What Would Brad Have Done?

What we  did

We have a very quiet day today. We get up a little later, go to the market for fresh fruit and vegetables and then eat a home made noodle soup in the leafy surrounds that we have become so fond of where we are staying. As we sit, A emerges, along with her cat, who we are pleased to see after a long period of enforced staying in. (She has been on heat and rather too interested in the passing males. I guess we’ve all had that problem. I mean A of course. Not the cat.)

A, M and I while away an unprofitable, but deeply enjoyable morning chatting. We discuss, writing, the ability to take criticism (and if it even matters), the attitudes of the older and younger generations and the relative reasonableness of each. We discuss life paths and choices and the lack of a ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ decision. We talk about travelling and what is expected of us as travellers, foreigners, representatives of our generation and humans. I tell A about ‘Brad’ (see ‘The Joy of Doing Nothing’) to her great delight. We send a while thinking about what Brad would be doing today, amid much hilarity, and this segues into a discussion of ridiculous but fun things we did at university. Somewhere in the middle of this A has the idea for the format of this entry.

Once we are talked out we agree to go together to a training café where A has a penchant for the atmosphere. And the cup cakes. Strictly in that order. A and I were both planning to achieve quite a lot in the way of our respective writing projects and M wants to catch up on his blogs, so we spend the afternoon in companiable silence, overdosing on sugar and caffeine and creating a most satisfying feeling of having achieved something by the time we are basically bodily removed from the café as they are trying to close.

M and I eat a home made dinner outside, share our blog entries, chat and then speak with M’s parents over skype. We use an episode of Doctor Who as a sleep aid, and drift away.

What Brad Probably Did

Brad was up with the dawn, with a stinking hangover because he partied for most of the night. There has been a recent fire in one of the copious nightclubs in Siem Reap in which some tourists were injured.

“I mean, like, it could have been me, man” says Brad over a beer, to anyone who will listen. “I felt like I had to make tonight a big one, you know? To show solidarity.”

Brad evicts his latest squeeze with a friendly pat on the bottom and medicates his hangover using an extreme energy drink involving a raw snake’s head, which he has learned about from one of his many Cambodian friends, who he can be seen high fiving in markets.

Then he makes his way to the temples. He hires a dirt bike to get there, which he drives with much gusto and shouting of ‘waaaayy’. He eats some chicken’s feet and washes them down with cheap beer.

He visits Angkor Wat. He abseils down the side of it.

Then he swims in the lake.

Finally, he throws up enthusiastically in a ditch, evacuating his stomach and making more room for beer. He tells this story in some detail to a group of adoring female backpackers in the hostel that evening.

At 3am, he is still toasting himself and celebrating the day’s achievements. He has eaten seven times, made 40 facebook updates, been bitten by a snake, carved his initials into the side of Angkor Wat, had four near death experiences and altogether spent 3.2 dollars.

He’s had a lot of fun. I admire his energy.

He can keep it though.