The Next Great Adventure

This is London?

2009-04-28T23:37:00.002+01:00

Explain this to me. I make eye contact with the guy sitting opposite me on the tube. I say "Hey, how's it going?" His response? "Don't talk to me." So I don't. We get off at the same stop, get in the same lift, and he starts talking to me again. "You got a problem?" he asks me, like I'm threatening him. I say it's a bit of an over the top reaction to a simple 'hello'. He gets aggressive. I tell him this is his issue, not mine, and walk off.

And everyone I speak to about this goes, "Oh, well, you shouldn't speak to people on the tube, you're lucky you didn't get stabbed".

Coming Home

2009-04-12T11:32:00.002+01:00

If I'd sat down six months ago and made a list, a 5 step plan as it were, of things to avoid doing, so as not to be a gap year casualty, my list would go something like this:

- Don't constantly go on about how people you know 'could really benefit from travelling'
- Don't interrupt with an interesting (but largely irrelevant) story about 'that thing that happened to you in Singapore' (or wherever) when someone is trying to tell you about a current (and highly relevant) emotional trauma they're going through
- Don't carp on about how 'everything's different now'
- Don't tell people you've 'found yourself' (or that you now understand what the whole concept of 'finding oneself' truly means, not on an intellectual, head level, but on an emotional, heart level, or through true experience of the very action of 'finding oneself' itself)
- Don't complain constantly about how it's 'so cold' in this country

So I am definitely, one hundred per cent, without question, a gap year casualty.

It's okay, I'm not too bothered (which would be number six on my list if I hadn't confined myself to just five spaces), it doesn't matter. I'm just glad I'm still wearing socks and have never, ever uttered the justification for my feet smelling that 'that's why they're so far away from your face, innit'. I don't have blonde highlights. And at the very least, I'm still self-conscious enough to put quote marks around the words 'finding myself'.

Still, it's a strange and wonderful feeling to be back. The cloistered feeling that made me leave London in the first place has been replaced by a quiet admiration of it's good points, a ringing condemnation of it's bad points but also a general feeling that this may just be another place, but right now it's the place for me. It's great to be somewhere where there's so much going on, even if I haven't had a second spare since I've been back, let alone an hour to check out all the galleries and shows I want to see.

More to the point, my 'eyes are opened now' (number seven) to what London is like. I never really noticed how unfriendly (eight) and closed off it is. People seem quite lonely here, but scared to break out. Sitting on the tube I said hi to the girl sitting next to me. She practically curled up into a ball and cried. I turned back to my friend. As I left the carriage at my stop, I looked back, and saw her staring at me, this enormous, cheerful smile on her face. She kept her eyes fixed on me, the same open-faced joy on her face, until I was two carriages down and she was out of my sight. Strange as that sounds, stranger was the musician I met the next day who gave me a fake address so I could come and see his band play.

Curious.

Do these things have to happen in LA, or am I just lucky?

2009-03-23T16:37:00.002Z

Curious thing. Since arriving in LA I've had the Human League stuck in my head. Maybe because it's a great song, maybe it's because every actor in LA is currently working as a waitress, I'm not sure. It makes for some odd bar chat. My favourite was the girl who plumped herself down at our table as she ended her shift, half mad and ranting from partying too hard the night before, saying she wanted to meet us because she heard we were English. If she wanted to hear our accents, she had a funny way of going about it, she monologued at us for an hour, talking louder every time anyone else opened their mouth and, every so often, letting out a deep bray for no apparent reason.

"I want to write for television. There's nothing intelligent on TV any more, it's terrible."

I squeezed my surprise in edgeways. "Is that true? What about the West Wing or..."

"Oh, yeah, like I've got time to watch for like an hour."

"So you want intelligence but you only want it for five minutes?"

She may not have realised I was playing, but she fixed me with a look brimming with integrity. "Yeah, exactly. That's why I write parodies of adverts."

Apparently this passes the 'intelligent TV' test.

She's not the only curiosity. There was the actor type walking down the street drunk at midday screaming obscenities at his (I'd imagine) perennially suffering agent (not present). I averted my eyes to avoid being hit and as I walked past him he yelled at me, "Why aren't you looking at me?"

I'd be tempted to call that a lucky experience, if the same thing didn't happen another two times before I got back to the hotel.

Hawaii

2009-03-20T05:24:00.002Z

I knew what to expect from Hawaii. Golden sandy beaches, bronzed bikini babes, muscly hunks showing off their comedy-sized junk in speedos on surf boards and all the dudes, beers, gnarley waves and coconut scented suntan lotion you could shake your long, blonde hair at. After a hard slog across the pacific's remoter islands, I was looking forward to some sunbathing time, a bit of beach chilling and more than a few chilled beers.

If I was disappointed in every single one of these expectations (except for the surfers, who were everywhere), missing out on another beach holiday was made up for by an island which offers some of the most astounding natural beauty I've ever come across. Away from Oahu which, with the exception of the view from the Diamond Head Crater, offers mainly tacky tourist beaches and chilled out surfer towns highly reminiscent (in every sense except for location and climate) of Cornwall, there's a rich variety to see.

Take Maui, one of those destinations - like Bora Bora, Bali or Tahiti - preprogrammed into our cultural consciousness to be associated with words like 'luxury', 'celebrity' and 'wedding'. Yet in a forgotten corner of the island, accessible only via a terrifying narrow winding road that veers round steep cliff faces, followed by a two mile hike through a dense and claustrophobic bamboo forest, stands something truly remarkable, a towering 400ft waterfall that gushes out of the cliff face and into a tiny pool below, where you can shower off in its chill waters and warm back up in the midday sun as you admire the view.

Or the Big Island, from which Hawai'i takes its name, which currently sits over the volcanic hot spot that created the rest of the islands in their turn, before they were dragged away by the Pacific plate and eroded by wind and sea. Here you can view the still smoking crater of the Volcano goddess Pele, or view the red glow of a lava river hitting the sea. Or you can take a car and drive up above the clouds, to the heights of the Mauna Loa and Mauna Kea mountains, until the landscape changes beyond recognition and you find yourself driving among the craters of the surface of the moon, or past Mars' red hills, or further until you see something you'd never expect from the beach vacation destination of Hawaii, thick blankets of snow, marked here and there by the faint tracks of skis.

This may not be the Hawaii I was expecting, but Christ, is it worth seeing.

Micronesia

2009-03-13T23:17:00.003Z

Once you've seen one island paradise...

The variety in Micronesia is in the nuances, so here is my very handy rundown of what's what in the Pacific.

Palau

The world's number one scuba diving spot according to many, the blue wall is supposedly unmissable. Supposedly, because of course we missed it. A Republic in its own right, Palau is the most developed of the truly Micronesian islands, and the natural beauty (particularly in the Rock islands) is unsurpassed.

Yap

Yap's sold as the Manta Ray island, but it is also the most traditional island in Micronesia, where women still go topless and tribal huts abound.

Guam

I expected American military bases and Japanese weddings, so I wasn't disappointed. Part of America, although I'm not sure what part.

Chuuk

The only island we didn't visit, this is supposed to hold some of the best wreck diving spots to be found - difficult to dive, but apparently worth it.

Pohnpei

The largest island in the Federated states by far, the highlight here is above the ground at Nan Madol. An ancient city built in the shallow waters of the coast out of gigantic rock pillars many times bigger than people, nothing about this place is easy to believe. Clamber over ancient tribal resting places and kayak between the ruins and the mangrove forests.

Kosrae

The least developed of the islands. There's some good coral for divers, but the Lelu ruins (in theory the forerunners of those in Pohnpei) are badly preserved, overgrown, and full of trash dumped by passing locals.

So that was Micronesia. Have now crossed the International Date Line and reached Hawaii, so what I think is today is now tomorrow again. Weird.

Yap

2009-03-04T06:20:00.002Z

It was Magellan who discovered Yap. According to local legend the word Yap actually means 'oar' in the local dialect (in Yapese the island is known as 'Waw'). Magellan, it appears, was holding an oar up when trying to work out the name of the place, and the confusion has stuck with it ever since. Or so our cab driver tells us as he spits the betel nut he's chewing out of his open window and starts the tricky preparation procedure for his next one, taking his hands off the steering wheel to pour ground up coral onto the betel nut, and wrapping the whole thing up in a leaf. We drift ominously towards a pack of stray dogs in the middle of the dirt road, and I grab my seat instinctively as he pops the nut into his mouth, takes control of the car again and releases a long red stream of spit out of the window. Noticing my concern he gives me a toothy grin, revealing his blood red teeth, stained and whittled down by the habit that's as addictive as smoking and so common on Yap that the airport floor has been painted red, so the spit stains won't show.

"You want one?" he offers.

I take one, as does Alex in the back seat. We prepare the mixture carefully, and I bite into the sour, bitter nut. My mouth fills with fluid, and I start to gurgle red liquid into my hands, like a helpless horror movie victim. The driver laughs and pulls over to the side of the road so I can spit out the juice and the chunks of leaf that are swimming between my teeth. The path is stained red where others have spat before me. I continue chewing, confused as to why people would put themselves through such an unpleasant experience, when I suddenly realise I've been cut off, I'm floating in my seat, a heat spreading around my shoulders and head that I've never felt. Take the first hit of a cigarette after a long abstinence and multiply it by ten, the feeling of release all the stronger but also warming you, and not just in your shoulders and the back of your neck but all over your body. That's what betel nut is like.

It's exceptionally popular on Yap, an island that accomodates modernity into it's traditions, and not the other way round. It is an island of wooden 'men's huts', stone money and bare-breasted women. Much of this is on display during Yap day, an annual celebration which combines ancient tribal traditions, arts and crafts and school sports day. Here you can see local dancing, where a village's women, all dressed in vibrant grass skirts (and topless except for loose decorative necklaces) sit in a line, with the youngest at the ends and the oldest in the middle, and chant ancient stories in a language only they are taught, ornamenting their words with claps, waves and other gestures.

Or you can see the master shipbuilder discuss the history of his craft on the island, and explain how one of the more popular designs came about, created by a boatbuilder to entice his son, who had gone into the woods out of shame about the poorness of his family's boat, back home. Or see schoolchildren compete in games like coconut husking, or mat weaving. Or, most impressively, see the carrying of the stone money, six strong men hulking an enormous round lump of rock along, supporting it on their shoulders with a trunk that's passed through a hole in the middle, like ants supporting a polo with a toothpick.

Then there's the scuba diving, which is what brings most tourists to Yap, and the manta rays. After completing our open water and nitrox training yesterday, we set out for our first proper dive today. Descending into the murky depths we were brought to a cleaning station, where smaller fish clean the manta's large, sleek bodies, and where male mantas come to scope out the females. We find a sandy patch on the ocean floor, so deep we can't see the surface any more, and stare out into the gloom. We don't have to wait long. With the tinkle of a little bell our guide alerts us to the manta's presence. I stare into the green fog, and gradually a dark shape appears, takes on elegant, streamlined contours and emerges gracefully, 10 foot long and smooth as a movie starship gliding through space, stroking its way through the water towards in us. It circled us for a while whilst we admired its contours and smoothness and then, all of a sudden, it was gone, scared off by the arrival of a new batch of divers.

In all we're spending a week on Yap, the longest stop on Alex and my trip together. With its tropical beauty, (so far) perfect weather, amazing wildlife and idiosyncratic culture, that was definitely a good decision.

Palau

2009-03-01T12:13:00.002Z

Located about a two hour flight from Manila, the Republic of Palau is generally considered to be the number one scuba diving spot in the world. Among the myriad islands and the lush tropical greenery stands a genuine natural wonder, the blue corridor, where divers can be amazed by a stunning variety of fish and coral. Of course, neither me nor Alex knew this when we booked our trip, which is why we only spent 24 hours on the island, unable to do anything except miss out on one of the world's great treasures.

Which isn't to say we did nothing. Palau may be a diving hotspot, but it has a wealth of other sights to enjoy. Our tour took us round some of the best areas to see beautiful coral, incandescent fish and white-tipped reef sharks, which allow other fish to swim mere millimeters in front of their mouths without coming to harm (can't think what the fish are thinking, I kept my distance despite the dubious claims of 'safety').

The undoubted highlight was swimming in the Jellyfish Lake. The experience was more than a little queer, not to mention terrifying. These jellyfish may not be able to sting you, but what they lack in threat they make up for in number. Snorkelling away from the shore, spotting the first miniature orange blob quivering towards me through the lake's murky green clouds, I felt a minor wave of panic. This was the point at which I realised I was more than a little scared of jellyfish, a creature I associate in my mind with disturbing tentacles and large amounts of pain. As more and more of the buggers approached me my panic grew, and I started to contort myself in increasingly frantic ways, desperately avoiding another orange blob as it calmly sauntered past. I was pushing on blindly now, just hoping to get past the wave of creatures, and each messy thrash brought me deeper and deeper into a dense web of them until, with a shot of pure terror, I realised that I could no longer move without being sure of touching one. I seized up, icy cold in the warm salty water, and stared around me. I realised that I was completely trapped, encircled. I surfaced and turned to our guide, panic writ plainly all over my body. She looked at me reassuringly. "Just touch one, you'll see they're fine" she said, and picked up a quivering lump in her hand to show me. So I looked back down and gingerly - oh so gingerly - touched the smallest, most innocent looking baby I could see. It felt like firm jelly. No sting, no blinding pain, nothing to worry about. Still, I wasn't quite yet ready to be won over. I made my way cautiously, experimentally prodding jellyfish of increasing size, each time sure that this one, being larger than the last, was the killer I was sure was lurking in the depths. Finally, with that euphoric feeling of released fear, I was able to appreciate what was around me, a gently shimmering neon orange universe that spread as far as I could see. Without the threat of intense pain, jellyfish become quite sweet to look at. In the dark, moody water they acted as beacons, making the depths seem brighter and prettier. We swam around for half an hour, admiring the colour and the movement, and when it came time to swim back I felt a pang of regret to be leaving.

Despite missing out on the scuba diving, I wasn't sad to leave Palau. Yes, it's incredibly beautiful. Like a lot of places that reach a certain point of popularity with tourists, however, there was a sense of being part of the tourist economy, rather than just a visitor. The tour guides, and a lot of the workers around, were not Palauan but Filipino, brought over to provide cheap labour, and their focus was on making money rather than sharing the beauty of their country. Like parts of Thailand, Bali and Manila, we came away with the definite sense of having been ripped off, prices a lot higher than they should be and the locals all with a keen eye on how to get a bit more cash out of you. Normally I'd say avoid these places - I'd avoid returning to Bali for instance - but even with the cynical attitudes Palau is definitely worth the trip.

Borneo

2009-02-23T08:22:00.006Z

The waitress stared at me in a mixture of shock and surprise, mingled with a little fear. This is common in Asia when people don't understand a question, or don't expect it. There's an obvious moment of panic, a widening of the eyes, a parting of the lips and the escape of an indistinct "Whaaa?" sort of sound, usually followed by the policeman (or whoever) explaining that, actually, the train station is behind you (and you're a damn, time-wasting fool for missing it). She recovered herself quickly.

"Could you repeat that, sir?"

"Sure thing. A hamburger please."

"Ah, sir, I am so sorry, we do not have a ham burger."

"Oh, never mind, I thought it was on the menu."

"No sir, I'm afraid not. Would you care for a beef burger instead?"

That's the great thing about Borneo. Places may aim to have a Western style, tours may try and match up to what they think Westerners want, but everything's just so charmingly unpolished (not to mention cheap). Of course, one thing you shouldn't do in a place like this is wear white trousers, as Alex found to his cost. For the past ten days he's been extolling the virtues of white linen - cool, bug resistant and they make you look like a Russian tourist. We were on our way to go white water rafting, and took a local train that goes into a rainforest and up a mountain. Seats were scarce, with plenty of places already taken up by enormous egg containers and a fortnights worth of food, carried up from the town into the recesses of the jungle. Still we fought our way on and found somewhere to sit down. After a few minutes, we suddenly realised there was a small girl, no more than five or six, sitting next to us, staring us with thunderous broody eyes. Suddenly, without warning, she struck out a leg and started kicking Alex, smearing mud all over his legs.

If Alex was having a bad time with his clothes, I was beginning to feel a bit unsettled. It's not so long since I read Conrad's Heart of Darkness, and as we began our ascent into the rainforest the sky started to become heavy and brooding. As the child lashed out again a crack of thunder sounded, and an almighty downpour began, rain coming in through the open windows and beating heavily off the leaves and the tin roof of the train. The girl collapsed into a crying ball beside her mother, who gave us a kind look, and I looked away, catching the eye of another child, a young boy who had spilled his juice all over the floor. I gave him a sympathetic smile and he too burst into tears. More than a bit bewildered, I turned to look out of the window, just as we passed a wooden sign that read "Death Risk" in large red letters, and the train carried us deeper into the heart of darkness.

Fortunately there wasn't too much time to brood on these odd portents, because soon enough we were on the river, heading back down the mountain and about to meet our first rapid. Our guide, who called himself Mr. Tapioca (which would have thrown me if I wasn't already more than a bit thrown), was telling us about the rapids.

"There are several grades, and we'll deal with them in turn. Our first rapid is called 'Mickey Mouse' rapid. It's very easy, that is grade 1. It is just a warm up. Grade 2 is harder, we'll do one called the 'Scooby Doo' rapid, but it's not too much of a bother. We'll then hit a grade 4, where the waves are very high, around six foot, 'The Headhunter' it's called. Then a grade 3, but a dangerous one with lots of rocks, called the 'Washing Machine,' because it likes to spin you round and round under the water."

Naturally, before we were even in sight of a rapid, mickey mouse or otherwise, I'd already fallen off the boat, thrown off balance by a minor upsurge of water. Mr. Tapioca pulled me out of the water laughing. "This rapid, it does not have a grade or a name, but perhaps we will call it for you". This little misadenture did have an upside, it made the other beginners feel a lot better about falling in because, as one of the others put it, "Now I won't feel like a twat."

The rafting itself was terrifying on the approach, terrifying and messy in the middle and exhilarating in the periods of calm afterwards. You're bustled and thrown by the waves, splashed in the eyes so you can't see and on all sides large rocks jut out of the water threatening to catch you if you fall out. The threat, though, is more perceived than real, and even if you fell in a rapid you'd be unlucky to come to much harm. Our guides proved it to us by - without warning - engineering a flip that sent the boat over with us. Scary it may sound, but you come up quickly on your life jacket, and being carried gently down a river - without needing to swim or work to stay afloat - is a peculiarly calming experience.

Our next stop was Selingan, one of the Turtle Islands, a tiny (8 hectare) outcrop where Malaysia and the Phillipines are running a conservation project. Infancy is extremely hazardous for turtles, and even with conservation the mortality rate is about 99%, but worldwide turtle populations are dwindling to an alarming level - largely because of human-created problems. On the island we waited till night fell to watch a mother lay nearly a hundred eggs in a pit she'd dug on the beach, before the eggs were transported to a safer location by the rangers. Later on we saw a newly hatched brood released into the wild, flailing around on the shore till they were washed away - most of them to certain death - by the tide.

Finally we visited an Orangutan sanctuary, where another conservation project is taking place, and saw a feeding. Alex took off with the tour into the jungle, and I came back to Singapore to wait patiently for a new passport and catch up on my sleep.

Other things I've learnt recently:

Borneo

Borneo is the world's third largest island, divided between Indonesia, Malaysia and Brunei.

Turtle-Tortoise

Turtles are sea based, and have flippers; Tortoises are land based and have feet.

Orangutan

Means 'Man of the Forest' in Malay. Orangutans are 96 point something percent human and a fully grown, dominant male can rip a grown man in two, but his face looks like a rubber satellite dish.

Rainforest

Is a scientific term. It rains in the rainforest. A lot.

Jungle

I have no idea what the word jungle means.

Kuala Lumpur and Melaka, Malaysia

2009-02-18T15:22:00.004Z

Kamal is a man of peace, and a man of god. A graphic-designer turned advertising executive, he packed it all in for a calm, happy life. He bought a taxi, printed a few business cards and started ferrying people to and from the airport. "I like to tell foreign people about my country, Malaysia," he tells us. "It is a country I love."

This is my second time in Malaysia in as many weeks, and it is a sentiment I'm beginning to share. There is a calmness and a friendliness that seems to wash off the people here, an attitude which has bred a multi-cultural, multi-faith society where a Hindu temple, a Mosque and a Chinese temple can stand side by side on Harmony Street. When we found Kamal, he was a little down, worn out by a few dispiriting trips back and forth from KL International. When we found out he'd take us to Melaka and back for the same price as two return bus tickets, and throw in a personal tour of his country and some of his insights to boot, we got him to perk right up. "I'll take you all over," he half cackled as he turned round to smile at us at 120kph on a motorway. "I'll show you the real Malaysia".

Malaysia is a rare feat in this world. Dare I say it, it's a country which has been left better off by colonialism. The British have left behind a strong legal system, a thriving middle class and an exceptionally cheerful populace. Whilst the capital shows off the overt signs of wealth - the ubiquitous Asian skyscrapers and malls, topped off by the Petronas Twin Towers, until recently the tallest building in the world - the prices are shockingly low, and certainly the cheapest I've come across.

The real history is to be found in Melaka, a city whose bloody colonial past is belied by the bright clashing colours of it's diverse population. It has changed hands from Portuguese to Dutch to British and housed Malays, Indians and Chinese. Now repackaged as a tourist attraction you can wander around the museum complex, which covers politics, literature, history and the customs of the various inhabitants, or sit in gaudy yellow carriages biked around by tour guides dressed in matching yellow (sponsored by Digi, the Malaysian mobile phone carrier, naturally) past the dark maroon dutch quarter, the bright reds of chinatown, pausing by the mosque so your guide can pop in for his afternoon prayers.

Leaving Melaka, Kamal took a detour to introduce us to a different side of Malaysia. Slipping a few layers from the pristine main road to more rough-and-ready tarmac, he took us to meet Noor, his sister-in-law, who collects rubber from small producers and sells it on to factories. Along with Palm oil production, rubber is a driving force in the prosperity of Malaysia's rural population, ensuring a stable income from exports to all over the world. Noor and her husband have been able to take advantage of this to build up a decent business and build a large house in a rural village. Even out here, far from the city, they speak decent English, and we were given a distinguished welcome, letting Alex have his first taste of pomelo and me my first chew of sugar cane.

And that's what's so great about Malaysia. It's just nice. It doesn't seem to have the tourist traps that abound in Thailand and Bali, the people are friendly and welcoming through good-heartedness, rather than greed, and everything feels pretty easy. Add to that the cheap prices and the lush beauty of the country and it becomes one of the nicest places to visit I've come across.

Bali and Lembongan Island

2009-02-18T14:45:00.004Z

Bad things out of the way first: we visited Bali off-season. That meant no people (we visited the supposedly 'it' club and found noone except a bartender reading a book in the corner), rubbish (apparently it's kept much tidier when there are more tourists about) and dodgy weather (it rained so much most of the roads flooded). Bali is also priced for tourists, and seems to have suffered an amazing amount of inflation in the last year. A tour that cost $25 in January 2008 now costs $39. The aggression with which locals harried tourists for cash was a bit discomfiting too. This wasn't helped by my general ineptitude. At one stage I tried to bargain and ended up handing over $5 MORE than the initial price quoted.

Still, you can't complain too much about island paradises, and there were some amazing things to see. Top of the list was the snorkeling around Lembongan Island, which offered the most beautiful assortment of brightly coloured fish and coral I've come across. After a failed attempt at riding a scooter - I hit a wall and a fence, then narrowly missed a small child - we moved on to a natural wonder, a Mangrove forest. Mangroves are trees that grow in the sea, and are instrumental in protecting sea shores from the impact of a Tsunami. We hopped aboard a boat punted by a shirtless Indonesian, who wound us round the eerie maze of waterways that cut through the densely intertwined trees. It all started to feel a bit 'Vietnam war movie' when we nearly hit a black lump floating next to us, a dead dog which had been thrown into the water. Before we left there was also the underground house to see, a hunched living space cut out of rock underground, complete with kitchen, living space and bedrooms. There seemed no obvious need for it on a small, peaceful island where everyone knows everyone else, but it was impressive to see.

Back on the mainland, we found ourselves in the rain in a monkey temple near Buda. The flat light, the torrential downpour and the shade of the trees made the place feel self contained, giving the monkeys sitting on thick stone representations of themselves a mystical feel. It all felt a bit like a Lara Croft game.

On the last day we gave ourselves up to surfing. I will try to recreate my surfing experience here. I carried a heavy plank of wood into the sea. This took quite a long time, and after one attempt I was pretty much ready to go back to bed. As a wave came I lay down on the board, let it get washed in to shore and realised that I had no idea how to stand up. In trying, I fell off. I then stood up, picked up the board and trudged back out to try again. Every so often an instructor would give me contradictory advice. The lesson was 90 minutes, and I progressed no further than this. Alex stood up on his fourth go.

Singapore

2009-02-18T14:19:00.002Z

Poor Alex. We planned this trip for a month, he gets on the plane after 6 tough months in London looking forward to our mad cap adventure and what does he get when he lands? Me, worn out from a jubilant spell of island hopping, worn down by a nasty little head cold and worn through with worry over the state of my passport. Was I in a happy mood? Sadly, not.

Luckily he had enthusiasm for the both of us, and made sure we saw most of Singapore. I find the place slightly oppressive, with reminders popping up here and there of the repressive laws that people live by. In the immigration and visa centre, 3 impounded cars stand next to placards informing of the crimes the drivers committed and the punishment they received (10 years and 4 lashings, usually). I was a bit concerned in case a stick of chewing gum was floating at the bottom of my bag, punishable by a cash fine if caught.

Singapore has the feel of a slightly more spread out, but less exciting, Hong Kong. If there wasn't much to do in HK except work and go out at night, Singapore felt even more limited. We visited the number one tourist attraction - the zoo - and wandered the streets, stopping in the early evening for high tea at Raffles. There are some fantastic buildings, especially the Esplanade. It costs the same as Hong Kong, it can match it for high rises and bankers, but without a job I think it would be hard to spend any extended period of time there.

What to do if your passport goes through the washing machine

2009-02-15T11:40:00.002Z

These things happen. I turned up in Singapore after an 11 hour bus journey, too air-conditioned and far too bumpy. Off came my clothes, in they went to a wash, and out came my thoroughly soaked and machine dried passport. Precisely at the point that Alex was sitting on a plane, coming to meet me in Singapore, planning to fly to Bali two days later. From the benefit of my experience, conversations with friends and much panicked internet searching, here's what to do if you ever find yourself in this situation.

1. Don't panic, don't beat yourself up. Not only do things like this happen, they happen a lot. All the time in fact. Assess the damage first of all. Things to look out for are the leather cover coming away from the paper, entry and exit stamps running through the pages and the laminated section separating from the face page. In my experience the first two are not necessarily killers, and from hearsay neither is the last one. From a common sense point of view, if the laminated section is coming away, you're far more likely to have trouble. It makes it look like someone's been tampering with it. My passport's front cover was completely separated from the paper, but the back cover was ok. The stamps were a mess, several running several pages either side. Luckily my Singaporean entry stamp was legible.

2. Apply for a new passport - if you can. In the UK you can get express passports in less than 48 hours. This is the obvious step, but it's not always convenient. If you're flying soon, you may not have time - in Singapore it takes 10 working days. You need the signature of a British subject with a respectable job (think qualifications, office building or the like), who has known you for some time - i think over three years. It's worth bearing in mind that you can apply for a replacement passport and hold on to your old one until two working days before you collect it, which is what I did.

3. Apply for an emergency passport. If you're in a foreign city and need to get home, you can get an emergency one-way passport which will get you home without any problems.

4. Risk it! If there's one thing I've found out this week, it's that people travel on damaged passports the whole time. The passport office and consulate won't advise this - they can't - and there's a degree of risk. The first is that at check-in someone will be concerned and stop you flying, the second is that immigration officials will be unable to read the stamps in your passport, or suspect you of tampering with it, and detain you at immigration - hardly ideal. How high this risk is, it's hard to say. At check-in the girl behind the desk joked that my passport looked like it had gone through a river, then laughed and loaded up my bags. At immigration in Bali, the official asked what happened to my passport and stamped me through. No trouble at all!

So far I've heard of people travelling without issue on passports soaked through with vodka, sent through a washing machine twice, and cut up and stuck back together again. Some people have problems, but they seem to be the exception. I even read about a pilot who travelled for five years on a machine washed passport!

I'm definitely glad I took the risk. I could have been stuck in Singapore, a tiny country where the number one tourist attraction is the zoo and number two is a cookery class, but instead I spent the day in Bali snorkelling and visiting a monkey temple!

Georgetown, Penang

2009-02-10T08:30:00.002Z

Wandering around a new city always feels like stepping into a puzzle, you see the individual elements first and then start to fit everything into a larger picture. The more I see of Georgetown, the more it intrigues me. The city itself feels very tired. Everywhere brickwork crumbles, iron is rusted over, sewers run alongside the road. Construction in the centre seems to have stopped around the 1940s, and successive generations of buildings from the 18th Century to the first half of the 20th stand side by side. Most of them look like they're into their third or fourth use at best, and plenty are shuttered up and left that way. One shop has a painted sign offering second hand books. I try to enter, only to find someone's living room. "Book shop?" I ask. A woman nursing a baby looks up at me blankly, then gives a nod of recognition. "Oh," she says, "I think he dead some time".

The streets are not designed with cars in mind, with cluttered five-foot covered walkways on either side of the road, falling apart or unpassable because of motorbikes, incense burners, shopwares, chairs and other obstructions, forcing pedestrians into the narrow roads. They wander peacefully along. I do not, keeping an eye out constantly for a motorbike overtaking too fast or a car riding too close to the side of the street.

Meanwhile dotted around the place are those expected signals of Westernisation I've come to expect in Asian cities, nods to the 20th Century's godhead of the American dollar: skyscrapers; shopping malls; Starbucks and McDonalds. These sit, uncomfortably pristine, next to crumbling locksmiths and pawnshops.

All over Asia you see this cultural disconnect, local culture against globalised commerce. Mostly you see how foreign companies make minor concessions to local taste in a bid to win the overall war - the Seaweed flavoured Lays crisps, the cheery Chinese songs sung in Shanghai's Cold Stone Creamery, the Spicy Chicken sandwich in McDonalds (competing with the more popular KFC). Here though the trend appears to be reversed.

Malaysia is famous for it's multiculturalism, and this is a city defined by it. Colonialism may have left it's mark, but so does the presence of immigrants from all over, especially China and India. The city may be named after a British king, and cars still drive on the left hand side, but this hardly feels a colonial city. Whilst Westernised commerce has touched the place, it doesn't dominate the way it does in Shanghai's mega-shopping malls, or England's uniform highstreets. The shopping malls here have almost as many market stalls as shops, and the chain stores seem to be accomodated into the local culture, rather than the other way round.

2009-02-09T14:35:00.002Z

Rather than retype everything, here is an email I sent out today whilst still 'in the moment':

This literally just happened, and I'm still mid-panic attack, but I have to tell people about it. Okay...

So yesterday I met my friend Sak from Shanghai in incredibly random circumstances - his boat was arriving at an island as mine was leaving it, we had no idea we were in the same place and no mobiles. Luckily we caught up on facebook and met up for a drink last night, which was great.

In the course of the conversation Sak, who has travelled in Malaysia more than me, gives me a warning:

"You have to be careful in Malaysia, you know? Like, they have the death penalty for even a small amount of drugs, and they use tourists to try and smuggle them. They hide them in your bag, see if you get through and then pick them up on the other side. If you get caught, you're screwed - of course you're going to say 'It's not mine' but even if you're lucky you'll still go to jail."

My mind went immediately to the sweet German couple (the non-smoking, moderate drinking types) I'm sharing a room with and I joke that they might be drug smugglers. We both laugh.

As I'm walking through the ferry terminal in Langkawi, out of the blue, Sak's words come back to me. I figure I might as well check my bags, knowing there's nothing there. I open a front pocket and can't see anything. I reach inside, and it's then that my hand makes contact with what is very clearly a plastic bag filled with white powder.

I'm not sure I need to describe how much panic I felt at that moment, but it's fair to say I was nearly crying, struggling to breath, feeling faint - about as scared as I've ever been. Not sure what to do, I make a rash decision to get rid of it as quickly as possible. I can't see a toilet anywhere nearby so I take a deep breath, walk as calmly as I can - given that every muscle in my body has just turned to icy jelly - over to the nearest dustbin. Looking around in what can only be described as a guilty, panicked way, I grab the bag and drop it into the bin, and start to walk away.

Now, as I'm doing this, I catch sight of something printed on the bag, the word "Trisara". It takes me five paces for the penny to drop, and for me to remember that I took a plastic bag of bath salts from the nice hotel I stayed at with my mum, the Trisara. It's another moment before I realise where I left it - in my bag's front pocket.

I'm not sure there's a lesson here - perhaps just 'don't be a twat' - but as terrifying moments go, this has to be up there...

Apart from that I'm now in Georgetown, Penang. It's completely unlike anywhere I've been before, with architecture in the colonial style which I've seen in movies but never in real life and strong influences of its Chinese and Indian communities. It achieves the rare feat of incorporating recognisable western features (malls, starbucks, mcdonalds) without seeming to lose any of its soul. Which makes it a pretty groovy place in my book.

Langkawi, Malaysia

2009-02-08T10:14:00.002Z

I'm not sure why, but even before the boat docked I knew I liked this place. There's something in the air here, a peace that was just missing in Thailand. Perhaps it comes from having fewer tourists, and the absence of the tarted-up Thai beauty that so easily attracts foreigners. Perhaps it's the money that flows to the island through its VAT free status, relieving the pressure on hotels, bars and restaurants to stimulate the local economy. Whatever the reason, the breezy atmosphere flowing off the crew on the speedboat into port showed a marked difference from the stressed out Thais who had ferried us to the end of their country all day. Thailand is a very friendly place, but there's something more here, the easy friendliness is natural, without the half-eye on your wallet that seems common in tourist areas of Thailand. Sitting down inside a bar with my new friends, a German couple who made the mammoth journey from Phi Phi with me and who ended up sharing a large hotel room (with a working shower, thank god!) with me to cut costs, a man approaches us. "Hello, my name is Carlton. I work in this bar during the day, although I am not working now. Welcome to our bar. Whilst you are very welcome to sit on your own, we would love it if you came and joined in the group." In a place like this it's hard not to wear a smile on your face.

Today saw more islands - a freshwater lagoon, eagle feeding (the island is named after its eagles) and pristine sandy beaches - and my education about Malaysia, courtesy of a Malay ex-Londoner on my boat. Until two days ago I didn't know Langkawi was in Malaysia, and knew very little about the country at all. She amused herself with my surprise as she told me a bit of its history as a British colony turned commonwealth country. The best she saved for last.

"You know this island used to have a curse on it? That's right. Until very recently. There was a woman, living here, whose husband went off to fight in a war. Whilst he was away she had a friend, a man, who she liked to spend time with. Another woman got jealous, and accused her of adultery. She was arrested, and although she protested her innocence, she was sentenced to death. When they cut her, however, they found her blood ran white, because she was chaste, and she put a curse on the island to last seven generations. In the 1990s it ran out, but until then noone wanted to develop here."

Perhaps that explains the scrappiness of the place. The road by the beach is still under construction, and on the pavement wooden planks stand every four or five paces to stop you dropping into the sewer system. There are few large hotels, and plenty of room on the beach, despite this being a Malay bank holiday, seeing lots of visitors from Kuala Lumpur. Still despite - or maybe rather because of - the lack of neatness, the island can't help but be a stunning place.

Phi Phi Island

2009-02-06T10:47:00.004Z

I really wanted to be principled here. A long time ago I remember reading about the impact of filming The Beach in Thailand, a beautiful island torn upside down to make room for cameras, lights, generators, and to turn a naturally beautiful beach into a natural looking wonder. I was all ready to follow it up with the final insult, the tourists who now come trudging through to see the beach where Leo ran amock (or am I misremembering?), and just maybe they'll find a lock of his hair or a broken flip flop inscribed with his name, hidden where the less observant searchers missed it.

All of that is probably pretty accurate mind you. Maya beach, stunningly - shockingly - set away in an enormous natural harbour of high rock faces fluffed with greenery on all sides, loses the impact it had on screen in the face of packed tour boats and smaller motor boats. It's now a box to tick, on every Thai traveller's radar. Still, when there's so much beauty around, it's hard to care less.

From Maya the boat tour (I'm no less guilty of these crimes than anyone else) shows us a small harbour where small, safe sharks swim alongside swordfish and other wonders of the sea. Next Bamboo Island, around which the sea is a perfect sapphire crystal lit up by showers of fish striped yellow and black, silver or violent purple. Shooting past small islands, shining beaches or fertile rocky outcrops, we reach a cove where monkeys will come right up to you, sitting on sand as soft as flour, hoping to steal your food or a sip of your drink.

The reason I'm in Phi Phi, an island I'd never heard of until a week ago and whose beauty leaves me a little lightheaded, is because of Danny Wallace, author of Yes Man. His memoir of a year of positive thinking saw him wind up in amazing and surprising places, and inspired others to do the same. One guy he spoke to was inspired enough to end up travelling the world and sends him a postcard from this very island. It's a great book, and chimes with my own experience - the unbelievable chain of events that sprang up in Hong Kong purely through positivity and saying yes to new experiences. If anyone's suffering from Winter blues right now, I'd say forget the movie (Hollywood adaptation with Jim Carrey - yawn) and pick this one up!

Tomorrow Langkawi Island, Malaysia. Till then...

2009-01-28T05:13:00.003Z

Looks like I'm staying in Phuket another week. Gawain's here, so I'm going to move in with him, play some golf, do a bit more reading. I've got a small pang, a 'you should be doing the difficult thing not the easy thing' which is encouraging me to go to Bangkok or Phnom Penh, but right now I'm pretty certain I'd only be doing it to satisfy a sense of guilt, rather than feeling particularly keen about seeing either place. The same feeling took over in Japan, and I didn't spend any time in Tokyo, but I've got one eye on next month, when I'll be doing a lot of intensive travelling, spending no more than four days in any one place, and usually just one night. The one thing that really has struck me about moving about is the feeling of being absolutely lost when you first get to a new place, a sense of being 'lost in the world' as opposed to lost in a place, and it takes a moment to catch up.

The advantage of my plan at the moment is Gawain's place has no internet, which means I can't distract myself with ringing people from home, email, facebook, blogs, newspapers and the like. It always amazes me how powerful the urge is to keep staring at a screen, no matter what's going on around you, and it's good to spend a bit of time incommunicado.

Max has started a blog! For those of you who don't know, he's my brother Wills' best friend, and a genuinely funny bloke. To find out about meeting Chelsea Davy, his man-love for my brother (flitting between Scrubs and Brokeback) and truly great puns check out max-sittingontheblog.blogspot.com

We Apologise for the Inconvenience

2009-01-25T09:12:00.002Z

I've been quiet a few weeks now. There are reasons for that; I'm travelling with my mum for her 50th birthday, so it's all a bit personal, I'm staying in nice places and having fun rather than doing anything I think worth writing about, but most of all I just haven't really felt like writing. Today I feel slightly more inspired.

I'm a bit anxious about talking about some of the things I'm up to at the moment. Everyone I speak to in the UK tells me the weather's miserable, the economy's miserable, the news is miserable and they're not doing too well either. Next to that, just telling people where I am feels like gloating.

After three months of mid- to late autumn- weather, and a week of central-heating-free winter, I've taken a step into the sunshine and started to work on my tan. Australia was boiling, but not to my mother's taste (not exactly mine either, with the average weight comparable to America's Southern states). Deciding that Manley Bay and Noosa Heads were, respectively, 'like Clapton on Sea' and 'disGUSTing', we rerouted to Phuket (via Melbourne for the tennis), which she is exceedingly happy with. It suits me, I love the place and sets me up in the right area for my trip with Alex. That trip is getting ever closer - just over two weeks away - and with the prospect of forty days of island hopping ahead of me, and having changed countries five times already this year, I'm quite keen to hang around Thailand for a while, relax a bit and forget about moving too much. If I wasn't a lazy sod I'd probably have worked out how to get to Cambodia and back by bus, but another week in the sunshine to shake off a bit of traveller's fatigue won't do me any harm.

Top Five Books (in my head right now):
1. The Uninvited - Geling Yan: A comic tale, and Geling's first in English, about a laid off factory worker who stumbles upon free banquets thrown for journalists. He just wants to be left alone with his shark's fin soup, but his dreams of legitimising his deceit draw him into a world he's not equipped to deal with.

2. The Delivery Man - Joe McGuinness Jnr.: McGuinness has been dubbed the new Bret Easton Ellis, and there's definitely a scent of Less Than Zero in this story of self-destruction and teen exploitation. Painful and impossible to put down.

3. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance - Robert M. Pirsig: a multidimensional journey through America, philosophy and the struggles inside one man's head, you'll want to reread it before you're halfway through!

4. Rice - Su Tong: Family infighting and generational competition captured in startling prose by one of China's greatest living novelists. His great skill is refusing to judge the cruelty his characters display to one another.

5. The Corrections - Jonathan Franzen: would be higher, but I haven't finished it yet. Franzen makes you feel the blows of every little frustration in his characters' lives, bringing sympathy out of conflict and self-recognition from self-pity.

Depending on where you are in the world, for tomorrow, Happy Australia Day, Happy Chinese New Year and, to my mum, Happy 50th!

Back to School

2009-01-08T14:01:00.004Z

Speak to most people about Japan and they usually tell you about the same things. "The toilets are amazing there," is a common one, and even more importantly, "It's so nice and clean, everything's so pristine". There's evidence to back this up. Some toilets do have heated seats, incorporated bidet functions and cute pictures of water squirting at your bum. Most places are very clean, the floors swept regularly and antibacterial handwash and wipes readily available.

Like most of the impressions I've brought to new countries, these ideas are easily dispelled. Whilst many of the toilets do have space-age functions, just as many are converted squat toilets, with a plastic seat just thrown over the more traditional trench design. When I visited Suzaka Higashi today, a midlevel highschool where Katie teaches English, any notion of absolute Japanese perfection was dispelled when I saw the dirty crumbling concrete and worn down air of the building.

Which isn't to say it wasn't a nice school. Both staff and students were exceptionally friendly, and the school seemed well organised, from the way desks sit on different levels in the classroom, like seats in a cinema, so students at the back of the room can have an unobstructed view (and can be spotted emailing on their mobiles by the teacher) to the idiosyncratically Japanese musical intercom that announced the start and end of classes.

What struck me most was the differences from Western children. Each day begins with the students cleaning the entire school, entering each room, including the teachers' offices, in teams and taking different jobs. Despite this, during lessons the students seemed to sometimes ignore the teachers entirely, turning their backs to continue a conversation whilst Katie was presenting her lesson. Japanese teachers have no means of punishing their students, and some of the older heads just let the kids get on with it.

I was there making a presentation about the UK, and to answer some questions. Katie assured me that I had to mention David Beckham and Harry Potter or they'd ignore me, so I shoehorned them in to my slideshow about London ("This is Leicester Square, famous for movie premieres. David Beckham goes to watch movie premieres here. The author of Harry Potter is also from London, and many of the scenes in the books take place here.") They were left cold by Asia's favourite footballer, but at the mention of Harry Potter a whisper of excitement spread through the room like I'd told them he was here to visit.

After the classes I took in written questions from the students and wrote answers for them. Most asked me if I had a girlfriend, or if Katie was my girlfriend, much to her's irritation ("No you cannot write 'Katie wishes'"). Some asked what I thought of Japanese food, or what my favourite music was. My favourite question by far though was this one: "Do you prefer summer or winter?" Right now, in sub-zero temperatures, unable to feel my toes, but with three months on warm beaches and in glorious tropical climates to come, the answer seems pretty simple.

2009-01-07T06:55:00.002Z

I am writing this from my friend's living room in the mountains near Nagano, Japan. The ski slopes made famous by the Winter Olympics are barely an hour's drive away. The city I'm staying in, Suzaka, is a satellite of the larger city of Nagano. With a population of just over 50,000 it barely qualifies as a city. It certainly has the feel of a village. The girls I'm staying with, Soleil and Katie, are teaching here as part of the JET program, and after four months out here can hardly go anywhere without recognising someone they know - often their students, kitted out in tight black leather jeans and bouffant hair to make Noel Fielding jealous. The buildings are low, as is the build quality, with no central heating and thin walls. Soleil describes them as 'glorified cardboard boxes'. It makes them exceedingly cold, but there's a fantastic kitschy feel to them that I can't help but love.

Japan so far is almost exactly what I expected. At passport control a woman overstepped the waiting line. When she was called back by the attendant there was exchange of bows, the woman repeatedly covering her face in shame, that reflected the overwhelming mutual crushing embarrassment of the whole situation. In a queue for train tickets I started to sneeze, and the man standing behind me immediately took three steps backwards and gave me the 'Is he contagious?' look. On the train ticket inspectors bowed each time they left the carriage. Among the low houses in Suzaka, off the beaten track for tourists and Western visitors, restaurants are marked imperceptibly Kanji (Japanese character) writing in their windows, and already I've seen children stare when I've walked past. It strikes me as quite an inaccessible place, more so even than China. Even throwing something out is near impossible without an understanding of Japanese, since the bins are assorted into at least five different recycling options, with no way of telling between them.

Still, there's something lovely about this city. It has the impact of a ski village, fresh faced cold and clean air, with snow-peaked mountains on all sides, without the short term triviality of a ski resort. The quiet streets and shut-down feel, during the day and at night, give it a sleepy quality that's very calming. It's a nice change after a series of megacities, and the throbbing nightlife of Phuket.

Thoughts on Hong Kong

2008-12-28T19:06:00.003Z

Five weeks is quite a while to spend anywhere as a transit point on your travels. It feels a bit different, making a run at setting up a life in a city and seeing how settled you can get. It's been exciting, and has helped me get ready for what's coming up - at least 22 flights, 10 countries and three months before I can think about going home.

What's struck me the most - and Soleil has picked up on it too in the week she's been here with me - is the pureness of the city in terms of function. Everything's thought through perfectly in terms of A to B. Covered walkways for the rain, which pass through shopping malls on the way to your destination. Escalators for the hills. An elaborate one way system. A lot of your paths feel very set, so much so that even when we tried to get lost, we found ourselves back on the way home before we had time to wonder where we were. In terms of logical thought, this is a marvel. I can see why this place is conducive to business, and the palpable workhard-playhard ethic seeps out of the streets.

The flip side of this is that it's a hard city to feel creative in. Early on I went to a arts networking event. There was a lot of talk there about how amazing it was to find something like this in Hong Kong, which I largely took for slightly childish backslapping at the time. I see something in it now. I'm finding it harder to express myself in writing here, harder to think emotionally rather than logically and harder to go beyond the functional. If Shanghai as a city felt characterised by aggression and anger, Hong Kong feels steeped in cool logic and dollar signs, exciting, dynamic but (I worry) soulless. The effort to set up an artistic, collaborative movement here may have seemed unimpressive at the time, judged by London standards (or even possibly Cambridge standards), but in hindsight I can see how difficult a challenge it must have been.

This is probably my last chance to say this, since I'm going to Thailand tomorrow, but I've never been in a place where prostitution is such an obvious and accepted occurrence. Local women go to check out the prostitute bars out of curiosity, there are accepted nights of the week when they can enter posh Lan Kwai Fon, while the area of Wan Chai is synonymous with them. It's barely even shrugged off, it's just a fact of the city. In Beijing and Shanghai you may be offered a girl by a dodgy leather-coat wearing pimp on the street, but you rarely ever saw a working girl. It's a shift I'm not entirely sure how to contextualise.

Finally, this city is a lot of fun. With so many people passing through, so many hardworking bankers blowing their cash in the evenings, so much energy, money and music crammed into so small a space, you're rarely at a loss for things to do. I've mostly gone out on my own, and the mix of people is unbeatable. For a traveller who hates backpackers - the kind of people who sit around in hostels drinking with other backpackers until it's time to switch cities - every night has brought something new, and usually refreshing.

Croc Shock

2008-12-16T17:47:00.003Z

Last night I was in a photoshoot for Crocs shoes.What started off as a bit of a joke for me - I agreed to the shoot before realising who it was for - turned out to be a bit of a revelation. I'm hardly Crocs' biggest fan. I think the whole neon rubber swiss cheese look should have been strangled at birth actually. Still, the shoot took me by surprise. Not only were the shoes as comfortable as everyone has told me, a weak justification to slip them on in my book, they had some new and varied styles that were actually - I'll whisper it - pretty damn cool. For guys, material beach shoes that could go well with jeans or on my boat, for girls some credit-crunch beating rubber highheels, and several other designs besides. I can't help but recommend them, although the original designs still feel inextricably linked to hybrid-driving vegetarians with bald spots and greying ponytails.

The shoot itself was fun, if quite long, with long periods of waiting around, and there was a lot of joking around with the other models. It also gave me a chance to have a bit of a think about Hong Kong in general, and how I'm settling in here. What occurs to me now, after three weeks, is that this has been a sort of dry run for moving to a new city, a plunge-in experience with the safety net of a ticket out at the end of the month.

It's given me a chance to see the city as an outsider working in, making friends and contacts, using every night out as an opportunity to meet new people, hear new stories and places to go and try and get myself into new situations. It's also meant I've had a lot of downtime. I have three nominal jobs (interning at a literary agency and Time Out Hong Kong and tutoring English GCSE), but they don't take up too much time in the mix of the global financial meltdown and the run up to Christmas. Still, with three different potential bosses to be hearing from each week, I'm not rushing out to find more to do.

The thing I've had to learn to do most urgently is to try not to force too much, advice Soleil gave to me in the midst of a mini-breakdown. After about four days with nothing to do, noone to call and only the companionship of the TV and skype, I was feeling a bit lonely and done in. Two weeks of going out constantly, meeting everyone I could, getting phone numbers, facebook, business cards and, on one occasion, an unpronounceable female Thai name written on a bar napkin in swirly characters that may not be English, had left me with no real sense of a friendship group in the city, and I was too tired to try again. I broke down, called around and complained about how I had no friends. Soleil's answer was the most calming. "Just relax J". I shouldn't expect too much from just two weeks in a new city. We chatted a bit more and I felt a bit happier, but still slightly lonely. Just then my phone beeped.

"Sorry Sols, I've gotta run. Thanks for chatting, but I just got a text from a girl I met last week, I'm gunna go meet her in a club."

The irony of the situation was not lost on me. It was from another unexpected email the next day that I heard about the modelling job. Clearly Soleil was right, but it's a lesson that's going to take some work to make stick, especially for someone who craves attention as much as I do.

Santa Cruising

2008-12-13T17:22:00.003Z

It will always amuse me that this was my most successful cold approach tonight...

Me: Hey, could you do me a favour?
Girl near the entrance to the club (wearing a daffy but cute fur hat inside): Um, yeah, guess so.
Me: Great. I'm just waiting on a friend. When he turns up could you let him know I'm in the other room?
Girl: Okay.
Me: Fantastic. Okay, he's about this tall, bit chubby. He'll probably be wearing a big red suit. He's got a large white beard. Umm... Oh yeah, he'll probably be wearing a hat, like you. His is red with a big white bobble.
Girl (laughing): Is his name Santa?
Me: You know him? Great. Send him along, I think he's got a gift for me.

Wan Chai

2008-12-09T17:18:00.004Z

"The thing you have to understand about Asian women," I was told here, "is they have a different concept of love to Western women. Here, it's very pragmatic. 'You pay for my apartment. I love you. If you don't pay, I'll find someone who will, and love him.'"

Knowing this, I'm not quite sure how it was I found myself explaining my mildly feminist, mildly self-preserving views on gender relations to two Hong Girls, D and K, over wine. Try telling a HK lady that it is somewhat seedy, archaic and above all disempowering to women for men to always pay for a date and they'll stare at you like a dog that's been shown a card trick. What started as a night out was quickly becoming a dismissal of my character and chances out here.

"That may be okay in the West, but over here you'll have to change your views or stay single," was K's decided opinion. She should know. Soon after we left to find her current sugar daddy in a bar, before heading out to one of the pricier establishments in town. K's paying boyfriend, a Canadian pilot, seemed a nice bloke, and generous with his cash, buying drinks all night for D and me as well as his girlfriend. After a while he suggested heading over to Wan Chai, the red light district, to meet some of his friends.

This is how I found myself standing in the corner of Neptune, a bar famous for Thai girls on working holidays in Hong Kong, sipping a beer and trying not to catch the eye of too many of the prostitutes, as they all tried to catch mine. D stayed close, not out of any moral objection but because she genuinely feared for my safety. On the way in I asked loudly and indiscretely whether this was in fact the prostitute bar. Apparently this is a big no-no, and is the second fastest way to get beaten up in Wan Chai. The first, although it probably depends on stamina, is refusing to pay afterwards.

K, meanwhile, was dirty dancing with her date in the way that drunk girls think they can get away with. After a while he came over, clearly knackered, and asked me to take over. We moved and shook for a while, and then she put her lips on me. I tried to back away, aware of her man standing in the corner watching us. I can't remember his name now, but at the time I felt a small pang of loyalty for a number of Hong Kong's more expensive beers. Still, the pang was quite small. K tried again and I gave in. Her boy stormed off, and when she realised she went looking for him. D, anxious for her friend - who was far too drunk to be walking on her own round a hooker bar at this stage of the night - told me to stay exactly where I was and took off after her.

So now I'm standing slightly helplessly in the corner of Hong Kong's most famous prostitute bar, sipping the rest of my beer (which I'm savouring in the absence of K's kindly benefactor) and wondering what to say to the two Thai girls who are walking my way. Together they stand real close to me and proceed to give me what I can only describe as the 'hard sell', rubbing themselves against me as I try and protest (it only seems to spur them on). I drink my beer like this, wondering if I've ever been in a more seedy situation (and, okay, actually slightly enjoying it). Time passes. I finish my bottle.

"You want another drink?" one of the girls asks me.

"I'm okay."

"You want to buy us drinks?"

"Actually I don't buy girls drinks. You can get me one if you want."

This, as it turns out, is the fastest way to get two prostitutes to leave you alone. I never saw the girls again, and soon after was rescued by D, worse for wear perhaps but richer for the experience.

Hong Kong

2008-12-04T21:31:00.005Z

I don't think I can begin to describe what an amazing time I'm having in Hong Kong. There are indications. The fact that I can compress all my stories into a list, and they still sound pretty damn cool, is a good one. The fact that I'm writing this at five thirty in the morning is probably another.

This is the place that everything feels like it's coming together. The last six weeks helped me shed my insecurities, self-consciousness and fears, but it is here, nurtured by the positive energy and hints of possibility I find coming my way from everyone I meet, that I really feel like everything has truly slotted into place, and I can feel myself embodying the person I want to be.

When I was wandering around Italy with Alisa in the summer, as we walked past the train station at night in Florence, we talked about traveling, and how you can develop through it and become a bigger person, but you are best off having someone next to you to witness it, and whose development you can witness too. It's a funny thing, but the place where I feel the strongest, happiest and most secure so far in my travels is the place where I miss the people I left behind the most, and wish they could see the me I've uncovered, the bolder and badder me who is unfazed and unafraid. Just as I'm surprisingly able to meet new people with apparent ease, I'm spending more of my spare time on the phone or facebook or skype, checking in on people half the world away.

Like I said, it's hard to let things worry me here, it's just funny to recognise this in myself. I think it's natural to have a blip of homesickness around the two month mark (53 days and counting), but it's also a nice feeling, I feel like there's something I can go home to when I do go back (not for a while at least).

As far as what I'm doing in Hong Kong?

- A few days a week in a literary agency
- Two nights a week studying Mandarin
- One morning (at present) tutoring a boy for GCSE English
- (Hopefully) an internship at Hong Kong Time Out (waiting to hear, otherwise I'll be in touch with the free equivalents)
- Several gym sessions a week
- Arts networking events (slightly self-indulgent, but fun) (although I kept losing at the last one by greeting new people with, "Hi, I'm new to this networking thing, how do you win?") (which I hoped would prick the bubble of their pretensions with a debonair charm, but frequently left me propping up the bar looking like a billy no-mates)
- Kraftwerk tomorrow
- Checking out what TimeOut says is cool

Finally, this blog's been accepted to appear on TravelBlogs.com. Check it out, it features the best of all aspects of blogging in relation to travel, exploring and backpacking.

Yumla, 79 Wyndham St

2008-11-29T20:05:00.005Z

I'm pretty sure I remember when I realised I had to leave the apartment. It was around the time R, my landlady, put on "Don't You Want Me Baby" and said, "I remember loving this song when I was seven". Hong Kong's a pretty small place. I only know ten people, probably less, but on the two minute walk from my flat in SoHo to the bar I read about in TimeOut, I had run into R and her friends, and found myself in a progression of latenight hangouts - a cool south american themed bar, a street corner, the roof, and finally her couch. I knew though that that wasn't what tonight should be about, and with a jolt of musical apathy I tore myself away from the friendly group of 30-somethings and on to the bar I'd read about, the one that advertised the odd mix of 'breaks and techfunk'. If nothing else, my mission was to find out exactly what 'techfunk' might be.

The bar wasn't where it should have been, and noone seemed to know it. The more difficult it became, the more determined I was to find it, and here it was, down a sidealley and off a staircase. The heart shaking pulse from within told me I'd arrived before I noticed the chalkmarks on the wall outside, declaring 'Yumla rocks' among other slogans.

The music was great, although I couldn't tell you what separates techfunk from other types of techno (or funk). What I can tell you about is how liberating it is to enter a bar/club like this on your own. That's when the pressure's off, bizarrely. Since you don't know anyone, by definition you can't truly embarrass yourself. Moreover there's more of a necessity to be open to everyone around you, so you have a stronger chance of meeting people if you put yourself out there.

Okay, so that's not totally true. I did have one ally going in to Yumla. At about a foot tall and bright blue, an Elmo doll I'd somehow picked up in the previous hour was my new best friend, and he did a lot of the hard work for me. (Edit: What I actually had was a Grover doll. I'm now checking other things I think I remember from my childhood, just to be sure.) He chatted up the barmaid (she was very keen on him, and looked disappointed when I tore him away from her), danced with a hot Chinese girl (he told me afterwards she had a boyfriend, but she blushed and moved away pretty quickly afterwards so I think she was beginning to take a fancy to him) and stole a cigarette off a British girl who knew the DJ but never took her jacket off. Me? I was doing poorly in comparison, making small talk with a Canadian documentary maker (his subject? Water. I'm not waiting for a mainstream release). Then a drunk and (slightly) terrifying northern girl got keen on me, and I was doing my best to avoid the vomit breath coming my way as she pinched my bum and told me she loved me ("but you don't even know my name", "that's just because you haven't told me yet" "erm... yeah").

Luckily, between the foul breath of my new friend and the shiny fur of my old one, I started to get going. She tried to trade up, using me to get in with a tall, chiseled-looking actor-type propping up a barstool. She pointed at me and said, "Have you met my friend?" From his lofty height he gave both her and me a dismissive look and shook his head. "Ah," I said, "But have you met my friend?" It was at this stage I introduced him to Elmo. This he liked, and before long me and L (who turned out to actually be an actor) were getting on like a house on fire, rank northerner forgotten. Through L I met P, a director he'd recently worked with, who told me about a party in a few nights time.

It's funny how quickly things move. I spent the last few days hiding, because I'm beginning to get used to the pace of things when you start to meet new people in a new city. It's manic for a while, testing out how 'worth it' these friendships are going to be. Truth be told, I've spent a few days with a box set of the Office, hiding away from getting going. Still, a night like tonight, which sets you buzzing from your toes to your finger tips, makes you remember why it's all worth it.

Here's to Hong Kong.

Cheers.

2008-11-18T10:27:00.006Z

Statue at the Nanjing Massacre memorial, commemorating the death of 300,000 civilians at the hands of the Japanese

The view from Sun Yatzen's Mausoleum, Nanjing

L-R Me, Charlie, Joyce at Armin, Shanghai

Glenmorangie, origami

Welcome to China

2008-11-17T15:49:00.005Z

If there's one story I've resisted telling about my travels, because it's just too much of a cliche, it's the "Welcome to China" story. One reason that I've steered clear is that it appeared in a book I hated (in fact it was a chapter heading), Polly Evans' "Fried Eggs with Chopsticks", a 250 page complaint about how awful travelling alone is (admittedly I only made it 80 pages in before I gave up). Another is that the story is pure surface, a nice little tale about a friendly interaction with a Chinese, hinting at some kind of depth without actually containing any. It usually goes that a few weeks in to your trip to China, once you're comfortable enough to seem approachable to Chinese people without understanding enough of the language to have a proper conversation, someone (usually a man, given how shy many Chinese women are) approaches you for a chat. You stumble through the few Chinese sentences you can manage - I come from London, I don't speak Chinese, I don't understand - and then there's an awkward, but friendly, pause, both of you out of lines of communication. You both smile at each other, wishing you could go further, and then he says (big grin for this one) "Welcome to China". It's easy to slip this into stories about traveling, since it seems so meaningful and relevant the first time it happens.

So if it's such a cliche, why am I - a hater of cliches wherever I notice them - discussing it here, on my own blog? Well, two reasons really. In part it's because I've had two such conversations today, enough to make me feel doubly welcome in a country I've been in for nearly five weeks now, but mostly it's because of the circumstances of the second occasion.

I'm in Nanjing still, leaving tomorrow for Hangzhou, and decided tonight to check out the bar district proper (having failed miserably to find a whiskey on the rocks last night). On my third attempt (The first place: sorry, you can't enter. No I can't give you an explanation; the second: please pay us 200 pounds) I found an R&B club with a nice bar, friendly staff and cheap(ish) drinks. Whilst I waited on a Glenmorangie, the man next to me turned and smiled. "Gambei" he said, the Chinese equivalent of "down it", and pointed at the shot of his beer the waitress had poured for me. I smiled, took the glass, maintained eye contact (important here) and took the shot. We chatted briefly, and I received my whiskey. In the meantime the prettiest barmaid had finished work and taken a seat on my left, and as I drank up I watched her engage in origami with fascination. She remained locked in concentration for a full five minutes, and at the end she presented the most perfect origami swan I'd seen.

I was not to be outdone. "Get me some paper" I said, and soon enough I had a sheet in front of me. "Watch this" I told her, and the watching barstaff. I honestly wasn't sure what would happen next. A few folds had me a decent corner. "Are you ready?" I said - I didn't care that they couldn't understand, they would get it soon enough. I placed the paper on my head. "It's a hat". The barstaff laughed, the girl took the paper from me, turning it into real origami, an amazing heart which she presented to me. I laughed and gave her the thumbs up, only to be interrupted again by the guy on my right.

"Gambei" he said again, and I obligingly downed the rest of my whiskey. We smiled uncomprehendingly at each other, and he pointed at my jacket - a tailored burberry style raincoat I picked up at the fabric market for 50gbp. He touched one of the buckles on the shoulders. "Yingguo shwo shenme?" he asked - how do you say this in English? I told him, and he told me that in China only soldiers had these, and how to distinguish verbally between an infantryman's epaulet's and a general's. Truth be told, between the speed of his slightly slurred Chinese and the MC's attempts at English (shake der tass, shake der tass) I wasn't following him too well. Finally he pointed at his chest, thumped it with his fist and smiled. He spoke Chinese, but I didn't understand, and when I looked back with confusion he repeated himself slowly in English. "The Chinese military welcomes you" he said, which put me on edge just enough to order another Glenfiddich, and down it in one.

Leaving Shanghai

2008-11-16T14:25:00.002Z

It's funny how quickly your perspective can shift. It's hard to recognise when something's going wrong whilst you're inside it. I really thought I loved Shanghai, but it took ten minutes in Nanjing to flip that belief on its head. Shanghai is a great city, a fun city and, above all else, an alive city, dripping with energy - commercial, competitive energy oozes from every face and building. The flip side of this is an undercurrent of aggression that never really leaves you, flashing out in the overcrowded subway or flashpoints with cab drivers, reflected back at you in the phallic skyline (mine's bigger than yours) and gaudy neon used to promote corner shop. The taxi ride from the train station to my hotel started out as a typical Chinese experience, long queues at a bottle neck, pushy cab driver who picked up another passenger with me already in the car, but quickly faded into a pleasure, travelling down Nanjing's broad streets through quiet Sunday evening traffic (a marked contrast to the Sunday lunch traffic we'd fought through to get to the station in Shanghai). Walking the streets is easy, calm, and frequently punctuated by friendly smiles. Of course there are problems, and it's easy to see the positive when you first get to a city, but right now it's a welcome relief from the naked aggression that bubbles around Shanghai, and which was starting to boil up through me in the run up to my departure.

Another strange thing after Shanghai (considered by the Chinese the seedy underbelly of their country, the world's largest red light district) is the difficulty I had finding a bar. Several people on the street couldn't think of one nearby. Finally a young shop assistant (she looked fifteen at most) told me to try a place round the corner. I found it easily and started to enter, but was called back by as I went down the stairs. Unable to understand the Chinese fired at me, I tried out my own few sentences - I don't understand. I go drink beer - and pointed at the budweiser sign above my head. More men came running, and now I was surrounded, each trying his best shot at English whilst I kept trying to explain myself in Chinese. This impasse went on for a few minutes. Finally one turned to me and said "Men not allowed". I smiled at him, said I understood, and started to walk away. "Bye", one of them called. "Bye", I replied. "Bye", he said again, and when I didn't respond he said it again, and again, until I turned round and stopped, burst out laughing, completely overwhelmed with confusion. For the first time I noticed the bar's sign, next to this group of smiling, waving men, twelve foot of neon with the name and, underneath, a drawing, the outline of a busty female form and a pole. Could this be the first time someone's been rejected from a lapdancing club for being male?

2008-11-15T05:20:00.002Z

Go to Pudong, the eastern financial district. Take a taxi to the Regency Hyatt. Let the footman hold the door open as you pay. Button up your suit. Walk past the first reception, smiling suited men and women with golden name badges and polished shoes. Hear the clip of leather soles on marble. Climb fifty four floors in the first lift, eyeing unshaven important western men, suit jackets over one arm. Don't catch sight of yourself in the mirror just yet. Switch lifts, walking past the dark gold ambiance of a second hotel lobby set against the dark night sky, the neon already far below you. Climb another thirty one floors with more businessmen, you can see them already looking forward to gentle sleep in a soft bed. Switch again, it's darker now up here but bright in the gold mirrored lift. Now examine yourself - there are three mirrors for the purpose. Tailored striped shirt, tailored grey jacket. Emerge out into the eighty seventh floor, soft neon the only thing holding back black and grey as you pass leather upholstered armchairs and black tabletops. This bar isn't for you tonight, the one where invisible Risk men are shifted over Friday night cocktails by the masters of the universe. You're going to the bar just beside it, you could watch and hear them from your table - these two bars are in the same room after all - but you won't. Your bar is personal, hidden away, just as dark on the inside - to be sure - but outside bright, infinite. In front of you a wall of glass and beyond lies the tops of sky scrapers so far below, the river, unerring neon and flashing lights to warn off planes, streets lit up by the red, yellow, white of headlamps and taillamps, the whole of Shanghai stretching out before you. Smoke a cigar, let the mist fizz up into your vision so it gives everything that dreamlike foggy air, and drink a cocktail, drink three, till the lightness near your neck and the top of your head makes you forget the glass, the bar, the money talk, until you aren't there at all but in heaven floating out over the night, the boats, the neon, the street vendors and the taxi drivers, since from up here everything is nothing but beauty.

They call this place Cloud Nine for a reason.

2008-11-08T19:49:00.003Z

It's sort of hard to keep a blog like this one updated once you slip into some sort of routine. For two weeks now my days have followed a rarely varying structure. Each morning I wake up for the car into school, holding myself back in my room five minutes just to irritate the old Swedish witch we all detest, have a morning group class from 9 till 12.30, have lunch, as often as not in Subway because it's easy and I usually have chinese characters to learn for my afternoon class, spend the afternoon chatting with Wang Ling, my teacher, and filling in the blanks from my morning's class. In the evenings a bar maybe, or dinner with classmates, or Bond, or a trip to the fabric market. Home, character revision, a DVD, bed. If I updated regularly, this would hardly be thrilling stuff.

I've been writing a fair bit in the meantime, largely experimentally and nothing that I would deem interesting enough to go on here. Of course there have also been points of excitement, but they've largely been to do with people and discretion dictates that I gossip behind people's backs; this is just too public for my own wellbeing.

It’s hard to find myself in new or challenging situations. In fact, I’m back in a flow – what my Dad called a ‘datastream’ – moving in the same direction as other people. At Mandarin House everyone’s moving in the same direction – my newfound friends by definition have a limited knowledge of Chinese, and few know much about China. The odd thing is how travellers can’t help but view people through the lens of where they come from. This is something I’m guilty of more than the others, but nonetheless the Yank-Swiss-Swede jokes and cultural misassumptions are a kind of basis for group and one one one communication. For these reasons I’m getting on very well with Wang Ling, who’s a laugh and who can give me an insight into how the Chinese view things. Most notably, she told me that the popular view is that Boris Johnson is a disrespectful drunk who only pitched up at the Olympics to ogle Chinese girls. Which just goes to show how perceptive they are.

A few more things stand out. Actually tonight I just got back from Above and Beyond (dance DJs) playing an incredible set, so good I just stood blissfully for two hours or so, listening to the music with equally enraptured friends. Despite my best attempts to contract food poisoning, testing out the street vendors (as long as what they sell is identifiable as one food or another) and coming across some delights, such as crispy fried vegetable dumplings, I ended up getting ill the old fashioned way, eating a burger from an American themed diner. My gut's still processing the supposedly American meat, a lesson well learned I think.

I managed to avoid going to the best Drum and Bass night of the month last night. Apparently noone outside the UK - yanks, swedes, french or swiss - knows what Drum and Bass is (at the very least I thought the Swedes would go for it) so in the end I cried off making a lone trip.

I'm doing another week on my course, which I'm enjoying but frustrated by, since I'd love to be able to speak the language and know just how long that will take me to accomplish. So after this week I'm putting myself back on holiday, to experience, enjoy and destress as much as possible, since after all that is what this trip is all about. Being back in this data stream has sent me reeling back to the Cambridge job listings website, sending out applications and considering just how much Chinese I can justifiably claim on my CV. Whilst Mandarin is definitely something I want to continue, I'd rather enjoy myself here than go back to the place I was in September, panicking about what happens next with my life to the exclusion of everything else.

Zhongguo Uncovered

2008-10-30T12:48:00.002Z

Today was a day of firsts. For one thing it was the first time I've seen live turtles for sale by the side of the street. This being China, I couldn't say for certain whether they were available as pets or as food, but my guess is probably both. It was also the first time I've encountered a Chinese transvestite prostitute, towering at about 6'3" in heels and advertising her dubious wares on a corner outside my hotel - which is in a very vibrant area indeed.

More importantly, today was my first glimpse into what makes this country tick. China's strength - the reason it can boast 9% growth in the midst of a global recession - is its industry, and particularly it's clothes factories.

Touring these enormous mass production lines was more than just an insight into the Chinese miracle, it was an insight into clothing generally. I assumed, not unreasonably I thought, that most manufacturing processes were automated these days, picturing a machine assembly line where a large bit of cloth went in and a polished and embellished tshirt, shirt or jacket came out, needing perhaps a bit of hand embellishing but nothing more.

I was quite spectacularly wrong. While some processes here are fully automated, such as the German knitting machines that produce garments to spec, needing no more manpower than a supervisor, most are full on, labour intensive and require large numbers of workers.

"This factory employs 7,000 people" my guide tells me, mostly migrants from China's rural districts who are housed on-site in dormitories. I don't pause to ask her, because I am gazing down line after line - as far as the eye can see and in all directions - of neatly lined up sewing machines, each manned and piled high with fabric. As you move down the line, watching each practice their specialty, from hemming to cuffs to buttons, you see the fabric go from rough material to finished product. The number of workers here alone is staggering, let alone the output. This is just one factory, and their are thousands like it dotted round Hangzhou, Shanghai, Beijing and all over China. This microcosm of Chinese industry, cheap labour leading to mass production, just goes to show why so many of my clothes bear the 'Made in China' slogan.

On another note, the following extract from The Londonist's halloween listings caught my eye:

Join the anarcho-pagans and witchy-lefties in Docklands, gathering outside 25 Canary Wharf, the now cold, empty building of Lehman Brothers, to dance on the grave of capitalism. 5pm to midnight, but as it’s an anarcho, don’t worry about getting there too early. This event has a Facebook page.

That sounds like a party I'd like to go to.

Ni Hao Capitalism

2008-10-27T15:54:00.006Z

He kele

All five of us stare blankly at the pinyin syllables on the board as our tutor leads us through their pronunciation one by one. It's our first morning of Mandarin classes, and so far we've gone through the gamut of juh, chuh, zuh and qus, the oas and ous and all the other uncomfortable consonants and vowels which have left our jaws feeling just a tad worn out. Our teacher smiles at us with an impossibly friendly grin, which hasn't left his face all morning. It could be reassuring if it weren't so forced.

"You are about to speak the first Chinese sentence," he tells us, grin spreading wider. "Please repeat: hur kur-luh". Each of us tries in turn, until he is satisfied with our pronunciation. "Now", he says, "what does it mean?" We stare at him blankly.

"This one," he points to the 'He', "is a verb. It means to drink. This one is a noun. Kur-luh. What do you think this means?"

The girl next to me makes a timid suggestion. "Cola?" she asks.

"That's right. Cola. So what does this sentence mean?"

Noone answers, so he tells us.

"Drink Coke." Another wide grin.

Mao is presumeably turning in his grave.

Market Passage

2008-10-24T17:57:00.002+01:00

Noone needs to hear about how I spent a week reading and shopping. It's an odd thing about Shanghai, I love it here but it's very western, and completely unchallenging in the way Beijing was. I could be in any city right now, which is why there's so little I'm feeling the need to write about, but I'm having a fantastic time anyway. I've spent my days exploring the city, and especially the art street (50 Moganshan Lu, a set of gallery spaces in old warehouses) and the fashion and technology markets. The art street was interesting, but there was little that really grabbed me. The most engaging piece was a work by Liu Bolin at Eastlink Gallery, although the website sadly doesn't make any mention of him. His photographs of chameleon-like people, who are painted to fit into their background, are powerful and reflect a general sense of the removal or ignoring of the individual in a lot of the works I saw. Another, less successful, show featured 21 artists' self portraits, none of which featured the artist themself, at least not in any kind of obvious way. One featured a screenshot from a google search of the artist's name. I do want to return, since a lot of the bigger galleries were closed on the day.

Apart from time spent with Charlie and his Mandarin course friends, I've spent most of my time in the markets, bargaining and checking out what they offer. Shirts are tailored for about 12-15GBP, whilst a tailored suit is around 50. Wandering around is fascinating, and makes you entirely reassess the value you attached to clothes since everything is so cheap.

Walking through a market yesterday, a woman started to offer me her wares - watches, handbags and DVDs. Having not yet encountered a proper fake DVD seller, I was intrigued and asked her what she had. She led me through her shop to a back room. There, on shelves, stood stuffed animals, which she removed. She grabbed a magnet from the side and attached it to the back wall. With a 'click' the whole thing came away, revealing thousands of tiny plastic slips, each containing a fake or copied DVD, each costing a pound - and I'm sure I could have got them for less. Having looked through hundreds of options, and picked out five to examine, she asked me if I was interested in TV shows. China does not show most American shows on TV, so it is down to the fake DVD sellers to keep the eager Chinese market up to date with Gossip Girl, Heroes, Prison Break, 24 and the like.

"What do you have?" I asked.

'Click'. Back went the back wall, and off came the stuffed animals from another shelf. 'Click.' Off came another panel and here again stood hundreds of boxes, brightly coloured, each one containing full series of TV shows. I paid for my purchases and made to leave. "Better take this", the shopkeeper told me, handing me a black carrier bag and putting the DVDs inside. "So the police don't see."

Mr. Jones

2008-10-21T09:00:00.004+01:00

Mr. Jones did not read much. Sure, he liked the radio, and television, and even enjoyed books on tape when he came across them. Still, he did not like to read. It was the voice. There are many lines in books, he always thought, that would be most affecting, if only they were delivered with the right tone of voice. Therein lay the problem for Mr. Jones, for he had been afflicted from a very young age with an immensely irritating voice. Even in his head, it jarred. Oh, he tried. “It is a truth universally acknowledged...”, he would begin, and then stop, wishing his ears would stop ringing. He longed for the deep, commanding timbre of radio presenters, who could declaim “Last night I dreamt I went to Manderlay again” with the solemnity that befits a great work of fiction. Sometimes he would try to read gossip magazines, ascribing his own voice to the writers' shrill pieces on cellulite (or was it cellulose? He could never remember the difference, not that he supposed it mattered much) and diet pills. It provided him with some pleasure, but for an intelligent person there is only so much to be gained from reading trashy magazines, and Mr. Jones longed for intellectual stimulation. Of course, since his voice was so off-putting to himself (and you might imagine he would be used to it by now, since he was in his late thirties), it was even more upsetting for others, on the rare occasions when he opened his mouth to speak.

It hadn't always gone like this. At school, everything had started exceptionally well for him. After all, all children have squeaky high pitched voices, and nobody paid much attention to the fact that his voice was just that bit higher and squeakier than everyone else's. In fact, it used to help. When teacher had asked whether someone could answer a question, it was he whose voice would stand out, having just the right pitch to rise above the cacophony of screaming children. His distinct tone of voice helped him when playing Stuck in the Mud in the playground, since he was able to make himself heard above the din to warn when others were in danger of getting stuck. Yes, until he left primary school Mr. Jones had been a normal, sociable, if slightly squeaky, child.

The problem had come when the boys started to develop, round the time he joined his secondary school. As he joined his new group of friends for classes, he noticed something had changed. Their voices, one by one, were losing the shrill squeaks and finding a more balanced, deeper tone. Every so often the squeaks would all rush back at once in a single word and the boys would go very red, whilst everyone around them laughed at a strangely pronounced word. Mr. Jones did not laugh. In fact, he used to go very red himself, for those high pitched squeals that involuntarily came to the others in his class sounded like his normal squeaking voice.

“Don't worry darling”, his mother used to say, “your voice will drop too.” But as the years passed things started to go the other way, and his voice became shriller, and his classmates began to tease him in the cruel way that children do. He began to really hate that voice of his. It was around this time that reading became difficult, reminding him in his otherwise silent state of his cruel affliction. He failed his exams and left school, sadly watching the other children go on to university. He began to retire from society, stuck as he was with the inability to communicate clearly with others.

It was only through bird watching that he had come to find any sense of peace. Amongst the pips and chirrups of birdcalls, he forgot that his own voice was unnatural and odd sounding, and it cheered him up. He made a living maintaining a bird watching society, writing a newsletter which he felt benefited from the birdlike delivery he could give it, and he moved in to a small commuter village on the outskirts of London, where the only sign of life to be found between the hours of 8am and 6pm, Monday to Friday, was the unexpected appearance of a Red Backed Shrike or a Long Tailed Skua. On the occasions when he did come across his neighbours, which was rarely as he did not frequent the local shops, preferring to use the internet to order his groceries, he would try and affect a deep voice. “Hullo,” he would chirrup, in the gruffest tone he could manage, the concentration involved clearly showing on his face. Invariably the villagers would laugh and scuttle on, anticipating the conversation over family dinner that evening about encountering “That strange Mr. Jones again”. He would sigh and wander home.

Still, it wasn't a bad existence, he often thought to himself. He was really quite happy. Although his income from the society, supplemented by a lump sum bequeathed to him when his great aunt had died, was not particularly large, he was not a greedy man and could live perfectly comfortably. Occasionally though, late at night or when he was having a bad day, when he'd run out of other things to think about and there was nothing on TV and he had just failed to get past the first page of Great Expectations for the thirteenth time, just occasionally he would think to himself that really he was quite lonely. As soon as he'd thought it, of course, he would try and forget about it, and think about other things. He'd remind himself that he didn't have it so bad really, that there were children starving in Africa and wars and famine and so on. He'd comfort himself with the fact that he had his birds, and his tidy home, with its special cupboard for biscuits, and really that was all more than he needed. He could never really convince himself, but then there wasn't much to be done about it, since his presence tended to arouse such a negative reaction in all who encountered him. He once tried to raise it with the vicar, a kindly if doddering man with more hair in his eyebrows than on the rest of his head put together, but the holy man had been unable to maintain an air suitable to helping out a troubled parishioner. He had tried his best, but half way through Mr. Jones' woes he had burst into a fit of hysterics that had not stopped, and Mr. Jones had been forced to abandon the whole endeavour. A little while later he received an apologetic letter from the vicar, but it was clear that the effort that had been expended in trying to take him seriously had left the man with no clue as to what had actually been said.

It was a curious aspect of Mr. Jones peculiar affliction that he rarely got sick. As a child, he had always been rather hardy anyway, but as he grew up his increasing isolation had left him immune to the various sniffles, coughs and colds that affected his schoolmates around him. If he had ever been sick, he didn't remember it, and he was sure he didn't know what it would be like. So when he finally did catch a cold, it took him completely by surprise.

It happened like this. Being a man of little inspiration or imagination, since he, like many of his generation, had been raised by the images force fed to him by the television and not those he could construct himself, and being rather literal in his interpretation of the world around him, it had never occurred to him to 'think outside the box'. Quietly Christian as he was, the only way he saw out of his current predicament was through prayer. Dutifully he would kneel at the pews on a Sunday and say his Our Father, and pray for acceptance, or at the very least a companion. Since this had been going on for a very long time, he was beginning to get the feeling that maybe it wasn't working. He was musing on this out in the fields on a cold February morning, when a realisation struck him. He was a practical joke, a toy devised by the heavens to amuse God himself. Stunned, he repeated the idea to himself, trying to see what was wrong with it, but could find nothing. Had he ever done anything wrong? Not that he could see. Didn't he eat his meals on time, say his prayers and give ten percent of his meagre earnings to the Church's charity box? Didn't he always do his best to be a good person, even when he was being rejected by all the people around him? It was at this point that he decided to start doing things differently. He started walking backwards, laughing at himself as he fell into a ditch. He took off his wellies and put them on his hands, and went running through the mud in abject rejection of everything his mother had ever taught him. He was sticking it to her too, the rules that he lived obediently by which had done nothing to help him through his trouble. It was then that he had come across a dirty pond, and remembering his baptism, decided to annul it in this festering water. Saying a little anti-prayer to himself, he threw himself backwards into it. This was how he became ill.

At first he didn't know what was happening to him, waking up the next morning with a ringing headache and a blocked nose. He felt terrible, and began to think that maybe the Lord was punishing him for yesterday's heresies. He hawked up a gob of phlegm and spat it into his sink, noticing the rawness in his throat for the first time, another thing wrong. He decided he needed to say sorry. He knelt down and started to pronounce the first words of “Our father...”. He stopped. He tried again. “Our father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.” He stopped again. Through the rasping pain in his throat his voice... His voice sounded deep, manly for the first time. He jumped up with a gruff whoop. Then he remembered what he'd been doing and knelt down again, finishing the prayer in the solemn tones that suited it. He jumped up again and ran downstairs, with an excitement he hadn't felt since he was a child, rushing to open presents on Christmas morning. Grabbing a book from the shelf he began to read, aloud, with a solemnity he had never heard himself deliver, “ And gentlemen in England now a-bed | Shall think themselves accursed they were not here, | And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks | That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day.”. Delighted, he threw the book down and grabbed another. “The Nelllie, a cruising yawl, swung to her anchor without a flutter of the sails, and was at rest. The flood had made, the wind was nearly calm, and being bound down the river, the only thing for it was to come to and wait for the turn of the tide.” Another! He was like a baby clapping in delight at finding a new trick he can do, enunciating every syllable and taking delight in the sounds each one made. That's when it occurred to him, he could share this gift with the world! He picked up the telephone, and called his mother. He was disappointed to find that she didn't answer. He decided to leave a message.

“Hello mother,” he started boldly. He paused, not sure what should come next. “I'm calling you on the telephone.” That sounded right. “You aren't in at the moment so I am leaving you a message on the answering machine. Goodbye.” After all, no point wasting time with a machine when there was a whole world of conversation to explore right outside his door.

He ran upstairs to get dressed for the occasion, adrenaline pumping through him so strongly that his illness was practically forgotten right now. Setting out, he marched down the village street, greeting the Saturday shoppers with a confident “Good day to you” or “How do you do”. Those that didn't know him smiled politely back at him and replied in kind, whilst those who had encountered him before stared back in shocked surprise. Children who used to run round him taunting him to speak started to approach when they saw him coming, then ran back in fright when he'd greet them with a cheery, if slightly eager, “Hello there young boy”. Yes, thought Mr. Jones, this was fun. After an hour or so, tired from his busy morning greeting people, he decided to stop in at the local pub.

Mr. Jones had never been to a pub before. At school he had heard people talk about it in hushed whispers, but had never been brave enough to join their excursions with older brothers or using a fake ID. Shy as he was by this stage, the additional ridicule he imagined would be attached to not getting served had made him even more anxious about the idea. By the time he had turned eighteen his withdrawal from society had been largely completed, and he had forgotten about the whole thing entirely. Now though, he decided that he would join the cheery crowd of drinkers he imagined resided within such bright and friendly establishments, a notion he had cultivated from an unfortunate addiction to daytime soaps.

Entering, he found the place darker and emptier than he'd expected, but warm and inviting. He looked around, and realised he was being watched by an old man with a long white beard and two pints of guinness already standing empty on the table in front of him.
“Are you the economist?” the old man asked him.

“No,” replied Mr. Jones, slightly taken aback. Then, feeling that perhaps this wasn't quite enough, he added, “I'm Mr. Jones. I run the birdwatching society.”

“Birdwatching?”

“Yes.”

The man seemed to think about this for a second. Mr. Jones studied him as he did, noticing the weathered look of his face and the worn state of his clothes. After a few second he spoke again.

“You ever seen a pair of tits?” He cackled to himself as he said this, although Mr. Jones couldn't see anything particularly funny. He started to respond with details of the blue tits in the area, but thought better of it. He knew well enough when he was being mocked.

Slightly disappointed by this encounter, which he felt had taken the sheen off a so far excellent day, he walked up to the bar and tried to decide what his first pint should be. The thought cheered him a little and he looked around for the barman. To his slight dismay, it turned out to be a bar woman, who smiled at him from behind kind, young eyes which belied a more experienced face.

Apart from his mother, Mr. Jones did not know any women. He had attended an all boys school, and even the few birdwatchers meets that he had attended (saying very little of course) had involved only men. This one seemed exceptionally young and pretty to him. He wondered whether he should tell her, but decided against it.

“Hello, I'm Mr. Jones,” he said instead.

“Hello Mr. Jones,” she repeated with a smile, “Jane. Don't mind Harry over there, he's harmless. What'll you have?”

He ordered a pint and paid her, and went to sit down. Among the many thoughts racing through his head, one rose to the surface. Jane Jones? Shame. He scolded himself for the very idea. Still, she seemed friendly enough, and his confidence was bolstered by the new voice he had acquired. All the same, he didn't really know how to talk to her. He returned several times over the next few days, often cutting off his birdwatching early to spend some more time in the pub. Each time he would sit with his pint, a wide smile on his face, talking now and then to people who came in – this in itself was a delight – and thinking of a way to strike up a conversation with Jane.
An opportunity finally came the following Tuesday evening, when Harry had a few more guinnesses than even his (by now rather pickled) insides could cope with, and he had to be carried home. Mr. Jones offered to do it and Jane closed the pub up early to guide him. As they walked back he managed to strike up a conversation.

“Do you run the pub on your own?” he asked.

“Yeah, it was dad's place. When he died I was applying for uni, taking a gap year to travel the world, but there was nobody else to run it. I didn't want to sell it out to some chain, it's part of the village life. I decided to quit and keep it going.”

“I'm sorry. That must have been very difficult. I didn't go to university either.”

“Oh.”

“I wanted to but something stopped me.”

“What?”

“I'd rather not say.” He didn't want to mention his affliction at this early stage in the proceedings. Already he was worrying that it might come back. Not understanding the nature of his illness, he didn't realise that he was bound to recover and his voice would return to normal. He thought that he'd been touched by a miracle. Still, it didn't do to tempt fate.

“I understand, I sometimes regret not going too. Still, it's not a bad life. Just a shame the only people who come to my pub are old alcoholics and school boys trying to hoodwink me. Apart from you of course, but you're new here.”

“Actually I've lived here a long time, since I left school in fact. I only just found your pub.”

“You can't spend that much time in the village.”

“No.”

Mr. Jones decided to tell Jane about his birds, and the things he enjoyed doing. He had watched a dating television show recently where they had advised against talking about certain topics – and birdwatching was one of them – but he liked telling her about it. She listened kindly, and responded here and there with a question or a laugh. When he was done she started to tell him more about her life, and the things she enjoyed. When they reached the pub she told him he had to return the next night for the pub quiz.

The pub quiz was one of the highlights of Mr. Jones' life to date. Jane got a man in to run it, and she entered her own team. He sat next to her throughout, and gave her several of the answers. When they won, which took him by surprise as many of the people on the other teams were older and – he would assume – more knowledgeable than him, she squeezed his hand and gave him a kiss on the cheek. He walked home elated, trying to compare the evening to other things in his experience, but unable to. He went to bed truly happy for the first time in his adult life.

Waking up the next morning he felt even better. Memories of the evening still glowed warm in his mind, and even the niggling headache and soreness he'd been feeling had evaporated. He jumped out of bed and opened the curtains wide. “Good morning” he started to say, but all he managed was “Goo...”. He jumped back in panic. His soft, crackly, solemn voice had gone, his old voice had returned. Terrified he tried out other syllables, but they all came out in the same screechy pitch he'd grown to hate over the years. Crying, he tried to regain yesterday's voice, but nothing worked. He was the old Mr. Jones again.

Mr. Jones did not go to the pub that night, or the next night. A whole week passed without him leaving the house, even to birdwatch. He felt miserable, unwilling to do anything but watch TV and think about Jane. After a week the telephone rang, but he didn't pick up. It went to the machine, but it was only his mother thanking him for the message and expressing her surprise at how well he sounded. Mr. Jones sighed. He had hoped it might be Jane, whom he had given his home phone number (in case of emergencies) after walking Harry home. Not that he could have answered if she had called, with his voice in the state it was in. Nonetheless it would have been nice to hear her voice.

Another week passed, and then the phone rang again. This time it was Jane. He stood by the machine as she left him a message, aching to speak to her. She told him they had missed him at the pub and she hoped she would see him at the next pub quiz the following night. She said she really missed him. Mr. Jones thought he might cry. He decided to go to the pub quiz but not say anything. He thought he could take a pad and paper and pretend to have lost his voice.

That's exactly what he did. He turned up at the pub the following night with a pad and a pen. He showed Jane his note explaining that he couldn't speak. She said she was happy to see him, and they joined in together again. This time they didn't do so well. Both seemed a bit distracted, and it was hard for them to discuss answers together when he had to pause to write down what he thought each time. When the quiz finished he stayed in the pub, but Jane was busy serving the customers. He watched her unhappily, wishing he could speak to her and tell her how he felt, sensing that perhaps she felt the same way. He kept silent though, afraid of her reaction to his voice.

“Oi! It's Mr. Jones.”

Hearing this he looked up and recognised a particularly nasty seventeen year old from the village, who had led his gang of friends in taunting poor Mr. Jones on many occasions. He looked at the boy pleadingly, hoping he wouldn't say anything.

“You all know Mr. Jones don't you? Mr. Jones who sounds like nails on a blackboard? He's got the weirdest voice you'll ever hear. Go on, speak.”

He looked anxiously around. Jane was watching him, curiously, while the other teenagers in the bar were advancing on him.

“Go on old man, speak.”

“Say something freak.”

“LEAVE ME ALONE,” he shouted, in a voice like a badly played violin, and the crowd of boys burst into laughter. Mr. Jones ran home, tears streaming down his face. He thought of the look of surprise on Jane's face when he'd spoken, the only person he cared about, shocked by his voice. It all seemed too cruel, to have gained something and had it taken away from him. Fury poured out of him, at the world, the heavens and his goddamn voicebox. He reached home and slammed the door. This didn't seem enough so he slammed another door. Still unsatisfied he walked into the kitchen and grabbed a plate, which he smashed on the floor. Feeling better he smashed another and another, but it wasn't helping, so he threw one at the window, which cracked as the plate broke off it, and still he didn't feel it was enough. He grabbed a big knife and stabbed at the window until he'd broken more of it, and took a fork and scratched it over the pristine wooden surfaces of his kitchen counter. Then he did it again, marvelling at the deep welts that the knife made in the hard surface. A third time, watching the wood shred beneath the metal prongs and realising what he was going to do next. He hesitated. His misery was too much. He had to do it.

He opened his mouth wide. He pressed the fork down it, but he started to gag, his eyes watering with the reflex and his face going red. Further he pressed the fork, a lump scratching the top of his throat now, and further. He moaned to himself, finding his vocal cords, and when he felt the sharp prong of the fork near one, he stabbed, hard, and scratched upwards, going back in for another dig, and another, blood choking him and throat screaming to stop. He didn't stop, but kept going, ripping every shred he could get a hold of, screaming without hearing, until his screaming stopped, became inaudible, just more bubbles in the frothing blood in his mouth, and he removed the fork with a final savage tug, dripping crimson onto his white kitchen floor, and collapsed in a heap, sobbing. He tried to speak, but could hear nothing but a faint whisper of air.

He awoke some time later to a knocking on his door. He staggered to his feet and walked to the door. From outside, Jane was calling to him.

“Mr. Jones. Open up! I'm so sorry they did that to you. I came as soon as I could. I don't care. I don't care about your voice. I understand. I'm so sorry. Please open the door.”

He gathered himself resolutely in front of the door, preparing to open it.

“I love you Mr. Jones. You're a good sweet man and I love you. You have nothing to be ashamed of. I understand why you hid away. Please, please open this door.”

He reached for the handle. The door swung open. He stood there in the doorway, haloed in the dark night by the dim hall light, battered by his own hand, tears streaming down his puffy, red cheeks. Their eyes met for what felt like eternity, he took her hand in his and she squeezed it, and when he tried to say “I love you” no sound trickled from his lips, only blood.

Shanghai

2008-10-19T16:49:00.005+01:00

I don't know what it is about Shanghai that made me immediately love it so much. It's probably the architecture. The crazy angles and impossible structures that made the Beijing skyline so interesting are here, and in greater numbers. In fact, entering in the taxi takes me back to entering New York, but here the buildings are more spaced out, less overwhelming. Each one can be appreciated for the marvel of engineering and aesthetic design that it is. Walking down Nanjing Rd., the main commercial street, with Charlie (a family friend doing a language course out here) makes me embarrassed at how excited I was to find Wangfujing. Every building seems to be a multi-storey shopping centre or a moody market, and everywhere people, excitement, full restaurants and busy streets. Taking the metro - despite the crowds - is a dream, clean, spacious, air-conditioned. The board counts down to the second how long it will be till the next train will arrive. And when the counter reaches 0.00, whoosh, bang on time comes the train. It's not a perfect city, but it's so energetic it's hard not to be sucked in.

There are pluses and minuses everywhere, and my hostel is providing two counterbalances. My room currently has no window. They assure me that tomorrow I can have a room with one, but they told me that yesterday too. Meanwhile the internet is sketchy at best, unable to deal with Skype or even internet radio. That said, the room is cheap, perfectly clean and pretty big, so I'm happy to have it as a base.

One thing that hasn't improved from Beijing is the driving. I don't think I've described just how manic Chinese driving is. First of all, traffic lights and pedestrian crossings are treated as quiet reminders at best. When a driver decides to turn a corner, traffic signals are ignored completely. As for the roads, the main ones can be divided into as many as six or seven lanes, which doesn't take into account the drivers' habit of using the lane markings as an overtaking lane. In Beijing we saw a car get wedged as he tried to gain a few yards down the tenth lane of a once six lane road. In taxis it's best not to look at the road, or listen to the horns around you, as your driver is as likely to be guilty of these violations as any.

I'm starting a language course Sunday for two weeks, so I'm doing my best to get as much of Shanghai in before I do. Checking out the markets tomorrow, hoping to find that £40 bespoke suit I've been promised!

Beijing

2008-10-17T14:50:00.004+01:00

Today is my last day in Beijing. It's funny, I booked my flight because I felt a bit overwhelmed by the city, wasn't sure what else to do with myself. As soon as I did, I started to really enjoy myself. Walking around Beihai park today, visiting beautiful buddhist temples awash with fragrant flowers and incense, soundtracked by evocative bell-ringing and harmonising voices from mounted speakers, I felt fully at peace. Pockets of serenity like this one, away from the frustrated gridlock or manic manoevring of the crowded traffic system, where the smog that pervades the city today seems mystical once again, protective. From the highest point the city hides in clouds of grey-yellow fog, but the boats on the lake, the belltower, the temples, these become part of my little world. I sighed contentedly, and wandered back to the hostel.

Beijing has felt like the deep end for me. Outside of the tourist spots noone speaks English, people haven't been very helpful - even taxi drivers - and the place has taken me by surprise, exceeding and undermining my expectations. At the same time it's hard not to love the place, the constant activity, the noise, the beauty, the size - it's all so idiosyncratic. The pace of change here is visible, which is not an experience I've ever had before, but the history is palpable too, standing side by side with sheer modernity.

Several things will stick in my mind about this city, but there's one thing I'll never forget. In the Forbidden City there was a sign beside a relic which read, in inimitable Chinese style:

Please remember a moment's carelessness can cause the eternal loss of beauty.

The irony of this quote - in a country that underwent the historical reinvention of the cultural revolution, in a city that all-but-destroyed part of its heart (the hutongs) to make room for wider roads for the Olympics - did not escape me. But "The past is another country" does not quite fit in here. Rather there seems to be a coexistence between past and present. This plea is a stark reminder of the risks of such a fast rate of progress in a country with so rich a history.

Wangfujing

2008-10-16T12:57:00.003+01:00

Just the name has something special about it. It reverberates around my head as I make myself down more wide boulevards, Wangfujing, the word itself enticing me to visit. Wangfujing, like Oxford Street, Rodeo Drive and 5th Avenue all rolled into one, something mega, beyond, the perfect home for a consumerist such as myself. The closer I get, the better I feel, like the sight of familiar shops, English and American brands and rampant consumerism will take me that little bit closer to home. Like so much I've experienced in these four short days (it feels like forever), I get exactly what I expected, and something else entirely.

Wangfujing is the highpoint of Chinese capitalism, a long street running parallel to the Forbidden City and Tiananmen. Walking down it from the top I pass rundown electronics shops and then, every so often but getting more common, like passing by ripples in a pond on the way to the heart of the disturbance, a designer store here, a five star hotel there. Boss. Burberrys. Smart shoppers laden down with bags, business suits, jeans and baseball caps, mobile phones. My hostel is in a traditional area of Beijing, full of hutongs, the idiosyncratic little alleyways alive with street vendors and tables crowded with chess players, at night lit only by the glow of their cigarettes and the moon. Where I am now could be a different country to those homely, dusty backalleys. This is a nod to western capitalism. Only it's bigger, better, cleaner and cheaper. As I enter the pedestrianised area, Wanfujing-proper, I am in heaven.

Noone needs to hear about how I went shopping for two hours, especially when the only thing I bought was a cheap (almost certainly fake) jade necklace. What is worth pointing out is just how big the place was. I wandered the main street to the very end, then popped in to check out the department store. This was how I found out that the street, which seems to stretch out for ages, is just a shop front. The department store itself merely takes up a part of an enormous shopping mall, which stretches the entire length of the street and climbing for six floors. Shops range from McDonalds to top-class restaurants, Nike to Giorgio, Starbucks to a multi-screen cineplex. And when you've explored that, you can cross the street and explore the next one, just two floors this time but occupying a whole block, underneath the Grand Hyatt.

I walked home elated, awe-struck by the containment of everything in one place, right at the heart of a major city. As I went, I noticed people eating what appeared to be candied chestnuts, and had my second following-the-ripples experience of the day, tracing the line back to the vendor of these sweet-smelling caramelised treats. It was only on my first bite that I realised my mistake. Not chestnuts, but miniature apples, softened but underripe, perfectly complemented by the crunchy toffee coating. Not tough like English toffee apples, nor too big. Each bite was warmly sweet and sour, a perfect balance of the two. As I reached the hostel again, I reflected on these symmetrical experiences which have made me fall in love with Beijing, if only just a little bit.

Forbidden City, Tiananmen Square, The Great Wall of China and Home

2008-10-15T08:51:00.005+01:00

Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City are like two sides of the same coin. Both are enormous, imposing. Both display the glory and power of their respective regimes, and reflect the egos of the men in charge of them. Standing side by side it would be easy to appropriate the one into the context of the other, a line of Chinese building which follows the same philosophy, if not the same aesthetic concerns. The Forbidden City is overwhelming, an overt display of wealth, a series of daunting, stunning courtyards and palaces dedicated to the glory of one man. 9,999 rooms make up the palace, befitting the son of god (whose palace in the heavens is said to contain 10,000 rooms). Tiananmen is similarly hard to take in all at once, barely a square, just a vast, open tract of concrete, with a statue in the centre and buildings barely hemming in the sides. From the gate towards the Forbidden Palace, Mao looks down upon his people. At the other end stands his mausoleum, queues of Chinese tourists backing up far into the square for the briefest of glimpses of the formaldehyde-preserved body of their former ruler. Yet there is stark difference between these two immense feats of architecture, and it is ideological as much as it is aesthetic. The Forbidden City was built to glorify the Emperor and was, as its name suggests, closed to the general public. Only the Emperor's wives, concubines and advisors, along with foreign dignitaries, were allowed inside. Despite the cult-like representations of Mao, Tiananmen was designed to be public, open at each corner, capable of holding 500,000 people in one go. Of course, it has fame for other reasons too, ones which my guide did not mention and neither - for fear of censorship - will I. Be that as it may, there is something in these two structures that draws hundreds of millions of Chinese tourists every year, flowing from one into the other, paying their life savings in some cases, just to see these two icons of Beijing before they die. Tiananmen may now have a reputation less conducive to the idea of a free populace, but this area is one of Mao's victory, Tiananmen being the conduit through which most visitors will enter, and judge, the excesses of a bygone age found in the Forbidden City.

***

In China, everything may not be for sale, but almost everyone is trying to sell you something. Our guide takes us to a Jade museum on the way to the Great Wall. Museums like this one are based in factories, so our tour takes in the different types and manufacturing processes of Jade as described with ruthless efficiency by a woman in a business suit and shiny silver trainers. Brief lecture dispensed with, we are dumped in the shop and told to address our questions to more semi-formal employees, ruthless salespeople who stalk us as we browse, always following a step or two behind. I buy nothing (despite the forceful attention of one of them). My guide, who appears to have a vested interest, notices this. At the next place, a ceramics museum-factory-shop, she follows me around making helpful suggestions. "This pen is lovely. Look, only sixty yuan. That's less than ten dollars... You could buy your mother a present. You like this teapot?"

At the Great Wall, our guide leaves us to explore by ourselves. My companion is a retired headmaster, a warm, kind man who appears to have a better idea of what my trip is about than I do. Our starting position gives us two options: an impossible looking steep climb to the top of a mountain and beyond, or a more leisurely path. My companion's air of hardy anticipation leaves me in no doubt as to which one we'll be following. I set off reluctantly behind him, knees aching from the initial two-foot-high steps. Half an hour in and I'm gasping, desperate for an exit strategy. Irritation and anger set in. In this impossible challenge, I'm beginning to see the rest of my trip stretch before me. Long days, difficult journeys. And for what? I don't care if I reach the top of the mountain. I don't care if I keep travelling for a day or a week. Why not just give up when it becomes hard?

The surprise comes at the last hut we stop at before turning back, a sweaty hour straight uphill in bright sunshine. We enter and decide to check out how much further there is to go. Every time we'd reached a hut we'd found it had hidden much of the path beyond, and more misery awaited us (or me at least, since my companion seemed delighted to keep going). This time, though, there is no more. Even if we'd wanted to go on, we couldn't. The wall ends in a miniature balcony over the hill. It is only on the way down, noticing how many more people there are at the bottom than the top, watching people falter a quarter or halfway up the path (at points where I paused and then struggled on) that I begin to feel really good about the whole thing. My legs are shaking with adrenaline, sweat's pouring from my back and legs, but I'm buzzing, my mind racing, my body stronger than it was a moment before. Walking down the hill I start to see the benefits of travelling clearly, how stepping out of my comfort zones may be awful at times, but will serve me well in the long run. How much stronger I can feel from an uphill climb. And how much better the world looks from the top of a mountain - but only on the way down again.

Culture Shock

2008-10-14T17:59:00.005+01:00

I wake at 3 pm, having slept solidly from midnight. A night on Dom's floor and snatched sleep on the plane left me dead on arrival. Yesterday was tough, but it seems miles away now. When I arrived, the hostel was empty, I didn't understand the language, everything seemed too big or too fast. At junctions, cars seemed to race across, people ran. From a distance it felt like watching a stop-motion video, unnatural and disconcerting. Jingshan park was crowded with Chinese tourists. I paid my 2yuan entry (20p) and wandered in. From the top of the hill, hidden by trees, I could hear singing in Chinese, beautiful harmonising voices. I started to climb, passing a man standing on the roof of a hut, engaging in a painful-sounding self-tapping ritual. At the top I reached a gazebo-type structure. Two women had erected a tape deck and speakers. This is the music I'd been hearing. Disorientated, I started to walk, passing through more gazebo-type huts decorated in red and gold. I reached the largest one, the highest, with an enormous buddha statue inside. Tourists queued up to bow, but I turned back, worried I'd get it wrong. From here the city looked overwhelmingly endless, shrouded in its low lying off-yellow cloud.

I kept walking, getting my bearings. I finally got back to the hotel hours later, mildly wet, moderately underfed and exhausted. Entering my room again, reviewing the small oppressive corridor with two sets of four poster beds, I burst into tears. For half an hour I couldn't stop crying, letting fatigue and fear flow out of me. Speaking to Alisa and Soleil calmed me down. I got into bed and watched a film, forcing myself to stay up until I could barely see with tiredness and my ears started playing tricks on me.

Today is different. I feel fresh. I head out of the hostel, past a crowd of young Americans and Canadians who I've been vaguely aware of from my room laughing and drinking since midday. I want to talk to them, but right now I need food. I reach a main street and stop in the first restaurant I come to. After so long the meal - kung po chicken and salty vegetable dumplings with the most fantastic chewy-crunchy texture - brings me fully back. In good spirits I return to the hostel. This time I don't know how to approach the group of people, still sitting around a load of bottles of beer. I sit down at a computer to check my emails, and smile at the girl.

"Would you like to join us?" She smiles in my direction as she asks, and I gratefully take a seat amongst them. This is my first exposure to travellers' banter, and it's fun. Ben always said it's like speeded up friendship, and it's clear that noone has the barriers up in the way they do when you meet people at home. They know that they'll be gone in an hour or two, as do you, so you can say what you like. There's nothing to hold you to them or them to you, so you are completely relaxed, and nothing is taken too seriously. We rinse each other mercilessly. It feels pretty good.

Later I head out from the hostel to meet a woman called Ashley I met on couchsurfing.com. It's a website that advertises beds in cities for travellers - usually on people's couches. I just want to meet some people who know Beijing, so I am seeing Ashley for a drink with some of her friends. I give the taxi driver the google map address of the place we're drinking, carefully transcribed by a helpful woman from my hostel. He drops me off, and a man immediately offers me a "Lady bar".

"You want sex? What, you don't like sex?" he asks.

I brush him off irritatedly, and start to walk. A moment of panic sets in - I can't see the place we're meeting, the Pink Loft. He approaches again.

"You need help?" Gratefully I show him my directions. Luckily his profession gives him a goodish grasp of English. "This is North street. You want South street. You go there, cross, keep walking. You find it." I thank him, setting off in the right direction and brushing off more people offering me sex.

When I meet Ashley she leads me to a bar. "This is a pretty authentic Chinese bar experience," she explains to me, guiding me into a hotel lobby. "You have to go through a seedy dive, where they charge for rooms by the hour, to get there." We get in the lift and she takes us to the top floor, where I meet her friends. The crowd is largely American, friendly, with a reminiscent scent of home befitting the conversation of expats. We discuss the city, my travel plans and childhood tv shows. Leaving, I get John's number. The party is given in his honour, as he's moving to Shanghai next week. This gives me a valuable contact in the city, which I'll be travelling to in the next week or two, and makes me feel even happier. Tomorrow I have to be up early, I'm taking a tour of the city. I just need to work out how to get to sleep first.

First Impressions

2008-10-13T04:39:00.004+01:00

There's a thick smog over Beijing this morning. Whether pollution or just fog, it's difficult to tell. Either way, it casts the city in a bright yellow haze, making everything seem brighter than it should, adding an aetherial tone to the skyscrapers and highrises. Beijing airport is immense, steel and glass as far as the eye can see and in all directions, especially up. Everything is efficient to the point of precision, and I am told off by the passport control officer for standing out of position. At baggage reclaim an attendant stands by, his sole job to set the cases upright and neatly ordered as they come off the conveyor belt. It seems pointless, passengers keep knocking bags over as they grab their own, but he keeps setting them right none the less, staring half-heartedly around him as he contemplates the Sysiphean monotony of his task. The taxi ride is in turns calm and terrifying, the driver nonchalantly weaving between traffic at 100kph without signaling or looking. The smoothness of the journey makes me forget that he is overtaking on the inside, until a particularly harsh bit of braking or the too-fast approach of a nearby car make me jump. Getting in to Beijing, everything just feels too big. Long, wide boulevards run five lanes deep (both ways) between the impossible architectural angles that make up more glass-and-steel behemoths on all sides. At first fascinating, I begin to lose interest until we turn off into the district I'm staying in, right next to the Forbidden City. My hostel is down a maze of side streets, messy half-built brick and tin shacks pepper the area. The hostel itself is nice, airy and comfortable, with bright red walls and paper lanterns hanging from the ceilings like a cheap Chinese restaurant in London.

I have a new mobile number, on an international sim card. The number is +447872259008. It's free to receive calls in China, and from the UK it's the cost of a local call. I'll also be on Skype from time to time. Until next time. x

The countdown begins...

2008-10-08T16:08:00.004+01:00

His departure was getting closer now, and still the fear hadn't hit. He was excited, but there was a part of him that felt nothing at all. China was just another place, another scene for him to contemplate whilst introspecting and feeding himself a diet of trashy narratives from American TV. This was the part that had learnt not to be afraid, that had kept him in his safe zone through university, the part that was always fighting his urges to the risky. Nothing new in it, but the excitement, that was keener, sharper than he had experienced before. He found it difficult to sit still, needed music, writing, constant movement. Not nervous, not anxious, just ambition and adrenaline. Standing in line at the visa office these two sides came against each other for the first time.

The process had taken weeks, with bureaucracy interfering at every step of the way. Now, finally, after two and a half weeks and with four days until his flight, he was about to hear the answer. His restful side was reassuring him – what does it matter if you don't get it? Don't worry about it. It was this side that directed him to read the farcical play that he keeps glancing up from, checking whether his number has been called yet. His excitable side, what's does it think? He almost doesn't ask. A week ago it was this side that he had let take over, lying in bed trying to get some sleep, so he could put his application in. This side had been running questions too, but they were stopping him sleep, palms sweaty beneath thin blankets, boiling shivers of anxiety that made him uncomfortable however he lay. What if you don't get the visa? What will you do? What will your family say? They already think this is a foolhardy, badly planned scheme, what about your flights? Endless. Endless questions, fears. He had lain in bed, trying every tactic he knew to stop the tape running in his head. Music, radio, tv, nothing helped. He’d snatched two hours of waking sleep and set off to put his visa in.

With this in mind, he embraced his comfortable side this morning, thinking about London, Starbucks and McDonalds, panda cars and zebra crossings. He looks up at the desk in front of him. There is a commotion, a man shouting. His wife was denied a visa and he, close to tears, asks what they are going to do. The powerless desk clerk, she's just a saleswoman, she can't help him. There's a helplessness in them both that he recognises as his own, recognises but no longer feels. Tentatively aware of this he finally listens to his adrenaline. To his surprise, he doesn’t start to worry, he doesn't care about his visa anymore. Now he just wants to get away, to get into new situations, take new risks away from watchful eyes. If not China, then India, Venezuela, Africa, anywhere. This side has liberated itself, isn’t locking itself into an idea but is open to all suggestions, and he knows this is the stronger side. He waits calmly. His number is called. He approaches the desk with enthusiasm, a smile breaking despite the sleep between his eyes and the morning-sick feeling he gets when he doesn’t eat breakfast. Whatever happens he will be travelling this Sunday, he knows it. The woman at the desk, she smiles back at him. It takes him by surprise, he has watched her deal with the people in front of him, miserable and disinterested. He feels a further surge of energy as he banters with her, passing comment on the other jokers travelling halfway round the world. When her stamp says 'APPROVED' he's really buzzing, because he is going to China, there’s nothing stopping him now, he’s taking himself into unknown territory, and he just can't wait.

One small island to another

2008-10-06T13:17:00.007+01:00

A bit of semi-creative writing from Belfast International Airport to Stansted:

He sits in the airport departure lounge, senses gouged by over bright strip lights, children's chatter and the pungent aroma of nearby monster munch. The darkness outside is held back by the reflections of pinball machines' flashing lights and the glow from fast food convenience stands. His head hurts, but only slightly. His eyes ache mildly. His stomach feels hollow, though just twenty minutes before he had felt ill from overeating. Nothing is wrong, really. Four words that fully sum up the extent of his despair more than purple prose ever could. Nothing is wrong. Nothing to complain about, no real reasons for sadness. In fact, in a way, he feels quite happy. And yet... The empty feeling won't quite go away, the aloof disconnection from the surrounding world, a quiet desire to escape. And yet to desire escape is to feel trapped, and he doesn't feel trapped in anything he hasn't constructed for himself, his own small neuroses and confusions that add pressure to a blessed life. He doesn't want saving, he isn't lacking anything he really wants, but he doesn't really want anything. To define your own goals when they have always been set for you is a learning step, and at the moment, he has no goals.

His fingers start tapping, his mind racing through options in a cycle. Who am I? Who do I want to be? Who can I be? He refuses to be trapped by these thoughts again, let himself wind down without an answer. He must decide. He must choose a path, and pursue it to a logical conclusion.

So who does he want to be in twenty years?

He lets his mind wander to the first thought, and declares himself a forty year old photographer. He sees the advantages. He sees his images in magazines, newspapers, on books. He hears the acclaim of those who respect his work. He feels the pride of an expressed vision recognised by an adoring critic. What's wrong with this picture? He can see the acclaim but not the work. In fact, he recognises something in himself now. He enjoys taking photographs but does not have the respect for the work that he wants from others. He doesn't admire the effort, in fact he thinks it should be easy. Even if it isn't, it's too simple. He doesn't want the acclaim. He wants to be something more worthwhile.

He sees an author now, tap-tap-tapping on a keyboard with a wife and children in an adjacent room. He finishes his chapter, wanders in to the kitchen to take a swig of milk, helps his daughter with her maths homework. That night he attends a party given for a friend of his, and tells an eminent politician they do not understand the human impact of their own policy. Returning home, his conversation has angered and inspired him and, sipping on the leftovers of last nights wine and lighting up a cigarette, he starts a new short story. Or a play. Or a film. It doesn't matter at this stage, the idea just has to get out there. Two hours later he looks up. He hasn't realised how long he's been writing for, and he looks over the pages that have appeared on his screen. His trance-like state has left him calm. When he wakes up in the morning he'll turn it into a treatment and send it to his agent, then get back to work on his novel. Now it's time to sleep

but he knows it'll be a peaceful life. Looking up, he notices it's his turn to board, but this vision has made him calm. He takes his seat at the front of the plane, lingering on the threshold to let the last of the cool night air and the fresh wetness of Ireland soothe his unwashed face, blinking his heavy eyes in the dark of the cabin at take-off. He doesn't let up now, he feels like he's getting somewhere, maybe.

The lights come on around him lending a harsh overexposed aspect to the fixed-false smiles on the over-made-up, over-medicated stewardesses. She turns away, but from the side he notices the break in her smile, the hardness of her look as she shows her back to her customers. He crosses air-stewardess off a mental check-list and turns to his next considered profession.

He sits across a table from a pin-stripe suit and a briefcase, and tries to remember why he got into politics. Suit's going through budget figures, restrictions, health and safety. Nothing gets done, he twiddles his pen between his fingers and tries to pretend he's listening. This is the downside of being a cabinet minister, but he knows in an hour or two he'll be done with meetings in his plush Westminster office, dark wooden furnishings lending an academic air to an already austere collection of literature and non-fiction. Attractive as his surroundings are, it is the meeting he has organised with a distraught constituent that he's really looking forward to. It may take place in a dingy pub where his suit and tie will draw attention soon enough to his wallet and mobile phone, the precise matter may be trivial to the point of being a waste of his time, but he will feel helpful. He will regain his sense that what he's doing, in however minor a way, is making things better, incrementally, salving the world's problems one oversized house extension at a time. Tonight, afterwards, he will attend a fund-raiser for a prominent cancer charity and pledge his commitment to increasing funding for the important fight against this disease. Next week, on the arrival of a foreign dignitary, he will conduct meetings to put pressure on the country's incipient dictatorship to release political prisoners and remove curbs on freedom of speech. In his infrequent periods of inactivity, or frequent periods of travel, he will re-read Chomsky, Pilger and Klein, or there future equivalents, and form judgements based on opinion pieces (never news reports) from a range of sources and newspapers. He will act for his beliefs, for his party, for his country, and for the common good of humanity, and he will stand tall when asked to go against what is right – because he knows the good he does is only worth it if it does not come out of a contract of doing bad. He...

He runs out of fresh things to say, but he gets excited rereading his own ideas and hopes. As the plane begins to descend and he is forced to hibernate his laptop, he stares out the window at orange pinpricks of light over London and wonders if the last two options are mutually exclusive. Why can't he be a politician and a writer? Why can't his politician have a wife and family? Why doesn't he see plaudits for himself in anything but photography? He considers making amendments when the plane lands, but he feels he must stay true to the goal he has set himself. When he hits the ground he starts running to get out of the terminal and onto the bus, to keep going and keep thinking. As he goes, his ipod blares in his ears and Santogold makes him pause for thought: Got no need for fancy things, all the attention that it brings.

He takes his seat on the bus, eyeing the seat in front suspiciously. Is it reclined? (Am I sitting in the wrong seat, could I get more seat-bang for my seat-buck?) Deciding it isn't, and that the blonde who occupies it is just attractive enough not to offend by moving anyway, he reconsiders the line he has stuck in his head (Santogold's still blaring at this point, but he doesn't pay attention to it). He was won over by the idea of not wanting fancy things, but hadn't considered the second part, the attention part. He doesn't care about not getting attention. If anything, he craves it, craves to be the best and to win. So he ignores that bit and asks himself whether he needs fancy things, or just wants them. And if wanting something, and being able to have it, is justification enough to take it.

So he thinks about Venezuela, an adjunct to the political career path he is setting out for himself, and tries to work out the feasibility of pitching up and asking for a job in the government. The idea excites him but smacks of colonial arrogance, so he imagines again learning Spanish, studying Latin America, possibly leaving London forever and never coming back. The images from John Pilger's documentary, The War on Democracy, flash through his mind – mansions and barrios – and the questions that present themselves start to veer into the realm of where he would live, and whether he'd be robbed in the first month. He clears his thoughts.

He is fat. Really quite fat. Not obscenely so, but enough to merit a ticking off under the conservatives 'blame fat people' campaign (and they hope the nanny state will die with Labour). The reason he's quite so plump is immediately obvious, the rich plate of desert that sits in front of him on a pristine white tablecloth. He sips a rich red wine and starts to make a pompous observation to his younger, female companion. He tells her that to run a successful restaurant – let alone a high-end chain – you really need to care about the quality of your food. He can tell she isn't listening, isn't really falling for it, is really thinking about the paps outside and the exposure it will give her modelling career, and whether she'll really have to sleep with him for him to introduce her to his fashionable clientèle, but he doesn't care because he knows she will sleep with him – they all do – and anyway this qualifying isn't for her benefit anyway. He listens to himself talk, approving the self-congratulatory tone and the flavour of his restaurant's signature dish, rich in his mouth from a flatulent burp. He stretches a venal hand to envelop her malnourished fingers, and suggests they leave. No need to wait for the bill in his own restaurant, and he wants to make sure they get decent press coverage (that'll show his ex-wife) before the paps flash round the corner to stalk reality TV stars snogging last year's Vanity Fair cover queen at the latest 'latest thing' nightclub, which subsists on those too stupid or not famous enough to avoid paying the exorbitant cover charge and drinks prices.

He shudders and smiles at the thought, confident that whoever this character is – and he can't help admitting there's something delicious about his caricature – it won't be him. Possibly an acquaintance, possibly an enemy, possibly the ex-husband of an equally parodic (but far thinner) older woman he'll have a temporary affair with, but certainly not him.

He feels alive, sharp, warm, passionate and almost teary eyed. This exercise is teaching him one thing, as he takes quick glances at the bitter, or gormless, or impassive, or downright bored faces that pepper the seats around him. Sometimes it doesn't matter what you write, whether you write it for yourself or for everyone to see, or if you write it for publication. Just writing is enough to give him energy, to excite him, to make him open his mind to new ideas, and he feels like maybe, just maybe, he's answered his question.

This is not a rant...

2008-10-04T11:02:00.004+01:00

There are some things that put me off a writer instantly. The most damaging is if you simply can't empathise with their position, especially when they go on about it. H once gave me a manuscript to read. It started with the line "This is a rant, so hear me." I put it down after ten pages of meandering complaints, usually centring on how customers at B&Q kept asking the narrator where the lugnuts were, the selfish pricks. I was clearly meant to see the meaningless futile angst of it all, but I just ended up thinking the writer was an arsehole.

The same thing put me off Paul Theroux, despite everything great I've been told about him. His book about travelling in Africa didn't so much set the scene of the journey as start mid-whine about how noone thought it suitable a man in his 70s travelling alone from Cairo to Cape town. I gave up on page 80, with some reservations - I did want to hear about his trip, but not when it was all viewed through the prism of sticking it to his wife and fellow concerned parties back home. I don't do teenage rebellion, especially not from a septagenarian.

So it is with this in mind that I make the following statement: people don't seem to entirely understand the concept of this trip. I am going on an adventure. Safe, secure, planned - within reason, these are words I'm trying to dispense with when I think about taking off around the world. For people in my family this is an odd suggestion. Over Rosh Hashana dinner my mother got herself into a panic ('He's not even going to get to China!'), my uncle took me under his wing ('I'll phone my travel agents') and my grandmother just waved a hand and told me it didn't matter that I'd 'done it all wrong' because I'll have 'learnt for next time'. As far as I'm concerned, I couldn't be doing this better. This messy, half-schemed trip gives me a chance for a real sense of freedom, and a real sense of adventure. It's only half about the places I go, the sights I see and the comfort of where I'm staying and how I get there. The exciting bit is taking off into the unknown, testing out new things (even if that's the queue at the Indian embassy in Beijing). I couldn't have planned it better.

Things to do before I go...

2008-09-22T18:03:00.001+01:00

Find out when A gets to Shanghai, and whether he's still coming. My excitement about traveling with him is fast becoming excitement about traveling full stop. How do I get from Beijing to Shanghai? The plane's the most boring option. LonelyPlanet tells me I can go by train via Tianjin, Qingdao, Ji'nan and Zhujiayu, which sounds exciting even without reading what those places involve. If I read it cover to cover I could make an informed decision, but I'm in two minds. On the one hand, I'm taking someone else's opinion before I experience the place myself. Not much is personal about that. On the other hand, I can hand pick the places I find exciting. Both are attractive, but I definitely think it's a good idea to travel alone for a while before meeting up with A.

Read, watch, learn. Wild Swans, Empire of the Sun, Raise the Red Lantern, On the Road. Find, read, pack. Films, flickr pages, columnists' views, anything's a resource. Lonelyplanet obviously. Going to Uganda, I read one book, which helped me understand and contextualise what I was shown. If I expose myself to more ideas, opinions and images then I can start to find my own way to explore the country.

What do I take?

Clothing:

2 x trousers

1 x shorts

2 x shirts (non-designer, obviously)

2 x t-shirts

2 x sweaters

4 x boxers, socks

overcoat

trainers

I don't want to leave my camera at home, this is why I bought it after all. I'll have to risk losing it, it's worth it. With a new prime lens and an extra memory stick, I should be sorted.

Books - three fiction/non-fiction books and two lonely planets

Toothbrush

Toothpaste

Face wash/liquid soap

Towel

A booked flight changes everything...

2008-09-21T10:38:00.002+01:00

Nothing stifles adventure faster than bureaucracy. When a single flight to China costs almost twice as much as a return and the Chinese government won't issue a visa without an address for your stay it's easy to wrap yourself in a comfort blanket. Then there's fear. Two days ago I was looking at a wonderfully middle class, safe trip to Beijing, a six week language course, with a return flight booked (optional, but it would be easy to take it) for early December.

Luckily I spoke to A, who suddenly got keen. He had a plan to get from Shanghai to Bombay via Nepal. A is no big risk taker, but this is exciting. If I have to apply for a new visa to get on my return flight, then suddenly my return date is as free as I want it to be. I can push on from India, visit the Maldives and teach English, spend a month in Hong Kong bars, ski with S in Japan.

"You're not as conservative as you think you are". Lunch with my Dad opened me up in ways I really hadn't anticipated. I met him in the middle of a panic attack. I felt directionless, unsure of myself, panicked at every possible career move. I tried to remind myself that I had a good degree from a good university, but it wasn't working. Growing up in protected North London, with an emphasis on being the best student and a stigma attached to any form of non-achievement, it's easy to see yourself as cushy, safe, risk-adverse. He was right though. I am switched on by this. My stupor is gone, I cannot wait to get out of London. I'm not telling too many people either, I hate the long goodbye thing. When S left she spent a month comforting the people she was leaving, or being comforted by them, because she wouldn't see them for a year. If I don't see my friends till next year it will be sad, but spending the next month being reminded of what I'm 'missing' is worse. I've got to look forward right now, focus on what I'll do when I'm away.