1st Chapter of a new book..would you read anymore?

Lao Lao

Hi all, below is the first chapter of a book that i am trying to write. it's about travelling through Asia and I guess is along the lines of Bill Bryson, Tony Hawks et all.....what do you all think, am I wasting my time here or is it strong enough to get you to want to read more?

Cheers

Brian



It was Saturday the 6th of October 2002. The Doyle household was buzzing with excitement and activity. All family members residing in the greater Dublin area had been drafted in for an early morning start to aid in the final preparations for my planned year long trip around the world.

My father was out checking the car. Oil, water and tyre pressure were all checked meticulously in preparation for the gruelling twenty-five minute journey to the airport. He needed military precision and organisation to ensure the car ran smoothly. Any mishaps or unplanned events and I could miss the flight. Paul, my brother in law, was his chief assistant. He got to sit in the driver seat, press on the brake and put the car into reverse as my father stood behind the car making sure all the back lights worked correctly.

Jenny, my eldest sister, was taking my clothes from the clothes horse and the airing cupboard and frantically ironing them to ensure that they were dry while trying to keep my hyper active niece, Kate, her daughter, out from under her feet, the ironing board and the iron.

Sally, my second eldest sister was in the kitchen fretting over breakfast. Dad only wanted rashers and toast, Mary wanted fried eggs one sausage and two rashers, Kate wanted scrambled eggs no rashers two sausages and toast with butter, Jenny wanted the works but with only white pudding, and Paul wanted extra hash browns. Mary, my other niece and older sister of Kate, tried hard to keep up as commi chef as Sally barked out the quantity of food to be put on the grill and the timing of same.

Meanwhile, I lay in bed, snuggled up in my king size duvet, eyes closed, still half asleep. I could hear all the commotion downstairs but I chose to block it out. It was really warm wrapped up in the duvet.

The knock on the bedroom door was followed swiftly by the entry of Jenny into the room.

‘Brian, when are you planning on getting up? You have to leave for the airport in forty-five minutes’ she bellowed

‘Yeah…I know, relax, I’m getting up now’ I mumbled in a sleepy tone.

‘Where’s your rucksack?’

‘On the floor in front of you!’

‘It’s empty’

‘I know, I’m going to pack now in a minute’

‘You’re leaving in forty-five minutes!’

Packing in advance was something I could never do. It didn’t matter if I was going away for a weekend, two weeks or in this case, a year. My only option was to pack roughly thirty minutes before leaving. It was a system that had always worked and now would be no different.

With showering and breakfast over, I got down to the serious job of packing. After four unsuccessful attempts, I finally managed to figure out exactly what I wanted and needed to bring with me all under the watchful eye of mother superior Jenny. There was only one problem, the rucksack wouldn’t close. We tried everything. We folded items one way and then another. We changed the order items went into the rucksack. We swapped stuff between the bottom and top part of the rucksack. We even had both Mary and Kate sit on it but still the zips would not come together in joyous harmony. I had a heart breaking decision to make; I would have to leave either Bert or Ernie behind.

Now I know what you’re thinking. What was a twenty-four year old man doing with Bert and Ernie in his rucksack? I’d had them both for years, four years to be exact and I had a plan for them. Four years earlier, I had been in Australia for a month’s holiday where I saw an English couple taking photo’s of Tigger and was rather puzzled. On approaching them I discovered that they were taking photos of him all over the world as they travelled and making a collection, a kind of Tigger on Tour! My version would be of Bert & Ernie.

We had to leave in two minutes or the whole planned trip to the airport would be off schedule and I could hear my father pacing impatiently downstairs. I tried eany meany myny moe, but that didn’t work. It was too difficult. It was like getting a mother to pick which one of her children died. One minute to departure, I had to decide. I closed my eyes, spun around three times and reached for the bed. Whichever my hands touched first was to come with me. I landed on Bert, he was to come travelling and Ernie was to stay at home. With ten seconds to spare, the convoy left for the airport.


On arrival, we spent no time meeting up with Jack and Dave, checking in and heading for the departure gates. Up until this point, everyone had remained quite balanced and restrained but the sight of the red rope marking out the lanes for the departure gates had a dramatic effect on the family. One by one, Jenny, Sally, Mary & Kate burst into floods of tears. Only my dad and Paul managed to hold it together. The travelling trio all looked on in disbelief as we disappeared behind the glass screen.

‘Holy flood plains of Finland Batman’ I said as I turned to Jack, ‘What was that all about, we’re only going for a year!’

‘I know’ he replied, ‘my lot were just as bad as yours’

Dave had been lucky, some might have said sensible. He had said his goodbyes back at home instead of the airport. We were finally on our way.


********

It had all really started three and a half years before when I visited Australia for a month’s holidays to celebrate a friend’s birthday and absolutely loved the place. As I left a twenty-eight degrees sun shining day in Sydney and arrived back on a one degree, cold, wet and damp Dublin day, I swore that I would have to return to see Australia properly. It’s both a huge country and a huge continent and there is only so much you can fit in in four weeks. The best laid plans however always take some time to come to fruition. A college degree, a serious job and three years later and my attention started to turn back to fulfilling my promise to myself. By this stage I was sharing an apartment with my two friends, Jack & Dave.

I had decided that I was prepared to travel on my own but it would of course be better if the lads came along, the more the merrier. The discussion lasted about ten minutes over our traditional pre Saturday night going out drinks whilst watching Match of the Day;

‘Lads, I’ve decided that I’m going to head to Oz on the year working visa lark’ I explained over Alan Hansen’s analysis of how Rio Ferdinand should have headed clear the Middlesborough corner. ‘I’ve been thinking about for a while now and I reckon I’m going to do it’

Jack took the can away from his lips, ‘Ah yeah, sounds alright, when are you thinking of heading’

‘Well, our lease is up here in September so I think that would be the best time to do it’

‘Are you going on your own or is it an open offer’ asked Dave as he carefully refilled his wine glass.

‘I’m prepared to go it alone but would prefer if ye came along, bit of craic you know’

‘If we went in September, we’d definitely be away for Christmas’ thought Jack aloud, ‘which means that I wouldn’t have to do Kris Kindle with the family. Yeah, count me in, I’m up for it’

‘Jeses, yeah, never thought of that’ said Dave ‘Count me in as well’

That was pretty much that. There and then, over a few cans of beer and a couple of bottles of wine, we decided to quit our jobs, leave our family and friends behind and head down under for a full year. It sounds very simple and in fact it was!

It was six months to the expiration of our lease in September so we needed to get ourselves organised in order not to have to sign a new lease or god forbid, have to move back to our respective family homes in order to avoid having to pay rent. If all went well, we would fly out of Dublin a day or two after our lease expired!

Being my father’s son, I had inherited some of his military planning expertise. First things first, we needed to check out flights. It seemed like a fairly logical first step so it’s where we started. In no time at all, we had an array of travel brochures from travel agents and airlines alike. One thing became glaringly obvious. It was better value for money to buy a round the world ticket and stop off in several places rather than just buy a return ticket to Australia. We decided that we would leave Dublin at the start of October, a month after our lease expired. It would mean spending a month back at our family homes, but on the bright side, it was a good way to save extra money for the journey ahead.

It was a Friday night, four months before we planned to leave. Armed with a six pack of beer each, a few bottles of wine and a bottle of vodka, we sat down to the task of finally thrashing out the route we would take. We had a total of eight flights as part of our round the world package and the options were endless.

‘I wouldn’t mind stopping in Nepal’ said Dave

‘Yeah, it’s meant to be great’ I replied ‘What do you think Jack’

‘I think I’m out of beer, whose turn is it to go to the fridge?’

‘That would be me’ confessed Dave

‘Can we stop in Nepal and South-East Asia’ I shouted into the kitchen so Dave could hear me.

‘Not sure’ he shouted back

‘Don’t think you can do Nepal and Thailand on the same flight’ shouted Jack

‘No beer left’ replied Dave. ‘Who wants red and white wine?’

‘Where’s the corkscrew’ questioned Jack

‘Underneath the travel Oz brochure, what about Indonesia, any interest.’

It went on and on for several more hours

‘I don’t think we can fit in Hong Kong on the way out if we do South-East Asia, maybe on the way back’

‘Speaking of on the way back, will you grab the vodka from the fridge on your way back from the toilet, we’re all out of wine’

‘How long do you want to stay in Asia?’

‘Do we save some of our flights to come in and out of Australia? Maybe to either New Zealand or Fiji, or even both’

‘We’re all out of mixers, shall we finish the vodka by doing shots.’

Who exactly said what is still a bit of a blur but after seven exhausting, thirst quenching, hours, we finally settled on our route and happily retired to our beds for a good nights sleep.

The next morning, we arose at a fairly respectable time, considering the amount of alcohol that we drank the previous night, and headed into town to book our flights. We had rather elegantly scribbled our itinerary onto the back of a cornflakes box and duly provided it to our travel agent when she asked where we wanted to go. After several baffled looks directed at both us and the cornflakes box, she laughed gently;

‘Eh lads, you do know that you’ve only used five out of your eight flights’

‘What?!?!?’ came the chorus of reply

‘We couldn’t’ I ventured ‘I clearly recall picking eight flights’

‘Lads, there is only five on the cornflakes box’

‘I thought we had eight as well’ said Jack

‘Yeah, so did I’ concurred Dave, ‘who was doing the writing’

‘Can’t remember’ I said quickly, trying to brush over who was responsible for the list making, ‘sure we can sort it out now’


The initial shock of just how much we drank the night before quickly wore off. We had a quick group con-flab, reorganised our itinerary, paid the deposit and went for a celebratory drink.

The route we had settled on was as follows. We were to fly out of Dublin on the 6th October to Bangkok, spend a couple of months travelling around south-east Asia, somehow making our own way to Singapore, without the use of a plane, where we would catch our second flight to Bali to bask in the sun for a short time. From there we would fly to Darwin and gradually make our way around Australia ending up in Sydney at some point. From there we had a flight to and from Figi and a flight to and from Auckland, New Zealand. Our final flight of the eight would be from Sydney direct to Dublin. Things were starting to take shape.

With the flights all booked we had to start making the rest of the preparations. Next on the list involved a trip to the Tropical Medical Bureau. On arrival, I was met by a pleasant young nurse who showed me to one of the treatment rooms.

‘So you’re heading away for a while. What areas are you thinking about going to?’ she questioned

‘I’m heading to South-East Asia and Australia’

‘Wow, sounds great. You’re fine going to Oz, but you may need vaccinations and medication for Asia. How long are you going for and exactly where’

‘The plan is Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia, Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia for about three months in total.

‘Hmmm….’ She flicked through a thick medical journal. Those countries for that time scale put you at risk from malaria, dengue fever, schistosomiasis, dysentery, hepatitis….’

‘Eh…..sorry’ I interrupted, ‘I’m actually going on a holiday!’

‘Please, let me finish, liver flukes, cholera, rabies and Japanese encephalitis…..I think that’s pretty much it’

‘They all sound kind of serious’

‘Yeah’ she said casually, ‘most have tablets or vaccinations except dengue fever. It’s actually more commonly known as the bone crunching disease and there is no known cure for it either. When are you available to start the course of vaccinations?’

‘The course?........sorry what was that about bone crunching disease?

‘Most of the vaccinations require two or three injections given over a three month period. We can start it now if you want’

‘Emmm, ok so….’

And so for the next three months, I made regular visits to the Tropical Medical Bureau where they treated my arm like it was a pin cushion and I stocked up on three months supply of malaria tablets. By the end of it all, I was at least semi-confident that I would not catch any horrible life threatening diseases except of course for dengue fever. Both the nurse and my now newly trusted Lonely Planet Guide to South East Asia advised that the best way not to catch dengue fever was to make sure that you were not bitten by a mosquito in certain areas of Asia, which I couldn’t help feel would be next to impossible. Of course, it would be ok it the mosquito


In between the needles and the stockpiling of malaria tablets, I set about stocking up on a few other bits and pieces that I felt necessary to bring with me. I must point out here that the sales guys in those outdoor adventure type shops are damn good at their job. Either that or I’m just an easy target. I went in to buy the bare essentials, a rucksack, a sleeping bag and a small flash light. After about five hours in the store, I emerged with a rucksack, a sleeping bag, a flash light, new hiking boots, a Swiss army knife, a pair of binoculars, a compass, three bottles of insect repellent and a mosquito net. In hindsight, it was probably a bad idea to talk about my fear of catching dengue fever as we were walking past the shelf that held the mosquito nets but it was quite a large net that folded up into such a small little bag, it was so compact. I heard a rumour that the guy who sold me all the stuff paid for a two week holiday in the sun for him and his girlfriend with the sales commission he made on my purchases!

Before we knew it, we were packing up our stuff from our apartment in Drumcondra and moving back to our respective family homes for the last month. We were all a bit anxious having lived away from home for so long but the last month went the quickest out of them all.

We all had a leaving party from our jobs and countless nights out having farewell drinks with friends and family. So much so, that we actually spent hardly any time at home for the last month and often it felt like that we were emigrating for good and not just going on a year long trip! Before we knew it, we had passed through the security gates at Dublin airport.

magnia

i like it, you shouldnt put a whole chapter on a forum though as most people only want to browse and not read for 10 mins. You will get people slagging you off as people are pricks but pay them no heed. You should get a few chapters together and send them off to every literary agent in the country. Buy the writers and artists handbook for addresses and tell them your writing a series of books like this no one wants to invest in just one book.

Grow up, kids

No, it's crap.

Sarky

That wasn't constructive. Either expand on it or don't bother posting again.

ojewriej

Hi

To be honest, it doesn't really read well. Sentences are a bit too short, especially at the start. Also it could use a bit more humour.

Two more things caught my attention: Ernie & Bert thing. You could at least make it his own idea - the fact that he's seen it done, thought it was cool and decided to steal it made me dislike the character straight away.

The lads deciding on going on a year long trip, so they don't have to do Kris Kindle is a bit far fetched in my opinion. No one is that cool and laid back, and because of that the characters are not believable.

But you know, it's not terrible or anything, it just needs polishing.

TravelJunkie

My opinion is you've gone to a lot of trouble to explain who the family of the characters are in the first few paras. Then, when you get to the airport, you don't do the same for who I assume are going to be key characters of the book. (Dave and Jack)

Another comment I'd have is to paraphrase a lot of the trivial stuff instead of putting it into dialogue.

Livvie

Is this fact or fiction? It makes a difference to how I approach it. Bill Bryson and Tony Hawkes write from experience, and I'm not sure if you are trying to write a work of fiction but with their style of writing, or if this is something you've actually done.

I can't see if you have already clarified this - sorry if I've missed it.

Lao Lao

Livvie wrote: »

Is this fact or fiction? It makes a difference to how I approach it. Bill Bryson and Tony Hawkes write from experience, and I'm not sure if you are trying to write a work of fiction but with their style of writing, or if this is something you've actually done.

I can't see if you have already clarified this - sorry if I've missed it.

Sorry, should have mentioned that - it's fact, based on my own travel experiences through Asia

Lao Lao

ojewriej wrote: »

The lads deciding on going on a year long trip, so they don't have to do Kris Kindle is a bit far fetched in my opinion. No one is that cool and laid back, and because of that the characters are not believable.

he he he, I kid you not, that is how the conversation went.....

rockbeer

Since you haven't actually told us about anywhere other than home in this chapter it's hard to judge, but I fear that this will be a book about three gormless parochial insular Irish lads abroad in which the astonishing places they visit feature only as a backdrop for and butt of their idiotic jokes and peculiar brand of culturally ignorant fun.

Were you the kind of travellers who made a habit of getting horribly pissed and mooning everywhere you went? Judging by this chapter, I get the feeling the book is going to turn out to be one long, boring macho boast about your extraordinary collective capacity for alcohol.

Maybe there's a market for that sort of thing but personally I wouldn't read it. Of course, I could be - and hope I am - entirely wrong. In any case, it's a long way from Bryson.

DublinWriter

Sorry OP-Dude, the eyes were rolling up into my skull by paragraph three.

Your style is too flat and I don't think it would engage or interest the reader.

Maybe you should try a non-linear narrative technique and start the book mid-journey.

Lao Lao

rockbeer wrote: »

Since you haven't actually told us about anywhere other than home in this chapter it's hard to judge, but I fear that this will be a book about three gormless parochial insular Irish lads abroad in which the astonishing places they visit feature only as a backdrop for and butt of their idiotic jokes and peculiar brand of culturally ignorant fun.

Were you the kind of travellers who made a habit of getting horribly pissed and mooning everywhere you went? Judging by this chapter, I get the feeling the book is going to turn out to be one long, boring macho boast about your extraordinary collective capacity for alcohol.

Maybe there's a market for that sort of thing but personally I wouldn't read it. Of course, I could be - and hope I am - entirely wrong. In any case, it's a long way from Bryson.

Yes, you are entirely wrong, this is not going to be a macho boast. Did we drink on the holiday,yes we did. Did we moon anybody, no we didn't.

Lao Lao

DublinWriter wrote: »

Your style is too flat and I don't think it would engage or interest the reader.

Maybe you should try a non-linear narrative technique and start the book mid-journey.

Can you elaborate on this a bit more, examples etc

Thanks for the feedback, much appreciated

rockbeer

Lao Lao wrote: »

Yes, you are entirely wrong, this is not going to be a macho boast.

In which case it might be worth your while to consider setting a more appropriate tone from the beginning so as not to alienate too many of your readers before they discover where you're really coming from.

Livvie

Now I know it's factual, I'd be quite interested in seeing how it develops.

ojewriej

Lao Lao wrote: »

he he he, I kid you not, that is how the conversation went.....

That might be, but the thing is, that sometimes things that really happened still sound way to far fetched for the book/screenplay.

deman

I'm going to give you some constructive criticism on just a few things, if you don't mind.

Lao Lao wrote:

Paul, my brother in law, was his chief assistant.

I would always tend to hyphenate "brother-in-law". Just to make it easier to read.

Lao Lao wrote:

Jenny, my eldest sister, was taking my clothes from the clothes horse and the airing cupboard and frantically ironing them to ensure that they were dry while trying to keep my hyper active niece, Kate, her daughter, out from under her feet, the ironing board and the iron.

Keep your sentences shorter. Always remember to KISS (keep it short and simple). By the time I'd got to the end of the sentence, I was getting bored with it and didn't care how it ended. Also "and"? What about the airing cupboard?

Lao Lao wrote:

Dad only wanted rashers and toast, Mary wanted fried eggs one sausage and two rashers, Kate wanted scrambled eggs no rashers two sausages and toast with butter, Jenny wanted the works but with only white pudding, and Paul wanted extra hash browns.

See above...

Lao Lao wrote:

...saw an English couple taking photo’s of Tigger and was rather puzzled.

I think you mean "photos" and not "photo's". You got it right one line later.

That's all I've got time for right now. I may get back to this later. Maybe not.