Two weeks ago, I was let into Guangzhou (Canton, for the rest of us) airport for some twelve hours. As there didn't seem to be a bar, we went to the nearest coffee place. That's usually a safe plan B. I squinted at the menu-boards up on the wall.

"How much is the Yuan to the Dollar again?" I asked the lady who came to welcome me.

"Six yuan, one dollar." She said. I tried to do the maths but it didn't make any sense. I couldn't blame the jetlag, either; I'd only been two hours on a plane.

"Wait that makes each coffee-"

"Twelve to fourteen dollars," she kindly offered.

I did that rising whistle thing that people do when they're impressed. "Welcome to China!"

She pointed a finger at me, accusing, disgusted. "What is that?"

I looked down. I still had the little round TIBET WILL BE FREE badge pinned to my jacket.

"You know what that is," I said.

Like the Mayan apocalypse, Christmas has come and gone. All you wanted was someone else and a bunch of things and in the end nobody offered you any socks and I guess you should be happy with that. All I wanted was not to have to listen to Mariah Carey. I got that. Nobody plays her until the next Christmas season starts. That gives us something like 6 months of peace and quiet, and I guess I should be happy with that too.

Well, now that most of us have recovered from the Shopping Zombie plague, this is as good a time as any to remind you that "love is free and life is cheap." As for me, as long as I got me a place to sleep, some clothes on my back and some food to eat, then I won't ask for anything more. Well. I'll be honest, I wouldn't mind a waistcoat like that.

Happy new year, you gals and guys. Hope you're working on either resolutions or revolutions. Over here in Portugal, we're needing at least one of those, but I won't go there, I promise.

"Paris, je t'aime"


Someone once taught my sister that every city is a woman and that most can be grouped into one of four categories; hooker, lover, mother or wife.

Paris, from which I have just come back, is not a whore; a whore takes your money, yes, but gives you what you pay for. There is an honesty, a humility to this that Paris doesn't even pretend to have, much less aspires.

Paris is not a lover; nobody loves Paris in secret and shadows. Nobody could. Like so many before you, you have to scream it to the wind and write it down and publish it a thousand times: je t'aime, Paris.

Paris is not a mother; it does not look out for you, it is not tender or soft and its bony, perfumed arms are not warm. Besides, Paris would never ruin her figure for a child.

Paris is a wife, I think, a "woman of my life" sort of wife, in the tradition of Zelda Fitzgerald. Paris likes to show off and party and dance and drink, drives you insane, kicks you when you're down, insults you, throws away months of your work but it is for her, because of her, that you try so damn hard to write something worth reading. (This isn't it.)

We (this time, we being the two of us, not the many of me) were walking down the road. We passed by a hair-salon. I looked inside, I walked back, I stopped, I said:

"I need a haircut."

Inside, sat down with the sprawling languidity of a subject of a Degas study on pleather sofas, or pouting, propped up on swinging chairs before great mirrors touching their geisha-paints, standing up at corners having gossip sessions, in tiny orange shorts and tops that would have been corsets had they only the laces, a multitude of Saigon's finest-looking girls waited for a customer.

The manager came up to me, a long Modigliani figure, so tall I felt like I was at the same level with her hips, her hair up like the mane on a general's helmet.

"I need a haircut," I said.

She showed me inside, and I'm falling in love left, right and center, my eyes can't even focus on anybody, but the crowd parts before me (to use a much-used, somewhat abused image) like the seas before old Moses. The girl with the impossible green eyes steps back, and the short girl who reminds us of somebody else, and the angel from an Opium dream, they all move back and we are pressed on to where an empty chair awaits us and it starts to feel like the walk to the gallows.

I am pushed down onto the seat. I swing it around from side to side looking for somebody, anybody to step forward.

A huge mammoth of a man, looking like a mutineering cook in a Pirate ship or a great gladiator,  walks out, putting on a belt with scissors and blades that do nothing to make him look less threatening. He walks up to me through the parted crowd.

"I need a haircut," I try to say, but the words get all caught up in the parched bits of my throat.

Let us just say that the consequences of that mistake, probably well-deserved, may require an eletric clipper.

Outside the Jomtien Hostel

We were sitting around the table, on the quasi-Apocalyptic alley of Soi Saritas, the Gay and Catholic ghetto of dirty, lusty Jomtien. The road was a long, thin cracked cement carpet. The tall, four-storied buildings on both sides, with their monumental arcades for fronts, were impossibly long and continued for a good 800 metres down to the absolute darkness of the sea. Zebra stripes of damp and dirt streaked these once-white walls. Creeping plants crawled up the pillars, while others drooped from balconies or, sprouting from the ground, had claimed and consumed the last vestige of a sidewalk.

It was seven or eight, but the night had settled already. The place was lit by huge floodlights, like a prison yard, throwing fantastical shadows all about this scene. The atmosphere was still and sultry: a storm had been announced and it was not far off.

Up the road, and half sunk in shadows, a dog was tearing at a carcass. Yellow skin flapped from the arced bones of a large rib-cage.

In our group, around the bottle of Thai whiskey, there was the little, drunken, heavily tatooed Cambodjan; an old, skinny man, completely naked but for his tight yellow briefs and pink rubber shoes; the fat little baby and his orcish keeper; the ladyboy, her face as flat as a frying pan, her fake hair hanging dead and long almost down to her feet; and the hostel's receptionist, Joe, with a thin scar running from his eye to his lips and his hair ends dyed yellow. He is our most reliable source of alcohol, followed closely by the flirtatious sexagenarian down the road.

In the baby's large black eyes, there was as much intelligence as you may hope to find in a shell-shocked sheep. The ladyboy hangs around my hostel when I'm in and won't leave until I do, and she follows at my heels, catcalling in her ugly, husky voice: "I like you, Spaaaain. I miss you, Spaaaain." She has done this since my very first visit into town and whenever I come back, she knows exactly where I was and how long I was there for.

A lady walks by and picks up the plump baby. He stares at his mother with as much recognition as a goldfish would look up at its feeder. She sizes me up in an obvious once-over and asks Joe something. He waves her away with distaste, sees my questioning glance and explains:

"She is a bitch!" He flourishes his long hand as he speaks, twirling and flapping it around. "Her husband is working far away in Saudi Arabia, for long long time and he send money every month. But now she has this baby - after he left, and she not tell him." As he gets excited, his voice started rising to a high, thin pitch. "Husband been away very very long time. So what you think? Husband can send sperm by SMS or what?" His laughter here went so high it scraped his throat and turned, mid-act, into a gasp for air. "So what she do? She come to this town of course, because in this town everybody's looking for a Farang. She cannot stay in village. They know what she did. But she needs to find new man, quickly, before other one finds out."

You wouldn't believe me, but I've heard this story a number of times before, give or take a detail or two. It seems to be the story of every single girl in town - and even of most girls who aren't particularly single anymore. 

Zero is a local bamboo tattoo artist. He has a dog, a hammock, a chopper and a cowboy hat. His shop is across the street from where I live. We took our seats at his bar. A few days back he'd explained to me the reason he'd opened the bar in his shop. 

"My friends come to island, to my shop, and say, Zero, come for beer. And then I'd have to close for the day. Bad for business. So I open bar. My friends come to island, to the shop, I sell them beer, I drink with them, and I can always keep on working while I'm drinking and after I'm drunk."

He poured me my drink as I sketched out a design to him.

"So like a ship's eye in the middle, see, circled by two Naga snakes - like this, their tails cross at the top, their bodies cross at the bottom, their heads hold up the eye's corners. See? What do you think?" He looked at it and squinted, and looked at me - he tried to understand whether I was tasteless, stupid or drunk. Finally, he shook his head vigorously and said:

"Mai dee. No good. This is not good tattoo. Do not do this. Please!" 

I should probably have bought him a couple of beers first - but then, the trail's always easy to see when you're looking back.

I was given a short tour of the bar.
"That's the fridge, these are the glasses. This is the paper and that is the pen."
"And that?" I pointed under the bar - it was a barrel, but not the kind you'd keep your drinks in. The mouth faced me, in that freezing black.
"Just in case," Mr. Lee said.
It had written on its side

DESERT EAGLE

ISRAELI MILITARY INDUSTRIES (LTD)

I'd never worked a bar with its own gun before.
When Mr. Lee left me alone, I checked to see if nobody was looking and pushed the barrel to the side.
Just in case.

--//--

Later, one of the Germans called me. With an oxidised moustache and a long, greasy pony tail he looked like the construction worker in a cheap movie (let's keep it PG, guys).
"Can I have a Cuba Libre?"  He asked. "But a little more Cuba, and a little less Libre."
Is it too hard to imagine a Cuba less Libre? Still, it's a beautiful country.

Blanca Gomez

I ordered my coffee, twice black (no milk, no sugar) and some banana roti (they didn't have pie) and took a seat. A girl from the other end of the room, Thai, young and pretty, beamed a great big smile when she saw me.

"Happy birthday!" She said. I frowned and she blushed, apologised but studied my face. She was so sure. She pointed across the street. "Yesterday you come to that bar." I remembered that. "You and your friend, you guys told everybody it was your birthday." I didn't remember that.

I finished my coffee and crepe in a long and awkward silence.

"I heard about how you nearly died," Nick, instructor and landlord, said.

"Oh yeah?" I tried one of those nonchalant faces like they did in old movies. I hadn't the faintest clue what he was talking about.

"Stepping on a snake, it was a miracle it didn't bite." I remembered that as well. "There's 27 snakes in Thailand, only two are not poisonous."

"I didn't step on it. It more like crawled up my leg."

"The Norwegians say you disappeared with a group of Russians and they didn't see you again."

That? No, not so much.

(-We Live and Burn in Nights like Beatnik Poetry)

The Landlord, shouted out to me from the kitchen.

" 'cisco! Phone!"

I came down from the bar and picked it up. On the other side, there were tears and heavy breathing carried over the distance of a thousand copper highways.

"There was a motorcycle accident."

I closed my eyes and tried not to swear. The whole world stopped, like it's cogs had jammed, or it was running on Windows.

Seconds later, I told myself I would never let my kids ride. Hours later, I realised how disappointed I'd be if they actually obeyed. Only today, in the morning, did the thought occur: why on Earth did my parents let me? Me of all people. I've crashed the thing more times than I can count. I crashed it into an ambulance once (and I was even sober that time).

 God, I miss that bike.

"So, when are you going back?" The Swede asked. His resemblance to Daniel Craig was uncanny. Everybody tried not to hum the Bond tune. Well, I know I was trying, anyway.

"I have to go back for Christmas so I'm not struck from the inheritance list," I said. He sat up, eyes bulging, a little pale.

"They can do that in Portugal?" He meant it - I checked.

"Oh yeah; we take Christmas very seriously." He shook his head a little horrified. I promised the other day I wouldn't lie anymore but it was a little late now to explain myself.

"We're not like that in Scandinavia. So you have to go to a government office and sign ourself in or what?"

"And take two witnesses of course. For the signatures." 

He looked out at the milky waters of the afternoon sea, his eyes scanning the dusty horizon for Pirate ships and Portuguese bureaucrats. But it was three o'clock, almost four and neither of them are very active after lunchtime.

 Later I was telling his Asian wife:

"Well, I've more or less worked six months, not worked six months the past three years." It's almost true, too, given the flexibility of the term "more or less" (and the flexibility of the word "almost"). "But I'm hoping maybe I can keep my job a little longer this time."

"So next time we see you, you will still be in Thailand? Married a Thai wife and ten childen like this one?" She pointed to little Gustav who'd collapsed next to us after our long session of hide and seek.
"No hairs on his arms, but all hair all curly on the head from your white man genes?" Ten? The mind reels but accomodates.

"Well, I can always start my own tribe I suppose."

"And your own dive school?"

"Oh, no. I hope not."

Magical ambition we accept - but let us check it's material sister. It could make a serious person, (the so-called mature adult), and we'd find ourselves writing about VAT and cholestrol levels and investing in stocks and bonds. Or, God forbid, taking politics seriously.

Shoot us if we ever.


Please.

(Robert Zimmerman above, Corey Cogdell by Lucas Jackson below)

 "You don't know me, but I tell you. I'm not a jealous man. I've always - how do you say (entertained, no?) entertained romantic notions, part Shelley, part Sartre," says the Spaniard, his Trilby down low, the slick brim pushed over his eyes. We haven't met an intellectual hermano since we last saw Alejandro in Hull. We're at the bar, of course, sitting on spinning stools - it's all black lights and shadows. "But she sat by my side and asked for my help writing messages to half a dozen other men: how old are you, do you have a girlfriend, &c. Her English isn't very good you see. But that's when I first felt it. Thailand - it is so real as to be surreal. It gets a bit much, no? I don't think I can handle it. Maybe I'll go somewhere else."

(Epileptic Valentines #4)

"And about this Parsi woman I know, Bapsy, that's her name, she lived in Germany for a while and fell in love with a Turk. - Trouble was, the only language they had in common was German; now Bapsy has forgotten almost all  she knew, while his gets better and better; he writes her increasingly poetic letters and she can hardly reply in nursery rhyme.- Love dying, because of an inequality of language, what do you think of that? - Love dying. There's a subject for us, eh? Saladin? What do you say?"

Salman Rushdie, The Satanic Verses

Matt Stephens

"I hope you understand that ours is a rather strange family. The people that make it are a little odd and the ties that bind them are very complicated."

(-in Correspondence and Old Letters)

I'm sat at the only bar still open - I was the last of a number of other strays to have stumbled in on my way home.The Frenchman complains that his girl is only with him for the money and the Finn replies with great, theatrical waving arms, and raising his voice so that everybody hears him:

"My dear! Nobody told him the first rule! In here, you are on top of the world. This is Paradise! This is land of a thousand smiles! In here, everything is Paradise. Everything is good. You either get broken hearted - and that is most likely - or you find the girl of your life. I can offer you one answer: if she doesn't want your money, she wants you. You go to her, you say you are my darling, my love, my everything. Quite litterally because i have nothing back home and if she stays, well, she is the one."

(Epileptic Valentines #3)

In Thailand's alleged best jazz bar, old Saxophone, I met an old Austaralian who was a good, friendly guy despite being a racist and a bigott. Ignoring his various, rather colorful ways of describing "this piece o'shit country" or his references to Australia as a " real one", he was really rather agreeable company.

He had a dozen good ideas for what I could do with my life, which he was good enough to give as answers to questions I never made.

"If you really want to make a move, I'd think about mining in Mongolia. That's a really good place to look for a job now. The boom there is unbelievable." (Remember to read these in your best Aussie accent.) "If you have the money for it, buy yourself a shack in one of Singapore's slums and live there for three years. Then you get the best passport in the world. That's what I'd do if I were you and if you had the money."

He kept referring to his girlfrend as "my little brown girl" and "the concubine".

A retirement plan helps too but there are only three things, I realised that night, one needs to have to be a true expat over here. A moustache, of course, a faded tatoo, and a local girl to call concubine and say horrible things about her country to.

If I don't manage all three of these before the end of the month, I can always try Mongolia I suppose.

(Epileptic Valentine #2)

 

And this is how we'll think of ourselves in the future.

Same setting as before. Rooftop, moon and thunder, bangkok skyline. Exit Lyonn, enter the Walloon in tight golf trousers. He is her boyfriend and they're on their break-up date, cheerfully. He waves away the third man who has proposed a threesome in the last half an hour and goes on saying:

"The guy on stage, Andy. He's got this great song called 'Can't go anywhere' which is about having a Thai girlfriend. It's really funny. It explains stuff like you can't introduce her to your parents because she may even be twenty something, she'll still look sixteen and all your friends think you're a paedofile. Or that you can't take her home, or travel with her, because she doesn't have a passport. It's a really great song."

"Definitely sounds like it," I said.

(-Epileptic Valentines #1)

She is really tall and a little dark. A pair of very long legs and a pair of very short shorts. She is so beautiful - hell, she is so perfect - when I saw her I thought she was a man.

Asia does that to a guy, I suppose.

She's sitting next to me, one thin leg dangling over the other, a slender-fingered hand on her knee waving a cigarette. The passing skytrain lights up beautiful little curls of smoke. The full harvest moon hangs exactly above us and lightning forks in the distant night behind her.

"He tried talking to me earlier," she said, about the big angry American with an inferiority complex. "I think he was drunk. But you know, so many times, so many times, men try to talk to me at bars. I don't know. I just learned to be snobby or something. It gets so boring."


She sighs out a long petal of smoke that washes across the Bangkok skyline. My heart goes out to her. People never think about what it must be like to be an ex-model.

"You no have girlfriend?" The fifty year old, self-concious Mary Magdalen said. She had all the appeal (and more than half the size) of a Sumo wrestler and above her shoulders orbited a full moon face - dark crater's shadows marring the bloated disc. She was a lovely girl and popular among the Scandinavian expats who found themselves short on cash. The last week of every month she doesn't have a moment to herself.

"No."

"Not in Thailand?"

"No."

"Not in Portuget?"

"No."

She didn't believe me and demanded to see my hands. It would have been great if she was a palm-reader to boot, but she was looking for a wedding ring. She seemed puzzled that I didn't have one and thought about it for a second.

"Maybe you are buttefly," she said at last, and I thought she meant something else. "You know butterfly? Fly from plant to plant, and kiss every flower."

I have you guys as my witness that I am no such thing - but isn't it a delightful description?

"I have only met two Americans in the past month. One licked my book, the other nicked my wallet. The first one's story is rather complicated, the latter's a rather simple tale.

The old, grumpy American had abused the staff and insulted the guests and earlier in my stay had forced me to change beds as he would not allow the cleaner to climb up our bunk's steps to change my sheets. On that occasion, and then a second time after that, the hostel made it perfectly clear that were I to complain, they would request he leave the establishment. I told them I was not particularly bothered.

He was in the room, though I had thought he had his back turned, when I reached into the secret compartment of my backpack to pull out some cash for the night. In the hour that followed, I watched it later on the security tapes, he would come into the room and leave the next minute and he did this three times and then he disappeared for two days from the hostel he hadn't left in thirty. My money, my card, and my made in Ramalde wallet that smells of old milk were all gone too. The wallet had two sweets that monks had blessed, which were supposed to be good luck for the money to keep in it. They had melted a long time ago.

When I saw him again, he was at the supermarket and all his clothes were brand new. He didn't look any happier and I was almost moved to break a bottle on his nape. It was not for the money - it was gone; or the card - I had cancelled it already and it was now useless to me; it was not even my not having certainty or evidence of his guilt (I, like Justice know these two to be triffling matters). It was the awful black basketballcap with some red character on its side, the black tacky shirt that sparkled on the shoulders which he had remembered to tuck into his black tracksuit trousers and the spotless, white trainers. It was like one of the Sopranos had gone shopping in China Town.

I knew, if he had taken the money, there was not that much to take, and he could hardly have gone to the opera with it. But surely he could have hired himself a concubine for the weekend instead of buying contraband Nike."

-One Nation Under God

Know What I Mean?

Addendum:
This was written before I was sent an extract of my bank account which registered the dimwit's six dollar Burger King feast and two hundred dollar sportshop extravaganza. We can only conclude the NIKE weren't contraband after all. I leave to you whether or not this is a redeming point.

Johnny played second fiddle to no one, or at least any that played beneath this Sun. He was, they say, the very best - or at any rate, was much better, much better than all the rest. But he came across the Devil in Georgia on the crossroads one day - and this that old and beautiful fiend had to say:
Money's the only answer for the predicament you're in, nobody cares if you are holy or if you were born in sin. Unless you find some silver coins to pay your way, you'll have to wait, who knows how long, at least another day.
 

 "The mysterious East faced me, perfumed like a flower, silent like death, dark like a grave. (...) This was the East of the ancient navigators, so old, so mysterious, resplendent and somber, living and unchanged, full of danger and promise. And these were the men."

Joseph Conrad in Youth

I went to  Bangkok's LIDO theatre, a 1960s relic I believe, to watch On The Road. It's a Franco-Brazilian production, strangely enough, which meant it was mostly naked people, great music, and some more or less awkward dialog in between.

This isn't a film review, though, it's contextualization.

It brought back to mind something I hadn't thought about in half a decade, that had really flaked to the dusty bottom of the mind. I think it was New York Maria who told me this story, and though it might have been in a letter, I can hear her soft voice perfectly, shaping the words.

A Professor in a writing class was criticizing (probably oblivious to the irony) this new generation of "classroom" or "textbook" writers compared to the older Authors saying something like:

"I mean, think about it. All these writers, they really lived, they did things, they had seen a part of the world most other people hadn't and wanted to share it." I assume Kerouac was the example with which she was illustrating this, but Conrad sailed the Congo river and Melville actually whaled; Theroux took up a cabin by the lake and Dostoyevski was exiled in Siberia; Shelley and Byron waved their little flags ever so romantically. "But people nowadays sit at home on their computers and think they will write a masterpiece." 

Whaling's a little out of fashion nowadays, and most people think hitch-hiking across the States will end up with you dead or worst, but there you have it: an incentive to do something a little crazy this weekend. If not for the novel you're not going to write, do it for your biographer.

Bukowski, by R. Crumb

I was accosted on the streets just now by a man. He was slender, tall, young enough, but there were white stubs to his day-old beard. Green eyes, Indian, very well dressed: no brands but a far shout away from what  passes as smart around here.

"Do you know," he said, "you have a very lucky face?" Now I haven't slept in three nights, haven't had a breath without a sneeze in two days, am too sick to eat anything since last night and woke up today with a killer pain that shoots from my right ear all the way past my shoulder and doesn't let me turn. I was walking stiffly down the street and I wasn't feeling particularly lucky - nor could I imagine how he could have seen anything remotely lucky in my scowl, and this sparked off a little curiosity. "Have you ever been said this before?"

"No, can't say I have."

"You have a very lucky face. I look in your face you know, and I see good things coming. A big change, and three definite things will get a lot better."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. See, I see that you have two bad problems in your life. Did you know? And that's why you've never been successful in your life, because it's true, isn't it? You've never been successful in you life."

"That's a little harsh."

"It's truth. I'll tell you what they are, why because of this you are always only twenty or thirty percent, never a hundred. One, you think too much, friend. You always worry about little things, it gets in the way. Two, you don't know how to separate the good people from the bad people in your life. Sometimes you'll sit at night and tell all your secrets to somebody you think is a friend and then they are not. Do you know this feeling?"

I said that I didn't.

"Well, you have. I can help you friend. I can make life better for you. Do you want to know more? I can give you proof, friend."

"That's more truth than I can handle in one go, friend, but thank you very much."

"I can give you proof," he said, but I thanked him and turned to go. He waved at me courteously and as I walked away I wondered whether I had proved him wrong or right about knowing who to trust.

The lack of appropriate footwear is really the reason why Napoleon's troops didn't carry the day in Waterloo.

(-Why Wellington Won the War)

"It's been a very bad year," the old man told me, in a conversation that was mostly mimed. He pointed to the pair of Havaianas some other farang gave him which were now tied by a string. He pointed to his old, worn shirt and then to his trousers. "Look, look at the state of my clothes. They are not good like yours. Your shoes, your shirt-" then he pointed at my trousers and stopped there, scratching his head.

He was a little bit more impressed when I snatched a cricket out of the air for him.

"And then? What then?" Asked the Great Khan, perched on his great ivory throne amid the hall of seventy-seven pillars. Upon the alabaster floor, Marco Polo sat on a thin cushion made of Chinese silk. "Did you see a clock that could talk in seven tongues? Did you meet a blind man that woke up every morning to find he had painted in his sleep what the angels' dreamt? Did you walk through a city in the desert made of ice and mirrors and all it ever reflected upon was its own destruction? What then? Tell me, Marco!"

"Polo," he replied with a smirk. "And then, Great Khan? My time, as they say, was up. My visa had expired and I had to go."

Oh the sisters of mercy, they are not departed or gone.
They were waiting for me when I thought that I just can't go on.
And they brought me their comfort and later they brought me this song.
Oh I hope you run into them, you who've been travelling so long.

Yes you who must leave everything that you cannot control.
It begins with your family, but soon it comes around to your soul.
Well I've been where you're hanging, I think I can see how you're pinned:
When you're not feeling holy, your loneliness says that you've sinned.

Leonard Cohen, Sisters of Mercy

"When I was a young man, they used to call me a gentleman traveller. That's what you are now. A gentleman traveller."

And suddenly I feel like I should have a moustache to twirl, or at least a hat to tip.

(- Kurt, the Delicatessen man)

"You have been here for long?" Usha asked her second favorite local hippy.
"Four years," he said.
"It is easy to stay here, no? Easy to relax."
"Easy to get stuck."
"Is it too small for you?"
"No, it is just right for me."

Which in short was probably his problem.
(-Woodstock Goldilocks)

 

(-Visa Run / Red Tape Road)

John, from Glasgow, is too drunk to open his eyes and a Jewish girl turned him down.

"What we should really ask is why did they kill Baby Jesus. Ey! Why did they?" He says, getting angrier.

"Do it, John. For me. Just this once." I say.

"No."

"Come on."

"No."

 "Cry freedom."

"That's the thing that gets me," he says and shakes his head with a sigh. "The moment Mel Gibson turns out to be an alcoholic racist, everybody says he must be Scottish."

Every time they offer me something ridiculous - like a scooter ride through the monsoon rains, or to get Dad's old tennis shoes shined, or my photograph with pineapples, or souvenier nail-clippers, or free AIDS - I always almost ask them if they think I'm stupid. Truth is I don't really want to find out the answer to that.

The German, when asked how his trip to the national park was: "It was great, yah. We paid two handred baht to get there and something silly like twenty baht to get in and then a tuc-tuc driver took us to all the places for us to take photos for six handred baht each and even left us at the hotel."
The German, when asked about his hotel: "It is great, yah, we pay only something like six handred baht for a room."
The German when told 30 Euros for a tailored shirt wasn't exactly "being robbed": "Noo, in Germany I can buy shirt for cheaper in the supermarket. There is no big difference."
He was also a specialist on KFC's local specialties. Discussing between the chain's Thai curry and Vietnamese soups: "At least you know where the chicken comes from - we've had our chicken experiences; and you only pay fifty-nine baht for a big piece of chicken, like this big. Much better than KFC in Vietnam or in Laos." His girlfriend, doll-faced Franziska, asks him if he's sure. "Yah, fifty-nine baht."

"They carried the land itself - Vietnam, the place, the soil - a powdery orange-red dust that covered their boots and fatigues and faces. They carried the sky. ... And for all the ambiguities of Vietnam, all the mysteries and unknowns, there was at least the single abiding certainty that they would never be at a loss for things to carry."

- Tim O'Brien in The Things They Carried

In Vientiane, I drunk with the mafia and spent days looking for a boat that did not exist.
In Luan Prabang, I ate my fill and was blessed by monks.
In Hong Sa I went to see elephants working, which isn't quite the same as saying that I did, and ended up being adopted by a local bussinesman.
I travelled up the Mekong for four days on a succession of slow boats, some considerably slower than others. In one we smuggled goods. I had to (almost literally) flag down another. Almost at the end of the trip I thought the pilot was going to sink his boat as he tried to land.
In Pak Beng, I found a town with no cheer, a bowl of free peanuts and a fever.
In Huai Xai, I made friends I will not see again, slept with people I did not know, (I'm pretty sure) I broke my nose, and said see you soon to Laos.

It was a roller coaster week - the highs epic, the lows vertiginous, a dozen times when it slowed down I thought I'd come across a dead end, when it picked up speed I thought it would go on forever. I'm pretty pleased with myself and my little trip and it's not half-bad being back in Thailand either.

So no, we didn't go to the Mekong Delta, or spend more than an afternoon in Hoi An, or stop by Ninh Binh as we drove past it in the earliest hours of the day, or treck Sapa or see Ha Long Bay (or any other great beaches, by that matter). And no, after a week in Hanoi, we never managed to go in Uncle Ho's Mausoleum, or see the Ethnological Museum or the Woman's Museum (rumored to actually welcome visitors of both sexes despite the name) or the Temple of Literature or the turtles in the lake.

'What have you been doing?' Asked, incredulously, the long-fingered lady at the Aurora and pretty much everybody else that ticked all their boxes.

Enjoying ourselves, mostly, I suppose, even if there's no such box to tick.

---

On other news, for Portuguese readers (or those who know how to use translate), (Royal) We have been quoted defending Walt Disney as an icon for feminist empowerment and (again) We have made a playlist more or less loosely themed on travelling children, which we hope does not make the parental organisation too mad. (Just once more, nothing left to lose now:) We love you, Mum and Dad. If you have any song suggestions, post them down in the comments and I'll add them on. I recommend watching "Second Chance" as it is possible the kitsch-est music video ever recorded.

As a a side note, this may have been the only passage in the whole blog where the author has admitted to having feelings. Believe in it if you must.

'What is your religion?' Fuchs, Easy Rider, asked.

'A Catholic,' I said, simplifying a rather complicated answer.

'I am Budhist. Look up at the sky. What do you call that?'

I looked at him, confused.

'The sun.'

'Yeah? Me too. Religion does not make people that different, you see.'

My travelling companion Tom's old travelling blog was the funniest travelog ever written. He agreed to write about our Vietnamese train experience (Nha Trang to Da Nang). Well, this is it:

South Korea to South and East Asia.

Nha Trang – Da Nang.  10hr Train Ride. 19/07/2012

There was a request on cyber space to restart my infamous, misspelt and hurriedly naff travel blog. It hasn’t been fiddled with since 2009. That was the great ‘Asia and back again’ journey, the first time out of Europe and the first time travelling on my own. Like anything I write, when revisited it makes me cringe. I find a great deal of embarrassment in my former self, just as I surely will if I ever have the displeasure to re-read this. Regardless, the old blog was apparently missed by the 2-3 hardcore sympathisers that took a skeg and stole a giggle way back when.

For one train only she’s back.

You can’t say no to a Sharma.

-

Since the first 70s masterpiece that I rode from Ulan Bator to Moscow, all steel and Communist zeal, the big train journeys have followed a similar pattern. Right down to the light fittings and the lack of loo roll in the gents'. Most the trains in Asia are Chinese built. Copied from a Russian model. 10-15 carriages, ranging from plush ‘Soft Sleeper’ at the top to chicken cage ‘Hard Seat’ at the bottom.

(As I type a small, slightly overweight and shaven-headed boy, a set of strong earring away from being a happy Buddha, is grinning and indulging me and Cisco with his company)

Usually on trains like this you’re in one of the sleeping options. Soft Sleeper contains four bunk beds arranged perpendicular to the train in a sort of Hogwarts Express style side room. Hard sleeping being the same, just with 6 beds of a slightly inferior quality. Soft Seat does what you imagine, a normal seat on a normal train.

Today, because we’re badass’, and short on funds and adequate preparation, we’re enjoying the varnished delights of the Hard Seat. Sets of slatted benches are arranged back to back and accompanied by tiny tables, perfect for a laptop. Although the benches are a dark mahogany, well varnished and labelled they still appear to have been conceived and built by a team of rogue Communist chiropractors. The back is ultra-straight, more correctional than comfortable –not that stops Asians sleeping their hearts out on ‘em – and the slats are just wide enough to get that part of your arse through that results in an epic oblong shaped pile developing from cheek to crack to cheek. The slats seems to have dropped down from the ceiling, like the shutters of an old dirty shop on your local road that have leaked down from the ceiling leaving just enough space to sleep a family of ten underneath.

 (We’re now playing the little Buddha ‘Jungle Boogie by Kool & The Gang’ and trying to get him to dance up a storm. He’s got the rhythm and clicking his fingers bit at least.)

It must be conceded that I have had far far worse than these seats. Plus the views have been exceptional. Not a place to ever fight a war.

Vietnam is really how you imagine it. Just richer and with more motorbikes. There are the obligatory Hollywood rice fields. People of all ages indulging the practical use of the Asian bamboo hat. Tall mountains covered in temples. Pristine beaches that Charlie wont surf on. The lot.

Here in the cheap seats we’re celebrities. I’m used to this by now. It’s all curious mostly, it’s a bit intense at times, especially from official types but in general it’s lovely. Walking up and down the carriages to get the obligatory couple of beers or packet of chewy sweets is an event in itself. Most people in the carriages down from us are sleeping across the gangway on straw mats, or playing cards in the doorways – money in between toes and cheap 60% rice wine disguising itself as water in an old bottle of Evian or the like. At one point, to climb over a sleeping man with his feet suspended across the carriage, I kicked a Vietnamese soldier in the arm. That won’t be the last time I grin my way out of something, I’m sure. We parted as friends.

(Cisco just had the little Buddha doing some train actions to a country song. Cisco loves Country. And Westerns. And truckin’. And beating his future wife (Presumably). The serious looking man opposite looks so unimpressed with us it’s mental. Maybe we’re a bad influence on his own little skinny Buddha he has sat next to him. Or maybe we’re just misbehaving. Who knows.)

There’s a fat baby across from us. This is important for a number of reasons.  1. It comes with an entourage. 2. Me and Cisco are implicated in maintaining its general state of serenity. 3. As a fatty boom batty, it tells us a lot about the future of Asians and of the human waistline.

First off it has a good five people tending to it. 2-3 asleep on the floor at any one time. They’ve developed quite the military machine for feeding, changing and appeasing it.

Second off, every time it won’t eat or is in tears the mother points to one of us and says something in Vietnamese. Initially we found this fun and pulled faces, did the ‘big eyes’ thing and, in my case, wiggled my eyebrows to put the kid straight. Eventually we realised that the mother was literally using us to get more food into the abyss of its mouth. Physically we appear to have become human stun grenades, facilitating in the ‘strengthening’ of this poor unfortunate with anything from Mentos to rice porridge.

Which brings me onto the final point, young Asian are getting fat. As fat as ours but in a different way. Western kids eat bad food, maybe their parents are lazy, or thick, or simply too poor to afford ‘out decent except whatever delights Heron has to offer. In Asia it’s sadly a more calculated effort. I’m taking this from my experience in China but more and more Asians, once poor , now of reasonable means, associate fatness with strength and prosperity. A fat boy is not overweight, he’s strong. Let this be a warning to us all.

At one point Cisco vanished for beers. Not to return for at least half an hour. I had visions of him sat red faced, his wide mouth with uproarious laughter whilst soldiers and cabin crew fed him beer and peanuts over a game of Chinese poker. When he came back it was revealed that he just sat there, on his bill, mainly being ignored. Well…as much as you can ignore a man with hair like a swarthy Mediterranean pirate from a harlequin romance novel in a Hawaiian shirt anyway.

Apart from karaoke we’ve enjoyed the film Evan Almighty (a film that seems to promote the noble virtues of blind faith, such as they are, whilst completely glossing over the fact that God has just killed thousands by sending a tidal wave through central Washington D.C. What a giggle) as well as half of the Arnie ‘classic’ Commando.

My back’s finally giving in now. But we should only be a couple of hours away from our destination. Usually if it says 10 hours you can add at least two. So we’ll be there at midnight I should expect. By ‘there’ I mean the wrong town, with no hostel/hotel booked but that’s just par for the course now, ain’t it? I’ll talk my way out of it. Just like always.

Hopefully you enjoyed this slight reprieve to the global titting about of a bloke and his continental sidekick. I’d say that more is too come.

That’d be a lie. There isn’t

-Tom

The  unending two-wheeled parade of old women on bicycles shaded by paddy hats (chickens hanging on one handlebar and fresh produce on the other), young girls on trendy scooters with silk gloves that reach their elbows, and men who, between helmets and hospital masks, all look vaguely the same.

The way each street crossing is a little adventure.
The way it is so alien and exotic, different and new. A minute in the local market and you'd have thought you were in a whole other planet. Spinach-colored milkshakes, rice dyed the color of tangerines, cups of beans in condensed milk, fish and vegetables and fruit and parts of animals you didn't even imagine existed.

The dirty little labyrinthine lanes.

The couples slow dancing to French waltzes under pagodas in the park when the sun goes down.

(-Why I Love Saigon, a little bit)