Friends and Neighbours

There are only few days left to meet up with our friends and neighbours to bid good bye. First and foremost is our 80 years old next door neighbour who lives on her own and is still very active. When we met her today, she said she was sad that we are leaving. She is such a lovely neighbour.

Then there are the Dutch and expatriate neighbours along our street who are very friendly.

In town, there is this very chatty guy called Barry who runs his father's "Will's Pancake House". We always enjoy eating the poffertjes or small pancakes at this shop. And every visitors that we managed to bring there were never disappointed with the poffertjes and were always amazed as to how tasty the poffertjes are. Barry was also willing to teach us how to prepare the poffertjes, quite simple actually, and hopefully we could replicate that when are back home.

By the Beach

These days we are spending much of our time packing and clearing our house. There are definitely a lot of junks collected over the years and a move like this forces us to clear things and to only retain the real essentials. Much of the time have also been spent on putting our garden into shape. Cutting the grass hedges alone took nearly three days.

For a change we went to Scheveningen beach for a meal in the evening today. The place was not crowded as in May or June as late July and August are the period where most Dutch go for their holiday trips abroad. In fact the city is unusually quiet nowadays as if the whole place has emptied.

Nasi Kerabu

Today we were invited by our Malaysian friends for some makan. The menu was Nasi Kerabu, a traditional Kelantan delicacy.

The rice is served in blue colour and normally eaten with fried fish, prawn or fish crackers, budu or fish sauce and all sort of 'ulam-ulaman'. Nasi kerabu is also normally eaten with 'Solok Lada' which is fish-filled large chilis or peppers in coconut milk. Once all are put on the plate they have to be mixed thoroughly together with the sauce before being eaten. Amazing taste!

There seem to be a number of families moving out, people going back, others trying out new horizons and so on. It is also a trying time for some people as job security bound to be a prime concern with all sort of company restructuring and cost savings going on. When the opportunities come along, and there are plenty out there, it is more of taking the plunge now rather than wait and see mentality in the past.

End of the Tour

Paris is gearing up for the Tour de France final to be held tomorrow on Sunday. Today the Champs Elysees was being prepared for that. The cyclists will finish the three weeks tour on this famous avenue. Temporary grandstands were being set-up and millions expected to line up the street of Paris tomorrow. It would have been great to stay overnight and watch the final tomorrow. Alas we got other things to do on Sunday and the kids also have things with their friends.

We saw some cyclists going up and down the Champs Elysees while we we were walking along the avenue, they were obviously non-pro by the shape of their bodies. But they were there just to liven up the atmosphere and enjoying the group ride.

On the Tour itself, the winner was already decided today on the 20th stage. Tomorrow's stage is usually regarded as a ceremonial one apart from the winner from the sprint. Today's stage was the last mountain stage that includes the infamous Mount Ventoux. Climbing this mountain is said to be one of the toughest in professional cycling. The gradients of the climb range from 7 to 10 % i.e 100m climb for every kilometre. The mountain itself is about 1900m high. It was reported up to a million people ascended to the mountain to watch the race today.

Paris in a day

It's a quick day trip to Paris on Saturday. Took us 4.5 hours to reached. The road was quiet but still full of Dutch cars heading south for their summer holiday. Some pulling their caravan, some were just loading up their car with whatever that could fit - bicycles, food and all kind of stuffs. The Dutch are known to be good at saving money and looking for best deal. Some would just carry their own groceries bought in Holland rather than spending at their holiday destination. We also saw many of the cars are driven by the ladies rather than the men. Not sure what is that so. In most cases the men are fast asleep on the front passenger seat. They might just be taking turns in driving.

There is only one toll road on the way between Lille and Paris. It costs 14.60 Euro each way. A return trip require just a bit over the car's full tank- that's about 60 Euros. Our rental car therefore could do about 900 km in distance on full tank.

V&B Country

An early start for the day. First was to pick our 2 weeks rental car at Avis. We were given a Volvo V70 D5 - quite a big and solid estate car with large boot space - easy to carry things around. The amazing thing is that the car is brand new. We are the first user with the car mileage still at 115 km. The mileage will definitely changed in the next two weeks. Estate car is quite useful to own here but apparently is something that people hate in our region. We always associate it as a hideous family car, and most people prefer a saloon or a 4WD.

Anyway we went to Mettlach in Germany close to Luxembourg for a day trip. We have never been here whereas most of the people we know always make a trip or so now and then. This is where Villeroy and Boch factory outlet is located. When I set the GPS, the distance to the destination was 444 km and supposed to take about 4 hrs and 15 minutes to reach. The rain was a bit heavy on the way and it took a bit longer.

The scenery over there is great. Mettlach is a small German town on the bank of river Moselle. This river provides some of the most scenic sights in Germany as the river winds it ways up north before linking to River Rhine.

We used a different and slightly longer route to get back home as we wanted to stopover in Aachen. But the nice thing is we could used the autobahn. The autobahn or the fabulous German motorway can be quite a scary place. Just a few days ago near Hanover, there was a massive accident involving a mass pile-up of 259 cars on the motorway during a busy and rainy day. But the autobahn between Mettlach and Aachen is less busy and is not a flat motorway and so is easier to see much further down the road. There is no speed limit on the autobahn. Most people drive at 150-160 km/hr. Even as we were doing 160 km/hr on cruise control, there were all sort of fancy and fast cars easily whizzing by and more likely doing 200km/hr. Finally arrived home around 10pm. The car's mileage display has already read 1000 km on its first day!

Dinner with Families

In the evening we went out for dinner. Photos taken by Muna.

My Bianchi

Yesterday we sold our car. Our red car has been a trusted chariot for our travels, clocking over a hundred thousand kilometres during our three years stay here. Selling a car is always a challenge especially when you know you are going to make a loss to the initial investment. This is especially so in the current downturn. Apparently smaller cars are in higher demand where else normal saloon car market currently is going through a patchy period.

Nonetheless this is the first time we are impressed with the power of selling through the Internet. I posted the car on a certain buy/sell site and four hours later someone expressed an interest to test drive immediately. An hour later the car was sold. And the guy let us to drive for the next three weeks. And yesterday was when all the formalities needed to be done.

And if anybody wants to know what e-Government should be, here's a great example. When I transferred the car at the post office, the lady only asked for the car certificates and the driving license of the buyer. In less than one minute all was done. She typed in the driving license number, confirmed verbally the home addressed is right and off she printed a new ownership certificate and a payment of about 9 Euros. There were no form to fill in, all the required detail was already in the system. Later when I canceled the car insurance, the same thing happened. When my name was type in,their system already indicated the car ownership has changed and I am entitled to a certain reimbursement. Amazing!

Anyway yesterday was also when I picked up my Bianchi. It finally arrived.

Leaving Reykjavik

Time to leave this Viking land. Before this trip the only thing we knew about Reykjavik is that the beginning of the end of the cold war took place in this very city. Back in October 1986, Gorbachev and Reagan sat down together and started talking in what was called the Reykjavik Summit. The rest was history - the collapse of the Iron Curtain, start of nuclear disarmament and so on.

On this trip we found that Iceland surprisingly offered more than what we had expected. To go here is to see and enjoy the nature. We were only here for 4 days but there are a lot more to do if one were to stay here a bit longer. For example one could go on snow mobiles and cross the glaziers and travel up the icy mountain...that would be a pretty cool thing to do.

Our hotel is located in downtown next to the main shopping street of Reykjavik. It is an ideal location to go around and also to have meal. The downside though is that the place can be very noisy even up to the wee hours in the morning. Like today when we left the hotel at 5 am in the morning, the street was literally crowded with obviously not so sober young people who with the midnight sun have partied all night long. It is probably that this place is just too isolated and the only thing that the young people know how to kill time is to party. Nonetheless, typical of people living away from big cities and large populations, we found the people here to be very polite and patient. They also speak excellent English.

To get to the airport is quite simple. People would be picked up from their hotels in small buses to the Central bus station. From there a stream of Fly-Bus coaches bring everybody for a 40 minutes drive to the airport. This place does not really need taxis or fast train to shuttle people to the airport. A simple solution like this coach service works perfectly well. It is just down to making sure it is all well organised and everybody are well served.

Whale Watching

Yesterday we went out into the open sea in a boat for whale watching. The whole trip was only 3 hours long, an hour to reach as far out to the whale's feeding ground, an hour to look around for the whales, an hour to get back and still have time for a quick stopover near to a puffin island.

Whale watching is gaining popularity worldwide. Here Iceland provides that unique opportunity to do that. Near to the capital Reykjavik, one could see the smaller whales that feed in the shallower water. To see the much bigger whale like the Humpback, then one need to go out further out in the ocean or deeper water and even in the quieter waters around the Island.

There are two main operators offering the whale watching tour out of Reykjavik. The boats are located in the Old Harbour which is just a short walk away from the centre of Reykjavik where we stayed. It only takes place during the warmer months from April to September when the whales are seen to be feeding around the island here.

During the colder months, the whales migrate down south. Some of the electronic tags put on the whales to track their migratory routes found that they reach as far south as the western coast of Africa.

Trying to spot the whale is actually not easy. The tour guide would announce any sighting through the microphones and uses the clock system...the whale is sighted at 3 o'clock...meaning it is on the right side of the boat, and so on. Everybody would then rush to the right and next moment the whale being wild would surface on the left!

We saw a few whales. Admittedly not easy to take photos as people would crowd around as soon as a whale is seen. They are also quite quick and unpredictable. They would surface every few minutes to breath as whales are mammal. They only surface for a few seconds, sometimes also making big noises and even showing their belly when they are about to make a deep dive.

Overall it was a good experience. It's even more true now as the whale population is dwindling due to the uncontrolled whaling industry in the last century. Sadly a few countries notably Japan are still continuing their whaling industry under the auspices of 'scientific research'. Amazingly this 'scientific research' require them to hunt up to 5000 whales a year!

This is Funny

Great View of the Rift Valley

As part of the tour we went to visit Thingvellir national park which has been declared as a UNESCO world heritage site. Not only it is a beautiful place, this is also the location of the world's first Parliament. This happened when the islanders were fed up with their Viking rulers, they broke away and formed a representative system where new laws were debated and voted. This was done in a place called the Law Rock. The exact place is marked by a big Icelandic flag.

The national park is actually a large and long rift valley. It is a big depression, much of it is in the form a large lake. When looking at the sight, this reminded me of those movie scenes in the Lord of Ring or King Arthur.

Nonetheless, the guide was forever talking about the rift valley as the split between Europe and America. This prompted Faris to have an endless discussion of where we were then as we walked through the rift valley, in North America or Europe? This is where the Europe or Eurasian plate is spilt from North American plate. The rift valley is the split and in a way we were walking between two continents. The rift valley is now a depression because it is not being filled up by magma from beneath the earth. Elsewhere along the same line as the rift valley, mountains are formed as magma are extruded along the split in the form of volcanoes. Ok enough of that.

Back to the scenery, it is an amazing sight especially when looking from an elevated ground.

Smoky Land

When the Viking found Iceland, they named the first settlement as Reykjavik meaning 'bay of smokes'. Reykjavik is located in a large bay but the 'smokes' description is related to the many Geysers and steams that can be seen around the place.

We went to this area where a cluster of active geysers can be found there. The largest one known as Geysir or the Great Geyser is no longer active though. It only becomes active after an earthquake when some openings are formed in the rocks allows]ing hot water to come out again. It used to hurl boiling water up to 60 metres high. One could only see this famously captured in many photos and posters.

The only big geyser left is called Strokkur geyser which erupts much more frequently, erupting to heights of up to 30 metres every four to eight minutes. In fact this is probably one of the few geysers in the world that still erupts at regular time.

Great Waterfall

Yesterday we went on a long 8 hour bus tour around the southwestern part of Iceland. This tour is more famously known as the Grand Golden Circle tour, probably the best package tour regularly organised here by several tour operators. It brings you to the most famous locations and great sights that are located close enough to Reykjavik.

The tour guide was excellent, describing the history, geography and above all the geology of Iceland as we progressed through the day. In fact it was like a geological tour - I had been to many geological field trips but this was the first time I managed to bring the family to one! The tour was a real good value for money costing about 55 Euros each.

One of the stop was this waterfall called the Gullfoss waterfall. Gullfoss means Great Waterfall. The water comes from melting glazier which is actually quite close by. The glazier's front is in fact only about 30 km away. A large part of Iceland is permanently covered with ice and Glaziers. This particular one is the largest in Europe.

Because Iceland is located quite close to Greenland, an hour flight away, is actually more located further north latitude-wise than Anchorage in Alaska. The weather here is normally extremely cold except for the southern coastline where it receives warm air from the Gulf Stream. The temperature like today was just nice and cool at 20 deg. C. But going north, the temperature becomes extreme. In fact there is a drop of 2 Deg. C for every 100 m elevation. And that is why just 30 km away from here one could see the front of moving ice or glazier.

One could see a lot of great falls resulting from the melting ice all around the island but would need a week tour. Gullfoss is probably the best known because it is the easier and closest one to reach. But there are more spectacularly and higher ones elsewhere.

Living on the Mid-Oceanic Ridge

When friends asked me where I am going for holiday, I said somewhere far far away from Geology – Iceland. Very funny!

Iceland is where one could actually see one of the evidence of the theory of Plate Tectonics – the mid-oceanic ridge. The theory of the Plate Tectonics incredibly only developed in the 60’s where it brings together older concept of ‘Continental Drift’ and a newer concept of ‘Sea Floor Spreading’ to describe the large scale motions of Earth’s lithosphere in the form of large plates. This was something I learnt when I reached university in the 80’s. But nowadays this subject is already thought when kids are in primary schools. Our daughter was already able to write an essay on plate tectonic when she was 7 years old when studying at JIS. So there goes how knowledge evolved very quickly in recent times.

Iceland is located in a Mid-Oceanic Ridge. The Mid-Oceanic Ridges are where two plates are pulling apart from each other as hot magma (liquid rock) emerges from the mantle as lava to fill the crack continuously created by the plate separation. The lava cools and in this case forms a land mass known as Iceland.
The Mid-Oceanic Ridge in Iceland resulted in Europe and America to be going apart from each other. The ‘spreading’ rate is actually very slow averaging 2.5 cm per year, or 25 km in a million years. But if the process continues for millions of years, this would result in plate movement of thousands of kilometres. Over the past 100 to 200 million years the Atlantic Ocean has grown from a tiny inlet of water between the continents of Europe, Africa, and the Americas into the vast ocean that exists today.

Middle of a Lava Field

Yesterday we spent a good part of the day relaxing at a hot pool about 40 km away from Reykjavik. This is said to be one of the coolest pool in the world. Known as the Blue Lagoon. It is a must visit place whilst in Iceland. Located in a large lava field, the jagged surrounding rocks make it as if we were on the surface of the moon! The whole place is always steamy as the water temperature always hovers around 40 Deg. C. But that is nothing if you realised that the water is coming from deep in the ground where the temperature is well over 200 Deg. C, enough to kill any bacteria. The place is more picturerisque when visited during the winter. The water look like fizzy blue in colur.

Today there were endless busload of people coming to the place but the whole complex is large enough to accomodate a lot more. The only way to get around in Iceland and visit places are by using bus. There are a handful of bus/tour companies doing that which provide pick up from the hotel before shuttling people to their destinations or tours. Even on arrival from airport, the only way to get to Reykjavik is by bus or coach. There are only a handful of taxis here and they look pretty basic. To visit far out places, the best way is to use four-wheel drives or even snow mobile. Certain part of Iceland got permanent ice on the surface.

Back to the lagoon, it took an hour to reach there after changing bus and so on. Return bus tiket and entrance to the Blue Lagoon cost about 35 Euros. The lagoon was actually created by accident. Read the article below................

"The lagoon was created entirely by accident. In the 1970s, the Svartsengi geothermal plant began to discharge water rich in salt, algae and silica, which turned into a kind of caulk. A pool formed in the featureless lava fields in western Iceland, and when locals jumped in, they found that it cleared up symptoms of skin ailments like psoriasis. Today, the Blue Lagoon sports a 15-room clinic and a spa that attracts 407,000 tourists annually. With revenue of $21 million and 200 workers, the Blue Lagoon is an Icelandic blue chip. "We are one of the 300 largest enterprises in Iceland," says Anna Sverrisdottir, managing director of the Blue Lagoon.

Iceland's economy, which until recently relied largely on fishing, has diversified in recent years, with rapid growth in tourism, manufacturing and financial services. And like the Blue Lagoon, much of the growth has been a happy by-product of Iceland's decades-long strategy of tapping sources of renewable energy. Mindful of climate change and the need to limit emissions, many U.S. states have set goals of obtaining 10 or 15 percent of their energy from renewable at some point in the distant future, and the European Union has pledged to reach 20 percent by 2020. But Iceland is already at about 80 percent. All electricity on the island is generated through geothermal or hydroelectric sources—low-emissions sources that don't use fossil fuels. Most homes are heated by water pumped from geothermal hot spots. "We are blessed with a lot of clean and renewable energy," Prime Minster Geir H. Haarde told NEWSWEEK. "The only uses of fossil fuels in Iceland are people using cars and the fishing fleet." And increasingly, Iceland, whose most prominent exports have been haddock and Björk, is devising ways to export what has been a stranded resource.

Iceland is a small island with a tiny, ethnically homogenous population: only 300,000, with more than half living in the capital, Reykjavik. It lacks coal reserves, and is endowed with massive glaciers, which produce huge volumes of water that can be harnessed to generate electricity. It also happens to sit atop a rift in the earth's crust that keeps significant reservoirs of heat bubbling near the surface. To a large degree, it is the polar opposite of the United States. Yet we—and other developed nations—can learn some valuable lessons from Iceland about what happens when a society commits to the systematic development of renewable energy."

Northernmost Capital City of the World

It’s the last day of school. Seemed to be a frantic day today. There are all sorts of things to do. But in the evening we were off to catch a flight to Iceland. It’s a 3.5 hours flight going north. We can’t claim to be the first Bruneians going here, surely there must have been a few especially those from the civil servants for some government meeting or some sorts. But there can’t be that many of our countrymen who have been here.

We landed at the international airport which is quite a long way from the capital Reykjavik (not easy to spell). The surrounding was still quite bright as if the sun never set here. In fact when we landed at 11.30pm, the sun was just about to set (wow magrib at 11.30 pm!). A few weeks ago the sun was setting past 12 midnight.

Iceland is huge but has the same population as Brunei. Two third of the population lives in the capital Reykjavik. The country is well known to be a 'bankrupt' country due to the financial crisis. A few of their prominent banks, known to provide high interests on savings and attracted a lot of institutions and even city councils in UK and Europe, were closed down during the height of the credit crunch. It’s like a ‘pyramid’ scheme on a grand scale, but not exactly like those eye-catching pyramid schemes we all know too well in SE Asia which gave unbelievable huge returns.