Welcome to Honney on Tour

Phnom Penh - 17 June 2008

Sometime in the spring of 1990, I was stood with five mates on the Lower Loft at Loftus Road Stadium, home of QPR, watching a very dire FA Cup replay against Blackpool when out of nowhere, my mate Stuart Martin pipes up that he would not be “Watching this shit this time next year as he was off to Oz.”  The group was further taken aback when I chipped in that I too was thinking of going and before you knew it, Stuart and I were stood saying good bye to out families at Heathrow Airport on 15 October 1990.

That first round the world (‘RTW’) trip was to be the one that got the bug out of the system and whereas it did for Stuart, in August 1997 I headed off to Vietnam, originally for 3 months but due to the firm I had just been offered a job with at the time, taking a dim view of their lawyers seemingly wanting to spend more time approaching the beech then the bench, it was cut short to a month.

However, that extended time away merely ignited the flame that seven years earlier had not extinguished and so it seems, it did not come as too much of a surprise to the partners of my firm when as we progressed through the agenda for my yearly review and on toward the section known as ‘A.O.B.’ I announced that I was off again.

In 2002 I set off on RTW 2, but the majority of the trip was spent following in the footsteps of Paul Theroux as I set off from Boston, USA one Sunday morning down as far as Barriloche in Argentina.  I would have gone on to the very bottom of the continent, but it was so bloody cold, time was running short and well, not to put too much of a spin on it, the lure of sitting on Brazilian beaches was too tempting.  Whereas before my communication with family and friends was via letters and ‘post restante’ the wonders of the modern world meant that I could ping emails from literally anywhere in the globe and keep all and sundry up to date.

But something odd happened on that trip which was arguably my most enjoyable and which was heavily influenced by the happy pursuit of hedonism.  In June 2002 I tracked down my Mother’s cousin in a poor barrio of Lima, Peru from where she has toiled as a missionary worker for the best part of 40 years.  To describe the two days with her as eye opening, especially when she pointed out that a couple of hundred pounds I had previously given to her to help build a hospital (and I use the term in its most basic form) had bought the foundation materials for the project.

Like a lot of people, I knew the world was basically unfair, I had read and seen enough on TV to know that.  But RTW2 more than any other trip or holiday even, had served to actually open my eyes to the plight of many. Now of all the ways this growing awakening could have manifested itself into some action, a few weeks later sat in the Cross Keys pub in Cuzco, I decided to run a marathon when I got home to the UK.  Yes, that was it; I’d run a marathon and raise some money!

True to my word, I got back some 6 months later on Christmas Eve and four days after that, I hit the gym.  I fully expected the enthusiasm to wear off within a few weeks but quite the opposite happened.  Indeed, as I entered a period of incredible hard luck with injuries and other difficulties, my resolve hardened to the extent, that I became obsessed.  On 17 April 2005, despite numerous setbacks and only being able to run a mere 57½ miles in training, I completed the task in a reasonable 5 hours, 37 minutes which for an amputee, wasn’t too bad I guess.

The experiences and the emotions of it all led me to my next and third RTW trip.  However, this one was more about putting something back and from May-November 2005 I worked as a pro-bono lawyer for a death row law firm in Atlanta.  The death row diaries were born and I then followed my instincts to Cambodia where I did another volunteering stint with the Cambodia Trust.

My return to the UK did not, unsurprisingly, see me settle and out of the blue came an opportunity to return to Phnom Penh and take up a 2 year contract with the Trust.  However, the vagaries of moving to a developing nation, getting stuck into my new role as an adviser on legal/disability matters is taxing enough, but when you have to get up at 5.30 on Saturday mornings to train for what will be my fourth marathon in Berlin after the demands and experiences from my runs in Chicago and particularly Boston, I am looking forward to completing the Big 5 in New York in 2009 and returning to some semblance of normality such that it is.

Anyway, I have succumbed to peer group pressure and agreed to do a blog/website thing for which the detail of how it all works is beyond me and it seems all I need to do is type and send it on to those whom know how these things work. The diaries from RTW 2 and 3 have been retrieved and joined by the marathon diaries in the archive section and I will add as I go.

People, enjoy the tales from Planet Honneywood and when you can, make an effort to make a difference.

John Honney

Phnom Penh - 17 June 2008