Do NOT Despair

The new buzz term for old fartz goes something like this:


Fabulous, fit and fifty.


But under no circumstances forget the next one - svelte, sexy and sixty

Joys of Local Language Skills

Having skills in another language is both good and not so good.

I have vivid memories of screwing up over over the words for “wind” and “dog” in bahasa indonesian while still a beginner in the language .......it translated as “the dog coming through the window” when it should have been “the wind” an anjing [ dog] rather than “angin” [wind].

But being back on Bintan Island where Indonesian is widely spoken by the staff at the hotels, and with my now reasonably competent Indonesian language skills has great opportunities for rapport with the staff. That sort of rapport does help.

Indonesians generally seem to mix and enjoy interacting with Australians at the direct personal level. They enjoy a laugh and a joke, as well as a bit of repartee, even taking the mickey out of one another. That was quite a common theme when working in the country with my direct work contact staff.

But even at the hotel, a smile, local language exchange and they accept you more readily.

I guess the theme applies more widely, across many countries.

But Indonesia and Australia have definitely not always been such great buddies historically over the past 50 years. Yet in a wider historical context, there has been contact between Makassan traders and north Australia for about 400 plus years. The aboriginal word for white man is mostly “balanda”, a term thought to have come from the Makassans, who used it to refer to the white skinned Dutch.

But for travel around the region, Indonesian language which can substitue mostly for Malay as well, covers maybe 300 million people. A lot more than Australia.

It has been a useful skill to have acquired.......and getting a chance to practice is a lot of fun too, especially with the travel.

Out and about in the Lion City

The street furniture is really going up for the Formula 1 SingTel Singapore Grand Prix. I am sure that somewhere there will be records of the amount of concrete and steel; but let me tell you, it’s lots! There is also a new permanent pit building, 1.2 kilometres of new road, a large amount of spectator seating and the lights are on, big time - turning night into day along the route.

The photo is looking down Bras Basah Road towards Marina Square, with the lights from the corner near the War Memorial . They are very bright!

Viet Nam! – Myth to Modernity

I am sorry to say that I felt that the exhibition was very disappointing, no even more so……a tad underdone. Yes, there was quite a lot of artifacts, from earlier eras, but little to tie them together and cover the ebb and flow of the great dynasties, rulers, regality and the reach of kingdoms across what is now Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia even into Thailand and southern China in the period 1200- 1600, before the arrival of Christian missionaries. After all, one of the ancient rulers of Vietnam beat the great conquering mongol, Genghis Khan. Some of the artifacts are quite stunning, especially the bronze and porcelain, and the statuary.

There was little on the modern period, even the 19th and 20th centuries – little on the French period in the late 18th and 19th centuries, little on the nationalist era of the early 20th century and the removal of the French colonialists, little on the American war [the Vietnam War of the 1960s- 1970s] except for a small photo of the Ho Chi Minh trail, nothing on the heroin trade of the 1970s and 1980s [see the book - The Politics of Heroin in SE Asia by Alfred McCoy] and really nothing on the period since 1980, when most of the current citizens of Vietnam arrived in the world.

All of a sudden the exhibition just stopped, with nothing but a few propaganda posters of the 20th century and a picture of Ho Chi Minh made of postage stamps. Not a lot that extended the exhibition in name ie the modernity, and the rapid industrialization of the past 30 years was also conspicuous by its absence.

Even the Ho Chi Minh trail, a key element of the so called American war…….if you have seen it, you marvel at the effort to move goods and munitions along the trail. It is tough going in monsoonal weather, of the character of the WWII Kokoda trail in Papua New Guinea, and a powerful tool that boosted nationalism and effectively operated through, and survived the US bombing. Where is all this stuff???? You can learn more of the pre 2nd world war period [1930-1940] by reading The Quiet American by Grahame Greene, or seeing the movie. What an opportunity squandered!

On the road again … oops, that’s in the air again, first.

We are on our way to Asia; first stop Singapore, and lucky for us, or our bank balance anyway; we will be there just over a week before the vroom, vroom of very expensive, very loud and very fast machinery hits the city streets of Singapore for the first ever night Grand Prix. Who would have thought that Singapore would close down its streets for a loud crowd of expensive, fast, Formula 1 racing cars. This is the city that had “encouraged” travel by (admittedly a very good) public transport system, by making ownership of cars out of the financial limits of most of the population, by its pricing of the cars themselves and the “on road costs”, plus city road congestion charges. I guess money talks as loudly there as it does anywhere else. If pricing of hotel rooms during the event is anything to go by, the hoteliers are definitely not missing out on the starting gun. $160 per night to $900 per night in just one day; and that’s not even at a front row seat establishment – you will need a lot more shekels for that type of genteel place to rest your head before and after the roar of the Ferrari’s and McLarens flexing their muscles. With three day passes ranging in price from $168 to $1388 there will be plenty of cash changing hands as there are expected to be 90 000 spectators attending. At least some would appear to be going Aussie way as Melbourne architect/engineer firm Kellogg, Brown & Root have been involved with construction.

So we plan to have a look at the Vietnam! From Myth to Modernity exhibition at the Ancient Civilizations Museum, do some street wandering with camera’s again and enjoy the beautiful street food of the place. And, I guess we will wander through Sim Lim Square and the Funan Centre, just to see what the latest and greatest electronic must haves are for the whiz kids.

Then we might go for a boat ride, not a slow one; but rather, a fairly fast one to Bintan.

But more about that later.

One of things that rather annoys me about travelling is the excessive cost which hotels charge for internet connection. One day charge can be as much as a two to three month charge for the average provider. Is it that they don’t want too many people using it – must be I think. Oh one of the joys – take up thy laptop and walk … to the nearest reasonable priced internet cafe or wifi powered venue, have a couple of coffees and upload and download. Wouldn’t it be nice to just sit at the desk in your room, which one has paid a reasonable amount for, and do it from there. But I refuse to “waste” that amount of money, so it won’t happen. I will just have to look a bit harder and move a bit further out of my comfort zone … again … and find a place which has the lot.