Back t o Munich - 26-06-06

Well it's MOnday 26/6/06 and today it is back to Munich but thank God that England have just beaten Ecuador. With Germany still in the competition, it would have been just too much to bear to be in Germany. Germany v Argentina comes before England's next game so wih luck Germany will be out of it by then.

England continue to pay badly but still win - a good omen.

Back to Munich on my own this time as Ann sits in Bangkok eagerly awaiting the arrival of Katie. They are off to Phuket for a few days and my only consolation is the fact that the weather may well be better in Munich than Phukhet as it is the monsoon season there. We went to Chatuchak market Saturday before I left and were caught in an unbelievable storm - it sounded like we were under artillery fire. Ended up piggy backing Ann through the ankle deep waters to dry land.

World Cup fever is well uder way here and I intend to sample a beer garden tonight. I expect Brazil will go through (although my wishful thiking tells me ot to rule out a surprise) and I expect Spain to beat France.

Malaysia Truly Asia - Monkeys and Monitor Lizards 10/06/06 - 19/06/06

Courtesy of cheap flights from Thai Air Asia, we spent 10 days in Malaysia, flying to Penang where we picked up a car and set off to tour the East coast. Our first stop was Taiping a small town known for its lakeside gardens. The gardens are lovely and the trees around are full of monkeys.

From here, it was on to the Cameron Highlands which are renowned for the cool air and tea plantations. There is also a large Indian community who were imported by the British to do the tea leaf plucking. There are now also a large quantity of strawberries grown in the area with many signs advertising "self plucking", that as intriguing though it sounded, we managed to resist!

Next day, we first headed north through the mountains in order to pick up a road that ran south to Kuala Lipis. This took rather longer than anticipated as much of the road was tortuous and winding. The road south was a new road that was impressive for the amount of engineering that it obviously took and the fact that it snaked through what appeared to be virgin jungle. The road was very quiet with no sign of life for miles and miles until we eventually arrived in Kuala Lipis a small town, like most in Malaysia with the exception of Kula Lumpur, that features some British Colonial buildings, and a small Chinatown but not much else. It was here that we discovered that the standard of hotels on Malaysia away from the west coast leave much to be desired despite the fact that they are very cheap. We did however find Flash Jack's Bar 55 which is a fascinating place run by a very friendly and helpful Chinaman unsurprisingly called Jack Teh. The bar looks like to has been there forever but in fact it has only been there 3 years.

Kuantan the capital city of Pahang lying on the east coast was our next stop. We stayed in the strangely named Mega View Hotel which actually lived up to its name as we had a top floor room overlooking the river and the sea beyond where we watched sea eagles circling and swooping for their dinner. This hotel had a riverfront terrace were 2 very large tv screens were showing the World Cup games. I wanted to stay another night but Ann vetoed that idea so we moved on to Cherating but not before we had visited the very pleasant beach at Teluk Chempedak where we watched monkeys looting the rubbish bins and performing their usual acrobatics in the jungle areas adjacent to the beach and had dinner at Tjantek Art Bistro, an excellent rstaurant which would be more at home serving the rich and famous of KL than languishing in the backwater of Kuantan. It is housed in a 1928 shophouse and sells various art works which are hanging on the wall.

Cherating was very, very quiet and has the air of a resort in decline. There are a number of resort hotels with their own beaches but we stayed at the Tanjung Inn in the village. This has nice air conditioned bungalows set in gardens which we liked very much although you are left thinking that it is struggling to survive. Here, in the morning, we sat on the verandah and watched a monitor lizard amble round the garden. Cherating Beach is an enormously long wide curving bay which could be fantastic but unfortunately it is subjected to that Asian malaise of just dumping your rubbish anywhere. We were disappointed and curtailed our planned 2 night stay to just one.

On to Kuala Terengganu, capital city of Terengganu state where we once again stayed at a substandard Malaysian chain hotel overlooking the river which was however well located next to Chinatown where we found good food at some stalls.

Kota Bahru is in Kelantan and we had the impression that this area was the most religious and traditional of all the places we visited especially as we even had great difficulty in finding a beer - even the so called "international standard" hotel we stayed in served no alcohol! It is not a pretty place with very few amenties to attract the tourist.

We were already one day ahead of schedule but decided that the next day we would take the East West highway back to Penang. As it was to be a long drive, we set off at 7:30 and drove across Malaysia skirting the Thai border through some very impressive rain forest and mountain scenery arriving in Penang 5 hours later which is exactly how long Jack, the friendly landlord in Kuala Lipis had told us it would take.

We did enjoy staying in Georgetown where the restaurants, bars and hotels provided a welcome change from the slightly depressing sobriety of the East coast. as far as hotels are concerned, we went from the ridiculous in terms of standard and cost to the sublime as we spent the last night at the Eastern and Oriental hotel. This place opened by the Sarkie brothers who, also ran Raffles in Singapore, in the late 19th century is simply wonderful having all the elegance and grace you would expect of a hotel that was a favourite amongst such people as Somerset Maugham and Noel Coward. Our suite was simply opulent with a fabulous view acrsoo the sea to the mainland.

We (or should I say I) have wanted to do this trip for a long time but in truth Malaysia away from the west coast is very disappointing and I would not particularly recommend it. We found it to be not very tourist friendly and quite frankly dirty with a very poor standard in hotels. However without exception all the people we met were very pleasant and friendly. On the other hand, since our last visit two and a half years ago, Georgetown has improved enormously. A lot of work has been done on the old buldings and many of the streets have been renewed. Little India has been formally established and there is a good variety of restaurants, bars nad hotels. Further improvements are also in progress and I would definitely recommend visiting and do spend a night in the Eastern and Oriental to experience what it would be like to be rich and famous.

A Special Day

Not only is today the start of the World Cup (and I have booked my armchair this evening) but the 9th of June is also the day that the King of Thailand came to the throne. This year marks the 60th anniversary of that event and there are lots of Kings and Queens knocking around Bangkok for the event which means lots of temporary unpredictable road closures as the King of Monrovia or the Queen of Anatartica decides to go shopping. There are lots of special events such as the Royal Barge procession but the one most interesting (because we have a grandstand view) is a firework display being held this evening on a platform which is on a lake in a park. Now it just so happens that we are on the 28th floor of an apartment block directly overlooking this lake. In other words we have the best possible view from our balcony of 8000 fireworks that are due to go off at 8:30pm this evening all accompanied by an orchestra. Should be spectacular!
Tomorrow, Ann and I are off to Malaysia for 10 days holiday. We have hired a car and plan to spend some time on the East coast away from the monsoons on the West coast (hopefully).

To buy or to sell? - well lets do both!

Our renters have left our property back in Beaconsfield so the inevitable question arose "Should we sell?". After a small amount of deliberation the property went on the market and so came the next question "Should we buy?". We had already considered this and had booked flights to Phuket for this weekend (3-4 June)to have a look around. However, before we got there we had put in an offer on an apartment in Wooburn Green (near Beaconsfield) after the girls had been to see it. We thnk this will be a place for the girls to live temporarily while Katie does her training and Natalie finds herself a job after finishing Unversity today! We know the apartments as they are on the site of Glory Mill and both Ann and I watched them being built as they are next to the gym we used to go to. And so to Phuket, where we spent the weekend looking at apartments and the odd villa. We both were enamoured by a rather nice villa not far from the Laguna area so at the moment we are in the process of selling one property and buying two. We returned on Sunday to receive an offer on our house which we accepted. Now as most people know buying and selling property can go disastrously wrong so we are not counting our chickens yet but we have hopes that very soon we will have exchanged our rather large 5 bedroom house for a 2 bedroon apartment in Wooburn Green and a 3 bedrooned villa in Phuket. Watch this space. For me personally this is the first step on the road to retirement!