Thursday 28 February 2013

Vomming Up Chocolate Rabbits

Washed my hands of mocks with the passing of maths paper two (which, thanks to a reclaimed yoga-come-geography room and a shoeless co-year went better than expected) on Wednesday at 10:33am. Roughly. Though having intended to run away to central as soon as permissible, I decided to charge my iPod and wait for free lunch first. 

Then I ran away to Mong Kok, and bought 4 shirts, each more garish than the last, a pair of boots that were slightly too small and made for a petite Italian man but totes fab nonetheless and a skirt or two. Boots aside, all that was about a fiver (yoyos wise). All to that "Mojo presents...Beloved" compilation CD dad got free a few years ago. Got a black and white film (cause I'm really hip) from SimCity, that great 5 story eclectic emporium of camera shops and sex shops. And an egg waffle. Bumming around MK was much overdue, though the humidity is picking up and I got dripped on a fair few times by those mirthless aircons. 









I got back to school fairly early (about 4ish) then went on a friend hunt, sequentially by room of course: Paloma, Lau, Beata, Dilly - until finally I had to settle for Hetzy, comatose on her bed. We made it to Ma On Shan, I had another of those heavenly HK$8 apple pies. And mango sago. Went to the promenade, were mega deep then walked back to school. I picked up a parcel from the general office with seconds to go before uploading the Nigerian CD it contained and devouring the contents (namely a chocolate bunny wabwab) over an erratic putlocker Juno. If you, as I, have not seen it since bebo was still a thing then go watch it. Morgan interrupted halfway through to deal with the realisation that she is becoming slowly more and more bitter. We listened to the soundtrack and moaned together. I lent her the Bart Simpson jumper to cheer her up.


After check in (with 15 minutes of Juno to go) I went to the gym where all of the post-mocks chub second years were de-chubbing with varying success. No lie there were about 15 people in there. Unfortunately after 20 odd minutes of girly cardio, I went to get a glass of water downstairs and vommed up a chocolate wabbit. Pleasant. I decided to call it a day and mooched back to ma chambre, until I decided that I had not quite satisfied my moaning quota for the day and called up Morgan to go whinge some more. Got back to my corner at midnight, and was just settling down for a nice as-many-hours-as-I-wanted kip, when I remembered that I'd only done gone promised Parker that I'd go swimming with him at 6 in the sea. I valiantly set my alarm for 05:45.

Thankfully (?) I had a broken sleep so it was fairly easy to get up. Starfish was less foreboding than last time, and the inky blackness was less so - though the phytoplankton were mysteriously not present. Nothing like a good dose of e.coli before breakfast anyway. Planning to skim the layers of clothing off my floor and get Heather to cut my hair today. 

H

ps. I made a photography blog for my totes trendy piccies. 

pps. I'm going to Thailand on Saturday isn't that odd and worth noting. Mocks have destroyed my ability to contemplate the future. Let's just hope that this time I don't lose the will to live whilst there.

Saturday 23 February 2013

Readiculous

The can't in my Hannah Can't Read has gone. I have my reasons. My 15 year old sister (though perpetually the cooler of the Reads I hasten to assure you) recently changed her facebook name to Clodagh Readiculous. Being a mature 18 year old who buys expensive cheese as a manic act of opulence on the mid mock weekend, the can't was already on its last legs. Upon the incidence of the family bad pun integrated facebook name spot becoming taken, well, it was a tough goodbye but not quite equatable to the Bridget Jones emotion spectrum.


Opulence and project hot breakings (I have two MOS apple pies and mindless yoghurt popping bubba fro-yo to hold accountable for that plural) aside, this weekend has been glorious. Heather taught me the intricacies of her culture (lol poi) and took photos of the awful faces I pull when I'm concentrating. It was lots of fun and I did no maths at all and she did no Chinese and we cut up a bikini we found in the art room to make me a set. I accidentally took a video of us and though its a 7 minute gem of Heather burning her hands on molten nylon and me aimlessly twirling a single poi yoke around happy as Larry to the Arctic Monkeys' Favourite Worst Nightmare, it would probably be perceived by those who do not have 7 minutes spare to watch a poor quality video of a humdrum wad of nothing as a right hape of shite. 




It being a very sunny day and I bumming around with hetzy and then making good aul wholesome food with dilly and laurita made me do all my summer daydreaming. The kind of February ERMAHGERDSUMMERRR will be da bestest bring on july 2kaii13 lad kinda feels. I'm buzzin to get back to Bulmers and baths and Bulmers in the bath and drinking MILK from the carton like the bogger I truly am. These dreams of Centra own brand low fat two litre bottles have to be accompanied by some kind of choons and mar sin I have been enjoying the birthday playlist I made for the most reverend queen of eyebrows traytray-d and also a Jape//David Kitt binge the past few days. 

Pure claaaaaaaaass.

Thursday 21 February 2013

Study Time with Hannah and Glenda!

A week into mocks, I feel qualified to share with you the observations I have made on how to study most effectively. The undisputed powerhouse of the boy's floor of block two, room 2/307 teaches you how to prepare for (the rest of) your mocks with their tried and tested 5-point-plan.

1. Be hot. Motivational posters and roomie gym sessions are in order.

2. Drop one of your sciences to standard, for more effective cramming!

3. Stay nourished. Have a Singapore-visiting first year roomie to provide chocolate 24/7

4. We have found that by groaning about the sheer volume of work left to battle through, one absorbs all the information!

5. It's all about set-up: Study horizontally and sporadically, in a tidy and fresh working zone to maximize productivity! We have found beds to be ideal working spaces.





Happy studying!

Tuesday 19 February 2013

desert island discs

A couple of posts ago, I mentioned how my 47 year old self was big into BBC Radio 4, where youth goes to die. Now every Sunday morning there's a programme called Desert Island Discs, where "castaways" have to choose 8 records they'd like to take with them to this hypothetical island. In preparation for when I'm a has-been celebrity (so that'd be shortly before appearing on Strictly Come Dancing) I've got my own 8-track playlist at the ready. It's fairly tough to whittle down to 8, and at the tender age of 18 it's probably subject to a lot of future changes, but this is it in its glory ag an am seo.

1. Seven Days in the Sun - Feeder




First exposed to this song in the summer of '01 as an impressionable 6 year old, on the Smash Hits Summer 2001 album, it has remained a firm favourite. I had the opportunity to see Feeder last summer, where they played anything but this no one wants to hear your new album i was 6 when you were big.

2. Sit Right Down - Toots and the Maytals




The first of the "I like this cause Daddy does" tracks. Strange that a Jamaican Reggae band from the 60s should remind me of home, but this whacks of the kitchen on any given Wednesday evening (only if played at maximum volume and sung along to).

3. Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground - The White Stripes



I think at some point in the early stages of my development I was brainwashed into loving Jack and Meg unconditionally. For the life of me I cannot think of a better band. Though all are masterpieces in their own right, I like this one cause it's ballsy, and has the best ever recorded reverb after the "every breath that is in your lungs is a tiny little gift to me" bit.

4. All Night Long - David Kitt




Even though the "Small Moments" CD in our house is dedicated to baby Clodagh and not ratty toddler Hannah, I got the David Kitt bug. Saw him in Thomastown a few years ago but it was only over the summer when I found the CDs to complete the collection in the library that I became a proper Kittphile. Got my own copy of this in the post today, and "All Night Long" gets under my skin.

5. Going Up the Country - Canned Heat




Songs that accompany adventures are always the best. I'm a sucker for basslines too, and this one's just so...MEATY.

6. That Old Pair of Jeans - Fatboy Slim




Saw Norman Cook once too, but that was when he was going into Langtons so it's not quite the same. Regardless,  I love this one not only for the bass (that always helps) but for the wobtwangywobwob bit near the end and the lurks.

7. Hope There's Someone - Antony and the Johnsons




Dad played Hope There's Someone from the office when I was about 12, and I thought it was the worst thing I'd ever had to endure. I seem to remember trying to be positive about the bit with the angry piano chords. When Dad had two tickets to go see A&tJ in Belfast but no friends, the tough choice came down to me or mum, and I won the eenie-meenie-miney. A few years of processing and now look at where this has ended up in my esteem.

8. Wild is the Wind - Nina Simone




I first heard this on the Kinky Boots sountrack, as the bit where he gets in the car and it's all love me love me looouuuvvv meeeeee. Incredible voice is a shameful description. dis mah favourite.


In convention with Desert Island Discs, I am allowed to choose one book and one luxury item. The book will have to be Tess of the D'Ubervilles by Thomas Hardy cause I'm hip lyk dat, and the luxury item is Reese's peanut cups cause they have both fast release and slow release energy, making for a pleasant and wholesome dining experience. 




Songs that were narrowly cut include: Tainted Love - Soft Cell, Going On - Gnarls Barkley, Poor Howard - Leadbelly, Trampoline - Bellx1, Bigmouth Strikes Again - The Smiths, Ballrooms of Mars - T. Rex,  Freak Off - Orchestra Harlow, You Only Live Once - The Strokes, XXXO - M.I.A., The Only One - The Black Keys, Laundry Room - Nirvana and Heard that you Were Dead - The Bluetones.





Sunday 17 February 2013

Ode to Sophia



This Christmas I was bumming around South East Asia with Madison Melton: romantic sap extraordinaire and Dorte Oretega Neumeister: college essay procrastinator extraordinaire. 

I'm not too sure how this came about, but I was in great demand for Christmas trips across the board and this one with it's small righteous American and cooler-than-me Ecuadorian covering 6 countries in 3 weeks was the most appealing, and so I ended up in Dorte's room about a month before trawling trip advisor with an excitable Maddie throwing her credit card deets at every cockroach ridden hostel we could find (hi maddie you will be caricatured throughout for humour value kthnxbai).

Christmas was soon upon us and straight after school on the 14th of December we packed our bags with clean knickers, plasters and even Maddie brought a towel. Marching out of school and onward to adventure, we - oh wait Hannah forgot her camera. We eventually wound up on the east rail line, the concentration of mainlanders and noise increasing as we drew closer towards Lo Wu. Still relatively clean at this point we managed to get through the border to Shenzhen with little difficulty and a good few stamps. Backpacks in tow we had our first beef noodle soup from a small shop across the road from the bus station before trekking back and forth between various bus stations late at night with the wrong kind of (or so Maddie said - I am doubtful ever since the pork bun china week incident). I was freaking out at the prospect of things failing miserably on day one, Dorte was radiating Ecuadorian peace vibes and Maddie was ecstatic that her masterplan to get us stuck in China was being realised. We did eventually make it onto our sleeper bus, sharing our one bottle of water, some gum and our first packet of oreos. That was the most comfortable night's sleep I had the entire holiday and I woke up bouncing along the road to Nanning in time to write Clody a letter and read some of Jonathan Raban's Driving Home. 




The next day we pulled into Nanning, bought some dirt cheap buns, made some insanely excited friends on the bus we took to get to the train station and then sat in Dico's (rip off KFC China style) for about 5 hours. This was interspersed with trips to the toilet, purchases of kilos and kilos of mandarins and furry lychees, pot noodles and photoshoots with starstruck Chinese. As well as a 40minute long Uno battle to the grave. The train, though in the end one of our most luxurious modes of transportation, was at first glance a rather tight squeeze. We played big 2 and Maddie kept winning. Maddie and I drank our pot noodle soup and Dorte avoided the inevitable carcinogens of doing so. The train was headed from Nanning to Hanoi which meant that there was going to be a late night border crossing. We were rudely awaken by a skeletal man in a foreboding uniform banging on our compartment which we shared with a chinese man and woman yelling PASSPORT. So naturally we handed over our passports for fear of our lives. I managed to nod off again before there was another knock and we were ushered (or rudely forced) off the train to sit in a cold room with a load of disgruntled strangers. I nearly shat myself when I realised I'd left my passport on the train and would have to walk past the heartless zombie guards to reclaim it. Maddie and Dorte can vouch for that. That border crossing over, we had a few more hours of disturbed sleep on the train (not for Maddie, the log child) before pulling into Hanoi at roughly 5 in the morning with only Dorte’s well remembered 100RMB changed into Vietnamese dong. This unfortunately was not enough to make it the few kilometres to our hostel by taxi so we paired up with an Indonesian and had an “issue” upon arriving at our hostel at 5:30 without the means to pay for the taxi. After trying the atms over and over and cursing the uselessness of Hong Kong dollars we threw some RMB at him and ran away, tripping over some stray dogs on the way. Ringing the bell of the hostel with a certain degree of trepidation warranted a sleepy looking face appearing from behind the rising metal shutter and shooing us from the Friendly Backpacker’s Hostel to the Elizabeth Hotel across the road. We brushed our teeth and washed our faces for the first time in what was an unhygienic amount of time (the first of many) and shared computer time between myself and Dorte; Maddie passed out peacefully on the only couch in the lobby aside from the one the concierge was drooling on. At 7 we were promised free breakfast and I flipped, pulling the IT’S ALL A TRAP THEY WANT OUR MONEY disgruntled white tourist card. Turns out they were actually being incredibly hospitable and in the end I had two delicious fried egg baguettes and a hape of dragon fruit.







We bummed around the lobby of the Friendly Backpacker’s hostel for a while until we could check in then bounded up the stairs and had showers. These showers were somewhat ethereal; in the water stained mirror one could watch the dirt peel away until one had changed colour. Magic. We talked for a short while with the a dirty Londonese motorbike enthusiast and a Russian girl who clinged to his every word and was on her way to buy a motorbike before heading out to Hanoi for a walk. The few days we spent in Hanoi were some of the best; drinking mango shakes on plastic stools in a church square, walking around the lake and the old quarter trying to find the cheapest backpack, eating pho and drinking tiger beer. And laughing at Maddie as her impoverished children facial infection grew. Maddie and I went to visit Uncle Ho but he was off getting a facial in Russia so we just saw the mausoleum instead. Maddie got scammed by a friendly banana seller and spent about $10 on bananas which I didn’t eat because I was too busy laughing. Everyday was a game of real life Frogger, death defying experiences with every motorbike at every turn for every quest for every cheap kebab. We went to Ha Long Bay on the cheapest day trip we could find, made friends with an American girl over our disgust for the halfway stops to marble statue workshops where a packet of m&ms would set you back as much as we’d paid for the bus journey itself. Ha Long was, of course, stunning, and the seafood on the boat wasn’t bad either. We bumped into the Indonesian we’d shared a taxi with and the Chinese lady who’d been on our train whilst kayaking through caves we refused to pay for. The massive cave we stopped at was lit like a Filipino club but that made the experience all the better, if lacking in some Cher. The tiny minibus seemed to take years to make the torturous journey back to Hanoi but we held out on the gold plated m&ms with the promise of a kebab and a good old can of Tiger on our valiant return.













We took an overnight train to Danang to get to Hoi An from Hanoi, which arrived at 5am. Or 6am. Or shit why aren’t we there yet it’s 8am. Hey Mr, DANANG? IS THIS DANANG? HAVE WE MISSED IT? No miss, no miss, keep waiting. Hey guys I think we’ve missed it. It’s 11am. We’ll just skip Hoi An and go straight to Ho Chi Minh. …Oh wait Maddie read the schedule wrong. We get in at 1. So we got in at 1, where we were accosted by a pretentious English guy trying to find someone to share his mini bus with. Dorte was convinced that we would get trafficked, but Maddie “Students Against Slavery” Melton and Hannah “Common Sense” Read persuaded her otherwise and we got a darn good deal, whizzing past the abandoned resorts lining the coast to Hoi An. We were only in Hoi An for a night, staying at the Loc Phat homestay. The minibus driver was a friend of the woman who owned the house and got her helper to collect us from the end of the dirty lane where we walked to the lime house and she offered us sacrificial guavas from the shrine in the living room. We borrowed bikes and cycled the 15 minutes to the waterfront where we drank overpriced coconuts and Dorte bought a dress. We headed back so that Dorte could have her “about to kill us nap”, showered and got ready to head back out for dinner. It was pouring with rain but I persisted that we cycle to the waterfront again where I could relive my garlic fried fish of two years previous. Soaked to the bone we ate, and even had a dessert of banana pancakes. We managed to get back albeit bedraggled, had an excellent sleep and woke up the next morning to go and get breakfast again on bikes. Dorte headed back to be a common app slave whilst Maddie and I temple hopped and stocked up on nutritious supplies for the forthcoming journey to Ho Chi Minh. 3 packets of Ritz crackers, and two of Oreos.










This next 17 hour train journey was fraught with obnoxiously loud milk adverts, one of which used a digitalised version of “If you’re happy and you know it”. By 3am I could have destroyed that television but was held back only by the distraction at the end of our carriage of a fist fight going on between someone who wanted their seat pushed back and someone who didn’t. With strangers’ hands and feet peeking through all and any gaps between the seats I was surprised that not everyone was going beserk at each other. From the train station in Ho Chi Minh we got motorbikes to our hostel, Dorte falling asleep with boredom and Maddie squealing with delight at every roundabout. Here was another early morning hostel crash, and we lay on the floor of the lobby with another three displaced travellers until 8 waiting for a free room. I read my book against the vending machine, Maddie again lucked out with the couch and the fan. The room wasn’t ready by the time our stomachs were digesting themselves and they weren’t prepared to offer us free breakfast down south so we headed out round the corner to a market where we had strange whole shrimp pancake omelette salad things which we pretended to like for each other but didn’t in retrospect. There were these skinned live zombie frogs with no faces for sale which were easily the best creatures I’ve ever seen. In Ho Chi Minh we went to the war museum, didn’t make it into the church on time, couldn’t afford the Reunification Palace, used the posh toilets in a department store, as well as visited a few generic touristy markets where we may well have been in the Ladies Market in Mong Kok. The war museum was a fairly shocking experience, in the Agent Orange section there was a foetus in a glass case which as you can probably imagine was a fairly hard hitting installation so to speak. Paying our entry in also meant that we had to budget fairly hard and share a single small bag of chips and rely of a two litre of 7up to sustain ourselves (ok just me). The next day we visited the post office and I sent letters to the fam before we headed to the Ho Chi Minh museum which was quite closed. From here we strode to the army surplus market, where I battled for a naff Buddhist flashing wall light for Dad’s Christmas present along the way. The army surplus was a mass of corrugated iron and dusty uniforms with fake veteran Zippos and old black and white photos in heaps for rows on end. Easily the best part of Ho Chi Minh, it was pretty surreal. It certainly beat watching  the scottish guy in our room with 3 girls’ names tattooed on him groan with a 3 day long hangover  or the fat guy in our hostel taking prostitutes up to his room. Madison “Stella and Dave groupie numero uno” Melton wrote a strongly worded indignant letter to him. And kept it to herself.










 We got a coach to Cambodia for our third border crossing. I may well have drawn a Cambodian visa on my passport with a green Crayola pencil than gone to the effort of securing an e-visa but either way the crossing was uneventful – the highlight being the mass produced Korean OAP tourists with perms and pink velour waistcoats. After driving through the insanely flat plains of Cambodia for a few hours we arrived in the mish mash that is Phnom Penh where we fought off the tuktuk drivers only to realise we needed one to get to Amanda’s sex basement (under the guise of a movie house). In the words of mo Dhaidí, "Dutch Movie House Yoga Place sounds like a poor euphemism for brothel". We arrived at the Flicks where Amanda made us the infamous Phnom Penh hotdog – we recreated her iconic photo – and we watched Trading Places and The Nightmare Before Christmas. It was so nice to dance around in socks to Christmas songs and Ramon was an unreal host (despite our concerns for Amanda’s sexual safety). We went to the Russian market the next day and I had the most excellentestly beautiful fried noodles of my life and yet another mango shake whilst the other three drowned in an endless sea of iced coffee. Following this was a trip to the genocide museum, which was more impressive for the setting – an ex-school which had been turned into a prison – than anything else. Photos showing people dead on the beds which were right in front of you and a room full of skulls, some with bullet holes, was enough to keep us morbid up until our next visit to the Killing Fields. This is one of many sites in Cambodia where the Khmer Rouge had murdered hundreds if not thousands of people and buried them in mass graves. The ground at the killing fields was cratered where the bodies below had decomposed. There was a huge monument built in the middle where skulls of the victims had been stacked in a tower. Whilst in there one fell from maybe 20 metres and scraped my nose before smashing at my feet. Permit me some profanities. Poor Dorte had to deal with a hysteric me whilst she was listening to a recollection of how the babies had been murdered. Bear in mind that this was Christmas Eve. That said, there were celebrations to be getting on with and so we returned back to the flicks, helped Manda with les customers and headed out for dinner where we had 3$ juicy fillet steaks and piles of morning glory with unlimited beer. Ramon joined us halfway through and had his own steak before taking us out to a cocktail bar on the Waterfront. We headed back and sat around in the living room, drinking beers from the cinema fridge and getting slowly drunk before we realised it was 2am on Christmas morning, each of us reading or common app-ing. I woke up on Christmas morning with Maddie in the duvet-less double bed beside me and chuckled a bit before sharing out the last of the rationed Quality Streets and beginning to pack up my stuff. We went out with Manda Panda to the bakery and stocked up for our next journey, a bus ride across Cambodia to Siem Reap. 










The journey took 9 hours longer than it really should have done, due to a distinct lack of roads. We pulled into the town and got collected by a tuktuk with our name (okay actually Amanda’s name) on it which took us to our hostel. We had dinner and I skyped les parents from underneath a table in the lobby to wish them a Happy Christmas before heading upstairs to our rooms to crash out in anticipation of getting woken up at 4:30 to go see Angkor Wat in all its glory. Angkor Wat in all its glory was really something quite spectacular, but Dorte pulled a Clodagh and refused to acknowledge that anything was worth waking up before sunrise for until a few weeks later. Even Maddie’s chipper was dim. We played real life Temple Run for a while and hunted down the cheapest 2L bottle of water like it was our mission before heading back into Siem Reap on the tuktuk where we got fish pedicures – it was gross, like hundreds of little cats wiping their sandpapery tongues on you – had more mango stuff and got a delicious meal for 75c of a huge plate of morning glory. Getting back to the hostel I passed out fully clothed and thus forgot to remind Dorte to wake up and do her college apps.







 Our next journey was into the hellish land that is Thailand on a budget. Our bus was (naturally) late but we made it to the world’s most notorious human trafficking border without too much conundrum. Dorte made friends with a Mexican on the way and I made the most of this opportunity to borrow her iPod to fulfill my Gwen Stefani needs (YOU’RE STILL A SUPER HOT FEMALE). But then disaster struck. Maddie was trafficked We had queued for hours in scolding heat in no-man’s land with no food or water waiting to cross into Thailand and when I reached the front I ran through, skipping merrily into the promised holy land of mango sticky rice and hermaphrodites and waited for Dorte and Maddie. But they never came. Whilst I was chilling on my rucksack in the DO NOT LINGER HERE zone, watching drug deals, reading my book and rationing the last of the Oreos, Dorte was being frogmarched back to Cambodia for trying to double passport the border, Maddie “Portable Peer Supporter” Melton on hand. Eventually after threatening deportation to Phnom Penh, Dorte’s woe stricken face made it through by police escort. We didn’t even have to pay for the privilege which must be a bit of an achievement. We waited around at this hellish border for a while more until we managed to get a mini bus that was going to take us to Bangkok with some angry white people. The bus unloaded us a good bit away from our hostel and fairly late at night so we had to get a taxi there. The taxi driver drove us there, saw the state of it and pleaded and begged us to stay elsewhere. Buut it was better than the hellish rat infested alleyway hole we’d imagined so we valiantly walked into a total bumhole. Within two minutes of sitting down and handing over our money to a whacked out dreadlocked French guy to the amusement of the people at the bar and under the nervy stares of the lost Chinese people in the corner, a miserably dressed woman lurched downstairs yelling incoherent accusations and throwing bottles which skimmed past our disinterested feet. I was about to write “we went to bed and fell asleep” but to do so would be a disservice to beds everywhere. I went to plyboard plank on distorted elevated metal frame and forced myself into a state of less than conscious before waking up at three am (ish) thinking hmm, I feel a little bit shite and then realising that BLEURGH all over the door of our 12 metal frame dorm, and, pushing past that BLEURGH all over the corridor outside. Luckily for me, the Overstay is the kind of place one can find abandoned t-shirts and boxes labelled “free clothing” with which to perform a methodical cleaning up, disposing of the rags in the “toilet’s” “bin”. The next morning (after what seemed like years of staring out the window to a Thai life insurance billboard), I managed to grunt at the others that there was no way in hell (Thailand) that I was going to make any effort to move, so for the morning it was me, my “pillow”,the garish graffiti (okay 1 in 4 pieces was impressive) and the lifeless junkies “sleeping” in the “beds” below. By late afternoon I was coerced into leaving by the other two and I managed a jelly fruit pouch from 7/11. We went to the internet café where I mooched around on bookface and the common app slaves slaved on their common apps. That evening we went to Khaosan road, nearly got Maddie a fake ID, got me some braids to tame the fuzz that was the increasingly bird’s nesty blonde lump at the front of my face, and bumped into the Cambodian border Mexican. We sorted out a train and bus to Phuket the next day and it all seemed so very very easy. We tried to find some fabled fireworks and instead found Maddie some cheap plaid shirts, before heading back to the cesspool of why not to do too many drugs kids. The next day we had huge plans to visit all the temples Bangkok had to offer but instead we couldn’t afford them. We did go to the longest reclining Buddha in the world and filled our water bottles from the water fountain at the end though which made the experience well worth the 100baht we paid in. We had strayed slightly from the beaten track on the way there, finding a somewhat haphazard market where I bought a camera case and nearly a novelty landline phone. We went back to Khaosan via a park and a market where I got blueberry Fanta which turned my insides turquoise, and tried to find a t-shirt for Dorte’s brother. Considering the fact the Khaosan Road might as well be called T-shirt Road this was harder than expected. From there we got a taxi to where the train would leave, and Maddie and I took the opportunity to kickstart our international singing careers by butchering Living on a Prayer. The train was fairly grim with hard seats and no way of getting comfortable but whilst Dorte was doing her thang and befriending the Spanish speakers, I did manage to have a listen to Humbug which sent me dozing a little. The American couple sitting opposite Maddie and myself looked on the brink of tears but little did we know how close we would soon be.











I woke up the next day (can you wake up without sleeping?) to find that the train had been delayed about 3 hours, which meant that we’d missed our bus. Getting off at our stop we were assured that this didn’t matter and that we’d just catch the next bus direct to Phuket. So we got on a bus which had an interior like a 70s Dr Who rocketship and which took us all of 5km to a food stop where we wasted money on some nutrition and lamented the crumbling of our holiday. We complained a bit but there were too many Russians and Australians and not enough Americans to make a difference. Eventually we were carted in the back of a pick up truck with 10 too many people another 5km to yet another food stop. Where we stayed for hours. And hours. And hours. Of course, all the while watching other people buy into their messed up business idea of stranding white people on the side of the road with overpriced sandwiches until they give in. We didn’t give in, we just yelled a lot and I nearly hitchhiked to Phuket. Maddie and I lacked angry assertive fathers and Dorte was just killing people with her death ray eyes, whilst everyone else ordered private cars or sat mute. By the time the bus came about 5 hours after we should have arrived in Phuket we weren’t even mildly happy, just emotionless. We reached a travel agency after dark where a quite amiable but condescending transvestite laughed at our plight and Maddie’s indignant snapping. We got a taxi to our hostel which was conveniently situated in the middle of nowhere and left Dorte for dead on the bed whilst Maddie and I ate ready meals from the  7/11 petrol station down the road. The next morning we left for the beach, borrowing the hostel’s towels and fashioning bikini-less Maddie a bikini out of Amanda’s bra that I had. We got a car there and set up shop, hoping to run in Jimmy B, Sarah, Mai and Ana at some point. We didn’t, but it was okay cause we spent a day in the waves, not being able to afford a sun lounger with shade, bought our first proper meal in Thailand (well mine anyway),  made me a sumo wrestler and a turtle and got hideously hideously burnt. The sunburn was unlike any other but we managed to steal some internet from the Scandinavian hotel of choice and get in touch with James who we planned to meet in Patong for NYE. No one would take us there in a tuktuk because of the traffic but eventually we managed to beg and plead with one woman who agreed to take us halfway there and let us walk the rest for a generous fee. We had to comply, and made it to Patong where a French couple were in a tuktuk heading towards the main beach. We joined them and agreed to split the cost and when dropped off the 500 metres later and paying the agreed price that tuktuk driver flipped and was shouting at us for not paying extra per person. He chased after Dorte and grabbed her bag until we managed to get lost in the crowd and some other tourists shouted back at him. We went down Bangla Road with its mass produced scenes of debauchery and found James and his sister and friend. After one beer each Maddie and Dorte had both thrown up from the effects of not eating properly for a few days and sunstroke. By the time midnight and the new year rolled around we were destroyed wrecks of past human beings,I carrying Maddie around and all of us slathering aloe vera on each other (which I later found I was allergic to) and trying valiantly to smile amidst the ping pong shows and silly string. Though the (ingenious) plan had been to stay out all night, not book a hostel and then head back to the hostel we had stayed at the night before to get a bus to the train station to escape the god awful country in the morning, we had to give in and admit that we really needed to sleep. We had no other option than to get a tuktuk back to the hostel we had stayed at, Maddie lying comatose on one side covered in her ratty white towel, Dorte and I sore and silent. We reached the hostel and snuck in the back, finding refuge in a single toilet cubicle, and sat in the puddle by the little hose on my shoes only in my underwear cause clothes were too painful to wear, Dorte on the toilet seat and Maddie shivering in the other corner. After a few minutes Dorte rightfully pulled a “fuck this shit” and left, leaving the two of us in anticipation of the other’s inevitable panic attack. We heard voices talking about someone being found and Maddie flipped out about being caught for trespassing and taken to the Thai police and so being on the lookout for Dorte we snuck out of the hostel (this is about 2:30am) and walked to the 7/11 where we took turns trying to sleep on the benches outside, powering through a packet of chewing gum and being hassled by stray dogs. I couldn’t sleep at all and I was in agony, Maddie throwing up black bile in the squat toilet round the back. Every so often I’d check the time on the credit card machine in the petrol station; 2:45, 3:42, 5:17, until 6:45 when we walked back petrified to the hostel to find Dorte, who had spent the night in a slightly more spacious toilet downstairs. The hostel woman was raging because we’d lost her towels, I had a personal crisis because I was a good-for-nothing towel stealer until we paid her off in return for a few minutes of internet to let Sophia know we were planning to arrive into Kuala Lumpur the next morning. We went out to the end of the lane to wait for the mini bus to take us to the train station. We had a mightily important train to catch in order not to be homeless and totally broke and, worst of all, in Thailand. 15 minutes, half an hour, an hour ticked past, marking the gradual loss of all resolve and faith in humanity. The bus came eventually, and we begged them to take us to Hat Yai in time for our train. The driver looked fairly incredulous, most likely because he was only going to drop us off at the travel agency. We were ignored as bus after bus went off from the shop until we finally got on another only to be dropped off down the road, picked up again and promised over again that we’d make our train, and picked up one last time. We stopped for lunch at about 1, where the  driver said “Okay now here for 20 minutes then it takes us 3 hours to get to Hat Yai ok?”. Which was really not very okay because our train left at 4. Maddie: PLEASE WE NEED TO BE THERE AT 3:30! Driver: Yes, we get there in three hours! I cried a little under my scarf and didn’t speak, Maddie pleading NO 3 THIRTY. YOU SAID 3 THIRTY. PLEASE. PLEASE. Until Dorte whipped out the Cambodia-Thailand border crossing puppy dog face and the driver looked at an angle to the sky, thought and then time stopped as he wrote 3:40 down on the paper.  My heart was in my throat for the next 2 and a half hours. He drove like god knows what, drifting on the corners of paddy field lanes when the traffic was too much on the main road, zigzagging at 140km/h along the dual carriageway. We made it into a gridlocked Hat Yai at 3:41. Following signs for the bus station we cringed; nonononononononononotraintrainpleasepleasepleasetraintraintrain. At 3:45 we spotted a train track and he pulled into the carpark. The first helpful person in Thailand had just probably just saved our lives. I shook his hand like I ent never shaken anyone’s hand before and we legged it to the station with our rucksacks, our sunburnt backs getting rubbed raw. Sitting on the train at 3:50 it still doesn’t quite seem real. We made it to the Thai Malaysian border in a state of shock. People were lovely to us, even the border control people smiled and we floated back onto the train on a pink fluffy cloud bound for the heaven that is Kuala Lumpur. That night Maddie and Dorte passed out but I seriously must have been fairly shell shocked or sunburnt or cold under the air con that I stayed conscious until we pulled into Kuala Lumpur main station in the early hours of the morning.

<no photos remain of the worst new year of our lives>

We had no ringgit at all to get the light rail to Sophia’s side of town or to get any food – we hadn’t exactly eaten the day before save some cheap fake Oreos – so we fell asleep outside the KFC in the station until we managed to get a little money out to get onto the train, I completely toasted and unable to walk or see straight from 2 hours of no sleep and 5 days of Thailand.  We reached there at about 9, found a payphone and some fried rice and sat down on some cardboard, watching Maddie wake Sophia up on the phone with a voice trying to be light hearted and carefree. Sophia turned up a short while later and had to deal with the most unreal smell (we hadn’t showered since the first night in Phuket and had been in the sea in the meanwhile) and the very sight of us was probably enough to make one’s stomach turn. Regardless, she took us to her house and we showered and recuperated, before we ate. Roti and fried rice and lamb curry and fried chicken and banana roti and sugar roti and cheese roti and mango lassies and orange cake and Hershey’s peanut butter cups and biryani and yoghurt salad and chutney and mangosteens and durian and macaroons and Taiwanese dessert and Froyo and sushi and…probably more food in that one day than I ate in 5 days in Thailand. I had the most delicious sleep and the next day we went to get nasi lemak and iced milo and then met Mustapha in the KLCC shopping mall before heading to the zoo which we couldn’t afford so instead we went on a free monkey safari through the suburbs which was infinitely better. Kuala Lumpur then dissolves into a magical culinary journey complete with running through thunderstorms in pursuit of shaved ice, walks in parks, photos by fountains, kebabs, Turkish ice-cream magicians, snow globe exploits and free birthday donuts and beer for Dorte. Our final leg meant getting up at 3:45 to catch a taxi to the airport. Of course being the cheap eejits we were (the entire trip) we went with AirAsia which meant that they used the cheap terminal and not the one we got the taxi to, so in the end we got a lift with a shady character pretending to be a taxi driver for money but by this stage my “avoid scams to make Daddy proud” resolve was wearing thin. We blew our last bits of money on more donuts and broke plenty of handbaggage rules before boarding our first and last flight of the journey.





h

(This blog post was 5,600 odd words long which is about the amount of kilometres we travelled. Hurhur)