155 days and I'm beginning to take a little strain. Don't get me wrong I'm still loving it but certain aspects of constantly being on the move begin to take there toll. For me, personally, its not the dirt, the loneliness, or the living out of a bag, its not the threat of malaria or even sleeping in a different bed every few days (107 different beds in 6 months...) that I'm struggling with. But, for me, the biggest singular issue that i have had to cope with has been constipation.
For the last 3 months i can honestly say that taking a shit has been one of the hardest parts of my day - to the point that when i finally do 'let a prisoner out' or 'drop the kids at the pool' i let out cries of joy and go so far as running round the room giving myself high fives. Christ I'm sad.
Moving on...for the last month and half myself and Mark have been trekking round SE Asia trying to take in the culture, the history and the vibe, whilst battling to not get sucked into the fun, the partying, the readily available drugs (which even plague the restaurant menus) and the progressively free minded plethora of female backpackers...its been rough.
We kicked off in Laos and spent a fantastic 10 days circling this little country. Out of the three countries we have just come through it has to have been my favorite, the people are friendly, everything is ridiculously cheap, Health and Safety does not exist and it hasn't yet been reached by bus loads of fat German tourists (but i feel it is only a matter of time..). The highlight had to have been our two day trek into the mountains. Myself and mark were accompanied by a little guide called Poi. The two days consisted of mountain biking, hiking and kayaking, all of which Mark managed to skillfully fail in. Not 15 minutes into the bike ride 'The Shark' managed to mistake the front break from the back break and in doing so almost completed a 360 (reckon he got to about 335 degrees). He came away with a little less skin on his arms and legs and the knowledge that trekking-guides from Laos have no experience in medical procedures. From there, and i don't like to rub it in, he managed to fall into a a rice patty and slip off a kayak - much to the amusement of Poi ...and myself. That evening was a memorable one as we spent the night in a remote mountain village getting acquainted with the local whiskey (lao-lao) and watching karaoke videos with a hut full of old women with no teeth (not much has changed since Rhodes).
From here we travelled a few hours south into a town called VangVieng - literally a one road town next to a beautiful river. VangVieng exists wholly to serve the many backpackers passing through it. It consists of makeshift restaurants and bars that are adorned with hammocks and cushions and continually show re-runs of Friends. One can only leave these restaurants if you are lucky enough to have the strength or experience of being able to break out of a coma or perhaps have beaten cancer. The menus take into account for every taste and if wanted one can order from the 'Happy Menu' where the options consist of your food being accompanied by 'Weed', 'Magic Mushrooms' or 'Opium'...when the bill comes instead of getting after dinner mints they serve baseball-bat size joints. Eat your heart out Olly Holly.
After finally being able to gather enough strength to leave VangVieng we headed down to a place called 4000 Islands - where the Mekong river breaks into many different parts and creates 1000's of islands (4000 to be exact). All we did here for 4 days was lie in our hammocks, talk smut and drink beer - bring on the culture.
Into Cambodia and after a 17 hour bus trip from hell (we hit a dog, experienced Cambodia's worst pop songs on a continual 1 hour loop and almost bludgeoned to death our bus driver with a sharpened spoon- I wish we had), we finally got where we wanted to be, well almost. Phnom Pen.
We had decided that when we were in Cambodia we wanted to try and get involved in helping out a bit, you know a bit of wholesome charity work in a distant country etc etc. So when we stumbled upon a little restaurant that was run by an orphanage we were delighted to find out that for every beer drank 20c would be donated to the kids and there plight to fight poverty. So we sucked it up and decided to lend a hand - think we smashed about a case and half of the local brew and felt proud to have given those little buggers a better start in life. Eat your heart Angelina Jolie...
Cambodia consisted of many laughs, many frustrations and many prostitutes (that we successfully avoided). Its a weird kind of place, absolutely beautiful but still so affected by what happened there just over 30 years ago. I'm proud to say that the best day of my life happened in Cambodia....the shooting range, where we managed to blow about 2 week's budget on shooting anything we could get our hands on. Yes, I'll admit that when asked if we wanted to shoot a live duck with an AK47 we jumped at the chance, a little too readily, but we made sure that after we had pumped 62 rounds into it's lifeless body we were allowed to give our trophy to our tuk-tuk driver to feed him, his wife and 11 children. In retrospect i think we were lucky that they were, at the time, out of live cows as we were quite prepared (in our frenzied state) to pay $300 dollars for a Heffer and one shot at it with a rocket propelled grenade.
Moving swiftly on as i realise this blog is beginning to grow longer than an English winter (by the way how is it over there at the moment?).
Vietnam, i think the country's name should be changed to 'Viet-fukin-nam', it has to go down as one of the most frustrating countries of all time. I don't know whether its because I'm a little tired and a bit cranky but the week or so i spent there, for me, wasn't the most memorable. Its a country that has realised, in the last few years, that tourism is an industry they can be royally rewarded for. Rightly so, it has all the boxes ticked as a holiday destination hot spot, but they just haven't got it right. Rip offs, too many Germans and a tourist route you cant seem to vier off from all make it a place that i wouldn't rush back to.
Although we did have some laughs. Mark and i met up with some Australian friends (one in particular i had been hoping to see for a while...) and had a great few days drinking too much, going on cheap tours (which i have to say are the best kind as long as they serve alcohol), hitting mud-baths and other random sights, and generally acting like 12 year olds.
The next few weeks see me kicking back on the island's of Thailand with the same Aussies from Viet-fukin-nam, before heading off to Beijing for a day...Christmas day...to see a man about a job (don't ask).
Hope you're all well, love to the family, friends and the chain that ties you to your desk.
Kisses.
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