Of Buses and Books . . .

23rd – 24th November

Actually, that’s not strictly an accurate title, there will also be taxis, a ferry and an airplane involved in this particular blog.

It starts at about five past five in the morning, with my alarm going off to wake me up in time for the taxi bringing me to Thongsala, the main town and ferry port on Koh Phangan. The next thing that happens is that I press the snooze button, because I stayed up talking to Laura and then Neena until well after I should have. Clearly a masterstroke on my part.

After twice pressing the snooze button I finally got up, showered and did my tattoo aftercare crap, which in fairness to machine-tattoo-aftercare is nothing. Rather than put a clingfilm bandage over it, I just put some olive-oil concoction on it instead. Then packed up my last few bits and pieces, left my key in reception. It was still dark and clearly no one was up – though after about fifteen minutes Vinny, one of the Scots boys appeared in taxi. I dunno where he was coming back from, but I assume it was some sort of pub.

Got picked up, brought out to the ferry, was offered sandwiches by numerous Thai ladies, and probably they would have been very nice, but I can’t eat at six in the morning. Unless I’m drunk, like. And haven’t been to bed yet. Which, let’s face it, has probably happened . . . let’s try not to recall a certain seven in the morning declaration that Jonathan and Nate should go to the shop and get a bottle of vodka . . . Oy, why are you thinking about that time! I said not to recall! Not to recall!

So, the ferry filled up pretty quick but I had a half decent seat. They played this ridiculous movie starring Michael Trucco as some sort of missile-firing technician man for the army, who helps to blow up a meteor that’s going to destroy earth or something. I think he had a daughter played by actress about his own age, but maybe he had a brother, or a son. Anyway, he had someone, and that someone liked someone else who they weren’t supposed to because they were the general’s kid, and the general doesn’t like Michael Trucco for some reason or another. I didn’t actually watch the film, or rather, I watched bits of it while listening to music, so I might not be too clear on the more subtle points. I got this much though, it sucked.

God Trucco, you’ve gone down in my estimation. Who’s Michael Trucco, you might be wondering. He’s that guy from either One Tree Hill or the OC who was someone’s uncle? I think. I saw him one time. There was a car crash? He might have been in it? Or saved someone? Possibly the guy who played basketball?

Still no idea who I mean? He’s Anders from Battlestar, you know that guy who played Pyramid, frakked Starbuck a lot and married her even though her and Lee should have been together and then he got shot in the head?

Why the hell am I even talking about Anders?

So, I’m on a ferry for about two hours and then afterwards it takes about twenty minutes just for everyone to get there bags because organisation is not a skill they’ve developed in Thailand. After that, short walk off the pier to where the buses pick us up. Literally no one knows what’s going on. Not even the staff. Ran into the two German boys from Full Moon, was talking to them for about three seconds and then they called my bus. Or a bus. But I got on a bus, a rickety old piece of shit that I initially thought might be the shittiest bus I’d ever been on. Ever.

An hour later we got to another terminal, and we got on a minivan, and let me tell you, this was DEFINITELY the worst bus of my entire, bus filled trip! Holy crap, it was one thing that they squeezed nine of us into this thing, but then they had to fit in our bags. It was so funny I nearly killed myself. It was only for about five hours though, so thank god for that! And I actually slept for quite a bit of it.

Once we got to Hat Yi we went to the bus office and I got talking to this other fella who was heading to Singapore like me. He, of course, was from Galway, a little older than me, but not that much. Sound though, and nice to have someone to converse with now and then too. We had about two hours to kill, so I stayed with the bags while he headed into the mall across the street and then he came back, minded the bags and I did the same. Grabbed some food and used the much cleaner toilets there than in the bus office.

Bout six (12 hours after I started this journey) we get on the bus, chat some, mostly about fuck all and then about Lord of The Rings and the new Hobbit film, because he sees that’s what I’m reading now. This bus is like the fucking king of buses though. Reclining seats, comfy ones, huge amounts of leg and arm room, storage space for bags, free water, blankets – holy shit, this is awesome!

Eventually we settle down, headphones in, and try and kill a few hours until we get over the border. This takes some doing. First, the Thai border, but that was pretty easy, then back on the bus, and we drove, with about a million other buses and cargo trucks, down a mile of road that took about an hour, to the Malaysia border. Off the bus and we queued for another hour to get our Malaysia visas. It was soul destroying. But after that it isn’t so bad, we’re back on the bus, and a short hop down the road we hot a rest stop with food. And internet, I discovered as we were leaving. Terrifyingly, I get a message on Facebook from Sarah saying she’s glad that I keep people updated on where I am because she knows I wasn’t in South Korea or Cambodia. Well, I thought, that’s great, except I know people in Cambodia! What the FUCK happened! And then the bus pulls off before I can find out what happened or whether they’re okay. Turns out, they were. They might not have been if they hadn’t stayed out the entire night before drinking and decided to do nothing the next day, but what does that teach you?

Drink saves lives. Yeah, that’s what that teaches you. I’m sure of it.

Settling in for the night, I go to grab my book light, only to discover it got knocked on in my bag at some point and now the battery is dead. Fuck, no book so. I played with my phone some, but then I eventually started to get tired and after winning five straight games of Mahjong you really kinda get bored. And I’m not in the mood for any of the more serious ones.

Eventually I got to sleep, though I woke up a few times during the night, it’s okay though. We stopped again about 6 (24 hours in) and get off for a stretch and some breakfast, but I still don’t eat that early. Just can’t to be honest. I walked around a bit, get a cold water. It’s all good.

Then it’s back in the bus, and only three hours to Singapore. Except, I learned, it’s not 7, it’s eight. Malaysia is an hour ahead. Cool, but since it takes us four hours to get to Singapore and an hour to get through passport control because some of the others get searched and some get lost, it really doesn’t matter. It was half-12 Singapore time when we get to the bus stop and then I jumped in a taxi to the airport and was there by one.

All good, except the KLM guys weren’t at the desk yet so I couldn’t check in. Fantastic. Downstairs to the food court and I grabbed a steak sandwich, and started to feel a lot better. I decided to wash up and change in the bathroom so I actually ended up feeling a lot better while I was waiting for the gate. Checked in no bother, though when she saw my passport the check-in desk lady tells me I used to look so pretty. Thanks love, sorry I wasn’t here six years ago. And then into one of the fanciest airports I’ve ever been in. There’s even a cinema, but it was two and I wanted to do a few things and not be rushing to the gate, so I skipped it. Next time! I swear!

Got on the net first of all and found out the Maltese Falcons were not dead, which was a relief, though the stampede in Cambodia is still fucking awful. I suppose in a very general way, it probably means less to a lot of you guys – not because you’re heartless or uncaring, but because you weren’t there, in that city, in that place, two weeks ago. I’m not saying I cried or got upset, but I think the reality of it might sink in a bit more. Someone I saw, someone I met, might be dead today. Of course they might be dead for other reasons, and people I met in other places could just as easily have died since I met them too. It’s just something that preyed on me at the time.

I went looking for batteries for my booklight second. The electronics shop didn’t have any, so they sent me to the pharmacy (God knows why), who then sent me to the watch shop, who sent me to the music shop, (they’re all fairly close to each other so I didn’t flip out and kill anyone, don’t worry) and eventually I got sent to the bookshop . . . who didn’t have any.

Now, you’re probably thinking, oh crap, Shane’s in a bookshop, I know what happens next. And you’d be absolutely right. That is exactly what happened next. I went in looking for two tiny little batteries. I came out with a new booklight and two books . . .

I’ll come back to these books later though. First, I’ll just run through what happens next, which is uneventful to say the least. I got back on the web, read some stuff and chatted to a few people, mostly Anna, Josefin and Jo-Anne. There are charge points for phones and laptops all over Singapore airport, so I was able to charge up my phone and laptop again, since both were running more of less on fumes at this point. My flight was at 6 (five on the time I’m on, which brings me nearly to 36 hours, give or take).

The flight was pretty uneventful, but I did have my own TV so I watched 30 Rock, Modern Family and Samanatha Who? And then read some of one of those books I bought.

Landed in Bali at about half-eight, maybe nine, and had to go through immigration, which basically means PAY MONEY to the man, and then found a taxi driver who knew my hotel and by about half ten I was in my room in a nice place, and getting into the shower to scrub myself a new kind of clean!
Now, the books. Well, here’s the deal. Neither is all that good, and neither was bloody worth interrupting Lord of The Rings for!

The first one you may have heard of, it’s called the Alchemist, by Paulo Coelho, and if you’ve read this and you love it, you should probably stop reading now, and you should never, ever, ever tell me that you love that book. I’ve been hearing about since I left, people telling me how good it is, how it’s made just for travellers, how it’ll open your mind and all this shit.

One guy, who was pretty sound, and who I don’t actually think was trying to be insulting, put it like this: “If you’re travelling, and you haven’t read The Alchemist, you’re a cunt.”

Unlike some other things I’ve read, that I read just so I could actively dislike them, I really did expect to like this book. Honestly, and I even tried.

It was just soooooo full of shit and drivel that I couldn’t even stomach some of it. Coelho has managed here to produce of complete pulp mysticism and somehow managed to dress it up as “interesting” fiction. Destiny is the subject of this text (or maybe I’ll call it “rag”), and the power of excepting destiny. The premise here turns on God being a benevolent creator who’s got out backs, rather than a deluded tyrant shoving his jackboot into the back of our skulls . . . actually, God’s probably not either. In Coelho’s work, we have the free will to choose between destiny or stagnation. Destiny is always somewhere else, some other place, and the simple act of GOING is enlightening.

Sure, travel broadens the mind, and all, but I think the case there is overstated. Some of the most intelligent and indeed wonderful people I know (I probably mean you) are at home right now. Many and most of you have not done this mad travel thing that I’m doing, and as far as Paola Coelho is concerned, that makes you less than me, but more importantly I think, it makes you less than him. You can’t know as much as him, or be as good a person as him, if you haven’t “followed you destiny” and left where you are. Destiny is never, somehow, in the place a person is.

Basically it goes like this, there’s a Spanish kid, who becomes a shepherd so that he can travel. He’s even pretty good at it and his flock increases, and he’s excited about going to this town he was in a year before, because there’s some hot girl he fancies there. However, before he gets there, he has a dream and goes to a gypsy to have it interpreted – he’s told he has to go to Egypt to find some treasure.

Later he meets a man who offers to help him, and appears to be some sort of strange mystic man. He gives him some magic stones to help him know what to do. So, he sells all his sheep and heads for Egypt – first he heads to Tarifa, where he gets conned out of all his money and ends up spending a year working for a crystal merchant in order to make more. Here is where it gets really annoying. The merchant is constantly derided by both the boy and by the authorial voice because he does not desire change, nor travel, but is content with his shop and his life. Fair enough in some sense, one should always be open to change and improvement, but it’s laid on a bit thick. The juxtaposition f the wise boy who’ll fly off after a dream and the stupid merchant who looks after his business and family is just a bit much after awhile.

Then the boy has his money and heads off with a caravan of traders through the desert to some Oasis where there is an alchemist. There’s an Englishman there too, who likes to read books. Eventually, when they get to the oasis, a war has broken out between local tribesmen. Some of these tribesmen decide to attack the oasis but the boy has another dream vision and warns them in time. He also meets a girl, who falls instantly in love with him, as he does with her.

Then he leaves with the alchemist, gets captured by some tribesmen and convinces the wind to destroy them by telling it some shit about God or another. Then he gets robbed, goes and finds more treasure and runs back to the girl. The end. (By the way, I get that the whole wind thing is a metaphor - it's just not a very good one, or a well worked out one)

I can see why this book might appeal to someone about to go on a journey. It confirms everything that they might want to hear. Travelling will make them a better person, it’s what they are supposed to do, they will be able to do it because it is what they are meant to do. Rubbish, travelling is fun and it polishes the edges. Reading a book like this four months or so into travelling, you can’t help but be astounded at the naivety of its dogma, of its simplistic look on things, on the sometimes harsh realities of travel, of the trouble and the dangers and the idea that simply willing something to be a way will make it so. Coelho wants to sell you something, more than most authors I’ve ever read, and remember, despite my prejudices, which are many and wildly unpredictable, I am still quite well read, he wants to sell you something – and the thing he seems to be selling, is that he is better than everyone else because he embraced his so-called destiny.

Let me tell ya a secret, even if there is a God, there’s no such thing as destiny, and if there was, it wouldn’t be a good thing. Destiny would mean that God needed, or demanded something of you. The last person in the bible who had a “destiny” ended up nailed to a cross, begging his father to save him, and ended up a dead man. Resurrection aside, I still don’t think the Catholic version of destiny is anything to be chasing after.

Do what makes you happy. Do what you want. And whatever Paolo tells you, God isn’t going to save you. I might, if I can, and other friends of yours, but once you start relying on God, as Malcolm Reynolds once said, “that’s a long wait for a train that don’t come.” Do what you can, do what you will, don’t expect it to be easy, but hope that it will be worthwhile, and it probably will be okay. Cynicism aside, I believe happiness is possible. I just don’t believe blinding diving after destiny has done anything except get people hurt or killed. Paolo Ceolho is a bloody idiot if he believes otherwise. And it’s not like I’m adverse to praying to Gods or having faith – since I’ve been giving thanks and saying prayers at temples from Japan to here, it’s just that the ideas espoused by this book infuriate me!

And there there’s the very clear misogyny lurking beneath the pages. Oh the girl can’t go with him. She should stay at home and wait for her man to come back. All the characters of consequence in the novel are men, the women mere shadows who serve the purpose of gratification for men, even the merchant’s daughter in Spain, who the boy assumes has married some other person in his absence. None of the women seem to be able to travel, to learn, to follow destinies laid out by God. Nah, they sit around and wait for menfolk to come and love them. Fucking bollox.

I’ve never been so annoyed with a book that I can ever remember. God it pissed me off.

Anyway, there was a tenner well wasted. I’d try and sell the book, but I don’t think I could take money for it! Ha! Anyway, I hope you didn’t like the book, and I’m sorry if I’ve offended you. And if I have, tell me, and I’ll tell you more subtly and with references to the text, why I hate this book, and maybe I’ll tell you some other books that I think you could read, that might change your opinion of Coelho and his crappy mysticism.

The other book was Law of Nines, by Terry Goodkind, who I used to love when I was about 16, but who I’ve not read in a long time. Now I remember why, all flash, no substance really. Ah well, better luck in Australia I hope. I still have a few books on my list, hopefully some of them are going to turn out a bit better. For now, back to Lord of the Rings!!!

So anyway, I’m in Bali, you aren’t and there’s two books you should never, ever read.

Talk to you soon,
Shane!