Tagged with: day:3

  • Day 3

    Artur has borrowed the car to take Rita to the hospital, and the weather is still overcast, so we have a late start (again) and potter about reading and trying to make the pool table work, unsuccessfully, until lunchtime. Some fishermen arrive with some fresh prawns, so we buy a kilo (at prices comparable with a supermarket at home, which seems a mite pricy to me) and make a prawn curry for lunch.

  • Day 3

    Phnom Penh is basically known to foreigners for two primary attractions – the Tuol Sleng genocide museum, and the killing fields. These chronicle the history of one of the world’s bloodiest campaigns of violence, a genocide in which some say three million people perished at the hands of the Khmer Rouge. We headed to Tuol Sleng first.

  • Day 3

    location:Barton/Acle
    summary:Morning swim. Afternoon sail to Acle with the tide
    trip:sailing03
    day:3

  • Day 3

    We left the hotel at 10.10, heading for the space museum, which is located at the base of a big metallic monument to the Glory days of Soviet space exploration. The monument has fantastic images of heroic explorers etched into the side – ‘heroic’ people going about tasks like talking on the radio, fiddling with a radar display, hitting a satelite with a hammer – that sort of thing, along with dates celebrating the fabulous achievements of the Soviet space programme. The monument itself is supposed to resemble a massive, tapering jet blast rising into the sky, with a rocket at its tip.

  • Day 3

    location:Cape Town and Peninsula
    summary:Robben Island, Boulders Beach
    trip:sa02
    day:3

  • Day 3

    We woke up at about 0940, and just made the checkout time. At the station our bags went into lockers. Probably the most complicated, over-engineered lockers I’ve ever seen, since in order to store an item you needed to find an empty one, stow your luggage (ok so far), close the door, wait for it to automatically lock, insert money in a nearby touchscreen terminal, and take a printed ticket which was dispensed.The problem was not so much the complexity of the system as the springyness of the doors. If they weren’t locked, they sprung open, which obviously helps people considerably when they are on the finding an empty locker stage, but becomes an issue when trying to close them, because you actually needed to HOLD the door closed while the motorised locking mechanism engaged the bolts. All over the room loud clangs could be heard where frustrated people slammed the doors with ever increasing force, only for them to spring open again immediately, because the locking mechanism hadn’t had a chance to close the lock.

  • Day 3

    location:Ramwort – Acle
    trip:sailing02
    day:3

  • Day 3

    Got up around 7:30, and went down for breakfast shaking off a light jet lag. There wouldn’t be any spicy food served for breakfast, obviously, so I got a plate of somethig that looked nice and took a big bite. How wrong I was. Strictly as a face saving exercise I ate most of it then rushed back to my room to drink several gallons of water. I phoned Wee, and we agreed to meet at 12, which left me enough time to buy a map of Bangkok. Wee arrived on time and suggested visiting a floating market but this turned out to be too far away. Instead she took me on a brief tour of the city by bus, ending up in her favorite hang out at Siam Square, a very westernised shopping and entertainment complex. We met Wee’s friend Jill (pronounced ‘Dew’ for some reason I was unable to establish), and I got my first proper taste of Thai cuisine, as well as a crash course in speaking Thai from Jill and Wee, who found my pronounciation very funny. To my amazement, Wee and Jill both support Enlish football clubs, Liverpool and Leeds respectively, although Wee doesn’t know where Liverpool is, and Jill only knows the location of Leeds because her boyfried lives there. As relationships go, I don’t think you can get much more long distance than that!

  • Day 3

    What a busy day. I am awake at 6am, and leave with Basil by 7 for his office a short distance away in Harare. Here I am introduced to Pam, his personal assistant, and get to see some photos he has taken of Reaper’s operations over the past few years. With cheques signed and business generally attended to, we depart again for the rural town of Rusape, where Reapers own a petrol filling station. The trip takes about an hour, and when we arrive I am surprised to see attendants at each pump, before realising that self-service stations are simply not present in Zimbabwe. I am introduced to Davina, the station manager who gives me a tour while Basil conducts a meeting. “I hear that you have to fill up the cars yourself in England?!” she observes.

  • Day 3

    Our first day in Australia does not start well. All my own fault, of course – I just can’t sleep on planes. 3am finds us in Darwin – the right country at least – waiting to board new passengers before continuing to our final destination, and starting point: Cairns. In order to do this, everyone is required to leave the plane. This seems faintly ridiculous, but I’m far beyond any ability to complain, and so obligingly trudge off the plane, only to trudge back on again 30 minutes later. I suddenly realise that this is day 3, and we’re not actually there yet.