Miri Crocodile Farm

The Crocodile farm is about 25km out of town near the Brunei Border and is touted as one of the City tourist attractions.  Our son is fascinated by crocodiles and reptilians and was desperate to visit. While there are many other more enticing opportunities in the area (lush rainforest, stunning caves etc) I have been advised to leave hiking through these until after the baby is born in September.   Having been to a fairly horrendous croc farm in Siem Reap, Cambodia in pursuit of his interests we were a little apprehensive. We checked the website and the farm is now, no longer a farm as such but a mini zoo as well.  We became even more sceptical as many small zoos are dreadful places. 

The farm, when we turned up, was rather idyllically situated with large (croc free) ponds and a rather tired looking pony offering rides to children.  We decided not to take up the offer!  Foreigners pay more than Malaysian citizens but the costs are not exorbitant.  Once you enter the zoo there is a reasonably good quality display on the evolution of crocodiles and a history of their interaction with humans in Borneo. 

The farm is set around beautiful, large, ponds.

The local crocs are saltwater (salties), they have a reputation as being the biggest and meanest of the crocodilians.  Some of the news reports of the captured man eaters were truly terrifying.  Having lived in land reclaimed from the swamp in Warri, Nigeria I have a healthy fear of crocodiles.  One child I knew used to keep baby crocs as pets before releasing them into the wild –pure madness as they would come back to the house when older (and larger), even a fairly small crocodile can kill a cat or baby, requiring the poor things to be killed or moved a long way away.  The ones in Borneo are much larger and much, much meaner. 

Some of the smaller crocodiles resting before feeding.  

From the display we walked along to the croc ponds – huge behemoths lazed in the sun looking for all the world to be fast asleep.  A short while later, however, a feeding time came round and we were under no illusions as to the speed the animals can move at.  A keeper stood some distance from the crocs, well protected by a barricade and threw (dead) chickens into the enclosure.  As the chickens came past a croc would raise his head, lightning fast, and devour it before a competitor could grab it from him, before retreating to the illusion of torpor. 

Having watched in silent awe we moved on to see the pythons in their enclosures, the zoo has a good range of exhibits here and the children were fascinated to watch one curled up, incubating her eggs.  While we were here the zoo’s tame sun bear walked up to us, he snuggled up to my husband and tried to nibble his fingers before a keeper came up with a bottle of milk.  The juvenile bear, who had been hand-reared, drank his milk before moving on to a whole coconut which he broke into in short order with his amazing claws.  Following this he retreated into a tiny little cage – we are not sure whether this is his chosen resting place (much as a domestic dog will choose to sleep in a crate) or if it is his, sadly tiny, pen.  I would have preferred to see him with access to a large enclosure with vegetation, trees etc.  He was generally healthy but did have a few, worrying, bald patches.  The other sun bears, who also live in the zoo, have rather miserable concrete enclosures and look very sad and frustrated.  These rare animals are classed as ‘vulnerable’ so all conservation efforts are good but I do wish they had a more satisfying place to live in.

We met this friendly hand-reared sun bear
wandering around the zoo.

He broke into the coconut in less than 2 minutes.

Other animals available to see include Peacocks, Parrots and Monkeys (chained to their homes and looking a bit depressed). Hornbills, Cassowaries and Sambar Deer. The Deer have a large enclosure which is grassed but they can also be 'treated' to extra feed bought from the attendants.  We did not buy any!

The deer do have grass to graze on but come to visitors who
are allowed to buy artificial feed for them.  

All in all although not the best zoo we have ever been to we did get the impression that it was trying.  Small zoos have a challenging path to walk in terms of welfare and break even.  As Miri grows as a tourist destination and more people come to visit hopefully the increased revenue can go to improving the living conditions for the animals, certainly boycotting (as some visitors advise on Tripadvisor) will not lead to any improvements. The keepers are friendly and knowledgeable, I can see that this is a place that we will probably be taking visiting friends and family members as  it is a good introduction to the local wildlife.


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How to find a new home in your new location.

We have just moved in to our new home in Miri, Sarawak.  It is amazing how being in our own place, even minus our shipment, can make me feel so much more relaxed about our new location.

As a child our new home was not really something I gave much thought to.  My father’s company set us up in interim accommodation until his predecessor finished the handover and left, we then moved into the predecessor’s house.  Often we were on company camps and there was no option but to live in the given property and even when we lived out in the community options were often limited.

Tied accommodation is the norm for resident teachers in UK boarding schools and from the start of our marriage we have lived in some choice properties (we could choose red carpet with blue flecks or blue with red, rickety furniture as standard) and we have become pretty adept at using throws, cushions, pictures etc to personalise a place. 

Some personalisation needed!

When we moved to Kazakhstan there was no provision for hotel accommodation so we were told that we would have to choose our apartment before we arrived and move straight in to it. In many ways this was fantastic as we were straight in to our new home.  HR could not, however, understand why I insisted on seeing photographs of every room in the proposed apartments, wanted a floor plan and a list of furniture that came with the property.  The estate agents seemed to be obsessed with photographs of bathrooms to the exclusion of any other room in the property.  I was told that it was normal, in Astana, for people to arrive and then move again a few weeks or months later if the property did not suit.  They could not understand that we wanted to keep the disruption for the children to an absolute minimum – to let them move into a home that they could feel was permanent.  It is one thing to stay in a hotel for a few weeks and then move quite another to hop between homes.

A tasteful interior - as an expat you too could live in a place like this!

Some of the decoration in the proposed flats was… interesting.  Having lived in tied accommodation in the UK and elsewhere (our house in Warri, Nigeria had banana yellow walls, cream and brown swirled carpet and grey (later orange and blue) sofas) I could see beyond this but there were certain non negotiables we were unwilling to compromise on.  We needed large space for the children and dog so they would not feel cooped up in the winter.  We needed a spare bedroom/office space so that I could work from home and we could have family to visit without making someone sleep on the sofa, underground parking, proximity to supermarkets and a lift.  We finally found the apartment we could be happy in only for one man in HR to tell us he wanted us to sign on a different, smaller apartment that met none of our criteria because he ‘liked the landlord’…hmmm.  He was a little miffed when I put my foot down but it was worth it, we lived in the apartment from the day we arrived to the day we left Kazakhstan.  Some other colleagues found, on arriving in Astana that they were moved into apartments that had nothing in common with the ones they thought they had rented and had to move.  I have never apologised for being fussy on my non negotiables!

Don't be shy about being honest if something does not work for you.
This delightful kitchen was one step too far for me!

Our recent move to Miri was a little easier in that we had two weeks in a hotel to house hunt.  Employers put us in touch with a local estate agent who showed us round.  Initially she had not been given a list of our criteria so the first few properties were unsuitable but she came up trumps pretty quickly.  Our main concern was to find a furnished place as we do not have any furniture coming in our shipment and do not have a furniture allowance.  Most properties in Miri are let un or only part furnished.  We looked at some amazing 7/8 bedroom houses with all the space in the world but they came with beds and a sofa nothing else.  Furniture may be relatively cheap in Miri but with a new baby on the way we do not want to be spending money we don’t need to.  Minimalist living may appeal to some but there is such a thing as too minimalist!  

We found a lovely property complete with furniture and some kitchen ware to tide us over and promptly decided to start negotiations to move in.  It has not quite been a week and we are still waiting for toys, books, personal items etc to arrive but this house already feels like a home so we know that we have made the right decision.

Top tips for finding a home in your new location:

• Will you have a choice of property or have to take what you are given?  If the latter you just have to be flexible and fit in or negotiate for a more suitable property once you are in place.
• If you are able to choose your own property find out your budget, do you have an allowance?  Are you willing to top it up yourself?  Let your agent know the budget range you are prepared to deal in.
• Decide what you need from your new house and be honest about it this should help prevent your agent showing you unsuitable properties.
• Do you have limited time in the hotel before moving, if so you may need to compromise a little more to get a property in time.
• Ask other expats about local idiosyncrasies/points to check ie in Miri I asked for the landlord to run pest control before we moved in.  In Astana I checked that the heating etc was working.  In the UK check how much council tax you pay on your property.
• Get to know your landlord - be nice to them and they will (hopefully) help you out beyond the minimum.
• Learn to love (or at least ignore) someone else’s taste.  The lighting/furniture/crockery etc may be hideous but you will have to live with it.  Get creative with sofa throws, pictures, etc etc.   
• Some times you will be living somewhere full of tasteless tat, sometimes in a home you could only imagine in your wildest dreams.  Our reward for the years in the Warri house (of banana wall fame) came on our move to Lagos.  We moved into a stunning old colonial mansion with the most amazing parquet floors and a huge garden with beautiful established tropical plants and (a luxurious necessity) our own generator rather than a communal one for power cuts.  Even the furnishings were (mostly) tasteful.  Learn to accept the rough and revel in the smooth. 

Sometimes you catch a break with a beautiful home.  

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Relocating With Your Expat Pet.

We moved from Astana to Miri, Sarawak last week.  We are currently settled in a hotel waiting for our new home to be ready and our shipment (our tiny, tiny shipment) is waiting at Astana Airport for a suitable cargo flight.  Our dogs are also settled here in Miri.  Borneo is a rabies free island so we have had to put them in quarantine.  The whole import/export process was, in fact, my largest worry but it seemed to go smoothly.

As a family we have moved pets internationally for 20 years or more – in fact one of our dog crates dates back to a 1993 move from Nigeria to Turkey – a family heirloom that all our pets have used at one time or another. 

Bessie and Perdita in Astana

The process is broadly similar for any international relocation – country A will issue an Export Permit and Country B an Import Permit.  You book the pet excess baggage on your airline and collect them in the airport arrivals hall when you get to your destination.  Each country has its own ins and outs, however, and these complicate the process.

The UK is famously tough to bring animals to.  In years gone by my parents took their dogs to the Netherlands and lived there with them for 6 months before bringing the dogs into the UK under the EU pet import scheme.  These days the repressive (and unnecessary) quarantine has been relaxed as long as you can show a pet passport and rabies blood test.  Import still requires you to jump through more hoops than just about any other country, however.  A friend is bringing her dog from Astana to UK – she has to provide a ‘third party country certificate’ which Kazakhstan refuses to offer.  Her cargo handlers (UK insists owners fly pets as cargo not as excess baggage) have said that the authorities at Heathrow sometimes waive this requirement but if they decide not to her poor dog (who has no infections whatsoever), will have to go into quarantine. 

 Other potential complications involve airline regulations on temperature and dog breeds (snub snout dogs cannot travel in high temperatures) and certain ‘dangerous’ breeds may be subject to import/export restrictions.  It is always worth checking with your airline and vet ministries in host and host to be countries to see that your import can happen.  Rules can also change at the last minute – some people in Astana found out just prior to a move to Indonesia that the import from countries with endemic rabies have recently been banned from import.  Their pets have had to find new homes.

The import to Malaysia was, in actuality very simple.  I spoke with a local vet in Miri who arranged for all the import certificates to be put in place.  In Kazakhstan we had to go to the Veterinary Ministry to apply for an export certificate.  On our first visit we took a local colleague with us to help translate and ask questions just in case it was complicated.  The people were very friendly, however, and the most difficult part of the process was finding the address and we did the rest of the process by ourselves. 

A few days before we flew we had to get our vet to issue a health certificate.  We had sold our car and at 27 weeks pregnant I was not walking both dogs on my own any more so the whole family plus dogs piled into a street cab, not the easiest to flag down with dogs in tow.  Once we got to the vets I was rather surprised to find that they did not even want to see the dogs and were happy to fill out the certificate based on their passports only.

Our certificate of veterinary health - no actual inspection
of animals required!

Two days before the flight we had to take the certificates to the Vet Ministry who used them to issue the Export Certificate 24 hours before the flight.  This is a trilingual document but the extra information was filled out in Russian only so we had to translate it to English for the Miri authorities. 

Our Export Certificate from Kazakhstan.

The day of the flight all we had to do was place the dogs in their crates and hand them over to the airline with documents and payment.  The transfer in Almaty was handled by the airline but we had to make the transfer between international and domestic terminals in KL.  In Miri we handed the dogs over to the vet officer and quarantine officials to go off to start serving their term.  It was a great relief to see them safe and sound – our younger dog had never flown before so we were worried that she would be upset, our older girl is getting infirm and we were worried that the stress and the heat might be too much for her.

We saw them a few days ago when our vet came to take bloods for the rabies test.  In Sarawak the length of quarantine depends on the time since the last rabies injection.  Our younger dog has only about a month and a half (if her bloods meet the test) but our older dog’s injection date means that she may have to be in for three or four months.  She has, however, a full history of rabies injections and we know her bloods meet the test standards so she hopes that the time can be reduced.  In the meantime they are in the kennels together which makes the process a lot less lonely.  We are also allowed to visit whenever we want which will also help. 

Bessie relaxing in quarantine.

The whole process is sadly expensive and stressful but pets are part of the family and we (and many people we know) could not be without them.

Tips for relocating with your expat pet:

1. Panic – this will be the most stressful part of the move.
2. Make sure that all your locally required vaccinations are up to date.
3. Check your host country’s export process.
4. Check your new country’s import process – colleagues who already live there may be able to recommend a good local vet to help with the process.
5. Get any further vaccinations required by your new country.
6. Get a handling agent if necessary (as in imports to the UK).
7. Check any airline restrictions on your pet.
8. Panic again – most of the export/import process can only be done last minute and you will stress until the papers are in place.
9. Make sure that you have the correct size crate for your pet.  IATA standards are instructive. 
10. Habituate your pet to their crate, keep it in the living room/their sleeping area and feed them in there.  If your pet is nervous start with the bottom half for a few weeks and then add the top half.

On the day:

1. Take your dog for a long walk – feed and water early in the day but not just before they go in the crate.
2. If your animal is nervous consider using a calming spray/rescue remedy etc.  Put something that smells of you in their crate – I usually line the crate with our towels -  they smell of us but it does not matter that they wil be ruined. 
3. Make sure that the crate has your pet’s name prominently displayed.  Sellotape a package of copy certificates/passports to the crate but keep all originals and at least one further set of copies with you.  Have your contact numbers on the crate together with a contact number for a responsible individual who is not flying and will be contactable throughout the travel period. 
4. Write on the crate the time of the last food and water – most pets in transit will be given a small amount of water at convenient times during the process, this will not be much, however, as the animals will not be allowed to leave their crate.  If the animal is travelling for more than 12 hours most airlines will give a small light snack in addition to water but do check this.
5. Have some light treats/water with you when you collect them as they will be hungry and thirsty. 
6. Make a big fuss of your pet.

Published as part of the Expat Life monthly blog link up - click for the very best in expat blogs and Animal Tales - the place to go for animal stories.

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Getting Ready to Relocate

Our moving date from Astana to Borneo is creeping ever closer.  Moving is one of those processes that should be simple, I have done it so many times (this is my 9th international move and 22 major out of over 30 different house moves).  It is anything but simple, however, particularly when unlike corporate or government expats we are organising everything ourselves.

When I was younger my father’s employers told us our moving date, arranged a packing date and sorted out our tickets.  Our accommodation at destination would be in place and arrangements made to hand back our current home to estate services.

Working in schools is slightly different – our flights out are paid but we have to organise them, we get a contribution to our shipping but again have to arrange it ourselves.  They will help us liaise with the landlady to hand back our apartment but we have to sort out the detail.  Neither Astana nor Miri are particularly easy or mainstream destinations – Sarawak has separate rules to peninsular Malaysia and most of the companies we have spoken to are used to dealing with KL.  Our dogs, for example, will have to undergo a minimum 1 month, maximum 6 month quarantine compared with 7 days in KL. 

It took me from February through to April to get a quote for transport of goods (all our stuff has to go airfreight due to the route).  Most companies failed to respond and of those who did most asked the question ‘where is Miri’.  One proposed sending our goods to KL for customs clearance then on to Jakarta (a different country and different island) before arrival in Miri where, no doubt, it would have had to clear customs again.  We have finally found a company who have come up with an eyewateringly expensive but just about acceptable quote for our tiny shipment, they were willing to work with us on the routing to keep the costs down as far as possible.  They even had someone who spoke English which made the whole process much easier.  I don’t know what the quality of the packing will be like or how efficient they are at clearing customs etc but I have my fingers crossed.  Rather than pack the day or two before we leave I have scheduled it for a week ahead so that I have time to sort out any unexpected difficulties.

Tickets are a separate problem all together.  It is easy enough to book the tickets but when I queried shipping the dogs I was told I had to fly them to Almaty ahead of time and clear them through customs there.  A friend based in Almaty has been told he needs to go to the vets in Astana.  The issue has become too complicated for my Russian so we are reliant on friends and colleagues to help us which, inevitably adds a layer of delay.  To complicate matters our Kazakh visas expire at the end of June so we have to be out of the country by then – no delays and the dogs have to be with us and as an expectant mother I am tied by airline fit to fly deadlines.  The process has to work and it has to work smoothly first time.  Luckily our visas for Malaysia etc are in hand and we do not need to worry in this regard.

As for the house – I have delegated much of the pre-departure prep to my housekeeper/nanny.  She is sourcing an industrial cleaner to deal with carpets and rugs (we promised a deep clean in return for being allowed to keep pets).  She has kept a list, over the years, of problems with the flat that the landlady has not addressed (collapsed skirting boards etc).  The standard of finish on the flat was not great and I will be very unhappy to be asked to pay for problems we have pre-notified and happened as a result of a poor installation as opposed to our use.  I have also found a few crayon marks on the walls.  The perpetrators have been suitably chastised and I have been searching for those wonder blocks of vanish foam that erase marks/matching paint samples.  At least we did not put up any pictures – I have not yet found polyfilla (spackle) here.  No doubt it exists but I am not sure where to get it or what even to ask for.  In extremis of course,  I could have fallen back on the old expat trick of filling the gaps with toothpaste!

Some parts of the move are going to be very easy – my Husband was out in Miri last week for some meetings and was able to set up a new bank account, arrange a mobile ‘phone and look at some potential houses.  He had a quick look around the town and the shops and said there seemed to be a good choice there and that everyone spoke English – I never mind learning a new language, indeed I enjoy the challenge and tend to pick up basics relatively quickly but it is much easier to settle in to a new posting if people speak one of the languages I already know. 

We are very much in the limbo stage now – life is normal but not normal and we are aware that it is coming to its end very soon.  In just a few weeks Astana will be nothing more than a dream, a memory and Malaysia will become our lives.  Hopefully everything will come together soon. 

So my top tips for organising your own international move:

1. Make sure your documents and visas etc are in order.
2. Start your preparation as early as possible – think about how much time you will need to sort out problems.  Double it if you know the bureaucracy will be difficult (ie the Netherlands) and double again if you are not familiar with the language or procedures of the country you are moving from or to.  This will probably get you a reasonable estimate of your minimum delay time. 
3. Be prepared to question every quote and correspondence from your moving companies – we saved $4,000 on a quote by suggesting a different route for shipment.
4. Begin preparing your packing as early as possible – identify things you want to give away to charity and advertise items for sale.  Try to separate out your air and sea (road) freight if applicable.
5. Have someone available to supervise on packing day – packers pack everything (one time we unpacked a bin complete with contents at our end destination).  You don’t want to find your landlord’s goods in your new home or find that all your personal baggage and clothes for the interim period have disappeared into the bulk of your shipment.
6. Work through the inventory you received when you moved into your property so you know what is missing and what you will need to replace.  Check that any repairs you need to make have been done. 
7. Enlist professional help for difficult aspects of the move – we have an import agent for the pets in Miri but are dealing with the export ourselves.
8. Book your tickets early – some destinations have popular exodus periods.  EG many expats leave their Astana posting in June so the flights tend to be very full.  KL is unlikely to be a common expat destination but this aspect of things is causing me the most stress at the moment.

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Defenders of the Fatherland

I wrote last year about the three holidays Kazakhstan celebrates at the start of May.  It is a lovely time of year in Astana with the trees having just burst into leaf, and, if we are lucky, warm weather and sunshine.  Families start to come into the parks and streets, the fountains are switched on and Astana starts to morph into its second personality, the summer city. 

7 May is celebrated as Defender’s Day.  Originally a Soviet Holiday celebrated in February, Kazakhstan celebrates the day, in May, that the decrees establishing the armed services of the independent Republic of Kazakhstan were signed.  It also acts as a day to celebrate men,  counterpart to the popular 8 March Woman’s Day. 

The President Watches the 2014 Parade

The day is celebrated with parades in cities around the country, Astana, as the capital has the largest parade.  This year Astana celebrated with a full three part parade comprising infantry, mechanised units and an aerial display.  When we arrived in Astana in 2011 we were lucky to be able to watch the 20^th Anniversary Constitution Day Parade.  We arrived late, however and could not get a view of the infantry parade.  

Over 250 pieces of machinery were involved.

This year a friend and I left early and walked over the river to the parade ground infront of the Pyramid.  We joined the crowds of citizens streaming into the grounds to get a good spot and then settled to wait for a few hours.  There was very little seating to wait but we managed to get a spot on a wall near a viewing screen.  As we were waiting for the parade to start I got talking to some of the other people in the crowd – delighted to speak with a foreigner. I was asked about my thoughts of Astana and Kazakhstan, the Kazakhstani people etc.  We whiled away the time playing with their children and chatting about life in Kazakhstan.  When the President arrived our new friends sent me to the front – proud of the parade display and wanting me to have a good view.   As a result I got about the best view of the parade possible for someone who was not squished in the front row by the barriers – much more satisfying than watching on the screen. 

The commentators to the parade let us know the details of each unit – sadly they spoke too fast for me to get much information and kept switching between Russian and Kazakh – I got the odd snatch but not the full information.  It did not detract from the parade, however and I was able to check some information on the internet later on.  Astana.kz – the City information website says that over 2500 personnel, 250 pieces of equipment and 80 aircraft were involved.

The Aerial Display always starts with the Helicopters

It was a wonderful morning and given that one of the first things we did in Astana was attend a parade, a fitting way to start to say goodbye to Astana.

I have added this to the Life With A Double Buggy Link Up - click to read some of the best expat blogging on the net.  

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Reverse Bucket List

Expat life has the potential to be very exciting, to give us all opportunities we never dreamed of.  My husband and I still pinch ourselves, regularly, that we live freely and happily in the middle of the ex USSR and can talk with local friends about their experiences of the time.

We are in limbo at the moment, however, with just a few months to go until we say goodbye to Kazakhstan and start the next phase of our expat adventure.  Such times inevitably lead to future planning - thinking of the experiences to come.  Today I was reading Amanda Van Mulligan's Life with a Double Buggy blog and she has prepared a reverse bucket list - a list of all her experiences to date.  I thought it was a fascinating post as were many of the others on the blog link up so I thought I would add mine to her blog link up.  This is my list to date:

• ·         Lived in 7 (soon to be 8) countries and moved internationally 9 (soon to be 10) times.
• ·         Lived in over 25 different homes (not including university and school).
• ·         Adopted pets in 5 different countries.
• ·         Maintained close relationships with family stretched over a minimum of three different countries.
• ·         Went to boarding school on my own age 11 and watched my family fly off to start a new life in Nigeria.
• ·         Flew to Nigeria for the first time alone four months later having had no post delivered desperately hoping my mother would be able to meet my plane and that I would recognise her (I was worried she would be so tanned I would not know her).
• ·         Survived a shoot-out/armed robbery in Lagos airport.
• ·         Lived through an attempted coup.
• ·         Speeding through the Niger Delta.
• ·         Visiting orphanages in Nigeria and seeing, first hand, how very very lucky my childhood was. 
• ·         Been on safari in Jos (Nigeria), not to be recommended as a top tourist destination!
• ·         Visiting Benin (the country) and Benin (the city).
• ·         Spending weekends in paradise (some holiday villas 2 hours from our home in Warri), walking through the gardens and swimming in the river.
• ·         Cycling on a raised path through the swamp.
• ·         Learning how to kill giant cockroaches, avoid scorpions and teaching the cat to kill snakes. 
• ·         Watching local witch doctors perform ceremonies.
• ·         Visiting Moscow and Leningrad (as it was) and travelling between them by train.
• ·         Going to the Circus and Ballet in Moscow and seeing the Hermitage and Aurora in Leningrad.
• ·         Learning to integrate almost seamlessly in the UK and to understand British humour.
• ·         Persuading my parents that, if I could fly around the world on my own I would be safe on solo trips to London.
• ·         Volunteering with my local lifeboat and old people’s home in the UK for community service experience.
• ·         Moving to eastern Turkey in the 1990’s when the situation was extremely volatile and daily life was very dangerous.
• ·         Convincing Turkish Airlines that they absolutely could let two young girls fly into our local airport and that we were not tourists.
• ·         Making my classmates in the UK laugh when a car backfired and I threw myself under my desk thinking it was the start of an attack. 
• ·         Driving to Nemrut Dag and Eski Kale and seeing the Ataturk Dam close up.
• ·         Enjoying a picnic on the shores of Lake Hazar and exploring Catholic Churches and Syriac monasteries on the Syrian border.
• ·         Exploring Istanbul – the most beautiful city in the world - for the very first time.
• ·         Shopping for carpets in Diyarbakir’s old town.  Crossing the Berlin/Bagdad railway every day and eating meals while looking out over the purported Garden of Eden. 
• ·         Touring remote villages helping to spread the word about the importance of education for girls.
• ·         Learning (and forgetting) Turkish.
• ·         Going to university in the UK and meeting my husband there.
• ·         Spending my first summer from university visiting friends before taking our dog from the Netherlands to our new home in Venezuela.
• ·         Exploring the Venezuelan Andes, Coro peninsula and Lake Maracaibo.
• ·         Being volunteered to work as a translator from Spanish for English, Dutch and German kids at a holiday camp despite not speaking a word of Spanish (I learned quickly).
• ·         Learning (and forgetting) Spanish.
• ·         Visiting the Venezuelan Supreme Court.
• ·         Qualifying as a solicitor and working in London.
• ·         Getting married in Durham Castle.
• ·         Getting our very first dog for our new family.
• ·         Learning to scuba dive, getting my Nitrox, Deep Diver and Divemaster certificates.
• ·         Taking a case to the House of Lords (now the Supreme Court) in the UK.
• ·         Buying our dream first home.
• ·         Having our beautiful children.
• ·         Driving around Europe for weeks at a time with no plan– just to see where we would end up.
• ·         Being elected as a local councillor.
• ·         Standing for election to the UK parliament.
• ·         Gaining accreditation as a social and commercial mediator. 
• ·         Moving to Astana, Kazakhstan.
• ·         Learning Russian.
• ·         Visiting Lake Borovoye and exploring the Kazakh Steppe.
• ·         Buying a car in Kazakhstan.
• ·         Being sent from Kazakhstan to Germany for an emergency operation (and back again in the space of two days).
• ·         Dealing with pregnancy in two (soon to be three) foreign countries.
• ·         Getting beaten up in Kiev airport.
• ·         Meeting NASA astronauts and Space Station personnel in Karaganda.
• ·         Exploring Almaty in the snow.
• ·         Coping and enjoying life in the second coldest capital in the world.
• ·         Visiting museums commemorating the Gulag.
• ·         Exploring the silk road cities of Kyrgyzstan. 
• ·         Spending Christmas in various places around the world including Lebanon and Angkor Wat.
• ·         Getting recognition as a public speaker and local government expert. 
• ·         Looking forward to all the experiences to come and thinking about all the things I have left off this list to prevent it becoming longer and more self indulgent than necessary.