I love you when it's humid,
    I love you when it's dry.
I love you when you say the weather makes you want to die.
    I love you with your clothes on,
    I love you in the nude.
I love you when you step outside and come back home with food.

    Four walls of brick, the air outside unclear
    and, in the front room, white men drinking beer.
    Hanoi becomes a pleasureground at last;
    the ceiling fan moves moderately fast.
    The soundtrack: bebop - some inspired session
    direct from the American Depression.
    The floor feels vast, its tiling cracked but clean;
    I tap my foot, and open Graham Greene.

      Some people have a liking for Siberia
      (its ruggedness, its panoramic grass)
      but, when I saw it, something like hysteria
      embittered me - and this was in First Class -
      realising, as each morning came to pass,
      I'd woken to a vehicle's sudden lurches
      and yet another window full of birches.

        Wind, rampaging as it pleases,
        crafts a landscape as we pass,
        while my winking eyelid freezes
        curling patterns in the grass.

    Siberia, under my eye,
    seems endlessly arid and dry
            with only one locus
            to narrow the focus:
    the line where the grass meets the sky.

        Silver twists of morning cloud
          pierce the sky and stain the ground;
        powerstations form a crowd,
          trains emit a spiral sound.

        I stopped in Moscow in the rain
        aboard a grounded aeroplane;
        and then I got the Bangkok blues
        so scanned my email, needing news.
        Alone in an enormous park
        I learnt I didn't like the dark;
        then, in Phnom Penh to see a school
        I drank posh drinks beside a pool
        with my good-looking Aussie friend -
        I thought my woes were at an end!
        But then at work I got queer looks -
        they didn't even want my books.
        The second day - an hour late -
        I turned up in a wretched state,
        yet meeting with the giant staff
        was so sincere I had to laugh.
        Then, elsewhere, facing genocide,
        I looked - but neither laughed nor cried.
        I let the telly set the tone
        for my three evenings home alone
        (that is, unless you count James Bond,
        four killers and a killer blonde).
        Election Day: the city drained,
        I watched some football, and it rained
        (but in that place it's always wet).
        My passport wasn't ready yet.
        I trailed a guy collecting trash
        then found a birthday boat to crash.
        Next day, I got into a flurry
        crafting tasty meatless curry.
        (He was cooking dinner, too:
        this made me feel bizarrely blue.
        Reaction? Spiders - fried - for tea
        plus beer beneath an ugly tree.)
        I shared one final western brunch
        then someone made my shoulders crunch.
        I fled the city, took a shower,
        crossed a river, scaled a tower,
        then - alone in awful weather -
        cheered our thirty months together.
        When the man had cut my hair
        I said: "could it be shorter, there?"
        The next day, fighting not to frown,
        I caught my bus, and left the town.
        Then Laos and my bungalow:
        my life became intensely slow.
        I stared at swollen waterfalls,
        ate vegetables, examined walls,
        read random books, slung out the hammock:
        I defined the undynamic.
        Then - a motorcycle ride
        so furious and fast I cried!
        I took my vegan dinner raw
        then noticed that my legs were sore:
        no matter - next day, on the run,
        I'd crossed my next frontier by one.
        North-Eastern Thailand's rather bland;
        I watched a noisy marching band.
        Then, back in Bangkok at a bar
        I had my hottest night by far,
        but found myself unsatisfied
        so spent my final night inside;
        and then - in clothes already worn -
        I caught the airport bus at dawn.

    I'm often faced with feeling neither happiness nor sadness
    and once believed that this betrayed a kind of secret madness;
      but now I've learnt - by counting up the silly sighs I've heaved -
      my palette of emotions runs from Anxious to Relieved.

        Squat, like a piece of over-ripened fruit
        that languishes half-buried in the mud,
        my bungalow - not beautiful, but cute -
        precariously hovers on the flood;
            and with each fresh apocalyptic thud
            I wonder what I'd do were she to sink
            and drop me (and my bedroom) in the drink.

        And yet, for all my want of trust, she stands
        above the Mekong's omnipresent swish,
        unfussed by my unbalancing demands
        of peering here and there in search of fish.
            Each morning I renew my local wish:
            to pass the day serene and undynamic,
            slung out with some Jane Austen in the hammock.

      Qiu Yi: a book to thank you for my stay
      at your delightful home - it's been outstanding.
      While I was here, I found that every day
      was balanced well: intense but undemanding.
      I hope you like the book. If not, expanding
      one's pile of texts is lovely in itself:
      an extra brick to decorate the shelf!
          (I've also bought a bottle full of gin -
          when yours is empty, this one shall begin...)