Happy Christmas folks...

So I had a different christmas, my first away from home at the ripe old age of 28. And as such it wasn't a christmas, I talked with the family while huddled in an alcove in the dark and rain on a beach on the other side of the world as they stood around waiting for my whimsical red wine wanderings to end so they could go open their pressies. From the start our little band of away-from-homers made a decent effort to make the occasion christmasy. We opened the day with a smoked salmon, cream cheese and brown bread breakfast, washed down with a cheap Baileys substitute. Seagulls hovered in the wind around us like we were returning trawlers. And us sprawled in the sun, our short sleeved shirts another effort to formalise it all. Then later, in a cave more used to student booze ups than buffet dinners, we served up a christmas fare of boiled ham, potatoes, sweetcorn and peas, pineapple, onions, stuffing and red, red wine. It was quite delicious but for me, try as we might, christmas did not come to the remote beach in New Zealand. For me, christmas is a ten day stretch, if not the whole month of december, where I get to see all those people who I haven't seen, maybe since the previous christmas. And I get to sit around with my big family and make the same jokes we've made for years and which, unlike us perhaps, never seem to grow old.

I am currently road tripping here, with surf boards on the roof and bikes racked to the back, wobbling our way along the coast in a top heavy van. So far the bikes remain unused, their chains rusting in the salty air as we chase the surf. I am new to this surfing game and I suck momentously. The water is head freeze cold, as fresh as the melting ice caps it comes from. I fittingly use a shambles of a wetsuit with some of one leg missing, a hole the size of my fist in the crotch and a sleeveless upper body like a girls one piece swimming costume. To counteract this I wear a hood which isolates me further from the others as I struggle in a very private battle with my board. Catching a wave is all well and good when I can barely sit on the thing. Each time I am swept off it brings the same instant angry frustration as stubbing your toe, and I shout and curse this great unwieldy ironing board I am trying to master. My shouts are impotent, lost in the rumble and ssssssh of the waves and it only makes me all the more exhausted. On occasion sheets of rain sweep across us, the wind whips the white tops up and I feel a little bit homesick, chilled to my core, an Irish winter's day in a New Zealand summer.

On the beach recovering, I watch a couple of small yellow-eyed penguins make their waddling way up the sand dunes. For some reason they remind me of an old married couple struggling back uphill from the shops, the woman leading the way and nattering away about this and that ( "Oooh I see the cormorants are back for christmas, and I have nothing for them..."), the husband patiently, silently walking in her wake, both their heads craning forwards as if crossing a finishing line.

In the evening I watch the sun set behind a small headland, great rays of light, like a snapshot of an explosion, light up the gathered clouds in a pink glow. The faces of the illuminated clouds seem to look into the suns cauldron with awe, its contents hidden tantalisingly from me, where I stand has gone dark and cold. I suspect a man less burdened by facts and figures could spend a fulfilling life trying to see into that cauldron, to see for himself what the clouds hold in such reverence.

I got a rugby ball stuck in the tree where we were camping, the same tree we hung our wetsuits from like upside down scarecrows who agitate in the wind, creepy in the dusk. I threw a variety of small hard objects up the tree to retrieve the ball and not all of them came back down. Occasionally a gust of wind would dislodge one and it would thump down unexpectedly like a rogue coin in those waterfall-coin games at the amusements. Not all of them came down though, and I like to think it is my legacy at that spot. If they do fall, and do hit someone, i can only hope that it is one of those people who feels obliged to leave a legacy of beer bottles and one-use barbecues. I have given Mother Nature the ammunition, it is up to her now.

We ate christmas dinner with a Czech couple. Their traditional christmas dinner involves carp. The carp is often left to swim for several days in the family bath tub to clear the mud out of its gills. Apparently many of the carp are saved by the tearful last minute intervention of the family children, who are unwilling to celebrate christmas by eating their new found friend. I am sure if we did the same with all the animals we eat over christmas there'd me more than a few disgruntled fathers on christmas day, grumbling quietly as they push their sprouts and soy-based ham (Sham) around their plates, while the kids happily charge around the garden slipping in fresh pig shit. Best christmas ever, they'd say.

Christmas down under Down Under

Just to clear up a slight misunderstanding. I am in New Zealand (not Oz), for a Christmas and New Years which will mostly consist of a surfing/mt biking road trip. I landed down on the South Island today and the first smell on leaving the airport was that of freshly cut grass. I thank you.

Aussie Ausbourne

I passed through Singapore. Two nights I spent there and I feel thats long enough to safely condemn the place as a soulless monument to money and malls and politeness, the streets are clean though, well done. I skimmed along the surface entirely unengaged, moving through like a ghost. I walked the streets at midnight with a full rucksack and almost wished someone would mug me. Fortunately I wasn't, and flew on none too soon to Sydney.

I've never had much interest in coming to Australia, unlike many of my fellow countrymen it seems, who proudly roam the streets in their county colours. Sydney, Co. Offaly. H'up the bhoys.

Sydney is a beautiful city but initially I had the same problem as with Singapore, wandering the streets alone watching couples and friends and other lonely people, and only later did I realise that I was wandering the upmarket districts, the Dawson streets and Powerscourt townhouses. I did however manage to find a giant chess game in a park. I watched a bum beat a Lebanese guy, the Lebanese guy was gold strewn and hair slicked, a mover and a shaker, and he did not like to be beaten by a man with dirty jeans. But the bum seemed uncaring of dented egos, instantly absorbed as he was by the next players to take to the board. One was an Asian man dressed like a tourist, an outsider perhaps in a shirt and shorts and socks with sandals, but calm like a clock. His opponent was a cycle courier on lunchbreak who never took off his helmet, as if every move he made was an All-In push. The courier took a slight lead and then just played attrition chess, taking one for one whenever he could. A good general, he won, but obviously not a bring-the-troops-home general. Around these players a bunch of us misfits watched, all males, nodding and hah-ing occasionally to let everyone else know what we knew. And wandering among us a man in his socks, homeless, or the victim of a rugby team prank, young and clean-shaven but edgy enough to make elderly spectators avoid eye contact and hasten away.

Australians are some of the friendliest folk I've met, particularly once you get out of Sydney. This is fortunate as most Aussie lads seem to be built like forges and if they chose to be unfriendly there is very little I could do about it short of pissing myself and threatening to get it all over them. And with most folks here a casual "How's it goin..." isn't a greeting, it's a conversation opener. I've said it a couple of times and when they reply I sometimes look a little put out, in a Ijustwantedabottleofwaternotyourlifestory kinda way. This in turn leads to the brick walls in front of me frowning and my bladder going into empty or exit mode. I have so far escaped unsoiled. So far.

The Aboriginal names for many places are still used (or are now back in use). I reckon when the first explorers arrived they encountered some very stoned young Aborigines. These lads, no doubt struggling valiantly with fits of the giggles, managed to pass off names like Wagga Wagga and Dingalingadong as genuine. They've only stuck with them as an eternal one finger salute to the white man, who has pissed all over them ever since. Where I was in the Blue Mountains the original pioneers found a lot of recent evidence of Aboriginal settlements but no Aborigines, apparently the diseases the pioneers carried had got there before them.

Still, at the tourist spots there is inevitably an Aborigine, body painted, playing a didgeridoo and looking as bushworn as they can. I saw a tiny Japanese woman stood beside one Aborigine for a photo up in the hills. He was a giant of a man, she barely came up to the top of his barrel of a belly. She ooohed nervously in that uniquely Japanese way and he just stood there with this fearsome thousand yard staring out from under his shaggy mass of hair, his mouth hidden in an equally shaggy beard. Two more starkly different human beings I have never seen, and I find it difficult to believe that they could ever treat each other as equal in the eyes of any god.

It is christmas here but it is not. The shop windows have christmas displays and there are christmas trees and decorations in every building. But listening to "A White Christmas" while struggling to apply suncream to that divil-to-reach place between my shoulder blades gives the whole thing a faintly ridiculous air. (I know Ireland is rarely white for christmas but we still seem to have that eternal luxury of hope. Bring on global warming.) I spent a couple of days on the beach and true to form I got sunburnt within an hour. When I took to the water I had to wear a t-shirt to cover my skin, my arms and face were painted white on lobster pink, my beard was grey, and I floundered desperately on my surf board, busy drowning myself. I couldn't have looked more Irish if I'd been eating potato-on-a-stick in a Celtic jersey.

Peektures

A brief burst of colour in Cambodjya then all Ozteralia, mostly the Blue Mts.


















Some mother's son.

Rock agus Roll

I have discovered that I am better than everyone. Princess lured me to Bangkok by promising to put me up in a 5 star hotel for a couple of nights. Nothing like a 5 star hotel to give one a little persective on life, an In-the-rooftop-pool-spitting-down-on-the-proles kind of perspective.

I, in turn, treated the little lady to a McDonalds meal. I even offered to supersize it (fortunately she turned that down, which is good, no one likes a fatty.)

The hotel is one befitting my new found sense of self importance, the kind of place where "Roast Peasant" on the menu is not a typo. The lobby takes about 15 minutes to cross, a cathedral of space with a deep pile carpet running down the centre that you cross like a humpback bridge.

At the reception I lay down the law from the outset. Between my mohawk and Princess' tattoos we look like a rock star couple and I reinforce this by singing a couple of bars of The Summer of '69. They ask me to stop, please sir, you are scaring the other residents and I say dat's what I'm talkin 'bout. I also let it be known that I am not above wandering the corridors in a wife beater and a pair of y-fronts if my demands are not met. The receptionist nods silently, the fear of God in her eyes.

The room is magnificent, everything is leather bound, with a tv as big as a small car. The toilets smell of christmas aftershave.

Being a not insensitive soul I am aware that perhaps my McDonalds does not quite represent a sufficient level of reciprocation for all this grandeur and so I offer to buy Princess dinner. We thusly picnic on the bed, on food bought from the local Carrefour behemoth. She eats gone off "Pre-packaged sushi" and I eat "Duck in sliced bread" washed down with a wine that tastes like it started life as a sock dye. She, being of common roots, is inordinately impressed.

I buy a dvd player in Carrefour, hey big spender. Then I take advantage of their No Quibbles return policy to return it for a full cash refund two days later. Again, that is what I am talking about.


Call logged 20.43
Yeah, this is room 303. One of my slippers appears to have fallen off. I suspect it is somewhere off the end of my bed. Please send someone up to retrieve it.

Call logged 21.07
Hey that last idiot you sent up left my reslippered foot in such a position as it impedes my view of the tv. Please send up someone to rectify this mistake and ensure the offending party is fired or shot.

Call logged 21.39
Your last garcon made eye contact with me. The next employee to do that will feel the blunt end of my bottle of Brut. Do you know who I am you foreign dog? You better start treating me with a bit of respect or I'll put the tv through the fucking window...

Call logged 22.43
I have hurt my back trying to put the tv through the fucking window. Please send up a chiropractor immediately, and two of your most strapping young men to finish the job.

Call logged 00.57
I want another tv, you bastards, and some of that Peasant Kebab with Mint sauce.

Breakfast is a buffet spread across acres of tables. People sit casually spearing melon pieces from their plates, reading newspapers from the world over. I adopt a Last Orders at a Free Bar approach and barely make it back to my table under my platter. On the plate a five course meal jostles for my attention, bacon and eggs, roast potatoes, spanish omelette, danishes etc. I glare around, daring anyone to catch my eye, but they are well trained, these blue-bloods, and maintain focus on their grapefruit juice and Le Monde. Before leaving I stuff my pockets with rare breads and cakes and fill a plastic bag with orange juice. I own you people, I scream, eyes twitching dangerously as I flee the room, a trail of soggy baked goods in my wake.





Rock agus roll. Princess is the one on the left.

Now look what you made me do...

Left to my own devices, and with no-one here to talk any sense into me, I have gone and got my hair shaved into a discreet mohawk. I think when I grow up I am going to be an undercover garda at a punk gig.

"Howya there lads, tis yourselves, havin a mighty time no doubt, anarchy and all that. Meself, I wouldn't mind a bit of the ould waccy baccy, have yis got any, eh? Any of the quare stuff, eh, lads? Or maybe some E's lads, jesus I'd fuckin murder an E, no? Well if yis hear anythin, gis a shout, I'll be just over there havin me a hang sangwich."




Its a bad one but it'll do for the moment. Again, sorry mum.

S-21

S-21 was a school in Cambodia's capital that the Khmer Rouge converted into a detention and interrogation centre during their rule. Entire families were brought here, photographed, tortured then killed. Of the 20,000 men, women and children who passed through, only 7 survived.

It is mostly as it was, bare beds in the interrogation rooms with bolts and chains, the tiny wood and brick cells, the barbed wire coils. Some of the classrooms now contain hundreds and hundreds of black and white photos of the dead.

The place left me with many twisting thoughts but little understanding. Ultimately it was the thoughts of others, overheard or graffiti'd or in the comments book, that helped me to start.

This is a quote from a letter a woman inmate wrote to her husband before she died.

"Its like living among the wolves, who do not know the language of man."

This is the language of man.

"Lucky guys you weren't born in this period."

"Give peace a chance."

"The justice and love of God will be with them."

"Pol Pop, fuckin asshole."

"Where was the world?"

"No oil, no USA."

"Its so unbelievable."

"Left always worse than the right. England forever."

"Sorry."

"The Jews do what they have to do."

"Replace hate with love."

"Puta sucia."

"May you rest in peace."

"We must never forget."

"Hopefully time will help you to forget."

"If this wasn't a concentration camp it would be a pretty nice school."

"Phil loves Lou."

Fuck you Phil.

The Typhoon Tourist

The train contours along slowly, the track etched into the hillside midway between the hilltops and the sea. Every few hundred metres we pass over the fresh scars of landslides, rich turned earth and boulders. We move very, very slowly, as if excessive speed might send us off the unsettled tracks. The sea below is a boiling mass, the rock dotted water yellow and foamy, as if stirred by rolling alligators.

The town of Hoi An was recovering from two typhoons as I plodded my way down towards it and weather reports had been predicting a third to hit within days. In the end this last one turned on its heel and stormed off to sea, a miraculous u-turn to my mind, perhaps in answer to some poor end-of-their-tether believer who begged for a sign, any sign.

In Hoi An itself the sun is hazy and the wind erratic, gusting and whispering in equal measure. Each time the wind dies the palm trees hang limp and exhausted, completely spent. Then it picks up and the leaves resume their desperate horizontal pointing, the tableclothes attempt flight and the many flags ripple and snap proudly. At this stage the serious flooding of a couple of weeks ago has mostly receded, only a small overflow remains by the river. By all accounts even at its worst life continued almost as normal. This in stark contrast to home, where an inch of snow has us at hysteria level Defcon 4 and has the Civil Defense( "To Protect and To Serve soup") escorting cyclists to work.

I book a 24 hour bus to get from Hoi An to Saigon. Unfortunately I have the shits. They insist there is a toilet on the bus but the bus arrives and there is no toilet. I medicate to constipate but I still have a belly like a bag of snakes. I will need a toilet. I try and explain that I will shit myself if I take the bus. The other passengers pretend not to listen to me humiliate myself. They now don't want me on the bus either but the travel agents don't understand. I consider getting a hairnet and some soup to demonstrate the current state of my stomach. Fortunately they quite suddenly refund my ticket without me having to resort to an involuntary dirty protest.

I am on a motorbike taxi out of Hoi An, my bag strapped precariously on the back. We weave our way at speed through the many cyclists in white, as they weave through the many potholes, with their straw hats like sharpened woks. I perch between my bag and the driver, feeling extremely vulnerable, my short shorts getting shorter against the leather seat. My legs, my marlboro whites, show up alarmingly against the rain slicked black road racing by. I should have worn jeans. Forty five minutes of I should have worn jeans.