Gwyn Morfey: On The Go

Relentless Memory

2011-12-12T18:40:50-05:00

Learning is the most important thing I do, but my memory is poor. I've just launched an app that helps me to do it slightly better. Here's my workflow: My sources are generally books, articles, or discussions with coaches or friends. In each case I write notes, either as text or on paper. I prefer paper, because it's more expressive than text, but much faster than digital non-text. Often I'll scribble in a book as I read it (I don't use ebooks much because I can't do this), then rapidly reread and collate my notes. I store the notes in Evernote, using a ScanSnap to grab the paper. They're tagged in broad topics, so an Evernote search lets me quickly revise for a specific event. For example: "what do I know about negotiation?". The notes serve as a memory cue, so a quick read-through is enough to get ready for action. This only works if I know exactly what I'll need to know, and I have time to revise it. For more permanent, general learning, I use a spaced repetition system. The open-source project Anki is a sophisticated SRS, but I don't use it, because it needs me to form my notes into formal flashcards ("What are the three steps in principled negotiation?", "In what ways is a Multiplier different to a Diminisher?"). This requires effort, it wouldn't work for all forms of learning, and it would give me a duplication of data, with the same material present in different forms in two different applications. Study you don't do counts for nothing. I can't afford this to feel like a chore, so I sacrifice efficiency for convenience. Instead, I used Evernote's API to build a web app called Relentless Memory. This is a naive SRS. On the first load, it pulls all the notes I've tagged 'remem' and shows them to me. I take some time to read each note, think about how I'd apply it, informally test myself on it, and then click "easy", "medium", or "hard" based on how well I think I'm remembering it. 'Hard' brings the note back the next day. 'Easy' or 'Medium' intelligently set a new date based on my history of encounters with that note. It takes ten or fifteen minutes, so most days I revise over the day's first cup of tea, before I'm useful for anything else anyway. Apart from better memory, this has a neat side-effect: ideas don't stick unless they're the right idea at the right time. I'll sometimes encounter things that were of only academic interest when I first read about them, but which - through serendipity - I can suddenly use and apply immediately. Try it if you like: http://relentlessmemory.com/. I'm continuing to develop it so I'd be interested in any thoughts.

Game Over

2011-10-28T19:17:45-04:00

[Here be spoilers, if you haven't played yet] I never expect to survive. But this time I didn't intend to. Every game invites you to play a character, though most people settle for souped-up versions of themselves. This time I swapped Dwayne Hicks for Martin Riggs. My mission: get the two VIPs through alive by any means necessary. I'm suicidal but I'm not stupid. I drop us into the second-to-last squad to go out (tired zombies lack stamina), with a bag of energy-giving sweets, backup batteries for the phones, satellite tracking of the VIPs (via Latitude), flashing lights to draw attention and a big Huntsman umbrella to hide behind. We get attacked early on and I'm able to hold the zombie's attention, at least. Okay. We have a plan. Further down Tooley St, a mob of survivors form as squads bunch up, all of us unable to find the checkpoint location. Viv spots zombies in the distance, not paying us much attention, as I try to collect intel from the other survivors so we don't have to risk exploring by ourselves. Suddenly they're moving our way, fast. Instinctively I yell "Contact!" and suddenly the whole mob is moving as one, fleeing six abreast down the middle of the road. Someone else echoes my shout; I doubt they've actually seen the threat. I glance back. The zombies have stopped hundreds of metres away from us. The mob runs on; shouting doesn't seem to stop them. I'm not sure if we're safer without them. A later checkpoint calls for us to go up to the ninth floor of a carpark on the stairs, then take the ramps to level 14. I lead the (newly collected) squad up to the eighth floor, past a couple of confused civilians, and stop on the stairwell before the landing. The door's ajar and I don't like it. I'm focused on that when a scream from the VIP makes me look up to see a grasping hand coming down from the stairs above, inches away. We back up, then charge through the door to the 8th floor, abandoning the stairs to the zombie. It happens again; exiting the carpark, Viv spots a hand gripping the door from the outside, only a couple of fingers giving away the position of the zombie hiding behind it. It would have murdered all of us in seconds. We take another exit. I'm supposed to be saving _their_ lives. I get my chance. Union St is narrow, and two zombies block our path. One group slips through while a car goes the other way, using it for cover, and a mob builds up behind us while we wait for another chance. Out of time, I look at the VIPs: "Alright. I'm going to be a hero, so you'd better be ready." Then I walk up to one of the zombies. "Hey! Stinkface! Your mother was an ogre!" He's not that interested. "You want tasty brains? How about these? It's a pity you're so slow! I bet I can hop faster than you!" He looks at me, then looks away. I'm waving a flashing red light in his face. Oh well. Plan B. I turn around. "Dammit. This doesn't work for shit." I'm half-expecting the response but my heart still jumps at the roar and suddenly I'm pelting at full speed down a side street. We reach the next junction and he's still chasing me. Right onto Copperfield St, past another turnoff, and another. I'm at full speed and can't keep this up for much longer, and I'm not gaining on him. Risborough St. He's still coming. I hit the t-junction at Great Suffolk St and another survivor waves me down; the pursuit has stopped. I stagger into a doorway and collapse, sending a terse message to the VIPs: "You'd better have made it." They do. We regroup, passing through another checkpoint and directly into an ambush under a bridge. Both VIPs are clear, but I'm on a collision course with a slow-moving zombie I have no room to dodge. "EAT FLAMING DEA.. or, don't". He grabs me just as I remember that I don't actually have a weapon. Okay. I'm scratched. But I'm still standing and the VIPs are still OK. We save precious energy by diverting down side streets; the VIPs are tired and I can't sprint any more. But it doesn't work; for the first time _ever_ in my four runs at this game, there's a random zombie hiding behind a car, alone, on a random street we shouldn't have been on. He starts tracking one of the VIPs at a fast lurch, then switches to a full-on sprint when I start calling him names. This time he gets me. It turns out that making them angry also makes them fast. The VIPs get clear and wait for me around a corner. But it's the final checkpoint where things turn weird. It's an ambush at the end of a street; the map says there's someone to meet there, but we can't find him. The whole mob is asking "left or right? left or right?" and refusing to approach until we know. Finally we do engage them, and it turns out to be an actor just standing there, right in the middle of the horde. We're magically safe if we're standing within a few metres, apparently. There's confusion. I get bitten again, but it doesn't matter. While he's muttering whatever plot points he seems to care about, we're standing less than ten metres from the zombies. I have no idea what's going on. Then suddenly the professor has gone and we're charging into certain death, though the road in the other direction is completely clear. It's a fuckup, a bad one, inexplicable, and it instantly undoes all of our heroics. One VIP dies in seconds. I spot the other being surrounded, and can see that there's nothing I can do, now. I get absolutely mauled, not that I care. So this is how it ends. I'd have liked to have gone out more gloriously.

One Way Trip

2011-09-15T04:13:44-04:00

This one's a facebook post.

This Was Not A Game

2011-09-04T15:30:47-04:00

The Resistance 3 event near Waterloo. It's clear quickly that this isn't a game. This is a standard 'scare ride': a linear path followed by small groups in the dark, with actors who'll jump out and scare them. It's very, very well done. The problem is not the format. The problem is that I can't stop noticing the format. Eyes wide open, torch scanning the corners, looking for exits, I'm assessing the threat. And once I realise that there isn't one, it stops being interesting. I'm aware even as I do it that I'm Doing It Wrong; I'm often slightly out of position, seeking cover to stop Them seeing me which also means that I can't see Them. But theatre needs a consistent, meaningful plot. Games need game mechanics. This has neither. Everyone else I talked to about this show - including some experienced Fire Hazard crew - really enjoyed it. That can only mean that the market for these kinds of things is still young, that most people still have low expectations of interactivity. Maybe that's the natural progression: when you can no longer enjoy being part of these experiences, you're ready to make them. Or perhaps you just have to, because that's all that's left.

Station Zero

2011-09-04T14:58:15-04:00

Moments I remember, from a day in an abandoned shopping mall playing the kind of games I usually run. KNOW THE AREA First run. Midgame. Twenty people are hanging around in the 'safe' room, zombies staring at us from both entrances. Almost nobody has a working weapon. We have seven of the eight power cells we need to call the helicopter, and by interrogating the priest I've got the location of the last one - in the basement. I try to form a squad but nobody's focusing for long enough. I'm already hoarse and can't get the group's attention. People are scared. It's probable death out there but certain death in here. So I get bored of waiting, and run, unarmed, into and through the horde. The space is wide and the zombies are slow-moving so, with a bit of zigzagging and a dive roll, I'm through nearly unscathed. A few survivors have followed, and we sprint to the far end of the mall, looking for the stairs to the basement as the horde pursues. And we overshoot. In fact, we lose it completely. By the time we reach the far end of the mall I'm the only survivor left, and I'm quickly cornered and devoured. CHECK THE VENTS Round two. I start as a zombie. A dozen human survivors make their way towards the roof early, thinking there's a helicopter coming. They're wrong, and with us between them and the stairs, they're trapped in the machine room. They've got lots of weapons including a couple of very long swords, and the corridor's only a couple of metres wide, so the horde pushes against them uselessly. We're getting nowhere. I clamber up onto the airconditioning machines on the right hand side, crawling between the top of the machine and the ceiling. A couple of players spot me as I growl, but there's too much cover for them to hit me and they're hesitant to waste their ammo. And while the survivors are fixated on me, a second zombie has crawled underneath the machines on the left hand side and popped out behind them. As soon as I hear the screams I jump down from the machinery, landing amongst the survivors. Their perimeter is broken, and they panic. The horde pushes them back onto the roof, then rushes them and finishes them off. ARM THE MOB Round three. We finish clearing the basement and our four-person squad emerges into the main hall of the mall. We're overrun by two dozen heavily armed survivors, fleeing past us and screaming "white knight! run!" Nobody's in charge. I shout "YOU HAVE TO KILL IT! IT HAS AN OBJECTIVE!" and the lead survivors skid to a stop, turn, and repeat my command to the others. Unnaturally quickly - a matter of a few seconds at most - the mob stops, closes up, brings heavy weapons to the front and charges back the other way. We hear gunfire and screams but, with a pistol, a knife, and a spade among the four of us, we don't get involved. They kill the knight. Turns out it didn't have an objective. We scarper before the mob remembers who told them that it did. WATCH YOUR BACK Later, we get caught up on the stairway with a huge mob of survivors and an even bigger mob of zombies. Somehow three of us manage to extricate ourselves, fighting hand-to-hand to exit the stairwell into an abandoned shop, with the horde close behind us. We're nearly clear, holding back to see if Simon has made it out, when a White Knight pops up in front of us, wielding a sword and a club. It's too fast so we're going to have to kill it. Nick immediately wades in with the spade and pushes it back, then I go berserk with the knife, screaming incoherently as I batter the monster and ignore the hits I'm taking in return. I've taken too much damage, so my plan is to take out the Knight to save the squad, then die dramatically. Somehow I succeed in pinning it down, the horror still thrashing but unable to get up from under my knife point, and I'm pondering what to do next.. when the horde catches up. Oh. I'd forgotten about them. I'm torn to pieces instantly. After a suitably dramatic death scene, the Knight helps me up and shakes my hand. Then we go looking for the rest of my team.

Winter is Coming

2011-09-04T14:57:45-04:00

This one's a facebook post.

Ruins

2011-01-29T09:56:54-05:00

When the town of Gibellina was destroyed by an earthquake in 1968, the Italians opted to simply rebuild it next door - and, later, to concrete over the entire remains, turning them into a massive sculpture. This kind of madness seemed like something we ought to see. But it's not so easy to find - even Italians don't go there - and the fortified hilltop building we end up approaching turns out not to be the memorial, but a museum of Islamic influences on Sicily. The curator is as surprised as we are, but turns on the lights and music as we arrive. Between looking at antiquities, I manage to get enough 3G signal through the windows to figure out that "next door" actually means over ten miles away, as the crow flies. We're not in Ruderi de Gibellina. We're not even close. As we leave, he says something. We don't understand. By the time I decode it as "another museum" he's led us across a courtyard and unlocked a huge, high-ceilinged exhibition of sculpture. And this is _interesting_ - bronzed interlocking shields in just the right light as an ominous surround-sound track plays from the other end of the hall, pinpricks of light from fibre-optics like alien plants. A couple of dogs streak past, inhumanly fast, as we exit. We don't worry about them. It's nearly full dark by now, and we're halfway across the deserted carpark when the barking starts. The goats and their attendant who were there when we parked are gone, but the wild dogs remain, between us and the car, and not glad to see us. We back up. I've never been attacked by a dog, so I don't know how to deal with this. Viv's never averted a dog attack, so she only knows ways that don't work. I pick up a couple of large rocks, then dump them in favour of a long, thin slab of concrete. We advance on the car, well spaced, moving slowly but steadily. She should be acquiring a weapon. I should be moving to protect her. We're doing this _wrong_. But we barely talk at all, both sensing that this is no place for a committee meeting. The two-handed heft of my concrete cricket bat is reassuring even though I have no idea what I'm going to do with it. There's suddenly movement, too fast to follow. I don't even have time to raise the bat as the two dogs tear down the road. We never see what they're chasing, but it's not us, so after a second we unfreeze and sprint for the car. I have an irrational urge to lock the doors - too many horror movies - and instead force myself into a slow, careful exit from the car park. We're safe, but still in the middle of nowhere, with no idea where to spend the night. Not something I'd normally do (outside of tourist season in a cheap country), but we've got wheels. How wrong can it go? As it turns out, not very. We find a pizzeria with lights on, and the waitress unlocks the door and spends twenty minutes calling every B&B she can find, communicating with us via a mix of amused smiles and Google Translate (years ago, I asked "Why can't my phone do this?"; now it can). Someone shows up to drive us in convoy to the B&B; he makes allowances for my lack of speed, but still has to show me how to reverse in to the spot. We eventually check in - google translate completely failing, this time - and walk back to the pizzeria, where we spend three hours eating pasta and drinking wine. We never make it to the ruins. We don't have to.

Devoured

2011-01-14T10:35:39-05:00

By the time I scrapped the Oz flights I'd already booked the time off work. This gives me a couple of weeks with not much to do but try to answer the question "what kind of person am I?" - so I've been using the time to try a few new things. On Wednesday I discovered Zombie Run, a GPS game of desperate escape, and took it out for a spin on Hampstead Heath. I got run ragged, never quite able to get far enough ahead to get outside their chase radius on the heath's winding paths, and by the time I was finally eaten after five kilometers, I'd accumulated half a dozen zombies and gotten completely turned around. So I've spent the morning hacking in Eclipse, and _my_ version of Zombie Run has a compass and a shotgun. I strap on my trail shoes and configure the game, using fingerless gloves on the touchscreen. Destination: the bridge northwest of Highgate ponds. Infestation density: moderate. Zombie mode: 'Resident Evil'. They'll move at 5mph as the crow flies, so on clear ground, I'm faster. Uphill or in overgrown areas, they're faster. And, obviously, they don't tire. Starting ammunition: a single shell. The map shows me the situation. There are at least half a dozen between me and the bridge, making a straight line a dicey proposition. But there are two ammo dumps at the top of Parliament Hill - unfortunately, with group of zombies standing around nearby. Jogging towards the heath, I build a plan. I'll take it easy, conserving energy until they notice me. At that point I'll sprint for the ammo, hope I get there first, then start shooting. From there I'll take a straight line through to the bridge, using the spare ammo to deal with any surprises. It's an uphill sprint but nothing I can't handle. Chclick. The icon turns grey. I've picked up the first of the drops, just ahead of the zombies. Now the game changes. I slow to a steady, deliberate walk, level the phone, tap the screen. The boom of the shotgun effect mixes with the hip-hop beats in my headphones, the click-clack that follows it deeply comforting. They're down. I pick up the pace, snatching up the second ammo dump on the way. Almost immediately another group spot me and start chasing. It's not a problem until a pair of zombies close from in front. I can't safely dodge them and can't go around without the group behind catching up, so I'm forced to shoot again, on the move this time. I'm empty, no defense left but my speed. But the bridge is in sight now. Standing at the near end is a resident walking his pets - or a Resistance guard with a handful of attack dogs, depending on how you look at it. He's nonplussed by my whoops as I come to an abrupt halt and take off my headphones. The world flips back to another grey day on the heath, and a long walk back to the flat. It's as if the zombie apocalypse never happened. Except that now I know the answer. I'm the kind of person who writes code to go running to escape from invisible zombies.

Poleaxed

2010-04-15T07:55:55-04:00

Couchsurfers say hello by walking. So I step off the 6am Stansted Shuffle in Krakov and go exploring with Anna - a flooded ex-quarry, a medieval fair on Krakus mound, a fortress built just outside the city walls. At drinks with conference attendees that evening we successfully derail a discussion of web applications into one about Venezuelan butterflies, leave them over hot chocolates in a cafe, then slip off to a smoky bar. It's the first of many late nights, but that's just how this goes. We play Crazy Taxi on the way to the Wieliczka salt mine, cutting a 30-minute bus ride in half with an unlicenced cab I pick up in the train station. I spend the whole trip more worried about being ripped off than killed in traffic; the situation trips _all_ my scam heuristics. I'm thoroughly confused when it fails to turn into one. This isn't Vietnam. Kopalnia Soli is a palace, not a mine. I'm not disappointed. We catch the bus back. Then it's two nights at the Park Inn for the Agile Central Europe Conference. It should really have been three, but I skip the post-conference party in favour of heading out to my second couch at Kazimierz. Language is shared experience, and as I travel, common phrases take on a new richness. "Roared to life" seems overblown until you've kickstarted a classic bike. "The man on a Clapham omnibus" doesn't mean much until you've met one. Maja is stunningly beautiful. That is, I'm actually stunned, and our first few moments of conversation in the doorway are stilted. But that's just how couchsurfing goes. Within half an hour we're comfortable. Nine hours later, at three am, we're still talking but I'm fading fast. We've been joined by half a dozen other couchsurfers by then, both hosts and guests, swapping stories and places around the table. Krakow does pubs _really_ well. Every place I saw was on a level with the best of London. It's a rough morning. Not because I have a hangover - contrary to stereotypes, everyone's too busy talking to get really pissed - but because of the phone call that wakes Maja at 8am. The president and most of the government have been killed in a plane crash. I make her a cup of tea; I don't know what else to do. You don't realise how important your downtime is until you don't have any. The tram to Nova Huta is almost the only time I've been alone in five days. I expected utilitarian concrete nightmare; I got well-planned but unimaginative metropolis. It's funny how the cities people claim they want - well planned, easy to commute, plenty of housing - aren't the ones they want to live in. I navigate through tramline suspensions (public transport failures aren't unique to London, after all) to the Bunker Art gallery. Art gives you new filters; once you've seen it done, you can apply it to your vision in realtime. Dark Rooms was an exhibition of darkened spaces, the absence of detail providing more room for the imagination. I'm back in time for a basement birthday party. The language barrier prevents me from casually joining conversations - a _much_ bigger barrier than you'd expect, and one that affected me just as badly at the conference - but they take turns to speak to me one on one, in English. I never get the feeling that it's a chore. I'm down at 2:30am and back up at 7 sharp to get the plane. My grip on reality is starting to slide. It doesn't help that, for background, I'm reading a book set in Krakow, the narrative slipping between two periods in history. That gives me three, all up, and walking through the Rynek I see echoes of other times. Other times that never even happened. Sleep deprivation is biting hard. The third day feels worse than the second, but the fifth day doesn't. I don't feel impaired, just slightly .. disconnected. It's an altered state of consciousness, not entirely unpleasant. If I just slept less all the time - many people do - I wonder if I'd get used to it? I'm back on a plane in less than a week. It looks like I'm going to find out.

The Far End

2009-11-20T15:44:25-05:00

Crouch End, London "Hide!" The guide, the voice who's been in my ear all the way from the clock tower, sounds like she means it. Rock and roll! Suddenly I know what we're playing and how this works. I make a snap decision and swing around the corner, ducking into the cloakroom just as a crew member opens it. Just as quickly, another crew member takes my arm and guides me back to where I was. I try to salvage some of the drama by uselessly flattening myself against the wall. Okay. This isn't Night Watch, and I _don't_ know how it works. It's funny what you bring with you. I never really find out. I'm not a ghost, but I'm not sure what's expected of me. This is new, and my normal approach is useless here. The voice in my ear tries to guide me through, but she lives in an mp3 player, so she's slightly out of sync. In fact, she's lagged, which leaves me at a disadvantage as she tells me how to handle situations. Perhaps it's deliberate. When people talk to me, I have to choose who to listen to, and sometimes I choose wrong. The whole time, I'm so focused on trying to fit in, to make the show work that I'm not absorbing as much of my surroundings as I should be. It's funny what you bring with you. These guys don't need my help. When, eventually, my guide dumps me in a basement, going dead after leading me through a door that's locked behind me, I feel the rules shift underneath me. It's not quite the Game, it's not quite Spider And Web, but it is a Change. That's the end, though, and once I work out my route out, there's no debrief. As always, I'm left wondering if I missed something. Or everything. Three years ago this would have blown my mind into a thousand sizzling sparks. It's an outstanding production. It's left me with several surreal moments and a vague sense of unreality. _Damn_ it: I can't stay on that edge. I can't even get back there unless I find something an order of magnitude better than before, and when you live in London, there isn't anywhere else to go. I _could_ build it. Though they made it look easy, one glance at the spreadsheets, one tense curse from an overloaded and out-of-position actor reminded me how brutally hard this is. But pulling Dead Reckoning together against unbelievable odds made me sure that I can do this. But the creators never play, never really experience it. And the opportunity costs are _massive_. When I came home from Faust, I never thought that I'd spend the rest of my time here trying to get back.

Keeper

2009-10-25T05:55:16-04:00

Every decision to succeed at something is a decision to fail at something else. So by failing to train, by diverting resources to work and Fire Hazard and travel, I chose to fail at Run To The Beat, and I did. 2:21 is 21 minutes slower than my last half-marathon, and _much_ more painful. Given that, how do you choose? I've tried setting overall strategy - Vision, as I call it at work. This year was the Year Of The Spy: weight-training and French lessons are in, computer games and rollerblading are out. But it didn't work out that way; opportunities appeared and I grabbed them. I don't trust the long-term plan so it doesn't work. In Cardiff we bought expensive tickets to Survival Of The Fittest well in advance, before it really sunk in. Dead-scared on the day, we still had to do it, and (as nearly always) we were glad we did. But you don't have to buy tickets to commit. July: I'm wiped from work, with four miles to cover to the pub. Heavy rain drips from my glasses, blinding me to the dangerous traffic on Euston Rd. But I said I'd be there, and I'll be there. Turnout is poor but that only means more time with the long-lost friend I'd come to see. It's easy to forget why you like people, when they're not around. It's easy, and it's sad. Lyn's barely finished booking the birthday tickets to the London gig when I hear that I've been accepted as a presenter at Scrum Gathering. In Munich. On the same day. The last conference trip collided with our anniversary, so this is a step too far. I said I'd take her to Newton Faulkner. Dammit. So I bring her to Munich, and afterwards when we land at Stansted, instead of the bus home, we get the train north to Cambridge. We're a day early for the gig, so we spend some time exploring King's College chapel and Trinity's Wren Library. It turns out to be worth it. Stagecraft is a step beyond musicianship, and Newton Faulkner _nails_ the non-stop set as we take turns to brace between a support pole and a ledge on the back wall so that we can see it happen. Then it's back on the bus, the bus, the train and the tube for two days of unpacking and rest. I'm back to work on Monday, putting out a week's worth of fires and preparing talks for XP Day and SPA. Dead Reckoning on Saturday, fifty-plus players in full costume on the Heath expecting £13 worth of fun but Royal Fail's lost a critical box of props. Test game on Monday, and shows coming up at Battersea Arts Center and Southbank. Got to get back to exercise. Six months of cash reserves left before things get ugly. It's hard to prioritize in this crazy rush, but I keep my promises. What does it matter what I _can_ do, if I can't do that?

Game On

2009-09-13T16:41:27-04:00

"No! NO!" There's real panic in my voice. The black-cloaked ghoul has popped up from around the corner of the tower block. He's much too close, running much too fast and screaming as he closes in on me. And I've come too far to die now. I force myself into another all-out sprint, back across the lawn and around the corner. He's gone, no doubt returned to his ambush position. Mostly they break off the chase after a couple of hundred metres. My team has scattered, two of us already dead and one more pinned down with ghouls on both sides. My phone is flat, so I stand under a streetlight to examine the paper map. I dropped my torch in an earlier escape and didn't dare go back for it. In a straight line through the school, it's only a few hundred metres to the next safe zone at Banana Bridge. But my legs are burning, and the next time they spot me I'm not going to be fast enough. Lost in an unfamiliar city, ghouls all around me and my team dead or missing, I'm going to have to go around. It's La Noche de los Muertos, and it's the best game I've ever played. With a crew of 40 and 200 players, it's a logistical nightmare to organise, but it features no technology and only one rule: Don't let them catch you. By the second afternoon of the weekend games festival, the trend is clear. Circle Rules Football requires a goal and a yoga ball, nothing else, and the only rules are that you can't hold the ball and can't shoot from inside the key. It's a blast. I ran until my already-sore legs could barely move, calling "Yo! Sub!" at ever-decreasing intervals. The Igfest Party was even less structured, with no rules at all. But in a nightclub full of people in robot suits, with an Upgrade Store swapping huge futuristic weapons for power tokens, there really aren't any ways to _not_ have fun. In comparison, four teams of eight completed LaserTrap: Bomb Squad and all had a great time. But it requires aching hours of preparation and a huge backpack full of fragile gear. Except in very limited circumstances, it loses in the fun-per-unit-effort stakes. I fear that Korean Lazer Ball fits into the same category, with 90-second rounds meaning that, most of the time, most people aren't playing. Like LaserTrap, it's visually spectacular but has demanding technical requirements. It turns out that it's surprisingly easy to design a game that's fun. I'm learning now to _optimise_ - what can generate the most fun for the most people, the most reliably, with the smallest crew? How can I make this sustainable, so that I don't burn out the playmakers just as I get a critical mass of players? Perhaps I'm not learning this so much as re-learning it. Children play with no technology and very few rules, with goodwill and instinctive dramatics filling the gaps. It's easy to think that with all the toys the adult world has to offer, we can make better games than that. But really, we're just making it hard.

Gator Bites

2009-08-23T12:13:13-04:00

As always, these are the stories that I didn't tell: I've been on an airboat, on dead-flat swamp as a lightning storm closed in, pulling a fast 180 to wait on the dock for better weather. In fact, I've been in a storm so severe that I had to pull off the road, because the plumes of water from the wheels were going over the car. I've cruised through Downtown, watching the beautiful people and the people who think they're beautiful, and seen it up-close from a rooftop bar. I've tagged along as my host talked herself into a gated community and up to a penthouse to take pictures of the view. I've driven across the road to go grocery shopping, because it was easier than trying to cross it on foot. I've shaken hands with the CEOs of three of the world's top Rails companies. I've chatted casually to one of them for ten minutes at a party before I knew who he was. I've not been to Disneyland, but I've been to its souvenir shop, and I'm not sure that's much different. And I've eaten alligator tail. It tastes like chicken.

Summer Storm

2009-08-23T12:12:39-04:00

BOOM. The thunder is muffled, but I instantly realise what's going on. Deep inside the mall, I'd never seen the storm developing, but now that it's in full swing, even Starbucks' light jazz can't drown it out. Fuck. I've left the roof down. And I'm a quarter mile from the car. By the time I make it to the doors it's well and truly bucketing drown, drenching me to the skin in seconds. The car will already be soaked but I have to go anyway; this is my problem and I intend to own it. I deserve this. Water is dripping down the dash as I hammer on the "close roof" button. The cup-holders are full, and the seats are already dank. As I head back to the mall, the rain stops, of course. The worst bit comes later. I'd promised to take my host out to dinner and, aware that she's never ridden in a convertible, I ask her which car she'd like to take. She's disappointed, and her gorgeous French accent takes none of the sting from her words. "Ah, ze dry one?"

On The Road

2009-08-23T12:12:18-04:00

"Drive." I'd hoped that the GPS I'm paying $11/day for would be more useful. Instead it's talking like a hijacker while I try to wrap my head around being on the wrong side of the car, on the wrong side of the road, on the wrong side of the world. My "arriving drive", as it's called, is only a few miles, but I'm finding it.. challenging. As the lanes merge and split just slightly faster than I can process, I'm swearing calmly. Not "FUUUUUUCK!" so much as "Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck." Controlled panic: it's almost a flow state. "In 0.2 miles TURN LEFT TURN LEFT" This is information that I would love to have had, oh, about five miles ago, so that I could get in lane and run the turn-left pattern through my head again. But that's not how they roll here; TomTom apparently values spontaneity over advance planning. Eventually I learn to adapt, knowing that my perky, sadistic navigator is going to spring things on me at the last second. Still, after a couple of days and a couple of long drives I relax at the wheel. And when things are easy, we're almost friends. "Continue. 78 miles." That's what I like to hear.

The New World

2009-08-23T12:11:46-04:00

"It's so.. American." It's a useless, trite response, but my drinking buddies understand. The country that exports most of the western world's media, exports an exhaustive definition of that word at the same time. You've been here, even if you haven't. And, because it's been in so many movies, it feels exactly like one. Everything is larger-than-life, almost too real. Everyone around me is playing a bit part, one stereotype or another. Soon enough, I'm doing the same. It's also trite to refer to anywhere as a 'land of contrasts'. But I can't reconcile fundamentalist billboards, no-deposit finance and talk-back radio with a country that can produce the Space Shuttle. And this extends to the people in a way that I haven't noticed, or perhaps haven't been sensitive to, when traveling elsewhere. The New Yorker on the front of the airboat speaks softly as he negotiates a discount for his young family, only removing his yarmulke when the wind threatens to tear it away. The good 'ole boy on the back has a beard that follows his jawline and fears nowt but lightning, out there on the swamp. The round-faced Texan at the conference wonders how I'd ever get separated from mah vehicle, and wants to know where the strip bars are. My new friends have flown in from all around the country, and as they tell me their stories I realise I haven't been to America. I've been to a small part of Florida. And now I've got a lot more places to see.

America! Fuck yeah!

2009-08-23T12:09:44-04:00

Three. Two. One. They don't need to say "zero". By then nobody's listening. We're staring at the magnesium-bright flare just two miles across the bay, watching the slender rocket arc into the pre-dawn sky. I immediately feel a surge of.. pride, I suppose, at being a member of a species that can pull this off. This bomb-with-fins, technically a Delta-2 rocket, is carrying the 49th GPS satellite, technology that already borders on magic even without the complexity of putting it into orbit. How much can be wrong with a civilisation that can put something like this together and have it actually _work_? This is geek porn, pure fantasy. My involvement was limited to waking up at 3:30 and driving the 100km to the launch site, and _I'm_ buzzed; the people who actually built this must be feeling like unstoppable giants right now. At work I "launch" web sites, but I'm going to stop using that word. Typing "cap production deploy" is not a launch. _This_ is a launch.

It's been an interesting day. The early start makes everything a little surreal, from the 4am trip to Steak-n-Shake just as it's closing to get my morning coffee, to my first real drive on the wrong side of the road. As the small crowd walks back down the jetty after the two-minute show, the sun is rising along the long, straight beach, and the first joggers are out. I bask in the lifeguard's ten-foot chair, then drive off to try to find a beachside cafe for a proper breakfast. An hour later, I end up at Denny's. Later, at the Kennedy Space Center, I get the chance to see how it was done. It's heavy on the propaganda and light on the science, but even the rather overexcited videos can't take away from the sheer _coolness_ of the place. The people are just as interesting as the gadgets. Two astronauts give talks every day, somehow keeping it fresh and interesting even though they must have done it thousands of times before. Based on the two I saw, they're not at all gung-ho fighter pilots; the steel doesn't show. But it's there. And, later, I get to see an actual Apollo capsule, complete with charred edges from re-entry. Knowing what it is and where it's been adds incredible gravity to the experience. Only military hardware has the same coolness factor, and enjoyment of that is always tainted by the guilty knowledge that it's only useful for blowing people up. There's only one problem; it's all so _old_. Now, I know that space is the wrong place for bleeding-edge, untested technology. But even the replica of the shiny new International Space Station has *CRT* screens! It looks like something from 80s sci-fi, and perhaps it is. NASA's, indeed humanity's, greatest spacefaring achievement was over forty years ago. I'd already resolved to tell my host to see a shuttle launch at all costs, but she'll have to be quick. There are only a few more, because they're retiring the remaining shuttles, something the otherwise open and frank staff are reluctant to talk about. And perhaps I wasn't the only one who sensed a note of falseness when the excited video presenter announced that "With the space shuttle retiring, NASA is going back to the moon on the new Ares rockets!" No. That can't be right. We're not going "back". We're going onwards, onwards and upwards, right? Right?

Freedom Ain't Free[dom]

2009-08-23T12:08:20-04:00

"You've been to Vietnam?" Oh, shit. He _does_ look about the right age, the right build. But really? What are the chances? "Yes." They try to be friendly, get you chatting. Don't chat. This is America, the most dangerous border crossing you've done since since Hat Lek into Cambodia. Concentrate. Remember that they're treating you like a criminal; electronic fingerprinting is no less humiliating than the ink-stained version. "Did you go to the DMZ?" Suddenly I can't remember. Is hesitation suspicious? Is lack of hesitation suspicious? Is wondering if you're suspicious, suspicious? "No; we went up the coast." He continues. "I was in Vietnam, in the DMZ. I went to a place called Loc Ninh". The name isn't familiar - damn it, when I did Modern European History in 1995 I never thought it'd save my ass one day. But I can tell from his sardonic smile. I play dumb, naive. I am _not_ getting drawn into politics. Never talk politics when there's an odd number of guns. "Really? What was it like?" I'm all genuine, innocent curiosity. He delivers the punchline, just as enthusiastic, but with a nasty edge to it. "It was fun!" He holds out a beefy hand, tilted so that I can see the gold ring inscribed with "Vietnam 1972". I finally give him a tight smile to show that I understand. But I don't. Not really.

Doubt

2009-08-23T12:04:13-04:00

We lurch again and this time the screams are real panic, not roller-coaster excitement. At least from some of the passengers on the 737; the mad girl on my right is shouting "do it again!". I try to keep my breathing even and my mind busy. Buddham saranam gacchami
Dhammam saranam gacchami I hesitate; I've forgotten the words. It's been too long since I needed them. Instead I focus on breathing. If you fight your fears and win, you're stronger, but if you lose, they're stronger, and flying into Chek Lap Kok airport earlier this year broke my ability to tolerate turbulence. I could be home now, in the new flat that still has the just-moved-in neatness, cuddling up to the love of my life as we celebrate nine years together. I could have a beer in one hand, chocolate in the other, the heating on and something brainless and funny on TV. Perhaps tomorrow I'd go for a walk to the organic cafe, read the paper for a couple of hours. Instead, even if I survive the landing, I have to survive America. It might be interesting, but it will certainly be hard work, work that didn't have to be done. I tell people that I enjoy it, but up here, I'm not so sure. After three years, dozens of trips, do I enjoy this? I don't know. I _still_ don't fucking know.

Now Or Never

2009-08-02T15:51:02-04:00

It was a simple mission: go to Sheffield and visit Lyn's great uncle Frank. We started planning, checking fares on megabus.com. We looked forward to completing it and reporting early. Somehow we were distracted, and never quite managed to free a weekend for the trip. We failed. Great uncle Frank died on Thursday. We failed because we thought we had time, but we didn't. The number of open opportunities remains roughly constant; for every new one that appears, another disappears. And this unavoidable loss is doubly damaging because adventures build on adventures. We spent ten days in silent meditation, an adventure in itself: at the end of it we were invited to hike cross-country with a group of Thai monks to celebrate Buddhahasa's birthday. That's a level up that we would never have known existed. So we don't, we can't, say no to anything. Right now I have trips booked to Orlando, Bruges, Bristol, Munich, Cambridge, and Scotland. Recently I've presented at Rails Underground and Hide & Seek (as far as I know, the second-biggest pervasive games festival in the world), and I've got gigs coming up at Igfest and Scrum Gathering. And as a result, we never have a spare moment. I still use David Allen's "Getting Things Done" system, but my "Someday" file might as well be "Never". This was a "Someday" mission. And that's why we failed. On some level, I know this. A good friend points at a flier and says "we should go to this". I agree, but I'm thinking, "we should, but we aren't going to". If we were going, we wouldn't be talking right now. We'd be buying tickets, working out logistics, clearing our calendars. At work, sometimes I startle people by dropping everything to deal with a new task _now_. I pay bills weeks before they're due. It's because I know that, if I don't do it now, I'll never do it. Even "never mind, we'll do it tomorrow" isn't safe. Tomorrow, something else is going to happen, we'll re-plan, and this will get quietly consigned to "someday". It's spin, a cop-out, to say "tomorrow". It's a lie. At least there's something very freeing about this kind of merciless scheduling. I've heard "clutter" defined as "decisions you haven't made yet". With everything either nailed to dates or thrown away, my schedule is clutter-free and relatively predictable. I book things weeks in advance, or I don't book them at all. It requires a constant alertness to make every single choice into "now or never". But I have to. Because there's never any time. Never any time but now.

Report: Lantau 2: Blackout

2009-05-29T20:25:24-04:00

I'm trying to force myself back to sleep. I often sleep poorly when travelling, even in a comfortable room; it's something about overstimulation, or possibly overdrinking. Recently I've been waking to pitch blackness, around 3 or 4 am. If I don't get back to sleep I'll perform poorly the next day. There's a tiny bit of light creeping around the curtains. It must be just before sunrise. I don't feel tired, but I roll over and try to sleep. Gwyn. "Gwyn." Her voice carries some urgency. "It's eleven o'clock. We've missed breakfast." I roll out of bed and twitch the curtains. Brutal sunlight pours through the gap. Thought so: they're blackout curtains. Last time this happened to this was in a windowless room in Oslo; with no alarm set and no visible clock, we never had a chance. We pack fast. By 11:40 we're on the bus back to Tung Chung, with dry crackers from the supermarket for breakfast. At Tung Chung things happen fast, and I'm on the World's Most Dangerous Cable Car (as decided by me) before I'm quite ready for it. Just two years ago a car fell off the cable at Ngong Ping, crashing into forest fifty metres below. It's shut down several times since then. But the view's amazing. Sure, there's undisturbed natural forest on one side.. but on the other, there's an entire island airport. We watch the planes take off and land until the mountains hide the airport from view. At the top the 'model village' is.. touristy. Every attraction has its own souvenir shop. We don't see any monks at Po Lin monastery; the few nuns are running for cover. The vegetarian restaurant feeds us until we're stuffed - too stuffed to walk up to the Tian Tan Buddha with our packs on. It's wrapped in mist, only sporadically visible as the clouds pass. As we ride back down to Tung Chung, the wind comes up, whistling through the vents in the car. Cars emerge from the mist ahead like silent ghosts. A few hikers pass beneath us, wearing plastic ponchos against the light rain. The bus from Tung Chung to Tai O is a full hour of twists and bumps. Lyn's still feeling peaky (we're not yet sure if it's swine flu or malaria), and it's nearly too much for her. As usual, we're burdened with the knowledge that we'll have the same ride back. We're ten minutes up a cute little lane bordered by tin houses on stilts when we make the decision. From the pier, the water had looked dead flat. Tung Chung is just around the headland. It's five minutes to six. We tighten our pack straps, we turn around, and we run for the last ferry. Which, of course, we miss, by two minutes. We're in time to watch it sail serenely away on its thirty-minute journey to Tung Chung. It's not dark yet, so we walk the other way, down to the abandoned police station. We're munching on enormous walnut biscuits that taste twice as good to me because I asked for them in Cantonese. At the end of the road a dozen eagles soar overhead, occasionally diving each other with a stereotypical piercing cry. I wander up the hill for some exploration, and then it's time to face the bus again. Even after the bus and the MTR ride to Central, we're not quite safely to the Ramada. We're glad of the seat belts in our Crazy Taxi, apparently driven by a mute ex-racer who was kicked out of Formula One for being grouchy. Checked into our 80%-discount four-star, we see a note offering room-service delivery of instant noodles. They've read our minds. But fifteen hong kong dollars? The last of my phone battery locates a seven-eleven where we get them for nine.

Report: Lantau

2009-05-28T08:20:29-04:00

Day one of our wedding present directs us to Lantau, a large island to the west of the Kowloon peninsula where we're staying. A hotel has been booked for us at Silvermine Beach, at Mui Wo. There's a direct, high-speed ferry from the port only a mile south of our hostel. It costs a pittance, runs every 40 minutes, and will drop us next to the hotel. But it involves a boat. Screw that. We're Done With Boats. It's a slow start, because Lyn still has the cold she smuggled through customs at Hong Kong airport. We're lucky their temperature checks didn't pick her up, because she feels terrible. With our packs on out the front of Mirador "Mansions", we agree that neither of us can face Chinese rice porridge - 'juk' - that morning. Western breakfast is hard to find in Hong Kong, so we spread the map out in a McCafe. I confirm the details on my phone. Thought so: it won't be easy but it should be possible. Fuelled by a real sandwich and the first proper long black I've had since Adelaide, we cross the road to Tsim Sha Tsui MTR - the Hong Kong tube. Nine stops north to Lai King, change to the Tung Chung line, three more stops above ground. We're on the island. But we're on the wrong side of the island. The direct route is only 8km, but it's a walking trail. With packs, that's at least two hours, the way we're feeling, so we find the bus terminal, hop the 3M bus and wind our way around 17km of steep single-track road to the ferry terminal. Done, in 90 minutes, and there weren't any boats. Our room in the Silvermine Beach Hotel features the National Geographic Channel, otherwise known as the "big buildings, plane crashes and huge explosions channel". We nearly don't leave, but we have a job to do, so we're soon out with a daypack under overcast skies and light rain. The desk staff don't seem to have a hiking map, but with full 3G coverage, how lost can we get? We start "hiking"; it's described as a hike, but it's a concrete path. Still, there's nearly no one around; apart from the 'snap' of mahjong tiles, it's nearly silent. The Silvermine waterfall is interesting but not spectacular; the cave has now been concreted off because it was "dangerous". But further up there are small settlements; unlike the Thai ones, it's hard to work out what they do there. A local burns a handful of 'money' in offering at a small shrine just before the rain sets in again. Dogs threaten us; puppies threaten me, or try to. We run out of ideas and follow a sign towards a village. A few minutes later, a couple of joggers pass us, and I interrupt them: "How far to the village?" "What village?" The rain is getting heavier, so a few minutes later we turn back, then off on to a side trail. It's late afternoon, but there aren't any mosquitoes. I'm starting to relax; Hong Kong's "jungle" is much more hospitable than Thailand's. Then I come to an abrupt halt, turning 180 degrees and screaming behind closed lips. As usual, Lyn's walked straight past the damn thing. And this time, she's missed it by mere inches. The orb-weaver's web has a diagonal line running to a bamboo shoot sticking out from the side of the trail. I don't know how she didn't see it. Its web is full of tiny leaves that make it highly visible. And it's _moving_. Wait. They're not leaves. They're _wings_. The thing is _unbelievably_ creepy. But I won't be beaten again. Lyn throws me a metre-section of bamboo, and I use it to probe for more lines I can't see. Then, with a kamikaze yell, I run under and past the nightmare. I'm shaking, but we're through. A hundred metres later, the trail terminates at an empty house. God damn it, we've got to go back. ---- Spent: hkd 80 breakfast hkd 70 MTR and bus hkd 80 lunch hkd 80 drinks, chocolate, and beer hkd 30 internet = hkd 340, from hkd 1800 allocated for Lantau.

Well, That Was Nice

2009-05-23T08:05:54-04:00

Several people have told me that my book turns them off travelling. I've always maintained that I travel for "experiences, not necessarily good ones", because trauma is interesting. It's not all like that, though; it's not that we don't have good experiences, it's just that I don't write about them. Because, except to me, they're not interesting. Still, anything I don't write about, I don't remember. So, I have: * Explored a cave or two in Railay. Hiked across the peninsula, following a trail of red-marked trees to.. nowhere. * Sea kayaked around Railay peninsula and some nearby islands. Spiky stalactites poking down from cave roofs, a tiny secret beach, calm seas. * Had a sunset dinner on an island so small it was mostly sandbar, with Railay's lights in the distance. The partial cloud cover made the colours spectacular. * Swum to shore from a longtail. Swum back again in a hurry as the storm closed in. * Jumped into the sea from a longtail after dark, the headland blocking even the lights from shore. Tiny dots of phosphorescent plankton lit up all around me every time I moved. * Learnt fire-twirling from a Thai on the beach in Phi Phi. Well, started to learn. It's hard! * Hiked to the viewpoint at the top of Phi Phi, locating a cache by instinct and wondering about the wisdom of rebuilding on a sandbar. Turning back from a jungle trek in time, this time. * Enjoyed Mexican, Italian, and even Israeli food; like London, everything is available here, but unlike London, I can afford it. * Played brutally competitive air-hockey at a video games arcade in Surat Thani, watched by surprised children and disapproving staff. * Borrowed a DVD player from the other side of the peninsula, and holed up in the air-conditioning for our own movie marathon.

Fear Fighters

2009-05-19T08:33:42-04:00

The first person we ask for directions tells us to turn back. So does the second; he's Thai, and he's frankly confused that we'd want to walk to Hat Yuan when, for a hundred and fifty baht, we could get a boat there. But that's not the point. So we ignore his detailed directions back to the pier, and hike into the jungle above Hat Rin. The trail's poorly marked, and by the time we reach the top we've received directions from a Thai leaning out the window of a hut in the middle of nowhere, and a _very_ strange farang who did not expect to find us in his garden. The viewpoint's everything we'd hoped it would be, a huge bare rock with 180 degree views. With my monocular I'm able to count tourists arriving by longtail, and identify an incoming Zodiac (what's that doing here?). A cloud of dragonflies circles a few metres above us. But on the way down the other side of the ridge, I come to a sudden stop. It's the size of a fat man's fist, black, yellow _and_ red, fangs visible and sharpened legs at nightmare angles. It's hanging at classic face-height, on one side of the path. Lyn must've missed it by a foot or two. She didn't see it, but now that I have, I'll have to go around. Bush-bashing in the jungle is a very bad idea, but this is only a couple of metres, cutting a corner downhill as the path switchbacks. I start my bum-slide, knowing that the orb-weaving spider couldn't care less but terrified that I've somehow snagged it, now that I can't see it. Plants catch at me and I tear through them, accelerating. I stumble to a halt at the bottom and begin to take stock. There's something on my chest. It's the size of my outstretched hand. And it's moving. Suddenly I'm flailing too wildly for Lyn to get it off me, and screaming too loudly to hear her telling me that it's a stick insect. Deep down, I knew that. But it doesn't make any difference. When we finally reach Hat Yuan the clouds are gathering. We're trying to celebrate with a beer or two, but I'm watching the darkening sky and the little longtail boats bobbing around on the wide ocean. May is the monsoon season, and massive storms arrive most afternoons, with little warning. It's time to go. So after only an hour in our new paradise, we're running down the beach towards a boat that's ready to pull away. We leap in, the driver starts up the massive car engine bolted to the back, and we escape from Storm Cove before the thunder hits us. Lyn, not a fan of deep water even when it's flat, is tensely silent. It's only a five-minute ride, though, compared to the three hours it took to hike. When I mention this, she threatens to find me another stick insect.

Jumping In

2009-05-19T08:22:24-04:00

So. The waves are going to either tip us over or smash us into the rocks. We're not visible from the shore, and nobody knows we're here. We're not wearing lifejackets. I'm a poor swimmer and Lyn's a panicky one. And neither of us knows the first thing about ocean kayaking. It's not that I'm afraid of dying; that happens to everybody. I'm afraid of dying a fool. But we have no choice, so we paddle harder. I lean back into the harness to put my back into the strokes, causing the harness to snap. My forearms are burning. With the current against us, hard strokes count for little but weak strokes count for nothing at all. We round the point and the waves subside as we paddle up to the shore on the other side. Staggering out, we pull the kayak up on to the rocks, well clear of the tide. It's not a very good beach. And we've still got to get home.

Bargaining With Buddha

2009-05-13T05:23:16-04:00

The fat guy smirks at me from behind the narrow counter. "Eternal happiness? Yeah, I can get you dat. No problem." Neon light spills in through the barred windows and raises highlights on his smile, making it somehow threatening. "What's it going to cost?" "Everything and everyone you've ever loved or ever will." "That's.. a little steep." Now he's openly grinning. "And everything that makes you you. Take it or leave it. I gots plenty of takers." I've insulted him, and the cramped pawnshop is suddenly too small for me. But I've come a very long way, and I'm not ready to run yet. "Do you have anything smaller?" "Yeah, yeah, you can have this little bit. It don't do much. Maybe get you a little bit of peace. It ain't gonna stop the pain, though. You gotta pay on the instalment plan. Ten minutes a day. And maybe just a little piece of you." It's not much of a deal, but I don't have a lot of options. I make my purchase and hurry back out into the real world. It didn't happen like that. Tan Dhammaridu is thin and his smile is genuine. He's not a buddha or a pawnbroker: he's a Buddhist monk and I spoke to him while I was living in a Thai monastery. But twelve seventeen-hour days of inactivity and silence do very strange things to your brain, and it really looked like that to me. Though the Buddhist dhamma has its own imagery - snakes, roosters and pigs, demons and bhikkus, animals and men - I created plenty of my own. Meditation became a computer game, the ship of the self swerving around rising thought bubbles and firing on defilements with weapons of visualisation. The colours behind my closed eyelids changed to match the level or the mode. Even with my eyes open, deprived of pens, books, or any form of stimulation at all, I was forced to adopt a pet spider. Wat Suan Mokh is a jungle temple, so there were plenty to choose from. When he ran away, I made my own from a fallen human hair, breaking and re-tying intricate knots to get the right number of legs. And the silence, the silence was the worst. It was the right choice to go on the meditation retreat, but it may have been the wrong choice to go on our honeymoon. At first I desperately wanted to talk to my wife, which was painful. Then I didn't want to talk to her, which was terrifying. Then she didn't want to talk to me, which was both. But the daily talks were light on dogma and heavy on psychology, science, and practical tools. And so in the midst of all the suffering - the /dukka/, as the buddhists call it - I learned to slow down, to live in the present moment. On day two of twelve, the future is so awful that there's not much of a choice. And I learned to do the mental push-ups that they call 'meditation'. Far from simply counting your breaths, these are brutally, brutally hard. This is a small measure of strength, an ability to absorb life's crueller blows with grit teeth and grim determination. But the real secret is to duck the blow entirely. The process is very simple: in order to never experience any sadness, you must never experience any happiness. With sufficient skill you will never feel anything at all, and 'you' will cease to exist. But if ultimate happiness is voidness, what's the difference between Nirvana and suicide? After twelve days, I couldn't see one. So until I do, or until I want out, real buddhism will sit on the shelf next to hard drugs and the Foreign Legion.

Night of Mayhem

2009-04-18T05:19:00-04:00

I've warned her that we'll have only minutes, and that she should choose her final words to us carefully. She looks into my eyes and says "You owe me a night of mayhem". It's true. But in the mean time we're trying to find one ourselves. It's harder than it seems. We hiked down the beach to a widely-advertised beach party and found it deserted, the poster gone, the huge wooden structure that I'd hoped they would set on fire standing there inert. The second time our expectations were lower, but we did see a farang wander up and ask "Isn't there meant to be a free barbeque here?". Thais asked Thais asked Thais, and eventually they determined that no, there wasn't a barbeque. At least not at the moment. It seems that nearby Ko Pha Ngan draws not only the full-moon-party animals, but the tamer nightlife as well; Ko Samui is completely chilled. Finally we pre-book tickets to a "Massive Songkran Party" over the internet. It names a bunch of DJs, boasts a "VIP dry area". The internet cafe's printer was broken, but I show the bouncer a screenshot of the confirmation on my phone, and he lets us in. I really wasn't expecting that to work. But then, I was expecting them to have our tickets waiting at the gate. Entering, we pass prominent signs reading "Songkran Festival: No Drugs". So, of course, the first thing anybody does is try to sell me ectasy. There are competing sellers doing laps, and although I don't see any deals happen, I see people who look like they've done one. It's ten o'clock and nothing's happening yet. The barman quotes me a price on a couple of beers, saying "sorng loi" to mess with me. He mistakes my disbelief for incomprehension and repeats the price in English, but it wasn't the language that was the problem. With a captive audience they're free to charge twice the going rate. I forgive them instantly when I find the bouncy castle. Adults allowed, beer allowed, and only slightly damp - plus it's in the shape of a pirate ship! It doesn't get any better than that, except for a bouncy castle with slides, and they've got one of them too. But it's punishingly hot, and we've soon exhausted all the possibilities that don't lead to heat exhaustion. I wasn't expecting that either; Songkran is a water festival. The previous day was a total free-for-all all over the island, Thais piling into the back of pick-up trucks with water guns to pelt people on the side of the road, who armed themselves with buckets and hoses. I turn to Lyn and explain my concept of dance party-waterfight hybrid: "I seem to be missing a waterfight." "And a dance party." But we persevere, and the dancing does start. We'd done a lap of the island that day, getting repeatedly lost and burning a whole tank of fuel each, and we're pretty shattered, so we don't stay long.

Report: champagne

2009-04-08T08:01:10-04:00

Left casually in the luggage trunk, this was an artifact. To complete the circle, we needed to drink it together at the start of the honeymoon. But after the wedding, things started moving very quickly indeed. Too tired or never alone, we missed the window. So we did the only thing we could do: do it all again. We padded the bottle with a bedsheet and lugged it all the way to Ko Samui, checking-in a bag solely so that we could get it past security. Then we found a site at our resort's lily pond, bought a wedding dress for 150 baht on the main street, and had the wedding we nearly had on our second trip to Thailand. The photographer was Lyn's camera on self-timer; the band was my phone in my pocket. The dress malfunction took only minutes to correct. The reception was the two of us, and the bottle of champagne. Intensely personal to the point of being secretive, I'm glad we didn't do it then. But I'm glad we've done it now.

Report: baht

2009-04-08T07:59:38-04:00

Our papier-mache mailbox was stuffed with inspiration, resources, and forgiveness. We have a duty to use them, if not wisely, then at least in an entertaining fashion. And we have a duty to report on them. This is the first of those reports. Contrary to our usual practice, we made our hard landing with very little cash. Changing money was one more headache we thought we could postpone to the morning. As it turned out, we were wrong. My leftovers from the last trip covered our taxi fare - even though it was five times what I expected. But at the second hotel, we had no prepaid booking and they accepted cash only. Exhausted and in the middle of nowhere, things were suddenly looking very grim. But a couple of people gave us not aussie dollars, but crisp 100 baht notes. And what they bought us was not an adventure, but four hours of precious sleep and the end of a disaster. Cheers, guys.

Hard Landing

2009-04-06T23:40:27-04:00

We're coming in too fast. The thunderstorms are over, but the air around Sydney airport is still turbulent, and we're bounced around as we head for the runway. We hit it with a BANG, and Lyn lets out the short scream of real panic. We speed down the tarmac, the little 737 taking longer to stop than the massive superjumbo that flew us to Adelaide. The cabin crew are tight-lipped as they farewell us from the plane, and we're more than a little shaken.But an hour later we board, again, for a long-haul flight to Bangkok with a talkative English flight crew, free champagne and a gentle landing. In Bangkok things turn nasty. This is our third trip to Thailand, and we've gone from overprepared to dangerously complacent. We have a transit hotel booked for the 11pm-6am layover, but I have only the name and address, not a direct phone number or a map. My phone is nearly out of credit. I don't have much cash. And we're tired. Bangkok Grand Residence Hotel staff are meant to meet us at the airport, but they don't. Rather than waste time calling them, I opt to jump in a taxi and head out there. Bad move. Navigation doesn't work in Bangkok. We tear confidently out of the airport, but ten minutes later our driver is asking 'You know?', looking for a hotel sign without slowing down. I read him the address and we pull a fast u-turn. I'm starting to think about all the backup plans we don't have. On the back of a month without enough sleep and seventeen hours in the pipe, I'm too tired to think straight; Lyn and I are still getting along only because we now make allowance for exhaustion. Half an hour. I run my phone to empty waiting on hold. Our driver uses his, waits, and eventually gets a direct hotel number from the booking agency. No one answers. We do another lap of the road. I show the driver the printed address in case I'm pronouncing it wrong, but he's too longsighted to read anything in the dim light. He doesn't want my glasses. One hour. We pull over and ask a couple of motos. They don't know either. On Lyn's direction, we swing back down the airport road to find the Bangkok Great Residence Hotel. Not us, and they don't know where ours is. Back down the road, and we call in at the Bangkok Grand Pinnacle Hotel. The sympathetic receptionist gives us detailed directions in English and Thai. With a cheeky smile, she adds a business card for next time. Fifteen minutes later we find the hotel, buried down the end of a side street we looked at an hour earlier. It's deserted and locked. The only right move I made all night was to keep the taxi for long enough to find this out. It's only four hours until check-in opens for our flight, and we're thinking about heading back to the airport, but our driver mentions that he knows a place nearby for not much more money. Normally this would be asking for trouble - in fact, that's why I hadn't asked him earlier. But his choice is honest, and we're checked in within minutes. I give the driver 500 baht, or about the price of a roundtrip airport transfer to anywhere in Bangkok. He's earned it. If we'd done this in Vietnam, or Cambodia, we'd have been in real trouble. Four hours later we're back at the airport for an easy flight to Samui, and this time our driver meets us. We check in and crash out. We've made it, but we've come down hard.

No Time To Say

2009-04-06T23:39:49-04:00

Too much happened too quickly, and the articles withered on the vine. Here are the husks: * The roof of an abandoned mental hospital at midnight. Barbed-wire fences and fleeing down the fire escape when the shadows moved at us. Playing pool at two in the morning. * On stage at the Crazy Horse, the other punters even more startled than me at the sudden change in the show. Bite marks. * Full sun in the back seat of a convertible, vines on both sides, cabernet inside us and gravel underneath us (due to navigational difficulties). Every one of the passengers injured, but only one showing it. * Tim Minchin, Saline Solution, and a walk in the Garden. The disaster that was Hitlerhoff. Feeling never quite at home in the Fringe, without an artist pass. * Back in the ute, looking into the gearbox through a torn cover as I haul bricks to the site in 4WD-lowrange. * Checking every jewellery store in the city _and_ Marion. The complete financial insanity of the _entire_ exercise. * Half the things that caused us massive stress turning out to be total non-issues. Never knowing which half. * We booked the bar, but the bar bitch bailed. The Metropolitain staffed by children. * The pyrophone juggernaut, and having to walk down the beach and back for the final explosion. * Unexpected strengths and unexpected weaknesses. Do-it-yourself weddings as the ultimate team-building exercise. * Spending half a day looking at suits. Borrowing one instead. * Overwhelmed before and after the ceremony, trying so hard to talk to everyone that I talked really to no one. Greeting and letting go at the same time; some people I won't see again. * Being moved by things that have always been felt but never said. * Backyard cricket in the park at Mt Lofty; when your network is a web rather than a star, everything works. * Working to teary collapse the day before the wedding, then doing it again two days afterwards. Seeing others take heavier loads with fewer complaints, even if I didn't really know them. * Travelling back in time fourteen years to find that nothing, _nothing_ has changed. Even the things that I wanted to change. * Feeling helpless, then completely relaxed as my phone and my authority were removed from me. Receiving a text message telling me to close my zip. Nobody really knowing how to arrange my handkerchief. * Speaking two short sentences at the end of the aisle without even blinking and finding out that I've been wrong from the start: this does change everything. * Two off-the-cuff speeches and three scripted ones. Powerful delivery by gifted speakers. * Being warmly welcomed into the club by some exceedingly long-standing members, and realising that I can do this because I've been shown how.

One Six Eight

2009-02-28T15:57:11-05:00

You don't have to die for your life to flash before your eyes. At the end of every trip it runs backwards in my memory, my mind returning home at the same time as my body. But now I'm skipping forwards instead, the steady acceleration of time towards our March 28 deadline having taken me to such a breakneck speed that I'm experiencing the world in jumps. I'm sitting on the top deck of the 168 bus, for the last time before we leave London. I've heard that you should see everything as if it is either the first or last time; grim advice, but I'm trying. Next to me is a French couple who don't have to try. As we roll through Camden they point out a sculpture at eye-level over a surf shop. I hadn't seen it, and I've been riding this route for two years. The bus corners hard and the skewed perspective makes them laugh nervously, thinking that we're going to hit the traffic light. It used to do that to me, too. I'm nibbling a scone while I watch a flame-haired girl make jazz singing look as easy as slipping out of a dress. It's risque enough to be interesting without being too crude for an afternoon; ultimately it's about the performer's skills, not her body, although both are exceptional. With 54 hours to go, I'm thinking 'someone should bring this to Adelaide', but someone tried. It was called the Weimar Room, on the south side of Hindley St, and it closed quickly. I'm a hurricane in the bedroom: each item in turn is examined against The Manifest, and stuffed into the backpack or hurled into the 'discard' pile. The room is thirty thousand litres; the backpack holds thirty. As always, the heaviest items are the ones I don't have to carry. I'm sitting across from a good friend in a basement bar, a half pint all that's between us and goodbye now that the lights are on and last drinks have been called. We're talking about the summer that we both believe will happen, but it's a long way to June, and some of the people who don't make it to our going-away drinks on Sunday will be long gone by the time we smack back into the tarmac at Heathrow. Others will be different; changes that are too gradual to see add up to a lot after a few months of absence. I'm checking my pack edgily as I prepare for the drop into Adelaide airport; it should be easy, but after two and a half years, I don't know how much of what I remember is still there. Perhaps I'm now irrelevant; perhaps it's now irrelevant to me. People, opportunities, skills, things: each time we do this, half of what I leave behind I won't get back. At least, with the things, I get to choose which half.

London Day

2008-12-14T05:17:06-05:00

I'm up before dawn, standing stunned in the dark room and trying to remember where my trousers are. Thirty minutes to get suited and booted; I have a breakfast date. We walk back and forth through South End Green, eventually settling on a Starbucks in Belsize Park because nothing better is open. When I planned the "secret breakfast" I had visions of coffee and a croissant on a sunny terrace: wrong city. It's full-grease English breakfast or full-sugar American snack-to-go in the damp Hampstead weekday dawn. Time's up and I hop the tube, emerging at Westminster. I'm not used to this. I'm not used to walking out of a train station on my way to work and being suddenly confronted with the majesty of Parliament House - and it is majestic. The modern additions of thick black metal screens make it seem authoritarian, brutal, and I'm disappointed until I remember that it always has been. Just not in comparison to anywhere else. It's perhaps this disappointment that makes me rapidly a Person of Interest as I pace back and forth in front of the building and nearby Abbey. My phone's been confused by the tube, and without it I don't know where I'm heading: trusting it, I hadn't even bothered to look it up before leaving. I never do. Nine sharp, and I'm at Dean's Yard, gagging on borderline-poisonous conference coffee provided by suited waiters who call me Sir. There's plenty to learn here but I'm waiting for the call that I know is coming. I scribble a few notes on a pad, pull a paper sword from my bag, and take center stage for an impromptu session on Team Building Through Ritual Violence. People laugh. People clap. People ask me for more details, but I've got no time to give them. Perhaps they'll remember my name. In the next presentation, the call comes through. The shit's hit the fan. Suddenly I'm holed up in the foyer, laptopping, putting out fires, missing a conference on how to avoid fires starting. For the rest of the day I switch back and forth, working with a deployment expert over the phone, coding with an expert back at the office using github and google chat. We get it done. We were always going to. By five the conference has wound up and there aren't any more crises where I'd do more good than harm. With half a dozen people from my company and a hundred or so other geeks, we head for the pub. There are plenty of interesting people to drink with, but I can't stay - because I'm meeting someone for a drink. We exchange business cards. Five-forty, and I'm at St James' Park. I need to be at Tottenham Court Rd by six-fifteen. Should be easy, but my phone is very nearly flat, and without it I'm helpless. I hike to Victoria tube because, without googlemaps, I can't find the closer one. Victoria. The train's packed, so packed that people are standing on the platform. It's not moving. I work out a new route on the District line, switch platforms, board the train. After going one stop, it stops.. and sits there. Five minutes later I'm out of patience and surface, paying my ¬£2 to go back aboveground 500m from where I started, back at St James' Park. I send a desperate text message, then realise that I actually have no other way to get there. Back on the train. It doesn't move. Card back out, run for a black cab, get mauled in traffic at Trafalgar Square, reach the pub. ¬£14 and an hour later, I've come three kilometers. Even with the suit and backpack, I could have run that in twenty minutes. The Bricklayer's Arms is unusual for a London pub, in that there's room to sit - if you don't mind sharing a table - and it's quiet enough to talk. We have the kind of conversation where "in the Bolivian jungle" passes without comment, moving so fast it's almost scripted, open to our table-mates joining in but aware that they'd never be able to keep up. Both of us have had the Traveler's Hello ("where are you from? where are you going? what do you do?") too many times, and would rather risk ruining everything than do it again. But I'm already letting go. In a couple of months I'll go back to Adelaide, and she'll jump a plane to Arizona. We're busy, and there is a very good chance that we won't see each other again. That's just how London rolls. I tell her this. She's not surprised. The night ends like a London night out always does: squinting at each other at Tottenham Court Road Tube. The 24 bus drops me at South End Green, half a kilometer from home. The bottleshops are still open but I've had enough; instead, Lyn and I share a herbal tea as we wind down. I set my alarm and crash out just shy of midnight. Come the morning, we'll do it all again.

Come Together

2008-11-25T04:39:54-05:00

On my way to the rendezvous I check my gear. I've got running shoes, spare batteries, compass, GPS, maps, network access, spyglass, notebook, tube card, gloves. I'm pumped full of caffeine, not sure what's coming, but ready to go for a burn. When it starts it's almost an anticlimax. I wanted a mysterious stranger in a fedora; I got Father Christmas with a fake beard. But the instructions in the envelope are intriging: "Ten other pairs are playing. They all started in London. You have until 5pm to find them." Apart from the promise of a £500 donation to Hope And Homes For Children if we succeed, that's all the information we have. It's a brilliantly simple game (or psych experiment, in fact - we're being filmed), and gives us a free hand. So, of course, we're instantly all over our phones, trying to end this thing before we even have to move. We call the charity and leave a message, which pays off much later. We call friends. We call gaming contacts. We change our Facebook status. We try to pump the cameraman for information ("Got any mates working today? Where are they?") This game hits the Strategy Point _instantly_. It all comes together very fast. We find our first pair at the London Eye, agree a strategy and rendezvous point with them, and split up again. We take Leicester Square while they head for Trafalgar Square, printing fliers that say "Playing? London Eye 3pm" because we can't stay everywhere at once. By mid-afternoon we have everyone and we're at the pub. Some people are surprised, but I'm not. If anything, I'm surprised that it took that long. The organiser reports that he's never had a team fail. I found the dynamics fascinating. Perhaps it was rigged - perhaps the people who respond to this kind of ad are all the same - but we all thought the same way. Several pairs independently developed the same strategies, and at some point during the day, _everyone_ went to Trafalgar Square. We all got along, even with multiple type-As each willing, but not insisting, on command. When the message got divided between 'London Eye 3pm' and 'Trafalgar Square 3pm', one of the players (an Iron Man) started a shuttle run taking in both. Unfortunately, this is the kind of game you can only play once. You can play a kind of virtual version in the comments, if you like - before you read any of the comments, work out your answer to this question: "Players all over the world have received the instruction 'meet asap'. Assuming freedom of movement, where are you going to go? How will you find people when you get there?" Then post your answer, and see if you found anyone.

Stone Cold

2008-11-08T15:21:13-05:00

I wake reluctantly, with a throbbing headache and a bad taste in my mouth. The light hurts. Good: we've established that it's not because of alcohol. I just don't like mornings. The bad news is that, with that variable removed by Marrakech's absence of bars, there's no prospect of my mornings getting any better when I give up drinking. I'm going to do it anyway. Unlike my caffeine addiction, this one is entirely psychological, and once the easy access is removed and the habit's broken, I find that I don't even _want_ a beer. A dry week's hard no harder than a dry day. Make no mistake: I'm not going all fundamentalist. Ethanol's a good tool to keep in the toolbox. It's just that a society that uses it only in strict moderation appears so much healthier. The streets here aren't any crazier at night than they are during the day. People sit around in cafes drinking mint tea and _talking_ to each other. I feel better, too. And I'm drinking less coffee. The change is surprisingly difficult even for someone who _likes_ fast changes. Alcohol is a social drink and refusing it is, in our culture, actually insulting. I can suddenly see a lot of parallels with much more damaging drugs, and I suddenly understand why the first step to bailing out is usually to build or join a community of people doing the same. Cutting back will be much harder than cutting out. For now, though, I'll have to have my turkey warm.

Prince of Persia

2008-11-08T15:16:27-05:00

We walk briskly down the narrow alley, looking back for the dark-coated Arab who's.. well, okay, chasing us. It's a strangely civilised pursuit and, unlike in Vietnam, the rules are clear. He's an unlicenced tour guide who's attached himself to us and is about to demand an outrageous fee for the one-hour tour of the artisan area. We're English tourists who're too polite for our own good, but aren't quite as naive as we seem (because we've been scammed like this before). At least one of the people around us is an undercover cop who'll put him in jail for 48 hours if he's even seen with us. We've never agreed to pay anything, I know roughly where I am and how to call for help, and violence against visitors just doesn't happen here. On the other hand, he's unshaven, missing teeth, and scary. Plus he has an unspecified and possibly unlimited number of friends. Game on. For the last part of the walk back to the center, he had to stay distant from us to avoid the cops. Naturally, we "lost" him in traffic and turned off. It would be no contest, but nearly all of these alleys are dead ends. We're backtracking out of one when he spots us and I'm forced to wave in "relief" and apologise for our "mistake". Prince of Persia, I'm not. Captured, we follow Abdul to the next stop. I abandon Lyn to her interview with his friend the spice merchant and break the routine by offering our involuntary "guide" a tip. Play starts at upwards of 1600 dirham - around $240 - and I know that if I'd paid it, that would have been each. We settle on 150 dirhams, which is a little above the odds but honestly not bad value. Add the chase scene, and it's cheap thrills. Last time I did this was in Saigon, where the opening gambit was only $140, but it was much more threatening, and we paid over $60 before leaving fast. We're getting smarter. But really, the only winning move is not to play.

Dodging the Bullet

2008-11-08T15:15:52-05:00

"It's going to explode." The airport security guard doesn't blink. I pretend I didn't hear. After a long moment, so does she, and returns the clothes bag to the backpack. We've dodged the bullet. I really thought that our casual slang for the messy consequences of unpacking a compression sack was going to divert our Marrakech trip to Gitmo. It's been a rough start. We're up at 4am after barely sleeping, and then the bus doesn't show up. Lyn texts 60835 to get three minicab numbers, and we call all of them. Swiss Cottage Cars wins the race and drops us at Victoria. But the "cheap" train to Gatwick is in fact the first train to Brighton, and it's full of late-night Saturday drinkers making their way home. The Invisible but Rather Vindictive hand of god gives our plane a good shaking on the way over - the kind that makes your stomach lurch and the stewardesses buckle into their seats with tight smiles on their faces. We're thoroughly rattled by the time we hit Moroccan soil. In the taxi from the airport the culture shock starts to hit. I'm having trouble adjusting to the fact that I'm even _in_ an airport taxi - I'm a backpacker, dammit - so it's a double change. I'm not so sure that it _is_ as good as the rest that I was really after. And the near-misses don't stop. Later that day, in a crowded, walled street, a horse-and-cart blocks the way forward. As I'm starting to squeeze past, it suddenly rolls backwards, shoulder-high wheels inches away. I jump clear into the crowd, but the cart is jackknifing as the driver loses control of the horse, and the crowd starts to panic. A boy falls over; not dangerous yet, but this could get very nasty, very fast. I help him up and bail out the way we came. A few moments later, Lyn is clear as well, and we duck into an alleyway to gather our wits. A local helpfully explains that the street is closed. I don't like crowds in tunnels. Not when there are horses. The next one comes with even less warning. I'm reading a book in our room when Lyn lets out a high-pitched squeal that I've never heard before. She's been electrocuted by the mains supply. Apart from two small blisters on her finger, a sore wrist where she landed, and a severe need for a beer, she's okay. At 240V, though, it's easy for things to go the other way. Further investigation reveals what happened. Someone's soldered up a plug-to-plug extension lead. They've plugged one end into the mains, then the other end into the _socket_ of a multi-way adaptor, and used the other sockets normally. This works, except that it leaves the exposed plug of the adaptor live - two inch-long metal prongs waiting for an unwary hand. It's the landline version of a taser. It's the most dangerous wiring I've ever seen, and I've been to Thailand. This isn't negligent; this is positively homicidal. Somebody has _gone out of their way_ to make this dangerous. Somebody says "sorry" and unplugs the offending extension lead when I mention that my fiancee was nearly killed. It doesn't really cut it, but what are you going to do? We're thirty-six hours in.

Secret Life

2008-09-17T10:44:42-04:00

I am not special. The photos from Antic Banquet make it look like a cross between a hippie festival and a commune - right down to fisherman's pants, hula hoops, and vegan food. For a while I've had the idea that one of the few rewards of being a generalist - condemned to be unexceptional at anything - is the ability to walk out of the boardroom and into the yoga tent, and to be comfortable, if not entirely at home, in either. As I get to know my companions - Antic is more of a large party than a small festival - it becomes increasingly clear that I am _completely_ wrong about this. Steph's a private-school boarder. Iris is a neuroscientist. I'll see Martyn in the office next week. We party like there's no tomorrow but we're all going to work in the morning. Perhaps that's why it's so interesting. This is not a group of crazy people. This is a group of people going crazy. Whether it's bellydancing and breakdancing on the same weekend, finding my missing piece through surreal street theatre (minus the street), or joining a frisbee game with nothing more than a shouted "heads up!" and a hard throw, it couldn't be further from a hard day in the office. The two-hour train ride bookends it, helps me connect different personalities to different places. The demographics would also explain why the organisation is so slick. The whole thing comes off without a hitch, right down to serving a full lunch for three hundred people in ten minutes (tossing the salad by heaving it off a shipping container onto a tarpaulin was inspired). I've caught the tail end of the season; there's one of these every weekend through summer. In a country where friends can live two hours apart - unlike Australia, where it's an easy ten minutes or an impossible ten hours - where the transport system shuts down at midnight, and where the average living room fits a dozen people, it's a perfect adaptation. After Womad, I thought I was lucky, but maybe it's always this good. Next summer I intend to find out. For now I've got a cup of tea and a couch to visit.

Fourth Wall

2008-08-26T14:40:52-04:00

I'm hanging on her every word. Then she steps off the stage. And, oh god, she's explaining to the other actor that they're in a play. My face falls. Burned before, I'd been worried when I entered a theatre with seating for only thirty, but from their first words, the two actors made it clear that this is a truly professional production. Now they've broken the fourth wall, a cheap laugh that comes at the cost of the rest of the show. I'm genuinely baffled. This isn't even a comedy. Nothing destroys the illusion faster or more completely. Nothing is more hackneyed, overused, devoid of any value whatsoever. Breaching the fourth wall is the last refuge of a writer who is out of ideas. And yet the writers are not out of ideas. The other 58 minutes of The Open Couple are _tight_, non-stop bitter reality with not a word wasted. It's against an otherwise flawless production that this failure stands out so badly. -- I have a recurring nightmare where I'm due to go on, but don't remember my lines, or even the name of the play. It's the theatrical version of the old "naked in maths class" So it's odd that the highlights of the last year have been shows that put me in exactly that position. They breach the fourth wall. But they do it in _the other direction_. Rather than deserting to the audience and leaving the stage empty, the actors bring the crowd onto the set. In Faust, I learnt the rules quickly: I did not exist. Masked and always alert to the movement of actors, I was freed from my seat but remained a ghost. In Office Party I was free to interact, but nothing I did mattered. In Death By Chocolate I took center stage. And I was being _assessed_. The rationalisation - trainee detectives interviewing real suspects - didn't feel forced at all. In a way, that made it rather frightening. As the show started, the suspects were sitting quietly. Detectives - the "audience" - were fidgeting with the evidence trays, looking at each other. Nothing was going to happen unless I made it happen. A few set-pieces moved us along but they weren't even really needed; there were many, _many_ avenues of inquiry. It was overwhelming and a little contrived - like the How To Host A Murder scenarios where _anyone_ could have done it - but with fifty people to keep entertained, perhaps there was no other way. It worked amazingly well. Going to Death By Chocolate was like taking the stage for opening night, without having to go to the rehearsals. It's some of the buzz with none of the heavy lifting. It's _genius_. Even if I can't remember my lines.

Badlands

2008-08-25T16:18:44-04:00

I've stood at two thousand feet and watched the mist roll in so fast that I reached nervously for my radio. I've hiked half a kilometer of bog in the pouring rain towards a cache, stymied by an uncrossable river. I've gotten lost in terrain that is barren, featureless, and full of spooky cows. I've had four different whiskies in an hour and almost convinced myself that I can taste the difference. I've followed strangers for kilometers in the dark hoping that they were heading for a pub that was open. I've watched a dog fetch rocks in a village deprived of tennis balls. I've had a sandwich in the abandoned banqueting hall of a ruined castle. I've been called "Frodo" by a scary man in a cloak, who says that the truth shouldn't get in the way of a good story. I've watched the reflected sunset tint hills from heather-purple to Irn Bru-orange. I've stood in silence so intense my ears hurt. Mostly at 3am, while looking for the campground toilets. I've walked up grippy rock that made me feel like Spiderman on the way up.. but didn't make me feel any better about the trip down. I've seen the Eye of Sauron disguised as the Wallace Memorial. At eye level, after bush-bashing my way up a nettle-ridden hill because I missed the track. I've learnt that you can run from midges but not hide from them, and that if it doesn't contain DEET, it doesn't work. I've been to the Highlands, and I don't have to go back.

Phantomysteria

2008-08-25T16:17:54-04:00

They have me before the show even starts. The college quad is imposing, backlit through the drizzle, while isolation-suited actors shovel ash into the courtyard ahead of us. Someone runs past with a smoke machine; suddenly, it's so dense that I can't see anything at all. The tape between us and the actors is cut. There are no boundaries now. A man runs out, silent but flailing, covered in flames. Flames? Must be a special effect. It takes me a second to realise that, in theatre, there's no such thing.The crazy bastards have set him on fire. There's plenty more. Drawing my attention throughout the show is the bright orange object on the left-hand side: Chekov would agree that a loaded propane cylinder in act one ought be fired by act three. It is. They get crazier, but in the sense of "illogical and confusing" rather than of "reckless endangerment". Like a cryptographer struggling with gibberish, I try to extract meaning where I suspect none is present. Afterwards, Lyn asks me what the show was about. I don't know either, but with a set like that, I don't care.

Charlie Victor Romeo

2008-08-25T16:16:55-04:00

Suck it up. We're going down. I've always found the rumble of the jet engines comforting, but not now. The vibrations through my seat are wrong; the tone has changed. This shouldn't be happening. Beside me Lyn is tense, unsmiling as I grip her hand. Everyone is staring at the pilots, sweat running down their faces as they struggle to control the crippled aircraft. By chance one of the passengers is a senior pilot himself. Moving up to assist, his first words are "when this is over, we're all going for a beer". We hang on every word of the pilots' discussions, wincing as they start to panic and wanting to cheer as their training reasserts itself. Air traffic control tries to help over the radio; on-the-ground mechanics can't get further than "Say again, you have zero hydraulic quantity?" As they struggle to reach an airport with a plane that won't turn left, I find myself really hoping that they survive. They seem like nice people, highly skilled, working hard. The engine explosion that's wrecked the plane isn't their fault. The crash-landing, when it comes, is protracted and deafening. The theatre goes black while the sound system does its best to shake us to bits. The screen at the front, behind the mock-up cockpit, shows the results of the 1989 crash we've just re-enacted: 111 dead. Among the survivors were the pilots, who presumably went for that beer. Leaving, I need a few myself.

Taking Out The Trash

2008-07-30T15:17:41-04:00

It ends the way it began, an inch of cheap scotch and the long silent walk back to the tent. Adventuring alone is a skill, and I'm rusty. It's not unusual; walking around the festival, I see hardly anyone staying alone for extended periods. By Saturday afternoon, I'm not doing it either. The vibe is strong, and takes a little getting used to. In a packed performance on Friday night, someone pushes past a listener, hitting him hard with his backpack. The victim gestures at the pack and yells something over the music. As the offender turns, I'm expecting a fight. He repeats himself: "Your backpack's open!" No one's offended or even surprised when I turn down the mushrooms, the joint. Even late, plenty of people are drinking tea, not beer. The litter pickers don't have much to do. This is _civilised_. With perfect weather and an intelligent crowd, this must be as good as music festivals get - and that's very good indeed. Like a night out with friends lasting three days, the music's the excuse but not the headline. Martha Wainwright has incredible stage confidence and an unusual voice. Devon Sproule mesmerises us, makes me think of Jewel's early albums. Show Of Hands have a hit - Cousin Jack - that sends shivers down my spine. I grew up with this music; I can't get away from it. The ticket's £130, or free if you're spending eighteen hours emptying bins. I wanted to try that, and now I have, and I don't need to do it again. The shifts are writ in stone; I missed plenty of acts I wanted to see, and was so, so tired for some of the others. But the network is amazing, and makes the festival; we all look out for each other because none of us has slept. There's thirty thousand of them and a few hundred of us, so the Crew campsite is the place to be. We race sleeping bags, pass plastic bottles of vodka and fruit juice. In the early hours of Sunday morning we speak nothing but French, and are nearly universally understood. Or think we are. Everyone's conversational after a few fingers of Sainsbury's Special. Not so much in the morning. The Sunday shift is murder, was always going to be. I don't feel as bad as I expect, or half as bad as I deserve. In fact, Tuesday's eight-to-six-thirty at my desk job takes a lot more out of me; the physical work may be relentless and sometimes miserable, but it _is_ good for you. Sunday shift aside, it's over fast. The weekend's already running in reverse, memories unwinding as I speed-pack the tent on Monday morning. I don't have the day off. The carshare home's hair-raising, the post-holiday workload crushing. But that's okay; I wanted it to be. Plenty of others are hitching back, or staying on for double shifts on minimum wage at a silent site. Like a player moving up a grade, my adventures are merely par in this crowd. I heard tales of sitting all night in a bus stop waiting for a backpack, of leaving a note on the kitchen table saying "Gone to Amsterdam", of working all day and still making Glasgow by dawn. Some sounded miserable and no doubt they were, but nevertheless I'm jealous. Maybe this is getting too easy.

When The Zombies Come

2008-07-06T10:04:36-04:00

If you love an idea, let it go. Forget about it. If it comes back, it's worth doing. I have so, _so_ many projects that I now apply this simple, brutal test to all of them. LaserTrap was one of the recent survivors; people kept asking me about it, so I started work on it. After several months, the Zombie Survival Kit has come back. The ZSK is two large backpacks on top of the wardrobe, containing everything we'll need to survive When The Zombies Come. Because, as everyone knows, the Zombies Are Coming One Day. Of course, it might not be zombies. It might be terrists. It might just be a major snafu. The Zombie bit makes it fun, and lets me continue to think that I'm not a victim of Government Through Creating Terror. The first step will be to define what we're defending against. One type of "worst-case-scenario kit" is a .44 and two bullets. In case of full-scale nuclear war, it would probably come to that. But I'm talking about something smaller. Perhaps Something Happens in central London; assuming we're able to make it back to our flat, we'll be without essential services for a week or two. Perhaps Something Really Big Happens and we need to get out of London. Either way, I'm assuming that civilisation will be back in a fortnight or not at all. Food and water: What form this takes will depend on whether we're staying or going. I'm tempted to go with lighter, more expensive, food so that we'll have the option. Gadgets: if we're assuming a short Event, then battery-powered devices are in. Radios and lights are the obvious ones. Navigation: We'll need maps and compasses. It might be worth working out routes in advance; if the zombies are going to seal off the M25, we'll need to move fast. Ideally we'd want contacts on the outside. Money: The ATMs will fail immediately, but paper money may well still be accepted. Weapons: probably not. They're dangerous to buy, dangerous to store, and of very little use unless you know what you're doing, which I don't. I think the Leatherman Core will be as far as it goes; anyone or anything that comes between us gets pliered, screwdriven, and awled. So, I'm throwing this one open. Is the ZSK worth having? What parameters would you define for the Zombie Event? What would you put in the kit?

I'm A Fire Engine

2008-07-04T19:50:44-04:00

The swarthy man lumbers up the concrete staircase, the mob I'm part of only a few steps behind. He reaches the top and turns, a hand outstretched in defiance, out of breath and forced to fight. The mob closes in. "Weren't you in High School Musical?" But he speaks at the same time, also mistaking us for celebrities. It's a draw. If he'd complemented our eyes our game would be over; if we'd sung him a song we'd have been the victors. The ten-second amnesty expires and he's gone. Minutes later he returns by another route, sniping us with a compliment before the unwieldy group can react. It's Cruel To Be Kind, part of the Hide & Seek Festival, which is kindergarten for adults. I'm part of such an enormous group because of a spectacular scene a few minutes before: two medium-sized groups spotted each other in jubilee park and charged, screaming compliments like battle cries as our lines collided. Even the South Bank's jaded pedestrians turned their heads for that one. Not all the games involved running. But the good ones did. Checkpoint saw a team of smugglers challenged to move the contents of a living room from one side of the centre to the other, past half a dozen guards posted around the edges of the safe zone. Most of the gear went under jackets, or over the balcony, handed down to a 'clean' contact on the inside. We shifted the chair using the usual method, passed down by repeat players: the Chair Rush. A dozen smugglers grabbed chairs, eleven of which were clean. I got through, but I didn't have the real chair. It was moving the body that was the real problem. We sent a decoy though in a wheelchair. We had spotters using mobile phones, "civilians" chatting to the guards, an actor taking a dive on the stairs while the smuggling team took a little-used lift. And they still intercepted her. A co-worker passed me while playing an immersive GPS-based game on a PDA. He didn't even see me wave. The game itself is excellent, though not exceptional: more exciting is just how easy it would be to make one, now. Full immersion is still a problem. I think this is a skill that needs to be trained and kept current like any other. In the preceding conference, somebody asked about helping children to create their own Alternate Reality Games; the presenter responded with "I think they already do". He was right; what we're ultimately trying to do, with all this organisation, all this technology, is to return to the days of "I'm a fire engine". Oh, and the zombies are coming. Seeing the poster innocuously placed with theatre fliers was one thing, but finding a business card stuffed into the side pocket of my backpack was a total TINAG moment for me. This is one region where I'm still a new player, and the experience still dominates the content. Deep down, though, I don't want to _play_ games. I want to _make_ them.

Lost

2008-07-04T18:22:07-04:00

Losing a notebook is like losing part of my brain. I defer writes, knowing that I've captured the important ideas somewhere - a very GTD philosophy. Now I don't even know what I don't know. I'm going to write more. Travel writers know that You Do Not Finish A Day Without Writing It Up; perhaps anybody with a poor memory should follow the same rule. It's getting worse. Tearing in to the Royal Festival Hall for Hide & Speak, I slam my bike against the rack, quick-change from Bike Fiend to Respectable Businessman, stash my riding gear in the backpack, and run off looking for coffee. On the way in to the Violet Room, my bag weighs heavily on my back. No surprise, except that I'm not carrying my laptop. There's a hard metal lump in the bottom, and it goes 'clink'. What could it be? I pause for a moment, then sprint back to the rack and lock up my bike. But it's not my bike that worries me. -- (I've written more about my experiences at Hide & Seek both here and on the Fire Hazard blog: http://fire-hazard.net/)

Long Weekend

2008-05-08T19:22:33-04:00

The first morning goes as the first morning always does. Up at four, into the taxi at four-twenty. I'm so tightly packed that I don't have loose change for a tip, though the driver deserves one. Drift off as the Eurostar nails the 465km to Paris in two hours and fifteen minutes. Step off the train and suddenly it's _on_ as our couchsurfer meets us at the station. Swap greetings and comments on the weather. Try to buy metro tickets with twenty-euro notes. Stop for croissants at a corner bakery. I still haven't had a coffee. We've been to Paris before. Seen the sights, ticked the boxes. This trip is _ours_. That's a really strange thing to say and a strange thing to think, but there's no getting away from it. It takes more discipline than we - or nearly anyone - has to spend a few days only in a city and _not_ see the things that make it famous. That's why the second trip is better. But we don't slow down. We hike around the local area - the Couchsurfing Hello - meet friends for dinner, have too many drinks. I lose a wheel on the hard cobblestones and disqualify myself from the Friday Night Skate. I'm not really sorry; Lyn's positively glad. We crash at 1am, sleeping on the bed while our couchsurfer surfs his own couch. Saturday. The weather's the kind we used to take for granted. We play scavenger-hunt on Rue Saint-Antoine and hike to the banks of the Seine with the treasures: cheese, strawberries, baguettes, wine. I fall asleep in the sun. Why is unconsciousness so precious? Is it just lack of sleep that makes me think so? And what does that say about our lifestyles? Sunday. I smack my wrist-guards on my knee-pads, my elbow-pads just as tight as the skates locked on to my feet. I feel heavily armoured but I'm horrifically vulnerable. Twenty kilometres, three hours - doesn't sound fast, but there's a break in the middle, and we spend a lot of time waiting for the thousands-strong crowd to catch up. Near the end of the route I run into an old friend by sheer coincidence. I briefly speak to her in French while at speed in the middle of the road. Somewhere in my mind, some boxes get ticked, and "skating" and "french" move back to the end of the queue. We run into the Free Hugs movement while watching a busker by Notre Dame. I always thought that it would be smelly old men, not shy, beautiful French girls. As always, I can transmit, not receive, so I'll never know what she said to me. Monday. Back to Montmartre; it hasn't changed. Saint-Germain De Pres is lovely, but I know myself well enough to know when I have to either take my skates off, or get run over. We're wearing down. But somehow we can't stop. Tuesday. We're inspired by an exhibition of videos of French couples arguing. Fortunately, we're in a hotel for the last night. Ticketing for the Kylie concert is a shambles, as usual, but I only feel angry, not inspired to fix it. While Lyn's dazzled by lights, I'm pushing the edges, following up a disgusting Pizza Hut takeaway with a twenty-euro bottle of wine. Not all travel stereotypes are true. Not all the time. The last morning goes as the last morning always does. Down at 1am, up at five, I ride the Paris metro to Gare Du Nord, fail to understand the security guard's French, doze on the Eurostar, tube back to Belsize Park for the grey-blue half-light and the long walk home. I lose my keys. I'm late to work. I snap at a colleague, survive the meeting, leave early, somehow get home alive. Everything already feels like a dream. About eleven I finally crash, dead-tired but too unbalanced to sleep. It's been a long weekend.

Making Tracks

2008-04-20T07:01:12-04:00

_Near Husbands Bosworth, Leicestershire_ "Fire." In the training session my voice sounded forced, and almost theatrical. Now, with the hatches down, it's clipped, flat, no louder than it needs to be. It's a hit. While the loader charges our air cannon and unscrews the breech, we lurch to my left, rolling rather than bouncing over the waves of mud. At 17 tonnes, the FV432 is too heavy to bounce. The noise abruptly stops. Peering through a narrow periscope, with the turret rotated 90 degrees from the forward movement of the tank, I'm disoriented. Tim's got the breech closed: "Ready to fire!" I start cranking the turret around to the right, looking for the other tank. It moves slowly, and I'm getting hot in my flame-retardant suit. The commander, sitting behind the driver at the front of the tank, yells "No firing backwards!", so instead I line up on the marker. I can't see him, but with the engine idling, at least I can hear him. The other tank appears, its turret panning to aim directly at us. Even with the bright-orange tip - we're in England, after all - it's distinctly menacing. A four-centimetre paintball round pings off our hull. "Fire." The paintball is swept by the wind, well to the left of the enemy. I see it and correct, but our commander only sees that I've now got the turret pointed far to the right of our target. "Left, left!" If I aim left we'll miss, but it sounds like an order to me. Our instructor's a lovely guy, but he used to do this with *much* larger bullets, and he's not to be messed with. Tricky. I swing the turret to the left. Our second shot curves around the front of the tank, and we're on the move again. That's the last shot at this position, and our driver takes us onwards. I'd done a couple of laps of the course myself, before the battle, so I know how hard he's working. Strapped into a claustrophobic space at the very front of the tank, engine on his left and highly-flammable brakes directly in front of his feet, he can see even less than I can. In a previous game, somebody hit a sheep. One more exchange of fire, and we're rolling back to the start point to compare scores. There are metre-deep ruts between here and there, but Brian handles them the same way I did. That is, I peered through the "letterbox" to try to pick a line through them, before realising "I'm in a _tank_. I don't _have_ to pick a line." We park and bail out into the rain, pausing to admire the sign on the back hatch of our tank: "In the interests of our neighbours, please leave the premises quietly". I'm too exhausted to do anything else.

The Things I Never Told You

2008-04-10T03:51:57-04:00

It's a narrow window. Less than a couple of days after an event I don't have enough perspective to write about it. More than a week and, without notes, I can't remember enough specifics. Notes would solve this problem, but I already feel too much like a journalist. I've caught myself writing stories in my head while still experiencing the event that triggers them. The other problem is that after a week something else has happened. There are a lot of things I never wrote about and some of them are gone forever - for both of us. I spend more time reading my travel journal than anyone else does. Here are a few. I'll update this entry in future, as placeholders for the things I might find time to write. * Randomly riding into an Akha village in Laos. They spoke _zero_ English and couldn't understand my Lao, but they fed us lunch, tried to get us drunk, and made me pay 4000 kip to buy cigarettes for the house spirits for applauding. * Returning to Faust. It was called The Masque of the Red Death, this time. Outstanding, but same-same.. which is terrifying. * Passing the bottle with long-term freegans under the treehouses at Bilston Road Protest Site. * Sunbathing on Portobello Road on a five-degree day, and _still_ not winning the photo contest. * Using facebook to track down everyone I've ever cared about, more or less, and reestablishing contact. * The most amazing house party ever at Battersea Arts Center.

We Don't Stop

2008-03-15T22:57:16-04:00

Deep inside the Nam Ha National Protected Area, Lyn and I are designing web applications. On our first trip, I'd have been deeply traumatised by this. Now I regard it as inevitable. The jungle is untouched and beautiful, but ultimately it's all the _same_, and my mind needs something to do while my body is trekking. We make good time and reach camp by 2:30 on most days. While our guides attend to camp chores - an uncomfortably colonial luxury - I have a long time to lie on the grass, scribbling in a notebook. Evenings are filled with sticky rice and lao-lao: with three languages across five people, there's really not much we can do but drink. Sitting at a roadside cafe writing this at 6:40am, because I can't sleep and can't stop, I'm passed by a group of monks. Perhaps they can make it stop. But I'm no longer really sure that I need to.

It Takes A Village

2008-03-11T06:52:13-04:00

The boatman's not stupid. Muong Ngoi's reachable only by boat, but most people stay only a night or two, so we can leave the bike here in Nong Khiaw and come back for it later. But we want to go further upriver and return by road, and that means taking the bike with us. We'll have to charter a boat, paying $25 for the trip, instead of the usual $2 each. But we're already paying that per day for the bike, so that doesn't dissuade us. The deal is done. I'm looking apprehensively at the steep concrete stairs running for thirty metres down to the water, but it's under control. Five guys, none of them much bigger than me, point to the stairs, point to the bike, and ask for a couple of dollars. We give them the thumbs up and they grab it, one controlling the front brake, the other four hanging on to the luggage rack as the massive trailbike rolls down at nearly a 45 degree angle. They're grunting with effort, shouting instructions to each other - monosyllabic languages always sound frantic to non-speakers - and grinning at the same time. There's some confusion and discussion at the bottom, but eventually they simply bring the narrow boat alongside, pick up the bike, and heave it in. Without their lean muscle and complete lack of fear, we'd never have done it. I love this about Laos, and about South-East Asia in general: money, and not even very much money, makes your problems go away. (In London, problems make my money go away). The handlers are overjoyed when I give them 50000 kip, or about $5, between them. It was fun to watch, but I would rather have been involved. It's my bike, after all. An hour later, as the boat pulls in to Muong Ngoi, I get my wish. There's a steep set of concrete stairs with a one-metre drop at the bottom. Further to the left, there's a dirt track at the same preposterous angle, running up the slope for about fifty metres. The boatman and a few of his mates heave the bike out of the boat and stand it up on the shore, but now it's our problem. A crowd is gathering, and others are watching from guesthouse balconies overlooking the river. A lightly-built, exceedingly beautiful Lao woman stands on the bottom step, speaking good English over folded arms. The locals are offering us a place in a shed near the river for a few dollars a night. But she'd rather we brought the bike all the way up to her guesthouse at the top, and she seems to be running the show. Over Lyn's protests, we go with the flow. The stairs aren't even remotely possible. So we wheel the bike over to the track, and half a dozen locals grab the luggage rack while I control the steering. There's no talk of payment; they're enjoying this. The guesthouse owner fetches her brother-in-law, a huge Swedish guy, but even with his help, the track is too steep. Somebody makes motorcycle noises. We need the engine to help with this, so, almost drunk on danger, I start it up. (It starts first time. We're paying twice the going rate for this bike, and it's worth it). Lyn stands on the right, controlling the throttle, while I work the clutch, and half the village stabilises the bike. It doesn't work. Lyn and I are close, but not so close that we can work a throttle-and-clutch combination independently. Ahead, the track gets even steeper - it's close to 45 degrees for several metres, before flattening out again. Even if we could control the engine, we need to weight the rear wheel to get any traction. There's nothing for it. I'm going to have to ride it. With five people hanging on to the rack, the bike's unlikely to fall, but that's not what it feels like. I have shorts and a t-shirt, no helmet, no shoes, no gloves, no hospital within a day's travel. I keep wanting to slide sideways to put a foot down, a heavily-ingrained instinct with an unstable bike. Eventually, though, I stay put, let out the clutch, and the bike lurches up the slope. Lyn signals someone to run around to cover my unprotected right side. My left foot is dragged slowly through a thorny bush, and there's absolutely nothing I can do about it, but I almost feel good - it's my damn bike, and I'm going to suffer for it. Later, half our helpers gather around my foot and pull the thorns out for me. The helpers - including the tiny Lao woman - are really suffering by now, but they're not complaining. There's talk of lying the bike down where it is, under another guesthouse. Despite Lyn's strong support, the idea never gets going. Reasons are given, but really it's because everyone's having too much fun. One more big push brings the bike up to a gentler slope at the start of the village. A few people clap. I wish I'd turned to thank, or even just recognise, our helpers, but I'm too tired, and too focussed on the next task - riding the bike to the guesthouse. Without my shoes, my feet don't reach the ground at all. It's an embarrassingly shaky start, and after fifty metres the Swedish guy takes over, maneouvering the bike across a drainage ditch as wide as the front wheel. We park it, stagger upstairs, and collapse onto our bed. When we emerge later on, everyone - farang and local - knows us as the people who brought their motorcycle to the village without roads. It's been expensive, inconvenient and dangerous, but a hell of a lot of fun. And it's true: It does take a village to raise a motorcycle.

Not Too Late

2008-03-11T06:50:27-04:00

Giving alms in Luang Prabang tomorrow? ---------- This is the information I wish I'd found quickly: * Be sure that you want to do this, and that you can do it respectfully: long pants, cover your shoulders, lose the camera, understand what you're doing. * Be at the south end of the fresh-produce market at 6am to buy a large box of hot, fresh sticky rice. Street directions are unreliable in Luang Prabang, but the market is shown on most maps. * From there walk east to the roundabout, turn south onto the main street, and stop opposite the Jomo Bakery. * Monks will approach from the south at about 6:30. * Barefoot, on your knees, place one small handful of rice in each monk's bowl as he passes you. Read on for my experience. ------ Don't let the internet tell you that travel sucks. The signs everywhere in Luang Prabang ask, if you are going to be involved in morning alms-giving, that you do so respectfully. But that's all they tell you. Respect means understanding, so I turned to the internet for precise details on what would be expected. Forty minutes later I'd learnt that the ceremony's been horribly defiled by hordes of rude tourists, that there are touts that rival Saigon's worst, that it's too late, and that rather than rise at 6am I should sleep in, move on, and mourn for the Luang Prabang that was. This didn't help much. I did at least know that I'd need freshly-cooked sticky rice - from somewhere - and that proceedings would be underway by 6am. I did the only reasonable thing, which was to set an alarm for 5am and hope that things would be clearer in the morning. We're at the fresh-produce markets by 5:10am, but it's pitch-black and there's little activity. The few locals who are around are _very_ surprised to see us. A quick lap of the main street reveals several touts already on the scene, but I'm very wary. We return to the markets and wait. By quarter to six I'm a bit nervous, and start asking people. Eventually they direct us to a stall all the way down the far end of the market, where broken Lao and bizarre gestures get us a couple of huge baskets of rice. Paying is complicated; it's so early in the morning that I can't grasp the Lao numbers. Back on the main road I'm disappointed to see that the baskets the (evil, evil, according to the internet) touts are selling look the same as mine. But at least _I_ know that I've done the right thing. Karma strikes fast as we discover a roadside coffee stall that's open - and the owner knows a good place to wait for the monks. We head south and take position on some mats that have been laid on the side of the road. There's maybe a dozen people around, half of them locals. I try to explain the whole procedure in thirty seconds to a camera-wielding Israeli who's just arrived and doesn't even have any kip yet. While he is approached by a tout, there doesn't seem to be any extortion involved, and they leave us alone completely. In fact, there's a fresh-rice kitchen across the road. It's fully light by now. Lyn's looking hungrily at her rice, and I'm counting the minutes that I've been needlessly awake - people are still arriving. Suddenly the monks are on top of us, appearing silently and at speed from around the parked van that blocks my view. I _know_ that men are supposed to stand, but all along the street, everyone is kneeling. I'm very, very visible, and at least in ritual, if you're the only one who's right, then _you_ are wrong. I sink to my knees. I don't see much besides my container and the monks' rice bowls; I'm too busy working. Lyn never gets the chance to take any photos. We've chosen to be in it, not to see it. They come in descending order of age, eyes forward, expressionless and silent. If they've judged us as intruders, they're keeping it to themselves. As the group of twenty or so ends, we relax, and stand up. Funny, I thought there were meant to be more than that. "Incoming!" - I've spotted another group rounding the parked car. We just have time to get back on our knees and open our containers. My fingers are burning as I scrape them across the hot rice, trying to form rice-balls quickly enough to feed every monk. Lyn's run out, so I surreptitiously pass across a handful. After a few more groups, the locals around us leave. That must be it. We walk back to the market to return our food containers - Lyn snacking on the leftover rice on the way - then wander up the main street in search of breakfast. And *now* we see the tourists, hordes of them, moving in the large, ragged groups that mean they are part of tour packages. A few monks are still making their way down a side street, deserted except for one local who is waiting with her rice. A tourist stalks them, point-blank, with an oversize camera. I would not have liked to have been here, half an hour ago. And maybe, for a two-hundred metre strip of the main street, Tak Bat has been "ruined". But you don't have to work very hard to find something relatively fresh. The beauty is that people who are too lazy to show respect, to buy proper food, or to arrive without a bus, are also too lazy to walk very far.

The Deep End

2008-03-02T23:26:16-05:00

I hit the kill switch, and the engine shudders to a halt at the same time I do. I'm intact but _shattered_. The trip looked easy enough on paper, but the bike's too big for us. And we got lost looking for the bridge, cringing every time we had to u-turn on tiptoes. Once we found it, we missed the turnoff to the "main" road, and I had to share a tiny trail with local children on pushbikes, pulling over - still on tiptoes - to let them through. Even near the cave the signage wasn't clear, and we ended up on a steep, narrow quarry trail which eventually petered out, leaving me flipping up my visor and yelling "where the hell is the road?". While I attempted a u-turn on fist-sized rocks, Lyn hopped off: if we're both under the bike, who's going to pick it up? Between us we kept the bike upright, but there were a few scary moments. Soloing down a steep incline - Lyn was on foot, because down is always worse than up - I nearly lost it on a series of huge rocks. And, of course, every single time either of us needed to get on to or off the bike was a challenge. The caves themselves were also challenging. We had them to ourselves, with dim LED lights and high-pitched ringing in our ears. One required a ten-metre climb up a bamboo ladder that creaked underneath us. It also featured a cave spider - the size of a huntsman, but infinitely more frightening. Back in town at Vang Vieng, I'm mentally exhausted, with the same hollow feeling in my head that I get after hours of heavy programming. At first I'm surprised by this. But while the conscious 15% of my brain was screaming into my skull and struggling to control the throttle, the rest was doing heavy physics. As it turns out, it wasn't doing it for free. It's not just that I'm tired. It's that I'm not recovering. Coffee and lunch don't help. I crave alcohol and sugar - not unusual, but the magnitude has changed. Lyn pinpoints it: the feeling's the same as the aftermath of rescuing the drowning man at Tioman. It's the aftereffects of an adrenalin dump. The only thing that will help is sleep, and that won't come easily. Before bed, I walk back to the bike to check the trip counter for today. Twelve kilometers.

Highway 13

2008-03-02T23:25:42-05:00

"Help!" I know they won't understand, but I'm running out of options. The bike's stopped in the middle of the road, leaning hard to the left. I can stop it going over - for now - but I can't straighten it up. On the front, Lyn's doing no better. The locals see the problem and cross the road to give us a shove. We're rolling again. It's a silly end to an exceptional ride. We'd picked up the Baja 250 trail bike in Vientiane that morning. Even with the suspension adjusted, it's far too big for us, but it was the only one available. I can ride it quickly, but I can't ride it slowly, and that's the opposite of how I'd like it. Getting on to or off the bike, or even putting it on the sidestand, is a two-man effort. So we rode to Vang Vieng - 172km of narrow tarmac that we shared with goats, chickens, school children on bicycles and the occasional beer truck - with only one stop. Apart from the shiny Land Rovers that burnt past us like American bombers, we were the fastest thing on the road.

Bits of Bone

2008-02-19T04:13:07-05:00

Our fellow-travellers on the Vietnamese tour boat, cruising gently down the Mekong, are stunned when I tell them that I hated Cambodia. While I'd rather continue lying in the deck chair and watching life in the delta, to explain why, I have to go back. It wasn't the border crossing. It wasn't the scams. It was the beggars that did us. They came in many ways and in many places. But a few images stayed with me. A man with no hands holding a stick with his wrists to knock down sparse fruit from a tree. Sharing a beachside swing with Lyn and two fruity cocktails while a desperate man dragged himself along the sand barely a metre in front of us. Two small children watching us drink our expensive - to them - beers. Not saying anything. Just standing right there, staring. And it's recursive; I felt _bad_ about feeling bad about it. But even people with all their limbs are.. different. You can randomly grin at people in Thailand and, nine times out of ten, they'll grin back. It doesn't matter if you're cruising past in an air-con bus and they're digging holes in the road. This doesn't work in Cambodia. It only happened once.. and I think that guy was Thai. We didn't help matters by going to see S-21, the former extermination camp, and the killing fields at Choeng Ek, where the murders were carried out. We've now seen a few places that could be described as 'war-torn', and this wasn't even the most recent, but it was the most depressing. Our guide's father and brother were among the victims. And once you've seen these things, it queers your whole mindset. The National Museum has a statue of harihara dating back to the height of Khmer power; now, coincidentally, one leg has broken off just below the knee. A restaurant mistranslates "take-away food", advertising that "you can be taken away". It's not even grim humour. It's just grim. There are consequences. The English owner of one cafe has stopped feeling anything. He's morbidly overweight, drinking at ten in the morning, and doesn't even come in on time to open the shop any more. He's left that to his local assistant, who he treats like dirt. She pretends she's in on the joke. Anywhere else this would go staight to court, but in Sihanoukville, the ultimate old-boy's club, it's par for the course. The expat magazine on the table felt like it had been produced by high-school students, full of dirty in-jokes and self-congratulatory "fiction". I could feel the change starting. Already, horrifically, I was recognising the beggars not by their faces but by the configuration of their missing limbs. And _that's_ what I really didn't like about Sihanoukville. I didn't like what it had done to them, and I didn't like what it was doing to me. We also met people who reacted the other way - incredible determination to do something. One Australian, running a tiny espresso joint as a front for an environmental operation, told us that everything always falls apart in this country, but "you just keep trying to do the impossible". As he talked, I watched four tiny sugar ants trying to drag a raisin from the table up on to an overhanging pot plant, then across it to their nest. In half an hour they moved it six inches. By the time we reached Siem Reap I was ready to attempt the impossible, but volunteering here needs more organisation than I had; by the time I'd set anything up, it was well past time to leave. As a coping strategy, I became an incredibly ineffective negotiator; I just couldn't bring myself to argue over a couple of dollars. That's not to say that there wasn't beauty. The restaurant lights reflecting from the water on Sihanoukville's long, curving beach produced a nightly rainbow, seen from our balcony. Sunset over the weedy Boeng Kak lake left, for a moment, one pool crimson while its neighbour was dark blue. Long conveys of bicycling schoolchildren in impeccable blue-and-white uniforms were a surprise on Koh Kong's isolated, dirty roads. The beach is clean and the water is warm. Oh, and the beer's cheap. Around Boeng Kak the going rate is anywhere between fifty cents and free (enjoy your five dollar pints, guys). This didn't change my alcohol consumption at all; as good a measure of prosperity as I've seen. If we'd flown from Bangkok to Siem Reap, along the lines of our original plan, we'd never have seen any of this. Proximity to Angkor has brought plane-loads of cash to Siem Reap, and that's transformed the city. There are no beggars. I don't know, and didn't ask, where they've been taken. Even the everpresent hawkers are forbidden to cross a metal wire in the dust fifty metres from each temple; the enforcement must be dramatic, because they're absolutely unwilling to take a single step over it. There's a classy wifi cafe that would fit right in, anywhere in London, pubs everywhere and clean streets, at least until you get a couple of kilometers out of town. Siem Reap has been _sanitized_. It could be anywhere. I think the "real Cambodia" lies somewhere in the middle. As I learnt later, some of our fellow-travellers found it; they skipped the "must-do" sights and went off to stay with their driver's family in remote villages, or talked their way into abbreviated diving schools on distant islands. They did what we should have done, and what anyone who wants to enjoy Cambodia has to do: forget the past.

Poisoned

2008-02-19T04:12:19-05:00

Khmer food is amazing. From the beef curry known as 'luclac' to the gentle 'fish amok' to the renditions of Western food that equal London's best, it's an experience to be savoured. It's also poisonous. There's no telling if it was the barbecue, the sandwich, or even the ice in the smoothy. But Sunday morning in Sihanoukville has us both vomiting. It's not fair; I haven't even been drinking. Out here food poisoning is a matter of time, not luck, and our number's up. Regarding this, I have only one piece of advice to give: Take the fucking pills. If you take antibiotics, you'll get better in a day. If you don't, you'll get better in as many days as it takes you to take antibiotics, plus one. We endured four miserable days in Phnom Penh, trying to convince ourselves that we were improving when we weren't. After Lyn either relapsed or ate a second dose of poison, I finally sought medical attention in Siem Reap. There's an international-standard hospital out by the airport, but Lyn wasn't willing to travel that far, for obvious reasons. So I took a tuktuk to the local pharmacy and explained our symptoms. The pharmacist asked me if I knew what I should take. I was ready for this, so, courtesy of the internet, I had the names of three alternatives written down: norfloxacin, ciprofloxacin, or azithromycin. She looked at the list, looked at me, and said, "you want take all?" No thanks. I want to live.

Stonewalker

2008-02-13T05:29:07-05:00

The first thing we see at Beng Melea temple, two hours out of Siem Reap, is a sign announcing the successful clearing of the surrounding minefield. There's a "completed" date. But, rather chillingly, there's also a "found at" date. The sign doesn't say, and I don't ask, how they found it. The humanitarian standard for minesweeping is 99.6% removal, or one remaining mine per 250 originals. Okay, no problem, but I'm not going to walk on the ground. This turns out to be an incredibly liberating decision at the most spectacular site we've visited in the region - and I'm _including_ Angkor Wat. Beng Melea is a large complex, and it's largely still standing, apart from the roof. This leaves huge piles of boulders - the fallen roof - in the middle of each room, along with exposed, accessible roof supports, which I run along. I pause at each corner to examine the stonework and the carvings. Many of the Buddhas' faces have been chiselled off by religious vandals. But the damage done by nature is fascinating. Huge trees grip the walls with wooden tentacles. Some have burst through the stonework; others have germinated on top of the buildings. Creepers hang down over the mounds of enormous square blocks where structures have collapsed, and I have to resist the temptation to swing. A couple of other stonewalkers come into view. They're not local - perhaps Korean? - but they're moving silently, and at speed. I don't mind. They show me where the accessible ledges are. But most of the time, I'm on my own. Occasionally I catch sight of earthbound tourists, but I quickly alter my route. As a response to the previous day's constant intrusion at the more popular temples, I'm carrying my earphones. Kaki King provides the perfect accompaniment to my explorations, and drowns out the tour-group chatter that normally carries so well in the still air. I kick the music over to London By Night and up the pace, bounding from rock to rock and racing down the galleries. Carvings are off-limits. So is anything that's braced, or anything that looks even remotely unstable. But this leaves a lot of rock. Two hours later I've been along the outer wall, I've contemplated the line of arches while sitting on the roof, and I've spent quite a long time on a ledge that turned out to be easier to climb up than down. The afternoon sun is becoming savage, and I'm slowing down. It's time to amble back to the tuktuk for the long ride back to town. But this, _this_ is my jungle gym.

One From Three Thirty

2008-02-11T05:55:14-05:00

Girls, guns, ganja. Phnom Penh still has some of the lawness 'frontier city' character which dominated it ten years ago. I'm here; I should get involved. This is the attitude that leads me to a military base near the airport, a frowning man at my shoulder and a warm AK-47 in my hands. I'm scared, but I'm no longer terrified. I crossed the real bridge a few minutes before when I touched a gun for the first time in my life, a diminutive .22 pistol. As our guide loaded the gun, cocked it, and offered it to me, I regarded it with deep, almost primal suspicion. I felt like it was cursed, that it had a mind of its own. Like Conan's blood-seeking sword, would it force me to turn it on others, on myself? Evidently the instructor had the same idea, because he stood at my shoulder, paying _extremely_ close attention. I squared away, gritted my teeth and fired. Hey, this isn't so bad. The terrible truth is that the second shot was _easy_. By that, I mean that it was easy to pull the trigger. It was impossible to aim. Conditions were perfect; the target was stationery. I was calm, braced, taking several seconds per shot to aim. I hit _nothing_, not even the paper around the scoring circles. Apparently this is not unusual. Lyn struck out. So did a couple of tough-looking English guys. As Lyn finished, puffs of dust sprang up as machine-gun fire raked the targets. Right, so _that's_ how you hit the bastards. Now, looking down the AK-47's oily sights, shoulder tensed and jammed against the brace, I'm more confident. Christ, the thing is _loud_. And that's _with_ hearing protection. The brutal punch in the shoulder I was expecting doesn't come, but realigning the sights, the bipod, my glasses, my earmuffs takes several seconds. Rambo has enormous biceps _so that he can control his gun_. Lyn notices the bulletholes in the ceiling as I switch the gun to fully automatic. The instructor is standing directly behind me, in case I lose it. I don't think he likes me. It's over in a fraction of a second. They bring over the target for my inspection. It has a small bullet hole in the upper chest. One from thirty. It's harder than it looks. I'd like to get good at this, but, thank god, I can't see any reason to.

Show And Tell

2008-02-09T23:19:21-05:00

_This_ is why we ride the local bus. True, we did it by accident; if you don't specify "super VIP luxury" when you buy the ticket, you'll default to an ordinary long-distance bus that stops everywhere and often does include a chicken in the aisle. It's half the price, but that doesn't make any difference to us. But now I'm in a mute show-and-tell session with a curious local sitting in the aisle. My backpack's shoved under the seat, but I have a lap full of amusements for the six-hour ride, and he's examining each in turn. Unlike most people here, he speaks no english at all. When he picks up a novel, he examines it upside down. My acquaintance isn't poor by Cambodian standards; his khaki jacket and business trousers are mismatched but clean. He's around 20, but looks the same as many of the others on the bus to me. I identify him by his red baseball cap. HIgh technology can't be totally new to him. Still, he's fascinated by my phone, acting as a book (right-way-up this time), mp3 player (he prefers the Hilltop Hoods to London Lounge), and camera. My compass-watch also gets an inspection. He's nonplussed by my phrasebook, so I don't try to use it; I've learnt that until you know the basics of correct pronunciation, it's more harm than good. Sign language is working just fine. The bus pulls over at a 'roadhouse', and we share a bag of sweet pineapple. I pick up some cashews for later at the same time. Back on the bus, I'm out of toys and out of energy. I'm just waking up when Red Cap takes the bag of cashews from the seat-back, rips off the top, eats a few, then walks up the aisle with the bag, still eating. Okaay. Massive cultural difference? Or was I just robbed? I'm not too worried, and anyway, he's gone. I go back to my book. When I pull my backpack out from under the seat at Siem Reap, my thongs, normally strapped to the outside, are missing. I check under the seat, where they'd have fallen, but they're not there either. Lyn's furious, convinced that my mystery friend has stolen them. I'm not so sure. But I know he took my cashews.

Crossing The Line

2008-02-09T23:18:06-05:00

I'm not used to negotiating with people in uniform. They're triple-teaming us, a stern schoolteacher type looking over her thin-rimmed glasses and speaking good English, while two mute bruisers sit behind the desks. We should never have entered the Immigration office. Smart people do their business through the window. But at least it's a respite from the swarming touts, all of whom want to "help". Inside, there's none of the terrible urgency of keeping track of Lyn, my passport, my possessions, our moto driver, and the dozen people who aren't wilting in the heat like I am. We have all the time in the world. There's silence. They've asked us for 1200 Thai baht for an entry visa. That's nearly double the official rate of $US20. We have the money but tell them we don't. They tell us to cross back over the border to a Thai ATM and come back. I was expecting something like this, so I show them the printout from the Cambodian Embassy's web page, listing the proper rate. I was also expecting that to make a difference. I'd cave - I'm not going to rot in a Cambodian jail over twenty bucks - but Lyn's incensed, so we hesitate. Perhaps they sense they've got a problem on their hands, because suddenly the price is 1100. Just as suddenly, I realise that this is negotiation, not extortion. We stonewall. I offer to pay the $US5 "processing fee" in addition to the normal price. No dice. We're holding up business. I'm grinning like an idiot and wishing I spoke Khmer. We have ID photos ready for the visa - something that they're used to having to take themselves - but they use them to retrospectively justify their price drop. We're still not playing, but everybody knows that we don't have any other options. It's taken us four hours to reach the border by chartered car. Eventually, I offer 2000 baht for both of us, and they take it. We're on to a couple of motorcycle taxis and heading for the town of Koh Kong in a matter of minutes. Shattered, in the evening we go straight for the farang restaurant, the Blue Gecko. There we meet an Australian expat who's done this plenty of times. Most recently he arrived at the border and confidently handed over his passport and official visa fee of $20. "You've been to Cambodia a few times before," the guard said, riffling through his passport, "You should _know_ that it's going to cost you $25."

The Absence Of Fear

2008-02-09T23:17:33-05:00

I see a girl perched on the edge of a balcony high above the street, relaxing, and suddenly it all clicks. Nobody here has any fear left. Everything bad that can happen _already has_. Perhaps it's a kind of fatalism, or perhaps it's like my experience with jumping: they broke their fear of death. It doesn't work any more. Whatever the reason, it explains everything from the suicidal traffic to the lack of safety features on basic appliances to the incredible freedom of a society that exchanges "think of the children!" for "it's your neck, man". In the West, nothing bad ever happens, so we jump at shadows and self-destruct after minor setbacks. Fear is like the allergies that cripple children never exposed to dirt. Fear is increasingly how we are ruled. We all have a lot to gain from the absence of fear.

What The Hell Happened Here?

2008-02-09T23:16:35-05:00

It used to be nice here. Here's what happened. 1864: Cambodia is conquered by France. 1953: France is distracted by unrest in Vietnam, so King Sihanouk declares independence. 1959: Vietnam War begins: North Vietnamese communists (Viet Cong) backed by Soviet Union and China vs South Vietnamese fascists backed by United States. Viet Cong use Cambodia as a hideout and transport route, drawing Cambodia into the war. Cambodian communists form the Khmer Rouge in support. 1969: US commences carpet-bombing Cambodia, hoping to hit hiding Viet Cong. Civilian casualties increase Khmer Rouge recruitment. 1970: General Lon Nol, with US support, deposes King Sihanouk. Sihanouk allies with the Khmer Rouge. 1970-1975: Civil war: Viet Cong + Khmer Rouge, supported by Sihanouk, vs Lon Nol's Government troops, supported by the US. The average Cambodian is forced to choose between King and Country. 1975: North Vietnamese win the Vietnam War. 1975: Khmer Rouge win the civil war. They immediately attempt to create an agrarian utopia by killing all dissenters and educated people. Through starvation, disease, and execution, around 40% of the population is killed. The Khmer Rouge launches attacks into Vietnam, despite Vietnam being a former ally, hoping to reclaim territory. 1979: Vietnam retaliates against Cambodia and conquers it in 13 days. 1979-1989: Civil war: Khmer Rouge (in hiding) vs Vietnam (occupying) + Cambodian supporters (led by Hun Sen). The average Cambodian is forced to choose between the murderous, fascist Khmer Rouge and the foreign Vietnamese. 1989: Out of money, the Vietnamese leave. The UN takes over and organises a peace treaty and elections. Hun Sen forms the Cambodian People's Party. 1993: Elections won by FUNCINPEC (led by Prince Ranirdh, and supported by the Khmer Rouge). The CPP refuses to accept the result. The UN brokers a deal: there will be two prime ministers. The CPP continues to skirmish with the KR. Hun Sen (prime minister #1) slowly erodes Prince Ranirdh's (prime minister #2) power. 1997: The KR collapses through internal splits and defections, becoming part of FUNCINPEC. 1997: The CPP takes power in a coup. With nobody left to fight, Cambodia enters a period of relative peace. - There are two obvious places where things could have gone differently. The first was getting involved in the American War (or the Vietnam War as it's known over there). This led to bombing and a coup which resulted in two civil wars. The second was the brutal rule of the Khmer Rouge in the period between the wars. They started as a popular revolution; Phnom Penh cheered when they arrived. But then the leadership went absolutely, murderously _insane_ - there's no other word for it; their actions weren't even in their _own_ interests. I still don't understand how this happened so quickly.

Cambodian U-Turn

2008-02-06T05:46:00-05:00

There's a thick concrete median to prevent u-turns, but that's no problem. We simply turn in place. Reality check. With Lyn, I'm on the back of a small scooter in Phnom Penh. Our rider has a helmet but that's the only armour on the bike. And we're proceeding at speed _on the wrong side of the road_ into Khmer traffic. Forget food aid. Somebody should airdrop these guys some traffic lights. The major four-way intersection is completely unprotected, and we ride directly in - still on the wrong side of the road, then swing right across the incoming traffic. I jam my knees in to fit them within the profile of the bike's narrow faring. I'm getting close to the locals, all right. But the funny thing is that I'm not even scared. I broke my fear of bikes in Ko Chang. It's a bit like the fast run with my hard-driving police-trained Queensland friend. I know this guy's got the skills to make it work. He doesn't have any scars. Nobody here does. So either they never crash or they never survive. - I realise that I've written a lot about transport. Surely the places themselves must be more interesting than the process of getting to them? It's not always true. Transport is one of the most dangerous things we do, the one that brings us closest to the locals - we mostly use the same means they do - and one of the things that varies most between places. And after all, what we're doing _is_ described as "travelling". Before I left it on the plane, I was reading a book about massive effects: complex results built from simple systems. Traffic is one of the most obvious examples. It turns out that it exists in three states: free-flowing, synchronized, and jammed. The "synchronized" state is rare because it's unstable, and will collapse without warning into the "jammed" state as soon as someone does anything sudden. From there, it won't return until the traffic density is light enough for the "free-flowing" state. Essentially, synchronized traffic trades safety margins for speed. I've noticed here that the traffic is always synchronized. It jams in Western countries because people overreact; the car ahead taps the brakes, so they tap the brakes a little harder, so the car behind brakes hard. Over here, if someone does tap the brakes, the guy behind will accelerate, swerve around, and overtake. Combine that with 90% bikes, mostly carrying two people and sometimes up to five, and they achieve incredible efficiency on narrow roads.

Mixed Fruits

2008-02-06T05:45:06-05:00

Hat Sai Khao, Ko Chang, Thailand I've finally cracked Thai pronunciation. The tones they use don't match the ones in the phrasebook. But I can hear them now, and I can mostly speak them. Here's the secret: as an English speaker, you're already used to producing tones, but you use them for emotion, not meaning. So map the meanings onto emotions: * The low tone is droning. * The mid tone is neutral. * The falling tone is panicked. * The high tone is questioning. * The rising tone is the high tone, but lower pitched. You *do* have to get it right, or you *won't* be understood, even if it would seem possible to deduce the meaning from the context. I asked a songtaw driver for a lift to "hat sai khao" and he looked at me blankly until I translated to "white sand beach". But it turns out I'd actually asked for "white knee beach", which may be just as descriptive, but isn't on the map. Speaking Thai really does open secret doors here. Order "coconut soup with chicken" and you'll get a rather bland, but pleasant, meal. Order "tom kha gai" and you'll be asked "bpet?" - "spicy?". Say yes to this and you're in for an experience. - The motorcycles we hired for 150 baht each can best be described as "working". Or at least "running". Mine came with "stomp gears" - I had to really kick the hell out of the gear selector to get it to change. This made it tricky to kickstart, because it would claim to be in neutral when it wasn't. Every single time I needed to start it, though, a helpful local would wander over and do it for me. I guess they're used to people with even less motorcycle experience than me. They must be, because the process of checking my qualifications was to gesture vaguely at the gears and say "You can?" I'm not carrying an international licence, only an Australian one, so it's just as well. In Cambodia, it's slightly different: they rent you the licence at the same time as the bike. I'm not sure if that's better or worse. - We spent most of the first night at our guesthouse fighting off ants. I shouldn't have been surprised; the place was pretty basic. They'd answered my question about hot water with "No have. Hot coffee, have." In the morning, Lyn took out our roll-on insect repellant to find an ant crawling across the surface. We also have a very small and very expensive bottle of 100% DEET. It works. The only problem is that it'll kill you faster than malaria. Still, it could've been worse. A very drunk man at the bar next door said that he'd returned to his room one night to find a snake in it. No worries for your average Aussie, but "a snake" around here means a King Cobra - you're pretty much dead before you reach the floor, let alone a Bangkok hospital. If I'd met one, I'd be drunk too. - I've made tissue-paper hot air balloons, propelled by cotton wool soaked in methylated spirits, before. They're beautiful, even more so when they're floating three at a time above the beach like orange stars. But back in New Zealand, we didn't quick-launch them with firework rockets. Actually, the whole beach has an obsession with fire. Every bar has a fire show - with the times staggered so the same crew can work many of them - and many of the kids we saw practice during the day with sticks, or coke bottles on string. - Yes, we had cocktails on the beach. It's a long time between drinks. But I've had my "week on the beach" now, more or less. I found that I never spent quite as much time actually lazing around on the beach or the water as I thought I'd want to - an hour or two a day at most. And after a few days, I was picking up new projects, like learning Thai, or Khmer, or excessive exercise. Lyn has even less ability to idle than I do. This is it. We don't _get_ any slower.

The Mind-Killer

2008-02-04T03:24:01-05:00

I'm sick with fear. My hands are locked onto the grips so tightly that, afterwards, I'm unable to straighten them. The wind on my bare, vulnerable skull is a hideous feeling. I'm a student of statistics, and I deal with fear by rationalising it away. The adventure sports industry is built on the _appearance_ of danger. In Croatia I gritted my teeth and jumped. I like to think that I'm smart rather than cowardly. But rationalising makes this, a new type of fear, much worse. I'm riding a small Thai motorcycle down a steep, winding road - and I'm wearing no armour at all. I can clearly hear the voice of my hard-bitten riding instructor in Adelaide: "You do not _throw your leg over a bike_ without your gear on". Rationally, I enumerate each part of my body that would be damaged in a fall. I'm going to lose a lot of skin, some of it irreplaceably. I'll lose teeth. I might shred my hands. As our speed climbs above 50km/h - Lyn's speedometer is mercifully broken, but mine works just fine - I might smash my skull and spend the rest of my life drooling. Fifty metres ahead of me, Lyn is no better protected. I'm wondering if it'll be her or me, and glad that I don't have to choose. She's a better rider but a more aggressive one, and rationally, two bikes doubles our chances. The jungle whips past us. Traffic is light. But this is not liberating. This is sickening. At the end of our ride, down to the Treetop Adventure Park in Ko Chang, I meet the other type of fear: irrational fear. I've never liked heights, and these jokers have ziplines, tightropes, and ladders twenty metres in the air, with stunning views of the beach if you can bear to look. I have my rationalisation toolkit ready to rock - for all the good it does against vertigo - but I don't need it. The French owner gives us our safety harnesses and, as soon as I'm clipped in, I'm fine. _This works even if I'm not clipped in to anything particularly solid_. We blitz the course, leaving the Austrian couple who are sharing our guide in our dust. Even the 150m flying fox, 15 metres up, doesn't cause me more than a second's hesitation. I'm so confident that I accidentally re-shave my head on the steel cable while turning to look at the view. I think I broke my fear of jumping in Croatia. Once you've leapt from a ten metre rock into an unknown river pool, something changes. Now, I've broken my fear of riding without armour: arriving in Sihanoukville, we opted for two motorcycle taxis instead of a tuk-tuk, to save _five dollars_. It's totally irrational. Lyn even commented afterwards on how "safe" her rider was. He's not safe. He's _slightly less hideously dangerous_. On each of our trips, both of us have consciously sought out our fears, engaged them, and beaten them. But while irrational fear cripples you, rational fear protects you. I fear that my victory is friendly fire.

Gamed

2008-01-30T02:59:49-05:00

"Next time I'm bringing Travel Guess Who" I should've stuck with pushing pawns around. But she's left her King exposed, and intellectual integrity demands that I do something about it. The thing about playing chess with your fiancee is that, even if you win, you lose. I have no such problem with pool. I've lost five times in a row now, going down in the last game even after taking a three-ball lead.

Standing Room Only

2008-01-30T02:51:24-05:00

This isn't me. This is madness. We'd seen this coming and headed for the front of the arriving ferry early, but we're less willing to shove our way through than the other travellers, and we reach the port nearly last. By then the waiting saengthaews are full, each pick-up carrying three in the front, ten in the back on two rows of benches, and a roofrack full of backpacks. We could wait for them to come back, since the round trip is an hour at most. We could wander around to find alternative transport. We could find a room here and sort it out in the morning. Instead, I wave at the driver and he asks me where I'm going. When I answer he sizes me up, as if wondering if I'm going to be able to hang on that long. Obviously I make the grade as he waves me on board. With no more room, Lyn sits on the back bumper with her feet inches from the road,and I stand next to her, gripping the bars that support the roof and trying not to lean too far out. It's not even that hard, until the pick-up heads up a steep slope. Lyn's slowly sliding out of the car. My biceps are burning. We're both relieved to jump off at Hat Sai Khao, less than half way to Lonely Beach where the other passengers are heading. It's not just - admittedly moderate - risks that suddenly seem reasonable. The next morning sees me up early, running up and down the beach and swimming before _coffee_, let alone breakfast. It's not so crazy, but it's crazy for _me_.

Dropping Out

2008-01-30T02:50:27-05:00

The eye candy isn't up to much: the crowd of overweight retirees mean that Hat Sai Khao is strictly BYO. They mostly lie inert, many with sunburn patterns such as I-used-to-wear-sandals-but-can't-anymore, I-really-should-put-my-watch-back-on, or I-can't-reach-the-middle-of-my-back. I'm not sure whether this indicates a very good, or very poor, market for an English-speaking personal trainer. Yes, we're talking about moving, again. Six months in Chiang Mai runs about two weeks of our central London rent. Out here it's a little bit more, but nothing a couple of days a week couldn't pay for. Plenty of travellers drop out in Vientiane or Phnom Penh, but I'll trade the 'girls, guns and ganja' for 'beaches, bikes and beer' and keep enough of my focus that I can go back. As our plans move from the pipe-dream to the ticket-buying stage the scope decreases from 'a lifetime' to 'six months', and the chances increase from 'never' to 'why not?' Maybe it's the afternoon sun reflecting from the waves, maybe it's the warm wind drying out my boardshorts, maybe it's the Beer Chang, but I can't think of a good reason.

Packing For Heat

2008-01-28T03:04:53-05:00

My bag weighs less than I do, which is a nice change. In fact, I can lift it with the little finger of my left hand. I cannot shake the feeling that I've forgotten multiple vitally important objects. Even repeating "I have my passport and credit card, and nothing else is a showstopper" isn't enough to reassure myself. I haven't drilled holes in my toothbrush, but only because I didn't have a drill. Everything else is _optimized_, particularly the geek gear. I'm not even going to Pantip this time; everything I can actually use, I own. Apart from the last-minute addition of the Jesus Shirt, every item of clothing I'm carrying is made of quickdry technical polyester. This stuff is _expensive_ - I'm not over paying $50 per pair of underpants, and $120 for a shirt - but it's worth the money, and it's absolutely impossible to get out here. The best place in the world to buy travel gear, based on my limited but ever-expanding survey, is Rundle Street, Adelaide, South Australia. I balked at the prices before our initial bailout; I wish I hadn't. I'm developing an appreciation for classics and instructive texts, because they take me longer to read, thereby providing more hours-per-kilogram. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle maintenance nearly took me forever; I'm simply not convinced that it has anything useful to say. It's perhaps missing the point to criticise philosophy by saying that it's not _useful_ - one could say the same thing about any field of human endeavour not actually concerned with tractor design - but this doesn't mean _anything_. It's marketdroid speak for another age. Like religious texts and song lyrics, it's so amorphous that anything you take away from it, you actually brought with you in the first place. The book's afterword hints that even the author knows this. The book is a "culture-bearer"; it doesn't tell you where to go, it tells you where you're already going. And it was written twenty years ago, in America. No wonder my reaction to the bits that actually purported to be useful was, "Duh". So if it hadn't been an ebook, it would have been an easy choice to ditch it. I did have to make some harder choices:
Left: Makes me look like a drug dealer Right: Makes me look like a terrorist Winner: Left
Right: Makes me look respectable Left: Makes me look like Jesus Winner: Left We didn't just load the backpacks, either - we packed _all_ our stuff into suitcases and garbage bags, and stashed it in corners of the flat. We're subletting it while we're away. It was almost exactly like moving out, complete with the last-minute rush and the tangled chain of dependencies. Perhaps it's that purging of material goods that makes this trip feel so much like the first one. We're staying in the same guesthouse, drinking at the same coffeeshop, and both of us are finding the lines of our memories blurring in a not-altogether-pleasant way. If I squint I can see myself standing in the corner, wearing a battered blaze-orange singlet and getting shocked by the third internet machine, the one with the faulty ground connection. The jetlag doesn't help; last time we did this, it didn't start with a redeye flight and a nine-hour time difference. Still, at least I'm remembering my Thai.

Optimise

2008-01-28T02:57:47-05:00

The fat man's never heard of Angkor Wat. As we listen in, standing next to him at the scale model inside the Golden Palace, his personal guide tells him that he can go there in an hour. He asks "By train? By bus?" The guide is horrified. "Oh no! By plane!" It's true. You can fly out of Bangkok and be in Siem Reap in an hour. But you miss Ko Chang, you miss Sihanoukville, and you even miss Phnom Penh if you fly straight to Hanoi after seeing Angkor Wat. We spend the morning on the internet, eventually finding exactly the kind of map that I was planning to draw: it lists travel times and road conditions, rather than distances. I'm in travelling-salesman mode, trying to optimise for time, distance, cost, accumulating the maximum number of "tourist points" in between. Six hours to cross two hundred kilometers seems excessive. At the hostel, the owner tells us that the Bangkok - Siem Reap road has never been bitumenised because the airlines have paid for it not to be. But we wouldn't have used it in any case. We're rolling southeast, crossing into Cambodia via the "back door". Six hours to Trat. Another six to the port. The border crossing is apparently "interesting". Having sorted that out, we need to work out how we're doing Phnom Penh to Siem Reap. The bus takes five hours and costs a pittance. There's also a boat running upriver, but at six hours and twenty dollars, it's not faster *or* cheaper. But the fastest and cheapest way is always not to go. We'll take the hard road, and damn the potholes, damn the touts, damn the torpedoes.

Coin Circle

2008-01-28T02:57:20-05:00

The golden face peers at me from between the pillars. At fifty metres long, I can't even see all of Thailand's biggest Buddha at once. I'm distracted by a continuous rattle, as if something's on the roof. It's not until I walk around the other side - spending thirty seconds seeing nothing but golden body - that I see what it's coming from. Perhaps it's hypocritical of me, but I join in: I spend 20 baht on a jar of small change, and drop one coin in each of several dozen metal pots, contributing both to the wat's upkeep and the noise that I heard on the other side. I obtain no spiritual relevation whatsoever, until I reach the end of the line, where an orderly is methodically emptying each of the metal pots into a larger basket. As I watch, he wheels his cart around in a slow 180, and returns the change to the desk I bought it from. It makes me think of the - possibly apocryphal - task of emptying a lower bucket into an upper one which has a hole. The change flows around a circle. Perhaps it serves a purpose other than just keeping the lights on.

Shoe Leather

2008-01-28T02:56:59-05:00

The GPS saves us from becoming hopelessly lost, but it can't save us from the five kilometer walk to the nearest Skytrain station. Taxi prices are fixed, for people who know how to insist on the meter, but they're fixed so low that at peak hour on a Friday, it's simply not worth the driver's effort to cross town. The bouncy river crossing has removed the ferryboat as an option, at least for the rest of the afternoon, so we have no choice but to leg it. I'd started to take European cities for granted. Bangkok is beautiful, but all its beauty is in one place. The rest of the city is ugly, dirty, and loud. Kilometer after kilometer of grimy motorcycle shops have no redeeming features at all; they're not even interestingly grimy. We stop for cold drinks at a 7-11, spending roughly what it would cost to get a lift to the station if we could convince anyone to give us one. I blow my nose when we finally make it back and leave black marks on the tissue; this isn't the kind of walk that improves your health. The next day, we grab a taxi even for the short hop to Chatuchak Markets. But that's not without its moments, either. I quickly lose my bearings as a series of turns takes us on to a five-lane highway. The meter hits 50 baht and my compass shows that we're still heading south, away from the market. I turn the GPS on and hold it to the window, knowing that he'll have _plenty_ of time to drive us to his remote hideout, rob us, and bury our bodies before it locks on to the satellites. A minute later we arrive. It's impossible to navigate in this town, and best not to try.

Forest of Spires

2008-01-28T02:56:29-05:00

The Grand Palace made me glad I've been to Ayuthera. It's strange that a ruined temple can be more interesting than a new one; the stark piles of bricks said nothing more than "I've been here for five hundred years, and I'll still be here in another five hundred". Wat Phra Kaew is _amazing_, but not _powerful_. Perhaps I'm more interested in the permanence of the idea than in its budget. In fact, one of the more interesting buildings was a scale model of Angkor Wat. That's not to say that a hundred-foot golden spire has no appeal at all. But stark has always been my style. As we leave the Museum of Royal Regalia, a boy behind us exclaims "everything the King owns is made of gold!" He's right; from betel-nut boxes to spittoons to Japanese swords, gold is the metal of choice.

FLR: "iGo Stowaway Ultra-Slim Keyboard", by "Think Outside"

2008-01-28T02:55:56-05:00

"Before you buy it, find out if I'm sorry that I did" Front Line Reviews are the opposite of "unboxing". You've read the spec sheet already. These reviews will tell you if it holds up in a production environment. --- "iGo Stowaway Ultra-Slim Keyboard", by "Think Outside" This is brilliant. It sets up fast, types fast, and Just Works. Software setup on my Nokia 6120c was trivial; I used Nokia's keyboard software instead of the provided CD and it worked. I can select text, copy-and-paste using hotkeys, and access the left softmenu key. I don't know how to simulate the right one. Think Outside's customer support will deny that this is possible. Don't believe them. If it doesn't seem to connect, make sure you type the passcode (initially chosen on the phone) on the keyboard. It's not always obvious that that's what you need to do. Hardware setup is just as easy. The attached stand works well with my phone; it doesn't slip off even on bumpy bus rides. There's no power switch, because it 'wakes up' when you press a key. It comes with batteries. Typing is a dream compared to the other fold-up keyboards I've used. The keys give good feedback and I can type at nearly my full 60 wpm. There's no lag at all, unlike my last keyboard, although I'm not sure if this was the fault of the keyboard or the device. Numbers and symbols are slightly slower, because they're shifted, but this trims a whole row off the keyboard's footprint. The iGo Stowaway is stable enough that you can type with the keyboard propped on backpack sitting on your lap, while on a bus. I got an eyestrain headache after ten minutes, but that's hardly the keyboard's fault. It does rock slightly even on a flat surface. This is only slightly distracting, and could probably be fixed with some bluetack. I'm using it with Ped, a freeware Python IDE for Symbian that also functions as the platform's best text editor. I bought QuickOffice, but the installation failed with an unhelpful error, and the customer support staff insisted that the only way to fix it would be to reformat my phone, so I gave up on it. Mine was 18 pounds, which is an incredible bargain. Ditch the Macbook Air and buy one.

Cynic

2008-01-28T02:55:20-05:00

I still basically trust people, but my last trip down here has made me automatically suspicious of young men who stand too close, speak too softly, and are too friendly - _particularly_ if they start by asking where I'm from. The gate queue at Abu Dhabi airport is not exactly a high-risk location, but I'm spending more of my time working out how this can possibly be a scam than holding up my end of the conversation. The poor Saudi at the wrong end of my prejudices is surprised to hear that I'm Australian, and asks if we speak English there, "like Americans". I'm still on guard, because he says he's going to Manila but this is a flight to Bangkok. It's only afterwards that Lyn points out that he'll probably have to change planes. It's a little early in the trip to be so cynical.

Miracle Device

2008-01-28T02:54:45-05:00

Things I have actually done with my phone: * Carried it through one of the largest street markets in the world, in my shorts pocket, without worrying about it. * Worked out in my room in Phaya Thai to beats playing through the speakers * Practiced my Thai pronunciation while waiting for a ferry, using a course of mp3s through the headphones. * Secretly recorded my experience at border crossings, so that if they disappear me at least there'll be some evidence. * Taken unobtrusive, flash-less photos to serve as memory cues for travel writing. * Managed my todo list from "organise a Vietnam visa" to "remember to buy a SIM card". * Set a 5am "go to Heathrow _now_" wakeup alarm that I can't ignore. * Navigated through Bangkok from Wat Phra Kaew to the Skytrain at National Stadium after taxis refused to take us home, using a bluetooth GPS that never left my pocket. * Written my travel journal with a folding bluetooth keyboard, lying in a bamboo hut under a mosquito net across from the beach. * Found a cafe near to Serpentine Road using Google Maps, when the only obvious one was full of prams. * Navigated the Tube using a topographically accurate map. * Read, and replied to, my email from a bus in the far north of Scotland. * Browsed the internet in bed at home when I can't be bothered reaching for the laptop. * Looked for geocaches at Blow-Up Bridge. * Read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance on the tube when it's too crowded to unfold a newspaper. * Made phone calls.

Plenty For Me

2008-01-20T16:39:14-05:00

The only way now is down. I first realized this reading We Need To Talk About Kevin. The protagonists have their lives _together_. The only news they can receive is bad news. Things can't _get_ any better. This is dangerous on two levels. There's the risk. The more you have, the more you have to lose. All you can do is build failsafes and prepare for damage control. I've done that. The other problem is losing perspective. From here I can't even _see_ the bottom. And that makes small setbacks appear much larger, and therefore more damaging, than they really are. I've been toying with this idea for a while, but it's time to take a trip into the valley. I'll be rolling through there quite literally in a couple of weeks when we hit Cambodia, but "poorism" stinks. While this may be about self-interest, rather than philanthropy, there are limits. So I want to get out there and help. I've always felt that there's something purifying about physical labour, possibly because I've never done any. But it's been one of my long-term goals to work construction at some point, because I've got something to prove.

Secret Window

2008-01-20T16:29:46-05:00

Everybody who writes about the early morning describes it as 'different', 'surreal', or even 'alien'. They're right. But everybody else seems to _like_ it. For the second, and final, time in my life I made it to the gym at 7am. Like most things that I don't enjoy, I did it only to prove that I could to a deeply cynical Lyn. Still, I felt more alive than I normally do at that time, and returning home at 8am with the workout out of the way meant that I could have a lazy morning, get to work at 9, be home by 5:30, and have the whole evening to myself. That's _impossible_ luxury. It's a whole extra time period, a secret window of opportunity. It pays off. Last week I rode to a client meeting and a co-worker decided to follow me rather than catch the tube. I blitzed him, and I was taking it easy. He's my age, and not unhealthy. The part of me that never really got over being beaten up in high school is not used to being fitter than my peers. Meanwhile, I've been bumping into things. Most recently I slammed into the edge of New Bamboo's coffee table while trying to dodge around another programmer without slowing down. I hit hard enough to leave a large purple bruise - and I have to practically get shot to bruise at all. I like to think that it's because I'm getting bigger and my brain hasn't quite caught up. More likely it's lack of sleep.

Consumer Confidence

2008-01-20T16:29:13-05:00

We couldn't do it. Tasked to spend £100 in the UK's greatest department store, we retreated two hours later with £70 still to our names. Harrods gift cards really mess with your value heuristic: I can't pay $70 for a pen. I just can't. Even if it's not my money. The network of small, themed rooms made it feel more like a shopping centre than a department store; in fact, it can be difficult to buy items from one room in a different one. When I tried to finalise my purchase of an enormous, laminated world map from Books, while in Stationery, the clerk told me he couldn't scan it and I'd have to make my way back to Books. He offered me a map. But it was standing in the food hall where I really had the feeling of living in one of the richest countries on earth, at the richest time in history. Even a hundred years ago, emperors would not have enjoyed the luxuries on offer here. Exotic, out-of-season fruits had been picked a thousand miles away and air-freighted in for my indulgence. Star fruit from Israel? Mangoes from Malaysia? Why not. I wanted to bottle the moment and hold it against a time when things may be worse, because they'll never be better.

Technical White

2007-12-31T15:12:00-05:00

_Carbisdale Castle, Scotland_ It's faster to walk across the fields to the main road than to wait for the bus to take the long way, so on Christmas morning, that's what we do. There's no snow but every surface is covered with a beautiful frost. Each crystal is a perfect rectangular prism, maybe half a millimetre across and three high. The cool sun produces long, soft shadows. I'm going to call it a technical White Christmas. As the bus passes a frozen river, I'm thinking "I wish I was driving, so that I could stop here". Evidently our guide is thinking the same thing, because she *does* stop, and we all pile out and rush down to the shore. The sheets of ice have cracked and been pushed up on to the bank in huge plates, so I can see that they're two inches thick. The whole river is covered. I step on to one and it creaks - and it's _very_ slippery. Someone throws a thinner piece out into the river and it shatters like glass. Before the evening party kicks off, one of the guides demonstrates proper kilt-wearing and sword use. A real kilt has almost nothing in common with the 'dress kilts' you can buy on the Royal Mile. It's more like wrapping a thick brown curtain around yourself. Having dispensed with the pleasantries, he waves an assortment of sharp things around, pausing to take long gulps of lager. He's proud of the Scottish reputation for violence and more than a little psycho himself, and I can't tell how much of it he's putting on for the audience. It seems to be too caricatured to be real, but if there's one thing I've learnt on this trip, it's that all stereotypes are true.

Bits and Pieces

2007-12-31T15:12:00-05:00

Even Lyn's not game for real haggis, and she's eaten deep-friend insects. But we tried "vegetarian haggis" (same spices, hold the offal) at the World's End, where Laphroaig is the Malt of the Month, and found it delicious. I've been to Adam Smith's grave. He does not appear, at this time, to be spinning in it. Scottish folk dances, as performed by two hundred drunk Australians on Christmas Eve, are nothing short of hilarious. The band leader, doubling as the dance caller, made no allowances for us at all. He'd run through the dance verbally, once, then start the music. The first dance involved getting into a circle, taking four steps, turning around, then taking four steps backwards, then four forwards, then turning again. Half the group got out of sync, or confused, or both, and collided with the other half.. continuously, for several minutes. By the last dance he was actually threatening to eat his fiddle. He wasn't putting it on; he was really annoyed. Still, it was a great ice (/bone) breaker, and much more entertaining than the generic nightclub dancing that happened later. Edinburgh contains lots of buildings that are not the castle. It reminds me of my first walk along the Thames, asking Lyn "is that Tower Bridge? Is *that* Tower Bridge? Ohhh... *that's* Tower Bridge". One of the buildings on the skyline that's Not The Castle is a particularly creepy gothic monument. It's right next to the ferris wheel, which is quite strange.

Shopping

2007-12-31T15:12:00-05:00

_The Royal Mile, Edinburgh_ They don't call it "scotch" here; they just call it "whisky". Of _course_ it's Scottish. Lyn's captivated by the cute dog in the window, but I'm more interested in the rest of the display. Though it may be on the Main Street, the place where you can buy "100% genuine kilt, full outfit", the tiny storefront is packed full of whisky bottles with distinguished or unfamiliar (to me, which means they're even more distinguished) names. There's not a blend in sight. The soft-spoken Scotman inside lets me browse, and Lyn play with his dog, until I ask him for a recommendation. He knows his stuff. I can sense that he doesn't really like Laphroaig, my starting point, and instead he recommends the Longrow, made in tiny quantities by a single distillery in Campbelltown. I'm checking out the shop at the same time. He actually _has_ a sign reading "unattended children will be sold as slaves". I'm starting to like this guy. The Longrow is the fifth bottle of booze I carry to the train station. It's not a backpack any more; it's a bottleshop. This is a $90 experiment; some people are impossibly picky with wine, some blow their money on fashion. I like whisky.

London To Edinburgh

2007-12-31T15:11:00-05:00

_London To Edinburgh_ Things only get worse. We have to take a rail replacement bus over much of the route. No one really knows where we're going. Half the group misses a connecting train; we watch some of them on the platform as we pull away. But it's all part of the experience: Confusion. Overcrowding. Delays. Roast beef sandwiches with mustard. A flask of hot tea. General good spirits despite it all. If this isn't a proper British Rail journey, nothing is. It's been months since we stayed in a dorm, but perhaps not as long as it's been for most of our fellow-travelers. When we arrive at Edinburgh Backpackers there was about a 50/50 mix of huge packs and rollerbags; very few people had light packs like ours (which were mostly full of alcohol). The procedure with the rollerbags appears to be that you wheel it in to your dorm, then push the handle down like a plunger, detonating the bag and spreading its contents all over the room. At least, that's how it looks.

Removed And Destroyed

2007-12-31T15:09:00-05:00

_King's Cross_ Train travel is an incredible luxury compared to the Stansted Shuffle, but we still feel the bite of the security ~~theatre~~ precautions. Every few minutes a voice over the PA reminds us that if we do not keep our belongings with us at all times, we will be removed and may be destroyed. Even belongings that aren't ours. I'd picked up the damn thing on instinct, sleepy and heavily loaded on an escalator and not really seeing it or the person who thought I'd dropped it. Now with no free hands at all and in possession of a squashed and unappetising bread product in a plastic bag, I'm frustrated to find that St Pancras[1] contains no bins at all. Anywhere. Since we can't find our tour departure point, I have the opportunity to make a thorough survey of the entire station. When we stop to double-check the trip information, I casually leave it on the floor next to my bag. But when I pick up the bag and walk away, an old lady points it out and I have to thank her and, grumbling, take off with croissant in hand. We finally abandon it on a table outside a cafe, behind the back of a fluro-vested copper. But we buy takeaway coffees at the same time, and so five minutes later we're back where we started. Terrorists took my freedom and all I got was a stale croissant and a paper cup. --- fn1. Which is not the same as King's Cross. We're not going to talk about that.

Christmas Party

2007-12-28T18:13:00-05:00

I'm in a full suit, wearing the silly Christmas hat I picked up in Scotland. Apart from Lyn, I don't recognise anyone here, but my "department head" obviously recognises me. "Gwyn! The helper monkeys for the blind were an amazing development! Could you put a green spot on Samoa for me? Oh, your hands are full.. again". You must always be changed by what is said to you. I slide smoothly into character. The office larrikin, I have a taste for good whisky and the hot blonde who's my co-worker. Lyn plays along. Without my need for drama, her character's actually a lot more believable than mine. In theory, she shouldn't even _have_ a character. We're at a play. But the play's pretending to be a party, and the party is a lot of fun. I circulate in the crowd, alternately sipping from the "Afghanistanian" wine that Miranda, the Corporate Social Responsibility manager, has provided to the team, and my own double Bell's. I'm not being a dick. I'm _acting_. It's amazingly liberating. _Nobody here knows that I'm not being paid to do this_. After a touching performance from a country & western singer, I end up leaning on Helen's shoulder and telling her that I really love her, man, what's your name again? Later, I strike up a conversation with a older guy from Domestic Services (cleaning), just to find out whether I can convince him that I'm an actor. I lose; I'm not sure whether _he's_ an actor. I lose the quiz game after they abruptly switch the red and green corners on me. I'm not paying attention, busy trying to pick up threads of plot from conversations around me. I'm bad at eavesdropping. The MC comes on again, and the CSR manager's looking for someone from her team to win a Sexy Employee Competition, or something. I'm pointing at Lyn but she grabs me instead. Suddenly someone's taking my jacket off, someone else has their hands on my drink, my hat's gone, someone's putting something on my face. Oh god, there's tinsel around my waist and my pants are rolled up. I stumble on to the stage. When they call my name I make Arnie poses and try to suck my stomach in. The girl next to me's far too good not to be a plant. I find out later that she isn't. Is everyone here a West End wannabe? I lose, but a couple of other employees come up later to congratulate me. Is _anyone_ here in the audience? The DJ gives me a nod and the music ramps up. My drink is gone, so I move purposefully over to the corner. I lean on the bar and order another double Bell's. I've buttoned up my shirt, mostly, but I'm still wearing tinsel and black lipstick. I've never felt sexier in my life. I'm not acting drunk any more. I am drunk. Am I still acting? There's a couple of set-pieces. A girl in the Christmas-pudding-eating competition freaks out, the lights go off, there's a trapeze act. I'm not sure what's going on. Helen from Marketing has a massive fight with the CEO and ends up pole-dancing. She's amazing, but she's very sweaty when she hugs me afterwards (and tells me that she loves me, again). Then they turn the lights on. People leave. A couple of the actors stay to chat. I go home with the cute blonde.

Into The Dark

2007-12-21T18:05:00-05:00

In the cold, still air the sound is penetrating. _Tick_ - _tick_ _tick_. The ice is breaking. I look on, not so much in horror as in careful preparation. Depth of the water, temperature, windchill, distance from help, all variables I need to solve for. But the dog's owners, our hosts for the impulsive weekend in Stockholm, don't seem concerned. Chica scampers back to their side; he knows what that sound means, too. There are frozen puddles and lakes everywhere, but hiking up to the top of the artificial ski slope, built on a former dump site, is as close as we get to snow. Even then it won't compact well enough for snowballs, although we throw some packed ice lumps (and Chica eats them). I learn that there are several different types of snow. The long stalactites hanging from the ski-lift cables make it seem colder than it is. Although the snow is lacking, we do encounter carollers in the streets. Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer sounds, well, hilarious in Swedish. Almost as hilarious as I sound trying to speak it. In fact, I quickly give up on the language. By the end of the trip I'm rolling up to sandwich bars and drawling "G'day, I'm after a coupla sandwiches.. I can't read the labels, but I can point". Accosted by a street evangelist who eventually gives up with "Oh.. you don't speak Swedish. What a pity. Jesus loves you anyway", I refrain from pointing out that Jesus didn't speak Swedish either. The Christmas markets are exactly as we expect, although I'd have preferred jovial red-nosed Englishment to stern Swedish shopkeepers. The best markets are at Skansen, a sort of "Pioneer Village"-turned-open-air-museum. We find it entertaining during the day, but magical at night. Magical, and absolutely bloody freezing. Our lunch is not just "London frozen", which is where you take it out of the freezer, and it's still frozen at lunch time. Instead, it's "Stockholm frozen", which is where you take it out of the pantry thawed, but it freezes in your pack. The friendly man with the Swedish-American accent and the ridiculous moustache recommends the baked herring to me at a cafe; judging by the reaction of other locals, it's not really a national dish, but it is delicious. At the wine & spirit museum we discover a "smell organ"; dozens of spices arranged with buttons that provide a quick whiff. Lyn scares the daylights out of both of us by pressing an innocent-looking button that fires up a bottling plant; their museums are hands-on, here. And the free audioguide uses infrared transmitters to stay in sync with your location. It's _organised_. Actually, the whole country is organised. At a supermarket checkout, we struggle to clear our groceries from the conveyer belt quickly, to avoid holding up the line behind us. The operator simply clicks a guide rail over into its second position, so that it channels the next buyer's goods into a separate holding area, and keeps serving. Oh, and she has a machine to give us our change, so that she doesn't have to count coins. Even the tube has this effect. True, it doesn't have the same reach or frequency as the London version - nothing does - but it's smooth and _silent_. Our hosts live fifty metres from the tracks, and behind their double-glazed windows, we can't hear a thing. The double-glazed windows are the least of the luxuries in the apartment we stay in. It's full of clean, sharp edges, usable spaces, unobtrusive design. The couch folds smoothly out into a bed without threatening to cut off my fingers, unlike any convertible couch I've ever used. The kitchen cupboards have tiny shock-absorbers, allowing me to close them silently when I do the dishes in the morning. These are small things, but I find them exciting. Maybe it's the recent months I've spent working on a poorly-designed software project, but it's so refreshing to be among people who've _thought_ about these problems, and _solved_ them. This place is like Singapore with a soul. And what a soul it is. It's irresponsible to generalise an entire culture's artwork from a weekend visit. But I found the pieces I encountered in Stockholm to have more depth than the ones in Oslo, although lacking their incredible clarity and detail. Norway sees, and Sweden _feels_. Till Gerhard's exhibition at Gallery Loyal was a particular highlight for me. The pieces are whimsical, fantastic, yet _dark_. And what Lyn describes as "splatters on a perfectly good painting" successfully carry across the "magical" idea to me. It's another world, visible from this one only with some distortion. Perhaps it works for me because I really do see things that way. The protagonist's visual overlays in Stranger Than Fiction, and the momentary inserts in series like Scrubs and Ally McBeal, are really how I see things. Obviously I'm not the only one. Araki's exhibition at Kulturhuset had a few similar photographs. When not taking roll after roll of naked Japanese women tied up in "artistic" poses, he experimented with allowing his film to go mouldy, or intentionally damaging it. The result is fascinating borders on the photo where the realistic connects with the heavily distorted. The Kulturhuset was, in fact, the trip highlight. It's a very large multistorey building in the dead center of town, containing a library, 'world news cafe', multiple galleries, two cafes, playground, activity center, chess corner, theatre and who knows what else. It's all free, and as a result it's a perfect place to hang out for a few hours, reading, writing, or just staring at the view. The place reminded me strongly of Higher Ground, without the tumbleweeds. I've never found anything like it anywhere in London; here, pulling out a laptop anywhere but the office or Starbucks is frowned upon. We spent a lot of time there, and not just because, sick as usual, we were too exhausted to do anything else. There's also the issue, of course, that it was dark by 2:30, and everything was closed by 5. Unless you're hitting the nightlife - which is apparently excellent, and which I regret not having the energy to do - there's not much to do but sit and read and think. Reading material for this trip was Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Halfway through, I now understand tappets, but I still don't understand Buddha.

Merciless

2007-10-14T15:24:00-04:00

I'm still counting up the fifty pounds when the big guy with the scar reaches into his bag, removes a pistol, and racks the slide. In fact, the bag's full of them, and his mates help him to get them all loaded. I wasn't expecting this. They must be props, or possibly BB guns, but they look real. No one seems to be passing around eye protection. As it turns out, the guns are for the advanced Krav Maga class in the next room. As new students, we'll only be dealing with the knives. The three-hour "induction" isn't physically demanding. While there are token pushups, the session is nothing on the two-hour Shao Lin workouts from my uni days. Blocking hurts, but there are none of the surprise attacks, pyrotechnics or full-contact sparring that my research had led me to expect. At least not at this level. There's a grim realism. Mike, our instructor, shows us the proper knuckles to punch with, then gestures to the smaller two and says "if you hit with these two, you'll break them". Against knives, running away is not only advised, it's _part of the drill_. It's difficult to move far in the crowded room, but those few steps are mandatory. I get the feeling that fights involving Krav Maga are very short, one way or another. Concluding a vicious three-second attack on a punching bag, Mike edges back with "and now I back off, because if the fight's still going, I'm in trouble". For all that, it's not boot camp. When he says "then you rip their eyes out", he pauses a beat and then breaks into a grin. The class is relaxed; we slap hands to build reflexes and play "zombie tag" to train awareness of multiple attackers. Our instructor jokes that "there's _always_ more than one", but then he says it again, and he's not smiling. The techniques themselves are simple, so simple that I have to unlearn some of my Shao Lin training. It's messy, too - everyone punches at a different angle, using the natural position of their hands, rather than rotating their fists. The only place you ever aim a kick is to the groin, or to the kneecap if you're down. At five feet and eight stone, the training doesn't give me new options - it just improves my survivability if there are no options. Given that, even three hours makes a difference, but I'm tempted to go to a few of the two-hour Thursday night sessions. Like the first aid course I did back in Adelaide, at least it'll guarantee that I never use it.

I Can't Talk To Czech Girls

2007-08-31T06:58:00-04:00

The hiss of the beer tap is the first sign of trouble. I hadn't ordered any beer; arriving for lunch, I'd said "two people", as an oversimplification of "Good afternoon. A table for two, please." As usual, I'm carrying a phrasebook, but everyone here speaks such good English that using it is a waste of time. I settle for stripping down my normally highly obfuscated speech as a compromise. Somehow, though, "people" has gotten twisted into "pivo". It's the equivalent of walking into a classy restaurant, stepping straight up to the waiter, and saying "Two beers!", or possibly "Grog want beer!" Now I have a problem. If I'm surprised by the beer, then I have to explain why, and there'll be complications, and I won't get any beer. If I'm not, then I'm ratifying my earlier rudeness. I have ten seconds to decide. On balance, I decide to Go With The Flow - the best travel rule we've ever come up with. So when the beer arrives, I just stare and stammer. For the rest of the meal I'm ultra-polite. No doubt a waitress somewhere in Prague has some stories to tell about Aussies - normally lovely, barbaric when they're sober.

Show Of Force

2007-08-29T11:29:00-04:00

We're already frazzled when we leave Kunta Hora. The Sedlec Ossuary - "bone church" - is deeply creepy. The silver mines tour was more pedestrian, although the large tour group added to the claustrophobia. I don't like crowds in tunnels. And it took an Act Of God in the form of a taxi appearing from nowhere to get us to the train station in time for the second-last train out of town. As we roll into Prague, I glimpse the tail end of a line of helmeted figures standing on the platform. Lyn confirms my theory: riot police. A _lot_ of riot police. They board the train as we leave, but there are more of them in the station, standing in immobile lines that are somehow more frightening than if they were actively looking for someone. The balaclavas work well to enhance the effect; they say "there will be no comebacks". Fugitive on our train? Training exercise? Or just the Man flexing his muscles? No one seems to want to tell me. While trying to find out, I learnt that English police can now fingerprint you, take DNA samples, and issue you an order to leave an area for 48 hours, purely because you look like you might be thinking about causing trouble. But it's an indication that this hasn't sunk in yet that when we see riot cops, we still walk towards them, not away.

The Other Side

2007-08-29T11:28:00-04:00

Every voice I can hear is Australian or English; even the staff are expats. The barman's delighted when I order Czech liquor, because no one else ever does. In the evenings we hang around eating pizza and playing pool. Tonight's our sixth night, and we have two more booked. No locals, no unfamiliar meals, no dash to the bus station, no use for the phrasebook: this how the other, other half live. Suddenly we've got a base to come back to, somewhere we can let our guard down at the end of the day. While I'm finding it hard to respect our hard-drinking clue-challenged fellow travellers, I'm welcoming the change. Travel as relaxation, instead of as Impossible Mission: Assimilate Culture - what an intriguing concept.

ESP

2007-08-25T01:36:00-04:00

Gripping the tree trunk, I can see it clearly: dead straight, pale grey, about a foot wide. The guide listens to my description with good humour, but he can't see it, because he's blind. The thing is, so am I. While my eyes failed to adapt to the total darkness in the exhibition, my brain switched to new inputs in a matter of minutes. It wasn't _like_ seeing. I _could_ see. Sometimes I could see things that weren't even there, but waving my hand straight through an object was only a temporary setback. The inferred positions were almost always right. Location by sound worked amazingly well: when the guide sat down I was able to hear the difference and locate the bench. Navigation by dead reckoning was similarly effective. Through a simulated forest, street, shop, bus and bar I was almost entirely comfortable, albeit slow and clumsy. By the end, I even caught myself using my habitual acknowledgment "I see it" when responding to directions. I never saw the exhibition with the lights on, but I have a set of mental images. They're vivid, detailed, and no doubt almost completely wrong.

Re-Entry

2007-08-20T05:39:00-04:00

There is no turnover, because I never turned away. I guess I knew that this trip was never about relaxation. We never got the cocktails on the beach. The rich diet of experiences has left me bloated. My vivid dreams are a warning that I'm devouring information faster than I can process it into something coherent. During the day, related memories constantly popping into my head are like files cast aside by an overworked secretary. The part of my brain that tracks our budget and knows how many clean shirts I've got left is watching my stability degrade as a result. Even reading something that was meant to be a light romantic comedy and turned out not to be is enough to leave me staggering for balance, like a drunk who knows it but still can't compensate. And I am increasingly aware of the opportunity cost. We've done this trip cheap, which is like saying that we got a good deal on a used Porsche. Five grand and two months buys a lot of fun at home. More than we've had? We both want to be home. We've been binging on travel like teenagers at a kegger. The next trip will be shorter. Meanwhile, in just over a week I'll be landing into a storm, with no reserves. I keep doing this. I don't know how to stop.

Towed Away

2007-08-13T13:50:00-04:00

I'm having a blast skimming across the surface of the water when my speed abruptly drops from 30 km/h to zero. The rope has gone slack. Meanwhile, my board is sinking into the lake. I know what's going to happen next. The cable-ski bracket rounds the corner of the track, the rope goes taut, and the submerged kneeboard is instantly capsized. Since I'm strapped to it, so am I. While sitting in the rescue boat, I watch exactly the same thing happen to Lyn. Still, we made it 150 metres, or about five times as far as I can wakeboard. Launch after launch, I'd pitch forward, digging in the front of the board for a spectacular crash, or lean too far back and drop my backside into the water. Lyn even managed to come off sideways at one point, though she also scored the distance record (and longest swim back). After each taking a dive within metres of the ramp, we finally quit and selected the kneeboard for our last lap. Quitters never win, winners never quit, but people who never win and never quit are idiots.

Steel Soldiers

2007-08-13T13:50:00-04:00

It's way out of town. Even when trying to talk Lyn into accompanying me to the statue park, I'm forced to refer to it as "a bit of a mission". But it's too cold for the water park and we don't have the energy for Sziget, so we take a train, a hike, a city bus, and a third-party bus to the middle of nowhere. It's cheaper than the brochure says - this _never_ happens - and nearly empty. But inside it's a treat. They've got a massive soldier, gun hanging around his neck to free his hands for the flag. He has the evil eye but radiates unyielding simple strength. I love Soviet art: it's uncompromising. Another, inspired by a poster that's also on display, has a huge soldier caught mid-stride. Standing in front of it, you know what it's like to be attacked by a Stone Giant. It's not the steel soldiers that move me most, though. It's a simple life-size statue of a submissive Hungarian worker shaking hands with a taller, stern Soviet soldier - a reminder of the debt owed and the payment due. They must have greeted the Soviets like this, those who lost so many men freeing someone else's country from the Nazis when they'd barely saved their own. I wonder how long it took the Hungarians to realise that the new boss was the same as the old boss? I'm glad they keep those statues. But I bet they're glad they keep them here.

Hot Hungarian

2007-08-10T13:09:00-04:00

There is no food service on eastern european trains. Not even the twelve-hour ones. Short of time because of a tram that never came, we skipped breakfast and did 24 hours with only half a box of crackers and 80 grams of dried ginger. It's not long - humans can live weeks without food - but by the time we pulled in to Budapest Lyn was nauseous. Having slammed an espresso at the station, I experienced very little degradation. Still, we were desperate for food, and all we could find near the station were proper restaurants. So we went to Burger King, for the first time in five years. It tasted _good_.

The Terror House, former headquarters of the secret police, is now an immersive museum. The first thing you see is a grown man cry; the second, a fullsize Soviet T40 tank. Sitting in a 1946 voting booth, holding the blue ballot that didn't make any difference, I thought of Faust. Lyn locked me in a tiny isolation cell and I immediately felt panic rising. It's a sad story: they staged an incredibly brave, country-wide, spontaneous uprising - and they _lost_. It's not supposed to end like that.

The immersive quality existed at the Labyrinth also. A set of rough caves joined by passages, ten metres under the palace, it's been set up with dim lighting and hidden speakers. In the darkness, with a deep regular thumping coming from _somewhere_ nearby, it was easy to switch the pale green glow of my compass for Sting's warning light. But while I moved slowly, checking the corners, Lyn danced to the beat: I'd presumed that the noise was hostile, while she was at home. It's funny what you bring with you. More than anything else, the labyrinth is _weird_ - there's a massive sunken head, a wine fountain, a totally dark section. It all added to the sense of exploration, but it left me wanting more. I wanted an oil lamp, a rubber sword, a puzzle to solve, opposition to defeat. I still want Dream Park. I still want to build it, if that's the only way to make it exist.

The Szecheny Baths are full of hot Hungarians subjecting themselves to water temperatures ranging from 15 degrees to 38. The saunas are at 50-something; since they use infrared lamps, the effect is not unlike going under the griller. The strong currents in the whirlpool pool pulled me around faster than most people; kicking out to avoid a collision, I ended up on top of a kid who was doing an underwater circuit and nearly drowned him.

Wallflower

2007-08-10T13:08:00-04:00

I've been to parties like this before. We've been spectacularly successful at meeting the locals through couchsurfing. Besides showing us interesting parts of town and occasionally providing crash space, they're eager to introduce us to their friends. Getting to know the locals is a basic mission for every Traveller Not Tourist, right? But you need more than an introduction. This isn't high school any more, and I'm happy to kickstart a conversation with anyone I can talk to. But that qualifier is a killer; while I can now order a coffee in six languages, I'm conversational in only one, and I've learnt that even in English I often speak in riddles. So I lurk at the edge of the circle of friends who are not-quite making space for me, like the unpopular kid, and try to understand one word in ten. I'm sure that many of them _could_ speak english, but I've given them no reason to. One-on-one is hard; groups, where most social interaction happens, are impossible. I make my excuses and head off. I haven't done my homework.

Bled Rock

2007-08-10T13:08:00-04:00

I release the hold and step back from the rock to consider my options. My Australian instincts are overkill here in Slovenia, but bright red with black dots is "poison" in any language. The bug scuttles away, leaving the hold clear. It's an easy climb, really more of a scramble, and the only reason to fall would be a surprise bite. Since an embarrassing rescue at Morialta, I've been edgy about freeclimbing, but my exploratory instincts finally push me upwards. I'd spotted the cave, high on the mountain that supports Bled Castle, from the church, and thought "there has to be a way up there". In the end I was almost disappointed by how easy the track was to find; the beer cans indicated that I was far from the first. The first cave was surprisingly large - with only a mobile phone to light the way I hadn't reached the end - but featureless. It was the sharp scramble up from there that had captured my attention. Finally I grit my teeth and move up several metres in a series of inelegant but powerful moves. Then I stop and go back down, to check that I can, and up again. There's a second opening into the hill, pitch black, barely big enough to crawl into. I give it a miss. I'm flinching at every touch by now. I don't like heights and I don't like spiders. With my limited reserves gone, the smallest provocation draws an extreme reaction. Further up I reach the payoff, a narrow ravine in the cliff, screened off from the town below. I pull myself up to the edge and see that I'm now level with the bell tower of the church that led me here. The view's not quite as good as from the castle, but this one is /mine/.

Keep Off The Grass

2007-08-03T14:34:00-04:00

I am acutely aware that this is the first unpaved surface I've walked on in Bosnia. I move slowly, almost silently - as if a light step makes a difference - and stick tightly to the path. Lyn wanders, collecting fallen plums and prunes to eat. Laughing at my fear, she comes over to offer me one. I stoop, using my hat to gently push away the grass, exposing a chilling skull-and-crossbones sign at ground level. She actually gasps, and freezes. I push the grass further aside, revealing the lightning symbol I've been able to see all along: the danger here is buried cables, not mines. This cemetary won't be claiming new victims.

The danger is finished but the damage is everywhere. Another cemetary is well-visited; we moved aside for a young man with a military uniform and two small children. The only English word our host can pronounce well is "sniper". Widowed, she spends her time on needlepoint. The footpaths are marked by shell impacts. The incredible brutality of the siege of Sarajevo is well documented elsewhere. I found two things hard to understand: how can a society function merely ten years after a civil war of such barbarity? Everywhere there are people who have lost partners, children, limbs in a one-sided attack - how can peace, let alone prosperity, be possible? How did they break the cycle of vengeance so quickly? Closer to home, what should be done? Nato ended the war by heavily bombing the Serbs. In other words, the Americans unilaterally attacked a country not threatening them.. but it was a good thing. There's no anti-Nato graffiti here. So, when do you say "none of our business", and when do you send in the cruise missiles? The far left, pacifist, anti-American position runs into difficulties here. Negotiations had repeatedly failed. Only cluster bombs made a difference. So if Iraq is one end of the spectrum and Bosnia is the other, where's Afghanistan? North Korea? I'm looking for a moral bright line, and I fear that there isn't one.

White Water

2007-08-02T02:25:00-04:00

Whitewater rafting is for sissies. Lying in the icy water of the Soca River with nothing to protect me but a helmet and an oversize kickboard, I felt vulnerable, and we hadn't even begun. As we started our practice maneouvres, it became clear that we wouldn't be able to do anything other than veer slightly to the left or right in order to miss the larger rocks. We certainly wouldn't be able to stop. Not that we wanted to. With only limited control the ride became tactical, like a rollercoaster with a steering wheel. I watched for the guide's hand-signals, then kicked desperately to the left or right as the rocks loomed. Sometimes they'd strike from below, giving a disorienting thump with no warning. Nothing was more terrifying than going through the rapids backwards, the board uselessly trailing while I completed a slow 360. At one point I was trapped, the board two wide to fit between two rocks, and the current too strong for me to pull it back. By the time I managed to get clear, the poor guide had parked his kayak on the bank and started walking back to look for me. We were the only two who signed up for "hydrospeed"; everyone else at the camp chose the rafts. They passed us once or twice, and though they looked like they were having a good time, they seemed passive. While we kicked desperately around the rocks, they sat there, rowing in unison according to the commands of the guide, protected from the river and the rocks by an enormous yellow cushion of air. If hydrospeeding is like riding a motorcycle, rafting's like catching the bus.

Just Run

2007-07-31T10:42:00-04:00

"You don't have to jump. Just run!" The guide is trying to reassure me, but it's not the jumping I'm worried about. It's not the falling, either. The water at the bottom of the falls is quite deep; not deep enough that I won't hit the bottom ("frog legs", the guide warns me), but deep enough to break the fall. Unless, of course, I slide sideways on the steep slippery rock and smash into the rocky channel carved by the falls. I'm already desensitised to the five-metre drop: I've jumped worse that morning. It's the runup that's the problem. It doesn't help that one of the group of twenty or so, a young woman, is flat-out refusing to do it. But the canyon has steep sides, so there's no other way down. I've waited too long; the best move is to go straight away or not at all. I wish, again, that I was wearing my climbing shoes instead of a restrictive wetsuit and reef boots. Step - step - a second's pause, and a disorganised splash. I recover and breaststroke to the edge. Lyn's starting her run. Step - she slides sideways. I'm sure she's going headfirst on to rock. But she slams out her right arm, shoving away the rock long enough to fall in cleanly. It happens so fast that she doesn't remember doing it, though her fingers are bruised. It's the scariest and most dangerous move we make as we work our way back down the canyon. Climbing up it in the first place runs a close second. We both opt out of the twelve-metre jump into a rockpool, preferring to go from six metres, and from the final slide which, according to the guide, is "not really safe". Still, by the time we reach the bottom, we've slid down rocks feetfirst, headfirst, on our backs and on our stomachs, and once even blind. It makes the slides in Langkawi seem insignificant.

Leftovers

2007-07-29T09:58:00-04:00

An ipod won't work if it's left in the sun. I had to hose mine down with water to get it back under control, since with no off switch, it would have run its battery to zero. The same trick, minus the waterproof case, works for me.

Don't wear flipflops in Zadar. Centuries of footsteps have worn the paving stones completely smooth. Even walking with exaggerated caution, I was lucky to stay upright. In Split the situation is similar - gutters are particularly treacherous.

The KL Rules - Lyn boards the bus and secures two seats while I stash the packs underneath - work well here. Our packs are still too big to take on board, now that they have shoes, sleeping mats, and a tent strapped to them.

A photo gallery here has shots from three places that the Americans have recently bombed: Iraq, Afghanistan, and Yugoslavia. The Russian photographer in Iraq is particuarly moving; in a description of the exhibition he says that he saw it initially as Good vs Evil, but now understands it to be Evil vs Evil, with Good caught in the middle. One local he spoke to said that he was leaving, so that he wouldn't have to choose between becoming a dead body and becoming a murderer.

Busted

2007-07-29T09:46:00-04:00

Lyn's shocked, but I've been expecting this since day one. Of course, it's still only day two. Like in Hvar, the legitimate campsite in Korchula is a punishing 3km out of town. There are no signs and no shade. While there's a water bus, one look at Lyn's face as we disembarked the ferry made it clear that further boats that evening were off the table. We were under time pressure when we picked the site, but we picked it well: a clearing in the scrub on top of a hill, a kilometer from town. The views were spectacular, and the only noise was from the hotel tennis court separated from us by a low concrete wall. Encouraged, we set up the tent and stashed the packs, using lime-green garbage bags because I hadn't managed to buy more black ones after losing the previous roll - perhaps they're too inconspicuous. Inspiration struck us and we piled some rubbish from around the site on top, creating perfect camouflage. Nobody disturbed the site while we were in town during the evening, and we heard nothing during the night, so we decided to stay another day. Encouraged, we don't bother to pack the tent up in the morning. So, of course, when we check in at lunchtime, it's gone. Only a single tent peg marks the spot, though the bags are mercifully untouched. We guess, correctly, that the hotel next door has nicked it. The question is whether or not to go and get it. It's worth 1000 kuna - hard to walk away from - and more importantly, we won't be able to get another one out here. We're on public property, as near as we can tell. Lyn's having a hard time seeing the funny side, so I leave her watching the aqua aerobics at the hotel while I venture inside. There follows a three-way bullshit session with the receptionist and general manager. I claim that it was public property, and that I couldn't find the campsite. They claim that they'd be liable in case of accident (probably false), and that the police were involved (definitely false). Eventually they told me to pay the "local tax" of 200KN. It's meant to be 7KN/person/night, but I know a deal when I see one. Negotiations here follow "firm reasonable", not "soft high" as in Thailand. The weird thing is that they gave me a printout itemising the exchange rate from my emergency-reserve Euros, the actual local tax (14KN), and a general charge of 186KN. Yes, when you bribe them, they give you a receipt.

Feet-first

2007-07-29T09:40:00-04:00

Diving, like opening champagne or changing a wheel, is one of those skills that you have to have, or sooner or later you're going to get burned. Still, in most cases you won't be burned in front of Guinness World Record judges and a TV helicopter. We'd been given a flier on the Zadar Millenium Jump, but everything but the name was in Croatian, so we didn't pay much attention. Once we found the best but of the beach roped off, though, it became a challenge, and we snuck in through a beachfront restaurant. We'd expected to be kicked out before the main event, but instead were asked, "So, are you jumping with us?" by a friendly official. He pointed out a spot shoulder-to-shoulder with 1500 Croatians and tourists, and explained that as he ran past and tapped us, we were to jump "by the head" dominoes-style into the water. Directly below us, a metre down, was concrete. A foot out from there was deep sea. But a one metre drop with a possibility of a concrete landing if you really, really screw up is not a good place to learn to dive. So I jumped with my arms out but my feet down and hoped it was good enough for television. I wasn't the only one.

Yellow Light

2007-07-29T09:36:00-04:00

I'm a disciple of science. I know the universe is in full compliance with natural laws. But, exploring Hvar's steep, yellow-lit old town, I was a little uneasy to stumble across the open gates of the town cemetery. The headstones are oversize, laid down like pavers. Perhaps they bury their dead standing up? It's in prime real estate, on the top of the hill. There's a hot wind blowing and a waxing moon in the deep blue sky. While many of the graves are attended by cop-out LED "candles" that can flash like roadwork beacons for weeks, a few have fresh candles. Across the town we can see the fortress, floodlit from below. It's a postcard shot - one of many out here.

Black Ops

2007-07-27T07:59:00-04:00

"Get down and stay down!" The figure on the balcony is silhouetted by the house lights. He's looking directly at us. A shorter shape joins him: great, they've got a dog. "If we have to run, you get the day pack, I'll get these." Lyn nods, frozen in a painful crouch. The watcher turns away and we reposition ourselves, standing behind a tree. We hadn't seen this coming; in fact, I'd cursed our inadequate lights when we realised that we'd have to do the job in the dark. But the site's more exposed than we thought, and we daren't use even our penlights. Retrieving the backpacks, wrapped in garbage bags and buried in the bushes earlier that day, has already made more noise than we can afford. The figure steps off the balcony. Site B is two kilometers away and it's already 11pm. We have to do this. I snap the sections together, trying to avoid the giveaway clicks that carry far too well in the still air. It's only the second time we've done it, and takes two attempts. Finally, though, the tent is up, and we crawl inside, pour two-thirds of a bottle of rum into half a bottle of fruit juice, and settle into an uneasy sleep.

Nightmare

2007-07-27T07:50:00-04:00

I never thought I'd wish for more pollution. Snorkeling at Tioman Island last year, I floated over a basketball-sized black sphere of horror, thick six-inch spines moving, moving in response to contact, five-toothed circular mouth lurking below. Later we bobbed above a field thickly carpeted with the poisonous nightmares, me screaming into my snorkel as we searched for a safe way out of the shallow water. Since then, not even spiders have given me the shivering terrors the way sea urchins do. But that was a long time ago, and I didn't make the connection between "ultra-clean" seawater and the presence of urchins when we arrived at Hvar. The ramp's the soft way out of the water, and flabby from too much Italian pasta I preferred to brute-force my way on to the jetty, scrambling up the sharp rocks. So when I felt a sharp pain in my foot, I wasn't totally alarmed. Out of the water, though, I found a dozen black spines embedded to varying depths in my toe. The staff handed me a sterile needle and invited me to dig out the pieces. This is harder than it looks. The next day I wore my flip flops into the water.

Meltdown

2007-07-27T07:40:00-04:00

Canyoning's not the only dangerously stupid thing we've done recently. Fresh off the ferry at Hvar with a shiny new tent and a sense of adventure, we opt to hire mountainbikes and ride to the campsite instead of waiting an hour for the 2:50pm bus. The map says it's only 4km. That's eight minutes on our Allegros, and certainly no more than fifteen on the halfway-decent bikes they give us. Of course, if we'd used the map for anything other than a distance estimate, we'd have seen the little triangle between us and Vira, or noticed the relief shading.. which is the only kind of shade there is on Hvar. It's "only" 36 degrees, but there's not a cloud in sight and the road's totally exposed to the merciless midday sun. With two 10kg packs and just over a litre of water between us, the results are predictable. I slog up the first few curves, preferring speed to get it over with quickly. I lose Lyn and stop, and am preparing to ride back down when she appears, gasping, "I don't think I can do this". But we've prepaid a full day on the bikes, so against our better judgment we push on. Half a litre of water. GPS says 3.6km remain. One more stop and we're out of water, adjacent to the fortress overlooking the town. Through an accident of routing, even GPS is telling us to turn back. It occurs to me that we haven't seen another pushbike since we arrived. I'm becoming increasingly concerned about heatstroke. There's no longer a question. Even if we made it, we'd still have to ride back to town, and then back again in the evening. We turn around and creep back to town, hands cramping. I catch a whiff of burning rubber as the brake blocks on Lyn's bike begin to melt, and pull in front of her so that at least there'll be something to stop her. We ditch the bikes, catch the 4pm bus to camp, and live to ride another day.

Murphy's Law of Vehicle Hire:
Don't hire it if no one else has.

Running Commentary

2007-07-27T07:32:00-04:00

On the bus to Zadar I finished reading We Need To Talk About Kevin. It's a horrible, horrible book and the worst part is the knowledge that I will have to re-read it. Until I'm ready, it lurks in the bottom of my bag like the bill you know you have to deal with, but can't face right now. This in-between state, where my subconscious is busy chewing over a massive dataset when it should be relaxing, has left me unable to read anything else. So instead I take refuge in the Wikipedia, which is the best thing I've ever done with the palm. I take inspiration from my surroundings, so the wikipedia entries become a kind of director's commentary of the trip: I know about hyperthermia, and dehydration, and caffeine, and canyoning, and picigin (a game played on the beach here), and the peruvian hostage crisis (we saw half of a doco, so I filled in the gaps) and now bivvy bags, tents, camouflage and camping. It's a fascinating sidebar, and I'll keep it going when we get back.

Cashed Up

2007-07-11T03:39:00-04:00

I hate coins. I'm no ninja, but I like to move like one. The louder the nasal-voiced, roller-bag-toting Americans around me, the quieter I am. In cathedrals I practice the crocodile drift, even sitting carefully so that my backpack doesn't creak. Just a few euro cents makes this impossible. Suddenly I'm not Hattori Hanzō - I'm Santa Claus. My deep anti-pickpocket pockets give the coins plenty of room to bounce around, broadcasting "I'm rich! Rob me!" Even wrapping them in a tissue doesn't help much. And then there's buying things. While the popular attractions have signs reading "coins please", because they're sick of atm-fresh 50-euro notes, in practice it's hard to do quickly. And a slow ninja is a dead ninja. Umm. I mean traveller. Case in point: making a donation at a cathedral. I know that I'm only going to get one shot at this. I can't stand there sorting two-euro coins from worthless ten-cent pieces. So I reach into my pocket and pull out... my room keys. A shredded, possibly used, tissue. An unspecified amount of money. The priest tries to appear grateful. So I try hard to use my coins on machines, taking longer to buy the coffee than to drink it. Even then sometimes they turn the tables. Pushed for time, we overpay at a train station booth. It pays out in small coins like a poker machine, and we're back where we started.

Write On

2007-07-11T03:39:00-04:00

With the destruction of two cameras in a week (stolen and dropped), I'll stick with the written word. Florence has two train stations. Still smarting from my trip to Paris' outer suburbs earlier this year, I made the mistake in reverse. Running on three hours' sleep, I moved too slowly to get back on, and had to wait an hour for the next train. The kicker, as I found out later, is that the difference is only 3km. They have guided tours of secret rooms and passages built into the palace. I couldn't see the doors until they opened them. We stumbled on a busker singing opera. She was _good_. We explored the Roman arena at Verona. It's still in use. "Juliet's Balcony" was what we were expecting. The romance of this city is elsewhere.

Full Charge

2007-07-11T03:34:00-04:00

There are no power points in a tent. With five devices to charge and little free time, I scavenge power from usb ports in the internet cafe, shaver points in the bathroom, and even a fusebox in the gym. But it's not just the gear that's running out of juice. I'm forced to hose my brain down with two espressos - the biological equivalent of jumper leads - just to function in the morning. I'm not buzzed; I'm barely awake. I don't understand how anyone is. The campground is well equipped, central and inexpensive, but useless as a base for exploring. This isn't Alba D'Oro, Venezia; this is Partytown, Anywhere, and the eighteen-year-old inhabitants are looking to get drunk all night, every night. The Americans kick it off, a girl shouting "This is why people hate us!" at about one in the morning. So, they do know. They just don't care. At about two, an Aussie stumbles past with a girl whom he's not having much luck with. The high point of the conversation is "Who cares if you're a fucking whore?" Smooth, man, really smooth. Much later, another Australian voice starts a shouting match with a couple of girls. If it's the same man, then his pickup lines have degenerated into "You fucking bitch why don't you fucking just fuck off, you fucking mong?" Not only is he stupid, he's not even creative. International competition rules require that a swearword not be repeated within a single sentence, although he does get obscurity points for "mong". But it only gets worse. At 4am, a group of drunken English walking past our tent have a great idea. "Let's wake the Americans up! They woke us up". Moments later they're singing "Rule Brittania, Brittania rule the waves.." This is how wars are started.

Roll On Out

2007-07-11T03:34:00-04:00

The same loudmouthed, empty-headed twits are on the train to Ljubljana with us. It ain't undiscovered no more. These guys, and the giggling girls opposite them, speak nothing but English, have no idea where they're staying, and are getting pissed on the train. I am beginning to hate the english accent. It motivates me to go further afield. These destinations are too easy and that's why they can survive here. We met a much better class of traveller in south east asia. St Petersburg next? Laos? Poland? This last happened to us in Melbourne. Campgrounds are a bad place to be, even worse than dorms, which tend to be accidentally rather than maliciously noisy. It's a pity, but it's the awful truth and we just have to deal with it. But we're staying with a local this time, and we'll be off the track soon. The weather hits its cue perfectly as we roll towards the border with eastern europe, breaking from sticky heat into a spectacular thunderstorm. It's dark grey on one side of the train and eerily light on the other, and the lightning strikes so close that the thunder is almost simultaneous. A train shrieks as it suddenly passes us. It's _cool_.

Firenze

2007-07-03T12:07:00-04:00

It's not a bad bike. The paint is new, the brakes work, and somebody obviously cares about it. It's a badly *designed* bike. Step-through, solid steel, no gears, no suspension, and *generator* to run the front light. For a city that's so enthusiatic about bikes, why have they ignored every advance in technology since 1950? We rattle over the cobblestones, which aren't so romantic when they're making your wrists go numb. Jumping on to and off kerbs to avoid traffic is much harder work. Still, they're not as bad as the ones in Thailand, and the traffic is much more respectful. We see a few of the sights, but faced with the prospect of doing this for the rest of the day, Lyn's brain quite reasonably decides to "exit her skull via her right eyeball", as she put it. I ditch the bikes, put her to bed, and explore on foot. A museum here has built scale-models of a couple of dozen of Leonardo Da Vinci's mechanical sketches. They range from simple multiple-pulley systems to an amazingly impractical "car" that's hopelessly over-engineered. It's difficult to see how the same man could have come up with both. I duck into a cafe for a coffee. Twenty-five seconds later I'm crossing the road in search of the church that Lonely Planet says is here. I follow a couple of Spanish backpackers inside. It's very quiet. The thick walls make the building defensible, but they also make it _peaceful_. I sit for a moment, and begin to feel clear-headed and energised. The coffee's kicking in. On the way out the priest sitting by the entrance motions me over. He's everybody's favourite grandfather, with a thumbs-up for a repeat visitor and a welcoming wave for the tourists. We can barely communicate, but I give him a few coins from my pocket for the church's restoration, and he points out that, if that's where I'm keeping my money, it's going to get stolen soon. As usual, I'm horrified when he thinks that I'm american, and he's delighted when I say I'm from Australia. He's a lovely old man in a lovely old building created to encourage bloodthirsty intolerant delusions. On the way out I'm reaching for my ipod; suddenly I need the teachings of MC Hawking very badly indeed.

Stand Up

2007-06-28T18:23:00-04:00

I'm moving at a dead run, breathing in tight bursts, the few pedestrians who are still around at this hour glancing back apprehensively as I approach them. I'm in no particular hurry. But in a misguided way I have something to prove. Mark Thomas laid down a devastatingly funny set that was more re-enactment than standup. He's met every kind of cop there is, bested most of them and befriended the rest. More than just angry, this man is angry and effective. But ultimately this is politics, not comedy. Nowhere is that clearer than after the show. I hang around to pick up his book, and while I'm at it I drop a pound in the jar for a tiny broken-kalashnikov badge. I like to keep a badge or two on my backpack when I travel, because occasionally people still pick my accent as American. I'm buzzed from the show and the half-time beer, but the woman behind the desk looks deadly serious. Mark's mentioned a few of his, well, "co-workers" in his routine, and her eyes tell me that she's one of them. I gesture at their other line of badges, the ones that say "THIS IS AN ILLEGAL PROTEST". "That's pretty cool. But I'm not heavily into getting arrested right now." I'm trying to make light of a situation that isn't funny at all. She calls me on it, deadpan. "Why not. I've worn these in Parliament Square." All I can give her is the ugly truth. "To be honest, I wish I had your courage. I'm doing a lot of travelling right now, and the last thing I need is more attention at the airport than I get already." "Fair enough." It's not, not really, but she doesn't labour the point. I'll do that myself. A hard mile later I'm slumped in a seat on the Northern Line with a book on arms dealing and a badge that doesn't say much at all. The copies of the Daily Mail left behind by the commuters have ten solid pages on Blair's departure, and I'm having a lot of trouble advancing my interior dialogue from "Send him to the Hague!" to how we'd actually get him there. Between stories I glance out of the window to read the name of the station we're passing through. Camden Town. I've been sitting for a long time. Sooner or later I'm going to have to stand up.

Wrong Turn

2007-06-18T16:41:00-04:00

I can't afford to draw blood, this time. But I haven't got long. I pull the razor quickly across my soapy skull, feeling for renegade hairs with my other hand. I'm exhausted but can't show it; it took a crew of three to haul the little car safely to Parma, and the navigator/offside spotter position was as demanding as any time I've ever spent at the wheel. Shirt. Aftershave. GPS. Phrasebook. Change the shirt. Cue the CD player. Cashcards and I'm out the door, brushing off my traveling companions with "On the move!" Dov'e posso comprare di fiori? I can't understand the answer. It feels like a date because it is one. Seven years together minus two weeks apart equals three days in and suddenly I'm a teenager again. I eventually get "rose" across at the flower shop, but they're delighted with my Australian background and limited Italian, and the conversation costs me time. I want to run, possibly holding it in my teeth, but it's thirty degrees in the shade and I can't afford to. The coffee here hits your brain like a bullet and it's about the same size, but it's not that which is fueling me, scanning traffic and GPS screen, cutting the ATM sidetrip - no time - and rehearsing my first words. Sei la donna piu bella- donna piu bella del- donna del monde- when the time comes, I can't remember anything. I _never_ forget my lines. We're not the only ones in this miserable situation, snatching narrow evenings together, faded with exhaustion. But the other girl's partner flew Stansted to Bologna and had a one hour train ride instead of two days of driving. He got to Stansted the day before his flight and _still_ looks like Einstein, because he obeyed the first rule: if it's about the girl, it's about the girl, and there's no point trying to pretend that it's about anything else. That's not to say it was all totally miserable. I stood in a cathedral in Todi during a thunderstorm, and one in Parma during a pipe organ performance - the artificial version of the same thing. I overheard a confession. These people have their religion like they have their coffee - strong and black - but I felt almost nothing. Religion doesn't work on me. Sometimes I think it's a pity. I have no such immunity to ristretto, or to the fearsome doppio which they served me at breakfast, probably figuring that I needed it. I spent the whole day *wired*, and it wasn't altogether pleasant. Drugs: Just Say "Non, Gratzi". Under the influence, I went to my first school speech night since 1997, and can report that they are just as futile and boring from the other side of the stage. The food, like the coffee, is exceptional, and unlike the French version, it's not challenging unless you want it to be. Even roadhouse pasta is fresh-cooked. A tiny corner store made us a pizza excelling Crafers' best. The art gallery's full of naked babies. La Madonna Con Bambino, La Madonna Con Bambino, La Madonna Con Bambino. Jesus Christ, get some inspiration. Norwegian art speaks to me. Italian art has nothing to say. Except, _except_, for the lone Da Vinci in a corner. That guy had talent. And a thing for mysterious smiles.. The castle we visited doubled as a gallery. It's weird to see irreplaceable 500-year-old artworks, unprotected, destroyed by graffiti.They've got so many of them that they just don't care. And hell, maybe these ones weren't even any good. Don't ask me; I don't know. Hanging out with Lyn's host family, I witnessed the mother dash to the computer, type in some Italian, and use a web translation service to show us the English. All I could think was "of course!", followed by "why the hell can't my phone do this?" Not that I needed it to. This language is _easy_. Hooray for high-school Latin! So we had our moments. Still, five hours on the road on the top of nine the previous day left me so exhausted that I sat in Ciampino airport for seven hours instead of hopping the thirty-minute shuttle bus in to Rome. Total continuous transit time, Macerata to Belsize Park, was sixteen hours. But I'm still two weeks away from home.

Kool Aid

2007-06-05T14:24:00-04:00

I bought an iPod. It came with a bottle of Kool Aid. I bought it despite the fact that it's expensive, fragile, trendy and underpowered, and despite the useless colour screen, manufacturer lock-in, proprietary interface cable and gimmicky controls. I bought it to replace a compact, reliable and expendable device that fills 90% of my need. Essentially, I bought it because everyone else has. The funny thing is that I don't regret it. Sure, it's a target, but that just makes me run faster. And with my entire collection available, now I'm listening to what I actually *want* to listen to, rather than what I thought I might like a couple of weeks back when I last updated it. Seamless syncing of everything down to my position in the 30-minute french lesson mp3s is not only neat, it actually *is* useful. It's funny how sometimes the millions who can't be wrong, aren't wrong. But this is part of a larger trend. I'm working nine-to-five, which sucks, but sucks a whole lot less than being self-employed. I'm taking protein supplements, despite my firm belief that they are strictly for suckers, chumps, get-fit-quick scheme victims and serious Rambos. It took several weeks of persuasion from a personal trainer who presumably knows what she's talking about, but, though it's hard to tell if there's a benefit, they're at least not doing me serious damage. And now, now I have a facebook account. I've always hated "social networking" and still do, possibly in the same way that chocolate-factory workers hate sugar. I prefer a few close friends to a wide network of acquaintances. I like to automate everything *except* my social life. If I want to know what people are up to, I'll damn well *ask them*. It's personal. It's meaningful. But it doesn't scale. I've spent years designing and occasionally building systems that let me ask "What's everyone doing tonight? Where are you, and where should we meet?". Facebook *does* that. It also gives me the basic details that I should remember but *don't*, so I don't spend the first three conversations with someone I've just met doing the same old ground over and over again - and it's not always me that's responsible. In a city of seven million, it can take a few months to get past a few meetings. But for me, the Killer App is being able to go from "... who was that guy, Alex's friend, Donald something, told me to email him about Croatia..." to an email address. It's not automation. It's *leverage*. So I drank the Kool Aid. It tastes *good*.

Long Morning

2007-05-28T00:39:00-04:00

Six years ago, I swore I'd never do this again. Technically I still haven't. The early start leaves my brain ringing with unpleasant echoes, like a nightmare DJ. Everything's a little too loud and a little behind, as if the signal's come from far off, but been amplified and distorted. Did you know that tube trains have windscreen wipers? I'd never noticed that before. It's already light as we walk through the miserable rain to the bus stop at Chalk Farm. It reminds us both of the drenching we got on the way to Santiago at a similar hour. It's becoming a tradition. I run Lyn through the preflight essentials - boarding card, passport, credit card, ring - and leave her on the Heathrow Express at Paddington Station, thereby keeping my oath on a technicality. The tube's running by now, and drops me at Swiss Cottage. I hike back to the flat, passing bin-men who're much more cheerful than I would be if I had their job, and let myself in. I've got a lot to do and far too much time to do it in. It's going to be a long morning.

Front and Center

2007-05-25T02:38:00-04:00

The box office looks baffled when I ask for "the line", but they send me downstairs to the main doors. There's no one there. That's hardly surprising. I bailed out of work at 5:00 sharp and bolted the 3km to the Carling Academy, not even pausing to grab a jumper - it'd only slow me down. Doors are at 7:00, and it's barely 5:30; only that late because I failed to realise that the venue would be a tiny place upstairs inside a small shopping center, and ran past it twice. Fanboyism is new to me. I can describe it as "very cold". By 6:00, there's still only two other people in the line, and one of them is nervously checking the date on her ticket. I'm half-frozen by the time they open the doors. Lyn walks straight in, but I get a quick frisk. I'm not sure exactly what they're looking for, since cameras, phones, and mp3 players are all okay. Knuckledusters, possibly. The knuckledusters might have been useful later on. The hall is empty at 7, full at 8:30, and elbows-out packed by 9. There's two bars but no chance of getting to them. About half way through the show a couple of girls make a *really* determined event to force their way to the front where we're clinging desperately to the barrier. Along with the laid-back aussie bloke on our right we hold the line, although we both cop a lot more flesh than we'd been planning on. The support act is an Adelaidean, DJ Reflux. He's got great skills, and he's fascinating to watch for the first hour, but he's on for *two-and-a-half*. Still, I've waited nearly four hours for my perch on the crowd barrier, front and center, and I'm not about to give up. The Hoods themselves are in and out in an hour, and given the energy of their performance it's hardly surprising. The show unexpectedly gets a lot more old-school when DJ Debris' audio feed goes down in the first track and again in the third, leaving them without beats. You'd expect a couple of MCs to be able to impro, and they do. It's a good mix of old and new, with the added wrinkle of a string quartet playing alongside - something they did on the Hard Road Restrung but which I didn't think they'd take on tour. They read the crowd well, even subbing in "John Howard" in An Audience With The Devil. I should mention that being next to the crowd barrier has an additional advantage; you can use it as leverage when you're jumping. This allows for some *much* better altitude. It was a better show than it would have been in Adelaide; the smaller venue makes it much more personal, like going back to before they hit the big-time. We managed the same trick with Missy Higgins, seeing her at the Gov just before she won a handful of Arias. Nobody I've talked to here has even heard of the Hilltop Hoods. Yet. I've climbed at Hat Rai Lei, I've patted tigers in Kanchanbury, and I've been front and center at a Hoods show.

High Definition

2007-05-12T14:27:00-04:00

Flying low over Sandefjord, a hundred kilometers south of Oslo, I'm initially confused by shiny squares that are scattered over the landscape. As we descend further, I can see that they're houses. It appears that the Norweigans polish their rooftops. Or maybe they don't have to. The entire landscape, from the splotchy coastline to the forests, is startlingly clear and bright. Even from thousands of feet in the air the level of detail is amazing. It's like the whole country is in High-Definition. A visit to the national gallery shows that I'm not the only one to experience this. The majority of the works, largely landscapes, exhibit a stunning level of detail - down to the veins on the leaves. The ones that aren't upliftingly bright are chillingly dark. From across the room, one small painting looks only like two blue dots on a black background. Up close, you can see that they are the eyes of a wolf menacing a black-cloaked figure. It's not hard to understand how the Scream was painted here. The blue skies and warm weather on our first day bring out the sunbathers, including at Akershus fortress, which is open to the public (but patrolled by soldiers) and has spectacular views along with large grassy areas for lounging about. It's a considerable improvement on Hyde park, although it would be much harder to play frisbee in. The days are long, and necessarily somewhat empty. Most places close at 5, but it won't be dark, and therefore reasonable to start drinking, until at least 9:30. On the second day we don't even get up until 11, because we slept in a windowless room and so have no idea of the time. It's only when our Couchsurfing host's poor roommates tentatively start cooking breakfast - they'd waited hours to avoid disturbing us - that we realise how late it is. Speaking of drinking, it's not an easy thing to do in Norway. Alcohol shops close at 6pm sharp. Even when they're open, you can only buy beer. To get wine or spirits, you have to go to a special government-operated monopoly. Apparently they exist, but we never found one. Clubs are open late, but cost a *fortune* - upwards of 50 kroner a drink in some cases. In aussie dollars, that's a $15 beer, near enough. We got through nearly four hundred pounds on the whole trip, and I think we must've drunk most of it, because we sure as hell didn't spend it on accommodation or food, and the flights, including transfers, were this side of a hundred. That's a thousand-dollar weekend, for those of you on sensible currencies. Previously that would have been unthinkable, _unthinkable_.. and here it happens by accident. Enjoy your five dollar pints, guys. It was worth the money. Used to swinging past Tesco's on my way somewhere at 10pm, I ended up boozeless on my way to a houseparty. Subsisting on scavenged vodka and a hip-flask of scotch brought along by a Dutch rock guitarist visiting to audition, I saw a *very* good-looking Swedish guy make out with at *least* three different women before passing out on the kitchen floor of a beautiful apartment full of beautiful people. We hopped the last metro to a club, had a few rounds, then hiked home and sat up until 4am with the hard-rocker and his wife, our host and her roommate, and some random guy who just wandered in (the front door won't lock) and serenaded us with a fairly tuneful rendition of Black Betty before we shoved him out the door. - There was no language barrier. As usual, I made a point of learning a few words, but it only made things difficult. You shouldn't authenticate in a language you can't speak - in a country where the locals aren't distinctive, if you say "hej" instead of "hello", they'll treat you like one. Absolutely, absolutely *everyone* speaks *fluent* English. In fact, when I asked one woman "unsheld, forstar du engelsk?" she gave me a fairly testy "Yes, of course." without a trace of accent. She may have been testy because she thought we were trying to break into her house. The only security for the complex was a fearsome and certainly unclimbable front gate, which locked us out *every single* time we left and forced us to either tailgate another housemate or phone our long-suffering host to get back in. And then, of course, my phone stopped working. The region that gave the world Nokia doesn't have a lot of payphones. In fact, Monday was a rather rough day. We hopped the bus to Sandefjord, not the nearby airport (Torp) so that we could see more of Norway than just Oslo. We saw quite a lot more, because the local push-button-to-stop busses in Norway are so classy and so expensive that it's easy to mistake them for always-stops-at-the-terminal coaches. At least, that's my excuse. We overshot and grabbed another local bus back. Not that there's much in Sandefjord - it's a Summer town, and we hit it in Spring, in the rain. It was entertaining to watch a ferry the size of a cruise ship unload a ridiculous number of ridiculously sized trucks, starting from the smallest and finishing with a monstrous B-double that really didn't look like it belonged on a boat. Apparently a better choice is to take the train over to Bergen and cruise around the fjords there. We did a two-hour cruise through the Oslofjord, which is indeed pretty but not the spectacular treats to be found on the other coasts. Holmenkollen is at least as exciting; it's a massive tower that complete lunatics use to launch themselves over a hundred metres through the air on skis. Standing at the top it's daunting, but from the bottom, you can see how steep it really is. It's a miracle that anyone survives. I would like to come back in winter, though. Not for the jump; I think we'll start with some gentle cross-country or snowboarding. Apparently parts of the Oslofjord used to freeze and you could walk between islands. - Whereas France is full of paintings of naked babies, further north they prefer to sculpt them. And they sculpt a *lot*. We explored the Vigeland sculpture park while waiting for the fjord cruise. While the centre-column, made out of what looks like a pile of bodies, was distinctly unsettling for me, some of the others were memorable. There's one that appears to be a man being attacked by a horde of flying babies. - I spent the runup to the trip steeling myself for Norweigan cuisine - the stereotype is rotten fish - but we never actually ate any, apart from a kind of sweet cheese. In fact, we subsisted on pasta, pizza, and Thai. We were having something of a cultural relapse by that last one, and went to see Spiderman 3 at the multiplex. It was a much more pleasant experience than cinema here; to start with, the ads aren't anything like as annoying if you can't understand them, and your seat is reserved. A good chunk of the audience left after the final battle and before the kissy bit at the end. I guess they knew what they'd come for. - We have learned that the five pounds you have to pay for online checkin is worth it. Waiting in a long queue, the only travellers without luggage to check in, is miserable. Ryanair also uses the "boarding scrum" boarding technique, which is fast but not totally pleasant if you don't have the priority coupon that online checkin gives you. Still, they took off on time, landed on time, and didn't kill us, and that's really all I'm looking for in an airline. In fact, sitting in the airport lounge trying to get our heads together after a 3:30am start, we heard an announcement that the plane we'd just flown in on was reboarding for the flight back. It was out of the airport before we were. Respect.

Riding the Rails

2007-04-09T09:41:00-04:00

Europe's long-distance trains are so easy that you can catch one by accident. Lyn's migraine has us bailing out of Canal St Martin on a sunny Sunday afternoon and, under the strict time pressure imposed by the rapidly closing doors, I decide that "Paris Nord" is probably not the same as "Gare Du Nord". It's a reasonable call - La Courneuve Aubervilliers isn't the same as La Courneuve 8 Mai 1945, after all. As the train accelerates out of the subway tunnel and onto the rail network, it becomes increasingly obvious how wrong I am. This is an RER long-distance train to Orry-La-Ville, intersecting the inner-city subway network purely as a convenience. We're lucky; it's not an express train, and it stops at St Denis, where we hop the next train back to Paris and switch back to the metro. === Heading towards Montmartre from Gare Du Nord, we are temporarily obstructed by two students manhandling a battered sofa down the stairs into the Metro. Lyn comments that they were probably moving house. In hindsight, we should have followed them; the trains are large, but I would have liked to see them get it past the ticket barriers. === The sewer museum is more museum than sewer. This is not altogether a bad thing, although the volume of water that flows through the system reduces the smell to a bearable level. The side tunnels, visible from the museum but strictly interdit, are more interesting than the displays of cleaning equipment. Still, with a unified sewer/stormwater system, regular automatic flushing, and a separate tunnel police, any unofficial visit would require extreme caution. The catacombs' official entrance was closed for Easter. In Europe, you have to plan. Or at least phone ahead. Or know someone with the key.. === I'm proud to say that I've been ignored, I've watched a barman do rounds with the regulars while on the job, I've paid four Euros for a coffee, and I've had my change thrown at me. Often at the same places. And I was speaking French, albeit badly - I hesitate to think about the American experience. I did see one young couple, his khaki combat pants even less fashionable than my backpacker gear, make a rapid exit from Le Chat Noir, failing to secure even one drink. I don't entirely blame them; the waiter picked up the accent on my initial "bonsoir" and hit me with a paragraph of rapid-fire French that I was completely unable to follow. Later I overheard him speaking understandable French to others. They didn't miss much. It has TVs in it now. Not everyone was like that; a couple of waiters and barmen were charming, or at least professional. And when we locked ourselves out of the Metro by accidentally leaving at a station with no ticket machine, a local gave us directions to another. I really think that coming here without being able to speak a little French would be a mistake, however. === L'espace Dali has a lot of molten clocks and not much else of interest. It costs more than the Louvre, perhaps a reflection of Dali's sense of self-importance even post mortem. === We nearly made it to the Arc De Triomph. Having battled our way through the crowds on the Champs d'Elysies, we reached the edge of the traffic roundabout that surrounds it. This thing really has to be seen to be believed; it's at least six lanes wide but there are no lane markings, and if there's any right-of-way rule at all it seems to be "faster vehicle wins". I stood mesmerised for several minutes. Cars would enter at speed from the feeder roads, swinging right into the middle and cutting off traffic already on the roundabout, which would sometimes end up stranded, stationary in the middle. Buses pushed their way through while motorcyclists all seemed to have concluded that the faster they got out of the roundabout, the better their chances, so they cut straight lines through the swerving traffic. It really scared me, and I've been to Bangkok. Lyn tells me that rental car insurance won't even cover you for that particular intersection. In any case, there was absolutely no way to cross it on foot. There's an underpass, but it also connects to the lifts that go up inside the Arc, and the waiting crowd completely blocked access to the stairs to road level. We had to retreat; if there's one thing I like less than crowds, it's crowds in tunnels. We nearly visited the Eiffel Tower. I wrestled with TomTom for several minutes - it was hopelessly confused by the Arc De Triomph's roundabout - until we spotted it on the horizon and just walked in the right general direction. A hundred metres away the line began, moving at a slow shuffle. But a traffic island provided an excellent view of the tower itself, so I folded my jacket behind my head and lay on the hot tarmac to admire it for a few minutes. We did visit Notre Dame. Personally, I think flying buttresses are a bit of a hack - like exposed scaffolding - but I hear that they're considered quite an achievement. It would've been nice to get onto eye-level with the gargoyles, but we really need to come back at 9am sharp, in midwinter, on a weekday, to get in on the same day we start queuing. It's on the list. The line was even longer at the Louvre, but Lyn had done her research. We can confirm that it *is* possible to slip in via the smaller entrance in the attached shopping mall. There's still a line, but it's a matter of 15 minutes instead of what looked like the wrong side of an hour. Of course, we blew half an hour coming up against locked doors in the wrong mall - an intimidating, nearly deserted art establishment that actually had us whispering - and we still had to line up to buy tickets, so it probably came out about even. I continue to be annoyed at the tendency of classical artists to ruin perfectly good paintings by filling them up with naked babies. === The Musee de l'Erotisme is rather disquieting, like looking at someone else's porn collection. It collects all the weird fetishes, fantasies, and distorted ideals of every culture into one place. It's a bit like the internet. There were more women visitors than men. I think that's because the men know that the places next door don't cost ten euros, and they're in colour. === We have the habit of taking a pre-dinner walk, which consists of wandering the streets trying to find something we want to eat. After the first half-kilometer, the options usually don't change, and the walk ends when we're hungry enough to take one. In this case, the walk extended at least a couple of kilometers. To start with we were looking solely at the numbers. After a few restaurants I did the maths, concluded that the weekend was costing us over $AU400 each *without* food, and that an increment of $AU40 for dinner was therefore not significant. After that we started looking for something we actually wanted to eat. This was surprisingly hard to find. French food is heavy on the meat, light on the chilli. As a couple of semi-vegetarians, our options were extremely restricted. Moreover, the menu at almost every restaurant was nearly exactly the same. Having grown up in a, well, "multicultural" society, such a monoculture came as a shock. It's not just a buzzword. Australia really does mix it up. We came to France to experience *France*, so we really did try, but there just wasn't anything we wanted to eat. Beaten, we had a lovely dinner at a nearby Italian restaurant. In defence of the French, however, I did have a marvellous (but rather confronting) three-course meal in a tiny place on the outskirts of Montmartre the following night. I think you just have to know where to look. You also have to know that, if you order the Camembert for dessert, they're going to give you a *lot* of Camembert.

Crocodile Drift

2007-02-24T11:41:00-05:00

It's cold. The smell of the pine trees is overpowering. I'm alone in the forest, surrounded by a blue-white mist, checking each tree for movement, because I don't know what's here or even what _could_ be here. A figure approaches and I'm instantly on guard. With a jolt I recognise the wooden handbag. Impossibly, it's her. I start running - if I lose her a second time I may never find her again. I reach out and place a hand on her shoulder. She stares blankly at me, turns, and walks into the haze. We don't speak. Her mask makes it impossible to read her face, but the message is clear: I am alone here. So begins the play-within-a-play. Lost and confused, I walk through four levels of abandoned warehouse, seeking my love, my reason to be here, or at least someone who knows I exist. There's a whole town up here - a cafe, a motel, any number of bars, along with the forest, a schoolroom, and apparently a barn that I heard about but never found. Sometimes there are other lost souls, masked and silent. Sometimes there are none. Always there are the black masks, motionless in the corners, easily mistaken for scenery if you see them at all. Early on, I tip my hat to one experimentally, but quickly we all arrive at the same rules: you can move freely but never block the movement of others, you cannot touch anything, or speak. You have no relationship with others. Only the Devil himself can see you, and then only when he chooses to[1]. This is what it's like to be a ghost. The actors quickly make themselves known. At least once I'm mistaken for one of them and draw a small crowd of masks before turning to reveal my own. More than once I suspect an actor of wearing an audience mask, but there's no way to tell. They've mastered the crocodile drift, moving slowly, steadily, and silently, and you simply don't see them until they want to be seen. When they do, they're often followed by throngs of audience members - the ones who've figured out that they are being lured to the next set-piece spectacular scene. But the scene will run whether the audience has assembled or not. At one point, returning to the forest, I catch a glimpse of a woman under a tree. Only the masked figures around her make me go back and see that it's a lone actress quietly performing one of the more powerful monologues of the play. Maybe six people saw that scene - there was a spectacular choreographed fight going on elsewhere on the floor[2]. Even as a traditional play, this would be first-rate. The standard of acting, choreography, and sets was the equal of anything I've seen. But as a freeform experience, it was _stunning_. It's still ricocheting back and forth across my mind. I haven't just *seen* Faust. I've *been* him. You may remain inside the performance space for up to three hours, but the performance space will remain inside you for days.

fn1. Generally when he's pouring you a drink. fn2. I know because, the first time, I watched it. That's right - they do the whole thing _twice_.

Hung Up To Dry

2007-01-29T16:26:00-05:00

It is impossible to buy a new phone. I do not wish to rent a phone. I wish to buy one. I require the ability to reach Lyn at any time at which she wishes to be reachable[1]. I require the equipment to be reliable. I require it to be interoperable with my library of SIM cards. I do not require an additional camera, an additional PDA, an additional mp3 player, an additional games machine, or an additional television[5]. I am aware of the real value of phones. I am willing to pay a substantial amount of money to satisfy this critical operational need[2]. It is not possible to do so. I've long been familiar with the phone-on-contract scams. We give you a shiny device for a dollar now, and you buy our overpriced network access for two years. It's a high-interest high-risk loan and I don't have a major problem with it. At least, I didn't while I could select my preferred network provider, select my preferred phone, buy one SIM card and one phone, and put them together. Leave the suckers to their game; I've got mine. That's not possible here. *Pay-as-you-go phones now come with a contract*. You cannot physically buy a mobile phone without also buying a network subscription. A given model of phone will typically be available only on a single network. It will be locked to that network. Thanks to advances in phone DRM[6], it is no longer possible to unlock them[3]. You cannot simply buy the phone and then pay the network to unlock it; T-Mobile *demands* that you have owned the phone for three months before they will sell you the unlock code. Non-affiliated phone stores are actually multi-affiliated phone stores - the first question they'll ask is which network you wish to be shackled to. Ebay is not a satisfactory option because reliability is paramount. Li-Ion batteries deteriorate fast, especially when they're driving overpowered playstation-wannabes. I need to buy a _new_ phone. The market has failed.

fn1. Technically, she needs a phone, not me[4]. fn2. Last Sunday I bailed early from an Infiltration meetup and *ran* to St Pauls to meet Lyn for a scheduled tour.. but her phone had failed and it took us 40 minutes to unscramble ourselves. If you don't have a phone, you have to have a plan. If you have to have a plan, you've lost your flexibility. fn3. I found this out after I bought a phone. Fuck. It's a brick. fn4. You can have my Nokia 6100 when you pry it from my cold, dead fingers. I've had this thing three years, and if it failed I would replace it with exactly the same model. fn5. Nokia.com has three sections under phones: "For Gaming", "For Music", "For Office". It does not have a section "For Calls". fn6. Digital Restrictions Management. While everyone's busy freaking out about iTunes and Vista, Vodafone's gone and screwed us all even harder than they're planning to.

I invite readers to submit examples of situations where bundling is not evil.

Combine Wall

2007-01-25T09:35:00-05:00

There are no crowds of banner-waving citizens at Parliament Square. There's only Brian Haw, a handful of loyal supporters, a couple of placards and a small cluster of tents. This is probably because it's now illegal to protest within a kilometer of Parliament house. The art gallery Tate Britain is exactly one kilometer from Parliament House. When the Serious Organised Crime Act[3] was passed, they did the only rational thing, which was to paint a line all the way through the gallery, showing where protest is legal and where it isn't. Brian Haw used to have a display fifty meters wide, until it was destroyed in a midnight raid by British police. Artist Mark Wallinger rebuilt the entire display, right down to the camp stove, and it's now on display in Tate Britain, where it gets a lot more promotion than it did in Parliament Square. The thing that gives me hope is that Tate Britain is government funded. I wish I really believed that this means that trying to kill us only makes us stronger. The next stop on our walk obviously has to be Number 10, Downing St. I'm staring at the TomTom mapper[2] as we walk, so I'm quite startled when I glance up and see:

Three armed[1] guards.
Two enormous black iron fences, one inside the other.
A building prominently labeled "Search Point".
A crash barrier designed to stop charging vehicles.

The fence in particular is intimidating. It's huge, and it blocks off the entire street. This doesn't belong here. This belongs in Half-Life. There's a small crowd of onlookers trying to take pictures through the bars, and a skinhead pacing back and forth, hands behind his back, eyes concealed behind dark glasses, scraggly orange beard standing out against all-black clothes. He seems to be paying more attention to the security than to the historic location behind it. A worried voice gets his attention. "Gwyn, could you please stop pacing?" I leave. Quickly.

fn1. I mean really armed, with the sort of gun that's too big to holster, so you have to swagger around with it in both hands. I'm seeing a lot of them here - there was a group with automatic rifles moving through Stansted when we arrived on a lazy Sunday afternoon. Nobody but me gives them a second glance. It's amazing what you can get used to. fn2. The Palm now has street-level maps of all of Western Europe, plus a full-text copy of the Wikipedia. Don't Panic. fn3. I wish I was joking. This is its actual title. Doubleplusungood.

Same Same

2007-01-16T12:54:00-05:00

At the top of Primrose Hill, I'm startled to see the London Eye on the horizon. I'd forgotten that I was here. I still get up early, hunched over the laptop answering emails from the same people. I'm still scared of some of them. The small supermarket on the corner still provides lunch. The cafe opposite it, my bolt-hole, still has flaky wireless access and strong, overpriced black coffee. The pub on the corner's still the first choice when we can't be bothered cooking. The working week still takes place inside a two-hundred-metre circle. I still go for a run at lunch time, drowning out my fatigue with the same Australian beats. Only the scenery has changed.

Time In Transit

2007-01-14T17:37:00-05:00

Santiago is a two-hour flight from London. It does not follow that Santiago is two hours from London. It breaks down like this: 0:00: Starting our run, we're on foot from the northwest corner of town. 0:35: We arrive at the bus stop. 0:45: We're on the bus. 1:05: We reach the airport. Now we have to kill two hours, because the airport bus runs only every 2 hours. 3:05: We're on the plane. 3:20: The plane takes off. 5:15: The plane lands[1]. 5:20: We're off the plane. 6:00: We're on a bus outside the airport. 6:10: The bus fills up and moves off. 7:05: We're off the bus and proceeding on foot. 7:25: We reach home[3]. With a start time of 8am, and one hour gained on the timezones, we arrive about 2:30pm. It's not that far off driving to Melbourne. You'd do it for a week, but you wouldn't do it for a weekend[2]. Having said that, I woke up in Santiago this morning, and that's still slightly alarming. Lose an hour. Gain an hour. If you wake up at a different time, in a different place, could you wake up as a different person? Every transit rattles me; every time I zero out everything from where Home is to which language I'm speaking to who the friendly faces are, I'm left slightly less stable than when I started. It's not like building up an immunity; it's more like cumulative damage. We have to stop. We need to sleep.

fn1. So far, both Ryanair flights we've been on have been ahead of schedule. I respect an airline that doesn't muck about, and won't tolerate it if you do. The Terms And Conditions are *fearsome* - basically, if you show up at the gate two minutes late or with half a kilo too much luggage, you're not going anywhere and you're not getting a refund. The Internet says that they' mean it, too. fn2. Although I know one person who did - in fact, who flew in to Liverpool and took a five hour bus ride to London on a 36 hour trip, just to avoid Heathrow. Respect. fn3. Home?

Santiago Santiago

2007-01-14T10:55:00-05:00

_Santiago De Compostela, Spain_ The Cathedral dominated the experience. Every time I stepped into the Old Town I got lost, unable to find anything else. Every time I walked past, it looked different. Every time I heard the bell I turned towards it, and usually found that I could see it. When we weren't looking for God in architecture, we were trying to find Him in the bottom of a bottle. The police came at around 11pm on Thursday, to nobody's surprise. We had no music at all, but there must have been 30 people in a space smaller than our London bedsit. We moved to a nearby park and drank among the statues, surrounded by hundreds of students doing the same thing. The crowd was well-behaved and the police took no further action, apart from making sure that nobody went home. But what we did most was sleep. With one exception, we were in bed by 11 and slept until at least noon. Even then, it required multiple doses of cafe solo, once we worked out how to order it, to keep us going. We could have seen, and done, much more than we did. Not that I'm disappointed. We saw the moment and seized it, rather than saying, "we'll do it when we have more time and energy". In a world of competing opportunities, "someday" means "never" . And anyway, we had to farewell our last contact in the northern hemisphere. From here on in we'll see plenty of friendly faces, but no familiar ones. Next up is the Czech Republic[1], or France. Lyn has an "ongoing" but temporary job, so we'll take our cue from that. For now, though, it's neither. We need to sleep.

fn1. Not, as a rather alarmed Czech girI explained to me, Czechoslovakia[2]. I'd have made the same mistake sober; I think I need to get up to date on modern geography. fn2. The Czech Republic split from Slovakia in 1993. If this comes as a shock, I have some bad news about the USSR.

Entiendo Un Poco

2007-01-14T10:53:00-05:00

Each time I start to learn another language - now three in four months - I worry that I'll end up so confused that I won't be able to speak anything. It doesn't seem to happen that way. Searching for a word in Spanish, sometimes the French, Malay or Thai word pops into my head, but always accompanying it is the knowledge that it's in the wrong language and it's not going to help. Rather than mixing up words, it seems that the human brain mixes up whole sentences. More than once we've been addressed at length in Spanish by our Australian friends. I can see how it happens. At one cafe, faced with my limited Spanish, the waiter came up with another solution: "Francaise?" It wasn't likely to help, and I didn't want to confuse matters, so I said "I speak only English." He gave me a long look, and it wasn't until much later that I realized why. I'd said it in French.
Among barmen, bus drivers, pharmacists, and other tourist staples, English here is nonexistent. The students are a different matter, switching effortlessly between Czech, Finnish, Spanish and English that, though they describe it as "horrible", is usually quite fluent. One thing that doesn't change across languages is that I can transmit, but can't receive[2]. I've had several conversations, conducted entirely in Spanish, that go along the lines of "Good morning. Two black coffees and two potato omelettes, please." "Do you want bread?" "I don't speak Spanish." I don't mind. Five hours listening to Pimsleur tapes and a small phrasebook is enough to get by, with some hand-waving and the odd bilingual good samaritan. And it's _fun_ - even a mundane task like buying a sandwich becomes an exciting adventure, complete with the satisfaction that comes with a job well done. Piecing together bits of overheard conversations becomes an involving mystery. Deducing that the guy on the next table thinks it's hotter than last year is like pointing the finger at the Butler, in the Library, with the Steak Knife[1]. With McDonald's on every corner in every country, the language is one thing that can be counted on to remain alien, and therefore interesting. Eventually the language barrier becomes not an impediment to travel, but a reason to.

fn1. I'm not quite at that point yet; interpreting a long string of Spanish for Lyn, I was forced to admit, "I only got one word. And it was 'is'." fn2. This is because, when speaking, I have time on my side. I spend several minutes looking up, memorising, and practicing the words that I know I'll need before each encounter. This gives me the illusion of fluency, which invariably means that I get an answer I can't understand.

[44] Circular Dependency

2007-01-02T10:10:00-05:00

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to obtain.. *a library card*.

Over And Out

2006-12-20T11:56:00-05:00

Outside, it's sixty-five degrees below zero. The seat-back screen tells me that we're thirty thousand feet above Omsk, Russian Federation, and Lyn comments that it's probably not much hotter on the ground. The screen is about the only good thing I can say about the experience on the Qantas 747 Flying Daycare Center where I'm writing this. Takeoff was four hours late, at the brain-bending hour of 4:30 am. We were the only people to check the web site and adjust our airport arrival time, so instead of checking in very early, we checked in nearly last and ended up at the back of the plane, just behind the bulkhead. Which is where they put the babies. Still, the Hoods blasting through my earphones are drowning out the shrieks of the excess baggage. And the screen's showing me dozens of nearby places - Paris, Frankfurt, Vienna, Brussels - as we fly over and out to London. Maybe it's the coffee, but I'm feeling good about this. We're just getting started.

Too Much

2006-12-20T11:54:00-05:00

I can't write when too little is happening. For the last couple of weeks I've had the opposite problem. There's too much to roll into a neat little package, but here are some random bits. _Border Skirmish_ We hired a jeep and driver for a day in Chiang Rai. He gave us a special 'family rate', which turned out to mean a car small enough that you wouldn't want to put five people in it unless they were family. First stop was Tachilek in Myanmar. Failing to cross the border and back would have left me open to arrest, since my Thai visa expired the next day. The Burmese[1] officials refused to take my American money, because after three months strapped to my body, it had gone mouldy. Luckily Lyn prefers to leave her valuables in her backpack, and had greenbacks in good condition. The transaction was conducted in eerie near-silence, because the officials spoke little English, and I didn't think it would be appropriate to speak Thai. They saw the funny side too; I extracted a wry smile from the guard as we fumbled to put away our useless money. In contrast, the next guy through the door opened the discussion with, "Do you speak English? I want a stamp!" I wonder if they lost his passport.
-
On the far side of the border post are the worst bits of Thailand and Malaysia rolled in to one; pushy sellers with a weird language. A Burmese man waved a knife at me and asked for money[3]. Lyn looked twice at a weapons stall and the owner seized a pistol from the table, cocked it, and shot her in the head[4]. Behind a stall, a child was shrieking in such terror that we thought she was being caned[5]. They closed the border about six hours after we crossed back into Thailand, as the result of a skirmish with Shan rebels the previous day. So, yes, I've been shopping in a war zone. Two hours later we were in Laos, having entered via an unofficial longtail crossing of the Mekong. The atmosphere was very relaxed. They gave us a free sample of 'snake whiskey' that tasted of truth, beauty and love, and then sold us a bottle that tasted like rotting snake[6].

--

fn1. Myanmarian? fn2. There was a skirmish the previous day, and. Close one, as usual. fn3. It was for sale. fn4. Pellet gun being demonstrated. Unloaded. fn5. She was being caned. fn6. This is the first bait-and-switch scam I've had pulled on me in this entire region.

Flashbang

2006-12-06T06:06:00-05:00

Turn your fucking flash off. Yes, I know you "thought it was off". No, it's not. That's why there's a little lightning bolt on your screen. If you are too stupid to determine how to turn your camera flash the fuck off, or there is any doubt in your mind whatsoever as to whether you have done so, then you have two options: 1) Place the fingers of your left hand over the flashbulb. This will require you to use two limbs simultaneously. All four, if you're standing. 2) Consider owning a less complex device, such as a rock. I am sick of walking past several huge "NO FLASH" signs to the pen full of precious week-old tiger cubs that must not be disturbed, knowing, _knowing_, that the first thing some idiot is going to do is flash them. That would be you. Even if you thought it was off. The next time it happens, I'm going to shoot you in the face. I will escape prosecution by saying that "I thought the safety was on". Some time after that, humanity will encounter a super-intelligent alien race that has developed cameras that default to 'no flash' when you turn them on. We will immediately steal their camera technology after disabling their eyes, or equivalent, with a flash. In the meantime, turn your fucking flash off. Thank you.

Pile Of Bricks

2006-12-06T06:04:00-05:00

_Ayuthera_ Ayuthera is remarkably large for a town of 80,000 people. Couple this with the brutal heat and lack of shade, and walking ceases to be an option. Instead, we hire bicycles for just over a dollar a day each. We get what we paid for. My bike, a single-gear steel step-through, makes such a terrible noise when it hits bumps that Lyn keeps looking back to see if I've fallen off. In straight lines it's okay, but corners are a little tricky. I do the first right turn straight up, at an unprotected[1] intersection. It's so frightening that from then on I dismount for turns and cross as a pedestrian. After the second of these crossings, I come to the depressing conclusion that I can run with this bike faster than I can ride it. Still, it's enough to get to four of the dozen or so ruined temples in Ayuthera. The locals have taken fantastic care of them. There's no litter to be seen, and the steps look newly swept. Perhaps they feel bad about letting them get sacked by the Burmese in the first place. For hundreds of beheaded Buddha images, it's too late. There are much smaller, portable Buddhas at the base of some of the ruined larger ones. These, too, lack heads. If they're contemporary, then people have wrecked them so they'll fit in (or Burmese raiders walk among us to this day). If they're ancient, they've been there for hundreds of years and no one has nicked them. We return in a chartered tuk-tuk in the evening, and see the temples lit by powerful halogens. The effect is as atmospheric as you'd expect. For all that they're just piles of bricks, these are powerful places.

fn1. Not that there are any protected intersections. Even a working traffic light is more of an "advisory".

Big Cat

2006-12-06T06:04:00-05:00

_Kanchanabury_ You can get a tourist minibus straight to the Tiger Temple. This is both good and bad, for the usual reasons. You can't complain about the Getaway-inspired hordes if you found out about the next Big Destination on Getaway. It's not what it was. The tigers are chained down, now, and you'll be marched through their area by a farang volunteer, not a monk. Each 'tiger patting' session is very tightly scripted. Partly, that's because of the number of tourists. Mainly it's because what you're doing is horrifically dangerous. People say that the tigers are drugged. I say that I saw one get up and pace, and heard another roaring its head off. The selection of tigers available for patting is adjusted moment-by-moment, according to their relative crankiness. The Tiger Temple is no longer pure fantasy, but it still does what it says on the box. You will stroke a tiger. The tiger will be in a position to fold up on to your arm and keep it if it wants to. You'll see guys in saffron robes doing things that ought to get them killed, and inexplicably don't. Go while you can.

Language Difficulties

2006-12-03T23:14:00-05:00

_Ayuthera_ Even Thais have trouble maneouvring in the night markets. A young Thai man fails to look behind him before stepping out and clobbers me thoroughly. He takes a second to think about it, then addresses me in my own language. "Good morning." I'm already past him, so all I can do is nod. Still, I think I understand now why the locals burst into good-natured laughter when I try to speak Thai. Heading for home, I ask the tuk-tuk driver "tow-rai?", which I hope means "how much?", and not "good morning", or "merry christmas", or anything like that. He mutters "see sip", then holds up four fingers and says "thirty". "See sip" means "forty" in Thai. I know this, but nobody knows that I know this. Earlier, I'd caused a considerable amount of confusion when paying for my room by saying "room seventeen", and then "neung sip baat" ("eighteen"), so I give the tuk-tuk driver forty baht. He's trying.

Swim Or Die

2006-12-03T04:29:00-05:00

_Erawan Falls_ Poised on a submerged rock, I consider the lunge that will take me through the falls and up onto a ledge behind them. I know I can make it. The moment is almost primal - it's just me, the waterfall, and a small fish, which bites me. I jump backwards with a yelp and bang my foot on the rock. This triggers Lyn's water-rescue training, and she's towing me rapidly towards the bank before either of us realise that I'm not actually injured. It's the same story at the other falls - seven in all. At each bank lurk dozens of fish from finger-sized to forearm-sized. The moment we step into the water they charge us. If we stop moving, they latch on in greater and greater numbers. The effect isn't particularly painful, but it is creepy. Only constant movement drives them away. I try wearing my shoes, but after a tense minute, one of the smaller fish targets my ankles. Eventually we give up on swimming and hike back to the entrance for lunch. I order seafood.

The Oven And The Fridge

2006-12-03T04:28:00-05:00

There's no middle ground. You can get a hot room with a freezing shower for 250 baht. If you want it the other way around, it'll cost you twice as much. Fan rooms are miserable. If you get a ceiling fan, it won't do much at all. If you get an oscillating wall-mounted fan, it's actually quite bearable for the five seconds out of every thirty that it's pointing at you. Suffering through this means that, when you finally do get an air-conditioned room through accident or economic insanity, you go completely berserk. Your hostel has planned for this. You can expect an individual remote-controlled split-system air conditioner unit that's completely out of proportion to the size of the room. The thermostat will go all the way down to 16 degrees, which is the only setting worth considering. In some guesthouses you'll also get a Freezer Death Ray. This is a very large Mitsubishi fan bolted to a sturdy wall at right angles to the AC unit and aimed directly at the bed. It serves to collect the cool breeze gently wafting from the AC unit, focus it into a firehose of arctic air, and launch it directly at your now-whimpering form. To start with this seems like a good idea, but around 1am you'll wake up shivering, and lie paralysed by tiredness and cold for several hours. At this point you'll remember that you own a high-tech synthetic sleeping bag that's rated to five degrees below zero. It's hard to miss; it takes up half your pack. Obviously you have to get into the sleeping bag. You paid for that A/C. You're not turning it off. You'll wake up early and book yourself into a fan room for the following night.

Hellfire and Darkness

2006-12-01T07:37:00-05:00

Hellfire Pass is a very long way from Kanchanabury. We'd already ridden to Erawan national park, which is merely a "long way" from Kanchanabury. When we hired the 125cc scooter - the largest available - I'd asked for a map. The staff member gave me a map of town, and showed me how to get to the bridge and the museum, which are maybe 5km apart. I didn't tell her what we had in mind in case she took the bike back. By the time the day was done, we'd have put 1.5 tanks of petrol through it. It's late afternoon when we finish with the waterfalls and head out. If we're lucky, the last yellow light of the sun will shine directly along the cutting, illuminating it in much the same way as the POW's torches had done. If we're unlucky it'll just be dark. We're lucky. We pull into the army compound at the trailhead about a hour before sunset. The soldier waves us through. On the railbed it's very quiet, the kind of quiet that makes your ears ring quite loudly. The onsite museum closed more than an hour ago, and we're totally alone. We walk the pass in silence, occasionally fingering the blackened rock. Under an Australian flag lies a note written to a departed soldier. His middle name is Gwyn. In the very middle of the pass stands a tall, thin tree. It looks dead. We can see the sun set across the valley from the railbed, just outside the pass. I raise my hand and a distorted gray-and-gold shadow appears on the rock wall. It's not hard to fill in a chisel, or perhaps a rifle. By the time we return to the bike the last traces of blue are fading from the sky. At this point we establish that: 1. The bike has a very weak headlight. So weak, in fact, that revving the bike makes it less dim. 2. It's mounted directly behind the carrier basket 3. The streets aren't lit 4. Our helmets have tinted visors The visors tilt, so we have the choice of pitch blackness, or near-blackness accompanied by 90km/h insect impacts. In my case the choice is narrowed even further by the inability of my contact lenses to cope with 90km/h winds. It's a truly frightening ride. In some places, we really can't see anything but the white line at the edge of the road. Streaks on my visor create white lines moving outwards from a central point, giving the illusion of riding into a star-trek warp field. Cars occasionally hammer past us at well over 120km/h, but they're the least of our worries. In fact, they provide magnificent illumination. It's a pity we can't keep up with them. It's so dark, and I'm straining so hard to pick images out of the noise, that at one point I get a clear sighting of a pedal cyclist moving from the right-hand side of the road into our path. It's good that Lyn's got the sharp end of the bike, because he never existed. Later we come across a godsend - a series of cars travelling at 70km/h. We drop into position behind them. Problem solved. A few kilometers later we reach a red light. We stop, they don't. Back to square one. Personally, I'd have run the light.

Off The Wagon

2006-11-25T04:56:00-05:00

_Bangkok_ It's my second day in Bangkok, and I've been to the Pantip Plaza IT Mall twice. I'm now sporting a Palm TX handheld and four gig of assorted non-volatile storage, I can browse the web and re-sync my email from anywhere with a wireless hotspot. I can re-read and re-stress-over existing emails from anywhere at all. I spent an entire afternoon getting the thing up and running the way I liked it. If I really wanted to, I could use Lyn's bluetooth phone, my GPRS sim, and our Palm to resync email from anywhere with GSM signal. Random strangers ask me if I know anything about Photoshop, and I tell them more than they wanted to know. This evening saw me testily stalling Lyn's conversational gambits in a coffeeshop while I finished sending an email to my accountant. I no longer have any plans to secrete myself in a monastery for a week. That's gone to "the next trip" now. My fast idle just became a dragster's scream.

Not To Scale

2006-11-25T04:56:00-05:00

When Lonely Planet tells you to buy a map, buy a map. Do not attempt to navigate using their map. Do not attempt to navigate using a map you got at the train station, even if it says "BEST SELLER!!" . Especially do not attempt to navigate using half-memories of a map provided by your guesthouse when you don't have it in front of you. Getting to the weekend markets was traumatic enough. After two dramatic navigation failures, we hop a taxi (for the equivalent of just under two dollars). 0n the way back, we're convinced we can use the skytrain. We're wrong. We get off at what we think is the right station, and wander around for about half an hour. The heat is murderous. We duck into a shopping center for a cold drink, and to look more closely at the map. I finally spot "Suttisarn", our street, on a section we hadn't looked at before. But it can't be right. It's miles away. We step outside the shopping center and wander around some more. We find an internet cafe, where we print out the guesthouse's extremely detailed map. It's terrible. There's no north orientation, half the streets aren't labelled, and the scale is so badly distorted that "three skytrain stations away" looks like "just around the corner[1]". Lyn stares at it for twenty minutes, concludes that the guesthouse is miles away, and she doesn't know exactly where, and gives up. A student of economic rationalism rather than navigational bloody-mindedness, I'd given up long ago. Defeated, we start walking in the general direction of our guesthouse, keeping an eye out for taxis. We flag one down, hop in, and give our destination. The driver immediately pulls a U-turn.
------
fn1. Captain Obvious' First Law Of Maps: "If it only makes sense after you've been there, the map is useless."

The Fuzz

2006-11-25T04:55:00-05:00

_Nakhon Si Thammarat_ We deserved it, really. Two months of lax security and no thefts had made us complacent. Under the pillow is not really a good place to hide your electronics. Especially when they're plugged into the wall. And your room has daily servicing. And costs just under six dollars a night. Which is how we ended up in the police station in a small Thai city that sees few tourists. The officer is friendly but speaks English about as well as I speak Thai. I point at "I want to report an offence," in my phrasebook. After a while he points at "My ... has been stolen." We change officers once the draft is done. The new guy is very enthusiastic about the chance to practice his English. He jokes with us, makes us correct his pronunciation, and eventually gives us a report. We leave with an incomprehensible (to us) piece of paper that's hopefully worth 10,000 baht, and a new respect for the boys in brown.
----
The footpaths here are wide and easy to walk on. Except for the one in front of me, which is full of police. I'm momentarily baffled by this, because a second ago it was empty. The officer has come out of nowhere, ridden his motorcycle up on to the footpath directly in front of me. And now he wants to know how long I've been in Thailand. I tell him, but he doesn't understand "days". "Ten weeks? Ten months? Ten years?" Things are getting, if not actually tense, at least strained. My phrasebook gets me out of jail. Asked about my address, I find the entry for "friend", hoping I won't have to explain couchsurfing. He is, as usual, delighted when I say I'm from Australia. He shakes my hand, gets back on the bike, and rides off. If it hadn't been for the uniform, it could have been a totally normal conversation with a curious local. He never asked to see my passport. He didn't need to. The next day we applied for a visa extension.
----
In conversation with a local, I mention that the Lonely Planet guidebook, no less, says that the going rate to bribe your way out of a "small pot bust" is 50,000 baht. He looks at me incredulously. "Fifty thousand? That'll get you off murder!" I don't ask how he knows.

A Little Bit Live

2006-11-23T01:41:00-05:00

Why does this hurt? I'm leaning over the machine, my knee brushing the chassis, plugging in a USB cable. My knee hurts. I glance down. No bruises. Nothing sharp. No spiders. A second later I realise and pull back from the machine. It's going to hurt again. But I have to know. I touch it with my hand. Jolt. My ring is vibrating. __The chassis is live.__ I've been in a lot of dodgy internet cafes. I've seen machines overloaded with malware to the point where they barely work. I've seen machines with broken drives, broken keyboards, broken screens. But this is the first time I've had a machine electrocute me. I immediately go up to the desk. As a power user, I don't like to call attention to myself at netcafes, but this situation is dangerous. I have to call it. I explain the problem. The easy-going expat understands. But his solution bothers me. "Oh yeah, that one's always been a little bit live. Try the one on the end."

Rock Bottom

2006-11-18T04:23:00-05:00

_Hat Rai Lei East, Thailand_ Fifteen metres up, I undo the knot that attaches the climbing rope to my harness. The view across the bay would be amazing if I was looking at it. We're climbing right on the beach, and I can see longtail boats[1] moving rapidly across the water. But I've got bigger problems. I'm no longer attached to the muscly Thai who's been belaying me. I've had twenty minutes of instruction in lead climbing, and it's all up to me now. He couldn't lower me down even if he wanted to[2]. It all started when I asked him if he could teach me to lead climb[5] in one day instead of the usual three. He said "sure, why not?", and after watching my first climb on top-rope, took me aside. I must have passed, but what he doesn't know is that, to do it, I burned everything I had. Exhausted, it took me six attempts to clip the top bolt, all the while desperately clinging on to avoid a five metre fall[4]. Everyone else has already left for lunch. I'm running on empty, but I've been doing that for an hour now, and one more lunge won't make any difference. Dangling by my safety sling, I stand up on a tiny ledge, pull the rope clear of the belay loop, rethread it through the top ring, and re-tie the knot. Then I unclip the sling. The rope holds, and I slump back into the harness as Jond belays me down. I'm covered in sweat, I can barely close my hands, and I'm absolutely buzzed. I _started_ this climb exhausted, convinced I'd hit bottom, and I've done "one more desperate lunge" more times than I can remember. Suddenly, I don't know where the bottom is any more. But now I'm a lead climber. I'm sure I'll find out.

fn1. Sort of like a speedboat built by a man with fifty dollars, two hours, and a spare motorcycle engine. fn2. He doesn't want to. Earlier that morning, pumped out and slick with sweat, I managed a dramatic leap because I had no choice. Five previous attempts had failed, but he still wouldn't let me down. Thai climbers know no fear. Thai belayers tolerate no weakness. fn4. It doesn't sound like much, until you think of it as falling out of a third-story window. On to rock. fn5. In "top-rope" climbing, the rope runs from the belayer, to the top, to you. It's always taut and you never fall more than about a metre, but it takes a long time to set up. In "sport lead" climbing, the rope runs from the belayer to you. You clip it through bolts embedded in the rock as you climb. You'll fall to the bolt, and then the same distance again as you take up the slack in the rope, or "twice the distance to your last bolt". In "trad lead" climbing there are no bolts, and you wedge bits of metal ("protection") into cracks in the rock as you go. You'll fall twice the distance to the first piece of protection that doesn't pull out. In "free" climbing you'll fall the same distance you climbed.

Trangquilised

2006-11-18T04:22:00-05:00

_Trang, Thailand_ They have real coffee. And sandwiches. The taxis ignore you until you want one. The beer is cheaper than in Australia. There are footpaths. I think I'm going to like it here. My expectations of Thailand were completely wrong. It's better organised, more expensive, cleaner, and more developed. There are many, many more tourists. I got one thing right - at least in Trang, nobody speaks English. My phrasebook could be a joke book written in Thai for all the reaction I get when I try to say anything. Our first Thai dinner was from a street vendor with whom no communication was possible. I will never know what I ate that night. The one exception is numbers. Everywhere uses roman digits, not Thai ones, and all Thais can speak English numbers. Of course, I spent two hours on the ferry learning to speak, read, and write numbers in Thai. The second dinner was at the night markets, and was accomplished with a lot of pointing. The vendor tried to warn me that my selection was "very spicy", but I insisted. It was delicious. I'd like to propose Captain Obvious' First Law of Cuisine: "If you only just managed to eat it, you won't be able to digest it". These days I'm eating western or westernised thai food about half the time, which works much better. It pays to stay alert, and to know roughly what things are worth. The bus fare from Trang to Satun dropped from 2500 baht to 350 when I explained that I wasn't English, didn't have cash to burn, and wasn't a total fool. Bangkok will be interesting.

Uppers and Downers

2006-11-12T07:27:00-05:00

_Pantai Cenang, Pulau Langkawi, Malaysia_ When it's good, it's very good. When it goes bad, it goes bad very fast. We ride 20km, walk half a kilometre, and wade a few metres to stand shoulder-deep in warm green water, no one else in sight, an eagle fishing in the distance. It's a perfect moment. Right until Lyn starts screaming. The jellyfish brushed me as well, but I'm not allergic to them. We run back up the beach to the car park and I start looking for help. We need vinegar to neutralise the stingers, antihistamines, and possibly medical attention. I approach a tout, who immediately offers me a boat trip to good swimming beaches with no jellyfish. It also has eagle feeding, and the captain's standing right over there, ready to sign me up. I make jellyfish motions at the restaurant next door, certain that they'll have vinegar. The baffled waitress offers me squid at 6 ringgit per 100 grams. A second tout immediately gives me directions to the hospital. Since the pain isn't improving, we decide to follow them. Lyn's brave enough to ride while injured, but not brave enough to let me ride for her. It's a 25-minute trip in rain hard enough to make your eyeballs hurt. The hospital provides antihistamines and painkillers. We match them with burgers and beer back in Pantai Cenang, and the next day, we don't go to the beach.

Fast Idle

2006-11-12T07:25:00-05:00

_Pantai Cenang, Langkawi_ "It's self-revving," my fiancee comments. The motorbike - one of the largest on the island - is getting more than enough revs from her personally, but glued to her back at 70km/h, I'm not going to argue. The beautiful coastline and imposing cliffs flash past, as I struggle to unfold the map against the wind. The GPS is useless, unable to see the sky between the press of our bodies. There's something not very manly about being on the back, but with the locals swerving all over the road, I'd rather trust her reflexes than mine, and, more importantly, so would she. We pull over for a photo op near Tanjung Rhu, the low rider crouched on the white sand, its rider posing in front of a perfect beach fronting uninhabited islands. I'm too busy enjoying the composition to reach for the camera. The best photos are the ones you never take. We swing through Pantai Kok, an entire beach nearly deserted apart from the occasional local couple sitting on their bike opposite the beach[1], and one unfortunate tourist couple who were sunbaking topless until we got there. At Gallery Perdana we're stunned by the quantity and quality of gifts presented to Malaysia from foreign governments and, more disturbingly, from local corporations. They come from as far as Sudan and Australia, but we don't see any from the US[2]. Telaga Tujuh is the highlight of the trip to date. The seven waterfalls footed by deep clear-water pools are unremarkable, but it's possible to slide from one to another. A couple of Japanese tourists look at us like we're insane, and perhaps we are - go off the seventh falls and you're in for the best, and last, slide of your life. The Langkawi cable car shows us exactly how far that last slide would have been - nearly a hundred metres. Overcome by vertigo, I'm unable to walk the suspension bridge between two of the island's higher peaks. One poor tourist, either braver than me or lacking my self-knowledge (and understanding partner) is miserably pinned most of the way across. At Kuah we run the ATM out of ringgit and the money-changer out of baht, no doubt to the amusement[3] of future arrivals. Later, with the bike to myself while Lyn's holed up with jellyfish bites[4], I see what she meant. It has a fast idle. I'm burning fuel just sitting here, waiting for the right moment. Perhaps it's the Italian coffee I had in Kuah, but I've been thinking about how to stay here longer, much longer. People need to be trained, arrangements need to be formalised, gear needs to be acquired, contracts signed, accounts organised. The previous night, I'd slipped out to an internet cafe and logged in to a computer I'd sworn not to touch, in order to fix a couple of problems, and spent the next day thinking about consequences, next steps, opportunities. This is as slow as it goes. Resigned, I sit at the intersection at a fast idle. ---

fn1. I'm assuming that, like most locals, the couple are Muslim. This would mean, I suppose, that she can't go into the water since it would mean uncovering herself, so he doesn't either as a sign of solidarity, and theyjust sit opposite the beach. fn2. Yes, we were looking. The recent elections don't change anything. Anti-Americanism is still cool. fn3. Not really. fn4. I got stung, but she got _bitten_. Or perhaps 'mauled'.

Lights Out

2006-11-06T07:41:00-05:00

_Georgetown, Penang_ No one is surprised when the lights go off. The owner of the East Xiamen restaurant uses his mobile - the universal emergency light of the 21st century - to find some candles, and we finish our dinner by candlelight. Getting home is a bit more problematic. We're halfway down Love Lane, a dangerous street at the best of times, and the blackout caused by the storm has wiped out the streetlights. It's pitch black and pouring, _pouring_. The footpath is constantly obstructed, so we have to duck from doorway to doorway, checking for traffic each time, because there are still a few poor motorcyclists about. Out the front of Traveller's Lodge, the road is flooded to a depth of about a foot. Lyn wades it; I climb over the side wall, which is a successful but unpopular choice. Home safe, we sit on the roadside tables drinking cheap Thai beer and getting drenched by passing cars.

Up And At 'Em

2006-11-06T07:41:00-05:00

_Georgetown, Penang_ The smart way to do Penang Hill is to catch the mini train to the top, then hike the jungle trails back down to the botanic gardens. Still smarting from my defeat in the Cameron Highlands, that's not how I did it. Even getting there was an adventure. Over here, if someone tells you "Bus X goes to Y", they mean that "bus X goes to somewhere roughly in the same suburb as Y, and no bus goes closer". This counts double if the person is a bus driver. It's easily a two kilometre hike from the "bus stop[1]" to the botanic garden, and that's if you know the way. The scowling man in the bakery was very helpful, though, leaving his store to point us in the right direction. Perhaps he was glad of the respite; the girls' school across the road had just closed for the day and the shop had been full for a while. The paths are largely unmarked, and mercilessly steep. The jeep track, while less acrobatically challenging, is much more psychologically damaging than the narrow jungle trails that we quickly switched to. From there, of course, we got hopelessly lost[3], ended up on something called Viaduct road, and only made it to the top by hiking along several kilometres of very boring flat road. We arrived too exhausted to do anything more than glance at the (apparently very important) temple. There's a hotel with a restaurant at the top. We sought it out, having exhausted our 1.5L of water and become very sick of dried salted chickpeas. The food was nothing special, but the restaurant did feature a number of "peaceful" pit vipers living in the vines directly above our heads. Signs pointed out that we viewed them at our own risk - as if we had any choice. Staff also pointed out a 15-centimetre centipede which made a break for my bag, although they were at pains to explain that, presumably in contrast to the pit vipers, you can't die from a centipede bite. The hotel apparently also has scorpions, but I didn't see any. I did find a cat, which looked scared. The "train" back down was absolutely packed, and moved agonisingly slowly. From the bottom, though, there was only two non-functioning bus stops and a crazy man between us and the fridge full of Chang[2] back at the hostel.

fn1. More accurately described as a 'bus open doors'. fn2. This stuff is very bad for keyboards. I spilt a single drop on the keyboard last night, and had to pull it apart. Always going to happen. fn3. Fans of "Backup Plan" will be interested to hear that I had neither phone, map, nor GPS for this trip.

The Other Half

2006-11-06T07:34:00-05:00

_Grand Plaza Parkroyal, Batu Ferringhi_ The cocktails are delicious, the music is live, and the surroundings are beautiful. But there's no snakes. And that's really the problem. The Parkroyal is pure four-star luxury. A sparkling warm pool is set in a large garden, complete with a cocktail bar (full-service, complete with little flags reading "service please" that you wave around from your recliner). Three restaurants serve delicious local food and fairly adequate Western food. The Javana Lounge features comfy chairs, a wide range of drinks, and live music all night. The two-piece band is a bit cheeky - while she sings, he's seated at a grand piano, which he uses only to prop up his laptop. It looks like the laptop is driving the backing tracks, making this glorified karaoke. And it's there that we've ended up. The problem is that, apart from drink cocktails and listen to the music, there's not much to do. The next night would see us - back in RM40/night accommodation where we belong - hanging out at the Sunset Bistro and drinking RM6 beers rather than RM30 cocktails. Unlike the Javana Lounge, or any of the Parkroyal venues, it's actually _on_ the beach. We run into a couple of Swedes and a very friendly local who turns out to be a snake handler. An hour later the bulk of his audience shows up and we form part of a nervous eight-metre circle containing some very stroppy four-metre snakes. Along with the requisite python and (mostly harmless) mangrove snake, they've got a King Cobra, and it's _not_ happy to see them. We had no idea any of this was going to happen. There's nothing wrong with the Parkroyal. But if that's how the Other Half lives, it's comfortable - and _boring_.

Airborne

2006-11-06T07:34:00-05:00

_Batu Ferringhi, Penang_ 'Hold your arms in the air', the big guy says, 'and run towards the water.' 'Run fast', adds the timid voice in my head, 'or the harness will cut you in half'. I'm not much of a runner, so while the boss is dropping crushed leaves from his hand to gauge the wind direction, I'm eying the ten metres of soft sand to the water. Twenty metres further on, attached to my waist by a rope, lies a small speedboat crewed by a local and co-piloted by a Swedish girl who's along for the ride. The boss comes back and ties a red ribbon to the right-hand side of the parachute harness. On his word, I'm to pull on it. As he switches it to the left side, then back to the right, citing changes in wind direction, I have a look at the straps. I'm a climber. I know what good rope looks like, and this isn't it. I also know ways to tie ropes to shackles _securely_, so that you don't have to use a little plastic cable tie to prevent slippage. Distantly, I wonder if I should provide some instruction. But there's no time. The boat takes off, and I start running. Within a few steps I'm airborne, the parasail lifting me smoothly into the air with absolutely no spine-snapping jerk whatsoever. From there on it's plain sailing. The boat driver's control is so good that when he lowers me to sea level for the optional "dunk", only my ankles end up in the warm green water. There's barely any sway, so I can enjoy the view without experiencing the nausea that marred my skydiving excursion. Directly underneath is a small fishing boat, the owner's broad-brimmed hat nearly completely concealing him. Foreigner's Rock, for which Batu Ferringhi is named, is a couple of kilometers ahead. It's tantalisingly close to shore - evidently too close, because someone has carved an enormous love heart, no doubt including two sets of initials, on the side. The boat circles back to the start point, and I haul on the rope marked by the ribbon. Evidently it's on the correct side after all, because I swerve in for a fairly gentle landing on the sand. Honour restored, I hand over the fifty ringgit and head across the road to get my pack.

[21] Backup Plan

2006-11-06T07:32:00-05:00

_Tanah Rata, Cameron Highlands_ Over breakfast, I overheard a young backpacker explaining to a couple of girls how he'd been lost in the jungle for most of the previous afternoon. Her first question was "did you have your phone on you?" Our clean-cut young hero explained that yes, he did, so he "had a backup plan". This made me angry until I remembered that my strategy is essentially the same. On Friday's jungle hike, I carried a phone and a GPS. In case of serious trauma, the plan was: 1. Call in my coordinates 2. Wait for the helicopters In my beautiful, rose-coloured world, a legion of paramedics would immediately rappel down, administer morphine and antivenom, and convey me to a luxurious recovery villa. Everything would be paid for by my insurance. This plan has one serious flaw: the helicopters aren't coming. Moving from a developed to a developing country, you give up some visible conveniences. Clean streets. Hot water. ATMs that work. But you also give up a lot of invisible infrastructure. When a hiker got lost on Mt Bartle Frere in Cairns and the local police couldn't find him, the Special Tasks And Rescue force flew 800km from Brisbane to join the search. They knew he had a phone on him, but it was out of range, so they loaded a GSM transmitter on to a helicopter and flew it over the mountain in the hope of picking up his signal. Through mass application of manpower, organisation, and expensive equipment, they found him. The last people who got lost in the jungle here in the Cameron Highlands weren't found for days. At Tekek, rescue for an unconscious near-drowning victim eventually came in the form of a local resident, a small motorcycle, and an improvised sidecar. Bangkok doesn't have any public ambulances at all. That's not to say that the safety net doesn't exist. The jury-rigged rescue vehicle proved sufficient to save the unfortuate non-swimmer's life. Some of Bangkok's hospitals are so good that tourists have elective surgery there. But if you go jungle hiking out here, don't just pack a phone. Pack a map.

Extended Downtime

2006-10-29T02:07:00-05:00

_28 Oct, Tanah Rata_ With the loss of my notebook to yesterday's downpour, and nothing to do in my present state except read and write, I'm forced to revisit some earlier material.

_Johor Bahru_ Nothing works in this country. Fresh from Singapore's humourless efficiency, we arrive at the border with thirty dollars and no ringgit. Surely an ATM won't be hard to find. It's not. We dodge legions of insistent touts and beggars, and find one tucked into a grimy corner at the exit of the border station. It's Out Of Order. No worries. Could happen anywhere. We switch our singapore dollars for riggit at one of the dozens of moneychangers, dodge another round of touts, and head into town. We quickly locate an ATM outside Bumiputra bank. It has an English-language mode and a relievingly familiar interface. But it won't give us any money. No problem - we switch to the backup visa cards. No cash. Okay, don't panic - we know the cards are good because they worked in Singapore. Backup card, secondary account. Backup card, primary account. My personal card. Nada. Okay, this ATM is stuffed. Two from two. Not great, but recoverable. We walk around a few blocks and don't see another one. Then I ask at a Seven Eleven[2], and they direct me to the one we've already tried. Back at the border station we ask one of the increasingly threatening touts, and he directs me to the first one. Right. Plan C. We catch a local bus to Larkin bus station, where we should've been anyway (see Do Not Skip Step 8). There's an ATM there, but it dispenses nothing but little pieces of paper that read "Transaction Cancelled". These are not legal tender, even when you're desperate. Okay. Plan D. I have a triband phone with an Australian vodafone SIM with international roaming enabled. It costs a fortune but Always Works, even here. The nice woman at Savings & Loans says "the card is active and the account has funds. It should work". Obviously, she hasn't been to Malaysia. Anyway, at least it means that the account hasn't been cleaned out or frozen, and if we can get back to Singapore, we'll be out of trouble. The US dollars we're carrying will get us out, if it comes to that. Plan E. We explore the station and find another ATM. I'd explained to the bank official that this was our third, but she still told me - several times - to try another. I do, and am very surprised when it hands over a thick wad of notes. We hit it up again for another RM600 while it's feeling generous. Perhaps she has been to Malaysia after all. Okay. We have cash. We're staying. We buy tickets to Mersing from a nearby counter. We'll be getting there in the evening, so I want to make sure we have somewhere to stay. The guidebook gives the phone number of a suitable hostel. I call it from my known-good mobile, and get nothing but a series of beeps. I try a few other combinations of international dialing code, country code, leading zero, state code, and local number. Nothing. Okay, I can call Australia, but I can't call next door. No worries; there's a bank of payphones. I have only RM50 notes, not coins, so I'll need to buy a phonecard. At that point I understood no Malay at all, but I speak Machine to a very high level, so I'd rather deal with them. I've already spotted a phonecard vending machine. I press the button for a 10-ringgit card and feed it my note. It spits the note out so violently that I'm forced to chase it across the room. Recovering my cash, I try again. This time, I'm ready, and catch the rejected note before it lands. The locals at a nearby table call out for me to press the button for the appropriate denomination before inserting my money. It's what I'm already doing, but I try it again anyway, with no success. One of the locals comes over, makes a great show of pressing the button, smoothing out the note, and inserting it, only to be summarily rejected. He asks me for a different note ("maybe that one is damp"), but it makes no difference. He shrugs and goes back to his meal; he can't make it work either. I give up and acquire a TM phone card from a nearby snack store, after nearly being sold a SIM card instead from nearby phone store. Back at the payphones, I discover that half of them are coin-only, half of the remainder aren't TM-branded, and half of what's left don't work. This leaves one from eight. I insert the card. The LCD screen says something mysterious in Malay. There's no dialtone, and a tiny pin has slid down in front of the card and then only partially retracted, preventing me from removing it. Eventually I pull it clear, after using much more force than I'm accustomed to applying to "delicate" "electronics". I return with a pocket dictionary. The phone flashes its messages for only a couple of seconds at a time, so I have to scribble them down, then step back from the phone and translate them. It begins simply enough, with "kad?", which I'd taken to mean "Please insert your phone card". More confusing is "sila ambit kad". After some paging through the dictionary I conclude that the phone is ordering me to "Be seated. Remove card." Stalemate; there's nothing to sit on. I study the card again, looking for clues. There's no english text, but there is a tiny triangle at one end. I'd been inserting the card backwards and upside down. With this revelation, I'm able to wrestle a quiet, crackly interstate call from the payphone, and book us in to a hostel in Mersing. It isn't really necessary, but when things start to go wrong, my top priority is to prevent anything _else_ from going wrong. An hour later we board the bus to Mersing. Mercifully, it works. --- fn2. English store name, English-speaking staff, goes my logic. It's true but not the whole truth; everyone here speaks English.

Jungle Gym

2006-10-29T01:59:00-05:00

_27 Oct, Tanah Rata_ There are many ways to deal with a fever. Bed rest, paracetamol, and lots of water are all good choices. A five-hour jungle hike in the pouring rain is not. Afterwards, Lyn commented that "the last bit was a bit miserable". By "the last bit", she meant "the second half". We saw approximately six-tenths of a monkey, a lot of (fairly small) spiders, and three drenched and miserable hikers. There are some rather spectacular trees if you're not too busy watching your footing to see them. One had tilted out of the ground and then grown strong roots back down, forming an organic cave that'd be a good place to shelter if you become one of the many people forced to spend the night in the jungle. A loop of strong vines hanging down from the canopy formed a natural swing that we were too cautious and demoralised to experiment with. It's probably just as well. From the top of Mt Berembun, you can see a lot of mist. We didn't stay long. The steep track down involved a lot of scrambling and would've been quite entertaining, dry and healthy. The hilarious thing is that it was me that pushed for the Cameron Highlands. Lyn wanted to shoot straight through to Penang and then Thailand ASAP. She's fine, now, and has given me (along with coffee, cake, and more paracetamol than is good for me), 24 hours to get well. Meanwhile, we're locked in mortal combat with mosquitoes that, with dangling legs extended, are more than an inch across. We've secured the windows despite the stuffiness of the room, and I've already nailed one with Thailand Confidential[1]. Lyn's attempting to spray them with 'Medicated Rid Repellent', possibly in the hope that the "soothing camomile and vitamin E" will calm them down, because it certainly doesn't kill them. The assault continues, with each of us spotting for the other. I slap another one on to the bed, then flick its mangled body aside. It flies away.

fn1. A mid-weight paperback with a glossy cover that's easy to clean.

Brass Monkey

2006-10-29T01:57:00-05:00

_26 Oct, Tanah Rata_ After five hours on a bus, we've reached Tanah Rata in the Cameron Highlands. This path isn't just beaten, but leveled, steamrollered and bitumenised. The cafe where we had lunch offers 10 minutes of internet access to "check your mail while we cook your food". No thanks. I'm trying to give it up. This is a backpacker highway. Everyone on the sign-in sheet was next heading to KL, where we've come from, or Georgetown, where we're going. Still, it has its benefits. The bus was air-conditioned, roadworthy, and had a sane driver. We were met at the bus station by a friendy tout and brought directly to the hostel. Everyone speaks flawless english. The western-style vegetarian lasagne was excellent. Nothing wrong with that.

Loadout

2006-10-24T09:38:00-04:00

_KL_ Nearly a month in, I've found a new routine. The first thing's always my glasses, which hang on the back of the bed frame behind my head. Underwear, shirt, shorts. Travel wallet under the shirt. Contents never change: two passports, two visa cards, a hundred US dollars, and about 500 ringgit. Time to load my shorts . 150 ringgit[1] from the travel wallet to the zipped inside pocket on the right. Small change in the back right pocket. Tissues in the same pocket to stop the change jingling. Map: right thigh pocket. Key, receipts, tickets, other authentication devices: left thigh pocket. Notebook, pen: left inside pocket. Phone: Right inside pocket. Palm, if I'm carrying it[2], back left pocket. Compass[3], LED penlight: right lower rear pocket. I'm carrying everything I need, and it looks and feels like I'm carrying nothing at all. But I've forgotten to have a shower. I drop my shorts back on the bed. They go "clank".

fn1. The day's budget for both of us. Unused amounts carry forward until they get spent on beer. fn2. These days, I am. It's hard to write entries in netcafes, because they tend to be filled with the sound of gunfire, and anyway, the internet stresses me out. Handwriting's no good because it's frustratingly slow to do, and *really* frustrating to later retype, even when I can read it. So this entry's being typed on an RM350 folding keyboard attached to the Palm. I think that means somebody, somewhere, has won a bet. fn3. Invaluable. The map gives position but not bearing. I even use it inside shopping centers.

A Simple Plan

2006-10-22T09:45:00-04:00

_Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia_ Deepavali. KL is polluted, noisy, crowded, and not at all like the beautiful beach I'd rather be on. We're woken by bells at 7:30am every morning. Lyn's chest infection is getting worse. And I'm not even supposed to be here today. It was a simple plan. We bought our bus ticket to Lumut, gateway to the island paradise of Pangkor, well in advance. The Transnational bus had already sold out, but we got Kuantan Ekspres tickets for only 50% more than the going rate - fair in the circumstances[1]. We had seats 6C and 6D on the 10:00am bus. Four hour trip. Ferries run every half an hour unti 7:30pm. Accommodation booked. Fixed-fare taxi available from the ferry terminal, and we could hike it if we really had to[2]. Bags packed. Alarms set. Birthday cocktails in the pool, here we come. It starts to fall apart as soon as we reach Puduraya bus station. It's absolutely packed. We present our tickets at counter 35, expecting to be given a platform number where the bus is waiting. It's 9:35 - plenty of time. Instead, a employee scribbles a number on the back of the ticket and leads us outside. He points at a bus and walks off. As we try to board it, it fills up and leaves[3]. By now I've figured out that it's a shuttle bus to another bus terminal, because Puduraya is full. It's 9:45. Controlling our panic we board the next shuttle. We reach the new terminal at 9:53. "P7" is written on the back of my ticket. We find Gates 2, 3, and 4, but no Gate 7 and no Platforms at all. Lyn's lost her voice by now but I manage to get the attention of one of the dozens of CB-wielding officials for long enough to find "P7" spray-painted on to the road. We're told to wait - our bus isn't here yet. It arrives by 10:30. As we wander over I comment idly to Lyn, "If they've oversold the bus, it might be helpful to get on first". But our packs hold us up, and by the time we're ready to board, the bus is full. A smartly-dressed Vietnamese man who managed to board but couldn't find a seat is thrown off. There's a lot of talking on CBs and mobile phones. Eventually they close the doors. Ok, we've missed it - GET THE PACKS GET THE PACKS GET THE PACKS. Back to the "platform" for some strategising. Bus two arrives. I seize Lyn's pack from her and send her on board. By the time I've stashed the packs and boarded, she already has a seat. One seat, and she's sitting on it. I squeeze in, but the inevitable happens, and we get thrown off. Next bus is 12:00, according to the official, who says he's sorry. The Vietnamese bloke who's been thrown off two busses so far wanders over to us and says something unpleasant about Malaysians. OK. This isn't working. Go to plan B. I try to squeeze us on to a Bas Ekspres bus. After some negotiation the driver says I can pay cash on the spot if the bus isn't full. The Vietnamese bloke doesn't wait to find out if it's going to fill up and gets on board. He doesn't have a pack to potentially get split from, so he has this option. They don't throw him off. It fills up, of course. I see some people with tickets being turned away. Who the hell oversells a bus on the busiest day of the year? 12:20, and the third Kuantan bus hasn't shown. Right. Plan C. There's a Transnational bus here going to Ipoh. From there we can get a taxi to Lumut for RM60. Even a taxi directly to Lumut is within the scope of my buy-my-way-out-of-trouble reserve, at RM200. So - search for a taxi, four hour trip, hike to ferry terminal, ferry ride, taxi ride, check in. Probably doable, but too many risks, too little time, Lyn is already down and I can't keep this up for the rest of the day. Bail. So we check back in to Pudu[7] for the third time. The owner, a former Aussie formerly known as Peter Mitchell[6], offers to go and get our money back from the Kuantan office downstairs. He's a friendly guy but definitely Not To Be Messed With, and it doesn't surprise me much when he comes back with the money. So we're pinned down - too sick to move even if there was anything to move *with*. To be honest, KL is probably a better place to ride out Deeparaya than Pangkor. Could be worse. I would now like to present Captain Obvious' First Law Of Busses[4]: _If you only just managed to buy the ticket, you won't be able to catch the bus._ The New Strategy, as yet untested, is Get On The Bus At All Costs[5] *with full packs*. After tickets have been taken, send one person to stow the packs if necessary. Good practice, anyway.
---
fn1. If Deepavali is like Christmas, Hari Raya must be like Easter. They happen so close together that department stores call it "Deeparaya". The country goes berserk. fn2. Really, really had to. Unencumbered, we walk 50% faster than anyone else in this country, even in crowds. With the packs, in 30 degree heat with narrow, uneven footpaths we're lucky to break 5km/h and even a couple of ks becomes an endurance event. fn3. Omen. fn4. This is related to Captain Obvious' First Law Of Climbing, which states that "If you only just made it up, you won't be able to make it down.". I would like to invite reader submissions, in the form "If you only just X, you won't be able to Y." fn5. This may get me knifed in Thailand. fn6. He married a Malaysian and, pursuant to Malaysian law, converted to Islam. He's now called Mohammed something, at least technically. fn7. The shuttle bus stops well short of Puduraya, due to traffic. I manage the hike to the hostel wearing both packs, for a grand total of roughly 25kg, or 45% of my body weight. It's doable, but the stairs hurt.

Melaka

2006-10-18T05:27:00-04:00

You know you're adventuring too fast when you spend over an hour at a netcafe, and you still have an entire page of notes left. In shortform: There's a weird ecology on the shores of the polluted river through Melaka. It consists of small crabs, large crabs, axylotyls (in large numbers), and GIGANTIC MONITOR LIZARDS. The biggest one we saw was hiding in a drain - must've been well over a metre long and very fat. Yet another good reason not to go draining in Malaysia. It's quite hard to get ripped off here even when you're trying. Standing in the dark at the gate to the Melaka Sound & Light Show, I'm under the impression that it's RM20 to get in. I only have RM50 and RM17 in change, so I give the guy the 50. He can't change it, but explains that it's only RM10 for both of us. I hand over RM10 in change and he gives us the tickets. We're working by torchlight, so it's all a little confused, but at this point I realise that I have accidentally performed a well-known confidence trick *on myself*, because he's still got the 50. After I make a brief but frantic search of my pockets (while casually sizing myself up against the two guys there and coming to a conclusion of Not A Chance), he locates it in his and hands it over with an apology. I now have a tshirt containing Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. I hope that this won't get me in trouble, either in martial-law Thailand or (more likely) at Heathrow. I'll turn it inside out if asked. The wannabe-political-prisoner in me wants to print shirts containing the UDHR on the outside, and "UDHR removed by official request" on the inside. After an adventure at (and to) Portuguese Square, I would like to award myself the titles Rider Of Local Busses, and Inefficient Eater of Crustaceans. While waiting at the bus station for a bus that would never come (tbey'd finished for the night), a local offered to ride off and find a taxi for us. Failing to find one, he went home, swapped his bike for his sister's car, and dropped us home. Awesome.

Mixed bag

2006-10-18T05:13:00-04:00

There are lots of things in my notebook and no obvious common thread that would let me wrap them up into a neat little entry. So here are the working notes, to be packaged later. *Unnecessary...* Out of respect for the country and a desire not to seem like yet another ignorant foreigner (despite being said ignorant foreigner), I've been trying to learn some Malay. It's not a hard language. I've been frustrated by the fact that everyone here speaks much better English than I'll ever speak Malay, so there's not really cause to use it. Still, I get a kick out of stringing the occasional phrase together. I knew I was making some progress when I approached the Transnational counter in KL and said "dua tiket ke Melaka".. and she answered me in Malay. Unfortunately, I had no idea what she said, and the rest of the transaction was conducted in English. This happened to me again later on, in response to "di mana medan portuguese?" - the directions sounded extremely detailed but were unfortunately useless to me. Baby steps. *... and insufficient* When my Malay isn't unnecessary, it's insufficient. We've reached the point where we can order from some restaurants even without a menu, which is just as well, because more than half don't have one. If you don't know any Malay, your options become "Fried rice fried noodle! Fried rice fried noodle!". If you do know some Malay, you'll be able to say "nasi lemak", but won't be able to understand why they won't give it to you - even if they served it a day or two ago. Instead, all you can do is eat what they give you, pronounce it delicious, and then say "apa nama ini makan?" so that you can order it (or avoid it) next time. *Batu* Looking directly up in the Batu caves, you can position yourself so that drops of water hit your glasses after falling roughly 20 metres, which means that you can watch them falling like glass marbles. It's pretty cool, even if it makes you look like a weirdo. *Petronas* Just outside the Petronas towers, you can buy a "roleckkssss" if you want one, or even if you don't want one. We got out of there pretty quickly, but not before getting hassled by another monk. The first one was cute, and touching, and we gave him a few bucks. This guy seemed to want RM50, RM100, RM150, based on what he was mutely pointing at. I think they use the bracelets they give you as a way to identify people who've already been hit once and shouldn't be approached again.. so I now have a Bracelet of Repel Buddhists +1 if anyone wants one. Petronas looks much, much cooler at night. The haze creates a sort of halo behind it - go pollution! It also appears that they've mounted a good old-fashioned cannon (or maybe a plank?) on top of one of them. It might come out in the photos. *Police* At the police museum, there is much talk of Communist Terrorists. Now, it seems that the communists were not all happy-friendly people, and some pretty bad things happened - but it's impossible to take that terminology seriously. Particularly when you're looking at an exhibit of a normal-looking top and bra labelled "Women Communist Terrorist Accessories". There are also some totally badass weapons (up to AK47s), which they seized from the enemy in police operations. 0n the next aisle over are examples of what they used to do the seizing - light machine guns (including bipods), a multi-chambered grenade launcher, and an antitank weapon. Meanwhile, a bloke at the backpackers joint we're staying at is wearing a vintage t-shirt that says "CCCP". If they come for him, I'll advise him to go quietly.

Chin-Ups On The Altar Of Progress

2006-10-18T05:03:00-04:00

KL's Lake Gardens are pretty but mazelike. They contain twisty roads, a very expensive bird park (containing a restaurant), and Nothing Else To Eat. Anywhere. Even if it's raining. We eventually located a large bag of barbeque chips (a traditional local delicacy, I'm sure), which fuelled an expedition up to a sculpture garden. Besides the usual modern-art wankery, it had a Monument To Progress made out of large steel pipes in asterisk-like formation. It was actually kinda cool, and I don't even like sculpture. Bit slippery in the rain, though. At the National Moment further up the hill is the usual statue of square-jawed soldiers hoisting the flag. But *these* soldiers are standing on top of a pile of dead commies. I'm developing a certain respect for asian literalism; the "fire exit" signs that show an enormous inferno only steps behind the fleeing stick-figure, and that same unlucky stick-figure being held at gunpoint on a "no trespassing" sign are particularly touching.

The Hell Out of Melaka

2006-10-18T04:55:00-04:00

Woke with the intention of going to Afamosa Water Park. Language difficulties once again precluded a normal breakfast. I've noticed that here, you order your food and then your drinks, in contrast to the Australian tradition of drinks first. What this means is that, if you start your order with drinks, you won't get to order any food. After the brochure, afamosa.com, and Google all failed to turn up anything more useful than "Tai Lye Bus Service #34 from Melaka Sentral. Maybe.", I called the resort +. They told me to take a taxi, for about RM70 one way, which is about half our daily budget. I asked for Plan B and was told to get a Transnational bus from Melaka to Tamin, and ask to be let off at Afamosa, which is sort of on the way. After our Portuguese experience, I was wise to this - there was no way we'd be able to get back. By this time Lyn was starting to feel like there was an alien living in her chest and feeding off her throat, so we agreed to bail. Within an hour we'd returned to the hostel, packed, convinced the nice woman at reception to refund most of our (prepaid) night's accomodation, and headed for the bus station. Within two hours we were on a bus heading to KL. When we arrive, we arrive without a plan. When we leave, we leave in a hurry.
----
+ Via SkypeOut, actually. It's a funny world where you use VOIP because it's *easier*.

In Soviet Malaysia...

2006-10-14T06:02:00-04:00

*...taxi hail YOU!* It's like a reflex. Every time a foreigner walks past, the taxi drivers say "Yes Taxi?", "Taxi?", or sometimes, more intimidatingly, "*TAXI!*". Sometimes they whistle, shout, or clap their hands. We just tune them out these days. I have this theory that we don't see many tourists on the streets of KL because they're all in taxis. Note: sometimes the people who are whistling, shouting, and clapping their hands, are your friends trying to get your attention. We nearly lost the rest of the group at Batu Caves. *...bus catches YOU!* Busses here are... practical. It's so hard to get over to the curb that sometimes they don't bother. And pressing the 'next stop' button doesn't even always cause the driver to stop the bus, but it will make him open the doors. Sometime between then and the next stop, he'll get around to closing them again. This usually means that, on disembarking from a bus, you're in the middle of the road, traffic is moving, your bus has already left, and you're in prime position to be run over.. by a bus. I nearly saw this happen. I raised the issue of speeding and aggressive overtaking with a local. and he calmly replied "Yeah, that's a bus thing." *...motorcycle doesn't see YOU!* Even if you make it to the footpath, you're not always safe. We've actually been forced to jump on to the _road_ by a motorcycle that was proceeding along the footpath at a fairly good pace. *...barman buy beer for YOU!* We found a pub in a side street of Jalan Bukit Bintang. A real pub, not a restaurant that serves beer, which seems to be what you usually get. The beer was frighteningly expensive (RM47/jug - we're only paying RM40/night for accommodation), but the barman, a Thai, lived in Adelaide for about two decades before moving to Malaysia. He ended up shouting us a jug. *...dinner wait for YOU!* It's 7pm. The food court is _packed_. Everyone has a meal in front of them. _No one_ is eating, except us. Ten minutes later the call to prayer sounds over the PA and everyone starts eating at once. Ramadhan does funny things to food-court economics.
---
Assistance for the Internet-impaired

Piscine Molitor Patel

2006-10-09T07:58:00-04:00

I'm sitting at the back of rescue boat three. We're stranded on a sandbar. To the sides I can see rescue boats one and two, on the same sandbar. Behind us is the distant shape of the Bluewater Express - the boat we're _meant_ to be riding peacefully into Mersing. In front of me is a crewmember, hauling on boat two to push us forwards, while another leans on the motor to raise the propeller clear of the sand. At the front of the boat the two Canadians sit there grinning, strapped into their harnesses like paratroopers ready for insertion. In the distance the sun is setting. We left Panuba at 11am. And for the last three hours, I've been reading a book about being stranded at sea.

Mersing

2006-10-09T07:29:00-04:00

_Mersing, Johor Province, Malaysia_ We stood on the docks at Mersing, listing to the distant call to prayer as the everpresent haze continued to darken. The distant shapes of the fishing boats at sea was almost creepy. One in particular - a construction barge? - looked more like some kind of distant sea monster. We also saw the Bluewater Express, a reassuringly large and stable-looking ferry.

A Far Cry from Mersing

2006-10-09T07:19:00-04:00

The Bluewater 4* is an oversized speedboat that does 55km/h and is a little on the bouncy side. In the interests of accuracy, the sign at the front should read "-life jacket- bilge pump, jumper leads and old rope under your seat". Still, the voyage could have been a lot more traumatic, thanks to the Travacalm pills Lyn was carrying. I only took one at first, but the first five minutes of the trip had be ripping into the packaging like an addict. They stop you from getting motion sickness by knocking you out. ...which made things a little interesting when it was time to get off at Air Batang. The driver, by now the only other person on the boat, pulled alongside the jetty and motioned us to get off while he expended considerable effort keeping the boat alongside. I was able to scramble up wearing my puny 11kg pack, but Lyn's 14kg behemoth (not counting the separate daypack) had her pinned between the boat and the jetty. We managed it in the end, and no one had to go swimming. From Air Batang, it's either a 5-minute water taxi to Penuba, or a punishing 20-minute uphill scramble in 30 degree heat wearing full packs. We hiked it, much to the alarm of the Penuba staff, who greeted us with "Air Batang?!" The beach is small but peaceful, apart from the unfortunate presence of a couple of English families with hordes of small children. This is, unfortunately, a resort, not a backpacker joint. One particularly loudmouthed mother was holed up in the internet cafe, simultaneously yelling into a mobile phone, trying to sort out some kind of trouble at home. This became a theme; at Bamboo Hill I overheard an American techie trying to do tech support over the phone for more than 20 minutes. Sometimes, you've just got to let it burn. ------------- . * No, not the Bluewater Express. Yes, we were surprised too.

ABC

2006-10-07T22:31:00-04:00

*ABC - Kampung Air Batang* _Kampung Air Batang, or "ABC" as the locals call it, Tioman Island._ The five metres between me and the pontoon is more fish than water. A Japanese snorkelling group is feeding them and huge brightly-coloured fish are teeming. It's out of my depth and I have no idea what's on the bottom, although the looming shapes of coral rocks in the shallower water further along the jetty gives me an idea. But Lyn's already on the pontoon, so I have no choice. A nervous plunge and a few short strokes later I'm there. We sunbake on the pontoon with the fish so close I can hear the grinding noise as they chew something off the pontoon's sides. Then we progessively build up our confidence in the deep water by jumping off the side and swimming back to the ladder. Lyn is scared of the sea despite being an expert swimmer. I'm scared because I know I'm not. Across the beach, on the side that's not a construction site, is a high jungle. There's a group of snorkellers at our depth but on the other side of the beach. All we need are monkeys to complete the picture. *ABC - Airway. Breathing. Circulation.* Lyn hears him first, but it's only after the drowning man returns my questioning wave with a desperate one of his own that I realise he's serious. I'm in the air before I have time to think. Lyn's a couple of seconds behind me, but crosses the 30m of deep water efficiently and reaches him first. He's flailing, out of his depth, but conscious. Lyn seizes a lifejacket from the nearby snorkellers and gives it to him while I head for his mate. He's floating peacefully face down in classic snorkelling position. Out of my depth and beginning to get in trouble myself, it takes me a few seconds to realise he's not wearing a snorkel. I flip him over. His eyes are open, his lips are blue, and he's not breathing. Lyn and I manhandle him towards shore. As we reach shallower water we're joined by the first of his friends. We've been shouting for help, and a couple of 6-foot English guys have finally arrived from the jetty. Lyn dispatches one of them to retrieve the other victim. Now jacketed, he's not drowning but he is stranded. We get him in to the rocky shallows and his mates start doing CPR - badly. Lyn directs them to tilt his head back and not blow so hard - they'd already inflated his stomach. Somehow, his breathing restarts. It's ragged, and he's still unconscious. A crowd is gathering on the beach but no one else moves to help as we haul him up on to the boat ramp. He's _heavy_ - it takes five people to move him. From there we get him in to the recovery position and wait. A motorcycle shows up but it's no use to us. There are shouts of "handphone" and "sidecar", and about 10 minutes later the "ambulance" shows up. We heave him in to the sidecar, propping his head up with a lifejacket, and three people help to push the underpowered motorcycle back up the boat ramp. It takes off, with the victim's friend perched on the side. It's 3km to Tekek jetty, an hour to Mersing via speedboat, and god knows how long from there to the nearest hospital. Everyone drifts off. One of his friends comes over to thank us. The monkeys we were looking for earlier come down on to the beach. A local taps a laconic finger in acknowledgement as we start the hike back to Panuba.

Step 8

2006-10-04T08:31:00-04:00

How to catch a bus from Singapore to Johor Bahru in nine easy steps: 1. Go to the Queen St bus station. 2. Get on the Johor bus. 3. Get off at the checkpoint. 4. Get your passport stamped out of Singapore. 5. Get back on the bus. 6. Get off at the second checkpoint. 7. Get your passport stamped in to Malaysia. 8. Get back on the bus. 9. Get off at Larkin bus station. Buy a ticket to Mersing. *DO NOT SKIP STEP 8*. We skipped step 8 and ended up at a very dodgy checkpoint infested with touts. It took us nearly an hour to figure out that we weren't in Larkin and buy a ticket *to* Larkin. From there, the run to Mersing was much less traumatic. Unless you count overtaking two trucks at once while tailgating another bus, uphill in the rain on a blind crest..

Stopping all stations

2006-10-02T21:54:00-04:00

It took me a long time to realise that when you reach the end of the MRT line, you've reached the end of the country. We did that twice yesterday. At one end is Changi Village, which is peaceful, inexpensive, and miserably hot. We spent a little time on the beach, regularly ducking to avoid being run over by passing 747s - have a look at Lyn's pictures to see what I mean. At the other is Chinese Garden, which is currently hosting the Lantern Festival. It was sort of like the Lights Of Lobethal, only with more lanterns and some seven-story towers we climbed up for a better view. Mooncakes are a confusing but delicious mixture of sweet bean curd and salted egg yolks. Mine didn't have any military instructions in it. Next to the dorm is a baggage storage area that's triangular in cross-section. Today, for the first time, I walked in and got my bag *without* banging my head on the ceiling. It only took me four thumps to learn. The first policeman we saw in this country was in our hostel. And he was looking for someone. We changed hostel the next day. The Inn Crowd, where we're staying now, has no policemen. It also has a bar suitable for entertaining two Canadian women who have to stay up until 1am so they can call their travel agent back home and get the hell out of here. Begging here is infrequent and sophisticated. It's more of a cold-reading combined with a confidence trick. It starts with a well-dressed man coming up to you on the street and telling you that this will be a lucky month for you, that you have several close friends, that you are a good reader of people, or other cold-reading fishing material. From there he speaks continuously, shotgunning you with predictions, and moves straight into the trick. This consists of writing something like "Blue 3" onto a small piece of paper without you seeing, then folding it and giving it to you. Then he'll ask you to pick a number (from 2, 3, 4) and a colour (from red, blue, green). By altering the script slightly he can force you to pick blue 3 - eg if you pick "2", he'll say "pick another". You pick 4, he crosses them both off, leaving 3. You open the paper revealing him to be a genius mind-reader, he opens a folder with pictures of a temple, starving children, and other worthy causes, and then demands money. How much he asks for depends on how he's read you. I was happy to give the first guy a couple of bucks for the entertainment, even though I was rather dubious that it was going to charity. The second guy asked me if I wanted to help the children "a little bit" ($100), "a bit more" ($200), or "a lot" ($300), and got rather stroppy when I gave him nothing. Of course, I'd sabotaged his trick anyway - asked for three birds, I gave him "magpie", "kookaburra" and "raven", which made it rather difficult for him to force me into choosing "eagle". The more convincing kind of beggar comes up to you in saffron robes and shaved head, gives you some kind of prayer card, and then says "buddha temple" "buddha temple" over and over until you make a contribution. The zoo /night safari needs its own entry. But I saw a backstroking polar bear, and that alone was worth the price of admission.

The hard road

2006-09-30T09:08:00-04:00

_Was on a path to nowhere, the harder the road,_ _The more broken baggage we carry the larger the load_ The internet access at the new hostel's just as hopeless, but at least it's close to some netcafes. We were migrating from one hostel to another, walking casually on a crowded footpath alongside Rochor Canal Rd (a main street), when I heard a loud *bang*. In Adelaide, this means a car backfire, so when I casually glanced back and saw *A MAN WIELDING A RIFLE* I was alarmed. Nobody seemed to be running, and, wearing 12kg backpacks, we _can't_, so we were lumbering slowly away when the man picked something up, got back into his car, and drove off. That's when we spotted the sign on the side of the car, which read "Crow culling. Keep clear". At least he's a good shot. Even when no gunfire is involved, shopping is hopeless in Singapore. Everything costs too much, the sellers are always pushy, and even in Funan (the IT mall) the range is disappointingly small. We'd have been better off at Ted's in Adelaide. But after two solid days of effort, we're now armed with an Olympus FE-170. So far I stand by my allegiance to the keyboard, because it's taken less time to type this than to upload Lyn's photos over this surprisingly-slow connection. Back at the hostel, we were instructed to take a taxi to a nearby monastery and meet a man called Chen, on the first door on the left past the fountain. Standing on a chaotic street corner in the pouring rain, armed only with my wits and a Brazilian named Rafael, I was starting to feel like I was in an episode of the Amazing Race. At the monastery Chen gave us some fascinating insights into Buddhism (friendly, peaceful and helpful) and Singapore's bureaucracy (not so much). The trains run on time, but not without cost. It's impossible to walk quickly in Singapore. It's too hot, the footpaths are too narrow, and the traffic is, in the words of a local, "merciless". So it took me nearly an hour to hike back to the first hostel, retrieve my towel (which had completely failed to dry, having fallen off the line and into a puddle), and hike back. We had a fantastic Vietnamese dinner courtesy of a Couchsurfer called Leo. It's beginning to look like we'd better get over there.