At the Back of the Green Gibbon!

The end for now...

2010-04-26T03:51:00.002+07:00

I'm archiving this blog as of January 2010, and starting another:
Cycling in the footsteps of Jesus to India!

Thanks to all of you who read this, and especially those that made comments.
I do intend to answer the comments on the new blog, rather than be spotty, as I was on this blog.
On we ride....
cheers,
Felix in Amman, Jordan, on my way to India.

In the Hall of the Mountain King, Pt.6: Barney the Bear

2008-02-15T17:38:00.007+07:00

Central Kalimantan, Indonesia

Ami steps up to the large wooden door and knocks, while Rob and I stand one step behind and below, mute.

What can you say?

It’s like lining up for a caning at school, back in the days when they cured naughty boys like Rob and myself of over-indulgence with a swift whack on the behind.

It’s odd, though, how naughty boys seem to be the ones that end up in places like Kalimantan either saving humanity or living a life of a dissolution, or both.

It’s just a question of what you find to believe in, but then as any good naughty boy will tell you, nobody can actually hand you belief, you’ve got to find it for yourself.

So you’ve just got to go on being naughty until you find something real enough, true enough, and God help us all, beautiful enough, that will bring you in from the cold, of its own accord.

(That is, if you keep honour with yourself, and don't succumb to the yapping of Poodles along the way, which is easier said than done. There are a lot of Poodles, and their logic is so poodle tight...)

As Jesus said to Thomas, in the Gospel of Thomas: I shall give you what no eye has seen and what no ear has heard and what no hand has touched and what has never occurred to the human mind.

... which does, if you think about it, put it beyond the reach of a lot of the known world.

("How freakin' far have I got to reach, Lord?" asked Thomas.)

Ami’s wearing her inscrutable ‘one size fits all’ Asian Happy Face, a great skill, and something that is impossible for Westerners to effect, no matter the effort.

Her face, even before the door opens, is radiating complete non-threatening, compliant tidak papa, ‘tidak papa’ being bahasa Indonesia for ‘no worries’, and ‘she’ll be right, mate’, as we say in Australia, and ‘it’s cool’, as they say in America (there being no equivalent in German.)

The Happy Face is not genetic, but simply a social skill that requires years of training, but you have to start early, like Tiger Woods or maybe Evel Knievel.

In fact, Ami’s in such top form for the big occasion that she looks like she’s stuck one of those small, round Happy Cushions on top of her shoulders, and it’s impressive. (You can buy them at the market in Palangkaraya for a dollar. They come in red, pink, blue and yellow.)

Yeah, the Happy Face...

The big white Mickey Mouse eyes and the ludicrous Gavin Jenkins’ smile* say ‘I want to play’ and ‘I have a very small brain’, which could be rather boring, except that in Ami’s case, being female, there’s an unmistakable subtext of lay down your sword Achilles, rest your troubled head on my welcoming breast and I will transport you...

*Gavin Jenkins was a fellow pupil in primary school, and he was perhaps the dumbest human being I have ever met in my sorry life. When in trouble, he smiled like a Happy Cushion, believing that this most guileless of facial gestures would win him through even the most critical of situations, ones that Jesus Himself would have had trouble with. The day Gavin took my beloved marbles, and I confronted him about it, was the last time he ever smiled like that in my presence, at least until they replaced his front tooth, at great expense and flowing of blood. As you can imagine, I got an awful caning for that little episode, from the very formidable Sister Marguerite, our school principal, viz;
“Felix,” said Sr. Marguerite, looming over my tender 10 year old self with the cane, “that was not a very Christian act!”
“Yes, Sister,” I replied, “but Gavin took my marbles and wouldn’t give them back! And then he smiled at me!”
"He smiled at you?"
"Ah, yes..." I said.
“Oh, for the love of God! What are we ever going to do with you?" she said. "Now, bend over!" which I did, knowing the game was lost.
“This is going to hurt me more than it’s going to hurt you,” she added, flexing the cane.
“Then don’t do it, Sister!” I replied quickly, and quite reasonably I thought, but which, I can tell you, was not the right response.

Yes, the Happy Face, what a formidable weapon it is.

Of course it's fine if it’s working for you, on your team, so to speak, attending your every need, molding itself effortlessly like Plasticine around every jagged edge you call an issue, massaging every Engram out of your colon with strong, soothing hands, sending you blissfully unawares into the Land of Forgetfulness.

But of course, everything in this dualistic universe in which we reside has a dark side, skills just being skills, massages just being massages, so it all depends on who is driving, and what they want.

And everybody, except Lord Buddha (Peace be upon Him) wants something…

We reach into the dark, past the phantoms and the feints, searching for a handhold, a foothold, a corner of earth, and further, down through the fissure in the rock, deep into the cave where the Genie lies, and then, and only then, can we see what animates the heart of that which we face.

At that point, we’re either home, or at war, and it doesn’t really matter which. The main point being that we know where we stand, and can act.

But as Ringo (Peace be upon him) tells us, it don’t come easy…

Rob’s gone ‘Turtle’, which may be the Western equivalent to the Happy Face Defence Strategy, but that is, I will admit, a little like comparing a World War II German Tiger Tank to a Stealth Bomber, or perhaps Celtic Bonfires to NORAD.

‘Turtle’, with its distinctive raising of the shoulders, withdrawal of the head and a field of vision narrowed to the circumference of a Vegemite jar, radiates more of a ‘I don’t want to play’ and ‘fuck you’, with a strong subtext of 'I can’t handle this.'

In a word, it radiates ‘fear’, which is definitely not the same thing as the tantalising promise of balmy evenings spent imbibing gamelan music while your small brained but highly pliable seven veiled companion attends to your every fantasy.

I know which one I prefer, but it’s a dangerous game.

In fact, Rob looks for all the world like he’s expecting the thudding of trolls and the resounding rumble of a Fee Fye Oleh Oleh! I smell the blood of a Rich Bul-e! and you’d have to mad to offer up your body to that, so hence the Turtle Pose, I guess.

(Oleh oleh: presents, souvenirs. Bule: albino, whiteman)

My own fear is sudden and outrageous possession by Barney the Angry Bear (in an Enclosed Environment.)

Yes, Barney, I know him well…

Still, let’s face it, it’s not my money, and even if it was it’s only 500 dollars and at the end of the day it might sting but it’s not going to bring the house down.

Not so Barney, though; he can bring the house down right on top of me.

But then again, when it’s all said and done, who gives a shit about the mewang and the polisi and all the bullshit rules from Lilliput?

But then the Lilliputians do seem to have us well tied up, and as much as I attempt, through objective logic, to deny the existence of all the little strings that bind, I have to admit that this whole thing has gotten to me, and I’m feeling emotive.

Barney may be, as we speak, prowling the plastic bag strewn streets of Lilliput in search those that heap injustice upon me, his beloved master.

Barny loves me, this I know,
‘Cos more than once I’ve let him go.
I’ve watched him rend, I’ve watched him tear
the head off a Care Bear.

An abridged scientific note on Mechanisms of Emotion from the Kiev World Book Multimedia Encyclopaedia (which comes free with your Mac):

Someone who encounters a bear in the woods would probably interpret the event as dangerous. This sense of danger would cause the individual to feel fear. Thus, a person who met a bear would probably run away, which would increase his chances of survival.

Which is fine, but what about if the freakin’ bear is inside of you, Mr Kiev?

You didn’t think about that, did you?

Now moving on, while Mr Dunderhead Kiev has a bit of a think, let’s take our Scientific Bear Story as a kick off and look at the situation from the bear’s point of view:

Barney the Happy Bear goes to the Zoo!

There was once a naughty, happy bear named Barney, who frolicked the day away in the cool, wide and salmon-rich spaces of unfettered Tundra Land.

One day he went to sleep, and woke up inside a cage in, in a zoo, in Lilliput. (It happens.)

Inside the cage was another former Tundra bear, Bobby, who was at that very moment having his peanut butter sandwiches confiscated by the zoo-keeper as punishment for rutting on Ami, a local she-bear (also in the cage), in full view of the zoo-going public, which, it seems, is against the rules.

(Notwithstanding the fact that the zoo-going public can often be seen at the zoo rutting on each other, this being Lilliput, and it’s hard to find a place to do your rutting in private.)

Now, the zoo-keeper, just to be safe 'cos you never know with Tundra bears, had brought along an armed security guard.

So here’s the set up: Two tundra bears and one local bear in a cage, one zoo-keeper reaching in to take the peanut butter sandwiches, and outside the cage, a security guard with a gun.

Keeping in mind that the zoo keeper and the security guard, not having ever watched Animal Planet, do not realise that bears have feelings too (and I’ll bet you three bowls of rice to a peanut they've never seen Free Willie I, or II.)

Barney does, indeed, have a decision to make, and he worries me more than the mewang, more than the polisi man and even more than standing in Starbucks with my fly undone.

Keep in mind, also, that although I’m Barney’s master, I may not have complete control over his actions.

I wish I did, but I'm beginning to wonder whether I have any control over Barney.

Yes, control, what an interesting thing it is; how we slave for it, work for it, hold on to it as though our lives depended on it.

Sit down Barney while I dope you up and stuff you in a cage.

Yes, you can bring Barney in, beaten and bruised, cowered and clipped, but as any good naughty boy on a bike will tell you, he either comes in of his own accord, in full splendor, or forget it.

Yes, Barney loves me, this I know,
'Cos more than once I've let him go...

Into the Zero Zone!

2008-01-31T20:52:00.001+07:00

Central Kalimantan, Indonesia

Late last year I made a short documentary for a local Dutch NGO about the Kalimantan MegaRice Project (aka Peat* Lands Restoration Project) here in Central Kalimantan. The film was part of a presentation at the Bali Climate Change Conference.

*Peat, a highly organic material found in marshy or damp regions, composed of partially decayed vegetable matter. It's one of those extremely delicate eco-systems, like wetlands, that is critical in the balance of all things nature.

The original 1996 MegaRice Project (sometimes called the Peat Lands Development Project), a Suharto government initiative, aimed at turning the very extensive peat lands of south Central Kalimantan into the Rice Bowl of Indonesia.

Unfortunately, the project was a grotesque failure on such a gargantuan scale that it beggars the mind; these words and pictures of mine fall miserably short of conveying the human and environmental misery.

Which did present a problem in the making of the film, I must say.

However, thankfully, the human heart is beautifully articulate organ both in joy and sorrow, and that is, of course, where you aim the camera, for better or worser. (It helps if you keep the lens clean.)

Briefly, re the very failed MegaRice Project (so as not to bore you with facts), after stripping the peat lands to the southeast of Palangkaraya - an area of land bigger than the Netherlands - of primary forest, constructing a network of canals, draining the peat swamps and shipping in some 15,000 immigrant families from all over Indonesia, the Suharto government finally had to acknowledge that peat lands don't make good paddy fields, but by then, of course, anything worth taking had been took, and who's gonna complain?

Greed and avarice blind us all, as any good Buddhist will tell you.

What we are left with today in south Central Kalimantan is fire, flood, drought, polluted waterways, bad soil, dead fish, dead animals, a disaffected local Dayak population forced to scratch a living from a once prosperous area, sama the transmigrant families who have managed to hang on (50% of the original transmigrant families returned home) and a flat expanse of arid land stretching the filmmaker's mind from horizon to horizon, whether he liked it or not.

The current Indonesian government is taking tentative steps to rectify the situation, but of course, what took a couple of years to de-construct will take a generation or three to put back together, if at all.

The Dream: 1996

Above: The (very recently) late President Suharto in jolly harvesting mood, and happy peasants all in a row - way to go! Pics from the original 1996 Indonesian government promotional film.

Above: Peat Land Development in Kalimantan, 1996.
The Mega Rice Project: The official Indonesian Government film.
Edited to 6 mins from the original 15 mins.
Notes:
1. This is NOT my film, this is NOT my film, this is NOT my film.
2. Have a close listen to the Environmental Poodle Speak. It is truly a seamless work of art.
3. The voice-over guy is one Mr Paul W. Blair, obviously from North America, and nobody on planet earth pronounces KAR-LEE-MARN-TARN quite the way he does. I'm with you, Pak!

Below: 2008, the God-awful reality...
Ain't nothin' much growin' out there, Pak!

Whatever happened to Kip?

2008-01-28T20:45:00.000+07:00

Bangkok, Thailand

Above, my friend Kip, who saw Mr Pumpy and myself off on our first ride into deepest, darkest Cambodia way back in 1999.

My friend Kip!

Kip lives in Bangkok, is in her last year of school and aims to go to university to study physics. She likes music, computers, singing and Mr Pumpy, and tolerates me. Suan, who also saw us off (see photos) but refused to have her photo taken last week when I was down visiting the family, is now married with two kids, lives near Chumpon in southern Thailand and runs a hardware shop.

The Hall of the Mountain King, Pt.5: Terry, the Inquisitive

2008-01-26T21:42:00.000+07:00

Central Kalimanatan, Indonesia

The mewang’s (district Dayak chief) house is the usual rambling Dayak affair - on stilts, made of ironwood and big enough for 3 or 4 nuclear family units, except that it’s surprisingly, alarmingly, neat and clean.

It's almost twee.

Where are the dogs?

Where’s the scungy student share-house style couch on the veranda with the depressed cushions, rogue springs and this being Kalimantan, unthinkably creepy things living inside, perhaps even a snake?

Where’s the plastic bags flapping about in the front yard and the nest of virulent black ants that attack you the second your foot comes off the pedal of the motorbike (or bicycle) and touches ground?

No, Robert, Ami and I are experiencing, from the looks of it, a scrupulously cared-for house fronted by a meticulously well kept white-pebble yard which itself is sporting little islands of well snipped greenery, ringed, no less, by lines of potted plants with… what are those flowers?

Silver bells, cockleshells, and pretty maids all in a row?

It certainly looks like it, but how would I know?

My bloom knowledge terminated abruptly in early childhood with contrary Mary.

Mary, Mary, quite contrary,
How does your garden grow?

I didn’t want to know.

Who or what, exactly, was a contrary Mary? Whatever/whoever she was, she was not, in my mind, the kind of lady, young or old, that little boys should go near, ever.

She smelt of death, or worse, dying.

Specifically, it was her fingers that scared me, viz.;

I am standing on Mary's front step. She is standing behind me, arms around my chest. There is no escape. I am trapped, abandoned, and together, they are two of the scariest words in the English language, no question.

Her contrary hands have slipped under my shirt and her contrary fingers are running all of over my tender, young body, feeling it, caressing it... she's mumbling something... I can't make out the words, but they can't be good.

I've always felt a slight unease in overly tended gardens, as you can imagine.

The mind is a strange thing.

Some weeks before I came up to Robert’s place and got bogged down in the Sex Behind Closed Doors Saga, my friend Kevin, a Kiwi expat, took a visiting friend, Terry, into the jungle.

Terry was on four weeks vacation from Auckland, and wanted to see the real Borneo before he returned to the grind, so Kevin, having some spare time himself, took Terry deep inside the belly of the beast, as far north as they could get without falling off the map.

“We were pretty deep in, deepest I’ve ever been,” said Kevin, chuckling. “Just south of the Malay border.”

They ended up staying in a Dayak longhouse for a week, there not being many guest houses up beyond where the roads stop.

At night they would sit on the veranda talking and drinking with the chief, amongst others, with Terry, the Inquisitive, working hard to get a grip on this strange and exotic new world he'd found himself in.

(Ah, the Western mind! It's so... exact.)

Kevin acted as translator.

“Your friend Teree asks many questions,” said the chief, to Kevin.
“Yes, he’s been to university, Pak!” replied Kevin. “He’s a computer genius!” (Pak is the common polite form of address to a male, equivalent to Sir, or Mr.)
“Oh!” said the chief, much impressed, turning to look at Terry.

Not many forest dwelling Dayak’s get the chance to go to university and become computer geniuses, so this was a moment to be acknowledged – a man of high learning in their midst.

(Terry, if truth be told, is apparently just a run of the mill programmer, but for all the coding going on in the jungles of Kalimantan, he could present himself as Steven Hawking and nobody would know the difference, sans wheelchair, even.)

“What’s he saying?” asked Terry, wondering why the chief was suddenly beaming at him.
“The chief likes you,” said Kevin.
“Oh,” said Terry, smiling back.
“Have another drink, Teree!” said the chief.

The chief, happy to share some local colour with the wise man from the Land Beyond Where the Kangaroos Dwell, proceeded to tell his visitors about the giant water-dwelling black snake that lives in the river north of the longhouse, and that if they went up there they must take a guide and be very careful.

“It will swallow you!” said the chief, matter-of-factly and knocking back another rice wine.
“How big’s this thing?” asked Terry, impressed, having seen Anaconda five times, apparently.
“About half the length of the longhouse,” answered the chief, gesturing along the veranda.

That would have made it about 25 metres long, Kevin told me, as long as a cricket pitch, and then some.

“Have you actually seen this thing?” Terry asked the chief, somewhat incredulous.
“Yes, I have,” answered the chief, lowering his voice and nodding soberly. “On a few occasions.” This was obviously not a subject to be played with.
“Yes, but is it real?” insisted Terry.
“Well, of course it’s real!” answered the chief, momentarily puzzled; for a wise man this bule (white man) was certainly asking some odd questions.

“Yes,” Terry went on, leaning forward and making an up and down movement with his right hand, “but is it real like you can lay it on the ground and chop it up?”

The chief looked at Terry in total disbelief. “Well, of course it’s not! What are you, an idiot?” and stood up and walked off.

Kevin told me that later on he asked the chief to forgive Terry because he was new to Kalimantan and in the Land Beyond Where the Kangaroos Dwell, they didn't know about such things. Terry might be stupid, Kevin told the chief, but he was sincere.

“The chief shook his head, said OK, but was pretty firm about ‘no more questions’!” laughed Kevin.

“Of course,” he went on, “you can imagine when next the chief’s favourite nephew asks permission to leave the jungle and go down to the big smoke in Palangkaraya to attend university.”

“I want to learn the ways of the bules, uncle, and come back and help our people,” says the hopeful young man.
“Over my dead body!” says the chief.

Belief is an interesting thing.

“You know,” said Kevin, after he’d finished the story, “living with these people long enough, you actually start to believe again, but in exactly what it’s hard to say.

“It’s like you take a breath of air and then all the colours come back into your life, and you feel like you’re inside a painting and kind of part of it... not outside looking in, judging it. You know what I mean?”
“Yeah, Kev, I've got some idea,” I said.
“The cynicism back home is just so much smoke pouring out of the machine, and it blankets everything, like kabut asap,” he mused. “Maybe it’s the by-product of burning off the bullshit?”

(Kaput asap - the ‘smoke fog’ that comes from the yearly burn-off in Kalimantan)

“Could be, Kev,” I said.

“It’s going to be hard going back,” he said, wistfully.

“Ain’t that the truth,” I said.

We sat on his veranda that evening and talked into the night, until the silences that sweep up out of the forest like waves finally drowned all our words, and there was nothing more to say.

To be continued...
(PS. Any ideas, Jeremy?)

The Hall of the Mountain King, Pt.4: Crispy Bacon!

2008-01-24T21:12:00.001+07:00

Central Kalimantan, Indonesia

Hate is an interesting thing - it drives us as much as love, although in this beige world of ours it’s more Poodle to talk about aversion, viz.;

Person 1: I say, chap, I’m feeling a strong aversion to having my personal boundaries penetrated forcibly by your good self!
Person 2: Thanks for sharing.

The word aversion (Dosa in Pali, the language of the great Lord Buddha) has slipped into common Western usage, to the best of my knowledge, from the Buddhist end of town, come barreling straight down the Politically Correct Expressway and entrenched itself on the large white divans of the educated and knowledgeable, like a fluffy dog.

Not that the Dalai Lama’s necessarily to blame (although I'm beginning to have doubts...); Dosa is more accurately translated as hatred.

Al least that's what they told me when I was living the life of a monk; not that they needed to tell me; any word short of hate to describe what I was feeling deep in the secret chambers of my heart was not going to float.

Not that, either, the Dalai Lama is in any way the Pope of the Buddhist world, but it's not surprising that things get lost in translation, even whole religious systems, and you don't even need to exit your own cultural base for that.

I’m only surprised that, as far as the West is concerned, the DL hasn't just closed the whole thing down and opened up a fish and chip franchise – it’d be a lot less trouble, viz.;

Our fish are fried deeply in loving-kindness… it’s the metta that makes the difference!

(Metta is Pali for loving-kindness, but then loving-kindness is Poodle Speak for caritas, love of fellow man, from the Latin, which is perfectly fine in the first place, I would think, canis in praesepi [dog in the manger] that I appear to be becoming...)

I did an interesting exercise with my students in 2006.

I was meant to be teaching English (and Film) at the local secondary international school, but I do figure that if I’m getting bored with the set curriculum, the students are too, the teacher-student bond being a strong, coiling rope of sensitive two-way impulse filaments, as real as your hat.

The film classes were fine - who doesn't want to be in the movies? - but the English smacked of good old, well intentioned, easy to defend, order, no doubt written by the kind of teacher I would have loathed as a student, and the teacher-student bond being what it is, the feeling would have been well and truly reciprocated.

Four weeks into the year I threw away the book, took the students into the auditorium and blindfolded them.

("Are you going to shoot us now, Pak Felix?" asked Robby. I love young people!)

After a few warm up exercises, I got them to sit on the floor and instructed them to conjure up in their minds a picture of someone they love, deeply. That done, I asked them to think of someone they dislike, a lot.

(I didn’t use the word hate, not at first, anyway. They were, after all, sensitive teenagers, open flowers awaiting my strong but gently guiding hand and deep worldly insight, and you do need to know how much the Tonka Truck can carry before the wheels fall off.)

Specifically, I asked them to search into their bodies and to watch, very specifically, how it reacted to the thought-images.

Fortunately, or unfortunately, Karim, the principal, just happened to be walking by at the time. (Which is something you need to know about school principals - they have a sixth sense when it comes to potentially odd behaviour within the school precincts.)

Hearing a small female voice on the other side of the auditorium door saying, ‘I can feel my chest contracting, Pak Felix! It feels weird…!’ I guess Karim began wondering what was going on, as principals are wont to do.
“Good, that’s excellent, Noor,” I replied, solicitously, “can you go deeper into that for me? Be more specific...”
Poking his head around the door Karim asked, "What are you doing, Felix?" in that measured tone that principals have which conveys both caritas and iron will, at the same time.
“Ah, English, we’re doing English, Karim," I replied, off guard. “We’re exploring adjectives… I think."

“Ah, can I see you in my office after classes?” he said.
“Yeah, no sweat,” I said, cheerily, the way you do when the customs officers at Melbourne airport ask if they can look into your bag, and even though you may look like you’re carrying drugs, or perhaps pornography, you’re not, but it doesn’t stop the fear rising.

You have to give Karim his due; firstly, for employing me, and secondly, listening patiently while I sat in his office three hours later taking it upon myself to shred the English curriculum (hoping to hell Karim hadn't been then one to write it in the first place) and finishing off with ‘…it’s just crap, the kids are learning nothing! Whadyawant, parrots or free thinking young adults!’ as I waved my hands in the air.

I love that silent moment when you’ve either just talked yourself out of a job, or the world is about to turn around and meet you, on your terms; it’s so pointy.

But it can go either way, and I’ve had both in my time.

Karim shook his head and chuckled, told me to do what I thought was best and said he’d ‘check back in a month’, God bless him.

(Partly, it must be said, that it’s hard to get any Westerners to actually live in Central Kalimantan – think Cambodia without the recent wholesale development, Thailand, Laos and Vietnam just across the way and no parties – that bosses are somewhat compelled to cut their employees a sizeable amount of slack, which, it also must be said, is one the reasons I live in Kalimantan.)

It may not sound like much, but to the semi-naked minds of a bunch of 12 to 16 year olds, half of them Indonesian, the idea that the content of thoughts can have such a marked affect on the physical body was a revelation of sizeable proportion.

Over the weeks that followed we developed that train of action, in many and multifarious ways, all the while articulating our experiences in the beautiful tongue, all the while returning to base; love, via hate (we eventually embraced the word hate, in context and meaning, as we did many other non-Poodle words, phrases and concepts - I'm not big on Poodle Speak in my classes, as you can imagine), light and dark, thunder, lightening and the clear light of the God given sun rising above the melting mist of another beautiful Kalimantan morning, which makes all laugh, dance and sing, together.

Ah, yes, all hail the day!

Karim was happy, the students were happy, I was happy, so it worked out pretty well in the end.

I love success…

Still, success, failure, whatever, it all stuffs our face us into the heart of the matter (although you could say reveals our very own heart to us…), and a year later, Rob, Ami and myself are standing on the top step of the mewang’s house in Kerengpangi, tapping lightly on the door and sweating abundantly under the Indonesian smiles we are busily uploading for the occasion.

“Who’s there?” asks a surprisingly melodious female voice from behind the door (in Indonesian, of course.)
“It is us, three rabbits come to visit!” we reply. “Two white, one brown.”
“Oh, that’s nice,” says the voice, “we eat rabbits around here,” and the door opens…

The Hall of the Mountain King, Pt.3: The bleak Plane of No-Speak

2008-01-22T20:04:00.000+07:00

Central Kalimantan, Indonesia

Above: Kabut asap (smoke fog) over Indonesia and beyond...

Early in the evening Robert suggests I borrow his motorbike rather than arrive at the mewang’s (district Dayak chief) house on a bicycle.

“It’s all about how things look, Felix,” he says, “so me and Ami will take her’s and you can follow on mine.”
“Good thinking, Rob,” I say.

Robert is stating the obvious, but well and good. Only the poor and the powerless arrive on bicycles, so let’s not exacerbate an already pathetic situation.

“Maybe you could tie your hair back, Felix?” he asks, demonstrating.

Shall I wear a suit, Rob?

Rob’s understandably nervous and trying to get everything shippy shape before we sail into enemy port and hand over the booty, and it is all about how things look, profoundly so.

So profound, in fact, is this surface culture, that for a Westerner, it’s easy to completely miss the brain behind the eyes that see you; and I must say, that brain worries me at times.

Not that it's all bad either, it's just another brain,. but like all brains, it depends on what's driving it.

In Indonesia long hair marks you out, at best, as a non-conformist, which is not a good thing in a society striving for containment.

At worst, you’re a ne’r-do-well drug taking rock ‘n’ roll fool, which is not something many mewang’s aspire to, nor for that matter, many minders, which is effectively my role in this depressing operation.

However, when it’s all said and done, I’m not sure it’s even worth worrying about how our motley little group appears to the enemy, motorbikes or not. We’re just a couple of clodding bule fools with their home-grown, pretty (and possible 5th columnist) kampung companion.

(Bule – Pron. boo-lay, lit. albino, slang for white man. Kampung – small country village.)

Signals get sent, signals get received, we search out the weak points, sort out the power balance, and if we can’t agree, we either to go to war, or somebody pays, or bends.

Of course, we’re doing the bending; their game, their rules, their turf and they hold all the red cards. It’s been agreed that Rob will get shafted in the locker room, and I’m just here to make sure he only takes the agreed upon strokes.

Not that I have any real power at all, other than the ability to count the thrusts and listen to the groans, and I’m not looking forward to it. Robert’s groans are my groans and I can hear them already.

Need a tissue, Rob?

In my favour, though, I do belong to Subud, a quasi-mystical spiritual sect that has it’s roots in Indonesia, and which is, by the way, the connection that brought me down to Kalimantan in the first place, some two years ago.

(Subud is an acronym of Susila Budhi Dharma. It's an international spiritual organisation that originated in Java in the 1920s. The Subud practice aims to train the feeling within the movement of the spirit.)

Considering the fact that there are no secrets in Indonesia, and Robert felt it prudent to let the local police know that I would be accompanying him to see the mewang (more bending), it’s reasonable to assume that the police have milked the local grapevine as to my identity and social position.

Not that there’s much to it, really, but belonging to Subud does give me some punch.

There’s a small but strong contingent of Subud members involved in various business and education ventures throughout the province, and we’re (we, us, my people!) well connected, notwithstanding the fact that some of the thinking on the ground is that we go in for black magic and free sex.

Some months back I was sitting in a local warung (food and drink stall) one hot afternoon, drinking coffee, listening to a couple locals talk about me, safe in the assumption I spoke little or no Indonesian.

Knowing I was with Subud (there’s no secrets), the squat, knowledgeable chap with the frilly moustache, was happily telling his mate that Subud is, in fact, all about that; black magic (black magic is big in Kalimantan) and the proverbial free sex (free sex is not big, but widely discussed and it is widely assumed, even by the educated, that all Westerners go in for it) and on it went.

I sat and listened, and what can you say?

It’s the brain that worries me…

Specifically, it’s that brain with power, position and weight of numbers.

How do you deal with an orang-utan when it pisses on you (very accurately, I might add) from the top most branch of a Jackfruit tree? How do you deal with a pack of dogs?

The gun is a very tempting object.

I finished my coffee, said nothing and left, disheartened.

Indonesia periodically brings you to that bleak Plane of No-Speak.

However, that being said, this phenomenon is also one of the main reasons I stay, viz.; where else on planet earth can you find a relatively safe environment that will shut down your cognitive processes and render you clueless on such a dependably daily basis?

You travel into the Void, you come back clueless; you travel into the Cloud of Unknowing, you come back clueless; you travel into the Bird's Nest at the Base of your Heart, you come back clueless... sama Indonesia!

This place is a jem!

Of course, the question remains, as far as bleak planes go: How do you work your way out of it?

Of course, also, this is where the real work lies, and you hear the tearing cry in your heart, or you've missed the boat, basically. And that boat is so easy to miss...

Yep, clueless is a much maligned and much misunderstood thing in this world of ours, and it does take courage to embrace it, but there, for my money, lies the real heart of our intelligence as human beings.

Love and hate, thunder and lightening and the clear light of day, it's all there.

Above: Palangkaraya, the Bundaran Besar (the Big Roundabout) and the Kahayan River, burn season 2006.

During the burn-off season of August/September/October 2006 it seemed the whole island was on fire and belching smoke.

It was a bad year, as if the dreaded nuclear winter had finally arrived.

Most afternoons visibility was reduced to a paltry 50 metres, 10 metres on a bad day, the sun literally disappeared for a few weeks and soot and smoke permeated every cubic square centimetre of your life.

Above: Living in the smoke, 2006, the non-hermetically sealed experience. Mid-afternoon, turn on the lights.

Some of my more enterprising bule friends attempted to set up an hermetically sealed smoke free environment.

Going to visit was like docking with the International Space Station. After knocking and politely requesting permission to enter, you passed into a little room where you closed the outside door after yourself, and then, and only then, you opened the door into the main living area, which was cut-off from the outside world, save for the air-conditioning and water conduits, as best could be achieved.

Ah, the pleasure of the smoke free environment!

Fires in the fields, fires in the backyards, fires along the roads. Farmers lighting fires, young boys lighting fires, old ladies lighting fires – it was madness.

Everyday the smoke rose leisurely up into the sky and headed west, conjoined by stratospheric winds, where it eventually blanketed Singapore, Malaysia and neighbouring Thailand in air-born muck. Crops wilted, tourists departed, babies and old people developed breathing disorders, and neighbouring governments became understandably upset.

2006 was a doozy of a year, indeed.

However, our neighbours, to a country, did seem to possess an odd sense of reality: ‘Can’t Indonesia get it together and stop this madness?’ they chimed.

Well, no, itulah Indonesia! It’s Indonesia, can’t you people understand that?

Some weeks into the holocaust, in response to a strongly worded formal complaint from Singapore on behalf of ASEAN, the Indonesian federal environmental minister rejoined that he thought it was perhaps rather bad form for Singapore to be complaining at this juncture considering the fact that ‘we send you clean air for 9 months of the year and you never take the time to thank us for that.’

It’s the brain that worries me…

Mind you, we had to chuckle at the Singaporeans for complaining that their air pollution index was something like 10 times above the WHO recommended safety level; in Kalimantan itself we were 3,000 times (yes, you read correctly) above cut-off. We could only dream of 10.

I would think a well-connected, sect-belonging, long-haired, black magic, libertine guy sitting in your corner does command a certain respect, and I do thrive on respect.

Mind you, this being Indonesia, the local police may neither know nor care a whit about me.

You never know.

Email account update January

2008-01-15T18:10:00.001+07:00

I may well finish the Hall of the Mountain King story soon....
currently I'm in Bangkok renewing my Indonesia visa.

In the meantime, below is a short video (see below) which is really intended to direct folks to my current email accounts.

Viz.; Felix's email accounts:
Primary: remove_pakpeelips@gmail.com_remove &
Secondary: remove_felix@mrpumpy.net_remove
(Remove the '_REMOVE_')

Note 1: If you are using the mrfelix@netspace account, please delete it. From Feb 12 it will be closed.
Note 2: I am using a severe SPAM BLOCKER on the felix@mrpumpy account, so to be sure to get through, assuming you have something important to communicate, use both, above.

So to the video. I was doing radio for a while there in Kali....

The Mr Felix Radio Show!
1 minute QT video on YOUTUBE
Click on link, above, or go here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GwtZVtFmIe8

Theoretically, the video will be embedded here:

Q: What does the web have in common with Indonesia?
A: It frustrates the hell out of me, but I keep going back to it.

Aduh!

The Hall of the Mountain King, Pt.2: For whom the bell tolls.

2007-10-15T22:33:00.000+07:00

Central Kalimantan, Indonesia

The story so far: See, The Hall of the Mountain King Pt.1: Robert
My friend Robert who teaches English to workers at the Kerengangi goldfields, got arrested by the police for ‘staying at his girlfriend’s house after 9 PM with the door closed.’ “Have seks!” said the arresting officer. “Not married!” Apparently this breaks the Dayak civil code. The person who made the complaint was the kepala desa, the local Dayak village head, who will now, along with the mawang, the district Dayak chief and the police, get a share of the fine, a rather exorbitant 4.5 million rupees, or about USD 500.

The Hall of the Mountain King, Part 2: For whom the bell tolls.

A few days after he was arrested, Robert called me up and asked me to go with him to the mewang’s house to pay the fine and sign the papers.

“What are the papers about?” I asked, on the phone.
“Well, that’s just it,” he said. “It’s all in bahasa so I could be signing away the house for all I know, but basically it’s to record the money transfer and all parties agree to agree on future rules, at least that’s what they tell me. This whole thing’s a charade of the first order.”
“Yeah, tell me,” I said. “I can probably read some of it, though, and ask some questions if you like.”
“It’d just be good to have someone in my corner, Felix, moral support and all that,” he explained. “I’m a sitting duck out here.”
“Yeah, no worries, mate,” I said.

Poor Rob: too visible, too alone and in the end, too much of a temptation. Once The Dog That Never Sleeps gets a whiff, it’s just a matter of time before has a go.

Our job now was to get in, deliver the money and get out before the evil brown fucker realised it didn’t have enough money to cover the cakes for Idyl Fitri, or the Christmas presents, for that matter, and took another leg.

It’s a brisk 75 kilometres from my place to Robert’s, straight up Tjilik Riwut Highway from Tangkiling to the Kerengapangi goldfields.

Most of the way the road cuts through forest regrowth, so there’s not a lot to see from a tourist point of view.

There’s a few scratchy villages, the odd roadside warung, some road works that never finish, but, as always in Kali, despite the lack of identifiable attractions, you get a strong sense of the physical, and occasionally something happens.

A large monitor lizard, like the Komodo Dragons in Lombok, only not quite as big, will run across the road, head up, legs pumping and tail wiggling. It stops, freezes, sniffs, ready for another lightening dart, and which way is this thing going to go? There’s no telling.

Snakes, big black brutes, two metres long, straddle the road like speed bumps, or polisi tidur, sleeping policeman, as they’re called here. They move like kings, sliding slowly through the hollow black on the inside of the world, and why bother even looking at the cyclist who’s standing a wary twenty metres back.

Reptiles can spook you, but then there’s always the sky for refuge, the Great Blue Dome. You can follow her all the way the horizon, just to get a look-see at what’s over the edge, at which point she’ll ask you to jump, which can be a surprise if you weren’t expecting it. When your feet leave the ground, if they do, you’re in her arms or you’re a dead man. Like the Wichita Lineman, at that point, you’ll need her more than want her, and it’s not a bad place to be.

It’s a scary world out there, but it sure is fuckin’ beautiful.

I’m over the Katingan River, through Kasongan, and dodging potholes on the last 25 kilometre leg into Kerengpangi.

A storm is on the way, which is common in the afternoon at this time of the year, and the wind whips down off the trees in sharp slaps that push the bike sideways, making your heart race and reminding you not to get ahead of yourself.

I cycle on…

There’s a low rumble of thunder running along the horizon up ahead and it’s as wide as a tsunami and as long as a Beatle song, although it sounds more like Tibetan throat singing than A Day in the Life. The earth trembles, the frame of the bike vibrates and if love can fall out of the bottom of your feet, then it’s happening.

I'm cycling into the Great Crunch and at some point I’m going to arrive, and it’s all going to end, which is almost inconceivable; in fact, it is. You can’t think about nothing, just like you can’t think about God, but that’s the mind for you.

I feel like a child.

8 kilometres to go and lightening detonates just above my head. An astonishing jigsaw of five white arcs hang in sky, one on top of the other, strung from one massive cloud mountain to the other, and I didn’t know they came in ‘fives’, Lord.

Bullets of rain explode on the hot tar all around me just as I roll it into Kerengapangi.

“Good to see you, mate, thanks for coming,” says Robert, standing at the door of his house in regulation white t-shirt and chequered sarong, just as the storm pours forth its flood. We scuttle inside and the rain on the tin roof is so loud we have to yell.

“Man, don’t you just love a storm!” Robert shouts across the room, and I agree, although I’m happy to have gotten in before I got completely soaked.

Robert’s house is a small four-roomed weatherboard box, painted a dainty blue and white, the Ken Done pallet not an uncommon choice in Kali, with a large front balcony and shaded on three sides by tall, leafy Acacia trees. It’s compact, airy and clean, and serves as a good little Whitey Oasis in a jungle of the Weird and Unplumbed.

I drop my panniers in the guest room, grab a coffee and go through the regulation ritual of stringing my hammock up on the veranda.

Robert’s primary object d’art is a half-size wooden statue of a traditional Dayak warrior, named Tjilik, after Pak Tjilik Riwut, the great, local Dayak hero, who also lent his name to the road I’ve just travelled up.

Bare-chested and strong, Tjilik, sports a short, wrap-around sarong and is holding the regulation spear and shield. He’s reminiscent of the once regulation plaster Aboriginal statues we used to put in our gardens in suburban Australia when I was a boy.

My family’s aboriginal stood proudly on one leg under the Oleander bush (a common spot), regulation spear and boomerang in hand, eyes fixed steadfastly on the Gilmore house across the street, and their mongrel dog, which thankfully lived in the backyard behind the carport fence.

In those days, unlike now, the only worry with this type of cultural object d’art was when you were playing footy out in the street, as you did most afternoons after school, and you stupidly kicked a grubber off the side of your boot which bounced all the way into the Gilmore house at kneecap level and knocked the head off of their aboriginal, or maybe the spear.

Up and down the street there was a strange decapitation process going on, and the nursery shops that sold these things must have been doing a brisk trade, viz.; ‘Free footy with every Aboriginal sold!’

“You paid 300 dollars for this? You’re fuckin’ kidding me!” I said to Robert some six months back, after he’d had told me the price. Considering it was my first visit to his house, it was perhaps a little insensitive, but still, a rip-off is a rip-off, and it’s hard not to take it personally.

“Jesus, man!” I went on, full of righteous indignation. “You could have got it for fifty, even then…”
“What price art, Felix?” replied Robert, taken aback at my outburst and wary. We’d only met the week before and for all he knew he may have let a psychopath into the house. You never know with expats.

He’d bought the statue down in Dayak Street, the one small touristy knick-knack lane in Palangkaraya, and they’d obviously picked up on the political correctness, and let the dog out.

Above: The evil Dr. Foo, the inventor of Political Correctness holed up in his secret Mind Lab, somewhere off the coast of Macau. “Hee, hee!” he laughs. “Onry wite peeper stoopid enuf for for dis! Hee, hee, hee!”

“They kicked off at 600 and I beat ‘em down to three,” he said, defensively. “That’s kinda standard.”

“Yeah, but that 50 percent rule-of-thumb crap is a myth started by Lonely Planet. I blame Tony Wheeler, Peace be upon Him,” I countered, not to be put down. “You could have at least got them to throw in a couple of naked dancers!”

Still, despite the outrage, I could see I was walking on sensitive ground; nobody likes to appear foolish, and public floggings aren’t that popular anymore.

“Actually, Rob, I lied,” I said. “Dayak dancers aren’t naked, they’re just topless, but still extremely attractive.”
“Felix,” he countered, “unlike you, I don’t need topless statues, and I’m quite happy with Tjilik, 300 bucks or not.”
“Well, have it your own way, man,” I said, throwing my arms in the air in mock disgust, “but I wouldn’t mind a few standing around the bed. It can get mighty-bloody lonely out here, let me tell you. Just think, you can tell them your secrets and they won’t gossip.”
“Gossip? Who cares about gossip?” said Robert, pouring himself another beer, a reasonable man once again in control of his world. “We’re foreigners, they’re going to talk about us.”

Above: “But Doctor Foo, these are my people!” pleads his assistant, Rhiannon, the former Miss Tasmania, 1964.
“Hee! Hee!” laughs Dr. Foo. “Wot yoo not see, Weearno, ee dat it dare riberawarism, lite dare democlasee, dat mek dem stoopid! Hee! Hee!”
“Please, Doctor! Liberalism and democracy are what our civilisation's all about!"
“Yoo stoopid, too. Now klo door, hav seks! Eye gi yoo big boner, Weearnoo! Hee! Hee! Hee!”

“Well, that’s easy to say, Rob,” I went on, “as long as you’re not standing in harm’s way. I tell you, it’s a freakin’ disease around here, a destructive force of nature, and it will fuck you if show a bare leg!”

I suspect Robert thought he was talking to somebody who’d spent just a little too long a time in-country, and he eyed me carefully. “No, Rob,” I said, by way of addendum, “stick to the statues, mate, they’re easier to control.”

He shook his head and laughed, “I’ll keep it in mind!” and took another sip of his beer.

Unfortunately, the only thing Robert kept in mind is that ‘it can get mighty-bloody lonely’, so over the next few months he fixed that problem, only to run into the rest.

What drums say, Phantom?

There’s a white man living with a local girl, he’s rich, she’s got a new hand-phone, free use of a motorbike, lots of clothes, additions to the new house, and in the close network of family, dependents and the bulging people layers of social favour and debt, everybody now wants their rightful due.

Everyday Robert is confronted with somebody putting his or her hand out. He gets it in the field, in restaurants and at home by the front door. “Fuck, it’s annoying!” said Robert, one day a few weeks back as we sat drinking coffee in the local warung. “I say to them, ‘What do you think I am, an ATM?’ but it makes no difference.”

He’s also noticing that people aren’t quite as happy in his company as they used to be, and he’s just not sure who his friends are anymore.

Robert’s world is going awry.

Ami’s co-workers complain to the boss at the gold shop that she’s a lazy, boastful and telling tales and she loses her job; at least that’s the reason given. “What I also find weird is that people actually seem to believe this crap, and yet they know it’s gossip,” he adds.

Robert’s got another wife in Thailand, and a wife back home in Oz. He’s going to buy Ami a 4 wheel drive kijang, and when her new house is finished they’re going to set up a supermarket in the main street of town. Rob’s also in the process of converting to Islam, so he can marry Ami, who’s Muslim, and there’s word he wants another wife to make up the allotted four.

Mixed religion marriages are outlawed in Indonesia, the irony in this case being that Ami herself converted from Christianity in order to marry her current (and missing) husband, who was a Muslim.

After all of that, they’ll soon be moving to Australia, and Ami’s pregnant.

“All news to me, but I get it everyday,” said Rob, sadly. “And whoever’s talking to me is always my best friend and it’s somebody else that’s stirring the pot. If I get upset and confront anybody it just makes it worse. Fuck, man, I’m just trying to help these people and survive, and I’m dealing with a pack of dogs!”

It was like watching somebody having his skin slowly torn off, and with it went the fleshy underside of well meaning good intentions. It did make you wonder when Rob’s own hairy dog was going to arise, and that certainly would be fun to watch, but at the moment Rob was managing to keep order.

The Dayak power structure works on a simple village set-up. The kepala desa is the local chief, charged with keeping order in the kampung. Next up is the mewang, the district chief who’s in charge of the local village cluster, and overarching all of the village clusters are the polisi, the arm of the provincial government.

And so the axe fell.

The kepala desa obviously figured enough was enough, and the next thing you know Robert’s in the station polisi talking about seks behind closed doors.

The rain falls and the night hugs us close.

“It’s been a long six months, Rob,” I said, rocking gently in the hammock, the cool breeze a welcome gift at the end of another long, hot day.
“Tell me!” he replied, still agitated, still chewing it through. “But you know the worst of it? I can’t quite shake the feeling that Ami knew about the police raid before hand and I tell ya, it’s an evil thought to be carrying around.”
“Yeah, I can imagine,” I said.
“The evening it happened I got a text message from an Indonesian friend, who lives just down the road, telling me to ‘leave house now’, but you know the communication system here. He’d sent it at 8 o’clock, but it didn’t arrive in my phone until the police had already arrived. I mean, you’d think he would have come up and told me about it face to face, but no, just a cryptic text that arrives too late anyway. But people obviously knew about it.”
“Well, Rob,” I said, treading as warily as I could, “I hate to say it, mate, but it’s a fair bet she did. You know what it’s like, everybody’s got their hand in somebody else’s pocket, and they’re all tugging, playing at the balances. And no one’s going to stick their head out to save you, mate, not even Ami. There all too shit scared of the dog.”
“You know, it’s amazing how shitty it can all turn,” he said, staring out into the night, as if he hadn’t heard me. “I know if I asked her she’d deny it, so there’s really no way of ever getting at the truth of it. Anyway, truth, what’s truth around here?”

Well, no man can sleep with a snake in the bed, and you didn’t have to be Ernest Hemingway to hear the bell tolling.

We slip into brooding silence, and watch the cicaks, the local geckos, eat mosquitoes and bite each other’s tales off. It’s a nightly ritual of cute fauna, unsuspecting prey and the bloodthirsty slaughter of limited resources.

“I’m living in a different world!” Robert exclaimed suddenly and began peering around into the formless night as if he’d never seen it before. He’d obviously been plummeting silently down the well and had hit the water, with a splash.

You’ve got to be careful what you say to the newly baptised, so I excused myself and went inside to get some top ups, and left him to it. When I came back a few minutes later he was sitting brightly up in his hammock, and I handed him his beer.

“Can you imagine what we must look like to them?” he said, and his voice had the ring of a six-year old, and I had to chuckle.
“What’s so funny?” he asked, smiling.
“Ah, nothing,” I said. “I just like it here.”

Tomorrow two white ducks, brothers in arms, are gonna go waddling into the Hall of the Mountain King a.k.a. the house of the mewang, and lay the Happy Meal at the feet of the king himself.

You just hope the dog’s tied up.

The Hall of the Mountain King Pt.1: Robert

2007-10-08T21:53:00.000+07:00

Central Kalimantan, Indonesia

My friend Robert got arrested the other night for staying at his girlfriend’s house after 9 PM with the door closed.

“Staying at my girlfriend’s house?” asked Robert, not quite believing his ears, when the policeman came to arrest him. “With the door closed?”
“Yes, door close, have seks, not marry!” said the policeman, sitting grandly on the couch in the living room where he’d parked himself, unasked.

“Door close, have seks, not marry?” repeated Robert.
“Yes! Door close, have seks!” said the policeman, leaning back and looking easily around the room, safe in the impregnability of polisi logic.

Robert’s in his mid-forties, tall and fair, from Australia and teaches English to the field workers at the Kerengpangi goldfields, a 200 square kilometre area of human and environmental desolation about 100 km north of Palangkaraya, the capital of Central Kalimantan.

Robert’s job is part of a broader multi-national aid scheme aimed at improving the lot of the local mining community.

“It’s pretty low pay,” says Robert, “but I like the work.” In the early evenings, before he heads down the dusty, pitted road to his girlfriend’s place, he often takes extra classes for the miner’s children, and whoever else is keen, at no charge. “These kids have got nothin’,” he says.

His girlfriend, Ami, is Dayak, in her mid-twenties, a single mother and deserted wife, not an uncommon plight in Kalimantan. She lives in a three-roomed wooden house amidst a loose collection of buildings that constitute the village, although the original township has been stretched and pulled almost out of recognition by the demands of the goldfields.

It’s one of a few villages that dot the area.

“But Ami’s son is here,” said Robert, arguing with the policeman, “surely you don’t think we’d be having seks in front of the boy?”
“Door close, have seks!” repeated the policeman. “You go truck, go polis station, stay night!”
“Stay the night?” repeated Robert, hackles rising.
“Yes, for safety! Many people angry!” said the policeman. “Attack you!”
“Attack me?” repeated Robert.

A few minutes earlier Robert, Ami and the boy had been snuggled up on the couch watching Aishya, a popular Indonesian soapy about a poor-little-asthmatic-rich girl who cries a lot, and just as the clock struck 10 PM, there was a loud banging at the door.

Robert got up and answered it, somewhat alarmed. “Yes, can I help you?” he asked, startled, as the fat senior policeman pushed past and walked into the room.

“Outside,” he told me later, “there was a police truck, a half-dozen cops in SWAT gear running all over the front yard and I could hear another two or three banging around in the dark out the back. I thought it was a terrorist raid!”

“OK! Now we go! For safety! Many people angry!” said the policeman, motioning outside with his chin.
“People angry? For safety?” replied Robert again. “What are you talking about? I’ve got lots of friends here and nobody’s angry and I feel perfectly safe!”
“No make trouble, Robert!” cautioned Ami.
“No make trouble?” repeated Robert, turning to look at her. She was standing beside him, in fear and close to tears.
“Go, go in truck!” she urged.
“Go in the truck?”
“Yes, go!” she said, pushing him towards the door.
“Well, that’s easy for you to say, Ami!” he said, but offering only token resistance. When it's raining frogs, it's hard to know where to begin hitting back.

Five minutes later Robert is sitting upright in the back of the open truck, surrounded by policeman, waving goodbye to Ami and her young son, also in tears and clinging to his mother.

“I wondered whether I’d ever see them again!” he told me later.

“We bounce out of the kampung,” he went on, “then take off at break-neck speed down the highway, it’s pitch black and all along I’m just waiting for us to slow down at some point and take a left hand turn down some dirt track into the forest!”

“Yeah, fuck…” I said, at a loss for meaningful words, looking around the room, as you do when you suddenly see it expanding in size due to the fact that you’re shrinking.

“But it’s OK, I demanded a TV and got it!” he said and smiled. “Opra’s just the ticket when you’re in jail.”
“What?”
“At the police station. After all the paperwork, they got me into the cell at about 2 AM, and I realised I couldn’t sleep, so I asked for a TV. Opra comes on early in the morning and as luck would have it she was interviewing Jon bon Jovi.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah, so they got that, and then I asked for some food, so they had to go out and get snacks, and then I got them to get me a fan and supply me with a broom; the floor was a bit grubby.”

I sat in silence, waiting for him to go on.

“Yeah, I mean,” he continued, “you know you’re going down, and it’s just a matter of how much it’s gonna cost you, and for all they know the big dumb bule is gonna flip out if he doesn’t get Opra on the late night teev, so you might as well play it. ”
“Right…” I said.
“And they like it when you smile!” he said, grinning.
“Yeah, I bet they do,” I said.

“In the confusion they’d left the cell door unlocked,” he continued, “so in the morning when I woke up I wandered out, saw some guy sitting at the front desk with his finger up his nose, so I thought, ‘What the hell! If I hang around and wait for the release papers it’ll take hours.’ so I just walked out. He didn’t even see me.

As luck would have it, just as I got to the front gate one of my students was going past on a motorbike, so I flagged him down, and he took me all the way home.”

“Excellent, Rob,” I said.

Robert was charged with ‘offending the moral order’ and ordered to pay 4.5 million rupees, about USD 500 – 2 weeks wages for him, or almost 3 months wages for a local, quite a sizeable sum.
“I did suggest they fine Ami’s husband instead,” he said. “After all, he was the bugger who ran off and left her with the kid and absolutely no support. She hasn’t heard from him since the day he left.”

The fine was divided up amongst the morally offended parties in order of umbrage. The police, being the most offended, took the bulk and what was left was given to the mewang, the local Dayak district chief, ostensibly for distribution amongst the community. What was left of that was given to the kepala desa, the local village chief, the last in the chain and the person who made the original complaint.

The kepala desa later complained to the police that after going to all the trouble of making the complaint and getting the ball rolling he ended up with only 200,000 rupees, about 25 dollars, but was told to go away.

Having spent the night in jail and paid his fine, Robert can now legally visit his girlfriend up until 9 PM each night, but must keep the front door open at all times.
“I guess the knock-shop two doors down and the half-dozen karaoke bars up the road have got to keep their doors open, too,” he said, laughing.
“One would imagine,” I agreed.
“Make sure you keep yours open, Felix!” he said, patting me on the back as I was climbing on my bicycle to leave.
“I certainly will, mate,” I said, and I do.

The Dayaks of Central Kalimantan #1

2007-09-23T19:36:00.000+07:00

Ramadan, camels and wells...

2007-09-20T21:55:00.001+07:00

Central Kalimantan, Indonesia

I live in Indonesia where, despite the news, it’s all rather safe and sound - chaotic, yes, but still safe and sound.

And now Ramadan is here.

Within Islam, despite the news, Ramadan is actually all rather safe and sound too. It’s a joyous and laid back time filled with prayer and good eating that my Muslim friends, both local and Western alike, look forward to with relish.

My friend Kevin, a Kiwi, a Muslim and the principal of the local international school, tells me it’s his favourite time of the year.

“It’s like Christmas and Easter rolled into one, Felix,” he says. “You should try it.”
“I don’t know, man,” I say, “I’m Catholic.”
“You don’t have to be Muslim to fast. Besides, you go places, you’d like it. Just climb on your camel and let it go…”

Kevin, of course, is being rather poetic, but I get the idea.

The inescapable urge to move towards the great void of God where nothing is hidden and all control is lost. You plunge into the blackness, fall into the well, surrender to what is, and if you’re lucky, find your star.

"The camel travels the desert at night, a star she blindly follows…," says Kevin.
“Is that in the Koran?” I ask.
"No, I just made it up."
"Oh!"

Kevin’s youngest daughter’s pet dog, Moonbeam, fell into the well at the back of his house late last year. The well is not quite bottomless, but it’s pretty damn deep, and we got one of the local Dayaks to climb down and pull her out.

Dayaks are very agile, as you can imagine – they climb trees, mess about in boats, ford rivers and beat off marauding orangutans when necessary, so getting one to climb down your well for a few bucks and rescue your dog is no problem at all. They move better than Madonna.

As it turns out, Moonbeam disappeared a month later anyway, and was never seen again, not by us anyway.

Some people say she’s living with the Dayaks in nearby Sei Gohong village, some say she got eaten by the Dayaks in nearby Sei Gohong village, but nobody knows for sure. My personal theory is that she heard the cry of the Great Grey Wolf whilst swimming around at the bottom of the well, realised she was actually alive and so took off at the first available opportunity.

Of course, being a dog, it may have been a whiff of the Great Golden Bone she got, but it lies at the foot of the Great Grey Wolf anyway, so it’s much of a muchness.

Yeah, Moon dog, Moonbeam… she didn’t have many brains, which may account for falling in the well, and wandering off down to Sei Gohong around New Year, but you never know.

It's not brains that count.

I’d love to be able to tell you that on moonlit nights people see her striding atop nearby Bukit Tangkiling (Tangkiling Mountain), her aching howl ripping the glory out of the day. Children hide under beds, carried swiftly and without effort back to their very own first lost cry in the dark. Older, wiser men feel the cold teeth of death nipping at their heels, mount their camels and get a wriggle on. But no, I’d be lying, besides getting carried away.

Moonbeam just disappeared. Itulah Indonesia! It’s Indonesia, and you learn to live with unknowns.

Cycling Ramadan!

2007-09-16T22:36:00.000+07:00

Ram-a-dan is here is again,
the skies above are clear again,
let us sing a song of cheer again,
Ram-a-dan is here again!
To the tune of ‘Happy days are here again!’

Kalimantan, Indonesia.
Contrary to popular wisdom, cycling during Ramadan is a good gig. In fact, believe it or not, it’s ‘tailor fit’ for cycling and has become my favourite time to hit the road at the Muslim end of the Southeast Asia.

I can’t speak for the rest of the Great Islamic Geographic Arc. Iran, they tell me is good. Iraq and Afghanistan might be dicey - I don’t fancy chugging down Highway 1, whistling and ending up on Fox News. Jordan, Syria… who knows?

But back to Indonesia….

A student of mine in Banjarmasin, the capital of South Kalimantan, recently asked me why the international media gives Indonesia such a ‘bad face’. It was a good question.

Moving along…

Despite the earthquakes, volcanoes, tsunamis, floods, mud-flows that swallow whole villages, sinking ferry boats, falling airplanes, raging seasonal smoke-clouds that envelope the whole region, ongoing separatist uprisings, Avian Flu outbreaks, occasional Christian-Muslim bloodshed, and, it has to be said, the odd bomb, Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim nation, knows how to throw a good ‘cyclist friendly’ Ramadan. It is also, as I said to my student, a rookie media mogul’s wet dream.
“Get into media!” I said.
“Thank you, Pak Felix, for your sagely advice!” he replied.
“No sweat…” I said.

‘To ride Ramadan, or not ride Ramadan?’, is the real question, though.

Option #1: Not the Ramadan Ride!
Place: Some totally God forsaken, ramshackle town in Kalimantan, Indonesia.
Season: Not Ramadan.
Time: Evening.
Action:
After a hard day cranking kilometres, I wander around alone looking for some ‘action’. I find it in Warung Mustafa.
Night descends, inky black, and the highway never sleeps. Trucks rumble by, dust clouds kick high in the air. I sit on a wooden bench sipping hot sweet tea. I say a few words to Mustafa, the proprietor. Conversation dies. A dog wanders in. Against my better judgement, I pat it, but that’s boredom for you, and the inescapable longing for contact.
I start to itch. Fleas! “This freakin’ dog’s got fleas, Pak!” I say. Mustafa nods sagely. I go back to my room, lie on the bed and stare at the ceiling.

Option #2: The Ramadan Ride!
Place: Same totally God forsaken, ramshackle town in Kalimantan, Indonesia.
Season: Ramadan.
Time: Evening.
Action:
During Ramadan, on the road, you can eat and drink during the day, as per normal, but at night, the world explodes - OK, a bad choice of word, considering the context, but let me go on… Mums, dads and kids, dressed in their colourful Ramadan best, venture out in the cool evening air to take in cakes and sweets, juices and teas, each other and as luck would have it, one lone Cyclist from another Planet.
“You want another cake, Pak Cyclist from another Planet?” asks Ibu.
“Thanks, ‘bu, don’t mind if I do!” I reply.

It’s a lot of fun.

Some philosophical comments:

Option #1, above, does have a certain stark beauty to it. Not to everyone’s taste, but to the (usually male) cyclist living in the West who feels that his Inner Being is slowly turning into Bananas in Pajamas, Option #1 can be the go.

Option #2, on the other hand, speaks for itself.

Radio South Kalimantan!

2007-08-19T14:25:00.000+07:00

The Pak Felix English Talk and Music Show on Radio Tuntung Pandang FM 102.3 out of Pelaihari, South Kalimantan was a good bet while it lasted, I must say.

I love radio. I love rabbiting on with complete control....

I spent 2 months in South Kalimantan setting up the radio show, training local teachers in a broad programme of 'live interactive' English language techniques (Forget the freaking English lab, folks, use what you got - your brains, your hearts, your wills!), visiting schools, looking at under-utilised multimedia labs and doing various training gigs with the local high school students, viz.: The State Debating and Storytelling Contests (Give me brave, kids, not smart! And besides, think of your oponents as monkeys...!)

Hell, I even had breakfast with the local Regent:

The Regent: We need this broad, region-wide English program to go ahead, Felix. I want everyone in the province speaking English! I'm behind you all the way!
Pak Felix: Groovy...!
The Regent: Here, try another sweatmeat.
Pak Felix: Cool...

Job start date: 1 August, in place.
Job cancellation date: 31 July.
Reason: Education department will not release funds. Discussion will continue in October at next departmental meeting. Money scheduled for release May 'o8. Will you be available then, Pak Felix?
Pak Felix: I'll probably be dead from lack of food by then, but you can always try.

Itulah Indonesia! Aduh!
That's Indonesia for you! Shit...
Kemana dari disini, Pak Peelips?
Where to from here, Pak Felix?
Tak tahu! Fuck knows...

Well, a great truth in life is to take things all the way, even into the face of certain defeat, and then the only step left is into nothing, which is freedom.

Bao Ling for Laos

2007-04-25T18:03:00.001+07:00

It's early April in Luang Prabang, The Water Festival (songkran) and Lao New Year are upon us, the world is descending by bus and plane (250,000 tourists, 2005 figures), and there’s something about this town that irks me.

I know it’s all ‘right and proper’ – World Heritage Status, Eco and Sustainable Tourism, a fair deal for the locals, limited 5 Star and big business access, and so on – and I do feel awful for saying it, but all of this good thought, work and will seems to produce a grand façade of sorts.
It's a bit like a gay Madi Gras, only nice, and it agitates me.

I want to look behind the curtain. I don’t want beige, I want reds, blues and yellows. I don’t want cappuccinos, I want chickens, pigs, dirt and plastic bags. I don’t want polite manner, I want polite disorder.

I guess I just miss my bike, and all that it bestows: the open road, the turn of the stomach that spells danger, the pain in the legs, the despair of another hill and the ecstatic laughter of running, jumping, screaming kids in grubby shorts.

It takes all sorts, I guess.

I wander into the Phunpaksom Guest House, and get shown to room number 4 at the top of the landing.

The room is large and airy, has a ceiling fan, a wooden floor, a hard double bed and a couple of shuttered windows overlooking the Mekong River, and despite the recent coat of thin white paint, it can't quite shake that ‘lost in Asia’ feel.

“I’ll take it,” I say.

It's the kind of room I know well. You can smoke opium, go mad, have mystical revelations, despair of life, read a book, make love, masturbate… in fact, pretty much anything goes as long as long as you pay your bill and don't flush paper down the toilet, and I’m fine on both points.

“All right, mate!” says Mitch, the tall, lanky, forty something ex-pat Kiwi who seems to be in charge. There’s a couple of Lao folk sitting docilely in big black leather chairs in the hallway, but they haven’t said a word.

“On holidays, are ya, mate?” asks Mitch.
“Kind of,” I say, “but I’d be just as happy to escape the lunacy outside.” Outside, Luang Prabang is winding up for the big tomorrow where they’ll be gallons of water to throw, a Miss Luang Prabang contest and parade to admire and oodles of UNESCO approved fun.

“This is Disney Land for adults, mate,” says Mitch, “Relax and enjoy it!”
“Right, yeah, I guess so…,” I say, as I fill in the register.

The Lao Quiet. If they could bottle this and sell it, the Loation import-export trade imbalance would be solved in one masterful, eat-your-heart-out Body Shop, stroke. But where is it? Buried under an avalanche of safety-first politically correct infrastructure.

I can see Mitch has pegged me as a potential wet blanket, but as long as I pay the bill and don’t flush paper all will be well, I’m sure. “When will it be over?” I ask.

“A few days after the festivities it’ll all go back to normal, mate!” says Mitch. Mitch has a way of turning each sentence he speaks into a cut and dried pronouncement, so that all I can reply is “Right!” while I try to gather my thoughts. I find I’m saying ‘right!’ a lot.

The Phunpaksom Guest House is on the low side of town down by the Mekong. It’s a large, white, high ceilinged two-storied house with sky blue shutters on the windows. If Luang Prabang was a Monopoly board, this would be Whitechapel, the cheap end of town and a long way from Go. Old Kent Road, in the guise of the Luangsumbao Guest House, is right next-door. They’re almost identical, except that Whitechapel sports two grubby share bathrooms, instead of just one, which is why I chose it. Contrary to what some may think, I’m not averse to a bit of luxury.

I take a shower, climb on the bed and settle into ‘Welcome to Hell: One Man's Fight for Life Inside the Bangkok Hilton’ by Colin Martin, just to remind myself how shitty, dark and mind-stonkeringly moronic Asia can be. It’s the cautionary tale of one man’s major fuck-up and the subsequent, requisite decade inside the belly of the beast, read: trapped in Asia.

(It’s very similar in content, style and emotional effect to the book ‘The Damage Done: Twelve Years of Hell in a Bangkok Prison’ by Warren Fellows. Warren was a first-class rugby player from Sydney before he blew it all one day on a drug run out of Bangkok. I particularly liked the before and after pics.)

In the room adjacent to mine is Tyrone, an ex-pat from California. He’s about 45, thin and wiry, and tells me he lives in Cambodia - which is where I've met him before, I realise, but say nothing. There's something ragged and imploring about Tyrone. He’s like a boy on the wrong side of the Municipal Swimming Pool fence who wants in, but can’t afford the fee.

The three of us, Mitch, Tyrone and myself, sit on the terrace later that night, swapping stories, feeling each other out, keeping the demons at bay. The other two are knocking back Beer Laos, and I’m nursing my usual two Cokes, sobriety of mind being a state I genuinely enjoy.

Tyrone's world view, fuelled by Beer Lao, stretches far and wide; a little too far and wide to make make much sense at all, really, which is not unusual in Asia. Still, it's humorous and populated by the unhinged, and I prefer listening to this jibberish rather than the usual basic tourist fare on offer. At least the man knows how to take a risk, even if, it seems, most of them are bad risks.

He has a way of looking up after he's spoken, head bowed to one side, waiting a reply, that says 'please don't humiliate me'. It’s odd, but it seems to make sense. I don’t fancy the home life of the boy in the grubby shorts on the wrong side of the municipal fence. Yeah, the damage done.

Maybe he just needs a bit of kindness?

Next morning I meet Mitch clobbering down the stairs, arms and legs whirling. "Have you seen Tyrone?" he asks. There's no 'mate' at the end of the question which probably means Mitch is not happy.
"Not since last night," I say. "Why?"
"The bastard skipped out without paying. He left me a teeshirt and note saying something about 'good kama'. Jesus Christ, who needs a shitty old teeshirt? It wasn't even washed."
"Right!” I say, and stand at the bottom of the stairs at a bit of a loss.

When I stroll back from the Miss Luang Prabang Parade late in the afternoon, Mitch is handling another crisis. Andre, a young French chap who’s been in Room 3 across the hallway for a week, and mainly kept to himself, is adamant that somebody has slipped into his room the night before and stolen 100 dollars. “I not can pay…!” he says. Oh, dear.

Mitch and I know this is turkey shit. Andre knows this is turkey shit. Andre knows that we know, and we know that he knows that we know, and so on, spiralling forever upwards into an everlasting budget tourist scamming loop, which would drive you mad if you let it, so what to do?

Don’t ever run a guest house is my advice.

Mitch proposes Andre pay half what he owes, and leaves it at that. “Fuck me!” he says, plonking himself down heavily onto the black vinyl couch that stretches along the front veranda.
“Right!” I say.
“You wanna go bowling?” he asks.

Ten minutes later we’re in Mitch's van, passing through the high wire-mesh gates into the dusty carpark of the Bao Ling (Bao Ling?) Ten Pin Bowling Alley on the outskirts of town. Above us looms the Bao Ling's large and lurid advertising billboard, somewhat reminiscent of a karaoke club.

“What kind of place is this, Mitch?” I ask.
“No, mate,” he says, chuckling, watching me eye the well defined picture of the scantily clad, young and rather fertile Lao girl with the bowling ball stuck between her legs, “don’t worry about the billboard. It’s just an aberration.”
“Right!” I say.

Yeah, Bao Ling for Laos, and I recommend it.

Mr Felix April 07 Update - Laos

2007-04-23T14:38:00.000+07:00

Luang Prabang, Northern Laos.

Last week I ran into Brad from Melbourne, my home town. He was sitting alone with his bike at a table on a street cafe 100 km south of Luang Prabang, and had that cyclist's 'raw prawn' look - flushed red skin, shoulders hunched, head bowed (as though the floor, or maybe your shoes, are of pounding importance, even more than the sweet Lao girl in a yellow and blue sarong who is serving you your second coffee, which is something.)

Brad had just cycled up from Laung Prabang town, mainly uphill, and I'd just come up by bus from Vientiane, so of course, after introductions, he asked, "What's it like from here, Felix?" He was heading to Vang Vieng, some 200 or so km south.

"More pain and suffering, I'm afraid, Brad!" I said. "There's a hill some 50 klicks away that's a beast, an unrelenting beast.... maybe 50 km up, up, and then more up. It looks like a real bitch."

"Thanks, mate," he said. (We're both Aussies.)

Brad emailed me the other day from Melbourne, and pointed me to the Lonely Planet Thorntree site, where it seems someone was asking after me, wondering where I was, having made no posts, nor Mr Pumpy updates for 2 years etc.

So this prompted me to write.

I'm in Luang Prabang, sans bike, but will head back to Kalimantan, Indonesia, soon, to pick it up - and then onto the next big thing, riding from Alexandria to Kashmir. There's reasons for doing this particular trip, and the end-goal is to write a book.

I've been living and working in Central Kalimantan, near Palangkaraya. I taught English and Film at an English medium school through 06, and managed a few rides.

As you can imagine, making films with a bunch of 12, 13 and 14 year olds was a lot of fun, and inbetween the heat, rain, power cuts, scorpions and fire-breathing centipedes, we managed to get quite a few made. End of year school night was a riot indeed - "Hey, look mum, I'm up on the big screen!" Mum was duely impressed.

Strange place Kalimantan; the end of the earth, the centre of the earth. I love it, and it reminds of Cambodia in many ways; an 'out-of-the-way' feel and a dodgey social infrastructure in which nothing is ever quite going to work, no matter what you do. There are times, standing by the road, a line of ramshackle wooden huts and restaurants to your right, a flat expanse of dry, stringy Eucalyptus trees to your left, heat pounding onto your head, that you'd swear you were in Cambo.

But it's the people, as always, that make it. It's basic, and we have nothing much else but each other, which is fine by me. The human scale is a good one - the flicker in the eye that says 'I see you', like starlight across the fathomless black void that separates us all, on a bike or off.

Well, maybe I'll start posting again, I don't know... I'll need to think about it. It's been an interesting last 3 years.

Best wishes from Lao.
Mr Felix

Mr Felix update....

2006-05-05T07:00:00.000+07:00

To blog or not to blog?
See the comments section in The Green Gibbon, below, for a brief update.

The Green Gibbon!

2006-02-19T21:41:00.000+07:00

In Kalimantan - blog assault cometh!

2005-12-17T14:02:00.000+07:00

I am now living in Central Kalimantan, Indonesia, near Tangkiling village, 36 km north of the capital, Palangkaraya.

I've been settling into my house, writing everyday, doing a little teaching (film/animation)at a secondary school here, riding the 'transmigrasi roads' and canoeing the surrounding jungled rivers and waterlands.

I am preparing for another 'BLOG assault' by Feb. 20, 06.

--------------------
The Comments Section:

A couple of people have emailed me a little confused about the comments section. So to be clear: No, that is not me posting within the comments section as 'Colonel Pumpy'. It is, I do agree, a little tiresome, and it may be time for this chap to get his own blog up and running under an original name and even more desirable, an original subject.
-------------------

Cheers,and thanks for the comments - appreciated.
Mr Felix in Kalimantan

Kathmandu to Gonda Pt.14 - Back on the road!

2005-11-17T18:24:00.002+07:00

A ride through the Nepali Terrai into India:
KTM to Nepalgung (Indian border) – 508 km
KTM to Gonda (India) – 636 km

The ride:
Kathmandu to Mugling Bazaar – 110 km
Mugling Bazaar to Narayanghat – 34 km
Narayanghat to Dumkibas – 63 km

The story so far:
On his search, Mr Felix has ridden through Hell, died in the bathroom, been visited by the Ghosts of Lovers Past, fallen down a mineshaft and found the Green Gibbon. After five days of rock and roll in Narayanghat, he resumes his journey west.

Part 14: Back on the road!

I roll out of Narayanghat at 10 am and Raja stands on the steps of the hotel waving me off. After almost five long days, the certified nut case in room 104 is finally leaving.

I ride past the bus depot and head down beside the market and can’t stop chuckling. Asia! If I was Raja, I’d be throwing rocks at Mr Felix as he pedalled off down the road to the next hotel and lucky houseboy, but no, he’s been attentive all morning and seems genuinely sorry to see me go.

I’d put my arm around him before I climbed on the bike and said, “I’ll never forget you, Raja!” and meant it.

I turn on to the highway into the morning traffic and weave through a long line of squeaking rickshaws carrying bundles of schoolgirls in crisp white shirts and blue skirts, and stand on the pedals and accelerate past gangs of wide-eyed schoolboys on bikes.

“Hello mister!” they chime, and I ring my bell, put on a burst of manly speed and feel the wind clipping at my cheeks.

I’m back on the road.

The highway out of Narayanghat is paved and wide and heads southwest for 60 kilometres, running just to the north of the Royal Chitwan National Park, before it crosses the Binai Khola (Binai River) and heads due west to Butwal, today’s probable destination, a further 60 kilometres on.

It’s a mainly flat run but I’m leaving today’s schedule wide open. If I flag or the weather turns bad, I’ll pull in and spend the night at one of the small guesthouses dotted along the road.

After the fun and games of the last few days, and especially last night, I know better than to be headstrong and antagonise the gods.

I stop for a late breakfast a few kilometres out of the city at a roadhouse of sorts, and when leaving almost skittle a lone brown duck that’s taking it’s usual, I guess, leisurely morning constitutional between the petrol pumps. “Sqwak!” goes the duck, highly indignant, flapping its wings, and it pays to concentrate.

I look over my shoulder to see if the owner isn’t standing on the driveway shaking his fist, also highly indignant, but no, it’s Asia, and they don’t do that sort of thing, so on I ride.

Twenty kilometres down the road the traffic drops off to a trickle. There’s dense forest on both sides of the highway and I sit high in the seat, coasting down the centre of a green tunnel while my front tyre goes ‘rrrrrrrr!’

I ride through a small village where young children call to their mothers from darkened doorways and arrest time in a squeal and a jig, and old men sit immobile under shady verandas and give me a quick salute, reminding me of my destination.

I cycle past a herd of cows and pretty girls in wrap around skirts turn their bright, hopeful faces in surprise, splashing light all over the road, and what is this landscape I move through?

There’s rain clouds up ahead – big, floating, white and grey hulks, expanding and billowing slowly upwards into a rich, blue sky, silent and as yet, benign.

On I ride.

Off to my right the thin blue line of the Himalayas comes and goes through the trees and every few kilometres I roll down sharp curves through crisp air into verdant, shaded river valleys, across sparkling streams or the odd wide brown river, and work my way over the bridge and up the other side, pushing on the pedals, leaning over the handlebars until the road levels out again, and I puff and sweat and settle back into rhythm.

Just after one o’clock I cross the Binai Kola and roll into Dumkibas. It’s a small, forgettable village with a few brick houses on each side of the road and a couple of earthen floor chai-shops.

Coming over the small crest down into the town I could see a steep, deep green ridgeline of mountains cutting straight across the road up ahead, and unless we’re taking a rather long detour, it looks like I’ve got some climbing in front of me.

It might be time to take on refreshments.

The chai-shop has the usual rice, dahl and chapatis laid out in pots and metal plates over the woodstove and after this morning’s brisk ride it smells like real food. Thank the sweet Lord for an appetite and a body.

While I’m sipping on a chai and waiting for the daal-baht to arrive, a small, thin man with wide, staring, fragile eyes wanders into the shop. He’s dressed in rags, says nothing and acknowledges nobody, and pads silently through to the back and takes a seat by the wall.

He looks about fifty or so and is possibly Nepali, but judging by his face, build and polite body language I’d swear he was Japanese, or had been at some point before he got deeply lost in Asia.
Nobody in the shop pays him the slightest attention, so I guess he’s a regular, and he sits, staring into the shadows, as weightless as a ghost.

After a few minutes, curious, I reach over and offer him a cigarette, but he looks blankly at the pack and turns away.

The daal-baht arrives and I spoon it into my mouth but in the face of such pointed human loss it’s hard to eat with any gusto. Still, I brought it on myself, so no use complaining, and thank God for Asia. If this was the West, we'd have cured the poor guy by now.

“Come now, Fujisan, you can’t go wandering all over the place like a madman!” says the nice man.
“No, please, leave me alone!” pleads Fujisan, as they drag him out of Starbucks.
“No, you’re lost and we’re just taking you…”
“But I like being lost!” he shouts in defiance, and so proves his madness.

According to the chai-shop owner, who speaks a little English, there’s a fruit shop over the road, a guesthouse just up the road, and right up the road there’s a steep climb through the mountains for either 7 kilometres, or 14, and I can’t decipher which.

“You mean seven up and seven down,” I ask, “or fourteen up and fourteen down?”

“Yes, fourteen!” he says. “Take three hours on bicycle!” he adds helpfully, which confuses me even more.

“Very steep?” I ask, and plane my flat palm at a ridiculous angle to the table and he says, “Yes!” whatever that means.

I can’t wait for iBlab, the portable digital voice translator to be released on to the market, but until then international cycling will remain an inexact sport, it seems.

By the time I get back out to my bike the clouds are hanging low in the sky and hugely pregnant, and if the ride up the mountain turns out to be the full 14 kilometres it’s going to take me over an hour, and from the looks of it I’m going to get dumped on real bad.

“Ah, no,” I decide. It’s a bit early to pull in, but so be it.

I cycle off up the road and turn right into the guesthouse, which is no more than a raw brick box with a few windows and a sign, but the owner is helpful and his wife flaps gently around making me comfortable, and this looks like home for tonight.

I take a quick, cold shower and by the time I emerge refreshed in my clean sarong the owner has kindly placed a comfortable wicker chair on the rough concrete platform at the back of the guesthouse under the first-floor overhang, and his wife is smiling shyly and holding a tray of hot black tea and a couple of biscuits.

It’s the Ritz, and I’m a fortunate man indeed.

Kathmandu to Gonda Pt.13 - Kathmandu Day 2!

2005-11-08T19:40:00.001+07:00

A ride through the Nepali Terrai into India:
KTM to Nepalgung (Indian border) – 508 km
KTM to Gonda (India) – 636 km

The ride:
Kathmandu to Mugling Bazaar – 110 km
Mugling Bazaar to Narayanghat – 34 km

The story so far:
On his search, Mr Felix has ridden through Hell, died in the bathroom, been visited by the Ghosts of Lovers Past, fallen down a mineshaft and found the Green Gibbon. He’s now on the roof of his hotel in Narayanghat, taking a 5 am tea break and thinking about how all of this began. It’s November 1974…

Part 13: Kathmandu – Day 2!

I wake up at 7 am ablaze. It’s my first morning in Kathmandu.

I was up in the middle of the night with the runs, stumbling around looking for the light switch to the toilet and finally giving up and squatting over the hole in the pitch black, which can sure bring you back to yourself, in a number of ways.

But why worry? I’m in Kathmandu on my way overland to London, with Abdul’s blessing.

The ticket I’d flown in on was a rock bottom, no frills, no-refund affair and I’d gotten it from Turkic Star Travel, deep in the ethnic enclave of Melbourne, on the recommendation of a friend.

“Go and see Abdul at Turkic Star, Feely,” said my friend Peter. “He’ll set you up and he’s a real character!”

“You’ll like him!” he added breezily, and the last person Peter had said that about was a friend of his girlfriend’s and I’d loathed her on sight - we’d loathed each other on sight. It was hit and miss with Pete.

Nevertheless, eager to save a few bucks, early one Saturday morning I boarded the tram to grubby inner-city Brunswick, home of Turks, Italians, Greeks, Lebanese, lost dogs and anything non-Anglo that walked the Great Southern Land.

“Feelexmyfrend, Calcutta ees dirty, steenking hole! Why you go dere?” said Abdul, about a minute after I’d taken a seat in his dingy little office and enquired about flights to India.

“Ah, well, Mister Abdul.. Abdul,” I said. “I wanna go overland to London, and I, ah, thought Calcutta might be a good place to start.”

The truth was I hadn’t done much up-to-date research and Calcutta was simply the former home of the East India Company, the current home of Mother Teresa and where the Black Hole had been. Throw in a few teeming millions and bingo, let’s start there.

Coming from the ‘positive thinking’ end of town - read: nobody had a clue, my flimsy plan had to date received all round airborne praise and nothing more negative than a blank stare and a ‘you gotta be kiddin!’

Certainly no one had challenged it with any authority, and here I was not a few minutes inside Turkic Star Travel and Abdul was already out with the club.

It was daunting, but everything about Abdul was daunting - his coarse three-day growth, rumpled suit and meaty hands, it all screamed, “I’m a Turk!” in a bulky, hairy foreign accent, but not bulky like Hulk Hogan, nor hairy like Skippy.

Even his bonhomie was bulky and hairy and he kept prefacing everything with ‘Feelexmyfrend!’ and what did ‘myfrend’ mean in Turkish?

On the back wall of his office just above his head loomed a large poster of a comely Turkish girl in a field of yellow flowers under the imaginative slogan: ‘Come to Turkey!’ and dotted around the room were peeling pictures of the Istanbul skyline, Roman ruins and Turkish mosques.

I felt like I was in deepest, darkest Asia already, with a bear.

“No!” said Abdul, opening his palms wide and grinning expansively. “Feelexmyfrend, I am telling you, you travel over by thee land to London, better you start Kathmandu! Calcutta steenking hole, Kathmandu many heepees! Yoolike!”

He arched his eyebrows, lent back in his chair and said, “Wot you tink?” lifting his chin in a short, sharp motion and it was clearly my turn to speak.

Abdul was obviously a man of wide experience and knew a lot about ‘heepees’ and, I guessed, a few other things, and it was plain to both of us I knew nothing, so what was I to say?

‘Wot you tink?’ was a challenge as much as a question on tourist destinations, and as I sat back and looked, despite the fact that everything in my brain was saying ‘leave now’, I felt myself warming to him.

I felt that if I stood up and threw a punch he’d take it, swing with it and laughingly throw it back. There was no need to fear him the way I feared a lot of other men.

Abdul was a good bet.

After a little while I said, “Sounds like good advice, Abdul!” as evenly as I could.

He smiled and relaxed. Despite the rather large Anglo handicap I labored under, I’d plainly made the wise choice.

He deftly unfolded a map of Asia and lent forward across the desk, motioning me excitedly towards him like we were about to go over the jolly plans for a bank robbery.

I leant in close.

“So!” he said, wriggling excitedly in his chair, “You fly Bangkok!” and stubbed a stocky middle finger directly on Bangkok. “And then you fly Kathmandu!” and stubbed again, and I looked at the map and thought, “All right! That’s where Kathmandu is!” but said nothing.

“Then you go Lon-don by thee land and we fly you back Mel-born,” he said. “Seemple!”

Abdul’s use of the word ‘we’ suffused me with a warm and unexpected glow, and I said, “Hmm, sounds like a pretty good plan, Abdul!” as evenly as I could.

I took out my passport and filled in a few forms, while Abdul busied himself with airline timetables and made a phone call, and just like that I was ‘in’ - and whatever ‘in’ was it felt a damn sight better than enrolling in ‘Advanced Reinforced Concrete Slab Theory’ at the university.

Roll on Kathmandu, roll on ‘heepees’ and bye-bye reo.

As I was getting up to leave, Abdul motioned me forward again and said, “Feelexmyfrend, I give you two piece advice!” and paused. Ah, the strange voice from a strange land speaks again. I lent in close.

“One!” he said, and abruptly lifted a thumb in the air. “Whatever you do, do not go to thee Greez! They are very bad peeple!”

I knew that Greeks and Turks hated each other with pathological venom, and I figured it was best to stay out of this one, so I nodded soberly and kept silent. (When you’re a piece of white tissue paper flapping in the breeze, go with the flow.)

“Two!” he said, and held up the other thumb so it now looked like he was giving me the ‘two thumbs up’. “Forget Ee-ran, forget Syr-eea, forget thee Lebanon!” which was somewhat mystifying as I would have to go through at least one of these countries to get to Turkey (and I couldn’t miss that) and on to Europe.

“T-u-r-k-e-y!” he said, slowly rolling the ‘r’ with great relish while his eyes glowed big and black. What the hell was he on about? I stared back.

He flicked his eyeballs up at the comely girl in the poster above his head and gradually his lips opened into a wide, lascivious smile, and as much as I fought the dawning, rising consciousness, I was moved.

Into my mind rushed an image I had seen a few months previous of a curvaceous, naked, Oriental woman with eight breasts.

I’d stumbled across the picture in a book on ‘medieval European myths of the mysterious East’, and one rainy afternoon had sat in the university library devouring the text and the engraved image of the mythical Oriental woman had made a big impression.

Naturally I didn’t tell anybody about it and had simply stuck it in my bag of secret desires along with the rest of the unacceptable, but here it was rising unbidden on Abdul’s desk. Who would have guessed?

Abdul followed me out on to the footpath when I was leaving, arching his shoulders and scratching himself through his crumpled suit, a man in control of his world.

“Well maybe, Feelexmyfrend,” he said, patting me on the shoulder, “Do not forget thee Lebanon.”
“But Abdul,” I replied, in a voice an octave higher than I would have liked, “Isn’t there a war going on there, and hijackings and killings…?”
“Pta!” he said and flicked his head back and waved his right hand dismissively.

I thanked him profusely, shook his hand and climbed on the tram and breathed out for the first time in forty minutes.

An hour later I was rattling through the suburbs of Melbourne, that endless run of neat plots and shining California bungalows, easy and familiar, clutching my air ticket, a long list of visa requirements and Abdul’s business card.

Despite the excitement of the moment, I still labored under the kitchen table idea that this impending trip was a boomerang; I’d go sailing out, whiz around a bit and then return to my point of origin, refreshed but unchanged, and then get on with building large, glorious, multileveled concrete carparks.

And what a fucking depressing thought it was, and why was I so angry?

I sat on the steps of my guesthouse in Kathmandu and wrapped my fingers around a glass of hot, milky chai.

It was still early in the morning and chilly, and in front of me, in a dusty, stone courtyard enclosed on three sides by tall, mud-brick buildings with their distinctive Newari style latticed bay-windows, Kathmandu was coming alive.

Little girls in pigtails played hopscotch under an arch and over by the wall of a small temple, noisy boys in ragged tee-shirts played marbles.

Old women were walking purposefully back and forth across the courtyard carrying bundles of sticks wrapped in cloth and a man emerged from a doorway, yawning and scratching his naked belly.

I was so absorbed in this people play unfolding around me that bubbling up came the words, “I love this…” but just before I mouthed them, cutting straight across from the right, I heard my father’s voice, loud and commanding, as if someone had turned on a loud speaker.

“Don’t love these people!” said the disembodied voice and I started in surprise. What, Napoleon was now telling me who to love and who not to?

And I’m hearing voices?

Maybe it was just my imagination but it sure sounded real. I looked up and before me, in the air, hung two moving pictures, side by side.

To the left was a young boy of about 8 peering intently at me, and troubled - it was me as a boy.

I shifted my gaze across to the right and saw a picture of myself as I was now, at 21, standing sideways and looking down with an expression of what? Aloofness?

Whatever it was there was something wrong with the eyes, and as I puzzled on this, a deep voice I didn’t know started suddenly from the inside my head and said, “If you take the left path you will find your vitality, and if you take the right path you will suffocate! Choose!”

I looked back and forth between the two images a couple of times and knew instantly, quicker than I could mouth the words, just what the choice was: Did I want to live a life, or live a successful death?

Just as my engineering training was kicking in and I was about to say, “Well, let’s look at the options…” the voice in my head said with great force, and a hint of urgency, “Choose now!” and I said, rather meekly, “The left one!”

And then everything went back to normal.

The girls played hopscotch, the boys played marbles and the old women came and went, and I sat on the stone steps cradling my chai and knew there was no way back.

Kathmandu to Gonda Pt.12 - Kathmandu Day 1!

2005-10-21T22:13:00.000+07:00

Kathmandu to Gonda Pt.11: Under the Milky Way!

2005-10-19T22:31:00.000+07:00

A ride through the Nepali Terrai into India:
KTM to Nepalgung (Indian border) – 508 km
KTM to Gonda (India) – 636 km

The ride:
Kathmandu to Mugling Bazaar – 110 km
Mugling Bazaar to Narayanghat – 34 km

The story so far:
On his search, Mr Felix has ridden through Hell, died in the bathroom, been visited by the Ghosts of Lovers Past, fallen down a mineshaft and most surprising of all, found The Green Gibbon. It’s been an exciting trip.

Part 11: Under the Milky Way!

I open one eye and look at the clock. It’s 10 past 4 and wouldn’t you know - why do these things always happen around 4 am?

My bed is soaked. The sheet I’m wrapped in is sopping wet, and as I roll on my back the dampness in the mattress hits me like a wet towel. Yeech!

Raja, the houseboy, is going to be mightily impressed with this. “Mr Feeliks, pleeese!” he’ll say. “When you are taking a shower, please do it in the bathroom like the other guests!”

Ten minutes later I’m down in the kitchen making myself a cup of tea.

I’d sprung out of bed and into the shower like a man possessed. I don’t think I’ve ever risen so quickly in all my life. Besides the discomfort of sodden sheets, I had an overwhelming urge to get outside into the night sky and fresh air.

I needed space, but first a cup of tea.

In the shower I’d looked at myself. I’d sweated so much during the night I was white and wrinkly and I must have lost ten pounds. I was positively skinny.

My flu was gone and I felt clear and taught, and what? Capable! I was going to live! But as I looked at my body I realised I needed muscle tone and red blood cells and I made a note a note to eat plenty of red meat. “Goat should do it!” I figured.

While I was making the tea downstairs in the kitchen I looked across at Raja and the other houseboy. They were dead asleep on the charpoys in the corner, and even though I was making the odd clatter and the gas burner was going ‘whoosh!’ they weren’t moving.

And what was I doing in here anyway? I don’t normally walk into hotel kitchens and help myself to tea. But I was dehydrated from the night’s activities and falling down mineshafts isn’t an easy business, no matter what anybody says.

And what the hey! If Raja woke up I’d give him a big smile and ask him if he wanted a tea. “One sugar or two, Raja?” (Being Nepali he’d probably take four.) But no, he was off somewhere dancing with Krishna and the gopis, and good luck to him.

I sat on the roof of the hotel and sipped my tea and looked out into the night sky. It was clear and vast and ablaze with stars. There was a half moon pocking it’s head over the mountains to the east and the Milky Way was vaulting upwards from one horizon to the next, a great heavenly arch of diamonds and pearls, keeping it all up, holding the roof in place.

Yeah, God knew what he was doing when He built that one, but it’s amazing he got it through the bureaucracy.

“Hey, guys, I’ve got this great idea!” He says. “I’m gonna build a Great Circular Arch in the sky made of stars and galaxies and it’s gonna shimmer and shine and underneath it the earth is gonna move so it looks like the Great Arch is moving…”
“It’ll never work!” say the doubters.

I guess it helps being the boss.

The Green Gibbon. The bright Green Gibbon! What the hell had I just run into?

When I was at university many years ago I’d taken a trip to Kathmandu. I’d been at the books for four long mind-numbing years and I needed a break.

I had one year to go to finish this engineering degree I was chipping away at (like a man with a chisel on a concrete block) and I was 21, miserable and didn’t have a clue.

Well, maybe half of one.

Christ! All my life I’d wanted to be an ‘artist’, and here I was studying freaking engineering, and I hated it.

I’d wanted to be an artist ever since I was 8 years old, and although I admit there was a certain romantic element in the idea, it was what I loved, and as far as I was concerned, that was it.

Roll on Rembrandt! Roll on Andy Warhol! Roll on Mr Felix!

But dad was having none of that.

When you’re born into the aftermath of the Great Depression, watched a world war rip the planet apart in your formative years, and just when you thought things were on the upswing, along come the Beatles singing ‘All you need is Love!’ and to top it all off, there’s a bunch of pansies dressed in flowers tripping the light fantastic and telling everybody to head to California where everything’s free and we’re all going to Heaven and bypassing Hell.

And they’re taking over the world!

Well, Charlie Manson woke us up out of that dream, but I couldn’t see it. But dad woke me up.

“The word is ‘no’, Felix!” he said, when I laid my carefully sculptured plans of a shining and brilliant art career before him on the kitchen table.

“But, dad!” I wanted to say, “This is how I’m gonna climb up on that big White Horse I saw in my dream. It’s the only way I think I can make it!”

But dad didn’t put much stock in dreams; not the kind you have in the middle of the night, anyway, and certainly not the kind that lead grown men to dance around in bear suits and burn down the learned institutions that had taken Western civilisation thousands of years to put together.

I’d never told him about the Great White Horse dream, and when my father said ‘no’, the word was ‘no’.

In my cosmos at the time, dad and God were interchangeable personages, and God's Will be done on earth, as it is heaven, or you’d get hit with a lightening bolt.

I took it real bad.

‘Sullen’ is a state of mind that many teenagers experience, but I do feel I moved this long and august tradition forward a quantum leap.

What Rembrandt did for portraiture and Andy Warhol did for Brillo Boxes, I did for ‘sullen’. It became my new art form.

And so, as these things go, some years later I ended up at university, studying engineering and failure was not an option. General Irwin Rommel, I have read, was a great motivator, as is fear.

Hell, you can even learn to smile, almost, if you work at it, even though you don’t want to, as you can learn to half believe what you’re doing is the right thing, even though you know it isn’t, if you’re confused enough, if you can follow that.

But underneath it all, under a sea of alcohol and a neatly crafted devil-may-care attitude, I was miserable, and the only thing more alarming than my misery was the fact that nobody seemed to notice.

Not my friends, not my girlfriends, not even my mum. I used to wonder whether they were all blind, but I hid it too well, and learned not to talk.

“Yeah, that Felix, he’s kicking goals! That boy’s a winner!” The world loves a winner all right.

I’d go to parties and in the middle of the testosterone and estrogen fuelled late teenager and early twenty-something frenzy, I’d simply not be there. It was weird.

The music would be thumping, the boys would be knocking back beer and weed and the girls would be shaking it out for the quick and the lucky, and the floor would drop away on me. I’d suddenly be stone cold sober and standing in a room full of grotesque phantoms.

In the middle of the night I’d lie on my bed and think about this strange phenomenon, and always, always, up would come the memory of the Great White Horse and the mineshaft.

It was scary.

Looking back now, it was amazing I held it together, but underneath it all I knew something, instinctively. My dad was the most merciless, hard-headed bastard on the planet, but I knew he loved me and I knew he would never intentionally damage me, and it made all the difference.

There had to be a way out of this mess. I needed an exit strategy and one that would hopefully not bring the Wrath of Khan down on my head.

Damage or no damage, dad could be formidable when he wasn’t happy about something, and we were talking big biccies here – my future, and his investment in it.

But which door? What door? Was there a door?

These things I pondered, along with how many pairs of socks to take as I packed my rucksack and prepared for my first big OS trip.

A few days after they let us out of the university, I was on the aeroplane bound for mysterious, exotic Kathmandu.

Kathmandu to Gonda! Pt.10 - The Cave!

2005-10-15T02:45:00.000+07:00

A ride through the Nepali Terrai into India:
KTM to Nepalgung (Indian border) – 508 km
KTM to Gonda (India) – 636 km

The ride:
Kathmandu to Mugling Bazaar – 110 km
Mugling Bazaar to Narayanghat – 34 km

The story so far:
On his search, Mr Felix has recently ridden through Hell, died (momentarily) in the bathroom, been brought back to life by the Ghosts of Lovers Past and has just fallen down a mineshaft. It’s been a busy couple of days.

Part 10: The Cave!

I am in a boat, on a pond, in a cave at the centre of the earth. I have just fallen down a mineshaft, and have arrived at the bottom.

I am calm, the pond is calm, and the little wooden boat is drifting over the black water through the silence towards an opening in the cave wall up ahead.

The boat slides through the opening into a bigger cave and a bigger pond, and drifts further out towards the centre.

I am sitting on the wooden cross-seat of the boat, towards the back, looking around at my new surroundings – there is a strange half-light in the cave, coming from where I don’t know, but everything is crisp and clear, and I’m content.

Just then I hear a splash and suddenly I feel something grab my right ankle. I look down and there’s a long arm extending out of the water and into the boat and a large hand has forcefully clasped on to my leg.

I just have time to realise that it’s a hairy arm, before there’s an even bigger splash and up out of the water rises a… well, what is it? It takes a moment for me to realise it’s a large hairy gibbon, the size of a man, and most startling of all, it’s bright green!

It all happens so quickly I don’t have time to be afraid, and then the gibbon, who’s standing waste deep in the water beside the boat and staring intently at me, announces in a deep voice: “You’re mine!”

For some strange reason this strong male voice, these words and the sure grip of the hand on my ankle calms me, and I relax back onto the cross-seat of the boat and take a look.

“Well, my, my, my!” I say to myself. “A bright green gibbon!”

I love gibbons. They are, without a doubt, my favourite animals on this good earth, and they’re the only animals I actually pine for.

I also love dogs, but who doesn’t? I enjoy romping with them, miss them when they’re not around and having a dog as a friend is something very special indeed.

But dogs are easy to love, and by saying that I take nothing away from them.

Kids and dogs, way to go, and dogs fit in. They are social, understand hierarchies (read: They know who’s boss!) and their capacity for forgiveness is almost christlike.

They’re a gift, and thank God for hairy, happy gifts that go ‘bow-wow-wow!’

But there are other animals in the pack that take a little more work to embrace, especially considering our penchant for torturing them.

I once saw a large, male, black panther in the Colombo Zoo and sat and watched it for an hour.

It was heart breaking to see this magnificent beast, with paws the size of rocks and leg muscles forged at the Krupp factory, locked into a small cage.

It paced relentlessly, hopelessly, back and forth without break, and without surrender. That thing was going to walk and walk, until it’s pilot-light simply extinguished, and then it was going to drop dead, and there was nothing I could do.

It felt bad (that’s an understatement!), I felt bad, so the only thing I could think of was to just sit there, beside the cage (safely on the outside, of course) and acknowledge the damn thing, as was.

And you know, interesting things happen when thoughts slow down.

I sat there for the first thirty minutes brushing away kids with ice-creams who came too close and stood on my feet and ignoring young men, with laughing girls on their arms, who threw peanuts into the cage.

The clock ticked on, and then, for a moment, when there was nobody else around, the great beast stopped its relentless pacing and looked at me.

I guess it was thinking no more than ‘who’s this turkey and if I could get out of this cage I’d rip his bloody head off’, but it was enough. I’d been noticed and for a second we looked each other in the eye.

Perhaps it’s just my mind in low gear, or maybe I’ve watched too much David Attenborough, but on some visceral level I felt something dark and immensely strong suddenly and unexpectedly punch into me, and it knocked the wind out of my chest.

I felt a short, sharp pang of intense fear - I was a mouse, frozen like sorbet. But I'm more than a mouse, I’m also a man with a heart and I said, unbidden (albeit in a small voice): “It’s ok to eat me!”

It was the least I could do.

And the great beast just turned away, without a flicker, and went on pacing. And what else would you expect from a king under the circumstances? Nothing! He’s a king.

But it changed me.

I felt a flood of grief go out of me like a wave. Whatever had been locked up, whatever guilt and shame I’d felt over what we’d done to this peerless brute force of nature, just left me.

Where it went, I have no idea, but I imagined it sliding outwards in all directions, entering forests and mountain retreats all over Asia where great beasts live, breathe and die.

I then got up and left.

An hour later I opened the door to my guesthouse room and it was like walking into a cave, and I looked around, puzzled, trying to work out what had changed.

Eventually I stood in front of the mirror and looked at my face, and I simply couldn't place it - it wasn't the same old gung-ho face I'd left with this morning.

It was pale and grave, and there was a clear, dark light in the eyes I'd never seen before, and it was coming from where? I kept getting the words in my head: "This light is coming from beyond the grave!" and it made no sense. What the hell does that mean? Where's 'from beyond the grave'?

And I remembered the black panther, and I thought: "What's a panther?" It was scary.

But I knew this: whatever the hell this dark light was and wherever it came from, it was the most majestic, albeit frightening, thing I'd ever seen in my whole life and it spelled freedom.

And it was shaking my foundations.

Kathmandu to Gonda! Pt.9 - The Tomb!

2005-10-11T21:31:00.000+07:00

A ride through the Nepali Terrai into India:
KTM to Nepalgung (Indian border) – 508 km
KTM to Gonda (India) – 636 km

The ride:
Kathmandu to Mugling Bazaar – 110 km
Mugling Bazaar to Narayanghat – 34 km

The story so far:
Mr Felix has just fallen down a mineshaft, but we wind the clock back a few hours for a bathroom interlude.

Part 9: The Tomb!

Just before I fell down the mineshaft, I went to the bathroom.

I was physically drained from the morning’s outing, and reading Dante’s Inferno had somewhat miraculously, and unexpectedly, collected all of the waring parts of myself into a coherent whole, and the coherent whole, I’d discovered, was empty.

I was The Hollow Man, alas.

“How ironic!” I thought to myself. Throughout my adult life, rightly or wrongly, deluded or on-the-ball, I'd relentlessly pushed for content over form. I worshipped the flame, and now the gas supply had been cut-off.

Maybe I'd forgotten to pay the bill?

A year and a half ago I’d walked out on a secure job at a university in Melbourne. I taught in the Creative and Digital Media Department, and what had begun as an exciting and stimulating job had, to my mind, degenerated under new management into a farcical parade owned by the forces of globilisation and ruled by political correctness.

It was the Emperor’s New Clothes, and we were living it.

The new order seemed to be: if it looked good and attracted paying customers, it was ‘in’, if it created waves and scared people off, it was ‘out’.

“But good art naturally scares people!” I said to the director, somewhat naively one day at the end of a rather heated discussion on ‘where we are heading’.

“Yes, we understand that, Felix,” replied the director evenly, "but we've got to keep the doors open and it's a new world blah blah blah blah..." He leaned back easily into his chair, a man in total control, and filled up the room with fine words.

Above his head hung his latest artistic gift to humanity, a glossy oil painting of the Space Shuttle Challenger just before it blew up.

"What's with the new painting, boss?" I'd asked him the week before. (He winced everytime I called him 'boss', so naturally I kept doing it.)
"Well, it's the Space Shuttle Challenger, just like it says on the label!" he said, slightly puzzled, as though overnight I'd turned into a moron, as well as being a pain.
"Yeah, but what's with the numbers?" I asked. Over the image of the Shuttle he'd painted strings of bright green numbers running horizontally across the picture.
"Why!" he said, obviously happy that someone in the department, other than the flunkies and boot-lickers, had finally taken an interest in his beloved art career. "That's the computer code that the Shuttle was spitting out just before the O-rings failed..."
"And the major malfunction happened!" I interupted brightly.
"Exactly!" he beamed.

I tell you, it's great to be on the same wavelength as the boss, especially one as well thought out as mine was.

And everything he said was all very reasonable of course, but you know it's a sham.

It's a bull without balls, a lion without teeth, a woman without a heart - and what's the point? How can you give yourself to something you no longer respect?

It stank and in the end I walked, and now, unfortunately, I was in the same boat as the people I so passionately despised; different path maybe, but same end-point.

I lay back on the bed and contemplated some well worn cliches: there are many paths to hell-on-earth, pride cometh before a fall and how wrong you can be.

But at least I knew I was in Hell and that was something, and the pilot-light on my once beloved (to my mind) roaring flame seemed to be still sputtering with some life - not enough to light a cigarette maybe, but still.

What was it that I’d betrayed so badly? What was it I wasn’t getting?

I lay on the bed without moving for over an hour. Whatever was at issue here, I realised, wasn't going to get solved by my on-board computer. I needed perspective. I needed a gun.

Time slows down. I am alone in a barren room, under a white sheet - a grey carcass of dried bones. Silence descends like a fog, filling every crack and corner of the room. I am suffocating under a sinking weight....

... and I need a pee, badly.

I then realised why God had built the ‘eat, drink and waste product’ mechanism into living organisms. Without it our pilot-lights would simply go out and we would sink inexorably into despair.

“Clever!” I thought. “Who would have guessed!”

Inside the bathroom I lent against the wall to steady myself and after I’d finished at the toilet, I went to the basin to wash my face and hands, and looked in the mirror, and what a sight I was.

It was a face I hardly knew – drawn, pale and without life. “Jeezus!” I said, “I’m dying on the inside!” and a knot formed in my belly and the fear of death rose up like a white sheet and I fainted.

I don’t know how long I was out, maybe a minute or two, but it’s hard to tell when time has stopped.

Slowly I became conscious of lying on the cold floor, and the right side of my head ached where it must have hit the tiles, but apart from that there seemed to be no damage.

I opened my eyes, groggy, and standing together before me in holographic splendour where the only two women in my life I have really loved.

I closed my eyes and shook my head, just to check I wasn’t hallucinating, and when I opened my eyes again, struggling to come awake, they were still there.

And they were radiant. They were the most radiant creatures I’d ever seen in my life, and they were looking down at me and smiling, and the kindness in their eyes just broke me.

And I started to weep great sobs (and I could feel my sinuses clearing up!) and I said, out of nowhere: “I’m sorry I lost you! I’m sorry I didn’t hold on! I just didn’t know how to reach far enough!”

And both of them broke into broad grins, and then they left, so I hoisted myself up off the floor, took a cold shower, went back into the bedroom, lay back down on the bed and fell down a hole.

Kathmandu to Gonda! Pt.8 - The Mineshaft!

2005-10-09T02:57:00.000+07:00

A ride through the Nepali Terrai into India:
KTM to Nepalgung (Indian border) – 508 km
KTM to Gonda (India) – 636 km

The ride:
Kathmandu to Mugling Bazaar – 110 km
Mugling Bazaar to Narayanghat – 34 km

The story so far:
Mr Felix continues his search for the lost divine spark. After a ride down through the mountains out of Kathmandu, he’s stuck in Narayanghat with a bad flu and a state of mind that’s approaching terror. He’s been down to the internet café to read about Dante’s Inferno and has chucked away his dope. Night is closing in, he is laying on his bed and things are rapidly coming to a head.

Part 8: The Mineshaft!

I am falling, falling down a mineshaft. I look back up towards the light and see the world of the familiar slipping away.

Below me I can see nothing. I am alone, hurtling downwards inside black fear.

“You’ve done it now, boy!” I say to myself, and I know with a cold certainty that whatever is at the bottom of this shaft is what I’ve been chasing for decades.

There’s a hard nut forming in the centre of my chest and it’s pushing its way outwards through my sternum. I wince with the pain and crouch forward as I fall.

I talk to myself: “There will be no way back. How bad do you want this? What the hell's at the bottom of this shaft that attracts you so?”

When I was at high school, many years ago, getting all set for a life of successful boredom, I had a dream about a Great White Horse.

In the dream I was a young boy, cradled lovingly in my father’s arms. We were in a green field and my father was standing, with me in his arms, by the entrance to a deep mineshaft, looking across to a big white draft horse that stood across the way.

“See that horse over there, Felix?” he said. “Your job is to climb on to it and try and get to the top!”

I looked across at the Great White Horse (for that seemed to be its name) and saw that it was surrounded by men, some of who I knew, and all of who were trying franticly to climb onto the horse and get to the top.

There were men hanging on to its sides, men hanging on to its tail and some were even clamping themselves upside down to its belly.

All the while the great beast stood stock still, turning its head every now and then, flapping its ears and flicking its tail, but ignoring the men. It was as happy and content as a Hollywood movie star on opening night.

The most successful men were sitting in a tight line on the great horse’s back, but they were also franticly pushing and shoving at each other and standing on the faces and heads of the men further down, who they attacked without pity.

The whole scene was one of chaos and desperation, and some men, the losers, the weak ones, were standing around disconsolately on the ground, waiting for an opening, or simply having given up.

But the most alarming thing of all was the man sitting on the Great White Horse’s head. He was obviously ‘the king’ because he wore a crown, which was made of tissue paper and coloured red, similar to what children wear at birthday parties.

He was small, wiry and nervous, lashing out repeatedly at those behind and below him, and he smelled of something rancid, something bitter. If he was a king, he was sitting on an uncomfortable thrown indeed, and he reminded me of a monkey.

I see a lot of monkeys in Asia, and I'm extremely wary of them. They can be vicious, unpredictable and opportunistic. They hunt in packs, attack without warning and act without reason; none that I can make head or tail of anyway. I avoid them, always.

“Climb up on that thing?” I thought to myself doubtfully, and with growing alarm.

I studied the horse for a few minutes looking for a path through the men, and I figured I could make it about half way up the beast’s side if I worked hard, and then, I guess, I’d have to hang on to its mighty flank for the rest of my life and hope nobody further up stood on my face.

But there was something even more disturbing. I felt sorry for the lot of them, even the vicious ones at the top, even the mad king. It was a half-life, a half-truth they were living, and it had driven them all half-crazy.

“Surely there’s more to life than this?” I thought. “Surely there’s a bigger truth to be lived?”

Just then my father interrupted my silent reverie and said, soberly: “But whatever you do, Felix, win, lose or draw, don’t go near that hole!” and he pointed to the entrance of the mineshaft at our side.

I looked down at this black hole in this bright green field of men’s labour, and back at the horse, and back at the hole, and felt myself slipping out of dad's warm arms.

I am hurtling downwards into the black.

The pain in my chest is persistent, relentless, and fear is turning cold. An icy hollowness is clawing at me, struggling upwards from my feet, snapping at my belly.

What’s at the bottom of this shaft? Death? Or worse... madness? A monster? A life of hopelessness?

Just then I know I can pull out. I can stop this freefall with a simple act of Will. I have a moment of doubt, and this is the slipperiest fear of all - the yawning fear of failing myself.

I struggle to get a grasp. I’ve come too far to turn back now and it’s cost too much. Home does not exist. I am alone.

Quietly, slowly I come back to myself. “Fuck it!” I whisper. “Let’s do it and be damned.”

There’s a sudden, sharp stab of pain in my chest, and I clench my jaw and curl into a ball. I can’t take any more, and I'm about to break.

I groan, and hear the nut in my chest crack open and it feels like a bone breaking, and out slides a small piece of white tissue paper, and I watch it float quickly away.

And out of nowhere, because it's the last breath I've got, I say the words: “Oh, Jesus, help me!”

Immediately, I feel a breath from behind and I hear the words, right in the centre of my head, clear and strong: “The Truth is in Surrender!” and without thought I arch my head back, open my arms and give in to my Fate.

Kathmandu to Gonda! Pt.7 - Will it float?

2005-10-06T12:37:00.000+07:00

A ride through the Nepali Terrai into India
KTM to Nepalgung (Indian border) – 508 km
KTM to Gonda (India) – 636 km

The ride:
Kathmandu to Mugling Bazaar – 110 km
Mugling Bazaar to Narayanghat – 34 km

The story so far:
Mr Felix continues his search for the Lost Divine Spark (LDS). After a ride down through the mountains and the rain out of Kathmandu, he’s now stuck in Narayanghat with a bad flu and a state of mind that’s approaching terror. He’s recently been down to the internet café and has been checking out Dante’s Inferno on the web, in one last-gasp effort to confront his spiritual condition head on.

Part 7: Will it float?

I feel a lot better after reading Dante’s Inferno, and back at the hotel I make a resolution: The dope has to go!

There’s no point working out where you are and then getting stoned off your gourd. It’d be like shooting yourself in the foot, which is one way to exit the war zone, but I’m a cyclist and don’t like holes in my feet.

I will go down with this ship,
And I won’t put my hands up and surrender.
There will be no white flag above my door,
I’m in love and always will be.
(Dido)

While I stand over the bowl and watch the plastic bag gurgle down the hole, I offer it up as a votive sacrifice just to make it official and maybe score a few heavenly frequent flyer points.

Scene in heaven: St. Matthew, the tax collector, and assistant, in charge of assessing votive offerings.

Assistant: We’ve got another incoming from that Mr Felix, Matt!
Matthew: Oh, gawd! What is it this time?
Assistant: It looks like about 38 grams of prime quality Nepalese Brown, dripping with water or something...
Matthew: Kee-riste, this guy kills me! What was it last time? A complete set of logged, ordered and numbered URLs on ‘Hot Babes on Bikes with Vegetables!’. All right, sigh… let’s dunk it!

(The 'dunk' or Votive Sacrifices Test (VST) is very similar to David Letterman’s TV segment ‘Will it Float?’ where Dave’s lovely assistants drop objects into a tank of water - a bicycle, for example, to see whether it floats or not. It’s gripping stuff!)

Matthew’s assistant drops the Nepalese Brown into the large font of holy water.

Assistant: No, Matt, it’s gone to the bottom! Feet of clay, mate. No points for Mr Felix today!
Matthew: Yeah, I thought so…
Assistant: Wo! Hang on! The placcy bag’s split and the hash is leaking out all over the place! Oi vay! We’re gonna have to drain the water and clean the font!
Matthew (coldly): 200 penalty points! What’s his score now?
Assistant (checking the book): Let me see, that’s, ah…205 minus 200… that gives him a grand total of 5 points.
Matthew: What’s his I.S.?

(I.S. stands for Inferno Status, and dictates where and for long you’re going to stay in Hell after you die.)

Assistant: At the moment he’s looking at a life sentence in Circle 2. That’d be 25 years, maybe out in 10, 15 with good behaviour. Heh, heh! Fat chance of that, eh, Matt?
Matthew: What’s he need to beat the rap?
Assistant: Rough figures? About 8 billion points.
Matthew: Sheezus! Some people are beyond help…
Assistant: Hang on, Matt, we got another incoming from a…Miss Julia Roberts!
Matthew (brightening): Ah, Julia! What is it this time?
Assistant: A 1962 Volkswagen Beetle in mint condition with a pink bow and a 'Save the Whales!' sticker on the back window, also original.
Matthew: What colour is it?
Assistant: Kind of a nice cherry red…
Matthew: It’ll float! Give her a billion points, and ah, can we pull a few strings and arrange another Academy Award for her? I loved that movie she did with that Hugh fellow, what's his name?
Assistant: Hugh Grant. Another bad egg, Matt. We've got him marked down for the cell right next to Mr Felix's. Another long-term stayer. Anyway, I'll see what I can do about the Academy Award. Shouldn’t be a problem.
Matthew: Great, let’s do lunch, I’m famished!

Back on earth I lie down on my bed and look at the ceiling.

Kathmandu to Gonda! Pt.6 - Lost in Circle 2!

2005-10-06T12:13:00.000+07:00

A ride through the Nepali Terrai into India
KTM to Nepalgung (Indian border) – 508 km
KTM to Gonda (India) – 636 km

The ride:
Kathmandu to Mugling Bazaar – 110 km
Mugling Bazaar to Narayanghat – 34 km

The story so far:
Mr Felix continues his search for the Lost Divine Spark (LDS). After a ride down through the mountains and the rain out of Kathmandu, he’s now stuck in Narayanghat with a bad flu and a state of mind that’s approaching terror. He's just left the hotel room for the first time in two days, and is at the internet cafe.

Part 6: Lost in Circle 2!

You have come to a place mute of all light, where the wind bellows as the sea does in a tempest. This is the realm where the lustful spend eternity. Here, sinners are blown around endlessly by the unforgiving winds of unquenchable desire…

I'm reading about myself on the web in a little internet café in Narayanghat.

I set off from home over 12 months ago in search of the lost divine spark, the reason to live again, and now it’s come to this: stuck in Narayanghat with a bad flu, and in Hell.

I find it laughable when people say they don’t believe in Hell. They must be looking around with their eyes closed. I once spent six months in a small hut on an island in Sri Lanka staring at the wall and let me tell you, Hell exists and you don't have to die to get there. All you have to do is stop running.

...the unforgiving winds of unquenchable desire...
...the unforgiving winds of unquenchable desire...

I’m searching through the Dante’s Inferno pages on the web, trying to get a little perspective. I’ve been stumbling around in the dark for over twelve months, beset on all sides by demons and monsters, and it’s high time I looked at a map.

I guess I have that very male thing of: "Hey, I know where I’m going, no need to look at a map! Klunk! Thud! Hmm, maybe I’m lost."

For my money you can’t beat the Inferno (originally published as Commedia by the Dante Alighieri Company) for a good map of Hell. Decent scale, all destinations clearly marked, easy to follow.

It seems I’m lost somewhere in Circle 2 where the ‘infernal hurricane never rests’ – yep, that sounds about right, and ‘whirling and smiting’ – yep, yep, tell me about it, and ‘you have betrayed reason at the behest of your appetite for pleasure, and so here you are doomed to remain.’ Jesus! Is that how I got here! Hmm, bad road, Feely.

The good news is that Cleopatra and Helen of Troy, two of my fave people, are down here with me, but I do wonder where Janis Joplin is.

I passed briefly through Circle 5 with the ‘wrathful and the gloomy’ and I didn’t see her, so maybe she’s in Circle 6 with the heretics. Woo! That’s a place I avoid like the plague, like maybe Sierra Leone, or Starbucks.

Being burnt at the stake is not my idea of a fun Sunday ride with the family.

Note: For those of you who would like to know which Circle you’re riding on, there’s a fun, and surprisingly accurate in my case, little multi-choice test at:
http://www.4degreez.com/misc/dante-inferno-test.mv
For a summary of Dante's Inferno go to:
http://www.4degreez.com/misc/dante-inferno-information.html
See you 'round!

The Lone Cyclist 5 & 6: The Wrong Room! & Valkyries!

2005-09-30T07:26:00.000+07:00

Kathmandu to Gonda! Pt.5 - An Interlude

2005-09-29T03:06:00.000+07:00

A ride through the Nepali Terrai into India:
KTM to Nepalgung (Indian border) – 508 km
KTM to Gonda (India) – 636 km

The ride:
Kathmandu to Mugling Bazaar – 110 km
Mugling Bazaar to Narayanghat – 34 km

The story so far:
After a ride down through the mountains and the rain out of Kathmandu, Mr Felix is down with the flu, and holed up in a hotel room in Narayanghat.

Part 5: An Interlude in Narayanghat!

On the morning of my fourth day in Narayanghat I mount up and go for a ride. I haven’t left the hotel in 48 hours and you don’t have to be a Rhodes' scholar to know I wouldn’t handle prison very well. I make a mental note to never break the law again.

I pedal slowly across to the bus station and turn left off the main drag.

Narayanghat is a surprisingly laid back town for it’s size. It sprawls out along the Trisuli River, rag-tag and dishevelled, but there’s a predominance of rickshaws over motorised traffic and the people seem friendly enough.

“Nepalis, not Indians!” I note. And thank god for that. When you’re as sick as me, the last thing you want is to be in India.

But India looms, just 'over there', and I'm heading that way and I can smell the fear. It must be a little like being a coalition soldier, waiting, waiting to go into Iraq. Yeah, Operation Mr Felix Freedom and 'we are committed!' Oh, dear.

I stop at a small general store, buy a litre of orange juice, open it up and suck it down on the spot. With luck it’ll have some vitamin C in it, but you can never be certain.

The lady behind the counter is short, sweet and smiley and surprisingly, speaks excellent English. She comes out on to the pavement and asks the usual questions and introduces her two kids, and ‘please wait a minute because they just want to show you the school project they’re working on.’

And wouldn’t you know, it’s about kangaroos. ‘Jackpot!’ for the kids, and it’s not what I had in mind but I won’t have to think too hard, so I guess I can handle it.

“Yep, I’m a genuine Ozzie, and I know ALL about kangaroos, kids!” I say, and suddenly their headlights turn on and I’m bathed in light and it’s the best I’ve felt in days, possibly weeks.

I tell them about great mobs bouncing across the Australian plains and how you can feel the earth go ‘thump! thump! thumpity thump!’ and how wonderful it is to stick your hand in the pouch of a mother kangaroo but you’ve got to be careful lest she rips you into six equal slices with her great hind feet – and I rise up and look ghastly and threatening, and then frightened, and the kids fall back and laugh, and gee, doesn’t it make you homesick.

And suddenly I’m drained. I feel like yesterday’s slice of bread, and I’ve got nothing more to give.

There’s an internet café across the street, and it’s easier to get to than back to the hotel, so I say my goodbyes and wheel the bike slowly across the road, dodge a few rickshaws, and go in.

Maybe some emails will pick me up. God, I hope none of them are abusive. When my emotional buffer is down I can handle my own demons, but external attacks are harder to absorb.

I settle into the small, grubby cubicle and Raja the owner looks pleased and turns the fan on ‘11’ and it’s nearly blowing me off the chair, so we sort that out, and he’s just about to go and get a cup of tea and 'would I like one?', and it could be worse.

Ah, the internet, what a release it is. Explorer’s opening up, and Google is coming online, and I’m floating free.

The Lone Cyclist 4: The Holy Road!

2005-09-27T18:30:00.000+07:00

The Lone Cyclist 1,2 & 3: The Call, The Border & She-Demons of the Night!

2005-09-26T00:45:00.000+07:00

Kathmandu to Gonda! Pt.4 - On ice in Narayanghat!

2005-09-24T01:51:00.000+07:00

A ride through the Nepali Terrai into India!
KTM to Nepalgung (Indian border) – 508 km
KTM to Gonda (India) – 636 km

The ride:
Kathmandu to Mugling Bazaar – 110 km
Mugling Bazaar to Narayanghat – 34 km

The story so far:
After a whizzy ride through the mountains and the rain out of Kathmandu, Mr Felix is down with the flu, and holed up in a hotel room in Narayanghat, alone. And he’s trying like the blazes not to lose the plot (whatever that is, because he’s forgotten.)

Part 4: On ice in Narayanghat!

I loathe Julia Roberts with a deep and abiding passion, and I’m half way into my second day in Narayanghat and three quarters of the way through her fourth totally forgettable film. Do they pay her for this crap?

Christ! Cable TV in Nepal, beaming in from India, is designed to make cyclists go mad, I’m convinced of it.

I switch across to Star Movies, Rupert (a pox upon him!) Murdoch’s approximation of a TV station, and there’s Tom Hanks in another poor excuse for entertainment, but it’s either that or the cricket on Star Sports – India versus Sri Lanka, and who gives a toss, so Tom Hanks it looks like it is.

The weird thing about both of these actors, though, is that you can’t take your eyes off of them. You’re lying naked on the bed and grinding your back molars into powder, out of sheer mind-numbing boredom, but still, you're compelled to watch. Which is why they’re ‘stars’, I guess. There has to be a reason.

I haven’t been out of the hotel in 36 hours and I haven’t left the room for the last 12. I’m feeling so wretched I’d join the Nazi Party if it guaranteed release.

I go into the bathroom again for the umpteenth time, clear the snot out of my nose, take another codeine – crickey! I better start counting them, I might OD! – and look in the mirror.

“I hate this! I hate this! I hate this!” I say, like a mantra, and go back to the teev.

My muscles ache, my bones ache and now my bum’s gone numb from all the Julia Robert’s films, so I rearrange the pillows and lie on my side and hope Tom doesn’t make it back from the dark side of the moon this time, but I know he will, because he’s rich and lucky, and people like to look at him, unlike me.

Are we having fun yet? Fuck, I’m not sure I’m gonna make it.

It's 2 AM and I’m wide awake and Tom’s climbed into the LEM and now I’ve got red-hot pokers sticking into the backside of my eyes from too much TV. I mean, really, fuck me, what now Lord?

When I was young and hopeful at St. Bridget’s Primary in Melbourne, way back before the Beatles broke up and the world still made sense, there was a joke doing the rounds of the playground, and when you’re young, cute and Catholic, it was a killer.

It went like this: A man walks into the church and his leg falls off. He looks up to the alter and says: “Why me, Lord?” He hops a little further down the aisle and his other leg falls off. “Why me, Lord?” he calls out again. He shuffles forward on his belly and then his arms fall off, “Why me, Lord?”, so he wriggles closer and his torso drops off, and finally, in one last desperate lunge for deliverance, he rolls forward, just a head now, and bumps into the alter steps – thunk! - and comes to a stop.

He raises his eyes to the heavens one last time, and calls out, pleading: “Why me, Lord? Why?”

And then there’s a flash of lightening and a crack of thunder and a big voice booms from on high: “Because you give me the shits!”

And I never, in my wildest fucking dreams, thought I'd be in the movie.

But there you go, and now I’ve got David Attenborough on Discovery Channel rabbiting on in his insufferable, wispy, pseudo-intimate animal molesting voice telling me about polar bears.

I’ve watched so much Discovery Channel in Asia I know more about polar bears than I do about cycling, and I’ve never set foot in the Arctic. And I love them, I really do. They’re wild and free and beautiful, and they’ll rip you to bits and eat you, and good luck to ‘em, but I’ve seen enough. Surely there’s something else out there on the frozen wastes we can look at.

How about another angle? How about gay polar bears? Some lesbian action? God, anything but this Disney-esque ‘and now the mother polar bear is teaching her young ones how to fish’ crap.

How about teaching them some real survival skills, like changing a tube, or downloading MP3s for nothing?

I go into the bathroom and blow out some more snot and take another codeine, and now there’s nothing else for it; I know it’s stupid, but I don’t have an internet connection, or an animal porn channel, so ‘drugs’ it looks like it is.

I roll up the biggest, fattest joint this side of the Kathmandu Valley. I literally pour the hash in, and then top it up some more. It’s top quality Nepalese Brown, light and powdery, and I got it for a song after a week of hard-arse bargaining in a dank little café in Freak Street, next to the slaughter house.

Fortunately, or unfortunately, I’m not sure which, seeing as I’m only a few days from the Indian border, I had to buy 60 grams worth, which is a very large fistful (indeed!), and I’ve only managed to get through a quarter of it in a month.

Hell, for a couple of weeks there I was the hashish king of Kathmandu. I sat on the roof of the Tibet Guest House with Todd and Dawn, a couple of American friends, and we played cards and blew the back of our heads off like Cristopher Walken in the Deer Hunter.

Yeah, sunsets over the Kathmandu Valley, pure orange octane.

I lean back on the bed and suck the smoke in, and feel it run down my throat, and I cough and gag, but I keep at it, and I feel better already.

And it’s all making sense now. Julia, Tom and David, they’re all part of god’s big plan, and it’s my mission to kill to them. It’s so simple, why didn’t I think of it before?

The smoke is rising and turning slowly up towards the ceiling, curling around the fan, and the red-hot pokers behind my eyes are withdrawing, gently, saying: “Sorry! Sorry! Sorry!” as they go, like demure Japanese schoolgirls, and I forgive them.

By the time I get to the end of the joint, I can even forgive god, almost, but he’s tricky, and holds the Death card, so you gotta keep your eyes open, even when you’re flat on your back, stoned immaculate.

Let me tell you about heartache and the loss of god
Wandering, wandering in hopeless night
Out here in the perimeter there are no stars
Out here we is stoned
Immaculate.
(The Doors)

I'm with you, Jim, and it’s 5 AM, and Narayanghat is waking up outside my window, and I may never move again.

Kathmandu to Gonda: Pt.3 - Good morning Narayanghat!

2005-09-23T17:35:00.000+07:00

A ride through the Nepali Terrai into India.
KTM to Nepalgung (Indian border) – 508 km
KTM to Gonda (India) – 636 km

The ride so far:
Kathmandu to Mugling Bazaar – 110 km
Mugling Bazaar to Narayanghat – 34 km

The story so far:
Mr Felix has ridden out of the Kathmandu Valley, down through the mountains, and is now onto the plains of the Nepali Terrai. Unfortunately, it's been raining, and he arrives in Narayanghat cold and wet, and it's not looking good health-wise.

Part 3: Good morning Narayanghat!

Bang! Bang! Bang! (Pause) Bang! Bang! Bang!

Holy shit, there’s someone bashing the door in! I’m half awake, stumbling out of bed, grabbing for a towel, standing at the foot of the bed. Where’s my glasses?

Bang! Bang! Bang! There goes the door again. It’s gotta be a drug bust! Where’d I put the hash? Where’s my glasses?

Shi-it! Dunno! Jesus, it’s 7 in the morning! Kee-riste! What’s going on?

I open the door an inch and peer out. “Your coffee, Sahib!” says Raja the houseboy, cheerily. I’m dumbfounded.

I fling the door wide open – th-wump! It cracks against the wall and in one grand sweeping motion I lift both my arms to the heavens and say: “Wot the fuck? Wot the fucking, fuck, fuck!” and then finish this grand morning welcoming speech with a breathy and frustrated: “Jeezus! Jeezus!”

My heart is pounding and I’ve got a headache the size of an elephant and my sinuses, oh god! Somebody’s come in during the night and shot spak-filler up both my nostrils and it’s expanded and hardened, and it’s now pushing both my eyes forward from the back, out of their sockets, and it feels like hell in a box.

I take a breath and let my brain settle in my cranium for a second or two.

Oh, boy! I’m down with a very bad flu, and it’s 7 in the morning and now Raja’s standing at my door with a coffee, looking dumbfounded.

“Your coffee, sahib!” he says again, a little less confidently.
“Ah, I didn’t order coffee!” I say.
“You don’t want?” He looks puzzled.
“Well, yeah, I want, but how much is it?” I say.

I’m instinctively suspicious of room service, and even though (now that I’m up and wide awake) I really want a coffee, rule number 1 in Asia is ‘ask the price before you partake’, no matter how you’re feeling, or how good it looks.

“OK!” he says, cheerily, and abruptly turns and walks off down the hall. And I know, even in my half delirious state, I should just let it go, but I’ve now gotten a whiff of the brew, and I really want that coffee.

I take a few steps down the hall, clutching my towel roughly over my private parts. “Hey!” I yell. “HOW MUCH IS THE FUCKING COFFEE?”

He stops and turns. “You want?” he says, and tentatively holds the cup out towards me like I’m deranged, and possibly dangerous, which would be reasonably accurate.

“Yeah, yeah, just give the coffee! Fuck it!” I say, and snatch it away and turn back towards my room.

As I’m going back through the door he’s still standing in the hall, looking at me, expectantly, so I turn and throw my free hand in the air in one final gesture of grand idiocy: “And don’t expect a tip!” I say, and slam the door.

Holy shit! Why is it so hard? Why do I feel so bad?

Alright, just settle down, drink the coffee, hang the cost and think about the oncoming madness.

I’m really ill, and I’m stuck in Narayanghat by myself; in here, with these four walls, and millions of Rajas out there, beyond these four walls.

Fuck.

Kathmandu to Gonda: Pt.2 - A Raksi Party!

2005-08-06T19:05:00.000+07:00

A ride through the Nepali Terrai into India

Part 2: A Raksi Party!
Mugling Bazaar to Narayanghat - 34 km

KTM to Mugling Bazaar – 110 km
KTM to Narayanghat – 144 km
KTM to Nepalgung (Indian border) – 508 km
KTM to Gonda (India) – 635 km

Just beyond Mugling Bazaar the road splits, one leg heading due west to Pokhara, the other turning south through a tight valley, following the Trisuli River and eventually easing out onto the forested plains of the Nepali Terrai at Chitwan National Park, and the Indian border.

I head out of Mugling at 10 in the morning in bright sunshine and take the road to the left towards the Indian border.

I spent half the night coughing up phlegm and I'm full of gunk. Egh! Bronchial problems. Who’s a stupid cyclist?

When your body temperature drops, you stop and take on food. It’s ABC stuff, but I was having so much fun freewheeling through the mountains, who’s got time to eat a chappati and change a wet teeshirt?

I really should know better, but let’s see if I can’t ride it out.

I push on over the bridge out of Mugling and on my left the mountain rises vertically, beautifully, into the mist above and down on my right, a hundred metres below, the Tusuli River, fed by uncountable bursting mountain streams, has grown wide and massive.

It’s a now pounding torrent of white water, powerful as a god, sending giant shoots of cascading water up over boulders and into the air. This is a landscape on a big scale: a great opera, powerful, energising, full of wonder.

The road continues to sweep downwards, but as soon as it turns up and I need to pedal, I start coughing and wheezing, and my legs feel brittle and empty, like rice-cakes. And then the rain steps in, big time. Shi-it! Water is sliding off the mountain onto the road at unexpected spots, and one slip and I’m dead, or worse.

It’s time to pull in.

I sit close to the fire with ten other steaming Nepalis and sip hot milky chai (tea). The teashop is perched on the side of the road overlooking the Trisuli Rover, and is the usual dirt floor, thatched roof affair with no back wall.

The old guy to my left is nodding and patting me on the knee (a sign of filial affection), and the guy on my right is smiling so much he has to be drunk.

“My sister beautiful?” says the drunken man, pointing at a grubby young woman in plaits and traditional dress sitting on the bench at our back. She gives me a shy smile and everybody laughs.

“Sahib, my sister, she like you!” he says, leaning over, putting his arm around my shoulder and breathing alcohol into my face. His sister (?) grins, and for one small moment I’m at one with the mountains, lost to the civilised world, but I make it back.

I raise my arm in the air and let it fall limply at the elbow, and make a joke about not being up to it, what with the cycling and all, and this goes down a treat.

The old guy on my left is laughing so much he breaks into a coughing fit and spills his tea, and somehow, magically, the raksi (rice wine) appears.

“Make you strong!” says the drunken man, and hands me a glass.

I once attended a raksi party in a small village way out in the western Himalayas of Nepal, where I was doing some work.

We sat on the floor drinking out of small clay cups (which miraculously never empty), and we drank, and we drank, and by late evening I was howling at the moon (so they say.)

They also say that the howling – god knows what it sounded like - scared away a band of robbers, so in the morning, despite a crashing headache of Himalayan proportions, I was something of the village hero.

Raksi, dangerous stuff, but maybe it’ll fix up my cold?

I knock back a couple of glasses, and lean easily back, and someone turns on a radio, and the world falls away once again. The booze is soaking into my bones and rushing to my head, and it's too late to turn back now.

I float upstream with another glass and nestle in beside the laughing girl and show her my passport. Life is good! And this smoky, gritty room of dank smells and jostling people is home, and it's about as earthy as it gets without converting.

I wake up a couple of hours later slumped against the wall, and the rain has stopped, and the party is over, which may be a good thing. There’s no sign of the drunken man and his sister, so I drink a tea and go outside in the fresh mountain air and stretch and cough, and try to coax some life into my limbs.

According to the map it’s only about 10 km to Narayanghat, and the teashop owner assures me there’s a hotel, so that might do it for the day: 34 kilometres, a few drinks and some new friends, and that’s an OK day’s work, no matter what anybody says.

A kilometre past the teashop the road flattens out, and I’m suddenly out of the mountains, and so much for rolling downhill all day. From here on in it looks like I'll have to work.

It’s up and down into Naranyaghat, and my legs feel like lead and rice-cakes at the same time, and I’m coughing and wheezing, and nursing a headache, and debating that age old question: is biking hell?

Kathmandu to Gonda: Pt.1 - Out of the Valley!

2005-08-06T18:56:00.000+07:00

A ride through the Nepali Terrai into India.

Part 1: Out of the Kathmandu Valley!
Kathmandu to Mugling Bazaar – 110 km

KTM to Nepalgung (Indian border) – 508 km
KTM to Gonda (India) – 635 km

It’s an easy 7 kilometres up out of the Kathmandu Valley to the small village of Thangkot. I stop for a tea and then work my way another kilometre up the hill to the police checkpoint perched on the top of the mountain, and look down the other side.

Check out the road!

It rolls straight off the mountain and plunges almost vertically down the other side; a contorted, looping ribbon, flipping left and right, going down, down, down until it disappears into the valley mist three thousand feet below.

This should be fun!

I check the brakes, jostle the panniers, pull my cap down hard on my head, and roll forward.

Go down, go down, pick up speed, tighten your hand grip, focus, lean left, lean right, go down, down, down, pick up speed, feel the fear, focus, easy on the brakes, listen to the tyres, shift in the seat, pedal one two, lean left, lean right and down you go again.

Cycling is good.

You go past wooden teashops, across a bridge and straighten out beside a line of trucks parked by the roadside. The guys standing around shout and give you the thumbs up, and the road falls away again to the right, and you follow it down and the cold mountain air cuts at your cheeks.

How long can this go on?

On both sides of the valley the mountains vault straight up into the sky, vertical and deep green. To the left and right, up above, there’s small brown and yellow mud-brick cottages perched on the cliffs, alone and in small groups, with wisps of silver smoke swirling around their thatched roofs.

Keep riding.

Thin white footpaths lead away from the road and wriggle painfully up the mountainside beside snapping, rushing creeks of silver water, and terraced fields sweep impossibly up the slopes, one horizontal cut after the next, and Jesus, I don’t want that job.

A thousand feet below the Trisuli River is thumping white water over boulders the size of two story houses, and I can see the road up ahead, cut into sheer vertical rock, twisting and turning, following the river and disappearing through a tight gap in the mountains some ten kilometres away. Oh, happy day!

I make it into Malekhu (70 km) for lunch, just as the clouds roll in, and with it the rain. This is the monsoon season, and a bad time to be riding, but what to do, and who cares?

This is riding as God intended it, and I am but a humble servant of the Lord, on a bike. However, if you were going the other way, east up the mountain into Kathmandu, you may need to know where you can stop and curse the Lord for his all-knowing perfidy.

There’s a guesthouse at the small village of Baireni, 49 km from Kathmandu, one at Adamghat, 56 km from Kathmandu and four at Malekhu, where I am now, 70 km from Kathmandu.

From Malekhu you’d be cycling pretty much 70 kilometres uphill to Kathmandu, with the last 15 or so kilometres before the start of the valley extremely steep.

Best of luck, but you really are going the wrong way.

I eat some dhal bhat (standard Nepali food, consisting of curry, dhal and a small mountain of rice), chat to the girl and push on.

I ride for an hour through drizzling rain.

Mercifully the road’s paved and in great shape, but it’s greasy and I’m on full alert. Trucks and buses pass in bursts, and I’m forced to the side of the road at times, holding my line, waiting for clear road, praying for deliverance.

Toot! Too-wooot! Another painful air-horn blast to the ear, a wave from the smiling jockey, 'the finger' from me and the truck is past, and I'm going downhill along with my mood.

Mugling Bazaar (110 km from Kathmandu) is a regional sized, non-descript town straddling the highway. By the time I arrive I’m wet and drained and just give me a tea, Raja, and don’t ask questions.

“Hey, you there, in the shorts! Leave the bike alone!”

I check into a hotel (Mugling has numerous hotels), take a cold shower and go in search of food. Dinner will take about forty five minutes if I stretch it out, lean back in my chair and look cool, and then it's a four walls and six (maybe seven) demons for company until morning.

Yeah, cycling, it's a trip.

MBA Pt.9: Riding into the light!

2005-06-10T20:47:00.000+07:00

My Bung Arm Pt. 9

The story so far: Riding out of Phnom Penh and Kampong Thom, Mr Felix then cycled north through the forest to the Thai border at Preah Vihar. Further west near Anlong Veng he visited Pol Pot’s grave and that night was bitten on the right elbow by a spider, or something - Mr Pot’s revenge. A few days later his badly swollen arm was cut open to by the Butcher of Sisophon (aka the local Cambodian doctor) which renewed his faith in the beyond (seeing is believing.) He is now undergoing for five day’s outpatient treatment at Aranyaprathet Hospital (with Sister Supachai) on the Thai-Cambodian border.

Aranyaprathet on the Thai-Cambodian border:

Three days of antibiotics, Japanese girls and the magnificent Sister Supachai and my right arm is on the way to full democracy.

The swelling is down, the 5 cm slice (I measured it) that the doctor in Cambodia made along the elbow has magically disappeared (along with the puss), and I’m having clearly defined moments of not feeling sorry for myself.

I’m a Third World success story. Sterling stuff!

But as the late George Harrison (Peace be upon Him) tells us, ‘all things must pass’, and when I return to Aranyaprathet General Sister Supachai is not there. Johnny’s also gone, and the room is hollow.

Where’s my world gone?

“Where is Sister Supachai?” I ask the new nurse behind the desk.
“She not here!” she says, and smiles.
“Yes, but where she go?” I’m a hungry dog.
“She not here!” she says, and smiles.
“Yeah, but is she coming back…?” I’m stepping on my voice to keep the alarm out (which is of paramount importance when dealing with the Thais) but I guess the hungry look in my eyes is giving me away, because the new nurse has got that ‘I’m looking at a crazy farang’ look and is sinking backwards into her cranium, where it’s a lot safer.
“She not here!” More smiles, but now she’s definitely inside the mystery of the brain, and the question on both our minds is ‘am I coming in after the bunny?’

“Yeah, but…”

I used to go rabbit hunting with my grandfather, and when you’re twelve and male, or a dog, death is very exciting.

My grandfather was a farmer, and we’d make our way into the forest that bordered the back paddocks, him holding the gun and me trotting happily behind with the rabbit bag, and the dogs, Dave and Wooty, doing their thing; sniffing, widdling, growling and running about.

Dave was a kelpie, an Australian cattle dog, and smart, but Wooty – I didn’t choose the name – was a black haired miniature poodle, the ‘house dog’, and didn’t have a clue.

The strange thing was that we’d sometimes bale a rabbit up in a hole, and the dogs would be beside themselves, yelping, lathering, dancing in circles, ripping at the dirt around the hole, and we’d pull them off, and dig the rabbit out, and it’d be stiff with fear, like a furry toy.

Crack! there goes it’s neck, and grandpa is stuffing the dead thing into the sack, and we’re taking it home for grandma to skin (she was Austrian) and we’re going to eat it.

And Wooty would hang back, and whimper and crawl on the ground and make squeegie bottle sounds. And when we’d get home he’d cower under the table, and wouldn't come out, and make more squeegie sounds.

Yeah, bunny death, it's freaky, and it hangs around.

I let the interrogation go and submit, and I must be improving.

Two days later I’m back in the saddle cycling west out of Aran on the way to Bangkok.

Status report:
Short term goal: Cycle to Bangkok.
Long term goal: Cycle to the south of France.
Personal goal: Find my Inner Ape.
Arm: Bandaged, prognosis good.
Personal future: Uncertain, prognosis unknown.
Personal past: Forget it.
Faith and hope: Holding on.
Charity: Forget it.
Favourite colour: Blue.

It’s not a fun ride from the Cambodian border; the roads are flat, the scenery boring and the traffic heavy, and it gets heavier the closer you get to Bangkok.

I set off early, put my head down and count the klicks.

Push the pedals, one, two, look up at the road, look down at me feet, check the back panniers, push the pedals, one, two, listen to the tyres go russsh-russsh-russsh! on the asphalt, sweat, breath, push down, move over, let a truck through, push the pedals, one, two.

Jesus it’s hot!

It’s 2 PM and I need lunch, but I can’t find a food stall. The paddies stretch out green on both sides of the road, low and flat, and the sky is big and blue; an open, empty space, with no limits.

Dangerous.

I’m back at the university in Melbourne where I was teaching, twelve months ago, just before I quit.

I have to go and see the new director’s personal assistant. She’s part of the lesbian brigade at the university, and I know she doesn’t like me, but I need a piece of paper.

When I walk in she’s leaning back in the chair stuffing a potato wedge into her mouth; knees up, head back, feet splayed out at ear level on the top of the desk (lurching towards me) and a large dob of mayo that’s slipped off a wedge and fallen in her lap.

I stop short three steps from the door, and no man should have to confront this.

It’s Niagra Falls, and I don’t have a barrel. It’s the Dualagiri Gorge, and I don’t have a rope. It’s the Khumbu Glacier, and if you fall down a hole, boyo, you’ll be deader than road-kill and twice as ugly.

(And 236 years later they’ll dig you up, call you the Ice Cyclist, stuff you, put you back on your bike and posit you in the Melbourne Museum next to Phar Lap.*)

“Wadayawant?” she says, and thank god she’s wearing blue pants.

I get my bit of paper and leave immediately. I walk up the stairs to the café on level 3 and order a scalding hot coffee. I’m hoping it’ll burn my insides out.

Cycling, yeah, it’s something. Newbies take note.

A little further along I spot a dusty food stall and pull off the road without thinking. Anything will do at this point.

There’s a middle aged Thai woman in a yellow sarong waving me in, and her young daughter, who must be about eight, is beaming and wiggling and showing me to my chair, and they don’t sell potato wedges.

I order noodles, and grab a Coke out of the icebox and a small packet of Oreos off the shelf on the way through and the little girl is so intrigued with the hairy half-baked monkey that when I sit down she comes across and rests her chin on the table directly opposite me, eyes ablaze.

Her name’s Noi and she’s a little pixie, and how I love these kids; no fear, no fear. I pop the straw into the Coke and slide it across the table and smile and tell her to ‘drink up!’ and mum smiles so we open up the Oreos and have a little picnic.

And Noi keeps hitting my brain with her eyes; I can feel the light opening doors and I’m coming awake in stops and starts.

I get out on the road an hour later, and set off into a big sky, and ride fast, and every time I slow down I see those eyes, and pick it up.

I’m riding into the light, Lord, out of the darkness and into the light!

* Phar Lap is a Thai phrase meaning 'wink of the skies' or 'lightning', and is also the name of Australia's wonder horse from the Great Depression, considered by Australians as the greatest race horse ever. He conquered the local racing scene—36 wins from his last 41 starts—and then they took him to the USA, where he won North America's richest race, the Agua Caliente Handicap, in 1932. Two weeks later he was found dead in his stall, and for a while there we thought about launching a pre-emptive strike on America. (We would have beaten the Japs to it by 10 years, and just think about the possibilities!) They brought the great beast home, sadly, and stuffed him and put him in the Melbourne Museum, where he stands today; proud, red (his nickname was 'Big Red') and huggable.

MBA Pt 8: Great balls of fire!

2005-05-15T02:16:00.000+07:00

My Bung Arm Part 8

The story so far: Riding out of Phnom Penh and Kampong Thom, Mr Felix then cycled north through the forest to the Thai border at Preah Vihar. Further west near Anlong Veng he visited Pol Pot’s grave and that night was bitten on the elbow by a spider, or something - Mr Pot’s revenge. A few days later his badly swollen arm was cut open to by the Butcher of Sisophon (aka the local Cambodian doctor) which renewed his faith in the beyond (seeing is believing.) He is now undergoing for five day’s outpatient treatment (with Sister Supachai) at Aranyaprathet Hospital on the Thai-Cambodian border.

Evening, day 3, at Aranyaprathet

While I’ve been off slaying dragons, Yoko and Kayoko, the two Japanese girls at the guest house, have been out scavenging for Japanese food, or the approximate.

They stumble in to the lounge room laden with ingredients, mostly from the 7-11, going by the plastic bags.

"Can I help?" I say, and no, no, Felix-san, you just sit there and make paper aeroplanes with Lek, the young daughter of the Thai owner, which is super-fine by me. I love paper aeroplanes, and Lek’s an enthusiastic test pilot.

We’ve got aeroplanes stuck in holes and crevices all over the room, including one going around on the overhead fan, which is just killing Lek for some reason, and we are busily trying to land another, unsuccessfully, when mum finally calls her into the house for dinner and I’m left to clean up the mess.

We’re not ‘going sushi’ tonight but what we are getting is apparently (almost) authentic ‘southern Japanese rustic style’, whatever that is.

"Have you had southern style Japanese food before, Felix?" asks Yoko. I tell her I’ve got no idea, but I love ‘Japanese food’ and hold up my fingers and make ‘inverted comma’ signs in the air, as you do when you haven’t got a clue.

It seems ‘southern style’ is going to be a whole new experience, and Yoko looks pleased.

Just then Kayoko comes out of the kitchen with a small vase of purple and white Thai orchids and places them in the middle of the low wooden coffee table, right in front of me.

She sits down and turns the vase a couple of times, and adjusts the stems, back and forth, and Yoko comes across and sits down, and as if on cue, they both say "uh!" and lean back in their chairs and look at the flowers.

And they’re simply gorgeous!

I sit and look and for a few precious seconds all movement stops, and the universe is spinning around a small vase of Thai orchids at the centre of our table.

Yoko says: "Beau-tee-ful!" and turns and smiles, and as if on cue again both girls get up and go back to the kitchen, without another word, and I’m left with the flowers, speechless.

What is it about Japanese and flowers?

The same thing, I guess, as Japanese and animation, and I’ve got ‘just the ticket’.

I slip off and get my Ipod and plug it into the stereo speakers, and ask the girls if they’d like some music and yes, that’d be nice, so I hit the button and the opening bars of the ‘My Neighbour Totoro’ theme song come flooding into the room.

Japanese girls really know how to scream, I tell you, and there’s a certain pleasure in being the cause of it.

‘My Neighbour Totoro’ (Tonari no Totoro) was a hugely popular Japanese feature animation made in 1988 by Hiyao Miyazaki, arguably the world’s greatest living animator. (He gets my vote!)

The theme song is a catchy upbeat tune loosely based on, and I shudder to say it, Cliff Richard’s ‘Summer Holiday’. It goes something phonetically like: Ar-doo-ko, ar-doo-ko, wa-deshi-wa-keng-keee… and it’s a groove! I’m so in love with the animation I have the complete soundtrack on the Ipod.

And so we play it through.

Yoko tells me that when she was at school she and her friends would march home along the road in a long line singing the song, and I wish I had of been there. That song’s a winner!

The food hits the palate and it’s salty, and after months of spicy Southeast Asian food my tongue is doing cartwheels, but I’m into it. Kayoko tells me the names of the different dishes, most of which I’ve never seen before, and I nod and repeat the names (and retain nothing) and eat it all up, and just as well there’s no after-dinner quiz, because I’d get zero.

Who’s the happy idiot?

We sip on green tea and chat, and make the obvious ‘John and Yoko’ connection and ‘do you have any Beatles music, Felix?’ and is Pope Benedict a Catholic?

I’m one of those people who would listen to the Beatles playing chess (over and over) and so we play Abbey Road, but the girls don’t know the early stuff, so gee, what an opportunity; almost virgin Beatle fans!

I lead them back through the heady ‘psychedelic era’ and deep into the early Mersey sound, which they especially like, so we keep going and plunge into the crazy worlds of rock and roll and rhythm and blues, and eventually uncover Fats Domino, who’s up there with Miyazaki in my pantheon of high art popular culture gods and ‘do you know how to rock and roll, Felix?’

It seems Yoko has done a bit of dance, so let’s try a few moves. I turn up ‘The Fat Man’ to 11 and we kick off, and by the third run we’ve found the swing, and it’s turned into a party.

And one of the things you don’t have to worry about in Southeast Asia is noise, and we’re making plenty of it. Luckily also, my good left hand’s doing most of the work.

Jerry Lee Lewis is screaming ‘Great balls of fire!’ while Yoko spins out from centre and I pull her back in, and for the world's most boring border town, Aran is a happening burg.

They can probably hear the music over in Cambodia, some six kilometres away, and I do wonder what they’re thinking.

MBA Pt.7: Bikers 1, Zealots 0

2005-05-09T21:23:00.000+07:00

My Bung Arm Part 7: At the Hospital in Aran, Day 3.

The story so far: Riding out of Phnom Penh and Kampong Thom, Mr Felix then cycled north through the forest to the Thai border at Preah Vihar. Further west near Anlong Veng he visited Pol Pot’s grave and that night was bitten on the elbow by a spider, or something - Mr Pot’s revenge. A few days later his badly swollen arm was cut open to by the Butcher of Sisophon (aka the local Cambodian doctor) which renewed his faith in the beyond (seeing is believing.) He is now booked in for five day’s outpatient treatment at Aranyaprathet Hospital on the Thai-Cambodian border.

Day 3 at Aranyaprathet Hospital, Thailand

It’s pretty obvious I’m rather taken with good Sister Supachai.

She’s the same every time I come in; shiny black hair tied back in the same ponytail, same stylish black shoes, same elegant silver watch around her left wrist, same easy smile, same grave eyes - but she’s new.

And her crisp white uniform gives off the same scent of lemons, and combined with the fresh smell of her skin (when she comes close) it’s a heady mix, and she’s taking me places I haven’t been in years.

I draw her smell into my body and it permeates my flesh, and float on it.

Yeah, she’s sexy all right, and I’m not just talking about sex. She reminds me, in some odd way, of a picture of Saint Rita (the patron saint of impossible causes) I once bought in the little Portuguese ‘Rosary Church’ on the Chao Phraya River in Bangkok.

In the picture Saint Rita is kneeling on a stone floor in her brown habit, eyes cast towards the heavens, and a light, like a laser beam, is exploding out of the clouds and hitting her square in the temple, and by golly, that’s sexy (and I’m moved!)

But yes, people have trouble with this human phenomenon from all sides of the overeducated spectrum.

There’s fire down below all right, and it’s a furnace, feeding the great generator of the heart, and it’s rocketing the mind skywards through the clouds all the way to Vega. Seems logical to me.

Still, we musn’t get carried away, as my mother once said to me when I was a boy and I’d come home from Mass and told her I’d seen a fire around the body of the girl in the pew in front of me, ‘just like in the holy pictures, mum!’

"Yes, but we musn't take these things too literally, darling!" said my mother.

“What, you mean the Church is lying to me?" is what I wanted to say, but I think I ate a sandwich instead. Still, when you're strangely moved, you're strangely moved, and I bet it was a good sandwich.

(The girl was in a class below me at school, by the way, and the torch was burning mutually bright from both ends! Woo!)

So yeah, Sr. Supachai is doing more for me than just fixing my arm, and I’m making the most of it.

And whatever madness is going down it’s better than the ‘shock and awe’ promulgated by the Butcher of Sisophon (and his band of Cambodian heretics.)

That kind of religious experience is a once only sling-shot sub-orbital flight, which is fine on the way up, but hitting terra firma without a parachute is a dog with fleas.

In the middle of my revelry, Sr. Supachai looks down and asks if I’m ok - she’s so observant! - and I smile and say buoyantly: “I’m fine! Never felt better!”

She looks a little concerned but goes back to the scraping and bandaging.

Johnny’s still sitting on the same bed in the same opposite corner but they’ve changed his bandages (and his pants) and even he’s smiling today (and, I guess, picking up on the vibes, ‘cos it sure is vibey in here!)

I nod and say ‘Sawatdee!’ and he gives me a shy ‘wai’ which is a vast improvement on yesterday, and the day before.

I figured our relationship had gone up in a ball of flame just after launch (‘a major malfunction’) but lo! “We’ve re-established contact with Johnny, Huston!”

“Roger that, Aran! Crackle! Crackle!”
“Yeah, he’s over on the next bed in a new pair of pants waving as I speak!”
“Roger that, Aran! Crackle! Crackle!”

But such is the embracing influence of good Sr. Supachai on the hearts of men.

(And as long as Johnny doesn’t get too comradely and float over and try to dock with us, things will remain fine. “There’s only room in this capsule for two, Johnny boy, and me and Sr. Supachai makes ‘two’, so that leaves you over there in another orbit, but we’ll wave back when we sail past if you like!”)

Yep, Aranyaprathet General, it’s a hotbed of humanity, and I’m digging it.

It’s so bright outside when I leave the hospital that I have to squint, and I start perspiring as soon as I climb on the bike and roll down the concrete ramp.

I wave to the guard at the gate and he waves back, and I cycle off down the main street past the clock tower and stop at the little coffee stall I found yesterday by the soi opposite the ATM machine.

The woman who runs it speaks pretty OK English, and her name’s Mon and she’s small, sinewy and intense, and the coffee’s only Nescafe but it’s a good spot, and I get to converse, more or less, and eat sweet rice cakes, rather than just sit alone and unplugged.

Mon tells me that tomorrow she’s off to Bangkok for some big Buddhist get-to-together or other, and there seems to be about thirty going from Aran in a big a/c bus, and would I like to come?

Well, no thanks, that’s very kind but I’m in the middle of anti-amputation treatment and besides, I’ve got my own religious experience on-tap right here at the moment and it’s not wise to mix your drinks.

I sip on my Nescafe and chew on a rice cake and Mon pulls out a brochure on the Wat she’s going to and unfolds it on the laminated table. It’s big and shiny and she flops it open so fast I have to quickly pick up my coffee and rice cake and balance them on my knees, which is a little annoying, but I can see she’s determined.

Yeah, I’ve got nothing better to do, so on with the show, I guess.

At the top of the page is a wide-angle colour photo of the main stupa area and it’s gobsmacking. It’s something out of ‘The Day the Earth Stood Still’.

I lean forward to get a better look and make ‘oo-wee!’ sounds and Mon says: “You like?” and I say: “Yeah, it’s amazing!”

There has to be about five thousand devotees, dressed in white, lined up in rows at the foot of a run of white stone steps leading up to, what looks like, a giant white flying saucer embedded into the top of an immense, square marble hill.

The temple is the classic saucer shape and there’s a small ramp leading up to the centre of the fuselage, and a curved doorway (leading into the inner chamber) from whence presumably Klaatu emerges at the start of Act II.

Mon’s interpreted my ‘amazing’ as ‘good, good and good’ and is talking excitedly and her English is breaking down under the pressure.

I finally work out she’s talking about Matreya the Buddha, and hence, of course, the fervour, and I think she may think she’s looking at the next convert.

Matreya is the name of the returning Buddha, promised to arrive some 500 years after Gautama Buddha’s death, at around the time of Christ. Despite the slight date discrepancy, there is a belief amongst some neo-Buddhist movements around the world that the ‘second coming’ is imminent.

And if Matreya the Buddha does return, albeit 2,000 years late, and pops out of this hyper-tech time capsule it’ll be an event to behold, and you can bet your bottom dollar the blonde haired woman with the dog face from Fox Asia News will be on hand to cover it.

“How did it fe-e-el to be reborn, Mr Matreya?” she says thrusting the mike in his face.

And someone better warn Him to keep it short and snappy. “No long Dhamma discourses, pleeese, your Grace. It’s all sound bites now!”

Fox Asia News Alert:

Matreya the Buddha returns in a UFO!
Announces:
“Lay down all thought surrender to the Noid!”

Which of course is a misprint, but Fox News, being Fox News, doesn’t know the difference and run it on the scrolling news bar at the bottom of the screen for three hours before somebody from Sri Lanka emails in and tells them that ‘Noid’ should probably read ‘Void’, not that it makes any difference to Fox.

“Why you not come, Felix?” Mon asks again, and I can see she’s all fired up with religious zeal, so I figure I better draw a line in the sand here before it gets out of hand.

“No, really, looks great, Mon,” I say, and hold my hands up and pat the air, “but I’m a Christian, so thanks, maybe next time.”

And now she’s miffed! Jesus, that didn’t take much. But what can you do? So I order another coffee and cake, and make a lame attempt to downgrade the conversation: “Gee, it sure is hot today, Mon!”

She doesn’t answer, but folds up the brochure in swift jerky motions, and grunts. (I’d actually like to souvenir it, but it’d be a gross mistake, so I let it go.)

A couple of minutes later she hands me my second coffee and plonks the rice cake on the table – thunk! Am I sensing an emotional shift here?

She sits down opposite me and says nothing, but I can hear the wheels of her mind going ‘whirrr-whirr!’ and it’s tense and I really can’t be fucked with this, so I sip my coffee and go off to the 7-11 in my mind and buy a packet of barbeque flavoured chips.

“Grandparents, alive, Ostalia?” she asks, which brings me back with a jolt. What’s this about?

“No, grandparents dead…” I say, cautiously, and point to the sky and nod sadly (as you must, in Asia, when talking about deceased family.)

“Mother, father, alive?” she asks, which seems like the logical next-step, but I’m now on alert. She’s got the look of a cocker spaniel closing in on a quarry, read: defenceless duck.

“No,” I say, quietly, “Mother dead. Father dead.”

Mon turns quickly back to the coffee stall and starts rifling through the draw under the Nescafe tin and I’m left hanging with my dead family, waiting for the next move.

She turns back and places an orange envelope on the table in front of me, keeping hold of it with both hands, and looks into my eyes. The envelope has a picture of a dhamma wheel embossed on the top right hand corner and the name of the Wat splashed across the top, and it’s obviously official, and important.

And unfortunately for Mon I know what’s coming: it’s ‘dana’ time! ‘Dana’ is Pali for ‘gift’, and if she can’t get me to join the movement, she’ll do the next best thing and extract a few bucks out of me.

And here’s how it works: Mon gets me to give a monetary donation to the temple, which buys me ‘merit’ (a kind of spiritual bank balance), and I can keep the merit or direct it to whomever I please (my parents, for example), and Mon gets ‘merit’ for getting me to ‘make merit’.

It’s very win-win, and, of course, the temple benefits, and from the look of the temple, they’ve got a mountain of debt, but that’s not my problem.

Mon holds the envelope up and stares and tells me that if I put money in here – she opens the envelope and shows me the hole – then I will ‘make merit’ and buy my parents a better rebirth, and she will take the envelope to the temple and deposit it for me.

“You ‘make merit’ for mother, father, in separate envelope!” she adds, which presumably will double my donation depending on how I feel about mum and dad as separate filial units.

And of course, this whole thing is ‘loaded’ – how can you refuse to give money to help your parents find happiness?

(And I do believe she would actually deposit the money at the temple, rather than steal it. She’s too fired up with genuine religious zeal to risk her own hell and damnation.)

Now that the irresistibly good carrot is dangling a short reach from my nose, Mon sits back in her chair, while I’m now supposed to wrestle with my conscience, weighing up the hope and the doubt (and think of a number, and double it.)

Fucken’ hell! I know I’m getting ‘put upon’, and if I was Thai she wouldn’t have pulled this stunt, but such is the fate of the tourist, and how to handle it?

But some folks just can’t leave well enough alone. “You buy them a better rebirth!” she says pointedly, and unnecessarily, when she sees me wavering.

I came here for a coffee and a cake, and a little conversation (and I’m happy to pay), but now this, and I’d love to tell her she’s a zealot and if she doesn’t back off I’ll punch her in the nose, but no, for the sake of international harmony, I’ll be decent.

“No, really, Mon,” I say, as measured as I can, “my parents are Christian and I am Christian. Really, thank you, but, no, not today.”

“Why you not give them better rebirth!” she shoots back with a look of (mock) horror.

And that’s a ‘red card’.

This situation is, of course, one of the perennial problems tourists face in Asia, or anywhere for that matter.

In the face of alien madness and blatant rip-offs, you’re the polite bunny, the koala on the freeway, the Lee Harvey Oswald in the big parade: “I didn’t shoot nobody, I’m just the patsy!” (Yeah, poor old Lee, may he rest in peace.)

And God knows you want to give the (poor) locals the benefit of the doubt, but if this was happening at home any reasonable person would have told her to go and fuck herself, and threatened non-payment (the only power you have.)

And I suppose I could just cough up a few bucks for the sake of peace and a guilty conscience, like some lame-arsed backpacker, or maybe take the middle path and just walk away, like a good Buddhist (or the romantically minded politically correct) but fuck it, I’m a cyclist.

And I do wonder how many poor farang fucks she’s laid this trip on in the past.

As St. Francis says: “Lord, grant me the serenity to endure the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”

I stare at the ground for a few moments and wonder which one this one is, but when in doubt, there’s only one way to find out.

I look up gravely and motion her towards me across the table, real close. We’re about eight inches from eyeball to eyeball sex (and it’s kind of exciting) and look steadily into her eyes.

“Mon,” I say, leaning forward and keeping my voice low so she has to concentrate to catch my confession. “I’m a Christian, and when I die I go straight to heaven!”

While I’m saying this I jerk my index finger straight across my neck, and smile, and Mon jumps back in her seat, startled.

“Mother dead! Father dead!” I continue, and repeat the cutting motion across my neck but do it slowly this time, and smile.

Mon’s looking horrified (which is good) so I point sharply at the sky with a very erect index finger, and explode with happy gusto: “But they now in heaven! With God! They not come back!”

Mon’s eyes have grown as round as flying saucers, and she’s sitting bolt upright in her chair as far away from me as it will allow.

“So you see, Mon,” I say, leaning back comfortably in my seat and taking a sip on my coffee, “making merit for me would just be a waste of money!”

And so everything falls to dust, and I pay my forty Baht and smile and say ‘thanks!’ and wait for something, but she says nothing, and so be it.

Farang Bikers 1, Aran Zealots 0.

And will we pray for each other? I suspect not.

As I cycle off I remember that the Japanese girls at the guest house said they’d be cooking Japanese food tonight, and I’m suddenly famished and could kill for sushi.

Yeah, it’s been another big day in the world’s most boring border town, and food seems like a great idea.

MBA Pt.6: A new man!

2005-05-09T21:18:00.000+07:00

My Bung Arm Part 6: At the Hospital in Aran, Day 2.

The story so far: Riding out of Phnom Penh and Kampong Thom, Mr Felix then cycled north through the forest to the Thai border at Preah Vihar. Further west near Anlong Veng he visited Pol Pot’s grave and that night was bitten on the elbow by a spider, or something - Mr Pot’s revenge. A few days later his badly swollen arm was cut open to by the Butcher of Sisophon (aka the local Cambodian doctor) which renewed his faith in the beyond (seeing is believing.) He is now booked in for five days outpatient treatment at Aranyaprathet Hospital on the Thai-Cambodian border.

Day 2 at Aranyaprathet Hospital, Thailand: A new man!

Sister Supachai is doing more for me than fixing my arm. I sit up on the bed in room 21 while she works away with the long stainless steel spoon scraping out today’s puss, and it hurts like the blazes but I’m resolute under her gaze.

I’m also the cleanest I’ve been in six months; my nails are spotless, my feet are scrubbed, my sandals polished, my pants and shirt washed and aired and I’ve shaved and picked over any stray facial hair that’s popped up in any of the usual odd places above the neck.

I’m a new man!

I’m even smiling, which is awfully disconcerting for Johnny the young Thai boy in the bed opposite with the bandaged head.
After yesterday’s failed stand-up comedy routine he has me solidly pegged as a maniac from beyond the borders of civilisation, and as we all know the only thing worse than a maniac is one that’s smiling.

But so be it. I’m with good Sister Supachai so who cares about popularity? But maybe Johnny’s jealous? I would be, but it’s hard to tell with Thais; after all this time in Southeast Asia I still have trouble reading the emotions, and the Southeast Asians are masters of deception.

Poor old dumb farangs let emotions explode out of the face like volcanoes on Java, or maybe pimples, but the Southeast Asians, no. They’re like the Tonle Sap (the Great Lake) in Cambodia: flat and even on the surface, but in constant motion.
And if you don’t want your little boat to sink you’ll take everything slow and easy, and listen to the currents.

But good Sister Supachai transcends all national barriers and today I’ve taken the hand off the tiller and am floating free. I might even be floating upstream.

MBA Pt.5: Zones & forcefields!

2005-05-04T22:06:00.000+07:00

The story so far: Riding out of Phnom Penh and Kampong Thom, Mr Felix then cycled north through the forest to the Thai border at Preah Vihar. Further west near Anlong Veng he visited Pol Pot’s grave and that night was bitten on the elbow by a spider, or something - Mr Pot’s revenge. A few days later his badly swollen arm was cut open to by the Butcher of Sisophon (aka the local Cambodian doctor) which renewed his faith in the beyond (seeing is believing.) He is now leaving Poipet, and Cambodia, on his way to Aranyaprathet to visit the local Thai hospital. His arm is not looking good, and neither is his mind.

Poipet, Cambodia, on the Thai border:

Blessed sleep has eaten the mental terrors of the night, and I wake early for a sunny Cambodian breakfast of dust and eggs in the little wooden stall opposite the guest house.

Everything is bright; the sun, the sky, the road, the table, and I sit upright on a plastic chair, the only guest, and the Cambodian waitress weaves around me in a thin cotton dress and healthy brown legs, and the old woman on the bench in the yellow sarong is peeling vegetables, and the young boy sitting by the door in the shorts and bare chest swings his legs back and forth and I could sit here amongst these bodies until my bike rusts over. Ah, Cambodia, how could I ever doubt you?

Maybe if I get my arm fixed in Thailand I can come back into Cambo and go cycling along the border south out of Poipet? The road runs all the way to the Cardamom Mountains near Koh Kong and Klaus tells me it’s ‘wunderbar’: hard dirt road, forests, Cambodian farmers, not too many land-mines, no tourists and no guest houses. Sounds like heaven!

I sip on my coffee and visualise: the bike, and me, pushing hard on the pedals, and the pedals pushing back, left, right, left, right, and we move in a straight line down the orange road, through the green…

“One step at a time, Feely!” says Mr Pumpy. “Don’t get ahead of yourself.”

Yeah, he’s right, take it one step at a time. Everything is sunny this morning because I’m leaving, and my flat batteries are giving me one last happy surge of Cambodian delight before they conk out completely and I have to lie down and look at the ceiling fan and wonder what it’s all about again.

I hold up my right arm and turn it around, and it really is a mess. Dirty blood-stained bandages, swollen forearm, swollen fingers and a squirt of fear in the belly. It’s bad news, and I wish it would go away.

Ok, stick to the plan: cross the border into Thailand, go to the hospital, spend a few days in Aran (world’s most boring border town), take some time to ‘heal’ (as the Americans say), maybe have a group hug at the hospital for ‘closure’ (another brilliant concept from the world’s most advanced nation) and hold a press conference on the steps of Aranyaprathet General for Fox Asia News.

Fox News Alert:

Thai doctors save arm of world famous cyclist!

“How did you fe-e-el, Mr Felix, when they were scraping the puss out of your arm?” asks the Fox reporter with the blonde hair and the worried expression of a barking dog. (Imagine being married to that, Christ!)
“Why don’t you go fuck yourself!’ I say, and in the space of two coffees I’ve gone from ‘Oh, Happy Day!’ to anger management issues but that’s flat batteries for you.

I cross the border and leave Poipet, sadly, and enter Thailand, and ride straight past the duty-free market and turn onto the highway. I’m not looking forward to this at all. Aranyaprathet, and the hospital, and another lonely hotel, but I can’t go home until I’ve found what I’m looking for, and I won’t know what I’m looking for until I’ve found it, and anyway ‘home’; it’s not even on the radar screen anymore. I’m in Hansel and Gretel territory.

I cycle a few kilometres up the highway away from the border and cut left along one of the laneways that leads into the back end of town and stop outside a small grocery store. I’m preparing for a heavy dose of invalidism and figure I’ll stock up on junk food.

I lean the bike against a tree and mount the steps and stop short in front of a young Thai girl standing on the veranda with her hands tied to one of the posts. What’s this all about? She looks about sixteen, and is awfully embarrassed at my approach and blinks at me like a rabbit. I’m so surprised I automatically say ‘Sawatdee krap!’ (Hello!) in a bright and cheery tone and it comes out as ‘Howdee doodee!’ and she goes red and tears well up in her eyes. Christ! What to do? Keep walking into the store.

I buy some chips and a couple of Cokes and on my way out the door the mother (I guess it’s the mother) is outside on the veranda giving the girl a savage tongue-lashing. Boy, that girl must have crossed a few lines, and I suppose there’s nothing like a dose of public humiliation to curb the wayward teenage heart, but it’s unnerving, and I sure would like to take a picture, maybe shoot some vid.

I stop by the opposite post and pretend to fumble with my plastic bag of fun things and listen in (to the sound of angry Thai.) Mum’s leaning nose to nose, almost spitting in the girls face, and the poor girl is choking back tears – Chuk! Chuk! - and I’d really love to shoot some vid, but I eventually slip past (you can only pretend to fumble for so long) and get on my bike and ride away. On the way up the street I have a nagging half-memory of a similar incident in my own dim distant past, and my mother beside herself with anger.

At the corner of the soi (lane) that runs onto the main street I spot a sign in English saying ‘Rooms for Rent’ and stop to take a look. The Aran Garden Hotel, about a block away, is the main cheapo tourist hotel, but I don’t want to stay there if I can help it. The management’s unfriendly and the building is unhappy, so I’m willing to look at alternatives, especially as I’ll be staying for a few days.

I go in and get shown into a spotless room by a friendly Thai woman in a white blouse. It’s quiet and clean, and maybe a little too clean, but there’s a TV and fridge and it’s cheap, so I decide to risk it. You never know with small intimate guest houses, but the woman looks relaxed enough, and honest, and I don’t want to be completely alone, so ok, let’s roll!

I plonk my dusty panniers on the floor and take a shower, and lie on the bed and turn on Fox Asia News. I need to psych myself up for the hospital, and a bag of Ley’s potato chips and the dog-faced woman with the blonde hair should do it.

An hour later at Aranyaprathet Hospital I fill out a bunch of forms and get given a piece of green paper and am directed to an adjacent room and told to sit and wait. There’s a long row of numbered plastic seats along the wall and one young Thai guy sitting alone on the first chair by the door. I sit down a couple of seats along but the orderly points sternly at seat No. 2 beside the Thai guy, so I shift up a couple. The boy and I rub legs and smile nervously at each other, and sit patiently together in the bare room like two gay guys about to get a test.

Ten minutes later I’m ushered into the doctor’s surgery. He’s a squat, middle aged Thai, with glasses, and barely looks up as I sit down opposite him – which is standard MD behaviour throughout the known universe - and I hold up my arm up and smile.

“What is problem?” he asks.
“I think I got bitten by a spider or something in Cambodia and it’s gotten swollen and infected,” I say.
“How long ago?” he asks. (This is an excellent question, and my faith in the Thai medical system is rocketing upwards by the second.)
“About a week or so,” I say. “Then I went to a Cambodian doctor in Sisophon and he cut it open and squeezed out the puss and gave me some anti-inflammatory pills but they don’t seem to be working…”

I trail off because at the mention of ‘Cambodian doctor’ the Thai doctor looks up with such a look of utter disdain on his face that I realise I’ve said the wrong thing and so I start to laugh. “Hey, Cambodian doctors!” I say, and lift my hands in the air and wave them around as if to say ‘what to do, what to do?’

The Thai doctor says nothing but it’s obvious he thinks I’m an idiot, and so what do you do? Why, you do what every spineless, spiritually flaccid middle-class idiot caught in self-serving fear does: you betray those you love and curry favour with those in power.

“Yeah, Cambodia, it’s a mess!” I say, and shake my head sadly. “But it’s so good to be in Thailand!” I continue, which might be laying it on a bit thick, but feeding the ego of those who rule is a timeless and trusted method of getting ahead.

(‘Bearing gifts’ is another, and I wonder whether handing across Angkor Wat would be a fair price to pay for saving my arm. “Hey! No need to transport anything, doc, just move the Thai border 150 kilometres east to Siem Reap and be done with it. Angkor’s wasted on the Cambos anyway! Heh! Heh!”)

He looks up and says: “Show me arm!” so I unwrap it and he has a poke a round, and I wince and moan (just to show I’m a genuine case and worthy of his expert attention), but he takes no notice and writes me an antibiotic script, and tells me to take the paper to room 12 to get the pills, and then go to room 21 to get the arm cleaned.

“You stay five days!” he says. “Come everyday!” and goes back to his paper work. I say thanks and back out of the room and it’s a hollow walk down the long dark corridor to room 12 while I think about Cambodia.

At the metal grill of room 12 there’s a gaggle of Thai women in white uniforms alert at the approach of the wounded farang, and I hand my paper over, and get handed another, and some laughs, and am told to go to room 13 (right next door), and so I do.

There’s another woman behind that grill and I pay a few hundred Baht and get another bit of paper and am directed back to number 12, where I pick up my pills and a few more laughs, and then get directed on to room 21.

I plod down the corridor and walk into room 21 and hand the paper over to the lady at the desk by the door and she directs me to a vacant bed in a corner at the other end of the room.

In the other corner there’s a young Thai boy sitting up in bed with bandages wrapped around his head, and as I turn he sits up straight, alarmed, and his face turns into an empty bowl, and we lock eyes. What’s his problem?

Then it hits me, of course. He thinks I’ve come to look him over. I’m his worst nightmare: a farang doctor!

And I don’t know what it is about fear in other people, but it sometimes brings out the devil in you, and I start walking towards him in an unblinking bee-line and the blood drains from his face and his mouth falls open, and then luckily – because this is meant to be funny (or something), but it’s rolling over into terror - the Thai woman at the desk calls out something in Thai, which means: “Hey, Mr Farang, the other bed you idiot!” so I retreat and climb up on my own defenceless bed opposite, and sit there.

I wish I knew the Thai for: “Hey, Johnny, had you goin’ for a while there, sport!” but of course I don’t, so I just smile at him and nod and point at my arm, and fuck it, what can you do? Johnny relaxes a notch, but he’s still wary and won’t relax completely until I’m out of the building and standing on the steps talking to the other white idiots from Fox News.

Sister Supachai is probably about forty, maybe forty-five but there’s something timeless about her. If she told me she was three hundred I’d believe her, and in fact, I’d believe anything Sr. Supachai told me. Her uniform is starched white and crisp and smells like lemons, and her shoulder length black hair is drawn back in a pony tale, and she’s elegant and good looking, but it’s what she’s giving off that’s mesmerising.

She stands by the bed inspecting the wound, and I’m immediately disarmed. There’s an air of quiet, professional capability about her, and a deep current of, what is it? Compassion? No, no need to grovel and denounce your loved ones around good Sr. Supachai; she rules with love, and demands trust and honour, and I give it willingly. I’m at my best, and a piece of putty.

She says a few things in Thai, which I only half catch, and then pulls out a thin stainless steel rod with a tiny spoon at the end. It’s similar to the colourful plastic spoons that they put in fancy drinks when you’re hanging out with Mick Jagger on Montserrat but this one’s for scraping out the puss. And so she proceeds.

Oh, Jesus, the pain, the pain! I’ve got tears rolling down my cheeks but I keep glancing at her face, and those dark, steady eyes, and remain quiet and composed. And I have to hand it her; whatever she’s throwing out from deep in that soul of hers is cutting straight through me, and out of respect, and my own sense of pride, I will not flinch.

When it’s done she carefully wraps the arm in clean white bandages, gives it a little pat, and says: “You came back tomorrow, same time!” I assure her I’ll be here (I’d stop off on the moon if that’s what she wanted), and make my way out.

It’s bright and sunny outside, and I cycle down the main street looking for a juice. I don’t know whether it’s my arm, or good Sr. Supachai, but I’m feeling heady, like a weaving, spinning top, and I need to rebalance.

I spot a juice stand and dismount and walk up and make my order and there’s a couple of farang girls at a table on my left so I smile and say ‘Hi! How ya’ doin’?’ and they look up and glare and I get hit with a sudden wave of electric fuck-off! Hoo-wee! It’s like a blast of cold air to the chest, and I’m momentarily breathless. Christ, where to run? But there’s only two tables, and I’m not doing takeaways, so we’re going to be sitting next to each other, like it or not.

I point to the table and tell the Thai lady I’ll be back in a jiff, and dart across the street and buy a Bangkok Post, and come back and sit down as far away from the farangettes as the table and chair will allow, and do what every man does when he needs solace; I read the paper. And it’s amazing how interesting the latest bombing in Fallujah can be.

It’s going on 4 PM and I walk in the door of the guest house and there’s two Japanese girls in the lounge area playing cards, and I say ‘Hi!’ and smile and they say ‘Hi!’ and smile – and thank God for that. They’re a couple of Thai language students from Osaka doing a three month placement in Aran, and they’ve been here for two months and I’m the interloper, and male, so I nod and bow, tread softly on the floorboards.

On my way through the daughter of the Thai owner, who’s about ten, comes out from the hallway and stands against the wall and stares at me like I’m a movie about to start. She’s as cute as a button and shiny as a star, so I turn towards her, pull myself up to full height and make an extremely formal ‘Wai’ and bow and say in Thai: ‘Hello, my name’s Felix, what’s yours?’ She does a half laugh-giggle and says ‘Lek!’ so I bow even lower and say even more formally: ‘Lek! That is a very beautiful name and you are a very beautiful girl!’ and that breaks her up, and she does a little dance on the spot, and the Japanese girls laugh, and the big hairy male farang with the bandaged arm has passed the first test it seems.

Christ, what a day! The water in the shower is poring over my head and down my back, and it’s cold and wet and cutting through my skin, and I take a few short breaths. My limbs feel like lead, and I need sleep. I lie on the soft pillow and clean white sheets and I can hear the Japanese girls talking in the next room, and Lek laughing every now and then, and I rest for the first time in weeks.

My Bung Arm, Pt.4: In Poipet!

2005-02-18T21:17:00.000+07:00

Poipet, West Cambodia

Klaus parks the truck beside the new Immigration Office, and switches off the motor, which goes clunk-de-clunk! Shudder. Oops!

I can't wait to get out of the truck. Driving is fun - after cycling it's almost wicked! - but give me the wind rushiing down my neck, and my legs occupied in the simple, sweaty activity of cycling.

Ah, cycling! I might be having a crisis of identity, but I can't blame it on the bike.

It's just after 8 PM and we've driven in from Sisophon.

We're going to get some free coffee at the casino, and kick back for a little while. Klaus wants some duty fee chocolate, and I'm heading across the border in to Thailand in the morning to go to the hospital, but right now, let's enjoy the sights.

We hoof it across the street, and walk in to the casino, past the guards, who barely look up, and take a couple of quick turns through the gaming areas.

I'm lost already, but Klaus's been here before and knows the way. "I found out about the free coffee a couple of years back," says Klaus, "and I've been to coming here ever since."

We get to the stall marked: Free Coffee and Tea, and I can see it's only Nescafe and powdered milk, but I'm still impressed.

Free is good.

Free is the promise of a beautiful, slim Eurasian woman with flowing, shiney black hair, wearing a white leotard and lying easily, and yet knowingly, on a cream couch next to a rubber plant. (Which is why they put that picture on the cover of healthy lifestyle magazines, by the way.)

At the coffee stall there's two very cute Khmer girls in tight red dresses. Bonus! They smile when we approach, and start giggling.

We order, and I don't know why, but the coffee seems to be taking an inordinately long time to put together. We stand there, waiting, and I must admit, I feel kinda cheap. Time to reflect can be a dampener sometimes.

The girls get distracted by a shout from across the hall, a disconcerting sound: the sound of pain? Loss? What? Who knows, but I'm losing patience. Come on, for chrissake girls, get it together! I want my coffee.

Eventually they hand 'em over. More giggling as I load two sugar satchels in to mine, and give it a stir. What's the joke?

I look at Klaus for a lead, but he's off dumping his spoon, and peering intently in to the green plastic bin. What's in the bin? Who cares, just give me my coffee.

We clutch our free drinks in the equally free plastic cups, say thanks, and walk off.

We do a loop around the gaming tables, looking at all the money, and go back for a refill. Same routine, same giggles, same laughs at the two sugar satchels. No, no idea.

But this whole thing is mind-bending: outside there are folks wandering about in rags, and here, inside the casino, there are folks, mainly Chinese-Thais it seems, rolling through the dollar bills, spending it like there's no tomorrow.

Klaus and I settle ourselves in an alcove by one of the fish tanks near the roulette table, and sip our coffees and watch. It's fascinating, kind of.

There's about twenty people at the table, all of them sitting hunched over, in groups of two or three, eyes fixed on the little ball darting around the wheel, making pleasant little clicking noises as it jumps daintily from lucky number to lucky number.

They nervously stack and restack the coloured chips, rolling them sensuously around their fingers, caressing them, fondling them, making more pleasant clicking noises.

Click-click-clickity-click! You can hear it throughout the hall. It's the sound of utter, bone-crushing boredom, and oh, how I wish I was rich, and maybe a bit cleaner.

I take a sip of my coffee and notice my fingernails are dirty. My right arm, which is swollen and bandaged, and has blood stains running from the elbow half way down to the wrist, and looks like leprosy. Or maybe the plague.

Still, that's one of the great things about being a Westerner in Asia. You can go anywhere and do pretty much anything, no matter what you look like. Every whitey in Asia is a somebody, even if you're a nobody.

Which is fine, as long as you don't start believing it, like Sid did. (Well, OK, he wasn't in Asia, but the world of pop music must have similarities.)

On the way out Klaus stops at the Ye Old Duty Free Shoppe and buys a dozen blocks of German chocolate.

There's an extremely beautiful Cambodian girl at the cash register, in a super-tight back skirt and breast-hugging white cotton top. She makes the coffee girls look like "5"s.

She's so clean, and utterly gorgeous, I actually miss a breath. I feel goofy all of a sudden, and lose control of my limbs, akimbo. I stand behind Klaus while he makes his purchase, peering over his shoulder to get a better look.

I know I shouldn't; it only hurts more, but such is the nature of desire.

She's friendly, and smiles while Klaus is fumbling with his money and I wonder whether she knows the effect she's having on us. At least I assume Klaus is affected, but being Klaus, he's not showing many ripples.

We walk out of the casino, and I'm glad to be gone.

Out on the street Klaus is clutching his bright yellow Ye Olde Duty Free Shoppe plastic bag, and is looking pleased with his purchase.

Chocolate, it's a wicked thing. And twelve blocks of it! At 4,000 Riel a pop, a dollar each, this represents about a fortnight's wages for the girl at the cash register.

No, the Americans have got it wrong, again: we aint all born equal.

Across from the casino is a small outside eatery, and we dart across and park ourselves at one of the tables. We order a couple of beers and some spicy beef on rice, and hoe in. It's a warm night, and the beer is cold and wet, and a welcome relief.

Around us are a few families, kids and all, middle class, well off, Chinese, but from where? Hard to tell, but they're coming alright, the Chinese. It's the big racial buzz in Asia, along with mobile phones.

Beside the fish tank is a table of very rich Thai men, elderly, and their rather young and exclusive female companions. The men are knocking back the Johhny Walker and laughing loudly, patting each other on the back every now and then, while the girls sit demurely, legs together, filling up the mens' glasses and looking attentive.

Oh, how I wish I was rich and had never read a book.

There's an Indonesian band on the small stage beside the bar playing the usual Santana standards (Wouldn't you know?) but nobody's listening, despite the rather snappy rendition of Black Magic Woman.

Klaus and I agree that they're a good band and turn to face them, smiling, nodding, letting them know we're listening. They nod back and start to play to us. It's nice, cool even.

A couple of minutes later there's a scream of feedback out of one of the speakers, and the song limps to a stop while the band members hustle about the equipment, pulling out a couple of plugs and looking perturbed.

The singer says something unintelligable in to the microphone - what langauge is he speaking? - and they down instruments and move across to the bar in a tight cluster and sit down. So much for that.

Silence reigns, and it's even better.

And then it's time to leave. Klaus's gotta get back to Sisophon and the family, and I've gotta check in to a guest house and get some sleep. I cross over in to Thailand tomorrow to get my arm seen to, so I need to be my chirpy best. You never know what trials lay ahead.

We pay our bill and head back to the truck. I pull the bike out of the back, get my panniers in order, and after a brief handshake, and a quick goodbye, Klaus climbs in to the front seat and hurtles off down the road. I stand there and wave.

Boy, what a gentleman. "Best of luck, mate!" I call out.

Poipet. I stand on the side of the road, alone, and for the first time really breathe it in. It's going on 10 o'clock, and the place is still nervy, frantic.

Across the street is a guest house, non-descript, but as good as any. I wheel the bike across, dodging a couple of motorbikes, and go in. Five bucks a night, with fan, TV and inside bathroom.

Sounds good, looks OK, let's do it.

I lock the bike up to the fish tank in the foyer, drag my panniers up the stairs and walk along the thin corridor.

The hotel's all concrete, and nothing esle, and smells of new white paint. It's part of the boom-town thing that's going on here, despite the bad road.

Outside one of the rooms, by the door, I see a massive bundle of shoes and sandals. I stop and count eighteen pairs. Eighteen! I re-count, amazed. How many Cambodians can you fit in a hotel room, for chrissake? And how do they work out who watches what on the teev? Amazing!

My pad is across the hallway and when I slip the key in to the lock and open the door, I stop. I don't wanna go in.

The room is white and cavenous, and empty. A man could get lost in there. Thoughts will bounce off walls and come back at you. Danger, Will Robinson!

Just then I hear a couple of kids laughing and squealing, obviously enjoying themselves, the voices coming from the Cambodian encampment across the way.

Maybe I could borrow a couple of Cambo kids for the evening? Ease the over-population, spread some good will. Win-win!

We could all get in to our jim-jams, snuggle up on the couch, pop open the very large tub of Strawberry and Honeynut Twirl ice-cream, and watch Finding Nemo on the vid.

Sounds like fun!

But no, I'd get arrested. Man found in Cambodian hotel room with children! Claims they were watching videos! Wouldn't sound too good. You've only gotta slip the word Cambodia in to the headline, and you're a dead-man.

Even my friends wouldn't believe me.

I unpack my panniers, take a quick shower, turn on the teev and lay down on the bed. I flick through the channels, and find HBO, but I can tell immediately it's a bad movie, so I roll my bandaged arm over my eyes, sink back in to the pillow and breathe out. Christ!

Antibiotics. An-tee-biotics. An-tee-bye-ot-iks. I roll the word over in my mind a few times, and it seems comforting, almost magical. An-tee-bye-ot-iks. The power of the Word. I might be losing it.

I wish I had a woman. One I could talk to. How about a game of Diplomacy? I wonder what Mick Jagger's doing right now? I bet he's not short on scintillating company.

I go back to the film. The lead actor has one of those really bad boofed-up 70s style hair-dos that never moves, and an insincere laugh, or is just bad acting?

"I cannot watch this crap!" I say out-loud, and spring up off the bed. I stand there for an instant and shake my head.

I gotta do something.

How about a ride around town? Maybe I can wear myself out, and anyway, I don't know if I'm coming back to dear old Cambo for a while (but I'm having trouble letting go, I admit, which may be part of the problem), so a goodbye tour around Poipet may be a good move.

Anything's a good move when you're at rock bottom, but I have a sneaking feeling I'm a rat in a maze, and every turn will lead to a sharp, electric shock. Who's doing this to me? Who's pulling the strings? Who's the arsehole?

I go downstairs, unlock the bike and let myself out past the sleeping night-guard.

Despite the fact that I accidently run in to the plate glass window on the side wall and it makes a god-awful ba-ung-ung noise that reverberates around the foyer, he doesn't move.

I cycle off down the main drag back towards Sisophon and take a left towards the market.

I figure there'll be a few night cafes open and the ubiquitous massage parlours are dotted around the area, buried amongst the shacks and stalls, and they're always good for some action.

I need something distracting, I need to lose myself so that sleep can sneak up on me, shy and furtive thing she is.

Last time I was here there was a dozen or so massage parlours; small affairs, wedged in together in ones and twos, unobtrusive. But as I cycle along the street I see that's it's now all lit up, gone festive, and there are parlours and girls all the way down on each side of the road for fifty metres, and more down the side lanes. Business must be good.

I cycle further along, actually looking for the nice cafe with the nice, kind lady that I stopped in once before, a couple of years ago. Some kindness would be good.

I spot it, but wouldn't you know, it's now a parlour and as I slow down I get accosted by a couple of girls who spill out on to the street, calling "You! You!" and grabbing at the bike.

For a moment I'm pedalling hard, legs going around, but the bike is standing still, with the back wheel spinning in the dirt. It must look ridiculous, and the girls and punters standing around on both sides of the street break in to an uproar.

It looks like I'm the entertainment for the night. The tourist becomes the attraction.

I dismount, and the girls are quick to surround me; full embraces, arms around my waist and chest, rouged mouths oozing over my shoulders, breath flowing warmly, freely in to my ear. And this has a lightening effect on me. I feel my body respond, go red. Jesus, I must really be lonely.

The working girls in Cambodia are usually very sweet, under the seductive swagger and shitty job description, but these two have got the Devil in them, and won't let go. They can smell the shift.

I stand stiffly, upright, and explain as politely as I can that I am looking for a particular cafe that I know, blah, blah, and it sounds lame, and stupid.

"Seriously, girls!" I switch to English, and take a deep breath, hoping that the drop in octave will save me. "It's not what I want!" I say, and I as I say it I feel the corners of my mouth go down, and for an instant I want to cry.

Boy, this really is getting a little much.

I prise myself loose, firmer now, but I can feel the emotion stirring around inside of me, about to come up. Oh, dear. "I come back later, I come back later!" I say, (Yeah, right...), lower my head, clench my jaw, and forcefully push the bike off down the road.

The crowd's still laughing and shouting. And who can blame them? They're monkeys, I'm a monkey, we're all monkeys. I hoist myself up on the seat and turn the peddles over, and make some distance.

You gotta know when to call uncle sometimes, but of course, I don't.

I find a cafe a bit further along the road that doesn't have blinking lights, so I stop, lean the bike against the wall, lock it and go in.

I figure a coffee might still help, and despite the fact that even the most positive of thinkers couldn't pretend that this is fun, I hang on. I'm more terrified of the hotel room than anything else.

I sit down on a plastic chair, sodden, and sad. I shouldn't have got off the bike, I know, but here I am. It's too hard to move. I make my order.

I drink milky coffee and eat a sickly sweet bun of some description, but I'm tasting nothing.

It's hot and stuffy in here, and I'm overly conscious of myself, the lone barung with the hang-dog face sitting under the too bright flourescent light on the white plastic chair with his elbows resting on the grubby laminated table.

My jaw is going up and down in slow motion, my teeth are grinding the pastry, and small lumps of whatever it is, mixed with saliva, are getting stuck in my throat. I think it's is the sadness coming up in the other direction that's causing the bottle-neck.

I really gotta go.

And when all else fails, there's pure Will.

I sometimes think that this is the missing line out of the Sermon on the Mount.

Blessed are the cheesemakers and all that, but sometimes, against all odds, you just gotta Will yourself through. I do wish Jesus had of said that. I'd feel better about myself.

I take a breath, stand up, pay the bill, say thank you, walk out, unlock the bike, and wheel it out in to the centre of the road.

My bike. My beloved bike. It still moves me whenever I look at it.

I climb on and feel the weight of the seat pressing up in to my body, and as I push forward on the pedal with the right foot, the pedal pushes back.

I roll forward, and for that most fleeting of moments, I'm not in control.

My Bung Arm Pt.3: Driving to Poipet!

2005-02-15T23:44:00.000+07:00

The order of the BLOG story so far:

* Cycling Days 1 through 10: See archives August & September.
(Cycling from Phnom Penh north up along the Thai border through Anlong Veng & Preah Vihar and down to Sisophon.)

* My Bung Arm Pt.1
The Butcher of Sisophon & the Great Mother Goddess Kangaroo!
http://mrfelix.blogspot.com/2004_10_01_mrfelix_archive.html

* My Bung Arm Pt.2
Sisophon, West, Cambodia: Our Man in Sisophon!
http://mrfelix.blogspot.com/2004_11_01_mrfelix_archive.html

My Bung Arm Pt.3: Driving to Poipet!
West Cambodia: Sisophon to Poipet by car

Two more days down the line and my right arm is no better.

Swollen, tender and rosy red. And the bandages are starting to smell. It's time to get out of Cambodia, and do the Thai hospital experience, before gange-green sets in and amputation becomes a viable option.

I'd been to a Thai hospital once before for minor mending, and although it's not the West, it's clean, cheap and relatively efficient. I know most Western folks don't skimp on money when it comes to health, but if your as poor as me, you do.

I figure all I need is a good dose of anti-biotics, administered by a fairly good Thai doctor, preferably with a diploma. No need to reach deep in to the back of the wallet and visit a Western clinic. When it comes to spending money, I'm a positive thinker.

And time is still on my side, so I tell myself.

T-i-i-i-me, is on my side,
Yes it is!
Now, you're always sayin',
that you wanna be free....

I can't do any serious riding on this arm, so Klaus kindly offers to give me a lift to the Thai border on Sunday night.

(Klaus is a German friend who works in Cambodia, and lives in Sisophon with his Khmer wife and her mother in a big old colonial mansion, not far from the town centre. He's a sometime cyclist.)

The plan is to drive to Poipet, spend the night, and cross in to Thailand at Aranyaprathet the next day. I can then check in at the out-patient clinic at Aranyaprathet General, and hear the worst.

"Also, Felix," says Klaus, "It makes a good excuse for me to go. I need to be getting some little bit of chocolate at the duty free shop in Poipet."

OK, no worries, some little bit of chocolate and a lift to the border it is. Win-win.

On Sunday I ride over to Klaus's place a little before 5:30, all set for the 6 PM departure.

"We are having a little bit of a problem, Felix," says Klaus, calling out from the upstairs balcony as I ride up the drive and dismount. "But nothing to worry about!" Oh, dear, what now?

I scamper up the steps, pat Klaus on the shoulder and say: "How ya goin', mate, what gives?", as you do.

It seems his Cambodian mother-in-law isn't too keen on Klaus taking me out in the truck and is making a fuss. She blames me.

"Me? Whadiyamean, she blames me?" I ask, alarmed. Last time I was here, mum and I got on like houses-on-fire. I thought she liked me.

Klaus starts patting the air in front of my chest with his open palms. "No, no, nothing to worry about, Felix, do not be angry!" he says.

"I'm not ANGRY, Klaus," I say - why do Germans always use the term angry? It's so unsubtle, even if I am angry - "I'm just a little nervous, on edge!" I say, flapping my hands about in response to Klaus's hands.

My brain throws up a quick image of a duck taking off from a pond, and I calm down. I guess I must look like a duck. And why is it so hard for ducks to get airborn? And then a horrible thought: Is it Duck Season?

"Well," Klaus continues, "she went to the monk yesterday and he apparently told her that I shouldn't be to help people! Big misfortune or something. So she's down inside in the car-port making a good luck puja over the truck and we have to wait a little bit until she's finished."

"The monk told her that YOU shouldn't help people? What is he, some kinda fortune teller or something?" I say.

Klaus ignores my question and says: "Should not be too long! Like a coffee while we waiting?"

"A good luck poo-jar?" I spit the words out. "Isn't she a devout Buddhist, Klaus? Aren't Buddhists meant to HELP people...?", but Klaus has already walked off in to the kitchen and is getting the coffees.

I sit down heavily in one of the wicker chairs and blow out some air. Why am I so on edge? Why do I instinctively fear the worst?

Asia, it's so unstable.

I have an arm in need of a doctor. It's swollen, oozing puss and I've already been to the local butcher, who nearly pushed me through to Level 6 Consciousness, and believe me, you shouldn't go there unless you believe in the Resurrection and have been celibate for the last 18 years, neither of which I qualify for, and thanks to Klaus, there's a little bit of kindness coming in to my sorry life (he's driving me to the hospital - I can't ride!), and now Klaus's mother-in-law is throwing a spanner in the works at the last moment.

Oy-vay!

I hear voices coming from the carport and realise Klaus must have gone down to see how the Mass is proceding and whether we have achieved transubstantiation yet, and can all leave and go home and get on with our daily lives, in peace.

I can hear his faultering Khmer, slow and deliberate, and then a torrent of higher pitched ethnic babble, which I conclude must be mother. A Dhamma discussion? Debating some of the finer points in the Abbhuta discourses?*

(*Descriptions of supernatural powers and their uses. An extremely handy little paperback this one!)

A little after 6:30 we pack the bike in the back of the truck, jam the panniers under the seats, slam the door shut and climb in. Klaus's mother-in-law is hovering around the front of the truck, with her head bowed, and her lips curled inward. She's looking up at me every now and then, and you can see she wants to let a couple go.

Maybe she wants to tell me a Jataka tale? It's sure to have a nice, neat moral ending like the one where the two proud fools in the ox-cart ignore the Buddha's warning and get trampled to death by a rogue elephant.

I lean my arm lazily out of the passenger window and give her a big smile. Fuck it.

Klaus guns up the truck, crunches the gears and we roll forward. Mumsy's standing by the gate, but she's only opened it a few feet and we can't get out. And she's looking at me real hard now: evil-eye stuff. Christ!

Klaus stops the truck, and waits, as though this is perfectly normal, and we're just waiting for dear old mum to get her shit together and open the gate fully; dear, old, lovable thing she is.

In mum's colourful world, this must be Klaus's last chance to not go forth down the road and have a 30 ton gold plated Buddha rupa drop out of the sky right on top of him (and me), or maybe a satellite, whichever is more statistically probable. And it's all my fault!

But I know, and Klaus knows, and God help us, even mumsy knows at some deep, semi-conscious, reptilian level - and don't you worry, under all that Cambodian vulnerability, she's got her reptile-mojo working well and good this afternoon - that this whole damn bullshit thing has more to do with investment portfolios than the Tripitika, or whatever cosmic operating system the monk's on.

And besides, the monk probably said something like: "Be careful when you help people, deary, lest they throw dog poo at you and trample you underfoot!", or some equally compassionate and well thought out piece of advice (maybe a little more erudite but), but I'll bet you London-to-a-brick that mum's come away from the temple and done a bit of creative re-interpretation.

By the time she's run the equation through her very limited processor it's come out as:

Me (good) + Felix (bad) = delete Arm

But perhaps I'm being a little unkind.

Believe it or not, I can be big about these things. The Lord knows I've turned myself in to a pretzel often enough to accommodate some facile and ridiculously convoluted ethnic go-to loop all in the name of cultural sensitivity, but not this time.

It all depends on what's at stake, and how badly you want it. And I want my arm - real bad, portfolio risk or no portfolio risk.

Klaus gives a little toot! of the horn, smiles, and inches the car forward a couple of feet. I'm so jacked off I'd probably run the bitch down, so it's a good thing I aint driving.

She opens the gate just wide enough for us to get past and backs out of the way. As the truck moves through the gate we pass within a couple of inches of each other, and boy, if looks could kill.

There's nothing on the road, so luckily we skip straight out on to the highway, without a wave, and in no time we're in to third gear and picking up speed, heading west, leaving the East behind.

What a relief. I'm sweating, I gotta break the spell.

"How about some music, Klaus?" I say, and he nods, and gives me a wry smile. Christ, this guy's got patience.

I plug the Ipod in to the sound system, crank Moby up to 11, and breathe out. I realise then that I've been holding my breath throughout this whole domestic ordeal.

Here we are now, going to the west-side,
I pick up my friends, and we go for a ride!
Lookin' out for a sunny day....

Highway 5 takes a sharp left, and we go past some bamboo drink stands and cross over a big metal bridge and suddenly we're in the country, free.

We're moving to the beat. We've left Sisophon and mumsy behind, and it feels good. We're a little bubble. A little motorised tin can, a mobile island, a continent unto ourselves. We're in here, and they're out there. Different. Not same-same. No way.

I think of Noddy, and feel almost bouyant, and a little light headed, like I want to laugh but I don't know what I'm laughing at.

Up ahead the sun is a dirty, orange ball about to go down, and we're heading straight for it.

Above it there's a bank of big, puffy clouds, cumulo nimbus, pink and white, and rays of light are shooting out of from behind their billowy bodies, spiraling up in to the centre of the sky. It's quite a show.

The sky is a purple and pink dome, a huge canopy, arching right up in to the heavens: on fire, alive, awesome. It's mighty God and puny man stuff. Excellent perspective. There should be more of it.

It's the wet season in Cambodia, and the paddies, stretching out in all directions are a gorgeous yellow-green, tinged with pink. The wind is skipping across the rice stalks, making waves, shades of changing colour that dip and scoop from one paddy to the next. Quick, sudden eruptions of energy, shimmering, an invisible hand stroking the beloved grain.

Even when it's the dry-season, and the whole country turns brown and grey, with dust clouds blowing across the landscape, it's still beautiful. And it's exhilerating on a bike, as you carve your way down the highway, right through the middle of this grand opera, one pedal after the next, the wheels spinning and your mind singing.

I first rode down highway 5 between Poipet and Sisophon in 1998, and over the years have been back and forth a few times, but the road is still in bad shape, which is surprising.

Most of the main arteries in Cambodia have been tarred and sealed by now.

Nice, big, flat, modern highways, with neat white lines and shiney arrows that make driving easy, but if you biked the highways in the old days, you can't help but feel nostalgic. There was fun to be had when the roads were abominable, and you could pat yourself on the back for simply making it to Phnom Penh.

But now the buses are running, and the transports are crossing in from the Thai and Viet borders, laden with processed food and cheap consumer goods. Cambodia is almost on the move, almost, but highway 5 to Poipet is still a mess.

As we move along I'm turning this way and that, spotting landmarks, trees, shacks, odd places where I'd stopped on the bike for drinks and photo ops at different times.

There's the big Bhodi tree with the Buddha statues that I lent my bike against and took a well earned water-break. There's the irrigation ditch with the rushing, muddy water I dipped my feet in to to cool off. There's the bamboo drink stand with the lop sided roof and the drop-dead-gorgeous waitress who smiled and fussed over me, and stood in the middle of the road waving me off. I wonder what happenned to her?

Back then I was fit and happy, and Cambodia was an alluring mystery, the forbidden fruit of South East Asia. But time brings change.

Now I'm riding in a truck, bandaged, and a bit beaten around in body and spirit, and pondering my next move. And I'm supressing a thought, an heretical idea that I can't quite admit to myself, much less put on the Pumpy site.

"You know, Klaus," I say, "I can't wait to leave this place. It's driving me nuts!"

Klaus smiles and says: "Yeah, it can do that to you...", and goes on driving.

I'd prefer it if he said something a little more meaty, like: "Yeah, this place is the shit-box of the universe!"

Or maybe something big-headed and Teutonic, like: "Ya, zat ist beekos yoo ist eina grosse nin-kom-poop, Feeliks!" and then I could flare up, and we could argue, and swear, and after a few verbal low blows, where we slight each other's cultural inheritance, say how much we love and respect each other, and then proceed towards a more sober debate on the problems of the Westerner in Asia, and then we'd descend in to personal stories, and bad experiences, and we'd get more acid, and more black, and then what?

We'd feel miserable. There's no end to this conversation.

I have a wild and wicked idea: "Let's drive to Kazakstan! In the truck!", but I catch it in time and don't voice it. I'm being ridiculous.

No, Klaus has to live here, and he's committed, and let's face it, I'm blowin' in the wind.

There's an unspoken agreement not too get too heavy about the contradictions, the sheer mind-fuck of the place. We all know it's a bag of shit if you look real hard, and I've probably said too much already. (I think that's a safe bet.)

We slip in to silence.

Moby's up to Why does my heart feel so bad?, and there's some black guy singing the line over and over.

It's sad, strong and melancholic, and I'm at Bell's Beach in southern Victoria (my home state in Australia) on a cold winter's day, watching the waves driving in from the Antarctic, crashing on to the shore; relentless, blue, powerful, one after the other, never ending, and I'm sitting alone, high up on the headland with my arms wrapped around my knees and the wind gusting in to my face; alone, jobless, useless.

He-e-e's lost his Hope! He-e-e's lost his Hope! comes the reply in the song. Some black woman's got it nailed in one. Poor bloke!

Now, I'm starting to worry. I don't mind riding off in to the back-woods of Cambodia alone, and I can even handle someone pointing a gun at me and threatening to blow me in to tomorrow, but Hope, Jesus! You don't wanna lose that.

I look out the window, and wonder.

It's dark now, and the lights from the shacks are slipping by, one by one, and the Cambodians are bustling about, walking in and out of doors, carrying things, drinking beer, watching the tube, laughing.

They're doing all those domestic activities that people do everywhere to keep mind and body together.

All those things that keep us occupied, and stop us screaming out in pain and anger at the utter futility of it all, the sheer gob-smacking insanity of being alive and having to get up each day, to do what? Stay alive so you can do it all again tomorrow.

Cambodia, there it is, passing by my window and out of my life, and I gotta admit, I still love it, and it hurts.

The folks, the Cambos; I instinctively reach out to them.

So much sorrow, so much soul cracking tragedy in every rock and blade of grass. How do they do it? What keeps 'em going?

And they're still taking it up the cosmic arse. Their government's doing them over, and when that's not happenning, they're doing each other over. What a mess.

I'm meant to be cycling, but I really don't know what I'm doing anymore.

How can you love something so much, put so much time and effort in to it, and one day you get up and it's all gone?

It's like you were wearing a pair of pants on Monday, all spivvy, walking down the high street lookin' like a blade, and on Tuesday morning you get up, none-the-wiser, whistling a tune, and you pull 'em on and they don't fit. They're a size too small. What gives?

Have I just grown out of it? Is it that simple? Mr Pumpy, where are you? I need you now.

There's not much traffic at this time of night, so the road mostly belongs to us.

All over Cambodia the parents and the kids are at home, tucking in to the evening meal and watching Muay Thai (Thai boxing) on the tube. The traffic will pick up in an hour or so when the karaoke bars click in to action, and the motor bikes, ridden by whiskey fueled Cambodian blades, start their crazy dance up and down the country.

Klaus looks across and gently pulls me out of my fug. "You know why this road is not made good yet, Felix?" he asks.

"Ah, no," I say, "but I was wondering about it." Well, I had been before I started feeling sorry for myself about 25 kilometres back.

"The story is that the Thai Airways has paid off to the Cambodian government to keep the surface like a bucket-of-shit all the way to the Angkor Wat so that all the tourists will be flying to the Siem Reap, and they will not be riding in the bus!"

Klaus chuckles, and I smile and shake my head.

No point saying anything. No point making cheap comments like: "Yeah, that's another reason why I gotta leave, man, I hate the corruption!"

Corruption. Christ! Not worth thinking about.

The suspension on the truck is making strange squeaking noises, so we slow down. It doesn't seem to be worrying Klaus all that much, but we take care to dodge the pot-holes and drive around any big rifts in the road.

We're down to about 30 km an hour, which is fine by me: I get scared in fast motorised vehicles in Asia.

We continue on.

When the wooden shacks and rest-stops peter out, there's big gaps of nothing, just pitch black holes, punctuated by the occasional scraggy tree. I can here dogs barking in the distance, and the sound of cow bells.

At one point a fruit bat swings low and crosses our path, blinded by the truck lights, flapping its wings, and obviously scared out of it wits. I'd be scared too: "Big tin monster with blazing eyes driven by two barungs nearly catch me. Me fly away. Is there any beer left?"

I get drowsy and start to nod off.

My head lolls back over the seat and my mouth falls open. Normally I'd make an effort to close it, but Klaus is an easy going guy, and male, so why bother? Sleeping in a car is a lot more comfortable when you can leave your mouth open and drool.

Just then I hear someone groaning, and I slowly realise the noise is coming from deep in my own throat, and I come awake, embarrassed. I've just had a dream, a B-grade horror flick. I sit up. How long have I been out? Was I audible?

"You OK, Felix?" asks Klaus, looking across, obviously concerned.

"Yeah, I think so..," I say, still a bit groggy, "but do you know those dumb movies where a ghost appears suddenly in the middle of the road, with the flowing white hair and intense eyes, waving her arms about and mouthing silent words that you can't make out, and you turn the wheel of the car trying to avoid her and run in to a tree?"

"Yeah, kind of..." he says, slowly.

"Well, I just had one!" I say. "And the woman on the road reminded me of your mother-in-law."

Klaus raises an eye-brow, and I realise I need a Coke, badly. We stop at a roadside shack and I buy a couple of cans, and we push on.

I change the music. We need something up. Something old and gold. A no-brainer. Let's try the Stones.

When I'm drivin' in my car
And a man comes on the radio...
I can't get no-o-o, Sat-is-fac-tion!

We roll in to Poipet just before 8 o'clock, and it's bright lights, big city.

There's new concrete buildings sprawling along the main road and more white and pink flourescent lights than Christmas in Bethlehem.

Poipet sure grown in the last few years. But despite the concrete, there's still lots of wooden shacks with slanting tin roofs, and it still seems to have that frantic, shanty town quality which I love.

Poipet served up my first taste of Cambodia, and I fell for it. And you gotta eat what you love, otherwise you'll die a slow, grey death.

I sigh and say something like: "Good old Poipet! What a blast!", and I'm suddenly awake to it, agitated, needing to get out of the confines of the truck.

I'm a monkey in a tin box.

David's India cycling blog!

2005-01-18T13:44:00.000+07:00

Another blog, this time from my mate and fellow Melbournite David Willshire.
http://davidinindia.blogspot.com/
David's an experienced cyclist, and this time is riding from Mumbai to Gujurat, up through Rajastan and if he's still alive after that, maybe back down to Goa. David is also carrying small pocket field-glasses with him. Why? What does he need to look at?
May the wind be at your back, Dave, and all your way-stops friendly, beautiful and cheap!

More helpful emails from downunder!

2005-01-03T13:33:00.000+07:00

I just got another helpful email from my elder brother which I thought I'd share.

He writes: ---------------------------------------
Felix,
Speaking of hotel rooms and TV (Felix: Which I wasn't...), have you seen the TV clip where they take the UV, or some kind of special light, into the 1 to 5 star hotels and expose all the precious bodily fluids on the pillows, sheets and matressess? Under the bed, in the carpet and just about everywhere. Semen, dribble on pillows, blood on matressess... anyway you get the drift. How's India?
bye bye for now, etc
-----------------------------------------------------

Is he working on my mind?

Anyway, India, Kolkata, you gotta love it.
Cheers,
Felix and the real Mr P in Kolkata, India

Krazy kangaroos! Cyclists beware!

2004-12-30T19:13:00.000+07:00

I got an email...

Miss "S" writes:------------------------------------------------
Felix,
I was wondering if, under the present tsunami circumstances, it would be safer to cycle in Australia than South Asia.
Miss "S", Australia
----------------------------------------------------------------

Well, I don't want to sound like JP2 on great matters of moral and personal choice, but in a word, "no".

Let me share with you a sobering email I got recently from my elder and only brother who lives and cycles in northern New South Wales, a couple of hundred kilometres north of Sydney.

He writes:--------------------------------------------------------
I got hit by a kangaroo a year ago while out pedalling. Bizarre! 4 broken ribs, a punctured lung, cracked hip, concussion and plenty of meat left at the scene. I left the bike and the dead kangaroo, walked 6 km to the highway and spent 9 days in hospital.
Months off work. Still can't sleep on my right side. And you should see my helmet!
------------------------------------------------------------------

OK, thank you elder brother for sharing your wisdom. Appreciated.

So, in India all you gotta worry about is "elephants", and in Cambodia, "landmines", neither of which hop.

So, Miss "S", I hope that clears that up.

Bye for now, your friendly helper cycling pals,
Felix and Mr Pumpy (in Kolkata)

Sisophon, West Cambodia: Our man in Sisophon!

2004-11-07T13:35:00.000+07:00

My bung arm – Part 2

I sleep until the late afternoon and then climb under the shower, careful not to get my bandaged arm wet. There’s a stretch of blood seeping through the cotton and running from the elbow down to the middle forearm, and I pose manfully in front of the mirror. It’s looking very Arnie. Man, seh ich gut aus! Lookin’ good!

The arm is still swollen – this afternoon’s estimate: 35% above normal - and paining, so I throw down some more anti-inflammatory pills and a couple of Panadol. I’ll swear I need anti-biotics, but doctor knows best, probably.

Having a medical problem in Cambodia is disquieting.

If it gets really bad, and they need to cart you off, who will know where you are? Who will record your last words, and relay them on to family and friends? And who’s gonna collect the body?

Nobody, that’s who.

And what’s the home town priest going to say at your belated funeral?

"We don’t know what (insert your name here)’s last words were, or his thoughts, but I’m sure they were with his family and friends, and he was grateful for your love and caring during his short but troubled life."

"But, friends," he continues, "at least he died doing what he loved best, may he rest in peace!"

Which of course you won’t, ‘cos you didn’t die doing what you loved best, you died in stark terror at the hospital, and with a great and abiding sense of abandonment.

And do they use adequate ice at the morgue? Probably not, so if there is a viewing of the body at home, it won’t be much.

But they do have plastic bags. Asians love plastic bags, and they’ll be able to wrap you in one, no problem.

Scene: Le Pines Crematorium, on a cold, grey, drizzly Melbourne day. Aunty Kylie and Uncle Max peer in to the coffin.
"What a lovely green plastic bag!" says Kylie.
"Yes, I’m sure he’s happy in there!" replies Max.

It’s Cambodia, friends, and it’s very poor and understaffed, and things go wrong out here, things that shouldn’t normally go wrong.

But so be it.

Right now I need the warmth of companionship and maybe some cheese, so I’m off to Klaus's place for dinner.

I cycle out of the guest house and on to the road.

This is Highway 6, which leads east out of Sisophon all the way through Siem Reap and on to Phnom Penh. It’s just on dusk, and as I gaze westwards in to the sun, the dust over the road is a great orange halo, dirty and opaque.

And it reminds me of the first time I stood on this same spot, way back in 1998.

---------------------------------

It was my first time in Cambodia.

I’d ridden to Sisophon from Poipet, on the Thai border, a couple of days before, and was about to push further along Highway 6 in to the Cambodian heartland. The ride in from Poipet had been extraodinarily good, but I was still apprehensive. There were so many unknowns.

At that time, Cambodia was just emerging out of almost 20 years of serious, and sometimes bloody troubles post the Khmer Rouge takeover of 1975 and the Vietnamese invasion in 1978/79. It had been a tumultuous period of civil unrest, political upheavels and lawlessness as the country struggled to it’s feet.

By 1997 the country was still a mess, but at least they weren’t shooting people in the back streets of Phnom Penh anymore. And apparently the countryside was safe enough to venture out in to, as long as you took adequate precautions, according to my (hopefully) well informed connections.

And I was ready to believe them.

Cambodia was a cyclist’s dream. New territory and virgin roads. Throw in a unique culture, an exotic past and a reputation, despite the mind-boggling terror of the Khmer Rouge, of easy going hospitality. It doesn’t come much better.

But how much remained? How dangerous was it to cycle through? Was this adventure or folly?

I’d read of a Canadian who’d cycled from Poipet to Phnom Penh and got there in one piece, sometime in 1996. As far as I knew, he was the one cyclist who’d made it all the way through, so I tried to track him down, but failed.

I felt confident enough I’d get through in one piece also, but I would have liked some reliable road information.

I put some postings on the alt.rec.travel.asia web-board and got a few replies. A couple of motorcyclists sent me some pictures and gave me a basic run-down. The roads were pretty rough, but do-able.

And I disregarded, as you do, most of the alarmist e-blowings of the back-packers who’d been through on pick-ups; ‘You’ll never make it!’, ‘The roads are diabolical!’, ‘Forget it!’

OK, what to do?

In January of 1998 I flew in to Bangkok, and stayed with some Thai friends out by the docks. The Thais, being Thai, were singularly appalled that I was going to Cambodia, and on a bike? Are you mad?

They dropped me at Hualampong Station (Bangkok Central) before dawn one Saturday morning, and even after I’d loaded the bike on to the train and was standing around saying last goodbyes, they were begging me to reconsider.

‘If you stay with us, Felix, we can go on a picnic!’ they said.

As the train began to pull out of the station, Kip, the youngest, and about 10 at the time, called out that she’d pray for me.

It was then I had my first real moment of panic. Not the sort that paralyses you, but just that little squirt of dish-washing detergent that spins around your belly and reminds you that you may be going down the plug-hole. Sheese! Kids!

So off I rattled towards Cambodia.

One hundred kilometres out of Bangkok we hit the smoke. It was paddy burning time, and the dense smoke from the fields blew in from the south and swirled around the carriage. It was gritty and hot, and threw the carriage in to an eerie half-light for most of the journey. It was like heading to Sleepy Hollow.

I’d never been to Aranyaprathet (Aran) before, on the Thai side of the border, and didn’t know what to expect. Border towns the world over are crazy places. Too much flow-through traffic, too many drugs, too many girls, too much of everything that’s transient.

During the 1980s, Aran was at the centre of a mess of Cambodian refugee camps, home to hundreds of thousands of displaced Khmers who had poured out of Cambodia ahead of the invading Vietnamese army and after the breakdown of Khmer Rouge rule.

The Khmer Rouge had been routed from Cambodia proper, but still operated with impunity along the Thai border, protected by the Thai military and a complex anti-Vietnamese political nexus involving the United States and other Western governments.

The graft within the camps was monumental, and Aran was dangerous and unsettled. NGO friends who had worked there told alarming stories of human rights abuse and blatant corruption.

The train arrived at Aran just after 1 PM, and I got down, collected my bike and set off for town. The Cambodian border is about 6 kilometres down the road, but I was advised to spend the night in Aran and cross in to Cambodia at Poipet in the morning.

‘Poipot is dangerous at night, Felix’ an NGO friend told me, sternly, ‘and you might get mugged!’

OK, I hate getting mugged, especially on my first day in-country. It colours the whole trip a dank shade of grey, and I much prefer blue.

I checked in to a cheap hotel and took a ride around town. Boy, for a former bad-arse burg, Aran sure looked quiet and sleepy. I rode down a couple of back-streets, curious to find the wrong end of town, but no, no smell of sleaze, no wind of corruption. The wrong end didn’t seem to exist.

By my reckoning, Aran had turned in to the most boring border town on the planet, which is something, but not what you’d call interesting. Tomorrow I was definitely heading across to dark and mysterious Cambodia, muggings or no muggings. Forget Aran.

At 7 AM the next morning I was winging down the paved road towards the border. If you cycle down that stretch today there’s a few guest houses and restaurants, and it’s quiet and sedate, but in ’98 it was sparse stretch, with nothing but a run of make-shift camping gear stores. ‘Don’t they have hotels in Cambodia?’ I wondered.

Take a right off the highway, go through the enormous Thai duty free market and you’re at the border.

And here I got my first look at the Cambodians. There was a torrent of them pouring across the border, entering Thailand on day passes. They were pushing carts, carrying large sacks and to a person, dressed in rags. I had never seen a more dishevelled bunch. Christ!

The Thai guy at immigration stamped my passport, looked dubiously at the bike and waved a finger vaguely in the direction of Cambodia.

‘You bicycle?’ he asked, incredulously.

Now, as all of you who cycle will know, this is the time when you stand up straight, look your interrogator in the eye and say, ‘Yep, only way to go, mate!’

And contained within this neat, little reply is a deep hell-hole of thoughts and prejudices: I’m a cyclist! And you're not!I’m a risk-taker! And you’re a marshmellow.Which makes me the Alpha male/female around here and you’re aways back somewhere in the middle of the Greek alphabet, maybe Mu or a Rho.

Ah, vanity. It’s so addictive.

But as I stood at Thai immigration, with the river of shabby Cambodians jostling behind me, I felt another squirt of detergent in my belly, and I nearly asked him, ‘You don’t think it’s a good idea, Sir?’, before I checked myself and just nodded.

His eyebrows went up to the middle of his forehead and he opened his mouth and started laughing. ‘Chog-dee!’, he said, which is Thai for ‘good luck!’ Oh, dear.

And so I left the relative hilarity of Thailand.

I walked over to the white fibro sheds with the nice, new, plastic Cambodian flags dangling in the wind, and got my passport stamped at Cambodian immigration. The immigration guy was not too concerned about anything. He smiled, said ‘Welcome!’ and waved me on. Excellent.

I then went over to customs. The customs officer spotted the bike, frowned, and came out of his office to take a closer look.

‘OK, here we go!’ I thought, ‘There’s about to be an argument about whether I can take the bike in or not, and lots of forms to fill in in triplicate, and money may need to change hands. Great!

’‘You go bicycle?’ he asked, looking down at the bike and running his hand across my back pannier.

‘Yes, sir, I do. I-go-Per-nom-pen-bi-cycle!’ I said, and pointed confidently down the road.

He looked up with a large grin, and said, ‘Oh, very good! Very good! Welcome to you!’, and reached over and patted my elbow.

‘Well, thanks a lot!’ I said. ‘It’s good to be here!’

He waved me off, shouting out ‘Welcome! Welcome!’ as I wheeled the bike under the enormous Khmer Gate that marks the border.

OK, excellent, bored immigration guy, and friendly customs guy, now what?

Take a look around!

I’d been cycling in Asia on and off for years, but nothing prepared me for Poipet. It was total rag and bone chaos, and brown. Everything was brown; the people, the roads, the houses, the air. On first glance, it looked like my kinda town.

But would I be mugged? Would I be engulfed by hordes of beggars, would I have children thrust at me by distraught mothers begging me to give their off-spring better lives, or maybe led off by underpaid government soldiers and relieved of everything but my bike-shorts, or worse?

But no, nobody besides the friendly customs guy had paid me any interest. I seemed to be in the eye of a storm. All around me there was movement. People whirled and dust skitted, but where I stood there was only me. Strange.

Throughout the eighties and nineties, there were mountians of Cambodian horror tales circulating in the media. Stories of guns, robberies, land-mines, the Khmer Rouge and rogue government soldiers, and I had read everything I could, including every book entitled: First they killed my mother, then my father etc, and there were a few.

And it was also only a few years since Brian Wilson, an Australian tourist and his two companions had been pulled off a train by the Khmer Rouge in Takeo Province, south of Phnom Penh, and subsequently abducted and shot. The video images that came to light during and after the ordeal were ghastly and unforgettable.

The case had received enormous publicity in Australia and around the world, and had coloured many peoples attitude to Cambodia.

And the late Princess Diana flying out from the UK and standing around in a Cambodian mine field, looking vulnerable and pretty, didn’t help much.

When I had first announced I was going, most of my friends were alarmed. "You gotta be kidding, Feel!" was the common response.

One friend, prone to excited outbursts, asked if I’d finally gone insane. ‘Why don’t you just go up to Queensland and ride around there?’ he continued.

Queensland?

But I'm wary of the so-called good advice most people hand out. It's well meaning, but often uninformed.

The fact was, by 1998, the word on the ground was that it was OK to travel through the Cambodian countryside, as long as you took some precautions;

1. Be off the roads by 4 PM, because after dark bandits come out. OK, as long as you’ve got a watch, what’s the problem?
2. If you come to a road-block of any sort, be friendly and pay up. A few bucks was the recommended price. I structured a few extra bucks in to my budget.
3. There’s a lot of mines, but most of them are marked. And if you don’t wander off the main roads and tracks, you’ll be sweet. OK, just walk/ride where everybody else is walking/riding. This one looks like a percentage play. No sweat.

As I happily explained to my excitable friend, once you break these things down in to their component parts, and deal with each issue separately, things don’t seem half as bad.

'Almost good, in fact!’ I added, brightly.

But as I stood near the Khmer Gate at Poipet, and gazed around, I wasn’t so sure.

I secured my panniers, checked my money belt and camera, climbed on the bike, and pedalled off down the road. I took a left towards the Poipet market and stopped in a small café, ordering some noodles and tea.

I ate slowly, and sipped on my drink. I wanted to get a feel for the place. I wanted to see how the locals were behaving before I headed out down the highway to Sisophon, some 50 kilometres away.

And surprisingly, despite my doubts, the locals were behaving just fine, and best of all, at least in my little corner of Cambodia, nobody was getting abducted, or blown up. In fact, quite the opposite.

The waitress in the café was doing her best to understand my embrionic Khmer, and the rest of the patrons were nodding, smiling and encouraging me to eat. Excellent.

The road out of Poipet to Sisophon was as rough as bags; bumpy, pot-holed and garbage strewn. The traffic was thin, but there was a small cavalcade of home-made vehicles and motor-bikes with trailors full of people, and the dust was behemoth.

Dust, dust every where. Across the paddies, over the road, and inside my eyes and panniers, and cycling down the highway was a total sensual experience. Visceral, pungent, gritty and unknown.

I stopped at a small bamboo drink stand some 10 kilometres out of Poipet. There was a family of Khmers living in a small wooden shed beside a large Bodhi tree selling Coke and ice. I got off the bike, and wandered slowly over, not yet sure of the correct approach and not yet sure of the Cambodian response to the lone barung on the bike.

But it was friendly and relaxed, and so unexpectedly welcoming, that after I’d drunk my Coke, I wandered out on to the road and took a few deep breaths. I had to shake the fear, it was getting in the way.

About 20 kilometres up the road I came to my first road-block. I could see it from a few kilometres away, and despite the good start to the day, it put the wind up me. Friendly Khmers selling Coke and ice is one thing, but soldiers manning a road block in the middle of the countryside is another question.

I rolled to a stop at the wooden pole straddling the road, and wheeled the bike across to the two men in shabby army fatigues who sprang to activity at my approach. They were well armed, with machine guns slung across their shoulders and pistols in their belts.

Usual thing: They look, I smile. No sudden movements. Show passport. Give name. Where you go? Why you travel by bike?

It was brusque but not unfriendly, and it was stinking hot. One of the soldiers motioned me towards a nearby hut, asked me to take my sandals off, and then led me down a path towards a small brown pond, some 20 metres off the road.

I trotted behind him like an obedient sheep, ready to please my master, ready to obey his every command, as long as I could understand it, considering I don’t have much brain.

Was this it? Was my number up? Maybe my friends were right. And what an inglorious end, and so soon! Not even a day in-country.

He then took me by the arm and gestured for me stand with my bare feet in the water. Oh, dear, here we go, popped in the back of the head and left to rot in a fish pond.

I stood stock still, waiting for his next order.

After a few seconds, he said something in Khmer, which I didn’t get (of course), and then lent forward, looked up, and made paddling motions with his hands.

"Move your feet, you stupid barang!" he was saying in sign language, "Don’t you know it’s 40 degrees in the shade out here!"

O-Ka-ay! I ge-e-et it! He wants me to paddle about in the water!

I stomped my feet up and down and paddled for all I was worth. I splashed, I played, I made whoopee noises. I lay back on the ground and let the cool, muddy water lap all the way up to my thighs. I looked up in to sky and started laughing.

And I couldn’t stop.

By the time I got up and walked back to the bike, all three of us were giggling, and looking around at each other with that sheepish why are we laughing? look.

Cambodia, this was it. I’d arrived.

By late afternoon, as I rolled in to Sisophon, I was dusty and tired, but happy as a boy who'd just shot his father. The roads were bad, the food poor, the countryside barren, the towns derelict but the people were alive, laid back and welcoming.

What a place, what a find.

And as I stood here now, 6 years later, on the road outside my guest house in Sisophon, with my arm bandaged, and the dust kicking up down the road, I remembered this; the apprehension, the joy and the sense of wonder.

But things change. Myself, and also Cambodia.

I’d ridden so much of it in the intervening years. I’d gone down the main highways, searched out the back roads and pushed myself further and further in, but now, as I stood here and thought about it, I realised it was over.

I was no longer bolted-in. The game had been played out.

And so opens the great yawning gap. Where to now, Feel?

Well, definitely not Queensland, and I was invited to Klaus’s place for dinner around seven, so that’s a good start.

And I have time to go around to the internet café by the park and check my SPAM. There might even be a message from home, you never know.

-------------------

I move in to the saddle, string my feet over the pedals, and turn the wheels.

At the internet café I get a reply from Sothy, my American-Khmer friend who lives in Chicago. She’s my Khmer background person, the one I contact when I need some specific, inside Cambodian information. I’d emailed her about my arm yesterday.

"Dear Felix," she wrote, "whatever you do, don’t go to a Cambodian doctor! Most of them are charletans and their qualifications are bogus. Get on your bik (sic.) and go to Thailand. The doctors there are much better."

O-Ka-ay! Thanks, Sot! Tell me about it!

I don’t have the courage to hit the return key and tell her I’ve already been to the Butcher of Sisophon. Best to let that one through to the keeper, I think. She’ll only get mad, and threaten to cease all communication again.

I double back to the Sokamex station, and take a left off the highway to Klaus’s place.

His house is a large colonial affair, with big verandahs running all the way around the ground floor, and a second storey that opens on to a large balcony, wide and airy.

He’s glad to see me, asks about the arm and ushers me in to the cool interior. I briefly meet his Khmer wife and mother-in-law, but they’re off to visit relatives, and won’t be back ‘til late.

We tuck in to a big Western meal of eggs, bacon, onions, German bread and cheese, and wash it down with red wine. It’s the best food I’ve had in weeks, and I savour the lot.

Klaus tells me that if my arm isn't better in a couple of days he'll give me a lift to the Thai border so I can go to the hospital in Aran.

"I need to be getting some duty-free chocolate anyway, Felix," he says.

After dinner we retire upstairs to the balcony for coffee.

It’s a hot night. Outside beyond the house-gates it’s pitch black and there’s not much noise, save for the odd bicycle rattling down the road and a couple of fruit bats winging back and forth between the trees.

I light up a joint and the Great Charlie Parker starts belting out some raw and untamed saxophone, which goes streaming over the bannister in great cascading loops, down across the lawn and out the front gate.

The Great Mother Goddess Kangaroo!

2004-10-16T20:40:00.000+07:00

A cautionary note!

Dear fellow cyclists,
We live in a beige world, and if you're gonna show your colours, you need to be very bloody careful which flag pole you run 'em up. So pl-e-e-a-a-se, don't all go rushing off to Tasmania at once like a pack of school kids on parade sans knickers. I don't wanna pick up the Bangkok Post one day next month and read:

Australia, Monday: Cradle Mountain officials bewildered at sudden surge in international cyclists to Park!

Why? Because it's only a short step away from:
-----------------------------------------------
Marsupial Monster Nabbed at Airport!

Melbourne, Frid: Kangaroo molesting cyclist Mr Felix was detained today as he attempted to slip through immigration at Melbourne International Airport.

A defiant Mr Felix was led away by Federal Police, shouting: Infidels! Infidels!

He faces a maximum life sentence if convicted, and a 3 million dollar fine.
------------------------------------------------------------------------

And I can hear them baying in the back streets of Melbourne.
Person 1: I always knew he was no-good! When we went to the Melbourne Zoo he took an unnatural interest in the monkey cage!
Person 2: Yes, dogs! Dogs! He always made a point of patting my dog whenever he came to visit. Egad! It makes me sick to think about it!

OK, folks, keep the rubber side down and may the wind be at your back,
your cycling pal,
Mr Felix - Phuket, Thailand

The Butcher of Sisophon and the Great Mother Goddess Kangaroo!

2004-10-14T19:38:00.000+07:00

My Bung Arm - Part 1

Sisophon – West Cambodia

Klaus comes by and picks me up at 1 PM. I just love German punctuality. We take off in his 4 Wheel Drive, headed for the surgery.

I make some light conversation, just to relax us all a bit.

‘Klaus, that's a pretty common name in Germany, isn't it?' I ask.

'Yeah, there are a few of us,' he says.

'Yeah,' I rattle on, 'it's kind of your generic German name, isn't it, like Fritz or if you were English you'd be called Tommy, like in the war, you called English guys Tommy, and we called you guys Klaus or Fritz, and maybe Americans are called Randy or Bob.'

Klaus keeps driving, looking steadily ahead and doesn't say anything, and I realise out of nervousness I've ventured in to dangerous territory. I try a back-peddle.

'Hey! Hey!' I laugh (forced), 'At least we're not (note the first person plural) called Bob, eh? I hate to be called Bob! What a stupid name. Imagine being called Bob Down, or maybe Bob Up! Hey! Hey...'

'Yeah, right...' says Klaus.

We arrive at the surgery and bundle out of the truck. The surgery is clean enough, but incredibly empty and sparse. No pot plants, no fish tank to soothe the fretting mind, no smiling receptionist to take your details and enter them on the computer for posterity (in case something goes seriously wrong).

Just the doctor and what looks like his younger brother. And they both look startled. And I’m so nervous all I can do is nod, smile and point to my right arm.

Klaus rattles off my something about my problem in pigeon Khmer and the doctor motions me in to the examination room in pigeon English. I don’t get his name, and he doesn’t ask me mine.

‘Show me arm,’ he says. I boldly thrust it forward.

‘Swollen!’ he says. OK, yep. ‘Mosquito!’ he continues.

OK, whatever, but what can we do and am I going to die?

‘I clean!’ he says.

He’s incredibly brusque, and I must say I respond to the gentle approach a little more, but maybe he’s just nervous. It’s not everyday you get a farang in the surgery.

I’ll make some small talk, that’ll lighten things up a bit.

‘I guess you don’t get many Westerner’s in here much, eh, doctor? Heh! Heh!’ I say.

‘I clean!’ he repeats.

OK, cut the small talk, let’s just clean the arm. There’s puss around the elbow and the arm is 50% bigger than it should be. It’s a mess. Let’s get to work. Good idea.

He leads me down a corridor with his brother trotting behind, and I leave Hardy sitting in the reception room.

‘See you soon, Klaus!’ I call out. He waves back encouragingly.

We enter what must be the surgery, and I’m told to lie down on the table. It’s a proper padded adustable number, which is encouraging, but the white covering sheet hasn’t been cleaned in a while and there’s blood dotted around the head-rest.

Brain surgery?

The doctor takes my arm and swabs it with some alcohol, and says, ‘I clean! No move!’

OK, cool, no move.

He then takes out a new razor blade and repeats, ‘No move!’

OK, we’re gonna open the white pussey bits on the elbow, might sting a bit, but I can handle it. If you’re gonna make an omelet, you gotta break some eggs.

I relax a bit, and look around the room. Over on the opposite wall there’s a calendar with a Swiss mountain scene hanging askew, and further along the ubiquitous oil painting of Angkor Wat. You see these paintings all over Cambodia. In people’s houses, in cafes, Guest Houses and doctor’s surgeries, it seems.

I catch a vigorous sweeping motion out of the corner of my eye, and suddenly there is such a jolt of sharp, stinging pain in my elbow, rifling down my arm that I momentarily dry retch. It’s so intense that I draw inwards and go black for an instant and then involuntarily lurch forward with neck muscles tensed and jaws clenched.

Oh, Christ in heaven! Oh, Jesus! I gasp for breath, and there’s tears flooding in to my eyes and spit coming out through my teeth in bubbles.

The doc has cut a two inch slice right on the end of the elbow, straight through the pussey bits and in to the flesh. Oh, shit. Oh, scheiße!

I look up and see the doctor’s brother peering over my arm, eye’s wide, grinning.

‘What the fuck!’ is all I can manage.

The doctor says something in Khmer and grabs my arm in a vice grip, and begins squeezing. Oh, holy shit-bags in heaven. There’s blood and puss oozing out of the wound and running down my arm, and the pain is turning in to a deep throb, all the way along the bones and in to my fingers which are splayed outward and rigid.

I swear, I curse. The doctor squeezes some more and his brother continues to grin. I’m breaking out in a sweat. My whole body is wet, and I’m suppressing the urge to vomit.

This is hell. Keep it together, Feely. I’m talking myself through, holding touch, walking the wire.

I focus. I close my eyes and pull inside. The doctor keeps squeezing. I breath, forcing the air in and out, slow and deliberate. I feel myself sink an inch or two inside my body. I’m falling, separating.

And then a picture pops up in to my mind: my right hand is inside the pouch of a kangaroo.

All the way in, deep, and it’s the most pleasureable feeling imaginable.

Utter marsupial bliss, something from home, something from deep within the Australian heartland, from a time before even the aboriginals first got out of their canoes, some 50 odd thousand years ago, looked around and said, ‘Hey, nice place! Let’s move in!’

Fancy that memory coming up now! The mind is a beautiful thing.

I was down in Tasmania some years back with a mate, doing the Cradle Mountain–Lake St. Claire walk. Tasmania is an island off the south east coast of mainland Australia, about the size of Rumania (!), and our smallest state.

It’s also pretty much the land time forgot. They’ve got crazy mixed up animals down there that appear nowhere else on the globe. The echidna, for example, is a small, marsupial spiny ant-eater that lays eggs, and suckles it’s young in a pouch. A strange combination of survival skills, but it works.

In fact, most things down there are marsupial, except of course the Tiger snakes, which are aggressive, large and deadly.

And the scenery is wild and beautiful, and in many places, pristine. Rugged mountains, deep rain-forested valleys and spectacular rivers that cut through the rock and spill out in shooting waterfalls on to the plains.

And of course, kangaroos.

Cradle Mountain is a large, 'cradle' shaped rise in the north west of the state, and the walk to Lake St. Claire takes about a week. At the entrance to the walk is a small Bavarian style chalet, surrounded by well watered, green fields.

And oh! how kangaroos love open, green fields, gentle herbivores that they are.

My mate and I set out on the walk, working our way past the chalet and up around the open fields. Right beside us, lounging on the grass was a large mob of maybe thirty kangaroos, taking no notice of our approach. They see a lot of humans around the chalet, so no big deal.

It was a bright sunny day, and ‘roos were half asleep, chewing on some grass, lying on their sides and looking well fed and bored.

So what the hey! Maybe I’ll go over and pat one. Why not? And so I do, and she seems to like it as I tickle her behind the ears. Nice kangaroo!

Hey, maybe I’ll rub her tummy! I call out to my mate, ‘Hey! Look at this! I’m rubbing a kangaroo’s belly!’

He takes a picture, but keeps a safe distance.

I mean, you never know with kangaroos. If they get upset they can split you in two with one swift kick of their hind legs, so you gotta take it slow and easy if you’re gonna get intimate. It requires a sensitive hand.

So then I start thinking, ‘What’s it like in the pouch?’ It’s something you never read about, and doesn’t come up in conversation much.

Nice kangaroo, there’s a good girl! Uncle Feely is your friend!

I slip my hand lower and lower down her belly, giving her a quiet rub, back and forth as I go down, down towards the Inner Sanctum.

The fur is getting softer and softer, and then I get to the pouch, and slowly, slowly I slip my fingers in. No movement from the kangaroo, no body language to say That's as far as you go on the first date, buster!, so I push down further, until my whole hand is sliding in to the pouch.

And then it happens, and it’s hard to describe.

Imagine the softest, most angelic kid-leather mitten, warm and ever so slightly moist. Imagine it enclosing your hand, welcoming, protecting, accepting, holding. Imagine that, and maybe smoke a big joint as well, and multiply by a hundred, and you wouldn’t even be close.

My whole body goes immediately limp, and I sink to the ground beside the kangaroo and lie down in the grass, and I never want to move. I am home.

My mate calls out, a little concerned, ‘Are you OK?’, and all I can do is nod my head.

When I die, folks, I wanna go to kangaroo heaven.

I keep it there, not moving, not doing anything until after about 10 minutes my mate finally calls out that we need to push on if we’re gonna make the first hut by night-fall.

OK, time to pull out, but gee, what an effort of will.

We trudge off down the track, and I’m babbling on and on about the experience, and my mate tells me later that he was seriously concerned about my mental well-being.

Yes, well, they thought Rama Krishna was mad when he returned, stricken, from the all embracing arms of Mother Kali at Kali Ghat. And ditto for pretty little Bernadette when she returned, full of grace, from a meeting with the Virgin at the grotto in Lourdes.

Let them scoff, infidels that are!

When you have lay down with the Great Mother Goddess Kangaroo, who cares?

For the next 24 hours my right hand feels touched by the infinite. It’s light and airy, but also soft, contained and dense. It floats, but it’s also grounded.

Oh, yes, we can but talk in riddles of things mystical. So be it.

Back in the doctor’s surgery I’m getting my arm bound, and there’s blood seeping through the bandages. No stitches, no pain killers, no ‘There’s a brave boy!’, but most of the puss seems to be out, and I’m on my feet and following the doctor and his brother back out along the corridor.

I’m absolutely drenched in sweat and my clothes are hanging off me like I’ve been out in the rain.

Klaus takes one look at me, and I note the look of horror on his face. He'd heard me screaming from the back room.

We pay up, ten bucks in all, and take away some anti-inflammatory pills. Take 3 a day for 10 days.

OK, ‘Thanks, doc!’, now let’s get out of here.

‘When he said he was going to be clean the wound, I thought he was just meaning to give it a little bit of cleaning!’ says Klaus.

‘Yeah, welcome to Cambodia…’, I say, and we pull out from the curb and head back through town.

My arm is still throbbing, and stings every time I move it. Christ, what a day.

Klaus drops me off at my Guest House and invites me up to his house for dinner later on in the evening. He promises some Western food, and maybe we have a little bit of cheese, Felix!, which sounds pretty good.

I’ll be there.

We drive through the Guest House gates, I get out of the truck, I walk to my room, climb on the bed and cash in my chips.

Cycle Day 10: North West Cambodia

2004-10-14T19:11:00.000+07:00

Banteay Chhmar to Sisophon – 64 km

The Ride/the Route:

Another flat, dirt road. No hills and very light traffic. The scenery is mainly paddies and some forested sections, with blue mountains out towards Thailand.

My Cambodian Road Atlas tells me this section of road is in better condition than the road north of Banteay Chhmar, but I couldn’t see much difference. Good and firm in sections, and cut up in others. Easy in the dry, difficult in the wet.

There’s a few broken bridges where you must walk the bike across, but it’s no hassle. Also a few mine-fields, but they’re clearly marked. You’d need to work hard at getting blown up.

There’s no Guest House in B Chhmar, but a market and good cafes by the lake. A pleasant spot to eat and drink. There’s also a basic bike shop.

There’s drinks all along the route, and food, shops and a market at Thma Puok (16 km from B Chhmar), and also at Svay Chak/Chet (36 km from B Chhmar).

You will come in to Sisophon from the north. When you hit the main roundabout by the big park, turn east towards Siem Reap down highway 6, and there’s 4 Guest Houses (3 on the south side, and 1 on the north) about 1 km down the road, just past the Sokamex petrol station. They’re cheap and basic at 10,000 Riel ($2:50), and I recommend the one on the north side, but take your pick.

The Day’s Ride:

Orn’s family wake up early and head off for the paddies, and I get packed and survey the damage on the back wheel. The tube has blown the side out of my tyre, so it’s either change the lot here in Banteay Chhmar, or catch a pick-up all the way to Sisophon.

I’m not hopeful.

Orn’s on holiday from the university and is off to a party with his mates in town. I slip him five bucks with strict instructions to buy lots of beer.

Good for the over-taxed mind, Orn! I say.

Now, I admit I might be suffering from Advice Transference Syndrome (ATS), perhaps needing a beer myself, but I turn down his invite to tag along. My right arm is swollen and paining and I need a doctor, so I need to get to Sisophon without too much mucking about.

The word amputation has surfaced in my mind this morning, and it’s not a word I normally associate with myself.

What do you think the problem is, Orn? I ask, waving the arm around in front of his face for maximum emotional effect.

Mosquitoes! he says. Yeah, right, just what I thought. I may be becoming clairaudient.

We exchange email addresses, and I trudge off wheeling my bike, and turn on to the main road towards town.

There was a hell of a storm last night, and the thunder claps woke me a couple of times, but I’m refreshed, and am busily telling myself to relax and accept whatever the day brings. The last couple of days have been arduous, wet and mud-filled, and I’ve been seriously wondering about the meaning of it all.

Remember to be Buddhist, Feely! I tell myself. You could be at home, waking up to a beautiful Melbourne spring morning, sipping a latte and reading about the latest episode in fundamental lunacy, and who needs all that?

Out here in Camboland it’s also a beautiful morning, the clouds are puffy and white and there’s some blue sky peeking through, but the road through town is a complete pig’s trough. It’s gushing mud and brown water, and I’m dodging and sliding around just walking the bike.

I come up past the temple ruins and stop to take a quick look. They’re right beside the road and are the usual exotic Khmer thing; big Buddha faces, semi-reliefs and inscriptions, and of course, the whole complex is falling down. So works the ravages of time, war and Thai antique dealers.

I’d like to spend longer, but with a question mark hanging over the day, I push on after 20 minutes. I’m told there’s a bigger complex somewhere up the road, but again, I’ll pass. As I’ve said before, ruins don’t spin my wheels all that much. I prefer a good road.

Three hundred metres through town and around the bend I come to the market and a few shops and cafes across from the lake. It’s brown and ramshackle, but picturesque all-the-same. There’s a couple of large Bodhi trees arching across the road giving plenty of shade, and on the other side of the lake sit the temple ruins. The ancient Khmers certainly knew how to pick a nice spot.

I choose the cleanest café, and wander in. The waitress looks appropriately startled and runs off before I get a chance to order, but she’s back in a flash with the manager, Mr Beng (or something), who speaks pretty good English and is over-joyed to see me.

Welcome, welcome! he says, flapping his arms around and grinning broadly. He motions me to a seat, and then sits down right beside me, and sends the waitress off for two iced coffees on the house. Excellent.

Mr Beng was at university studying English and French up until 1975 when the Khmer Rouge took over. End of studies, act stupid, and keep your head down for the next four years.

But there was a lot Khmer Rouge activity up here in Banteay Meanchay Province right through until the mid-to-late-nineties, and for the local population the nightmare continued like a long drawn out Indian Summer, minus the chappatis.

The Khmer Rouge used to abduct people from around here, take them off in to the forest, and demand a ransom from the family, says Mr Beng, sadly.

I nod. The common people get shafted again here in South East Asia. I sip my coffee.

So what are you doing here, Mr Feelis? he asks.

Well, I’m cycling through to Sisophon, I say, but I’ve got this bung arm. What do you think is wrong it? I wave it around in front of his face etc. Mosquitoes?

He nods. Yep, mozzies. Damndest thing.

The swelling has mooched all the way down in to my right hand, and the knuckles and fingers are pudgey and white. It’s looking decidedly Sigourney Weaver and Alien.

Mr Beng shows me to the bike shop a couple of doors down and I sift through the dusty collection of tyres hanging from the wooden rafters. There’s no point getting the tube fixed if I can’t find the right tyre. They’ve only got about a dozen in all, so I’m not holding my breath.

But, wouldn’t you know! There it is, a 26 inch x 1.75 nobby tyre, made in Thailand. I strip the back wheel off the bike and hand in across to the bike shop guy. What a find! Who’d have believed it?

OK, lads! Fix the tube, fit the tyre, bugger the cost and give me a yell when it’s all done. I’ll be drinking coffee with my new best friend Mr Beng, and chatting up his waitress.

I pay the bike-shop guys 16,000 Riel ($4.00), which is a pretty good deal for a tube patch and a new tyre, and I hit the road.

The clouds are building up, and sooner or later it’s going to rain, but it’s only about sixty odd kilometres to Sisophon, so it’s gonna be no different than the last few days. Wet, and mostly shit-house, but what the hey! I’m working through my own little personal hell, and I’m sure it’s doing me good.

And despite the flat tyres, the bike is performing beautifully, and I’m getting distinctly fitter, and more resilient. And despite the swelling and occasional ache, the arm is not impeding my progress much. I need to take it off the grip every now and then and flex it, but apart from that, no worries.

But also, I must say, I’m in need of some Western company. Preferably someone who likes to talk about concepts, and maybe even better, someone who likes to listen to my concepts. I don’t ask for much.

Oh, Jesus, who loves me and always provides what I need, not what I want, send me a conceptualist! Thanks again, your pal, Feely, over and out.

The road out of town is surprisingly dry so I step on the pedals. I go past paddies in flood, and the usual stream of Khmer farmers calling out and waving as I go by. And the traffic is very light. A few pick-ups packed with smiling Khmers, some small tractors and trailors, and of course, motor bikes.

The new back tyre is hanging in beautifully, and I’m making great time, weaving around the ditches, cutting back and forth across the road and enjoying the view. Cycling can be exhilerating at times.

It’s a decidedly simple activity, really, but requires concentration and stamina, and as the days go by, you feel your body changing, getting taught and able.

And you are forced to excede your limits, forced to go on when all you want to do is lie back in an ice cold jacuzzi of Coca Cola, with ice chunks the size of footballs bobbing gently up and down and making the Coke go fizz-zz around your ears.

But so you get fit and mean. Is good.

16 km down the road I come to Thmar Puok. It’s a small village with the usual gaggle of shops and services, and I pull in for a Coke and some food. The clouds are looking menacing now, so after 15 minutes I push out on to the road again and move in to top gear.

There’s blue mountains out towards Thailand and green paddies all along the route, and the odd broken down bridge. The wind is kicking up in short gusts, and a light rain sweeps in from the west. It’s not enough to dampen the road or my spirits, and I cycle on, and it passes.

By the time I get to Svay Chet the sun has broken through and all of a sudden it’s hot. Yeah, things change out here. I stop at a café and ask to use the loo, and they direct me all the way out the back to the Wat.

I like country Wats, and have spent a lot of time in them over the years, and this one is no disapointment. There’s an old monk brushing up some leaves by the kitchen so I wander over and ask if I can use the toilet. He’s old and wrinkled, and amused, and gives me a key and points to the ablution block down the path.

It’s clean and quiet and shadey inside, so after attending to business I strip off and take a long shower. I pour the cool water slowly over my back, and let it run down my legs. My God, this is close to heaven. Over and over I pour, until I’m almost cold myself, and intensely refreshed.

When I take the key back to the monk I stop and tell him what I’m doing and where I’m going, and he asks me if I need a place to stay. How I love these guys! Normally I’d probably take him up on the offer. The thought of getting off the road and wandering around the grounds for the afternoon is appealing, but my arm beckons.

I say my goodbyes and head back to the café. Pleasure time over. While I’ve been chatting to the monk the clouds have rolled in, and a storm is on the way. It’s about 35 km to Sisophon from here, so I either sit it out, or brave it.

I decide to head out, and hope I can find a roadside café somewhere down the road when the rain hits.

Half an hour later I get caught in a deluge, and the road turns immediately evil. And there’s no café, just paddies and Khmer’s sheltering under trees. I ride on through the gathering mud until I’m so soaked and exhausted and pissed-off that I ride off the road at full speed and come to a slithering, agressive stop under a small tree.

I dismount and stand by the bike. I feel like Ratty in Wind in the Willows; wet, bedraggled and was having a good time but now it’s all turned bad. Ah, shit. Fuck this! I wanna be in Sisophon, now. Watching telly.

Two hours later I get there. It’s late afternoon, and the rain has stopped and it’s hot again. I check in to a cheap-o Guest House, take a shower and climb on my bed, feeling lonely and depressed.

My, how it all changes.

Am I the only idiot in the world who crawls in to his Cambodian hotel room, locks the door and doesn’t wanna come out?

Well, maybe not. I take a snooze, and wake up hungry. OK, that’s something: feel hungry, go get something to eat. Right on. Very Zen.

There’s a long line of cafes in Sisophon beside the park, and I cycle along the strip, looking for the right one. Just as I get to the end I see a Whitey at one of the tables and he waves. OK, this looks like dinner and if I’m lucky, a conversation.

Klaus is German, is working in Cambodia, is married to a Khmer girl and is a sometime cyclist. Excellent. He’s also a thoughtful chap, and a conceptualist.

After the prerequisite formalities, we launch in to all the world’s problems, the joys and sorrows of cycling and the mind-numbing terrors of the farang in Asia.

My, oh my! Who’s the Doubting Thomas? Who’s the guy that’s gonna get up to the Pearly Gates and get directed to the door marked: "Doubters"? And what on Earth am I going to say? Oh, boy.

Klaus inspects my arm and thinks it’s probably a spider bite that’s got infected. But no worries, if I can wait until lunch time tomorrow he’ll come and pick me up and take me to the best doctor in Sisophon.

But, Felix, he says, the best doctor in Sisophon is maybe a little bit not so good, and you may have to go to Thailand to get it looked at by a real doctor.

OK, no worries, let’s see what the local quack says, and take it from there.

Before I head back to my Guest House I send an email to my friend Sothy, an American-Khmer living in Chicago. I talk about the arm, and ask her what she thinks.

Any particular spiders or bitey things that you know of in Cambodia? I write. Any particular thing I should do?

Back at the Guest House I crawl in to bed and bury myself in my book. Doctors, I hate doctors almost as much as I hate Custom’s Officials.

OK, another lonely night in Cambodia. Read my book under the 20 watt globe until I can’t see anymore, turn out the light, go to sleep.

Next door there’s a couple of Khmer’s playing Cambodian pop music on a shitty little sound system, but that’s normal.

Cycle Day 9: North West Cambodia

2004-10-09T15:20:00.000+07:00

Samraong to Banteay Chhmar - 57 km

The Ride/the Route:

A flat dirt road, mainly smooth and firm, but a few intermittent sections where the road is cut up. There are a few dodgey bridges where you will need to dismount and walk the bike across, but apart from that, everything is straight forward and easy. The traffic is very light. As usual, an easy run in the dry, apart from the dust, but difficult in the wet.

Drinks available along most of the route, and some decent food at the small village of Am Pin, 30 km due west of Samraong. From there it’s 27 km south to Banteay Chhmar.

Banteay Chhmar is a small town, with a market and a few cafes, but there is no Guest House in the town itself. In normal circumstances, you’d be advised to ride straight through to Thma Puok, a further 16 km south down the road, where there is a Guest House (although I didn’t see it), or all the way to Sisophon, 64 km from Banteay Chhmar.

The temple ruins in Banteay Chhmar (what I saw of them) look interesting and untouristed, and there is apparently a Guest House some 10 (or maybe 20?) kilometres out of town at the main temple complex. I don’t know the price or exact location.

The people are very friendly and helpful out here in the north-west, and they don’t see many tourists, especially on bikes.

The scenery is pleasant and rural, paddies and forests, with blue mountains in the distance along the Thai border. There’s quite a few live mine-fields, but they’re all clearly marked. Stick to the road and well worn paths and you’ll be OK.

The Day's Ride:

I roll out of bed at the Phra Chea Thmey Guest House in Sam Raong at the usual early hour and Ouch! My right arm is swollen and sensitive to the touch. The little red volcanoes where the spider (?) bit me are still oozing puss, and the swelling has spread down the arm from the elbow to the middle of the wrist.

Yep, it’s now a medical problem, and not just a minor bother. Just what I need.

It’s also been raining all night, and I woke up a few times and listened to it pounding on the roof. I don’t mind too much if it rains at night, as long as it clears by morning, and there’s a chance that the road will dry out as the day progresses.

But no such luck today.

The clouds are heavy and grey, and there’s an annoying drizzle coming down as I walk out of the Guest House and cross the road to get some breakfast. The Ryk Reah restaurant serves up a big plate of French fries (Freedom fries? Save me!) and good coffee, so this cheers me up a little. French fries are not common fare in Cambodia, so I’m winning on the food front at least.

I order an extra coffee and sit at the front table by myself, gazing out on to the road and the early morning activity.

My arm hurts, it’s raining, I’m lonely, and the roads up ahead will be turning to mush so it looks like I won’t make it through to Sisophon today, about 120 km away. I’ll try for Thmar Pook, about 80 km south west of here. A couple of Khmers have told me there’s a Guest House, so that looks to be the day’s reasonable destination.

If worst comes to worst I can stop in Banteay Chhmar, a small town about 60 klicks down the road. Three out of four Khmer’s tell me there’s also a Guest House there, and these are reasonable odds for the lone cyclist.

And I’m slowly coming around to the idea that I’ll need to go to the doctor to get my arm looked at.

Oh, dear, the Cambodian doctor experience. It’s one I’ve luckily avoided up until now, but it looks like my number is up. Khnom bproo-ay! which is Pigeon Khmer for I’m a little worried about this!

So why don’t I just catch a pick-up all the way into Sisophon and save myself the trauma of two more days riding in the mud with a bung arm? Well, that would be cheating of course, end of story.

Like the Canadian Mounties, the Texas Rangers and any other gung-ho idiotic group of testosterone driven dick-heads you can imagine, the international cyclist comes through.

Why?

Well, ladies, down this bung arm and in to these legs flows the blood of Ned Kelly, the Man from Snowy River and possibly the milk-man who used to deliver dairy products to my great grandmother while my great grandfather was away fighting the Hun up along the Rhine River Valley in 1914.

No, defeat is out of the question, even if it kills me. I don’t have many material possessions but I have my pride.

At 10 am I climb on the bike and push out in to the rain.

The main road through Sam Raong is sealed and in very good condition, and heads due south to Chung Can (Chong Kal) and further on to Siem Reap. Considering the rain, the mud and my arm, it would be the wise choice, but I’ve been to Siem Reap a couple of times before, and the glut of soft bottomed tourists doesn’t spin my wheels.

No, it’s the north and north western back roads for me, so I take a right turn off the main road and push west towards Thailand.

It’s muddy and slippery, and there’s deep ruts in the road, and it’s approaching biking hell before my odometer hits 5 kilometres. But no use complaining, just turn those pedals over and over and forget about the pain.

You can do it, Feely. Be a man! So I tell myself.

At the 10 kilometre mark I’m getting cramps in my stomach. What next? Maybe it’s the French fries?

Two hundred metres on I pass a Halo Trust encampment, and the Khmers lying under the awning of the house call out as I go past. OK, this looks like the toilet stop, so I turn the bike around and roll in.

The Halo Trust is one of the many NGO groups here involved in de-mining, and one of the Khmers lounging about under the house speaks good English, which is always a relief. I use the loo, and take up the offer of coffee. And as I sit there sipping it, the rain really sets in.

It looks like the elements are really against me today. I belt across the road to the little variety store and buy a big bag of boiled lollies, run back, share them around and climb in to one of the hammocks. If I’m gonna be stuck here, I might as well get comfortable.

And then I drop off in to a deep sleep. God knows what’s going on. The weather’s screwy, my arm is screwy and so is my metabolism, it seems. The only thing that’s working well is my bike, and the Khmers.

And thank God for their easy going hospitality. No rush, no pressure, no questions. Just lie in the hammock and make yourself at home. This sure is a long way from Switzerland, at least the German speaking part.

I wake up at one o’clock and drink another coffee. Thanks again, lovely Khmers. The rain has stopped and I’m feeling fresh enough to go on. And I’ve only done 10 kilometres, so it looks like Banteay Chhmar might be the end point today.

Up and out along the road I go, working against the mud, sliding and slipping, standing on the pedals and straining to stay upright as I slither from rut to rut. Minute after difficult minute.

There’s farms and paddies all along the way, and a few rivers with broken down wooden bridges. I actually love these old bridges, with their horizontal planks lying across the roadway in all directions, and upright supports standing askew. The wood is grey and weathered, and the bridges have withstood the ravages of weather, time and twenty-five years of serious social conflict.

Beside the rivers, which are swollen from the rains, grow big shady trees, and you’ll often run in to kids fishing off the railings, or women washing clothes down on the cool, dark banks.

But of course, I’m being romantic. If you’re a Khmer, you’re gonna prefer the new metal bridges that are popping up all over Cambodia. They’re clean and functional, and have a certain Stalinist feel to them, but like most things Russian, they do the job.

At the 30 kilometre mark I stop at the small village of Am Pin. It’s almost 3 PM and I’m in need of more coffee and a little food. There’s a market and a string of cafes, but it’s a grubby place, with flies buzzing around the food and dogs sniffing about under the tables of the cafes. It’s also not helped by the rain and mud, but the Khmers are helpful and friendly, as usual, and tell me it’s about 25 kilometres to Banteay Chhmar.

The man at the café also tells me there’s a Guest House there, but the woman selling sugar-cane juice tells me there isn’t. It seems my odds have dropped to 50%, but there’s nought I can do about it, whatever the truth. All will be revealed in God’s good time.

But I’m so exhausted I take a good hour to freshen up, and then it’s back on the road. I’m only averaging ten kilometres an hour in this mud and slush, but I should make it in to Banteay Chhmar by 6:30 PM, just on dark, accidents notwithstanding.

On I go again, down the road, through the mud, slowly and painfully on and on. It’s like dragging a dead weight. I’m doing my best to keep my spirits up, and thankfully my arm, which is still swollen and doesn’t seem to be getting any better, is not impeding my progress.

I pass a few small villages, and the Khmers are friendly and surprised, but gee, this is hard. But by now the rain has stopped and there’s only dark clouds hovering overhead, and as the day turns into late afternoon it’s actually getting chilly out here.

It turns 6 o’clock and I check my odometer. It says 56 kilometres. OK, maybe five to go, maybe ten at a push. I think I’m gonna make it. It’s going on dark already, but not far now.

And then, POP!, a loud bang from the back wheel. Oh, Jesus, no! I’ve blown my back tube. I cannot believe this. Not now, Lord!

This is the last of the super-high-tech self-sealing tubes that they talked me in to buying down at the Melbourne Bike Shop before I set off on this mud-caked odysee (may a pox descend on them and their children for seventeen generations). These tubes aren’t worth a pinch-of-shit. Scheiße!

Not only has the tube blown, it’s taken out the side wall of the tyre as well. And finding a replacement tyre out here in woop-woop is gonna be difficult.

Oh well, cycling over for today, nothing else for it put to walk and push the bike. At five kilometres an hour I should make it in to town in one hour, or maybe two, depending on the distance.

It’ll be well and truly dark by the time I arrive, and then there’s the problem of finding the Guest House, if there is one. And if not, well, it may be the restaurant floor again, unless of course I find a good Samaritan Khmer who will take me in and say nice things to me.

And so off I set.

My God, I’m wet and miserable. The traffic’s non-existent, so it’s just me and the mud and my bung arm and now my equally bung back tyre.

If only that good Samaritan Khmer would come by and rescue me. It’d be also nice if he/she spoke English so I could explain my problems, and maybe go on and on for a while. Nothing like off-loading on someone when you’re in deep shit, but it helps if they know what you’re talking about. But fat chance out here.

You’re on your own, Feely, nobody loves you and you’re a dick-head.

Yep, I’m a dick-head, and my life is a bag of shit. Nay, a muddy, wet bag of shit…

And then, Hey! Hello! You need a lift?

There’s a Khmer coming up behind me on a small tractor and trailer, and he’s speaking English. And quite good English. Almost my favourite type. This is really blowing my mind. I can hardly believe it.

Am I hallucinating?

No, I’m not!

It turns out to be Orn, a 25 year old Khmer who is studying Philosophy at Phnom Penh University, and he’s stopped beside me and is asking me to put my wounded bike on the trailer, and no, there’s no Guest House in Banteay Chhmar, but why don’t I come home with him, meet the family and spend the night?

This really is too good to be true, but I’m willing to give it a try, trusting and desperate soul that I am.

I throw the bike on to the trailer and climb in after it. I whisper a quiet prayer: Thank you, Lord, I will never, ever in my life doubt you again. Amen, over-and-out, thanks again, peace be upon you!

A kilometre up the road we reach Banteay Chhmar town, and turn right in to Orn’s driveway.

Orn’s house is a typical Cambodian affair, large and airy, made of wood and standing on stilts. The family is somewhat startled to see what Orn has brought home, but they soon compose themselves and begin looking after the muddy, but honoured guest.

I take a shower at the outside well and climb in to some clean clothes. By the time I’m done, Orn’s sister has cooked up some fried beef and rice, and I gratefully tuck in to it, and sip some hot tea. Life is good.

That evening we sit around and Orn translates the many questions his family has about my fascinating life as a Westerner. I’m the first one they’ve studied up close, and a real curiosity piece.

As I’m sorting through my panniers, Orn spots my I-pod and asks what it is. I explain that it’s an MP3 music player, and I’ve got 20 gig. of Western music on it, everything from Rock to Jazz, Techno to World and Swing to R & B.

I set up my speakers and show him how to skip through the artists. He’s intrigued, and stops on The Sex Pistols.

Who is this? he asks.

It’s probably the word sex that’s attracted him, but how do you explain The Sex Pistols?

Ah, yeah, The Sex Pistols, I say. You probably won’t like ‘em. They’re a bit heavy.

But Orn insists. He definitely wants to hear The Sex Pistols, and so do his family. For real Western music that for real Western people listen to, and with a bit of sex thrown in. Can’t be all bad. Let her rip, Mr Feeliks!

And so I do.

God save the Queen,
The fascist regime!

The Pistols bash it out, and I let it run all the way. I don’t really know what else to do. By the time we get half way through the set, Orn’s father is looking seriously appalled, and Pretty Vacant pretty much does him in.

He excuses himself and goes upstairs. The rest of the family slowly follow, and Orn says: Yes, thank you, very interesting!

I try to explain that there’s a lot of different types of Western music, and maybe I could find something that they’d all like blah! blah! but the damage is done, and there’s no way back.

Western music is definitely a no-go in Orn’s house from here on in. Oh, well.

That night I sit quietly on the stairs smoking a cigarette and watch the lightning cracking over and over way off over the hills in Thailand. Big horizontal bursts of light, snaking across the sky, and the rolling thunder rattling the wooden boards underneath my bare feet. It’s a beautiful thing.

As I crawl under my mosquito net, Orn and family are huddled in the far corner watching a Cambodian soapy on the tube, and that’s pretty much the last thing I remember. I roll over, carefull not to put any pressure on my swollen arm and enter Dreamland.