Other Peoples Words. In the order i think them.

I have

All the sins of love, without the detail,

detail without the love.

The regret of having spoken,

Of having run out of time to speak.

Of hoarding oneself,

Of turning ones back too often in favour of sleep.

I want To want to slip free the knot and float, suspended in the present.

To become irrevocably unmoored, to feel love pure and unconceived.

What does the body make us believe?

That we're never ourselves until we contain two souls.

Truth grows slowly in us. Like a musician who plays a piece

again and again until suddenly he hears it for the first time.

More for Less

I've been thinking how I’d like to have less. I'd like to get by on less I mean. I'd like to be stronger in resisting the urges to have more. I'd like to work towards a goal of attaining the same state of contentment or for want of a better word, 'happiness', with less rather than focus my life around developing my ability to acquire more. Those who know me might find this, at the very least amusing, bordering on hypocritical. I’m no Ghandi. While I don't devote my life to the acumination of material gain, I certainly do enjoy, in perhaps a specifically male way, collecting items; books, music, clothes, pictures.

Despite this I don't think it invalidates my point that for me now, looking forward, rather than focus my thirties on how much more I can get, I’m beginning to think I'd like to focus on trimming down. How can I reuse or better still do without. It seems that things are getting made so that folks can have more things. The process of production has a drain on recourses. And what’s more if I can train myself to be the same amount of 'happy' with less stuff then why wouldn't I? Like getting by on one less six pack of beer a week or one less cigarette, if you could, why wouldn't you. It leaves you freer in a sense, freer to fill up the vessel that is your head or your life or your day with something else entirely.

One of the great changes that I hope will follow on from this sudden collapse of the church of capitalism will be that needs will no longer be so confused with wants. We kind of already know that pursuing wants rather than needs is very bad for our collective mental health. It creates an inner emptiness, a constant hunger for more. A cycle of "work hard to consume more/feel emptier after the want-satisfying consumption does not meet needs/work even harder to afford ever more extravagant and decadent consumption". If we cut down on having we can begin to focus on being. Goals and motivations will be evaluated in terms of whether they bring intrinsic satisfaction, rather than the external rewards we are so used to chasing. I expect that, apart from spending more time with family and friends, there will be a rediscovering of favourite hobbies - from sports to stamp-collectingto trainspotting, it really doesn't matter what. I guess this focus has come in part from my never ending uncertainty on how to spend my days, where to direct my personal labours. And this has been contextualised by the economic meltdown and what I see to be an opportunity for reflection and a readdressing of our mutual labours.

Looking back at the way things have been: a huge unregulated boom in which almost all the upside went directly into private hands, followed by a gigantic bust in which the losses were socialised. That is nobody's idea of how the financial system is supposed to work. It is just as much an abomination to the free marketeer as it is to the social democrat or outright leftist.

I took this from the guardian:

"Not even Gibbon could supply a story as fatefully bizarre as the ultimate consummation of Reagan-Bush conservatism, its last act: the most massive shift of financial power from the private to the public sector since the New Deal. Rather like the Pope deciding that all along he really wanted a bar mitzvah. "

I want to know why we can't start to readdress this inequity now. Why I've not seen any suggestion boxes put up by the Governments that have spent so much public money on these decrepit banks and Insurance corporations. "We've plugged the gap with your money, any ideas how we should run things from now on? Suggestions on a postcard" etc. I for one would like to question who gets what from now on.

Up until recently, this seemed straightforward. Apart from the public sector, where the state sets pay rates, we essentially left value for the market to decide. And the market not being an instrument of equity, justice or fairness, but a mechanism for wealth creation and distribution, rewarded bankers and hedge fund managers far more highly than almost anyone else in our society - despite the fact that the actual value they added to society was, it turned out, at best limited. At worst, it's now clear, their net value was negative.

Partly because the layman could never fully understand it, and partly because it became so dominant in the global economy, the financial sector, over the past two decades, has turned into a living metaphor for a growing chasm between value and worth, between pay and reward, between what we should get and what we do receive. Which would have been rather academic up until a few months ago. But now the public own such a huge share in the banks that we as citizens not only have a right but an imperative to question who should be paid what - and why.

I suppose I want to start looking honestly at what is valuable. And to whom. To begin to honestly weigh up the costs of coveting red sports cars and marble bathrooms, personally, socially. Do we now have an opportunity to establish the worth of other valuable assets we have in our life. Time, care, others. It would be goodto move beyond considering only those things that add to econimic groth as valuable.

I’m being deliberately naive here in my calling for a brighter future I know. I understand the cosiness between government and business; that perfect feedback loop: money to power, power to money; tax breaks for the corporations; donations to those who might command the heights. And I understand that despite the radical events of the past year these people continue to command power and continue to own vast, unfair swathes of the economy. I still foster a hope that change will slowly come however, I'm still getting the urge to step outside. To try to want less.

“When you get to the right place,with the right people...”

(Easy Rider)


That she'd neither seen nor heard of Easy Rider did not surprise me in the slightest. It was becomming clear we shared relativley little in the reference pool of popular culture, and scant else besides. However her underexposure to Hopper, Fonder and Nickleson's trans American homage to the hog did not put her off the idea of travelling the 1000km trip i'd suggested; through the Vietnameese central highlands on the back of a motorbike which was to be manned by a member of the self named clan of 'Easy Riders'. The Rough Guide references this disparate bunch of Honda highwaymen saying; "they'll probably track you down first, but if you need to find them, wait outside the church in the main square after sundown." This made me think of locating the A Team and already i wanted to travel with them. In the end a formal church wedding wasn’t necessary; as is often the way in Vietnam, the barman had overheard our discussion and made the call, and no doubt the commission, himself. Before we could say ‘heavy metal thunder’ two, slightly smaller than anticipated, though immediately likable motorbike merchants stood before us, laminated photos and tatty road maps in hand. After a brief route planning session and a stern price negotiation which ended with smiles and handshakes on both sides of the table, we saddled up and wound our way through the frantic streets towards the outskirts of Hoi An and the distant, misted, shadow like mountains on the horizon.

That first day, we gained about 1700m in altitude as we rode east towards the Laos boarder, where the Ho Chi Minh trail wound its way through the jungled hill sides. Only 40 years previously this area had been bombed relentlessly by Americans trying to stop the spread of supplies and guns slithering up north. And as we wound round the mountain switchbacks i tried hard to visualise the destruction; flames and smoke, the mud and the sound of choppers and the chaos. But really all i was doing was overlaying the images i'd been fed as a child by Oliver Stone and Francis Ford Coppola onto the lush dense jungle surrrounding me. When we passed sections of forest which had been slashed and burned by the hill villagers to clear space for mountain rice, the scorched and mangled tree stumps and the bare red clay allowed the briefest of windows into the past and fed the somber mood i'd forced upon myself.She didn't understand why i kept going on about the war and i suppose my morbid interest came from nothing more than the fact that, growing up, Vietnam had been more a war than a country to me, an amalgam of horrific images and injustices. So through the whole time I was travelling in Vietnam, the war had to be the back drop to my understanding of the way things were, not so much in the sense that things and people were the way they were because of the war, but dispite it. And the more I read the more I realised that ‘War’ singular misrepresented the experiences of Vietnams inhabitants over the last two centuries. Shackled to imperial rule long before the GIs arrived and still fighting the Cambodians and then the Chinese well into the eighties. I don’t know whether Communism would have taken hold in the way that it did, if the population hadn’t been unified it its desire to oust the French colonialists. An irony lost entirely on the Americans I heard photographing them selves infront of bits of American tanks.

As the days rolled under the wheels of our expertly manouvered motorbikes, i was able to blend the past with the present. Tourist stops all invoked a view to some aspect of the imperial past, but the day to day blah blah........tbc

Blog of Bald

It was yesterday I realised I was going bald. Well it was yesterday that I faced up to the fact; stopped the denial and tried to stare down the barrel with what I’d like to say was dignity, but what was more closely akin to, if I'm honest, sniffling. I mean you just don’t think it will happen to you. You’ve never banked on it, never planned for it. If I’d known I would have done something, lived a somehow fuller, hairy headed life before this day came. Somehow celebrated my dome fur, wouldn’t have taken a single day of absent minded combing or brushing for granted. But no, you don’t know, you’re not informed, you just go blindly on, imagining the wrinkled, bent over image of the future you, aged, and decrepit, but with shimmering, healthy, silver locks.

I’d seen bits of slightly exposed head in passing but thought nothing of it. Applied my product, flattened it down, spiked it up, slappy chop chop and wandered off whistling. But slowly there’s this dawning, a panic plying of hair this way and that, then the wobbling bottom lip. “This can’t be happening to me, I’m, I’m, I’m...” I’m what? Young? Special? Beautiful? Genetically immune? Au contraire mes amis, it appears I’m nothing more than a future, frequent hat wearer. I know time waits for no man, we’re all getting older, I may have passed the brow (pun entirely intended) of the hill of physical wealth, but if I have to show signs of aging I’d rather be grey than bald any day – grey says wise, grey says distinguished, grey says Gere. Bald says De Vito.

Intellectually I’m trying to be level headed about this (tenuous pun intended), to see this as a necessary phase for a man to pass through, the opportunity to let Peter Pan fly away, to exorcise Dorian Gray, to push Narcissus into the lake and make off with his clothes. This is healthy I say to the mirror, this is natures’ necessary poke at the ego; this is the point where humility replaces vanity. This is good, this is development, this is, this is the beginning of a beautiful and varied…hat collection.

Tell you what’s strange though; you start to realise you’re constantly on the look out for other baldies. Safety in numbers? Searching out those worse off than you? And they’re everywhere. Can’t say I’d really noticed them before. In the lift, on the street, in the office. Do they look happy, is it getting them down? Are they living sad, depressed, bed-sit lives because of their baldness? Were they once prosperous, happy, laughing, youngs who one day caught themselves in the mirror?

Then the wondering what kind of bald your going to become – the bald dome, a la Friar Tuck, the receding side bits, a la Ray Reardon - will it all go, a la my dad? Will I keep the front bit, if so for how long – my god what am I going to look like? Will my friends recognise me? Will they laugh, will women shy away from the very look of me, will I even recognise myself? WHAT will I look like? I’d rather just know now, not have this dragged out – a tragi-comic opera of disfiguration…

Note to self: humility remains absent….guess it'll be along presently......

Mo Bile

The new venue for my most recent exploits as a corporate yes man is taking a bit of getting used to. Vodafone have purpose built a 6 story glass cage for their minions, and filled it with bean bags and Swiss balls and a 30 metre woven carpet of plastic chilli peppers and optical fibre cascading from the roof of the atrium. A great red stream of the bizarre, forcing visitors to stop momentarily, I’ve seen them, eyes up to the havens, mouths slightly open as they gaze up, possibly marvelling at the symbolic charm of the piece, more likely reconsidering their meeting schedule and wondering if its too late to bolt.

In short, it’s all very ‘Now’. That is to say, that Vodafones’ marketing vision for us, employees and customers alike, to buy quite literally into, is all about making the most of ‘Now’, living in the ‘Now’, celebrating, even, how good ‘Now’ is. I find the whole thing insidious. As soon as I log on in the morning, an automatic banner scrolls across my screen telling me to make the most of now (I very nearly pack up and go home immediately). When I go to the coffee machine im told, via plasma screens streaming ads, to make the most of now. Gad damnit even when I go and sit down on the loo im staring at a poster on the back of the stalls door telling me to make the most of now. Needless to say I personally find my daily, peaceful, routine occupancy of said stall the best use of ‘Now’ all week.

In case you’ve been shaded from the global glare of the vision statement it’s basically that, and I quote, “Vodafone thinks the world is a great place! There's never been a better time to be alive. Never before have we had so many amazing opportunities, so many possibilities, so many options. The world is constantly new and improved. Now we can do what was impossible before; things people hadn't thought of - let alone wished for. And the point is we'd be crazy not to make the most of these amazing things now.”

Where to start?! Before I get ahead of myself, I know, I know, they’re not going to sell any mobile phones by saying ‘isn’t the world terrible and unjust, we’re ruled by incompetant, delusional maglamaniacs with one hand on their crotches and the other on the button, and if you’re watching this ad then you’re one of the lucky ones, and your probably not a refugee, famine victim or political prisioner blah blah’. But come on, this self congratulatory bile designed to ‘feelgood’ people into buying a shiny, new phone and a top up text plan stinks. My role, as well as assessing the software, is supposed to test the customers exposure to the ‘deal’. The systems all work fine but extended exposure to that BS on the website is liable to cause vomiting and chronic post-modern angst I kid you not.

Then there’s the desk thing. It appears that in modern, proactive, ideas farms you don’t get your own desk, you get a ‘zoner space’. This is a shame because in the past I’ve quite enjoyed the cozy, clutter and familiarity of my own desk. Im quite sure im up to international standard when it comes to growing coffee cup mold. I’ve always got a half read book stashed in a draw in case of a sunny lunchtime that cries out for a lounge in the park. Plus a desk is great for storing all the documents im never going to read, but which, when spread over every available surface give the impression of intense activity. Sadly none of that is possible here. Im given a laptop and every morning I play hunt the work space. If youre in early you get a window view, come in late and you’re stuck out by the lifts. S’rubbish, the mold doesn’t stand a chance to even get a foothold.

With no fixed desks, there’s no need for fixed phones either, which is wholly understandable in a Vodafone building I guess. Its all mobiles, and this has strange repecussions on the office environment. People can’t help but walk and talk. The whole blinkin building is filled with tossers with bluetooth ear pieces, phone clipped to belt, pacing up and down. I’ve seen it happen; as soon as people dial a number, they stand up and stride off round the building so as, it seems to me, to share their frightfully important conversation with as many people as possible. Sometimes they nearly stride into each other round blind corners, and theres a sort of embarrassed shuffle while they redirect themseleves and both stride off in different directions, finger on ear.

‘Nowness’, I was recently reminded, was the buzz phrase of the beat generation; the original malcontents disaffected with the bile of commodification. 50 years ago Kerouac and Cassady frantically capaurpulted themselves across America, in constant search of now, living life in the present was their way of avoiding the buy-in lifestyle. The irony, William Burroughs subsequently pointed out, being that the story of Kerouac’s’ travels indirectly sold a ‘trillion pairs of levis and a million espresso coffees’ as counter culture became absorbed by the main stream. Within his own lifetime Kerouac saw his ideas packaged up, branded, marketed and sold back to him.

Maybe that’s what I find so hard about being surrounded by this ultra sophisticated marketing message to the people; that there really is no question about whether it's the right thing to do or not. Maybe it’s that I just can’t seem to simply close my eyes and be absorbed by it.

Mountain Top Hop

In August 2006 New Zealand played host to the Burton Open World Snowboarding Comp in Wanaka, and the UCI Mountain Biking World Championships in Rotorura. Typical to my poor fortune or actually if I’m honest my poor planning, I was going to miss them both. Either i was not far enough south in time or not far enough north, never did work it out. Even so August was my month to tour ski fields and MTB trails all across NZ, and in the doing I devoured a delicious slice of New Zealands landscape and conditions, met and rode with the locals and more often than not enjoyed moments of sublime mountaintop elation, whizzing through some of the most eye watering scenery I’ve ever whizzed through . What follows is part diary, and part personal reminder of the happy month of August 2006.

Mt Ruapehu – Turoa Ski Fields
JAFAs was a new phrase to me when I arrived in Ohakune and set about looking for a place to stay. But I soon saw why the locals referred to the towns weekends guests as ‘Just Another Fuckin’ Aucklander’. No Vacancy signs all across town led me to the rooms of very good and infinitely more organised friends who provided sofas in such hours of need.
The perfect weather had contributed to the weekend population surge, and as we queued for over 10 minutes for the first lift of the day I realised I, as a gentleman of leisure, should have come mid week. Still, a view of the distant snowcapped peak of Mt. Taranaki floating over 50 miles away, above a sea of low hanging cloud helped distract us as we shuffled to the chair. Soon enough we were pelting down our first few kiwi pistes (or trails as they call them here – ask for the best piste round here and you get directed to the toilets in the café) and smiles began to widen.
I’d been told not to expect too much, that ‘this isn’t Europe’, that the number of runs was ‘limited’, by so many people that I was actually pretty impressed with the variety of trails at Turoa. Some mindless motorway runs admittedly, but some nice blacks off the back and a bit of a lark in the park kept me more than happy all day. Topped off with a hot spa and cold beers and my Kiwi ski odyssey was well under way.

Wellington -Mt Victoria MTB Trails
Started out as just a warm up roadride to test the extent of my unfitness and to get a bit more used to my bike which still felt like wearing somebody elses shoes. Out of Wellington on Oriental Drive, which takes you along the sea front, past the executive flatlets, and round the peninsular about 10miles to the very southern tip of the North Island.
However, a combination of the sunshine, my growing happiness at being out on the bike again and, perhaps most importantly the fact i got proper lost and kept going round in circles trying to find this trail i was looking for, meant it ended up being quite a draining trip. And by the time i finally got to Mt Victoria's inner city MTB tracks, i was too knackered to do much on them. Still It was a beginning.

Nelson – Hira Forest MTB Park

Paul came with me on this one. He'd never ridden a decent offroad trail before. As we snaked out of Nelson he belted off and i didn't see him for about 20 minutes. Passed him wheezing about 1 km into the 7km ascent which started the ride i had planned, he spluttered he never wanted to go mountain biking again. I think he liked the down bit though. The locals had cut a couple of sweet singletracks into the hills and through the woods. It was boggy and slippy. I had a succession of falls culminating in a crack on the shin and the trickle of warm blood. Once went riding with a guy said that its not a propper injury until the blood reached your sock. 'Finally', i thought, as my sock filled with the sticky red stuff, 'a wound to be proud of'.

Fox Glacier to Gillespie Beach
For a ride so short on singletrack I was amazed with how exciting I found the day. Perfect weather splashed bold colour on the walls of the world, bright blue skies as the base coat with the lush greens of the native rainforests covering the mountainsides right down to the sea, and the bright whites and pale blue of the snow and the slowly advancing Fox Glacier.
The first 10km was an easy warm up; flat, straight and empty sealed roads ran towards Matheson Lake and one of the most famous panoramas in NZ. I'd pumped my tyres up rock solid and they buzzed on the tarmac, my heart slowly sped up as I rushed to the lake, not wanting to turn and look back until just the right moment. When that moment came a ludicrously perfect view of Mt Cooks pointy peak mirrored in the still waters was mine and mine alone. I sat by the lake for over half an hour and didn't see another soul. Just the calmness of the lake and the majesty of the peak. Cycling along I tried to remember the beauty I’d been moved by just five minutes previously but found I was being distracted from my reveries by everything around me, the present blocking out the past. Sunlight shards dispersed by fingers of enormous tree ferns, mist rising through the flax from the surface of the lake, flocks of ducks breaking the glassy surface. All this and I appear to be the only person around for miles in any direction, i greedily hoarded it.
The second half of the track rose through low hills, the sealed road giving way to hard packed gravel, twisting and turning round the contours until the apex was reached and the swift flowing decent began. I could smell the salt air reach me, though the canopy of the rain forest refused me a view of the Tasman sea until the last minute when the unwelcome forigner gourse bushes parted and a vast beach showed in sea mist stretched out in either direction and into the distance.
I sat eating my sandwiches, looking down the length of the coastline and not wanting to have my back to the imposing mountain range to my right or the powerful crashing surf to my left. There have been moments in my travels when I’ve hungered for someone to share a sunset with, a partner to marvel at a mountain with. But today, on that desolate beach I worshiped my solitude. I smiled, I sang, I talked to the driftwood and the flat pebbles I’d carefully piled on top of each other. I felt profoundly affected by my surroundings, I felt lucky to be the one that was there on that beach at that moment, and my elation continued to soar as late in the afternoon I glided back down the tracks through the strobing sunlight and shadow of the forest. On a day like today, in country this powerful, with weather this perfect, I can do without the singletrack.

Wanaka - Treble Cone Ski Fields

Pictures

Wanaka Plantation MTB Park
Speak

Queenstown – The Remarkables Ski Fields

A thousand

Queenstown - Moke Loop via Arthers Point

Words

Hamner Springs – Jollies/Jakes Pass Loop
A ride that basically went up remourselessly for over two hours, on a 4x4 track through the Douglas Fir plantation, above the snow line, round the back of the mountain and back down the other side. The decent took about ten minutes of tear jerking, sphincter clenching, winding mountain track. It was ridicously cold, i should have worn leggings and was worried about getting stuck up there after dark as i'd not set off until after 3. By the time i got back to the bottom my hands were white and so numb i couldn't hit the brakes and the brake disks were red hot and smelling of disintergrating pads. It took over a quarter of an hour in the 32 degree thermal pools back in Hamner before i could feel my feet again.

Mt Lyford Club Ski Fields
Our reasons for skiing the small and unrenouned Mt Lyford originated entirely from a moment of misguided philanthropy. I’d picked up plenty of hitch hikers before without cause for regret, but as soon as Jen, a Greenpeace tin shaker from Washington DC plonked her substancial weight into the back seat and opened her mouth, I had Paul giving me sideways glances which continued all the way to snowy lake Tekapo.
We took the Mt Lyford 2 for 1 voucher from her as payment, so as to at least gain something from the experience and next day headed north in search of our next ski field.
Conditions looked good at 6:30 in the morning, or as good as anything can look at such a ridiculous hour. We had arranged a shuttlebus up the top and a good thing too as the ole van would have never made it half way, on a good day, with a following wind, snow chains or no chains. We arrived after a half hour groaning ascent, at the emptiest ski field I’ve ever seen. The 10 of us in the bus made up half the people there and as we spread out around the different trails it was like having your own mountain and gave it a friendly local vibe where chats on lifts ended in skiing with strangers or ski buddies for the day.
And though the button and Tbar offered only limited options we loosened up our limbs happily and explored all the opportunities for cutting offpiste. When adrenaline dwindled we hit the little terrain park to be the first off the newly built kickers and by 11 theyed opened the back breaking rope tow to the top and 5 or 6 devilishly steep powder options reared into view. Only partially tracked out, I spent the rest of the day making my squiggily mark on this strange deserted mountainside before the clouds came down, the light got flat, and bringing a very real closure to my S. Island ski trip, I mistimed a landing, lost a ski and ground my poor fragile frame into the snow. Game over, time for a hot Milo. Small ski fields with no one on them can be big fun.

Napier - Eskdale MTB Park

Whirinaki Forest MTB Trail

Rotorua – Whakarewarewa Forest MTB Trails

Auckland – Woodhill MTB Park

Anyone For Tennyson?

“Come my friends,
‘Tis not to late to seek a newer world
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:
It may be that we shall touch the happy Isles…”
Tennyson, Ulysses.

“Can’t get decent meat up in the islands” said Victor. This in answer to the quizzical look I gave him as we packed 4 dozen steaks and 10 legs of lamb into the freezer. “Or wine” he added as 8 cases of Sauvignon Blanc and 3 of Merlot followed down the steps into the galley on board Ethereal, my home for the next two months. Drowning admittedly remained a danger but starving was evidently out of the question.

Drowning, the risk of, had also been minimized by choice of boat. After the debacle in Indonesia last year I wanted a vessel with at least a 50/50 chance of holding together for the 1400 mile trip up to Tonga, and Ethereal seemed a safe bet; 52’, 28 tonnes and built like a tank were Victors’ reassurances and I went with it. Besides I reasoned, no sensible man would risk so much fine wine in an unsafe boat. I felt safe, reassured and reached for the cork screw.

There were some pretty ‘cool’, and I use that term reservedly, things about the passage up to the ‘Friendly Islands’, so named by Captain Cook who stopped off for a pig roast some time way back (apparently a week after he’d dubbed them thus some ‘friendly’ Tongans nicked off with one of his boats, but Cooks’ subsequent replacement name “Thieving Bastard Islands’ never stuck for some reason. Firstly we sailed up the Tongan Trench. No, not a euphemism for Polynesian builders bum, the deepest bit of Ocean in the world. Six miles deep, we were sailing over mountains taller than Everest, unimaginable volumes of dark blue wetness passed beneath us, less understood than the surface of the moon, I mean, wow. Ok, ok it made no difference to us as we sailed over the top of it but it kept me happy, I mean, wow. Also we sailed through 180 longitude, putting me on the opposite side of the world to you guys in London. The dateline, where every minute is born (is that too saccharine?), also kept me amused all day. I giggled about seeing people tomorrow, running to the end of the boat, received stony glances from fellow crew, no sense of humor these Dutch, and I guess since I haven’t known what day it is for as long I can remember it made little difference anyway. Still, wow.

Truth be told I been feeling a little ponderous during my night shift the previous night. Plagued by nagging doubts; what was I doing out here, where was my life going, was I spending my time wisely, was there still value in what I was doing? The prospect of a good friends forthcoming Rhode Island wedding led me to imagine meeting successful, driven peers; ‘So what do you do?’ would come the inevitable question. I went to bed wondering what the answer would be and woke up none the wiser and a little blue. And then the whales surfaced. First one, about 20m off starbrd, then, as I spat tea over myself ‘Whale!!’, two more much closer, then another two, right under the dingy which hangs from the stern. Such a big ocean, for them to be so close was amazing, magical and left me feeling elated for hours into the day. The exact species of whale has yet to be distinguished, despite the detailed description I gave to a marine biologist I met in a bar; “err big and erm…grey?” Anyhoo, I can’t decide if I’ll say ‘Adventurer’ or ‘International Freeloader’ in answer to the inevitable question, but I’m usually a bit tipsy a weddings so it probably wont matter anyway.

Tonga is 170 islands populated by Polynesians, pigs and the odd Palangi (whitie). Never colonized, the kingdom has a feudal edge presided over by one of the only absolute monarchs left in the world. In Tonga what the king says goes and what he evidently says on a regular basis is “Feed Me” as he is said to be one of the fattest men on the islands and believe me that is saying something. Over the years he has been a perfect example of why power should be handed over to the people rather than being left in the hands of a privileged few who are quite obviously mad as a box of frogs. Famous for his deranged money making schemes (a floating city for tourists, developing a machine for turning salt water into natural gas) and for being taken in by international con men (he invested half the nations GDP with a man who sold magnets for back pain), the king is nevertheless respected by many. Though some Tongans are up in arms about all this and when they get round to it might well mooch round to the Palace and have some serious words. But nothing happens very fast in Tonga, a country where the national speed limit is 22mph. “Revolution? Today? Do I have to? I just got comfy and me dinners on” Political and social reform is a tricky thing to get going when the oppressed masses live in a tropical paradise drinking kava all day.

This state of lathergy and national apathy had led one fresh, young Peace Corps worker I met to conclude if you can’t beat ‘em join ‘em. Sent to live among the islanders for two years to help them with ‘business plans’ and ‘economic development strategies’, he disgruntledly admitted, under questioning, that none of them wanted either, that they were quite happy sploshing in the sea, catching fish and slowly repopulating. And on reflection he couldn’t blame them.

Personally I enjoyed the way Tongans did things. I spent a happy day with Peter who helped me carry water to the boat from the Tongan Navy base on Lifuka. Base is probably too strong a word really, ‘shed’ or ‘lean to’ would probably be more accurate. Peter, one of two navy officers working on the ‘base’ told me the Tongan navy had three boats, though he couldn’t tell me how big they were as he’d never actually seen them and wasn’t sure where they were. He didn’t seem too bothered about this though, his shed had its own table tennis table and on Thursdays they roasted a pig, did I want to come? Countries like Tonga rarely get invaded. But make lovely places to go sailing round.

Just a Whistling Fool

Head north out of Auckland for 3 hrs till you reach Whangerai, take the Ngunguru road to the Tutukaka coast and carry on through the town of Matapouri. Past the village shop hang a left onto Clements Street and follow it until the road turns into an unsealed track. Carry on over the bridge, past the horse paddock and bio tunnels, right to the end of the line.

There you will probably hear the whistling coming from under one of the homes, built into the side of the hill. The whistling may be interspursed with sounds of sawing, hammering or drilling. The hammering particularly may come across as slightly 'chirpy' somehow.

The source of this contented, busy, racket is hard at work, but unusually he is happy to be so. Strangely he was also happy to get up early this morning, and to then cycle 2km and go swimming in the sea, before he'd had his breakfast. Before he'd had his coffee even. He did not complain in the slightest, in fact he began whistling about this point and has continued ever since. He whistled through the garden picking bananas and passion fruit for his breakfast. He whistled as he munched on his musili - this is not a good idea - whistled as he sharpened his pencil stub and stuck it behind his ear, and, springily it seemed, walked to the site of his days labours.

If pressed he would put it down to the environment. He'd always, previously, come down on the side of 'nurture', though in this instance he believes its the nurturing effect of the 'nature' thats tweaked the tone knob on the amplifier of his disposition. It also occurs to him that The Good Life may not have been so named purely because of the presence of Felicity Kendal. He thinks, not for the first time, how nice it must be to build your own home, grow your own food, knit your own yogurt.

Jack Who?

A letter addressed to somebody called Jack was slipped under the door. It was telling him in no uncertain terms to hit the road and not under any circumstances to come back. I know its rude to read other peopls letters but anyway. I took it as a sign, packed my work clothes into a box with 'Open in case of Emergency - $200 fine for improper use' written on it. Threw the rest of my tatty belongings in the rucksack and headed out for the airport.

Sydney has been good to me and good for me also i guess. Truth be told i needed the routine it provided, i needed the comforts of the big city, the regular bathing, the fancy foods and fluffy towels, and lets face it, the money. But in the last 5 months i've hardly travelled more than 2 hours away from its hub in any direction, and even then usually in the air conditioned comfort of Fionas' V6 (the finest flatmate in the southern hemisphere by the way; she makes me smoothies before work and brownies for after, truely a lovely person to live with! 'Ok Fi, you can untie me now...'). A slab of land as big as Oz and this really was the proverbial drop in the ocean. I had a month and i wanted to go from Cairns to Sydney to take in as many sights of outstanding beauty as possible whilst avoiding the hoards of English gap year students getting banjoed on what is aptly called Goon.

First stop, the foothills of the Atherton Tablelands to stay with Glynn 'coming to you live from the ABC newsroom' Greensmith. Those who know the great man i heartily advise you to get out there and cadge a few days in his hammock. The joys of Cairns taking a backseat to kicking back on the verandah or swimming in the creek, surrounded by rainforest and all its associated squeeks, yips and chirps. One thousand thankyous to Glynn and Emma for a great week, i was so chilled when i left i floated down the Bruce highway to Airlie Beach without even untwisting my legs from the lotus position along the way.

Airlie Beach is the jump off for the Whitsunday Islands; 72 mostly uninhabited slabs of rock of such stupendous lovelyness it almost hurts. My choice of transport around them was of course the sailboat, my choice of travelling compardre was John 'the nicest Banker i know' Bentley, fresh in from the square mile, looking to invest heavily in some Chillian stock we met over the tablefootball table. God's little joke about this stretch of beautiful Queensland coastline being that you can't actually swim in the sea for 7 months of the year cos of the fiendish, deadly jellyfish, oh and the fiendish, deadly sharks and the crocs too, both the fiendish and the deadly ones...fact pretty much everything's fiendish and deadly round here, even the koalas look at you funny. Unpeterbed, we had a few days good sailing, some very tasty fish suppers and managed to maintain Englands superiority over Chile in the world table football league. It was delared a success.

Next, Fraser Island; ha, they give you the keys to 4.6ltr 4x4s and let you head off into the worlds biggest sand island with nothing more than a tent and a slab of 4X! What were they thinking? Highlights, apart from the obvious benifits of being somewhere so beautiful, have to be the Spaniards and the Dutchies in our group. Mr Rodriguez, you are without doubt the funniest drunk i've met in a long time. hope to see you in NZ!

Ah DagNammit, just realised this is turning into a list. Can't stand lists. You see these couples sitting in internet shops, entering their blogs from written notes, one dictating one typing; 'Day 47, had musili, milk, semi skimmed, temerature, mild, wind, light, south south east...'.

Oh well, in for a penny.

Road trip with Dutchies; learned to sing a 4 verse dutch folk song.
Noosa; posh beach resort, slept soundly.
Brisbane; cycled, appreciated art.
Byron Bay; stayed in a wigwam at some sort of hippy Butlins, took didge lessons, met nice Irish girl.
Port Macquarie; went fishing all day in the rain with lovely Hungarian bloke who invited me to start a business with him in Berlin, no fish caught, crab stole bait.
And finally, Sydney; riotous final blow out involving one of the most memorable poker games i've ever been to and quite a lot else besides. Jaquizzi bleached my boxers quite oddly. Sean and Fran, many thanks for your kind hospitality over the last few months. I'm so gonna miss that view.

Fly to NZ in 2 hrs. Anticipate needing a jumper.

"I have of late, though wherefore I know not, lost all my cynicism..."

There is ample opportunity whilst away from home in foreign lands, distant from restrictive forces, disruptive factors, both real and perceived, to consider issues of greater significance than the every day. The chance is there to grapple with matters of import. It is possible to use the very tenable maxims of 'if you don't ask you don't get' and 'if you don't try you'll never know' in every day life. Becoming aware that it is possible to do all the things you want just by putting the necessary wheels in motion makes this 'sterile promontory', o'erhanging firmament and all, a far nicer place. If I have lost all my mirth in the past, I have it back now. Anything can be achieved is the order of the day, and with this in mind im seriously considering growing my hair long again...

Saul Good.
Hyde Park Barracks, Sydney, 13-01-06

The Marquee was long and low and was being thoroughly washed and rinsed by Sydneys third night of rain on the trot. Mild precipitation this wasn't, the social smokers had already decided against it, leaving the hardened and resigned to hug the Barracks walls blowing blue steam through the drops. The warm sweaty interior had a dank humidity, slightly too wet to be cozy. This was the kind of gig where dreads smell real bad.

When Williams' opening poem struck out through the cheers and chatter it took half the room with it instantly. People stood mouths half open, straining to catch every word. Syllables rolled over syllables, the metre rose and dipped and twisted in on itself impossibly. Long lung defying deliveries occasionally giving way to the repeated affirmation 'I am'. Half told stories hung unfinished in the crowd as the gathered congregation of low slung jeans and phat laces refocused attention on the man on the mic.

Listening to spoken word delivered at this speed can be all consuming in the same way a subtitled film holds you tighter. Scared to look away for fear of missing something, the audience is carried willingly towards the poems conclusion, and when it reaches its climax, and the beat cracks like the whip in the poem, 'Sha-clack-clack', and the hairs on wet necks stood erect, and the oppressive atmosphere turns electric, Saul Williams had set his stall out.

Its true that free form lyrics combined with the tight boom-tish of a hip hop rhythm has never been an easy marriage. Sometimes the poems can be enhanced, but often Williams suffered similar problems as Ursular Rukka at the Opera House late last year; either the beat is shoe horned round the words or the words round the beat, the flow can seem constricted. Despite this, for the best part of two hours, tightly knitted phrases of injustice were juxtaposed with a self proclaimed power to overcome. All without a single syllable smudged, not a single misphrasing, not one stich dropped. He said 'I am' and he certainly was.

http://www.saulwilliams.com/

‘Gili to Dili’ or ‘14 Degrees of Separation’

If the world was a Terry’s Chocolate Orange, now stay with me here people, Plain or Milk it doesn’t matter for the purposes of this analogy, then just one wedge of that orange, though of course if I had a choice I’d probably go for the Milk, without a doubt, who wants to live in a Plain chocolate world? Then just one wedge of that orange, assuming there are 25 wedges in a chocolate orange, not sure about that actually, you can’t get them here or else I’d have checked it out, but anyway ‘assuming’ there are 25 wedges then just one wedge would represent about 14 degrees of the Earths Longitude, give or take.

I spose if that guy Harrison had known that he wouldn’t have spent all that time messing about with clocks. He’d a been straight down the newsagents, picked up a couple of Terry’s Oranges, one to fend off scurvy, the other for navigational purposes and then quick sharp down the Admiralty to collect his prize. Job done.

Anyway, 14 degrees of Longitude is also ‘amazingly’ the distance from Gili Air, Lombok, Indonesia (where I was) to Darwin, Australia (where I wanted to get to). And in some small, misguided way, once I’d figured this out, during one of my more lucid moments propping up the bar, I kind of felt better about sailing it. ‘One wedge’ I thought, ‘how hard can sailing one wedge be’.

Ok, so it turned out that mixing confectionary and nautical navigation was slightly misleading, and I’d have been better off considering the wind direction and tides and actual distances an ‘stuff’, but hey this is a leaning curve maan, you have to make mistakes to learn maan, stop twisting my mellow maan.

So, there were three of us; two East German freedom fighters who’d been deep undercover in Asia for some years now, and me, still a relative rookie on the world scene but keen to fight freedom and the causes of freedom where ever I could. What? Antja and I had been down t’market buying all the food for the trip; 10 papayas, 144 packets of super noodles, a jar of Nutella etc., Andreas, our skipper had also been busy, bribing the police, the harbour master and the immigration officials (they come to stamp your passport on the beach for about 5 bucks and a packet of smokes!).

Ready to go, we upped the anchor and with a minimum of fuss said ‘goodbye Indo, hello OZ’, ‘tally ho’, ‘pip pip’, ‘bon voyage’ and sailed into the rising sun to the east. By the time the sun was setting to our stern 12 hours later we had hit a storm, were getting chucked all over the shop by the swell, torn our foresail and realised we’d forgotten the beer. How things change at sea. The thing about hellish nights you think will never end is that invariably they do, eventually, end. And the thing about watching the sun come up over a now calm sea, the tatters of your boat flapping gently in the breeze, is that gradually calm begins to seep back into your brain, the adrenaline slowly subsides softening your iron grip on the helm, the warmth of the morning allows you to unclench your teeth and relax the sphincter a smidgin. Undeniable feelings of ‘Well that wasn’t too bad now was it’ and ‘we’re gonna be alright’ jostle for attention next to the, by now familiar feelings of ‘We’re doomed’, ‘we’re all going to die’ and ‘I can’t believe we forgot the beer’.

The trip should, we reckoned, have taken about 2 weeks straight sailing without any stops. However stops were already looking like a bit of a necessity and by the time we got to the north coast of Komodo 48hrs later we dropped anchor in a secluded bay to get some rest, check the damage and have a nice cup of tea. We’d gone the full 70hrs without more than an hour or two sleep here and there, surviving almost entirely on Tango vanilla wafers. We didn’t talk much over dinner. We slept ‘soundly’.

It wasn’t until we actually hit the coral reef at 5 the following morning that we realised the anchor joints were seized up rendering it pretty much useless on a sandy bed, also that the depth sounder didn’t work very well. Upshot being my morning snorkel was shunted forward and I’m swimming down holding onto the anchor chain and trying to give signals to help Andy reverse off the reef before the tide dropped any lower and we got stuck there for the rest of the day. One wedge, I ask you

There really is no way of condensing the antics of the following three and a half weeks into anything you lot would consider reading. Come on, I know you, tell me you didn’t already scroll down to see how long this was going to take you! ‘Two bleedin pages, who does ee fink ee is ey?’ Undoubtedly when they make the film of it - I see a comedy starring someone like Chevy Chase or Steve Martin, possibly even Bill Murray, a classy flick like – the whole thing would be put in montage format with some cheesy overdub.

There would be the section depicting hardship, mishap and anguish; shots of me kicking the broken steering system , close ups of leaking fuel filters, burned out starter motors, and smoke pouring out the engine box. There’d be Andreas covered head to foot in engine oil and dripping sweat beating the hell out of rusted up bolts, swearing loudly in German and hurling spanners about the cabin. Cut to Antja and me sitting up top, silently signalling to one another for the cigarettes or lighter, knowing that now would not be a good time to ask how the repairs were going. There’d be a brief pan through the interiors of various mechanics shacks, discussions with Indonesian grease monkeys, sitting on our haunches making diagrams in the dirt, rowing toolkits and mechanics out to the boat and rowing them back again for the screwdriver they forgot. This section would probably culminate with the engine spluttering to nothing at 3 in the morning, leaving us drifting for days, the sea as flat as the proverbial pancake, neither a whisper of wind nor a cloud in the sky to take the edge off the sun.

Segway to the upbeat section, the fishing boat coming to our rescue having seen us waving our sarong. Cheers and celebrations as nervy engine coughs splutter into life. Windy days with the sails out full, each of us on a rope or the wheel, silent communication. Sailing into ports or past cloud tipped volcano islands with the music full blast. Any sort of generic upbeat 80s track would do for this section, dare I say, maybe…Rio? Golden orange sunsets melting into sliver blue moon rises. Starry skies and black seas sparkling with phosphorescence. Massive pods of dolphins silhouetted against the dusk sky. You know I’m sure they winked at me. The montage would draw to a close having successfully compiled over three weeks into under three minutes, and we’d be sailing into the small port of Dili in East Timor, out of Indo, out of energy and running out of soundtrack. After the inevitable fade to black I’m pretty certain there’d be a brief shot of me boarding a small prop plane on a deserted airstrip, and as the plane banks into the setting sun, I (or Steve Martin, whatever) would look out the window at the boat down in the bay and smile distantly. Then turn to the stewardess to order a drink.
Roll credits.

The postscript would of course be that Andreas did eventually manage to get the boat to Darwin, after six weeks of engine work and numerous flights to Oz for spare parts. And as a heart warmer it would, if it’s the kind of tacky 80s film I’m imagining, also add that he fell in love with the woman who replaced me as crew and they are now living happily ever after in Malaysia. Now how’s that for a Hollywood ending?

Yes it is, it's the magic number..."

Welcome back listeners and boy do we have a show for you today, the energy here in the studio is simply electric. I can now, (finger in ear), yes i can confirm the phone lines are now closed, all votes have been counted and the results are ready to be announced. In keeping with modern times, the age of the compilation, league tables and bullet points and in view of the shortening attention span of todays youth i have reduced, simmered down to a rich gravy if you will, my observations and entertainments of the last couple of months. The results have been reformatted to be accessible yet informative, incisive and still overarching, oh and so a la mode it hurts.
I give you my top 3's.

Top 3 Life Affirming Moments:
Climbing to the top of Mount Rinjani in the middle of the night to get to the top for sunrise. Only not quite making it it time and deciding not to bother with the last 400meters ascent in favour of eating cookies and smoking tabs.
Sipadan - the best dive site ever! I haven't felt that alive since i tried to join the Silly Buggers society at Eton.
3 hour motorbike journey wearing full backpack up mountainous dirt tracks. Think i may have broken with protocol and gripped the drivers waist. Should have took a cab on reflection.
Top 3 Unintentional Double Entendres:
"My knees not so good now because i go down so many time" - Porter on volcano trek
"Oh don't worry, we not loose them, i have small boy in the bottom" - Guide on Volcano trek
"Yesh, vee like it hard and raw in Germany" - Nauseating German on Volcano trek who insisted on telling me about his thrash metal band.
Top 3 Emails received:
Paul Smith's Rasta Dub Poems - 'Accutely Political, Bitingly Real' The Guardian
'Dear Rupert, thank you for your email, you are more than welcome to join me in sailing my yacht to Australia next month. Call me on..."
'You have won the lottery - just open the attachment and your winnings will be forwarded directly to your bank account' - how was i sposed to know it was spam?!!
Top 3 Travelling Partnerships:
Wetfoot, Flemmy and Nick; the Borneo Collective AKA the Last of the Unmarried. Early risers the lot of 'em but still bloody good folks.
Jasmin, Germanys future diplomatic envoy to Indonesia!
Lucy and the Pussycats - sounds like a girl band that - Alex i guess that means you're on the drums!
Top 3 Dismal Musical Experiences:
Feigning interest in being taught November Rain by Guns and Roses on the guitar, by some tone deaf 'what I lack in talent i make up for in raw energy' Balineese local.
Singing 'Born to Be Wild' in after hours kareoke bar in Sibu, only westerner in the place. Utterly arseholed, god i love that song.
Gamelan music. I know I know it's an intrinsic part of Balineese culture, a cornerstone of their traditional heritage and all that, but you goto admit it sounds like a toolkit in a washing machine.
Top 3 Things to look Forward to:
Sailing down through Indo to Timor next week and maybe seein some of them dragons on the way. Then, having won the Ashes by the time i get to Oz.
Cheese. God i want some cheese.
State Pension.
Top 3 Beach Faux Pas:
Mullit, hoop earing, white jean cut offs, chest wig, frisbee (bloke).
Orange Brummies venting spleen at beach hawkers; ' Naw, eye do not want any bluday pyneapple - Or Ryte!'
Speedos, cigar, and cowboy hat. There should be a law.
Top 3 Late Nights:
4am sit down meal with Kuching underworld members we'd apparently met earlier at 'Cat City' nightclub.
Full Moon on Gili Trawangan - mushrooms turned my shoes into a small boy, strangely.
Semi Nekid vollyball in the rain and the mud in the middle of the night in the middle of the jungle in the middle of nowhere.
Top 3 Skin Complaints:
A rather interesting rash on my elbows, seems to be clearing up now.
The onset of trenchfoot in the Jungles of Borneo
Got a downy patch of hair on my chest - is this normal?
Top 3 Books Read:
The Complete Enderby Series - Anthony Burgess (Smiffy you need this in your life!)
Brief Interviews With Hideous Men - David Foster Wallice (so so good)
How to Give your Body and Hold onto your Dignity - Chad Barnett (contender for the Booker apparently)
Top 3 Gastronomic Encounters:
Pan fried chickens feet in a 'please enjoy our specially prepared local delicasie while we watch you expectantly' sort of situation
Jack Fruit - looks like chicken, tastes like chicken, is not in fact chicken.
Steak and a bottle of Shiraz (such extravagance!) shared with that special someone.
Top 3 Hawker Sales Tactics:
"Mista, mista where you come from? England? Oh Lovely Jubbly. You want to buy porno, big cocks!'
"Mista you want water" - No thanks i already have water as you can see
"No this water better' - That water is exactly the same
"No is better, only 3 thousand" - Look, i have water, see?
"Mister, where you from"? - England
"Oh England, lovely jubbly, you wanna buy water?"
"Hello brother, you wanna buy ecstasy, is good" (Sits on haunches in the sand, eyes rolloing back into head, hugs knees, falls slowly sideways, adopts foetal position, moans quietly)

Well thats all we have time for this month, thanks for tuning in and a special thankyou to all those who took part and voted. A reminder that all the money raised will go to a nice peanut seller i met in Semporna. Bye for now and don't touch that dial.

Young Man and the Sea

It was close to 3 in the morning when it suddenly hit me. Actually hit me. Fairly and squarely in the face. Like a wet fish, because it was a wet fish, with wings on it. If you’re hit in the face with a wet fish in the black of night way out in the south china sea and no ones there to laugh do you make a noise? I’m not sure on the protocol. All I could think of saying was ‘oh’, and sat down to shine a torch at the little fella flapping about by my feet. I mean you got to hand it to him, he’d come a good 30 foot or so, right over the bow, down the full length of the boat and I dare say he might have made it off the stern and back into the water too if my face hadn’t got in the way. He had to be just as surprised as me by the whole thing I guess. I mean one minute you’re flying gracefully through the air, content in the knowledge you’ve successfully evaded some preditor or other, the next you’re on a sail boat bound for Singapore and your wings have stopped working. Dems the breaks I spose.

Koh Samui to Singapore was going to take six days straight with no stopping, and since there were only two of us on board there wasn’t much chance of me pulling my usual sailing trick of holding some random rope, looking busy, cracking a beer and stareing into the middle distance. Actually that’s not entirely true; our shift patterns meant that Ashley the Skipper and I were rarely awake at the same time so I had quite a lot of freedom to absent mindedly look to the middle distance, except in sailing parlance we call it ‘on look out’. “Hold your course and whatever you do don’t sail into another boat or an island or anything” were my instructions on my first night shift as Ashley went down to bed. It was, I don’t mind admitting, a rather edgy few hours; ‘Please God don’t let me sink this lovely, shiny, expensive yacht on my first shift. Ok, ok, focus, focus, any lights? Do we see any lights? Anywhere? Behind us? No? nothing. Nothing at all…..hours pass….is that a light? Could be, no, no it’s a star…am I thinking this or saying it?’ When I did finally see a light on the horizon I locked on, got me compass out, took a bearing, licked finger and held aloft, and waited, poised, to see if evasive action was required. And waited, and waited. Nearly an hour later we passed the fishing boat to port side, narrowly missing it by about four nautical miles or so. My next night shift I brought up a book and a head torch.

The highlight for me was the 5:00am – 8:00am shift, strange as it may sound. The sunrise is not something I’ve often been priviledged enough to observe, what with having been afflicted with acute lazyness from an early age, but when you’re on your own in the middle of nowhere with a 360 horizon and she rears her head over the sea its enough to knock your socks off I tell thee. ‘Your missing the best part of the day’ I heard my mums voice come through the duvet of time as at 8:01am I collapse face down into my bunk.

Singapore, when it came, came full on. The Singapore straights is the 2nd busiest shipping lane in the world apparently and I can quite believe it, s’kinda like a oil tanker motorway. We hit it at around midnight with the skyscrapers of downtown sparkling in the distance. ‘Lights, lights, omg lights everywhere, we’re surrounded, what are we going to do?!’ Luckily Ashley didn’t trust me anywhere near enough to allow me to have any responsibility other than tea making during our passage through it. Shrewd judge of character that Ashley.

Quite a lot like ‘Lost in Translation’ I kept thinking as I walked round mall after mall of Prada and Gucci, Channel and Versace. With me playing the role of the dry, witty, sardonic Bill Murray character at once confused, perplexed and amused by all he sees and Singapore playing the role of the Asian uber city chasing its tail to keep up with its own image of the western values of commerce and hyperreality. Its quite a police state really; undemocratic, civil liberties coming pretty far down the list, just under ‘make money and keep schdum’. You know even chewing gum and oral sex are illegal in Singapore. (Individually I mean, getting caught doing both at once doesn’t bear thinking about!) Well my rebellious streak’s a mile wild and I don’t know if it was the enhanced illicit nature or what but I never enjoyed a Juicy Fruit so much.

Anyway, to cut a long story short, Sasquia the Dutch maritime lawyer hooked me up with a job crewing on a dive boat on Tioman island off the Malaysian coast and I’ve been there ever since. I fill scuba tanks, pull ropes what need pulling and mix fantastic rum cocktails and in return I get taught how to endanger my life in new and exciting ways underwater. I’ve not worn shoes for weeks and I shower only rarely. These are the good times.

The Motorcycle Diaries

"It is illegal to gamble within 100km of Phnom Penh. Those surprised to find two large casinos within walking distance of the city center are evidently new to Cambodia." (Footprints Guide to Cambodia)

Cambodia's a crazy place, its crazy past seems to have given way to a crazy present. The majority of the population is under 20, a generation of the country's educated, cultured and skilled have been wiped out and the government seems so openly corrupt that 'cash for questions' would be laughable. This leaves a strange moral vacum in peoples' day to day. The standard byline is that 'anything is available in Cambodia, for a price'; from girls, guns and ganja to children and contracts on peoples lives, the dollar will get things done.

Well, this is what people tell you anyway, bars overflow with stories told to you by folk who no doubt heard them from other people in other bars. Personally, i cant claim to have seen any of this. With just a few weeks to spend my perception of Cambodians seemed to be defined by foreigners heresay on the one hand, and what i was seeing on the roads as i passed through them every day, on the other.
Now, for your Steinbecks and your Kerouacs the road represents choice, escape, opportunity, and ultimately the road is all about freedom. I'm not sure this has ever really occurred to your average Cambodian as they trundle into the towns and cities to try to make a buck. However the way people flow through the streets of Siem Reip and Phenom Penh must show something, and if it is possible to read a nations personality through its rules of the road, then the roads of Cambodia describe a schizophrenic with obsessive compulsive disorder, 'rules' and even 'roads' often being hard to pin down.

At the top of the food chain are your Land Cruisers, and your other chunky 4x4s. They dominate the road and answer to no one. Since they house affluent Cambodians there really is no concept of right and wrong on the road for them, the dollar again able to encourage a policeman to turn the other cheek in the case of a fatality. Somebody i met (yes, in a bar) said they were on a bus and saw a 4x4 go into the front of 2 bikes oviously killing one of them as he flew headlong into a wall. The only forigner on the bus, and a GP, she stood up and shouted for the bus to stop, which it did momentarily, but only so it could reverse and drve round the bodies. GP said nobody else on the bus batted an eyelid.

Most of the roads traffic though is made up of motorbikes and in a similar parallel they surcumb to the dominance of the monied, getting out of the way when they're parrped at without fuss. These motorbikes, usually the trusty Honda 125, were my medium; my vessel to ride the roads and the lense through which to see them. Its weird but road rage doesn't seem to exist, dispite the most random driving this side of Calcutta. As big cars and busses pull out into busy roads as the whim takes them, flying through junctions without stopping or just stopping for no apparent reason, the constant flow of four or five lanes of bikes just opens out, absorbing the obstruction and then pulls together again, all meshing together like a YKK. No raised fists or curses, just calm stoic acceptance.

Lane discipline appears to be a bit of a fluid concept. Though in the main the traffic flows on the right this is in no way a restriction on the road users freedom. If he or she, or more often they, wish to use the left hand side of the road then that seems fine with everyone. Veering across the road and subsequently switching between left and right regularly is also a good way of meeting people and gaining a fresh perspective.

Roundabouts seem interesting too; standard is an anti clockwise rotation, but all the cows i saw using roundabouts were going clockwise. I'm not sure if this is just cows or all quadrupeds because most of the dogs on the roundabouts were mainly just sleeping on the road until an attractive cars, bike or cow came along to chase in either direction.

Use of mirrors seems frowned upon unless it is for the combing of the hair or the picking of the pimples. Similarly indicators, though often used, are mainly used to indicate that the driver may or may not have recently turned left or right, also that he may or may not be turning left or right again in the near future, though they don't specify exactly when.

What about protection on these crazy streets? Well do not worry the Cambodians have got this covered, they have umbrellas. Versatile, they offer both protection from the sun and the rain, in heavy weather they tend to be held out horizontally in front of the bike. This stops the rain going in the eyes of the driver and also allows a perfect view of the 3 ahead of the front wheel, the rest of the mayhem on the roads is obscured and thus the driver is free to converse with his passengers uninterrupted.

Motodrivers in Cambodia are always keen to win you as their fare and will often take a stock refusal as encouragement to simply ride alongside you until you crack. 'Is hot today no?' tends to be the opening gambit, 'too hot for walk no?' And as sweat trickles down your nose its often hard to disagree with them. These guys will not rest till you are being delivered somewhere on the back of their bike, fanatical; I was on a moto one day and as we pulled up at lights some motodrivers lounging on the corner lept up with a 'hey mister, you want moto?' I was momentarily stunned, and by the time i thought about helping them with their marketing strategy by suggesting they possibly only focus on people not already on a moto, the lights had changed and we'd trundled off.

Maximum passenger capacity of the average 125 motorbike is really only restricted by the imagination and ingenuity of its passengers. Obviously the seat affords a cosy housing for three, then the handlebars and cross bars are to be used for the smaller passengers the young and the old. The livestock can either be hung or slung as you see fit and then the passengers shoulders
are also an option if you're feeling fancy.

The Honda 125 provides Cambodians from all walks with the transport they need when they need it. Waiting for a bus outside a hospital i saw a moto pull out into heavy traffic, on the back was to be the drivers wife sitting side saddle holding a new born baby over her shoulder. As this marvel of new life disappeared into the smog and traffic another bike came into the hospital car park from the other direction. The passenger slumped forward into the drivers back and the driver was holding, vertically in one hand, a t-bar of rough wood knocked together to support a bag of plasma connected to a drip which disappeared into the passengers clothing.
Balance, i thought, from the cradle to the grave the Honda 125 gets you there. That should be the byline.

Not For the Dark of Heartness.....

They said it couldn't be done and we'd be foolish to try. We did it any way. They said it would take 10 days, we did it in 8. They said it would be cheaper, easier and quicker to take the bus, and on that I have to say they may have been right.

We were in Phongsali in Northern Laos, just off the Nam Ou River, about 30 clicks from the Chinese boarder. Yes, that’s right my friends; clicks. This is deep in Heart of Darkness territory, the lands of Kurtz, where rogue CIA agents smuggle opium, the birthplace of Pathet Lao the Laos Communist party. If I don't get to use the word clicks here then I just don't know when I get to use it. Getting there had taken 5 days on slow boats, sitting on wooden planks for 6 hours a day, chugging upstream watching jungle and water buffalo slide by. Each day fewer travelers joined us in our journey north, until on the 5th day Ben and I made up two thirds of the landing crew at Hat Sa. The final third being a mellow bearded Californian who said he was Tim. Tim, if that was his real name, (I was trusting no one) started the ball rolling by telling me about a couple of Swedes he'd met who'd bought a canoe and rowed down stream to the next town. Apparently, so Tim said, without mishap. Eyebrows were duly raised, ears were pricked up, conspiratorial glances were conspiratorially glanced. Could this be our mission up here? Row the 200miles back to Luang Prabang, to go deeper? to search for Kurtz, truth, ourselves? Or was Tim leading us astray deliberately, was he in fact working for the other side, was there even another side out there? We needed a drink. Our paranoia died quickly after a few mid afternoon beerlao and by evening two other Brits had been enrolled on our mission, a date had been set, and we'd all become experts on white water techniques, boat maintenance and the construction of emergency shelters using bamboo, banana leaves and bits of string.

'Why you want to buy boat?' a new Laos friend from the Phongsali tourist dept. asked the following day on hearing our plan. 'is only one day on bus, is ten day on boat'. He was lost, clearly perplexed, I started to explain how the British sought out adventure, how the empire had been built on pure bloody mindedness, a willingness to endure, a desire to overcome. I told him that just because something may be a stupid idea, and they may not have the faintest idea what they're doing, the British would stride forw.... My Laos friend already had his head in his hands and was rocking forward and back with silent laughter. Poor disbeliever. We pressed on. And so on my 29th birthday we hit the riverside at Muang Khua and began the complex bartering process for a boat big enough for 6 people and their gear (our group having swollen still further as our drunken blathering had grown louder). I became the proud owner of a slightly rusty 12" machete with a loose blade, we all became part owners of a 38' boat, 5 oars and a bamboo pole, and a random Laoation ex-boat owner walked away, I’m sure rather contentedly, with enough money to buy himself another boat and probably an engine to go with it.

The thing about 6 people all rowing the same boat, it turns out, is that they all need to 'want' to go in the same direction, also they all need to know their left from their right, and most importantly, they all need to maintain a healthy sense of humor at all times. These requirements gradually sunk in as we zigzagged downstream, careering off rocks, our oars splashing independently of each other on either side of the craft. The looks we got from the fishermen and kids we passed encouraged us to think that, whilst we may not be an entirely new breed, 6 falang in a boat was clearly not an everyday sight. Looks of confusion and disbelief without exception broke into wide smiles and waves as we 'Sabadee'd' everyone we saw. The screams and splashes of the kids playing in the river mixed with our own cheers and clapter temporarily shattering the peace of the Nam Ou valley. The scenery would have taken our breath away if the rowing hadn't already done so, huge limestone cliffs rising from the water, densely forested hillsides, the sound of the jungle all around. Tiny bamboo villages populating the riverside every half hour or so peeked out from behind the tree line. As the sun dipped our thoughts turned to shelter for the night. Though we had tarpaulin and blankets and enough laolao (rice whiskey) to get us soundly off to the land of nod fairly promptly, camping out remained an unattractive option. It had been raining heavily every morning that week, the mosquitoes and fire ants seemed to have most of the beach taken, apart from that occupied by the water buffalo and so our utopic image of a night under stars soaked away. All was not lost however for whoever came up with the phrase 'Relying on the kindness of strangers' had evidently been to Laos for his hols. A reconnaissance team was sent into the first village we came to and they returned with a cluster of curios kids and a village elder come to see what all the fuss was about. He sized us up briefly and then sized up our craft obviously impressed with her sleek lines, the way she sat in the water. He asked how much we'd paid and we lied telling him we'd paid half the actual price. Smiling he gave us the international sign for 'you bin done there mate', picked up his own body weight of our gear and strolled back to the village motioning for us to follow.

Our hosts treated us with incredible kindness, gave us quarters, food and copious laolao (it's considered rude to turn down the first two offered according to our book. The book wasn't clear if it was ok to drink them dry or not), whilst most of the village took it in turns to come and look at us. When communication is limited to 5 words, and the locals are bored of seeing you juggle, we found music can be a strong way to convey thanks and goodwill. So, in the flicking candlelight of this bamboo hut, in deepest darkest Laos we danced around singing Old McDonald as all the kids fell about in hysterics.

Days wore on and as we progressed downstream we became an elite unit, expert rowers and navigators of rapids (kinda), inspired kids entertainers (hats off to Ali and Ben S) and every place we stayed in amazed and inspired us. We took tea with monks, sang Beatles songs in candlelit temples, and arrived at the inescapable truth that bug stew tastes better before you know its main ingredient. The scenery having changed dramatically each day opened out on day 7 as we finally reached the end of the Nam Ou and hit the mighty Mekong. Twice as wide, twice as fast and twice as busy as the Nam Ou, it possibly wasn’t the greatest idea to get utterly smashed on laolao and sleep on a restaurant floor the night before our final day. That said, we did it anyway and next day, a shadow of our former selves we limply sculled on in the midday sun, Luang Prabang the so called 'jewel in the crown of SE Asia', our goal, glistening in the distance.

Since we'd got there, and we'd managed against all odds to keep our boat in one piece and the right way up throughout, it seemed to us reasonable to give thanks to the dominant force in the area. So, after a celebratory steak and bottle of wine, we approached one of the local Buddhist temples to find a monk with enough English to understand that we wanted to donate a boat and would he be interested. Amusingly the look of confusion and disbelief on his face once he grasped what we were saying was not dissimilar to that on the face of the original boat owner when we said we'd wanted to buy the thing. Even so he seemed happy with it and as the ropes were ceremonially handed over, we too were pretty chuffed to see the boat filled up with monks in saffron robes checking out their new ride, and probably wondering what they were going to do with it.

Laos continues to inspire.

Beach Life Its the only Life I Know


I just read this quote from Evelyn Waugh in the preface to a book I’m reading;
“There is some longing, romantic, reasonless, which lies deep in the hearts of most Englishmen, to shun the celebrated spectacles of the tourist and without any concern with science, politics or commerce, simply to set their feet where few civilized feet have trod”

Now, there is some mild irony in this for me because the last month in Thailand has gone pretty far from shunning tourists civilized or otherwise. And though I kind of fancy the Waugh style intrepid explorer image, baggy khakis and butterfly net and huge mustache discovering new waterfalls never before seen by western eyes (Parker-Bowles Falls I was going to call them), I also want a well stocked bar and a bar keep who mixes a good daiquiri and I suppose you can’t have both, so this month at least, I got on board the tour bus and mucked in with all the others.

So, I met an Alaskan gold miner who seemed in constant search of Thai gold diggers, presumably to discuss some technical issue he had. I met a Canadian who told me he ran ‘a great little promotional products business back home’, but who also, and more interestingly, claimed to be the reincarnated son of some Burmese monk he’d met at a full moon party some years previous. As I left him he was packing some promotional products, mugs and picture frames I think, and was taking them to his father from another life up somewhere in Burma. I can’t help wondering what a devout Buddhist monk was doing at a full moon party anyway, and whether if you do meet a monk at a rave is it at all possible that they may lay some of the ‘reincarnated’ stuff on the Farang just for laughs. I met a couple who found absolutely no humour whatsoever in the fact that they were called Peter and Parker. Not only that but they seemed to take issue when I helplessly displayed the amusement it brought on in me. And I also met dozens of blond, bronzed Scandinavians who loved to dive, party and themselves in equal measure.
This random collective along with Ben and myself were all washed up on to the various beaches and islands of the Andaman coast, and I have to say there are a lot worse places to be washed up.

Paradise having been located and paradise bungalows and hammocks having been secured, we set about immersing ourselves into the culture; discussing the royal wedding, watching European football and rugby, learning to dive and so on. As for the latter we had a man, and I use that term in its loosest possible sense, on the inside. Passing for a Scandinavian in more ways than one, not least his tenuous grasp of the English language, Nigel entered our lives once more and took it as his task nay his duty to introduce us to the PADI family.

It would be a lie if I said I wasn’t slightly concerned as I signed my responsibility waiver with the blond one stood grinning over me ,but in fairness this concern was un warranted. In between regularly declaring, to the world in general it seemed, how much he enjoyed diving, ladies in bikinis and his hair, Nige proved a competent, patient, and helpful coach in the ways of the scuba. Supportive and encouraging when initially, and somewhat understandably I thought, my brain reacted poorly to being asked to breathe underwater. Informed and educational when describing the names of the fish we’d just seen for our log books (though I have an idea he may have just been saying some fish names he knew; ‘Cod? U sure Nige’?). And inventive, if somewhat unconventional when teaching the rudiments of break dancing at 18 m (I always wanted to head spin like that). He seemed upset at not having seen the Whale shark spotted by his peers on previous days, and I sympathized with him bitterly, though truthfully if I’m going to come face to face with a 12 meter shark, I want to at least be able to use my flippers properly first. Also one of those cage things would be nice. All in all though, a truly mind-blowing few days and I’ll be having some more of that as soon as I stop having the Jaws dreams.

“Dude, it’s so like, underwater skydiving on mushrooms, maan” I was told by an American long hair the following day, and I immediately thought less of him for it. Later in the evening as he was juggling fire things on the beach, one of his batons became loose, flew off and hit me on the nose as I was attempting to enjoy a cool beer. My low opinion of the long hair shrank back still further. The night, having started poorly proceeded in a downward spiral from then on. I was deposited upon by some, as yet unnamed tree dwelling creature (my suspicions lie with Mr. Wee’s pet squirrel whose been giving me funny looks since I got here), and to round the evening off I was struck with the inevitable traveler belly bug and was unremittingly ill for 12 hours. Just another day in paradise as poet of our times Phil Collins so memorably stated.

Evidence if the tsunami has been everywhere and yet strangely illusive down the west coast. On the one hand you often see whole rows of palms flattened. Or empty sections of beach; ‘there used to be a really nice restaurant there’ or ‘there used to be 46 bungalows there’. We saw an island that had been cut in two when the wave had washed through the lagoon and straight out the other side. Everyone had a story to tell of their experience, niges motorbike repeatedly told its story, by making the weirdest rattles and leaking seaweed out the exhaust. But since we arrived characteristically late on the scene it was sometimes hard to know what had already been rebuilt, what had been untouched, and what were always scrubby bits of piled up plastic beach furniture. The locals just want people back, and seem understandably put out that an article in the Bangkok Post just after the tsunami had described Ko Lanta as ‘Devastated’ in a map of the area, when actually there was relatively little damage at all. Kind of like the ‘bring out yer dead sketch. The bar owners particularly need your help as they seem, out of a mixture of depression and boredom I guess, to be getting high on their own supply so to speak and can be seen staggering about the beach bottle in hand, looking out to sea wistfully.

Ben and I are getting on admirably it has to be said. We have come to an understanding on many things, neither of us is, on any circumstances prepared to rub sun cream into the others back, there shall be a strict conversational hiatus until breakfast is over and as long as he stops using my toothpaste I’m sure we’re going to get on just fine. We both feel ready to leave the beaches now though, bloody sand gets everywhere and if I have to listen to that Jack Johnson album one more time… We heard that Lao coffee is good, that they have reasonable red wine up there and that everything is half the, frankly laughable prices in Thailand. We leave tomorrow.