SAMWAW 2nd PRIZE Sunset in Tapaktuan (1996)

Won Second Prize in SAMWAW Travel Writing Competition


823 words        SUNSET IN TAPAKTUAN                27.3.99

Not laid-back but dour, I pride myself on my unflappability. Here we were, at an age suited to luxury travel by cruise liner, making our way uncomfortably, by public bus, up the west coast of Sumatra. Making for the most northerly island, Pulau Weh, scene of a ferry disaster that made world headlines thanks to two backpackers who survived twenty-four hours in the water and vowed to marry if they survived. We had stopped off for a few days at the delightful, but little visited, seaside town of Tapaktuan.


We were staying with an Indonesian couple, who lived in an elegant wooden house, built, in colonial days, for an important Dutch official. They had built a guest house for lorry drivers, Losmen Bukit Barisan. Like us they were grandparents, but very sad because their grandchildren lived far away in Europe and the USA, and further estranged because the kids couldn't even speak to them in Indonesian. As trusted guests we were invited to have a large bedroom and free run of the house.


On the mainstreet a front room shop had been cleared and was being converted into a fairy tale venue for a marriage. Being curious we poked our head inside to look. Evening after evening we were welcomed back as friends of the family, to take part in the week long preparation for the wedding. We saw the room transformed, fit for a queen. Brightly coloured patterned kain panjang, long cloth, covered the walls in all shades of red and gold, highlighted by sparing use of bright green. On the floor was a bright blue woven carpet, patterned in red. Decorative streamers broke up the monotony of the dark red ceiling. At the far end, facing the street, was an intricately upholstered throne, with a myriad of beautiful oriental cushions and a lavish backdrop. Even this was outdone by the bridal suite upstairs, a four poster bed luxuriously draped in soft pink silk, a Hollywood blockbuster. And all those brown smiling faces.


I should have felt secure in Tapaktuan. Was it a case of sensory overload?
     'Watch the sunset from the headland, it's beautiful', we were advised.

So we made our way past the radio-station in the twilight, pushing along a narrow track through tall dense undergrowth. Leaving Joan sitting on a rock at the base, I climbed, a hundred feet or so, up to the platform of a radio aerial, and sat down to watch. It was soon evident that the sunset would be spoiled by clouds, banked low on the horizon. Nevertheless I stayed on a while, dreaming.


When I got down it was pitch black and Joan had gone. Not for the first time had I been surprised by the suddenness of nightfall in the tropics. I shouted for her again and again, but I shouted in vain. I followed the narrow path around the tip of the headland, shining my torch down every steep cliff, getting ever more fearful that she had tripped and fallen. Had she been pushed ...? Had I really lost my companion of nearly forty years? Sobbing, I walked back past the radio station. A radio operator, seeing my distress, led a renewed search of the cliffs with his powerful lamp. Defeated, he led me into the building, sat me down with a soft drink, calmed me, and phoned Losmen Bukit Barisan. 'Isteri tuan bukan Bukit Barisan'. Wife you not ... it was time to call the police. They screamed up to the deserted headland on their motor bikes. More questions were answered in halting Indonesian.


Then the phone rang. 'OK, isteri tuan sekarang Bukit Barisan'. Already! In no time at all I was on the back of a police motorbike speeding back over the twisting bumpy track to town. Wondering if, by stroke of irony, we would crash and I would be the one to die that day. Joan walked out of the French windows onto the lawn in the front of the house, still unaware of the extent of my relief. She had shouted up before leaving the tower. Got no response - all too normal! Assumed I had heard. Walked slowly back to town.

I had flipped as never before but managed a smile on remembering friends' warnings. 'You are too old for that backpacking game!'  Bonded anew, we walked silently along the dark mainstreet to witness the blessing of the bride. Members of the close family sprinkled her with rice and splashed her with water. Then to great mirth from everyone, but none more so than the bride, we added our blessing. Before retiring to bed her fingers were wrapped with betel nut, so that they would be stained red for the wedding. Joan sported red fingers for the rest of the trip. A constant reminder of a very special evening, but typical of the frisson and welcome for those daring to get slightly off the beaten track in Asia. 

SAMWAW Borneo - Deep in the Rainforest (1993)

ENTRY for THE SAMWAW AWARD, CLASS TWO

                 The Travel Article


1198 words        DEEP IN THE RAIN FOREST            27.3.99


The logging pickup truck deposited us on a deserted pontoon wharf, just upstream of a giant wooden pier for logging boats on the Balui river. We were on holiday, backpacking in Sarawak, Borneo. Men in small boats came over. 'Down stream to Belaga for a hundred ringgits', they offered. We negotiated hard. One by one they turned away. Had we overdone it this time? It was beginning to look as though we'd have to sleep on the pontoon. 'I just can't imagine my parents travelling like you', said Mane, our American companion, a little younger than our children.  Out of the blue, a torpedo shaped express boat pulled in. Immediately it berthed I jumped on. Anything was preferable to being left behind.

    'Where do you want to go?', asked Liwan, peering from the flight deck.
    'Anywhere', I replied.
    'You can come to my longhouse.'
    'Where's that?'
    'Two hours upstream.'
    'OK, I said, relishing the idea of going further into territory forbidden to tourists.


This was not the large impersonal torpedo boat of the coastal reaches. Instead of dead pan expressions and kung-fu movies, there was the blare of disco music. When we went below we were welcomed with a cheer. Everyone on board was in high spirits, returning from a rare day out in town. Some even wore head-feathers. 'These are real Red Indians', said Mane excitedly. When I went over to inspect a basket of fat grubs an old man sought to impress by eating one alive. Although he grimaced for effect I knew that they consider sago worms a delicacy.


But the real excitement was outside so we clambered from the narrow deck onto the roof, to join the lads, the luggage, and the Guinness. All around was the green rain forest, wilder than anything we had yet encountered, even in Sarawak. The high powered boat fought its way up the fast flowing muddy river, winding round rocks, pitching in rapids, engines roaring whenever the propeller came out of the water. We passed the occasional longhouse or burial ground, marked by a decorated wooden cenotaph.


Beautiful brown women, their faces shaded by large vividly coloured straw coolie sunhats, came to meet the boat at each longhouse stop. Men returning home drunk were slung over a friend's shoulder and carried up steep, notched log, ladders to longhouses high above the river.


'This is the terminus', said Liwan as he beckoned us up to his longhouse, and into his home. He was thirtyish, of small wiry build with jet black hair and tattooed hands, now wearing a clean light blue and white rugby jersey. His wife Cynthia, rather younger, a decorative band round her hair, in a loose white blouse and a floral skirt, was sitting cross legged on the floor with her sister for company. Like Liwan she spoke excellent English, no-one else at that longhouse understood. She was preparing betel nut chews for them, from nut, leaf, and a chalk like powder. 'Like to try', she said as we sat
down, then warned us off, fearing ferocious headaches.


Unlike most longhouses this one was built with about twenty bilek bilek (rooms) on either side of the central verandah or ruai, a sort of pedestrian precinct. More lived in than Coronation Street, but not a hive of communal activity like that at the Iban longhouse where we stayed earlier. Liwan, Cynthia, and their two young children lived at one end of the block. Thus they had a private end of terrace balcony, overlooking the rain forest, which was used for drying clothes. Directly opposite was the headman's room. 'We'll introduce you to him, because he's the only one with a toilet'. The ultimate status symbol. Nothing but a proper seat above a hole in the floor, and a big drop to the ground far beneath. Yet somehow it felt better than peeing off the balcony, the only obvious alternative, or looking for the purpose designed hole in the wooden floor to squat over.


Cynthia came from a Kenyah longhouse, another two hours upstream.
     'Will you take us there tomorrow? we asked Liwan.
     'Yes, you can stay you can stay overnight with her parents, then make your way to the Rajang river by logging truck. But you will have give me money to buy petrol'

Unfortunately it poured with rain all night, so he was unwilling to risk the final dangerous rapids in the suddenly swollen river, but suggested a round trip upstream. As we left two similar boats set out to hunt for wild boar, a few men with a pack of dogs and wooden spears in long narrow open boats propelled by powerful outboard engines.


We stopped at prosperous looking Long Liko for lunch with the headman, admired his trophy cabinet, and tried on the elaborate ceremonial helmet and feathers from the Emperor Hornbill, the emblem of Sarawak. In front of the longhouse the cocoa crop was drying in the sun, to the rear was a pond where fish were farmed, and a caged wild boar which had been caught as a piglet. A boar's head was being barbecued. Then a middle aged woman with a large jug challenged Mane and I to a drinking contest, no sipping, down in one. As we left a large party had gathered in her room, she could afford to throw a party on the proceeds of selling us one jug of tuak! With not a little difficulty we negotiated the stairway down to the boat.


On the way back we stopped at a Penan longhouse. This was an attempt by the government to force this nomadic forest dwelling tribe to settle in a house. The initial impression was of poverty, squalor, graffiti and lack the normal warm welcome. Housework was an alien concept to people who had lived with nature. But the kids were as brave as hunters should be, they didn't run away and hide, they just sat and stared us right in the eye. Soon Mane had them singing along, 'One little, two little, three little Indians'. The young girls started performing graceful dances and inviting Joan to take her turn in the competition. We took tea with the young teacher, in her well kept quarters, and learnt how she had been drafted here by the government for two years. It was sad to reflect on how official government policy was ruining the lives of such a brave and resourceful native people. The rain forest had become too valuable, it had to be reclaimed from its long-standing owners.


Liwan shouted as we exited a rapid. Disoriented for a second, I saw a stick poking high out of the water and thought it marked a dangerous rock. Liwan turned rapidly, nearly capsizing, and seized the stick. We came to alongside a wild boar with a wooden spear stuck in its flank. It had escaped its attackers, presumably the hunters from our longhouse, only to drown in the river. We hauled it on board. It was still warm. Finders was keepers. Liwan butchered it on the floor with the help of a deaf and dumb man. Cynthia cooked some for our supper. It was more appetising than sago worm.

SAMWAW Krakow (1998)

1166 words            KRAKOW                    27.3.99


For decades Paris was unrivalled as my favourite city destination. But now, on a much smaller scale there is Krakow, capital of Poland before Warsaw, and undamaged in the last war. The beautiful central market place or Rynek, is the largest in Europe. Dominating the middle is Cloth Hall, built in the Renaissance style, a long, elegant, cloister. Around the square street cafes extend onto the wide pavements of this pedestrian precinct, where the only traffic is horse-drawn carts. The interior walkway through Cloth Hall is now full of small shops selling high quality goods to tourists. Upstairs is a small, impressive, museum of nineteenth century Polish painting.


There are many more museums and art galleries in town. Krakow's most famous art gallery, the Czartoryski Museum, has many fine works including one of the few Leonardo da Vinci oil paintings existing 'Lady with an Ermine', and Rembrandt's, 'Landscape Before a Storm'. A guided tour around the Collegium Maius is strongly recommended. It was founded in the fourteenth century, a few years after the university at Prague. They have turned several rooms into a museum, including one dedicated to their most famous student, the astronomer Copernicus. The college records show that he paid his fees, but he obviously failed to get a degree!


At the north east corner of the Rynek stands the Mariacki Church, with two crown like towers. Inside is a beautiful gothic altar screen carved in wood by Wit Stwosz in 1447. From the taller tower, two trumpeters play a warning chorus every hour, day and night, to all four quarters of the compass in turn. The phrases being cut short in memory of an celebrated trumpeter, who was shot by an arrow whilst sounding warning of a Tatar invasion. At first you don't notice the faint high pitched sound above the bustle of the square, but once recognised it becomes part of the charm. The trumpet chorus opens the Polish news, to give it a national identity, just as we derive significance from the chimes of Big Ben.


Our rooms were in a pensjonat, beautifully situated, right across the street from the Wawel castle. It had been built as a hotel in the days before 'en-suite' was considered essential. The rooms overlooked a recreation park. The facilities, across the corridor, informed that, 'The Sauna is Co-Educational. We invite'! Breakfast alternated between the cold plate of ham, sausage and cheese and one of an individually cooked scrambled eggs and ham. Both meals were finished with coffee and genuine cheese cake. Choosing a central location in a city has a lot to commend it.


Wawel Castle and Cathedral are the premier attractions in Krakow. They lie just a ten minute walk south of the Rynek, and are sited on a hill overlooking the town and commanding the river. The courtyards are superb in themselves, but inside are four separately ticketed attractions, the Cathedral, the Treasury and Armoury, the Oriental Collection and the Royal Chambers. The last has an extensive display of tapestries from Brussels, paintings from many different schools and furniture. Most rooms feature a magnificent, ceramic tile clad, nineteenth century room heating stove, taken from a fairy tale castle. Individuals are merged in with tour parties, so when tickets are issued they define a time of entry, thus avoiding congestion. Below on the lovely walk along the river bank a realistic bronze statue of a dragon breathes fire to perpetuate a myth about the founding of Krakow.


The Jewish quarter now incorporated in Krakow was once a separate town, Kazimierz, home in the middle ages to the biggest Jewish population in Europe. The Old Synagogue, built in the fifteenth century, vandalised by the nazis, has been reconstructed and now houses The Museum of History and Culture. In the same square are two adjacent Jewish Restaurants, both claiming the name Ariel, feature evenings of Jewish music, across the square another specialises in organising tours associated with the film Schindler's List. In Krakow you are never very far from reminders of the Holocaust, but we found a simple display of old nazi film in an almost empty Isaac Synagogue particularly evocative. It recorded the journeys of some of the fifteen thousand Jews forced to  move all their possessions on hand carts from Krakow into the ghetto across the river at Podgorze.


There are popular excursions from Krakow to Auschwitz, Zakopane and Wieliczka which you can easily organise yourself, maps and travel information are available from Geographica, a small shop on the street between the Rynek and the Wawel Castle. Auschwitz is easily reached for those with the stomach to deal with the simple dereliction, reminders of gas chambers and of human hair being saved for sale. A trip to the Ancient Salt Mine at Wieliczka, a UNESCO heritage site, is not to be missed. Although salt manufacture has been traced back to 3500 BC it has been mined there for just seven hundred years. In the middle ages the mine accounted for a quarter of the tax revenue in Poland. Two percent of the mine workings have now been turned into a museum, full of beautiful carvings by Poland's most able sculptors, using the dark green rock found around the salt deposit chambers. The most impressive chamber is the Blessed Kings Chapel, dating from 1896, virtually an underground cathedral, lit by salt crystal chandeliers. The Saint Anthony Chapel carved in green salt in 1698 was built to allow mass to be celebrated without the need to return to the surface. Minibuses leave Krakow every ten minutes, since they follow a circuit round Wieliczka town, arrival and departure from the museum is on the same side of the road.


A much longer trip leaves little time to explore the Tatra mountain resort of Zakopane. It's a fine ski resort in winter, currently bidding for the Olympic Games, and beautiful mountain walking country in summer, well deserving of another kind of holiday.


Krakow is now becoming much easier to reach by air thanks to regular scheduled flights from London shared between BA and the Polish Airline LOT. Alternatively there are travel agents who specialise in Eastern Europe, like New Millennium, who also offer the alternative of  cheap coach travel.


All the attractions are contained in a compact central area around the Rynek. There are restaurants galore. A good meal downstairs in the Hawelka costs less than ten pounds, it's essential to book at what is arguably the best restaurant in town. In general our money goes twice as far. A tasty pizza, big enough to share, cost a shade over a pound from a fast food place near the college. As for entertainment there's Krakow Philharmonic or opera, we just missed a performance of Faust. Cellar jazz clubs, and cellar night clubs where you could savour fine vodkas, the way you might tackle malt-whisky in Scotland. Four days was enough for a good taster, seven would have been better, we will have to go again.

SAMWAW Wedding in Himachal Village (1996)

1170 words    A WEDDING IN A HIMACHAL VILLAGE


A small marching band of two trumpets, clarinet and two drummers, brought up the rear of a party walking along the lane to the waiting bus. At the head was the groom in a sedan chair carried by four strong men, wearing a multicoloured silk hat with long golden tinsel tassells and a garland of new rupee notes. This was a Hindu wedding party. We were going to a far off village and would return tomorrow evening with the bride, in a second sedan chair, and enough furniture, bedding, pots and pans to furnish their new home. My wife Joan, squashed between Rajan and me, was the only woman on that crowded bus. All the others had stayed behind to prepare for the triumphant return.


The bus bumped along for a few hours, through several small towns. Finally it turned into a narrow track clinging to the mountainside, winding its way above a river valley, ascending the Himalayan foothills. Soon the bus ground to a halt. A rock-fall had swept the track into the river far below. The groom got back into his sedan chair as the journey had to be completed on foot. Night had fallen, but there was a bright moon above and a clear starlit sky. Our spirits soared high above the valley and into the pine forest above the path. Whenever the party flagged someone would find a few rupees to persuade the band to burst into another number. At the top of the mountain the vista opened out onto a plateau. We headed towards an oil lamp glowing dimly in the far distance. An hour later the band struck up to announce our arrival.


The farmhouse was a linear two storey building, dimly lit with oil lamps. A rough stone tiled roof sloped over a full length verandah, which doubled the floor area and provided living space in the open air. Four rooms opened onto the verandah. It was a pleasantly warm evening. The village women were sitting cross legged in groups on the wooden floor, wearing the colourful cotton salwar-kameez trouser dresses of the Punjab. The largest group was quietly singing, not for the benefit of us new guests, but as a joyful release from a hard day's toil in the fields. Guests were intent on enjoying the occasion. Some older women were clustered around the wood fire in the kitchen. There was no electricity, no gas, no piped water, no television and no toilets. Next morning we were to learn how to wash under the hand operated water pump, before following the party departing for the toilet fields, conveniently sited just below the Shiva temple. Plastic water bottles gave a whole new meaning to the word, bidet.


Everyone enjoyed the moonlit wedding evening without alcohol, or other drugs. Our party was welcomed with the usual cup of sweet, cardamom flavoured, boiled tea, or chai. Rajan whispered excitedly,
    'I think you're going to become the chief guests'.

He was right. The hosts found us a card table, chairs, stainless steel mugs, plates and forks, whilst everyone else sat cross legged on the ground, and ate with their fingers from banana leaf plates. It was a simple, deliciously spiced, vegetarian rice meal.


After the meal we became the centre of attraction with Rajan as intermediary. We learnt that the men and women tilled the fields with oxen and hand held wooden ploughs. The young men, soldiers in Kashmir, brought in a little cash. Then fifteen year old Manoj, son of Dalip Singh, started to question, nervously, in halting, quietly spoken, English.
    'Where did you learn to speak English like that?', we asked.
    'In the village we speak Phadi. I learn Hindi and English at school.'
    'Where's school?
    'In Shahpur, two hour's walk down the mountain side.'

We were the first English people he had ever met face to face. It was simply amazing that he should have such an instant command of his third language, English, and have gained that from a simple local school, in a class of one hundred pupils. His older brother also spoke English, but not with the same facility, no-one else tried.


Only the attentions of one better dressed man grate. He works away from the village, disgruntled, underpaid, in a foreign owned factory and incessantly repeats his welcome, 'Very sorry for hill walking. Very very sorry for hill walking'. He knows the ways of the city and feels, wrongly, that we are paying Rajan for taking us to the wedding and wants a share of our money. 'My father is dead. My mother is dead. I am a poor orphan. I don't have money for the return fare.' He insists on carrying the small rucksack which contains our valuables, passports and cameras, not even a toothbrush. We worry that he has taken it hostage.


A square bower had been built in the centre of the dirt farmyard, it arose from the floor like a huge four poster bed. Tinsel hung down from twine strung between the posts. It was around this bower that the couple would walk seven times, as required by the Hindu wedding ceremony. A young Brahmin, with a white scarf tied round his head, led them through the ceremony, frequently consulting a written text. His props were a big pile of rice on a banana leaf, earthenware pots full of oils, wood for a small fire, and fruit. The service lasted three hours. It had overtones of wishing  prosperity for the couple, symbolised by rice; wishing them children, symbolised by fruit; aromatic oils, fire and religious mysticism. Red is the Hindu's auspicious colour for marriages, the groom wore a vivid headpiece to complement the bride's wedding dress. Mother wore green, symbolic of peace and happiness.


A Hindu marriage must be an ordeal for the bride. Next day she left her home village for good, to much wailing, with a man she had scarcely met. Perhaps to face a life of quarrels in her mother in law's house. She will return to her own  mother's side in a year's time, for the birth of her first child, that's all. No wonder the participants all wore solemn faces. At the end of the service the family came over, beaming smiles of congratulation. Still the bride's emotions remained hidden behind her veil, I never did see her face though Joan was more fortunate.


Being  privileged guests, we were given an Indian rope bed, a charpoy, on the verandah of a nearby house. 'Very sorry for hill walking' gets into bed alongside Joan, but even he can't spoil our evening. Gazing out at the moonlit sky, feeling the windless air waft over us, savouring the smell of the flowers in the garden and the meadow, recalling the colour of the dresses, the novelty of the ceremony, above all the friendliness. We mused in unspoken unison. Had it really started that very morning, as a chance encounter with Rajan, on the half hour service bus ride from McLeod Ganj to Dharamsala?

SAMWAW Backpacking for Holidays

1196 words        BACKPACKING FOR HOLIDAYS        27.3.99


Is it such a ridiculous idea? Have you ever envied the young people who go off globe trotting for months? Many of us willingly endure far more hardship and uncertainty. The mountain, walking, camping and sailing fraternities for instance. It might come as a surprise that the technique is practicable for three week holidays. In small bites it takes longer to see the world, that's all. Bed and breakfast touring on local transport is a fair analogy.


The adventurous Aussie globe trotters tackled Asia in the fifties on their way to Earl's Court. In so doing they caused the infra-structure to be laid down by local entrepreneurs. That is to say the necessary English speaking guest house/restaurant/tourist transport facilities. Now backpackers are a large and international fraternity. A Lonely Planet tells you all you need to know. The first year you will start nervously but finish with lots of confidence. On successive trips you will get more and more adventurous, probably choosing, like us, to get ever closer to the local people, their transport and their food.

You can choose to be energetic by trekking in Nepal, laze on beautiful beaches on islands off southern Thailand, explore the wonderful forts and palaces of Rajastan, or get lost in the jungles of Indonesia or Borneo. We have done them all. There aren't many of our age bracket out there, but there should be a lot more.


How can I persuade some of you to try it out? It's not a hard slog, in fact it is so different as to be exhilarating. Much of the budget accommodation is of a surprisingly high standard, but you can stay in good hotels if you must. Nowadays everyone raves about Thai food, so why not follow Rick Stein's advice and try the real thing in the night markets? Why not add a bit of adventure to your humdrum life? Choose a different region each year, we took three holidays in Thailand. Learn how satisfying it is to find your own way around, providing you do your research up front you can hit the ground running. You will get more efficient with every trip.


It's a cheap holiday, apart from the air fare. Costs are such that once in Asia you can live and travel for less than it costs to live at home. The longer the trip, the better the economics, especially when you consider all in costs. So in spite of the airfare a three week holiday in Asia is less than one in Europe.

One of our ambitions had been to walk in the Himalaya. We were into our mid fifties, clear of the kids and in full time careers, when we met two young people who frequently visited Nepal to buy and import specially designed jewellery.
    
 'If we can do it, surely you can with all your experience! Buy a ticket and give it a go.' It was hard to ignore such a challenge, for we had never considered ourselves as lacking in enterprise. The more we read of Nepal, the more we realised it had to be our first project. Kathmandu awaited with Pie Alley and Freak Street, Durbar Place, temples galore and above all the Himalaya. We bought a ticket and set out
without even a hotel booking, determined to dive in the deep end. It wasn't until we reached Kathmandu that we set about organising a guide and porters for a fifteen day trek up the Kali Gandaki gorge in Annapurna, saving fifty percent on UK prices.


Several years later it was Borneo, Sarawak to be precise, for our last holiday before taking early retirement. Island of rainforest and huge rivers, head-hunting tribes, poison darts spat from blowpipes, bone penis pins, and longhouses where raw sago worms are considered a delicacy. Maybe a synopsis of some of the more unexpected happenings on that trip will help to explain why we became addicted to this form of travel.

Like to share at first hand the excitement of David Attenborough? We had exactly that feeling when we saw the rare large ungainly long nosed Proboscis Monkeys jumping madly from swaying branch to swaying branch, playing in the undergrowth of the forest at twilight before climbing high into the canopy to sleep. At the time we were staying at the Bako National Park, not far from the capital Kuching. By walking round forest trails you can experience a full variation of tropical vegetation, thanks to a substantial change of elevation in a compact area,. It ranges from coastal mangrove swamps and areas of virgin primary rain forest, unbelievably tall Dipterocarp trees, to a semi-arid plateau and its insect catching pitcher plants.

The same feeling of déjà vu whilst we watched for twenty minutes whilst dark columns of massed swallows and bats swirled in the sky. They carry out their celebrated shift changeover ,at dawn and dusk, at the famous Niah Caves. Inside we saw brave men, with simple flashlights strapped to their foreheads, risk death to climb the cathedral high interior on fragile bamboo scaffolding. They were gathering nests, whilst the swallows were on the wing, to keep the Japanese supplied with Bird's Nest Soup. Wall paintings of dugout canoes were found in an adjacent cave. The walk back in the dark to our wooden bungalow through the rain forest was enlivened with the sparkle of fireflies and the glow of phosphorescent mushrooms.


Fancy a trip to Mulu, the world's largest underground cave, over a hundred miles of it in dense jungle? At a travel agent in Bintulu we arranged a scheduled internal flight in a plane which turned out to have folding canvas seats.


Using local transport in Borneo means travelling by torpedo shaped 'express' boats, for there are only isolated sections of road. But it was far more exciting in a small high powered open boat, with our Liwan, our longhouse host, at the helm. Absolutely unforgettable when he swung round suddenly in the surging river to pick up a wild boar. The pig had got away from a native hunting party and was floating downstream with a wooden spear sticking in his side. Finders was keepers, so Liwan butchered him that evening on the long house floor, and his wife cooked some for our dinner.


Interested in hand crafted textiles? In Kapit we happened to chance on a major pua-kumbu competition. These intricately patterned, wall hanging, blankets are woven from cotton. The warp is tie-died by a process known as ikat, a speciality of the Iban tribe. Goodness knows how they succeed in weaving an accurate pattern this way. My wife recognised the judge Edric Ong, contributor to our Periplus guide book. He willingly explained quite a lot of the weaving technique as well as the symbolism in the patterns, and helped us to buy direct from the immaculately dressed tribal craftswomen.


All that and far more was packed into a twenty five day holiday. Was it expensive? An all-in cost, door to door, of £1100 each, of which air travel accounted for 75%. Since then both exchange rates and air fares have moved sharply in our favour. But the experiences were priceless. Interested?

SAMWAW Thoughts on Viewing Mumbles Pier

941 words    THOUGHTS ON VIEWING MUMBLES PIER        19.3.99


Park the car at Bracelet bay on a clear day, walk past the Apple snack bar and gaze out over the sea. A full panorama of Swansea Bay unfolds across that stretch of blue-grey ocean. There's Nash Point and Porthcawl in the east, then the chimneys of the giant steel plant at Port Talbot that first brought me to the South Wales in 1966. 'You've come to work in the gold mine?', they joked in the bar. Little did we foresee the endless series of recessions that was to hit the area, following the oil crisis of 1974. Closer up those steel plants have a stark, cruel, beauty of their own, a beauty born from design focused on function. But they do not intrude here on our picture postcard view.


The eye continues round the hills opening onto the Neath valley, and the radio topped Kilvey Hill. Then to the Post Office Tower building dominating the centre of Swansea, once much vaunted for its architectural harmony with the castle. Never popular with the people, now encapsulated  in reflective glass to show their disgust. There's the new County Hall, built at a time when counties were being amalgamated in the name of efficiency, but Glamorgan was divided into three. Still it's visually satisfying for a modern building, and its redundancy might just have led to Swansea's Guildhall becoming the seat of the Welsh Assembly. The moorings at Mumbles are now almost deserted, resulting from the exodus of yachts across the water to Swansea Marina. But there are still masts in the dinghy park at Knab Rock.


Straight below are the buildings which were once the terminus of the much loved Mumbles Railway. Was it the country's first railroad, or the last horse drawn one, or just a tram? There, pointing out to sea like a broad elegant finger is Mumbles Pier. It frames the bay, dividing it sharply from the white lighthouse beacon on the tip of Mumbles Head, the terrors of the Mixon Sands and the deep sea beyond. It must have been so different in it's heyday. Hundreds of people getting off the train to stroll on this man made promenade, which illustrated the confidence of the age. They thought that even the sea could be easily tamed. Tell that to the brave men who triumphantly defied the elements in the lifeboat, or the widows who had to face the aftermath of the disasters.


In Victorian times the bay must have been a spectacle of activity, small fishing boats, even oyster skiffs from Mumbles. Tall oak ocean going sailing barques and the first iron steamships, plying in and out with cargoes of copper ore from South America. Swansea's wealth was built on metal refining. Briefly it was one of the most important sites in the world. But the tailings turned Swansea Valley into a lunar landscape. Kilvey Hill died. Somewhere on it's slopes are the trees the children planted, thirty years ago, when reclamation started to expunge all traces of the industrial past and turn Swansea into a picture postcard. Soon all our industrial heritage will be a thing of the past, everything pretty and green, a de-industrialised land devoid of metal industry and coal tips, pit heads - and jobs.


Take a closer look at the pier. It's all that's left as a symbol of that bygone age. Walk down the steep, narrow, concrete road which winds down between the cliff and a limestone wall. For a while the vista excites. There is a simple elegance to the yellow cast iron railings. Is that really still a line of gas lamps? But don't go too close, or your senses, like mine, will grate at the trivia, the amusement arcade, the grotesque toys. Those lamp stands are topped with modern tin hats, and opaque, frosted, white glass. The yellow paint is peeling from the cast iron railings, the stanchions supporting the pier are rusting badly. At the pier's centenary, signs proclaimed, 1898 to 1998, and the Pier Hotel advertised itself as a 'football free zone' for banishing the World Cup. Why not go for it, and become a television free zone instead - in keeping with the era. Should the pier be developed as a museum of Victoriana? Should the whole area be resurrected as a theme park? A living monument to a bygone age at play, with telescopes, paddle steamers, bathing machines, bathing hats, giant postcards and 'what the butler saw'.


Certainly the pier should not be left to rot. It could be dismantled and the sea greened like Swansea Valley. But as you grow older you long for the things you ought to have saved; that old steel needled clockwork gramophone with its clockwork motor and giant acoustic horn, old glass bottles and stoppers in fascinating shapes and colours. Large sums of money have been spent on restoration of the Orangery at Margam and resurrection of the Old Swansea Guild Hall as Ty Llen (Literature House) for the 1995 UK Year of Literature. These buildings have been secured for the future generations. In spite of paying the mortgage should we be concerned with the wisdom of the expenditure now we can see the results? They are the things which help preserve a place's culture, give it a unique identity. If fully used they could provide an exciting base for development of a new role. Is the Mumbles pier in the same category? It's an important question because Swansea, struggling with decline like the rest of West Wales, needs to develop its environment and facilities to attract and hold modern high tech. industry, its footloose workers and tourists.