Water weekend

It was when writing up my dive log that I noticed I last dived the Daymaniyat Islands off Muscat four years previously to the day. Four years? I was astonished.

On this recent trip, all the dive sites were different, so everything was new. To be fair, all the sites are broadly similar tropical wall dives with prolific hard and soft corals and uncountable reef fish. Others in the party from Doha were lucky enough to see, and in some cases photograph, rays and turtles; Muggins wasn’t that fortunate.

The weekend away was organised by one of the guys in Doha Sub-Aqua Club to provide a change from the dubious delights of the silt and jellyfish of Old Club Reef. We flew to Muscat on Thursday night, dived intensively on Friday and Saturday morning, and then chilled out at the Al Sawadi Beach Resort before taking the Fun Bus back to Seeb airport in Muscat at obscenely early hours of Sunday morning. Thus, a very early flight got me back in Doha and at my desk by around 6:30am instead of the customary 8am.

Beloved Wife simply drove over to Muscat from Dubai, picked me up from the airport on Thursday night, and we drove to the dive centre on Friday morning.

I finally escaped from the airport so late on Thursday that it was almost Friday. Over 90 minutes I stood in a queue to have my passport stamped. It was Visa On Arrival, and paying was the easy bit. Why is Muscat’s immigration so unbelievably slow? How long does it take to find an empty page in someone’s passport and hit it with a rubber stamp? I pity the poor hapless fools who had purchased their visas in advance. They had to stand in a different queue to get their visas before joining the back of the passport-stamping queue. Even having a visa in advance was no help. The queue for visa holders was even longer.

How is it that when one of those alumininium tubes with wings pulls up outside the terminal building - exactly as forecast in the flight schedules - and disgorges several hundred people, that the authorities seem completely unprepared for the sudden influx? Once again, it’s Karma Sutra Passport Control: Loads of positions, but most of them don’t work. Beloved Wife rang me to find out if she’d missed me at Meet and Greet. No, I was still queuing.

Having at last got my visa stamp (on yet another empty page), I spent the next half an hour looking for my luggage. All bags had been removed from the baggage carousels and piled in unwieldy heaps. Was there any clue as to which carousel the Doha flight had used? Is the Pope a Buddhist?

I was certainly a relief to get to our friend TGL’s flat and become horizontal for a few hours. Beloved Wife handed me a small pie at the airport to cheer me up. Good show!

Friday’s breakfast consisted of an Egg McMuffin in lieu of food, and we headed off in Beloved Wife’s car to the resort. I drove and BW fiddled with her new GPS.

The diving was, on the whole, excellent. There are some additional photos in this gallery.

Having washed the kit after finishing on Saturday, we killed time allowing it to dry, and awaiting 6pm and Happy Hour. It would not do to pack our dive kit wet; paying excess baggage for water is extremely undesirable.

A beery and sleepless evening followed, and at 2:30am we boarded the fun bus back to Muscat and the airport. Here, I discovered a colossal cock-up with my ticketing. For reasons unknown, I was booked to fly a week later, and the only way to get aboard today was to buy a new ticket. A single Muscat to Doha cost an appalling OMR150, or some $400. My original ticket had been obtained through Qatar Airways’ Frequent flyer Air Miles, and should be changeable for a $25 fee. But of course, nobody’s available at 3am, and I couldn’t wait until office hours owing to the need for me to present myself in my office. Oh, and the website to obtain a refund on the unused return ticket simply crashes, perhaps because it’s allergic to giving anything back. It's not a total loss, however. Qatar Airways have now cancelled my erroneous booking for 23rd October, and I can apparently pay $25 to reroute it Dubai to Doha any time before September next year.

Not true, I have learned (November 2011). It's $25 to change the date, plus $25 to change from MCT-DOH to DXB-DOH, plus the difference in airport taxes. In other words, "$25" is nearer $100.

It took a while, but I eventually found myself airside. I went looking for breakfast. The only place that was open and offering solid food was a Dairy Queen. I stood at the entrance and checked my Omani cash, the menu, and the employee poised expectantly at the counter. Decision made, I asked for that thing on the menu, only to be advised that Dairy Queen was closed until 6am. So why the bloody hell didn’t he say so while I was planning my breakfast? Why wasn’t he simply asleep in his bed? What is the point of creating an illusion of being open for business when the shop is in fact closed?

On the whole, the diving and chilling part of the weekend was excellent, albeit unnecessarily expensive owing to the ticketing screw-up. Such a pity that I find myself exhausted and irritated by the trials of air travel, and immediately in need of a holiday to recover.

]}:-{>

Pet shop boys

Once more, the Goat has fallen victim to ‘Not Coming In Dubaitis’. This time it involves the tropical fish.

There is no shortage of shops selling fish tanks, air pumps, power heads, gravel, imitation coral, plastic skeletons and treasure chests, and fake Greek temple ruins. And neither is there any problem finding someone who’ll sell tropical fish. But what happens when some of the electric hardware goes wrong? Does anyone carry spares?

Guess. Go on; you’ll never guess.

An aquarium power head comprises an electromagnet in a sealed waterproof plastic box. This drives a tiny impeller which circulates and aerates the water. But when the impeller comes adrift from its magnet, it sounds like bricks in a tumble dryer. Obviously there is an urgent need to replace the broken part. It should not be necessary to replace the entire power head.

The first shop had some replacement impellers, and they were dirt cheap. But all the wrong size. Nobody else had any at all. I rode my motorbike all over town, to be regaled with variations on a theme of “No” ranging from “Sorry, Mr Goat...” to “Neanderthal Grunt.”

Eventually I was forced to throw away a perfectly good power head and buy a complete new unit in order to obtain an impeller worth a shilling. As usual, the electric box came with about half a metre of cable, which is nowhere near enough when electricity and water are involved.


The stinking shops in Satwa that sell tropical fish and ornamental birds were right at the bottom of my list. In addition to the odious Neanderthal Grunt, which was available in all the shops, these places are a continual reminder of the unspeakable conditions from which animals are offered for sale. I hate going there and seeing the wretched creatures and the atrocious conditions of their accommodation.

A couple of months ago, 7DAYS ran a front page that did the dirt on the Sharjah animal market. This was inevitably followed by a host of indignant Letters to the Editor concerning dying animals sold to unsuspecting punters with clean bills of health from the local veterinarian.

Unsuspecting? Why is anyone surprised? You can see the overstocked tanks of putrid water with dead fish floating; you can see the rheumy-eyed, runny-nosed kittens; you can see the pony with a ribcage that resembles a bicycle rack. Of course, actually buying any of these animals to rescue them only dooms more to the same fate, and even the most passionate animal lover can’t save them all.

How can people be so cruel? When you see (or read in the local papers) how some folk treat their housemaids, is it really any surprise, the treatment meted out to mere dumb animals?

]}:-{>

Donkeys and camels and goats. Oh my!

The Crumbling Villa is bursting at the seams. Instead of being populated by The Goat and his Beloved Wife, this week The Goat's howling herd has descended for some sunshine. Apparently it's cold, damp and snowing in Blighty, whereas here in the Lands of the Sand there is more sun that you can sheikh a stick at.

The two adults and their four kids are of course all having a riotous time, and The Goat has taken a week's leave of absence from his job. There was a plan to escape back to the office mid-week, but the savage itinerary set by the rellies who want to see everything and do it all doesn't allow this.

An outstanding and long-standing promise involving a large motorcycle and some nephews has been discharged. After The Goat borrowed a spare helmet, the ten-year-old rode pillion to Sandy Beach and the 13yo rode on the trip back. Yes, yes, Bad Goat... Everybody else went in the Goatmobile. Sandy Beach advertised its wares with a large sign in Reception warning potential punters that there were jellyfish in the sea. Following physical observation, 'a jellyfish' would perhaps have been nearer the mark. There were also sharks and barracuda, much to the delight of the young and not-so-young snorkellers.

We're all off to an aquarium to have a better look at some sharks today. Not Atlantis, though. Visiting Atlantis was limited to driving around the barrier reef and getting splashed by the enthusiastically rough sea. That'll learn Beloved Wife with her open-top car!

We all piled into two cars on another day and did part of the most recent Gulf News Fun Drive across the dunes. Clearly too easy because nobody got even slightly stuck, this trip was deemed a delight by the visitors. Of course, the Fossil Rock steep track was added to the itinerary, to the further delight of all. As well as picking through the dunes, the visitors busied themselves checking out the wildlife. No oryx; no gazelles. But plenty of the usual suspects.

Tomorrow we're off to ride the water flumes up at Dreamland in Umm Al Quwain. The Goat mentioned the availability of fizzy yellow beverage to his brother-in-law, but somehow forgot to note the delicate Low Tide aroma wafting in off the mud flats.

What else? Well Beloved Wife and Goat are packing the other 'dults off to a five star hotel for their wedding anniversary on Wednesday, and then spending the evening in loco parentis (you've gotta be mad to be a parent). Cinema followed by Burger King, we suspect. And there's also the obligatory trip to the gold souq. We've already been to Karama: "Copy watches, genuine fake handbag, etc."

The relatives have had such a wonderful time so far that they're already mumbling about visiting again.

]}:-{>

Whale meat again

Hot news on several blogs, websites and Facebook pages is that Sammy the whale shark has been tagged and released. Since her September 2008 incarceration in the Atlantis hotel on Palm Jumeira, there was initially a lot of talk, but little apparent action.

We, Atlantis, are studying the whale shark. It's under medical care and observation before we release it back into the wild.

We, Atlantis, have no intention of ever releasing the animal.

Release Sammy!

Personally I’ve never darkened the doors of Atlantis, pending the release of the fish. And I’m not alone.

Isn’t it somewhat surprising that Sammy’s release into the wild was a quiet, unassuming affair with no fireworks, photographs or even witnesses? Surely some form of commemorative photo story would have been appropriate to undo some of the public relations damage done by taking the fish from the wild in the first place? Or perhaps a backtrack from “We’re keeping the shark for ever” to “It’s been tagged and released” constitutes the dreaded Loss Of Face. Therefore it has to be done in secret and at the dead of night, so as not to stress the fish.

It’s curious that, according to the inevitably biased Set the Whale Shark Free from the Atlantis Aquarium Facebook group, requests for the shark’s tag number result in the correspondent asking for it getting blocked from Atlantis’ Facebook group. Mote Marine Laboratory in Florida currently does not carry any information about this particular tagged animal on its website. Atlantis’ employees are allegedly banned from discussing the whale shark.

Why the apparent cover-up? What’s with the obfuscation? What is there to hide?

Those of us with a cynical streak a mile wide might infer from the lack of any evidence to the contrary that the shark was removed from the aquarium and turned into cat food. I fervently hope that those cynics are wrong.

Unfortunately, being a threatened, vulnerable species, the aphorism that “there are plenty more fish in the sea” simply does not apply.

]}:-{>

Turkey and chips

The tourist shot.
It might take a while for the desert sands to reclaim this little lot.

What news? What news indeed. The Goat’s brief blogging hiatus has been caused by Nanny Goat’s visit over the past two weeks. So no comments here about defaulting on loans or the alleged imminent demise of Dubai to be reclaimed by the desert sands. For further reading on the above subjects, please feel free to read what Seabee and The Real Nick have had to say.

Anyway, Nanny Goat. She arrived bearing gifts from Faun Parts: a small white goat that sits on its haunches and sings about A Lonely Goatherd, doing a passable imcaprination of Julie Andrews. Also motorcycle farkles, and new batteries to replace the old and dying items in various old and dying mobile phones. A ‘farkle’, incidentally, is a Fancy Accessory; Really Kool; Likely Expensive, and is generally to be found adorning a motorcycle. New extended fibreglass mudguards now keep more road crud off the expensive bits of rear suspension and the front of the engine, and a grille over the radiator protects against extremely expensive impact by stones and errant birds.

There’s a previous blog about the new zorst. Since then the bike went over to the Aprilia shop way over past the Autodrome in Dubai Investment Park, for a session on the dynamometer. It is gratifying to note that the gainsayers were wrong. The new exhaust pipe does not cock up the carburetion so that the engine runs super-lean and risks burning holes in pistons. Isn’t digital fuel injection wonderful? The air/fuel ratio is perfect up to 8000rpm and runs just slightly rich above that. Given that 8000rpm equates to about 240kph in top gear, doing anything about the rich mixture doesn’t seem worth the effort or expense. Over 130 horsepower isn’t bad either, although using it all on the public highway might be.

Bad for the fuel consumption; bad for the wallet; bad for the licence...

Not that the bike’s been out much during Nanny Goat’s visit. One morning there had been some spots of rain overnight and Diablo Black had become smeared with Dubai Beige, which was rather off-putting. I don’t like riding in the rain, particularly in an environment where most people don’t seem to be able to. The clouds have been a welcome change, though. Actual blue skies with fluffy white things make photos that include sky so much more interesting than the usual plain brown.

Following a week when the Goat was obliged to go to work (Keeps away the lupine pest) and Nanny Goat stayed at home and made pasties (Huzzah!),we’ve been swanning around the Emirates seeing the sights and doing that whole touristy thing either in the Goatmobile or with the roof of Beloved Wife’s tin-top convertible folded away. On her first evening here, there was a desert barbecue out past Bab Al Shams that was tricky to find in the dark even abetted by GPS. A separate BBQ over an adjacent dune proved distracting and confusing at first.

Later, we drove around almost the entire length of Palm Jumeira’s barrier reef. We didn’t go into the Atlantis, and will not do so until after the whale shark has been released.

Sharjah Heritage Village and its souq was available for use, so Nanny Goat and I wandered around buildings recently restored in the style common in the 1850s, or possibly even the 1950s. The door to the Heritage Museum was shut in our faces, and the Islamic Museum seems to have disappeared.

It was diverting to wander around the aquarium in Dubai Mall. The Goat tried and failed to take decent photographs with Nanny Goat’s new compact camera. There was a long and protracted session with Photoshop^(TM) afterwards, trying to get the colour balance back to something approaching plausible. Incidentally, the same problem afflicted all the photos taken under the blue-glassed atrium of Mercato Mall. Messing with the white balance and other settings met with little success.

On the subject of said camera, it was astounding to see how cheap memory cards have become. So cheap in fact that 2GB was given away with the camera (an Olympus with 12 megapixels, if anyone’s interested) along with spare rechargeable batteries, a charger and a carrying case, and all for well under Dh500. Merry Christmas, Nanny Goat. Unfortunately such beneficence was not displayed when I enquired about a new Nikon DSLR body. That will have to wait for some considerable time, given that it’s probably Dh6500-worth cost of D300.

What else happened? Beloved Wife threw a massive and traditional turkey dinner on Thanksgiving Friday. We have now at last more or less got rid of all that food. There remain the final remnants of a pie that the Goat made from turkey leftovers, but the potatoes, cranberry sauce and squash have now gone the way of all food.

The blog’s normal service - complaining about stuff that gets up the Goat’s nose - will be resumed following Nanny Goat’s departure.

]}:-{>

Binary fission

This is the means whereby large cardboard boxes reproduce. It doesn't matter how many we empty, there are always some more cartons full of stuff that needs a home. The bookcases are full, the kitchen cabinets are replete, the DVDs are stored near the TV or on bookcases, and the front yard is bulging with collapsed empty cartons awaiting collection by the removal men.

And yet, as at the end of a weekend of unpacking and putting up shelves, there were still four more boxes to empty. The den, the maid's room and the other bedrooms currently resemble an explosion in Home Centre. The 'to do' list remains monstrous.

The main bedroom now looks fairly civilised, as do the kitchen and lounge/diner. The manuals for the TV and DVD player emerged during the move, so I was at last able to set up the home theatre with a DVI digital video connection and six-speaker surround sound, whose primary purpose actually is not to annoy the neighbours.

Still, the aquarium and fish seem to have come through the moving experience unscathed.

Money For Nothing

"We gotta install microwave ovens
Custom kitchen deliveries.
We gotta move those refrigerators;
We gotta move those colour TVs."

Thank you Dire Straits. All of the above was really easy compared with shifting an aquarium.

Microwave oven?
Small and light. A doddle to move.

Custom kitchen?
I had to customise the 89cm slot for my 90cm stove, and, much to the astonishment and probable disappointment of the removal men, the stove slid neatly into its allocated space. All the existing cupboards are much improved by new Ikea doors to replace the incumbent ghastly, rotten papier mâché items. The wall cupboards are to be delivered, assembled and installed by Ikea's own experts. Then there remains the small matter of fitting a cooker hood cum extract-o-matic.

Refrigerators?
Two upright fridge-freezers now stand side by side, pretending to be an oversized double-door unit. A third miniature fridge needs a home. Somewhere convenient for the beer. In the den, perhaps?

Colour TVs?
Despite the removers' concerns, the telly was surprisingly easy to move. Fortunately for everybody, when they moved part of the display unit and sent a shelf and ornaments crashing down it missed the TV and only dented a cabinet. The damaged unit is irreplaceable; it's a line discontinued by Ikea ever since I bought one. The removers knocked off some money in compensation, and I managed not to be too profane at the time.

Anyway, the aquarium. I previously blogged about how every time I mentioned my fish tank one of its occupants went belly up. I have decided to risk publishing again. Googling moving house aquarium yields a lot of scary stories and dire injunctions against attempting to shift it with water in. Yeah, like 515kg (water plus gravel plus glass) can be shifted by a couple of guys. "Moving house is one of the most stressful things you can do," I'm led to believe. And that's before a fish tank is included in the equation. To complicate the issue, the tank is 1.5m long and the floor of the lift was 1.4m square. So the tank had to be upended.

The first stage was to remove the ornaments from the tank and to put these along with about 60 litres of syphoned water into a clean plastic bin. While discarding most of the rest of the water with the syphon, I spent a happy half hour chasing some extremely rapid fish around their diminishing home. One at a time they ended up in the dustbin along with an immersed filter and a couple of airstones. So far so good. I only got bitten once. The smart money, according to t'internet, says to put each fish in its own ziplock bag with some water. I decided not to pursue this option because it would have made reconstructing the tank environment a huge rush to beat the fish running out of oxygen.

Having drained all but the last few teaspoons of water I shovelled up the gravel and put it into clean and available polystyrene boxes, which I loaded into the back of the Goatmobile. The fish came next. A dustbin two thirds full of water and fish is unwieldy, to say the least. It took several tries to get it into the car the right way up and secure for a journey. And getting the bin out of the car in Mirdif was even more awkward because there was no security guard to assist, and Beloved was busy elsewhere. Once inside the building I re-established filtration and air supply, and let the fish calm down.

The aquarium was delivered the following day by the removal men. As soon as I could I put the gravel and ornaments back in the tank and mostly filled it with tap water, treating for chlorine as I went. At one point the hosepipe obligingly fell out of the tank and poured several gallons of water all over the floor. Just as well, then, that it's tiles and not finest Axminster. I left the pumps and aeration running overnight to try to get the tank environment stable before introducing the fish to their new home.

Porcelain express

Perhaps I shouldn't blog about my aquarium. I did so here and two fish promptly dropped dead.

:-(

I found an ill-looking tiger barb and isolated it in a net in the aquarium so that it wouldn't get attacked by the other fish, and the barb died overnight. A day later I discovered the mortal remains of one of the allegedly indestructible catfish on the gravel.

Normally this sort of thing is caused by poor water quality, but chemical tests reveal nothing wrong with the water, and none of the other tank occupants seem to be even slightly unwell. So it's a bit of a mystery.

If I never mention the aquarium on this blog again, it'll be because my fish drop dead every time I publish something about them. So now you know.

I am currently considering buying a marine aquarium. Aside from the additional cost and complexity, there is the issue of finding somewhere in Grumpy Goat Towers where a second fish tank won't get in the way of the rest of the furniture whilst still being reasonably visible. It's a bit pointless keeping ornamental fish if no-one can see them. And the decision is also related to whether or not I change my accommodation arrangement when my lease expires in July. And that is subject to how greedy my landlord decides to be.

Something in the water

Does the phrase 'mad as a fish' ring any bells? I can't remember where I first encountered it, but it was probably in connection with the ISP.

This post has very little to do with the internet, and rather more to do with my aquarium's denizens. I last posted about the aquarium here, since when the tank has been successful. I regard a major part of the success being the low numbers of dead fish. My Siamese fighting fish Betta splendens were not successful. The three females and one male only lasted a week before they went belly up and ended up riding the porcelain express. I suspect that the fish were on their way out when I first bought them; none of the other residents have perished, at least not since I removed the crayfish, which was less fish and rather more Kray.

I found a shoal of clown loach Botia macaranthas in my local aquarium shop and duly took five of them home. I'd read somewhere that these are naturally shoaling rather than solitary fish, so would be a lot happier in like-minded company. The same book suggested that clown loach are timid by nature. They prefer to cower under things at the slightest provocation, and they're also crepuscular (most active at twilight). They can eventually be coaxed out over time, or so I'm advised.

Not my loaches. That would be too easy.

The tiger barb Puntius tetrazona comes in several flavours. Several of mine are the classic tiger-striped orange and black. Tiger barbs are extremely boisterous, constantly chasing each other and anything else. They're 'in yer face'. "Look at me. Look at me! I'm a tiger barb!"

One of the features of the clown loach is its orange colour with black vertical stripes. This pattern appears to be close enough to the barbs' pattern for the loaches to have decided that they must all be the same species as the barbs, and should therefore exhibit the same behaviour. And there we have it. The supposedly timid clown loaches, all up at the front of the tank demanding constant attention in a "Me, me, me. I want attention!" sort of way.

Not that I'm complaining. I think it's excellent that the fish are visible and not hiding under or behind the aquarium hardware.

As if crazy loaches aren't odd enough, the aquatic asylum also features a surface-feeding catfish Hypostomas plecostomas. Two of these are supposed to keep the algae under control by slurping it off the inside of the glass, and this indeed is what one of them does. The other prefers to swim upside down just beneath the surface, sucking up flake food instead of eating the sinking pellets specifically provided for the bottom-feeders.

This link is to a 38-second video of the aquarium's occupants. There's a lot of movement, so at over 13MB it's not recommended for Ye Olde Dial-Uppe.

Thai dry

"Let's rent a motorbike. It's only 200 baht a day (about Dh20, or £3)."

It's very tempting. The Japanese step-through bike is everywhere, and unlike in the UK where there is a major social stigma associated with grown adults riding chicken-chasers, these machines are the practical transport of the masses. Given the riding style, however, I dread to imagine what would happen if the major motor manufacturers got their way and managed to prise everyone off bikes and into cars.

Of course, people ride bikes out of necessity rather than choice. Two, three or in extreme cases even four-up on a Honda C90 are common occurrences, as are riding helmetless and in flip-flops.


The law demands that riders and pillion passengers wear helmets, but as the local constabulary chooses not to enforce the law, it is widely flouted. Does this sound like anywhere else? It reminds me of everywhere else.

With a maximum payload of 170kg, I was advised that Mme Cyn and I really ought not to share a moped. And the only big bike I saw for rent was an ancient Hardly Ableson with bald tyres. But it was the flip-flop issue that convinced me not to rent a motorcycle. Neither of us had any proper shoes, and in my mis-spent youth I have learned the value of foot protection while on two wheels. But not while elsewhere. Being an inveterate nelipot, I packed my flip-flops away on the bus trip from Phuket airport and didn't find shoes necessary again until I got back to work.

We rented a car, and spent a couple of days exploring the astonishingly small island of Phuket.

You still have to be a bit careful when renting a car in Thailand...


It turned out that the west coast bays were rather commercialised. This is where to go if you like posh hotels, souvenir shops, bars and nightclubs all jostling for space on the seafront road. Chalong, which is where Mme Cyn and I stayed, is rather quieter.


The roads are still loaded with shops, this time offering diving, dive kit and Thai massage (sometimes all in the same venue), but there was a lot less of the 'in your face' pandering specifically to the rich foreign tourist who wants a suntan, a souvenir and a shag. Are cormorants indigenous to Thailand?

Thai silk, I am reliably informed by Mme Cyn, is the souvenir. After dragging up to a new shopping mall, Jim Thompson informed us that we should go to the factory outlet, and gave us directions. Souvenirs and gifts for the folks back home all sorted. Job done.

We visited Wat Chalong, the major local Buddhist temple, where I took photographs.



I wonder why it remains necessary to have the Hot-Pants Police on permanent duty? Do people really not understand that thing about respecting other peoples' beliefs? Based on my observations, it seems not.


I really like the local habit of setting of very loud fireworks inside an enclosed space as shown above, in order either to attract the attention of supernatural beings, or in the case of evil spirits, to scare them off. Just as well I'm not an evil spirit; I'm a great fan of irresponsibly loud pyrotechnics.

Elephants were on my to do list. Whilst very familiar with the elephant in principle, I'd not seen one close up since about 1969 in Singapore, when I was extremely small. Our hotel manager gave directions to a recommended elephant emporium. We chose the short, 20 minute ride, which turned out to be a wise decision given the terrain. Elephants don't do downhill very well. The animal's handler alighted from his beast partway through the short trip and took photos with my camera.


Some of the shots are not of his thumb. He tried to encourage me to get off the saddle and sit astride the elephant's neck, but I declined, fearing that moving my large and ungainly bulk might unbalance the payload and cause me to fall off. Thai elephants aren't very large, but it's still a long way to tumble.


After taking the punters for a ride through the woods it is, of course, necessary to get a good wash down.



In the bar at Pachyderm Central were some other funky creatures...


We managed to get horribly lost in downtown Phuket, but the town not very large so the principle is to keep going in a straightish line until a direction sign is enountered. Traffic lights have countdown numbers, which seems like a brilliant idea until you realise that everyone waits until the red numbers get down to about five seconds and then jumps the signal. It's disconcerting to drive through a green with several seconds to go, and to have a horde of mopeds accelerate straight at you!

We eventually found our way to Phuket aquarium, where it was possible to see some of the fish that we'd missed while diving. The major tank is one of those with a transparent tunnel. The water was full of leopard sharks, white-tip reef sharks, eagle rays and trevally. It proved impossible to get a satisfactory photo of any of the aquarium's denizens.

We also found a butterfly farm. In order to see the insects it was necessary to pay for admission and then to run the gauntlet of various live tarantulas on display in acrylic domes. I'm not an arachnophobe, but it's beyond me why anyone should wish to keep a large spider as a pet. It's furry and has long legs, I suppose. The same as a saluki. Anyway, the highlight for me was the world's largest moth.


The atlas moth, that metamorphoses from this gigantic caterpillar, was capable of dwarfing my beer gut, and that is some achievement.


It is enormous. And so is the moth.

Thai dive

At last. At long, long last. After 294 days I managed to escape from the Lands of the Sand to somewhere a little bit greener. More specifically, I'm now back after a week or so in and around Phuket.

Thanks to Qatar Airways and my copious collection of frequent flyer miles the return trip to Bangkok cost me a mere Dh600; the cost of airport taxes. Thai Air Asia dealt with the Bangkok-Phuket flights at a mere Dh350 return. Thai Air Asia is very much an equivalent to SleeziJet, in that the baggage allowance is a minuscule 15kg and on-board refreshments involve the exchange of cash.

I met Mme Cyn in Bangkok, and together our excess baggage charges cost more than the original tickets. But I had brought some of Mme Cyn's additional diving goodies as requested. On the return trip I transported some of Mme Cyn's purchases back to Dubai, exploiting the 40kg baggage allowance that frequent flyer members get with Qatar Airways (and everyone else too, I suspect). But despite Phuket International's baggage handlers loading my 39kg bag and Bangkok's unloading it without a problem, I was advised at check-in to Dubai that the rules prohibited any single bag being heavier than 32kg. Why can't everyone employ burly stevedores as baggage handlers as they apparently do in Phuket? I had to unload some of the luggage and mummify it in about a kilo of clingfilm before it could be checked in.

So much for the flights. The holiday itself consisted of a stay in a small resort bungalow either side of a three-day liveaboard trip to the Similan Islands. I booked all accommodation, diving and transfers with Sea Bees. Having picked them out of the small ads of a diving magazine virtually at random, I was very pleasantly surprised at how the entire holiday went like clockwork. Perhaps it's something to do with Sea Bees being run by some legendarily efficient Germans. This is meant to be a compliment, not a racist slur.

It was perhaps a little unfortunate that the sea around the Similan Islands was cloudier than I'd been led to believe. A plankton bloom was in progress, together with upwellings of cold water that made a wetsuit necessary despite the sea surface temperature being a Speedo-friendly 28 degrees (or 82F in old money). At least all the crap in the water would encourage the appearance of the large planktivores (who do not, as the name suggests, eat nothing but long, flat pieces of wood).

Sure enough, on two separate dives manta rays appeared. On one occasion a manta loomed over me out of the red tide, but alas was so close I didn't have time to get any decent pictures. Most of the dives involved mucking about among the coral and rocks, seeking out minor denizens and trying to photograph them.

It seemed rude to have a week in a tropical diving destination and only to dive over three days. Mme Cyn and I went on a day-boat trip south from Phuket to Racha Noi and Racha Yai. I loved the boat, Excalibur II, and spent a lot of my time aboard fantasising about how I could convert it into a luxury yacht for my own personal ownership. Maybe I'd repaint it not banana yellow for a start. Again, the diving was very well organised, and we got three decent, albeit a bit murky, dives. I spotted one leopard shark, cruising languidly in the distance too far away to photograph with any chance of success.

I took around 500 photographs. I'm ever so glad I bought a 2GB card for my Sony DSC-T1. With a capacity of around 800 high-res shots, or about 90 minutes of 640 x 480 MPEG video I didn't have to worry about having to download the photos every day. The photos weren't limited to underwater stuff. Driving around Phuket, elephants, gibbons and a Buddhist temple were included in the itinerary, but I'll leave those for a separate post.

Giant stride off the boat, and there it was, just below the surface

This turtle hung around the boat, being fed bananas and cucumbers

A forest of Christmas-tree worms

Shocked at being caught with a cleaner wrasse in its mouth

That's one enormous hermit crab in a full-size conch shell

Psychadelic slugs

An octopus, being timid

Here is a short video clip of a different octopus. A broadband connection is recommended...

Stonefish? Scorpionfish? Ugly and with tons of attitude

I think these are coral shrimps. They're less than an inch long

A nervous blenny peeking out of its hole in the coral


Oral hygiene, tropical reef style


This is a banded cleaner shrimp, I think


The minuscule coral crab, spotted on a night dive


A group, or at least a brace, of coral groupers

Just add water II - Adding the fish

Over the past week or so I've been populating my aquarium. I made an early decision to try to keep it looking reasonably natural, and to have all the fish from, very broadly, the same area of the planet. Having selected south-east Asia, my tank is inappropriate for Amazon piranha, South American angel fish or African cichlids. As part of the 'natural' decision, there is no room in my aquarium for bubbling plastic divers, skulls, treasure chests, sunken ruins or fairy castles. Instead there are a few interestingly-shaped pieces of bogwood, a big hollow (plastic) rock and some real plants. And some tropical fish.

The current list stands at:-
Tiger barb (tiger striped) - 5
Tiger barb (green) - 4
Bala shark - 3
Boeseman's rainbow - 4
Armoured catfish - 2
Black molly - 3

I lost a shark and a tiger barb to Ronnie (or possibly Reggie) Cray. Back to the shop with that one! And my experiment with one male Siamese Fighting Fish and four females soon ended with them all riding the porcelain express. It's a mystery why the all went belly-up; the other fish are all fine and the water tests say water quality is OK.

Future plans are for a small shoal of clown loach. These are currently not coming in Dubai, but deliveries are expected sometime this week, I'm told.

The only additional thing I need is an automatic feeder to prevent hungry fish from turning on each other if I go away for a few days.

Just add water

My aquarium is installed, commissioned and is teeming with life. After planting some genuine greenery, some real bogwood and an authentic plastic rock, it was time to check water quality. Chlorine, as found in tap water, is deadly to aquarium fish, but fortunately chemicals are available that instantly get rid of chlorine from the water. A small bottle of bacteria helped to get the nitrogen cycle running. The pumps are pumping, the bubbles are bubbling and the overhead light goes on and off.

The Aquarium: All 375 litres of it

After a week or so, everything looked good so it was time to introduce the first residents. I picked a couple of suckermouth catfish and four tiger barbs. The catfish are referred to locally as janitor fish, as they spend all their time hoovering algae off the glass, gravel and other tank hardware. The barbs' primary purpose is to be ornamental and cute. Tiger barbs are shoaling fish; I read on the InterWeb that a solitary one will pester other fish and take chunks out of their fins. If there is a shoal they generally pester each other and leave everyone else alone.

Within twenty-four hours I had an outbreak of the dreaded ich. White-spot is a protozoan infection that if left untreated will kill all the fish in the tank. Where it came from is a mystery. There could have been ich cysts in the gravel or any of the fish or the plants. "Immediate action" is the recommended course, so I immediately shot down to the aquarium shop in Sharjah and got hold of some methylene blue. The warmer the water the quicker the ich life-cycle will be, so 28C and 48 hours later I'd removed all symptoms and hopefully killed the infection stone dead. One dead tiger barb too, unfortunately.

I returned to Sharjah Aquarium Centre a day or so later to pick up some more fish, and some spare white-spot treatment just in case of another outbreak. I had a very careful look at the tiger barbs in the shop, and was able to confirm that there was no evidence of ich anywhere in that tank. I also collected four shark minnows. I'm pleased to report that the tank has apparently remained ichless. I bet the infection came in on the plants.

I had previously read that a small freshwater crayfish could be a good idea as a bottom-feeding scavenger. "They will have a go at fish occasionally, but are generally too slow to present any real danger," went the tropical aquarium website. Yeah, right. Lobby the lobster immediately started moving the furniture around in the tank. The following morning I discovered the decapitated corpse of a silver shark. Maybe it died, and the lobster had been noshing on the carrion. Or not: that afternoon one of the barbs got caught in a pincer movement. Either the lobster is a lot quicker than advertised or all the other fish are dozy and stupid. Or possibly both. I now learn from other aquaculture websites - those that are not concerned primarily with selling aquatic invertebrates to the punters - that lobsters, crayfish or what have you do not make harmonious and co-operative tank mates.

One of the Cray Twins

Bearing in mind the pincers, I was amused to see Jay, or possibly Edgar, slurping something off the lobster's carapace, just out of range of the latter's weaponry. Crustaceans can't generally do 'cross and annoyed', but this one came close. But it'll have to go. I explained to Abdul Kareem over at Sharjah Aquarium that even a tiny lobster seems too aggressive for my tank community. He has agreed to accept the lobster back and exchange it for some less nocuous fish. A pity really, because the crustacean is fascinating to watch. Ornamental fish are however a bit expensive to be used solely as one of the lower levels of a food pyramid.

It wood be nice

For some time now I've been looking for a strong and well-built item of furniture for an aquarium. The basic problem is that the fish tank I've had my eye on for a while will weigh close to half a ton once the weight of water, gravel, glass and fish are all totted up. So it's not small. Ikea, emporium of budget furniture from Sweden, had nothing suitable on offer. Any wooden box of approximately the correct dimensions had the ominous 'maximum weight 100kg' on the label. Good for a TV perhaps, but not a fish tank. I encountered the same problem in Homes R Us, Home Centre, Marina and Pan Home Furnishings. Lots of stuff, all the wrong size, or too feeble, and in most cases both.

Chipboard is out, as is MDF. The problem with these is they're not strong enough. They bend under the weight of paperback books, so a few hundred kilos of aquarium is entirely unsuitable. The fish-tank shop offered a custom-built box for the tank to sit on. But at over Dh1000 for the cabinet this didn't strike me as particularly good value for a few square feet of the dreaded chipboard veneer. And despite the catalogue showing several colours, Petland was happy to impersonate Henry Ford. "Any color[sic] you like, as long as it's black."

I even drew up some dimensioned sketches and touted them around the carpentry souq. No-one I asked was willing (able?) to provide what I wanted; they all wanted to use MDF and most demonstrated an inability to read drawings in third angle projection.

At this point one of my friends - yes, actually I do have some of those - suggested Pinky's in Sharjah Industrial Area. Chunky furniture, made of real wood, I was told. The map on the Pinky's business card is not particularly helpful, and after an hour of Sharjah traffic and asking unsuccessfully for directions, I got through to the warehouse courtesy of Directory Enquiries. I arrived at the door just as the man was locking up for lunch.

"Hi. I see you're shut. Oh well. At least I know where you are now. See you some other time."

Not at all. He re-opened the warehouse and let me wander among the Indian reproduction antique-style furniture for the next half hour. Yes, in his lunch break. Although I couldn't find anything quite right I thanked the salesman and promised to be back.

I did go back a couple of days later. I'm pleased to report that I found a suitable sideboard that looks the business, which was polished and delivered exactly as requested. What a star! The extremely pleasant surprise of getting decent customer service has warranted these words.

And now I await the delivery of the aquarium itself. Even as I write, it has arrived, so the rest of my evening is going to involve reaching into a big glass box.