Ben Welsher | Writings

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...

Day 95 - Huè My similarities to a Mandalorian begin and end with the wearing of a helmet. While the life of an interstellar bounty hunter is undoubtedly exciting this journey is also imbued with a certain freewheeling self-determination. I just hope I don't fall into a sarlacc pit. And for the first time in a couple of days I don't feel like I will. A night's sleep unruffled by (excessive) booze has led to a morning free from hangover and riding that is fun again. My mood is reflected in the landscape as the road bends to skirt the South China Sea. It becomes free of traffic and to my right is countryside. To my left begins to stretch mile after mile of empty beaches broken only by colourful fishing boats pulled up onto the sand. The road is good and I can safely take my eyes off it long enough to be lulled by surroundings that finally reflect those scenes I conjured in my mind before I started the ride. We are fed so many idealised images of travel, inaccurate at best and...

Day 93 - Dong Hoi Is hair of the dog a universal concept? (certain stricter Muslim countries aside). If so there may be something in it. Nevertheless I declined the café owner's kind offer of a beer and a toke on his enormous pipe (arf) and settled for a black coffee instead. A coffee served neither hot nor cold and the fact that the right word for this temperature escapes me shows the effects of my escapades over the past two nights. It was but a bitter drop in the black ocean of my fatigue. Anticipating an even worse day than yesterday I wearily swung my leg over the bike. After a few kilometres of riding that felt like nails on a chalkboard, if my brain was the chalkboard and the nails were nails, I pulled over to the side of the road. There was only one thing for it, I needed the help of a patron saint. Now you'd think that Saint Christopher would be the obvious choice, his specialism being travellers and all. But I felt a bit hypocritical calling on the help of a holy man...

Day 92 - Vinh Even in the most nihilistic recesses of a life lived under a 'light-touch' regulation of desire I struggle to justify the decision to ride with a steepling hangover. Not only because it increases the likelihood of death but also because it makes the time leading up to that death also feel like death. Not for me the rat-a-tat of Bonnie and Clyde's defiant end nor the Thelma and Louise weightlessness of being beyond reach. I haven't named the bike so I can't even meet my surely imminent demise was a plus one. Not that the bike would die of course, just look at the speedo. They'd pick it up, the police perhaps if they could spare a second from grift but more likely the locals, and it would be dusted off and back on the road in a day or two. Me they'd sluice into the gutter like they were shopkeepers cleaning their shopfronts, which they could be. To die on day two of this epic journey would make it look like a foolish idea and I can't have pe...