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Published: September 18th 2011
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The other day in Phnom Penh I went to a fortune teller, they foretold that I had a dark secret that I hadn't told my family and similarly they had one that they hadn't told me. I entered a deep meditation on the subject as I entered the vacuum of one's own mind to its furthest reaches to find what could I possibly have kept secret from my family. And then on a humid night as I watched the rain scatter over the tubes of Vang Vieng it struck me, at about the same time as the lao whiskey shots did. - It must be Flash.
My motorbike, my dear Flash, aptly named due to the electrics not working.
It all started out one sunny day in the middle of March. We had just swung out many girls on various terrain such as swimming pools, dance floors and sand dunes. Ben and I had excelled in facial expressions during frog jumps. I had watched Chris as he dived head first off a sanddune and we were now contemplating how Mikeal and I should spend our remaining days in Vietnam.
A plan was formed, we were to purchase motorbikes
as neither of us had any sort of qualifications in driving them and it is the occupation of youth to make rash decisions without heeding reason and one's parents.
After a brief encounter with a rather dodgy geezer in purchasing the bikes we were off. Heading south to the vast expanse of the Mekong River Delta, using rickety bridge or rickety ferries to cross the numerous branches of this flood plain. Stopping a while for a coffee and condensed milk to watch the brightly coloured barges and fishing boats mill about the business that is river trade.
In those days Mikeal and I would discuss some topics such as philosophy and deeper questions, our answers and conclusion now are long forgotten but the warm feeling of nostalgia still holds and I look back with fond memory. Days pass and after having watched bitter storms on the pacific coast and swam in the somewhat murky waters of the Gulf of Thailand our time like the sand in an hour glass had fallen away in the blink of an eye. He went north to seek new adventure whilst I returned to Phnom Penh and continued my life of arduousness.
The shackles of the sedentary life began to wear through to my bone and I was pulled away by forces of a universal proportion. Every fibre of my body pulled and tugged at me, I knew that I must break away. My bike was my hope now, my escapism and my salvation. I was to ride to the famed city of the north - Hanoi. I heard tales of winding streets with more vendors than houses and a style so contrasting to that of the surrounding lands that it drew upon it great numbers to marvel at its wonder. So with this goal in mind, Flash drove me forward and north through the lowlands of Cambodia and Laos. On the banks of the mighty Mekong I found a man thats face was familar, a Dutchman no less that I had seen on the steppes of Central Asia. From his publications he has been in hot pursuit of me for many months.
His Dudeness We broke ways after our encounter at the trading station of Pakse. I powered north through tremendous rain of the likes not common in British Home Isles but occurs with a high frequency in these tropical climes.
The storms washed the roads and the land became sea. The men of these parts build their houses on great wooden columns so as in dry season they sway above the ground below but in this wet season they become reminiscent of trips to Venice
But perhaps that can be a story for another day.
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