Ben Welsher | Writings

Day 181 - Sydney 13 days into this unexpected tangent in the trip and some notable achievements could be listed. We were now regulars at the Coogee Bay Hotel (henceforth CBH), a bar known (to locals at least) as 'the animal pen'. We had taken in the famed Bondi Beach. I had swum on both sides of the Pacific Ocean. I had a job. Once more I had plunged into the masked ball of interviews where every interviewer pretends that they are offering the world's greatest job and every interviewee maintains the fantasy and professes to have dreamed of one day having such a position. I could now add 'Senior Administrator' to my garlanded résumé. The company? Accenture Plc., a multinational management consultancy firm with 250,000 employees worldwide. Well to be accurate 250,001. Not bad in less than a week. with a view from my desk of Sydney CBD 'fallen on my feet' would be an apt phrase to use. Before I started though myself and Mike found the time to catch up with our...

Day 168 - Sydney Surprising fact about Australia #1: It has seasons. Surprising fact about Australia #2: Some of those seasons are cold. Surprising fact about Australia #3: I was in it. And cold. Everybody likes surprises don't they? Unexpectedly finding two men in your flat when you return from work qualifies as a surprise right? The alarmed screams seemed to indicate so. Scaring Amy and Jayne has proved to be one of life's simple pleasures but traveling nearly 5000 miles to do it could be deemed excessive. Myself and Michael would have to find something else to do in the land of Oz. That something else was the perpetuation of travel by way of the accumulation of capital. Gainful employment in short. Like a bombshell we had exploded back into the girl's ordered existence and with the shrapnel flung wide we settled into catching up over a couple of boxes of goon. Bangkok's sweltering temperatures and dollar beers lay far behind us though we were as culturally, econo...

Year - 0 We all, no matter the person, find ourselves at a point. The moment I started writing this - a point. The moment I finish - a point. The moment you start reading this - a point. The moment you finish - you get the idea. And a myriad of events but moreso decisions lead us to these variad points. Our decisions but, again, moreso other people's decisions brought us to this crossroads. A crossroads unlike any we've seen before and, with apologies for being obtuse, unlike any we'll see again. And this laboured point springs to my mind as I walk outside everyday, as I walk out onto the streets of Bangkok and look across to the Khao San Road. It forces me to question my own imagination, I read 'The Beach', I dreamed of the viscerality of this place, I dreamed of the real world no matter how fake it actually was. In a previous life I dreamed of another thing, a world that lay beyond my own that I promised myself I would see, that I would drown in, in the utter bli...

Day 155 - Bangkok If there is 1 place synonymous or perhaps infamous with the backpacker circuit then surely this is it. If there is 1 place whose reality so precisely matched my expectation of it, whose sights, sounds and smells mirrored those of an imagination fed by popular media then surely it was here. I woke after the first proper sleep in days and walked out onto the balcony of the Romruen Resort. Beyond the sliding glass door was a wall of heat, thick air enveloped me and mocked sweat glands sprung desperately into action. We had arrived in the world's hottest city or its outskirts at least. Eschewing originality the bags were repacked and the two of us headed for the traveller's rite of passage that is the Khao San Road. It isn't Thailand, it isn't really Bangkok, it is something else. A road constructed from dreams of escape and the unquenchable thirst for the exotic. You could write it off as a parody of travel, a hollow shell of culture that ceased long ago...

In no particular order other than chronologically. McSorley's Irish Bar “...36 beers stagger us but not as much as the $90 bill...” Our first night on our first day in our first country of many to come found us in this Irish bar whose history dates back well over a hundred years. Presidents, poets and paupers drank here and now so had we two peripatetic Englishmen. Conversation was struck up with locals on the timeless and ever novel subject of differing nationalities and backgrounds, a scene to be repeated again and again on this trip. We staggered home happy, drunk and with empty wallets, a scene to be repeated again and again on this trip. Snorkeling in Belize “...I felt as if part of the ocean.” I must confess to an apprehension of the water borne of watching a particular film as a child, I believe the medical condition is known as 'Spielbergian scarring'. I didn't realise though that Mike's watery inhibitions put mine to shame. But he did it and he lo...

Day 153 - Beijing Our next journey was longer than average. 14,000 miles separated its beginning and end, or rather its end and its beginning for we were leaving this new world and returning to the old. From Rio to São Paulo and a couple of days in Bogota of table-tennis (82-0 Michael, eighty two - nil) and quinoa education before another flight north to Los Angeles via Miami. 24 hours in the city of angels gave enough time for a stroll along Santa Monica Boulevard with its parade of entertainers, freaks and pot peddlers. Tanned, athletic bodies pumped volleyballs back and forth on Venice Beach. Clean streets, straight lines, faintly familiar conventions. Even my fingernails, usually blackened with transit, were a pristine white through no doing of my own. Skateboarders looped and leapt along the promenade, sharks fought over morsels at the aquarium and the Hollywood sign remained elusive. After a wholesome dawdle there were two happy travellers when a pub was found stocking both cide...