Paul Schiernecker

Category: Travels

Gobi Trek 2016

I met Adam at Green Park.
I had a Chai Tea Latte.
He was late.
Nothing ever changes.

The pair of us rode the Piccadilly Line as far as it would go and emerged into the joyous riot that is Heathrow airport. We agreed that we really like airports. Unless you’re there to pick someone else up then they’re a lot of fun. We met up with Nora and Alun who were walking just ahead of us. We checked our luggage in. I was pleased to have three kilos less than anyone else (slimmer of the year).
Once we were through security, having been pulled aside because we look like we are smuggling drugs, Adam and I headed to get some breakfast.
We were sat debating what to eat when I noticed Adam was staring at the man next to us. We opened up a conversation with him before realising he was actor, director and playwright Mark Rylance. We talked to him about trekking, ballets in New York and the Colorado river before he bid us adieu and headed off like a handsome dream. We bolted down the rest of our Mexican Breakfast and overtook him as we ran over to our gate.
We just about made it and settled in for the first flight of three to get us to Mongolia. Adam insisted we sit together and then insisted we watched the same films, syncing them up by pressing play at exactly the same time. After Independence Day: Resurgence and Daddy’s Home we arrived in Istanbul.
We got off the plane and found the nearest bar. Everyone else was there. Under Turkish law they have to give you food with your alcohol so there were about twenty paper plates of plain crisps piled up across the table where everyone stood, trying to remember how to make polite conversation. It was my first opportunity to catch up with Ian, Feyza, Jo and Emma who I had previously trekked the Sahara desert with. We were excited to be back together.
After a couple of pints which I still don’t know how much I paid for, we were ushered back onto a flight. I broke free from Adam’s film regime and watched Born To Be Blue and Destruction – they were both right little uppers. We were given some food, but more importantly, drink. Adam and I had a glass of wine and then as many gin and tonics as the staff could carry. I awoke a little while later to discover we were refuelling and I was being booted off the plane. In my haste I forgot to pick up my headphones.
I was handed a blank boarding card and asked the obvious question:
“Where the fuck are we?”
We had to find a souvenir shop selling fridge magnets to establish we were in Kyrgyzstan. Beers were charged at $5. They were a reliable 11.8% proof.

I slept through Star Trek: Beyond and woke up to a poor excuse for scrambled egg, congealed to the tray and accompanied by a couple of balls I was later informed were supposed to be some kind of potato.
We landed at Chinggis Khaan Airport, Ulan Bator, Mongolia, collected our bags and headed outside into the freezing air. It seemed strange to me that they would name an airport after Khaan. Wasn’t he a bad guy? Liverpool had John Lennon. New York has JFK. I’m sure he’s a big name but it’s hardly Ich Bin Ein Berliner or I Am The Walrus.
I was given a number (27) which I was told I would need to remember and that it would all make sense later. I never needed the number again and am still unsure of its purpose.
We drove for about two hours to our first ger camp. We were first taken into a big hall for lunch. A starter of shredded leaves was being put out on the tables. We had tea and coffee. Aside from the fact it didn’t seem to have any kind of heating I was blown away by the comfort I was in. I noticed the bar was stocked with vodka and beer. Maybe this wasn’t going to be quite as treacherous as I had thought.
We were asked to divide into fours for the accommodation. Adam and I chose Alex and Sean like they were a couple of Pokemon. Alex is from T’North. Sean is from New York. Between the four of us we had all the bases covered.
After a lunch of questionable meat, vegetables, rice and potato chips we were told to collect our bags and head to into our gers. Those who aren’t particular au fait with Mongolian housing, a ger is a lot like a yert. For those of you who don’t know what a yert is, a ger looks a lot like this:

Inside there were four beds, a little stove, a table and four chairs. I was reminded of the glamping teepees at Glastonbury. Somewhere I have never stayed but always admired the gumption of. We unloaded some of our stuff, prepared for an acclimitisation walk and visited the toilet block where we discovered there were showers as well as proper toilets. If this was to be the standard of accomodation for the trek then I was going to have to be careful with what I shared with friends when I returned home.

Our walk for the day was beautiful. We were taken uphill over the camp and through a strange forest of orange leaves before circling back round via some cows. I was surprised to find I was breathless after short climbs. I hadn’t been out walking for a couple of weeks but I was in generally good shape. I realised we were at altitude and I was going to struggle in the way I would in Peru. I walked a lot of the way with Kirstin who was there as a representative from WaterAid. I immediately took to her, which is good as I hate most people.

Back at the camp we quickly realised there was very little to do beside drinking so we headed to the hall and got a round of beers in. Five beers for five quid as it turned out. I felt like a student again. We ate dinner and continued drinking. We moved onto vodka. The second group landed, having flown in from Hong Kong. With them came a bottle of Jager that was soon being passed around. I went to bed drunk and warm and looking forward to a long, hot shower in the morning to rid myself of my sins.

When I woke up the pipes were frozen. Everything was frozen. The world was Frozen. Let It Go. I was impressed I didn’t have a hangover. It must have been down to the altitude. We packed our bags up and headed back to the airport for our chartered flight to Dalanzadgad. It was exciting to take a private jet. I felt like the lovechild of Richard Branson and Indiana Jones.

As it turned out, the flight wasn’t entirely terrible. There were no televisions in the backs of the seats but I did get to enjoy watching those who struggle with flying practically shit themselves as the tin can left the runway. I read some Bunny Munro and chatted with Jo. We were told it was important our weight allowance wasn’t exceeded as the plane literally would not be able to handle it.
We arrived and wandered through an arrivals lounge about the size of a postage stamp. There was an outhouse to collect our luggage and then we were loaded into trucks and driven out into the desert.

Our second camp was bigger and just as nice. There was a “king ger” where we could all hang out and eat. There was also a beer fridge. This trekking lark was alright I figured.

We had five beds in our ger and took Kirstin under our wing. She had seven bags with her to accommodate all the extra stuff she had brought with on behalf of the charity and was keen to get rid of the hats, t-shirts and running vests she needed to pass across to us over the course of the week.
We eventually got dinner and awaited the arrival of our friends from HK. We took great delight in telling them we had a room with beds while they had to sleep on tarpaulin on the floor. Our joy would be short-lived. We hung out and got drunk and I slept well, warm and cosy in my last bed. I hoped the showers wouldn’t be frozen again in the morning.

I was wrong. The morning was beautiful but there was no running water. We had a chaotic breakfast as a hundred people queued for their rations and then we prepped for our first day of trekking. I put my thermal base layer on followed by my boiler suit. Despite the previous treks I had done I didn’t have any warm clothing to hike in. I always seemed to be doing it in the sun. This was a different beast. The only thing in my wardrobe that I figured could cover me was a boiler suit I bought with the intention of doing a lot of DIY in it. That never happened but it became a beautiful costume for the Gobi trek.

Our group of 25 (Blue Team) were the last to leave. The plan was to trek out to a frozen waterfall and return to the same camp. We tried to keep warm and pocketed leftovers while we waited for everyone else to shoot off ahead of us.

I put my parka on but once we were a couple of kilometres out of camp I found that I didn’t need it and resorted to just walking in my boiler suit. Despite the head wind I was relatively warm. We walked and caught up. We were excited and funny and glad to have started this great new adventure of which we would all be a part.

As we were the last group out, we met the others coming back the same way ahead of us. There was a real gang mentality as they approached. It was basically war. As we came into the reservation containing the waterfall there was a huge sign and painting depicting it. The real thing didn’t live up to the grandeur but watching everyone fall over like the goons in Home Alone made up for it.

Due to an administrative error it was after 3pm before we had lunch. I was starving. We had some kind of meat and noodles. It was nice to have something warm to hold onto. I put my coat back on and we tucked ourselves behind an abandoned building to stay out of the bitter wind. After a second bowl we started on our way back to camp.

As the sun started to go down it was noticeably colder. We watched it set and soon had to find somewhere to take cover. Dinner was organised by groups. As we were the last to eat lunch, we were the last to have dinner and sat in our ger pretending we knew how to play card games until we were called. Once in, we hung around hoping for second portions of the meat, rice and potatoes we were given until all the guides and local support had eaten. We didn’t let on to the other groups until it was gone. Then we started drinking again. I soon realised it was the best antidote to the cold.

We packed up the following morning (again, everything was frozen) and prepared to head onto our next camp via a gorge in the mountains. We were the first group to set off and set the pace for everyone. The walk boasted my favourite views of the day. We were completely submerged in the landscape and words escape me.

That night we arrived at our new camp where we could see out across a desolate landscape for miles and over to the mountains. I slept on the floor for the first time. Our ger had been put up that day and throughout the night the wind whipped underneath the crosshatch walls and the fire wouldn’t stay lit. I had to sleep with my arms holding my mummy sleeping bag closed in order to keep the heat in.

We walked out the next day across the flat and I meditated under the protection of The Camel, a collection of Buddhist flags up on the mountains. We collected up fragments of bones we found on the ground and Sean and I told everyone we were hunting a jackalope.

Back at the camp we drunk straight vodka and played games in the warmest ger we could find. I slept well and dreamt I was chasing jackalopes.

On the fourth day we trekked through mountains again, taking on one of the Red Team whose birthday it was. The walk was hard. I was starting to feel the distance in my calves and my joints. We talked about whether this was a sign we hadn’t put in enough training or were just getting older. We climbed a mountain before a lunch of spaghetti and birthday cake. I put Tabasco on everything I could to give it some flavour. In the afternoon we saw goats being herded through the pass.
We had to climb out of the gorge to a spot where we could be collected and taken to camp. I was in the second group to go which meant we could sit around drinking beer which promoted itself on its “Ultra Drinkability” – the very least you want from a beer. We also wandered out into the abyss and dropped trou to pose for photos. In the car on the way back I blinked into the sun and felt the growl in my belly.

On our last day we headed out into the dunes. Only 3% of the Gobi desert is sand. We were lucky to find some I guess. It reminded me of being in the Sahara. We walked together, all hundred of us across the last sixteen kilometres to the finish.
We thought we had found it when we saw the bus ahead. It turned out it had broken down and everyone was trying to dig it out. It was another couple of K before we actually made it in.

There were screams and shouts, there were calls from across the wasteland and then we started drinking and didn’t stop until we ran out and realised the sun had set and we were alone with a broken down bus. It was four hours before we were rescued and taken back to camp. In the interim time I considered which of my fellow trekkers I would eat first if it came down to it. There was plenty of choice.

Note: During the trek, I carried my trusty GoPro.
For those of you who prefer your intake a little more visual, see below:

October 18, 2016
To The Top

September 27, 2016
Coming Down to Machu Picchu.

I’m a chancer. That’s a given. I will take any opportunity. I’m happy to take a leg up. I enter a lot of competitions. I apply for a lot of things and I always live in hope that one day one of them would get me to the place I want to be.

The latest of those is the World Nomads Travel Film Scholarship 2016.

This includes a ten day all-expenses-paid trip to Vietnam and four day workshop with travel filmmaker Brian Rapsey.

You can view my entry above and the video is below. I’ve taken a page from my upcoming book on the Inca Trail in combination with video from my trip there in 2014.

August 28, 2016
Hike.

I’m now in training for the Gobi trek I’m taking part in later this year. Last weekend I walked thirteen miles and it was a beautiful day. Stopped in the pub. Stopped at my dad’s. It was just like being in the desert.

July 24, 2016
Thailand

It was dark and the heat was terrible, one of those encompassing heats that knocks you off your feet as soon as you step out of the air conditioned comfort of the plane. It was Thailand Jim, but not as we knew it.

My first thought was what the hell we were supposed to do now we had arrived. We collected my bag once more and headed through the confusion of security and out into the arrivals hall. There were a gang of beautiful faces. They were not waiting for us. We withdrew some baht and considered our options. There were already more people than in the airports of Malaysia or Singapore, all trying to get our attention, all offering a cab ride or a flight or a hotel. We knew where we were going, we were just reliant on not getting ripped off before we got there. Staring at a laminated map on a desk we found the rough location of our hotel, the only place I had left Adam to book. The only place that still had vacancies seven hours before we were due to arrive in town. The hotel was near to Rassada Pier, where we were due to get the ferry to Koh Phi Phi Don from the following morning. It was away from Patong and the party side of the island.

We paid our 650 baht (£13.46) and headed outside where there were rows of beautiful white cars waiting in the heat of the night. We were ushered into a backseat. I felt tension shift beneath the leather and assumed everything was fine. Our driver half said something before starting up the engine and pulling out in front of whoever else was waiting. On the walls beside the car park were huge posters for club nights and full moon parties. We stared at them like dogs into the window of the butchers. The car just kept on going.

Some way out of town he pulled up suddenly and without explanation, the taxi idling in the light of a travel agent as he disappeared inside, leaving the windows down. A woman came out and asked us to clarify where we were going. Adam fumbled with his phone like Hugh Grant proposing illicit prostitute sex and pulled the address. They struggled with the English translation and ended up calling to confirm. The directions were then explained to us in English and the driver in Thai before we headed off. The tales of Thailand were always those of legend. It was the place people had been most excited about us visiting, assuming a certain lifestyle or expectation by a visit to the fair land. That was not our intention but if it happened, I was happy to play along.

We pulled up on the driveway and a small Thai man came out onto the street to greet us. He offered to carry our bags and we headed into his immaculate home. Everything inside was tiled. It was too clean. The walls were probably covered in plastic wrap and the host zipped up in a biohazard suit just hours before as he disposed of his last guests in the harbour. It was that kind of clean. He couldn’t stop bowing.

He proudly showed us the table where breakfast items had been set out for the following morning. He then introduced us to his maid who I instantly fell in love with. Then he methodically led us up the stairs, making sure we paid attention to every painting and frame along the walls. The place was completely silent except for our creaking nods of agreement. We were the only guests at the Bleach Hotel. Our room was on the second floor and was somehow hotter than the streets. We quickly turned the air conditioning on full as our host showed us everything from the towels, to the toilet roll, to the water in the fridge, to the folded swan on our double bed. We approved of everything. We were tired and we were hungry. All he kept saying was that if we needed anything he was right next door. I know he meant well but it had a touch of the serial killer catchphrase about it. When he finally left I turned to Adam and let out a huge sigh.
‘He’s a bit intense’ I said. ‘What’s his name?’
‘I don’t know know.’
‘You kept saying something.’
‘I know, it’s something like Criterion but not that.’
For the rest of our stay that was what we mumbled at him.

Criterion return a moment later to introduce his wife. He seemed proud of his hotel. He simply could not do enough for us. We asked if there was anywhere locally we could get something for dinner.
He gave a series of confusing instructions which Adam and I hoped the other had been paying attention to and then we were out on the hot street. We came to a bar that we thought might have been where he had suggested. There was nobody inside. It was so quiet that the barrstaff were stood in the doorway, chatting with a bunch of prostitutes. We ordered our first pints of Chang, the lager of Thailand, and took a passing look at the laminated menu before making our excuses and moving on.
Somehow we found our way to another restaurant. At the front, two giant plastic prawns faced off against one another, lit from beneath by a series of garden lights. It appeared to be popular with locals. We went in.

As we bungled our way between tables of families a handsome waiter grabbed us both by the collar and led us to a table where the majority of the fans could be directed. We were under a canopy but exposed to the elements so the humidity still caught up. We were told to go and collect whatever food we wanted while they fetched a grill for us. We ordered another two Chang. Other tables, more developed in their understanding, had globular BBQ pits set up on their tables and were taking turns at grilling meat and fish. I returned to the table with a tray of overlapping plates, some fish, some meat, some vegetation. Our waiter took a piece of pork fat and ran it across the hot plate over the coals of our personal BBQ and layered meat onto it for us. Around the edge was a moat of chicken stock where the fish and seafood could be cooked. We got to it. There was a surplus charge if we didn’t eat what we cooked so we filled our bellies and ordered another Chang. The waiter kept excitedly bringing more food over for us to try, keen to introduce us to more Thai cuisine. We ate prawns and octopus, chicken, something that might have been beef and who knows what else. It was the best meal for the occasion and we felt stuffed and treated.

Afterwards we washed the fish guts from our fingers and found our way to a bar where a four-piece band were playing, the cocktails tasted sweeter than necessary and we were the only European faces. We drank and smoked and applauded the band. The heavens opened as we were preparing to leave. We decided to risk it anyway, sure we were just minutes from Criterion’s safe house.
Adam lost a flip-flop as we jumped the flood along the gutter and I ducked back inside as he watched it head downstream. He caught up with it somehow and we ran back laughing in the darkness, worrying about our wet footprints on the white tile and having to hang our money out to dry before we climbed into our last matrimonial bed.

In the morning we quickly showered and dressed, heading downstairs to Criterion’s demonically wonderful grin and offers of croissants and coffee. He said he would drive us to the pier in his 4×4 and refused to take any money for his troubles. At the very least I had found myself a Thai sugar daddy.

We were instantly able to identify the clichéd travellers at Rassada pier. There were the vested dude-bros, the girls looking to Instagram their way around Asia and the honeymooning couples. I don’t know what they made of us. We didn’t care.

As soon as we got aboard we headed downstairs to find somewhere to rest our asses and maybe even our heads. The lower deck stunk of fumes and they were showing Mr Bean. I don’t know what hell looks like but…
Adam and I made a game of it by pretending we were on the lower deck of the Titanic with all the Irish folk.

I soon grew tired of jigging alone and headed up to watch the sea. I’ve always been fascinated by open water and there’s something about the wake of a ferry that reminds me of holidays I took as a boy. The sun eventually beat me and I had to seek cover again, watching Rowan Atkinson crawl around a hotel in the buff.

Two hours later we made it to Phi Phi and everyone hurried to their bags. We were staying on the far side of the island and were told we would need to locate the taxi boats that ran up there twice a day. A man in Oakley sunglasses and what Adam called “a Jumanji hat” holding a sign for our “resort”. It wasn’t really our resort, but we were apparently welcome to use their taxi services. We took this permission to be fairly liberal and open. He told us the boat would not be leaving for another two hours, that we were welcome to leave our bags with him and should come back fifteen minutes before we were due to leave.

I dropped my huge bag off my shoulder and breathed a sigh of relief.
‘What are you doing?’ asked Adam.
‘I’m putting my bag down’ I said, ‘the guy said we can leave them here.’
Adam stepped closer to me.
‘Are you going to trust him with all your stuff?’
‘It’s just stuff man.’
Asia had clearly changed me.

Adam eventually dropped his bag too and we started walking off.
‘Are you sure about this?’ he said.
‘Yeah, I’ve got our passports and my card, what else do I really need? Anyway, I trust him. He had a good face.’
Adam didn’t seem so sure. ‘I think he had teeth missing’ he said.

Our first stop was for breakfast where we each ordered a Chang before anything else. I had the American breakfast which was the least American thing I have ever eaten. Adam ordered a spicy noodle dish. It looked like Asia was changing him too. I got an orange juice and a coffee and sipped my three drinks in turn. It felt good. I wanted to keep on going and never look back. As long as I could get online every couple of days and tell my mum I was okay I never wanted to go back.
The issues with such a plan were several-fold. Mostly they came down to the fact I had left some cherry tomatoes in the fridge and they really needed chucking in the bin.

We walked up and down the market stalls in search of something. Adam considered getting a bamboo tattoo but balked at the price. We checked out clothing and massage parlours, bars and private boat hire stalls before returning to the pier for our next boat. Jumanji was still there. As were our bags.
‘I told you he was alright’ I said.

Adam and I were the only passengers on the narrow boat. It was fifteen foot long with a motor on the back. The “captain” stood at the back directing the rudder while we sat under a cover and shouted to one another over the sound of the suffering engine.

After half an hour we turned a corner and pulled into the kind of bay a Bond villain would set up base in. There were palm trees and private boats, chalets on stilts and handsome tanned people enjoying life. We had arrived.

As we clambered down into the surf our bags were taken from us and loaded into a motorcycle sidecar. We jumped in and took a leisurely ride to check in. Along the way we passed between a row of shops and the five star resort I secretly hoped we would be staying. Our place was slightly more basic. Once the air conditioning was on and I realised I had my own bed I felt a lot better. Adam and I threw our stuff down and headed out for a swim. I only had Converse to wear and felt a bit of a dick because everyone else was bare foot or in flip flops.

The sea was so warm it offered no comfort from the humid air. I swam out as far as I could and watched boats fly along by our harbour as they ferried travellers to different islands. It was possible from Phi Phi to visit Maya Bay, the beach popularised by The Beach. The Beach beach. I heard there was no point in going in search of quiet paradise because it was now a queue of people looking for that one shot.

Adam and I stretched out under palm trees and snoozed. We then sauntered into the infinity pool for the five star resort. Adam kept muttering to me to look like we belonged there. I was in a pair of swimming shorts that didn’t fit me, Converse flapping on my feet. I was covered in tattoos and had shaved my head just days before. They all knew I didn’t belong there. A waiter came over and offered us a drink. We considered charging it to one of the rooms in the hope we could scram before anyone picked up on it. We were too recognisable. We drank from coconuts and took a dip in the pool, drying ourselves with the plush towels stacked at the side.

Later in the evening we went in search of a night out. On the north end of the island this was a hard job. We stopped at the first restaurant we found and ordered pizza and beer. Every tourist who walked into the joint ordered pizza and beer. Adam was distraught. Amongst the other patrons were the German couple who had been eyeballing us as we sunbathed on deckchairs in the private resort. They knew our game. We didn’t care.

An hour later we were in Freedom Bar watching a Thai band cover Hotel California. When they finished they asked if anyone wanted to get up and perform. I don’t think they were expecting it. I got up and played covers of The Cure and David Bowie before letting them slam through some more songs. They were cool guys and our bar bill was half what it should have been by the end of the night.

The next morning we decided to head back over to buy cliché travel items. I was done with Converse and bought flip flops, leaving my trainers under a cart for fate to decide upon. Adam bought a vest and instantly regretted it. We got some food on a balcony overlooking the cove. I ate as much seafood as I could and knocked back a beer.
Our heads were turned at the thought of a Thai massage. We found ourselves off of the hot street and in front of a large fan in the doorway of an open room with four low beds. There was a curtain around each for privacy. As I kicked off my new flip flops I could feel my t-shirt clinging to my back with sweat. Whoever ended up seeing to me deserved a lot more than the 200 baht for a half hour massage.

I didn’t even get to buy her a drink first. She was on me. Smart hands and digging elbows starting on my calves, working up the backs of my thighs. I felt things being pulled that were surely not designed to be pulled. The pleasure and the pain continued up onto my back until I realised she was standing on me, tiny heels and toes undoing all the trouble my poor posture and terrible desk habits caused. She worked up to my neck and then massaged down my arms before yanking each of my fingers in turn. She turned me onto my back and pulled my arms free from tension with a sharp click. I gasped.
The next thing I knew she had her knees in my back and was pulling me over on top of her in the most bizarrely uncomfortable but mildly sexual position I have been forced into in some time.
She was like Xenia from Goldeneye. I wanted to be put to death by her thighs.

As Adam and I walked up the road feeling soulful, taller and lighter I waxed lyrical about how I would return to make her my wife. We went for another beer and to enjoy paradise before getting the boat back.

We started talking to two German boys with matching pencil beards and baseball caps on the ride back. They had arrived in Thailand after travelling around Australia for six months, living out the back of a converted van and doing construction jobs whenever they needed money. Their stories all revolved around how stoned they had got in a particular location. We made plans to go for dinner together on the basis that, unlike the vast majority of people in the area, none of us were honeymooning couples.
Over Thai curries we talked about Frankfurt, David Hasselhoff and drugs. We bought more beers and ended up nearly passing out in their rooms.

The following day all I wanted to do was sit by the sea and soak up all the sun and memories I could. We got back into the honeymooners resort and pretended we belonged there. We swam and read and went and got food. We went out into the sea and I wondered why we had to go back to our own lives at all. We decided to group our funds and go big for our last night. It turned out Adam didn’t have any money left. This meant we could scrape a dinner and maybe a round of drinks for the pair of us. It was already too late in the day to get to the other side of the island where there was access to an ATM. We wandered through the posh resort and asked at reception if they would charge our cards in exchange for cash. It wasn’t happening. We asked at our favourite restaurants and none of them would take card. We got to the end of the road and there was one place left to try. As we walked by Adam noticed a sign he recognised above the till – VISA.
‘No way’ he said’. We were in luck. We would eat like kings.

We ordered a beer, a cocktail and a bottle of water each. We sat out the back and in plastic candlelight watched the sun go down and people go by. We ordered two lots of starters, four lots of main course and deliberated over the idea of dessert before getting more drinks. It came to two thousand baht (£41.40), the most we spent on anything while we were away.

We went back to Freedom bar and spent everything we had on two vodka and cokes before falling in love with a South African couple. He wore a vest, worked on oil rigs and swore at us, she painted our faces and was too drunk for our own good. They picked up the tab for the night and we ran out to the beach.
I fell asleep some time later and Adam drank whatever else he could find and smoked something he found on the floor. Our last night in Thailand was not without mishaps.

The following day, with his head rattling and mine as fresh as a daisy, we took the boat back to the other side of the island, got another beer for breakfast and waited for the ferry. The whole trip felt very sombre. My shoes were not where I had left them.

The flights back were terrible. Adam kept trying to talk to me. I was watching The Good Dinosaur. I slept. I ate something unspeakable and before I knew it we were back in Heathrow and I felt like a tit in a pair of flip flops.

June 25, 2016
Malaysia

While we waited for our flight to be called we wandered around the small space that was Changi departures lounge. Upstairs we found a food court and argued about whether we were going to eat pork and rice in the canteen or a chicken burger at Louisiana Burger. It was eight in the morning.
‘It’s not just a chicken burger’ I reasoned, ‘it’s a breakfast meal.’
‘The only thing that makes that a breakfast meal is that you get a hash brown instead of chips’ replied Adam. He decided he was going to eat pork noodles. I let him go and queued up for my chicken.
Everything on my plate was a shade of brown. I tried not to think as I took quick bites, trying to fool my taste buds by washing everything down with an unnatural tasting mango juice.

Adam solemnly joined me with his chicken breakfast having given in to the power of Louisiana. Both of us ignored our food and chatted as we slowly pulled it apart and chewed it up. Confused as to why we had eaten when we weren’t hungry, we got onto the hour long flight from Singapore to Malaysia. As soon as the plane levelled out a couple of chicken tikka wraps were thrown at us, followed by pots of water.
‘I told you we get a meal’ said Adam.
The plane immediately started to descend. I stuffed the sandwich down and we landed in Kuala Lumpur.

Adam and I collected my bag and were directed around the airport in a complete loop until we came to a taxi rank. We withdrew some money and asked for a ride to the area I had booked in Chow Kit. The taxi driver was called Eddie and wanted to talk about the weather in London and our taste in music. Both subjects were fine with us. We were dropped at a shopping centre and gladly sucked at the air conditioning while I roamed around in search of a free Wi-Fi connection to contact our host.
We then had to be directed across the road to an intense looking tower block. We were staying on the 32^nd floor. We got by security and managed to get as far as the 7^th floor before realising we were supposed to have a key card in order to access the higher floors. We wandered back down and met Nikolas whose apartment we were staying in. Him and his girlfriend, Sasha, showed us to our room and offered to wash our clothes for a very generous 15 ringgits. We took them up on the offer as I had run out of pants and then headed down to the swimming pool. We bought a couple of beers, swam as much as we could and fell asleep in deck chairs until the sun disappeared behind the mall.

Tired of my sweaty hair falling in my face I told Adam it was time he took the beard trimmers to it. I sat on a towel on the floor and let him drive a clean sweep down the middle of my head. My precious fringe fell into my lap. He told me it was too late to change my mind. Fifteen minutes later I was a monk.

As the evening drew in Adam had a nap and I watched the most incredible tropical storm from the lounge. The sliding doors to the balcony were open and I stood just before them as a sheet of water fell. In the distance everything crackled and rumbled. Skyscrapers disappeared from the base up until it felt like we were in isolation in an apartment in the clouds.
Adam emerged having been scared awake by the thunder and came down to sit with Nikolas and I. I kept rubbing my hands over my exposed scalp. Adam had been in contact with a friend of a friend who lived locally and had offered to take us out for the evening. We didn’t know what to expect or how awkward it would be.

When Nigel came to collect us we had to walk out to the main road where we found him curb crawling. We got in like a couple of night walkers and he gave us a historical tour of the city before taking us to a restaurant in Chinatown. We let him order for us, both food and wine, and before long the three of us were tucking in and sharing tales of the great loves of our lives.
After Adam and I had paid the bill as a thank you, Nigel took us through the nearby market. He told us to keep our hands on our wallets. We were both amazed at the selection of counterfeits and bootlegs. Barrel-chested men in peeling football shirts and chains stood in doorways offering us a good price. I walked through like Obi-Wan Kenobi, telling them I wasn’t the shmuck they were looking for.

From there we went to PS150, a secret prohibition-era bar tucked down a back street. Nigel had to give some kind of special nod or handshake for us to gain access and from street level the bar dipped backwards through a covered alley and into something that looked like it was from a Nicholas Winding Refn film.
The three of us worked our way down the menu until midnight and then decided to head home. We had an early flight. Adam and I insisted on stopping at a 7/11 so we could load up on beer and cigarettes to take out onto the balcony. Once we had said goodbye to Nigel and were back on our very own Pride Rock we looked over our new kingdom and talked about the importance of living in the moment and being around people.

I went to bed happy and drunk.

The following morning we went for an early swim to clear our heads and then packed up our stuff. I kept looking guiltily at the bin of hair in the corner of the room. It felt weird leaving it for our hosts. They dropped our cleaned and folded laundry back to us. It smelt so fresh compared to everything else I had in my bag. It felt a shame to collect it all together.

We hit up TripAdvisor for a Chinese temple and found Thean Hou, which had been given four stars. I struggled to establish how you could grade religious monuments. Set on 1.67 acres of land in Taman Persiaran Desa, it’s intimidatingly beautiful and tucked away from the manic hustle and shine of the rest of the city. I found myself speaking in hushed tones and trying my hardest not to do anything disrespectful. I’m not a religious person but I appreciate the importance others place upon it.
We took our shoes off on the steps outside and prayed before each of the statues. For all my naivety I was in awe. It looked like an album cover from the summer of love. I found my mind drifting to the people I cared about, those I shared my most precious moments with. It’s so easy to get caught up in everything that seems to be going on in our lives that it takes a lot to get away from it all and think about what truly matters. On the hillsides of Malaysia I was able to do that. I understand if it sounds pretentious and distant, that it doesn’t fit in with the version of myself you see but there was something about the area that enchanted me.

Adam and I burnt joss sticks and got our fortunes told. The latter was based on a game where you picked up a collection of sticks and dropped them into a divot in the top of a coloured drum. As soon as one stick bounces out it counts as your fortune. Each stick is imprinted with a number which relates to a drawer on the front of the drum. I had 41.

We sat just inside the door, our bags rolled up against the wall. My stomach started to growl and I realised we hadn’t eaten since the previous evening. When I checked with Adam he had no money. We had been driven out away from the city and I wondered if there would be anywhere we could eat. We headed out the back of the temple and up a winding staircase to a lane of ornate statues that came to a dead end. We headed back down and found an information centre that was closed.
As we were starting on our way back to the road we noticed there was a small shop underneath the hill. As we got closer we realised it opened into a basement area with a food court and stalls selling Buddhist items and joss sticks. We had ten ringgits between the pair of us, equivalent to £1.67. I started to panic. There was nowhere to get any money. None of the stalls would accept card. We didn’t know where we were. We didn’t have access to anything. We were far enough out of the city that it would be difficult to pick up a taxi and explain that we would need to withdraw money on the way. On top of which, I was hungry and irritable.
‘I really want to get a statue’ said Adam, looking back at the stalls from where we had strolled into the centre of the space.
‘We need food and water. We are going to need a taxi to the airport. You haven’t got any money. You’re not getting a statue. It’s going to take some kind of miracle for us to get anything here.’
Two plates of food and a bottle of water used up our last ten ringgits. The temple had Wi-Fi so we were able to book an Uber to the airport.
I’m not saying it was divine intervention but something was shining down on us that day.

We arrived with enough time to get something to eat before our flight. We checked my bag in and headed into the terminal. We walked back and forth and the only place to get anything was a coffee shop with garish blue lights and pink font. We were both starving again and bolted down sandwiches, sausage rolls and tiramisu, hardly traditional Asian fare but all airports look the same so you might as well eat the same.
I called my brother because it was his birthday and we had a very stilted conversation because of the delay caused by the connection. Then we were loading ourselves into cattle class and heading on to Thailand.

June 2, 2016
Singapore.

“Clearly you’ve never been to Singapore”, famously uttered Captain Jack Sparrow upon freeing Elizabeth Swan from her corset using a knife. This wasn’t the only reason I wanted to visit the city but it was up there, along with the fact it would coincide with Eurovision. I figured flying to South East Asia was a cheap price to pay in order to escape the hideous showboating and rip away skirts.

When my friend Adam, who I first met two years ago on a trek to Machu Picchu, mentioned the pair of us going to stay with his friend Roshni in Singapore, I think he was expecting a little more resistance. I agreed almost immediately. It was only afterwards the gravitas of the decision really hit me.

It seemed bizarre to travel all that way to only visit one place so we set upon Malaysia and Thailand in the process. This post, however, is about Singapore, what we saw and did there, and the lessons we learnt along the way.

Changi airport is one of the best air-conditioned spaces in the world. How do I know this? I tried going outside at eleven o’clock at night to hail a cab. Two steps out into that muggy wall of heat and I returned to the Wi-Fi and eateries of the arrival hall. While waiting for Roshni to meet us, unsure of exactly how we had ended up in such a predicament, we counted our money and tried to work out how many Singapore dollars there were to the pound and if everything before us was a bargain or a rip off. It’s fair to say that Singapore has equal opportunities for both.

Roshni collected us and we got a taxi across the city, taking in views of the marina and the incredible number of skyscrapers before blasting out the other side and up to her apartment. Roshni moved to Singapore last year to teach. She’s possibly the most upbeat and spirited person I have ever met. She’s purposeful and attentive and her smile can sort of break your heart a bit. On top of this, she insisted we take her bed while she slept on the sofa. It was the first of many nights Adam and I were in bed together.

The following morning Roshni made us smoothies and introduced us to her flatmate Amanda who also worked at the school. They took us for breakfast at a restaurant called Jimmy Monkeys to sweeten the deal before we attended a dance show at their school. It did the trick. As I sat with a thick vanilla milkshake, eggs and avocado smeared across soda bread, I couldn’t care what we did, as long as we kept cool in the process.

Like most drama schools, there were a lot of pushy stage parents. My first encounter with them was when we were ushered into the darkened auditorium and told we could sit anywhere by the other teachers, before being moved along by parents who had booked specific seats. They obviously needed to best capture the offbeat stammerings of their kids. After being moved on yet again by another set of Croydon facelifted mothers we hit the back row and watched two hours of theatre which was probably cute if you had an invested interest/offspring putting in a wonderful performance as a daisy or rabbit.

Afterwards Roshni took us on the Singapore underground service, the MRT. I just did some research and that stands for Mass Rapid Transport. How delightful.
We went to every coffee shop, bookshop and bakery we could find before heading to the top of the Pinnacle Tower for an incredible view over the city. Singapore has been built up very quickly. The skyline looks like a competition nobody is winning.

We headed back down and strolled around the city before Roshni took us to one of her favourite vegan restaurants for wraps, soup and salads. Adam and I discovered paying by card in Asia is not commonplace. Like the Queen, I don’t carry money. Unlike the Queen, I serve a purpose beyond just looking nice. Each time we wanted to pay for a meal we had to locate a cash machine on the busy streets and then worry about how to get back and whether our bags and passports would still be there. Considering it lacked my favourite foodstuffs, the vegan restaurants we visited in Singapore were incredible. I was almost converted.

Roshni took us through Chinatown and back onto the MRT to go and see the Supertree Grove in the Gardens by the Bay. This is a must when in Singapore. Not only is it beautiful but it’s also free. My favourite things are beautiful and free. We spread out on the paved floor, in the way of everyone else, and stared up. The supertrees are a collection of eighteen man-made trees, at around eighty-feet high. One of them has a restaurant inside to give an impression of scale. Each evening a light show plays out across the trees in sync with classical music blasted from hidden speakers. We were treated to a waltz. It was a mix of Fantasia, Debusssy and the music from X Factor. I was quiet and still for ten minutes. If there’s one thing it is enchanting to be, it is quiet and still. The lights and music pumped through me and I was so moved by the display that I realised my mouth had dropped open. The experience was something I was so pleased to enjoy with friends.

Afterwards we met up with Roshni’s friends and went to a bar in an alley where musicians played covers on guitar, trumpet and keyboard and we sipped at expensive cocktails named after renaissance painters or Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Soon we were dancing away in the hot night. Adam and I took breaks to stand in front of a huge fan that pumped out recycled air into the alley. We watched a woman getting arrested and Roshni fell in love with yet another musician, taking up residence in the chair directly opposite the performance area to pine. After clearing away all of the money we had withdrawn earlier in the day on drinks, Adam and I were forced to call it a night and get a cab back to Roshni’s apartment, falling into a drunken sleep underneath the buzz of the ceiling fan. The best way to get over jetlag is to get drunk.

The following day we woke up late to discover we had been left alone. It was a Monday and Roshni and Amanda had both got up and gone to work/school. A friend of mine had recently returned to the UK after spending a year in Singapore and had given us a number of spots to check out, including a barber’s shop in Geylang where he had worked.

When we got outside it started raining, a thick viscous downpour that quickly soaked us through. I was growing tired of the mop of fringe dangling wet in my face. I wanted it gone and considered shaving my head.

We took the MRT without Roshni’s assistance for the first time and when we arrived in Aljunied (memorised by thinking of All You Need Is Love by The Beatles) we found the barbers closed. I had told Adam we couldn’t rest or eat until we had found it. After rattling the door for confirmation our thoughts turned to our stomachs. We didn’t have a clue where we were or where was good. There were no picturesque bakeries or quaint vegan eateries so we stumbled into an open air buffet next door where we were promptly handed two plates of what we quickly realised were the “westerner’s special” – rice, noodles, chicken, sweet and sour pork. It was delicious but Adam was feeling adventurous. He went back up and returned with a plate of pig skin. He assumed it would be fried off, similar to crackling. He was disappointed. What he had collected was boiled skin. I watched him struggle with a mouthful before deciding I needed a similar kind of punishment. I have put some terrible things in my mouth but the lump of pig made me heave. I quickly chewed and swallowed it down but I could feel it writhing. I was once told that pork is the closest meat to human and I had the horrible feeling I had gone all Hannibal on the buffet. Our two plates of food plus pig skin, two bottles of coke and four bottle of water came to £9.00. You can’t beat that with a stick.

Being suckers for punishment we decided to head to Orchard Road, an intense complex of shopping centres designed for the ex-pat community especially. The place was so swanky that I felt like I was going to be shooed out with a broom the whole time. Adam found a gold-plated, jewel-encrusted pen that was marked up at £3,500.00. He said he would buy it if he had the money. I called him a capitalist pig. It was the first of a series of conversations we had about materialism and politics. I told him a Bic was good enough for me. He pitied me.

We had arranged to meet Roshni and to visit another of her favourite spots, East Coast Park, but were slightly concerned we would have to forgo meat from another meal. Despite the tale/tail of the pig skin we were eager to get some food in us before our next adventure and hid in a KFC near our arranged meeting point while trying to connect to the Wi-Fi so we could book a restaurant for dinner. As Roshni had been so kind to us we wanted to treat her. When we told her she seemed genuinely impressed but had already set her heart on visiting Brownice, a vegan Italian bistro nearby.

We first went to East Coast Park, took off our shoes and paddled in the water before walking up and down the beach and talking about how connected we felt with the earth. At the time it felt really intense and honest but I now feel silly and clichéd for considering a concept so enlightened. Not me at all.

Brownice had the best food I ate in Singapore. The pizzas were big, covered in tofu and vegetables and their Root Beer float changed my perspective on the universe. Again, when it came time to pay, we couldn’t use our cards and Roshni had to pick up the tab for the bill we had kindly taken her out for. We got vegan ice cream and sat out in the hot street, watching traffic and street cats wander past until it was time to go home.

The next morning we awoke at six for our flight to Malaysia. Roshni made us smoothies so thick they would have been placed in a remedial class and we booked a taxi back to the airport. Our next adventure was waiting.

May 22, 2016
A mile high epiphany

“Please ensure your chairs are returned to their full and upright position, that your seatbelts are fastened and that your tray tables are stowed away”

I had managed to secure the window seat when my travel buddy got up to use the bathroom. It meant I got to watch the strange shapes that clouds make from above. As a boy I took it as gospel that it was possible to bounce on top of clouds like in Peter Pan or Mario, depending on your cultural viewpoint. Neither seemed to apply as the plane started to descend and my ears began to pop.

I was on my way home from five days in Malta, five long days away on business. I was in suit. I’m never comfortable in a suit even if I tried to make it look entirely natural as I stalked around the duty free selection of the departures lounge. It had been a hard graft being away and I was pleased to be home but as the clouds broke apart around us and I caught sight of London I felt like I had locked eyes with the love of my life from across the room.

I have made no secret of the fact I struggle with my mental health. That still applies. I’m currently medicated and in therapy but my god that flight made me feel thankful for a number of things I hadn’t taken stock of in a long time. Descending into London is really something magical. It’s the stuff of legend, both EastEnders theme tune and the opening scene of The World Is Not Enough, to my mind one of Brosnan’s top three outings as Bond. London to me is still a city where the streets are paved with gold. In a more literal sense they are paved with chuggers, Pret and scuffed brogues but we aren’t talking about that.

As the plane headed towards the capital I couldn’t help but smile. I’ve been really lucky. I had been to an island I hadn’t visited since I was six months old. I was returning to my own place. I have a job I love. I have people I love all around of me and who seem in varying senses to get me. I have a whole league of things ahead of me this year to look forward to. I was left with the strange sensation that everything was going to be alright. The knot of anxiety I wear around my neck near enough constantly wasn’t with me on that flight, maybe it was in the luggage I had checked in but I certainly didn’t appear to have carried it on. I felt breathless and weightless and fantastic.
I wanted to log that somewhere, the sensation that despite all the shit we all go through, it’s worth it for, what Jules in Pulp Fiction refers to as a “moment of clarity”. It made perfect sense at the time and I hope you get them every now and then too because they make everything flow a lot better from that source.

April 9, 2016
#25 – Go surfing

Surfing has always seemed like the coolest sport anyone can do. It conjures up images of handsome people with lovely teeth and sun-bleached hair scoring their boards and their bodies through the water as they escape whatever it is people hide at sea to escape from. I’ve always watched from the shore and wondered, would I be as good at that as I feel I would naturally be. Before we continue, the short answer is no.

As a kid I watched Neighbours a lot. There were a lot of cool surf dudes in Neighbours at the time. There may well be still. I can’t deal with the thought of watching soaps though. My first experience of death was Todd Landers. He got hit by a van. It was 13 July 1992. Todd was really cool. I still miss him.

For my 29^th birthday Charlotte and I headed down to the coast. Which coast you may ask? The coast if you want to get away from it all and have the chance to surf. Cornwall. We stayed in a gypsy caravan for a week where we would often fight over who was going to get out of bed and into the two degree winter morning to make tea (it was invariably me) and see what culinary delights it was possible to summon up on a simple red camping stove. It turns out you can bake a Camembert and grill a salmon if you really commit to it.
While we were there, our kind host Dale, who we found through my new best friend AirBnB, asked if we wanted to go surfing. Dale had lovely teeth and sun-bleached hair even though it was February and for some reason I trusted him.

On the last full day we were staying in St Ives he picked out a couple of wetsuits for us, found the biggest, thickest surfboards known to man and we followed him in his 4×4 down to the beach. The car had to be bump-started every time he took it off the farmland. It was part of the charm.
We pulled up in a residential area and walked through a number of alleyways to get down to the beach itself. Dale kept pointing out different buildings and telling us how much it would cost to move into them and move it up. For a cool surf dude he had a real eye for property development. I could hear the roar of the water, feel it rising up high enough to sit on my lips and make the experience taste salty. I wedged the board under my arm tightly and tried to make it look like I did this shit every day. I don’t do this shit every day. I process words and numbers every day for “the man” but I wanted to look like I knew what I was doing.
We got to the beach and quickly got changed into our wetsuits. There were two reasons we quickly wanted to get changed into our wetsuits, the first is that we were very exposed in the little concrete overhang beneath the stairs down to the water and the second is that it was four degrees out. If you take anything away from this, it is important to know that it is a bad idea to go surfing in February as a first-timer. It’s a bad idea to do anything in February really.

Wetsuits are a curious thing. With the way Bond slides out of them revealing a tuxedo underneath you would think they come away like the outer layer of a week old onion. They don’t. It’s like trying to fit your entire body into the rubbery insides of Ronnie Corbett via his mouth hole (especially when you’re six foot tall). I eventually wangled my way in with a lot of elbow grease and grunting and like in every other situation I’ve ever been in, started to wonder how much of a tit I looked. I looked over at Charlotte in her sea-blue wetsuit, she looked like Lara Croft in those levels where you spend a lot of time underwater watching her fabulous pixelated backside. As a boy I used to enjoy watching Lara Croft drown. Concerning and also possibly the reason I didn’t offer a lot of support when my girlfriend went under the water.

We waddled out awkwardly, trying to impress on the dog-walkers huddled up against the cold on the far reaches of the beach that we knew exactly what we were doing. I’ve seen enough people having surfing lessons to know that you’re not allowed in the water for about an hour. Instead you have to put the board down in the sand and practice lying on that, popping up and riding around like a sand god or goddess. Before we even have time to ask if you still called the front the bow and the back the stern, Dale and his girlfriend had run out into the water and disappeared. The waves breaking about a hundred metres out looked incredible. It was only as they reached them that I was able to see how large they were. Aside from the little dots climbing up the side of the walls of water everything looked fairly grey. The sky was grey. The water was grey. My skin was grey and sort of mottled. I tied my GoPro around my wrist and hoped that it a) wouldn’t come off and b) would make me look cool. It held around 50% of the bargain.

Charlotte was a couple of steps ahead of me and bravely headed out into the water.
“My shoe just filled with water,” she said of the two-pronged Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle-looking shoes we were both in. “Is that supposed to happen?”
“Yeah, of course,” I said in a way that I hoped convinced us both. We walked out a little further, her slightly less stable because she doesn’t have the gangly proportions of a Beano character and can’t wrap an entire arm around a surfboard.
We soon discovered that the cold we had been expecting, that breath-shuddering induction to the water simply wasn’t there. I felt comfortable in my wetsuit. Maybe, I considered, I had found my true calling. I pushed the board out further and dipped the back of it so the front rose over the first few waves we had encountered. Charlotte was struggling. What I hadn’t considered is the differences in our history around open water. I spent a lot of summers in the sea, and I don’t mean that in the twenty-first century call to get rid of something we don’t like. We would always find a beach and my brothers and I would bodyboard our way to glory. I therefore know how to get through waves, how to ride back in and most importantly, what to do when you inevitably go under. Charlotte managed to set herself up to ride her board in a couple of times before she went down. I helpfully captured the whole thing on GoPro before she was able to splutter enough seawater out of her face to call me a bastard and call it a day.

I headed out deeper without her. Waves started to seem like daunting bullies from my secondary school days, big foamy versions of the boys who hit puberty first and didn’t like me. I bounced up and nutted them down. I wasn’t having any of it. I rode in a couple of times laying out on the board and then decided to test this standing up thing. If you’ve got to crawl before you can walk then I had put in plenty of time riding into the shores of the med as a pre-teen. The first time I “popped up”, I made it to my knees before the board tipped up and I disappeared beneath the water. I coughed up a lot of seawater and quite probably a less important internal organ. I looked up to the beach to see if Charlotte was hanging around looking cold and concerned for my safe return from sea. I couldn’t see her anywhere. I headed back out to try again.
I knew it would be just a matter of time before I found my natural rhythm and went pro. All I needed was a couple more hideous wipeouts and I would be the best damn surfer this ocean had ever seen. The next time I managed to stand I was too far forwards on the board and it nose-dived to the sea floor, sending me hurtling upside down into the water again. For a second I wondered if it looked like I could have been hanging ten, a move I only know from playing Tony Hawk, again as a teenager. Watching the footage back there’s no mistaking the fact that I simply didn’t know what I was doing. I was also very liberal with the bluest of four-letter words.
I pushed the board out again and waited. Tick followed tock followed tick followed tock. Everything went black and white. Some horses started to gallop over the lip of the next wave. I was in a Guinness advert. I lined myself up and started to paddle. The wave caught me and I bolted forward. I held the board steady, got up onto my knees and then jumped up. I was standing on a surf board. It could only have been for a few seconds, enough time to triumphantly lift my arms over my head before it all went Pete Tong but I was going to have that. I had done some actual genuine surfing.
Once I had recovered I looked up to the beach alcove and Charlotte was still not there, not watching me. I wondered if she would ever realise how truly cool her boyfriend was. It started to rain. Then it started to hail. I was reminded of the line in Forrest Gump:
“We been through every kind of rain there is. Little bitty stingin’ rain… and big ol’ fat rain. Rain that flew in sideways. And sometimes rain even seemed to come straight up from underneath.”
This was the rain that seemed to come straight up from underneath. I decided to take on one more wave before having to explain to my girlfriend why I thought it would be enduring to capture her first wipeout to show to our grandkids one day.

I spotted the wave. I turned and started to paddle. It caught me. I stood, I whooped and I fell. I realised as I walked back to the shore and started to consider getting out of my new layer of Rip Curl skin that everything is like surfing or that surfing is like everything else. The things you fear about it, the being cold, the going under, the drowning. It’s very unlikely they’ll actually end you. You might fall, you might go under. You might end up in tears because you can’t feel your feet for an hour afterwards but at the end of the day, if you can just stand up for two seconds and holler it out to the world then it feels like you have got somewhere.

February 21, 2016
An excerpt from AFK.

As people started to move from their seats despite the fact we had been specifically told not to undo our seatbelts until the sign had been turned off I grabbed the US Customs form we were supposed to have filled in during the flight. I had been too engrossed in my mammoth film session to even consider the red tape and bureaucracy of it all. I managed to get the first couple right, I knew my name and date of birth, but beyond that I started to struggle. They wanted to know the specific address we were heading to and when we would leave. I thought to myself calm down mate, we just got here. Harvey gave me his form to copy so as long as I didn’t accidentally copy his passport details down I was sorted. We were due to spend our first night at a lodge in Grand Canyon National Park and that was what Harvey had put down on his form. I copied his details word-for-word before realising we didn’t have the same date of birth, he was five years younger than me and also infinitely cooler. I managed to remember that America, for reasons unknown, put all their dates in the format month, day, year and checked everything I had put down. I wanted to make sure it was right. Despite the fact we had taken off at eleven in the morning and flown for over ten hours it was only two pm local time. I struggled with the maths of it all in my head as Harvey handed me my bag from the overhead shelf and I carefully piled everything back into it.

We arched our way out into the aisle and I slowly managed to shake off the dead feeling in the bottom half of my body. I’d only got up once in the course of the flight and felt twinges like it had gone to sleep. I felt rested but confused and disorientated, like waking with a hangover. Maybe this was the jetlag.

Nobody had anything to say to each other as we followed the row of heads through white corridors and out into a hall covered in a snake of rope to help us non-American citizens queue more effectively. Overhead were a lot of warnings about having your passport ready for inspection and not taking photographs in the hall. Every two minutes a video would flash up featuring Carrot Topp detailing how it wasn’t a good idea to decide to “have a laugh” when it came to entering these United States. I took heed of the ad, I was going to be a good boy.

As if the videos weren’t enough, a stern looking guard in uniform patrolled the front of the queue and yelled at anyone who had taken their phone out prematurely.
‘Sir, no pictures in here.’
‘You, in the sunglasses, cell phones away until you’re through security.’
‘Have your passports ready for inspection.’
This meant taking them out of protective cases. Security hate protective cases which is funny because they literally sit in one, behind glass, judging. I watched as Melanie and Harvey were asked to step forward into a queue for a particular desk. There were outlines of footprints painted on the floor to indicate exactly where they were allowed to stand while waiting to be invited up to the desk. Customs didn’t want them to stand too close together apparently in cas e that was the moment they chose to launch an attack on US soil. Behind me, Dr James and Teni were worrying about where Dr Amy had got to. They were sure she had been right behind them as they were coming off the plane but now she was nowhere to be seen. Teni was trying to count everyone through to make sure there were no stragglers.
‘Sir, you can join queue 17.’
As they had said sir, I assumed they were addressing someone else. Someone who must have somehow been ahead of me in the queue. Maybe an adult. It turned out they were talking to me.
‘Sir, number seventeen, hablo English?!’

I stepped into a queue and started to sweat. I tried to look like I hadn’t done anything wrong because I hadn’t. The bloated couples in front of me, clearly on their way to Vegas in their clichéd trilby and sunglasses, their too high heels and palm tree shirts were having their fingerprints scanned. It seemed a bit unnecessary. From what I had seen on the news, Americans had been committing crimes against fellow Americans with no mention of us non-US citizens being involved. Regardless of all the gun crime and the rape they may have committed against each other I was certainly not going to make a joke or try to be funny or give them any reason to take me to a tiny room and test the capabilities of my frame with a cavity search.

I looked up and the solemn man with the wonky moustache but straight glasses signalled to me with two fingers. I hoped he was at least going to buy me a drink first.
‘Ello’ I said, attempting to be more English than ever before and coming out somewhere along the way to Van Dyke cockney.
‘Passport please… sir.’
I put my passport down on the desk between the pair of us. Everything around him was square to the desk itself. It had a place. The pens were in a row at the side of the keyboard. The monitor was facing the back wall. His hands were poised on the edge, perfectly manicured fingers ready to judge me. In the midst of all the depraved and purposeful contours of his universe was my misaligned and grubby passport, eight years into its ten year life, stamped in Africa, South America and soon, the United States of America. He swung it around and looked hard at the picture. A young, shaggy-headed version of me looked up at him with stoned, puffy eyes.
‘Hmmmm’ he said. The sweat on my brow stopped rolling like his vision was based on movement. ‘You’ve had a haircut.’
‘That was 2008 mate, I’ve had a few.’

The hallway was windowless. I could have been anywhere. All I knew is I was alone and if I didn’t do something about it I was going to be stuck there for a long time. People walking in the opposite direction glared at me. I felt scrutinised and studied the floor. At the end of the long hallway there was a glint of light like a door had briefly been opened into another world before being shut again.
I wasn’t about to feel the long arm of the law. I had simply lost the rest of the group.

What happened after I made the terrible blunder of attempting to be funny on my way into America is the man with the wonky moustache and straight sunglasses looked me dead in the eyes before glaring hard at my passport picture.

‘Place your thumb on the panel.’ Shocked, I did so. ‘Spread the fingers of your right hand on the grid’ he added. I did as I was told, placing my four fingers across a Logan’s Run looking pad attached to the front of his desk. ‘Repeat the same with your other hand.’ I repeated the same with the other hand. ‘Look into the camera. I tried to look distant and aloof with a wry grin, like I knew I was going to be trouble. When they flashed that mug shot up in the Fox News update showing in my mind I wanted Americans sat around their television sets to declare me a nasty piece of work with adorable dimples just based on that know-it-all smugness.

‘Welcome to the United States’ he said and banged his stamp in and around my passport a bit to make it look official. I fought the law and I won. I hurried through to baggage claim and waited while everyone else in the group managed to find their bags. I went into the bathroom to brush my teeth and freshen up. My mouth felt dry and gummy, again like waking with a hangover. I checked my reflection over and pulled at the sleepy black circles underneath my eyes. I tried not to think about the time back home but knew it had to be bedtime. I wanted a Horlicks. I needed to keep on trucking and assimilate the new time zone as quickly as possible to get full enjoyment from the trip. When I came back out, everyone except Dr James had gone through. He had his bag but was still waiting for Dr Amy who hadn’t come through security. She seemed to have disappeared. He was understandably concerned for her for two obvious reasons. The first is that anyone who is whisked away upon landing from a flight is either a celebrity or in trouble. The second is that he didn’t want to deal with our whining and first world problems on his own for a week, which was understandable. My bag finally came through. I was able to recognise it from the rainbow tag that remained tied to the top from the group flight to Peru a year before. Aside from that it was a non-descript black backpack. I took it down from the conveyer belt and slowly tried to wheel it through. The problem is, and always has been, that the bag is shorter than my legs. It doesn’t have an extendable handle so I’m constantly having to slouch to pull it and it is constantly having to flip over and embarrass me. We’re like C3PO and R2D2 but not in a galaxy far, far away.

‘Sir, can I see your passport?’ asked a guard at the side of the walkway. He had a gun and a walkie-talkie so I respected his request. He looked it over and I managed to hold my tongue.
‘You got anything on you?’ he asked.
‘I’m sorry.’
Oh shit, here we go again.
‘You got any on you?’
He raised his head indicating towards me. I couldn’t work out what I was supposed to do.
‘You got any coffee, like on your shirt.’
I looked down at the stupid upside-down logo on my t-shirt. I JUST WANT TO DRINK COFFEE, CREATE STUFF AND SLEEP.
‘Oh, haha, no. I don’t, sorry.’
‘There’s a lot of you coming through here for that Grand Canyon Lodge. Where are y’all going?’
Y’all, y’all, he actually said y’all. I was in America after all.
‘We, good sir, are off to trek the Canyon for charity.’ Again, the sentence was jumbled together with chimneysweep cockney thrown in for good measure.
‘Well, have a great day.
Have a great day, have a great day. He actually said have a great day. That confirmed it.
I gave a bit of a curtsy and broke on through to the other side.

February 12, 2016