Poi, China

My name is Poi and I like Tottenham.

The last time I got to see my beloved team was the pre-season wembley cup a while back. We lost to Celtic, That was my goodbye, thanks guys, I’m off to China.

Since then I’ve spent the last year and a half in China and South East Asia, luckily everyone around here is obsessed with football so it’s always a good talking point. I’ve been trying to think of the most interesting stories of how I’ve kept up with spurs and this is what I have. In order:

– Arriving at our stop off airport on the way to China in Dubai I ran around the airport trying to get the free wifi to work, who’d have thought a year before when I booked the flight we would have been playing the Young Boys for a place in the champions league that very night! Thank f*ck we won that game and I was buzzing all the way through the next 7 hour flight!

– A few weeks later I was sitting in our Chinese hotel, in a place called XIamen around 2am waiting for one of our champions league game to kick off, I’d had a little nap beforehand but something about that hotel was dodgy and I came out in a crazy rash all over my body from the bed, bright red, swelling all over, the works… I held out for as long as possible for the game but I had to give up and leave the hotel. I missed the game but I spent the night getting worse and by the morning when the pharmacy opened and I’d moved hotels after strolling the streets in the middle of the night, my whole body had been taken over by the rash. Cold showers all night and serious pain, the worst night of my life. I did at least try and watch the game lads…

– Later that season I left a country early to see a game. We were in the south of Laos and loving it there (one of my favourite places) but we were playing AC Milan in the champions league! I wasn’t gonna miss that. Nowhere near us had any sort of cable tv so I spent a day ringing around hotels in the north of Cambodia asking who had sky TV, we found a place, well out of our budget and two long bus journeys away. We arrived and I had them show me the channels and guarantee I could watch the game before checking in. I woke up at 3am, had to wake the security guard at the front gate, who had no idea what was going on to let me into the lounge, he agreed because he wanted more sleep and we had a dodgy night but survived 0-0 to go through. Well worth it!

Since then I’ve been living in Bangkok, Thailand and the TV coverage is amazing, every PL game every week and everything from Europe and Domestic cups as well. Thanks to the timing as well I get to go on nights out and come back steaming in time for the games. Lovely stuff.

I’m moving back to England in May so hopefully I’ll be seeing some stuff a bit more exciting than my last live game.

Toodles.