Amsterdam

Amsterdam is all that we imagine it to be. Flat, watery, bikes everywhere, some of the houses are disappearing into the subsoil. The windows are huge and the stairs so narrow that everything has to be craned into the house. It is a smaller city than I expected - only 750,000 people. We went on a canal boat ride and then for a walk but it was flying visit.

There are many houseboats, the number of registrations has been capped so they are very expensive. Many of them have been taken over by squatters.

Amsterdam prides itself on its flowers and this is a small street market with bulbs, blooms and dope starter kits. (One in Graham's case - dont tell him.)

Bangkok - July 5-7

Goading crocodiles must be a hard way to make a living. This was at the Samphan Elephant Park. It was eerily quiet there indicating that Thailand's recent turmoil has really impacted on the tourist trade.

Graham and Liv went of a ride on an elephant - each time the elephant took a step the seat seemed to slip a bit further Grahamward. He is wearing the Pinkie Hat which I bought there.

We went to a floating market. In the brochures advertising this tour there were hundreds of boats over flowing with flowers, fruit and other fresh produce. After a 90 minute drive we arrived at a back water canal in which lumps of floating rubbish far outnumbered boats. A few old ladies sold cooked squashed bananas and the inevitable street market was full of

people desperate to sell.

This is the lady who had never seen a pinkie hat before and was desperate to have it for her granddaughter. It undoubtedly looks a lot less silly on her granddaughter than it did on Graham or me but I was sad not to have it for some days. Never mind, Bangkok residents were probably a lot less amused and unkind than Londoners would have been to see Graham walking about in it.

church

This is the church in which Shakespeare was buried. He was probably outside originally but they have carted him and put him on an inaccessible place so they can charge $3 to see the casket. He's probably making almost as money dead as Elvis or Michael Jackson.

Shakespeare's birth house

This is purportedly the bed on which Shakespeare was born, or at least the room in which he was born. The house is set up to look very like it would have then. The trundle bed on the side is where the children slept and the wall paper is made of linen, it hangs quite loosely on the walls and was painted by decorators after it had been hung a the walls were never square. The dress on the bed was worn by both girls and boys at the time as boys had a higher mortality rate and so they tried to trick the devil into thinking they were only girls. (How many cross dressing gender confused adults they produced we will never know.)

castell coch

This was amazing. The then richest guy in the world who owned half of Cardiff in the late 19th century had a hankering for a good project and so he decided to build himself a genuine medieval castle complete with working draw bridge. It is also beautiful inside as he got a heap of painters and and furniture makers to decorate it. It has the most incredible paintings on the walls, the drawing room is completely covered with aesop's fables. Can you see Pinkie sitting on the bed in the mistress's bedroom?

castles or piles of rubble?

This is the view of another castle wall. Edward 1 made himself very bust building heaps of these things in the 11th century and they are very intriguing.

This is one of the beaches we visited in wales. The mountains are incredibly green and the colour of the sea, sky and vegetation is enough to turn you to the nearest jumbo pack of Derwents.

Wales

This is a Very cool castle in Wales called Caerphilly Castle. It was built in the 12th century. The bit hanging off is doing a leaning tower of Piza imitation. There are hundreds of castles like this in Wales and it is easy to get a bit ho hum about them after the first three or four. There was even one plopped in the middle of the Swansea shopping centre. Unfortunately I had gone there to do some serious card burning so didn't take my camera.

On the right is a photo I took by hanging the camera out of the window. The roads are incredibly narrow and drivers have to have nerves of steel and a knowledge of the width of their car down to the last millimetre.

Tuesday 27th?

Forget the cutesy English pub in the background. Zoom in with Pinkie on my first WooWoo - a splendiferous mix of vodka, peach schnapps and cranberry juice.

This is the room from hell in Hyde Park. You can see Liv on her camp stretcher at the foot of the bed and Graham with the triplets. What you cant see is that it has been 42 degrees all night nor can you smell the stale poo from three floors of poor plumbing which is leaking out of the ensuite.

Monday July 26th

Today we are heading towards Swansea – taking in a small town called Chipping Sodbury on my behalf, as it is very silly name, on the way. We are hurling along the M4 which is marked in blue on their maps which made me think the major highways were rivers – a reasonable deduction, I would have thought but one which has caused a lot of piss taking. Near Chipping Sodbury lies Little Sodbury and Old Sodbury, both of which I hope to photograph. It is overcast and we are flashing past fields with hedge rows, turning off the M4 the properties are immediately bordered by stone fences and the trees hang towards the middle of the road.

Chipping Sodbry is so called because “chipping” means market and Sodda was an anglo- saxon who owned the place in the first millennium. It was a beautiful old medieval town with a very wide street, designed specifically for the local market which ran every week for a thousand years. The local guide showed a building which dated back to medieval times – it is now an op shop – I went in to ask what the “burbages inside” were but the lady behind the counter could go no further back in her imagination than the butcher who was in the building before them.

I had hoped to head back towards the freeway on a small road which runs almost parallel to the freeway and takes in at least three similar towns but I wasn’t sharp enough and we doubled back to recommence our hurtle down the M4.

We just had our first detour off the M4 in Wales. We went to see Castle Caerfilli which was built in the 13^th century and has been deteriorating at a rapid pace ever since. We didn’t pay to get in. We walked along the street. It reminds me of Morwell with grass and castles. Nasty cheap houses, unemployment, desperation… At least the kids are polite, saying excuse me as they whip past on the grassy slopes on their bikes. Picked up a brochure with another 23 castle ruins described. Okay, okay, I get the general idea.

We have just passed the biggest steel works in the world.(At some time, smaller now.) Is Wales the factory of England which had to foreclose in the depression.?

This afternoon we reached Swansea which is much more cheery and pretty. It is a beachside town in full commercial swing. We stopped to drop off stuff at our quaint Welsh guest house and then toured around the Gower peninsula which is a little lump on the bottom of the big foot which sticks out of the west of the UK. We went to places like Mumbles and I forget what else. We had dinner at a pub and I had two wuwus which are vodka, cranberry juice and a few other additives. Very nice but not conducive to new blogging.