My Asian Travels 2004

Willesden Green, NW London, UK

2004-09-02T09:05:00.000+01:00

I'm home having sat on a plane surrounded by screaming children. We did get to circle central London and saw some great views of the city, HP, Buck House and the Thames and Tower Bridge which was nice though, even if it came several months earlier than I would've liked. I think the journey took longer than normal as, the onscreen airshow revealed, we were headed directly over Iraq before taking an occupied-country shaped detour over Saudi, Jordan and Syria instead.

Dad picked me up not recognising me at arrivals, claiming when he initially saw me appear that he expected I'd look something like the long-haired dishevelled apparition walking out yet not actually realising that that was his son. It was around half nine in the evening when we got to Willesden and not only was there no ticker tape parade but no-one was even home and my neighbours Matt and Siobhan had to let me in, allowing me into theirs for some champagne - he proposed to her a few days earlier - before I wandered off to track down flatmate Dave sitting outside a pub with a mate of his. I'm actually in a pretty good mood even though I've already lost my keys - I last used them when I collected my bags in terminal 4 and now I can't get into my bags meaning I had to sleep with my contact lenses in. I've now got a few day to organise my life, deal with Abbey National, and catch up with people. Yes Sab, get me in to the party tomorrow please. Phil, we'll meet up soon. Jamie, sorry I missed your party but I was arriving home. Steve, I'll give you a shout for that meet-up mate. Rog, Gus, Faith, Jon, we need an evening out. Can you make it, Monkey Dave? Big Pete, Jim, Suky, again, we need to meet up so I can annoy you. Rob, come round. No-one has told me off for smoking yet.

So I guess that's it. Bill Hell, a bomb-hit room, a shallow job to acquire so I can get some cash, did I even go? God I miss being away. I even miss the great India/ Sri Lanka combo which took an estimation nose-dive after I discovered Thailand. I told Dad and Mum, when I phoned her from the car, that I wanted to stay out there and they mumbled something about 'responsibility' and other stuff I didn't really want to listen to.

Hey, it's about half 2pm in Thailand. I'd be having lunch around now and smiling happily to myself before a spot of sightseeing, or chatting to other travellers. Of course, it's 1pm in India and I'd pretty much be doing more of the same. I've not even been home 24 hours yet I keep having flashbacks to everything I've done in the last two-and-a-half months and it seems like a dream. I'm already reassuring myself that the world will always be out there, that I can go back one day.

Still, on the plus side, at least I'm not sweating anymore.

Four hours left in Thailand

2004-08-31T10:05:00.000+01:00

and I'm choked. I've been having a great time and now it's all over. Getting a flight to Sri Lanka tonight with just enough time to rent a hotel and sleep in it is not an attractive proposition, especially as it'll all culminate in me being back home and having to sort my life out - a shame as over here, everything feels pretty sorted to me. The backpacker lifestyle is pretty damn good, even if living out of a rucksack can become trying after a while and I'm dying to wear clothes that veer towards sexy, as opposed to something white and crap to sweat in.

Last night I visited a nearby restaurant that was showing the remake of 'The Ladykillers' - Tom Hanks actually being quite good although not in Alex Guinness's league, and it did seem fairly flat for a Coen brothers film. I then wandered off for a pointless game of pool, waiting half an hour to go up only to play an arrogant British tosser who said absolutely nothing to me and went on to pot six in a row from the break before I even lined up my first ball, something I found annoying enough to be relating now, then had to decline a threesome with a ladyboy and an old hooker - very flattering - and ended the evening chatting to a couple of friendly Germans lads who invited me to drink with them just because I was sitting by myself. For me, meeting people is a huge part of travelling, and it was nice to talk to these guys who were great company and surprisingly open and intelligent about the past - a shame really as my own countryfolk have come across as boorish alcoholics (not me though). Not counting the backpackers as they're younger and generally keen to explore and learn, the older Englishmen here have been pretty unpleasant. Why we're like that is anyone's guess. Something to do with once having an Empire and thinking we own everything, I suppose.

In fairness, they're pretty friendly although Thailand does seem to have cornered the market in attracting the very worst of the English. I suppose if they weren't here, they'd be on the Costas yelling at the Germans. Generally 40+ and blind drunk every night, they all have Asian wives and see it as their divine right to sleep with as many hookers as they can. One English guy in Ayutthya for example was so screamingly drunk, he began by yelling at an Irishman about how noble the English are, then went on to call a nearby American a Spic and told everyone within earshot that the best prostitutes are the new 14-year olds. Another guy I nicknamed Ratboy (but not to his face), mainly due to his shifty eyes and rodent head. If rats also swore loudly at the drop of a hat and angrily bellowed at bargirls for "a beer this fucking century, if it ain't too much trouble", then it would be even more apt. In fairness he was a friendly guy but just because he didn't try to hit or rob me (or beat me hands down at pool without saying a word), that doesn't automatically put him in the same camp as Mother Theresa. He lives in Vietnam and has a "stunning" 26 year old girlfriend 18 years his junior - and I can well believe that. I suppose in many ways it's not a bad situation as he had originally met her a few years back when he bought her for the night, then decided she was good enough to see daily and moved her in, getting her off the streets in the process. Not that he was being particularly noble mind you as he only wanted sex on tap from a girl he could never hope to see in a million years back home and still regularly visits prostitutes anyway, the exploits of which I got to hear about in graphic detail. Red-faced and bloated and with all the allure of a red-faced bloated shaved rat, he went on to tell me that his pushing-fifty friend in Saigon was married to an absolutely stunning Vietnamese girl in her early twenties, despite him being "as ugly as sin". I tried to picture what his friend must have looked like if a man with all the sexual attraction of a chipped pebble considered him ugly, and could only come up the image of the Elephant Man with herpes.

But this is Asia and men with all the charm of a sewage plant and sophistication of a council estate pub can date or even marry a much younger and astonishingly beautiful woman. Unlike conservative India where women are sometimes seen yet rarely heard, the women in Thailand are conspicuous and feisty. I spent my last evening in a nightclub happy to mind my own business and soon struck up conversations with local girls whilst being stared at by others dancing nearby and no, this was not a brothel. I wouldn't mind so much though if there was a frisson of emotion involved, but my worry that I'm seen as a walking wallet. It was also awkward talking to the girls as a few older Thai men sat grumpily in the corner watching me chatting, so I tried my best to stop grinning. The Thais really are wonderful though - sanuk, fun, is how they approach life - although there is a hidden resentment at all the rich old farang who seem to invade Thailand and snap up the most eligible women. "Yellow Fever" Ratboy called it, and claimed proudly that he'd only *expletive* Asian women and that western women could go *expletive* themselves. (That insight regrettably came after I stated my opinion that if a man declared himself attracted only to black women or blondes or Indians, he's racist albeit in a positive way as he's making a judgement based on colour. I managed to backtrack by telling him that any woman who has a big heart and is a decent person was preferable (although I think I may have said "big tits" instead).

I had an interesting meeting a few days back when a British backpacker told me he had money stolen from his padlocked rucksack on the Surat Thani to jetty coach that morning - up until then I had considered my money stolen from my hotel room as that was the least secure point. Now I realise that in all likelihood the coach operators, transporting 99% farang backpackers, have an extremely profitable scam whereby they help themselves to the contents of the tourists rucksacks from the immense luggage hold on the coach. I kicked myself as all I had to do was seperate my daypack (important gear) from my main bag (old pants) before handing them to the bastard with the torch and skeleton keys in the huge luggage hold, but my wisdom tooth pain was causing me to think about nothing else apart from "Hey, that's a big luggage hold, there's a man comfortably inside and Jesus my fucking tooth hurts". Also, the padlocks reassured me that it wasn't worth the hassle of separating bags in the 8 seconds it would've taken. So much for my world-wise independant traveller schtick.

So that's my trip. Brief. Fun. A hell of a lot of fun. Mind expanding. Life enhancing. Sickening (mainly the theft bits). Ego boosting (although that's classified). Stunning. And now absolutely devastating as I have to leave. Fortunately I get to see my folks and friends. Unfortunately, I have a pretty certain life of rain, drudgery and moody people ahead of me as I try my hardest to recoup my losses and refuse a 'quick beer' with flatmate Dave most evenings. It's incredibly easy here to chill out as every day's a Saturday and there's no pressure on you at all. And all that will end in 24-hours. I still have a few hours left in Sri Lanka which is nice - Katy is currently there but too far away for me to annoy her, plus Luke and Sab will be staying in Negombo about two weeks after I wander around it tomorrow.

Anyway, I can't think of anything else to say. India was brilliant and now I've done it twice I'm never going back (although I'd rather be there for a month instead of London), Sri Lanka was brief but fun, and Thailand has such a seal of approval that I intend my next holiday to be here. People have been incredible and it's been an honour to watch the world walk by or talk to them. I'm so happy here that I actually think my nickname 'The Miserable Whinging Bastard' is finally redundant, although when I think about what I have lined up for me back home, probably starting with flatmate Dave saying "Right, remember that eighty quid you didn't pay me before you left, well there's also...", I feel a moan coming on.

See you all soon.

Ayuthaya

2004-08-28T13:30:00.000+01:00

I have finally moved on after a mammoth 8 night stay in Kanchinaburi and I think I've cheered up. My posts have been somewhat miserable and pitifully self-reflective of late, so I may as well add a new one that's a bit more lively, although not much has happened.

I left Kanchi this morning and not before time as the Jolly Frog guesthouse has all but emptied as the full moon approaches and every traveller with any kind of hedonistic urge heads south for the piss-up (I'm a] leaving the day after from Bangkok so it's cutting it close and b] not exactly in the best financial position to be lashing out on frivolities such as alcohol). Shay the fat Israeli Ali G lookalike was the only guy I really knew left in the whole place and we said goodbye after he invited me to look him up in Israel and I made a point of telling him that that was unlikely. I did however invite him to London, but I knew it won't be taken up as he hated the place. "The people are all mentally deficient", he very tactfully told me, and repeated it again as we said goodbye. Nice bloke during the day though. How anyone can turn from friendly and warm to loud or morose after two beers is anyone's guess, but that was he.

The lovely English girls were also leaving and although I gave them friendly nods and warm smiles when I left my room, I couldn't be bothered to say goodbye at reception as they turned down the opportunity of a lifetime to join me for a drink and a five-some. I liked the atmosphere of Kanchinaburi but it was also getting me down due to my overstay, something I didn't fully grasp until I checked in to Tony's guesthouse in Ayuthaya, the former capital of Thailand. I had spent over three hours on a couple of public buses for about 75 baht all in - about a quid - to get here, and I'm too exhausted to do any sightseeing. It's early evening anyway and I'll probably take the cheesy tour of the Buddhist temples tommorrow night as it's cheap as chips (or 'French Fried' as the menus here have it).

For some reason, all the staff in Tony's are remarkably happy, friendly people. When I pointed at the pool table in the restaurant with my best 'Can I play on your table please?' expression, a grinning Thai approached me to yell happily "It buggered!" It would appear that isn't the only thing either as there was something I wasn't able to place until just now; the staff all seem like ladyboys on their lady day off. In fact, it only dawned on me just now when I threw a beef in oyster sauce meal down my neck, I suddenly noticed a chef and waiter friskily jumping on each other, then turned to my left to see the male receptionist massaging the shoulders of the other male receptionist, both with faraway dreamy looks in their eyes.

I'm now in the Internet Cafe opposite and, well, lets just say you'd love it here Roger. The two young men working here are also extremely friendly and fancy-free and just now, one of the guy's mobiles went off... Da da, Da da, Da da da da!... and my mistake was to think about it and in a fit of over-excitement at having guessed the tune, I turned to repeat the da da's at the guys only to inspire us all to yell 'I love you baby, and if it's quite alright I need you, baby, to warm a lonely night...' until I realised what I was singing and promptly shut up.

I'm beginning to think the whole town's gay, and I've only been here a few hours. I got chatting to a really cute Canadian girl in the restaurant earlier - wedding ring: not evident, mention of boyfriend: not yet - but she did mention her girlfriend and although she could possibly be the pretty one in a rug muncher's duet, I'm still hoping that she meant 'girl friend' in the soppy girly way, but I doubt it. It's all irrelevant though as when I get home, I'm putting my genitals up on eBay (in the auction sense, otherwise that last sentence sounds quite odd).

I've also discovered a minor faux-pas when I gave a now well-honed reverential thank you bow to the young girl who gave me my change earlier - it would appear that that's reserved for the elderly or royalty, which would explain why the kids in Kanchinaburi's 7-11 giggled every time I walked out. I do like Thailand though. There are many Thai's who are simply jaded, especially in the south, as the place is farang tourist central, but when the people are nice, they're fantastic. The children are gorgeous - yes, I'm actually getting broody - and everyone really does smile a lot, even if some of the wiry muscular blokes look like real shitkickers when they're going about their daily business and not smiling. I never realised how Chinese people can look too, but darker, unsurprising as people settled Thailand from southern China which I find interesting anyway. I haven't seen any Siamese cats though, or Siamese twins (Note for my sister and Rachel: Siam is the former name of Thailand.) 'The King and I' was set here, although it's not a popular movie for its somewhat racist portrayal of the king - unsurprising as he's venerated almost as a god (Ek in the 'No Name Bar' said he'd die for him) and there are portraits of the big guy and his wife everywhere. In fact, I was rather shocked to see Mrs Queen on TV recently looking quite portly and elderly - all the pictures at roadsides and in just about every shop depict a rather attractive and glamorous woman - although it would now appear that only younger pictures are used in public. I was actually quite shocked when I saw the King and Her on telly as they both looked doddery and bewildered as every image I had seen up until then had been quite the contrary. God knows what will happen when the inevitable happens - decades of mourning probably. For some reason, there are also many many portraits of Rama V, the current King's Great-Great Grandfather everywhere too, the equivalent of us venerating Queen Victoria back home. Again, I find this interesting, so I'll stop now.

I don't have much else to add. I'll stay in Ayuthaya for two days or maybe three, leaving me with just the one day in Bangkok to see how much cash I have left to buy some fake police sunglasses seeing as I left my last pair on a railing at a hot spring near Burma. I just hope I have enough to at least get myself a cheap hotel for my overnight stay in Sri Lanka and my flight back to London where I intend to write for a living never to work in a soulless office again where my immense intellect and talent won't be appreciated. Hello former Edexcel colleagues if you read this or even remember me. I was the bloke in the corner who always turned up late, never did any work and pissed you all off. And hello DL and the Schuring woman if you're about too. I'm coming back to bug you all, and that goes double for Sophia, Karla and Caspar who've been eerily silent since I left. You're all gonna get a nice thick slice of Me Pie.

Random update

2004-08-26T09:30:00.000+01:00

I'm still in Kanchanaburi as it's a cheap, pleasant place to while away some time. I'm staying at a guesthouse called the Jolly Frog which is perfect as there's a communal and very popular restaurant, and my room overlooks the River Kwai, which is nice. There's a constant stream of travellers coming and going and I've met some great people; Dan from Wolverhampton, Shay the unstereotypically friendly Israeli, Luke and Mark from Gloucestershire, Fiona and Miriam from Reading, and a bunch of lovely English girls I don't want to talk about in case I jinx anything.

I went on a cheap tour a few days ago to a waterfall and hot springs where I met Kelly and her boyfriend Gideon the ginger Jew from Edgware, who's currently studying Media at Bournemouth University, and I've had to force myself to stop visiting the No Name Bar up the road as I'm now on first name terms with the English owners and all of the regulars.

As already mentioned, there have been a few financial difficulties over the last week or so which has soured the already unpleasant feeling of being robbed a fortnight earlier, and so I am wrapping up this trip with more than a little eagerness although it has been great. Tomorrow, I'm planning a trip to the former Thai capital for a couple of days before returning to Bangkok where most of the travellers will have left as the Full Moon Party will be cranking up in Hat Rin on Ko Pha Ngan island down south, so that's that. Kanchanaburi has been a great place to stay put as it's cheaper than most places and friendly to boot, plus I've lost the will to up sticks and move around anyway. On 31st August, I fly back out to Sri Lanka where I will not be extending my trip, then I face a 12 hour wait til my flight to Heathrow - after presumably sleeping on Colombo airport's fairly clean floor and getting my rucksack stolen - and will be returning to Willesden Green some time around 9pm on Wednesday September 1st. I fully expect to return to a ticker tape parade in a Melrose Avenue thronged with crowds of cheering people, crying women and brass bands. If not, flatmate Dave will get an ear-bashing for not arranging it.

Some bastard in Britain is nicking my money

2004-08-24T07:40:00.000+01:00

It's official, now Next directory has made a 200 pound debit from my account. As I told Abbey National that I cannot have my card declared stolen as it's my only lifeline out here (and thus, they can wash their hands of me), I have potentially lost for good nearly 600 pounds due to some weasle-eyed little slag going on a spending spree with my number.

I am going to phone Abbey now and suppose I have to get my card declared stolen after all as I now have 20 quid to last me a week - unless more money leaves my bank, and my guess is that it will. Can someone send me a Western Union transfer please? Sorry.

This is clearly bad karma for mocking a larger lady, and calling my bank an ineffectual bunch of tossmonkeys when someone really was nicking my cash. I'm being perfectly calm and reasonable but feel pretty hard done by and despite having had the time of my life, I wouldn't actually mind being on a plane to Heathrow right about now, mainly so I can wrap an iron bar around whoever has my card number.

I think in a past life I must have been Hitler.

"What have I done?"

2004-08-21T21:03:00.000+01:00

is of course Alex Guinness's last words in the film 'The Bridge On The River Kwai', loosely based on the true story of Allied POWs forced by the Japanese to build the Bangkok-Rangoon railway bridge over the Kwai river in the Burma-Thailand jungle, and I crossed that same bridge yesterday afternoon. I am in Kanchanaburi, a nice little town a few hours drive from Bangkok.

Back in the city, I had a pleasant few days wandering around the Khao San road (again) and generally getting hot, although it did rain every day and bloody heavily, but I did get to watch Fahrenheit 911 at a nearby bar even though it left me suitably angry and pissed off at the world. I got to chat to random Americans afterwards, the travelling variety being much nicer liberal people than the flag-waving mob-mentality psychos they have back home. I then decided to nip into Shamrocks bar to listen to the live bands when I got the biggest shock of my life.

About three years ago when I went to India with Jason, we had nipped into a bar in Dharmsala in the north of the country, the home of the Tibetan government in exile, and where the Dalai Lama had driven past us in his Merc earlier that day. As we sat there idly chatting that evening, a girl appeared from nowhere and asked me if I had gone to Bournemouth University like her. She had recognized me six years after I had left there, and it was a bizarre coincidence. A couple of days ago, as I sat in Shamrocks in Bangkok, idly watching some Thai men belt out surfer rock anthems, the same girl walked up to me and said "What are you doing here?"

Natalie was really sweet company, and it was quite surreal to be chatting like old friends, based mainly on the fact that we had hardly spoken to each other in India and now we had the chance to catch up. To my romantic mind, this was undeniably kismet, a fate that had long ago sealed our lives as intrinsically wound up in each other no matter what we did or where we went, and even now it astonishes me that we just bumped into each other like that. Regretfully though, she's an elephant. I think she'd put on a stone in weight for every year since I last saw her, and she disconcertingly looked like and ex of mine and my cousin Roslyn, which was plain odd. She also had the largest breasts I've ever seen on a mammal, although they were probably bigger than normal due to her size, and I couldn't help thinking that if mens' penises grew the more weight they'd gained, the Earth would implode under the strain of all that excess weight.

The next morning, I had a huge argument with an evil, bitter, farang-hating bitch at the reception desk because I lost the receipt for my key deposit. Not the key mind you, just a slip of paper telling me I'd given them 500 baht. This woman, who had treated me like trash when I'd first moved in, just snapped "No receip', no money"at me, which was slightly galling as I'd switched hotels to save cash, not give it away. I tried to stay calm, telling her quite reasonably that I had only checked in 24 hours previously and she had been the one who checked me in and took my 500 baht, but she wasn't interested without a receipt. I then tried to blackmail her, waving the key in her face and saying "No money, no key" but she yelled "I don' care, key 15 baaat, you lose 500". I then tried to explain that I was a customer and this treatment was totally uncalled for, but I was hardly in the Hilton and she seemed to be relishing her moment of power, so I went back to my ex-room to look for a slip of paper I knew no longer existed. When I returned three and a half minutes later, I was a picture of subserviance although I refused her command to hand the key over until I saw a 500 note.After slagging me off in Thai to the other members of staff, she grudgingly put the money on the table and that's when I had my moment of revenge, maturely snatching the note, throwing the key on the desk, and level-headedly yelling, "Thank you ever so much for handing back my deposit, you miserable fucking cow" loud enough to cheer me up and shock the Swedes next to me. I do like the Thais, but when they're unpleasant, they're horrible.

In an effort to meet the world's most difficult nationalities, I grabbed a schnitzel at the Israeli cafe down the road where the Thai staff are surly and miserable after years of dealing with surly and miserable Israelis, and chanced my luck at the city bus station where I grabbed one to Kanchanaburi. It's quite a pleasant little town, and strange in the respect that twenty minutes up the road is a little bridge that crosses the River Kwai, made famous in the film of a similar name based loosely on the events of WWII. I won't go into details (although that's mainly for the benefit of my sister and Rachel), but the Japanese weren't very nice to the western prisoners of war here. It was quite strange walking up to the bridge and seeing Japanese tourists grinning as they posed next to a couple of defused bombs that fringe the entrance to the bridge, but at least this time they're armed with cameras and smiles as opposed to guns and their ridiculous Samurai code that considered POWs lower than dogs because they didn't have the decency to kill themselves instead of being captured. I got quite choked up at the nearby allied cemetary; it's one of about three around here and wasn't particularly big, but they had crammed the guys in, many of whom were "Known only unto god". The thing that got to me though were the sixty year old declarations of love from the living to the dead, a series of 'my beloved son/ husband/ brother' and 'we miss your smile' that by the end of it, I was a bit of a wreck, so I went to the Death Railway museum which was more informative and less morbid than it sounds.

I've been asking some local guys what they think about the Japanese, and one guy said he hated them, while another admitted that they've never been taught what they did during the war which is why they wander around Kanchanaburi smiling and taking pictures and presumably saying "How interesting" in Japanese. Sixty years ago, they were starving POWs, and simply not paying the Thai, Chinese and Burmese labourers to build their Thai-Burmese railway, forcing people on huge marches, sleeping them in insect infested bamboo huts and working them to death. Even the totally emaciated walking skeletons were considered fit for bone-crushing work if they could just about stand. Ironically, it was only when they were dead that the Japanese finally treated them with respect, and there were a hell of a lot of dead to pay respects to. In getting the railway line built at breakneck speed, the Japanese managed to kill 16,000 POWs, mostly British, Dutch, Australians and Americans, and about 100,000 conscripted Asian labourers.

Despite its history, it's a nice town. There is a local I go to here full of ex-pats, which isn't as bad as it sounds. They've been showing the Bridge on the River Kwai every night for about five years so I popped in yesterday to watch it. The sign said 6.30pm so I got there on time but the TV was off as I was the only customer, so I walked over to Ek, the Thai guy who works there, and asked him if he could put it on, and he replied simply, "Oh fucking 'ell".
Every so often I caught sight of him mumbling "Jolly good show!' seconds before Jack Hawkins said it on the telly. I think it's sending him mad.

Back in Bangkok...

2004-08-18T09:50:00.000+01:00

again. I've moved out of the D&D Inn on Khao San Road as I was slowly going through every one of their rentable rooms plus it's too expensive, so I've tracked down a mattress in a nice cell for 300 baht less than I had been paying. There's no en suite this time though, just shared showers with a toilet in each cubicle - or should that be a toilet with a shower in each cubicle?

Anyway, I was pleased to be getting out of Hua Hin with its middle-aged sex tourists and older British and German couples with small children, and back to the 'Kok (hmm, I'm not sure I like how that abbreviated.) Dump though it was, it's a shame that Hua Hin was typified by ABBEY NATIONAL BEING A BUNCH OF USELESS AND INEFFECTUAL TOSSERS, but at least I got to speak to someone after a day of emailing my hotel number to them, even if the Visa representative I spoke to was a complete jobsworth. Apparently, this 200 pound transaction to a company I know nothing about has to declared 'fraudulent' and my card has to be declared stolen. If that happens, I may as well sleep on the beach and dine on whatever I can find from bins, although the daft cow from visa disputes didn't quite seem to understand why on earth I would refuse to go along with company procedure. I tried to explain without swearing how I couldn't care less about procedure so long as I got my money back but she didn't see it that way, adding with more than a little impatience that if I refused to have my card declared stolen, any further money that Telewest Online took from my account would be tough, as I wouldn't get it back. None of this concerns me of course. If anyone is stupid enough to take any more money from my account, I will embark on the Mother of all Vendettas. That, and the fact that in my initial angry emails to Abbey, I correctly guessed the email address of the backwards name-sounding Luqman Arnold, the Chief Executive of Abbey National, whose PA astonishingly promised he'd get back to me.
I think I get my anger and well-honed sense of injustice from my Mum.

From Hua Hin, I took a local bus up the coast to the capital, drinking gallons of water all the way, although I was in considerable pain by midday as I needed the bathroom beyond belief. I was overjoyed therefore to see a woman return to her seat in front of me from the rear of the coach and sure enough when I looked around, there was the toilet. Trouble was, when I got there, the door wouldn't shut properly enough for me to get the job done, and it was going to be a lengthy job, so after much fannying about, I was able to be understood enough to get a member of the coach team to lean on the door, allowing me to lock it from the inside. Even better was despite all the efforts of the Thai Stirling Moss behind the wheel, I was able to leave the asphixiating dark unit with my conscience and trousers clean and noticed as I left, the woman from earlier patiently waiting outside for her turn. She hadn't been able to go last time because of the door, and now it was my time to do some leaning so she could lock it.

I was a bit bemused ten minutes later when, from my seat, I became vaguely aware of pounding even over the music I was listening to on my headphones. I took them out of my ears and heard the unmistakable sound of a woman frantically banging on a coach toilet door to be rescued. As I turned round I saw a sea of grinning people much nearer the toilet than I, none of whom seem bothered about actually helping - for some reason, that was supposed to be down to me, so I stumbled to the back of the coach and let the angry woman out. 'Grateful' is hardly the word I'd ascribe to her - fucked off would perhaps be more accurate - and some of the grinning passengers exchanged some words with her as she answered while shooting me a filthy look. For some reason, I'm pretty sure her reply to them wasn't "Why didn't you bastards let me out?" as I know it would've been mine.

As soon as I checked in to my hotel in Bangkok, I made for my STA travel representative to get an early flight home, the upshot of which being... I can't get an earlier flight home. After the woman had done all her checking and I asked her to try some more variants, it became apparent that I can't change flights without a significant cash outlay, and considering that I'm only trying to get home in order to save money, it kind of defeats the purpose. I was initially panicky, gabbling at the woman that I had money stolen and I've been spending too much cash and I have to get back for Jamie's 31st (guess which one I didn't actually say), only to get the weirdest response; she just sat back and grinned. Sensing a dead end, I tried upping my panickiness some more and added some arm flailing for effect, but she just grinned harder and went mute, so I thanked her for smiling and got a cab back to Khao San. Recalling something I read about Thais, I found a passage in my guidebook about 'Saving Face'. Apparently, the most important social aspect for Thais is the ability to avoid confrontation and embarrassing situations, unless it's fun to do so. This would explain, albeit bizarrely, why as I became very farang-like and loud, she grinned in response. It's the Thai way of defusing the situation - not actually helping, but smiling politely. It's also one of the sources of the famous Thai smile as most of the time they're presumably thinking through clenched teeth, "Oh shit, this is awkward".

So that's that. I'm taking my time now, firstly as it's bloody hot, and secondly because I have two weeks left and a few places I want to see - plus I don't want to go too far out because of the cash situation, so I've earmarked Kanchanaburi, home of the famous Bridge on the River Kwai (also known as the Death Railway) where thousands of Allied POWs and Thais died back when the Japanese were vicious racist maniacs, before their interest in home electronics and strange television shows, so that'll be fun. After that I'm planning on visiting Ayutthaya, the former Thai capital and Unesco World Heritage site, which sounds nice. And lets not forget budget, budget accommodation, the cheapest meals around, and no more presents for anyone, hooray!

Angry email to ineffectual tossmonkeys

2004-08-16T11:24:00.001+01:00

Right, I'll be brief. I am in Thailand on holiday and thankfully checked my account this morning. It would appear that two transactions leapt from my dwindling funds to go to TELEWEST ONLINE - whoever the hell they are - on the 8th and 10th August, one for 150 quid and another for 50. This is now the THIRD time you have very kindly paid for another customers bill with my money and as you may possibly appreciate, I don't like it, especially considering a recent theft from my sodding rucksack. I am now left with 70 pounds thanks to you geniuses.

As soon as I discovered this withdrawal (I wonder how many I've missed over the years?) I phoned your freephone number from Thailand - not free from here of course - where a nice lady from Bangalore told me that their computers were down and to try back later. This is unsurprising considering I was in India a few weeks ago and power cuts are fairly common but hey, if you must take advantage of cheap labour in a developing country, then go expand that juicy profit margin. When I did call back a couple of hours later, the line was constantly busy with an automated voice telling me to wait in the queue, but I don't have 20 minutes to wait when I'm at a callbox using a Thai phonecard, do I?

Therefore, I have to send this email to as many Abbey addresses as I can. You are a hair's breadth away from completely screwing up my temporary respite from the London rat race and I need that money as it's all I have left.

If you haven't already noticed, and I don't suspect that you have, I am absolutely livid. I have been with you since I was eight years old, so that's 22 ineffectual years, and I promise you that once this is sorted, you can kiss my paltry paycheck goodbye. That'll teach you. You'll probably go under in a week.

Therefore, I DEMAND THAT YOU RETURN THIS MONEY TO MY ACCOUNT IMMEDIATELY AS IF I END UP SLEEPING ON A BEACH FOR A FORTNIGHT AND RELYING ON HANDOUTS FROM LOCALS, I SWEAR IN THE NAME OF ALL THAT'S HOLY THAT AS SOON AS I GET HOME I WILL HEAD FOR PRESCOTT STREET AND KILL EVERY LAST ONE OF YOU.

Abbey National are a bunch of ineffectual tossmonkeys

2004-08-16T07:50:00.000+01:00

I really don't want to write a moody post when everyone's at work on a Monday morning and I'm on holiday in searing temperatures, but I'm really being tested and it's taking all my willpower not to go on the rampage.

I am now in Hua Hin on the east coast of Thailand, about four hours south of Bangkok. It's an interesting place, more of a coastal resort for Thais my guidebook said, but I no longer believe what it tells me. I left Ko Tao island yesterday morning having met the girl who knows Rob Reynolds again, and her friend who used to work with Rob Reynolds, so that was interesting. We boarded the ferry and I spent about two hours looking at the sea and getting wet while my hair was blown into a ginger afro and I got burnt because I didn't feel it thanks to the sea breeze made stronger by our motion. After docking at the relatively odd port of Chumphon where Thai fishermen actually stare at you - no tourists actually stay there as it's a hole - most people boarded the Bangkok-bound bus, although I got to leave half way while the majority stayed on for the duration. I mean, what is the point of travelling if you're not going to explore the country and just travel from one big destination to another? Anyway, I was hardly being adventurous as the first signs of life I saw in Hua Hin from the bus window were white ones, as middle-aged tourists plodded around in bad shorts.

After checking in to a hotel, I wasn't sure what to make of the town. If Ko Tao and Ko Pha Ngan were packed to the gills with young travellers strolling around with their tops off, Hua Hin is home to the fatter, older, balder Englishman or German, slightly craggy and slightly pissed, and each deserted bar has at least one, boring the young bargirls who are there to keep them flattered. In fact, there is a tiny girlie bar street here that I accidentally ambled down, realising where I was when girls outside each one yelled at me that they 'loved me long time' and tried to get me inside, but I managed to resist and went for a fish supper at a German owned restaurant instead. I got talking to a young English couple - well, the wife started chatting to me while the husband went mute and refused to join in, with a look on his bored face that said 'Christ, she's at it again'. I mentioned my travelling and that I had money nicked, and she got me a beer on them which was tremendously embarrassing as her husband silently registered his shock and disgust at becoming my benefactor. When they left, she ran over and slammed a 100 baht note on the table and said 'Get yourself breakfast tomorrow'. I tried to tell her it wasn't necessary but she was having none of it, saying 'Remember the Essex girl!' as she left. I would've loved to have known what the guy made of all this and if the look on his face was anything to go by, it was going to be 'an argument' once they got back to their hotel room.

I was bowled over by her generosity and phenomenally embarrassed as I didn't feel worthy of a beer and breakfast from anyone, but it filled me with an incredible love for people as I skipped down to a bar where I grabbed a water and nearly beat a moody rickshaw driver at pool. I didn't stick around though as the near empty place with its miserable Irish owner depressed me, even if Chelsea had just scored against Man U at that stage. (The day before in Ko Tao, I caught the entire Spurs-Liverpool game - bad start Phil - although I did get funny looks when I was the only one cheering Tottenham's second goal. I didn't realise I was watching a replay of their first and only one, so I made a mental note never to watch football in public again.) I ended last night going back to my hotel where the only thing on telly was 'The Killing Fields', a rather bleak film about the Khmer Rouge coming to power in 70s Cambodia, with lots of Thai-looking men pointing guns at westerners.

This morning, I bought a bus ticket to Bangkok for tomorrow - I have to sort out my flight home although regrettably I have two to change, my Bangkok to Sri Lanka flight and Sri Lanka to London, so I really can't see the likelihood of all this. And earlier, I thought I'd check my bank account online. For some reason, I have only 70 quid to last me two-and-a-half weeks, and that is because those useless ineffectual fuckbuckets at Abbey National have deducted 200 pounds to go to a company I've never heard of called Telewest Online. It's not the first time they've taken money from me mistakenly - I believe this is number three or four - so I'll be calling India from Thailand via Britain to scream at a well spoken woman from Bangalore as Abbey National now routes all its calls to Asia. I think I'll switch to Halifax or HSBC after 22 years of banking with a bunch of retards who charge me a small fortune for getting overdrawn because they use my money to pay for other people's card purchases (That, and I spend quite a bit).

Of course, there's an outside possibility that my card number's been clocked over here and used to pay Telewest Online, but I absolutely refuse to entertain the notion that another 200 pounds has been stolen from me. Hopefully by the end of today, this cash problem will have been resolved and by this time tomorrow, I'll have my flight sorted out too which is great as I really can't wait to get back to London and get myself a rewarding and fulfilling job going blind in front of a monitor for eight hours a day and wishing I was in Thailand. I'm also looking forward with trembling anticipation to the long and detailed discussion with flatmates Luke and Dave about how much in back rent and bills I owe from my tremendous cash reserves of nil.

In the meantime, on the first Saturday night of my return, I intend to go to School Disco for a highbrow evening of culture and entertainment to honour my early yet unavoidable return to the stinking rat-race of dead-end jobs and work appraisals that contain the words 'surly', 'consistantly late' and 'eventual dismissal'. Everyone's invited and it'll only cost you a drink that'll go to me. And my admission. And the taxi back to Willesden. And probably the unpleasantness of seeing me stare morosely into the middle distance as I sit mutely in the corner of a cattle-market with a schoolcap on my head and a warm Bacardi Breezer in my hand to the accompaniment of 'Come on bloody Eileen' as I ponder the inexorable futility of life, then get a second wind and start dancing to 'Wham!', ending up in a taxi repeating 'Where did it all go wrong?' then falling asleep in front of a trashy weekend tv programme about saggy old German couples who are into spanking and wearing rubber.

Right, a few more hours to kill until I speak to Abbey National's Indian call centre as when I last tried, the computers in Bangalore had crashed and I was told to call back in two hours.
I love cost-cutting multinational companies who exploit the developing world while providing a less reliable service to their customers.

Scars and Gripes

2004-08-14T10:08:00.000+01:00

Right, Dave went back home a couple of hours ago and I'm ashamed to say I feel a bit lost. I was doing fine traipsing around Asia on my own before he turned up and we had a good time, and now I'm back to being pretty much mute unless I'm speaking with hoteliers or waitresses. And to top it all off, I checked my bank account - I'm fucked, basically - and I also received an email from flatmate Luke to say the rent back home's gone up an extra 80 quid a month.

I have decided to leave Ko Tao island so I've bought a ferry and bus ticket back to mainland Thailand to a resort further up the coast, nearer Bangkok. As much as it pains me to do so, I will have to go to my travel representative over here and see if I can get an earlier flight home. I can't take the risk of running out of money so that's me absolutely gutted.

Ko Tao is odd. It's a tiny island and most people scoot around on bikes. Farang seem to outnumber the locals, which adds to the incongruousness of it all, and even weirder, most of them appear to have burnt their right ankle on the steaming exhausts of the bikes, so every other traveller has a bandage round their leg. On closer examination, most have several mosquito bites and various scratches, so god only knows what the Thais think of us. The island is a bit of a diving mecca, so the place attracts my favourite people; arrogant, bare-chested, lip-puckering brow-furrowing manslags of the diver genus, a distant cousin of the Surfer Twat. They can be found strutting down the road with their knuckles dragging behind them, targetting anything in a bikini through the ritual courtship pattern of encircling the female, thrusting out a tanned, tattooed chest and grunting. They congregate in packs like wolves, particularly when there are said females about. Last night was a case in point. Dave and I sat at our resort's beachside dining area next to two young German girls. Neither of us was interested in actually chatting to them as we both admitted afterwards that we'd picked up negative signals when we first sat down (the giveaway for me was the snarling). We waited for the herd to arrive, having spotted a small clan pounce on them earlier that day, and sure enough, one in an Arsenal t-shirt approached first and secured a position next to the girls in the corner, blocking them in and ready to counter any advance from rival males such as Dave and me.

I listened with interest to the diver as he was barely able to articulate coherent sentences, creating long periods of silence to my right. I tried to help out by striking up a conversation about his football allegiance, but he was having none of it, presumably recognising it as a ploy to muscle in to his territory. Eventually, his mates arrived, a fat Italian and an albino with dreads, and completely hemmed the Germans in, ironically, I thought, in a Pincer Movement. Soon, everyone was chatting among themselves and it amused me to think that no-one gives a fuck who you are or what your name is unless you have breasts, something I shouted possibly a bit too loudly to Dave when a guy wandered over and asked the girls their name, while we were invisible that night. I got bored and a little annoyed at this pathetic display of men trying to get laid, plus I wasn't allowed near enough to try my own luck anyway, so we headed off to a bar on the other side of the island where we got talking to an English girl who just so happens to know a mate of mine back home.

Today, I checked in to a hotel in the town centre, having first tried a dive school with their own apartments. I was a bit aggrieved to see a tanned white diver with a square jaw approach from reception, and I was further bored to see him do what I fully expected, potter around the desk in slow motion, look in every conceivable direction except at me, and finally stop completely and look nonchalantly into the middle distance while squinting to give the very clear signal that he's so damn cool and I'm so unimportant that he can actually do absolutely nothing and I'd still have to wait. The only reason that I didn't walk out is that I was rather amused to watch him do exactly what I thought he would. Eventually, he drawled out a bored customer orientated 'Yeah?', so I asked for a room and was told with a fair degree of gloating that they only cater to divers so I left, mentally adding 'The Diving Fraternity' to my list of people I want to cull.

And that's all I can be bothered to say. I'm damned if I'm going to spend any longer in this internet cafe. I'm running out of cash and I've got to cut my holiday short so I can be afforded the pleasure of finding myself a spirit-crushing job in London. Oh well, it's a gorgeous if preposterously hot early evening, so I may as well make the most of it.

Island hopping

2004-08-12T15:44:00.000+01:00

Dave and I are now in Ko Tao, a tiny little island in the Gulf of Thailand, just taking things easy. He only has a mere two nights left before he returns to Bangkok and Blighty which seems remarkably quick, so we're steeling ourselves for 'The Big One' tomorrow night. We left Ko Samui, the main island to the east of the country a couple of nights back, having spent three nice days discovering thefts, getting my jaw x-rayed by Dr. Jimmy and watching the painfully slow yet blossoming liaison between Dave and Moon the bargirl. It lifted my spirits to see my old mate pull a cute girl I had my eye on, and I smiled a wry smile to myself as I did my own thing in the evenings when they disappeared for the night - mainly sighing and saying "No I don't think I'll have a special Thai massage" to Nanny the aggressive ladyboy. On the plus side, I did discover I can do reasonable cartwheels on the beach on our last night, and chatted to some German girls who seemed quite pleased for me to bug them, which makes a pleasant change.

The following morning, we took a ferry from Samui to Ko Pha Ngan, the middle island of the big three inhabited ones, and stayed in Hat Rin, home of the infamous Full Moon parties. Sadly, it being the 10th, we had missed it but keen to cash in on the traveller's Baht, the locals hold half-moon parties and even a new moon party in the middle of the month when, erm, you can't see it. Unfortunately, we had arrived in between a full and half moon period, so there was no specific party, but there was one hell of an atmosphere. The place was full of farang, most of the people there were Westerners in fact, and Hat Rin itself was buzzing, if a little quiet. It is situated in the southeast of the island, on a beachy peninsula. The western side is called Sunrise Beach and a short walk on the other side is Sunset Beach, so you get the idea of how to spend an evening. We wandered down to Sunrise and were immediately confronted by a string of beachside bars, neon lights and pounding house, and into a guy throwing a flaming pole around his head. We eventually settled down on a rug in the sand and bought a 'bucket' of vodka, coke and redbull. Sandcastle sized buckets are sold everywhere, with bottles and cans sitting in them until you pay about two pounds 50 and they crack everything open and chuck it in the bucket with ice and some straws. We had three of them, so it was hardly surprising that I ended up with my top off dancing in the sand - bloody well, I thought - although this was not an opinion shared by the girls I was dancing next to.
I wanted to stay up all night, but Dave got quite rightly upset when men turned up with baby monkeys around their necks and a gang from Leeds got all excited and had their pictures taken with them, so we wandered off and called it a night.

I felt absolutely terrible this morning as we took another ferry to Pha Ngan, a much smaller, quieter island than the others, and after a huge argument, Dave and I ended up at an overpriced bungalow with families and couples in the back of beyond. Nevertheless it is pretty damn beautiful, a small bay all to ourselves (and the other more intimate couples), with stunningly clear turquoise waters barely hiding a small coral reef. We went snorkeling when we got here - I've never done that before - and was surprised to see how near scores of strange coloured fish were to the shore. They're inquisitive little bastards too, coming right up to you and banging into your goggles while you muffle a scream because your wisdom-teeth pained mouth has a snorkel in it. And that's been pretty much it. I'm considering getting an early flight home because I daren't get dental surgery here, I'm in further pain from using an old pair of swimming trunks with that lousy rough lining that I'm convinced has left me unable to father children, and I'm badly running out of cash, mainly due to my huge donation to the Thieving Bastards of Phuket Charity. Nevertheless, I am definitely coming back to Thailand. The people here are wonderfully friendly and cheeky, the scenery is stunning, the weather beautiful, and I'm surprised that the country isn't overrun with any more tourists as there's everything here that anyone can want.

It is with some reluctance therefore that I have to go home and sort my life out. It certainly needs it. I'm considering filling up my condoms with water and chucking them at people. I have no use for them otherwise.

Random whinging

2004-08-10T06:56:00.000+01:00

...because it seems to cheer people up when I moan, plus it helps me offload.

1/ I am sick to death of being pale. Apparently I'm Jewish yet I look more Scottish or Scandinavian so I'd fit in well at a Nazi rally.
2/ I sweat more than Michael Jackson thumbing through an Early Learning Centre catalogue. This is a byproduct of being pale as my body overheats immediately even though I don't necessarily feel in dire need of cooling down. In the documentary 'Anatomy of Disgust', sweating was listed as the third most repulsive sight after blood and pus. Therefore when I walk down the street dripping profusely, only a heavily bleeding man or someone with weeping sores would divert the filthy looks.
3/ On a hike recently, one of the guides told me that he'd never seen anyone sweat as much as me, and he's been taking westerners on treks almost daily for years.
4/ Even female walking bottles of Tipp-ex would pass on a romantic dinner with me. Probably a good thing; I drop most of the food all over the table.
5/ I inherited my freak colouring from my Romanian Great-Grandfather. He couldn't pronounce yacht properly, and he can currently be found haunting a pet shop in Bournemouth.
6/ According to fashion 'experts', the only colour suited to my complexion is green, bloody green.
7/ My attempts to flirt with the gorgeous bargirl last night were hampered by the fact that I started sweating when we played darts, plus Dave was doing significantly better breaking the language barrier as he jumped up and down like an exciteable chimpanzee which she remarkably found endearing. I, however, was not without my admirers. Yet another fucking ladyboy has taken a shine to me, and I was getting randomly stroked all night. Sadly, she works at this internet cafe too, and I had to spend five minutes just now refusing a massage and a drink with her/ him/ it later. Her cheekbones are so high she looks like a Klingon.
8/ And the gorgeous bargirl largely ignored me when I got here too, dammit.
9/ My relatives are all darker and swarthier than me, although my Dad can't remember what colour hair he used to have (back in the days when he had some).
10/ Sample example: I woke up this morning, had a shower and breakfast, and walked along the beach for a matter of yards. Because of this little stroll, I had to go back to our hut for another shower and even change clothes. I then took our motorbikes back, so hardly any walking there, but still had to go back for a third shower when I returned. I am now in an air-conditioned internet cafe. I full expect to have shower number four soon, especially when I have to run past Nanny the aggressive-looking ladyboy who is convinced that I think she's a woman.
11/ I hate Italians.
12/ That bloody ladyboy has just come in and demanded I go to her room for a full massage at 2 o'clock, forcing me to do as much as I can on the Internet in the hope that she'll think I'm busy. And when she left just now, I turned around only to find her staring at me, which meant I had to give her a sheepish nod back. Now she thinks I fancy her. Fucking hell.
13/ I'm on more drugs than Elton John during his flamboyant years. I'm taking a course of antibiotics, painkillers, mosquito pills and Tesco's 1-a-day multivitamins. Followed by crack for dessert. As a result, I can't drink alcohol and wash away the pain of my general existence.
14/ In the reflection of my monitor, I can see the waif-like figure of Nanny the ladyboy flitting outside the computer room. I am going to kill the cute barmaid as I had attempted a chat with her earlier where I told her to get Nanny to back off. God knows what she then said to her, as that's what compelled Nanny to arrange a date with me at 2pm.
15/ Why didn't I pay 30 quid more and get proper travel insurance? I'm tempted to get my legs broken to make it worthwhile.
16/ Ugh, I've just had my shoulders massaged by a transvestite.
17/ No matter how hard I try, I'm just not good at pool. I did win one game last night, but that was against a girl with no arms, and it took me two-and-a-half hours.
18/ My hair looks really, really shit.

On the plus side: I saw Brad Pitt in Berlin and I'm taller than him. I am also island hopping in Thailand and it's gorgeous. Enjoy work, everyone! Right, I'm off for a drag-queen avoiding shower.

The world is a stinking cesspit of pain and bastards

2004-08-09T07:35:00.000+01:00

There is no god. Life is just one big cosmic accident with no reason, purpose or sense. And if I'm wrong and those ancient supersticious cavemen were right and there is a higher being, She fucking hates me.

After my near ladyboy-pulling episode, Dave and I went our seperate ways to scoot aound Chiang Mai on our bikes, he to the zoo to see his relatives, and me to the night market which clearly wasn't open during the day. That afternoon, being the International jetsetters that we are, we got a couple of planes from Chiang Mai to Bangkok then Bangkok to Phuket in the south, arriving late in the day as we'd had to wait about five hours between flights. The entirety of our time in Phuket was spent being bored shitless in what can only be described as the Costa Del Thai, a soulless strip of loud bars and tattooed farangs waddling past tuk-tuk touts and market traders. Added to that was the highest concentration of fat, white-haired, middle-aged European men with slender young Thai girlfriends we'd seen, a sight that gets more and more disturbing with each noticing. The afternoon was spent shopping for pirate dvds followed by cliched frisbee throwing on the beach that we vowed we'd do when Dave first said he'd join me. After a rip-off meal at a tourist joint, we had a strangely downbeat beer on the empty beach. Phuket was pretty grim. Fortunately, we were leaving the next day.

Unfortunately, I'm living though Teeth Disaster #2 as for no reason and in no way connected to my teeth whitening escapade, a wisdom tooth has decided to make a forceful appearance about 12 years later than most normal people's gums. I woke yesterday morning in phenomenal pain as a continual dull throb gnawed away at the back of my jaw, making it hard to talk, eat, or even open my mouth. It also didn't help that for some reason, perhaps a combination of trying to smoke through Thailand's cigarette surplus and sleeping semi-naked in air-conditioned rooms, I now have a constricted red-raw throat that makes swallowing a tad unpleasant. Razorblades for breakfast would be more preferrable to simply breathing at the moment.

And now for the really fun bit...

We woke up early and both spaced, with me more than a little unbearable thanks to having a redundant mouth and no sleep due to Dave's snoring. We checked out of our hotel and waited for a taxi to drive us to a minicab to take us from west Thailand to Surat Thani in the east where we boarded a coach that took us to the ferry which brought us here, Ko Samui island. It was all just about bearable, except I was acting like Genghis Khan with toothache, ripping in to Dave when we had a difference of opinion on hotel requirements as I generally found it rather hard to stop thinking about the vice-like swelling in my mouth. There was also a cute blonde girl who kept appearing at various stops along the journey, although my attempts to smile casually at her looked more like I was wincing on the toilet, so I stopped.

We eventually docked at Ko Samui island yesterday afernoon, having travelled there in mood-altering high winds and rain, and found a pharmacy where I reluctantly bought some bonjela and throat lozenges, then checked in to a hotel on one of the quieter, non Phucket-like beaches. It's a shed with two beds and an asbestos roof. After a badly needed nap, I woke and showered and decided to track Dave down, so I grabbed my travel wallet to get a few notes for the night. Hmm, strange, my stash wasn't there. I had got out 10,000 baht (135 pounds) the night before as I needed more cash. I searched my bags for a while then decided 60/40 that I had mislaid it as opposed to it being stolen, so I wandered off to get dinner with Dave. As I sat there and told him about it, the awful truth suddenly dawned on me; I've had with me for a month and a half an emergency 50 pounds and 20 dollars kept in the same wallet where I put my baht, and if that had gone too, it's because some lowlife scumbag had stolen it, most likely while Dave and I were running after frisbees on the beach with our tongues lolling out of our mouths like dogs. Either that or it was nicked on the coach to the ferry, although my bag was padlocked at that point. Basically, someone at the hotel had taken the key we'd handed in as we headed to the beach with towels under our arms and helped themselves very discreetly, as I didn't notice the theft for at least 24 hours. Dave fortunately didn't lose a thing.

Last night after the discovery was spent in a supisingly upbeat manner - I had resigned myself to my stupidity and reassured myself that this is what insurance was invented for, so we had a few beers (still on Dave, I've yet to pay him back) and chatted to some vacuous early twenty-something British girls before going for a midnight paddle to watch sparkling phosphorescence flicker in the sea like stars - eventually going to bed to pointlessly replay 'Why Didn't I Just....?' scenarios in my head for two hours.
I woke up this morning in considerably more pain that I did yesterday. The anaesthetic properties of Thai lager had helped the night before, but upon waking, I felt as if I had several thorn stems lodged in my aesophagus, just below the golfball with claws that's lodged in my jaw. Deciding to visit the dentist in the town after recording the theft with the Tourist Police, I grabbed my passport and (oh god) insurance small print. In my cheapskate wisdom, I had bought the 'Broken Spines and Hostage-Taking Payout Only' cover, and stared at the column that said 'Loss of Money repayment- Nil'. I twitched my nose, and swallowed. A jarring pain tore though my throat. I squeezed my jaw to ponder. I may as well have punched myself as my gum back screamed in shock. I am now not bothering to see the Police as the insurance won't pay up anyway.
We wandered off for breakfast and I could barely open wide, easing thin slices of banana into the slot I managed to turn my mouth into then slowly masticating the fruit into something soft that could be swallowed - which only hurt anyway.

So that's that. I had been mentally patting myself on my back just a few days ago for being a world-wise travelling genius until some fuckhead decided to waltz into our room and help themself to my cash. Oh how I laughed when I realised that happened a matter of hours after my 10,000 baht top-up. Oh the joy when I realised I'd get it back in insurance, only to discover I'd spent sixty quid on cover that only Terry Waite and John McCarthy would've benefitted from. And oh the pleasure of coming to terms with the fact that I can no longer extend my trip by a week or two back in Sri Lanka - in fact, I may have to cut it short as my depleting funds have been slightly screwed by my kind donation of 200 pounds to a thieving pondlife rat who deserves to die a slow, agonising, guilt-ridden death in pain, misery and Hounslow.

I've been receiving emails from flatmate's Dave and Luke. Apparently there is a fortune in utility bills and more rent to pay since third flatmate Rob left and the rate increased, so as you can imagine, I'm thrilled about the pospect of going back home, back to a fun, fun life; a life where I'm unemployed. And 30. And with a sore upper digestive system. And with no career, financial security, girlfriend, fuure, or decent hair. I even bought an alice band, a fucking alice band, a few days ago in the mistaken belief that my head needed it, but it just makes me look like a cunt.

Please no supportive comments, or even any mention of this again. I have no doubt that I'll make that 200 pounds back once I've paid off all my debts and bills thanks to my exciting office-based position rearranging paperclips with a new bunch of people who hate me because I don't like my job.

What a bunch of arse. I guess I'll be seeing you all in a couple of weeks to complain.

Massaging strangers and pulling locals

2004-08-06T04:31:00.000+01:00

There was a slight twinge in my mouth when a wake-up call came and banged on our door at 7.30 yesterday morning, so I showered and wolfed down a pointlessly quick breakfast. A taxi arrived with my Thai massage teacher and a quiet Japanese lady inside, also there for the course, and we headed to the teacher's house where a third pupil, a middle-aged woman from Malta who looked disconcertingly like my former boss Gail, was waiting. The lesson began with the teacher demonstrating the one-hour massage technique on the compliant Japanese lady, only for me to suffer the ignomany of having to repeat the process on the old Malteser. I had barely set foot in the room when there I was, kneeding her buttocks, and I didn't even know her name.

Lunch was a fairly staid affair with the teacher throwing some strange vegetables into a pot - clearly she didn't like to talk during cooking - leaving me struggling to converse with my new oriental friend (obviously a shy woman even by Japanese standards), while I avoided eye-contact with the Mediterranean whose thighs I'd not long been squeezing. It wasn't long before I found myself pounding the small backside of a demure lady from Hokkaido, and was unfortunately perspiring quite heavily by the time I was manipulating a Malteser's neck, forcing me to leave the room for a cool-down.

I was overjoyed when the day's course was over as I'd picked up all I wanted to (in massage technique) and was eager to leave three quiet women and get back to town. Martha from Malta slipped me her name and address which was nice if odd, and by the time I got back into Chiang Mai, I'd bumped into Dave so we headed off to re-rent motorbikes and pretend that we were in Easy Rider.

We zipped down to the night market where I got to witness Dave's indecision in present buying - he is officially Worse Than Women as even they tend to eventually part with their money for some tat. Dave on the other hand can't quite tell the difference between a Thai stallholder who has finally reached their lowest offer and won't budge, versus one who'd love to continue haggling in a good-humoured way for another hour. At one point I thought he was going to get stabbed - by then, I was hoping he would - when he kept cheerfully elbowing a lady to sell him a lamp, saying "Go on, one hundred, you can do it!" as she got more and more irate, yelling "I tol' you, one fif'y", so I walked away to wait for the massacre that sadly never came.

After grabbing a ruby at a vegetarian Indian joint, we went for a night-time cruise around Chiang Mai on our bikes and by accident happened upon a strange complex of outdoor bars that circled a Thai boxing ring. Apparently we had missed the show which also included females writhing in said ring, so we chatted over a beer and tried to enjoy ourselves amid the cacophony of noise as each - literally - neighbouring bar tried to outdo itself in the loud music stakes. We had headaches from listening to James Brown, Robbie Williams and House all at once, so we went for a quick circuit of the place before bed until we noticed an empty pool table and nipped in for a game. A barmaid racked up for us and Dave surprised me by being good. As a consolation for being beaten, there was a second barmaid who was absolutely gorgeous, similar to the actress Lucy Liu, but rounder and more voluptuous, less angular looking and altogether prettier, so I alternated large chunks of losing at pool to Dave and the other barmaid with trying to catch the eye of Lucy, but she was too cool for me as she smiled indifferently and gave off no real vibes.

Towards the end of the evening, I got to sit next to the bar's enormous fan (no comment) which was fortuitously next to Lucy, and should've been overjoyed when she tentatively started to chat me up. I can say that with impunity, as she definitely batted her brown almond eyes at me and invited me to a nearby disco, but by then I had lost interest and it was all Dave's fault. I say 'fault' but it would be fairer to say that I have Dave to thank. Lucy had asked me a few questions which merely served as a conduit for subtle, admiring glances, and I replied with little sheepish grins. She'd sat down at the bar next to me and rested her cute little chin onto her surprisingly large foreams and pushed the disco option as I shifted uncomfortably. When Dave whispered earlier that evening, 'Mate, I think she's a ladyboy', I snorted derisively. In fact, I laughed the laugh of the seriously flabbergasted. There was absolutely no way that that porcelain-skinned vision of beauty was born with testes, but the bastard had sown the seeds of doubt into my mind. I'd began checking her out discreetly. Hmmm, she was slightly bigger than your average Thai girl. Voluptuous, I thought, but then again those shoulders are pretty broad. And that walk; it's a little contrived. Still, I couldn't be sure. By the time I was sitting next to her though, being asked out by a woman with fucking enormous hands and a disturbingly ambiguous voice, I made a feeble excuse as Dave lost a game to the other barmaid and we got out of there. It was all very disturbing as she really was very very attractive for, erm, a man. Buddha knows what would've happened if it wasn't for Dave's assertation that she was less Lucy, more Brucy. Ugh, the alternate scenarios are too grim to contemplate.

Still, on the plus side, my teeth no longer hurt and they're white.

Chaing Mai

2004-08-04T08:43:00.000+01:00

I am in unbelievable, self-inflicted pain but more on that later. We're still in Chiang Mai having disappeared for a three-day trek into the hills where guides drove a group of us into the back of beyond so we could traipse through streams and romp up muddy paths. I officially sweated three times my own body weight in one afternoon, and after about an hour's walk in humid conditions, not a stitch of clothing on me was dry. In fact, I wanted to burn my shirt at the first village we got to as some kind of offering to the gods but the head guide wouldn't let me. We'd been walking for around four hours as we approached the Karen tribe village via a practically vertical mud precipice. Everyone breathed a sigh of relief when we saw the bamboo framed huts, all of us feeling pretty worn out. Even Dave was damp and unpleasant looking (more so), although I had the added bonus of looking like I'd just climbed fully-clothed out of a swimming pool and was close to death. I had even managed to tear my shirt to ribbons as if it was wet paper before we were greeted by tribespeople selling trinkets.

Our first night was spent en-masse in a large hut lying on a wooden floor. I had earlier chatted to the group, making the slight mistake of telling the French couple about how people from Hartlepool are known as 'Monkey Hangers' because during the Napoleonic Wars local fishermen found a monkey on a shipwreck, so they hung it thinking it was French (Thus inferring that this couple were monkeys.) The following morning, the French people and a few others had gone as they were doing a shorter trek, so the remaining six of us continued on through more forest and up into the clouds, eventually arriving at a waterfall where we dived in and showered while it rained. We stayed there overnight chatting amicably - Dave got drunk rather quickly in my opinion - then woke up the next morning for a last chance wash under the waterfall and off to another trek where we eventually got to a stream and went bamboo rafting - although I was quite surprised to find myself at the rear having to propel us forward. Dave was on another boat and one of the girls attempting to raft managed to get her pole lodged in a rock she was trying to push away from, which I thought was bloody well done.
After that, we were driven to lunch, then on to Elephant riding, which was bloody terrifying. They're amazing creatures, quite noble and majestic, but I don't recommend climbing up a wooden scaffold and sitting on one. The elephants took a circular route for about an hour, slowly wading through narrow ravines of slurry and elephant shit and at one point up a steep mud slope so sheer I honestly thought the lumbering bastard was going to slip and throw Dave and me twenty foot down into dung before landing on us. Plus I wasn't sure if all this pointless elephant sitting was any good for them or not. It all felt a bit touristy.

Getting back to our proper hotel was amazing, what with their normal beds and showers and no animal noise outside, and we spent last night in a pizzeria with the others from the trek, including a nice girl from Guildford who suddenly went woozy and fainted, which was mildly interesting for everyone except her.
This morning, Dave left to do a Thai cookery course, and I've just returned from having my teeth whitened. It seemed like a good idea at the time as it's a fraction of the cost of getting it done back home, except now I'm in searing, mind-boggling pain. I spent two hours with a clamp in my mouth flailing my gums out while some solution sat angry-red on my teeth. I was overjoyed when the dentist finally appeared to wipe everything off, except now I'm in no position to smile as occasional flashes of pain shoot through my mouth as if someone's injected liquid nitrogen into my teeth nerve-endings. I'm hungry but I daren't eat. Sodding vanity. Last time I do something like this again, even if I now lack yellow molars.

Travails with Ping Pong

2004-07-30T07:32:00.000+01:00

Dave and I have made it into Northern Thailand, Chang Mai to be precise, and the capital of the north with a decidedly relaxed air about it. It's in trekking land and we've booked ourselves on to a mammoth 3-day hike into the hills and waterfalls in the next few days, so this'll be the last entry for a while.

Yesterday we had a fantastic two-hour thai massage with a couple of friendly elderly Thai women and got some great tips in how to manipulate people's spines, so I may take a course in it while I'm here, as well as one in Thai cookery (Dave seems keen and I wouldn't mind learning how to make spring rolls for when I return.) Some things never change though - this keyboard still has Hebrew characters.

Anyway, it's a pleasure to finally leave Bangkok although I'm still fond of it and have no problem with returning. As it turned out, we did have time to check out the Thai Boxing at a stadium a short tuk-tuk drive away, which turned out to be fascinating. Once I got used to seeing the familiar sight of two men square up to each other in boxing gloves and exchange tentative jabs only to suddenly high-kick each other round the chops, we got down to the serious business of seeing a series of matches with guys beating six bells out of each other. It seemed much more violent and fast than the rounds I'd seen on tv, and I considered the idea of getting some lessons myself. One match was particularly gruesome and entertaining with the soon-to-be loser cockily shrugging off every punch and kick yet still getting pulped into a bloody, slippery mess. Some of the kicks and knees they were getting into the ribs and kidneys seemed utterly incapacitating although it didn't appear to bother the participants - and certainly not the spectators who cheered every kick as the action built up in the later rounds. A few hours of bloodlust later, we hailed a tuk tuk into Pat Pong district which, we realised as we headed that way was concerning us slightly; the country's most imfamous sex district, home of the shows and lots of women who'll sleep with you for money was leaving us slightly anxious. Big Pete had already warned me via email not to get drunk and end up in 'Pussy Galore' and I'd heard enough stories to be on my guard. As it turned out, we were dropped off on a large bustling, neon-heavy street where men held menus under our noses, lists that documented activities that all seemed to begin with the slang for 'cat'. We decided to get a drink at a normal bar to orient ourselves, and noticed as we watched the crowd of kids and middle-aged tourists potter around the market stalls in the road that we couldn't have been on Pat Pong. Once two elderly Muslim women in Burquas walked past, we realised we were on the wrong street, even if glances inside bars revealed lithe, bikini-clad girls gyrating around poles. We walked around neighbouring streets and got sweaty (me) or concerned about looking like a sex-tourist (Dave) and were fairly pleased to meet two Australian girls on holiday also trying to track down a ping-pong show - Astonishingly, I discovered, Perth is a mere 6 hours away. It was slightly reassuring to get the chance to announce to the girls that we weren't perverts as the four of us followed a tout to an alleyway and an anonymous office that had a seedy cabaret in a backroom, which we declined to see. We went our separate ways after that, with us headed to a restaurant so we could eat and I could hose myself down. It turned out that we had been on Pat Pong all along earlier, it was just that the government had gone out of its way to make the area less seedy. God knows what it must have been like years ago.

Dave and I were eventually dragged into a top-storey bar, one that we had already passed earlier and our passing a second time elicited what seemed like hundreds of cheers from the girls outside as we were surrounded by women who pushed us upstairs. Regrettably, there were no shows, just a handful of girls in bikinis wiggling around poles while we ended up buying drinks for the girls who walked us in, their Chinese Madam, some cleaners and a ladyboy in a thong who took a shine to Dave. The next half hour was pretty surreal (although I'd experienced similar in a dodgy bar in Budapest), with my hand on the supple, honey-coloured thigh of a gorgeous young girl - she put it there, Mum - while I half-heartedly tried to stop her from groping me. Dave, meanwhile, had an unusual-for-Thailand voluptuous girl on his lap who molested him. The elderly Chinese madam, after thrusting an aged arm up my shorts then began to intimate that we ought to disappear into the back rooms with the girls for a while, something I had no intention of doing, until the girl herself batted her huge almond eyes at me and began to nuzzle into my neck, which was when I realised we had to get the hell out of there phenomenally quickly as she was a really lovely prostitute. All we really wanted to do was tick 'Ping Pong Show' off the list and instead we were getting propositioned working girls who wanted thirty quid for the works. I wasn't too sure how to leave - Dave clearly wasn't helping by not budging an inch - or how to adequately talk to a young girl who barely spoke English yet kept motioning to a hidden back room, but I did make the mistake of enquiring "Do you kiss?" purely because she was inches from my face and she seemed keen to try, yet as a prostitute I didn't think they did that. It was the wrong thing to ask because she jumped down my throat and I was in the strange, yet not wholly unpleasant position of getting off with a cute Thai girl while at the same time trying to get her to stop as I tried not to think where her mouth had been.

We managed to leave when I stood up and said 'We're leaving', deciding that if we did anything that night it was to duck while a woman with Shwartzeneggerian walls fires ping-pong balls from her chuff. In the event we did, although the reality was somewhat uninteresting. We found a small, UV-lit bar with bored girls in luminous bikinis gyrating around more poles, and eventually one walked on stage and popped a couple off balls up herself and unceremoniously popped them back out again into an oversized Brandy glass on the floor. That was it, as erotic as watching a hen in a dayglo bikini lay eggs. It wasn't easy on concentrating on the rest of the show though, as a girl sitting next to me seemed determined to get me to sleep with her (which was nice), although the only other thing to see other than lame ping-pong ball releasing was a particularly unattractive and muscular post-op ladyboy, erm, blowing out candles. I was getting rubbed to a high buff that night - I cursed myself for not wearing my steel underpants - as this girl stroked my arms and stuck hers down my shirt saying "Me like hairy men", although I have no doubt that "Me also like hairless men/ men with limps/ men with three heads and no legs" depending on the particulars of the client. I eventually managed to leave when the lights went up at 2am. The girl at this point had been sprawled out all over me faking an orgasm which was not wholly unpleasant, and I was able to bolt for the door when she stood up and looked the other way. Dave yelled out 'Help!', trapped as he was under an Oriental Salma Hayek lookalike, but he was taking too long wrestling with his conscience so I waved goodbye and headed out into the street.

My last memories of Pat Pong said it all. I was busy arguing with a tuk-tuk driver for a fare back to the Khao San Road when two devastatingly cute women walked past us. I was slightly side-tracked, especially when they started waving and smiling - they were also hookers - and the driver went and ruined it all for me. "They're men", he said distractedly.

One Night in Bangkok (left)

2004-07-28T11:02:00.000+01:00

I'm still here. It's been almost a week in Bangkok but as of yesterday, I now have a fat-fingered monkey-regarder in tow.

Dave arrived yesterday morning - I met him at the airport grinning as I had a message read out over the intercom ("Can Mr Monkey Dave from flight TG911 please report to the Information Desk where his Mummy is waiting for him") but he didn't hear it. It's quite weird having a familiar face accompany me having wandered about on my own so far, although I was feeling pretty ill by the time he got here. I was a bit concerned when we got back to the hotel room and he saw me with my top off as he went mental - his diagnosis being that I had sunstroke and was ill from that, not from the air conditioning. He's probably right as the symptoms are the same as the one he read out from his guidebook, so I went to sleep as I was phenomenally tired (another symptom - in fact, the day before Dave got here, I spent the day pretty much asleep or watching the ruined-for-tv version of Goodfellas in my hotel room, "I'm just breaking your brains Tommy... Now go get your freaking shinebox". They even deleted 'Schlub' at the very end.)

Dave's already over-enthusiastic about the food whereas I'm not eating much, although I have been eating chicken, something that a charming Canadian lesbian at last night's restaurant was shocked at as apparently there's been an outbreak of avian flu here that I was not aware of, so I'm going back to sodding vegetables.
Last night ended up quite hectic, what with all the drinking and dancing at the Shamrock pub where they had more live rock, and demanding that Dave either shut up about that cute Thai girl in the blue top who kept staring at him or bugger off and talk to her.

This place is great; the Thai's are tremendously friendly even if unlike Indians they don't stare at you at all and leave you with the worrying impression that they all secretly harbour a grudge against farangs, start screaming about family honour and then kick-box you back to the 17th century but on the contrary, when you do engage them, they start beaming huge smiles and are contageously friendly. Sadly the contageon doesn't spread to the other travellers - who seem to get on Dave's nerves - surly, moody, stereotypically hair-braided and arrogant - and that's not even the Israelis. I'm just happy to be here and watch my burnt body heal itself, even if I do look like the Singing Detective.
Walking back to the hotel at night is always very trying - yesterday evening had the pushiest prostitutes yet, with one cute girl grabbing my hand and thrusting it within her generic crotch area and insisting I go back to hers for 500 baht (about 7 quid), making a playful grab for my genitals once she gave up, which was nice. As I wandered off for a late night bottle of water, I suddenly realised that a good many of the loitering hookers had more testosterone in them than me. One grabbed my arm with a deep "Come with me" and when I said I was fine, really, I just want to buy some water, I realised I was in the grip of an arm-wrestling champion. As I looked around wriggling to get free, I noticed that I was surrounded by bloody ladyboys, many of whom made pretty unconvincing women.

Tonight's the big one - we're off to Pat Pong district where if you don't know what it's (in)famous for, then I'm not telling you. Dave's tremendously excited. In fact, he's stuffing his face with enthusiasm at a nearby restaurant as I type. He's already wolfed down spring rolls, some thai veg soup, had pad thai noodles as a nightcap (and that was after consuming a kilo of mangosteens before we went out), so he's as happy as a fat bastard on holiday. We were going to cram in some Thai boxing before going on for the night, but that starts in 5 minutes so I guess that's out. Anyway, we're finally off to Chang Mai in the North tomorrow, and we've actually succumbed to a couple of cheap flights from there to Phucket Island in the south after we've done some trekking, so that's that. I'll try and get some pictures scanned and will do my utmost to get Dave into trouble with the prostitutes. I of course don't do that kind of thing.

Jamie, you should consider moving here. The hookers will sleep with anyone.

Bangkok update 2A and B

2004-07-25T05:22:00.000+01:00

Update A:/ If it wasn't for Monkey Dave turning up in two days, I'd've left here ages ago. Instead, I'm spending most days wandering and getting wet, then browsing shops and buying stuff I don't need. The evenings are pretty much the same, walking out of my hotel and hitting the Khao San Road for a meal and a few drinks, although after Friday's multiple whiskey or vodka redbull session and the consequent hour's sleep (bloody speed), I'm cutting down. Tonight and tomorrow, I'm going to attempt booze-free evenings, but it's not easy. In complete contrast to India, I'm surrounded by drunk westerners and small girls on their gap year as if I'm in a kind of Oriental Ibiza. I may spend today swimming, as I'm still holding off the sights for as long as I can - the weekend market yesterday being a humid waste of time - all I did was stroke puppies and tiny bunny rabbits and tried to avoid the shifty geezer thrusting a baby python into my face and saying "No poison, No poison."

I managed to get my room switched from one that overlooked Khao San Road and had three kinds of pumping house simultaneously blasting up from below plus the occasional cheers of some blokes from Leeds de-bagging their mate, to one set further back from the street, where the only nocturnal sounds are of pissheads slamming doors at 1am and Thai hookers yelling 'Jack!' and trying to open my door. Despite that, at least I got some decent sleep last night.

So that's it, a stagnant few posts as not much is really happening but after my massive trek across India, I'm quite happy to chill for a bit. Everyone is really friendly - except the bloody Israelis - and the Thai tuk-tuk drivers aren't anywhere as annoying and pushy as their Indian counterparts. Even the prostitutes are friendly and take 'no' for an answer surprisingly quickly (so remember to say "Yes", Dave.) I've had several offers of these ladies being my girlfriend for the night, but I can't see the point of paying to be nagged at for an evening.

Update B:/ I am now officially a walking disaster zone. I trotted up to the hotel's rooftop swimming pool and strutted past the bikini-clad busty Irish girls (roundly ignored) to swim several lengths (two at a time, pausing to cough for half an hour between each one). After casually walking over to my sunbed, I reclined and tried to concentrate on 'Lady Chatterley's Lover' (I fail to see what she sees in him - Mellors seems to talk in another language and when he is being coherent, he's calling her a cunt.) Sadly, given that it was a cloudy day, I chose not to bother with frivolities such as my factor 1,000 suncream. Two hours of dull novel-reading-by-the-pool later (midday til two o'clock, great timing), I suddenly realised my face was feeling slightly irradiated so I headed back to my room for a shower. The heat had got to me and I passed out, waking up to discover that I now look like the devil. I thought I caught the sun badly in India but that was clearly training burn. It didn't help that I wore my sunglasses throughout so now I look like a satanic panda.

I wasn't too keen to be venturing out for a meal, but it was either that or starve as I hadn't eaten since breakfast. One Thai pizza later (exactly the same as an Italian one, but every single element is basically not quite right), washed down with The World's Worst Coffee, I managed to get hot cigarette ash in my eye, completing the freak look thanks to my advanced-stage cold that I bestowed upon myself when I spent my first night in Bangkok comatose and naked in an air-conditioned room having not slept for 24 hours and further sedating myself with several strong Thai beers.

This is why I'm back in a cyber cafe. If I go outside, I'll scare the children. They'll think I'm one of Willy Wonka's sneezing Oompah Loompah's with glaucoma.

Bangkok update

2004-07-23T19:35:00.000+01:00

Well forget any revelations of the cultural kind. I spent today doing some shopping having bought myself a nice silver Ying-yang spinning ring and some t-shirts (Rob, your Chang beer top is a moody grey - tell me if you want otherwise.) After some aimless wandering, I spent the evening yet again chilling out in the Irish Shamrock bar where a surprisingly good Thai band churned out surfer-rock classics ("And everybody say you pretty fry for a whi' guy") - the lead singer looking scarily like Deviant Rog right down to the blue shirt - and chatted to Beau the too-much-drink-the-night-before Australian, and Eileen the New Yorker (Women faux-pas number #552: "Oh Eileen, as in Eileen Wurnos, the mass-murdering lesbian whore" - that went down well.) I have now imbibed about five Thai whiskey and Red Bulls. Both have speed in them, so I'll be awake til 2008. Not much else to report. I'm keen to do some sightseeing to Wat Po temple and the royal castle, but I'll probably end up at the famous weekend market buying stuff I don't want. Anyone need anything?

I'm in touch with Monkey Dave, who'll be here in about three days - alright mate!, but I sincerely fail to see how it could possibly be any more raucous. Oh yes I can, I chatted to a drunk Southampton lad at the bar at Shamrock's - apparently a one time Wimbledon reserve player - who told me that I will truly be a man if I can resist the girls in the go-go bars in Pattaya. I'm used to the hard sell of Indian touts, but apparently you need to be pretty much gay to say 'no thank you'. Rog, please advise.

Oh my god, I'm so so tired yet strangely very very awake. I think I'll go for a dance.

Bangkok

2004-07-22T03:42:00.000+01:00

Confused. Haven't actually slept yet and it's Thursday morning at a quarter to ten. Sooooo many Westerners that the Traveller's Nod is completely redundant. Yanks, Aussies, Brits, Irish lasses, Israelis, oh, and some Thais. I'm currently on the Khao San Road and have just had a wander to orientate myself but my head is starting to hurt so this'll be phenomenally brief. That's it, goodnight...

Ok, it's a few hours later and I've had a couple of hours sleep, and now I'm a bit shikker after a couple of beers. It's hard to avoid the Jewish thing as I'm surrounded by bloody Israelis and even my keyboard has Hebrew characters on it, despite being in Bangkok. After a pleasant time in Calcutta* (*Not pleasant - it was full of bulldog-chewing-wasps Irish girls and pretty unattractive French women, a fact I've since put down to Calcutta being a mecca for the rabidly Catholic thanks to Mum Theresa ), I took a cab down pot-holed roads and to the Netaji Subhas Chandra airport where I cheerfully wode through legions of police who had to be nice, answering their questions and letting my bag get searched. I got chatting to a pissed, well-to-do Indian guy who was about to holiday in Thailand for fun and we had an interesting blether, especially when he said that he had worked with Jill Dando when she was in India. There's 'Six Degrees of Seperation' for you.

For the entire night flight, I couldn't sleep; despite being thirty and in a position where in an alternate world I'd have a mortgage and fifteen children by now, I was so excited that I kept looking out of the window as the flickering lights of Calcutta vanished (power cuts?) only for the bold, hearty Blade Runneresque nightscape of Bangkok to appear two hours later like a big bunch of orange and blue lines. (Look, I'm having trouble typing, so be grateful for some attempt at prose.)

I was getting more and more intruiged; the airport was as modern as anything in Europe or the States, and as I left and tried to muster the latest word for 'thank you', khawp khun krup, I grabbed a cab into town and through Bangkok's rush hour morning traffic. I was overjoyed to hear not a single horn for the entire hour, even if my driver was a surly kickboxer who didn't exactly provide me with the best image of Thais. I felt the urge to wind down the electronic window for no reason, only to find that I couldn't get it up (not normally a problem), and my exclamnations of 'Sir, Sir!' were met with silence and a barely perceptible flick of his driver's switch that made the window shut. Very cool. A bit later on, a woman waded through our line of motionless traffic, selling flowers that my driver ended up buying. Again I attempted a "Sir, what is that for...?' when he ignored me, clasped them in a hands-praying motion and wrapped them around his Buddhist icons on the dashboard. Then he lazily said 'Frowers.' So, I was none the wiser, unless of course that's why we didn't crash.

I'm impressed with Bangkok in a horribly western way. It is spotless (I had to ask a shop owner if I could extinguish my spent cigarette on the bare tidy pavement - a far cry from the Indian method of throwing any waste from a moving train out of the window.) There are unfortunately McDonalds, Starbucks, Burger Kings, and even Seven-Elevens on every corner. People seem friendly, but nowhere in the league of Indians. It feels very odd to not be stared at, and for no-one to ask me anything about anything. Even walking through stalls of wonderful beads, necklaces, bracelets, knives and knuckle-dusters (sadly I'm not joking), not a single person hassled me, barring an Indian looking Burmese fellow. I was very interested in the facial characterisics now I'm here. Obviously, people here look Oriental as opposed to Indian dark with caucasian features, so supposedly somewhere along the east Indian borders, people begin to look more eastern. I certainly remember a few years back going to far northern India with Jase near the Nepalese border, and the local Indians began to take on board some of the characteristics of oriental people. Anyway, I'm rambling now.

After a day of wandering around the neighbouring streets, I opted to get a salad on Khao San, the road I'm currently living on, absolutely chock-full of westerners and gangs of women. Absolute nightmare. I've only had a couple of Singha beers and, thanks in part to my low alcohol intake of the last month, I feel like the King of the World!!! So perhaps I'd better stop now.

The carnage potential is enormous and I am a mere rowdy few days of beer-gutting all the weight I've since lost back on again. Monkey Dave gets here in four days I believe, and I am deliberately saving the female ping-pong ejaculation shows 'til then.

Calcuttaaargh!!

2004-07-21T05:41:00.000+01:00

I have finally made it to Calcutta after traversing the country from west to east for 1,235 miles on a sweatbox train that took 32 hours to do so. I'm so proud of my ingenious planning ahead that has had my last few days in India spent covering vast distances while being stared at.

I had to leave Mumbai waking at 4.30am so I could get a cab to the station. It was a shame as I'm quite fond of that vibrant place with its promenade and high-class drugs and men who look into your ear because they want to stick prongs into it and pull out your wax at a price, but I had to get going. Waving the puppy-sized rats of Bombay goodbye, I tracked down the correct platform at CST (formerly Victoria Terminus) Station and avoided the gaze of the police officers who were busy bellowing orders at the other commuters who did as they were told lest they were smacked around the legs with the police-issue Big Stick. Our train pulled in twenty minutes ahead of time so I boarded and clambered up to the top bunk where I popped in a couple of earplugs and fell asleep for four hours, a great way to kill time. I had steeled myself to the long journey, taking the first twelve hours - the time it took on that dull journey from Goa to Mumbai - in my stride. People, complete strangers, chatted to each other amicably as soon as they sat down, as a cacophony of sound from the food and drink sellers were yelled down the aisles, deep booms of "Chai-ah, Chai-ah" or a fast, gabbling "Samosasamosasamosa..." I was getting quite used to this by now.

As people prepared for bed, I decided to nip in to the toilet, avoiding the police nearby who had suddenly appeared from nowhere to scream into one guy's face and prod fingers at him. Perhaps he had answered back or not shown enough deferrence, I wasn't sure, but I was sure that I was going to hide in the lavatory at this point. Proud of my one sneaky cigarette later, I soon realised I was locked in. Despite sliding the bolt across, I had also managed to lock the door from the outside via the inside and it had now jammed. I had visions of spending my evening sleeping in a 5 foot stinking sarcophagus. No amount of shaking and banging at the door was rousing the other passengers, but I noticed I hadn''t been the first to get trapped. The door at the top end had a large crack in it where a previous user had tried to break free so I put my arm through and blindly tried to feel for the catch but then realised if the police saw me, they'd do me for damaging property and demand a hefty fine. Ten minutes of fruitless door-shaking later, I was considering crying then jumping out of the window as a possible option when the door suddenly opened. A man had come to rescue me, alerted by a nearby female passenger who was clutching her ribs and laughing in pain at the sight of a disembodied white arm flailing for the lock. I know this because she did an adequate impression of a nervous hand trying to reach an out-of-reach object.

Yesterday on the train was agonising. I had been befriended by a gang of lads who assumed that the way for me to understand them was to speak Bengali very slowly, and who then got bored and made little comments that the others laughed while my MP3 player gave up the ghost again. Throughout all this, various beggars turned up, a gorgeous little boy of around ten with huge wide eyes and no feet, propelling himself along the floor with his arms and later, a man with no arms but stumps instead, so I gave him a few coins (he motioned for me to put them into his breast pocket, if you were wondering). Later on, some Hijrah's turned up. I am very fond of them as they're not as threatening as they like to think, although many Indian's can't seem to stand them. They're basically eunuchs, men who've decided they're better off without balls, who dress in saris and wander the country begging. They have a huge community and their own goddess who, I believe, is also a eunuch. They're pretty despised as they tend to be extremely pushy and intimidating, and as I understand it, their main use is in ceremonies such as male births where their presence is said to absorb any homosexual tendencies in the child. I had been standing by the open door of the moving train when I heard clapping behind me and suddenly thought "Oh bollocks" - perhaps because they don't have any - and sure enough, there was a grinning Hijrah, clapping to signify that if I didn't give her some change forthwith, up would come the sari to reveal what she no longer had. Thankfully I had a few coins on me and that was the end of that. I can't help feeling that in a different society, ours maybe, they'd grow up listening to Bronski Beat and have a deep abiding love for musicals.

As we neared Calcutta, the beggar push seemed to go into overdrive, and I was quite amused to see another Hijrah turn up who quite frankly wasn't trying. She wasn't effeminite, her voice wasn't even high-pitched, and with glasses and a slight stubble, he looked like a bored accountant in a dress. Perhaps he was pre-op. I was overjoyed to be pulling in to Calcutta's Howrah station and leapt out of the carriage after a day and a half of inertia. I was utterly filthy, the upper flanks of my combats were a dark orange, sweat mixed with suntan lotion mixed with mosquito repellant, and my once gleaming white vest was black and orange around the cuffs with a delightful new 'yellow splat' motif stained onto the front. All my clothes are now like this and I have ammassed a collection of damp, fetid material that really deserves a ten-day wash in boiling water and napalm. My hair had become caveman wild and I began to get a little warm as I stepped out into the humid sticky air, past the crowds of red-clothed porters and lazily-walking commuters, and indifferent to the otherwise vomit-propelling smell of eau de fish et urine. I felt sure that steam was rising from out of my t-shirt and eggs could've been fried on my shoulders but I no longer cared - I was focussed on cab-getting mode, eventually succumbing to a blatant rip-off that was still cheap.

Calcutta is insane. It seems more chaotic that Delhi, Mumbai and Chennai combined, with potholes and uneven roads, tram-lines to add to the road-travel misery, horrendous busy traffic, and what seems like India's entire population of a billion people trying to cross the road at once. All vehicles are unremittant, bearing down on people with no thought for their souls, hooting loudly rather than stopping. It's overpoweringly hot, even my taxi driver frequently had to mop his face down with a rag, and everything seems crammed in to every nook and cranny. (How Mother Theresa put up with it, I'll never know. That woman deserved some kind of medal or something.) The language is now Bengali but I stopped bothering to learn the words once I'd left Cochin and Kerela state behind, as Goa's Konkani language was useful for only the day I was there, Mumbai's Marathi again would've served me a day and a half, and Bengali in Calcutta is pretty pointless to pick up as I have to get my cab to the airport tonight. Thai, on the other hand, will be a necessity as I'm there for a month and a half.

I'm overjoyed to be in Calcutta as it's an absolutely fantastic destination to want to leave. Sorry Sangita, but your Mum's home town is a little tricky. And oddly enough, it seems full of French westerners who've taken to Indian clothes like a Hijrah to saris, strutting around with Gallic self-importance and ignoring me when I give them the friendly Traveller Nod. Yesterday, I got some kind of perverse pleasure out of packaging the books I have read and even my Indian guidebook into a box, along with some presents and things I don't need on me, to be posted home. Unfortunately, the hotel owner put me off, saying that customs would open my intricately sealed creation fashioned from several different boxes and tied up with string, and there was a possibility that some or perhaps all of my contents would go 'missing'. I've now got to cart the sodding lot with me. Just as well I didn't buy a ton of fresh, cheap weed for flatmate Dave though.

So that's that, I've 'done' India, albeit in a mad rush towards the end. I'll be sorry to go as I'd've liked more time, but I'm equally ok with flying off to Thailand tonight. I've been reading my Thai guidebook and getting to grips with the customs and language and it seems absolutely fascinating. I still don't know what to make of it yet as my very politically correct observations on Thais is that they're all kick-boxers and hookers, so I'm looking forward to being proved wrong. Karla, if you're reading this dear, do you want to give Ed a shout if he's still working in Bangkok? I'll get there on Thursday morning.

As for India, I still can't believe I came back considering how pleased I was to be leaving last time. It's too hot, difficult, heartbreaking and trying, but it's for those reasons that it's better than three months in the Costa Del Sol. Plus if you overlook the tremendous guilt you feel when seeing or being accosted by beggars, coping with the unusual fragrances, dealing with the strange animals, insects and bloody mosquitoes, staying relaxed when you're bombarded by touts, not getting too offended by piles and piles of rotting litter or the sight of people wading through them for something worthwhile, enduring the insanity of a bus journey and coping with the endless, repetitive hooting and noise and bustle, it's really not a bad place. The people are tremendously resilient and friendly, many are curious and kind, the culture is fascinating and intricate, the food is absolutely out-of-this-world, there are some stunning views and landscapes, and it's nigh on impossible to walk down a street without seeing something you'll remember for a lifetime, even if that something is a little bit strange.

I'm never coming back. Mind you, I said that three years ago.

Bombay

2004-07-18T11:13:00.000+01:00

That dull title is the best I could think of while waiting half an hour for the 'new post' page to appear. I considered 'Bombhey, wanna buy some coke?', but the joke wore off after I thought about it. I arrived here last night after the world's dullest train journey, twelve-and-a-half hours of managing to listen to 60 songs my MP3 player deigned me fit to listen to, then demolishing the first 80 pages of 'Lady Chatterley’s Lover', a ponderous classic that's perfect for a half-day train journey. God only knows why it was banned, although I should imagine it's racy by Indian standards ('Lady Chatterji's Brother' probably being more acceptable).

The journey that would never end eventually did, pretty much as it started, me on an eerily empty carriage. I left Goa having got wet - on my walk back from the Internet cafe it started raining so I yelled at the leaden clouds and demanded more, which it duly gave me. My t-shirt and shorts were saturated and even my cigarettes were rendered useless, so I showered and met a nice Danish girl in my hotel who once again terrified me with her 'single European female in India' stories. She was the timid sort too - I don't know how she's managing it.

My pretty pointless afternoon in Goa was a washout; every time I attempted to walk to the beach during a lull in the rain, it started up again so I didn't get my further than my hotel. Even the train journey up to Mumbai/ Bombay was interspersed with various spats of bad weather but I'm pleased it's over - a few months ago, a train on the same Goa-Mumbai stretch derailed and fell into a gorge. It was pretty aggravating being enclosed in a steel tube for an entire waking day, especially when a large mute man in a pink shirt stared at me impassively throughout most of it. Even when I stopped reading to stare back in a glare standoff he didn't blink, forcing me to go for a walk and hang out of the train doorway. Towards the end, he took to flicking insects off my trousers at no extra charge. Staring in India just isn't considered rude, and they all seem to do it. Indians are terrifically polite though and it's had an effect on me; In the last month, I've taken to calling everyone Sir, modified my accent so that I pronounce 'W's as 'V's yet sound like a Sergeant-Major from the last days of the Raj (one of the friendly ones), and I hardly ever say 'fucking bastards' anymore. Even the lads who noisily played charades a few nights ago apologised profusely at the time - one of the rare occasions where I did use that phrase though. I've taken the trouble to avoid putting food into my mouth with my left hand (it's the 'Andrex' substitute), but I've yet to stop blowing my nose with kleenex (keeping bodily secretions in a tissue in your pocket just isn't on - they use the 'finger-block the clear nostril and blow hard onto the pavement' method. Spitting is endemic (considered more hygienic than swallowing), and the nighttime is never complete without the gentle rripp rripp of cicadas, a dog barking in the distance, and several hotel porters clearing their throats for three quarters of an hour.

I had several awkward moments when a coffee-wallah, a chap with a big urn who walked up and down the aisles alongside bhaji-wallahs, samosa-wallahs and a woman selling peanuts, joined me for a chat. He broke the ice with 'England?' followed by 'Cricket!', then pleaded to be taken to the UK with me. I had trouble explaining that tourists can only bring back 200 cigarettes and an assortment of bad souvenirs and that I might get caught trying to pass him through the green channel at Heathrow. In fact, it crushed me. He said he'd clean windows and work in hotels, repeating 'very poor, very poor' as he pointed at himself until he realised that he wasn't going anywhere except Mumbai. Looking dejectedly at the floor, he shuffled off and I stared into space convulsed with guilt at the fate that had me born in the West.

By the time I arrived at 11pm last night, I was on a mission. In a scene that reminded me of Ted Stryker punching his way through armies of Hare Krishnas in 'Airplane', I stormed through Mumbai CST station eyes fixed ahead, shouting 'No thanks', 'Not interested', and 'Go away', until I haggled a decent taxi to the Carlton Hotel.
The name Carlton Hotel conjures up very specific images of comfort, opulence and a home from home, but my home isn't a flea-infested shitpit (yet), so I got back into the cab and to the Regency which had (slightly) fewer fleas and higher costs. Fed up with my choices, I succumbed to the cab driver’s nagging and got driven to a bustling little part of Mumbai where I checked out a room and took it, in part due to the fact that I was doing the sweat thing again. When I decided to take a midnight stroll, Mumbai seeming to be the only place in India where people don't go to bed at 10pm, I was disappointed to be handed the hotel card and discover I was on Arthur Bunder Road. As my guidebook helpfully pointed out to me on the train on the way up (I love this bit), "Avoid at all costs the nameless lodges lurking on the top storeys of wooden-fronted houses along Arthur Bunder Road - the haunts of not-so-oil-rich Gulf Arabs and touts who depend on commission from these rock-bottom hostels to finance their heroin habits." Cursing my ineptitude, I left my lodge on the top storey of wooden-fronted house and headed into the street for a wander where I was offered drugs several times (they all believe me when I say I'm a copper and they bugger off sharpish), and met two charming kids slightly camper than Frankie Howerd who said I had a nice body and asked "Are you a gay?" to which I replied no but I wished them lots of luck in a country where they're criminals if they indulge in a sexual act they'd actually want to do. (Not in so many words - I just said 'good luck', then stared in awe at all the Asian Princesses wandering around, slightly miffed that the nearest I've got to sex was an offer from Vimal the Raging Queen.)

Today has been quite pleasant, wandering around the Prince of Wales museum and being offered oversized balloons or more dope, as well as a part in a Bollywood film. When young lads ask you the standard dull questions followed by 'Would you like to be in a film?', then you know there's a scam somewhere. In this situation, a guy on a brand new bike sped up to me and disgorged the female PA who was sitting behind him. They both had the latest earpiece cell phones and she asked me if I'd like to be an extra in a new film doing nothing more taxing than sitting at the back of a classroom, for which I'd get 500 rupees and would meet the other tourists they'd roped in to this at an air-conditioned unit nearby. This is a normal occurrence - my guidebook acknowledging that Westerners are often offered the opportunity - but I declined as wrap-time was well after my Calcutta train leaves tomorrow morning. Rats! My ego would've loved that, except I've worked on enough film sets to know that it's as exciting as standing around for four hours until you finally get your big break - as someone standing around in the distance. Nevertheless, I was gutted. Fame and recognition at last, although I'd've preferred ‘Anti-Hero with Great Lines' to 'Bored White Bloke 4 In Classroom'.

Never mind. It's all been an adventure so far, and tomorrow is the greatest adventure of all - 36 non-stop hours on a train going from West coastal India to East. Hooray.

Goa, Goa, Gone

2004-07-16T09:56:00.000+01:00

Well, not exactly, I've just arrived, but I'm not sticking around.
I left Cochin yesterday afternoon just as the skies darkened and the mosquitoes came out early. Early enough for me not to have doused myself in repellent and now my left leg is a vista of tiny mountainous bites. Stevie Wonder could read off it.

Most of the sights in old Fort Cochin appeared to be in Jew Town so I went there again to buy a few bits and pieces and nipped back to see Sarah Cohen as I wanted to know a bit more about her history. She was thrilled when I appeared as she tried to sell me more stuff (definitely Jewish), and then told me about her children in Canada who never call and that most of the local Jewish 'youngsters' (probably 50 plus) were actually in Ernakulam and that they never come to visit anymore. So they're not quite dying out after all. I just got that impression that they were because she was a world-class whinger.

I had a slight sense of foreboding as I prepared to take the jetty back to modern Cochin and on to the train station as it started bucketing down. So this is the Monsoon. Strange, as I had evisaged exotic wild storms; unpredictable, sudden, tropical, but it was just rain. Boring, wet rain. I took a rickshaw to Ernakulam Town station and boarded my sleeper train for the 15-hour trip up the coast to Goa. Some lads in the open compartment next to me played sodding Charades all night ("Three vords... Two syllables... Vinne the Pooh!!"), forcing me shamefully to tell them to shut the fuck up at midnight when their clapping seemed to annoy only me as everyone else was asleep. The strange thing I've noticed about Indians is that if they get annoyed, they never show it. Ever. The heat, incessant hooting, clapping wildly to someone saying "Villy Vonka" when you're trying to sleep, no-one says a word. Except irate Brits.

Before I went to sleep, I consulted a passenger's train timetable and planned my last few days here as I have to be in Calcutta by Wednesday. Despite my progress - I'm on the opposite side of the Indian penninsula to where I started and now further north than my starting point in Chennai - I was horrified to discover that I'm screwed anyway. I have just under a week left and that time will be spent sitting on trains for several thousand miles. I immediately abandoned my planned visit to Palolem in Goa for a beach nearer the train station, Benaulim to be precise, where I am now. To say it's quiet is an understatement. There are more piggies snuffling in the undergrowth and bulls staring me out than there are people. I feel as if I'm on an Indian beach version of the Marie Celeste. Just as well as I shall be here for tonight only. In fact, I will be in beautiful Goa just for tonight as I've already taken the precaution of booking my train to Bombay which leaves tomorrow morning. No time to discuss the new language (Konkan), the glut of alcohol and churches everywhere (the Portuguese influence), and the fact that this is where Vindaloo originates (from the Portuguese vin d'alho, garlic wine).

I can't believe I've been gone for nearly a month. It feels like a very busy week. If it's any consolation, my entire Saturday will be spent on a train and all of Bombay will be mine for Sunday only. My Monday morning will also be spent on a train, as will the afternoon, the evening, bedtime, and the following day. I have chosen to traverse India from west coast to east via the widest bit, and at the last minute. When I roll in to Calcutta, it will be to post a load of stuff home, wind Sangita up about the height of the people in her paternal city, and get on a plane to Bangkok.
Damn, I hate the way that last bit sounds.

Choked in Cochin

2004-07-14T14:06:00.000+01:00

This may be a long one as I've seen and done a lot since Kollam. The great irony is that I didn't like the town one bit and was rather pleased to be stuck a ferry ride away on a small bit of land in a nice hotel. I had to do something until the boat arrived on Tuesday to take me further up the coast to Alleppey, so I opted for some other boat based thing to fill the empty day. I had no idea what exactly, but it was cheap and passed the time. Plus I was keen to get away from Prabath, the chap in the hotel who wobbled a lot when I returned for my first night there. On entering, I found and waved an empty plastic bottle of rum at him, which encouraged him to yell back 'The boss is away!!' then stare at me, lost in strange unknown thoughts. I made a mental note to keep out of his sight.

It was a Monday morning, normally the most horrendous day of my week, when I repaired to the jetty and took the 12.30 public boat to the mainland. Still having no idea what was going on (I can never be bothered to read things properly), I went to the meeting point and was driven for nearly an hour to a village in the back of beyond with a small Indian family ('small' both in number and size). I was surprised and a little peeved to see that the boat, a word that conjures images of something motor-propelled, big and fast, was actually a wooden handmade canoe, propelled by an old man with a stick who as far as I could ascertain, wasn't motorised. The women from the family shrieked at the wobbling canoe as they got in (saving their largest yelp for me when I jumped in last) and we set off. Oh what joy it was to be asked the usual questions; name, place of residence, marital status, whilst being filmed by a tourist. Yet it didn't matter. The trip was breathtaking. I hate to sound upbeat, even sentimental, but I was utterly in awe as we ambled slowly and silently from the muddy shore where men were busy making a new boat out of wood and string, and crept downstream. There were vast canopies of palm trees on the far bank pleasantly cloaking from view everything that hid behind it, and chickens, goats and children watching us intently nearby. Slowly we turned inland, down a narrow canal with overhanging palm fronds and footbridges so low we had to duck and we passed under them. There was silence everywhere except for the gentle splashing of the boatman's stick as it tapped the water and ciccada's rasping exotically within trees. We eventually came to a vast bay-like clearing yet seemingly without an exit as all around in the far distance, misty expanses of green land could be seen. For the first time in - well, as long as I can remember - I felt totally, completely at peace and I couldn't stop grinning. It really was quite phenomenal. I thought of the book I've just read, Alain de Botton's 'The Art of Travel' and noted that, as he mentions, this would be an experience I'd relay in my mind whenever I'd be annoyed at my next job (probably within the first week) or stuck in London traffic. At various points in the two-hour journey, mysterious and haunting Sanskrit was sung from distant loudspeakers dotted along the route, dispersed from a hidden temple. My mind wandered and I realised that afternoon that it was 11am on a British Monday morning and I thought of everyone back home, many of you - too many to list - trudging through the routine, the mundane, the dull, and it dawned on me how unfair it is that these moments are the minority and the daily 9-5 grind the norm. That's not life as I see it. For the next few days, I was totally chilled out. Even the noisy drive back from the boat trip held new pleasures and the hooting and swerving were so irrelevant as to not even register any more. I couldn't wipe the smile off my face.

The following day was the trip to Alleppey on a boat, a big motorised one, with the family from my previous day's cruise and a smattering of westerners. There were a couple of girls who returned my "Where are you from in the States?" question with "Canada" - they never returned from our scheduled lunchbreak after that - and a moody American Val Kilmer lookalike called Lee who's life was a brilliant cliche; set up an investment broker business, resounding success, wasn't happy, sold his share to his partner, and was now on a loud boat telling me that. He had spent two and a half years as a teenager travelling the world and that quarter of a decade's worth of wanderlust hadn't appeased him. This time round he'd been travelling for two months and had spent most of it in - of all places - Pakistan. Even now I can't work out if, under the current climate, his going there was noble and brave or just plain dumb, although I like to think the former. Nevertheless and unsurprisingly to be fair, he made it out alive to tell me how beautiful it was and - contrary to what you'd read in the tabloids - how fantastic the people were, and how overjoyed they were to see a westerner actively visit a country pretty much depicted in the west as full of fanatics. We chatted for some time, most of the eight-hour journey in fact, as pleasant but incomparable-to-yesterday landscapes of the usual exotic tree or lazy cow disappeared from view.

My guidebook, normally bubbling with enthusiasm at the crappest places in India, described destination Alleppey as "a bustling messy town of ramshackle wood- and corrugated iron-roof houses" which was enough to convince me to get the first bus out of there. Lee had yet to take a bus in India so I forewarned him of the chaotic scenes; the noise, the indecipherable signs, the heat, the stomach-churning smell from the toilets (a gutter on the far side of the stations), not to mention the journey itself once we'd boarded. Typically, there was none of that. We found the bus to Cochin in the near deserted station almost immediately (a Tourist Policeman pointed it out), it was a soft-seated coach, and the modern road was the first two-laned one I'd seen, so overtaking was a relitively quiet affair. Even Cochin was exciting. We stopped in Ernakulam, the newer city part, and its western hotels and neon bar signs made me consider that Bangkok might be like this. I stayed the night there, Lee and a nervous German called Bernt choosing old Fort Cochin, as I wanted to book a train to Goa from the nearby Ernakulam station this morning. The night before, my chilled mood began to wane as I opted for a Pizza Hut salad. I wasn't particularly hungry and I wanted something small and was unwilling to opt for something cooked on the roadside. For that crime, I ended up repeating my name, 'England' and 'Unmarried' a dozen times as grinning waiter after grinning waiter approached me keenly. Even the manager of Cochin's Pizza Hut gave me a lecture on Britain's acheivements in the creation of the Hill Station drainage systems. By the time I read his copy of Newsweek outlining Kerela's high unemployment rate, and glut of suicides, infanticides and crimes against women, I feared for my safety when I walked back to my hotel. Instead all I saw was a rat and a flailing cockroach in a puddle. Downer.

This morning, I watched the very PC 'Will and Grace' on my room's lousy telly, followed by the distintly un-PC Benny Hill show. India seems to be the only place on earth where you can watch that crap. I can't believe I loved it as a kid as it was bloody awkward watching it now. Old men panting over young girls and scenes with stalkers chasing women to a sped-up version of Greensleeves seemed somehow normal then. Patting bald guys repeatedly on the head definitely was.

This morning I left Ernakulam and made for the jetty to stay in Fort Cochin, booking in to Adam's Old Inn whose narrow wooden interiors remind me of a pirates' hideout. With no real agenda other than heading for the synagogue - there have been Jews in Cochin since we were chucked out of the Middle East - I got roped into shop-browsing by a pushy rickshaw driver and eventually got to the Shul. It was the usual affair, old and quaint if incongruous in India, although the area, Jew Town, gave it away. My guidebook, bought three years ago when I first travelled here, mentions twenty indigenous Jewish families who now live in the area, as most left for Israel after its creation in 1948. Today I was surprised to learn, there are only four left, some twenty people. I found myself in the rather strange position of reading out the Shema to Hindu tourists and pointing out the Ten Commandments on a nearby wall, and receiving a lecture from Raj, an old man holidaying from the Punjab, on interfaith relations in India.

Wandering back, I got a shock. I noticed 'Sarah's Embroidery', a small shop that adjoined her house. Inside, a lovely old lady in a sari was selling Jewish stuff. A local woman, she was very old but probably younger than her brother Shalom who was sitting further inside watching TV. They were two Cochin Jews. For one thing they were white; well, not 'me' white but they certainly weren't dark Southern Indian. 2,000 years after fleeing Israel, they were to have a community of hundreds, but not anymore. The house was full of life though, as young local Indians - friends of the family - were chatting and saying 'Shalom' to me. Another woman arrived, a wonderfully spritely smiling grey-haired woman who reminded me of Grandma with the singular exception that she was in a sari too. They all spoke Malayalam having been born there, and as they talked they all involuntarily performed that curious side-to-side head wobble of Southern India. The people here are quite a tourist attraction although I was the only tourist, and I was left utterly choked when Sarah asked me to stay for Shabbat on Friday. She seemed genuinely disappointed that a complete stranger was heading off before then, but really disappointed, as if that was as exciting as things got around here. If I did go to synagogue with her and the twenty other elderly members of the community, I'd be a blubbing wreck. Bored shitless, but a blubbing wreck nonetheless. In ten years' time, there'll be no-one left.

A rickshaw driver had pointed out another old man ("This is a Jew here"), born in Cochin, who seemed bemused that I came over to say hello. For my part, I was bemused that a guy could be born this far away in a country so characteristically different yet look like any number of my elderly relatives. Walking back, I saw swastikas on buildings, Hindu prosperity symbols strangely out of place on Synagogue Road, and pushy Kashmiri traders standing next to Dr Mohammed Ali's practice, all oblivious to the living tourist attractions, and by extension a part of their very livelihood, about to become extinct.

Kollam. Is shit.

2004-07-11T13:47:00.000+01:00

As the title suggests, I've managed to piss myself off. I have left that wonderful (off-season) party resort of Kovalam as I was beginning to get lethargic, plus I realised that I'm behind schedule if I want to be in Calcutta for two weeks time, so this afternoon I hailed a bus and left that miniature paradise. As an ironic twist, two beautiful European girls in flowing Indian clothes appeared like a vision of... two fit women, walking down the promenade as they held hands with local children, grinning like brooding time-bombs. As a less ironic twist, the night before I got talking to two cute blonde Dutch girls that Stefan didn't seem all that enamoured with. I told them to meet us at a bar later on and they never turned up, convincing me that my Ruud Van Nistelrooy/ Benicio Del Toro lookalike Dutch friend was some kind of Netherlander ne'er do well who had scared the prim and proper girls off. That, or they thought I was a twat.

I had several people around the village to say goodbye to, Harry and Kumar at Coconut Grove, Sunil at my first guesthouse, the lads in my current one, and Edouard the Frenchman who's name actually turned out to be Bruno, a fact realised when he scribbled out his email address for me. The bastard had let me call him by the wrong name for four bloody days.
The lonely walk up the hill with a twenty-stone rucksack on my back didn't exactly enliven my mood, one that had soured due to the fact that I was actually happy where I was but I have places I want to see and a very far destination to reach in a very short space of time. Needless to say, after fending off blatantly lying rickshaw drivers ("Yes there are buses that go direct to Trivandrum because it's the state capital a mere twenty minutes away plus that's how I got here in the first place so no, I'm not getting in your sodding auto") and enduring two damn buses - not a single European in sight and forty locals staring mutely at me as I sweated in a filthy shirt - I had become a little tetchy. The driver of my last bus neglected to tell me that we were driving through and beyond my destination, and I yelled to be let off in the nick of time.

Kollam doesn't have much going for it. In my opinion, it's just a bustling coastal town with a variety of river inlets and interesting views that you can't see from the centre anyway, so I heaved my bag onto my red raw shoulders and walked in the vague direction of the jetty. I'm here to take a boat cruise up to Allapuzha along the coast, an eight-hour journey that should beat the hell out of a bus or train, knowing full well that there weren't services on a Sunday, but I wanted to walk and suffer in penance of my four days relaxing and enjoying myself. Sadly, the three people I had said 'Boat? Sea? Water?' and wiggled my hand to mistook my intentions and sent me the wrong way, to a crappy beach, forcing me to hail a rickshaw back to where I started. Four foot away, to be precise. The jetty was right next to the bus stand and I hadn't noticed. It was all irrellevant anyway, as my guide book was actually right for once. There are no services on a Sunday. Or a Monday for that matter. Stuck here for two days unless I forgo the one reason for coming here and get a bus instead. The rickshaw stopped quite deliberately opposite a little office that sold ferry tickets, the little man within calling ahead to a pleasant looking hotel on its own little piece of land jutting out into Ashtamudi Lake, expensive at five pounds a night, but I was in no mood to start hunting for a place to sleep in a place I didn't want to sleep in. I took a local bus-ferry up river to the hotel, thrilled beyond belief to be elliciting stares and giggles from my fellow passengers. My white t-shirt now had black arms and amoeba-like stains on the front. I've had my clothes thrashed and beaten by Indian dhobi-wallahs twice so far; there are no washing machines so clothes are cleaned using soap, a rock, some stream water, a well-developed forearm and the sun. As a result, after three weeks travel, my clean tops come back looking like I've spilt Sunny Delight down them.

Two stops later, I climbed out of the ferry and met a guy from the hotel who had come to collect me. On his motorbike. I had honestly thought I had done all the helmetless bike riding I ever wanted to in India, but I had to do it again, and this time with a rucksack on my back. The driver struggled to stay vertical when I climbed on, and I struggled not to cling on to him for dear life, opting to just stay steady and risk falling off rather than hug a strange man from behind.

The hotel itself is lovely; wood panelled, luxurious, double-bedded, incredibly romantic, and a complete waste of time for a single bloke. It makes me feel like a eunuch in a brothel. And did I mention that I'm the only guest there too? What a difference a day makes. It doesn't help my mood that I've booked myself into somewhere accessible only by boats that seem to run once a month. It's a gorgeous, loin-stirring mansion cloaked in palm trees and with a bedroom that has a door leading to the riverside and a stunning view and I'm bored. There's no-one here!

The owner appeared, a tiny local man who lives in America, and offered me a lift back into Kollam as forget the Internet, I can't even get dinner where I am. He still isn't used to Indian driving, so the journey was incredibly slow if pleasant as he had with him two American students who I bombarded with questions mainly out of sheer happiness that here were people who could more or less understand what I was saying and who weren't Dutch.

So there we go. I'm now in a lush hideaway miles away from civilisation and it's sending me insane. If any of my female friends would care to join me over the next two days, for christ's sake get here immediately. Tomorrow, I've booked myself a small local cruise for the day and Tuesday I'll be getting that boat to Allapuzha. I'm tempted to step off the boat and get straight on to a bus to Kochin as Allapuzha sounds like a hole. In addition, I'm eager to get ever nearer to Goa. I'm starting to miss that laid-back beach vibe already.

Anyway, enjoy your Mondays. Mwahahahahahahahaha!

Kovalam update

2004-07-10T14:12:00.000+01:00

Today I forgot to put on sunblock and now I look like a bus. Thanks to my stupid sleeveless gym top, I have blatant white straplines on my shoulders when topless. Think lobster in a training bra.

I'm still in Kovalam, a lovely resort that has had me saying 'I'll leave tomorrow' for two days running. Gangs of female travellers keep turning up, and I can't see the point of leaving to be stared at by Indians during another angry journey when there are so many tourists here, although they all seem to disappear by nightfall and there's nothing but empty bars. The days are too lazy for my liking, wandering along the beach, drinking fresh pineapple juice, and telling that moustachioed guy for the tenth time running that I will never ever buy a lungi from him. I have no desire to wear a man's skirt in India and there's no way on earth I'd even wear it from within the confines of my London flat. (I'll stick to my towel in those circumstances.)

This morning, a guy gave me a lift to the Kovalam juntion, home of the ATM machines, on the back of his motorbike. There was something liberating about belting down a wide street being driven by a maniac, helmetless, and hanging on trying to look casual about it. He even took me out of the way to stop at some stunning viewpoints which overlooked a dense range of palm tree tops jostling for space in front of the Arabian Sea. It was wonderful, but didn't take my mind off the fact that I had to be driven back.
I've met Stefan the Flying Dutchman (constantly stoned) and his sister (constantly mute) - he's next to me at the moment making rambling, nonsensical comments and swearing in Dutch at his emails, and now Edouard the non-stereotypical Frenchman has walked in (I recently told him about some girls who had just arrived and he replied "I love my wife". Astonishing).

So that's that. My last few days here have been relaxing with avengeance and I'm feeling the urge to get moving again. I'm certainly not interested in anything sex based with a womb-owning lifeform, contrary to what some wags believe (such as Gus. And Jamie. And everyone else except my Mum) so despite noticing nonchalantly the three feisty voluptuous girls from somewhere-as-of-yet-undefined from Europe, I intend to leave Kovalam and Dutch stoners for a land further up the Kerelan coastline.
Tomorrow.
As I keep telling myself.

Oh dear oh dear oh dear

2004-07-07T10:52:00.000+01:00

I feel sick. And I've gone slightly mental. But other than that I'm fine.

I'm now in Kovalam in the Indian state of Kerela, a bit of a tourist spot. The language has changed from Tamil to Malayalam (so 'No thank you' has changed from 'Ney Nandri' to 'Veni Nandi'. I have yet to learn 'If you don't fuck off in the next three seconds, I am going to kill you.') It would appear that most Indian states are defined by the reach of the language spoken there, and there are fifteen different ones (not including the thousands of local dialects). I left Kanniyakamuri yesterday afternoon at the sensible time of midday, trekking to the bus station with a fully-laden backpack and leaving a persperation trail behind me. I took the opportunity to see the tiny Gandhi memorial before I went, a strange pink peeling building in a bizarre ice-cream cone design, all domes, semicircles and jutting angles. I was shocked to find myself the only person in there, with all the Indian tourists instead walking around the impressive statue nearby. It was odd being the only person at the place commemorating the father of a nation my country had nicked, and I wondered what Gandhi would've made of it. Nonetheless, he wasn't there anyway; the plinth in the centre of the empty room had a sign saying his ashes which once stood there had been scattered into the sea some 56 years earlier, so I trotted of to catch a bus to Trivandrum on the lower west coast, and then on to Kovalam.

And that's where I went mental. For some reason, I couldn't accept buses any longer, despite having undertaken five different bus journeys up until then. I began to develop an extremely deep-seated loathing for my driver, whose head and shoulders I bored into with angry eyes. I became Disgusted from Tunbridge Wells, shaking my head and mumbling 'idiot' every time he raced his flat-fronted bus directly up the the flat-reared behind of another bus (we're talking hair's breadth), and sat on his horn. It defied logic. The bus in front was going as fast as it could and there were vehicles in front of that. Nevertheless, he overtook everything in his path and even occasional motorcycles coming towards us yelled abuse at him as he forced them off the road. My head began to pound as my MP3 refused to play Airto Moreira and I had to endure 'hoot, hoot, hoooooooooooooooot' extremely regularly for an hour.
I was ready to kill.

At Trivandrum bus station, these centres being no place for the extremely pissed off, I tried to track down the bus to Kovalam amid signs only in the circular and indecipherable Malayalam. One man came up to me and pulled a 'Where are you after?' face, so I said Kovalam. He responded by rubbing his fingers together - he'd tell me if I paid him - so I stormed off leaving him with nothing more than my intention to deprive him of his testicles with a blunt scythe. Eventually I found the bus, an extremely crowded one full of old women who stared at me disapprovingly while I flared my nostrils and looked vacantly into the middle distance. 20 minutes later, I disembarked and haggled a rickshaw for 20 roops down to the beach. By the time we got there, I had a tout either side of the vehicle yelling at me to visit their respective hotels. Numb to everything, I got out and gave the driver a note, but he reneged on the deal and tried to shortchange me. Granted, it was only a few pence to me, but a deal's a deal and these guys want to squeeze you dry. Then I flipped. I screamed at the driver, I told the touts that if they didn't intercourse off I was going to tie a knot in their windpipes, and everyone finally backed down, except the bastard driver.

I walked myself to a hotel, telling an accompanying tout that he had better leave me alone immediately, and found a delightful room with a dead cockroach on the floor, so I headed for the beach and checked in to the Shiva Moon guesthouse instead, which was adequate enough. Within an hour or so, I had showered and calmed down, and was able to play my MP3 disc on a shop owner's player and listened to Grace, 'Not over yet' as the sun set over the Arabian Sea. I wandered around Kovalam, with its little shops and restaurants lining the impressive small coastline we occupied, and grabbed a bite to eat - a calamari curry that was hotter than hell - which caused me to sweat attractively as I sat next to two groups of Western girls. After drunkenly installing my mosquito net (thanks, Jon!) and cutting my hand to ribbons as I couldn't be bothered to switch off the ceiling fan, I headed off to a beachside bar where I availed myself of a hideous rum and coke and an even more unpleasant Irish coffee (cold), lifting the glasses to my mouth with a bleeding hand. Somehow, the excuse of palming off a crap coffee plus the presence of alcohol in my system gave me the courage to start chatting to two girls who were in my restaurant and were now sat in this bar. Inna and Wendy were Finnish and Dutch respectively, and I was really chuffed to discover that they were to fly home that night, about as happy as I was when I casually walked over to their table and stumbled over my own foot. Nevertheless, they were fun company as I listened to their adventures thus far and I avoided all talk of my wanting to kill people earlier that day. When they left, I was invited to the table of a Dutch couple, Floris and Crystal, who are wonderful, anglophiles who love Blackadder and Monty Python, so I got them up to speed about Alan Partridge. We ended up chatting til gone two in the morning, the only people around by this point, and with Stefan, a young Dutch stoner who had met Floris and Crystal a few days before. By the time I got to my room, I bumped into Edouard, a Frenchman who was busy smoking a joint outside his room, and chatted to him about North India as he was headed that way. A charming Frenchman, whatever next?

This morning, I agreed to meet the Dutch lot for breakfast, where I tucked in to banana porridge and something called a jackfruit which the owner laid on for us. We were all getting alone fine until I felt slightly odd - bloody terrible actually - as if my digestive organs were about to exit via my mouth. Allegedly I went pale (I didn't realise I could get any whiter) as I sat there concentrating on not embarrasing myself majestically in front of my friendly companions, so I swiftly headed to my room where I showered down using a sodding bucket as the water had been cut off. I think I will avoid a curry tonight and porridge for breakfast as I look like shit.

Well that's it so far. There's a Japanese man sitting next to me with tissue up his nose, coughing, sighing and moaning loudly. I think I may have to kill him.

As south as India gets

2004-07-05T09:58:00.001+01:00

I am back in the lowlands after spending three pleasant days in the hills, and am now at India's southernmost tip, Kanniyakumari. The place is a pilgrimage spot for Hindus, and is also remarkable for the fact that it's where the Bay of Bengal, the Indian Ocean and the Arabian Sea converge, if you like that sort of thing. Ghandi's ashes were laid to rest here, so I'll pop round and check them out later. Kodaikanal was lovely and hilly, and on my last day I opted to take a five-hour hike through a tiny path laden with ferns and strange plants, overlooking a stunning view of the neighbouring hills. My guide took me to 'Dolphin's Nose', a small rock jutting out over a preposterously high precipice and it was then that I remembered that I'm scared of very high heights, especially when there's a sheer drop within 2 feet of every direction except left. The next morning, I took a gruelling 10-hour coach ride to get to Kanniyakumari yesterday with a bus driver desperate to break the land speed record in a condemned vehicle. The hard and fast rule of driving in India is; the larger the vehicle, the more impunity you can hog the road. I lost count of the number of times we overtook something, despite oncoming lorries, cars and the like bearing down on us with neither vehicle willing to adjust their speed. What normally happened was that whatever we were overtaking had to succumb to our driver's constant hooting and our imminent deaths by slamming on their brakes so we could - very literally - sharply pull in at the last conceivable moment. This no longer bothered me as I have learnt to accept my fate as soon as I step on to an Indian bus.

It started pleasantly enough. A kindly chatty woman in the seat behind introduced herself and her companion, declaring 'We're sisters!' so I mumbled a rather feeble 'yes, you look alike.' It was twenty minutes later that I realised they were Nuns. Sister Angela was very pleasant company. She sat next to me and bombarded me with the usual questions: "From where are you coming? What is your professions? Are you married?" and almost immediately traded addresses as seems to be the Indian way. She gave me a couple of bread rolls, so I returned the favour by offering her a polo mint, semi-fresh from Heathrow airport. Sadly, and I sincerely hope through no fault of my mint donation, Sister Angela spent the rest of the trip vomiting heavily out of the neighbouring window, so I tried not to look. As time wore down, I got more and more angry as the seat next to be became occupied by younger and more moustashioed grinning men, and my MP3 player refused to play. (When I first arrived back in Sri Lanka, the buttons ceased to work. Now, they work 3% of the time, but the machine involuntarily pauses itself for no bloody reason, then plays half a second of song three minutes later.) I cheered up briefly when an hour or so from our destination we pulled in to a station and there, remarkably, were a gang, a gang, of female backpackers. In my time out here thus far, all I've seen are a dozen or so travellers, either dull couples or else drunk lonely middle-aged men who want to befriend me. This, however, was astonishing, six girls, all attractive, passing even my unhelpfully fussy standards. I decided that I had to have an immediate extremely casual cigarette ("Oh, hello there, I'm just having a casual cigarette"), so I raced out of my seat and ended up fighting against the tide of humanity trying to board the bus forcing me to wait expectantly for the crush to subside, trying to look laidback and not at all desperate as I did so. It was all pointless as none of them knew I was on the bus anyway and as far as they were concerned, they were the only backpackers within a 200-mile radius. I believe I screamed from my jailed vantage point amid boarding passengers as I watched them slowly drift away into the heaving mass of the station's commuters, never to be seen again. I am used to being forsaken by the God of Casual Sex, but now even the God of Getting To Know You Over A Quiet Drink had buggered off. Dejectedly, I left the bus anyway and lit up, only for the bastard driver to edge out as I did so, so I stamped on my freshly-sparked fag and boarded the bus in the mother of all huffs.

Kanniyakumari is very pleasant, albeit touristy (even Indian tourists have baseball caps and bad t-shirts in their own country), and has a stunning view across the ocean to an imposing statue facing back at the town. There's a Hindu temple nearby with a line of Sadhus, saffron clad men who have renounced all worldy posessions except my cigarettes when they saw me walk past smoking, so I gave them an offering of what was left in my pack.
I took a ferry to the rocks where the Vivekananda memorial lay. At least I think it is as my guidebook is a bit out of date now. There's no mention of the immense, new looking statue which I ended up visiting, or of the Buddhist temple nearby where I walked in, sat cross legged on the floor and attempted to meditate in a darkened, modern air-conditioned room with a green-glowing symbol at the front designed to aid complete peace. A haunting loop of 'Oooohm' played in the background so I closed my eyes and attempted to clear my mind of all thought, which was surprisingly difficult as my one single thought was "You look like a tosser right now". There were 150 or so pleasant words of wisdom around the entrance to the statue, written in that unique language, Indian English, my favourite being "A splotless mind is a virtue".

It hasn't been easy melting into the crowd as my visit to the memorial and statue on the rocks proved. I thought I was going to be by myself as I walked towards the ferry until I turned a corner and saw 200 seated Indian tourists stare back at me in quiet shock. When we arrived on the rock, I was invited into two photographs with random strangers, making me feel like a cross between a minor celebrity and John Merrick the Elephant Man. I don't mind the attention but it can get a little trying. Last night, a gang of Sikh lads surrounded me and bombarded me with questions, and I tried out my Punjabi courtesy of Suky - I greeted them with a 'Saas re akahl' and went on to say 'b'down' and 'cumbrr', which I take it means 'aubergine' and 'blanket', very useful. After ten minutes of overt questioning, I spotted a bar and ran inside, knowing they wouldn't join me. They didn't. Unfortunately, a pissed, middle-aged tourist called Carlos did. Of all the lonely drunks I've ever had the misfortune of being lumbered with, Carlos, an ex-patriot Spaniard, was probably the friendliest. Although he was hammered. I thought he was managing quite well until he said he was a musician and proceeded to air guitar the Rolling Stones and yelling 'I'm a Yumping Yack Flash, is a gaz, gaz, gaz' at the top of his voice and I wished I was in Baghdad. I successfully managed to part ways with him when the bar switched its lights up and even more successfully refused his offer of another bar without offending him. Sadly, nicotine had got the better of me and when I went to hunt down a shop, Carlos, with a newly acquired bottle of brandy, bumped in to me again and it took me an hour - an hour - to break free and go to bed, but I had to endure his philosophies on life and watch him salute his guru (quite literally, there was a poster of this guy on the wall next to us), and I was treated to the sight of a paralytic Spaniard do the very un-Hindu thing of toasting a poster's health. Carlos was kind enough to sum up the Great Truth, the meaning of life as imparted by his guru, and apparently it is this: "The truth... is in silence".
Just my luck that he didn't practice what he preached.

I think I have made the acquaintance of enough drunk, lonely old men in my time that meeting one nubile, single female backpacker's only fair, unless I've acquired a mountain of bad karma by poisoning a Nun.

Kodaikanal Hill Station

2004-07-02T06:46:00.000+01:00

I'm happy again. I am in the hills, Kodaikanal to be precise, having travelled some 500 miles or so by trains and buses and I'm still in Tamil Nadu state. The British built this place in 1845 to get away from the heat and it's bloody marvellous. I've ditched my shorts for long combats as the weather is practically identical to back home. It's amusing to see local chaps looking like the Michellin man in 15 layers and a thick hooded coat while I stroll past in a sleeveless top saying a cheery hello - my useless pale hide has finally found the right climate.

I belted out of Tiruvannamalai as fast as I could yesterday, which worked to my advantage. I woke up ahead of my alarm at 6am and couldn't face a traditional Indian breakfast of something spicy-looking as I couldn't find someone to do me eggs, so I grabbed some bananas and got the bus to Villupuram where I took a train to Dindigul. I was surrounded by policemen on the train which is normally quite unpleasant but they were full of smiles and even went out of their way to count my change for me when I bought an urgently needed bhaji from the guys who march down the train corridors selling food. I even met a lone female traveller, an English girl waiting for the train at Villapuram, but all I could manage was an 'Are you headed to Dindigul?', followed by an, 'Oh, ok, bye then'. It didn't occur to me to say 'What the bloody hell are you doing here?' until about two-and-a-half seconds later, by which time I had walked off and turning back would've looked too stupid.

After being stared at by 90% of my train carriage, I got to the ramshackle (I have to find a new word when writing these posts) Dindigul bus station and waited an hour for a connecting bus into the hills. A very disorientated gentleman came over to shake my hand and told me he was a professor and he would like to say something to me. What he did say was entirely in Tamil so I told him that I wasn't actually understanding him at that point, so he gave up and staggered off pissed as a fart. I also got hounded by five different beggars but was only able to help a couple of them. I gave some coins to one croaking guy who sounded particularly close to being reincarnated when a nearby man who had been grinning at me for a good ten minutes turned on the beggar, presumably to say 'leave him alone!' I was then surprised to see the formerly dying beggar become healthily vocal as he told my new friend to sod off. In fact, he looked positively full of life. I have now decided to submit all beggars to a blood test before I give them any more coins. They're never grateful anyway. Despite giving them enough for a small meal (which equates to about ten pence), they tend to expect a small fortune from me, plus they actually come back later as if they've never seen me before.

During the glory days of British India when we nicked their country and took all the natural resources, soldiers who cracked up under the strain of life over here were packed off to the psychiatric hospital to dribble and scream in peace. That was in Deolali, and where we get 'going Doolally' from. I don't know what their problem was - at least there were thousands of other Brits here all whinging in unison. Kodaikanal is devoid of any wester- nope, two Germans have just walked in to the Internet cafe. Anyway, it's still quiet, but very pleasant, even if the three-and-a-half hour journey up into the hills was tiring. When we initially left Dindigul, we approached another bus station twenty minutes later where I was witness to the most disgraceful insane free-for-all as people fought to get off the vehicle and people fought to get on. The only rule appeared to be every man for himself, the women sensibly opting to avoid the crush. From my rear corner seat with the back door in front of me, I tutted in astonishment as people trying to leave surged forward against the tide of screaming people trying to get on. Those in the crush were handing me their bags so they could claim the seat next to me and not have to stand for the next three hours. The bizarre thing was, once everything calmed down and people had accepted their sitting or standing fate, there was no acrimony or bad feeling at all. Before long, complete strangers who moments earlier had their hands in each other's mouths or were mere inches away from an accidentally illegal act were soon casually chatting to each other in an extremely non-London way. Even I got talking to a chap who works for the World Health Organisation having originally met him as he grinned like a crushed maniac who had just had his bag placed onto a small bit of vinyl-covered seat. Unfortunately, he was incredibly dull.

The ride into Kodaikanal was pretty impressive as the bus wound its way up massive hills overlooking thick, luch forest so fluffly you wanted to reach out and stroke it with an enormous arm. The sun had set before we reached the summit and I have yet to check out the town properly but I shall do so now. I like my hotel a lot - I watched Saddam's court appearance on the BBC World Service in my room - and I intend to stay here for a few days to wander around the lake and do some hiking, then I'll go back into the lowlands and sweat once again. Travelling here isn't something you do lightly and takes days, so I'm going to recuperate for a while before a ridiculously long train journey to Thiruvananthapuram (or Trivandrum if you prefer) in Kerala state in the far south west of the country. I was 'on the road' from 7am til 8pm yesterday on buses and trains for hours. I need a holiday.

Pondicherry and on...

2004-06-30T14:18:00.000+01:00

I have spent the last few days hanging out with the locals on Indian buses, where they can freely stare at me in disbelief. I am currently in unpronounceable Tiruvannamalai, a large town bordered by an extinct volcano. It is one of the holiest sites in Tamil Nadu, the state I'm in - besides 'sweaty' - and I'm utterly ticked off.

Mallamapuram really was lovely, but my legendary patience gave way and I had to get moving again. I spent three great nights by the beach and among the most Westerners I've yet seen, but I finally got fed up with keeping the locals in fags and beer. I met a middle-aged drunk Australian called Tony who delighted in giving me his opinion on bloody everything and to top it off, the bastard even nicked my lighter. I left a shirt out to dry in the sun, deftly utilising a neighbouring clip from someone elses' washing, reattaching both items with the same clip, but didn't do a good job as I found it on the ground covered in shit. I have also become accustomed to the cockroaches. I found one in the bathroom (screaming like a Japanese schoolgirl when I saw it) and tried flushing it down the plughole with several jugs of water. Unfortunately, it was too fat to go down it and managed to end up on it's back where it flailed about pathetically. Suddenly taking pity on it, I scooped it up and slung it outside. Sadly, one of the elderly residents from the hostel (think 'Major' from Fawlty Towers), saw what I had brought out so he grabbed the cockroach, flipped it back onto its back and pulled what can only be described as a croaking, gasping face as he pointed up to the sun. I couldn't be bothered to argue with the guy as he thought he was helping me, so I left it to a grisly end (the 'roach, not the old man).

On my last night in Mallamapuram, I found a scrap of paper on the floor which I was about to ignore when it occurred to me that it could be a declaration of love for me. When I opened it, it read 'If you need a clip to fasten your washing, just get a clip yourself! DO NOT TAKE MY CLIPS!!!' I smiled to myself at the pettiness of some people as I let myself into my room. Ten minutes later, as apoplectic rage consumed my being, I angrily scrawled ' THANK YOU FOR ALLOWING MY SHIRT TO FALL IN SHIT' with 'shit' underlined three times. If there is a god, the note writing clip owner will be consumed with guilt and contemplate some kind of self-harm.

It's not all been paradise. One of the locals informed me that an Indian tourist got dragged under the sea, but happily added that they'll get the body in a few days when it swells up. I made a snap judgement to avoid swimming. And India once I'm home. The food's been good to me so far; I've had a green salad (ironically it was tomatoes, carrots and peeled cucumber), and curried shark (far, far nicer than it sounds), and yesterday I treated myself to ice-cream and caramelised bananas that disconcertingly looked like sausages. Having once again chosen the only hostel in town with no other travellers, I was lucky enough to meet a couple of Yanks, David and Frances, when I was listening to my MP3s in an internet cafe. (Ryan Adam's cover of Wonderwall did the trick). The three of us yesterday headed off to Pondicherry, the former capital of French India, which wasn't as nice as it sounds apart from the view of waves from the Bay of Bengal crashing onto the rocks that form the shore line. The only thing French about it is the occasional 'Rue' streetname, the stupid caps the police wear, French on monuments and the bloke who said 'merci' when I handed him money for my breakfast. Oh, and I suppose women ignoring me is another one, and the incessant hooting, but they've both been a constant throughout India so far. We found a lovely hotel, the Sea Side ashram, which was the best I've stayed in by far. Absolutely spotless, and extremely cheap for the price. Unfortunately, being an ashram meant a 10.30pm curfew in a town with no tax on beer (30 roops a pint, about 35 pence).

I decided this morning to part ways with Dave and Frances as she was incredibly ill (all she ever said was 'This place sucks' when we arrived in Pondicherry) and anyway, I wanted my independence back. I had inadvertently insulted David when I first met him by discussing politics and saying that Israelis are a surly bunch of wankers. It was only later when we checked into the hotel that I discovered he was one, what with being born there. American and Israeli. That makes him more humourless than the Germans.

So now I'm in Tiruvannamalai and it's a little hardcore. My crappy room - why did it have to come into my life after the Sheraton-style opulence of the last place? - has five huge spiders in the bathroom and a spider graveyard under one of the chairs, not to mention a shower that dribbles a small amount of water from a low-pressure nozzle. I had to fill a bucket and pour it onto my head. There's a lot of Hindu temples here so I may check them out tomorrow, but my immediate reaction is to get a train into the hills or perhaps to Kerela and Goa. I stick out like a near-to-death burnt sweaty thumb in a vast canyon of perfectly un-sore thumbs.

I'm not going to lie, only a nubile lone female traveller will cheer me up at this point. I posted a note to the Lonely Planet Thorn tree forum to say that I was a single bloke wandering about southern India and did anyone want to meet up for a beer. I didn't get a single reply. Not one. I am tempted to repost, pretending to be female, just to see what happens.

I'm out of here. The only sleeping around I've got to look forward to is with the spiders.

Mamallapuram

2004-06-27T09:28:00.000+01:00

Thank god, I'm finally happy again. I left Chennai (formerly Madras) a couple of days ago and decided against a public bus further down the east coast as my guidebook said the bus station would be a nightmare and I wasn't willing to disprove this. I took a taxi for the two-hour ride south and am now in a beautiful if ramshackle little village called Mamallapuram. I checked in to the Uma guesthouse and installed my mosquito net, as I did in my nicer hotel in Chennai - it helps reassure me and I get to sleep quicker. There was no power in the whole village when I checked in - this is normal for India. Even at Chennai airport as I waited for my luggage, there were two power cuts forcing the conveyor belt to shut down and the lights to go out. That was fun. (So was waiting for an hour for my sodding rucksack only to notice it sitting folornly on the floor opposite when everyone else had gone home and a man told me 'Colombo bags done.')

I cheered up a bit on my first night when I had an amazing Veg Kolpana and remembered that there were many positives about India even if they're not immediately evident. Mamallapuram is another one. A short five minute walk down the road from my guesthouse is the Indian Ocean, and several lovely beachfront restaurants where I tucked in to deep-fried calamari and a couple of beers for about 3 pounds. I've decided to stay here for a few days to chill out, plus there is a steady stream of backpackers here so I'm happy. Sadly I've yet to meet any of them save a cursory nod at each other because we happen to be white, but I have met a local lad called Kanen who speaks excellent English and genuinely wants to just chat and hang out. We even played chess yesterday on the step outside his shop. (I didn't even know I could play. Perhaps that's why the little bastard beat me 3-0).

I wandered around the place yesterday, little more than a few dusty roads, and found it surprisingly charming. It's a stone-carving centre, so there are endless shops with incredible sculpted rocks and the like. I'm used to seeing things like this in shops, but when you walk out into the street and see someone patiently chiselling in to a large, unimpressive granite stone, you appreciate the incredible talents these guys have. The locals are extremely friendly, although naturally they want to drag you into their shops. Since they've discovered that I have no need for little stone balls with Kama Sutra carvings on them or bags of weed for a few rupees (I'm using the 'I'm a London policeman' routine to convince them to stop hassling me), they're quite happy to just yell hello at me as I wander past.

I screwed up last night. Having done with my wandering, I realised that I didn't have my torch/ key combo on me. I use my own padlocks when staying at guesthouses for added security, and suddenly I began to panic. Without my keys, how would I shower? where would I sleep? Plus, all my stuff was in there. I had to retrace my steps and revisit every shop I was dragged into, much to the initial delight of about half a dozen shopkeepers. Soon, I had a few children helping me look as they thought they could make a few roops but I shoo-ed them away - I knew it couldn't possibly have fallen from my shorts as the torch is considerably more noticeable that a few keys. When I got back to the Uma and peered through the grill of my room window, I realised as I saw my torch and keys sitting carefree on the desk that I had absent-mindedly locked myself out. The next half an hour was farcical, as I stood there shirtless in a pair of shorts sweating profusely as the guesthouse owner and his mates played 'fish the keys out of the room and win a happy rich pink bloke' via a ten foot length of wood with a hook attached to it. The guys had been kind enough to fashion a grabbing device with various bits from around the village and much to my annoyance, a crowd kept trying to grab the stick off me, presumably so they might be rewarded. My only saving grace was that I looked and felt like a beached whale as I calmly tried to oh-so-delicately hook the bloody keys up, so no-one was keen to get too close to me. It was quite exciting (in retrospect) being tantalisingly close, including actually having the keys at the end of the stick twice, only to drop them when someone coughed. More annoyingly was that each slip up was accompanied by a frantic grabbing of the stick, but I had to have my moment of glory, which eventually happened as I gingerly pulled the stick through the grill and grabbed the keys.

It made me laugh to think that my immediate reaction on seeing the keys in my room was 'Sod it, break the lock', but this was incredibly un-Indian. Why break a perfectly good, and costly, padlock when there were other options? It also reminded me that losing something and getting it back is one of the best feelings in the world, even though you're essentially back at square one.

I did some calculations and since my taxi ride/ nice hotel frenzy, I should really budget for five pounds a day for the next week or so, which means not leaving this place. I think I can handle it. I'll do Pondicherry, the former French colony, later on. It's Bastille Day, the big French knees-up, on the 14th, and a lot of them flock there to chill with the French-speaking locals and sleep with one another. One of the girls may be desperate enough so you never know...

Indian media

2004-06-26T13:11:00.000+01:00

With a TV in my last hotel, I'm in a good position to assess the broadcast material over here. Of the twenty or so stations I could receive, 90% of them seemed dedicated to some sort of cabaret or musical, or clips from films (with lots of dancing).

The women are by and large absolute goddesses (making me think frequently 'God, I'd love to meet her parents' - until the girls start singing and the illusion is shattered), yet they all seem to have on-screen love interests a bit like Asian Mr Bean's with collosal moustaches. Last night, I watched with interest an open air interview with a rugged Bollywood star and the thing that I found most fascinating was the reversal of how it would've been in the West - the guy in queston appeared petrified as the all-woman audience stood up and forcefully bombarded him with questions. I have no idea what they said but I'm guessing it was along the lines of 'Would you consider a non-arranged marriage?', 'Would your parents approve if you married a fan?' and 'Shouldn't you be getting married soon? To one of us?' He looked more uncomfortable than I do when I walk down a street full of beggars. Every so often they interspersed the interview with some utterly brilliant clips from his films; a crash-zoom of the guy grinning in a cowboy outfit atop an elephant, or else winking at the camera in yet another dance routine. Thoroughly entertaining.

I watched a man weave a bucket to an instrumental of Abba's 'Dancing Queen' (no lie), and have now come to the conclusion that India is the land of unsubtle cheese. Now I know why Suky Singh is so much like Suky Singh. I've seen the mother of all Bollywood stars, Amitabh Bhatchan, prostitute himself yet again (he advertises everything, glaring with millionaire sincerity as he points at a battery), and watched an amazing cheesy advert where, all shot in B&W, Bhatchan walks into a bar, takes his trilby off, smoulders at the sexy girl at the bar, then dramatically throws said battery at a guitarist (a la Matrix) who starts playing a kind of Hindu funk as colour floods the screen and our hero saunters out of the now heaving building eulogising about small red batteries. They don't even power guitars, so it didn't work for me, to be honest.

I've been a witness to a teenager winking at the camera because a girl smiles at his clean shirt, and pondered over the (currently) 100% success rate of women getting slapped about by their men in films. It seems to happen sooner or later, either the guy hits her to the floor and the camera crash zooms to his gnarling face, or else he hits her to the floor and the camera crash zooms to a man with instant regret. Both times I had to race to turn the volume down as the dramatic music went up.

You can tell a lot about a country by its television. I have learnt that I will need to body-pop and wiggle my finger if I want to kiss a girl on the cheek and make her turn away and touch her face as she smiles to herself.

IndiaAARGH

2004-06-25T09:19:00.000+01:00

I am currently in Chennai (formerly Madras) in the Southeastern corner of the country and can now thoroughly recommend Sri Lanka. It's the India for people too scared to do India, which is hotter, noisier, hoot-ier (in the non sexual sense, Harris) and a whole lot harder. I only left the airport four hours ago.

I bade farewell to Kandy yesterday afternoon - it feels so far away now - in that remarkable train with the panoramic view, leaving behind the hills and waving at people as they crossed our just travelled tracks. Now I know what the Queen feels like. I was sorry to go and even one of the birds had one last crap on me, this time in my hair. I decided to muck in again so I took a public bus to Negombo (nearer to the airport) although I sadly didn't get to see much of the place. It was nightfall by the time I arrived so I checked in to an adequate guesthouse and had a bite to eat at a nearby quiet restaurant. The only other people there were a local couple and a British one. The shaven head, tattoos and ENGLAND t-shirt gave it away (and that was just the woman, ahahaha.) We did our best to pretend the other didn't exist until the waiter said to me 'You English? They too!' forcing us to grudgingly nod at one another, as is the British way abroad, when sober.

Naturally, I was in a strange environment so I didn't sleep a wink and was completely perplexed when I woke up at 5 this morning to get my flight, and now everything's changed. For a start, I'm amid Hindus as opposed to Buddhists and, in Negombo's case, 90% Christians with their street corners adorned with very fetching and not at all tacky plastic Jesus's, lit up with flashing neon rope in accordance with Biblical tradition. Chennai (formerly Madras) brought home very quickly how different things will be compared with my previous week. There are a lot more saris about, and bindis on foreheads, and women riding sidesaddle and helmetless on the back of their partners' motorbikes. The beggars are already unremittant, with a little girl pleading with me from the middle of the road when we stopped at traffic lights, and shoving a packet of cotton wool buds into my face. (One beggar even reached his palm out to me in the three seconds I was able to look at him from my speeding taxi.) The police and officials are a lot more surly and swollen with power - a smile would be unthinkable from them - yet the women are much more attractive. Good job they're all on the look out for a large pink man whose right arm is a huge landscape of mosquito bites. I look like a dot-to-dot puzzle.

The language has changed from Sri Lankan Sinhalese to Tamil, the writing less circular and more vertical, plus it's hot and dusty, but I'm putting that down to being in a big city. I've checked into a moderately decent hotel (i.e. one with a TV, and this time it was television that informed me of the England score before I could watch it - I will never discuss that again). So here I am in Chennai (formerly Madras). I intend to leave for Mammalapuram as soon as is humanly possible. It's a bit further down on the coast and is supposed to be nice but if it's Beggar Central, I may keep moving. Chennai is heartbreaking. I saw one guy lying on the pavement stark naked - too poor even for shorts - and it's depressing the hell out of me, more than it seemed to three years back. I feel like I've been hassled already but that was all from the taxi. I took a rickshaw to this Internet cafe as I'm in the middle of nowhere, and walking down the street would send me insane. All my clothes are being washed right now so all I have to wear is this stupid sleeveless grey gym top that I don't wear out back home. To say I stand out is an understatement.

I was expecting to be the only European on the plane but as it turned out, there were two British girls there too. As soon as we landed, I went to chat to them, and asked if they wanted to share a taxi to the centre, but they were getting a train out of the city. After all, as my guidebook says, there ain't much to do in Chennai. I decided to remain stubborn and stick with my decision to bed down for the night. I'll do all my fleeing tomorrow. Nevertheless, I am currently rethinking my India options (although in fairness, after my first night in Sri Lanka sleeping with the cockroaches, I considered going back home). I will check out Mamallapuram and Pondicherry in the coming few days and see what they're like. (Check out this map. It's hardly covering vast distances.) It's also oppressively hot, so I'll be catching a sea breeze in Goa, as we did the last time I was here. I had wanted to do new places, but needs must. It's also dawning on me to head back up into the Himalayas where it's cooler and it's where the other backpackers are (like we did last time.) At the moment, I feel like the only backpacker within a 2,000 mile radius and I'm already starting to tire of telling people where I'm from, if I'm married or not, and what I do for a living, plus I'm being stared at in disbelief. At least other westerners will divert the attention.

Right then. At this rate, I expect to be babbling like a maniac in 7 to 10 days, and have fully blown dengue fever by mid August.

Random Joke

2004-06-24T07:56:00.000+01:00

What do you call a Fat Goth?
Vampire the Buffet Slayer.

I like Kandy...

2004-06-23T10:20:00.000+01:00

I am currently in the Hill resort of Kandy, some distance from the capital I was glad to leave behind. First class was first class, comfy seats and ceiling fans, and at the back of the train so we had a near panoramic view as we rolled out of Colombo and into the lush countryside. We crossed rivers crushed by palm trees jostling for space right up to the water's edge, very Vietnam (if the movies are correct), and witnessed locals crossing the train tracks once we'd passed, as if it were only a road. Children waved and... you get the idea. Kandy is up in the mountains and as such boasts a freak British summertime climate all year round. That is to say 30 during the day with cooler, warm nights. Reaching the mountains finally made me appreciate being here as we skirted around the rim of a collosal bowl of green, fringed by impressive hills on the other side. I found myself so content that I fell asleep. When I came to, I got chatting to the gentleman next to me, who pointed out fascinating pieces of local history;
"That hill over there we call Bible Hill."
"Right, why's that?"
"Don't know."

I am very fond of Kandy. It is as modern as it gets over here, which is still difficult for the unseasoned traveller but is no big deal for a man of the world like myself, of course. I was even lucky enough to get to watch highlights of the England-Croatia game. I had been hoping for a replay (it was on at 1am live but everywhere was shut) but before I got to see a thing, I was even more fortunate to intercept an email from flatmate Rob who was kind enough to divuldge the score I had been avoiding all day, so thanks Rob.

Yesterday was a chillout day as I walked around the picturesque lake in the centre of the town and sat down by the lake's edge once I had shaken off a very nice chap who just wanted to chat but then tried to drum up business for his rickshaw driver mate. I sat there perfectly content for about 30 seconds when I spied a small ant on my right thigh which I casually flicked off, then noticed another and did likewise. I then turned and looked at my left leg - which was coated in at least a couple of hundred of the buggers. Passers-by were then treated to a screaming pink man re-enacting the Bavarian Slap Dance.

That evening, I headed to the Buddist temple nearby when a bird decided to crap on me. I know I was in pretty scruffy gear, but there was no need for that. Fashion critics. I visited the Sri Dalada Maligawa, the Temple of the tooth (in a new bloody shirt I'd just bought), where apparently one of Buddha's molars lay, having been swiped from his funeral pyre. I didn't realise it wasn't evident anywhere til after I had left. What I did see was a lot of paraphernalia associated with Buddhism, and was left to walk around in a kind of reverential bemusement with the German tourists. I had to purchase a flower at the entrance and eventually handed it to a bored bald monk who paid no attention to me as I gave it to him. After all, people were queuing up to give this guy the flowers we'd all bought downstairs which I thought was ingenuious. I could start my own religion where people come and visit me (no chatting), but only after buying an offering of beer and porn, handing it to me, then going away.

In another sanctum was an impressive golden buddha next to a monk who eyed the tourists poker-faced. Having no idea what was entailed, I made a point to stop, put my palms together and bow slowly, which seemed like a good idea, but I didn't attain nirvana. The monk wasn't impressed anyway, as I didn't tip him. I spent that evening in the town nightspot, 'The Pub', which was more of a restaurant actually. It was there that I saw the England highlights from scratch on a huge screen tv where I thought, "Excellent, this'll be the match I haven't yet seen but I now know we won 4-2", so thanks, Rob.

This morning I headed off to the Pinnewala Elephant reserve via a couple of local buses which is much more fun than behaving like a tourist and taking a cab. It occurred to me that I'd never seen an elephant before, a fact I remarked to the guy who came to say hello as I waited for the second bus to take me to the reserve. He told me he lived next to the largest-tusked elephant in the region and I told him I lived near Lord's Cricket Ground, which he thought was a much better living arrangement. So did I, actually, and I'm not a cricket fan. I am now an elephant fan though. There's something very innocent about them, all large, slow and gentle, a kind of animal world Peter Lee. One of them was lame and it's front right leg was withered and unusable which I found very upsetting, then a tiny baby elephant appeared clinging to its mother while being boistrous which cheered me up, so I concentrated on looking at that. I didn't hear any of those famous trumpet calls, but they did growl, a low rumble like something out of Jurrasic Park. In fact, they reminded me in some ways of dinosaurs as they were being bathed about 10 feet in front of me. (That's incongruous of course, people never bathed dinosaurs, but it was the whole lumbering gait and think leathery skin I was thinking of).

The assembled crowd then follwed the herd as they were led to the reserve but that was when I chose to head home. The sun shone with such ferocity that I was looking like I'd showered with my clothes on. Plus I was beginning to resemble the Singing Detective. I toyed with the idea of buying an Indiana Jones style hat as there were plenty for sale, but they were all made out of a killed-to-make-a-hat animal, or buffalo, as they're also known. That was totally at odds with my ethics so I gave up the opportunity to stand out as the worlds most absurdly dressed burnt tourist.

After a return bus journey home that was much less 'veering around corners in a packed to capacity bus at 75mph with an adolescent's genitalia sitting on my shoulder' than it had been this morning, I got myself a ticket out of Kandy. Tomorrow, I'm heading for Negombo beach just north of Colombo. It's near the airport and I jet off to Chennai (formerly Madras), India on Friday.

To be blunt, I'm bricking it. It's woefully hot already so hey, let's go somewhere 10 degrees hotter. I'm not about to list a whole bunch of neagatives about the country I intend to spend a month in, so I think I'll draw this post to a close. Something tells me I may have to make an unscheduled detour to the Himalayas again. It's hotter than the sun already!

PS - my combat trousers are being held up with string. Pulling chances: minus 3,000.

Chilling in Bambalapitiya

2004-06-21T06:20:00.000+01:00

I've got time on my hands (obviously), so here's a quick update before I board my train to the mountain resort of Kandy in four damn hours.

Things are going great so far and the only major hindrance has been the heat. The 30 degrees celcius is wonderful, but it's the 85% humidity that's been slightly difficult. That and the distinct lack of breeze. As predicted, I didn't manage a wink of sleep last night, mainly because once I felt the desperate urge to pass out at half nine, I switched off the light and was engulfed in an intense darkness that added to the fear factor as I lay there listening to the most god-awful stomach churning screams from god-knows-what outside and wondering what ever happened to that cockroach. It didn't help that bushes rustled, twigs snapped and things moved disconcertingly near to my window - a hole in the wall covered by netting that had frayed away and left huge, swarm-of-insect sized gaps.
I belted out of bed after a restless few hours to chainsmoke, which was in itself not a great idea as I saw a lizard sprint up my wall when I swtiched the light on. In fairness, that didn't really bother me too much as they eat the insects I hate - I forgot about those damn insects when I was in England planning this trip - so I went back to bed to listen to everything intently for four hours. There were geese going mental, ciccadas, strange birds (I hoped) and what I thought was a dog going 'woof' except it was more like a throaty 'oof' that became frenzied and high pitched. The exciting part about that particular noise was that the creature had chosen to do it right outside my window. All I could think about was that scene in the Blair Witch project when all hell's breaking loose outside their tent.

Eventually, I passed out (only sporadically though), and came to around 7.30 this morning, so I went upstairs to the courtyard for breakfast - scrambled eggs and fresh papaya, which was nice. The lady owner asked me if I had a nice sleep, so I told her in no uncertain terms that I didn't because of the bloody noise, and the fact that I thought that there were monkeys outside my window. She just gave me a funny look and said 'no monkey, noise nice'. I forgot how much of a pampered western city boy I am - all I'm used to at night is the distant doppler-effect sound of cars driving past playing House. A few huge crows then flew onto the chair behind me and went 'KRAW!' in my ear, and stared at me as if my number was up. I told her that they symbolise death back home but she was in too good a mood to be brought down by me so she buggered off leaving me to watch a documentary on polar bears whist muttering under my breath at those sodding birds. I felt like that vicar from the Omen.

So now I'm in this cafe. I checked out of my fleapit and took a rickshaw - immense fun - to the Colombo Fort railway station where I bought my ticket to Kandy, first class no less, for about a pound 50. I hopped on a 3 pence public bus to get to this unpronouncable district, which was less fun, sweaty and crowded but earthy and amid the Sri Lankans who were thrilled, I'm sure, to be sat with the leaking pink guy. So that's the story so far. Fun, fun, fun! Apart from the sweating bit. And the fact that my rucksack seems heavier. I'm looking forward to a shave when I get to Kandy at 6pm (1pm BST) as I look absolutely ridiculous and it's starting to itch. My barnet's looking daft too, and it's no fun coming out of the shower with strands of hair tickling my shoulders and convincing me that something's crawling up my neck.

Right, it's nearly midday. Should be hot enough to walk out and get burnt to a crisp. I want to be able to hear that incessant, unremittent traffic hooting.

Gone! Colombo, Sri Lanka

2004-06-20T14:00:00.000+01:00

Bloody hell it's hot. It's only about 30 degrees but the humidity's knocking me out. Getting here went without a hitch, and I managed to squeeze in a visit to Shish in Willesden Green with Luke, Dave and Dave's missus Antonia before getting the tube to Heathrow. I left in plenty of time (to drop a lit cigarette onto my new trousers and spill beer down my shirt when I missed my mouth), and spent a glorious evening in a plane that deliberately avoided Iraq, trying to sleep while the bloke behind kicked my chair. I have yet to sleep and I don't think I'll have much luck tonight. I'm staying at a hostel that Dave recommended (Monkey Dave, not flatmate Dave), and remembered why these places are so damn difficult. It has an en suite bathroom, but that's not nearly as exotic as it sounds. It's basically a room with a bed that has a connecting room with a shower. When I walked into the bathroom and saw HUGE metallic green flies (same colour as my car, how thoughtful), and then the cockroach, I pointed it out to the lady owner but she said simply, "You big, it small" (although I thought the difference in size was marginal.) I thus refused to take the room, and could she point me to the Wayfarer's Inn instead. She then told me that I was in it so I asked her if I could split the rent with the cockroach, but she ignored that very serious suggestion. Being too hot and bothered to find another hostel, I resigned myself to my fate, stripped off, and had a shower with the local wildlife whilst shouting loudly to myself ("Jesus Christ!", "Aaargh", etc) and wondering where the cockroach went. It vanished soon after I first stared at it in wretched disbelief. To make things more interesting, my room backs on to the garden. It's full of vocal chickens.

Anyway, so far, so good. A local "city guide" latched on to me earlier and despite my insistance that I had no money to pay him, I couldn't shake him off until I saw this Internet cafe. The last I saw of him was when the owners of this fine establishment shut the door in his face when I stepped in. He's probably still out there now, mind.

Anyway, tomorrow morning, I'll get a train to Kandy. That's the best thing about travelling. If you've seen enough, get moving...

3-0 and two days

2004-06-17T22:56:00.000+01:00

A better result. I watched the Eng v Swiss game at my Mum's new house surrounded by boxes, as she moved today. It never really bothered me about leaving behind my childhood home until my sister started crying as the house so linked to our Grandma was emptied of everything in it and our voices began to echo in the shell that remained. Soon they'll demolish it, which is even odder, and I feel some kind of emptiness about it all, but I can't quite find the right word. A cross between unease and upset, I guess. I'm Unset. That'll do.

It doesn't help that I'm starting to go slightly mental as I leave in two days and I've picked up sympathy stress from my Mum's moving, plus I didn't have time to get my Thai visa this morning. I soon discovered (while queueing up for the damn thing) that it takes two working days, as opposed to the efficient Indian matter of hours, by which time I'll have got on a plane and left the country. Now I've got the hassle of getting my Thai visa in India and I may have to go to Delhi instead of Calcutta to be absolutely certain, a minor diversion of 810 miles. To make matters worse, I don't have enough money to do the whole trip, I still have to buy some varied bits and pieces, oh and I've managed to develop a painful case of the Chalfonts to make my journey uniquely painful. If you don't know what that is, I'm not telling you.

Why can't I be more organised, and why did I write in my last post that I miss my friends "tremendously"? In fairness, England had lost, I wasn't that sober and I'm looking forward to this trip with the same mix of happiness and fear as a guy about to have major heart surgery.

Oh god, I'm unset again.

2-1

2004-06-13T23:25:00.000+01:00

England have just conceded two goals in bloody injury time, 90 minutes in. We were winning 1-0 and had looked like staring our first game in Euro 2004 on a massive high - apparently we never win our early matches, yet we had fought surprisingly well and to add insult to injury, France, who had been unbeated for over a dozen games, slotted in two goals in the dying, exhaustive minutes, although I'm guessing it's something to do with ridding ourselves of Rooney and bringing on the dynamic Heskey. How the winners can become the losers so damn quickly and so damn suddenly is still something that I cannot fathom. This is why I, a self-admitted plastic supporter, cannot bear to watch England, the only team I honestly care about, play - they're practically a metaphor for my life. I'm pleased that I won't be in the country during the tournament to be honest, but I intend to take a schedule with me and watch from afar. I text'd my mates Jamie, Phil and Pete after the match, and hopefully I'll see them all this Friday, the day before I go, with Jimmy there too. It'll be an honour; I miss them all tremendously.

This morning, I did my last car boot sale for a while. I made £30, pretty bad really, but the way I see it, it's the cost of my visa to India so it's all relative. At the sale there were England flags everywhere. Normally I find it offensively tacky, especially bearing in mind the legions of bare-chested, tattooed males who strutted around the site the morning of our first match but in retrospect, the whole thing seemed uniquely English; sporadic pockets of overt pride that was ultimately wrapped in a real and disappointing finish. But it's not the end as there are more important games to come. It's how we handle defeat. In any event, that's what seems to count.

In six days time, I board a plane and experience the trip of a lifetime. Something tells me that my happiness won't lie in the fate of a few sportsmen playing a game in Portugal but at the moment, that's what seems to matter.

Ayubowan, Phir milengay, Sawatdi, Goodbye

2004-06-10T17:09:00.000+01:00

I can't wipe the smile off my face. Perhaps two and a half months of chronic stomach cramps will correct that. I have, this afternoon, booked a one-way ticket to Colombo, Sri Lanka, with a flight on to Chennai, southern India, a week later. I will then be able to work my way around India's southern tip, perhaps go as far west as Goa, then work my way up the eastern coast to Calcutta in the northeast.

I intend to write myself into a self-indulgent coma, read important heavyweight literature (Dickens, Orwell, Descartes, Bravo Two-zero by Andy McNab), re-write and ultimately finish 'Emails from India', my seminal classic űberwhinge from three years ago, find myself spiritually (I intend to read the Koran, the Torah, the Bhagavad Gita and the New Testament side-by-side but I won't have room in my rucksack), detox myself clean with a constant diet of fruit and water, and grow my hair down to my nipples. I am not and never will be a cliched hippy, but since turning 30, the realisation that I don't have a receding hairline or any kind of male pattern baldness has forced me to grow it out like some kind of sad sales rep desperately clinging on to his youth, mainly because I can.

Some time mid-July, I will leave Calcutta (Wait a minute, what the heck am I doing going to Calcutta in the middle of July???) and get on a plane to Bangkok, which I am steeling myself for as I type. My current opinion of the place is that of a modern-day Sodom and Gamorrah, but more Asian. From what I've been told, I will spend half the day fending off extremely attractive but worryingly drug-addled teenage Thai prostitutes, who may or may not be men, depending on the size of their hands. Once I've avoided them, I will have to find myself one of the only two decent places to stay in, as most of the accomodation consists of a series of rooms with soiled, flea-ridden matresses. By all accounts (and this strangely includes tourist websites about the city), Bangkok is a stinking cesspit of hell. I guess the only way to find out is to go there, then leave immediately for trekking in the north and beach sitting in the south.

I don't know what I'll gain from this, but hopefully it'll be a sunnier outlook, visible abdominal muscles, an education that can't be bought, and a successful career in journalism. Actually, if I achieve any of that, I'll be bloody stunned.

Car Boot Soul

2004-06-05T19:45:00.000+01:00

My life is on hold at the moment as I am caught up in a cosmic cycle of selling household items in someone else's field. I'm not a morning person and the 6am starts are beginning to confuse me. I've been fighting to stay awake all afternoon after an average morning watching the Great British Public talk a lady from Radlett into parting with her old denim miniskirt for the princely sum of 20 new pence, and ended up succoming to a nap since returning home. It's now 8pm on a Saturday evening and I'm awake yet dazed. Is this my destiny now I'm 30? My flatmates are all probably on a Cruise ship somewhere in the Caribbean at the moment.

This was my fourth Car Boot sale. My fifth and perhaps last one ever will be tomorrow and I'm running out of decent things to sell. All the good stuff has already disappeared courtesy of the brutally alert vultures who descended on me as I drove into the sales, combing out my classic albums and finest bone china crockery before I even set up - I was too busy dozily trying to assemble the dangerously inappropriate, not made for frequent dismantling, former-East-German table. I lost a good chunk of cash due to these dealers who've presumably been awake since 4am, Tai-Chi'ing and steeling themselves for the assault on the unwary seller, (me), angrily offering £10 for £50 worth of my Grade A posessions and catching me unawares as I was pretty sure I hadn't actually woken up yet and was merely having a very detailed dream about stubbled Spivs with too many nasty gold rings.
Fascinating places, car boot sales.

All I'm basically trying to do, in the modern vernacular, is 'Life Launder'. I agree that it's better to streamline and de-clutter your life, and I want my Mum and Stepdad to move into a bungalow without years' worth of unnecessary baggage around them. It helps me too as I get to downsize my gear, make some cash during my work lull and generally bide my time until I can get a ticket out of this very uninteresting country.
I'll be helping my Mum move on June 17th. If all goes to plan, I will be on a plane heading for Chennai (formerly Madras) on June 18th. Then I'll probably remember why I was so keen to get the hell out of India when I first went three years ago.

Disturbing list of anger

2004-06-04T00:06:00.000+01:00

Ok, I've been a Blogger for a matter of hours, I've added a photo and tinkered with a few settings. The time is right therefore, for a new and irrellevant post, and I think random and bitter should set the tone; a short list I'm calling 'Things that should be Irradicated from the Face of the Earth'

* Italians
* Brow furrowing, pouting Boy Bands
* The South African accent
* South Africans
* Pub licensing laws
* The British weather
* Wankers
* Being pale and getting sunburnt in a thunderstorm
* Paying rent
* Mouthy teenagers
* Monosyllabic, grunting Neanderthals with an armful of tattoos who hurl AA batteries at your car as you’re doing 80 down the M3 because they cut you up so you responded by driving up to their bumper and flicking V’s
* Ostriches (‘ropey birds who look down at you’)
* People who stop your lift to travel up one bloody floor
* Shoppers in busy supermarkets who waddle in slow motion down the aisles whilst deliberately using their trolley as a path blocker
* Women who think I embody every leering, creepy bloke they've ever come across. I'm practically a bloody feminist, for god's sake. Sort of.
* Realising that the music you grew up with was actually better than the stuff that comes out now
* Realising that thinking like that brings you one step closer to your parents
* Losing the American War of Independence
* Being first on an empty platform, only to fight to get onto the damn tube when it eventually turns up ten minutes later and there are now 400 commuters pushing in trying to do likewise
* Chris Evans
* Sweating
* Welsh and Scottish pride that can only be displayed through a vitriolic hatred of the English, or directed at me when trying to buy a pint in Cardiff or Edinburgh
* Jamie Oliver
* People who drive in the middle lane of the motorway regardless of what the rest of the traffic is doing, if indeed there is any traffic
* People who feel the need to be cold and ruthless in order to succeed in life
* Being accused of looking like Jamie Oliver
* People who felt the need to be cold and ruthless in order to succeed in life, who have actually succeeded
* George W Bush
* Australians
* Flying St George's Cross's from Vauxhall Novas because some Ball Kicking Contest is about to bring the fucking country to a standstill
* Parents who bring their children into shops to scream
* Queuing for an age at the bar only to be beaten to it by some bloke who’s just casually sauntered over and been served immediately
* As above, but this time a woman has pushed in and not only is she unperturbed by her own lack of manners but is positively convinced that she has the god-given right to be served first, as if it’s the modern day equivalent of covering a puddle with your cape
* Being accused of looking like Boris Becker
* Buying a brand new can of deodorant only for the nozzle to block and become useless. All that precious spray, no way to unblock it
* People with mobile phones who never answer it and never reply to any voice or text messages.
* ‘The Bill’
* ‘Eastenders’
* People who come up behind you when you’re playing computer solitaire and tell you where to place the cards
* Fumbling in front of women I really like
* The fact that recently, the 'fumbling' became 'sweating uncontrollably and it wasn't even hot out'
* The British Film Industry for not thinking beyond cockney gangsters, upper class Southerners or plucky Northerners standing proud in the face of adversity
* Tony Blair
* People who sing really badly
* Friends who sing really well
* Women who call you ‘mate’
* The drug addled weasel-eyed little slagrat who casually broke my lock and rode off with my bike from the railings outside work while I sat upstairs trying to earn a bloody living.
* Jeffrey Archer
* Sexually Transmitted Diseases
* Not being in a position to contract a sexually transmitted disease
* Jeffrey Archer being released from prison
* Posing for a picture, thinking 'that should come out well', then being handed a photo some weeks later that features Jabba the Hutt with your head on it - a head that's gurning with eyes that are half-closed.
* Drunkenly offering chocolate biscuits to commuters on the late-night tube, and getting petrified looks in return
* The Daily Mail

The background

2004-06-03T15:23:00.000+01:00

Today is quite overcast in London and I'm bored. I've chanced upon this Blogger site and have just created www.sweatinginasia.blogspot.com in anticipation of my forthcoming trip. Quite frankly, it won't come a moment too soon.

Yesterday evening I had an argument with flatmate Dave who got in a girly strop because flatmate Rob and I ordered our dinners before he arrived at the restaurant - a very informal and vaguely speedy place called Shish in Willesden Green. Due to Dave's status as 'Most Unreliable Individual I've Ever Met', I ignored his comment over the phone that he'd meet us there, so it was a very pleasant surprise when he did actually turn up. It was less pleasant when he began to shout in the crowded restaurant that I should've waited so we could all order together. This coming from a bloke who frequently agrees to turn up for something then never appears. Personally, you'd think that someone a few weeks away from turning 30 would be able to deal with the phenomenally minor infraction of ordering food 120 seconds after his companions, but Dave demanded an apology for this hideous insult (which I ignored), demanding in return a 'thank you' for inviting him in the first place. In his defence, he had just come back from a day's work, so I can only assume that the effort he used to wake up and walk out of the flat to work for a living had rendered him ratty and irritable by the evening. With an apology not forthcoming from me, he threatened to leave so the last thing I said to him yesterday was "Go on then, fuck off".
I've yet to see Dave today, so there's an argument waiting to happen.

I'm currently at my Mum's in Edgware. She's moving house soon and I had agreed to help sort through years of accumulated crap. I'm not working at the moment, so anything that she doesn't want I'm merging with stuff that I don't need either and have been selling at Car Boot Sales in and around London. At the moment, it's my only source of income. I used to work in the Marketing department of an examination board, and although it wasn't the worst job I've ever had, it didn't exactly challenge, excite or enthuse me either. In fact, the job was completely grinding me down in a my-life-is-going-nowhere kind of way. The people around me were fantastic which is why I ended up at that company for nearly four years on and off, but I would've gladly traded it in for anything that paid better. Trouble is, nothing pays better than your dead-end job when that's all you can get.
Turning thirty last month didn't help either. I had been threatening to leave for nearly a year and it felt somehow dishonourable if I continued to stay as I had always said I'd leave be shot of that place by my 3rd decade. My opportunity finally arrived however, when I found out that my Mum was selling the family home for something smaller and further out of town and I'd receive a little something from the profits, so I resigned as soon as I could. I wasn't too comfortable with being given a large sum of cash from my Mum for no real reason, but I'm learning to come to terms with it. I'd also decided that the best way to be offered the journalism jobs I was being rejected from was to undertake a journalism course after a jaunt to Asia, a place where I'd spend very little money as I irradiated myself under a fierce sun and lose a bit of weight in the process.

The irony now, is Mum hasn't received a thing and I've basically screwed myself. I've managed to pay this month's rent, but I've got £30 left to my name. Having said that, I feel liberated; penniless, yet optimistic.

So that is the situation so far. Bide my time, clear out my unwanted material possessions and that of my Mums, have a showdown with Dave, sort out a journalism course which includes tracking down someone famous to interview as part of the admissions process, then fill up the time in between wandering aimlessly around South East Asia trying not to swear.

The prospect of this had until fairly recently filled me with dread. Now, the idea of spending a few months trudging through monsoon stricken India and Thailand getting preposterously hot and ravaged by mosquitoes, eating healthy organic curries and generally getting fit and healthy miles away from arrogant flatmates and tattooed bargain-hunters who fly into a rage because you want £1 for an item they'd rather pay 5p for, is now becoming rather appealing.