I have put this together at the request of a friend, this isn’t the official film — I am doing an “end of year special” — this is just to wet your appetites!

Rolling Thunder was a 36 hour combat mission created and run by Tier One Military Simulations. They are the cutting edge of airsoft in the UK and for two select teams on the US side this included a dawn assault from the air!

Their objective? To capture the Taliban leader known as “Panther” hiding in an Afghan village.

Did they succeed?

You will have to wait to find out!

Comments welcome!

Regards,

Basho

On the road, and neatly tucked into our bus seats, we were also well placed for scamming. A guy came up to Wendy and handed her a phone. She took it and the voice on the other end claimed to be from the “hotel” we just left. Apparently, she had departed without paying the final bill. The voice said that she should give the missing amount to the “agent” on the bus (the man with the phone).

All lies.

I had been there when all accounts were settled and I know that our friend had not “failed to pay”. She got very angry and the guy got insistent. This was his mistake, because our friend was a British GP (a doctor) and in my experience doctors don’t take shit from anyone. She shouted at him for a few moments and he shrugged and took his leave.

Worse was to come when we arrived into the desert.

The sun was very hot and of course the desert was as exposed as countryside can get. Over the endless heat waves we espied the fortified city of Jaisalmer. Cesca described it as,

“A giant sandcastle”

And indeed it looked the part, being raised high above the desert, and presumably dust winds, by what must be a huge pile of sand. It looked like it was sitting onto a dune. The only thing I have seen that comes close for the view was Uluru in Australia. It was striking in the extreme and exciting.

The bus entered the vicinity of this old city and stopped by the side of the road next to a swarm of touts. Immediately these started opening the bus storage doors and taking out our bags. I was up, out of my seat and off the bus in seconds. I pushed my way through the throng and grabbed my bag off the tout trying to make away with it.

“Put my bag down!” I screamed.

He did so. I was much bigger than him. I quickly took it and collected the girls’ bags too.

Another tout tried a different tact, producing a “licence” he claimed to be from the tourist board here to take us to our hotel. I put on my sunglasses and ignored him. I guarded the bags and they stood slightly back. That was until the girls got off.

Clearly white women getting off busses here make a “Ca’Ching” sound. Cesca and Wendy were instantly swamped with touts all pushing against each other to get the business. Pushing the girls too, who had their Lonely Planets out and were thumbing a map of the city. Upon seeing this, the touts as one craned their necks to see the page and “assist”. Arms were thrust onto the page and attempts to take the books to “show madam” aplenty.

As soon as I had seen all this start, I started counting to ten in my head. I reckoned that, what with the bus con fresh in their minds, the girls would explode after ten seconds.

9, 10…

Boom!

“Look!” shouted Wendy, “all of you just BACK OFF, RIGHT NOW!”

It was like kryptonite on these guys. Wendy was bigger than most of them to start with and she really shouted at the top of her not inconsiderate lungs.

This prompted a policeman to come over. He had a sub machine gun at his hip and it was loaded. The touts backed away and he very casually suggested that the tout that had spoken to me was actually “official”. Of course, this may be a clever bit of the play we were in, but it worked. I heaved all the bags into his tuk tuk and he sped us through the outskirts of the old city, just at the base of the sand mound it sits on, towards a hotel he swore blind was excellent.

When we got there, I defended the bags again and the girls went in. Immediately they came back out with the hotel owner, a 30 something Indian man with a professional manner. He handed the tuk tuk driver a note and he left. He then welcomed me to his hotel.

As it happens it was a brilliant hotel.

We got a quite expensive room (by our standards of the time, I probably spend more on coffee now) and met up on the roof top bar. All the hotels around this area had similar bar restaurants and we ordered some very nice food and drank out the night. Soon we had met others on their holidays and formed a little pride of travellers. There was an Asian lady from Canada on a life changing trip, a couple of very attractive Sweeds as well as a British couple who were good fun. We all decided to go on a Camel safari together.

The next morning, we set off early for the desert proper in jeeps. After a couple of hours of riding into the desert, putting us not too far from the border with Pakistan by my reckoning, we came to a small dusty village and met our camels.

I never thought I would like camels, they are shaggy with rough fur that catches dust and sand, their farts endlessly serenade the desert and their spitting is legendary in its ruthless laid back efficiency. However, one look at the smiling face of my mount for the next two days and I was in love. She was lovely.

Clambering aboard I immediately noticed that we were not riding in high Berber style on a mound of cushions – clearly the organisers were worried about us falling off (camels are very tall) – so instead we had to use horse style saddles only without stirrups.

About 5 or 6 seconds of the jerking, jolting, off-timed and frankly horrendous bouncing was enough for all of our crew to realise that is was not going to be pleasant experience. My inner thighs complained almost immediately.

We bounded off; each led by our camel tied to the one in front and headed into the desert. Soon the dunes swallowed the village behind us and the amazing spirit of emptiness started to pervade. The desert here is very quiet, only occasional tracks, desert roads and some power lines crossed our path which was otherwise endless scrub bushes and sand.

We plodded for about 10 miles or so, taking most of the day, and then our hosts announced we were stopping to make camp. Camp sat upon two very clean looking sand dunes that were empty apart from hundreds of 4 inch long dung beetles. I like beetles and these little scurriers skittered all around us as we setup the mats and the guides started a campfire.

They then taught us how to make chapatti, which we all had great fun doing before feasting upon the tiffin pots of food the guides had brought.

As we ate, talked and laughed together I sat back and wondered at the guides, for whom this was probably their primary business. By this point in our adventures Cesca and I had been on 20 or so “local tours” and I could recognise the signs of a well organised trip very quickly. This one, I decided, was definitely above average for, while we were missing a few home comforts out here, the guides were good and trying hard to please, the food was the pleasant Indian fare I had come to appreciate and the group atmosphere was friendly.

Then it rained.

In the desert.

Huge sheets of rain suddenly thundered down on us and we were all wet through. I couldn’t quite believe that so much water was available to fall in the desert, and neither could the guides. Gone was the chance to sleep outside and they scurried to the back of a camels for some small tents they had brought. Unfortunately there were not enough tents to go around and we would have to share, I quickly claimed a tent for Cesca and me and since we were the only married couple on the trip no one argued to join us. We all helped put up the tents and dived in. Listening to the rain, we huggled down and slept.

The next morning the rain had passed on and to look at the desert you would not know it had rained at all. To look at the group however… Several of the tents had flooded and eventually the poor junior guide had slept under a camel. Many people were seriously wet.

I stretched and walked up the dune to see the sunrise. There is definitely something primal and wonderful about the morning here. Soon Cesca joined with her camera and then the entire group rushed up to capture the moment on film. We all ate a hearty breakfast and then it was back on the camels.

Our route back took us via a couple of small villages, and had cleverly been designed to be shorter as the guides must have worked out that long camel rides play havoc with western soft legs. Soon, the vast majority of our group had abandoned camel and were walking alongside.

We arrived in our final village stop way after lunch and the camels all went for a drink. All around us the villagers came out and greeted our visit. An hour later I said goodbye to my mount as the jeeps arrived and we jumped on board for the trip back to the city.

On the way back we all discussed the rain we had experienced, surely a rare event in the desert? I should have realised that it was a portent of what was to come, but my thighs were burning too much to care.

On our arrival back we headed to the roof bar and drank our success in surviving the trip. I don’t remember going back to the room to sleep, but what happened next will always be in my mind.

I was awoken from a dream by a unique sound. I have thought long and hard about how to describe it, and I have settled on the following:

It was the sound of the entire Golden Horde, all 60 thousand horses; men and carts, galloping towards us over the desert.

The sound was loud at first, but soon it was huge and all around us. The walls shook, the paintings shook with them, the bed moved with the vibration. I heard screams outside and then the sound was with us in total and the entire world shook. Cesca and I jumped up in the bed,

“Earthquake!” I shouted.

“Oh my god! The city!” Cesca said, and we shared a vision of the city sand flowing down towards us burying us in a landslide of ancient walls, camels and palaces.

“Quick!” I shouted to her, “Get under the door frame!” I pointed to the entrance to the bathroom and we rushed under it and held each other.

Ten seconds later it passed on, but the screams outside continued. These were joined by the sounds of feet on the nearby stairs as screaming, jabbering tourists fled the building.

Seconds passed and no further roaring approached. The building remained standing. Clearly the city wasn’t going to engulf us in a landslide today.

“That was an earthquake!” Cesca exclaimed.

“Either that or war with Pakistan has started and we just got nuked!” I replied. “I’m going back to bed” I said.

“What!?” Cesca said, “Shouldn’t we go outside?”

“Out to panic? No thanks.” I jumped back in the bed and pulled up the covers.

Cesca made no move to follow me, “I’m heading outside”

“Baby” I called from the bed, “if it is Pakistan, try not to get any on you…”

She stuck out her tongue and went off.

Sure enough it had been a quake, measuring nearly 6 on the scale. The local area had suffered some damage, but we had been lucky. Quakes are on a logarithmic scale, so while a 6 is high, it’s not in the same league as a 7 and not even the same sport as an 8. All the same, it was one hell of a thing to be woken up by.

For the rest of the day the only chat was of the quake and I eventually logged onto the UN Quake watch web site to record my eye witness account in their database. No further incidents happened and the next day it was forgotten.

We use our final day in Jaisalmer to visit the old city. It was very beautiful.

The ancient buildings all have facia carved from stone and thin alleys wind all around the centre. The hotel owner took us on a tour to the tumble down palace and we spent a good few hours talking to the man whose job it is to rebuild it.

He was part of a family who had worked for the Rajput for generations and it had fallen to his generation to try and get the palace back in order. It was very old and open to the elements, and I remember thinking that he had one hell of a job on his hands.

As we shopped I considered buying a camel skin leather bag, which all looked wonderful (I am a sucker for bags) but didn’t. I regretted that for days until I read on the web that they are often not properly treated and consequently rot with a smell that is impossible to mask and will definitely get picked up when going through an airport.

That evening we all checked out together as one group. We took a bus to the nearest train station and had berths near each other. That night we all chatted and enjoyed each other’s company for one last time before Cesca and I left the train in the early morning and wended our way to our final stop in Rajasthan; Jaipur.

Kind regards,

Basho

But then they are probably not trying to, instead they are after a unique chance of visiting the worlds greatest monument to romantic love ever constructed. For that is what this strange tomb is; one man’s attempt to express his love and loss. Seen in that sense, flying half way across the world just to see the sun rise here is perhaps not so crazy after all.

Cesca and I arrived a different way, a much more down to earth way; by train. Agra was one of the few places that we had phoned ahead and booked. This is because Agra has quite a different reputation amongst backpackers; a deadly reputation.

Surrounding the great tomb is, what some might call, a shanty town. In the past it probably was, just a place for the Mountebanks, snake charmers and con artists to live when they weren’t begging outside the tomb proper. Then came the era of international tourism and the arrival of backpackers. I can hardly imagine what courage it took to backpack India in those first days. I get some of the stories from fifteen years ago when my sister-in-law was in the north of India. Back then, the population was tiny compared to now and everyone much poorer. Staying in the area around the Taj, called the Ganj, was probably taking your life in your hands even just from the point of view of the water quality (drawn directly from the great river flowing behind the Taj and very polluted). You may consider this an exaggeration, but even in our more modern times there has been deaths here. The story I was told was that there was a con being played, which went like this:

Tourists would stay at a hostel and naturally enough ask at the desk for a food recommendation, the helpful staff would call up tuk tuk and direct them to a “quality” restaurant. At the end of the meal the tourists would start to feel ill and eventually collapse in pain. The tuk tuk would then take them to a doctors clinic who would check them in and claim that they had a well-known local infection that he could treat no problem. He would then give them medicine once they had called their insurance company. Over the next few days to weeks they would remain ill and eventually “respond” to the treatment. Thanking the doctor they would probably fly home none-the-wiser to what really happened to them. You see, the hotel, the tuk tuk driver, the restaurant and the “doctor” were all in on a nastily little scam. That the restaurant poisoned the tourists is obvious, but worse so did the doctor’s “treatments”. Why? Because western people are insured up the wassoo and all this money flowed directly into the doctors clinic where he would pay off the others. It worked pretty well for – I hear – a couple of years until two German tourists died from the treatment. After that the Indian government went though the Ganj area and forced out all the scammers. Or so we should hope.

Cesca and I were hearing this tale from a guy on our tiger safari whose face was covered with hundreds of painful looking bedbug bites – the result of a visit to a bad hostel in Agra. We were only slightly more concerned about the story than the painful looking bites, surely going to scar.

We later read up and found that the tale was true.

“What shall we do?” Cesca asked me, knowing that I was the more security conscious (read: paranoid) of the two of us.

I thought for a moment before the answer hit me, “we will stay with Muslims,” I announced. My hope was that the famous Muslim hospitality would prevent them from any such behaviour as it would be against one of the Pillars of Islam. So, we called ahead and booked into a hotel in the heart of the Ganj area owned and run by a Muslim family. It was very close to the Taj itself and the view out the back of the room was over the houses leading up to the great Tomb.

The view from our room / a local women takes in the street view.

We were just deciding to take a walk around the area when we met one of the most memorable people of all our travels. I stood outside in the dusty street out front of the hostel and perused my Lonely Planet. I was considering where we might find something to eat. Then suddenly, amongst the endless sounds of India; chatting in Hindu, Indian music, etc, came a vocal accent it was wonderful to hear; Scottish.

“Hey pal, may I borrow that from ye?”

I looked up to find a thin late thirties bald man standing over the frame of a road bike and indicating my Lonely Planet. He was dressed in cycling shorts and a sport top and his bike was ladened down with large specialist bags over each wheel. Clearly this was all his gear.

“Sure,” I said handing him the book, which he took without hesitation, “it’s nice to hear an accent from home.”

“Aye,” he said reading the book and not really listening. Cesca and I shared a smile. It really was nice to hear the Scottish brogue, it’s a reminder of my little island and my people who I often missed. It has occurred to me since that we spent a lot of time travelling in the company of Scottish and Irish people, I wonder if their voices had anything to do with it, or that the legendary gregariousness of these nations commutes to friendship all over the world? The man flicked through the book for a few more moments and then looked Cesca and I up and down, “Do you know where I may get a beer?” he asked.

“Not off the top of my head I’m afraid, we are new to the area, but there will be one in there I am sure,” I said.

He seemed to come to a conclusion, “Would you two like to come for a beer?”

“Why yes, we would”.

“Grand, I know a good place over there,” he gestured at a building 100 yards away.

“Basho,” I said holding out my hand to shake, “and this is my wife Cesca”.

He smiled a broad grin, “I’m Eric”.

And so we went to have a drink. We were fascinated to learn more about this strange fellow on his bike. The fact that it was early didn’t bother us at all; it was still very hot, ‘tis true, but more than that you don’t look a gift horse in the mouth when meeting people. Some of the greatest people are met in the most unlikely ways; sometimes thrown together by fate like Lenin and Bobbits in Laos, sometimes met through hardship like Gwenny in Kerala and sometimes unavoidable like Connor and Marie-Lou who we gratefully met over and over and over. Sometimes it’s just meeting someone who you just know you will enjoy the company of, like Eric.

We went to the rooftop bar/café and the owner greeted Eric like an old friend, we sat overlooking the Ganj and the Taj poking over the rooftops; all the pretence of needing a guide book was gone.

The Ganj viewed from the café.

Eric ordered us all beer from a little boy waiter,

“He has to go buy it,” he explained, “it’s illegal to serve beer, but he likes me so the lad goes and gets it. We must drink it under the table in cups, OK?”

“Sure,” said Cesca, “so tell us, what’s with the bike?”

He told us.

I’ve met quite a few courageous people in my life and Eric is right up there with the best of them. A postman in Scotland, Eric was struck down with ME; the strange and not understood exhaustion disease/syndrome that usually puts people into homes for the rest of their life.

“I recovered,” he said, “and I said to myself I wanted to do something different, so I became a Yoga instructor”.

“Of course, why not?” I said.

“Aye I did that for a while to earn enough money to leave on this journey.”

“Where did you get the bike?” I asked.

“No that’s what I mean, I left Scotland on the bike, I’m cycling across the world from Aberdeen to Adelaide in Australia.”

There was a silence as we took in the enormity of this challenge. Then my talent for saying stupid things at the wrong time came to my rescue,

“Adelaide is lovely,” I told him. You’ll love it there.”

He smiled, “I hope so”.

“You must be about half way through,” said Cesca.

“Aye, but I’m stopping here for a few days as I’m bloody exhausted from Pakistan.”

And he told us about his experiences cycling through Pakistan. They had not been very pleasant to say the least. The Pakistani government had given him a police escort through the country because they were worried that he might be murdered. This escort stopped traffic as he came to roundabouts and junctions and he felt very isolated from the people. They forced him to sleep in police stations at night and, as he tried to sleep, his “guards” ordered up prostitutes for themselves and eyed his gear.

“It was horrible,” he said, “eventually I decided to just power through it and so here I am trying to recover from the effort.”

“How long will you stay in this area?” Cesca asked.

“Oh, maybe just a few days,” he said.

Sometimes a husband and wife think as one. Perhaps it is a form of mental connection beyond cues, something psychic. Whatever it was we both knew right there and then that this guy wanted company, that he needed some help to right his mind and that this was exactly what we were going to give him.

We sat and ate and drank with Eric all that day. He talked a lot, like a man who had missed the sound of his own language. We listened and talked to and it seemed to me that we had a lot in common.

The next day we did the same. This time we met up with some other travellers (including a graffiti artist and his partner from my home city of London) and long, semi drunken conversations lilted off into the day and night on all sorts of subjects. Life, the Universe, travelling to name three of the topics. We all benefitted from the company and I guess we all needed it, but Eric most of all. Slowly I could tell he was coming right again.

In the distance the Taj still sat. Waiting. I watched it out of the window of our hotel, poking high above the buildings. It wasn’t going anywhere and I wanted to wait until we were ready.

So the next day, we agreed to meet up with Eric at dinner and went off to the Red Fort.

The fort is very large and impressive, if a little barren.

This being the part of India that fought against the British, the fort had long been looted, but still it was an incredible day with the sun high in the sky making the red bricks glow in the light. The fort had been the prison for the Khan who built the Taj for his beloved wife. Almost bankrupting the nation, his son usurped his rule and placed him here for the rest of his life. To add insult to injury the son built a special optical illusion from the prison cell that makes the distant Taj appear to grow closer as your eyes focus. I imagine the old king crying, to be so close to his love and yet unable to touch her, lost in memories.

You cant capture the optical illusion with a 2D camera, but it’s very eerie.

That night we dined with Eric and a nice American couple on the “tour” of India where you fly in and out in a few days. I don’t meet many people quite this rich in such circumstances and certainly not with the same outlook on life, and so it was interesting to spend some time in their company. However, their story of that day’s visit to the Taj was the last straw and Cesca and I determined to visit it the next day. As darkness fell the local people of Ganj had a festival and we went down into the crowd to see the procession. It was very colourful and bright, but I am not sure what it represented beyond the obvious gods.

The next morning we made for the Taj. There are a number of entrances, but only some are open early.

The early queue, with me right at the back…

I remember that tourists are charged a vastly inflated price in comparison to locals, but then; their disposable income is far less in relation. Once into the gateway, and through the very thorough search protocols, you are greeted with an outer courtyard of prodigious size which leads all the paths to the main entrance in to the famous park. Even though we were very early, the place was busy and I could tell that once the bus tours arrived it would get seriously packed in and not too much fun.

The main inner entrance.

Through the giant main entrance (where you have to leave your camcorder for some reason) you arrive in the garden proper. From here the building itself is breath-taking. Again using the optical effects seen in the Fort this is the best moment of the visit as you cannot fail but to be impressed.

In front of you is the spot that Lady Diana made famous and this is the start of the trouble because everyone wants the same shot.

It becomes an inelegant scrum very quickly. In this garden, supposed to be a private place, there is now unnumbered people climbing all over the top of each other and since these are the sorts of people up at this time in the morning they are the sort of people with “photographic agendas”.

I started to feel the magic of that first view drain away, so we approached the tomb. As you get closer you quickly realise that it is a lot smaller than it looks. The design is following some secret principle of making things look bigger, but only from particular angles. From others it shrinks.

Through the hundred meters of garden you arrive at steps and up up to the platform on which the tomb sits. As we drew closer we could see that the entire buildings façade is slight in need of repair with the fine inlaid stone being endlessly chipped off and stolen.

We walked around and spied the river running behind the structure. It is large and very dirty. We then entered inside the tomb, which was quite bare and amongst the throng of people there really wasn’t much to see. Soon we left the building and, avoiding the oncoming hordes, we went into the garden areas to the right. In these there were lots of plants and squirrels and we had some fun feeding the little blighters before deciding to leave the Taj.

Maybe the Taj can be seen in the way it was intended, maybe it is just me, but the large crowds meant that I got very little romance from the occasion and less from the ambience (which is one of busy frustration). If people visited the Taj with the quiet solemnity that one visits, say, Stone Henge then it would remain a magical experience. However, for me the Taj gave very little. What did surprise me was how nice the people of the Ganj area were and how good the food was! Surely this place has changed since the stories we had heard about.

That night we said our goodbyes to Eric. He was moving on to further adventures on his epic journey across the world. I later learned (from his blog) that he not only made it across the deserts of Australia to the wonderful city of Adelaide two months ahead of schedule, but decided to cycle back the other way! Returning to his native Scotland via New Zealand, America and Ireland. He is truly a lesson to us all, and one that was not lost on me.

Cesca and I held hands all the way to the station watching the Ganj area, and the wider roads of Agra, fly past our tuk tuk. Perhaps the Taj had some magical effect after all?

We boarded the train and took up our beds, still holding hands. Ahead was Rajasthan and the great lake city of Udaipur, with its pure quiet romance, huge forest fires and hordes of dancing virgins with giant puppets on their heads…truly.

Regards,

Basho.

It was when I was sitting in the steam room at Virgin Active with 20 sweaty men all dressed in the same set of bright beach shorts, and making jokes about their penises, that something struck me as odd,

“This has to be,” I announced into the cloud of steam, which was being jetted into the room at an alarming rate and temperature, “the most surreal Ground Zero Weekender I have ever been to.”

The member of team Delta Alpha to my right leant in and said,

“Do you feel better now, though?” He asked.

I considered the question.

The Ground Zero Weekender is a large airsoft event in the latter part of the year in the deepest parts of the New Forest. My team, Delta Alpha known as the “DAs”, had been attending it for 5 years or so and we had come to the conclusion that attendance was mandatory for a team member to retain his number and only top excuses were allowed. Such excuses as “my wife is in labour” (the baby kind – not the political affiliation) or “It’s Ramadan, and I can’t come,” are the level of acceptable. “I don’t feel like it” wasn’t good enough for the DA committee (of which I am happy to be a member). The thing is, as much as the event is a “must attend” (and I’ll give you an example: TA Events offered me a free ticket to their event the weekend after and the chance to be the official cameraman and I turned them down) it is not that we take the airsoft too seriously or even seriously at all.

The DAs are an odd bunch of airsofters with wide ranging experience. Some DAs still only play the urban based, Electrowerkz style, of CQB for which the team is justly infamous – although our home is now “The Mall” in Reading. Other DAs only play high end Stirling Airsoft 3 day Mill Sim events where being captured can actually lead to being REALLY water boarded. One thing we have all decided is that, as good a ground as GZ is, the sheer numbers of players means that serious airsoft is almost impossible. That is for us. I am sure that for other teams it is different. Some definitely take it too seriously, as we shall see.

No, for us GZ is all about the camping, hanging out with our friends and the “Posse” of London teams that attend. In fact, it is nice to be anonymous amongst the great crowd of players. We drove down on the Friday morning to find that some DAs had wormed special permission to arrive Thursday night and had setup “The Moonbase Alpha”. A giant collection of popup tents all linked together to create a space bigger than some airsoft grounds. It had rooms, chambers, cavernous corridors. It was complex, you could almost get lost in it.

“Wow!” I exclaimed to Charlie.

He laughed, “Next year we plan to have enough to create a complete loop with a space for the party in the middle.”

I don’t doubt it. All the DAs are working men and GZ is a chance to show off new kit. At GZ people bring out their new guns and those secret projects that they have been working on all year. At GZ, they try out new tactics and silly toys for the first time. Here people swap roles with our normally SAW pumping commanders taking a breather and all “going sniper” for a few days. In fact the command structure we work so hard on the rest of the year is totally dropped at GZ. It affects me too: I have found myself leading a group who want to go out and move about, whereas normally I am known as a bit of a lone wolf on the field.

So, Friday night we had the traditional DA party, and there is very little I can repeat here as my wife is reading this! Suffice to say, this was a “boys weekend” away (our wives are probably glad we can get it all out of our system). There were a few announcements: a new expectant father, someone was getting baptised soon, someone else was changing jobs – that sort of thing. Each was greeted with the normal DA rousing cheer and many a raised pint pot.

Saturday, we woke early and I broke out the coffee grinder and hob boiler to make some real coffee. Then we ate, tooled up and went into game.

Sure enough, the normal field commanders were having none of it on this event and so we wandered around until we got into contact. Not being natural woodland players, the DAs struggle a little to beat local players and after half a dozen lives lost we came back for lunch and then split into two teams, going at different paces, to suit taste.

It was about only 10 minutes into that when it all went horribly wrong.

The way I see it is that anyone who plays woodland must be prepared to take a few hits at once. Woodland is often at range and people are only shooting at what they can see. Bits of arms and legs; whatever is visible between the trees and bushes. When I get hit at GZ, I am almost always hit by multiple rounds and often clipped a few more times as I walk out of play. Shit happens as far as I am concerned. I don’t let it get to me, as I am sure it is not on purpose.

Some people see it differently.

My small unit, of 8 or so, were making their way through the bush when a target presented itself. We were spread out along a ridge, fighting up a steep hill. Vince and I saw the target and both fired a small burst. I heard a “hit”. The player then stood where they were. I could only see the legs of the player, but I quickly realised that it was an “Intel holder”. That is a player who has been given an Intel Card to present when shot as a capture objective. They have to stand where they are and wait capture, rescue or a timeout. Of all the players who are going to get shot too many times, this is that role as, by not moving away, other players will naturally consider you still alive.

One of the team (not Vince or I, but further down the ridge) took another shot.

Then all hell broke loose.

The Intel Holder turned out to be a feisty red headed girl from a well known team based on a British Island. And she was not happy. With a scream is rage she pulled up her gun and on full auto ran into the bush firing at us. My shout of, “Dead players don’t move or shoot!” was drowned out by a 6 gun barrage of returning fire from the DAs down the ridge – all of which had no idea that this was the Intel Holder. After a few seconds of Vince and I shouting to cease fire, they did. The damage had already been done. The Intel Holder was now livid and out of control. She was screaming at us that being shot was wrong and that she was angry about it. At first I wondered why her being angry was anything to do with us, I wondered if something else was going to be in her argument, but no that was it “I’m angry and so I am having a self serving fit” was all she wrote.

On the other hand, my team were of the opinion that, while we were very sorry about the overkill, it happens and could we all just calm down please.

After 3 minutes of this, I suggested that perhaps she should just forget it and return to her dead zone. I was going to continue to say that she could raise this with a marshal if she liked, and we could deal with it through him. The DAs have no issue with authority. Many of us used to marshal atElectrowerkz, a site that REALLY had a problem with overkill, and are quite used to talking it out rationally. I myself was a senior marshal there for 3 years.

I didn’t get to say anything after the words “you’re a dead player”.

With a scream the girl launched herself at me and started attempting to beat me up. I say attempting as I was in full body armour and helmet so I could not feel anything. I turned away and hunched my shoulder and made no attempt to defend myself. Suddenly two arms grabbed me from behind. Soon she was dragged off me and our friends separated us. At the time, I wondered why my team was holding me back as I was absolutely fine. She was still desperately trying to claw her way through her friends towards me. There was one of those large group tussles as all sorts of people on both sides tried to get between us. The volume increased as everyone started shouting at each other. Eventually the girl was restrained enough to be dragged away.

As quick as that it was over. The groups split up and went their own way. The DAs stopped and replayed the situation in our heads.

“What the fuck just happened?” I asked.

The general opinion was that she had gone mental and was a danger to players.

“Are you going to report this Bash?” I was asked.

I thought for a second. “I should. She might hurt someone, she was bloody mental.”

“Or she may start on someone else who might smack her head in next time,” offered a DA.

“We were all worried you would fight back and kick them all in. Especially the guy who shouted at you,” said another.

I get this all the time, once people find out about my black belt in taekwondo and European tournament win.

Sam patted me on the back, “We acted the right way brov’, don’t worry.”

Then suddenly something occurred to me; the head camera!

“I have the entire thing on tape!” I exclaimed.

The general feeling was that this was awesome news. About ten minutes later we all got shot and so walked out. I went up to the nearest marshal and spoke to him. It turned out that the other group had already made a complaint about me. We all agreed to go speak to the organisers regarding it.

Back at the command tent, the site owner “H” took me to one side.

“Tell what you say happened,” he said. I felt that he clearly suspected me in this. I told him, leaving nothing out, but he didn’t look particularly convinced.

“…and,” I said, “I probably have the entire thing recorded on head camera.”

“Right,” he said, “let’s see it.”

Soon we were viewing the footage. It was very high quality.

It showed everything. It showed the DAs calling for calm before the attack, DAs saying we will walk away (this is a team rule), basically: the DAs trying their best to do the right thing and clearly saying they were sorry for the overkill. It also showed that this simply made the girl more mental until she attacked me in a rage.

It was the most convincing piece of footage I had ever recorded; I was totally cleared by it.

“Right, she is in trouble!” H said in anger and stomped out of the room, presumably to deal with her.

I went to rejoin my fellows standing by the entrance to the safe zone. Soon Lex and Trip (the other team leaders) arrived and after we had watched the footage again, we went to talk to H about what he was going to do.

This conversation had four points of view:

1. H wanted me to decide what should happen.

2. Lex offered to arrest her if I said so (many DAs are policemen).

3. Trip wanted to have her ejected as well as the guy with her.

4. However, I thought that it’s not for me, a player, to enforce the rules of a site.

I am not taking responsibility for the appropriate punishment a player should get for assault. When I was a marshal, I took little notice of the victim’s wishes as violence has no place in the game AT ALL. If a victim said to “leave it”, then that was nice, but the marshals decide if someone is to be ejected. It is for the marshals to enforce this at GZ, not I!

Also, my religious beliefs are founded on being compassionate (seriously), so I decided to drop it and go and have a beer.

H offered that perhaps a hand shake would suffice. Frankly, I found that ridiculous. This wasn’t a punch up or half my fault, this was an unprovoked attack. You don’t ask someone who has been mugged to shake hands with the muggers do you? I told H that a handshake wouldn’t work for me and I would not want shake the hand of someone like that ever. Hate filled, self obsessed, stupid, psychotic people are not friends of mine.

So we walked away. As we do.

However, I did agree not to post the footage on the net, I said nothing about stills.

Back at the camp, we were having real troubles letting the event go. The entire DAs were up in arms about it and all sort of rubbish was being offered. Some were saying I should have hit her back, others that I should post the entire thing to the net, others still that I should insist she be ejected and her name blackened all around every site we know. Some just wanted to go and have it out with them now. Some even saw it my way (mainly the ex marshal crowd). After about an hour of discussing it I wanted a break. It was then that Vince had a brain wave:

“You know,” he said to the group, “I am a member of Virgin Active and this weekend all their branches are free to use.”

The team considered this in silence.

“That is bloody brilliant,” I said. “But we will need shorts right?”

“Let stop off at Tesco and buy some,” suggested Trip.

Suddenly we had something fun to do and a mission. Laughing, we jumped in our cars and went. It was great fun running around Tesco trying to find shorts and then zooming to the closest Virgin Active. Sure enough it was free, but the staff was shocked to have us all turn up at once. The place was basically empty and we swam, played volleyball in the pool, sauna and enjoyed the steam room. It was there that Vince said,

“Do you feel better now, though?” He asked.

“Oh yes. Thanks mate.”

And after that we forgot about it and after a very one sided vote we drove off to Nando’s for dinner.

The next day’s airsoft was fun and the chaotic kind we all know and love at GZ. I did see the girl again – so she hadn’t been banned – but we didn’t acknowledge each other.

On the way home I thought of the promise I had made about the footage. Sure, I agreed not to post the footage, it shows a crime after all, but I have kept it just in case I need to make a complaint to the police regarding this event in the future. I did however decide to do something in my film of the Weekender – a subtle revenge – you will have to watch it to find out what.

So, yes, it was a surreal airsofting event. I have never actually seen someone properly attack another at an airsoft event – not in three years of marshalling at EW or in 10 years of playing – and I hope to never see it again, let alone be the victim of that attack. Airsoft is thought to be violent, but it actually isn’t. From the outside, we may look like we are serious people, but in general we are not. Sure, I have had my anger flare up before, but I have always walked away. Any serious complaint I have taken to a marshal. I think that people who can’t walk, who are so up themselves that they must “have a go” or –worse still – actually attack someone, should never get to step foot on an airsoft field again. I would be interested to hear your viewpoint.

However, as usual, it was the brilliant group of team mates – my friends – who made the event for me. The Ground Zero Weekender and airsoft in general is about making new friends and not counting your kills.

Regards,

Basho

The film:

Vimeo HD version:

The DA Team – Ground Zero 2010 from Basho Matsuo on Vimeo.

You Tube version:

Shame I don’t live there then!

Cesca and I have written many articles on the subject of New Zealand and also made a “love letter” of a short-film celebrating the country (found under “films” in the navigation bar). However, I have always wanted to do more to speak of our time driving around these islands.

Well, our wish has come true.

About a two weeks ago I was approached by a company working for Air New Zealand. They wanted to license all our content on New Zealand for use in the official Air New Zealand iPhone app!

On the go and in the air, Air New Zealand’s free Spot-On Travel Guide App Series help you make the most of your visit – even offline.

Browse hand-picked activities, events and destinations by region, then save them for quick retrieval upon arrival. Handy travel tools and social network integration make finding and sharing amazing spots a cinch.

Be a tourist without looking like one.

It’s the Kiwi in us – Air New Zealand.

We jumped at the chance of being involved because we loved our time in New Zealand and the idea of that being celebrated “officially” made us very happy. It gives us another way to share our experiences and give something back. Hopefully, this will have a positive effect on the places we experienced and make sure that people visiting the country for the first time don’t miss out.

I cut down the articles to 150 word long chunks with one picture per chunk. I then uploaded them to a custom CMS provided by my contact. A few days ago they were approved and went live on the app!

We uploaded articles on the following topics:

• See the splendour of Pahia and the Bay Of Islands
• Walk endless sands of 90 Mile Beach
• Be blown away on the cliffs of Cape Reinga
• Walk to the falls of Waitonga
• Cycle up Mount John.
• Walk the Hooker Valley for a view of Mount Cook
• Visit the Sir Edmund Hillary Alpine Centre
• See the wild waters of Hokianga harbour.
• Wonder at the Giant Kauri Trees
• Brave the unpaved roads to Waikawau Bay
• Get washed up in Cathedral Cove
• Bath in Mud at Hell’s Gate
• Dip in the Polynesian Spa at Lake Rotorua.
• Wander around the history of Rotorua museum.
• Early morning at Lake Rerewhakaaitu
• See the wondrous colour palette of Wai-O-Tapu
• See the huge Lake Taupo
• Walk the Queen Charlotte track
• Visit and stay at Furneaux Lodge
• Dig your own spa at Hot Water Beach
• Wonder at the strange Moeraki Boulders
• Get wet at Punakaiki’s Pancake Rocks
• See whales by helicopter in Kaikoura

I have created a special “landing page” for use in the iPhone in-built browser. This can be found here: www.outsidecontext.com/new-zealand

If you are thinking of, or planning, a visit to the best country on the far-side of the world, then get this app and read up on some of the above. We did so much in New Zealand. In two months we travelled one end to the other taking in mountains, beaches, volcanoes, islands, cities and vineyards. We walked on its glaciers, jumped off its bridges, worked on its farms and skydived over its mountains. We didn’t want to leave.

So, get this app and then you too can fall in love with New Zealand.

Just like me.

Download from here

Basho.

PS. If you do get the app, and you like it, then please leave us a comment here to let us know – it would mean a lot to us to hear of your visits to NZ.

There follows a true story of a situation that took place in the street, but equally could have been straight out of a dojo training session. It is interesting because it highlights many things: the dangers of being “switched off”, the speed of the trained man’s reactions, the attitude of the police and the judgement of others. It also highlights a part of conflict that is often missed and shows that in the end the most harsh judge is in fact yourself.

This story is true and happened in late 2009, I repeat it here as it was told to me with permission of the person involved.

Raymond was walking through his local town of Brixton, London. As he walked down a quiet street near the park, three large men approached him from the front. Raymond didn’t totally ignore them and walk straight into the situation, but he was not instantly aware of the danger either. They closed on him and formed a semicircle that blocked the street ahead. Raymond looked up to see the man in the middle pull out what he later described as, “the biggest knife I have ever seen”. The knife came up threateningly and moved towards his midriff. It looked as though these guys were going to mug another helpless victim and escape into the park. However, this time they had made a huge mistake because Raymond is a professional martial arts instructor.

“As soon as I saw the knife, I just started moving. It was instinctive,” he told me. “It was like a sudden shock and my body took over, it was so fast.”

Indeed the entire episode was over seconds later. Raymond turned his body so the knife passed by his stomach. He then covered over the knife arm with his hands and slammed his hip against the man’s elbow. The move was textbook perfect and the knife man’s arm was dislocated instantly. The second man moved in to strike Raymond. Without letting go of the first man’s arm, Raymond kicked out with the classic downward sidekick to the knee. This missed its intended target and his heavy shoes crashed into the second man’s shins, breaking through his leg with a sound Raymond described as, “a sickening crunch”. As the second man fell down, Raymond pulled the first man’s arm around and disarmed the knife by pushing it towards the man’s face making him let go of the blade that passed into Raymond’s hand. Another textbook technique, except as Raymond was describing this to me I saw a look on his face; a look of self-reproach.

“You moved the knife towards his face?” I asked.

“Yes, it was the technique,” he replied to me, “when it is taught in class, the end of the technique is to have the knife against the opponents neck. I have taught it for years; take the knife and use it against them.” He shook his head and looked down.

“And did you?”

“I was about to. My body was just doing the technique automatically and the blade was moving towards this guys neck. I realised that this was going to kill him. I screamed at myself inside my head, trying to stop the action from completing. I was like, ‘what the hell are you doing?!’ to myself. At the last moment I turned the blade away.”

As the blade moved in front of the first man’s face the last man moved in to grab Raymond’s hands.

“What did you do then?”

“I stepped forwards into him and struck the last guy with an upper rising elbow to the collarbone. It broke and he went down.”

“A stepping upper rising elbow?” I asked, “that’s a strange technique choice.”

“With the knife in my hand I didn’t want to stab him, it was just instinct,” shrugged Raymond.

With the three men disabled and rolling around on the floor in pain, Raymond did what any good citizen would do in these circumstances; he called them an ambulance. Then the police arrived and promptly arrested Raymond.

“They arrested you?”

“Yes, they spoke to a bystander who had been on the other side of the street and he said I had been excessive and over the top,” he said.

“Really, there was three of them. Did the bystander not see the knife?”

“No, I showed him it on the ground and he said that I had still been too violent. I couldn’t believe it, I was like, ‘can you not see the size of this thing?’”

Raymond was telling me this story the next day along with some friends. To them, it was exciting and macho. They replayed it again and again amongst themselves, shouting and whooping and saying how they would have dealt with the situation. The only person not smiling was Raymond.

“What do you think the police will do?” he asked me. Luckily, one of the friends present was an off-duty Metropolitan police officer.

“What did you say at the station?” the policeman friend asked.

“The truth. That they pulled that knife and I was defending myself. That they were coming for me and I was in fear of my life.”

“Don’t worry,” the policeman friend said, “you appear to have acted correctly. You waited and phoned the ambulance too that shows a lot. They will probably give you a medal.”

Raymond looked across to me, “what do you think Basho?”

“How long have you been teaching Raymond?” I asked him.

“18 years.”

“Mate, you will have hundreds of students willing to give you a character statement. Don’t worry.”

“Yeah,” said the policeman friend, “I will give you one too, just get them to call me. You have my number.”

“Yeah,” broke in one of our other friends, laughing, “and if you need one from a bricklayer, let me know!”

We all laughed, except Raymond. The others went back to describing the event to each other excitedly. Raymond remained quiet.

“Look,” I said, “I know how you feel. Guilty, right?”

“I was so close to killing him. Maybe I was excessive.” He sounded unsure of himself.

“Take your time,” I said, “you just need to work through this.”

Raymond’s reaction to the event was not unusual. Where one might expect him to be happy, elated and empowered by single headedly defeating three muggers, in fact he was badly shaken by it. The huge amount of danger he had been exposed to had put his mind into shock. What if he had lost the fight? Would he have been stabbed to death? These things were running through his mind again and again, playing over different outcomes, a mental state the French call, L’esprit de l’escalier” or in English, “the spirit of the staircase.” Such feelings are very common after a violent situation. At the moment Raymond saw the knife, and his reactions took over, his brain ordered his glands to dump all sorts of chemicals into the blood. These chemicals made him stronger, faster and narrowed his vision. It also made his blood coagulate quicker and his mind process faster so that the entire event seemed to be happening in slow motion.

One side effect of such a body reaction is the feeling of either terror or rage. The ‘beast’ inside is unleashed and takes over the body. For martial artists, this is channelled through our training. By the endless repetition of techniques, basics and kata we have conditioned ourselves to act in a certain way under pressure. The downside is trying to control that rage with ‘the beast unleashed’. Our civilised brains, the part of us that doesn’t want to hurt anyone, fights for control. For some, like Raymond, it succeeds. For others, the beast wins and tragedy happens; someone gets killed.

Regardless of the outcome, the chemicals burn the event into the memory and what Raymond was feeling was essentially survivors guilt. Guilt for having lived through a traumatic experience, prevailed against the odds and having almost killed in the defence of his life.

The part of British law that covers self-defence has been clearly written to take this mental state into account. The police arrested Raymond and made him make a statement very quickly after the event. At this point he was either still pumped full of adrenaline (making him more talkative) or coming down off the chemicals in his blood stream (making him feel down and possibly needing to “offload”). The police are trained to take advantage of this situation to get the truth out and down on paper. Therefore, your statement is the most important thing to get right. People acting in self-defence have still gone to prison because of what they put in their statement. Knowing not ‘what to say’, rather ‘how to say it’ is going to be the second ordeal you face on a day this happens to you. The law is available in clear and understandable terms at the following government web address: www.cps.gov.uk/legal/s_to_u/self_defence/

The question of how to translate the mental part of combat into training is the primary challenge for instructors. Most doctrines teach that building muscle memory is the way to go, and it is often said that a thousand repetitions of a technique will embed it into instinct. While this appears to be true, there is a large question left outstanding; if we are not teaching people how to cope mentally, then are we teaching them to freeze up and fail at the vital moment. On the other hand, it is important to avoid fully automatic instant responses and end up battering someone honestly asking for directions. It is a balance that forms the hardest part of training and teaching. How many instructors inadvertently teach techniques that kill, sometimes tacked onto a disarming technique as an afterthought? Instructors spend all their lives teaching how to deal with the physical outcomes of conflict, but is it not equally important to understand and teach the mental aspects?

While objective answers to these questions may be impossible, it is surely vital that the class and the instructor considers the questions.

The next week I met up with Raymond again. He told me that he had re-visited the police station and been told that all three men were still in hospital. However, he was also told that the police were not going to press any charges against him. He looked most relieved. He was free of the event legally, I only hope that he is able to free his mind as well.

Basho has been in the martial arts for 18 years and holds a 1st Dan instructor grade in Taekwondo. He recently returned from a year touring the far east.

Sandals.

I hadn’t worn shoes for 2 months. A new adult first, meaning that my feet were always dusty; the ever present Indian dirt and sand sticked to my toes. Every night I showered and a torrent of black washed off my feet. I turned onto my side and spied Cesca on the next sun lounger, she was taking in the sun by laying on her front, her bikini open at the back to allow a tan, but – since I had rubbed in some cream for her – no white line or burning. I reached to the table between us and took down my beer and my book. It was called The Master of Go, by Nobel Prize winning author Yasunari Kawabata.

Then my phone rang. It was my best friend Mark.

I thumbed the screen and the call connected, “Mark!” I exclaimed, genuinely please to hear from him, “It’s great to hear your voice. Where are you?” From over the connection I could hear what sounded like traffic and men talking; the sounds of London. The sounds of home.

“Heyya, I thought I would give you a call,” his voice was raised like he could not really hear me and was compensating by shouting; he must be at work on a building site, “I’m in a man hole at the moment sorting out foundations for a new tube station.”

“Wow,” I said, interested.

“Yeah, it’s for the Olympics and all that. Anyway, it’s cold, wet and horrible and I am down this smelly hole and I thought I could do with cheering up. Where are you?”

I could well imagine England in February and being stuck out in the legendary English wet winter could not be much fun. I looked at the majestic view around me. The beach stretched off to the right and ran into a high line of cliffs with chalets atop the jagged rocks. This had a path running down that ran right behind us giving access to the twenty or so beachfront guest houses. A sort of motley collection of flop houses that serviced the lower order of traveller and would only be reviewed in backpacker bibles such as the Lonely Planet. These ran past us to the left and on down the endless beach, which was also home to a couple of dozen bars of all levels of coolness, before rounding the headland in the hazy distance. The beach itself was dotted with people playing in the surf, lounging on beds like ours, doing yoga and drinking. Everyone looked like they were on a sort of the-morning-after-we-are-the-cool-kids vibe that only a night spent drinking, going to parties and getting laid can get you.

Sure enough, for a certain type of person Goa was a seductive paradise.

“Oh,” I said to Mark, who in my mind was struggling in the cold and wet down a big hole; traffic running all around, “I’m in Goa, India…”

“I see.”

“On the beach…”

“A-ha.”

“Drinking cool beer in the sunshine.

“Is it beautiful?”

“Most definitely. Wish you were mate,” I said honestly, “you would love it.”

“Thanks-“ he then shouted something to someone off the phone that ended in swearing, then he was back on, “Look. I have to go.”

“Sure. Hope the kids are well.”

“We are all looking forwards to you coming back. The lads too, we will all share a beer with you at Ground Zero.”

“Deal, can’t wait.”

“OK, bye!”

And then he was gone.

“Bye, buddy.” I suddenly realised that I was really missing him and the rest of my friends.

I looked at the sea again.

Like I said, a certain type of person would love Goa. Just not me.

A week previous we had left Ellora and headed back towards Mumbai, before jumping off at a junction in the middle of the night and catching the connecting train down into Goa.

Goa is split up into different parts. The area around Colva in the south is all family places. No drugs, no happy pizzas or topless girls and not much yoga. Then there is Manadrem, roughly in the middle, which is chock full of middle-class Indians. Then there is the wilder northern town of Arambol, which has been given over the travellers. Arambol is famous. Moon parties, drink, drugs and lots and lots of pizzas; happy and otherwise. We had started in the southern end as it was closer to the station and after buying a very expensive taxi ride had ended up in a family resort/guesthouse with beachfront  views. The idea was to chill out down here and then work our way back up to the north before heading inland towards Hampi and Mysore. It was good plan.

This guesthouse was fun, in a sensible sort of way, and the food was really nice. We chilled, read some books, had some fun and then made plans to find a good hotel for Valentine’s day.

Valentine’s day is big news in India, but not normally for the right reasons. The Indians have many customs that on the one hand might feel quite liberated and on the other are not. Public Displays of Affection (PDA’s), for example, are fine between men. That is between pals; what the British now call bro-mances. But, PDA’s are not fine between men and women. The highly sexed western valentine’s day, rubs Indians up the wrong way something chronic. Which is to say that it causes all sorts of tension and in India where there is tension, passion and public sexuality then there is violence. Goa is the worst flashpoint for this.

And it is all the westerners fault.

I am going to sound like a “granddad” now, so before I do let me say some things in my defence. I am a modern Londoner. I am confident sexually, comfortable with women and in every way a liberal minded person. This liberality has been the driving force that enabled me to find my religion of Daoism – that and my philosophy degree – and as such I am cool with people cutting loose. I can cut loose too and I like Mary J as much as the next Philosophy Graduate.

Right, so, as I said this is all the westerners fault.

There is a certain type of person looking for something in particular when they go travelling. Goa attracts these people like flies. Serious Ergophobics or, as Douglas Adams called them, “Fart Arounds”. They moved in around the late 70’s and never left. This influx has given rise to an entire enclosed culture that exists in the north of Goa. A culture that doesn’t exist anywhere else in India (that I saw). India is still a very closeted country when it comes to sex. White smooth-limbed western girls with their boobs out are a massive cocktease that the average gently-repressed Indian male finds hard to deal with. Goa is chock full of people that think two things. Firstly, that they can do what the hell they like and to hell with anyone else. Secondly, that India is the same as Thailand.

Believe me, it is not.

The only reason that the Indian government doesn’t roll out the riot police and throw the lot out, is that the tourists bring in a lot of money to a poor country. And that is the big thing for me. When I see westerners mistreating a culture and exploiting it through the power of their money I get angry in a little place inside. And if I feel it, the Indians definitely do. Those not too turned on to think straight.

While in Mumbai I read in a national newspaper about the “worry” regarding Valentine’s day in places such as Goa. That the licentiousness would cause flashes of violence.

It has done in the past.

It was reported that in 2007 a couple of European girls and their boyfriends had been beaten up outside a local bar where they had been drinking all day. The inference of the article was that the lady in question had been underdressed, was drunk and very abusive to the locals’ feelings. In India, you have to watch the public mood carefully. This event had shocked the west and been played down as local trouble, easily sorted, but I can almost guarantee that what happened was instigated by a locals reaction to their attire, their attitude, their rudeness, their drunkenness and probably all of the above.

We wanted none of that.

I never forgot that almost all the police in India have a sub-machine gun.

So we attempted to book a great hotel in the middle of Goa, used by the Indians themselves, so that we might avoid any unpleasantness. We did avoid it, but unfortunately we booked an absolute dive of a hotel that was extravagantly expensive and we hated every moment there that was not spent in our room. Take my advice, unless you want to spend your days eating bad food covered in flies with terrible service, high costs and a small beach then stay away from Mandrem.

After Valentine’s day we bit the bullet, caught a Taxi to the North, and got stuck in. The town of Arambol is basically three long roads leading down to the beach. Each road is absolutely lined with guest houses, bars and tourist shops all selling authentic crap to westerners and catering for the traveller crowd. Mile after mile of this leads finally to the beach and more bars and beach clubs before another spate of guesthouses. It was to one of these we made our way by trudging through the searing heat toward a large blue converted house inches away from another identical copy.

Our room was tiled like a bathroom and had whitewashed walls. Quite romantic in a down to earth kind of way. We unpacked our mosquito nets and made a bed tent to protect ourselves overnight.

We then went shopping and looking for beer and food.

As anyone who reads this blog must surely know, I am somewhat of a culture-vulture when on the road and, since Cesca does not partake of the magical herbs, this left me somewhat at a loss for something to do, until I managed to pull up some WIFI in a great cafe and get on with some writing, followed by browsing an excellent and well stocked second hand book store. Cesca was not in love with this idea. Indeed we only finally reached agreement when I put the laptop away and laid on the beach.

And melted.

On the flip side, the sea was great fun and we found a fantastic Italian restaurant just off the beach. It was near here that I saw my first Ahsram-Girl.

An ashram is a religious hermitage. Additionally, today the term ashram often denotes a locus of Indian cultural activity such as yoga, music study or religious instruction, the moral equivalent of a studio or dojo. WIKI

Ashram-Girl is a term I invented for the very white and thin western girls you occasionally see wandering around places in India. They are easy to spot as firstly, they are very thin after weeks/month/years spent in Ashrams. Secondly, they have that genuine beneficial smile of the believer in whatever it is the ashram teaches. Finally, they only wear Sari’s. I saw a number when I was in Goa and they all have something else about them too, they take your breath away. They are beautiful – In the way that only the content and happy can be. Radiant I guess you would call it. The first one I saw literally parted the crowd drawing bows, smiles, nudges and “wow” statements from all the male Indian shop keepers. She smiled like a painting of the Madonna and willowed her way to wherever she was going.

Whatever they are doing in those Ashrams, and some of them are all about sex to the point that you get a HIV test when you arrive, I don’t suppose they need to advertise. There are all sorts of legends regarding them, and all sorts of terrible tales as well. Abuse, rape, enforced drug taking, starvation and even death. There exists an entire trade in kidnapping these people back to their families and many Hollywood films on the subject too. I had known a true believer when I was in school (in her case a Christian) and while she wasn’t naturally beautiful, she was radiant in the same way that these girls were and I admit that it is a little scary. They look a little lost in another world. That they wear this one lightly. I could picture Cesca in such robes, lost to herself, her family, living a strange life in India, living some true spiritual life of yoga and I didn’t like the idea one bit, but I won’t deny that the part of her that would embrace that life is one of the many parts of her that I am attracted to.

Over the next few nights we partied, ate, drank, shopped and sat in the sun. I went through book after book from the shop until I came across one that would change my life.

The Tao of Pooh and Te of Piglet (Wisdom of Pooh) is not a real Daoism book. It is not exactly well thought of in terms of intellectual Daoist studies, nor is it in line for any sort of prize for accuracy, understanding or factualness. Nevertheless as a starting point for a long mental journey it was perfect. The book is about the Chinese Religious Philosophy of Daoism. Or more accurately, it is about the Westernised version of the Chinese Religious Philosophy of Daoism. The writers claim that Winnie the Pooh is Daoist. It is a such a strong idea that millions of people have read and instantly understood – or thought they have – Daoism without reading anything else about the religion. For most that is the first time they receive “knowledge outside the scriptures” and as such most come away with a self satisfied sense of having “got it”. They then get back on with their own lives and that’s that.

Daosim. Sorted.

For a few others this leads down a rabbit hole and after a very long journey, into wonderland. I will have much more to say on this subject in a later Philosophy post, but suffice to say, that while I have listened and read Alan Watts for many years by this point, only the talk of Zen had really interested me. His common reference to Daoism had not, at that point, stirred me. This book, about a fictional bear with very little brain and his identification with an ancient Chinese Philosophy was the first time I really considered it.

Eventually Cesca and I booked a train ticket from the nearby town of Panjim and caught a taxi out of Amabol. I was finally feeling relaxed, and little sun burned. The atmosphere of the place made it impossible not to chill out. We arrived in Panjim and booked into a guest house called Park Lane Lodge.

The owner was very eccentric, and the guesthouse was basically a room in his large house. It was the only place I stayed that had a curfew and the room was not particular well cooled, so we walked around and found an ATM.

Panjim has a very nice feel of colonial architecture and a Portuguese vibe to it.

It was a nice place to wander around before tucking into a meal of grilled fish at the towns top hotel.

Then we walked back to the guesthouse and I started to feel thirsty. Like I really needed a cup of tea. We got back and tucked into bed.

Then a hole opened up and I fell into hell.

The first thing that happened is that I need to use the facilities about half an hour after turning in. As I sat on the seat I suddenly felt wrong and threw up. Then both ends of me threw up for about 5 minutes. I had Indian food poisoning. Bad. Feeling that the worst was over I showered and managed to make it back to bed.

But, only for ten minutes.

My body was then wracked with pain in the stomach and I had a terrible thirst. I tried to sleep but every ten minutes I was forced to drag myself to the loo in agony. I drank and drank our reserves of water to no avail. I eventually had to wake Cesca to go and get some more water from the guest house owner, who thankfully was very helpful and kind. After a very long night I was feeling even worse. I couldn’t get up in the morning, I couldn’t really see anything, nor keep anything down. I was drifting in and out of a nightmare dream that I remember well, it was of a vampire/devil character biting me and smiling a toothed grin. The super strong sun was now on the room’s roof and heat started to radiate into it.

It is fair to say that I suffered that day. I had drunk 8 litres of water through the night and I was starting to worry.

Cesca went out and bought me all the cold drinks she could, electrolyte powder and cokes. These kept my sugars up and replaced all the minerals I was losing rapidly.

I then decided to pop an antibiotic. We had brought with us a small collection of Ciprofloxacin, which is a strong antibiotic used for serious gut infections.

Ciprofloxacin (INN) is a synthetic chemotherapeutic antibiotic of the fluoroquinolone drug class.It is a second generation fluoroquinolone antibacterial. It kills bacteria by interfering with the enzymes that cause DNA to rewind after being copied, which stops DNA and protein synthesis.  WIKI

I couldn’t read the instructions but I knew what was the dose as I had taken them in Cambodia. It was 500mg for gut infection and 700mg for tuberculosis!

Though that day I was delirious and didn’t know myself or Cesca. I can remember being locked in a short repeating dream that was coming and going like a wave and constantly repeating itself.

The next day I felt a little better, but I was as weak as a day old lamb. Cesca took me to the famous Panjim church and we tried to climb the steps, but I couldn’t.

I was so weak. After a hour climbing steps that should take less than a minute we went back to the guest house and I tried to eat something.

I couldn’t. My appetite was ruined.

I made a promise then and there. Next time someone gets that ill, we are booking into a top hotel and getting air-conditioning and room service. It sucks to be ill in an Indian Guest House. It is the worst possible location short of the middle of the Indian jungle. It wasn’t until the next day that I felt well enough to travel. We waved goodbye to the guesthouse owner and passed out of Panjim towards the train station.

We clambered aboard a train and I considered our time in Goa. Beach holidays and laying in the sun was not the reason I left home. However, having said that, I think Goa has almost everything that a beach holiday could offer. Goa has a massive massive range of accommodation and beach styles and you are sure to find something that suits you, just keep moving if it doesn’t. As for Panjim, well I had been purged by Panjim, it was a very nice looking place, but I can never forgive it for trying to kill me.

Now we were heading to the one of the most memorable parts of our trip to India, indeed the world. We were going to the countryside for a rest cure in a UNESCO village on the banks of the river Ganges.

The train stopped, we had arrived in Hampi.

Regards,

Basho

During this time, the Mongol led precursors to the Ming had collapsed and China was about to enter its most fascinating historical age. It was an age of intellectual flowering, towering social and political achievements and immense scientific progress. During all of this, Chinese Daoism was again forming into something new. The almost shamanistic practices of external alchemy were giving ground to a new practice of internal alchemy. Internal alchemy was the search for ”immortality” through the development of magic powers inside oneself. This is a syncretic idea heavily influenced by both Confucianism and indeed the movements of Buddhism, which after all is all about internal realisations, forming ideas that are readily recognisable for their influence on the west.

I am talking about internal kung fu.

One of the leading thinkers of Daoism at the time was the legendary Chang San-Feng, who wandered up Mount Wudang and made it the base of his Daoist sect. Legend has it that, in one of the temples up the mountain, he formed his magical exercises into Tai Chi after watching a snake and bird fighting. After the Yongle Emperor decreed Wudang to be “The Grand Mountain” its place in history was assured. Fast foward in time and the monasteries and buildings were made a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1994. The palaces and temples in Wudang contain Taoist art and icons from as early as the 7th century. It represents the highest standards of Chinese art and architecture over a period of nearly 1,000 years.

Of course, the true nature of Daoist history is as slippery as the core texts. I will have more to say about the veracity of this “history” later.

So what is it like to visit? Walking the 20,000 steps (!) up the mountain is one of the most spiritual things I have ever done, but not perhaps in the way that you might imagine. We came to Wudang half way through our journey in China and before our journey into Japan. Since we were basically on a spiritual journey around the world in general, and Buddhist journey in particular, the effect of Wudang took a long time to settle into my bones. However, my muscles ached like hell the very next day! Also, this was still China in 2009 and Daoism is a very strange and illusive beast to get a grasp on. So what the hell happened? This is something I will have to go into far more depth about at a later time, but essentially the contrast between this strange and very foreign way of life gave me the space to consider my own thrown into sharp relief. When you meet people and visit places that are so different to your experiences and your life, then you have two choices. You scoff. Or you stop and think. Mount Wudang is one of the best places I have ever visited for making time to stop and think. To, in fact, go beyond thinking and be able to sublime the nature of your existence. It is a fair thing to say that I walked down Wudang a different person than when I walked up, but that I didn’t realise it until much later.

So, here is the (small) film about that day. I hope that I managed to, at least a little, capture some of the feeling of the place and time.

NEW You Tube version:

Vimeo version:

Wudang Mountain, the Heart of China from Basho Matsuo on Vimeo.

Note: This is the third part of a complete three part article that completes our time in Vietnam. This entry continues our adventures in Halong Bay and the wonder that is Tet in Hanoi.

The next day we were taken to a large island and dropped off. There we were given a bike each. These were frankly terrible bikes and I got the distinct impression that that staff did not expect us to ride them. They expected us to pay for a moped instead. An older couple from our group did so, but Cesca and I insisted on riding and so set off. The chain fell off immediately, so Cesca changed her bike and we set off. The wheels locked immediately, so Cesca changed her bike again and we set off. The seat fell off immediately, so Cesca took my bike, I got another one, and we set off.

The trip was through the mountains and I rode up to the guide,“What’s with these bikes?”

“They are the best we have.”

“Well, perhaps a little maintenance is in order.”

“Listen,” he said, “These people don’t have much.”

I thought this was a bit rich since it was his company’s responsibility to provision local services. Since he had so much of our money (about $2000 paid by the entire boat), one would think one of the locals could be trained as a bike mechanic. I suppose he was trying to make me feel guilty, but unfortunately for him I had already been to Laos. Those people had nothing. These people were relatively rich.

We rode through the mountain pass and down into the next valley. This was your absolute picture perfect Vietnamese countryside. Rice paddies, buffalo and villages set against the majestic mountains. Eagles soared overhead. The problems with the bikes were quickly forgotten.

We rode through the village and smiled a hello to all we met. This was much more like it. After about 5 miles or so, we stopped at a little cafe and bought some drinks, and then the guide led us to the walk.

It was clear to me that most of the time people do not actually fancy the walk, as it was straight up the mountain on a dirt track.

However, this time he had not only Cesca and I, but also a guy from the Italian mountains. He walked up the thing, back down, met us half way and back up again all without breaking breath. By the time we reached the peak (about an hour later), the three of us (plus guide) were the only ones who had bothered to make it.

At the top was an old base left over from the war, which afforded incredible views of the valley on either side and the water all around with the peaks of islands in the distance. It was one hell of a view.

We walked down again and stopped for refreshment. There I met another English couple who were about to go home. They too had got to wondering what their trip was all about and bemoaning the fact that they felt exactly the same as before they left. Don’t worry, I told them, it will come to you at home. Epiphanies are not always of the order of magnitude you expect. Not everyone can have the flashing burst of the infinite that struck Jesus or Buddha, some get lots of little ones, some get none. Perhaps they are something you must not look for.

Perhaps they are why we climb mountains and travel countries.

Personally, I get a little one every single time I cuddle up to Cesca in bed. That is good enough for me. Anyway, I had a big one about 12 years ago in Israel. Still, we jumped back on the bikes and rode out the way we came in.

Back on the boat, we were taken for one last jaunt, to Monkey Island. As we arrived, our group, which was by now getting on well, passed around some whisky and I read the Lonely Planet description about Monkey Island. I read it again aloud and everyone voted to give it a miss. Monkey Island is unsurprisingly full of monkeys that, also unsurprisingly, have developed a hatred for humans, not that I can say that I blame them. Subsequently they often attack them, and some have rabies.

Instead, the boat took us to a local floating village comprised of a couple of shacks, some barrels and a lot of nets. There we met with a clam farmer who uses an amazingly clever way of farming clams using buckets of mud suspended under water.

This was the most genuine experience of the entire venture and the one that we all enjoyed. The farmer was friendly and we joined him for a toast of the local firewater outside his shack.

The inside the shack sat his children and they obviously all live in this strange place. I think, it is quite possible the strangest lifestyle I have ever come across. At once so remote and harsh, and yet he gets tourists popping in all the time.

After half an hour of nodding and smiling, but no actual conversation, we got back on the boat and made for the final island.

Cat Ba Island is much larger than the rest and has a lot of building going on it. I suppose the idea is to turn it into a holiday resort, but now it is a bit of a concrete jungle amid a building site. We jumped into transports and were whisked to a hotel. This was purporting to be the Vietnamese idea of a high quality hotel, but I spied that it was really another type of tourist trap. That night we all met up for a set meal and some very expensive drinks. The food was ok, nothing special, but I really enjoyed the company as by this time we were all getting on in that peculiar British way of connecting when stuck with each other.

We slept comfortably that night. The next day, after a breakfast, we headed back towards the city. About half way, we stopped at a restaurant for lunch. This also had something strange about it, as although it was nice and the food ok, I could not escape the feeling that only tourist busses come here. For people like Cesca and I, used to the genuine experience, such sugar coated tourism felt wrong and unnatural, but still the view from the window was great.

We bid the others goodbye when we arrived back in Hanoi and re-entered our original hotel. The staff was not pleased to see us at all. In fact, they told us that we could not stay. After I pointed out that we had already paid to stay, they got a little agitated. Eventually, they went over the road and organised for us to move hotels.

This turned out to be a great idea as the staff at this second hotel, the service, the room and the food, was the best I had in the whole of South East Asia. Friendly, quick, polite and happy these people made us feel right at home.

In the room, Cesca was still steaming about the other hotel. I personally think that the staff had made plans to close the place during the coming New Year, and we were totally buggering them up. Still, rudeness, the most unforgivable trait in a hotel concierge, was painful.

That night was the first day of Tet and effectively the Vietnamese New Year. Our hotel manager explained what that meant. Tet is the celebration of many things all rolled into one. The traditional Tet is the New Year, which means, like in the UK, that the year ticks over by one. However, unlike in the western world, it is also everyone’s official birthday. Therefore, someone 29 today would be 30 tomorrow. Someone born today would be one tomorrow. Crazy as that sounds, it gives rise to the third phenomenon: Tet is also Xmas. Of course, the Vietnamese are not a Christian nation, rather they are Buddhist, but Tet affords all the practical actions over a British Christmas.

Firstly, everyone takes as much of the week off as they can, they also go to visit their families for that time. They have a special social practice around this, where on the first day of Tet, only the direct family are invited, then on the second day wider family, the third day, neighbours, and so on. It is very easy for foreigner to cause offense in such an environment and if you are invited on a certain day, you must never appear beforehand. You are seriously warned about this.

Secondly, everyone buys each other presents.

Thirdly, they all surround themselves with a special tree. Rather than the Norwegian fir tree used in the west, they use a peach or orange tree. The entire city was decked out in beautiful fruit trees all around. It was rather magical.

Looking at it from his viewpoint it is not hard to comment that Vietnamese Tet has everything in common with the average UK Christmas; religion enters into it in only small and controlled amounts, while superstition is rife.

Also worth remembering is that Tet is the anniversary of the Tet offensive against the Yanks. The Vietnamese feel very strongly that the thousands slaughtered in the ensuing battles died as heroes, every single one. Amazing and even now the strength of feeling still moves me.

The final thing that happens is that the City empties in the run up to Tet and then everyone comes out for the fireworks party. Cesca and I spent the day exploring the area set aside for the party and planning our night’s activities. We had a lot of fun playing in the strangely silent roads, possibly for the only time in the year that they are empty. For a country such as Vietnam, where everyone – absolutely everyone – has a moped, this was a surreal experience.

As the night came down, the city stirred and we went in search of food. On the way we bumped into a few people we knew and shared a hearty “Chuc mung nam moi!” which is the cry of Tet. We eventually found a very special place to hold up awaiting the action coming later, this was a great bar above a street and one of the few place still open. Most were either eating in roadside food cafe’s, a sort of selection of crates used as chairs and planks of wood as tables – fear not as the food is amazing at these places, or they were ensconced in the higher end bars that charged Western high prices.

We managed to find something in between and had a very romantic time.

As the hour approached, we made our way down to the lake, which by now was stacked with people. Our worry about being unwelcome at such event vanished as the Vietnamese seemed to adopt all the foreigners that night, everyone was happy and smiling, all had brought their families out to enjoy the event, it was a wonderful feeling to be so welcomed at such an event and lots of smiling shouts of, “Chuck Mung Nam Moi!” reached our ears from all directions.

The crowd closed in and the numbers welled to thousands. Now everyone was standing. Cesca and I could see over the sea of heads that they were awaiting something. We worried for a moment that the trees lining the lakes edge would block the view of the festivities, but then the fireworks started and banished those fears.

I have seen fireworks all over the world, In Disneyland Florida, in the seaside coastal town of Brixham, in Australia, in Cambodia, in Brazil and even in Israel, but the fireworks I saw that night were as good if not better than any of them. The Vietnamese welcomed in the New Year, their new ages and honoured their dead with one hell of a bang.

After almost an hour, the last explosion lit up the sky and the crowd started to move in one direction. It seemed that some sort of temple ceremony was now happening and the idea was to visit the temples in a certain order. Cesca and I joined in and were carried along amongst the happy fellows.

Many hours later, we managed to arrive back to the hotel. There we found that the manager was having her family event right there in the lobby. With great joy she bid us to join, and greatly honoured, we did. I hope it brought her luck. We ate the traditional cakes and drank a little before thanking her and heading to a well-deserved bed.

A day later, we were leaving Hanoi and Vietnam in general and I took stock of what he had experienced. The people of Vietnam are a pragmatic and hard working bunch. Their economy is trying to copy the successes of the western while avoiding the problems, at least for now. Their cities are rich and impressive and they have a very positive attitude. They love visitors, but do not love tourists and in that I agree wholeheartedly with them. They cater to tourism out of the fundamental need to enrich themselves. Their cooking is divine, their beer is fine and their women are very good looking. We had seen the most sugar coated sights and yet had also managed to peek a little into the truth under these illusions. There was so much more to explore here that I felt that we could be back one day and see the rest.

I loved Vietnam. The country that, more than any other, I got “wrong” in my preconceptions. It has to be seen and felt with the heart itself as, like the brochures for Halong Bay, pictures alone cannot do it justice.

Regards,

Basho

Coming next: Coming in the next article is the mighty city of Bangkok, an incredible meet-up with some old friends and the horror of the Bridge On River Kwai, where Basho comes face to fangs with an eight inch spider.

The trip cost us $85, and we were lucky, others on our boat later told us what they had paid anything from $80 to $160 each for exactly the same experience.

The bus arrived at the dock’s edge (having visited the ubiquitous tourist-shucking-shop on the way) and we joined the scrum waiting for their boats. It was there that I started to come up with a theory:

What appears to happen, to my sceptical mind, is that the tour guide from the hotel is actually an agent from one of these travel cafes. He arrives with busload of suckers, all who have been sold “luxury” cruises and generally up-sold as much as possible, and then goes into the dock office and passes you off into that system for a commission.

Then he buggers off.

Now you are in another system, which has bought you all at the same price. This is why paying more makes no difference to the client. To the agent, paying more goes straight into his pocket. So now, you are randomly’ishly assigned a boat by block and shuffled aboard. The boat crew have paid the office a small amount for membership of the boat club and they then earn all their money, beyond a cut of the price, in the reselling of extras. This explains why a beer is £4 and they hate you bringing your own water.

However, that is just a theory and frankly like most we simply went along with it like sheep. After ten minutes our boat was ready. It didn’t look too bad; a little fake in that extra effort had been made to make it look oriental, with wood panels and dragonheads, etc. Really, it was just a big square-bottomed cruiser.

We said hello to our fellow passengers and settled into our room. This was in the second deck above the main kitchen, which itself was above the engine. The quality of the room was not too bad for two days at sea and I am sure that in the summer a lot of fun is to be had in sunbathing on the decks. This was not summer, but then we are British and are more than used to that. Cesca showed concern about the noise, but I figured that we would be stopped during the night.

Of course, the boat and the rooms had only passing resemblance to the pictures in the brochures.

The boat made its way out of the bay, jostling with the absolute armada of other semi-identical boats all setting off at the same time. We piled onto the top deck and considered the scrum; a veritable traffic jam of boats hitting each other and men shouting while wielding barge poles.

All the boats had people on the top deck (effectively the roof) by now and everyone was a little sheepishly staring at each other’s transport to see who’s was the best. I think that ours was average.

I was filming this amazing sight on my camcorder when it suddenly went pop and broke. Yep, I went off-line with my filming from this moment. This was the start of a big hassle and I did not get a working video camera up and running until half way through India, two months away!

Anyway, we chugged across to the famous limestone karsts peaks of Halong. They were large, strange, and popping out of the water to great heights. Over all there are more than 775 dotted around only 334km.

These amazing ancient structures have featured in many novels and films and it is not hard to see why, as they are unique. At least that is what they tell you on the trip. They remind me of fjords that have half collapsed into the sea. We passed by umpteen small structures as the sea mist swirled around them. The consensus on board was that they were well worth seeing

What I personally enjoyed more, strange old me, was the communities that live on the water, literally on the water, at the bases of the islands. Floating little villages and boats ferrying locals to a fro were very interesting. What would living in such a place be like? I wondered to myself. How would you get to work or to school?

The boat made its way further amongst the islands, roughly in a line with all the others. Then we came to the first stop; the Sung Sot Caves, or in English, “The Caves of Surprises!” I have been in caves all over the world, from Asia, to America to Australasia and of course, in the UK, but here was a cave system of magnificent proportions.

The Vietnamese know this and have designed a walk through the cave system that would be in Disney World if it were not so real. Well lit and stunning in proportion we went down to the caves in groups. The group leader tried valiantly to tell us about what we were seeing, albeit an official version, but I could not understand a word of what he was talking about so I started listening to the next group. Then I noticed my American chums from Sothern Vietnam.

After exchanging hellos and a quick update on our journey through the county, Cesca and I joined in with them and we all walked around together. The girl, and I honestly cannot remember her name – sorry, was about to finish her 6 month trip and head back home.

This was the first time that I had come across a now very familiar syndrome. When people start travelling they expect something to happen. They expect to change, get religion, or become one with nature. To find themselves changed inside, with the flashing of epiphany and momentous re-understandings of spacetime. It is not their fault; this is how travelling is sold to people; its image. Watching films like, The Beach or The Motorcycle Diaries, suggests that you can lose yourself and find yourself on your travels. Perhaps even become a famous revolutionary leader!

The truth is not so seductive.

This is 2009 and it is quite possible, even on a budget, to travel for months and never be out of your comfort zone, to never be reached inside, even by yourself. This is partially due to what is called, “The backpackers bubble”. It is really hard to honestly break out of this bubble. This leads to a quite strong feeling of frustration with having missed something. People tend to become uncharacteristically philosophical at these times, they tend to want to talk about, “what they have learned and what it all means.”

She talked and I listened.

Since then, I have come across this mind-set many times and I have talked many people through it, lent an ear and spoken a little on the subject. In fact, I have been thinking about it deeply and I am going to write a lot more than is appropriate here. Suffice to say, this girl was ever so slightly disappointed with her trip and needed to talk about it.

I am glad that she chose me for that brief moment for I was able to tell her this: “When you get home, when you find your old life envelope you like a warm bath, you will feel a tinge of guilt. Guilt that you did not become Che Guevara or a Zen Buddhist Master. You may also feel shame. Shame that there is not a book going to be written about your experiences. You want your life to have a meaning; you are told that it is special. Of course, life itself is special, but the meaning of an individual’s life is not found at the end of journeys. Meaning is found by living and breathing. Life is not a pilgrimage with a reward at the end. Life is a dance, and one that you only get to dance once. Cherish what you have done, not what you missed. Don’t look back, don’t look forwards. Concentrate on now. Live in the now and let the past rest and future be. Then your life will not lack for meaning.

Anyway, out of the caves, we returned to the boat and it took us to a floating village. This village had some very dodgy canoes, which we all jumped in and rowed ourselves around and through a cave system. This was pretty cool, but let down by the very poor equipment and the short time given to this part of the journey. I got the sense of boxes being ticked by the tour guides.

Then we were dropped off at an island to walk to the top of a karst mountain. It was great fun, if a little steep. At the top, we watched the nightfall and the lights come on all around.

That night we came down for dinner and sat with a nice English couple we had been chatting to and getting on well with.

Then the staff came up and directed us to move to sit with a different group.

“Why?” I asked

“You have different meal.”

“But we don’t mind, neither do our friends here,” cue agreement from our new comrades, “we want to sit here.”

“Move that table now,” he said pointing to the table next to us.

“Does it really matter?”

“Now!”

This conversation was then repeated with the next table and so on until the entire boat was being rearranged because no-one was seated “where they should be”  Everyone had to get up, move a few feet and back sit down. People were all a little miffed to say the least and some loud protests fell on deaf ears.

After all that, the only difference in the meal was the starter: crab.

The Vietnamese insistence in this regard, and their total bemusement regarding our reticence, was the first time I had come across a peculiar Asian phenomenon. It does not happen very often, but mores and social norms are naturally different over here. Not that they are in any way wrong, just different and when Western and Eastern feelings clash it often results in a complete lack of understanding. Our hosts simply stood bemused at everyone’s problem with moving, shocked (probably) at the (apparent) rudeness. For the Westerners, on the other hand, who had all been brought up that the “customer is always right”, rules in restaurants are really only guidelines; often broken as a way of making one feel special. To us the staff were being amazingly fussy and rude.

Who hasn’t been asked to follow a rule by a server of some type and then had them make an exception, “just for you sir”? We all have, it is common in the west. A Western server would not have insisted on a shuffle, they would have simply served where we were. It really was not important that we got the “right” meal, but it was important that we sat with who we wanted to.

None of this exists in Asia and I had similar things happen in countries all over this continent. Especially Japan, where the normally super-polite Japanese can turn into being, what can only be described as, “bloody insistent.” I suspect the core of it is the language barrier, as English has all sorts of nuances and “ways of putting things” when speaking to soften an order into a request. To those coming to English from another language, having been taught direct speaking, they can appear rude as all hell. Once we had all had about six beers in us, the staff started the hard-sell on things like pearls. They did not get very far, but Cesca did buy some postcards.

I suspect that the staff on these boats hate the rich westerners with their drinking, loud aggressiveness (to us: assertiveness) and incredible rudeness (what the westerners call ‘being direct’ or ‘plain spoken’). On the other hand, westerners probably just want an authentic experience without being asked to dip into their pockets every five seconds or the feeling that they are being fleeced. I think that trips like these made Cesca and I want to drop off the tourist routes as much as possible. To break out of that bubble and into a little freedom and honesty, where “tourists” were only normal “customers” and “servers” became “locals”. Such wants started to pull at us and our future plans for India started to take shape.

Anyway, after enough drinking, Cesca and I left the others to it and turned in. The boat was anchored in a peaceful lagoon along with many others and it slowly drifted around the anchor. Cesca and I opened the windows to watch the lights of the other boats playing against the deep darkness. The sky was clear and in the distance loomed the shapes of the giant karsts.

It was quite beautiful.

The next part is coming soon…

Regards,

Basho