Il commence …

The Good: My Lille bedroom; staying with Caroline, Christian and Anais; Wall-E; red leaves in Zottegem; the Arab Quarter and Sleepy Sam’s Hostel.

The Bad: Losing my ATM card; not bringing soap!; Lily going missing a week before I left.
The Ugly: Little India in Singapore; being charged for the ‘complimentary’ peanuts and napkins in a Chinatown yum cha restaurant in Singapore.

Okay, after some random posts about spam mails and sewing projects, here is my first real actual blog. Yay. Yes, yet another travel blog!For youse guys I haven’t spoken to before I left: I’m going to France for sevenish months to take up a post as an ‘assistant’ – i.e. I will be that funny foreign person who hangs around French high schools talking English to teenagers. This is my big last travel splurge: when I return, I’m doing the lot: full time work, house building and dog/cat buying.So: it begins. It’s been a week, and I’ve just arrived in Lille, and no, it doesn’t take a week to get from Australia to France, so what have I been up to?

Packing …

Sunday the 21st began with: packing. Somehow all of this is supposed to fit into my poor, totured suitcase.

Totured Suitcase

Clearly everything didn’t fit. So some serious culling began, the end result being I’m now without half the clothes I wanted to bring GRRR. And, of course, I forgot to pack a few basics: soap, a brush and a writing pad for when I start teaching. I’ve been a mucky kind of tourist for the past week.

Astro Boy settles into his seat.

Along for the ride is, bien sur, ASTRO BOY! The flights were no problem, I feel like the old pro at flying now. 7 hours to Singapore. 13 to Amsterdam. This time, though, I spent a couple of days in layover, so it made the trip even easier.

Illuminations in Singapore’s Arab Quarter due to the End of Rammadan celebrations

Singapore

First city in la grande voyage was Singapore. Been here before, on a five hour freebie tour, courtesy of the Singaporean government, during a layover; it’s definitely one of my favourite cities, very cosmopolitan, yet lacking the dirtiness, crowds and sleaze of most Asian big cities. Luckily I arrived during religious festival times – the Arab Quarter and Little India was lit up with beautifully intricate illuminations. Weaver had recommended a hostel in the Arab Quarter called Sleepy Sams; I found it easily because of the half naked tanned Europeans draped on the sofas outside – a little obvious in a wholy Muslim district.

Bussorah Street

Sleepy Sams is located on Bussorah, a paved pedestrian street lined with small pashmina, silk and dress stores, and decorated with palm trees. At the end is this big mama:

Sultan Mosque

Sultan Mosque, seriously large, and sending out the call to prayer five times a day. Besides the beggars hanging outside the mosque, and the sleazy British teenagers hanging outside the hostel, it was a really decent area to stay in.

Weaver and I generally ate some decent local food, including a Muslim pancake (murtabak?) thing which was damn good, and eating at Komitiam, a chain of food courts with cheap-but-not-nasty combo foods (food courts are the bomb in Singapore). I played with taking photos, bought a bag, and dangled my waterproof camera in a pond to take photos of some carp:

Koi

Worked well, hey?

Then there was Little India and Chinatown, the dirtier, dodgier and smellier little cousins to the Arab Quarter. I haven’t smelt toilets as bad as those in the food court in Little India since Japan. Little India also had some very very beautiful illuminations, however, and the Mustafa complex, a massive discount department store that I will definitely visit again if I need some random brand name thing and I happen to be in Singapore.

Illuminations in Little India

There also was a festival market in Little India with plenty of beautiful indian crafts which I definitely could never bring back into Australia (on a side note, ‘Border Security’ is actually a known show in Belgium!).

Beautiful random Indian things

In all honesty, there’s a Chinatown in every city, with the Chinatown mecca being San Francisco – I think the Adelaide one shit all over the Singapore one, but my opinion is probably influenced by being overcharged for Yum Cha at a restaurant here (they charged us for the friggin napkins!)

Once youve seen one Chinatown …

So, totally missed out on catching up with Katie of Aldinga News fame – sorry! I ran out of time. However, I really do love Singapore, and will definitely transit through here again if I can. Seriously – it’s like the best of Asia, without having to deal with the nasty smelly stuff.

So, 13 hours later I ended up in Amsterdam.

Amsterdam

Yeah, been here before. That was what slightly grumpy me was thinking after a 13 hour flight with a throbbing knee and a dry nose. However, I did find some new things.

A free tour was one; these were around when I was here last, but not this group. I recommend Sandeman’s New Europe Tours if you happen to be in one of the cities that host one. Usually students or working-holidayers take foreigners around for a free wander. The idea is, if you liked it, you tip the tour guide at the end. Mine was Lou, from Sydney – man she reminded me of the people I know back home – she was Liesa with red hair and stockings. One wonderful thing we discovered was this marvelous sculpture in the red light district:

Notice the chain and padlock.

I’m a fan of this anonymous artisan. Also wonderful: the definite tilt of some of Amsterdam’s canal houses, due to generally dodgy foundations and genuine practical reasons:

Sloping canal houses – not a straight card in the deck.

We also wandered past the most famous ‘coffee’ shop in Amsterdam (well, it was in Oceans 12, apparently), as frequented by our guide; she pointed out the resident Dampkring cat which she tells us never moves. Happiest cat in the world (or most abused, depending on your point of view).

De Dampkring Cat

I didn’t give the tour guide a tip, I’m ashamed to say, as I’d intended to return for the Red Light District tour she was also to take later, and I was stretching my euros to do that. However, I returned to the hostel, closed my eyes for a second, and woke up again 8 hours later. Oops. I will tip her next time I’m in Amsterdam.

Besides my boot breaking and having to use a crowbar to get my (totured) suitcase out of a locker (!) Amsterdam was uncomplicated. Onwards to Zottegem.

Zottegem

It’s in Belgium. Specifically, it’s where mes amis Caroline, Christian and their daughter, Anais, live. I stayed a very pleasant three days with them. It was nice to fall back into a leisurely pace, eat some very nice Belgian food (the mash potato combinations there are fantastic – particularly mash, cheese and spinach). We drove around and saw some local sights. Particularly, we went to Enghien, a local chateau site, with the most magnificient dahlia garden – those who know me, know I like to take photos of flowers, and here are the best:

I loved the tubular effect the dahlia petals have.

Here is Anais amongst the dahlias:

Anais in the Dahlias

Another wonderful site was une grande maison in Zottegem – a beautiful forest and grassed garden topped with a large mansion. I loved the red colour of the autumn-ivy and kept a leaf to remember the colour (I will try to paint with it later).

Grande maison pres de Zottegem. See the red ivy?

Its silly, but I was excited to see holly trees:

Christmas time!

Sadly, it was time to move on to my home for the next six months: Lille.

Lille

Grey Lille.

So, it was foggy and rainy when we arrived, so the beautiful centrum of Lille was a little grey, but it seems nice what I’ve seen so far. Caroline and Christian were kind enough to take me to Lille themselves, and meet my new landlord with me. My new digs is a townhouse in Hellemmes, an inner city suburb of Lille, about five km from the centrum. This is my bedroom – very sweet and nice. Being I have next to no stuff, it should stay relatively tidy (stop laughing, Mum).

Ma nouvelle chambre

Those who know my recent knee troubles will be laughing their heads off to learn my bedroom is on the top floor of the three storey townhouse. But my knees almost better, and hey I have a really nice view:

View across Hellemmes

Hellemmes is a nice area. It has hundreds of similar townhouses with tiny courtyards and squashed frontages:

Townhouses and one really ornate Flemish style house.

At the local discount supermarket I can buy a printer (!) but not a writing pad (which I actually needed), but besides that there’s been only one problem.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I forgot my pin, and the local ATM swallowed my Satisfac debit card. Yes, Weaver, after my smirking at your losing your Visa in the jungles of Sumatra, you now can belittle me for allowing an ATM in suburban France to take my card. Lucky, I didn’t close my BankSA account before I left, and after returning to my new house to check my pin, I was able to access some money with another card to pay my landlord. I fell victim to a rookie traveller mistake: my pin is a word, and international ATMs don’t have letters on them. I actually had to come back, look up in Google images for a picture of an ATM keypad from Australia so I could find out what my pin actually is. In my defense, they were all changed just before I left Australia. I transferred money from my Satisfac account to my BankSA account, so I should be right till I organise a new card, but goddamnit, seriously not impressed with my stupidity.

So right now, I’m going to finish fiddling with my computer and have a sleep. More next week. Au revoir.