Kiwi Capital and Campervan Collaterol

TEA AND DEAD SHEEP

Apologies dear reader for the warp and weft of my narrative. We are all but poor loomsters in country cottages circa 1814.

As I type, I am living in a campervan. I spent a few days ensconced in a carpark in Nelson. Now, that might not sound like a New Zealand idyll, perched on a granite head with black waves pummelling the coast and slightly deformed people waddling around on stilts, but Nelson is a gorgeous sunsoaked place. I have left Nelson now in search of that monstrous idyll. After all, as the great Jonny Berliner once said:

There's nothing like stopping on a country lane simply to make a cup of tea and when your kitchen is your back seat there's no finer cuppa.

And he should know - he lived in a bus for much longer. Anyway to this end, I stopped at a viewpoint called Something Saddle. And there they were, the Southern Alps on the horizon, white caps sparkling in the sunlight. I drank tea and ate biscuits, and scowled, manfully. More on this later.

But now, I beg you to travel back with me but a menstrual period. You are standing on a pile of dead sheep in Auckland staring paranoiac upwards, when you see a tiny grey specklet berthed in the sky. But wait - it is growing! Could it be - one of those metal monsters that have conquered the clouds? And on it, obsessively reading My Name is Asher Lev by Chaim Potok, eating a gargantuan chocolate muffin and totally ignoring the view, is that.... Lemuel Gulliver? No, it's Yorick the pastor. No it's Amy Earhart. Oh, no, it's.. oh fuck it.


DORKLAND TO SMELLINGTON IN ONE EASY CHAPTER

I flew from Auckland to Wellington the next day.


FOR ANARCHISTS THEY'RE EXTREMELY WELL ORGANISED

Wellington is scattered over a series of bays, with a ridiculous system of gorgeous hills, a plentitude of sea everywhere, and brain-defying connections between the disparate suburbs. I didn't know there were still Anarchists but the movement is alive and Wellington. I went to an Anarchist stronghold for a free Spanish lesson from Jose. I made myself a cup of tea and deposited 40c in the food donation box. I'm not sure if the Spanish lesson was actually free or if I'd just failed to find the Spanish lesson donation box.

I read some leaflets about why your vote doesn't make a difference. I believe in their communal enterprise, and they were all very environmentally sound, but do we have to do away with Democracy? I find election campaigns so entertaining.

I was in good time for the New Zealand election. Lissa & Co. were extremely absorbed, and I couldn't help but be the same. I watched a leaders' debate. Owing to proportional representation, quite a few ridiculous parties get a look in. A short square odious guy called Rodney Hide leads the 'scrap all bureaucracy' party. Someone out of a 70s cop show spoke for the 'scrap all immigrants' party. The leader of the oppostion National Party was wormlike and chemistry teacheresque. He had an Anglo-American accent lilt rather like Lloyd Grossman. And imperious throughout was the matriarch Helen Clark.


WELLINGTON TIMES

Borrowed a lovely group of friends from Lissa. Lissa is in fantastic shape, and has a great new feller by the name of Russco. Won $40 at poker. Saw a great klezma band. Got drunk repeatedly at a place called Chow's with fantastic cocktails. Played a lot of Scrabble. Tried some NZ party pills (legal). I didn't think they'd had any effect on me then I realised with a start that I was standing on a balcony chewing my lip and babbling about Shakespeare to anyone who'd listen. Ate disgustingly good blueberry muffins in a cafe with a high opinion of itself. Spent a rustic weekend eating in Palmerston North with Bob & Helen Chong. Made some obscene cocktails with Lissa's blender and a variety of foodstuffs. Spilled a galaxy of red wine on her carpet. Played a ferocious game of ping pong with Russco.


MAKARACOSMIC

Drive but five minutes in any direction from Wellington and you will find a stunning bay. Makara, for example, is a particularly special beachy bay rocky headland place. It contains dinousaur egg rocks, an elephant's graveyard of driftwood, the sea swooshing on gravel, and, up extremely high, some gun battlements from the War that point far far out to the serene and endless blue of the sea. They were created with the aim of foiling an invasion. Apparently Hitler had intended at one point to invade New Zealand in order to tap its natural resources. But that doesn't limit the incongruity of those battlements so high and far from anything, in the middle of farmland and sheep atop a dizzying cliff. We played frisbee with a piece of a bread for a surprisingly long time.


RAIN

Quintessential Kiwi film, a touch sepia sentimental but highly well acted and atmospheric. Apparently sums up the collective Kiwi childhood holiday experience. But why kill the kid?


TALES FROM THE OPEN ROAD

Arrived in Wanaka under a canopy of misty rain. Last night I parked at the bottom of the enormous glacial Haast valley with snowy mountains standing guard. The radio doesn't work so I talk to myself and sing incessantly. I think I might be too far gone to host passengers now even if I found some.

I met a Dutchie driving round the South island sleeping in the back of his car. He prefers to park up in country lanes, eschewing cities. Whereas I love 'em. My favourite place is right in the seedy middle of a town, round the back of a restaurant in a residentially deserted carpark. This is the real me, I feel. I have resorted to licking cutlery clean - is this a backward step?

When I'm stumbling around these human settlements people peer at me as if to say 'What a solipsist!'. I just calmly say to them 'I might be a solipsist but at least I exist.' But at this point they have vanished, or never were there, at least at that time, in this place, in that form.


And yes, what if I did play in an Irish band with a mean fiddler and a barnstorming banjo (not to mention the frollicking flautist and beneficent bodhran)? No-one was fooled into thinking I was Irish, even when I started bragging loudly about my staying power. But I chimed in all the same on my guitar, though why it was making a chiming sound is beyond me. Whiskey in the Jar, Danny Boy, D A G D A G D A A G went the chords for every song but FUCK! was it exhilarating, especially when ol' Fran or Jesse on the fiddle led up the tempo and the whole pub was stamping and singing. Some of my contributions were I Will Survive and By the Rivers of Babylon, which were played with degrees of accompaniment. I figured Irish pub songs and Gospel are both indicative of hope in the face of cultural hegemony, no?


The West Coast is sheer drama. Black crags, a monstrous sea, terrifying cliffs and pancake rocks. Sorry, what? Did you say Pancake Rocks? Yes, they were a part of the early Imperial Government's attempts to 'breakfast this shitty little island up, what!' (Colonel Arthur Dagenham IV, Redbridge Balloon Corps). These limestonically layered piles of pancakes are riven by whamples of hard grey water into a multilevelled system of coarse tunnels through which the water surges to -POP!- up out of blowholes. Geologists don't know quite how the pancake stacks were formed, but for me the real mystery is how the Maori name for the area Panakaiki (meaning 'springs in the rock' and referring to the blowholes) sounds so bloody similar to 'pancake'? Only time will tell.


Abel Tasman was okay but once you've seen one dazzlingly gorgeous untrammelled beach in a cove with blue green water delicately playing among the silt you've seen them all.


I ran over a couple of hobbits today. They're quite difficult to see. First I knew was when I heard someone screaming 'Fek!' in an unconvincing Irish accent and then - bdm! bdm!. Though apparently they're a pest for the farmers.

Speaking of roadkill - if I collected all the dead possums (possa?) I have seen and stitched them together I could carpet Greenland.


For the past 2 days I have seen a glacier a day. I am hoping to maintain this excellent record. I saw the Fox Glacier (mint flavoured) and the Franz Josef Glacier which is similar to Franz Ferdinand only less rock-based. I saw quite a few tourists with bad cases of terminal face. Not a pretty sight. Foolishly I walked to Franz Josef in only a fluffy bra and lacey panties. My heels were a nightmare on those large chunks of rock.

But my favourite place so far has been the enchanted forest just next to Fox Glacier. I had never believed in fairies until one nicked my wallet. But the leaning trees carpeted with moss and the little murmuring creeks were enough to soothe my loss.

Hawro Darwin

THE KIWI: FLIGHTLESS, YET LAYER OF DISPROPORTIONATELY ENORMOUS EGG

Travelling is a metaphor for life, and that was a metaphor for travelling. What on earth have I been doing for the last four weeks? I have been in New Zealand though I have barely seen any of it, being camped out in Lissa's bunker-like lounge on a futon. It might be said I have ghost-written an informal fact book for boys for a leading New Zealand author under a pseudonym (his not mine). Though it might be said that I have merely collected facts into organic heaps and piled them up against his shed.

In Wellington, this overwhelmingly trendy city with cloistered and fecund music scene and proliferation of anarchists/barefoot types wandering the pavements, I received great respect from locals for getting a job in Tupelow, a bar so trendy you need a bloodhound and radar system to even find it. However they could only give me one shift every six months so I'm forced to pass them by.

But first I need to return to Australia.


TO BRISBANITY AND BEYOND

Ten minutes before the bus to Brisbane I realised with horror that the pouch with all my extremely important papery things was still behind the desk at the hostel.

I leapt into a taxi and barked at the driver.

'ALL RIGHT SOLDIER - WE GOT EIGHT GODDAMN MINUTES TO GET TO BEACHES AND BACK. IF WE MAKE IT, YOU'RE A HERO. IF WE DON'T, I'M GOING TO ADMINISTER YOU A SUPPOSITORY - WITH THE BARREL OF MY AK47!'

He gave me a firm salute, passion and provenance bursting through the veins of his neck. Seven and a half minutes later the cab screeched into the bus bay. I shot the driver in the back of the neck. Poor bastard knew too much.

Brisbanic contained chillified cocktails in funksome bar the Press Club, garnished by giant cogs and elaborate light fittings. Superclub FAMILY has four floors. It pumps some kind of house through the bottom three. The top level resembles a space pod with breaky tunes and a Tim Burton ice bar. We bonded with Justin and Whassername. Justin was convinced I was an undercover cop. Before long we were all gyrating on a podium amid diverging washing lines of laser light. Spent a while curled in a gazebo drinking gin and tonic. The song You'd Be So Nice To Come Home To is not addressed to 11 people with whom you are sharing a dorm.

There is something of London about Brisbane, and I don't just mean the concrete South Bank replete with art galley and theatre complex. Damn - I like it! Hannah bought a green hat. In the art gallery a film concerning the meticulous destruction of a supermarket warehouse was hypnotic. They were working intently, psychopathically. The camera's slow pan revealed at least three ways to destroy toilet paper, as well as some people diligently pulling down shelves and chipping away at the bricks beyond.


EVOLUTION AND OTHER FACTORS

A deadpan voice above a spiral beard belonging to Dwayne informed us that Elke's Backpackers had mislaid our room reservation. This was at 2am. Eventually we shacked up in the TV room, to be woken by a stream of people gawping through the french windows.

Darwin is small and hot, rednecked but charming. It was great to get back into the heat and all the lack of socks that entails. We feasted on steak. Darwin's nightlife consists of a fantastic market with every food on the planet. A stall called Roadkill served us skewers of crocodile, camel and kangaroo. I think the retching was due to the quality of the meat, not the incongruity of the animals. Aboriginal bands cavorted and belly dancers shook their collective booty. A stargazer sold constellations. On the beach the sun splashed the sky with unset raspberry jelly. Cheap flip flops gauged symmetrical chunks out of my feet.


PRACTICAL PARK PRATTLING

We cruised national parks Kakadu and Litchfield in a rental car with a rental tent. After setting fire to the car on its first journey (nothing permanent) we reached a campsite and realised our grave error. Entire civilisations of mosquitos were born and died on our non-repellented bodies. They love the fleshy bit at the back of the upper arm. My skin was carpeted with thick clusters of red welts. You could barely hear anything above the sound of buzzbombing. We walked five minutes to the toilet block to get water for pasta. While we were there some bastard completely rearranged the layout of the entire campsite. For over an hour we wandered through bracken holding a pan full of water. Our lantern sputtered out. Eventually a drunken Ozzie took pity on us and used Common Sense to find our site.

I had to do all the driving (except for a few unnamed sections) but the car was automatic which gave me a feeling of great power. The roads were mostly deserted which meant we could travel at interstellar speeds. The landscape was reddish and desertesque with endless scrubby trees and terrifying rock behemoths propping up the sky. It was seriously hot. The fizzy jubes flowed freely through our systems manifested in a manic gleam of the eye. Cathedral termite mounds towered cathedral-like. The Moreno Wetlands were obscenely wet. Thousands of whistling ducks stood in groups as if at a community meeting to discuss how wet the wetlands were. They whistled and whooped, and the Aboriginals' favourite magpie geese honked. Jabaru cranes probed. I got the car stuck on a concrete breezeblock. As I edged back and forth to get it off, brain-crumbling scrapes made me fear for my deposit. At the campsite we kept the water boiling and the mosquitos melted away with only the psychotic braille on my arm to confound the blind. The intoxicated moonlight spilled into the tent like frozen vodka and milk.

To Blood on the Tracks we drove to Yellow Water Billabong at 5am. Dawn rusted the sky. Three boatloads of tourists had made it. A Kiwi woman spoke through a PA about crocodiles and birds. We saw plenty of both. Crocodiles are my favourite. Though preening eagles aren't bad. A guy in front had a camera like a rocket launcher, and kept demanding we go back to look at kingfishers. Not another bloody kingfisher. The sun rose and mist shagpiled the saturated plains. I wanted to see an archer fish spit at an insect but they were all off fighting in that senseless war against the shrews. I asked if anyone had a baby to throw to the crocodiles and received a stony silence.


OLD MEN FALL AND A BRECHTIAN FAREWELL

The main campsite of ghost town Pine Creek was locked up and deserted. A small chalk board bore the message 'Gone fishin. Back soon'. Perfect. Fortunately a small site next to the Shell petrol station was open, and crammed with old men positively ejaculating out of campervans. We drove into the corner next to the road and set up shop. We dined extravagantly on steak and mash with onion mushroom gravy and drank extravagantly on red wine. The old men peered at us from behind their fish.

Litchfield had stunning waterfalls in which to swim and frolic. A secret warm rockpool at Wangi Falls was particularly frolicsome. We camped within earshot of Wangi's roar. Our neighbours were long-term itinerants. So many Australians sell up house and board campervans to travel the country. Incomprehensible distances are part of the culture, and campervans a beautiful way to manage them. I would love to do that - outward on the great red roads, self-sufficient and able to eat at a moment's notice. I feel my great skills as mechanic would stand me in good stead.

Darwin Arts Festival was ON. The Threepenny Opera was packed out. The set was thrilling. The actors stood around barking their lines with several seconds delay between each. What is it about the Australian accent? Perhaps I'm slightly prejudiced but the sound of those nasal syllables embarrassing the stage makes me laugh out loud. Sorry. We were forced to escape early to eat pizza. Hannah flew off to the States via Fiji and Mexico, and I mournfully watched Aboriginal dance shows and drank vodka with Irish people.


9 INCHES OF DEMOLITION AND THE END OF AN ERA

Brendan and Gin were overexcited about the Nine Inch Nails concert. They donned a panorama of make-up and monochrome clothes. Fritzi took me to dine with a House of Germans. This reaffirmed my love for the Teutonic people, most of whom have by now infiltrated my family. A Demolition Party was rocking Tamarama.

So they tell me: these houses are/were the last vestige of the neighbourhood's former beatnik character, but finally the siege has been successful. They too will now meet the demolition ball, thus heralding Tamarama Beach's complete gentrification into Yuppie Parquet Floor & Slate Fireplace Land.

I celebrated this highly symbolic occasion by shamelessly booze-scavenging. I found a suspicious premixed caramelly drink in a fridge and guzzled it before delightedley securing a rogue bottle of white wine. I met several assorted beatniks and Teri, a documentary producer, who kindly gave me fruit salad.

Sunday's Opera House gleamed like enamel against polished blue tile. With Lissa's friends Paula and Caroline I quaffed wine and cheese like a newly released prisoner. At home Brendan and Gin were still relishing the 9 inches. I watched some grisly videos and chatted long with Brendo. Nice way to finale.

Sydney Poitier and Fraser Crane

THE MAN WITH NO EARS AND INNOVATIVE COCKTAILS

Brendon and his housemate Gin held up a sign 'The Man With No Ears' so I could recognise them at the airport. All three of us had ears, fine ones, so the sign must have been a homage to a fictional entity, or some kind of grisly summons. Gorgeous and welcoming like the hot winter sun, B and G swept me to breakfast where the enormity of Australian portion sizes became apparent.

The waiter used a forklift truck to deliver the toast.

I eagerly ran into the bathroom to watch water swirling down the plughole in the opposite direction, but I'd forgotten which way it swirls at home. I think one of them is anti-clockwise and the other is clockwise, but it could be the opposite. People in Sydney wear large sunglasses, and Brendon is no exception.

I gorgeously met Hannah, last seen (by me) in Vientiane, Laos, 6 weeks before. I found her and Emma where I'd left them - hungover and sleep-deprived. They'd been peddling vibrators at the Sexpo festival over the last few days. Hannah and I celebrated our reunion with obscene cocktails in the 'W' trendy and expensive hotel - warehouse chic. Each cocktail had an essay devoted to it on the menu, containing phrases like forbidden marriage and gesture of hyssop.

We upheld the backpacker ethos by checking into a split level studio room with an expensive minibar that sirenously beckoned us. Thus born was the cocktail LaBambert - half whiskey, half vodka and double ginger ale. The 'W' bar would have added a circumference of forsythia but some people know when to stop.

I spent a few days in Sydney wandering about. Hannah and I continued our mission to spend a year's traveller's budget in a few days (venison was involved). The harbour shoots with shards of sun. The shade reminds chillingly of winter, but all this changes, sure as the Global Market. Brendon introduced me to the Canon of Heavy Metal, particularly Marilyn Manson who has a malleable and munificent face. I saw several videos of impromptu operations being carried out by the Nine Inch Nails. We ate shnitzels the size of antelopes in a true German tavern. I decided to hop on a plane to Byron Bay with Hannah and Emma. Why not?


CALCULATED HATS

Byron Bay is a hippie hangout, crawling with aging Israelis and ubercool travellers with calculated hats who discuss the structural aspects of each guitarric specimen in studiously loud voices. The Arts Factory is a hostel/centre for organic growth run by travellers who work for accommodation. One behatted acid freak excitedly explained the meaning of this: 'This place is ours, man, I mean, this place is ours.' I accept his point but did he have to be so irritating? The beach is crystal expanse, a plain of frolics. German Johannes drunkenly bewailed female obstinacy in the abhorrent club Cheeky Monkeys. He had been blanked by all surrounding women for trying too eagerly to massage their hands. 'They don't know how good I am at massage,' he moaned. I urged him to engage in at least superficial pleasantry before leaping to the massage stage. The next day with a Scottish girl called Emma we hired a car and gunned the windy roads to Nimbin.


PERFORMANCE POETRY WORLD CUP QUARTER FINALS

Colourful small town Nimbin is famous because you can get a wide range of psychotropic drugs there within 40 seconds from an assortment of hippies representing both sides: intellectual bourgeoisie and down-and-out beatnikdom. Like everything else in our commoditised culture this enclave of ostensibly radical ideas has become a tourist attraction, to be gawped at by passers-by who feed the community by buying weak hash cookies and overpriced 'organic hydro' (hello, yes). We caught the Performance Poetry World Cup Quarter Finals at the Rainbow Cafe!

To the taste of angostura bitters we entered upon a berobed woman of stature poesising a wet dream. She was the compere. We watched 9 contestants. One man read a poem about Jesus visiting him. Apart from his shaven headed girlfriend forming a crucifix behind him, the performative element was undermined by his murmured drone and hooded glare. Another man called Brian or Mark (or possibly Robert) blew everyone away: a fluid poem about summer days with a rhyme scheme almost worthy of Eminem but more regular, and pictures painted of stone skimming and breathless delight in nature - phwoar. One act was a trio: halfly skinhead halfly punked-yellow woman swirls arms and shouts sex in the shower; older continentally beautiful woman stands eyes closed at other mike muttering sensually in Portuguese; dreaded hippy stereotype sits on stage and plays haunting yet faintly ridiculous guitar. First glance had my self-conscious critical hackles flaring but the interplay and their sheer absorption caught me up in a trance, and it worked. Now that's what I came for! We also came for mushrooms but the mushroom people had moved on when we emerged from the crazy-painted shim-sham bright-eyed world of hippy untouchability into the darkened puddle of night.


BRIEFS AND BONDAGE

Hannah, Emma and I shoveled ourselves with bags onto the street at 3am to wait a worrying time in the silent road until a bus arrived like Jean Claude van Damme popping out of the rubberised ether in Timecop to puke a grumblingly officious (I told you) and grizzled driver. He did us a big favour and let us on his bus. Thanks, you old bastard.

Hervey Bay; starched in sunlight and rather like a beachside retirement town. Actually it is a beachside retirement town. We got to Beaches hostel in time for a Fraser Island briefing. Fraser Island, the largest sand island in the world, is mostly accessed by backpackers in groups and 4x4s arranged by hostels. That's what we did, and were therefore part of a group of 9 travelling in the same truck. There were three groups of nine going out at the same time from Beaches so we suddenly had an extended group of temporary friends.

Each group put together a food list and booze list for the next three days. Our group was very proud that we bought double the booze of the other two groups put together. This included 16 litres of wine for some reason. Hannah & I also wisely bought some sparklers and face paints. Scouts say: Be prepared.

That night Beaches threw a party for us including drunken physical challenges. I'd have felt like I was back at uni if I'd ever actually done that stuff at uni. The Ozzie backpacker scene is like a big campus. The birthday boy Sean frequently tried to snog me and then played a whale song on his banjo (not a euphemism). Hannah and I escaped and hit the beach where stars gaped and cold sand beckoned.


GROUP KANGAROO, OR PERHAPS DINGO

Dominic from Ireland surprised everyone at the pre-Fraser bonding party by being able to pick up a piece of paper from the floor without using his hands. This Houdini-like flexibility had been unknown to him up to then. The only other person who could do it was a gymnast who could also bend both arms backwards, which she did on a table to drunken roars of appreciation. At the start I understood barely 30% of the words Dominic said, but it was a steep learning curve. A berocca addict, and all round bouncy fellow. Damien and Aine completed the Irish trio, and then we had Kelly and Mike from America, who were travelling together despite their intense mutual hatred. Gary from Blackpool was a wonderfully mental driver. And finally there was Hannah, Emma and myeself who were the demonic impetus behind the excessive alcohol buying.

The potent aroma of a dead stingray permeated the dock. I befriended a local fisherman and he showed me his bream. Romping Rhonda (name trademark Hannah Lambert) with large shoes and an expansive midriff ran tirelessly to and from the ferry when it arrived. The sea alongside was peppered with constellations of sun shrapnel.

And then the island - the largest sand isle in the world! Have I mentioned that? I drove on the endless beach alongside the roaring slapping sea that we couldn't swim in because of the sharks. I drove the van through a crevice which scared everyone and scored a '9' from a passerby. Not understanding Dominic's Irish accent I unwittingly affirmed that I was an experienced surfer. We stopped at a barnacled shipwreck and took photos. Then we decided to go to the campsite and drink. We played bizarre drinking games and Hannah and I produced the sparklers. I was having difficulty speaking. 'Sentences are fucked!' I declared post-structurally. I whipped out my tiny guitar and thrashed obsessively for a thick crowd of drunken people. And don't they always go crazy for Don't Look Back in Anger?

The next day we hit the Champagne Pools. They are actually like champagne! Waves crash over the rocks into pools, and fizz up like a natural jacuzzi. From Indian Head, a high point, we saw whales frolicking in the sea. Drinking games involved face paints. Everyone crashed down to the beach where a dazzling canopy of stars loomed. I've never seen a sky like it. Rings and clouds, and the milky way like a cummerbund across an boundless besuited belly.

A Vietnam Sandwich

OZZIE WRAPAROUND (1)

In Australia time seems to move more slowly, creakily negotiating the vast spaces. People in minor bureaucratic positions are even more officious than in England, perhaps in an attempt to impose petty order on this unwieldy terrain. The urinals all have flush chains. After Asia it was a shock to see so many white people who all speak English (of sorts). Another shock was the price of everything. I had become accustomed to splendour, which is difficult to forget.


HOI AN FLUSH

Last night in Hoi An. It's been gorgeous, full of experience. Lots of stories, some that I can't even fathom. Seems crazy to have a story without a suicide bomber these days. I feel like an idiot - but these chances are so fleeting and must be grasped. From one ridiculous experience to a really rather beautiful one. From a great non-realised romance with the cutest Vietnamese girl [her accent and the way she laughed the words 'no' and 'maybe', and never said yes just the Vietnamese grunted 'ugh' (sp?), and threw her head back bashful to the audience when we said goodbye] to an abortive homo dalliance. And kisses in the street. Love runs parallel, never quite touching, always visibly staining the street with its syrupy ooze. I am DRIVEN by these things. Is this the time for self-indulgence?

I lost my camera in Hoi An, with 300 photos of Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam. I have drawn minature sketches of all the ones I remember. I passed through Hue in an afternoon.


HIGH HANOI

I received a pen and a drink from a lovely London family atop the City View cafe in Hanoi against the lake stretched out darkly sparkling. The man had once been arrested with some friends for being Irish and loud on the tube. The woman was beautiful and had a theory that the world's terror atrocities were following their family around the Globe (there was some substantiation for this, which I won't go into right now). Their littlest daughter was very cute and clever and loved watermelon and riding camels, and the eldest was teetering on the brink of adolescent bashfulness. We drank beer and breathed in the crazy city, astoundingly alive far below us like the bottom of the cave in Raiders of the Lost Ark.


MONEY AND STREETS

Hanoi was running around ripped off. Sometimes I am gullible as a hungry puppy. An irritating hotel and an obscenely extravagant flight to Hong Kong brought about by my lack of forward planning. An overpriced day trip to Halong Bay was deafeningly misorganised. On the good side, fantastic beef noodles at a street cafe where no-one spoke English. I love sitting on those tiny plastic stools amidst sweat guzzled streets and Viets huddled round endlessly chatting and drinking beer with ice and smoking White Horse. I LOVE IT! The memory of the streets hits me like a wave, and the taste of the soup inhaled with voices and people and warmth. America has used chemical warfare. No other country has used nuclear weapons in war. In the concerted effort to prevent other countries from developing nuclear technology we are like the members of a very smug club. We have it but you can't. Or, we have it so you can't. The big question is, though the US has used and uses hideous means to conquer the world ideologically and financially, do I want their mission to be successful? It has been enormously refreshing to be in Vietnam, a country that seems to work without the gush of Americanised culture that's inescapable in the West. There is poverty and corruption, inefficiency. Healthcare is all but unaffordable to the average person. Nonetheless the culture is strikingly warm, friendly, community based. Families look after each other, which might be the result of poverty and the lack of a welfare state as much as indiginous cultural differences. Does our welfare state come after our individualism or does it inculcate it? Do they advance together? In a replica ethnic longhouse in the grounds of the Vietnam Ethnology Museum I drank tea and chatted with Dat. He was rather happy with the Government but wanted more cash and the ability to travel. It will come eventually, I'm fairly sure, along with living alone and plastic surgery.


TWO THOUSAND STUBBY ISLANDS ALONE IN THE SEA

En route to Halong Bay (with a bunch of people who had paid less than me) we stopped off at a tourist warehouse with 30 other buses. Whiteys swarmed, buying diet coke and smoking fags in the scorching heat. Disabled people sold bits of cloth. The free lunch was lousy. I ate it next to Vung, a Vietnamese girl with pointy shoes who I'd chatted with on the bus. She was about to go to Reading for a month, the poor thing. Several others at the table ate in surly silence. Hung out with two French bombes, Oriane and Valentine, for the day and they laughed at my French. Sitting aft of the boat in the sun silently roaming an inescapable canopy of bluest sky and everywhere around craggly knobbles sprouted out of the sea like mushrooms after a storm. Two thousand islands, some cut away underneath, some stretching out towards their siblings; some adrift, alone, pensive.

Into a grotto lit up with multicoloured lights like Disneyland. Too majestic to ruin, but they did their best by installing penguin-shaped bins in every crevice. Hundreds of tourists traipsed through and tour guides bellowed an assortment of languages. The walls were stone jellyfish, soaked with cold condensation.

I didn't pay to see another cave, even though it starred in a James Bond film and a French flick Indochine. People live in between the islands on house boats. Surreal in the midst of this natural beauty, little plastic prefabs topped with TV antennae. A school floats, funded by the UK government. I took credit for that. Someone had to!

I was sad to part with Valentine and Oriane. I put so much of myself into these transient relationships. As soon as people feel at ease with me I can't help working into them like the ocean into a fissure of rock. But all the while I am working them into me and I feel it so strongly.

Travelling solo is both wonderful and difficult - I always craved a weird poetic ideal of solitude yet I NEED companionship. And when I have it I want to escape. Some people are never happy. When I'm alone my deranged imagination starts to feed on itself, which is entertaining at first, but irritating after a while.


NEW CENTURY

The calculating crooks at my hotel were one step ahead of me again. All ready to confront them for overcharging me for the Halong Bay day trip, when I was greeted by the sight of someone playing my guitar in the lobby. But.. that was in my room! And is that my bag over there? Yes, it was. Some vague 'problem' with the 'room' had forced them to stuff all my things into various pockets of my bag. THE WRONG POCKETS! Don't these scurrying misfits know that there's an order to things? I was whisked away by bike to their 'other hotel' and put in a vast warehouse type room with cracked mock antique furniture and hammer horror light fittings. The shower was an abbattoir. I bumped into Jakob, my hirsute Canadian friend. We drank in an overpriced shithole called Funky Monkey and met two Ukranian girls who took us to a club that was new and closed. Then, in a superclub called New Century, drinks were astronomical and thousands of pineapple slices had been used as decoration. Bouncers wearing orange boiler suits (each with their own number) prevented me from taking a drink onto the dancefloor and from eating the pineapple. One of the Ukranians expected me to buy her drinks so I ran away upstairs and played pool on a balcony with some guys from Dorset while a bouncer told me I was handsome and offered advice on which shots to play. When the club closed, my bag had magically transported from one locker to another one. I asked the guard to saw a woman in half as his next trick, but this was misinterpreted and I decided to leave Vietnam forthwith.


MIXED BALLS

And what about Hong Kong? Have you ever seen such a craven crowd of skyscrapers? People slosh at the bottom like rainwater in a gutter. Flash storms combined with many short people holding umbrellas on crowded strips of street is bad for my head. Hotness and wetness, and an occasional unexplainable belt of cold air that passes through the city like an angel of mercy.

I had mixed ball soup in a Chinese cafe with condensation coating the front window. I was greeted with frank hostility by the waiters, which I rather liked (do you ever feel like you could use a beating?). Somehow a bit of chilli made it into my eye causing me to weep like a baby. I felt the eyes of everyone on me, like a monkey on drugs. I dabbed with a tissue and soldiered on with the mixed balls, some of which were brown, some white, and some inscrutable grey.

I walked three hours when I arrived in Hong Kong, disbelieving at the difference in room prices from Vietnam. Rooms were 15 pounds - 15 pounds! Can you imagine? I hadn't paid more than 50p for 3 months. Eventually I found the cheapest room in the city at HK$100 (about 8 pounds). It was approximately 2 x 1 metre, with a bathroom that you couldn't sit down in owing to a crisis of width. It was impossible to turn around in the 'shower area' between sink and toilet. There was no floor in the room, it was all taken up by a bed that sagged and groaned under aeons of filth. Wombfully I loved it.

'What gave money its true meaning was its dark-night namelessness, its breathtaking interchangeability.' (The Wind Up Bird Chronicle, Haruki Murakami)

I sat in the Peninsular Hotel blowing any difference in room prices I had scored on gin and tonic, listening to unobtrusive jazz and breaking the dress code. The next day at the peak of Hong Kong, overlooking the dizzying bay furred with fantastic protrusions, I met Ruth, a psychiatric nurse from Stoke. It's very difficult to meet people in Hong Kong - there is no backpacker guesthouse scene, and big cities impose anonymity. Ruth was feeling much the same so we descended on the ridiculous peak tram and drank bizarre chinese wine cocktails in a subterranean bar airconditioned to freeze the eyeballs.

AC's friend Alex, who lives in Hong Kong, let me stay at his stunning apartment with a panoramic view of the sci-fi city. Alex is relaxed and charming. Jane is down to earth classy. And my fellow (though more long-term) freeloader, Sophie, moved to Spain in order to learn flamenco and make clothes. It was warm and nice being welcomed into their place. Alex and I managed to have a conversation about Pol Pot and the Cultural Revolution as a violent expression of the Hippie revolution in America within about 10 minutes. Brilliant. We all left together, they to a dinner party. I met Ruth and ate won ton noodles in a thronging eatery. Lang Kui Fong is a street with an unusual gradient, packed with people drinking beer out of yard glasses on straps round their necks. We met Alex & co in an ex-pat bar called Feather Boa which is rather like the Bennets' parlour in Pride and Prejudice as seen through a twisted mirror. The size of the cocktails defied belief, and my capacity for reason. I discussed religion and marriage with Alex and a small posh man, young and married and awfully pleased about it all. Small pictures of dogs and things grinned from paisley walls. My vision blurred. Ex-pats bobbed and weaved. I eventually made it back and decided judiciously to have a one hour nap before leaving for the airport at 05:30 to catch my flight to Sydney.

I slept soundly and woke up 45 minutes after my plane had departed. I crashed in on sleeping Jane and Alex to announce my folly and then scarpered off to the airport berating myself intensely during the hour journey. 'Why am I so STUPID' was the mantra, accommpanied by slapping of own face and occasional punch to temple. I was convinced I'd be charged for a whole new ticket, and that the rest of my tickets would be cancelled. And I was supposed to be meeting Hannah in Sydney that night. And Brendon was supposed to be picking me up from the airport.

But the Qantas desk lady didn't even seem to hear my muttered story about severe stomach problems. Nor did she seem to smell the margarita crust that had formed around me. She simply changed me onto the night flight, no charge. I felt tears of relief welling up. I wanted to fall at her feet and offer her my eternal soul, but I didn't want to get locked in a customs bin for 24 hours. And partly I felt I should have been punished for my stupidity. I didn't deserve to be awarded the winning raffle ticket. So I resolved to spend the 12 hours until my flight in the airport, as a sort of purgatory. Hannah emailed saying she couldn't meet that night anyway and Bren offered to pick me up the next morning. Plus HK airport is a shimmering wonderland filled with nymphs and goodies. Am a lucky bitch or what?


12 HOURS IN HK AIRPORT

Ate bowl after bowl of noodle soup;
Bought item after item from Pacific Cafe for 15 min internet slot you get with each;
Read;
Played guitar and attracted large crowd of Chinese who gave me biscuits;
Napped;
Stared into middle distance with runway transit eyes


OZZIE WRAPAROUND (2)

And now Australia. Filled with campervans and friendly people (though there are many people who are painted-friendly shells filled with hate. I know that's true everywhere but their accent gives them a strained intensity that terrifies me).

What have I done in this enormous country over the last three weeks? Did I rescue Hannah from the pouch of evil Professor Wallaroo? Did we save the human race from eradication by a horrific biotoxin with only a can opener and a boomerang? To find out, tune in next week to rrrrrrope of sssssand!

So much has happened..

WHILE I TRAVEL

Global terror intensifies, and home territory looks horribly vulnerable. At the same time I am in Vietnam experiencing a culture and environment still coping with the horrendous effects of war, dealing with poverty and corruption, but today feeling rather safe and optimistic. It's a different world, far from the face of terror today. It's a strange feeling being away from London when it's under attack. I feel guilty not being a part of it. I am staggered by the brutality of the London police shooting a man in the head 5 times. Such facts are daily realities in Israel, and will be increasingly in England. But Israel is a lot easier to police. We have enjoyed relative liberty and safety for a long time, but it can't continue in the same way. I can't help but think of all the juicy vulnerable targets in England I could strike at if I were a terrorist. I am thinking of home and Egypt and wondering how anyone can stop people who want to kill themselves to kill. Sounds trite but there we are.


ANG-KOR BLIMEY GUVNA

Siem Reap is surrounded by mind-evaporating temples from the Khmer Empire 1000 years ago. It's SE Asia's premier Wonder which means that 5:30am sunrise at Angkor Wat includes several hundred tourists. Low season. It's testament to the sublimity of the sight/site that hoards of chattering tour groups can't spoil it. The whole walled area of AW is 500 hectares (that's big). The temple/mortuary (for it might be either) itself is encrusted with age and surmounted by 5 enormous lotus bud turrets like missile silos sprouting out of a craggy and weirdly symmetrical island. The temple faces West, and the sun rose behind it, streaking the sky with pink like a demented artist.

I bought a book on Angkor from a shoeless urchin-

segue way into

DO YOU FEEL LIKE A SPOONFED TOURISTIC CHIMP?

Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam are paved with backpacker stepping stones. Travellers are all doing some cocktail of the 20 or so key spots. Little shoeless urchins walk around with boxes containing a selection of academic texts on Khmer Rouge, the Vietnam War and the temples, as well as your normal guide books and the Da bloody Vinci Code. And Mr Nice. Why Mr Nice? Who gives a shit about Howard Marks? Every place has its three or four things that tourists do, and people crowd you in the street offering to facilitate your doing of them with a motorbike or some kind of wheelchair bicycle contraption. The backpackers all go to the same couple of bars, usually the ones in the South East Asia Lonely Planet guide, which I've got. I do indeed feel like a spoonfed touristic chimp sometimes, travelling from one highlit place of interest to the next, learning about massacres and genocides and getting pissed and making transitory relationships. Don't think I'm complaining. A cynical self-critic hangs around me like a friend with whom I sometimes can't be bothered but usually find entertaining. Sometimes he is yawning at my neck, and sometimes keeping me awake with interminable whining.

I could leave the beaten track I know, and have done over the last few days. But when you have two weeks to travel through Vietnam, you gotta move your ass. And there's so many friendly people around offering highly convenient all inclusive bus tickets. I feel less like a walking sack of cash here than I did in Cambodia. In fact, in Cambodia I felt more like a fat cow at a meeting of hungry butchers.

BACK TO THE TEMPLES

I bought a book on Angkor from a shoeless urchin and painstakingly read extracts to Dan while we strolled around examining bas reliefs and distinctively Khmer architectural features such as porticos, vaulted ceilings and cruciform passageways. The place is encrusted with Time and stokes the imagination with exploits of another era as I'm sure Machu Picchu must do. Bas reliefs surround the temple detailing Hindu legends and Khmer military exploits. The most memorable one depicts the Churning of the Ocean of Milk.

The Churning of the Ocean of Milk - a cockeyed and half-arsed version

Around 1000 gods and 1000 demons both crave the elixir of immortality, obtainable only by Churning the Ocean of Milk. Must have been some kind of cheese. The foes decide to co-operate. They each tug on an enormous snake coiled around a god/mountain, thus turning the mountain and churning the milk. They keep at it for 1000 years (which makes one wonder why they need the elixir of immortality anyway) when - FUCK! - the mountain begins to sink.

Enter Vishnu, who seems to be THE DUDE in all these Hindu legends. He is incarnated as a tortoise. He supports the mountain until the job is done. The gods nab the elixir (thank gods) and many gifts appear, including a three headed elephant, worth a fortune on the ivory market. And thus, cheese is born.

N.B. My irreverent tone in the foregoing passage is not due to any scorn of the Hindu religion or its legends. In fact I love the legends, and Vishnu is a GEEZER.


FACES

The Bayon temple has over 200 faces staring out North, South, East and West from over 50 enormous turrets. The faces are HUGE and weirdly benevolent. No-one knows if it's some buddhisatva or the face of King Jayavaraman VII. I was unable to shed any light on this. Dan and I walked round the temple for an hour or two, literally FACE TO MASSIVE FACE. At the end of the day we happened back past the Bayon, and decided to have another look. 'Oh my god!' exclaimed Dan on approach. 'Have you seen the faces?' Faces, you say?


CHILDREN

Many children hang around the temples. As young as 6, they have a startling knowledge of history. Leeching onto you ('Hello, where you from?') they follow you around spewing out interesting facts about Angkor and Cambodia and then beg for dollars to 'help me at school'. How can you refuse?

In fact children working the streets is endemic along the S. E. Asia tourist trail. They roam around the streets of Phnom Penh, hitting and poking you if you refuse to buy their postcards. There are hundreds of them. I feel a moral quandry about whether to support child labour, combined with an increasing hard-heartedness owing to the sheer number of people who want cash out of you. However this is balanced against the desperation of the kids, and the effect of seeing children wheeling their hideously deformed friends from tourist to tourist. In Saigon chewing gum selling kids are still working the tables outside the bars at 3am, mostly barefoot. So sometimes I bought and sometimes I didn't and mostly I just felt sorry.


BREAKFAST AND PHYSIO

In Angkor Wat Dan and I had breakfast with a couple of English girls, one of whom was a North London Jew (I know - they're everywhere). That night we bumped into them in a bar and played drinking games with a guy called Hedley who later vomited twice on the floor of the Martini club. What was amazing was his utterly blasee attitude about it. I think his brain had shut down all unnecessary feelings to keep him alive. His friend Will was unsupportive, and Dan and I took care of Hedley before emotionally blackmailing his friend to remove him forthwith to his bedchamber. We drank with the girls until 4:30am and then decided to head straight for Angkor Wat for the sunrise. Sadly we just missed it, but sat for a long while staring at the brightening sky reflected in a crystal pond in the compound, clouds occasionally breached by leaping frogs. The girls were both trainee physios and worked our hamstrings in an ancient library. Needless to say we never saw them again. Beware girls who physio and run.


DEAD FISH AND BLIND MASSAGE

Our guesthouse, evocatively named 'The Dead Fish Tower' offered free head massage to all guests. Dan took advantage of this to discover that 'head massage' actually means 'quick shampoo'. We stormed off to get massaged by blind people instead. In a dank crepuscular room I lay face down on a table with my head stuffed in a cushioned hole. My masseur enjoyed clicking bones. 'Is it good to pull each toe until it cracks?' I wondered. Then he folded my leg back onto my bottom and sat on it until it gave out with a deafening POP. I yelped in agony and limped for the rest of the day. Where's a physio when you need one?


PHNOM PENH AND THE KHMER ROUGE

The capital of Cambodia delivered to me the mess of the country with startling vivacity. The poverty and desperation of so many people, bearing scars from the insane Khmer Rouge regime of 25 years ago everywhere are juxtaposed against a stunning confluence of rivers and an exhilerating buzz on the streets. The place is alive, monstrous, fascinating.

My friend Eelco, a Dutch pilot, ska sax player and all round great guy whom I had initially bonded with impersonating fish on Perhentian Island, Malaysia, had a stopover in Kuala Lumpur and flew down to PP to meet me. We went to S21, Tuol Sleng prison, used by the Khmer Rouge to torture 'intellectuals' before sending them off to be executed in the killing fields. Intellectuals was a broad term that included teachers, foreign language speakers, anyone who wore glasses. The place was originally built to be a school, with a series of multistoried buildings facing into a large central courtyard. However, all the classrooms had been converted into cells.

There's something horribly symbolic in the way that schools and temples were transformed into places of detention, torture and death. In the Khmer Rouge 'experiment' education and spirituality meant brutal repression and hideous cruelty.

For high ranking KR officers, there were individual classrooms, which still had the shackles and torture implements lying rustily in the centre. Photos of the brutalised corpses found by the Vietnamese invaders in 1979 hang on the walls. Rank and file prisoners were put in brick cells of 2 square metres crudely put up inside classrooms. Blood stains remain on one of the floors. Medieval instruments of 'interrogation' are in glass boxes. A gallows stands in the centre of the courtyard next to a large pot that was used for dunking people in shit.

But the most affecting is the display of 4000 portrait photos of prisoners taken by the Khmer Rouge before the subjects were executed. The faces are confused, stubborn, normal. Young and old, male and female. All women had the same bob haircut required by the Pol Pot regime. Some had number tags pinned into their chests. They look terrifyingly alive as they stare out at you.

Our guide had been separated from her family at 10 years old and forced to work rice fields 7 days a week dawn to dusk on 6 spoons of porridge a day. A huge amount of rice was produced by the millions of Cambodians who had been evacuated to the countryside and forced to farm, but most of the produce was sold abroad by the government. I saw the killing fields south of Phnom Penh with its dug out mass graves and dizzying tower of skulls. The Cambodians I spoke to told me they don't talk about it, but they all remember. The sheer nonsense of it befuddles me. Two million people killed, for an incomprehensible experiment. All cars, trains, clocks destroyed. Families separated, men and women kept apart. Barely any children born in the 5 years of the regime. Teenage guards at prisons and the killing fields worked for 6 months to a year before being killed themselves. No Cambodians even knew who was in charge at the time. And now amongst the population live people who killed, tortured, perhaps as much the victims as those they killed. I don't understand how the Cambodian people with minimal education can even begin to deal with what happened not thirty years ago. Especially when it makes no sense.


HEART OF DARKNESS

A seedy gothic bar red lit and filled after midnight with tourists, ex-pats, groups of locals, and plenty of working girls. In fact basically all the Cambodian women there are working girls which is a fact I was unaware of at first, thinking that a particular girl 'just liked me'. Always have had a high opinion of myself.

Other entertainment in Phnom Penh includes 'happy herb pizzas'. I indulged in one with an Alex from Texas and a Claire from Edgware, plus 3 other random English girls. I became one of the world's leading pool players for 15 astounding minutes, before suffering an attack of paranoia that a disgruntled motorbike driver was going to break into the cardboard box where I was staying and slit my throat. Actually he didn't, and I employed his services the next day (as moto driver) to his immense gratitude. When you walk in tourist areas of Phnom Penh you get offered, in this order:

Moto? (ie. I'll drive you like a maniac where you want for $1)
Tuk tuk? (ie. I'll trundle you where you want in my golf buggy for $2)
Smoking? (ie. would you like to be overcharged for some shit weed?)
Opium? (ie. would you like to be massively overcharged for some shit opium?)
Boom boom? (have a guess)

With the patience of a wildlife photographer, I said 'no thank you' to each of these requests, which came with relentless regularity from every person I walked past on backpacker alley. My guesthouse was based on a wooden deck that spanned out onto the lake. Bats flew under wooden bridges at night. It was cool.

Colonially, I became rather fond of spending happy hour (5-7pm) at the Foreign Correspondent's Club, which is high above the street and looks out onto the gorgeous Tonle Sap river at sunset. I met some charming Ozzie vets called Kate. My last night in Phnom Penh was spent in Heart of Darkness with Israeli Avi, Edgware Claire and French Sabrina. We danced to shit music and then finished up sitting on the lake as the sky whitened. I packed my bag and boarded the bus to Vietnam.


HIDY HIDY HIDY HO CHI MINH CITY

I love Vietnam. I love the food, the business, the persistence and optimism of the people. Ho Chi Minh (Saigon) is a big dirty city. Great! It's a whirling maelstrom of motorbikes, driven with outrageous audacity. As in Cambodia, it's customary to drive for about 300 metres on the wrong side of the road before turning left. I hung about, went to some bars with a Canadian metaller called Yakob, and did a fair amount of eating.

I ate some strips of beef that I cooked on a personal barbeque at the table. I made friends with a Vietnamese guy in a bar who spends his days in marketing and his nights trying to pull foreign girls. He likes Jamaican girls the best because of their bottoms. His friend was wearing a Dutch football shirt in hommage to his Dutch girlfriend, who also has a big bottom. I think Vietnamese men are bottom-starved.


WAR AND DESTRUCTION AGAIN

The War Remnants Museum is an excellent museum, rather anti-American in stance as one might expect, with an intense selection of war photographs, and a gallery of paintings and sculpture. The US dropped 4 times the amount of explosives on Vietnam than they did anywhere during WWII. The museum included foeti in jars deformed by the chemical warfare deployed by America. The courtyard contains aircraft and enormous guns. I spoke to some Americans who felt uncomfortable. We call it the Vietnam War, but they refer to it as the American Aggression War. The guestbook was filled with anti-American comments from tourists. The war was totally misguided and carried out with insane brutality. I found myself wondering what would have happened had they not invaded. Would the feared 'domino effect' have taken over South East Asia as predicted? Certainly large areas of Laos and Cambodia would not be scarred by craters now. And the Pol Pot regime might never have happened. But these are all what ifs. Some Vietnamese still hate the Americans, but most are looking forward. There is a great drive to become a developed country.

My Vietnamese seamstress friend Hoi's father fought for the US-Saigon army during the war. As a consequence of that she was unable to find work as a lawyer and had to drop out of law school. Most Viets that I speak to say there is a great difference between South Vietnam and North Vietnam and some ill feeling. Saigon is very much a Western city these days, even with hammer and sickle flags draped from lampposts.


A DIRTY BEACH

I 10 hour bussed it to Nha Trang, a rather long beach flanked by mountainous outcrops and coasted by litter. The sea was warm and the waves were high, making the dodging of plastic bags rather difficult. I played pool with a Vietnamese guy called Ben who rather liked me and ended up dancing with him and his 'sister' (not actually his relative) at the Sailing Club, which has big noisy parties every night in a picturesque outdoor setting on the beach. I wisely stashed my bag behind the bar for safekeeping and then unwisely forgot to pick it up before wandering off down the beach with Yakob the Canadian metaller. The beach turned out to be crawling with unbelievably persistent working girls, so I ran away. The next day I picked up my bag. Everything was in it except my nail clippers (darn it) and spare batteries. 'Phew! there's my camera', I thought, only to discover that the rechargable batteries in it had been replaced by dead AA ones, and the battery compartment filled with water. Now the bastard doesn't work. Do you think I could find anyone at the Sailing Club to hold accountable? You might as well try tracking down a dog whose shit you've just stepped in.

Wandering along the beach with my guitar I was called over to a large Vietnamese Californian family whose parents had just married, and were on their honeymoon with their three enormous daughters, who seemed significantly older than their father and mother. They gave me beer and we sang some songs. The new husband had grown up in Nha Trang but skipped the country at 10 years old. His mother and brother (the latter was also there at the beach - he had a piercing whistle) had failed to make it to the bus in time. He had arrived in Boston alone. Apparently there are 300,000 Vietnamese people in California, who are slowly bringing their whole families over through a lengthy sponsorship system. The guy I met was unable to do that because he had changed his name. They gave me a bowl of sweet tofu to taste - delicious!


HOW LONG HAVE I BEEN IN THIS GORGEOUS PLACE?

Hoi An is a small town filled with mazy streets, Chinese temples, tailor shops, and a fantastic market. It's riverside is fringed with sweet cafes serving some of the most delicious food I have had in Asia. Hoi An has plenty of its own specialities from the large Chinese influence, and I have been stuffing my face. I had a suit made for some reason, and was invited out fishing by the seamstress, Hoi. On the back of her bike we sped off some 10 miles out of town to a little village, where we met a few of her friends. They didn't speak much English, or really any, but that was okay. We caught three tiny fish, that flapped on the rock for a while. It's amazing how long they live out of the water. Eventually they found their way back to the polluted river. We sat up at a rooftop cafe and drank beer with ice, smoked cigarettes and chatted. Her friends were lovely. We communicated fairly well considering they didn't speak English. They insisted on paying for everything - Vietnamese culture. Then we went for the obligatory Pho Bo (beef noodle soup) on the street. You sit on plastic kindergarten chairs and get a huge bowl of soup with white flat noodles, strips of beef and vegetables. Simply add fish sauce, chilli paste, and leafs of various herbs, and then scoff with loud slurping noises.

The next day Hoi took me to the Marble Mountain - a huge, um, marble mountain, out of which have been carved a range of pagodas and grottos. Dark caves streaked with green and red contain huge Buddhas. The view from the top reaches the spectacular coastline. Whenever I see a giant Buddha I am always beset with the notion that he might get up and start stomping around smashing buildings and throwing people around. Not sure why. She also took me to meet her family, and to the place she grew up. It has been nice to see a real side to this place, outside the tourist cafes and western faces. I think I could live here, even just for the noodle soup.

Against a backdrop

LONDON

On the first night I've had a tv in two and a half months we switched it on to hear the announcement that London had won the Olympics. On the second night we switched it on an hour after three London Underground trains and one bus had been bombed by terrorists. We sat stunned for three hours watching the chaos unfold, feeling a combination of long-held fears realised and a deep sense of unreality. We stared at the streets we know so well on the television in Cambodia and raced through mental lists of all the commuters we know. Even now as the media and the world digests the news there are still pieces of body being collected far underground in unbearable heat. We phoned and emailed and made contact, and still wonder about those people down there. I miss the city (for the first time), and feel distanced from the mood I am sure is tangible there in the streets. I also feel something else strange - a bubble of nationalistic outrage. Certainly it's been the talk of the travellers. And the next morning we watched the sun rise over the magnificent 1000 year old Khmer temple of Angkor Wat, powerfully reminiscent of a different time filled with different atrocities. I keep thinking about the people affected, and selfishly hoping I don't know any of them. I recall Tony Blair standing in front of a group of the most powerful people in the world, arms rigidly by their sides, faces like waxworks.

Backtrack to Laos and forward to Cambodia

DOWN THE PAN

In the en suite bathroom of my room in Luang Prabang was no sign that said 'Pleas put paper in bin, nott in tolet!'. There was also no bin. So I put toilet paper down the toilet, just like the conditioned Westerner that I am. After a few days, the toilet was filled to the brim with liquid of spine chilling colour and throat mangling consistency. I was forced to tell the tiny slightly deformed guy who ran the hostel, who came into my room with three of his friends. Many toilets out here have a little spray hose with a trigger firing action next to the toilet for arse cleaning purposes. Fearless and businesslike, our man set about detaching the trigger, causing a jet of water to start firing out of the hose. He plunged his hand into the toilet up to the shoulder. His three friends gently closed the door, shutting him in there alone. They giggled at me while I sat on the bed mortified. Horrific sounds of splashing and squealing emanated from within the bathroom for ten minutes. Eventually he emerged, soaked in water from head to toe. The bathroom was spotless and the toilet was an apogee of flushable perfection once more. I couldn't look at him. All I could do was sheepishly press a wad of notes probably equal to a week's wages into his hand. He was naturally thrilled.


BIG JUGS

I travelled with Daniel and several to Phonsavan to look at the Plain of Jars. Fields full of unexplained enormous stone jars thousands of years old. They are huge things, hewn out of rock found nowhere nearby. Over 4000 jars in total, but you can only see 1000 because most of the fields are littered with unexploded ordinance from the USA's steady carpet bombing of Laos in the 70's. We took a 'local bus', which means it breaks down every 20 miles and has enormous bags of grit in the aisles. The bus was red and white and resembled something clambered together from scrap metal found at the back of a supermarket. The driver smoked cigarettes constantly, possibly to disguise the black smoke billowing from the engine. My knees were pressed into my head. But it was okay - the journey was only seven hours.

The jars themselves were differently shaped and differently sized, just like countries can be. Some had square holes and some had round ones, just like people can have. One jar in particular was big enough to contain at least three members of the New Zealand rugby team, whilst others could barely have contained a contortionist midget. None of them were filled with sweets or amphetemaines, but some had algae and even flowers.

We visited a Hmong village (a local tribe), where houses and fences have been built out of U.S.A. missile casings. We saw wide expanses of fields studded with enormous craters. Grass grows at the bottom now but the flat land was once blown apart by bombs. Strange to imagine that in peaceful arable land scattered with villages and rice fields.


FIFA KARAOKE AND WHISKY NATIONALISM

I managed to single handedly get all the tourists in Phonsavan to Fifa Karaoke Bar. Their concept of karaoke is to put Chinese karaoke videos on a tv while a DJ plays mix cds of cheesy dance music. However, it was 2 pounds for a litre of whisky. 20 Lao teenage girls danced on the dancefloor in a circle, taking in turns to dance in the centre. The other girls responded to the centre dancer's antics by letting out a collective scream you might otherwise hear at the appearance of headless zombie holding a dead baby and an axe.

Daniel and found ourselves in the street with two French guys and a Canadian. We respectively sung our national anthems while the others respectfully downed shots of whisky. We were then ready for Phonsovan Night Club. It was reminiscent of a Greek restaurant in Finchley, replete with pillars, murals and a fantastic keyboard player who was accompanied by two fat men singing with gusto. There had been some kind of event and the entire party was made up of middle aged Lao types. On the floor they danced in couples, not touching or even looking at each other, but twirling their hands and revolving incredibly slowly while the group as a whole moved round in a larger cirle, as waltzers at a fairground. Come to think of it, maybe that's why they call them waltzers. Did everyone else know this already?


VANG VIEN

...is a tourist strip on the Song River surrounded by vertiginous limestone karsts (cliffs, you dummy). The strip has restaurants which each serve 'special' food, such as marijuana pizza, mushroom shakes, opium tea, spaghetti heroin bolognese and crack waffles. Ok, not the last two. Many of the bars show episodes of Friends all day, which gives you the eerie feeling of being in Hell. Daniel and I acquired a gorgeous bungalow with a charming veranda overlooking the stunning view. I wonder if I might have included a few more positive adjectives in that sentence. Hannah and Emma, from Bangkok, Chaing Mai and Luang Prabang, were there. We all went tubing together along with Daniel's Germans and Irish.

Tubing is sitting on a massive rubber ring and floating surprisingly quickly down a river. In Vang Vien there are little bars alongside the river, where men with long sticks hook you in for a drink. Actually getting over to the side in time can be tricky. I had to watch Dan torn away from me by the current, screaming and clutching in vain at flimsy branches only to disappear round the corner. May I never see such a sight again. Caught up with him later in a bar. He had gallantly reentered the water to rescue Katrin (one of our Germans) and managed to sustain serious scratches on his arm as well as puncturing his tube. That's what you get. The bar had a swing on which you stand while three guys run up the hill pulling you back on a rope. There is a moment when you are thirty feet above the water, horizontal, staring straight downwards, when they release, and you hurtle downwards, skimming the water before being thrown in. For the rest of the way down the river I had to drag Dan alongside me on his deflated bit of rubber. We stopped several more times, being handed shots of Lao Lao whiskey (rather like sake's demented cousin). We were quite merry by the end and sailed well past our get off point, necessitating a 2km walk back to town. Fantastic.


VIENTIANE TO SIEM REAP IN 30 SHORT HOURS

Spurning Southern Laos and dodgy border crossings, Daniel and I opted for:

Vientiane to Bangkok - 11 hours
Bangkok bus station - 1 hour
Bangkok to Arunya Pathet (Thai border) - 7 hours
Cambodian Immigration and waiting for bus - 4 hours
Poyet - Siem Reap - 9 hours

Travel incident 1:

Laos immigration forgot to give me an exit stamp, so when we arrived on our bus at Thai immigration, they refused me entry. Our bus would not wait very long - it had to catch the connecting bus to Bangkok in the bus station. Er.. so did we. The Thai immigration officials were stonily intransigent. 'It's not my fault!' I wailed. They pointed back to Laos. I wildly banged on the estate car of a well-to-do Thai couple and begged them to take across the bridge to Laos immigration. Then I coralled a young Thai guy listening to rock music in his pick-up truck to take me back to Thai immigration. Daniel stood forlornly with our bags - our bus had gone. We boarded a tuk tuk which drove us torturously slowly towards our bus station, resigning ourselves to spending the night in wherever-the-fuck-we-were. But in the bus station, like a shaft of light penetrating the bleakest dawn, was our bus, all kitted out with pink frilly curtains and free cans of coke. I blissfully sank into the seat, my feeling of elation only partially undermined by the deafening volume of the Thai pantomime they were showing on the tv.

Travel incident 2:

I left my guitar on the bus at the Thai-Cambodian border. I realised when we were almost at immigration in a tuk tuk. We returned and I ran around in the midday heat from bus to bus. I frantically boarded 7 buses, but none was ours. Finally our tuk tuk driver stepped in, like Sylvester Stallone in Demolition Man when he has just been defrosted. He made a few calls and took us round some side streets to a barren country road, where our bus was sitting happily by the side of the road. My guitar had sustained a serious neck injury, but nothing that Cambodian glue can't fix.

Travel incident 3:

The road to Siem Reap from the border makes a quarry look like the M1. The distance is 120km but the journey takes 9 hours. Car-sized holes abound, and so do the passengers in the bus, up clear off the seat. We stopped occasionally to be mobbed by the cutest kids in the world selling stuff we didn't want. 'No thanks,' I said, several times, and then bought a pack of postcards, a bracelet, a drink and gave several donations. Cambodians are very pushy, and know how to use extremely cute kids to full financial advantage.


BYE FOR LAO

It is a beautiful country. Wonderfully relaxed, though that might be because most of the people don't have jobs. It's one of the poorest countries in the world, yet the people are so much less pushy than Thais or Cambodians. Might be the opium. Beer Lao is the elixir of immortality, though it makes you sleepy. The cliffs are astounding. I missed the 4000 islands in Southern Laos, but I figure I can go to the 3000 islands in North Vietnam and just take a bottle of thousand island dressing. I didn't do Laos justice; it's so hard to cram everything in. Or even anything. Not that I'm complaining. Hannah went off to Thailand so our frequent meetings along the way are at an end. Daniel has also gone the way of the Thai islands, and I'm now travelling alone for the first time. Daniel was an unexpected blessing, and we had a great time together. Now, for the open road, with only a brown paper bag and a plastic windcheater for company. I'll tell you about Angkor another time. If anybody's out there.

The People's Democratic Republic of Laos

SPANIEL KILLER

My grandma used to say to me, 'No sooner have you lost one Dan than you find another in an Indochinese night market.'

I finally understood what she meant when, wandering among the stalls of Luang Prabang, I was approached by Daniel Miller. We had lived round the corner from each other through our formative teenage years, travelled to and from school together every day, and even had the occasional conversation. You don't get much closer than that. Neither of us had known the other was in Laos. I naturally had to fire two of my communications team, which means my having to write this post myself. In fact Dan and I had planned to meet in Hong Kong in about a month. But there we were face to face on a dusty brown street lined with fine fabrics and ceramic Buddhas. Later we discovered we were staying on the same little alley in opposite guesthouses. Fate has a backpack, and it's full of flowers.

Dan had collected a large group of people, like a good boy. In Luang Prabang (or 'lung problem' - D. Berelowitz) the tourists actually do come in by the boatload. Every day one may see large groups of people chatting and eating together like old friends or members of an apocalypse cult - they have all travelled together for two days on the same hard wooden benches. It creates a sense of shared destiny. In his collection Dan had some Italians, Germans, Dutch, Danish and Irish. He is planning to exhibit them in Earl's Court.


THE CAT AND THE FROG

I said goodbye to Cameron the Ozzie over a beer as we walked downside the Mekong. It was late and most places were shut up in accordance with the Government's dictat. We were quarrelling over the exact meaning of 'ignorant' when we noticed a grand double door lit up with flourescent strip lights.

In the globe of light were hundreds of moths. Not sturdy British style moths but flimsy ones with bright orange plastic bodies and tan wings that fall off at the slightest provocation. They were out in force. Perhaps they were only alive for a day. Certainly they were dying profusely. The light itself was clouded with the living. On the floor, the concrete step was carpeted with wings and moths in their death throes, vibrating wildly as they desperately guzzled their last sips of Life.

Among the half dead and the fully dead was a cat. The cat hugged the door, walking backwards and forwards and stuffing it's face with pawfuls of moths. It had wings sticking out from its mouth. It barely even toyed with them. It was like the unconscious movement of a fat man's hand travelling from pretzel dish to mouth as he watches the football.

Working alongside the cat was a large frog. The frog began in the thick of it, but moved down a few steps to the outskirts. These were the stragglers and the hopeless, fallen down horribly far from the light that drives them crazy with instinctive desire. The frog was chowing down. His belly sagged on the floor as he stood in front of a flightless moth buzzing on the floor. He'd stand with immense gravitas for a few seconds - waiting for something? - and then WHOOP - the insect would fly into his mouth as if sucked up by a powerful vacuum. The tongue was invisible - too fast.

The frog must have eaten about 30 moths while we stood there. The cat possibly an even tally. Who knows how many they'd eaten before we even arrived? We had the sense we were watching an experiment unfold. Humans had put the light and the cat there, the moths blindly chased a moon and the frog was an opportunist. The blindly wild moths came on and on and the feast continued. I felt blessed.


TURNOVER

People come and people go. Most travellers have a bold sense of Itinerary. Mine grows paler and more flaccid by the day. I ended up staying in LPB for a WEEK. Such a timeframe is abhorrent to your average backpacker. I spit in their figurative face - it is charming. I want to stay everywhere but now I have Daniel spurring me on with puppy-like zeal.

Cameron and lovely Iris and Hester from Holland moved on from LPB like good travellers. I stayed like a bum. Hannah from Bangkok and Chiang Mai turned up with her friend Emma. They are wonderful drinking partners. Hannah and I made it to some disappointing caves crammed with broken Buddhas. Less disappointing was the luxury boat we cheeked our way onto back to the city. It had been commissioned by three Austrailian hotel execs, and was filled with comfortable seats and wine that were lying unused. Down the Mekong in style this time.

I would consider myself an expert on Luang Prabang's toilets thanks to the Diarrhoea fairy. I exceeded 15 times in one day for which I think I deserve some kind of civic award.


BIG JUGS

This chapter will have to wait, along with the one after, which doesn't even have a title yet.


HOW I CRUSHED DAN'S RESOLVE

Dan had intended to go straight from Vientiane to Bangkok and onwards to the islands. Until he met me. With satanic persuasiveness I convinced him to accompany me to Siem Reap to see the famous Angkor Wat, jewel of the Angkor Empire and Wonder of the World. In fact, we are about to take two 12 hour bus journies back to back to get there. Wish me luck and a bag of valium.

Down the Mekong to meet my fate

CHIANG OF FOOLS

I recovered from my illness and felt like a born again Christian, minus the Christian part. It's amazing how good you feel after being ill for a few days - I actually jumped off the roof of the guesthouse in the belief I could fly. Fortunately I managed it.

I began slowly to explore Chiang Mai. It's cooler, in temperature, than the steamy South. It is crammed with peaceful wats (Buddhist temples) each with their particular sense of calm serenity as soon as you enter their courtyards. The breed of farang (foreigners, money burners, tourists, slags) is more shaven headed and vegan, and they do all manner of cookery courses and hikes and other horizon broadening activity. The Thai people who live there seem a little more trendy. The book shops are immense in scope, if not size.

Hannah from Bangkok stopped by. We spent a couple of days together sniffing spices in a market and getting drunk with ladyboys.


RAY'S PLACE AND THE LADYBOY ARMY

Dan, Hannah and I went to a covered marketplace where the stalls were in fact tiny bars looking into the centre space, which sported a Muay Thai boxing ring. Most of the bars were overflowing with prostitutes and white haired fat men (latter not for sale), but one place was clear. We played pool there and talked to Ray, the English tattoed proprietor, who resembled a former boxing manager. He only has to sell ten beers a day to keep his place running. We sat out front and watched Thai boxing matches. We bet each other the equivalent of 30p on each fight. The fights seemed tired, and a little staged. After the fights the boxers do a lap of the marketplace with a tipbox. That always gets 'em up off the mat.

When we'd had enough of the boxing, we went next door to a ladyboy bar and drank shots of tequila with the ladyboys, who responded by playing deafening cheesy music and dancing with us and vigour. The boss, a stout (wo)man with a stout face, pulled out a variety of coloured wigs and silly hats, and the photos rained down in their thousands.

Ray foisted some sachets of viagara jelly on us. Hannah and I tried a sachet each. It tasted like bitter colgate. Both of our last memories were throwing the empty sachet into the bin, before we woke up fully clothed 7 hours later. Must have been good stuff.


AND HE'S OFF... OR I AM

Dan left Chiang Mai on a rainy Saturday evening with Louisa from Cambridge to head to Borneo via Bangkok. He was heading for the Mecca of diving, Pulau Sipadan, where whalesharks abound, and 5 metre Manta Rays embrace you with their majesty. I had missed my bus that morning which gave us the chance to go through every detail of our journey together, over a chicken tikka lunch on the veranda. We said goodbye, and I waved as his open backed taxi trundled off down the rocky back street to be enveloped in darkness. Strange to be without someone to whom I can babble my endless stream of repetitive anxieties. Somehow anyone else saying 'Shut your fat yap' just isn't the same.

It was fantastic travelling with someone with a perfect understanding and complete absence of issues. It was sad to part and I felt a little lost and alone that night. What I miss the most is being able to discuss and process the variety of bizarre events that saturate each day. Now I feel like I am losing experiences like the brown water that oozes down the Mekong. I feel a bit weaker without the endless strength of Dan, but will adapt I'm sure. Dan, wherever you are, eat a Manta Ray for me. With rice and salad.

I rose early the next morning and was politely shoehorned aboard a tiny hot minibus with 8 other travellers to drive to Chiang Kong for the night; and thence to Laos down the Mighty Mekong River.


MEKONG

The bus wound up and down the tree covered hills and sloping valleys of Northern Thailand and deposited us at a guesthouse in Chiang Kong, where I glimpsed for the first time the Mekong River, and, on the other bank in the guise of lush greenery and ramshackle houses perched on the hillside, the country of Laos.

The river is as wide as the Thames, and is the orange brown colour of earth in this part of the world. The river is swollen with the rains and rushes in creases and ripples through Indochina, carrying Himalayan rocks to the South China Sea. The brown is hypnotic, inscrutable. It dominates the landscape with its rich opacity.


OVER THE BORDER

I bonded with Cameron, an Ozzie drummer on an indefinite trip towards Europe, over a few games of pool on a snooker table and we ended up in a Cowboy Bar which advertised 'Food, drink, disco'. What else is there? Inside it was empty except for four Thais at a small table. A live band was nonetheless earnestly playing the cheesy love pop that Thais adore.

The next morning we ferried across the river to Laos immigration. I changed my 2500 Thai bart into over 600,000 Lao Kip, which they could only give me in 5000 notes (worth just under 20p each). The money came in several bricks bound by elastic bands. I was forced to turn immediately and wop the girl next to me on the head with a brick of kip. Then I stuffed it all into my bag. Shortly afterwards I discovered Lao people prefer to take Bart or Dollars.

We boarded the 2 day slow boat to Luang Prabang. It was packed already. Not bad, benches just big enough for two people on each side with an aisle down the middle and a distinctly okay toilet at the back. They also sold Beer Lao, the Dom Perignon of South East Asian beers (in quality not price). Some people had been sitting on the boat for 3 hours already. We waited around for an hour for no particular reason. Perhaps we were waiting for the engine to be delivered. A man in a smart shirt inched down the boat in slow motion taking tickets. Time creaked. We set off.


SLOW BOAT

The cliffs hang over the river as it passes into Laos country. Occasional huts perch on inconceivable inclines. Wild cows graze on the banks. Even at one point, a solitary elephant, tossing its trunk, oblivious to our wonder.

You chat to a few people when you're shoulder to shoulder on a boat for two days. I had fantastic conversations with two Quebecoise women, the kind of chat you can only have in French. I asked them to help me translate a few parts of Ne me quitte pas, by Jacques Brel, that I didn't understand and we moved onto talk of Love and Fate, Buddha and Eternity. Was Romance dead? Well, Jacques Brel is. Sylvie was an activist with a message for the pope. She also leads seminars on personal improvement. Helene was a graduate of Sylvie's course to her own salvation, and a university professor. Sylvie had a theory that the world was moving from the masculine principle, embodied by the Church's perversion of Christ's teachings, to the feminine principle, encapsulated by Buddha and to be instigated by China's impending domination of the world. She drew me diagrams and told me I was a genius. I liked her.

We stopped for the night in Pakbeng and divided off into various guesthouses. The proprietor of my guesthouse offered me weed and opium before saying hello. During the night a large rat scrabbled around under my bed making unspeakable noises. The lights didn't work but I caught a glimpse of him in the bathroom before shrieking and locking the door in terror. He was the size of a cat and seemed to be dragging something. Possibly my rucksack. The next morning he'd vanished. I discovered a chewed open packet of malaria medication with a few of the tablets gone and one half eaten. I like to think I've contributed something to the global problem of enormous rats with tropical diseases.

The next morning the same number of people were stuffed onto a boat half the size with tiny hard wooden benches and no cushions, for a six hour journey. The boat stopped roughly every half an hour to pick up more Lao people who came free with enormous sacks of gravel and massive dead fish. By the end of the journey my arse was singing with pain. I wished for the first time that I had a prosthetic bottom. I had bought Heart of Darkness to read for that authentic Apocalypse Now Mekong sensation, but the noise of my backside screaming obliterated my concentration. It's still grumbling even now, though that might be the Lao sausage.


LUANG PRABANG THANK YOU MA'AM

We were greeted on the bank by a host of boys wearing only briefs. My new Ozzie pardner Cameron and I took a room together. I have taken to calling him Steve and speaking in a comical Australian accent. The whole of Laos shuts down at 11:30pm. Half an hour better than London. Even the few places that stay open have to turn off their music and keep everyone quiet. I went exploring with Dutch Iris from the boat and we ended up back outside our place. The whole town was dark and quiet, except this outdoor restaurant on a veranda over the Mekong. They were pumping out a looped mix of 5 brash hip hop tunes incredibly loudly. It was the 18th birthday party of the proprietor's niece. Iris and I were invited to join all the Lao teenagers. Their hospitality bordered on torture when it came to drinking shots of whiskey and eating sickly birthday cake. I had a chat with a French guy who laid the blame squarely on my shoulders for the English bombing of the French countryside during World War II. It was good to see 18th birthday parties are the same all over the world.


I think I'll stay in Luang Prabang another day. It is charming, and at times like a village in the Loire valley. The architecture is somewhere between French and Buddhist. Last night I ate a 'Pizza Lao' which had Lao sausage and Mekong seaweed pressed into large square cards embrailled with sesame seeds. When paying for dinner, I remove an enormous wad of kip and peel off fifteen to twenty 5,000 kip notes. I feel like a big man.

Laughter and Disease

Thais, especially the women, of whom at least 70% are fit, tend to laugh in all sorts of unlikely situations. Sometimes I can just walk into a shop to be greeted by fits of giggles, though that may be the clown's wig and floppy red shoes I've taken to wearing of late. The laughter is in no way intended to be rude, and can actually make you feel at ease, though it clashes sometimes with my uptight Western sensibilities.

For example the nurse who took my temperature at the hospital burst out laughing when she told me I had a fever. Imagine if I'd had a terminal disease - she'd have been rolling on the floor in hysterics.

McCormick Hospital is Christian although 90% of Thais are Buddhist. I didn't notice this until I looked on the back of the sachets containing my drugs:

'We prescribe medicine, but Jesus Christ is the healer.'

Guess I'm fucked then.

Thai hospitals have a reputation for overprescribing. Four types they gave me: cough syrup, kick arse paracetemol, runny nose pills (hardly seems worth it) and ...fanfare... ANTIBIOTICS! - which let's face it is the only shit that matters.

For the last two days everything I've eaten has come rushing through me at 100 mph bringing with it 40% of my body's water. After throwing up on the floor of my guesthouse restaurant last night I went back to the hospital and proudly received another set of pills to add to my collection. If I were in prison I'd be a rich man. Add to this optional valium, pepto bismol, rehydration sachets and various Chinese concotions from the angels at my guesthouse and I'm getting dangerously close to Paula Yates territory.

However I still feel like a sack of mouldy potatoes with bowel problems. I have a golf ball protrusion on my neck and I look 40 years old. I move in slow motion as if wading through fudge and have only just been able to have a intelligible conversation with some Australians. Although that might have nothing to do with the illness.

Libra guesthouse are angels - checking on me, mixing me up pungent Chinese herbal remedies, giving me umbrellas when I go out, in case it rains, giving me plain rice soup. In fact it was the plain rice soup which made a quick getaway onto their floor. When I was grovelling in shame to the girl who laid down paper on it, she just laughed - which made me feel much better.

Bangkok Nights

KHAO SAN ROAD

is a crazy maelstrom of tourists, market stalls, food vendors, unbelievably loud techno and bucket vendors. It's like nothing on Earth.


TUK TUK

Tuk tuks are ridiculous three wheeled motorized rickshaws. The drivers have deals with shops and brothels etc to bring tourists there in exchange for gas coupons. The first day Dan and I were taken to several temples and things for free because we agreed to stop in a tailors, a tourist bureau and a jewellery shop. Tuk tuk drivers are fearless and completely mad. If you get them going then they'll even do a wheelie. That night after drinking on Khao San Road we piled into a tuk tuk and asked to go somewhere we could dance. We were of course deposited at a brothel. It did have a 'club' upstairs with shit music and expensive drinks. Steve got on very well with the Madam. I had a drunken shouted 'conversation' with an English girl called Hannah about literature. We arranged to meet in Boots the next afternoon, and she was half an hour late, which gave me the unique experience of being stood up in a chemist.


SUNGLAZED AFFAIR

Chatachuk weekend market is an incomprehensible labyrinth. You can walk in any direction for upwards of half and hour and only find more and more corridors with stalls selling everything from snakes, to fake labels, to bad hats. I went with Hannah whom I'd met in the brothel. We ate noodle soup. She bought two pairs of extraordinarily sexy sunglasses, and I bought the most ridiculous pair I have ever seen, yellow goggles with suction padding that make me look like a superhero or twat.

The heavens opened and parts of the market hurriedly packed up. We continued through the covered section and finally decided to go. We had to walk about 30 minutes to get out of the market. Trying to get a cab we were soaked as if we'd been dipped in a vat of ice cold water. Hannah looked hot with her pink dress clinging to her and her hair slicked back. When we got back she came up for a hot shower. We both agreed we were commitment phobes. She accused me of being a player. I denied it and kissed her. Later on she called me a 'Gay Pig'. I like that actually.


LADYBOY SHOW

Classy cabaret in a posh hotel. The ladyboys mimed and danced to ridiculous choreography. Dan was pulled onto stage. Some were beautiful and some were hideous. At one point they all came on dressed as Marilyn Monroe, then Tina Turner, then Michael Jackson. Hilarious. No ping pongs though, it was a classy affair.


STAR WARS III

We paid over the odds to see it in a luxury cinema. About 8 pounds, but we were in massive armchairs that reclined into beds, with blankets, socks and pillows. I think I would have thoroughly enjoyed Digby the Biggest Dog in the World in that cinema. The film was an epic tragedy with bad acting. Loved it.


KING'S PALACE

Met a Thai woman Thom who took us around the Palace grounds with a couple of Spaniards. Most Buddhist temples allow photographs, but I discovered after taking one of the Emerald Buddha in Wat Phra Koew that it was an exception. The guide threatened to turn me into the police unless I sent her a copy. Corruption is rife.


HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO STEVE

After considerable effort we managed to get a t-shirt made for Steve to wear as he cycles 4000km through Asia. On the front it says 'Trans-Asian Express', with 'TEAM STEVE' on the back. Who wouldn't be thrilled! I also found him a cake. We went to a couple of shit Thai clubs. If you go to a club with Thai people, they tend to order themselves drinks and food and then follow you round with the bill. Dan and I responded by singing My Way karaoke.

Steve was insistent we find the brothel we'd been inadvertently taken to on the first night so he could try to shag the Madam. Somehow we did. Fortunately Dan and I had the presence of mind to board the night bus to Chiang Mai before we were forced to open a bordello and start firing ping pong balls out of our asses.

Since leaving BK I am committed to a life of moderation. I have tattooed the word on my penis to leave this in no doubt.


THAI MATRIARCHY IN GUEST HOUSES

The whole rack of Thais can be divided by my arrogant and generalising eye into various designs. Bold paisley is the elder woman who without fail seems to run each joint. Her lightly checked husband usually stands about with a faraway look in his eye, rubbing his swollen belly that always seems to be hanging out. There are usually one or two unbelievably quiet and effeminate guys of light pastel, and some young, beautiful, extrememely shy girls sporting bow ties. The mouthy matriarch is an endless pisstaker, and if you goad her then she smacks you, in a nice way.

FEVERISH

I was sitting at the back of a beer garden when I saw a tall, sandy haired and pointy chinned girl approach me holding a smooth wooden sphere, slightly larger than a basketball. I took the sphere and played around with it to make her laugh. It was much lighter than I'd expected, and I could even do a few keepy-uppies with it. I asked her where she was from and she lowered her eyes and quietly said Suisse. I tried to talk to her but she babbled unintelligibly. Then she hit me in the face. Pretty hard. She moved her face into mine as if for a kiss, and then hit me again. Is this some kind of sadistic come on? I tried to grab her arms but she kept hitting me, and then kissing me. I looked around, embarrassed. Maybe we should go somewhere private? Because I liked it at first. But at some imperceptible moment, her blows became painful. I tried to hold her arms, but she was too quick, and she seemed to be hitting me harder and harder. I became uncomfortable. 'I'm going to leave now,' I said. I wasn't sure if she could understand me but she continued her barrage, and there was something else in her eyes, a cold intensity that terrified me. I stood up and she pulled me to the ground and pummelled my face. No-one else in the bar seemed to notice or care. Somehow I wriggled away and ran out of the bar and back to my room. I pushed the button on the door to lock it and then went to lock the backdoor, when I was seized by uncertainty about whether I had successfully locked the front door. I went back to it and pushed the button - and it unlocked. At that moment she burst in, smacking the door against my face, a whirlwind of hate and violence.

Dan came in at the point and I woke up. Feverish and ill, I considered the dream. Maybe it was some kind of revenge for my crimes against women?

Turns out I have tonsilitis. That means no hill trekking or elephant riding or Thai cookery courses for me. Five days of antibiotics and no drinking. Just as well perhaps.