A non-stinging memory

This is Rosie. She is, her owner told me with a touch of resignation, stingray-spotting. “She doesn’t realise the season has ended.”

Well, I didn’t realise there was a season for rays either; but it was still very soothing to sit on the beach bench sipping my coffee and watch Rosie slowly prowling along. Not everyone knows we have rays of many sorts cruising our beaches, but I’ve seen them myself right up at the edge of the water, and been vaguely unnerved by the thought I could inadvertently stand on one. Apparently, though, our sole stingray fatality so far (human, not squashed fish) was back in 1938, so I can probably live with that. Literally. (Mind, an orca was stung to death here in 1998. Nasty.)

What was a bit disturbing though was being reminded of a marine tour I did in Tahiti, in the stunning Bora Bora lagoon. Part of the experience was the ‘stingray swim’, when we were expected to jump into the super-warm, super-clear water to interact with a cluster of rays that had been trained to come swarming up for a feed. They were big, and were all over us, smooth and rubbery - but we weren’t to be scared of stings, we were told, because they had been “de-stung”. That is, the barbs had been removed, and some of them had even had their tails chopped off, leaving just a stump. Horrible, eh? That was in 2016 - hopefully, they’re more enlightened now.

To finish on a pleasanter note, Rosie also reminded me of my first visit to the Cook Islands, where I was delighted to see, on Muri Beach, one of Rarotonga’s very many laid-back dogs doing exactly the same thing.

Disaster #?

Oh dear, poor Myanmar. That was a massive earthquake for Mandalay on Friday, 7.7 - our 2011 one in Christchurch was 6.2 and that was a forever spike in the city’s history. As if Myanmar hasn’t had it bad enough, with a civil war that’s been rumbling on for so, so long.

When, in 1980, we dipped into Burma as it then was, we were told as we approached that we shouldn’t take photos from our Thai Airways plane, because of military restrictions. We had so many forms to fill in that we hardly had time to look out of the windows anyway, recording all our financial assets on top of the usual immigration stuff; and then, once landed, had to write out duplicates before our bags were searched. Then we were driven into Rangoon/Yangon in a Vauxhall Velox so old that rust fell onto us with every bump we went over. And there were plenty of them. The city looked quite run-down, but had clearly been grand in its colonial days, and it was still colourful and lively, and the people were friendly.

Mandalay, though, where we flew the next day (our battered Fokker was the only plane at the airport when we landed) was quite different. Mostly flat, it was very spread-out, with no tall buildings other than the many imposing and elaborate pagodas. The streets were wide and tree-lined, and there were just a few battered buses and old cars trundling around - most of the traffic was horse-drawn carts, trishaws and bicycles. There were even cattle, sheep and goats grazing the grass verges. The pagodas though were breathtakingly beautiful and splendid.

The people were a bit shyer in Mandalay, but still friendly, though we were clearly seen as a resource, nagged by the bolder ones for money, pens, cosmetics, combs, anything. Fair enough - their lives were hard, and we must have seemed impossibly rich. Which of course we were, in comparison, though we felt we were doing it properly basic - especially when we were sleeping on bare boards on the Irrawaddy steamer going downriver to Pagan the next night, but that’s another story.

Our hotel was just outside the moat around the (even then destroyed) Palace, and we had a stroll around the extensive grounds. Lots of greenery, which rapidly became less attractive after I went up close to look at a flowering shrub, and disturbed a snake in its branches. It was all very lovely though, and we took a trishaw to the base of Mandalay Hill, to climb the 1,729 steps up to the summit. We had to do it bare-footed, because of all the temples along the route. That was a bit nerve-wracking, after the snake, and also because of lots of little brown frogs everywhere. Lots of golden Buddhas too, and pretty pagodas, and finally long views over the city which from there seemed to be mostly trees.

The next day we were taken to a workshop where small girls were hunched over looms, weaving silk thread into elaborate cloth, another where young boys hacked at blocks of wood held between their feet, bought some mosquito coils at a market that turned out to be a major production, and even watched a wedding in the hotel, very colourful and traditional, where the guests wandered in and out as the priest droned on. I had several offers during the day to buy my very ordinary watch. And then we headed off through the warm dark to the Irrawaddy River for the next stage of our Burma experience.

All that was, gasp, 45 years ago now, so presumably the city grew, getting taller and more crowded, full of buildings that are now, at best, full of cracks and, at worst, reduced to rubble. The death toll is currently 1700 but will inevitably rise. It’s just awful. Poor, poor Mandalay. (But not forgetting Bangkok either - where, apparently, most of the workers in the under-construction skyscraper that collapsed were actually Burmese. Sigh.)

25/3/20

Today it’s been five whole years since everybody’s phone beeped at 6.30pm, and all the awfulness that we’d just been watching on the news came and hit us hard. Well, up to a point. Our definition of lockdown meant eliminating the virus, not just suppressing it, as in most other countries (same as China - no comment - and Australia, Taiwan, Singapore, most of SE Asia) and though shutting our borders was hard and sharp, it did mean we had very few deaths for the first couple of years, and were able to enjoy almost normal lives (socially-distanced, masked, in bubbles) while the rest of the world was in lockdown. The numbers shot up in 2022, but overall we’ve had now only 5,700 total deaths in a population (or ‘team’) of 5 million. Bad enough, but could’ve been so much worse. We had some very tedious lockdowns, especially here in Auckland, and there was, finally, discontent and rebellion against the rules and mandates, some of which were certainly OTT. Generally, though, we came through well, compared to most other countries (and we Kiwis love nothing better than to compare ourselves to other countries).

For me, though, and for this blog, it was a kind of death. All my travel plans were eliminated - goodbye, scheduled cruises to Japan and to Greenland - and they have never, thanks to boring stuff that happened in the meantime, been revived. All my former colleagues are back at it again, but my passport is now totally redundant. Even domestic travel has been restricted to short and generally local destinations. Big sigh.

But at least I, and everyone I care about, we’re all still here. I’m still producing the occasional story. And every single day that 6pm news bulletin features somewhere I’ve been where, in most cases, I’m currently happy not to be again. So on we go…

1915, 2015, 2025 - ad infinitum?

This is good news for everybody in, or visiting, Wellington. It’s a - literally - big display at the national museum, Te Papa, that’s focused on the experiences of NZ servicemen and women (ie a nurse) at Gallipoli. For non-Kiwis/Aussies, that was a campaign in Turkey Türkiye in 1915, planned by Winston Churchill, pitting NZ and Australian troops against the Turks, that was a disaster for all concerned, on both sides. But it had the effect of establishing our bi-national ANZAC identity for ever after, and the date it began, 25 April, is our day of remembrance in both countries.

The exhibition opened in 2015, to mark the centenary, and was meant to close in 2018, but has been so popular that its run has been extended over and over, with its closing date now pushed out again till 2032. Getting on for 5 million people have visited it already, and I reckon not a single one of them would have failed to be moved by it. Weta Workshop’s genius was to tell the story by focusing on a single, different, moment experienced by eight real people - soldiers, doctors, the nurse - who are all constructed in minute detail, 2.4 times life size. While that makes the models’ physical perfection that much more visible and awesome, it doesn’t distract from the story each one tells, that draws you right in. I’ve visited it several times, and been gobsmacked without fail.

I have to admit, having been beforehand to the Anzac centennial ceremony at Chunuk Bair itself may have made me a bit more susceptible, but the exhibition is so stunningly well done that, honestly, no-one would be immune to the emotion that this brilliant display evokes. It’s just such a horrible shame, eh, that there are soldiers out there right this very minute, in multiple countries, reproducing these scenes in real life.  

White Lotus, black spider

No disaster links today. (That’s a choice, of course, not an actual state of affairs, as we all know.) Anyway, the background in the screenshot above interrupted my moderate (so far, I reckon last season was better) enjoyment of The White Lotus. It’s a phenomenon I have written about before, that recognising scenery wrecks your suspension of disbelief while watching TV and movies. Life is tough in so many ways, eh.

I was quietly pleased, though, that my identification of the location was instant and the memory vivid, because my cruise through these spectacular islets (in a much less fancy boat, natch) took place way back in early 2009, even before this blog lurched into existence. Look:

How could you forget something like that? It's in Phang Nga Bay, in Phuket, Thailand. I was there on a working trip, my second time in the country (or third, if you count a stop at Bangkok airport after aborting in just Singapore my 1977 overland OE to England. Ran out of money. Had enough to buy a souvenir bronze letter opener though - which I last used just this morning). It was a very busy famil, and what with being on the go all day and evening, plus everything being so vibrant and colourful, the five days felt much longer.

The cruise out in the bay, even, though very pleasant, had its tensions too - most notably squeezing inside a couple of these hollow islets. We did it in rubber inflatables, and when it turned out that the tide was a bit on the high side to get easily through the tunnels, they told us to lie flat with our heads in each others’ laps while they let some air out of the rafts, so we could just scrape through, pulling ourselves along by grabbing at the rocky roof, and scaring off the little bats clinging there. OSH would not have been impressed.

We managed it, though (the second island was much more of a challenge than the first one, above) and it really was lovely inside - very quiet and peaceful, with egrets perched on mangrove branches and brown spotty jellyfish in the super-clear water. All my laid-back chill was wrecked later on, however, back at my hotel, the Indigo Pearl resort with its enthusiastic industrial chic theme, when I once again took four wrong turns in the grounds on the way back to my room. I blamed exhaustion and lingering jetlag, but really the designer needed to take some responsibility. Also, the creepy big metal spider on the mosquito coil burner? That didn't help with the ambiance. Not something those rich people in The White Lotus had to put up with, I bet.

Cheating on Silversea - Edgy!

October 2024 was a long time ago, right? The world has been busy since then - so it's entirely understandable, isn't it, that despite having researched it thoroughly and writing 800 words of advertising copy about it, my first visit on board Celebrity Edge today was a, cough, voyage of discovery? It was fun to be invited, along with other travel writers, for a tour and a lovely lunch; and despite, thanks to my long-time Silversea connection, my prejudice against big ships, I actually came to see its attractions.

Because Celebrity Edge is BIG. It literally loomed over everything in Auckland's port, dwarfing the ferries and blotting out the Hilton. It is properly massive. It's not actually the biggest there is, by some margin (Icon of the Seas, 7,600 passengers) but, accommodating nearly 3,000 guests on 15 decks, with 30 bars/restaurants and three main swimming pools, it's far from intimate. And it’s way, way bigger than Silver Muse’s scant 600 guests.

The clever thing though is that the designers have catered for snobs like me by their ‘ship with in a ship’ scheme (which is probably not unique). On Edge, the cunningly-named Retreat is accessible only to those who have rooms suites there - some of which have two storeys and private plunge pools. It's all butler service, fancy restaurants, spa, complimentary this and that. Basically, Silversea. 

But, Silversea with access to big-ship add-ons like a decent-sized swimming pool, massive theatre, wide choice of restaurants and entertainment - and the Magic Carpet. This is a tennis-court sized deck on the right starboard side that slides up and down for 13 storeys, as tender access, a lounge or a restaurant. One Aussie passenger I spoke to on it was a loud Celebrity fan - he's done "about 20" cruises with them. Out of 56! (He also took the trouble to inform me that both Celebrity and Silversea are part of the Royal Caribbean group. Gee, thanks, OWM.)

It did help with the ambiance that most of the passengers were, of course, ashore - the bulk of them, it looked to me, queuing for the Waiheke ferry. So it was nice to wander through lightly-populated spaces, enjoying the elegant décor, the artworks, even the remarkably realistic plastic plants. And finishing up in a restaurant where friendly staff delivered a delicious but, afterwards, painfully generously-sized long lunch, followed by cheerfully juggling martini servers, was the crowning touch. So, would I? Would you?

Channelling Sir Ed. Sort of

With thanks to Big Little Campers for this famil

Today I climbed a mountain, both literally and figuratively. Well, maybe "mountain". The day started well and then just carried on that way. Bircher muesli with fresh Otago cherries (shared again with my poultry visitors) eaten outside on a bright morning gazing at a sea view was an excellent opener, and a stroll around the farm to bid farewell to all the cute animals continued the pleasure.

Then, it was time for the mountain. Māngere Mountain, that is - one of the biggest and most intact of Auckland's 50-odd volcanic cones. It's actually only 108m high, but it's very noticeable, and inviting, poking up green above the surrounding suburbs. There's a lot of Māori history and stories about it, and geological information all laid out on info boards, but today I just used it for a pleasant bit of exercise with the reward of some lovely views in all directions: harbour, bridge, suburbs, city, airport. Lots of fresh air and nature, and other people climbing up and down. Nice.

That was the end of the holiday bit. Next came the campervan return chores, which I'd been quietly dreading - but, as with all my other novice worries, there was no need. Honestly, the hardest bit was wending my way to the nearest dump station - yes, the place to empty the self-contained campervan tanks containing the 'grey water' (from the sink) and the 'black water' (ahem) from the loo. I was expecting it to be a major, but in fact there was just a simple covered drain with a tap at the side of the Mobil petrol station. Once I'd got my instruction via a phone call to helpful Nicola at Big Little Campers, I was able to take out and empty the toilet tank (containing only #1s, natch), and even swill it out, and then drain the grey water - absolutely no big deal, easy as and not in the least gross. I actually struggled more with topping up the petrol tank afterwards, being somewhat out of practice.

And then all I had to do was cruise over to the BLC base, remove my single bag of gear, be reassured again, by Jon this time, that the branch scrape incident was no big deal, and Uber away to train, ferry and bus home. Done! And it was a success: I got over my nervousness, enjoyed the freedom and the comfort, and would happily sign up as a member of the Vanlife community. What I'd feared would be a fairly intimidating mountain to climb turned out to be a doddle. Definitely recommended.