Dressing for success

I’ve often been astounded by the inappropriate way people dress depending on where they are going.

For example, the opera. Many wear jeans and T shirts and don’t bother to dress up at all. Being a favourite tourist activity while in Sydney, as it’s on at the Opera House, many come in what they have been wearing to tramp around the city all day – shorts and runners. (Listen, short shorts on old legs ain’t a good look and I’m talking about the men here.)

Then on the other hand, there’s those patrons who over-dress. Dinner suits and bow ties are not really necessary unless it’s a gala occasion. The same goes for women wearing long dresses, furs and a lot of jewellery.

Last time I went to the opera, daaaarling, I saw a woman wearing a striking red and black dress, red stockings and…red gloves up to her elbows. Such get-up doesn’t make any difference to the music appreciation.

And by the way, you are allowed to laugh at the opera. They’re not all serious. In fact, many of them are meant to be FUNNY.

I’m even more shocked by what people wear on aeroplanes. Tiny little shorts and super high heels can’t be that comfortable on a long-haul flight. You don’t have to dress for the destination. You can change when you get there. And don’t these passengers realise it can get very cold on planes. This may be the only time you can get away with wearing a track suit in public – and jiffies and thick socks.

It’s come to my attention that several airlines have dress codes – and that’s not for the flight attendants. They have them for Economy as well as First Class and Business Class.

For example, one Business Class dress code I read says men should wear: trousers, collared shirt (no jeans, shorts, trainers, t-shirts) and women: dress, skirt, trousers, business shirt / blouse (no jeans, singlet, shorts). Passengers are told on this airline they will not be accepted for travel if airport staff consider them to be inappropriately dressed.

But forgetting style for once and in the interests of making people feel more at home on a plane here are some dress codes for a variety of airlines:

Garuda - braided hair, a very bad suntan, tiny shorts, mid drift tops and thongs (if female). If male, stubby shorts and tats are fine or sun-bleached hair and board shorts and of course a Bintang t-shirt.

Gulf Air – very good Kohl eyeliner, which I can never find in Australia.

Virgin – a clown suit so you can repeat all those hysterical jokes they make and at least look like a clown (but they’ve cut most of them out now).

Air Asia – something in batik.

Air France – something very chic like a black pencil skirt, a classic white shirt and matching jacket.

Tiger - a mullet.

Singapore Airlines – big sunglasses, cheong san dress. Men in badly-made business suit.

Air New Zealand – ski gear and a nice, small but discrete face tattoo and dreadlocks.

Thai Airways – something soft, silky and flowing and always speak in a very, very quiet voice.

Qantas – a flak jacket and a set of safety regulations.

Say no to shopping

There's nothing more likely to send me screaming out the door than the announcement on a trip that "yes ladies, you are going ..... shoppinnnnnnng!".

Why is it taken as gospel that all women love shopping? I don't. And I'm a woman.

I don't mind doing a bit of leisurely strolling past windows and perhaps ducking in and looking at one or two items. But the leisurely stroll has to be en route to a cafe.

The idea of spending hours and hours walking around shops fills me with horror.

And even greater horror is supermarket shopping or...that scary of all scary places, Ikea. Get those trolleys away from me!

But it's this idea that women need to fit shopping in when they go on a trip that really annoys me. When shopping is suggested, it's often said with a cheeky glint in the eye, like "Ooo you're so naughty, going out and spending all that hard-earned cash" (or more likely credit).

Maybe men might want to shop while the women go and play golf, or hey even go and see an exhibition at a gallery or visit a museum. Or wait for this one, talk to locals.

I've been known to stand outside shops and wait for my companion rather than go in.

We're slaves enough to consumerism then why force more of it on us? I have enough things. I want to throw stuff out not buy more. (Unless it's a ruby ring or perhaps an incredible Kenyan wooden necklace. Everybody has their limits on not being able to say no.)

A few souvenirs or artifacts from interesting countries are allowed, and they might even get past Quarantine and a good pair of boots from Italy or even cowboy boots from the US can be sneaked into the suitcase. Yes that's OK but they should be bought in the process of doing OTHER things or right at the end before you're about to jump on the plane.

Not everybody will agree with me on this one and it's a free world - well when it comes to spending money it's not that free (and don't lets start about politics).

So do whatever you will. But please don't expect me to come with you. Just meet me at the bar.

Guilty consciences

Tourism and travelling has become a serious business, of late.

You can’t go anywhere without being expected to volunteer for a charity, visit an orphanage, look after sick elephants, donate your services to a soup kitchen, vaccinate rabid dogs or give money to war victims.

You just can’t go anywhere without a guilty conscience.

Five star hotels in third world countries beg you to leave money for their local charity or do something to help.

Airlines ask for even more money on top of the taxes, fees and charges so they can offset their carbon by planting a tree in the middle of nowhere. Would you trust that person asking for that extra money? Even with that smile on their face? Would they be planting the right sort of tree for the environment anyway?

Call me cynical, but I don’t trust any of them. And yet we all want to give back to the places we’re taken a lot from. A few cents for victims of land mines in Cambodia is not too much to ask. Visiting an orphanage and collecting some money for the kids there isn’t going to kill you.

But today many have been bitten by the volunteer bug and often they have more volunteers than they can adequately deal with you. And you have to put your name on a waiting list, especially in the more exotic places.

Cambodia is especially popular. The South-East Asian country has one of the saddest histories of any country on earth. Because of the Khmer Rouge's fundamentalist Marxist polices pursuing increased rice productivity almost everybody was displaced and between one and two million people died in the period 1975 to 1979 and hundreds of thousands more died during a severe famine in the late 1970s after Vietnam invaded in 1978.

But since UN-sponsored elections in 1993 and the surrender of elements of the Khmer Rouge in the mid-1990s and the remaining forces in 1998 there has been some semblance of normality.

Today there seems to be almost as many NGOs in Cambodia as there are tourists, helping to get the country back on its feet. And it's impossible as a visitor - and as anybody involved in tourism including hotels - not to be aware of the fundamental dilemmas of heritage and cultural protection and the financial benefits that tourism brings.

And how can you not have your breath taken away by the enchanting children?

At what could loosely be described as an orphanage in Siem Reap right next to the amazing Angkor Wat I meet children, some of whom have been brought here by their parents because of poverty.

No, I'm not doing an Angelina Jolie or even a Madonna (more my type), but I can't help but cuddle them.

One little boy, freshly showered and hair combed, grabs my hand. "I have no mother, father. You be mother, him father," he points to the general manager of the hotel where I'm staying, who has been donating materials to the orphanage.

Well, I wasn’t going to go that far. I explain I have children back home.

Meanwhile, one child after another comes out with a drawing to give me to take back to Australia.

As I climb to the 10th century Bakheng temple to see Angkor Wat bathed in late afternoon sunlight, I pass a group of musicians maimed by landmines performing traditional music.

On the way back, one of the musicians hands me a pamphlet explaining that they are members of the Angkor Association for the Disabled. It says they are pursuing funding for an ecological farm in the Siem Reap area, where they can live and grow organic products.

Their main aim is to transition members from a life of begging on the streets into safe, adequate housing.

They say - despite campaigns to clear them - landmines continue to maim and kill thousands of Cambodians every year.

As well as money, people are urged to donate their time and skills, from everything from small business and funding proposals to promotional activities, to teaching and training.

Even at the airport, the proceeds of cards sold at the giftshop are said to go to NGOs.

Conscience tourism is alive and well here. But this is one place where my hard-core cynicism melts.

The Rain Stopper

Photo by Chris Gleisner

All this terrible weather lately in the Southern Hemisphere reminded me of an interesting guy photographer Chris Gleisner and I met while in Indonesia a few years back. A person who could come in handy now.

It was pouring with rain and there was definitely no hint of a rainbow on the horizon. Early wet season in East Java, the main island of Indonesia.

Players in an Ernst and Young expat accountants golfing tournament at the Finna Golf and Country Club resort near Surabaya battled on regardless.

But next to the 18th green we came across a disheveled looking old man in a worn black suit, white shirt, and crumpled hat, smoking a large roll your own kretek cigarette and looking not the least bit perturbed about getting wet.

I noticed his fingers were covered in large, exotic rings as he handed me his card. Red writing on white, in Indonesian it said Pawang Hujan, dll, which translates as “rain stopper, etc”.

I learnt Mr P Anom Kartowiyono was the local magic man who comes up from his village whenever needed, to stop the rain spoiling a day’s play. The “etc” stood for his other talents – palm reading, fortune telling and so on (illustrated on his card by a genie emerging from an Aladdin’s lamp).

Many locals believe such rain stoppers have the power to move storms and they are hired by golf clubs and event organizers (such as weddings) throughout Indonesia’s 18,000 islands.

They are normally paid on commission, depending on whether the rain stops or not.

The club's manager at the time, Richard T.Wilson, who hailed originally from Texas, said s Mr Kartowiyono’s wife had complained to him during the previous particularly heavy rainy season that if the rain didn’t stop the family would starve. She begged for an out-of-season payment.

Normally rain stoppers use talismans that they place around an area where they don’t want rain and speak to the gods in a partly-Arabic mantra, despite their tradition being animist and pre-Muslim.

Mr Wilson said if he doesn’t hire a rain stopper and it rains, he’s in trouble. And he's castigated if he does hire one and it still rains. But to be on the safe side Mr Kartowiyono was invited back again.

What we could have done with recently, especially with the cyclone in northern Australia, though is a wind-stopper.