Not me.
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I FALL asleep immediately, so I’m not sure what happens. According to this article, though, “the negative pressure needed to pull wax from the canal would have to be so powerful that it would rupture the eardrum in the process”.
Keeper? No, don’t feel any different.
IT’S my last day in Kuala Lumpur and I’m mad as a sack of seagulls after some hoohah from back home.
The last thing I want to do is take various forms of public transport alone to a far-flung suburb, get on a five-storey thrill-ride in a shopping mall without so much as a witness to squeal “Ooh! That was spectacular,” rush back to my hotel, get my suitcase and lug it to the airport for a long-haul flight to England.
Right, then!
Finding the Empire Mall takes some doing, but eventually I get there and there’s the slide in all its curly glory. Although Time Out made it sound like it was for Bear Grylls-style daredevils, when I get to the fifth floor it’s just me and a couple of 10-year-olds in the queue. When it comes to my turn, I’m tucked in a sack, handed my handbag to clutch, and given a shove.
I barely have time to pronounce “?$%!!” at the sight of the chute whizzing around me, before I’m startling the wee bloke at the bottom, who was expecting to catch someone smaller.
Keeper? Yes. Cheered the fuck up.
I'm either really bruised or I've been spammed.
IF I could get up and do a runner I just might, but I’m forced down onto the practitioner’s table with the pressure of an Acme anvil.
I know bugger all about cupping, other than Gwyneth Paltrow caused a furore after attending some red carpet bash with circular bruises on her back and a beatific smile on her face, and that it has its fair share of naysayers. I’ve found this spa in Kuala Lumpur that does it for a tenner though, so it would be churlish to ask too many questions.
I lie topless on my front and my practitioner, Maimum, yanks down my undies, and gives me a bit of an angry slather of oil, put out that I’m not going for the massage for another tenner. I hear the ignition of a cigarette lighter. I’ve guessed this is going to be uncomfortable, but at this very moment a panpipe rendition of ‘Do You Really Want to Hurt Me’ comes on the stereo and things take on a sinister skew.
I pipe up and ask Maimum what cupping does.
“Get body wind.”
“Did you say ‘wind’?”
“Yes. Bad wind.”
A good belch would have been less traumatic.
Maimum applies a cup to my neck with a loud sucking noise and it’s a sensation I haven’t felt since being bitten as a kid by one of those rogue bitey kids you get running around. Actually, it’s like being bitten and then having those jaws tear upwards incessantly.
“Pain? Pain?” Maimum says. I agree.
Eighteen cups are applied in total, as I grip the table legs. It hurts to breathe, which is awkward, as I seem to be breathing more sharply. Judging by photos I’ve seen of this treatment, my back now resembles a smorgasboard of prolapsed arses.
“How long do these stay on for?” I gasp in a conversational tone through the head hole in the table.
“Fifteen minutes,” she sympathises, tapping away on her Blackberry. I’m not going to crack and get her to pull them off early, but by god it’s tempting. “Most people cry,” Maimum adds happily. She leaves the room and I experimentally try to get up, but only succeed in squirming on the table – if there was any bag rifling going on I’d be powerless to act. All I need is a hood over my head.
After 15 minutes, Maimum pulls off each cup and the relief as each inch of my body is returned to me is so sweet that we both laugh. I’d actually pay the cupping price just for that feeling. Maimum brings me a cup of warm water (“NO coffee!”) and I beat a hasty retreat out of the spa to have a calming cigarette.
Keeper? NO.
Don't hold it like this.
KUALA Lumpur’s a maze of upmarket malls, but Times Square is the most bizarre by far.
With escalators rising to dizzying heights and Lady Gaga pumping out of every dazzling white store, it’s got a theme park slap bang in the middle, around seven storeys up. Among the rides is a roller coaster, which weaves in and out of the eaves, curling down past shops and fast food joints.
Bugger that, though, I’m going to the archery range.
For three dollars I’m given 10 arrows and a full-size bow, and shown how to pull the thing. Right on cue Akon’s ‘That Girl is So Dangerous’ starts blaring out. It’s like they know about my wobbly eye and chronic myopia. (I call it mytopia – the world’s so much better all blurry.)
Archery’s hard on the ol’ bowing arm, but I manage to get all 10 arrows more or less on the target.
Man alive! It's a friggin' roller coaster!
Keeper? Would be hotter if it wasn’t in a mall.
THE old codger in vest and shorts has to be practically hoiked out of the water by the spa orderlies, so keen is he to get his feet nibbled free of every callous by carnivorous fish.
When it’s my turn, my tootsies are given a cursory wipe-down in a pan of water and then I swivel around on the bench to lower them into the trough. (I say trough, but it’s a fairly fancy trough in a spa primping ‘My Heart Will Go On’ on panpipes.)
The moment my feet make impact with water, hundreds of tiny carp are onto me like seagulls on a chip. I can feel each individual one chomping frantically, but overall the sensation is like being tickled with eels. Some of the sardine-sized tiddlers worm their way between my toes – taking liberties, it feels like – while others work their way up my legs.
I’ve been wanting to try a ‘fish pedicure’ for ages, but they haven’t really done the rounds in Australia, and they’re fast getting banned across the US. These epidermis munchers are supposed to leave you with glossy soft skin, rather than grizzled heels, plus I’m hoping they’ll nosh off the peculiar itchy rash that I’ve been cursed with these last few weeks.
Health officials in the US point out that cosmetology tools need to be discarded or sanitised after each use – particularly cosmetology tools that eat your flesh and then someone else’s – and that it’s impractical to chuck out fish or bake them for 20 minutes at 350 degrees. This has led spas to protest that they use individual tanks, regularly clean out water, and install UV light sterilisation. Although, not the spas over here in Kuala Lumpur, which have a more communal, convivial vibe.
Back in my hotel room my feet are prickling. Hopefully they’re just prickling with fear.
Keeper? Probably not one of my greatest ideas.
AS IF to mock my own experience of being wedged into bushes, six-year-old Billie is tearing up the paddock on a miniature quad bike, gunning the throttle and hooning down slopes with a fearless stare in our direction.
She brings the bike to a splattering halt in front of us. “I’ve got four horses,” she announces.
So we head up the hill to see them.
This stud farm outside Launceston breeds Arabian horses for endurance racing, and the majestic beasts are everywhere, rearing up, cycling their front hooves and psyching each other out. They’re bred for Tom Quilty endurance racing: 160km across country in one day. A ‘strapper’ has to hose down the horse at intervals to get its heart rate down to a vet-approved bpm, then it’s off full-pelt again. I’m glad I’m not being dared to get on one.
“You big sooky la la,” Billie admonishes as I hesitate at the electric fence. I hand Old Dog my latte, which he accepts with a grimace, and duck under. Bloody hell, they breed them tough around here.
As we ascend the paddock, horses come up for a mild-mannered look, until we decide to take a closer inspection of the foals, at which point a whole field’s worth of horses start clustering us. I turn around and there’s a nose right in my face.
Back near the homestead, which is awash with dogs, kittens, mice, motorbikes and kids on motorbikes, a new recruit with beautiful pebble markings is being dressed in the stables. It looks a bit mortified as it’s bustled up in a total of five fetching coats – and that’s without even knowing its picture’s going to be splashed all over the internet.
Keeper? Yes: patting, not racing.
I’VE never questioned the existence of boulder-lined bush tracks. They just crop up here and there, don’t they? Apparently not, as I’m given the mission of creating one today.
The hard work’s done – the quarry rocks have already been sourced from a nearby pine plantation and lugged to the right spot. My mission’s to help shape the track that will form a 1km walk around this property, so I start by undercutting the slope we’re on with the blunt end of a pick.
I’ve got to hack through tree roots and form a level area on which to lay the rocks. The bush pirate points out wombat trails as we go, identifiable by upturned soil and mulch all pointing in the same direction. He’s right – but I’d never have noticed.
Keeper? I only toiled for 10 minutes, truth be told. I don’t think I’m built for brute force and ignorance.
THE bush pirate is working on a property that’s in the middle of a clear fell — a brutally overlogged area that he’s trying to restore to its full foresty glory of 150 years ago.
He’s thinned the paperbark swamp forest of dead trees to create light and reduce fire hazard, and cleared out the undergrowth of blackberry bushes, nettles, logs and dead branches. Now he’s in the process of putting in braces of myrtle beech around the boggy patches, and an understory of four species of ground ferns and man ferns.
Before.
After.
He piles up some of the detritus he’s cleared around the ferns, where fronds will keep the muck moist so that they grow moss which accelerates their delay, which in turn feeds the ferns. That’s clever.
Artful mulching.
Already, within the existing paperbark forest, he’s created two areas of rainforest, a blackwood forest and a eucalypt forest – all on this four-acre property.
Today we’re propagating ground ferns. When fronds of the ferns die, new buds and leaves grow at the end. These are pulled off and replanted in clusters. He grabs the last specimen from his pile of tagged man-ferns and shows me how it’s done. Muddy work, to be sure, but nowhere near as hard as transplanting man ferns, which can grow up to 22-feet tall and have to be manhandled by the bush pirate up and down steep slopes. I never knew gardening could be so sexy.
Getting the dead fronds with green tips.
Planting em. And so on it goes.
Keeper? Could actually do this without supervision, should I stumble across any ground ferns.
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You had to be there, clearly.
I CAN hear the falls the whole time, but if Bucket the dog didn’t glow white in moonlight, I’d never be able to find them.
She leads the way, and after a 10-minute hike we’re awarded with a spectacular view of a two-pronged falls. The bush pirate gives me 20 cents to make a wish, then we climb the fence and pick our way down rocks to sit at the bottom, for a more refreshing experience.
Keeper? Yes. Exploring’s more fun at night.
Australia 2012. It's okay, we're friends.
Hey man, now you're really living 
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