Canterbury Tales

Not the most original post title ever but that’s what I’m working with.  I took a day trip to Canterbury for an appointment a while ago and although I’m not moving there, it was a nice day out. The town is lovely and it was interesting to see how it had changed since I visited it briefly nine years ago. I originally went to Canterbury while on a two week (I think) car trip around some of the more southerly parts of Britain with my Grandfather and Canterbury was one of our early stops on the drive from East Anglia.  This time I had a more work oriented reason for my journey but still had a look around.  The weather was really good - here’s what Canterbury looks like.

Royal Museum and Free Library (as per the sign) found on one of the main streets

Main gate of Canterbury Cathedral

This is the main entry point for the Cathedral. I didn’t get the time to visit on my latest trip but have been before and can highly recommend it (especially if you like Cathedrals). The building is stunning and the shrine dedicated to the murdered Thomas Becket is worth a look.  I would like to go again but that will have to wait for another visit.

There was a crooked house...

...and a crooked terrace of houses

The old city walls, now part of a carpark

The Canterbury Tales

And this beauty is the outside of a tourist attraction everyone should visit. It’s The Canterbury Tales - an animatronic rendering of the classic tale for everyone’s enjoyment. Sadly, like the Cathedral, I didn’t get to go in on this visit but I have been before. In fact, on my last visit to the UK I patronised a number of similar exhibits, a sort of oddly smelling, jerkily puppet-like tour of British history. I also visited the Robin Hood Tales in Nottingham because I am all class.  I do recommend it, they put a lot of work into it and they’re always amusing.

punting on the river

And last but not least, I finished the day off with a visit to Tiny Tim’s Tearoom for a delicious cream tea (also highly recommended) before catching the train back to London.

delicious afternoon tea

Weekend travel in the Capital

Welcome to weekend travel in a city of roughly 7 million people (and don’t forget the tourists).  Some of whom may actually want to travel by tube without having to change lines three times or catch multiple replacement buses.

The forecast for this weekend:

• Bakerloo – Good Service
• Central – Part closure
• Circle - Good Service
• District – Part closure
• Hammersmith and City – Part closure
• Jubilee – Part closure
• Metropolitan – Part closure
• Northern – Good Service
• Piccadilly – Good Service
• Victoria – Planned closure
• Waterloo and City – Planned closure

Note this doesn’t take into account station closures for refurbishment or anything else that might go wrong in the mean time (I  mean, there’s a whole other day till these planned closures start).  It’s a good thing I’m going to spend most of Saturday walking through London – here’s hoping the Bakerloo will still be going to get me back to the south side of the river, because after that it’s rail replacement buses all the way.

London travel tip

When you’re standing at the ticket window at Charing Cross station with staff ready to sell you a ticket, this is not the time to answer your phone and tell the person on the other end ”Yeah sure I can talk now”. If you could possibly see all the harried commuters standing behind you, please know that you’re holding them up.

I’m in London!!!!

So the flight was very long, but not as bad as I thought it would be.  I’ve arrived my accommodation here in London no troubles and have even made a trip to the shops to buy some food.  I don’t know if I’ll be able to eat it as I have a horrible headache but will see how I feel later.  I watched lots of movies and tv shows while on the plane but there wasn’t much else to do. If it had been any longer I would have run out of stuff to watch that I was actually interested in seeing. My bags are definitely too heavy, I haven’t adjusted to carrying around a laptop yet.  It’s quite heavy when in its bag. I will have to look into other portage methods.

It’s strange being out, wandering around London because it feels alien at the moment but there was a time that it didn’t. I’m sure I’ll get back there again soon enough. Tomorrow I have to go out shopping and start connecting up essentials such as a mobile. And sorry Mum but I haven’t had any shaky moments yet. It’s exciting being here again (although I really need a nap).

Chicken Village

Chicken Village, also known as Lang Dinh An, can be found just outside of Da Lat in the Central Highlands.  When I travelled to Vietnam we visited the village as part of a day long motorbike tour.  The village is mostly know for its immense concrete sculpture of a chicken (hence the name although I think it might be rooster) but the local women also produce beautiful scarves and other woven products on hand looms.

We had a wander around the village and talked to a few of the locals.  The village is matriarchal which meant it was the women we chatted too and they explained that in their village it is the women who give dowries (generally buffaloes) to the men when they marry.  One of the guys in our group was informed that he’d be worth four buffaloes, much more than some of the locals apparently.

This isn’t a great picture but they had a decent sized school room and it seemed to only be the younger children who weren’t in attendance.

These little boys followed us for a while and posed, so we could show them their pictures on our cameras.

This lady acted as one of our guides in the village and demonstrated using the hand loom to weave.  The finished product can be seen in the background.

Last day at work today!

Apologies for the lack of posts this week but it’s been an interesting time.  Getting ready to leave somewhere has its ups and downs.  I’ve been going through all my piles of stuff at work, which is making me think I should have had a spring clean a little bit sooner.  I’ve baked a few things this week though, so I might get around to posting the recipes sometime soon.

I finally bought my ticket!

I finally psyched myself up to pick a date to travel to the UK and went and bought my ticket.  I was finding it difficult to choose a particular date as it was all quite arbitrary and I didn’t want to pick the wrong date.  Whatever, now I have a date and will have to stick to it.  I’ll be arriving in London in mid August, just in time to see out the British summer which is apparently about as warm as our winter. Every time I look at a website with a weather forecast, it always seems to be raining, drizzling, with showers, or chance of showers or some such indicator of imminent precipitation.  I’m only  just beginning to understand the truly numerous words that can be used to describe rain.

food, glorious food…

One of the best parts about travelling is eating all the fabulous food you encounter in different places.  My trip to Cambodia was no different.  On our day trip in the countryside around Battambang we visited a number of homes and businesses that produced different staple foodstuffs. 

The lady here was making sticky rice in the bamboo.  The hollow bamboo was filled with sweet sticky rice and cooked in the bamboo over coals.  The rice turned out delicious and chewy.

This picture is from the fish sauce factory.  It does not truly convey the delicate aroma of slowly fermenting fish in the midday sun.  To make the fish sauce, the ladies would gather a few handfuls of the small local fish together, get a cleaver in each hand and chop the fish into a paste.  This paste would then be put in large buckets to fully ferment and get that lovely fish sauce flavour.

This is the house where they made rice noodles.  They kept the threads of dough soft in buckets of water while they were making them all and used the husks of rice to fuel the fire.  The fire heated water to boiling point so that the fully formed noodles could be set before being parcelled up and sold fresh to other local businesses.

And this is the house where they made rice paper for spring rolls.  The rice was ground down and mixed with water to form a paste.  The paste was used to make the rice paper on the container you can see the lady using.  It was applied to the very fine mesh on top of boiling water (sort of like a steamer) to set the paper.  When this was done the paper was laid out on the mats you can see in the front of the picture in order to dry out.

I wish this worked in reverse

Check out this new promotion to get more working holiday makers into Australia.  I could do with a cheap flight to the UK – no swapsies available ?????

Some good news…

…which some of you will likely know already but the past few days has involved sad news and I didn’t really feel like finding anything to post about.  So it’s time for some happier thoughts momentarily.  My good news is that I will be flying abroad again in the not too distant future to try my luck in Old Blighty while enjoying the last gasps of a British summer.  I’m heading for England (London for starters) but could end up anywhere really depending on what sort of job I land (and I am assuming I get one).  I don’t really want to fly half way across the world for a big fat fail – and I quit my job already.  But, it’s time for something new and exciting and a teeny bit scary.  It’s all good though and I’m looking forward to finally getting back to the UK, something I swore I’d do when I returned home last time, just over eight years ago now.

I'm excited! (with thanks to Westminster Uni site for the pic)