Waka Waka World Cup 2010 Review

India is in full world cup swing and there is no escaping it, especially if you are not at work and have plenty of spare time (like us) . Although not fielding a team this tournament, India’s enthusiasm for football is very much in evidence. Driving along even small country roads we’ve seen huge billbords and posters, proudly showing support for the teams local business are supporting (Argentina and Brazil mostly). Since being here we’ve watched virtually every game, scoring us enough taxi chat points to last a lifetime.

Despite my lack of football knowledge I have a few points I’d like to raise.

England’s poor performances – Thankfully we missed England’s or rather: ‘Team Capello’s’ first game as it was on at 2am and there was some kind of alarm clock malfunction. However for England’s second game we were less fortunate. England are the most miserable team I’ve seen, lead by sour faced captain Steven Gerrard. The Algerian team on the other hand looked genuinely pleased to be there, being paid to play a game no less!

Apparently England have some really good players, but fail to ‘gel as a team’, hence the poor results. I think I know what the problem is. And there are a few. Firstly there is no one on the team with the X-Factor. Beckham had it, Shearer had it, but Rooney, hasn’t got it. No amount of Hello photo shoots will change this either. It’s clear Wayne is having trouble scoring goals because he’s up all night with his and Coleen’s new baby. I know this because its plastered all over some magazine. Less photo shoots more kicking practise needed.

Secondly they got the wrong guy out of retirement. I can’t remember if Carrick kicked the ball once the whole game, but I’m sure if they had got Gazza on the pitch, even if England had still lost, he would have got into a fight that we could all have been proud of.

And finally the team don’t like each other – something to do with them all sleeping with each other’s wives (Official term: WAG swap) . That’s why they couldn’t link a pass together all match. I’ve seen wheel chair rugby with more fluidity.

One ball to rule them all - FIFA don’t seem content with using inflated pigs bladders and stitched leather any more. Instead they’ve employed someone from the Italian Space Agency to come up with the ‘Jabulani ball’, capable of bending through time and space to trick the opponent. Yet, as far as I can tell this million Euro ball is much like kicking a balloon inflated with helium making scoring a goal as likely as wining the Euro millions draw. Jabulani should stick to making Roman candles.

Shakira – I have mixed feelings about Shakira and her world cup anthem ‘Waka Waka’. The tune is undeniably catchy, and there is something slightly more visually appealing about her than Baddiel and Skinner ever were. But I keep getting a re-occurring dream that in three months time I’ll be sitting on a bus going to work, when a bratty school child pulls out his phone blearing out ‘Waka Waka’, I garrotte the child and throw his phone under the wheels of the bus. Bad Shakira.

Crap attempts to win free kicks – It would appear that the most highly regarded footballers are, as the commentators put it the ones who ‘earn free kicks’ from being fouled. Christiano Ronaldo - The most expensive player in the world happens to be the best at this. He can trip over thin air quite beautifully which the referees can’t help but fall for every time. If he’s going to win all these free kicks the opposing team should at least make the most of ‘injuring’ him with a team pile-on him until he really is injured.

Kerala India

This is the final part of our journey through Asia. We’ve left Bali and now face the monsoons of Southern India. Naively, I assumed the rainy season in Kerala would consist of a short burst of rain once a day with glorious sunshine and blue skies the rest of the time. In fact we were both counting on good weather, as we’ve only just started to get tans after 3 months of travelling, and lugging a year’s supply of aloe vera gel doesn’t feel worth it if its constantly raining.

We considered taking the surfboard with us over from Bali when we found out there was good surf during the monsoon season, but out of laziness, decided to leave it behind thinking we could always rent a board if it looks good (real reason is we’re both crap). Looks like it was the right decision as the sea here is like nothing I’ve seen before: gargantuan waves break haphazardly, some far out at sea and others smashing into the sand churning the water and making it murky and green. The sound of the waves crashing into the cliffs can be heard a mile off and I’ve not seen a single person go in. On the way to the beach, a girl gutting a bucket of small Pomfret told us her dad was a fisherman, but that it was a very dangerous job and they made no money.

I am now on to my third pair of flip-flops, which works out at one pair per month. It’s a mystery as to what happened to the last pair. As normal I left them outside the door of our hotel room to keep the sand in the bed to a minimum – a sandy Laura is not a happy Laura. The next day I woke to find one of them was missing. A wave of sadness swept over me as it became apparent that someone or something had stolen it. I felt genuine anger that I would have to buy another pair of flip-flops and wanted to lash out. A kid must have run off with one of them as a dare. There were no kids around to strangle, probably for the best, as I’m no warrior and would have come away worse off. The hotel manager thought it was most likely that a dog had gone off with it, which is probably true, as there are at least 10 dogs for every person here. If this is the case in the rest of India, that makes approximately 10 billion dogs on the subcontinent.

Anyway I have some new flip-flips now, they rub and my feet feel like they are slowly being grated away with each step. I reckon they’ll be perfectly broken in, in a month’s time.

Travellers tash

In the maul-like queue for the flight to Trivandrum I noticed that every man had a moustache. I’d forgotten that virtually all men and quite a few boys in India have moustaches, and if I was to be taken seriously and not appear like a boy on a school trip I would need one too. So far I have shaved my chops and am now the proud owner of a faint shadow on my upper lip. According to Laura, my micro-tash looks a bit ‘Mexican’, but once I nip the ends off and it gets a bit thicker I might just have the makings of a young Edwardian gentleman. Bravo I say!

(Pre-tash photo)

DIY dudes

Despite our best efforts to look the part, as soon as we get in the sea Joe and I immediately betray something of the all-the-gear-no-idea persuasion of surfer dude. To combat this, we continue to practice, aka play the long game. In the short term, we take steps to give the impression to our fellow surfers that we are, in fact, as gnarly as they. By ‘take steps’ what I of course mean is make props.

A key accessory if you’re a surfer dude is to wear a horrible necklace of some kind: sometimes a shark’s tooth, but more often an incomprehensible symbol made from shell, rock or coral. These are sold everywhere by earnest salesmen who will give you a boring monologue their items’ symbolism if you so much as blink in his direction.

Or you can make your own, which is what we did. For the benefit of fellow wannabe beach posers, here’s how:

1. Go to a beach
2. Find an enormous piece of dead coral, the bigger the better
3. Attach it to a piece of weathered leather string
4. Spend a few seconds coming up with some meaningful statements about its background/magical powers/the fantastic surfing trick you were engaging in when you found it

Once you’ve completed these 4 steps, all you need to do is let it dangle casually across your naked chest and wait for other dudes to approach and give you respect. Here’s the one Joe made:

Finding Hansel

After a short spell on the Gili islands, and a failed attempt at enjoying Lombok, we’re back in Bali where the food is cheap and the people are cheerful. We toyed with the idea of sailing or flying to Borneo or Sumatra to track down wild orang-utans, but it all seemed like too much effort as we’d have to take at least two extra flights and endure bus rides... far too much like hard work. I’ve promised Laura I’ll dye every hair on my body orange and only eat bananas from now on to compensate for not seeing the real thing.

With two weeks to kill in Bali, we’d left ourselves no choice but to buy a surfboard and become proper surf bums. With a meagre budget I went out with strict instructions not to come back without a surfboard, preferably one over 8ft tall – a good size for learning. I was keen for Laura to come along as chief negotiator as I was wary of falling in love with the first (and most probably unsuitable) board I saw and agreeing to pay whatever the shop was asking for it, yet I couldn’t raise her interest in the dealings so went along solo.

The process of buying a surfboard is much the same as buying a snowboard, pair of skis, any sort of sporting equipment in fact. In other words, it helps enormously if you know what you are talking about. If you don’t, the sales person usually picks up on it quickly and goes for the hard sell on the most expensive and ridiculous thing in the shop. This may have happened, but I am not completely sure as I know virtually nothing about surfboards.

I walked away from the shop positive I’d struck gold and sure that Laura would be most impressed. It was only 2ft shorter than requested and 50 percent more than we had agreed to spend. It must have been the canary yellow that distracted Laura from these pitfalls as she appeared genuinely impressed with my purchase. Unfortunately this only lasted until we took it out for a spin and discovered it’s virtually impossible to catch a wave or stand up on the thing. Perhaps it will grow on us...

Adding to Laura’s Introduction to surfing, here are a few new-found afflictions that accompany the activity:

1. On top of having to wear a rash vest I’ve splashed out on a pair of Speedos. I stress these are purely for medical reasons, I wouldn’t want my nether regions grated off by the board. Watch out London fields lido...

2. My nose has become a storage tank for a large percentage of the Indian ocean. Hours after leaving the sea my nose will leak salt water like a broken tap onto anything and everything in front of it.

Bali's Got Talent

This is a picture of a German traveller we first encountered on the slow boat to Lombok, a week or so ago. Let’s call him Klaus. My first impression of Klaus was not favourable: a traveller of indeterminate age, he sat on the seat next to mine and for the next 4 hours repelled me with his frowsty, unwashed aroma. Then we got off the boat, went our separate ways and I rejoiced. It wasn’t to last. A week later we were reunited with Klaus, somewhat predictably, on the boat back to Bali. His long blonde hair was tied back in a lank pony tail and he was decked out in staple traveller garments: free flowing, ‘ethnic’ print shorts, a mysterious pendant made of stone or shell and work and dusty sandals. We were sat on deck, upwind from him thankfully, but this time he made a far more serious sensory assault. Klaus had a recorder, of the type usually favoured by 10 year old girls, and for 4 hours he sat broodingly on the side of the boat and played such classics as Celine Dion’s My Heart Will Go On.

As the hours rolled by, my distress grew. To Joe’s embarrassment (sorry Joe), I ostentatiously put my hands over my ears and glared at him, but my passive aggression was blithely ignored by Klaus, who was no doubt experiencing recorder-music induced euphoria. Towards the end of the voyage he instigated a duet with a Balinese guy with a guitar, but even Klaus could see that a recorder/guitar rendition of Hotel California was never going to work and the session fizzled to a halt as the boat finally groaned into port.

I bring your attention to Klaus because in many ways he embodies everything that is embarrassing and awful about travellers and travelling. In his native Germany, Klaus no doubt conducts his life in a moderate and Celine-Dion-free sort of way; it’s only when a few thousand miles separates him from his native shores that he becomes a grotty, recorder-playing berk. People like Klaus irritate me, and there are plenty of them.

Joe tentatively suggests that I should try to be more tolerant, but I can’t help but be incensed. And anyway, I think that not pushing Klaus overboard and throwing his recorder in after him was extremely tolerant of me.