Mary Poppins fights Freaky Realistic

Bangkok, Thailand
Made it to Bangkok on Monday after a rather rude early start in Hanoi. At HQ BKK - Ros & Dan's house, my SE Asian home from home, all was eerily quiet on account of the absent Ros & Ruby who are back in the UK.

First priority of course was for me and Dan to sport our matching swimmers and get to work on our synchronised swimming routine. It went very well. Expect to see more of us on obscure satellite sports channels over the coming months building up to Beijing '08.

Secondly, a traditional Thai meal was needed. So we had a terrific Lebanese mezze.

Job done. Now all that remained was for us to pick up our favourite line of conversation when left to our own devices - 'Where are the band members of Freaky Realistic now and what are they up to?' In the background tunes from their wonderful only album, Frealism, were playing of course.

I get periodic updates from The Badger as to what Justin 'Liquid' Anderson is working on since the 1993 evaporation of FR.

Checking out the FR website, that's still running after all these years, there was a certain amount of initial disappointment over the fact that the Ask Aki [Omori] A Question section on their website threw back a 'Sorry, Aki cannot answer your question' message. Come on, it's only been 14 years since the band dissolved, surely Aki must still be there in cyberspace waiting to answer all the Freaky yet Realistic questions that must flood in daily.

Still, there was this good quote from Alan Anderson (Justin's brother) regarding their 1993 appearance on The Word:

"I was in the audience watching them perform on The Word. Bob Holness was dressed as a hippie for some reason. They had lent him a dog to complete the image and it bit me."

Actually you can view their entire performance on The Word from their website. Worth checking out, especially if you've just learnt you're immortal so have some spare time on your hands.


Here's a rather blurry snap of Dan doing some cyber detective work. The drink to his right is what we have named a Mary Poppins - gin (or vodka...or indeed any white spirit...in fact you could use actual white spirit if you like), guava juice, a splash of tonic and some fresh limes. The reason for the name is it lessens the pain of having to endure Ruby's obsession with and endless need to watch Mary Poppins on DVD. Obviously the two year old Ruby wasn't around but that didn't mean we shouldn't immunise ourselves (heavily) with the Mary Poppins antivenin. And we did.

And then BINGO, we struck FR pay dirt! Aki has a blog. Right here on Blogger in fact. She's now a yoga teacher living in north London. I'm not sure how far we got to tracking down the erstwhile rapper MPL, Mary Poppins had clearly given my a thorough shoeing and I had to retire.

The farewel to Bangkok
Dan was leaving Bangkok today and I'm going to Hong Kong tomorrow so we had a farewell 'bash' last night. This involved very swanky cocktails at an open air bar called Breeze on the 57th floor of the State Tower. Bangkok is a phenomenal sight from 600ft, at sunset, with a Negroni in hand. The conversation didn't swing round to Freaky Realistic this time.

Chit Lom BTS Skytrain station towards sunset.


Dan, cocktail in hand, sunsetting behind and the lights of Bangkok coming alive below. Smashing. Doesn't Dan look snap in his John Smedley top. Like Paul Weller's younger brother.


You may notice that I've had a haircut. Can't say it's the best I've ever had. My Thai haircut vocab only stretches to nit noi, which means 'a little bit'. I had clearly pronounced it incorrectly.




And of course, a couple of cocktails to the fore and all the sophistication goes out of the window and I get a chuckle out of the name of this tailor's shop. Oh dear.

Right, next stop Hong Kong, the final foreign destination on my global meanderings. See you there.

Rag tag bag of wags

Bangkok, Thailand
Many thanks for your tags on the site...most...errr...kind. I haven't been able to see them until now on account of Thailand's military regime deeming Blogspot to be subversive therefore barred from being viewed from Thailand's ISPs. Got round it using a proxy server service...don't ask me...I have no idea really.

1. Yeah. All highly hypocritical of me to have a rant about global waste production whilst tripping the light fantastic on long haul flights, kicking back in business class, sipping Rusty Nails and reading the FT. That is why I have decided to take more personal responsibility and increase my green credentials. I shall continue the rest of my journey overland, preferably on foot or bicycle (well, rickshaw). From now on I aim to fund the trip through selling second hand, solo flip-flops and I shall be stopping every kilometre to plant a sapling and offer up a small sacrifice of burnt toe-nail clippings to the Green Man o' the Woods.

2. I have had my haircut twice on this trip already, one of which was here in Bangkok (banish that thought Churchy!) and both sheerings I consider unnecessary, much as this fella clearly does:
3. The bag is described as a Men's Sports Tote. Anyway, I'm not insecure about my sexuality, it may look like a girls' bag or indeed a purse to some but it works for me and is so handy for carrying my makeup, Prada sunglasses and hormone tablets.

By the way, I'm heading to Myanmar on Wednesday for a couple of weeks, which means no mobile phone, more than likely no email or internet and therefore no Spratticus updates. So for the vast majority it makes absolutely no difference, in fact it could be seen as a downright blessing. Let's GO!

Pass the port

Bangkok, Thailand
I am once again a legitimate British Citizen, with a shiny new (biometric...oooh, check that) passport to prove it and I am a valid visitor to Thailand with a replacement visa. No longer do I have to skulk about lacking credentials feeling like some form of refugee or illegal immigrant, knowing I couldn't leave the country if I wanted to. Living in fear of being stopped by the police for some random check (as happened!) or guesthouse staff asking to see my passport. Feels good. Better than I ever imagined it could have before I lost that essential bit of travel kit.

Actually when I say I have a new passport, I actually don't have it. It's at the Myanmar Embassy to get a visa for a trip I'm going to make there this week (sounds like it made the trip to the embassy of its own accord). But if I did have it, I'd take a picture of it and let you see how spangly and delightful it really is.

My advice to you is really quite simple and bloody obvious: hang onto that burgundy (or whatever colour it may happen to be) document as if your life depended on it. It just might do and it's a crashing bore trying to get another one.

Instead, here's a picture of the replacement for the bag I had stolen (hech hem...lost). Weirdly enough I chanced across the exact same model in the Siam Centre in Bangkok and it felt like destiny to replace like with like...and guess what...it's chocolate brown with an orange lining so there was no question about not getting it really.

Perhaps I shouldn't broadcast my overt act of consumerism given my previous post. And the bag's made by Nike, perhaps in some Chinese sweat shop where 13 year old kids work 18 hours a day, are discouraged from taking any days off and get paid the princely sum of seven dollars a month. [Eyes downcast in shame; pass the hair shirt.]

We are a messy race

Ko Kud, Thailand, 28 May 2007
Now, I'm not having a dig at Thailand per se, the inordinate amount of rubbish the human race produces is a global phenomenon and truly phenomenal. That said, probably the Gulf of Thailand is a little more chock-a-block with flotsam & jetsam than most stretches of water. I ended up waking up in the middle of the night the other...err...night (product of going to bed at 8:30pm I think) and not being able to drop back under the spell, I started thinking about the issue. I guess it was on my mind.

Now I'm not going to get all overtly moralistic and Green Party Manifesto thumping (recycled, unbleached paper, natch) although there's no reason not to, but I did have a little bit of a personal epiphany. (Any 15 year old fourth year economics student - feel free to shoot my arguments down in flames. Make a change from me enduring said 15 year olds deafeningly shooting each other in CyberShacks with their online gaming.) It occurred to me that on the grander scale the world economy is based on production and consumption. At the bottom of the production chain are the raw materials: coal, wood, oil, gas, beef, wheat, iron ore...the list is endless. And we as consumers consume these raw materials (no, really!), often after they've been refined and manufactured into other stuff. And it's the byproduct of all this, the stuff that's left over or not useful that we end up just chucking out, clogging up landfills, littering fields, parks and road sides...and oceans. And that's not even going into the non-renewable issue that entangles a lot of the base materials.

OK, so that's not going to win any prizes for fresh or groundbreaking news I know. But isn't the whole world's economy based on us producing more, consuming more, paying for newer, bigger (or smaller in some cases), faster, shinier, things with more knobs and dials, more channels, tones, computerisation...all in a stunning NEW colour that's the must have hottest trend! And therefore isn't the world economy completely at loggerheads with the growing motto of 'Reduce, reuse, recycle' that Jack Johnson has so adroitly popularised (and after three months of having it played on loop coming up through Malaysia and Thailand I would happily recycle all his CDs into coasters or Frisbees).

So if we were really to embrace this ethos of RRR, then surely commerce would have to start marketing (and making) their products differently and certainly not building in redundancy that I'm sure takes place these days. I mean, what mobile phone doesn't seem to start playing up after a year and a half? Coincidence or a conspiracy between phone manufacturers and cellular network providers to tie you into another 18 months contract as you need a new phone and you're not going to pay off the shelf prices (although you pay more in the end I'll warrant)? (Guess whose phone has just started playing up!)

Volvo - buy one for a lifetime, hydrogen cell compatible and we'll even throw in a fresh water waste collection system so kiss goodbye to water rates!

Is that really going to happen? Where's the money in making a product that doesn't need replacing...ever, in reducing consumption to the lowest level possible? So where's the money in NOT polluting and producing more waste? While society still operates on an attitude of consumption, then there is no impetus to change the way things are. Like most things in life, change comes at the level of personal responsibility...or we could all carry on regardless until you can walk from shore to shore across the rubbish floating in the sea or have to wear gas masks to walk in an urban street.

OK, rant over but just for those that like pretty pictures, here's a delightful selection of pretty items I encountered simply strolling along the beach in Ko Kud. Don't get me wrong, it's a nice beach. It just could have been nicer without all the junk. And that statement works for the world in general.

(Jeepers, I think I've become Evan!)

Richard Branson meets Robsinson Crusoe

Ko Kud, Gulf of Thailand, May 25-29, 2007
When the going gets tough, the tough go to the beach. With the processing of my passport application being dealt with by the starched shirts at the British Embassy in Bangkok, there was nothing to do but wait, and where better to contemplate my navel than at the beach on a tropical island? Let me see...nope can't think of any really. So it was off to Ko Kud for me.

A few things about late May in Thailand. It's the start of the rainy season and this means...well, rain mainly. It also means bugs of a blood sucking nature, who enlivened by the warm wet conditions, start to party. I guess the two above related factors explains why May, June & July are the 'closed season' for Thailand's tourist spots. Ko Kud was no exception. I ended up being the only tourist (and I really mean I saw no-one else) on the west side of the island (fourth biggest in Thailand so considerably bigger than Lundy!). All the accommodation was (not surprisingly) also closed but I managed to wangle my way into a resort called A Na Lay for a handful of beans (good value compared to what it would cost in the 'on' season). I also negotiated with the owner 'Vee' to eat the same meals as the lads that were repairing the rather swanky hillside bungalows. A limited choice but as authentic Thai food as you could wish for, if a little eye wateringly spicy at times.

So I had my own private resort effectively, all to myself making me feel a bit like Richard Branson hanging out on one of his own islands. But I also felt a bit like Robinson Crusoe in my isolation.

It did rain quite a lot and I also got bitten to bugg*ry (to use a very apt expletive) so it wasn't all coconut flavoured gravy. Also the solitude started to get to me and I started playing cribbage with a Milky Joe character of my own invention.



The beach on the west of Ko Kud where I hung out with Milky Joe.

My own teak wood veranda looking west over the sea.

The rickety jetty (under repair) looking west, sun setting behind.


A sun lounger. Not that useful when there's no sun but could be used at a push to shelter under when the rain lashes down.

Hello! You travel half way around the world and are in a place where there are few people, no cars really and barely any roads and what pops up - some traffic cones! Jeez.

A strange fruit, not to be mistaken for Simon Callow...another strange fruit.


Whilst on Ko Kud, I learnt it was my friends', Catrin & Pops, wedding. So here's a wee message of congratulations and good luck...and a can of Singha beer with which I toasted their health.


In case you couldn't read it, here's a close up and I think you might need bifocals!

Time travel

The missing bit: Malaysia and Thailand Apr & May 07
You might have noticed that the old Bligblagblog got miraculously up to speed and we are now pretty much in the present. This was due to me kind of skipping a goodly portion of my wayfaring, namely the bit including Malaysia and the Thai islands.

They say a picture speaks a thousand words, so to that effect I have loaded up a whole host of new pics on my Flickr site to save having to do the writing bit. That said, couldn't resist displaying this selection here. They don't tell you anything of my travels really, maybe just a little about my state of mind. (I think you get the picture...quite literally.) Obv the more informative style pics can be seen on Flickr.

Amazing who you bump into on the road. This is Nathan & Petra from Herne Hill, a stone's throw from my home whom I met in Kota Bahru, Malaysia and hung out with on the Perhentian Islands. After a little chatting it turns out that they not only know of the Badger (my upstairs neighbour and once the owner of the finest pair of Piccadilly Weepers south of the river) but are big fans of a band he plays in: Rowan & The Crops Failed. Petra in fact runs (or rather ran before they left London to see the world) the South London Club at the Windmill in Brixton and The Badger was at their farewell bash. Small world eh? Still, I wouldn't like to lick it clean.

A charming advertisement for what I presume are the Penang version of Fishermen's Friends.

A urinal in Penang, Malaysia. A strange place for a pair of tongs...I wonder what they are used for? Still, could save washing your hands I suppose.

A portrait of some rum looking cove from Penang's museum. When I took it I thought it looked the spit of Jon Petty but now I see it again I think it's more like Richard Hammond - the midget from Top Gear, a show I HATE (and that's a strong word in my book).

Now here's a freak of nature. A gang of six toed cats in Langkawi. This was the mother of them all. They say that homo sapien dominates the earth due to our manible thumbs. Is this the next link in the evolutionary chain?

Ahhh, a little reminder of home - nutty brown Harvey's IPA at the Royal Oak on Tabard Street. Shame it was just a beer mat but The Badger tried to send an emergency parcel of the ambrosia before to Perth but to no avail. Still, the beer mat did a fine job of keeping the bugs out of the Bangkok G&T!