It was women who led me to travel. In 1982, there was the Eurail trip across the continent with Motorcycle Cate and the young boys on discounted trains. Together we swept through Paris, Geneva, Milan, then a bit of Germany before Amsterdam and back.
Two months after my arrival, Teddy and I moved into a single-story concrete hut at the top of a hill, the other side of Yung Shue Wan. It was fortunate because when Tropical Storm Helen blew in we would not get flooded; though we might be buried under a mudslide. The streets leading to the hut were concrete channels two person wide, and by the time the 5th bell had rung to stop all the ferries, the drains were clogged and all routes home were fast-flowing rivers of rain.
I needed to venture beyond the safe confines of the Gringo trail. I had spent Christmas in Utila with an incongruous group of travelers and I was getting frustrated that the trip was turning more bar hop than adventure hop. A flamenco dancer from Amsterdam and a group of university students from Cork were my group then and we gathered nightly in the one or other of the two bars which had ‘Pirate’ in the name.
A well-dressed man in a formal gray suit came up to me to ask where I was from. I was standing in Sanam Luang park in front of the Grand Palace when he approached, and he had a generous smile, was fluent in English. It was my third day in Bangkok and up until then I had been alone.
I arrived in Singapore after being burnt in Jakarta. And I had been told how dangerous it was but after six months of travel through already dubious locations I had become complacent. The late-night bus from Bandung was just pulling into Kalideres. A short trip and I had the whole bench, rucksack above, daypack below. Normally I would have used the daypack as a pillow, but the bench was wooden and not cushioned. It could only seat two and it was not possible to lie across it. Still, this time I was not thinking.
Took the death plane from Heathrow, a numbing multi-stop ride, first Schipol then Sofia, which only a few of us survived, before we arrived, 2 o’clock in the morning. On each land the empty seats flopped forward, their backs pointing to the ceiling, crash position. Was that the best position to make it through?
