Fiordland, in the south-west of South Island, is full of Sounds. To be honest, I wasn’t quite sure what a Sound (with a capital ‘S’) actually is, so I had to look it up. It turns out that a Sound is a large sea/ocean inlet, formed when the sea fills a valley, so it’s surrounded…
Author: Louisewp2016
Albatrosses and Orcs
We landed in New Zealand at Christchurch, and the temperature was 32 degrees. We just accepted it, having become used to Malaysian and Australian weather – but it turned out to be a fluke, and as we drove south to Dunedin the temperature dropped by more than 20 degrees, until it was just ten above…
Doing shots in Tasmania
This is a shot – Tassie style – It’s an oyster shot – – sake with wasabi, pickled ginger and a plump, fresh Tasmanian oyster … delicious! The seafood here is so good – – I devoured these six scallops cooked with brioche crumbs and herbs in about three minutes, in a little restaurant on…
Melbourne: trees in skirts
Having spent a few days in Melbourne, I feel just that little bit hipper and cooler. I’ve been hanging out in bars with uber-cool names like … which has a series of unusual collages on the walls – And Melbourne’s the sort of city where you can get a Shiatsu massage in the market –…
Question: What’s the weather like in Perth?
Answer: It’s Perth-fect! I’ve never been in such a perfect climate … wall-to-wall sunshine with horizon-to-horizon blue sky all day, every day, and with a slight breeze to stop it getting too hot. This is what the sky looks like all the time – So … apart from the flawless weather, what else is Perth…
What a whopper!
To wrap up my time in Malaysia, we did a little strawberry picking up in the Cameron Highlands – – it must be the unique climate that makes them grow so big … The Highlands are ideal for growing tea, and in some places there are tea bushes as far as the eye can see…
Krabi … but not Crabby
After a hectic Christmas day at the pool – and an exhausting evening posing around the Christmas tree at the Majestic Hotel – We were definitely in need of some R & R on Boxing Day, so headed off to the beach in Thailand. Krabi was not quite what I was expecting. Despite the severe…
Taiwan: Temples, Trains and Toilets
Taiwan is an intriguing mix of the old and the very new – Taipei 101, shaped like a piece of bamboo, was the tallest building in the world until 2004 – – and it’s considered cool to have your picture taken perched precariously on a wet and slippery rock halfway up the mountain behind the…
Street food in Taiwan
When you tell anyone in SE Asia that you’re going to Taiwan, they roll their eyes ecstatically and say, ‘Ooh – the food!’ So when I arrived in Taipei, getting to grips with the local food was my number one priority. I really like walking food tours, where the tour guide walks you around an…
Two weddings and a funeral – and a blow to my ego
I feel that I’ve hurtled at breakneck speed towards the end of my final term at school here in KL. The tempo increased when, sadly, I had to make a second flying visit back to England, just three weeks after Sam’s wedding, for my dad’s funeral. Once back in KL, it was a sprint…
A week of Thai feasting – part two
Life lessons continued: 3. When you go to visit a friend abroad and she asks what you’d like to do while you’re there, say that you’d like to do a food tour, thereby disguising greed as cultural appreciation. That strategy found me on a food tour of Bangkok with Angel – – here we are…
A week of Thai feasting – part one
Life lessons: When a chef brings a pot of his own Thai green curry to a potluck supper, you make a beeline for it. When a friend then invites you to dinner at that restaurant, you accept with alacrity and Old Siam is even within walking distance for me … result! Pad Thai is…
Crazy Rich Asian Parents
It’s not just Singapore that has Crazy Rich Asians – the Chinese Malaysian parents in KL are up there with the best of them. The most ridiculous thing I’ve been asked to date by a parent, was whether I thought it would be a good idea for a five-year-old to start learning Latin ‘because it…
Wedding number one …
As I have recently learnt, having just the one wedding when you get married is SO last year – in fact a friend in KL is having three, so I wasn’t surprised when Sam and Alice announced that they would be having two weddings. Wedding number one was yesterday – a beautiful sunny autumn day…
Feeding my addiction
Mindful that I will be leaving KL at the end of the year, and will be cut off from my new favourite foods, I put out a plea on the local residents Facebook page – I got a few suggestions for using salted egg powder instead of the real thing, which just wouldn’t be the…
White Supremacist joins KL school
I’m constantly shocked by the number of spelling mistakes in the teaching materials at the language school where I work. In a recent lesson on Sherlock Holmes, we had two creatively spelt names to contend with – I can only assume that Dr Whatson is a relative of Dr Who. Then we had a worksheet…
A Walk in the Black Forest …
… no, not that Black Forest – this one was only black because it was dark, very dark. It was a night walk held at the Forest Research Institute of Malaysia, and our volunteer guide was a self-confessed snake addict. Here he is holding his special snake stick – – I thought it was for…
A quandary …
What do you do when your guide on a walking tour turns out to be an obsessive nose-picker – – and then, when you get to a steep step down onto a narrow path between two rice paddies – – he offers you his hand? Do you … a) say breezily, ‘no thank you, I’m…
Bali Highs and Bali Lows
After a 3-day weekend with a jaunt to Java last week, I had a 4-day weekend this week … gotta love the Malaysian public holidays! I decided to make the most of my time off with a trip to Bali, as it’s just a hop and a skip from KL on Air Asia, and a…
Me and you and a cat named Lou
If there’s one thing you have to do in Java, it’s indulge in a cup of coffee – And I decided to try coffee luwak, or civet coffee as it’s called in English. Civet coffee is the foie gras of Asia … some people are willing to pay up to £60 for a cup, while…