War or Peace?

I think somebody is taking the piss. At the end of every night's cacophony in Chinatown (my wife swears last night's finale was a sped up version of "Could You Feel Love", sung in Mandarin), there's a comedy trill, bop-bub-babaBAABAAbompBOM, and then everything went quiet, like the finale of a not-very-good sitcom from the 1970s.

Then, blurry and confused in the taxi on the way to the airport, I had one of those conversations where you begin to doubt what you're hearing."Do you prefer war or peace?" my driver asked.

Driven crazy by Bangkok

Arriving at Suvarbharmi airport this evening, I cruised through passport control and got outside, where a man offered to drive me to my hotel. I asked him how much and when he said a thousand baht, carried on walking to the taxi stand. If it cost 300 to get to the Lebua last time we visited, I didn’t think prices could have gone up that much in a month and a half.

Like driving on ice

They don't salt the roads in Seattle, because the run-off would pollute the water and harm the fishing industries. Which is good for the environment and the salmon, but it means that with a little bit of snow like today, the roads get rather slippery.

A terrifying thing happened to me on the way to the club...

I had an extra-specially confusing taxi driver this evening. I went downstairs and walked out to the street. There was a queue of four cars queuing up at the red light at the crossroads, and the last one was ready for hire. I jogged over, waving at him and he waved his hands back, frantically shaking his head. Crushed by this rejection, I changed direction and started walking back along the street.

To Singapore with Cathay

I flew to Singapore with Cathay Pacific this evening, in the hope that a proper airline wouldn't have a plane that took off late and stank of piss.

Driven in Penang

The plane was delayed flying from Singapore by an hour, so I didn't get into Penang airport until 1:20 in the morning, and then I had to get out some money, and pay that to the taxi kiosk, and then get into a slightly shabby white taxi, so I had no hope of getting to bed before two o'clock this morning.

A night out in Hong Kong

Tonight I went to see Ruben Paul at the comedy club; tomorrow I'm hosting so I thought it would be good to see him perform. It was a bit odd to be back in the club after so long away: I think the last time I was there must have been two months ago.

The Price Of Living In Switzerland

Switzerland is amazingly expensive. The sort of expense where your vision begins to shimmer in disbelief, that a man has charged you 60 Swiss francs to drive less than 3 miles in his car.

Kinabalu National Park

When the driver gets frightened and says "oops", that is usually a bad sign. Unfortunately, when you're doing 90 km/h down the side of Mount Kinabalu, there's not much opportunity to modify your travel plans in favour of a more cautious chauffeur.

The Cost Of A Taxi

Tonight we went to a restaurant on Wyndham Street, and then to the Globe, where everyone seemed to be drinking pear cider. It's not exactly Proust but the mere mention of this alcoholic beverage had us scrambling for a taxi to take us home, to watch Stewart Lee's epic pear cider material.

Unfortunately, as the taxi pulled up at the side of Hollywood Road, we saw that we had selected a vehicle driven by the smallest and oldest man in Hong Kong. He could hardly see over the top of the steering wheel, and if that wasn't bad enough he looked ready to pass out.

Not relaxing in Malaysia

Malaysia is a relaxed country, but this is a problem if you decide to leave in a hurry.  We got a taxi from Sentral at 1:40, which was possibly cutting it fine given our flight was at 4 from KL LCC, but we probably would have been less stressed if our taxi hadn't seemed to travel as slowly as possible, all the way there.

Keep it down, lads

A friend is leaving Hong Kong this weekend to return to NYC, so he held a party in Bassment, a bar down on Lyndhurst Terrace.  It was a traditional Hong Kong expat party; a bar with a single barman trying to keep up with dozens of demands for booze, a sound system that pumped bass out hard enough to ruffle the hair on your head, and an inflatable plastic penis.

Minor adventures in South London

It rained all today. This pleased my girlfriend immensely. She had been told that Britain was always raining, so the two days of clement weather in Wales had greatly disappointed her. We drove back from Oxford, where we'd spent the night, drinking in a bar called the Rusty Bike, which was full of posh dimwits. Or perhaps just young people. What's the difference?

Cheap Taxis

I got in a taxi tonight (after trying out my new Swiss jokes in front of a confused crowd) and was complimented on my pronounciation of the street where I live. Pretty good work given I've been there for almost two years.

Boxing Day surprises

People keep telling us things, and then they start happening to us. Last night we met an acquaintance from Hong Kong who lives in Taipei, who warned us about the mad people who hang out at the main station and talk to people, and now every time we go near the station somebody will come up and try to make conversation with me. They don't seem properly mad, in terms of the government-is-reading-our-minds-and-we-must-all-wear-tinfoil-hats; since the extent of their conversation is to ask me how long I'm in Taipei for and where I'm from, they're essentially harmless, but it's odd that they never approached me before. Or perhaps I'm just hanging around in the railway station more frequently.