The Right Mistakes

Game Almost Over

2009-06-22T08:08:00.001-07:00

I'm sitting in the lobby of the Gershwin hotel on the corner of 5th Avenue and east 27th Street in Manhattan and I'm one flight away from circumnavigating the globe. Last night standing on top of the empire state building, 86 floors up, looking at the spectacular view I couldn't help being struck by the circularity of the whole thing. Being on top of such a properous city, encircled by the headquarters of the richest companies on earth and almost exactly a year ago being downtown in the bowels of Bangkok watching the hustle of a city whose people are schmoozing and lying and sneering and laughing just trying to get by in the thick heat of a country so much poorer. And of course there's the whole in between, places poorer than the latter (Laos, Cambodia) and on par at least with the former ( Hong Kong, Sydney).

It's unrelentingly strange now that I think about it, and I hadn't until I started writing this a couple of minutes ago, that I've almost done it. That thing I said I was going to do more than a year ago. Travel around the world. And yes I did lament at the time that it was almost passe at this point to take such a trip. And in a way maybe it is. And the route wasn't anything particularly out of the ordinary. But still. It was. It was for me. I'm visited, oddly, at certain occassions - when things have gotten a little weird, when I'm looking at something my destiny never had in mind for me, a wild spider the size of your head in a jungle distracting me from loaded guns, a rollercoaster taxi ride through the neon streets of some Asian metropolis, signs written in their strange language, the world turned utterly upside down - by a vision of myself as a child, the normal, petty, ordinary hum drum splendour of a happy childhood and I can't reconcile, sometimes, the insulation of that life with the exposure of this new one.

I'll be home very soon now. Just two flights and a bus ride away. And I know that very soon the slow unstoppable awkward wheel of time will start to dull the colours of the last year within me. It's new now but in mere weeks it will be stonewashed and faded.

But I hope it'll be comfortable and only slip down a little instead of completely away, into my subconscious, where all these things that I've done will remain changing in some small way the actions and reactions of that cotton wrapped child that pops into my head all over the world.

The only question that remains is: Now What?

Leaving Las Vegas. Already. And None too soon.

2009-06-19T11:58:00.000-07:00

I suppose I should say something about las vegas since I'm leaving it today.

First off it's not immediately as extreme as I was expecting. I, at least wasn't struck with a sense of inescapable seediness. Not right away, though, that's all. It comes on slow, like good mescaline, as the man says. The terrible desperation on the faces of flocks of overweight white haired middle Americans isn't immediately as palpable as that on the faces if the droves of San Franciscan homeless. In fact, though I'm the first person to admit that I think of all addictions and afflictions gambling is absolutely the most stupid and least deserving of sympathy, and of all types of gambling addictions a problem involving ones love if slot machines is the most stupid and ridiculous of an already empty and petty way to screw up one's life, I couldn't help throwing a few dollars into one myself. And I will admit that I am part of the problem that makes the shrewder element of this city unspeakably rich in that I am now one of an untold number who can say they essentially considered it worthy entertainment to put their own money into someone else's fancy money box (there an be no better metaphor for these things) but I quit at five, okay, ten dollars (not counting the money I won and then put back in the machines.) I will never understand how, first someone could sit all day at one and lose more than they expected to and second how they could possibly get angry with it or the establishment for any negative consequences arising from their own negligent pre frontal cortex. So yeah, if you're reading this thinking I'm too hard on the poor gamblaholics just remember that I couldn't care less about them and that they deserve everything they get.

Also it seems to me so far that this is where B-listers from Hollywood go to die. Better Midler is playing across the strip from our hotel in Caesars palace. She has been playing nightly for years and will continue as such. Nightly. We saw Penn & teller the other night and they've been doing it for 8 years now. 8 years. Nightly. Ditto for David Copperfield. I know prostitution is legal here but that has to make you feel a little dirty at some point. Making the same joke at the same time every evening and, worst of all, getting the same laugh, night after night, thinking about all the money and how it is totally worth it because, well yeah, it's every night in Vegas, and it's this horrendous treadmill of falsities but the money is just great. Really... wonderful.

Other amusements include being handed wallet sized photos of naked ladies every where you go on the strip. Each night the ground is carpeted in these little pictures and armies of people are employed to rid the morning of this x-rated cushion underfoot.

Also yesterday was spent, 15 hours of it at least, busing to and returning from the grand canyon. Which was large and spectacular as natural holes in deserts go. Pictures to follow when connections permit. As it is now a flight leaves for the city so good they named it again and again which I shall be on within the hour.

The condition and social category of people who lack housing

2009-06-12T18:06:00.001-07:00

I like walking around cities at night time. Sometimes when I can't sleep and it doesn't seem like suicide there's nothing nicer than a slow walk when it seems like everything is closed. And even the weather has been turned off. I've spent a lot more time in cities in the past year than ever before and I've noticed this about myself. I came back from a theme park yesterday, a little sunburned and well thrown around the place but exhausted, overtired even, and I couldn't sleep. I went out for a walk thinking I'd get something nice to eat. A little treat from the late night eateries of San Francisco might be just the ticket. But when I got to one it didn't seem right. So I kept walking. And when I got to the right one I kept walking still.

The doors have been closed but all the stores keep their windows lit around Union Square. Saks, Neiman Marcus, Macy's even a Louis Vuitton and I'm walking past slowly just enjoying the still air and the chatter around me. I realise I've walked too far when I start seeing homeless people in groups of greater than three. At least I do when I notice that the only people on the street at all are homeless. So I turn back towards something a bit more central. There's no intimidation or even interaction, it seems this late that even a lot of them quit for the day and stop begging (some - but not most) but it's probably for the best.

As I was waiting behind the security locked door of our hotel for a sushi delivery boy the other night - this was around 11pm - a guy limped up the steps outside. He looked at me through the glass. He saw me but continued as if he didn't. We didn't acknowledge each other, he regarded me as he would have a lamp or a couch inside. (I ran a little matinee in my head wherein he started snarling at me, leapt through the glass like a crazed animal and pinned me to the floor wondering whether he'd use the knife in his back pocket or just tear me to pieces with his teeth - but underneath, on the surface I was implacable) He sat down in the corner of the little vestibule and removed a few items from his pockets. His jeans were torn as was his shirt. His back was to the window and I could see on the back of his neck some bruises and unhealed scars. I couldn't see what he'd taken out until he moved his arm a little - and I didn't want to look too closely lest he perceive my intrusion - and wrapped it with his belt. He had cooked some heroin in the short while he'd been fussing on the ground outside and now injected it right into the most prominent vein in his left arm. I thought he'd be here for the night. I was thinking about calling the delivery place and telling them that the whole thing was off, that it wouldn't work, there was an unforseen obstacle, we'd have to reschedule. This hotel was unreachable for the night. But then he got up. All he left in his wake as he limped up the hill outside was a flourescent orange lighter, dismantled.

This scene kept repeating through my head as I walked. I saw a woman earlier, well dressed, really, a nice hat, like a bowler for a lady, with a little flower on it, a nice coat, dark blue, with a brooch on the lapel. She held a starbucks cup out and had an eager longing on her face. I couldn't understand that, I still can't. It struck me like a Magritte painting. Things I've seen before but their position altered, their roles corrupted. Her face and the little tableau outside our door hanging behind my eyes when I get back to Union Square, and within one block I've been asked for money in a number of different ways.

"Can I have a lucky penny? Hey a lucky penny, come on I'll catch it." A man says as he waves his cup from a short distance.

"How about some money for a war veteran? Can I get some dinner, hey how about it?"

"God bless you sir, God bless you." This is uttered as I approach. "Thank you sir, goodnight and God bless you." As I walk away.

A sign that says " Why lie? I need a beer."

A transexual in denim hotpants and a tattered coat, torn nikes and blue lipstick asks me if I can help her out with a dollar to make bus fare. I give her two dollars. She holds it in front of me and looks in my eyes and says "Can you help me with this?" "That's all I got," I say. "No," she says, "can you help me with this? Can you afford it?" "It's all yours," I tell her and she marches off proud, her shoulders back a little, this awful tumbleweed. She swaggers off and in the distance I see small groups part for her to walk between. She owns the street and walks through those people like they're only there at her pleasure.

Further down a man, who is out of his mind, he's black too I should mention, most of them are, is standing on an upturned milk crate. He's not moving and the ubiquitous coffee cup is in his outstretched hand. He's trying to do that thing he's seen street performers do. He's standing still, pretending to be a statue, and he will move for a tip. He can't tell that he's swaying dangerously. There's a cavalier look on his face, one that says, I know, I've cracked it, those other guys would have never thought of that. That's why I'm on top of the heap. Or at least the milkcrate.

And then outside a late night bakery and coffee shop a woman, maybe 65 years old crashes into a set of chairs. She's wearing anachronistic clothing, a tweedy coat and a light orange scarf. She too has a brooch and I move to help her up before I realise that her heavily made up face shows signs of, at best, heavy drinking. People that were moving to help her stop as they realise she's another member of San Franciscos homeless... what? Community? Neighborhood? Party? A cafe worker helps her up with an exasperated look on his face. She stumbles further down the street and resumes begging. As I approach I recognise something in her face, something quintessential to a woman of that age, and a flash that takes only a few seconds shows me the faces of all the women of that age that showed me kindness once. A grandmother, a neighbour, a babysitter, a teacher and it's locked in a terrible satire of the way such a face should look.

Have you ever been shopping (or drinking) for so long that one of your pockets gets uncomfortably full of change? Well that had happened to me that day. A ball of coins had jangled annoyingly against my leg the whole walk that night and I felt miserable for having such a problem as I emptied it into this lady's cup wondering if I had to be here any longer than a holiday, could I take seeing this all around me everyday?

Just tore myself away from San Francisco to say...

2009-06-09T13:59:00.000-07:00

If you have noticed something of a drop off in the number of posts lately and are still dealing with a bitter after taste from my 'description' of Fiji then it's a pity that you've been suffering while I've been delighting myself. Moreover, if you don't already feel like the worse off half of an abusive relationship, I'm not sure how many more times I'll be able to drag myself away from this place to blog further! So take it while it's coming children. And consider yourselves lucky.

I LOVE THIS PLACE.

God it feels great to redress the sentence that acted as the above's corollary with the above. And it's great to be in a place that doesn't make you feel like you're (that awful phrase) 'making the best of things.' And why is that? Well because San Francisco is a great city. There's something decandant and funky about it in places, there are parts that are downright run-down and feel dangerous, there are areas where people talk about the second act of last night's new A.C.T. production on the way out of Tiffany's and there are places where vagrants will thunder past you shouting about how 'Those bitches had no right. They'll have to live with their LIES.' (actually overheard that soliloquy yesterday!) And here's the best thing: They're all the one place. That's going on almost everywhere. The crazies are weaving unseen through crowds of the less obviously crazy and no one acknowledges that the pillars are creaking, that the roof might just collapse inward, that the music has taken on a sinister rhythm. They all just carry on dancing, regardless.

I'll speak more specifically on that subject later, when I have enough time and have had enough time to think. It's great not to have that though, time. When it's flowing out your ears in a place like Fiji, and the slow mechanisms seem to be struggling through some kind of Gel it's really refreshing to find yourself saying, Ah no, is it that late already? There's another day here almost over.

Here's the lighthouse on Alcatraz, as taken quite soon before the sun said screw it and hit the horizon, on a night tour of the famous prison.

The museé mechanique, near fisherman's wharf, is total geek antique. It's an arcade made up of 18th, 19th and 20th century amusements. All of them in perfect, gaudy, slightly repressed working order. You'd be surprised how you can sort of catalogue the emancipation of the intellect through those times, relatively minor as it may have been in comparison to earlier centuries, by the sorts of things a person would spend a quarter to see. Highlights include a machine into which one peers (there is room for only one set of eyes) to watch 'What all men go crazy for!' Incidentally, if you're interested, all men, around then, apparently went crazy for sepia toned photographs of ladies in long and heavy silk and satin slips. I remained as sane as I had been before the deposit of my quarter. Equal blame may be laid at my rock solid psyche and the feet of the internet.

It can't have been too much of party having the commode so close to the bed in this typical cell on the rock. Though to be fair the colour of the paint is punishment enough for any crime I've ever heard of, and I should know. For a brief period as a child I had a room covered in a thin uniform layer of it.

Insensitive given the context of the place but what were you expecting? Gravitas?

"Freshly captured leprechauns." That's Irish for 'If you're from Ireland just keep walking, no good can come of entering."

Looks a little less like a jokeworthy scene with the bars pulled across, huh?

Now here's a lovely tradition. Near fisherman's wharf, there's a bakery famous for sourdough bread and clam chowder. You'd never guess the weird and wacky ways in which they combine the two. Well actually you probably would. For those not blessed with an imagination though I herein attach the above.

A Mitigation, Not A Retraction

2009-06-01T18:30:00.000-07:00

Alright, I don't have that much time but I feel like I should mitigate the negativity of my last post a little bit with a short list of the positive things that I've done up until now, the day I leave Fiji for San Francisco

Woke up in a hammock on a white sandy beach with my book across my chest and watched the sun set on crystal water.
Stayed up late (which meant 10.30pm on Barefoot island) drinking Kava, the traditional drink - made from a crushed root and water; it essentially gives you cotton mouth and helps you sleep - playing Fijian rules draughts (checkers to my fictional American reader(s)) on a rope mat with 15 locals.
Snorkelled with Manta rays as they swam against the current in a channel between two of the Yasawa islands. Saw reef sharks underneath me and am conditioned enough not to give a damn.
Snorkelled on a reef beside a resort in 5 foot of water and saw a school of at least 400 little yellow fish migrate from rock to rock eating coral, got freaked out a little by a titan triggerfish. Got terrified by the close proximity of two large reef sharks and splashed my way back to shore, laughing, realising that I am not, in fact, just yet, cool enough with sharks to swim with them unflinching.
Dived, dived, dived.

Time's ticking out here and I must away to Nadi airport soon for the long flight to L.A. And while my thoughts are with those poor people who are still currently lost for unknown reasons aboard an Air France flight from Rio to Paris, I wish, to God, they weren't.

Another Shitty Day In Paradise

2009-05-27T22:32:00.000-07:00

Right, I've been nice so far haven't I? I haven't had much cause for complaint on the bulk of this trip but moreover I've tried often in the face of good reason to stay chipper.You only need, if you have arranged without my knowledge or permission, a camera crew to follow me on and document my travels incognito, to rewind your tapes a few days to witness me being the positive counter to Adam's initial negative perception of this country.Well I've been forced to take up a counter position just lately so this once, indulge me, I'm going to get angry, okay? All strapped in and ready? Good.

I HATE THIS FUCKING PLACE

Nadi (pronounced, inexplicably, Nan-dee) is a dilapidated backward spread out refugee camp of a town. All the 'resorts', and this word is applied without justification to every business that offers accommodation - none of them live up to what it conjours in your mind - are divorced so much in random location and quality both from each other and places where the word paradise isn't used unjustifiably, like Thailand, as to make you wonder how they have the barefaced cheek to even pretend to have a tourist industry, let alone actively solicit the visitation of foreigners in pursuit of happiness.

I was warned by a deceptively pleasant customs officer, on arrival, to ensure the cab driver turned on the meter when he took us to New Town Beach, a trip that should, she said cost $5FJ (about EUR 1.80) That sort of advice soon goes without saying in most of South East Asia - so no worries there then- other than the immediate advertisment of a poor and dishonest population. Then again aren't most taxi drivers dishonest? Especially at airports? If I flick through my mental slideshow of holiday snaps I find that yes this is the case. At the taxi rank the drivers says, when we ask, as instructed, for a meter, that yes, he has one... But it only goes for 10km, and our destination is outside that radius. Complete bullshit, of course, but he says this in full view of the taxi rank manager.He tells us the fare is $10. Fine screw me out of two euros. Fuck you, who cares? On the way out the security guard stops the cab to make sure the meter is on - and it is - only for his sake. It's flicked off once we get through. We tell him that we don't have a place booked when he asks, but have done some light research online and that this looked like the best area. He tries to drop us out on a desserted road and finally takes us, to what we learned later, was probably the crumbiest joint in the area. Who cares? It's only for one night.Whatever.

Next day it's a bus to Pacific Harbour, the self styled 'Adventure Capital of Fiji.' There are 3 gift shops and 2 hotel/hostels there. Oh and a post office. Did I mention the post office? Well there's a post office there too. We shark dived, as previously mentioned, which salvaged something of the trip but the 2 days there were punctuated by overpriced accommodations, lousy food, torrential rain and drunken friendly advances from the locals which quickly became violent attacks from the locals. Incidentally, not only were these people clearly too drunk and hostile to the tourists but all out fights were ignored by the bar staff - a nice cherry to crown the dollop of cream that is their thus far service-with-a-frown. Almost every situation in which I've wanted to buy something or give money to someone for something I've had to physically acquire their attention and then feel like my custom is an open handed insult, not to mind inconvenience.

But we make it back to Nadi, consoling ourselves with the advice that we've gotten from everyone we've met who's been here. 'You have to get off the main island.'

So we book a trip that takes us to Mana island to dive a site called 'Gotham City.' And that's where I am now. So why am I not diving? Well there's only 1 instructor here and he's fully booked today. And the ONLY OTHER DIVE SHOP ON THE ISLAND WON'T TAKE MY MONEY! Seriously. They just flat out refused $400 becuase I wasn't staying with them. We can't even buy things from their shop! And we booked all this stuff, necessarily, from the mainland. Oh and all our meals are paid for too. Great, huh? Funnily enough, no. I was just given a plate of lukewarm macaroni and cheese in a queue! And all the while an interminable cycle of horrible, radio fodder, chart music is being pumped out with the volume all the way up to 11. And just the first 15 seconds of each song! There's a completely oblivious Fijian at a computer smiling away to himself as he starts up a , say, Lady Gaga tune. Then 9 seconds in he starts a Beyonce track, then 12 seconds later Who let the Dogs Out? - a questions I've been asking myself more and more lately - in a constant maddening cycle.

It's crossdressing night here tonight and apparently you don't get served unless properly (or improperly I suppose) attired. Ordinarily I'm cool with some such nonsense but my usual good nature and patience are being put under a lot of stress right now.

Not 30 minutes ago I walked along the beach far enough away to escape the tumble dryer of top 30 hits and asked a local if I might lie in an unoccupied hammock on an almost empty beach in front of an empty hotel and she said 'No, it is not allowed.' I would have to be a guest in a different hotel for that...

So I walked back here thinking at least my old friend the net will help me vent but the generator is off between 10am and 3pm here so I'm foiled again. I'm actually writing this with a pencil, grudgingly lent to me by the peevish, sow-faced woman in charge, on the back of my faxed itinerary, the one that saved me being refused entry to New Zealand only 2 weeks ago.That's dedication, you say.No, it's raw anger. This has taken long enough so that the "DJ" has stopped ruining me with his listening habits and has been cathartic enough to downgrade a real Fuck-The-World mood to simply a Fuck-Fiji one.

We keep being told that $100 a night is a cheap way to see paradise. But none of this comes close to the Gulf of Thailand or anything nearby and everything costs 400% more. And even at that we're being treated like shit and being told we should be grateful. We dearest Fiji, I invite you to perform a lewd act on yourself. My heart belongs to South East Asia.

An Update upon typing this out from the original: I didn't get to dive that Gotham City site either. Weather was too choppy. And I was hungover as hell when we did dive the 7 sisters site, which was pretty nice but we had to walk down the beach fully kitted up both ways so no more diving for me. Especially since the showers here are icy cold too. They show real creativity here in destroying the potential in raw material as wonderful as the natural landscape of these islands.

But that's only another minor gripe. Worse yet, with all my little hardships and group complaining during the last 48 hours I forgot the birthday of someone special yesterday. They'll let it slide, I hope, and let me start it's making up with a little late but doubly wished Happy Birthday!

The Bistro

2009-05-25T17:12:00.000-07:00

There's an island just south of Pacific Harbour, where we stayed in Fiji, called Beqa (pronounced Ben-ka) and the straight of water between it and the mainland is just referred to locally as 'the passage.' It's the middle of the pacific ocean so you shouldn't be too surprised when I say there are plenty of sharks around the place. What might sound a little more surprising is that you can go diving in those waters. What might begin to multiply the hopefully rising levels of disbelief is that yesterday I did, in fact, dive in those waters. And we, the dive boat, took two 250 litre drums full of fish heads and guts down with us. And then opened them. And then waited... This is 'The Bistro.' The craziest dive I have ever done.

So what happens? Well a bait ball started to form. A towering swirl of Giant Trevally, Groupers and Great Emperor fish. And they're all pretty big. And after a couple of seconds you're so hypnotised by this that you hardly even notice the 6 foot bull shark that swims across the background. And by the time you do there's a shadow that passes momentarily above your head and it's another one on his way to dinner. And before you have time to freak out you're kneeling 25 meters below the surface 4 feet from 8 wild sharks. Eating.

Brandon, the guy who swam into the middle of them pulling space hopper sized chunks of fish heads is a real defender of sharks. He speaks impressively about all the species, their feeding habits, their behaviour and their possible extinction. He's involved with the local government to try to stop the insane amount of 'finning' that goes on (a shark is pulled from the water by a fisherman, stripped of it's dorsal, tail and both pectoral fins and thrown back into the water to drown or starve at the bottom). He's been doing this for almost ten years now and never had a problem with them but as I watched him literally smack a wild shark on the nose because it was swimming right at his head I couldn't help but think 'You crazy bastard...'

Am I doing too many crazy things lately? It's starting to feel like it.

The Bridge Over The River Fear

2009-05-22T17:10:00.000-07:00

Me. Freefalling.

The morning of Wednesday, May 21st, 2009 I woke up with a medium strength hangover. It was unreasonably cold outside and drizzling a little. The drama of the landscape served as a minor distraction, as did the starbucks coffee we both drank on the 20 minute drive to Kawarau but ultimately our minds were focused on what lay ahead. The idea of jumping off this bridge had transmogrified from a giddy and distant abstraction to a sharp impending reality. The car was silent. We savoured our coffees as though they might be the last drink we'd have. I imagined the wind whipping around my body and thought about how hard it would be not to look down.

I'd been thinking about doing this for a long-ish time and the more I swirled it around in my head the more dread I attached to it. I thought about how the most fun way to do it would be to abandon all hope and just dive gleefully into the abyss. To let go and savour the fear. And I thought about how impossible that would be, how almost every step along the evolutionary path had reinforced mechanisms in the brain to not only fear heights and falling from them but to actively contravent conscious instructions to the body which commanded the individual to leap from anything much higher than itself. I thought about how it would be a waste to leave Queenstown not having done it. And I thought about how it would be a waste if I had to be pushed. I knew the real thrill lay in pushing oneself.

For months now I had tried to trick myself into not thinking about it by resolving to just not do it. I said to myself and anyone who asked that it wasn't for me, that I wouldn't enjoy it. That all this passe thrillseeker rubbish wasn't my bag. And it worked for the most part but once Adam had booked his I couldn't let it slide much longer. I had to stop trying to decieve myself and admit that it was going to happen all along. That I was no different from the hundreds of others who had done it. I had something to prove to myself also.

And yes there have been many before me and there will be many after: older, younger, weaker, stronger, braver and more fearful but as you're standing at the edge telling your brain to tell your body to jump I defy you to tell me those thoughts were a comfort.

When I checked in, I tryed a little gallows humour. The bloke who weighed me was used to it.

"How many times have you done this?" I asked.

"Oh I wouldn't do that... Too dangerous, mate." he said with a smile. We're led to the edge. Adam goes first but I don't see the jump. When I'm led out to be strapped in I ask again. Again the guy says he's never done it, that it's too dangerous, and again that knowing smile that tells me he's probably jumped off everything taller than himself in the country.

And then I'm standing there. Someone tells me to wave at the camera. Are you ready?

I've already jumped.

I still can't believe this is me...

P.S. Through the giddy and delighted laughing as the rope tensed and I was sprung back up I could see Adam sitting on the shore below. I shouted to him "I THINK I'VE LOST THE BABY!" but he didn't hear.

I can't wait to do that again.

On Queenstown being made of equal parts beauty and fear

2009-05-19T23:07:00.000-07:00

You cannot imagine how beautiful it is here. You either know because you've been here or you don't but it's impossible to have the gaping beauty of this place imparted by words or pictures (a fact that somewhat undermines my project for the next forty minutes as my internet kiosk time counter clicks down). I had been told, I'd seen pictures and to be honest despite it all, before I left, I'd always had more of a soft spot for the idea of the exotic that is brought to mind by the thought of travelling through south east asia but god I wasn't expecting this.

I could stop trying to achieve the impossible now and just say this is a cold Laos and be done with it, since heretofore it's the most beautiful country I've seen, but I'd be doing the place an enormous disservice if I didn't at least mention that I couldn't drive more than two minutes today and yesterday without wanting to pull over or slow down or say something stupid like 'Jesus look over there'.

And that reminds me: I don't generally like driving. I got my first car when I was 17 and the novelty wore off pretty quickly. Maybe it's because I play too many video games. The same fact might be a reasonable explanation of why I'm mostly unimpressed with real life boxing; the virtual equivalent of both is full of so much more visual and visceral hyperbole that it sort of dampens the colour of the real thing. Until now. I've been driving for almost 10 years now and I can honestly say I've had the most enjoyable spells behind the wheel (of our rented Toyota - a car this time, thank christ) of my life in the past two days. Beautifully maintained roads wind through canyons and along mountainous ledges beside massive lakes backed by row upon row of white torn-paper mountains. A serious delight.

I'd planned on riding horses through this country; a kitsch and slightly tacky hangover from Lord of the Rings but the weather hasn't been right during our short stay. However a couple of hours ago I did take a ride on the Shotover Jet. 80 clicks an hour doing 360s through a canyon, shaving teethlike rocks as close as a couple of inches might not sound intially like a relaxing afternoon's entertainment but believe me with the prospect of what awaits me tomorrow it seems akin to embroidery or flower pressing.

I told myself and everone else that I wouldn't Bungy jump here. Since I knew we were coming here, which has been quite a while, I had been torturing myself with the idea of it and I decided to just live like I wasn't going to do it. That way, I reasoned, I wouldn't be walking around here trying to smile through the lurching ball of fear that is currently sitting squat in my stomach. You see, while we waited for our driver to pick us up today Adam booked his jump (at a bridge which I'm told was the site of the first ever jump; bungy that is, not regular :) ) and it got to the point where I couldn't pretend it wasn't an inevitability anymore. So there we are, my plans for the immediate future are as follows: Get sushi in town tonight and follow it with a few beers. Wake up at around 9am, check out of here and throw my stuff in the car. Jump off a bridge. Drive to the airport. Almost sounds reasonable. Almost.

A bona fide mountain. One of an infinite number on the most beautiful road I've ever driven; the one between Queenstown and Glenorchy.

A snapshot while Adam was at the wheel of what it looks like for almost every second of that glorious 45 minute drive.

Here I am, impressively well layered even if I do say so myself - considering I had to pack for both tropical islands and alpine ski town, looking cavalier with the man himself before getting thrown around shotover canyon in the afore mentioned Jetboat.

Here we are getting thrown around said canyon in said boat. Second row from the back on the left clenching our respective sets of teeth.

Real life kiwi ducks who swam across the lake and got out to say hello as we took pictures. Of course you won't be able to ignore the look of disappointment on their faces here; they had just realised neither of us spoke a word of duck. Maybe they were looking for directions or something but whatever it was they got back into the lake quicksmart.

The driver of this ship did some showboating (ahem) before he picked us up.

An exercise in ignoring the cold of Queenstown

2009-05-18T00:47:00.000-07:00

I'd hate to throw frustration in the spotlight above other more interesting emotions, like curiosity, amazement, fear and whatever you call a mixture of the three so I'm quickly following up my previous communique with a shopping list of interesting things that have happened to me recently which elicited said emotions.

1. Ever seen Airplane? Of course you have. You, most likely, found it dryly witty and thought the thick line it walked between satire and farce was well judged. You found the peppering of inconceivable events into the story useful as both a barometer of tone and also as a comic device. The storm through which they, these passengers of this Airplane - (incidentally, which is more proper? Airplane or Aeroplane? Or is it just a Truck/Lorry America/Rest of the World thing?), fly is suitably over-the-top. You probably laughed as the plane was lit up by lightning licking at the windows. So did I. And then one day, long after, I boarded a plane leaving Bangkok bound for Sydney. I didn't know what nest of red tape vipers awaited me once I was to land safely but you see as the flight was in progress the prospect of landing safely seemed then even more unlikely than easily making the connection seems now.

I awoke, stretched across four seats (the flight was almost empty :) ), and thought I saw out of the corner of my eye a flash of light. Then I realise people all over the plane are huddled at the windows. I try to stay asleep, to retreat back to the evil world of dreams where all the horrors aren't real. But it's too late, I've seen it now and my body has taken over, has pumped in some adrenaline. Not much, but enough to keep me alert. A nasty remnant from millions of years of evolution where once my personal actions may have served to save my life, instead of just make it's final moments miserable and helpless. Another crazy flash. This one happens in three parts and continues for at least 4 seconds. I walk to the bathroom, being thrown around my turbulence but for some reason the seatbelts sign isn't on. Perhaps it's a final concession on the part of Qantas. A no hope policy. Sorry, Sir, you're going to die... but you are free to move around the cabin as you please. We hope you have enjoyed your flight. I maintain my upright stance all the way to the back of the aircraft and ask the steward what's going on.

"Tropical Storm, mate," he says. "And she's a Big'un too," he says.

"Yeah? Well yeah but you've seen worse... right?"

Here he whistles, and says something like, "Wooo, I dunno, mate, she's a Big'un."

I look out the window as the plane rocks and stare at the darkness, which persists just long enough for me to think we've outrun the inclement weather. Then a gigantic swirl is illuminated by a flash that comes from above. The plane shudders a little but the Steward assures me we're flying well above the storm. I watch with a mixure of fascination and fatalism. Then I go back to my seat and listen to Morissey's new album thinking about how the more you travel the less scary it should seem.

2. This brings me nicely to where I am now, and under what circumstances I came to be here. I am in Queenstown, New Zealand. And in order to get here I had to take a flight from Wellington to Christchurch and then another, this one with a FUCKING PROPELLOR on each wing, to Queenstown. The weather in New Zealand is almost custom designed for bumpy flights. It's extremely windy and there isn't a massive amount of land between many of the airports to break the wind's strength as it rolls down from pacific storms or up from the Antarctic. Bumpy pumpy I can handle, but the approach to Queenstown airport, one which no pilot on earth could possibly be used to, is the craziest there could possibly be. The plane, propellors going like the clappers mind you, did a FIGURE OF EIGHT through mountain peaks, LORD OF THE RING-TYPE MOUNTAIN PEAKS in order to line itself up at the correct height with the runway. On at least three seperate turns I was convinced the pilot had suffered a stroke and was unaware he was headed for a piece of vertical land. He didn't, but I feel that purely accidental. We landed and I'm here but only by the slimmest of margins. The unspeakable truth of course being that I have to make the reverse trip again in three days. And what am I doing between then and now? Taking a jetboat through a few ravines and doing 360s in it on a lake at speed, riding horses through valleys and contemplating (although largely already certain that I will not proceed with) a bungy jump. Perhaps you can excuse the overriding theme of fear but it's not something I feel a whole lot of. Not out of bravery but more by subtracting the opportunity for it to strike.

3. Stumbled across a gigantic sleeping sea turtle 15m down at Green Rock in Ko Tao on my final dive. Watched him snoozing for maybe 10 minutes as his resident pilot fish cleaned his shell.

4. A lighter note: In an attempt to see more of what Ko Tao had to offer - more than diving and eating/drinking I indulged in a single night at a Muay Thai tournament (wherein small people whose musculature made them look huge hammered each other against ropes until one of them lost consciousness) and made repeated visits to a Ladyboy Cabaret show. The star of this nightly show being one 'Whitney' - whose finest act of the trip I didn't manage to catch on video for you but not to worry some child of the Cyrillic alphabet has done this for me us :)

The silken sad uncertain rustling of an aussie airport worker's papers.

2009-05-14T20:55:00.000-07:00

Imagine a long and slightly mournful night of drinking on the beach. A night you knew would be your last there, and maybe for a long time. Imagine, say, going to bed that night at around 4am. Now throw in, for example, a wake up at 7. Then, just for the hell of it a trip to the pier in the back of a pick up truck followed closely by a two hour wait/queue to get on a packed boat that took two hours to get you to the mainland. Now, just for seasoning, imagine that when you got to the mainland you took, I don't know, an eight and a half hour bus wedged between a tall and tired Irishman that you knew and a tall and tired Spaniard that you didn't. We don't need precise measurements to explain the word wedged here beyond the simple fact that both my outer shoulders and thighs were consistently pressed against those of my flankers - in the hot hot heat. Unpleasant, you'll agree.

Now let's say you arrived in a city that was custom built to tear you a new exit. You found a place to stay, deftly avoid robbery/assault and found that once there you were overtired. Too tired, that is, to sleep. So you think, a quick drink should fix that. Now say that quick drink ran on a little and the next thing you know you're sitting in the back of a taxi the next day and an hour later you're waiting for a flight that takes roughly eight hours and forty five minutes. (Note that it would only take seven hours and fifty minutes but Sydney doesn't allow planes to land in it's beloved airport in it's beloved city before 6am lest it's beloved citizens be awoken from their beloved sleep by some pesky interlopers in from hot climates. - You may already see where I'm going with this - my apologies to all my good Australian friends; I merely wish to accuentate your good eggedness and decency by throwing it into sharp relief against that of your more, shall we agree on... unpleasant, countrymen.)

Now we have a background for a state of mind. Try, if you can, to transpose that mindset so it fits your own. Imagine how you would feel. Well this is how I felt as I alighted yet another plane early yesterday morning. My passport clenched in my hand, I looked at the little sticker, the one that told me my bag would be sent to Wellington on flight QF 47, and looked for the transfer desk to get myself a final boarding card for the last leg of this woeful journey out of heaven.

I clear security before the transfer desk, not before some local makes a snide remark about the gun on my T-shirt. It gains me also a "random" search from some bored officals thereafter, who say they are swabbing my person and handluggage for traces of explosives though I know it's for narcotics. I pass. They seem a little disappointed. They let me go, watching all the way for some imperfection on which to find purchase, a handhold, something they can grab in order to pull me down. They evidently find nothing. And so it was that I presented myself to the Syndey Aiport Transfer Desk.

"Hello," I said, attempting to set the tone, make it chipper and govial. We're all friends here, my voice said, let's just get this over as quickly and politely as possible. "I'm transfering to Wellington on QF47, it's a BA flight that's being operated by Qantas, here's my baggage slip, they said I'd need to get a boarding card from you guys."

"Righto," he says, and I can see his smile is hiding a sneer. I can tell right away that things have all gone too smoothly this morning. I can tell that he's seen me approach the desk and try, under the weight of such a journey, to be positive and creative with my internal misery and exhaustion. He bears his teeth unwittingly. I can tell me wants to destroy something beautiful every chance he gets and that this is his chance for today. "Can Oi say yoor Oitinery?"

"Ah, I don't have one," I say, still confident. "It's all e-tickets linked to my passport. I'm just flying back to New Zealand to meet my travel buddy. We're on to Fiji on the 22nd."

"But yow must hiv an oitinery?" he's secretly delighted.

"Oh sure, I have all the information stored in my email accounts, if you can't find it on your system I can get the onward details from there if you like."

"Aw look yow caan't print inithing here. Yoor s'posta heave that alriddy."

"Oh sorry, I haven't had that stuff for a single flight in all the 36 I've taken in the last twelve months. Are you sure you can't find my details right there. They're all Qantas flights."

His namebadge had a Qantas logo.

"Aw look Qantas don't even fly to Fiji," he says

"Well when I say they're all Qantas I mean they're operated by Qantas, the actualy flight is probably sub contracted to a local airline where the destination isn't one of their own."

"Look Oi caan't lit yow floy t'day, they won't lit yow inta tha cuntry without onward travil plans an' oi'll get moi azz kicked if oi let you go ova."

"Right, I understand that, but I do have onward travel plans, all booked and paid for that take me right back to my own country. All of which are Qantas flights,"

"But yow came here on a British Airways floight," he says. OHMYFUCKINGGODAHHH I'm thinking. Keep it together.

"Yes I know, I went home for Christmas and stayed around Europe a little while, but now I'm back to finish my original trip,"

"Aw look" he says. And here is interuppted by a horrible little voodoo doll of a woman. She's of Asian descent but Australian through and through. Note also that while all this is going on, while my poor and lovable head is in a vice, the other workers at this desk and laughing coarsely on the phone and making loud and vulgar jokes. It's like a downmarket topless bar in HELL. Each of the aging ladies behind the counter has that cracked look, makeup running ever so slightly, like that final scene in Cabaret where the glamour and sophistication of an idea is betrayed in slow motion by it's awful workaday reality.

"We need written confirmation of on ward travel otherwise we can't let you fly," she says.

"I know, I have that, if you'd just let me print it out?"

"You can't print it here, you should have already printed it."

"No one ever asks."

"Get in touch with your travel buddy then and have him fax us your details."

It is apparently totally cricket for Adam to print the very same thing, and fax it to them. Then it's official. He could type it out in notepad and print it, then fax it and that renders it a legal document. My eyes bulge as my brain struggles with the logical hall of mirrors this conundrum presents.

And here, your hero begins to get worried. He turns to go upstairs and find communication - internet, phone, smoke signals. Note that his phone has died and only hours earlier he learned Adam's New Zealand number off by heart, just for something to do. He holds no currency and is wondering about making a phone call, procuring local cash and hears from behind him, with a rueful grin advertised in the tone "Betta hurry, mate, floight closes soon,"

Currency exchange. I ask them to change baht into dollas. No luck, he says it's too small, I can't convince him that all I want is change for a phone, he doesn't want to help. Is there an ATM here? A what he says. Shit. I find one. 20 dollas. Back to the exchange desk. Can I have change for the phone. He takes a deep breath. Changes the note for me but holds my change on his desk for a FULL MINUTE while he clicks around on his computer unneccessarily holding me hostage to his T crossing and I dotting. Inside I scream. I scream so loud inside that outside I make a little ooh noise. I boil over with rage. Payphone. Dollas entered. I dial 00, drop the local 0 and the rest of his number, no joy. I have to ask three people, all locals, one of them an airport policeman, before a girl from Malaysia tells me the international dialling code in Australia is 0011. I Dial again.

"Hi Adam, emergency, need you to fax all onward travel plans to this number within the next half hour or I can't get the plane over, theses swine are turning the crank on me."

"Got it. Done, I'll text when it goes through," he says. A real professional.

"Oh god. Thanks, had to get that out before the phone died. How's tricks anyway?"

"Good good, hopefully we'll have a pint later."

"Yeah man, clock's ticking, thanks for that."

BEEEP.

Free internet kiosk. I check emails, find flight numbers and airline, borrow a pen, scribble them down. Head back to those BASTARDS.

Downstairs it's the same soul destroying grind of helping 50% of the people, antagonizing the other half and speaking loudly, making crude jokes, talking and talking and talking absolute shit. Right in front of me is a very tired French lady. Though exhausted her inate class is so obvious as to be embarassing here. It is 7.32 am. She hands her documents over.

"Look, Oi told you already THREE hours ago it was seven forty!" the woman at the counter ACTUALLY SHOUTS at her. The lady from France looks at the clock behind this lady which now reads 7.34. "I am very tired," she says. The transfer desk woman ignores this and shouts further. Something irrelvant and pointlessly rude and sends the lady on her way, crushed. Sure that they don't speak french I call after her, nod at the desk and say "Je suis aussi tres fatigue... avec cette mierde." She smiles and I'm happy for a brief moment. It's my turn at the counter.

"Right, my details are being faxed through so..."

"There's nothing here yet."

"I know, when they're here.."

"I said we haven't received them yet. There's no fax for you."

"I know," I say, forced to raise my voice a little, "when they do come through I'll be notifed I just wanted you to double check your system for my details on these flights." I hand her the notes I made from my emails. She flounders for a while, shakes her, says no, sorry, no record. Then clicks again, presses more buttons and as soon as she's found them I know because she starts making that confused face and hits many more buttons unnecessarily as if some anomaly greater than her own perpetual uselessness and cruelty has occurred to her.

"Hang on," she says. For another ten minutes she flutters about attempting to make a call. Once her plan is in her mind she says: "Alright we're going to contact your travel airline and have them fax over the things you need." I tell her there's no need. It's on the way already, I just wanted her to know what she was waiting for, that I had everything in order long ago. She starts to lecture me.

"You can't just dispose of these tickets, you need them, they're offical documents, they'd never let you into America with just your passport if you said you had your details online."

They will. And they have. I went to New York on business last year and that is in fact exactly what happened. But I bite my tongue. She is interuppted by the sound of a fax. Everything is in order. With much grinding of their teeth I am given a boarding card. Then I walk around bitter and tired but triumphant at least and listen to the television and some crumpled old bag from Adelaide who tells the country how outraged she is about something with her unfeasibly whiney voice and down sloped eyebrows, how it's a terrible thing for Australia. How it offended her. How unfair and randomly cruel it was.

Later in Wellington I purposely keep the dreaded onward travel documents in my bag as I clear immigration, just to see. My passport is stamped with a smile by a young lady. I am told to enjoy New Zealand. I don't tell her that her instruction is superfluous.

A postscript concerned with the first thing that happened once I'd cleared immigration:

On the flight to wellington I declare that I am bringing food to the country - a box of chocolates I bought on the previous flight to watch a movie with. Normally I wouldn't but Sydney put me on edge. When I get to customs a red marker is put on my card. Then a strong man takes me to a steel desk marked 5. He asks what I do, where I come from, who I'm meeting. He then looks in my bag and at my chocolates. He says into his radio that he's got a RED ON FIVE. He asks for my mobile phone and tells me that he's swabbing it for traces of narcotics. He then puts on a rubber glove. A person my age at the desk opposite looks at me like I was his friend and smiles. He says he's heard I've been smoking that shit. I look as puzzled as you should reading it. The test comes back in less than a minute. Negative. Lovely he says. You can go. We're all good? I say. All good he confirms. I offer him a chocolate. No Thanks he says. Your funeral I think.

Death of a Cockroach

2009-05-05T00:18:00.000-07:00

Pong Pheng Guesthouse, Room 14 - July 2008

"Hey Paul, C'mere"

"What is it?"

"Nothing, just look"

"Fuck sake,"

"There."

"What?"

"On the wall, there, see him?"

"OH JESUS CHRIST ALMIGHTY. KILL HIM KILLHIM KILLHIM"

"Ah ha ha ha"

"I don't know what you're laughing at, you're cowering behind the door the same as me"

"Look at the size of him"

"Oh Jesus"

"Right who's going to do it?"

"Oh come on"

"Alright I'll do it but you stay here and spray him with something - to kill the eggs"

"Oh Jesus"

Paul holding a can of Lynx deodorant as threateningly as he can is cowering behind Adam who himself is standing low, knees bent with a sandal high above his head. The two inch closer to a cockroach who is attached to the bathroom wall. The cockroach is slightly smaller than a human baby. His face and individual legs are discernible from a great distance. Adam gets close enough to strike. A lifetime of missed attacks informs both men that this may not be the fatal blow. They prepare for much scuttling, possibly towards themselves. They run the nightmare scenario in their heads - the cockroach starts flying. Both men are aware that an airborne offensive will require backup. They'll need hotel staff to get involved. Adams hand begins to tremble. The cockroach will sense the strike. He'll run. And then it comes. CRACK. He didn't run anyway. Paul descends, still wobbling from the encounter to spray the corpse. Together they dispose of it without ceremony. Within minutes both have begun drinking. Hours later one laughs, then the other. It is over.

In-Touch Guesthouse, Room 14, Koh Tao - May 2009

"Barry I don't want to alarm you but we have a job to do."

"Yeah? What is it?"

"Look in the corner"

"What the washing?"

"No, behind the bin"

(silence for 10 seconds)

"Oh Jesus"

"Yes"

"I can't"

"I know"

"I can't kill it"

"I know, I'm worse than you Barry. But it has to be done"

"I know"

"Right if you move the bin and get me a good strike distance I'll do it."

"Fine"

"Do it slowly though, we don't want him to flee."

"What if he runs under out beds?"

"Then we sleep on the beach."

Here Barry with great patience and purpose of motion removes the waste paper basket from the corner of the room in which a cockroach no smaller than an adult male goat has taken up residence.

"Right I'm just going to get out of the room."

"You can't leave me Barry. What if he moves?"

"Right I'll stay."

"Okay"

"Oh Jesus."

"Oh Jesus."

Here Paul approaches the corner, much like Adam a year before him, a sandal high above his head, knees bent, preparing to strike. The roach could be asleep. They sleep don't they? He might not sense me coming. But then he might. And then what? Don't think about it. If you think about it you'll get too afraid. Fear is the mind killer. I must not fear. I'm close enough now. My hand trembles slightly. I'm close enough to make out individual hairs on the beasts legs. One.... Two... Fuck it. BOOM! Direct hit. BOOM! BOOM! Just to be sure. I life my sandal and a broken cockroach convulses on the ground. BOOM! The fatal strike. Soon we dispose of the body in an empty Pringles can. Then we blame any food residue for his presense. The bin and some half empty beer bottles and removed to the veranda. Once a sweep has been performed we both shiver thinking about what could have done wrong. Later I dream of victory and how what it is to be brave is to fear and continue anyway.

Bangkok 2.0

2009-05-01T01:01:00.000-07:00

It's always an experience at least. A city that never fails to chew up it's first time visitors. And this time was no different. The highlights without naming names, of either victims or predators, this time include:

The loss of almost 10,000 baht to a drunken hour in a club.
The extortion of 1,000 baht by a 13 year old girl for two bags of corn (thrown with her hand clutching ours before we could stop her) with which to feed the bangkok pigeons.
Two ten minutes sessions pretending, in order to secure a kick back for our driver, that we were interested in having more suits tailored for us than a stick could be shaken at. (Why we didn't employ the use of a four letter expletive spelled with an F, a C, a K and a U closely followed by an OFF I can't say/remember/invent a reason for.
The procurement of some excellent forged press credentials. Just because we could. You never know.
And finally, a 12 hour bus trip which began with our meeting a young Serbian father of one who now resides on Ko Pha Ngan and the story he told us about the young driver who last took him from Bangkok to Chumpon and how he fell asleep at the wheel and crashed. He also took pictures of this and showed them to us, laughing, saying how he wasn't hurt because the left side of the bus impacted the tree, that he was on the right and that the only reason the entire vehicle didn't descend into a ravine was it's reflection by this tree. He then showed us a picture of himself giving two thumbs up, smiling, in a hole in the side of the crashed bus. He then identified the driver of our bus as the same young man who had crashed the previous week.

And that last point brings me neatly to where I am now. A long bus, a long sit and a long boat away from that cesspit of wonders that is Bangkok and down to where it's at. Where I can make it to the heart of things. Off which I shall dive tomorrow and any other day that lets me. Where I can't stop being tortured by beauty. Koh Tao.

Guess Who's Back.

2009-04-27T06:27:00.000-07:00

I won't, jeans stuck to my leg as they are, go into what has happened in the last four months. Let's just say that after being told Australia catches fire in January I decided, during a terrible moment on hold for a Sydney taxi hearing Drivin' home for Christmas, to drive, fly, sail and walk home for that particular fortnight of festivities and basically slept in until April. Well, that's not precisely true, there was a short jaunt to Berlin with my parents (to see the world's largest model railway - at least that was the excuse) and another to Amsterdam for purposes undisclosed here but I've been off the grid until now. Round 2.

Adam's still in New Zealand and there's the small matter of global circumnavigation yet to be completed so Paul, with the best of intentions decides to go directly from a marathon of self harm called the Bangface Weekender to Bangkok (why not stop in Thailand if you have to go to New Zeland?) And that's it, that's where I am. I left Pontins in Camber Sands this morning, hiking through a swamp of drug addled scene-sters and musos to catch a bus and three trains and then two flights and a taxi and now I'm here, again, on the Khao San Road in Bangkok. Which brings me neatly to the explanation of why my jeans have taken on a slightly adhesive quality: I'd been raving in them for three days solid before flying to Qatar and then trudging through this city and it's associated heat so I'm off now to replace them with shorts.

More on the above, mentioned life-hiatus later, when the mental dust has settled. This is just a bugle call to my faithful readers, now departed, to let them know that for the immediate future at least, I'm gone. Which means I'm back. Back again.

The Strange Fruit of My Labour

2008-12-01T23:36:00.000-08:00

I could tempt fate by saying the worst is over and just in fact did. I may come to regret that. But it would be the regret of a fool who's looking for excuses because he knows he doesn't believe in fate. 26 days later: a day off. Allow me to state that in clear terms. I worked a minimum of ten hours a day for 26 straight and this is my first one free. Why, you ask, and how did it all come to this? And I can't help you there. Like so many of the worlds most confusing realities this one doesn't have a clear answer. Have I developed a heretofore dormant but now raging work ethic. Well I don't feel any different. Whatever it is the worst is over now. And the fruits of my many days journey into night can be found here: http://www.tombraiderchallenge.com.

(Download the plugin and try out at least a couple of the clues, it's pretty cool even if I do say so myself. And a note to people who live up over: The competition is only for us down under.)

Anyhow, like most readers, you probably want to hear about ecstacy, the virulence of the young traveller on the worlds ulterier face, the recipe for joy in the overworked and under awed tapper away of blogs, Myself. Well here it is: Pancakes and strawberries with maple syrup and a very fine coffee, followed swiftly by a stroll through the royal botanic gardens by the opera house, topped off with an hour or two transfixed by a series of monets and renoirs in the art gallery of new south wales with a side of excellent sushi from Makoto in the city all washed down with some baskin robbins ice cream and an hour or two reading under a tree watching the ships come in to Sydney harbour. Serve warm to the dedicated borrower of passion.

There are possibly better ways to spend a day off but I haven't figured them out yet. If you know them please write them for me here but after devouring the above I realised that my perception of this, maybe any, place is like a cheap hoody: Reversible.

An Adventure Wrongly Considered

2008-11-18T02:45:00.000-08:00

It's impolite to talk unless you have something to say. It is for this reason that the blog I sometimes keep has been a little thin on content lately but these are lean times for narrative in my life, dear friends. Mundane things that are available to you all are what has kept me from having a story worth telling in a while, things like work. You might object that I said things (plural) and listed only one thing (singular) and you would object from the entirely defensible position of correctness. There has been only one (single) thing lately that has been devouring the cheaply costumed charades I use to mask a life made up largely of boredom and small doings punctuated by interludes of digressions on the topic of leading a life of boredom and small doings, and that one (single) thing, if you have managed to keep a hold of the main thrust of this sentence, is my recently aquired new job.

It is to my free time as, for so many years Ross was to Rachael, incompatible. I wouldn't be telling half truths if I were to apply to your consciousness the abstract idea, made more cogent and interperable by the probability that you know me and have a mental mannequin in your head to place in the scene, that I worked something like 25 hours during the 48 of the weekend just gone. The smoking of your pipe is an action for you to undertake of your own volition but consider it primed and filled with ample material by yours truly.

Anyway that aside I haven't ceased to live completely. There are still stretches of time during which I am expected and even forced to parse the behaviours of people and places in the way that only I can, spherically opposed to the majority of my readership as I am here in Sydney. So here goes, an actual event, from this life that I'm now leading.

So I move into an apartment with a co-worker. And it's nice, it's a lovely place. It's own independant loveliness is thrown into sharp relief moreover by the filthiness and slum-ishness of places I'd looked at earlier. There was even a brief interlude, unreported here in the interest of preserving my own laziness, wherein I met with an estate agent looked at a place I thought was unfit for the quarantine of hibola positive monkeys, agreed to live there, gave him 300 bucks, returned to work triumphant at the procurement of digs, found out it was in the center of the police no-go area of Sydney, read an article on the net which was headlined "50 riot guards injured during incident" (which pertained to my new home) and recontacted the professional liar/scoundrel from whom I accepted the place to whimper "No, no, not me, I can't live THERE..."

But I, characteristically, digress. So this new place, wonderful. I'm out of hostels. I can now call myself a real person again. Or as much of a real person as the reader will grant me without smiling to themselves at the thought of me performing the day to day tasks of a legitimate person. So this particular evening, having been at a pub to watch a band, after a pretty long and beleaguring day, I realise that still in my bag are a couple of special brownies, a gift from the hyper-nice girlfriend of one of my new workmates. And there I am thinking, like King Lear, making plans in my head, unaware, that though I'm mostly a good and righteous person the universe wants to take me down a peg or two, and I decide on what I believe in good faith at the time, is the best course of action for my own self thenceforth. That action? Well here it is. I was about tired of the gig, I wanted to relax. I'll eat, I thought, one of these brownies right now.

I'll eat that sucker and then about ten minutes later I'll hop in a cab and head towards my new place of residence. By the time I get home, I reasoned, this item of psychotropic confectionary will have begun to exercise it's effects on my body and mind. That achieved I will retire to my new bedroom and listen to music, safe in this promised hazy bubble and awake refreshed and rebuilt, ready for another soul destroying day.

So brownie ingested I begin to say my goodbyes. I hail a cab with no trouble, though it took perhaps a little longer to be on the road than I had anticipated, all was still well with my agenda. And I arrive, in the agreeable suburb of Glebe, now beginning to feel, there's no other way to say it, good and stoned. I'm giggling to myself as I open the outside door to the apartment block. I had, that morning, when I got the keys cut, chosen, almost as a dare, a bright red heart shaped key ring. That was enough. And so I laughed my way up the stairs at this incongruous mechanism of key association. The brownie had begun to serve me just as I had hoped. And then it strikes.

I'm at the inner door, the final hurdle. Peace and sanctuary lay just beyond it's array of small glass panels. So near and yet so far. The key we had cut but that morning failed in it's most basic duty: the opening of the door. Panic. Cold streaks of panic. Where to go? What to do? Who to call? I didn't know anyone... Adam was in New Zealand, my sister had gone, her month long stint in Sydney ended merely days previous. Help, I needed help. Someone to talk to. Fuck, I'm pretty stoned now. Maybe it's me, maybe that's just what it is, I'm not trying it right. I was never good and opening locks that needed a little extra jimmying, that special knack. But there's no one around. And I don't know the place. I'll ring Chris. Pockets feel like they're filled with cotton wool. My phone feels like the buttons resitance is proved by little panels of cotton wool. The phone itself takes on the characteristics of cotton wool. This isn't like being really drunk. I can't brute force my way out. Slow determination is the key. But not too slow, or your'll forget what you were doi...

Wait why do I have my phone out? I should go inside. Shit! I can't get in. Oh yeah, I was ringing Chris. Ring ring. Chris, Hi man, listen ahh you wouldn't believe this but.. the key doesn't open the door. Yeah. I know. It is. You're where. Oh it's an hour west. No no, I'm fine. Really it's cool I'll ahh. Yeah. Listen I'll do that and I'll see you tomorrow. Hang on there's someone coming up the stairs, I'll ask them to.... Hi, listen, sorry I just moved in here, and I got keys cut today, but they don't work. I'm a little drunk though, could you help me out? Try them? Aww thanks mate. (Wow I can't believe I managed to sound that articulate... What the fuck did she put in these things. Ha ha, stupid keyring. Did I just get away with saying mate? - Shit he's having trouble too. What next? Your move brain...) Thanks mate, don't worry about it, I'll just go stay with a friend. Thanks again.

(That's twice now you've said mate. And you don't have any friends you can stay with) A cab, wave. Full, shit. That one has lights on. Walk down there. Damn it's going. Just wait here. What the hell was that? There's possums out here I betcha. Hiya can you ahh take me to the city? Thanks. (Jesus does he have to take the corners that fast, I'm going to be sick. Oh fuck, no not here. what would happen if I just heaved right here? Or into his lap, fuck I have nowhere to go to clean up, I'd never get a hotel. And he wouldn't let me out the cab. He'd probably hit me, and then I'd be stoned and badly beaten and covered in vomit standing at the reception desk of a hotel looking for a room for the night. Ha ha. Shit stop laughing, he's looking at you weird.) Yeah mate, right here is fine.

Sliding door, bright lights, reception. Get ready to talk, don't act stoned. (Note to self: in preparation for not acting stoned don't remind self to 'not act stoned.' As a simple instruction it has no intrinsic value, imparts no real advice, is likely, in fact, to only enhance contemplative state of mind and increase risk of appearing stoned.) Shit she's looking at you. Your turn.

Hi (she's got dreads, tell her the truth she'll get it. Wait is that discriminative? Shit, just say something.) listen I just moved into an apartment in Glebe, and these are my new keys. Here's the twist. They don't work, new housemate is hours out of town and I'm extremely stoned. Please tell me you have a room for the night? Oh ok, don't worry about it, sorry.

Four hostels and hotels later, still no room at the inn and the white hot panic turns black. homelessness for the night, lost unable to function, wrapped in a blanket of marijuana induced disregard for my own body. Back to port one. Hi, me again. Sorry to bother you is there anywhere else you can think of x, y, and z are all full. I'm totally fucked aren't I? Yeah thanks, the number of a few places would be great. Yeah, the Y, I stayed there before, yeah thank. Cotton phone again. Ring ring. Hi room? No, come on. It's 2am there has to be someone who hasn't arrived yet. Just gimmie that one, really there's a huge tip in it for you. Yeah, yeah, do that, book it for me online. I'll be there in ten minutes . Yeah it's 5432 4402 12 (you don't need the rest, do you, dear reader?) Thanks.

Out on the street again. I need to eat something or I'm going to collapse. 7eleven. Yes. Crisps, oh yeah I love those, and cookies. Fuck I can't even walk properly. That breeze is gorgeous. Okay where was I going?

A long walk later and I'm there. Hang on I spoke to a french guy on the phone. This dude isn't French... Sorry sir, no reservation for you. You sure it wasn't the other Y hotel?

Shit. Streets. Cab. Finally. Y. Redfern. Thanks. Door. Reception. You? yes you, oh thanks. Yeah, nightmare keys didn't work, taxis all night hotels full. Thanks. Room 85 oh god brilliant thank you. Oh I'm a web developer. Yeah, oh you do? Really, no I don't have a card (Why does he want a business card?? Why does he want to talk to me about work? I NEED TO GO TO BED!!!!!) Don't I look fucked up enough to be the sort of person this guy doesn't want to talk to?) 20 minutes later and the sweet embrace of hotel bed is bear hugging me and I never want to wake up...

Beep beep, phone alarm. House keeping. Check out time, oh God.... Can't think straight, where am I? Oh yeah. What the hell did she put in those brownies?

The unspeakable truth: I'm eating another right now :)

A Suspension of Disbelief

2008-10-26T18:28:00.001-07:00

There's a lovely little art house cinema in Sydney harbour. It has a beautifully tiled foyer with a circular staircase that leads to a bar or a restaurant above. It plays the sort of movies I like. The snack counter has beer and combo number 2 is popcorn with a glass of house red. I can't imagine wanting to drink alcohol before watching a movie you wanted to pay attention to but that's the sort of vibe here. The screens aren't huge either. And there's a girl who works in the box office, who I haven't actually met but who I'm told is an art college student, who spends her days there chopping up movie posters to make collages of each film. It's a nice touch. My last trip there was Saturday and there was a bride standing on the circular black and white marble floor with her wedding gown spread out having her picture taken from above. I'm sure it was a nice photo. Anyway I saw a film that I'd just decided to watch without any preconception based on a poster I found somehow intriuging. The premise of the film is interesting enough to warrant going when you really think about it, which is hard in these days of internet news. It's hard to consider anything truly amazing when every second email you get shows you something new and amazing, something that without the web you'd never have seen. And to some extent I think that's deadened our sense of wonder. It's blunted mine anyway.

So here it is, 'Man on Wire' is a documentary about a man called Phillipe Petit. In 1974 he travelled to New York and in a brilliant piece of guerilla DIY rigged a steel cable between the north and south towers of the world trade centre and walked across it 8 times. That's it. Wow, I can hear you say. And when you really put yourself there and imagine what it must have been like to see, what it must have been like to do, when you really put yourself there and try to imagine how the wind would howl 450 metres up, how your body would rock with fear then maybe you can bring youself to want to know more. Well that's where I was on Saturday, trying not to let this age of constantly eroding boundaries of amazement kill my jaw-drop reflex as I entered the theatre.

And wow. Really Wow. Whenever I hear people tell me a film brought them to tears I struggle to find the value in that. More often than not I don't want to be upset by a piece of entertainment. Great if a film can affect you in that way but how willing are you to have that happen, to surrender to that manipulation however much it may be worthwhile?

How about this? When was the last time a film brought you to tears of joy? Told you about something which seems merely amazing and showed you in simple convincing terms why it's actually truly beautiful? When was the last time that a quirky, animated, playful, inspiring, talented, driven individual was sketched out for you in ways that make you wish you had a tenth of his passion? In ways that will make you look, at least, if not find, something like that passion for yourself? I can't do this movie justice here but I can try to spread the feeling of real excitement that my sister and I left the cinema with, the feeling that you'd just been let in on a new perspective that makes the light of the world a tiny bit brighter:

Go watch Man on Wire. Today.

So what have we learned?

2008-10-18T03:00:00.000-07:00

Why do people travel? Scratch that, why am I traveling? Frankly I don't have much of a satisfactory answer.

I've always felt like I should resist automatic impulses. Whether it's a reactionary, self flagellating mechanism that developed out of some binary logic taught to me as a child that things that come easy aren't worth having / doing or just an idea that if something is easy and anyone can do it then it's uniqueness is diluted somehow, cheapened by popularity, I can't say but I suppose because I knew that because it would be in some way difficult it would thus be worthwhile and possibly character building to circumnavigate the globe. Besides it's not exactly kosher to be as opinionated as I am about so many things, places and people without finding them, seeing them, meeting them.

But that doesn't do me well enough. I read once in an alternative version of the ten commandments a rule which I felt I should always try to keep: "Thou shalt not stop liking a band just because they become popular." And so just wanting to do something different isn't enough justification for me being here doing what I'm doing. (Not that it's particularly novel these days when almost everyone within five years of my age goes on a trip like this.)

So what's left? I suppose when I can see something coming, unless it's something I really want, I work to stop it happening. I could see the blocks arrange themselves in the distance once, a few years ago, and they formed a fairly pleasant seeming life, but I knocked them over, and would do it again. And why did I do that? Because there's nothing worse than knowing what's around the corner. Give me a surprising future any day above a prescribed safety. And I know it's an ancient eastern curse: May you live in interesting times. Maybe some people can just see further along at what's coming. Maybe some people don't even look, but I've never been one of them. In fact I spend more time staring at the ever approaching horizon than I do almost anything else.

Well it's certainly been different. For the most part anyway. Mind you I'd have to admit that the more things change the more they stay the same. I'm on the other side of the world right now. And it's late at night. I'm in a gaming internet cafe and the props required for this scene have fallen serendipitously onto the stage and lay now as they would, probably do, in fact, everywhere, anywhere else. There's the serious game player, whinnying like a donkey with grammatically mal formed insults and put downs ( the lions share of which denigrate himself in greater measure than his victim ), a girl whose wrists still bear the mark of travel -friendship bracelets from some pseudo utopia given in sincerity by an armchair Zionist who's memory were it not for the internet would have faded in the drink and drug tinged haze but which is flickering into focus in front of her right now as I type these words, courtesy of the misinformation super highway.

His dreadlocks were never grown with a skype headset in mind, but she doesn't notice the incongruity - she's happy that a living souvenir from a part of the world she may never have seen - if it weren't for her answering the same call of the road that I did - is continuing in some small way to edit her life.

I'm sitting here myself, wondering what this has done to me, what it's made of me that my separate pieces couldn't have been assembled into without this monumental journey. And I honestly don't know. I'm getting up in the morning (granted I still live in a hostel) to go write code for the day. Alright sydney harbour is a short walk away but functionally speaking what's different? Not much anymore. If I really open my eyes I can see it again. But when you're travelling you become like a reverse kitten. Your eyes are wide open in the beginning but the more time goes on they more they close. Soon it's like you're walking around not seeing anything, the way you do at home. The difference is, now I can turn it on when I want, I can look at this place through the lens of a foreigner and that's something I hope I can take home.

I may not always have been a finder but at least I'm out there seeking.

Note: I love the internet. It's my workplace and my playground but honestly on the road it's the closest thing I have to a home...

Return of the Mack

2008-10-04T23:37:00.000-07:00

Hi. Sorry. I know. You didn't even know if I was still alive. I'm a selfish thoughtless bastard and I don't deserve you, but stay, wait a minute. I can explain. Just give me three minutes. Then leave forever if you want.

Where the hell were you?

I was busy, alright. I had to find a job and I couldn't do that without a working holiday visa. God if I could go back and just check the box on the web form that said 'Yes, I intend to work in australia' I wouldn't have been off the map for so long. I would probably have been proper set up by now. But it's not all bad. There are worse punishments for a lack of fore-sightedness than a holiday in New Zealand where you get to check out the city of Wellington and meet up with your sister for some museum perusing and theatre going. But that's no excuse for neglecting you, I know. The thing is when we got to Wellington we thought we might as well see what the work situation was like there. And so we did interviews. I made my mind up during a chat with Ann that I really didn't want to be in Wellington long term. So it was back to Sydney for me. And without Adam too. He had a follow up interview and I needed to be back to meet with people for a job that needed to be filled right away. So there I was, a week ago, in Sydney, alone knowing no one, staying in a hotel, wondering, as I often do, 'What the fuck?'

Well... then what?

It wasn't all bad, some friends were in Sydney, Derek and Saranne of further up the coast fame. So that was nice. And I did some interviews. Things didn't go so bad. And the weather in Wellington got to Adam so he came over not long after me. We stayed and are still staying in hostels and have to move a lot because we never know how long to stay for and are frantically trying to secure an apartment for ourselves. But I found a company that makes games out here, Flash games, facebook games, cool things. I spoke with them on the phone and interviewed a couple of hours later. We actually chatted about games during the interview and the vibe was great. Totally what I wanted to be honest.

And...?

They hired me.

Really?

Yeah, I started the next morning. It's cool, a lot of work and pretty challenging but great.

Well, ...congratulations I suppose.

Thanks. So ah, we cool again? I mean, it was hectic and all and I know I came back here without even any pictures but...

Oh forget about it, I'm just so glad you're back!

Great, I hate falling out. I promise I'll never leave for this long again. And I'll say more next time, I just wanted to make sure things were okay between us before I came charging back here like nothing happened.

You silly sausage.

Death of a Campervan

2008-09-16T04:20:00.000-07:00

The sun rises on the final day and we know it's over. There isn't a word spoken to acknowledge the denoument but with every cycle of the wheels the reality that our time together is over only becomes more harsh and pointed.

I started noticing road signs more and appreciating, if only because the petty annoyance of it was now to be relegated to the dusty halls of memory forever more, the odd wrong turn, the drag it's fibreglass roof gave in the wind. With every oncoming roundabout my clenched teeth were loosened and I stopped worrying about the things that the inertia of navigating the circular interchange would certainly send flying because the end was near.

Even as this day, a day like any other, was dawning the sun had begun to set on our most recent companion. And as I stifled a tear, our three hour (4 mile) journey through the winding east side streets of Sydney at it's end, a map crumpled in my tight fist, I looked at our campervan, the ship of our emotional desert, the physical manifestation of our psychological locomotion, parked, it's headlights the sad eyes of a puppy begging it's indifferent master not to leave it at the pound, I said to myself, quietly:
"Fuck You, Campervan. Fuck you."

Am I required perforce to drive home the full impression that campervan travel left on me to the reader? I think not. It's one of those things that's fine in principle. You get a bedroom on wheels and with your driving gloves on tight and a stubby cigar held between your jaws you explore a new country safe in the knowledge that there will never be an inn whose owner says "No room," because the ass you rode in on is all the room you need. But like so many things that are fine in principle the reality is somewhat less romantic. Like going to the gym: one thinks of health, the outdoors, looking good in shorts, a satisfying sweat.

One rarely is encouraged to visualise, when being sold membership to a gymnasium, oneself vomiting from overexertion, or the dark evenings when all one can see through the window is oneselves' withered carcass pulling itself in an awkward gait over the neverending black plastic road to early death, a corpse in animation: Sisyphus on a treadmill. So it goes with campervan travel. The harsh realities of it are thus: Imagine sleeping on a thin spartan cushion, the thickness of one you'd expect to be provided on the wooden bench of the viewing room during an exectution in the early 20's. Imagine now having no room to sit up in this bed. It is cold enough to freeze the testicles right off of a brass monkey when you lay your shivering head down, in three layers of clothing.

But consistency is the enemy of the efficient tormentor. A subject can become accustomed to any amount of consistent misery so what to do? Well have it become unbearably warm at around 6 in the AM. Yes, of course, you could almost hear Herman Mengele cry, that's it. Freeze thaw action it's called in modern Geography. A month of that, and eating microwaved supernoodles while sleeping in holiday parks people with the armies of the white hair. The over 70s. Ghostly Man and wife feeding each other spoonfuls of yoghurt or mashed potato under a canopy at a plastic table wittering away to each other that "This is nice, isn't it?" "Yes, Dear." Happiness is a warm room with no wheels, whose mercy is manifest in her soft mattress and her constant temperature. Caravan Parks, like limbo from the annals of Catholicism, should be stricken from the record.

There follows a less embittered photographic essay on my wanderings towards and arrival at the welcome city of Sydney.

A Manta Ray. They are frigging huge. Feeling less despondent about the demise of Steve Irwin having seen one so close. They could probably just touch you to death.

The view from the underside of a large and carnivorous fish. Unpleasant.

A testament to the aforementioned low temperature to be found within our van. These sheets had come out of the wash and the wrapping of them around ourselves was an almost indecent joy.

As can be seen from my puerile face.

The ugliest of exotic fish - a Titan Triggerfish. I saw one of these diving in Thailand (the fish wasn't diving, I was. Well I suppose it was too but it wasn't wearing SCUBA gear) and apparently they bite divers when they're in the mood. It's described as similar to a bad dog bite. Don't they look uglier now, hearing that?

The almost Jane Austen-esque-edly named Darling Harbour in Sydney. A very pleasant place indeed.

The inside of a Kangaroo. This was in a museum by the way. Not just a zoo that hates animals.

The grand view of the large tropical fish tank in the Sydney Aquarium which was, not to make it sound untrustworthy, extremely fishy.

A tiny squid. I've decided I now want a fish tank full of these little guys. Apparently they're quite intelligent. I got the impression from this one he was well aware of me. I even took a picture while he was eyeing me, using the flash, just to see his reaction. He blinked and swam off, almost mouthing "WANKER."

A prehistoric possum. It weigh(s)(ed) 3 tonnes.

I can't imagine this fossil was taken from the earth intact like this. Proves a long held belief that you can't trust anyone who works with bones all day. Especially butchers.

Interesting to look at behind glass however I would happily eject my lunch through whatever orifice was closest at the sight of one in the wild.

Artificial coral reefs. Exponentially more luminous than the real thing but very James Bond villain conference room none the less.

The harbor so suggestively named you'd almost want to hug it, Darling.

I think this one is self explanatory.

One Big Mac and a large portion of absolution, please.

2008-09-07T03:28:00.000-07:00

Okay so Im sitting in a McDonalds in a town called Ballina in Australia. I actually lived briefly in the one in Ireland but that is neither here nor there. Well it is there but that's the way places are isn't it. They're there. I digress. I'm sitting there in this McDonalds with a vanilla mocha and a pink donut with my nose buried in a book. The book is called The Blind Watchmaker by Richard Dawkins. It's about Darwinian evolution through natural selection. This is something I've only gotten interested in recently having been moved by a reading of Derren Brown's Tricks of the Mind to pick up his favourite book, The God Delusion.

I should broach the vulgar topic of atheism:

I am one and it's not a vulgar topic.

There. That's the way I see it.

I actually feel like I owe Mr. Dawkins a debt of gratitude for writing a coherent and cogent argument for that being an acceptable thing to say and feel in the modern day and I've long felt it myself. Anyhow reading the God Delusion made me want to get down to the actual science of natural selection and Darwinism, inasmuch as a non scientist can fully understand such things. So I bought the blind watchmaker which is touted as a watershed work on the subject. There's nothing wrong so far is there? Nothing at all. Well there I am buried snout deep in a chapter callled Origins and Miracles which deals with the subject of the origin of life, the original self-replicating cells and I hear a voice say, "Must be good books."

If you hear someone say that to you do not think, run. It means he thinks there's something out of the ordinary in reading. Or that books must be spectacular and not just ordinarily edifying to move the reader to expose his word lust in public. My companion was perusing the lonely planet guide to the land down under and this is what our curious interloper seemed interested in first. In retrospect it was a good move I guess. After a couple of pleasantries and truisms on the subject of her Majesty's prison yard (sorry if you're australian, I couldn't resist) he looks at me. "And what's that one about?" he asks. "Evolution," says I.

This is a dirty word to the creationist ear - that's what he was by the way, a real one, a the-world-is-6,000-years-old sort of guy - but our galllant soldier of Jesus didn't even flinch.

"Richard Dawkins," I said. "It's very good."

"I know that fella, going around in his wheelchair," he said.

I was stunned and I'll explain fully why in a second. "That's Stephen Hawking," I said. Unperturbed this warrior of righteousness attempts to, in his own way shatter the arguments of Professor Dawkins, with, I swear to his God, a quote from Genesis. I can't remember the whole thing but it was something about trees replicating or everything coming from trees. Whatever it was it was the sort of semi poetic nonsense that can in hindsight be applied, with a little crowbarring of logic, to anything. The reason I was so surprised that he came over to me at all is that I can understand a deeply religious person recognising Dawkins and seeing him as a threat. A person of that turn of mind is compelled by his own dogma to try and save me whether I want it or not. What I am surprised by is the fact that he was still on his way over even when he thought it was Stephen Hawking I was reading. A scientific argument for disbelief is God is one thing but saving me from quantum physics and string theory? Is this how bad it's gotten? Well anything, I suppose, like learning can be perceived as evil when you think the earth was created around the time of the agricultural revolution....

Then out of his wallet, he produces, under the exasperated gaze of his wife - whose face seemed to be saying 'Leave the poor Godless bastard alone, Robert' - a laminated card. He handed it to me as he said the following: "We believe a different theory," here he hands me the card before saying, unbelieveably: "Death is the wages of sin." I was amazed. I would love, in my masochism to have spoken longer with him but he was pulled out the door by the missus and I was left with the greatest bookmark a Darwinist could ever hope for, especially while reading such books as I'm dual reading now The Blind Watchmaker by Richard Dawkins and God is not Great by Christopher Hitchens.

So there we are, saved, under the pearly - sorry, golden - arches, under the omnipresent gaze of St. Ronald Mc Donald, the patron saint of burgers and plastic movie tie-in toys. The lord is my McSheperd, there is nothing I shall want. (Except maybe to super size for just 50c extra.)

Here it is, the keeper of my page, the constant reminder of my damnation, the laminate of my eternal suffering.

Evolution, the wages of sin.

A digression of lighter tone. This was taken on the way back to the car from Australia Zoo. It could have been the overdose of crocodilia but that cloud does look like a croc, doesn't it? Well maybe a long beaked version of Darkwing Duck but still...

Surfers Paradox ; A Photographic Discourse on Australia; In the Hall of the Widow Irwin

2008-09-06T02:54:00.000-07:00

Surfers Paradise is what the place is called. And it was built up in our heads more than even a name as suggestive as that should reasonably expect to be able to live up to. I don't want to open the bag of humbugs and bitterly suck on one as I say it's a completely inappropriate name but just saying that should make my point. I was going to say the surf there isn't even that great but as we left this morning I did see someone carving a 20 foot barrel like a madman so I won't whinge about that especially considering I can't and wouldn't if I could, surf. Anyway it pretty much fell into the category of another anonymous place to park the van and go for a couple of drinks. There were a couple of decent clubs but most of them had their ambience take second place in the after midnight contest of things Paul likes to a couple of very recommendable kebabs. But that's not what we're here for is it? No, so we left. For where Sydney. For what? Ok, hang on, don't get sick.... Work. Yeah, that's it, we decided we'd have to do it. And to be honest after a couple of weeks sleeping in what is a glorfied - though that word suggests some glory, Hiace - I could certainly see myself enjoying life in a big city and a nice apartment albeit programming. And even at that there're are some nice sounding gigs. Even maybe making Flash games. So it's not all doom and gloom. I'm addicted to luxury though, that' it. I need a big bed and a nice power shower and a door I can slam or gently close and know that for a while at least the world will leave me alone and I have a couple of square meters of sanctuary.

Anyway there follows a brief photographic history of the last couple of days by way of apology for what has been, I admit, neglect on my part for my constant - possibly hypothetical - reader.

Me and the 2 dimensional Steve Irwin in the only pose that it's fair dinkum to strike with said gentlemen.

A rack of Steve Irwin shirts with messages from around the globe of sad sad people telling of their sad sad-ness at his sad sad demise. Note: I am being completely genuine here. I think we lost a good man that day. I still remember where I was when I heard the terrible news. I queued on release day at the movies to see The Crocodile Hunter when it came out. I still think he's up there with Magritte and regard that film as one of the watershed works of surrealist cinema of the modern day. I mean he's on the top of a moving train fighting an FBI agent and then starts inexplicably talking to an implied camera man. Genius.

The bronzed Irwins hewn in bronze.

A very hungry but still large and impressive snake eating a totally emaciated pig in a glass case.

More, to give you a sense of scale, of the tribute bearing apparel.

A genuine, Steve captured, dinosaur.

This was an under construction shop, I think I can leave this here without the sniggering jokes I made when I took this puerile picture.

Look at the size of her.

I really wanted to photoshop in a remote control here, he looks like he should be on a couch.

I had a lump in my throat reading these actually, more than I had when I visited the Anne Frank house in Amsterdam. Really. Sad sight.

Note the oblique mario reference in the above. I didn't see any evil reptiles anywhere.

This is here for all the people I know of the above name. Enjoy.

A slightly racist brand of Aussie cheese. They're not even embarassed about it.

The dingo ate my homework

2008-08-27T01:47:00.001-07:00

Alright so there had to be something done, we're this far down the coast and the reasons to laugh haven't been legitimate for most of that time. Don't get me wrong I like laughing for the wrong reasons almost more than for the right ones but still, one expects to be having some traditional fun in places like these, on trips like these. So we're in the quiet retirement-esque hamlet of Hervey Bay and what do people come here to see? Fraser Island. Great, let's go and see what it's about... Oh there aren't any roads? Oh right, it's all sand tracks, and you have to rent and learn to drive a Land Cruiser to get around. A lot of people get hurt, sometimes fatally, doing this do they? Oh right, cool. Dingoes? Wild ones? Right so, and what do you.... You just back away with your arms folded maintaining eye contact, is that it? Grand so. Four hundred and fifty dollars? And we have it back to you by six with no scratches? Fine. Hang on what's that about man eating sharks on the north beach? And was there something about pits on the beach that kill and maim a not insignificant number of people each year? Forget it, sign me up!

Seriously that's it, we're really that interested in having some good old standard fun. You wouldn't believe how bumpy the roads got and how intimidated I initially felt as we, the two of us, rented a 9 seater 4 wheel drive to knock around this island. It's one of the only all sand islands in the world and the only one that has a rainforest on it. It also houses more than half the worlds perched lakes. Don't ask me about the ecology but they look beautiful as you can see if you continue reading and scrolling. There are somewhere in the region of 200 wild and potentially dangerous dingoes out there too and lizards you wouldn't dare shake a stick at so the rules are, don't feed the animals. A kid bought the farm out here a couple of years back which confirmed the whole dingoes do eat babies thing. Poor Lindy. I should watch that film. If only I'd had the foresight before I left home I'd have watched The Beach, The Killing Fields, Tomb Raider, Apocalypse Now, Platoon and that one in which a woman claims the eating of her baby was the gastronomic doing of a Ding-diddly-ingo.

Lake McKenzie on Fraser Island, a perched lake of infinite beauty but very clearly finite size.

Me at another perched lake. Lake Wobby. The astute viewer will quip that this perched lake looks parched. And they'd quip like they view, astutely. Note: I love the T-shirt I'm wearing there and have overworn it since it's purchase in Chiang Mai. It's Ronald McDonald looking drunk with two topless ladies. A Banksy image I think which raises it's banality to the level of high art. At least that's my rationale.

A monitor, neither flatscreen nor cathode ray, but lizard. A massive one at that.

This wasn't even a tourist attraction. Seriously I just stopped because I reckoned that knobbly tree there looked like a moose's head. And the braches coming out look like antlers. Seriously. If you can't see it let me know and I'll be happy to provide a higher res image that proves it.

The flippant captaincy of this monstrous vehicle began with more reverence for the terrain than is seen here, I swear.

Negative Magnetism

2008-08-26T00:48:00.000-07:00

A journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step according to Confucius but a journey of a thousand kilometres, I'm here to tell you, starts with one diligent early riser eschewing sleep and general bodily happiness in favour of sliding open a Hiace door and driving his camper off it's site. It continues then, in two hour shifts, for our diligent starter of long journeys (aka: me) of alternately driving and sleeping. It's a long old drive from Airlie Beach to Hervey Bay but one we were both happy to sacrafice our comfort and safety to make. This apparent lack of concern for ourselves can be viewed as a result of a couple of factors but the only one that matters is that every place since and including Cairns seemed unreasonably quiet and joyless. Perhaps that's a bit of an overstatement and we're being misled by authors of a lonely planet guide that's too busy greasing it's pages with lies to keep the constant flow of backhanders coming in but Townsville had two or three clubs all of which we hit one night in search of fun to no avail. You can add to that list Magnetic Island and Airlie Beach (which was admittedly a little better but not by much) but Hervey Bay, a heretofore unreached bastion of livliness and debauchery, turns out on visitation to be a village favoured by retired people and sports two pubs worth visiting both of whom have a piece of wood that sinisterly resembled a closed door barring entry after 10pm. And who said the nightlife in Laos was unreasonable?

I will say this though, the Whitsunday Islands were lovely. We took a Catamaran out on rough seas to go Diving off Pearl Bay on the northern most island. The water was cold and the visibility wasn't great but snorkelling on the beach was really surprising; the proliferation of fish was actually jarring, right around your feet there are parrot fish the size of watermelons happily munching into coral unperturbed by your gallumphing legs coming down around them. And the beaches in the Whitsunday national park are perhaps the most beautiful we've seen so far. Stingrays come right up to the dying of the waves (don't mention the war, Steve Irwin's zoo is only two hours down the road; next on the list!) and the beach seems to die away in so shallow an angle that before it's two feet deep it's rising on the shore of the next island. Truly stunning and made all the more ethereal since I didn't bring my camera and you'll just have to take my awkward words for it.

And the captain of the ship, Joseph, from San Fernando in California looked really like Dustin Hoffman, overweight and with a beanie cap and a goatee. Really funny guy who openly chastised his new and only crew member in front of us. He worked him like a dog and laughed as the boat rocked twenty feet up a wave, insisting conditions were not that dissimilar from a swimming pool and continued as such as his long suffering colleague puked overboard behind him. A real character with the real character hallmark: he was probably a total bastard. Don't believe that's a good enough measure? See Basil Fawlty.

The most Magnetic of islands, Magnetic Island.

An actual, if you can believe this, Koala bear. Apparently they get stoned from eating Eucalyptus leaves. This one was wading in up to his neck. I'd say he was trolleyed by the time we arrived: he took no notice of us.

The view west from (almost) the tip top of Magnetic Island.

The soonafter sunset at same (almost) tip top. Note: I did get a little worried that walking a two hour trail back in the dark through not just snake infested forests but 'Death Adder' infested forests. (I know, I thought he was just the bad guy from Golden Axe, but he did get his name from somewhere. I think that fact alone made an already dangerous sounding name sound dangerous-er)

The Grand Tour of Chez Paul and Adam.

Tease and Seize; A Moving Bedsit; Once more into the drink, dear friends

2008-08-21T02:57:00.000-07:00

An arty shot taken through a hail of bubbles only feet above the greatest of barrier reeves.

So we did it: organisational hump cleared with no faults and through to the next round. There was always going to be a bit to achieve in this town:

Find a place to stay that would neither break the bank nor put either of us in a room that had more than 2 beds and hence people.

Go diving on the great barrier reef.

Find a campervan to rent to take us down to Sydney that we didn’t perform intestinal somersaults of revulsion at the sight of.

And, of course, indulge in a reunion with my good friend the boy Derek and his missus Saranne.

Cairns turned out to be, now that I’m fit to say my piece about it, writing as I am, on my shiny new 9 inch laptop in the back of the above foreshadowed camper, a serviceable port of entry but somehow a little like listowel during the races. Forgive me those of you lucky people who don’t know what I mean by that: what I’m trying to say is it all seemed a little 18th birthday party on the streets. An 18th birthday party where a couple of older cousins and uncles turned up, the ones who weren’t invited because they tend to remove the garment that covers their nethers when drunk or start/threaten to start fights. It may not be all that bad in reality, we didn’t get the full perspective that a resident of the town might but that we didn’t want to was enough for us.

Anyway yesterday, on quite choppy seas we took a large and luxurious boat to the large and equally (from a diver’s point of view - and we are them now, okay?) luxurious reef known to the world as the Great Barrier. Actually on our connecting flight from Brisbane to Cairns we could see said reef from the plane such is it’s scope. It looks from the sky like green patches of water, inviting enough but from a well equipped diving boat it looks like a water slide during a heat wave. One wants to be in it, so to speak. And in it we were as succeeding photographic evidence will attest.

Having made a couple of calls and sent a few emails we found a vehicle that could sleep us both in a non together fashion. As it stands we have double bunk beds in the van at night time which is nicely in line with our penchant for comfort. I was told on the way to collect said vehicle by Adam that we ought to review the T’s and C’s before committing. Unaccustomed as I am to the 5th Dan level ways of the force in matters Management Speak I didn’t know this was a short hand for Terms and Conditions. Imagine my disappointment when I found out there was no Tease and Seize to be reviewed. Sounded like a spicy little pursuit altogether. Ah Well.

So campervan arranged we stocked up the vehicle with a moveable feast from the Dunnes down under and so it was with a full up fridge that mere hours after waking on our last day in Cairns (annoyingly over pronounced by the locals (Caaaaaannes) said he, with monumental impertinence) we were barrelling down the Bruce Highway towards Townsville. A spectacularly shit name for any town. Townsville. Towntown. Villageville. Placeplace. Give me a break.

Addendum: The opening to the above was written on the road towards Townsville. This is a note from the future, now on Magnetic island: If only the worst thing about that place was it’s name!

This dude was one of many and wasn't as scary as he looks here, mind you I'm not one of the fish he was eyeing so it's easy talk.

There's something really weird and cool about seeing goldfish that aren't in a bowl. Mind you given the open ocean available to them they might as well have been, this little mushroom of coral was pretty much the only place they'd go.

In a vulgar display of power I became upside down for a photo.

However my natural distate for having my picture taken quickly took over.

And the content of subsequent photos deteriorated in quality.

As you can see.

To the Gizzard of Oz via Chinese New York

2008-08-15T01:36:00.000-07:00

Hong Kong: the city so good that naming it twice would just cheapen the whole affair.

So maybe in we did Viet Nam a little fast. It's what happens, you're on the road for a number of weeks and you stay too long in the first place you visit (Thailand in our case) and you find out the clock, as has become it's habit, kept ticking. So we gave ourselves an extra week which meant we stopped in Saigon, Na Thrang, Hoi An then flew to Hanoi only to catch another flight to Hong Kong which was, before we arrived just a hub to get to where we are right now (Cairns, Austrailia), and is in fact the most fun city in South East Asia. It's so developed that it's almost unfair to consider it as a contender amongst the rest and so expensive that it's probably immoral to recommend a trip there to backpackers who actually look at the bill for things before they pay but whatever.

It's weird I suppose that from Bangkok to Hong Kong, the first leg or our trip, it seems the further east you go the more west things get. And HK is definitely the clincher. We stayed, after some cursory research in a swanky hotel in an area that was allegedly (and after real-life experience confirmed to be) kicking.

Lan Kwai Fong. It's near Soho and close to the financial district and is made of skyscrapers, taxis and streets called Gloucester and Aberdeen and is positioned against a cloudy tipped mountain overlooking one of the largest ports in the world. I can't tell you (and am under too much pressure for time to indulge in the poetic hunt for the sort of metaphors and synonyms that look good together) how nice it was to drive around those streets in a clean taxi with a driver who spoke fluent english and agreed to, and subsequently (this is the important bit) actually succeeded in, taking us to our hotel with no fuss. And then we get there and have our bags brought to a lovely and quaint (read: miniscule) but well appointed and ultimately luxurious hotel room on the 27th Floor. (See below for the view from the room.)

The twin beds were close together (almost in such a proximity that one might mistake them at a certain angle for one large king size) which would have made for interesting dissection of how we both entered them: (seperately I would like to make clear) with groans of rapacious pleasure. You see, the sheets were clean, the blankets had that lank heaviness that good ones do, the air was conditioned enough to make them necessary and the shower, Oh the shower, I have never been so gently and pleasurably beaten into awareness of how wonderful western civilisation can be as I was during the oppulent pummeling I was given under that shower head.

Note: I am aware of the giggling misinterpretation that is wide open within the above but was so moved by the experience that it's a price I'm happy to pay.

Anyway not to descend into a Keatsian lament just take my many words for it, amazing experience and all as it was in South East Asia, realised in the first couple of hours: I am a westerner to the core.

Even in Viet Nam you can't really get a drink late, though we made a good attempt after a dingy little club in Hanoi left us down, in a place called Hair of the Dog. Herein at 2am we were ushered beyond a shuttered shopfront only at 3am to be reversely compelled by a band of Vietnamese police (whose uniforms I made a point of complimenting as I drunkenly and brazenly shook their hands) who departed not ten minutes later as we transparently waited on the streets outside only to repeat our previous clandestine entrance. That notwithstanding, you usually can't stay out late in any of the countries we visited except Thailand, and certainly not in places that are pumping. But Hong Kong does not sleep. Really, anytime day or night, forget it, it's awake. The first of our two nights saw us scramble back to the hotel in broad daylight. The second was not much different. Too much happened to delve into specifics but there were and are plenty to savour over the coming days. There were some excellent restaurants (one that professed on it's menu to have been considered as one of the best in the world) and some really nice clubs but to be honest some of the things I enjoyed the most about the place were things you could enjoy at home. The same could be said of Adam who, to his credit, did submit to my reply to his (only half joking) suggestion that we eat in McDonalds since there were plenty: "With only two nights in Hong Kong? Fuck that," and savoured all the more our last day's pilgrimage to the long lost Big Mac before our flight to the land down under.

The above promised and here delivered view (there is a video but it would take longer to upload on this connection that it would to raise a couple of children) from our Lan Kwai Fong Hotel's glorious window. (Un-openable it was too: Lest the tourist find this city too beautiful to endure and the business traveller find himself too endurable to see the beauty and both be impelled to leap into it's breast.)

The man himself locked in a lover's embrace with his long lost sweetheart.

The Tailor of Hoi An

2008-08-07T06:24:00.000-07:00

The perceptive reader will discount this post as a thinly veiled attempt to balance the severe inelegance of my previous post with something (comparatively) elegant but he can perform a lewd act on himself because I'm posting this anyway.

We're in Hoi An, (yes, almost a spoonerism of Hanoi) half way up the coast of Viet Nam. It's famous for a couple of local dishes - one called a cao lau which apparently isn't done right unless it's prepared with water from a local well - and it's abundance of tailors. Of course I've been diving headlong into the small restaurants dotted around the quaint French colonial streets but just today we picked up a couple of suits we had custom (ahm ) tailed (?) and it's this that is the thrust of what I'm excited about. It's pretty surreal actually, they measured us up at 4pm one afternoon and the next day it's made, just awaiting small adjustments like leg length etc. One more visit and everything is ready to go. There're actually plenty of cobblers (insert your own puerile joke here) in this town too so we thought we may as well go the whole hog and have some shoes cobbled also. The results are below but really it feels great sliding into a shirt and suit that have been sewn by the hands of local tailors just for you. It's a bad analogy for such delicate work but the girls here are going at it like the hammers of hell. There are embroiderers who's hands flash above and below fabric wound tightly in front of them creating flowers, birds and abstract patterns each time hitting, with amazing accuracy considering the speed at which they work, the perfect point in the cloth. The particular two who took care of us in Yaly's worked all but one day a month and get 5 days holidays every year. And a days work means opening til closing; at least 11 hours.

That's pretty much Hoi An for you, excellent tailors who'll custom make anything you like even from a photo for a quarter of nothing at all, and some transcendant local food. Don't come here for the night life: there isn't one, which is almost more of a pity since you'll really want an excuse to road test the new threads. Ah well, as Adam says, there's always the Melbourne races. (vomit)

Adam didn't want to let Hana know that she'd accidentally thrust the marking pin into his pancreas.

Hana from Yaly's, who took the kind of care of two men that all of them need, telling us if a tie or shirt would just look stupid in the colours we'd chosen.

The sewing rooms in which the dinner-wear fairies of Hoi An perform their magic.

A stolen glimpse of the above mentioned embroiderers.

A Major Catalogue of Minor Mishaps

2008-08-06T05:06:00.000-07:00

Alright after Laos I said I wouldn't bother doing this but just when you think you've reached the pinnacle of suffering one event trumps another.

Before I say this I should first apologise to my mother (and yes, you did tell me) but I got a little bit too drunk (accidentally and by stealth of course; but too drunk nonetheless) in Nha Trang a couple of days ago. There was a beach party going on and since we'd booked a dive for not the next morning but the one after this was our only chance to get good and sauced in this town. And by God did we grab it with both hands. I didn't mean to though, we went and had a nice dinner waiting for this beach party to get moving and had a couple of beers, and I really mean a couple, not an Irish couple of beers, which means at least four, a genuine couple: two. And I was perfectly in control of myself. But then we arrive at this party and the entrance fee comes with a Jagerbomb. Fine, it's just one. Then we order a bucket. Vodka I think this time, half filled with ice and juice but with a serious and undectable amount of hard liquor within. I had two of those rather quickly just delighted to be listening to good music (the first since we came to this part of the world and the only since; we're in Hoi An at the moment and a club last night was DJed by a short Asian dude who smoked to help the tension of picking out the single least enjoyable songs to play to a club of people from the computer's library. He approached the task like it was something of serious medical importance and I developed a still burning hatred for him since he played La Bamba with this expression on his face closely followed - I wish I was joking - by Galway Girl) and suddenly I was terribly drunk. Too drunk. Dangerously drunk.

I wish the scars I'm healing from at the moment could have been from some valiant encouter with a thief or doer of wrongs wherein I countered some malfeasence with raw heroism but alas I tripped off a step on the beach like the drunk tit I was, cutting my face. Later I would trip again spraining my ankle so badly as to have it swell beyond walking size. It would swell to the point that I was prompted to attend a local medical clinic (which ended up being quite professional and reassuring and where I procured much to my delight xray proof of an unbroken but depressingly badly sprained ankle). However the worst it seemed was to come when, walking a friend home - in fact I think it was her walking me home such was my ultra tipsiness - when a gaggle of the worst type of bastard (a thief trying using the cover of trying to sell you things) surrounded us. It was seriously intimidating in retrospect but I was weirdly cognisant of what was happening mad as it seems to me now. Anyway they swiped my friends camera and emptied her wallet. When she started crying at the idea of so many lost pictures the promise of a reward had it produced to me immediately. We managed to hobble away and make it to bed proper upset with the locals of Nha Trang (and probably wrongly so since only a small minority actually pull this type of shit, still it's hard not to paint a few backgrounders with the same colour when you're smearing it on so thick on the main subjects). This wasn't all, Adam's wallet and watch were thieved from his person also. I can't speak for his level of inebriation but it can't have been shallow enough that he'd have no problem operating heavy machinery anyway.

So here we are in Hoi An (a small but nice town with excellent local foods and plenty of restaurants all trying to outdo each other with their own versions) taking stock of our major catalogue of minor mishaps, and it looks thus:

Paul: A mildly (compared to this one) sprained ankle in Kanchanaburi.

Adam: A badly upset stomach that lasted a week, compliments of a roadside diner in Bangkok.

Paul: An almost majestic fall from a breaking balcony into the gushing river in VangVieng.

Adam: A (very funny) fall, potentially more serious than it turned out to be, into what had looked like a path but turned out to be a 4 foot deep open sewer in Luang Prabang.

Both: Badly cut feet with wounds that wouldn't heal from 7 days of consecutive diving in deep and aggravating (to wounds) seawater in Ko Tao.

Paul: A funny but smarting fall right on my ass after leaving the half moon party and travelling 4 hours direct to our old island home. Fell right on the base of my spine which went numb a little. In that state I almost wanted to cry, now I can't do anything but laugh.

Adam: The reappearance after years of dormancy of his wisdom teeth which it seems have decided to check out what all this eating things is about. They're keeping quiet lately but for a while there the desperate thought of using a south east asian dentist reared it's ugly head.

Paul: As explained above a very badly sprained ankle resulting in my currently swollen a bruised left foot and some hideous scaring on my face which has thus been rendered more hideous.

Again, Mom if you're reading this I didn't write any of the above to make you worry (which you shouldn't) just to let you (and whoever else is reading) know that I'm okay despite it all.

I'll hobble off to dinner now but one of the lovely things about this town: I just had a suit tailored along with 3 cotton/silk shirts. I came from the first fitting today and I felt like a million Dong!

The South East Asian Microchip

2008-08-03T02:31:00.000-07:00

The ubiquitous golden calf of this part of the world is the petrol engine. Really it's like the pinnacle of development and sophistication. People in possession of one are part of the upper tier of society over here, just a motorbike with a trailer translates to a livelihood for many people. And nothing about any trip is wasted. We've been transported in the back of pick up trucks, tuk tuks, buses and boats and not a single area of space in one of them wasn't put to use. In Kho Pha Ngan for example our pick up truck from the pier to our hotel stopped three or four times to pick up bird cages or electric fans or chickens from some local shopkeeper or farmer and stack them on our bags or us and transport them down the road. Well we're making the trip anyway, they're thinking, I'm sure, we might as well make as much money as possible. What do you mean the people who agreed to pay us to take them somewhere might not fancy driving miles out of the way or being lumbered with random bric-a-brac?

The thing is though, it's so ingrained in the culture over here that it's completely normal to see vans filled to the brim with people thundering along with the back doors open, legs hanging out inches above the dirt road beneath, and every space between the people inside filled with boxes or tightly wrapped packages of black plastic and duct tape. And that's just the inside, of course the roof has a rack with more luggage and at least two people sitting there, their faces conspicuously devoid of the hey-look-no-hands expression that anyone in a situation as dangerous as that ought to wear. In Bangkok they have motorcycle taxis that people use to get to work. In eight lanes of traffic at rush hour I've seen a woman sitting, side saddle, on the back of one using both her hands to rummage through her handbag; find her compact and apply makeup with an infuriating calmness on her face. Why, I thought, isn't she freaking right out? But they don't care. Adam remarked to me in a taxi in that city a couple of weeks ago that even though the traffic is 100% insane while still managing to be more sane than the people driving in it, we hadn't seen a car with any dents in it. I presumed he was implying that they mustn't have that many accidents to which my response was 'You know why? cos if anyone has an accident on these roads at this speed it's goodnight Irene.' There wouldn't be anything left to be dented.

Even on the islands the long tail taxi boats all have huge exposed petrol engines powering what looks like a table fan on a pole. I swear to God they'd put petrol engines on toothbrushes if they could.

Still this thought was in my head waiting to be kicked into life and that kick came in the form of the buzzing and weirdly magnetic city of Saigon (I hate calling it Ho Chi Minh city). I have NEVER seen more vehicles in one place moving. The ratio of scooters and bikes to cars is about 1000:1 and they roar and beep their way around the city like torrents of water gushing from a burst dam. If a car or pick-up stops on the road they flow around it, every space is filled just as it's created with a trickle of scooter traffic. Crossing the road became, after the initial terror, a bit like a game. You just have to walk out into it maintaining pace and trust them to judge your position and avoid you. My first attempt had a bit of a false start where I got separated from Adam who was laughing from the relative safety of the pavement opposite but a local who saw me dancing back and forth just slapped me on the elbow and walked out into it mumbling what I presume translated as 'come on, you coward'. Not a bother to her. After that one it was hard not to fall into paroxysms of laughter at the willful stupidity of walking onto one of those roads and hoping it would all work out.

Also no discussion on the transportation around this part of the world would be complete without a short diatribe on the proliferate misuse of the horn. We've had a six and a half and a twelve hour bus journey in the last week and for the duration of both the driver honked (though honk is too light a word for the aural rape that is perpetrated on passengers by this demon device; the sound seems to be custom engineered to commit maximum damage to a human's well being) relentlessly. He leaned on it whenever he passed someone (and there are bikes everywhere so he's always passing someone), drove along a bend or saw someone he wanted to show off his horn to. The short video above is just a snapshot, a single minute and is representative of the whole trip. Not to sound reactionary but I still HATE the driver of that bus.

The tiny little beds we had in a train from Saigon to Nha Thrang from where I'm tapping out this post, wounded and hungover, unable to walk properly and still reeling from a triple dose of mugging. Tune in next time to find out what I'm talking about.

The Final Countdown

2008-08-01T13:31:00.000-07:00

So we're in Vientiane and someone tells us there's live music around the corner. We head there thinking, cool. And when we get inside and are flanked on all fronts by some seriously 80s decor and see a band comprised of two singers (one taking a time out), 5 guitarists (no less), a bassist and a keyboard player all backed by a drummer who was kept inexplicably behind a pentagonal perspex wall. They all look sombrely towards the floor until the bass line kicks in and belt into what you wouldn't believe unless I'd procured video evidence, the Final Countdown. The music was absolutely roaring but I'd swear you could hear me laughing above it. Brilliant.

Keeping it riel

2008-07-30T08:29:00.000-07:00

Face to face, through forced perspective, with the Buddha of love. (To be fair, I haven't been called that in years but that's one lucky statue alright.)

Whether it was evident from the somewhat panicked tone of my last post Laos was probably the highlight of my trip so far so it was with the familiar misery of leaving people and places that we flew into Phnom Penh, Cambodia from it's capital Vientiane. I think we decided against liking or trying to like Asian capitals after Bangkok and having landed in the capital of Cambodia faced with the task of getting to Siem Reap (something which we thought could be arranged at the airport) and finding out heading into the city centre was the only way to do it I think it's fair to say the apprehension was rife. Rightly so it turns out, taxi drivers circle you like hungry wolves all claiming to intimately know the place you want to be taken, usually something from a list in the yellow bible (lonely planet guide to south east asia), and of course not having a notion. The city streets in Phnom Penh bring to mind something of the back alleys in Bangkok and it's not a place either of us wanted to confirm our distaste for further. The driver we finally settled on, after my employment of a newfound firmness in my voice (probable indiscernible to everyone else but there in spirit in my mind) he actually took us right there. Of course his brother ran a better travel agent, his brother in law would take us all the way to Siem Reap for half what the bus would end up costing and he knew at least three or four hotels in the city where we would be treated like royalty and given weed, opium and the ubiquitous 'boom-boom' but to his credit after repeated polite declinations he brought us to the right place.
Turns out we arrived in Cambodia at a very interesting time. It was the day of government elections and not surprisingly a lot of the Cambodian people are less than pleased with their leader. The streets were almost deserted in comparison to their usual bustle, we were told because everyone was off voting, and we arrived just in time for the only bus to Siem Reap that day. A bus which was laid on for the locals who wanted to return home (a six hour commute made only to vote against the sort of person who makes you commute six hours to vote) from angrily performing their civic duty and there were a couple of seats left. So six U.S. dollars buys us a seat. Delighted.
Sitting there by the counter is an innocuous looking local dude, affable enough, but when he finds out we're heading to Siem Reap it's all, you stay in my guest house. I've spoken before about how some of the less reputable people around this part of the world put you on the back foot with people who may turn out in the end to be genuine and this was most certainly a case of that. Thomas was his name and he turned out to be, bar none, the nicest local we've met since we left home. He happened to work for a guest house called Bakong Lodge, and also work as a guide around the Angkor Wat temples. We agreed on the bus to at least take a look at the place and he didn't insist but we get there and he gives us a good price on a nice room with air con and a hot shower, happy days.

Amazingly he happens to also be the only tuk tuk driver/ guide in Siem Reap with Irish connections. He drove the one pictured below.

I can't speak highly enough of this guy. For two days he took us all over the Angkor Wat temple site, told us stories about each temple and explained what they were originally constructed for and so on. He told us where to eat locally and what was good (I discovered a magnificent local specialty called Lok Lak which I'll be seeking out again), took us to a military base where they gave me (yes, me) a loaded AK-47 to play with and most importantly he taught me what it's like to be a Cambodian. He's one of the most passionate people I've met in ages. Vehemently anti-government (who are corrupt as it gets apparently; proof is available on one's ticket to Angkor Wat where it clearly states the name of a Vietnamese hotel chain who are controlling and charging entry fees and doing nothing to maintain the place; sold off by some government officials for their personal enrichment) and anti-police but still hopeful of a change in power and a better future for his country, evidenced by the fact that he was coming back from the gruelling trip to the capital just to make his mark on the ballot. A guy like Thomas doesn't make a lot of money it seems and yet still at one of the stops along the way when I asked him what a local girl was selling at a stall he insisted on buying me one and explaining. (Dumpling filled with fried pork and onions; sweet but pretty nice and certainly different) Wouldn't hear of me paying; a cynic could say this was playing the long game but when we had already agreed to stay at his place and have him be our guide through the temples he still called us over to his table in the lobby when we got back from the pub and with his friends continually filled our glassed with the local beer shouting Boren Sap (possibly mispelled but meaning: 'down in one').

To co-incide with the political unrest in his country we arrived in the middle of a border dispute between Cambodia and Thailand. They're laying claim to a temple in Privihear in the north and sent armed forces into Thailand. The owner of Bakong Lodge was previously an official in the hideously underequipped Cambodian army and the stories he told us you just wouldn't believe. There are soliders in their army now who don't have uniforms or guns, stationed without food or money hunting and eating, I swear to God, frogs to cook and eat. Disbelieve and laugh if you want, I didn't, we'd seen enough that it wasn't out of the question. Thomas had, after a few Boren Saps more than we were able for, at least provisionally enlisted us to head to the border the next day and drive the Siem (Thai) back into their own land.

On our last night he told us about a hotel that ran a buffet and had some traditional dance show. We said cool, he hadn't put us wrong yet, and when it came to getting tickets I asked him how many times he'd seen the show himself. Never he said, too expensive, only for tourists. So we ask him to come along as our guests for once and I really felt bad at how grateful he seemed. He got dressed up and everything and before the show took us to the local park to watch the bats who drop from 6 trees there every night like clock work at 7pm to go hunting. (The sky was black with them and they were huge.) It was probably the equivalent of a night at Bunratty Folk Park but we enjoyed it and the food was good and it was nice to be able to say thanks to such a genuinely nice guy, one who improved an already beautiful country and people exponentially.

A few collections of pixels that illustrate better than words, some things from Cambodia:

A Cambodian gas station, Thomas told us, shaking his head, pissed off with the government. A four year old boy empties a whiskey bottle of petrol into his tuk tuk. He used these local ones to spread the wealth among the people and not give it to big companies I think.

The two boys outside the truly stunning Angkor Wat Temple.

What turned out to be one of my favourite temples just because of the name. It translates to Body Chain and was where all the kings of the ancient Khmer Empire were cremated. Their bones were stored in seperate towers a few of which I snapped above.

Massive trees choking the temple of Brahma, the site where some of the first Tomb Raider movie was filmed. Incidentally apparently Angelina Jolie ate in a restaurant while filming called the Red Piano in Siem Reap where I had dinner a couple of nights ago. She invented (or transported the recipe from the west for) a cocktail which is now called the Tomb Raider. It was great.

A postscript to explain the admittedly oblique reference in the title: The currency in Cambodia is offically the riel. Not as bad as kip (12,500 to the euro) at 4,400 to the euro but vastly outdone by the infuriating Dong (yes I know, haha) which I found out on arrival here in Saigon not two hours ago you get 20,000 of for a single lonely pathetic euro.

zOMG

2008-07-26T03:25:00.000-07:00

I had been intending on writing an entry cataloging our ever increasing list of injuries on this trip. (I brought, as did Adam, a travel first aid kit, which, like him, I've restocked twice already!) But having gotten to Vang Vieng and left, and been tubing twice it seems redundant. We've had a lot of minor scrapes, twisted ankles, deepish cuts that won't heal etc., but considering I'm still alive after what's happened to me in the last couple of days I no longer consider them worth discussing.

To set the scene: We left Luang Prabang a few Dutch friends heavier than we arrived with and headed towards Vang Vieng on a bus to go tubing.

Tubing is what people go to this town for. One is given a large inflatable donut into which one's rear is placed. One then floats down the river. This is rainy season so the river is quite fast. Along the way there are bars. These bars have employees who's job it is to throw you a rubber ring on a rope which you hopefully catch and then pull you ashore. Then it's a walk through ankle deep mud to a wooden dance floor (which just happened to be playing the best music I've heard in any pub or club since we left home) on which drunk tubers (and I don't mean potatoes) are dancing, most if not all smeared from head to toe in the same slimy muck on which this bar is built. The regular reader will remember my previous diatribe on the bucket phenomenon so there's no need to repeat that here, but they sell them on every bar on the way down. The more astute readers will have already beaten me to the conclusion of this simple equation: Danger.

The first day we engaged ourselves in this pursuit we had just gotten off a 7 hour bus journey and were on the banks of the river not an hour after arriving, tubes in hand. We get dragged in at the first bar where the buzz is palpable, get covered in mud (although on a number of occasions I was acused of being 'too' clean) and get drunk. The next logical step seemed to be to climb a twenty five foot overhanging stairs on the river to zip line, drunk and sans lifejackets, into the drink. Again we're thrown a rubber ring and again, down to nothing but luck we make it back ashore, laughing and giggling about our lack of respect for our own lives. We then, sun still up at this point, hit the river again and float maybe a kilometer to the next place we like the look/sound of. It was here I realised that my safety wasn't exactly guaranteed on this trip, twice I narrowly avoided some rocks none of which looked friendly or particularly merciful. You're ability to steer is almost non existent in rainy season (and drunk season) and the current is surprisingly strong. Anyway getting aboard this bar was more difficult but we all managed.

It could have been the thrill of simply living until that point under the circumstances or maybe it was just a nice day to be wet and caked in Lao mud drunk but the reality of this sort of thing gets away from you. In my case it was brought sharply back to the fore as, while I was standing on a deck that overhung the river made entirely of bamboo (a structural component I'd come to trust since hitting the road as it had never let me down before and it's used all over the place here) COLLAPSED while I was in mid conversation with one of our new Nederlander friends (a charming girl called Carmen) and fell ass over teakettle maybe 15 feet into the river below - again drunk, again with no lifejacket. Maybe it was the diving course we did but for some reason I was really calm as it was happening. I remember thinking, okay just exhale when you get under and you'll be fine. It was only when I was back ashore that I began to panic, laughing of course, and drinking again of course, but a little panicked all the same.

Amazing fact: One of the Lao workers there swam almost into the middle of this insane current to get one of my flip flops that had come off during this fall. I couldn't thank him enough but he didn't seem to think it was worth mentioning. He also replaced Carmen's now soaked cigarettes. You'd think saving our lives was enough...

Anyway just discussing what had happened kept us there until sun down and the only way back was in the tube so now, drunk, caked in mud and a little freaked (but glad to be alive) we set off in the dark towards.... towards.... Actually we were about a half a kilometre away, in the pitch dark, floating in the heaving water when we realised we didn't know where we were supposed to go, or what to look out for. Further, serious panic ensues, punctuated by hysterical laughter and then just when you think it's going to get rough a little Lao kid comes out and drags you shore. Don't ask me how they haven't lost more people doing this, and they've lost a good few I hear.

The kid wants money of course but I'm happy to give it. I get my wallet from the dry bag and give him two of whatever notes I have in my wallet. The only English they know is 'one more' but screw it, one more it is, I'm alive aren't I?

Evil scenes all around as the tubers come back in the dark, a bridge gave way to a hole somehow deep enough for the guy behind me to get his knee through once but not back again and when it looked like we need some serious outside help we somehow managed between the three of us to snap the bridge plank and get him out. All I can say is made the first beer afterwards go down like water.

Gluttons as we are for all things, punishment included, we decided to try it again the next day (now yesterday) and things were going well. Well that is until we got smashed and left it a bit late to jump back in the river. So in the dark for the second time in a row we're floating towards what we presume is help and realize we've taken a left down a different route. Our group of ten or twelve got broken up by the bridge I mentioned above, the one we broke a trapped (Irish) tuber out of the night before and some how, don't ask me, I end up holding on to a reed alone in the raging water. It was impossible to climb alone, Thank God I had a life jacket, so I call up to the people passing to get me some help. And then a guy called Paddy, who I'll never forget, climbs down the bridge pillars to help me. I really couldn't do it at first, but thanks to him I somehow manage, knowing it's do or die, to get onto the foothold he had. That one wasn't funny when it was over and still I get a bit chilled by the thought of what might have happened if I hadn't been able to hold on. My right arm and foot are both severely bruised from the climb up but it's a good lesson.

All that said: best days we've had so far.

I should mention also that Laos is absolutely the most beautiful country I've ever seen. The road south is winds unbelievably and cuts through valleys and sheer cliff faces and there doesn't seem to be a flat patch of grass in all directions. I was wondering what it was that makes this sort of scene so appealing to the human eye and I couldn't really answer but I guess you see more when you're surrounded vertically with the landscape and maybe it has something to do with bringing the view from heaven right down to the ground.

Two more pictures taken from the balcony outside our room in the clearly well named Grand View Guesthouse.

This is the kitchen of the place we stayed on the first day of our slowboat into Laos. I wouldn't put in any walls either if I lived beside that.

And here is the corresponding video from our place in Vang Vieng.

Early Extradition

2008-07-23T02:58:00.000-07:00

July 22nd 10:51pm, Laos Laos Garden, Luang Prabang.

"Last Order," he says, in typically soft Laos accent.

Confused checking of watches, blank faces. "Really?"

"Yes, close at eleven," he says.

"Wow, Okay, another round then, I suppose," we say, stupidly ignoring what turned out to be, I think at least, a major hint and continue to play pool.
Before the drinks have even arrived the shutters are closed, the fan is turned off along with the television. We're flanked on all fronts by the tired faces and indeed bodies of the bar staff. Each one looks at us without the slightest hint of apology in his face. We're the ones breaking etiquette here, apparently. Two sips taken from our beer and a game of pool just started, a decider of three in fact and it's clear there's only one choice: abandon ship.

So with full drinks and a curfew looming (Yes a curfew!, one ought not be out past 12 if one is a foreigner, one ought to be back at one's guest house. One is going to be given the tired welcome of a proprietor who almost definitely needs to be woken from a fiercely burning slumber that stretches the definition of the word welcome beyond breaking and mutates it into something that describes a greeting composed entirely of contempt. And yes, that is at only midnight.) and weirdly the only place a dyed in the wool Irish twenty something can get a drink is the bowling alley. They're the only places that you can get a scoop after 11.30pm in this country. Don't ask me why but this simple fact alone pushed us into a drunk round of said game and threw into sharp relief my heretofore untested but now transparently pathetic bowling abilities. It was also the stage on which a meeting took place between me and some friends of friends (who are now friends, I guess) from back in the old country. What a teeny tiny small little world.

I've tried to understand from locals what the buzz is as regards this early to bed thing and the best I can get is that the country is marinated in Theravada Buddhism. This means that the local heads get up with or before the sun to give the monks, of which there are many of all ages, a bite for the day. The monks stroll peacefully through the town collecting these alms and then head back for, I presume, some hardcore praying.

It's a nice idea I suppose and the fact that they've removed themselves from a culture that might create a lot of alcoholism is possibly a good thing. Mind you when you take into account what is here and weigh it against the problems that might arise as a result of having a pub scene I'm unconvinced that it's entirely balanced. For example you might cut down on unplanned pregancy as a result of over exposure on the part of a healthy and drunk young duo of boy and girl but there are a massive amount of little kids around here (not that I'm suggesting for a second that any were unplanned - I mean in a lot of places the lights go out at 10ish so it's not surprising that entertainment follows a similar reductive pattern to the oldest amusement of all); there's a cute little Lao girl running around this net cafe as I write. Similarly it's hardly the problem of accumulating vices amongst the populace because since I've been in Laos, even in Pak Beng which is tiny but riddled with guest houses and not a lot else including electricity and walls, I was offered both weed and opium out on the streets and by the waiter and owner of the restaurant in which we ate dinner. So it can't be that My Body is a Temple thing either. Don't ask me, maybe they just aren't into talking endlessly and stupidly about the same things every night in a smoky pub listening to repetitive music trying to make eyes at someone they wouldn't help up from a bad fall sober. Maybe that is it... I don't know what's wrong with them.

Part 2 of my round up of recent photos:

The official method, I swear to Jesus, of entering Laos. Thundering out of the heavens sitting there up to your ankles in smooth muck, worrying about your gear and it's level of moisture content. The head with the umbrella is a government official. (Are you getting the picture that the words 'official' and 'government' don't seem to mean much in this part of the world?)

You can't help but laugh at the Duty Free Shop in which you can purchase crisps and sandwiches and pepsi while in the limbo of immigration transit in Huay Xai.

More real life people who live on the banks of the Mekong. I began to wonder after we floated slowly past yet another of these riverside dwellings why they looked at us with such amazement, since two boats have passed daily, packed to the gills with plastic coated westerners for years now. Maybe they still find them as inscrutable as I do.

This is cool. Young monks are everywhere, they're pretty chilled and mostly if you say hello they nod and reply with a smile. Fong, our guide on a recent kayaking trip we took down the Nam Khai with two delightful Dutch ladies, explained to me that in Laos, if you are the same age as someone with whom you're walking, it's par for the course to throw your arm around them. Just to say you're cool with them. They walked all the way down the road like that.

Video evidence, as if it was needed, that I wasn't just complaining about nothing. Note the serious depression on the faces of all the miserable pink poncho-ed profoundly wet travelers.

We can't stay here, this is baht country

2008-07-22T02:16:00.000-07:00

I've spent way too much money already, we both have. We keep meeting people who have been roughing it, staying in places that cost 100 baht (roughly 2 EURO), and thinking to ourselves, yeah we'll have to get used to the idea of staying in those places soon and besides Laos and Cambodia are going to be much worse than Thailand. But still, everytime we arrive somewhere and need a place to stay it's the same thing. The two boys look around and start justifying their addiction to luxury.

"Seriously man, it's going to be bad enough in other places, and it's cheap by euro standards."

"Seriously man, I can't take a gaff without air con tonight, it's too hot, seriously."

"Man, seriously, I'm not sleeping in a double bed with you, I don't care how cheap it is."

"Listen alright, it's seriously cool man, and we're here now, so come on, I mean seriously. Man."

Both of us are guilty of the straight faced utterances of any combination or mutation of the above. But comfort is a nice thing to have when you're away from home. Anyway the result is that we've paid something like four times what almost every backpacker we've met has for our rooms. But fuck it, seriously man, we're rolling like pimps.

So exodus from Thailand has kept me off the grid for the past couple of days. We took the charmingly titled and far less charmingly realitied slow boat to Luang Prabang from where I'm sending this message into the ether. (Say that out loud: Luang Prabang. Say it a few times, it's the nicest place name I've come across so far. Luang Prabang.)

A bus from Chiang Mai, the inside of which was the setting for a humourous exchange with some agreeable belgians, to Chiang Khong, the last town in Thailand before Laos. At Chaing Khong you get a boat across a river which forms a natural border between the two countries. It's rainy season here so it was LASHING down when we got there, ferried over in the back of a pickup truck even though it was LASHING. I bought rain ponchos for us but since it was LASHING so hard all the colours but pink were sold out. So standing in thick slimy muck up to our ankles, knackered from a nights traveling, wearing our delightfully butch pink ponchos, we climb into a boat with all our gear on our backs, hoping it wouldn't get soaked, fearing rightly that it would and all this in the relentlessly LASHING rain.

(I should point out that while Ireland is considered a rainy country one can't really enjoy it - if you're in bed or the bath or something - because it rains hard for only a couple of seconds, then impotently resigns itself to drizzle; not here, here when it rains it rains the whole day and all the while it's totally mercilessly frigging LASHING out of the heavens.)

Across this hard crossed river is Laos (silent S for those reading this aloud to the elderly) immigration. I thought there were some shotgun operations in Ireland but this shit right here, this shit was off the hook yo. Honest to God, in the LASHING rain they have everyone wait while a dude checks each passport and a little up the hill at a plastic table under a sun umbrella a guy looks at it and says something unintelligible at which point you're officially visiting Laos.

Anyway after this we pile into another pickup and head to the pier, where we wait, double check our passports, buy oreos and bags of lay's and exchange our baht to kip.

*A side note on cold firm cash: Kip is in my humbly arrogant opinion the lousiest currency available today. You get 12,400 of the blasted things for a euro. My breakfast this morning was fifty five thousand kip. What the hell are they messing around with it for? I got about fifty squids out of the ATM (of which there are two in Luang Prabang (ahh) and only a handful more in the whole of this country) and it was a wedge of notes that actually weighed me down slightly. *

Then the slow boat for 7 hours which takes us to Pak Beng, half way there, and we get out and stay in a guest house that looked, how to be kind, spartan, to begin with but after coming back from dinner a bit pissed was found to have been running on a petrol generator and was now devoid of electricity. You heard me right, indoors in the place the lights flicker as the engine ticks over and they turn it OFF at 10.30pm. Nightmare. (Incidentally, as I'm sure future posts will continue to mention, the idea of a nightlife in Laos is totally unnatural. There are no pubs, just restaurants that serve hooch, and all are shut by 11.30pm. Even coming back to the guest house at midnight last night seemed like asking for a kidney from the proprietor, who after much taking of deep breaths opened the gate and let us in. No amount of pandering will resinstate your position within the pages of one or more of his good books.)

Next day it's the same shit. Only this time it's 9 hours down the river. I shouldn't complain though, it was truly stunning to see, but after two hours of consecutive epic beauty you start to think, oh look, over there, more awesome landscape that almost moves me to tears.

Anyway I woke up a few times with the foresight to take a few quick snaps which appear below with a round up of others which got mixed up in the washing.

The same same guesthouse in Chiang Mai, lovely heads and decent digs. English, at least in the first sentence above is either very bad or irrelevant in the face pursuits of the flesh. I can not corroborate the assertion in said above statement.

Real people, of the child variety, who live on the banks of the Mekong in Laos, just chillin'.

The misty mountains of northern Laos, who's beauty was dampened, like that pun, by the damp weather coupled with my outside-ity.

A surreptitiously stolen photographic record of my real world encounter with a man of the cloth while on scooter back in Chiang Mai, lost. Not a frigging word of English out of him but he wouldn't end the encounter without repeatedly pointing in that direction. We found the park afterwards incidentally as his directions much like his orange habit, were spot on.

Fun Fact: Internet speeds here will make you want to slide naked down a jagged sharply inclining cliff into a receptacle of salt and leeches so it is for that sad reason that I hereby deprive you of further photos and videos.

Missing Things

2008-07-17T21:49:00.000-07:00

It's inevitable, I suppose, that you end up missing things sooner than you thought you would. So here we go, not even a month in, with a list, in no particular order (excluding item 1), of the things I miss.

1. Mom and Dad. Sad but true. I didn't get time to teach my heretofore computer illiterate father how to use skype before I left. I was too busy doing nothing at home, with them, which was of course a task of the utmost importance in the list of things to be done before departure. But just over three weeks later, touchingly, he has not only created a gmail account for himself, which he regularly checks, but learned how to use skype and bought and configured a webcam.

2. My own bed. A bed in a climate that makes you need, and so love, your duvet. It's not a heat thing when you get down to it.

3. Tea. Oceans of tea that I drank like water and didn't appreciate and would give fifty thousand mango fruit shakes for a small measure of now.

4. Coronation Street.

There are others of course, but I'm only really writing these down to get them clear in my head, quantify the void inside that I may know it better and so deal with it properly. It's weird actually, looking at that list, it doesn't seem to encapsulate the sombre feeling you get when you wake up for another consecutive day in a place that seems so alien. Every traveller would love a door that opens into their own bedroom. A half an hour at home, one night, just a cup of tea with friends or family. I've thought about this too, but I think on closer inspection it would be a bad thing. If we had that, if traveling was that ephemeral an activity then we'd open a door unto Bangkok, for example, and decide after half an hour that we didn't like it. And maybe rightly so but even in days like these when traveling such distances takes no more an investment than 14 hours on a plane we're investing something in a place. We can't just flip a switch and be at home. It could be called isolation, like being trapped, but it forces you to look harder and deeper into a place, to find something you like. Something to make you glad you came, something beautiful. And when you find it, it's that bit more beautiful because you've had to search so hard.

Actually the above list, with the exception of item 1, is just stuff, things. It's the feeling of being at home that everybody craves. And maybe you can find that on the road. And when I think about it some of the things I miss the most about home probably aren't there. Maybe they never were.

Tripping in both senses of the word

2008-07-16T03:43:00.000-07:00

It's a sad fact that one has to get used to long expanses of time in a confined space to travel around this part of the world. This is exacerbated out of all Godly proportion because I'm Irish and a long drive is more than an hour; a lot of travellers we meet are from Oz or AmerikA so they're used to driving 8 hours for a bit of surf or a burger respectively. I on the other hand, delicate soul that I am, am ill equipped for such endurances. Bear that in mind when I tell you we left the island of the turtle yesterday at about 2pm ish and arrived in Chiang Mai today at around 9am this morning. And that's with us taking the extremely cushy route of flying from Bangkok.

No one really wants to leave a place like Ko Tao but time is ticking it was a pickup truck to the pier, boat to Chumpon, bus to Bangkok (Khao San road area), taxi to the airport ("Which airport Sir?", "What?", "Two airport sir, old one or new one?", "Shit, dunno, can you take us to an internet cafe to check?", "International cafe sir?", Here he rang a translation service to whom I explained we needed to go to an internet cafe, handed the phone back and he spoke in rapid but helpful Thai - this was all on abandoned streets at 2am in the morning, knackered off a bus now, so internet place, checked the mail, it was the main airport all along) , four hour wait to check in, one hour flight on a new airbus that was piloted by what could only have been a child who'd done a short course in aeronautics and then a taxi to our wonderfully named new home: Same same guesthouse in Chiang Mai.

It is no exaggeration to say that I was almost speaking in tongues by the end of that ordeal. Both of us were falling asleep given anything more than 30 seconds in one place during most of it but a good book (the saviour of many a nasty situation) rescued me from absolute hell, which is ironic since it was the God Delusion (which you should read).

I should write a short note on how I've been coping with the wildlife here. Most people that know me are well aware of my explosive arachnophobia so it's a sad fact but one that reinforces my usual fear that the first cockroach we encountered indoors stirred the following exchange:

"Jesus Paul, look at the size of him.!"

"What?" Here I saw the cockroach, in OUR bathroom (the impertinence), who was about an inch and a half shorter than me. "Jesus christ look at that..." (playing it totally cool, but standing well back)

Casually but still a little creeped out Adam says: "Will we take a picture for the blog?"

"Just kill him."

So that is why you've been robbed of evidence of something that I thought I could never stand and which it turns out I can, just not particularly comfortably. But then if you are comfortable to the point of affection with anything like that then you shouldn't be walking around on anything less than four legs.

I want to say this 'little' bastard was hanging above our hammock but he was HUGE. A foot at least. I 'discovered' him after repeated gentle entreaties that I try the hammock out, I should have realised what was going on when gentle entreaties became an insistence that really 'it was cool' and 'you should just lie in the fucking hammock, alright.'

Our quaint huts on Sairee beach, lovely from the outside but constructed specially of material that insulates and amplifies stifling heat that one's night might become double plus unpleasant.

This place apparently did the best pastry in Ko Tao! Another example of the constant nature of the world of uninvited micro squatters in the warmer areas of modern day Earth.

Leaving the island is a sad thing and made more miserable as it is here, viewed through a dirty ferry window. The background music is the movie that was playing for the duration. The Ladykillers if you're asking. Actually between Ko Tao and Chiang Mai if measured in movies, the distance, in our humble case is: The Ladykillers, Are We There Yet? (on a bus full of adult what were they thinking?) and Michael Clayton.

Two cocks and one understandably battered looking hen at chumporn pier.

The vulgar display of piety that is the Temple around the corner from this internet cafe.

(Note: I can't get this Thai keyboard to allow the implied accent egu, so get off my back alright)

Yet more colourful effigies that prove we really believe in a higher power around here alright. Well it looks cool doesn't it? Come on it took aaaages to build... and it cost a fortune too... come on....

The yawning chasm of deleted personality represented by young male toplessness of the washboard stomach variety

2008-07-13T07:31:00.000-07:00

A short meditation on the positives and negatives of Ko Tao, where we have arrived again, and which was given a perceptual boost due to the severe unpleasantness of our recent trip to Ko pha ngan, cannot take place in any real sense without ones thoughts returning again and again to the twin pillars of despoiled heaven that are creepy crawlies (including lizards) and roaming parties of young men walking around proudly and conspicuously devoid of clothing above the waist (and below the neck).

Such is the despicable view I've arrived, it seems, inevitably at, that I am rethinking the above use of the colloquialism 'creepy crawlies' as a description of them rather than the cockroaches around here (another word which, incidentally, would suffice).

I'll back pedal: We arrived on Ko pha ngan ready for a party. Good music, cool people, nice times. An achievable goal, it seemed, and still seems I'm sure but it was too tall an order. Around every obnoxious tout growling an agressive and confrontational Hello, How are you? trying to sell you a ride in a taxi boat or dinner in his restaurant there was another drunk harem of guys, all of whom, in heat that didn't require it, roamed slovenly about the dingy streets breathing with the top 10% of their lungs that they may hold in this cobblestone street of stomach, flexing every single beer in their abdominal eight pack. Drunk, all of them, on one of the most heinous beverages I've ever come across.

A sangsom bucket: A bucket (as in bucket and spade) hewn of plastic in a primary colour is the vessel for a bottle of thai rum (which says 80 proof on it, but it couldn't be, could it?) mixed with ice, coke and red bull. It is garnished with four straws, the presumable intention of which is sharing this monstrosity, the result of which is that one guy drinks the lot with four straws. The leering lechery and attempted hopeful wanderings towards debauchery, the likes of which would shock the jailers of sodom, is turned into almost farce, on that island at least, by the desperation inherent in displaying, not unlike mandrills are said to do with their bottoms, ones hard won washboard. I'll say no more on the matter however lest I, perhaps rightly, be accused of slowly souring grapes.

Another reason we didn't like the island was that the much vaunted half moon party wasn't particularly wonderful in any respect. And the music was an abberation. Anytime you see the prefix psy in front of music it's a bad thing, music with no peaks or troughs, played straight for at least 9 hours. Psy trance, psy techno, psy trad for that matter, avoid... like... the... plague.

Actually so miserable was our view of this place that it was, on the steps of the basin in which the half moon party takes place, we conspired to leave right away. I've spoken of the urge to flee before and this time it wasn't suddenly that it came, it was so quick as to almost have appeared in the past. We left the party in the back of a pick up truck with 8 drunk party goers (scumbags if you're asking, one of them tried to pick a fight with me for reasons I didn't understand at all, then quickly realised none of his friends thought it was worth it and said, "Sorry, my friend, sometimes, I do speak out of turn") grabbed our bags from the spartan surroundings of our yoghurt home and, still quite drunk hopped in another taxi, then a boat, then walked from the pier in Ko Tao to a bar called In-Touch, took a room and began a serious power snooze. All the details of that trip, that evil evil scene are still clear in my head, a twisted flippant and drunk conversation with a humouring if not humourous ozzie couple at the pier, hellish sea and stolen winks on the boat, a name calling incident in which I was so belligerent I verbally abused a chicken on the road beside me and a fall the result of which I can still feel in my lower back.

Anyhow it's great to be back on this island, come here if you can sometime, even the first time it's like coming home.

Ceci n'est pas moi sous l'eau

2008-07-10T01:16:00.000-07:00

Ignore the pretentious reference in the title of this post if you like but it's still sort of meta that I had to take pictures of the prints we got back from our dive camera with my digital one to put them up here for you, whoever you are, current reader.

Anyway here it is, as if proof were needed, that at some point in the world at some point in time, 18m below the surface I was breathing and looking, I think you'll agree, damn sexy.

The buddy check must be performed before every dive, a practice during which one checks ones buddy's regulator (the thing what you breathe through), one's buddy's secondary regulator (the thing what one's buddy (oneself in this example) breathes through if one's buddy's air stops the intermittent pilgrimage to one's buddy's lungs - this is the bright yellow one; easily identified, hopefully in a hard real time panic), one's buddys BCD (Buoyancy Control Device - an inflatable and deflatable lifejacket essentially), one's buddy's weight belt (used to achieve neutral buoyancy underwater; directly proptionate to one's weight; crippling reality is hit home during the procurement of which since Adam only needed five and Beth - our wonderful instructor - suggested I try six!), one's buddy's straps and finally (now that I've well and truly flogged this now fossilised horse) one's buddy's AIR.

The above is an example of my performing a buddy check on Adam who, as is clear from the above, made a mockery of the whole affair pulling that Blue Steel shit.

This is us not underwater, dressed like assholes.

Having dived three times, it was suggested to us by our instructor, the previously mentioned Beth (an excellent instructor, evidenced by the fact that I was surprised when she told me she was 25 years old, much to her disgust, but which in reality is a compliment and reaffirmation of her authority and eloquence as a diving instructor), that we try going in differently. A James Bond entry is an attempted somersault where the goal is to land on one's back, one's tank, as one hits the water. It's incredibly difficult wearing dive gear, an outfit that is to graceful attire as falling bricks are to weightlessness. I performed it wonderfully. There was applause, and I think I saw a tear.

This picure is a poor excuse for the amazing feeling of swimming freely through clouds of wild (if that's an appropriate term of placid little fishy's just chillin' near a rock - and it isn't) fish. The fact that water in large quantites is blue means that the photo's have undergone something of a blueshift and photoshop and the time required to use it to correct this is a lot to ask, too much in fact, of me, Thailand and me in Thailand.

Beth, more comfortable underwater, of course, than me, blowing bubbles with great fluency, which is in stark contrast to the top photo here, of me doing, or at least attempting same, like a large fitting ladies blouse. Fun Fact: I drank a lung full of water attempting that, and didn't let it show: Gang star!

Ko Pha Ngan, My Yoghurt Home away from home

2008-07-08T03:33:00.000-07:00

So yesterday there was a little discussion about time. You wouldn't think you'd be so pressed for it with six (now seven) weeks to dick around this lovely part of the world but when we actually wrote it down it seems we're allowed only a couple of days in each place, Chiang Mai, Luang Prabang, Siem Riep to name but a quartet minus one. One of the factors involved in our reappraisal of available time was that we decided we couldn't leave Ko Tao without diving again.

I mentioned previously but we did an open water diving course on the island, which was amazing. I won't go into the detail of how cool this was because I want the pictures we took to encourage you, dear reader, to disregard these hard drawn words in favor of the thousand each one is worth. Our dive camera is currently in the shop where we arrived in Ko Pha Ngan and I will post what I can when I can, which brings me neatly if contrivedly to the next affair of our wanderings: 'avin' it large.

This island is famous for the debauchery of it's full moon parties, where sunset beach (remember that show?) is crowded with revellers going mental til the wee smalls. We've elected to only hit the allegedly more boutique feeling of the half moon party, what I imagine is the electric picnic to the full moon's oxegen. So party on the 10th, hangover on the 11th and back to Ko Tao for the advanced (oooh) open water diving course, where they take us to 30m, and then off the islands.

A lovely lady in our dive resort who found out where we were going recommended our current guest house, where she said she used to work. It's called, wonderfully, Yoghurt Home 3, a delightful unnecessity made more brilliant by the apparent, as yet, lack of any Yoghurt Homes 1 or 2. She got us a good deal though, by writing a little note to the girl she knew who works here.

(Side note: When she wrote her name on the note, I coughed and didn't, uncharacteristically for me, say So wa dee, Krap, [insert name] and then introduce myself because I knew both Adam and I would have broken apart by my saying her name which was: Pu)

The pier from Ko Tao, though which we left.

Our lovely yoghurt home, which Adam described as 'cheap and cheerful' (it has air-con) and which I countered with 'cheap and depressing.'

The sign outside so you know I'm not bullshitting you, as if I had that Magritte an imagination.

The above is an example of what it's like to arrive on one of these islands. Every person on the pier wants your money and would like to take you where they're going. There's a small moral quandry, for me at least, involved in ignoring them, but it's worse again to even make eye contact. Keep an eye on the dude shouting red shirt, red shirt. Because I was wearing one and he was too, he thought we ought to engage in an act of capitalism.

Actually I was cracking up at the ignorance it took to just take out my camera and film them, the poor bastards but I couldn't resist. It's weird too, a red shirt was enough, we had enough kismit, connection to go to the town together... I wonder what he says to people in a different colour top from him? 'Homo sapien, homo sapien, I walk upright also, we go together!'

On the semi constant nature of the urge to flee

2008-07-07T06:22:00.000-07:00

The urge to flee came, as it always does, suddenly. The woman we were cursing not twelve hours before for burning us on the visa deal came up trumps on our status inquiry Wednesday morning and so it was with a hurried and buoyant excitement that we packed our meagre belongings and fled the charismatic town of Kanchanaburi and headed right into the belly of the beast.

Neither Adam nor I wanted to go back to Bangkok, which would sound as normal as neither Adam nor I wanted to shave our heads with rusty cheese graters to those who know both us and that city. A minibus driver who didn't so much suffer from bad judgment on the road as rejoice in it takes us to the west side, near the famous Khao San road. Here is where the problem lied, we needed to get to the far east, 80 minutes in that traffic, and right back again to the train station without being killed. It's with great pleasure and the relief of not boring you, dear reader, I hope at least, with another recounted tale of being abused by yet another bastard behind the wheel of a cab. This guy was actually quite nice, took us all the way across town, waited for me while I grabbed those wonderfully comforting wine coloured documents (our passports, I mean, lest you conjecture) and took us back without screwing us (or over charging, bad dum bum). Note: He did stop on the opposite side of the road from the agency though making me cross that insane road alone, under pressure for time, so I am now one of those battle hardened people who has survived crossing the street in Bangkok without dying, though I swear to God a little bit of wee came out.

Anyway it was all aboard the night train after a grevious wait in the station, pictured below, and an encounter with something masquerading as chicken in the KFC beside it. No air con and 9 hours very much non non stop (it stopped often and long) from Bangkok to Chumpon and then a three hour power snooze on the hard tiled floor of the lay over area (reached by piling gullibly into the back of some Thai fellas pickup truck - not the first time I've done that since I got here) and a two hour ferry to the wonderful island of Ko Tao.

I swear, despite the unfathomable fatigue induced by almost 24 hours of frantic travelling it feels like we've finally arrived when we get to the pier. There's no half measure required to describe this place, it's paradise.

Future updates will include further details but - Fun Fact: I am now a qualified open water scuba diver!

The truly unpleasant interior of the truly unpleasant train station of the truly unpleasant city of Bangkok. I know, why are they all sitting on the floor, why not put chairs in if you can't move anyway, I know, why?

Turtle island, or as the thais call it Turtle island. (Which is Ko Tao in Thai)

This picture is specifically added for my previous work colleagues, because even in paradise there's a way to say Hello Tomorrow! (don't ask)

A funky little bar where I ate dinner not an hour ago, ten feet from the slowly lapping waves...

Another shitty day in paradise. Well the first actually, and the rain only lasted an hour :p

28 Clicks on a Motorcycle, Riding Bitch

2008-07-03T08:13:00.000-07:00

That's what it's called isn't it? Riding bitch? As in sitting on the back. Well I can't say anything bad about it. I highly recommend it in fact if you can find the right person. And I did. From Kanchanaburi to a cave temple, which was amazing: a deep and twisting cave where bats flew around golden shrines, altars and statues, where my newfound guide took a minute or two to pray to her Buddha. (The day of the week on which you're born determines which Buddha is yours. Jep's was born on a Thursday, so the reclining Buddha is hers.) Anyone who knows me is probably well aware of my antipathy for any sort of religion but I was charmed and beguiled despite myself by her ritual. In the most silent and sacred of places she paced with her hands pressed together in front of this golden statue, chanting quietly. Then she rattled what seemed like, well, a rattle. When it was over the sombre mood vanished like mist on a sunny morning and it was all smiles again.

To be fair, she was an excellent driver, despite her constant joking at my natural fear, usually overtaking Adam and pretending to cycle as she did so, violently shaking the bike. I relaxed through the gorgeous expansive beauty of her countryside more, though, than I have in most people's cars.

To say thanks we went for dinner in a floating restaurant beside the bridge. On entering she surreptitiously stole a banana from the tree which was the dining rooms centerpiece and ate it. When I asked what she was doing the reply came spoken only in monkey. I don't speak monkey, or much Thai for that matter. She taught me one phrase alright but wouldn't say what it meant, though I have an idea.

So here goes. "Pom ruk koon, Jep's."

Almost Famous

2008-07-01T00:40:00.000-07:00

"Hello, How are you?"

"Oh Hi, fine, how are you?"

"Where are you from?"

"Ireland."

"England?"

"No, Ireland."

"Ah England..."

"No,"

"Nice to meet you man,"

Clink Glasses. Smile. Go back to drinking, he's happy.

The above has happened in almost every bar we've visited and is an encounter entered into after much stolen glances from across the bar. And that's just the guys. We went to a club last Saturday and just stood watching the band, young thais, none more than 18. Perfect for the genre, which was EMO all the way: all style no substance. Anyway just there drinking stylish (read: regular) bottles of Heineken and I realise that a group of about 7 or 8 people, mostly chicks, are standing with their back to the band in front of us alternately waving and giggling.

The correct decision would be to discount it as curiosity since we were the only westerners in a club full of around 1,000 clubbers out from Bangkok...

This happens out on the street too, and in restaurants. We rented scooters yesterday and the girl filling the petrol asked if I had a girlfriend. I'm serious that was her opening line when I asked for petrol and I won't transcribe the rest of the conversation here but in this single regard Thailand is a great place for the non narcissist. It's hard not to feel like a total rockstar. But I'm being told to enjoy it while it lasts, apparently backpackers aren't royalty in every country.

We'll see about that...

I swam in this...

2008-06-30T04:04:00.000-07:00

Each of the 7 waterfalls at Erawan national park had pools which were heavily populated with a fish whose species I'm ignorant of. They nip you if you don't keep moving but it doesn't hurt, it seems most closely related to mild sexual harassment.

Star Wars Episode 0: The Bridge on the River Kwai

2008-06-30T03:53:00.000-07:00

One of the nicest things we've done since arriving here has been rafting down the river kwai. They give you life jackets (I chose the hi-vis green one because the alternative was red and we were told not to wear that colour visiting the tigers; I thought not being mauled would improve the day significantly - not that there probably are any left in the wild, that theme park probably has a monopoly, like a drug dealer in a slum, sooner or later if all your mates are doing it you want a hit, and then there's no escape) and sit you on a raft. Those brave enough, and that includes me, can jump in a float down along side the empty raft. The water was cool (temperature not attitude), really pleasant to swim in. There wasn't a single sign of any hungry and aggressive looking animals and when I happened to conjecture to our group that swimming in this river might give us all some exotic disease the gondolier(?) took a cupped handful and drank it. There's nothing so pleasant and surreal as floating down a warm river surrounded by jungled hills and bathing elephants.

Later on we were taken to the famous bridge, which was weird for me since I don't know anything about it and haven't seen the film. ( I know, I know) Funnily enough everyone I asked, including Adam knew little or nothing about it and hadn't seen the movie either.

There was a constant stream of people walking across and I wonder how many were there for the actual history of the thing (which is the most noble scenario), because of the movie (ignoble but still better than option 3:), that they are aware that Obi Wan Kenobi was in another film set here and this is the titular bridge.

The Bridge, all together now (I'm so sick of saying it), Over The River Kwai.

On the exploitation of Tiger/Snake/Elephant

2008-06-29T22:22:00.000-07:00

I wouldn't say we're 'trapped' here, more like legally compelled to stay, so to run down the time (almost a week we hadn't anticipated) we hit locally cultural delicacies.

That amount of time in this town necessitates a few trips and below is the sad photographic evidence of my complicity in the exploitation of three fine specimens of deeply unfulfilled animal POWs. Tigers, snakes and elephants.

A tiger cub, full of the natural instinct and ferocity of a genuine, not-for-show tiger engages in a deadly battle with some blue plastic.

Queuing for a ride on an elephant I was slowly but almost fatally attacked by an albino burmese python. I took it rather well all things considered, I think he stopped trying to kill me because I was laughing so much that it cheapened the whole affair.

It is against the law in Thailand to drive with no hands... talk about a gangster.

To be honest I felt a little weird about what all those animals must do when we're not around, I'd like to think they're happy, and I suppose considering they don't know anything else that could be said to be true, but they seemed a little dead on the inside. The tigers in particular were so sedate that I wouldn't be surprised if it came out that in the morning they were given, along with what I hope is a lot of raw meat, a twenty minute drip of dopamine direct to the spinal column. While we were sitting there rubbing them (just looking isn't considered to be enjoying them enough, one must touch to get one's money's worth) I was wondering what it would take to get one really angry, if it was possible at all and to be honest, if I had walked up to the biggest one and kicked his almost sleeping head clean off the ground I doubt he would have reacted. Sad but true.

A bag of coke and two tickets to Kanchanaburi

2008-06-27T03:41:00.001-07:00

So Bangkok was too much to take after two days. Adam well equipped with what might have been described in a more polite time as a 'dicky tummy,' was in no fit state to keep walking down streets with four lanes of RELENTLESS traffic, being accosted on one side by the alternating smells of freshly prepared pad thai and slowly decomposing (but for the moment still alive) dog.

They told us it would take two days per visa for each of Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam - we later found out that all but the vietnam ones could be procured at the border - so we hand over out passports and escape to the west. Kanchanaburi looked great from the smoggy streets of Bangkok so after yet another (it's getting boring reading it I know - but living it is a very different story) deathwish cab ride that took 45 minutes (and cost roughly 2 euros) we arrive at Thonburi station.

They only operate 3rd class trains out there so we buy two third class tickets and when I see the train, windows open, slowly growling, looking like it and all it's inhabitants want to eat me I decide that I've had enough. I need a bag of coke. I know, I know I shouldn't have but things got on top of me. To be fair it wasn't hard to find, and was bigger than any I've ever seen. Quite cheap too. Pictured below.

Be honest, it's huge - and it only cost 24 cents!

The view from the train. Rural Thailand.

A note on the below: I was too giddy with excitement to think of what to do with this afterwards. The ice inside was probably tap water frozen so drinking was out of the question: I found a public toilet at the station, girled by a young Thai who was conked asleep so I pretty much stole a go to dump this down the sink. From purchase to disposal I was bent over laughing... The locals must hate people like me...

Hospitality and the Deathwish Taxicabs

2008-06-25T00:22:00.000-07:00

So having finally found our hostel after an agonizing walk, (a couple of miles at least through central Bangkok with a full rucksack in humidity that's verging on being under luke warm water) without seeing a single other backpacker and having had no sleep for the bones of 48 hours - we got a cab from the airport but when I said Sukhumvit Soi 38 he only heard the 8 (Soi 8 is very very far away from Soi 38 - I think soi means street incidentally) - we decided that we were too awake to bother trying to get some rest and got a taxi to the Khao san road.

It didn't look too far on the map and the hostel dude said it shouldn't cost more than 100 baht but to make sure and either agree that with the driver or argue with him until he put on the meter. Having had said argument and gotten good and deep on the wrong side of him in so soing he takes off. I won't waste time (especially with this hangover) trying to find colourful ways of expressing how dangerous that ride was, motorcyclists weaving around us at top speed to the point that I thought it was all a show being put on for us, a very near miss with another cab, thundering through a massive roundabout that was thick with cars at 65... That was bad enough but when we had been in the car about 25 minutes with no sign of getting anywhere but deeper into slums I started to get worried. I didn't want to look at Adam's face in case it betrayed a similar dismay. Freaking out is bad enough without someone else confirming that it's probably appropriate. Later on when we finally got to Khao San (it turns out he was probably just doing the 'scenic route' thing that cabbies everywhere pull) we would both exchanges relieved certanties that we were being driven to a squat where some hard men would relieve me of my money, credit cards, consciousness and possibly liver. It made the drink we eventually got that bit better though.

Khao San is mental, one long street where you can't take two steps without being offered a good deal on a 'ping pong' show. I didn't realise they were so into sport over here.

Couple of hours later and we're drunkish. I suggest heading back in the interests of surviving at least the first day but Adam's having none of it (and rightly so) so we walk down the road, whose masses being to dwindle and a few of whose shops and stalls are closing and fend off a couple more invitations to observe a woman perform a lascivous and salacious act of pseudo table tennis and we're grabbed by a quartet of thai girls who insist we go into the club they promote. I'm apalled at the age of the youngest one, who's no more than 12 and out on this street, and ask her age, she agrees to tell me if I agree to go into the club. What could I do? Having been physically and otherwise shoved in the door I ask her again. "42," she says and I'll give her this, she acts it.

Mai, Sum Laff, Was Da Stow Ree and Fern.

I won't go into specifics but thai girls like foreigners. Again trying not to descend into bad form by indulging in vulgar details I'll say this, the thought occured to us, having spoken broken english to a few people that it would be nice to see Bangkok from the point of view of a local. I say this thought occured but it was pretty much thrust upon us. So somehow, frankly langers, a minute later we're piled, two in the front, five in the back, into one of those deathwish taxicabs.

Soon after we're in the one room apartment in downtown Bangkok of a charming girl named Mai, the six or seven of us, Adam and I, Mai and her friends. Talk about a baptism of fire. Some first night...

The view from their balcony.

Edit: I only remember the names of the two on the far left and right in the photo above so the facetious act of attributing joke names was borne of necessity, not cultural insensitivity, I swear.

Fear and Loathing 37,000 feet above Kabul

2008-06-24T23:55:00.000-07:00

He who makes a beast of himself escapes the pain of being a man

-DR. Johnson

Okay so four hours in and I'm three whiskeys and two beers deep, can't sleep no matter what and it hits me that I'm going to be in Bangkok in a couple of hours. I look at the flight plan on the screen in front of me and we're hovering above Kabul, all the cities we're passing out seem like places you just don't go and it brings home the reality of what I've started. It's easy to say "I'm off travelling," but keeping the good humour that comes with planning when it actually starts is a little more difficult.

In an attempt to outrun the fear I order another whiskey - they have Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas on the movie menu, a film I've seen at least 20 times but never once sober.

I can't speak the language, it could be a really dangerous city, I don't know where I'm going, it's going to be way too hot, I might get sunburned really terribly and have to go to hospital, what if I forget specify that I don't want ice in my drink and get dysentery- it's probably way too hot to be sick over there.

It's funny, watching Hunter Thompson attempt to check into a las vegas hotel suite under an assumed name with intent to commit capital fraud on a head full of acid actually chills me out a bit. I not going to be that bad at least... am I?

Notes on arrival:

1. I should have learned more Thai and not expected that bowing a little with my hands pressed together (called a wai, the equivalent of a handshake) with a stupid look on my face would intuit to everyone I was going to meet what I wanted.

2. Everyone who works on the front lines of tourism in Bangkok is out to get you. Just finding a taxi who isn't going to drive you whereever he feels like going and overcharging for it is a task that requires about as much effort as a days work. I'm unsure about whether this is an indictment of how hard I'm used to working or not but what I mean is: it's hard.

3. Everyone who drives a motorized vehicle in Bangkok has a death wish and gets up in the morning in the fervent hope of commiting ludic suicide. 100mph in lane 4 of 6 with more cars on the road than I've ever seen at rush hour at home and the taxi driver decides he wants to be on the far left: What does he do? He pulls the steering wheel down sharply with his left hand! That's all you need to do. I've taken four cab rides at the time of writing: I have no right to be alive.

4. Bangkok is huge.

Brenda Fricker

2008-06-24T23:33:00.000-07:00

Okay so we get to london (trying to find our connection) and there's a woman at arrivals with a sign that says: BBC - Brenda Fricker.

The correct thing to do would have been to get to the gates quickly but the right mistake? Wait and see if she shows, twenty minutes later Mrs. Brown appears. Totally worth it.