brits on tour (aka, hungoaver)
despite the huge scope for disaster and delay that two flights in a day in this part of the world entails, yangon-cal-mumbai was actually relatively painless, and I arrived at rich’s place at about 10pm on thursday feeling in pretty good nick. a quick word about the pad: big, clean, and stunning views of the ocean and marine drive: totally polarised from my recent residences. when I told rich i was going to the toilet clutching the usual bog roll he looked at me with something between confusion and despair to tell me that his bathroom was already equipped with paper. happy, happy days.i’ve met lots of interesting people recently, but it’s always nice to be with someone that you already know very well, and me and darbs stayed up till about one talking shit and tucking into the kingfishers. it actually got a bit boozy towards the end, an adumbration of the weekend to come.
rich had cunningly taken a half day the following day so, whilst his journey in in the morning seemed like a bit of a struggle, it meant that by 4 we were in goa, by 4.30 we were checked in to a little bungalow by baga beach, and by 5 we were settled in a nice little beach shack, sea lapping the shore right in front of us, kingfishers at the ready.
i don’t think I need to go into too much detail as to what happened next. we drank. a lot. frankly it was all a bit brits on tour, but i’ve just been roughing it in burma, and rich actually lives in mumbai, so I think we were entitled to a dip into cliché. we found ourselves some youthful english types (dave, flic, cat and miriam, lovely peeps all), promptly set up a school of lash, got the drinking games going, and generally disgraced ourselves. this all culminated on the dance floor of mambos., a club cum bar full of rich indians trying to impress. our shapes went down badly. as did we.
it was bit of a struggle getting up the next day, but a few bacon sandwiches (i deserve this! i’ve been living off noodles dammit!) and a cup of tea set us up for a day of lazing in the shade back at out our favourite shack. the staff were a bit surprised to see us alive and many a grin was had as they continually tried to get us back on the beers too early. as we were lazing, a chap rocked up to collect money for some leprosy hospice. i threw him some notes, as did rich, and he wandered off. after a minute, rich turned to me to enquire how one caught leprosy. contact, i replied. this wasn’t the answer rich was looking for, given that the chap had a lot of his hands missing, and rich had apparently rubbed him all over his face (or something like that) instead of just paying him. as such it was obvious that rich had probably got a spot of the leprosy coming, so we would have to indulge in some power lash whilst he still had appendages with which to pick up his glass. we got going again at 5.30 and were going along quite powerfully, when at 8pm we realised that it was saturday, and football was on the cards. as such, we stumbled into town to find that, as it was off-season, most places were closed. in one of the restaurants however, we could make out a fellow in the darkness watching tv. the only option therefore was to bang on the door and get let in, ignore his protests that they were closed and had no booze, send him off to the local off licence to pick up some beers and food, and hijack his remote. as this was the only option it’s what we did, buying him a few beers for the trouble.
the upshot of all this japery was that we were in a fair spot of disarray. the place to be that night was titos, but it was operating a strict couples only policy to keep out hormonal indian types. i said we go in as a gay couple, but darbs thought it might be less controversial to procure some ladies as props instead. having first got our sights all wrong and getting instead a rather random trance loving german called rainer, we finally found ourselves three lovely swiss lasses (nuff love mirka, lorissa, and schimo) with whom we duped the doorman.
ugly scenes all round when it turned out that an old monk (rum) and coke was only 50r (about 80p). i’m not fully sure what happened next. all I remember are fragments, including come baby come by k7, rich trying to pull off a particularly extravagant dance move that culminated in him staggering backwards about 50m then performing a memorable stack onto his arse, and ending up on the beach at 4am wondering quite what i was doing with my life.
checkout the next morning was at 9am. when raj, our lackey, rather apologetically turned up at 9.45 to remind us of this, rich was incapable of movement and I wasn’t too keen on it either. raj went to ask madam if we could stay a bit longer and came back talking about half day fees and other such nonsense. unacceptable, so i went off to speak to madam.
i’ve lost a bit of weight recently, so the sight that confronted the patron was a brown man, his shorts near his ankles displaying some bright pink boxies, a good bud hairy chest, and sunglasses still just about revealing bloodshot eyes, trying to negotiate a couple of extra hours. it wasn’t really a negotiation: sheer sympathy and a desire to get this aberration out of her sight meant I got my way.
the flight back was no fun. darbs couldn’t get a ticket and ended up having to fly business class and my plane was delayed by three hours. in fact not really plane so much as a car with wheels: it actually had propellers. a bumpy ride, and not what was called for after a weekend of powerlash. still we finally made it back, thought about a few g&ts, and realised that the lash was off for a while. lots of jolly japes all round though and frankly remarkably welcome after the rigours of myanmar.
rich flies in fairly high circles, so over the course of the week i may be having drinks with the french ambasador, and going to the chinese ambassador’s reception (hopefully with ferrero rocher in tow). bit posh for me, but this may be darbs’s last chance before his limbs fall off, so small talk and free booze will have to be done.
posted by bicrom @ 9:57 am
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