The World - One Chicken at a Time

Happy New Year! All the best for 2007 - It's finally here.

I think 2006 is the year that never was - I don't remember a lot of it too clearly. It's probably better that way. Really a year that just flew (or sneaked) by.

Sorry I didn't text anyone on the night, I dropped my phone stumbling home in the small hours of New Years day and broke it.

Anyway, on to the travel side of things; I am cutting my Christmas leave short by a week and going to East Timor, to Dili airport ?- we have received a contract to replace a damaged antenna, then carry out routine maintenance and then calibration of the airport navigation aids. It will only be a short trip ? 4 days in Dili altogether.

I don't know if I'll be able to send a newsletter and photos from Dili, so this is a pre-trip newsletter, sort of a teaser really.

There has been some trouble in East Timor before Christmas, youth gangs fighting and rioting, apparently. I don't think that will affect me, I should have enough time in my schedule to wait out any trouble in the hotel if need be. I haven't seen anything in the news lately so all should be good.

At least, unlike the New Zealand summer, the weather should be warm; 30 DegC as I write this, but unfortunately it's also thunderstorms, humidity and mosquitoes. I started taking Doxycycline today, as an anti-malarial; what fun, you always have to take the stuff before going somewhere warm and it makes your skin more sensitive to the sun. You really can't win can you? I haven't had the nausea from it, although I felt a bit odd for about an hour after taking it this morning. Stay tuned for detailed reports on the side effects--I will be taking it for about 5 weeks!

Anyway please enjoy these photos from the last couple of jaunts: Jordan, Portugal and Libya.


Cheers,

Dale / BoriS

3rd January 2006

As I remember it (*silly maps*) the Chiado area is on the hill and the Baixa area is on the flat from the base of the hill, heading south to the sea. Both are interesting. Baixa is a grid of shops and streets, the Portuguese look as if they spend a lot of time and money on looking good and I guess Baixa is a good place for clothing. It seems as if every shop is a boutique of some sort. I poked around a few (trying something different) and found that clothing is quite reasonably priced here! NZ$15 each for some cool shirts, NZ$100 for a cool (well, it is!) leather jacket, NZ$50 for a pair of jeans. About time I learned to buy my own clothes again

 

•  A roll of Duct Tape - fix anything! I have fixed several shower heads with tape - cheap hotels always have removable shower heads, with a broken hook on the wall. Did the same trick this morning actually
•  A cheap multi-tool leatherman copy - something you can afford to lose/give away - again, fix, tighten, unscrew, cut tweak, pull, hammer etc anything that comes your way - also makes a good gift if you have nothing else.
•  Small pocket knife - you never know, after giving away your multi-tool, you still need a knife! You may not need one with the thing for getting stones out of horses hooves...
•  Toilet paper - sounds like a no-brainer, until you forget it...
•  A handful of small cheap carabiners - just the $2 shop ones. Handy for clipping anything to anything else.
•  Small cheap Compass - align that cr@ppy map from the hotel with north to avoid going the wrong way. [I forgot to last night and had a good explore of the wrong end of Lisbon! Thank god for the metro! ] - in hindsight - also ask the people at the hotel to circle the dangerous areas of town on your map BEFORE you go out.
•  Small torch - some cool parts of castles/caves etc are not lit. The little keyring LED ones are cool. The torch can save you from nasty falls or headbutting the (inevitably) low ceilings. You can also see your map and compass in dark parts of town at night.
•  Something to plug the plughole with. Cheap hotels often don't have plugs in the rooms. I don't know why. Toilet paper doesn't work - it disintegrates too quickly.
•  Plenty of pens. I give mine away, both by choice or involuntarily. For this trip I cleaned out the stationary cupboard in Radiola Corp of blue bic pens - don't tell anyone Spike! Give them away when you can, but I usually/nearly always have one on me.
•  Yashmagh - yes, my old faithful, red, Arabic scarf. This is the best thing I have found in my travels. Towel, headscarf, disguise, pillow, mini-tent/sunshade, serviette after a messy meal and great when it's 0 degrees and when its 56 degrees. Mine goes everywhere with me. 10 years old, I got it in my first trip to Iraq in 1996. You could substitue a sarong for this. Not my style though ;-)  
•  Phrase book - not everyone speaks English. In my opinion, Berlitz write the best ones. Lonely Planet ones aren't too bad either. I have a collection now: Arabic (of course), Thai, Mandarin Chinese, Portuguese. I tend to buy them at the airport on the way out, to have a read on the plane. In the worst case, you can point at the phrases if you are too shy to try mangling someone's language. The locals will help you with pronunciation. Laughing!
•  A few candy bars and a bottle of water. Great when you are waiting for a long time - see patience below.
•  Patience - pack plenty! You will always end up waiting somewhere! Great chance to chat to the locals to kill some time. Get the phrasebook out and have a go! A sudoku book is also pretty good for killing time, but you get labelled as as an obsessive nutcase!

Hi All,

• A lot of buildings have ceramic tiles plastered all over the outside walls - much like we have in our kitchens or bathrooms! We saw some huge murals made using the tiles too!
• An excellent pair of local products - Port and Douro wine (mainly reds as far as I can tell) Both as cheap as chips (3-4 Euros--NZ$6-8!!) and I still haven't found one that isn't fantastic! Huzzah!
• All the other good products are available there too - Super Bock beer (5.6% and very nice.); Ham, bacon, pork,BBQ chicken, coffee and beer again, cheese and patries. We consumed disgraceful quantities of all of those products and rate them very highly!
• Picturesque cobbled streets and buildings (-not cobbled buildings, but definitely picturesque!) Although it looked a fair bit different, Porto did remind me of Wellington. It is a bit drab and grey like Wellington and the almost constant rain didn't help.
• Port cellar tours! Yay! Unfortunately for us, the incessant rain had caused the river Douro to breach its banks, flooding m ost of the cellars. So, we only got to go to one cellar - Calem. BTW their port was well worth sampling ;-)   -see the two River Douro pics! One during, one after!
• The flooding was pretty bad for some people - they were trapped in their houses and were subject to being gawped at by the like of us --in the photo, nearly all of the ground floor is underwater!
• The houses are diefintely different - they are tall and narrow - they look cool even when they are as tatty as hell! 

We strolled through a very dodgy looking, grimy alley, coincidentally, near the waterfront. It looked like the sort of place a bloke could get robbed if he stopped moving (also if you stopped moving, you'd probably be trying to scrape the dog poo from your shoe in Porto! Little dogs everywhere!). We sort a few places unconvincingly labelled as "bars" with red lights, curtains and old women standing in doorways that were pushing the bounds of reality for actually earning money! It's hard to see how they get people to pay them, instead of vice versa! They were old and not too flash at all!

 

Phil and I had a fairly simple weekend - largely walking, talking, taking photos and having a good nose around. We alternated these activities with shopping, drinking beer and coffee and exploring in general. Actually, we spent an extraordinary amount of time, especially once it got dark, trying to find a bar - we were lookning for something that looked lik a bar that we are used to, but after a fruitless weekend, the we believe that the bar culture is just not here yet. People do drink at night, but they seem to go to the cafes and little neighbourhood places to do it. Quietly. Oh well

Seems to be ok- Almost twice as expensive as the last hotel, at 45 Euros (NZ$90), but still not too bad for Lisbon. It is a bit small and spartan, but very clean and well-kept, but I am a bit concerned though - there is no toilet paper and no supermarket nearby! Arrrggghhhh!! Luckily, I usually travel with some! No details to follow on this one!

I will end there. There are a few more things I'd like to say about Porto, but the email is getting a little large now. Maybe tomorrow I will get some more typing done. I am looking at visiting Sintra, a medieval town (with a CASTLE) tomorrow. We will see.

Cheers