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This is an e-mail that I received from John Darroch which I thought may be of interest to some of the members:- Hi Mark, Sunday 27 April 2014. th Thank you for the back numbers of the DLN just received. I am sorry that you had to search for these. I have spent this morning reading thru all five DLN’s for 2014. Thanks for the mention in the Jan DLN, did not expect that!. It was good to go back into times past when we were young, I can still clearly remember it all but how times have changed. Although long retired I still keep very busy, mostly with jobs in and around the house. We have about 3 acres of landscaped garden plus various animals: Over eighty ducks, some chickens, six geese, four dogs etc. Jead says it is more like a farm than a house. We did that second cruise to Java, Indonesia. Fay and Terry our Aussie friends joined us for this in Singapore. I managed to catch a severe cold while on board, spent some days in bed with little energy; have only just about fully recovered. We had all been to Indonesia years before, so this cruise was meant to be a long rest, I certainly got that. Out of 7 ports of call I only went ashore at three; Bali, Lombok and Komodo. Komodo island is the home of the huge monitor lizards known as ‘Komodo Dragons’ Jead and I went on a short trek into the forest area and saw about six Komodos in a clearing, we were within 40-50 feet of them. There were six park rangers protecting us and the other passengers with long forked poles. The Dragons are deadly if one were to be bitten. They have a poisonous saliva so if bitten one is going to die a long and slow death. In the wild they ambush their prey, once they bite the poison causes their prey to become quickly paralyzed, the lizards wait for this to happen before moving in and tearing it to pieces. Their prey is wild buffalo, deer, other game animals, all abundant on the Island. We were told some about 2,800 Komodos reside permanently on the island. It was a spooky place but also very enlightening. After the cruise Fay and Terry came back with us to Phuket and spent the next two weeks at our house. 8