The final countdown

I now have less than two weeks left of this part of my adventure. It has taken me to some incredible places and I have met some incredible people. When I think back to the highlights and the low points, I have reached the firm conclusion that it is the people that make the places. All of my main highlights have correlated directly with the people that i've been sharing them with, and likewise, the low points have predominantly arrived when i've been feeling a tad lonesome or when travelling with some utter douchebag that has been picked up along the way.

Take for instance Kuta. When I first came here a few weeks back I was on my own (I got Nicks arrival date wrong, so I ended up here a couple of nights early). After missing my flight from KL I was irritable, out of pocket and had no one to vent my anger to/on (the blog definitely helps on that front!). So I made a vow that I would not be sociable for 48hrs, as I was running low on cash and my body needed a break from constant partying before Nicks arrival. As you can probably tell from my previous post that I had a pretty miserable time. Yet a few weeks later I am back with a great group of people and I have had a great time. The French girls and Flo have all been here, nick for one night and I'm rooming with m,y mate ollie, who I met on our diving course.

Team Kuta

Every night we have gone out and got smashed and we have developed genuine, long-term friendships during the course. The fucking donkey raping shit eating hawkers are still there trying to sell me viagra and crossbows, the assholes on their mopeds with surfboards are still trying to run me down, and the ho`s are still a ho`ing, but this time it just forms part of a wider joke and is funny as opposed to blood boilingly annoying. For all of its faults, Kuta has been a blast (god bless you sky garden and your liver crippling offers).

The free tequila is administered from above

The time that I have spent with close existing friends (the 3 L`s from Bristol & Nico) have been right up there, as have the time I spent with the Padi guys and the Israeli`s. I have been asking around and there is a general consensus that the people make the places. I think that people who travel with groups of existing friends are more likely to judge a place on its individual merits, whereas the lone traveller accredits more to the people they are with and thus, their state of mind. When you are with friends you can cope to a much greater extent with the negative aspects of a place, and they are accentuated to a greater extent when alone. Whilst thankfully, I have not spent a great deal of time on my own and have not suffered any sustained periods of being lonely, it does happen from time to time. But I think there is huge value to to travelling alone, such as the freedom to escape people and make quick decisions on where you want to go and how you want to get there.

I have developed a great deal of respect for some of the 18/19 year olds I have met who have come away on their own. At 29 years of age, and even with my added life experience, I still felt fairly intimidated and a bit insecure about coming away on my own. I took quite a big risk quitting a decent job and leaving everything behind, but I can hand on heart say that I have no regrets (except maybe not purchasing a fucking lonely bastard planet guidebook),I can only offer words of encouragement to anyone considering doing the same.

So I`m down to my last couple of weeks, and as you can probably tell, i`m feeling a bit reflective as I`m about to leave another group of great people and friends to head off on my own again for the final time. In the spirit of this reflection I have compiled a couple of lists. The first are the things that I will miss about SE Asia, the second deals with the things that I will not miss about SE Asia, whilst the third.is the things I am looking forward to


Things I will miss

Buckets
Riding a scooter
Meeting new friends each day
Not knowing what day it is
Getting abused by monkeys
Breakdancing with locals
The bum gun
Dan
Buckets
Going to bed at 5am
Getting up at 3pm
50p burns
3 pound tattoo`s
Bikinis
Pooing my pants
Not knowing where or who I`ll be with next week
The food
Buckets
Street dogs
Oceans without turds floating around in them
Being allowed to wear a vest (for a reason unbeknown to myself it is unacceptable behaviour in England)

Things I will not miss:

Crouching over a hole to have a crap
Night bus journeys
Mosquito`s
Hawkers
Hookers
Bangkok chickboys
Deet
Crossing roads with no traffic system
Bleeding toes
Fucked ankles
People trying to grab my bags and make me go to their hostels straight off a 15hr bus journey
Sharing a bunk bed with weird old bearded men
Sand
Carrying a rucksack with a broken foot
Having perma-shakes in my hands
French-Canadian gay cage fighting physicists
Disposing of soiled pants
The pack of douchebags tracking me across three coutries
Pillows that smell like dick cheese
Being woken up by people sweeping
The Vietnamese
A douchebag with a guitar
Bed bugs
Haggling
Rats
Skype conversations whilst trying to work
Irate Indonesian migets
trigger fish
Ants in my pants
Bob Marley tracks
The smell of a 10 man dormitory at 9am

Things I am looking forward too:

Seeing my bulldog, my new niece, friends and family
A cup of tea
Being able to flush toilet paper
Having a secure wanking facility (Dad, prepare the garden shed for my homecoming)
A pint of cider
Bangers breath
Calculating how many thousands of pounds over my budget I went
Getting amongst the dole queue. I can talk to them about my travels and they can talk to e about their smack habit, then we can all go back to my place and watch an episode of Micheal Barrymore's `My Kind of People`
Investing in a good spying ladder
Being able to fart without fear of soiling myself
Annoying people with travel stories
Carrying around my lucky nut from Kuala Lumpur
A bathroom with a sink
Clean pants
Traffic signals
Exercise
A 6 hour stop over in Riyadh Airport, Saudi Arabia, lovely place, so welcoming 
Getting to watch Nick in Doctors everyday
Going to see an actual Doctor to find out if my breakdancing career is over
Trying to hand a cashier two pounds to pay for a meal, two beers and a pack of 20 burns
And, of course, South America and Benicassim

I am sure there a a hundred more things to add to these lists, which will become apparent over the coming weeks. Whilst mosquito's are well up there, for some reason they have become less relevant and apparent, and the general irritation attached to them has gradually subsided as time has progressed. I remember at one point during my first week in Thailand that I was seriously contemplating coming home because the bites were driving me fucking crazy. I was using 100% deet, which was melting lighters in my hand and felt like I was covering myself in toxic waste, but I was still getting peppered in bites every night. I was close to breaking point, any time I saw a mosquito I couldn't settle until I had smashed its ugly fucking face in. Whilst I am still getting bitten, I stopped wearing any insect spray weeks ago, and I only realise that I've been bitten if I see the lump in a mirror. Maybe the body just adapts, the locals are certainly not affected by them, which was something that I was quite curious about, but perhaps now understand (I hope this is not the only thing that I've learned). They are still a big pest, my mate Tom who I met on the fun bus to Chiang Mai has recently contracted Dengue fever, which sounds like a fun one. He is fortunate to have his girlfriend with him, it would be a lorra lorra fun to be on your own with that affliction.

Last night I was walking down an alleyway and I heard a weird noise that was approaching me from the rear at pace. When I spun around I was stunned to see a monkey on a bicycle hurtling towards me. It had the same look in its eye as the vicious little fucker that bit me in Thailand. If it had not been for my crippling post champions league final hangover I would`ve turned and run. Just as I was about to scream and kick a monkey on a bicycle in the face it was tugged back on a lead by a bloke a couple of meters back. I`m not sure how this monkey came to be in the possession of his bike, but it even had its own little monkey helmet (not pictured, but I stopped the bloke to get a video where it puts on the helmet itself and then jumps on the bike - I couldn`t leave that situation without closure on whether I`d been spiked with mushrooms or not).





The situation reminded me of one of my long standing aspirations, and I think it outlined how important it is for me to make this happen. My original objective was to train a monkey to ride my bulldog, but after witnessing their aggression I`m not sure if I`m up to the training part. Granted it`s a rather modest ambition, but nevertheless, it is probably the thing that I aspire for most in life. So if anyone knows of any monkey`s pre-trained to ride a bulldog, then text the words `It`s not animal cruelty if it`s amusing` to 84221.

A little bit of rain

I have spent most of my time in Kuta in Sky Garden, which is what a nightclub should be. There are 5 levels satisfying every possible requirement. There is a huge beer garden outback which has two huge screens and drink all you can beer from 6pm - midnight for about 7 pounds (aka the bloody blokes area where I watched the champions league - I was the only englishman there supporting barca, I think I know who had the last laugh). Then their are various sky terraces, dance rooms etc. When we left the other night it had rained so hard whilst we were inside that when we came out, we had to wade in water upto our shins where the road used to be. After ollie had swam in it for a minute or so I realised that the drains must be flooded, so we were basically frollicing in faeces.

I wondered why I woke up with a strained thigh

When Nick left I discovered that he`d left a pair of shorts in the wardrobe, which I know for a fact haven`t been washed for about 2 weeks. Needless to say I am now wearing these. I note that they are waist size 29 inches. I was wearing 34 inches when I came away, all of which are now hanging off me, whilst the 29ers are a tidy fit. I seem to have developed a tidy beer gut concentrated solely above the waistline. For any Nicolas Woodman fans out there I shall be selling these shorts unwashed on ebay on my return, so unless you're outbid by Nick, then you too can sample the unique blend of fausty sweat and bum hole.

I have decided that I will spend my remaining time passing through Indonesia. I will visit the volcanoes of Java, go diving at the Karimunjawa National Marine Park (an archipelago of 27 tiny islands, mint) and finish up in Jogjakarta. Tidy like

That is all

Shaking Stevens

If you're going to spew, spew into this

This morning, and against all of the odds, Nick managed to get up in time to catch his flight back to Blighty. It was another quiet night at the office. I don't think I've ever drunk so much in my life as I have in the past couple of weeks. My hands seem to be permanently shaking, but it has been an absolute blinder. The intensity of this classic UK binge drinking episode is actually down to the French. They have introduced Nick and myself to a card game called 'fuck the dealer'. And my god, has the dealer (and everyone else) ever got fucked... We were buying bottles of vodka from the bar, along with litres of sprite and jugs of ice. Basically the game revolves around a higher / lower scenario. If you guess the card to be a two, and it's an ace, then you have to drink 15 sips (the difference between the two cards). My personal highlight was guessing a king and it was a three, which meant 12 sips, and nick, being the gentlemen he is, had just refilled my cup. At this stage we were playing with a german guy we'd met, the two french girls and three english girls who were our neighbours and i'd invited along as an apology for being so rowdy the night before. Now what nick had neglected to do was add any sprite to the jug of vodka. Because of the amount of sips I was due, I just picked it up and downed it. Needless to say I instantly spewed everywhere, which somewhat detracted from my attempts at an apology to the english girls.

Ouch

That night was a complete and utter blur, and I woke up with two new tattoo's that a drunken Indonesian man had given me at 3am. Nick got away lightly and only had one. Now when you get a tattoo you're not supposed to go in a swimming pool for two weeks, needless to say we were in a swimming pool within two minutes. So on the negative side I now have 'Dan' tattooed on the bottom of my foot, but on the plus side it only cost me three pounds. Other negatives include hepatitis, having a random mans name tattooed on the bottom of my foot and trying to keep the sole of my foot clean on a fooking beach (I am fully reassured that the needles were sterelized, as Florian was slightly more sober than me and watched them remove them from the packet).

Gili paradise

We managed to miss the boat back to Bali four days in a row, so nick has spent the significant time of his holiday on the Gili islands, which is far from a bad thing. The place is amazing, great nightlife and beautiful scenery. After a week or so almost every local on the island seemed to know our name, although I don't realy recall speaking to that many of them. For some reason on our last night some irate little indonesian man bottled me across the back of my head. It can't have been hard as it didn't break and I barely had a lump. I suspect it was to do with the french girls, as they were on a mission to abuse any local who attempted to speak to the. For the past week they had been getting regularly hassled by them, and they were always hanging around outside their bungalow. They told us that they felt like they were constantly being watched, and then one day one of them was in the shower and had a weird feeling that someone was watching. She went round the back of the bungalow and there was a fucking ladder leading up to their shower room window, which they didn't take too well (feisty one she is). So after that they lobbed all of their stuff into our room and I'd hidden our ladder, they went on a mission to abuse any local who they recognised, one of whom I suspect was they guy who attacked me. This left me with a couple of options, go after him and probably get attacked by a load more of them, or just let it go, which I obviously did. Asshole. My alternative theory is that he was one of the two hundred hawkers that nick pointed to me and said 'he wants one', which led to some pretty awkward moments. We came back to bali yesterday (kuta, yippee skippy) and the locals have further engraciated themselves upon the french by stealing their camera. This is now the 4th time that their camera has been stolen from them, and it is a gutter as they had so many photo's of us on the gili's. This latest bout of thievery reminds me of a story the frenchies told us about in nha trang in Vietnam. They were walking home one night and the saw a man passed out in an alleyway in only his pants. They approached him and it turns out that he'd been having a shit in the alleyway and someone had crept up behind him, hit him with a brick and taken everything, including his clothes. Probably some karma involved. This is certainly not the first story I've heard about nha trang. They also told us about one guy who'd been mugged two nights in a row by the same two guys, so he said he was going to take his mate out with him that night and fight back. Four hours later they saw them run past the bar they were in hotly pursued by the two Vietnamese men mugging them again. A German girl also got taken to a Vietnamese man's house and was forced to take out cash and play blackjack avaunt a Chinese man against her will. It seems bizarre that instead of just mugging her they made her play this card game, I like a gamble as much as the next man, but I don't think the odds are particularly stacked in our favour in such situations

Woodman catching some sun

The sunsets on the isalnd were pretty special, I wanted to go and watch it one night after having a nap. When I got up I realised that nick had actually locked me into the room, where I was stuck for the next two funfilled hours. For revenge I dragged his bed outside of the room and into the street when I got home that night (and the following night). The inspiration came from me telling nick about the time I was on holiday and I was sharing a twin room with a mate. I came back from the beach one day and the lad had pulled our two beds together and was shagging the gap inbetween them. After I told nick this I came home one afternoon to find our beds had been pushed together... Out of the room his bed goes!

Team fuck the dealer

On our final night nick handily managed to lose our room key and so needless to say he kicked the lock off the door, taking both the padlock bracket and the door handle with it. Luckily we managed to cobble it back together with a combination of window screws and drawing pins. That night we met a french canadian gay cage fighting phyicist, there can't be too many of those around. I also managed to rectify the issues outlined in my previous post, back in the ball game! So i'm going to stay in bali with the frenchies and florian the german guy, as well as ollie who I met whilst I was diving. I would love to say that now nick has departed that I may be able to squeeze in a bit of detox, but I think we all know that this will not happen... I'm also going to go and try and view the cctv from the club we were in (sky garden, fucking awesome club) to see if we can track down the asshole who stole their camera. But fair play, that club is a testament to how a club should be run (it's actually the one that got bombed a few years back, where 260 people lost their lives) My final thought is for the european cup final tonight, come on Barcelona.

If I write this I'm apparently gay

So It turns out that for some unknown reason an entire pack of French canadians think I'm gay (15 of them on a tour). This revelation was made by nick this morning. I have my theories, largely based around the White linen travellers trousers that I picked up in chiang mai. Other speculative theories are currently being developed that revolve around me blowing out a 6ft 3" giraffe girl, in addition to another of their pack. My favoured theory is that they've been closely watching me closely watching the Swedish desperate dan on the beach all day. So my options to retrieve this situation are essentially two-fold, I either nail a giraffe or put an end to dan watch, and I'm not convinced that I can bring myself to do either. As I have previously explained, there is something hypnotic about this blockheads that instinctively draws my eyes to that head. Nick is obviously revelling in this and is going to use all at his disposal to fuel this rumour, probably beginning by telling them that I touched him. Even the French girls that we are hanging out with are questioning it, which I largely attribute to my pet rescue carry on with the skanky cats on this island. I have discovered that I genuinely feel more compassion for animals than I do for humans, I'm not sure what that means, probably that I'm a bender. Basically tonight I'm going to have to go out, drink 15 pints of lager, watch some football, have a fight and a curry and then nail a giraffe, pretty standard so I'm not sure if it will be sufficient to dispel these rumours, especially with nick working hard on the case to convince them otherwise... Yours sincerely, Julian

The land of the bum gun

So after the living hell that was Kuta, I got the funk out of there and met televisions nicholas woodman at the airport and we decided to plump for Ubud. It was around lunchtime so the obvious thing to do was drink the remnants of the king cobra whiskey. It's head had been exposed for a few days after it leaked so it was probably begining to rot a little bit. Mmmmm, yummy.

Even got my own bed like

Ubud is a lovely place, we were told that a lot of famous musicians (mick jagger, david bowie) used to go and hang there in the 1960's, I can sort of see why. Nick broke the news to me that it was his holiday so he didn't want to stay in shitholes, so with a quivering wallet we went in search of accommodation. What we opted for was the nicest place I have stayed since i've been away, it had a swimming pool and trees, which for me have been optional extra's that i've yet to induldge in.

The day was still young and I decided that we should hire a moped and go and watch the sunset over the famous rice terraces. I asked some bloke on the street where they were and he game me some fairly straightforward directions. We managed to catch a glimpse of some terraces but we assumed that there were good viewpoints etc. So we started to onwards and uphill for what seemed like an eternity (the scene echoed the scene in dumb and dumber where they're going over the rocky mountains) but development was becoming sparse and it didn't feel quite right. We stopped and asked a bloke in a car for directions and he literally laughed in our face, we were basically on top of a hill in the middle of nowhere. On the way back we took a detour through some medieval looking villages who looked like they'd never seen two douchebags on a moped before...

That night we went out for a few drinks and I somehow managed to offend two lebonese girls, after I started discussing the Isreali's, who I'd been hanging out with for a couple of weeks a while back. So that was perilously awkward and they left really quite quickly. Shortly after I have vague memories of using a terrapin as a mobile phone. We decided we'd only do one night there so set my alarm for 6.30am for a lovely fastboat to the Gili islands. After 10 minutes on the minibus I realised that I'd left my fucking camera charger in the room so I imediately engraced myself on to the rest of the passangers. On the plus side drive let us smoke burns in the van, so it panned out okay.



Tic Tac sir

The Gili's are awesome, it has much more of a feeling of being on holiday that travelling, which I guess is a welcome relief in a way. Accommodation is relatively expensive here (obviously three pounds a night doesn't seem quite so steep for Nick), but we found a place that seemed okay. It took us a good twenty minutes to realise that our bathroom didn't have a ruddy sink. So for the past 6 days we have been using the bum gun to brush our teeth. The lack of hygiene involved in this is too mind boggling to even comprehend, so we try not to dicuss it so much....

The bum gun is possibly the greatest revelation that I have experienced. For three months I have been looking at this little gun attached to a hose that most bathrooms have and thought it was just there to clean the bog. I have recently been informed that this contraption is basically a hand-held, aim-able bidet. Mazin. In a part of the world where 50% of the transient population is shitting gravy, this little beauty is a godsend. I feel a genuine feeling of elation every time I go for a dump that resembles a poo (it may even border on pride). When it doesn't, and when other things such as sweat and sand are factored in, the prospect of using toilet paper is somewhat unattractive, and this is where the gun really comes into its own. I'm not sure if its benefits would strictly be transferable to England, but as the UK's no.1 advocate of the bum gun, I feel that I'm strongly placed to obtain the UK licence for its import and share this gift with my compatriots.



Take for example yesterday. Me and Nick have been drinking with three girls from france for the last few nights, and we'd met them on some leather day beds just off the beach. We'd had a heavy night, and I really needed to fart. We were outdoors so I didn't consider it to be such a faux pas, as long as they weren't aware that any fallout was on my behalf. So I concentrated so hard on letting it out silently that I accidently did a little bit of poo in my swimming shorts. A quick crab walk up to the toilets and I bum gunned the pain away.

The first night I had gone to use the wifi at a bar and was sat having a beer when this english bloke came crashing over and started talking to me at 300 miles an hour. He was giving me too much information to process, but from what I could glean from the conversation he used to be the manager of UB40, was a child actor, created echo beach on Bali (named it after an album), owned three bars in the Gili's, including the one I was sat in) and had recently just purchased two islands, which he is selling off to investors that include Mick Jagger and Carl Cox. Natrually I thought this guy is full of a new level of bullshit that I'd never previously had the pleasure of experiencing, but then he started getting me free drinks from behind the bar so I took an interest and even went and got nick so that he could meet the legend that is Nigel. Over the course of the next few hours he'd given us the full tour of his 5 star establishment, he'd showed us the water that he bottles and sells as organic water, but is actually just some stuff from a river in Lombock (Del Boy), he'd told us that he used to own the local newspaper (he bought it because the local press was angry with him about something - may be they once met him or something), he then owned a production company and a clothing firm. All of this after he'd told me that by trade he was a pipe fitter (he was an utter pikey in essence). After a couple of hours of drinking he decided that he was going to take us out on one of his 3 boats, but he ran off sulking when his captain couldn't get it started. Bizarre character.

Later on that night we met an indian couple who had just got married, she had some crazy temporary tattoo's that are part of the ritual. At the time we met them they'd just purchased a bag of mushrooms which they were going to try for the first time. We didn't see them again, I assume they made it through the other side... Everyone is trying to sell mushrooms here, they are legal so there are these hilarious signs everywhere, but I don't think either of us plan to induldge...

Get your tats out

The place is only very small, we walked the perimeter in 2hrs, and this is the biggest of the 3 islands. It is very beautiful and there is a good vibe to the place. When we had walked around we'd noticed a bar which looked nice but it was completely abandoned. We asked Nigel about it and the owner had built it, invited VIP's etc and then had a heart attack and died during opening night. Pretty eerie

Now I don't like to make sweeping statements, but everyone in South East Asia seems to be constantly sweeping. I get woken up every fuckinjg morning by the sound of sweeping. I'm not a good moring person, and this noise drives me fucking crackers. So after being woken by the soothing vibes of brush on floor we took a walk down to the beach and got chatting to one of the locals (every bloke on this island seems to know our names, the majority I have no recollection of speaking too)... Within around 3 minutes of speaking to him he told us that "he only likes to fuck local girls because his cock is too small", possibly the most brutally honest admission I've ever heard. He is an insanely happy young chap who has no home, he crashes where on the beach or guest house day beds once the party has finished (and sells drugs during the day!). Nick has been endeearing himself to the tat sellers and hawkers. Everytime they approach us he just points at me and says 'he wants one', so then I have the awkwardness of explaining that I really don't want a pearl necklace. I tried to pick one of the locals up the other day (like a baby), and it didn't go down well, he thought I was trying to kill him or something judging by the way he ran away. Another asked me if Nick was my husband.

We've been getting pretty boozy, I'm basically living a champagne lifestyle on a coca cola budget. The french girls we've been drinking with are mad for it. It has taken me 3 days to learn their names. For the first three days I was calling the one called Audrey 'Amy' (none of them are called Amy), and I was calling the one named Emily 'Audrey'. The only one I obviously remembered immediately was Fanny. It has been the source of some very, very awkward moments.They had their drinks spiked the first night and two of them were running around crying, waterway to have a good time. They got tattoo's for three pounds last night, got to stay away from this temptation

Dans' a great bloke

Speaking of awkward, I met a bloke on a booze cruise in Cambodia who I didn't speak too, but I remember him by his perfectly oblong shaped head. He has the squarest jaw I've ever seen, absolute blockhead, he looks like a mediteranean desperate dan. I spotted this guy on the beach and pointed him out to Nick, and we sort of acknowledged each other. For some reason I have no interest in even knowing his name, but after acknowledging him I now see him every 5 minutes. I've been studying him intensely, there is something about the squareness of his head that fascinates me. I'm pretty sure he's clocked me staring at his head on a number of occassions. He has one of the most indetermiateable nationality of any man i've met. After five days of awkward encounters I said to Nick that I'd love to know where this man comes from, so Nick walked straight over to him and said 'my friend wants to know what country you come from' (whilst pointing at me). I mean, how badly can you phrase a question?! It turns out he's from Sweden, which would genuinely be the last place I'd guess that he was from.

I think that the best thing about being back on a beach is that, to my considerable relief, the sand has finally managed to get the bright red spraypaint off my toenails that I got tubing about a month ago. And the downside of this of course, is that the lack of spraypaint reveals what lurks beneath. But for the first time in about 4 months I don't have any injuries (aside from the 3 month old swollen ankle that is). It is nice not having any cuts to worry about. I wasn't aware of this until recently, but I bought a bottle of Dettol to put on my wounds from 7/11. I think the brand recognition was the decisive reason for me selecting it, although it wasn't really in the medicine section. Two months later, after using it almost daily, I'm informed that it is a kitchen disinfectant, no wonder my wounds have been healing a little bit strangely. Tidy on a friday like. Last night I experienced a first when a fucking ghekko fell out of the sky and landed on my neck, it is not easy to keep your cool in such situations. But my highlight from the gili's was nick overhearing four lads from Essex discussing what they were going to be wearing tonight, classic





For the love of god, will you just hawk off

Oh just hawk off will you

So for elmo's birthday he brought along 5 bottles on Indonesian vodka between 6 of us. I was wary that I had an early flight booked to bali in the morning, so I set my alarm for 6.30am and packed my rucksack before the drinking began.

At 5am, and barely able to stand, I decided that enough was enough and stumbled to my dorm. The circa 55yr old bloke on the bunk above had, for some reason, stayed up until 4am watching 'the cable guy' on tv. We could see him from our seating position and, whilst I know the film isn't jim carey's finest work, he didn't break a smile once. What he did however break was wind, spectacularly. As I lay in bed contemplating getting up in an hour for the bus ride to KL airport I was ushered into a deep sleep by a symphony of some of the most inhuman noises I've ever heard.

So I woke up at 8.30am, two hours after my alarm had gone off (I either turned it off or the toxic gases coming from johnny shit pants above me caused it to temporarily cease). In a blind panic I got up, put my pack on and legged it out of the guesthouse. After 5 minutes of running/stumbling I realised that I still had my room key and I needed the 10 ringett key deposit to get to the airport. so I had to run back again, which wad nice. By this time I was really in a blind panic as I'd paid a fair whack from my flight and I really didn't want to miss it, so I went to the cashpoint and hailed a taxi. Inevitably there was a painful level if traffic, and as the take off time approached and passed I felt like headbutting the driver. When I got to the airport, which seemed unfamiliar, I decided to see if airasia would give me a refund or some money off a rearranged flight. After half an hour of searching for their desk I found out that I wasn't even at the right airport, tidy (I had no idea that KL even has two airports).

So I eventually landed in Bali pretty downtrodden and not in much of a mood for the painstaking process of finding the cheapest hostel. I had taken out 30 dollars for the 25 dollar visa fee, but on the plane I was so dehydrated that I paid 3 dollars for a water, and the change was given to me in local Indonesian money. When I went to pay for the visa I was told that I could only pay in one currency, so I'd have to find a cashpoint in the airport. When I got to one I realised that my cashcard was in my fucking backpack (wiseguy) and I therefore had no way of paying for my visa. I was pleading with the witch behind the visa counter but she would not budge. By this point I was almost broken, and sensing this, a kind couple said they'd exchange my local money for dollars, thank god for human empathy, because at that point I was ready to cause quite a scene (possibly starting with screaming and ending with crying and rolling around on the floor)

After this i only had 50,000 indonesian ruppies which was just enough to get me, against my wishes, to kuta, which id heard was a bit of a shithole. What I was greeted by was one of the most irritating experiences of my life. Hawkers, hawkers, hawkers. Every 5 steps someone was trying to push something on me, whilst I lugged around my backpack sweating out a pungent mixture of vodka and rage.

I'd say I am probably as polite and patient with hawkers as most - in fact I think I probably purchase more of their crap than most of the people in SE Asia. But the sheer volume of these people in kuta almost made me scream (again). The things compounding my rage were the amount of mopeds flying past in impossibly narrow side streets, the heat, the amount of people trying to rent me mopeds, the amount of women offering massage (one every 5 feet) and the dialect used by the hawkers. The place is full of Aussies, so the hawkers kept coming up to me and saying things like 'g'day mate, Viagra?', 'alright sport, need a lady?', or, 'hey boss, you want good time?'. I mean, couldn't they tell that I was already having a cracking time?

After an hour or so I couldn't take it any more and checked into the next place I found, had a cold shower and a nap and calmed the burning rage. 

This place is grim. Today I thought I'd relax and go to the beach (which you can barely move on, and certainly can't venture into the sea for fear of some bodacious dude ploughing you down on a surfboard). I lay down and within 30 seconds the hawking began.

The first to approach was a woman selling sarongs. As if I need or want a fucking sarong. So five minutes after I used the last of my money to buy a sarong some fucking bloke approached me trying to sell me a bow and arrow. I told him that i was not interested (although, for once I actually was) and went through the motions of telling him another 15 times that I had no money. Needless to say he didn't get the message and sat down next to me, after which he slipped a 30cm long blowpipe from his shirt sleeve. Before I could even express my bemusement at him even sitting next to me he fired a dart straight into my flip flop (which constitute my only footwear). Whilst I was secretly impressed I explained, to the great amusement of the group of Aussies sat next to me who'd just watched me battle in vain to not buy a fucking sarong, that I had no possible use for a blowpipe (although he was giving me reason in itself to purchase one). 

Wary of the fact that he had two semi-lethal weapons at his disposal I put it as subtly as my temper would allow, and told him that I'd give him my last 10.000 rupies if he'd just fuck off out of my life forever, which he duly accepted before asking if I wanted some Viagra.

Whilst I felt a little ashamed for my abruptness I think sometimes they just push too far. There are times that I feel genuinely awful for not buying this tat. The street kids at Angkor wat and land mine victims in Cambodia certainly spring to mind, but purchasing things only encourages more to do the same.

In the case of children in particular, I have seen some pretty terrible things, many of which I suspect are the result of encouragement of unscrupulous parents. Things that stick in the memory include mothers sat with motionless children sprawled on the pavement with begging bowls lay infront of them (who many speculate are drugged), packs of children no older than 6 years old trying to sell bracelets at 2 or 3 in the morning, and small children leading blind men holding cups through crowds. Perhaps the most disturbing one I've seen was in Bangkok, where a young girl was sat on the pavement playing with a dead baby rabbit, whilst her mum held out a bowl. 

This leaves you in a position where you either donate and encourage this behaviour or withhold and suffer the inevitable guilt for what you have and choose not to share. I have been advised along the way that the best thing you can do is offer food and drink. Each time I have done this the child looks at me in disgust and the mother looks like I have taken a shit on her childs head.

Anyway, rant over, tomorrow I get out of this hell hole and meet nick at the airport to head to the hill town of ubud, where hopefully we'll be away from the hawkers and hookers. Peace

Strange Shit's a'goin down

Something out of the ordinary happened to me today, and it is something that I intend to remember. So I arrived in Kuala Lumpur yesterday, I flew at 9am from Chiang Mai and landed in KL at around midday. The next 5hrs was a bundle of joy. When I landed and got outside into the heat it reminded of me when I first landed in Singapore at the start of this trip, at which time I felt disorientated, intimidated and a bit scared. Things are very different now and it thankfully it takes a lot more than a new country to invoke any feelings of despair. The guesthouse owner had sent me the name of the bus that I needed, which I'd taken a photo of. My last blog entry was done from my phone, and as a token gesture I had tried to upload that picture of the african bloke sucking himself off. When I landed I approached some airport official to show him the bus company that I was after, and the picture that came up when I showed him my phone was the last one opened (a black guy sucking himself off), awkward.

The bus into KL took about an hour and then the fun began. This is the first ime I'd booked a hostel in advance since that first night in Singapore, as from the experience I've accumulated, it can be an absolute ball ache trying to locate a reasonably priced hostel in an alright area. I really should have invested in a lonely planet guide, oh for a map in such situations. The guesthouse owner had given me a pretty brief set of directions, and they were so brief that I thought it must be simple. I was wrong. There's nothing quite like walking around foi 3 hours in 36 degree temperatures with a huge pack on your back to crush your spirit. It was just the worst, I asked 3 seperate taxi's to just take me there after the first hour and none of them knew where it was. In Laos I bought a botle of whiskey with a king cobra in it, and that leaked in my bag during the flight so there was a lovely smell following me around too. After this utter debacle I was ready to destroy the owner once I eventualy found the hostel, but he turned out o be so nice that it was impossible to stay angry. It's nice being in a place where english is predominantly the first language.

Now you've done it tony

This hostel is full of lone travellers and one of the guys who works here cooked everyone a meal and then we all sat around drinking until 6 in the morning. There was two malaysian blokes and a couple of philipino fella's who work here, a german, a fin, a frenchy, an american and myself, The german bloke is one of the more interesting characters that i've met. He basically pretends (at least I think he pretends) to be a nazi and most of the humour is jew based, highly controversial! One of the locals was a muslim who was geting absolutely smashed. Every time he ran out of beer one of us went with him on his scooter to the 24hr place up the road. When it came my turn to go with him we drove out onto a dual carriage way and went about half a mile up the road to buy 20 cans. On the way back he opted not to take the longer option of driving up the road and coming back the other way, instead we drove the wrong way up the dual carriage way, which was big fun. Philipino Tony is 68 and was so hot that he was down to his underpants by 4am! It's the Malaysian guys birthday tonight so we're cooking a meal and having a few beers, I think I'll bring out he King Cobra whiskey to finish off..



King Cobra whiskey, mmm yummy



So today I managed to drag my ass out of bed at around midday, could have slept far longer but I was aware that it's my only full day here. I decided that I'd try and walk off the hangover and try and navigate the city by foot. For the past week or so I've been thinking about a new project that I feel could be quite credible. I was wondering down the street thinking about this and not really paying much attention to what was going on around me when someone walked past me and said "do it, it will be successful". This properly freaked me out and I wasn't sure if I'd imagined it. I looked around and there was an Indian man with about 3 teeth smiling at me. I walked up to him and asked him how the fook he knew what I was thinking. He insisted that he saw all around him and could read a persons future through their thoughts. He told me that I was on the verge of a big success but there was someone who would try to stop me. Intrigued and still slightly skeptial I asked him if he wanted to go for a coffee, which he accepted. This man was not a hobo by any means, he was dressed in religious clothing and spoke clear english (although his second language).

He continued his schpiel about my future and when I needed to act, but I think he could sense my skepicism. He pulled out some paper and wrote something down. He then asked me to put out my hand and placed the scawled up piece of paper in my hand so that I couldn't read it. He then took another piece of paper and asked me the year of my birth (1981), my favourite flower (don't have one so said my mums, Lily), my favourite animal (dog), the name of my mother (penny), the name of my first love (Joanna), a number between 1 and 10 (1) and my favourite colour (blue). We then went hrough some prety bizarre rituals that involved me tapping the paper against my forehead and saying "goodluck enter" and tapping the back of my neck and saying "bad luck leave". He then told me to open up the piece of paper which I'd been holding, and writen on there was 1981, Lily, dog, Penny, Joanna, 1 and blue. I prety much freaked out because it was nothing short of unsettling. I have no idea how this man did it, and frankly I'm not sure if I want to know! He then analysed my answers and told me that I believe in god but have no real faith (which I'd been discussing at length drunken last night, I had a massive debate about how life came to exist, which naturally turned into a religious who-haa).




Freak show



I was in a complete daze by this point and he began to offer me more dark information, offering to tell me which girl I should pursue, as he knew that I had a few in mind, and also who will stab me in the back in the future, but I decided not to pursue either of these options, as something's are best left alone! He told me that something very good will happen to me in June (hello Ascot races) and something even bigger in March 2012. He also gave me some weird litle red nut type thing which I'm supposed to keep on me, great. He wasn't looking for money or anything like that, he says that he is there to reassure and help people who are in doubt, and to lead people down the correct path. Fucking weird as fuck, but I'm definitely now going to puruse the project I had in mind.

Post spew

After that I walked up to the Petronas Towers, which at 488m were once the tallest buildings in the world. Shortly after I arrived there I spewed into a bush, which I can't say either way as to whether it was due to previous hours conversation or the 6am drinking finish. The city is amazing, and I wish I was staying a bit longer as I'm really enjoying the people, the food and the culture. But tomorrow I fly off to Bali to meet up with Nick for 10 days, bring it.

Chang Bye

Not really a lot to report but I'm in rather a reflective mood. I made a vow of abstinence from the booze but I'm not strictly straight edge. The detox has neatly coincided with a requirement to reduce my outgoings. This has been simultaneously achieved by breaking off from the deadwood of the last group I was with and making an active effort to avoid making new acquaintances. 

One thing that these three months have taught me about travelling (probably not applicable elsewhere) is that being alone is the only way to genuinely save money. This is basically the money saved by not being a ruddy bloke and going out drinking every night. I don't know what it is about other peoples company that makes me want to drink, probably the same instinct that makes me want to run over cyclists. But you do, if you're with someone you go and get a drink, what's the alternative, just sit, just have a nice sit is it? I can sit with the best of them if alone, but if there's some near stranger sat next to me, then I'm going to require a drink.

So basically for the past couple of days I've been indifferent to lone travellers advances, perhaps bordering on rude, but what the fuck, I've been impossibly polite for 3 months and sometimes forcing politeness grates when none of it amounts to your own gain (if it happened to be a Swedish beach volleyball player I'd perhaps reassess the situation). I always end up feeling bad and then have to make a concerted effort to make over enthusiastic welcoming gestures every time I see them from then on, a small price to pay to not have to hang out with them.

I have probably assumed a bit of a lone wolf tag in bristol but I would never have been comfortable eating alone in a restaurant. When I first arrived in SE Asda I felt very self conscious when eating alone, and whilst it has been a fairly rare occurrence since the first week or two, it doesn't even register as an issue anymore. I haven't made my own food for 3.5 months now, so I guess eating alone is pretty inevitable, it's often when you also end up meeting people (and despising people). 

Eating dinners with new people has probably provided me with some of my fondest memories of this trip. If only it was as easy to meet new people and all go for spontaneous meals together in England! Why do we have to travel half way across the world before we can approach each other with relative ease?! Probably because in England if it was a bloke approaching me then I'd automatically assume he was a gay, and if a woman approached me then I'd be hip grinding her faster than you can say sexual assault charge.

It has been a nice respite getting away from dougs eating habits. The noise he made when eating evoked such suppressed rage in me that I bent my knife and fork in half most meals. 

Tomorrow I leave Thailand for the final time, for me this really does signify that the end of this trip is in sight. It has given me a sense of freedom that you don't get from other holidays, it has given me a sense of shitting in a bucket in a broom cupboard that you don't get from other holidays. 

I will be sad to leave, the people here are so friendly. The aspect I've enjoyed about the Thai people is watching them interact as a family, as many all work together in their family run business. They are always playing, smiling and joking with each other, and they are a very close community. Most of the time this does rub off on to the travellers. In Vietnam I think the guesthouse owners instinctively just spit in your face as a welcome. But to be fair to the Vietnamese, they probably get treated the same in most western cultures. Plus they have no tangible reason to show me any respect. I basically come to their town, tell them to get away from my bags, tell them their spring rolls are shit and then get smashed. Probably not endearing. 

So tomorrow I fly into kuala lumpar for a couple of days and then onto Bali for full moon, tough times. Normally I'd upload pictures but unless you want to see a picture of a conjoined banana twin that I purchased earlier, which I will email upon request, there is nothing new to show as back in chiang mai... Bulldog t-minus one month 

Luang Prabang - Chiang Mai - Pai

Much has happened in the last couple of weeks, the grand sum of which has left me weak, malnourished and in need of a short period of detox before Bali...

I'll start with the lovely little bus journey from Luang Prabang to Chiang Mai. Whilst at around 21hrs it has not been my longest journey, it has been by far the worst. I booked the 'VIP' bus, why, because i'm worth it. When I got there I was first struck by the smell, then the lack of seats, then the lack of leg room, then the reality of the next 15hrs. The only plus point was that tom and sophie, who I'd met in Hanoi,, and Ben, who I'd met elephant riding, were all on my bus. When I got to my 'seat' I was relieved to see that instead of there being a seat, there was actually just a piece of wood where the cushion used to be. Add to this that I was at the back and therefore right over the wheel base, I was feeling good about the prospect of the 15hr leg of the journey to the Thai border. Just before we set off I noticed grafitti from someone else who'd chosen the bus option over the slightly cheaper long boat option (see right). I think I perhaps got about 30 secondss sleep between two crashing thuds of wood against buttock during the 3% of the road that was actually paved.



Another satisfied customer



During the journey Tom put me on to an interesting idea. Apparently you can change someone's name by deed poll for just 36 squid, and to do this, apparently all you need to present is a birth certificate, as he's previously tried changing his mates name to John Bon Jovi, but couldn't get hold of his certificate....

So after finally arriving in Chiang Mai after about another 6hrs on a much more comfortable minibus on the thai side, the four of us, and another unlucky member of the bus journey. a young lad called doug, booked into a guesthouse and resolved to get shitfaced. I don't think I have ever met someone who likes a drink as much as Tom, so our time in Chiang Mai pretty much revolved around drinking and tigers.

Whilst i've hired a lot of scooters during my time away, I have never really driven in traffic before. This changed quickly when we decided to drive to tiger kingdom on scooters, and within 10 minutes I found myself on a motorway being overtaken by huge lorries... A tad intimidating and certainly glad to make it back alive that day. The tiger kingdom was quality, got to cuddle and play with quite a few different tigers, the ones that lay down were fine, but occassionaly one of them would jump up and start strolling towards you, at which point you'd either run or poo.



Sober



The photo to the right was taken that evening when we all went out with a couple of others from the hostel in tow... The bloke was a 38yr old who was cycling across laos, thailand and vietnam. He was a bit weird. We went to watch a few bouts of thai boxing, and he seemed to disappear. Someone spotted him in a nearby ladyboy bar, sat on a bar stool sucking on a ladyboys tit. Bizarre scene, very bizarre! Me and an american girl ended up going out with a couple of said ladyboys and ended up drinking with them until stupid o'clock.  The next day the weird guy told us that he didn't actually sleep with the ladyboy, but he did know enough about her to tell us that his/her balls had been lopped off and that he/she had her own brand of whiskey, which we'd been drinking all night!

The following day tom's girlfriend and Ben headed off to go on a two day trek, so me Tom and Doug resolved to get more smashed than humanely possible. By 5pm we'd emptied a stash of around 4 whiskey bottles, by which point we were joined by the weirdo. For the next two hours we sat watching videos of 9/11 conspiracy theories, and I don't know if you've ever seen 4 smashed people debating the rigidity of steel framed buildings and their propensity to absorb heat in excess of 3,000 degrees, but the place seemed to empty pretty quickly when it began! The guy had also bought out half a mortar round which we were using as an ashtray! Shortly after doug used his typical grace to knock over and smash two whiskey bottles we were (to our astonishment at the time) politely asked to leave, which was sort of mission accomplished.

After around 5 days in Chiang Mai it was time to move on, and me and Doug headed to Pai. Within two minutes of getting on the bus I got chatting to a lad, and when he asked where I was from, it turned out that his best mate in the marines (richard mason) was also from Hereford. Small world indeed. So when we arrived we all got rooms together and what was supposed to be a period of detox pretty much instantly descend into much of the same. Pai is a great place, it's a really small town up in the hills. On our first night out we got chatting to a couple of essex girls who we've been hanging out with since. On our second day we hired out peds and went up to a big waterfall, a canyon and a naturally heated spring spa.

On the way back we popped back to the canyon to try and catch the sunset, which was pretty cool. Somehow on the drive back me and Katie got seperated from the other three, and for some reason I had completely lost my bearings. We ended up about 10 miles out of town, and by the time we got back the other three had started panicking and had sent the two lads out on a search party! Pai is a kind of a small hippy town, and almost everyone here is getting stoned and driving around on scooters, so I'm fairly sure that around 50% of the transient population are lost most of the time!

Today is the first day of my detox proper, and I am feeling so ruddy ill. I didn't drink anything during the mighty enjoyable games of football last night and had myself in bed by midnight - then spent the entire night crapping something unnatural out. My most reasonable explaination is that i had the munchies when i got back and the only thing I could afford with my remaining 5bt was a pack of chilli covered broad beans, mmmm yummy. Dan, Doug and the girls left yesterday, so I am currently rooming with an 18yr old christian girl who keeps crying everytime she skypes her boyfriend - and I'm pretty sure her bags will be packed and gone by the time I get back to the guesthouse. There's an awesome little place where you can hang during the day which has a pool, table tennis table and gym, so I'm going to spend my next few days trying to be good!