Ketchup with Bolty

I met Bolty back in 1991.

We met in a guest house in Manila. I´d arrived in late into the city and took the first place I could find in a backpackers ghetto in the middle of the red-light district. Not surprisingly it doubled as a whorehouse and rooms can be rented by the hour or by the day.

Having arrived in from Muslim Kuala Lumpur, i´m hit by the decadence and depravity that i´m surrounded by. After little sleep, Bolty comes into my room. “You gotta get me out of here” were his first words to me and I can´t agree more.

Bolty is an Englishman of similar age to myself. An engineer by trade, he has oodles of creativity and a wacky sense of humour. We spend about a month travelling wild through The Philippines, hitching our way through the island archipelago and enjoying and sharing some real outrageous moments.

Bolty subsequently relocates to Hong Kong and starts buying up flats on Lamma island and, more recently, the swanky Mid-Levels district. Now, he rarely has to work, living with/off his wife – an NGO currently based in Vientienne, the capital of the beautiful country of Laos.

Backpacker Bolty and wife Kim

A fellow dromomaniac, he must now be close to 100 countries explored. I last caught up with him in Bogotá in 2007, but we regularly catch up via email. He sends me another classic story today.

Bolty writes: -

Ha! A strange / scary event on the train down to Bangkok.

Found myself sharing the train carriage (only two bunks - cosy) with this 58 year old Swiss prostitute - there was no backup, confined at close quarters. I mean she didn't look so bad in the half light of those dim train night lights. I think she still had all her teeth. She asked me if I wanted top go on top??? - I showed her my ticket that did say 'lower bunk' - so I kept it unconventional.

She insisted on telling me some of her exploits - stopped short of having encounters with farm animals - plenty of lesbian stories to while away 12 hours on the train. By the sounds of it, she had tried all drugs known to humankind and recently had a heart-attack and still smoked like a trooper, she might of had in WWII, on top of that.

I did enjoy the photos though of her 20 yr old daughter in naughty tiny Santa Claus outfits back in Switzerland - sweet, but too cold for the Alps.