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!

sad mother's day :(

I have unwittingly spent the last week testing my digestive system. A dinner of Dog meat and a brunch (Chinese people call it 'lunch'. it's not lunch. it's at 11:30) of duck's stomach and that dangly thing under a chicken's chin have all been eaten. All completely finished, in fact (don't offend the host, now), by me with my newly expert chopstick claw. NB however many brownie points asking for the local speciality gets you, it's ALWAYS COMPLETELY RANK.

My not-that-supervising supervisor is away from Beijinjg for a few days, during which i've been trying to pimp myself out to any lawyer inside the firm. My pledges of perfect English, patience and a gentle touch remain untested. So i'm doing this at work again, whilst getting very exciting about seeing the Backstreet Boys next wednesday. That night promises to be the most spectacular two hours of pretending to be disinterested i have ever, or will ever, spend.

new events: backstreet boys tickets were thrown away, along with the remnants of our delivery macdonalds from the night before. one of the hotel 'Early Morning Room Boy' cleaners chucked them. sensible things like purchase insurance and paper trails don't exist in China so we've no hope. we're planning on turning up regardless, and taking the venue staff to our (empty) seats to try to let us in. two non-chinese-speaking young men describing the loss of tickets whilst inadvertently criticising the ridiculous ticket purchase arrangements? what could go wrong...

here you go mum!

and i will not be seeing:

before you criticise someone, you should walk a mile in their robe

the view from my window is typical of Beijing i think. There are high-rise modern apartment blocks, a shiny green glass office tower and a building site that seems to have lay dormant for the last two weeks. but when i woke up this morning and looked out of the window, the ground was covered in snow! so the view was slightly less grey. it was only half an inch thick, but meant that a) all of the taxis were full, b) the subway was absolutely rammed and c) the OAP Slo-Mo Tai Chi Regiment were not on parade. not that they should be barrack-bound for long, no one does organised snow clearing like the chinese. brighton and hove council take note!

hit a bit of a dry patch this morning work-wise, so i'm actually writing this out sitting at my desk in between reading about boring chinese contract law and reading a local litter reduction unfortunately titled 'BRING BACK TRASH!'

it's been a few days since i last wrote and i've seen a bit more of beijing. i went to a networking event at peking university and spent two hours trying to explain my (apparently quite complicated) plans for the future to a hundred different prodigal law students. met a 17-year old girl in her second year of university, reading for TWO degrees at the same time. it was a bit like meeting an oracle or shaman. nevertheless, she was mighty impressed that i'd been in a Student Union (read: infighting events committee) and so i talked it up appropriately. gave out some business cards to try and get some guanxi. got none back.

we did a lot of sightseeing at the weekend, the highlight of which was probably buying a traditional robe and then wearing it to the supermarket. it looked like this:

we also went to Tian. Square but that was a bit of a disappointment. just a square really! went to the forbidden city (not a city, more a decorated wind tunnel) and it looked like this:

also we went to the summer palace which was amazing - a giant park with a huge man-made lake. this sounds normal enough, but in true Beijing seemingly-normal-but-at-the-last-moment-completely-insane style, the next clearing we walked in to was FULL OF DANCING OAPs! there were hundreds of them all bopping around to the sounds of a crooner standing at the front. it was casual enough so we joined in but, in response to some subsonic cue that we must have missed, the OAPs suddenly moved into a line formation and started to dance choreographed dance in unison. a sort of maccarena meets the Cha Cha slide. needless to say, suddenly feeling very sheepish, we floundered in the sea of nimble oldies for a few minutes before breaking ranks and shuffling awkwardly away. we were delayed for a few minutes by this man's advances:

but we made it back to the hotel in the end.