Shiomgh…. What?

Monastery of Shiomghvime or the Cave of Shio in the impossible to pronounce Georgian language

As mentioned in my earlier introductory post on Georgia, Georgian (Kartvelian language family) is a language which is unrelated to any other languages in the world, making it a primary language family. One of the main features of Kartvelian is the crazy groupings of consonants, MGHVime, MTKVari, TSKHoveli… How do you even pronounce them? Why not something simple for cave like ‘gua’ (Malay), or ‘dong’ (Chinese), or ‘puk’ (Mizo)???

By the way, the Caucasus is a treasure trove of impossible consonant-loving languages. It has two other primary language groups (totally unrelated language families) in the world: 1) Northwest Caucasian (languages of the Circassian regions of Russia and the breakaway Georgian state of Abkhazia) and 2) Northeast Caucasian (languages of Chechnya, Ingushetia & Dagestan regions of Russia). There're no other languages like them and they are unrelated to each other, but they all have one thing in common, crazy consonant groups!

Anyway, back to the topic, Shiomghvime is medieval monastery built around a cave where St Shio, a Christian monk and missionary from Assyria (present day Iraq and Syria) spent his last days as a hermit. This was in the 6th century! Pictures coming up.


Shio-Mghvime Monastery, Georgia – it’s a 20-30 mins drive from Mtskheta


The hills surrounding Shiomghvime, Mtskheta, Georgia


Is that the entrance to the cave?? We (the kids and I) went down there and there was something like a tomb. Got out as fast as we could! And we were the only ones in there at that time. Didn’t tell the missus. She’d freak out. (Once she took some photos of a temple in Thailand at night without realising that it was surrounded by graves. She deleted every single photo when she realized what she did)


The interior of the church at Shio-Mghvime


Another church - the plaque names it as the Church of St John the Baptist


Pilgrims at Shiomghvime


Now that’s too colourful for a pilgrim… Oh, it’s you honey!

There. One quick photo post done! Till we meet again, see ya!

The Pillar of Life

Svetitskhoveli Cathedral, Mtskheta, Georgia – Aug 2018. If you look closely, you’d see a wedding procession under way. Far behind, on top of the hill on the left of the photo, is the Jvari Monastery

Summer is here, officially. Every year in the UAE, from 15-June to 15-September, no worker is allowed to work out in the open between noon and 3pm. It’s the mandatory midday break rule. Any company caught flouting this rule, would be subjected to hefty fines, the size of King Kong (or Godzilla depending on whose side you’re on). Previously, workers used to die from heat stroke every friggin year.

Summer also marks the end of the school term and the start of the 2-month long summer vacation, that’ll drive the residents here to make a beeline for the airport, immediately on the day that school ends. Don’t believe me, just camp out in the airport on the last day of school, and you’ll see what I mean.

But this year? Hmmmm… I have no idea. Countries are starting to open up. All the ads on radio, YouTube, Google and what-have-you are about airlines and holiday destinations. Everyone’s surfing the web hunting for places to go, holiday packages… (including yours truly, ahem). But will it materialize? There’re still SO many restrictions in place, procedures to follow, COVID-19 tests to take, visas to obtain, etc, etc, etc, might have to give this summer break another break! That’s 2 years in a friggin row. WTF.

Anyway, here’s something from 2 years, no, 3 years back! A continuation of our summer vacation in the Caucasus. Continuing from where I left off – Tbilisi. After a couple of days in Tbilisi, we started our customary road trip (what’s a holiday without a road trip?!) A road trip on a Chinese 4WD car – a Great Wall 4WD automatic transmission SUV (don’t ask me the model, OK?) Let’s hope it doesn’t conk out… Fingers crossed – Don’t want another broken car adventure like the one we had in Armenia earlier in the trip!

First stop, Mtskheta, the former capital of Georgia in the olden days. Mtskheta has been around for centuries, err.. actually longer than that. It was there at the time of Alexander the Great, 4 centuries before Christ!


This bird’s eye view of Mtskheta is taken from the Jvari Monastery. Svetitskhoveli Cathedral can be seen clearly in the middle of town

Anyway, the story goes that a Jewish native from Mtskheta, who was in Jerusalem at the time of Jesus’s crucifixion, bought Jesus Christ’s robe from the roman soldier who had it. He brought it back to his hometown Mtskheta and was met by his sister. When his sister touched the robe, she was so overwhelmed with emotions that she died clutching the robe. They could not remove the robe from her clutches, and buried her together with the sacred robe. Years went by and a cedar tree grew from the place where she was buried.

About 300 years later (4th century), St Nino (a nun who converted Georgia to Christianity) chose this sacred place for the building of a church. The enormous cedar tree was cut down and made into pillars for the church. When the builders started erecting the pillars, the last (seventh) pillar rose into the air by itself. It only came down after St Nino prayed for a whole night. The pillar also exuded a liquid that cured people of all diseases. Now, it only I knew which pillar this is… Hmmmm…


Svetitskhoveli means life-giving (tskhoveli) pillar (sveti) in the impossible to pronounce Georgian language


An artwork portraying the living pillar legend, from the hilltop Jvari Monastery, photo compliments of camera-trigger-happy wife (I love you honey, you capture the most amazing things on camera, mmmuahhhh!) A similar artwork is supposed to be in Svetitskhoveli, but I just didn’t pay attention, there were so many religious artworks around, duh. I only ‘discovered’ this photo while picking out the photos for the post!


This is the ciborium marking the place where the robe of Jesus Christ was supposedly buried… (if only I’d knew about it during the visit… I only found out while reading about it for this post!)


The original church built by St Nino had been damaged many times in the course of history by earthquakes, wars and lastly by religious subjugation during the Soviet era. The present church dates back from the 11th century. Behind Anu, you can see a grapevine cross with drooping arms. That’s the cross of St Nino which has since become a symbol of the Georgian Orthodox Church


“Wow, this place is like a castle!” “Hey kids, this is not a playground, OK?” (As if they'd care...)


A fresco of Jesus Christ can be seen behind the chandelier, Svetitskhoveli Cathedral




More scenes from the Svetitskhoveli Cathedral, Mtskheta


The monastery on top of the hill, Jvari Monastery, Mtskheta


Jvari Monastery, Mtskheta, Georgia


The Jvari Monastery also has its story. St Nino erected a large wooden cross (or was it a grapevine cross…) on the site of a pagan temple. This cross could work miracles and this attracted pilgrims from all over the land. Eventually, someone erected a church at the spot and it grew to become the Jvari Monastery of today. Is this the miraculous cross? I don't know. I don’t think it’ll survive that many hundred years… What, with the wars and invasions throughout history!

By the way, St Nino also featured in the story of neighbouring Armenia’s conversion to Christianity, which made Armenia the first Christian nation in history. St Nino was the only survivor of a group of virgin nuns from Rome who sought the protection of the king of Armenia, only to be slaughtered by the king when one of the nuns, Rhipsime refused to marry him. St Nino eventually came to Georgia and converted the king of Georgia (then known as the Kingdom of Iberia) to Christianity. Georgia therefore became the second nation in history to adopt Christianity as its state religion. The end.

Escape the Jungle

Here’s another forest family trip. But not the tranquil forest walk on suspended bridges like the last post. This one’s for the adrenaline junkies, a jungle trip on steroids! With rope courses and zip lines! See for yourself!


This is Escape, Penang – an adventure theme park in a natural jungle environment that aims to recreate the days of how kids used to play in Malaysia before the arrival of electronic toys or gadgets. All that and a fantastic WATER PARK!!!


Hello Honey, all ready for the adventure? You’ll be OK, the ropes don’t look that high (Anu has a fear of heights…)


The team learning the ropes – getting instructions from the attendant on how to hook themselves onto the cables. There are different levels of rope course to choose from (I think there are 3 levels) – they chose the easiest and lowest due to the kids. (Yours truly had to attend to Jayden who was too young to go on – later I took Level 2!!! Hehe)


All through the first rope! Justin was first, then Anu, Stacey and last, Jason


Ropes course and zip lines are not all. There’re also trampolines… Good one Stacey! Above, you can see someone zip-lining thru


You can try your skills at being a monkey, climbing a coconut tree


Or a friggin 3-storey building! Stacey’s the expert climber of the group


More monkeying around – swinging from a rope tied to a tree… whoopee!


What about for the little one??? …Oh, he could do the Zoom Bug, or explore the ant maze …a maze of burrows accessible only by crawling through. You could see it all on the CCTV screen on the outside if you don’t fancy crawling in – Oh, there you are Jayden and Papa!


And there’s prospecting for ‘gold’! “See, I got a little gold nugget!”


Now, back to the ‘serious’ stuff – the ultra-high zip-line, the Flying Lemur – only for those with a head for heights. “Hey, where’re you Honey?” Oh, there you are (on the ropeway leading to the flying lemur, with Jason behind). ”Err… YOU CAN DO IT!!” We aren’t supposed to bring out our phone or camera as per the guidelines (as there’s a risk of them falling off and causing an injury to those below, but what the heck! This is too good to miss). Anu didn’t realized what she’d put herself into, until it was too late. She wanted to quit, cried, pleaded and even tried to remove her harness when she was on top the ultra-high platform! Only to be stopped by the attendants there, whew…


Back on the ground… “YOU DID IT!! See, that’s not too bad, right?” (She swore she’s never gonna do another silly thing like that again, EVER…)


Now for the water park… As you can see, Jayden’s NOT A FAN of water parks. He’s scared of water. This was my last photo before I joined the water slides. Yippeee!!! (By the way, Escape now has the Guinness World Record for the world’s longest water slide. It was under construction at the time of our visit)


Escape, Penang, Malaysia 2019

Family Time in the Woods

Redwood Memorial Grove, Whakarewarewa Forest, Rotorua, New Zealand

Skye is 5! At the rate the kids are growing, they’d be grownups in no time! With COVID around (and doesn’t look like it’s going away anytime soon), can’t even plan when we’d be able to fly again, let alone have the kids meet their cousins!

Sigh, summer is in full force (although summer officially only begins on 15 June in the UAE, but whaddya call temperatures of 43C, 44C???), where can we go without baking our skin off and eating desert sand?

…Here’s a little memory trip of a more pleasant time and weather. A trip to the woods with the family in NZ in 2018 Dec. Pray that the pandemic would end soon and for things to get back to ‘normal’. If it ever does…


Little Skye (2.5 years old at that time), with her mommy and aunts, at the Redwood Forest, Rotorua


The redwoods (giant sequoias) are native to California, USA and were planted in Rotorua, NZ a hundred plus years ago








Redwoods Treewalk – a suspended walkway among the majestic redwood trees – nice for a quiet time of contemplation


I did it! Anu is afraid of heights. But surprisingly, she fared quite well on this trip.




What are these? Homes of the tree elves? Nah, they’re lamps that light up at night


These woods are ideal for playing hide and seek. Hey boys, where are you???


There you are! Jayden with his NZ cousin, Jared – Redwoods Forest, Rotorua, NZ, Dec 2018

Jedis Don’t Need Toilet Seats

Hello. I’ve decided to come back to Star Wars Country for this post, since I’ve already sorted out all the photos preparing for the earlier posts, hehe.

One strange thing we noticed when we visited Southern Tunisia was that somehow, the toilets here DON’T HAVE TOILET SEATS. You know those plastic seats and cover that’s fixed to the toilets? They’re nowhere to be seen. And no, it’s not the one restaurant or hotel that this happens. We’ve not seen a single toilet seat in any of the toilets we came across in the 3 days and 2 nights we were in Southern Tunisia. That includes Luke Skywalker’s Tatooine home, Lars Homestead (Star Wars Hotel or Hotel Sidi Idriss) which we stayed a night in.

Ask anyone about toilet seats, and they’d be like …huh? Why d’ya need that? It’s like they’ve never existed in this part of the world! The toilets are there alright, clean, with working flush and all, but they’d have two empty holes – “holes for you to screw in the blasted plastic toilet seats and cover, man!” Maybe it’s something to do with the Force, …maybe Jedis just love the feel of the cold bare porcelain on their naked butts early in the cold morning. Awakens the Force in them and helps them channelize. Or something like that. If you find out the exact reason, please share willya?

The city of Gabes was the first place we noticed this strange custom – we were travelling from El Jem to Tataouine and stopped for lunch in Gabes – a cheap and nice chicken lunch, …but, you guessed it, no toilet seats…


New Mosque of Jara, Gabes, Tunisia – this was near where we had lunch, before we continued our journey to Tataouine to stay for the night

Then we had the ‘privilege’ of visiting 3 separate ‘hotels’ in Tataouine City, a dormitory and 2 guest apartments, before choosing the last apartment to settle in for the night (we had no bloody choice, it’s either that, or sleep in the car as it was too late to go look for another). None of them had toilet seats! Yeah, not one, not even on any of the shared toilets in the dorm!

When we got to our hotel in Matmata, Hotel Sidi Idriss which is the place they used as a setting for filming Star Wars’ Luke Skywalker’s home (Lars Homestead) in Planet Tatooine, none of the toilets there had toilet seats! And this was at quite a pleasant hotel!! With hordes of visitors throughout the day (yup, the hotel is a main tourist attraction of Matmata nowadays).

Anyway, enough about the toilet seats, here’re the rest of our photos taken in Southern Tunisia. Enjoy!


Slave quarters in Tatooine? No, just another ksar / fortified granary. This one’s at Metameur, just northwest of the city of Medenine en route to Matmata – Notice the brewing storm in the sky??


Ksars are all over the place in Southern Tunisia. This isn’t one of the popular ones like Ksar Ouled Soltane or Ksar Hadada. We just noticed it off the road, and drove towards it…


Start of the hills – view of the Metameur / Medenine area from the road to Toujane & Matmata – see the multiple rainfall locations at the back of the photo?


Suddenly the road narrowed… What’s this interesting place? Welcome to Toujane Village




Toujane Village, Tunisia – We noticed tourist buses stopping with hordes of tourist taking photos of this interesting Berber mountain village – We later learnt that Toujane featured in the Call of Duty 2 video game. So it’s not only Star Wars that found this place interesting…


Looking back at Toujane Village, from the road to Matmata


Lars Homestead, Luke Skywalker’s childhood home on Planet Tatooine – This has become a hotel now, Hotel Sidi Idriss, or the Star Wars Hotel. It was where we stayed a night and it was nice, regardless of the shared bathroom and the lack of toilet seats. When in Jediland, do as the Jedis do… May the Force be with you!


Matmata Village – on the surface. Don’t be fooled. Many houses are underground, like the Star Wars Hotel. In this picture, the hole in front of the buildings, is actually one of the courtyards of the Star Wars Hotel!


The kids in a dining hall in Hotel Sidi Idriss, Matmata, Tunisia


Bye-bye, we’re going north again – On the road north, with storms chasing us all along the way – we saw over 10 separate rainbows!


The typical landscape along the highway, acres and acres of olive farms. After all, olive oil is Tunisia’s green gold


Ahem, yours truly with a prickly pear cactus, near the road to Monastir. Prickly pears are also all over the place! I would’ve put in a photo of the missus, or the children (unfortunately, the missus is a far better photographer than yours truly, pah!)