It's the dog days in Saratok after the Chinese New Year and I had to drag myself out for a run this evening. As usual I went to the running track a couple of kilometres out of town where the car park was full.  Several people were walking or running around the track and a football match was in progress in the middle.  I did a slow warm up, nodding every now and then to one of the regulars, then launched myself onto the track for a five kilometre trot, which my GPS watch tells me is just under eleven circuits in the outside lane. Whenever I begin a run I have this anxiety that my body won't carry me, that this is the day when my old legs just refuse to budge and I stop immediately or fall flat on my face.  It never happens, muscle memory kicks in and the body just goes through the motions.  People seem surprised that I don't get bored, running round and round in circles, but there's a surprising amount of stimulation.  I have my MP3 player, on which I listen...

With Chinese New Year looming Sue and I decided to make a quick getaway to the Marriot in Miri.  This is a resort hotel in the north of Sarawak, next door to oil-rich Brunei.  Miri itself is an oil town so there is money here, which in turn attracts expats and sleaze. We flew here from Sibu at dusk in a turbo-prop which took off in heavy rain and thrummed and bumped its way to Miri in and out of thick cloud with the odd flash of lightning.  One of the main reasons for coming was that we can apparently stay using the "government rate", which gives a 50% discount for public servants.  This proved harder to wrestle from the smiling but wary staff at Reception than I expected, though I think we finally succeeded.  A number of Sue's colleagues had the same idea and it's been good to catch-up with people around the pool and over dinner. Because the hotel is out of town we've been insulated from the Chinese New Year celebrations, apart from being woken up by a...

I started teaching again ten days ago and now our holiday feels well and truly behind me.  This term I have more classes and a routine more like a full-time language teacher.  I work Monday to Thursday and most days I teach for six hours, which with preparation time makes for an eight to ten hour day.  It's been good to see my students again and to say hello to some new faces.  Up to now all my students have been Chinese, but I now have a group of eighteen year olds which includes some Malays and a feisty bunch they are. Looking back, I wish I'd written more about Sri Lanka and the experiences we had there.  One morning in particular keeps coming back to me when I was lying in bed at dawn in our B&B up in the tea country and as I tossed and turned I could hear church bells competing with the chanting from a nearby Buddhist monastery.  Haputale, where we were staying, is up at about six thousand feet and quite chilly at night and at dawn you can get...

I used to think jet lag was a myth propagated by people who secretly wanted to boast about their travels, but for the last week I've been a zombie, psychotic with tiredness yet unable to sleep.  Sue and I occasionally meet up in the living room at two in the morning to catch an old episode of a Jamie Oliver cookery programme or a sniper competition.  If only they could combine the two. We had been away from Saratok for five weeks and now everything seems strange again.  The day after we arrived I sleepwalked into Everise, our local supermarket, to be greeted as a long lost friend by one of the assistants who urgently directed me to the storeroom.  "Tiger beer" he said proudly, indicating a pallet load of blue cardboard wrapped twenty-four packs.  His logic was clear - a pink man coming to the store on New Year's eve must be in need of beer.  I staggered to the check-out with a case while smiling dutifully.  Then I witnessed another mystery I've yet t...

While travelling around Sri Lanka we used just about every mode of transport except a bullock cart. The prize for the most uncomfortable goes to the no. 27 bus from Wellawaya to Unawatuna.  It was the only way to get from the tea-producing hill country down to the coast without hiring a car and driver.  The start of the journey was fine, we were taken by tuk-tuk from our guest house in Haputale to the local bus station and escorted onto a spacious local bus to Welawaya down in the foothills.  Within a few minutes of arriving in Welawaya we were hot, stressed and hassled by lots of locals wanting a piece of us and giving confusing information about where and when the buses for the coast left.  I've finally learned something that Sue has known for years about these situations, which is don't get infected with other people's sense of urgency - if you're feeling hassled just stop and say "no thank you", find a cafe if possible and sit down and have a drink.  ...

One of the first things to strike me about Sri Lanka was the sheer number of tuk-tuks, the tiny three-wheeled taxis which are such a familiar sight in most of Asia.  As we roamed the island we found even the smallest towns and villages would have droves of them, mostly parked, often with the driver taking a nap inside or passing the time of day with his fellow drivers.  I suspect they provide a sense of purpose to men who would otherwise be unemployed.  They are the bottom end of the transit market, moving people and goods to the spots inaccessible to trucks and cars as they wheedle their way through the tightest traffic jam and the narrowest alley, guided by a cheap and ever chirruping mobile phone. For the tuk-tuk driver it's always open season on tourists.  They will peremptorily ditch an existing passenger or errand and do a suicidal u-turn across a busy main road just to get a tourist on their rear bench, because tourists equal serious cash.  Even when y...

I'm a sucker for old harbours like Galle.  Mainly built by the Dutch then taken over by the British, it is a wonderful mixture of european architecture and asian culture.  We visited several times while staying at Unawatuna beach, five kilometres down the coast.  The old town is walled in by Dutch fortifications and inside is a grid of narrow streets filled with the kind of buildings you would see in a traditional English or Dutch market town, including churches, eighteenth century shops and townhouses and a few art deco gems.  The place is being tarted-up rapidly and renovation work is going on everywhere to create more and more boutique hotels and craft shops.  Of an evening locals and tourists alike spill out onto the ramparts to stroll and watch magnificent blood-red sunsets.  They are accompanied by hundreds of crows, who line the walls and stare indifferently at the pearl-coloured sea. Despite the gentrification, there remains a large indigenous,...