happy birthday pop!

happy birthday dad!

Oz

AUSTRALIA NOW!

There are lots of things that i miss about Laos. Looking at some photos of our 3-week trip (‘travelling’ isn’t really fair – we saw 3 towns) i realised how much i miss the clothes worn by foreigners on that great South-East-Asian circuit. Vest (Beerlao branded), linen trousers which either drape to the ground, or bunch around the knee (making me feel a bit like one of the forty thieves) and some self-consciously unworn flip-flops. No Lao person (Laotian?) i’ve ever seen wears this ridiculous set of peacock feathers, and those who do in Brighton tend to be seen only by the other squatters in their flat near Preston Park. But in South-East Asia, or the slither of it which i saw, it’s everywhere. The choice is between this or sweating around as a conspicuous fashionista. After all, cut-off denim shorts aren’t all that cool when it’s 40 degrees.

We’re in Australia now and everything is completely extortionate. The irony of our forgone drinks with dinner and tuk-tuk haggling’s futility does not escape us as we hand over 6 dollars for the four-fifths of a pint that they call a ‘schooner’. (The tuk-tuk chakras got us back with some crash-based karma.)

Haggling in very poor countries is one of those things which all foreigners fret over as a very personal dilemma – no one wants to deprive a smiley kid of dental care, but paying the quoted price of 25 pounds for a counterfeit West Ham shirt (sponsored by Jobswerve!) isn’t fun either. It’s galling to leave your cut-price 5-man ensuite with air-con to buy breakfast, and having to sidestep the woman washing with a hosepipe in the guesthouse courtyard. People who are backpacking tend to ponce around touting a very enlightened version of martyrdom through frugality, but it’s all a bit of a show really. Travelling in the Hard Seat carriage is cheaper and more exotic than it’s pampered and pillowed neighbour but on the whole we’re all on a foreign, if a little weighty, holiday.

Hostels in Australia are different. No one can afford a single room, so it’s all dorm-beds and conviviality. There are long-term hostel workers from a lucky dip (or smorgasbord – what is this word?! Why is the UK press suddenly full of it?!) of European countries, who form an insolently indolent model UN behind the laundry counter. There are the solitary bearded man who sits with a joint and teases his dreadlocks with all the precision of a watchmaker. Then there’s us – younger, more English, and arse-achingly out of place as we toil over a 45-minute game of pool.

We’ve been crawling up the Pacific Highway for 3 weeks now in Dylan. Dylan was not our choice of name. Maddy and Tessa chose it and we all think its rubbish. We even had to press Maddy to not name the poor sod ‘Dylon’, fearing we’d be mistaken for homesick tye-die enthusiasts. He’s a ’95 Ford Falcon and has a shelf-life of probably four weeks. A homeless German in Byron Bay gave a prognosis of two months, but we’ve taken many wrong turnings since then. He’s gone shaky and can’t speed up when Maddy floors it. Maybe he has Parkinson’s.

Jon! How could i forget Jon?! Jon the Great Canadian, Jon the fact-rich 24-year old who teaches Doctors how to do things via skype. We met him on Mt. Warning (named by either Captain Cook or volcano-conscious Aboriginals, depending on how PC your guide-book is) and a hitch to Surfers Paradise has evolved like a pokemon into a two-week trip up the coast. Jon knows lots and lots of facts, and often leaves at dusk to take pictures of the kangaroos and wallabies around our house. As such, i have a kind of trust for his authoritativeness that a toddler does for a parent or a primary school teacher. He knows too many facts to not trust, and being the wily North American he is, he’s used this to his advantage a bit. Last week, he told me that hummingbirds fly so quickly that they technically time-travel, and i responded with the sage concurrence of a slow nod. It’s a case of it’s-true-because-mummy-said-so and, frankly speaking, mummy lied.

Time to go and inspect Brum’s inspired design of ‘Steacon’ – like a Christmas pig-in-blanket for a tiger – pictures soon!

spicy laos

i've left china! hooray and boo hoo in equal measure. laos is very different to the parts of china that i saw and worked in. chinese staple pork and noddle soup has been revolutionised with the addition of a sprig of mint, and onlookers are a little less incredulous and a little more sombre.

apart from the kids, who run behind our bikes shouting 'sabaidii' which means hello (of course) and smiling and waving. almost scarred myself for life by falling off waving back (with helmet, of course mum). now put all the energy into a slightly unhinged smile and nob combo. we sometimes reply by saying 'sabaidii' as well, but we may be shouting a family-related insult because as soon as the kids reach 7 years old they seem to stop waving and smiling, instead glaring and trying to overcharge us for barbecued fish.

i'm currently in a place called luang prabang, famed for it's monks and temples, and monks who live in temples. it's a world away and a hundred times better than vang vieng which was utter hell on earth. more correctly, utter hell on tractor tube floating on river. it's been ruined by travellers (not like me, oh no no) and now is full of 'Friends' and 'Family Guy' bars where people sit and hallucinate and watch shit television. a fitting antidote to the water slides and vodka buckets of the Nam Song river which makes up the day-time itinerary. it's a town finely tuned to opiates, rope swings and jennifer anniston and it's as horrible as it sounds. still, free buckets from 8.30-10 at bucket bar! woo hoo!

all in all, am looking forward to purging said sins from my mind with some incense and monk-based fun.

MEPHEDRONE IN CHINA

I met Sun on West Street in Yangshuo. It’s the main shopping street in this mountainous tourist trap and Sun was perched on an impractically tiny stool behind a towering stall, covered in tarpaulin. He must have seen me through a periscope because he jumped to his feet. He held out his fist and, admiring his effort, I shook his clenched hand. Our conversation began as mine normally do here; a mispronounced introduction in Chinese, a la teenage internet chat room dating. ‘Tom. 18. English.’

He was a lovely chap! I’m going on a hike today, Sun. Such beautiful mountains in Yangshou! So beautiful they’re on the back of this 20 yuan note, see? No, give it back.

So I went to the caves yesterday. Ah! This was my cue. I whipped out The Cave Pic.

The Cave Pic is a photograph of me and 6 other English guys standing in a mud cave. A laminated, wipe-clean picture of 7 half-naked teenagers splashing around in a knee-deep pool of exfoliating mud. Oh yeah. The squaresquares go mad for the Cave Pic and Sun was no exception. Any way, what do you sell here Sun?

“Do you want Miaow?”

No! Had the status of mephedrone reached the dizzy heights of the Yangshuo mountains!? No, I bloody well don’t Sun and neither should you - it’s illegal now don’t you know? I can still hear Hattie Harman harping on, craning her pre-historic neck through her brother-in-laws new loft-extension’s window. It ain’t safe and, now, it ain’t legal.

You don’t want to do it, Sun. I’ve seen them, squatting in the corners of nightclubs like defecating gremlins as they chew their teeth to talcum powder. You can spot them a mile off, Sun, eyes as wide as their future mono-nostril. You don’t want to join the motor-mouth brigade, chattering away in a one-man tournament of Just A Minute (with flagrant disregard for the rule of no repetition.)

Miaow Miaow has become the new British pre-teen drug du jour, and was was recently in the papers a lot as it was banned by the government. This was newsworthy as the bearded bloke that disagreed with the Government was named after the Nutty Professor. Miaow also deserves special mention as Brighton’s third biggest export (after buy-to-let real estate and white-washed wooded furniture) but that’s a world away from Guangxi Province. Steer well clear, Sun.

A bit put-out, he pulled back the tarpaulin cover to show me his contraband wares.

He was selling plastic solar-powered cats. The Chinese ones which wave to give you good luck and money, high on nothing but the sun’s rays.

At least now he knows.

Don't Worry Ma, I'm Only Being Sick For Hours On End

spending 9 hours a day in an office with people speaking Chinese does odd things to your hearing. sometime in late february, somewhere deep in my synapses, cerebral beamont decided to give up on trying to relate these alien sounds to meanings. now he focuses instead on what the Chinese words sound similar to. there's a word used all the time which sounds identical to an unfortunate racial slur i think it means 'that'.

the most unsettling one is the word meaning 'correct', but used as yes - dui (dway). sounds harmless, but Chinese people in the office have a habit of shouting it a hundred times at once really, really quickly and out of nowhere. it sounds like a drum roll by the drummer of Slipknot, or a tommy gun. it's not the end of the world, but it makes me want to jump up and hide under the desk. DADADADADADADADADADADWAY! completely out of nowhere. pretty unsettling.

the long-anticipated trip to the Military Museum was every bit as GLORIOUS as expected. Lots of artefacts demonstrating in arse-aching detail how the Chinese army have developed to be quite so very good. being the only white guy in a feature exhibition of the Opium Wars (on a Chinese National Holiday, to boot) wasn't that much fun either. Glares all round!

we spent the last weekend in Qingdao, on a not-so-sunny beach trying to ignore the feeling that we were the only survivors in a post-apocalyptic ghost town. things looked up - hilariously, we stumbled upon China's Muscle Beach and spent a few minutes in a ridiculous face-off with some elderly chinese weightlifters (Workers' Stadium Tai chi regiment but with heavy weights). Andrew stole the show as a Under-21 Northern Ireland Deadlifting Champion (seriously, he brought a 3kg tub of meat powder to China). My contribution will be immortalised in an upcoming photoblog...

Then spent the night with people we'd met in the hostel, some people from New Zealand and Denmark and other countries that churn out incredibly nice people. had a good night watching West Ham win 1-0 and enjoying my revelation that i should start talking to only foreigners about UK football - they have no idea i'm as clueless as they are. BUT THEN:

the next day turned out a bit worse. as the others woke to meet the Kiwi Danishes and take a bus to hike the Laoshan mountains, i decided that it would be a much better idea to contract a kind of viral-food poisoning hybrid illness. my seaside hike turned into a glaring contest with our flu-ey chinese roommate (i may stink of sick but you snore like a fucking hoover, pal), and i spent the morning getting to know the toilet bowl, sent to sleep on the freezing tiled floor by the foghorn lullaby of The Flu-ey Roomie. then spent the rest of the day glowering at eachother as we lay in sickly slumber, like two sickly pissheads vying for some A&E attention in the waiting room.

Just got back into beijing from xi'an, where we saw the Terracotta Army (self-appointed 'eighth wonder of the world'). they're thousands of years old which is quite cool, especially when you consider that the only stuff we have from back then in the Uk are nondescript bronze slabs which might have been used for something somewhere by someone who was possibly important. Unfortunately, 1,000 of them are in Canada at the moment. ('on tour, like a rock band!'. Cue explanation of Spinal Tap to bemused Chinese lawyer). There were loads of them anyway. Luckily, cloud-bathing, weight-lifting and vomiting stayed off the cards. yay!

normandy travel blog

When i was 13, i went on a tour of Northern France with my basketball team to play at High Schools in the most grey and sullen towns that Normandy could muster (think The Road). This 5-day series of sporting Waterloos (i wish) was punctuated by a pretty incongruous day out at a war memorial site. I can't remember its name but it was absolutely vast, and a seminal pit-stop on a tour of Great War attrocities . It should have been a solemn place, but it wasn't. Oddly, there was no sadness in our teenage mourning that freezing afternoon, and as far as I can tell, the mourning of the other visitors.

There was a well-thumbed book in a monument building - a Yellow Pages of those who fell in the War and were buried there. We each took turns to leaf through the laminated pages in search of a war hero who also bore our names. (Predictibly, I didn't find one matching my non-surname - a pesky registrar and illiterate ancestor made sure of that many years ago) There was little remorse in this, but a boyish pride and nostalgia. For me, it was not put there to allow a personalised account of the thousands of white marble crosses, but a chance to feel some visible patriotism, by knowing that a relative contributed to the grand declarations of chivalry plastered on the walls. This was a chance to revel in the regalia of the catalogue of the dead, and in the achievement of people i felt i knew. Like looking for friends in a school photo or a sibling's name on the board of sports captains in the school hall.

It felt like mourning to be seen as mourning; outwardly paying my dues for not having to speak German. I remember my self-congratulations at the saintly humility of trudging down the rows of allied men, then turning to walk with the Schmidts and Mullers. I'd like to think that ever year on the 11th November, i stand at the rain at the Old Steine for different reasons. I'm not convinced.

I' about to leave the flat to meet a colleague for a tour around the China People's Revolution Military Museum. I've a feeling it might have a slightly different vibe...

Keen and Able

Haven't posted for ages because it's just suddenly got a little harder to sidestep the Great Firewall of China. I have to do a complicated thing with something called a VPN to get onto some websites, like computer hacking! It takes me ages, making me feel like a massive computer illiterate and a little like James Bond or someone from The Matrix. Anyway, it's working today..

Every day, a number of lawyers from other firms come to the office to chat, and take part in the Chinese business practice of nepotism 'guanxi'. This means that, every day, I perform the ritual of nodding in mock understanding as the newest guest hears a description, in Chinese, of me and what I’m doing at the firm. My guess is that, depending on who’s telling them, they get a very different story to the last man. Explaining to a Chinese colleague my plan of a ‘gap year then joint honours degree then hopefully conversion masters’ isn’t very easy. As a result, stories that are partly wrong get hawked around the office and come back wildly different to the first one. Like a real life version of Chinese whispers! However tempting it is to reply ‘Yes Mr Lei, I do live in Chateauneuf-du-Pape’, I correct people. Trying, of course, not to make them lose face by implying that the real reason I’m not a French postgraduate is because no one understands a bloody word I’m saying!

In the end, the Backstreet Boys played and were amazing. They even did a take on the First Rule of Fight Club! All the interns loved it. Apart, of course, from me and Andrew who weren’t let in. It turns out that some ‘aspects of Britain’s culture’, like paper trails and receipts can be really useful and wouldn’t do much harm here. (‘No no no, it’s just a different way of doing things darling!’) So we went to a local bar to celebrate what was left of St Patrick’s Day with this man until 6.30am:

(girl in photo’s name is not ‘Andrew’)

We went to a local Chinese restaurant the other evening, and it was a disaster. There was no picture menu (very common here! Weird) so we pointed at other customers’ plates. Unfortunately this offended some of them. Each time we tried to order something they just stared with midly insulted confusion, as if I’d stormed into a McDonalds shouting ‘Anastaszia, the best table in the house!’

So next time I’ve vowed to just pick 6 numbers from the menu. I’ll work something out like people who play the lottery do, using relative’s birthdays. I was very careful though, specifying repeatedly that we wanted FIVE dumplings. Predictably, five full plates of dumplings arrived so we took them away in a bag and had them 2 days later. Gross.

We went to the Great Wall of China! It was really beautiful, and it was lovely to see mountains and countryside after over a month in central Beijing. Here is a photo of me on the wall!

We also went to beijing zoo. It was horrendously depressing for obvious reasons. The pandas (national tweasure of china) get their own restricted area. The large cats are kept in prison cells, in a building halfway between a workhouse and guantanamo bay. Photos to come chaps! And pig’s trotters is the latest addition to my list of recently conquered foodstuffs. Had a delicious beef dish today that tasted like a Burger King burger. I know it doesn’t sound nice, but also on my tray was a seafood-flavoured yoghurt and sweet seaweed. It’s all relative!