This is an exquisitely written account by the first Ranee of Sarawak, the wife of the second Rajah, Charles Brooke. It is a fascinating and detailed description of the flora and fauna of Sarawak. The author makes several expeditions into the interior and got to know the country very well. She had a very good rapport with the Malay women. She says that the Malay people have better manners than most Europeans. But life was not easy. One of her children was born dead after she fell down stairs in a boat. Her three remaining children died on a voyage to England. She did manage to produce three more children who survived, the eldest of them becoming the hird and last Rajah of Sarawak. However, the author has very little to say about her husband, Charles Brooke, and his exploits even though he seems to have been a very interesting character in his own right.

The Tiger Lilly Ladies: A Memoir of Kashmir by Sudha Koul. This is an autobiography of a member of a Hindu Kashmiri family living in the most beautiful valley on Earth. Like Nehru and his daughter Indira Gandhi, the author is a pandit. The story spans three generations; the grandparents, the parents and the author and her husband. In Kashmir it is a hard life but an idyllic one. The peace and harmony with the Muslim neighbours is emphasised in the early part of the book. The author goes to convent school and is educated by the nuns but she does not follow her family tradition of becoming a professor in English at university. She trains to become a magistrate and as such she is the first woman on the circuit. She comments that her job is a continuation of the British administration. During this time foreigners from Afghanistan and Pakistan settle in Kashmir. They stir up trouble and come into conflict with the Indian administration. Her mother endeavours to arrange a marriage for the author and gathers her trousseau. By this time she is 25 years of age and most of her friends are already married. However, just at this time she meets a Kashmiri who has been living in the United States for several years and it happens very quickly. Soon she is married and off to a new life in the United States. By this time the pressures on the family in Kashmir have become too great and they move to New Delhi. On moving to the United States the author begins a life of exile and loneliness. Her two daughters grow up as Americans. Although she makes visits to her family in New Delhi, for the daughters it is different because “they do not have their roots in Kashmir.” Interestingly, she notes that while the marriages of her daughters’ friends’ parents fall apart, hers is as strong as ever. Towards the end of her story, it appears that Hindus are moving back to Kashmir and are able to claim heir former homes. Perhaps tourists will soon be able to follow.

He must be the greatest short story writer. The stories are exquisite but they must owe something from the translation from the French. The stories feature human nature; each with a twist of irony. I don’t think the stories have been surpassed in the 150 years since they were written.

The head-hunters referred to in the title are the Dayaks in Sarawak. The author was born in a well connected English family. Her father seems to have been offered all sorts of attractive jobs; most of which he refused. He did, however, become that administrator of Windsor Castle which was, and still is, one of the residences of the British Royal Family. The King and Queen became Uncle George and Aunty Mary to the author. She played with Prince Edward, Prince Albert and their sister Princess Beatrice. Prince Edward became King Edward VIII until he married Mrs Simpson. It seems he had his own mind even as a child. Prince Albert (Bertie) later became King George VII. She mentions that whereas King Edward VII had been a pretty liberal parent to his children, his son, King George V, had been a strict disciplinarian. As a young woman the author had some literary success. She had some stories published and she moved in the literary circles of George Bernard Shaw who was a life long friend and mentor. It so happened that the Ranee of Sarawak, Margaret Brooke, a neighbour, ran a female orchestra for the purpose of assembling a collection of young ladies for the purpose of introducing them to her three sons. The eldest son was Vyner Brooke, who took an immediate fancy to the author. Presently, they were married. Just to briefly recap some of the events covered in my earlier passage on “The White Rajah”. James Brooke, an English adventurer turned up at Sarawak and put down an insurrection against the Sultan of Brunei. In gratitude, the Sultan ceded to James Brooke the territory of Sarawak. Thus James Brooke became the ruler of his own kingdom. James Brooke had no children so he was succeeded by his nephew Charles Brooke whose wife was Margaret Brooke. Charles Brooke ruled for many years and made great progress in establishing trade links with the outside world. A disconcerting habit of Charles Brooke was his habit of relieving himself off the veranda of the astana in front of his guests. The old Rajah was injured in a fall from his horse but he recovered enough to return to England where he died. Vyner Brooke became the third Rajah of Sarawak and the author became the Ranee. The Rajah truly loved his people in Sarawak, particularly the Dayaks, although he tried to reform their head-hunting ways. He saw the purpose of his life as service to his subjects. As all good times come to an end, the Japanese arrived in 1941 but Vyner Brooke had managed to escape to Australia just in time. The author says that the people suffered terribly under the Japanese. However, the Dayaks had their own little game. They sent the young girls to the pool to bathe. When the Japanese soldiers came out to watch them, the Dayaks lopped off their heads. After the war the Rajah was persuaded by his advisors to cede Sarawak to the British Crown in return for the payment of a million pounds which should have been enough to support him and his family indefinitely. However, his daughters, and their husbands, had an insatiable appetite for money and it soon went. The author, the Ranee had been vehemently opposed to ceding Sarawak. The Rajah and the Ranee became virtually estranged. She had said earlier in the piece that in spite of his shyness there was no doubt that the Rajah had a roving eye. He had admitted to her that whenever they went to a social gathering he asked himself, in respect of each of the ladies present; will she or won’t she? The Ranee had to go to live with her daughter in the West Indies on account of the arthritic pain she was suffering in the English winter. It was there that she admitted, after 25 years without sex, to a few illicit affairs. The Rajah himself was having more than a few illicit affairs. However, the Ranee was confident that the Rajah would never divorce her and she got on well with his “other ladies”. The author did not say in her book, but it is reputed from another source, that Vyner died at the age of 87 in the arms of his 17 year old mistress. He must have been something of an embarrassment to his family. One wonders how he got like that. Could it be that he was able to indulge too freely in Sarawak. I think the Ranee died in 1971, shortly before or after her book was published. I thoroughly enjoyed her story about real people in another time and place. It was enthralling from beginning to end even though just short of 200 pages in length; short and sharp. I consider myself lucky to have been able to get a loan of what was probably the last copy in the public library system.

The White Rajah by Nigel Barley This is a biography of Sir James Brooke who became the first white rajah of Sarawak. Sarawak was ceded to Brooke by its ruler, the Sultan of Brunei, in return for Brooke’s part in putting down an insurrection against the Sultan’s rule. It seems that the Sultan may have mistakenly believed Brooke to be acting for the British government (or the East India Company) when he was in fact acting in the capacity of a private person. Brooke was the founder of a dynasty of three white rajahs who ruled Sarawak until the Japanese invaded in 1941. His successors were his nephew, Charles Brooke and Vyner Brooke.

The last bit of the holiday was the stopover for three nights in Kuching in Sarawak. We had stopped briefly in Sarawak on the way to Kuala Lumpur five weeks earlier. From the air one sees the chocolate brown Sarawak River snaking through the lush, emerald green jungle. We arrived about midday after a meal of nasi dagang, my favourite Malay dish, on the aeroplane. We checked into the Holiday Inn. A room with a view over the Sarawak River. Although I arrived jet lagged I have had five or six hours of chemically induced sleep on the flight from London to Kuala Lumpur so I am ready to hit the shops in Kuching until bedtime local time. I successfully manage to get some local currency out of the Maybank teller machine. I then go to a photo shop and buy half a dozen rolls of remarkably cheap Fuji film. The next day, after breakfast at the hotel, we go for a ride around the city on the tourist bus. It is just an introduction to get the lie of the land. After that we walk the esplanade. On the way back the mood takes us to cross the river to go to Fort Margherita named after the wife of Charles Brooke, the second white rajah. The Fort gives a good view of the city from across the river. Being the second full day, I have booked a trip to the Cultural Village. Here there are several different types of dayak longhouses, Malay and Chinese farm houses. Even though the village is not the real thing because it has been built for tourism, it is nevertheless very interesting. Following this tour of the houses we enter into a very cold air-conditioned theatre for a cultural show by people in their native costumes. The cultural village is close to one of several jungle-clad limestone mountains rising very steeply out of the surrounding plain. The top of the mountain is above the clouds. It is so steep that I wonder how anyone could climb up there. It is the last full day and I want to see the museum that we had passed on the bus the first day. The museum is a very distinctive European-style building perched on the top of a hill. The architect responsible for the building was French and he modelled the building on a town hall in Normandy. Inside the building they have constructed the interior of a Dayak longhouse. The displays include displays of the local flora and fauna and it was very interesting. After this I headed for the river and made another crossing heading for the Astana which was the residence of the Brooke’s who ruled Sarawak until the Japanese invasion. Unfortunately the Astana is not open to the public.

Walton Hall During our UK holiday we stayed at Walton Hall, near the village of Wellsbourne, four miles South of Stratford -on-Avon. Walton Hall is a Victorian manor house built in the 1860’s on the site of an earlier Jacobean house in the Walton valley four miles South of Stratford-on-Avon. It has been the setting for a TV programme entitled “The Warwickshire Scandal”. The owner, Sir John Mordaunt, was in need of a bride to produce a successor for the estate. He met and proposed to one Harriet Moncrief, the daughter of a Scottish family. Harriet’s father was delighted with the match. He had a large family. The solution to his financial problems included getting his daughters married off in the best matches they could make. Harriet’s betrothal to Sir John certainly met with her father’s approval. Harriet and her sisters had been members of a party-going social set which included HRH the Prince of Wales and heir to the throne who later became King Edward VII. The wedding took place in Warwickshire and all went well for a while. So well that Sir John was able to go on a fishing trip to Norway leaving his young bride in charge at Walton Hall. This turned out to be somewhat ill advised as Harriet entertained several male visitors during her husband’s absence. One of the visitors had been the Prince of Wales. Servants later gave evidence that the Prince spent an hour or so alone with Harriet after she had given strict instructions to the servants that they were not to be disturbed. On his return, Sir John became aware of the royal visitor at least. The Prince had presented the young bride with two white ponies. Sir John forbade his wife from having anything further to do with the heir to the throne. He had the two white ponies brought onto the front lawn and shot in full view of Harriet. Presently it became apparent that Harriet was pregnant. As the time for her delivery approached Harriet became more and more agitated. The child was born. A daughter. Harriet was particularly concerned whether the child was normal. Apart from some conjunctivitis of the eyes, the child seemed normal. Within a week or two after the birth Harriet made a confession to her husband that the child was not his. It had been conceived during his absence in Norway. Sir John was deeply upset and commenced divorce proceedings. A divorce was not what Harriet’s father wanted. It would exacerbate his financial problems. He did not want Harriet and her child on his hands. He consulted is lawyers and they advised that if Harriet could be certified insane the divorce action would fail. Harriet was taken to the most eminent psychiatrists of the day who produced the result that they were paid for. The divorce case proceeded with HRH being cited as corespondent. HRH was called to give evidence and was asked about his relationship with Harriet. He testified to the effect that no impropriety took place in that relationship. When counsel for the husband was invited to cross examine HRH, he decline. The heir to the throne would not be called to answer for his perjury. It took several years before Sir John could get his divorce and re-marry. Even then he failed to produce a male heir. Harriet was placed in an asylum where she was confined for the rest of her life. She might have been silly but she was certainly not insane. Subsequent events may have driven her insane. It was a sad episode of an eighteen year-old being manipulated by scheming adults for their own ends. The only good thing that came out of the whole affair was that Harriet’s daughter married well and became the Marchioness of Bath. We have stayed several times at Walton Hall and walked in the footsteps of Harriet and HRH.

I should not be doing this. A travelogue should be written contemporaneously. With the passage of time recollection of amusing, poignant or even annoying moments fades into oblivion. It was an early start from Perth at the commencement of this five week odyssey. I don't know how we made it to the airport for 5.30am, but we did. I must see what time the alarm clock was set for when we get back home. I am relieved to hear that the aeroplane will not be full. I am paranoid about overloaded aeroplanes. Our Airbus A330 leaves on schedule. Our next sight of land is of the Sarawak River snaking through the lush vegetation prior to our approach to Kuching Airport. I did not know what to expect of Kuching but I find it is not llike Kuala Lumpur. We had to spend an hour in the lounge while the aeroplane is refuelled. It is a small lounge and there are few seats available but we did manage to get a table. We were joined at the table by other travellers with whom we struck up a conversation. This turned out to be fortuitous as one of the persons at the table was a director of the Holiday Inn at Kuching and we were in need of a hotel booking to complete our itinery on the return trip. My preference for the Holiday Inn was losing out to the Hilton on the assumption that the higher price brings greater comfort. Our new acquaintance rang the Holiday Inn on his mobile and made the booking for us. We continued on to Kuala Lumpur where we were met by family. There is a family reunion the following evening. The next day we set off for Penang by road. We are booked in at the Lone Pine at Batu Ferringhi. By the time we arrive I have developed a head cold and I am feeling lousey. The pool is right in front of our room but I did not feel like joining the people splashing about in it. There was another family gathering at a restaurant in Georgetown. After two nights in Penang we return to Kuala Lumpur to spend another two nights with the KL family. For our last two nights in KL we are booked in to the Concorde Hotel by a director who is related to a friend in Perth and who we met at a Hari Raya party in Perth. Checking in on arrival we received an invitation to the re-opening of the Saloma Restaurant. I really did not expect any more than a standing drinks and nibbles for an hour or so. However, the event turned out to be more like a wedding reception with speeches by our host and the Minister for Tourism followed by an exellent cultural song and dance variety show by all the beautiful people dressed in their finery. Apparently the Saloma Restaurant is named after Saloma who was a singer in the 1960's and 1970's who was married to the famous P. Ramlee. I had not brought my digital camera on holiday as I could not be bothered carrying the battery charger and the plug adaptors. However, I did bring the memory card so I got the photos taken previously download and printed at a kiosk outside the front of Lot 10. We also went to the Megamall. I had a haircut (rambut ikut) at the hairdressers outside the Carrefour supermarket. That completed our errands in KL. After two nights at the Concorde and a lunch at the Hard Rock Cafe, we continue our journey to London. On arrival in London ther is a minor hitch as we had failed to pick up one of our bags from the baggage reclaim. That is the hazard of travelling with too many bags. Once that is sorted out we got the bus to the Ibis Hotel which we have used on a number of times before. They have a special cheap rate because it is a week night even though it is Friday. The next day I find there is time for an early morning walk before going back to the airport. I walked a couple of kilometres to where there is a take-away indian restaurant where we got a memorable meal on an earlier occasion. Of course, it is closed at this time of day but I am re-assured that it is still there. After settling up with the Ibis we take the bus back to London Airport. Here there is another hitch. Our daughter had booked our flight to France on the internet. Until they had swiped her credit card they would not check us in. I managed to call her on her mobile. She was still on the bus but would be arriving at the London Airport shortly. When she turned up we were able to proceed, still in good time. Here we are in the South of France again. It is our favourite holiday destination. On arrival at Nice there is a delay before our baggage was available. I had anticipated catching the airport bus to the train station but opted to get off at the bus station, a little closer to our appartment in Rue Massena. It was a fortunate choice as Avenue Jean Medecin which we would have taken from the train station was subject to roadworks probably for laying a new tram track. As it was it was still an ordeal dragging our baggage across the streets in th hot afternoon sun. As the bus took us down the Promenade des Anglais, if we had been really smart and known where to get off, that is just past tthe new casino that wasn't there last time, we would have had only 100 metres to walk to Rue Massena. Although we were in good time we had to wait until 4pm for Madame to open the front door. Once we are in the door we are in a better bargaining position even though Madame Concierge is a bit dubious about our documents. At a time share apartment it is not just a metter of arriving and paying money. We have paid maintenance fees for our time share apartment in Australia; we have paid a fee to exchange that entitlement for a week at the apartment in Nice. Madame must satisfy herself that everthing is in order and that we are the people who have made the booking; and have paid for it. I was expected to be asked for, and was prepared to pay a security bond of 500 euros. However, Madame thinks I look the honest type and settles for 100 euros plus 40 euros for electric which is not returnable. This time our apartment does not face onto Rue Massena but faces onto the back yard which is rather disappointing. We settle in and then go in search of food to cook as we do not intend to eat in restaurants. There is a small supermarket around the corner from Rue Massena wher we get bread and milk for the night. For breakfast in the morning we go out and get a baguette, one of those long sticks of French bread. It costs 0.75 euros which is very cheap. The next day is Sunday and there was an Italian food festival on the Promenade des Anglais. We bought a chunk of Gorgonzola cheese. Later in the day, we walked down the Promenade and round into the old port of Nice. From there we crossed the road, the Cour Saleya, and into the old town of Nice where the streets are barely wide enough for two bicycles to pass. The next day we took a bus to Villefranche-sur-Mere, the next seaside townalong the coast from Nice in the direction of Monaco. Here the old town of Villefranche comes right down to the seafront. There are two cruise liners in the harbour. When we felt we had had enough of Villefranche we went to the train station to get the train to the next town along the coast which is Eze. At the train station we met a couple from Brazil. They had arrived on the cruise liner which they had joined at Barcelona. The cruise liner will visit five ports around the Western Mediterranean and return to Barcelona. The other cruise liner had come from Venice. The Brazillian couple were restauranteurs and this was their off-season being winter in Brazil. At Eze we could not find the shops. We asked directions from a building worker - in French. He replied in perfect Irish and pointed to the top of the cliffs. This is the town of Eze. Eze is an art and craft village. It is only accessible by cable car or taxi. We thought it was just too difficult and went for a snack before catching the bus back to Nice. On the bus there were more cruise passengers. I sat next to an old American. He was impressed with the bus driver's cornering. Next day we went to Antibes by train. The attraction here is the Picasso Museum. The building had belonged to the Grimaldi Family of Monaco but Picasso had actually worked in the building in 1946. Most of the works were from that period. I am not an admirer or Picasso. Next was a visit to St Paul de Vence. Last time we got to Vence but missed St Paul. This time we went to St Paul but not to Vence. St Paul is the original tourist trap. It is very tiuristy. It exists for tourists. That said, it is a typical French hill village. I guess that tourism and the money that tourists spend helps to maitain the village in pristine condition. It was here that we found a couple that we had met on our visit four years ago. They brought a painting to show to the friend we were staying with at Port Grimaud. Here, they were in St Paul with their own gallery. The weather changed. It became overcast. It rained and then it turned quite cool. We visited Cour Saleya, the flower market of Nice. It was here that we bought a French table cloth. It was 12 euros or about 20 AUD. On our last day the sun is out again. We take a trip to Monte Carlo and take our photographs outside the casino. If one is not a gambler, Monte Carlo does not have much to offer. We managed to get out of the apartment by checkout time and reclaim our deposit. We Hauled that luggage the 100 metres to the Promenade des Anglais and caught the 99 bus to the airport. We came on a large Boeing 767 but we are going back on a much smaller Airbus A319. At London Airport we separate from our daughter who is going to Brighton for the medical exam she has been studying for while we have been in Nice. This part of the holiday which consisted of two weeks in England and Scotland and a few days in Prague, I will come back to later to avoid making this passage overly long. The last bit of the holiday was the stopover for three nights in Kuching in Sarawak. We had stopped briefly in Sarawak on the way to Kuala Lumpur five weeks earlier. From the air one sees the chocolate brown Sarawak River snaking through the lush, emerald green jungle. We arrived about midday after a meal of nasi dagang, my favourite Malay dish, on the aeroplane. We checked into the Holiday Inn. A room with a view over the Sarawak River. Although I arrived jet lagged I have had five or six hours of chemically induced sleep on the flight from London to Kuala Lumpur so I am ready to hit the shops in Kuching until bedtime local time. I successfully manage to get some local currency out of the Maybank teller machine. I then go to a photo shop and buy half a dozen rolls of remarkably cheap Fuji film. The next day, after breakfast at the hotel, we go for a ride around the city on the tourist bus. It is just an introduction to get the lie of the land. After that we walk the esplanade. On the way back the mood takes us to cross the river to go to Fort Margherita named after the wife of Charles Brooke, the second white rajah. The Fort gives a good view of the city from across the river. Being the second full day, I have booked a trip to the Cultural Village. Here there are several different types of dayak longhouses, Malay and Chinese farm houses. Even though the village is not the real thing because it has been built for tourism, it is nevertheless very interesting. Following this tour of the houses we enter into a very cold air-conditioned theatre for a cultural show by people in their native costumes. The cultural village is close to one of several jungle-clad limestone mountains rising very steeply out of the surrounding plain. The top of the mountain is above the clouds. It is so steep that I wonder how anyone could climb up there. It is the last full day and I want to see the museum that we had passed on the bus the first day. The museum is a very distinctive European-style building perched on the top of a hill. The architect responsible for the building was French and he modelled the building on a town hall in Normandy. Inside the building they have constructed the interior of a Dayak longhouse. The displays include displays of the local flora and fauna and it was very interesting. After this I headed for the river and made another crossing heading for the Astana which was the residence of the Brooke’s who ruled Sarawak until the Japanese invasion. Unfortunately the Astana is not open to the public.

This native of Edinburgh, Scotland has written a dozen or so crime novels set in his home town. My interest arose by reason of residing in Edinburgh as a student and having some knowledge of the nature and whereabouts of the Edinburgh suburbs he mentions. His writing is not that good and yet he is very popular. No doubt crime is a popular topic but I guess I am not really into crime. Having read a sample I had not intended to pursue this writer. However, as I disposed of this book to my sister, she responded by giving me a volume containing two more novels by Ian Rankin.

This is a beautifully written collection of stories set in Thailand by an American born Thai writer. Each story explores a different relationship; mother and son, father and daughter, a boy and his friend. One of the storiesexposes the plight of Cambodian refugeesliving in Thailand. I really enjoyed this one even though I cannot understand how the title relates to the stories.