A German boy and his Japanese Chickie go offroading.

Halfway into our second week here and have begun to feel more settled.

Its Thursday today and I've taken the afternoon off. Kyle's gone back to site and I've been walking up and down Galle Road trying to find an internet cafe with electricity.

So back at work on monday Kyle and I had decided that we'd painted as much as we could with our wee gang and decided to explore further afield deeper into the site where houses are still going up. Managed to get one of the guys to give us a job block-laying (which I've never done before) so spent a little time moving blocks from the pile into the house where the reinforced concrete structure is up already while Kyle attacked the seperating wall between the houses. Eventually I plucked up the courage to try my hand at making the walls to my happy audience's delight.

So by Wednesday night we'd finished the seperating wall, the toilet and shower room that are situated downstairs and half the kitchen. So my poor girlie hands are knackered to say the least.

Aside from work work work, we've managed to get in quite a few other things. Monday was animal day. Since working on the houses by the river allows us to check out the animal life there. So on Monday, the boys went fishing (as usual-the slackers!) and caught a slightly larger catch than normal - a land turtle. Sisiaq excitedly showed Kyle who then told me (who was busy at work applying primer on the windows-upstairs!). I ran downstairs to see the turtle and almost cried as I saw it was bleeding!!! obviously from the hook- a cut that was inevitable seeing as they were fishing anyway. They told us they were going to keep him and curry him for their dinner. After a few hours of abuse and me trying to get Kyle (the Cigarette Godfather) to tell them that he was going to buy them all dinner if they put the turtle back in the river, they finally gave in and told us that they were messing and that the turtle was going into the temple pond just down the road.

After the turtle incident, we saw what must have been a family of Biawak or Monitor Lizards swimming up and down the river and a couple of bright blue kingfishers. Oh and those of you who have stayed round our 'Mansion' in Singapore - that blasted bird followed us here! AiiYOOOOO...

Around 5 the sky went black and thinking that it was going to rain I looked up and saw thousands of bats circling the sky. In Mulu, we saw them leaving the caves in ribbons but these guys were just circling above like a giant cloud of bats. Bats the size of large birds! The biggest bats I've ever seen in my life. They eventually stopped in the trees just opposite the house we're building.

We've also hired a bike for the week and have gone rallying inland which is undoubtedly much nicer than the beach town itself. After about an hour or so rigind inland we stopped to turn around as our bums had turned to jelly at this point and a lady approached us.

Lady: Hello!
K+W: Hi!
Lady: Where you from you Germany? (speaking to Kyle)
K: No, England.
Lady: Oh nice. And the lady? You Japanese ya? (looking over at me)
W: No, Malaysia. (I've given up trying to tell everyone who asks me that I'm from Brunei. Because apparently its an American colonized Japanese state that is 80% Muslim Extremists with a Sultan)
Lady: You must come up to speak to my father. He likes you. (speaking to Kyle)
K: He likes me?
Lady: Yes, you see he like foreigners.
K: I see..

Broom broom away now!! xxw