Christ, Australia is big. It's the sixth largest country in the world, nearly the size of Europe and has about half the population of the UK in it. That might be because there's this whole massive bit in the middle in which pretty much nothing can live.
This blog took a bit of a rest when I landed in Sydney just over a year ago. Whilst on my previously detailed adventures with Mr. Furious throughout South East Asia, there were many adventures, much madness and, therefore, many updates. Since arriving in Australia, there's been a fair share of adventure and wonderful times, but in between those adventures there's been way more time to lounge around and indulge in my natural laziness. Another excuse for not updating this blog is that it was all a bit moment to moment in Australia, constantly extending my stay, before I bit the bullet and decided to stay for a second year.
There's been a fair bit of hitching. Australia's expanse is perfect for hitchhiking. Wherever you're dropped off on the highway, you're pretty much guaranteed to be in some kind of glorious expanse. Much more pleasant than hitchhiking in, say, the UK, where the nicest view you'll have is a massive pile of concrete. Anyway. For hitchers I do recommend hitching in Oz, as Australians are generally very generous and welcoming to strangers and travellers. This can be lovely ("Help yourself to food, I always pack lunch for two in case I pick up a hitcher") or unnerving ("You should've had me pick you up ten minutes up the road, then you could've had a hit of my meth"). As always with hitching, you meet a ludicrous range of people, and Australia certainly has its fair share of strange folk from isolated areas. One particularly memorable experience is a guy in Tasmania telling me about his girlfriend and his family. He was 21 and his girlfriend was 16 ("I won't go any lower - I'm very careful about that"), and also shared with me the delightful story of the last time he saw his estranged brother. Him and his Mum came in to the front room to find his brother having sex with the family dog. The brother yelped, stood up, and (understandably) legged it. His neighbours at his place reported later they heard loads of crashing around, screaming, then him getting in the car and driving off. No one's seen him in four years. Insane.
I've been indulging in a bit of spoken word here and there, having performed in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, in the desert north of Roxby Downs and Byron Bay. The performance poetry community here is pretty tight, but growing, and there's plenty of amazing talent on offer. Fortunately, no one really had a monopoly on screaming obscenities at audiences yet, so I've happily filled that role. The gigs have uniformally been extremely well run with a dedicated spoken word audience. Performers and promoters in different cities have very tight connections despite the huge distances, and the whole thing seem to function rather well as a community of artists, a lot of whom are doing some really interesting stuff. I was very proud to run Australia's first Anti-Slam with my friend Tim (aka Stackhat - irritatingly good performer, writer and musician) in March this year. We ran it as a benefit for Sydney anarchist spaces Dust Monster and Black Rose and it went down a storm. We raised a fair bit of money for both spaces, got extremely drunk and I got to yell at some hipsters. A fine evening all round.
To make ends meet this year I've mainly been helping out with some after school projects as a casual assistant, and on weekends busking with huge bubbles, which has been awesome. Everyone loves the wholesome joy of a massive bubble. And kids go ape shit for them. Honestly, I've never seen anything like it. When there's loads of them, screaming for bubbles, running around in a kind of chaotic ecstacy, I feel like Simon in Lord of the Flies before he gets beaten to death by a hysterical, tribe of mini-psychos. But, despite the ever present danger of being murdered by children, I brave it, and it usually ends up being a jolly good time had by all.
Presently I'm staying in the Blue Mountains, and in forty minutes I've got to catch a train back to Sydney and stay there for a bit. Free Hari Krishna food, cheap coffee and warm weather await.
I promise you grubby lot I will update this blog more often.
Tuesday, 11 June 2013
Sunday, 20 May 2012
Malaysia Part 2 - withdrawal, gainful employment and Oz-bound
After a few more days swanning about Magick River and its cool gorgeousnessnessness, it's time to head back to Batuarang to help out at Reboot The Roots. Unfortunately, things are winding down a bit there for a while, so I concentrate on going through alcohol withdrawal.
Staying in a building who's purpose is to help ex-heroin addicts, drinking is obviously not encouraged. It's not especially encouraged in Malaysia full stop, being a Muslim country and everything. So, running low on funds and it being a hassle to get booze, I just stop drinking. Since I was about 18, like a lot of people, I've probably consumed far, far, far more alcohol than any medical advice deems healthy. And over the past two months, Mr. Furious and myself went a bit overboard, deeming sitting anywhere for any length of time deserving a tasty, crisp, cold beer-shaped beverage. I would not describe myself as an alcoholic, and wouldn't even say I had a drink problem necessarily, but in a few years it might well develop into one.
So for the first time I can remember, my body enters the world of withdrawal. Without a drowse-inducing drink, my body and brain are suddenly flooded with energy, and doesn't know what the hell to do with it. Staying up until 4 or 5am every morning on Facebook, attempting to write poetry and chainsmoking is the way I deal with it (because three cigarettes an hour is definitely healthier than a couple of beers). It's a strange sensation, made stranger by the fact that I didn't particularly crave alcohol, which is a blessing. However, the sleepness nights are getting aggravating, but Soon, who facilitates Reboot The Roots, having been through similar situations himself, is great to discuss these feelings with. I'm in the weird position of being both a volunteer and a resident going through withdrawal. I chat to Mr. Furious online, and he says that six months ago, he was doing exactly the same thing, in the same chair, at the same computer. Great, booze-addled minds think alike.
I need some work (well, I need money... them's different things), and Soon helpfully hooks me up with PODs Backpacker Hostel in KL. It's a quiet, calm place - exactly what I need. I get to stay there for free, as well as have all the peanut butter sandwiches I can cram into my mouth. I'm put on a lot of nightshifts, spending my nights in darkness with the hum of the computer screen, or being paid to curl up on a beanbag and sleep. My bosses are cool, understanding, lovely people, as are my co-workers. It's the perfect environment to collect my thoughts. I don't go out much, popping out now and then for some amazingly cheap and perfect cooked curry, before scurrying back. It's a good three weeks.
Before I left for South East Asia, my Dad called me, generously offering me a flight to Australia from where I happen to be in Asia. My old punk buddies Jay and Anj live in Sydney, as does my ex-squatmate Taz and his girlfriend Kael. All brilliant, lovely people and great friends. I decide to take my Dad up on the offer. This is too good an opportunity to miss.
And so, restless to continue my adventure, I bid goodbye to the much-needed quiet of Malaysia, and board my flight to Sydney...
Tuesday, 8 May 2012
Malaysia Part 1 - Kuala Lumpur, Batuarang, Magick River and some sad goodbyes
This is mine and Mr. Furious' last big hurrah as crusty duo Pidge and The Wizard: a gruelling thirty-six hour trip to the village of Batuarang, Malaysia. Mr. Furious has a plane to catch from Kuala Lumpur in a few days, and, having spent the last four years working and living in and out of Malaysia, has a few goodbye hugs to hand out before he leaves for Londontown.
The train ride to southern Thailand is brutal. We're crammed into third class, stacked human Jenga peices - if anyone moves, then the whole carriage threatens to fall apart. Passengers sit on hard chairs, the floor or by the side doors, smoking out into the speeding night. A brief reprieve is found in the restaurant carriage. We drink until it closes, and stagger back to the claustrophobic reality of the train carriage. Settling into discomfort, I find it impossible to concentrate. Music and books offer no consolation. My mind ebbs and flows, waves of boredom morph into stress, anger and sadness... there's a few moments blissed out contentment, before slipping back into boredom to kick off the mundane cycle once more. Shards of sleep become indistinguishable from shards of wakefulness. Is this what it feels like to go insane? After thirteen hours of this, we hit a town in southern Thailand and book a bus to Kuala Lumpur.
The bus is a palace in comparison. The seats have cushioning on them and everything. We arrive in KL late. Mr. Furious, on home turf, is more confident now - he knows the routine here. I, on the other hand, am a crumpled mess of a man. Nausea is gurgling in the depths of my stomach from from excessive travelling, tiredness and bad food. My energy is spent on babbled half-sentences, drinking coffee and sitting. Mr. Furious organises us a ride to Batuarang, where the charity he helped set up (Reboot The Roots - check them out here) is based. Augustine and Hazar, two giving gentlemen, pick us up and we begin the final half hour stretch. Half way there, the stomach grumblings surge towards my throat. I pathetically beg Augustine to pull over. I fall out of the minivan, sway toward the roadside and assume the classic vomiting position: bent over, hands on thighs, breathing heavily. There's a moment's silent tension... then my stomach and brain explode out of my mouth in a geyser of vomit, my body rejecting all the stress, all the intoxicants, all the hitchhiking, all the nightmarish joy of the last two months. Wiping the chunks of vegetable fried rice from my mouth, I climb back into the van full of cheer. I haven't thrown up like that since I was a child. Awesome. "The bizarre euphoria after an hour's puking", as Chris Morris once put it. The chaps in the van are polite in their acceptance of my ill-timed bodily functions. Thanks guys.
We pull up to Reboot The Roots HQ, where I babble thanks to Hazar and Augustine, murmur hellos to resident workers Soon and Myriam, before stumbling into bed for a hard-earned, dreamless sleep.
I wake fully rested. Soon, Myriam and Mr. Furious have been up for ages. Apparently there was an attempt to rescue me from my temporary coma, but it was in vain. It's soon evident that my stomach hasn't stopped rebelling against the sudden calm just yet, as my arse explodes several times in the toilet (my introductions to Malaysians really need work). Soon gives me some Chinese herbal remedies and some classic, liver-destroying Western remedies. In tandem, they work wonders. This is the first of many acts of kindness from Soon, a guy whose patience and diligence in working with reformed addicts using radical forum theatre is simply awe-inspiring.
Now to Magick River so Mr. Furious can spend his last few days in Malaysia with his "Malaysian Dad" Antares - the shaman who runs the informal community guesthouse, who I've heard much about and am interested in meeting. Mr. Furious says his final goodbyes to Soon and Batuarang. I know Reboot The Roots is very, very close to his heart, and his hard work has been a real driving force. Even from my outsider perspective, it's a brief but sad moment.
We take a train to Kuala Kubu Baru, and Antares and his wife are waiting at the station, delivering us to Magick River. Magick River is invigorating, peaceful and the perfect way to trickle away our last few days together. For five days, we live simply and quietly. We swim in the namesake's river, basking in the sun. We hang out with Antares - a unique, witty and consistently interesting man. We live simply and quietly in the Bamboo Palace. Our friends Laura from Bangkok and Caroline from Pai comes down. Its all being rounded off with novel-shaped clarity.
As inevitable as the dawn, the one and only Mr. Furious must depart for The Big Smoke, returning to see his Mum, and then our squatting family in London. Laura's leaving with him for India via KL. I haven't gone into much detail about all the amazing individuals we've met, mainly because it'd take bloody ages. But Laura has been vital chemical to ignite our adventure, a bottomless well of infectious energy. She will be missed greatly.
We all hug what will never be enough time. To share this mind-bending beauty with Mr. Furious has been an utter privilege. He's got the impassioned eloquence, the magical spontaneity and manic flashes behind his eyes to make it not merely a trip, not merely a journey, but a real adventure. In the warm early sun, I'm shamefully eluded for words. Tears block my throat.
"Thank you."
"No, mate, thank you."
And that's it. Hugs reluctantly part, and Mr. Furious and Laura disappear into the distance. The Crusty Tour has ended, and I'm solo here on in. It was...
... what?
Great?
Awesome?
Brilliant?
Nah.
It was everything.
The train ride to southern Thailand is brutal. We're crammed into third class, stacked human Jenga peices - if anyone moves, then the whole carriage threatens to fall apart. Passengers sit on hard chairs, the floor or by the side doors, smoking out into the speeding night. A brief reprieve is found in the restaurant carriage. We drink until it closes, and stagger back to the claustrophobic reality of the train carriage. Settling into discomfort, I find it impossible to concentrate. Music and books offer no consolation. My mind ebbs and flows, waves of boredom morph into stress, anger and sadness... there's a few moments blissed out contentment, before slipping back into boredom to kick off the mundane cycle once more. Shards of sleep become indistinguishable from shards of wakefulness. Is this what it feels like to go insane? After thirteen hours of this, we hit a town in southern Thailand and book a bus to Kuala Lumpur.
The bus is a palace in comparison. The seats have cushioning on them and everything. We arrive in KL late. Mr. Furious, on home turf, is more confident now - he knows the routine here. I, on the other hand, am a crumpled mess of a man. Nausea is gurgling in the depths of my stomach from from excessive travelling, tiredness and bad food. My energy is spent on babbled half-sentences, drinking coffee and sitting. Mr. Furious organises us a ride to Batuarang, where the charity he helped set up (Reboot The Roots - check them out here) is based. Augustine and Hazar, two giving gentlemen, pick us up and we begin the final half hour stretch. Half way there, the stomach grumblings surge towards my throat. I pathetically beg Augustine to pull over. I fall out of the minivan, sway toward the roadside and assume the classic vomiting position: bent over, hands on thighs, breathing heavily. There's a moment's silent tension... then my stomach and brain explode out of my mouth in a geyser of vomit, my body rejecting all the stress, all the intoxicants, all the hitchhiking, all the nightmarish joy of the last two months. Wiping the chunks of vegetable fried rice from my mouth, I climb back into the van full of cheer. I haven't thrown up like that since I was a child. Awesome. "The bizarre euphoria after an hour's puking", as Chris Morris once put it. The chaps in the van are polite in their acceptance of my ill-timed bodily functions. Thanks guys.
We pull up to Reboot The Roots HQ, where I babble thanks to Hazar and Augustine, murmur hellos to resident workers Soon and Myriam, before stumbling into bed for a hard-earned, dreamless sleep.
I wake fully rested. Soon, Myriam and Mr. Furious have been up for ages. Apparently there was an attempt to rescue me from my temporary coma, but it was in vain. It's soon evident that my stomach hasn't stopped rebelling against the sudden calm just yet, as my arse explodes several times in the toilet (my introductions to Malaysians really need work). Soon gives me some Chinese herbal remedies and some classic, liver-destroying Western remedies. In tandem, they work wonders. This is the first of many acts of kindness from Soon, a guy whose patience and diligence in working with reformed addicts using radical forum theatre is simply awe-inspiring.
Now to Magick River so Mr. Furious can spend his last few days in Malaysia with his "Malaysian Dad" Antares - the shaman who runs the informal community guesthouse, who I've heard much about and am interested in meeting. Mr. Furious says his final goodbyes to Soon and Batuarang. I know Reboot The Roots is very, very close to his heart, and his hard work has been a real driving force. Even from my outsider perspective, it's a brief but sad moment.
We take a train to Kuala Kubu Baru, and Antares and his wife are waiting at the station, delivering us to Magick River. Magick River is invigorating, peaceful and the perfect way to trickle away our last few days together. For five days, we live simply and quietly. We swim in the namesake's river, basking in the sun. We hang out with Antares - a unique, witty and consistently interesting man. We live simply and quietly in the Bamboo Palace. Our friends Laura from Bangkok and Caroline from Pai comes down. Its all being rounded off with novel-shaped clarity.
As inevitable as the dawn, the one and only Mr. Furious must depart for The Big Smoke, returning to see his Mum, and then our squatting family in London. Laura's leaving with him for India via KL. I haven't gone into much detail about all the amazing individuals we've met, mainly because it'd take bloody ages. But Laura has been vital chemical to ignite our adventure, a bottomless well of infectious energy. She will be missed greatly.
We all hug what will never be enough time. To share this mind-bending beauty with Mr. Furious has been an utter privilege. He's got the impassioned eloquence, the magical spontaneity and manic flashes behind his eyes to make it not merely a trip, not merely a journey, but a real adventure. In the warm early sun, I'm shamefully eluded for words. Tears block my throat.
"Thank you."
"No, mate, thank you."
And that's it. Hugs reluctantly part, and Mr. Furious and Laura disappear into the distance. The Crusty Tour has ended, and I'm solo here on in. It was...
... what?
Great?
Awesome?
Brilliant?
Nah.
It was everything.
Monday, 23 April 2012
The Overstay, Bangkok (reprise)
When you go to Bangkok for relaxation, you know you're in trouble.
Previously, I've been damning of Thailand's infamous capital. Damning of its hellish smog, its nerve-shredding crowds. It constantly has one hand fingering your wallet and the other fingering your genitals. But after Laos taking open season on our sanity, we need some snuggly, crusty familiarity. And so we head straight for our hostel/safehouse of choice: The Overstay.
You can find The Overstay in Pinkau, a safe distance from the garish backpacker prison of Kho San Road (which does has its plus points, but like fuck am I staying there). As far as I'm aware, there is nothing for the average backpacker experience around here, and therefore very few English speakers. As such, The Overstay - for those who don't do their research - attracts mainly because of its cheapness. Therefore, it is the recipient of mixed reviews. The negative ones are, I think, mainly from individuals who have been lured by the low price, and repelled by its apparently ramshackle nature. If you crave designed, formulaic comfort, I'd recommend you snuffle for your truffles elsewhere. On the other hand, if you seek a challenge, something beyond the passive consumer culture so many hostels enforce, The Overstay may be for you.
As we stagger like thrashed chimps into the bar area, we are immediately heartened by the dimly lit, familiar faces supping from cans of beer and the thick layer of cigarette smoke hanging from the ceiling. We meet people from our previous misadventures, as well as wonderful new folk. We crack open beverages and raise a toast to our repair. If Cheers was set in a squat, and was run and frequented by crusties, drunks, travellers, anarchists, and clean cut English language teachers, it would be like this.
The Overstay has no agenda in the regular sense of the word. It is a place for creative freedom, and it encourages you meld into its environment. It is, sometimes literally, what you make of it. Sasha - excellent photographer, handsome barman and all round fine gentlemen - wanted to put on an exhibition of his work on the first floor (that's first floor in the weird British sense of floor numbering. Second floor to everyone else). Mr. Furious, myself and a gaggle of other diligent delinquents set about helping him. The squat skills come in handy here. With a tight deadline of two days and hammers, nails, fabric, paint, wood and combined imaginations at our disposal, we do this not for money, not for glory, but simply because these things matter. The exhibition is a success, and I'm proud to know and work with such passionate people.
We also chip in to help set up an S&M-themed party, complete with whips, candles and a St. Andrew's cross. The whole night vibrates as boundaries were pushed and new worlds discovered. There is a huge emphasis in S&M on mutual respect, playfulness and creativity - and these are exactly the qualities The Overstay requires of you. The party marches relentlessly into the morning, battering the dawn down with a fun-filled fist.
It is a place where you can get involved as little or as much you like, but regardless, you should be prepared to let things flow naturally. Chilled evenings can erupt into near-raves. You may find yourself suddenly running the bar. The variety of people The Overstay attracts is astounding. You will have lengthy conversations with the outcast, the wonderful, the sexy, the hilarious, the vibrant, the lonely, the unnamed. Having lost so much personal control in Laos, I realise the significance of places like this. For people whose grip has slipped, a space like this is a haven.
Mr. Furious and I stay there for nearly two weeks before we realise, in the fashion of the hostel's namesake, that we shall be overstaying very soon. It is with humming brains and heavy hearts we bid goodbye to an unshakeable experience. I don't want to start mentioning names as I fear forgetting someone, but there are individuals I meet at The Overstay who, if we don't remain in touch, will certainly remain very beautiful memories.
If or when the world comes crumbling around our ankles, we'll need to honestly connect with each other. But why wait around for Armageddon when prepping for it is so much fun?
To find out more about The Overstay, go to http://www.theoverstay.com/.
As we stagger like thrashed chimps into the bar area, we are immediately heartened by the dimly lit, familiar faces supping from cans of beer and the thick layer of cigarette smoke hanging from the ceiling. We meet people from our previous misadventures, as well as wonderful new folk. We crack open beverages and raise a toast to our repair. If Cheers was set in a squat, and was run and frequented by crusties, drunks, travellers, anarchists, and clean cut English language teachers, it would be like this.
The Overstay has no agenda in the regular sense of the word. It is a place for creative freedom, and it encourages you meld into its environment. It is, sometimes literally, what you make of it. Sasha - excellent photographer, handsome barman and all round fine gentlemen - wanted to put on an exhibition of his work on the first floor (that's first floor in the weird British sense of floor numbering. Second floor to everyone else). Mr. Furious, myself and a gaggle of other diligent delinquents set about helping him. The squat skills come in handy here. With a tight deadline of two days and hammers, nails, fabric, paint, wood and combined imaginations at our disposal, we do this not for money, not for glory, but simply because these things matter. The exhibition is a success, and I'm proud to know and work with such passionate people.
We also chip in to help set up an S&M-themed party, complete with whips, candles and a St. Andrew's cross. The whole night vibrates as boundaries were pushed and new worlds discovered. There is a huge emphasis in S&M on mutual respect, playfulness and creativity - and these are exactly the qualities The Overstay requires of you. The party marches relentlessly into the morning, battering the dawn down with a fun-filled fist.
It is a place where you can get involved as little or as much you like, but regardless, you should be prepared to let things flow naturally. Chilled evenings can erupt into near-raves. You may find yourself suddenly running the bar. The variety of people The Overstay attracts is astounding. You will have lengthy conversations with the outcast, the wonderful, the sexy, the hilarious, the vibrant, the lonely, the unnamed. Having lost so much personal control in Laos, I realise the significance of places like this. For people whose grip has slipped, a space like this is a haven.
Mr. Furious and I stay there for nearly two weeks before we realise, in the fashion of the hostel's namesake, that we shall be overstaying very soon. It is with humming brains and heavy hearts we bid goodbye to an unshakeable experience. I don't want to start mentioning names as I fear forgetting someone, but there are individuals I meet at The Overstay who, if we don't remain in touch, will certainly remain very beautiful memories.
If or when the world comes crumbling around our ankles, we'll need to honestly connect with each other. But why wait around for Armageddon when prepping for it is so much fun?
To find out more about The Overstay, go to http://www.theoverstay.com/.
Friday, 13 April 2012
Punks vs. Laos - Part 4: Apocalypse Laos
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Friday, 6 April 2012
Punks vs. Laos - Part 3: The Early Signs of Endgame...
We hitch to Vientiane, the capital of Laos. We get there late, find a guesthouse and take a wander for no real reason. We hear music coming from a bar and enter. The place is definitely not for folk like us. It's clean, for a start. And the people working there wear shirts. Shirts, for Christ's sake. Patrons are sitting at huge long tables, dining and drinking quite heavily. And there's a band onstage, who, as far as I can gather, are a kind of rock n' roll variety act, complete poodle-haired guitarist and transgender costume changes. A couple drunk of guys go up and put notes in the lead singer's pants. It's all a little odd. We order an extortionately priced beer each, get confused by The Wealthy Laos Experience and leave for some much needed sleep.
We wake and begin hitching again, blindly stumbling through this country that neither of us really have a clue about. We're heading for Pakse, probably because we half-heard it was nice. But, secretly, I think it's because we desperately need to feel like we're not adrift. Trusty road 13 - the road we've been following throughout most of Laos - has become the foundation to build a narrative around, and Pakse has become the final chapter, the denouement to our epic traveling adventure. Everyone needs stories, even if they're being improvised in the fog of intoxicant abuse.
What follows is familiar, different only because of the tiredness and heat really getting to us now. Mr. Furious has to lie in the shade to gather himself, and I'm not far off the same. Fortunately, a truck pulls up, kicking off our ride to somewhere or other. It's on road 13, and heading toward Pakse, we know that much. Everything else is a mystery written in dust on a slip road.
It's here things start to noticeably crumble.
We hitch a ride with two lorry drivers- one deep into his forties, the other a fresh-faced early thirties. We go through the usual rigmarole: them asking for money, us saying we don't have any, and both parties trying to explain themselves without sharing a language. The guys eventually agree to let us in for nothing, and we squeeze into the front.
After an hour or two, the truck stops in a village. The older guy gets out, and goes to a house across the street, and is greeted by another man on the driveway. They head inside. We wait for a while, unable to ask the younger guy what's going on.
And we wait. And wait.
We see the older guy come out the house, go to a shop, buy two beers, and disappear back in again. We get out of the lorry and wait.
And wait.
The younger guy gets out of the lorry, and disappears into the house. Throughout all this, there has been no attempt to explain to us what is going on. Mr. Furious and I wait around for a little longer, attempt to find a suitable place to urinate, and then decide to not bother with these guys anymore. Frustrated, we grab our bags, slam the lorry door shut and march down the road.
It takes ten minutes for another ride to come along. A sleek, clean, black car, steadily purring wealth through the dust and dried grass. The window silently drops. The driver - suit, slick back hair, sunglasses - turns to us. Familiar language block. We point frantically, gesticulating wildly. (Our miming abilities are beyond compare. A future in silent film awaits us both.) The front door opens, and we get in. Furious in the back, me in the front.
We introduce ourselves. His name, we think he says, is Jean (the french pronunciation). He puts his foot on the accelerator, and it takes around ten seconds to realise that he's drunk. Really drunk. A couple of weeks previously in Laos, we got a ride with a soldier who was ridiculously hammered and a bit mad. It turns out Jean beats this guy for drunk insanity hands down. Furious informs me later that he could see the reflection of Jean's eyes in his sunglasses. "They were all over the place".
After some attempt at conversation, we reach the conclusion that, even if he spoke English, he would still be an incoherent babbling wreck. He drives erratically. He spends too long not looking at the road. He gets very close behind motorcyclists before sharply turning to avoid them. Although I can't drive, I have had the privelidge of witnessing people drive before, and it wasn't like this.
Jean grabs my arm, slightly too roughly in that 'jovial' way drunk people do. I'm beginning to have flashbacks to our Thai driver who was also a bit liberal with what we used to rest his hand on, and the thought makes me shrink away against the passenger door. Just to make everything a little more mental, he reaches into his glovebox and brings out a medium sized pink paper bag. He presses it against my nose. It smells like potpourri. He then throws it on my lap. Being a polite potential murder victim, I hand him back the bag, smiling and saying thank but no thanks. He cackles in that way that only the truly mad can muster and, quick as a predator acting on the barest instincts, he reaches over and tweaks my nipple. He then lets rip another cackle. Yes, you read that correctly. He. Tweaked. My. Nipple. And it didn't seem sexually motivated, which just made it even weirder.
Mr. Furious doesn't notice this. I'm on the frontline with this lunatic. A car has never felt smaller.
Jean taps me on the shoulder. Reluctantly, I face him. With a thin, jabbering smile he makes his hand into a two-fingered gun shape. He leans his arm right across me, and points it out of the window. He then pretends to shoot things out of the window, making a little pow noise with each fictional bullet. He cackles that cackle which will reverberate in my nightmares for decades to come, and puts his hand on the steering wheel to hastily avoid slaughtering another motorcyclist.
At this point, I break.
"Can you stop now? Here is fine..."
He seems to ignore us. Both of us are getting a bit more urgent.
"Jean, this is fine, thank -"
He abruptly brakes. Somehow, he understood! Furious is immediately out with the bags. I go to open the front door. It doesn't open. My hand wrenches at the handle a couple more times. Locked. My brain races -
ohfuckohfuckohfuckohfuck he's going to kidnap me and strap me to this seat and make me smell his weird stuff in the bag and give me endless amounts of meth and tweak my nipples until one of us dies
- and Jean presses a button and I almost fall out of the car, slamming the door behind me. We stand and stare at Jean. As a parting gift, he makes his finger gun once more, and, taking aim, shoots me first, then Mr Furious - pow pow. He don't react. We just stare, gormless and dumbfounded. He cackles and speeds off down the road, disappearing into the stretch of concrete and dirt. I'd like to point out that all this happens in ten minutes. Ten minutes of chaos wrapped up in a tiny, scorching metal box, racing through a wasteland. Was that Hell? Did we just meet Lucifer himself?
Furious turns to me: "Did he tweak your nipple?"
Yes. Satan's incarnate tweaked my nipple. How many people can say that?
We half-joke of Jean coming back and gunning us both like the salty, dusty dogs we are. Thankfully, he doesn't. Although if he did, it would've made a great story. We hitch a ride into the next village, which seems to be a rural red light district. We find a guesthouse, and the guy who owns it generously offers to take us up the road to a bar which he drops his son off at his evening classes. This level of domesticity is very, very welcome.
We find a bar. Tinny karaoke irritating our ears, we sit, our brains vainly attempting to rearrange the last few hours. We get drunk. Two sex workers come and join us, chatting to us, drinking some of our beer and refilling our glasses/coercing us to buy more beer. This all annoys me slightly, as I just want to be left alone. The woman attempting to talk to me realises she's on to a lost cause, and is handed a wireless mic and starts singing in Laos. I think at this point I'm losing my mind, since when she hands me the mic I get up and begin to shout my poem The War On Romance over the music. This seems like the best course of action right now. The mic is wrestled from me after about four lines. A few minutes later, she decides to entrust me with the mic once more. Foolish! I do the same thing again, probably out of some base instinct to try and have control over one aspect of my life today. Again, the mic is deftly taken from me. At this point, I suggest we leave, and, wisely, we do.
As we stagger out, we bump into the older guy from the lorry earlier that day. One hand around a pretty young woman, another round a beer, he smiles a drunken, half-remembering smile at us. We half-smile back, and get the hell out of there.
There's been enough reality today, so we head back to the guesthouse to see if our dreams can offer anything better.
We wake and begin hitching again, blindly stumbling through this country that neither of us really have a clue about. We're heading for Pakse, probably because we half-heard it was nice. But, secretly, I think it's because we desperately need to feel like we're not adrift. Trusty road 13 - the road we've been following throughout most of Laos - has become the foundation to build a narrative around, and Pakse has become the final chapter, the denouement to our epic traveling adventure. Everyone needs stories, even if they're being improvised in the fog of intoxicant abuse.
What follows is familiar, different only because of the tiredness and heat really getting to us now. Mr. Furious has to lie in the shade to gather himself, and I'm not far off the same. Fortunately, a truck pulls up, kicking off our ride to somewhere or other. It's on road 13, and heading toward Pakse, we know that much. Everything else is a mystery written in dust on a slip road.
It's here things start to noticeably crumble.
We hitch a ride with two lorry drivers- one deep into his forties, the other a fresh-faced early thirties. We go through the usual rigmarole: them asking for money, us saying we don't have any, and both parties trying to explain themselves without sharing a language. The guys eventually agree to let us in for nothing, and we squeeze into the front.
After an hour or two, the truck stops in a village. The older guy gets out, and goes to a house across the street, and is greeted by another man on the driveway. They head inside. We wait for a while, unable to ask the younger guy what's going on.
And we wait. And wait.
We see the older guy come out the house, go to a shop, buy two beers, and disappear back in again. We get out of the lorry and wait.
And wait.
The younger guy gets out of the lorry, and disappears into the house. Throughout all this, there has been no attempt to explain to us what is going on. Mr. Furious and I wait around for a little longer, attempt to find a suitable place to urinate, and then decide to not bother with these guys anymore. Frustrated, we grab our bags, slam the lorry door shut and march down the road.
It takes ten minutes for another ride to come along. A sleek, clean, black car, steadily purring wealth through the dust and dried grass. The window silently drops. The driver - suit, slick back hair, sunglasses - turns to us. Familiar language block. We point frantically, gesticulating wildly. (Our miming abilities are beyond compare. A future in silent film awaits us both.) The front door opens, and we get in. Furious in the back, me in the front.
We introduce ourselves. His name, we think he says, is Jean (the french pronunciation). He puts his foot on the accelerator, and it takes around ten seconds to realise that he's drunk. Really drunk. A couple of weeks previously in Laos, we got a ride with a soldier who was ridiculously hammered and a bit mad. It turns out Jean beats this guy for drunk insanity hands down. Furious informs me later that he could see the reflection of Jean's eyes in his sunglasses. "They were all over the place".
After some attempt at conversation, we reach the conclusion that, even if he spoke English, he would still be an incoherent babbling wreck. He drives erratically. He spends too long not looking at the road. He gets very close behind motorcyclists before sharply turning to avoid them. Although I can't drive, I have had the privelidge of witnessing people drive before, and it wasn't like this.
Jean grabs my arm, slightly too roughly in that 'jovial' way drunk people do. I'm beginning to have flashbacks to our Thai driver who was also a bit liberal with what we used to rest his hand on, and the thought makes me shrink away against the passenger door. Just to make everything a little more mental, he reaches into his glovebox and brings out a medium sized pink paper bag. He presses it against my nose. It smells like potpourri. He then throws it on my lap. Being a polite potential murder victim, I hand him back the bag, smiling and saying thank but no thanks. He cackles in that way that only the truly mad can muster and, quick as a predator acting on the barest instincts, he reaches over and tweaks my nipple. He then lets rip another cackle. Yes, you read that correctly. He. Tweaked. My. Nipple. And it didn't seem sexually motivated, which just made it even weirder.
Mr. Furious doesn't notice this. I'm on the frontline with this lunatic. A car has never felt smaller.
Jean taps me on the shoulder. Reluctantly, I face him. With a thin, jabbering smile he makes his hand into a two-fingered gun shape. He leans his arm right across me, and points it out of the window. He then pretends to shoot things out of the window, making a little pow noise with each fictional bullet. He cackles that cackle which will reverberate in my nightmares for decades to come, and puts his hand on the steering wheel to hastily avoid slaughtering another motorcyclist.
At this point, I break.
"Can you stop now? Here is fine..."
He seems to ignore us. Both of us are getting a bit more urgent.
"Jean, this is fine, thank -"
He abruptly brakes. Somehow, he understood! Furious is immediately out with the bags. I go to open the front door. It doesn't open. My hand wrenches at the handle a couple more times. Locked. My brain races -
ohfuckohfuckohfuckohfuck he's going to kidnap me and strap me to this seat and make me smell his weird stuff in the bag and give me endless amounts of meth and tweak my nipples until one of us dies
- and Jean presses a button and I almost fall out of the car, slamming the door behind me. We stand and stare at Jean. As a parting gift, he makes his finger gun once more, and, taking aim, shoots me first, then Mr Furious - pow pow. He don't react. We just stare, gormless and dumbfounded. He cackles and speeds off down the road, disappearing into the stretch of concrete and dirt. I'd like to point out that all this happens in ten minutes. Ten minutes of chaos wrapped up in a tiny, scorching metal box, racing through a wasteland. Was that Hell? Did we just meet Lucifer himself?
Furious turns to me: "Did he tweak your nipple?"
Yes. Satan's incarnate tweaked my nipple. How many people can say that?
We half-joke of Jean coming back and gunning us both like the salty, dusty dogs we are. Thankfully, he doesn't. Although if he did, it would've made a great story. We hitch a ride into the next village, which seems to be a rural red light district. We find a guesthouse, and the guy who owns it generously offers to take us up the road to a bar which he drops his son off at his evening classes. This level of domesticity is very, very welcome.
We find a bar. Tinny karaoke irritating our ears, we sit, our brains vainly attempting to rearrange the last few hours. We get drunk. Two sex workers come and join us, chatting to us, drinking some of our beer and refilling our glasses/coercing us to buy more beer. This all annoys me slightly, as I just want to be left alone. The woman attempting to talk to me realises she's on to a lost cause, and is handed a wireless mic and starts singing in Laos. I think at this point I'm losing my mind, since when she hands me the mic I get up and begin to shout my poem The War On Romance over the music. This seems like the best course of action right now. The mic is wrestled from me after about four lines. A few minutes later, she decides to entrust me with the mic once more. Foolish! I do the same thing again, probably out of some base instinct to try and have control over one aspect of my life today. Again, the mic is deftly taken from me. At this point, I suggest we leave, and, wisely, we do.
As we stagger out, we bump into the older guy from the lorry earlier that day. One hand around a pretty young woman, another round a beer, he smiles a drunken, half-remembering smile at us. We half-smile back, and get the hell out of there.
There's been enough reality today, so we head back to the guesthouse to see if our dreams can offer anything better.
Monday, 26 March 2012
Punks vs. Laos - Part 2: From Boredom to Insanity
We stand outside the bus station in Oudonxai, repeating the now familiar and surprisingly tiring action of standing with a thumb out. The scribbled directions are turning into sweaty dust in my pocket. The heat's throbbing silent, burning dubstep waves into our skin. We constantly swig at water bottles. We're tired, grumpy and dusty. Both of us are probably restraining ourselves from kicking the other one in the face.
Hitchhiking has many great elements to it, but, above all, it's one of the most intensive patience tests you can ever experience.
Fortunately, we reach Luang Prabang within the day. It's a very pretty (bland word, but the only word for it), nice (ditto) city. And, unfortunately, there's tuk tuk drivers. You'd think, escaping Thailand, that they wouldn't be around. But no, there they are, being annoying, getting in your face, jabbering incoherently in order to baffle money out of you, offering everything from rides to opium.
We get to a hostel called SpicyLaos and hung out with some pretty awesome people there. There was a chap from Arkansaw called Jeremy, who let me rip loads of music off him. A pleasure to have The Boss back in my ears. He also downloaded The Inbetweeners movie, which was comforting, predictable and incredibly funny. I still think the series is probably the most authoritative observation on suburban British teenagers. Pretty much everything you see there is exactly how they are. And, if you've never been a teenage boy brought up in suburbia, it's scarier than you could possibly imagine.
After our slightly mental journeying, it was good to stay put somewhere for a few days... although it is a bit of a mission finding things to do in Luang Prabang. There's a couple of decent bars filled with irritatingly perfect looking people and rubbish music. A plus side is the great night market where I bought some beautiful hand-stitched juggling balls and honed my haggling skills. My Mum would love the place.
Speaking of juggling, Mr. Furious, myself and a couple of other folk from the hostel went to a bar to see a circus trio, who were shamblingly fun. They had clearly completely blagged the gig on the hoof, and were basically rehearsing onstage. This all added to their charm though. What was particularly odd was the way the bar area occasionally blasted out bits of music at random. Whether they were either hinting at them to get off stage, or quite clearly telling them to fuck off, I couldn't quite gather. But, like with most things on this trip, I just accepted it as another level of weirdness being shoved into my brain.
Also, I'm reliably informed I talked in my sleep in the dormitory. Anyone who's shared space with me will attest to my nonsensical nocturnal ramblings, but this one apparently went overboard. The girl sleeping in the bed nearby mine said:
"It was like you were at a football match, shouting 'GO GO GO!'"
So yeah, turns out I don't even shut up in my sleep. There is no escape.
And that was pretty much it from Luang Prabang. Revved up to go again, Mr. Furious and I head south to Vang Vieng: the trouncing, booze-and-drugs-powered juggernaut of Laos partying. We waited for ten minutes, and a guy parks up in his pick up. He is heading to Vang Vieng. He says he will do it for 10 000 all in. We break the unspoken hitchhiker code, agree and jump in the back. Still, we get to Vang Vieng by late afternoon, and have the smug pleasure of overtaking a couple of tourist buses. Sorry guys but, honestly - pull your thumbs out and start hitching.
I believe I've covered my views on Vang Vieng in a short story I wrote a couple of weeks ago, which you can find here. However, it's worth going into a bit more detail. After a now-regulation meal and beer to celebrate not being killed and left to rot on a South East Asian rural roadside, we find another SpicyLaos guesthouse, drop our stuff, and go marching off into the unknown. And when I say "the unknown", what I really mean is "in search of various intoxicants".
Stumbling through the dark, going off road, we hear the familiar party rumble - the thundering, distant, deep bass that cuts through the pitch black. The primal calling to wreckheads world over. We come to a river which is blocking our path to the beats. And instead of trying to find a bridge, we wade through the dark water, scrambling up the muddy bank to the other side, fully formed songs forming in the darkness as we get closer and closer.
We stagger into the glitz of Smile Bar, with its raging campires and dizzying lights. We head straight for the bar, flip the menu over, and there are the previously mentioned/consumed "happyshakes" of Kho Phang Yan. A decision is made with a single look to each other and a grin. We order two, and delve into our minds for six hours. It is, frankly, fucking fantastic. We dance like chimps, babble mindless crap at people, avoid the irritatingly beautiful people playing beer pong and posing about like twats and, through doing so, meet some people who're on the level, which seems to work out just fine. After quite a while of all this, we stagger off to bed.
During the day in Vang Vieng, there is little to do apart from go tubing. I didn't bother, partly out of being contrary for the sake of it, and partly because it sounded fucking nightmarish. Basically, you go down the river in a little rubber ring thing, and stop at various bars. At these various bars, you get hammered. And that's it. There seems to be a strange delusion which grips some folk abroad, which is when there's plenty of cheap alcohol available, somehow the individual's alcohol tolerance rises. I'll let you into a secret: it doesn't. Unsurprisingly, Vang Vieng is host to many accidents and some deaths every year, and not just of dignity.
What amazes me most about this get-fucked-as-much-as-possible culture is that the individuals within it are frequently surprised when you don't want to join in. One guy comes up to me whilst I was lying in a hammock. He's a touch worse for wear at 6pm.
"What'd you do all day?" he asked.
"Err... well, I'm currently reading and lying in a hammock and enjoying the sun."
"You just seem to get hammered at night and do nothing during the day."
"Okay, I'm fine with that."
The implied question lurking beneath "what'd you do all day?" is "why aren't you getting drunk?" By all means, drink as much as you like, but why criticise me for not drinking? I felt kinda bad for him, as he was clearly bemused by how anyone could be enjoying themselves just hanging out on their own.
I found this psychology quite endemic in Vang Vieng, and as such Mr. Furious and I made it our mission to scurry off in search of small bands of really cool people have fun our way. Which, to be fair, seemed fairly similar to the way everyone was having fun, but with added scummy crustiness, swearing, over-expenditure, less posing and more chimping around.
Vang Vieng has the potential to suck you in and refuse to let you go. We stayed there five days and considered it too too long. We meet a girl who'd been there two weeks, drinking every day. She looks dazed, like she couldn't possiblyenvision a world outside of the Vang Vieng bubble. The environment of irresponsibility seems to not stop at the abuse of the individual's liver, but extends to treating other people like toys in a game. We hear about one guy who slept with a girl in our hostel, and told her that he could only have sex with the same girl three times, because it was an agreement he had with his friends (I use the term 'friends' very loosely here), otherwise he would have to down a pint of piss or something equally twattish. She didn't really take him seriously, and when it turned out he was serious, she was very hurt.
It's this kind of heartlessness that an inherently heartless environment will engender, and that's kind of sad.
That said, Vang Vieng at least has the gumption to wear its heart on its sleeve. It is what it is. Unlike Pai, with all its sinister hidden codes and hierarchies, Vang Vieng is as loud and as crass as a pair of massive brass balls banging against a pair of equally massive brass tits. Which is kind of fun to experience for a day or two, but after a while, it becomes a repetitive blur of lights and superficial noise, and we realise that there just isn't any substance to the place. Nothing to sink your teeth into, nothing to properly engage you.
Rinsed of all other possibilities, Mr. Furious and I get ready to hit the hell out of the road for Laos' capital, Vientiane...
We get to a hostel called SpicyLaos and hung out with some pretty awesome people there. There was a chap from Arkansaw called Jeremy, who let me rip loads of music off him. A pleasure to have The Boss back in my ears. He also downloaded The Inbetweeners movie, which was comforting, predictable and incredibly funny. I still think the series is probably the most authoritative observation on suburban British teenagers. Pretty much everything you see there is exactly how they are. And, if you've never been a teenage boy brought up in suburbia, it's scarier than you could possibly imagine.
After our slightly mental journeying, it was good to stay put somewhere for a few days... although it is a bit of a mission finding things to do in Luang Prabang. There's a couple of decent bars filled with irritatingly perfect looking people and rubbish music. A plus side is the great night market where I bought some beautiful hand-stitched juggling balls and honed my haggling skills. My Mum would love the place.
Speaking of juggling, Mr. Furious, myself and a couple of other folk from the hostel went to a bar to see a circus trio, who were shamblingly fun. They had clearly completely blagged the gig on the hoof, and were basically rehearsing onstage. This all added to their charm though. What was particularly odd was the way the bar area occasionally blasted out bits of music at random. Whether they were either hinting at them to get off stage, or quite clearly telling them to fuck off, I couldn't quite gather. But, like with most things on this trip, I just accepted it as another level of weirdness being shoved into my brain.
Also, I'm reliably informed I talked in my sleep in the dormitory. Anyone who's shared space with me will attest to my nonsensical nocturnal ramblings, but this one apparently went overboard. The girl sleeping in the bed nearby mine said:
"It was like you were at a football match, shouting 'GO GO GO!'"
So yeah, turns out I don't even shut up in my sleep. There is no escape.
And that was pretty much it from Luang Prabang. Revved up to go again, Mr. Furious and I head south to Vang Vieng: the trouncing, booze-and-drugs-powered juggernaut of Laos partying. We waited for ten minutes, and a guy parks up in his pick up. He is heading to Vang Vieng. He says he will do it for 10 000 all in. We break the unspoken hitchhiker code, agree and jump in the back. Still, we get to Vang Vieng by late afternoon, and have the smug pleasure of overtaking a couple of tourist buses. Sorry guys but, honestly - pull your thumbs out and start hitching.
I believe I've covered my views on Vang Vieng in a short story I wrote a couple of weeks ago, which you can find here. However, it's worth going into a bit more detail. After a now-regulation meal and beer to celebrate not being killed and left to rot on a South East Asian rural roadside, we find another SpicyLaos guesthouse, drop our stuff, and go marching off into the unknown. And when I say "the unknown", what I really mean is "in search of various intoxicants".
Stumbling through the dark, going off road, we hear the familiar party rumble - the thundering, distant, deep bass that cuts through the pitch black. The primal calling to wreckheads world over. We come to a river which is blocking our path to the beats. And instead of trying to find a bridge, we wade through the dark water, scrambling up the muddy bank to the other side, fully formed songs forming in the darkness as we get closer and closer.
We stagger into the glitz of Smile Bar, with its raging campires and dizzying lights. We head straight for the bar, flip the menu over, and there are the previously mentioned/consumed "happyshakes" of Kho Phang Yan. A decision is made with a single look to each other and a grin. We order two, and delve into our minds for six hours. It is, frankly, fucking fantastic. We dance like chimps, babble mindless crap at people, avoid the irritatingly beautiful people playing beer pong and posing about like twats and, through doing so, meet some people who're on the level, which seems to work out just fine. After quite a while of all this, we stagger off to bed.
During the day in Vang Vieng, there is little to do apart from go tubing. I didn't bother, partly out of being contrary for the sake of it, and partly because it sounded fucking nightmarish. Basically, you go down the river in a little rubber ring thing, and stop at various bars. At these various bars, you get hammered. And that's it. There seems to be a strange delusion which grips some folk abroad, which is when there's plenty of cheap alcohol available, somehow the individual's alcohol tolerance rises. I'll let you into a secret: it doesn't. Unsurprisingly, Vang Vieng is host to many accidents and some deaths every year, and not just of dignity.
What amazes me most about this get-fucked-as-much-as-possible culture is that the individuals within it are frequently surprised when you don't want to join in. One guy comes up to me whilst I was lying in a hammock. He's a touch worse for wear at 6pm.
"What'd you do all day?" he asked.
"Err... well, I'm currently reading and lying in a hammock and enjoying the sun."
"You just seem to get hammered at night and do nothing during the day."
"Okay, I'm fine with that."
The implied question lurking beneath "what'd you do all day?" is "why aren't you getting drunk?" By all means, drink as much as you like, but why criticise me for not drinking? I felt kinda bad for him, as he was clearly bemused by how anyone could be enjoying themselves just hanging out on their own.
I found this psychology quite endemic in Vang Vieng, and as such Mr. Furious and I made it our mission to scurry off in search of small bands of really cool people have fun our way. Which, to be fair, seemed fairly similar to the way everyone was having fun, but with added scummy crustiness, swearing, over-expenditure, less posing and more chimping around.
Vang Vieng has the potential to suck you in and refuse to let you go. We stayed there five days and considered it too too long. We meet a girl who'd been there two weeks, drinking every day. She looks dazed, like she couldn't possiblyenvision a world outside of the Vang Vieng bubble. The environment of irresponsibility seems to not stop at the abuse of the individual's liver, but extends to treating other people like toys in a game. We hear about one guy who slept with a girl in our hostel, and told her that he could only have sex with the same girl three times, because it was an agreement he had with his friends (I use the term 'friends' very loosely here), otherwise he would have to down a pint of piss or something equally twattish. She didn't really take him seriously, and when it turned out he was serious, she was very hurt.
It's this kind of heartlessness that an inherently heartless environment will engender, and that's kind of sad.
That said, Vang Vieng at least has the gumption to wear its heart on its sleeve. It is what it is. Unlike Pai, with all its sinister hidden codes and hierarchies, Vang Vieng is as loud and as crass as a pair of massive brass balls banging against a pair of equally massive brass tits. Which is kind of fun to experience for a day or two, but after a while, it becomes a repetitive blur of lights and superficial noise, and we realise that there just isn't any substance to the place. Nothing to sink your teeth into, nothing to properly engage you.
Rinsed of all other possibilities, Mr. Furious and I get ready to hit the hell out of the road for Laos' capital, Vientiane...
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