Brighton

You can never go back, that’s what they say. You can never go back.

Well, I did go back and of course it’s true, although the clichéd sentiment should be changed to ‘you can never go back because it’ll be a lot shitter than you remember it and caked with dog poo’ just to clear up any misunderstanding.

Dog poo

In fact, dog poo is my overwhelming impression of Brighton. It seems that as a nation of dog lovers, the British have decided, quite without my input, to turn Brighton into the country’s dog toilet, like one of those inconveniently placed bins you get on country walks, which seem to be always placed at least a mile from where your dog actually drops a load – not that my dog ‘does it’s business’ on a walk, very much like it’s owner the dog prefers to go on home turf, which did raise my neighbours’ eyebrows, me squatting on the lawn, shaking like an old man trying to explain to a teenager why everything was better in his day.

History (sort of)

When I lived in Brighton a decade ago I don’t remember it being so chock full of K9 doo doo. It does however seems to have the same number of pretentious alternative lifestyle wankers who have hung around after they finished their degrees and decided that they will drop out of the mainstream by claiming benefits from the government and smoking stacks of dope.

Brighton appears to also have the same amount of dope dealers, and gay folk (being the gay capital of England, or Europe or something). There are far more foreign workers in Brighton now, but frankly it’s a relief to have these hard-workers replace all the fucking Aussies that dominated all the bars, restaurants and pubs, with their cheery ‘everything about Britian is shit, mate’ attitudes – nah, they’ve all pissed off elsewhere I assume, maybe Bognor, who knows?

Toffs

Brighton also has more toffs, which I believe is a result of the terrific improvements in public transport between London and Brighton (yeah right!) and the fact that a few D-grade celebs lived here once – anyone remember Zoe Balls? But then again Britain generally has more toffs now doesn’t it?  Or is it simply that for some horrific reason they’re no longer ashamed of their privileged interbred heritage.

Kemptown

Area of Brighton in which I live, Kemptown, is probably the most gay part of this increasingly popular seaside town. Kemptown has stacks to offer the visitor, a couple of crappy shops, a half decent pub, some shingled beach, mr whippy dog poo by the arseload and a church which is also a venue for gigs. As for what it has to offer the gay visitor, I really don’t know. My ‘live-in’ eligible lesbian seems to like it, but then she did live in Birmingham previously so anywhere would be an improvement. Maybe not Dagenham.

Dangers

They say that Brighton is an artsy town, stack full of artists, writers, musicians, thinkers, lazy bastards, smelly bastards, drunken violent bastards and old Scottish gentlemen who frequently sit on the bench opposite Brighton Pavilion growling at passersby and occasionally standing to either relieve themselves or to inexplicably shake one another’s free hand, the other hand clenched with a teenage masturbators grip around a can of whatever will get them the most blind. 

Booze appears to be the main pastime of the average visitor to Brighton, along with gay-love of course. The two top the chart of the main reasons for visits to the casualty department, conveniently located in Kemptown (convenient to Kemptowners but not convenient to anyone else as the town centre is a good 20 minute walk). Alcohol related incidents and over use of ‘poppers’ for loosening up see many folk enjoying a 4 or 5 hour wait for treatment or an overnight stay if you’ve really pushed the boat out.

Places to eat 

I dunno, you can get a pizza or go to McDonalds. I like Thai food if it’s my choice.

Must visit

London, yeah, I’d suggest getting the train to London. Only 50 minutes from Brighton station to London Bridge, which in fact will be the part basis for my next thrilling travel blog. 

Rules of the blog

I hate travel blogs, HATE THEM.

The vast majority are specifically designed to;

a. brag about being on holiday/ traveling (holidaying for the middle class)
b. talk utter shite about ‘spiritial journeys and ‘experiencing’ other cultures.
c. Constantly stating about how we don’t appreciate what we have and how lucky we are – if you can afford to piss off round the world rather than working like a slave like decent folk then I suppose you are lucky and probably a cunt.

Reading about other people visiting exotic locations is fundamentally boring, and only mildly interesting if you happen to personally know the person. That’s why 99.6% of travel blogs are exceptional dull. So the challenge is, as I see it, is to make a travel blog both interesting and amusing, rather than what most travel blogs are, dull and cuntish.

Which nicely brings me to announce the latest incarnation of Angry Chimp – Angry Chimp: Your basic travel blog

What what?

I shall be departing these shores with my girlfriend in just over 2 short months time for South East Asia, a rite of passage for all white middle class lazy bastards.

Our simple aim is to spend as much time as possible traveling around and having a really easy time of it. We will try to visit as many countries in SE Asia as possible; although we may decide to give Myanmar a miss (but I do hear Burma is nice this time of year).

This travel blog will be an unflinching account of my travels as we journey on a shoestring (a relative shoestring, we’re a long time past our gap years, although I am technically on a gap year - a gap year from any responsibility or progression of my so-called career).

When I first kicked this blog off way back in 2005 I set some rules (which I don’t know if I ever stuck to) so it seems appropriate to refresh these rules for this new incarnation.

Rules of this travel blog –

1. For each destination visited I will restrict my use of the words ‘beautiful’ and ‘amazing’ to only one occurrence each, e.g,

“It was a beautiful morning when I saw the amazing sight of a ship load of scary Somalian pirates approaching our freighter at an horrific rate of knots”

or

“As we departed Portsmouth, a small southern costal town in England I considered it to be neither amazing nor beautiful, but rather a bit of a shit hole”

2. The only growth I will experience whilst abroad will be my waistline through stuffing my gob with tons of top, cheap foreign nosh. Or from an infection of some sort.

3. During my time in southeast asia I will not remark about the generosity or gentle spirits of the locals or indeed anything that can be considered to be patronizing or vaguely racist. You can not define an entire race of people by the very few you may meet – if this were true visitors of the new Mayor of London would believe us all to be stooped and privileged, floppy brained, deceitful, shallow twats. Personally I am neither privileged, nor stooped.

4. There will not be photo upon photo of impossibly beautiful golden beaches that look as close to paradise as it is possible to get… actually this is untrue, hopefully I’m going to stuff the blog full of them.

5. I will never use the terms ‘off the beaten track’ or ‘unspoiled natural beauty’.

6. I will only write about places I actually visit. Again, I know this is not a hard and fast rule for many travel blog writers.

7. If/ when I visit Thailand, I will not proceed to tell an ‘amusing’ story about visiting a Thai bar where a local of indeterminate gender chatted me up with a view to selling sex. This is THE MOST CLICHED STORY EVER in travel writing!

If I happen to be approached by any indeterminate gender local with a view to exchanging bam bam for wam wam I will simply have sex with them and be done with it.

I'm joking of course .