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Michael Deveney takes his readers on an amiable ramble by bicycle
through Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand and Laos.
A middle-aged Brit expat with wife and kids and job in Ho Chi
Minh City, he took up cycling to gain a modicum of fitness.
"I do what I can to make sure the tones are not quite jelly and
are a bit firmer than blancmange," he writes. "I am aiming for a
midriff that's not so much a six-pack but more a bag of shopping.
From nice shops."
"Lollipop Fury" is the name of his book and he'll explain why.
The author adopts a breezy, jokey, conversational tone throughout
which can be greatly entertaining but also irritating as he rambles
off on maddeningly irrelevant tangents.
But the main trunk of his story is fascinating: four glorious
bike trips from Ho Chi Minh City to Pattaya, from Luang Prabang to
Vientiane, from Ubon Ratchathani to the Bolaven Plateau in Laos,
and from Mae Hong Son to Chiang Rai.
On his first trip he leaves home at six in the morning and
reaches the Cambodian border in three hours.
"Miracle rice, miracle irrigation, work, work, work - Vietnam is
a verdant and vibrant advert for the earth's fecundity. Doing! You
cross the border and the green turns to brown. Mile upon mile in
every direction, tough, unforgiving villages. No rain for ages, no
crops in sight, not a plant, not a worker; the contrast couldn't
be greater. This is Svey Rieng Province in Cambodia, one of
Cambodia's poorest at the best of times and now as raggedy-ass as
could be."
On the beach in Sihanoukville, he checks into a hostel where
Rule No 1 posted on his door reads: "No condoms, no sex". And
behind the reception desk are "a dwarf, a transvestite and a man in
a black vest with a body-builder's physique. How did I miss
this?"
On he pushes to Pattaya where he devotes 20 pages to the mores
of bargirls. Nothing new here but he does show a keen understanding
of their dear mercantile hearts.
He comes into his own in Laos where he's overwhelmed by sheer
joy as he cycles alone through the mountains outside Luang
Prabang.
"One thing I notice is that I am listening to the sound of
silence, something that I have not heard for a long time - a
tautology but you know what I mean. After living in Ho Chi Minh
City for a while this is like brain medicine. Let's call it aural
therapy. Happy ears, happy thoughts. It's more like a kind of
gestalt therapy commissioned by the music of the void. Wow, who
said that? Kerouac? Teilhard de Chardin? Me?
"This is a beautiful stretch of road, the limestone peaks
soaring ahead of me - it's a bluetooth landscape. The descent,
when it comes, is an adrenaline rush so I let go of the brakes to
see what it's like but when I pass 60kph I rein things in …
This is almost perfect cycling: warm sunshine, the fields being
cultivated, the air smells alpine fresh and it looks like
Grindelwald or somewhere. You wouldn't be surprised to see this
vista as the subject of a 1000-piece jigsaw."
He is equally exhilarated on trips along the mountainous Burmese
border in northern Thailand, and in the Bolavan Plateau in southern
Laos. And in his intimate, chatty style, he brings the reader along
with him.
"It is green up here on the plateau with lots of trees and
bushes … Everyone has got coffee beans drying in front of
their houses which are sturdy and made of a kind of clapperboard. A
steady income lifts the life-chances up a notch or two and you can
see it in the dress, the gardens and things lying around in them -
like satellite dishes instead of antennae. Gardens even have hedges
and ponds; the houses look like homes. The cool air smells like an
English country lane in spring …
"Everyone on the plateau shouts hello and beams a huge smile,
even the adults - these are the best farang wavers yet, they
positively rush to the road when they see me, as a family; 'Come
on Grandpa, look lively - all together now, helloooo!'
"It's as if the plateau is a Conan Doyle lost world where
innocence has survived intact. Their happiness is so infectious it
has left me in a carefree mood. 'Helloooo!' I yodel back."
Where Deveney loses the reader, or at least this one, are his
boring asides about his favourite books, movies, TV shows, football
games and family jokes. We really don't want to hear it. You feel
the urge to thump him and say, "Get back to the story!"
But this is a minor irritant. When he's on track, Deveney tells
his stories well and I can't wait to hear more of
them.
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