Signing Off for the moment!!

  As I cuddle in my bed with a duvet cover and electric blanket on, it is hard to imagine the humid warmth of the Borneo that envelops you day and night. The way in which you can get out of bed without a thought of a dressing gown or slippers is a thing in my not too distant past now. Andrew has now returned from East Timor and is acclimatising  himself to the cold of a Normandie winter which I must say has not been very cold at all. We are still having clear blue skies and very mild weather for this time of year so the weather has been kind to us so far. I can hardly believe that time has been passing very quickly and it is over a month since I arrived on French soil. I have kept myself busy by sorting, looking at my bright Asian clothes and wondering if I'll wear them again, visits to the dump and decorating several rooms in the house that needed a freshen up. I have managed to catch up with most of my friends and I have managed to see four out of five children with a lovely visit to England last week. Tomorrow Andrew and I are off to Dublin to visit Gen, who started her new job in September and we are really looking forward to being tourists instead of rushing through on the way north which we have done for years.

The amazing beach at the Tip of Borneo

Bako Park

   So I haven't got a job yet or have any idea what I will be doing except that Andrew has accepted a job in London which starts in the new year and we are going to look at flats next week. It will be another chapter in our lives and hopefully some job will come up for me that I will enjoy and the farm will be our residence secondaire for a while. Based in London will mean that we will be nearer our children and lots of other advantages but we know it will be difficult getting used to small living spaces, crowds and living together too!!

Farewell to the mentors at my house

  Our project will not be continuing and at the moment the office and staff in Kuching are having their last few days of employment which is very sad after 5 years and they have all done a fantastic job. I said farewell to the mentors at the end of September and they are all over the world including Japan, China, Colombia, Java, Myanmar, Zambia......I feel that we will keep in touch and they were a wonderful group of people to work with. In October the management team met for a final couple of days meeting in my favourite Kuching. It was lovely and a few of us decided to go to Bako park for the weekend to extend our final few days together. It does seem like a dream now but I have the photos to remember and know I have made life-long friends.

  I will miss East Malaysia very much but mostly I'll miss the wonderful warm people and their smiling faces and their happy disposition and attitude to life. I will miss the cows and water buffaloes wandering along the roads; the monkeys and monitor lizards; the birds and geckos and the sound of the insects constantly humming. I will miss seeing the mystical Mount Kinabalu early in the morning just at sunrise, the amazing sunsets and of course the clear turquoise blue sea. I will return and this is not the end of my story with Borneo but for now it is and so this is going to be my last post ............ unless something amazing happens that I have to let you know about!
Thank you for reading my ramblings and I wish you all a very festive celebration and a very peaceful, healthy 2016 - whoever and wherever you are.

Peace

  Somehow I got locked out of my google account a couple of weeks ago and it has taken me all this time to get a new password as I couldn't answer the secret question about my mother!!! I have tried many variations on the same theme of Elizabeth but none of them worked. Has this happened to anyone else when you make secret questions that you can't remember? Anyway I'm back and I was very touched about several people contacting me after the horrific night of carnage in Paris. I live about two hours from Paris in a very rural area and although I know several people in Paris there doesn't seem to be anyone that I know who has been involved. Of course there will be many families and friends who are trying to come to terms with the loss of their loved ones and reconcile the nightmare of the attack to the carefree lifestyle they thought they lived. There has been so much media coverage over the last week and a show of defiance of the Parisians determined to continue the lifestyle they feel they have the right to. Strangely I had been talking about the "Troubles"in Northern Ireland on the afternoon of the 13th and remembering how much it had affected my teenage years but not really realising until I had left the country. Having roadblocks,getting searched in every shop, checking for car bombs, bomb alerts and hearing bombs and gunfire became a part of my life. The terrorists in Ireland also targeted the innocent public most of the time and I remember receiving the phone call to urgently tell my father to get to the RV hospital as soon as he could. It was the Abercorn Bomb in 1972 that went off in a busy restaurant on a Saturday afternoon and killed and maimed many but the memory of my father's face when he returned will haunt me forever.
 Terrorists, whoever, wherever they are and whatever religion they are doing it in the name of, are a tiny minority. They are just a few fanatics and psychopaths and do not represent their religions. I do believe that we humans are fundamentally good that peace is the answer but I worry that France and other western powers seem to believe that bombing is the only solution to retaliate. Have bombing and attacking another country always worked? It is a very complex subject that I do not envy the leaders of countries to address but I sincerely hope that life in France and Belgium does not become one of violence, fear and suspicion. I think for me the most poignant scene after the attack was David Martello playing John Lennon's Imagine outside the Bataclan theatre. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ynsq5ms9lvl. My thoughts are with everyone who have had their loved ones killed wherever they are in the world and whatever they believe in. If each of us begin with being tolerant and kind to each other then surely we will have a peaceful world one day.

Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religions too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace                 John Lennon

Fiona in Siem Reap

This draft of my visit to Cambodia has been patiently waiting for the photographs to be added of which I have hundreds! So please cast your minds back to September after my trip to Vietnam.

Spot the tourist at Angkor Wat!

The face of King Jayavarman is everywhere

 Yes I cheated and flew to Siem Reap and spend 4 days in and around Angkor Wat which has always been on my list of things to see. (bucket list I believe one says!) There is always a flutter of anxiety when I reach another country just in case I'm refused entry for some reason. In the old days when I was travelling, days were spent in capitals trying to get visas in embassies so nowadays when you can either do it online or at the airport it just seems too easy. The Siem Reap airport is new and stylish and the visa process was incredibly efficient. I had booked a guesthouse online that morning and to my disbelief there was a tuk tuk driver with my name on a paper waiting for me. It was all so easy and off we went into Siem Reap to Rosy Guesthouse which was on the river near to the Royal Palace. It was very nice and I was in the budget room which meant no air-con but I was on my own! The next day I decided to walk around Siem Reap and explore . I visited a buddhist temple which was also the site of a "small" killing field and about a thousand skeletons were found here which are on display. I find it so hard to understand the horror that the Cambodian people went through during the Khmer rouge reign of terror . As I came back I passed the new Angkor Wat museum and decided to visit. I was queuing up for my ticket and I heard my name being called. It was my boss and his family on holiday too and it was a total surprise to see each other. The museum is well worth a visit and after an afternoon of absorbing the fascinating history of the temples, we arranged to meet for dinner and see traditional Cambodian dancing. The dancers and food were excellent but the musicians were not so!




  The next three days were spent at the temple area which is vast and of course there are many temples to see. I watched the BBC documentary Jungle Atlantis before I came which is a fascinating insight as to how large Angkor was - larger than London in the 20th century. The first day I joined Phil, Jani and Thomas and cycled to the famous iconic Angkor Wat temple. The next day I hired a tuktuk and visited Angkor Thom and many other outer temples including the famous Ta Prohm with the roots.




 The final day was spent again on my bike just riding around the park and stopping at any temple I hadn't visited. I'm quite sure wikipedia will be able to fill you in on the vast amount of  historical details. Some of the temples are still in use as Buddhist temples although most started as Hindu temples and there is a huge amount of restoration going on, and interestingly much is sponsored by the Chinese government.



Each evening I joined my friends and fortunately Jani loves to research restaurants before she visits places and I went to two wonderful restaurants including one where we had fried red ants and silk worm cocoon kebabs (not one to have again!).
 I left Siem Reap and my short visit to Cambodia wanting to come back and see more and buy more of the beautiful silk....so maybe one day!

Hello again!

Celebrating the arrival of Dylan and the All Blacks!

 I know quite a few of you have been wondering where I've been and whether I will ever come back to my blog. So this is just to let you know that I arrived back in France on Saturday after spending two weeks in New Zealand and a hectic final few weeks in Sabah. So I do have lots to catch up on which I do intend to do - now that I am unemployed and should have some free time as well as access to a computer and quicker internet!
  It has all been a whirl and full of lovely memories and many sad farewells however it is done now. Having the wonderful time with my two brothers, wives, nieces, nephews and offspring has made it easier and of course made me appreciate how precious family are. I left New Zealand in the fever of the World Cup Rugby final and Lisa and I managed to watch it in a pub in Lille and despite being in the minority we were able to rejoice with the All Blacks. I can imagine there was much celebration throughout New Zealand and in my families especially as Dan Carter seemed to be the man of the match and he is related by marriage and known as Uncle Dan! There was also the excitement of a new great nephew, called Dylan , born just after the exciting semi-final.

Yes even the dog was wearing Number 10!

  I spent one day in Kuala Lumpur before I got on the plane for Paris and went to "work" at the head office in KL which is just so alien to the way our project works and no wonder we don't fit into the corporate organisation. I saw a few people I know and then had coffee and a long chat with Linda, the publisher who has been such a supporter of the Storybook Project. It was nice to feel that humid warmth again but the noisy buzz of the city is not what I love about Malaysia and I was glad to get on the plane. I will be on my way back to Normandie tomorrow on the train and my dear friend Hazel will be there to bring me home......

Fiona in Vietnam part 2

Day 6 -  The bus arrived earlier than planned and by the early afternoon I was wandering through the charming UNESCO historical town of Hoi An looking for my backpackers in the old quarter. The backpackers' hostel was very nice and good value (10$ per night) including a very good breakfast and free hire of bikes...the only downside was that they were catering for people 30 years younger than me and I was sharing a room with an 18 year old boy!! Can you imagine both of our feelings when we saw each other?! However there was no other choice apart from finding another hotel and after 18 hours in the bus I couldn't be bothered and we managed to get through the three nights fine. I set off to see more of this town which has been trading spices for two thousand years and a very important port in the 16 and 17th centuries and the architecture is a mixture of the Chinese, Dutch, Japanese who had huge emporiums for trade in that period. In the 1990s it started to become a tourist attraction and it is famous for the tailors and the lovely restaurants and shops. It is delightful and known as the city of lanterns with beautiful silk coloured lanterns hanging everywhere. I sat down for a drink and saw the same Australian girl that I'd met on my first night in Hanoi. She had already been to a tailor and ordered 200US $ worth of clothes and by the time I had got back to the hostel to change I had ordered a pair of blue leather sandals (20$) made to fit my feet! We met up later and went to a bookshop/bar and had a mojito and then on to another lovely restaurant of which there are many.


Day 7 - I went off on the bike tour organised by the hostel with some new arrivals - a Portuguese brother and sister and 2 German students. We all got on really well and were unanimous in our dislike for our  Canadian guide who confused ducks with egrets among many other stupid statements! We eventually ended up at a gorgeous beach after riding through the padi fields and spent the day there - mostly keeping out of the sun and chatting. By the time we got back to the hostel we were in time for happy hour and the BBQ and we ended up staying there and our group was enlarged by two lovely Italians. They were all so nice and friendly and didn't make me feel my age although some people assumed that I was someone's mother!

Another shop or restaurant?

The beach at Hoi An

Day 8 - I finally ordered something in the tailors opposite the hostel. It was a bit of a whim and the choice was endless but I ordered a silk Vietnamese style top and a pair of linen trousers which cost 40 $ including material. If I ever go back I will bring some of my material store to get made into things but I wasn't that keen on any of the materials in the shops. People obviously do come prepared and they were getting many things made! We spent the morning together wandering round the market and shops and then I decided to do the visits to the historical houses, temples and museums which I found very interesting. I collected my lovely blue shoes and had a fitting for my top and trousers which were already finished apart from minor tweaks to be done. Happy hour again and then Cao Lau noodles on the street which was fantastic. I was persuaded to go on to a bar with them which was definitely for the younger generation but it was fun and I had a good night out with them all.

Japanese Bridge

The market at Hoi An

Day 9 - My last day in Vietnam and I collected my trousers and bought some ground coffee (the coffee is delicious!) and a few lanterns with my last dong. I said farewell to my new friends and got the mini bus to Danang airport where I waited for my flight to Siem Reap. Danang is a very modern airport and my very superficial impression of Vietnam is that it is thriving. The people are welcoming and friendly and very industrious and traditional and modern life seem to coexist happily. I met a Korean physiotherapist who was working with the victims of agent orange which is nearly 50 years after the American war but yet I didn't feel any animosity against white people surprisingly. I would like to visit again and explore more of this lovely country - thank you for my visit!

Cao Lau with friends

Fiona in Vietnam Part 1

Rice harvest in Sa Pa

Our guides in Sa Pa

I'm back after nearly two weeks of travelling and apart from my flights booked and the first night in Hanoi, it happened "organically" and everything worked out perfectly. I feel as if I've been away longer and managed to not touch a computer, read three good books and meet lots of interesting people as well as try and see as much as Vietnam as I could. So for me to remember what I did I'm going to write a sort of diary.




Day 1 - Arrived at Hanoi and got shuttle bus into the city and found my backpackers in the old quarter. Spent the day wandering around and trying to organise what I would be doing over the next few days. I met a lovely Australian girl in my dorm and we went out for a delicious bun cha which was noodles, pork and lots of salad with mint and coriander. We then went for a walk around the lake and the whole of Hanoi seemed to be doing the same. It was a lovely atmosphere with families walking, chatting, dancing and eating the lime and mint icecreams! Yes the streets are full of motorbikes and it is crazy trying to cross the roads but I loved the buzz.

Day 2 - Left early on a mini-bus for a 1 day tour of Halong Bay. It took about 3 hours to get there but I chatted the whole way with a South African lady also travelling on her own. Halong Bay is VERY touristy but it was beautiful, as you'll see from the photos and we were very lucky with the weather and the diverse group on the tour. I was glad I had chosen to do only 1 day but it was well worth visiting. We got back before 9 pm and then I started to panic as I had to be on the overnight train to Sapa which left at 9.30. Our bus guide very kindly offered to take me by his motorbike and before I knew it I was off whizzing through the streets of Hanoi with no helmet, jumping red lights and having great fun!!


Day 3 - I slept like a log on the overnight train to Lao Cai and arrived about 6 am, being collected by minibus to Sapa for my 2 day trek. Sa Pa is a small town set high in the mountain range of Hoang Lien and is where many of the H'mong hill tribe people have settled for centuries. This was a place I had wanted to visit for ages and I would have stayed longer if I could have. Our women guides, dressed in traditional costumes, with babies strapped to their backs, were there to meet us and we set off on our trek which was wonderful! Three of us who walked quicker, formed our own group with our guides and the scenery and the rice terracing was just breathtaking. We arrived at their village for lunch and immediately were mobbed by ladies selling their beautiful embroidery crafts. I was such an easy target and of course I did buy from our lovely guides and yes no doubt they ripped me off but for all the time and effort they spend on their spinning, weaving, dying and embroidery, they are very welcome to my money. We continued our trek in the afternoon and finally reached our lovely homestay about 4 pm. It was much "posher" than my Laos homestay and had hot water, a sit down toilet as well as wifi! We had a lovely meal and rice wine and then it was early to bed sleeping on the floor with real quilts for the cool nights.

Day 4 - I was up early and able to soak in the amazing scenery with the high terraced mountains and river flowing through the valley. It was harvest time and everyone was busy with cutting and threshing and drying the rice. The textiles were my great interest though and they showed me how they grow and use the indigo plant to dye the hemp that they hand spin and weave on very narrow looms. The women, spin or embroider at every spare moment and it takes 3 months just to embroider  a sleeve but because of the recent tourist interest the young generation are keeping the traditions alive. More trekking in the morning and then after lunch I sadly had to go back to SaPa to await the bus and overnight train to Hanoi. I met a charming young German couple so the time passed quickly and of course I could more shopping!!

Selling postcards?!

Buffaloes on our path!

All ages helping!

One of my guides

Day 5- A very early arrival in Hanoi at 5 am but again a good night's sleep on the train. I had to decide the best way to get to Hoi An and chose the overnight bus as it was cheaper than the train. I spent a day wandering around Hanoi - eating, reading and visiting a few sites and then was ready for my pick-up at 5. 30 pm. Eventually got on the overnight bus at about 7 pm and slotted into my capsule where I would be spending the next 18 hours. These buses are fantastic - air con. toilet and wifi and again I slept really well and enjoyed looking at the countryside out the window - not like the old days of travelling!!
To be continued......

Our homestay in the mountains