Big City Dickhead

[bigcitydickhead]

How to Make Friends at Work

As avid followers of my life, you’ll all be aware that I recently started a new job. For those of you who have a different definition of the term ‘recently’, I’ll clarify that I’m still on my probation period and could still be fired with a minimum notice period, so it counts. Anyway, I’ve now been there long enough to make some new friends (!), so I feel like I’m probably qualified to write a “How To” Guide on friendship. You’re welcome.

1.       Show your funky side.

It’s important to make the first move in a business relationship, and the best way to show that you’re fun and kooky and open to friend dating is to make that move from ‘serious professional conversation’ to ‘conversing only in gifs’. When they ask “Can I get that back by five?”, send them a picture of a big thumbs up, which has the added advantage of showing that you know what Facebook is and that you still have all your limbs. If you need to remind them of a deadline and you already know that they’ve got a lot on, send a picture of a baby giraffe to soften the blow. Everyone loves baby giraffes.

 2.       Take the conversation beyond work

It’s important to show that there’s more to your life than work, and to start exploring shared hobbies. If they mention soup in an email, ask them how their soup was. Ask them if they had croutons in their soup, or if they add cheese to it (no one adds cheese to their soup Saskia, only you). Ask them if it was their favourite soup, or if they would have preferred another one. Soup has broken down borders before, and it can do so again for you here. Keep the questions going relentlessly, so that they really understand you have interests other than the day job. That interest is soup.

 3.       Invite them for a business lunch.

If you have some questions about what you’re doing at work (of course you have questions about what you’re doing at work, do you even know what your job is?), ask if they don’t mind grabbing lunch so you can clarify a few things. Take them to EAT. and surprise them with candles and roses at the table. BAM. It’s a date!* There’s nowhere more romantic than EAT. If you need to keep up the pretence, prepare a short five minutes of work questions to get the conversation started, but don’t worry, your natural charm will keep that chit chat flowing.

 4.       Maintain contact.

If you’re worried that you don’t see each other enough to build a true friendship, find excuses to visit their desk, and then just stand there. Everyone feels awkward in this situation, so they’ll eventually give in and make conversation with you. Once you’ve done this enough, they’ll feel build a sense of dependence based on your shared time together, and blamo, you’re married.

 5.       Introduce them to your friends.

In any relationship, it’s important to introduce the other person into your friendship group, in order to really bind them into the circle of secrets that they can never leave. Obviously this means they’ll have to go through the interview process, but this can be done casually in a relaxed setting, such as a party, or a gathering at the pub. Make sure your friends know what’s up so they can prepare any additional questions, but keep they interviewee in the dark. They’ll only get nervous, and you want to them to display the real them!

So there you go! I hope you all frolic forward into this brand new world, carrying this knowledge with you in your heart and bonding with people over soup. Good luck.

  *Dating should be consensual and this is really a terrible example of how to date.

[bigcitydickhead]

How To Survive Your First Tube Strike

1.       Try not to leave your headphones at work. I mean really, that was dumb. What were you thinking? You don’t have that mad skill of being able to read while standing on a crowded bus. You’re going to be bored.

2.       Pay attention to which bus you get on. There’s a chance that if you actually get on the right bus in the first place, you might make it in to work at least some time within the hour that you were supposed to.

3.       Have you considered growing wings?

4.       Take lots of deep breaths, but not too many because then you’re probably not actually taking an oxygen in. Make sure you continue to inhale oxygen and exhale the other one, the one we don’t want in our bodies. Carbon monoxide? Exhale carbon monoxide. This also applies to all the time.

5.       Try not to be hungover. That was also a mistake.

6.       Be prepared to walk a distance. Don’t complain about it. Walking’s lovely! Look at this city you live in! Wow! Isn’t it great? Yay, A Tube Strike!

7.       We’re all in this together. Except that guy. Urgh, that guy. What was he thinking?

8.       Leave work on time, even if you feel guilty because you turned up an hour late. Remember, it’s Tube Strike Day, and it’s not your fault.

9.       Try not to make any statements in favour or against The Strike while at work. Even in jest, one opinion leads to another opinion and then suddenly everyone has an opinion and somehow they’re all wrong.

10.   Remember, you moved to London because you wanted to experience the big city, and now you’re in the big city and this is a big city experience. Savour all those shared sighs and exchanged eye rolls! You’re part of it now! Yay! A Tube Strike!

[bigcitydickhead]

We’re not in Kansas anymore, kids. To be honest, we were never in Kansas and it would have been strange to find ourselves there, but the point is we’re not in Asia any more either.

I left Indonesia in late March and arrived, dazed and possibly hallucinating from lack of sleep, many days later in delightful England. I have no idea how many days it actually was, because I really don’t understand how time works. I came back to the UK without telling too many people, especially my mother, and I don’t know if you’ve ever walked into a room full of people who think you’re on a plane to Fiji, but may I heartily recommend it? Unless any of the people have a weakness of the heart, then maybe give them a heads up. Also if it’s a large gathering with place settings, maybe give the organiser a heads up too so you get food. Otherwise, go nuts.

Still, after the excitement of the first few days, which were filled with Easter and weddings and playing on Sims, I had to face the prospect of being back in the UK with no job, no plans, and no driving licence. Somehow, over the rest of 2016 I somehow managed to change all of those things?

I got a driving license!

Look, I’m not saying I’m a good driver. I’m not even saying I enjoy driving. I still drive with a P plate and I refuse to go anywhere without the full soundtrack to Hamilton, but I’ve got a pink card with my name on it that has the added benefit that I can finally buy alcoholic drinks. Yesterday I even managed to smoothest hill start you ever did see, on the first attempt! I’ll be a rally driver yet!

I got a job!

I got an actual, real life job in a highly competitive industry in a well known company being paid genuine money (I’ve used it in shops guys, it works). I’m not entirely sure how it happened, although I know that my manager was extremely hungry during the interview, so there’s a chance she hallucinated something better. She did, after a few drinks, tell me that one of the other interviewees had been straight up terrifying, so it may have just been my friendly disposition.

I got some plans!

Ok, well the plan is mostly “don’t quit this job!”, but I’m determined to make this one stick guys, I really am. But let’s not tell anyone at work that I have a fear of workplace commitment – I’m still on probation.

Anyway I moved to London. That was actually the entire point of this update. I moved to London and I’m on a train there now to live up my big city life (read: eat noodles out of the pan) and I’m still a dickhead, I’m just a different kind of dickhead now. I started a diet today, and I’m going to go for a run before 7am tomorrow. I’m that dickhead.

Who wants to hear some things I have noticed about London since I moved here? ‘Everyone’ is the correct answer, thank you.

1. Wow, people are terrible. I knew this already, and comment on it frequently, but oh my god humans are the worst who even let them onto this planet? I mean all of them, in all forms - drivers, cyclists, pedestrians* – they’re all terrible. The traffic lights in London do not take long to change, on account of how everyone has Places To Be and how they Just Don’t Have Time For This Nonsense, but no, it’s important for everyone of any kind of transportation to race through the end of their green light just to save those milliseconds and maybe get to their job on time for once. Except this happens every day so maybe they should just reconsider their entire existence and specifically their morning routine. My point is, I’m going to see someone die in London.

2. Oh man, London is so big. Please realise that I just came from Australia, the land where an hour and a half is not an unreasonable distance to travel for a booty call, so when I say London is big I mean it really is unreasonably sized. Sure, everyone in London just parties all the time and has an incredible social life, except that the entire city is under a TfL imposed curfew and it takes an hour to get anywhere, so somehow I’m much busier and also much less sociable? I spend all of my time going to see people, but never actually seeing them. I think I’m somehow being sucked into an unending black hole of underground tunnels.

3. The north/south divide is real and I’m on the other side of it. Sorry, northerners, I’m all about South Of The River now. Sure, the parties happen in the north, and the artists live in the north** and the transport is better in the north (see point 2), and that’s all very nice but I can afford my rent in the south. Who ever thought they’d be saying that sentence out loud, hmm?

4. Everyone moves to London after university. I realise this has been observed before and I’m by no means saying it’s a bad thing, but I recently attended a party where the only guests were other people I knew from one society in Glasgow. How did this happen? Glasgow’s a great city! Why on earth are we all in London?! Don’t tell me it’s because the streets are paved with gold, because they’re really not. They’re paved with bird shit and chewing gum, which won’t even buy you a Freddo.

That’s all I have to observe about this city. I like it here. I have a flat I can afford and a job that pays me and probably won’t fire me at the end of six months. This post has been entirely self indulgent and a chance to tell you about what I’m doing now, because I had some time to kill on a train and I wanted to write. I apologise for the lack of anecdotes in this one, I really wasn’t kidding when I said I was busier and also doing less. If people tell me they still enjoy this, I will endeavour to Do More Stuff in order to have something to write about. I might do that anyway, so I can blame anyone reading this (my mum) when I go Outside and then remember that Outside is horrible. Now if you don’t mind, I have to get off this train and get on with my Big City Life.

 The zip on my bag broke earlier so everyone can see my pants.

  *The three well known races of humanity.

**I know two artists and they both live north of the river therefore This Is Fact.

[bigcitydickhead]

Look. There's a chance I've been avoiding this topic because somehow I don't think my family would approve - and since they make up 99% of my readers, why would I put them off. Still, family: Please read at your own discretion. At the very least, don't read this one to Oma.

Since leaving Bali and the Gili islands, I've been hiring motorbikes. I realise your hesitancy: I still don't have a car licence and I once fell off a quad bike going slowly. I recently fell over on a volcano, and there's a chance I broke my toe on a snorkelling trip. Why should I be trusted in a foreign country with an (admittedly tiny) motorbike? Well, consider this: the only minors I got in my last driving tests were for drivng too slowly. Really, I'm an extremely cautious driver. And if anything, my driving has improved. Throw that hazard perception test at me again DVLA; I'm all about avoiding obstacles* now.

Indonesia's public transport is something of a hassle, and trying to fight the constant sales pitch of touts can be draining and exhausting. Rather than spend full days on busses crammed with our luggage, other passengers, and live chickens, my friend Marli and I decided to see Lombok by scooter: the chosen transport of South East Asia in general. It's easy to hire a bike, although they have to be returned to where they originated which limits the routes you can take. We circled the whole island of Lombok in four relatively easy days, including one spent primarily on the beach. Like so much of Indonesia, it's a volcanic island, so most of the riding is along mountain roads with an impressive view of the sea. It's alright, I guess.

From Lombok we flew to Labuan Bajo, a town on Flores, to see, as promised, DRAGONS. Freaking dragons, man! Although the place doesn't really cater to day trips, which was all we had, we still saw what we wanted (ie. actual real life genuine article dragons), and they were as impressive as we'd hoped. They're huge! This one's called Patrick Parker, according to our guide.

After the dragons, I was on my own (Marli was not eaten, I don't think) and figured with my four days of experience behind me, it was definitely time to rent a bike on my own and head off on a six day pilgrimage to see some lakes. Really good lakes, mind. I drove three days to Moni, through wind and rain, to access Mt. Kelimutu and the three coloured crater lakes at the peak. The lakes are red, green, and blue of varying shades and intensities and, according to the local people, hold the spirits of different ancestors. They're best viewed before 8am when the clouds very quickly role in, so after a short hike there and back, I jumped on the bike to go back the way I'd came. The idea of repeating the same route could be frustrating, but the roads are incredibly beautiful, so it doesn't really feel like a chore at all.

Driving through Indonesia is a lot what I imagine it's like to be a celebrity, if a celebrity were to find themselves on a mountain highway of Flores, dodging schoolchildren. They like to practise their English, as I mentioned, but it turns out they also like to throw themsleves are your moving vehicle in an attempt to get a high five from the excitingly multicoloured white and red human. Lesson learnt: Do not try and return the high five, you will be mobbed.

Another interesting sight on the roads is the public bemos: brightly coloured mini busses or trucks with, apparently, names. The names don't seem to follow any pattern; so far today I've seen "Happy Roses", "Frederick" and

"Excellent

                White Angel"

It was unclear if the last one was a bus with two names or just terrible spacing.

After Flores, it was back to Bali for the end of my time in this country. The visa's up but the trip isn't, so I'll be hoping on a flight east, to Fiji, to fulfill a childhood dream of just never leaving the beach. Bali in itself is an interesting island, although it has a reputation for being the party island of South East Asia. It's easily possible to spend a few weeks on this island alone, but alas I'm only dedicating one week to it. So far I've seen temples and rice paddies, monkeys and yet more offers of mushrooms. And yes, I rented a scooter here.

*Obstacles include: water buffalo, cows, other bikes, potholes, dogs, chickens, monkeys and, twice now, confused looking ducks.

[bigcitydickhead]

Listen up kids, it's time for more learning. You know that song by Baz Luhrmann, about wearing sunscreen? I have some amendments. Say you forget to put sunscreen on some vital areas (vital areas that enable you to walk, sit, etc etc), swim for the day, and then hire bikes along a rough, island path? It's not going to be an easy ride, is all I'm saying. Still, you're clearly on an island so drink some rum, watch the sunset; there's only so bad island life can be.

Indonesia, for the uninitiated, is entirely made up of islands; big and small, Muslim and Hindu, accessible and inaccessible. I began this stretch of the journey on Java, home of coffee. Jakarta - the capital city - is sprawling, busy and uninteresting, but I hung around to check out some family history. My Oma grew up throughout Indonesia before the war and her brother is still buried here. Public transport being somewhat difficult to navigate, I hired a driver (!) and spent the day cruising around, drinking champagne and walking red carpets. Well, sort of. I visited a grave and fell asleep in the back of the car.

From Jakarta, I travelled in the fanciest train South East Asia could manage (not sarcasm, it was fancy) to Yogyakarta, for a light spot of volcano hiking and temple templeing. This is the home of Borobodur, the biggest Buddhist temple in the world (don't google that - I haven't). It's an impressive site, and I would have spent more time exploring it if we hadn't been set upon by several small hoards of school children intent of practicing their English. Their teacher also popped by to help us practice our tenses, which was kind of him. Nearby Borobodur is Prabanan, where we accidentally tailed a university group for a few hours; it was a day of learning all 'round.

After Borobodur came the first of our volcanoes: Mount Bromo. To visit Bromo it's possible to take public transport most of the way and stop at Cemoro Lawang, a town just perched on the edge of the crater. Personally, I like a town brave enough to hang out that close to an active volcano. Across the sandy desert of the crater sits a temple and then the volcano itself, which sort of looks like it might have been dropped there. Now, this one we didn't actually climb, due to the small matter of it gently erupting a tiny little bit maybe. The best view is from the mountain overlooking the volcano, which can be climbed in around two hours without a guide. Great! I love a 2 a.m. start for a sunrise! Everyone knows how great I am at mornings.

From Bromo, we travelled to Ijen, volcano the second. This one is famous not so much for its volcanoness, but for the large lake that sits in the bottom of the  crater (apparently) and the blue flame that spits out next to it. So yeah, this one you really do have to get into. The final ascent is up a fairly steep path, although its easy to follow the other tourists and the sulphur miners who make daily trips into the crater for little money. Towards the top, it's necessary to don a gas mask thanks to the rotton smell and the heavy sulphur fumes in the air. Then begins the climb down, along a relatively well carved set of stairs to the bottom. This trip takes a while, if only because of the number of people moving each direction, in the dark, on a volcano. It's a bizarre feeling, being in a crater before sunrise with roughly 200 other people most of whom are wearing some form of gas mask. If I stumbled across that without any context, I'd probably get over excited and start hunting out Scully and Mulder. The blue flame is impressive, although honestly I missed the lake despite standing right next to it. I did get a piece of sulphur as a souvenir, but the smell didn't go away so I gifted it to Bali.

From Java, I travelled to Bali and the Gili islands, for a few days post volcano rest. You climb two volcanoes overnight and tell me you don't deserve a beach day. The Gili islands are like Bali's older sister; sure, she likes to drink a bit some of the time, but there's no need to be that loud. Or, that's possibly just my older sister. They're three idyllic islands set just off Lombok, where no motorised transport is allowed and apparently it's totally fine to openly advertise mushrooms everywhere (Mum: I have not taken mushrooms, or any other hallucinogens, in Indonesia). It's also perfect for snorkelling, which leads us back to the beginning of the post: I burnt my bum snorkelling and it really hurts. Like, seriously guys. It hurts. I also didn't see the turtle that everyone else did, which I think makes the sunburn even more bitter.

If I get through the next week without sitting in an ice bucket, I'll do my best to update you on the next round of adventures, which should involve dragons.

[bigcitydickhead]

Gather 'round kids, we need to learn a lesson. Today's lesson: Sure, that whole gungho travel thang is great most of the time, but sometimes you're going to end up at the back of the bus with a pair of shoes in your face. Hope they're your shoes, and try not to think about the hund kaka you once stepped in.

If we thought travel through Laos was interesting (it was), our journey into Vietnam was no improvement. Hannah and I had put off travelling across the border in order to avoid Tet, the extended Chinese New Year that is celebrated in Vietnam (and, it turns out, in Laos) with an enthusiastic closing of doors and telling everyone to fuck off. The country retreats into family gatherings, and although loud music can be heard everywhere, it's fairly clear that foreigners aren't that welcome at this one. So, two days before the end of Tet, Hannah and I strolled across the Laos/Vietnam border to be greeted with... nothing. No tuk tuks, no currency exchange, no security. We had a hostel booked in a town four hours away, with money that is as good as tissue outside of its home country. Great.

Luckily, we managed to get rid of our Kip by giving it to some women in a car park who happened to have a whole lot of Dong (I know) in their bumbags. Excellent! After that, we were loaded into a variety of minibuses, tuk tuks, moto taxis, and gradually made our way to Hue. People have different ways of dealing with the language barrier: in Laos we were ignored with that sort of terror that renders children mute but has them peeking out from behind their parents legs, while in Vietnam we were bundled along like cargo. This was one of those countries where if you just say the name of where you're going enough times, people will forcibly move you from one form of transport to the next until you're where you want to be.

And don't get me wrong, Vietnam is great. Hue was our first stop, and it's a cool town with things to do and more than two cafes open, even during Tet. And hot showers! Civilisation! The main attraction in Hue is the huge citadel right in the centre - the ancient royal capital, probably. I wasn't really paying that much attention, but I'm sure Hannah will give you the historical details if you ask nicely. It is beautiful to wander around, and it's interesting to see the enormous Chinese influence on Vietnam, a stark contrast to Thailand and Laos.

From Hue, we moved to Hoi An, a riverside town which would be sort of sleepy if not for the terrifying lack of traffic control. It's a UNESCO World Heritage site, so it's got that trapped in time feel to it and it's easy to just spend your time in coffee shops watching well dressed people dodge motorbikes and rickshaws. It's also well known for its tailor shops, so although I avoided the markets this time, don't think my bag is getting any lighter.

And from Hoi An, our final stop: Ho Chi Minh City. Here, Hannah and I spent one night living it up in a fancy hotel before she jetted off to South Korea to begin a teaching job. I'm fine about it, really. I've been unattended for nearly three whole days now, and I'm doing great. I'm alive, well fed, well watered. I've got myself to a whole new country! I'm doing fiiiiine.

(There's a chance I'm going to die oh god who thought this was a good idea.)

I'm kidding. It's going great.

(I'm not kidding help me)

For the next few weeks, I'll be in Indonesia, soaking up the island lifestyle and climbing as many volcanoes as I can. (I'm aiming for, like, three. I've never climbed a volcano before I don't want to get ahead of myself.) I promise I'll take photos, if not as many as Hannah does, at least some. They'll be artistic, in the sense that the focus doesn't work that well on my camera so they'll all be slightly blurry.

I hear there's trains in Indonesia. If I can just avoid minivans with too many passengers and too much cargo, I'll be grand. Wish me luck!

[bigcitydickhead]

How I ate literally the first ever banana I've ever eaten ever and didn't hate it.

Well my day has been super weird. Has your day been this weird?

Today's adventure began yesterday, when we attempted to find the tourist information, got lost, found it, found it was shut, and decided the hostel would definitely be our best point of contact when booking the tour we were interested in. Oh, we were wrong. How we were wrong!

The lovely fella behind the desk assured us a tuk tuk (or something) could take us to the cave with the underground river in the morning, we just had to turn up at 8am and pay then. Great. Fine. Exactly what we wanted. So show up at 8am we did (or just after...), and it turns out our tuk tuk is a car and our guide is the lovely fella behind the desk. We went along with it, because to be fair his English was quite good and he was lovely.

So off we drove, heading out towards the hills and definitely following signs for the right cave. Except when we got there, our driver had a bit of a chat with the ladies setting up tourist stalls and told us we had to head back into the village to find an actual guide. Sure, that's the sort of thing a driver to tourist destinations wouldn't know in advance. Of course. But back into the village we went, where after a longer chat with the local village council (or gathering of men, I don't know), he said we could go ourselves, we just couldn't go through the cave because the boat was broken. OK, he's allowed that one, he didn't break the boat himself.

The walk to the cave was beautiful, over rickety bridges and through tree shaded paths, to the entrance of a truly stunning cave. The boat did indeed look quite broken, given that it was half submerged beneath the water, and the view from the opening is really quite impressive anyway. So we took some cool pictures and went back on our way. Lovely.

The second cave of the day was the Buddha cave, discovered in 2004 with a bunch of mysterious Buddha statues in it. Cool! Who doesn't love a bunch of mysterious Buddha statues half way up a mountain? We donned the ugliest skirts Laos could possibly choose as respectful national dress and poked our heads in. It's become a working temple again since its discovery, so the small space is crowded with worshippers, people selling offerings, and a full CCTV system. The lower cave is accessible by boat for 10000 kip, or one whole British pound, so we paid up and finally got our boat trip through a cave. Great! The day is going so well! Sure, things were a little confusing at first, but everything's coming up us!

Sorry, wrong. Throughout the morning, our charming little guide has been chatting about his friend Thomas, a German man who married a Lao girl and is now settled near the town. Would we like to pop in for lunch? Um... sure! We're open minded travellers, who don't mind doing things we're unprepared for. And there might be a party as well? Well, great. We love a party!

So through the streets we drive, back into the city and down a dirt track. As we approach, it turns out the German guy isn't there at all, and everyone's been drinking since 10.30am. Apparently it's the norm in Laos to go and give alms to the monks, give thanks for your friends, and then get blasted all day. We pull up outside, and by this point even our driver is beginning to look nervous. Is there a chance everyone's too drunk? (Yes.) So we sit in the car for a while as he tries to sort food for us, before we are eventually physically dragged from the car by some Lao girls, who take us to the dance floor and proceed to dance with and around us. Beer is poured and forced into our hands, people chatter away to us in Lao and seem happy with terrified laughter as a response. My glasses fall off my head, and when one of the girls picked them up I told her to keep them: I truly hate those sunglasses. At some point, an old man appears and seems to be trying to teach me to dance, before handing me more beer. (It's not a secret that I detest beer in every way, and the only time I've drunk it before was one of those Never Tell My Mother nights, so I'm sipping mine and passing it off to Hannah whenever I can). I try to smile and accept graciously, as I've learnt that in Laos they get offended when you don't finish your plate in a restaurant, so rejecting a beer must be tantamount to murdering the hosts son. It quickly becomes apparent that sipping and smiling won't be enough, and I am instead expected to chug the glass. Great. Everything I ever wanted. I down it through gritted teeth, and the man continues to dance with me. I think there's a chance I married him.

Eventually, food is served, sort of. Hannah, being vegetarian, is served a bowl of raw eggs, while I am given mystery meat and noodles. We both get a honey sandwich. Our host gestures to the plate and I realise today is the day that I am going to have to face the one food I've avoided longer than beer: banana. They're tiny Asian bananas, sure, but they're bananas, and I wouldn't wish that fruit on my worst enemy. Why are they so yellow and mushy? Why do they smell so bad? Why is the taste so dramatically different to the haribo version? Do they really need to be that phallic? Still, I'm a polite European, so I try a piece and it's not terrible? Kind of like a yellow kiwi fruit. What a day for bananas!

Throughout all of this, we're handed more beer and told "Lai, lai!". It transpires that it is some sort of custom (I think) to down your drink, and it's incredibly rude not to. I only found this out after a Lao woman yelled at me for a while, but what can you do. I drank as much as I could, and snuck the rest to Hannah who gallantly drank it for me. It's not the first time she's finished drinks I couldn't.

So after more beer, and more dancing, we managed to leave. It took a while, as everyone needed to take a picture with us, one guy needed to tell us he loved us several times, and some other women needed to wish us good luck and good morning. But that's the story of how Hannah and I ended up slightly drunk on a Sunday afternoon in Thakek, and how I ate literally the first ever banana I've ever eaten ever and didn't hate it.

[bigcitydickhead]

Welcome to a much rarer specimen this week: a blog about Laos. Does anyone remember Laos from GCSE History? It’s that small one squished next to Vietnam, that the Americans bombed the s!&t out of, where cockerals crow in the city and customer service is but a distant hope.

In our last few days in Chiang Mai, Hannah and I spent our time pursuing indoor activities; there’s no better day than a rainy day to willingly lock yourself in a room and try to solve a lot of puzzles before you can get out. It’s also the city that started the Elephant Parade (ever seen a lot of highly decorated elephants hanging out in your capital city? That’s that.), so for 600 Baht we got to hang out with some Chinese kids and paint elephant statues.

We eventually left Chiang Mai and Thailand, wallets lighter, bags heavier. That’s actually not true in my case; I bought so much crap that a parcel is sailing slowly home already, along with winter clothes I hope to not need for the next few months. Hannah has done the journey to Luang Phrabang (a city in northern Laos, you uneducated heathen) before, although her memories of it are perhaps somewhat blurry maybe, so there’s a chance she romanticised it (Read: She was drunk). The journey takes two days and involves a boat, so there’s only so romantic you can make it. Still, drifting slowly down the Mekong between misty hills, elephants meandering along the banks, wooden houses nestled in the trees: it’s not the worst journey I’ve ever taken.

Luang Phrabang used to be the royal capital of the kingdom and it feels a little bit like it got stuck in time - a very old world meets new kind of vibe, if you want me to get hippy and wanky entitled Westerner about it. School kids might whizz around on mopeds (They’re so much COOLER than I was!), but the boats are made entirely of wood and there’s a soft aroma of shit and woodsmoke. Some of this is because Laos is still one of the poorest countries (a third of the population live on less than US$1.25 a day), and the most bombed on the planet, although hopefully this poverty will change if China builds a railway through the middle. Some of the problem comes from the lack of access to education, as most schools are unable to afford books in Lao or English - there are a lot of charities in Luang Phrabang which target this.

In the city, there’s a night market which runs the main street, and a temple on a huge hill that sort of looks like it was dropped in the middle. The temples throughout Thailand and Laos so far have been impressive (there’s a lot of gold involved for a religion which is all about the simple life). This one has its very own Buddha footprint, and apparently Buddha was the size of a dinosaur. There’s also an appropriate number of bakeries for a country that used to be owned by the French, although the focus is more on crepes than croissants (That’s fine with me, really). We’d come to regret eating so many crepes on our final day, when we decided to test the old Communist bridge, which creaked loudly as we tiptoed across. From approach, with cars and mopeds sailing over, the bridge looks perfectly stable but it turns out the footpath is a few bits of wood tacked on the side at least twenty years ago.

Since Luang Phrabang, we’ve headed east in a Hannah and Saskia speciality detour (“we heard about this thing that sounds really cool but it turns out we have to go ages out of the way to get there!”). The cool thing this time was a bunch of jars on a hill, dating from around the same time as Stonehenge probably (I don’t know when Stonehenge is from, wikipedia won’t load). No one knows what the jars are for (theories range from large vats of whisky to burial chambers), but there’s around 60 ish sites of them and they just sort of look like they were dumped on the side of the hills. I bought a replica and personally, I’m going to use it for jam.

Tomorrow, we’ll be heading south to go and look at a cool cave. Underground stuff is a favourite of ours, and luckily Laos is choc a block with cool caves and underground rivers (this one has both!). However, as I typed this, Hannah informed me that one of the caves has fist sized spiders and she doesn’t remember which one. So, as ever, whether or not we will survive to see another blog post is uncertain.

The charities, for those interested:

The Library Boat - I can’t find a website for this one, probably due to my internet connection, but this is a library which visits more remote villages by boat. Donations go to buying books in Lao and English to go on the boat.

Big Brother Mouse: http://www.bigbrothermouse.com/ This charity sponsors print runs for Lao language books.

[bigcitydickhead]

Look, a blog about travelling in Thailand! What a rare beast.

There's very little that makes this blog different, except that I'm writing it and as my mother always told me, there's only one of me. (A quick Google search will set you right on this; there's me, and a French girl with cat whiskers on her face.) Still, I'm in Thailand and you're not, so I'm the one who gets to write self indulgent stories on the internet to anyone willing to listen.

We got to Bangkok almost one week ago; I arrived on a short hop from Hong Kong, while Hannah (travel buddy, photographer, translator) came in on a fifteen hour flight from the UK. Planning first began over a year ago ("Let's go to South East Asia!") and continued the second day here ("Right, where are we going?"). Hannah lived in Thailand six years ago, so much of the trip so far has involved visiting her old haunts ("Look! We used to buy our cheese from him!"), but this is my first major trip to a none English speaking country and I spend a lot of time trying to use international sign language in restaurants. The air scribble for "bill, please" doesn't seem to work here, and it's possible that a lot of waiters think we're asking for their number. They don't give it to us, which is a little insulting.

This first week has been a mix of tourism and Getting Shit Done, as Hannah arrived and immediately had to hand her passport in to the South Korean embassy in Bangkok, because of course she did. We visited Ayutthaya, a town just north of Bangkok in which the modern city has grown up around the old capital of the region, where important historical sites face off with the Thai favourite, 7/11. The city is large and the sites spread out, so we hired bikes for 30 - 50 Baht and dived helmet first into the terrifying Thai rush hour. Ayutthaya was the capital of the kingdom until the 1700s, when it was finally defeated by the Burmese (after 20 something attempts, so they were clearly pretty determined). The result of this is a lot of ruined temples filled with headless Buddhas. Headless, because the monks would cover the gold statues in clay when they heard the Burmese were coming, and the best way to check if your lumpy looking Buddha statue was really a gold masterpiece was to lop his head off. Personally, I would've looked for the ones on which the clay wasn't quite dry yet.

After Ayutthaya and a quick jaunt back to Bangkok to pick up the errant passport, we visited Sukhothai. Sukhothai is a small town similar to Ayutthya in the amount of history in it, but different in that the history is kept neatly on the outskirts of town and the Buddhas still have their heads. We hired bikes again, and with less traffic on the roads, I'm pretty sure romantic music could have played in the background as we sailed along the tree lined paths. The town is popular with both Thai and foreign tourists, including a large English camp that appeared to be using the ruins as a base to corner tourists. My previous travel experience has been in the US and around Europe, and at no point in any of those trips did a group of Thai school children interview me as part of an English lesson. So already, it's different to travelling in a Western country.

We've now been in Chiang Mai for a few days, mostly hiding in coffee shops from the freezing rain. This is a tourist hot spot away from the partying in the south, so there's a good chance some errant Brit brought it with them, and if I find which one it is, I'll glare so much they'll think they've got food in their teeth. I slept in a hoodie last night. A hoodie! Luckily this city is fun to just wander around, and has an abundance of markets in which I've been spending everything I earnt in the last year. After Chiang Mai, hopefully armed with more tourist tat and hippy clothing than I can fit in my bag, we head on to the border crossing to Laos. In Laos, I'll try and write again about what will inevitably be a lot of time spent in French pattiseries, because cake. But maybe I won't. I might forget. I'll probably forget. I hear cake fogs up the brain.

But see? I blogged. Mother, never let it be said that I don't tell you what I'm up to.

Thailand stats:

Clothes bought: 6 Presents bought for me: 1 Presents bought for others: 1