Bournemouth, old London town, and old mates

Good old London – being an Aussie, you can always find lots of mates to catch up with. First on the list: Lisa and Dave, mates of mine from those long-ago days at uni. They were awesome hosts, welcoming me with Dave’s special bangers and mash when I arrived! It had been a while, and it was great to catch up on their lives in the UK. During my time with them, Lisa gave me a tour of her and Dave’s work (the Royal Science Institute, brilliant), we wandered around Oxford and Regent streets to check out the Christmas lights and elaborate store-fronts (to me it was amazing – after the non-event of Christmas in Indonesia, the biggest Muslim country in the world!), and we went to see a theatre version of Edward Scissorhands. It was great fun. The other reason that the two of them are champs is because they let me use their house in Queen’s Park as a base while they were away for Christmas.

Because most of my friends were working during the day, it gave me a chance to see a bit of London (and its shops) during the day, and catch up with people during the night. I was able to share a few wines in London’s oldest wine cellar near the Thames with James Mac, an old uni buddy of Ange’s; share a few beers with Sally and Schuey at the Regent Hotel down the road; catch up with Fritha, a new friend from the wedding, for a drink on the Thames; randomly find out that Rob M-L was back at home, and share brunch and some Christmas shopping with him in Camden; and of course buy myself a few Christmas pressies. But I couldn’t help myself from converting all the costs to the feeble Aussie dollar! So it was another reason I was thankful that I had a gratis place to stay. And justified all my purchases. :)

And then, the most random thing that’s happened to me in a while: while strolling across Westminster Bridge, James and I ran into a distant relative of mine, Tanya, who was coincidentally on holiday too. We both looked at each other and at first couldn’t put names to faces, we were both so out of context! But after a few seconds we worked it out. It was great to see her – I’d only met her a few times after discovering I had a third cousin I didn’t know about! – and to get out of the cold, the three of us went to the nearest pub for a couple of beers (see a trend emerging here?).

Tanya and I spent the next day on a Thames river cruise up to Greenwich to check out the Meridian, and meandering back to the city afterwards. It was great to have a friend to hang out with, who had just as much free time on her hands as I did! And I would never have gone there if she wasn’t planning on it.

And then onto the next adventure, with a certain Mr Zul.

Zul is one of the biggest legends I know, with a cracker smile and cheeky approach to life that makes him fun to be around. We used to work together in Liberia for ICRC, in 2006. I hadn’t seen him since then, so was looking forward to it. He was born in Cameroon, but educated in the UK, and had gone back to university for further study in Media and Communications at Bournemouth University after finishing up with humanitarian work after a few amazing destinations. So I jumped on the train and headed down to Bournemouth to hang out with him for a few days.

I got quite a welcome when I arrived – a big hug and pick up from the train station, an impromptu tour of his great little town, a trip to the beach, followed by an amazing roast chicken he’d made for our lunch. I felt very spoiled! It was nice to be taken care of, I realised how much I missed it in Indonesia! The beach was only 5 minutes away from his flat, and albeit cold and windy, being winter, I could imagine in summer it would be a cool place to hang out. If the wind ever stopped and the water ever got warm enough. Hehe! I never imagine beaches when I think of the UK, but being an island I guess it must have them somewhere…

The next afternoon we drove to Weymouth, further west. It was quiet, and many guesthouses said ‘full’, but were just closed during the off-peak season. Weymouth is another picturesque coastal town, with old stone buildings and a clock tower along the seafront, with a wharf at one end. We had come here to visit Zul’s mate from uni, who owned a nightclub and was hosting a big pre-Christmas bash there. After a tour of his club – which was amazing – we went for dinner, before coming back for a night on the town. The place was pumping, mainly upstairs in the club area with DJs, but also downstairs in the recently renovated, beautifully dark and seductive Moroccan-inspired Kas-bar. And the drinks were flowing… Zul’s mate kept cracking the bottles of champagne all night. Rad!

The next afternoon I received a tour of Bournemouth University and then onto the centre of town for some last-minute Christmas shopping, followed by watching an English Premier League game at the local pub, followed by trying to console him further (Chelsea had already lost) when his car was clamped for being parked illegally and he had to pay a huge fine… boo! We’d even moved the car once already, after parking illegally the first time, to what we thought was a legal park!

So it was at the train station the next day that I was sad to part ways with Zul. But we both had new adventures to look forward to – he was heading to Switzerland for Christmas and skiing adventures with a group of good mates, and I was heading back to London before cruising up to Manchester for Christmas with Lucy and her family. It had been a great few days with Zul, and I greatly appreciated all the effort he had gone to – I hadn’t felt that special in a long time! Amazing what a true bit of hospitality can do for you.

Back in London again, I checked out the Natural History Museum (my favourite building in London), which featured the National Geographic Wildlife Photographer of the Year. As usual, it was an amazing exhibition. I was also happy to catch up with two more friends, Sally and Isaac, for dinner one night – Isaac played footy with my previous boyfriend Matt, and we had become friends through him. While I had seen Sal at the pub a few nights ago, it was great to hang out with both of them at their place, and to find out what Isaac had been up to.

You can check out the pics here: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=60812&id=543196685&l=34f29e40aa

Christmas Eve, I packed my bags (again!) and jumped on the train, direction: North.

Och aye! A gorgeous Scottish wedding

Medan, Singapore, Doha, London, Glasgow… Yep, five flights to get to Scotland, my destination of choice for a three week holiday. Phew! I can definitely state that I was knackered for a while after that. And luckily, I didn’t have any trouble with my ear on the plane – perforated or not – which meant I had plenty of time to find the perfect dress to wear while in Medan with five hours of waiting for my next plane.

The main reason for going to Scotland: my friends’ wedding. Steph and Jon are two fabulous friends who worked on Simeulue with me. At first I wasn’t really sure why they’d chosen such a chilly place to hold their big day. I arrived at Taychreggan around 8pm on Thursday, after a few hours on the train heading west from Glasgow (oh yeah add a 3 hour train ride to my flight tally), just in time to join the early arrivals for dinner. It was great to see Jon and Steph again – they’d left Simeulue in the middle of the year, but it felt like I’d seen them only yesterday.

The next day revealed exactly why they had chosen this place. Taychreggan is the location of a 300-year-old hotel situated right on the edge of Loch Awe, a gorgeously serene, misty and mysterious lake with perfect reflections of the reds, greys and browns of the countryside around it. And to top it all off, behind the Loch were some lofty hills with a sprinkling of snow. It may have been freezing – especially coming from balmy Indonesia – but it was such a gorgeous location and I could see immediately why they had fallen in love with it.

‘The girls’ spent Friday pampering Steph. Steph’s mum Sue, Lucy, Kari, Fritha, Lindsay and myself took her to the nearby town of Oban, on the west coast, for a manicure and pedicure, while sipping champagne of course. We took off for a bit of looking around the beautiful town and some last minute make-up purchases, while Steph and Kari (childhood best friend and Maid of Honour) got pampered. I was sharing a room in the hotel with Lucy, an English girl who had studied in Australia with Steph. We hit it off straight away and were the only two single girls at the wedding! Friday night the arrived guests shared dinner and drinks around the bar. The boys became quite involved in Scotch whisky tasting with the encouragement of David, the ‘everywhere man’ waiter-barman-“I do everything guy” who was a champion the whole weekend, at our beck and call and delivering everything that everyone asked. He really made life easy for everyone.

Saturday morning was spent busily helping to help Steph get ready (and calm her nerves with champagne and chocolate), decorate the hotel, wrap up the confetti and a whole bunch of other girly things. The boys, of course, went clay pigeon shooting near the Loch – a very manly but appropriate thing to do on the morning of the wedding!

The wedding itself was simple, elegant and beautiful. A string quartet played ‘all you need is love’ as a very nervous Steph almost sprinted down the aisle towards the equally nervous Jon at the altar! Steph’s dress was gorgeous; a white lace halterneck with a flowing silk gown, and a cute, almost 1920’s inspired lace hairpiece that partly covered her face. The marriage celebrant got down to details and it was over almost as soon as it began, the happy couple moving back down the aisle to the applause of the smiling crowd.

At the reception dinner, Kari’s Maid of Honour speech was so lovely that it brought a tear to the eye of everyone in the room (and I’m glad to say her partner Aaron proposed to her shortly after the wedding when they went to Edinburgh. I think his already formed plan, plus her tear-jerking speech, and lots of encouragement from us in the wee hours of the morning convinced him it was a good idea!), and Gareth – Jon’s best man – played the clown in his. Jon’s speech was great because he couldn’t stop referring to Steph as “my wife”. I love love.

After dinner, we all joined in the Ceilidh – traditional Scottish group dancing – which was loads of fun! Half the time we spent just trying to work out what the hell we were doing, and it was hilarious. A number of the guests cracked out their traditional family tartan kilts (even a Frenchman – maybe not so traditional…). There were a lot more drinks at the bar, plus a spot of snooker on a regulation-size table, which took forever but was fun with a couple of whiskies under the belt (sneakily supplied by Gareth in his water bottle) or wearing masks of Jon’s face, which Gareth had made up and distributed for all the boys to wear. Gold!

What I loved most about the wedding was the ‘big family’ atmosphere. I don’t know how many members of the two families and various friends had all met before, but everyone just clicked. Everyone was so lovely, welcoming and easy to get along with and I felt like one of the family. Both Steph and Jon’s relatives were gorgeous. It was also quite a multicultural wedding; Steph’s family being Canadian/Australian, with a number of other family members coming from other countries like France and Russia; Jon’s very traditional English family; plus the group of friends who came from Australia, Canada and England.

Sunday involved some refreshing and much-needed walking around the loch to get to the pub for lunch with the crew who were on their way out. It was great to have the chance to catch up with Jon, Steph and Sue about the wedding and life in general, and to share dinner that night with the remaining family who had so willingly adopted me!

So, by Monday, part one of the adventure was over when Lucy and I reached Glasgow. I was a bit sad to leave, but it had been so awesome to be invited halfway around the world for a wedding, plus I got to meet some great new people. Lucy was a champ and invited me to her place for Christmas, which I gladly accepted! Plus, I had the next instalment of the adventure to look forward to: London.

Idul Adha celebrations and potongan kerbau

... which means carving up buffaloes for distribution to the poor and to family & friends...

what a spectacle....

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=53531&id=543196685&l=cb2bdc7d84

Simeulue road trip

Guess what? It’s only one week til I go on holidays. Exactly one week from now, I will be sitting on a plane to Singapore. Yah! I have about 6 hours between landing in Medan and leaving for Singapore, hopefully enough time to get a hair cut (so I look half decent for this wedding) and to buy some warm clothes! I need gloves, scarves, thermals, socks and comfy closed shoes. Not to mention maybe a nicer outfit for this wedding…

Being in the field like this, with little to do at night, provides me with ample opportunity to regularly update my blog.

Last weekend we took a road trip to a little place called Sibigo, aka Batu Ragi. It’s a trip that’s been long in the planning – we’ve been meaning to go there for about a year! It’s about 4 hours drive on the other side of the island to Salang – heading north-west from Sinabang on the east coast road rather than the west coast road. There’s only one road around the island, and I don’t even know if you can make it all the way around. The north-western tip of the island is apparently impassable at the best of times, particularly in the rainy season.

Which it definitely is at the moment! This last few days has seen almost constant rain all through the day and night. Simeulue seems to be constantly wet anyway, but we’ve had downpour after heavy downpour here over the last week. It’s crazy! Thank goodness it finishes by January (apparently). That will help the project a lot. Luckily we had enough of a break in the rain this afternoon to participate in a game of volleyball with the local lads (and one other lovely lady). It was good fun, although I felt a bit crap at the game, especially compared to the guys who are all extremely athletic and can jump a metre in the air to spike (local version: smash) the ball. Still, it was good to finally get some exercise here in Salang. I noticed that the neighbours also have a table tennis table, and I brought my Frisbee too, so that will keep me busy.

Anyway back to the story: road trip to Batu Ragi. Back during the time when Steph and Jon were still here, we’d talked a few times about making a trip to Batu Ragi, the location of the field office of Norwegian Red Cross, where my friend and fellow ex-pat Shir Shar works. He’s another WatSan delegate on Simeulue, and is a nice Afghani fellow who has a project up there building community latrines and capturing spring water supplies for a number of villages on the opposite side of the island. He spends as much if not more time in the field than me – and stays every second weekend there – in an equally isolated little town on the water.

Last weekend at Lugu, we were discussing our various weekend plans and once again this one came up. So finally we decided to do it the following weekend. Why not? We were all free! So, late Saturday morning after a lovely German-style brekkie at Lugu, Chigusa, Daniela, Anna, ShirShar and myself set off in the NRC landcruiser to Batu Ragi.

The drive itself is one of contrasts. Beautiful coastal scenery; the now dead and rocky coral, which was exposed when the 2004 earthquake tipped the island up; the mangroves hugging the shore, little re-forestation projects here and there, designed to help them recolonise and buffer the shoreline from future tsunamis; the hilly terrain with its beautiful untouched rainforest. Scattered in between the forest are little villages, green rice padis with their new shoots interspersed with empty ones or those underwater, or even disused padis that are now only the playground for wallowing buffaloes. And then you drive over the next hill and out come the gasps of horror, or amazement, or both, from everyone as we see, yet again, rows and rows of ‘kebun sawit’ – palm plantations, stretching as far as the eye can see. Last time I went on this road – around one year ago – I was amazed by it. The destruction is now at a catastrophic level, with more than double the area cleared. It’s really sad. Unfortunately its providing the community with a means of income but at the same time destroying this beautiful island. At the moment the price of palm oil is apparently very low. Maybe this will be the island’s rainforests’ saving grace?

After about a 4 hour drive, we arrived. Batu Ragi is a beautiful little place, right on a now-disused harbour. When you stand on the jetty, where the local kids jump into the water for an afternoon dip (which we also did), there are four identically sized, identically spaced islands spanning the horizon between two peninsulas. It really is a beautiful place to while away some time with a book.


The NRC compound may have once been a nice little place, but clearly only men live there! It’s pretty grubby. Its staff accommodation shelters are currently being dismantled as they downsize their operations, and move next to the PMI (Indo Red Cross) and Government Water Supply Company offices. Not far up the road is another little town (whose name escapes me at the moment) on another bay, where people take the local ferry, called a “Robin” – named after the motor it uses. The ferry is basically a motorised wooden canoe! It has a couple of nice waterside warungs (local restaurants), so we watched the sunset over the water before heading back to the compound.
The following day we took a boat out to one of the islands. It was interesting to see, as we approached, that the four islands were in fact very distinct from each other and different in size, shape and composition. The island we visited was beautiful, with a long, white sandy beach – and I’m totally bragging when I say all of the outlying islands around Simeulue are like this! Ahhh nothing like living in a little tropical island….
The snorkelling was beautiful and we spent the next few hours exploring the coral reef surrounding the island. The coral, as in most locations around Simeulue, was dead or exposed in some areas, but it was unique in this case because it was arranged in hundreds of canyons extending outwards from the island, creating havens for so many fish - many more species than I’d seen in other locations around Simeulue (like Pulau Siumat, where we normally go). Hence it was really interesting to snorkel around this island and discover what it had to offer.

So we finally made our road trip to Sibigo. It was worth it too, and we had some great company. I really enjoy spending time with the other expats on Simeulue; they are such a wide variety of fun people with such different interests, and coming from so many far flung and different countries, it makes for an interesting group of friends.

Next weekend will be a long weekend, because on Monday (8th Dec) it’s Idul Aha, or the Hajj. Perfect for me to have enough time to pack! And just for something different, we also plan to attend a buffalo slaughtering ceremony. During Islamic celebrations people jointly buy buffaloes, get them butchered, share some with the poor, and then cook up their portions in a big feast. We plan to go along and witness it, and then buy some buffalo meat to make a barbeque. A bit of a pre-Christmas Christmas dinner, so to speak. Something else to look forward to … hope I can keep my breakfast down :)