I love being back at work, the stability, normality, effort and office life is brilliant. I have now totally got the travelling bug out of me, and intend to now buy a house and even some furniture, find a girl, have a bunch of kids and settle down for gooo.... Aw heck. Who am I kidding. Don't be stupid. Sorry, boss, but of course i'm not over it. The problem with travelling (for many of us) is that instead of ticking places off your list, you with each journey you might loose one or two, but you'll gain a whole chunk of new places. I miss the life. The travel. The meetings and incidental occurences. The people. The food. So many great people, memories, and experiences. I've had time to reflect on everything that has been, and also attempt to rejoin the productive (well not really, but it's possible that my boss is reading this) work force. It's very strange being back. Certain things I really shouldn't still recall or know, I do. Some things I still seem to know better than some of my colleagues, even though I haven't looked at it in 15months. Other really simple things I have no idea what to do.

It will be a steep (re)learning curve.

It could be worse. I have returned in the middle of what is so far (and looks like continuing to be) is a glorious Swedish summer, and for those of you who all believe Sweden to be a cold miserable place most of the year, I can inform you that there are very few things better than good Swedish summers. The town is alive (for 10months each year, you see livelier ghost towns), there are people everywhere and the feeling is good. As is traditional, 80% of the population is off work at the same time, and all are taking 4 or 5 consecutive weeks. Work isn't piled as high as when i left right now, so i have time to readjust, whilst the beer is flowing, the beach is not far away, and the girls are all stunning and scantily clad, as is the way of summer.

I'm still homeless. In 2 weeks, i've stayed at 6 different places. And that will surely rise (thank you all) as immediate prospects aren't looking amazing. If anybody knows of somewhere (small-ish apartment or room in a house) in Kristianstad or NE Skåne, please let me know!

Kristianstadsdagener are also now over for another year. For those unfamiliar with the custom, basically for a week (read: 9 days) each town in Sweden has a summer festival, whereby booze is easy to get everywhere, and they sell it on the streets. Hoards of people descend on the town to enjoy the revelries, whilst numerous events and concerts keep people entertained. It's a great week in some ways, astonishing in others (you really can't believe that it is the same place in autumn, winter or spring), scary in yet more (Scandinavian prices again. Holy cow. A conservative and easy going week cost almost as much as a months travel!). And now it's back to the grind.

Almost.

As a way of dropping in slowly, and taking advantage of summer and certain offers, I'm wandering around a bit, and trying to avoid sitting here glumly all the time. I've already met glorious TP leader Pete and his lovely wife Janelle in Copenhagen, and have trips planned to Lund, Varberg, Ven, Ystad, Helsingborg, Gothenburg and Åhus in Sweden, plus Bornholm and Copenhagen (again) in Denmark in the next few weeks. Plus a trip to Norway, Stockholm, one to Poland, and a longer trip back to the UK and Ireland. So many people to see, places to visit and things to do. And some work stuff and trips as well. And of course I'm pondering the next big one, the when, where and how of which is still formulating.

For that, you'll just have to wait and see.

But It isn't the end. Oh no. It's just a break between books. And the next one will be the most exciting, complex and longest yet.

See you in 2007.

Me with my pack, back in the office in Kristianstad, Sweden.

My famous possessed MP3 player, a Creative Zen 40gb, as previously noted with it's own sense of humour, irony and brilliant timing. Without it, I doubt I'd have survived the trip

And Clive even made it back to! Yes, I am aware that a good 99%+ of readers will have no idea who the heck Clive is, or what is such an achievement. In fairness, I should probably have introduced him last year from Hong Kong, instead of waiting until I got back and it was all over. But I didn't.

And so, *sigh*, back to the daily grind remains copyright of the author Gelli, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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Matt lost his battle and died early this weekend. It is strange how you can *know* that it will end that day, for no apparent reason. But that morning we all instinctively seemed to know it would, and it was a very strange and scary experience. Aldo and I had been taking it shifts with his parents, and we phoned them to say. They arrived a couple of hours later, and all 4 of us were there at the end. Looking at him in those minutes, he looked utterly at peace and entirely relaxed, the pain which had racked his face had gone and the release from his pain was almost joyful. I had been dreading that my last image of a dear friend would be one of him in pain, but instead i have a picture of calm serenity. Because of the situation, the initial reaction all around was more of relief than anything else. It wasn´t unexpected or sudden, and he had suffered greatly, thus the feeling that the had been released from that suffering was relief.

I have almost become too accustomed to death for it to register as anything more than a kind of strange "desolate and depressingly resigned sh1t happens" kind of feeling which I can`t really describe at all. Yes, there is overriding grief, but it´s much more than that. It´s hollow, empty, guilty (part "why me?" and part "Why not me?") painful kind of feeling and for the moment that´s all i can really say.

Images from Germany v Ecuador (above) and Serbia-Montenegro v Cote d'Ivoire (below)

Nurnberg, and images from USA v Ghana, below

Despite all the great times, there had to be a real downer remains copyright of the author Gelli, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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Queue absolute mayhem and a huge party all around. You would have thought that we had just won the World Cup. The evening went downhill rapidly from there, and ignoring the fact that the 3 Aussies I had started with had metamorphosed into 13 (just how do they do it?!) plus a fair few others - and amazingly considering the make up of the crowd, somehow not including a single Swede - the rest of the events of that evening will remain untold. And not entirely because I don't remember most of them. The fact we didn't make it home until gone 9am probably says something though...

SVERIGE! SVERIGE! SVERIGE! SVERIGE! SVERIGE! SVERIGE! SVERIGE! SVERIGE! SVERIGE! SVERIGE! SVERIGE! SVERIGE! SVERIGE! SVERIGE!


The following day was, shall we say, somewhat unproductive. I achieved nothing at all except sitting outside of a kebab van watching football on TV. Movement wasn't going to happen. Plans to play football really weren't going to happen. And I was the active one - none of the Aussies even surfaced before 7pm. But it wasn't a bad day to be stuck there. Argentina gave a masterclass of possession football and attacking intent, demolishing Serbia - Montenegro 6-0, whilst also having a goal wrongly ruled out for offside, missing several good chances and scoring a fantastic goal, after a 3minute long 25pass (forward and back, left and right), and 9player build up. I've long thought the Argentinians have had the most depth - for the last 10 years or so - but curiously they have often failed to use it to it's potential. Admittedly teams that blow away their groups historically have peaked too early and then blow up in the knock outs, but there's always exceptions... The Dutch then beat the unlucky Ivorians 2-1 to send them out and mean my Cote d'Ivoire v Serbia -M game is irrelevant, except for pride and as S-M's last ever appearance together. The Ivorians again looked extremely good, and to my money would qualify from any other group, easily being amongst the top 5 teams. But unlucky enough to be in the hardest group.

That evening, I somehow managed to score tickets on the FIFA site for 2 more games - the Germany v Ecuador group decider and a tasty looking Ghana v USA. Typically after booking 5 nights in Berlin, only to then have to travel to Munich for a game, I will now be staying near Munich and have to travel to Berlin for a game (plus Nürnberg, which is easy). Oh well.

Left Berlin the following morning to Bavaria which is awash with yellow (Aussies of course, bolstered by a large Brazilian following for their game the following day). I have tickets for that, and now have 4 games in 5 days, but whether we manage to go to them all - or any - depends on a very important external factor.

Some of you know why, and I hope the rest will accept that I am deliberately leaving out details, but things are really not looking good down here, and I will probably now be in Bavaria for the duration. How long I'm here depends upon developments, but sadly we don't have much hope left. And because of that, i won't be around much for a bit as I have much more important things to do than be online. I'll update you when there is news, and hopefully will have some stories from Australia - Brazil et al as well, but your going to have to wait until I am in some kind of useful frame of mind to be able to put them together. If I ever am.

Sadly, and despite what Bill Shankly said, football isn't the most important thing in the world, even when it is the world cup. Life and death don't pay attention to TV schedules.

Which idiot let the entire Swedish population in? remains copyright of the author Gelli, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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Munich's Allianz ArenA exterior and the stadium filling up prior to the game

Oddly, and despite FIFA's later protestations that it was a 66,000 sell out, there were large chunks of empty seats. Many were in the side reserved for corporate sponsors, who, I'm guessing, being underwhelmed by the two teams on offer had decided not to bother, but were too arrogant to actually return the tickets for real fans to use, whilst even my row of 24 was half empty. It was also a very strange crowd. Of maybe 55,000 people actually there, probably no more than about 5,000 were actual patriotic fans. The rest of us were essentially random football fans (huge numbers of English, lots of Germans, sprinklings of virtually everything else) who had managed to get tickets and were there because it was the world cup. It was great fun, but a strange atmosphere as there was little of other partisan cheering and support that tends to heighten the atmosphere.

The teams line up before the game starts, and some of the Tunisian fans cheering on their team

The game itself was decent and entertaining without being amazing, although most of the crowd seemed more interested in starting Mexican waves than actually watching the game. Technique and talent seemed to be lacking a bit and it wasn't the most technically amazing game at all, although as there are few African-Asian competitive Arab matches, they certainly weren't taking it easy. The Tunisians went 1-0, and then 2-1 when the veteran Al Jaber, formerly of Wolves scored seconds after coming on with less than 10mins to play, before Raidi Jaidi of Bolton equalised right at the death. Both teams could have won it, but i thought a draw was fair. And with Ukraine (who I've bet on to reach the semi's, woe betide me on that showing) oddly capitulating against the Spanish earlier, a draw certainly gives both sides a decent chance to progress to the next round.

Action from the game

The Saudi fans cheering on their team after Jaber's goal, and Me at the end of the game in the emptying stadium

I watched most of Germany v Poland in the Station awaiting my night train back to Berlin, and was amazed to see some common sense and thinking being applied by DB, German railways. Not only were they putting on extra trains on the four core internal routes away from Munich (to Stuttgart and Frankfurt, Köln and the Ruhrgebeit, Hannover and Hamburg and Berlin) to help people to get home after the game, But they had delayed all night trains leaving by between 10 and 30mins until after the end of the German game to allow fans (and staff) to finish watching it. And as Germany didn't score the only goal until the 91st minute, that extra time was definitely needed...

Crowds of fans leaving the game, and then heading into the U-Bahn station at Fröttmaning after the Tunisia v Saudi Arabia game

2006 Battle of the Arabs remains copyright of the author Gelli, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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I had failed to find free accommodation in Copenhagen at such short notice, but had then come up with a cunning plan. I had a ticket which was valid from the following day, and had expected to be on the 07.45 train, but it occurred to me that my ticket started at midnight, and Denmark has a few trains leaving Copenhagen and Kastrup airport in the early morning which I could use, thus saving on accommodation and getting to Berlin earlier to boot. Thus, at 00.30, and with typically convoluted indirectness and cunning (or, perhaps, "me-ness"), I headed from Copenhagen to the German capital via Aarhus, Fredericia - and yes, i did indeed go to all the way to Aarhus for no reason at all except to double back about an hour to Fredericia. I did say it was convoluted me-ness - Kolding, Padborg and Hamburg, eventually winding up in Berlin. An amazing city, and one of my favourites, and I was delighted to be back, football or no.

When I had been killing an hour waiting for my train from Copenhagen, I had farted around online and actually managed to score tickets to another World Cup game. Thus it was shortly after checking in to my hostel, I headed to the Olympiastadia to queue for several hours to receive my ticket for that heavyweight battle to top all others, Tunisia v Saudi Arabia. Annoyingly, it meant that i missed the Australia v Japan game, but that couldn't be helped. Fifa not showing their own football in the ticket centre until huge pressure changed their minds was odd, so i saw it was 1-0 with 81mins gone. I should have actually stayed to watch the last 10mins, of course, but I didn't and only discovered later that Hiddink had inspired a 3goal comeback. Pah!

Instead, i headed to the fan fest in Berlin's central Brandenberg Tor, a mass of colourful fans watching football on some huge screens whilst enjoying German sausage and beer, which thankfully as it wasn't in the stadium, was real German beer, instead of the American cats p1ss cr*p that has to be served within the stadiums due to a certain 'beer' company being one of the official sponsors. I have no problem with official sponsors, and even one who's slogan says 'you do the football, we'll do the beer', except that to have such a slogan, surely they should actually supply beer, and not whatever the heck the water stuff they actually do is.

Despite barely seeing her 2weeks ago on my second pass through Siberia, it was great to catch up with the mad Masha again, although tragically she was neither wearing her superb wellington boots or any fancy multicoloured socks. Gutting. I'm sure that shouldn't really be allowed. Masha had been doing a bit of work in the city, but was now free to enjoy herself, and also celebrate her recent acceptance to Edmonton University. I don't know why, but most of my Eastern European/Russian friends seem to be in the process of moving to Canada. Me thinks at this rate, a new trip will have to be planned very soon... Amongst other things i learned that, perhaps unsurprisingly, the human Trotskyist (the hero in this little tale for those who have no idea what I'm talking about http://gelli.travellerspoint.com/90/ ) had lost his job on his release. You might think that a little harsh for somebody that didn't even have to fight an attempted terrorism rap, but when you realise that he was a primary school teacher, it becomes a bit more understandable...

Assorted freelance entertainment outside the Brandenerg gate included this group of break dancers etc

We spent the afternoon watching football in the square (Czechs looking good), meeting up with random other friends of Masha's - by the end we were a Welshman, Russian, German Polish expert, Italian, Brazilian and handful of Spaniards - and seemingly constantly walking back and fore between Brandenborg Tor and Fredericksraße S-Bahn station, utterly confusing the guards outside the American embassy on the way and probably appearing increasingly suspicious to boot.

Oh, and Kiki is pregnant. With twins. And Christian is not the father.

Croatian fans preparing to face Brazil

The following day can probably be summed up in the way that many subsequent days will be. Football in the fan fest. 3 games over an 8hour period where i did little except watch and take in the great atmosphere. The final game was Brazil v Croatia, the first to be played in Berlin, and also the first time I saw the Berlin Fan Fest properly packed. As with the previous day, their were fans from almost every conceivable country, including many from countries not even in the finals. Probably 70% of the crowd were wearing Brazilian tops or waving Brazil flags, although suspiciously high numbers of them were English speakers or Germans, and probably the number of real Brazilians there was very low. The remainder included large pockets of noisy Croats plus lots of Swedes (who play here in a few days time), who added to the general yellow-ness. And even a fair few Scots, including one with a simple yellow T-Shirt with Brazil in big letters, followed by the line 'because my team is rubbish'. It's still slightly odd how such a successful team can attract such affection and support from virtually ever other nation, but that sums it up really. The game itself wasn't great, but the atmosphere was, and it was a heck of allot of fun.

Brazilian fans with musical accompaniment passing through Berlin's Central Station

Croatian fans in central Berlin "celebrate" the pitch invasion by a random naked guy...

And the pregnancy (why the heck does everybody i know - without exception - have to have complicated kids. They either have twins or triplets, have one parent missing, unknown, in prison, or some other twist, and even in one case, a single mother still utterly convinced she's a virgin despite obvious evidence to the contrary... Why the heck am i seemingly incapable of knowing a happy couple who have a single child at a time????) wasn't even the twist I was going to tell you all about if the response had been that you wanted to hear about it. That one is even better!

Pictures, like so much of the last few months, will follow at a later date, but for now it's gone 3am and time to try and sleep. I haven't really in 2 days, and I have a 6hour trip to the other end of Germany to watch an Arab game tomorrow.

I get reminder's of the whole Kiki thing everywhere...
Rich

Welcome to Fan Fest 2006 remains copyright of the author Gelli, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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I utterly confused everybody at work by just randomly appearing without any forewarning at all, with one or two going in to major shock at my appearance. I don't think anybody actually expected me to return at all, and even now, many still doubt it. Do I really give the impression that I want to leave that badly?? If it was strange to be back in Kristianstad, it was even stranger to be back in work. Not a huge amount had changed, although two of the old hands had left (one for 6months, the other permanently), Matthew had finally gained a clone and good old Marky Ryan, an old colleague from the Aylesbury days where we were spent more or less our entire time scheming as to how the heck we could leave the office of doom and get out from under the cosh of the evil boss man, and who I had first encountered at University, had recently joined and was now settling into life in Sweden. Useful to have around, as he is (a) a crusader for mac's as well - of course I was only ever going to Conn TK into hiring Mac people and (b) has enough quirks that my habitual wandering around the office in odd coloured socked feet with numerous assorted holes probably won't attract as much comment as previously...

And the electronic store around the corner had gained a portable Thai food wagon.

Excitement knows no bounds, doesn't it?

But no, don't be daft. Of course i wasn't back properly and almost having to do real work again. That's one I'm really trying to avoid. I farted around for a couple of days, catching up with everybody - work colleagues and other friends - crashing at 3 different peoples places, and trying to work out what the future held for me and at work. Made a few small plans, and after spending an evening in Banken watching the opening two games (Germans don't look bad, Poles look pathetic) and then a good triple bill of watching the English start in customary style (doing not allot whilst trying to defend a 1-0 lead against inferior opposition), the Swede's somehow managing to fail to realise that the ball needs to go into the net if they were to beat Trinidad and Tobago (and that would have been a great party to be at, following the result) and the Argentinian and Ivorian teams putting on a good display of technical and mostly attacking football in the group of death, it was time to head off.

As you may have realised, It's World Cup time. It's in Germany. And i'm not. Yet. This must be rectified. Time to get there as quickly as possible.

Without flying, of course...

A boring bit about being back in Kristianstad remains copyright of the author Gelli, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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The weather was beginning to get decent after a few dodgy days in Russia, and I was looking forward to seeing some friends again. With a few people away at summer camp, and others in the middle of exams or in the process of moving so unable to let me crash, i found myself an excellent (if bizarrely full of Aussie's) hostel in the centre and spent a couple of days wandering around happily, catching up with some friends and generally relaxing. Amongst others, I managed to spend some time with wonderful Vaida who i had met on my way through last time, and who after a very tough few weeks was in the middle of her final course commitments and about to finish, with, hopefully a pass from her Thesis presentation, which ends their course and after which they will know straight away whether they had passed or failed everything. Plus a few others who I knew from various places, and one or two commitments which I won't go into, which were necessary but sadly not the most fun.

Even though it isn't all that big, I never manage to have enough time in Vilnius. I think perhaps I just need to move here for a few months, which would be easier. And I can never tire of watching the girls wandering around, as they are almost to a fault all universally stunning.

In the middle of my time in Vilnius, I went to Kaunas for a couple of nights. Vilnius's second city is about 80minutes West of Vilnius, but despite passing through maybe 20times, I'd never managed to stop off for even a couple of hours to see it, and was determined to rectify the situation. Admittedly my timing was bad - the weather changed so that it was mostly wet or rainy, it was right in the middle of end of year (or course) exams so few people were about, and I arrived Sunday with only Monday as a full day there, which with most things being closed meant they were are the worst days possible. Oh well. But I had managed to find myself yet another (as they all have been) great host, in the shape of Ina - of the many Lithuanian girls with an Italian boyfriend - and we had a look around town. I also spent a day walking through the old town, and out to the convent by the lake, which despite the weather was very pleasant, and I'm more than happy to have finally managed to see Kaunas.

Central Kaunas, the old town, and covent by the lake

Ina also gave me a chunk of Lithuanian music to add to my growing collection of World Music, and introduced me to a hither unto unknown Italian liqueur, which whilst admittedly on the sweet side, had the totally unexpected quality of tasting more or less perfectly like liquid Bakewell Tart. I used to love Bakewell tarts (a kind of English pie/cake, originally from Bakewell in Derbyshire, for the many of you know wondering what the fr1ggin heck Bakewell tart is) and haven't seen or tasted one in many years, so was both stunned and delighted when the realisation of the taste hit me. I also had an extremely strange experience with 3 young-ish girls in a kebab shop (and another Uni celebration) which for your amusement I should probably expand greatly on, but in this case i really won't.

It's just better that way.

Progress is building new things right next to old buildings; Kaunas by night; art or really bad parking depending on your point of view, and proving just how safe Lithuania is!

Back in Vilnius it was midweek, so the hoards of English speakers there at weekends and the stag-do mob that do exist had all gone, leaving the city much quieter, more relaxed, and mostly composed of Lithuanians. WooHoo! Vai had had her Thesis presentation that morning with excellent results, and thus we celebrated both her graduation and imminent move to London to join her English boyfriend and start a new life there. Later and deliberately, if a bit more randomly, i hooked up with my old Norwegian friend Tina and one of her friends, who had just finished their exams in Trondheim and who had just flown in to start a well deserved summer holiday.

I've said it before, but I wish I could stay longer.

However, I had another semi-commitment to take care of, and so i took the bus to Klaipeda on the coast, and after wandering around for a couple of hours (the old centre is OK, but I've never liked the city in general), went to the port to get the ferry to Karlshamn and my return to Sweden. The ferry was boring, and I had very little of either Litas or Krona so restricted myself mostly to watching the water pass by. It was the calmest ferry I think i have ever been on, with not even a hint of rocking, and if i hadn't known i would never have guessed I was on a boat or moving. I watched Sweden appear the next morning, feeling very strange about my return, even if only a brief one, and after negotiating one slight problem (Karlshamn port is nowhere near Karlshamn, and there is no public transport to it) with the help of a couple of nice Lithuanian lorry drivers, we passed through Sölvesborg and the Swedish rock festival and I was dropped in Kristianstad.

I was finally back.

Why? I'll explain next time.

Klaipeda central square

University celebrations and calm before the home coming remains copyright of the author Gelli, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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I'd spent 3 days in Moscow, partly just because I had a little extra time after the Kazan cock-up, and because I managed to arrange my ticket to Riga that way. It was the last possible way that I could have been tripped up and forced to fly (in theory), and even then I had several alternatives.

In Moscow it was heartening to see 90% of people wearing the national costume (jeans, black shoes and leather jackets) and also the requisite number of beer drinkers. I have never worked out exactly why, but i think it must be mandated by law that at least 50% of all Russians must have an open can or bottle of beer in their hands at all times. This applies at any hour of the day or night, and in any situation, with the alleged exception of drivers. Despite having the vodka reputation (vodka generally gets drunk at home and for occasions), Russia is very much a beer country with huge availability and vast variety of Russian - and some foreign brands - most of which are very good. And it is also surprisingly rare with such numbers of constant drinkers to see very drunk people in the streets, which I still find interesting. And of course, the requisite number of Russian stunners out in the sunny weather.

I had arranged to be in Moscow for less than the 72required hours, so visa registration was not an issue, so instead of returning to a hostel I managed to find myself a lovely host at short notice, with the excellent Natasha happy to put me up (the moronic Winston Wu should take note). Unfortunately, poor girl, she is a lawyer at a big firm and works long hours. On my first evening when I went to meet her at 10pm after work, she told me that something had come up and as such she wouldn't be able to leave for another several hours. But brilliantly (and I love this about CS), she was more than happy to hand her keys and directions to me (a strange foreigner she had known about less than a week and had met for less than 5minutes) and told me to make myself at home.

I'm always wary - especially in places where I don't know the language, and with people I don't know at all - about being given keys for the first time, as partly I feel uncomfortable in strangers houses without them, but more that I always dread misreading/interpreting the directions and ending up trying to break into the wrong building, leading to long a long and unpleasant interrogation by the police whilst things are being sorted out. I.e. How long have you known this person? 5 Minutes. Where did you meet? Online What is her surname? No idea. And the like. But happily I managed to find me way through the hoard of tower blocks in Bratislavskaya in the SE corner of the city and got into the correct apartment without being attacked or even queried by eagle eyed Babushka's. It later turned out that poor Natasha appeared at about 5.30. And went back to work before 9am.

After sorting my ticket, i spent a couple of days just wandering randomly, something I love doing in big cities, revisiting a few old tourist spots and doing some chores and bits of shopping. I spent a huge amount of time (and later, money) in a huge toy shop, marvelling over it's size and the sheer variety of stuff available to kids these days - I'm sure it wasn't like that in my day - looking enviously at a life sized fury camel (if I could have afforded it, and also worked out how to get it back to anywhere useful by myself, i would have bought it) which would have almost made up for Erik's sad recent demise and bought a pile of stuff for my god kids and a few others. And picking up other such essentials as a huge wall world map in Russian

The middle day with another CSer, a Portuguese language student and translator (In Russia you go to Uni to do language, meaning it's English and something, but cant seemingly choose the something. Olga had been assigned to Portuguese, like it or not) heading on a day trip to Sergiev Posad. One of the Golden Ring cities, it is one of the most accessible from Moscow and somewhere I had planned to visit on my way East, but failed. In fairness, It wasn't the most exciting place in the end, and the reason for it's golden-ness - the Kremlin - whilst lovely, was half closed to visitors and partly under reconstruction, which didn't help. But we had a good wander, I happily ticked off somewhere that had long been nagging me and Olga was great company and good fun.

Arriving in Latvia was a little anti-climax. No problem at customs, and barely a glance at my strange pile of toys in assorted bags, and I was then back in the lands of cursory passport checks and no stamps. I've acquired a fair few stamps and visa's on this trip and will soon need a new passport. Indeed, the reason that I was coming to Latvia at all is that the direct trains from Moscow to Vilnius all go via Belarus, and I don''t have either a current Belarus visa in this passport or enough space to get a new one. Less than an hour after arriving in Riga, I was on a tram to the outskirts, and barely 5minutes later had managed to find a ride (with a lovely Lithuanian in a huge new BMW on his way home from Tallinn, who even insisted on buying me dinner on the way) all the way through to Vilnius. I'd been in Riga just long enough to post some toys, change a little money so i could buy food and a tram ticket, and then head to the outskirts.

It really is coming to an end now, but despite very strange feelings to be back in Europe (the foreboding of which started before I had left Thailand) I'm still excited. No new places perhaps, but lots of people to see again and in barely a week there is apparently some football-type thingy beginning in Germany which might be quite good...

Sign near Red Square. Me thinks they haven't quite got teh hang of this yet...

Returning to Roman alphabets remains copyright of the author Gelli, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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I was disappointed not to be able to get a ticket from Kazan to Moscow, meaning that again, I had to drop Kazan from my plans. That's the 4th time that it has happened, and it's fast becoming my #1 must get to destination, just because it's proving so hard. But as I did manage to get tickets through to Moscow from Tyumen, it wasn't the end of the world. It meant that I would still be able to keep other commitments, leave the country before my visa expires and also get there without flying.

The thing that really annoys me is that after being told that there was no space on any train between Kazan to Moscow, the train I got to Moscow went through.... yup, Kazan. So no space on just K-M, but if I want to travel for the 18hours before Kazan as well, I can get a ticket no problem. Grrrrr.

Ah well, that's life I suppose.

The journey itself was somewhat interesting. I ended up opposite a family of mother and 2 young kids. The kids were wonderful and after the initial few hours distrust of the new strange person on the train became extremely friendly. Both kept bringing me 'gifts', at the quiet behest of the mother. I played football and hide and seek (not two of the easiest games to play in a train carriage, i must admit) with the 4 (?) year old boy, and then had a long session of learning Russian and teaching Swedish to the 9 (?) year old girl, with the aid of a Russian equivalent to an etch-a-sketch. I must admit that using an Etch-a-Sketch to make conversations etc on trains when there is no common language is a stroke of genius, especially when coming from a young girl. Admittedly, it overlooks the fact that I can't draw AT ALL, and my attempts at drawing simple objects for the naming in Swedish-Russian game were at best, abysmal.

The mother, whilst not admitting to speaking anything other than Russian spent much of the day watching me with a strange look in her eye that confused me a tad and worried me slightly more. It's a look I try and stay well away from. And it go worse after the kids had started to adopt me.

What I certainly wasn't expecting was that during the night when i was asleep (in Platskartny, or open dorm bunk style carriages), she decided to crawl into my bed with me. To say I was spooked when I rolled over to discover this strange woman lying next to me - on not un-cramped bunk - is an understatement. A mother and a young child, yes, but I have never even seen two people a bunk on Russian train before. Not couples or very close friends or even when dozing during the day. I somehow managed to wake her and to persuade her that she should possibly be lying somewhere else, but suffice to say i was a tad restless for the remainder of the night.

Why do I manage to attract such people on such a regular basis??

By morning, nothing was indicated about it, although the woman (and the man who had been on the bunk above mine) both suddenly discovered the ability to speak some English, and the woman also gave me two pairs of socks as a gift. I have a feeling that she must have been sent by the "good" people at T-K, as they are the only people I can think of who would be worried about the potential imminent return of my holey socks...

When I disembarked in Moscow, I admit to a feeling of sorrow. Not only had I passed from Asia back into Europe - and all that that entails - and made it to Moscow in 23days, but I was also getting off what was the last long through journey of my trip. From here on in, it's Europe where distances are relatively short and journeys faster, and there will be no more 24hour+ trips for me for a while. In fact, journeys of over 15 hours or so are now just a memory (until the next trip) and I wasn't happy by this fact. I really like long, slow journeys, and have grown to like them even more. Hmmmm.

And so, Moscow. Again. But that can wait.

Sadly, to end, I have some tragic news to impart, regarding my very good friend and long time hitch hiking partner, Erik. Erik, as some of you probably know, is a life sized inflatable (one hump) Camel who I have long hitched with for the simple reason that a heck of allot of people stop when they see a camel by the side of road, who would sure as heck not stop for a normal hitch-hiker. Especially when the camel is in Europe and with a sign saying somewhere as likely as 'Vladivostock' or 'Singapore'.

Erik was left in the care of a friend and hasn't accompanied me on my trip, for the simple reason that he is too damned big and heavy when deflated to be worth travelling with when you are not hitch-hiking the entire time.

Tragically, I have been informed that Erik - and he was an inflatable of growing years - has perished. He was being inflated to check all was well before he was due to meet me in Germany in a few weeks, but had given up the ghost instead.

A long time companion, he will be virtually impossible to replace, and in more ways than one.

Trying to avoid becoming an adopted father... remains copyright of the author Gelli, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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Let me explain.

I had stopped off in Tyumen for a night to visit Masha, my wonderful HC host from my journey over. For those that don't remember her, she is the crazy girl with the most amazing socks you will ever see. And some wonderful multi-coloured wellington boots that she wears.

Masha resplendent in her trademark socks and boots, and with the Human Trotskyist in one of her less colourful moments

Depressingly, after having so much luck with tickets in Irkutsk, my luck deserted me, and I failed utterly to get hold of a ticket for the Kazan - Moscow leg. I don't believe it, but allegedly all 9 trains were completely full in all classes for 3 days. And I had no time to wait. Instead I managed to get a ticket through to Moscow from Tyumen for the following day, and even p-ex'd my Tyumen-Kazan ticket. It could have been much worse.
And so to the Trotskyist.

It seems that Tyumen has 3 Trotskyists. Admittedly 2 of them remain entirely unknown and probably a figment of people's imagination, but Trotskyist #1 happens to be a friend of Masha and the gang. A week previously, said hero had decided it was time for a revolution, and that action must be taken.

Thus, he took a powder based fire extinguisher and spray painted the exterior entirely in silver. Then donning a silver contamination suit of the style worn by people in environments where getting the slightest contact with anything could kill you, and the inevitable gas mask he headed to a new shopping centre.

And as far as I know, no, he didn't travel there by bus.

Sadly for him, but perhaps not the rest of the world, In the act of setting off his extinguisher he was over powered by 2 security guards, who prevented his deadly chamber of, erm, fire extinguishing foam, from being released over a crowd of shoppers. Showing that his attack wasn't entirely planned to perfection, he was then taken to the police station opposite. Nothing like going to somewhere which the authorities will take time to get to.

Anyhow, his lawyers seemingly managed to argue 'attempted terrorism' down to 'breach of the peace' and he was given a paltry 500rouble (about 10gbp) fine. What happened next remains a bit hazy, but out Trotskyist seems to have objected somehow, and ended up being given a week's prison sentence.

And it was from this incarceration that our glorious hero (?) had just been released and to which everybody was heading to celebrate his return to the real world. I don't get invited to freedom parties for released convicts that often (this is my first in over 12months), so who was I to turn down the chance to meet the man aiming to start the next Russian revolution....?

I admit to being slightly disappointed, although not actually by the grand hero himself, but more by the level of his comrades in almost arms. My favourite part of the whole story is that, somehow, he managed to argue that the items confiscated (one silver coloured fire extinguisher, one chemical warfare suit and one gas mask) were legally his and as such the court has ordered that they be returned to him on his release....

Archive picture of the Human Trotskyist. If you see this guy wearing a gas mask (although, obviously, if he was wearing the gas mask, you wouldn't see it was him) and carrying a fire extinguisher, don't worry, either Panic, or get your camera ready...

Anyhow, Tyumen more than lived up to it's reputation and memory of my previous visit, and was great fun. A random place to be sure, but some amazing people, and always something different going on. The previous visit was all about Orthodox Churches (long, long story), whilst this was all about the Human Trotskyist. I admit to being hugely intrigued - and I still am - as to why he was being constantly referred to as a human Trotskyist, and not just a Trotskyist. To me, that kind of implies that the rest of them are not Humans, although I can't quite see how a pig, for example, could be classed as a Trotskyist...

A strange red glow across the Tyumen night sky

The tale of the human Trotskyist remains copyright of the author Gelli, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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Spent a couple of days passing through the wonderful emptiness of Siberia. On the Southern edges near to Mongolia and China, there aren't even the trees and spread out shrubs etc that characterise the rest of Central/Eastern Siberia. Instead it's just empty rolling low hills and grasslands (or grasslands covered in Snow as much was). And after China, I loved the feeling of enormous emptiness.

Passing through Snow covered areas and past obscure Siberian villages in the wilderness on the Trans Manchurian train between the Chinese border and Irkutsk

Passed through Ulan-Ude, but sadly without time for me to visit my favourite head (the huge Lenin head. For details/pics, see my previous entry for Ulan-Ude) and then around Baikal in daylight, allowing me to watch the Lake pass by, and see that the Eastern side at least is still entirely iced over, with people walking over the frozen lake.

Amazingly, I made it Irkutsk without killing or at least seriously maiming any of the aforementioned stupid traders, although it took will power of Churchillian levels to avoid it.

Irkutsk was my next deliberate stop off. Through tickets to Moscow etc are prohibitive in China, and also the through services only have 2nd class Kupe, so I stopped off with the aim of booking my own way Westwards, and saving money by doing it in 3rd class Platskartny. I managed to book myself through to Tyumen on the perfect train, and even then get another ideal service from there through to Kazan.

It's not supposed to be this easy.

After spending a night in Irkutsk, getting my visa registered, and catching up on such missed Russian favourites as Shastlikh (a kind of Kebab in Eastern Russia) and Blini (Pancakes), I headed down to Listvyanka for a night.

I really wish that I had significantly more time to explore the Baikal region properly, as indeed I had wished on my last pass through. It will happen, definitely, but that's for another trip. And indeed, I am opening the floor to anybody else that wants to spend some time around Baikal and cross via the more Northern BAM onto Sakhalin - If anybody else is interested in such a trip, and might want to share ideas or even team up, get in touch. It will be a great adventure, and probably somewhat mad!

All the way down from Irkutsk on the bus, I started getting flashbacks and fond reminisces of my last visit, in company of Ala, Irek and the Polish lot. Even remembering the packed bus and people squashed together sleeping in the aisle on the way down brought a smile to my face.

It was out of season still, and whilst the West bank was free of ice, there were no other tourists around that I saw, and I had the place pretty much to myself. The mountains across the lake were wonderfully snow capped, the sky was blue and cloudless, and the sun shining. It was a glorious spring day, and I loved it. After a visit to our old camping spot (where I had ended up sleeping on the beach until woken by a rain storm around 4am, and had also learnt probably the single cardinal rule from this entire trip [even more so than 'don't carry liquorice through customs" and "beware unmarried Japanese girls], namely NEVER try and drink vodka with a group of Poles. The people, not big sticks) and the half built house where i had later slept in to escape the rain (happily still half built and unchanged), I did nothing except walk.

The house where i'd crashed to escape the rain on my way across from Europe, months earlier

On an aside, there's an almost funny story, or rather installment, in the travails of the wondrous Kiki and Christian, but I have decided not to regale it here unless requested by (un?)popular demand. It's up to you now.

After being in the chaos of China, and then on a train with stupid warring factions for 3days, it was wonderful to be out in the utter tranquility and calm of the shores of Baikal, in such glorious weather. I walked along the coast, and was quickly into an area of country and more or less utter silence. It was bliss.

With that, the following day it was time to return to Irkutsk, and after a quick wander around some of my favourite attractions (Lenin, of course, and the theatre for Dog shows) it was on to a train for another 50hours Westwards to Tyumen, and, almost, Europe.

The tranquility of Lake Baikal, Listvyanka village with the snow capped mountains across the Lake in the background, and old and new side beside in the village

Back in the mother land remains copyright of the author Gelli, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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Happy days.

Had two great nights out in Beijing, although sadly due to a technological hitch (f*cking stup1d phone), never hooked up with Phil again for his birthday celebration. It was strange being back at Leo's. Two folks from my previous visit were still knocking around (one of whom, Jamie, I'd bet against with a Danish girl one night, and ended up being so embarrassed by the failure of the Canadian guy who I had backed and seemed unbeatable, that I'd changed my bet to "Random black guy" [this is not meant to be in any way racist]). In addition, Martin and his sidekick Christian, two Swede's we'd met on Don Det at New Year (although neither had any memory of that whatsoever, such was their addled state) turned up as well. In the way of hostels, we twice ended up with damned good groups of 25+ people heading out, and it was a fitting end to my time in China.

I'll really miss this country allot.

And I will return, I hope, very soon.

Miles. Metres. Meh. Close enough!

After supplying up for the journey, I headed to the station with plenty of time to spare, not wanting another metal detector incident, or to push my luck in the slightest. Although not mentioned anywhere on any station publicity, it was obvious which platform queue was ours. I haven't seen a single Russian looking person in the whole of Beijing, and then suddenly, there is about 40 of them queuing up.
Oddly enough, despite the horror stories, there was no trouble at all, and my bags weren't weighed, and my ticket not even checked until i was entering the train. Got on the train, and we left a minute early. And yes, i was on it. It's now almost 3 days ahead of me to Irkutsk, and I was Finlay leaving China and with enough time to get back to Europe.

Still no planes, and few obstacles ahead. In theory.

I couldn't help but be bemused at my troubles to get hold of a ticket, when i realised that I was out numbered by the provodniks (2-1) as the only passenger in our carriage. Hmmmm.

It says it's the Vostok, on the Beijing - Moscow run. And it even was. I'm on the way
Late the following afternoon at an obscure Chinese stop, i began to realise why, when the carriage suddenly started to fill in a big way with a large group of Chinese traders. They each had significantly more stuff with them than I own in total (let alone was carrying with me), and before long there was cr*p everywhere. 2 joined my compartment (China - Russia through trains only have 2nd class Kupe places, not the 3rd class Platskartny I normally use) and the remaining berth and all other space in the compartment where other useful things (such as oxygen) could fit were soon swallowed by their cr*p.

Oh well, doesn't bother me providing I still have my berth and enough space for my bag, which I did.

After passing through such delightful cities as Shenyang and Harbin, and spending the last of my Yuan in the restaurant car on a delicious but scarily overpriced (for a Chinese restaurant car) meal - where, impressively, with just a single look, the woman handed me the English menu as opposed to the Chinese, Russian or German ones, at 4am on the third morning, we reached Manschuria.

Manschuria is the Chinese border station. We were locked in our carriage for about 90mins whilst they whisked passports away (after a slight scare when a very friendly and English speaking inspector insisted I had overstayed my visa for a day, and I had to explain that he was looking at the last entrance date on my visa, and not the 30days after I had actually entered date. We then spoke at length about Lijiang - no never been, although he thinks I had - Tie Li, Brazil, Rawney [Rooney] and Sun Jihai before he eventually happily pottered off). No luggage or customs checks at all. Passports returned, and then we had about 90mins to wander the platform and small shop area.

Manschuria station at about 5am after disembarking after passport control, the welcome sign at station (curiously not in Russian as well) and an almost perfectly phonetic sign

And then the fun started.
A sh1t load of new passengers, mostly Russian, then went through customs and boarded the train. I returned with about 20mins to go before departure to discover a huge heated row going on. It involved everybody else in the carriage, but was centered on my compartment. All the Russian boarders were also traders with large amounts of baggage and you can probably see where this is going...

Anyhow, everybody was being utterly stupid and I made the mistake of uttering words in Mandarin to a Chinese and Russian to a Russian (I think It was "Excuse Me" and "Thanks"). Upon which - and realisation that I was a third party foreigner - I was seized upon as translator extraordinaire. Despite maybe having as much as 100 words of each language, that was about 90 more than anybody else could muster of the other, and led to everybody shouting at me at once in 2 languages I don't speak, and my having to mediate between a group of extremely stupid Russians and a group of even stupider Chinese, who regardless of if they knew each other beforehand had now forged into a Chinese mass and a Russian mass.

Why me?

We went 25mins to the Russian border, in the process going from 7.30am and brilliant sun, to 2am and still brilliant sun, such is the way of Russian railways and use of Moscow Time. It was then 3hours stuck on the train whilst we went through Russian immigration (easy), and customs (easy for me and the Russians, hell for the Chinese). The Russian inspector enjoyed making every Chinese person open every bag and throw stuff everywhere whilst searching for anything vaguely contraband. In such an enclosed space and with so much stuff in it to begin with, it was utter Chaos. What struck me most was the sheer amount of utter, utter cr*p and entirely random rubbish which the Chinese "traders" were carrying. Very little seemed even good enough condition to sell, let alone be vaguely desirable. And whilst admittedly they may make their money on the return legs, I can't work out how they would even break even on ticket prices trying to sell stuff which second hand shops would normally turn down.

After 3hours, we were turfed off the train for 4 more whilst they changed bogie's. Russian Railways are at a wider gauge than the standard gauge Chinese - and most of the rest of the world - meaning time consuming delays at the border as they don't yet have TALGO technology, and I doubt, ever will.

Dual gauge track at Zabaikalsk station, plus changing the bogie's in the shed from Standard gauge Chinese ones, to broad gauge Russian ones, ready for the trek through Siberia towards Moscow, and, below, Zabaikalsk station with passengers awaiting the re gauged train for re boarding

I spent some time in the carriage shed watching out of curiosity, wandered around the town of Zabaikalsk (and exhausted it's possibilities), got all misty eyed at the discovery that 2 carriages on my train had come through from Pyongyang, North Korea, got some food, did some reading and just farted around.

And then it was, finally, back on board to another 2full days of screaming, shouting, arguing and my needing to mediate as best as i could, whilst mostly swearing in an assortment of other languages and wishing they would all disappear in a cloud of smoke, or at least eaten by wild animals or some such.
As long journeys go, it could have been worse, but I admit that I've had more relaxing ones. Roll on Irkutsk. Or wherever the heck these people are getting off.

I've just realised that for all I will miss about China - and that is allot, even without considering the delights of watching old people ballroom dance in parks (I kid you not, this has become a major hobby of mine) - the hardest thing about leaving China (and everywhere I have been before it) will be learning how to use a knife again...

And relax... Sort of. remains copyright of the author Gelli, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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View along the vast Xi'an city walls, then two views from the walls, and a brilliant sign on the South East Corner of the Walls, which I don't ever want to translate for fear that it might make more sense!

10 days down, only another 12 or so to go.

I headed back to Beijing, praying extremely hard for a sudden bit of luck, but not really expecting it at all. I've more or less resigned myself to flying. It's either that or go up via the river at Blagoveshenk on the least known and touristed (but actually cheapest surface route between Moscow and Beijing) and be a day or two late returning. Assuming I can then get a useful ticket in Blagoveshenk, of course. It's a possibility

And besides, I had an appointment at the Turkmeni embassy to meet the Ambassador.

I'm not entirely sure why, but things seem to be happening quickly and with an efficiency quite unlike anything I've come across in that part of the world before. The more I think about that evening, the more I'm convinced that there is a hell of allot more going on than I know about, and that is really playing on my mind.

What the hell is the real story here? Somebody? Anybody? Answers on a postcard, please.

4 hours until deadline moment (end of business on Friday, meaning last chance for tickets) and still nothing. I was expecting it to be tight, but 4hours - and i will still have to dash across the city and somehow find the correct building even if successful - is starting to cut things a bit fine, regardless of the confidence of my agent that it is early days yet.

The embassy experience was, erm, interesting, and curious but not exactly enlightening in the slightest. More than that, I won't say for now.

2hours to deadline I get a phone call.

Wrong number.

B*gger.

Fart around some more.

1hour 20mins to deadline.

YIIIIIIPPPPPPPPEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!

One very lovely agent has found me a returned ticket, and in the nick of time. But it's too late to deliver it (meaning I didn't have to stay in the damned hostel after all, as the only reason I did was for a delivery address. Bah!). All I have to do is get to their office, in a neighbourhood which i don't know - and I don't actually know where I am myself, at this point - in the next hour to claim the ticket. If I fail, It's all over right at the end and in the cruelest way possible.

This is not necessarily a sure thing under any circumstances.

The race is on (and yes, I have Yello on my MP3. Groan. But at least it's a great track!)

An odd building sign, in Xi'an. I have no idea what it's supposed to be, but I am definitely intrigued!

It's getting really, really tight... remains copyright of the author Gelli, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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The Bell Tower at night, after all the crashes...

Chinese style semi Propaganda at the Terracotta Warriors

Assorted pics of the Terracotta Warriors

How to get back from the Terracota Warriors, Gelli style remains copyright of the author Gelli, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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Yay.

A sign outside the Luang Namtha Bus Station (no, I have no idea) and loading a bus heading south

But made it to Mengla OK, and lucked out with a berth on the last sleeper bus of that day to Kunming, leaving in about an hour. Was joined on board by one of the the most stereotypical ignorant American surfer dude type people it's ever been my misfortune to meet. Sat for over 3hours at the same spot (more or less) as was delayed on the way down due to roadworks, and had the most stupendous rain storm. My MP3, for the record had excelled itself with a string of China related songs within the first hour or so of entry, followed by such delights as Blind Melon (No Rain) just as the heavens opened.

In Kunming i again lucked out and got a hard sleeper on the next train to Chengdu (Xi'an full, Chengdu an easy alternative) just 2 hours later, and spent a day going through some fantastic remote scenery in the South West of China and Himalayan foothills. In Chengdu I managed to get a useful connection North, giving myself about 6hours to have a quick wander around the city (pleasant, if like all others, under reconstruction) before heading through to Xi'an. I really need to return to Chengdu, and also the area between there and Kunming, but for now, time does not allow it.

Images of Chengdu, although the bottom one is really beginning to make me think that somebody (Kiki?!) is giving me not so subtle hints

And thus after 8days of straight travel, I had made it to Xi'an, my first rest point on the mad trek North. And even with a day or two free to be a tourist and visit some Warrior type people...

Xi' an Bell Tower in the centre of the walled city

Dashing through the South of China remains copyright of the author Gelli, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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A couple of weeks ago, Simon, a cheery Aussie we had met in Hanoi, and a few others happened to be on Don Det. This was barely a week after we had left there after New Year. There was a few of them around, and as happens, you pick up people as you go along. One afternoon whilst in a bar on the island, a Danish girl they had met and wasn't entirely free of the influence of chemicals, happened to notice that the menu of the bar included "weddings". Curious, the question was asked to the staff. When told that it did indeed mean that, she was somewhat enthusiastic and said that she was having such a good time that she wished she could get married there and then. Opinion was canvased of the assembled males, and Simon said he'd be delighted do it. After spreading the word in full, the next day in front of virtually the entire islands population of travellers, and a good 30 or so locals, they tied the knot. And you all thought that I got into strange situations?!

For those now sniggering people who actually know my life history, lets leave certain previous incidents out of this, shall we?

Sadly, it didn't work out, and they divorced about a week later.

I love Lao, I really do. It's an amazing country, and despite so many people saying how great and unspoilt it is, it does actually live up to it, and then some. It is great to be back, although I am admittedly somewhat depressed that it is only for such a short time, out of necessity. Better make the most of it.

In Vientiane, I met up with Troy. Couchsurfing's only Lao based member, and somebody who had been highly recommended to me by Kevin and Solene. In a slight twist, since they finally stopped stalking me, I've more or less been following their route and dropping by all the same people that they did. In this case, I'm glad I did. Troy is certainly one of the most interesting and intelligent people I have met in a good while, and I only wish that I could have stuck around for longer. After all, anybody that has lived in Yemen and Azerbaijan is bound to have a tale or two to tell.

Luang Prabang's Night Market

Travel in Lao, at least North of Vientiane invariably means long daytime bus journeys, and with that I returned to Luang Prabang, 10hours and barely a few hundred kilometres later. It was another one stopper between transport, but entirely randomly and barely 30mins after arrival, I randomly bumped into Chevy (he of the fecked-up beer fish night in Yangshuo, ice hockey in Hanoi and the circuit in Nha Trang) and Mick Jagger (who's an old short guy with a young girlfriend who sings in some band). It was from Chevy that I got the Simon wedding story, and as they were still travelling together, later that evening I heard Simon's version as well. And met a curious Swedish tattoo-ist. I hadn't met anybody I know by accident since I was last in Lao (The French guy from HCMC) so I was definitely due.

Assorted Tuk-Tuks waiting for passengers in Luang Prabangs North bus station

A good 7 or so hours of standard wonderful Lao scenery the next day took me to Oudomxay. Admittedly the also standard 2hour or so delay on departure meant It was too late for me to continue northwards when I arrived. And I did spent most of the journey being vomited on by an extremely cute, if admittedly slightly sick seeming young child. And being a local bus meant that we stopped once for a guy to get off and buy three large bags of salt, once for everybody to buy courgettes from a roadside stall (although one passenger somehow managed to buy a dead monkey instead) and numerous times just because they felt like it.

Reasons I love Northern Lao numbers, whatever the heck we are up to now - The gorgeous hilly great mountainside, random roadside markets on the tops of hills in the middle of nowhere on virtually empty roads, and the ubiquitous black pigs that can be seen wandering unattended around every village

Many people get stuck in Oudomxay. It's in no way unusual, despite everybody desperately trying to avoid it. And all known guidebooks offering about a paragraph saying that it's boring, but you are likely to get stuck there at some point. Most of them seem to be German speaking. Those that aren't are either French Swiss, or Chinese. They only ever stay a night. It just is the way that Lao works. And as I discovered from talking to two German's who worked at the tourist office trying to encourage growth (Read: Bang heads against the wall in frustration of not being able to achieve even tiny things), until they come up with a way to take advantage of that, and get the locals excited (meaning they actually prepared to do something, instead of just take free money), that's how it will stay.

We also pondered the fate of a night bus alleged to have disappeared during a night the previous week (but being kept very quiet by authorities) and also an American, Ryan Braben Chicovsky, who had disappeared in Northern Lao a week or so previous. And as it's just one of those fairly mundane and standard travel things that just happen, there's no need to explain how I somehow ended up sharing a (tiny) double bed with a middle aged German lady who's name i didn't (and still don't) know. Not entirely related, I suppose, but more or less at this point my camera died. Grrrr.

Our Guest House in Oudomxay (Close enough, I suppose...) and early morning clouds over the valley

What follows should probably come out of a work of fiction. In fact, its possibly all just too bizarre, and any author trying to pass it off (Carlie, believe me, i don't recommend it) would have been laughed out of their publishers at light speed. Sometimes, however, truth really just is so strange that you can't make it up.

Some days just defy all logic and expectation and it was simply one of those days. And with the possible exception of one of the days spent trying to leave Vladivostok, it certainly now tops my list of most memorable days on this trip. Curiously, 4 different people have mentioned that my blog is being serialised in a provincial Ecuadorian newspaper. What 4 different friends were doing reading provincial Ecuadorian newspapers, I'm still unsure. And have as yet not been able to confirm or deny these rumours (if anybody comes across an article from here, please, PLEASE save it and post/give it to me as i want to see if its true or not), but if they are oddly enough true, they may like the following. Or not. I don't really care.

After waking up slightly freaked (i hadn't remembered that there was an old German lady in the same bed until I was awoken by snoring), i had a strange twist, whereby I couldn't get on the bus as it was alleged to be "full". This is an interesting - and unusual - concept in a country where people and goods can be packed in with amazing skill, and for a bus which almost inevitably would then stop and start picking up more people of the roadside within 200m of leaving the Bus Station. If I'd have thought, I'd have jumped a tuk-tuk to the edge of town and then hailed the same bus and got on without a problem.

But the same delay meant that by the time I got to Luang Namtha, happy to return to the site of my first (and brilliant) Lao experiences, plus some evil looking clouds and thunder noises ahead, it was too late to make renting a motorbike any sense. A shame because in the short time I'd been away, all the the roads which had been dodgy - part of the fancy Chinese financed and built highway running from where the Kunming - Boten expressway will eventually end through Northern Lao and Thailand to Myanmar - had been fully completed and were stunningly smooth and tarmacked, like the stretch in from the border. The Chinese don't mess about. Things happen quickly, and the result is unquestionably the best road in Lao.

Instead I hired a mountain bike. At half a dollar, it was significantly cheaper than a motorbike, i love bikes anyway and in honesty i needed to work out some of the pain in my legs caused by being squeezed on the minibus for so long. I made it to the Luang Namtha museum, which had been shut when Erin and I first passed through, and was happy I did as it has some very interesting stuff especially about the local tribal groups. I then headed out into the country with no plan except just to ride quite hard for an hour or so, see what happened, and then probably turn back. I was on a fairly quiet road north towards the National Park, when what i hope will be the final of my 3 transport mishaps (think Cambodian minibus and Thai pickup) occurred. Without anything nearby, i went over a slight pothole and the rear triangle of my frame snapped. Both at the same time, and sheer. Obviously, the back of the bike gave way somewhat and I landed on the ground in a heap. No damage to me, but It really didn't take long for me to realise that I was about 10km north of the town with an utterly fecked bike. With the storm rapidly approaching. Bah. I hoped to catch a lift, but wasn't passed by anything in any direction for 20mins, so hung the bike over my shoulder and was about to start the walk back towards Luang Namtha.

The reason that I'm not convinced that it will turn out to be the final incident in my accident trilogy is that it was right at that moment that I got the most amazing and stunningly unexpected piece of luck. My eye was caught by movement round the corner, so I stopped expecting a motorbike or something that i could flag down. Instead, 3 elephants with riders came along. They stopped. The lead man got off and in a perfect Midlands accent asked what I was doing. I explained that I had no choice but to carry the bike and walk back to town. He - his name sounded something like Mwaaauy - asked why. I said because no cars or motorbikes have come past that i could hitch with. Mwaaauy asked why I wanted a car or to walk when there was an elephant right there. It took my brain a few seconds to register, and then i believe I may have had a large grin on my face.

Yes, I managed to hitch-hike with a bicycle on the back of an elephant.

And yes, you did just read that correctly.

I've had a lot of great moments on this trip, but it's going to be damned hard to top this. Admittedly, elephants are not quick animals, but no slower really than a pedestrian at Lao speed, and the time passed quickly. And the storm clouds broke off without more than a quick splattering, and thus we wandered under the most amazing rainbow I have seen in years. Deep colour and shine. I can't think of anything better. I was also treated to several gasps of delight and looks of awe from other travellers as we wandered into town. It was great! I was dropped outside the rental shop after agreeing to meet them a little later for food and to buy them a drink.

They wandered off to park the elephants or whatever you do with elephants, whilst i embarked on a long, calm and reasoned discussion with the rental owner. He wasn't overly surprised when I refused to pay him 500usd (!!!) for a replacement, and we continued a relaxed and open discussion as to what to do next. A few others appeared, and things started to get a tad more animated as two of them also got involved and seemed to want a cut of any money for unknown reasons. I had paid a 10usd deposit that I was happy to let them keep, but stood my ground refusing to pay anymore for something that blatantly wasn't my fault. What swayed me into giving them another 25USD was the guy who ambled over to see what the fuss was all about and had a machine gun swung over his shoulder. I'm not overly fazed by guns, but he seemed somewhat agitated, utterly reeked of alcohol, and was waving the gun in my direction, with rather more intent that I would ideally like. Especially when I noticed that the safety was off.

In cards, as in life, always know when to fold. I will gamble with the best of them, and can often bluff my way through, but a drunk guy pointing a live machine gun in my direction seems a good enough reason to fold. I meekly apologised, handed 25usd to the renter, apologising that I didn't have more (if he's have realise I had a money belt, i could have had a problem), and left pronto. I was a good 300metres away when I turned around to see another local waving a large sword in my direction and group of people watching the guy with the gun.

It can sometimes be useful having a good grasp of local geography and being relatively fit, although I admit that being a white guy in town meant I wasn't overly inconspicuous and had visions of the motley duo touring every guest house that evening, demanding to see all white people, and then me being dragged away to who knows what. If you are reading this, it didn't happen.

This is where the levels of credibility really start to get stretched.

I no longer have my passport.

Or rather, I do now again, obviously, but for a while that evening I didn't. Let me explain. Or at least vaguely try, for I'm really struggling to grasp this one as well.

After a very pleasant couple of hours with the elephant guys in a locals restaurant, they took their leave and headed off. With a few kip left over, and not enough to make exchanging it worthwhile, I decided to have another beer. An hour or so earlier, a very strange group of people had entered and occupied several tables near the back. Two were quite polished looking and white (i pegged them as Russians) and sat alone in the middle table, whilst those around them were locals but a tad ominous looking. But as they left us alone and I had my back to them, i had ignored them. About 30minutes after Mwaaauy and his friends had left, one approached me and asked in thickly accented English if I would like to join them for a drink. I politely refused, saying I was about to leave (I was as well) and had no money (also more or less true). He, erm, "suggested" that it might be rude to decline their hospitality and that I should at least stay for a drink. Looking back over my shoulder, the local guys seemed a heck of allot more ominous than I had remembered. So out of a lack of reasonable options, and in fairness, with absolutely nothing better to do, I accepted.

I discovered that my Russian guess wasn't entirely correct, and they were actually Turkmeni's. And allegedly not irrelevant ones either, although how true this is, I don't know. Turkmenistan is somewhere few people know much about, and fewer still visit. Having said that, I have actually been there in the past on more than one occasion (long story), and know a bit about it. In a nutshell, it can be characterised by Saparmurat Niyazov. Mr Niyazov is the President and essentially Turkmen dictator and is generally known as "Turkmenbashi the Great". In 2002 (i think), he renamed the month of January after himself, and amongst many other idiosyncrasies has also come up with a new system for dividing people's ages (which are not, as you may possibly guess, children, teens, adults, middle aged and elderly, or words to that extent). He's an interesting man leading an interesting country.

Oddly, they seemed to know at least a bit about me, which was a bit freaky and unnerving (especially as I had now quickly cottoned on to the fact that the ominous looking people were the heavies/security detail) although i am fairly sure that they had just overhead the previous conversations I had been having with Mwaaauy. Anyhow, one thing led to another and whilst I am aware that nobody will believe any of this in the slightest, but there I was in a locals bar in an obscure town in Northern Lao, being offered the job of chief strategic and planning officer to the Turkmenistan army and presidential advisor on foreign affairs.

..... I need time for that one to sink in, let alone you .....

I've always said that life is never boring.

My passport was whisked away for some kind of check of some description (i don't believe that there is a Turkmen military attache to the province of Luang Namtha, but on the last few days experiences, i really wouldn't bet against it) without my having any say or choice in the matter, whilst all manner of business was discussed. I believe that I managed to decline on the grounds that I already have a commitment to my current employer (Sten, the things I do out of loyalty to you and the company. I really think that I deserve a large pay rise for my loyalty here in the face of adversity....).

Long story cut short, but a couple of hours later, my passport was returned. They thanked me, i thanked them, they said they would be in touch, and I took my leave, wandering straight out of the bar and into two guys loafing against one of 3 jeeps who just happened to be the guys with the machine gun and sword from earlier. They gave me a drunken grin and wave. I started walking in a random direction at a fairly high rate of knots whilst desperately trying to work out what the f*ck had just occurred.

I am expecting an email from somebody at work within the next few days asking some very strange questions about why I am consorting with such people, and what the situation is. Plus potential correspondence from assorted Turkmeni's.

I have a feeling that this one is could run and run, although I doubt Kiki (or any of my normal crazy bet and strange situation - and that is one I'm not even going to try and explain to all those that have no idea what I'm talking about, except to say that these guys are so good that I once spent 8months trying to prove that I wasn't married. Which sounds easy enough, but when they can produce a wife, photos, and even get assorted random friends and family members swearing it was true and had happened, you get the idea that this is not an entirely conventional betting ring - group) is involved....

Despite being perhaps slightly unconventional by many peoples terms, and this pass sadly only being 4 nights, Lao has more than lived up to my memories, and I leave with it still being a top my list of favourite places on this trip. It's been utterly amazing, and on this brief transit, stupendously surreal, unlikely and just plain weird. I like that.

It's a wonderful country, and I really can't wait to return.

[i]Taking a nap at work during the midday heat[i/]

Of weddings, rock stars, job offers and Turkmeni's... remains copyright of the author Gelli, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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Pained but alive and on my way, I left Thailand. Leaving Bangkok (on my first Thai train) for the last time was really strange for me, and not only because i was under the influence of assorted drugs from the hospital. I had a kind of sadness I don't usually have, but not simply because I was leaving Thailand, which if you remove the people I met (most of whom I already knew and was just catching up with) I could more or less give or take. Whilst in no way over - and months before i have to return to work - from here the journey is back. I have only about 25days before I need to be back in Europe for some commitments, and with i think a theoretical minimum of a 16-17day (on a pre-planned and pre-booked perfect scenario journey) trek from Bangkok to Sweden ahead of me, It means I don't have much room for manoeuvre.

In addition, with few exceptions, all of the journey I now have to undertake I have done beforehand, so there will be little new and really exciting stuff for me. And I don't yet know how I am going to get back. I have an idea of how things will go and how to do it, but I am gambling heavily on getting lucky in Beijing. I may yet have to insert a flight (believe me, I'm working on avoiding it) in to this trip, simply due to a lack of spare time to play with on alternative routes - of which there are many - if my gamble doesn't pay off. It's an all or nothing roll of dice, and only time will tell if I'll hit the double sixes.

Although my neck still hurt like heck and i had a general stiffness, I was pleasantly surprised by how I felt waking in the morning. I had expected to be feeling effects of my high speed tumble onto tarmac and rolling in broken glass and spilt diesel allot more. I crossed back into Lao (Really great to be back, Wish i had time for a much longer stay here) via the Friendship Bridge without incident and even got myself a cheap and rare (in SEA) dorm room in Vientiane, possibly as life compensation for the previous afternoon. I don't want to get cocky though, as I will be needing all the luck i can get in the coming 3 or 4 weeks, for both logistical reasons, and because i will be more or less living on buses and trains doing a number of long journeys, and with my 3rd strike of "things come in 3's, such as accidents" still to come...

And so, back to Lao and onto day 2 of the Road home

A sign to strike fear (or alcohol poisoning) in the hearts of a certain couple of TPers after New Years exploits waaay back when...

And so it begins... remains copyright of the author Gelli, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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And hospital visits don't help.

They take time and money, and are usually the result of an infliction of pain.

And two transport crashes in two weeks is really beginning to make me wonder what the third one will be. At current rate, it won't be pretty.

But we're loosing chronology again. Important it might not be, but sometimes i just like it that way.

Together with Matt and some of the guys, I headed down to their home town of Hua Hin, home of the King's summer palace and a fairly relevant town about 3hours south of Bangkok. Thai geography and population growth means that they have one huge city of umpteen million (Bangkok) and then nowhere else of any great relevance whatsoever. Hua Hin is a strange place. Whilst I was aware that many Swede's and Scandinavians come to Thailand, I wasn't quite expecting them to have colonised entire towns.

Part of the beach in Hua Hin

Swedish (or Danish) is significantly more useful than English in Hua Hin. I saw at least half a dozen Swedish restaurants alone - plus ABBA karaoke songs, but no Ikea or Volvo's, sadly - plus any number of establishments named to do with Danish (such as hairdressers), Norwegian (Dentist) and Finnish (no idea as I can't read enough Finnish to workout what it was), plus Scandinavian real estate negotiators and agents and the inevitable hoards of Bars, Guest houses and restaurants either to do with them, or at least having Scandinavian menu's and signage. It was very, very strange. Not entirely unpleasant, but extremely strange. The town also had a foreign population demographic which was more or less reads:

Foreign people aged under 40 - 15, give or take
Older Scandinavians, mostly couples - Absolutely Sh1tloads
Old fat ugly British men with young Thai girls - A fair few
Real old &/or Really fat British men with young Thai girls - An unseemly number
Young kids/babies born to the above mentioned two group - way too many, the poor kids

Anyhow, it was an interesting place. Seeing a small-ish town through the eyes of one of the very small young and established (as opposed to transient) foreign community was very interesting, and one of the reason that i love staying with people instead of in hotels/hostels where you are entirely cut off from real life. Every town and village with a small (and obvious) foreign contingent probably has the same stories, but suffice to say that Hua-Hin life would be more than worthy of it's own soap opera. Didn't do much the time I was there except relax, have a few drinks, catch up with Matt (when you haven't seen somebody since you were 11, there are a few details from the past years to catch upon), and wander around Hua Hin. I got introduced to the wonders of Hua Hin on a Saturday night - vaguely surreal - which included the inevitable late night trip to a Karaoke bar. I was actually quite impressed with Thai karaoke. It's a kind of cross between Oriental (private groups in private rooms, meaning there is nowhere to hide from singing, and no strangers to laugh at/at you) and European style bars (open to everybody, including non-singers) which means a string of small bars of about a 20-25person capacity where you get to laugh at people and can hide, but not with so many strangers that you are worried about singing. Not a bad idea, although Thai karaoke music in general, is.

And yes, there really are reams of "Michael Learns to Rock" songs to choose from.*

Randomly, and off topic, I've just discovered that two people have had the gaul to unsubscribe from my journal. In fairness, I'm amazed it's taken so long for them to get wise and leave. Why anybody wants to read this sh1te, i have no idea, let alone why there are still so many of you actually subscribed. You should get your heads examined. Having said that, the fact you even consort with me suggests that you lack some of the necessary mental functions to succeed anyway...

After a great few days in Hua Hin, I returned to Bangkok. It has been a great and surreal experience catching up with Matt,and I hope it's not another 16years since we meet again. Annoyingly, i arrived in Bangkok in time to cunningly miss Rick yet again (who I'd travelled through Sweden and parts of Norway with, on the now mothballed - kind of, for full details contact Morten - old Landy RTW project, still possibly online at www.landy-rtw.com/). Rick now owns a bar and does diving courses etc on Kho Tao, and had returned South before I had managed to catch him. And sadly, I don't have time to get to Kho Tao on this trip. There will be other trips though.

Instead, I met up with Sam and Des again at the Night Market, along with another CSer, Laure, and a couple of her friends. Laure is a French girl who my lovely stalkers Kevin and Solene had stayed with in Korea. And as they are now at more or less at home - oddly, Irish Kevin is now in France brushing up on his French, whilst French Solene is in Ireland to learn some Gaelic - and no longer stalking me, I've taken it upon myself to go and visit everybody that they met on their way around this part of the world in kind of a reverse stalking manoeuvre. Some astounding dreadful(yet funny) singing by the band on the big stage, food, many beers and several hours sat on the floor of an umbrella shop playing kind of battle of the CD players and it was time to move.

Inside the Night Markets food complex

I also finally managed to do some of the touristy stuff. I went all around the Royal Palace and wonderful Royal Monastery of the Emerald Buddha, bounced through a couple of museums, finally tried Phad Thai (no idea what all the fuss was about), got myself the obligatory fake student card (as they sell so many, surely you would have thought that by now they would have learnt how to spell "University" correctly) and wandered around numerous Wat's. Preperations for the King's 60th coronation anniversary are well under way, and Bangkok is being given a well deserved make over. Why such celebrations delay things which should have been done 15+ years ago (and it was the same in the UK for the Golden Jubilee) I'm not entirely certain.

Bangkok's Royal Palace complex, What Phra Kaew

I then spent a couple of days in Pattaya. Which I really don't recommend. It's Hua Hin on a significantly larger scale. A huge ugly resort town of the sort that i routinely detest. A couple of bus breakdowns leading to a midnight arrival meant i got hurled straight in to the "fun", and also was unable to find cheap accommodation that would let me check in at that time,meaning i had to stay in a fancy hotel. Neither of which helped my impressions. Whilst Hua-Hin is Scandinavian, Pattaya has a large German contingent, and also a large elder British one. Plus, slightly less expected, a large Russian presence. Whilst i never actually heard any Russian,and saw maybe only a couple of Russians (prostitutes,inevitably), there were signs in Russian everywhere, with a fair splattering of Russian restaurants (sadly, they didn't do Bosnian Cevapicci, but that's possibly unsurprising) and Russian estate agencies. Annoyingly though, my brain wave came to nothing as every time i tried to buy some Russian Roubles off people/exchange places/a Russian restaurant, I was looked at as though I was some kind of Martian, or Russian Roubles/currency were a new and unheard of type of algae.

Oh well.

Sign in Pattaya. Eek. The Russians are coming. Or are already here. Either way, there's (annnoyingly) still nowhere to change money into Roubles

The reason i had come to Pattaya was to catch up with Jasper (A cool Kiwi i had met in Cambodia), and Kay and Dave, a British couple who I'd never met, but had known online for some time due to their website www.britishexpat.com. Sadly, Jasper's schedules changed and we missed each other, but i spent a great day with Kay and Dave touring some of Pattaya's, erm, sights, indulging in some great seafood, and wandering the more sedate end of town at night. Oddly, my mental impressions of them both turned out to be surprisingly accurate, which is scary tome, as my mental pictures of people i know but have never met are normally wildly wrong.

Local's street market in a back alleyway, somewhere in Bangkok

I happily left Pattaya as soon as I could (i really don't recommend visiting if you can possibly avoid it). Admittedly not as soon as I'd hoped, due to the vagaries of Thai holiday traffic and bus services. Basically, you get a ticket for a specific bus and then end up on a completely different one an hour or two later along with people who all have tickets with wildly varying departure times (none being the same as yours, or when the bus departs), and to destinations in all possible directions, and pray that you get somewhere useful and returned to Bangkok for the final time. A boat across the bay - it's not far - from Pattaya to Hua Hin would make allot of sense, and would have saved me at least one trip through the mess and traffic of the capital. Just because I could, I staying this time at Sam and Des's, for my fourth different accommodation in 4 passes. Des was away for a wedding, so Sam and I and another CS'er passing through, Jessica, went for dinner at the curiously named "Cabbages and Condoms", where Condoms were much in evidence, but there was sadly no sign of any kind of Cabbage, even on the menu. An over sight which i was not impressed with. And then headed out for an interesting night of bar hopping in the Gay and Lesbian district. Having a 45year old man try and pick you up may be flattering in one sense, but wasn't really a particularly helpful event for either of us, and i have to say, even Kiki managed more charm than did this random Belgian.

Cabbages and Condoms

It was the following day after i had left Sam's (i think she might have died from alcohol poisoning by now, although i swear that it is entirely her fault. I am fast beginning to think that Couchsurfing should carry a large health/alcohol warning. Soness, all is forgiven!) that the incident that i began this - a long time ago, i admit - entry with and which might have been the reason for your continued reading, occurred.

To keep a long story short and details between the relevant people (you REALLY owe big time for this one!), I had headed to the dreaded KSR to make some phone calls and get a student card which had the details correct, when i ran into somebody who shall remain anonymous at this point. The details and reasoning behind our subsequent trip will also remain hidden, but suffice to say that i got conned (don't ask) into joining her on a strange errand, and we took a speeding taxi across the city and deep into the obscure suburbs. That went fine, and astonishingly (especially to me) the reason for trip actually turned out fine. It was on our return, sitting in the back of a pickup truck at standard Thai speed (as opposed to BKK rush hour speed) on the 5lane elevated expressway that things went slightly wrong.

Let's just say that traffic accidents are not uncommon in a country where fate, and the religious belief that you will be protected until your time is up, in which case there is nothing you can do about it, run the rule. Impressively, our driver realised the trouble ahead in time to slam on the brakes and slow us down enough for it not to be fatal, and even more astonishingly, there wasn't anything coming at speed in the lane on our right to which i flew into as he swerved desperately into a wild spin.

Two weeks after jumping off the roof of a bus in Cambodia to avoid a crash, I'm being thrown out of the back of a pickup in Thailand on a 10lane highway due to another accident. As these things come in 3's, i would suggest that everybody takes care in being absolutely nowhere near my vicinity (Europe is probably close enough) for the next few weeks.

Ouch.

Amazingly, neither of us, or the driver/passengers up front were really hurt. A broken arm, an assortment of bangs and gashes, some bits of blood and lots of groans as we all struggled to shake off the effects were a small price to pay, especially as the pickup looked a complete write off. The people involved in the original incident which we had tried to avoid and a couple of other late comers to the party like ourselves all seemed to have come off a bit worse, but nothing seemed too serious. A few broken bones maybe, but not much more.

We were near a freeway exit, which allowed easy access through the chaos for ambulances etc, and after letting the more serious people head of first,we were whisked off with lights flashing and horns to blaring to a hospital. I may well be forgetting one or two, but I think that this is my first ambulance journey on this trip. WooHoo! A different one, but just as efficient as friendly as the previous one I had been to, and where we spent the next 3 or 4 hours being checked out. They wanted to keep us both overnight, but neither of us were keen to stay for differing reasons. And so, despite the odd bruise, bump, gash and assorted pains (my neck is really not happy by this constant state of affairs), i managed to get them to release me with enough time to have a fighting chance of leaving. And in a break with tradition, i successfully made it to the station just in time to jump onto the train north (and without the tuk-tuk crashing into a canal on the way) to Nong Khai.

Passing the independence Monument on route to the station

Thailand has been strange time. I've spent waaay too much money, met some interesting people, caught up with a number of old friends, but i haven't really seen much of Thailand itself. It never really appealed to me prior to this trip, and on the evidence of Hua-Hin and Pattaya (which would both have been dreadful if I hadn't been with friends), I might have been correct. But there are chunks that i want to see and will be back. But now, I need to leave for liver and financial reasons if nothing else. It's been by far the most destructive couple of weeks of my entire trip, with way too many 5am + nights, and none earlier than 2am. Ignoring the fact that I have to if I'm going to make it back to China in time, and recent highway incidents, I need to leave Thailand in order to detox and preserve money. I will be needing both of these in the coming weeks, and more.

In a away, from here the journey is kind of over. Yes, I have almost 6months before I need to be back at work, but I have a few commitments coming up and now start the trek back to Europe. Don't worry, this blog and story has a ways to run yet. Hopefully, a long relaxing and incident and pain free journey awaits, but with the way i feel at the moment and the way things have been going I kind of doubt that's possible.

This scary looking manequin has been all over Thailand and also Vietnam. I must admit, that I have to wonder who the heck the model was, and what the heck had just happened when they took teh photo that was used to make the manequin. Any ideas? Answers, as always, on a postcard

* Anna and Tania, the two Danish girls we met on our way to Vietnam and travelled through most of that country with, first introduced me to this the fact. Michael Learns to Rock are a fairly average (I'm being diplomatic) Danish rock trio from the 80's. I knew of them and a couple of their tracks beforehand, but they hadn't done all that much in the UK, and hadn't come up often during my many visits to Denmark. What they have done,however, is seemingly take over much of Asia. In China, the standard CD of Chinese songs which play includes two ML2R tracks (which is what the girls had said, when they discovered it to their utter astonishment. It seems to be the main reason most Chinese have heard of Denmark), and then all through Vietnam it was noticeable that their stuff seemed to appear with alarming regularity. In Thailand, they are possibly even bigger, regularly play concerts here and are still big sellers. Essentially they a Danish equivalent of Shampoo in Japan and David Hasslehoff in the old East and West Germany.

I think somebody is trying to tell me something. B*stard. remains copyright of the author Gelli, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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I might even live long enough to see some of this place.

The bus (which seemingly only runs Westbound, not Eastbound) was fine, and only the last section to Poipet was unpaved meaning that i wasn't whacked around as much as I'd feared. Poipet was again an easy place to cross (i either got lucky or the stories have all been blow out of proportion), and I again pondered the building of hotels and casino's in no-mans land between the frontiers, which obviously makes sense from certain perspectives, but seems to have slight problems from others. I was thoroughly checked over in Bangkok proved i had nothing broken, given some pills for the pain and swelling and on my way again with ease. Cheap, efficient and friendly. Three things i am entirely unused to in the medical service.

A sign you are unlikely to encounter on TfL's river service in London

I made some attempts to actually be a tourist whilst in Bangkok, and spent time wandering at random, riding up and down the river, visiting the Royal Monastery of the Emerald Buddha and Royal Palace and some of the other sights. If you ignore the traffic, and maybe the 500m2 around Khao San Road i think i could get to like this city despite first impressions. It is hot though, and you need to be showering about every 12minutes or so if you have any intention of trying to stay even vaguely fresh.

New and Old together by the river, A ubiquitos Wat and peoples homes by the river

But my time in BKK can mostly be taken care of by a series of meetings with people. Timings worked to my favour, and sometimes these things just happen. A bit of good fortune every now and again is certainly no bad thing, and thus it was that in 4 nights, i managed to meet up first with my Aunt, passing back through at the end of her holiday, plus a friend of hers I'd met before and his lovely new wife. Then the following day, i caught up with James (Glorious leader of the intrepid quintet who left Shangers together to climb Huanshan and be attacked by monkeys) who was passing through on his way from India to Tokyo to work for a bit. Things seem to be going well between him and Kyoko, and I can only hope that (and she certainly seems it) Kyoko is significantly less marriage crazed and warped than Kiki was/is.

Update.

I'm being bombarded by emails from both, wanting me to try and sort out their marital problems (he wants a divorce, she - unsurprisingly - doesn't understand what the problem is. The answer, on the off chance - I pray not - that she ever finds this blog is that you conned a random foreigner into marrying you after knowing you for only 2 days, and when he was mullered out of his face).

It was great to see them both again although as it always does when you re-meet people in strange places, it feels a bit surreal. Sadly an attempt to hook up with Rick (from the old Landy days, for those who know about them) the following night failed on logistical terms, but i hope to catch up with him in the next few days. No big deal, as I spent an entertaining evening out with some guys from the hostel instead, more of which to follow. But on the fourth day, came the really odd one. After a small CS meet-up with the excellent Sam and Des, plus visiting Kiriyaki, a trawl around the Weekend market and watching in bemusement as Kiriyaki (who owns a clothing store in Greece and was on her way home from a fashion show in Korea) started running riot in the market, buying more or less anything she could lay her hands on, I headed into town to hook up with Matt Lavender and a group of his friends.

I don't know if you've ever done it before, but it is undoubtedly a very strange and surreal experience to meet somebody you haven't seen in about 16 years. Especially as you were both 12 when you last met.

I'd randomly come across Matt's website (http://www.geocities.com/fourontour/ ) through another school friend a few years ago. With another friend, he successfully went overland from the UK all the way to Australia, something which many try and most fail to achieve (the other two guys of the four had to fly out from SEA to Australia) due to the last leg from Indonesia. They had even done the same Zarubino - Sokcho ferry ride, something rarely attempted by travellers, although obviously at a better time of year... Anyhow, I'd got back in touch, we'd traded a few emails, and as he was now living in Thailand had agreed to meet up when (if?) i ever made it that far.

Amazingly, and against most peoples expectations - especially mine - i actually had.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, conversation was slightly different to our last meet. Whilst i can't remember in the slightest what we talked about last time I'm fairly sure that items such as "fancy another beer?", "look at the knockers on that slapper" and "impressive distance on that Banana" probably weren't amongst them.

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One of Matt's friends was leaving, so a group of them had come up to Bangkok for a going away party. As with the previous nights outing ************** *********** ****** ****************** ******** ********** ************ ************* **************** ********* very messy stuff. ************** *********** ****** ****************** ******** ********** ************ ************* **************** ********* ************** *********** ****** ****************** ******** ********** ************ ************* **************** ********* although it should be noted that ************** *********** ****** ****************** ******** ********** ************ ************* **************** ********* ****** Eeeeek! ************** *********** ****** ****************** ******** ********** ************ ************* **************** *********************** *********** ****** ****************** ******** ********** ************ ************* **************** ********* Surely, that has to hurt. ************** *********** ****** ****************** ******** ********** ************ ************* **************** ********* ************** *********** ****** ****************** ******** ********** ************ ************* **************** ********* ************** *********** ****** ****************** ******** ********** *****It's very impressive what can be achieved with so simple a prop. ************** *********** ****** ****************** ******** ********** ************ ************* **************** ********* ************** *********** ****** ****************** ******** ********** ************ ************* **************** ********* *** ************** *********** ****** ****************** ******** ********** but it didn't really turn out like that. Funnily enough, ************** *********** ****** ****************** ******** ********** ************ ************* **************** ********* ************** *********** ****** ****************** ******** ********** ************ ************* **************** ********* and physiologically I'm fairly sure it's an impossibility ************** *********** ****** ****************** ******** ********** ************ ************* **************** *********************** *********** ****** ****************** ******** ********** ************ ************* **************** ********* ************** *********** ****** ****************** ******** ********** ************ ************* **************** ********* and to top that episode off, Pompey have even pulled off a miraculous come back and are staying up. ************** *********** ****** ****************** ******** ********** ************ ************* **************** ********* ************** *********** ****** ****************** ******** ********** ************ ************* **************** ********* Following on, she ************** *********** ****** ****************** ******** ********** ************ ************* **************** ********* ************** *********** ****** ****************** ******** ********** ************ ************* and from there on in, it was pretty much all downhill ***************************** ********************* ************** *********** ****** ****************** ******** ********** ************ ************* **************** *********************** *********** ****** ****************** ******** ********** ************ ************* **************** ********* Indian TV star who just happened ******** **************** ******************** ****************** *********** ****** ****************** ******** ********** ************ ************* **************** ******************************* Don't ask. *************************** ************************************ ******** ************** *********** ****** ****************** ******** ********** ************ ************* **************** ********* but it must be said that despite all that, and the vast reputation it has, to me (and no, i am in no way an expert) I was disappointed by just how tame and conventional most of the stuff was. Bangkok has a huge reputation, but on current evidence, it no longer really lives up to it.

I ended the night on my now strangely traditional efforts to help somebody. I had met a couple of young Scandinavian girls in Cambodia and agreed we should meet up in Bangkok again if possible. What i wasn't expecting was the 5am hysterical and incoherent phone call. One of the girls, who shall remain nameless, had somehow manged to loose the others after she went outside for a little, coming back to find the bar now shut and no friends. Or bag/money/key etc. After about 30mins of drunken stumbling, she had made it back to the hotel, to be told by the security guard that whilst she had been staying there, did she not remember checking out that morning and moving somewhere else? Now having lost the plot completely and then a shoe to boot (sorry), wandering around hopelessly lost and alone in tears, she had come across a group of drunken lads, who in their efforts to help had seemingly been more friendly than she would have liked.

She had managed to get to a police box, who had laughed at her story and kicked her out into the street. And perhaps unsurprisingly she'd really lost it at that point. 30mins after the phone call, I eventually found her curled up in a corner of a garbage skip on a side street in something of a state. Much coaxing later and we got her out of the skip, calmed a bit, water and food in to her, and with a bit of a plan. Proceeding then to knock on virtually every guest house in a 300metre radius of KSR looking for her new abode, until amazingly running into one of the other girls at about 7.30am, who realising she hadn't returned and had no bag, had set out to find her.

I think she'll be OK, but it will take some time. So much about travelling is great, but there are always things that happen which jolt you back into the sad reality that real life continues, and incidents do occur.

The horrors of Khao San Road at night

Catching up with an assortment of folks remains copyright of the author Gelli, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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Ouch.

Monks heading to the temple

But who am I to let a little pain get in my way. I have things to see and do, gawd damned it. Despite a chunk of pain, i managed to haul myself enough to spend a day around town. I watched a procession of monks, visited the National Museum (which concentrates mostly on artifacts instead of propaganda and the wars) and Royal Palace/Silver Pagoda (very pretty, if slightly overdone in places)n and retrieving my passport complete with visa. I can say that of all the embassies and consulates that i have ever dealt with in the world - and that's a fair chunk - the Russian consulate in Phnom Penh has been by far the easiest and most friendly, and is highly recommended to anybody. Especially when you compare it to the normal Russian/former soviet embassy experience. It's stunning.

The Royal Palace (above) and Silver Pagoda, below

I also got to the Independence monument, cool central market (a great art deco building), and had the now inevitable monkey incident. What is it with Monkeys this year?! Don't they know that it's the year of the dog?? At Wat Phnom, a large Wat on a small hillock in the middle of a large roundabout, fairly large Monkeys were wandering all around and enjoying themselves. A couple of female tourists appeared to stare too intently at one of the larger ones, who freaked and came and tried to grab one of the girls bag and camera. They shrieked, and with one monkey still grabbing on to her back, ran. Towards me. Great. So i ended up with several monkeys headed towards me making lots of noise, and two shrieking girls a couple of metres behind, using me as a partial screen whilst trying to remove the persistent monkey from one girls back. I managed to grab it off and get it away without a bite or scratch (although i yanked my neck in a direction which it REALLY didn't like), although by that point I then had a good couple of dozen advancing towards us. I more or less decided at that point that I had exhausted the possibilities of Wat Phnom and with my neck really hurting, hurriedly left taking the girls with me.

Central Market

And randomly, and very oddly, the Cambodian queen looks scarily like Queen Elizabeth II. Actually, the first time I saw a photo it was on the Queen's birthday, and my first thought was that they were showing a photo of her in her younger days, before i realised who it actually was.

Independence Monument

It's a shame that I've had such a short time in Cambodia. From what I've seen, i really like the country. However, I would need at least 3 or 4 weeks to do it even vaguely justice, and have ended up with 1, of which a few days have been written off due to traveling to hand in passports etc, and one which i was in too much pain to take full advantage. Phnom Penh is a cool city, and i think i could happily live there for a while. The mosquitoes around the lake are annoying, but otherwise it's a great little place, and the only city I have so far come across where elephants wander around and up and down roads entirely unattended. A vaguely surreal, but very cool sight.

The food in this country is amazing. I could quite happily live off Khmer food for a while, especially Lok Lak (sliced beef and veggies in an oyster sauce with rice) and Amok (a kind of fish soup). I will seriously miss both, and will have to add them to my list of foods to source at European restaurants. Deep fried tarantula had to be tried, and whilst it's ok (although the juice which oozes out when you bite into it is disconcerting) and I'd eat it again, it won't be the end of the world if I don't. But another random local culinary speciality added to my ever increasing list of strange things that I have eaten.

But sadly, and without further ado, I'm leaving. On a 13hour bus ride (yes, despite the protestations in BKK, i did indeed prove that there are direct BKK - pp buses, and several of them each day) back to Bangkok, with the aim of discovering whether their hospitals are as good as everybody makes them out to be.

Local transport in Cambodia

Another explosion, and the now inevitable monkey incident remains copyright of the author Gelli, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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Nuff said.

Angkor remains copyright of the author Gelli, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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Mistakes like that should never be repeated. My first task now will be to go out and buy a dozen sets of batteries in order to make sure I'm never caught short again. Some things need pictures to be believable and sadly, i have none.

Sometimes, being a little adventurous doesn't pay off quite as planned.

To save myself the 4usd bus fare (and for some variety, having spent most of the last week on buses), i decided to hitch back to PP. There are lots of local transports, and i figured that even if it cost me a couple of dollars and a couple of hours longer, the experience and variety would certainly be worth it. I got a moto to the edge of town, then started walking, awaiting the inevitable pickup or minivan. Barely 5mins later, and a Toyota minivan (of the 8 seat variety) pulls up, and offers to take me all the way for 50cents. Great news. So ignoring the 22 passengers in the van, I climb on to the roof to sit on top of a precariously high pile of assorted luggage (including 3 motorcycles), along with 7 others and off we go.

In many countries, manufacturers seating capacity and number of passengers conveyed are not exactly the same. One of my favourite memories of Morocco was a Mercedes taxi which had 9 of us in the back seat, plus 3 in the passenger seat, and then we watched half amused and half incredulous as a final passenger got in, sitting between the driver and the drivers door. In Cambodia, a simple pick-up can have 5 in the cab, and up to 30 or so standing in the back and sitting on the small roof. And so in something already designed to carry 8 passengers, 30 or so plus all their luggage and a few motorcycles isn't actually much of a big deal. All was great for the first three hours or so. The locals delighted in having the farang - or Gaijin, in Japanese - on the roof, and we laughed happily and traded snacks whilst whistling through the wind. It was at a moment not unlike that that we rounded a corner whilst being overtaken by a bus to discover 3 lanes of traffic (plus a couple of cyclists) heading towards us. My maths has never been that great - to all those who remember my exploits whilst trying to pass (on 9 occasions) 'Mathematical basis of cartography' will know what I mean - but even I can work out that 5.5 into 2 doesn't really go all that well, and that something had to give.

To cut a long story short, together with a car (which was the middle of the three lanes bearing down on us) we drew the fold card. Sitting so high on the roof (i was probably 3.5metres in the air) gave me an excellent view of the impending situation, and after a split second analysis of my options - the passing bus was rejected as it shot past quickly as we slammed the brakes on, and i didn't fancy jumping into the truck heading the opposite direction - did the obvious. More or less in tandem with two of the other roof passengers, I jumped off the side of van, aiming just to get as much distance between me and the inevitable collision and praying like hell that I would miss the tree (i grazed it) and that the ground would be soft enough (i got covered in cow sh1t) not to break too many bones.

I'm not entirely sure what happened in the next few seconds, as things were happening extremely quickly in all directions and I possibly blacked out for a second or two. However i do remember there was a couple of huge crunching and banging noises, rolling over to look up and seeing a huge cow standing over me looking down curiously, seeing a bus disappear at speed towards PP and a lorry and minivan towards SR. A cyclist had stopped by the roadside and was looking bemused, and a couple of motos and some locals were fast approaching excitedly. The car was on it's side down in a ditch on the other side of the road having embedded in a tree, whilst the van that I had been on, was perched at an unlikely angle of about 70degrees against another tree, having shed it's load completely and careered down a metre high embankment and through a small pond. One of my fellow roof passengers was hanging in the tree, a couple were on the floor (one spread eagled under a large suitcase, looking like something out of a Wile-e-kyote cartoon), the rest nowhere to be seen.

I pondered my situation a little. I could see that the car passengers were being helped out and seemed to be mostly OK. So after managing to scare the cow away enough that i could move, and investigating my body (I still have the requisite number of limbs in approximately the correct number of pieces, although much of me hurts like heck) I forced my way up, wiped some of the sh1t off me and staggered over to the van.

What happened next was utterly astonishing.

Completely on queue and in perfect unison, bodies appeared out of the windows on the left hand side of the van and with a couple of locals arriving perfectly to push, the sudden shift of weight righted the van. 10 seconds later, the engine started and the driver drove up to the road. Everybody got out, looking a bit dazed, and shook themselves off. A little blood, a little crying. Nothing more. The van had been so packed that there was no room for people inside to actually fall around, and as it hadn't toppled completely (although how it didn't topple falling down the embankment, i have no idea), there were no serious injuries. Luggage was recollected from it's scattered place over the field. The boot was bent back in to place. The guy dropped out of the tree. Those missing from the roof magically appeared off the grass, and although we all had a few bruises, all were mostly fine if shaken. The motorcycles (one now utterly fecked), bags and crates were hauled back up and reattached to the roof, everybody re-boarded. With nothing more to do, and no camera to use, I got back on to the roof.

Thus barely 5minutes after we had all nearly died a messy death, to the cheers of locals and some utterly, utterly bemused cows wondering what all the fuss was about, leaving a wrecked car on its side in a ditch, we were barreling back down the road towards PP. Albeit in a somewhat bashed up van (the right hand side of the van was, shall we say, not in pristine condition anymore...) and with more black smoke bellowing out than is possibly healthy. We even caught and passed the offending bus to a chorus of waves and beeping.

Excepting a small crash where we knocked over a (riderless) moped, we reached Phnom Penh without incident.

A minibus similar to the one I had to jump from, if not quite as full as my one, in the streets of Phnom Penh

When hitch hiking goes slightly skewiff... remains copyright of the author Gelli, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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