8/31/2002

Out of Site, Out of Mind :  Food is a frequent topic of conversation, when a group of people are stuck on an island eating fried noodles with onion every day. Fantasy food conversations abound, and people often surprise themselves with the details they can provide about a long-absent treat. Maybe the crunch of fresh, cold lettuce. The smell of warm stilton. The savouring of a Magnum ice cream bar, and the feeling after eating one, with your eyes rolling into the back of your head. On Balak, we had many such conversations, but I don't recall ever mentioning Melton Mowbray Snack Pork Pies, but I found myself magnetically drawn to one of these this morning - my first morning in the UK for 6 months.

There could be a couple of reasons for this; the first deals with the shame and public ridicule faced by pie scoffers, and the second is the difficulty in making a pie sound tantalising. As for Pork Pie Shame - I can't find any references to this on the web, but I remember some survey results in the news. It turned out that marketeers were having difficulty targetting pork pie advertising, as no-one would admit to buying them. Through extensive research, they found that it was middle-aged men who were the missing noshers - but they did so secretly, without mentioning it to anyone. As for making pies sound nice, they are quite revolting to describe. They are made of fat, and bits of pig anus, wrapped in a clear slime-like jelly (made from pigs' feet - hmmm), and then dipped in pastry covered in more fat, and then hermetically sealed in lard, before being left to sweat.

But I am coming out of the closet. I ate a snack pork pie on my second day back in the UK. But I was weak. If I'd have been a real man, I would have bought one of the six pound pie beasts, I would not have wolfed my snack in private. I urge you all to succeed where I have failed, and take a whole pie back to your household and display it with pride in the fridge. Apparently, Hitler agreed not to bomb Melton Mowbray in the second world war, as he intended to occupy England, live in Oxford, and live on a diet solely consisting of pigs' feet pies.
posted by Garreth at 3:52 AM

8/30/2002

Sunrise over Heathrow :  Its with mixed feelings that I come back to sunless London. All I can say is that it all looks okay from above the clouds.
posted by Garreth at 6:25 AM

Tips for the Traveller :  When purchasing a round the world ticket, check the terms and conditions carefully. To get from Singapore to London with a round the world ticket, you may have to go the long way round, to accomplish what it says on the ticket. So for example, you might have to spend 19 hours flying from Singapore to Los Angeles, with a brief pit stop in Tokyo. Then, Los Angeles being Los Angeles, you might have to fill in a form and collect your baggage and pass customs and immigration before getting back on a plane from Los Angeles to London, taking maybe 11 hours. The advantage of this route is not always obvious to the weary traveller; perhaps going the wrong way across the international date line gives you more free meals.

Another Top Tip: long haul flying is very much like income tax. You are going to be badgered by the whole jet lag thing, so you might as well go out all night, get little or no sleep, and try to get your hangover onto the plane. That way, you can claim back the loss of sleep from drinking against the inevitable dizziness and confusion that the plane will foster in you. Its like a tax dodge, only with sleep. Only drawback is that you have to pace around airports when catching connecting flights to avoid falling asleep in a corner...


posted by Garreth at 6:22 AM

8/28/2002

Dodgy Posting Template :  Finally fixed the bug with my permanent links, so that I can 'deep link' to the individual posts. In all the archive versions, the tags were screwed up. Must tell the bloke at Blogskins who came up with the template. Ha! Open Sauce at its best. Does that mean that this Open Sauce thing only works when people have too much time on their hands and no commercial pressure? I don't know. But it reminds me I'm hungry, and there's only so many times I can put my hands under the toilet hand-drier to offset the effects of this extremity murdering air-con.
posted by Garreth at 1:58 AM

Sleeping in Balak :  On this expedition in Balak, the sleeping area for scum, sorry, volunteers was a large dormitory room. The whole house was wooden in fact. It was a longhouse, built on stilts in the sea. The stilts are just long enough to keep the floorboards out of the water during a high-tide. Not a high-tide in a storm unfortunately.

I say a large dormitory, but in reality it was just about big enough to hang everyone's mosquito nets next to each other, and leave about 50cm to navigate between them. The days on the expedition were often short - partly because the generator and hence lights would be turned off at 10pm, partly because you would have done a fair amount of work from 6am. So theoretically, you could get 8 hours sleep a night, unless you were one of the 5:30am swimming / yoga nutters. But somehow the 8 hours never materialised for me.

Sometimes, there would be no breeze at all, and it would be roasting hot, and you'd lie awake, drenched in sweat, watching fleas jump up and down from your chest. If there was no breeze, the insects would swarm in, although cockroaches never needed an excuse. They would appear from between the gaps between the floorboards, invade your pile of mattresses which lay on top of the bare floor, and then bury themselves in whatever you were wearing. You might wake up with Emily thrashing around trying to get one out of her pyjamas, or wake up batting one from your face.

Other nights, there might be a pig or monkey attack. Perhaps the two species joined forces to try to outflank the two dogs, and get at the chickens. "Ya schwien, vee vill perform ze pinzer movement on diesen hund. Vee vill attack from ze treez, providing coconut bombardment ov zees confounded hounds!" Whatever great military tactics were being employed by the forces of anti-chickendom, the result was the same - a running and barking battle which would wake us light-sleepers from our light sleep.

Early mornings, the chickens might get their Daylight Saving Time confused, and start crowing far too early. Or the mange-ridden cat, Porridge, might decide he wanted his porridge a few hours before the allotted 6:30am breakfast time. He was ugly as sin, and even the warm-hearted vet nurse (a self confessed 10 out of 10 religious type) thought that he should be put out of his misery. The excrutiating noises of pain and anguish that the under-porridged cat emitted would conjure up images of cats being interrogated by the gestapo in the bleary eyed volunteers. Maybe the pigs had captured him. But no, he'd be parading by the side of my mattress, complaining he was hungry. We never threw him in the sea to keep him quiet, normally because we'd be intercepted by a cat lover, but I did learn to take a handy vessel of water to bed to throw at him. I think he's dead now.

Some nights, a few gypsy volunteers might stay up to look at the stars, and read poetry to each other by moon or torchlight. This would infuriate a few of the rest, and there'd be a series of pleas to be quiet. Followed by demands, then maybe threats. I think they should have thrown the late night poetry class in the sea with the cat, but they never did. The glowering barely contained rage from people deprived of their sleep at the breakfast table was always a source of amusement though.

Personally, I'd just wake up in the middle of the night for no obvious reason. I'd be confused about where I was - the sound of the waves underneath the floorboards would make me think I'd fallen asleep on the beach again. So I'd look around to get my bearings so that I could get back to my mattress. I'd be able to see light from the open doors and windows of the dormitory, and I'd get confused as to which way I was pointing. Then I might figure that I was in the dorm, but had strayed off my mattress. I was terrified that I might inadvertantly crawl off and end up in my neighbour's mosquito net. Probably not as terrified as Susie was though, which might explain the strange whimpering noises she made in her sleep.

If it wasn't the animals, the people, or the heat that ruined any chance of a good night's sleep, it was the storms. Tropical storms are awesome - first the wind suddenly rises, an enormous black cloud appears, and within a minute, the cloud divebombed our tiny island. Most noticeably on our tin roof. It was like trying to sleep in a popcorn pan. But sleep wasn't an option. All of our fresh water came from the sky, and was collected in a large container from roof run-off. When this was full, we'd have to direct rain from the gutter into barrels, as the water container wasn't half large enough to hydrate 11 volunteers and up to 11 staff. So we'd all pile out trying to gather water in whatever container we could. In the early days, when the faithful still believed in personal hygiene, eveyone would rush out even at 2am to have a shower. It was hysterical - a dozen people in their swimsuits in the dark, holding sponges and covering themselves in suds. It was a calculated risk as to when to start rinsing, as the storms would stop as quickly as they began. If you timed it wrong, it'd be back to sea-water for rinsing, assuming the tide was in...

All in all, quality of sleep was not great, but it was funny. People shouting "Fuck OFF!" at insects in the middle of the night would always raise a titter from those lying awake. Ah, those summer nights.

posted by Garreth at 1:23 AM

8/27/2002

HyperText Go Go Go :  Ah the joys of tinkering with HTML. Tried to make a rudimentary traffic monitor without using CGI or anything. I must have too much time on my hands. Now all I've got to do is make the background at the top a bit nicer...
posted by Garreth at 11:21 PM

Host With The Most :  Today I signed up with a new ISP, ignoring some advice and going for some other because it's cheaper and doesn't allow me to use .asp, which I otherwise would. Not of interest in and of itself, true, but it means that I can pepper my meat and two veg with a little colourful spice. Or at least put my snapshots up. Isn't that what the internet is for - baby photos and drivel? I'm supposed to be writing up all of the old stuff and trying to get all my photos published, but I seem to spend more time surfing right now...
posted by Garreth at 8:43 AM

Lonely Planneted :  First it was the Americans with 'Vietnamisation'. Now theres a bunch of Aussies and Septics who are wrecking the country with 'LonelyPlanetisation'. They have LonelyPlanneted the place to death. ' Le guide du voyageur indépendant' my arse. You get on your tour bus where your cadre, sorry, tour-guide gives you some information about the attrocities (or temples) you are going to visit. Everyone on the bus whips out their 'Lonely Planets', their 'geoPlaneta Lonelissimos', their 'Planetisches Gelonesomeskeit'. And they check the details. Except for those of use unfortunate enough to be able to remember the articles verbatim. We try to forget, so that next time we meet someone, we don't spew out the guidebook to them as a knee jerk reaction.

Then we get off the coach, where we are given the opportunity to buy local goods for local people, from new local shops which have sprung up around the coach resting points. There, these independent travellers look at their books to figure out how to test if the goods are authentic enough to be hung up in a cabinet in their hallways back in Baden-Baden. How fortunate, the shopkeepers know exactly how they are going to be tested by these canny independent travellers, and their goods, which really could be used to plough fields / keep the sun off / kill pygmies, miraculously pass the Lonely Planet tests. It's like some syllabus for shopkeepers. And if there's a food place with a good write up in the independent travellers' bible, lo and behold, many food shops change their names to match. What the Mohammed El Fayed are our independents to do? They might have to try their luck, or make a decision on their own.

I think the Lonely Planet books are fine, even useful. In fact, I really enjoyed all of the blinkered tours on offer from Vietnam that they recommend. Certainly beats having to think about things - just remember a time to wake up and they do the rest. I like not thinking. The tours and the book have a synergistic effect on tourists in Vietnam - you keep meeting the same French people wherever you go. But aside from the same French people at every stop, the obvious, accessible 'scene' in Vietnam, the one that the book lays out for you, is great. But these travellers aren't independent. Independent from what? Certainly not the book. Not even from the state-controlled tour operators. Independent from any unguided thought maybe.

At any rate, as long as you don't meet one of those people who 'went there before the guidebooks', back when 'it was really unspoilt', then I guess you're doing alright.
posted by Garreth at 6:46 AM

:  Why do they keep torturing that old man? Stop wheeling him around, he needs a break. Why don't you let him retire and play video games? You gave him this job at age 58. Let him retire, he's 82. The last pope to retire did so in the 13th century. Come on JP, call it a day. 55% of Canadians think you should in a Pole poll. If you're worrying about paying back taxes for profits from some of your world tours, just leave the Vatican, and use your old passport in which your name is Karol Joseph Wojtyla. No-one will know, trust me.
posted by Garreth at 3:27 AM

:  Singapore must be hell for people with schrapnel wounds - it's just too gosh darned cold inside, hot and sweaty outside. Beats me why they don't put the whole lot in a dome and aircon it all. Maybe have a big heated pool on the outside.
posted by Garreth at 2:16 AM

8/26/2002

:  And you can drink the tap water, which is a first in about 6 months. So much more convenient than having to remember to buy water on the way back from a night out.
posted by Garreth at 1:12 AM

8/25/2002

:  And the other thing about Singapore that's different to Vietnam - the kids man. I was in a glass tunnel watching divers feed sharks earlier. They were pathetic sharks really - not big teeth, and letting the diver pet and cuddle them, but it was good to see lots of fish again. I even recognise some of them still. But the kids. Arrgh. They shout all the time in their spoilt brat stuccato English. Perhaps its the hangover, or the acoustics of a perspex tunnel, but they really should see to them with spearguns. In Vietnam, the kids seemed quieter, still liking to play and have fun, but without the yelling.

Another thing that sticks in the mind about Vietnam is that the food places were run much more intimately. You could sit and chat to the owners and tenders. The toilet would also be the family and staff toilet for the concrete shell, so you'd see toothbrushes in the room. I never counted less than ten toothbrushes in each one. Haven't seen any toothbrushes in Singapore toilets yet.

And the road in Singapore may have holes, but I haven't hit one yet. As for Vietnam, the holes sometimes had bits of road between them. If they were lucky.
posted by Garreth at 8:46 AM

:  The end of an era, the start of the hangover

On the surface, Joe and I don't have much in common, except that we both agreed to go and save fish with Greenforce. But we've spent the last couple of months mainly touristing around together. And saying goodbye to Joe and going on to Singapore is part of a strange change process. Apparently, if you read the bumph on the left of the screen, this blog talks about the effects of this so-called 'sabbatical'. So here goes.

During our time together, we would have cycles of activity, followed by staying somewhere for a few days getting shedded, and then we'd scoot off again, spending a day or two moving about to sober up. Our last night in Saigon was pretty typical. We'd just got out of the War Remnants Museum, which has some pretty harrowing photos of war. A bit of aimless wandering afterwards revealed no pirate DVD movies to buy, so we went to a bar, and ended up playing pool for quite some lagers. A quick trip to the hotel for showers, party clothes, and cheap rum resulted in Joe cutting his own hair, and throwing condoms filled with water at the street below our balcony. More lager and a bit of food followed that - playing Connect 4 so that Joe can win some money playing people in bars in Thailand.

Another Apocalypse Now bar. This was on a Friday, so it was heaving, yet we didn't pay any entry fee. The ladies who entered did have to pay I noticed, perhaps this was some kind of equality sponsored 'gentlemen's night', though I doubt that very much. A bit of dancing with the motley assortment of pimps, expats with their temporary lady friends, and I decided to see if Saigon had anything else to offer in the dancing stakes. We went outside and an obliging moped driver took us to a brothel called Green Hill following our request to go dancing. "No, no, no! DISCO dancing," we hollered at him, and he took us to a few other places which also had no dancing. So we went back to Apocalypse Now after exhausting our driver of ideas. We danced a little more, befriending a pimp who had perhaps had a few too many shandies. He kept asking if we were interested in his particular protege, who seemed unaccounted for. We assured him that we were quite fine, while thanking him for thinking of us. Apocalypse Now finished, but we were not. I remembered that Green Hill had a pool table in the 'meeting area', so that's where we went.

We started playing pool upon entering the brothel, and drinks were brought, as were doubles partners, should we need them. Joe's partner had little sticky plasters on her temples, so I thought I would show off my grasp of Vietnamese, saying that she was crazy. I didn't know the words for electro-convulsive shock therapy, but I don't think that would have helped. My quip had fallen short of the mark, and the lady stormed off, replaced by one who had no signs of attendance at thought correction school. This lady proved to be a bit of a pool player, so Joe and I decided to play for money. We figured that this would kind of cover the opportunity cost of us taking them away from their line of business. Although there were no other potential punters vying for their attention in the Green Hill, we figured that we shouldn't leave them empty-handed.

We played pool. We lost. We played again. We lost. Tequilas came and went (the ladies liked Baileys) We doubled the stakes and lost again. This was hysterically funny for Joe and I, as we had to get rid of the last of our currency, had no intention of having the ladies escort us anywhere, and were keeping them off the street. Very noble. I can't remember when we left, but I have flashes of memory. I phoned my mother at around 5:30am Vietnamese time, and sent a few random SMS messages, including one to someone in Thailand whose number is written in the back of one of our books.

The important thing is that we managed to wake up at 7:30, and I managed to get my hangover onto the flight to Singapore. I'm a strict believer that you should always fly with a hangover, so that you don't notice any dehydration that air travel might cause. Somehow, while standing in line for check in, while weeping toxic rum from every pore in a very badly ventilated airport, I was selected to be upgraded to business class. I didn't realise until I got onto the plane, I was too preoccupied with keeping my breakfast south of my throat. I sat in the comfy seat on the plane, trying to hide my mud splattered walking boots, thinking there'd been some kind of mistake. I still think they made a mistake - perhaps the check-in people didn't have a sense of smell.

I found myself in Singapore where everyone speaks English, and alone in a hotel room for the first time in about 2 months. It wasn't hard to see the staggering difference between life in Vietnam and that in Singapore. No-one has tried to sell me guns, girls or ganja. No-one has tried to sell me books about guns, girls and ganja. No-one has really tried to sell me anything. You kind of get annoyed sometimes by the attention that you get in countries like Vietnam and Thailand because you are visibly different to most of the poverty striken people there. But you get used to it, and now the absence of attention is alien. You just become someone walking around in freedom, no longer a pretend celebrity with a wallet to be taxed. And they don't watch wrestling much in Vietnam - probably the WWE figured there's no-one with enough reddies to buy the merchandising. So I watched Brock, and the Rock last night, and am strangely slipping back into my old civilisation. The one with computers that have big screens and fast connections. The one where Kane is coming back to the ring soon. And booze is expensive.
posted by Garreth at 8:28 AM

:  I have to stop drinking. Vietnam has some great beer for virtually no money. My left ear started bleeding a few days back. I think some of the brain which attends to focussing my eyes may have leaked out. As fortune would have it, Singapore beer is really expensive.

Last night I only had a few lagers, and I was fortunate to find some innocent entertainment before I found any trouble. Perhaps there is no trouble in Singapore - I'll keep you posted. What I did find in this innocent city? The Suntec City Dance Finals. This is where lots of small people jump up and down far too fast in an attempt to qualify for some kind of Asian dance competition. It reminds me that a mouse has a heart that beats really fast because it is so lickle. And an elephant's heart beats really slowly, as it is ginormous. Maybe these Singaporeans weren't fully grown, but most of them appeared to be of below average bodysize. So perhaps that's why the group dance teams chose music with more beats per minute than Rodney King's Face - perhaps their hearts beat faster, their limbs move faster, they die younger (like mice).

Now I don't know too much about dancing - you can ask anyone who was in any Loughborough night spot in the last few decade. But it seems to me that you shouldn't try to get six people on a stage prancing out of time to music that seems uncoreographable to them. What do I mean? Well, if the dance master says you have to move the extremity of a limb about one metre for every beat, and your maximum limb movement rate is only so high, STOP DANCING TO MUSIC THAT'S TOO FAST. It looks silly and you can't keep in time. Christ on a bicycle.




posted by Garreth at 7:40 AM

:  Automatic For The People

At the Cu Chi tunnels visitor centre, you can fire guns. Big guns. Admittedly, there are no rocket launchers and live targets, but Cambodia can wait. I'd read a good book about the underground war fought against guerillas in tunnels close to Saigon - most of it talked about crawling with a torch, a handgun, and a piece of rope, and engaging the enemy from short range. It also talked about agent orange, napalm, very big bombs, and very many medium sized bombs. But it never talked about the M60 or the M16. Mainly because the M60 should be mounted on something. Like a helicopter, tank or a Rambo. And as this page points out, you need a lot of bullets, on those natty little over the shoulder numbers.

You pay a dollar a bullet. I get twenty for a go on an M16, and with virtually no training, I am given a big gun, and told to point it at some animal targets a way down a range. Tourists mill around a few yards away. A quick squeeze or five of the trigger on semi-automatic. Lots of noise. A big grin. There is an unarmed attendant, whose role is presumably to prevent any maniac with a gun like the one in my hand from turning round and making hamburgers out of busloads of tourists. He flicks the small lever which instead of pointing to 'semi', now points to 'full', or 'pande-f*cking-monium' as they would have labelled it, if the gun had more room. Barely a second later, my grin has widened considerably, and there aren't any bullets left.

Predictably, I return for more bullets to the counter marked 'cashier'. They probably couldn't have fitted 'license to print money counter selling one dollar bullets for guns that use several hundred per minute' on the front of the desk. This time our guide advises me that I can "become a hero, just like Rambo", and points to the bandoliers of M60 ammo. I get fifty of the bullets, which is half a belt. I proceed, after a quick pose for the camera, to the M60 station. After even less instruction from the attendant than I had before, he loads the belt of bang-bangs into the deadly killing stick. There's a kind of catch to pull up to make things happen, and there isn't a label on it. The inscription "noise switch" probably got worn away in the last few decades of abuse. Things get really loud when I use that little switch, and the sand bags above my cheerful tiger-shaped target start to show they're feeling the fun too. Something at the back of the target starts to glow white hot. Fifty US dollars is gone in a few bursts on the M60. I am positively laughing out loud by the end of this, and Joe remarks that it's only places like Vietnam and perhaps a few special bars in Bangkok where you can have so much fun spending money so quickly. Gone in far less than 60 seconds.

Regardless of the fact that there was all manner of suffering and misery because of guns and stuff, its wicked fun firing automatic weapons. Remember its not people who kill people. It's psychopaths with automatic guns that kill people.
posted by Garreth at 6:28 AM

8/22/2002

:  Supply and Demand

In Hoi An a few days back, an area in heart of Vietnam which is experiencing a crop-threatening drought, I was caught in two days of torrential downpour. Enough water to instantly flood the road. Twelve dollars per cubic metre of water, my arse. Sitting in a cafe under some tarpaulin, I spied a young boy peddling his bicycle through the six inches of surface water outside. He was holding a rather nice umbrella, so it seemed logical to shout that I wanted to buy his umbrella. I was surprised when he stopped and turned back, and by the fact that he spoke English to a sufficient extent that I might negotiate a fee for him to fetch me an umbrella as I sat and drank rum.

Sitting at a cafe in Nha Trang, I watch a hungover English person stumble towards a chair. He sits and orders a beer and a curry for his mid afternoon snack. A True Brit abroad. A cyclo driver lurches past slowly, and True Brit looks up from his stupour and takes a puff from an imaginary cigarette. The cyclo driver raises his eyebrows, turns back and returns the sign, nodding. After the arrival of the samosa course, a moped driver arrives with a big grin, and buys a cola. He looks at True Brit and says, "Marry Wanna?" True Brit nods and a newspaper packet of what looks like about a pound of grass is handed over and a price agreed. Simple and not particularly subtle.

Conversely, one tactic for deterring hawkers is to ask them for ridiculous things that they don't have. This can sometimes backfire. I was stumbling home last night when yet another toothless cyclo driver asked me if I wanted anything, and reeled off his inventory of "lady" and "marry-wana", adding, "very good, very cheap". I shook my head and told him that I only wanted smack, horse, haich, junk etc. I tapped a vein in the crook of my elbow to demonstrate. "No have heroine." Good. However, an enterprising pick pocket turns up. She is an old hag with lots of makeup, sharing a moped with two grinning blokes. The middle bloke tells me he can get me some smack, and is tapping his forearm in sympathy with the obvious withdrawal pains I must, as an alleged smack-user, be feeling. Meanwhile, the old hag is off the moped, asking if I want some "sucky sucky", while lunging at my trousers. With one lewd hand, she tries to grab my little chap, while using her devious hand to pat down my pockets for cash and wallets. I guess she thinks I'm a junky, and can't feel her devious hand. I unhand her, and have to admit I don't really want any smack. I resort to telling them I'm actually after a water buffalo, and I can just see them coming over the horizon now with a large animal with a ring through its nose.
posted by Garreth at 12:07 AM

8/21/2002

:  Any claims by web sites that the beach here is littered with hypodermics and condoms are unfounded. I have found only one condom on the beach in an hour. But the place is littered with dodgy characters. And a first for me - something I've never seen before - a man with no arms and no legs propelling himself down the sand, with a bag clasped between his teeth, asking for donations. I couldn't quite make out what the donations were for, as he could speak very clearly, what with him having the strap of the bag clenched between his teeth.
posted by Garreth at 3:45 AM

:  So I've made new friends, having temporarily lost Joe and the hotel room key. With a shady character who attempts to sell you opium as you ride on the back of his moped. A cunning trick, and probably leaving both dealer and punter capable of evading low speed pursuit.

He filled me in, unbidden, on the local hooker scene. If you go to a disco, such as the one I told him that I and Joe were at the other night, hookers will dance with you and otherwise distract you while your pockets are picked. I suspect my little visitor in the cyclo the other night was attempting to pick my pocket from the comfort of my lap. Last laugh is on her in that I didn't have any money.

So my new friend tells me that the way forward is to meet at the Four Seasons Cafe. The drinks are cheap. There are no women to pick your pocket. (Probably no women to tie bits of string and menus to your trousers, giving an indication of how light fingered they are, and how insensitive drunk people are to their pockets). The only people there are dealers and pimps, and they apparently just phone up for hookers as you need them. So now you know. These communists are very forthcoming with exposing their seedy underbelly sometimes.
posted by Garreth at 3:36 AM

:  Never let it be said that I don't listen to feedback. Call me a pedantic, stubborn, value for money freak, but don't call me unhearing. Recent polls have shown that today's audience is looking for action and adventure - something bordering on the 'Romancing the Stone', but with a little bit of 'Fear and Loathing' thrown in.

Two nights ago, Joe and I went out to get in trouble in Nha Trang - a place as crooked and mafia-run as your average beach in Thailand. One article says that next to the beach is a set of roads infested with pimps, drug pushers, hypodermics and Trouble with a capital Tee. But to reverse the effects of westerners coming to have too much fun and exploit the local peasants, one Canadian/Vietnamese woman is taking a stand with her bar - Crazy Kim's. Every drink you have, every plate of bangers and mash or full English breakfast - they all generate a contribution to combat drug and prostitution Problems, with a capital Pee. So we got wangered during the prolonged happy hour, and bought local handicrafts from any impoverished looking street vendor who approached. We felt good - decadent with a hint of altruism.

So to start feeling bad, we went to a few beach discos - merrily propelled by a scrawny looking cyclo driver. In the course of our 5 minute pedal-powered trip, we had been offered Marry Wana, good lady, cheap lady, and the promise of a bar where we could buy aineeeting. Getting to the beachfront discotheque, we proceeded, as Joe would say, to "dance like bell ends", and investigate the local scene. The second such disco had at its disposal a pretty young lady who would tie menus to the belt loop at the back of your trousers when you weren't looking. The menu would swing about as you danced around, with muffled guffaws from the rest of the crowd. Standards expat affair of drunk western chaps, and one wealthy looking Japanese fellow, with lots of smiling asian girls. DJ wouldn't play the Final Countdown however hard we petitioned him. At one point I was convinced I had had my pocket picked when I turned to see a short chap counting notes behind me, I patted my pockets and suddenly forgot that I had spent nearly all of my money on 'killer cocktail buckets'. I stared at him from a distance that swayed between 2 and 4 inches from his nose for a while before I figured things out.

I left Joe in the clutches of a German girl, and went to the street to stagger home. Greeted by our all-offering cyclo driver, I was whisked off at a snail's pace to God knows where. I had no idea of the name of my hotel, and by the time I'd fished out the hotel card, our cyclo driver had driven past some kind of cycle-through brothel, and a beautiful lady was sat on my lap, offering her services for a mere twenty dollars for a 'shaw taime' or thirty dollars for 'orl nigh'. Polite as could be, and with all the charm of a man soaked in vodka and gin, I declined her comely advances, and invited her to leave the carriage. She wasn't in any rush to leave the carriage, seeming quite comfortable on my lap, and since she was keeping said lap nicely warm, I gave her the benefit of the doubt and allowed her to remain there, with the added bonus for her of a free ride.

The cyclo now heading towards my hotel, at the pace now of a lazy snail on beta-blockers, a moped pulled alongside and kept abreast of us. He headed to what he thought was the hotel of my new wife and I at least. And the gentleman on the back of the moped, who I came to assume was my new wife's pimp seemed adamant that I give him some money for doing unspeakable things to his protege.

In the guidebooks about Vietnam, it tells you to avoid conflict, and always smile in negotiations. Offering around a pack of fags is supposed to smooth any ruffled feathers, and allow any heated negotiations to commence at a cooler temperature. All of these pieces of advice were totally absent from my mind, locked away from my conscious. The pimp on the back of the moped kept on at me to give him some money, and eventually the lady on my lap left the bicycle carriage, but not before telling me to meet her at 10pm the following day. I think that was the message, but considering her command of English was insufficient for her to be able to negotiate her own deals without a cycling chauffeur and a pimp on a moped, she could have been singing 'God Save the Queen' for all I know.

Seeing that the pimp still didn't relent his demands, and was the size and stature of a Gerry Andersen puppet, with appropriately oversized head, and diminuitive dangling body, I decided to jump off the bike and shout at him in the street for a bit. A street which I admittedly didn't recognise, and that could have been described by a more observant type as a dark alleyway. After a bit of gesticulation, and a fair bit of yelling, the pimp seemed to be reaching into his back pocket for a knife. I jumped back each time he did this, and he looked pleased at the small victory that such a reaction produced in me.

After a couple of minutes of this nonsense, the cyclo peddler appealed to me to get back into his vehicle, and I figured that he wanted to get me back to my hotel, and away from the deranged pimp and his burly moped chauffeur. I got back in, and the pace matching and harranging continued from the Thunderbird pimp. In an offer of reconciliation, I tried to grab the moped driver's right hand, ostensibly to shake it. He wasn't having any of it, probably best too.

Arriving at the shuttered-up hotel, I reached between the metal grill and knocked on the window, and after a few minutes, the shutters opened enough to admit me, and I thought my three pursuers would be shut out, and I could safely go to sleep behind protective bars. But I was wrong. The scrawny fellow appealed to the hotel guard in Vietnamese, and he was persuaded to open the shutter. I made for my room, and Mr Scrawn latched onto my synthetic shirt. I pried his hands away. He grabbed me again. The pimp joined in the grab-a-Ron grab-a-thon free-for-all. I was more than a little angry by this point, and let my assailants know this at the top of my voice. I figured out that all three were in cahoots, as the demands for money now came for services of Mr Scrawn - apparently he wanted to charge me for waiting for some 5 hours outside various clubs in town.

Trying a change of tack, I grabbed a packet of fags from his top pocket and threw them on the floor. The hotel guard seemed to be siding with them at this point, and was offering no assistance - why should he, when a wealthy white man has returned at 5am with three men demanding money - surely this western guy has plenty of US dollar and owes these poor downtrodden folk some of them. I pulled all of the money I had from my pockets in a dramatic gesture, and counted it out, amounting to about forty pence. And although forty pence is enough to get a bottle of vodka, a bottle of coke and some biscuits for your hangover, it wasn't the sum my friends had in mind.

This was all of the money I had, and Mr Scrawn had been cycling me around for a while, giving me a tour of drive-thru brothels, neighbourhood pimps, and had indeed found my hotel rather than leaving me in a dark alley. The moped driver did look a bit tasty after all, and with no command of English at all, I assumed he must be the muscle of the operation, and I wasn't too keen to find out first hand whether he enjoyed his work or not. I proferred the notes to Mr Scrawn, saying this is all the money I have, but he refused to accept it. More than once, I threw it at the pavement outside the hotel, as I was getting very tired of these games, and the hands that kept grabbing me every time I tried to leave.

I'm not a person that is quick to anger. But I was tired. Words were not working. I stared into Mr Scrawn's eyes from not very far away. I can't see very well in dim lighting, so it was best I got as close as possible to see what was going on in his head. He held my gaze for a while, and then looked away. I figured that he wasn't going to hurt me. I did this to the pimp too, demanding to know who the real boss of the negotiations was. This was a question I posed them both, and eventually it transpired that Mr Scrawn was. He still held my arm, so I convinced him with my free hand that he should let me go. I threw the money at the floor again, and made to leave.

It must have looked pretty comical as I strode off on the hotel's tiled floor dragging a scrawny baseball-capped cyclo driver behind me as he clutched my shirt. Seeing as he wouldn't let go of my shirt, I dragged him up a few flights of stairs, and unhanded myself there. From the amount of shouting, I would be surprised if anyone in the neighbouring rooms was still asleep, and finally he relented and descended the stairs. Despite my room being on the ground floor, I walked to the top of the hotel, where I could see Mr Scrawn and the pimp leaving the area. Momentarily distracted by the sunrise in the distance, I figured that this left the muscle behind.

Arming myself with some broken furniture I crept back downstairs. The hotel guard was waiting for me, and told me that everyone had gone and I could put the weapons away. He also handed me the key to my ground floor room, indicating that he knew that I didn't live upstairs, where I had just dragged Mr Scrawn. I just couldn't figure him out, so I barracaded myself into the room, and after recording a bit of a video diary in case I went missing in the middle of the night, I set down Joe's camera and passed out.

I've been here about 36 hours since then, and I haven't seen them again yet. I wonder what tonight will hold?

posted by Garreth at 1:19 AM

8/19/2002

:  Brief History of Time?

Oldest game in the world. I just read this book, and quite enjoyed it. He wibbles on about how people used to be persecuted by the Church for saying things about God and the earth going round Uranus and what not. And then he says that some ancient bloke finally wrote his stuff in Italian rather than Latin, opening it up to the masses. And he says that many ancient blokes were wrong about physics and the universe. And he doesn't even tell me if he thinks God exists, though I think he implies he doesn't have a place in his theory. The thing that really narks me is that he uses this kind of catch all theory that we probably wouldn't be around to observe things if such and such wasn't true so it wouldn't matter. And this seems to be used in the candy-coated text to hop between bits of theory quite frequently in the last half of the book. Smacks less of candy-coating, and more of FUDGE to me.

So should I follow the lessons of history he serves up and disbelieve what he tells me now? I kind of like his nerdlike humour, and the fact that he laughs about being placed right next to the speakers of a stadium sized concert because of his wheelchair. But I don't like the fact that something probably quite complicated is simplified to the point that he has to reason with "probably... ... isn't it reasonable to assume... ...it would be unreasonable to assume"
posted by Garreth at 6:51 AM

:  Perhaps its because of the advertising I have been subjected to from glossy magazines, I don't know. But there's something about health centres that I find strangely compelling. Perhaps it's because I'm a hypochondriac, and I drink all the time, and want a short cut way of feeling better. So the fact that there's a dirt cheap hot spring resort in Nha Trang at Thap Ba meant I was there like a shot. Having spent 13 hours on a crap bus from Hoi An unable to sleep for the constant lurching and beeping, meant I signed up for a massage too. Buses over long distances in foreign countries are okay, don't get me wrong, but only if they have character, and your discomfort is because of local people with live goats and chickens on their laps. When the bus is uncomfortable because there are too many seats, and your neighbours are all French, it doesn't have the same romantic faraway appeal.

So a bath of hot mud was in order, in a wooden bath overlooking some mountains. Very nice, except when you got it in your eyes. Quite funny to see normally prudish Vietnamese people running around covered in lycra and mud. The prudishness was still present in some of the victorian bathing costumes, but the mood was light-hearted in the mineral pools and blasting wall. This was nothing more than high pressure hot water delivered horizontally between two walls about 80cm apart. There was a water fall to stand under - inexplicably hot mineral water blasting away any cobwebs, and hopefully some of those nasty toxins that make you get a bit irritable after four nights of alcohol abuse.

But the massage was the piece de resistence. This was delivered in a small cell, at the end of a corridor of similar bed-sized cells, much like a prison wing. I could hear the Irish guy next door being called handsome by his masseuse, and prompted into action, the woman walking up and down my back told me that I too was handsome. Apparently this was a health farm for only handsome men. After various knees to the neck and elbows to the spine, I felt much better. After dressing to leave, my masseuse came back to escort me out of the prison. Spotting my hideous manga shirt (all my clothes are in the wash), she started hollering, and from the closed cells I was passing, other masseuses would pop out to see it. Much pulling of my beard followed an stroking of my lovely nylon threads, as I negotiated my way down the walkway, like some new recruit being welcomed to death row, batting away clawing hands and short women.

All I can say in my defence is that I bought the shirt when I was srunk on the way to a club in KK, and the beard thing is a result of 9 weeks on an island without a mirror. I was going to have it amputated and leave it to medical science, but I think I'll sell it now instead.
posted by Garreth at 5:22 AM

8/16/2002

:  Great thing to slip into the middle of sentences: "Bic bom crataar." As proved by our Vietnamese guide who was showing us what the effects of 100,000 tonnes of explosive can do to a small place within three months as we peered out of the windows of our tour bus. I'm not sure whether its Vietnamese propoganda (they did kind of win, but as our guide said, no-one really won), but it seems that some American and local chaps put up a hell of a fight to avoid losing a bit of ground that they later abandonned.... by this time the landscape was rendered a bit of a moonscape full of 'big bomb craters'. Not to mention around 11,000 deaths. War sucks. I can't believe people still have them.
posted by Garreth at 9:21 AM

: 
Memories of Balak - III

Despite being an island mostly filled with fish-hugger conservationists, there was a fair amount of competition on Pulau Balak. At the start there was a big challenge to learn to identify fish, coral, and slimey spineless things, with tests. Some of the volunteers were straight out of their A-Levels and were still on a learning tip, so this proved no problem to them. But a comparison of identification test marks bears no real relationship to the spirit of true competition on the island. This was to be found in the various awards that were presented....

Muppet Award

This nightly award was the highlight of the evening meal (hotly contested with the expedition leader's daily roundup) . Emily, first winner of the award, would recite the nominations for who had done anything remotely absurd that day. The nominations would primarily include one of the members of TRACC - the other NGO we shared the longhouse with. They had more boats to play with, which are always a source of mishap - people falling between boats, people setting off to dive without masks, people forgetting to take their small boat from between the beach and the house before the tide went out.

Some nominations were kind of strange, and in my best Dennis 'Speak a bit quicker and stop nodding you hapless fool' Norden way, here are some of the ones that spring to mind:

• Trudi put chicken into the vegetarian food and continued to protest that it was a vegetarian meal
  
• Jackie suggested using cement to fill the crack in the wooden dug-out canoe whose bouyancy was always suspect
  
• Joe saying that only he could drink Tequila like a real man - through his nose while hanging upside down from the pullup bar, and promptly having to lie down with his sinuses in excrutiating agony
  
• Dave, the expedition leader, leaving one of the boats pointed at the beach with the engine running, getting out of it, and forgetting about it
  
• Rich for absent-mindedly pouring coke into the only container full of drinking water on the island
  
• Emily for keeping her waterproof diving torch in a ziploc plastic bag to keep it dry
  

Hardcore Award

This weekly award was for valour, for being hard, and nothing to do with those junk emails you get when hotmail reveals all of its email addresses to all and sundry. (Britney, Shakira, Viagra, Strap On, add 3 inches etc). Scouse was the second winner, managing to hang from the pull-up bar by the tops of his toes. I managed to get it by dragging about 20 metres worth of tree and poles from the other side of the island while recuperating from Balak Belly, and not being able to temporarily ingest anything other than water for three days. Alex got it for breaking her toe, throwing up underwater, and driving everyone back from a dive without mentioning it to anyone.

Pisshead of the Weekend Award

I was disappointed at not winning this more than once - putting my heart and soul into chimping on a Saturday night by the inevitable fire on the beach. One weekend I did win was Sarah's 30th Birthday party, for which I roped myself in to promoting party games. I was particularly proud of being able to turn the prize for pass-the-parcel from a packet of TicTacs (don't underestimate the power of such a treat on a remote island) to a packet of TicTacs and the opportunity to dance and sing the Flashdance theme while having jugs of water thrown at you. It was kind of upon Alex's insistence that she won and got her opportunity to do this feat, and while she normally sulked if people threw too much cack at her clean clothes (cake in nightclubs, talc in the changing cell), she was keen as chips to be covered in water and prance around. To make sure I got the award, I fell over a few times, spilt things and shouted a fair bit too.

One weekend I was particularly miffed at once again being pipped at the post for the pisshead award. It was the same Saturday night that the 'Stars in Their Eyes' competition had been postponed and I had rummaged into my secret stash of jungle to pullout enough quality firewood to make a 'Burning Man'. The chaps did an astonishing job of stealing the requisite bent rusty nails to fasten the logs into said effigy, and nailing them together, so the prospect of a booze fuelled night with no obvious focus for entertainment was avoided. For some reason, I declared no burning until midnight, probably to weed out the lightweights.

I'd put in a good early appearance - hardly able to sit up at dinner, I had poured some of the very limited and precious commodity called Tequila into a communal punchbowl, fashioned from specially imported ice. I realised my gaff at having to share my sacred booze (there were only three bottles on the island in 9 weeks as far as I'm aware), and made a desperate attempt to slurp the lot (via a series of four straws) before the hippies got their greedy tonsils on it.

With another block of specially imported ice, some folks fashioned a tequila luge. By carving a runway into the surface of a two foot long block of ice, a Cresta Run for booze was made. Propping the ice up at one end, you could deliver cold booze (tequila if possible) mixed with anything you could squeeze onto the lower part of the cooling run into someone's waiting gulliver at the lower end. Cold things were a precious commodity on a tropical island with no fans, no fridge, and no running water, so even our most holy Christian, the reverend Susie, got her Jesus-loving lips wet with illicit booze.

No matter that I passed out at about 10pm, managing to wake up when my name was called for burning the man. No matter I subsequently staggered all over uncharted bogs and broken glass on the island to collect more palm fronds for the burning. No matter how P D Mulhooned I was, Susie was awarded the prize the next day. Apparently she didn't walk in a ruler-straight line after a few shots of nasty meths. My liver and I were a little disappointed after our concerted efforts. The only consolation was that she resolutely refused to admit that she had been at all inebriated, and wouldn't touch the award, being totally offended by our intimations that such a clean living lady would ever lower herself to the level of a common animal with drugs.

posted by Garreth at 9:12 AM

:  Insult of the day: "You filthy public ledger!"
posted by Garreth at 8:19 AM

8/13/2002

:  Alone in the Dark

I've been touristing (refuse to go travelling - say no) with Joe for a few months now, and there are a couple of soundbites / mottos that remind me of the whole experience, including when we hooked up with Mike. They include

• "Denzyl, let's offroad".usage: to all taxi / motorbike / truck / cyclo drivers conveying us who may or may not be 'off roading' from (the Fast Show Off Roading characters who are actually called Simon and Lindsey)
  
• "Let's get into trouble". usage: whenever we've not been out in a few days, signalling that the liver is functioning once more and needs some punishment. from: being in KK too long, and wanting to stay out past curfew / get attacked by transvestites to break the routine.
  
• "It's very nice". usage: anything ingested that isn't that nice. from: being polite to hosts
  
• "Lesbian dopeheads on mopeds". usage: anytime women are seen travelling on the same moped . from: great name of a band which is quite catchy
  
• "Toe it", "Rag it", "Nail it", "Go on my saaarn. give it some". usage: to any non-comprehending driver. from: expressions on Balak shouted at Lara / Alex when they were driving the boats - "Rag it!" being Sarah's preferred directive.
  
• "Its the bomb. The money. The Lick. The Flush". usage: good things. from: Mike's favourite expression on Balak, augmented by Joe's "Flush"
  

The latest addition to our stilted dialogue is "Don't Panic!" This was born in a kayaking incident yesterday in Ha Long. Ha Long's rocky outcrops have numerous small indentations and abrasions from the sea. At low tide, you can see small caves and dark passages that are covered by the sea at high tide. At low tide, you can see all of the shells and barnacles between the low and high water marks. While waiting for the other tourists, at low tide, in our two man kayak we spotted a cave which looked deeper than the rest. I had just taken over the back seat and was trying to get the hang of the steering control. We zig-zagged towards the opening, as I wrestled with the rudder. Once in, we could see a small bend, and total darkness beyond it, and paddled towards it under the very low ceiling, covered in pointy shells. Suddenly, Joe noticed that we couldn't stop.

As the tide was rising, for some reason, a strong current was pulling us into the darkness. We paddled furiously and in a less than coordinated fashion to prevent being sucked further into the dark, fearing that our heads would be gashed by a razor sharp stallactite. I tried to steer. We got turned sideways, and pulled faster into who knows what. Trying to slow our progress and realizing the speed at which things were going from bad to worse, I put out my hand to grab at the ceiling. I pulled it back, covered in blood from a myriad of barnacle slices to my hand. I had unsettled the kayak now, and we had the added fear of capsizing.

"Don't Panic!" I yelled, realising that this was exactly what I was doing, and somehow recalling the idea of an "incident pit" into which panic can quickly suck you from our diving training. Somehow, Joe managed to wedge the boat between two rocks and arrest our progress into the spikey void. Another big heft and we were facing outwards, and then we toed-it, ragged-it, nailed-it and gave it some, until we were out into daylight again. It could only have been a matter of about 90 seconds of mayhem, but we were both fully pumped up on adrenaline, and babbling about the speed we lost control. All of this on an organised tour with a guide? Bring on the trips down south where we get live ammunition and no guide....


posted by Garreth at 11:57 PM

:  Just on the way back from a tour of Ha Long Bay - we eventually got to our kayaks about 6 hours late. Ha Long bay has been made a UNESCO world heritage site - it's a pile of 2000 small islands rising out of the sea, which is littered with floating villages. It's quite bizarre to go shopping in a boat - I'd piloted motorcycles through land based markets before, but I'd never been to a moving boat shop before. The 15 foot shop was rowed by a small woman, who like all South East Asian people, seems to be able to squat on her haunches for hours at a time. We arrived in our squadron of four kayaks and windowless shopped for a while, before paddling off.

The people who live on floating houses are some of the poorest in Vietnam, so that's pretty poor - Vietnam's version of white trailer park trash - yellow water park trash. Maybe the 'trash' bit is a little unfair, maybe not. The view you get from a kayak is very different from that from the top of a tour boat. You get to see the vast quantities of trash floating in the water. Apparently plastic bags and flip flops lead to interesting sport fishing experiences, both being quite hard to reel in, with flip flops doing more leaping and thrashing. But Ha Long bay is a tip - noodle packets, bottles, shoes, plastic everywhere. Bit of a shame really.

posted by Garreth at 11:51 PM

:  B52 Wreckage

We'd finished a nightmare train ride, and arrived in Hanoi determined to do something other than hide in airconditioned luxury, so a trip to the Hanoi Hilton was in order. This is a prison built by the French a hundred years ago, and used to 'cruely hold political heroes striving for a free country'. 'Evil French Secret Police would torture and kill these prisoners', the propoganda told us. And in the American/Vietnam war, it housed 'American pilots shot down by the brave Vietnamese who served Vietnam well'.

After getting bored of the propoganda - photos of healthy Americans playing cards, and opening gift wrapped boxes they had been given, we stodd outside the prison, wondering what to do. Motorbikes arrived to ferry us off - they suggested to see the B52 wreckage at the Aircraft Museum. We agreed to this destination, B52s being a bit of a signature drink for us. We got taken anywhere but a museum, instead pulling up at numerous pieces of scrap metal around Hanoi, with small signs telling us how the heroic forces, blah blah blah, shot down cruel Americans blah blah blah. Also a few captured vehicles of the 'American puppets'. Taking a photo of the the twisted remains of a B52, I remarked to Joe that it would make a good photostory - showing us outside some B52 wreckage, followed by a shot of us drinking B52 cocktails, followed by a shot of us looking hungover with a caption saying 'B52 wreckage - 30 years on'. Well it was hot, and it seemed funny at the time.

Apocalypse Now. I've never seen the movie all of the way through, but I've always wanted to. But when I found out there was a club in Hanoi named after the film, I was keen to go. The guide said it was decked out in movie paraphernalia, and sleazy, so we agreed to go there after a skinful of Tiger, despite having to set off kayaking the following day at 4:30am. We got to Apocalypse Now after the real treat of hearing the Vietnamese try to pronounce it, before promptly cycling us there in the rain. We drank them out of B52 ingredients by about 11:30pm. Not that impressive as we only had one each. Then we discovered that we could buy a bottle of Smirnoff, and we'd get a free plate of fruit. Well, I was really in the mood for fruit, and things proceeded downhill from there. The place started to get busy with its Sunday clientele at about midnight - us, some hookers and a few expats. There's not much to say about the rest of the night, save for being pestered by an insistant lady of the night who had probably met a fair few Americans several decades before, having to carry Joe to a taxi, and a small one-sided fruit war waged by Joe against the rest of the night club.

We missed the tour departure. Joe realised he had vomit on his sleeve, and threw away his T-shirt on his way to the travel agent at about 6:30am. Casting it into the street, I forgot to take the photograph - 'B52 Wreckage - 30 years on'.
posted by Garreth at 11:38 PM

8/11/2002

:  I now know how many kilos of rice are grown in a Vietnamese rice terrace per year, how tall the crops are when they are harvested and how many crops per year are grown. What use is any of this?
posted by Garreth at 1:19 AM

:  It had been a while since I spent hours locked up in a train, so it was with some joy that I folded myself into the short bed of an overnight train to the Chinese border the other day. The compartment was fan cooled, which meant no glass in the windows between the sleepers and the corridor. Which in turn meant that you would wake up in the night with strange little men in the room, who had let themselves in using thin arms and the pane-less windows to unlock the door.

The way back was more interesting still. Our beds had been double booked, so I got shunted from compartment to compartment, eventually coming to rest at the expense of a young Vietnamese girl who was turfed into the corridor by the heartless guards. I'd had a few Tigers, and was presented by a local expert on tourist development policy, and an aging, grey-bearded English fool. The fool had been to Nepal, Tibet, anywhere else he cared to mention. Before it was legal / popular / easy / blah blah blah. Nepal was great. No matter how the Vietnamese dude tried to steer conversation to Vietnam and our opinions on the tourist scene, or of Asian politics and economics, the fool was determined to tell us how good trekking in Nepal was.

There weren't any elephants in North Vietnam he said, which was a pity. They were good for trekking. But he prefered to see them in their natural environment, working. And although you could see them in Nepal, it was a bit touristy. Touristy? Do you speak Nepalese, Vietnamese? Well, do you? Thought not. Travel around speaking English slowly to them, hoping that they will be untouched by your visit. Do you want all of these people to stay exactly as they are, so that you can visit them with your stupid sandals, and compare them all to Tibet thirty years ago?

While you're at it, lets set some people up in England, let them live in the middle ages so we can visit them too. Watch them die of bubonic plague so that we get the authentic insight into nursery rhymes about roses. And please, can you be one of them?

So the Hmong only wash their clothes once a year, who cares that tourists want them to be cleaner to buy bangles from? They have UNICEF hospitals and an improving life expectancy, and ten children per family. The children sell trinkets to tourists for more money than they get selling rice, without the back breaking labour. What do you think they're going to do? I'm not going anywhere in particular with this rant, but at least acknowledge that if you are going to visit places, in whatever numbers, you are going to change them. Its okay giving 'sustainable capability building policies' to the locals, but what about giving a bit of a kick, and some instructions to the tourists. Sorry, travellers.

posted by Garreth at 1:14 AM

:  Minsk motorbikes are a bunch of arse. They were designed by (blind) Russians before WWII, and are revered locally as a testament to simplicity and reliability. 'They can be fixed by anyone, anywhere in Vietnam.' What they mean is that they are decaying, never worked very well in the first place, and are neglected by every coke can cutter in Vietnam. I hired one for an hour in Sapa, the kind of place to which tarmac is a legend passed on from distant travellers. True, I didn't hire one from a reputable hire shop - some bloke in the street asked me if I wanted to borrow his, so I said yes.

I learnt to ride in the UK on a 5 day 'pass your test or bust' course. The instructor was patient, and used a radio microphone in his helmet to communicate with a group of three students. This meant you could overhear the advice to one of the students, who on his first day decided to go off-roading. The first time biker had been scared by an overtaking car by a shopping centre, and had tried so hard to avoid being clipped by the wing mirrors, that he had taken to the pavement. The advice from the instructor was calm and simple, and the student managed to avoid all of the old ladies, and families with shopping trollies admirably, before rejoining the proper carriageway.

My Minsk instructor had no radio equipment, but instead sat on the back of the underpowered 125cc abomination he was renting me. His command of English was comparable to my command of Vietnamese, but at least he did know the numbers. 'Two!' he would yell when he wanted me to change gear, 'Tree!', 'Fo!'. Incoming pedestrians? No problem. 'Bee-bee-beep,' came the instruction on how to use the horn to achieve the desired effect. He neglected to mention that the front brake was worse than useless - perhaps the language barrier prevented this. It was worse than useless, in that it was totally dangerous. The head stock was badly worn, which meant the forks carrying the front wheel were tenuously attached to the bikes frame. The wheel was buckled, the tyre was flat. An attempt to use the front brake resulted in an uncontrollable shaking which would eventually slow the bike, and terrify the rider(s)

The back brake wasn't much better, and slowing down required large lumps of mud to wedge the wheels in, and a small prayer. The guy who rented it to me didn't ask for any form of ID or deposit. He knew very well that the bike couldn't get more than a few miles from its owner without falling apart. He got it back after a death defying hour.
posted by Garreth at 12:56 AM

:  Bun Ho
Trekking in the North of Vietnam is quite a laugh; we went with a reputable tour operator, which meant that we didn't get offered any opium, and we shared the 3 day trip with two Dutch lesbians from McKinsey. I haven't been around anyone who introduces themselves as a consultant, let alone a principle in quite some time, so hearing phrases like 'out of the box' when staying in a bamboo shack was twice as unusual as it would otherwise be.

Bun Ho turned out not to be an Alien Sex Fiend tribute village, but rather the home of one of Vietnam's 54 minority people. Meaning literally 'water village' it was at the conflence of two rivers, and hiking there in the rainy season meant that we got to walk through and under many clouds. The path we were using soon turned into a third river, making it quite entertaining to walk down. There were a few styles of descent from our hikers. One was to use your boots as skis and try to turn every now and again by planting a bamboo walking pole on a mud mogul. Another was to try to step down slowly, from one piece of slippery mud to another, leaning heavily on the bamboo pole. A variation of the first was to punt yourself along, feet pointing straight downward, gathering speed all the time by pushing off left and right. But my personal favourite was the out of control spastic 'Run Forrest, run.' This was accompanied by that just out of control feeling, and relied on there being a flat rock to leap onto to arrest your high speed. While all of this was going on, seven stone locals would run past us, up the slope, wearing plastic sandals, and an amused expression. They found it entertaining to see our four styles of mud navigation, as they bounded effortlessly along.


posted by Garreth at 12:39 AM

8/07/2002

:  It takes a few days to adjust to Vietnam for the first time visitor. Initially, the virgin tourist may be inclined to say "No, Thank you." when people offer services such as transportation and conical hats on the street. Once the would-be vendor hears this level of politeness, they have assessed your freshness and can then repeatedly ask you to purchase their service, for a small amount of money, extracting either a barage of "No, Thank you.", or some foreigners' dong (Vietnamese currency, ma)

Over time the visitor can tune out the pleas for money, either responding with a swift shake of the head, completely ignoring the plea, or simply not hearing it (enlightened state focussing on listening but not hearing). At first, I found it harder to ignore the pleas originating from young children, women, and old hags. Old hags being bent double, with heavy burdens attached at either end of long poles slung over a shoulder.

I'm not particularly interested in a debate about foreign money, poverty and begging, but I do have an idea for them.

The scam is based on the following observations:

• It's harder for people to ignore pleas from women and children
• Men scammers want a piece of the pie
• watching innocent people get beaten is quite unpleasant for most people
• there are only a few ATMs in each city where foreigners can extract healthy dong and dollars
• Authorities turn a blind eye to begging / scamming

Picture the scene as family exits bank laden with fresh currency. They see, or look without seeing, hags and children begging, and walk past. But what's this? An alarm clock goes off, and then a man suddenly starts beating what must surely be his wife and children with a rubber hose pipe. Thwack, thwack, wail. The beaten are huddled by a sign and the alarm clock. The sign is essentially a rate card. Father goes up to the man to petition him to stop the pounding, which he does for a moment, before returning gleefully to punishing the family. Thwack, lash, squeal. Maybe the mans breath, should little Zak get close enough to smell it, would be perfumed with a cheaper version of the whiskey stench, just like Daddy's breath when he comes back from The Club in a taxi.

Mother reads the sign and nudges father, "Honey, I think he wants money."
Thwack, thud, shreeik.
"Wha..?"
"It says on the sign that you can sponsor his family for a few hours to remain unbruised. Look, a dollar an hour. And then he sets the alarm clock."
Thwack, blat, scream.
Father petitions the man once more, who this time ignores him. The beaten child, bruised face gushing blood from a split lip, points to the sign, plucking at the wallet strings of the potential tourist saviour. "Pleeeese," he gasps, his cry showing missing front teeth uncharactistic on a child of this age.
Thwack, thump, groan.
Father reaches into his pocket, hands over enough dong to ease his conscience, and get his family out of the scene. The punisher accepts the money, and stoops to pick up the alarm clock. Maybe father kicks the bending man, prompting a nearby bent copper to come over for a slice of the action, maybe he just walks on. Either way, the scam family get a few bucks. Perhaps some of the scammers don't even use rubber hosepipes. Perhaps some use other people's families to spare their own. Details, details.
posted by Garreth at 6:56 AM

:  Saw another dead bloke today. I think that bumps my number up on this trip to three. This old dude with wispy white hair and beard. Vietnamese I think. He looked serene in death, lying flat on his back. Surrounded by soldiers I couldn't get too close - there were no obvious weapon marks, no blood, no crater sized exit wounds left by slugs of lead from some big bore hand cannon. Perhaps it was natural causes - he looked quite old.
posted by Garreth at 1:57 AM

:  I'm sure the Lonely Planet would call Hanoi the Paris of Asia, and talk about boulevards, a city experiencing an influx of foreign investment and an attempt by the commies to promote local employment leading to joint ventures on hotels etc. I would call Hanoi stupendously hot. I'm sure I've read in another guidebook that Bangkok is the hottest metropolis in the world, but that was nothing compared to Hanoi. Firstly, I didn't really go onto the streets of Bangkok during daylight. Secondly, Hanoi is not a metropolis. It says 33C and 66% humidity, but it's like being in a fan assisted steam oven. Drenched with sweat like nowhere else I've ever been, regularly abandoning planned trips to local museums, we stagger around, too exhausted to even knock back all of the cyclo touts and motorbike taxis.

A bit of trekking to see some Hmong is in order. And maybe a bit of homicidal motorcycling.
posted by Garreth at 1:46 AM

8/06/2002

:  Hanoi is a blur of mopeds and horns blaring. Roads are crossed amidst a throng of speeding, overloaded, Honda Dreams by refusing to face the traffic and walking slowly across the road. Dave Prowse would be turning in his grave if he was dead, and watching children get eaten up by hungry taxis. It didn't help that we arrived here after failing to sleep recently. Bangkok seemed a better place to celebrate my 30th than Hanoi, even if I did have to wait until midnight to start the action. But after dispensing of the formalities - taking Bangkok virgin Joe to a show involving women bathing in enormous champagne glasses, we got to go to Long Gun. Long Gun is my favourite club in the world. Its based on Soi Cowboy, and appropriately enough has a Wild West theme. Its good for dancing, cocktails and meeting fans of Americana, and they even played 'The Final Countdown' when we bought the DJ a drink.

Nuff respect to Jim and Wan for ensuring that we managed to eat something before we staggered off to the next club at about 2am. The idea of going to bed seemed churlish given that our flight left at midday the following day. So it got a bit messy, and the B52s flowed to such an extent that we had to pass on trying a B54 when we arrived bleary-eyed the next day at the plush 5 star hotel in Hanoi. Maybe if I can get CPR on my liver, I'll discover them soon. After I try the snake wine...
posted by Garreth at 9:35 AM

8/04/2002

:  Its my birthday tomorrow, and my last night in Bangkok tonight. Joe has never been to see the shows in Pat Pong, so we'll head off there now. We've achieved things already today - even managing to get our of bed before 7pm. We deserve a drink. I hate to think what Joe is going to get me for my birthday - he's mentioned surprises, so I'm quite excited, but I have a fair bit of apprehension - I don't want any second hand ping pong balls.
posted by Garreth at 4:37 AM

:  A friend of mine has tasked me with a few specifics. I think it's an attempt to promote interspecies breeding or something. I have failed at the first objective - kissing an Orang Utan, but Joe has taken it upon himself to fraternise with elephants in Bangkok, without any prompting. You know that skinhead at nightclubs who grabs you, dances with you, and then finds a stage to moon the crowd from? That's Joe.


Bangkok nights are not limited to western men, ping pong balls and lady boys. Enterprising Thais have taken to torturing elephants for the benefit of tourists. A baby elephant is paraded around the streets, starving hungry and cute as can be. Drunken tourist staggers out of nightclub, bottle of Heineken in hand. Looks both ways for homicidal tuk-tuk drivers and does a double take as they are confronted by an elephant walking toward them, sometimes playing a mouth organ. Drunken tourist pats elephant, elephant does cute things like trying to get at the bottle of Heineken. Elephant handler appears, brandishing nourishing elephant food in handy sized bags. Tourist is dumbstruck, buys elephant food from handler. Elephant whips food from tourist's hand, then goes back to trying to get at Heineken. Tourist is dragged off by friends, sick at abhorence of making baby elephant grow up on streets of Bangkok.

Thats what normally goes down. But last night was different, not least because we found a bar called B52. This bar was to be our salvation, after going to the Dubliner several hours late. The Dubliner, as Irish as any pub with Thai waitresses can be, managed to omit the grand marnier from the B52 we ordered there. But not to worry, we'd clocked a bright neon sign proclaiming 'B52' on our nightmare taxi ride to the Dubliner. They'd surely be able to help in our quest for triple-tiered drinks and a rapid descent into depravity.

Indeed they were of assistance. We had B52s. We had Kamikazes. We had Thai whiskey. I got beaten at Connect 4 by the ka-toey bartender. We had more whiskey. Jim and Wan spotted one of the customers from their restaurant. Joe had met a young lady, and was beating her at Connect 4. Things were going a bit Pete Tong, as we were never going to make it to the Ministry of Sound to get in free, and time's winged chariot was being dragged by wild horses towards midnight.

Hawkers hawked to us, peddlars peddled. I've had knives pulled on me before. I even went to hospital after a fight involving a knife at college. Admittedly it was a knife in my own pocket, but that doesn't sound quite as hardcore. But I must admit, I was genuinely surprised when a small girl peddling lighters, pulled out a knife and put the business end into my chest. I don't think I had time to be scared, perhaps it was because I was outside an open air bar surrounded by Jim, Wan and Joe (plus ladyboy. plus Joe's new friend). She jabbedd it a bit, not enough to break the skin, and asked, "You want to die, or you want to say?" I didn't understand, and told her as much. As often happens in these situations, my mind went a little sideways, and I started thinking of the possible blood, and how blotchy my chest looked already from the days waxing. I asked how much it would cost to die. "One million baht!" I didn't even bother trying to figure out what that was in Sterling. "Two million!", I raised the price, spurred on no doubt by the whiskey. She withdrew the knife and then lunged at my neck. Again, my mind went sideways, and I recalled that during a cut throat razor shave a few days before, I had completely entrusted by life to a complete stranger. She drew the blade across my neck, and walked off. I turned to Joe. We were both surprised. No blood was drawn.

Elephants. We left the bar shortly afterwards, a little the worse for the booze and rampant heat of the city. Jim tipped the bartender for beating me at Connect 4. Joe said goodbye to his new friend. Unpredictably enough, we were greeted by a baby elephant outside the bar, crossing the street towards us. Jim, Wan, and I moved past - I had temporarily forgotten my mission to kiss an elephant. Joe however had decided to do one of his party tricks in front of another young girl, standing at the corner of the street. The elephant must have been about five feet tall, but this didn't put Joe off getting out his John Thomas and slapping the elephants head with it. Elephants are big and strong. They have long trunks. They can lift trees and knock down buildings. Personally, I wouldn't put my family jewels too near an elephant's face. And after Joe's performance, I don't think I'll kiss an elephant's face, either. Well not that elephant anyway. Sorry Alia.

posted by Garreth at 4:30 AM

:  Achievement of the day: gerkin off.

Well I had my face 'cleaned' at a local beauty parlour. I could tell that it wasn't really aimed at western men, given that the bed I had to lie on was about 5 inches shorter than I was. But the beautician got down to scrubbing my face nontheless. And one part of unusual experience was the slapping of cold damp gerkins onto my mush.
posted by Garreth at 3:57 AM

8/03/2002

:  So its easy to feel guilty about not actually doing anything while in foreign countries, save shout and drink and whizz round in contrived vehicles. "Shouldn't I be seeing temples?", "What did that guidebook say about feeling sorry for the poor souls wh o sit and watch American movies in bars all day?". Well I don't feel too guilty, as long as one can achieve one thing per day, and that not including getting arseholed. So yesterday , we managed to get a visa for Vietnam, a cause for celebration with some lovely Thai people we met. And their brothers, and their brothers' work colleagues. Who were actually quite scary when we happened upon them in a very dark alley, striding purposefully towards us in identical shirts like some extras from a bad gang warfare movie. The getting of a visa only really entailed being at the reception of our hotel at 6:30pm, but you've got to start small, right?

Today, we only managed to move to a cheaper hotel and pick up some laundry. Maybe a smidgen of guilt could start to creep in, I thought. So I had my chest waxed, for no other reasons than I'd never had it done before, and we were walking past a waxing shop. I got the impression that they'd never had a chest wax request before, as the proprietor of the waxing shop walked over to me as I proposed this idea to her outside her establishment, lifted up my shirt and poked me a bit. She came up with a price - everything can be had for a price in Bangkok, and before I could figure out if the idea was a good one, I was lying on my back being talced.

It wasn't particularly painful, being smeared with boiling wax and then having the hair around your belly button and nipples wrenched out. Well that's not really true, but it was an impression I was trying to cultivate with the hot spatula-ed torturer who was frantically defoliating my torso. She didn't even ask me for my name, my rank or my serial number. But those are the only bits of information she would be able to extract between my clenched teeth. As she soon ran out of hair, and her suggestion that my armpits would make a good next target met with stiff opposition.

So no guilt today, and I'm off to go disco dancing right now, and hopefully to avoid dark alleys, bar girls and pink hotel rooms with mirrors on the ceiling.


posted by Garreth at 7:06 AM

8/02/2002

:  Phrase of the week: 'Boom boom parteee'

posted by Garreth at 4:53 AM

8/01/2002

:  White Russian. That's a drink right? I travelled about 3000 miles in Russia, or Russian Russia as it's known to those in the know. I saw three black people. I didn't ask if they were visiting. Can you call a drink a Gay Gordon? A Faggot Felch? Maybe the first, but I doubt the second would go down to well.

Actually, you could make a Faggot Felch out of B52 ingredients, you'd just have to think of an innovative way to serve it.

As you can see, my brain is rotted through with booze and a chronic lack of colonic irrigation. And it's been two days since my last Thai massage. I'm still keen, despite having to physically unhand the vicious torturer, and tell her to stop punishing me for crimes I may or may not have commited. Since when did she become the judge, jury and executioner. Besides, I only think of crimes mostly. Perhaps this particular massage crone was some kind of martial arts cast-out - thrown out of her dojo for crippling too many opponents. She was a wee thing, but managed to virtually disable me with one thumb to my thigh. I kept trying to get up, and communicate that I had to go, but she kept pushing me down, and then she'd skewer me on her thumb again. Vicious.

posted by Garreth at 3:48 AM