Still, a few dedicated punks in Bangkok makes for a well rounded community in my books. These fine standing citizens hanging out, drinking Leo at the end of my road are a welcome addition to sukhumvit 71.

Make yourselves at home lads!. Reminds me of London.

Colin “Drums of Death” Bailey was kind enough to offer up a couple of comps (thanks Colin, via Raf “The2Bears” Rundell), and with wristbands waiting at the PR desk outside there was no excuse for a no-show this year.

I ended up spending what must have been 85% of the evening at the Dude Sweet stage, initially simply because the dancing robots were keeping me thoroughly entertained with their surreal antics. I could go on to describe the Blue Peter style DIY outfits on show, though sometimes YouTube speaks louder than words. These guys were great!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=QvYO58onskw

Following the fancy dress performance of the techno robots came the main event (for me at least): Drums of Death. What came was undoubtedly the best set of the evening, with a varied selection of pretty much everything you could think of, including a couple of inspired Guitar Hero moments.

Between the trance kids prancing around the Slinky warehouse (urgh), and the Horesmeat Disco lads mincing about the stage next door, the real “culture” of Culture One was being banged out of a MacbookPro by a Scotsman made up to look like death. Add in the dancing robots working overtime at the front of the stage and you have all the ingredients of an evening of Awesomness.

Here’s a snippet of Drums of Death dipping into a bit of piano rave. Nothing smugly ironic at all, testimony to the ease in which this guy blends one random track into another. It just worked…

www.youtube.com/watch?v=PxTUP6d_ORw

Collected my Nepalese visa today and am ready to get moving again with a brief detour to Everest Base Camp.

I’ve always childishly amused myself by giving bogus and increasingly outlandish occupations on visa application forms (gymnast, chimney sweep etc), though at the Nepalese embassy this morning i nearly got caught out by actually having a visa application interview; something that’s never happened to me before. I was asked into the consular officials office, sat down and the conversation went something like this;

“Hello Mr Anderson, in what city in England do you live?”

“London”

“So you are a Welder?”

“Yes”

“What do you Weld?”

“umm… Sheet metal”

“What kind of metal?”

“Um, Stainless steel. For fences, mainly people’s gardens” (Shit! )

“People don’t use wood in London?”

“Yes, some do. But sheet metal is becoming more popular”

“Ah, so it is the fashion yes?”

“I do okay”

He seemed to buy it and gave me a 60 day visa, though I might stick to plain “student” from here on in…

The Chinese have transformed it into something of a Tibetan theme park for moneyed western tour groups (hence the checkpoint dodging bit – i wasn’t prepared to cough up 120 pounds for a Tibetan permit I’d never see and no-one would ever ask for).

The real Lhasa exists, but it’s been relegated to a small square around a temple surrounded by identikit Chinese streets and shops.

Seeing Han Chinese doing a brisk trade flogging traditional Tibetan prayer wheels to tourists who wouldn’t recognise a Tibetan if one took off their slipper and slapped them across the face with it is a tad disturbing.

A lot.

They don’t seem to recognise that it’s rude and will unflinchingly stare at you in restaurants, bus stations, even when your taking a shit.

The reason I notice them staring when I’m pooing (which is quite often) is because there are no doors, or indeed walls, or anything resembling a cubicle whatsoever in many Chinese toilets. Roadside toilets in particular consist of a trough in the ground by the road with a series of planks across them to put your feet on. Nothing else.

On two occasions now a passing Chinese person has decided that the I represent a great opportunity to practise his English despite the fact I’m squatting down with my nads hanging out trying to squeeze one off;

“Herro”
“I’m shitting”
“How are you?”
“You can see I’m taking a shit right?”
“Where you from?”
“Look, just fuck off!”

{post script}

Talking of shitting (i can’t help myself), today i fell foul to what commentators of that uniquely Asian sport Extreme Eating call “The Follow Through”. That’s what you get for eating donkey meat noodles for breakfast followed by a Yak burger for lunch I guess.

Should’ve known better than to tackle three steps at once on the way to the Poltala Palace.

Faced with the prospect of the first Saturday night in weeks where we can actually buy a beer, and an early start the next day, we got shit faced drunk with a yank we met on the table next to us. This guy claimed to be have a PHD in Uighur, the local dialect, and when we got kicked out of the restaurant he suggested we find another place open for a drink.

We left it in his capable hands discuss with our taxi driver where was the best after hours drinking den.

In retrospect, asking a taxi driver in an isolated desert outpost where to get a drink after 2am is akin to saying “I’m rat arsed and want to fuck!’.

After getting dropped outside the local brothel we attempted, in vain, to explain that we did actually want a drink and weren’t speaking some kind of cowboy code.

The Chinese border crossing was exciting though. Everybody on the bus was looking forward to a cold beer and the prospect of seeing women again, maybe even women that you can actually talk to! The beer bit worked out okay. Beer in China is actually cheaper than water, which sounds great, but if you haven’t drunk for a while it can work to your detriment.

The ” actually talking to women” bit was a little harder as i speak no Chinese and I couldn’t find anyone that spoke English, women or otherwise. Luckily I crossed into Tashgurken with an aussie guy Arron who’d been studying mandarin for three years and got me through the first week, otherwise I think i would have had a very different experience.

The Chinese checkpoint at a 4,500 metre pass (snowing again) was amusing as we were filmed during the whole process. It appeared the Chinese wanted to show of their new interrogation technique, which I’ve gotta say is inspired. An army guy gets on the bus and requests your passport. While he’s holding your passport, and this is the clever bit, he gives you a steely stare and says; “What is your name?”. I wonder how many people they catch out with their cunning mind tricks?

I wasn’t one of them.

(this time)

While i was there i hired an armed guard with an Argentinian i met and we took a trip through tribal land along the Khyber Pass to the Afghanistan border. Took the obligatory photo at the border, trying to blend in wearing a full Shalwar Kameez and, er, holding a Kalashnikov (the guards idea).

Onto Islamabad (the capital; shit) for my Chinese visa, and up into the mountains. Northern Pakistan was great, no tourists, astonishing trekking, camping, glacier crossings, Indiana Jones style rope bridges etc. Real boys own stuff and I’d love to go back sometime. {post script: see pics in photo section, one day I’ll get my arse together to post…}.

The only thing about the country I wasn’t a big fan of was the food. I like a Kebab as much as the next man, but three times a day was a bit excessive. Every meal consisted of some kind of meat, a tiny dish of chopped tomato&onion (this would constitute the portion of vegetables), and a few chapatti’s.

I saw four in total but they had to sit at the back.

In a cage.

Lahore! (yes i do realise I’m overly using exclamations!)

“Sufi night”!

There were seven of us (white folk) ushered through the middle of a throng of hundreds and sat down in front of the makeshift alter, which was enough to make me a wee bit paranoid. This was eased when a huge Pakistani Jesus lookalike wielding an enormous drum charged over to us, shook our hands and said “you are welcome here”, before taking his place alongside another drummer in front of the crowd.

Apparently Sufism is a kind of Islamic mysticism. From what i can make out it involves a load of blokes getting together and getting as stoned as possible while banging out some breakbeats on huge drums and dancing about in a trance. Not unlike a rave back home then.

It seemed there was a great deal of kudos to be had by the number of spliffs someone could smoke at the same time, with lots of red-eyed folk managing to cup their hands together inhaling eight at once. The entire mass of people heaved under a dense cloud of hash smoke and the locals were keen to pass the dutchie on to their guests and that meant us.

I haven’t really been smoking (hash) for some time now and my initial “I’m okay thanks” was met with such insistence that before long we were all puffing away with the rest of the Sufi massive. I was doing okay and getting into the music when i realised i had just passed a  spliff onto a policeman who had appeared next me. He clocked my double take and the subsequent look of horror in my eyes, grabbed me by both shoulders and asked where i was from.“England! that is my favourite of all countries! You are very welcome in Pakistan!”.

He pulled another spliff out of his pocket and gave it to me to light. Friendly folk those Pakistanis.

Share a spliff with a policeman: Box ticked.