For Your Consideration: Kilv

This blog comes courtesy of an Australian lady's laptop, because internet stops at 11.30am on Saturday (it doesn't even start on Sunday), and we missed it because, frankly, we were underwater. So, thanks Australian lady. I may even ask you your name when this is done.

Well, as you're no doubt all shouting at your screens: What about Kilv?! I'll tell you what about Kilv: he's here, as of last night, and he brought us whiskey and cigars, so it's chill. We went to the market for dinner. he told us that the guaranteed job prospect that had led him to miss a week had now been downgraded to a tenuous job prospect. Oh, Kilv...

He's now lying somewhere, with eyes like a thirsty man's lips and blood cascading from his nasal cavities, because his diving this morning went a bit awry and we think he's probably dying. Essentially, his eye mask began to fill with water, and because he had a basic but important misunderstanding of what he should do in this situation, he just let more water in. Jack and I had no idea what was going on, so when the divemaster held his hand because he couldn't see, we just thought they were on an impromptu date.

Jack, meanwhile, struggles on with his addiction to steak.

But yes, diving. We have gone absolutely mental over this shit. Basically, just off the island we're on, there's this massive American warship under the water, and I can assure you, if you haven't done it, there's no way you can imagine how amazing swimming through a rusty old colossus can be, with skeletons of the previous luxury it offered, caked in coral and rust, emerging through the water before you. It's amazing.

OH! And also, I tried to make this blog interactive, so you could join in and maybe feel like you were here with us, having fun and NOT being cold. But, hey! It didn't work! Not one of you posted about my Kilv welcome idea thing! That's it! I'm not going to make this blog interactive any more! You've ruined everyone's fun, but especially Kilv's!

Shithead scores:

ROUND ONE: Jack: 5 (2), Will: 1 (2)

ROUND TWO: Will: 10 (3), Jack: 7 (2), Kilv: 2 (0)

Rivers? RIVERS!!!

We left Luganville again yesterday, and this time managed to get much further, because a taxi man was with us, and he'd kindly brought his taxi. We were headed to the Blue Hole, a famed pool of water, to take photos and frolic about. However, the taxi driver, called Jackie, mistook a question about whether the blue hole was formed by rivers to mean that we were really, really interested in rivers, and promptly stopped at every one (they were remarkably clear, like seriously).

Soon enough though, we found the Blue Hole, and Christ was it blue. Like, not even murky turquoise, that you could think was blue, because its nice to think of it as blue. This was proper blue, the colour of a child's crayon with the word 'blue' on the label. There were some other tourists there, and I impressed EVERYONE with my sexy diving. We also tried to use the rope swing, but the whole setup was designed so that you were just swinging down into the water. I even climbed a tree. It didn't work.

On our return to Luganville, Jack had his eighth steak of the day, and we talked about his controversial understanding of the role of a Fluffer.

Right, I've decided to make this blog more interactive. It's an experiment. Kilv arrives today; he's in Sydney at the moment. Now, Jack and I still harbour some irritation about his general delaying of our getting out of these godforsaken 'cities'. On the flipside, we'd like to see his cheeky grin and the difficulty he has over making decisions. So, fans (?), write on here, or my facebook wall, what should we do to welcome Kilv back into the bosom of Vanuatu? I guarantee we'll adopt at least one idea, as long as it's legal and doesn't cost more than 500 VT (about 3 pounds).

Also, the Shithead scores from last night were:

Round One: Will: 5 (2); Jack: 4 (0)

Round Two: Jack: 5 (1); Will: 1 (2)

Also, remember Shithead fans (?), from tonight, it will be a three horse race.

The Prodigal Sun

Our first proper day on Santo, and the terrible weather was in decline. There was sunshine about, and we decided to actually leave the city on our own two feet. We wanted to go to a beach, and in a summit between us and various representatives of the Luganville taxi driver community, all mediated by a man whose name could quite possible be John, some pretty big numbers were being thrown about. After a few hushed words, and furtive looks about the place, we withdrew our offer from the table.

We kept the shore on our right, and to save us from somehow ending up in the middle of the island (it's what we do), we committed ourselves to taking very right turn available to us (a tactic which had, on our first Vanuatu residency, almost ended the life of Jack and Kilv, and this time took us to an industrial port and someone's garden). Eventually we found a turn-off which didn't breach some no doubt lazily upheld trespassing laws (but they're still laws!), and wound up on a nice secluded little beach. Over a little hill we found an even littler, even more secluded beach and it was here we settled.

We waded out into the perpetually shallow sea, and just floated around for an hour musing on the subjects of marriage, how drunk it would be acceptable to get at the wedding of our friend Jess, and how much more drunk than that we would actually get.

On our return to the city, we went to the Natangora cafe. Now we love the Natangora. We love it up. It was the place of our first meal during the Easter holidays of Vanuatu '07, and it didn't involve taro, yam or f*cking island cabbage. It had burgers and fried breakfasts and f*cking MILKSHAKES! Yeah, boy! You can't imagine how much the quality of a milkshake will increase, exponentially, for every slimy strand of island cabbage you are encouraged to even consider eating beforehand. We sat, we had our milkshakes, we ate our burgers and, after agreeing how much the current moment reminded us of The Trip, we argued over who was Rob Brydon and who was Steve Coogan. It was settled thus: Will: Brydon; Jack: Coogan.

We lazed the rest of the day away, chatting to a woman from Pentecost who, rather too late, warned us off kava, and then had supper at the market, sat around picnic tables each with their own dedicated kitchen.

Also, as this seems to be becoming a longstanding feature of this trip, I'm going to start including the scores from our nightly Shithead championships (first to five):

Will: 5
Jack: 2

If my blog were an album, this post would be the filler track

(I've committed to writing a post a day on this blog, so if this one seems particularly boring or unnecessary, or like I've had so little to say I've decided to arrange it into a haiku, you know...DEAL!)

Vila abandoned,
we await Kilv in Santo.
Our bathroom: doorless.

Cheer up, Will!

A sombre day yesterday. It rained, and it's up to you whether you chalk that up to pathetic fallacy or a contributing factor.

I'm bored of Port Vila. Like an airport, it's just an exhibition of the country, it's most acceptable and sterile face. We lie on comfortable mattresses, under an electric fan, and I feel like a sham. I feel comfortable drinking cola and beer, while kava lies disregarded, overlooked down dark alleys behind air-conditioned supermarkets. I won't remember these days, just like I won't really remember my stop-off in Seoul. The insignificance of this time is uncomfortable. I just feel numb.

Our time on Pentecost can't come soon enough.

The high-point was being granted access free of charge to a resort as we were 'residents' of Vanuatu (i.e. we could speak Bislama). I'm sure our subsequent swaggers were fairly blatant. Still though, it was a resort. You know, where tourists go. And I desperately don't want to be a tourist. It seems a pathetic step back.

It's high time this blog stopped being about my time in airports.

After a good too many hours circumnavigating the globe, we arrived in Port Vila, Vanuatu's capital 'city', close to midnight on Saturday. This is the first blog since then, because internet doesn't exist on Sundays here. We booked into a nice enough hotel, found Australia had conned us out of about 30 pounds each and settled in for some proper sleepikins.

Sunday was filled with small nostalgia bombs. Bongos, Twisties, Splashe, Tusker and in a small corrugated iron shack with a red light above its door, kava. Kava, kava, kava. Like drinking mud laced with peer-pressure. We were on about 7 or 8 shells a time when we lived here previously. Now, after one, we almost threw up, got pretty upset with ourselves, and basically ran away from the whole affair.

On the reverse side of that, the Bislama has been working out sweet. It's the national language, and by the end of our original tenure, we could chat away fluently. Recent attempts to revive our understanding of it between the group have been hesitant and stilted. But, once to oppressive skies of British grammar were far behind us, all nervous verbal stumblings fell away, and we conversed freely once again. People here love it. We're set apart from the usual, annoying, condescending tourists. And with sunburn shifting slowly but definitely into tan, our worries are dispelled: Vanuatu welcomes us back.

From Russia with Love (as long as it's between two white people...)

Round 2. I'm now in Sydney for something like the sixth time in my life. We've spent a happy morning wandering around, followed by a weary afternoon in a cafe garden brought on by beer, heat, not having slept too much and too much wandering around. We took a photo of a German man, and then refused to engage him in the conversation he so clearly desired (due to history...); we watched a fire juggler apologise repeatedly for the fact that he couldn't really juggle fire; we became connoisseurs of the best shade, in art galleries and museums across the Rocks district.

Meanwhile, Kilv lies asleep in his bed dreaming of earning £28,000 per annum.

Our second flight of the expedition, the one which brought me from the last blog post to this one, was struck by disaster. Between Heathrow and Seoul, the lack of Kilv meant our three seats became one sofa, with the central area transformed into a bin. We even had his screen permanently tuned to the SkyMap so we didn't have to pause our films or nothing.

However, as we arranged ourselves into the familiar set up on our flight out of Seoul, The Annoying Russian approached. But what? This wasn't Kilv! We, being the ones spurned by his sudden and still hard to understand change of heart, surely had the right to repurpose his reserved space how we saw fit. And we saw it fit for empty peanut wrappers, the Evening Standard, and a tea-stained Brideshead Revisited. But as she lumbered over, announcing herself as our new flight companion, these dreams of an airborne living room crumbled to dust.

Throughout the ten hour flight, her questions and comments included "what time is it in England?", "do you find it weird to see a white woman with a not white man?" and "I have a dream to speak to some people with good British, Queen's English. Now my dream has come true!". She also slept with her hand on Jack's side... She really was a menace.

Oh, and Jack correctly identified her (female) friend as looking like the fat guy from Borat.

Waiting in Korea (Not a career in waiting)

This is a rather hasty first entry of a blog that I've only just decided to write. It's hasty because I'm in Korea, and very soon won't be. I've decided to do my best at chronicling my second stint of travels in the South Pacific. I'm halfway there at the moment. This is a thoroughly different affair from the trip I took almost four years ago, being shorter, more travel-heavy, and, unexpectedly, more likely to get some of my photographs published in the Sunday Times.

A brief introduction then. Because I'm a member of the liberal upper middle class coming of age in the early 21st century, I took a Gap Year (a flimsy generalisation, proved wrong by so many of my friends). So, I rocked up in the offices of Gap Activity Projects, the company who had sent my brother to Nepal, and bumbled through their folders of destinations. Right at the bottom of the alphabetically ordered bookcase, was a folder on Vanuatu. I hadn't heard of it. Few have. But that's cool. It would be the band I knew before they became famous.

So, because I've suddenly remembered to keep this brief, I spent six months there. A glorious six months, probably the best of my life. Not even the malaria could ruin it, as it only reared it's ugly head when I was at university. (I didn't need to go to LA to get treated, because unlike Cheryl Cole, I'm not famous, and apparently if you're famous, it's a different type of malaria, and needs different treatment...).

Summarily, I spent those six months living in a village without electricity, teaching English to kids who basically already knew it, jumping off picturesque waterfalls and getting high on the ceremonial drug, kava. I also killed a pig. With an axe.

On our return, my fellow travelers and I were scattered across the UK, but still managed to remain in regular contact, with reunions every few months and one disastrous trip in a campervan. Now, I'm a graduate. So are most of the 'Van Clan'. We still meet, and at one reunion in Wimbledon, the idea started getting batted about that we should go back. I didn't really join in at first. I didn't have any money. My first foray into the Edinburgh Fringe had seen to that.

But then, my mind was changed. Of course I'd have to go back. It was all far too exciting. I began to justify it to myself that this was the last time in my life where it would be sensible for me to do something not very sensible. Then, all of a sudden, with money both borrowed and earned, tickets were booked. Shit was real. For about five weeks in November and December, Jack Noble, Tom 'Kilv' Kilvert (whose departure was ultimately delayed, placing him in the marginally less exciting Norfolk at the time of writing) and I would turn our backs on budget cuts and lack of sensible job prospects and go back to a place where money doesn't really matter. And of course it's silly. Nothing more than a temporary reprieve. We'll be going back to more debt and financial woe than we left with. But somehow it feels sillier not to... Oh, and there's that Sunday Times thing, but I'll talk about that another time.