Over 30 years ago my Mum, my sister Catherine and friend Jim jumped into the old 1977 Toyota Corolla and headed from the Table lands north to Bundeberg and then to Bargara beach. It was hot and the beach was long and beautiful. The water was just like a hot bath and it was great sitting in a small tidal pool in the evening without the fear of sharks or other nasty beasties creeping up on us, well the mosquitoes were a problem. The hotel was nice but the food was that nouveaux cuisine rubbish, it looked great and it tasted ok but it was damn expensive and not much of it.

The drive the first day had been about 14 hours and so we stayed here for a couple of days before we carried on north till we reached Rockhampton and then flung a left towards Emerald and Sapphire. We stayed in Emerald overnight and continued our quest west until we could go no further at Tennant Creek where we flung a left once more to head south to Ayres Rock.

The daytime temperatures were brutal, 46c if I remember correctly and we could not use the air-conditioning in the car because when we did the poor old thing coughed and spluttered and so for many hundreds of kilometres we had to have the window open just a little to get airflow through the car but it was brutal. Driving at 100 kph and with the added bonus of wind-burn, not wind-chill, but wind-burn made for a very difficult journey indeed.

Ayres Rock is almost in the centre of Australia and you can fly or drive and we chose to drive to experience the Outback in all its glory and to be honest it was a great experience and having my Mum there made it all the better. For the first time in many years she was young again and carefree away from the miserable old bugger that tried to contain her. There is a picture of her standing in the middle of the desert highway in the middle of nowhere with a big smile on her face, I can see it in my mind’s eye now……

So like many other folk that come this way, we come to see a big rock and pay exorbitant prices for the pleasure. When we went, we shared a kind of backpacker cabin arrangement where we had 4 beds to a room. You sat outside to eat and you could watch the big friendly Iguana stroll around looking for scraps and in the distance the rock itself. Ayres rock is big, it’s a huge feature on the landscape and most people come here so that they can experience the desert, the surrounding MacDonnell Ranges and of course to climb the rock. The local Aborigine tribe has decided that they will no longer allow anyone to climb the rock from October because it goes against their beliefs. The rock is on their land and they believe the rock is very sacred to them and so no one will be allowed to climb it anymore.

When I first went to Australia I didn’t know much about them and so over time you begin to learn a thing or two. After living in Australia for 30 years I don’t really have much time for them. The population of Australia is made up from many different races and the Aborigines just happen to be one of them, but they were there first of course and because of this they own the whole of Australia apparently. Over the years they have been given land rights, which is fair enough. They have complained about the brutality they faced at the hands of the British, fair enough. They were hunted for sport, many terrible things happened to them but after listening to them for 30 years about how they were treated by the white man, you begin to get sick of the broken record, especially when many choose not to help themselves. I don’t care if you are black, white or blue……………..there comes a time where you need to just get off your arse and change your situation instead of blaming every wrong decision you made on the invading white man that came to the country. I come from Scotland and the English treated us like shit over the years and it was around the same time as the shit was going down in Australia, but we as a nation we have become quite successful and many of our people have moved on and we don’t get any special treatment, we did not get compensation from the crown………..that’s not to say of course that some folk still do hate the English and I’m sure there are a few in England that don’t like us, but we move on we have to.. I’m a Scottish Aborigine after all. But the Australian Aborigine’s spend their life’s in the past and refuse to move into the present.

If you go to the job centre you will see one lot of jobs for the Aboriginal and the Torres Strait Islanders. No one else can apply for these jobs, no other Australian or immigrant can. Years ago I saw a job in the job centre for an IT trainee that had been advertised for over 6 months and so I went and asked about it. “Are you an Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander?” “Eh no, I’m Scottish” “Then you can not apply for this job, only they can” “But the job has been there for 6 months and no one seems to be too interested, they seem more at home hanging around the street corners chatting to one another and walking with a limp” “Sorry sir these jobs are only for Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islanders.”

And there you go; this is what it is still like in 2019. They have many services that are specific to them and yet they shout about discrimination. Everyone in Australia should be equal regardless of the colour of their skin and yet this is not the case and so how do they think that respect will come to them if they don’t join the rest of society. Every time something goes wrong it’s not their fault. The educated Aborigines are making a fortune of the backs of their poor uneducated.

Millions of dollars have been……….. what’s the word? ………Misappropriated…….. This happens too many times ……

I was having a game of snooker one night in the local RSL club, it was a competition and I got paired up with this Aboriginal guy that worked at the university and after listening to him for a few hours while we played snooker, and by the way we won some chickens that evening, I learned that many of the educated Aborigines are also quite disgusted with their own people and more so of the ones that take advantage of them.

I shared a house with a bunch of Scottish folk in western Sydney in Arakoon Avenue and we had an Aboriginal family living next door to us. We would say hello to each other but sometimes there were fights and sometimes the girls would come over to our house for help and then we would call the police for them and then get abused for calling the police. They stole our washing, how did we know this………because we saw them wearing our clothes, they used our swimming pool and yet when we tried to complain about them we came up against the racist card. One of their kids got knocked down and myself and Tom ran outside and help pick up the corner of the car while someone pulled the young boy from under the car, we helped to save his life. They had a dog which they never looked after and the rest of the street used to feed it, it was a nice dog. One day we phoned the RSPCA to tell them that the owners of the dog were not looking after the dog and could they come and pick it up.  I explained that the dog was friendly and if it was not for the kindness of the neighbours the dog may have starved. She was very interested to listen to my story until I told her that they were Aboriginal and then outcomes the racist card. Oh sorry sir there is nothing we can do about this and as long as the dog is being fed then that is ok. But the owners don’t look after it……………..because they were Aboriginal they would not do anything, because they knew that the race card would be played as it is still done to this day. You can not criticise a person of colour or a minority element within the community.

Opal fuel was developed in 2005 to combat Petrol Sniffing in over 106 communities, one of the favourite pastimes of your average Aborigine back then. The health costs were massive, but it was BP that came to the rescue by changing its formula slightly so that they could not get this high anymore.

There was a story back in the early 90’s about two Aborigines that tried to sue Fosters Beer because they had become alcoholics, If Fosters hadn’t made the beer they would have drunk it and so QED they would not be alcoholics.

Communities in the north of Australia are supposed to be dry (no alcohol) because many were spending their dole money on booze and so the smugglers step in and a new market is created. Prohibition does not work; it just makes some people rich.

To try and combat some of the problems the government have given the members of community that are claiming government support a debit card and no alcohol can be bought using them. The feedback is that they are being discriminated against and they should have the same choices as everybody else and have cash put into the bank. When this happens the children are the ones that suffer. So many adults are irresponsible and the money ends up getting pissed up against the wall. There are so many other issues but I am not going to list them here, but one underlying theme is the lack of ownership for any of the problems that they have, they really need to look inward and begin with educating the young and start to move into the present day.

So I’m not being racist here by the way, I am telling you what I have observed over the years. It’s the immigrants obviously that have built Australia, wave upon wave of them over the years have brought their skills to the country…………maybe it’s making food or making coffee or whatever, but the difference between them and the local indigenous communities is that they have forged a future for themselves and contributed to the growth of the country in a very big way.

Not allowing tourist to climb Ayres Rock I feel is just being done because they can, and not really for the reason they say, which is that it’s a culturally sensitive site. You can climb Ayres Rock and you can appreciate the natural wonder of the place and when you stand on the top of it and look around at the panorama on offer you will see that it is stunning. All over the world tourists go to religious and culturally sensitive sites and buildings and locations and they are happy to share them with the world and let them be amazed at the same time. You can go to many wonderful cathedrals and mosques in the world and you can often climb up to the roof structure and see the wonders of the ancient stone masons. In Florence I climbed up to the top of the cathedral and it was brilliant. I’m not religious in the least but I admire the engineering and the ingenuity of the builders. I also have the same respect for nature, Mother Nature created Ayres Rock, there was no architect, no owner, no builder and it belongs to the world.

The local indigenous people have made a big mistake by putting a ban on this area. People will continue to come and they will climb it anyway. You have to pay $25 for the privilege and many will pay this without a thought. A stupid decision has been made by the local land owners and they are fracturing the reconciliation process. So many people have been pissed off by this. If I ever go to that part of the world again and I have the opportunity to climb the rock I will because it belongs to the world and I will leave my $25 at the bottom of the rock or I’ll post it to the relevant authority.

Update Oct 28^th 2019

I wrote this about a month ago and since that time the rock has been closed and the fine for climbing the rock has been set at $10.000, which is absolutely ridiculous……..I just hope that all those local mobs that made such a commotion about people climbing Ayres Rock start to feel the pinch from the lack of tourist dollars that will hopefully not be spent in that area. After all one of the main reasons to go to see Ayres rock is to climb it, to experience its majesty, to look at the amazing form from the summit and to experience the panoramas and vistas on offer from the top.

If I win lotto and I can happily dispose of $10,000, then you will see me on TV as I climb the rock and maybe I’ll take a bottle of wine for good measure.

There are bigger problems in their communities to tackle than to spend so much time and resources on stopping people from climbing Ayres Rock which for many has been a source of income and joy for the climbers, I for one hope they come to regret their decision.

In this day and age of the internet there is no need for customer service representatives, after all everything can be solved by an “avatar” online. We can connect 24/7 with AVA from Airasia or Red from Westpac and may I say both are completely useless.

Let’s start with Airasia, they told me a couple of weeks ago that my flight has been cancelled and so they have moved me to a later flight and if this is not suitable then I can get a refund, just have a chat with “Ava” on the website and all will be hunky dory. Well Ava had a few problems trying to understand for some reason and I was typing in English but I am in China behind the great firewall and I guess my VPN wasn’t doing a very good job. Anyway Ava took all my information eventually and I thought, marvellous. A few days later I have heard nothing and so I log into my account and the flight is still confirmed and not cancelled. I check with Ava and she has closed my enquiry………..I reopen the enquiry and go through the process once more and the same thing happens again. I call Airasia and they say “You need to talk to Ava” I said “I have and she doesn’t want to help me” Customer service guy continues with the same sentence and will not change tack and so we could have spent all day doing this and so I hung up before I became abusive.

I search for ages to try and get a contact for Airasia, an email address, a fax number, anything so that I did not have to go back to Ava but in the end I had no choice. So after saying hello to Ava Avatar I just entered random numbers until finally a link appeared that I could click on which opened up a new window where I could type a nice letter and so I did. So far the correspondence between myself and several Airasia reps would fill a library and I have still not had a resolution. I have never had to work so hard to get my $130 returned to me, I should start to charge Airasia for my time, for the phone calls, for having to go to the bank to get a copy of the initial transaction because after I gave them everything they asked for before they told me there were a few discrepancies with my name. This I feel is the new way businesses do business, they wear you out, they hope that you will give up and just think it’s all too hard, well let me tell you this Airasia………..I am Scottish and there is no way I will let you do me out of that money that is rightfully mine and I want an upgrade on my next flight.

Now Westpac was my next bitch. I got an email to tell me that they are changing from Visa to MasterCard and it will be sent to my PO Box. I called them and asked them to send it to my address in China, no problem was the reply. “Can I have an email address so that I can send you the address in Chinese?” “No sorry sir we cannot enter Chinese into the system, only English can be entered” I knew at this point that I was not going to see my new credit card in a hurry and nearly 5 weeks later I have been proved correct. I called Westpac today and they said “that’s a bit strange sir, you should have received it by now” you would think so. “We can send it again for you” I said “Can you give me an email contact so that I can send you the address both in English and Chinese?” “No not possible” “Can we send it to your PO Box sir?” “NO I’m in China” I hung up.

Now they also told me to talk to “Red” the Westpac avatar which quite frankly is completely useless if you are outside the country, in fact even when you call from overseas it just does not seem to register with the workers that you get on the end of the line. The rules are different if you are outside of Australia, you cannot use the same services and the solutions are also different and I’m amazed, disgusted that a company so large can’t manage to get my credit card from Australia to China. Other companies seem to be able to send coal, baby formula, vitamins but Westpac cannot send credit cards.

I have solved the problem by asking one of my Chinese friends in Australia to receive my card and then forward it to me, this is of course is an easy thing to do and I should have done this at the beginning of this process, but as I say you would think that a bank as big as Westpac can get my replacement card to me, but it does not give me much faith in the process if I lose it, or it gets stolen sometime in the future.

Not everything can be done online, in this global economy and especially when Australia and China are big trading partners I’m wondering why Westpac is unable to enter an address into their system in another language such as Chinese. They have the ability to do this in China and many other countries; surely they would have one person in the company that understands Chinese?

Did I mention that my hotel in Jeju had a super duper hi-tech 21^st century toilet set to auto. This means that you can approach the toilet and do your business and then as if by magic it will automatically flush, bloody marvellous. To the left of the toilet on the wall there is a small control panel with many buttons, the buttons have symbols and so you can get the general idea what is going to happen before you try……….I can’t read Korean and of course there is no English, I just kept pushing the buttons and waited to see what would happen.

In the morning when it’s time for your morning ablutions life becomes so much more enjoyable. The seat is very comfortable and it is not cold in the least, in fact you can set the temperature, but auto is fine. When the time comes to grab for the loo paper, fear not we can save the planet and at the touch of a button noises begin and the next thing you will feel is a warm jet of water being directed at your nether regions, if you are not awake by now you soon will be with a smile on your face. After the rinse and shampoo out comes the hairdryer and at the same time the seat begins to warm up and all that is really missing is your morning cup of coffee and the news paper to finish of a rather pleasant experience. This is definitely on the shopping list when I eventually return home.

The Japanese and the Koreans have had these contraptions for many moons and I guess we are still a bit prudish in the west and think it’s all a bit perverse and if it is I don’t really care. This is the first time that I have used one of these super duper hi-tech loo’s and it comes in the same week as two young girls were beaten to death in India for defecating outside because they don’t have a toilet and here is me sitting on the Rolls Royce of crappers. It is absolutely disgusting that in this day and age that people can’t have the convenience of going to the loo in the comfort of their own home or at the very least in a place which is kept clean and safe. I have been to India and the stench in some places is so ripe that you want to vomit; it’s not only the cattle that shit in the street. At least this is one thing in China that has been a success and where the Chinese government have made it a priority to have good sanitation in many of the old districts where at times there was none.

It’s a strange old world where the priorities of those in power are completely fucked. We would rather send a man to the Moon or to Mars instead of building toilets for the poor, for helping those that cannot help themselves. Australia gave America, of all places, $150 million to help them to get to the moon, when back in Australia there is a drought that has been going for a many years now causing intense pain and pressure for many. America does not need the money, if it stopped being so paranoid about life the universe and everything and stop spending obscene amounts of money on defence then maybe many in their country would be better off too and of course the rest of the world might be a safer place too, oh and maybe we could build some more toilets for those in need………….

Yesterday I went to a town about an hour away called Changshu, I went with a group of Expat’s that had been invited to test drive a tour. I’ve gone on many of these trips since I’ve been here and yesterday’s trip was not too bad. The sun was shining as I strolled up to the meeting point and low and behold there be many a foreigner, a gaggle of them or is it a flock? I knew a few of the faces and nodded morning as I arrived.

I was last on and got the front seat, how marvellous was that? As it turned out we actually had a good bus driver and so the drive was very enjoyable for a change. Our first port of call was at a Qipao factory, what is a a Qipao I here you say?, well have a look below, it’s the name of the dress that the girls are wearing.

After we all had a bit of fun trying long dresses and the like we headed off down the street to an old house of a famous scholar. Once you enter through the front door the design and decor is much the same as many other such places I have visited over the years and so I leave the group and go for a wander and leave them to it.

Lunch is next on the agenda and I’m afraid there are no pictures because we were all really hungry and when the food came out it was just hoovered up. The food we had here was absolutely delicious and I think it was because there were only two fish dishes and the food was all very “foreign friendly” The hot and sour fish soup was great, the pork, the radish, vegetables, in fact everything was great.

We waddled off to our next port of call which was a mini “Great Wall” Changshu boasts a very good and complete section of wall which is surprisingly steep and some of the fatty foreigners did struggle quite a bit when they started to defy gravity and walk up the stairs and when we all reached the top many of them bought ice-cream just to make sure their thighs didn’t shrink too much from the climb.

The last port of call was a private library which had been rebuilt and of course this is where many of these cultural days out take a turn for the worse. Authenticity is important and at times when you arrive at these “olde” places the smell of paint is fresh and everything is shiny and new, but I think we were all getting a bit tired and we were looking forward to the promise of a cup of tea. Not only did we get a cup of tea, but we got moon-cake, fruit and many other calorie filled delicacies to top up the thighs once more and lots of green tea and I got a doggy bag………………I felt fat and ready for a nap.

At one time Changshu had over 100 private libraries. This part of Jiangsu Province is famous for producing many scholars over the years and they have gone on to become officials at the highest positions in government and so I understand why they took us here to introduce the history to us, but sometimes the renovations leave nothing of the original structures.

It was an interesting day out and I got to meet another few foreigners of Suzhou. I will come back to Changshu again and maybe explore this city a little bit more and see what it has to offer.

it was with a heavy heart that I headed to the airport………the sun was shining and the sky was blue and the typhoon had disappeared and it was a perfect day for walking up to the top of the mountain or just to go for a walk along the coast.The air is fresh and clean and there are not many people here. When you are on one of the walks you will not meet many Chinese because they don’t like to walk as a rule, unless of course there is a big shiny shopping centre for them to swan about in.

I was about to return to the heart of the beast which for the last few months I have been struggling with. Many Chinese act in a manner that I find quite distasteful and annoying and when I go on a visa run to another part of the world and I don’t have to deal with them every day, I feel so much better for it. The last week in Jeju has been really enjoyable and I am sure they also have their fair share of dickheads like any other place, but most people are polite and look out for others. When they navigate through their day they are conscious of others, what they are doing, where they are in respect to themselves…………you know just like any other civilised society………….but in China there are many people as I have said before that are utterly selfish, ignorant and are just concerned with themselves and don’t give a fuck about anyone else, their safety and just don’t care about rules.

We boarded the plane in the usual chaotic way, people will stand in the aisle blocking it and don’t get out of the way to let others through. When they do sit down they recline the seat, then when they do sit down some will then think “oh I need to go forward to see my friend and try to push through the tide of people boarding. it must be hell for the flight crew on these flights, sometimes you only have to look at their faces to see the agony of their situation.

When the plane begins to taxi for takeoff they get up to retrieve something from their bag, they are still using their phones, the tray tables are down once more and we are having a picnic, someone wants to use the toilets. After takeoff I took this picture and as you can see there are many that just don’t like to follow the rules when it comes to safety…………..this is the Chinese way.

Most of the Chinese on the plane are part of a tour group and they are led around and spoon fed and told what to do most of the time, don’t think too much………..if only they were educated on these tours to be more considerate to others and told put your phone on to fuckin’ flight mode.

In the picture below you can see the woman holding her daughter after the plane has just landed while we are taxing back to the terminal, maybe one or two minutes have passed. The other woman beside her has already taken off her seat belt and is talking to the people in the row behind her. The guy beside me is on his phone and you know they are not the only ones on the plane. On the last flight that I had a guy stood up to retrieve his bag literally seconds after the wheels hit terra firma……….this is the everyday situation on a Chinese flight

From Pudong airport I took the bus to me bring me back to Suzhou, it’s takes about two hours which is longer than it took me to get from Korea back to China. it drops me about 3 km from home and so I use a local bus to take me the rest of the way. As the bus arrives there is a mad dash by the locals to get on board first. I wait for a couple of people that were before me to jump on and then I take my turn. My case is in my left hand as I move to the door, out the corner of my eye I see someone trying to sneak passed me and so I put my hand on the bus and nearly choke this old woman as her throat catches my forearm…………I look at her and smile………..she is not happy and starts to rant to me………………I’m not sure what she is saying but I’m sure I can guess. In amongst all the chaos of China at least I get a bit of a kick when I stop someone dead in their tracks like this, they were shocked when they were stopped and more so by a foreigner. I guess they don’t expect us to be as rude as them and so at times I do delight in these occasions and this is one thing that I do enjoy about China and I also feel that I am doing them a service by educating them on a little bit of etiquette…………..I know it may sound a bit sick but it keeps me amused and this is something I would never dream of doing or would have to do do in many other parts of the world………………maybe I’ll stay here a little bit longer 🙂

Now I have met quite a few tubes in my time but not one as big as this. This was on my to do list for Jeju. The rain was still lingering about this morning but a quick check of the weather forecast app informed me that after 9am all should be well and it was. There were patches of blue sky, the rain had cleared but the wind was still very strong.

I went to the lava tubes first and then planned to do a bit of walking afterwards, although it was still about 3km from the bus stop which meant I had a short walk to begin with.

I saw this beautiful spider eating a recently caught fly, they look very similar to spiders that I get at my house in Australia.

There is a single strand anchored onto this pot plant keeping the whole web in tension, they are amazing engineers.

The lava tube is about 1km long and you need your brolly when you go inside, especially after all the rain we have had over the past few days. The surface underfoot is amazing, the rock was once a river and you can see the eddies and all kinds of formations and textures along the length of the cave. It’s not well illuminated inside and there are not colourful crystalline structures to see, but you can see the power of nature when she gets very hot and bothered. It’s fascinating and well worth a visit, but bring your brolly just in case and a jacket because it was very cool inside only 15c.

I enjoyed going here and as you leave your subterranean experience the humidity is overwhelming but short lived. My specs steamed up but all I had to do was face the wind for a few seconds and I was defrosted.

They predicted huge winds and about 600 mls of rain but thankfully in the north of Jeju it did not turn out that way. We had squally showers and a few at times felt like you had walked through a waterfall, but I was not concerned because I had waterproofs and they worked a treat……..however not the same can be said for my waterproof hiking boots that I bought in the Mountain Warehouse in Glasgow….. After five mins or so of torrential rain my socks were soggy but the rest of me was dry and so I made for the hotel and changed into my training shoes and this is why I don’t feel so stupid for packing so much for a one week holiday…… I have two pairs of boots and one pair of training shoes and its just as well I brought then all.

I went to an indoor market for a look and had a lazy lunch and then a coffee at BooBu cafe and then it was back to the hotel for a quiet night, not much point wandering about considering the weather and I fancied find nothing anyway…

I’m a coffee snob and I always struggle to find a good coffee wherever I go. At home I have my own Italian blend which I have drunk for many years and it has a rich flavour and strong coffee taste without the bitterness and so for me quality outweighs quantity.

So far on Jeju the coffee has been mediocre and expensive, mind you I did go to the CU convenience store and their coffee was surprisingly good and cheap. But yesterday I stumbled upon this little gem of a cafe with a very interesting decor and atmosphere, old 20’s and 30’s music playing in the background and the coffee was served up on a wooden platter in a lovely wee expresso cup and it was great.

I could have sat here all day just drinking coffee but alas I would have been too hyper and climbing the walls for days, I had finally struck gold….. black coffee gold that is……

A full flavour, not bitter and with a viscosity that allowed you to extract every part of what it had to offer, the taste flowing around from taste bud to taste bud……. Perfect.

One more day here and I’ll make sure I have one more coffee before I go.