The haunting story of the missed flight.

It's warm. No rubbish carpeting the ground. Lots of eyes look at us alot of the time. The traffic goes whizz screech rumble. Vowel after vowel after vowel leap out of everyone's mouth. And the coffee- it isn't instant; it is dark, frothy, thick and potent, and totally worth the time it takes to brew. I am here in China with an aquaintance, an arch nemesis, a friend-of-sorts, one self-professed generously-endowed Kieran H., each hair-raising 6ft 6 of him, and we are having quite the oriental time, indeed. Though try as we may, we are not blending in, not nearly, not slightly, not at all.

There are 3 reasons the blog has lain dormant as long as it has:

• Crossing from Mongolia into China took an entire 2.5 days - that's 2.5 days without showering, 2.5 days of toileting outside in the snow, 2.5 days of pent-up cabin fever because I couldn't sleep, nor stomach the provisions I brought with me, nor converse with anyone because I happened to be the sole English speaker in the vicinity. I felt like a deaf-mute locked in a basement.
• Eventually reaching Beijing, the stretching of my train-gnarled and bus-knotted muscles was first port of call. The day was Saturday, so I decided the most affective method to alleviate the stress on my poor and meagre muscles would be to unwind with a twist and shake, dip and dive on a bustling dancefloor till the sun rose. Suffice to say, I woke up in a hostel I hadn't checked into the day before, which wasn't the plan, and there were little patches of blood on my pants, but I wasn't cut. Also, my credit and savings cards had disappeared. Nor was this the plan. The hangover lasted a whole two days, then suddenly snowballed into an upper-middle intensity flu, which I am still clawing my way out of now. But I got my cards back, thankfully. I am still searching for my dignity, alas.
• I am very slack at times, most times. It seems to a global kind of phenomenom, active at home and abroad, thus though I've had a plethora of opportunities to park my teakettle and write, I've opted instead to crash kites, de-chain bikes, daydream wistfully, dance badly in public, karaoke-hop, tickle unsuspecting Chinese tots (too often evoking tears, not laughter), and fall further and deeper in love with the most intriguing continent in the world, at least in this narrator's humble opinion.

Seen with eyes that are no longer hopelessly dependent on the assistance those Australian-manufactured eyedrops with the oddly cute and totally innocuous alien with bulgy eyes on the front, in the southernmost provinces of China- and Ulaanbaatar- and the border-crossing between the two, which like all good border-crossings was in the middle of, like, nowhere:

• On a television in a ramshackle mutton-worshipping cafe: a television broadcast of Bush's north-eastern sojourn. His speech before hundreds of dignitaries in tumid government house, all of whom seemed to be white, which is not the colour of Mongul skin. His adjourn to the steppes fringing Ulaanbaatar, into a ger where he was treated to a traditional Mongul throat-singing performance, during which he appeared a little embarrassed. His departure to the airport, a sleek black limousine speeding amid a convoy of similarly-black security vehicles, like a cluster a bullets. The crowds left agape on the side of the road, young and old, rich and poor, horses and cows, Muugi and I. There we were, faces pulled like a clown's, clear as day on Mongolian national television. I cannot say I aimed to appear on Mongolian national television, but natch, I feel as though I've achieved something. It was then that I knew my work in Mongolia was done, that it was time to confront China.
• In the Little Red Book, this one with frayed edges and dusty cover: statements penned by Chairman Mao in 1966, the start of the Cultural Revolution, copiously copied and distributed to the Red Guards who reputedly memorised all 150-odd pages before marching, armed, to every hidden corner of China, where they tore the rich, smart, and Communist-dissenting from the arms of their loving families, re-educated and relocated them. Most of these men never saw contact with their families again. My particular book comes with a name handwritten inside the front cover, little doodles on various pages. I am not sure if this validates its authenticity or not. It might have belonged to a real-life Red Guard. A killer, perhaps.
• On my mobile phone, Monday 6th December, 2005: 6:34am. It ticked into 6:35am and the alarm buzzed. My Scottish room-mate queried me of the time. One hour till my flight leaves, I told him. He just laughed and laughed and laughed, Scottishly, while I whimpered, lamely. You see, it takes two hours to get to the airport, and check-in time is an hour prior to lift-off, and here I was fours minutes late of checking in, in bed. I don't even think I was packed. I had missed my flight, the first I've missed in my life, wasted $200 as it turned out, which was money I could not really afford to waste, and consequently befouled my mid-morning rendezvous with Kieran H., oh thee self-professedly well-endowed. Like all good men, I went back to bed and dreamt of flying turtles.

More to come in the not-too-distant future, perhaps live from Tiger Leaping Gorge.

And I'm going to Burma now, instead of Vietnam. A fair trade, I think.

Salam, friends.