It's about time...

Tuesday November 30th, Bangkok

It’s about time I started a blog really. All this travelling around I do and I never document anything. When I’m old and ridden with disease from all my international debauchery it would be nice to have a record. Obviously that’s a joke.

I think that about sets the journalistic standard for this blog...

I’m not that organised enough to approach this with any structure, so I’m just go to splurge random musings. I don’t really expect anyone to be that interested or to wait avidly for new updates, but you know, some of you may find it interesting. Besides, I’m not doing it for you. I’m doing it for me. I don’t even like you.

So, first post, how exciting. And first post has an exotic location too, well, it’s an airport which is not really that exotic, but it is in Bangkok. I have just arrived from the Philippines and a long weekend in Boracay, which I guess is the main subject for this entry...

So, Boracay. What an awesome place, and the perfect contrast to my two weeks working in bustling Manila. No-one in Boracay bustles. Unless you can bustle a beer. Or a surfboard. Or another beer. After a fortnight of eating cheeseboards at 3am in the lobbies of 5 star hotels came to an end, and after a couple of hastily grabbed hours of sleep (and some even hastier packing) it was off for an early flight on Saturday morning. Carrier de jour? Cebu Pacific for the one hour flight on a little prop plane over to Caticlan (Boracay is too little to have an airport, how cute). It was a pretty fun flight in the end. Anyone who’s flown Cebu Pacific before will know of their penchant for playing mid-air games with prizes (and for dancing the safety briefing, although they didn’t do that on my flights with them). Can you imagine Ryanair playing games on their flights? Other than their obligatory game of ‘the customer is a prick’ of course. And who’d be without that? Not me. Wait, yes, me.

Caticlan ‘airport’ (it’s just about 1000 yards of straight(ish), flat(ish) tarmac, think Fisher Price ‘My First Airport’) was reached just as a tropical downpour started, but fortunately Cebu Pacific provide umbrellas for the 50 yard walk to the terminal from the plane. How lovely! Again, I’m pretty sure if Ryanair thought to do this there would be a £5 umbrella surcharge (£8 unless you booked in advance, you just have to guess if it might be raining or not don’t you. You should know that!) Exiting the airport, it was a quick motor-trike ride down to the port, on a boat, and 10 mins across to Boracay. Total cost was about 3 GBP, cheaper than even a 100 yard cab ride in the UK, and British taxis hardly ever take me to tropical islands! Bastards.

Hostel-age was provided by the deliberately mis-spelt ‘Frendz’ resort, and even though I have a mild hatred for deliberaet mis-splellings, I had booked three nights in advance thanks to some good reviews on TripAdvisor and HostelBookers. I was greeted by the owner and his wife on arrival, and immediately given a frosty welcoming beer. Clearly they knew the way to my heart - through my liver. I was staying in a 6-person dorm (all male), which was clean, but slightly hot (no air-con, just fans). Quite the contrast to life in The Peninsula in Manila...

Following my check-in the following three days consisted almost entirely of the following five activities: eating, drinking (lots), beach time, sleeping (not lots) and meeting new people. The last one is the key one here really. It might surprise some people who know me that I’ve never really travelled on my own before, and certainly not to a totally new place of my own. I will confess I was a bit worried about meeting people. No-one wants to sit on their own for three days, well, some people might, but not me for sure. Too many dark, dark thoughts. JOKE! I needn’t have worried anyway; I met some really cool people, and had a great time chatting away and sharing stories. Mostly I seemed to hang out with English and Australians (which sounds rather like my life in the UK actually, so much for new experiences... ;)) but met lots of other random people too – all happy to share a beer, or teach me how to throw a Frisbee (it’s HARD!) or to try and find the Ashes on TV.
Going into a bar in Boracay and asking a Filipina working there “Do you have the Ashes on?” is not a great move FYI. It is generally met with “What’s the Ashes?”, “Oh, sorry, it’s a cricket game between England and Australia”, “What’s cricket?”, “Oh, sorry, it’s a bit like baseball... only not really. And it takes 5 days.” “5 days, for one game? Are you sure?”, “Oh yes, absolutely, can you see if it’s on any of your channels?”, “OK... I have 7 channels of basketball, is it any of those?”, “Not so much... I’ll try somewhere else... thanks”. Repeat that a few times and you’ll realise that trying to watch what, to the rest of the world, is quite an obscure sport is not the best way to spend your time when on a tropical island. But in my defence it was raining (and England snatched a draw from the jaws of defeat, so you know, it was important!)

Anyway, the subject of this blog was supposed to be ‘meeting new people’ and not ‘sports at which England are un-arguably superior to Australia’. What else do I want to say? Well, nothing really, I guess you had to be there. Which is probably the point. Stop reading my blog and go to your own tropical island, or even down the pub and chat to some strangers, end result is probably similar even if the location isn’t.

All too quickly it was time to leave Boracay anyway, so a quick walk-trike-boat-trike-plane-minibus-plane later and here I am. Sitting in Bangkok airport, waiting for some more adventures to begin. I have a Singha keeping me company though, so I’m utterly content with the waiting. But it’s getting warm, which means it is time to stop typing.