Back in training

Evening all.

One of my briefer posts I hope. I'm back in paid employment, and actually relishing the prospect of my first UK pay packet in almost 2 years tomorrow. Training at Trailfinders has been going well - nice bunch of fellow trainees, some good teachers, and the material's rather less dry than most other things I've been taught! The systems are proving relatively tractable (perhaps a little less unnerving for me than for some of the group who'd never really used a computer in command-line fashion rather than via windows), and the blizzard of destination information hasn't overwhelmed me yet!

And of course, I've been as sociable as ever - some of the group actually fall into that rarified category of "Bad Influence on Pat" - taking in some unfortunate encounters with tequila, an over-raucous celebration of St Patrick's Eve (gotta love the Irish), a couple of pub quizzes and catching up with various friends. All good fun.

And I've finally sorted out (touch wood) somewhere to live once I'm back in Bristol - still got to sign the contracts, but all agreed to move in on Easter Monday. So I have a job and an abode once more. Almost starting to turn back into a responsible adult.

Hope you're all well! Take care and have fun,

Pat

And in other news...

Hello once more, my many and various correspondees.

One more quick note, as various of you asked to be kept informed as to what I was going to do by way of REAL LIFE once I got home. A fair few of you (principally those for whom I have phone numbers) already know this, but my time loafing around at home is soon to end. I have an offer of employment once again. And, as of yesterday, my proposed start date has been brought forward, such that on March 5th I begin work for Trailfinders, the UK's leading independent travel agent (yes, I've already read the corporate literature...). I'll be based out of the Bristol office, so it's farewell to the wilds of southwest Cambridgeshire (praise be) and hello again to my Uni town, delightful old cider-infested Brizzle.

Prior to that, though, I'll be training in London for the first 5 weeks (early March to mid-April), so can hopefully catch up with some of you who are based down there.

Hope all's well wherever you are, and my thoughts are (jealously) with any of you still on the road. Take care and have fun,

Pat

Happy Christmas, and looking forward to 2007

Good evening ladies and gentlemen.

Don't worry, I'm not about to assault you with another monster posting. This is just a quick note to wish you all a very Happy Christmas, and best wishes for the New Year.

I've spent the former in the bosom of my family (although enlivened somewhat by a friend of the family over visiting from the Czech Republic, which has kept me rather more on my best behaviour than I might have been otherwise), and, in a display of disorganisation quite exemplary even for me, I have no idea what I'm going to do for the latter. All I can tell you is that 2007 will have to go some to be as incident-packed and interesting as 2006 was (and, indeed, 2005 before that). Some of you were involved in making those years so memorable, and for that I thank each of you.

For 2007, my immediate goals are to do all the remaining catching up I planned (somewhat over-optimistically) for December, to give myself a month off the booze to start undoing the excesses I've visited on my poor constitution, and to find a job. Yes, it always keeps coming back to that.

In the meantime, I hope all is well wherever you are, that Santa (if you believe in him...) brought you some nice pressies, and that you have some nice things planned for the New Year. Take care and have fun,

Pat

Home, Sweet, Quiet, Somnolent Home

Wow. I actually made it back. So, Doug and any of the rest of you who were betting on this being the time I didn't come home, tough luck! The call of home has brought me back once more to England's Green and Pleasant Land (freezing though it is at the moment).

My last few days in Hanoi were spent split between a comfortable, alcoholic haze and occasional bursts of tourist acitivity. I went down for a daytrip to the Perfume Pagoda complex south of town (which was okay, with quite a cool cable-car ride up the mountain but not worth the time or the money it took to get there, let alone my having been sensible the previous night and hence missed out on possibly the biggest drinking night of my time in Hanoi *sighs*). I went to see Ho Chi Minh (aka "Uncle Ho")'s mausoleum. Which is a big-arse pile of granite (or some other deep grey rock) surrounding a marble chamber containing a hard-wood-and-glass coffin-type-thingy containing either a) the embalmed body of Viet Nam's independence leader or b) a wax-work, depending on which version of affairs you believe. And it's impressive enough, more for the guards than anything else, if a bit spooky. I went to the Jade Mountain Pagoda out on an island in the Returned Sword Lake (home to Viet Nam's equivalent of the Excalibur myth, only it features a bloody great turtle) in the middle of Hanoi. And, between all this, I socialised, largely on Halida beer.

So, it's all over red rover. 1 month in Viet Nam, 3.5 months in SE Asia, 5 months back living out of my pack, and 18 months away from home. I'm back in Caldecote, which is probably about as different from Hanoi as I'm likely to get. After a few days back, I've sort of got my perspective on things, so here's the results of my thoughts.

Things I will miss about Viet Nam:

- The smiles. There's something about the Vietnamese grin (admittedly more common down south than up north) which just lights up the person's face and makes the day seem happier than it was.
- Bia hoi. Yes, Vietnam's very own uber-fresh micro-brewed beer, available for the comedy price of around 10p a glass. Light on the taste-buds, light on the alcohol front, but a very nice way to get the evening going.
- Pho. As a certain well-known guidebook series put it, "the dish that built a nation". Slight hyperbole there, but it is one of the few ever-present things from where I travelled in Viet Nam (and one of the fewer good ones). And seeing how much it was in a Vietnamese restaurant in Cambridge nearly gave me heart failure.
- Hanoi Backpackers' Hostel. Yes, it's expensive for a dorm set-up in Viet Nam. Yes, it's run by Westerners (well, Aussies, but we can give them that much). But the atmosphere is fantastic, and the crowd there were some of the better friends I made in my time in SE Asia.
- Crossing the road. I was faintly terrified of this on arrival, but a month in country convinced me it's entirely natural that you should not worry about avoiding the traffic, just let it avoid you. The feeling of invincibility this imbues is intoxicating (and probably bad for your health), and it all just seems to make more sense. Of course, if I tried it in London I'd probably be dead in 2 minutes flat.

Things I won't miss about Viet Nam:

- The vendors/hawkers/touts. "You buy something?" is possibly the most irritating thing I have heard on my trip. I don't mind so much getting touted at if at least the person has something specific they're flogging, but having stall-/shop-owners decide that just because I happen to walk past their premises I'm going to become a customer is really annoying. Work out what I want and try and sell me something specific!! Or else just leave me alone. Grrrr.
- The motorbike-taxi riders along all streets where a tourist might be found (NB this also applies to Cambodia). "Moto-bike you?" does not count as a good sales pitch. Even if you do accompany it with the "hands on handle-bars" symbol that appears to have taken root in international sign-language to mean "Excuse me, good sir, but could I perhaps interest you in a ride upon a motorbike taxi to wherever you are going?". Just because I am white and I am walking somewhere, it does NOT mean I automatically want a moto.
- "Why not?". This is the ultimate irritating answer to the most commonly-used phrase in Viet Nam, "No thankyou!". Why do I not want to buy a motorbike ride/T-shirt/set of postcards/bottle of water/bag of marijuana/assistance in getting "boom-boom"? Could it possibly because I don't need said items? Or even just don't want them? As has been pointed out enough times, albeit in different circumstances, "No means NO!".

Things I will miss about South-East Asia:

- Cheap, cheap food. Wandering through Cambridge today I saw a hot-dog barrow selling its product for 1.65GBP. This is not so ridiculous in the UK, but that equals 50,000 Vietnamese Dong or 120 Thai Baht or something similar. I could get, in either case, a decent meal for that and still have change left over.
- Cheap transport. Again, I looked at transport to maybe go down to my old Uni town of Bristol and back. Cheapest fare would be around 35-40GBP return. This for a trip lasting around 3.5-4 hours. By contrast, a bus-journey of similar length in Viet Nam would cost maybe 4USD, or around 2 GBP. An overnight sleeper train from Hue to Hanoi, going nearly half the length of the country, cost me around 14 GBP. A sleeper from near Melaka up to Kota Bharu in Malaysia cost me about 6 quid. And all of those services had a good chance of being on time.
- Polite, enthusiastic small children grinning their heads off when you respond to a wave and a cry of "Hello!".

Things I won't miss about South-East Asia:

- Being unable to understand the vast majority of what's going on around me.
- Being totally unable to fit in in a crowd.
- Spending most of my time on alert for who is trying to rip me off at the moment (honourable exemptions from this to Malaysia and SIngapore).
- The incessant smell and noise of millions of motorbikes, especially the damned tendency to use the horn every 5 seconds or so.
- Nearly concussing myself on the door-frames of bathroom doors in the morning when I'm not paying attention.
- Minibuses. 'Nuff said on this one.
- The "walking ATM" syndrome. Just because I'm a Westerner, does not mean I have cash to throw around the whole damned time.
- Sweating my arse off the whole time.

Things I will miss about backpacking:

- The sheer pace and intensity of life. I have more experiences in two days on the road than I often did in 2 months at work at home.
- The camaraderie. Especially in Asia, where we all stand out a mile off, the sense of community amongst backpackers is very handy. And the recollections of people who've recently travelled to a place are generally a far-preferable way of getting info on there than reading the Lonely Planet.
- The freedom to go do what I want, when I want.
- The endless stream of new friends. If anything, this is generally my favourite thing about travelling.

Things I won't miss about backpacking:

- Living out of the same clothes week in, week out, for weeks and months on end. It's been such a shock to come back and find that I do actually have a wardrobe (both literally and metaphorically) again.
- The less-pleasant aspects of communal living (at least when in dorms). Snorers, early risers, people who feel the need seemingly to stuff their packs with plastic bags to rustle, people who seriously contaminate the air of a communal bathroom (and don't even have the decency to look sheepish), people who, shall we say, reach levels of intimacy not entirely appropriate to a dorm...
- Early morning departures.
- Traveller-snobs. You know the kind, the ones who think that unless you travel with less than 10kg of stuff, sleep in the cheapest flop-houses, avoid any concentration of more than 2 Westerners and are capable of surviving on instant noodles for weeks at a time, then you aren't a PROPER backpacker.
- Keeping track of an endless succession of exchange rates.

I think that about sums things up.

Those few of you coming up to Caldecote at the weekend, I'll look forward to seeing you then. Those down in London, I'm still hoping to get there next week, maybe on Wed or Thu night. Those in Bristol, it's not looking like I'll be there any time before January, as Xmas has people oh-so-busy. Those still on the road, I hope you're still having as good a time as I did. Even after a few days, it feels a little like a dream that's fading slightly from the memory, so I'm getting this down while I still remember it all.

It's been fun (well, mostly) passing on these tales, and I hope you've enjoyed reading them (I know some of you have). After this, I might drop out another e-mail once I have some more stuff updated properly onto my now-very-quiet blog, but otherwise that's it for another bout of travelling.

Take care, have fun, and happy travels, now and for the future.

Pat

Clarification for Mr McKinnell...

In response to the persistent haranguing of one of the more obstreperous of my acquaintances, let me make it crystal-clear that the fact I signed off a blog posting as "Px" does not indicate that my Y-chromosome has gone walkabout, nor does it indicate any impending coming-out. Clear enough for you, Dougal?

Not much else to add - I'm just sat here looking longingly at the beautiful sunshine outside the office window as I spend my last day working up here in Leeds. Few days time left to serve in London, and then I become free (or unemployed, depending on how you want to look at it...)

Pat

Jack and the bus

Well, the first leg of my departure celebrations last night, and was a bit of a mixed bag.

Evening started off with the return, after 6 months, of the pub quiz for the NHS programme I've been working on for Accenture. As the reigning champions, my colleagues from Training and I made our return as the mighty "Stop the bus and let my brother Jack off", hoping for a creditable performance.

In fact, slightly surprisingly, we won again, which means I've probably left various of my soon-to-be-ex-colleagues up here with the enduring impression of me as a quiz geek! Ah well, I guess you can't hide the truth for long. Prize this time did not consist primarily of alcohol (which is probably part of the reason I'm actually compos mentis and in work this morning), but is a dinner, so we're going out again tonight. Yay!

After the quiz, the plan was to celebrate my impending departure like mad, but, like all the best-laid plans, it went somewhat awry. Ended up meeting up with another mate whose birthday it was and having a drink with him, then dragged the rapidly dwindling survivors down to Hifi Club (which I can heartily recommend on a Wed night here in Leeds). Those who were left weren't really in the mood, though, so it all kind of fizzled out.

Guess it just goes to prove the old truth that you never have a really big night when you're planning for one. Which doesn't really bode well for next Wednesday and the second leg of my leaving celebrations in London...

Up and running...

Hello!

Well, in an effort to save the inboxes of so many of my friends, this time around I shall be eschewing the joys of mammoth e-mails to all and sundry in favour of a blog. No idea how it'll work out, but should be fun!

43 days to departure and counting...

Px