Of swim shorts Ming the Merciless and other bobbins

[Have revisited this post and added some pictures now I've managed to drag them kicking and screaming off my rather wan camera. Enjoy!]


Hue, Vietnam
Oh hello, fancy finding you here.

I'm having a fearful strife getting pics off my camera at the moment so there's no visual titillation (unless looking at Verdana font rocks your world...it does mine, I can assure you). Bit worried about it as the last time I tried to 'Explore' my memory card I briefly saw a collection of folders on there that I don't remember having added myself, one entitled Administrator Porn. Nope, I'm pretty sure that one wasn't one of mine. Maybe all this promiscuous dirty 'porting', sticking his USB cable into any old cheap foreign slot in Cyber Cafes has got Cam a nasty dose. And if some digital gremlin is going to infect my camera, well fair enough, but share the love - let me see this porn as well. Hey ho.

Weather (I am English after all)
So what's new? Well, it's been raining a lot...and I mean a lot. Enough to make Gloucestershire feel like the Atacama desert I'm sure. Some cyclone passing through that has been shedding its heavy tropical tears on the region. Perked up today though you'll be glad to hear. So that's the weather done with.


Swimmers of Hoi An
Had a lovely time in Hoi An, a Unesco World Heritage City and also city of a thousand tailors. And yup, got the swim shorts made up. Felt a bit bad cheating on my original tailor in Singapore but that's the cut & stitch world of tailoring for you. The shorts weren't quite as natty as I had in mind - was thinking red, yellow and orange trim on a brown base - but in the end they ended up just plain Orange & Brown but hey...that's what it's all about. In fact had some made up with pale blue trim on a brown base as well, so thanks for the advice Evan, but I was there a little before you. In fact I got a bit carried away and also had a pair of O&Bs made for Dan, I mean at $7 a pop, it would have been churlish not to. It will be good to have matching swimmers for our bid to represent GB in the synchronised swimming pairs event at Beijing 2008. (Pictures to follow...of swimmers...not us in the 2008 Olympics...when/if I can clean up my camera.



Other than that, Hoi An was charming and had more than its fair share of lanterns.




Ming the Merciless
After five months of noodling about the tropics I think it's fair to say that some, most in fact, of my clothing isn't in the best of shape. As a product of endless sweating, getting rained on and in the rainy season often clothes taking a long time to dry after being laundered, some of my T-shirts have developed that clawing, sweet-sour, fusty, just-not-right smell: Ming the Merciless. Once in your clothes then that's pretty much it. You can wash them and wash them, add as much disguising fabric conditioner as you like but somewhere in there lurks Ming and out he will pop, and then even you are upset at having to sit next to you on an eight hour bus ride. I remember Ming the Merciless visited a pair of Radar's snowboarding gloves once and they had to be quarantined and then burnt. It took months for him to scrub the smell off his hands. I think I'm going to have to ditch most of my T-shirts when I get back to Bangkok, which is a shame as I rather like a couple of them, but that's the only way to get rid of Ming. That or skewer him with the point of War Rocket Ajax.

Plumbing the depths
So, here I am in Hue, Vietnam and what do I find myself mostly doing? Scouring the web for SE London plumbers. Kerrr-Ray-Zeee. It's all musical flats back at the Borough Bunker and there's a slow bath drainage issue (gripping stuff huh?) that needs resolving before the next incumbent takes up residence. So has it been getting awestruck by the Tomb of Tu Duc, the Tomb of Minh Mang or the pagoda of Thien Mu? No it's been emailing or trying (unsuccessfully) to Skype Steve-The-Plumber or DIY Darren. I did find a plumber in Walworth called Yen Lin Chong, so that made me feel like I hadn't completely lost that SE Asian connection. And I did manage to get to the Citadel (Kinh Thanh) and the intriguingly named Forbidden Purple City yesterday, which contrary to its given nomenclature is neither purple nor forbidden. I wanted my money back; the bare faced cheek!




So killing a spot of time just now waiting for another bus, perhaps my last 'eric' overnighter in SE Asia, up to Hanoi. As potentially the finale, I'm really going to cherish this one, maybe try and stay awake all night just to soak up that wonderful experience: the bladder shrinking air con, the blaring DVD of Vietnamese pop videos, the constant beeping of the horn as we high speed snake amongst traffic, most of which seems to be coming straight at us.

Right, better skip off and write my last will and testament...actually something I should have done a long time ago. Be good now and eat your greens. You know how I worry about you.

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.]

And in honour of Shave...

I have given the old BligBlagBlog a wee bit of a face lift. I know, I know, time could be better employed in actually getting it up-to-date but I couldn't resist.

So as you can see it is now in the Shave colourway, that also happens to be my favourite colour combo - brown and orange. What's more, the eagle eyed (and maybe even those with gripping hands) amongst you might spot that there's been a wee rejig going on to your right. No, not out of the window numb-nutz, I mean on the side bar. It's been slightly re-ordered to make a little more sense (yeah right!) and also I've added a section dedicated to folk I've met on my wanderings or at least those with a web presence (and that I deemed worthy of adding!).

I am mighty chuffed with the results I have to say. Gonna treat myself to a Paddle Pop as Tangly Twisters are known in Thailand or maybe that's the generic Thai name for an ice lolly? Who knows? Who really cares? I'm gonna get me one!

(One slightly annoying thing is I seem to have lost the font size I was so happy with before: it's either too big or too small, no Goldilocks - just right. Ah well.)