Massage? Let me rub you?

I stepped out of Bangkok airport into the sweatbox climate, onto the airport bus headed towards the centre of town. Air-conditioning! Quite the novelty! Three months in India and Nepal had really skewed my sense of normailty. 4 hours flight had whisked me 75 places up the IMF 'list of countries ordered by GDP per capita', and it was apparent! - the wonders of 'civilisation' flew past the window. Moving traffic, unobstructed by cows! Pavements! Rubbish bins! Shops selling products other than 'Parle G' biscuits! On stepping off the bus - the air! Where was the choking dust? The smell of s**t? I made it all the way to a guesthouse only being heckled once for a taxi. Once! And he wasn't even persistent... Of course all this comes at a price some might describe as 'terrible'...  Capitalism (the relentless b*st*rd) along with His slick protégé, Comercial Tourism, had their glossy claws into the region where I'd disembarked (alighted? can you alight a bus? or is it just trains? regardless i love that word - oh yeah, just so you knows "regardless" is totally the new "whatever", eg:
Cleggers: "Davey C, you like totally promised you'd read my new policy proposal if I got you that skinny frappa mocha latte yesterday"
Davey C: "Yeah, Regardless! Hey Haguester you old poondog! Grab your gashcard! We're off Queefing down Spicy Club!"
Haugester: "Too easy Brew! You know dem dames can't resist my 'muffliato' charm!"). Sloganed T-shirts and tattoo shops peppered the tourist ghetto of 'KoSan Road', a guy was hawking fried bugs, cockroaches and scorpions to passing sunburned mugs (just because the local people have slanty eyes doesn't mean they eat rancid insect gutter vermin (they eat Maccy D's and Kentucky Fried Kitchen like the rest of us - though they don't have Gregs. Wahwah, unlucks!) you shirtless cocksickle!).
Despite this, walk a few streets away (too far for the bucket-drunks to stumble) and a bit of local Bangkok can be found. The sheen only mildly dulled by globalisation, a powerful local charecter still shines through -This was most apparent in the food culture. One market (which I refuse to describe as bustling) was particularly memorable; I put myself at the mercy of some stall holders and proffered some Thai Bhat in exchange for various dishes; some fishey smelling and of irregular consistency (pink rubbery ball filled with kidney bean paste anyone?) others delicious but un-chopstick-able. The food was certainly one of my favourite parts of visiting Thailand. Further down the market I saw a stall selling f*ck-off massive knives, machetes and baseball bats (no gloves or balls), another with heaps of pirate pornography - all the blokes browsing as naturally as a forehead, flipping through boobs and misc fetish material as one might Dickens at Berkhamsted library (Great Expectations being the most modern book you can find there, Harry Pozzle 1 being perpetually out for rent, the waiting list for which I've been on since before I was born).

This was about the point where I discovered one or two of the disadvantages of travelling alone, principally exposure to crazybag wierdos. A friend is a wonderfull ally in any campaign against unwanted company; "What's that? Oh yeah we had those plans that I remember that we agreed on, to go to that place where nutbags aren't invited. Yeah... so see you later mate". Without a companion you can be vulnerable to almost anyone whos fancy you take (I'm not knocking it completetly, quite the reverse, meeting new people has undoubtedly been the best thing about travelling alone, but in general it's probably best to be the chooser, not the choosee...) And so it was that I came to be stood in the corridoor outside my room being verbally accosted by an Iranian international criminal telling me the best ways to obtain passports for the purpose of forgery (solicit junkies aparently). SQUISH! He ruthlessly flipflops a passing cockroach and continues telling me about how his Thai 'girlfriend' (prostitute) keeps robbing him, but why he wont change his safe combination code becauase he trusts her... Tit. (I really hope he doesn't read this...).

This chappy was typical of the holiday makers in the next town, Hua Hin, where I unwittingly strayed en route to the sunny southern islands. Sex tourism is not cool - the sorry balding men with their tiny haggared looking Thai 'girlfriends' in tow, wandering along the grubby seafront are probably one of the saddest, lonelyest things I've ever seen. Even the most wonderfully jolly lady, her fried banana selling cart parked in the middle of the hooker bar district, women leering and giggling all around, wasn't quite enough to get the "Let me rub you"s and "Sucky sucky"s out of my head that evening.

Too many words for now...

Laterz Potatoes!
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Kathmanpoo

It's Mr Gordon's last day in Nepal.
My stomach is thankful; one's dietary requirements cannot be fulfilled on chowmein and buff momo's alone,  despite what Mr Momo Man in the cafe over the road would have the world's press believe. Indeed the consistency of my bottom toilet droppings has been wavering around the 1-2 mark on the ten point viscosity scale for sometime now.
Calum and Chris have gone back to sunny England, a place where rivers are for punting as opposed to Kathmandu where any such endeavor would lead to even the most able Cambridge puntsman being drawn inexorably downwards into an oozing channel of septic effluence. Waste disposal seems to be a big problem here, as in India, people drop all their rancid rubbish in piles on the street and wait for the rain to wash it onto somebody else's doorstep. It's as much to do with individual's attitudes as it is lack of civil waste disposal facilities. Mum, I'm sorry to report that for every Waitrose carrier bag you save with your beloved 'Onka bag' there's 100 million south Asians tossing a crisp packet out a bus window and spitting on it for good measure. It's not because Nepali people are particularly heartless, on the contrary, I've never met a nation of people so accommodating and friendly. There's clearly a necessary job for the government/authorities to educate the populous. I'm sure they would, smiles wide, welcome a new friend, Ms Environment, if only they could see she was down there, under their feet, choking on all their plastic waste.
My next report on 'waste disposal around the world' comes from Thailand. I know you can't wait.


Overall my experience in Nepal has been hugely positive. The country has fantastic natural assets from the Himalayas, to the national park forests. Among other things we hiked up to Everest base camp, and visited Chitawan National Park where we were almost brutally savaged by a rhino (if he'd been like 300m closer and in a rage he probably would have done someone a mischief). We rented motorbikes in Pokhara, and rode up the most funnest winding hill ever. My bike chugged to a halt half way up, certainly not a result of karma for earlier when cackling with glee, I ragged it like a dishcloth past Chris, his bike struggling with his heavier frame. On freewheeling down I gave a local man a lift. I've never been so terrified in my life. I'm pretty sure the guy had a boner, I was seriously considering trying to flip him off with a well timed front 'wheelie'.
We finished our trip with a canyoning excursion. Canyoning is a pursuit for those who find abseiling by itself just isn't wet enough. One makes one's way down a river, abseiling down waterfalls, swimming, sliding and jumping into pools. I've done it before in Germany, this time was different, in a way that can only be described as notably 'Nepali'. The harnesses and rope were, to put it kindly, 'retro'. On the positive side was our guide who was so jolly I thought he (or I) might explode, there was a canister of laughing gas plugged into one his orifices I'm sure. He found it a particularly hilarious joke when, after implying that he would lower me gently down, he subsequently dropped me from about 3 meters onto my bottom. This added to our unease when he told us to leap, 6 metres diagonally down into a pool only 1.5 metres deep. "It's fine" he said. It wasn't. My bum landed on the bottom of the pool, taking a beating worse than Calum's on a typical Friday night.


Gluteal blunders aside Nepal is a brill place. You should totally visit.
Laterz Geeks
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