I feared my contentment would be over when I got to New Zealand, but if anything life just got cosier. When people hear that I went to New Zealand, I’m sure some will ask how high I skydived from and which bungie-jump I took; and I admit that before I went there I thought I would come back with answers. Instead my friends, Jason and Els, showed me that the real way to see the country didn’t cost much, or come with a souvenir certificate and DVD. All we had to do was walk up the nearest hill, or get in to the camper-van and go. It didn’t really matter where we went as we drove to Dunedin, Lake Tekapo, and Wanaka. The best times I had were sat together in the front of the van talking about anything and everything, taking a walk in the torrential rain on the coast, or just feeling of togetherness I felt in everything we did. Finding some seals, going to the cinema, and playing in the snow; all of these things were so much more fun knowing that that beside me I had friends who knew exactly how good it was to appreciate and do these things together.

And so after two separate weeks staying at homes with dogs, washing machines, internet, being met at the airport with hugs and smiles (and not a placard reading “Daneil Slatterf”), but most of all being with people I cared about; I was ready to go solo again.

The boat moored off a cay (a small sandbar island) home to thousands of nesting birds. The other passengers and I were ferried to the cay, where the crew proceeded to give a talk about the birds. Normally I would have listened with interest and taken a few photographs; but not on that day. Instead I strapped on flippers and waddled backwards in to the water. In my first five minutes, I saw nearly every type of life I had previously encountered in the tropical waters of Thailand and Vietnam. Everybody was there for the party, even a few blue spotted stingray. After I had said hello to my old friends, I began to notice the more distinguished guests. The most senior by far, comfortably sat on the seabed, were the century-old giant clams. At over two metres long, and unlike their younger relatives, they had no reason to close their shells when I neared them. Instead they just sat their displaying their slightly erotic, and very alien innards. A part of me wanted to stroke their fluorescent-green labia. The other part of me knew that if I did I wouldn’t get my hand back. As usual the parrot fish, with their telltale coral-crunching, were the noisiest creatures on the reef. An unfamiliar deep crunching sound led me to a parrot fish slightly bigger than me; the deeper the crunch the bigger the fish. In contrast, it was easy to miss the quietest and most gentile of the reef dwellers; the turtles. Having never seen them before in the wild, my heart skipped a beat as I noticed the first giant mottled shell laying in the sand. Probably due to the pesky snorkelers, a few of the turtles I saw were using their flippers to throw sand over their shells and bury themselves in the seabed. Although I must have seen half a dozen that day, I’m sure I missed many more in hiding near by. However when I did manage to notice them, and get close enough to touch them, I was pleased to be greeted with indifference rather than fear. Compared to the neurotic, ever-moving fish, they were and absolute pleasure to photograph. The stingray for instance were more than happy to show their tales and gliding wings as they swam away from me, but were reluctant to pose for their close-up head shots. After pursuing one for five minutes for such a photograph, I found myself in much deeper water. As the stingray made its final bolt in to the blue abyss, something else caught my attention; a cuttlefish. At first it was blue and pink, then, when it felt my presence, it changed its colour to match the chalky white coral. As it hovered in the water, probably thinking I couldn’t see it, I managed to get very close to it. Unlike its body, its flanks rippled through colours I had never seen before; many at the extremity of my sights gamut. No video or photograph could ever do this animal justice; the granularity of its pigmentation to finer than any pixel, pulsations and flashes faster than any frame-rate. Once again, something in the periphery of my vision distracted me. A shoal of squid was swimming alongside me in almost symmetrical formation. While their cousin, the cuttlefish, may have had superior camouflage, the squid, with their perfectly streamlined bodies were built for speed. I was welcome to swim with them provided I kept out of their way; too close and they would propel themselves like bullets to a safe distance. Just as I was trying to determine exactly how far this distance was, and how close I could get to take a photograph, I started to hear a whirring sound. For the first time in three hours, I looked above the water to see one of the catamarans dinghy’s coming towards me. The woman driving the dinghy was calling back to the boat; I was along way from both the cay and the boat, and also it was time to come back for lunch.

What I saw in the water that morning filled my mind with images, questions and ideas. I would have been content to spend the rest of the day sat on deck, swimming in my thoughts. However, as promised, and after a very welcome buffet lunch, there was a second dive in the afternoon. From where the boat where the boat was now moored, out of sight of land, I didn’t imagine there could have been much going on beneath the water surface. In fact it seemed like quite a strange place to be; the water looked deep and dark, and the waves were big and choppy. Of course beneath the waves it was a different story. After a short swim, I found myself hovering over a steep ledge in the seabed. This geological formation, and the effect it had on the water currents, had turned the area in to a meeting point and feeding area for thousands of fish and other, more microscopic, life. Each section of the ledge was dominated by a different species or played its own role in the local food chain. Out of curiosity of what existed further down the ledge, I found myself free-diving deeper and deeper. At about 8 metres, and after equalising four times, the water surface started to look like a long way up. I was as deep as I could possibly go with no end to the ledge face in sight. Along with learning to drive, and figuring out how to cook a number of dishes from around the world, the list of things I want to learn inspired by my travels now includes one more item; scuba diving.

After the Great Barrier Reef, the other most memorable Australian excursion was a 3-day self-drive trip to Fraser Island. Formed of sand, and with no roads as such, a four-wheel-drive vehicle is required to get around the island. With a long history of fatalities associated with such trips, I was not surprised to find out that they will soon be getting banned. I suppose I was fortunate to be doing the trip with a company that had a good safety record and provided a day of induction training. I was put in to a group of 8 and assigned to a Toyota Land Cruiser. Over the next day we were taught how to shatter the suspension, break in to the vehicle, and cause it to do 180° flips. Concerning the environment, we were advised how to deal with dingoes, tides, lakes, and what to do with our rubbish. At every stage the trainer had an anecdote of someone who had not followed the rules and ended-up paralyzed, writing-off the vehicle, or paying a hefty fine. After all these threats, when we set-off driving through the sand dunes, rivers and along the sandy beaches, it felt like we were on a military mission of sorts. Although I couldn’t have the pleasure of driving, the coordination of tide tables, maps and regulations was more than enough to keep me happy. Having followed our route and met all of our ETAs, we, and the other 7 groups, parked-up near the beach to set up camp for the night. Even then, racing against the setting sun to put up the tents and make dinner turned in to a military operation.

Thanks to all the cheap boxed wine we bought with us, it didn’t take long to unwind from the day. Like so often when I drink to excess, the night became a collection of dislocated dream-like scenes. In the first scene I’m sat on the ground in a circle of people. An Irish guy with a guitar is doing a great job of playing all the usual sing-a-long stuff. Unfortunately he’s singing in such a high pitch that when I or others in group try to sing too, we manage about 30 seconds of strained, high-pitch, out of key whining before we start to get embarrassed with our efforts and leave the circle. In the next scene I’m stood between two German guys with shovels. Under the powerful headlights of one of the Land Cruisers, they’re having some kind of digging competition. All around me sand is flying through the air and people are yelling “Schnell!”. Then, when it starts to rain, I find myself in the back of my vehicle looking for a drink in the cool box. Without me noticing, a cute German girl has sat herself down on my lap and wrapped her arms around me. She’s stroking my chest and my face, and put her lips to my ear. Breathing heavily, and squeezing me harder, she starts to whisper to me how much I remind her of her boyfriend. Too drunk to figure out how to play my part in the role play, she starts squirming on my lap. To both of our surprise, this has the undesired effect of pushing on my bladder. I pop her off my lap and scramble in to the dunes to urinate. Long after I finish, I carry on standing there looking up at the Milky Way and the unfamiliar stars of the southern hemisphere. With so little artificial light, and so many stars on display, I find it hard to pick out any constellations. My stargazing is interrupted when I hear something move in front of me. When I switch on my head torch I see that I’ve pissed inches away from a laying dingo. It doesn’t seem to be interested in me. It just stays there staring at the camp with a sad longing in its eyes; kind of like a pet dog that’s been banished from its home. The next thing I know I’m sat in the front of my vehicle smoking a spliff with a Dutch model. We’re listening to Ace Of Base, but when we realise that the Dutch girl and German guy in the back are now kissing, we figure some mood music is in order so put on 2 Become 1 by the Spice Girls. The last thing I see before slipping into darkness are the colourful light of the stereo and the dashboard. I wake up to find myself now in the driving seat slumped over the steering wheel. In the moment before I wipe the condensation off the windscreen, the feeling of panic starts to rise in my throat; had I been driving? No, we’re exactly where we parked the evening before. Unable to get back to sleep on the front seats, I go outside but don’t stop to look at the stars again; it’s far too cold. I crawl into a tent and, with no sleeping bag or bedding, I huddle and shiver myself to sleep. Every now and then the sound of the dingoes snarling, or twanging guide ropes wakes me up. And again I have to get warm before I can drift-off again.

Other than the odd night like that, during the trip to Fraser Island, and the subsequent sailing trip around the Whitsunday Islands, I began to feel slightly disillusioned with the way in which I socialising and meeting people. It wasn’t that I didn’t get to meet some lovely people, my problem was that every two or three days the slate got wiped clean. I would say goodbye to the people I had met and never see them again. I therefore began to feel that although the time I spent talking and getting to know people wasn’t wasted, it could have been better spent.

Australia’s natural beauty blew me away, humbled me and left me feeling freer than any other place on earth. I do not feel that the time I gave, or the way I traveled the small part of that very big country did it justice. When I do return, and I certain that I will, it will not only be for a lot longer than 3 weeks, but also behind the wheel of a camper van.

As I walked back along the beach, I realised that for as far as I could see, nothing had been touched by man. I could see no other people, no footprints in the sand, no rubbish on the shoreline, and no buoys in the water. What I was seeing was no different to what had been discovered three centuries ago. I was in a place that hadn’t changed for millions of years. I was outside of time. Hard rain began to fall on my face, then seconds later it stopped to be replaced by sunlight, then rain again. I looked to the sky above the ocean to see if I could figure out what would happen next. Like theatre scenery, the tiny white clouds were sat on layers of sky; each one moving at a different speed. Shafts of golden sunlight found their way through the clouds and swept across the sea like searchlights with nothing to look for. Every now and then the light, rain and wind would combine to form fragments of rainbows. Like the clouds these rainbow pieces moved with the wind, but died when geometry could no longer sustain them for my eyes. In an instant I had been propelled from the feelings insignificance and humility, to witnessing something I believe no one ever else has. On top of the familiar feeling of weightless euphoria, something else was there. I felt more receptive, more open; more alive than ever. It was as if I wasn’t just experiencing the moment, but in some way capturing it in its entirety to be experienced again. Was I simply collecting a sample for some greater powers collection of everything? Was I recording a scene for my afterlife? Whatever happened, I have the feeling I will experience that time and place in some other way in my future.

Back at the lodge when my room mates (two English doctors my age working in Australia for a year) asked what I had been up to that afternoon, I only told them I had been for a walk on the beach. Putting myself in their shoes I figured that if a strange hairy man smelling of coconut started talking about flying rainbows and being momentarily possessed, I probably wouldn’t feel to comfortable sharing a room with him. Instead I stuck to the script and we ended up going to a local bar for the evening. Joining us from the lodge were a group of girls from the Isle of Man, who were all somehow related to each other. The bar, which had been described by our bus driver as “banging”, had three other customers that night. There was the drunk at the bar, and there was the couple on the dance floor. The drunk, when he was able to stand up, stared longingly and starry-eyed at the couple shuffling about to Dire Straits and Chris Rea. Occasionally he would approach one on the Manx girls, start stroking their anoraks, and ask what animal they were made from. On the dance floor, a middle-aged Aborigine woman was spilling out of her leopard-skin dress, wore a blonde wig and had a face so swollen she could barely see. Her partner wore steel-toecap boots, socks pulled up to his knees, tight shorts and a lumberjack shirt. I had the strangest feeling the bus driver wasn’t joking when he recommended the place.

The following morning I went for a dip in the local swimming hole. When I looked under the surface, naturally I as hoped, I was not alone. The river bed was crawling with catfish and freshwater turtles. Mid way between the bed an the surface was a shoal of a strange type of fish with massive eyes. The odd thing about them was that unless I got really close, they just hovered in the water in front of my face staring at me. In numbers, fish can be really intimidating.

By accident I found that I was able to walk in to any hostel I wanted, the dorms often had an open door, and CCTV was usually only present in the bar areas. I could have taken anything I wanted from a spoonful of Nutella, to thousands of dollars of cash. I could have taken things that would have gone unnoticed, things that would have been inconvenient to lose, or things that to lose would have ruined someones trip. In the supermarkets, when I wasn’t wondering if I could eat tinned dog food, I made a point of knowing the whereabouts of all the blind spots, cameras and mirrors. To live like this wouldn’t have been so hard. And as for the guilt or remorse I would have felt; I knew that inside of me I could have justified it to myself and done it all again the next day. That would have been an easy life. The real challenge was how to get by without turning to the dark side.

I have been surprised to find, and I’m even more embarrassed to admit, that on top of the amazing life I’ve lived for the past 6 months, karma seems to have played its part in my life. Particularly with money I noticed that all the rupees scammed off me by Indian taxi drivers came back to me as cups of tea from complete strangers. The thousands of Thai bhat, Australian and Singaporean dollars that mysteriously disappeared from my wallet were returned as a free speedboat ride, discounted food from the innumerate lady-boy, and the money I found blowing in the wind along Bangkok’s Khao San Road. And that’s just the shallow, financial, quantifiable side of my life. I’m sure that in every other way, in ways that I cannot put a value to or even recognise, things have been going my way. My point being that where I have not meddled with this balance, not indulged my greed, and not manipulated others; I’ve still ended up on top. Now I’m not saying I turned the other cheek and left fate behind the wheel, I just mean that I didn’t want to end my run of good fortune for a bit of pick-pocketing and a few shoplifting sprees.

And so legitimately and honestly I learned to eat in Australia for next to nothing. I quickly found that most hostel kitchens had free food shelves that were stocked-up by fellow travelers who didn’t want to see their surplus food go to waste. Usually there would be rice or noodles there that, combined with a sachet of soy or chili sauce I had picked up along the way, would make a filling and flavorsome meal. When I arrived in a new place, I would find out which restaurants and cafés were offering promotions. Sometimes the promotions would require a purchase, and so, usually with the cashiers blessing, I would wait for another customer then piggyback on their purchase or exchange my voucher for their cash. And for desert, though they never advertised it, McDonald’s sold 50 cent (32 pence) ice creams. Everyday I found something new, ate something different, and got a real buzz in the process. On one occasion, when my bus stopped in a small town and I had to shell-out some hard cash to eat, I went in to a bakery and bought the cheapest loaf of bread I could find. As I walked out of the bakery on to the street, a man who had been on my bus approached me with his hand out.
‘Give us a few dollars for a pie would ya mate’
‘Fuck you I didn’t just buy a one dollar loaf of bread to indulge your expensive pie-eating habits.’ I thought but didn’t say out loud. Instead a big grin spread across my face as I walked past the man (who thought I hadn’t heard him and started shouting at me), filled-up my water bottle from a fountain in a park, and sat in the shade of a tree to eat my bread. As I sat there staring at the sea, something fell in to my lap; a pear. I looked up. The tree I had sat under was full of them.

It’s actually not that far from southeast-Asia to Darwin. However to take the single short flight from Singapore I wanted would have cost hundreds of pounds more than the 14 hour "u" loop I took from Bangkok to Singapore, Singapore to Sydney, and finally Sydney to Darwin. Despite somehow ending up with my own row of seats on each flight, and the efforts of Singapore Airlines to knock me out with red wine, I was too excited to let myself fall asleep. For the first time in my life I was crossing the equator to the southern hemisphere, to a new continent and, it occurred to me, my first native English speaking country away from home (whatever that meant). My cosy world of darkness, Cabernet Sauvignon, Ferrero Rocher and in-flight entertainment began to slip away as over the wing of my Boeing 777 dawn broke in the new world. For the next hour or so my face was pressed to the window as I scoured the view for the unique and unexpected. What struck me the most was the sparsity of my vista; no sea, no rivers, no lakes, no roads, no signs of civilisation or any variation in the landscape for that matter. For as far as I could see (which at 11,500 metres up on a cloudless day is a very long way), all I could see was red and yellow rocky desert. Why were we flying over Mars? But then I saw something too precise to be a work of nature; a straight line in the desert. Very slowly more lines began to appear on the land. It was as if an alien race had visited millions of years ago, drew up blueprints on the land, boundaries perhaps, then changed their minds. Was it too inhospitable for them? Too much trouble to terraform? Or did they just kill themselves off before the landing parties could make it? Before I could look for patterns in the lines, they disappeared from my view. All I saw for the next 2 hours was desert again. Australia, I realised, is very big and very, very empty. In a way I feel for sorry for the place. In a hundred years or so, when the rest of the world overflows and eats itself alive, everybody will want a piece of this desert if just to use for landfill. At the moment, before we are too desperate, the invasion is a courteous mining operation. I wonder how long this will continue before the land starts to be taken by force?

In the hours I spent at Sydney airport making my way from the international to the domestic terminal, I naturally began to form my first impressions of Australians. What hit me first, and what I immediately dismissed as comparison against Asia that I would have also made had I arrived in London or Berlin, was how much older and fatter everybody was. It wasn’t that I was now seeing more extremes of age and obesity, it was just that the distributions of age and size had suddenly shifted up a few figures. I had forgotten how normal it is in the western world to carry around a few excess kilos and live for close to 100 years. A few hours after making this observation, I discovered that it had probably been amplified by the fact that my flight from Sydney to Darwin was mainly taken up by a large over 60s touring group on their way to Kakadu National Park. Although I might be on the trip of a lifetime, seeing them reassured me that if I miss anything out, like them, I will have plenty of time to fill in the gaps.

My other first impressions did not turn out to be of Australians but of myself. All around me I was pleasantly surprised with how people interacted and behaved. I was surprised to see a woman reading a book, at the friendliness of the customs official, at the warmth and patience a mother was showing towards her children, or at the kind way in which a nurse was treating his two elderly Aboriginal patients. The reason I was so surprised had nothing to do with them. Until this time I had no idea how much prejudice I had towards Australians. My expectations of stupidity, heavy handedness, rudeness and racism were not being met. In a way I was disgusted and embarrassed that a lifetime of jokes and comments had formed such negative stereotypes in my mind. At least as I was now aware of this, and that I was now in Australia, I could form my own first-hand opinions of its people.

Flying back across Australia from Sydney to Darwin only served to echo my earlier thoughts on the size of the country. My initial plan to explore Darwin’s nearby Kakadu National Park, travel across the Northern Territory, then down the east coast in 18 days now felt like a lot more traveling. Yes I might be able to cover those distances in that time, but I would have been stretched to stop, think and take in the world along the way. Not wanting to admit defeat immediately, I checked out Darwin’s hostels and Internet cafés for advertisements for lifts to Cairns on Australia’s east coast. Everywhere I looked I was a week too late or a week to early. I could make the journey by bus, but I wanted the experience of a road-trip through the desert; hot dusty days and cold starry nights. After a day of responding to ads, leaving answer machine messages, and posting to travellers forums, I was anxious to get going and stop wasting time. As I walked past yet another Internet café, an ad in the window for Australia’s east coast caught my attention. I figure that if I can’t see much of Australia, I may as well see the bit of the country I most wanted to see.

And so less than 36 hours after I arrived, I said goodbye to Darwin and flew to Cairns.

The remainder of our time in the country was spent on Koh Chang; an island off the far east of Thailand near the Cambodian border. There was something "just right" about the place. It didn’t have many resorts, didn’t party too hard, had more Thais than tourists, and for some reason celebrated Songkran (Thai new year) two weeks later than the rest of the country. We stayed in bamboo huts in the family-run Joy Cottage. In the evenings the place hosted live bands, Billie Holiday was played in the mornings, and cats, dogs, toddlers and mosquitoes circled our ankles whenever we sat down. During the day we sunbathed on the nearby Lonely Beach. As usual I would become restless after 20 minutes of lying still, and would set off with my snorkel and camera in search of adventure. On one occasion I again tried to swim to the neighbouring island. I wasn’t going to make the same mistakes twice, so before setting off I drank plenty of water and proceeded to make my way to the island swimming close to the shoreline. As I swam near a rocky outcrop, I noticed that rocks were full of small coves. The first cove in fact turned out to be the entrance to a cave. After walking a few metres in to the cave, daylight slipped away to darkness. I set my camera flash to maximum, pointed it in to cave and took a photo. My idea being that the photo would give me a rough idea of what I could expect as I blindly felt the sides and climbed deeper in to the  cave. A second after taking the photo, the air was filled with the sound of screeching, chirping, swooping and flapping. I had woken up the caves inhabitants; bats. The photo showed that I could venture a lot deeper in to the cave, but then what? Take another photo? Piss-off the bats even more? At the thought of a bat chewing-off my eyelids, I turned around and dived back in to the sea. In the sheltered waters of the next cove, I again disturbed the locals; a giant shoal of silver anchovies. As I swam through the shoal I was surprised that despite their numbers and my size, we never brushed shoulders. At this thought, I felt something touch my toes. I span around to try and catch sight of whatever it was. Dangling on the surface of the water next to the rocks was a fishing net. I gave it a tug to free it from the rock and get it out of my way. Just as I did this, the shoal of anchovies changed direction and swam through the net. They were too small to get caught in the mesh, however something had caused the net to surge. I peered beneath the surface just in time to see a long silver garfish chase the anchovies through the net and become snagged by its toothy beak. Looking further along the net, I saw that the first surge had been caused by another garfish who was entangled and thrashing about in the translucent nylon. To free them, and not cause them further harm, I would need a knife to cut the net. Normally my knife is clipped on to my belt when I go in to the water, however after finding that I never needed to use it, I decided on this particular day not to bother bringing it. I would therefore have to take the net (and the fish) to a knife, which, I hoped I could borrow off someone at the beach. I tied myself to the net and carefully, looking out for more fish, began swimming back to the beach. About half way there I noticed two eyes watching me out of the sand. As I descended to get a closer look, a giant striped tail thrashed out stirring up a cloud of sand; I had woken up a stingray. I swam alongside it for a moment then left it be as I remembered I was tied to a fishing net and that it could all go horribly wrong for all of us.

Back at the beach I created quite the scene. Fortunately I attracted the attention of a guy with a knife, and so I set to work freeing the dying the fish as quickly as I could. My backup plan, eating them, went out of the window when I saw my sisters reaction to the haul. I had half forgotten that she was a vegetarian, and so probably wouldn’t want to spend her last day on a Thai beach with a pair of decomposing fish. I sped up my attempt to untangle the fish who were now motionless except for their gills which continued to gently open and close. As soon as they were free of the net, I positioned them in the water and pulled them against the current in a vein attempt to get the water flowing through their gills and resuscitate them. As I was doing this, an old, topless Italian woman came marching up to me. From her point of view it must have looked like I was torturing the fish.
  ‘You will eat these animals?’ she demanded.
  ‘No I-’
  ‘You make me sick!’
And the she pushed me aside, grabbed the fish out of my hands, and threw them in to the sea as far as she could. Before I could explain what happened, and how I didn’t really mean to catch them, she walked off muttering under her breath in Italian. A bit taken aback, but relieved that I didn’t have to worry about what to do with the fish anymore, I walked over to my sister who I hoped  could see the funny side of the encounter and console me that I had done nothing wrong. She didn’t look happy.
  ‘What’s up?’
  ‘There’s dead fish in the sea!’ she snapped.
  ‘There’s always dead fish in the sea!’ I joked.
  ‘Well there weren’t any in my bit a minute ago. I can’t go back in the water now!’
  ‘What do you want me to do about it ?!’
  ‘Move them.’
  ‘Where to?’
  ‘I don’t care.’
And then she turned the other way and went back to her sunbathing.

Diligently I went back in to the sea and tracked down the vegetated garfish. I swam them back to the rocks, and threw them to the crabs. Food isn’t wasted in the sea I told myself.

I’ve kept the fishing net in my backpack for another day.

Anyway, as I walked out on to the platform, I stopped thinking about all that rubbish; I was at a railway station again. I was at home. If, under the NHS cuts of a Cameron led government I do lose my job (and assuming Beeching ‘s axe doesn’t reappear), I shall definitely pursue a career on the railways. I think it’s the toxic mix of chaos and order that I find so alluring. On the one had there’s this party going on; people are shouting, running, urinating on the walls, cooking food and throwing rubbish on the track. But it’s also an autistic-friendly party of precision engineering, stock movements, timetables and loading gauges. Compared to Indian Railways, Thai Railways can’t compare on chaos, but it did put on a very good show. In my time on the platform [I'm on the train now] I bought deep-fried chicken giblets from an 8 year-old and watched the station master dance with a dog. The conversation with the strange but sweet man who insisted on showing me what was in his packed lunch barely bares mentioning; I think that’s pretty standard everywhere. On board the train it’s lacking in craziness, but certainly makes up for it in comfort and detail. My second-class carriage is the perfect temperature, has one leather seat either side of the aisle, loads of luggage space and fold away Formica tables. At my seat I’ve been served dried fruit and drinks, and in a moment a man will be along to make my bed with crisp white cotton sheets. In the morning, before arriving in Bangkok, I will be served a hot breakfast.

The three weeks since my last visit to Bangkok have been a blur of island hopping along Thailand’s, and eventually Malaysia’s west coast. For the first two island groups, Koh Phi Phi and Koh Lanta, I traveled with Harriet and Megan. For Koh Lipe and Malaysia’s Langkawi archipelago, I was on my own again. By fortune on Koh Phi Phi I met up with Frida and Therese (the Swedish au pair). On our first day together, we hired out a long boat for the day to explore the nearby islands and beaches. For me the highlight of the day was Maya Bay off Phi Phi Le. One the beaches in Maya Bay was the main location for the beach in the 1999 Danny Boyle film, The Beach. Not wanting to deconstruct the film, or join the other dozens of tourists, I didn’t actually set foot on The Beach. Instead, preferring to seek out my own adventure, I jumped off the boat in to the clearest water I have ever seen. At once I was surrounded by fish who were just as eager check out my new camera as I was. Swept along with the fishes, Therese and I  found that we had swam along way from the boat, and were now near the side of the bay. After swimming past caves, blowholes and through rocky archways, we found our own deserted beach solely inhabited by strange red insects and the friendliest hermit crabs I’ve ever met.

Back on Koh Phi Phi we collected free drink fliers off the promoters and headed to the beach bars. We danced with fire, danced with balloons, drank whiskey out of buckets and didn’t spend a penny.

The following day I attempted to swim to another part of Koh Phi Phi. On the list of stupid things I’ve done on this trip, It’s a close second to trekking the Himalayas in the dark. After swimming for 90 minutes or so in the midday sun, my back was so sunburned I could no longer point it skywards; I had to do backstroke. Despite being immersed in water, my body continued to sweat profusely until my throat was parched with thirst. I had long lost the reassuring sight of the seabed; I was well out of my depth. Worst of all, every now and then something would brush against my feet. Breathing faster, and wasting more energy, I would thrash around looking for a piece of seaweed, a floating cup; anything to blame and reassure my sanity. At first all I could see was deep blue water and shafts of sunlight, but then, as I kept very still and slowed down my breathing, I began to see that I was far from alone; I was surrounded by jellyfish. About the size of walnuts, they were completely transparent except for the faintest outline and occasional black speck. I was three-quarters of the way to where I wanted to go, but I could no longer ignore the mounting warning signs; I had to turn back. Very slowly, and only using my arms in front of me where I could see them, I swam through the jellyfish to the shallower and safer waters near the shoreline. Hot and thirsty, all I wanted to do now was  sleep, but I was still a very long way from where I started. Still going very slowly, I carried on swimming back in the shade of the rocky shoreline. When I followed the shoreline round a corner, and the sea became completely exposed to the sun, I swam underwater where water was coolest at the seabed. I think the sun and the sea taught me a lesson in respect that day.

Other than curiosity, the one reason I attempted to swim so far was to build-up an appetite for “The Burger Challenge” that evening. For 500 baht (£11), The Reggae Bar on Koh Phi Phi will serve quadruple decker beef burger, with chips, onion rings and coleslaw. If you can eat it all by yourself with 30 minutes, it’s on the house. Anybody who’s ever ate with me, and especially those who’ve catered for me, know what I’m capable of. I can make kilograms of cheese disappear, reduce buffets to tablecloths, eat roast potatoes like peanuts, and pizzas like Pringles. But when the giant platter was put before me that evening, I gave up before I even took a bite. I attempted in vain, hoping it would just disappear, but after 12 minutes of trying, I abdicated from the contest. I had only managed to eat the burger and a few onion rings; the rest was untouched. The girls, who had absolute faith in me, were shocked beyond belief. I had eaten less than I would have in a typical meal. I’m still trying to figure it out, but in a way, I’m kind of glad that I’m not cut-out for eating contests.

Not surprisingly, the next day I didn’t feel like eating, swimming or being in the sun. It was still a wonderful day at the beach, as thanks to Therese, I finally got to make a sandcastle. At least it started off as a sandcastle.

On our last day on Koh Phi Phi, I woke up to the sound of slamming doors and the “slap, slap, slap” sound of people running in flip-flops. A moment later our door burst open, and the guesthouse receptionist shouted out
  ’Tsunami! Go to the mountain!’
She then ran off herself leaving Harriet, Megan and I looking at each wondering what to do. If we did as she said, we would miss our boat in 20 minutes time. Was this a drill? Did this happen every time the seismograph fluttered? We agreed that it probably was a false alarm, and that as we were on the first floor of a concrete building, we would probably be ok under any circumstance. Ten minutes later, the authorities gave the all-clear and people started to come down from the mountain; some of which had barely time to put clothes on. We then smugly walked through the deserted town, and caught our boat to Koh Lanta. Later that day I learned that tsunami alerts did not occur that regularly. The alert was triggered by an earthquake of a greater magnitude than the one in 2004 and had also occurred in a very similar location. Talking to a survivor from 2004, I learned that it wasn’t a just a 2 metre high wave that swept away a few non-swimmers; it was up to 10 metres high. At 4 metres on the first floor of our guesthouse, we definitely wouldn’t have been “ok”.

I’m afraid to say that our time on Koh Lanta may as well have been anywhere warm and sunny by the sea; we fell in to the resort trap. Occasionally we would venture out to another restaurant, but for most of the time we lazed by the empty pool, snacking and drinking cocktails from our sunloungers. For Harriet and Megan, this suited them well; they were winding their trip down, talking of home and topping-up their tans. As I started to lapse in to a similar rhythm, I needed to remind myself that I was just over halfway along on my trip and shouldn’t be losing momentum. It was time to go our separate ways. I don’t think it was an accident that on the day we left the resort we were driven to the port in the open back of pick-up truck (as opposed to a less exposed vehicle). The date was April 13th (Songkran, Thai new year), which, as we had been told, was celebrated with a massive water fight. Everybody we passed on the road joined in. Old ladies through buckets of soapy water over us, young children charged out in to the road and ambushed our truck with water pistols, teenagers on the back of motorbikes discharged Super Soakers as they overtook us. What a perfect way to break in the new year on a hot day. When I said goodbye to Harriet and Megan at the port I, and everything I was carrying, was drenched.

The 240 Km trip from Koh Lanta to the tiny island of Koh Lipe isn’t (yet) a popular enough route to warrant a typical ferry. To make the journey I needed to get passage with the local speedboat club. These guys knew their stuff. As the heaviest passenger they made me sit nearest the bow to stop the boat bouncing on the waves. They could reverse the boat backwards on to beaches, and just before the propellers dug in to the sand, some clever hydraulics would kick-in and flip the engines out of the water. When the boat left the shelter of the islands, and the sea became quite choppy, the crew had one policy; accelerate.

Koh Lipe is still relatively undeveloped; it’s too small to have roads, concrete (as opposed to wooden) buildings are only now starting to appear, and the electricity is only turned on in the evenings. The island is surrounded by coral reefs, that, in addition to providing excellent snorkeling, also provide a form of income for the islands sea gypsies. Because even small boats like my speedboat sit too deep in the water to get near the island without damaging the reefs, the local men operate a fleet of “long tail” taxi boats. For a flat rate of 50 baht (£1), they will take you from anywhere on the island to anywhere on the island.

Because Koh Lipe was so small, I didn’t feel like my days were wasted if I didn’t do too much; there really wasn’t much to do there if I wanted to. On most days I would wake up in my cocohut on Sunset beach to blue skies and the sound of birdsong (and I don’t mean cockerel-crowing at 4 AM). I would walk along the beach to a shack where a 190 cm, 120 Kg ladyboy with giant clip-on earrings would make me a delicious breakfast. Often when I came to pay for my food, she would mess up the change and leave me walking away in profit. On some days I would walk around the island, explore the jungle and photograph the sea. Most days I went snorkeling on the reef on my doorstep, watched the sunset and went back to the ladyboy’s place for some fish curry. The best day saw me go snorkeling at a very low tide. There was so little water above the reef, I had to be careful not that my belly did not touch the urchins, anemones, or damage the coral. It turned out to be a great way to see and photograph the creatures on the reef. The fish, having nowhere to swim to, would instead keep very still and hope that I couldn’t see them. Also, where I could now stand or kneel on the seabed, it was easier to keep the camera still. Along with the usual clownfish and starfish, I even got to meet an octopus. While I was taking its photo, I noticed that quite suddenly everything had got dark in the octopus’s garden. When I took my head out of the water I saw why; I giant thundercloud was now over the island. As soon as I had swam back on the beach, the storm broke and the first rain of the monsoon began to fall. For more than an hour I laid on the beach in the rain; the gently warm sea lapping beneath me, the cool rain pouring on my face, chest and in to my open mouth.

I had looked forward to being in Bangkok for one reason; I could finally get the underwater housing for my camera there. Having exhaustedly searched Vietnam, I was told in Saigon that my only chance of tracking down what I needed in southeast Asia was in Bangkok. After we checked in to a hostel, I began my search on Khao San Road. As one of the worlds backpackers hubs, I expected Khao San Road to be an open sewer of pickpockets, touts and prostitutes. I was therefore very pleasantly surprised when I found myself walking down a bright and airy pedestrianised street streamed with colourful bunting and smiles everywhere I looked. I found a camera shop where after the owner made a dozen phone calls, I was told that I’d have a hard time finding what I needed. When I walked in to the next shop, my heart skipped a beat. There in a display cabinet was a boxed Canon WP-DC28. My search was over. I eagerly waited while the shop attendant finished serving the customer in front of me, then pointed at my Holy Grail.
  ’I'll have that please’
  ’Oh that. That’s just a box. We don’t sell that anymore.’
My heart sunk.
  ’Why do you have the box?’
The attendant shrugged.
  ’Is there anywhere in Bangkok I could find it?’
  ’MBK’
Thirty seconds later, and in a city I had only known for an hour, I jumped in to the back of tuk-tuk. I instructed the driver to go to this “MBK” and set off down a wide boulevard lined with stalls selling placards and red t-shirts. Tomorrow, the driver told me, was going to be a big day for the protestors. Perhaps that would explain why there were fewer tourists in the city than I expected.

Fifteen minutes later I arrived at MBK which, as I had hoped, didn’t turn out to be an airport or another city but was of course a giant shopping mall. The top floor of was a sea of hundreds of small shops that all appeared to be selling the same thing: mobile phones, digital cameras and pirated media. I worked my way through the ranks until I was introduced to MBK’s technology matriarch. I got the impression that she knew everybody and could get anything. Yes she had what I needed in the warehouse. All I had to do was leave a deposit and come back in 20 minutes. Fortunately I didn’t get my hopes up. When I returned I was told that the last one had sold just that morning and was returned my deposit. I tried to buy the housing for the next model up, but she (MBK’s technology matriarch) pleaded with me not to be so foolish. The game was over. I had lost.

On my way down the escalators, I found the Canon photography shop. I had been told that they did not stock what I needed, but at least I could finally get some answers. Why was it so hard to get what I was looking for? The turtle-necked  shop attendant could see that I was flustered so sat me down on a leather sofa and offered me a cappuccino. I declined; I wasn’t going to be won over that easily. Apparently, though probably not the official line, Canon had stopped selling the housing  as it leaked. They tried to get around the issue by selling the housing without a warranty, though as that only enraged their customers further, they quietly stopped manufacturing it. Immediately my frustration turned to relief. Suddenly I was so grateful to the guy in the shop for giving me a straight answer. So grateful I bought a dedicated underwater camera. I haven’t looked back since.

I have a renewed appreciation for the people I’ve known over time; my friends and family. The people I’m meeting now, the new friends I’m making; they cannot substitute longevity. I miss the pleasure of sitting or walking with someone in silence and not feeling the burden of having to make small talk, or being in the company of someone who understands why I’m laughing or what makes me smile. My (relative) teetotalism is not part of some forced health kick. When I have tried drinking, it’s just not felt right. I’ve realised that drinking is what I love to do with my friends. Without them, what’s the point? Where’s the fun?

The culinary experiences of the past 3 months have been a journey in their own right. I am so grateful to every person who has played a part in not just feeding me, but introducing me to so many new flavours, textures, ingredients and combinations. Where linguistically and culturally I have been separate, in the international language of food, I feel fluent and united with all. For every sip, bite or mouthful I take, I am increasingly receptive to all the nuances and variation in what I eat. I feel like I could join any meal on the planet, and, through food, share an empathic connection with whoever I dine with. However, only being a receiver, an eater, for so long has left me with a yearning ache to be the one creating and preparing the food. I look forward to my return home for the feasts I can prepare and the happiness I can (hopefully) share with others.

Given my obsession with eating, it’s a relief to know that one of the other things I miss is a form of excercise; cycling. For me it provides a perfect vantage point and speed to see the world, isn’t too dangerous, and has the potential to send the heart racing and the sweat gushing; all whilst comfortably sat down. Now that the world seems like a smaller place, I’m looking forward to my return to explore more of London, the UK and beyond on my bicycle.

Interestingly there’s a kind of void in my life where I’ve not been working: I miss problem solving. Where cycling left my body feeling like a well-oiled machine, my job exercised my mind. Rarely on my trip have I had the chance to sit down and crunch some numbers, but when I have it’s felt great. I think that’s why, with its allocations, timetables and waiting lists, I enjoyed using the Indian Railways booking system so much. Or, why the other afternoon I spent sat by the pool figuring out how to launder money between accounts and cards to eliminate overseas transaction charges felt so good. It’s reassuring to know that I have, and will be returning to, a job that I enjoy and find so stimulating.

Finally, on the list of things I miss, it wouldn’t be English of me not to mention the weather. And no I don’t miss the British climate in itself, just certain facets of it. Seasons for instance. When I left home in December the days were at their shortest, and early in to January I saw photos of the whole of Europe covered in snow. Now in to spring I expect flowers are starting to appear, and soon the trees will explode with green. At home the day length changed so much that time had to be corrected for summer. Not only do these changes shape the collective mood (depression in winter, hope in spring), but they also provide a sense of linearity, change and progression. Here in the tropics the sun sets and rises at roughly the same time every day, the temperature hovers in the 30s and the vegetation is always blooming. If it wasn’t for the increasing but still rare appearance of rain, I would say that beyond the time of day, time has little meaning here. I’m not complaining but there can’t be a summer unless there’s a winter.

Before I set out, my greatest fear for the trip was loneliness. Conversely, solitude has turned out to be my best companion. It has allowed me to experience genuine and undiluted emotions; I haven’t had to feign interest or curb my enthusiasm on someone elses account. I haven’t had to compromise, persuade or hold back from going anywhere or doing anything. I haven’t needed to worry about someone elses feelings, or how mine are being interpreted. That I can eat, sleep, stay and travel when I want means that I alone waste my time. As a tool for bettering myself, solitude has allowed me to become happier with who I am. I’m no longer making jealousy inducing comparisons between myself and others. I don’t need to put others down (with words or in my mind) to make myself feel better. The race is only with myself.

Other than a bit too many “stamping fees” crossing the Cambodia/Laos border, the rest of our journey passed without major event. We arrived at the Mekong just after the sun set. According to the ferry operator, the bus ticket did not include the ferry crossing; we would need to pay another two dollars. If I had been on my own I would have probably coughed-up the extra money. Thankfully as there were 16 of us in the same situation, we had power in numbers; we boarded the ferry (a narrow longboat) and staged a sit-in. We refused to get out until he took us to Don Det. I really hope the ferry operator was eventually reimbursed by the bus company.

I woke up the next day to the sound of a crowing rooster, quacking ducks and a grunting pig. Beneath my stilted wooden shack was a farm. In the field next to me were cows and buffalo, who for some reason had segregated themselves in to separate rice paddy squares; one for each breed. Trespassing in to each others square resulted in a swift charging and lowering of horns. However for most of the time it was peaceful family affair where calves, cows, and bulls grazed side by side.

The Laotions are some of the most chilled-out people I have ever met. It wasn’t uncommon to walk in to a restaurant (after first leaving my flip-flops outside) to find all the staff asleep in hammocks. I felt a little bit guilty interrupting their slumber to ask for a menu. I found myself walking in to shops, taking what I wanted, and leaving the money on the side or paying later in the day when the shop was staffed. Once I re-calibrated the time needed to order food, I found my life, and probably my heartbeat, slowing down to the gentle rhythm of Laos (or maybe it was the Valium they put in my “happy pizza” one night in the Reggae Bar).

Our next stop was in a small riverside town of Vang Vieng. Since the mid 1990s Vang Vieng has rapidly become a magnet for backpackers attracted by the activity of tubing. Starting out as simply lying in an inflated tractor tire inner-tube and drifting down the river taking in the beautiful scenery, tubing has turned in to something much more hedonistic. The riverbanks are now home to dozens of bars, each with their own set of incentives to get your custom. Most will lasso you in from the water, one gave me a free banana, another a portion of chips, and all will insist on you downing a shot of Lao-Lao whiskey. What set them aside for me were their zip-lines, swings and slides. Once I had drank enough whiskey and smoked enough weed, I realised that it wouldn’t be suicide to jump 20 metres out of a tree above the rocks; after all I was in heaven already.

For the next few days our lives alternated between partying and recovering. We became friends with two Welsh brothers working at one of the bars and virtually worked there ourselves. Harriet and Megan would serve out shots and I would lasso-in the customers. On the off days we explored the nearby caves and water features. I found Jesus in a cave, and got in to an argument with the staff of the Blue Lagoon. We walked away with refunds after I pointed out that their lagoon was neither blue nor technically a lagoon (it was more of a green pond).

We’re now, at the end of two weeks in Laos, in Luang Prabang. It’s so pretty here the whole town was made in to a UNESCO World Heritage site. Compared to Vang Vieng, where you could walk around in your swimming gear covered in bruises and spray paint, the travelers here seem more civilised; they wear beige trousers, sunscreen and glasses. Yesterday, after my cautionary protests, my sisters persuaded me into us hiring out mountain bikes and riding 32 Km to see some waterfalls. I peddled off completing the trip in 75 minutes. My sister and Megan turned up over 3 hours later with their bikes on the roof-rack of a tuk-tuk. It turned out that after going 5 Km uphill they turned around and rode back to town. If they had ridden a further 500 metres, they would have found that the remaining ride was largely downhill. I was just pleased to see them as they had the other half of the picnic in their bags; I had the bread, they had the cheese. We spent the rest of the afternoon sat next to a waterfall in the jungle listening to a nearby thunderstorm. Before jumping under the waterfall, we gorged ourselves on Danish Blue, cheddar and Parmesan. I love cheese.