Ben Welsher | Writings

Day 131 - Malacca Someone always has it worse than you. If there is someone telling you that then they have, statistically speaking, a 99.99% probability of being right. It's not always a great deal of comfort as a person's suffering is uniquely their own but it is unimpeachably true. It's true unless you are that one person who has it worst. And if you are then you have my woefully inadequate sympathies. The person that caused my bus to Malacca to make an unplanned stop wasn't that person but he did cause me to stop feeling sorry for myself. He'd eaten something that didn't agree with him and, despite what was no doubt a considerable period of clenching and hoping, he could hold no longer. The driver pulled the bus over to the side of the motorway grudgingly accepting that a disrupted timetable was better than disrupted upholstery. The unfortunate guy whose bowels could take no more probably couldn't think of a worse situation in which to empty them. Car...

Day 124 - Perhentian Kecil And so, what cure for a broken heart? (tiny, plastic violins strike up) Distance - I was 438km from Kuala Lumpur Sun - it beat down Sea - ...onto the glistening blue waves Sand - over there between the land and the sky Sex Scuba - my name was on the board I'd arrived on the Perhentian Islands mid-morning after a little 14-hour bus journey. And nothing much tends to happen on a scuba island mid-morning. The dive boats are out and anyone too hungover to make the early dive had yet to surface. I wandered into Ohlala dive shop and found it deserted. Deserted that is except for Ben. He bade me sit down, made me a coffee and inducted me into his friendship circle (though current attendance was two). Now this wasn't me finally losing my grip on reality and conversing with an unimaginatively named alter-ego. Or if It was I had at least made him Dutch for some variety. And if you want to go down the road that all 'reality' is somewhat the p...

Day 123 - Kuala Lumpur I have too much time to kill, too much time to think. Walking the city I find my path bending back towards The Step Inn yet debating the idea all the way. There was no-one sitting outside to catch me in my door-stepping madness. Its infatuation and it'll pass but in the moment it masqueraded as eternal love. Nice to be reminded that I have it in me if nothing else. Maybe I should have got the early bus but it was expensive and I wanted to save money. And, to be honest, to hold onto the slim chance of a farewell. But it's never coming. And that is the truly sad thing here. Everything else was fixed but it didn't need to end like this. I'm less certain of my decision to send that message than I was yesterday because the consequences are now fully realised. It's hard not to imagine how things might have been if I had held back. What was the purpose of it? The purity of of honesty seemed unimpeachable as if that were justification in itself. It...

Day 120 - Kuala Lumpur Which animal would you be? The people round the table sip their beer, pass the joint and give their answers, A dragon I say. A goat she says. I the dragon, she the goat. If anything it feels the opposite right now. The next question comes, What makes you cry? It's turned into a an ice-breaker session at her hostel, People that want to be together but can't be My answers have gone from silly to soppy in a single bound but it was a reflexive answer, true and without guile. The irony of it hit me later. I'm going to bed she says. Pity, I think, I enjoy her company just that bit too much. Room 302 she says. In case it's easier to stay. Easier? Christ, I would find it very easy to stay. She has a boyfriend, I reluctantly know that. How easy would it be to know that and go anyway? I have another beer to consider my options and really, truly, to stop myself haring up the stairs after her. I sip and rationalise. It's probably nothing, j...

Day 118 - Tanah Rata And as soon as I was inside I knew something wasn't right I let out a laugh through a grimace...I graphed. I'd met Cory the day before on my way down to the Cameron Highlands. They are, as the name suggests, highlands. They are not, as the name suggests, where Ferris's friend fled after wrecking his father's 1961 Ferrari GT California. They are, in fact, a fief of Baron Cameron of Chipping Norton and Malaysia. 'Call me Dave' he says to his friends. Dave and his family come here in the summer so the children can have luge lessons while he screws, serfs and eats pigs. Or some combination of those verbs and nouns. The temperature cools as you wind your way up to the tea plantations that blanket these hills and the air provided a nice respite from the coastal swelter. Resolved to find more ethical pursuits than the ex-Prime Minister I'd booked on a walking tour. Rainforest stills covers two thirds of the area and, while the forest here i...

Day 113 - Georgetown Blues, oranges and pinks smeared the sky and a purple haze hung over the fields. The sun was rising slowly over over Southern Thailand and creating a scene of such delicate beauty that Turner could have painted it. It was just before 6AM and, sat in the vestibule of the the train, I could watch through the open door my time in Thailand running out. The train was hurtling (well, kind of) towards the Malaysian border and country number five. I'd contrived to miss my ferry off Ko Tao three days prior due to mixing up the arrival and departure times. One of the more burdensome aspects of solo travel is not having anyone to check your working out. It was a fuck-up and I may come to regret it more than I did at the time but it's also travel and pleasant chance often arrives after unforeseen events. The train gets me to Hat Yai and from there it is a bus over the border. As someone from Great Britain you can only really appreciate the wonder that is the Schenge...

Day 105 - Bangkok Bangkok...shit, I'm in Bangkok. Again. Economy of time necessitated that I skip Cambodia, the planning fallacy would not be defied in the greater scheme of things I had to admit. Economy of money necessitated that I fly back to Thailand's capital. I suspect that I'll never love it no matter how much time I spend there. Too big, too hot, too many stones that have been turned. peek-a-boodha With only a day to pass though I could suffer it one last time, tiny violins strike up. Wat Pho has a 46 metre reclining Buddha and while size isn't everything it was enough to get me through the door so I could wonder how they got it through the door. Stopping by Penguin Café Bar afterwards I found the alley leading down to it mysteriously blocked off. I crossed to the other side of the canal to get a better look. The owner was sitting on a concrete bollard watching a film crew bustling around his joint. He hadn't learned English in the 90 days since I was last...

Day 101 - Saigon Saigon...shit, I'm in Saigon. Every time I think I'm going to wake up back in Bridgwater... I stopped the bike on some non-descript bit of pavement in the middle of the city, turned off the engine and called time. It wasn't a triumphal ride down the Champs Elysée but I was done. Mission accomplished. Even if I got squished under a bus riding from this spot to my hotel they couldn't take my achievement away from me, 'they' being no-one in particular. And what about me? I do a brief monologue to camera to record the moment. No-one looks twice at foreigners talking enthusiastically into little black boxes on sticks anymore but this is only for my edification. So, again, what about me? I think I feel relief. I don't know if I have more pleasure in the success of achieving my goal or at the evasion of disappointment. Those may be two sides of the same coin but they may also be reflective of how a person views their life. Do they view it as a pu...

Day 100 - Mũi Né Cruising in the sunshine, towards my finish line. Nothing could stop me now except exceptionally poor judgement or very bad luck. Back to that poor judgement... As previously stated my bike (who shall remain nameless) was not in the first flight of youth when I bought it. The Bonnie Blue of the road, she'd had a lot of riders. It had near enough required one of those electric heart re-starters you find in phone boxes these days to get it going at first. The speedo had never worked which, as I never knew what the speed limit was anyway, didn't seem a problem. But it made it slightly tricky to argue with the man who had just told me you were breaking the speed limit He might have been right. There's every chance he was right. But since I'd likely been breaking the speed limit all-day, everyday for the last eight days it seemed a bit late to be telling me now. Given that the man was a policeman however, it was more than just a casual observation. It was...

Day 99 - Nha Trang Ben don't surf. He do look at beaches. Them's the breaks. Charlie don't surf either so there was not much to see in Nha Trang except sand and water under a grey sky. Stepping out of the hotel in search of my morning coffee I found myself unsure why I came here so I went to look at the beach in case that was the reason. It wasn't. I think I just liked the name of the place. I also wanted to get ahead of schedule so the previous day I'd decided to to find out just how far I could ride. It hadn't got off to the best start as, after my dinner in the silent restaurant, I'd returned to my room only to be woken by doors slamming with a startling ferocity. Someone on my hallway was very displeased with something, possibly doors. They kept this up for over an hour and my early start was out of the window. After packing up I resolved to just give the throttle a flick and see where I ended up. Once on the road things improved markedly. The scenery w...

Day 97 - Hoài Tân I'm somewhere but I'm not sure where. In a geographical sense I'm by the beach in Vietnam. In a town that may or may not be called Hoài Tân. It's the place nearby whose name remains when you zoom out of Google Maps. In a numerical sense I'm 1000km into a 2000km journey so, according to Pythagoras, halfway. In a specific sense I'm in a bar that is so empty of other people that my thoughts seem to echo even though the place has no walls. The only sound is the fan cooling me and the waves hitting the beach. I cough and it sounds like a foghorn. The staff mill about in the background but they have no English and I am deeply alone. I find the situation strange rather than unpleasant, though I feel bound to search my feelings. In a personal sense I find myself unsure if I'm the person I was, the person that pursued an unfulfilling life to breaking point. I suspect not but it is hard to judge when you're inside the fishbowl. Rory would insis...

Day 95 - Hội An Umbrella eh? Would you like an umbrella sir? Eh Eh? Cometh the rains in central Vietnam (and they do cometh) cometh the men with the means to keep you dry. My path had crossed Rory's again and we were sat outside a bar in Hội An as rain gently pattered the glistening streets. We took it in turns to politely decline the repeated offer from the salesmen who appeared in their multitudes after the first drop hit the ground. There was however no need for their flimsy, mass-produced protection from the elements. We *were* the elements. Toughened and smoothed by hills and valleys and time. Two pebbles in the stream. I'd got to Hội An the night before and realising that Rory was in town had agreed to join him on an organised pub crawl. It was like a form of speed-dating without the prospect of a date at the end of it. Most conversations with the other 'crawlers lasted only a few minutes and covered the basics of name, nationality, where you'd been and where you...