Miles from nowhere

Looks a bit milky to me!

Miles is over 200 miles from Brisbane in a westerly direction, i.e. into the outback, there's not much traffic here, in fact there's not much of anything including light pollution which means we got an amazing view of the night sky - this is a picture that Lyndall took outside our wooden cabin.

I'll go for double tops!

A couple of hours earlier, in the diminishing light of dusk, we'd spotted an Australian Darter coming in to land onto a branch very conveniently situated right opposite the verandah of our log cabin. I took a stack of photos but given the fading light only a few were much cop but this one sums up the magnificent bird - they are a bit like giant sized cormorants and often sit with their wings spread drying themselves in the sun. We also saw one on our last visit engaged in its other favourite activity which is fishing - when swimming their bodies are submerged and all you can see is the neck and head - this looks eerily snakelike and explains the alternate name of 'snakebird'.

Ooh that hurt!

Miles is not much of a town (pop. 1746) but it does have a very good example of a 'Historical Village'. Generally this means that the odd small town has decided to move it's old buildings to a site on the edge of town and line them up in a vague approximation to how the town would have looked like a hundred years os so ago. The collection of buildings in Miles was impressive enough, an old post office, a tavern, butchers bakers, candlestick makers, etc., but somehow along the way the local seem to have put the call out for everyone to donate their artefacts, collections of trivia and junk. here's a snap of a bullock that had escaped and lived in the bush. Unfortunately one of its horns had grown in the wrong direction, not having a caring farmer to trim this renegade appendage, it must have suffered a lingering death.

On your marks!

Despite its size Miles has a parkrun! So we had to give it a go. And everybody knew everybody else apart from us - and they soon knew us. Lyndall was first lady (with Scout, 8th in 25:46) and I was second overall (21:42) and Vicky got her best time for ages (33:03)) on a slightly undulating course along the Dogwood Creek.

Swallow that!

Twitter, twitter, tweet!

Time to get the camera out for a bit of twitching. This is a swallow as you'll all have guessed - a friendly little chappie perched on a waterway signpost by the Gold Coast in Queensland, Australia. But the more observant of birdwatchers from the UK might spot that there's more red on this bird's head than there should be. That's cos it's a Welcome Swallow Hirundo Neoxana which is the common swallow down here - the one we get back home is the Barn Swallow Hirundo Rusticana. But don't swallows all fly across the world backwards and forwards - shouldn't they all be the same. Goodness no! There are dozens of different types of swallows - keep your eyes open.

Made it in one piece!

Finally got our 'Z' - this is at Zillmere parkrun in Brisbane - a curiously poorly attended parkrun considering it's all off road - it's a mad dash round several sports fields and I got lost! Well not exactly lost but I tried to go round one of the fields again - with no other runner in sight I got a bit disorientated and lost 4 places to come in 8th in 27:17. Vicky was assisted by Scout (Skip's mother) and breezed in with a time of 34:59. Just 'J' and 'V' to go with our parkrun alphabeteering. Weather conditions were much more conducive to running - no humidity, no sun, an early morning (7 am) temperature of less than 20 degrees - you'd have thought we'd have both flown round. Let's try again next week.

Road signage in Queensland is often present to state the obvious. Here this indicates a one way street or a highway exit. Other signs warn motorists to beware of kangaroos, (a real danger and we've come close to running one over already!) Various miscellaneous signs that we've also seen include those with pictures of koalas, emus and crocodiles - we've yet to see the cassowary signs or the ones that say beware of falling coconuts but these do exist. Other signs are there to correct possible misapprehensions (see below!)

.....never mind what the satnav says!

Orchids and Durians!

You don't get these in pots!

The weather in Singapore seems to suit some species very well. The national flower of Singapore is the orchid and we spent a couple of sweaty hours at the National Orchid Gardens which are full of hundreds of different varieties of orchids - most of them seemed to be in full bloom and I took plenty of colourful photos.
'Have you got Durians?' We'd just stepped into a hotel lift with a porter and another couple got in with a suitcase, the stern question about durians was addressed to them. They declared that they had just eaten durian but they weren't carrying any - they still looked worried though!

An explosive mixture!

At R5 to the pound - a bargain!

In Malaysia and Singapore durians
are forbidden in hotels, airports, trains (see the above sign) and various other places. But not in McDonalds it seems - here's the ad for a Durian Crunch McFlurry.  Durians are a spiky looking fruit which grow on some South East Asian trees - many people find them unusual but pleasantly tasty but others describe the flavour as overwhelmingly disgusting. The smell? Well it can be detected from miles and lingers for days - hence the ban in hotels, etc. and that pink thing? It's not a McDonald Apple Pie made with pink apples, it's a Taro Pie, Taro being a favourite root/fruit in Malaysia - you can't say that McDonalds aren't catering to local tastes!

Singapore Sling

Yummy!

One of the delights of travelling, as far as I'm concerned, is going into supermarkets and finding out what the locals eat. Here we went into the supermarket more to take advantage of the air-conditioning and escape the humidity. As well as Malays, Singapore is home to large populations of Chinese and Indian people, plus a few Europeans. Hence the huge variety of foodstuffs on offer. And thus at Fairprice Supermarket in Katong we came across this little beauty - Buddha Jump over the Wall. Buddhist monks are vegetarian but legend says that when this super gastro version of shark's fin soup was first devised it smelt so good that Buddhists from the local monastery forwent their principles and jumped over the wall to join in the meatfeast! Not our cup of tea however and unfortunately for us none of the Singaporeans seem to eat porridge so we were out of oats for the few days we were here.

Hup two, three, four!

We had thought that a week in South East Asia would have been a reasonable period in which to acclimatise to the heat and humidity. No such luck though as we found the East Coast parkrun in Singapore just as hard as the Malaysian run last week. This is a very pleasant there and back course through trees parallel to the beach in a busy park full of runners and cyclists - there were large groups of runners in training being paced for the forthcoming Singapore Marathon - as we galloped by their minders shouted "Parkrunners coming - keep to one side!" Galloped is maybe optimistic as far as I was concerned but there were half a dozen runners under 18 minutes so a fast course for some. I managed 27th in 22:13 and Vicky was 92nd in 36:51.

Grand isn't it?

The Bay Marine Hotel is typical of the grand old hotels of Llandudno - strategically positioned on the sea front this fine example of Victorian architecture has hosted thousands of happy holidaymakers over the years. Type Bay Marine Hotel into Google however and you're more likely to be presented with the Marine Bay Hotel in Singapore, an astonishing building that consists of three towers with what looks like a boat sitting on top of it - take a look at the photo below and you'll see what I mean. Tourists who in former years would have been very happy with living it up in Llandudno now travel halfway round the world and pay a fortune for the privilege of staying here in what apparently is quite an ordinary hotel from the inside. Outside it looks good but it ain't half hot!

How did them trees get up there?

Tropical Parkrunning

Glad that's over! 

Running In Kuala Lumpur is interesting! The 19th Taman Pudu Ulu parkrun Facebook page told us that the event was in danger of being cancelled due to air quality issues, we subsequently found out that this is due to smoke drifting over from other parts of Malaysia - the result of the annual burning of paddy fields. We arrived the night before and were up at six to catch a Grabcab (the local version of Uber) - the air seemed clear (and warm and sticky). This parkrun was set up by Harry, a Malaysian who had come across parkrun during his time as a student in Cardiff. Already he's got together a great team of helpers and the 100 plus runners consisted of a mix of locals, ex-pats and tourists. The run duly went ahead, I can only describe it as running through treacle in a hot shower so I was surprised with a time of 22:42 in 11th place. Vicky was also first in her age group with 35:11. We joined the organisers and other runners (including a chap who had just completed a parkrun world tour (i.e. managed to complete events in all countries where parkrun takes place) for a Malay breakfast - a roti bread with egg cooked in it - was actually pretty good.

Ready for launch?

KL as Kuala Lumpur is known by many of the locals, is a real mix of poverty and opulence. It's home to the Petronas Towers which were the tallest buildings in the world for a number of years. Seeing this close up at night is quite something - fairly close by but not easy to find was the Taps bar which had a selection of craft beer from all around the world - mostly very strong and at hugely inflated prices - I think they need a bit of competition to stop this nonsense. We had a quick drop of their lightest on offer. We did much prefer the ambience of the Coliseum Cafe, a colonial relic now surrounded by a street full of Indian department stores and malls. This was where the plantation owners hobnobbed and drank their G and T's. We settled for a reasonably priced Carlsberg. We quaffed our beer and speculated that the word 'malaise' must have originated here in this hot humid climate. (Only later did I sadly see that 'malaise' is derived from the French!)

What Ho chaps - ready for a snifter?

Soweto

No cats on these hot tin roofs. (Rooves?)

Yes it does look like this - in parts. Soweto's name comes from the abbreviation of South West Township and originally it was mostly a disorganised slum-like township where migrant workers lived. Several miles out of the centre of Johannesburg, it's grown somewhat and now contains around a million and a half people, not all living in shanty towns like this. In fact we saw some quite upmarket homes and there are some very wealthy people living there. Our party of six in a minibus were taken on a five hour tour to see some unforgettable sights. As we entered the township we were driven past the largest hospital in the Southern hemisphere - this is the Chris Hani Bardgwanath Hospital which has 3,500 beds, our driver drily noted that they are experts at treating gunshot wounds! (We also drove past what must be the biggest taxi rank in the world which was opposite the hospital.) But back to the poverty, we were taken into Kliptown, an area where 45,000 people live in tin shacks with no sewerage system, no pavements, no infrastructure to talk about. Despite this the inhabitants try their best and we were taken to a pre-school where the infants, all in uniform, crowded around us to say hell and click their thumbs with us. We were glad we were there in Joburg's winter - in summer it must be diabolical - think flies and smells! However less than a mile away is a huge shopping mall with supermarkets, upmarket clothes stores and restaurants.

The decommissioned Soweto power station - full of beer now!

Lunch time beckoned and our driver took us to a brewery - another surprise, the Soweto Brewery, billed as a craft brewery which employs female brewers (in the African tradition) the place we went to was the Ubuntu Kraal brewery styled as an African village/wedding venue/etc. The 'craft' beers, an IPA, a stout plus others flavoured with cherry, ginger are brewed on site but one of the employees quietly told me that the flagship lager Soweto Gold is brewed by Heineken who now own the whole shebang. In any case we had nice 'Braai' barbecue and a taster of the ales.

Soweto is full of contrasts but it also epitomises the confusion and concerns about the future of South Africa. It's still a violent place and although the majority of killings are black on black an increasing number of white farmers are being murdered and are having their land taken away from them al la Zimbabwe. Corruption, crime and general misrule is the norm. Here's a picture is of a power supply being pirated - we saw a lot of this on Soweto, the electricity supplier ESKOM is bankrupt and this isn't helping. So Soweto is worth a visit - it's eyeopening in fact and there's even a parkrun although I'm not sure how we'd manage it!

Going for a 'U'

My first parkrun in Africa - we were down on the coast south of Durban running through the forest surrounding the Umdoni Golf Club. My Strava took a while to get used to working in the southern hemisphere - looking at the Strava trace you can see it's all over the pace for the first k! We now just have J, V and Z to bag - there's no X - we seemed to have picked up most of the letters of the alphabet without trying but clearly a bit more planning is required to cross of the last few letters and become 'parkrun alphabeteers'. This was a wonderful course which involved some wide trails interspersed with narrow wiggly tracks through the forest.

Phew - you're heavy!

And here's me emerging from one of the wiggly bits bringing up the rear behind Tania and Siena who, together with various other in-laws and relatives, gamely got up early and joined us in the parkrun. The bonus that everyone was looking forward to was a well earned breakfast at the Umdoni Golf Club for which Tania very kindly stood the bill. Vicky had a great run and really enjoyed this off road course - no wild creatures encountered en route (but see below) - her time was 33:58 and she was first of 9 in her age group. A young lad nipped past me at the uphill finish and I had to settle for 4th overall in 23:19 - astonishing that I nicked the V65 record by one second! Parkrun is incredibly popular in South Africa - one of reasons being that a leading health insurer awards points to its members for completing parkruns - there were 140 runners here but just up the coast in Durban the North Beach parkrun has had well over 2000 runners at various times!

Who are you looking at?

Pardon the fuzzy photo but this was taken from the car window on our way out of the golf club. This seems to be a rare white springbok who wandered past unconcerned as we bounced around on the dirt track. Apparently this is a colour mutation rather than an albino animal but it was still a rare treat to see one of these fine creatures.  Lots of other wild life to be seen down here on the coast including the magnificent African Fish Eagle which we saw plunging down in the breakers to catch its prey and other birds new to us including the bright Yellow Weaver and the secretive Mocking Cliff Chaff which I spotted out of the corner of my eye under a bush - what eagle eyes I have!