http://www.travelblog.org/Bloggers/Rambling-Rose/ Travel adventures in journals and photos from Rambling Rose en-us Fri, 18 Dec 2009 17:04:31 +0000 Fri, 18 Dec 2009 17:04:31 +0000 To look into the eyes of lsquoPrincessrsquo a rescued and rehabilitated Orang Utan in her home environment was a spine tingling magical experience. She is one of over 200 Orang Utans that have been returned to their natural habitat by rangers working at Camp Leakey deep in the rain forest of Borneo. Truth be told lsquoPrincessrsquo has not been fully rehabilitated she had too much con http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/Indonesia/Kalimantan/Derawan/blog-351199.html Today we are leaving Kupang to travel in Indonesia before returning home to the UK on Decemeber 12th. It is with mixed feelings we leave so sad to say farewell to some great people relieved to get away from the heat and noise satisfied even smug about what we have achieved amazed at what people can and will achieve when given the opportunities intrigued by the resourcefullness of people http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/Indonesia/Timor/blog-347638.html Its official Colin is married to an old fossilThe thing they removed from my ear was a deposit of calcium if this is the first time for you of reading this blog you need to track down the entries for the ear saga as this is a follow up reportThe theory is that a chronic infection in the outer ear that went on for so long caused the body to lay down cells to surround the infected area but it http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/Indonesia/Timor/blog-346217.html The saga of the Kupang ear.November blogFor me this month has been dominated by an ongoing ear infection.For Colin it has been a very productive month working with the suppliers to install the new hospital computer system all is looking good with the project at the moment.You may chose not to bother reading the rest of this self pitying whining blog entry which is all about me and my earThe sa http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/Indonesia/Timor/blog-344243.html 3 weeks on from the fire and we are back on track. We have a new computer training room and managed to salvage 5 computers from the fire and have 3 others that have been donated by VSO in Bali. So 8 useful computers some with burn holes in the cases but they workImmediately after the fire we met with the hospital management who were really keen that we reestablish the training room. So that http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/Indonesia/Timor/blog-343880.html Sunday 21st Septemberhelliphelliphellip.. had been a hot sticky lackluster day and we had hid away in our room most of the day. At 6 pm we went out to find somewhere to eat with not a lot of success as our favorite watering holes were shut as we wandered the noisy broken street of Kupang concentrating in the dark on spotting the broken pavements in order to avoid falling into a storm dr http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/Indonesia/Timor/blog-343861.html 4 weeks laterhelliphellipBeen here 4 weeks nearly and feeling quite settled funny how things which were so strange to start with I now donrsquot notice. In my first week I was terrified of falling down a hole in the pavement into a storm drain now Irsquom used to jumping holes dodging scooters in the road and have abandoned the foreign concept of a safe pavement. Canrsquot say that http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/Indonesia/Timor/blog-343869.html So here I am in Kupang West Timor Indonesia arrived July 28th living in an en suite no bedroom just an en suite. Canrsquot complain lsquocause I donrsquot speak the language. Actually itrsquos not so bad it is one large tiled hospital room usually assigned as doctorrsquos quarters. In the room is the sink and lsquoMandirsquo sluice and toilet and we have curtained off one http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/Indonesia/Timor/blog-343843.html Blog 0 July 2008Our travels in 2008 have brought us to a noisy busy seemingly chaotic town Kupang on the dry dusty island of West Timor at the eastern end of Indonesia. The nearest town yoursquove probably heard of will be Darwin Australia approximately 1000 miles SE of us. Colin and I are here in Indonesia with Voluntary Service Overseas VSO to help install a hospital information syste http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/Indonesia/Timor/blog-343174.html We are back in the UK We returned home from New Zealand via Vancouver. This part of the trip was a real joy as we were catching up with some old friends who live in and around the Vancouver area college friends as well as people we met when we did our 6 month house swap in this area in 1990 and friends from Freeland who have a house in Kamloops near Sun Peaks ski resort. We are back in the UK now http://www.travelblog.org/North-America/Canada/British-Columbia/Vancouver/blog-253135.html AustraliaIt is a lie Australia is not a hot dry dust bowl edged with sun baked golden beaches adorned by bronzed muscle bound lifeguards well not what we saw anyway. The beaches were akin to Bognor in the rain Bridlington for our Northern readers but with bigger waves the Hinterland was green lush and in flood from the constant rains that fell nonstop from Boxing Day until we left http://www.travelblog.org/Oceania/Australia/New-South-Wales/Murwillumbah/blog-252641.html Procrastination and dogged determination to complete a blog irrespective of dwindling readership are these the signs of the demented Hope not as I sit here a sad Old Aged Geek trying to catch up and finish off my blog before we leave New Zealand and head home.At the finish of the previous entry we were trundling our wheelie cases out of Indonesia clutching a dog eared Lonely Planet guide on o http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/Cambodia/North/Angkor/blog-243640.html Dear All Long time with no blogging but lots of travelling now we are settled in New Zealand for a few weeks Irsquoll bring the blog up to date starting with our time in IndonesiaAfter leaving the childrenrsquos home in Thailand at the end of November I flew to Indonesia Bali to meet Colin where we lived for two days in a luxury beach side hotel a bit of a contrast to the cockroach farm http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/Indonesia/Bali/Denpasar/blog-237580.html Happy New YearColin is in NZ and through a bit of a ticket mix up Irsquom still here in Australia is he trying to tell me something. Irsquom enjoying great hospitality on the outskirts of Melbourne with Nic and Sandra clubbing mates of Colinrsquos from the 60s in Twickenham Church Youth Club that was. Irsquom availing myself of their fast system to upload the final chapter of the http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/Thailand/North-East-Thailand/Khon-Kaen/blog-233600.html Irsquod like to tell you so many stories about the boys but Irsquove picked a couple so you can get a feel for the background of these boys. First Anuchai a hill tribe boy from the Thai Burma Myanmar borderAnuchai featured in a previous blog because he was the lad who took my photographs of Richard at a Manchester United event and just gazed lovingly at them for hours. Since then his perp http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/Thailand/North-East-Thailand/Khon-Kaen/blog-228690.html In my last blog Irsquod just arrived in boystown and was rather overawed by the place itself as it was not at all what I expected but then Irsquom not sure what I had expected. My only experience of a childrenrsquos home before coming here was one I used to visit in Long Hanborough occasionally where social workers looked out for the childrenrsquos welfare and house keepers ran the home. http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/Thailand/North-East-Thailand/Khon-Kaen/blog-226677.html Namphong boystown Rosiersquos storyI have been here in the boystown for a week now and have become part of the landscape. The boystown is a childrenrsquos home that provides escape from grinding poverty and child labour for boys from the age of 11 until they leave school and get a job at 18 some are funded to go to college . So my first impressions of Namphong Boystown. I arrived mid after http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/Thailand/North-East-Thailand/Khon-Kaen/blog-221485.html Arrived Bangkok Friday pm and was met by Dr Anukul a retired professor from Khon Kaen University who has been director of the boystown in Namphong for 15 years. Anukul had trundled down country by bus from Khon Kaen to Bangkok to meet me and be my guide in Bangkok what a star.Bangkok first impressions not so good it is a concrete forest of high rise structures growing out of a crawling m http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/Thailand/Central-Thailand/Bangkok/blog-219455.html Many thanks to those brave and loyal friends noticeable lack of family members what did they know who made it to the 'sell by date' party at which all the 'soon to be out of date' food stuffs at home were turned into miracle dishes by Ali and Elaine. It was a potential breezy affair with bean soup bean stew and bean trifle seems like I had a lot of dried beans in the cupboards. We raise http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/United-Kingdom/England/Oxfordshire/Oxford/blog-219191.html