Jan 10th. I'm all for nepotism, it's just a shame my parents have fuck all to offer.
I have an abandonment issue - How do I abandon my mum in a country she can't even pronounce? The obvious answer is 'fucking easily' but what I'm really asking is how can I get away with it. In a perfect example of stupidity I turned to my dad for advice (they've been separated for 20 years), he laughed his fucking bollocks off! Not exactly helpful you Martin Keown looking bastard. Although his response did help me realise I probably shouldn't go through with it. Which is unfortunate as I've already set the wheels in motion.
I have people coming up to me almost daily on this trip. I know what they're going to say before they do. They pull me to one side and bang on "I just want to say, what you're doing, this trip with your mum, it's amazing. It makes me realise just how important...(this is where I tune out.)" Little do they know that the purpose of this trip is to exploit my mum for personal gain. Not to mention I'm already fucking sick of her. And as a true egalitarian, I hope she's sick of me.
I usually write about some self inflicted shit storm I've found myself in. Well not today my friend, we're still in production. This time it's future nonsense. A couple of you seemed genuinely concerned when I wrote that I would abandon my mum in Laos. Which is ridiculous and the fact this came to fruition was morally unforeseeable (my blindspot). We were only 3 days into South East Asia before I invented my latest extenuating curse against mum. She asked for an adventure. Well, you can't have a fucking adventure while holding your "adult" son's hand. What I've miraculously done there is make out that I'm liberating my old dear for selfless reasons. Like a good son I only want what's best for my mother. And as a good mother, she only wants what's best for me. So by dumping mum, I'm actually fulfilling her dream of making her son happy - ignoring my own crippling shame: selfless! So the next time mum is stood at a train station, scared, confused, and paying some hobo for opium thinking they're first class tickets somewhere safer. I'll know that I chose this life for her, to make her happy.
Alright fine, so I'm an ingrate - fucking shoot me! I'm of the ignorant belief that if you're friends with your mum then she hasn't done a very good job. So in many ways, my inability to handle this situation which I've orchestrated is a great compliment. I've spoken to my brother and he's of the incredulous belief that "losing" her here is in some way despicable? So with great reluctance, I pretended I understood. If I were to bail on mum so quickly, would that be the most despicable thing I have ever done? Of course not, but to quote my favourite racist author 'I am not typically despicably' (Dr Suess). I once gave a Vietnamese kid a football. He was amazingly happy and his father walked up to me and shook my hand. As usual I misread the situation and after 20 minutes I tackled him, strapped that ball back on the back of my bike and rode off into the sunset. In my defence - he was shit.
Some of my less ambiguously scrupulous readers might wonder if some basic communication might be preferable to forsaking my own mother. Probably, but I've never let the right thing get in the way of my mistakes before and look where that's got me. Plus I've decided mum didn't raise me well enough to breach the topic of my vacational emancipation. So in the interest of saving any awkwardness at future family funerals (mine and hers excluded of course) (Oh don't look at me like that, it was semantically important) (Which does not make me autistic.) I decided to stop being such a monumental fanny and get on with it.
The most popular chat at hostels is definitely the ethics of an elephant tour. A debate had in leather sandals over a pork curry. We did one of these tours at the Pointy Hook Riding Circus and it was the most fun I've ever seen an elephant have, he wouldn't stop wagging his trunk. Our elephant's name was Inmate 2611 and knew more tricks than a magician of the night. Speaking of magic, I've been so inundated with shroom shakes in this corner of the world that I've decided to finally upload the mix I made in November specifically for people seeing pink elephants. Download 'Mushroom Taxi for One 2' here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/2gs67tuiw056sl5/Mushroom%20Taxi%20for%20One%202%20flac%20%281%29.flac?dl=0
I made the mistake of admitting 'tipsy tubing' in Pai (Thailand) involved an inadvertently themed Benidorm rave half way down the river and so I couldn't persuade mum to go. Then three weeks later in Vang Vieng (Laos) I got a 2nd chance. Eager for some content, this time I said the theme was 'The History of the River Kwai'. And fuelled by the guilt of me not going in Pai, mum pretended to believe me. I was hoping to find her brother's T-Shirt I lost on the same river 7 years ago but all I discovered was the sense that mum wanted to abandon me. At last I think... A way out.
Not for the first time then my new remit is to go full-bogan. If I can't ditch me mammy then I'll make her want to ditch me. From midday hiking to midnight hiking - the possibilities are endless. Time to switch the en suite twin room for the infamous 36 bed dorm at Hanoi Rocks. Next time somebody drags me to one side to tell me what a good son I am I'll be able to tell them that last night my mum's breakdown went viral on tick-tock.
The Umbrella Incident
Feb 15th. I'm not really allowed to say nearly all of this but if having a great grandfather from the Amalfi coast makes me Italian then having the campest man in England as my brother must count for something.
Unseasonable rains have hit us hard in Vietnam. The Hanoi rain somehow sits still in the air and the fog in Ha Long bay meant we couldn't see beyond the first islet. I wasn't happy about it but the time had come to buy an umbrella. It cost a whopping 134,000VND and was both ostensibly BNWT and weathered from being on display. I would have haggled on the price but the woman working behind the counter was a 10 year old girl babysitting a 6 year old girl. I can't take money off of children, only footballs. Plus I'm not sure how much leverage I have considering the monsoon drowning out my voice. I pay the cunts and step out into the storm. The brolly is a gay pride one. Each segment of the canopy is a different colour of the rainbow. There's even a little rainbow flag wrapped around the top end of the handle so nobody could accuse my umbrella of hiding in the closet.
I took my open & proud umbrella out for some pho with mum. She's a short arse so I have to hold it and I notice the pole wiggling loose in the handle. I had almost bought the blue tartan brolly but I thought am I really that self-conscious that I'm willing to buy an uglier umbrella just because the rainbow makes me look gay. And I thought NO! I am so self-conscious I can't buy the other umbrella just in case somebody thinks I'm too self-conscious to buy the pride one. So in an act of defiance against my feelings of self-consciousness, I self-consciously purchased the gay umbrella. And off I skipped singing in the rain pretending I'm Rhianna.
The wind picked up and the brolly flew straight up out out the handle and I reached up and caught it. I immediately realised I've been hustled by some tax dodging children. I mean all children are tax-dodgers when you think about it but not many have to hide their income. We walk into the packed Pho place, it's a chain called Pho Thin. I leave it by the front door next a proper umbrella and when we go to leave I see the fucker has been stolen. Who steals a fucking umbrella! Have I just been hate crimed? I'm outraged! This is brilliant? I've never been victimised before - I'm a straight white English man. It's cocaine for minorities. It's crack! It's nourish, it's bloody crack nourish! What do you mean YOU people?? Can I say the N word? I'm basically that white lady who died at the BLM rally.
Okay, let me be the first to say I may have got a little carried away there but moving on...
The person who stole my umbrella saw two umbrellas. One was a large army green colour and the other was my pride one and that bastard thought "Who is less likely to beat me up?" I play it over again and again in my mind but I can't seem to move past it. Those fuckers! I just wanted to spread the love. W-H-Y!? Would they have stolen the blue tartan brolly? Walking to the pub in the pissing rain later that evening to watch The Arsenal and what do I spy walking towards me! I spot it from a mile away, my £4 symbol for equal human rights and bad weather. I have ages to form a plan in my head, How to best conduct myself. It's two Vietmanese men and they're walking on the opposite side of the street. I plan only one thing in advance... to make absolutely certain that it is actually my umbrella.
I wait until they're almost opposite and soaking wet I hurry through a gap in the traffic. The two men see me late. I grab the pole and lift the fucker clean out it's handle, scaring the shit out of the two now blatantly homosexual men. All that runs through my mind is how both these queens look bone dry. "I knew it!" I hear myself scream. The two men were comically different heights, earning them the extremely childish nicknames in my head: Top and Bottom. Not wanting to be arrested for mugging I did the only sensible thing I could think of, something that most people would be ashamed of instead of proud. I broke the fucking thing over my knee and and handed it over to Bottom. Top had his hands full as he was still holding the handle as if there was an umbrella attached to it. The little rainbow flag poking out above his hand quickly became a beacon for help.
Free of a robbery charge it was finally apparent I had just committed a grievous hate crime. Cries of "I knew it" running back through my head. Their faces looked more guilty than scared though (as per my autism face chart). I just hope that it's not because it was the first time they felt confident enough to walk the streets as an openly gay couple and they've just been attacked for it. I didn't care. All I cared about was how this looked like anyone watching. In a rare act of genius I form an immediate and full-proof escape plan. And off I minced as camp as a row of pink tents. Hoping to look like I had just discovered my partner cheating. All that was missing was the slap. "Surely they can't arrest me for 'I knew it!' now" I think while sashaying a visual representation of the dunning-kruger effect. Truly proud for the first time that day, safe in the knowledge that I couldn't have handled that situation any better.
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