Part One: The Travel Diary of South-east Asia
The Travel Diary of South-east Asia
What follows here is part of a series for anyone who is interested about my travels over a year ago. I spent three months in South-east Asia. Though true to the actual handwritten diary in terms of events which I recorded on my trip day-to-day, I have changed the names and where possible gone into more detail for each day with the luxury of having a laptop this time around! I don’t know how regularly this will appear, but I’ll sporadically type up bitesize chunks of it, as doing it in one piece would be an arduous task that I really can’t be bothered with. Part one concerns my decision to go traveling, the flight, and Singapore.
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What ensued were months of frantic scrimping and saving, along with fantasies and nightmares. Fantasies of broadening the mind, fantasies of the cultures I would encounter, fantasies of making friends, finding a girl, somehow becoming a modern day Kerouac and seeing things that would live immortal in my memories. Nightmares of my trip being destructive, my shyness being the social death of me, enforcing patriarchy, being mugged. It was all there, brimming at my eyelids and swirling from one day to the next, this excitement and trepidation with a dollop of fear. Winter came and in the dark days I hibernated, saving and shrinking with fear as the days drew nearer, the sporadic pints with friends freezing up whenever someone mentioned it. Was this really happening? Too right it was, and little did I know how my fantasies and nightmares would all be realised at some point or another (not the Kerouac one unfortunately), but of course the one prevailing fact about realised fantasies or nightmares is this - they’re all unforgettable.
So here it goes, I’m brushing the dust off and opening the diary on one inconsequential and perhaps ignorant trip for mankind, and one giant leap for a man…
10th of January 2019 - Gosport > London
Just as my first step in booking the flights was accompanied by Jake, I thought it fitting that he should be the last person to share my final moments with before the trip was to begin. We shared a pack of 4 Heineken in the company of a cold green sea at Stokes Bay, him offering advice, condolences and some very useful additions that were to go in my already bulging bag at home, and me semi-listening and semi having a breakdown. How the fuck am I going to put all this in my bag? Didn’t everyone say to pack light? Now I can’t even fit my third pair of shorts or seventh fucking t-shirt in my stupid 40l Osprey bag. Why didn’t I ask for a 60l for christmas? In fact, why am I even going...ALONE. I clinked the glass bottle for the dregs and gulped them down, hearing the imagined hiss of my searing thoughts as the cooling force of dutch courage sunk down. He asked what time the flight was, and after I realised it was 11pm and we were coming up to 5:30 I gave him a hug, thanked him sincerely and headed back home for an overdramatic parting from my Mum and Dad and a cheerful but worried goodbye from my two sisters.
I hit the ferry and felt the sea spray and saw the disgruntled workers with eyes that were blessed. The transition of eras in my life were like tectonic plates deep within myself moving both slowly but with great power, and it felt like seeing everything for the first and last time all at once - aching excitement. I got one more beer for the train and after a blind panic of debris on the track and 2 unscheduled switches with ankle shaking and twiddling thumbs maniacally typing all the way, I still got to Gatwick for 8:00 and looked around thinking, ‘well, what now?’
Of course I’ve been to airports before, but never alone. I checked-in ok, there was surprisingly no queue and it being late at night Gatwick stood like a ghost town, but soon I found myself not realising the way to the gates and swivelling to-and-fro - too scared to ask someone exactly where to go and too proud to admit even to myself that I was lost! For about five minutes I walked round that check-in lobby place or whatever you call it, until by the grace of the imaginary gods, someone actually asked me if I knew where I was going and pointed up the elevator (of course!) to the departure gates. For fuck sake why don’t you just turn back around right now, how are you going to navigate fucking countries if you cant even navigate an airport? Some more of my inner monologue there just to paint a picture.
But anyway, here I am. I didn’t turn away. I wasn’t perturbed when I attempted to make small chat to the two girls sat next to me and failed miserably. When I asked ‘does this plane have wifi?’ one of them replied, ‘well its a budget airline with no legroom so I don’t reckon they do, no’. Funny, but a bit awkward as I found no good repost and now every time I have to get up for her to head to the toilet I do so with an averted gaze. I was however perturbed by the immigration card I had to fill out on the plane which informed me they did in fact still keep the death penalty for drug offences, just brilliant. I’m further perturbed as I look around in the dawn light. How is everyone sleeping? Here I am, above the clouds on a Boeing 787 Dreamliner as the sun rises, on my way to another corner of the world.
Next stop, Singapore.
11th of January 2019 - Singapore
Touchdown. There was a butterfly garden INSIDE the airport for goodness sake! But it being around 10pm by the time I’d got my bags I headed straight to the train and tried to figure out my route to Little India. Knowing I wouldn’t be able to find a sim with data at that time, I instead had the ingenious idea of screenshotting every step of the way - from airport to India. But when you’re there in the stagnant and moist night air the furthest you’ve been from home running off of the fumes of nervous energy, it all of a sudden becomes quite an impossible task.
I followed the signs fairly easily to the right train on the MRT, and was astounded with the cleanliness and efficiency of the public transport - a far cry from the chewing gum riddled outdated carriages of the London Underground. Train doors aligned with gates at the platform to stop interference on the track by the public and I sat down wired on a practically empty carriage taking in every little morsel of activity that might just transition into lifelong memory. My stop came and along with it my first real problem. There are two exits at the station, but does google think to mention that? Of course not. Also what’s right and left in reality when compared to my now quite useless screenshot of the route? I rambled up and down the quiet and anonymous streets that quite literally could have fooled me for being anywhere, until somehow I came across a thin one way system that was crowded and contained more colour than the monumental buildings that lined the streets before. Bars, phone shops, hostels and a few stragglers looking for a way home or out - of course this was Little India and the location of the cheapest hostel in Singapore… my one.
The InnCrowd Backpackers is my first ever Hostel, and in my hour long experience so far I’m finding them to be crazy places. I spoke to the lady and was told to wait as they got everything processed and ready for me my nightmares were realised in the first 5 minutes. As I searched for a seat I saw only a step to sit on in front of the communal computers. All the other tables were occupied by groups of people playing card games and planning trips, big fat smiles on their faces. Loneliness engulfed me and I think I could have cried right there and then. Could I definitely do this trip alone? I don’t know what took them so long but they finally took me upstairs to a mixed 12 bed dorm where I lay now in my simple bed (bottom bunk luckily) scribbling away. I’ve gone 20 hours so I know as soon as I stop writing I’m passing out but fear grips me. My bags are literally just out in a little cupboard room thing with all the others adjacent to the room is that ok? About 10-20 inches from my feet is someone's face passed out, whilst to my left is a bottom bunk with towels obscuring the bed. I can hear muted whispers coming from that direction and maybe the sound of kissing? Right, fuck it, bed.
Ok update: I’m pretty sure THEY’RE HAVING SEX RIGHT NOW. God what am I doing here.
12th of January 2019 - Singapore, Little India
Woke up at a fairly normal time and with an incredible resolve which I was so grateful to rise with. I’m just going to will myself into things, no point in being here if I’m not gonna try. So I got showered, heard someone playing the new Catfish and The Bottlemen song which sounded great, I’ve looked it up now (Longshot) and just went and sat there, right in the centre of the common area. I felt slightly buoyed by the fact that I’d see my friend from home Benito for the next couple of days as he was fortuitously coming towards the end of his own trip. Just having that slice of the UK with me for the first lurch was what I needed. But anyway, I sat there eating as much free toast as my rumbling stomach demanded and people just started talking to me.
The first was a fellow Englishman, who lives in Swindon - which we both agreed was a bit of a shithole but at least it was commutable to Bristol - and works at Nationwide in a dull number crunching kind of job. I could tell from his similarly pasty white skin that his travelling had just started and we talked about our plans, they actually sounded quite similar. The second was a half-Phillopino half-American who I just had down right away as an Instagram poser before we’d even followed each other. His skin was immaculate and his face was beautifully sculpted and bronze and when he told me the locations he wanted to seek out in Singapore, showing me examples of similarly immaculate men and women who’d taken brilliantly crafted pictures at the locations, I switched off. I imagine I’ll be seeing so much of this on the trip - ‘must get the right picture or it didn’t happen’!. And the last was inevitably an American. I’d been dreading this. I knew setting out that the only other sets of travellers to rival the volume of Brits abroad would be yanks. But actually he was cool. A DJ, he talked about this set he might be playing at a club downtown in the evening.
So what was I worried about? It’s that easy right? Then after retreating to the room for my phone, there was Benito’s message and then there was Benito himself. We headed out firstly to the Marina Bay Hotel, literally one of the only things I knew about Singapore flying out, and there under a sun-kissed sky we drank some cocktails and he gave me more details about travelling. I tried to pay attention but the view was just something else. Skyscrapers swarmed for attention in a cluster around my eyeline and as I looked down to the sea I saw countless ships in the world’s busiest port. This is the life. But alas, when the bill came, it definitely wasn’t the price. I have to find cheaper alcohol and food here.
I started paying attention as we headed to the famous botanical gardens. Stories of the full moon, of deep sea diving, of treks and of a dozen other things made me smile. Two guys from Gosport, on the other side of the world. It made me smile even more when I thought of how I’d had to explain to each guy I’d spoken to about where Gosport was. ‘So it’s next to Portsmouth’ ‘where?’ ‘Portsmouth, like the south coast, near isle of wight, you know like the festival?’ ‘London?’ ‘Yeah near London… fuck it’.
The gardens were of course unreal and I doubt any other botanical garden on my trip will rival it, I mean, everyones seen pictures, and the reality is something special. But I just couldn’t shake off the severe jet-lag, something I’d always been sceptical of until today, and Benito was similarly tired from the scorching sun. We made a plan to head back, sleep until 8pm, then head up to go out. Benito said he had a friend also in Singapore that he’d like to meet for drinks at a bar.
I hit the bed and have woken up sweating profusely at 2am as I now write this. Fucked it. But overall, not a bad day.
13th of January 2019 - Singapore, Little India
The big downside of missing that night is that I had to wait around for Benito to rise from his stupor, which ended up being 3pm! And I didn’t have much luck with my whole sit-and-people-talk-to-you thing this time around, so I frequently headed outside, walked around, got too hot, came back inside. My favourite thing about Singapore so far are the orange juices you get from the street vending machines. It's quite ridiculous I know but man I love orange juice, and you actually see the juice being squeezed fresh and cold, so refreshing as you navigate the blindingly hot asphalt streets. I just can’t quite get over the sanitised nature of Singapore, it seems like lurking somewhere is culture and art, graffiti maybe, a stained train, but I just can’t see it.
Anyway, Marco woke up and we headed to the Universal Studios theme park (honestly I’ve researched Singapore so badly I’ve no idea where else to go at this point), and after buying an 80 dollar ticket (about 50 quid? Still trying to figure out currency) the heavens unleash a torrential downpour causing the park to close before we’ve been on anything. Luckily, Benito is with me. Ever since we were young, he has been the wheeler dealer. The school had coke cans for 60p, Benito had one for 40. Wanted to take old DVD’s to Blockbuster and cash in? Benito would give you a quid more and then shift them on eBay. He had a company in year 7 and now works selling software or something. Quite the opposite to me who would rather take a shit deal than suffer an ounce of confrontation, Benito relished off of heading to the help desk, where he got us our money back along with complimentary tickets to the Aquarium. Del Boy strikes again!
After a quick trip around that, which was good but not that noteworthy, we headed to Chinatown where Benito had been last night and found a bar/restaurant with dead animals hanging within 10 fit of the cooking area and beers for the equivalent of around 3.50gbp - the best we were likely to find. I immediately sat facing away from the animals and began to feel guilty about the fish, dairy and eggs I’d be eating on this trip. I’m a vegan usually, but I don’t think I’ll have the time to scout out plant based stuff anywhere. Benito remarkably thought about eating here but I suggested somewhere a bit less gruesome so after a couple we went to a Japanese restaurant and had sushi.
Then it was just beers. A few more in Chinatown and a few more in Little India and we ended up in an Irish bar talking shit about how our twenties were all about travelling and this West Ham Everton game was shit and how hot it was and how good Japan is and how I’ll do fine making friends and traveling solo blah blah etc. etc. I drunkenly persuaded myself about Japan and booked a flight as I downed a pint, along with a coach ticket to Kuala Lumpar for tomorrow at 1.
Me and Benito said our goodbyes. He was heading back to the grey skies of England. I, following the sun and heading north, alone again.
For part 2 click here
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