Japan

Hong Kong

Indonesia

Turkmenistan

Saudi Arabia

India

Qatar

Japan is very organized and formal. The first day that we dressed up nicely to visit a company, we all looked wonderfully dressed up until we got on the street where everybody looked same. No jeans, no pull-over but a mass of people in grey, black and dark blue suits and dresses.

This is, we found out later, in sharp contrast with some Tokyo scenes: a Sunday afternoon in Yoyogi park where Tokyo releases pressure and turns up in bunny suits and pink hair! In addition, we found out that there is a real "hood" where American blacks run disco's (the cheapest in town). It was very strange to run into these guys after two weeks in Japan.

We were in Kobe, just a year after the huge earthquake and the damage was still visible in some places: a building with the fifth floor sandwiched, the other ten floors still "in place". During the tour we saw some inventive earthquake technology, such as an enormous building with rubber foundation to absorb ground movement instead of transmitting it or models of high buildings with a pendulum to keep the building stable.

We visited enough bored tunnels to last a lifetime but also some very interesting underground constructions. One appeared an Escher-like peace of M. C. Escher: a small spiral-formed tunnel around a huge underground dome, de-stressing the rock mass.

In Tokyo the name Escher was brought up again. The director of an enterprise we visited had a particular interest in a Dutch engineer, by the name of George Escher. Whether this engineer was related to the artist was not clear.

This engineer spend a long time in Japan in the start of the century, fighting erosion problems. He wrote many letters to his colleague de Rijke in the Netherlands and our Japanese friend wanted to obtain translations of these letters.

Because the Dutch embassy was not willing to lend a hand, he took a dictionary and started to translate the letters himself. By the time we met him, he was able to read (old fashioned) Dutch! Try to do the same in Japanese!!

In December 1994 Cornelia went to Bandung with her mother and brother to visit an uncle who stayed there for several months and trying to escape Christmas. Bandung has a few nice attractions, such as the Dago tea Gardens (very idyllic) and the Geological museum where remain of the "java man" can be seen and geological maps can be bought.

But, the most popular attraction is, without doubt, the Tanguban Prerahu (turned-over canoe), nick-named the "drive-in volcano" because one can practically drive his car into the crater. We climbed it and met many original Indonesian art dealers with thriving slogans such as "kijke kijke nie kope!" when they discovered our origin. Also eggs, hard boiled in the steaming volcano water were sold, but it took a while to get them!

Off course we wanted a better volcano. The Papandayan was the volcano we were looking for: a golden crater and wild stories about fatally intoxicated people due to vapours. So, we rented a little van and off we went. On our way there we visited still some temples and other non-volcanic attractions.

There were hardly any tourists at the Papandayan and did not get a guide. The crater is a long-stretched valley and it can be climbed with a detour over a path on one side. The other side does not have a path; only loose stones on a slope and a danger sign. Because, sportive as we were, thought the loose stones would not raise life-threatening situations, we decided to take the short route, closer to the crater and ignore the sign.

It was a nice climb, but halfway during our lunch, rain started to pour down on us. We decided that up was as far as down and at the top was a little shelter that would "protect" us. The climb was a bit harder but finally we got there, on a twenty-five-hundred-meter-high ridge with a good wind, ready to catch a pneumonia.

When we turned around we saw that the entire crater, including the slope where we had walked had disappeared in mist. The rainwater runs into the craters and evaporates, providing a probably very unhealthy fog. That was the danger sign and probably the intoxications. It had been -without us realizing it- a very close shave!

Cornelia's first offshore trip was to Qatar. So this story is not really on Qatar, but on the Persian Gulf. Lack of visa limited the time onshore in Qatar to a minimum: several long boring days locked up in a port in the middle of nowhere or watching life at the other side of the gate and five hours waiting in the airport.

The offshore experience was very overwhelming; there is a lot to learn the first time on a drill ship. But also, the most exclusive thing happened. Cornelia tells:

"At about seven o'clock in the morning, I left the laboratory to get some air on the drill deck. When I looked over the sea, I saw all these enormous fish. First, I cried out in joy: I thought it were dolphins and I always miss them when they show. There were very much of them, I saw at least twenty but when I looked better I cried in horror: it took no expert to conclude these were not dolphins. It looked rather shark-like and they were, like in a comic book, surrounding the vessel. Shark attack!!! However, they were so large, they could compete with jaws! So finally I concluded they were perhaps whales.

"Finally we learned they were whale sharks. They are rare and normally they do not show in groups. They eat plankton and were not planning to attack us. Someone claimed to have estimated the amount at two hundred, but there were at least more than a hundred. They stayed with us for more than three days and the last ones left after a week. We never found out why they were so attracted to us!

"This was a very special experience and probably many a marine biologist will envy us!"