For a reason, a season or for a lifetime...

When I left England sixteen months ago I had it in my head that I would meet only wonderful people on my travels. I thought that somehow there would be a connection between travellers, a unique bond, some kind of secret, shared knowledge that would allow us all to commune on a higher level than those we left back at home.

All bollocks, of course, as I soon discovered. There are just as many idiots on the road as there are at home. It's all relative of course, I suspect many of these so-called idiots consider me to be an idiot, although you'd surely have to be a bit of an idiot to think that, wouldn't you?

I take it from your silence that you agree with me.

Yes, you'd have to be a complete idiot, like the London geezer who sidled up to me as I was skinning up at a party late one night. He started bragging about how much cocaine he snorted, smoked half my spliff, promptly fucked off and the very next evening called me a prick. How would he know? The coke-addled twit wouldn't let me get a word in edgeways.

Fortunately, my travels over the last month in Thailand and India have afforded me the opportunity to spend time with a lot of lovely people - people that I probably wouldn't get the opportunity to mix with under normal circumstances. For example, during the new year festivities I spent a lot of time hanging around with a group of relative youngsters, guys and girls ranging in age from eighteen to twenty-three. I reckon the only place you could meet teenagers as cool as these characters is in a country like India, on a beach like Palolem, in a place like Tony's Coco Huts.

At the other end of the age spectrum was my old friend Foxy, who joined me on Palolem with his girlfriend Kristine and their friends Stuart and Julie. They proudly held aloft the flag of maturity, experience and restraint. Once my young friends had left the beach and dispersed to various exotic corners of Asia, I was left to pick up the pieces of my sleep-deprived and alcohol fractured mind and body... well, that's what I would have done if I'd had the opportunity. Instead, I embarked on another week-long bender with Foxy and the gang, who, not to put too fine a point on it, turned out to be mentalists and wronguns of the highest order... in the best possible way, of course.

Well, you are as old as you feel, they say. At the conclusion of my time on Palolem Beach I felt about ninety-nine years old and needed a Stannah Stairlift to get up the steps to my hut.

But I digress.

New Years Eve gave me an opportunity to spend time (and yes, okay, party exceedingly hard) with friends old and new, some of whom I suspect I will never see again. This particular night, with its seemingly random and limitless potential for sociability, offers me a fairly convenient platform from which to expound my views on the nature of friendship.

A wise man once said to me, "We all have friends for a reason, a season or for a lifetime". Cute, I know, but it's also quite true. It's something that can be hard to accept - the idea that no matter how much you like someone, no matter how much they like you, no matter how much you have in common and how much experience you share, friends come in and out of your life all the time. When you travel, they sometimes flit through your life at ridiculous speeds. Sometimes you become friends with someone because you need them and they need you, as was the case with double-hard Alon, my Bombay wingman. We were able to support each other through that first stressful day in India, but it never crossed either of our minds to exchange email addresses.

Well, I exchange email addresses with people all the time, but I know that with many of them it is an empty gesture. It isn't even the case that you make a conscious decision to keep in touch with some people and not with others. Co-incidence often seems to dictate whether you will see someone again, whether your relationship will strengthen, whether you will ultimately become friends for a season or longer. Sometimes it's the most unlikely people that you end up bonding with.

Another wise man once said, "Hold onto your friends". It's hard work keeping in contact with people if they're thousands of miles away living different lives and dreaming different dreams! I'm sad to say I've lost people this way. However, there must be a reason why we sometimes lose our friends. At risk of sounding trite I'm going to illustrate my next point with another common saying: When one door closes, another one opens. Our personalities and our relationships are not static, they are forever changing, and we're all changing in different ways. It would be naive to resent someone for not keeping in touch with you if their lives are following a different path to your own.

So what is it that makes someone a friend for a lifetime? Luck surely has a lot to do with it, as do perseverance, acceptance, understanding, forgiveness and not a small amount of faith. Maybe it isn't about the stuff you have in common, it's about accepting the stuff that you don't. I don't really know, so I'll conclude by resorting to one last cliche in an attempt to tie all this rambling speculation up...

Love, of course, is all you need.

This blog entry is dedicated to those people I've passed on the journey and also the guys and girls partying at Tony's on Palolem Beach on New Years Eve. Whether we're friends for a reason, a season or for a lifetime, there will always be a bit of my heart devoted to you.

Keep in touch!

People and places in Thailand and India

I love Penriff

On the day I finished working in Oz I was presented with some gifts by my charming colleagues. One of these gifts was a gorgeous leather journal cover (hand-made by my boss's father) and another was a t-shirt bearing the legend "I love Penriff", Penrith being the west-Sydney location of the company's offices. I said I'd wear the t-shirt throughout my travels but the various strange looks I received on this particular day persuaded me otherwise.


Another experimental temple shot

I thought I might as well throw in a bit of culture. Most of the interesting experiences I've had thus far on this trip have related not to the exotic cultures I'm exploring but to the people I'm meeting - travellers and tourists of every kind. Therefore, most of the photographs I've taken are of people, not places. This is one of the few exceptions.


Fasting buddha

Yes, it's an emaciated Buddha. Whatever.


Grace, Jess and Doug made quite an impression on me

These guys are now travelling together in Vietnam. There was a point when I considered changing my plans and going with them. Grace and Jess possessed such a wonderful sense of freedom that it was difficult not to be attracted to them.


Fiery Jess on Haad Rin beach

We hung out with Thai punk fire-dancers on Haad Rin beach, one of whom had a huge, perfectly maintained mohican and "Sex Pistols" tattooed on his back. Thai punks are amongst the friendliest Thai people that I've met, which might sound quite strange. They may pout menacingly and give you the bird at any opportunity but it's purely a fashion statement. I don't think there is much understanding of the anarchic ideaology of the sub-culture they've chosen to mimic. Having those kinds of beliefs would be quite dangerous in Thailand.


Bangkok wingman

In an unexpected turn of events, Ben from Sydney turned up in Bangkok two days before I left for India. Perfect timing really, as Ben is a charmer-and-a-half and I had just invited Signe and Sofia from Denmark to dinner, and was in need of a wingman. How can I not believe in providence when, in my hour of need, I'm handed a wingman of Ben's callibre?!


Signe, Sofia and a guy whose name I shamefully cannot remember... it might be Toby

Signe and Sofia (who I think looks like the actress Natascha McElhone from The Truman Show) were lovely. Signe was clearly so impressed by our love of Sydney that she went back to Denmark and immediately booked a ticket! Good luck in Oz Signe!


Chubby little Indian

Spaced out and strung out, I drifted in and out of sleep during the flight from Bangkok to Bombay. On one occasion I awoke to find a chubby little Indian teenager staring at me and wobbling his head. Despite the fact that he had a stale sweat issue and was prone to commanding me to repeat Hindi phrases as if I was his houseboy, we got along okay.


Double-hard Alon and I bide our time waiting for the train that will take us to Goa

Alon and I had contrary but complimentary attitudes to our travels in India. At times it felt like we were engaged in some kind of good cop/bad cop routine. We didn't have a lot in common but we helped each other through the a tricky period of adjustment to India.


Dogs on Palolem Beach

Dozens of dogs roam the beach, here and in Thailand. The dogs here are less mangy and more sociable, although they still have all kinds of noisy adventures in the early hours of the morning when everyone is trying to sleep. I love them though. You can be sat up late having a quiet bedtime joint with your pals and suddenly find yourself surrounded by six or seven dogs. All they want to do is chill with you.


The mystery of Sira

On the day I arrived on Palolem Beach I met Sira from Switzerland and her German friend Katarina, who were lovely, remarkable and inspiring girls. Still only about twenty years old, they had just done two months working in an ashram looking after orphans and unwanted children, and were therefore totally feeling the "real" India. I got on particularly well with Sira, so have been quite perplexed by the fact that she's not been in touch. The subtleties of traveller friendships - where they stop and start - are still beyond my grasp.


My friend Jenny relaxing by the pool at the Poussada Tauma "boutique hotel" in Calangute

As a guest of Jenny and her husband Ian, I spent five days in a suite at a posh boutique hotel. It was lovely of course, but can anyone tell me what, exactly, a "boutique hotel" is? I stayed in one, and I'm still none the wiser.


Christmas Day

I spent Christmas Day in charming company, with Jenny and her husband Ian and her mum Gloria. Before dinner Ian and I played pool against the restaurant owner and his friend. I succeeded in losing 9000 rupees of Ian's money on a single shot. Jenny and Ian's driver, Yeash (also pictured), was an amusing chap. On the day he drove me back down to Palolem from Calangute, I desperately tried to find something on my iPod he'd like, as his only request, for Backstreet Boys, I was unable to satisfy. After two hours of failed attempts I pulled it out of the bag with "We Will Rock You", just as we were arriving on Palolem Beach.


Ball-point pen tattoos

I was lucky enough to spend some time with Rachel, an English girl living and studying yoga in Goa. One day she came and picked me early in the morning and we scootered back to her appartment for a bit of yoga (I was brilliant). Yoga was followed by chai and a massala dosa for breakfast and then we spent a lazy day on Calangute Beach with some of the various people she's met while she's been here, including Leela, a beatiful little Indian girl who drew flowers on my shoulder and sold me a bracelet which broke the following day.


Laziness is a state of mind

Ah Foxy, you old bastard. Mike is the reason I'm on Palolem Beach. This is his fourth visit to the laziest place in the world, and he's been encouraging me to come here for a couple of years. Laziness is a state of mind, isn't it? I'm sure the people getting up at six o clock in the morning to do yoga on the beach wouldn't describe their lifestyle here as particularly lazy, neither would the Indians. However, tapping this keyboard is the most energetic thing I'e done since I played frisbee for ten minutes four days ago.

Purple dishwasher monkeys

This requires a bit of explanation, I think.

My first stop on this trip - after Bangkok - was Koh Tao, a small "dive island" in the Gulf of Thailand, north of Koh Pha Ngan. On Koh Tao, I fell in love with a couple of young Australian girls called Grace and Jess and also, funnily enough, a Californian fire-fighter called Doug.

Oh yes, there was also a Swiss carpenter called Andre, but I didn't fall in love with him, we were just good friends. Worth mentioning though. Top man.

You may be wondering how it's possible to fall in love with three people (and make good friends with another) at the same time?

Simple. The potent power of Sangsom rum. Bucketloads of the stuff.

A bucket contains a bottle of Sangsom, a can of Coca Cola and a small bottle of hideously strong Red Bull. This heady but inexpensive coctail of legal uppers is then garnished with a smattering of straws so that you and your new traveller pals can sit round a table and all get stuck in together so that you can get drunk and start trying to pull each other as quickly as possible.

An hour and three buckets later things will probably get interesting... and a bit silly. You might also end up in all kinds of trouble, like becoming the prize in a fist fight between two ladyboys. But if it's simple silliness that you're looking for then it helps if you throw two lovely, crazy girls from WA into the mixer, and also a chilled out Californian called Doug. If you were to do this then you would undoubtedly be confessing your sexual fantasies by ten and prancing around in the ocean with no clothes on by eleven.

I don't want to give you the impression there was anything sordid going on. The love I'm talking about is of the platonic kind, not this so-called "free" love that all the kids these days seem to be getting excited about. This is the kind of love that forms when you bond through buckets, embarassing stories and skinny dipping.

After a few days of bucket bonding we had to go our separate ways and I was very sad. There was an empty little place in my heart, a little ache. So sad was I that I was compelled to follow Grace and Jess to Koh Pha Ngan, where I spent one, final magical night in their company. I guess I was kind of their bitch, following them around lost puppy-style like I did, but I didn't mind, they were the providers of fun after all.

Cheeky girls, as the pictures below indicate.

So long, Grace, Jess and Doug, and thanks for all the silliness. This is my tribute to you.

Something like paradise

The days in Goa have flown by. I guess it's because I've been so busy since I got here! My days are just packed! I mean, all that curry to eat and all that sleeping to do, not to mention the smoking, swimming and shitting (it takes longer here), also the ogling, backgammoning, sweeping the sand out of my hut and, last but by no means least, all the hammock action I've been compelled to engage in.

Phew! I'm knackered!

The last few weeks have been a bit of a rough ride, which is quite funny when you think about it, because as I just explained I've spent them lazing on a beach doing very little.

When I say lazing, what I mean is LAZING. L-A-Z-I-N-G.

A prime example of this particularly apathetic form of laziness is sitting right in front of you. Quite a lot of this blog entry has been cobbled together from emails I've sent to some of you guys over the last few days. I figured, fuck it, why not. There's too much lazing to be done, there's not enough time in the day for much else.

Palolem Beach sucks the vigour right out of you and leaves you listless and lazy and content in an edgy kind of way. Well, that's how I feel about it right now, but that may just be the residue of the excessive amount of partying that I've done over the last six days. I had a good time but I got very messy and lost the use of some of my higher brain functions. For a while I wasn't able to discriminate between nice people and not-nice people.

However, apart from feeling like the tide of booze and drugs has gone out leaving the beach of my body littered with all kinds of crap, I'm in a positive state of mind. Exhausted after all the festivities, last night I was lying in my coco hut and I experienced what alcoholics refer to as a moment of clarity. It's very easy to get sucked into Palolem's Party Pit but it's not really a very interesting place to be!

Palolem Beach has changed a lot, apparently. No longer a southern retreat from the trance parties in northern Goa, it's now embraced tourism in pretty much the same way as the rest of the state. These days, it goes off at Cafe Del Mar in the middle of the beach all night every night, and amongst the various groups partying hard until dawn, there are more English tossers than you can shake a stick at.

I'm not a snob. I just didn't expect to come to India and meet the Brits abroad. I'm kind of disappointed. Most of the beaches in Goa are like the Costa Del Sol with bad plumbing. Although the plumbing is worse here, Palolem is much better than almost everywhere else, but still, the seed has been sown here and the place will continue changing, for the worse, until whatever magical energy it started out with is entirely gone.

It's not a paradise, not any more. Well, perhaps it's a paradise for drop-outs, but not for me. Nonetheless, I am enjoying myself tremendously. I've even extended my time here, I was supposed to leave tonight but I can't be arsed. This could be my first step on the road to drop-outhood. The thing is, if the biggest decision you have to make in a day is whether to go for a naan bread or a paratha with your chana massala, then making a resolution to pack your bag and move on can seem very intimidating indeed.