Keeping dry in Taipei.

Our rainy Sunday was not an isolated cloudburst; Cape Town is still trapped under a low ceiling of cloud cover and steady drizzle. But after living in Asia, really, this is nothing. No one does rain like Asia.

We had quite a few experiences of being trapped by a sudden downpour. Like the walk home from work in Bangkok, where Bordeaux and I had to just give up on the idea of trying to stay dry, and ran home, sloshing through knee-high puddles. Or when we were visiting Phnom Penh and got caught in a downpour; luckily we were trapped inside Chocolate, a little cafe selling delicious baked goods and warm lattes. Or the first day of our road trip in Northern Thailand, where less than half an hour out of Chiang Mai we had to pull over to seek cover.

Through all of these incedents, for whatever clever reason, Bordeaux and I were generally without an umbrella. Most often this meant we had to wait it out, or we just got soaked.

Once, however, this ended a little differently. We were in Taipei, and had just visited the National Palace Museum. And just as we were walking through their gardens, the sky opened up and it began to pour. We got trapped, rather unconveniently, under the eaves outside of the restrooms. The rain had no sign of stopping, and we could have been stuck there for much longer, but a Taiwanese couple spotted us, and handed us one of their umbrellas. We tried to co-ordinate getting to the next spot dry with them, where we could give them back their umbrella. But no, they explained, we could have the umbrella. I'd often experienced that people in Taiwan were friendlier than average, but this went beyond. And thanks to their generosity, we got home dry.

Activities for rainy weather.

On Sunday we woke to the sound of a steady rain drenching Cape Town. Thankfully, we'd had a busy Saturday, so it gave us the perfect excuse to spend a lazy Sunday at home. But we did need to buy some groceries (and to rent a DVD), so we had to make one excursion out. Outside, the air was oddly warm, yet not muggy. And everything looked beautiful slicked with rain, as if everything was just a little more lush and green.

This might seems a bit of a stretch, but somehow that feeling really reminded us of being back in Southeast Asia. Particularly, of being in Northern Thailand. In 2007, Bordeaux and I took a motorbike trip through the mountainous region of Northern Thailand, from Chiang Mai to the city of Mae Hong Son, and back. The trip was not without its share of missteps: we ran out of gas in a tiny village without a gas station (thankfully it was in a village), we ended up sleeping in towns where we had very little luck finding dinner, and shared rooms with giant spiders and terrifying cockroaches. And most notably, our trip took place during the rainy season, so we ended up soaked for most of the journey in torrential rainfall. We would get to a hotel, and the first thing we would do would be to unpack our bags to try and dry everything out. But despite our soggy luggage, it was an incredible experience. We found some fantastic meals, explored a bit of Thailand, and spent most of our time in awe of the unbelievable scenery of rain soaked cloud-forest, verdant rice paddies, and staggering mountain passes.

We spent our recent rainy weather rather differently-- returned home, had comfort food for lunch, baked giant cookies, watched a bad TV series over coffee, and a Japanese horror movie over dinner. Which rainy-weather activities I preferred, I really can't say. As much as I love what travel can bring, I also appreciate the value in a day spent happy and comfortable at home. I guess, for me, a balanced life needs to have a mix of both?

Cape Town CBD.

Every now and then, I like to go out and act like a tourist. I find that as a local, I have a tendency to grow so accustomed to my surroundings, that I don't really look around anymore. I stop noticing new things about my city, stop actively engaging with the world around me. And when I do see something interesting, I generally express the sentiment 'I should go check that out, but I'll go another time', which often results in never going at all. Exploring like a tourist is my way of correcting this; it means seeing everything as if it were new, exploring everything that grabs my interest right in the spur of the moment, and being open to experiencing the city in ways I usually don't.

Last week, on a particularly sunny day, we headed down to Cape Town's Central Business District (1) for a morning of sight-seeing. Actually raising my eyes to look around reminded me of all the unusual details in the architecture of the CBD, like this incredible carving of early Cape history on the Old Mutual building (2). We stopped and admired proteas in the Trafalgar Flower Market (3), which I've seen from a distance for almost five years, been curious about, but never been into. And in general we just wandered around, admiring the eclectic mix of architectural styles that make up Cape Town's CBD (4).

Our only real activity of the day was a visit to the Castle (5), a fort built by the Dutch East India Company in the late 17th century. We ended the morning out with a lunch on St George's mall (6), a leafy pedestrian street right in the centre of town. It's not somewhere I often think of going-- the cafes are mostly chains, and I'm not too into the stands selling paintings of townships or the big five. But it is an attractively green urban space, and I like the hum of constant daytime energy as people stroll through, meet for lunch, or stop for coffee. The crowd is always an interesting mix of locals and tourists, so as we ate our lunch we enjoyed some people watching, listened in on conversations in foreign tongues, and felt very much like tourists in our own city.

Early views of Table Mountain.

I am obviously not the first person to develop a fascination with capturing views of Cape Town's neighborly mountains. On Monday we took a visit to the Castle of Good Hope, a fort built by the Dutch East India Company in the early days of settling the Cape, where we found a fantastic collection of early paintings of Table Mountain. I love images created in the early days of exploration-- they're always such an interesting mix of science and fantasy. Comparing them gave a real sense not only of the history of the Cape, but of changes in how artists depicted the natural world. Here are a few of my favourites. (I've included a recent photograph of the mountain at the bottom, labeled for convenience. You may have to click to make it larger, unless you have super sharp eyes).

This rather early one was done by Aernout Smit, in 1683. It is a little odd for me to picture Table Bay swarming with galleons (they would later be replaced by whaling ships, later on by massive tankers of international trade). Though Lion's Head is looking a little bulbous, on the whole the city is depicted rather well. If you look closely, you can see how little of the city was developed-- just a few forts and buildings near the shoreline.

This one was painted about 50 years later, in 1730, by Samuel Scott, who I suspect may never have visited Cape Town. Not only is Lion Head here transformed into a steep pinnacle, and Devil's Peak is given a sloping hillside that fills up the whole of the city bowl, but the whole mountain is for some reason carved of a blue-white stone. It almost looks like some sort of antarctic glacier. A Table Mountain ice sculpture? Looking at this painting, one can really get a sense of what a strange and fantastical place the Cape must have seemed to people in Europe-- a settlement on a distant corner of Africa, in the far Southern reaches of the known world.

This painting by William Syme, done in 1850, uses light and shadow quite evocatively. The scale of the humans are miniscule, just a fleck of paint compared to the churning sea, the distant afloof mountains, and the broken, cloudy sky.

While I like the moodiness of Syme's painting, this view, painted by Thomas William Bowler in 1857, might be my favourite. I love how well he used simple, flat shapes to depict the different peaks of Table Mountain. Lion's head is particularly effective as just a dark shadow.

And here's my own view, photographed in 2006. A little less glamorous without all the wooden ships? If you click on the photo to make it bigger, and look very very closely to the right of Devil's Peak, you'll even see the three towers of Disa Park-- which look no less alluring to me from this angle.

Travel is addictive.

Considering the globe-trotting many of my readers do, I'm probably not shocking anyone with the revelation in this post's title. Most of us have found by now that the more you travel, the more you need to travel.

2009 was our year of giving up travel completely, cold turkey, for settled life. Oddly enough, it left us all the more unsettled, even vaguely depressed at times. So, seeking a temporary cure, we took our quick honeymoon in September. And it felt fantastic to get out on the road, even for just a few days. I didn't realize it at the time, but this little trip planted an idea in our head. It was meant to get us over our need for travel, for a little while at least; instead, it reminded us how great it feels to be traveling.

A few weeks after our trip, when Bordeaux half-seriously suggested we get back on the road, this cause-and-effect didn't come to mind. But looking back on it, I can see: a little travel can be a dangerous drug.

Ugly/Beautiful.

Would you consider these Cape Town buildings, known as Disa Park, to be ugly or beautiful? Around here they're generally regarded as one of the city's ugliest architectural blights-- though I have to say I rather like them. I do understand the point that they sort of hamper the view of Table Mountain (blocked out in this photo by heavy cloud-cover), but I find something about them elegant. I don't know, maybe it's some strange connection I've carried from childhood that round high rises equal glamorous living. What are your thoughts?

culturedPRIMITIVE/style: Living is better with Muji.

We have many reasons for wanting to get back to Asia. The food. The lifestyle. A need for travel. And Muji. Their pared-down clothing and accessories are simple, functional, and so straight-forwardly handsome. I'm browsing the site now in advance, and I wouldn't mind a new Muji bag, or a new Muji notebook (I filled mine up months ago)-- I'd even be totally unhip and get a pair of Muji house-slippers, if I could find them in my size.

I'm thinking it's time for a little more Muji in my life.

And a view of the other mountain, for balance.

I know I rather favour views of Lion's Head, but Cape Town's more iconic Table Mountain does offer its share of incredible views as well. This one on the intersection of Annandale and Upper Orange is one of my favourites, for the bizarre contrast it offers; a contrast that to me says so much about Cape Town. The stately Presbyterian church, looking like a scene out of an English hamlet, and behind it Table Mountain, clouds unfurling over it like a primeval landscape from the 'Lost World'.

View of Lion's Head #11.

Or, perhaps, a game of where's Lion's Head.

culturedPRIMITIVE/stockist: Rooibos.

The global guide to stocking your pantry.

I am generally a coffee drinker, but I do occasionally take tea. In South Africa, that often takes the form of rooibos, a brewed beverage indigenous to the Western Cape. Rooibos is of course known outside of its country of origin; it is perhaps one of the few products with an Afrikaans name to successfully branch into the international market. That name, by the way, translates as 'red bush', an evocative descriptor of the rusty-earth colour the needles take once they have been oxidized. It is available in many brands, in organic loose-leaf or chai flavoured tea bags, and even in an espresso like form, but I rather favour Eleven O'Clock Rooibos for its no frills tea, and its attractively vintage graphics. Outside of South Africa rooibos is mainly sipped by the health crowd (it is high in anti-oxidants and caffeine free) and is generally taken black, but here in the Western Cape we take it in the proper South African way: with a little milk and honey, and preferably, a crunchy buttermilk beskuit on the side.