alien invasion
July 7th, 2008. Published under general/photos. No Comments.
Independence Day: as viewed from the 27th floor in a central Bangkok location…
Let’s ‘ave it!
Needless to say, I recieved tropical soaking on the ride home.
Classic BKK Graf
June 1st, 2008. Published under general/photos. No Comments.
Very tempted to bust out my super-size magic marker and add another comment below the “no thank you”.
I’ve seen this gem at a few locations around town. If anyone can shed any light on the meaning please comment.
71 punks
May 29th, 2008. Published under general/photos. 1 Comment.
Or more accurately; punks found at the bottom of my Soi (Suk.71)
I thought these upstanding citizens were a one-off, until I can across this fella on Khao San road a couple of days later…
he seemed happy enough, though something told me his mate had been hitting the Chang pretty hard;
Bloody nice bloke.
Postcard from Tibet (via Pakistan & Western China)
May 24th, 2008. Published under Travel. No Comments.
Hello from Lhasa!
It’s been a while since my last postcard and i know you’ve all been dying to find out what I’ve been up to. So in a nutshell…
India had it’s good points and bad points, though compared to other countries with similar attractions it’s bad points go off the scale. Seeing as I wasn’t interested in joining an ashram, finding myself, smoking copious amounts of cheap hash or talking bollocks with faux hippies I was quite happy to wave goodbye to India and say a big hello to Pakistan.
Pakistan rocks! It’s not dangerous (unless you want it to be), and the “Death to America” squad generally keep to themselves, planning their evil schemes in the privacy of their cave/tea shop/gun making factory or wherever.
The vibes changed the moment I crossed the border. My exit from India was a laboured bureaucratic mess of traipsing from one window to get a ticket to give to the official in the next window and so on… Then you walk across no-mans-land to the sound of blaring music coming from a massive PA system and approach a guy in jeans and t-shirt sitting under an umbrella at a table and the first thing he says is “how’s it going, you like the music”? Great! I hung around for the Closing of the Border ceremony which was like a football match with India on one side and Pakistan on the other cheering on their “team” of soldiers while they parade up and down doing python’esque silly walks and blowing raspberries at each other.
Lahore was a cultural extravaganza. On the second night there it was a mate of the guesthouse owners birthday and he’d arranged a gig on the roof performed by some local heroes fresh home from a tour of European festivals. Great music and a late night was enjoyed by all. I should mention at this stage that Pakistan is a completely dry country, with not a sip of booze to be had except in the foreign embassies which i wasn’t frequenting, so the gig was fueled by sprite alone. That’s not to say that Pakistanis don’t like to get shit faced. Their drug of choice is Afghan hash, which is smoked in large quantities by everyone . Everyone male that is. Maybe Pakistani women do partake, it’s just that i didn’t really see any (women that is). Where are they? The few I did see out and about were fully clad in Bhurka’s so you could just make out their eye’s behind the mesh.
The highlight of Lahore was “Sufi night”. There were seven of us (white folk) ushered through the middle of a throng of hundreds and sat down in front of the makeshift alter, which was enough to make me a wee bit paranoid. This was eased when a huge Pakistani Jesus lookalike wielding an enormous drum charged over to us, shook our hands and said “you are welcome here”, before taking his place alongside another drummer in front of the crowd.
Apparently Sufism is a kind of Islamic mysticism. From what i can make out it involves a load of blokes getting together and getting as stoned as possible while banging out some breakbeats on huge drums and dancing about in a trance. Not unlike a rave back home then. It seemed there was a great deal of kudos to be had by the number of spliffs someone could smoke at the same time, with lots of red-eyed folk managing to cup their hands together inhaling eight at once. The entire mass of people heaved under a dense cloud of hash smoke and the locals were keen to pass the dutchie on to their guests and that meant us. I haven’t really been smoking (hash) for some time now and my initial “I’m okay thanks” was met with such insistence that before long we were all puffing away with the rest of the Sufi massive. I was doing okay and getting into the music when i realised i had just passed a spliff onto a policeman who had appeared next me. He clocked my double take and the subsequent look of horror in my eyes, grabbed me by both shoulders and asked where i was from. “England! that is my favourite of all countries! You are very welcome in Pakistan!”. He pulled another spliff out of his pocket and gave it to me to light. Friendly folk those Pakistanis. Share a spliff with a policeman: Box ticked.
I should point out that that there were some women allowed into Sufi Night. I saw four in total but they had to sit at the back. In a cage.
Peshawar was Intense. I managed to get a beer in the smugglers bazaar, sitting in the “narcotics” section in a stall with piles of opium and heroin on one side, and another pile of Afghan hash on the other. While i was there i hired an armed guard with an Argentinian i met and we took a trip through tribal land along the Khyber Pass to the Afghanistan border. Took the obligatory photo at the border, trying to blend in wearing a full Shalwar Kameez and, er, holding a Kalashnikov (the guards idea).
Onto Islamabad (the capital; shit) for my Chinese visa, and up into the mountains. Northern Pakistan was great, no tourists, astonishing trekking, camping, glacier crossings, Indiana Jones style rope bridges etc. Real boys own stuff and I’d love to go back sometime.
The only thing about the country I wasn’t a big fan of was the food. I like a Kebab as much as the next man, but three times a day was a bit excessive. Every meal consisted of some kind of meat, a tiny dish of chopped tomato&onion (this would constitute the portion of vegetables), and a few chapatti’s.
I was elated to discover on crossing the border into China that the mainstay of western Chinese meals appeared to be that ubiquitous Asian dish “Meat on a Stick”. Woo-hoo!!! The Chinese border crossing was exciting though. Everybody on the bus was looking forward to a cold beer and the prospect of seeing women again, maybe even women that you can actually talk to! The beer bit worked out okay. Beer in China is actually cheaper than water, which sounds great, but if you haven’t drunk for a while it can work to your detriment. The ” actually talking to women” bit was a little harder as i speak no Chinese and I couldn’t find anyone that spoke English, women or otherwise. Luckily I crossed into Tashgurken with an aussie guy Arron who’d been studying mandarin for three years and got me through the first week, otherwise I think i would have had a very different experience.
The Chinese checkpoint at a 4,500 metre pass (snowing again) was amusing as we were filmed during the whole process. It appeared the Chinese wanted to show of their new interrogation technique, which I’ve gotta say is inspired. An army guy gets on the bus and requests your passport. While he’s holding your passport, and this is the clever bit, he gives you a steely stare and says; “What is your name?”. I wonder how many people they catch out with their cunning mind tricks? I wasn’t one of them.
The first major town we hit was Kashgar, where there were lot’s of middle aged American tour groups there for the famed Sunday market, the same reason we were there. Faced with the prospect of the first Saturday night in weeks where we can actually buy a beer, and an early start the next day, we got shit faced drunk with a yank we met on the table next to us. The septic claimed to be have a PHD in Uighur, the local dialect, and when we got kicked out of the restaurant he suggested we find another place open for a drink. We left it in his capable hands discuss with our taxi driver where was the best after hours drinking den. In retrospect, asking a taxi driver in an isolated desert outpost where to get a drink after 2am is akin to saying “I’m rat arsed and want to fuck!’. After getting dropped outside the local brothel we attempted, in vain, to explain that we did actually want a drink and weren’t speaking some kind of cowboy code.
Anyway, China was a bit weird, and the Chinese like to stare. A lot. They don’t seem to recognise that it’s rude and will unflinchingly stare at you in restaurants, bus stations, even when your taking a shit. The reason I notice them staring when I’m pooing (which is quite often) is because there are no doors, or indeed walls, or anything resembling a cubicle whatsoever in many Chinese toilets. Roadside toilets in particular consist of a trough in the ground by the road with a series of planks across them to put your feet on. Nothing else. On two occasions now a passing Chinese person has decided that the I represent a great opportunity to practise his English despite the fact I’m squatting down with my nads hanging out trying to squeeze one off;
“Herro”
“I’m shitting”
“How are you?”
“You can see I’m taking a shit right?”
“Where you from?”
“Look, just fuck off!”
Talking of shitting (i can’t help myself), today i fell foul to what commentators of that uniquely Asian sport Extreme Eating call “The Follow Through”. That’s what you get for eating donkey meat noodles for breakfast followed by a Yak burger for lunch I guess. Though I should’ve known better than to tackle three steps at once on the way to the Poltala Palace.
After two days dodging checkpoints to get to Lhasa it’s not quite the “holy city” i was expecting. The Chinese have transformed it into something of a Tibetan theme park for moneyed western tour groups (hence the checkpoint dodging bit - i wasn’t prepared to cough up 120 pounds for a Tibetan permit I’d never see and no-one would ever ask for). The real Lhasa exists, but it’s been relegated to a small square around a temple surrounded by identikit Chinese streets and shops. Seeing Han Chinese doing a brisk trade flogging traditional Tibetan prayer wheels and flags to tourists who wouldn’t recognise a Tibetan if one slapped them across the face is a tad disturbing.
I collected my Nepalese visa today and am ready to get moving again with a brief detour to Everest Base Camp. I’ve always childishly amused myself by giving bogus and increasingly outlandish occupations on visa application forms (gymnast, chimney sweep etc), though at the Nepalese embassy this morning i nearly got caught out by actually having a visa application interview; something that’s never happened to me before. I was asked into the consular officials office, sat down and the conversation went something like this;
“Hello Mr Anderson, in what city in England do you live?”
“London”
“So you are a Welder?”
“Yes”
“What do you Weld?”
“umm… Sheet metal”
“What kind of metal?”
“Err, Stainless steel. For fences, mainly people’s gardens” (Shit! Too much information)
“People don’t use wood in London?”
“Yes, some do. But sheet metal is becoming more popular”
“Ah, so it is the fashion yes?”
“I do okay”
He seemed to buy it and gave me a 60 day visa, though I might stick to plain “student” from here on in…
Postcard from India Part II: Back in Delhi
April 21st, 2008. Published under Travel. No Comments.
Delhi is shit. A nightmare. If you were ever considering visiting, don’t.
I’m back for the third time now and have managed to whittle down my stock response to begging from “Sorry, I have no money” to a simple “No. Fuck off!”.
The same can be applied to: “Hello sir… Rickshaw?, Map of India?, Where you from?, Shoe shine?, Keyring?, Hashish? Opium?” etc. On one mildy tipsy evening I was returning to my guesthouse and attempted a twist on the standard “fuck off” exchange with the 37th person to ask me if i wanted buy any hash (must be the Beard), responding; “Hash? No… I’d like a gun. Can you sell me guns? Maybe a grenade?”. The shady character stopped in his tracks, had a think for a moment, and replied; “Okay. Come with me”. I didn’t.
I’m even finding myself annoyed by the cows this time round, and they’re about as non-confrontational as you get in Delhi.
If you want to get out of town for a day or two destinations close-by to Delhi don’t offer much relief. I’ve just returned from Agra and, apart from the Taj Mahal, I gotta say it was also pretty shitty. I did however manage to see the Taj for free thanks to some sound advice from a local drug dealer (not something you get to say too often). After overhearing I’d not yet visited the Taj, he suggested to some americans he’d just sold some hash to they give me their ticket stub and i amble up to the gate claiming I’d previously forgotten my camera and could i please be re-admitted. Great! Works every time apparently, and i saved the the equivalent of 5 nights accommodation…
I received an Indian style search on the way in. After making a great show of emptying the contents of my bag, they sent me back to a cloakroom to deposit my knife, mobile, lighter and cigarettes. Second time round they uncover a previously undisclosed USB cable and send me back to the cloakroom. Third time they signal me to the front of the queue, check my bag again and produce my camera, some paracetamol and a packet of condoms (well, you never know!). They then proceed to make a great show of emptying the pack of jonnies on the table, inspecting each one and calling another guard over who smiles, winks, heartily slaps me on the back and waves me through. I imagine the crowd would probably have cheered if one of them had been used.
Anyway… The Taj Mahal was lovely at sunset. Big, shiny and red.
In contrast I’ve enjoyed my time in the north of India, particulalry Leh and the surrounding areas. The Himalayas are massive. Really, really, really big. Huge in fact.
And the people are very friendly and chilled out.
So… Tomorrow I pick up my Pakistan visa (finally) and wave goodbye to India for at least a couple of months (Delhi for good!!!) and look ahead to some more high Himalayan action and, er, islamic fundamentalism.
It’s been interesting. I’ve met some good folk and had some really good times along the way.
Some things i have learnt:
-Trying to queue is pointless. Elbow your way to the front, loudly demand what you want and shove some money in the persons face.
-NEVER purchase a ticket for the “un-reserved” carriage of a train no matter how short the journey (unless you want to sit on the floor on a bed of half smoked bidi’s and snot while fles crawl into your ears and up your nose).
-After some practise it is possible to sleep on trains despite the incessant nasal shouting of people walking up and down the isles requesting money in exchange for some sweaty salad floating in a warm tin bucket full of un-identified slop. ..>..>
-The state of solidity of your shit is a perfectly legitimate subject of conversation at dinner.
Something I have yet to learn:
-To my continued frustration I have no idea what the fuck a head-wobble is supposed to mean (except that it appears to be an acceptable answer to absolutely any question whatsoever).
Where am I?
March 21st, 2008. Published under Travel. No Comments.
