With the Green Cross Code Man as his mortal enemy, Obi Wan tries his hand at road safety...



Two-headed tortoise? I ask yer...

I have recently acquired a copy of Football Manager 2005 so you’ll understand why the date shown above is so distant from the date shown above my last posting. Hmm, actually I wouldn’t want my friend Rob to leave a comment revealing that in reality I got the full version of the game only yesterday so I’d better alter my initial comment: I have recently acquired a copy of Football Manager 2005 so you’ll understand why the date shown above is likely to be some distance from the date shown above my next posting.

I’ll try not to let this happen too much.

So, it’s been a while. Apologies. You’ll understand I’m sure that on my return I had much to do. Including getting my old job back – although now in freelance shape and appearance. I had many friends and family to contact and much photography to exhibit. Sadly I returned home in time for… Family Karaoke! But it was good to see the people involved. Out of the usual pathetically poor choices on offer I felt the least offensive was "Don’t Let The Sun Go Down On Me", I sank to my knees in mockery as I warbled. Seven months abroad and karaoke had loomed large. In a guesthouse in Saigon my room appeared to be situated next to a rather loud karaoke-singing man who was consistently far less tuneful than a cats chorus. Any karaoke CD production company who produces a CD with anything approaching half-decent music rather than this vacuous clean cut middle-of-the-road shit will surely clean up. As will any camera manufacturer who markets a mid-priced camera that actually takes a photograph the moment one presses the button rather than three seconds after. Who wants to capture a moment three seconds into the future?

When that same karaoke-plagued room in Saigon was infested with over thirty cockroaches I took the situation calmly: for it was a silent afternoon. I’ll never forget the cleaner somehow cramming dozens of cockroaches into a cigarette packet before drowning them with ‘roach spray – many legs stuck out the top of the packet all thrashing about furiously as the spray took its deadly effect.

Karaoke wasn’t the only thing I came back to which cushioned my return. In Asia I had been eating much rice and noodles. And since restaurants are actually cheaper than buying food and cooking it, I hadn’t eaten home cooked food since Australia – and that was my home cooked food. So it probably doesn’t count. So when I met my dear Mama she offered me two options: a trip to the Chinese or a trip to the Indian restaurants. Not that I want to complain – I was very grateful. Actually I had missed a good old English Indian curry. Nothing beats it I assure you. The next day my Mum prepared chicken with rice…

Another reason for my posting ineptitude was that there was a certain laziness there – a desire to lay back and enjoy the comforts of home. So I‘m not too depressed to be back. I actually enjoy a quiet evening catching some television, although I’m disappointed to have spotted few changes for the better. My Playstation 2 was unpacked with great relish, and my bass guitar has been cradled somewhat. Plus it’s been interesting to stalk through London with fresh laser corrected vision. Marvellous really.

I lucked out on my flight home. Cheapo cheapo Kuwait Air aren’t exactly the most luxurious carriers I’ve travelled with and their food was as gross as I have had on a long haul flight, but I had a window to my left and two empty seats to my right. Up go the arm rests, every blanket is taken out of its wrapper and I bury myself under a sea of pillows. Bliss.

And so I’ve seen many of my friends. And almost every one of them, plus many members of my family said:

“You look thinner.”

“I didn’t realise I was fat before.” I replied in almost those exact words every time.

“You weren’t.”

“So do I look very thin now?”

“No. You look good.”

“Did I look bad before?”

“No.”

“But my stomach was flat then and is flat now.”

“Don’t show me that.”

I still don’t understand. Perhaps it is something to do with the fact that I had a dodgy tummy for about a month before I returned. It was such that I felt both hungry and full up constantly. So probably my present ‘healthy’ condition is as a result of an illness. Such are the pressures of today’s society that one has to become gaunt from sickness to look attractive. No wonder the world is rife with anorexics and bulimics.

Either that or the small bit of facial hair I’ve cultivated on my bottom lip – a kind of Hitler moustache but underneath the mouth – lends a kind of stripy look that helps to make my face look thinner. Vertical stripes and all that.

Bah.

In Bangkok and I've just booked my flight home. Not that I'm not looking forward to seeing people, but living and working in London isn't adventuring around foreign soils and meeting excellent new people everyday.

Having said all of this I am especially lucky. Lucky in the standard sense in that I have been able to do all of this, but especially so because being a Londoner means I get the opportunity to reunite with many of the friends I have made on my travels. I have met dozens of fellow travellers who either live in or near London, plan to live there, or plan to visit at least once in the near future. Some of these people I made a real connection with.

And I will go home a changed and improved man. Literally - yesterday I was told I had better than twenty-twenty vision, which is a definite improvement on my myopic astigmatised vision upon leaving Britain. And I'm probably more confident now as well. Which might sound strange to those who know me as I've always been a confident type anyway - not yet aroggant though; not even sure if they are part of the same sliding scale mateys.

So generally speaking this whole adventure has probably been good for me. And good for my personal possesion count. Yesterday I took in Bangkok's Chatuchak Weekend Market for the second time. I try to avoid unnecessary usage of swear words here but: fuck me it's big. The biggest of its type in the world with in excess of 9,000 official stalls covering over 26 acres. Click here for some piccies... It's not enough of course that market stalls cover pretty much the rest of Bangkok which also hosts a superb floating market and a marvelous night market in Patpong (the area that is largely famous for other more lurid trades). The weekend market isn't the cheapest place to buy goods in this city but definitely offers the best choice, and if your bargaining skills and patience are well honed you will find some excellent deals. I bought five excellent quality t-shirts for less than ten pounds and three fake Rolex watches for about 12 pounds each. Always good. Gotta be careful where I flash my supposed bling though in London.

But anyway the point is, Chatuchak Market is insanely big and one could never hope to see all the stalls given even every minute of its opening times during one weekend. But should you want to shop that much - you deserve shooting frankly.

So like almost everybody else who comes travelling in this region, I'm leaving via Bangkok and I'm stocking up on the shopping before I do so. I have met countless people who have done the same - my purchasing is really quite tame in contrast. And my return ticket was a bargain too - 11,300 bhat is about 140 pounds. I think one could buy a flight to Bangkok, spend a shed load at Chatuchak Market, come home and find that money has been saved had the same purchases been made in London.

Well maybe...

I would have been relatively suprised to learn, when I started this weblog, that I would still be posting entries after two years. Mainly I expect because knowledge of the future is an amazingly unlikely thing, but also because I was not confident in my own determination to write regularly. Yet here I am in a particluarly slow internet cafe in Pai, northern Thailand, writing the 130th entry. Which works out at a dissapointing 5.6 days between each entry - all good things must be waited for I would like to think. (Though I'm dubious as to whether that is true, and even if so it does not follow that all things that must be waited for are good.)

God this internet connection is slow. It doesn't help when others come in to use a neibouring computer although I suppose they have as much right as I do. It does amuuse me though when someone comes into the shop, stands by a computer, spends twenty seconds trying to attract the attention of the person behind the desk, then says "Is it okay if I use the computer?"

So anyway: Pai. Pai is a haven of easy living, pretty scenery, friendly locals (this is an increasingly familar list I'm sure) and cool bars and shops. I would say roughly one in two people here are westerners either visiting or residing here permanently - and many are of my parents generation. And you can see why it's so popular. It's a bit on the hippy side, but not too strongly; the food is varied, bountiful and tasty; there is excellent live music; a host of useful shops which specialise in doing differing things very well; and a nice little market. Nearby there are hot springs, waterfalls at the bottom of which you can have a swim, and picture perfect scenes of varying geography.

I met a sharp 50 year old chap - who's brewing his own wine from oranges of all things - and who has moved here from Blighty. He pretty much summed it up in his Welsh Anthony Hopkins voice: "Home? Why should anybody want to go there? Last time I went back to Britain we gathered about twenty of us ex-pats and went en mass to give each other support." He lives here with his son his wife and his nephew. Family members come to visit him and they love it. I met at the same bar a chap my age with his Mum. None seemed unhappy with their new life.

And so I'm chilling out here for a few days making friends and supping at the cup of life. Maybe I'll do a tour to a nearby village. I haven't decided yet. Need a new book though.

Meanwhile the hit count for this site is nearing 9900. The most popular day for visiting is a Thursday which accounts for 18.91% with a peak of 7.76% logging in bewteen 1 and 2pm. Interesting eh?

Having established that Laos is both poor and technologically backwards, it is no surprise to learn that it is a country where NGO's (Non Governmental organisations - or in laymens terms: charities) undertake activites everywhere. Walking around the place one can see signs of this on the sides of jeeps - which look out of place anyway; on signs erected alongside completed projects; in advertisements in the local press; or in the conversations of the volunteers who drink at certain bars. So reliant has it become on these organisations however that it appears the peoples attitude there has grown to one of: "let the NGO's sort it out". Nowadays little development of infrastructure is undertaken there that is initiated and completed by government alone.

I ended up last week in the northern Laos town of Luang Nam Tha. There's not much there except the opportunity to partake in the government organised eco-treks, which center around hill tribes. Eco-trekking supposedly limits the numbers of tourists that might engulf a village and ensure the tribes are not changed by it - although how true that last point can be is questionable. I cannot say too much about this personally as I didn't go on one in the end. The cost is very high and since such a project by its very nature makes it illegal for any other trekking firms to operate around the area the government holds a monopoly on this business. I wonder how much is "eco" and how much is economy - the numbers of visitors to this part of the world is extremely low so I wonder how important "eco rules" on group size actually are. We wanted to do one but we were only three and didn't want to cover the cost of the fourth missing person - four being the minimum size to get the lowest price per person!

So I went away from Luang Nam Tha having done little more than research a trek I never did and headed straight for the Thai border by bus. It was a 200 kilometer journey; hilly but not mountainous. The estimated time was nine hours! When I got to the bus station they were replacing the engine and the front of the bus was pretty mangled up. The 9am bus finally departed at 10.45am, the sealed road lasted about five minutes before the long thread of dirt track and mud was embarked upon. A television sat in the aisle next to my feet; further forward lay some large sacks of an unknown grain or cereal; the back seat, always a desirable lying down possibility on any bus, carried luggage and produce rather than passengers. The overhead luggage rack - fastened to the roof by strings in parts - creaked with rhythmical loudness throughout the journey.

By midday we had required our first bulldozer. We all piled out: 30 or so locals and about six of us falang (Westerners) - we stretched ourselves by the beautiful scenery and waited for a fortunately nearby bulldozer to go to work. It cleared a landslide remarkably promptly. We crossed some streams and rode through some large ponds or small lakes over the following hours before one proved too much. For the second time the bus was cleared whilst the bus driver attempted to climb an extremely muddy patch of dirt road which should normally be attempted by four wheel drive, not by rickety two wheel drive passenger bus. After much revving and careering about a rope was produced and tied to the front. In these situations the Western travelers are always the first to eagerly volunteer their services. Presumably for the locals such an inconvenience has long ago lost its novelty and become downright frustrating. There were four of us western males and all of us and three or four locals grabbed the rope and started our tug-of-war with a bus, a muddy bog, and the laws of gravity (helped by whatever horse power our driver could produce). Success and celebration before we all cursed the fact we did not give our cameras to the two Western girls to capture the moment.

A third evacuation occurred for the inevitable flat tyre (to be replaced by an equally decrepit looking specimen) and us four Western lads heaved the flat to the rack on the top to the approval of the Laos locals.



It was a good journey in truth. When one goes through rural areas, all the kids run out to catch a glimpse of the bus. When they spot some Westerners they all wave and shout "helloooo!!!", and we all try to wave back before we are out of sight. That's Laos for you. We arrived at the Mekong side of the Thai border at about 11pm tired and arguing whether Mekong is properly pronounced May-kong or Mee-kong. I said it was the former, everyone else said I was mistaken and being foolish. But look! Look at this....

Never doubt me!

And so on to little Laos. This country is so laid back it's almost horizontal. Boats that leave at 8.30 usually end up chugging away from the dock at 10; used dinner plates will sit uncleared at a restaurant table for hours; citzens lie back dozing in the shady spots; and everyone lazily greets you "sabai di" as you stroll past in the sun. This land is almost entirely jungle with a few clearances for towns and villages mostly along the Mekong. Life here begins early in the morning and peters out in the early evening. There is genuine friendliness here - no wonder everybody loves Laos.

But, like the population of two of it's neighbours Vietnam and Cambodia, the people of Laos went through terrible hardships during the US occupation of the region. Between 1964 and 1973, in direct contravention of the 1962 Geneva Convention recognising Laos' neutrality and forbidding the presence of all foreign military personnel, the US made this land the most bombed in history - in fact more bombs were dropped here in that period than were dropped during the entire campaign of World War II by all sides. Laos was of huge strategic importance and the administration, especially Nixon's, thought that pressurising Laos and Cambodia might shorten the conflict in Vietnam and lead to a less embarrassing US pullout.

To evade the Geneva Convention - perhaps in law, if not in spirit, the US made air force pilots wear civilian clothes temporarily declaring them to be civilian pilots and placed CIA agents in foreign aid posts. The North Vietnamese soldiers didn't even bother to do that. The name "Laos" was banned from all communications - being referred to simply as "the other theatre". Almost every rule of engagement that had to be observed over Vietnam could be safely ignored.

The Laos governemt at this time was nothing less than a puppet of the Americans. The Laos economy was almost entirely reliant on US money and inflation has been rampant. Today, one US dollar is worth 10,000 kip.

The statistics of The Secret War make for sober reading. The number of air sorties over Laos totalled 580,944 by 1973, 50 per cent more than took place over Vietnam - making it one plane load of bombs every eight minutes, 24 hours a day, for nine years, costing US taxpayers US$2 million per day. By the end the bombing amounted to approximately 1.9 million metric tonnes per square kilometer - over half a tonne for every Laotian man, woman and child.

To help them, the US recruited 60,000 Hmong hill tribe villagers to fight in the war. These soldiers were paid with funds earned via CIA-supported opium trafficking, although they were a very poor force which lost almost every battle they fought.

When one visits a country, sees its beauty and meets its wonderful people, it becomes almost impossible to read such histories and avoid the feeling of disgust. Hence my eagerness to describe it here. Very few people are aware of what happened here. The history of Cambodia is arguably even more atrocious. Western governments have been guilty of following abstract political philosophies for decades at enourmous human costs. The ridiculous thing is, these philosophies often turn out to be borne out of a sence of superiority and end in spectacular failure and disaster. In this case communism, poverty and destruction weighed heavily on Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos in the years after the US pullout which in the case of the economies of Laos and Cambodia was akin to pulling the foundations out from under an already tottering building.

I'm currently residing in Luang Prabang - I try to avoid the word, but it can only be decribed as quaint. A tiny town on the spot where the Mekong and Nam Khan Rivers meet, old buildings and markets vie for the tourist kip.



This compares with Bangkok which I have just vacated. On my last day I saw 'The Terminal' at a cinema for 600 bhat. That's eight British pounds. Extremely expensive as it is akin to British prices. The difference was that I sat on a leather sofa with one remote control to recline the seat and another to select one of the seat's many massage programs. I got a waitress service, free drinks, and arguably the greatest toilet seats on the continent. Mmmm....

Last week I temporarily vacated Bangkok for the town of Kanchanaburi - a standard looking town three hours north west of Bangkok via a 25 bhat train journey. This journey was marred somewhat by a very drunken local attempting to teach me Thai boxing number one in the world in Thai for the majority of the journey. It was later made more interesting as I had to verbally maneuver around some pleasant but persistent touts attempting to make their commission by convincing me to stay at particular guesthouses. I beat them all by taking myself to Apple's Guesthouse - a place that doesn't need to sell itself is usually preferable I find.

Kanchanaburi is made special due to its geographical location - near Bangkok and beside the Burmese border; also overlooking the Kwai River - this town was the perfect place for a bridge providing passage for trains passing through Burma and into India from the east. And so it came to be: during WWII the Japanese rounded up their Allied POWs and set them to work on a railway which would serve such a purpose and their srategic interests. Prominence for Kanchanaburi was sealed by the David Lean film Bridge Over The River Kwai which is an inaccurate tale but yet supplies Alec Guinness with the opportunity to produce a stirling performance.



Visitors of all ages flock to see the (fairly unremarkable looking) bridge, a well maintained Allied war cemetery, and to partake in the town's other activities. And luckily there are many. Tours take in a series of stunning nearby waterfalls, elephant bathing, more examples of POW efforts on the railway, rafting, a monkey school (which I missed!) and even a tiger sanctuary ran by a Buddhist monastery where I was one of a number of tourists to stroke the fur of a couple of fully grown adult tigers. Such is the beauty and immensity of these animals - one cannot help but be awed into a silenced reverie.

I did this last excursion as a half day trip. I couldn't help but notice on my receipt the very carefully and deliberately written words No Insurance. I avoided wearing red, but it was okay; the tigers ignored me - they were hand-raised from birth, contentedly fat, and probably drugged to the eye balls. Which is morally acceptable if monks are doing it surely...



Typically for a tourist town Kanchanaburi serves up a string of bars and restaurants offering western and Thai fare. And as is usual in this part of the world they saturate the market to the extent that a single traveler finds it difficult to find a bar with the busy hustle of people meeting each other over a drink. Instead customers are spread out such that the average number in a place is between none and three. Classic south east Asia annoyance.

I rarely offer many recommendations on these pages, and it is about time I started. I shall immediately address this oversight with a plug for Apple's guesthouse restaurant - possibly serving the best Thai food I have eaten and deserving of their excellent reputation. Apple's also do a cooking school and their one day tour was superb. The rooms are okay although at a meager 150 bhat per night I have nothing to complain about - but bring your earplugs if you want to avoid being forced to listen to the chat of the residents in the adjacent room to yours.

And I will further compensate for my past ineptitude by recommending a superb guesthouse in downtown Bangkok: Suk 11 is air conditioned throughout, is extra clean, enormously friendly and I don't stay anywhere else in the city I have returned to for the next few days.

Ah, air conditioning... the second greatest invention in human history...



Meanwhile, Stav has put up some picures from her stay at Cool Bananas guesthouse in Agnes Waters, Australia. Don't expect to see me featured too much, but they do illustrate the sort of thing I had to put up with whilst I was there.