Comedy news: On The Road: Carl Donnelly in The Far East (part one)

With the violence in Bangkok becoming so severe that Foreign Office has advised against travel to Thailand it's best to give old Siam a bit of a wide berth at the moment, unless of course you are a comedian. Carl Donnelly has just returned from a short tour of the Far East, here is part one of his On The Road blog he penned for SSP.

I have just returned from a tour of the Far East during which I did shows in Hong Kong, Phuket, Pataya and Bangkok. All in all it was a successful tour with good shows and much fun was had.

The first question you get asked when you tell people you are performing/have performed stand-up in the Far East is “Who to?” They seem to think I decided that the comedy circuit in the UK holds nothing for me so learnt Chinese & Thai and headed off to create my own circuit! 

The truth of course is that I was performing to ex-pats, a mixture of Brits, Irish, Americans, Canadians and maybe a few other Europeans scattered around. It is basically no different to the audience demographic at any large weekend club in any major city.

Here a brief description of what we got up to on each leg of the tour:

Hong Kong:  This was my least favourite place on the tour but we had three very good shows. The locals are basically like Londoners in that they walk around looking miserable viewing any outsiders/tourists as a hindrance. I’d normally be into that but after a couple of days I just wanted to see some cheery local people as It didn’t feel right that the only happy people I saw in the whole of Hong Kong were the westerners that were at our shows! 

On the second day I did stumble across a theory that it was the diet that made the locals so moody. This was all down to the worst tasting item of food that has ever entered my body: Melon Soup.  I have always been quite an adventurous eater. If there is something that sounds odd and like it is clearly a mistake on a menu you can rest assured that I am going to order it. On this night ‘Melon Soup’ stood out as the weirdest sounding thing.

I ordered it and awaited it with baited breath. It came last which was the worst thing that can happen, we had eaten a massive array of tasty dishes so as the Soup came, there was a lot for it to live up to. Unfortunately rather than be the perfect end to a perfect meal, it basically ruined my day.

It sounds like an exaggeration to say a bit of food can ruin your day but I love food so much that I expect a lot out of each portion. I am very judgemental of food. During each meal I have there are two things happening. One is the physical act of me eating.

The other is the episode of Masterchef going on in my head! I turn into Gregg Wallace for those moments and if you had been able to hear my Gregg impression during my Melon Soup, the air would have been blue, Jon Torode would be getting a kicking and the dish would be on the wall! It was basically a bowl of hot sick with seaweed on top. It tasted like someone had eaten a melon and drank some tea and then vomited into my bowl and said ‘enjoy’. 

We did three shows in Hong Kong and all were good but nothing could make up for that soup!

Phuket – This was probably the most chilled out leg of the tour as we were there for four days and only did one show which meant we spent most our days by the pool drinking and coming up with swimming based games. By the fourth day we had a whole selection of events such as ‘Pushy Offsies’ and ‘Spinney Roundy’. I think we had a reputation around the pool as the four grown men who act like twats!

There is literally nothing to dislike about Phuket. It is as if they have collected up all the friendliest people in the world and whacked them on an island. Then just as they were thinking they were done they also decided to make everything incredibly cheap!

I think the show in Phuket reflected our visit in that it was probably the most laid back show where the audience allowed us to mess around and do some weirder stuff. It is probably a good thing that we didn’t spend more time here as a few more days by the pool and I would have been so relaxed I think I would have been performing lying down!

(part two, including Bangkok and Pattaya coming tomorrow)

Carl Donnelly is currently touring the UK with fellow Fringe Award nominee Pete Johansson, for more information and tour dates visit: Carl Donnelly's Official Website