There is a back story as to how I ended up sharing my hotel bedroom with two blonde Dutch girls, but I assure you it’s not especially interesting so I’ll resist elaborating further. Suffice it to say that I did and for that brief period in the dying days of 2009 throughout the country of Cambodia the subject of my meeting, subsequent enchamberment and implied living arrangments with these two young ladies, speculative or otherwise, was one of considerable intrigue for hotel owners, gawking locals and assorted leering tuk-tuk drivers nationwide. “Lucky guy” quipped one idler lounging in a basket on a street corner, “greedy man” remarked another lazing in a hammock as we walked by.

This was something I was starting to notice, whereas the Vietnamese and Chinese were busy and industrious, here, despite the crushing poverty so many people seemed to be just hanging around doing nothing. “Its because they’ve had a genocide of the intellect” had claimed one big boorish British imperious Jeremy-Clarkson-looking-mutha-f**kr I’d met who was running a charity. “They are lazy and in need of help” he claimed addressing the empty space slightly above everybody’s head, Listening in amusement I’d always suspected that charities tended to attract pathological personalities, my suspicions proved well founded as I later discovered. His helping out also extended to the local industry, although less for charity and more for services rendered shall we say. Of course it was nonsense what he claimed, that a nation so dug up and torn apart as Cambodia looked a little like Lord Of the Flies was hardly surprising. I’d always suspect that many charity workers were really about getting their jollies having people suckling at their metaphorical teats.

Anyway I digress, back to the story, so there was me and two blonde Dutch girls, after dinner we decided to check out the Penomh Penh nightlife, and made our way towards the aptly named “Heart of Darkness”. “No guns allowed in nightclub” claimed a sign at the door, and it wasn’t a joke, apparently the place was regularly shot up. “As soon as the guns go off, the hookers hit the floor, and its suddenly a scary, empty place with nowhere to hide” claimed one internet poster I’d read. Approaching the door I was frisked but luckily I’d remember to leave my kalasnikov back in Nam. Inside looked like a scene from the fall of Rome. A weird mix of bra-less deadlocked bedecked backpackers, middleaged pot bellied P.E teachers and tiny elfin temptresses. The P.E teaching perverts generally stood with backs pressed to the wall with beer in hand as the local ladies ground up on them with a frightening ferocity. One grinning chap with an uncanny resemblance to Jabba the Hut stood in the corner with his eyes slowly glazing over as one pixie like girl gyrated into him. I had sudden horrific flashes as a hellish vista open before me, imagery of tiny grasping hands rooting, searching, clawing through mounds of flesh.

We sit down near the back observing the spectacle and are joined by the French version of the Addams family. They were ostensibly a mother and father and two sons in their early twenties. The mother got up and started dancing in a wholely inappropriate manner with her two boys, it began to seem as if she had brought them here as some sort of initiation ritual as she pushed them towards the local honeies. As one of them paired off with one of the pros, the other turned back to whom I had presumed was his mother and plunged his tongue down her throat.

It’s time to get the hell out of here I told my blonde haired retinue and it was back out onto the streets. As we wander around in search of somewhere else the ramshackle darkened city took on an increasingly sinister feel, solitary white men appear like wandering spectres in unlit debris strewn streets. Suddenly Jeremy Beaddle’s uglier brother turns into a side alley. I watched him lope off into the darkness, his strange gangly walk and pasty white skin taking on the ghoulish appearance of a badly reanimated corpse slouching on his journey, bound for some god forsaken place. What was he doing here in this infamous place, who would ever come here alone who was not a backpacker. What were these people and what was their business. Were you to put the whole world in a sieve and shake it, whatever dropped out and landed in Cambodia must surely the be the scum of the earth, the sort of people that keep Josef Fritzl awake at night.

Eventually we ended up in an almost deserted Cambodian nightclub. The only other people in the place were a group of Cambodians with a seemingly unlimited beer supply. The young man who appeared to be the leader of the group approached me offering beer, cigarettes and the promise of friendship. Although it quickly transpired that in fact this was all part of the process of brokering a swap deal for my two Dutch blondies in exchange for a choice of any two of the ladies in his entourage. I remember reading a line in the Lonely Planet about how Cambodian patrons of nightclubs are the children of the elite, are usually armed and accompanied by a troop of thugs hired to do their dirty work. We made good our escape.

Photos to follow soon…….

Updates coming soon, tune in two weeks from now……….

Any day you dont find yourself playing Russian Roulette in a Vietnamese prison cell can’t really be described as anything other than good. Whether or not today was going to be one of these days I was about to find out. By some strange, possibly deliberate, bureaucratic quirk on my Vietnamese visa I wasnt quite sure that I hadn’t overstayed my welcome in the country.

I wasnt in the mood for any mishaps so I jumped on the first plush air-conditioned tourist bus bound for Phnom Penh. Ordinarily I might have commandeered the back seat and sprawled my geographically atypically long legs out down the aisle but for some reason this bus had assigned seating so instead I found myself seated next to a blond Dutch girl who we’ll call Erika. In an uncharacteristically loquacious mood I chatted merrily with Erika as the giant behemoth of a bus ploughed through the late morning traffic of Ho Chi Minh city. As it turned out she had followed an almost identical route from Europe as me, with the exception of a short detour to Thailand for a course in massage therapy. Which, she claimed also contained an additional optional component in “handjob techniques” she informed me smiling. Whether or not she opted in for this I didnt inquire.

Long before we could see the Cambodian border we could feel its approach as the usual ramshackle collection of wooden slates and corrugated iron roofs which constitute the standard Vietnamese roadside dwelling began to deteriorate into barely habitable junk heaps.

Eventually the bus pulls up to the crossing for the usual tragicomic farcical pissing contest that characterises a border anywhere in the world. Marched single file and eyed suspiciously for the probable drug smugglers, anarchists and welfare frauds that we most likely are we entered the immigration offices. Ah border guards my old friends, how I have missed your Molotov cocktail of boredom and spiteful malice.

Stepping up to the counter, the guard looked at my passport then at me then at my passport then back at me, I felt like a fly looking back at some drooling snot nosed child about to pluck my legs off for the sheer hell of it. He motions to hand back my passport, moving slowly, almost reluctantly as if his mind, realizing that this was his last opportunity to inflict some horrible damage on me was whirring madly trying to think of some devious ploy which would see me rotting in a prison cell.

Back aboard the bus for a journey of several meters before disembarking once again the driver herds us as though we were sheep being driven into a corral. The crossing on the Cambodian side went considerably smoother than I’d expected, I suspected this had perhaps something to do with the driver extracting a vague fee from everybody onboard for “travel agent” expenses, and collecting all our passports to allow him to engage in what you might term cash based diplomacy. There was no point in arguing we were now entering one of the most corrupt countries in the world where backhanders and greasy palms were considered to fall under the broad and honorable umbrella of “doing business”, oddly enough a, more than any other South East Asian country actually reminded me of another country with which I am intimately acquainted.

On the other side an ultra smooth super straight road in perfect condition ran  right through the landscape in front of us. I suppose its not difficult to keep a road in perfect condition when there is virtually no traffic on it. A few cyclists and motorbike scatter like panicked chickens as the bus straddling the center line barrels down the road at full speed. The driver seems to never take his hand off the horn, I didnt know buses could go that fast.

The contrast between the country we had just left and the one we had entered was immediately apparent, waxy green vegetation sways and dances in the breeze and the countryside looks wilder and less intensively farmed. To my surprise the people too look dramatically different from the Vietnamese and Chinese before them, with much darker in some cases almost Indian coloured skin and bigger rounder eyes. Amidst the smiling faces and waving palm trees this idyllic rural scene from the vantage of the air-conditioned bus could easily be mistaken for some sort of pastoral paradise. But there is an unshakeable feeling that something sickly is waiting just below the surface, a queasiness in the sweltering tropical heat. As the bus stop to refuel we are immediately swamped by hoards of child beggars and hawkers. The door open with pneumatic hiss and the wet humid heat of midday pours in accompanied in single file by a troop of these tiny slightly comical fruit merchants chanting with an almost sing-song refrain “Hello Mister, you buy my pineapple? You buy my pineapple? Hello Mister. Now or maybe later, you buy my pineapple?”

Child Beggers in Phnom Penh

Getting off the bus I tried to swat off one girl wearing a funny pink peaky cap, “maybe later” I replied, fatal mistake I quickly realised the purpose of “now or maybe later” as she followed me back and forth around the bus stop stall chanting “how bout now? how bout now? how bout now?”, ducking and diving between fellow passengers but to no avail I couldnt shake off my squeaky tail. Eventually I stopped and turned to face her, she looked up at me with what was probably a well rehearsed doe eyed expression and said “you no buy my pineapple you break my heart!”. I gave a sigh of exasperation, “why aren’t you in school?” I asked looking down at her, “I go to school in the morning” and without skipping a beat added “you no buy my pineapple no have money for school”. I had the feeling that this was a well anticipated response to a very common tourist question.

Little did I realise that my four foot fruit seller had tired of her current sales approach and was about to resort to her nuclear option. “You like Polly?” she asked, “Wha-” “Polly?” she replied “Holy Mother of effffffff” I roared silently in my head, before I had a chance to react she had reached into her pocket and placed a hideous hairy tarantula on my chest, I could feel its weight pulling on my tshirt as it just hung there. “Okaaaaaay” I answered slowly, “so how much did you want for that pineapple again?” trying to play it cool but in actuality I was standing frozen like you always see people doing in those stupid old films when confronted by some horrible stinging, poisonous creature. I was willing to accept an asking price of anywhere from one to one hundred dollars as reasonable, given the circumstances of course. One dollar sufficed and I was grateful, and it was a very nice pineapple indeed.

Now for some gratuitious music, here’s one by that annoying cue ball Moby, I feel its appropriate since it was used in the Bourne series of films. In fact in many ways Im actually a lot like Bourne or Bond or one of those other legendary nomads, that is if Jason Bourne were to have had a deathly fear of spiders, insects and contracting malaria.

My head banging with a hangover, I awake, rolling to one side I slowly open my eyes. Before me, not much more than a foot from my face, lies that which had perhaps once served as a reproductive male organ, twitching and jerking it swings and bobs hither and thither as if it twere set dancing upon some merry gig mayhap by the mockery of unseen silent demonic flutes. Momentarily transfixed by this monstrous cycloptic puppet, I stare, caught in the hypnotic all knowing urethral glare. Too long I gazed into the abyss and the abyss it stared back into me as if to say “Behold! Such darkened and occulted recesses have I penetrated as now into your soul I delve and there I do see such craven sins that it does start from me like some wanton beast pregnant upon its benighted purpose. Flee! Flee! Before me and the burning light of truth and piety which I bring”. Recoiling in abject terror, drawing the bedsheets close upon me I clutch at the pillow like some desperate shipwreck to a piece of flotsam “Ye gods! Ye gods! Why do you mocketh me?”

So my day had started much as the previous had ended. Willy had in a single fluid almost gentle motion slipped his boxer shorts down over his boney concave buttocks, whos cheeks gently met and parted threatening to reveal unspeakable horrors as he hunched over his bed fixing the linen. In the bunk above me lay a petite Spanish girl with nothing but a flimsy magazine cover spread open unwittingly shielding her from unblinking brown eyed terror beneath.

Later that day I somehow got roped into traveling along with Willy to the Cu Chi tunnels. The tunnels were used by Viet Cong irregulars to penetrate right into the heart of American bases, attack and disappear. The tunnels were tiny and filled with booby traps, I pity anybody sent down to die in that muddy hell. Willy turned out to be relatively normal for a solitary older single male traveler but who knows the most sinister and dangerous learn to cover their tracks. We stopped at a food stall on the side of the road in Saigon where Willy attempted to strike up a conversation with a monosyllabic Belgian man with a tiny Vietnamese girl who looked she’d raided her mothers makeup cabinet, and in a big hurry too. The Belgian looked like a classic pervert you’d expect to see in a Viz magazine or something, big bald head, jam jar glasses and a permanent lupine leer plastered over his sunburnt face, just like my old PE teacher actually. My ears felt violated by his rapist deep tones followed by jarringly incongruous high pitch squelling laughter as he bellyached over some private joke in his own head after every response he gave to even the most trivial of questions. I was unfortunate enough to cross paths again with this man in Cambodia, what he was doing there I never found out although another young looking girl appeared to be sharing his room.

Incredibly load gunfire from Ak47s at the tunnels added an interesting imaginative factor. I purchased 10 rounds off some old guy who had probably killed people with the gun I fired and shot the hell out of some stuffed animals. A good day was had by all.

 

Apologies to my legions of loyal readers. I have been busy of late but I have not forgotten about my blog, I promise an update soon, hopefully sometime next week or the weekend.

I met Sophia sitting at the bottom of the steps. Her eyes were red and puffy,  she had been crying. “Its so horrible” she whispered. Andy was sitting a few feet away, his head hanging limply between slumped shoulders. “How can people do such things? Babies, children…..”. I sat down beside her, resting my elbows on my knees and starred outwards into the traffic chaos swarming around the War Remnants museum. My mind flitted between thoughts and clouded emotions as I tried to think of something comforting to say but instead settled into a wordless stupor.

The museum was filled with photos of atrocities from the war, only those committed by American featured of course not that it matter, the horror of some of the photos left you numb to such trifling details.Bawling, malformed victims of Agent Orange, photos of grinning marines with severed head trophies, that iconic photo of the screaming child with her clothes burned off running from advancing infantry. One photo showed an aged Senator Bob Kerrey, his face looked gaunt and haunted, his eyes fixed in the distance, beneath the photo was a plaque describing how Kerrey in his later years, tormented by the past admitted that as commander of an elite Navy SEAL unit he had partaken in the cold-blooded murder of Vietnamese families, many of whom were knifed to death during a raid on a peasant village. I was reminded of a quote from Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn “If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?”

Our time together was drawing to a close and as night fell, not wanting the atrocities of the museum to be our last impression of Vietnam we decided to let the childlike innocence of the Vietnamese water puppet show be our last memory together. The next day Sophia was to fly home to Paris and Andy was to push onward into Cambodia, I had decided to stay an extra day in Saigon ostensibly to visit the CuChi tunnels but in my heart I knew it was to allow some road between myself and Andy. There was no animosity in it but from the limp promises to meet up in Penomh Penh we both knew it was time, I was sure I’d meet him again somewhere along the trail but where we were going now we had to go alone.

 

“He was comin’ at me like a hoor on a honda” the immortal phrase uttered by a former classmate of mine in reference to some nonspecific  drunken brawl which took place in the back streets of Dublin several years ago. It had lain dormant in the darkened recesses of my memory for all this time, till now a sudden stir of echoes and it resurfaces again into the light.

“Masaaaaaaaaaaaage, maasaaaaaaaaaaage?” Two young ladies in miniskirts and high heels suggestively straddling a revving motorbike pull up alongside me as I walk back to hostel through the streets of Ho Chi Minh. “Ah Im alright, thanks” I reply, undeterred the dark haired beauty on the back of the bike kicks her right leg far higher in the air than seemed nessecery, pivots impressively on the seat and leaps off the bike. Motioning she indicated that I am to take her place and allow the pouting driver to whisk me off to god knows where for purposes unknown.

My pace, which had begun as a brisk walk, then a gentle trot had picked up to a full blown sprint as the motohookers pursued me down the street mounting the footpath several times in an effort to cut me off.

Just prior to this encounter I had been drinking in some late night neon plasterd bar. Standing at one of the bar tables minding my own business, a small Vietnamiese girl catches my eyes and smiles over. Dancing with her friends she works her way over in my direction and grabs me by the elbow and pulls me into their group. Thoughts such as “Hey I must be some sort of super stud” began circling in my mind, just before her friend whispers in my ear, “you take her to hotel, you pay.” “Hmmm I should have guessed” as I back away her friend makes one desperate last-ditch attempt, clutching at my shirt, she screams “But she love you long time!” “Oh my god she didnt actually just say that did she?” ” I come too if you like?” It’s a steep learning curve in this part of the world.

I found these these videos on YouTube, they bore such an uncanny resemblance to a crazed Scotsman I met in Jakarta that I felt they needed to be posted.

Sing in me, Muse, and through me tell the story
of that man skilled in all ways of contending,
the wanderer, harried for years on end,
after he plundered the stronghold
on the proud height of Troy.

He saw the townlands
and learned the minds of many distant men,
and weathered many bitter nights and days
in his deep heart at sea, while he fought only
to save his life, to bring his shipmates home.
But not by will nor valor could he save them,
for their own recklessness destroyed them all —
children and fools, they killed and feasted on
the cattle of Lord Hêlios, the Sun,
and he who moves all day through the heaven
took from their eyes the dawn of their return. . . .

The entire horizon illuminated before me in a ghostly silver-grey light, little fishing boats strewn about the bay blinked silently into life then vanished back into the blackness.

I waited, counted and calculated, but of the cataclysmic fury far out to sea no sound reached the shore, except for that told by the bristling rage of the solitary palm trees dotted along the beach. Walking until the sounds of music from the bar became garbled and muffled by the breeze I sat down in the sand.

After a while a figure approached picking its way delicately along the shoreline, holding her shoes in one hand and bunching her billowing skirt over the spray with her other. “I thought I’d find you out here staring into the sea, my god you’re so moody” Sophia laughed kicking sand at me. “I came out here to look at the storm” I replied brushing off my shirt. “No you didnt!” she howled, “you came out here looking for the meaning of life, I know you did, admit it!” “Grrrrrr” she said as she pressed her knuckles against her forehead in mockery of intense concentration. She moved to kick another pile of sand in my direction but instead lost her footing and collapsed in a heap on top of me. “Somebody’s been enjoying the cheap cocktails, so what happened to the Russians?” I said. “Oh, they realised why everybody was laughing at them and the bouncers had to drag them out the door”, “And the ladyboy?” “Still there dancing like always” “Ha! another story for the blog at least” I thought.

“Vietnam is such a magical place, why do people have to work, why cant they just travel from one adventure to another all the days of their lives” said Sophia wistfully. I began to wonder if we only ever recognise our own folly when we see it expressed by another. “What are you smiling at? Are you laughing at me?” The sight of her angry pursed lips and glowering eyes caused me laugh even harder, she began beating me over the head with her hands in response to my insolence. I had hoped to sing some wild paean to freedom, to irresponsibility, to the infinite possibilities of life untethered but knew I had failed. “Nasty, brutish and short” “what the hell are you talking about?” “Did I tell you that when I first started out, I met a grizzled traveler in St Petersburg who had journeyed in darkest Africa. In Tanzania I think it was, while passing by in a truck he happened upon an angry mob who had cornered a thief. He had been stripped naked and trapped in a river of filth. Eyes white with terror he didnt even bother to cover his genitalia as he ran frantically back and forth to the delight of the jeering crowd. He was beaten to death and his body burned.” “That is disgusting! Why did you tell me that story!” “I dont know, Im not sure” I replied and I was telling the truth. For momentary flicker, in the half light I saw it, the creature on the bridge, I remembered, just a single image less than a second, it turned and looked at me but instead of eyes there was nothing, I couldnt shake it off, that haunted apparition.

Returning now the to the bar, Andy had struck up a conversation with an English builder who appeared to be celebrating his birthday alone in Muine. As it turned out we had seen the same doctor in London before leaving to travel. He made it clear that whilst not only respecting her medical acumen, he considered, too, her mammaries worthy of favourable comment. Carrying the jocular tone I commented on the unusual profusion of beautiful women populating the beach resorts of Muine, but then it was unsurprising that the less attractive were disinclined from strutting about virtually naked.

The night was soon drawing to a close and the blue hue signaled the approach of dawn. Now the road ahead too was becoming clearer. Tomorrow we would reach Ho Chi Minh city and then we would all part company, time once again to go it alone, to experience life’s rawness untainted.

Prising apart the soft pink flesh with my fingertips as I pressed it close against my lips, the dragonfruit burst suddenly revealing its secret inner fleshiness. Juices spilled freely down over my chin and neck staining my shirt. Few things were as evocative of the mysterious Asian southeast as its bountiful bizarre and utterly exotic array of fruits. Once a fruit had been an apple or an orange or maybe even a peach now surveying the enormous fruit bowl at the poolside bar I had a choice between the luscious mangosteen, the bitter sweetness of vermilion tinged spiky rambutan, or might I dare the infamous pungency of the “King of fruits” the durian. Oozing with juice and dripping in the heat, I thought to myself, it never actually said it was an apple, perhaps, although the Dragonfruit of Original Sin didn’t have quite the same ring to it.

My favorite, picking out a fresh young coconut, the bar girl hacked away savagely with a machete exposing the milky clear juices within. Waiting, I scanned the bar, the usual array of lost souls populated this Eden of the fallen. A weird mix of white kids with dreads who can play that one Bob Marley song on a guitar glowering in righteous indignation at a smattering of beer bellied middle-aged geezers with beautiful young lithe-limbed locals. Rootless and rudderless I’d drifted to this aeolian isle of damned, a beach bum kite boarder hangout on Vietnam’s southern hook and the wrong side of paradise, Mui ne was about as far from the sort of travel I had originally envisioned as I been so far.

Rising, the moon was high now and the strong gusts fleeing the typhoon out on the South China Sea set the palm trees lining the beach swaying in unison giving the night a frantic harried atmosphere. Soft sands kicked up from the beach filtered in and scattered across the white marble floors.

Delicately balancing my coconut, skirting around the barside pool I made to the cushioned seated area overlooking the sea where Andy was sitting with the latest addition to our entourage a young doe-eyed French girl of barely twenty named Sophia. We had found Sophia wandering alone in the foothills of Dalat. Her family had once owned a plantation in Vietnam before the war, she had returned here now alone chasing some fantasy of a past she had never known. Given the vast multitudes of freaks, weirdos and miscellaneous hungry wantful creatures I’d encountered wandering the earth, I was glad that we were the worst things that she’d met.

Reclining back against the purple velvet, striking a matching and cupping it from the wind, I lit a cigar and signaled to Sophia, “looks like we’re in for some entertainment tonight…….”

Mickey danced every night at the Sankara bar in Mui ne. A passerby on the street outside looking in would see her silhouetted beyond the shimmering oasis of the pool bathed in the cool blues and greens of the soft mood lighting, twisting and gyrating with her eyes half closed as if in wild rapturous trace to the music. With long luscious black hair tumbling down over her bare slight shoulders, with her beguiling brown softly oval eyes in the impassioned heat of the night many man could be forgiven for making the mistake.

Already she had caught the eye of two Russian skinheads who’d been drinking vodka by the beach all day. We looked on watching in bemusement as the Russians staggering onto the dance floor began circling in ever tightening spirals like sharks closing on a kill. The bouncers too had caught wind to something afoot, realising the danger they began shifting uneasily, signaling for backup. Puffing on my cigar I sat observing from the shadows. Soon the whole scene was awash with muscular heavily tattooed men fanning outward in concentric circles surrounding one semi naked Vietnamese girl who, seemingly oblivious to the threat had now dropped to ground, and with impressive agility, balancing on her fingertips and stilettos began thrusting her hips repeated upwards in a rather unambiguous fashion – blood in the water, I chuckled softly to myself. as she stood up pouncing in a pincer like movement one of the skinheads towered over her from the front whilst the other, encircling her narrow hips with his enormous hands began grinding hard into her from behind. Uncaring and in reckless wild abandon with her arms raised towards the heaven she continued writhing sandwiched between her two pursuers. Word had quickly begun to spread around the bar and small groups of onlookers had begun to gather, pointing and laughing – adding fuel to what was already a dangerous and incendiary situation. It was only a matter of minutes before one of the thugs ground up a little too closely on Mickey sending the spark which would blow the lid on this powder keg.
Chomping down on my cigar, I chuckled softly to myself, this was about to get interesting…………

Sliding in closer against the green baize, with great care and deliberation, I sized up the shot. Bringing the cue parallel to eye level, mentally measuring distances, angles and calculating expectations of all probable future scenarios.

I paused, a Zen-like omniscience descended. I became aware suddenly of the lizards creeping in the rafters, of the rats burrowing in the cellar, of every grain of sand sent fleeing before every stray ocean zephyr born on a butterfly’s wing beat, even of the rotation of the earth herself. Inhaling deeply, I took my shot. Rolling forward less than an inch the cue ball came to a gentle halt sandwiched between my two remaining striped balls. “You bloody Irish bastard!” shouted Andy swinging his cue over his head as if to club me.

We had become pool degenerates. Perhaps it wasnt so much the game but rather the unsettling cabin feverish rivalry which had gradually begun to envelope us. It had now become all-pervasive, twisting and consuming every activity from pool to trivial things like skimming stones across a pond to finding our bearings in a new town, engulfing and sucking the joy out of everything. In the downtime between these bouts we would engage politely in conversation, hoping the other would miss the furtive glances about for the next opportunity to administer a pool beat down. Eventually it all become a bit tiresome.

What had started in Hue over a jovial game of darts had grown into a monstrous rampaging beast following a most brutal smackdown on the chess board dished out by myself in the hostel bar. Andy’s forfeit involved drinking a shot from a bottle aptly labeled “Arse”. It’s sickly salted taste lingered on the tongue and bored into the soul.

It probably would have ended there and then had he not consistently defeated me at connect-four which sent me spiraling into deep brooding rage tinted meditation on the subtle strategic aspects of the game. So much so that months later the far-famed bar girls of Bangkok who specialise in fleecing those foolish enough to try quickly learned to refuse to play me.

“Alright lads!” The door of the bar swings open in march two Welsh lasses from the valleys, “play ye for the table”. I look at Andy, given our intense pool battles over the pervious days, these newcomers should be easily dispatched, we agree to the challenge. I line up the triangle and place the cue ball, the noise fades away until there is only Shunyakasha, no sky, the divine vibration of Om in the shapeless void. I strike, two balls fly off harmlessly leaving the majority of the triangle intact. Damn. Grabbing the pool cue, one of them swigs back a huge glup from her pint glass of lager, with her legs spread wide, cigarette hanging from her lower lip she hunches down low resting her pendulous breasts against the baize and wallops a ball into the far left corner. Andy tries to look nonchalant but I see the faint trace of concealed horror brush like a shadow across his face. She proceeds to clear the table and we beat a hasty retreat in ignominy.

In another bar we encounter two separate groups of Irish guys and a middle-aged American going by the name of Filthy Frank. Detaching himself from a group of other Americans Filthy Frank stumbles over to us glowering half eyed with the drink. For some reason unbeknownst to me this brings howls of protestation from some of the Vietnamese girls in the bar who begin whacking me with their hands. Backing away as I try to fend them off Filthy Frank grabs hold of me by the wrist, “Listen good to Filthy Frank son” he sputters at me, “the women in these here parts, they’re all looking for the same thing” “Whats that?” I ask recoiling in disgust. “Something BIG!” he roars as a film of saliva coats my face. I stumble backwards out the door into the dark batting away Filthy Franks grasping hands and the hoards of shrieking Vietnamese girls.

Our mighty chariot

I take the early morning bus to Hoi An, a city famed for its tailoring industry. Having been fitted for a nice cashmere suit I became dimly aware and somewhat troubled by the fact that it would almost certainly not fit me once I returned from traveling. I found it strange that despite the fact that I was consuming about as much food on a daily basis as the average South East Asian family, I was perpetually losing weight. With several tiny Vietnamese girls crawling over me, tugging and pulling at the suit, one of them was even standing up on a stool just to reach my shoulder, I decided I`d rather just get it over with and would worry it later. After several, what would ultimately be futile, back and forths over the next two days for refittings, eventually I was presented with a fancy cashmere suit to be posted home.

The ancient city of Hue

Hoi An itself is impressible picturesque, on the banks of a river with many restaurants specialising in colonial era French cuisine. Walking back in the orange sodium lite haze to the hotel through the deserted market drove a furious scurrying of rats ahead of me. In my room I lay on the bed watching the lizards moving in their funny stop start weaving motion along the ceiling before drifting off to sleep.

Down along the river bank in Hoi An

I spend the next day wandering around the market places and the old city. My hair had become impressively dishevelled and I finally managed to get it cut. The following day myself and Swiss Andy are back on the road to Vietnam`s beach bum city of Natrang. The bus journey is predictably horrible despite managing to seize the largest bed at the back. It turned out to be a poisoned chalice anyway, it was a stinking fetid mess enseamed with the crusty filth of several decades of grimy travellers. I arrived early in the morning in Natrang with tales of roving bands of youths robbing unwary tourists with tasers ringing in my ears.

Relaxing at day`s end

The marketplace

The unwelcome guests

Arching her back and thrusting her chest forward, the Danish girl shot me a wry look from the corner of her eye, “yah but I was dissapointed, they wouldn’t let me break off the head myself”. It might have been just the motion of the minibus as it careered around the heavily potholed road, but I could have swore she began writhing in pleasure on the backseat at the memory of her trip to the snake farm outside Hanoi. The experience apparently culminated in some Temple Of Doom type ritual involving devouring the still beating heart of a live snake.

I briefly trifiled with continuing the suggestive nature of the converation, perhaps adding some Kenneth Williams inspired rejoinder such as “I bet you like a bit of snake inside you” or some such shite but instead I began edging slowly away from her. Anyway, – that’s what she said

I was now in Hue having broken with my prefered means of transport since I was unsure of the extent of the train network in Vietnam, I had joined forces with Swiss Andy and bought a sleeper bus ticket which would eventually carry me down the entire length of country. In the fluorescent half lite horror of the first night journeying from Hanoi to Hue, it was a purchase I soon came to regret. The driver with his hand poised like some striking cobra hovering above the horn played chicken with fate, the old tin can of a bus hurtled its way down the centre of the highway over taking everything in its path. Surprisingly I had enough leg room in my chair/bed/coffin compartment even after shoving my wallet, passport and laptop under my feet for safe keeping. I closed my eyes and tried to blot out the random swerving and lurching from side to side but some found myself shivering in that sickly wheezy chill of an airconditioned cold sweat.

Miraculously I did mange to snatch a few precious fragments of sleep albeit punctuated by disgusting drips of condensed moisture from the cooling compartment overhead. At one stage I awoke to find myself airborne as the bus momentarily left the road thanks to some large unseen object. Swinging my legs over the side of my bunk, I somersaulted out of the upper compartment to stretch my legs. At the last second I manged to grab hold of the opposing row of beds as I noticed something strange on the floor beneath. The aisle, I gasped, it’s a made a people. My foot was dangled in midair, suspended about an inch above the chest of a sleeping Vietnamese man. The space between the beds was crammed full of people sleeping and bags of rice.