September 15, 2012: All quiet here in the enclave.

We wanted everyone to know that we are fine and safe here in Dhaka.  The embassy has sent out warnings about the possibility of unrest, but also that they have not been advised of any new dangers.  Things, of course, are not well in North Africa or parts of the Middle East.  Even Australia has seen violent demonstrations--we were in Sydney six weeks ago and thought it was incredibly calm.

Tonight, for instance, we went to the opening of an art gallery--the grandmother of one of Gail's students owns the gallery (and the building)--so we got to see some expensive locally produced art.  Well, more expensive than anything we own that would be considered art.  Several hundred or thousand dollars for original oil paintings, for instance.  Everyone was gracious.

And we went shopping this afternoon and saw no evidence of any unrest, except that we did notice more beefy young American men, apparently Marines on their day off.  Last night one of the other administrators told us she saw a demonstration in front of the US Embassy (six blocks away), but thought it was a parade.

One of the reasons things here are not in the uproar that other Moslem countries have experienced is that, for one, this is a moderate, secular society with a tradition of tolerance.  The other reason, I think, is that most people are so poor that they have no time for politics; just living is enough of a struggle.  To get an idea of the place, check out this link: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/10/world/asia/killing-of-bangladesh-labor-leader-spotlights-grievances-of-workers.html?_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss&src=ig

No, it's not Venice.

You can also check out these pictures from an August trip into the city with the new teachers.

The Banana Man

The Bangladesh Parliament

More Waterfront

The Music Store

The Fish Seller

At the Vegetable Market

School Children of Hindu Street

The Streets of Dhaka

Return to Paradise, Or How We Spent the Kids' Inheritance: Final Chapter

Chapter Six: Down Under and Back

Trinity Beach

Trinity Beach, Queensland, Australia, just north of Cairns and opposite the Great Barrier Reef, became our home for six days.  Trinity is beautiful—palm trees (with the coconuts thoughtfully removed) line a half-mile strip of sand beach between two rocky points.  The Coral Sea lapped at the beach less than 50 yards from our balcony and windows.  Restaurants and bars sat at the corner of the next intersection, a block or so down the beach, along with a convenience store and car rental place.  And I was the youngest guy in town---like Phoenix with a beach and a rain forest.   

Trinity Beach and Tablelands

We drove the coast road—the Captain Cook Highway, with lots of curves and hills along the sea north toward Port Douglas and Cape Tribulation.  (Captain Cook had some trouble here.) The “tablelands” meet the sea in stunning cliffs, and we stopped at one scenic lookout place to watch parasail guys take off from the cliff. 

 The other thing we saw that day was Mossman Gorge, a national park around a rushing mountain stream and rain forest preserve.  A red headed turkey-like bird followed the tourists down the path to the stream; on the way we saw a tree snake, but that was about it for wildlife.  Wallabies, small kangaroo-like mammals, could be seen along the road near Trinity Beach, as well. 

Road Side Wallabies

The only cloudy, rainy day was the day we booked an all day snorkel/SCUBA trip.  On the way to their dive moorings on the reef, the girls filled out medical forms, and Abby made the mistake of mentioning that she had had childhood asthma.  That disqualified her from SCUBA, but she and Gail snorkeled while Millie dived.  It was too rough for my seasickness and me to enjoy.  The clouds cleared as we returned to Cairns, and it was beautiful again.  So we got some gelato before the night market opened.

Our next-to-last day, we drove up into the tablelands and saw yet another waterfall, then spent the balance of our Trinity Beach time laying on the sand and packing for Sydney.  The flight was sort of eventful (Don’t fly Jet Star if you can help it.) with our bags being just overweight enough to get expensive for us and a bother for the check-in person we dealt with.  She left and the bags were okayed by the next check in person.  The flight was full of screaming children, tall Asians with pointy knees—at least the guy behind me—but brief enough that we all survived. 

We scooped up our bags, caught a big taxi and landed in downtown to find that the Meriton Service Apartment on Kent Street near Darling Harbor had overbooked two bedroom apartments, so they gave us a three bedroom, split level, 56^th floor, sub-penthouse apartment.  For the first time in six weeks, the girls did not share a room or a bed and Gail had a Jacuzzi bathtub.  And we had an incredible view from the balcony.

From the Penthouse

Sydney was beautiful—mostly sunny and cool with lots to see.  We wandered around late that first afternoon until we came to the Circular Quay, the ferry terminal between the two main landmarks, the Harbor Bridge and the Opera House.  The next day we rode the hop on/hop off buses around the city, then spent the evening walking around the shops next to Darling Harbor before we caught the latest Batman movie at the world’s largest IMAX theater. 

China Garden near Darling Harbor

The next morning we took the Opera House tour, then after a Quay-side lunch, caught the ferry to the Zoo.  The Opera House is a monster—like the Taj Mahal, Notre Dame or the Lincoln Memorial, bigger than you expect, and really a fantastic piece of architecture.  At the gift shop, I could have bought a T-shirt that read: "The sun did not know how beautiful it's light could be until it saw it reflected off this building." But, we got Christmas tree ornaments instead.  

The Opera House

The Zoo is pretty cool as well.  We finally got to see the kangaroos, emus, platypus and exotic birds.  Eventually we caught the ferry back to the city and packed up for the next day’s flight back to Dhaka. 

At the Zoo

We spent the last of the kids’ inheritance at the Sydney airport duty free shops on single malt Scotch, t-shirts, ties and perfume...important stuff.  Eight hours later we were in the Kuala Lumpur's airport, Abby was still working on her last class assignment and charging her computer when we were called to board the last flight—Kuala Lumpur to Dhaka—of the summer. 

Sydney from the Zoo

In the end, Gail and I decided we were blessed to have daughters that turned out to be such good travel buddies.  And, this was the trip of a lifetime—Milford Sound to the Coral Coast to Return to Paradise Beach to the Sydney Opera House.  

Return to Paradise, at Last

Chapter Five: Paradise At Last

Samoa

We landed on Upolu, Samoa, about 11:30 PM, managed to get through customs and immigration and into the best hotel of the whole trip: Aggie Grey’s Beach Resort.  This is our only upper class, 5 Star, resort of the trip: a couple restaurants, pool with swim-up bar, golf course being developed, all on the northwest coast of the island, with Savaii in the distance and the gorgeous Pacific all around us.  Of course, the place also comes with lots of screaming under-parented Australian kids…but a small price to pay for Paradise, champagne sunsets right outside our room and the incredible Pacific we had hoped to see. 

The original Aggie Grey’s Hotel is in Apia, the capital city (well, town) down the coast 45 km.  The Hotel has been an institution of renown since WW2 and has seen its share of celebrities.  We stayed there once 30 years, but I don’t remember anything special.  (We missed the weekly floor show and "siva" dance, originally performed by Aggie herself, now performed by her granddaughter.)

Millie at Breakfast

Beach Front at Aggie's

The cloudy weather followed us to Samoa,and we tried hanging out at the pool and working on our tans without success the first day, Saturday July 14.  We studied the possibilities, bought an hour of internet to check the weather, and decided to book snorkeling for us and SCUBA for the girls for Sunday at the dive shop down the beach. 

The weather was still a little cool, cloudy and windy Sunday morning when all of us had our first dives (girls SCUBA, Gail and I snorkeling), but by afternoon, it was clear, calm and perfect.  That second dive was a mile off shore, in a sea that deep blue and shallow emerald green you dream of, and the sunlight lit up the coral and the fish in the Fish Bowl Café, as they call the diving site. 

But the best part was that we were watching our girls six meters below us.  They have now had four open water dives and seemed completely comfortable.  Abby announced just before we left that she didn’t see herself coming back to be a SCUBA instructor here.  We didn’t know it was even an idea. 

The Wide Pacific

Monday we rented a car and drove around the island.  We caught another mostly sunny day and followed the beach road south then east along the coast.  The villages in Samoa, unlike Fiji, are colorful places with lots of flowering plants everywhere and plants that add color with their leaves.  Big ornate churches were the dominant structure in every village, each appeared to have been freshly painted just for us.  We drove slowly and took lots of photos, of course. 

The road was pretty memorable as well.  It left the shoreline after several villages and moved over a pass between the hills, then back down into a valley.  The road got less paved and narrower as we went, finally coming to a stream that we had to cross.  Actually, there was a low water “bridge” and the clear water rushing down the mountain and across the road was only a few inches deep.  Fortunately, we had rented a 4WD SUV, so I was sure we could ford the creek.  The Corolla taxi in front of us almost didn’t make it, though.  I got to wade across and push a little to get him through.  It was all part of the adventure. 

"Return to Paradise" Beach

After a few wrong turns, we found the Beach. “Return to Paradise” Beach was the set for a Gary Cooper movie from the 40s; none of us have seen the movie, but the beach was incredible—not for swimming, just for walking around and looking. In the 80s, it was just a barely marked beach you could just drive to, with a little help from the villagers.  Now, it’s a tourist attraction with a guesthouse and a couple chiefs hanging out at a "fale o'o" (coconut hut) to take your 10 Tala (about $4US.) per car.  

The beach was a hundred yards of sand surrounded by coconuts and bordered by black lava and white coral. A major lava flow had cooled at the beach, creating lots of pools, and the waves break close, so there is a constant rush of water over and around the rocks.   Gail and I came here Christmas, 1980, and we have a great photo of Gail on the beach.  The girls thought it was just as cool.  So we took lots of pictures and played on the rocks until it was time to head to the waterfall. 

Millie in the middle

Fish Bowl Cafe

Last Look at Paradise

The waterfall, on the way to Apia, is a hundred feet high and flows over a cliff in the middle of the rainforest.   The viewing area is opposite, just off the cross-island road, and that day covered in mist and fog.  The guy who lives across the road will help you down a path to the pool at the bottom for 100 Tala, but we decided to pass. 

We drove back into blue sky and brilliant sunshine in a few minutes and soon found ourselves at the waterfront of Apia.  Apia struck us as mini-Honolulu from the 50s—suburbs of sorts and lots of blooming and colorfully leafed plants.  The waterfront was recognizable, even though there has been much development.  We found the place where Gail’s dad took a picture of a boy walking a horse, with the harbor in the background. 

The last day in Samoa, we checked out and then waited around the pool and beach for our flight out of paradise.  Our next stop is six nights at a two-bedroom apartment on the beach just north of Cairns, Australia, opposite the Great Barrier Reef.  The place is a different kind of paradise with a washing machine and dryer, a supermarket down the street, and BBQ grills next to the pool.  The adventure continues.

Return to Paradise or How We Spent the Kids' Inheritance; Chapter 4

The Museum of Fiji

Our divers and the raging Pacific

Waidroka Bay Resort

Chapter Four: Fiji

The Fiji experience began at the Nadi airport, where we were met by Ali (or Ili, not sure which). He put our luggage and us in a Waidroka Bay Resort van and began a three-hour nighttime drive to the resort.  We stopped in the town of Nadi for dinner, then got into the driving on the mostly paved Queen’s Road, which follows the coast, mostly, to Suva.  Thirty years ago it was all gravel.

This is not the India/Bangladesh driving that we had become accustomed to, but pretty developing-world in its own way. Lots of speed limits in villages, speed bumps and the occasional broken down car.  Few people and fewer lights between villages.  

After a couple hours of steady rain, Ali pulled off the main road into a gravel lane, up and over dark hills for several kilometers until the road ended at the almost completely dark “resort”.  No one was present to greet us.  Ali jumped out and found a note in the key box, grabbed the key and we climbed a long set of stairs, with our luggage, in the rain, up to our room.

Our bure away from home

The room had only beds for three, the air conditioner remote could not be found and there was no one to complain to.  While we each swore and complained to each other, Gail read the note, looked at the hotel information and realized we were in the wrong room.  Ali, of course, was long gone, and it was still raining.  Millie and I grabbed an umbrella and flashlights and went off to explore.  We found our way back to the main building and located the correct note and key in the key box, and stumbled through the rain until we found the deluxe family ‘bure’ (Fijian for house), with beds for four, that we had booked.  So we brought the luggage back down the steps, through the rain, to our new little bungalow.   

Scuba Lessons

The next day we booked the girls into SCUBA certification lessons and found there really wasn’t much for Gail and I to do.  Even though the place is located in a sort of arc of a cove, there was no beach, just rocks and mud when the tide was out.  

But we weren’t driving an SUV anymore, and there was a pool.  The place focuses strictly on SCUBA and surfing, and everyday takes guests off shore to places for both.  The other guests were mostly surfers plus a father and son from Denver who had maxed out on SCUBA.  

Gail and I caught a ride the next day to Suva, Fiji's capital, and wandered around the city, checked out the museum, bought some souvenirs and had a nice lunch.  The girls are hard at the book-learning part of the SCUBA experience. 

Almost Sunny

Two days into SCUBA and the girls were out at sea for their last two dives to be certified.  The weather all week had been cloudy and rainy, but Wednesday, July 11, had a higher sky with occasional sunshine and still lots of wind.  The resort faces a lagoon with waves breaking on the reef far out to sea.  Inside that reef the wind was blowing hard enough to produce whitecaps.  So we had to hang by the pool instead of snorkeling yet again. 

At the last minute we decided to brave the waves and head out with three surfers and their mom to the “Pipes” a good place, about a mile offshore, for both snorkeling and surfing.  Fiji apparently is the home of world championships for surfing and one of the most popular places in the world for surfers.  The “Pipes” is one of the best places. The waves break out in front of some reef and it’s safe to surf.  The resort has a mooring place to tie up the boat nearby.  The surfers took their boards and swam a hundred yards or so to the Pipes while the grown-ups stayed on the boat and bobbed around.  The weather got worse and we never got to snorkel, but I did eventually get seasick.  We came back in during a pouring rain and got wet that way. 

The girls, meanwhile, were seeing a shark, a turtle and lots of fish and coral.  Late that afternoon, the local employees invited the guests to a kava ceremony.  Kava is a root that is ground, pounded in this case, and then mixed with water in a kava bowl to a consistency of muddy water.  In Samoa, the ceremony is a very tradition-laden event, only done by a village princess and with specific sequence of events.    (We have a bowl from Samoa at home.)

Making Kava

Delicious

Here it was more of an endurance test—how much can we get the tourists to drink?  The drink makes your tongue numb and generally induces a calm, restive state.  It’s also a diuretic.  As easily the oldest person there, I was designated the “chief” and had to start each round.  I stayed for the entire 2.5 hours—about a 12 pack; Gail and the girls bailed early. 

We gave it one more shot: waited for the weather to clear and maybe try to snorkel one more time.  In the meantime, the girls passed their written tests and are now certified to 18 meters of open water.  But the rain and clouds continued. 

On the Way to the Airport

  

Finally a Sunny Day for a walk in the Dunes

The next day, the only sunny day of the week, we left early for the airport.  We had asked to stop for some shopping, lunch, and a sand dunes national park on the way.  We wanted to make it to the airport early so Abby could find an internet connection and send off another assignment for her on-line course.  We did it all, and everything worked out.  

Looking back, it wasn't bad, but it wasn't paradise yet.  We would have to wait a couple more days.  On to Samoa!

Return to Paradise, or How We Spent the Kids' Inheritance; Chapter Three

Entering Queen Charlotte Sound, South Island

Chapter Three: South Island

One of the Southern Alps

The ferry crossing to the South Island is a two to six hour adventure, depending on the sea and the weather. We made it in about four, with pretty heavy swells moving one of us to seasickness for a while. The ships for this trip are large—lots of cars, big trucks, campers and RVs.  Once they get you parked inside the ship, you find a seat near the bar, food court or lounge or stand on one of the decks.

The Cook Strait was pretty rough until you get in the “shadow” of the South Island, then things flatten out a bit.  Then once you get into Queen Charlotte Sound, it might as well be a lake.  Since we caught a sunny, bright morning for this trip, we had spectacular viewing—just cold and windy.  The boat finally docked and we headed south down the Pacific coast to Christchurch, the most English city in NZ. 

The girls slept through this one.

The road cuts through one of NZ’s best know wine producing areas, then some hills and more sheep before heading along the actual coastline—all in sight of the Southern Alps, the snow covered monsters that seem to have just sprouted out of the pastures and vineyards.  NZ is one of the Earth newest landforms and the mountains are vertical, jagged and rocky—like the Grand Teton in Wyoming, only the range is the length of the island and almost always in view.

The Pacific was raging and roaring just like the Tasman had been on the other side two days before, big white-capped waves crashing noisily on the beaches.  The driving was slow and hard since the road hugged the coastline.  It would have been fun to drive in Gail’s car, but this big old SUV doesn’t handle like a Beetle convertible, so we plodded along, stopped for lunch at a place with a view and then headed into Canterbury, of which Christchurch is the provincial capital. 

South of Queenstown

Earthquakes devastated Christchurch in recent years and most of the downtown was destroyed or damaged to the point where you can’t see anything of the city center. We stayed on the outskirts of the town and walked a few blocks to a mall and a restaurant.  We passed churches and pubs that showed the damage.  In fact, the churches seemed to be the places that showed the most damage, maybe the 19^th century stone construction did not allow for the elasticity necessary to stay upright in an earthquake.  In any case, we’ll not be adding this one to the retirement list; the next morning was once again cold and sunny as we headed toward Mt. Cook.

The drive was up, over and through the foothills and plateaus leading up to a couple alpine lakes and finally, NZ’s tallest mountain.  The mountain and its brothers block the west end of a glacier-created lake, and were framed by our motel room windows.  

At the foot of Mt. Cook

We were right at the base of the range and so close you could walk over and start climbing.  Actually, it’s maybe a mile away, but since the air was so clear and cold, it looked really close.  We scraped off the frost from the windshield the next morning and headed down the valley and around the lake toward our main South Island destination—Te Anau and Milford Sound.

Milford Sound is one of the fiords that the ice ages cut into the southwest corner of the South Island, and spectacularly green, vertical and beautiful, but the drive there is pretty spectacular itself.  We rolled past several glaciated lakes and lots more sheep before we got into the higher, ice and snow-covered part of the trip (“allow two hours, check road conditions, rent chains from the service station if needed”).  We took longer to get there, but didn’t need the chains after we checked.  We were told to beware of the black ice. 

Early Morning Mt. Cook

The Road to Milford Sound

The drive started out in clouds and fog—it was hard to tell which we were driving through any particular moment—then moved up into Alpine forest, lakes and the snow.  The NZ highway people had conveniently spread some kind of “grit” limestone chat, I guess, on the roads provide us with traction on ice, but I thought it just made the road slipperier.  

Still on the Road to Milford Sound

We came across waterfalls, icefalls, roaring mountain streams, incredible ice cycles and, of course one-lane bridges.  We even drove through a one-lane tunnel for at least a kilometer downhill, ending in a sharp curve that lead to more sharp switchbacks and curves down to the Sound.  Just before we arrived, we were stopped by the friendly NZ highway department man who told us to “drive very slowly the last 10 kilometers or so, because they hadn’t put down the morning grit yet and filling out the insurance forms for our wrecked rental car would be sooo time-consuming”. 

The Sound

But nothing ill befell us and we landed safe and sound at the Milford Sound boat harbor and got ready to board.  As with everywhere else in NZ, people thought we were a little odd: two obviously Chinese girls with a couple really white people.  And since we were surrounded by Chinese tourists, we sort of stuck out. 

The Sound was incredible…waterfalls, dolphins, seals, bright blue sky and sea and yes rainbows…well, sunny waterfalls that created rainbows.  It was all majestic and magical and unchanged from 30 years ago.  The boat took us out just into the Tasman Sea, turned around and came back on the shadow side of the Sound, stopping to let waterfalls spray us.  Dolphins followed us, and seals slept on the rocks. 

Wood Family in Winter

We drove back up through the tunnel, past the ice cycles and fog/cloud and lakes to get back to Te Anau in time to take another water excursion with a boat-load of Chinese tourists, enjoying the glowworms in a cave on the opposite shore of Lake Te Anau.  The cave itself is pretty long and requires SCUBA equipment and wetsuits.  The tourist trip we took is a brief walk into the cave and a silent, totally dark boat ride into a grotto, where the worms glow from the ceiling of the cave.

Pancake Rocks National Park

After Milford Sound, it was a four-day hustling drive back up to Auckland, touching every possible one-lane bridge on the way.  We should have counted them. We came up the Tasman coast of the South Island, stopping for the night near the Franz Joseph Glacier, then continuing on to Picton the next evening.  On the way, we stopped to visit the Pancake Rocks Blowholes—curious rock formations, but only blowing at high tide and we had just missed that. 

The 7:00 AM ferry the next morning was delayed five hours and we finally landed in Wellington after 3:00 PM, then drove five hard hours to Napier, a curious little city on the Pacific coast of the North Island.  Napier’s town center was pretty much destroyed by an earthquake in the 1930s then rebuilt in an Art Deco fashion.  It was all cute and pretty but we had to head on to Auckland for the flight the next day. Napier might be added to the list, but isn’t as spectacular as Wellington or Waikere.    

Giant Fruit of Cromwell

We arrived in time to find a movie theater in a mall and saw The Amazing Spiderman, our last tourist event of the trip.  The next day we turned in the car at the airport, and with the luggage properly weighed and wearing our winter clothes, boarded the plane for Fiji.

Somewhere on the South Island

The Long White Cloud