Packed it, booked it, f**ked off!

On Saturday I walked into a travel agent’s in Leeds and spunked £1,600 of my hard-earned savings on a rather long holiday. Then to my annoyance I had to follow it up with another £150 on Monday to seal the deal.

My trip next year is no longer the hollow pipe-dream that it has been for so long. It’s no longer a vague platitude spooled out to friends, family and bemused onlookers ad infinitum: ‘I’m going travelling’. I went out and sorted it all on my lonesome. It’s happening for real! It’s going ahead!

The plane tickets are booked; the dates set in stone. I am excited and elated. I've handed over a large chunk of my savings to make this happen, and I would go as far as to declare that one is veritably buzzing one’s tits off with excitement. Like JFK handling the Cuban missile crisis, I told those bloody Russians where to get off and no mistake, and now the world is my oyster.

Now my itinerary is set (to a degree), this is a very good time to outline where I am going, what I plan to do and what my expectations of my trip are. Even though I am both a spunky young whipper-snapper and a well-read ‘man of the world’, I would be the first to admit I know next to bugger all about most of the cities, places and countries I am set to visit.

I don’t want to come across like some pompous eco-warrior shouting “we in the West are ignorant, man!” but I have a burning desire to learn about other places in the world. Recently I was greatly inspired when I went on a volunteer training weekend in Cardiff with UNAexchange. They were very nice but I think they might have brain-washed me a bit. Now I plan to work on three of their international volunteer camps in India and south-east Asia. This will give more structure to my travels, give them some sort of purpose other than globe-trotting for the sake of it, and help me to meet people and delve into local cultures.

I want to record my travels on here to better understand them, and I want to share as much with my friends and family of what promises to be a varied and utterly amazing experience. And anyone else who’s bothered is welcome to join us for the ride! Perhaps you are dreaming of doing something similar yourself? In which case draw wisdom and inspiration from my cultural learnings!

I'm no Bill Bryson but I dream that one day my travel writings will be published and collected in leather-bound anthologies, and pored over by academics at Oxford University (or Oxford Polytechnic at least) who consider them such culturally significant, top-quality pieces of literature it frankly gives them the horn. But if not, this blog will still be here on the t’interweb as a monument to my journey. Unless it gets deleted for gross obscenity and/or libel.

Well the days and weeks are ticking away. On 10th January next year I fly from Heathrow to Delhi with Virgin Atlantic. (I hope someone remembers to tell the pilot he’s not flying to America!) I will be spending a month in India and I’m hoping to:

1. See some of what old and new Delhi has to offer. I don’t know an awful lot about the city yet, apart from that it is bloody big and in India. Confusingly it is called ‘New Delhi’ on all the maps, but really ‘New Delhi’ is just the modern name for the ‘traditional’ Delhi, and it encompasses a place called ‘Old Delhi’. I think. We’ll see. If I turn up in the wrong place it will make for a hilarious (and profanity-filled) entry!
2. Work on a volunteer project with disadvantaged schoolkids in New Delhi. I have always been pretty awkward around kids, and I have tried my best to avoid them throughout my life, but I sense that one day I will be forced to spawn and raise offspring (possibly to save the future of the human race). So, I figure that on a personal development level, I need some sort of once-in-a-lifetime baptism of fire to traumatise me into liking children. Hopefully it will do the children (and me) some lasting good! I aim to occupy the ‘kindly uncle’ role of Chef on South Park and am considering bringing a chef’s hat, black face paint and a ladle to dish out food.
3. Travel further south to explore the city of Mumbai, where my dad was born.
4. Travel even further south to explore the beaches of Goa and get hallucinogens slipped in my drink by hippies. Spend the night at a beach party raving my tits off to pulsating trance music, convinced I can ‘see’ time as waves of colour. Wake up in a bamboo pit with a bandaged stump where my left leg once was. Time to dust off those travel insurance documents!
5. Realise that waking up in the pit minus a leg was just one in a long chain of freakish hallucinations. Journey back to Delhi by train, convinced my shoes are out to get me.

Hopefully no bad things will actually happen and it will be proper good.

On 14th February I fly out of Delhi with Singapore Airlines, to – funnily enough – Singapore! Which brings us on to the far eastern leg of my journey. The itinerary I have planned is thus:

1. Spend 2-3 days exploring Singapore, going on a tour round the (City? Country? What the hell is it?), followed by the amazing experience of a night-time safari round the state zoo! Expect me to post loads of pitch black photos that supposedly portray various amazing events and creatures. I’m not sure what effect flash photography would have on all the wild beasts and I don’t want to risk sending hordes of animals stampeding through Malaysia by turning my flash on!
2. Fly to Bangkok (via budget local flight, not yet booked). Spend a few days sightseeing and inspecting the temples and shit. I will be mortally afraid of looking any woman in the eye in case they are a ladyboy. (“Well you just can’t tell with some of them can you?”) Best case scenario: I will shatter my negative stereotypes (i.e. ladyboys, Thai prisons) and fall in love with the country. Worst case scenario: I will get locked up in a Thai prison on trumped-up drugs charges and lose a leg. Then discover it was all a hallucination, brought on by a ladyboy spiking my drink, and wake up in bed next to the ladyboy. With a sore rectum.
3. Depending on funds I will briefly journey around Cambodia, Vietnam and Laos. All of these territories promise remarkable unspoilt scenery and much exotic cultural wonderment. But there is so much to see in this region and I have so little time in which to see it. I am working to a tight schedule and have to keep my itinerary as uncluttered as possible. Dammit!
4. Travel to the Chiang Mai area of northern Thailand, to take part in a five-day cooking school which will teach me Everything You Need To Know about cooking Thai cuisine. This sounds absolutely fascinating, and the brochure tells me I can “take time to explore the vibrant night bazaar and many temples or just laze by the pool”. Well bollocks to lazing quite frankly, I can do that at home! I’ll be scooting off on a borrowed push-bike, as it informs the reader “Chiang Mai is small enough to get round by bicycle and this is a great way to see this happening city”! I really hope I’m not laid up with the shits or something. It would do my head in to miss this chance to learn something about authentic eastern food, as “the chef will reveal the secrets of Thai cooking in the relaxed atmosphere of his family home”. I hope it really is relaxed and he’s not an unhinged psychotic Gordon Ramsay sort of chef. No more super noodles for me after this jaunt!
5. Work on my second volunteer project, doing cultural understanding work with the inhabitants of a remote village in the Golden Triangle area near Chiang Mai (it is also near the border with Laos). I will be living in a hut beside a beautiful lake (which sounds fantastic, assuming the volunteer organisation is being more honest than your average estate agent). I imagine this could really broaden my horizons about issues affecting local people. And I can put my newly-acquired cookery skills to use! Expect to hear of a spate of poisoning-related deaths in Thailand in the news.
6. Travel into Laos/Cambodia briefly if I didn’t get time to earlier. I’m still on a tight schedule though as I have seven days to…
7. Fly to Osaka or Tokyo (again via local budget airline), see a bit of rural Japan and then arrive to work on my third and final volunteer project, helping a school in the Fukuoka (pardon my French) area of southern Japan organise an arts and crafts festival.
8. Do some sightseeing in Tokyo, then fly on to Hong Kong to chill out for several days and enjoy the night-time light displays that bathe the entire cityscape in swathes of breathtaking colour.

Of course when you tot it all up, this is all likely to cost oodles and oodles of money. In this respect my savings are like a lump of delicious Edam. We all love Edam don't we? There's not enough Edam in the world for everyone. And I have to take care not to use a blunt knife to carve my Edam up. I know from past experience that when you’re abroad, luxuriating in a country with prices much cheaper than your own, you end up spending just as much in a month as you would back home. Before I know it, I'll have really buggered up slicing that Edam. So a sharp cheese knife is essential at all times.

I have completely lost my thread now. Erm... the basic gist is, I need to seriously economise on my journey. I will have to descend back into my hereditary Yorkshireman mindset and employ a coin purse to keep track of my cash. It will be a challenge after years of wasteful spending. I really have wasted my money on some crap in my time!

Anyway - the next part of my trip affords me a much-needed chance to earn back some travel funds. That’s right folks, armed with a working visa I am going to the kingdom of the dusty outback, the kooky kookaburra and Rolf Harris’s ethnically-inspired hyperventilation and wobble-board combo (not to mention Rolf himself) – good old Australia!

I fly into Sydney on 14th April and I have four and a half months to work, party and travel my way round Australia. I have no specific plans apart from spending a few weeks in Sydney, a few in Adelaide and a few in Melbourne (which I am told has a good music scene).

Hopefully by then I will have hooked up with some other travellers down at the hostel for company. In my imagination we’ll form into a tightly-knit gaggle of tie-died, generation X surfer dudes who enjoy nothing more than a cold tinnie, ‘flipping the bird’ at ‘the Man’, and tripping on peyote cactus if they have that in Australia. While lying wasted under the stars one night, we'll all resolve to travel the outback. We’ll spot a knackered old slaughterhouse truck with broken axles on sale for peanuts, and we’ll set off for some high jinks on the road, our death-trap vehicle careering all over the place in the dust clouds. Later I will come to regard these times as my happiest upon the Earth. How will it all end ... or begin?

Timewise, nothing after my arrival in Oz is set in stone really, apart from one condition of my air ticket being that I have to return within twelve months of my departure date, i.e. January 2009. Britain!? Fuck that, I hate the place.

Once I get to Australia I have to consider my budget for the rest of the trip. At the moment I have my stops in New Zealand and Fiji provisionally booked for September and my stops in LA and New York pencilled in for October. This is because the airline booking system cannot reserve plane seats more than eleven months in advance. The provisional flight dates are 1st September for Oz to New Zealand, 29th September for New Zealand to Fiji, 1st October for Fiji to Los Angeles, and lastly 4th October for New York to London. How I will get from LA to New York is also undecided.

Nearer the time, for a flat £35 fee I can re-arrange these dates to suit my itinerary (bearing in mind I have to keep within the cursed 12-month rule). I will need to make some big choices when I reach Australia. If my money is holding out I would like to spend some time travelling round Peru, Bolivia and Chile after reaching LA. If not I’ll have to postpone my trek round south America for another year (sob) and fly straight to New York, and from there, home (double sob) to enjoy a Christmas being broke (treble sob).

To be honest there’s no telling how tired and grumpy I will be when I get to America, after several months on the road. Will I be able to face more cheap domestic flights, more overnight bus rides and buying yet more visas off border guards using strange notes with lots of zeroes on? I suspect a direct plane journey home, a steaming hot British cup of tea and a good night’s sleep in my bed at home will probably seem more desirable to me than the most beautiful woman on Earth by that point.

Later in life, I will no doubt rue the missed opportunity in hindsight! Such is life.

If I am seriously hard-up I will stay and work in Australia until the end of October. Croupier, tree surgeon, fireman – name it, I will try it. My portmanteau case bulging with Australian dollars (yeah, right), I will spend four weeks in New Zealand, a week in LA, then fly straight to New Yoik to spend a week there just before Crimbo.

If I really am desperate for money on the road, there’s always cash to be made as a medical research subject, or donating various non-essential body organs. The human body is a walking cash-crop - though hopefully I won't have to cash in any of the rather valuable chips my maker has blessed me with! I will have to watch my own back out there in the world at large, and not stray over-budget or behind schedule. That’s a challenge if ever there was one.

If I am mega-flush I will leave Oz on 1st September, spend four weeks in New Zealand (hopefully meeting up with some friends from back home), two in Fiji, one in LA, up to six in south America, and one week in New Yoik. I will return home on a similar date, gasping for the aforementioned cup of tea and comfy bed.

Back to the present, I spent Sunday evening typing out most of this blog in a mood of great optimism. Then STA bloody Travel phoned me on Monday morning to tell me I'd have to stump up another £150 to guarantee the departure date to India I wanted! 10th January is so close to new year that it got flagged up by their billing department, but I could leave on 17th January without paying any extra. Though of course then I'd miss all the volunteer projects. Bastards! Out came the plastic.

And it is now time for even more spending: the framework of my journey in place, I have 3 volunteer projects (£360+) and the Thailand chef’s course (£200) to pay for – taking my spending well over the two grand mark! As I had only £4,400 savings to start with (and I now have a monstrous itinerary snaking its way through 2008’s calendar pages), it is imperative I find work as soon as I hit Oz!

Well I’ve been prattling on for long enough. Rest assured the next instalment won’t be too long in coming!

Congratulations! Now you’ve finished reading the full article, here’s the condensed ‘light read’ version for your convenience:

Have booked my ticket. Going to lots of places, leaving 10th Jan. Cost shitloads. I don’t care. Bye!

Planning for next year

All is dark and quiet here.

Suddenly a key turns in a rusted lock. Bats flutter from their resting places. The imposter swings the door open, sending mini-cyclones of dust billowing through the air. The rats nibbling the crusts of mouldy bread on the table scarper into the shadows. Light pours in from the hallway, clouded with dislodged cobweb fragments.

I am back after a hundred years, to once again post on my travel blog!

Wow, it certainly has been a while since I posted a blog on here. Looking at the fractured messages below that I spat out on to cyberspace as I journeyed through the Balkans (oo er), our travels seem like such a long time ago. I could have been wearing different pants, it was that long ago.

I hadn't completely forgotten about posting on here, in fact I've been searching all this time for a suitable way to sum up and round off what has been a rather crazy and eventful summer in a rather crazy and eventful year! No ideas came. In the weeks and months after I finished off my travels and returned to England I let this journal die a slow, quiet death. Until now.

But rather than closing off the tale I must now begin the telling of a whole new "story arc" (like George Lucas innit). Welcome to Episode II: Bondy travels the world!

You see, I like the world. I think it's interesting. I think it's dead good. I always told myself, 'Bondy son, one day you'll travel the world, and see some fine sights.' Through years of university study and work, I never gave up my dream. I told myself that no matter what happened to me afterwards, I wanted at all costs the chance to go and see the world.

Even if I returned home penniless and destitute, and was forced to accept work as a manual declogging operative on a sewage farm, scooping handfuls of human shit out of dark and cavernous processing ducts in exchange for a paltry minimum wage, at least I could roar defiantly to the world that I had travelled (in place of the pitiful squeak my lowly incumbency would dictate).

Earlier this year, as most of you know, I got made redundant from the omnipotent and rather sinister multinational IT firm where I worked, and that got me in a right tizzy - until I realised fate had dealt me the hand of champions, and it was time to vamoose, brave Sir Lancelot! The money I'd squirreled away from my earnings was burning a hole in my pocket, and the world waited out there to be discovered, like a million bejewelled delights.

So there I was, in the middle of April 2007, having just made the decision to take off and travel but not knowing where to go first. I needed a bit of a trial run, a "dress rehearsal" for the real thing. A couple of months traipsing round obscure corners of our glorious new friendship-based European super-state would get me in the mood, right? Right. So I booked a place on a WWOOF farm on France, arranged to rendezvous with my friend Katy a few weeks later, and off I went, staggering under the weight of my comically over-stuffed rucksack [1]. (I have certainly learned a few lessons about travelling light! That rucksack weighed 39 kilos at check-in!)

As you probably know I had to return home earlier than planned after I got mugged in the Ukraine and ran out of funds. I went to stay with my mum and dad in Meltham and tried desperately to wine and dine the travel insurance folks via Royal Mail so they would give me a big fat juicy payout. Having already arranged the rest of my travels I had no alternative but to book another flight out to Budapest a couple of weeks later. Things hadn't turned out quite as I expected but, to be fair, forking out for a fresh air ticket was greatly preferable to spending my summer moping around in the lush yet decidedly un-foreign West Yorkshire countryside. It was cool to see my homeboys Anthony, Chris and Gary travel all the way to Hungary from Blackpool by road! RIP to the Pepy machine.

Croatia and Bosnia are wonderful places to visit. I was incredibly moved by the warmth and hospitality of the locals, considering they hardly had the best decade ever back in the 90s. At least they were spared the massive disappointment of Oasis' third album.

Straight after I returned, I went to Tommyfest, which was cool for all sorts of reasons. "An outstanding weekend of music, sun, warm beer and good solid happy times" is the tagline commemorating that particular bank holiday weekend in my mind. I was slightly sick of camping out in a tent after braving the 'seven day mud and piss marathon' formerly known as Sziget, but it was well worth making an extra stop for. I got to play a gig on the Saturday lunchtime, and I fancy the organisers raised a packet for cancer charidees. Not exclusively from my gig you understand - I'm no Kate Moss!

I had decided while out in the Ukraine a few weeks prior to this that I would relocate to Meltham and move back in with my parents for the time being. A slightly unusual move for a twentysomething perhaps, but I needed and still need to save money for my travels.

Also I needed a break from Blackpool; love it as I honestly and truthfully do it is a fucking dump all the same, and my repetitive routines of work/pub/sleep and work/gig/get pissed/buy fried chicken/sleep had left me in a creative and emotional rut after three or four years of little success. I'm not cutting ties, I just need some time to chill. And if you've ever visited the Huddersfield area, you'll know that compared to Blackpool, Meltham is an excellent place to do just that! (Thank god I have family outside of the Fylde. Otherwise I'd be living under an overpass in Salford or something.)

Two months down the line the move seems to have paid off brilliantly. My batteries are recharged. I feel great. I'm writing so many new songs it beggars belief. Thanks to my parents' patient support I am still financially solvent. I've even discovered enough momentum to catch up with my emails and update my website (which has languished without an update for far longer than this blog), and then do the dishes before the Simpsons came on! It's all go here at Bondy HQ!

I recently had a four-week temping job at Huddersfield uni as a room surveyor, which involved going round all the classrooms in a block, knocking on the door and disrupting the lecture, and then counting how many students were in the classroom (much to the bemusement and then amusement of the class). I also got a nice smart clipboard to write the numbers down on. They paid me to do this! And I got free time every hour so I could read a book. Or just sit and stare. (I alternated between the two depending on my mood.)

One time I made a room full of medical students burst out in laughter as I walked in. I looked up wondering what was happening and realised that at that moment the lecturer was busy pointing to a close-up of a vagina infected with thrush on the projector screen! (Ladies, if you have worries in that area, you can come to me. I'm a qualified GP now. I can't do prescriptions though.)

That job finished last week, which more or less brings me up to the present. Right now I'm looking for more temping work, and trying to use my free time to do productive stuff like plan for next year, and throw wing nuts and apples at the squirrels in the garden for laughs.

I have also turned to the TV shows of Michael Palin for enlightenment. Some of his journeys (f'instance Pole to Pole and Full Circle) provide a lot of ideas and inspiration. Here is a man who shows you How It Should Be Done in terms of travelling - and he entertains the ass off the viewer.

I have certainly noticed a recurring theme in his recent work - wherever he goes, whatever continent or time zone he winds up in, he invariably 'meets up' with a hot female companion from that country, who gladly introduces us to the local culture. Always. A bird in every international dialling code it seems. Phwoaarrr, they is fit innit! Representative of the Earth's population? Maybe not - but respect, Palinmeister, you are the pimp daddy of global travel. (Maybe he gets the chicks cos he was in that Monty Python band innit?)

Today, I went to visit a travel agent in Leeds to get some "ball park" figures for round-the-world plane tickets. I was pleased with what I found; a six-stop ticket going to Delhi, Singapore, Sydney, New Zealand, Fiji and LA costs in the region of £1,250 after taxes (through STA Travel). My original plan was a bit more ambitious and I've had to cancel the stops I wanted to make in Africa and South America as this would add a thousand quid on to the final cost!

I have until 9th November to confirm all the dates, and pay up, and then it's official! I am off round the world! My date of departure is 15th January of next year, and I plan to return in December 2008 (on around the 10th). Thus 2008 will be a giant voyage of discovery; a huge frosted marshmallow cake of adventure.

Though it seems like a good deal I must say I was a bit surprised at the general lack of choice for a budget round-the-world traveller (not pointing fingers at STA in particular). If I use the route above I am following something of a standard backpacker route, as you can only connect from certain airports to certain airports, depending on the availability of flights. (Basically it appears like all the world's airlines are divided into two giant camps, like playground gangs, and the two camps proper hate each other and won't share customers and diss on each other's mamas and stuff.) When I planned it in my mind I'd hoped to get a little more off the beaten track.

South America and Africa were both no-nos for reasons of cost (but I could have done a round trip to both quite cheaply if I'd missed out SE Asia, Oz and New Zealand - hence the 'two camps' theory). If you're travelling east from India, Singapore is the only place you can fly to. When you fly east from Fiji (crossing the beguiling and entrancing International Date Line, I believe), the only place you can go is LA. I'm not super-keen to go to LA (I would have gone on to Santiago in Chile if I had the choice), but as I'm obliged to pass through that part of the world I thought I might as well drop in and see what disgustingly opulent lives our porculent cousins over the pond live in Californ-i-yay. Who knows if I'll get another chance? It's all life experience.

But I would like to fit in a quick final stop in New Yoik afterwards if I can - for similar 'living for today' type reasons. The Newyoikian culture and history particularly amaze me. (How much it will amaze me when I go there will depend entirely on whether I have any money left!) Anyway, here's to romantic notions of the world of Carlito Brigante and Travis Bickle - and let's forget those troublesome money worries for now!

I think today showed me that intercontinental air travel can be a hard-to-fathom, mysterious beast. What you quickly realise in the planning stage of a backpacking trip is that certain flights cost more than others of comparable distance, and those prices can randomly fluctuate throughout the seasons. You have to live with it. It's not straightforward like buying a bus pass - you're seeking to travel thousands of miles round the world at an advantageous price and, at the end of the day, you have to pick and choose your opportunities. (Though on a separate note you should perhaps plant several thousand trees when you return home to make Jesus happy.)

Let's face it, if you're lucky enough to get the chance to go anywhere, a million bejewelled delights will await the visitor in many of the globe's destinations; having restrictions imposed on your plans can paradoxically give you greater freedom to decide what you want to do. I suppose you have to be prepared to enjoy the moment and go with the flow.

As long as there's no stag parties or suicide bombings where I venture to (or explosive train crashes for that matter), I'll be happy. Amen!

Bosnia is even better

Howdoo,

Me and my good buddy "Rick" have just returned to Croatia after two days in the lovely little medieval town of Mostar in Bosnia. It's a very picturesque place with lots of cobbled streets and little old Turkish-style buildings, and unfortunately it suffered a lot of bombing in the war. But now it is almost rebuilt, though you can still see old bombed-out ruins in amongst the spectacular scenery. A very eye-opening experience.

So anyway, we've got back to Dubrovnik now and we were looking forward to spending our last day going on a day trip to Montenegro, but we've found there's bugger all happening trip-wise tomorrow! So we'll be sat around getting drunk I expect. Although Dubrovnik is in Croatia, it is full of British and Australian people, so it barely feels like being away from home. Which is kinda confusing. This internet cafe is quite nice, they're playing a song by the Byrds on the CD player, but it's not as good as the last one, which was outdoors! In a park! Crazy.

Oh and at the moment I'm reading Lullaby by Chuck Palhahunihuiluiujikk who wrote Fight Club. It's a stonking good read.

Croatia is better

Hi there,

I`m now in Dubrovnik in Croatia. I cant write for long and this keyboard seems to have no apostrophe, possessive or otherwise. Its very upsetting. Nevertheless, its very nice here and hot and sunny. Sziget was fun in the end. We all cheered up once we located a warm shower! Then we watched Madness, who were pretty good. Then I packed up my tent, caught a train with Rick and Katy to Zagreb. Then we got an overnight bus to Dubrovnik. By the way it is impossible to sleep on one of these contraptions, but at least they played a Croatian cover of George Harrisons "my sweet lord" which was pretty funny to listen to. Now weve spent a couple of days here on the Adriatic coast, and we went on a nice cruise round some islands yesterday. I have to go now, my time is up. Take care!

Bloody rain

Hello,

I'm now at Sziget. I am tired. It's been raining loads overnight. My friends got soaked last night in a torrential downpour. I didn't cos my tent is ace. Ray Mears eat your heart out. The weather's not very good this year, though we've seen the Chemical Toilet Brothers and Madness, which was cool. Either I'm getting old or the weather's not like it used to be. I really enjoyed Sziget last year, and the year before that, but this year just hasn't felt the same.

We've got another three or so days of this World War One-style mud, madness and mosquitos, then we all go our separate ways. And then I'm off to Croatia with Rick and Katy, which should be good. Though I can't wait to come home all the same. Camping is rubbish.

Still... there's always tomorrow!

I think we're all going into Budapest today, to get a shower in Rick and Katy's appartment. Possibly we will enjoy some fine wines and witty banter, aboard the city's own Reggae Boat. I still have high hopes.

Anyway, I can't stay for long, there are guards patrolling the perimeter of the internet tent, with dogs on chains and freaking big guns. Tattybyeski!!

Worst birthday... EVER!

If anyone is still reading this, you'll be aware I've not written anything for a while. I'm not dead, I'm pleased to say. Things just went "titski-up" as the Ukrainians say, and we had to fly home to Manchester on 21st July. Since that day I've been living in a horrible stupor, unable to comprehend the amazing events which befell Katy and I in such a short space of time. I've been keeping a low profile in the Huddersfield region. Tomorrow I resume my travels in Budapest with the Sziget festival.


I left off when we arrived in Lviv. On the Saturday we took a taxi to the meeting place, Polyuya 7A, which turned out to be a massive soviet... arrrrgh, I'm far too tired to explain every intricacy of our extraordinary few days right now. It's 2am and I have to sleep - I'm catching a plane in 12 hours. Basically, this is what happened:

1. We went to the volunteer camp in Zolochiv.
2. Lots of nice people at Zolochiv. Sunshine. Mosquitos. Searing heat. Very basic accomodation, featuring the world's most gruesome shower, which actually resembles the inside of the nuclear reactor at Chernobyl. Unbelievably cheap local beer (22p for a bottle of fantastic Lvivske lager, f'instance). I was starting to fall in love with the place.
3. Train crashes nearby, spewing toxic phosphorous over a wide radius and causing a minor environmental disaster.
4. Katy and I did as the locals did and fled the aforementioned cloud of gas, and decided to spend a few days in Kiev while we figured out what to do.
5. We arrive in Kiev on the morning of my birthday, severely hung-over from pre-birthday drinks on the night train, and without a place to stay for the night.
6. After several exhausting journeys around the city looking for accomodation (we're both carrying all our luggage with us), someone secures us a booking over the phone, and we catch the underground train to our hostel.
7. As our train arrives in the underground station, an old lady starts inexplicably waving leaflets in our faces and shouting at us. When I free myself from the gibbering old crone and make for the Metro train, I discover someone has stolen my wallet and camera from my pockets while the woman was distracting us. F*ck. This is one pickle Her Majesty's Constabulary will be unable to resolve. What's more, we now have 1 Hryvnia (10p) between the two of us!
8. We made it to the hostel and somehow Katy persuaded the dude on the desk to let us leave our bags there without paying a deposit. Phone calls to family. Tears. Expletives. Bank cards cancelled. No way we can continue; Katy has no access to funds either. Katy's mum books us plane tickets home the next day.
9. Trip to British Embassy in Kiev. We plan to throw ourselves at their feet and beg for assistance. No such luck - they've closed early as it's Friday afternoon. Leaving us loyal British subjects right in the brown stuff and with nowhere to turn.
10. Visit to police station. A nice man who happens to be there (and we were extremely grateful for this chap's help) lends us money to buy water, and acts as a translator to help us report our crime. The Soviet-style bureaucracy we encounter means it takes 3 hours for us to obtain a police report for my insurance, but at least we get a ride in a Ukrainian cop wagon.
11. Vitaliy (a dodgy American dude with loads of cash we made the acquaintanceship of in Zolochiv) comes to our rescue, chucks $100 at us, and offers to buy me three hookers for my birthday. I decline, politely, but we take the $100.
12. Next day we use the money to catch a taxi to the airport. We fly home to Manchester. Numerous delays. My baggage got lost changing planes at Heathrow but at least we got free crap food from Costa Coffee, and some wine.

Some of our fellow passengers were less impressed with the baggage mix-ups, and took it all out on the hapless airport staff at Manchester with a series of four-letter tirades, which I thought was unfair. Like Bill Hicks said, the human race is just a virus with shoes.

Oh and I lost my camera so all the wonderful photos I took to show you are all gone. Bugger. I'm hoping some of my buddies at Zolochiv will let me show some of their pics. Next I'm off to Hungary, Croatia and Bosnia.

My lack of camera will forcve me to paint pictures with words, as per the greats of classical literature. Strap yourselves in, you're in for one hell of a ride!

Sziget road trip - read my friends' blog!

My friends Anthony, Chris and Gary are travelling from Blackpool to Budapest by road, to go to the Sziget festival, which starts this week! Then they're driving all the way back! I am now back in the UK (long story) but will be flying out to meet them at the festival! Read about their amazing encounters with bandits, sorcerers and unforgiving Eastern bloc toilet paper here!

http://szigetroadtrip.blogspot.com

Anthony, Chris and Gary are three very crazy characters. Anthony is a whelk salesman. Chris teaches monkeys to clean up inner-city graffiti. Gary flies jumbo jets for a well-respected Egyptian airline. It is my pleasure to know people in such a diverse range of occupations. And let me tell you - they work hard and they play hard. Innocent lives will most likely be lost before the end of the month as the result of our no-holds-barred partying in Hungary. But hey, these are the crazy times we live in, and we need to document our lives so as to warn future generations away from the depths of debauchery to which we sunk.