Short Story: Well Kids, I Went Travelling,

Short Story: Well Kids, I Went Travelling,

I felt her hand on my right shoulder. It gave me one of those oogie-boogie tingling sensations. I couldn’t help thinking, why does this woman keep touching me like this? She wasn’t touching anyone else in the group with such a frequency, or with such an oogie-booginess.

To make it all the more creepy, she looked me in the eyes and said to me three short words.

‘You be safe.’

I scanned the faces of the other members of the group for some sort of recognition, but they were all too busy stuffing their faces with dumplings – they had mastered the art of chopsticks. They had mastered it so well in fact that Arty Farty and The Texan Cowboy were able to simultaneously discuss bastardry and blow-job innuendos, whilst Nick Harper (like the guy from My Family) took a million close-ups of her face with his large and unsubtle camera.

We were in a Buddhist temple.

Not that I think the woman minded. I mean she was a Buddhist nun, shaved head and grey robe and all that, but you could tell she had been around a bit. She had that sparkle in her eye which you don’t get from just praying all day. She wasn’t afraid to admit it, ‘Oh, I did a lot of travelling before I became a nun you know.’ Yes, that’s what I’m going to tell my grandchildren. ‘I did a lot of travelling, kids.’

Despite her ominous warnings, she was quite an inspirational character. I looked around and thought to myself, I wouldn’t mind ending up here when I’m old, you know, after all my err-hmm, travelling. What a serene life she had. Living in the grounds of one the most beautiful buildings on Earth, a temple, the largest I’ve ever seen, stretching across the Taiwanese mountains. You could tell she lived a life of peace and silence, catching the rays as she watered the flowers in a morning, meditating in the shade when the sun got too hot in the afternoon. I think my nana would appreciate that kind of life. Instead she has my little cousins to contend with, the Terrible Two, who put a hose-pipe through her letter box and called 999 to tell them there was bomb in the house. I thought I’d give them a mention because they’re so terrible that, at 8 years old, they even read this story. Hi kids! Give your poor nana a break will you?

Life for the Buddhist nun had also just got a little more exciting. Her tranquil temple had just been gate-crashed by six extrovert Westerners hoping to get profile pictures sat on Buddha’s lap. Instead of those angry, condemning faces you get when you walk into a church hoping to get a snapshot with the Virgin Mary, in the temple we received an offer of a free lunch. A banquet in fact. Dumplings, sweet potatoes, green vegetables, chopped watermelon, dragon fruit... Apart from, as always, I was struggling on the old chopstick front, hoping no-one would notice the piece of sweet potato I had just accidentally flicked into the air. It had landed in the middle of an incense stick, and was now stuck there, resembling a vegetarian kebab.

Maybe this was what she meant by, ‘Be Safe’. I have a premonition, be safe with those chopsticks. I see you blinding yourself or starving to death.

Maybe I’m being a little hard on myself about the chopsticks thing. Maybe it wasn’t that at all. Maybe it was the fact that I’d be clinging on to the back of The Texan Cowboy all day, holding on for my dear life screaming ‘You had better fucking slow down Cowboy!’ This is the guy who is wanted by the Taiwanese mafia and who drives a scooter without a licence, insurance or anything else which is required to be on the road...such as brakes. It was then I who was tapping him on the shoulder. ‘You, be safe,’ I said. ‘You think the Taiwanese mafia are bad? Wait until you meet my family.’

And, to be fair, he did drive quite safely. The Cowboy’s loyal steed turned out to be nothing more than a rusty old mule. On several occasions, as we got higher into the mountains, I actually had to get off and push.

We were on our way to Puli, via the scenic route. The Texan Cowboy had insisted that he be the leader of the gang, after all, he had the map. Two roads drawn in pencil on a post-it note.

But later, it turned out that Panjita and Nick Harper were in the front, followed closely by Arty Farty and Amelie. I decided, that if Arty Farty was going to continue being French (he was wearing his beret again that day), then I would grant him a French girlfriend. I was having trouble thinking of names and she does seem like the quiet, mischievous type. I could donate her my pink Po-Poulain beret if she ever felt the name didn’t suffice.

With the skewered sweet potato going unnoticed and the steep Taiwanese landscape capping the Cowboy’s speed at 30 km/hr, the outing was going too well. We even accidentally ran into a brewery, which kind of sums up the average human’s perfect day. Perhaps the Buddhist’s words had been lost in translation. What if she had really meant that she was just feeling my good vibe, as in, ‘You are safe man!’ Then I started having regrets about not giving her a high five and calling her bro.

Well it turned out the Buddhist nun wasn’t a gangster rap artist, nor did she grow up in the ghetto. It turned out what was jeopardising my safety was a big badass black rain cloud, lurking over the route back to Taichung.

I didn’t nickname myself the human sponge without good cause. That was until Panjita mistook my big yellow raincoat for a garbage bag and filled it with used toilet roll. Then my only shield from the rain was an umbrella, but one day, on the way to Carrefour, the material blew off in gale force winds. I had been left standing in the middle of the road, sewage up to my knee caps and frozen like the Statue of Liberty, the skeleton of an umbrella held up to the air in my right hand.

But there was nothing liberating about the storm on the way back from Puli. The opposite of liberation is entrapment. And I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say we were trapped. Mr Arty Farty’s bike had drowned in the sewage canal that now flowed where the motorway once lay. We had taken refuge under an electrical shed in the rain next to a hill that the Texan cowboy said may ‘landslide’. And we couldn’t call the police, because obviously the Cowboy was involved with the mafia and none of us had a driving licence, some of us didn’t even have visas.

I documented the whole thing on camera. I thought this could be the next ‘Day After Tommorow’. I’m not having much success at getting published as a writer, I could have dabbled in disaster documentaries. But now when I look back on my video clips, it just looks like six pissed off people in a shed with the odd lightening flash in the background. I even missed the moment when a gust of wind picked two Taiwanese people from their scooter and threw them into a ditch because I was too busy filming Panjita goofing around in her helmet. I swear that video would have been my claim to fame. Can you imagine how many hits that would have had on youtube?

And to my disappointment, this still wasn’t even a typhoon. Just your average storm apparently. When the water had cleared, around two hours later, we realised we had been a little melodramatic about the whole landslide thing. I had envisaged scenes of rescue helicopters, food packages and tin foil coats, but hey, whatever. You’re not the one who received death threats from a nun, okay?

Let’s just pray that this was all there was to worry about. A simple storm. Although I am still secretly concerned. After all, I am having pains in my left kidney. And I’m like for fuck sake, come on, give me a break, I haven’t touched a bottle of vodka in months.

So if you don’t hear from me again, it’s safe to assume either or all of the following:

I am seeking an organ donor. I was kidnapped by the mafia. I was arrested for impersonating the Statue of Liberty and other famous monuments. Or, my preferred choice, the Buddhist nun in fact is a gangster from the ghetto and has invited me to collaborate with her fresh and upcoming single ‘Peace out man (kebab remix)’.

Remember, in Taiwan, anything is possible.