One for the Road: The lost chapter

Regular readers might remember a column I wrote on my phone a couple of months ago, after forgetting my laptop on a flight from Manila to Bangkok.

Well, after eight weeks of harassing Thai Airlines, the tiny computer landed yesterday.

I opened it up this morning and on it I found the lost column that I had been writing during that fateful flight.

Here it is…

If the old cliche that ‘it is all about the company’ is true, then I couldn’t be more relieved that the crowd of eejits I spent the last week with finally went their separate ways yesterday.

The craic was great but the damage was greater.

I’m no more than half a case of San Miguel Light away from sclerosis of the liver and a Kenny Rogers (all in good time) away from some serious cardiac event.

For the first time since Niamh and I have been away, we’ve had visitors.

First to arrive was Niamh’s friend, Grainne, who, petrified of rats, mice, bugs, germs and all other things small and impossible to avoid in this part of the world, has to be the most easily frightened, disgusted and generally freaked-out person to ever make it into the Irish Defence Forces.

Anyway, together the three of us spent four days in sunny Bali, where we climbed a volcano, played cards, drank coffee made from beans that had been excreted by a small rodent-like animal, furtively drove mopeds through police checkpoints, ate chicken satay, ate more chicken satay, drank, scrubbed lizard turds from our beds, adopted – and, after he boked on the sofa, swiftly evicted – a cute but bilious local dog, and generally had a ball.

Then we flew to the capital of the Philippines, Manila, where we met Niamh’s brother Conor and his partner, Sinead.

Conor decided he would rent a car to be picked up when we arrived in Manila – a city with a population density of 44,000 people per square kilometre, where they drive on the other side of the road, and where Google Maps does not work.

Before the air-con got going, local traffic cops pulled us over on some trumped-up motoring violation and were telling us they could make all our troubles go away for 1000 Philippine Pesos.

“I’ve only 500 on me,” said Conor, in a thick Dromore drawl.

The cops looked at him uncomprehendingly.

“I ONLY HAVE 500 PESOS,” he said again.

Permutations of this back-and-forth went on until eventually the money was waved in front of the cop’s face.

“Oh,” he grinned. “Too kind, sir.”

From there, things got better and worse simultaneously.

The next day, we went to a theme park in the rain. After being there for about an hour, the hunger kicked in.

“Anybody for a Kenny Rogers?” asked Niamh, pointing to a restaurant all painted and upholstered in candy apple red and cream.

It turned out that this chicken chain – named after the country and western star that founded it -was ubiquitous in the Philippines.

Before leaving the country, we ate a humiliatingly high number of ‘Kennys’.

Next day we went to a zoo where the main attraction was a cow with one eye and five legs.

Thinking some natural beauty might offset the spirit sullying effect of the animal abuse we’d witnessed, we headed to a place called Twin Lakes.

After walking around the grounds of a hotel for 20 minutes, we noticed a distinct absence of any large bodies of water.

“Where are the lakes?” I eventually said to a fella in a uniform.

“Oh, no lakes sir,” he said awkwardly.

“But sure the place is called Twin Lakes…”

“Yes sir, it is called Twin Lakes after two lakes we intend to build in the future.”

I laughed in his face and he laughed back into mine.

That night we went back to our hotel, drank like hell (then suffered the next morning) and chuckled about the surreal day we’d had.

After a a few hours of carousing in this very fancy rooftop restaurant, we bribed a waiter to hijack the sound system, kill the ambient jazz and loudly play Christy Moore, whose name, to avoid any part of the request getting lost in translation, we scrawled on a piece of paper.

He obliged.

Then, three and a half minutes later, we re-bribed him to play the same tune again.

Afterwards, before the official closing time and without as much as a shout for last orders, the bar stopped serving drink altogether.

I guess two back-to-back renditions of ‘Ride On’ was as much as they could take.

Anyway, now I’m on a flight home, which often gives one time to reflect, reminisce, mythologise and yearn for next time.

I wish I could say I can’t wait until we all meet up again – but that would be a lie of Twin Lakes proportions.