Before I knew it I was stripped, washed and laid out on a hospital bed, having been prodded, x-rayed and injected with God knows what.

Before they were done I had IV drips in both arms, with four different solutions being flushed into me. This made things awkward, I still had to reach the bathroom in ten seconds flat and unplugging the damned machines cost too much precious time. I was supposed to buzz the nurse to help me, but that too added precious seconds to the ordeal. They would chide me 'Mai pen rai! Mai pen rai!' (Never mind! Never mind!) when the alarms on the drip machines went off. Several times I didn't make it, but had the luxury of cleaning up after myself before they found me. It became the most undignified period of my entire life. Pretty young nurses cleaning up after a middle aged man who'd lost control of his bowels. I wept a few times when they'd gone. I had rarely understood before just how important a person's dignity is to them. Moreso than the pain even, or weakness, not being able to control one's basic functions is utterly degrading. I began to sense what others had claimed, those with ailing health through disease or old age, that point of no return, where death is preferable to the indignity of one's infirmity.

On one occasion I made the usual dash to the bathroom, but woozy from painkillers and fatigue, I slipped and fell. I lost conciousness. It could only have been a minute or two, but that's how the nurses found me, lying in my own filth on the floor, the machines howling their alarms. They scolded me again in their own charming way, and never have I had such respect for such wonderful people who do this every day, caring for those in such conditions without batting an eyelid.

It's something I don't think I could ever do. Perhaps that's the key though, a willingness to rely on and be relied on. I've always been fiercely independent, have always had to be, always willing to help yet always preferring to crawl into a corner and die rather than ask for help.

After about 36 hours, things started settling down, and I moved into a strange and not unpleasant state of drifting in and out of conciousness, the violent cramps had receeded and my bodily functions were more controllable.

I had thought about calling my family, but they were half a planet away - why worry them, what good would it do? Lying there, I suddenly thought how alone I really was here in the city of Angels. I had the numbers of a few friends, but truth be told they were little more than occasional drinking buddies I watched the cricket or rugby with. I decided to bear the ordeal alone.

My thoughts then turned, rather morosely to how alien I'd become, how far away the past and everything else that used to be familiar seemed these days. Brooding, I realised that my life had little gravity, no centeredness. No real meaning. I was drifting, driftwood on a gentle dawn floating from shore to distant shore with no direction. I could no longer remember home, what that meant; or of permanence, roots, stability; for it has been over two years on the road now.

My thoughts flew back to a conversation in Phnom Penh, with Robin, a dry, witty Englishman with whom I'd struck up a transitory friendship. He'd observed that he once too had travelled for a long while and that when he returned to England, nobody knew him any more. Nor did they really want to. And even more profound was the realisation that he didn't want to know them either. They were just agreeable memories. He soon found that they were no more interested in stories of his adventures, his tales, his marvellous tales, than he was with the ordinariness of their lives, their smug compliance and conformity, secure and safe. Their contentedness and his aching pangs of seeing beyond the next horizon. I think I understood what he meant. A friend of mine once returned from travels long and far, landing on my doorstep in London on the way home. My girlfriend and I welcomed him, not minding that he'd woken us, and bade him sit down. So he did. And he started to talk, and talk and never once did he stop. There's a politeness afforded the traveller for a seemly while, people nod and approve, smile and appear to listen, but deep down there's the loud bell of your own life ringing. I have to go to the bank. I have to drop my girlfriend off at work. I have to get some food in. I have to meet so and so in the pub in two hours time...all those thousands of little tediums that oil the wheels of your complacent yet content life. Soon you cease listening, the author now a crashing bore, your thoughts are of escape back to your wheel away from this invasive intrusion.

Some people have too many tales to tell, and sometimes it's insurmountable. A rare gift is to know when and where it's appropriate to relate, and when to shut up and realise that other people have lives they rather would not be disturbed with such tales, marvellous tales of ships and stars and of isles where good men rest.....

Back in Phnom Penh, Robin finished his musings with a terrifying observation. When his parents eventually died, he left England and had never been back. All his friends had forgotten him, or rather, could no longer love the strange alien moving among them. They had lost everything in common except the past, by now a distant country.

Such thoughts collided in my mind on the hospital bed, I'd called no family or friends, could not see the point, even while in agony and despair. It's not right to say I was feeling lonely, it was different to that. I felt no need for kindness or comfort beyond that which the nurses extended so naturally. I was simply feeling apart, seperate from the rest of humanity, an observer, loving the alien.

By now I'd been in the hospital for three days. It was difficult to find out what had happened to me, what was I going through, while the doctors and nurses were excellent and every day brought progress and ease to my shattered soul, I had to try and piece together the causes. When the doctor had first seen me, my eyes were apparently hollow and sunken. I was badly de-hydrated and was running a fever. Which was odd, because although I knew I was ill, I didn't feel feverish, dehydrated or anything much other than the violently painful cramps. Later I was to be told that I had some sort of 'jungle bacteria' again odd, because I hadn't trekked anywhere in perhaps nine months. Then again, I know that such things can be opportune, one can have malaria for up to a year without realising it and then the parasite strikes. Others have suggested amoebic dysyntery - who knows?

Still musing on my solitary fate, one of my own choosing, while wondering if I could ever again fit into a static, stable society with family and friends, a job and duties, taxes and bills to pay a small miracle occurred.

A nurse came in and said that someone had come to see me. I was perplexed and puzzled - nobody knew I was here, who would come and see me? It turned out that the girls that ran the hotel in which I stayed had got worried as I hadn't checked in for three days. Bless their hearts, they rang hospital after hospital until they found me. And then they came to see me. With little gifts of fruit and garlands of lotus flowers, smiles and an English newspaper they fussed over me and worried at me. My heart soared like an eagle. Soon, when word had got around, the waiters and waitresses at my favourite restaurants were also visiting, I had thought that I was nothing to them other than a customer. How wrong can you be? These hard working, honest and delightful people were genuinely concerned for my wellbeing. This gave me pause for thought, from the depths of my feelings of alienation, as I realised that this reation was infact my very own special relationshiop with the Thai people, and not just the Thais but for most of SE Asian people. I'd always respected them, never shouted at them, occasionally brought them gifts of cookies or candy, small acts of kindess in recognition of those that looked after me so well. And of the sense of sanuk or 'playfulness' that I seem to have adapted to so very easily. So many Farang treat local people like servants rather than a possible friend. But smile and take the time to talk and learn about their lives, their hopes and their fears and they take you to heart like an ancestor.

Deep trauma often invokes deep thoughts, some of them darkly so. As I write I'm aware of this, but also too am I aware that deep trauma can induce deep change. The miracle of the community, here in the city of Angles, that wrapped themselves around me in my failing, has changed something within. Perhaps it will come to nothing, perhaps it will be the spur to commit myself finally to a wonderful people that are so damned generous of spirit with so damned little.

Who knows how many lessons are writ large in this most humbling of experiences?

yechydda,