So seven Brits and a Chinese guy walk into a bar...

Traveling "alone" is a relative statement. One always seems to find mates to travel with on the road. My purchase of a 20 cent "black book" for contact information was perhaps the wisest pre-trip investment thus far. Well, that and the Cipro. The list of countries I now have a bed to sleep in now includes Canada, England, Australia, France, Holland, Viet Nam and Sweden, not to mention the few Americans I've also met (they tend to be few and far between). Most of these travel relationships last only a day or even just a few hours. That is why my time spent in the last three days with 7 Brits and have been a marked and much appreciated change of pace.

The group of seven is tightly knit. Andy and Hollie, whom I met in Hanoi two weeks ago, tell me that they're all from the same "village" about 30 miles north of London and that they've all known each other from the time they were small lads (how quaint!).

Andrew Dicker, or just Dicker, is a barrel chested young man. He stands 6'1" and probably weighs 230. If he grew up in the States he would've for sure been a dominant lineman playing high school football. We shared a motorbike on the way to the sand dunes of Mui Ne, and he is the first to give me a little background on this tightly knit group of friends. "You ever heard of that TV show Jackass? Or CKY (the original Jackass)? Andy, Chalk, Lewie, Dan and I did the same sort of stunts and filmed it all. You can check'em out on www.vimeo.com", Dicker shouts over the noise of the wind as we go 35mph on the two lane streets. He then proceeds to tell me about his work. "I work for the waste management department in the city of London. Basically, I drive a van with poo in it for a living. Shit job, but great pay!", Dicker proudly states. "I'm also a bouncer at a bar." His body had countless scars from the shit he's done, the lastest being on this trip where he flipped his motorbike and landed headfirst in a ditch with the motorbike landing on his head. The unbreakable man that he is, he came out of that with large scratches on his leg. By all accounts he should've been seriously injured, but his mates said that it's pretty typical that he would come out of it with only some scratches. The 11 cars he's totalled (going through the windshield twice) is testament to his nine+ lives. It is obvious that Dicker is a gentle giant, and I like him immediately. http://www.vimeo.com/clip:49316
I highly recommend checking out this clip and others at www.vimeo.com. search andrew dicker, andy ash, dan simpson.

Chalk, who introduces himself by his real name James, can only be described as special. The quotation marks kind of special. His enthusiasm and unabashedly oblivious do/say first, think second mentality gets him into trouble, but it is also impossibly endearing. One of the first things I hear from Chalk's mouth was, "If I learn Vietnamese, would I have an English accent like they have a Vietnamese accent when speaking English?" Chalk is in the British Army Reserves and volunteered to go to Afghanistan. He likes shooting guns. God save the Queen...

Andy, whom I met in Hanoi is an aspiring photographer who still shuns the use of digital. Surprisingly, Andy, not Chalk, is the target of the groups benign bullying. Andy's mom, apparently, has slept with all the boys in the group, and even one the girls. One time when Andy went away on vacation, he came home to a large lamp post in the middle of his front lawn as well as the house being on sale for the past two weeks.

Heidi, one of two girls in the group, emphatically breaks the stereotype that English girls are not cute. She has dark brown wavy hair and a figure that just doesn't quit. I guess that time in dance school does a body good. Heidi's also a screamer, shrieking all the way down the sand dunes on her board. Heidi's been traveling Asia with Louie, her boyfriend of the past year. When the game of "what animal would you be" came up, Louie's animal was a walking stick. I thought more of a praying mantis.

Dan is something of a local celebrity back in their small village. "Everyone knows Dan," Andy tells me over happy hour Saigon Beer at Crazy Kim's bar in Nha Trang. "It's usually, 'Hey! Dan from the wineshop'!". At 28 Dan is the old man in the group. He's into all sorts of music and tells me that I should check out the South by Southwest music festival in Austin. He likes white russians, and is fantastic company after six or seven of them.

Hollie is the total package. A laid back, gorgeous, natural brunette, Hollie can party with the boys, but also has maternal instincts that naturally manifest themselves when the need arises. She took care of Dicker after the accident. And when Chalk got wasted beyond repair our night in Nha Trang, it was Hollie who carried him on her back home to the hotel about a kilometer away. Dicker offered, but Hollie had it under control. She says it was easy because Chalk could "rest his legs on my big hips." I laugh at the comment, because they are actually very nice hips. "What? It's true!" she protests. In a group of "characters", Hollie's relative reservedness betrays her many dimensions. That she is studying Drama and English at university suits her quite well.

This is the group that I've been with for the past few days. We sandboarded, swam in the South China Sea, haggled with our hotel owner over the price of a destroyed motorbike (good work Louie at getting it to only $280!), and partied like rockstars at Crazy Kim's and the Sailing Club in Nha Trang. Until we meet in England...cheers!