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August 2007 Archives

August 28, 2007

Hit the road Jack

Jack Kerouac's seminal work "On the Road" is out of date, old hat, anachronistic, passe. This was my drink addled comment to my American mate for the day Simon as we ate and drank away the early hours in the street hubbub that was Chinatown, Rangoon. OK it's a classic of the beat generation of the fifties and inspired in part the counter culture revolution of the sixties. However it needs to be revisited and up-dated to represent the current crop of young people who want to extract every ounce of adventurous and spontaneous discovery that instinctive youth demands. I met Lisa in Chang Mai while having breakfast on the cafe bar veranda. She has used TEFL (Teaching English as Foreign Language) as a means to work, travel, and party in various parts of the world. She had just arrived that morning from India where she had been teaching and was to spend some time in Chang Mai where she previously worked to meet up with old friends, party, and then head off to Tanzania where another old friend and colleague had fixed her up with a teaching position.

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August 10, 2007

The Road to Mandalay (a moral dilemma)

If you're travelling to Asia it's difficult to avoid Bangkok, unfortunately. In my youth when stationed in RAF Jurong in Singapore I made probably the most exhilarating and exciting trip of my life. In 1971 the two day third class train journey packed with many Asian nationalities along with a couple of mates and much live poultry snaked its way through the rubber plantations of Malaya and into Thailand. This would be exotic now, but back then Benidorm was little more than a fishing village, and six months or so earlier I was factory fodder at Guest Keen and Nettlefolds. I have happy memories of Bangkok, the Buddhas, Reclining and Golden, the floating market, and yes the exotic bars and the girls with the shiny beads. We met GI's on R & R from that old crazy Asian war. It may have been youthful insensitivity, but I can't remember any guilt feelings about the fact that I was having a ball in Singapore and in an other part of S.E. Asia they were experiencing a living hell.

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August 6, 2007

Getting laid by the local bike

Luang Prabang is lush. I mean that in every sense of the word. Nestled at the confluence of the rivers Nom Ou and the mighty Mekong I could barely make it out as we arrived, camouflaged as it is amongst the tropical rainforest. Its the size of a large village, and is an UNESCO world heritage site. The area is inundated with temples, wats and stupas and visitors mingle at ease with young Buddhists monks amongst the crumbing French colonial buildings. Nothing really happens in Luang Prabang which along with its location is much of it's charm. Most of the activities take place in the surrounding countryside and up and down the rivers. The first morning, to get my bearings, I hired a bike. I've never been totally conversant with a bicycle, not having owned one as a kid. My first real experience was at the age of fourteen starting a job as an order boy in Wilson Road in Ely for the Home and Colonial, or was it the Bon Marche or even the Maypole? Well one of those now defunct post war grocery outlets. My inability to ride a two-wheeler was matched by my proficiency for physics because the first thing I did was to place a boxed order in the front basket whereby the bike did a perfect forward somersault. I was sacked within a week

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August 4, 2007

Me, four old sweats and the blonde

Have you noticed that many wise adages have opposing and equally sagacious proverbs. "Strike while the iron's hot" can be tempered with "look before you leap" or "act in haste repent at leisure" and "self praise is no recommendation" can be countered with "false modesty is the worst form of conceit" In siding with the latter I would like to state that I have no complaints about the way God or nature formed me. I may not be Hollywood nor am I a circus freak. I was given enough to be reasonably successful with opposite sex. The fact that I haven't has nothing to do with hand I was dealt. Out of the biblical five talents in this department I probably used about one and a half. Part of the explanation is a combination of Catholic guilt, a boys only school and being incarcerated in factories dominated by men in my youth. My social life again was a male dominated culture of the most extreme kind, rugby. When I first started playing for St. Peters RFC women weren't even allowed in the club

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August 2, 2007

It's a jungle out there

After several 24 hour bus journeys in South America last year the eight hour jaunt from Phonsovan to Luang Prebang would be a mere bagatelle. Most of the backpacks, including mine thankfully, were stored on top of the jalopy of a bus and the rest were packed into the aisle where passengers clambered over them to get in and out of their seats. At the back a middle-aged Australian couple, a young German couple, a Lao man and I formed an English speaking fraternity for the duration. Most of the passengers were Lao including a uniformed soldier giving orders to all and sundry and a young plain clothed man with a barely concealed rifle under his denim jacket. The mountainous jungle area through which we were about to travel is still home to Pathet Lao guerrillas although it was explained by our Lao friend that they're little more than a rag-bag of highwaymen now. The armed escort certainly gave the feeling that this was bandit country.

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