A short term on Palolem Beach

While I got quite snap happy with my friends and surroundings during my time in Thailand, there was not a subject which particularly interested me and compelled me to reach for my camera. As soon as I arrived in India I started carrying it with me everywhere I went because everywhere I looked I observed something I wanted to photograph.

This fact perhaps reflects the different feelings I have for these two countries. Thailand is a great holiday destination, rich and exotic and full of such beautiful people with such easy smiles... but sooner or later you start to get the uncomfortable sense that in a lot of cases there might not be much beyond those smiles except a deep and somewhat tragic understanding of the ways of the western world.

In contrast, Indian smiles are often hidden behind a deep reserve and caution. An Indian man will quite comfortably stare at you for minutes on end, his head cocked to the side and a scowl of concentration on his face - while you feel increasingly awkward and wonder what you've done to deserve such unwanted attention. All you need to do is stare back with matching intensity, wiggle your head from side to side and treat him and everyone else in the vicinity to a big beaming smile - then watch as he is immediately dissarmed and smiles back in delight, head wiggling fit to fall off.

India is a country I find totally compelling - the variety and the complexity of the cultures represented here is totally overwhelming and it would take someone like me a lifetime to really understand the place, which I think is the reason why so many people return to India again and again throughout their lives. It's endlessly fascinating. With each new place you visit you learn something new, or something you thought you knew is turned on it's head. It has the ability to continue to suprise you every day and in every way. Sometimes those suprises are good, sometimes they're not so good...

I started my second journey into India in the same place as my first. Goa, with it's multidude of beaches and Catholic churches is a good place to start because, they say, it is not "The Real India" – it’s an censored version with a lot of the offensive bits taken out, and as we all know from years of wincing at BBC-hacked TV versions of movies, the offensive bits are often the most interesting. I was not planning to return to Goa because I didn't think it had anything new to offer me. I had just come from Thailand which has a beach culture which is so much more unregulated and uninhibited. A young man can only do so much partying before he hankers for something more substantial and this was how I felt once my final Koh Tao hangover had subsided and I was on my way to Bombay.

I was wrong about Goa, it did have something new to show me - something valuable I was able to learn about myself and about other travellers who choose to come to India - but that is another story and will be told another time. I was also reminded that although Thailand may have nicer beaches, clearer waters and a more dynamic nightlife, in terms of people watching, Goa's beaches win hands down every time, but nonetheless, a week spent back on Palolem Beach could be seen from one point of view as a week too long.

Some of you may recall I was there for three weeks in 2005 and complained in my blog of the awful sense of laziness and inertia which slowly but surely engulfed my being until I felt like a raw husk of a man, a vampire who sweated through the days in a shaded hammock and only came alive at night once half a dozen beers and a couple of cocktails had been consumed.

An hour ago I left Goa for the second time. I remember feeling the first time no desire to go back. I feel the same way now. Clearly this is only a temporary condition then – perhaps one that has come about as a result of over-indulging in Goa and before that in Thailand… I’ve had too many nights out with not enough sleep because in this heat and humidity it’s impossible for me to stay in my hut much past 9am.

I departed in significantly more style on this occasion than the first time. Right now I’m flying high above the middle of India headed for Delhi. This flight compresses a 48 hour train journey into a trifling two hours. I had planned to catch the train and revel in the sights, sounds and smells of The Real India on my way north but that would have meant staying five extra days in Goa and I had to get out! I didn’t have it in me to laze anymore.

It was pointed out to me by a good friend that I’ve become a Champagne Backpacker, jet-setting around India with a laptop, mobile phone, iPod and digital SLR camera. I can hardly deny it. This afternoon I paid 900 rupees for a taxi to the airport instead of jumping on a couple of local buses and paying little more than 50 rupees for the hundred kilometre journey – which would have taken four hours instead of one and a half.

Yes – I took a taxi a hundred kilometres, and it isn’t the first time it’s happened this week, it’s the fourth time. I’ve been pinging around Goa shelling out rupees like there’s no tomorrow. In one weekend at The Big Chill I spent around 15,000 rupees on my ticket, taxis, accommodation, alcohol… and assorted sundries – that’s almost £200, probably more than you’d expect to spend in two days at a UK festival. Over the last few weeks I’ve been leading a very extravagant lifestyle but all that is about to stop because I’m heading into the mountains and planning to quit fags, drugs, booze, meat – and sex.

None of that should be too difficult. The cool mountain air and the state of the butchers’ shops up here should be inspiring. I added sex to the list as an after-thought. If, in two months of travelling in Australia and Thailand, I didn’t see any action then I think it’s fair to say that the trend will continue in the mountains, so I may as well pretend to myself that I’m being virtuous. Some of you might say that’s an apathetic and defeatist attitude but, to be entirely honest, I can’t be bothered and I don’t much care.

View my Palolem Beach photographs

Bangkok Burger Break

Long have I been known to condemn the evils of global fast food franchises. I don’t remember what it was that got me up on my high horse on this issue in the first place: Years ago I used to pop out between pints and gobble up a Big Mac or a Whopper on a Friday night without a moral dilemma. Later it would be a kebab on the walk/stagger home. Occasionally I’d wake up the following morning with a stinking hangover and the acrid remnants of a doner kebab at the foot of the bed. Ah, those were halcyon days indeed when, in my late teens and early twenties, the amount I ate and drank had no effect whatsoever on the size of my waist!

Things have changed now and maybe it’s my resentment at having to choose what I eat a bit more carefully that drives me to revile McDonalds. No, of course it isn’t that – I’m not bitter about developing love handles, it’s simply that with age comes wisdom and in my case a more uncompromising response to the insidious influence of mass marketing on our lives. I ask you, what is a better symbol of global consumer culture than the Big Mac?

Let me ask you another question - ultimately, what is advertising all about? It’s about selling an ideal. It’s about selling something you don’t need on the premise that it will make your life better. Eating a burger, for example, will apparently make you popular and cool. I’m lovin’ it – here, McDonalds is telling you that you love Big Macs – even though you don’t. Okay, so it isn’t exactly subtle or sophisticated but it’s still bullshit. As far as I’m concerned it’s about selling a big fat fucking lie. McDonalds marketing campaigns must have, over the years, told more lies to more individuals than every single politician on the planet, ever. After all, each time the bastards show us a picture of a Big Mac selling us another deceit!

I admit I might be getting a bit carried away here, but I think we should all have something upon which we can vent our frustration, whether it be people in front of us taking inordinate amounts of time to withdraw cash at ATMs or Celine Dion. Therefore, McDonalds has become my scapegoat for all the wrongs in the world over which I have no control. Upon this global behemoth of a business which has insinuated itself into every corner of the planet I pour all my hate and revile for all the lies we’ve been forced to swallow, all the lifestyle compromises we’ve been compelled to make and all the average food we’ve chosen to eat - to the extent that I now find myself becoming angry whenever I’m in the vicinity of one of their “restaurants” - I start glowering and spitting and have been known to shout drunken insults at their customers. The smell of the place particularly winds me up, that sanitised, sickly sweet, greasy, rubbery, plastic-coated odour that drifts through the swing doors and assaults you as you walk by – I almost suffer an allergic reaction to the place my repulsion is so powerful. Many a time I have had to qwell an instinct to launch a brick through the window.

I know of course that in this matter I am indulging in myself a sort of hypocrisy because in many ways the choices I make in my lifestyle do not reflect the opinions I indulge in myself when it comes to the subject of fast food. For example, I am a smoker. I pollute my own body and the bodies of those around me who are forced to breathe my smoke. For this reason alone I reckon my opinion counts little. However, thanks to the concept of freedom of speech that democracy holds so dearly I can still gripe and groan as much as I like about the distasteful habits of others and be as hypocritical as I like in the process. I might add that it is this same democracy which is hand in glove with capitalism and is therefore to some extent responsible for the freedom with which corporations like McDonalds can sell their wares.

However, none of my high-minded ethical beliefs were able to alter the fact that, after a week in Thailand, I found myself hankering after a Whopper.

A Whopper is okay though! Isn’t it? It’s flame-grilled, after all! If McDonalds is the devil then Burger King and KFC are his right hand men. I will deal with them if I have to but I won’t like it one little bit. I figure I can’t go through life never eating fast food (I’m sure some people can - hippy, quorn-popping vegetarian types for example) because a lot of my friends enjoy the taste of an average burger and I wouldn’t dream of foisting my prejudices on them and spoiling their fun when we’re out and about, so I compromise with the likes of Burger King. However, to find myself in Thailand, resplendent as it with such wonderful, fragrant, diverse, healthy and tasty food and to be hankering after a burger is tantamount to treason against my stomach, but who am I to resist thirty years of programming?

My brother Tom and I woke before dawn in Chiang Mai in the north of Thailand. We were due to catch a commuter flight to Bangkok which would connect with a flight to Surat Thani where we would get on a boat to Koh Pha Ngan and begin the second part of our holiday which would mainly involve lazing on the beach. After the rigours of steamy night train journeys and jungle trekking it would be a welcome break. The sun had not yet risen as we sat in the airport departure lounge sipping hot coffee and munching Dunkin Donuts, discussing how we would spend the five hour stopover in Bangkok before our connecting flight to Surat Thani was scheduled to leave. Maybe it was the e-numbers in the frosting on my donut which influenced my thought processes when I said, “I really fancy a Burger King!”

Tom did not take much persuading. At that moment it seemed so right – that burger, those fries, that fizzy drink, those little plastic tubs of sauce… surely we deserved all that after getting up at 5am? I found myself becoming quite excited as the plane descended towards Bangkok, anticipating the satisfying bulk of my Whopper clenched between my greasy fingers as I prepared to take my first bite. I experienced a dawning sense of horror as we disembarked a few minutes later into what quickly became apparent was the worst airport I’d ever had the misfortune of visiting. This was one of Bangkok’s provicial airports, not the glorious, sprawling, post-modern monstrosity I had expected to find myself in, an airport boasting every kind of eastern and western food known to man.

This airport didn’t even boast a place to sit down. In a daze we found some seats and plonked ourselves into them but were then told they were reserved for monks only. As we wandered around contemplating how on earth we were going to spend five hours in this place and stay sane I spotted a sign advertising a shuttle bus to Bangkok’s other airport, the one with the Burger King. Assuring Tom that the only way to effectively kill five hours between flights was to keep busy, we boarded the bus and waited patiently for it to depart. Two hours later we were on the other side of Bangkok and stuck in a traffic jam but very close to the other airport and our burger brunch. I began to appreciate the scale of the endeavour we had undertaken in order to eat Whoppers. Our burger consumption turn-around time would be minimal if we stood any chance of making it back to the first airport in order to catch our flight.

We jumped off the bus and walked swiftly into the departure terminal, grabbing the first official-looking person we could find and pumping him for burger franchise location related information.
“No sir. There is no burger here. You must be passing through customs in order to eat the burger.”

The phrase blinded by greed kept popping into my head as the bus crawled through the traffic, headed back towards the original airport, the one I had now concluded we should never have left in the first place. This was associated with a sinking feeling in my stomach which was exacerbated every time I glanced in Tom’s direction and spotted the slightly wild look in his eye and panicked expression on his face. The bus moved very slowly. Time passed very quickly. With half an hour to go until our flight was scheduled to leave, Tom commented, “34 kilometres to go,” - his voice was even but I could almost taste the accusation in it. 34 kilometres?! Impossible!
“No mate,” I said, vainly attempting to maintain my cool, “No way. We’re nearly there!”
“I’ve just seen a sign. It said 34 kilometres to the airport.”
So appalled was I at the prospect of missing our flight that, in that instant, I calculated that we still had enough time to catch our flight. We had to travel 34 kilometres in 30 minutes AND check in AND get to our gate in time to board. I was delluded. I was delusional.

For a couple of minutes I sat sweating, staring out of the window, my eyes darting from one sign to the next as we travelled along the expressway, desperately trying to extract some kind of meaning from them – meaning that would prove my younger brother wrong and make me feel a whole lot better about the predicament I had landed us both in. Eventually I spotted a sign for the airport. It didn’t say how far we were away but it did inform me that we were travelling along Route 34.

Route 34? ROUTE 34?! I didn’t know whether to punch the little bugger or kiss him. Ten minutes later the bus pulled up outside the airport departure terminal and we scurried off to find the check-in desk. However, our ordeal wasn’t quite over. At the desk the young woman behind the counter looked nervous and confused as she typed our particulars into her computer. We stood waiting for five minutes as she procrastinated, her colleagues standing behind her appeared to be looking at us and fidgeting uncomfortably. I started to think that our seats had been given away. With incalculable relief I finally heard the reassuring zing of a dot matrix printer and a moment later our boarding passes were handed to us. For the second time in the space of half an hour I wanted to kiss my little brother.

“There was never any doubt,” I said magnanimously as I settled into my cramped aeroplane seat and buckled myself in. Tom looked at me incredulously but said nothing. Clearly the sense of relief he was experiencing overshadowed any resentment he felt towards me for making him run the gauntlet for the last five hours. For my part, I felt immensely pleased with myself for constructing such an exciting set of circumstances in which to spend a five hour stopover. We could have sat around that crummy airpoirt experiencing wrist-slitting boredom. Instead we had a mini adventure.

In the end I had a Whopper at Bangkok’s gloriously monstrous and swanky new international airport with only minutes to spare before I had to board my flight to India, where it’s quite hard to find a beef burger on account that cows are considered too good for mincing there. Eating that burger in that airport was a guilty pleasure… in fact, if I recall correctly there was not a great deal of pleasure involved in the experience – it was more like a strange, feverish compulsion.

Grace and Jess, my Australian friends who I had left behind a couple of days previously on Koh Tao, would not have been impressed. After I had finished my burger I recalled a story that Jess had told me about an Englishman she had witnessed coming into a beach restaurant and ordering a burger. He sat with his friends and was generally repulsive and insulting towards them until his burger arrived, at which point he shut up for the three minutes it took for him to stuff his face full of his burger and fries. There was no pleasure there, she said, no reflection, nothing registered on his face as he concentrated on consuming his food as swiftly as possible, as if he were some kind of robot who has been programmed only to eat burgers and do nothing else.

I looked around the airport restaurant and saw a sea of blank faces, the only sign of life, jaws chewing. With a shudder I assessed my own very recent burger eating experience – it was still fresh, the empty wrapper was in front of me and the sour aftertaste of it still in my mouth – and I realised I was no different. I knew my face had been blank and I had thought of nothing during the three minutes it had taken me to finish my Whopper. What is it about these places that make the process of eating so bland and functional, so devoid of pleasure? What is food without pleasure?

Over the last few years McDonalds have seen a drop in their sales, presumably because people are beginning to realise what a terrible con it has been all this time. I was delighted to witness one of their restaurants in Bristol close down. What a coup! I felt like dancing. In the world of global commerce even a one percent drop in sales equates to millions of dollars and in response to this relative disaster McDonalds have introduced new ranges of supposedly healthy food – salads, wraps and - I was staggered to learn – apples! These days you can go into a McDonalds restaurant and buy an apple! People, don’t buy your apples from McDonalds, get them from your nearest green grocer!

McDonalds are not fooling me for a minute. Pause for a moment and consider their freaky clown mascot Ronald. You don’t have to have read Stephen King’s book IT to know that clowns are evil. Evil I tell you! Hamburgler was always the good guy, valiantly trying to rid the world of McDonalds’ obnoxious burgers but continually scuppered by Ronald and his little cronies. I remember a recent TV advert in which Ronald leads a gang of healthy, bright-eyed kids through a park and into a McDonalds restaurant, the point being that if you bought enough Big Macs then McDonalds would contribute sports equipment to your kids’ school. What’s the subtext here? Eat McDonalds and get healthy? Please.

But don’t listen to me - I once almost gave up drinking Coca Cola because the adverts on TV at Christmas were so utterly dreadful and offensive. In the end I realised if I did then I wouldn’t have anything to drink my Jack Daniels with and that would never do would it?

An interlude in Thailand and a big brush with nature

I spent a little over two weeks in Thailand - two weeks spent giving my little brother Tom some insight into what backpacking in Asia is all about, as well as having a few giggles and getting thoroughly into the swing of island life with my old Aussie friends Grace and Jess and our new Scottish friend Michelle.

We had fun together. We got drunk on strong Thai rum, went wild and suffered the consequences the next day. We swam in the sea and we trekked in the mountains, rode elephants and bamboo rafted, we ate good food and we drank beer seasoned with formaldehyde, we snorkelled with the fishes and we dived with the whale sharks, scootered with hot chicks on the back and didn’t fall off. We played mini golf in forty degree heat. We laughed and we sweated. We caught night trains and food poisoning, lost our sunglasses in rivers and our heads in Bangkok. We got propositioned by fat chicks, freaked out, slept badly, got sick and tired and dozed for whole afternoons in hammocks…

Tom had a good time, although I suspect he’s more likely to describe his time as an amazing experience rather than a holiday of a lifetime. It was his first time in Asia, and while Thailand is quite developed and westernised in many places, it is still part of the developing world and has developing world problems. If I recall correctly one of Tom’s significant issues with the place was the lack of a decent sanitation infrastructure. The boy has a point. Sairee Beach on Koh Tao is like paradise… but only if you can pretend there isn’t raw sewage trickling down the sand and into the ocean metres from where people are bathing.

Two weeks is certainly enough time to enjoy a relaxing holiday in Thailand if you’re chilling out at a resort but it’s not much time if you’re backpacking and want to see more of the country than a beach, a swimming pool, the bottom of a cocktail glass and the pages of a Dan Brown novel. Thankfully I think Tom was more interested in having an experience than a holiday and in that sense I’m sure he wasn’t disappointed… but in some ways I was. I hoped he would take to the traveller lifestyle more like a duck to water than a fish out of it. I felt responsible for him having a good time and when I perceived that he was struggling I felt like I was failing. I suppose I was a bit naïve. I’d forgotten how it felt the first time I landed in a steaming Asian country and was forced to find my bearings in a seemingly alien culture.

Despite my concerns, Tom has reassured me since that his feelings about the trip are overwhelmingly positive. It’s true that he missed the comforts and the climate of home, he abhorred Bangkok and was challenged by the intense bouts of travelling… but there were moments he considers unforgettable, like sharing in a wedding celebration in a remote hill tribe village in the jungle of northern Thailand and sitting on a tropical island beach looking up at the stars and spotting a lightning storm far out to sea.

He also has mixed feelings about a few things, in particular the Thai rum buckets and their mania-inducing effects. There’s one story that springs to mind that I would love to share with you on the subject of the dangers of bucket stimulated psychosis but, alas, it is mostly Tom’s story so it must be his to tell. One day I hope he will let me write it down so we can all have a good laugh at his expense! And mine too.

I also had a good time in Thailand. For me it was all very familiar – it was my fifth time in Bangkok, my second visit to Chiang Mai and my third trip to Koh Tao. I suppose I’m a bit of a veteran, Thailand doesn’t really hold any surprises for me anymore – it’s quite predictable. Unlike India where you never know quite what’s going to happen next, Thailand exhibits the Ronseal Effect: it does exactly what it says on the tin. As long as you abide by it’s few unwritten rules then you will be safe and happy as well as hot and sweaty…

I tell a lie, I just stated that Thailand doesn’t hold any surprises for me anymore but I did get a big one when I whipped off this hot Thai chick’s pants one night and found myself confronted with a little brown cock…

I speculated for a good couple of minutes whether I should leave that line hanging but in the end realised that this blog will potentially be read by lots of different kinds of people, and while many may be amused and know I’m joking, some might be appalled and assume I’m not – so, for the sake of clarity, let me elucidate – there were no close calls with lady boys… not on this trip anyway.

There was a surprise though. A big one. It was about five metres long from tip to tail and it had a big, amiable grin.

I saw the whale shark on my first dive on Koh Tao on this trip. My alarm woke me at 7 o clock and I lay in bed for a couple of minutes debating with myself about whether I could be bothered to get up and go diving. This usually happens but the active, dynamic, outdoorsy Ollie that many of you are unfamiliar with invariably wins the argument. I got up, dressed and walked the short distance down the road to the dive shop. An hour and a half later we were 2 kilometres from Koh Tao and in the water preparing to descend. That’s the moment when you know it’s all going to be worthwhile – you’ve been through all the rigmarole of getting your kit together, getting it on, lugging yourself to the side of the boat and then balancing precariously top heavy as you slip on your fins one by one – as soon as you’re in the water you’re weightless and all you have to worry about is breathing.

We descended together to about 27 metres and the dive master – a chubby Mancunian with legs covered in mosquito bite scars and the gift of the gab and hence a disproportionately fit girlfriend – led us around the dive site, which was very nice. Visibility was good and we saw some nice little fishies. Suddenly there was a commotion. An underwater commotion is unlike one you might experience on land – it’s all very muted and in slow motion. I could hear a couple of people banging on their tanks and the sound of exclamations muffled by regulators (the bit the air comes through that you stick in your mouth). I looked around and observed half a dozen divers motionless in the water, looking towards the surface. I followed their gaze and then I saw it, gliding through the water towards us, a whale shark, it’s mouth wide and jovial, it’s eyes seemingly glittering with intelligence, it swam amongst us and then slowly faded away into the green-blue murk.

We followed for a while but it was far too quick, even at it’s most languid pace. With our pulses racing and our peeled, we continued with our dive. We saw a giant barracuda – big deal. We saw a nudie branch – break out the bubbly. Then we saw the whale shark again, flanked by it’s entourage of cleaner fish. It disappeared almost as soon as it arrived. Then we saw it again. And again. And again. It was circling the reef, seemingly fascinated by the ever increasing number of scuba divers thrashing excitedly in the water around it.

It was such an incredible beast. I can’t begin to describe the feeling of being in open water and having a shark at least ten times bigger than you pass within metres of where you’re floating. It’s not fear – because Whale Sharks are not dangerous. You experience a mixture of awe and adulation and visceral sensation that comes up from the depths of your inherited consciousness… you feel so alive it’s almost too much to bear.

I was out of the water and back on the boat changing my tank when a shout went up and the captain’s children started pointing into the water off the starboard side of the boat… starboard side? I’m having a laugh – I have no idea which side of the boat it was but when I looked I could see a huge shadow moving beneath the surface of the water. Quick as a flash I grabbed my mask and snorkel and dived into the water – I don’t mind telling you that as I did this I felt like an absolute hero. I haven’t had many opportunities to feel like a hero in my life but jumping off a diveboat in persuit of a shark was definitely one of them... it’s just a shame there were no hot chicks around to impress with my fearless machismo.

Absurd and unbelievable as it sounds, this sixth sighting of the whale shark was by far the best. I swam with near-manic haste towards where I thought the shark was to be found… and then I realised the shark was swimming towards me. I stopped dead in the water, bobbing on the surface, my mask and snorkel allowing me to observe the scene in the ocean below. The shark swam directly beneath me - it was less than five metres away. I duck dived down to within a couple of metres as it glided past and I had to fight the irresponsible compulsion to reach out a hand and touch it. Big nature at intimately close quarters… there’s nothing quite like it.

One of the dive instructors on our boat was a charming French girl called Aurelie who had over five thousand dives under her belt, but until that morning had never once seen a whale shark. There was also a couple who had just started their Basic Open Water training who had dived a staggering two times before. With only thirty dives behind me I felt quite privileged to have been so close to such an amazing creature.

As I said repeatedly for the rest of the week to anyone and everyone who was interested (and a great many who weren’t) swimming with the whale shark was the best thing that ever happened to me. In retrospect I reckon perhaps that was a bit of an exaggeration, but now that I come to think about it, some of the greatest moments of my life have been in nature.

To feel truly alive is to feel totally and unequivocally part of the natural environment in which you place yourself, without barriers and obstructions and safety nets, whether you’re at the bottom of the ocean or on top of a mountain – or in your local park with your toes curled in the grass. To experience the diversity, the beauty and the possibilities inherent in it first hand – that experience is something to be cherished, respected and sought after because it offers the ultimate perspective, and the true beauty of it is that it’s not difficult to attain – it’s not exclusive. All you really need to do is go into the countryside, walk up a hill and reflect for a moment on the sanctity of the natural world, and you will experience some measure of the freedom that is available to us all.

View my Thailand photographs

Australia from start to finish and beyond... from a certain point of view

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.