Consumer guarantees
There are innumerable stories of travelers who come to Thailand and never leave such is the country's charm. And then there are others, such as the two big fellows at our hotel, both retired, who return on a seemingly endless basis. One, an English Australian who lists Bathhurst as his official residence, has been coming here for years and appears just to sit at the bar between meals seemingly finding no reason to move much further. He has just returned to Bathhurst after being here for eighty-two days and running up an accommodation bill of 80,000 baht ($NZ3,200). He'll be back in December for another stint, including filling his traditional role as the hotel's Father Christmas. The other bloke, from north England, spends ten months a year here and moves only about as far as his friend, generally sitting at a table all day overlooking the street, interrupting his gaze only for short bursts on the internet at the computer in the hotel lobby, restaurant or bar. We are told he phones his girlfriend back in the UK on a regular basis and that she does join him on the odd occasion. A curious arrangement.
Other than for work and extended visitor arrangements, the standard permissible length of stay in Thailand is thirty days if you arrive by air, and fifteen if by land. The shorter duration for land-based entry is so the authorities can keep some control over the number of Burmese here illegally. Quite hefty fines are meted out against those who overstay but tour operators have this under control. Most offer visa runs; every day of the week there are trips to the neighbouring Burma and Malaysia aimed at ensuring those whose visas are about to expire can leave the country and return with new, fresh entry arrangements. It is big business and there is nothing covert about it; these runs are openly advertised and, it seems, every old American hippy does a regular trek. Coincidentally perhaps, the authorities have announced that as of next week there will be a crack-down on people working without proper permits “to reduce the economic crime of the jobs of Thais being taken by outsiders illegally".
A couple of American warships are due to dock in Phuket later this week to allow a few days rest and recreation for the crew, one of the consequences being that ladyboys from all over Thailand are enticed to Phuket to enjoy the company of these men and their money. It may be that after the all-male on-board company some servicemen find the transition to female friendship too much and opt for the safety of a half-way measure. This raises the obvious question, however, of what happens when one actually wants a woman, woos "her"with food and drink all night and then, when things are set to get a little more romantic, finds out the breasts he has been admiring are accompanied by a full set of male genitalia. We will seek an opinion from those with legal knowledge of whether those who failed to notice the Adams apple could make a claim under the Consumers' Guarantees Act, or whether this is simply a case of caveat emptor, let the buyer beware.
Under the heading “US Warships Visit Brings Ladyboy Crime Invaders” PhuketWan recently reported that, during the last visit by servicemen, Denny Bowman, one of Phuket’s leading expat business identities, was mugged by three kateoys (ladyboys) and had his wallet nicked. We were relieved to learn that he managed to hang onto the Lion of the Year award which he was also carrying. “I was guarding it with my life,” he said.
Those concerned about our well-being during what may be a boisterous old time in Patong may be relieved to learn that for the next week we will be in Koh Samui, a small island off the eastern coast of Thailand. Reliable advice has it this island is beautiful, friendly, cheap and will soon be home to David Beckham, or at least one of the homes to David Beckham. He is building a house somewhere there and though he is reported never to have visited, his wife Victoria has been a couple of times.
One of the little intrigues previously reported, the lack of recall by one of the Kiwi-bar staff into the health of her injured Canadian boyfriend, may have a simple explanation. It turns out that Jo, an Australian woman who assists us maintain the viability of the bar, currently describes this particular Thai woman as her partner. It seems our question about a boyfriend may just have been put to her at an inopportune moment.

Queer news
There has been a reunion of sorts; and it is good to be able to report that all of our old friends are back at the Kiwi bar in Patong. Good in that we had heard from some Australians that our favourite two staff had been sacked for misbehaving too much and there was neither sight nor sound of the third so we assumed she too had gone; the bar appearing to be staffed by a new collection of much younger girls. But we were wrong; something was lost in translation, one favourite had been sick not sacked and the one that liked Kaelene quite a lot, although no longer working there, was still about. The third also appeared on our return for a pre-arranged barbeque, all keen for a repeat of a sambucca-fueled night which occurred somewhere in a distant, hazy past.
But it wasn’t just the difference between sick and sacked that was lost in translation, we enquired after the health of the Canadian boyfriend of one of the staff who, on our last day here in May, was reportedly hurt in a motorcycle accident elsewhere in Thailand. Upset that day, the woman explained that she did not have the money to travel to see him. It may have been a hint for financial assistance but we didn’t offer, and our subsequent request for an update on the boyfriend’s health led to a complete absence of recall on the issue of either Canadian boyfriends or motorcycle accidents. Two other Australian patrons sharing the barbeque were also surprised to hear us getting an update on the proprietor’s two sons who live with their father in Bangkok as on three previous holidays to Patong they claimed Tikki had told them she had no children at all. Indignantly, she denied denying motherhood, and it could be that these moments of confusion are simply that. We almost feel part of the family there and would hate to think that they would spin us a line.
Prior to our departure from New Zealand last year a professor of food science offered some handy travelling advice and that was to eat yoghurt on a daily basis as its active bacteria are just the very thing a human gut needs to maintain its good working order and to fight off, as far as possible, the ill-effects of unfamiliar foods and bugs on and in the digestive system. Mostly we have maintained that regime and there has not been a day of illness, until now and it coincides with a slip from our precautionary consumption of yoghurt. It’s not on the breakfast menu at our hotel and we hadn’t gotten around to getting some from the local supermarket so the inevitable happened. The indignity of description is unnecessary suffice to say that the last week has been slow going and ventures too far from our hotel infrequent. There is a lesson for all travelers to exotic destinations, and that is to heed the advice of professors of food science.
Keeping relatively close to home meant that the Vegetarian Festival has passed us by, and if it was thought vegetarianism is for the lily-livered the calendar of events should dispel such notions. There were a number of sacred rituals performed each day at various shrines, including fire walking, self mutilation and climbing ladders with bladed rungs, and good fortune is said to be bestowed upon the devotees, or mah song, taking part. The Phuket Gazette reported: “… the mah song have shoved axes, fake guns, swords, tree branches, bicycle cahins and even umbrellas through their cheeks. In one such act about twenty of the mediums took axes to their tongues in a bloody ten minute act to appease the gods.” Now that’s not for the faint hearted.
In its Queer News column, the Gazette reports that a family in another part of Thailand has set up a shrine to house the body of a stillborn, headless baby. “Relatives took the baby home, setting it up in an old fish tank converted into a display case. They placed the baby in a sitting position and put a baby’s bottle and nappy in the fish tank. They also lit incense and set up a donation box for visitors.
“If the body of the baby did not start to decay, they would keep it in the fish tank permanently for people t come and give worship,” the baby’s great Aunt said. “If it began to go off, they would give it a proper burial,” she explained.

Death by shock
It has to be acknowledged that there was a certain irony in being in the “secret” room of a DVD seller’s shop in Phuket checking to see whether the copy of Sacha Baron Cohen’s movie, Bruno, we were buying was of satisfactory quality. Even more ironic when a portion of the video was a trailer about the perils of buying pirated DVDs and the potential problems with reproduction quality, not to mention theft of royalties. We blamed the movie theatres in London for our need to buy a copy, caused by their not showing Bruno at suitable times when we were there. Midnight screenings were just not for us. We felt OK though because we were assured that, at around $2.80 a copy, these DVDs were the genuine article and not fakes.
The reason we needed to check the quality of DVDs from this store was that, on a previous visit, someone who cannot be named for legal reasons purchased about six movies only to find that The Pink Panther 2 appeared to be filmed on a handycam during an actual theatre showing. Not only was the film’s quality as stale as second-hand cigarette smoke, the only properly audible sound was the theatre audience laughing at what we presumed were the funny parts.
Still, this is Phuket where anything goes including, it appears, our camera and Marty’s flash sunglasses which were in our luggage when we left Bangkok but absent on arrival. It is the second camera to go west here, the first, Kaelene’s Pentax, simply died one day on the beach.
Little has changed in Patong, our Kiwi bar is still there post-recession although it has made a major concession and now displays a couple of large Australian flags (we’ve made our displeasure known), the refurbished Hard Rock Café, due to open last February, is yet to unfasten its doors (though progress has been made and it looks not too far away), markets, street vendors and tuk-tuks still clog the streets, as do time-share salespeople the latter of which (all white tourists, generally working illegally), are pests not to put too fine a point on it. We quickly adopted our previous stance of telling them in English that we don’t speak English and for some curious reason this seems to do the trick, they don’t persist.
Still circling the streets are the utility wagons with Thai kick boxers on the back urging people to come to their next show (at around $NZ60 to get it we won’t be there), also there is the man you can pay to have your photo taken with his iguana, the bar girls (with their sing-song calls of hello, welcome), the massage shops and those tourists. This would be a great place without them, and then there are the beggars. They were about on our first day back but, unusually, gone the next having been "unmasked" by Patong’s "top cop". The local superintendant told The Gazette that among the regular beggars was a one-legged florist, a man who is usually accompanied by his fat daughter and dog, a drunken man with white hair, an elderly but healthy aunt and a man with short hair and a tiny body. The tiny body beggar, posing as blind, can make as much as 30,000 Baht of $NZ1,200 a night. It must be unlawful here to make so much money.
The Andatel Hotel ($NZ40 a night including breakfast and unlimited internet access) is home for the next week or two, it is down the other end of town than our previous accommodation so there are new experiences. The call to prayer rings out, we hadn’t expected that but there are a number of mosques in the vicinity and a quite large Muslim-Thai population. This is their patch, and they are campaigning to have one of the streets near here declared alcohol-free as a symbolic gesture of some sort, we are not quite sure what.
We lunched at the appropriately named Paradise Beach with an ex-pat journalist Alan Morison and his partner Khun Oi who together run Phuketwan, a news internet site with a focus on Phuket. Alan is an old-fashioned newshound who pushes the boundaries almost too far in terms of stories and has campaigned against the abuse of Boat People by the Thai Navy and exposed scams perpetrated against tourists. His is bold, gutsy and refreshing journalism and he told us he probably gets away with it because the authorities don’t quite understand the criticisms he makes, although he qualified that by saying that he is pretty careful not to go too far. Phuketwan is worth a read, even from afar, and Paradise Beach worth a visit but be warned. The road in and out is so steep that, in April, when Marty and Kaelene tried to get there on a hired motorcycle, it didn’t have the necessary fortitude to make it up the hill.
What also hasn’t changed are the Australians who still swagger about as though they own the show even if the Europeans and now Chinese try to monopolise at certain times of the year. Phuketwan revealed that three Australians have died during the last week, but the story that caught our attention was of the man who took his last breath while involved in what was described as a tryst with two Thai women while his unsuspecting wife was in a hotel elsewhere on the island. A senior Phuket policeman provided what we thought a very medico-legal explanation: “People come here and drink too much; they perhaps take Viagra or other drugs, then get very excited. Thai women are beautiful. They are much more beautiful than most western women. In this kind of situation, some men simply suffer shock.'”

One night in Bangkok
and the world's your oyster
The bars are temples but the pearls ain't free
You'll find a god in every golden cloister
A little flesh, a little history
I can feel an angel sliding up to me
One night in Bangkok makes a hard man humble
Not much between despair and ecstasy
One night in Bangkok and the tough guys tumble
Can't be too careful with your company
I can feel the devil walking next to me
This was Kaelene’s third trip to Bangkok and Marty’s second, we were more relaxed than previously and somehow the old bandicoots with gorgeous young Thai women on their arms didn’t seem quite so offensive. We don’t quite know why; old men (much, much older than us) with genital-strangulating shorts, beer-brand tee singlets, white socks pulled up the just below the knees and sandals. How hideous is that? One almost, but not quite, feels more sorry that men would dress like that than for the young woman that need to attach themselves to such men, but it may be the sort of symbiotic relationship that we were supposed to learn about in high school science. Each is reliant on the other, however distasteful. Perhaps one reason we were so relaxed was because in Barbados a global balance seemed to be achieved somehow by a predominance of middle-aged white women on the beach, loved up, with young black studs. It’s a funny old world.
As for us, a day or so in Bangkok was not spent chasing ping pong in Patpong, we were satisfied with shopping and a taxi ride to the Hard Rock Café, the tenth such café we have visited on our travels so far (and at least one more to come if ever the Patong one ever re-opens), a meal and the purchase of another HRC shot glass to add to the family collection. Our children are destined to inherit an invaluable collection of internationally worthless souvenirs if, doubtfully, we ever pass away. Fortunately immortalisation is possible with the new science.
Then it was to the Hillary II bar, to sit outside in the warm evening air, drinking red wine and watching the world go by; the street vendors, tuk-tuks and passersby, visitors and locals playing pool in the bar. This is life. Kaelene was simply impressed that the host recalled our red wine order from the night before and brought our tipple out without us actually even needing to order. We looked at each other and decided that this was a better look at contemporary life than a trip to the royal palace or the reclining Buddha. Warts and all, this was real.
But Bangkok was just a short interlude and reality an airport taxi ride away. If there is an airline company that appears to know how to treat its customers Bangkok Airlines would set a shining example; a customer lounge in the domestic departure hall with magazines, tea, coffee and snacks, and then an aircraft that is actually configured with legroom that is comfortable for more than just midgets. Contrast this to Lufthansa, a Star Alliance partner, with whom we flew to Milan in July. Despite entitlement to Star Alliance lounges through our Air New Zealand Koru Club membership, we were denied entry because our bookings weren’t actually made through Air New Zealand.
We claim some expertise in comparing and contrasting airlines and they shall be ranked at some stage soon, but we could give an early indication that Jetstar would be the most abysmal, and we mean abysmal, outfit we have ever had the misfortune to fly with (Sydney to Thailand in April, we still have nightmares), and Emirates would retain its number one spot, surprisingly with the Boeing 777 as the most comfortable of planes. But this is all another story.

Free Prozac for the almost unique
Here’s something to ponder, and that is whether a two hour stopover in Helsinki qualifies Finland as a country we have visited or whether it is just a place we have been. Maybe neither, as even as early at 9.00 at night the airport resembles New Zealand of another era; everything, aside from one duty free store, was locked up tight, even the coffee shop. There was at least some solace with free wireless internet access throughout the departure lounge. Perhaps thirteen hours flying Finnair and several hours more on the ground does qualify a sort of visit status, but we haven’t been confident enough to list Finland among our destinations on the blogsite. All we can say is that we’ve touched down.
Finland has a reputation for having the highest suicide and depression rates in the world, which might be the explanation for the graffiti in the toilet: Free Prozac for Finn’s (sic). The wrongly hyphenated plural may be a desperate plea for help from an attention-seeking Finn in itself; we don’t know any of these northern species ourselves to know what sort of behavioral characteristics they exhibit, but the late Richard King had a good friend Yussi from Finland who seemed quite jovial despite the long hours of winter darkness.
On the issue of grammar and we know this may invite attention to our own linguistic failings, but there are some instances when the misuse of language can be amusing but others when it is irritating. Or it could be that we are getting trivial? One of the latter that caught our attention has been the qualification of the word unique, firstly when a guide at the Irish Rock of Cashel was telling us why something was almost unique to Ireland and secondly when Alexandra, our very nice guide to Kephalonia in Greece, described something, we cannot remember what, as very unique. Now excuse us, but something is either unique or it is not. It is that simple if it is almost unique then it is not unique at all. The same goes for very unique, it’s a superfluous adjective. The word very is used to give effect to something, for example the difference between driving fast and driving very fast. However something cannot be more or less than unique because unique is the sole required descriptor. Perhaps it is us, rather than the Finns, who needs the Prozac.
It would be a fair question to ask why we were in Finland at all en route to Thailand. It was a consequence or benefit of travelling on Qantas air points, Finnair (thin air to eastenders?) is a partner One World airline and is the fifth airline we have travelled on while running down our air points tallies (Emirates, Jetstar, Qantas, British Airways and Finnair). In this instance we booked Qantas and travelled Finnair, it is as simple as that.
It is some 22 years since Kaelene first visited Bangkok on a Hotel Workers Union trip, a side journey after a conference in Penang, it is still the same city but seems less polluted, and less congested and has much better shopping. The street traders are here still hawking fruit and vegetables, copy brand clothes and jewelry and the usual array of DVDs, including the latest porno titles if the signs are to be believed. The bar girls are still there as are the white men who seem to quite like them, but best of all Bangkok smells and feels like Asia
Perhaps the shopping looked good because we were are staying in Sukhamvit which is adjacent to the Chid Lom district with its array of brand name stores and shopping malls which would rival the best anywhere, except perhaps the Middle East, there are no indoor ski slopes in the shopping malls here! We are staying in a place called the Omni Tower Syncate on Soi 4 in what appears to be an apartment with a kitchen, huge living area and a bedroom with a walk-in wardrobe. Not bad for $50 a night, even if the free internet doesn’t quite seem to work. The Chief Executive Officer of Omni Towers Syncate is “Paul” Pornthep SriNaralu who describes himself as a motivator and lifestyle philosopher as well as hospitality and realty master. He is a modest man, the founding coach of Life Changing Mission, the founding vice-president of the Real Estate Broker Association, guest faculty at the Thai Real Estate Business School, the founding president of Bangkok International Vegetarian and the president, in 2007 and 2008, of the Siam Toastmasters Club. With credentials like that it is amazing he was on hand personally to greet us and hour and a half late, as we checked in from our fight. But then, we have always been lucky.

A miscarriage of justice
We arrived early in London, landing at around 5.15am. Immediately we knew why we don’t live there; it was cold and grey, with more than a hint of drizzle and, by contrast to the 35 degrees we left in Barbados, the temperature was a cool ten.
One of the remarkable things about our travel to the Carribean was the configuration of the British Airways Boeing 777 which flies the route between Barbados and London Gatwick every day. Perhaps as much as 60 percent of the plane is devoted to better-than-economy travel; first and business classes and premium economy for those prepared to pay for extra legroom and bigger video monitors. We didn’t ask but surmised the reason for the extra allocation for premium travel is that Barbados is a destination primarily for moneyed holiday makers who travel in style. The plain old economy seats down the back are for the likes of us and the poorer Bajans.
To give an idea of coastal property prices in Barbados there is an old hotel currently for sale on the waterfront on the south coast which is a nice area but not nearly as up market as the west. The hotel looked fit for the wrecking ball and there was little adjoining land, but it is right on the beach and the price tag is a cool $US12 million or $NZ16.3 million.
At Sandy Lane, in the flash part of the west coast, where Tiger Woods got married, the accommodation prices range from between $B25,000 ($NZ17,000) a night for a villa in the festive season down to $B1,000 ($NZ700) for the cheapest room in the rainy season. A guest at the hotel can play nine holes on its golf course for $B130 and $180 for 18 holes, and the green fee alone to play on the Green Monkey, whatever that may be, is $US385. The sample menu on the resort’s web site does not list prices, nor does it for the wine list, but it could be expected that a glass of the Bollinger Special Cuvee does not come cheap. We are able to report that there is a handy selection of New Zealand wine on the menu ranging from 1999 Babich Sauvignon Blanc to a Cloudy Bay Pelorus bubbles and then the Te Mata Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot. As for us, we felt hard done by paying $7 for a small bottle of Banks beer at west coast bars by comparison to the $3 we paid at the Oistins Fish Fry.
Our time back in London was to be brief, two nights in all, with only one night together with the Moodies and Andrea, the Hungarian child minder. Martin was off next day to Cannes for year 21 at the Cannes Duty Free something-or-other (3 of the 8 days are dedicated to golf, but we are told the rest is hard work) and Andrea was off to Mallorca with her boyfriend for a long weekend. It was Andrea’s birthday recently and Anousheh’s on Friday, so this was a farewell and birthday celebration combined at the local Greek restaurant with its half-price mains between Sunday and Thursday. So as well as the birthday cake, it was an opportunity to bid our farewells and thanks to the very generous Moodies who have let us use their home (and most charitable hospitality) as a base for the last five months. In fact, they are exceptionally giving and with Anousheh’s permission we could have raided the fridge in the shed and polished off our host’s best vintage Veuve Clicqot champagne. But we were our usually restrained selves and the champers remains untroubled.
Any visit, even one of as short a duration as this, would be incomplete without an incident with the authorities and this was no exception. This time a 30 pound parking ticket, the irony being that it was collected while going to get a duty-free receipt for a 30 pound VAT refund. We claim, of course, that the ticket was thoroughly unfair (and it was, truly) meaning that Marty spent much of our last morning arguing the toss at the Ealing Council office while Kaelene fought even harder to get our purchases of the last five months into our two suitcases - which were already overweight even before we started our travels. What the Moodies may discover eventually is that we have hoarded belongings all over their house in what we hope are unnoticeable little piles.
This parking ticket was jolly irksome and a satisfactory resolution yet to be achieved. Despite eloquent submissions, witnesses and photographic evidence pointing out that the clock on the pay-and-display was incorrect and that a sign setting out the conditions of parking provided inaccurate information, a decision is yet to be made on whether the fine will be waived. In the meantime, we are preparing a defense team to be led by Joe Karam and negotiating the movie rights. On the strength of that alone we have booked the villa at Sandy Lane for a month.

Feeding turtles and conjoined tortoises

It was inevitable there would be another incident with the authorities, fortunately this time we were merely onlookers. Our bus, the number 27 to Oistins, pulled out from the gap by the racecourse and onto the main road at the Garrison, ignoring a compulsory stop sign directly in front of the Hastings Police Station. That, in our view, was asking for trouble and within several hundred metres the bus was being hounded by a police Land Rover, lights flashing and siren wailing. So there we all were, in the middle of the highway, traffic backed up, while the driver got a good old fashioned dressing down from the local constabulary. It seems to be one of the things about the authorities on Barbados; they like to make a point and then let matters rest. We were free to go.
At 41,000 feet above the Atlantic Ocean, heading away from the Caribbean Sea and on our way back to London it was time to reflect on our last few days on paradise. Along with several of Fleur’s current colleagues and two former ones from Dusseldorf, we headed north east to the Barbados Wildlife Reserve where, it seems, they have a prized collection of conjoined tortoises. The park claims the largest gathering of tortoises in captivity and it may well be right, but these tortoises were not conjoined at all, they were merely ensuring the continuation of the park’s population; hundreds of the things grunting and humping, making more noise than on a pornographic movie set. For those like us who had not previously considered the question, tortoises have toenails and are land-based creatures whereas turtles have flippers and swim. In any event, this island has presented to us an absolute feast of both.
The park is home to a number of iguana, some spectacled caiman (a species of small crocodile), Brocket deer, brilliantly coloured parrots and a huge python which only has to be fed once a month. More regularly fed are the green monkeys which are not so much housed in the park, but come and go as they please. It’s more come than go at feeding time and we were captivated. These are not your usual unpleasant, mangy, bare-red-bummed monkeys, but quite cute ones and we, the collection of school teachers and us, took hundreds of photos. It was quite remarkable, the tortoises took time out from copulating and hot-footed it to the food (faster than a hare they were), pushing their way past the human onlookers and then, looking like a collection of boulders, ate while the monkeys used them as stepping stones and perches in their own bid for food. We were entranced as the monkeys entertained, particularly one with a very small baby, and would have stayed an hour or more.
The day was completed with a visit to the home of two other teachers, for tea and cake on their deck which looks out over a bay called St Martin’s on the Atlantic coast. This is the sort of place that makes it tempting not to ever go home. Set among a banana plantation, these people have all the modern conveniences such as internet and television, and a million-dollar view over the blue waters of a palm tree-lined bay. What could be more enchanting?
We will miss Oistins, a working class part of the island. On our last night we went to the fish market and close a couple of fresh fish, the variety of which we cannot recall and, while they were being gutted and filleted, went out onto the wharf armed with fish scraps to see if we could spot any turtles to feed. There were and of course there was the local who, for a donation, would lure them to the surface and, in this case, actually jump in the water to hand-fed them.
How good is it to be able to pick out the fresh fish and wait as it is prepared? There are flying fish, barracuda, snapper, kingfish, tuna and the much discussed dolphin. Perhaps it is time to confess that the dolphin, which we didn’t actually sample, is not the mammal we know and love but is something described on the Barbados web guide as an ugly but delicious fish.
Another thing we will miss about Barbados will be the daily newspaper, The Nation, with its remarkable reporting style. Our last day’s highlight story was that of Verna Alodia Louis of Syndicate Road, Bush Hall, St Michael who was determined to establish whether the postman’s threat not to deliver any more of her mail had substance. She posted letters to herself, got her husband and her friends to do the same, and in the absence of their being delivered telephoned the Attorney General’s office and threatened to blow up the post office with two sticks of dynamite. After being reprimanded by Magistrate Christopher Birch, Verna was discharged without conviction, but we are none the wiser whether her mail delivery will resume.

Goats’ milk and other vices
If the daily newspaper, The Nation, is to be believed there is barely a decent man left in Barbados, but no end of silly or gullible women. Each day a full page is devoted to the trials and tribulations (titillations?) of everyday life through letters to an agony aunt who goes by the name of Christine. On her days off Miss Reid steps in to fill the breach such is the demand for advice and counseling, and then, at the weekend, Sanka Price deals with relationship issues by the page-full in The Saturday Sun. Dr Ruth answers sexual health questions and a column called Pudding & Souse deals with all the gossip under the hot Bajan sun. Typically the requests for help come from women seeking advice on such things as what to do after falling pregnant to a man who then denies paternity or wants nothing more to do with the woman and impending child, and generally the woman will have been in the same situation before. One writer this week had four previous children to four different fathers and found herself unhappily pregnant again with the fifth. The other common situation is where, after promising her the world, a man cheats his way to all of a woman’s hard-earned money and then disappears without trace. Each hard luck letter is followed by a deluge of "I told you so" replies, a few sympathetic ones and further expressions and examples of the failings of men.
It must be one of the great contradictions of a conservative Christian country that there are so many human failings on displaay. While young men are jailed for riding bicycles without lights or for possessing camouflage clothing and where it is completely illegal to sunbathe in the nude, the per capita rate of HIV infection is the highest in the world anywhere outside of Africa, teenage pregnancy among the highest in the world and it seems that almost the entire female population has become unwittingly pregnant or ripped off by predatory men at some stage.
In this weekend’s paper alone, headlines and major features included: “GT girls” horn each other too, Hurt by dad’s cheating ways, Don’t judge without the facts, Sex not what we thought it would be, Why men have sex (“Men can and do engage in sex out of a husbandry duty. There is the fear of being charged with dereliction of duty or that if they don’t do it, then somebody else may”), Saved from a lesbian’s life, 8-hour shift of hot love, and Dumped lover still pimping. Somewhere in there was a reference to President Obama being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
But we do not concern ourselves with such maatters. We are tourists and our next excursion was to the northern tip of the island, to the Animal Flower Cave. This is the only sea cave on Barbados, thought to be some 500,000 years old in parts with the coral floor a mere 126,000 years. After going down steep steps, visitors are treated to spectacular views out through various cave mouths onto the Atlantic Ocean and, within the cave, boulder-like formations where the coral rocks have been eroded by waves over the years. In those rocks are shapes which look like such things as a lizard, turtle and a human hand, hence the animal part of the cave’s name. The flower name derives from displays, at the right times of the year, of anemones which bloom in the seawater pools on the cave floor.
If the cave was spectacular, then so too was the drive to get there and back, the road so rough in one section we thought we had become lost and strayed onto the road to hell. It was down to 5 kilometers per hour and even that was bone shaking. We passed a couple of the island's big churches and went into one at St Thomas’s, and then down towards the east coast with the intention of going into St Nicholas Abby, another plantation house (not a church as the name suggests) and billed as the likely last remaining authentic house of the 17th century in the “New World” and potentially a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Our intention to go in remained just that, at $30 a head even to get inside the grounds we carried on to a lookout giving a (free) panorama down the coast. This part of the Atlantic coast could be mistaken for somewhere like Piha in New Zealand such is the similarly of the shoreline and warnings about the dangers of its strong currents and rips. We journeyed down the coast to St Martin’s Bay, through banana plantations and palm trees, through the grounds of Fleur’s school (The Codrington School) then past the big house, Her Majesty’s Prison Dodds, and back to Bridgetown for another intended visit, this time to the Jewish Museum. Careful again with our money, we thought the $25 per person entry fee a little steep for what seemed a small museum.
In other news, the Prime Minister has declared that there is no place for politics in solving the problems facing West Indies cricket and our columnist friend Richard Hoad is extolling the benefits of goats’ milk which he says has aphrodisiac powers ("our lawyer is insisting on a health warning: If after consuming this product you have an erection lasting more than four hours, call the Guinness Book of World Records") and tattoo removal ("Any young ladies wishing to have a tattoo removed in a private place should give me a shout"). Somehow we don’t think Richard’s columns would quite cut the mustard in the New Zealand press.

Turning turtle
It was a bad day for George Clarke, aged 73, of the Warrens, St Michael. It seems George had a heart attack at the wheel and by the time we arrived on the scene in Broad Street, Bridgetown’s main road, his car was straddling the pavement in front of Colombian Emeralds, having knocked over a large plant container and come to rest against a rather, by-then, bent looking street lamp. Unfortunately for George, he didn’t live to tell the tale.
It was probably an inglorious farewell to Bridgetown, our work there having been completed, or as close to being finished as need be buying bits and pieces for Fleur’s apartment. That done, we headed up the west coast to the Folkestone Marine Park, narrowly missing a wayward monkey which darted out across the road in front of us, to meet Monica and Michael from Westwater Adventures for a glass-bottom boat trip. And what a cracking little trip it was, out over coral reefs and a sunken boat and then onwards for a swim with the turtles. It is quite sensational to swim with these most curious of creatures, perhaps fifteen of them in the open sea, ranging from about one foot long to more than three feet. There were two rules; no hanging on and no swimming immediately behind them; aside from that we were free to enjoy their company, and enjoy it we did. All snorkeled up, we accompanied them for perhaps twenty-five minutes. One bloke, off another boat, with a bag of fish scraps was hand feeding one of the biggest turtles and we coat tailed, quite indescribable to watch it all from below the surface, and more the pity we didn’t have an underwater camera to record the action. Deeper, a large stingray circled menacingly and Lorenzo, the boat skipper’s son, dived down for Marty’s benefit to disturb a flatfish camouflaged on the sandy bottom.
With turtle-time up, we returned to the reef for a crash course on the various forms of coral (viewed through the glass bottom) and the dangers flame coral poses if it touches naked skin. It’s not called flame for no reason and the only known antidote to its burning sensation is urine, so perhaps the precaution is to swim with at least a half-full bladder. From the reef, we journeyed a short distance to the shipwreck to feed and swim with the coloured fishes. As in Phuket, these fish are so used to being fed that the water becomes a seething mass once food is thrown to them and, for those in the water with snorkeling gear, the scene is once again amazing. Neon coloured fish abound, from purples to yellows and greens, and among them plain old grey fish-coloured ones. Despite his father lamenting his son’s unsociable teenage traits, Lorenzo took it upon himself to guide Marty, pointing out various types of fish and then onto the reef for an underwater look at the coral. Not ones easily given to tipping, such was the trip we rewarded father and son handsomely.
From the sea we could see the various onshore luxury hotel developments along this part of the island; this is where the rich and famous hang out. The skipper ran through a list of stars that stay or who own property along this shore, and told us of seeing David Beckham and Wayne Rooney with his own two eyes. While this might be a playground for the beautiful he clearly had us marked. Don’t eat at the restaurants on this part of the island, he warned, they are just there to remove your money and charge about $B60 ($NZ45) a course just for lunch when you can get a perfectly good selection at the supermarket deli for about $10.
Good advice we thought as we headed to the Sunbury Plantation House, a 300 year old heritage home which gives an insight to life in a sugar plantation in the 18th and 19th centuries. Well, it gives an impression of how the white owners lived because we saw no evidence of how the approximately 250 slaves and apprentices (slaves in disguise) lived, slavery not having been abolished here until 1834. According to the guidebook Sunbury has been restored to the era of the planter elite, full of mahogany furniture and glassware, with a fine selection of prints portraying the island’s history. As well as being restored, and it is a tribute to fine architectural design, there is a excellent museum collection of buggies, saddles, cameras and, of all things, optical machinery and sight-testing equipment; most of the latter looking for all the world like instruments of torture. And if food on the west coast was expensive, the guide told us was that, for $US100 per person, we could enjoy a five course meal at Sunbury. If $US100 seemed a lot, we even balked at the Magnum ice creams in the gift shop at $US3.50 each.
This is a country of roundabouts, most named after someone famous (the latest being Ryan Brathwaite), but our favourite is the Emancipation Roundabout with its statue of a slave named Bussa, his chains shackles broken free, who in April 1816, led a revolt which led to reforms which eventually resulted in the end of slavery. It may have ended then but the freed slaves simply became tenants without rights and whose labour remained forced. And Sunbury is probably a reminder that not a hell of a lot has changed.

Out east

What is it that makes a country adopt everything English? With four weeks down and only one to go, it seemed only proper to start really exploring the sights of Barbados before it is too late, our forays so far having been generally limited to the south of the island and shopping excursions. And exploring is where place names and maps come into play, it is like embarking on a journey through little England. Such things as towns called Hastings and Dover, the district of Christ Church, the international cricket stadium, Kensington Oval, Cheapside (although quite why you would want that one we don‘t know) and Beachy Head, although not known as a suicide spot. We aren’t sure what occurred at Cuckold Point but no doubt there is a history, and then there are the administrative parishes (like our local body councils), all but one with saints’ names and each centered on a state-subsidised Anglican church. St Philip, St John, St Michael, St James, there is even one for the women, St Lucy. But it is not exclusively English though, down the road from us is Joe Louis Boulevard, although the shingled lane would hardly resemble what we know as a boulevard, and further towards town a gap called Ella Fitzgerald, gap being the local terminology for a road or street.
Getting to some of these places can be a challenge; the only tourist route map of the island could never be described as particularly accurate and in places a complete absence of road markings and signs make direction finding almost impossible. Arrival at an intended destination can be a matter of chance, but the island is so small it is difficult to get too lost.
But it may only be a short time before this is remedied, at least in part. Fleur was chatting to a local woman on Friday night who has almost finished a self-appointed task of accurately road-mapping Barbados and she hopes to sell the completed product to the tourist board soon. Our advice would have been to have included satellite navigation points as well, but perhaps she already has a deal with SatNav Ken.
Notwithstanding inaccurate maps and rutted roads, on Sunday we found our way around the south-eastern tip of the island and up the east coast, firstly to Skeete's Bay, then Bath and Bathsheba. This is the Atlantic coast, far more rugged than the tourist-dominated west, and to some extent physically reminiscent of New Zealand’s west coast. The bays are reached down steep roads flanked on either side by palm trees and banana plantations, it is quite spectacular. We stopped first at Bath and couldn’t decide whether it was named after the historic English city or the fact that the sea water was positively tepid. We had expected the sea on the Atlantic Coast to be cooler but this wasn’t so, never have we swum in water so warm and it was clear the locals use it in which to bathe. We were the only white faces among several hundred locals, large family groups picnicking and relaxing, and dozens and dozens swimming, staying in the water forever without any of that teeth-chattering cold which permeates even the hardiest of bodies at home. Just down from us, a group of boys suspended an old sheet of plywood above their heads for others to take turns using as a springboard to somersault into the water. The scene would not have been complete without a huge bank of speakers in the domain across the roads reverberating with a Reggae homage to Bob Marley.
Further up the coast, Bathsheba, the main town on the east, is more accessible, its rocky shores home to surfers and with an overpriced café making the best from passing tourists; at $20 for three soft drinks, it would have been cheaper to buy beer.
Back south, Crane Beach, which is overlooked by the luxurious Crane Resort ($75 per person for Sunday brunch but it was booked out so we didn’t go), has been named by the defunct American television programme, Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous, as one of the ten best beaches of the world. It was certainly a nice beach, but if it is one of the ten best in the world, then the other nine could be in Gisborne, New Zealand, alone.
For a warm country there are surprisingly few unpleasant animals to dampen the enjoyment. There are no sharks in the seas for reasons we have yet established and no evidence of things like jellyfish. Snakes have been rendered extinct by an introduced species, the ravenous mongoose (is the plural mongeese?) and there are very few monkeys. The cane toads which come out after the rains are enormous, perhaps up to 8 inches across, and each day as we hang out the washing or tend to other domestic chores we startle little green geckos which dart to safety and then watch us from a distance. But best of all, when walking home from the beach the other day and looking out over a small bluff, there was a turtle which would have been at least three foot long swimming idly by through the crystal clear water. It’s not a bad old life.

Milking goats
Somehow we were on a guided tour of Barbados, the guests of Ted Hoad, eighty-four, third generation islander, the eldest of nine children, and retired biscuit baker. It was an unusual tour, more a potted journey through Ted’s life, all at speed and generally from a distance; the place where he and seven of his siblings were born, the church he was christened in, the house on an east boast beach where he and his bride honeymooned, the home in which he lived with his wife for twenty-something years, the site of his parent’s family home in Bridgetown, the place, now a bank on Broad Street, where his grandfather set up a bakery downstairs and his family lived upstairs, and where he used to play, swim and bike when he was young.
We flashed by the occasional tourist highlight (if you look over there as we go past you might be able to catch a glimpse of this or that, we’d stop if we had time, but first I want to show you where I won a game of marbles two weeks before I got married in 1948).
We met Ted a fortnight ago when having dinner with several of Fleur’s colleagues who live in what could be described as a cluster of units inside the perimeter of the Rockley Golf Club. Ted is a neighbour and wandered over and we inadvertently ended up inside his unit looking at an impressive, huge reproduction of Broad Street showing his grandfather’s business with his uncle leaning out over an upstairs balcony, and photos of his family, most of whom it seemed have abandoned the island and live in far-flung parts of the globe. Ted’s wife died not long ago after sixty-one years of marriage; he was lonely and insisted on taking us for a car trip. We agreed.
But if we thought this was to be where the real Barbados was revealed we were wrong. “What’s he name of that of tree,” Kaelene asked him. “Ohh, if you hadn’t a asked me dat I woulda known”, he replied. “What kind of birds are those?,” we asked. “Ohh I don‘t know, we never used to have then here when I was young,” he replied, “I think they must a got blown here in a storm and never went home.” Then, “What brought your grandfather from southern England in 1856 to set up a bakery in Bridgetown?," an interesting one we thought. “Ohh dat’s a good question, but I never rightly thought about it.”
Later in the Barbados Yacht Club (where he has been a member since age eighteen) for lunch any number of people greeted Ted warmly by name. “Ohh dat’s’s the trouble, all of these people, dey say hello, but even if you gave me a thousand dollars I still couldna tell you who dey is.”
Despite that there were some interesting things we learned though. The sugar cane industry is in decline, thwarted by overseas experts who came in, ignored the locals, and restructured, reducing the number of working mills from around 100 to two, but locating them in the hills away from the main growing areas and across the other side of the island from the port and main towns. As a consequence, local farmers, sick of paying the new, huge transport costs are increasingly abandoning the industry.
Then there are the houses. Small wooden houses which just sit on stones or rocks so that, when their owner changes jobs, the house can be picked up and moved as well, this practice having started when workers moved between plantations. If the house was secured by way of permanent foundation, it became the property of the landowner.
Undoubtedly the most fascinatiing, Ted’s gift for predicting major weather events. The appearance of yellow butterflies has caused him to accurately ignore many a hurricane warning, and the foliage on a certain type of tree has allowed him the give drought advice to his brother.
And his brother’s place was our primary destination we realized. Just down the road from the Morgan Lewis Mill (a wind-powered sugar mill which was the only one of its kind left in Barbados until it was hit by lightening), Richard Hoad milks goats (and writes occasional satirical columns for various media). Not that Ted can understand why his university-educated brother and his wife, a former Barbados Scholar (dux of the island), would give away the opportunities of education to farm in the remote north-east, but it is clear that Richard and his family just love it, and equally clear that Ted is immensely proud of his twenty-something years younger brother. We were there for milking time, these are goats of Swiss and French origin, and so tame and well-mannered they virtually milk themselves. “This is Mr and Mrs New Zealand, I can’t understand a word they say” Ted said by way of introduction before Richard got down to banter about our dairy products flooding the market, Anchor cheese being about the only cheap commodity on the entire island. Not that he is too concerned though, he cannot keep up with the demand for his goats’ milk, and he was very impressed by the attractiveness of the young Kiwi woman who recently graced the cover of Dairy Udders International or some similarly titled magazine. Even more impressed he was when we told him that all New Zealand women were like that. Not a dud among them.