The little town of Saratok, where we now live, has a population of maybe 10,000, similar to Locorotondo, our hometown in Italy.  For a white European it is a bewildering cultural melange of indigenous people (the Iban), Malays and Chinese, with an overlay of influences from the British and American Empires. At first sight it's an unassuming little place with a town centre comprising a few grids of concrete two-storey buildings.  It has a daily market, two snooker halls, several mosques and Anglican and Methodist churches.  There are lots of cafes where you can get a square meal for around £1 and these are divided between muslim and non-muslim (where beer can be had).  There are no restaurants. Popular local drinks include Nescafe with condensed milk and sugar, tea, also with condensed milk and Horlicks.  The food is mainly traditional Malaysian and Chinese, but the two small local supermarkets also do a brisk trade in baked beans and Quaker Oats.  Thi...

We bought mountain bikes a couple of weeks ago and sometimes I sling my bike in the back of the car when Sue goes to a school and then cycle home.  Today she dropped me in the middle of nowhere at 7.30am and I decided to go home on a route that took me via a river ferry.  I cycled to the ferry and joined the queue of early morning workers.  The tide was ebbing strongly and the ferry was making hard work of the crossing, it was pushed a long way down river before reaching our side and punching back upstream in the slack water by the bank. On the ferry I started taking photos when the Captain gesticulated at me from the bridge.  He looked very stern, but a deck hand motioned to me to go up to see him.  So I climbed up some rusty iron handholds and joined him. "Welcome" he beamed.  Looking desperately around for a present his hand lighted on some sachets of instant coffee which he thrust at me. "Drink!" "Thank you."  I said, dropping the sachets...

A couple of kilometres up the road from our house is the Saratok running track.  Three or four years old I am told and a really nice and well-drained surface, essential in this climate.  People go there in the morning and the evening when it is cool enough to run or walk round the track.  I am now a regular a few times a week. Sometimes there are thirty or forty people of various ages making their way round at varied speeds from a slow stroll to a fairly gentle trot.  Sometimes, for reasons I haven't yet worked out there is just me ... and the dog. The dog likes to keep an eye on what is going down at the track and likes to go for a snooze in one of the straights, usually in lane two.  Sometimes he raises an eyelid as I stagger past, panting and bathed in sweat.  Sometimes we exchange a glance which may or may not mean anything to either of us. Normally I do ten kilometres during which time the dog will shift his behind a couple of times and maybe g...

We were invited for New Year's Eve to take an outing into the mangrove swamp by Sue's fellow mentor Ellie.  Ellie is based at Maludam, a remote community sandwiched between two large rivers which can only be reached by ferry. We set off before dawn and reached the car ferry just as it was getting light.  There were only a few cars waiting to cross, but as the ferry approached from across the river I could see it was packed with palm oil trucks and motorcyclists who rumbled ashore like an invading army. At Maludam we met Ellie and her brother Richard and went in search of our boat.  After the inevitable confusion about where and when the boat was to rendezvous with us, we embarked in a small day boat with a crew of two.  After a half hour or so we heard some thrashing noises in the trees which signalled the approach of a group of monkeys.  I saw them fleetingly then heard a crash as one missed its handhold and fell towards the swamp below with a cry that coul...

We decided to go away for a few days around Christmas and booked three nights in a smart hotel in Kuching, the regional capital and three nights at a small beach resort, Sematan, in the far west of Sarawak. The Pullman in Kuching was much as one would expect.  Nice rooms, big bathrooms, big breakfast buffets and lots of affluent looking people traipsing up and down.  It was OK but not an experience either of us feel in a hurry to repeat.  I like smartish hotels but I don't feel so comfortable in them here, maybe because they make me feel more part of an affluent elite that I don't want to admit to belonging to.  If so, this is probably hypocrisy. On 27 December we drove to the Sematan Beach resort, which was much more fun.  A collection of chalets on the edge of the South China sea facing a massive sandy beach where the tide goes out by about half a kilometre.  Our booking included a buffet breakfast and evening meal and the resort was packed with mainl...

Sue does not have to be back at work until early January and so we have a total of four or five weeks together to travel and allow me to acclimatise.  Last weekend we went to Sibu, the nearest large town, some two hours drive from Saratok.  Sibu lies on the Rejang river and from there we took a day trip on the river ferries to Kapit, a small town in the interior which can only be reached by river I believe. The ferries travel at 20-30 knots and the journey to Kapit takes about two and a half hours.  We travelled "business class", which is one step down from "first class" and entitled us to air conditioning and a flickering film on DVD which could barely be heard above the roar of the engine.  During the trip a man wandered round with a large bin liner full of crisps and other packet snacks for sale. As we hammered our way up river I scanned the shoreline for crocodiles and, out of the corner of my eye briefly glimpsed a large one basking on a log with its legs d...

We went last Sunday to a wedding in Kabong, the village and district in which Sue works.  It was about a thirty minute drive from Saratok and my first opportunity to get a feel for the area that Sue travels to most working days. Stopping to ask directions some way from our destination it was clear that a large section of the local community already knew who we were and why we were there.  Central Kabong is a collection of houses on stilts over a salt marsh linked by a network of wooden walkways. The wedding was for the brother of Nora one of the teachers of English with whom Sue works.  This was the second ceremony, the first having been held in the regional capital Kuching. They are a large, sophisticated and well travelled family and as a result I felt both very welcome and remarkably at ease in a setting like nothing else I have ever experienced.  We joined in the ceremony, took photos, ate, danced and relaxed in a palpable atmosphere of hospitality and good...