boots!!! I carried a stick for protection and was always ready for an attack. Oh, the twisted mind of an arachnophobic!

Needless to say, Joen was none to happy about the prospects of encountering a brown snake. He actually saw a coastal taipan on the gold coast, one of the deadliest snakes in the world, and John nearly stepped on it!

There is a Darwin walk in the blue mountains, in an area that he explored during the famous Beagle expedition. It felt grand to walk in the footsteps of my hero, and we took special care to examine the nature in detail.

 

 

Back to traveling in style. Twenty-four hours later I was reunited with one of my favourite people on the planet…

…Tuva!!!! One of my very best friends for the past 24 years. Fourteen years ago we traveled to Australia together and she got left behind 🙁

She ended up marrying John (it doesn’t get more Australian than this, beer and bbq), which resulted in…

…this one! Adorable little Myles and subsequently also…

…this one! Tuva and John named him Morris but he’s not having it, he only listens to Robin, since he is Batman’s sidekick.

I take it back, it actually gets more Australian than John drinking beer at the bbq. Close to their house you can go kangaroo and…

…koala spotting!!! Doesn’t he look adorably melancholic or maybe buddhistic?

Then there is surfer spotting…

…beach walking…

…and hiking behind waterfalls in subtropical rainforests. Tuva surely got everything Australian covered.

They spoilt us rotten with wine, cheese, beer, bbq, Swedish licorice (!) and heaps of fantastic food.

But best of all was to just hang out and stay up talking all night long. The highlight of the trip! Miss you <3

We also had the pleasure to meet up with our dear friend Christina and her adorable mini-me Digby. She came all the way from Bundaberg, several hours drive up the coast. We first met while camel trekking in India 13 years ago and has kept in touch ever since. She has visited us in Stockholm and we have met up in the UK several times. She now took us around her former hoods in Brisbane, where we visited independent book shops and looked at beautiful old Queensland houses, she surely knows what we like!

Unfortunately it is difficult to get a boat over to Australia so, again, we had to resort to flying. Very uncivilized.

We flew to Cairns and then took the boat to Green Island, smack in the middle of the Great Barrier Reef.

And were greeted by this fella… 

…and a ridiculous amount of aquarium looking fish.

Naturally, we went snorkeling. It is like a magnificent colour explosion, fireworks and kaleidoscopes under the surface. We saw sharks, turtles, snakes (!), clown and parrot fishes, rays flying out of the water and a multitude of other surreal looking corals and fish.

During the day the island is busy with day trippers. There is one hotel and only the few remaining hotel guests are allowed in the evening, making it a Crusoe-esque experience.

It took about 30 minutes to walk around the whole island.

Joen used to think sunsets were banal. Luckily he has now grown out of his emo stage and rather enjoys them, especially these 80’s looking paradise poster types.

We were a bit tired of traveling so after Christopher left we rented a beautiful teak house in Ubud, surrounded by volcanoes, palm trees…

…and rice fields.

We stayed for a month, reading an obscene amount of books, studying…

…and writing all day long on the veranda.

We had occasional social interactions though, such as the baptism (Balinese equivalent) of Ketut’s (our landlady, to the left in white) nephew.

Here is the lovely little family, Ilu is Ketut’s half sister. They were so welcoming and sweet, me and Ilu were on hair braiding terms within minutes.

Joen dressed up for the occasion, and was much appreciated by the ladies I might add.

But the best thing about this little travel break is that we got to hang out with these two everyday!!!! Ping ping to the left and her daughter Siti to the right. Ping ping might not be the prettiest girl on the block, but has a heart of gold and laughed euphorically with her whole face every morning we got up. Siti has a terrific sense of humour, loves to dance and eats like a wolf. I could almost give up nomadism to be able to hang out with them.

And here is our VIP date! We met up in Bali and traveled over the Wallace line , over to the much more undisturbed beaches of Lombok. We were so happy to see our Christopher (or Chrille as we call him), although it doesn’t really show here (it is the only photo of the two of us). We had not seen Chrille in 3 months, Bali in 7 years and Lombok in 13 years. We have many fond memories of them all.

We spent lazy days on Selong Belanak, reading, walking…

…watching the sunsets…

…and the lovely water buffaloes walking by twice a day. I love water buffaloes!!! We rarely holiday at beaches (boring), but always make an exception when it comes to Indonesia. Staying at an excellent hotel is absolutely vital if we are to endure a beach venture though, which we succeeded in marvellously at Sempiak villas.

The jungle was obviously calling us, so we then traveled up to the rainforests in northern Lombok. I pretended to walk in Alfred Russel Wallace’s footsteps. A remarkable man, who co-discovered natural selection and of course the Wallace line.

We had a magnificent jungle view by the foot of Gunung Rinjani, the second highest of Indonesia’s many volcanoes…

…and experienced the most fabulous monsoon rains, we all love weather with a bit of character.

We naturally needed to climb the volcano, it was highly recommended to do it in two days, but since we bloody hate camping we decided to do it in one day. It started of beautifully through thick and misty jungle…

… and savannah looking nature the higher up we got…

..until we reached the rim of the crater. The lake is the floor of an inactive gigantic volcano, with a smaller active volcano growing (yes, they grow!) inside it. There had recently been an eruption and smoke was still coming out of it. Such fascinating things, volcanoes! We were absolutely exhausted for days after this excruciating hike, after a few days recuperating in Ubud (Bali) Chrille flew back home to the cold north.

After our serpentine adventures we returned to the concrete jungle. Selva de cemento (concrete jungle in Spanish) was my first encounter with a soap opera by the way, set in Brazil and dubbed in Spanish. Back in the 80’s, when we lived in Uruguay, it was all the rage.

There is something soap opera-ish about the constellation and expressions of these mannequins. 

Miami Vice? End of cineastic references. This art deco building reminds me a lot of Miami though; I never really craved for Miami but was amazed by its beauty when we visited. I like places that look like other places and paintings that look like other paintings.

Little India. Obviously looking a bit like India, at least regarding its colour scale and residents. Most Indian immigrants (75% Tamil) came here during the British colonisation.

Helpful advise given back in the colonial days.

Speaking of colonial, I thought this was a catchword against Portuguese colonisation in 1515 (it was actually in 1511) but after some extensive googling I realised it had to do with a protest against increased taxes on 1st of May 2015, far less romantic. Bersatulah kaum pekerja means “Workers of the world, unite”, I found it a bit surprising with communists protesting against taxes, but then again maybe not so much, considering Malaysia has a corruption index of 50.

Less political subject?

We then left Kuala Lumpur for the city of Singapore.

I momentarily morphed into my alter ego Lady Caroline (missing my Queen Sari), having afternoon tea at Raffles, pearls and everything.

Joen graced its corridors.

We ruined ourselves at several roof top bars, this is the highest in the world at 282 meters. Stunning view but dreadful music, some lounge-house hybrid shit, imagine if they played opera instead!

Singapore feels a bit like a gigantic shopping mall, very put together, but we managed to find us some Gotham.

Some drinks later, Joen was very eager to show me how the interior designer visualized the hotel carpet.

After 20,500 kilometers by land, all the way from Stockholm to Singapore, we had to succumb to flying. Very unromantic, but we needed to be in time for a very important date in Bali. The longest we have traveled by land previous to this was from Hanoi to Kiev at 12,500 km.

We arrived afloat to our next jungle destination, Taman Negara. It is one of the oldest rainforests in the world, estimated to be 130 million years old.

It is a national park with minimal settlement, mainly consisting of floating houses which gives it a little bit of a verdant  “Wild West” (wild east?) atmosphere.

River cowboys playing chess.

We stayed in a cabin by the edge of the jungle and woke up to this view in the morning. One morning I was astonished to see a small hand withdrawing our window curtains, followed by a thievish bearded face… startled I screamed and woke up Joen, who immediately thought a snake was in the room and made a hell of a debacle of terrified shouts and rumbles. I took him hours to recover and calm down.

The simian culprit to the right, we called him Fagin. Monkeys are such little muggers and apparently do not hesitate from breaking and entering.

We went for a hike but were sadly stopped by the abundance of leeches, I have never experienced anything like it. There are not many things that will drive me out of the jungle but we would have become anaemic had we continued. To my deep distress, I had to admit that I am not much of a Mungo Park after all.

Luckily, the leeches were out of reach in the boat that we chartered to go up the river.

It was such a “Heart of Darkness” kind of setting, and I could safely go back pretending I was an 18th century explorer again.

They dropped us off at a leech free area (!!!) and we hiked to some beautiful rapids where I, very bravely I might add, jumped into very dark waters.

Joen always walks with a large stick, not for support but for snake protection. I tend to tease him about this, but we actually ran into a very poisonous looking snake, winding across our path.

We didn’t have the presence of mind to photograph it, but I thought it looked like the green/black one in the top right corner, whereas Joen thought it looked like the more fluorescent green one to the left. This probably demonstrates the difficulty for witnesses to identify criminals in police lineups pretty well.

Joen could not wait to pursue our Malaysian explorations. Next up was the misty Cameron Highlands.

I always wanted to stay in an English faux Tudor house in Malaysia, so we did. The Smokehouse Hotel was an orgy in anglicism, complete with a cluttered pub, floral patterns, Sunday roast and afternoon tea. Unfortunately, the quality of the food was just as authentic. Like porn for an anglophile. Nowadays, many English B&Bs have left the lovely traditional Fawlty Towers look and morphed into some shabby chic style, which is such a shame.

The garden was equally magnificent, filled to the brim with orchids and tropical wonders.

I was very eager to visit the tea plantations, for some reason I’ve never managed to visit one, neither in China or India. I instantly had a bit of a chew on the tea leaves which was a big disappointment, it tastes just like any generic leaf. I knew this of course since I’ve read several books about tea, but academia ruined me a long time ago and I foolishly rarely believe in anything.

The little white dots are tea leaf pickers, it’s not done by hand though, but with some kind of machine.

Another mock Tudor mansion!

We had the most amazing jungle hike! In most jungles I’ve visited you have to have a guide (often forced to) but there are really good paths here so we had the jungle all to ourselves and did not run into a single person for several hours, it was close to a religious experience. The rains were magnificent, I just love monsoon rains, and although it was pouring down fiercely we hardly got wet because of the dense foliage.

Joen checking for leeches after crossing some streams, luckily not a single one in this area. I am always busy checking for orchids, they tend to be very shy in the jungle, most often growing high up in the trees but we found some lovely bright yellow ones (unfortunately no photos taken since it was raining so much)!

If you have visited Bangkok you most likely know about Jim Thompson. He was a famous art collector and successful silk merchant who mysteriously disappeared almost 50 years ago when on holiday in Cameron Highlands. He was last seen at his friend’s house, the Moonlight cottage (seen above) from where he vanished without a trace. Conspiracy theories have naturally flourished ever since.

We had a vain snoop in the jungle in the vicinity of the house. You can probably imagine how much that beautiful mist contributed to the myth, creating the most eerie atmosphere.

Unsurprisingly, we did not find any further clues but continued discussing different theories curled up in Chesterfields by the fireplace all night long. Well, until 11 pm anyway, they took British traditions very seriously at The Smokehouse. Very “Midsomer Murders”.

After our perpetual Bangkokian feeding frenzy the train brought us into the palm fringed sunset, destined for…

…Georgetown, Malaysia, where we woke up the next morning.

Georgetown is a stunning colonial haven with UNESCO status on the island of Penang.

I imagined its colour scale being more like a mix between Indian and Chinese influences (the majority of Georgetown’s inhabitants) rather than typical colonial…

…with beautiful dirty marsipan shades. I liked the thought of that anyway, since I feel a bit guilty about being so fond of colonial aesthetics. I guess it’s not politically correct enough, at least not for someone from Stockholm.

Anyway, if you feel really, really guilty about it, you could always wander off to the christian cemetery and spit on the graves of the former colonial masters (kidding!!!). I, however, did not feel that guilty but was more intrigued by the cause of death of some, imagine if you could be let off that easily about a diagnosis today. I’m tempted to just diagnose all my tricky cases with jungle fever, it would make my life so easy. And apparently some just expire, even easier!

Georgetown is famous for its abundance of street art.

But I was more impressed by some of the eerie derelict buildings, I just love when nature invades any constructions made by man, like some floral vindictiveness against civilisation. Oh dear, I better go eat before I come up with a full science fiction novel.

Sunset boarding on the train to one of our all time favourite cities, Bangkok, where we have been more times than we can count. We had not been for four years and were so full of anticipation that we had trouble sleeping, like children the night before Christmas.

Many people don’t like Bangkok and only see it as a gateway to the islands; it is chaotic, noisy, dirty, smelly, greedy, debauched and absolutely wonderful. We did not care that much for it the first time either, but have grown to love it over the years. There are few cities that provide such sharp contrasts.

You can sip drinks on top of a skyscraper with eternal views one moment (Moon Bar at the Banyan Tree is our favourite)…

…and drink cheap beer on plastic chairs in a cheerful soi just minutes away.

The city is too spread out to be able to determine a proper downtown or central area, but we usually spend a few days around where there are lots of tall buildings, not being faithful to a particular area (Sukhumvit this time).

But we always spend most of the time in the old town, Banglamphu. It is like a village within the city with small markets, temples with chanting monks, children and chickens running around and people’s living rooms dropping out on the streets. All moments away from restaurants and bars, some industrially trendy (is that still trendy btw?) and some with fluorescent lights and plastic chairs (probably more trendy in the anti sense). It just doesn’t get more diverse than that.

We stayed in Bangkok for three weeks and since we were a bit deprived of city life, we spent way too much money on restaurants. There is just too much choice for people like us, with more appetite than sense. Not to mention those breakfast buffets that has ruined not our economy as much as our waistlines.

We also spent a fair amount of time at our favourite bar, fortunately and unfortunately next to a khlong, meaning it’s pretty but mosquito infested. Our favourite Thai restaurant is called Hemlock on Thanon Phra Athit by the way. And we had the best Neapolitan pizza ever at Peppina, with fresh black truffles and taleggio, an unimaginable bloody umami explosion. And yes, we have been to all those famous pizza places in Napoli.

We also had dinner at the stunning, time-capsulated Hotel Atlanta, which has looked pretty much the same since 1954.

When we took time off eating, we looked at pretty buildings. This is the former East Asiatic Company, next to the Oriental hotel where we usually have afternoon tea, which I suppose would be categorised as eating.

We love the Jim Thompson house museum, it must be one one the prettiest houses in SEA, but it can be pretty crowded. Another museum which is almost always empty (is there anything better than an empty museum?) is the Bangkokian museum, a beautiful teak building from the 20’s.

It was inhabited by a doctor and these beautiful old books made my medicine heart somersault, especially the tropical disease one. When I don’t eat, hike and frequent museums I actually spend a lot of time studying tropical diseases.  I’m currently doing a distance masters degree in infectious diseases at The University of Edinburgh, it focuses on international health, including both animals and humans.

We also visited some art galleries, which succeeded in making sense, which is a bit of an accomplishment when it comes to modern art. There is usually an old school TV/video with some incomprehensible “message” standing in a corner, we always compete on who finds it first. I remember one exhibition, I think at the Whitechapel gallery, where the obligatory TV showed mouths flashing by accompanied by the sound of dripping water, no further explanation was given. Stuff like that is difficult for a scientific and logical mind like mine.

Our stay coincided with the highly worshipped and loved king’s birthday, the festivities and celebrations are endless and the biggest holiday of the year. Everyone dresses up in yellow and the amount of lights put up would put the worst Christmas crazed American to shame. I don’t know what day the Swedish king’s birthday is.