Trans Siberian |
When a fledgling Royal Albatross has grown to adulthood it soars into the updraughts off Tairoa Head and spends the next six years circumnavigating the Southern Oceans of the world. It will then return to the spot it left, ruffle its feathers, and settle down to mate. Albatrosses understand the art of travelling.
Touching the earth lightly. Belonging wherever we are. Journeying with a purpose, and yet recognising that to be fully alive is to be free. Travelling is an art form. We live in a clumsy culture, where Albatrosses are caught and killed in drift nets, not because we mean to do it, but rather because we are so inadequate at design that we fall over our own feet and damage the wonder of the natural world along the way. Every journey is both an experiment and an exercise in design. In some areas we triumph and in others we fail. The story of a journey is the story of what we learned along the way. Ideally it would be the story of drawing closer and closer to oneness with the earth. Kaitiakitanga. Belonging rather than understanding. It felt good to arrive back at Karaka Bay and find electronic copies of mail sent around a paperless world. Technology is helping us to shake free of the conference syndrome where we carry almost no luggage, but struggle with 40 kilos of paper. It felt good at last to tentatively venture into GPS, with a single 8 megabyte disc storing every minute detail of the northern half of the North Island. The theory of taking only a laptop with all the Lonely Planet guides on a disc or two is now a possibility. Even in Moscow and St Petersburg CD-ROMs were available at less than the cost of a heavy guide book, with the same amount of information. Above all, the copious illustrations on those CD-ROMs are ready to be enlarged, manipulated, and set free of the tyranny where choices made by an editor are frozen for all time. Even the entire collection of London's National Gallery is now available on only 3 CD-ROMs. Technology has however moved far ahead of our emotions. I still feel vulnerable when one speck of dust could render all the information I need for a trip inaccessible. When my high technology Nikon 601 failed yet again in Hong Kong, I found myself nervously overstocking on batteries which I thought would not be available in Russia. Of course they were. We all worry about details when travelling. "What if I cannot find somewhere to change money?" "How will I manage?" Our personal concerns prevent us from observing that we are in a country where life has gone on for millennia without the use of money. We bring our money with us along with our fear. Is freedom really the security of knowing that we have a pocket full of money? Or is freedom, as James Baxter used to say, the security of knowing that you have nothing in your pocket and therefore nothing to lose. There are no answers to these questions. One virus far smaller than any speck of dust could cause our bodies to cease functioning, and yet we never think about it. We take astonishing risks with toxic materials or air-conditioning. We offer excuses that we are too busy to be concerned about global environmental collapse. Travelling helps to shake us free of the protective irrationality which forms the "claustrophere" (refer to Ben Elton's "Other Eden") of modern mediocrity. Any journey is also a journey inwards into our own soul. How is it possible to look out the window of a 747 at a sun rising over fluffy cumulus clouds and not ask questions about ourselves? How is it possible to stare out a train window without philosophising about all those who have made this journey before? Wherever they happen to be, experienced travellers move quickly from being voyeurs to engaging in the struggles of life, Travelling gives us a chance to discover what it means to be a citizen of the "global village". Experienced travellers never escape. They embrace. It is only through belonging in our world that we can be free. Saturday 5 August Karaka Bay - Hong Kong Balancing the many demands made upon our time must be one of the most difficult tasks of being alive. We see what might be, and we quite reasonably ask why not? Already overburdened by self-expectations we then get caught between the conflicting demands of all those who want our help. Every request is reasonable, but the cumulative impact presents a mountain of impossibility. Travelling allows us to shake free of this web of familiarity, seeing more clearly, and making often quite dramatic choices with deft assurance. First, however, we need the courage of the albatross to leap from security into the updraught of freedom. The panic of trying to satisfy everyone else's demands always seems to overwhelm my over-extended life before I break free and catch a plane. The Vernacular assignments are all marked and the grades are with Heather Lynch. The Design assignments are all marked and the final grades for the course are with Vivian. The Habitat course is completed and all the students have their grades. My studio work is completed. A few late students who have been caught by the sheer hurricane of it all will have to wait until my return. The Masters students have the whole Habitat book to work on, which will be more than they are able to handle. My only regret is that the "Human Cities" book remains unpublished, so that I will lose two valuable months of political impact. On the positive side Megan and Mark have the Internet system running, with the "Policy" and "Commitment" pages available internationally. I leave full of hope that I will be able to achieve useful work on my way around the world, but it will all be much more difficult than I had hoped. In Asia and Russia I will not find a single computer able to link into Internet or use e-mail. The business centres in the hotels have plush carpets, sexy lighting and helpful people but the technology is at about the level you find in Mid-West USA. I find it very difficult to get enough free time to find the right people in the Universities, and most of them are still in summer holiday mode anyway. My discussions in Moscow however are really useful, and I may end up providing the hardware they need to go along with their enthusiasm. The journey makes it clear to me that New Zealand has been moving ahead at such a pace that we probably are one of the few countries with the right political/technology/cultural mix for setting up the world-wide Habitat II network. The few things I need for the trip to support the group get thrown into a bag. Mostly an extensive medical kit, which fortunately I will not need. Every trip is different, and one of the traps in leading groups is that everyone can end up needing the same medication at once. I stop at St.Heliers to double my supplies of gargle and throat lozenges, feeling after my last trip to China that it would be impossible to have enough. The pollution however does not affect people in the same way on this trip. I conclude that flying as far as Beijing has real advantages. A supply of padlocks for the group, but I will not need those either. China, like everywhere, is changing rapidly. There are a couple of things I need for myself. Reference material for St.Petersburg, which proves to be invaluable as none of it is available when we get there, and a few Russian addresses which had escaped my normal address books. They too will be invaluable. I am xeroxing all this material when I should have been on my way to the airport, but Karen Smith provides the support I need. Helen takes Lisa back to Karaka Bay. There are nine of us flying up to Hong Kong. on Cathay Pacific CX108. Melva and Bill Harrison, Alex and Mary Tagg, Nancy Ayde, Martin Laird, Joan Wiles and Audrey Shipperlee. The flight provides a chance to talk a little, but the re-circulating air of planes tends to reduce minds to a state of numb lethargy. With a 13.20 departure, a little over eleven hours of flying, and four hours of time difference, we make a 20.30pm. arrival in Hong Kong, There have only been a few tantalising dusk glimpses of New Guinea on the way, but flying in over the lights of Hong Kong is as spectacular as ever. It takes much longer to find Jecking, to locate a bus, and then to get everyone on board, than it did on my way home for me to jump on the Airbus. One of the Airbus routes conveniently goes past the hotel. There is however a pleasant security in knowing that a local is sorting it out and making all the mistakes. The commentary is tedious and the following commercial about a half-day city tour tomorrow for NZ$49 brings zero interest from the group. These are serious travellers. I know that we are going to get along well together. The check in at the BP International House is like they always are before you get to know everyone. We discover that it is Baden Powell rather than British Petroleum who are sponsoring us for the night. Learning should be fun. The scouts seem to have their own way in and out of the building. Everyone is glad to head for a hot shower and bed. Sunday 6 August Hong Kong A great sleep and a superb view to wake up to. From 25 floors up all of Kowloon is spread out beneath me and I am looking across to Hong Kong island. The mountains disappear in to the mist, and there are threatening black clouds. I go down for breakfast around 7.40am. to find that everyone else is already there. Good fare but very predicably "hotel". The struggle of tourism to rise above bland familiarity. We discuss our options for the day, which the schedule shows as "free". I must have oversold my enthusiasm because everyone decides they want me to show them "my" Hong Kong. The bird market and the other markets are just up the road so I decide that they can wait until tomorrow when we will need to be conscious of catching a plane. We walk the other way through Kowloon Park. Exotic plants. I discover the botanical bias of the group almost immediately. Swimming pools. Tai Chi. Through the local fish and meat market, watching faces to see that I am not pushing the group too far too fast. They love it. We emerge at the Cultural Centre. A brief moment of enthusiasm for going to "Phantom of the Opera" tonight dies when we discover the price is NZ$135 a seat. Martin actually gets to see it in London. *** Martin begins to feel dizzy and sick, so I leave him to sit a while in the air-conditioned space while taking the rest of the group for a walk along the waterfront The new walkway past the front of the Regent Hotel. I relate the story behind it, and outline the lessons for Auckland. We return to find that Martin has not recovered enough to carry on, so I take him to the Star Ferry taxi rank and send him off to the hotel. It was a mistake. I should have gone with him. The taxi takes him miles away, instead of just around the corner, and Martin is in no condition to sort out the shambles, or cope with the stress. Fortunately he has a wonderful temperament and a stoic attitude to adversity. He needs it, because he then finds the key to our room does not work. Instead of being able to recover he ends up going up and down in the lift trying to get someone at the hotel to help him. When he finally does get in he is too afraid to go out again as they do nothing to sort out the problem. I inherited the "key-that-won't-open-the-door" when I arrived back, and ended up with the Manager, the General Manager, the Assistant Manger, the Engineer, and the Computer Maintenance Technician. They all nodded wisely and after immense deliberation concluded that I was right. "The key does not work." Oriental inscrutability should be left strictly to orientals and not imposed on the rest of us. Fix it? Everyone seemed surprised that I should want to fix the door as well as defining the nature of the problem. I realise that I am among planners. I ended up getting into the room whenever I needed to by finding a cleaner. My admiration for Martin goes up. *** The remaining eight of us catch the Star Ferry to Central to see the Sunday ritual of all the Filipino maids gathered in Queens Square exchanging photographs and news. They now spread right up through the whole space under Foster's Hong Kong - Shanghai Bank, and the noise is like the chattering of sparrows. Bill and Mary feel the need for a beer coming on, so I explore the area with familiar bars, but they are all closed. A clothing market, and out to Pier 6 of the Ferry terminal to catch the boat to Lantau Island. The whole area here is under construction and it is chaotic to say the least. Signs indicate that there is a boat to Tai-O from pier 7, but they assure me it is not so. We end up on the 11.30 boat to Mui Wo. My experienced team are quick to note that they are "senior citizens", and are thus entitled to a half-price fare. It would be wise on any future trips to pick up a senior citizen card for everyone from Pip Ashford before going, to make the asking easier. The Tandem Press book "Aging is attitude" by Mary Tagg and Ann Gluckman has been published in the last few weeks, so Mary is right up with play when it comes to anecdotes about senior citizens. I have much to learn. The boat provides a wonderful way of experiencing life on the harbour. A very full bus pulls out before everyone has arrived at the bus stop, so I have little choice other than to let it go. It is a lucky chance. The half hour wait provides time for a beer and a walk around Mui Wo, and we end up with a new air-conditioned bus almost to ourselves. Who said there is no such thing as a free lunch? The reservoirs, the beaches, and the giant Buddha up on the hill. Everyone really enjoys the ride. Tai-O is having a busy Sunday afternoon, with the markets crowded with people and the sampan as close to peak hour loading as it can get without sinking. Endless varieties of dried fish. Tai-O is reputed to have the best dried fish in Asia. Exotic delights. The stench rising from barrels of pink slime. This is the infamous fish-paste, which is made from shrimps and then fermented, dried in the sun on flat wicker baskets, and bottled for sale. Mah Jong players all over the place. The very best of everything with none of the hassle. It had never occurred to me before that so much of the housing was sheathed with flat sheet steel. Does this date back to the Second World War? I go right out to the little shrine past the Hau Wong Temple and then back across on the sampan to check out the edge of the river. I am sadly able to confirm that the new "park and open space" development is extremely insensitive, bringing values from another place to this unique town. Karaka Bay all over again. Is there nothing we can do to open people's eyes? The environmental destructiveness of the media in this regard is something I always find hard to take. There is no level playing field when it is fashionable for the new right to contend that the destruction of quality environments is inevitable. The act of destruction is made to seem to be little more than a self-fulfilling prophesy. The Hong Kong Magazine (16-22 October 1995) devotes four pages to softening people up to the idea that Tai-O and all it stands for is doomed. "The new tower blocks ... bring much-needed improvement to the environment" states Emma Levine, displaying an arrogant ignorance of everything she might have learned from thousands of years of history. I will arrive back at Karaka Bay to find the pump-station has been painted in fashionable fascist colours on the direction of the newly-arrived "taste-arbiter", who displays an equal ignorance of the entire coastal bach tradition of New Zealand. Lemmings must look in wonder at what we do, and puzzle to understand our stupidity. Several people in the group had expressed an interest in seeing the new Chek Lap Kok airport construction work. I had checked out every possibility and concluded it was impossible. The buses are not allowed down to the site, and I was assured that there are no boats which go anywhere near it. However by now we are becoming a good team, and taking a risk or two does not seem beyond us. A boat had gone from the southern landing at Tai-O at 3pm. I had checked that the next one was at 4.30 pm and this seemed to offer an interesting alternative for getting back to Central. I arrive at the landing to be told by the waiting group that a ferry went at 4.10 pm. These boats are all on a Sunday only schedule, and thus more than a little difficult to track down. Another boat arrives, and everyone has a different opinion as to where it is going. More conflicting opinions encourage me to make ever more enquires, but they only lead to ever more opinions. We sit out an almost monsoonal rain-squall on the boat and then set sail around 4.40 pm. To my total delight we follow around Tai-O island, providing a rare opportunity to see exactly what the other coast is like, and to experience the approaches to Tai-O as they would have been seen three thousand years ago by the Chinese salt traders. This astonishing piece of landscape is very rugged with absolutely no development facing China. As if this was not a big enough bonus we then motor around the perimeter of the Chek Lap Kok airport reclamation and call at the Tung Chung Wan airport wharf to drop several people off. It is all astonishingly close to Tai-O when viewed from the sea. You need to be close to the granite boulders to grasp the scale of the work. We then follow back along the whole length of the runway, with views across to the terminal construction work. I count more than 25 tower cranes in this area alone. There is still more to come. We go across to Tuen Mun, one of the new towns in the New Territories. Approaching from the sea it seems to be totally unreal. A long line of identical high rise apartment blocks. Beneath them is an elevated pedestrian level, above the transport terminal. We have time to explore before returning to catch the 6.45pm hovercraft back to Central. This takes us right under the new bridge being built to take the new road to the airport. Wow! Dusk on the harbour is the perfect way to conclude the day. It is a day of surprises and they continue. As we go along to the Star Ferry to cross the harbour back to Kowloon we find a "New Zealand ice-cream" stall. Needless to say it is ice-creams all round. Up Nathan Road back to the hotel buying a new battery for my Nikon along the way. It has been a real "value for money" day. The Star Ferry cost HK$1.70 each, the Lantau Island ferry cost HK$7 each, the bus cost HK$8, the boat ride cost around HK$10, the hovercraft cost HK$17, and the Star Ferry was another HK$1.70. The whole day of adventure and variety totalled less than NZ$10. I paid for everything and then we divided it up at the end of the day which made the accounting simple. Back at the hotel Nancy misses her step on the marble staircase and lands with a crash on the marble floor, before I can get there to break her fall. The hotel staff do not know what to do and leave it to me to determine the safety of moving her. My feeling is that it must have happened often enough before, as extending out from the bottom of the stair is a single lonely step. A fatal architectural mistake. She insists she is fine, but she must have had some bruises she never told us about. Some people stay at the hotel for coffee and a club sandwich, but the prices seem to me to be rather inflated, so off with Martin and Joan to find a good restaurant. It takes a little sniffing about, with a look at the Temple Street Market along the way, but finally we find exactly what we want. A steak as good as anything I have had in New Zealand comes with free soup, bread and tea. The steak is HK$36, and coffee is HK$9, a total of around NZ$9 for the whole meal. The laughter, the fun, and the atmosphere all come free. My only regret is that everyone did not come. We stock up on yoghurt and fruit and take a feast back to Nancy to cheer her up. As the party goes on in her bedroom it seems hard to believe that we have not yet reached the end of the first day of the trip. Somewhere around 11pm I fall asleep wondering if we will be able to keep up the pace. Monday 7 August Hong Kong - Guilin Down to join everyone else for breakfast around 7.45am. Isobel and Noel Potter come to breakfast to meet us all, but then we need to farewell them again as they catch their train to Xian around mid-day. It is infuriating to not be able to get back into our room, and it seems needless to delay others while I spend more than two hours waiting for the Manager to come to sort it out, so we make this an "independent" day. The core group heads off for the Peak tram. Martin is happy to enjoy the area around the hotel and to do a little shopping. I make my time useful by ringing Bevan Donovan to confirm that he will meet us at the airport. Bevan had previously rung Martin to leave a contact number. I ring Dragon-Air to confirm our flight, and they confirm that we are not even on the flight. Such are the joys and woes of travelling. I work my way around through the system and eventually sort it all out. Telephones are very useful, but when there is a problem to sort out they are unfortunately no substitute for standing beside a person with a computer, I cannot track down Eddie Wong's number, and regretted not making that last minute effort to do it in New Zealand. However Lynne Laracy is in her office, which is the only contact number I have. She is in "front cover" mode and too busy to see me, but she invites me to make a stop over on my way home to stay with Peter and her at their new Lantau Island flat which they move into on Saturday. I ask if it is at Silvermine Bay. She obviously did not understand my question, and her "yes" begins a mis-understanding which will take more than five weeks to unravel. By now the rain has stopped, so off down Nathan Road, buying a spare Nikon battery, but only looking at the affluent shops with their summer sales. The Star Ferry. Foster's Bank. The "escalator walkway" up to Conduit Road. It is ugly and unpleasant with very little going for it. I think of the pure delight of wandering uphill through Italian hill towns. What have we learned? A brief walk across to the rather mediocre post-modern blocks of flats. We seem to have reduced design to decoration. The tropical tree roots which spread all over the retaining walls are far more interesting. Back down, and by now I have run out of time to do much more. Called at HKTA to try and track down Eddie Wong, but they are unhelpful, only suggesting I go down the road to a public booth and ring Directory Enquiries. Another New Zealand ice-cream before catching the Star Ferry. A new route following the edge of the water, but the Harbour City shopping area is totally enclosed with not a single view of the water. All over the world it seems that greedy developers seek for waterfront sites only to then totally destroy the site for everyone. Endless very posh shops. The hotel is just around the corner and I am there right on 4pm. Martin is able to let me into the room. Helen has just phoned, and she has arranged to phone back at 4.15. At 4.25 I finally decide that I can wait no longer, but just then the call comes through. Down to Visa my phone calls. I began to hassle about the cut-off call to Mary Bryers about the marae meeting, but I really can't keep a straight face. I have had such a wonderful time in Hong Kong that the thought of wasting time hassling seems just crazy. Every conversation, and every chance contact when travelling, should end on a positive note. We bus out to the airport with Jecking, and Bevan is there to meet us, so now we are ten. I check, and no GPS is available. Just as well that I forgot about doing this, and bought a Panasonic GPS on the way home. The queues are endless, but finally we are off on our way to Guilin. The views are superb as we lift off, but very quickly everything is lost in the cloud. *** Darkness and heavy rain welcome us into Guilin. We land with a shower of spray as though we are coming into a paddy-field. Could this be a variation on the sheep paddock landings of New Zealand. Clearly this is all routine to Dragon-Air, and they issue everyone with a throw away plastic raincoat to provide some shelter for us to run across the tarmac to the terminal. Queues and delays. Square buildings decorated with signs to encourage the workers to keep working. Square green boxes for the workers to work in. At first glance not much seems to have changed in China. We are met by Lin na, who will be our guide, and Li, who will be our minibus driver. Lin na assumes that we will be tired, and spares us long explanations. As far as I can work out the human dynamos in our group never get tired, but I don't let on. It takes about 45 minutes to drive through to the Universal Hotel. The road is all in darkness now, but we will pass this way three times more in daylight. There is endless form-filling because we do not have a "group visa" and each person needs to register individually. A group visa is of course not an option for a group which finally does not all meet up until Beijing. It is a little disorienting to share a Brazilian coffee in the "La Pizzeria" restaurant of the Universal Hotel in Guilin, but tomorrow will provide opportunities enough to find out where we really are. Tuesday 8 August Guilin Nothing in life is ever quite what it seems. All the rooms had a spectacular view across the karst outcrops except one, so I took the "worst" room for myself. Bleary eyed people told me in the morning that they had been kept awake half the night by noisy plumbing. Trying to describe a sound I had never heard, in Chinese, was quite a challenge, and finally Bill had more success than I, because at least he knew what he was talking about. I think the problem was resolved. It may have accounted for those went for an early morning walk before breakfast. We have a "western" breakfast around 7.45am., and head off around 9am for the all day Li River Cruise. I long to be able to stop to explore and photograph the classic Chinese brickworks with the long lines of bricks dying in the sun, beneath their straw hats, but I am not sure of the slack in the 45 minutes allowed for the bus to get the point where river cruises now start. We do stop to photograph a water buffalo sloshing through the paddy fields. As always I find we need not have rushed. They have allowed plenty of time for shopping. It is an overcast day and the flat light does not do justice to the landscape, but you take the weather, like life, as you find it, and make the most of it. Our boat is middle-brow so that we can sit on the terrace deck like some British explorer, or retreat below for protection and sustenance. Greg had suggested the lunch left a lot to be desired, but I thought it was excellent, and there was more than enough. Indeed much more than we could eat was provided free, so there was no need to pay for extra dishes. We did however order an extra dish of water chestnuts, because this was the local delicacy of the area. Perhaps they could best be described as rather like toffee apples. The usual shopping at Yangshuo and the usual cormorant fishermen. Lin na is convinced that there are no ancient pottery kilns in the area, and I am equally convinced that I saw one from the bus when I was last here. With a whoop of delight I discover that my memory was not a dream. Li squeezes the bus onto the side of the road. I feel sure that everyone else thinks I am crazy, but they generously humour me. The brick arch roof of the kiln has now collapsed, but with almost no work it could be fired again. It sits at the edge of a working pottery, so there are stacks of pots everywhere. A photographers delight, but there is no time to do more than gather record snapshots. It is not included in our tour but after dinner we all decide to go off to an evening of folk dancing, with dances and music from each of the many minorities in the area. It is well presented, but a little bland. The pastel silks seem to belong to courtesans. There is no strong earthy "folk". There is nothing which springs from the power of the landscape. Perhaps it was all lost in the Cultural Revolution, and this is quite literally a pale reflection of what once existed. I take a long late-night walk across the Jiwfang and Huaqaio Bridges to the Quixing (Seven Star) Park, which encompasses a number of hills and temples. Night life for the Chinese includes a lot of time sitting around pools of dim light, smoking or talking, Wednesday 9 August Guilin - Xian Very early in the morning when I return to Quixing Park two people are down on their knees inscribing a text across the entire length of the Huaqaio Bridge, with only water on their very large calligraphy brushes. Crowds gather to read the message before it evaporates into the air. Wonderful detachment. In contrast it seems quite bizarre to see hundreds of ball-room dancers, belonging more appropriately in a clip from "La Strada", but ball room dancing is all the rage in China, and can be discovered at any time of the day or night. Our usual bacon and egg breakfast, and then a rather rushed walk down to the urban design "birthplace" of Guilin, where the two rivers meet, just to check that it is not marked in any way. Off by bus at 9.30am to visit the Reed Flute Cave. It has now been totally consumed with gaudy coloured lighting and is quite revolting, with the lurid purples more likely to turn your stomach than any goat's eyeball soup. The beehives alongside the road as we drive out are much more interesting. The top floor of the Ronghu Hotel is a superb place to have lunch. The whole city is spread out beneath us, and the dramatic karst hill-forms fade into the distance. On to the Guibei Silk Store, with silk and visa cards changing hands with great expertise on both sides. At the very end the enthusiasm turns a little sour. Everyone seemed to have a slightly different version, and it all became complicated because everyone also had a different idea as to how the situation should have been resolved. It seemed that Melva had been charged twice for several items, but even that was not too clear. I would like to have seen it all sorted out to everyone's total agreement, because bad tastes tend to linger on when you are travelling, It was not to be. The Chinese Hospital is a very slick operation with tourists at the centre of their concerns. They have 350 patients, 400 doctors and 180 nursing staff. Much more interesting is the discovery that they get about 3000 western visitors a year. Some for treatment. Some to just look. The pressure I had put on Lin na after the group had expressed a lot of interest would seem to have been hardly necessary. We are welcomed and walk through the corridors of the main building to an annexe with a small lecture room. Cups of herbal tea, of course, to help us to relax and concentrate. The lecture is rather predictable for New Zealanders, who probably know more than most about Chinese medicine. Balancing blood and Chi. The Ying Yang balance. The 2000 year old system of the 12 Meridians. The 360 acupuncture points. Acupuncture should be combined with activity. They now use ear acupuncture mostly for checking, in contrast to its common use in the 1950s and 1960s. The hand corresponding to the body. Their skills have improved a great deal in recent years. In 1960s it took three years to cure sciatica, Now it takes only 3-5 weeks. There was of course a delay in medical development during the Cultural Revolution. They freely use Western medicine to help with diagnosis. They use scans etc., for example, to decide what Chinese medicines are needed. Many of their patients are Westerners. Italians, Germans and others as well as non-Chinese Asians. They also appear to have learnt a great deal about Western PR, marketing, and salesmanship. An assistant suddenly brings in hand-out sheets in English. Some university educational psychologist has obviously told them to save the handouts until the end of the lecture. Then we are ready for the star turn. A doctor has spent some hours of psychological preparation so that he will be unaffected by passing high electrical voltages through his body. He hooks himself up to the power socket and grasps an electric light bulb, which of course lights up. The magic show goes on with Bill becoming more and more intrigued as to how it is done. Then it is time for audience participation. Lighting up bulbs and feeling the energy in his body to begin with, but then individual treatment for anyone willing to volunteer. Mostly massage with number twenty two, and glass suction cups. A strong red response from the skin confirms what the doctor had expected. It becomes impossible to distinguish between truth and con-tricks. The ultimate act is to present a price list, with the speed of taking money and returning with pots and jars being even more astonishing than the electrical trick. Two assistants with supplies have been waiting outside the door for this moment to arrive. By now my main concern is to discover the medicine which will get us to the airport in time, so I spend my time graciously thanking everyone and trying to stem the flow of questions. We need not however have been in such a rush as the flight is delayed for an hour. Nowadays they do have video screens with departure schedules, which seems like a quantum leap from the days when no one, not even the pilot, seemed to know when the plane was actually going. I can well understand that Lin na had no idea of the rescheduling. We mill around filling in the time looking at all the Chinese medicines. A variation on duty-free. Our Russian TU 154 is very comfortable. Great views of a landscape half submerged, but we quickly lift into cloud and there is nothing more to see. *** Sue meets us at Xian Airport, and arranges for us to have a meal there. I agree, as it is an hour-long drive to the hotel. It seems a pity to arrive at Xian in the dark as it is quite disorienting, but our tight scheduling for the whole trip makes it possible to fit a great deal into each day. There is charm in driving through Chinese cities at night, because so much of life is lived out of doors. The Lee Garden Hotel is quite exotic, and more than comfortable. It is one of the new breed however which assumes that buses whisk guests away from the door to take them to thrilling encounters with tourist venues. To make this work you need to be away from the centre of cities and close to major traffic arteries. This in turn means that it is difficult to walk anywhere from the hotel. These are important urban design issues, but all over the world no one seems to be in control. Every move is a knee jerk reaction to other equally irrational circumstances. Something to ponder as we look out upon Xian from our glass elevator. A late night whisky with Bill and Melva to see that feelings about silk have subsided. As always they are bubbling and much more interested in talking about more exciting things. Thursday 10 August Xian The management have asked if we could avoid the breakfast rush hour as the hotel is very full, so I arrive at the 6.30am opening time. I am alone, and there is a certain grandeur about all this five star luxury being provided just for me. Even to a Tai Chi performance outside the Jacques Tati plate glass windows. Waiters rush around making certain that I have enough coffee and that everything is to my liking. They are relieved when Melva and Bill turn up to have some other outlet for their attention. A day of solid tourism, which in China can be very solid indeed. The need to protect yourself from being constantly hassled by vendors and crowds means that you switch off mentally just when you should be switching on. The whole process is counter-productive. The experience is taken away. I think of sitting by the pool at Ryoanji Temple watching the reflection of the full moon, long after the last tourist had left. There is enough space in China, but by the operators not thinking tourism through. The visitor now seems to come away feeling as though they have experienced a motorway at rush hour, when they really were looking for a quiet country road. We set off by bus at 9am for the Small Wild Goose Pagoda. There is an extra charge for climbing it, so no one bothers. It is much more interesting to be able to share Alex's responses to the trees. The terra cotta warriors factory opens up the possibility of becoming famous by purchasing an army and burying them somewhere. The problem nowadays is that everyone wants a quick return on their investment. They want to know that they have succeeded in being famous before they die. The Banpo Springs look very tired, and they are totally overwhelmed by tourists. It is no longer possible to visit Chiang Kai Shek's room, and the treasures which used to be here now seem in the main to have been moved to the Provincial Museum. There is very little left other than hundreds of people hassling to sell their mass-produced junk. We lunch close by. At the terra cotta warriors we visit halls one and three, and take a brief look through the window of hall two. The gigantic monumental buildings and the scale of tourism totally overwhelm the dusty experience. A pity. I always enjoy the chariots. I ask if we can go back to the hotel through the old city, which gives us a chance to experience the urban design form, and we pass through the city gates. Dinner. Five of us go to a superb "folk show" at the "Tang Dynasty" Restaurant. We were told there were no spaces available, but I worked on the theory that it would be more difficult to throw us out than to let us in, so we moved in while Sue went to see the Manager. The strategy worked. The show was robust and strong, while offering an astonishing variety of experiences. A full 24-member folk orchestra demonstrated individual instruments, a selection of musical traditions and a full ensemble. The Cultural Dance Segment included the White Ramie Cloth Costume Dance, the Qiu Zi Dance, the Da Nuo Dance, and the Rainbow Cloth Dance. The instrument solo and singing segment included a stringed instrument quartet, a warriors song and the Spring Orioles' song. The finale of the Emperor's Parade Dance was rather like a full scale Verdi Opera, with actors mingling among the tables, laser lighting and everything else they could think of. We got a ride back to hotel with a busload of Italians, so there was a finale to the finale as we kept the party going. When I arrived at the hotel I was presented with a "tour-leader" chit, so I finished the day enjoying my one free drink in the small bar. Friday 11 August Xian - Beijing It is 6.30 before I wake, and thus 6.50 before I get down for breakfast. We are still away ahead of the crowd. Back to my room to pack, and up to the roof for a final glimpse of the city form. We check out and I return everyone's passports. By now everyone is settling down and deciding that there are more important things than worrying about where your passport is. The Provincial Museum is excellent. It has only been open for a year or two, and is very selective is the material chosen for display. We follow the time sequence of the displays, with each one extremely well explained. It is all far more interesting than the Terra Cotta Warriors. Models and maps make it possible to study the relationship between landscape and the earliest urban development. Beyond the obvious the Feng Shui spiritual form of the landscape remains unaddressed. It is tragic that the Chinese have forgotten their own heritage. We have enough time to call at Myer Guilin Jewellery Mfr. Ltd.. First we visit the factory to see jewellery being crafted, and then demure women in neat blue uniforms scurry to their counters as we enter the sales area. A mood of quiet efficiency demonstrates that today most people communicate through the use of a pocket calculator. Mary decides to purchase an exquisite piece of jade. Two large fish have been caught. The mood changes. Men in suits appear to sweep the blue girls aside. Robert Lo, the Operations Manager, is suddenly in charge of everything from the visa card to the straw packing. Zhang Jing, the Showroom Supervisor, scurries about. Caring for the fish becomes an important ritual of the journey. Fragile as the jade is it all arrives back in New Zealand safely. Mary becomes more and more confident about her decisiveness, as we never see another piece of jade to compare with what we are carrying with us. Lunch is over early enough for us to go through the old city and stop at the North gate on our way to the airport. We climb to the top of the wall, and everyone agrees the stop was a highlight of our visit to Xian. We pass the unexcavated burial mounds on our way to Xian airport. The terminal is much larger than that at Guilin, and it is crowded with travellers. At 14.50 we depart on China Northwest Airlines. *** The great advantage of not having any checked baggage is that it allows me to move on ahead of the group to find the CITS contact. The only thing I need to remember is to give someone else the baggage tags so that the group are permitted to leave the customs area. In Beijing I end up chasing all over the terminal, as CITS have no record of our arrival. However all is well. Our new guide Anna (Liu Xiaoping) and our new driver Liang Uy meet us in a minibus. The sky is grey but Beijing looks even more sad when seen through the non-vision windows of our minibus. At some stage a reflective coating had been put over the windows, but it had failed and then wrinkled to make it even worse. We tried to get another bus. After a day, when the driver discovered what we were on about, she said that she would be delighted to get rid of the coating. With glee I tore it off, only to release the fumes of the glue layer. I tried to get solvents to clean the glue off, and we finally left Beijing still being dogged by the problem. Motorways lead in to the city which hoped to host the Olympic Games and lost out to Sydney. In Beijing there is still a lingering hope that this disaster will be put to right, if only Sydney goes broke and cannot meet its commitments. Everyone watching the unfolding circus of the United Nations Womens Conference is very thankful that China did not get the Olympic Games. Our first indication of the Chinese fear of power and protest came when they had doubts about issuing our visas, in case we were subversives. In a sense they were right. By global standards we were a very subversive little group. Three of us had in fact been in China in 1989, at the time of "Tiananmen Square", but we kept that information to ourselves. The Chinese began by moving the Women's Forum as far away from the city as possible, to a small village. Exactly the opposite of our Habitat II strategy of getting everything onto one site at Istanbul. Then the Chinese tried to keep the media away. At the World Social Summit in Copenhagen I was one of more than 3000 media people, and we were all made very welcome. The Chinese also tried to stifle any political comment. I remember making political speeches in South America from clandestine radio stations which evaporated when police appeared down the road. The Chinese managed to get it all wrong, and they were roasted for it. We saw a little on CNN or BBC news, but it was much later before there was a chance to fill in the gaps. We were too early for the Conference itself, but we saw the signs directing delegates off into the wilderness. *** The China World Hotel plunged us into an opulence which made us feel more like political masters than political players. However we all became players in the room allocation game. Pauline and Anita had made the first move by refusing to accept their room being turned into a triple through a "camp stretcher" being placed in the corner. Audrey ended up moving in with Alex and Mary, which they are all very happy about. The musical chairs continued on the morrow when Nancy arrived. We all ended up with doubles again, thus avoiding the needless extra charge for changing rooms into triples. If that sounds complicated do not worry. It was. No description would do justice to the amazing welcome dinner we then enjoyed. We gathered around a single long table. The wine flowed, the exotic dishes were endless. The story telling got better and better. The staff were probably thankful when the laughter died down, so that other guests could sleep. I joke of course. How could you not sleep in a super-king-size bed looking out on the lights of Beijing. Saturday 12 August Beijing Awake at 6.15, so able to shuffle paperwork until breakfast at 7am. This is no ordinary breakfast. The choice includes dishes from every corner of the globe. It is possible to have a full Japanese breakfast, to choose from dozens of dishes gracing the Asian selection, or to go Western. The salmon comes fresh, baked, grilled, and every other way you can think of. Omelettes are made to order by a chef waiting to whet your appetite as he cooks it. Another personal chef will prepare waffles just the way you think they ought to be done, but you do need to choose your own sauces from the hundreds on display. Of course there is endless coffee, many varieties of juice, and fruit from all over the world. A "page" girl walks by ringing a bell and carrying a signboard. "642" is felt-tipped onto the board. My room number. A phone call from New Zealand, has been transferred through to the restaurant, with the explanation that I was being "paged". Unfortunately there is so much noise that it is impossible to hear anything, and I give up. The efficiency of the process really impresses me, but when I get back to New Zealand Telecom assures me that my "page" had been walking around for the greater part of nineteen minutes trying to find me. I change Nancy Pellow's room from a single, which has a double bed, to a twin, so that Audrey Shiperlee can move in with her. Off to Tiananmen Square at 8.30am. 80.000 people queue to see Mao each day. We leave them to it. A walk around. On in the bus to the Forbidden City. Smoking is indeed forbidden. It is hot and hazy which makes it seems less impressive than usual. A new con-trick at the Clock Museum is making everyone pay 2 yuan for "shoes" to cover your own shoes. I pay for the group. The Emperor's private garden. Alex is much more interesting than the guide as he identifies trees. We have only taken two hours, and are now early so there is time to kill. The "Art Gallery" kills more than time. A few mediocre paintings and an exhibition of Danish Art. The lifts barely work and the escape stairs have been blocked off. The place is a death trap to such an extent that if I had known what I later discovered I would never have allowed the group to even go in. It takes less than a minute to see all there is to see so after finally managing to get the lifts to work well enough to get out we all end up sitting on the steps outside, waiting the rest of the half hour for the guide and bus driver to turn up at 12.30. The lunch is very average, but we are all so overfed that no one feels like eating much. Nancy Pellow arrives to join us, having come straight from the airport, after flying from Hong Kong. She looks very tired. On to the Temple of Heaven. We begin at the southern Zhaotong gate around 1.40pm, climb the circular mound in the square garden, end at the circular temple which was restored only a hundred years ago, and exit at the East Heavenly Gate around 3pm. The workmen are repairing one of the gates, and it seems as though the timber has been covered with a hessian felt which has then been plastered. Along motorways but it still takes 40 minutes to get to the Summer Palace. The village at the entry has now been totally restored. A one-way trip done at speed, but the advantage of exiting at the West Palace Gate is that this takes us past my favourite boathouses. The speed-track grinds to a halt however at the junk-merchants. I kill the waiting time in the local store trying to find a solvent with which to clean the bus windows. Perhaps I will never discover the Chinese for methylated spirits. Away at 5pm., to spend another 35 minutes on the bus to get to our restaurant. We are the first people to arrive for the Beijing Duck dinner. The space and quietness seem magical. The usual formal rituals. Bill tries to find out the name of one of the waitresses only to eventually discover that she is Miss "Trai-nee". On at 7pm., at a relentless pace, to the Acrobats. The same old clapped-out hall, but the performance is spectacular, with a strong emphasis on pleasing the crowd through the use of very young performers. Back at the hotel by 8.50pm. I share a whisky with Alex, Mary and Audrey, as I try to sort out the triple and twin rooms. Nothing is that easy with the Chinese, but in this case they must have given up on us. I give up too. I hope the invoice makes sense to Karen. Sunday 13 August Beijing Deep sleep and deep dreams. I begin writing around 6am. Helen rings around 6.30am and now I can hear what she is saying. Rosemary Wright's mother has died. Another astonishing breakfast, and away at 8.30 in the same minibus. They claim that they could not find a replacement with windows you could see through. Motorways with tall buildings everywhere. A 53-storey lozenge shaped block would be almost identical to that proposed for the Magistrate's Court site. Yesterday we saw the Casino Skytower - Beijing style - a decade ahead of Auckland. The road north has four lanes, apart from the bicycle roads on either side behind the trees, but the bus is not permitted to use the centre lanes. They are reserved for cars, but even this level of elitism is not enough as a Audi passes with its horn blaring, expecting every other car to pull off the road. The street of stone statues is now a very slick tourist operation. Drop off at the south end and pick up at the north end, with a bus by-pass around the side. There is no time to go back to my adobe village. On to the Ming Tombs to find them totally over-run with hundreds of tourist buses. The queues are intolerable so we give up and throw our tickets away. I think of the time I spent wandering around when there was hardly another person there. We stop at my adobe village as a consolation, only to find that almost the whole place has been rebuilt with Ming Tomb profits. Although it feels very middle class it is still interesting for both the high quality of the spaces and the many vegetables in the gardens. It is the only chance we have to see how Chinese live. We lunch around 1pm at the "Friendship Store", and afterwards are able to explore the cloisonne factory beneath. We are of course given ample time for shopping, but they don't have methylated spirits. Away at 2pm. to join the end of an impossible queue of vehicles all trying to get to the Great Wall at Badaling. I talk about the beehive camps alongside the road, we sing, and we even try entertaining each other with poetry. We finally run out of patience and set out to walk the last mile. It is 3.30pm. Most of the tourists go north so we headed south along the top of the wall. The other advantage of going this way is that you can quickly reach a section of the wall which has not been restored. Bevan wanted to explore that a little, so I told him to go for it. We only had an hour to see the wall, and we had spent much longer than that waiting in the queue. The view down towards Mongolia has more interest now, and our train will pass this spot on our way to Ulan Bator. Back down the valley and through a tunnel beneath a new section of wall they are building, specifically for the tourist trade. On the road back into Beijing hundreds of trucks are parked all along the roadsides, waiting for 7pm. Only after then are they allowed into Beijing itself. The drivers sleep or talk to each other. Many trucks are laden with coal, and much of it seems to have been packed by hand. At the Temple of Earth tourist buses are allowed in, while the locals are kept out. Our evening meal is here at 6.30, and we are the last guests for the day. They clear the tables as soon as it looks as though we might be going, and even the stalls outside close as soon as they decide the serious shoppers in the group have walked past. Back to the luxury of the China World Hotel. I hold a meeting in my room to deal with any queries. Mostly people worry about money. How much they will need, and where they should change it. I assure them that they are best to leave getting Mongolian currency until they get to Mongolia. Slowly the visa money rolls in, but my concerns are all about the visas rather than the money. Off to find Noel and Isobel, who arrived at the hotel around 2pm today. They are already relaxing in bed, so we sit around and talk. I brief them on our next moves, and they tell me a little about their train journey. Meanwhile on CNN news the feature lead item is the smiling faces of Jim Bolger and Helen Clark seeing off the Tui with two MPs on board. It steams off past Motukorea, which leaves me wondering if they have a navigator on board, but the nostalgia engendered by CNN is always more important than their accuracy. For days New Zealand remains at the top news positions, and it is great to see all the footage of the protest fleet setting off. Monday 14 August Beijing The "China Daily" is pushed under my door, so that I wake up to find smiling Jim and smiling Helen looking at me yet again. The impression that the Tui is the entire New Zealand navy will remain forever in Chinese minds. We really should have borrowed a frigate, even if it was only for the photographs. Another misty smoggy day, with light rain. Dismal. It is tragic that Anita has a minor stomach problem and cannot do justice to the exotic breakfast. We are however able to introduce Noel and Isobel to all that they have been missing. A trainee waiter from England seems strangely awkward. I discuss tomorrow's breakfast with the manager, and it obviously is going to make much more sense for us to eat here rather than for them to provide a packaged lunch. By now she has come to know us fairly well. Today is a "free" day, providing an opportunity to try and track down some of my friends. I have little success. After lunch a small group are very keen to go to the post office. I get the bus to drop them off, and they make their own way back by taxi. The taxi driver goes for miles and miles, to eventually stop outside some obscure museum. Intense discussion followed their protestations that this was not the hotel. It eventually transpired that the card they had shown the driver said "Please take me to the ...museum." Only on the other side did it say "Please take me back to the China World Hotel." They turned the card over and drove all the way back. Exploring the hotel itself takes time. There are endless levels of shops. Melva and Bill take a swim in the pool. I buy a few things for the train, but it turns out that we will not need them. A long walk along Jian guo men wai Street to Tiananmen Square. Dinner. Two of the group off to the Opera in a taxi I organised for them, but fortunately I decided not to go out for the evening. At the time when the Mongolian Embassy closed for the day we still did not have Mongolian visas. As far as I was concerned we were going to get the visas and catch the train. Some money needed to change hands. I never let it show, but as far as I was concerned it was a bargain. I could never have guessed that Melva was travelling on a passport which had been issued before her marriage. As a result all my documentation failed to tally. As far as both the Chinese and the Mongolians were concerned I was trying to pull the wool over their eyes. I was in no position to argue, and I knew it. Tuesday 15 August Beijing - Train Awake at 4.45 to watch the traffic which of course never stops. My alarm watch does not go off, but I am on my way well before the wake-up call. I am the first person down for breakfast, but even the omelette chef is waiting for me to arrive. Soon after 6am we are on our way to the station. To be sure there are crowds, and there are moments of apprehension, but a special concession is made to let us go ahead of the crowds through the subways to the platform. I race backwards and forwards transporting luggage, but we end up with time to spare to catch the 7.40 train to Ulan Bator. Train number 23 is very commodious. Twin-berth "soft seat" accommodation, with a very small washroom between every pair of compartments. We retrace our steps back up to Badaling. The Great Wall without the hassle of getting there. In a confusing manoeuvre we shunt even higher, to end up crossing a plateau. Around 1pm we pass the Wall yet again, hundreds of miles further on. Around 1.43pm. we pass three strange structures, almost like an Indian observatory. A brief stop. We cross the Great Wall yet again. A new road is being built up the valley. Barrel vaults with grass growing on top. Fascinating adobe villages. Courtyard housing. Bad erosion. A few sheep. Around 4.40pm we make a stop at Jingaling. By now we are up on the high plateau. Around 5pm we see our first Ger in a small walled village. The light lingers on. Wonderful villages. Finally to the endless plains. Urga country. When we wake the scenery will be very similar. There is a dining car after all, and so we are able to have an excellent meal. By 9.30pm we are at the border. We put on our own edition of the Goon Show. Two of the group hand over all their visas instead of just their passports, and then create a scene expecting me to go and stir up the officials to get them back. My attitude is to not rock the boat in case we instead stir up trouble over Melva's passport. There are riotous drunken threats to make formal complaints to Venturetreks about the lack of co-operation, and alcoholic abuse flows "because that is what leaders are paid to do". As far as I am concerned I am paid to get the whole party through the border, and I intend to do just that. By the time a camel carries a complaint back to New Zealand we will be where I want to be, and everything will be forgotten. Besides I have had a bottle of good Chinese red wine myself with my excellent dinner, and apart from my eyes not focusing as well as they might, my general state of euphoria makes histrionics seem entertaining rather than challenging. Of course it all comes to nothing, Everything is returned, and there are no real problems I need to deal with. A relief. A few of us wander off down the line to watch the carriages being hoisted up and the bogeys changed to the Russian wide gauge. They seem to be very relaxed about us taking photographs. The mega task is carried out by women of tiny stature. It all adds to the surrealistic atmosphere. Back onto the train. Mongolian checks. A search for stowaways. Customs. Passport checks. By the time everything is over, at around 2.20am I am feeling totally exhausted. Was it really worth getting a sleeper? On our way again. I go soundly to sleep without even making up my bed, not realising that there will be no more officials to wake me up. It is 7am before I wake. Wednesday 16 August Train - Ulan Bator A camel train goes by. Horses. Endless Urga country. Yurts everywhere. Vultures. A strange aberration where an architect has passed by and left behind a six-storey apartment block sitting in the middle of nowhere. Small railway settlements, sometimes with a satellite dish. Breakfast in the new Mongolian dining car. Great coffee. Beef stroganoff. Omelette and coffee for lunch. All my information had assured me that there was no dining car on this train, and I ended up giving away the food I had bought to help keep the group alive. I was yet to discover the train which had no dining car, where the schedule showed the group would be fed, but that is another storey. There is a one hour time zone change. *** Around 13.40 we reach Ulan Bator. I leave the group in a defensive huddle while I go in search of the Juulchin representative who is to meet us. The wonderful feeling of having arrived. You can breathe the air. The station has high hall-like waiting rooms and tiny ticket-booths with little wooden shutters. Most of the people are dressed in traditional clothing, and they move with the ease of nomads. This is Bruce Chatwin country. Eventually our Juulchin guide finds us. Cheerful smiles. We head off to the New Capital Hotel. Ulan Bator has a population of 600,000. So they say. I find it difficult to believe. Perhaps they took the census when there was a party on. They have nomadic suburbs here. Wooden fences enclose twenty or thirty yurts. If life is not so good in town you can pack up the whole suburb and head for the hills. Absolutely fantastic. I do a little research on some of the early prints to find the idea is as old as Ulan Bator itself, which of course was first called Urga. Urga seems a better name. Hundreds of years ago mobile yurt suburbs surrounded Gandan Hiid. They still do today. The New Capital Hotel is only three storeys high. It is a step back in social time. They are not yet cynical about tourists. They still believe that all travellers are just like themselves. The PR Management "you-can-make-a-buck-and-to-hell-with-the-human-environment" "international advisory teams" have been through, but the Mongolians seem to have found them less credible than their next door neighbours. The Mongolians are straightforward, helpful, and up-front. They get on with life, in spite of incredible difficulties. Our guide is constantly apologising, instead of "selling". "There is really nothing to do up at Terelji, but if you are completely bored, we could come back here early." She was very lucky to get us to come back at all. "The 'City Tour' will not take long, because there is really not much to see." We hardly had time to skim the surface, let alone explore the more interesting questions. Why is the city so far above the Tuul Gol river? If the old print I found in the Monastery is right it is because the flow of the Tuul Gol is from east to west, while the stream which has now disappeared flowed from west to east. The four defining hills are there, which gives it an identical urban design form to Seoul. The question of the relationship between Korea and Mongolia fascinates me. They seem to be linked by a Chinese reading of landscape. But why? We have no time to explore the puzzle. The city is lineal, although the axis of Peace Avenue is new in contrast to the axes running down the slope from the low hills. There are excellent views from the ugly Russian Monument on the hill to the south of the Tuul Gol. Dinner is back at the hotel at 7pm. Good simple fare. A fax arrives from Clive, which suddenly makes Ulan Bator not as remote as it was beginning to feel. We did not do nearly as well as this in Moscow, where no one seemed to get incoming messages by mail or fax. Thursday 17 August Ulan Bator - Terelji Helen rang around 7.30am. I met with T Batjargal, the Sales Manager of Juulchin, to finalise details and payments. Breakfast at 8.10am. In theory we should have checked out, but to minimise the confusion I arrange to keep my room, so that everyone can store their luggage in it. The idea works extremely well. Off through the city by bus at 9.10am. Gandantegchinlen Monastery (popularly abbreviated to Gandan Hild) is not the oldest but one of the largest and most important in Mongolia. Built in 1840, it feels as though it should be in Tibet. Only because it was such an architectural showplace did the buildings survive the 1937 purge, but as a monastery it was effectively dissolved. As recently as 1990 there was great opposition from the Chinese when the Dalai Lama wanted to visit. The Chinese feared that their province of Inner Mongolia would demand independence, and the Mongolians feared the Chinese would cut off the trade they so badly needed after the economic collapse of Russia. The stand-off was resolved by making the visit a private one rather than an official one. None of this struggle is evident to the visitor. Wizened old monks seem to have come from somewhere and they have been joined by a very healthy number of new novices. In guilded incense-filled rooms the chanting goes on endlessly, and everyone seems very relaxed about visitors being as obnoxious as they are intrusive. Monastic life has never looked healthier. The Winter Palace Museum of Bogd Haan was where the last Mongolian king (1869-1924) lived. After Karaka Bay it is refreshing to find a palace where no one cuts the grass. The buildings too are very low-key, but the spatial organisation is intriguing. The last king came from Tibet at the age of five, and was regarded as a living reincarnation of Buddha. The Palace is stacked with interesting artefacts, and the museum in the grounds is where I discover my 1912 print of the old city. There are also adjacent temple grounds. We are almost the only people there, so it is possible to be totally alone when walking along the axis of the courtyards. It seems sublime after the Forbidden City. You can feel the spaces and even have the chance to dream. Even this remote spot is not, of course, as remote as it might at first seem. A musician in traditional garb sits by the door playing a very traditional stringed instrument. To help the memory linger he is selling CDs made in Berlin. "Enchanting Mongolia" Traditional Mongolian Music. The insecurity of being without money and postcards overwhelms the group, so we head for another tourist hotel where there is a Bank and a Post Office. A little after mid-day we drive off to Terelji. Back along the valley we came down by train, but then we turn north. Suddenly we cross a low divide and it seems as though we are back in New Zealand. Only the white gers dotted here and there through the landscape give it away. The mood changes again as rock formations dominate the valley we climb up to the ger camp where we will spend the night. It is always easy afterwards to confess to having been a little cynical. I imagined that tourism would have killed the spirit of this place, but no, they have had to wait for architects to do that. I weep to see how much damage my profession does, not only to the physical environment but also to the cultural and social environments. The new ugly brick buildings hang like an ominous cloud about to destroy everything which could have taught them about life. We are the lucky ones. We are just ahead of the destruction. It is still possible to stand with your back to the new buildings and fall in love with the smoky haze drifting over white ger roofs. Within a ger the whole world can be forgotten. We do just that as we sit down to lunch around 2pm. When we arrived a few scruffy, moth-eaten horses were tied to the rail trying hopelessly to flick the flies away with their tails. A little sultry bargaining left me with the feeling that we could do much better than this. I confidently told our driver that, instead of going riding, we would go further up the valley by bus, to explore. A rough translation of his reply suggested that the road was not good. "No problem" I confidently replied. "We're from New Zealand and we don't mind rough roads." "Okay, whatever you say." We drove down a steep bank, over the shingle beds, across the river, and then climbed steeply out the other side. I realised that he had been trying to say that the road actually ended at the camp. He was however determined to achieve whatever I wanted. I needed to rescue the situation. We climbed up across a paddock to a grassy knob. "Stop" I commanded, while surveying the wilderness. "This is what we have come to see." The driver looked about as mystified as the guide, not reading my acute observation that this was probably the last spot where the bus could be safely turned around before we plunged down into a bog which looked capable of swallowing the vehicle. Everyone piled out, and they promptly shot off at great speed in fourteen different directions. We were in the middle of the most amazing field of wildflowers. Alex was cross checking species. Mary and Audrey were making comparisons. Joan was gathering samples. Everyone had lost interest in going anywhere else except this paddock. The driver and the guide decided that they had found a new species too. They were not sure what they had achieved, but felt chuffed at their success. Ideas began to tumble out. With a grin the driver asked if we would like to go and meet some of his friends. "Of course." Back across the river-bed and down the valley we turn up across another farm road, and head over the paddocks again. A figure emerges from a ger. A few quick words, and with seven great strides and a single leap he bounds into the saddle of a horse waiting tethered to a post. There is the sound of hoofs beating on the turf, but to the eye it seems that no hoof comes anywhere near the ground. This is Mongolian horsemanship. I have never seen anything like it. More people have appeared and we are welcomed by the women. Within the ger we feast on yoghurt from the sheepskin bag just inside the door. The ritual of entering includes stirring the yoghurt. The whole interior is richly decorated in reds, golds and greens with family treasures on display. Photographs of those who are far away give a Polynesian air. We are all nomads, and this is our common language. Meanwhile the horseman has returned, bringing back enough horses for us all. Everyone who wants to go riding mounts, and there is one horse left over. I am convinced it is the spirited one which galloped across the plain. I point out that my first duty is to stay with those who have chosen not to go riding, but they will have none of it. With leadership weighing heavy upon me I leap into the saddle. The horse heads off enthusiastically as far as the first patch of excellent green grass, puts its head down, and I cannot get it to move until it has had its fill. We ride over the hill, with my horse going by fits and starts from one good feed to another, but the scenery is so astonishing that even the unusual shape of Mongolian saddles seems to be of no significance. The Mongolians seem to ride standing on their stirrups. I conclude that they do this to avoid being physically re-shaped, something which seems even more threatening when the saddle has half a dozen nails which have not been driven home. But these Mongolians know about problem resolution. They catch a wild yak which is somewhat bigger than a bull, and show me how to ride it bareback. Then they insist that I should have a go. A Mongolian saddle has never seemed more comfortable. By now our numbers have swelled with yaks and more horses as well as neighbours who have come to see the crazy Kiwis, but for us a meal is waiting back at our ger encampment, and we are already late. It is an achievement for me to make the whole group late, for they are all more punctual than I am. Back at the camp the excited children are lighting fires in our pot-belly stoves, so that we will be perfectly comfortable. Comfort? A ger must be one of the most comfortable dwellings ever devised. Friday 18 August Terelji - Ulan Bator They do not have wake-up calls, but you can place an order for your fire to be lit at whatever time you like. Being heroic I decide that our ger does not need one, but when I look at the first rays of sunlight dancing through the smoke above our roofs my heart melts. I tell them we really need one after all, and I suspect they still sit around in the evening talking about the Kiwi who wanted the smoke, but didn't need the warmth. Some cultural gulfs are impossible to cross. It seems as though we have been here for weeks rather than a single night. We feel very much at home. After a little negotiation we saddle up fresh horses and set out for a two hour ride. They are very well organised with a foot guide leading each horse. Once they discover that you can ride the guide unobtrusively drops away until, for our group, we are left with just our leading horse. "Choo, moro, choo." The horses only speak Mongolian. We climb over the hill into the valley beyond. The other fork from where we attempted to go by bus. We reach the turning point. The guide looks at me. I look at the guide. No language is needed. Instead of returning we head on up to a remote village, tether our horses to a fence, and are welcomed into a tiny house which opens into the fenced compound. We sample curd and clotted cheese. We drink chai. We laugh and share photographs. Neighbours come to join in. Another choice. Another nod. No one needs to say that we are having too much fun to want to go home. We ride off to another house. More delicacies. More laughter. More friendships. We finally have no choice but to turn our horses heads for home. We break into a gallop to make up time, with the glorious freedom of feeling the wind blow through our hair as we sweep down the grassy slopes. Time seems to be totally irrelevant. Back at the camp Martin has been treated by a local doctor. An experience even more exciting than horse-riding. They offer to take him back to Ulan Bator in a limousine, but I calculate that he will feel better among friends. It is great having Noel for a second opinion, or should I say first opinion. A late lunch. Turtle Rock. More wildflowers. A wonderful timber bridge across the river. *** We re-establish ourselves back into the New Capital Hotel. The chief concern is whether the hot water has been turned on. The town has a typical Russian central heating system, which of course can only be maintained during this short summer period. The whole town has been without hot water for several days. While I am racing around saying "Isn't it fantastic to have water!" everyone else seems to be saying "Isn't it a tragedy that we have no hot water". Not everyone appreciates my positive attitude, but I think of the leader's golden rule. "Give me the courage to change those things which can be changed, the patience to accept those things which cannot be changed, and the wisdom to know the difference." The hot water is a little intermittent at this time, but by tomorrow morning hot showers are in full flood. Everything feels better when you cannot take it for granted. There is a little time to spare and the shoppers are suffering from shopping-withdrawal symptoms so we take everyone by bus down to some of the "western" stores. I try to spend the time usefully by tracing the line of the old creek. The water has gone now, but the pattern is still visible in the walls of buildings and gardens. Enough to satisfy my curiosity. Supper, and for me a long walk down Peace Avenue almost to Constitution Street. I run out of time to get the photographs I want. Saturday 19 August Ulan Bator - Train Around 4am I wake up in a cold sweat after a nightmare about pohutukawa trees being cut down at Karaka Bay. Living among the gentle people here is obviously creating some emotional tensions and some responses to the new wave of violence which has swept over Karaka Bay. It is the story of Urga, and yet it is universal. I know that if those responsible for the "ecological genocide" were to come to Mongolia that here too they would destroy all the beautiful things which they never realised existed. How are we to open people's eyes? I fall back into a deep sleep, thinking of the time I booked the whole Academy cinema so that all my students could see Urga. Only a few of them showed up. Now I am here in Urga. There is much to think about. Suddenly I jolted awake. It is Joan Wiles beating on my door. Helen is on the telephone from Auckland, but the call has been sent to the wrong room. Joan very intelligently determines that any attempt to transfer the call would be much more complicated than transferring the people. I leap out of bed with nothing on. The scene moves to the corridor where anyone unable to sleep would have been able to observe a woman in her underwear being pursued down the hallway by a semi-naked man clutching a towel to defend his dignity. Stories are exchanged of Mongolian horse riding and Helen's trip to Northland with her cousin, who is apparently staying at Karaka Bay. The local news which is being whispered along the corridors is that there is hot water for showers. A well-washed team with smiling faces turns up for breakfast at 8am. T Batjargal, Juulchin's Sales Manager arrives with a receipt, just as I am sitting down to breakfast, and I run out of time to go for a photographic walk as I had intended. At 9.45am. the bus arrives. We need to go first to the Juulchin Head Office to collect the train tickets. I don't like keeping the group waiting but it was impossible to do this earlier as the office was closed. I am also able to collect several brochures to show the group and Suntravel some of the other options for future expeditions, and to thank Batjargal. On to the line up of locomotives for those who wanted to get some photographs. I am much more interested in the building site over the road, where the construction workers have moved in with their Gers and set up camp. Children and all. Mobility is a frame of mind. On to the Natural History Museum at 10.30. A relief model of Mongolia is very useful for gaining an understanding of the river and valley patterns. Endless stuffed animals and rocks. Dinosaurs. Mongolia is a source. I end up ahead of the group and actually write some postcards while others are shopping. I finish the postcards over lunch and left them at the hotel for posting. The Planning Department, Rita Ogilvy, Graeme and Ana Robertson, Rowena and Michael, and Harry Turbott. The cards all turned up in New Zealand about the same time that I did. We bus back to the hotel just before mid-day, check out, leave our bags for loading onto the bus, and settle down to lunch. It seems to take forever. There is a wonderful simplicity about Mongolia, as they try to do everything right, without quite being able to understand the point of it all. Yesterday the gringos expected them to get out of their comfortable and environmentally appropriate traditional costume to put on idiotic bow ties. Today the gringos want their lunch in a hurry. There is no point in trying to explain, because a western civilisation which seems hell-bent on self-destruction is beyond explanation. I go out to the kitchen and help with the serving. We are away at 1.10pm, only ten minutes behind schedule. It is only a short trip to the station, and there is very little confusion. I tip with both toreg and dollars. The relationship between currencies becomes more and more meaningless. *** In no time at all everyone has settled into carriage 13, train 5, and we are on our way to Irkutsk around 13.50pm. Villages. Vast landscapes. We follow a winding river down a luxurious valley, with the late afternoon light casting a surrealistic glow over everything. Before we have even left the platform a woman is asking me if I could carry her suitcase with me "because she has more than she is allowed to take". Once we are on the move the train becomes like the warehouse of the Warehouse. It is almost impossible to stand in the corridors as dozens of people go backwards and forwards distributing all their good all over the train. Everyone wants us to hide some of their goods for them. The Mongolian traders buy in China and then take their goods on the train all the way to Moscow selling as they go. If anything is left they sell it on their way back to Mongolia. They seem to be outfitting the whole of Russia in track-suits and Reebocks. I find to my dismay that this train has no dining car. I have brought no food, but everyone is very understanding and we manage with a night of fasting. I have taken the odd berth and my companion is a Mongolian lass, B. Oyyinchimeg, whose husband is in the army. She seems to know all the police, and my compartment seldom is occupied by less than a dozen people, five hundred track suits, and endless roubles. At 9.30pm the train stops for the Mongolian customs. The bargaining and dealing is far too complex for me to follow. Somewhere after 3am I seem to remember completing formalities for the Russian customs. They seem to get all the rest of the group out of bed for a full search, but I am left lying comfortably on top of more stock than I would care to mention. My forms are all in Russia, so I translate everything, but when I take my English version along to help everyone else I discover that they have been given English versions. I will never know who told who just "exactly" who I was. Sunday 20 August Train - Baikal At 7.30am. we make a long stop at Ulan Ude, which is a very large city, and we change over to an electric engine. We also pick up a dining car, so I shout breakfast for the whole group, around 10am. Daches, which are rather like European allotments. Along Lake Baikal. Brick dominates the area here. I shout everyone lunch. At 4pm we arrive at Irkutsk. Oleg Zuban and Anna Kochetkova meet us and we go by bus directly to Lake Baikal. The journey through the city has me almost leaping out of the bus windows. Wonderful timber houses with colourful shutters to windows which have their sills almost at ground level. Anna farewells us, leaving me to try and extract information out of Oleg. I try to explain that these birch forests are of interest to New Zealanders. Are they protected? Are there planning controls to regulate the offensive new brick house being build for the nouveau riche of Russia? Oleg does not want to know. Hotel Baikal was built for a visit by President Eisenhower, in 1960, but then Francis Gary Powers' U2 spy-plane was shot down and the visit never took place. We swan around looking like lost diplomats. Oleg and I go down to the tiny beach below the hotel for a swim in Lake Baikal. Very refreshing, but I realise that my energy level is down. Dinner at 7pm. I am astonished to find a table for two set some distance away from the group. It is for Oleg and me. I explain that I want to be with the group. Oleg explains that he does not wish to be forced to eat with the group. "As soon as you sit down to eat they start to ask questions." I consider that most problems and queries are best dealt with over a meal. The difference in our attitudes is total, and it is a gulf neither of us will cross. I tolerate this one miserable lonely isolated meal only listening to my friends laughing uproariously, as we have become accustomed to do, but not able to hear the jokes. Once is enough. I tell Oleg he is very welcome to sit on his own if he wishes. Off for a long walk at 8pm. The drivers we have seen so far seem to be very reckless, and I find the hunch reinforced by a major car accident. The distress and anguish of bodies being taken away. Accidents seem even more sobering when you are far from home. I think of the many people I have seen killed in car accidents over the years. Those who set out on a journey quite unaware that it would be their last. Back at the hotel I catch up on my laundry. Monday 21 August Baikal - Irkutsk Clear blue sky. A walk down through the bush to the same small beach. Off for a swim to the surprise of those waiting at the bus stop to go off to work. My energy level is up and I enjoy being able to stretch my limbs. It is a really good swim. So good that when I stop to enjoy it I realise I have swum out into a one or two knot current and am well on my way downstream to the Angara river mouth and Iskutsk. There is a rock in the centre of the river where it leaves the lake, which has gathered over time all manner of legends. When wives were suspected of being unfaithful they were placed on the rock. If they drowned trying to swim ashore it was assumed they were faithful and had gone to their reward. If they made it to shore it was assumed that this indicated they were unfaithful, and they were killed anyway. I decided there were already enough legends and opted for a very energetic swim to get back to my little bay A hot shower was great. Then my bag to pack and breakfast at 8.30am. Oleg fails to show up. He has slept in, which leaves me more than a little in the dark about the day's arrangements, as his concept of a power struggle does not leave him open to consensus decision making. I am convinced the rooms do not need to be vacated, but someone in the group is convinced that they do. The customer is always right. Everyone has loaded all their bags into the bus by the time Oleg appears and we find out that we are to lunch back at the hotel. I keep my room key at least, and leave my trip documentation in the safe. My plan had been for everyone to walk through the bush to the Limnological Institute, but the thought of trying to cope with Oleg is too much, so we drive around in a circle to end up below where we started. The Lake is the deepest in the world and is tectonic. I query exactly what the scientists mean, and if the message was translated correctly the Lake is a downward thrust of the tectonic plates. This makes it the exact opposite of New Zealand, which is the only country in the world which is the result of an upward thrust of the tectonic plates. The exhibits are more interesting than I had expected. We watch a video with stunning underwater photographs showing the clarity of the water over great distances, and photographs of winter ice, which although 1.5m thick could be seen through as clearly as plate glass.. Only to be compared with Antarctica. My questions about what is being done to protect the watershed are evaded. They know about the increasing impact of industry as much as I do, and they know about the pollution in the stream just beside the Institute. The situation is no different from that at Karaka Bay. The facts are there, but no one sees them, because to acknowledge them would of necessity lead to doing something about them. It is a peculiar characteristic of human beings to assume that logic flows in only one direction, from facts to conclusions. In environmental issues logic more commonly proceeds the other way, from desired conclusions to denial of the obvious. The bus takes us on around to the port, and we are given 10 minutes to take photographs of Listvyanka. Kiwis head off at great speed in all directions. I need to convince Anna that she does not need to worry about this, for her, totally-out-of-control behaviour, and then I head off myself for the houses. As the bus drives back along the road Kiwis appear again from all over the place, with stories of discoveries and photographs. Back along the main road and up to St Nicholas. We are only given 15 minutes, so I am already on my way out before the others have even come in, after being delayed by the trinket sellers. There is a full wall of painted icons, which are almost European in style. but also several fine classic calm icon faces look out from intricate metallic frames. Mu concern is to explore the houses of the village. There are several "group houses" with a really New Zealand form, and even a very fine mullion window system. Has a New Zealand architect been here? Log cabins. The local children are really friendly, and they give each of us a dandelion to take with us. The smallest things are sometimes what a traveller remembers. Back to the hotel for 12.30 lunch. Green salad with potato salad. Fish soup. Exquisite fish in batter with tatare sauce for the main course. Russian tea. Much more than we can eat, but it is so delicious that I do my best to help everyone else out. After all the rush our guide does not want to leave until 2pm, but I press her to make it earlier. By 1.45 I have collected my "safe deposit" items and am sitting on the bus with all my baggage, along with everyone else. Down the hill to hear the story about the rock in the river. Men were also put on the rock, and if they survived the night it was assumed they were innocent, and they were set free. Several children are learning how to be entrepreneurs, but they don't seem to have it quite right. They insist that they are giving their postcards away as presents. An ethic like mine. On through the forest with Anna telling some Russian fairy tales. Because it was too old to be of use any more a dog was sent off into the forest to die. A bear found the dog dying and felt sorry for it. The bear went off and got some food for the dog. The dog was extremely grateful because he had forgotten how to gather any food for himself. Each day the bear brought food for the dog, and they became great friends, but clearly this situation could not go on because it did not deal with the cause of the problem. "I know what I will do", said the bear. "I will steal the child of your old master when she next leaves the child in the pram in the garden." "Then I will allow you to rescue the child and take it back." "They will be so grateful that they will welcome you back again." And so it came to pass. The dog was welcomed back into the home where he was once again well fed, and there he listened to tales about the dangerous bear in the forest. We stop at a Shamanist spot where people tie a piece of cloth to the trees, either so that they will return, or so that some other wish will be fulfilled. More recently the custom has developed of smashing empty champagne bottles for similar reasons. The lookout has wonderful views down the river, but resembles the Puntas Arenas rubbish dump. The group stands in the middle of the smashed glass and flapping rag, trying to convince the guide that the place ought to be cleaned up. The cultural gap is impossible to bridge, and finally a truce is declared from the sheer exhaustion of neither side making ground. Meanwhile I have had time to run back up the road a few hundred yards to have a very cursory look at the Museum of Wooden Architecture. About twenty structures have been restored and they are located in the forest setting. It is interesting, but a little tacky. Better to study the many timber buildings which still exist in their original settings. On past the elitist entrepreneurial homes for very wealthy Russians. What they lack in taste they make up for with cost. Magazine images with no merit. It is sad to see the forest fringe of the city being destroyed. One of the greatest tragedies of modern economics is the way in which it concentrates wealth into the hands of those with no taste. Other civilisations have left behind quality design for us to admire. We gather it into museums, but we do not seem to learn. Our civilisation will be remembered for having turned the world into a rubbish tip. Russia has now joined the club. The airport. Air fares in Russia have gone up by more than a thousand percent, so that only those with access to western or Mafia money can afford to travel. I think of the fun I had rattling around the Soviet Union on Aeroflot in the days when the passengers must have been one of the most motley collections in the world. People often forget the egalitarian underpinning of socialism. There is a nervous insecurity about not having a pocket full of roubles, so we make a detour to the hotel to change money. It takes forever with the queue locked into a frozen formation. I give up and decide to do it later. The premonition of the group was right. A sign "Closed for break" goes up, and seems to be even more fixed than the queue. I never did get any roubles, and ended up having to borrow enough for our after dinner ice-creams. I really should have changed money on the train, where my rapport with the Mongolian traders would have ensured good rates. I tend however to be cautious when travelling with a group because you place the group at risk rather than yourself. We travelled too quickly to develop those friendships which give easy access to the black market, My suspicion is that the "black market" now operates much more than it used to at the level of the Cook Island's "wine box" corruption. Lawyers, politicians and businessmen. The big players then exercise a mafia type control over the little players. Indigenous people have traditionally broken out of cocoons to pick up diseases rather than culture. It is a pattern being followed in Russian economics just as much as in New Zealand economics. *** It really pleases me that the city tour should be presented in the best "City-Speak" manner. We begin at the beginning, where the Irkutsk River flows into the Angara River. The marshy low-lowing delta nature of the junction makes it clear at last as to why the city was founded on the opposite bank from where it might have been expected. The unusual landform provides high ground opposite the Irkutsk River rather than adjacent to it. The original structures may have gone, but there has been urban design "layering", so that the eternal flame burns on in a sultry way in its granite tomb, while the surrounding open space is in turn dominated by the Church of the Saviour and the Epiphany Church. The Polish Catholic Cathedral nudges into one corner. It is described as "gothic" but the brickwork suggests that gothic never reached as far north as Warsaw, any more than it penetrated south to Rome. The axis which is generated from this point leads into the town with classical formalism, but as the "new" buildings occupy the axis we snake down it until it dissolves. Behind the party headquarters is Ploschad Kirova, the new square. Downstream, just across the Ushakovka River, is the Znamensky Monastery. It is sadly presented as a series of tourist gimmicks. The stone placed over the businessman's grave by the peasants to make certain that he could never return from the grave. The tree sculpture with ten sawn-off branches above the grave of the man who had ten daughters but no sons, so that the line of his family tree died out. Beyond the tourist facade, and the refusal of entry to anyone in shorts or not wearing a skirt, is a classic Russian Orthodox interior. We make our way back through the city to the marketplace, as interest in Irkutsk wanes and the urge to shop takes over. It will be the last serious opportunity for shopping before the long train journey. As soon as everyone has headed for the market for a 15 minute stop I race off wildly in the opposite direction to study and photograph the astonishing array of wooden houses. It is a brilliant blue sky and conditions are perfect, but there is so little time. Back at the bus Anita and Joan fail to turn up. It is the only time we end up with people getting lost. After waiting and checking their last sightings two of us set off to see if we can find them. To my surprise the market is actually quite small and five minutes is ample time to walk right through it. 25 minutes later they find their own way back to the bus, after being confused by nothing more than the price of bananas and a can of beer. They tip the driver to apologise and I do the same, so everyone ends up very happy and unconcerned that we are 25 minutes later than our 5.30 schedule for getting to the Intourist Hotel. The check-in is efficient. I am told that I have been given a "special room", but when I go to the floor to collect the room key it is missing. Phone calls here and there, and eventually I am given another room. I never did find out what the "special room" was all about or why the confusion occurred, but I suspect that dollars had been changing hands somewhere. The rooms were simple and basic, but very adequate. The facilities were good, at least for anyone with a fundamental knowledge of the hot water demands of group tours. Successful travelling is always about avoiding peak hours. I have the two things I need. A window which will open, and a magnificent view over the river. Off for a long walk. Back to the area between the market and the river and on south towards the hydro-electric dam. Ostrov Unosti is a water playground contained by an island and two connecting bridges, and Irkutskians are making the most of the summer. Through the poorer area of town where there is no reticulation of water. It still has that feeling of the Siberian frontier. Timber houses, painted or carved shutters, and flowers in windows. The wonderful Russian window shops where the window is stacked with produce and a tiny shutter in one corner is just large enough to pass though some money and get a packet of sugar or mustard in return. For me they are so evocative of going shopping in Moscow when it was thirty below. North again, weaving my way through the city to pick up the axial line and tie my understanding of the urban design together again. I arrive back at the Intourist Hotel exactly at 8pm for dinner. More by good luck than good management. We share a long table and a simple meal. Afterwards we explore the ice-cream shop off the foyer area. It is useful having Bevan with us as he is an international ice-cream taster, able to offer advice and to comment on the comparative merits of ice-creams from all over the world. I decide that there is little merit in continuing to explore in the dark, so settle for a hot shower and an early night. Tuesday 22 August Irkutsk - Train The phone rings at 6.03am, fortunately. It is still very dark and I am in a deep sleep, so I would never have woken. I have been dreaming about Karaka Bay for a second time. Neighbours plotting, which all turns out to be true. It always astonishes me that communication around the globe can be so clear without the need for satellites or Internet. We "hear" over great distances, even though the messages are not always clear. It will be months before I become aware of the details to flesh out this intuition. A great hot shower, knowing that it will be three days before I get another. Everyone is in the foyer by 7am., with Bevan the last to arrive. I collect the passports and distribute them. We are ready to go, but then the floor lady arrives. A towel is missing from Bevan's room. He returns to the room, and comes back with the assurance that he has paid the lady US$5 and kept the towel. I am more concerned about getting to the station, after losing the 15 minutes the whole exercise has taken. We cross the bridge to the western side of the Angara, and for some inexplicable one-way-street reason do a great loop through a whole unseen part of town to end up back where we had started, outside the railway station. A tip to Vladimir, the driver who brought us from Baikal to Irkutsk and on to the railway station. The station is sparsely populated and four smartly-dressed hostesses are waiting by the carriage door to greet us. We almost fill Carriage 8 of Train 9 which is a very convenient arrangement as it leaves us almost self-contained. Each compartment is beautifully presented, with the table set with two blue porcelain cups, a small blue porcelain tea-pot, and a blue porcelain vase with artificial flowers. The table cloth matches the curtains which shroud the double-glazed windows. There is a table lamp to complete the homely atmosphere. There are comfortable carpets on the floor, and the one in the corridor is protected by a runner. The hostess' constant straightening of the runner becomes one of the train routines. Across the Irkutsk River, which gives a chance to see just how low-lying the land here is, and through the sprawling outskirts of the city. Farmland, which could almost be in New Zealand. Small villages which are very Siberian. Every property is fenced and every plot is an intensely cultivated vegetable garden, taking advantage of the fertile black soil to beat the very short growing season. Birch forest. A grey overcast sky, with dull flat light. Away to the North-West. Industrial cities. They all have centralised heating systems, so the 600mm or more pipes which snake their way through all these cities become a hallmark of Russia. The cemeteries all have frail blue wrought iron railings around the graves, and the graves have many flowers on them giving a splash of colour to an atmosphere of benign neglect. There are a few brick buildings, but no sign of any kilns, so perhaps bricks come in by rail, as I imagine everything else does. Apart from the climate and the isolation life here does not seem to be too bad. Blue and green shutters to windows. The trains run on Moscow time so we change our watches by five hours. 8am back to 3am. It takes a little adjustment to cope with meal times being suddenly out of phase. In another sense train travel is timeless, and at least the disorientation gets slowly less as we approach Moscow. With our odd numbers I take the shared compartment to make it easier for the others, and at 4.16am at a small station Helen joins me in my compartment. She is apparently going to Paris on a holiday, taking the train south from Moscow. Although she speaks a glimmer of French, German and English communication is difficult. How could she understand a crazy crowd of kiwis who pile out of the train at every opportunity, full of excitement no matter how small the station. The group thinks that I lead a charmed life to have a blonde in my compartment for this journey, when they were already teasing me about the brunette who shared my compartment from Ulan Bator. There are no traders on this train so the atmosphere is totally different from the Ulan Bator - Irkutsk train. Breakfast is at 9am Irkustsk time. Bread and cheese, fried eggs and coffee. They are very happy to give us an extra coffee. The fun and laughter of our group becomes infectious and we get a great welcome when we turn up for lunch at 10am Moscow time, or 4pm. Irkutsk time. A tomato and cucumber entree, delicious soup, chicken and buckwheat, excellent bread and coffee or tea. It begins to rain. At last I am able to catch up on my diary, but at times I must confess I wished the train would stay still. Joan Wiles swaps an address list with everyone. We need to wait at a siding for three freight trains to pass where the dual track has been reduced to a single line by track maintenance. The lines are extremely busy. We are twenty minutes late for our 15 minute stop at Nizhneudinsk at 11.45, but somehow they make up the time. A chance to photograph the engine and the small stalls. The fresh raspberries are delicious. At times it seems almost a pity that all our meals are provided as we have no need of the endless array of delicacies which are offered wherever the train stops. Forest as far as you can see. Timber towns, with the house either left with a natural finish which weathers to a dark brown, or a painted finish. Dark roofs finished with malthoid or timber. Haystacks built up around a single pole. Five-storey log house construction buildings used for industry. The small sweat lodges which we seem to see everywhere built into the side of the banks particularly interest me. Oleg cannot help me as he has never noticed them. At first they do not seem to have a chimney, and later they seem to have a small window as well as a chimney. The roads around here are really rough. More like logging roads. The edges have snow markers. At 2.45 we stop for five minutes at Tayshet. Suddenly there are wheatfields, but then they disappear and we are back again to forest. Every few miles there is another village. Less frequently there is heavy industry, but nothing of a large scale. Geese. Hamlets. By 3.30pm (8.30pm) the sun is setting. It is spectacular and the perfect foil to the rainbow we had seen earlier. At 4pm (9pm) we have dinner. Coleslaw, savoury rice with meat, munchy biscuits and coffee. We cross a major river in the darkness. By 6pm (11pm) we are all busy trying to work out how to make a Russian bed. We have been given a pack with fresh pillowslips, sheets, towels and facecloths, to match the mattresses and pillows provided, but fitting them all together is left to our imagination. Wednesday 23 August Train Awake at 2.24am (7.24am) when we stop at Bogotol. Familiar rolling terrain. Familiar birch forests and open fields. Familiar small wooden towns. Helen is sound asleep so I doze and think. Pondering whether to go to Ireland, how to get to St. Julien, and more immediately how to get some roubles. Either the black market in Russia really has dried up or I have lost my touch. At 4.42 we make a 20 minute stop at Marlinsk. Delicious melon. Hot rolls, like a generous sausage roll, but much more tasty. Fresh bread and milk in bottles. Old women with their kits full of good things. Photographs looking back up the line. Breakfast at 5am (10am) Luncheon sausage, butter, bread, carob which is like chocolate, fried eggs, apple juice, and two cups of coffee. Our arrival in the dining car is greeted with even more enthusiasm. Our waitress is beginning to realise she can relax and have fun. The leg pulling becomes a two way affair. Most Russians seem to be astonished that we have so much to talk and laugh about. Just finding out about each other is fascinating. Audrey, for example, introduced Visa into New Zealand, after going back to work in 1973. Blue skies. Some mist. Oleg wants a game of chess, and no one else is willing, so I oblige. The Russian Grand Master not only triumphs, but decides there is no challenge in beating such an unskilled opponent. Novosibirsk. Hundreds of high rise apartment blocks, with the open space surrounding them totally filled with steel sheds used either for car garages or for storage. Hundreds of them, some with big doors and some with small doors. A motorway infrastructure to rival Beijing. The atmosphere feels very drab and grey. A photograph looking over the station. The Ob River is extremely large. Novosibirsk is where the Swedes we had met in Mongolia had done their exchange. Off again at 11.32 after a 25 minute stop. Lunch. Potato salad, soup, mashed potato and casserole. Villages, water towers, industry, grain elevators, haystacks. Pre-dinner drinks. Russian white wine and vodka. Dinner at 5pm (10pm) The caviar is orange and with more jelly than the black variety we are used to. It comes on a piece of bread, with a light salad. Sausages and pasta. Biscuits. Another wonderful sunset. Helen puts the TV on so I tuck up into bed and enjoy a little of a Russian variety show. A video I presume. Some people complain that their spaces are too hot, while others complain that their space is too cold. All insist that I should do something about it, but the logic of exactly what to do escapes me. I get Oleg to help, but translating the problem into Russian does not do a great deal to help. The stewardesses are in fact very helpful, but I never manage to sort out if everyone ends up being happy. Giving people control over their environment seems to invite dissatisfaction. It is much better to just have "weather", and then everyone can grumble to God. "We'll all be rooned, said Hanrahan ......" A chance to sort out our Moscow schedule. Oleg has a list from Intourist which puts the action at the end, and the free time at the beginning. It seems to me that people need to become oriented, and to then be given the chance to explore. Oleg is not good at discussing strategic questions. He feels I am mad to let everyone get involved in decisions. He suggests that we should all go to the new War Museum, at a cost of around $100 for the group. Noel is mildly interested, most are neutral and Nancy Ayde and Pauline feel very negative about the idea. We sink it, but it keeps bobbing up again, not finally fading out of sight until we leave Moscow. Thursday 24 August Train The "Women by Train to Peking" should have left Moscow yesterday, and it is scheduled to arrive in Beijing on 29 August. The 150 women on board intend to take part in the NGO Forum of the United Nations Conference. We must have passed them somewhere over the next day or two, but we remain unaware of the moment. At 4.30am we make a 15 minute stop at Tyumen. Four trains are in, including an Ulan Bator train on its way back home. Fur traders, but on the other train some Reebocks and clothing seem to change hands. Silver birch seems to have given way to fir, but the terrain remains flat. Overcast sky. Small stations. Breakfast at 7am (mid-day) Orange juice. Salami and bread. Pancakes and jam, instead of eggs, coffee, and "chocolates". The waitress by now is really friendly and we have lots of laughs. A 15 minute stop at Sverdlovsk, but we are surrounded by trains. For Bevan it is a chance for another ice-cream. The town, which is also known as Saint Catherinsburg is a very large with a great axis, which we cross, with a classical building at the termination. There are many high-rise apartment buildings, but their orientation is all over the place. The familiar tin sheds fill all the available flat land. The usual array of single story timber houses ring the centre. We climb a little up into the southern Urals and at kilometre post 1778 (from Moscow) we pass from Asia into Europe. The divide is marked by an obelisk, but Oleg comes to visit as I am counting down the kilometres and watching for it, he distracts me, and I miss it. It transpires that he has never seen it. It mystifies us all that a guide can be so disinterested in his own country. Small towns, timber towns. The mood changes. It seems that we our now really are on the fringes of Europe. Mansard roofs. Helen watches TV. Through the Urals, but they never gain any elevation. A two-minute stop at Shalya at12.10. Photographs of the water tower, the attendant from the next carriage, and some of the housing, simply because the train is travelling slowly enough to make photography possible. Lunch at 11am. Entree, soup, chicken, coffee. Suddenly we break out of the Urals into a river valley, following the banks of the river. We cross a deep valley with three churches on the rim reaching up to touch the skyline. I realise that skyline has no meaning in Siberia. Three-storey, square, plastered-brick houses appear in the midst of the usual timber houses. The peeling ochre plaster could place them in Czechoslovakia. A photograph of housing. The train slows down, A 15 minute stop at 4.30 at Perm, with little to see. Some trading on the platform. The train begins to move completely without warning and the speed with which everyone moves to get on board astonishes our stewardesses. They constantly worry that one of us will miss the train. 1,000,000 population. Photographs of garages and high rise apartments. Glass houses behind the trees. A touch of colour, which is the first sign of Autumn. Perm is one of the major ports on the Kama River. There are many Rhine size barges. Fir forest. A social whisky, with nine of us jammed into the compartment. Jan, an Aussie, turns up from carriage 6. She lost her wallet at Beijing Station. We invite her to team up with us in Moscow. 1312 at 6.44pm. Another industrial town. Friday 25 August Train - Moscow Another deep sleep with powerful dreams. The compartment is great, but very warm and enclosed compared to the fresh air I love. Up at 5.30am. Mist covers everything and the windows are fogged up, so that there is little to see. The friendly attendant is in full uniform sitting in her compartment. Does she never sleep? Around 6.30am. the sun rises over the fir forest. By 7am there is enough light to enjoy the view. I think a little about life. Journeys tend to bring on such pondering. Chance meetings, moments, things which might have been done, love. At 7.08 a two minute stop at Galich Only time to amuse our attendant by throwing a kiss, as we all lean out of our doors, to the seductive attendant in the next carriage, who has brought along her boyfriend for the trip. Our attendant is not willing to let us out in case we miss the train. Houses painted yellow, with blue window frames. Flat sheet steel roofing. Two-storey buildings become more common. Gables. There are still the water towers. Brick below and timber above. The vast Volga river, with steamers and a port. I complete some University work. Lunch at 12.30 so that they can clean up. Apparently there is a major health check when the train gets to Moscow. Salad, soup, mashed potatoes, and casserole. I tip the waitress. I tip each of our stewardesses. We exchange addresses. Ella gives me the badge she is wearing. I give her two photographs of Karaka Bay. Zagorsk has a wonderful collection of onion domes. We will be back in two days to explore the area. Dache. Why, all over the world do people not put in gardens before they begin to build? Two-storey brick developer buildings similar to those we saw on the fringes of Irkutsk. Local stations. Colourful houses. Street markets. Slowly the density goes up and the interest of the environment goes down. We arrive at Moscow. *** The station is busy and crowded, but finding our bus, with Dimitri our driver, is no problem. Following the ring road around to the Ukraina Hotel takes us past many interesting buildings and provides an excellent introduction to the city. Reception is helpful and efficient and in no time I am looking down from my room on the twenty-fourth floor across the whole of Moscow. With the weekend looming I rang the Institute of Architects to tell Vladimir and the others that I was in Moscow. They said they would wait there until 6pm., but sorting out the taxis all took so long that I decided I could not get there and be back in time to take the group to dinner. It always takes a few hours to settle down when you arrive in a city, and it is difficult to act quickly and decisively in the way that you will twenty-four hours later, I was not to know that I would run out of time on Monday, and miss seeing many of my friends. That's life. While the others are getting organised I take a walk through the adjacent park and housing across to Kiev Station, and then cross over the river to the end of old Arbarth Street. The detail gives some quick clues about the new Moscow. One hour fast-photo processing, a jazzy petrol station with glitz decoration, and bananas at international prices, which can be paid in dollars if you wish. Opposite McDonalds is an excellent Art Gallery. We eat at the Ukraina and four of us end the day up on the roof top of the hotel. There is no access, but a dollar or two in the right direction does work wonders in Moscow. This is the kind of tipping I can understand. Everyone wins. The experience is like a Lloyd movie. Saturday 26 August Moscow My sleep has been very broken with prostitutes ringing my room through the night to try and seduce me. It turns out that almost everyone has had the same problem to some extent, although I presume they only keep ringing back when a man answers the phone. Their system is not too good as the women in our group discover that the only people not to get rung were Bevan and Martin. The trap of course is that after being out of touch for some days you leap out of bed on the assumption that it must be New Zealand calling. By the next night I know to just roll over and let the phone ring. By the third night I am well enough adjusted to the prostitute scene to not even bother to roll over. We have been three weeks on the road. I decide it is time to begin a third blade razor. I relish the sunrise over the city and ring Clive at 7.30am to discover that it is only 3.30pm in New Zealand. I rework my calculations. Fantie Watkins has died and the funeral is on Monday. Trixie has written to say that Mary has cancer and is none too well. I resolve to try to get to see her. Tom has moved out of Maesmawr, but Helen is still living there. I get Clive to find out information on Eurodollar Heathrow car hire and the cost of the Holyhead-Dublin ferry. Down to breakfast exactly at eight to find a thousand people in a gigantic queue, with the door to the restaurant securely locked. There is a mad scramble, but the chaos clears much more quickly than I would have expected. Each person gets a tray with a couple of pieces of salami, a hard-boiled egg, a pancake, and a small cup of coffee. There are definitely no returns. It is all more like an army canteen than one of the best hotels in Moscow. The breakfast system is really bad psychology. It means that everyone starts the day grumbling, and it becomes the central and obsessive topic of conversation. There are many things to be very thankful for, and as always plenty of things to grumble about, but the breakfasts seem to ensure that everyone remains in grumble mode until the afternoon. A great pity because it could all be so simply resolved. Open the doors at 6am and most of our group would have had breakfast before anyone else arrived. We would have joked and laughed about it all, and the waiters would have been free of pressure and much more relaxed. The dollar cost of the goodwill created would have been negligible. By 9am we are again gathering in the foyer, delayed only by the lifts. They are hopelessly inadequate to cope with peak demands, but with a little spreading of the breakfast routine and some of the other peak generators the whole problem could have been easily resolved without any need for more lifts. Oleg wanted to leave at 9.30. I insisted that as far as I was concerned if we were paying for the bus arrive at 9am then I wanted it to arrive at 9am. Off at 9.15 for our city tour. Along New Arbarth Street past the new US Embassy, which they refused to occupy because it was bugged. I get a great view of the building from my hotel room. Around the inner circular to park below St Basils, after approaching from the south-east. Because I have insisted on the early start we are the first bus to arrive, which makes it all astonishingly pleasant. We even catch the postcard sellers by surprise, and have got well into Red Square before they catch up with us. By the time we get back there are thirty buses and endless touts. A walk through the GUM store. On over the river by bus, making a stop on the far side to look back at the domes of the Kremlin. Oleg takes us over the road to a souvenir shop. Free vodka to loosen up the purse strings. I linger long enough to watch in a mirror as Oleg is paid his cut of purchases made by the group. It is interesting that he is paid in dollars. On past the Puskin. A new church is being built, with a cluster of tower cranes rising up over the structure. The Donskoj Monastery, which Oleg insists is free, but is not actually on the itinerary. He refuses to come with us, insisting he will meet us at a souvenir shop close to where the bus parks. I end up looking down the barrel of a gun as I argue with a guard who wants 2000 roubles each to let us go through the grounds and 1500 roubles each to go into the Cathedral. His firepower is superior. and the group quite correctly feels they have been cheated. We decide to give it a miss. I could have paid for everyone, but I feel that we have paid to be taken on a city tour, and we ought to be taken on one. Meanwhile Oleg is waiting in the tourist shop to get his cut on purchases. The entire group refuses to even go in, and I am left with the task of trying to get him to come out so we can carry on with the tour. What a performance. We carry on past the cemetery. I would have taken the group to explore this if I had known that I was actually running the tour. On past the Stadium, where crowds of people are pouring into an open air market. Across to the western side of the river, where there is an immense amount of parkland. The university has 28,000 students. Familiar and tired Stalinism. Back over the river and back to the hotel, but we are an hour ahead of schedule, so we stop at Kiev Station to explore the underground. There is not time to take a ride, but we need to buy a ticket to get in to see the murals, mosaics and chandeliers. "The metro" is a separate tour, which is not part of the city tour, so we need to buy our own tickets. I could easily have paid for everyone, but at 800 roubles (around twenty cents to go anywhere on the system) a person it seems much more fun to let everyone go through the same experience as the local peasants. Later on Nancy Ayde does her homework and finds the metro included in the Suntravel description of Moscow. She concludes that because of this it should have been free, and she certainly has a point. Promising more than we can deliver is the very foundation of the consumer society, and it trips us all up from time to time. I end up feeling thankful that we did at least all get to see the Metro because otherwise everyone would really have had reason to feel they had been short changed. Meanwhile Oleg has collected a fistful of notes and is trying to get tickets. I watch to see how he gets on, and another argument develops, apparently over whether a note with Sellotape on it is acceptable or not. The queue becomes a mile long and I almost reach the point of simply going to another window and getting the tickets, but want to avoid seeming to get into an up-staging game, which of course is not my point. We simply want to get on with the things we enjoy doing. One of those is not standing in a station vulnerable to pick-pockets, gypsies and others. One of my rules for safety is to always keep on the move. When you are immobilised you are very vulnerable. Everything is spotlessly clean, but the crowds are more fierce than anything I have experienced, even in Tokyo. The system is being pushed to the limits. The escalators have been speeded up to clear the crowds, but we witness one accident where the emergency button brings everything to a halt as the tangle is sorted out. Much haste, but less speed. At peak hours the trains run every 45 seconds. Drivers must have nightmares about red lights in front and tail-gating trains behind. Lunch is at 1pm at the hotel. Entree, soup, mashed potatoes and carrots. At last we have convinced Oleg to eat with us, but he promptly leaves when we finally turn town his offer of a tour around the War Museum. The price tag is now US$60. We had actually turned the proposal down several days ago, but he kept insisting. He does not seem to understand that the group is extremely good about making their minds up. When they say yes they mean yes and when they say no they mean no. Our itinerary leaves us with a free afternoon, but the group wants me to show them "my Moscow", so we meet again at 2.15 in the foyer. My game plan is to use Old Arbarth Street to walk through to the Architectural Museum and the Puskin Museum, and then follow the pedestrianised shopping streets around to the Bolshoi and other theatres, taking the metro home form somewhere like Lubjanskaja Place, which some of the group want to see. I let everyone make their own relaxed pace, and as a group we never get beyond Arbath Street. To make the trip along from the hotel as interesting as possible we look at one of the original Moscow timber houses, a petrol station, and even a car salesroom. I show people where the cheap bananas are. Then we all get lost among the artists, musicians, camels, horses, colour and life. Mary and Audrey turn up imbibing at a street cafe. Noel enjoys the street theatre. Nancy Pellow gets a good many Muscovites and a dozen New Zealanders involved in bargaining for a fur hat. It is very Western but there are also the old women selling beautiful angora shawls for around US$20, and the music is from all over the world. Everyone loves it. I encourage the group to go on, but they opt for sounding the retreat. A pity. I allow them to find their own way home, back down Arbarth Street. I head a block west and am pleased to have no difficulty locating the courtyard from which the door leads into the Architectural Museum. Our memories all play tricks on us, and it is interesting to find which memories are precise, detailed and very clear. When the temperature is thirty below there is not a great deal of room for error, and I conclude that cold temperatures can sometimes focus the mind. I keep telling the group that they are so lucky to be able to just idle their wandering way around sunny streets, but they just humour me. The Architectural Museum is just setting up a new exhibition focusing on a 16th century house. Part of the timber house is being rebuilt beneath the wonderful white brick arches and vaults. I am able look over some of the drawings. No one speaks any English, and none of my friends are around because it is Saturday, so I can do little more than leave a card and a note. My idea of getting a travelling exhibition to New Zealand is now more difficult than ever, and in Russian eyes would depend on total support coming from outside Russia. Good things which used to happen in Russia have withered on the vine because Western economic attitudes think that life is about making money. A brief look through the Moscow library. If you want to learn a great deal about a person you only need to browse through their library. To a New Zealander the organisation of the Russian written heritage seems very formal, and almost French. The Puskin is just around the corner. Some rooms are just full of junk, such as Classical, European or even Assyrian plaster casts, but there are also exceptional works. There is a feeling of honesty. No one has been over the place yet with a PR report, so the viewer is free to sort it out for themselves. It is strangely refreshing to feel that you are not being manipulated. Memories of Carlo Scarpa's plaster-cast gallery, and the gems which were revealed once we began talking. I love Rembrant's "Old Man". Gaugin fills a room, which allows comparison with the Gaugin exhibition I went to in Auckland two days before flying to Hong Kong. I guess that few Russians realise that Gaugin spent time in New Zealand, and even less that his daughter was probably conceived in an Auckland pub. The stuff of which Bruce Chatwin stories are made. There is half a room of excellent work by Claude Monet, and some really interesting Van Gogh's. The work by Leger, Rodin etc. seems rather predictable, but anyone not able to get to Paris or London could do worse than spending an hour of two in the Puskin. The highlight for me is the Egyptian room. Several small sculptures, dated IV-III Millennium BC, have a vitality and freshness in their relationship to nature, which we seem to have lost. Along through the underground link which leads in to Aleksandrovskij Sad, below the Arsenal. Flowers and people. Major construction works, which have a contentious history. Some say that the park which used to be here was too close to the Arsenal, and there were fears of rioting. Others that important archaeological remains are being revealed and interpreted to encourage tourism. Either way the construction techniques are very sophisticated, with much more flair than we have come to expect from Moscow. Red Square. The great brick buildings which I particularly enjoy. A wedding is popping champagne. The pedestrianised streets to the north are alive with beautiful women promenading for the admiration of the world. High fashions. Lubjanskaja Place. The Academy of Architecture. I leave a note for Sasha. Later I will find that he was away at his dache, where there is no telephone. The Bolshoi and the other theatres, but they are closed for the summer. Back around Ohotnyj Rjad, passing the Zoology Museum and the Anthropology Museum, to look at the construction works at Maneznaja Place from the other side. Down old Arbath, at the jazz time of day, with a check to find some of the old houses recommended to me by the Architecture Museum. At 8.05pm, exactly 5 minutes late, I am back to the hotel to find everyone waiting for me so that they can go in to dinner. Afterwards four of us join a wedding party in the adjacent ball-room, and end up dancing with the guests, to everyone's delight. They bring a video camera to photograph us having fun, and we will never know the feelings of some bride and groom who will look at the video and wonder how four gate-crashers managed to get in. The rooms are well equipped with heated towel rails which are excellent for drying washing, so it seems time to spruce up my sweaty clothes. Sunday 27 August Moscow Diary writing and a general clean up. I sort out my Moscow and Leningrad addresses. Breakfast at 8 am. Around 9am we leave by bus for Zagorsk. The first part of the journey is an opportunity to explore northern Moscow. Then motorways lead on through the countryside. A stop at10.20am. to organise lunch. The others go to the lookout while I race off in the other direction to check out some of the vernacular architecture. The Trinity Monastery includes a number of buildings which are very different in style. Of particular interest to me is the Islamic dropped arch found in both the Chapel-at-the-well and the portico of the refectory church of St Sergius. A mystery to explore. Another mystery is that the stair at the back of the museum seems to have been plucked out of Finland. The pure forms of Romanesque. We go back to our lunch spot by bus. From 12.30 - 1.30 we wine and dine and are entertained by several instrumentalists and a vocalist. They stop very suddenly and demand tips. There may be such a thing as a free lunch, but there is no such thing as free entertainment. I explore the lookout and the nearby area. Everyone wants the bus to stop at one of the small villages to photograph the timber houses, but the driver insists that it is impossible. Remnants of the old Intourist days still linger. However when Oleg tells us that the schedule is over for the day, several hours ahead of the time we are supposed to get to the hotel, I decide that one aspect of the old Intourist style is over. Oleg says as far as he is concerned he is going to the hotel and he is not going to make any suggestions as to what else we might do. It is over to me. It is Sunday afternoon, the sun is shining, and Muscovites are enjoying the summer. Gorky Park, I proclaim, fearing that it will be even more moth-eaten than when I was last there. In some ways it is worse, but in others it has been cleaned up. To keep the riff-raff out an entry fee is charged. Oleg, of course, refuses to help me with buying the tickets, but with lots of rotund smiles from an equally rotund ticket-seller I emerge with a fistful of paper to let us all in. The nouveau riff-raff are running seedy amusement park shows, and there all the usual switch-back and roller-coaster railway rides. Beyond the Western noise the walk along the river is delightful. Families feed ducks. The city silhouette rises above the river. On our walk back to the bus we even find bungy-jumping, so there is something for everyone. Back at the hotel everyone uses the hour from 4,30 - 5.30 to clean up and then after dinner I take them for a walk to see a little of the lives of the people. Monday 28 August Moscow - St.Petersburg Breakfast at 8am., with a slightly different routine. The luggage ends up in a chaotic mess. I checked yesterday at Reception and they were very helpful, agreeing that we could put all our luggage into my room until a convenient late check-out. Oleg then gets in on the act and insists that this will cost US$40. I know it is going straight into his pocket, as he milks the system at every turn. Finally we resolve the confrontation by loading the luggage into the bus. Another incident we could have done without, as it took the edge off a beautiful morning. The Kremlin visit includes all the usual costumes and carriages. I am more interested in the new CD-ROMs which are available for only US$49. This is indeed the new Russia. They are not sure about Mac compatibility so I hesitate to buy. When we get to Europe however I will find that apart from the National Gallery in London the Russians are far ahead. We were hustled through the Kremlin at speed, only to find ourselves far ahead of schedule. Oleg's sense of timing drives me nuts. I try to fill the gap with a walk through the Park and a visit to the Flame of Remembrance. Lunch is back at the Ukraina at 1pm. Oleg's idea is that we sit around at the hotel. My idea is that we make the most of every minute we have in Moscow. He refuses to co-operate. Money changes hands as I work out a deal directly with the driver. Off we go by bus, around 2pm., to Red Square I gave everyone the directions they needed to get to their chosen activities and set off at speed to the Architectural Academy. It is a monumental task to break through the bureaucracy. Finally I manage to get as far as Sasha's personal secretary, and she agrees to take my card in to him. There are queues of important people waiting for whatever it is they think is important and they are totally dismayed when Sasha bursts out of his office, envelopes me in a great bear hug, and takes me through to his room. Time is short. He lines up three glasses of vodka for each of us and orders nibbles, chocolate, tea and other delicacies. It is the Russian way of doing things, he explains, only breaking our conversation to sign an important document or two so that the financial institutions will not grind to a halt because I have arrived. He has heard nothing from Stockholm since Copenhagen, which makes my visit doubly welcome. I give him news of Akio, Reuben and Jim. We make plans for Habitat II. I arrange for his students to link with mine through Internet. I offer to help with hardware. He wants me to look over the exposition, but I have run out of time. I arrive back at the bus in a lather of sweat only five minutes late for our 4.30pm schedule. With my head racing I sink into the soft seat as we drive to the station for the 5.10 train to St.Petersburg. By now everyone is very train-wise and in no time we have squeezed all our baggage into the relatively small apartment. It seems even smaller when Pauline cuts her finger and I need to rummage through all my things to try and find some stitches. By the time Noel has stemmed the blood and bandaged everything up I am past telling anyone that Oleg has put us in the second class rather than the first class for which we had paid. No one notices until we arrive at St.Petersburg, and then they generously let the matter slip. Everything in Russia seems to be easy until Oleg gets involved. The countryside is very flat, with small villages from time to time among the endless forest. Darkness overtakes us. *** Natalia Semenova is waiting with a bus at the "Moscow" station in St. Petersburg, The Station in appearance is exactly like the "Leningrad" Station in Moscow. The streets are relatively deserted, very classical, and we seem to be driving through a film set. I try to match the reality with the images I had been given of a "dangerous" city. The Pribaltiskaya Hotel is generous without being ostentatious. Workmanlike. Tuesday 29 August St.Petersburg Breakfast is at 8.30am in the Red Room, and by 9.30am we are off for a bus tour of the city. The sun is shining. The city is T-shirt warm. The light is sharp and crisp. A jazz band is playing as we alight from the bus. They have a few words with Bevan, and suddenly switch to playing "God Defend New Zealand". There is a light-heartedness about St.Petersburg which is the perfect foil to the exquisite classical setting. We begin the tour where the city began, at the tip of the island where the Neva River divides. From there every bridge we cross and every corner we go around makes the city seem to be more dazzling. It is the integrity. There are no discordant notes in this classical wholeness. Our guide loves the city, and her love is infectious. She knows every detail. After having been a guide for some six years is quite unusual to find that she has not been dulled by tourism. Where we stop to visit the cruiser "Aurora" another jazz orchestra is playing. It seems that the city is filled with music. This was the ship which fired the cannon which began the Revolution. Today it is an immaculately maintained museum. Lunch is back at the Pribaltiskaya Hotel and then we set off again by bus at 2.15pm for a Hermitage Tour. One chandeliered, gilded space leads to another, and the array of art is almost overwhelming. There is time to enjoy the grandeur of the external spaces too. If only the so-called design team filling Queen Elizabeth Square with expensive junk could come here to feel what a space can be like when there is nothing in it. By 5.15 we are back at the hotel for Dinner at 6pm. At 7.30 we head on again to the Ballet. This was not part of the tour, and is expensive at US$35, but we are all feeling that our wonderful journey is closing in on us and some kicking-up of heels is appropriate. Oleg gets his revenge by giving me a special seat from which it is impossible to see more than a third of the stage. What I can see of the Nutcracker Suite is rather lacklustre. A local company assuming you can get tourists to pay lots for mediocrity. I think of Nureyev dancing with Fonteyn. He ruined my appreciation of ballet by setting a standard of excellence doomed to make other performances pale in comparison. Wednesday 30 August St. Petersburg Our bus needs to be away promptly at 8.45 to make certain that we can catch the 9.15am Hydrofoil to Petrodvorets. (Peters Palace) The Gulf of Finland is astonishingly shallow and we follow buoys the whole way along the Southern coast, with a "ship" intersection half way along where we cross the main shipping lane. The Palace is not unlike Versailles, with extensive gardens and fountains to mark the culmination of axes. The whole place was trashed by the Germans in World War Two, so that everything you now see has been reconstructed. The most astonishing thing is that all this reconstruction of palaces with marble staircases sweeping up to gilded mirrors took place during the Communist period. Everything which could be moved was railed across to Siberia for protection during World War Two, and then railed back after the War. Distance has always been the great defence for Russia. As well as all the other art work Petrodvorets has on display a special temporary exhibition of seldom-seen paintings which were spirited away to Russia during the Second World War. There is great diplomatic pressure now for them to be returned. Gaugin's "Two sisters" (1892). George Roualt's "Man with raised arm" (1906). Andre Derain's "Path in park with figure" (c1911-1913). Renoir. Degas. We rendezvous with our bus at 12.30, and travel by land to return to St.Petersburg. This provides an opportunity to see some of the smaller palaces, and the manicured landscape. Closer in to the city we pass the airport and endless apartment buildings built during the sixties and seventies. After lunch we go back in to the centre of town, and spend several glorious hours cruising the canals of the city on the back deck of a small launch. It becomes a celebration as we wave to locals and they wave back. How different from the perspex-topped tourist boats which offer a similar journey, but take away the experience. Organising this boat is the one thing which Oleg does manage to get right. Noel and Isobel moved to their homestay this morning, but they join us again for the canal trip. It provides a fitting farewell. From here they will go south to Warsaw. We then explore the shops of Nevsky Prospect, and take the metro to within walking distance of the hotel. We emerge into the daylight, but Bill's wallet does not. On the escalator someone unzipped his bag and managed to remove it. We all feel very vulnerable. We walk through new and old housing, and explore a school and other community buildings. Dinner at the hotel. On at 7.30pm for the Stavropol Cossacks of the State Dance Company. An ancient legend in the Caucasus relates how people could fly, and these dancers keep the legend alive. By chance I meet Gavin Thompson. His daughter is one of my students, and he is in town for the Russian Farm Fair. He gives me a pass so that I can visit it tomorrow. We sit on the steps for some time waiting for the bus to come, but once we are on board a singing competition takes place. Even Oleg joins in to everyone's surprise. Thursday 31 August St. Petersburg - London Awake somewhere around 7.30 with the sun already well up. The "tide" is in, so I begin to believe that it is the winds which make the difference. Breakfast at 8.15am, with Oleg still getting the numbers mixed up, not realising that Noel and Isobel have left the group. I return everyone's passports around 9am. We are told that there is no point in the bus leaving before 9.45am. as Peter and Paul Fortress does not open to 10am. The tour should have been for an hour, but it was cut short. A pity for there was a great deal to see, but our guide did not seem to understand that. The axis of the island establishes the whole axis of the city, and there has been endless debate about the "natural" axis and the "intellectual" axis. Either way the walled defence works at either end mark out that axis in an architectural sense. We fail to visit them although it would only have taken a few minutes. Within the walls that axis line extends through the mint, which is still functioning, and the Cathedral, which is coming back to life with the realisation that there is money to be made out of Tzarist opulence while not too many Westerners are interested in any critical understanding of socialism or communism. Strong light streams down from the large windows onto the tombs of the Tzars, and bounces back up onto to illusory painted ceilings. The stories of wives, children, lust and corruption are related in great detail as we meet all the relatives. Peter the Great's son Alexey who was part of a failed coup died under interrogation, and is buried under the stair of the Cathedral. I enjoy the thought of being condemned to a broom cupboard for eternity. No mention is made of the interesting DNA testing programme going on at the moment in which some of these tombs are being opened up to provide DNA profiles to make possible the identification of the exhumed remains purported to belong to the last Tzar. A dangerous game I would have thought. One just as likely to turn up the reality that some of the tombs we are looking at do not belong to the Tzars at all. Corruption and intrigue depend heavily on the gullibility of the human mind. The boathouse, which contains a very small boat and a very big tourist shop is in an intriguing position to one side of the open space. The other side of the axis is devoted to stables and other interesting working buildings. There is only time to run down for a cursory look. Off by bus to St Isaacs, but the initial interest has waned, and only four people finally pay to go inside to look. Most just "shop" among the tourist stalls. I would have gone through St. Isaacs, but time is running out and hard choices have to be made. I head off to Nevsky Prospekt to try and find Maslennikov. No luck. His office has moved and I cannot track him down. A mid-day cannon announces the time I need to be back at the bus just as I turn the last corner. We farewell Natalia, our excellent guide. Lunch is back at the hotel at 12.35. Everyone else is happy to just sit in the hotel for the rest of the afternoon, so the time is my own. I paid my telephone bills, and headed off in a hotel taxi, with a wonderfully helpful driver. It is a difficult address to track down, but finally I discover that Mark Chidekel is now in USA. I left a message for Oleg Romanov, as he was away on vacation. Alexandre Plaksiev is really helpful, and is now running architectural tours. He would be the person to contact for any architectural groups. My taxi driver waits for me and then he drops me off by St. Isaacs. I walk east, exploring the Art Nouveau and romantic detailing which I had only been able to see from a distance. I am also able to walk through some of the parks, getting a feel for a variety of urban spaces which tend to not be noticed by those who are concerned with artifacts rather than relationships. West again, and across the most Lejtenanta Smidta bridge to check out the lifting mechanism. None of us have had the energy to get up for the 2 am ritual of lifting all the bridges, so that large vessels can pass through. Back along the Lejtenanta Smidta promenade. Being able to walk beneath the trees alongside all the shipping tied up to the breastwork is pure delight. I think of all the boring people back in Auckland who contend that this is not possible, as they fence the Port off from the people. At the Russian Farmer Exposition I find the New Zealand stall. I have however missed the Russian President by an hour or two. There is no time to worry about it as I walk on at a very rapid pace to get back to the Hotel. The bus to the airport is scheduled to leave at 5.15, and it is frustrating after my frenetic dash to be back on time to find that we are left sitting on our suitcases. We mess about until 6pm. Then at last the porter begins to load the bus. Chaos breaks out. Audrey needs to get off first and her bag has been put at the bottom. Oleg goes and sits in the bus, refusing to sort anything out. The porters refuse to repack. In the finish I end up doing it myself, which takes a lot less time. Then the porters want a tip for not doing it. The tension is high all round, and it leads to a fatal mistake. At the Warsaw Station we farewell Alex, Mary and Audrey as they take the train to Warsaw. Mary's only final desire is to cut the string on Oleg's worry beads so that they will spill across the pavement. I feel no compulsion to prevent her. We are at the airport just after 7pm. Only as we get organised for customs does Bevan realise that his coat, bag and souvenirs are still back at the Pribaltiskaya Hotel. I had been standing beside them and would normally have done a final check, but with all the shambles had been happy to get the bus on its way to the airport. Panic. I know that standing beside his luggage is my friendly taxi driver. I calculate that if I can get everyone to clearly understand we can just make it. Oleg insists that there is not enough time to get a taxi to the hotel and back. The time for being tolerant of his negativity is over. Somehow I get the communication through. Everyone else checks through and I wait with Bevan. We just make it, and Bevan pays for the taxi. At times like this I feel a compulsive need to tip. We taxi for miles to a totally different airport. At 20.35 British Airways flight BA879 wings us away to London. It is dark but we fly over the top of several European cites. I find myself distracted by a US Congressional Mission which has been looking at joint projects in St.Petersburg. This is what the bomb scares had apparently been about. Fred Williamson, my seating companion, is the Director of Imaging Technology Policy with Kodak, handling Federal Government Relations from a Washington base. *** Heathrow is now much more swept up and efficient, but the first impression is not sustained. An airport bus does exist, but the last one for the day has gone. There is an underground, but the tubes are on strike. Finally we squeeze into two taxis. The ride becomes one of those wonderful London experiences. London is best seen through the eyes of a cabbie. The Central Park Hotel brings us back to earth. The rooms are half the size we have become accustomed to. I have a brilliant view into a brick light-well. I feel as though I have arrived "home". Nothing seems to have changed since my days in the tiny flat under the stair in Belsize Grove. Cutting up a carcase of New Zealand lamb in the hallway because there was no room to get it into the flat. Memories of living in Brixton. I was not so sure then but now I look back and remember what good days they were. Friday 1 September London I sorted out what everyone wanted to do for the day, and gave them the tips they needed to make it all work out well. Martin goes off. I continue my clean up. Rang Clive to see that all is well in New Zealand, and he phones back with information I need. We discover that the Suntravel numbers for the hotel are not correct. I never thought to check this before leaving, but did not have time anyway. Finally around 10am I set off to take a nostalgic look at London. The tubes are on strike. The roads are clogged with traffic. It is a pedestrian day. Hyde Park is looking very dry, with grass much browner than in the Gobi Desert. Everyone is talking about the endless dry hot summer. I seem to arrive in each town with the first rain they have had for months. Bayswater Road. Terrace housing. A "private road". A sign declaring "Not all cats are fat cats", erected by the kind of society for the protection of cats which could only exist in England. Those small details which cultures never notice, but which seem so important to the stranger because they speak of community attitudes to the law or your neighbour. On to Oxford Street. Grosvenor Square, with the US Embassy. Berkeley Square, but no nightingales seem to be about. Intimate lanes. A city really working as an urban space. Busy. Intricate. Through the tight web to Piccadilly. At last I find the Cathay-Pacific office, only to find a sign on the door saying that it had closed down. The only London contact is now out at Heathrow. The phone numbers leave me feeling I may as well go out, but there are no tubes. A very English gentleman turns up, and is as frustrated as I am to find the office closed. We reminisce about the early days of Cathay. Flying over the hump. I recommend that he should read "Beyond Lion Rock". Thomas Cook want to charge a fee to get in touch with Heathrow. Why people complain about the Russians mystifies me. At this moment I feel they have nothing on the English. I forgive all when I walk down the road to find myself in the middle of the "changing of the guard". A full military band, pomp, ceremony, and police on horseback for crowd control. A quick walk down to Buckingham Palace since I am so close, and back to St. James Square. and the National Westminster Bank. Up Regent Street, with a cup of coffee along the way to 66 Portland Place. A footpath protest is under way outside, and I am disappointed to find it has nothing to do with architecture. When will architecture arouse passion? The protest is directed at the Chinese Embassy over the road, and is seeking independence for Tibet. The RIBA discreetly draws the curtains as I go in, to make sure that pretensions are not disturbed by the reality of a wider world. The English right to protest stands in contrast to the Chinese refusal to allow protest back home at the Beijing Women's Conference. I am astonished to find there are no CD-ROMs available in the bookshop. They seem to be astonished that anyone would expect them to have anything. England has obviously lost a lot of ground in the last two years. As a consolation prize the largest section of the bookshop is devoted to "Vernacular". Clearly this is flavour of the month. The "Post-Prince Charles" era. The RIBA September programme is not yet available. Late from the printers they say. No one knows what is on, and they suggest going in to the bookshop to look in the front of AJ. Is this seriously an organisation which is likely to change the world? I browse through a few exhibitions, which are well presented but not too exciting. The "Members Room", with plush leather to sink into while browsing through magazines under the watchful eye of dignitaries frozen on canvas. Not much fun on your own. Cake and a cup of coffee in the Cafe. On through endless interesting back streets back to the Hotel. Rang Cathay to spend a considerable time listening to music, with an occasional burst of "all our operators are busy, but please hold ....." Finally I get a real person, only to open up a general state of confusion. They have no record of Bill and Melva Harrison, who are flying, while they have a seat booked for Joan Wiles, who is not flying. I end up getting confused myself, wondering if I have made a mistake, so in the evening I check with everyone to make certain I am correct before beginning to modify the flights. They cannot change my own booking from London without checking first in Auckland, and of course by now the Auckland office is closed for the week-end. I also discover that there are only flights to Auckland on Tuesday, Thursday and Friday, so that my idea of going on Wednesday is not feasible. I put everything on hold and let Martin in. He has been patiently waiting outside the door for me to sort my way through the chaos. He is off to Miss Saigon in the evening, with Nancy Ayde, Anita and Joan, which is great. Off with my passport in my pocket, not quite admitting that the clock has beaten me. I feel so frustrated with English inefficiency that I almost feel like going home on Monday. Across Hyde Park. The space is so vast that it is possible to get lost in it. The protective shelter over the restoration of the Albert Monument is almost more impressive than the monument itself. The Royal Albert Hall. By good chance I arrive at the Natural History Museum just as it begins the free "end-of-day" entry, from 4.30 to 5.50pm.. Since I was last there it has been transformed. The standard of display is now very high, with the dinosaur display, for example, making the dinosaurs of Mongolia look totally inadequate. One whole wing is devoted to a special display on "Ecology". It hardly pushes the edge of the debate, but does try to illustrate the interconnectness of life. I doubt that it would bring about any political change at Karaka Bay. Interactive displays. The foyer is more magnificent than I remember. Mass at Brompton Oratory at 6pm. Harrods is as eloquent as ever. In the basement bank I change US$200 travellers cheques to give me spending money, and then in the bookstore I buy the new AA road map of Britain for 8 pound 99 pence. It feels good to go shopping in Harrods, even if it is now owned by Arabs, and they no longer stock elephants. Knightsbridge. By now it is well dark and I am feeling rather walked-out, so I decide to head for home through Hyde Park. The lighting here is all underground, shining up through grilles to illuminate the underside of the trees. It is so effective, and I wonder why I have had such an endless struggle to get Council to do the same at Karaka Bay. Communicating with the ignorant is very difficult because you are talking about a world which is right outside their experience. British television seems to be all "comedy" of one kind or another, but the news headlines items about ecology and water quality. I try to unravel my paperwork, consuming the last of my Moscow nibbles for supper. A phone call to Robert reveals that Brenda has been offered the Professor of Technology job, Slug is up on the hard, so the prospects of canal boating are slim. I arrange to go up and see them. Martin arrives back after enjoying Miss Saigon. By 11pm I am in bed. Saturday 2 September London Awake at 6am., around the time when Pauline is departing to catch her plane. The pigeons are still flapping in the lightwell. Two hours writing in the semi-dark to avoid waking Martin. He has had a rough enough trip and I am determined that for him it should end on a high note. Breakfast at 8am., at least with a shave this morning. It is a farewell breakfast for Joan and Anita, and I help them carry out their suitcases and load them onto a taxi. They go off to another group tour which commences at a different hotel. I re-organise the rooms, with Nancy Ayde moving in with Nancy Pellow. I take the trouble to write out two precise lists of exactly who is in which room, so that there will be no confusion, and give it to the management. He seems very happy that I have gone to the trouble. However when I get in in the evening, around 9pm I get a very cool reception, and they refuse to give me my room key. They do not seem to know what the problem is, and I am sent off to the cashier. I wait interminably, only to be told that we are leaving tomorrow and that she wishes to remind me that all the telephone bills are to be paid. With her bumbling inefficiency I have had to hang around for 45 minutes, but I keep my cool, and tell her she is wrong. She goes off to check, comes back with my very own note, concedes she is wrong, but does not apologise. I find it all very offensive and insulting, and am thankful that the group is being protected from this sort of behaviour. I would have kept the key in my pocket from then on were it not for Martin needing to share the one key. In Russia they have duplicate keys so that each person has their own. Why anyone from New Zealand would go to England to learn about planning totally mystifies me. We learn about hospitality from our Maori tradition, not from those who run London hotels. I try to unravel my air ticket, finally deciding that Friday is very late to get back to NZ, and as Thursday is not a possibility, I must therefore aim to be back on Wednesday. A day stop-over seems to be essential to avoid a crippling flight, so that means I cannot take full advantage of a 7-day car hire. It is the best I can do. I ring up with the expectation of listening to more music and instead get an un-digitised human voice. It is "Harry", a really cheerful lass with the positive approach to life I need. Nothing is a problem to her, she can see exactly where I am coming from, and in a few moments she has entered my bookings, cancelled Joan Wiles off the flight, put Melva and Bill onto the flight, and checked all the others to see there are no further errors. What a pleasure it is to deal with people like her. Rang Diana Schumacher. She is not in the house, but she is in the country, so visiting her goes onto my list. The morning has been slipping away, but it is raining so I do not feel too badly about that. Off to Queensway Station to buy a 2 pound 80 pence day pass for zones one and two. A change at Oxford Circus, above ground at Charing Cross, and off into Trafalgar Square. The rain has eased, the light is sharp, and there are thousands of pigeons everywhere. I check the Imperial Measure to put to rest the story I had been told that there was now a "metre" there. Fortunately the "human" measure has not been ousted by French technocracy. It is difficult to see when wandering around the National Gallery exactly what all the contention was about. It seems rather non-descript with no challenging spaces. The computer suite is far more interesting. At a terminal it is possible to explore the world of painting through indexes of authors, styles, places or dates, with excellent cross referencing. Having homed in onto a particular painting and inspected it in full colour it is then possible to press "tour". When you have established what you want to see you simply press "print", and a plan of the gallery appears with the location of every painting marked, and a full index with all the details. The CD-ROM is available in the bookstore, so you can take the National Gallery home if you wish. Down in the basement there is a superb exhibition focusing on Turner's "Last voyage of the Temaraire". Turner always seems refreshing. In our journey we seem to have seen works by almost every known painter, with Russia having an astonishing array of Impressionists. However we have not seen a single Turner, and the sensation of seeing the way he interprets light is rather like the surprise I always feel when I return to New Zealand. It had never occurred to me before, but perhaps it is because Turner paints seascapes, while Constable, for example, paints landscapes. I decide that we have enough landscape architects. We need seascape architects. I enjoy the associated paintings, the remnants of the ship, and other material which places the painting in a context. It is the philosophy behind the display which is important. Moving away from paintings as "objects" to seeing paintings as part of a much greater whole. Gaia, sustainability, design ... the terms are less important than the recognition that relationships matter, and they make all the difference. Upstairs I browse through the Leonardo's and Rembrant's. The raw passion of an idea struggling to find form always excites me much more than polished conclusions. I prefer "The Old Man" to the "Nightwatch", which I saw when in Amsterdam in March. I prefer the cartoon of Leonardo. Off up Charing Cross Road, sitting at a street table to enjoy a coffee, a roll, and the life of the city. A short distance up Long Acre is Edward Stamfords (12 Long Acre. tel 171 8361321) perhaps the best shop in the world for maps and travel books. I explore the world, partly to see what is available, and more importantly to see what is not available, so that if I do a PhD thesis and CD-ROM on "City Speak" it will be breaking entirely new ground. I go away reassured. I also note that very detailed maps of the area around St.Julien are available. Quite satisfactory for locating an individual house. I can find nothing comparable for Lucca. Covent Garden. The Royal Opera House. Looking back I could kick myself for missing Sir John Soane's Museum, which is just north of Lincolns Inn Fields. I wanted to see it but had not done my London homework carefully enough. When travelling, even on familiar ground, you need to keep you mind very finely tuned. The DLR (Docklands Light Rail) runs from Bank and by good chance I find myself on the branch line which goes out to Crossharbour at the southern end of the Isle of Dogs. From here I am able to explore the Inner and Outer Millwall Dock area. It has been overwhelmed by commercialism, and feels heavy and lifeless. The DDC visitors centre has just closed for the day. From here I could have gone on to walk under the Thames and past Greenwich to see John and Catherine, but I had tried to phone them and been unable to get a reply. Later I will find that they are in Italy. Back by DLR to Canary Wharf, which is absolutely dreadful. Vulgar, pretentious, and totally lacking any sense of scale or proportion. Close by is Piers Gough's apartment block. Interesting but not exciting. I cannot see his other work and do not have the guide books I need with me. Back by DLR in the fading light to Bank, and I decide to carry on to Queensway, to explore the area here before going back to the hotel. An interesting TV programme on the media and war. The first casualty in any war is indeed truth, but trying to sort out what to do about that is exceedingly complex. Sunday 3 September London Breakfast a little before 8am after a good sleep. Everyone has been achieving a great deal. Nancy Ayde seems to be organising relations all over England. My schedule is crowded so I decide to clear the outlying areas while the tubes are running. A 3 pound 30 pence four zone day pass to give me complete flexibility. The journey to Kew seems to take forever, as I loathe spending time sitting waiting for trains in underground stations. More than an hour and a quarter later I emerge at the delightful "town centre" and walk the short distance down to the gardens. There is now a superb display of marine plants in the basement of the palm house. The tropical fish wander around among the coral, and it could easily be Aitutaki. The relatively new 8-zone glass house makes it possible to travel even faster than we have been doing. Only a pace from Arizona to tropical rain forest A new Japanese pavilion is being built in the traditional way, not far from the pagoda. Back one stop to Gunnersbury Station. It seems to be the only convenient way to cross the river. From there it is a suburban walk to Sutton Court Road, but then I find the address I have for Livio is for his office. I am rescued by a firm of adjacent architects who are shifting their offices. A really helpful soul sorts out Livio's home address, rings, and finds out he is on holiday in Spain for two weeks. Left a message of goodwill for Livio, and an invitation to visit NZ for my helpful friend. Back then to the Gunnersbury Station. By tube all the way through to Hampstead. The pond is partly dried up, and you can see right across the Thames to the Surrey hills. How times change. This is more than I was able to see in the whole time I lived in London. Heath Street is locked solid with traffic jams, in spite of it being Sunday. Down Pond Street past the hospital to 19 Cressy Street to share a coffee with John and Delaine Young. I have not seen them since we said farewell at Karaka Bay after Helen and Derek's wedding. Their two daughters are just back from nine months in Australia. There is unfortunately not the time to accept a dinner invitation. A brief look at both my old flats, in Upper Park Road and Belsize Grove, the Dominican Church down the end of Tasker Road, and the "Haverstock Arms" on the corner. Surprisingly little has changed. I have run out of time so I make my way as quickly as I can from Belsize Park to Queensway. Unfortunately I get caught by the infuriating announcements which constantly seem to be made too late. Just before leaving a station an announcement is made, as the doors close, that you should have changed to another train. I get caught with the split in the Northern line, as there is no other way of telling which track the train will take when the destinations are the same. I end up on the city loop going all the way to Monument. By the time I get back to the hotel I have missed my 6.30pm. rendezvous. Fortunately Bill has left a note to say that they have gone to Stanhope Street. Unfortunately, being London, there are a number of Stanhope Streets. I pound off down Bayswater, hoping to catch them, not realising that I have gone past Stanhope Terrace to get to Stanhope Street. I can find no "Victoria". Back again and this time I am lucky. The pub is indeed all they described, and I can see why they enjoyed it so much. A "black and tan" - Guiness and blackcurrant - with Bill, Melva and Nancy Pellow, and then we go over the road to the Hyde Park Tapas Wine Bar and Restaurant for a farewell dinner. It is a little pretentious and up-market, but nothing is going to stop us from enjoying ourselves. (10 pound for the meal and wine. The Guiness is one pound and threepence. No rounding out occurs in England.) Back at Central Park we are joined by Nancy Ayde for a Heineken in the Harrison's room Bill and Melva went to Westminster, South Bank, Campden and Hampstead, by bus. They discovered everything from a real Lady Godiva sitting on top of a building to all the local markets. Martin tells me when I get back to my room that he made it to the War Cabinet rooms. Some time after 11pm I fall asleep. Monday 4 September London - Southwell Up early to catch up on my diary, while trying to not wake Martin. Clive rings around 7.30am. Helen rings a few minutes later. A final hilarious gathering for breakfast at 8am. The restaurant manager comes along and asks "Was it your table looking for honey?" Ever so seriously, and quick as a flash, Nancy replies "My honey is back in New Zealand." It seems to have become a pattern for the trip. Never an occasion for which there is not an appropriate joke. As we thank them all the staff say that they will miss the laughter in the morning. Martin packs and I follow. In these rooms simultaneous activity is not a possibility. The cashier rings and hassles me which gets up my nose, leaving me more inclined to pay and then ring Lynne in Hong Kong, than to tie up all the loose ends and then ensure that all the bills are paid, as I have become accustomed to doing. No messages, so I ring Harry at Cathay. It is "ok" to change, but it will cost me $50. I ring Lynne, but she has obviously left for Singapore, so I leave a message to say I will stay on Monday night. Everyone leaves their luggage in the generous luggage room. It would sleep fifteen. Off to the tube. There are immense queues at the ticket office. The strike is in full swing. They assure me that some trains will be coming through. "About every 15 minutes". My enthusiasm for spending all day waiting in tube stations is minimal. Off at a brisk pace to follow a new route to Pall Mall. Called in at New Zealand House to check the news and refresh my memory of the carving which is causing all the contentiousness. Checked Edward Cullinane's address, but eventually I run out of time to get there. When I get back to Dunedin John Hawkhead will be reminiscing about the time when Ed came to the Christchurch NZIA Conference. Back around to the bank where they xeroxed my passport with a smile. Through the corner of Trafalgar Square and down Whitehall to Westminster Abbey and the Houses of Parliament. Millbrook looks just as it did in the sixties. Is it really the same grime on the glass? The Tate Gallery is still free, with old friends waiting to greet me. Giacomo's sculpture. I remember the Louisiana in March. Turner seems better than ever. The development across the river shows just how dull monumental formalism can be. Across Westminster Bridge to County Hall. My old office is apparently being turned into an aquarium. Festival Hall. My Hayward Gallery is closed while they are mounting an exhibition. The National Theatre has nothing to excite me. "Under Milkwood" in the Olivier must be a favourite for anyone who has to handle the pompous newcomers to Karaka Bay, but it is familiar ground. Volpone by Ben Johnson (1606), and "A little night music" by Sondheim (1973) seem very safe. John O'Keefe's "Wild Oats" (1791), Joe Orton's "What the butler saw" (1967), and Eduardo de Filippo's "La Grande Magia" (1948), all in the Lyttelton, seem to be more concerned with box office safety than theatre for our time. In the Cottesloe Shakespeare's "Richard II" defines theatrical sustainability, 1595. 400 years and still going strong. Ernst Toller's "The Machine Wreckers" (1922) and David Hare's "Skylight" bridge the centuries. We are now so spoilt with good theatre in New Zealand that perhaps London is bound to be a disappointment. The National Film Theatre, with the new Museum of the Moving Image. Again times have changed. Fellini and Bunuel screened to small audiences up in Hampstead, but now the astonishing array of avant garde work at film festivals in New Zealand is packed out. The NFT schedule seems familiar rather than exciting. Hungerford Bridge, with a glimpse of Lloyds in the distance. Charing Cross looks impressive from the river, but it fades away to nothing as you enter, and is invisible from the Trafalgar Square side. Up Regent Street, with a brief side excursion into the streets of Soho. There are crowds everywhere in this lively city. Leicester Square is packed. Perhaps just tourists. A mad dash along Oxford and Bayswater. I would have jumped into a taxi, but walking is better than the frustration of sitting immobilised. I am ten minutes late for our 3.30pm rendezvous. The concierge who has been so helpful to Martin has organised for his fifth cousin to turn up in a very swept up "non-London" taxi which comfortably takes five of us and all our luggage. The driver follows the scenic route to Heathrow, even taking us past Sutton Court Road and Kew Gardens, much to my surprise. 35 pound, and everyone throws in five or seven. Terminal 3 seems very manageable, and there are no crowds. Handshakes and hugs and the great Trans-Siberian shopping spree is over. Not quite, of course. I hear later that Bill will finally get the piece he wanted for his camera in Hong Kong. Bill and Melva, Nancy Pellow and Martin were the last four, and as I watch them disappear upstairs I suddenly have that feeling of being on my own. I have enjoyed the companionship enormously. *** It is 4.45pm. Through to Arrivals. There is no one at Eurodollar, so I ring through on their phone. They offer a week for 171 pound, so I take it. Budget is 174 pound, so they seem to be about the same. It seems better to stay with the firm I know. Outside to Stop 19 and a Eurodollar shuttle arrives. The paperwork is straightforward. The Peugot offered over the phone becomes an "assembled in England" Nissan Micra. M 369 SJH. I think of the phone booths on Bayswater Road which have dozens of cards advertising prostitutes blue-tacked to all the windows. What is promised over the phone is not necessarily what you get. Off on the M4 to Windsor. Alma Road does not leap out to find me, so I do a few circles before a taxi-driver points me in the right direction. At least I have the one way system mastered, and I swing easily into 87, much to the surprise of Mark who is cleaning the car. It is Andrew and Christina's anniversary, so I insist that this is my reason for dropping in. Andrew is one of the world's great story tellers. A cup of coffee, two years of news to catch up on, and then they head off for a celebration dinner. At 6.45 I head back on the M4 to take the M25 circular. The journey around to the M1 seems to be interminable, because it does not feel as though you are heading as far north as is the case. The light fades, it begins to rain. The spray from trucks reduces visibility to zero, and most of the traffic travels at around 80 miles/hour. Terrifying in my little Micra, but the car has plenty of sting and the road holding seems to be good. Fortunately during the whole week I never find myself pushed to absolute limits. Milton Keynes in the distance. Life seems to be too short to waste it on boredom. Northampton. The turn off to Birmingham and Coventry. Leicester. There are three exits for Nottingham. I take exit 26 to the A52, because it seems to offer the least chance of getting lost. Navigating on your own in the dark when it is teeming with rain is a nightmare. Towards the City Centre and by a stroke of good luck I find the A612 is signposted to Southwell. Several times I decide I am lost and turn back to find where signs are missing, but given the conditions getting to the Autonomous House is more straightforward than I feared. At 10.05pm, as I triumphantly park in the yard the curtain is tentatively drawn back. Robert and Brenda are in bed, but soon they are up again. I am too exhausted to want to do anything other than climb up the ladder to the Karaka Bay suite. Learning to operate the house can wait until the morning. Tuesday 5 September Southwell Robert and I intended to spend the morning emptying out the Clivus, but by the time I have sorted out how to run all the systems the phone is ringing with an invitation to go across and look at an electric car conversion at the Hockerton property where the five underground houses are to be built. We end up drinking coffee in the sunny courtyard while we pour over the plans and model. I need to explain why the space we are in is so pleasant. Solar design is not a new idea. On to Nottingham University to meet Brenda for lunch, and then she very graciously lets me use her e-mail for the first effective communication I have had back to the Department. Unfortunately I do not have the course outlines with me, after carrying the information all around the world. Down with Robert to check out "Slug" to find that she is back in the water. My first chance to learn how to steer a canal boat as I take her back to her moorings. The new Inland Revenue Department building is alongside the canal, looking up to the castle. It seems astonishing that the brief should ask for a non-air-conditioned building. Times are changing, even if it is not as quickly as some of us might hope. Back to the Autonomous House for a relaxed meal. Brenda and Richard play games but I am too tired for the intellectual demands. I am very glad to be able to retreat to the Karaka Bay suite. Wednesday 6 September Southwell - Tiglin It was meant to be an early start, but inevitably I end up talking and then there are the photographs which I really should have taken yesterday. A nostalgic wander through the Minster and some of the local byways. North to the A617. Hockerton. Kirkilington. Mansfield. Chesterfield. Clive and I had explored this country when we were last here, so I am happy enough to drive on through. The Peak District National Park. The bleak and lonely terrain is always impressive. Ashford in the Water. Buxton. Macclesfield. Rod Hackney is unfortunately away on holiday, but I yarn with his friendly secretary. Rod is off to the USA in October to lecture on community architecture. I suggest that he should make contact with Jim Morgan. Rod will have a letter waiting for me when I get back to NZ suggesting that he could use some of my slides on his study tour. Knutsford. The M6 up to the M56. I would have liked to get up to see Bob Quealy, but it would take forever to find my way through Liverpool without a navigator. I make the hard decision and press on. North of Chester and on to the A55. It is not a good way to enjoy the countryside, but the roads are all dual carriageway and it is possible to cover a lot of ground. A stop for a mixed grill and a cup of coffee. In one sense I do not have the time, but feel it would be better to safely miss a boat, than to go over the edge trying to catch one. It gives me a chance to look at some maps and calculate some distances. It would have been too far to go south to Llangollen to see the aqueduct. One day I will get there in "Slug". Conwy. New tunnels to shorten the distance. Menai Bridge. My road speed drops drastically. Holyhead. I still have 45 minutes before the boat, which I believe is departing at 3.45. I follow a sign "to the Lynx". That was a mistake. A helpful soul tells me it is the slow boat which I want, and it leaves at 5pm. He shows me the boat in the distance. I relax. Around the corner to the main terminal. There are two lines and two boats. The prices are the same. The "Irish Ferry" to Dublin goes at 3.45, and is the boat for which Clive had sorted out the details. The Stella line goes at 5pm, and I realise that the man I had been talking to was a Stella employee. Fair enough that he should only give me half the story. I can have a ticket for the Irish Ferry if I go now. "Yes", but it is too late. They telephone from the ship to say that they are putting the gangway up. I buy a Stella ticket, idly pick up their brochure and join the queue. We move forward to the base of the boat ramp, and while waiting I browse through the brochure, to discover that they have a 48-hour Irish special, which provides a free trip. I leave my car and run back to the ticket office. No problem. He simply gives me a free ticket and I have saved myself a hundred and nine pounds. The only challenge is that I must catch the 10.30pm boat on Friday night. This is the first available boat after the expiry of the 48 hour period. The Stella Cambria is very well appointed. The sea is like glass, which I find unbelievable. I am very happy to lean over the rail and let someone else do the driving. The coast is rugged, and the sea seems to be quite shallow. I presume that it is an oil rig we pass. A meal. They want two and a half percent to change money. This grates, so I leave it, not thinking about accommodation for the night. We reach Dun Laoghaire on schedule around 8.30pm. South. It is dark. I investigate a few bed and breakfasts, but they really put me off. Have I come all the way to Ireland for this? Then I stumble on a youth hostel sign. Up a lonely road. I decide I must be mistaken so back to the pub to check. I am right. Back again. It is 10.45pm when to my great relief Rupert welcomes me into one of the most wonderful buildings in Ireland. Everyone else is in bed, and in a few minutes so am I. Thursday 7 September Tiglin - Cork I sleep in late with the grey sky and swirling mist confusing my body clock. This is the weather of which mysteries on the moors are made, and where better to enjoy such an atmosphere than in this wonderful complex of farm buildings. From the low hill behind the buildings the full beauty of the protected entrance ways is stunning. The horseshoe arch to the forge is like nothing I have seen before. When I am about to head off around 9am I call out farewell to Rupert. He has obviously been fascinated by my delight and we end up carrying on the exploration together. The pig pens with the chicken "attic" above to take advantage of the warmth, the byres for feeding out, the astonishing size of the slates on the roof. He tells me the slate is from Wales, not Ireland. We talk about the need for restoration. The only architectural intervention is so insensitive with its concrete block that I cannot believe the crassness. Why is love so hard to find in this world? We are not short of tasks to be done. We are short of the love needed to direct those tasks. It would have been worth going to Ireland for this one building, but I am conscious of the distance to Cork and wend my way through the mist down to Ashford and head on south through not-very-special but nevertheless interesting countryside. There are endless mediocre suburbanised Bed and Breakfasts. This is tourist country, but I cannot see why. I pick up a hitch-hiker who explains all the countryside and tries to convince me to go to Kilkenny, where he was born. When he explains that all the tourists go there I decide this is reason enough to stay away. Kilkenny is the home of a black marble. I see a little in the cathedral at Mullingar. My hitch-hiker used to sell insurance, but is now selling a pen which can be used to identify fake banknotes. The ink turns yellow for genuine notes and black for forgeries. I drop him off at Ennisworthy and take a walk around the town. With steep streets, it could be Wales. A traffic diversion sends me off for a romp through the Irish countryside, but eventually it leads me back to New Ross. I pick up another hitch-hiker who is going through to Waterford to collect a rental car for delivery. Everyone seems to hitch around Ireland. Perhaps many of them are businessmen rather than students, or folk making their way home after one-way car deliveries. She is another fund of local knowledge. At Waterford I change $100 into my first Irish pounds, which gives me some local currency to go off and get a "mixed grill" for lunch, with good coffee and a generous glass of milk. Indeed everything is generous, which reinforces the lasting impression I took home from my first visit to Ireland. Five pounds the lot. On the wall I am fascinated by three maps, showing the early town walls, later development, and then the final town plan. There is not a right angle anywhere in any of the plans. I had not expected to find such an interesting place. A mile or two out is Waterford crystal, a very smooth tourist operation, with factory tours, and a lavish shop. There are also superb loos. I have no time to tarry so on to Dungarvan. Photographs at Youghal where the Blackwater River runs out to the sea. I had expected to find Mount Mellary on this road, but it eludes me. Picked up another hitch-hiker, who tells me he is saving a four pound bus fare by getting a ride to Cork with me. There are massive road works as we go in, and Glen Mirre is lost somewhere in the midst of them. Mayfield sounds familiar as the suburb where the Dominicans are so I decide to head for there first. After endless enquiries and following directions all over the place I finally end up Ennismore, Montenotte, a Dominican Retreat House. Brother James is really helpful, but tells me I am on the wrong side of town for Eugene's grave. He attempts to show me where to go, but then gets totally confused himself Conceding that he cannot read maps he humbly decides he should seek help. After a few minutes he comes back with Paul Ramsey. We look at each other in disbelief. Paul speaks first, reminding me that I took him sailing at Karaka Bay one Christmas Day, when I was sharing a little of that traditional hospitality. I must confess that I did not think it was Christmas Day, but this is a time for nostalgia not discussion. We laugh about Eugene's flamboyant descriptions of my house. He phones Tommy to say that I have arrived and will come around shortly. He arranges for me to stay at Ennismore. Then he takes me off to the South side of the city, in his own car to find Eugene's grave. I would never have found it without a very good map, but as a rough guide it is almost next to the Malvern Sportsground, famous because it was here that Paul watched Ireland beat New Zealand 9-8. The grave is exactly as Hugh and Eugenie described it, with the name almost lost on the back of the single Dominican monument in the centre of the fenced plot. A prayer, a few photographs, and a moment of reflection on all that we shared and did together. It was good that Eugene should have lived at Karaka Bay when there were happier times. Who would know him now as the "Bard of the Bay", walking up and down reading poetry? Who would laugh now at his singing in the sauna as he recovered from the damage done when he was nearly paralysed to death? Who would even understand the wit of the famous "Grace for Ian" at the "Karaka Bay Festival" hangi? The spirit of Eugene lives on at the Bay, but only for those who are sensitive to the spirit of the Bay. Paul then takes me on for a personal journey through Cork. Where Eugene taught, and where he went to school. Buildings and places they shared as they were growing up. The physical setting of Eugene's Ireland. He rings ahead, guides me on to the church by the road junction, and Tommy comes to meet me there and guide me on to the Hermitage. I am totally lost until we swing into the drive, and suddenly everything seems familiar, from Eugene's photographs. Tess, his wife, and one of his sons are waiting for me, and one of Eugene's sisters comes over from her house nearby. She is a Moynihan. We talk the night away. They remember when Ruth Millar stayed for a day or two. The time Tony Molloy called in. Dave and Glenys. Hugh and Eugenie. Tom and Tess are named after Tom and Tess of course, and they are surprised to find that I am Tess's godfather. Tess is related to another Thomas, who is in turn related to the Strevens. One night is not enough to weave the threads together. For them, of course Eugene is Noel, and there is a whole other side of the man which I know very little about, close as I was to him. Around 10pm Tommy drives ahead of me to guide me all the way back to Ennismore. It is an exquisite full moon and spread out below are the lights of Cork. Room 15 is my home, and as I write up some diary notes I ponder what I should do tomorrow. Friday 8 September Cork - Stella I am awake well before dawn, but try to rest a little so that I will not be too tired for driving. A generous Irish shower and I am creeping out quietly to avoid disturbing anyone when I meet Fth. Robert Davidson in the corridor. He offers me a coffee, I decide I ought to accept, and we end up talking about his interesting life in Argentina and other parts of the globe. When he came to Ennismore in 1975 he met Eugene, but he did not know him well. A slice of bread and I am inclined to stay for Robert's 8am Mass in the chapel, which still bears the print of Eugene's re-organisation, but am very nervous about the distances I still have to drive. This has been a trip of constantly wishing for an extra day. Down to find a parking space right outside the Dominican Centre, which makes it possible to share the morning office. On by foot to explore Cork, with a limpid sun hanging over the river as the city slowly wakes up. I then get totally lost trying to find my way out through the one-way system and end up back at the Dominican Centre. I decide I am meant to share the 8.30am. concelebrated Mass with Paul Ramsey, which seems a very fitting way to end my wonderful stay. Filled up with petrol, which gives me a chance to check route times. The attendant suggests it would take at least two and a half hours to get to Tralee, and another two from Tralee to Limerick. The direct route to Limerick is about an hour and a half. Without another week to spend exploring the byways of Western Ireland the choice is made for me. I am also discovering that Western Ireland is simply not what it used to be. It is now over-run by Germans and Dutch seeking to escape from Europe. The driving is excellent when not caught behind a truck. Trucks become the bane of my life on narrow Irish roads. Passing is not an option, and it is impossible to enjoy the scenery when driving behind a truck. I get into the habit of just waiting to let them get ahead and then catching up again. Ireland seems to have an astonishing array of ruins. Derelict castles and abbeys all over the place. Those from the 12th century at Mallow are fascinating as the cemetery is inside the walls, totally reversing spatial expectations. There is a large encampment of gypsies beside Mourne Abbey. The number of gypsies in Ireland is astonishing. It seems as though others have left while the gypsies have stayed on. Interesting small towns. and gently rolling countryside. A new church at the Tralee road junction. Limerick is a complete traffic tangle of such magnitude that I eventually decide to divert back to the bypass, just looking at the island up the river. A lavish motorway leads on to Shannon airport. New factories everywhere. Bunratty Castle looking like a papier mache tourist mock-up. Pleasant rolling countryside. Galway. The dock area, with an atmosphere of dereliction and the tide far out. Out along the coast road to explore a little, but the charm I remember has all gone, overwhelmed by the scungy mediocrity of people wanting to escape from the mediocrity they have created elsewhere, but bringing it all with them. The Karaka Bay problem. Rain develops. The environment is sad for what it once was. I wonder if the far side of Galway Bay is any different and turn to head east again. Another hitch-hiker to take on to Loughrea. My gaelic causes constant confusion. Loughrea sounds like "Loch-aire". I was half way around Ireland before I discovered that Dun Laoghaire is actually "Dun Leary". No wonder no one could understand me, or where I wanted to go. On the recommendation of my hitch-hiker I stop at the "Skillet Inn" for lunch. A very old Irish pub. Lasagne and coffee. It is a pity to be driving and not able to imbibe a little Guiness. Stone fences. A photograph of them. A good road all the way, even after I turn off at Athlone and Ballykeeran to take the R390 to Mullingar. The Royal Canal. Mullingar has a pleasant and busy town centre. I am not sure about the Lakefield address, and enquiries lead only to blank stares. By good chance I enquire at a solicitor. Yes, Denis Johnston is just around the corner. A very traditional office with the pleasant air of another century. A solid timber balustrade leads up to a very surprised Denis. It is worth taking a few risks when travelling just to enjoy the surprise on people's faces. Denis is very gracious. We meet his son Shane who hopefully will take over the business, look over the Cathedral outside which I have parked, and then go on to Lakefield, passing along the way the cottage where he first lived. I love weaving the story of people's lives into the fabric of the landscape and the buildings they have lived in. Lakefield is most impressive. Brooding clouds hang over the lake. Oily portraits hang over the mahogany polished table. Tea in the generous family kitchen. Without a visit I could never have imagined such a mansion. I take Denis back to his office around 6.30pm. and head on to Dublin. Denis suggests an hour and a half, but I am there in less than an hour in spite of very heavy traffic. Dublin, like London, is close to gridlock. When I return to New Zealand even our crowded peak hour roads seem relatively deserted. I follow the river right through the town and on out to the port. Found the Royal Canal locks. Even a gypsy encampment close by. I cannot find the new development I was expecting. My homework had not been thorough enough. All the new buildings are pompous and badly scaled. A long walk around the centre. Dublin Castle, Trinity College, the Abbey Theatre, O'Connell Street. I find it all tawdry and unpleasant, which is the way I remember it. I cannot find the Georgian spaces which Denis has recommended to me, so I set off by car, but the one way street system becomes a maze with no way out. From initially regretting that I did not have more time I am pleased to be able to leave Dublin behind. Filled the car up with petrol to use my remaining money as I make my way south to Dun Laoghaire. I think I have time to spare but am shown almost directly onto the Stella Cambria for the 10.30pm sailing. The ramp for the upper deck needs to be raised so that the lower deck can be filled, and this results in being early on and very late off. With a full moon over the lights of Dublin our departure is very romantic, but I am alone on the top deck to enjoy it all. Conditions are described as moderate, but it seems to me that there is no sea at all. A meal. The Times tells of riots in Tahiti as the people try to break free from the tyranny of France and the French nuclear holocaust. Some diary notes. A valiant attempt to get some rest. Saturday 9 September Stella - Caersws The manoeuvrability of the boats continues to astonish me, as we berth on time, somewhere around 2am., after curling around the lights of Holyhead. I will arrive back in New Zealand to see a photograph of the Stella Challenger, which went aground off Calais on the Bleriot-Plage sandbank. The boats have an astonishingly shallow draft and are almost flat-bottomed. Little wonder that it is possible to turn them around almost in their own length. Access to the upper car decks is by an internal ramp which cannot be lowered until the lower deck is cleared. The small band of all-nighters wait for what seems like another hour for the ramp, complete with the cars parked on it, to be lowered. Off through the streets of Holyhead. The sign to Trearddur sends me off down a sideroad to find somewhere to park and get some sleep. Trying to navigate on my own in the dark is hopeless. Villages and caravan parks, but no sign of the Holyhead Mountain Heritage Coast. Eventually I retrace my steps, only to realise the next day that I had almost completed a loop road. Other abortive searches. Narrow lanes which never seem to get beyond being narrow. A reserve where my sense of environmental protection prevents me from "camping overnight". I must have been very tired to think that I would fit that description. Finally after 4am an all-night service station lets me park in a yard. I was past the point of being too tired to drive, but being well tuned to travelling the reserves are there to meet the occasion. A couple of hours later, with the sunrise, I curl myself out of the back seat and carry on. Only when I get back to New Zealand will I discover that Pasty and Nick are on holiday close by, and I could have had a bed for the night. That's life. That's travelling. Anglesea is quite densely developed with small holdings. I miss the A5 turn off to the town of Menai Bridge, but as I cross the Strait on the new bridge I can see what I am after. Thomas Telford's absolutely superb Menai Straights Bridge. The source for the Pompideau Centre is here. It pins together like a giant meccano set. Every joint is beautifully crafted. I ponder the mind of a man able to think at such a vast scale and yet also be concerned about the small detail. Today he would feel equally at ease with the great issues of global warming or the sweet trill of a tiny invisible grey warbler. Beaumaris is only a few miles along the Straight and well worth the drive, with the dawn light shimmering on the endless twin keel yachts lying, stranded by the ebbing tide. There is a fine castle and moat, and of course superb places where I could have spent a comfortable night. From here you look across to Bangor Pier which compares favourably with Brighton. One day I will go on out to Puffin Island, but that is for another trip. Back up to Menai Bridge around 7.30am. and south on the A487. Caernarfon, with views across the wild coast. Snowdonia is exquisite. The sun is shining, the light is sharp. The landscape here makes the Ireland I have seen seem very ordinary. Wales is undiscovered territory, and I hope that it remains that way. Tourism is the great destroyer. Down through wonderful valleys to Porthmadog, where Traeth Bach runs out into Tremadog Bay. This was once a small but thriving port from which the slate brought down by the Ffestiniog Railway was shipped away to cover roofs all over the world. Today the port has been almost overwhelmed by a very average housing development, but the context is as superb as ever. Why architects all over the world insist upon privatising our history by building houses over the commons mystifies me. Back in Auckland Marsh Cook and Peter Beavan are advocating just this for the Viaduct Basin. If only people travelled with their eyes open we could save the world a lot of pain. The railway has now been fully restored, with love and commitment evident everywhere. A diesel train does the first run for the day, but I have some breakfast and a coffee while waiting for the usual steam train. The brass is polished, the whistles toot, and I think how excited Barry would be if he was here. The fully restored station includes a large museum with photographs and mementos to excite anyone who loves slate. A pity the group is not with me to go for a ride up to the quarries through the Snowdonia National Park. Marion, the pseudo-Italian village built by an eccentric architect is at Minffordd, only a short distance past the 5p toll on the road. By now the world is waking up, the traffic is heavy, and I think how shrewd someone is to set up a 5p toll on a major road. Onto the A470, coming south from Ffestiniog. Familiar territory as we were through here two years ago after the Chicago UIA Congress. The visitor information centre at the Trawsfynydd Atomic Power Station is almost sickening in its public relations presentations. "We have not left future generations to pay the environmental costs as other industries have." For the politically correct you could say "Nid ydym yn disgwyl i genedlaethau'r dyfodol dalu'r costau amgylchedddol, fel y gwnaeth diwydiannau eraill." Tours are available, but they take one and a half hours, with the first half hour taken up by a brain-washing video. You are not allowed to take the tour without the video. I settle for a coffee which I decide is a level of toxin I can handle. Trawsfynydd is being de-commissioned. An entirely new concrete bunker is being built around the outside of the whole structure, and this will be sealed up to allow the radioactivity to decay over the next 130 years. By that time it should be possible to go inside to begin to demolish the radio-active building. Ultimately Snowdonia National Park will be restored to the pristine condition it was in before the station was built. All this will be achieved at no cost to the consumer and the process is absolutely safe. Patience is the only thing apparently which some people do not have enough of. Dolgellau. Tal-y-llyn, the disappearing lake because it seems that you are going to drive past it, but then the main road turns off and the tantalising promise remains unfulfilled. The Centre for Alternative Technology. It seems to be from another age. The water powered cable car is an economic overkill which could never recover its embodied energy, and the Centre seems to be going further down the same blind alley. They want more than a million dollars to put up a building to demonstrate sustainability. The energy is going into fund-raising rather than working out that this is an environmental dead end. Nothing seems to have moved on, and the extent of the displays seems to be less than it was in the sixties. At least then you knew the methane generator was not working, and you could go and have a look at the reasons why. Now the cracks are papered over and the difficult questions are hidden from view. There are fun demonstrations for the children, and the crowds roll in, but the building exhibits have very little to say. Walter Segal is fine, but the world has moved on and Walter would have moved with it. Sealing up windows is what the Canadians did thirty years ago, and then they had to pass legislation to stop it because of all the people dying of toxic fumes. New Zealand seems to be light years ahead of where CAT is at, simply because thousands of people got on and explored the issues instead of getting bogged down in a dream. Machynlleth. Caersws. Initially I am disoriented with coming in from this side. It is interesting that we often have the sharpest memories of every detail when our minds are stretched, while we relax when with the familiar. Observation is not something we automatically do, and I suspect it is not something we can choose to do either. Perhaps the world will need to be in an even more severe crisis before people will begin to observe. Up to Brynhylleg to find out where and how people are from Jane and Angus. I have little choice other than to be really rude and ask if I can phone Cathay to get my trip home delayed by two days. In my extremely tired state the thought of just getting a few hours sleep and then needing to drive all the way to Heathrow before 4pm tomorrow is more than I can take. I can only get a wait-listing on the sector to Hong Kong, but am more than happy with that. Trixie is at Belan Barns with Mary, so Jane and Angus tolerate even more rudeness as I dash off down the road to see them both. There is disbelief rather than surprise, but soon stories are being told, and the light is fading from the magnificent view down the valley before I make my way back to Brynhelleg for the night. Mary is in bed when I arrive, but by the time I leave she is full of colour again and dashing around making cups of tea and pouring sherry. More relaxed time now with Jane and Angus before sinking into the luxury of a wonderful bed. While trying to keep my eyes open to enjoy the moonlight and the rough-hewn beam across the ceiling I collapse into dreams. Sunday 10 September Caersws Jane and Angus pressed me to stay for lunch, and I felt the rest would do me good. Besides it was raining and not very pleasant to go anywhere. We talked half the day away. It seemed as though the day would close in early, and so I accepted and earlier invitation and decided to stay for an extra night. In the afternoon I went down the direct route to Newtown, up to Dolfor and over the B 4355 to Knighton. Trixie was not in, having taken the children off to school and not yet returned. Up the A 488 to Clun, to explore the castle and the old town. On to Bishop's Castle, and from there the B 4385 leads through to Montgomery. The rain seems to get heavier, but from the castle I look through the mist at the two straight roads which Angus has told me about. Montgomery is interesting not only for family connections but also because it has been a significant site from the earliest times through Roman settlement and on to the Civil War and the eventual destruction of the castle. It was too wet to sort out the land-forms which I am convinced lead to an urban design continuity. Offa's Dyke also runs up the valley close by. All that will have to wait until some time when the weather is better. I discover that a bottle of wine cannot be bought at the local pub. They wonder which planet I have dropped in from, and then direct me to the supermarket. There are no New Zealand offerings and Australian seems like a poor substitute. I settle for some Chianti. Mary is on her own at Belan Barns, and she enjoys talking of old times. Family stories. Some I have heard before, but I need to be reminded. I think how we would play our cards differently if only we could know what life will bring. Social convention forcing us into a mould which does not exist. Back at Brynhylleg my room seems cosier than ever as the rain beats down. I ring Martin Valatin only to discover that Bradford-on-Avon is close to Bath, and miles away from Stratford-on-Avon. Martin tells me that Avon is simply Welsh for "river", so that there are Avons all over the place. Monday 11 September Caersws - Oxford A hot bath. Tea and cereal around 7.30 with Jane, while Angus is feeding out. A phone call to Cathay Pacific in London. My wait-listed seat for Tuesday has become available. Another call to Eurodollar at Heathrow gives me an extra day on my car hire. I decided I had better phone Lynne in Hong Kong. She is on another phone so I leave a message to say I will be two days late, and staying on Wednesday night. Everything is now in place for my return home. The sun is shining. It is a great day. The direct road down to Newtown. I had intended to be much earlier, but it is already 9.30, so the shops are open. I hesitate, but then end up in Clarkes. Shoes to replace the ones I am wearing will not be in for another month, so I settle for a waterproof pair with similar cushion soles. Off to Knighton. At the crest of the road I pause to photograph the horses and sheep enjoying an Indian summer. On the way down I pause to photograph the dove-cot at Pound Farm, and May Ruell comes out to talk to me, and then to show me around. Trixie is busy with a mail out, so I give her a hug and am on my way. At Bromyard there is no sign of Patsy or Nick. The car is in the drive, leaving the feeling that they are close by, but on the other hand there is mail everywhere which seems to indicate they are away for a few days. I leave a note and press on. I will discover when I get back to New Zealand that they were in Anglesea. I need to make a difficult choice. It is becoming clear that it will be impossible to weave from Oxford across to Bath and Cheddar, and back to Heathrow via Winchester. Worcester. I would have stopped to look at the cathedral, but it is impossible to find anywhere to park, and finally I decided the distance to walk back is too great. The Cotswalds. It is only a detour of two miles to go down to Chipping Campden. Yellow stone and thatched roofs. The lineal spine enlarging for the market hall, Delightful, but not the mood there used to be on quiet Sunday mornings back in the sixties. Stow-in-the-Wold. The village square where roads meet, but do not intersect. A coffee on the green. Moreton-in-Marsh. A "new world" cross now, rather than the original Medieval form. Chipping Norton. Robert and Brenda have generously given me a map of Oxford which shows me how to find Sue Roaf's house. For me it is "on the way in", and thus it is my first stop. "Hannibal", Sue's wonderful little electric car, is sitting outside, marking a house which at first glance is not so different from the other houses in the street. Sue notices my interest in the house and is about to invite me in, when she realises to her astonishment that I am not just a stranger after all. The warmth of her welcome envelopes me. After relishing the house we set off to explore Oxford. A meal, and then one of Sue's friends joins us. Stories of streets and places. A drink where all the students gather. On again. Another drink in one of the small pubs. Finally back to my cosy little room which for me has some of the flavour of a Greek space. Sue has never thought of it this way, and it seems to me that she has intuitively built her love of those vernacular spaces which fold so easily around a stairwell. Tuesday 12 September Oxford - 747 I lie in bed enjoying the space. A solar-water bath, and a shave by photo-voltaic light. Breakfast with Susan at 7.30am. We talk of Graeme, vernacular, and the dig she was involved with at Tel Madhhur. The house is illustrated on page 54 of "Cultural Atlas of Mesopotamia and the Ancient Near East" by Michael Roaf, She very generously gives me a copy of the book, which has sold 100,000 copies. Susan has only been separated from Michael for 18 months. The energy she has poured out during that period is astonishing. She hatches the plot of producing a book on vernacular architecture for the millennium. She was not aware that the sun touched New Zealand ahead of any other country in the world. I photograph the house, Hannibal and Sue. In her book on British Ice Houses she has appended England's climate figures since 1640. I am astonished that records should have been faithfully kept for so long, but apparently Greenwich Observatory got off to an early start. The changes since then have been so notable that Ice-houses are no longer a viable technology. The ice simply does not form on the ponds in the way that it used to, and the moisture which is the enemy of ice is more prevalent now. Her regular car is hard to start and Hannibal must need charging, so I take Sue off to Oxford Brookes in my Micra. Headington is the road from London, and there is a bus directly through to here. It is graduation day so the foyer is crowded with people basking in the newly-acquired status of the Poly. The new year has yet to begin so the teaching studios are deserted and there is little work on display. The atmosphere however is bright, busy and cheerful. Susan mentions that Paul Oliver is about to publish a three-volume work on world vernacular. I am able to meet a number of the staff and explore the simulation room and computer facilities. We look through the door to the Urban Design Department, but I am left with the feeling that architects do not cross the threshold very easily. Off to find the ring road, and after one false exit I get it right and find myself at the familiar roundabout which leads to Boars Hill. It is only a mile or two, and I pause on the crest to pack my things ready for a Heathrow exit, while enjoying the wonderful view over Oxford nestling in its valley. There is not a new building which breaks the skyline. My map guides me to the Cumnor Road, and I find Little Bradley Farm with deceptive ease. Unfortunately no one is home so I leave a note and take a few photographs. With nostalgia I enjoy the heavy beams hanging low over the kitchen, and the lintels. My memory is sharper than I suspected. I get quite confused finding the road to Wantage, but eventually get it right. I cannot afford the time I waste, but on the other hand I need to accept the limitations of not having a navigator. Just north of the town there is a sign to Lain's Barn. The chooks are delighted to see me, and the whole atmosphere exudes success. My memory directs me to the 417 road, and in a mile or two I am in the centre of Wantage. There is no one home at 2 Priory Road, so I leave a note for Dick Squires. I hope I have the right house, but I cannot waste more time trying to check it out. Back on the 417. Lain's Barn is also signposted from this road. The sun comes out and the countryside is exquisitely English. Hedgerows which escaped the agrarian reform. Small clusters of buildings nestling along the contours. Down from the rolling countryside to meet the Thames. I cannot resist exploring a little and end up discovering that the bridge over the Thames has a toll at the far end. A U-turn takes me back to the 4033, which goes directly south to the turn back to meet the junction of the M4 just before Reading. With a jolt I am driving between the truck lane and the Audi lane at 80 miles/hour heading for Heathrow. Suddenly a sign to Gatwick appears, and it lures me off to the M25 ring. Driving conditions are horrendous and it is 35 miles to Gatwick. It is 2pm but I decide I can just make it to Godstone and back. It is almost a mistake. In my head I thought Gatwick was north of the M25 and Godstone was to the south off the same intersection. The maps are beside me but there is nowhere to pull off and no chance to safely check them. Another one of those occasions when you wish you had been a little more observant some years before. In the midst of a tangle of road works there is an exit for Gatwick, so I take it, terrified of the implications of going past my objective. I emerge from the interchange heading south on the M23, with very little idea as to where I might be. Another take off and I find myself making a choice between Gatwick departures and Cargo. At last I am able to pull up on a grass verge and consult a map. Godstone is at exit 6, not exit 7. Gatwick is well south of Godstone. I lose a valuable half hour wending my way north again to the M25, consoling myself by filling up with petrol along the way. Diana is not in. I leave a note, join the M25 at exit 6, which is only a few hundred yards away, and set out on a frenetic drive all the way back to Heathrow. By now at least I feel I have the motorway system sorted out. Not so. From the M25 to the M4 is easy, and from there I imagine all I have to do is to follow the Eurodollar Map. It is seriously inadequate. Round in circles and round roundabouts, until I am totally lost and confused. I stop at a garage, but they cannot follow the map either. Half an hour later I am back on the M4 starting the whole exercise all over again. Finally I throw the map away and follow my nose. To my incredible relief I find a sign to Longford. I arrive at Eurodollar in a state of panic, suffering from severe motorway frazzle. There is no time to pack, so everything gets thrown into my bags. They must be used to people getting lost so he reads the terror in my face, just collects my contract, and suggests that they will post me the details later. In a few minutes I am on the Shuttle bus heading for Terminal 3. I still have an hour before the flight, which is a great relief. My ticket change costs 24 pound, but I am able to pay by Visa, which all saves time, as I have run out of English money. Neither Harry nor Maggie are there so I leave a bottle of Irish whisky for each of them. Checked through, and then revived myself over a long cool fruit drink to use up my loose change. I still have a few twenties, so they go on a long phone call to John and Catherine Bereen. I am casually making my way to gate 26 when a Cathay girl races along to explain that they are closing the gate ten minutes before the flight time, and I will need to run. I do. A panic to the very end. It was however not me that they were looking for, and I do not seem to be on their flight list. I subside into my seat The captain announces that they are waiting for two passengers, but will be taking off as soon as they arrive. I smugly wonder what it must feel like to be late. By 6pm we are taxiing out, and we take off around 6.24pm for a 12 hour 30 minute flight to Hong Kong. Excellent views as we follow the Thames out to the sea, a little to the south of the river. The city slips by. The Isle of Dogs with the winking light of Canary Wharf. Greenwich. Royal Docks. The barrier. The softness as the river widens to meet the River Medway and the Swale coming in from the south and low-lying Foulness Island to the north. The land dissolves into water. Darkness envelopes us. Another excellent Cathay "first" is the "Change for Good" programme run in conjunction with UNICEF (United Nations Children's Fund). Each passenger is given an envelope in which they can place any "left-over" currency. The publicity says that the scheme has been running since 1991, and in that time more than a million dollars have been collected. Our route takes us south across Europe to Budapest and over Istanbul. Everything seems to be lost under cloud. By 10pm there are the lights of cities to be seen. Turkey perhaps? Apparently we need to go north of Bosnia, and to avoid closed air space over Afganistan. A meal, two glasses of wine and a brandy. It has been a day of high drama freely mixed with gentleness and relaxation. There is much to dream about. Wednesday 13 September 747 - Hong Kong Cloud seems to cover China. Slowly the brown waters of the Xi Jiang River become visible and we follow them all the way down to Hong Kong. A sweep out over the Bay gives views across to the new airport. I come off the plane at around 2.30pm local time (7.30am London time, with a 7 hour difference) An airport courtesy phone makes a call to Lynne possible. She is bubbling but in our exchanges about the idiocy of calling buildings "Brilliance Court" or "Glamour" the essential message becomes confused. She gives instructions, and I try to double check as they do not seem to make sense to me. Eventually I decide I must be a little jet-lagged. The luggage check-in is very straight-forward. Checked in at arrival level, and collected upstairs at departure level. HK$18 for 24 hours for each piece of luggage. It all seems very hassle-free without a group to worry about. I set off with just a few essentials, and the signs provide easy guidance to the Airbus. I probably should have taken the A2, but it seems much more fun and a little cheaper (HK$12) to take the A1 which wanders around the streets of Kowloon and has a stop at the Star Ferry. There seems to be no rush so I enjoy the waterfront, and wonder about "Serengeti" at Omnimax, but the next show is not until 4.30. It is a five minute walk from the Star Ferry terminal to the Lantau Ferry, and the next boat is not until 5.30pm. There is not enough time to do anything useful, so I just wait. The pleasant sea breeze on the hour long trip leaves me feeling very tired, but my dream of a bed to collapse into is dashed when I cannot find "Brilliant Court". Confusion heaps onto confusion with the police being as mystified as I am. A phone call to Peter reveals the truth. He is at Discovery Bay, not Silvermine Bay. There is no road connection, and he suggests that the walk around, past the Trappist Monastery would take at least 90 minutes. A local assures me that 4 hours would be closer to the mark when following an unfamiliar path in the dark. There is a ferry connection directly to Discovery, but the last boat left at 6.30, 15 minutes previously. Eventually I decide there is no alternative other than to go all the way back to Central. The next boat does not leave until 7.30, so that by the time I eventually get there the trip from Kai Tak to Discovery Bay has taken 7 hours. I am exhausted. A great welcome from Lynne and Peter. They have given up waiting for me, but cooked a meal and saved a feast for me. We talk until after midnight. Thursday 14 September Hong Kong - 747 I wake with a crash as Lynne drops her Nikon on the floor, breaking the little catch which secures the back. She is understandably very distraught, and with the added muddle of my being there is late getting away for work. I am blessed with a rather more leisurely beginning to the day as I share some cereal with Peter as we talk about University degrees and the law. He has been in touch with Alison Roberton about transportability. The location of Lynne and Peter's flat has much to commend it. From the bedroom or bathroom there are views over the green hills of Lantau to the ships off Cheung Chau. From the living area the view is over the whole of the Discovery Bay Development area. Wilderness and city juxtaposed. Outside it is so hot and humid that walking in the sun seems totally inappropriate, let alone playing tennis as some fashionable people in fashionable whites and Reebocks are listlessly doing. However I am fascinated by the Discovery Bay development, and want to explore. It could be another planet. "Niven-land." I walk half the distance to the end of the deserted road. Only two beach-buggies go by, driven by people looking like tattered magazine photographs of Hollywood stars. Through the artificial forest to the artificial beach. Artificial people walk by with either lap-dogs or tennis rackets. Signs at the beach illustrate the thirty things you are not allowed to do on the beach, but there is no one there to do them anyway. Karaka Bay really could be like this. There is not a smile or a happy person to be seen. Everyone is successful instead. In the plastic shops I find what I need - a bottle of wine. Most of the wine seems to come from real countries, so I take a chance and get a bottle as a gift for Peter and Lynne. Back at Brilliance Court I farewell Peter, and gather up my bag and the box Lynne wants me to deliver, I have just missed the 12.30 boat and the next hovercraft is not until 1pm. There is time to walk past the latest low-rise, high-density development, which is still under construction. Green glass is in, balconies are out. Classicism with the washing carefully concealed. A little further on there is a real beach. The servants who service the rest of the development live around the corner, and there are little glimpses of reality all over the place. A truck being repaired. People. Back at the excessively large bus station the buses are revving their engines at platforms 1,2, 3 and 4, but they have nowhere to go, and there are no people to go on them. Planning is a strange profession. Buses become a symbol for people who have denied themselves the right to own a car. Visibility is minimal as the oppressiveness of the heat closes in around the air-conditioned hovercraft. Half an hour and HK$23 later I am walking from the Star Ferry terminal along the waterfront to the Macau Terminal. The choices are none too clear, so I allow myself to be guided by the information I collected at the airport and purchase a HK$123 ticket on the Jetfoil which leaves in 20 minutes. It all seems so simple and convenient until I set off for the boat and find hundreds of people in long queues waiting to get their Departure Cards accepted so that they can leave Hong Kong. Nobody is moving. There seems to be a problem with everyone. At a snail's pace we inch forward as the clock races around to departure time. A crazy dash for the boat, with a seat being allocated as I race through the gate. I am on my way to Macau. We go south of Cheung Chau which gives a different view, and a little further on there is a resort tucked into another bay. Islands. Boats. Macau itself is a series of islands, linked by massive long bridges which rise high enough to enable shipping to pass beneath. China is much closer to Macau than the islands are to each other. An immense reclamation has been made on the Eastern side, and the boring grid pattern of the streets on the reclamation is complemented by even more boring Gargantuan architecture. They go in for mediocrity in a big way. The ferry terminal is new and efficient, with at least a little style. The visitor approaching from water level sees a strange vista of an island with a cluster of high rises linked by a sweeping bridge to a Macau which is hidden by the reclamation buildings and the ferry terminal. There are queues at Passport Control, but Customs has an African casualness. The exit is totally disorienting at ground level, with a tangle of roads and a bus terminal leaving no pedestrian possibilities for getting to Macau. Clutching Lynne's parcel I dash over barriers and roads to end up in total dereliction. Rotting cars, piles of rubbish, and rusting steel where buildings have been commenced only to stop when the money went elsewhere. Pavements torn up and a general air of dereliction. The one green hill seems to be a remnant of better Portuguese times, but there seems to be no way of gaining access to the hill to get a better view of the landscape setting. I wander on past tacky tawdry metal grills, slowly getting myself oriented, until I reach the "Casino Lisboa". A tawdry pastiche of Las Vegas and Bournemouth. I could have explored the interior, but it would have involved checking in Lynne's parcel, along with other people's revolvers, which are also not permitted inside. Up the main street, with typical Chinese intensity. The "gold" shops do little to tempt me. Half way across the island is a square with Portuguese Buildings and "Brazilian" paving. A church and the adjacent Chinese market streets provide a strange juxtaposition. The older docks are to the far side of the island, and it is hard to imagine that the other side of the river is China. It would be easy to swim across, if only instant toxic death could be avoided. The rest of the island does little to tempt me, so I do not feel sad about needing to retrace my steps. I have achieved my basic objective of placing images into context. At last I discover the upper level walkway to the terminal which I should have used when I arrived, and from this level it is possible to see how the reservoir blocks the route to the north. By now it is also clear that the jetfoil is the boat to use, rather than the less frequent turbo-jet. Fortunately I am able to buy for a ticket in HK$, and am surprised to find that it is only HK$119 from this side. Passport Control is simple and quick and we wait at the gate for the 5.15pm boat. Beneath the bridge and on into the haze. I think of my trip from Kansai to Kobe. We pass four or five jetfoils coming the other way. I find the frequency astonishing and remain mystified as to why there is so much traffic between Macau and Hong Kong. Everyone seems to be a local rather than a tourist. Passport delays are minimal, so that by 6.30pm I am back on Hong Kong soil again. A meal and a coffee at the terminal after briefly ascertaining that no film was available. Outside to the bus terminal, to discover to my delight that this is the terminal from which the Airbus departs. An A2 is waiting. HK$17 and a few minutes later I am on my way to Kai Tak. The busy streets. The tunnel. I am there an hour and 45 minutes before the flight. There is not a person waiting so my check-in is instant. Off to find some film. The price seems little different from NZ for Fujichrome Sensia, so I settle for 5. Later I discover it was less than one third of the New Zealand price. Then I find a Panasonic GPS with map readout. I ask if I can "feel" it. The assistant has met all kinds of people, but no one quite like this. Is there nothing I would like to know about it? I thank him graciously for allowing me to feel it, and tell him I will think about it. I may as well have said I would be back as soon as I had jumped over the moon. NZ cards are available and there seems to be good NZ support. I return to buy. He is even more perplexed. Do I not want to see how it works? No, I assure him, it "feels" right. On to the left luggage to collect my bag. HK$90 for two days. I know I am pushing the edge for cabin baggage, and Lynne's box takes me over it. They refuse to let me through to the plane unless I check her box through. It is so inadequately packed that I know it will not survive, so I return to take the risk of checking my own bag through. They decide that baggage for the flight has closed and I end up with a special permit to take both her box and my own luggage. It almost costs me my flight as so much time is wasted that I end up with only five minutes to spare, A bus out to our 747. Two passengers are missing, so there are delays, but somewhere around 10pm we come to the front of the queue of planes and are on our way. For me it is the perfect flight. The plane is nearly full, but I find myself with three seats to stretch out on, which allows me to get a tolerable amount of sleep. The crew are very efficient so that everything seems to arrive at precisely the right time and there are none of those endless delays while you wait for debris to be taken away. I send off a recommendation that my stewardess should be complimented for her excellent sense of timing. The glass in my window seat is clear, and the views are excellent. I watch the spectacular views of Hong Kong slide away, and settle down to a glass of wine with my meal. Our route takes us over Manila, but I do not see any lights. We will skirt the Australian coast as we go down past Cairns and Brisbane, but from my side of the plane there is nothing to see. Friday 15 September 747 - Auckland The usual two hours as the plane wakes up, but somehow it all seems very relaxed, and breakfast is over before we are suddenly passing over the Three Kings. Stunning views of North Cape and Cape Reinga. The Hokianga snakes its way through the landscape. Manganui Bluff. Waipoua Forest. Dargaville, with the brown Wairoa seeming to be about the same colour as the Xi Jiang River. Fluffy clouds obscure the view, so that there is only a brief glimpse of Rangitoto and Motutapu before we swing into the cloud and emerge over Clevedon. A phone call to Clive with the phone card I remembered to take. It seems that Regency Duty Free is now owned by the English, and DFS is owned by the Japanese. I have that feeling that more of New Zealand has been sold while I have been away. No Customs problems. Later I figured out that in my Papatuanuku cap and Papatunuku T-shirt I must have seemed to be very much the Kiwi returning home. Any journey however is not about the arrival, for the arrival is nothing more than the beginning of another journey. The weather is perfect. The light is sparkling. The air is so clear that you can see for a hundred miles. My house at Karaka Bay is ablaze with white plum blossom. Spring is in full flood. The world is full of new life and new hope. I have arrived at a beginning. |