Miss Sheppard: great, so what else happens in the play? Yep, Child 1?
Child 1: Joe dies at the end.
Miss Sheppard: yep, he does, sad times.
Child 2: (with genuine concern) Huh? Wait! Spoiler warning! He dies? (turning to end of play) Oh my gosh, he dies.
Tuesday, 30 October 2012
The Day I Left My Passport On A Plane...
Parents: look away.
Once upon a time, there was a foolish young adventurer whose only weakness was unhindered grumpiness when tired. Fatigue was her kryptonite because not only did it make her horribly cranky, it also made her forget about essential items like USB sticks, keys and piles of exercise books.
One night, after her flight from Tawau to Kota Kinabalu had been delayed by an hour because the whole of KK airport was closed, and she had valiantly spent all her strength getting her and some innocent villagers transferred onto an earlier flight, the foolish adventurer arrived at a hostel and was greeted, exhausted, by the receptionist.
It was the dead of night. The receptionist asked for her passport, as is custom. The foolish adventurer searched in her backpack.
The passport was not there.
"I have left my passport on the plane!" she whispered, in a silent, death murmur. "My working visa is in that passport."
Worst of all, that passport had a multitude of cool and awesome stamps from many foreign and exotic countries in it. That passport was one of the only things that made the foolish adventurer Cool.
After some fatigue-infuriating faff, the foolish adventurer shouted, "I AM GOING BACK TO THE AIRPORT!" and jumped in a taxi where she sat in an intense state of anxiety and dread for a full fifteen minutes.
At the airport, she learnt the following things:
- Flight 6127 on which she had flown had returned to Tawau.
- Flight 6127 would return to Kota Kinabalu between 1:50-2:15am.
- The Passport of Security and Life may or may not be on the plane.
The foolish adventurer thanked the wise informers to whom she had spoken and sat down to wait, watching the clock tick slowly. In the next hour and a half, she learnt and realised the following things:
- Without her passport, she would not be returning to Saigon on Sunday afternoon.
- Her school was going to be really mad at her.
- To get out of Kota Kinabalu she would have to get a police report to get a temporary travel pass to get to Kuala Lumpar to go to the British Embassy (thus missing her transfer) to get a temporary international travel pass to get to Saigon the following day (after an extra night at a hotel in KL and completely new ticket to Saigon) to sit with Vietnamese Immigration officers and hope that they would let her back into the country to work illegally without a visa.
- The flight she had booked to go home at Christmas would be null and void without a passport.
- The only place you can renew passports is the passport office in London, UK, a place she could not get to.
The foolish adventurer did not cry, because she is very brave.
At 2:18am, whilst sitting in the lost and found with Kevin, the lost and found man, Kevin pointed out the arrival of Flight 6127. He directed the foolish adventurer to a door that lead to the tarmac and pointed to an Air Asia flight. In a move that would never be permitted in the UK, Kevin then left the foolish adventurer to her own devices, whereupon she trotted across the tarmac of a working airport, without a high-vis vest and wondered whether now would be a good time to hijack a plane in a Jason Bourne style end to the story. (She didn't.)
Up the steps of the mobile stairs she crept, to be greeted by some mildly surprised cabin crew. She peered apprehensively into the pocket of seat 31C...
The passport was there.
Thanks be to God. Amen. Here endeth the lesson.
Once upon a time, there was a foolish young adventurer whose only weakness was unhindered grumpiness when tired. Fatigue was her kryptonite because not only did it make her horribly cranky, it also made her forget about essential items like USB sticks, keys and piles of exercise books.
One night, after her flight from Tawau to Kota Kinabalu had been delayed by an hour because the whole of KK airport was closed, and she had valiantly spent all her strength getting her and some innocent villagers transferred onto an earlier flight, the foolish adventurer arrived at a hostel and was greeted, exhausted, by the receptionist.
It was the dead of night. The receptionist asked for her passport, as is custom. The foolish adventurer searched in her backpack.
The passport was not there.
"I have left my passport on the plane!" she whispered, in a silent, death murmur. "My working visa is in that passport."
Worst of all, that passport had a multitude of cool and awesome stamps from many foreign and exotic countries in it. That passport was one of the only things that made the foolish adventurer Cool.
After some fatigue-infuriating faff, the foolish adventurer shouted, "I AM GOING BACK TO THE AIRPORT!" and jumped in a taxi where she sat in an intense state of anxiety and dread for a full fifteen minutes.
At the airport, she learnt the following things:
- Flight 6127 on which she had flown had returned to Tawau.
- Flight 6127 would return to Kota Kinabalu between 1:50-2:15am.
- The Passport of Security and Life may or may not be on the plane.
The foolish adventurer thanked the wise informers to whom she had spoken and sat down to wait, watching the clock tick slowly. In the next hour and a half, she learnt and realised the following things:
- Without her passport, she would not be returning to Saigon on Sunday afternoon.
- Her school was going to be really mad at her.
- To get out of Kota Kinabalu she would have to get a police report to get a temporary travel pass to get to Kuala Lumpar to go to the British Embassy (thus missing her transfer) to get a temporary international travel pass to get to Saigon the following day (after an extra night at a hotel in KL and completely new ticket to Saigon) to sit with Vietnamese Immigration officers and hope that they would let her back into the country to work illegally without a visa.
- The flight she had booked to go home at Christmas would be null and void without a passport.
- The only place you can renew passports is the passport office in London, UK, a place she could not get to.
The foolish adventurer did not cry, because she is very brave.
At 2:18am, whilst sitting in the lost and found with Kevin, the lost and found man, Kevin pointed out the arrival of Flight 6127. He directed the foolish adventurer to a door that lead to the tarmac and pointed to an Air Asia flight. In a move that would never be permitted in the UK, Kevin then left the foolish adventurer to her own devices, whereupon she trotted across the tarmac of a working airport, without a high-vis vest and wondered whether now would be a good time to hijack a plane in a Jason Bourne style end to the story. (She didn't.)
Up the steps of the mobile stairs she crept, to be greeted by some mildly surprised cabin crew. She peered apprehensively into the pocket of seat 31C...
The passport was there.
Thanks be to God. Amen. Here endeth the lesson.
Borneo
Warning: this is really long. Do you want to commit your whole lunch break to it, or do you want to get some friends together and have a dramatic reading on Saturday night with some beers? You can cast people as different voices (Emma, Bridget, Carl, Mike, Agnes Keith, orangutans) and send me photos of your freeze frames so I can guess which scene you are reenacting. If I guess the scene, you win a prize.
After an Earl Grey tea at Harrods in Kuala Lumpar - the first and most delicious cup of Earl Grey, made with real cow's milk, fresh from a cow, that will go off if left for too long (I checked with the waitress) in ten weeks - we finally made it to Malaysian Borneo, or the state of Sabah as it is also known. Our taxi driver apparently doubled up as a tour guide and was incredibly informative during our three hour transfer to our hotel, which was super helpful, but also a little bit of an overload after a day of travelling and excitement of nearly-missed flights. Because this was an action-packed holiday, I will have to use subheadings to organise all the anecdotes into manageable chunks. Feel free to treat these anecdotes like episodes in a series, and come back to them as and when you have time to escape to the jungle-filled landscape that I will now create with my amazing talent for imagery and figurative language...
Kinabalu
This subheading refers to the town, the mountain and the national park. Of the three, we got to only two properly. We knew we didn't have the time to climb Mount Kinabalu, and apparently Bridget and I have a poor track record with tall mountains and mist: by the time we had commandeered a reasonably priced taxi from our hotel to the park gates, and digested our breakfast, the clouds had sat down on the mountain and we stood at the view point and stared at spooky whiteness. Technically, we did see the mountain, but there was an inconveniently dense amount of cloud coverage, so all we saw was this:
Can you see the mountain?
A similar thing happened last year at the top of Toubkal. On this occasion, our failure was due to the fact that neither of us had stopped to realise that in the rainforest, the clouds get tired during the day and so descend to earth for a snooze, soaking everyone on their way down and not because we were walking against a mighty and aggressive wind storm. Unperturbed, we took a walk through the jungle, which involved much bug-flapping and unexpectedly walking through spider webs and having more inadvertent girly fits about things clinging to us. It wasn't particularly Li Hi, but then the thought and very real danger of leeches (leeches!) is enough to cause even Bear Grylls to have an epileptic spasm of leg-slapping, deet-spraying and entirely useless arm-wiping. Ug. Leeches.
We tried to wait out the clouds, and watched them roll across the landscape like the crests of waves from underneath our raincoats for a while, but eventually gave up and returned to our hotel to sit in sulphur-smelling hot springs whilst it continued to rain. That was pretty cool. Whenever we got too hot, we just got out and stood in the rain for a while to cool down.
The rainforest, by the way, is pretty impressive. It's everything you imagined the rainforest would be like: lots of green and vines and creepers and strange noises and enormous flying bugs and jumping frogs and bats. Pretty rad. We arrived at night time and could just see all the trees poking out of an entire blanket of cloud that had dropped right into the valley. Now that WAS like looking at the ocean. All we needed was an enormous spotlight to shine onto all 4,000-something metres of Mount Kinabalu to see it in all it's glory. Maybe next time.
Sepilok and Sandakan
Remember how I only go places if there's a book involved? Well Borneo was a different kettle of fish: I had to find a book to justify the literary worthiness of the trip and so whilst Bridget has been reading 'In The Shadow of Kinabalu' (morbid death march fest), I have been flicking my way through Agnes Keith's 'Land Below The Wind' (colonial and imperial romp fest). Conveniently her house just happened to be the perfect mini-museum stopping spot after a five hour bus ride and before our expedition into the jungles of Sepilok to see orangutans and other rainforest-type creatures.
As is always the case with awesome nature-type things, it is difficult to describe them in a way that does them justice. Being less than twenty metres away from six orangutans, including one baby, and a whole hoard of macaque monkeys, including babies and one that jumped up onto the viewing platform and scared the life out of us and almost caused an old Australian lady to fall over (hehe - but we weren't allowed to laugh) is pretty darn cool. There were hornbills flying overhead also. Extra cool. Walking back to the cafe and shop and having one of the naughty orangutans turn up at the reception area and hang out for a bit whilst everyone freezes, unsure of exactly how dangerous a rogue orangutan is, whilst slowly reaching for their camera is also pretty cool. Wandering down to the Rainforest Discovery Centre and strolling along a canopy walkway to hang out with a giant tree squirrel, some really tall trees and some brightly coloured little birds, all 17 metres off the ground: cool. Pretty cool. But 'cool' is not a very descriptive word. Conclusion: watch more of the Discovery Channel or come to Borneo to hang out in the rainforest with some orangutans. Do it. Nature is amazing.
Mabul (not Sipidan. What's so great about Sipidan anyway?)
So I'll get it off my chest straight away: the start of this leg of the journey was like knowing you were going to get an iPad for Christmas, seeing the packaging in your parents' wardrobe and the gift receipt on top of the microwave and then not receiving said iPad on Christmas day because you don't have a PADI qualification and therefore can't even get a permit to sit on your iPad let alone dive in it.
Translation: mother, father, I don't want an iPad for Christmas. But I did want to dive off Sipidan and it turns out I can't. Risk or Death made a really big deal out of how amazing it was but when we arrived in Semporna, a nice man named Mike spelt the whole thing out for us, whereupon I genuinely nearly cried. Not exaggerating, I had to check myself and remind myself that I was in public with strangers and it wasn't okay to cry tears of bitter disappointment. Borneo is a really long way away from even Vietnam and I'd come on the understanding that I'd be Discovery Diving Sipidan. Bad times. So when I tell you about my trip to Borneo, do NOT ask, "oh, the diving there's supposed to be amazing - did you dive off Sipidan?". The answer is no, I did not.
After two lunch time beers, some pizza and reassurance from Bridget and Mike, though, I was totally over Sipidan and booked two dives and an overnight stay on Mabul island. Mabul island is like Sipidan's less flashy, chilled out cousin. It has more or less the same stuff to offer, but it's not making a big deal of it: that's not Mabul's style. Sipidan is like the melodramatic frontman. Mabul is like the cool bass player or drummer.
I then had a lot of fun with the medical questionnaire:
Mike: do either of you have any medical issues you think we should know about?
Me: Bridget has a heart murmur.
Bridget: that's right, I do.
Me: (looking at list of questions) Bridget, are your preparing to be pregnant?
Bridget: sadly, no.
Me: do you want to tell him about your dysentery now or later?
Bridget: er...
Me: Bridget only has one lung.
The next day we zipped across the Celebes Sea in a speed boat and arrived at the same time as the rain. It makes no difference though, because you're underwater. I peed in the ocean, Bridget freaked out about equalising her ears. After that, we saw six, that's right, SIX hawksbill turtles hanging out on some coral and some sunken wrecks. One even did swimming and swum above us so that the sun shone through the ocean and made him/her look like the shadow of a sea angel, slowly gliding through the still water. See, told you you'd get some figurative language.
We also saw lots of pretty fish, that we instantly forgot about when we got up onto dry land and were unable to identify on the Diver's Laminated Book of Fish, a shoal of squid, a big, ugly cuttlefish and some form of ray (Charles). Apparently coolest of all, though, was a Flamboyant Cuttlefish that looks like a stone when it's stationary but when it moves, turns into a neon light show and has black and white strips pulse along its back like Christmas tree lights. All the other divers thought we were completely Li Hi for having seen it, even if we were just on a Discovery Dive. We didn't tell them that Bridget and I had crashed into each other underwater or that Bridget had messed up her buoyancy and floated, unawares, to the surface from where Carl had to pull her down by a flipper. Nicht zo Li Hi...
Almost-last-day of the trip was spent waiting for the rain to stop and then SPRINTING to the beach to sunbathe and wandering around the Bajau village on the island and taking photographs of beautiful and interesting things. Here are some for your viewing pleasure:
The last one is my favourite.
Red fish: ARGGGGHHH!
Grey/brown fish: Hmmmph.
Pinky fish: uuuhhh?
Shark bait ooh ha ha.
After an Earl Grey tea at Harrods in Kuala Lumpar - the first and most delicious cup of Earl Grey, made with real cow's milk, fresh from a cow, that will go off if left for too long (I checked with the waitress) in ten weeks - we finally made it to Malaysian Borneo, or the state of Sabah as it is also known. Our taxi driver apparently doubled up as a tour guide and was incredibly informative during our three hour transfer to our hotel, which was super helpful, but also a little bit of an overload after a day of travelling and excitement of nearly-missed flights. Because this was an action-packed holiday, I will have to use subheadings to organise all the anecdotes into manageable chunks. Feel free to treat these anecdotes like episodes in a series, and come back to them as and when you have time to escape to the jungle-filled landscape that I will now create with my amazing talent for imagery and figurative language...
Kinabalu
This subheading refers to the town, the mountain and the national park. Of the three, we got to only two properly. We knew we didn't have the time to climb Mount Kinabalu, and apparently Bridget and I have a poor track record with tall mountains and mist: by the time we had commandeered a reasonably priced taxi from our hotel to the park gates, and digested our breakfast, the clouds had sat down on the mountain and we stood at the view point and stared at spooky whiteness. Technically, we did see the mountain, but there was an inconveniently dense amount of cloud coverage, so all we saw was this:
Can you see the mountain?
A similar thing happened last year at the top of Toubkal. On this occasion, our failure was due to the fact that neither of us had stopped to realise that in the rainforest, the clouds get tired during the day and so descend to earth for a snooze, soaking everyone on their way down and not because we were walking against a mighty and aggressive wind storm. Unperturbed, we took a walk through the jungle, which involved much bug-flapping and unexpectedly walking through spider webs and having more inadvertent girly fits about things clinging to us. It wasn't particularly Li Hi, but then the thought and very real danger of leeches (leeches!) is enough to cause even Bear Grylls to have an epileptic spasm of leg-slapping, deet-spraying and entirely useless arm-wiping. Ug. Leeches.
We tried to wait out the clouds, and watched them roll across the landscape like the crests of waves from underneath our raincoats for a while, but eventually gave up and returned to our hotel to sit in sulphur-smelling hot springs whilst it continued to rain. That was pretty cool. Whenever we got too hot, we just got out and stood in the rain for a while to cool down.
The rainforest, by the way, is pretty impressive. It's everything you imagined the rainforest would be like: lots of green and vines and creepers and strange noises and enormous flying bugs and jumping frogs and bats. Pretty rad. We arrived at night time and could just see all the trees poking out of an entire blanket of cloud that had dropped right into the valley. Now that WAS like looking at the ocean. All we needed was an enormous spotlight to shine onto all 4,000-something metres of Mount Kinabalu to see it in all it's glory. Maybe next time.
Sepilok and Sandakan
Remember how I only go places if there's a book involved? Well Borneo was a different kettle of fish: I had to find a book to justify the literary worthiness of the trip and so whilst Bridget has been reading 'In The Shadow of Kinabalu' (morbid death march fest), I have been flicking my way through Agnes Keith's 'Land Below The Wind' (colonial and imperial romp fest). Conveniently her house just happened to be the perfect mini-museum stopping spot after a five hour bus ride and before our expedition into the jungles of Sepilok to see orangutans and other rainforest-type creatures.
Agnes Keith's doodle:
Actual view:
Pretty accurate.
As is always the case with awesome nature-type things, it is difficult to describe them in a way that does them justice. Being less than twenty metres away from six orangutans, including one baby, and a whole hoard of macaque monkeys, including babies and one that jumped up onto the viewing platform and scared the life out of us and almost caused an old Australian lady to fall over (hehe - but we weren't allowed to laugh) is pretty darn cool. There were hornbills flying overhead also. Extra cool. Walking back to the cafe and shop and having one of the naughty orangutans turn up at the reception area and hang out for a bit whilst everyone freezes, unsure of exactly how dangerous a rogue orangutan is, whilst slowly reaching for their camera is also pretty cool. Wandering down to the Rainforest Discovery Centre and strolling along a canopy walkway to hang out with a giant tree squirrel, some really tall trees and some brightly coloured little birds, all 17 metres off the ground: cool. Pretty cool. But 'cool' is not a very descriptive word. Conclusion: watch more of the Discovery Channel or come to Borneo to hang out in the rainforest with some orangutans. Do it. Nature is amazing.
Mabul (not Sipidan. What's so great about Sipidan anyway?)
So I'll get it off my chest straight away: the start of this leg of the journey was like knowing you were going to get an iPad for Christmas, seeing the packaging in your parents' wardrobe and the gift receipt on top of the microwave and then not receiving said iPad on Christmas day because you don't have a PADI qualification and therefore can't even get a permit to sit on your iPad let alone dive in it.
Translation: mother, father, I don't want an iPad for Christmas. But I did want to dive off Sipidan and it turns out I can't. Risk or Death made a really big deal out of how amazing it was but when we arrived in Semporna, a nice man named Mike spelt the whole thing out for us, whereupon I genuinely nearly cried. Not exaggerating, I had to check myself and remind myself that I was in public with strangers and it wasn't okay to cry tears of bitter disappointment. Borneo is a really long way away from even Vietnam and I'd come on the understanding that I'd be Discovery Diving Sipidan. Bad times. So when I tell you about my trip to Borneo, do NOT ask, "oh, the diving there's supposed to be amazing - did you dive off Sipidan?". The answer is no, I did not.
After two lunch time beers, some pizza and reassurance from Bridget and Mike, though, I was totally over Sipidan and booked two dives and an overnight stay on Mabul island. Mabul island is like Sipidan's less flashy, chilled out cousin. It has more or less the same stuff to offer, but it's not making a big deal of it: that's not Mabul's style. Sipidan is like the melodramatic frontman. Mabul is like the cool bass player or drummer.
I then had a lot of fun with the medical questionnaire:
Mike: do either of you have any medical issues you think we should know about?
Me: Bridget has a heart murmur.
Bridget: that's right, I do.
Me: (looking at list of questions) Bridget, are your preparing to be pregnant?
Bridget: sadly, no.
Me: do you want to tell him about your dysentery now or later?
Bridget: er...
Me: Bridget only has one lung.
The next day we zipped across the Celebes Sea in a speed boat and arrived at the same time as the rain. It makes no difference though, because you're underwater. I peed in the ocean, Bridget freaked out about equalising her ears. After that, we saw six, that's right, SIX hawksbill turtles hanging out on some coral and some sunken wrecks. One even did swimming and swum above us so that the sun shone through the ocean and made him/her look like the shadow of a sea angel, slowly gliding through the still water. See, told you you'd get some figurative language. We also saw lots of pretty fish, that we instantly forgot about when we got up onto dry land and were unable to identify on the Diver's Laminated Book of Fish, a shoal of squid, a big, ugly cuttlefish and some form of ray (Charles). Apparently coolest of all, though, was a Flamboyant Cuttlefish that looks like a stone when it's stationary but when it moves, turns into a neon light show and has black and white strips pulse along its back like Christmas tree lights. All the other divers thought we were completely Li Hi for having seen it, even if we were just on a Discovery Dive. We didn't tell them that Bridget and I had crashed into each other underwater or that Bridget had messed up her buoyancy and floated, unawares, to the surface from where Carl had to pull her down by a flipper. Nicht zo Li Hi...
Almost-last-day of the trip was spent waiting for the rain to stop and then SPRINTING to the beach to sunbathe and wandering around the Bajau village on the island and taking photographs of beautiful and interesting things. Here are some for your viewing pleasure:
The last one is my favourite.
Red fish: ARGGGGHHH!
Grey/brown fish: Hmmmph.
Pinky fish: uuuhhh?
Shark bait ooh ha ha.
Monday, 22 October 2012
12:00
So. FYI: don't ever let me organise anything. Ever. Especially if it involves airports, aeroplanes or checking in. My father may remember in his daughter-anxiety nightmares the evening I called from a pay phone in Girona airport in incomprehensible hysterics because I had booked my flight home from my summer season for the 6th July. At the time, it was the 6th August. I had not realised my mistake until the nice lady at the check in desk pointed it out to me. €300, a lot of tears, and an overnight stay at an airport later, I managed to get myself home.
Bridget Clay, who has been visiting for the last five days, will also never forget the following conversation, which occurred at 10:28 at Saigon International Airport:
Me: what time is our flight?B: you said twelve, didn't you?
Me: is our flight at eleven?
B: no, you said twelve.
Me: our flight is at eleven. I'm so sorry.
It was only after we began running that I shouted, blindly panicking, "wait? Do we know where we're going, or are we just running?" because in situations like that, sometimes it IS just a natural instinct to run without thinking about it first. Luckily this is neither Frenchie nor Bridget Clay's natural instinct, and they had looked at the gate number. Pretty sure Frenchie is going to sever all connection with me now that he knows what a moron I am. He will at least, stop dropping me off and picking me up from airports.
Me: we're so sorry, we're very late, but we need to get on this flight.
Check In Lady: no, I'm sorry, we are closed.
Me: no, no, it says 'last check in'.
CIL: hmm, but we closed ten minutes ago.
Me: (in exalted remembrance) WE CHECKED IN ONLINE! Does that make a difference?!
After a short verbal tussle that included some doubt about checking in Bridget's gap yah rucksack and a desperate glance back towards Burger King (we had had no breakfast) that only resulted in the kiosk crumbling into a pile of salt, we were flip-flop sprinting to the first security gate, which is quite hard to do, and very noisy.
Then, then, then! Thankfully everyone in every security and passport queue was KIND and by the time we got to the third security bit, they had heard us coming and stood aside to let us go to the front of the line. This security man was the only guy who seemed intent on doing his job, which was FRUSTRATING but understandably essential. God Bless America. We lost the Scissors and the Pen Knife Spoon in this great security gate massacre. With the touching down of the plane and in the airport, we will remember them (we will remember them). Worryingly, though, nobody seemed fussed by the big bottles of shampoo, the aerosols, the flammable hand gel, the tweezers, either razor or the kilogram of cocaine.
Whilst Bridget was putting on her Calm Face and sweating a little bit, I yelled: "I WILL GO AND HOLD THE PLANE!"
.JPG)
Bridget said, "Yes, this is a good idea," in a quiet voice that only just disguised her utter disgust at my Ace Ventura styled idiocy.
Turns out I did a pretty good job of holding the plane because we were able to run, in a swaying, back pack motion, squealing apologies in our plummy little accents ("sorry, so sorry! Awfully sorry!) down the umbilical cord that joins the plane to the airport before falling gracefully into the cabin and delicately stepping our way, like ballerinas to our seats to try and fool people into thinking that we had either been there all along, or planned the whole thing this way.
Bridget's tolerance to No Food Mornings has improved since the days of Tetouan/Chefchaoun so she was not sick behind a wall but instead quite perky having heard the news that lunch would be served shortly once we had taken off (on time).
I have booked all the hotels for our trip to Borneo. I'll let you know how this pans out.
Bridget Clay, who has been visiting for the last five days, will also never forget the following conversation, which occurred at 10:28 at Saigon International Airport:
Me: what time is our flight?B: you said twelve, didn't you?
Me: is our flight at eleven?
B: no, you said twelve.
Me: our flight is at eleven. I'm so sorry.
It was only after we began running that I shouted, blindly panicking, "wait? Do we know where we're going, or are we just running?" because in situations like that, sometimes it IS just a natural instinct to run without thinking about it first. Luckily this is neither Frenchie nor Bridget Clay's natural instinct, and they had looked at the gate number. Pretty sure Frenchie is going to sever all connection with me now that he knows what a moron I am. He will at least, stop dropping me off and picking me up from airports.
Me: we're so sorry, we're very late, but we need to get on this flight.
Check In Lady: no, I'm sorry, we are closed.
Me: no, no, it says 'last check in'.
CIL: hmm, but we closed ten minutes ago.
Me: (in exalted remembrance) WE CHECKED IN ONLINE! Does that make a difference?!
After a short verbal tussle that included some doubt about checking in Bridget's gap yah rucksack and a desperate glance back towards Burger King (we had had no breakfast) that only resulted in the kiosk crumbling into a pile of salt, we were flip-flop sprinting to the first security gate, which is quite hard to do, and very noisy.
Then, then, then! Thankfully everyone in every security and passport queue was KIND and by the time we got to the third security bit, they had heard us coming and stood aside to let us go to the front of the line. This security man was the only guy who seemed intent on doing his job, which was FRUSTRATING but understandably essential. God Bless America. We lost the Scissors and the Pen Knife Spoon in this great security gate massacre. With the touching down of the plane and in the airport, we will remember them (we will remember them). Worryingly, though, nobody seemed fussed by the big bottles of shampoo, the aerosols, the flammable hand gel, the tweezers, either razor or the kilogram of cocaine.
Whilst Bridget was putting on her Calm Face and sweating a little bit, I yelled: "I WILL GO AND HOLD THE PLANE!"
.JPG)
Bridget said, "Yes, this is a good idea," in a quiet voice that only just disguised her utter disgust at my Ace Ventura styled idiocy.
Turns out I did a pretty good job of holding the plane because we were able to run, in a swaying, back pack motion, squealing apologies in our plummy little accents ("sorry, so sorry! Awfully sorry!) down the umbilical cord that joins the plane to the airport before falling gracefully into the cabin and delicately stepping our way, like ballerinas to our seats to try and fool people into thinking that we had either been there all along, or planned the whole thing this way.
Bridget's tolerance to No Food Mornings has improved since the days of Tetouan/Chefchaoun so she was not sick behind a wall but instead quite perky having heard the news that lunch would be served shortly once we had taken off (on time).
I have booked all the hotels for our trip to Borneo. I'll let you know how this pans out.
Saturday, 13 October 2012
To Cambodia!
World: sorry, what was that, Emma?
Me: oh, no, nothing, don't worry.
World: no, honestly, I didn't hear you: you were mumbling. You always mumble.
Me: oh, no, I just said that I ran 11.39k outside in 1 hour and 18 minutes. Nothing important. Just... y'know... half of my half marathon. Whatever. It's cool.
World: wha...? Oh my gawd! That's amazing!
Me: no, please, I'm a humble person. Don't make a big thing of it. I'm shy.
World: but that's, like...
Me: stop. Honestly, stop.
World: but only two months ago, you had never...
Me: it's embarrassing. I'm so humble.
Tuesday, 9 October 2012
Homage to Marguerite Duras
So. In 2006 I went to Russia because of the BBC mini-series adaptation of 'Dr. Zhivago'. In 2009 I went to South America because of Borges' 'Ficciones'. The Middle East: well, y'know, the Bible and stuff. Haworth: 'Wuthering Heights'. Vietnam: Marguerite Duras and the swoonerific French film, 'Indochine'. When asked at my interview for the Big International School why I wanted to move to South East Asia, and Vietnam specifically, I named this author and this film as my raison principal and happily explained that I live my life in a fictional bubble, which involves me morphing into any one of my favourite literary heroines/heroes as and when the situation demands. They still hired me, yo, which proves that I'm not as mental as everyone seems to think I am. At least not on the International Education Scene: everyone's mental here. I fade comparatively into the background of general unhingedness.
It was with a consuming excitement, then, that I took up the offer of a weekend in the Mekong Delta, birthplace and setting of many of the novels of Marguerite Duras, the woman who had affairs with much older Chinese men at 15, and then drank herself to death aged eighty-something having purged herself through a set of autobiographical novels and had an intellectual affair with a much younger gay man named Yann. Wow! She is my actual role model. To make it even more exciting, I was accompanied by a Frenchie who revealed himself as King of Laid Back and Unassuming Adventures and Google Maps. This, and his fairly decent Vietnamese language skills, promised a trip of Li Hi proportions. Three hours on a moped (I absolutely drove for some of the way and did not crash, though I did squeal like a girl on a number of ocassions) without a single Westerner in sight, a broken exhaust pipe, a catastrophic downpour, through which we just had to drive, a couple of hundred rice paddies, fish farms, a lover's house (Marguerite Duras', not mine, alas), a ferry and a Buddhist temple with some naughty statues later, I was not disappointed.
Some more photos:
I really am driving, here. It's not a clever camera shot.
Look: it's me! I bought a Duras book with me to show everyone how serious I was about all of this.
One reason I love Marguerite Duras so, is that she was poor. Dirt poor. So poor that pilgrims don't visit her house, they visit her lover's house. We don't even know where her house was: it was a shack that was pushed down by a slightly stronger than average wind. She never even set foot into her lover's house: they used to rendez-vous in cheap hotels in Cholon, the China Town of Saigon (I have been here, too, but not to any cheap hotels, obv: I live in a posh apartment). Despite this, someone else's house has been entirely dedicated to her and she is like, way famous - at least in France, or on French courses at KCL - and her books have been made into distressing films. If I was the Chinese Lover's wife, I would be well annoyed that the house of which I was proud for my entire life, was now dedicated to a poor, famous, troubled homewrecker. Sorry, Mrs. Lover. Duras is just way more awesome than you.
As if not seeing a white person for the whole day, and freezing our tushies off on an actual local's passenger ferry found down a tiny path, unfit for mopeds, along which we drove our moped, was not enough authentic tourism, more joy came with an evening meal on metal table tops with blue plastic stools and some delicious DIY pork dish that involved picking and choosing from a variety of spring roll/wrap options such as cucumber, banana, rice patted down into little rice squares and lemongrass, and rolling everything up like a cigarette before dipping it into salty brown sauce. That was a really long sentence, so here's a short one to break it up: Yum! This was all most reminiscent of what is known in some circles as Nancy and Susan's Big Adventure, where Lizzie and I chanced upon a young man who goes by the name of Mark Dominic Monaco, and ate the best Chinese food we've ever eaten in a white-tiled, brightly-lit eatery by the side of the road on Hainan Island. Good times.
Some introductory photos for the next stage of the story:
Now I was pretty content with most of this, and had already reverted back to grubby traveler mode, forgetting my new expat lifestyle full of air con and cake Fridays, however! However! There was more! You can't go to the Mekong Delta and not visit the floating market to take photos of old ladies with fruit you will never buy. That would be a travesty: there would be no point in going. But of course, Frenchie abhors any form of bus/boat/plane/train that says 'Tourist' on it, literally or figuratively, so we took the mopeds again. This time, I did full on driving and Frenchie did better navigating than he had done the previous day. Technically, I had been navigator, but Frenchie hadn't listened to me when I said turn left, so we ended up on the highway for a long time when we should have been zipping through paddy fields. (Sexism alert!) Men are really quite stubborn when it comes to directions.
Frenchie's method this time was to ask random Vietnamese people the direction to the floating market until we found a friendly man who took us down some back alleys to his house.Me (thinking): oh dear, we are going to die.
Frenchie (probably not thinking): this is exactly what I had planned.
Me: what's he saying?
Frenchie: his wife's going to take us on her boat.
WOW. So we hung out at their house for a bit: everything made out of wood and jutting out into the river. Chickens inside right next to the stove. Sleeping arrangements: question mark. Hygeine? Let's not think about it. Lots of fluoride toothpaste absent smiles all round, so philosophical question of the day: what is happiness? What is poverty?Then we got on a boat and visited a floating bar to eat mango, a floating petrol station, a floating off license for cigarettes (hubby had to stock up for the journey), a bush with beautiful flowers, in front of which hubby insisted Frenchie and I took 'soon-to-be-engaged' type photo (they like cliche and tack like this in Vietnam), and a family of children who were fascinated by my camera and nearly dropped it. We then returned to the house to watch one family member squeezing pork liver in a basin. Wow.
Random: what do you do for a living?
Vietnamese lady: I squeeze livers.
Hmm. Squeezing livers, hey? Have a photo:
On the way home, I was pretty convinced that the adventures were all over. However, I was wrong! Stopping for petrol, we discovered that the moped would not restart. Hmph. We pushed it to a mechanic. He resolved that yea verily, the moped would not start. Frenchie did not want to pay 400 dong for a moped that was not his, and so I stood, perplexed, wondering how on earth we would get back to the hotel. Frenchie, at this point, is still pretty laid back and unassumingly hails another guy on a moped who, he tells me, will get both of us and the moped back to the hotel. This is how it works:
Step 1: Put experienced driver on broken moped.
Step 2: Place right foot on broken moped and start working moped.
Step 3: Push broken moped along using thigh muscles of steel and blind faith in experienced driver on broken moped.
Step 4: Take photos if riding as a passenger on working moped.
Step 5: At roundabouts or other intersections, push broken moped away and leave experienced driver in the hands of fate, to dodge oncoming traffic.
Step 6: If police come into view, let go of broken moped and allow it to wheel gently to a stop.
Step 7: Get off broken moped and run along with it, sweating, and looking like an idiot.
Step 8: If ascent onto bridge becomes too steep, apologise, and let go of broken moped. Repeat Step 7, but uphill.
Step 9: Pay Vietnamese guy way more than expected because lady you are trying to impress is in awe of what just happened. Look generous and capable whilst still retaining laid back, unassuming air.
Pretty impressive trip, right?
Hope the photos made up for how looooooooong this post was. Some people (literates) love it. Others complain regularly about the length. Sorry guys. Have you ever heard me tell a story verbally? At least this way, you can go and get a cup of tea and come back to the story without worrying about offending me, or having to do the gesture that Laura, Grace and Bridget have perfected, that involves me pushing along to the actual point of whatever the heck it is I'm trying to say. Everyone should know to make themselves comfortable when I have a story to tell. It's just how it is.
Tuesday, 2 October 2012
More Rain
I decided that riding from school in the dark and flooded streets wasn't enough, so I went back two days later and rode to school and got wet, parasite infested feet before I even got to my classroom.Photos came out better, though.
Vietnamese commuting is pretty Li Hi. Risk of drowning every morning before 7:20am.
Monday, 1 October 2012
Rainy Season
So. The rainy season,
right? Yeah, me too. I’ve heard of it. People keep telling me about it. “Whoa,” they say, “We’re sure sorry for you
guys (referring to all the new 2012 starters).
We haven’t seen rain like this for foooooooooooour years. No, sirree, no rain, not like this, uh huh,
mmm hmm.” Then they spit into a spittoon
and continue to rock on their creaky rocking chairs in the staff room. Most of them wear checked shirts and have a
tobacco pouch squashed up in their breast pocket.
But, y’know… I’m British and we kinda, y’know, “get”
rain. The Swedes have 50 different words
for snow; so too do we for rain. We’ve
got cats and dogs in our rain. We’ve got
aristocracy named after wellies and puddles in which to put them to good
use. We’ve got that misty-type rain that
sooaaaks ya raaaight through. We’ve got
wet playtime and downpours and the light sprinkly rain that seems oblivious of
the otherwise pleasant weather and therefore results in rainbows over meadows
through which we can frolic. We’ve got
brollies and macs-in-sacs and anoraks and ducks that quack. We’ve got rain on Christmas day every year
when what we really want is snow. We’ve
got waterproof mascara for all of these occasions that never works. We’ve got rain scheduled for every bank
holiday for the last and next four millennia.
We’ve got insurance companies intelligent enough not to insure against
flood damage. Rain is so abundant in our
country that our indigenous peoples didn’t even invent a god for it. It wasn’t desired: it was just there
and always will be.
So, Vietnam ,
you might have been trying to impress me with all this water and stuff and I’ll
admit, your thunder is cool, as is your dry lightening. Sometimes I even stop my lessons to point it
out to the kids who shrug, disinterestedly.
If this happened at the Monkey, Hunter, Banana
Academy , you’d have a riot on your
hands: the boys would probably throw themselves out of top floor windows in
their excitement over thunder such as you have, Vietnam .
Riding around on a moped with your eyes closed because the
rain is driving into your face and it stings is less cool though, but it’s okay
because your people are such sensible drivers, that I trust them not to career
into me.
This is what I thought until this:
It doesn’t come up as well in the photos, but look! That's the ROAD, guys - that thing that looks like the river. WOW.
That is some pretty impressive flooding you’ve got there,
Wow.
I am completely way impressed by this and will be talking to
my students about it tomorrow.
Especially my extra English kids, because I managed to convince them
that when the streets flood like this we will all get cholera and pooh
ourselves to death. True say, guys. True say.
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