Malaysia Part 2 - withdrawal, gainful employment and Oz-bound

After a few more days swanning about Magick River and its cool gorgeousnessnessness, it's time to head back to Batuarang to help out at Reboot The Roots. Unfortunately, things are winding down a bit there for a while, so I concentrate on going through alcohol withdrawal.

Staying in a building who's purpose is to help ex-heroin addicts, drinking is obviously not encouraged. It's not especially encouraged in Malaysia full stop, being a Muslim country and everything. So, running low on funds and it being a hassle to get booze, I just stop drinking.  Since I was about 18, like a lot of people, I've probably consumed far, far, far more alcohol than any medical advice deems healthy. And over the past two months, Mr. Furious and myself went a bit overboard, deeming sitting anywhere for any length of time deserving a tasty, crisp, cold beer-shaped beverage. I would not describe myself as an alcoholic, and wouldn't even say I had a drink problem necessarily, but in a few years it might well develop into one. 

So for the first time I can remember, my body enters the world of withdrawal. Without a drowse-inducing drink, my body and brain are suddenly flooded with energy, and doesn't know what the hell to do with it. Staying up until 4 or 5am every morning on Facebook, attempting to write poetry and chainsmoking is the way I deal with it (because three cigarettes an hour is definitely healthier than a couple of beers). It's a strange sensation, made stranger by the fact that I didn't particularly crave alcohol, which is a blessing. However, the sleepness nights are getting aggravating, but Soon, who facilitates Reboot The Roots, having been through similar situations himself, is great to discuss these feelings with. I'm in the weird position of being both a volunteer and a resident going through withdrawal. I chat to Mr. Furious online, and he says that six months ago, he was doing exactly the same thing, in the same chair, at the same computer. Great, booze-addled minds think alike.

I need some work (well, I need money... them's different things), and Soon helpfully hooks me up with PODs Backpacker Hostel in KL. It's a quiet, calm place - exactly what I need. I get to stay there for free, as well as have all the peanut butter sandwiches I can cram into my mouth. I'm put on a lot of nightshifts, spending my nights in darkness with the hum of the computer screen, or being paid to curl up on a beanbag and sleep. My bosses are cool, understanding, lovely people, as are my co-workers. It's the perfect environment to collect my thoughts. I don't go out much, popping out now and then for some amazingly cheap and perfect cooked curry, before scurrying back. It's a good three weeks.

Before I left for South East Asia, my Dad called me, generously offering me a flight to Australia from where I happen to be in Asia. My old punk buddies Jay and Anj live in Sydney, as does my ex-squatmate Taz and his girlfriend Kael. All brilliant, lovely people and great friends. I decide to take my Dad up on the offer. This is too good an opportunity to miss. 

And so, restless to continue my adventure, I bid goodbye to the much-needed quiet of Malaysia, and board my flight to Sydney... 

Malaysia Part 1 - Kuala Lumpur, Batuarang, Magick River and some sad goodbyes

This is mine and Mr. Furious' last big hurrah as crusty duo Pidge and The Wizard: a gruelling thirty-six hour trip to the village of Batuarang, Malaysia. Mr. Furious has a plane to catch from Kuala Lumpur in a few days, and, having spent the last four years working and living in and out of Malaysia, has a few goodbye hugs to hand out before he leaves for Londontown.


The train ride to southern Thailand is brutal. We're crammed into third class, stacked human Jenga peices - if anyone moves, then the whole carriage threatens to fall apart. Passengers sit on hard chairs, the floor or by the side doors, smoking out into the speeding night. A brief reprieve is found in the restaurant carriage. We drink until it closes, and stagger back to the claustrophobic reality of the train carriage. Settling into discomfort, I find it impossible to concentrate. Music and books offer no consolation. My mind ebbs and flows, waves of boredom morph into stress, anger and sadness... there's a few moments blissed out contentment, before slipping back into boredom to kick off the mundane cycle once more. Shards of sleep become indistinguishable from shards of wakefulness. Is this what it feels like to go insane? After thirteen hours of this, we hit a town in southern Thailand and book a bus to Kuala Lumpur. 


The bus is a palace in comparison. The seats have cushioning on them and everything. We arrive in KL late. Mr. Furious, on home turf, is more confident now - he knows the routine here. I, on the other hand, am a crumpled mess of a man. Nausea is gurgling in the depths of my stomach from from excessive travelling, tiredness and bad food. My energy is spent on babbled half-sentences, drinking coffee and sitting. Mr. Furious organises us a ride to Batuarang, where the charity he helped set up (Reboot The Roots - check them out here) is based. Augustine and Hazar, two giving gentlemen, pick us up and we begin the final half hour stretch. Half way there, the stomach grumblings surge towards my throat. I pathetically beg Augustine to pull over. I fall out of the minivan, sway toward the roadside and assume the classic vomiting position: bent over, hands on thighs, breathing heavily. There's a moment's silent tension... then my stomach and brain explode out of my mouth in a geyser of vomit, my body rejecting all the stress, all the intoxicants, all the hitchhiking, all the nightmarish joy of the last two months. Wiping the chunks of vegetable fried rice from my mouth, I climb back into the van full of cheer. I haven't thrown up like that since I was a child. Awesome. "The bizarre euphoria after an hour's puking", as Chris Morris once put it. The chaps in the van are polite in their acceptance of my ill-timed bodily functions. Thanks guys.


We pull up to Reboot The Roots HQ, where I babble thanks to Hazar and Augustine, murmur hellos to resident workers Soon and Myriam, before stumbling into bed for a hard-earned, dreamless sleep.


I wake fully rested. Soon, Myriam and Mr. Furious have been up for ages. Apparently there was an attempt to rescue me from my temporary coma, but it was in vain. It's soon evident that my stomach hasn't stopped rebelling against the sudden calm just yet, as my arse explodes several times in the toilet (my introductions to Malaysians really need work). Soon gives me some Chinese herbal remedies and some classic, liver-destroying Western remedies. In tandem, they work wonders. This is the first of many acts of kindness from Soon, a guy whose patience and diligence in working with reformed addicts using radical forum theatre is simply awe-inspiring.


Now to Magick River so Mr. Furious can spend his last few days in Malaysia with his "Malaysian Dad" Antares - the shaman who runs the informal community guesthouse, who I've heard much about and am interested in meeting. Mr. Furious says his final goodbyes to Soon and Batuarang. I know Reboot The Roots is very, very close to his heart, and his hard work has been a real driving force. Even from my outsider perspective, it's a brief but sad moment.


We take a train to Kuala Kubu Baru, and Antares and his wife are waiting at the station, delivering us to Magick River. Magick River is invigorating, peaceful and the perfect way to trickle away our last few days together. For five days, we live simply and quietly. We swim in the namesake's river, basking in the sun. We hang out with Antares - a unique, witty and consistently interesting man. We live simply and quietly in the Bamboo Palace. Our friends Laura from Bangkok and Caroline from Pai comes down. Its all being rounded off with novel-shaped clarity.


As inevitable as the dawn, the one and only Mr. Furious must depart for The Big Smoke, returning to see his Mum, and then our squatting family in London. Laura's leaving with him for India via KL. I haven't gone into much detail about all the amazing individuals we've met, mainly because it'd take bloody ages. But Laura has been vital chemical to ignite our adventure, a bottomless well of infectious energy. She will be missed greatly.


We all hug what will never be enough time. To share this mind-bending beauty with Mr. Furious has been an utter privilege. He's got the impassioned eloquence, the magical spontaneity and manic flashes behind his eyes to make it not merely a trip, not merely a journey, but a real adventure. In the warm early sun, I'm shamefully eluded for words. Tears block my throat. 


"Thank you."


"No, mate, thank you."


And that's it. Hugs reluctantly part, and Mr. Furious and Laura disappear into the distance. The Crusty Tour has ended, and I'm solo here on in. It was... 


... what?


Great? 


Awesome? 


Brilliant? 


Nah.


It was everything.

The Overstay, Bangkok (reprise)

When you go to Bangkok for relaxation, you know you're in trouble.

Previously, I've been damning of Thailand's infamous capital. Damning of its hellish smog, its nerve-shredding crowds. It constantly has one hand fingering your wallet and the other fingering your genitals. But after Laos taking open season on our sanity, we need some snuggly, crusty familiarity. And so we head straight for our hostel/safehouse of choice: The Overstay.

You can find The Overstay in Pinkau, a safe distance from the garish backpacker prison of Kho San Road (which does has its plus points, but like fuck am I staying there). As far as I'm aware, there is nothing for the average backpacker experience around here, and therefore very few English speakers. As such, The Overstay - for those who don't do their research - attracts mainly because of its cheapness. Therefore, it is the recipient of mixed reviews. The negative ones are, I think, mainly from individuals who have been lured by the low price, and repelled by its apparently ramshackle nature. If you crave designed, formulaic comfort, I'd recommend you snuffle for your truffles elsewhere. On the other hand, if you seek a challenge, something beyond the passive consumer culture so many hostels enforce, The Overstay may be for you.

As we stagger like thrashed chimps into the bar area, we are immediately heartened by the dimly lit, familiar faces supping from cans of beer and the thick layer of cigarette smoke hanging from the ceiling. We meet people from our previous misadventures, as well as wonderful new folk. We crack open beverages and raise a toast to our repair. If Cheers was set in a squat, and was run and frequented by crusties, drunks, travellers, anarchists, and clean cut English language teachers, it would be like this.

The Overstay has no agenda in the regular sense of the word. It is a place for creative freedom, and it encourages you meld into its environment. It is, sometimes literally, what you make of it. Sasha - excellent photographer, handsome barman and all round fine gentlemen - wanted to put on an exhibition of his work on the first floor (that's first floor in the weird British sense of floor numbering. Second floor to everyone else). Mr. Furious, myself and a gaggle of other diligent delinquents set about helping him. The squat skills come in handy here. With a tight deadline of two days and hammers, nails, fabric, paint, wood and combined imaginations at our disposal, we do this not for money, not for glory, but simply because these things matter. The exhibition is a success, and I'm proud to know and work with such passionate people.

We also chip in to help set up an S&M-themed party, complete with whips, candles and a St. Andrew's cross. The whole night vibrates as boundaries were pushed and new worlds discovered. There is a huge emphasis in S&M on mutual respect, playfulness and creativity - and these are exactly the qualities The Overstay requires of you. The party marches relentlessly into the morning, battering the dawn down with a fun-filled fist.

It is a place where you can get involved as little or as much you like, but regardless, you should be prepared to let things flow naturally. Chilled evenings can erupt into near-raves. You may find yourself suddenly running the bar. The variety of people The Overstay attracts is astounding. You will have lengthy conversations with the outcast, the wonderful, the sexy, the hilarious, the vibrant, the lonely, the unnamed. Having lost so much personal control in Laos, I realise the significance of places like this. For people whose grip has slipped, a space like this is a haven.

Mr. Furious and I stay there for nearly two weeks before we realise, in the fashion of the hostel's namesake, that we shall be overstaying very soon. It is with humming brains and heavy hearts we bid goodbye to an unshakeable experience. I don't want to start mentioning names as I fear forgetting someone, but there are individuals I meet at The Overstay who, if we don't remain in touch, will certainly remain very beautiful memories.


If or when the world comes crumbling around our ankles, we'll need to honestly connect with each other. But why wait around for Armageddon when prepping for it is so much fun?

To find out more about The Overstay, go to http://www.theoverstay.com/.

Punks vs. Laos - Part 4: Apocalypse Laos

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Punks vs. Laos - Part 3: The Early Signs of Endgame...

We hitch to Vientiane, the capital of Laos. We get there late, find a guesthouse and take a wander for no real reason. We hear music coming from a bar and enter. The place is definitely not for folk like us. It's clean, for a start. And the people working there wear shirts. Shirts, for Christ's sake. Patrons are sitting at huge long tables, dining and drinking quite heavily. And there's a band onstage, who, as far as I can gather, are a kind of rock n' roll variety act, complete poodle-haired guitarist and transgender costume changes. A couple drunk of guys go up and put notes in the lead singer's pants. It's all a little odd. We order an extortionately priced beer each, get confused by The Wealthy Laos Experience and leave for some much needed sleep.

We wake and begin hitching again, blindly stumbling through this country that neither of us really have a clue about. We're heading for Pakse, probably because we half-heard it was nice. But, secretly, I think it's because we desperately need to feel like we're not adrift. Trusty road 13 - the road we've been following throughout most of Laos - has become the foundation to build a narrative around, and Pakse has become the final chapter, the denouement to our epic traveling adventure. Everyone needs stories, even if they're being improvised in the fog of intoxicant abuse.

What follows is familiar, different only because of the tiredness and heat really getting to us now. Mr. Furious has to lie in the shade to gather himself, and I'm not far off the same. Fortunately, a truck pulls up, kicking off our ride to somewhere or other. It's on road 13, and heading toward Pakse, we know that much. Everything else is a mystery written in dust on a slip road.

It's here things start to noticeably crumble.

We hitch a ride with two lorry drivers- one deep into his forties, the other a fresh-faced early thirties. We go through the usual rigmarole: them asking for money, us saying we don't have any, and both parties trying to explain themselves without sharing a language. The guys eventually agree to let us in for nothing, and we squeeze into the front.

After an hour or two, the truck stops in a village. The older guy gets out, and goes to a house across the street, and is greeted by another man on the driveway. They head inside. We wait for a while, unable to ask the younger guy what's going on.

And we wait. And wait.

We see the older guy come out the house, go to a shop, buy two beers, and disappear back in again. We get out of the lorry and wait.

And wait.

The younger guy gets out of the lorry, and disappears into the house. Throughout all this, there has been no attempt to explain to us what is going on. Mr. Furious and I wait around for a little longer, attempt to find a suitable place to urinate, and then decide to not bother with these guys anymore. Frustrated, we grab our bags, slam the lorry door shut and march down the road.

It takes ten minutes for another ride to come along. A sleek, clean, black car, steadily purring wealth through the dust and dried grass. The window silently drops. The driver - suit, slick back hair, sunglasses - turns to us. Familiar language block. We point frantically, gesticulating wildly. (Our miming abilities are beyond compare. A future in silent film awaits us both.) The front door opens, and we get in. Furious in the back, me in the front.

We introduce ourselves. His name, we think he says, is Jean (the french pronunciation). He puts his foot on the accelerator, and it takes around ten seconds to realise that he's drunk. Really drunk. A couple of weeks previously in Laos, we got a ride with a soldier who was ridiculously hammered and a bit mad. It turns out Jean beats this guy for drunk insanity hands down. Furious informs me later that he could see the reflection of Jean's eyes in his sunglasses. "They were all over the place".

After some attempt at conversation, we reach the conclusion that, even if he spoke English, he would still be an incoherent babbling wreck. He drives erratically. He spends too long not looking at the road. He gets very close behind motorcyclists before sharply turning to avoid them. Although I can't drive, I have had the privelidge of witnessing people drive before, and it wasn't like this.

Jean grabs my arm, slightly too roughly in that 'jovial' way drunk people do. I'm beginning to have flashbacks to our Thai driver who was also a bit liberal with what we used to rest his hand on, and the thought makes me shrink away against the passenger door. Just to make everything a little more mental, he reaches into his glovebox and brings out a medium sized pink paper bag. He presses it against my nose. It smells like potpourri. He then throws it on my lap. Being a polite potential murder victim, I hand him back the bag, smiling and saying thank but no thanks. He cackles in that way that only the truly mad can muster and, quick as a predator acting on the barest instincts, he reaches over and tweaks my nipple. He then lets rip another cackle. Yes, you read that correctly. He. Tweaked. My. Nipple. And it didn't seem sexually motivated, which just made it even weirder.

Mr. Furious doesn't notice this. I'm on the frontline with this lunatic. A car has never felt smaller.

Jean taps me on the shoulder. Reluctantly, I face him. With a thin, jabbering smile he makes his hand into a two-fingered gun shape. He leans his arm right across me, and points it out of the window. He then pretends to shoot things out of the window, making a little pow noise with each fictional bullet. He cackles that cackle which will reverberate in my nightmares for decades to come, and puts his hand on the steering wheel to hastily avoid slaughtering another motorcyclist.

At this point, I break.

"Can you stop now? Here is fine..."

He seems to ignore us. Both of us are getting a bit more urgent.

"Jean, this is fine, thank -"

He abruptly brakes. Somehow, he understood! Furious is immediately out with the bags. I go to open the front door. It doesn't open. My hand wrenches at the handle a couple more times. Locked. My brain races -

ohfuckohfuckohfuckohfuck he's going to kidnap me and strap me to this seat and make me smell his weird stuff in the bag and give me endless amounts of meth and tweak my nipples until one of us dies

- and Jean presses a button and I almost fall out of the car, slamming the door behind me. We stand and stare at Jean. As a parting gift, he makes his finger gun once more, and, taking aim, shoots me first, then Mr Furious - pow pow. He don't react. We just stare, gormless and dumbfounded. He cackles and speeds off down the road, disappearing into the stretch of concrete and dirt. I'd like to point out that all this happens in ten minutes. Ten minutes of chaos wrapped up in a tiny, scorching metal box, racing through a wasteland. Was that Hell? Did we just meet Lucifer himself?

Furious turns to me: "Did he tweak your nipple?"

Yes. Satan's incarnate tweaked my nipple. How many people can say that?

We half-joke of Jean coming back and gunning us both like the salty, dusty dogs we are. Thankfully, he doesn't. Although if he did, it would've made a great story. We hitch a ride into the next village, which seems to be a rural red light district. We find a guesthouse, and the guy who owns it generously offers to take us up the road to a bar which he drops his son off at his evening classes. This level of domesticity is very, very welcome.

We find a bar. Tinny karaoke irritating our ears, we sit, our brains vainly attempting to rearrange the last few hours. We get drunk. Two sex workers come and join us, chatting to us, drinking some of our beer and refilling our glasses/coercing us to buy more beer. This all annoys me slightly, as I just want to be left alone. The woman attempting to talk to me realises she's on to a lost cause, and is handed a wireless mic and starts singing in Laos. I think at this point I'm losing my mind, since when she hands me the mic I get up and begin to shout my poem The War On Romance over the music. This seems like the best course of action right now. The mic is wrestled from me after about four lines. A few minutes later, she decides to entrust me with the mic once more. Foolish! I do the same thing again, probably out of some base instinct to try and have control over one aspect of my life today. Again, the mic is deftly taken from me. At this point, I suggest we leave, and, wisely, we do.

As we stagger out, we bump into the older guy from the lorry earlier that day. One hand around a pretty young woman, another round a beer, he smiles a drunken, half-remembering smile at us. We half-smile back, and get the hell out of there.

There's been enough reality today, so we head back to the guesthouse to see if our dreams can offer anything better.

Punks vs. Laos - Part 2: From Boredom to Insanity

We stand outside the bus station in Oudonxai, repeating the now familiar and surprisingly tiring action of standing with a thumb out. The scribbled directions are turning into sweaty dust in my pocket. The heat's throbbing silent, burning dubstep waves into our skin. We constantly swig at water bottles. We're tired, grumpy and dusty. Both of us are probably restraining ourselves from kicking the other one in the face.

Hitchhiking has many great elements to it, but, above all, it's one of the most intensive patience tests you can ever experience.

Fortunately, we reach Luang Prabang within the day. It's a very pretty (bland word, but the only word for it), nice (ditto) city. And, unfortunately, there's tuk tuk drivers. You'd think, escaping Thailand, that they wouldn't be around. But no, there they are, being annoying, getting in your face, jabbering incoherently in order to baffle money out of you, offering everything from rides to opium.

We get to a hostel called SpicyLaos and hung out with some pretty awesome people there. There was a chap from Arkansaw called Jeremy, who let me rip loads of music off him. A pleasure to have The Boss back in my ears. He also downloaded The Inbetweeners movie, which was comforting, predictable and incredibly funny. I still think the series is probably the most authoritative observation on suburban British teenagers. Pretty much everything you see there is exactly how they are. And, if you've never been a teenage boy brought up in suburbia, it's scarier than you could possibly imagine.

After our slightly mental journeying, it was good to stay put somewhere for a few days... although it is a bit of a mission finding things to do in Luang Prabang. There's a couple of decent bars filled with irritatingly perfect looking people and rubbish music. A plus side is the great night market where I bought some beautiful hand-stitched juggling balls and honed my haggling skills. My Mum would love the place.

Speaking of juggling, Mr. Furious, myself and a couple of other folk from the hostel went to a bar to see a circus trio, who were shamblingly fun. They had clearly completely blagged the gig on the hoof, and were basically rehearsing onstage. This all added to their charm though. What was particularly odd was the way the bar area occasionally blasted out bits of music at random. Whether they were either hinting at them to get off stage, or quite clearly telling them to fuck off, I couldn't quite gather. But, like with most things on this trip, I just accepted it as another level of weirdness being shoved into my brain.

Also, I'm reliably informed I talked in my sleep in the dormitory. Anyone who's shared space with me will attest to my nonsensical nocturnal ramblings, but this one apparently went overboard. The girl sleeping in the bed nearby mine said:

"It was like you were at a football match, shouting 'GO GO GO!'"

So yeah, turns out I don't even shut up in my sleep. There is no escape.

And that was pretty much it from Luang Prabang. Revved up to go again, Mr. Furious and I head south to Vang Vieng: the trouncing, booze-and-drugs-powered juggernaut of Laos partying. We waited for ten minutes, and a guy parks up in his pick up. He is heading to Vang Vieng. He says he will do it for 10 000 all in. We break the unspoken hitchhiker code, agree and jump in the back. Still, we get to Vang Vieng by late afternoon, and have the smug pleasure of overtaking a couple of tourist buses. Sorry guys but, honestly - pull your thumbs out and start hitching.

I believe I've covered my views on Vang Vieng in a short story I wrote a couple of weeks ago, which you can find here. However, it's worth going into a bit more detail. After a now-regulation meal and beer to celebrate not being killed and left to rot on a South East Asian rural roadside, we find another SpicyLaos guesthouse, drop our stuff, and go marching off into the unknown. And when I say "the unknown", what I really mean is "in search of various intoxicants".

Stumbling through the dark, going off road, we hear the familiar party rumble - the thundering, distant, deep bass that cuts through the pitch black. The primal calling to wreckheads world over. We come to a river which is blocking our path to the beats. And instead of trying to find a bridge, we wade through the dark water, scrambling up the muddy bank to the other side, fully formed songs forming in the darkness as we get closer and closer.

We stagger into the glitz of Smile Bar, with its raging campires and dizzying lights. We head straight for the bar, flip the menu over, and there are the previously mentioned/consumed "happyshakes" of Kho Phang Yan. A decision is made with a single look to each other and a grin. We order two, and delve into our minds for six hours. It is, frankly, fucking fantastic. We dance like chimps, babble mindless crap at people, avoid the irritatingly beautiful people playing beer pong and posing about like twats and, through doing so, meet some people who're on the level, which seems to work out just fine. After quite a while of all this, we stagger off to bed.

During the day in Vang Vieng, there is little to do apart from go tubing. I didn't bother, partly out of being contrary for the sake of it, and partly because it sounded fucking nightmarish. Basically, you go down the river in a little rubber ring thing, and stop at various bars. At these various bars, you get hammered. And that's it. There seems to be a strange delusion which grips some folk abroad, which is when there's plenty of cheap alcohol available, somehow the individual's alcohol tolerance rises. I'll let you into a secret: it doesn't. Unsurprisingly, Vang Vieng is host to many accidents and some deaths every year, and not just of dignity.

What amazes me most about this get-fucked-as-much-as-possible culture is that the individuals within it are frequently surprised when you don't want to join in. One guy comes up to me whilst I was lying in a hammock. He's a touch worse for wear at 6pm.

"What'd you do all day?" he asked.

"Err... well, I'm currently reading and lying in a hammock and enjoying the sun."

"You just seem to get hammered at night and do nothing during the day."

"Okay, I'm fine with that."

The implied question lurking beneath "what'd you do all day?" is "why aren't you getting drunk?" By all means, drink as much as you like, but why criticise me for not drinking? I felt kinda bad for him, as he was clearly bemused by how anyone could be enjoying themselves just hanging out on their own.
I found this psychology quite endemic in Vang Vieng, and as such Mr. Furious and I made it our mission to scurry off in search of small bands of really cool people have fun our way. Which, to be fair, seemed fairly similar to the way everyone was having fun, but with added scummy crustiness, swearing, over-expenditure, less posing and more chimping around.

Vang Vieng has the potential to suck you in and refuse to let you go. We stayed there five days and considered it too too long. We meet a girl who'd been there two weeks, drinking every day. She looks dazed, like she couldn't possiblyenvision a world outside of the Vang Vieng bubble. The environment of irresponsibility seems to not stop at the abuse of the individual's liver, but extends to treating other people like toys in a game. We hear about one guy who slept with a girl in our hostel, and told her that he could only have sex with the same girl three times, because it was an agreement he had with his friends (I use the term 'friends' very loosely here), otherwise he would have to down a pint of piss or something equally twattish. She didn't really take him seriously, and when it turned out he was serious, she was very hurt.

It's this kind of heartlessness that an inherently heartless environment will engender, and that's kind of sad.

That said, Vang Vieng at least has the gumption to wear its heart on its sleeve. It is what it is. Unlike Pai, with all its sinister hidden codes and hierarchies, Vang Vieng is as loud and as crass as a pair of massive brass balls banging against a pair of equally massive brass tits. Which is kind of fun to experience for a day or two, but after a while, it becomes a repetitive blur of lights and superficial noise, and we realise that there just isn't any substance to the place. Nothing to sink your teeth into, nothing to properly engage you.

Rinsed of all other possibilities, Mr. Furious and I get ready to hit the hell out of the road for Laos' capital, Vientiane...

Punks vs. Laos - Part 1: Mountains and Night Dogs

So Laos is the reason why the updates have been so, so very slow until recently. A big hand to Mr. Furious for not just being there and making it more interesting, but also bothering to remember it all in order so I don't write it as a jumbled, impressionist mess.

Everyone told us that Laos is "a really chilled place" many, many times. Now, Mr. Furious and I have many qualities, but being chilled is not among them. For a fascinating variety reasons (not worth explaining now), we are quite unchilled people. This unchilledness projected on to the landscape of Laos makes it as chilled as the aftermath of punching a rhino's balls in.

And so we arrive in Huay Xai, the Laos border town, and we get bored almost immediately. No offence to the place, but hitchhiking through Thailand to arrive somewhere really quiet was a bit of a comedown... so, after a look at a map, some scribbled road numbers and destinations, we do the sensible thing and start hitchhiking again.

We head north east to Luang Namtha, taking one truck ride nearly all the way there. We bravely begin walking the 5km walk to the town, but we end up hailing a lift to take us the rest of the way.

It's late and the town is dead. We meander around for a while trying to look for a place to sleep. I don't know if you're aware, but provincial/rural South East Asia after dark tends to be where all the Night Dogs come out and begin acting rather aggressively. These Night Dogs generally look a little bit wild and haggard, and like they're going to chew your face off at any give moment. A bit like George Bush in his drinking days. Thankfully, most of them are all bark and no face chewing, and certainly wouldn't be capable of launching illegal wars.

We happen up on a guesthouse. After a brief discussion, we decide to bed down in the porch. This is all fine and dandy until the lady on the nightshift comes out, and then we kinda feel obliged to pay for a room. Ah well.

The next morning, we agree that the journeying is way more fun seems way more fun than any destination, so we continue hitching. We get to ride in the back of pick ups and taken through the mountains. This, beyond every other view I've seen so far in South East Asia is easily the gobsmacking and breathtaking. It's cocking panoramic - craggy mountains rocketing out of dense jungle, cramming into the horizon. Frequently, we just sit in silence, occasionally muttering something along the lines of "... fucking hell". We are officially awe-inspired, our eyes melding into the scenery.

To add to the excitement, frequently the mountain roads have no barriers and are also occasionally blocked by massive boulders. Oh, and there's the small matter of cars coming the other way too.* I have no idea how the drivers don't just suddenly snap and scream:

"FUCK FUCK FUCK, WHAT AM I DOING? I'M DRIVING ROUND A FUCKING MOUNTAIN! IMGONNADIEIMGONNADIEIMGONNADIE..."

But, to their credit, they don't. And nor do we. Whilst slowly burning in the sun, Mr. Furious and I have some nice chats about anarchism, ideas of community and the individual, our old squat... just generally sifting through the politics in our brains. All in all, jolly good, enlightening stuff.

So, after a hard day's hitching, we arrive in Oudomxai. We try to hitch for a bit longer from near the bus station, but it gets dark, and, not being hot girls, we don't get picked up (oh, how I longed for my Chang Khong molester and his gentle, pissed, masculine touch). We're tired, but our adrenaline is pumped, and we don't want to sleep just yet. We go and eat and bimble around, before happening up on a tiny bar. There's a load of articulated lorries outside, with the truckers drinking there. Being adventurous, curious and wanting a drink, we go and join them. All the truckers are really drunk, but incredibly friendly and inviting. We chat in broken English, try and fail to learn what "cheers" is in Laos, and, when they leave, refuse any of our money to pay for the bill. They then proceed, whilst hammered, to get in their lorries to drive home.

Watching five huge vehicles on a road barely wide enough for one of them, simultaneously attempting to execute three point turns was a truly beautiful and terrifying sight. No fatalities either.

We wander back to the bus station, and bed down on some chairs. I wake after about an hour to find Mr. Furious gone. This concerns me slightly, but I don't do much about it, being a terrible friend and everything. It turns out he's helping some of the dudes also sleeping at the bus station build a fire to keep warm, so I chip in, and wander off to get some wood. Unfortunately, every bit of wood I try to pick up seems to be protected by the aforementioned dreaded Night Dogs, so I've got three options:

1) Pick up the wood and pray the Night Dogs do nothing

2) Pick up the wood, and, if the Night Dog tries to chew my face off, beat it to death with said wood

or

3) Don't pick up the wood

I choose the third option, put some other stuff on the fire, go to sleep, and then we wake up early, get some cheap noodle hobo broth in us, and get our hitch on to Luang Prabang...

To be continued...

*This reminded me of when me and some friends were being driven through the mountains of Botswana in 2003. I peered over the edge of the road to look down to the valley floor. There was a wrecked up lorry, slowly rusting in the dust. This scared me. But I wisely chose not to share this memory with Mr. Furious until we were done with the mountain bit.

A completely self-imposed race against time...

Pai was bit of a critical moment for me in realising that, from Bangkok onwards, we've been shoved from box to box. From cab, to tuk tuk, to minivan, to guesthouse, to bar, to club... all claustrophobic four walls, barely any open space... designed not to challenge but to comfort.

And so, being men of extremes, Mr. Furious and myself decided to hitchhike to Laos.

Oh yeah, I also only had two days left on my visa, which meant getting over half of Thailand to border town Chang Khong by that night. In a country neither of us had hitchiked in before. Yes, it was a dramatic race against time. Like '24' if it mainly consisted of two increasingly desperate-looking punks standing on dusty roadsides with their thumbs out.

Hitching is surprisingly easy in Thailand. Some people wanted money for the rides, but when we said we couldn't afford public transport most of those who stopped took pity on us. And it definitely broke us out of the claustrophobic box of the tourist trail, opening our eyes to a damned beautiful country and some extremely nice people.

There is a slightly unnerving ride with one guy. He stops, and I jump in front, and Mr. Furious in the back. The driver is slightly, how should I put this... over-friendly, what with his drunken (yes, drunken - drink driving seems something of a sport in South East Asia) strokes of my leg. He speaks okay English, and suggests that we go to his place and stay "for free". His manner suggests that he had a very liberal interpretation of the word "free". I turn to Mr. Furious - who is happily ignorant of the whole situation - and say: "I don't think this ride is going to be free". He doesn't have a clue what I mean, seeing as he can't see the occasional light petting. Mind you, I'm pretty sure he would encouraged me to take one for the team in order to get a free ride anyway.

The driver is clearly a nice guy - he isn't really that creepy (the whole picking-up-younger- men-on-roadsides-and-trying-to-bang-them-whilst-drink-driving-thing notwithstanding), and dropped us off where we needed to be dropped off. I am, however, a little shaken by the experience. If that had happened in a club, I obviously could've just gone "sorry man, not interested" and wandered off. But being in the car, with someone else in control, not able to get out... that is genuinely a bit frightening. I don't think the driver quite realised how intimidating a situation like that is to a girl like me.

Anyway, after that, some kindly gent drops us off outside a police station. Now, given my very brief history with Thai police and their reputation of being pretty corrupt, this doesn't exactly make me feel safe. However, it seems that the cops out in sticks are a bit nicer than Bangkok's finest, and help us flag down a ride with their torches. This does take some time though, and I'm amazed at the number of people who simply ignore cops trying to flag them down. And fair play to them for wanting to avoid getting involved with Thai police. I wouldn't if I had the choice. After an hour or so, a car stops, with a lovely English-speaking couple who had a lovely car which smelt lovely and had lovely seats. And then two men - who, at the best of times, probably don't wash their clothes enough - clamber in and ruin the atmosphere. Still, they are very tolerant of us, and drop us off in Chang Khong.

And so, eight rides and around nine hours later, we've made it. Boom! We then meander around trying to find a hostel, and wander into one owned by a guy called Danny. We ask him if he knows anywhere cheap to stay. The exchange goes something like this:

Me: Do you have anywhere cheap to stay?

Danny: How low can you go?

Mr. Furious: Free?

Pause.

Danny: If you buy food and a few drinks here, you can sleep in the massage palour next door.

Us: Yes, that sounds great, thank you.

"If you beg for free shit, sometimes you get it" - The Bible, Chapter 674

And so we do as he says. We watch an amazingly terrible horror movie dubbed in Thai, drink, eat, barble nonsense at each other, before being shown to the massage palour.

Now, given that it's a Thai massage palour, and it's free, I presume there are be some kind of strings attached... so we wander in with some trepidation and find...

... two made up beds.

Win!

So we snuggle down for a decent night's rest in the most comfortable beds we've had so far. Danny, if you're reading this: You're our hero, and thank you.

So we wake up, buy breakfast, give our heartfelt thanks to Danny, and go to the border. We pay 40 baht to cross the Mekong River into Huay Xai, Laos by boat (when, later, we see people crossing it on foot - and that's the kind of petty revenge Thailand takes on you when it senses you've got something for free), pay $35 to be let into the country, bimble around the border town for a bit, get bored, and decide to continue our hitchike into Laos, with little to cling on to other than second-hand advice about the country and our own ever-decreasing grip on reality.

And that, my friends, is how you get to Laos, UK-crusty style.

New short story: Party at Ground Zero

Vang Vieng, Laos, 2012

The open air bar bangs out a discordant mash of popular songs that meld with the humidity. Snoop and Dr. Dre are shoved uncomfortably next to Rage Against The Machine, who, in a lurching seugeway, suddenly turns aimlessly generic dubstep and drum n’ bass… bundled together into a compilation CD aimed at the mythical average party goer. The DJ seems less concerned with playing good dancing music, and more with soundtracking a cultural apocalypse.

This particular cultural apocalypse is alight with gaudy neon and dazzling superficiality. Faces melt from beer bottles to kissing lips, to campfire fire trance like a montage of a trailer for an advert. Bundles of meaningless banknotes are bundled into invisible hands, passed from tourist to bar to police for protection. This is a carefully designed experience, where fun comes from the top down and any notion of grassroots has been dug up and left on the compost heap.

It’s a whirl of booze and hormones, of blonde girls and ripped guys grinding in a hammered MTV parody. This is UK high street drinking with added mushrooms and opium on the bar menu to lend an aura of decadence.

To be fair, though, the drugs are pretty fucking good.

I sit with my friend Mr. Furious, greedily sipping whiskey and coke through straws like the needy, infantile, irresponsible goons Vang Vieng needs us to be, debating what drugs to take, where the next free drink is coming from, lip-synching to whatever the hell is being thrown at us by the DJ.

This is pretty much business as usual in Vang Vieng.

Then, through the clouds of cigarette smoke, dust, polished skin and unattainable dreams, she appears. It’s 9pm, and she’s seriously drunk. It’s the kind of unpredictable drunk where elation and depression are in constant battle with each other, and a thread hangs between tottering calm and spitting rage.

She stands and sits repeatedly, swaying like a rag doll in a gale. Her carefully applied make up has been swept up in a torrent of sweat and tears. She lifts up her dress and displays the crudely drawn spurting cock on her back to all who will look. This could be funny, except it’s all acted out with such lingering, trashed security. Like I said, she’s seriously drunk. It’s difficult to not feel deeply uncomfortable. Mr. Furious and I can only avoid her glazed eyes, ashamed on her behalf, lost at what to do.

She attempts to talk to us, but her chat is a gabba set on loop, a mash up of repeated slices of anecdotes and cut ups of opinions and accusations. She tries to explain, reason or justify her arrival to us, at this bar, alone, and drunk. But, because of the latter, it comes out as a hopeless ramble.

Suddenly, she clings on to a piece of driftwood from our conversation. I’ve no idea what it is – a word, a phrase, we’ll never know – but it triggers something inside her, and her first words of clarity are as direct as they are saddening.

“No woman has any self-respect.”

Silence.

Mr. Furious and I almost hit the deck at the sudden bluntness of her words. She nods to herself as if her point is finally made, and drifts back into incoherence. Again, we can only sit, helplessly at a loss.

No woman has any self-respect.

The six words reverberate in my brain for hours, days, weeks after, and make my heart shudder whenever I repeat them to myself.

I witness this annihilation of self-respect too often back home. A majority of the populace have been convinced that the only way to handle life is by debasing themselves because, after all, as British people, we come from a social structure that tells you daily:

BE GRATEFUL THAT YOU LIVE UNDER A DEMOCRATIC GOVERNMENT.

… while at the same time attempting to force complete obedience through a labyrinth of complex institutions and archaic traditions. Growing up in the UK, we’re told that obedience is the key to climbing the mythical ladder of life. We’re told to “play the game”. And obedience doesn’t work if the individual is allowed self-defined notions of self-respect, because any self-respecting individual will tell anyone who orders them around to go fuck themselves.

And we come back to those five words – No Woman Has Self-Respect, and have flashes of her past, present and future.

I see the teachers training her through detentions and suspensions. I can see the politicians on television, all smiles and shark teeth, telling her everything will be just fine if she buckles down. I see newspapers scaring her into work to let someone else profit from her anxiety. I see bosses, red-faced, barking orders at her. I see boyfriends convincing her to have sex when she really doesn’t want to, a subtle threat of violence snaking through his words. I see advert up on advert holding up a postcard to a life that’s as alluring as it is illusory. All these conspire to do one thing – to convince this woman that she isn’t special.

But she is special. And I hope one day someone shows her that she is in charge and doesn’t have to take all this shit. I don’t want her to fall into the spiral of Vang Vieng, into the abyss that deceives people into settling for nothing, into the whirlpool that drains all natural energy and creativity…

I want to tell her all of this, but instead I look away. As I try to figure out what kind of a hellish world could make someone utter those six words, I immediately begin to drink away the memories.