Did I ever tell you about the time it all kicked off when I went out for a bit of a pre-Christmas celebration with the lads at the academy in China?
Well if I didn't, let me just set the scene for you quickly...
It was at the end of a weird night at some dodgy karaoke house in the middle of nowhere, and things were getting a little bit tasty amongst a few of us...
There was ADHD suffering Nigel from India who was shouting at everybody...
There was Scottish Gordon (the unemployed fella with a bad snot problem) who was threatening to head-butt anybody who came near him...
There was the strange, pale-faced quiet fella from England (that no-one could really get on a level with) who suddenly made a last-minute decision to bolt it during the heat of the moment...
There was Kyle from the USA whose eyes and veins were popping out of his head (who also, by the way, went on to make a "massage girl" tap herself out of a leg lock he got her into the previous week, this being after she apparently tried to lay him out with a right-hand punch of course)...
Oh and then there was me too... and I was just stood there in the middle of all this whilst thinking to myself "My God. Isn't this whole Shaolin way of life meant to chill everyone out??"
Ha ha!
With hindsight, the argument was one of the side-effects of keeping loads of blokes with high-testosterone levels cooped up with each other for long periods of time I suppose...
But anyway.
This Nigel bloke from India.
Hmmm... looking back on it, I think it was three months into my stay with the Shaolin Monks when I saw him turning up on the doorstep of the academy actually...
He had just flown over from his home on the Indian subcontinent as it goes, and I when I first saw him wearing his posh clothes with his hair slicked right back, I remember thinking to myself that he appeared to be of a different class altogether really.
There was only Europeans, Americans and Chinese at the place at the time you see, and we were right scruff-bags the lot of us as well.
The strange thing about him though, was that he had a problem with drink didn't he?
In fact this was so much so, that it is fair to say when he wasn't training during our downtime in the evenings, he would either be chuffing away at the cheap dirty fags that the Chinese store sold down the road, or he would be tucking into the bottle of brandy that seemed to be permanently living in his back pocket...
Ha ha!... "I come here because the hard work will tire me out and I will be able to sleep properly at night" was the reason he gave us for going to train at the academy as well actually.
Apparently his ADHD gave him insomnia you see.
Moving on however, and despite his quirkiness and all of these bad points of his, the best bit about him had to be his stories of India...
And what a mad, messed-up country he made it out to be!
The thing is, I guess that because he was rich, he ended up knowing a great deal about the weirdness that goes on in the society on the subcontinent really, and it was as a result of this that I used to be laughing away at the things he told me when we saw each other at the weekends...
In fact, thanks to those inspirational tales of his, I'm actually here in India myself now aren't I?!
Ha ha!
And what a funny end to my travels I'm hoping it should be!
I have to say that travelwise (to get here I mean) it was none too inspiring though...
You see, despite the fact that it appears to be quite close to Thailand on the map (in terms of the whole world), doing the whole overland thing to India from where I had been staying recently was not a possibility for me unfortunately, as Burma's borders were closed, oh and the whole Tibet situation to the north was a bit dodgy too.
Anyway... to get around the above, this in turn left me dreaming about the ferry journey between the two countries that didn't exist (this was quite annoying when I saw how close the Indian territory of the Andaman Islands was to Thailand by the way), before I then had to go on and book a flight for this part of my trip instead.
And now I'm here?
My God!
Well, putting Nigel's mad tales aside, my main reason for coming to this part of the world basically amounted down to the fact that my year of travelling is coming to a close now, and so I guess I was looking for one final good old fashioned shock to the system really...
Like for example the times when I found myself feeling like an alien in Moscow and Beijing when I visited them for the first time last year...
Ha ha!
It was with this in mind that I originally wanted to go and travel South America actually, as I was wanting to try and give myself a good opportunity to compare the chilled-outness of the locals in South East Asia to the passion that is meant to be over there...
But as amazing as that would have been, when I looked at it seriously however, I found that I was needing a much larger timeframe to do that mad continent the justice it deserves of course... plus there's the fact that I want to be older when I visit it too (so that I can get a bit of Spanish under my belt).
So no, the subcontinent it is for me for now.
I tell you what though... I know I've only been here for half a day or so, but my head is still spinning!
Geographically speaking I am currently in Chennai, this being a big sprawling industrial city that is situated on the east coast of the country, and in short, it's a pretty weird place for me to be a part of indeed...
In fact, I was sharing a lift in a taxi with an Italian guy just after I touched down here earlier, and he was sat next to me whilst banging on about this leather shoe making business of his or something, whilst I was just sat there looking at all that was around me and thinking to myself "oh dear... what on earth have I let myself in for?!..."
Ha ha! I could expand on this and go on to say that the area I am staying in is a pit... the street I am on is a pit... my room is a pit... blah, blah, blah... but no... that wouldn't be fair really...
So instead, I'm finding myself just looking at the strange aspects of all that is around me at the moment (as there are plenty of them about!)... and whether it be the meal that was just served up to me that the shape and size of a bazooka... it be the fact that the locals heads seem to wobble up, down, all over the place whenever I try to speak to them... or it be the weird 50's type cars that are driving about on the roads over here... it is fair to say that it really does feel like I am in a different world altogether right now!
And when I look at it, I guess that's the whole point of travelling really isn't it?!...
So all in all, me coming to India seems to be a job well done!
Speak soon ;o)