Oh I do like to beside the seaside

A day at a British seaside resort is one of my favourite ways to while away an afternoon. As a child, I always enjoyed my annual visit to Southend-on-Sea, every eastender’s favourite ‘resort’. A walk along the Golden Mile, putting a few coppers in a penny-falls machine in the Kursaal arcade, a stroll to the end of the pier (it’s the longest in the world, dontcha know?) and back while munching on a stick of candy floss, and half an hour in Peter Pan’s Playground. What more could an eight-year-old want out of life?

I returned about five years ago after an absence of almost two decades and my rose-tinted memories were given a given sharp dose of reality. The quaint Peter Pan’s Playground had evolved into a behemoth now known as Adventure Island, with ear-splitting Europap and hordes of marauding Vicky Pollard look-alikes. The Kursaal had been redeveloped for housing. Even the name of the town suddenly seemed a laughable misnomer. Southend-on-Sea? Shouldn’t it be Southend-on-the-polluted-Thames-estuary?

But for some reason, my trip rekindled my affection for traditional seaside resorts, and I decided to visit more of these quintessentially English anachronisms. Last year, I made my first trips to Whitby and Scarborough. The former was more of a fishing village (and quite an upmarket one at that), but Scarborough was everything that I had hoped it would be. In fact, I got so caught up in the atmosphere of the place, that I spent four hours in an amusement arcade playing a penny-falls machine (in some ways, I’m still the same as I was during those annual visits to the Essex riviera), having somehow convinced myself that the mobile-phone handsets sitting on top of the rows of coins were real. Seven plastic phones and £18 later (yes, that’s a lot of 2p pieces), I realised the folly of my ways.

So last month, when my parents, brother, sister-in-law, nephew and niece headed up to Caister-on-Sea (not the Thames) for their annual holiday, their caravan park’s proximity to Great Yarmouth persuaded me to join them for the last couple of days.

My last visit to Great Yarmouth had been in 1981, when we had stayed at the same holiday park. All I remember about the resort was that I had bought a Madness trilby (which I’ve still got). Twenty-eight years is a long while, but from the moment I arrived in the town until the moment I left, I had an absolute ball.

The first thing that I saw as I walked towards the sea-front were several crown-green bowls lawns, populated by scores of immaculately attired elderly me (and a few women) enjoying the late-summer sunshine and some competitive sport. After a few minutes enthralled by the action (it’s a strangely addictive activity), I started walking along the promenade. And to my delight, I was soon ticking off every cliché with gay abandon. Donkey rides on the beach. Tick. Multi-generational families of sun-reddened, tattoo-covered chavs with rolls of flab bulging out of their obscenely scanty clothes. Tick. Bouncy caste populated by overexcited toddlers. Tick. Two piers (anything Southend can do…). Tick. Pensioners with tartan rugs over their knees, drinking flasks of tea. Tick. Overpriced funfair with a haunted house and various sick-inducing rides. Tick. Gaggles of underdressed girls tottering around in inappropriate footwear. Tick. A high street dominated by tattoo parlours and rock shops. Tick. Countless amusement arcades with grandiose, Las Vegas-style names. Tick.

If they ever produce one of those yellow spotters’ guide books to tacky (and I use that word in an affectionate way) seaside resorts – and they used to make them about the most boring subjects, such as ‘trees’ – I’ll be the first to buy one. The only thing missing was someone rolling up their trousers and swapping their ‘kiss me quick’ hat for a knotted handkerchief, before going for a paddle in the sea.

I feasted on a tray of chips drenched in salt and vinegar while walking along the promenade, followed by a huge Mr Whippy, all washed down with an 85p cappuccino sitting in a plastic garden seat (who needs Starbucks?). And I was so enchanted by the whole experience that I totally forgot that West Ham were playing Spurs (I had timed my return from China to coincide with the start of the football season), one of our biggest matches of the season, live on Sky.

It was one of the most enjoyable days I’ve had for a long time. Even if I didn’t find the shop where I had bought that Madness trilby.

Chinese puzzle

In all my travels, I have never visited anywhere that is more a mass of contradictions than China. It may be the world's fastest-growing economy and on its way to becoming the 'powerhouse of the east' , but as a country, it is caught uncomfortably between the 21st century and the 1950s.

The fruits of the economic boom are everywhere. China is home to the world's tallest building (Shanghai World Financial Center), the largest dam (Three Gorges), one of the most iconic stadia (Bird's Nest) and the second-fastest passenger train (the Maglev, which can reach speeds of 270mph). A beer costs £5 in Shanghai, while it's £100 to cuddle a panda in Chengdu.

But on other development indicators – such as democracy, human rights, healthcare and the environment – China is making negligible progress or even moving backwards. It has a per capita wealth similar to that of Namibia, while 500 million rural Chinese do not have access to clean drinking water.

The 'great firewall' may have come down to allow unrestricted internet access for the duration of last summer's Olympics (at which China won more gold medals than the US for the first time), but Beijing's 30,000 cyber-police (Chinese checkers?) were just enjoying an extended tea-break, and a quarter of websites are blocked. Hence me having to write this travelogue retrospectively (is me bemoaning the lack of single women on my trip really a threat to Communism?) and asking Legon to update my Facebook status (so the literals weren't my fault). Type 'Tiananmen Square' into Google and all you get is a tourist guide to the square – all references to the events of 1989 have been airbrushed from history.

Trying to engage somebody in a conversation about the political system is met with an ashen face and a solemn declaration that such a subject is taboo. Every day, our guide had to make a list of where every member of the group was, for official purposes, while foreigners are allowed to stay in only designated hotels. And our itinerary had to be altered because the government didn't want us going anywhere near Tibet.

On a day-to-day basis, the country manages to continually surprise. Even on the busiest street in Shanghai, people stop and stare at Westerners. As our Chinese guide spoke to us in English, we were surrounded by locals of all ages. They came so close, I thought they were going to start poking us with sticks. Young children do not wear pants and sport trousers with long slits in that allow them to go to toilet where they stand (parents do not take them somewhere discreet to do their business – I witnessed a baby having a number two on Beijing's main shopping thoroughfare and another having a wee in the middle of a 10-deep queue to get into Chairman Mao's mausoleum).

Then there is a perplexing etiquette system. Every night at dinner, our guide castigated us for 'crimes' such as standing up to serve ourselves food from the lazy susan or lifting our bowl off the table. 'Chinese people wouldn't do it that way,' was her continual refrain. Yet while serving themselves from the communal dishes, everybody dropped food (including her) from their chopsticks (which had been in the user's mouth), only for someone else to pick up those same pieces, as the table revolved. No wonder a cold spread between all 13 of us within a couple of days.

The food itself also took some getting used to. We ate as a group almost every night, feasting on up to 15 dishes for about £3 per person. But the guide, who did all the ordering, had to ask for dishes to be brought 'without bones', much to the perplexity of the waitresses. We had lunch one day at a farmer's house, which was all very nice until the final dish came out – chickens' feet. Most of us couldn't disguise our repulsion. But our 25-year-old guide jumped up beaming and was soon gnawing away on the 'delicacy'. Mind you, she did carry a vacuum-packed duck's neck in her rucksack, in case of an emergency. On the rare occasions, usually breakfast, that she wasn't with us, we all ended up in McDonald's.

Queuing, as it is in many parts of the world, is an alien concept. But never have I seen so much barging, as people jostle for position. I'm ashamed to admit that after a month of being pushed from pillar to post, I lost my temper when someone attempted to eject me from a left-luggage queue – while I was being served at the counter. I finished my business, then flung the perpetrator to the ground. In England, I would have found myself in at least a slanging match (and probably a lot more). But the bloke accepted it graciously. It was as if he expected it – a case of 'live by the sword, die by the sword'.

I don't think I've ever been to a noisier country. More than 1.3 million people talking in a whisper would be loud enough. But everyone barks at the top of their voice – into their phones, to people standing next to them, into their lover's ear (I don't think you can whisper sweet nothings in Mandarin - Chinese whispers is something very different). It's as if they are all continuously having an argument. One lunchtime, a waitress rushed over to our table and bellowed a couple of sentences. We thought there must be a problem with the bill, until our guide told us that she had just come over to tell us it was raining.

Finally, and for many of us most alien, was the propensity of men to spit everywhere. And I mean everywhere – restaurants, train carriages and shops. And we're not talking a dainty spitting out of chewing gum – this was the hawking up of 'greenies' from the bottom of their lungs that would have put Kenny Everett's Sid Snot to shame.

But it wasn't only in the practices of the locals that China made an indelible impression on me. As someone who is lucky enough to have been to almost 60 countries, I often myself underwhelmed by sights that guidebooks eulogise about. However, the Great Wall (the West Bromwich Albion footballer who, during a tour of China in 1978, reputedly opted for a lie-in in preference to a visit to the architectural wonder, with the comment, 'seen one wall, seen them all', was misguided) and Terracotta Warriors certainly lived up to expectations. I even had the privilege to have met the only survivor of the three farmers who stumbled across the warriors' tombs while digging a well in 1974. In fact, his presence persuaded me to spend £10 on a signed guidebook (it will be worth a few quid on eBay one day) I would otherwise never have bought. The frail old man, who must be in his eighties, was taught to sign his name solely to wring a few extra yuan from tourists. The cynic in me couldn't help but wonder whether all three farmers had died years ago, and the man who signed my book was just the chosen extra that day from the Xi'an amateur dramatics society.

Experiencing a five-minute total eclipse in a perfectly clear sky, when almost everywhere else in the area was shrouded in cloud, while on the Yangste River was also unforgettable. I only wish that I had been able to make the journey up river before the Three Gorges Dam had been built, when the cliffs were several hundred feet taller and the valley far narrower.

On a more personal level, I taught myself to use chopsticks in two days (it was either that or go on a crash diet) on what was my fifth trip to Asia; won my name written in Chinese characters in a game of musical chairs; was part of a 'choir' that performed a Chinese love song on a ship's stage (it didn't win me anyone's heart – hardly surprisingly, as I am tone deaf); and learned to count to 100 in Chinese (don't ask me to write it, though, as there are more than 56,000 characters in the Chinese language – I pity their poor sub-editors).

The only downside was the recurrence of a serious eye problem (I almost lost sight in one eye in Peru eight years ago), which meant that I couldn't open it for the final two weeks of the trip. I thought my luck was in when we reached Xi'an and checked into a hotel that was a five-minute walk from an eye hospital. But the quality of the consultation left a lot to be desired (the door to the treatment room was open and a stream of people came in to ask to the specialist questions while he was examining me). My long-standing problem wasn't even picked up and I was diagnosed as having an 'eye infection'. I was prescribed three types of drops and cream, which I had to administer 15 times a day (not easy when you're hiking the Great Wall). But they only served to make the problem worse and it didn't start to heal until I threw them all away. As I said earlier, for a country developing at such a pace, the quality of healthcare was frightening.

All in all, it was a memorable trip in so many ways. But the size of the country (we did four train journeys of at least 18 hours), the heat and humidity, and the language barriers (at train stations you couldn't even read the departures board – it was little wonder that we encountered only four people travelling independently in the course of a month) meant that at no stage did I feel that I had China in my hand.

I'm a Viet vet

It took the Americans more than 10 years - and they still failed. But I have conquered Vietnam in 15 days.

Despite the unrelenting heat and humidity, it has been probably the most enjoyable start to a trip I have ever had. Once I got used to an exchange rate of 30,000 dong to the pound (if Vietnam had a royal family, would its head be known as 'king dong'?), and incessant badgering from everyone I pass on the street ('Hello, how are you?' 'Fine.' 'Motorbike?' 'No thank you.' 'Marijuana?' 'No thank you.''Lady?' 'How much? No thank you.') and everybody trying to stitch me up, I have had a great time, particularly as most locals really do wear those conical hats of legend (I can imagine a Vietnamese tourist in London emailing home at this very minute saying he has been disappointed that nobody walks round in a bowler hat). What's more, Vietnamese for 'thank you'is 'cam on'. So perhaps all the Saturday night beer monsters all over England screaming 'cam on' at each other, while beckoning, are in fact linguists who want to thank each other for an enjoyable evening.

After a couple of days in Hanoi (lots of motorbikes, narrow streets), I did a boat trip out to Halong Bay, which is home to hundreds of limestone outcrops and islands (reminiscent of Krabi in Thailand). From there, I caught an overnight train to Hue, which was the boundary between North and South Vietnam during the war, and the scene of much fighting. My next step was Hoi An, which is over-run by tourists, as the beautiful mix of Chinese, French and Vietnamese architecture has led to the whole turn centre being designated a Unseco World Heritage Site. And with 'fresh beer' (home-brew, basically) selling at 10p a glass, it was a good place to while away a few days.

As the result of chasing a woman (see Love Ain't in the Air), I stayed too long in Hoi An, and had to fly to Saigon (blowing my minuscule budget out of the water). I had only a day-and-a-half to explore the country's biggest city (lots of motorbikes, wide streets), but managed to take in the War Remmants Museum (maybe Museums Journal will take an article) and visited the Cu Chi Tunnels. Both were harrowing places - the first for revealing the war crimes perpetrated by the Americans, as well as the affects of Agent Orange. The latter for proving to me that even though I am living on noodle soup, I'm still too portly to have made it into the Viet Cong. I have become fascinated by the Vietnam/American War - and after almost 25 years, my knowledge extends past the fact that the average age of the US soldiers was 19.

I am now in the Mekong Delta, which has been a bit of a disappointment. Most rivers look the same, so perhaps I was expecting too much (I just hope I don't apply that logic to the Great Wall). I booked an expensive three-day trip down here from Saigon, but this morning, we reached the floating market (the highlight of the trip), just as all the selllers were reducing the price of their goods and rowing home. Walthamstow market is a different class - and I can get there on the 20 bus.

What's more, the only problems I have encountered are having had my camouflage beanie stolen by a six-year-old (and the replacement is a shocker - it makes me look like a cowboy) and being conned out of 100,000 dong (three quid) by a waiter. After 20 years on the road, I think I'm finally getting the hang of this travelling lark.

Good Morning, from Vietnam

Well I arrived at my hotel in Hanoi after a 31-hour journey that took in four countries in 26 hours (England, Dubai, Thailand and Vietnam). Appropriately, it was the longest day of the year.

The hotel I had booked online before leaving home was a disappointment to say the least. As I was shown in to my room, two cockroaches scuttled across the bed. I later found out that the price I had paid, $21, was nearly twice the average for a hotel room in Vietnam.

Hanoi is one of the most exciting places I have ever visited. The buzz on the streets makes Hong Kong look like Singapore. The city has four million residents - and six million motorbikes. You take your life into your hands every time you leave your hotel (you can't walk on the pavements because they are full of old women selling half-a-dozen lychees or men drinking beer). I saw four accidents in the first 24 hours - and because no one has insurance, the two parties just shake their firsts at each for a few minutes, then drive off (apart from one case, when an elderly man was knocked down and left to bleed in the road). There are absolutely no road laws. Bikers drive on the pavement to under-take, while the white lines down the middle of the road are there purely for decoration. Posts have replaced the white line on some roads in an attempt to dissuade suicidal overtaking.

So far, my disasters have been limited to losing my cabin key over the side of a boat, necessitating a very thin crew member to squeeze through a six-inch-wide gap in my window. My shower gel also came open during the journey from England, covering most of my clothes. I got caught in a storm a couple of days ago and there were more bubbles than in a Matey advert.

Of course, I also suffered first-day sunburn (it was cloudy all day). I am now so paranoid that I plaster myself in so much sun cream, the locals stop and stare (although it could have something to do with the camouflage beanie and cut offs, 2 Tone t-shirt, lime-green flip-flops and the fact that I am six inches taller than any of the locals and sweating like Mr Blobby in a sauna).

Celebrity stares

If you had asked me this time last year which celebrities I most disliked, I would have said Piers Morgan, Kerry Katona and Jade Goody.

I stand by my opinions of the odious Morgan and the talentless Katona. But casting aside my desire not to speak ill of the dead, my opinion of Jade softened during her heart-wrenching battle against cancer.

After her embarrassing antics on Big Brother, like most people, I soon dismissed Jade as an ignorant – but harmless – chav. But her appearance on Celebrity Big Brother, when she revealed herself to be an aggressive bully (and, some would argue, a racist), sent her soaring to the upper echelons of my hate list.

A few months later, I stood next but one to Jade, in a queue in the Loughton branch of Abbey. She was braying into a mobile at the top of her voice, with no consideration for anyone within earshot – which must have been half of Loughton. My opinion on her had only been reinforced. The thug she was dating and her foul-mouthed mother provided more fuel to the fire.

But as it became apparent that she was terminally ill, I started to see her in a different light. She was clearly a devoted mother and the fortitude with which she was battling her cancer was admirable. Yes, she was common and ignorant. But was she not just a product of a traumatic childhood and poor schooling? However ‘stupid’ (if a woman who made more than £5m in five years can be called stupid) someone is, they don’t deserve to die at the age of 27.

The day before her funeral, I decided to visit Jade’s house. I had a day off work, and I thought the three-mile walk through Epping Forest would be a pleasant way to spend a morning. I even took my camera with me – to take pictures of the woodland life, rather than anything more morbid. When I arrived in Upshire, I had to ask an elderly lady for directions. We had a conversation about what a tragedy Jade’s death had been.

Outside Jade’s house was a group of three middle-aged men, leaning against the bonnet of a car making small-talk. Paparazzi. As I looked at the rows of cards, flowers and poems, I was approached by a young woman and a man with a video camera. In a heavy accent, she asked me how far I had come. I said not far. She then asked me whether I would be willing to talk on camera about why I had come.

I was horrified. Of course I’m not going to appear on TV talking about the death of a woman famous for asking whether ‘East Angular’ was abroad. I made my excuses and left, with the camera crew looking disappointed (visitors were thin on the ground).

As I walked away, I tried to persuade myself that I had declined the opportunity because, like Chris Moyles or David Mellor, I have got the ‘perfect face for radio’. After all, I had twice been asked by Sky in the mid-1990s to talk about the all-too-regular crises at West Ham – a subject I can speak far more passionately about than I can on Jade Goody – and both times had refused. But the truth was, I was embarrassed to be outside Jade’s house and certainly didn’t want to advertise my presence beyond my immediate social circle (although this blog entry might seem to contradict this). What if someone I knew had seen me, however unlikely it was that anyone I had ever met watched cable TV in southern Europe.

It dawned on me that, although I did sympathise hugely with Jade’s family, my fascination by her death was curiosity that the sleepy corner of Essex in which I have spent the past 38 years was one of the focal points of the UK news. Jade met Jack in a nightclub half a mile from my flat, her boys went to the pre-prep school in Loughton that I attended in the early-1970s and her funeral was to take place at a church a couple of hundred yards from a school at which I spent seven years.

Consequently, the following morning, my mum and I were two of the first people to take our positions on Loughton High Road, opposite the beauty salon that Jade part owned, to watch the funeral procession pass by. We were surprised by how few people were on the streets, with only 30 minutes until the cortege was scheduled to pass through. We clearly weren’t the only ones fascinated by the event, though, as 20 minutes after the hearse was due to have passed by, the streets started to throng with people (the journey was being screened live on Sky). The police shut the main road, a helicopter buzzed overhead and TV crews and photographers appeared from nowhere. The crowds were soon five deep. Loughton had never been so busy.

As the hearse appeared in view, I had a sudden lump in my throat – funerals always remind me of the loved ones that I have lost. The crowd surged forward, as people threw flowers at the hearse and fought to take pictures of Jack, Jade’s mum and the rest of the party, as they walked solemnly behind the lead car. Although it was hardly a national outpouring of grief – I didn’t see a single person shed a tear – as I watched the cavalcade of cars carrying wreaths and mourners, the only comparison I could draw was with Princess Diana’s funeral.

Michael Parkinson was right when he said: ‘Her death is as sad as the death of any young person, but it’s not the passing of a martyr or a saint or, God help us, Princess Di.’ He may well also have had a valid point when he described Jade as representing ‘all that is paltry and wretched about Britain today’. But when I have the chance to be present at what was, rightly or wrongly, the lead item on the evening news, like thousands of other people, I wasn’t going to miss the opportunity. I just hope that no one I knew saw me on the footage.