23

1am: I can't believe I've still got these pants on. Haven't had a chance to do any laundry because of the relentless need to keep moving of the last few days, so the ones I have on are already recycled from last week and after today, even the fact they're on back-to-front doesn't dilute the unmistakable stench of piss as I slip between the sheets. I feel a bit ashamed, but too tired to care. I've pulled the bed towards the fan I finally managed to prise from the owner's death grip and I'm grateful for it now as the room's fusty, damp and hot as hell. Still as a corpse and twice as smelly, I'm drifting off in a heady fug of wet heat and damp tramp crotch smell and barely have time to consider the contrasts of the day. From the morning's glory to the night's terrors in just under 24 hours - this must be what life's like for coffee beans. They always start life in exotic surroundings, but then end up in a Norbury greasy spoon. With that thought the sandman appears, with a peg on his nose, takes hold and I'm gone.

11:30pm: The bus finally rolls into Dempasar station and with it the familiar dread of clambering hands and discarded notions of personal space boundaries. Dismounting, I'm clothes-lined into the side of the door by an over-zealous taxi driver and angrily shove back, spitting my distemper through a sagging mouth and rolling pie eyes. Everything's sore and aching and tired and confused. I silently pray for a quick solution - that a shiny guesthouse lies just behind the station's fuming hub of noise with food, beer and breakfast included. Maybe a nice story to help me drift away and take my mind off my pants - something with a reckless mole who's blind to his own shortcomings - but I know it's never that easy and wheeling Daddy Bag onto my back, with Mummy Bag on my front, me and the others walk the wrong way for 10 minutes before realising our mistake.

By then it's too late and any hope of finding somewhere to bed down at this time of night quickly begins to dribble out of me like cranberry sauce at the Stroke Society's Christmas do. I find myself Goleming after another group, misguidedly hoping to limpet onto their successes, but, as is seasonal, for all of us now, there's no room at any inn. Casting eight ninja turtles shadows against the crumbling streets around the bus station a decision is made to rent a minivan and when the deal is finally made I'm struck by how much emphasis the driver places on the prefix of the term. Mini is entirely accurate and with the appropriate grunts, tsks and ninja moves, eight stinking, tired and grumpy (me leading the field in all categories) travellers shoehorn themselves into the mini(scule) van and head down the road to Kuta. It must have more instant food and sleep options. It's the right decision.

The guidebook calls Kuta not pretty, but I'd go further than that and suggest its positively disfigured. As we approach bass pounds and vibrates through the tin walls of our can-pram and eventually we're tipped out into the ketchup streets; late and in full swing. Shirtless, drooling dirtbags crab alongside us with a late-night swagger I mirror through fatigue and finally we settle for a hostel, embelished by the forgiving cloak of sundown. The room's got the customer review of three turd streaks wiped down the wall behind the toilet, but it's too late, in every sense of the word, for me to give that much of my own shit and change my mind. I just need to pursuade the owners to lend me an extra fan as the ceiling-mounted offering is set to suck, neatly emulating its own ability to function. Now for dinner - after a wait of over 12 hours anything will do, and in the kebab we settle for, literally anything could be in it. I squelch into the flakey meat and sweet sauces with the promise of cheap beer to wash it down and firm up my plans to leave this place tomorrow. Like the guesthouse, it stinks.

4pm: I'm feeling surprisingly upbeat. They may have sat me next to the fattest narcaleptic in Indonesia, whose idea of bonding has been his adhesively sweaty thighs sticking to mine throughout the bus journey while he peacefully slumbers, but we've reached the ferry port now and that means we're making progress. Getting on board is a dieselly affair, but above the fumes there's an air-conditioned room and shouting us above deck are a couple of nutters slicking about in the oily water of the pier. They're shouting for coins, apparently, and when they're thrown overboard the oily ticks penguin beneath the surface to snatch them up. I'm made a little uncomfortable by their life-limiting escapades, but beaming up at the boat, they appear happy and it's nothing a good soak in Fairy Liquid won't solve.*

As I watch Java shrink into the distance I'm relieved. It's been a sleepless couple of weeks and just downright tough at times, but today more than made up for it and thoughts of the morning colour my memories a rosy hue. The AC room has kicked off now and amongst the insistent cries for various instant noodle treats, the room has erupted into a karaoke den. I'm more tempted than you will ever know, but the crowd's hostile at best - at worst genuinely angry when I try to encourage the participators with applause - so I decide to give this one a miss. The boat finally begins to slow as we approach Bali, which is actually a relief as the 'singing' is testing everyone's screechy thresholds, and we start to load back up on the bus. Bali - land of beauty in more ways than one as it's here that I'll reunite with Nabila. Can't wait. Fatty-fatty sleep-sleep has disembarked and I have a seat of my own now. It's all good.

9am: How can I have been up for six hours already? I'm completely exhausted, but totally exhilarated. What a morning! It's been 12km of winding mountainous paths, up and down, but the sights and the colours and the feeling of achievement - these are the reasons I've done this trip and this was another one of those moments to feel blessed. The guesthouse is so basic but now that we've got back, the planet requires that I have a wash. The bathroom is cold - as cold as I've experienced in Asia and although I'm still flushed from the trek, getting naked is an instantly diminishing affair. No shower here, just a trough of freezing water and a plastic jug.

I countdown from five, squeezing my eyes shut and gritting my teeth - bracing for impact and condensing even further from the anticipation... The water tips, it hits, it saturates - then I scoop more and do it again and again, discharging the strange language icy water exudes from humans while furiously lathering the soap onto my smelly bits. Every bit. Goo-gaa-cak-cak-bah-baa-chis-chis-hahh-ha...! And it's over. I'm clean. I'm refreshed. I'm alive. It feels great and the lethargy just slips away. It's nearly half past now and our first leg of the long journey to Bali is about to begin, but I'm ready for it. Bring it on.

4:30am: The sun is about to rise. We've been walking uphill now for two hours and the layers (it's all about layers) have been gradually peeled off one by one. Started with five, now I'm on two. Looking over to the summit of Mount Bromo, it's quite a sight as the cloud florets mushroom into the tangerine spaces invented by the rising sun. The volcano is spoiled by this every morning, but for me, it's a moment to savour. We consume the view for another five minutes before moving on - gotta get to the top, make it all worth the work. We walk on for another 30 minutes and the path turns to road, we have to be nearly there. The sun's beating us now and I'm struck by how many times in Asia it's been a race against the firey star - sundown, sunset, sunrise; get there, see it, be there - a small window, but when will you get the opportunity again? I need the sun to burn this image onto my memory and I will make it. For the last 100 metres I run up the stairs - like Challenge Anneka, people are pointing upwards and shouting encouragement and my bum wobbles dutifully as I reach the top.

Wow. Ignore the people, this is stunning. It looks like a painted backdrop and can't possibly be real, but it is. Bromo sits eternally and the reds of the sun erupt the volcano for all of us to see. Shadows quickly turn to faces and light begins to lick life into the scene before you know it. But I was there. I saw it. Pictures and videos ensue and then the trek continues as we don't have much time. It's downhill, but the sun is hot now and rising fast. The path eventually flattens out into a plateau leading to the volcano itself. It's moon-like and its emptiness catches in your throat; the stillness and peace a surprise given the hoards of tourists at the summit. They couldn't walk the walk though and this is our reward. The hostel is just the other side of Bromo, a mere hour's trot in the sun. It's dusty and volcanic and at 7:30am it feels good to already be able to say, what a day.

2am: Shivering. Cold. Didn't sleep as much as I should. Probably got off at around 11pm in the end. Felt like Christmas as a kid where all you want is for it to be the other side of this wait. Sod it - I'm getting up early and putting on my layers (it's all about layers). I have my torch ready, woolly hat on and two pairs of socks. It seems almost perverse to hear the alarm go off at 2:30am, especially as I'm already dressed in preparation for the day. I open the door and start to see dark figures emerging from their rooms. It's time to leave and we all know this is gonna be a long day. I just hope it doesn't rain.

Well, there you go. Thought I'd try something a little different this week. Had a week off for Christmas - but you got the video, so what're you complaining about? Hope you all had a fantastic day and have a great new year too. Nabila has been here for a week now and we've had the most incredible time at beautiful hotels and restaurants, but I'll save that for another time. Merry Christmas, Everyone. X

(*It is. They will definitely die young)

The Undiscovered Country

Here are some things I’ve done which would make the Traveller Police literally spit their maggoty stink fruit out:

- Been to KFC two days in a row

- Watched the whole series of I’m a Celebrity... over three days (to be fair, I was ill; but it was fantastic)

- Asked three separate guesthouse owners to remove the chickens from my vicinity. When they didn’t, I attempted. The chickens went mental.

- Got a motorbike taxi driver to take me to seven different hostels because each time we would arrive at another construction site.

- Yelled SHUT UP! From my room every time a local spoke near me.

OK, that purging of the conscience does make me feel a little better. A lot of these are sleep-related though and as Nabila and any ex-member of Habitat (my house in Norwich) will tell you, if I don’t get my eight hours, I’m a horrible bastard... get me out of here. But this is about new beginnings and my arrival in a new country wipes the slate clean, as far as I’m concerned. Now I love noise when I’m trying to sleep.*

So I’ve bid my final farewell to the grabby clambering of the Vietnamese, but will always remember the kindness extended to me at the wedding of [VIETNAMESE MAN’S NAME] and [VIETNAMESE WOMAN’S NAME] that I was invited to. Thank God for that, in fact, as most of the other locals I encountered there were pretty bloody awful. Sorry, but that was my experience. The Traveller Police will have next-to-none of that maggoty stink fruit (look up durian fruit and you’ll see it. It stinks. Hence the name) left by the end of this post. But anyway, as I’ve indicated in the lines above (paragraph two, line four, ‘new country’) I’m currently sitting under a different sun in a world where the water goes the other way down the plughole. I’m in Indonesia. (The ‘new country’)

This part of my trip was principally about getting to Bali for Christmas to reunite with my very own little stink fruit (love you!) Nabila and watch her get sad. (As we discussed in our first months together, every time someone says Merry Christmas, a Muslim dies) Because of this (the movement across Indonesia, not the Islamicide) I’ve been here for a week and haven’t done much more than travel towards my festive destination, but in doing so I have obviously interacted with many of the locals, who have just been fantastic. A world away (or at least a country) from the Vietnamese, Indonesians are always pleased to see you. Every person you pass in the street beams up at you (they are rather short) and waves or says hello. My enduring memory of the people so far is of teeth and although some of these can resemble the clustering dental inadequacies of a mako shark, they are always on show for my benefit and not, thankfully, only available during financial transactions.

In Vietnam’s favour, so to speak, the attempts of country after country (Chinese, French, US) to attack, colonise or pinch from them could have caused this hostile predisposition and so you can’t really blame the people for being a little on the sod off side. But whether it be because of their faith, their beautiful unspoilt landscapes, their weather, beaches or food, the Indonesians are a happy bunch (just look at those lovely little kiddistinkles in the photo) and being around them makes me beam too. Apart from the call to prayer every morning at 3:30am. That, admittedly, is something which requires work. Not much work though – just move it to 7:30am. There. All done.

As a country, Indonesia is not as much on the traditional SE Asian stomping around list and I think this also contributes to their open, warm and friendly nature. Simply put, we haven’t had the chance to fuck it up yet. They haven’t had time to tire of the endless plod of crusty feet and underwear that makes up the typical traveller and sicken of the late-night tourists, hopelessly lost and jabbing an optimistic finger at a non-descript photograph trying to get home (see Snap, Cankle and Pop Part One) They seem to really love their country and are fiercely protective of its traditions and portrayal across the world. This is evident in the recent article exclaiming that a group of Indonesian punk rockers were arrested by the police, shaved bald, taken to a river to wash, given new (conservative) clothes, all while being forced to listen to more mainstream and less punky music. Hang on, that’s not really good, is it? No, it isn’t. It’s mental. So they are, at least, keeping that aspect of SE Asians alive.

The journey across the country has been tough though and none of it made any easier by the lack of any others’ presence before me. The truth is the people are exceptional, the countryside an unblemished jewel, but the guesthouses just suck ball-bags. For the most part, they stick rigidly and unswervingly to the description of a room, in that that’s exactly and only what you get. Four walls, often hastily constructed out of a bigger area from MDF, a floor and a bed. So what if the bed has visible festering mould on it? Who cares if it’s so damp you wake up in the morning feeling as though someone’s flicked you into the middle of a rainforest? And did you say you wanted to sleep next to some cockerels again? Well, that’s all part of the deal. Roll on, Bali. I’m man enough to admit I’m not man enough to take it without some Western comforts. Let’s face it, I’m no man.

Still, the endless journeys (32 hours in the last week – that’s nearly a full-time job!) have afforded me the opportunity to perfect my now regular bus routines of:

- Soundlessly mouthing the words to the Anita Baker album, Rapture, while fixedly staring out the window so no-one can see the tormented emotion in my face as I mime along. Closed eyes; the lot.

- Maintaining a faraway look of deep contemplation when anyone gets on to try and sell me something.

- Waiting for a tight gap on the road between vehicles, eagerly announcing, ‘you could get a bus through that’ and then breathlessly scanning the bus for a reaction. Nothing.

There you have it then. I’m on my way to my last few stops in SE Asia and it’s definitely a good thing to experience the other side of this continent’s offerings. So I’ve experienced it now. That’s enough. I need another KFC.

(* I don’t)

The Good, The Bad and The Early

Vietnam has been a strange place, where the ratio of mentals to lovelies is almost completely proportionate. That is to say that when you have a good experience with one local (share a joke in a local store) almost immediately something pretty vile occurs to redress the balance (guesthouse owner walking into your room at 6am to show people round). This post aims to reflect this Vietnamese phenomenon of ensuring a status quo is maintained - don't get too joyful or carefree because there's something terrible around the corner to even things up. That's Vietnam.

Let's start with the good because they're the most boring to read - we'll get to the bad (great) stuff later. Mui Ne is a small and well-stocked beach resort on the southern coast of the country. Arriving by bus, you hurtle down the main 'strip' on your way into town where neon lights throb out of wooden shacks - some with glitzy fairy lights in straight lines to entice people in like a human runway. The theme here is fish, which invariably meant a lot of normals banging on about how I have to try a scaly mouthful. I didn't. They feigned outrage to make their tired and dull lives more interesting. (Being self-referential makes me feel powerful) Anyway, because of the sea's proximity, the outsides of restaurants have a veritable smorgasbord of animal rights travesties woefully glugging at you from their shabbily constructed fishy shanty towns. Dogfish Beaker at their glass prison walls dejectedly and huge crustaceans tune into Cruelty FM with intertwining antennas. From a beautiful sea-view apartment to a luckless grief-hole faster than you can say, 'I can't eat it all.'

I spent three sand-filled days in Mui Ne; swimming, gazing at the perilous kite-surfers (one girl died doing it while we were there - isn't this meant to be the 'good' section?) and avoiding seafood. We took motorbikes - now becoming a staple of the SE Asian experience - to the beautiful white sand dunes and arranged to be there at sundown for optimum cliché. It really was stunning though and the picture that makes this post finally, after three weeks of none. Apologies. The colours and the spectacle more than made up for the propensity of sand to whip and fondle its way into your crevices and watching the sun melt into the nearby lake from our sandy vantage point will be something I remember for a long time.

Just before we left for the dunes, our rusty-toothed guesthouse owner, Mr Ho, insisted that we make it to a local wedding reception taking place at the digs later that night. This was just about kicking off by the time we got back and after spading the sand out of the aforementioned crevices, we settled into the hedonistic hootenanny. The locals were kind, generous and unbelievably drunk and seemed to make it their mission to get us there with them - well, it would be rude not to. We had all kinds of food poured onto our table, from an entirely tasteless pink and green rice 'cake', to a decimated duck dish and every time our glasses were half empty, we had to down it, '100%!', with an accompanying cry of, 'yo!' - which I'm sure means cheers. Or hello. Or yeay. Something. The music was completely deafening, musically illogical and brutally tuneless, but when we were fished up onto stage we gave it our all in the 'sing literally anything' part of the evening. One song. One and a half hours.

So that was the good. Now for the bad:

Happily cruising down the road on our way to the dunes, drinking in the sights and warm tropical air, a squishy pug-nosed man in uniform suddenly appeared in the middle of the road waving us over with his authority stick - and who were we to question the authority of a stick? I had heard about this from many travellers - about the corrupt police who pull you over and extort money from you, but, as the saying goes, you never think it's gonna be you. I was furious about it though and when he started to draw his filthy little rat claw over the well-worn document declaring, 'you pay fine of 160,000 dong', I kind of lost it a bit.

You do have a little more gumption in these circumstances, knowing full well they don't understand a word you're saying, so I let him know how I felt about him and his sickening scam, pretty much calling him every name under the sun. I also told them I worked for the BBC and would write a report on them, which seemed to be about as useful as threatening someone in a language they don't understand, but in the end they let us go; giving us a 60,000 dong reduction, I think mainly for our staying power. You cannot imagine how hard it was to resist giving them the finger as we left - it took every morsel of self-restraint I had and resulted in extra off-colour jokes later on in the evening to make up for it. Must... offend...

Think of the Mekong Delta and you can't help but picture a highly romanticised image of boat people, gorgeous scenery and craggy peninsulas. That's what I saw in my mind's eye as well when I booked the three-day trip a few days ago. The guidebook said good things and I had some time to kill, so I thought, why not? Here's why not:

The first day was OK. The journey wasn't the most comfortable, but was mercifully short and had a well-informed guide (who spoke like he had a mouth full of water) meaning we arrived fresh and ready to take it all in. This was the first organised trip I've been on, if you don't count treks, which are a bit different - more trekky - and straightaway it seemed odd. The people were OK, apart from an incredibly ugly Russian duo who spent half the afternoon trying to get a monkey high through the bars of his enclosure, but it was strange to be led from one buying opportunity to the next. Lots to see and do though and some great photo opps. Watch coconut candy being made, listen to locals sing (awkward) try the tropical fruits of the region, wear a snake - you know the drill. In the evening I shared dinner with some Aussies and went to bed early.

The next morning I was woken by the phone in the room going off just before 6am. 'What?' I demanded. 'God moning.' 'What?' I repeated. Click. We had to get up for 7am, so a call at 6am was completely unnecessary. Already vexed by this, I made my way downstairs for a piece of bread and some water - 'breakfast' was included, you see - and sat about for an hour thinking about how I could have still been asleep. We then travelled to the floating market, which was all right. Not particularly life-changing though and certainly not worth getting up so early for. It basically consisted of people throwing fruit into each other's boats and kids looking bored. They weren't the only ones. Then we went to watch rice noodles being made (whoop) and jack fruit being grown (cheer) The day would've been rounded off beautifully by a trip to the paint-drying factory, but I guess we didn't have time.

After the day's activities (which finished at midday - pisstake) we were driven for 'two' (three) hours to the arsehole of the earth and after waiting for everyone else to get their room, I was told there were no rooms left for me. The owners walked me over to another guesthouse, which was without doubt the worst I have ever seen in SE Asia. Wires sticking out of the walls, stains and filth caking the room and a moving floor of all types of insects - I wasn't pleased. The men next door kept me awake all night by phleming up and coughing as though they were shouting while watching teeny pop videos at full volume until I knocked at their door and told them to shutthefuckup. Exhausted and now unwell because of my lack of rest, I decided to forego the last day's agenda and asked to be put on the next bus back to Saigon, a local bus apparently and that's when it got interesting.

Saigon is separated into many districts - 2-many are for locals and the tourists almost exclusively only frequent district 1. When we got to Saigon, the bus pulled over and, while I tried to ask where we were, I was shouted at and physically thrown off the bus, with onlookers laughing and staring. Eventually, after wandering around in a bit of a terrified daze, I noticed that one of the shop's signs indicated we were in district 5. The people on the street then tried to get a crazy amount of money out of me to get to the one address I fortunately had on a hostel card in my pocket. Every time they quoted me about 10 times as much as it should be, knowing full well I was miles away and had no other way of getting there, they smiled and laughed about it. I suddenly felt very intimidated, alone and lost.

I started to get angry and shouted at them (very sweary - which they enjoyed enormously) until I finally relented and got on the back of one of their bikes (I literally had no other choice) for a 15-minute death ride through the choking smog. I got bike boy (finger missing, sweaty smell) to pull up at the travel agents and stormed in, demanding they pay for the bike, which, surprisingly, they did. I then spent about 30 minutes detailing my misadventures in the Delta and finally got a quarter of my money back. For SE Asia that's unheard of, so I'm quite pleased with myself. Think it was the cold talking.

So that's the bad - now the early:

As you've read, if you've got this far. This is, admittedly, a very long post. But then I haven't really written anything about Vietnam, so stop your bleedin' moaning. I got no sleep on the Delta trip, but before this, I stayed a couple of nights in Saigon. The guesthouse owner curled us into his beautiful room for three and, I have to admit, it was the quietest I've ever been in while staying in such a crazy city. At around 3am this all changed though. I was dreaming about teaching, I think, and being subjugated by the monsters, when they all started making this perculiar noise - like a high-pitched screeching. One, then two, then eventually all of them, making this same three-tone noise. It was bizarre until I finally woke to the sound of a cockerel giving it the morning big one. But how? I was four storeys up a building in the middle of Saigon - and it sounded like it was right outside the room.

Imagine my surprise when, once I'd been lying awake for around four hours because of the constant, relentless, merciless crowing, the sun came up and I could now see, right outside the window, almost on the ledge, a tiny wooden box with a cockerel in it. The gravity of my argument at 6am in reception was diluted considerably by my trifle hair, squashed up fatigue face and furious chicken impression and I knew while performing I would laugh about it eventually. Just not yet. Cockerels became a theme for the next few days, being woken by one three days later in exactly the same circumstances and then sharing a bus with a bag full of them a day after that. I hate them. (insert cock joke here - is 'insert cock' good enough?)

Right, that'll bloody do. Thanks to a record four comments on the last post. Victoria, you can be a part-time fussy eater if you want, but it's just not as much fun; Simon, a thoughtful response which informs as well as enlightens about your stance on the issue; Rob, you are right about the mayonnaise thing, but it wasn't cos it was foreign, it's cos it's made out of eggs, which are chicken periods; and Nabila - I only try things to make you proud. Happy now? I'm off to Indonesia tomorrow to begin my trek to Bali for Christmas time. It is Christmas soon, isn't it? Someone tell the sun that. Laters.