Meaning in Chaos. Signal in Noise.

June 2025 marks:

• 3 years in Kampot
• 19 years in Asia

It's been three months since the last post, a lack of inspiration being the main cause. There are no grandiose philosophical points to elucidate, few data points to add and even fewer musings of a 51yo wokefugee contentedly eeking out an early retirement of tranquility in the tropics. Therefore, the following is merely a summary of recent events, the dullness of which is for the reader to judge.

Agency and Disenchantment

Kru Sateeb

Another PDR (Pay Day Runner) added to the long list of PDRs. This one, however, felt different. It was the first one where I understood I was exercising agency.

What's agency? Glad you asked: the capacity of individuals to have the power and resources to fulfill their potential. Or, in more crude vernacular, the capacity to do whatever the fvck you want, when and where you want - (so long as you don't intrude upon the life, liberty and property of others). Perhaps intelligence could be thought of as the ability to acquire, understand and use knowledge in the pursuit of agency?

Old flame or dying embers?

5 years

Composing this drivel in a perfectly ambient hotel room in Thailand. Thailand? Aye, I'm back after exactly 5 years. Flew out on the 4th November 2019 and flew back in on the 4th November 2024. Weird or what? 3yrs Cambo + 2yrs Nam = definitely got me SEA wings noo like.

ER2@48 - two years in

Island Boy

Two years since that nail-biting PDR (pay day runner) from Vietnam. A short flight to PP followed by a van to the Pot where I was welcomed back to the Pumphouse by a laptop-wielding beer-swilling freedom-loving Antipodean who definitely sings from the same hymn sheet as yours truly - bless his cotton socks.

Answer to nobody

Shitbox in Kep

I live for myself and answer to nobody.

I've been ruminating over Steve McQueen's words as early retirement approaches the two year milestone. The mind pictures him racing across the Swiss Alps on a motorbike. Free. Living for himself and answering to no one. No wives, bosses or clocks demanding his precious time and energy. I've dedicated much thought to living the best possible life and here we'll examine a few ideas from various (mostly Schoppy) sources.

Decadence

Kampot Seahorse

June 2024 marks:

• 2 years in Kampot
• 18 years in SEA

The last two years have been chilled af - effortless - living the dream. Contrast that to 2009 where I was slogging it out in a Trang government school, full time, for $780/month. Mostly hungover. However, I thoroughly enjoyed the time there and even saved enough of the pitiful salary to buy a Honda Phantom which ended up taking me to many Thai nooks and crannies few foreigners get to see.

Conceived in Liberty

"To be born an Englishman is to have won the lottery of life"

New place

Quipped Cecil Rhodes at the Empire's zenith. I sometimes wonder what this giant of British imperialism would make of today's England? And the wider western world at large? Would he agree with the weak-men-create-hard-times meme doing the rounds on Twatter? Surely he'd wince at the degeneracy? The weakness? The pandering? The decline? Would he approve of the increasing trend across the west to incrementally remove freedoms? Boil the frog? Maybe.

Satisfaction

On Submarines, in the 1990s, I vaguely recall a more senior lad who seemed to be above all the bullshit, detached if you will, seemingly floating up ladders and along decks. Effortlessness personified.

The Big Five Oh

Stunning

Fifty orbits around a burning sphere of hydrogen. Fifty arbitrary time-units as an impermanent coalition of quarks and electrons, gravitationally bound to an encrusted sphere of liquid iron. In a form conscious not only of its existence, but also of its ultimate demise. Beholden to, and limited by, seemingly universal physical laws. No choice in the matter - simply thrust into the glaring light of being, endowed with only the evolved faculties of a primitive ape. It's all so mind-bogglingly bizarre.

ER2@48 - a year in

So then, aye, a full year of early retirement in Kampot. Has it been everything I'd hoped? Spose so aye. Can't overstate the gratitude I feel to be unencumbered by the trivial and mundane. Free of petty managers, mono-dimensional colleagues and insipid grind. A visa not contingent on thumbing-in-and-out of a prison. No longer a number on a ledger. A whole year. Free.

17 years, Man and Boy

Bokor Sunset

Laid in the hammock observing sinister cloud formations over Bokor. Next door's fluffy dog on my lap. As the seasons shift from hot/dry to cool/wet the sky is often pregnant with electrical energy. Distant arcs of lightening, count the seconds, 15, so roughly 5km, a while yet before hammock-evac.

Rotting in Kampot

Lotus pond sunset

Tech

June 2023 marks:

• 1 year in Kampot
• 17 years in SEA

32 when I left, 49 now. The social and technological changes have been staggering. The early blogs were hastily cobbled together in internet cafes - normally in an hour. Phones didn't have cameras so the 2006 - 2009 era is light on pics. I had a habit of drunkenly losing USB sticks and cheap digital cameras - most of the photos back then were courtesy of transient girlfriends.

The Xi'an Glimpse

Feeling an overwhelming sense of gratitude to be here. To be alive. It's been a surreal few weeks.

It may have inadvertently started when a Manc septuagenarian began to (randomly) recite passages of Othello while downing cans of Black Panther. Auld Dave's as tough as they come having spent decades as a boxing coach. The last thing I was expecting was a broadside of Shakespearean prose as I scoffed me pie n chips - tremendous.

Don't go chasing Waterfalls

Loving Kampot. Seven months here. The blink of an eye.

Kampot-time flashes by whereas Saigon-time wades, waist-deep, through putrid sludge.

How? Simple. Physics tells us that time dilates depending on an observer's relative velocity and/or location within a gravitational field. Clearly, Saigon must be orbiting a massive black hole at incredible speed giving rise to its lethargic clock.

Was grateful to visit TWO waterfalls on the back of antipodean Simon's AirBlade - like shit off a stick that thing. He rented "The Pumphouse" back in the day before escaping to Kep. A most convivial companion - perfect for splodging up jungle streams and clambering over slippery rocks to reach the refreshing ទឹកធ្លាក់វាលពួច.

49 times around the buoy

Progress

Lying in the hammock enjoying the evening chorus of croaking frogs and chirping crickets. Not a breath of wind - palm fronds motionless in the still air. Winking stars dot the blackness - incomprehensibly distant. The moonless night rendering Bokor Hill invisible. Perfect. I feel ridiculously grateful to be here.

Kampot Capers

Hurricane

Hunkered down in my $70 room sheltering from Typhoon Nora. On Wednesday the 28th of September it slammed into Danang after killing 6 in the Philippines a few days earlier. It reached the peak classification of Violent Typhoon with wind speeds of 255 km/h. Like most of SEA, Kampot was caught in the wash. The half dozen water buffalo roaming around outside the room bore the brunt of it, poor buggers.

ER2@48 - pulling the trigger.

Starter

September 2022 and I've only written two entries this year. Shocking. Saigon literally extracts the creativity from your soul. Meanwhile, I'm stunned to see the hit count approaching 500,000 ... quite something considering this blog is essentially the aimless ramblings of an eccentric loon.

Kampot - 16 years in Asia.

BinYenh Guesthouse

Was lucky to get the first week of May off, so spent it back in Mui Ne. Magical. Same room. Same routine. Rinse and repeat. Daily 9km walks along a NATO standard tropical beach - palm trees and strikingly blue sea. Destination: Teen Cafe and its prominent viewpoint.

Retire@39 fail. Retire@49?

I haven't written for a while. Truth is there's not much to write about. I'm simply grinding out the lifeless-life of a sector-7g worker drone, in a spirit-crushing urban hell-scape, stacking as much $Dong as I feasibly can in order to not have to do this again. I mostly spend the time daydreaming about my time in Battambang, Chiang Mai, Nepal and the many epic motorbike trips I enjoyed in rural Thailand. Treasured memories, getting harder to evoke, elusive, like grasping for smoky tendrils near a ceiling fan. Man, I couldn't be further away - in both spatial and temporal domains.

Amor Fati - Luxury is weakness

Sunday afternoon, December, 31C. Lovely, doubt I'll ever tire of tropical winters. Cocooned in a windowless bed-n-bog - insulated from the traffic - both the horns (aaahh) and the filth, though the air quality is treating our lungs to a rare day in the green.

You never know what's round the corner

Got double jabbed. I didn't want to get vaxxed but I do want to travel. Government overreach around the world has been terrifying. Some Europeans are protesting but compliant Asians have bent over and taken it - no lube. The Army starvation lockdowns in HCMC were brutal - the worst on earth!

For this too shall pass

Today's title is culturally appropriated from ancient Persia, reflecting on the ephemeral nature of things.

HoChiMing had already been locked down for 3 months when they decided to bring the Army in. We can't leave our homes - not even to shop. If the coof doesn't get you - starvation and depression will. Welcome to the planet's most draconian lockdown.

Lockdown blues

Eight weeks off - good.
In lockdown - bad.

HCMC has entered the mother of all lockdowns whereby we're only allowed out to the nearest grocery store. Given that I live in a windowless bed-n-bog, I've been eating anything that doesn't need cooked.

Dreams of clean mountain air in Dalat quickly evaporated leaving a residue of ham sandwiches and youtube.

15 years in Asia

I left England 15 years ago today. The 12th of June 2006 to the 12th of June 2021. My last sight of Blighty were the remote Shetland Isles slipping away on a bleak southern horizon. The ferry was making its way north, through the icy Atlantic to Torshavn - the capital of the Faroes Islands.

I was 32 then. 47 now. I didn't plan to stay away this long, it just happened. Let's take a peek through the murky telescope of history at this roller coaster.

20 types of western teacher in Asia

I’ve taught in Asia since 2007. During that time I’ve encountered a whole spectrum of characters in a wide variety of roles. I’ve taught in Taiwan, Cambodia, Thailand, Vietnam and China. I’ve taught online, in language centers, in government schools, in international schools and even as a private tutor. I’ve seen it all.

21st Century Diogenes - a tribute

Not many people in life leave an impression. There’s been three men that have had a profound impact on how I view the world. Armin (Austria) whom I met in Malaysia in 2008; Joe (Australia) whom I met in Thailand in 2014; and Dave (Wales) whom I met in Cambodia in 2019. They’re similar in some ways yet as unique as can be in others. The underpinning characteristic they all share, other than speaking foreign languages, is that they most certainly do not follow the Nietzschean herd.

Pedagogical BS

Flow

I haven't written much lately. Working 50hrs/week impedes the flow of creative juices. Weekends are for recuperation. Additionally, there's not much here to inspire a man with an adventurous soul. This is hardly the Himalayas, Borneo or the Mongolian Steppe. This is Ho Chi Ming - a chaotic city of 10M souls. Why would humans willingly subject themselves to this much noise and depressing concrete? Is the gr$$n stuff really that powerful?

Celestial Maneuvers in Mui Ne

As the earth completed another arbitrary orbit of our star, I spent the time reflecting on 47 years of sentience. The older one gets the more meaningless everything becomes, to the point of laughable absurdity. Life certainly seems to be a cosmic joke. Extended periods of suffering punctuated by moments of joy. The universe exercising its dualistic nature, happiness can't exist without pain. Light without dark. Once basic needs are met, the best one can hope for is contentment, whereby both bliss and suffering are attenuated, and a vanilla state of being is achieved. The middle way as Buddhists might say.

Urban wage slave

Waffle

Me little blog has racked up 300,000 clicks. Who'd a thunk?

Megalopolis

Starter

I'm writing this from a poky little bed-n-bog on the 4th floor of a small hotel in the pulsating heart of HoChiMinh City. It's taken some getting used to, the noise, the building shaking when a truck rumbles past, the horns, the perpetual white noise of traffic, music blaring from bars.

Did I mention noise? The last place you'd expect to find an AWOL Geordie.

Stop moaning. What've you been up to?