A London Moment

Having just watched The Constant Gardener, heads full of the horror of companies and countries treating the poor and black in Africa as petri dishes not people, we walked out into Mayfair. One of the richest areas of Central London, it is stuffed with expensive hotels and restaurants and, as we headed back to the Tube, we went past both the front and back door of one such establishment known worldwide for its chef and prices. At the main entrance stood the doorman, white, grey-haired, in a dark Crombie-like coat. At the back stood two tall black men in aprons, next to several plastic crates full of pheasants. There must have been a hundred birds, two hundred meals.The men were pulling something off their necks then throwing them into black plastic bags. Kenya, it seems, had resurfaced in Curzon Street: the white guarding the door, the black clearing the rubbish.

Just a Thought

Twenty years ago, a period of time which makes me wince, I went to university. In my first term, my Mum bought me a coat, a turquoise duffel with black toggles.This being Cardiff I didn’t need it very often, since all-in-one waterproofs were more use as protection from the persistent rain. When I did finally wear it no one really noticed, although its distinctiveness meant that my friends made a point of telling me who else was wearing the same one.

A year later I went to study abroad in Strasbourg, France. Unlike South Wales, Alsace has a continental, cold climate and the coat was put to immediate use as soon as classes began. Whereas in Cardiff no passerby would even look at me, I noticed that in Strasbourg I was frequently the object of critical glances. At first I thought they were appraising but then, having experienced several, I realised that there was nothing but bemusement and judgement on the faces of onlookers. I asked French friends, some of whom it has to be said had made comments, why my coat was such an object of interest. The response was often the same: because it was a ‘fantaisie’, a bit of fun, not a classic. It stood out because it was so far removed from the camel/navy blue straight-cut overcoats worn with Burberry scarves sported by every right-thinking young female student. It wasn’t normal or, rather, it wasn’t French.

Most people who have travelled on the Paris Metro will have experienced the same treatment, a rapid glance up and down with no attempt to disguise the resultant sneer. It’s just a way of life, a habit. Whereas in London on the Tube, a group of Portuguese-speaking transvestites can sit side-by-side with a few Hassidic Jews, a black Muslim reading the Koran and a bunch of middle-class white women returning from Oxford Street (I kid you not) without anyone even acknowledging anyone else, in France the merest hint of difference, of ‘fantaisie’, will make you stand out. What hope for racial tolerance then if the band of acceptance, on such a simple, unimportant level, is so narrow?

Souvenirs

The lemongrass shampoo from the first hotel has finally run out, the battery in my toothbrush has given in and the Bangkok pedicure is looking decidedly patchy. I’m home and though I've only been away for seven weeks it feels like much longer. I am glad to divest myself of a rucksack, the constant checking for passport, travellers' cheques and camera (not easy to miss that one; it weighs rather a lot) and the mosquito bites (four on my last day, just in time for the flight where I was crushed into an economy seat and unable to scratch them) but I will miss a lot more. Not physical sights, more the immateriality of being in a different culture. I'm in winter boots now, rather than wearing flip-flops all the time; I can hear police sirens and trains not the constant sound of parrots or lorikeets in the trees and the rain, well, let's just say it doesn't come in short, tropical downpours.

I didn’t bring back many things, not for myself anyway, but I hardly needed to. My body is a souvenir. There’s the pedicure, as I mentioned, which I had in a small backstreet hairdresser’s in the Pratunam district of Bangkok. A Thai-American woman in my first, posh hotel offered to show me the best places to go and, although the lift in the BMW was reassuring, the tiny streets she barged it through were not. I wondered, as she pulled up outside Renee’s, how on earth I would find my way back. Inside, after the initial introductions, I sat in a chair surrounded by locals, completely at a loss as to how to make myself understood. Luckily choosing a colour isn’t that complicated. Once it was finished, I decided against retracing the BMW’s route through the market and headed towards the bright lights at the junction. Nothing looked familiar and, since it was Sunday, every inch of pavement was covered in stalls selling both tourist tat and local necessities. I cowered for a few minutes, then remembered what my new acquaintance’s husband had said about Bangkok: don’t be afraid of it; it’s just another city. In London, getting lost on a walk is part of the pleasure; perhaps if I could approach this strange metropolis from the same angle I wouldn’t spend any more time on this street corner. So I simply turned left, crossed over the bridge and there, in front of me, was the Skytrain. I knew where I was and it was five minutes away from my starting point.

The clothes I wore have left different traces. The swimming costume crisscrossed my upper back, whereas the bikini left straight lines so I am patterned with a St George’s Cross. And, since most of the time I was in strappy or short-sleeved tops, my shoulders are brown whereas the rest of me is not. I’m not much of a sunbather, but I still managed to get burnt twice, first when kayaking and second when snorkelling. Despite the factor 30, the shorts and the careful timing, the proximity of my skin to the silvery surface of the Pacific left the back of my legs pink and, if the itching is anything to go by, soon to be peeling. I didn’t learn my lesson.

Then there’s the scars and bruises. First, on Koh Samui, I was so busy looking at the moonlight on the sea that I failed to notice the titanic weight of a wooden sunbed bearing down on my shins as I walked into it. Even seven weeks’ later my left leg still proudly sports a big red mark, evidence of my distractedness. Similarly, for some reason, I never noticed the large metal handles on hostel and hotel doors and both my upper arms look like they’ve been squeezed in a vice. However, my right leg, obviously wanting to join this litany of damaged limbs, didn’t miss out either. Having borrowed a bike in Port Douglas, the quietest and easiest place in the world to ride one, I was happily sailing along on the safe, separate cycle path when for some reason, having noticed the disused tramlines in front of me, I decided to try cycling across them. Of course I fell off.

I couldn’t avoid the mosquito bites but the rest, well, travelling seemed to distract me from the need to look where I was going. Perhaps that’s the point. There’s actually nothing to be gained from looking too far ahead: all I needed to notice was where I was. Maybe then I’d have saved some epidermis.

Finding Nemo

When I first arrived in Koh Samui, I stayed in a beachfront bungalow. Dark, damp and, since it was on the path from the road to the beach, far from peaceful, I found it eminently depressing. When I discovered that cleaning my teeth with bottled water also meant that I gave my feet a bit of a wash, I decided to move. Despondent and lonely, I switched on the television. Finding Nemo was on and, after a few minutes of watching Marlin and Dory argue about the best way to reach Sydney, I felt more cheerful. I rinsed off my toothpastey feet and went out to find somewhere else to sleep.

On my last full day in Australia, as I set off on a snorkelling trip to the Great Barrier Reef, I remembered that moment and wondered if I might find the real Nemo, or at least his piscine equivalent. To be honest I was feeling quite guilty. Here I was, having seen the damage to the Samui coral, taking a trip to one of the most delicate ecosystems in the world. I had deliberately chosen a small group, accompanied by a marine biologist, as opposed to one of the 450-strong ferries that plough across the water but I still knew that I was adding to the problem. However, ever since I was little, perhaps because I saw a documentary or maybe another Disneyfied story, I have wanted to visit the Reef and I gave in.

Our first site demonstrated that this was no gentle float in the water wearing a mask. Waves broke over our heads, filling mouths and noses with salt, and the hour and a half journey offshore meant that the t-shirt for sun protection was also quite useful, at least initially, for keeping me warm. Under the waves blue, yellow and purple fish swam lazily beneath us, unfazed by fifteen shadows. Back on the boat, as we motored to the second site, we were invited to ask questions. I wanted to know how much damage such a trip would cause the coral. Tim, the marine biologist, was obviously anxious to reassure me since his business depended on it, but, I determined, not particularly happy that I’d asked. Apparently such trips only visit 1% of the Reef and simply snorkelling is not a threat, unless you touch or break the coral. In fact, the biggest threats, he explained, are the weather and the development of the rainforest: tropical cyclones and storms cause huge waves to lash against the delicate coral, snapping off years of growth in one day whereas cutting down trees to make room for hotels rather disturbs the soil and fills the sea with unwanted chemicals. There was no suggestion that oil-guzzling, rainforest-lopping humans might be aggravating the storms and undermining the earth.

I wasn’t reassured but that didn’t stop me going in at the next site. Tim came in with us, to give us a guided tour. This wasn’t the easiest of prospects, when waves and different swimming speeds separated us and if, like me, you were almost last off the boat and then prevented from progressing by a faceful of flippers, you missed both the turtles and the reef shark. However, Tim then dove under the water and pointed silently to a dark spot. Once my eyes had readjusted, I spotted three stripy fish, blue and white, all different sizes. Back at the surface Tim explained that these were Great Barrier Reef anemonefish, which, like the clown anemonefish made famous by Pixar, live all their lives in one anemone. For a moment I forgot all my reservations as I watched the family dart in and out of their home. It was, is, incredibly beautiful.

The guided tour almost complete, we headed back towards the boat. Then Tim resurfaced with something small and pink in his hand. It was a piece of coral. I don’t know if he had broken it off, or if it was a loose, dead piece he’d picked up but, whichever it was, it didn’t belong in his hand or ours. We had found Nemo, or at least his closest equivalent but all of a sudden I wished I’d stuck to the celluloid version.