When I re-read my journal as I prepared to write this blog I was surprised by how downbeat it was. During the five week period when I was in Australia I didn’t write a huge amount but what I did write described someone in a state of minor crisis – someone confused, dislocated and unsure of himself and the decisions he had made… but that’s not particularly representative of the experiences I had while I was there, which were many and varied and shared with some very special people. It was almost as if in my quietest moments I struggled with the change in my circumstances and it was during these times that I sought refuge in my journal.
Therefore, having already made the decision to fill the gaping Australia-shaped hole in my blog with recollections from my journal, I suddenly became reluctant to publish these private thoughts, feeling as though they might give a rather skewed impression of my time there. In the end I decided – as I often do – to publish and be damned. It’s too late now to worry about the impression people get about me from my writing – after all, almost everyone who counts has by now seen photpgraphs of me in a dress! If you haven’t seen the incriminating pictures, don’t worry because you will have by the time you’ve finished reading this blog.
I think these excerpts are interesting, if only because they describe some of the strange personal challenges I find myself facing through my travelling – leaving comfortable, familiar places and arriving in strange, new ones; finding familiar places changed and familiar people the same – but different. Biggest of all is the challenge of finding yourself changed and having to reconcile what you thought you knew and who you thought you were with what you have become. This kind of journey is never going to be easy – moving from one place you love to another, finding yourself caught between two worlds and seemingly incapable of choosing between them – that’s one of the hardest things I have had to learn to do during this most recent adventure.
As is most common with my journal these days, I write about what I’m feeling, not necessarily what I’m doing, so while I did lots of fun stuff in Oz, as well as a fair bit of lazing around in friends’ appartments while they were out at work, I don’t really describe any of it here. Having said that, there are a few photographs associated with this blog which clearly illustrate some of the mischief and wrong doing I got involved in while I was out there.
On a final note I want to thank all my friends in Sydney for making me feel so welcome and for putting me up and putting up with me the whole time, particularly when I was feeling vulnerable. I miss you all very much but I know I will see you all again very soon.
Tuesday 13th February, 6pm
Location: Heathrow Airport
At last the new adventure begins! That it begins with four hours spent killing time in an airport massive almost beyond comprehension with a nervous, sick feeling in my stomach is inevitable I suppose. It would be different if I weren’t alone. The nervousness would present itself as excitement and shared anticipation instead of this strange pre-emptive culture shock, the shock of so much change in such a short space of time. I haven’t even had time to adjust to the idea of finishing work and leaving Bristol before I find myself contemplating the reality of an imminent departure from England and a long-haul flight to the other side of the world – a world that seems big suddenly, and scary, but by virtue of a jet plane and the freedom of the skies will soon seem small and something like my oyster.
I’m relaxing a bit now as I slowly adjust to this new reality – a reality involving waiting and watching, listening and thinking and writing. My time is now divided up into an entirely different set of activities from those which, over the last few months, have become comforting and familiar though charged with a sense of banality – working and cooking, cleaning and shopping, watching movies and messing about with my computer… I’m starting to think that this life I’m leaving behind is perhaps not so banal as I thought. As is so often the way, it was the decision to leave that life behind which brought it into it’s true perspective – the prospect of radical change which flicked the switch on it from black and white into colour.
Tuesday 20th February, 12pm
Location: Royal Botanical Gardens, Sydney
I didn’t count on the Botanical Gardens being this busy, but I suppose the arrival of the QM2 in Wooloomooloo docks this morning heralded the start of a great day for Sydney tourism. Throngs of people pass along the path behind me, presumably tens of thousands of people will pass this way in order to catch a glimpse of the biggest ship in the world. At least twenty Japanese tourists and senior Australian citizens share the shade of this smallish tree with me. It’s busy alright. If the average age of the individuals clamouring for a view of the great big boat was a couple of decades younger then this would feel like a music festival – although a rather more relaxed affair than the one I attended on Saturday, crammed as it was with about ten thousand too many people.
So, a week down the line, the time comes for me to properly reflect on my feelings in light of all the quite dramatic change in my life since I arrived here in Australia. It’s been quite an emotional rollercoaster. I’ve felt compelled to ask myself a lot of questions – all of them I’ve been unable to answer because they are so far unfathomable. It’s all too immediate at the moment, I’m experiencing sensory overload. I’m sort of waiting for something to happen inside myself, for some switch to click from the off to the on position so I can actually start engaging with all these familiar but strange relationships in a more pro-active way. The trouble is, I don’t think it will happen - or at least, it won’t happen in the way I though it would.
I thought that leaving everything behind would somehow liberate me – that it would make me bolder and more confident, but the certainty I felt as my departure approached (but which waned at the end) has been dininished by a frustrating and confusing culture shock and a sense that I don’t belong here. If not here then where?! I don’t mean to imply that Sydney was my last hope for a place where I could fit in and call home, I just mean that it’s a place that I love filled with people I love but I now find it very different from the place I left behind. That’s a difficult thing for me to get my head around.
Photographs of Sydney
Tuesday 22nd February, 5pm
Location: In transit from Penrith to Sydney
A hideous burst of emotion, of self-pity sick in my stomach, overwhelming weariness and a desire to find some private place and cry my heart out. Why? I think because I am in fear that the sickness in my leg is spreading – although rationality says it is not – I feel most peculiar and unwell with waves of dizziness and nausea. The irony of the fact that I came to Australia to strengthen and purify and now I find myself physically and emotionally crippled is not lost on me.
This train journey is interminable! How did I manage to do this trip every day?! I want to quit this claustrophobia, breathe deeply the fresh air rolling off the ocean, reassure myself that I am fine and strong despite the injury, feel a sense of fate and rightness about my trip to Perth on Thursday – but all I feel is uncertainty, like a dark cloud is blemishing the sunshine of my faith in the future. Is this a sickness of the mind, the heart or the body?
Most likely I’m just travel sick…
Thursday 1st March, 7pm
Location: Bondi Beach, Sydney
I wonder now what all the fuss was about, sitting here as I am in comfort and contentment watching the sunset over Bondi. Actually, with the benefit of hindsight and a modicum of objectivity, I see that there were so many layers to my distress earlier in the week that I couldn’t see the wood for the trees.
It was skin deep – in that my wounded and infected leg was giving me a whole pile of grief. The side-effects of the antibiotics effected every aspect of my physical self – I felt completely wrong and that churned up all the hitherto largely ignored emotional upset that I’ve been feeling since I arrived, particularly with regard to my uncertainty about my place here in Bondi and my fears about my trip to Perth – a trip into the unknown that I did not feel ready to take and so have not taken.
I’d be arriving now and while my ostensible reason for cancelling has turned out to be a bit of a decoy, in that my leg seems to be healed to the extent that it would not have rendered travel inadvisable, it feels like the decision was the right one – I’m not in a place within myself to cope with a reunion with Grace and face the completely unknown quantity that is her new boyfriend.
After two weeks in Sydney it feels like I’ve only just arrived. I’ve only just begun to explore the possibilities inherent in my relationships with my friends here. To leave today would have been like abandoning a building after constructing only the foundations. More and more it seems like my purpose for being here is to plan my future, to understand what starting a new life in Bondi would really involve, stripping away the romanticism and seeing it for what it really is.
Tuesday 6th March, 1pm
Location: Indian Consulate, Sydney
On the day before my 30th birthday I find myself once again on Indian time, but only briefly, as I sit waiting to be processed in the Indian Consulate in Sydney, my application for a tourist visa clutched in my hand. Actually, the wait hasn’t been as interminable as I feared it would be – barely more than an hour has passed since I arrived and my number is almost up – a blink of an eye in the scale of Indian beaurocracy. I consider myself quite lucky considering that I turned up at the consulate late and without the requisite passpord photographs or a valid itinerary.
A burly man of eastern European descent questions the woman behind the counter with distinct incredulity but supreme patience considering the ridiculous nature of his paperwork problem. Unlike me, he’s clearly unfamiliar with the obtuse nature of the visa application process, but we do have one thing in common – neither of us can understand why we have to buy a plane ticket before being granted a visa for entry into India. Surely without a valid visa a plane ticket is useless and if one’s application were to fail it would also be a complete waste of money!
I decided to fabricate my itinerary because I don’t know when or where I’m going to enter the country. I’m fairly confident that the visa office won’t contact the airline to check that I’m actually booked on the flight I specify in my itinerary. At least the flight itself is real. Who knows, I may even book on this exact flight at some point in the near future – I’m just reluctant to buy a flight over here when I can probably get it for half the price in Bangkok.
Anyway, it feels good to be pro-active about my trip to India. Sat on the bus on my way into town this morning I began to question my motives to return – and not for the first time. Last night, lying in bed trying to sleep, my brain a little fevered due to the spliff I had inadvisably smoked a short while earlier, I questioned my motivation for being all the way out here on the other side of the world in the first place. Interestingly, here in the consulate I feel calm and content and eager to begin the adventure.
Because, I’m beginning to realise, I haven’t yet begun my adventure. I even postponed it when I delayed my trip to Perth. I’m beginning to understand that this sense of dislocation will likely permeate until I kick off this trip properly, with enthusiasm and vigour. I’m impatient for that to happen, but it’s almost as if I’m waiting for myself to catch up. I think I’m feeling irrationally scared by the prospect of going it alone again.
Thursday 8th March, 12pm
Location: North Bondi, Sydney
There’s no two ways about it, I am blocked and I’m experiencing the psychological equivalent of that sense of near asphixiation you get with a really blocked nose – you can still breathe, but it feels like every breath is a struggle – or in this case, every sentence.
I’m sitting on the grassy knoll looking out over Bondi Beach and I’m wondering what I’m doing over here, failing to write, rather than out there, learning to surf. Thus far this trip has been all mixed up, I’ve failed to achieve what I planned to and I haven’t found anything else to fill the vacuum that this failure has left.
Ashamed though I am to admit it, particularly given the beautiful weather we’re having at the moment, what I really want to do is lie around watching DVDs and getting stoned – but, given my temperament and my earnest desire to be useful, persuing such a lazy, self-indulgent course would make me feel bad about myself… worse even, than I do already.
I feel bad because I’ve had my fair share of down time recovering from my injury. I made the decision to stay in Sydney rather than go to Perth and now I feel a bit stuck. I know that tomorrow will be different, I will be consumed by a weekend of frivolity with my friends at the Playground festival, then a few days later I’ll be heading to Western Australia and whatever waits for me there… after that there’s Thailand, India, Nepal and the rest.
I won’t be stuck for long, the blockage will clear – adversity in the form of India will, I’m sure, get my creative juices flowing again, but in the meantime I feel next to useless, and whining about it in my journal isn’t helping very much, alas. I think I might go and eat a pie and then slouch on Julia and Melv’s couch and watch Point Break. Gnarly.
Photographs of Playground
Wednesday 21st March
Location: North Bondi, Sydney
I’ve been so busy this week I haven’t had a chance to write anything in my journal, but that isn’t to say that I haven’t spent any time in reflection – the great outdoors of South Western Australia has given me ample opportunity to review and digest everything that has happened since I arrived five weeks ago, and I come to the concluding day of my spell in Australia with a sense of optimism that has only been dampened a little by the laziness of a day spent sleeping, washing and emailing in Julia and Melv’s appartment in North Bondi.
It’s possible that part of my problem over the last few weeks is that I’ve been stuck in the city. Travelling through the glorious countryside of WA gave me a great sense of happiness, peace and freedom – I have not been so happy in a long time as I was on Sunday as I explored beaches and forests, climbed trees and built fires, and at the same time explored myself and found within me some measure of contentment.
In some other writing I have posed the question, how long have I been messed up for? When I was back in England was I so screwed up? I’m sure friends would argue that I was not – that I am not, that I’m the same as everyone else in this, we all have our insecurities and we deal with them in different ways. Mostly, I think, we bury them as deep as we can and then they occasionally make themselves known in our behaviour towards other people. We integrate them. They are part of us and always will be. Maybe this is not such a bad thing but I don’t think it’s what I do – or, at least, it isn’t what I’ve been doing over the past few weeks since I’ve been in Australia when my feelings have been very close to the surface – I’ve been aware of myself, what I’m thinking and feeling, the whole time.
Possibly then, a new chapter has begun, I’ve reached a new level of emotional maturity. More likely though, this is a philosophical phase that will pass when I reach Thailand and am caught up again in backpacker culture. Two steps forward, one step back… I think I’m headed in the right direction though.
Photographs of Western Australia
Friday 23rd March, 8am
Location: Bangkok, Thailand
Bang-fuckin-cock; what a result! I can barely believe I’m back in this spiced stinking city. I feel an adrenaline rush just sitting in this restaurant waiting for my breakfast, which is my favourite Spicy Fried Rice (or as the Thai waiter calls it, Spie Frie Rie – it’s basically an omelette with spicy fried rice inside) from Wild Orchid, the location of so much fun during my last trip to Thailand. I remember arriving here in December 2005, fresh from Australia, and experiencing in one moment extreme culture shock on one intensely hot and humid afternoon on the Khao San Road. Although the heat has not yet risen I suspect (or hope) that on this visit I will not go through such a crisis… or, to be more accuarate, I won’t shit myself like I did last time.
What a wonderful prospect it is, the day unfolding ahead of me, a day with nothing much to do apart from pottering – the purchase of a couple of train tickets to Chiang Mai and a sturdy lock, contact lenses and a haircut, a massage and a trip to the D&D to book a room for tomorrow when Tom arrives, freshly squeezed orange juice and pad thai from a street hawker, email, beer and a green curry, maybe a chocolate banana pancake and I daresay too many cheap cigarettes… this is Khao San life.
In amongst all these lazy activities there will undoubtedly be encounters with a variety of friendly locals, all of them trying to sell me one thing or another – a giant zippo or a pen which administers an electric shock or some other completely useless item. I’ll meet colourful farrang (foreigners), every different kind of traveller under the sun – the good and the bad, the young and the old, the happy and the sad, the lucid and the wasted, those arriving and those departing, those who should have gone home years ago and those who should go home now if they want to cling onto the sliver of sanity they have remaining.
6.30pm
Okay, so I am feeling a bit culture shocked now. The heat is getting to me – or rather, the humidity because it doesn’t actually feel all that hot (although it’s hot enough, believe me) but I’ve sweat bucketloads and it feels like my knackers have shut down, permanently. Aren’t your bollocks supposed to keep your sperm refridgerated? If so, mine are working overtime. Poor Tom! Tomorrow, the temperature here will knock him for six – twelve in fact – it’s already knocked me for six and I’m supposed to be used to this sort of thing! I dream of an air-conditioned hotel room. Bliss. Instead, my pokey, boxy 200 baht a night cell is about as welcoming as a coffin in a crematorium.
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