My other big friend Kely is an ozzie, 28, very attractive, one time life guard, she’d spent the last year and a half working in London and was now dawdling slowly home.
She’s always worked in the cosmetics business, something for Estee Lauder, I haven’t yet asked her what she makes of my moisturiser free, sun ravaged visage. ha the cracks are beginning to show, i’d be better off investing in polyfilla.
her home town is Coffs Harbour and she lived in Sydney for years, both places i know quite well
Her boyfriend is also called Kelly! freaky narcissism! I thought it was Oedipally bad enough that both my mum and pam are both called pam (they look nothing like each other i hasten to add)
she met boyfriend Kelly in Africa, apparently he’s a kiwi and a hunky brickie. He keeps on sending her texts saying ‘What are yer wearing?’, apparently this is a common text topic from blokes. me and coz have been adding suggestions as to how she should respond.
I think we all got a bit carried away as he texted back from a family bbq with an agonised ‘please stop’. ho ho
She’s down here in Bangkok now, so it’s been good meeting up with her in the evening and comparing adventures
she looked at the room i’m staying in and rejected it with a ‘her on earth would stay in this!’. the answer me, well yes indeed it is an airles shoe cupboard. Just a fan and a flophouse mattress, but it’s cheap… and the cafe downstairs is great .. and i’m going to have to get used to sleeping in the stifling heat soon.
Mostly tho’ it’s because i went to 5 other places and they were all full and i couldn’t be bothered hoiking my backpack on my shoulders anymore!
Kelly is staying in a slightly more salugbrious air con pad. natch
Anyway confusing myself, so much still to tell about nepal, which was just a blast! missing the cool and the absence of tourists already
Kelly was working in an orphanage in Pokhara (‘cept for when her mum came out and they went off trekking together!)
Sounds like all the kids were snot nosed but lovely.. and really appreciated all the attention, neither her or coz were particularly impressed by any of the organisations involved.
the guy who ran the orphanage was a christian bod, his own children were in the orphanage too and got preferential treatment, the previous volunteer had brought all the kids socks before she left, but the owner had confiscated them! they were only to be worn for best, which rather defeats the point of the gift!
Kely had got them all clean knickers before she left, but was continually concocting plans as to how to smuggle them onto the kids. life shouldn’t be so hard
Makes me think of how lucky my kids are and for that matter how we all are in the west
We all moan and grumble about debt, about being unhappy, but really are just billionaires, I am one of the most privileged people in one of the wealthiest countries on earth, at the wealthiest time in history. It’s nothing profound, just stating the bleeding obvious, i, and all of us just should find someway to just be happy.
Healthcare in Nepal is fairly rudimentary. If someone gets run over (and they all drive like demons possessed. ‘Slow Down’ ‘Chill Out’ I find myself shrieking at the fume spouting traffic, 10 times a day!), if someone gets runover and is injured, the driver who caused the accident has to pay compensation to them for the rest of their life.
Grimly, if somebody is runover by a truck, it’s not uncommon for the truck driver to reverse back over them, to finish them off.
Back to the more mundane grumbles of the volunteers, the guesthouse they were staying in was undergoing building works, had a 9pm curfew, no common area, was noisy, away from lakeside, no garden and was costing them 300rps a night (nearly what i was paying)
ust by chance Mike the head of the volunteer organisation POD was over staying that week, he hadn’t visited in 4 years, a bit of a show down meal followed
Mik was a pleasant enough fellow. Very Public School, properly spoken, upright posture and an ex army officer. A nice bloke, but not really one to drink with till dawn.
Broadly speaking i’d say the volunteer organisation was trying to do the right thing, heart in the right place, the volunteers had to pay quite a lot of dosh to work in the placements, but where the money broke down was interesting, firstly the salaries and infrastructure back in the UK, then there were the huge fees to teh tibetan bloke who organised the volunteers locally
In a nutshell none of the cash actually got through to the poor people who needed it
Despite all the good intentions in the world. money just finds money. sad really.