Goodbye Yellow Brick Road 2

Another final post for the second time in my own blogging history then. (see www.millsdoescanada.blogspot.com for more details) I would say have your tissues at the ready, but you're on the internet and the chances are they're close to hand anyway. I've done a lot of fantastic things on this journey - seen some amazing things and met flocks of fuckers (you can have good fuckers too) but in order that we have agreeable symmetry here, there needs to be a resolution at the end. Of course, were this Star Wars, or any traditional hero myth (I'm the hero, needless to say) this would be the darkest night of my soul, being the second part; but regrettably life doesn't always echo the Star Wars universe. Which is a bloody shame if you ask me; although on the plus side, I don't have to lose a hand.

So now there were two. Nabila and I had spent an incredible 10 days in Bali, but with Christmas and New Year blobbing satisfyingly around our waists, it was time to make a move. Flying into Kuala Lumpur late at night meant that as we drove towards our hotel, the iconic Petronas Towers were a shimmering and sparkling beacon lighting our way through the darkness. The differences in wealth were as blinding as the landmark we sped towards and perfect asphalt signalled a far richer country than those I'd been ratting around in previously. The room had a [superlative] view of the towers, which you can see in the photo at the top, and a free bar from 5:30pm-7:30pm meant I could bring the tone down, Norfolk-style.

Acts of shame:

After getting carried away the first night of the free bar and barely remembering eating in a restaurant with the 'best Malaysian food in KL' - although photographs indicate I was there - where I constantly harassed the waitress, reminding her she was Malaysian. Not maliciously, you understand, just out of drunken incredulence - I thought it was a good idea to get whammed the following night as well. The whole time I've been out in SE Asia I've never had any shoes, just sandles/flip-flops, so not wanting to waste time after going out for the day - a trip carefully engineered by moi to get us back in time for the free booze - I arrived in the Horizon Club (see - Horizontal Club) with my dazzling yellow flip-flops flipping and flopping with growing temerity towards the chilled beers.

Walking into the club is a feeling I can only compare to how Charlie must have felt as the doors to the Chocolate Factory opened. Just for the record though, I definitely wouldn't have swum in a lake of beer because with that much beer available, some pissed-up inconsiderates would unquestionably have taken a slash in it. So as Nabila rolled her eyes skyward, I skipped, danced and sang my way through free drink after free drink until I'd shelved the flip-flops and now was swaying towards the bar blitzed and barefoot. Fancying a break from watching the Discovery Channel playing out opposite her, Nabila decided to go for a wee and that's when, wrapped up in a drunken blanket of beer, another hotel resident bent down and started whispering in my ear.

There is a certain dress code in the club, you know? You mustn't walk around without any shoes on... This is, I'm sure, where I was meant to reply, but not wanting to grant the nonsense any credence whatsoever, I kept my mouth shut and stared fixedly ahead. The man started walking away, looking back open-eyed and nodding - It's just a bit coarse. Nabila came back to find me ostentatiously gnashing about some pompous cunt, pointing at my flip-flops and deliberately talking extra loud so he could hear me, while sneering towards his table in an attempt to goad him. Anyway, turns out he was autistic, so....

Crashing on - aside from the autistic baiting, Kuala Lumpur was a great couple of days. Went up the towers, went to Chinatown AND Little India, had a beautiful authentic meal, went to the national mosque and nearly had my ear bitten off by a parrot (see pic for a shot moments before he sunk his beak into the pinky goodness) One lasting memory which took days to leave me was a nasty batch of food poisoning and on the train to the culinary Mecca of Malaysia, Penang, I took a turn for the worst. Everything was fine until suddenly it wasn't anymore and I couldn't stop throwing up. All the time. Took the shine off the staff spiel at the hotel we arrived at when, as he proudly showed off the original fixtures and infamous seaview, I joined in at the toilet, loudly retching in approval.

The sickness lasted for two full days after that and couldn't have come at a worse time, being in the foody capital of the country. Just passing by food in the days following the M25 event (busy at both ends) resulted in a cold shiver of dread gobbing down the back of my throat, but on the flip side, I got a great workout on my abs. Which crippled me for about a week afterwards as well.

We took a taxi over the border, when I eventually stopped puking, and I was finally back where I started. Back in Thailand after all these weeks. Because of time constraints we had to stop in a pretty seedy town called Hat Yai - which I've since learned is no more than a brothel with city status - where I saw a beggar man lying on the ground who looked like an ant that had been blasted with a magnifying glass. All claws, bunched up skeletal legs and arms and a constantly shocked-looking expression on his twisted face gazing vacantly upwards. Honestly, if Nabila hadn't endlessly made fun of him for hours afterwards, suggesting he had just arrived in town and was simply surprised by the sleazy milieu and so on, I don't know if I would've got over it so quickly. What can I tell you? She just hates poor people.*

One night in Hat Yai and then a hasty bus ride out of the southernmost tip of the country to the infamous beaches made infamous by the beach movie called The Beach - and James Bond classic, The Man With The Golden Beach - which was to be our penultimate destination. As we had become used to at this stage, the resort (Amari) was stunning. Set just off the beach, with its own private area on the sands out front, the rooms came with an outside hot tub, a spectacular view of the picturesque ocean and a pot-bellied sense of entitlement. This was where I'd do it.

Unbeknownst to all you; well, most of you, I'd had a plan since arriving in Asia. Something I wanted to do, but not just anywhere; it had to be perfect. It took some arranging (me asking and the singer saying yes) but on our last night there, after spending days snorkelling, swimming through azure/green lagoons (see pic) feasting and blissing out, I got up on stage and starting singing to my girl. I sang my girl Your Song (enough pronouns?) but as I looked at her from the stage (bar) I couldn't hold it in, I was actually overcome with emotion and, worse still, it was having a detrimental effect on the high bits. The reason for this anomalous display of emotional vulnerability was sitting in my pocket until the end of the song, where I brought a confused Nabila onto the stage (bar) took the ring I had bought in Vietnam out of my pocket, got down on one knee and asked her to be my wife.

I know! She said yes, by the way and that night saw the return of the busy hands eluded to in chapter one, the insatiable strumpet. I had waited for the moment, the place, the night and it was all perfect - but more than that, I had waited a lifetime for the girl to be right and, aside from her politics, she is.

So back in England we are - the soon-to-be Mr and Mrs, going about our plans, our ideas and our dreams. This is the end of English Bitcherature and I finally have the happy ending we all aspire towards. Fuck you, world - I win! (Apart from the fact I don't have a job - anyone need a video doing? I specialize in montages of me) This blog was about how I move on from teaching, which I've definitely achieved. It was also about avoiding a life of extreme violence and ritual murder (see post one) which I have also done; although it has been tough considering all the travellers, children and teachers I've encountered (see post 26/13 - well, all of them really) who have been just asking for a series of rabbit punches to the throat.

Reading through the year's events it's almost as though there's no message at all to be found - no point, no reason, no intention; so what was it all for? Well, I'll leave it to Doc Brown, who bewilderingly sums up his motivation behind endangering the very fabric of time and space when he reads Marty McFly's warning about his impending murder by exclaiming 'I figured, what the hell...' Not good enough then and not good enough now. But that was the '80s for you. X

*She doesn't really.

Goodbye Yellow Brick Road

A list of things which make you a rock star:

1. Jet-setting around the world

2. Staying in beautiful and unique hotels

3. Eating, drinking and cavorting to excess

4. Being really, really sick

5. Drugging up the world in a smokey haze

Well, I'd like to say I've been doing all of these things recently, but the reality is ever-so-very-slightly different from the list. Isn't it always? To be honest - and as I've always said, that's something I continually strive to be - the list is a little misleading about what I've been up to. Number one is about right and definitely number two, since my beautiful girlfriend arrived just before Christmas, but that, frankly, put the kibosh on any cavorting/drugging plans I might have had which would eventually lead to number four. Don't worry though, I have been really, really sick recently, but that was far more a consequence of slimy chicken than wanton abandon - although I did very much abandon myself to that chicken. And she broke my bloody heart.

Indonesia was tough-going, I believe I've made that clear in the forerunning posts, but Bali was outstanding. Being the Australian destination of choice for revellers, jivers and fuckers, there are some none-too-discreet areas, like Kuta, but our first destination on the island was a far gob from there. Meeting up with Nabila at Bali Airport after so long was a definite highlight on this mammoth trip. I couldn't sleep the night before, despite drinking and masturbating myself into near-palsy, so when the morning arrived I simply rolled out of bed, unrested, hungover and enflamed, got my things together and limped into the taxi I'd booked. People talk about butterflies in the stomach, but the sensations I felt were more akin to a team of epileptic break-dancers performing on a bouncy castle at the national strobe fanciers ball while each holding a plastic bag filled with electric toothbrushes, dildos and butterflies. My tum-tum went all squiggly!

She didn't disappoint. She very rarely (but not unquestionably) does. The little black number brought glamour, elegance and beauty to the airport, but I have to say, it wasn't the most expensive shirt I've ever worn. (Do you see? Took you one way, then, BAM! It was about me, not Nabila!) She scrubbed up pretty well too and looking as good as she did was no mean feat after 36 hours travelling. I'd been travelling for 2,160 hours at that point and as such looked about as slick as - well, somewhere between Gandhi and any Italian man, but that didn't seem to matter to Ol' Ms Busy Hands. Honestly; I'm not just a piece of meat. In truth, it was surreal to see her after all that time and every episode we have where we don't see each other for a long time I almost forget how dazzling she is. Lights up any room she enters. Even the baggage reclaim ones. Not as easy as it sounds with brown skin.

This is where my old adventure finished and a brand new one began. We pulled into the Four Seasons Resort in Bali and I felt like Julia Roberts in that film where she's a whore - Eat, Pray, Love, I think it's called. Or any of them, really. The servitude was something I was not used to or indeed ready for at all; the bowing, the curtseying, the endless cheek-bulging grins, this was a different world for me. I had spent many weeks avoiding being ripped off, bartering, sleeping in flea-ridden despair holes gasping for breath, touching anything in the rooms suspiciously between thumb and forefinger and now I was in paradise.

We had our own villa complete with infinity pool which looked out onto the ocean, that I treated like a massive nappy, and spectacular views from the room into the natural beauty created by the Four Seasons (TM). The food was delicious and worry-free and any time you wanted to venture outside your villa, beaming porters arrived in little golf buggies to transport you from place to place. We spent an incredible few nights there, including Christmas and Boxing Day, that made me almost forget I was away from home for the first time during this period. Not that it was any great hardship - we had presents, spoke to the family on Skype (including an ostentatious bomb into the pool - just cos I could - first and only time the pool was spared my nudity) and enjoyed an unbelievable feast at the Coconut Grove Club for dinner. Father Christmas couldn't have brought anything better [insert joke about sack here]

After a teary and awkward Sophie's Choice style unfastening from the Four Seasons we made our way to the next location on Nabila's itinerary of magnificence - the island heaven (used paradise too much already) of Nusa Lembongan. Tucked in between other resorts, you could only reach Waka Nusa by boat and when we arrived it ticked all the boxes. Crystal blue waters, white sands, perfect snorkelling conditions, cast of Cocoon reunion, everything was present and correct. Our hut was just behind the sea, but you could still hear the waves as you drifted off to sleep - just before the fucking fireworks began - but I'm over that now. Soooo over that. Not being able to swim, Nabila had never been in water over her boobs, but when we went snorkelling I insisted she came in to just hold onto the back of me, and we shared some of the greatest, most pure waters I have ever seen. Fish everywhere and just the occasional terrified squeal from my new turtle shell. Look carefully and I'm sure you would have seen a little turtle's head as well.

Back to the mainland for our last Balinese resort - Alila, in the Uluwatu region of the island. Something so different from what we had been used to up to this point, Alila was a contemporary dream with wooden installations and clear symmetrical lines. It incorporated all the elements of earth, wind, water and fire into the concepts behind each room and villa and having another private pool out the back meant I could emphasize and build on most of these elements myself while taking a skinny dip.

New Year's Eve and Nabila's birthday were met with the now customary extravagance and after a beachside meal at Bali's number one restaurant we took in the new year and the final hours of the missus's birthday at the disastrously named Potato Head. A great club - just too many people. Midnight was outstanding though and the only time I haven't been pissed off to see fireworks. We took a crazy motorbike ride back to Alila, sharing it between three of us, and jumped in the pool when we got back because how many times are you gonna be able to have a midnight swim (or bob, in Nabila's case) on the 31st December? After a couple of days to recover in luxury we were off again, this time to another country - number six on my South East Asian tour.

So, as with all good franchises - and make no mistake, English Bitcherature is a franchise - the last part always comes in two parts. So what to expect from the last post? Traditionally there's a resolution, a twist, a massive battle and the stones/ring/force/world order is brought into a new equilibrium. Well, I won't ruin it, but it could be the best thing that's ever happened to you when you tune in next week. Just saying. Of course, if you choose not to read you'll never know. And we can't be friends anymore.