Crazy Hotel Staff

We are staying in the best hotel in town, that doesn't mean much as this is a small town and only a couple of other big places here, so we have to endure a 25 minute ride to and from work everyday, that is if the traffic is good, and we have to tolerate the staff who are bizarre at the best of times and just insane at others, like they cannot organise an early morning call regularly, twice in 3 weeks I have been let down, having to dash about like a drug crazed lunatic in a morning rushing to get the bus. The restaurant is the best place to observe the total craziness here, last night I went with the old scotsman Bill for dinner, he asked for a glass of water with his meal, the waiter brought a glass and when bill picked it up he dropped it down and swore under his breath, I was really puzzled but Bill then said the water was boiling hot, HOT, yes friggin hot, they had brought him a glass of boiling hot water, how could anyone want a glass f hot water with their meal. He called the waiter over and asked him why he had given him hot water, the expression on the bonehead waiter was blank, like he was asking him about particle physics, he was shocked that bill wanted cold water. I ask you is that normal behaviour. The hotel is really nice and clean and the food is not bad but trying to get a meal sorted in under an hour is almost impossible, I have started only having soup of the day as that is pre-prepared and can be pretty quick, This morning the girl was trying to locate the owner of an omelette that had been ordered, there was only 6 of us in the restaurant, how difficult can that be, but she was stood looking round as if she was on a desert island, Bill had to shout her over. Perhaps this part of the country hasn't been developed for so long and these are just the idiots who can speak a bit of English and cannot get a proper job elsewhere, but man it is hard work dealing with them after a long day.

The Long Hours and a Trip onto Australia

well this last week has been a long one, we are working a 12.5 hour day and with an hour drive also means we have time to have a wash and eat and go directly to bed afterwards, The job is OK but I have trouble keeping my eyes open at many points during the day. But saturday night we had a bit of a blow out to celebrate the birthday of two of the young italian guys on the job, they had a pool party around the hotel pool, well it didn't start until 10pm, normally my bedtime, and they had bought in a mountain of beer and liquor and ordered about 20 large pizzas plus a few Kgs of chicken wings from the hotel restaurant. The music was too loud and it was a quiet affair for teh first hour and i was tired and really wanting to go to bed but i persevered and after a couple more beers the party was starting to feel a bit more entertaining, the young guys were swimming in the pool and throwing each other in, one guy was making cocktails all night long, we were eating and drinking and at midnight we were dancing like a bunch of silly boys, we had the latest dance music and some older stuff it was quite an eclectic mix, but the old scotsman who kept saying i will have just one more scotch before i go to bed, I ended up being the DJ and keeping the music going while the young'ens played in the pool with rubber rings and snorkels and the like, at 1pm and a real thirst going, i made a tactical decision to go to bed before i got really drunk and stayed with them in the pool, they eventually left at 4am, just in time to get 1 hours sleep and get ready for work which they all did, no-one missed work.

well I have been asked to go directly to Australia to carry out a small job in the large LNG plant in Karratha, a nice enough small town in the north of Western Australia, I decided to do it as it would mean i take a longer break afterwards, plus i get to go to Australia again of course, I love Oz, the sun the beer the wonderful hot and arid climate, we will see if it will all come off, but i will fly from here directly to Singapore and then onto Perth then karratha and with it I will retain my gold status on my Air France airmiles card, very important to keep that as it allows me to get in the business lounge for free beer and peanuts.

Niah Caves and Bird Nest Soup

Today we had a surprise day off, which is nice as I was so friggin tired, I got up later than usual but I had booked a taxi to take me to Niah National Park. It is a small park of only 3400 hectes but the caves are some of the biggest in the world, the cave system covers 10.8 Hectares about 20 acres so these are huge caves, the biggest by far i have seen in my life, the cave system in in a limestone ridge that are completely hollow, the caves are maybe 500 feet tall and just so wide, biger than any cathedral. just immense and to make them even strange they are full of bats and Cave swifts, now these cave swifts are pretty special, these are the ones that make nests that humans eat, now this is really a disgusting part and only adults of a stern disposition should read on, the nest is basically congealed bird saliva, with a few feathers and bugs and shit probably. Why anyone in there right mind would eat congealed bird saliva just defeats me. So I am in this cave system and there are thousands or bats and birds inside this cave flying about, squeaking and clicking like cave flying animals do, and to no surprise there is a large amount of shit involved with living with birds and bats, just mountains of the stuff, maybe hundreds of feet deep and that is no exaggeration, well the smell was incredible just enough to make you vomit, so luckily I hadn't eaten yet, there were other creatures that feed of the shit, like cockroaches and giant crickets, it is a weird ecosystem, but to say it was impressive is an understatement, it was the most impressive natural wonder I have seen since I saw Jabber the hutt in the steak place the other day. The drive was longer than I expected, about 2 hours and the walk was about 4 hours, around 9 Km, whats that about 6.5 miles in the steamy jungle, I was wet through, it was good fun but not a single soul wanted to venture out with me, so I went on my todd and had a great time and maybe i will sleep like a baby tonight for the first time this trip.

The huts are full size and give you and idea of how big the caves are

H1N1 Flu, So What!!!!!!

Now forgive me for being a little surprised but why is everyone going insane over a new flu. Is it the fact that we get several flu strains every year that kills many people and the old get jabs every flu season, so what is it about this flu that has everyone with their knickers in a not about it. I am in Sarawak Malaysia for Gawds sake and everyone you see has a friggin' surgeons mask on to protect them from what, someone sneezing on them, someone spitting on their face, I am at a loss to understand why they wear them, they dont even wear them properly, it usually gapes around the nose so any devious flu virus' would be able to sneak in undetected to do there worst. Now we are seing the discarded masks all over the place, as they get clogged with moisture it becomes hard to breathe and then it is a pain to wear them unless you have a never ending supply in your pocket just in case you encounter a horribly infectious person trying to kill you with a virus, that they don't know they have and you will catch anyway weather you have a mask on or not,

This Virus strain may be killing a few people now and then but I personally hope it preferentially selects the stupid morons who wear those masks as they piss me right off. Plus I hope it kill off all those slow drivers and the idiots who throw trash in the street, am I starting to sound a little stressed, well maybe but not really but there are people who need to die and should catch the killer virus today and die within a week, including the guy who stole my car in 1995, which was never recovered, and the asshole who threw a stone through my garage window, plus the plumber who was crap and when I told him so demanded lots of money and when I didn't pay he stole all the things I was going to install in the bathroom refit, so lets say I am still reeling over that from 6 years ago, please God kill those who I hate and need a dose of the killer flu today, thanks and can you make my my hair grow back on my forehead also, tar very much.

I Met a Movie Star In Malaysia

I have met a movie star in Malaysia and I am staggered to meet such a prestigious star in such an out of the way destination, Bintulu Sarawak Malaysia, It was purely by chance that we went into a local place to eat and he was sat down just minding his own business but still larger than life and almost as big as I remember him in Star Wars, I was shocked and stunned speechless just seeing him in the flesh and what flesh he had, he was all of 500 pounds if not more(250Kgs), he spoke with that same husky gargling rasp that he had and was really a peasant just like in the movies, he did two if you can remember in the star Wars first two movies, he was the villain that had Han Solo imprisoned in some strange black stuff and ate frogs and things, Yes it is Jabba The Hut, I saw Jabba the hut in a steak bar, he was just as ugly if not more so, he had a windpipe tracheotomy so that he had to put his finger over the end to speak and make a gargling sort of voice, he was as fat as a fattened chinese pig and shuffled about in shorts and a giant ugly old T-shirt, probably a disguise. I never would have thought I would see him in this neck of the woods I feel so privileged, it made my week anyway.

Jabba looking all the part of the villain, he seemd to have grown some head hair since the movie.

Sarawak, The Information Highway

In a normal country we live by the information highway, E-mail and Flickr photo sharing and Facebook, but here in Sarawak it is the information Donkey Track, in the office it is so slow that it willnot open Yahoo Mail even, and the hotel is barely better, I can chat to my wife on Messenger and do mail but only just, but as for living a nice life, this is a tropical paradise, apart from the fact they are cutting down all the forest, Malaysia is the 2nd biggest tropical wood exporter after Brazil. and the environment minister claimed that there is no destruction of the jungle to plant Palm Oil, but even here on the coast we drive passed newly cleared jungle to plant Palm Oil, he is of course a corrupt politician and will say anything they pay him to say. I have been told that the local Chinese people here run all the business and all the dodgy business, so it is best to leave them alone but how can you eat ut without going native and eating a great chinese Tom Yam spicey noodle soup, I ate across the road at a cafe and it cost $1 and i got a bowl of really nice spicey noodles that were just amazing. i love the food and the climate but they have to leave the jungle alone

Jetlag and Malaysian Food

Well i am totally exhausted with the miserable jetlag i cannot shake off, I am falling asleep anywhere i sit down, any place at work during the day, luckily we dont have much to do right now so nobody is bothering me about it, it will be gone by the weekend, but the food here is just fantastic, it is all spicy and full of herbs like ginger and lemon grass, the soups are especially tasty, i even had some spicy noodles instead of a coffee at the stop we had in the docks, they wre just sensational, as sensational as noodles can get, but the food is like chinese but with a spicey boost to give it a kick, so I am going to ty and get some sleep, later peeps

Kuala Lumpur International Airport

I am starting work in Malaysia on the Island of Sarawak but have to fly through KL to get to the island. The airport is a really perfect design and very spacious and far better than anything in the UK, how can these developing countries get such great airports and the Brits have to tolerate crap, it is about saving money, On this trip i had a bad trip, i had to fly from Malaga to Paris Charles De Gaul, the airport is as ugly as the old politician used to be, then fly to Amsterdam, which is a pretty good airport, one enormous terminal building. But arriving in KL was a delight, no crowds and an easy way to a busy immigration, pity it was so busy, i think 3 planes had all landed at the same time and I needed to pee so i missed getting to the front of the queue, I did get ripped off by the taxi touts, I was asked if i needed a hotel, i said yes and was offered the 5 star at the airport or a 3 star a bit further away, I said 3 star even though it isn't my money, I am a tightwad deep down. but the little bit further away was actually like 30 Km, and the hotel was tiny and cheap but to be honest it was acceptable and clean and the food was honest home style chinese food. it was great like any takeaway chinese food, I just hope that all the food in Malaysia is just as good. Only problem i can actually see is the air is full of smoke from the forest that is being burned completely to the ground, I passed a woodyard that was piled high with cut trees and being cut and chipped and basically removed and everything else in the forest is being burned and then turned into Palm oil plantations, these are the lungs of the planet but not for much longer, what will the planet become without all these wild places, my thought for the day.

KLIA




KLIA




KLIA

Museum Guards in Egypt

I have never seem such a motley crew as the guards in Egypt, these jobs are given to the poor relatives of museum staff I believe, the reason is they do nothing, when we went to see the Tutenkamoun treasure the guard was solid asleep with 200 people making lots of moise and probably able to steal some treasure, not only was he sat down and solid asleep he had his head laid on a cabinet from the displey, oh how I laughed, then the worst was the guard on the Karnak temple in Luxor, he was sat down and had his boots off with his stinking naked feet laid out in front of all to see, but the worst part was that he had his finger shoved to the second knuckle up his nose, for all to see what he could find in there, just outrageous activity, these are really peasants. wish i had taken a photo.

Spanish Trains and The Madrid Museums

To get to Madrid we travelled on the train to take the opportunity to spend a couple of days in Madrid as it is a city we haven't seen before, The trains were fantastic, even Malaga stations resembles an airport terminal, complete with baggage scanners and security and the trains themselves are probably as advanced as anywhere in the world again just like a train, we had a steward and in flight movie, it was travelling at just over 320 kph, which is around 180 mph. it was flying but smooth also, not rattling at all, just amazing, the British train system has been starved of finance for years and it is nothing like this. I was very impressed and our hotel in Madrid was near the airport and very nice and clean and nice food in the restaurant. It was chosen for two reasons, it was close to the subway station and close to the airport as we got a free shuttle to the airport. getting the tube into madrid centre was easy and very cheap, the subway is designed to move lots of people about without a car in a busy city, and it was fantastic, all new and clean and easy to get about and find were your going, just what we needed. The Museums I visited were the Thyssen Museum, very impressive to say he was alive until a few years ago, The Prado Museum, very old ugly pictures of the Catholic guilt, Christ and the Madonna, too much of an overdose for me, it was OK, the naked fat ladies of Rubens were OK, and the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, this was the Modern Art Museum, it was a joke, this art is a confidence trick, just pure bullshit of the highest order, even Picasso was represented in many pictures and it was shit, that man was a joker, he must have laughed all the way to the bank, even his Guernica was just rubbish, I hate modern art, The impressionists started all this but they were good, there were many in the Thyssen gallery and some in the Prado and a few in the modern art, even Darli didn't do much for me, only his elephants with big legs was interesting. They were all feeding off each other to just make money, at the expense of the stupid rich folks with more money than sense, that museum can close and no-one would miss it

Malaga Railway Station, Very Impressive




Just like a duty free store in an airport




The Underground was clean and new but still smelled like the london underground




The Prado Museum was big but full of Catholic guilt pictures, 500 of the Christ on the crucifix and Madonna and Child

The Arrival in Cairo and Trip To Aswan

I have a buddy who has been in Cairo and Egypt in General for 18 months and he has written many things about the country but his descriptions of Cairo never really did it justice, it is the most horrifically busy overpopulated and nasty place i have been. It is full of trash and zero planning so there are quarries next to highways and houses next to highways with roaring traffic 24 hours a day, I couldn't live like that, I would be a suicide bomber within months. we arrived late after flying to Luxor first and to be honest if I had the option again I would miss out on the pyramids and the Cairo museum as it was good but the extra messing about wasn't worth it, so we got late to the hotel which was a nasty cheapo place right next to the roaring highway. I hardly slept for the constant noise and the AC was crap and the tv was missing but as it was 2am and I didn't care. The next morning we went down for our trip to the pyramids and the breakfast was OK but no Bacon of course, but always these beans fried beans either white or red, I never touched them once. I then found out that Jenny had booked a totally personal tour, we had our own vehicle and driver and guide for every day we were there, very luxurious but expensive all the same. We could see the pyramids from out hotel we were that close, I never realised they were in the suburbs of Cairo, what a pity. You arrive to them to find millions of hawkers selling shite like plastic sphinxes and plastic pyramids. expensive water and anything else you could imagine. The pyramids are huge and look in a bad state of decay, not bad for 4500 years old. The guides were OK but they only knew what they had read, he didn't know that all the outer limestone casing had been used by the recent builders to make there houses, like the last 2000 years, all the big blocks remained as they were too big to use. Again the tomb robbers had stolen everything, we took lots of pictures and then we were told we were going to the papyrus museum, it was a lie it was a shope to sell us expensive copy's of hieroglyphics. we bought a few and then we ended up in a perfume shop on the tour, the guide must have been getting commission as always on these type of tours. We bought some great selling oils, but must have been a total rip-off again, then a nice meal at a fancy restaurant which was miles out of our way for the train journey over night to the Aswan station probably another commission paid meal, we finally went to the cairo museum, it was just crowded solid and this was the low season, it was full of the remains of the tombs and temples as the good stuff is in London and Paris and Turin and New York, the guide did a resonable tour but was complaining about it being hot and how tired he was, he was full of shit. The museum would be nothing without the Tutenkarmoun Treasure, it takes centre place in the museum and it just magnificant, it is breathtaking with its comlexity and beauty, the gold head covering which weighs 11 Kgs is just amazing. If that was in the London Museum then this place wouldn't be worth visiting. There was another small tomb found, the wife of the great Pyramid builder, a few things were found, her bed and some jewellry, it was all very nice but was nothing compared to Tutenkarmoun, it makes you think about what treasures were stolen from all the tombs.


I was looking forward to the train ride, I like trains. The station was full of two types of people, desperately poor going home after a day of toil for low pay and rich folks who were catching the overnight sleeper which costs more than a months salary for normal egyptians. The poor folks looked dangerous, some crazy even and they were filthy and stinking, our train arrived and was nice and clean and the cabins were OK, the food again was not bad for airline type meals and train moved along OK, I was happy to go for a beer in the bar which the train had. we slept bad as you can imagine but we arrived on time and to the most incredible heatwave of 47 C, it was roasting me ears off out of the sun. the hottest I have ever experienced. off to our first hotel, a marvellous luxurious place on the hill overlooking the Nile, I felt like a king.

The Pyramids of Giza




The Sphinx and Pyramid




The Kids at the Cairo Museum




Us at the Cairo Museum




The Fancy Hotel overlooking the Nile




The Nile at Aswan, just up the road was the Upper dam, what a waste of a visit, nothing to see other than soldiers waving guns about.

I Bought a new Breitling

In Hurgarda on the Red Sea, I was given the opportunity to buy another fake Breitling, the money was so cheap that I couldn't refuse as it looked even nicer than the black-faced one I bought in Tarragona. I got an even better deal as I bought a fake swatch for Jenny which was also a nice rip-off. I am not a watch collector but I do like these fake ones, I just wish I was wealthy enough to buy the originals and not think about the price, $15,000 which just seems an incredible price for a watch.

I like the sun and the moon dial the best

Puns for Educated Minds

1. The roundest knight at King Arthur's round table was Sir Cumference. He acquired his size from too much pi.

2. I thought I saw an eye doctor on an Alaskan island, but it turned out to be an optical Aleutian .

3. She was only the whiskey maker's daughter, but he loved her still.

4. A rubber band pistol was confiscated from algebra class, because it was a weapon of math disruption.

5. The butcher backed into the meat grinder and got a little behind in his work.

6. No matter how much you push the envelope, it'll still be stationery..

7. A dog gave birth to puppies near the road and was cited for littering.

8. A grenade thrown into a kitchen in France would result in Linoleum Blownapart.

9. Two silk worms had a race. They ended up in a tie.

10. Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.

11. A hole has been found in the nudist camp wall. The police are looking into it.

12. Atheism is a non-prophet organization.

13. Two hats were hanging on a hat rack in the hallway. One hat said to the other: 'You stay here; I'll go on a head.'

14. I wondered why the baseball kept getting bigger. Then it hit me.

15. A sign on the lawn at a drug rehab center said: 'Keep off the Grass.'

16. A small boy swallowed some coins and was taken to a hospital. When his grandmother telephoned to ask how he was, a nurse said 'No change yet.'

17. A chicken crossing the road is poultry in motion.

18. The short fortune-teller who escaped from prison was a small medium at large.

19. The man who survived mustard gas and pepper spray is now a seasoned veteran

20. A backward poet writes inverse.

21. In a democracy it's your vote that counts. In feudalism it's your count that votes.

22. When cannibals ate a missionary, they got a taste of religion.

23. Don't join dangerous cults: Practice safe sects!