Dear Aussies.....

Dear Stan, Junior & Mel (and any other Australian),

I write to you seeking cultural clarification on a confusing issue. Having recently encountered some (well, actually thousands of) people of Australian breeding in a small town called Kuta in Bali, it has left me utterly confounded. Firstly, may i say thank you for teaching the Balinese how to speak English so well, we have not met someone yet who cannot speak to us in our language which is convenient to say the least. However, i wonder why they seem to have this tic where they attach the word mate to everything? 'How are you mate?' , 'Need a taxi mate?', 'This sarong is very nice, comes in 3 colours and seven sizes mate'. I assume this is an Indonesian word that has yet to be translated.

But i am really perplexed as to why Australians come to Kuta? Is it for a love of the uniform that they seem to have to wear here, the Bintong beer logo seems crass for a child of 5 but apparently no-one is exempt from wearing it? Or is it because there it is compulsory to walk around with a full beer and cigarette firmly grasped in one hand, whilst the other is used for balance (usually along walls)? Or is it for the beach? Upon which i saw a DEAD rat on, not even an alive one, a dead one, even he didn't like Kuta beach. Or is it the rubbish and the small waves? From what I've heard Australia has all these things: beaches, the sun and the surf (and from what it looks like on Home and Away yours are so much better) so why come here for less of the same?? Dont tell me Home and Away lies!

I know that Australians are lovely people, i often (compulsively) watch the documentary that is Neighbours about real Australians lives. I know they can be somewhat hectic what with multiple marriages, near death experiences, illigitimate children arriving and not to mention that most Australians lose their memories at least once in their life. But really you are lovely people, who just want to help each other and can often be caught standing around a street party singing Christmas songs together.

So why go to Kuta? Please explain.

Confused English woman

LE

Balmy Bali Beaches

So Thailand (the land of backpackers) would not let us stay anylonger. So despite wanting to volunteer at the Zoo for 3 weeks, we had to leave after two. The only way to get another Thai visa was to fly back into the country from somewhere, so we have flown to Bali. But since we thought we would like to actually see Bali now that we are here, we are not returning to Thailand.

We have now also booked flights to go on to Singapore and then to fly into Cambodia. When we left Thailand they seemed to be disagreeing (with some guns) with the Cambodians about the borders around an old temple, so traffic to Cambodia and back was limited, thus flights were deemed necessary. I hasten to add that this disagreement is far away from where we are going and has already calmed down.

So now we are in somewhere unexpected. This is a nice change as our route has been set for so long, and now we simply changed it. Bali seems lovely, there are numerous structures around which look like they have been made out of terracotta Lego bricks, and everyone speaks English (well apart from all the Australians - I am sure they are making up words!) We haven't done much yet as lots of sleeping and bodily cleaning has been required since the Zoo work. But today we are off to explore.

Dreaming of Britian

More accurately, Xss and I have been discussing food at length. These are the final and much discussed short lists of what food we want most:

Xss
1. Flaming Hot Monster Munch
2. Cottage Cheese
3. Salmon fillets
4. Cookies (White chocolate and Raspberry from Sainsburies or Double Chocolate from Tesco)
5. A smoked Salmon and cream cheese wholemeal bread sandwich (that's cheating)

The Geek
1. Humus
2. A whisper
3. Cadbury buttons
4. Ben and Jerry's ice cream (cookie dough and brownie twisted)
5. chocolate milk with a Cadbury flake chocolate dessert (if he can cheat so can I!)

Opposites attract. Well they do on magnets but in humans they constantly challenge each other. In our case, in a good way.

Talking with Blue

This is Blue the Macaw. He speaks English and Thai. Yesterday when i was cleaning him out, in a small 2m square cage, complete with numerous poles, platforms and bars (fun for him, difficult for me to duck under), he was following me around and quite often getting quite close to my face. Eventually this got too much, so i said directly to him, ' Look Blue, I'm sorry but i cant understand if you are being nice or horrible?' to which he said perfectly clearly, 'Horrible'. So i got out the cage.

My new Bra

I have been bra shopping and the new bra that i got (minus matching pants :( ) is a sizer bigger than i normally buy. Therefore i have been examining the current environment i find myself in to look for a correlation between behaviour change and bra size. Here are my suggestions:

1) Monkey wee on the skin. Most of the Gibbons here have cages with floors a couple of meters above the ground in an effort to get them to understand that they live in the trees not on the ground. This means that several paths go under Gibbons cages and certain Gibbons have perfected the art of peeing on people as they swing overhead. its quite an art, and quite a way to start the day at 6.30 am.

2) Eating copious amounts of Thai food. All food is provided at the zoo so i eat peanut butter toast for breakfast, but come lunch time am starving so usually dig into two plates of cooked Thai food (typically rice, satay potato's, stir fry vegetables, sweet and sour chicken, bread crumbed potato, fried corn cakes). Bu dinner time it is cooler and i am still hungry so i usually have 2 more plates of Thai food from the buffet. Perhaps its not only my chest size which has increased?

3) learning monkey. Most monkeys communicate with us in some way, Xss's favourite does a repetitive kissing motion then turns around and scratches his backside and front at the same time while looking back. Apparently this is nice. They also make lots of noise and it is hard to not copy them and try to interact through crazy facial actions whilst feeding them. Are bizarre facial exercises responsible?

4) Constantly standing in poo. Everyday at 9am, straight after breakfast each team has a 'special task' these often include cleaning out pools in the enclosures. ALL of the animals enjoy swimming and then pooing in their pools. Therefore each day we take off our shoes and climb into a partically drained pool to bucket out the rest of the water and scrub it with a handheld brush before it is refilled. Is bear poo a brilliant fertiliser for growth?

5) Sunshine and water. It is hot here, we know its going to get hotter as we travel more, so we try not to complain, but most of the time it feels like someone is holding a hand dryer to your skin as soon as you step out of the shade. This is accompanied by drinking mugs full of water on each and every break. Is an increase in energy input responsible?

6) Living in mild peril. Some of the monkeys here are a little aggressive when you go near their cages and you have to stay back from them. Even ones missing limbs like Bandit below (one armed bandit!) try to scare you. The animal most people are scared of though is Randy the horn-bill (whom Xss actually likes) i was in his cage cleaning out (very hurriedly at that) whilst someone else distracted him from outside the cage with a stick (he thinks he's a dog). However, that got boring and he swooped for me. As i ducked in a hurry i fell on my backside. It was funny, but i then ran out the cage as quick as possible. Does fear give off a growth hormone?

Bandit giving a thoughful pose

7) Small Thai peoples. Thai women are undoubtedly smaller than me in everyway. It is indeed possible that the whole country mislabels their lingerie on purpose just to boost self esteem? Seems nice if this is true. In England we like to steal self esteem and when you go to buy your wedding dress, the day you want to seem slimmest, they mark up the sizes so that you order a dress 2 sizes bigger than you normally wear. That almost made me cry. Isn't that sad.

well, there are numerous positive correlations here but as to them being cause and effect? All i can say is that i am happy, relaxed and smiling inside and out so who cares.

Japan Evaluation 220

Japan

Likes: Extremely polite people, people running and doing things at a speed of knots when you ask for something (or even buy a can of coke at the local store), everything being shiny and new looking, adults dressing up like Manga cartoon characters and walking the streets, sumo wrestling, Akihabara district, feeding the ducks in the freezing temperatures left over breakfast, sumo soup, heated toilet seats, familymart, skateboarding dogs,

Dislikes: no evidence of a countryside, queuing to a ridiculous degree, everything being expensive (especially trains), lack of creative architecture, Japanese food, being in minus temperatures with only a waterproof coat, cyclists trying to run you over on the pavement, the most uncomfortable pillows in the world, people trying to buy luck,

Sunrises passed: 6

Places visited: Tokyo, Kyoto

Number of times i wanted to come home: 1. I almost cried whilst on the metro once as it reminded me so much of London- how odd.

Favourite hostel: Hotel Mystays, Ochanomizo. A semi double room, perfect.

No of Geisha's in Kyoto: less than 100

No of Geisha's we saw: 1 score!

No of people dressed creatively: all of the girls and at least half the boys.

No of people dressed like me: 0

Percentage of people wearing those little face masks: 10%

percentage of people these face masks actually help protect: the other 90%

Favourite memory: Singing Karaoke for the the first time ever. Xss excelled and even put in some dance moves

Worst day: Well, worst night. Sharing a semi double with an overgrown man who had a high temperature and sweated waves in the night. Hot bouts of air swarming towards me whenever i moved. - He's better now.

Favourite new food or drink:

Best/worst smell: Best- Free shower gels in the hotels. you cant buy stuff that good at home.

Best/worst noise: Being spoken Japanese to and not even being able to say i don't understand.

Best Norwich City Victory: Wes Holahan signing a new 3.5 year contract.

Weirdest country fact: Even homeless men take their shoes off when they step on their cardboard mattresses. No lie. I have photographic evidence.

New thing learnt: A sense of style and fashion are in inbuilt and individual. I have long been toying with what to do with how i dress, as i am giving up dressing like a boy. However, the bible states that you should adorn yourself with good deeds and a great character rather than jewelry and perfume (in 1 Peter 2 i think), however, what about for special occasions?? How far should you go to look presentable, but not have it as your main asset when people are shallow and assess you very quickly primarily on your outward appearance? I often dress down on purpose as i like to have people's thoughts about me brought upwards after speaking to me, rather than me looking good/professional and then having people think less of me when they hear me speak. Once you've won this battle, then its much easier to get people to listen to what you say rather than the image you are putting out there. But all the same should i dress nicer?

Country Score: 220

My so called Zoo life

My Favourite- the Loris', who unfortunately sleep during the day. lazies.

I love it. I really do. I am not sure if part of it is that i am in one place for long enough to do washing AND hang it up to dry, or that they cook all my meals, give me innumerable breaks (in fact its more like the work is a break from sitting around reading and chatting), and i get to spend time with Xss.

Recently Xss had been discussing whether in the future we might be able to run a hotel together, and then came to the conclusion that we cant. As he wont agree with all the decisions i want to make. He is so unreasonable! BUT perhaps we could run a zoo together.....

Our day starts at 6.30am everyday, which sometimes makes me feel like i might be going on a childhood holiday when you get up in the middle of the night to leave. Well, i am romanticising that a bit, really i feel like i want to die, but social pressures to meet the rest of my team means i get up. We then feed some sort of animals. Initially as you are shown around you think, 'oh, this is great you can get really close to the animals and could if you wanted to touch them through the cage', as soon as you've been around to feed anything you think, 'oh, not so great, the animals try to 'touch YOU' through the cage'. I got grabbed by a Gibbon my first day, he wouldn't let go but someone freed me with no shirt rippage!

The Bears, waiting to 'touch me'.

We generally then clean out, clean a pool in an enclosure or prepare some treats for the animals. Then there's lunch at 12, a selection of Thai dishes, and nothing to do until 2pm. In the afternoon we generally feed again and tidy things up, lock up and put the rubbish out. Xss has been doing different things to me and today played football with a long billed bird (i don't know what exactly) for about 15 minutes. Unfortunately towards the end of this time Randy (the bird) said he would not support Norwich City, as he wanted to remain neutral since there are so many nationalities at the zoo. There are about 30 volunteers here of all ages and nationalities. But since English is the best language in the world, everyone speaks English to each other.

One of the five elephants, June. They really are quite ugly. Here she is refusing to got the way the people 'walking her' want her to go.

Zoo..m

We are here at the Zoo! There are several Oxfam shop animals, including a dog with literally no back half, yet he still manages to walk around with just his front legs, he is called Bruce, and i quite like him, a tiger called Meow, who walks very shakily, and many more healthy Gibbons, Loris', Bears, Otters (one called Pirate- sure to be a favourite), crocodile (this lives just outside our room (in a cage)), and some random other things. We will be working 6.30am until 5pm with an hour for lunch and an hour for breakfast, so it'll be hard work for sure. However, it is simply just the next adventure in the series for Xss and I.

It was our wedding anniversary on the 3rd and Xss took me to a roof top restaurant at the Banyan tree which was lovely, as I got a rose and a cocktail served in dry ice afterwards! Really great. The view of Bangkok was ok, but the view of Xss was better! hahah. Four years in and he is increasingly a bigger and better friend than i ever dreamed of. Anyway, we then stayed at the Bangkok Hilton (hotel not prison) on the 6th as this was the night we arrived on our honeymoon there, mostly thanks to me booking flights on the wrong day. That's why I'm not a real adult.

So this morning at 10am a Thai man in a woolly hat (its not warm enough for him, its only 34 degrees C) and shades arrived and hung around outside the Hilton in his 'car' to collect us and bring us to the Zoo. I say car as it was really a sound system on wheels. This guy can afford a speaker system that nearly fills his car (Xss's feet were on the bass speaker and mine on the mixing box), but cannot afford to fix the massive crack in his windscreen! As we drove through Bangkok he buckled up his seat belt into the passenger side seat as his was missing (presumably taken out to make room for the microphone and Karaoke system he is installing next week), but then promptly unbuckled as soon as we were out of town. It was a great reminder of all that we have been away from for the previous few weeks whilst staying with Xss's parents. We have easily adopted part of Thai culture- just go with the flow, it'll all work out in the end. We arrived at the Zoo in one piece. Objective achieved.