The further adventures of self-indulgence: All my British homes

We've finally secured a reasonably good internet connection, so before I'm inevitably thrown back to the dial-up ages I've been making the most of those advanced, high-bandwidth services that you lucky people in the developed world take for granted, like YouTube videos above 144p, non-HTML Gmail and Google Street View, which enables less fortunate people to imagine they're wandering the real streets of wealthier countries in 2009.

I've thought for a while that when I finally make it back to the UK and visit the family, I might also take a tour of my childhood homes and haunts in search of overwhelming primal nostalgia or crushing existential despair about the transience of our brief lives. Any emotion would be fine really.

But since we just built a house, and that rules out travel for this year at least, I settled for a synthetic virtual substitute and spent an hour or so clicking along familiar routes to schools, playgrounds and newsagents where the latest issue of Dinosaurs! magazine with another free bit of glow-in-the-dark Tyrannosaurus Rex skeleton isn't waiting for me any more. I didn't feel much of anything.

If you're ever in South Cheshire, Lancaster or Edinburgh and you feel like paying tribute to my life, here's where to light those candles.

Bachelor

Freedom used to be my most cherished possession. I'd sooner have gone to prison than have my freedom taken away from me... oh hang on, that's the same net result.

The glimmer of freedom has tarnished since I met someone I like spending my time with, who I had to leave behind for a few weeks due to a combination of visa expiry and a cleansing religious festival that didn't exactly require boyfriends to be around.

Fortunately, I'm an expert at killing time and treading water in South East Asia, and I took the opportunity to visit a few places on my to-do list that Jackie probably wouldn't be that interested in when we started travelling together. Staving off my depression by visiting some of the bleakest tourist attractions in the world helped for a while, but then I accidentally checked in at a tranquil resort where everything was mockingly designed for two and the solitude was rubbed in my face.

As I watched the sun set over the Gulf of Thailand from my balcony with one too many chairs, I comforted myself by visualising the shackles of codependence slowly approaching over the horizon. We'd be together again soon. I'm a traitor to single travellers and the values I've stood for over the last two years, but I have to admit it's nice being able to share experiences and actually have someone to talk to rather than just typing my frustrations. Here's hoping this is my last solo excursion for a long time.

Second first impressions

Drawn back to South East Asia by the lower cost of private rooms and paying people to cook all my meals for me (it really is all about that), the obsessive-compulsive, collector part of my brain is annoyed that there aren't many new lands left to visit in these parts, but the realistic part of my brain that occasionally speaks up reminded me that that's not important. It's not like I'm out here collecting passport stamps, this is my actual life.

Travelling extensively in this part of the world has taught me which countries I like and which are to be avoided, and there's always more to see - especially in countries I didn't visit for so long the first time around. Indonesia is an obvious choice, as even though I had some of my worst travel experiences in that country I've only been to two of its islands, but I opted for the Philippines again, which I really didn't see much of in 2011 thanks to arriving at the height of typhoon season. Maybe plans are useful sometimes.

I was so disappointed by the Philippines last time, mostly the fault of the typhoons admittedly, that I passed some time trapped in my rain-battered hotel room recalling my first impressions of all the countries I'd visited up to that point, to see whether my initial experiences coloured my overall opinion of a place. The jury's still out, so I've brought the list up to date with more first impressions of the countries I've visited since.

I checked the weather forecast for Cebu and it looked peachy, so I was optimistic that the Philippines would do better the second time around. I was wrong. But that's probably a good thing, as it turns out people enjoy my blog most when I'm angry, stressed, uncomfortable and generally not enjoying myself for your entertainment. Always glad to be of service.

A month of Sydneys

I don't normally celebrate New Year, which gets the same attention from me as my birthday, Christmas and Ramadan. Despite spending my last three December 31sts in capital cities where they don't let the arbitrary turning of the Gregorian calendar pass by unnoticed (Edinburgh, Taipei, Seoul), I preferred to spend those pivotal hours like any other: on my computer, avoiding contact with revellers or just being asleep.

But when I ended up spending this New Year in Sydney, and was invited to see in the New Year from the best vantage point in the city and enjoy several hours of drinking in the park, sleeping through the event this time seemed a little disrespectful. And anyway, this might be most easterly (and earliest) New Year I'll ever have, which, combined with the equally redundant time zone system and the end of my month in Sydney, somehow resulted in a night worth celebrating. Happy Early New Year!

Oh yeah, I'm in Australia. Didn't I mention that? I should probably backtrack a little...

The Conquest of Monkey Island™

No sooner had I got my sea legs, than they were snatched from under me as we went ashore for some extremely medium-duty jungle trekking on Cat Ba Island™. After getting suitably sweaty, we took another short voyage to spend the night on Monkey Island™, which was inevitably disappointing given my impossibly high expectations.

Not only did I not see any monkeys, I didn't see a single pirate skeleton ghost or come across seemingly random objects for my inventory that would later prove ingeniously useful when combined with other objects or parts of the background. I feel like I've been the victim of an extremely long-winded marketing con by Vietnamese travel companies in collaboration with Guybrush Threepwood and the good people of LucasArts. I've heard they are contemptible sneaks. Still, I always enjoy a rickety wooden cabin.

Ha Long is a piece of string?

That depends on the scrupulousness of the travel agent you book your tour of Vietnam's tactically voted Wonder of the World with, and how stubborn you are to fight through their deliberately ambiguous sales pitch and outright lies about 'VIP' boats and 'superior' bungalows before they admit that everyone just gets handed the same length of tatty old string frayed at the edges and with a couple of frustrating knots that they've tried loosening with scissors, but that just made it look worse.

If you enter the tour company's office prepared to deal with their bullshit, and don't get indignant when the tour guides advise you that you shouldn't leave any valuables in your boat cabin because the crew routinely breaks into rooms to look for anything salvageable, you'll probably have a great time in Ha Long Bay. Once you've accepted that you're going to be scammed, the satisfaction lies in minimising the collateral damage.

Paradise is overrated

Travelling isn't all that stressful, it's life that's stressful. I get stressed at the drop of a hat, which is why I can never wear hats. I tried it once, let's never speak of that again.

Or at least I thought I got stressed a lot. It turns out all that time I was just getting a bit annoyed. Now I know what stress is, and what it's capable of doing to my formerly invincible body. I won't bore or sicken you with the details, but I have my reliably unreliable bank to thank for making an annoying situation steadily worse and piling on problems and bureaucracy like a stress Buckaroo until my digestive system couldn't cope any more. No, I don't have any formal medical training. Why do you ask?

The result was that I had to spend a lot longer limboing in Bangkok than I'd planned, or than Thai immigration allowed me, with a dwindling supply of emergency baht and no way of accessing my own money that I work for.

Then I remembered I was in Thailand, where there are loads of idyllic islands designed for just these situations, and sought to counteract the most stressful experience in my life with the most relaxing. It was going quite well for an afternoon until the typhoon struck.

Tossers of the world

I don't play by your admittedly sensible and important rules

This might surprise you, but I'm not perfect. I've gone on record describing myself variously as 'a bit of an asshole' and 'a dick,' but I don't think I'd go as far as to call myself 'a tosser.' I'll reserve that privilege for those more self-assured and insufferably cocky men I've encountered on my travels (they are always men) who make modest boasts about what they view as their impressive or unusual achievements that tend to look rather mediocre or even pointless to the objective eye.

These are usually the objective eyes of women who fail to be impressed when being insulted through their association with the lamentable tourists surrounding the tosser, who are probably only here on holiday, doing a bit of sightseeing on the well-trodden path, unquestioningly following their Lonely Planet guidebooks before going back to their humdrum lives. Like there's anything wrong with having something to go back to.

Here are some true examples of modest boasts, failed attempts to impress and general tossiness that I've enjoyed from an impartial vantage point elsewhere in the room, usually when I'm working, writing these blogs or finding other ways to avoid interaction. Most of these are from South Korea the first time around, which was the last time I shared rooms and hung around in communal areas in hostels, so is probably why those are freshest in my memory. I've embellished the events slightly for dramatic purposes, and although most of the featured tossers could conceivably be me, only one of them actually is. But which one?

Sleep like the dead

I thought long and hard about where to go next after not exactly being blown away by Sri Lanka, before ultimately making an impulse decision again after spotting an absurdly cheap flight to Tokyo. It was as good a reason as any, and this time I was a lot more excited about Japan, having strategically lowered my quality of life in recent weeks rather than coming straight from comfortable Korea like last time.

In the short term, I was particularly excited about spending my first night in a capsule hotel - you know, those extremely cramped, utilitarian bed/coffin arrangements that sprang up as a cheap accommodation alternative in the overcrowded megatropolis of Tokyo.

You might have seen these on TV shows highlighting how kerrrazy Japan is. I thought I had, but clearly I hadn't, as the image I had in my mind was of a fully grown man in pyjamas sliding horizontally into a barely-human-sized slot, like a poor family keeping its children in a chest of drawers (citation needed).

It turns out it's really not that bad, and I found there to be more than enough space. Though I have spent a lot of time in bunks over the last 20 months, which generally offered a lot less room and privacy (especially last time I was in Japan). You'll have to try harder than that to shock me, Tokyo - please take on the challenge.

Memories of Germany

I studied German for seven years at secondary school and right through to sixth form, not that you'd be able to tell from my almost total lack of conversational German skills.

I haven't forgotten everything I learned, it's more the case that I was never very good to begin with. I'm pretty sure I only scraped a mediocre 'C' by abusing the senility of the frail German assistant, whose overly constructive feedback to my coursework consisted of crossing out my bad grammar and providing grammatically perfect German in red pen, which I could just type up. Like that would teach me anything apart from the value of the old and deranged. I wonder if she's still there, or if they've had her put down.

Another failed attempt to enhance our language studies was the semi-annual school trip to whichever uninteresting part of Germany could be reached in the least gruelling time by bus from North West England. I'm pretty sure no one came back from those trips feeling that their German skills had improved, but some of the excursions were memorable for having unrealistic stereotypes improbably reinforced.

Memories of France

Image: Sam Osbon

I didn't travel much before 2010, which is part of the reason I went so full-on with it, in my typical binary on/off, black/white, glass-is-full/glass-is-instantly-empty-and-you-didn't-see-any-transition-got-it? way. But I did have a few notable experiences on family holidays, school trips and excursions around Britain in my adult life, which are memorable either for being fantastic or incredibly awful. Like I said, I don't do half measures.

Today: France.

I (don't) have the powerrrrrr

Do not stand at my grave and cry,
I am not there; I did not die.
Anyway, I'm just a plug;
Get some perspective.

The day I had long feared finally arrived as I gazed down at the power cord tethered umbilically to the left side of my laptop to find its familiar white glow absent. Tenderly wiggling it around in its socket and aggressively forcing the prongs in and out of the wall, I was unable to re-ignite the spark of life. My laptop plug had delivered its final charge and gone to join the toasters in silicon heaven.

I was screwed.

How many New Years do you people need?

Four months into 2012, I'd already had to endure three new years in the countries I visited. The Solar New Year (1 January) and Lunar New Year (23 January) in Korea were easy enough to avoid, and the swarming streets didn't look much different from the safety of my tower. But the Sinhalese New Year in Sri Lanka (13 April) was a different matter, as the family-owned shops, restaurants and hotels that are so pleasingly prevalent in developing countries all took the day off so they could go swimming in the lake. Where's an evil corporation when you need one? I'm thirsty.

It was like being back in the UK during that dead period between 25 December and 3 January when the Western world shuts down (I never did work out what was going on there). It's my own fault for not doing my research, as I'm pretty sure there are websites and leaflets out there designed specifically to inform me about this. If I'd known the country would be sleeping for 48 hours I wouldn't have spent my Thursday uploading photos of old ruins on a tediously slow connection - I could have done some emergency stockpiling instead. But if there's one thing you will have noticed about me in recent months, it's that I'm incapable of planning ahead.

Sayonara!

Wh...

Huh?

Oh, I see - you're saying this is all you saw of Kyushu (the southernmost of Japan's four main islands), right? Before you went to Osaka, Kyoto, Tokyo and all that stuff. I get it.

No? But you can't possibly mean...

Oh. Wow.

You know people actually read these reviews, right?

So what if it's a peaceful room in a tranquil paradise for an unfairly low price?

If you can't provide Wi-Fi in the sea, prepare to be destroyed

I can be a bit of an asshole sometimes. When I was a teenager, I could try to blame my temper and disgraceful attitude towards my younger brothers on a perpetual lack of sleep that was directly related to the fact I drank three litres of cola a day, but now that I'm supposed to be an adult it's less excusable when I let petulance or a bad mood cloud my judgement and I give unfairly harsh feedback on hostel booking websites, when I've actually had an alright stay.

I guess I could still play the nationality card and blame it on stereotypical British consumer outrage. Or maybe writing these blogs in a vacuum has made me forget that sometimes people actually read the stuff I write elsewhere, especially when they're trying to weigh up the pros and cons of staying at one place over another in an unfamiliar city or country. I do feel a sense of obligation to inform these potential customers about the good and bad aspects of places I visit, though admittedly only based on my own needs and desires from a place - but there have also been a couple of times when I've witnessed the repercussions of the things I've written in a fit of spiteful haste, and have felt a little guilty.

I've worked in the digital marketing industry for a while, and compiled reports for companies based on consumer feedback from these sorts of sites, so I know the powerful influence these seemingly innocuous reviews can have. I've left some pretty harsh feedback for hostels and hotels in the past that I've felt was completely justified, when a place was falsely advertised or the owners were even bigger assholes than me. But rating down a hostel based on the quality of its guests or slightly inconvenient Wi-Fi (I have to go into the lounge to receive the completely free high-speed internet access? Outrageous!), I sometimes forget these places are actually owned by people who might be affected by the thoughtless things I'm typing.

So for some self-critiquing fun, here's an anthology of the more critical reviews I've left over the past 18 months, analysed with the cool head of hindsight.

Whaddido?

You really can't win sometimes. I was under the mistaken impression that by travelling to different countries, paying my way and cleaning up after myself, I wasn't contributing to the meltdown of the global economy and clanging the death knell of Western civilisation. But there are people who are prepared to take issue with anything, and when you're dealing with someone as indefatigably moral, upstanding and all-round ace as me, you do have to dig deep to find the bad stuff... oh hang on, that sentence alone has proven you don't.

I've been criticised as a dropout and a deserter for leaving my home country behind for so long. It's an overly antagonistic but otherwise accurate assessment - I didn't feel like living in the UK any more, and I had the means to leave, so I left. They don't make it all that difficult to escape, to be honest. But desertion didn't seem to be the main problem - it's that I'm still going and haven't settled down somewhere and got a real job. Again, I didn't feel like setting down and having a real job again, and I had the means not to, so I didn't. This really riles some people up.

By floating aimlessly and carefree (not entirely carefree, as blogs like this prove), I'm apparently not 'doing my bit,' 'giving something back' or 'some other platitude that I feel the need to put in inverted commas.' Like I'm a hedonist raping the world of its resources to satisfy my insatiable appetite and doing more harm than good. I just don't see what I've done wrong.

Ch-Ch-Ch-Ch-Chang is

...an island, a beer and a Klingon played by Christopher Plummer in Star Trek VI. But let's start with the island.

This was my final destination in South East Asia, so I was determined to make the most of it. By doing as little as possible. It was nice. Here are my photos of absolutely nothing.

Let's do Cambodia properly

I saw more than just the border this time, at least. Even if I still spent less time in this kingdom than I have in any other country (Brunei excluded), at a disappointing 72 hours - abandoning some of my remaining principles and booking a despicably lazy package tour from Bangkok.

These are my last few weeks in South East Asia, and I didn't feel like spending too much time and effort getting to grips with a new culture, a new currency (not that they even use their own currency as it turns out) and some new phrases to half-heartedly learn and be too embarrassed to use, for fear of pronouncing them like an idiot.

But even after just two days out in Siem Reap, I was pretty templed out and ready to go back to easy-peasy lemon polka-dot Thailand.

He's changed

A few months ago, I might have settled for that Basic Dorm and risked suffering the snores and nocturnal telephone calls of 15 people. But my budget backpacking days are behind me, and I was happy to splash an extra 43 pence on air conditioned Superiority. Ooh, la-de-da - who does he think he is? He's changed.

Oh Bohollocks

After a pleasantly sunny first day in Bohol, I was woken early to find the typhoons had followed me south. I thought I'd escaped their inexplicable wrath, but like the Grim Reaper and those scary flying faces in Mario 2, they were going to catch up with me sooner or later.

The tour guide taking our depleted group around the island's sights couldn't understand it - apparently the storms don't usually reach this far below the typhoon belt. I felt guilty. Clearly I'd done something to piss off Anitun Tabu, Thor, Tlaloc or one of the other storm gods, and according to Oliver (who knows about these things), I needed to get a blessing to make things right again.

But where should I go? Which one of these obviously pretend deities was the right one?

Then I remembered - there is only one God; namely God (clue's in the name, duh). Silly me! I'd spent so long in the heathen world that I'd forgotten. Luckily for me, the Philippines was raped by the Spanish 500 years ago and they sorted things out by leaving the permanent scars of Catholicism and Colonial architecture. I just had to find me a church. Gracias, señores!