I started Hashing in 1984 with the Nassau Hash, Bahamas and followed that with the Freetown Hash, Sierra Leone in early 1988, where the highlight was ‘That Dam Run’, a run from the Dam down to the coast and No 2 Beach (the beach on which the original Bounty Hunters commercials were filmed). I hashed for the remainder of 1988 with the Seoul Hash, where the annual bash was a black tie event but with shorts and trainers, and the main entertainment two Z Z Top look alikes serenading the all male committee as they danced in tights and tutus with red roses between their teeth, hmmm.

I introduced So Young to hashing with the Accra Hash in 1989/90 and again when we returned to Accra in 1994. We set some runs and hosted a couple of bashes at our house. We then joined the embryonic St Petersburg Hash upon moving to Russia in 1995, where I started a Hash Sheet and coined the phrase: ‘The St Petersburg Hash - the only thing in Russia you don’t have to queue for!‘. I was one of the Hares for the First Birthday Pub Crawl Run in August 1996 that managed to run through half a dozen bars, stopping on the way for a drink in each. The highlight was Wobbly’s where Bob and Wally, the landlords, had wired up a set of traffic lights and rows of red, amber and green drinks to be consumed as the lights changed! It’s a hell of a way to run...

From St Petersburg, we moved to Singapore where we joined the Lion City Hash running each Friday evening. This is a fairly large Hash with a pack nearing a hundred on occasions. It is also surprising how much bush and shiggy can be found in a relatively built up island. We were on the Committee that organised the 1997 Annual Bash, ‘A Day at the Races’. We also ran the Vientiane Bush Hash during a trip to Laos in 1998.

In 2000 shortly after the Hobart Interhash we moved on again, this time to Viet Nam where we joined the Saigon Hash running in some great countryside around the city, and also with Hash weekends including a weekend at Phan Thiet on the coast north east of Saigon. The Saigon Hash attended the Indochina Mekong 2000 Hash in Phnom Penh in November 2000, the same weekend as the annual water festival when the flow of water down the Ton Le Sap river from the Ton Le Sap lake to the Mekong reverses direction and starts to refill the lake. At this festival teams from all over Cambodia race boats down the river by the main waterfront. The best views are from the balconies of the Globe restaurant and the Foreign Correspondents Club (great pizzas and a good bookshop).