Saturday

Well, I know that this is a bit of a late publish, but we've had a very, very busy day!


Tari had a hideous day yesterday, from 8am until 2pm without a break in a small room where the AC had broken down. She was sooooo wrecked by the end of the day that it just wasn't funny. Our lovely hosts had decided to take us to see some local silver-smithing and they're just such lovely people that we went along even though I think Tari could have slept for several weeks.


I'm actually writing this on Sunday afternoon, but I'll still do Sunday's blog tomorrow morning, otherwise this one would be too big, and I'm kinda tired too! We just got back from a very brisk walk to the mall again (more about that tomorrow) but I can't hold back telling you about the music in the Safeway equivalent. Elevator music? Nope. Elton John? Nope. Hard core death metal? Yup. Very highly amusing to hear yelling and screeching where we would get something by Frente.


I finally saw some animals, there don't seem to be many around, more about that tomorrow though. Couple of cats, some chickens and, most amusingly, we were passed by a motorcycle with a birdcage containing a dozenish small baby chickens, each one was a different fluoro colour. Don't know what that was about, wasn't gonna ask, just kinda watched it go by. Bizarre.


Should say that we were in Fauziah's husband's car for this story. Fauziah reminds me a lot of you, Mum, and her husband is a lot like Dad! There were all the same car arguments, I mean, discussions, that we get. Where he should turn, why didn't he turn back there, oh yes, that's right, this next turn is the right one. Watch out for that car. Watch out for that bike. How fast are you going? etc. The most amusing thing for me was that he was a very sedate driver - hardly ever overtook a car into oncoming traffic.


We drove past a soccer (football) field on our way and could hear "real" bike noises. Turns out that the local lads use the massive car park as their own motorcycle race-track. They had tyres and stuff to mark out the track, a couple of sharp corners and chicanes and one nice straight stretch. Must be nice for them to actually drive fast, on the roads nobody gets near 40kph.


Anyway we went to two silver manufacturers and felt obliged to buy something since Fauziah and her husband had so kindly driven us there. I'll show you a pic of what we got in a minute. It's absolutely incredible the process that they go through. First up they melt down the silver with some copper or bronze for strength. They do this in a little crucible with a gas flame that is foot-pump powered. See pic:
They then either turn the silver into sheets or into wires. The things they do with this is amazing, I mean I guess I've probably seen it before, but without knowing just how hard it is to do I haven't really had an appreciation before. For starters you'd better get rid of any of your occupational health and safety regulations!


The filigree work in particular was so fine that I couldn't really see how they managed to do it. The picture above I took without a flash and it is actually that dark there. People were bending, twisting and what-not these tiny little detailed things and it was hard to see anything. Of course they did the same thing day in, day out so I guess they were used to it. I was going to go nuts with the photos, but was too absorbed in how it was all put together.


At first the people doing the work seemed a little put out to be interrupted, but I think they saw that we were genuinely interested in what they were doing and they ended up taking us through some of the steps that they used to make different objects. Below is a photo of a temple made out of silver:

The photo doesn't really do it justice, it was behind glass and really finely detailed. Polished so that sometimes it looked like crystal until you realised it was just reflecting other silver bits. To polish it to such a shine they use a local fruit. Below is a picture of the little fruits, the ring that is now lodged on my heat-swollen finger (won't be coming off until we're back home I think) and a pendant that Tari got, the red is polished, coloured coral. They use the fruit by stripping back a bit of the bark (really pungent odour) and when you get a toothbrush onto it and a bit of water it froths right up and really cleans up the silver, super polish. We're not gonna try getting them through customs, so make the most of the picture =)

On the way back I took some photos of the traffic, they're not great shots, but might give you some small idea:

And this one shows the bikes all lined up at a crossing.

Last shot for today is of my dinner. This is Soto Ayam (chicken soup). Slighly more in depth than Continental Cup-a-soup version. The soup itself is just fantastic by itself, very rich chicken broth with all the asian herbs and spices that you'd expect. Around it are some Ketsap Manis (yummy sort of soy/bbq sauce, that's a bad description though), limes, chili, corn chips and rice. This allows you to flavour the soup exactly how you want. I went with lots of lime and a tiny bit of chili.

I started off with a half teaspoon of chili and Tari said "less" went for a quarter teaspoon "less" a tiny bit on the end of the teaspoon "sure". Boy, that stuff must be used to power rockets. That tiny little bit went in the massive amount of soup and still made me sweat!


I'll have more for you tomorrow, but we're getting close to the end of the interesting stuff. I think Tari's pretty flat out from dawn to after dinner now so there might be one more touristy thing, but that'll be about it.

More than halfway there now, tomorrow you can find out about our trip to the Sultan's Palace!

Sim.