I am unsure whether it is the wind, or the spray being kicked up by the boat, or whether it is conceivable that I am cold. This seems impossible, in Bangkok, at this time of year. Nevertheless, the driver has donned an impressive looking ski-jacket and is using the hand not on the tiller to fiddle with the zipper. I notice that the North Face logo appears to be sewn on backward, and that the stitching doesn’t quite seem to match the pattern, but he certainly looks warm. Overkill for sixteen degrees, maybe, but there is no doubt the wind is cutting. He’s mastered the zipper and reaches his now free hand up to his neck and tucks the amulet there inside the jacket and out of sight.

More throttle. More noise. The wind is cold.

.

There is a tiny hut, a ramshackle collection of planks held together with rusty nails, that sits at half way down my soi. In it are housed a desk, an angle grinder, and a concrete plinth upon which sits a hand-drawn checkers board and enough bottle-tops for two teams of draughts. Singha for red, Heineken for green. The kings have inscrutable Thai symbols scrawled on them with thick blue paint.

This is where the drivers of the motorcycle taxis that ply their services from soi spend their days when they are not running people to work, or weaving wildly down alleys while kids in school uniform ride side-saddle, or doing lackadaisical, effortless, chin-ups on the parts of the street lights that are supposed to hold flowers but instead simply outline smudges on the sky.

They share the space with an old man who makes amulets, and a carefully maintained cage containing the old man’s tame bird. This is a vicious black and yellow thing who is let out on weekends to terrorise the local dogs and will scuttle and swoop back to the cage at the sound of metal on the grindstone, or from the slightest whistle from the old man.

On Sundays, the motorcyclists sit in a circle around the checkers, still flaunting jaunty orange vests, and pass around a glass bottle of coke that has been judiciously topped up with Sang Som. The bottle stays full, but I notice the colour of the liquid inside gets lighter and lighter as the sky darkens.

..

“Can you hold it?” she says.
“Hold what?”
“The bottle. Hold the bottle.”
“What in god’s name are you doing?”
“Mixing them. There’s enough space in the bottle now.”
“You’ve never done this before, have you?”
“What, why?”
“You pour the spirit into the can. That way it just looks like a normal can. It’s actually quite hard to look inconspicuous when you are standing in an airport taking slugs from a bottle of imitation vodka”
“Oh, yeah. Okay.”
“That man over there is laughing at you. Hell, I’m laughing at you.”
“Give me the can.”

And I do.

.

We dip to the right to avoid one of the idling barges and an arc of spray slaps the oily water beside the longtail. The engine cuts and we roll forward as our wake overtakes us.

“It’s because of China,” the man sitting opposite me says, as the driver opens the throttle again, sliding us back over the wake and onward.
“What’s because of China?” I ask.
“The weather. A low pressure system up there and it throws the whole thing out of whack. It’ll be another two weeks at least.”
“And then?”
“Hopefully some bloody heat. This isn’t right, not for March.”
“It’s nice though, right? A break from it.”
“Sure, if it was a break, day or two, right. But it’s been a week. Close to. Upsets the locals. Don’t like that,” and he stubs the butt roughly against the hull and flicks it into the river. “You saw the paper today?”
“The Post?”
“Yeah, that idiot with the earthquake predictions. Tsunamis. Wipe out half the fuckin’ coast down there . Just like oh-seven.”
“I didn’t see that,” and I’m thinking about 2007. Really? It was then. Earlier, surely?
“Some nutjob from up in the provinces. Reckons they’ve predicted every major disaster in the past twenty years. Flawless record. Blah blah blah. Well now my wife is too scared to travel down that way and half the bloody office are acting like it’s Armageddon rather than a holiday. Reckon if he’s that bloody good he should’ve had a go against Paul,” he says as he glares at another oncoming barge.
“I’m sorry, who’s Paul?” I ask.
“The octopus, mate” and now I am utterly baffled.
“The octopus? What octopus?”

..

The two sisters are identical but, dressed as they are, you have to look closely to see it. One has donned a bright pink apron, pockets overflowing with notes of small denominations. She works the cleaver rhythmically against a rubbery octopus, clinically separating limbs from body. Thump, thump, thump, swipe. The other wears a simple black polo shirt and a silver charm, and rolls tiny bags of lurid vermilion chilli-sauce between her fingers. They move in harmony, the cleaver and the fingers working taut rubber bands over the lip of tiny bags. Two bodies as one. She’s created a small pyramid of the bags, and it glistens like a tiny shrine to some god of fire, or fertility, or clay-red dirt. A shrine with an offering of tentacled limbs piled below it.

.

“Soccer person? Football, whatever” he says, and looks ruefully at the cigarette packet that’s been soaked by the river water.
“I guess. To play. A bit.”
“You didn’t watch the World Cup? -” and then I remember Paul, the octopus who chose winners from a box and who was now, if I recalled correctly, stone-cold dead.
“- picked the winners for ages. Magic run. I’d trust him over some bloke with a fold-up table, tarot cards and a couple of plastic chairs. Thieves, the lot of them.” This makes me think of an article I read the other day stating that Australia now holds the ignoble honour of having the highest per capita rate of gambling in the world.
“I think he’s dead,” I say.
“What? The article was just today.”
“No, the octopus. After the World Cup. I think,” although I am less certain now than I was a few minutes ago.
“Someone probably had a flutter that went the wrong way, eh. Not a good job to have, octopus.”

.

The river is the colour of freshly-poured miso, and the sediment swirls behind us in ever diminishing loops. Fibonacci is at the tiller, and I’m watching the angle of the sun as it tips behind Rama 9.

..

At the mouth of the soi, near where the motorbikes are parked, I notice the bird pecking at something curled on the ground. It is the skeleton of a frog, and the tiny fingers are splayed wide, clutching at air.

…

On the way to the river today, I saw a girl coming out of Seven Eleven, letters on her shirt in a sharp abrupt sans, “I’d rather die terrified than live forever.” And I would.

Or at least that’s what I said in the hypothetical.

Posted in Mwah on Sunday May 29, 2011.

‘Chee cheong fan, one please,’ I ask the lady who is stooped, scowling, behind the counter.
‘Pork. You can, ah?’ she retorts.
‘No problem’
‘Chilli? Dai, ah. Dai dai.’
‘Please, and a coffee. Kopi o. Siew dai, okay?’
‘Can. You sit, ah. I bring’ and she smiles as she takes the plastic note and inspects the tiny transparent pattern in the corner.

The two aunties that run this hole-in-the-wall coffee house at the arse end of Chinatown have a polished double act that indicates many years together. They yell to each other from opposite ends of the shophouse, and create a bubble of bustle and bluster as they stomp up and down, slapping the tables with sodden rags. The woman at the register grabs a plate, piles it high with food, and then passes it back to the other auntie without a glace, confident in the knowledge that a hand with be there, ready to receive it and relay it to its destination.

It is the first Sunday after New Year, and even the flies seem lazy. They buzz in slow circles, not bothering to land. The streets are near deserted, shops shuttered and barred, and the only traffic an open-backed truck full of laborers in matching blue shirts. It does a slow lap of the block, looking for shade, and then parks under an overhanging awning and turns on its hazard lights. No one in the back moves.

At the front of the shop, perched on the myriad burners, beneath contraptions girdled with frayed wires and caked-on fat, are an array of pots, steaming. I can smell the rich anise tang of bah ku teh, and the fatty note of pork hock, until the ancient grinder is cursed at, hit, and forced into service. The aroma of coffee floods through the shop. At the table next to me three people in business shirts, a heaped plate of kaya-toast in front of them, talk of the year ahead.

From the street comes the sound of the Indian temple up the road and, if I crane my head, I can just make out the heaped piles of shoes sitting on the pavement, beneath the watchful eyes of a porcelain cow, liquid eyes glossy in dead painted perfection. “This year, I get fit,” the eldest of the group says, as he grabs a piece of toast, smeared with butter and smothered in sticky kaya, “start to run, lah.”

When it arrives, clunked onto the table with a nod, the coffee is black, viscous and strong, exactly as a cup Hock Chew’s finest should be. My eyes water as I take the first sip, and I concentrate on the chopstick dexterity required to pick up the slippery cylinders of rice flour that are my breakfast. At the neighbouring table, the final piece of toast is snapped up and fingers wiped on greasy napkins. “It’s 2011. A good year. Heng, ah.”

It is, and it will be. I can feel it.

Posted in Mwah on Monday January 3, 2011.

The function of this weekend is one of relief, a rusted yellow wrench to smash against the pressure valve, and a chance to escape the grime, sweat, and claustrophobia of Krung Thep. The target: the ancient capital of Sukhothai, a crumbling city of ruins, praised by the consulate staff in Canberra who urged us to get out, explore, and then send them an email explaining the highlights. So, bus, beer, ruins, beer, chill, write email of effusive praise. Too easy. The simplicity of this plan should make it impervious to disruption.

The plan falls apart three minutes after shouldering our way through the teeming throng of people at the Mo Chit bus terminal, as shutters are dragged down over ticket booths and options for destinations shrink by the second.

“Sukhothai?”
“No can. Full.”
“Umm, no air bus?”
“Full.”
“Tak?”
“Full.”
“Where can I…”
“Full. No can. Full!”

We wander the line and find one company that has put on extra buses heading north, late departures, expensive, but it is out there, and it is not Bangkok. We are headed for Chiang Mai, the second largest city in Thailand, and long a refuge for hippies and their brethren. The last time I was there we hiked through the hills, and the early morning songthaew ride to the bus terminal the only time I can remember ever being cold in Thailand.

.

Chiang Mai has a stately laid-back charm, particularly in the old city, and it invites the kind of lackadaisical, coffee sipping, book reading, tofu eating weekend that I am fully in favour of. I wander the leafy back streets and admire the numerous second-hand bookstores, their treasures weighing heavily against my post-kindle decision to not end this year with another forced deliberation over which stacks of paper I can afford to ship to the other side of the planet.

The majority of local shops are today closed and shuttered, people having headed home for the public holiday. The reason for the holiday is H.M. the Queen’s birthday which, in Thailand, is also celebrated as Mother’s Day. Earlier today, long lines of locals stood waiting to lay cones of flowers before a huge portrait of the queen, as old ladies warbled karaoke into an open mic behind it.

We’re on the hunt for somewhere to open the evening’s proceedings and the few bars which have their doors open display the usual bunch of weary looking travelers and scruffy, overweight expats. We stroll the canal for a while before setting on Rooftop John’s, three flights of rickety stairs, and a simple, open, rooftop bar still firmly stuck in the sixties. Tubes of gaudy neon lights blink to no-one in particular, and a screaming kid on the pool table voices his intense displeasure at not being allowed another coke.

We grab a table near the edge and look out over low-rise Chiang Mai. There is a Thai man sitting at the table opposite us who bears an uncomfortable resemblance to Kim Jong Il, sunglasses and all, and after some strongly worded directions from him, the serving boy climbs the barrier onto the outside ledge of the building, to sweep pieces of paper off the edge and watch them flutter three stories to the ground below.

We order a bottle of Sam Song, the acclaimed and reviled Thai fire-water. The tasting panel is unable to ascertain whether it is whiskey or rum, but is however unanimous in its verdict of “horrific.” It is almost tolerable with coke though, almost, and it gets better the more you drink. We are near the bottom of the bottle when the fireworks start going off, about a hundred metres directly above us, the difference in time between the arrival of light and sound indistinguishable at this distance, and a chest thumping boom for each and every flash.

..

It rains then, in that striking monsoonal fashion of the tropics, where the sky is clear one second and then thumping bricks of water at you the next. The volume of water is extraordinary, and small sub-sois off the main drag turn from roads to rivers in a matter of seconds. We sprint from hastily erected shelter to shelter, skipping over electric wires trailing through puddles, the water at our ankles and rising fast.

The only place that seems to be open is an overpriced Thai place just off the touristic night markets, packed with foreigners and well-lit, in contrast to the sodden, empty stalls surrounding it. The walls are covered in years of glowing praise about the food, written in multiple languages in red and blue sharpie. Based on the reviews, it seemed a dish from here was liable to cure cancer, reverse premature balding, and buy you a Christmas present that wasn’t socks, all at once. The food is unremarkable, but the wine cheap, and after finishing a bottle and abandoning all hope that the rain will stop, we’re back puddle jumping in search of a tuktuk to take us onward on our quest to unravel the mysteries of the Mai.

…

We spot the bar as the tuktuk hammers through the flooded back streets, sheeting water behind it. There is a simple orange sign and the sound of music from within, and all the windows are fogged with condensation. The driver has appropriated two signboards advertising ice-cream, and has balanced them on either side of his seat to offer some protection from the deluge. Given how wet he is, I don’t think it is working terribly well.

We’re across the threshold before we really look inside. AC/DC thrums merrily in the background and there are about twenty guys in here, heavily tattooed and in gang leathers. An enormous white dude on a table to one side, pieced, bearded and glaring. Cigarette smoke puts a haze over everything. An old Thai women stands behind a bar in the corner, three half empty bottles of Jack Daniels and what looks to be a collection of bullets in front of her. There is a slight pause in conversation as people realise we’ve wandered in. The spotlight of attention that you don’t want when those directing it look like they break children’s fingers as an amusing pre-dinner game. Fuck.

A grinning imp of a man, face a lined maze of Thai script tattooed forehead to chin, lit cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth, steps forward, “You drink?”

Before we left Australia we were subjected to a week of briefings that were supposed to give us a crash course on staying alive, more focused on the folk being deployed to Port Moresby, or Ghana, but the presentation that jumps to mind now is the PowerPoint slide of a carefully constructed risk matrix setting out the relative risk factors of varied environments. The colours were your standard cool-to-hot blues and oranges, as favoured by so many project managers, with the deep crimson of “highest risk” reserved for unfamiliar places, while under the influence of alcohol.

We drink.

One of the bigger guys has been dancing around with what looks to be a mortar round, fat stubby fins clustered around the base, that he’s holding as he mock-tangos back and forth. One of the fins snaps with a sharp, ‘ping’ and there is a resounding metallic thunk from next to the table. He has just dropped it on the floor. I feel the floor shake through my feet, then continue to vibrate as several more choppers pull up outside. We are given more beer by someone in leather who has a fetching chain wrapped around his wrist. I have a sneaking suspicion that this is spiraling out of control.

And then our friend the imp puts on ‘My Sharona,’ grabs a skinny Tony Jaa lookalike by the waist, kicks the fallen bomblet to one side, spins him onto the floor, and it all gets a little weird.

Posted in Travel on Sunday October 17, 2010.

Today, the river is green. Clumps of broad-leafed plants stretch from bank to bank, spinning in delicate patterns as they are pulled into eddies that ripple from the centre, where the water runs fast and deep, and the squat barges, heaped high with gravel, spread tresses of silt behind them.

Toward the banks, the plants clog the water, a blanket bunched around the boats manoeuvring between the piers. The surface looks solid and substantial, like the tops of clouds, as the seatbelt sign dings to itself in resignation and you soar upward into the sunlight. I always imagine pulling myself through the window, running down the wing, and swan-diving out into the white.

I want to hop-scotch across these plants. I want to run like a basilisk. I want to be free.

We hit a narrow channel and slow to avoid the curling wake of a passing longtail. A swarm of tiny grasshoppers, green as the plants they’ve leapt off, launch themselves into the air and onto the woman in front of me. There is a wet slap as a catfish hurls itself from under the plants and smacks into the side of the boat, as if in competition with the grasshoppers. The woman doesn’t react at all.

The shrill whistle of the conductor sound from the rear of the boat, as he guides it toward the dock. Endless wolf-whistles to anyone who will listen. We are under the bridge now, in a moment of shade, and in the distance I can see the building that is built but not finished, near-fractal recursions of faux greco-roman balconies stretching 40 floors into the sky, the columns less and less complete the further you crane your neck.

The river is green, and as we whistle our way up against the dock, I remember green Pepsi.

.

“You want green Pepsi?” he says, as the lady with an apron bulging with cutlery leans over to place bowls brimming with thick brown soup in front of us. There are small chunks of meat in here I can identify, and larger ones I can’t.

“Green Pepsi? What?”
“Is special Pepsi. You want, you try?”
“I want. I’ll try.”
“Okay, I go for green Pepsi.”

At this stage, I am imagining one of two things. The first is a special edition bottle, bright green, with energetic Thai script, and with pictures of cavorting, oiled young things, smiling as they frolic over whatever beach or forest setting the men in suits deemed appropriate to “really, like, connect with the demographic.”

The second is a bench, somewhere in this mass of people sat on plastic chairs under the bridge, where sugar syrup and an assortment of tiny bottles are used to concoct whatever bespoke beverage is required for the occasion. I am thinking about green Pepsi. I am thinking about bhang lassie, happy pizza, special cookie and ‘hey mister mister this one just for you special okay?’

Okay.

What I am not expecting is enormous cans of Heineken, and matching green straws. He grins and pushes one across the table. “Green Pepsi!”

The lower balconies of that building behind him are covered in bright green paint. It hurts to take it all in at once, the building, such is the enormity of the spectacle of 40 stories of crumbling opulence, a tall, broken kingdom surrounded by a sea of humanity. It’s not something you expect to see in ascendant Thailand. Instead I think of rural Japan, and of their struggle to retain a sustainable population, as the excess of the bubble years is slowly reclaimed by the trees.

..

I dream of a river with deserted, crumbling schools lining its banks. Where blackbirds swoop between the trees, harassing hawks three times their size. Dragonflies as big as my fist hover above the surface of the river, iridescent and ancient. The train fills with school children and then empties again. Lungs. Like lungs.

I dream of you. I think this is important.

You bound through the glass door, and the house is as it was when I was growing up: orange map of Texas on the back door, potted plants crowding against the glass criss-crossed with fat strips of masking tape, to stop the dogs running through it. The bricks outside are specked with moss.

You throw yourself into my arms and smile, really smile, then nestle your head against my neck.

“How did you know I was back?”
“Your brother called. He said I had to know.”
“He said…”
“We all know.”

I wake and, in the dim light that filters through the curtains, everything is green.

Posted in Mwah on Wednesday August 25, 2010.

I thrash back and forth for an hour in the pre-dawn fuzz before giving up and hauling myself upright. The air-con has clicked off at some time during the night, and it is hot already, as the sun creeps around edges of stippled grey in the sky. A tepid shower, in the haphazardly tiled bathroom, neck angled to avoid hitting my head on the roof, provides none of the refreshment it should. I am sweating as I step out of the water. I will continue to do so for the rest of the day.

I am the first one of the group downstairs. The cavernous dining hall, empty every other day this week, is this morning teeming with people. There must be a conference here today. A line snakes out the door as people queue to sign in, and I notices smiles and head nods between people in the queue; everyone knows everyone, or at least makes a good show of doing so.

I head for the coffee, a tarnished and battered pot that emits the smell of stale Nescafe. Still, it’s caffeine, and dearly needed. As I fumble for the milk jug, a woman, head to toe in peacock green, and with a pin that would make Madeline Albright jealous, leans across me and places a stirring spoon into my coffee with a toothy smile. I manage a grin in return and shuffle back to my table in the corner to watch proceedings.

It smells of the tropics today, the steady rain overnight putting a gloss sheen on everything: rust-stains and dirt streaks in shining relief against the dead grey sky. But it is not polluted, the air, or not noticeably so, and this surprises me. I remember the smothering heat and exhaust-choked air of my last visit, shirt wrapped over my face as we sat on the open-windowed public bus as it idled in traffic. We paused for thirty minutes or so, stuck in a Chinatown side-street, an immobile island in the sea of commerce around us. T remarks that the traffic is worse than KL, and that this is somewhat of an achievement in South East Asia. Nate gets out of the bus to stretch his legs, walks a slow circle around us, then heaves himself aboard again. We have not moved. This is close to ten years ago now.

So yesterday, as we whisked over the traffic in the efficient, clean public transport system, and the clear blue sky showed a city that stretched right to the horizon, it occurred to me that Bangkok has changed, and much more than I had expected it to. In the time large Australian cities have spent bickering over the implementation of smart cards on the struggling, poorly connected public transport system, the Thais have built the public transport, linked it to a smart card network, connected the smart cards to the atms, then linked these to essential services. Taking a leaf from Japan’s book, the atms are the service centre where you, in addition to banking, top up mobile credit, pay bills, clear flight bookings and recharge any of those aforementioned smart cards.

It’s eminently sensible and makes me wonder about the two-dollar-munching obelisks that grace Australian shopping malls, that click and crunch as they struggle to produce a balance statement on request. This is not smart technology, nor a strong use of a network, it is a profit creation device, one akin to speed cameras on deserted weekend freeways, right on that corner where the speed dips to sixty, but only for two hundred metres.

This coffee is horrific.

A group of Thai men, having collected their folders of conference paraphernalia, take the table across from me and the last man to the table realises there isn’t a seat left for him. He glances around at his options, and as he does so, is teased about, just perhaps, having to sit with the foreigner. This causes much amusement amongst the group, and they titter as he pointedly turns his back on them, and moves to sit on a free table on the other side of the room, alone. His colleagues continue to chortle for a while, then turn their attention to plates piled with wilted vegetables, red chilli heaped on top, and the ever present fish sauce glistening like the rain-slick streets outside.

Good Morning Bangkok.

Posted in Asia on Sunday August 8, 2010.

A stream of Daft Punk helmeted motorcyclists zip past, the single traffic light reflected as a jagged lipstick red smear in their mirrored visages. They lean hard to avoid the bus. Kick up dust. I give my window a half-hearted tug, but it’s wedged open, and the tiny half curtains ripple in the morning breeze. The dust has shaded the walls of the houses facing us a burnt ochre, and on one huge letters spell, “Welcome” and “LOVE” in lazy broken loops of white spray-paint. We are angled diagonally across the intersection, stuck behind a teetering pile of wooden wardrobes being drawn by a vehicle that resembles the result of a drunken tryst between a ride-on lawnmower and a bullock cart.

Emerging from the stalls that line the road, snack food vendors use the opportunity of a halt in motion to push their way through the swarm of old women negotiating the loading of a stack of chairs, and step up onto the bus. The driver and conductor share a brief exchange as the light changes to green, and manoeuvre the bus past wardrobes, escaped chickens, and stacks of wilting vegetables, before returning to their primary conversations on respective mobiles. The last stack of tightly-bound red plastic chairs is heaved onto the roof with a clatter and the women push forward to climb aboard. Inside the bus, vendors weave their way up and down the aisle, tiny chickens splayed wide across single skewers, glistening with honey and oil. The couple in front of me haggle for chicken livers with a girl who cannot be more than fifteen years old.

On the other side of the road, behind a perfectly level fence that doesn’t quite reach the ground, sits a chipped and colourless temple. It is straddled by an equally chipped and colourless concrete Buddha, with prominent nipples and a beatific gaze that takes in the shabby wooden lodgings scattered around him like discarded children’s toys. An old monk, hand holding his glasses against his nose, and waving frantically to catch the driver’s attention, begins to head in our direction. As he crosses the courtyard in front of the wat, three novitiates, orange-robed and running, converge on the shuffling older man. First a bag is slipped over one shoulder, a water bottle pressed into a waiting hand, and a sheaf of bank notes slipped into a pouch around his neck. At the threshold they stop and stand in a line, grinning.

The monk steps aboard and stops, blinks, and for a moment looks concerned. As if only just learning where he is, he pats the pouch at his side, and begins rifling urgently through its contents. Papers and water are held, chin to chest, as he rummages through the bag. Finally he smiles, nods, and withdraws a crumpled packet of cigarettes and a battered phone. He waves at the trio of shaven-headed, saffron-robed youngsters and begins to shuffle to the back of the bus, before being instructed by the driver to ride shotgun, up front, robes curling around the gearstick.

Ever since we set off, the TV mounted to the front dash has played karaoke, and the video to every song is a slight variation on the same story: a woman, who works in a restaurant, stares wistfully at her mobile, waiting for it to ring. We cut to the love interest who is busy in his inevitably solid and respectable job: smashing rocks into smaller rocks, delivering large bottles of water, or welding something to something else. There are several closeups of his mobile, sitting just out of sight. Perhaps it has slipped out of his pocket, or between the seats of his car. It is ringing, and he cannot hear it. She is lost, unsure what to do, and so she rings again. And again. When it seems all is lost, and our girl is stumbling through the rain-lashed streets, crying, the phone will ring. We see it again, close, and it’s definitely his name and suddenly he’s there with an umbrella, and an easy smile, and they duck into a restaurant so that she can look bashful as she feeds him a spoonful of noodles. Their phones rest against each other on the table, together at last. These bricks of plastic are the stars of this show, and the people surround them mere props, useful only in bringing them together.

The girl with the livers has failed to convince the couple in front that they represent a sensible investment, and so she scrambles to the front to step down and off. Her hands and face are streaked with the red black dirt that covers everything, and there are shining streaks where the fat from the chicken has run down her arms. As she nears the steps her pocket begins to ring, and she hands her skewers to a friend and pulls a phone from her jumper.

With a sigh, the wind kicks up again. The sting of dust particles prickles against my cheek, and clumps of discarded plastic press against the bus, then drop to the ground, lifeless. There will be no rain today, and restaurants in this part of the country are few and far between, but I wonder who is on the other end of the line. Whether she has a water delivery man of her own, and if their mobiles huddle together at night, waiting for their time in the spotlight.

Posted in Travel on Tuesday April 6, 2010.

A thousand windows of a hundred hotels face me all at once, black, punctuated by a flickering pulse on identical ceilings, blue, in synchronised media fulfilment. All I can see are his legs, thin, with tight black jeans and simple white shoes. A bare wooden floor. The ornamental façade of the Jubilee hall obscures his top half and so I watch the legs with interest as they begin to dance, alone in an empty gallery, hot-stepping fifty metres from one end to the other, and a succession of bewilderingly fast twists and back steps in front of the mirror at the end. Fireworks explode above the marina, visible between the towering buildings on the waterfront, most half-finished and exposed at the top, baring girdered claws. And still he’s stepping out, out, and out again.

The menu is in arcs of colour, green & white, with a cartoon figure of a man crouched, running, menu held above him, and it advises that ‘in case of rain’ it can be used as a Makeshift Shelter™. I have always considered the phrase ‘in case of’ confusing, no matter how correct it is. I guess others thought the same, as the signs outside elevators now say, ‘If there is a fire, do not use this lift,’ and this is brutal in its clarity. The lifts here say neither, casually omitting warnings as easily as they shed the fourth floor, the fourteenth. Sometimes the 24th is there.

I duck as the bassist turns back toward the bar and almost clocks me with his guitar.

“And who are you, whitey?” says the girl that has elbowed her way past the sound guy and into the tiny area of clear space from where you can shout at the old man behind the bar. She is small, curly black hair, and a trio of tiny cuts curl, ragged, toward her left eye, bisecting freckles, and only a day or so old.
“Dan,” I say.
“Just Dan?”
“Just Dan.”
“Well that’s no good,” she says, “Much too ordinary. How about I’ll be Star, and you can be Dare, and we’ll be superheroes.”
“But I have no superpowers,” I point out.
“This is okay. We can work with this. All we need are the outfits.”
“I’m not such a fan of outside underwear.”
“Oh, that’s such old-school thinking. We’ve moved on. Moved up.”
“To?” but she has caught the old man’s eye and is engaged in vigorous explanation of how, exactly, she wants this cocktail to be served. Bamboo culms, inked so finely they look like a photograph, stretch across her shoulder-blade and out of sight, and they flex in time with her gestures of affirmation.

I turn back to face the man with the Mohawk and the microphone, all muscles, and black gloves, and neck stretches, and I look for superheroes in the crowd.

Posted in Mwah on Sunday February 21, 2010.

Give generously: Red Cross, CARE, World Vision, Oxfam and Medecins Sans Frontieres are all operating in the area.

Posted in Asia on Monday May 12, 2008.

Today, Al Jazeera launched their new world-wide English channel from their headquarters in Doha. Here’s the first six minutes on Youtube and here’s an interesting look at some Facts and Fictions about the network. (via Metafilter)

Posted in Asia on Thursday November 16, 2006.