Juanito’s travels – Juanito's Travels

Still in Pakbeng, Laos, writing about Koh Chang, Thailand. Just saw one of the elephants from the Mekong Elephant Park, across the Mekong from us going down and taking a dip in the river. It must be their male as it was alone and having been to the park yesterday they explained the male was the only one that would go down to the river by himself, with his ever present Mahout of course. Jeez those Mahouts are dedicated. But I’ll write more about the park later. Even though I wasn’t overly impressed by Koh Chang, I feel I should finish writing something about it acknowledging that my last post was probably a bit on the dull side. I spent a lot of time writing about getting money out of ATMs, but you know these are things you need to think about when travelling. Like here in Pakbeng, there’s 2 ATMs, both are not working and nobody, except maybe the hotels, takes cards. So if you wanna eat you need money. Luckily we had brought a few thousand Thai Baht with us to Laos which the guy at the Indian restaurant exchanged for Kip after we paid our dinner bill. It was a nice place actually, thinking of going back there for lunch. But back to Koh Chang. Our second day in Koh Chang we decided to head to Khlong Phlu Waterfall because it was April, and so f*cking hot and a waterfall has water in it. It cost us around 200 baht each way, maybe 150, can’t remember. It’s a great choice to spend your time in the heat. The taxi driver agreed she would come and collect us in 2 and a half hours, which was ample time to swim, sit, and for my wife to be covered in butterflies. There’s lots of little and quite big fishes there as well that like nibbling at your feet. Some gave quite a nip actually and it felt on occasions that big chunks of skin were being taken away. I had a wonderful on my leg caused by a fellow tourist a few days earlier who carelessly whacked his backpack into my leg as he got out of the shared taxi tuk tuk thingy which I can still make out on my leg here, maybe 10 days later, or something like that, I’ve lost track. Well the fish liked chomping on bits of my wound, not sure how hygienic that is but I kept applying my tea-tree ointment I brought from Australia to try and keep it from getting infected. Which it did! I also swear by tea-tree toothpaste when travelling as it helps to avoid bacterial infections. That’s about it for the waterfall, what else can you say about waterfalls,Khlong Phlu Waterfall, a bit of a hike from the carpark, maybe 800 metres, and it takes about 10-15 minutes to walk there. It costs around 200 baht each to get in as it’s a national park. There’s a few birds about, the water is nice and refreshing as opposed to the mostly warm waters you get at the beaches that time of year. And yeah, here’s another butterfly picture! We went back to Lonely Beach after, had some lunch, went up to the hotel, had another swim and more showers then headed back down into town to have dinner having to skirt around some angry dogs on the way. If the beaches of Koh Chang were a little disappointing – though I did certainly enjoy the Lonely Beach vibe much, much more than Klong Prao Beach – partly because Lonely Beach is not that easy to get to, and with no paths you either have to get yourself a moped to drive around (presumably stoned which is probably not advisable) or walk on the road to get there. There’s no long stretches of beaches down that way you can walk along. But, if you go early in the morning you can see monkeys though! Anyway when we decided we’d like to see the islands around Koh Chang, to see if they were any better – the reports being, yes they were. So we organised a snorkelling tour of four islands near Koh Chang for the next day. You can also do 5 islands, 3 islands etc. I’d say in the end it doesn’t matter what number you visit, they are all pretty much the same, and all very nice. I don’t think you’re really getting much more value by seeing 50 in a day. You get to snorkel at each of the 4 islands, or however many you pay for, and on one, don’t ask me the name of it, you have time to wander about on the island for about an hour. The typical tour thing where they’re rushing you about so they can tick off, yes you went to 4 places and they were all islands, so you can’t complain. But, if you’re expecting the oceans to be teaming with life then get ready to be disappointed. Which is where I come to part of the title of this blog entry: where’d the sharks, rays & turtles. Inspire dog course by Ween’s classic song Where’d the cheese go? (I don’t know). We have been to Queensland’s Heron Island, which is on the Great Barrier Reef. There we saw an abundance of coral, even though it’s been bleached and damaged a bit over the years with global warming. We also saw an abundance of fish, rays, turtles and sharks, including some cute baby sharks I was snorkelling with on the last day on the island. We even saw baby turtles hatching out of the sand and a mother turtle laying turtle eggs. You also have plenty of space to swim about and enjoy the reef just off of the coast. It’s a natural paradise. That’s not the experience you’ll get on the islands tour off of Koh Chang though. They gather tourists from all parts of Koh Chang in the morning and they ship them down to Bang Boa harbour – one thing you can certainly say about the Thais is that they are super efficient at herding tourists in tourist activities. – which is full of plastic waste by the way. There they fill up dozens of boats full of tourists and then ship them off to each snorkelling spot, and while you do see a lot of fish there’s nowhere near the biodiversity you’ll see in a truly natural spot like the Great Barrier Reef. There are no rays, no turtles, no sharks, the coral is super mangy and the water, at least at that time of year (April) is super hot, like tepid bath water. Also because they have so overexploited the area there is no concept of doing things in moderation and you end up getting crawled over by tourists trying to stay afloat. So all up, the scenery above the water is pretty nice and you’ll get your nice pics to post on instagram. But the snorkelling is very shit and honestly the Thai government needs to put some effort into controlling the exploitation of its natural resources, maybe limit the amount of people visiting the islands every day or setting aside more protected areas. Because whilst I do find sharks, rays and occasionally even turtles a bit freaky, they are indicators of a healthy ecosystem. And the bottom line is the islands they take you to around Koh Chang are far from healthy. In fact I wouldn’t be surprised if they get so overexploited that they won’t be worth visiting in years to come. Frankly they are barely worth visiting now. The day trip was pleasant. If you can, go visit a natural reef in Australia or one of the pacific islands if you want to truly explore nature. Well, that was our last day on Koh Chang. I wouldn’t bother going back again, though the waterfalls, and massages on Lonely Beach are nice.

Khlong Phu waterfall koh chang thailand

Still in Pakbeng, Laos, writing about Koh Chang, Thailand. Just saw one of the elephants from the Mekong Elephant Park, across the Mekong from us going down and taking a dip in the river. It must be their male as it was alone and having been to the park yesterday they explained the male was the only one that would go down to the river by himself, with his ever present Mahout of course. Jeez those Mahouts are dedicated. But I’ll write more about the park later. Even though I wasn’t overly impressed by Koh Chang, I feel I should finish writing something about it acknowledging that my last post was probably a bit on the dull side. I spent a lot of time writing about getting money out of ATMs, but you know these are things you need to think about when travelling. Like here in Pakbeng, there’s 2 ATMs, both are not working and nobody, except maybe the hotels, takes cards. So if you wanna eat you need money. Luckily we had brought a few thousand Thai Baht with us to Laos which the guy at the Indian restaurant exchanged for Kip after we paid our dinner bill. It was a nice place actually, thinking of going back there for lunch.

But back to Koh Chang.

butterfly Koh Chang Khlong Phu waterfall thailand

Our second day in Koh Chang we decided to head to Khlong Phlu Waterfall because it was April, and so f*cking hot and a waterfall has water in it. It cost us around 200 baht each way, maybe 150, can’t remember.

khlong phlu waterfall koh chang thailand

It’s a great choice to spend your time in the heat. The taxi driver agreed she would come and collect us in 2 and a half hours, which was ample time to swim, sit, and for my wife to be covered in butterflies. There’s lots of little and quite big fishes there as well that like nibbling at your feet. Some gave quite a nip actually and it felt on occasions that big chunks of skin were being taken away. I had a wonderful on my leg caused by a fellow tourist a few days earlier who carelessly whacked his backpack into my leg as he got out of the shared taxi tuk tuk thingy which I can still make out on my leg here, maybe 10 days later, or something like that, I’ve lost track. Well the fish liked chomping on bits of my wound, not sure how hygienic that is but I kept applying my tea-tree ointment I brought from Australia to try and keep it from getting infected. Which it did! I also swear by tea-tree toothpaste when travelling as it helps to avoid bacterial infections.

fish Khlong Phlu Waterfall Koh chang thailand

That’s about it for the waterfall, what else can you say about waterfalls,Khlong Phlu Waterfall, a bit of a hike from the carpark, maybe 800 metres, and it takes about 10-15 minutes to walk there. It costs around 200 baht each to get in as it’s a national park. There’s a few birds about, the water is nice and refreshing as opposed to the mostly warm waters you get at the beaches that time of year.

And yeah, here’s another butterfly picture!

butterfly boobs oblong phlu waterfall koh chang thailand butterflies khlong phlu waterfall Thailand

We went back to Lonely Beach after, had some lunch, went up to the hotel, had another swim and more showers then headed back down into town to have dinner having to skirt around some angry dogs on the way.

If the beaches of Koh Chang were a little disappointing – though I did certainly enjoy the Lonely Beach vibe much, much more than Klong Prao Beach – partly because Lonely Beach is not that easy to get to, and with no paths you either have to get yourself a moped to drive around (presumably stoned which is probably not advisable) or walk on the road to get there. There’s no long stretches of beaches down that way you can walk along. But, if you go early in the morning you can see monkeys!

monkey on wire Koh Chang

Anyway when we decided we’d like to see the islands around Koh Chang, to see if they were any better – the reports being, yes they were. So we organised a snorkelling tour of four islands near Koh Chang for the next day. You can also do 5 islands, 3 islands etc. I’d say in the end it doesn’t matter what number you visit, they are all pretty much the same, and all very nice. I don’t think you’re really getting much more value by seeing 50 in a day.

Snorkelling Tours to Islands around Koh Chang

You get to snorkel at each of the 4 islands, or however many you pay for, and on one, don’t ask me the name of it, you have time to wander about on the island for about an hour. The typical tour thing where they’re rushing you about so they can tick off, yes you went to 4 places and they were all islands, so you can’t complain.

Snorkelling Tours to Islands around Koh Chang

But, if you’re expecting the oceans to be teaming with life then get ready to be disappointed. Which is where I come to part of the title of this blog entry: where’d the sharks, rays & turtles. Inspire dog course by Ween’s classic song Where’d the cheese go? (I don’t know). We have been to Queensland’s Heron Island, which is on the Great Barrier Reef. There we saw an abundance of coral, even though it’s been bleached and damaged a bit over the years with global warming. We also saw an abundance of fish, rays, turtles and sharks, including some cute baby sharks I was snorkelling with on the last day on the island. We even saw baby turtles hatching out of the sand and a mother turtle laying turtle eggs. You also have plenty of space to swim about and enjoy the reef just off of the coast. It’s a natural paradise.

That’s not the experience you’ll get on the islands tour off of Koh Chang though. They gather tourists from all parts of Koh Chang in the morning and they ship them down to Bang Boa harbour – one thing you can certainly say about the Thais is that they are super efficient at herding tourists in tourist activities. – which is full of plastic waste by the way. There they fill up dozens of boats full of tourists and then ship them off to each snorkelling spot, and while you do see a lot of fish there’s nowhere near the biodiversity you’ll see in a truly natural spot like the Great Barrier Reef. There are no rays, no turtles, no sharks, the coral is super mangy and the water, at least at that time of year (April) is super hot, like tepid bath water.

Also because they have so overexploited the area there is no concept of doing things in moderation and you end up getting crawled over by tourists trying to stay afloat. So all up, the scenery above the water is pretty nice and you’ll get your nice pics to post on instagram. But the snorkelling is very shit and honestly the Thai government needs to put some effort into controlling the exploitation of its natural resources, maybe limit the amount of people visiting the islands every day or setting aside more protected areas.

Because whilst I do find sharks, rays and occasionally even turtles a bit freaky, they are indicators of a healthy ecosystem. And the bottom line is the islands they take you to around Koh Chang are far from healthy. In fact I wouldn’t be surprised if they get so overexploited that they won’t be worth visiting in years to come. Frankly they are barely worth visiting now.

The day trip was pleasant. If you can, go visit a natural reef in Australia or one of the pacific islands if you want to truly explore nature.

Well, that was our last day on Koh Chang. I wouldn’t bother going back again, though the waterfalls, and massages on Lonely Beach are nice.

Snorkelling Tours to Islands around Koh Chang

Juanito’s Travels 50 yr backpacker – 1995 Jaipur. Rajasthan, India, this guy Steve from Australia, a Belgian couple, elephant rides and a dead tiger on a floor, pt21

1995

I was woken just before dawn by the conductor. They were so efficient these Indians, and super polite, I was constantly feeling like a regal gentleman, even though I was clearly a hippy with just a few dollars to his name. “Mr Royston, your stop is soon”, he said. And I woke up and looked out the window at the pre dawn light as we pulled closer to Jaipur and the Indian guy scoured and the British guy remained sound asleep.

Maybe 20 minutes later I was outside looking for a rickshaw to take me to meet Steve, who wanted me to meet him at another cheaper place he was staying by himself before we headed to the place he’d read about in his Lonely Planet that he invited me to come along to so he could share the cost. He’d written down the address of the place he was staying on a bit of paper which I unscrambled and explained to the auto rickshaw driver.

There was hardly anybody on the roads at this time. It was dusty. the place was just waking up. The cows were sitting under trees. People slept out in the open here and there. The pedal rickshaw driver drove around a bit past a few crossings and then back down some of the same street until I eventually spotted the name of the hotel Steve had told me about and got him to stop there.

I was barely able to stay awake. I sat around in the garden of the hotel under some trees with monkeys in them, clutching anything small enough for the monkeys to take as they would take it if you turned your eyes for a few seconds. The hotel had a bit of a restaurant happening outside. I was hungry and ordered some chai and whatever else they had on offer, perhaps some more chapatis, or even corn flakes and yoghurt. Steve showed up in a bit and looked up at the monkeys. “I hate those monkeys, they take anything”. He has remained as charming as when I first met him in New Delhi. He had his bags ready, he seemed pretty confident I was going to come. I wasn’t too fussed to be there, but Jaipur was an improvement on New Delhi in terms of the sound, and even had more trees and the like. It was almost suburban where we were.

We made our way to the famous hotel from Lonely Planet. I just wanted to sleep. When checking in I kept yawning.

“Cover your mouth when you yawn”, the man at reception barked.

“What, sorry, I have been travelling all night.”

“Only illiterate people don’t cover their mouth when they yawn”, he said.

‘Sorry”, I said. A few moments later, I yawned again and was so tired I forgot to raise my hand to my mouth in time. This time the guys just glared at me. We got the keys and I went sheepishly off to the room.

The room had two beds and I immediately lay down on mine after taking my shoes off and just lay and rested. Steve asked what I was going to see in Jaipur.

“I dunno”, I said, “I don’t have any guidebook or anything, I wasn’t really planning on being in India at all, so no idea, I’m gonna rest a bit first before doing anything.”

“I’m going to go to look around a bit.”

I waved him off and got in maybe a half hour power nap which left me slightly more refreshed. I got up and looked around the hotel. It had a beautiful garden that included a peacock and some fine roses. It was kind of fancy, much more than I’d be able to afford anywhere else in the world. Still it was a bit of a stretch in my meagre budget so I could only do a maximum of 2 nights there I figured.

I found Steve in the garden smoking a cigarette and drinking some chai. I sat down at the table with him. He had his Lonely Planet sitting next to him on the table closed. I pointed to it.

“Do you mind if I take a look at your guide?” I asked.

He looked at me as though I had asked him to donate a kidney. “You should have bought your own rather than bludge off someone else”.

“Woh, ok” I said. Not sure what distorted sort of childhood this guy Steve had but anyway I wasn’t going to argue.

Steve seems to regret his outburst and a minute or so later tries to explain himself. “I met a lot of people with no money in India, trying to take advantage, that’s all”.

“Up to you mate, I don’t mind”. I said. It’s funny the things that stick in your head over the decades, like some guy called Steve who wouldn’t lend me a Lonely Planet, while so many other details are lost.

He was a weird one that Steve. I got up and went back to the room to freshen up. What I really wanted was a shower. I didn’t have the energy to engage with Steve over his fancy Lonely Planet book. I had a prejudice against Lonely Planet, in my mind it wasn’t for real travellers anyway. Real travellers just went with the flow. In 2023 I’ve drawn on them extensively because they provide some great tips. I even contributed to one, helping edit the Ireland guide (I think in 1997) while doing a placement for my university writing and editing course.

But back in 1995, I had a shower and got into some fresh clothes, it always seems like a layer or dirt was scraped off your body whenever you showered in India. There was just so much dust, and in New Delhi the added smog. It will be an amazing transition when they have electric auto rickshaws and electric cars zooming around the streets.

I sat back down on my bed. Steve came in a bit later. He apologised and handed me the Lonely Planet guide to have a look at. I wasn’t too proud to take it and flicked through for some ideas as to what to do for the day. I saw there was a fort on a hill outside of town.

“This Amber Fort sounds good”, I said.

“I went there yesterday”, said Steve.

“Cool, well I might head off there. Do you want to catch up for dinner late for something.”

“Sure”, said Steve.

After a bit more resting I made my way to the fort. Jaipur was a pretty pretty city (the first pretty used in the sense of quite – when I travelled with Corinne years earlier she was struck by the phrase ‘pretty ugly’ thinking it must mean pretty and ugly at the same time, rather than quite ugly. In some ways Jaipur was also pretty ugly. It had beautiful buildings dominated by this marvellous pink colour but also its ugly side, rubbish, dust, grime, a wall where men just pissed out in the open and the urine ran between their legs into the gutter. Of course it also had its cows, I loved the cows.

When I got to the fort I spotted a line for elephants which were taking people to the top of the hill to visit the fort. In 2023 I’m more aware of the welfare of elephants, and my wife and I are planning a trip to an ethical, non-riding, elephant sanctuary in Laos. Back in 1995 I was super keen to jump on the back of one and make my way up the hill like a Raj on a tiger hunt. And it only cost around 120 rupee return – about a $1.20AUD maybe, based on more recent exchange rates.

The line was kind of like those at a theme park where they had to fill a carriage and they have a spare seat and they yell out for anyone who is there by themselves, like they sometimes do on lines to get on roller coasters at Movie World and other theme parks on the Gold Coast. A couple had climbed onto an elephant and were waiting to depart. The mahout called me up and asked whether I wanted to ride with the couple.

“Is that ok with you guys?” I asked the couple.

“Yes, that is fine.” they replied.

So I climbed on and we rocked back and forth, and side to side, as we went slowly up the hill. As soon as the elephant had departed there were at least two hawkers, who seemed to be officially assigned to the elephant, who tried to sell their wares on the way up the hill, yelling offer after offer. One was selling bracelets, scarves and other knick knacks, the other string puppets. I had no room, or interest, for either in my backpack but ignoring them, saying no, saying I wasn’t interested had zero effect on them, they were like super-hero level hawkers in India and the word ‘no’ had no effect on them, only a sale would stop them. At least the puppet man, who followed us the whole way up the hill. I think he started trying to sell the puppets for 400 rupees and by the time we’d gotten to the top was offering them to us for 200, or maybe even 100. It is like when you go to the supermarket and you see all these signs everywhere saying everything’s 50% off. Yeah, that’s only because you jack up the prices by 50% first every now and again. I’m sure this guy went on to be a consultant for Coles and Woolworths.

The couple I was sharing the elephant with ended up being Belgian. Well they also started off being Belgian. They didn’t suddenly change as they went up the hill in line with the puppet prices, perhaps starting as Swedish and working their way down through Denmark and Holland until they declared they were actually Belgian. That’s no reflection on the value of Belgians, and these ones were very, very nice. They were newlyweds and had decided to go on a trip to India for their honeymoon. They were smiley and very friendly and we chatted about our trips and where we were off to next. They had a plan to visit some bird sanctuary and of course I had no freakin idea.

In 2023 my wife and I listened to a podcast from some newlyweds who were commercialising their love by making a podcast about their honeymoon. The episode was about Chiang Mai, and they kept mentioning they were newlyweds and that they had met other newlyweds and blah, blah, blah, the usual inane shit. My wife and I are constantly on honeymoon and we don’t go making podcasts about it. I did start this blog though I guess, but that’s different. I don’t think anyone reads it and I’m merely hoping for posthumous fame, like Franz Kafka when they discovered his work and published it. It was genius. That’s all I want, people to find this when I die and say, wow, he was a genius. So just after vanity not money. I do have my principles.

I don’t remember a great deal about the Amber Fort. I guess that’s why, in 2023 we take millions of photos of everything, so we can look back and look at them and say, oh yeah, I must have visited this place and that place because I have all these photos of it. Back then in 1995, I just experienced the place, and for the most part left that back in the 90s. I do remember some room of mirrors and some beautiful architecture, and sitting and looking out at the value below looking at the view, the reddy soil, the acacias, the vultures riding the thermal winds, and the monkeys scurrying over the Parapets, the tourists walking through the place taking photos. I think I was too tired to take it all at the time. Though that happens sometimes, when you visit places. When I went to Italy with my daughter we visited Pompeii, which is amazing, but we just wandered the streets aimlessly and were kinda too tired to see how amazing it was. That’s travel.

After our fort tour, the Belgians and I got back on our elephant and headed back down the hill, with several more hawkers in tow. At the bottom, I went and bought the elephant a mango and fed it to her and patted her trunk. She didn’t seem too unhappy, no less unhappy than many of the poor Indians in India at the time. Just trying to survive. The Belgians invited me back to their hotel for a drink. I was like sure. We headed back.

Wow, these Belgians were staying at a super fancy place. It was quite literally an ex palace of a Raj. They showed me their room – don’t worry this is a g-rated blog and this is not about to degenerate into some sordid offer a threesome with the newlyweds. They were, and as far as I know still, happily married. They were just being nice and Belgian – I don’t think I’ve met any other Belgians so I’m assuming their whole country is full of nice people. Whether or not they are into threesomes, I don’t know, it’s not for me to judge, and if they are it doesn’t in any way diminish their niceness. Anyway they had a fancy four poster bed and even a real dead tiger as a carpet on the floor.

Ok it was a real dead tiger, I think it had been dead for quite some time and when it was killed attitudes were very different, so I’m not sure why you would throw out a perfectly good dead tiger skin. And besides, India has recently reintroduced cheetahs back into India and the cheetahs are even having babies, so let’s focus not he presence. I must admit the tiger did look freaking awesome.

The Belgians seemed cornered that I had no plans so they offered to take me with them to the bird sanctuary they were visiting the next day. They had hired their own personal driver so they could offer me a seat there. I was like sure and we agreed to meet the next day.

I went back to the hotel and Steve and I went out for dinner. I told him of the elephant ride and the plan to go to the bird sanctuary. He said, ‘looking at some birds is a waste of time’. I’m not sure what his plans were, I think he may have mentioned that he was going to Pushkar or something before heading back to New Delhi and back to Australia.

We chatted a bit more and ate some more dhal and chapatis. Steve went on about how grubby India was, he didn’t like the place, the rubbish in the streets, the peeing wall, the constant hassling of the hawkers. To an extent I agree, the intensity of the place was driving me a bit crazy as well. But Steve, he really hated the place, I just found it tough to handle. Steve had a greater appetite than mine and ordered around 6-7 chapatis to my 2-3. We went back to the hotel, and the next day went our own ways.

When I got back to Australia I looked up Steve. I rang up his house and his mum answered. She told me he’d killed himself. Seems he’d gone to their holiday home somewhere and shot himself. I’m not sure she was as detailed as that but she may have been. I guess it wasn’t just India that was too much for him, it was life in general. In retrospect he must have been very depressed. I felt for him and his family. R.I.P

Juanito’s Travels 50-Yr-Backpacker – 1995 New Delhi India without a visa but with a little scam Pt18 (not pt IX of Star Wars)

March 2023

There’s risks with nostalgia. Stuart, from the biodynamic farm, Inisglas, I first stayed on when I visited Wexford, Ireland, told me: “never look back”. I perhaps interpret that as never hold onto the past. Anyway Stuart said lots of things and was against floppy discs and technology in general so I will ignore Stuart and go back to reflecting on a trip from 27, now 28 years ago. Though Stuart did have a point of the need to move forward. Sometimes I want to try and recapture the spirit I had back then in 1995 rather than move on. But I also like to remember.

Patrick Leigh Fermor looked back on his trip walking from Holland to Constantinople in the early 30s in a trilogy starting with A Time of Gifts. That was a nice reflection, not trying to change the past, just remembering. It’s a nice slow read with some interesting details of the past. A Time of Gifts wasn’t published until 1977. That was the year Star Wars IV: A New Hope was first released in cinemas.

Star Wars IV: A New Hope is a very good film. One of the best of all times. It has a very simple story, lots of action. It had the character of Hammerhead, the best supporting character ever to appear in a film. I wrote a fan fiction featuring him in a story I wrote: Cuba: with Hammerhead the star of Star Wars: A New Hope. I bought an action figure of Hammerhead in the late seventies when I went to Toombul shopping centre in Brisbane with my grandfather. My cousin Alistair told me I should be getting all the main figures before I started getting the more obscure ones. But Alistair’s family was rich, I had to choose more carefully, and I couldn’t go past a dude with a head like a hammerhead.

Star Wars IV brings back wonderful childhood memories that I love to reflect on. I still have a Hammerhead action figure (even with the original weapon), along with a Jawa and Greedo. Now in 2023, I am faced with the nightmare of Star Wars Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker, one of the most disappointing films I’ve ever seen. EP VII was okayish, EP VIII got worse and was a waste of however long it took to watch it, maybe 2 hours or something. Then came Ep. IX: a confusing nostalgic homage to a great trilogy that began in 1977, and has still, yet to be surpassed. A New Hope brought so much hope. Then the hopes were slowly destroyed. Years later the originally released trilogy was followed by a prequel trilogy which did have their moments, they were ok, even looked like they were going to be good, but then Annikan just walked around being grumpy and frumpy all the time like some petulant child and in the end it just got shitter and shitter. And then came the abyss of the trilogy sequel, where the only stars were those from the 1977 film, including two non-human, non-droid stars, the Death Star and the Millennium Falcon. Those began the era where the writers couldn’t get away from their nostalgia for what was once good, where not one new idea was created, where they created another Death Star, like they had been stuck in the tractor beam of that original Death Star since 1977, which meant the best they could do was now create a new Death Star which was now the size of a planet.

The sequel is full of characters who die and then come back to life and save lightsabers from being chucked into fires and having chats with their sons. Where Palpatine comes back to life and wants to take over the universe again and the character Stoke or Snoke or something was really Palpatine. Where all the actors can do is keep yelling out “Poe!” or whatever. They’re always yelling! When Luke yelled it sounded like he was yelling for a reason. When the new ones yell I’m left asking: What the feck are they yelling about? And they just keep flying around to places to find some triangle thing which will show them how to get to some other place they need to go to to destroy a new star fleet filled with star cruisers which, like the Death Star, can destroy whole planets, but like there’s heaps of them, thousands or something – must be cheaper in CGI to just make one and then copy it hundreds of times. I couldn’t tell you how Ep. IX ends, I’ve struggled to get halfway through it and not sure I can bear the pain any more.

But enough of the horrific side of nostalgia and back to my own reflections of adventures past, in the lead up to my new adventures in a few weeks.

1995: Maybe November

After the 20 odd days in France at the Vipassana meditation centre, and hitchhiking from Paris to London with Beth, it was time to try and make my way back to Australia.

My Thai Airways ticket had options to stop in India and Thailand on the way. I had to stop in Bangkok, even just to change planes. India was an optional stop. All I wanted to do was go home, but when I booked my ticket in Paris, at a travel agent, before the time of online bookings, before leaving for London, they only had a seat available to New Delhi, India, where I’d have to wait at least a week before getting another seat from India to Bangkok, then Bangkok to Melbourne. I’d at least only have to spend one night in London before heading off.

I had about £80 to cover the 16,800 kms from London to Melbourne. I spent around £10-15 staying a night in London. I probably got a slice of pizza for a couple of pounds. I had to get out of London otherwise I’d go broke: Down and Out in Paris and London. London felt that way at the moment, I felt I had a pretty good time in Paris. I always love Paris. My friend Howie wasn’t too impressed with it. He also thought Laos was so-so. I’ll be finding out about Laos at the end of April (2023).

My first leg back to Australia via New Delhi posed another challenge. My visa for India, which I got before leaving Australia, had expired. It was one of those ones that went from the day you stamped it and this one lasted 3 months. The three months were up about 3 months or so ago. I looked at getting another visa but it cost £20 and would take 2 days to get. I couldn’t afford 2 more nights in London or the £20 for the visa. Figuring if they caught me in New Delhi they’d deport me towards Australia I thought I’d just risk it. I wasn’t too worried about deportation at that point having almost been deported the first day arriving in London at the beginning of my trip.

I got up early the next day and was heading into the tube somewhere around Earls Court, perhaps Earls Court station around 5.30am. I think I had to wait a little until the first train to Heathrow. I looked at tickets out to the airport and it cost something ridiculous like £12. Maybe it was only £6, but it felt like a fortune at the time and any amount I spent meant breaking a precious £ note and getting coins which couldn’t be converted to rupee in India. Even though it would take a big hit from my remaining funds I couldn’t bring myself to jump the gate. Better to get out of the place with a little less money than get arrested on the way to the airport.

They didn’t ask to see my Indian visa when I was checking in to the plane with my blue backpack, and by mid-morning I was heading in the right direction on my final legs. I was out of Europe.

I slept a fair bit on the way to New Delhi and I didn’t feel too bad when I got there. I lined up for immigration when I arrived and a big scary looking man with a big hipster – before hipsters really took off 20 years later – moustache looked at my passport, he looked at me, he looked closely (apparently) at my expired visa then looked at me again, then without a word he stamped my passport and let me enter India. I shrugged my shoulders. ‘Whatever’ I thought, if they let me in, that’s on them. Now I’d just have to wait it out in India for a week or so. At least it was a place where my remaining £40 could get me somewhere. But of course it wasn’t going to be that easy and I was about to fall for another small scam, within my first minutes of arriving. This wasn’t a scam of the scale I’d had in Bangkok on the way over to Europe but it still cost me a bit.

I walked out of the terminal and was hit by the heat and the haze of dust glowing with pinks, purples and oranges of an Indian sunset. I was entering what seemed to be the largest, most chaotic car park in the universe. There were thousands and thousands of cars, and even more thousands of people, cooking things, selling things, yelling at each other, yelling at me, trying to get me to take a taxi. I was pretty sure there were a few donkeys and perhaps an elephant in amongst the throng. There were a lot of cows and dogs for sure.

I chose a taxi about 50 metres from the exit. I asked the driver to take me to the backpacker area which I knew was around Connaught Place. We drove along a very long dusty road, there were more cows, many more people, and more dogs around.

“Sir, that area of Connaught Place is dangerous at the present time. We have Hindu/ Muslim troubles. It is not safe. I can take you to a nice safe area, with nice hotel”.

It was before the times of the internet so there was no way to check if there really was Hindu/ Muslim troubles. I kind of doubted it, and felt a bit like a scam was coming on, but figured I could probably cover a hotel for a couple of days while I waited for the $200 to be sent to me from Australia via Western Union, which I’d asked my family to lend me before leaving Europe. So I went where the guy took me.

When I got to the hotel I explained to them that I was waiting on money and could fix them up when that arrived in the next few days. I rang my sister and she even tried to pay for the hotel with a credit card. But it was 1995, and the hotel guys wouldn’t take a credit card, they wanted cold hard cash. There wasn’t even an ATM around to get cash transferred and withdrawn. So I just had to wait. The hotel agreed to put me up for an unspecified amount. I knew I’d be hit with an unrealistically high bill but I had a roof over my head for a few days, until my money got transferred, and it was a pretty good roof, a fairly decent hotel.

I did get out for a walk on my own in the early morning and explored the neighbourhood a bit. There were some guys making yoghurt out in the open street with milk from cows that were wandering around eating marigolds and cardboard from rubbish heaps. There was a guy with a dancing bear trying to get money from people. The kind of scene you see on those animal cruelty ads on TV – if you watch TV anymore. I got a photo of the first street I saw with a lady in a sari walking down it and a dog in the smoggy haze. Like today it’s a very polluted city. They need electric cars. Which I’m sure they’ll have by the next time I visit.

After the first night the hotel must have gotten nervous that maybe this hippy wouldn’t pay up. They kept a minder around for me to make sure I didn’t run off without paying. It was a bit awkward. The hotel took me around to a few highlights of New Delhi. I went to the Red Fort for a bit. There was a sad looking cobra in a little basket and a million people, cows, dogs, and perhaps even a donkey or camel. It was insane. The actual fort provided a little break from the craziness. I looked up and in one of those arched windows typical of Mughal architecture a woman was brushing her long silky hair oblivious to the throng of people and the noise down below.

A couple of young German guys arrived at the hotel and were staying in the room next to me. I ended up buddying up with them a bit. I find the young Germans can be so enthusiastic and often bound with joy and energy – just like us young Australians (True Blue or otherwise – see previous post if you don’t get that bit). One of the guys climbed over the balcony which was adjacent to mine and scared the shit out of me when he opened the glass door from the outside. I was ready to stab him with the Swiss Army knife I’d gotten from Corrine the year before, and which I always carried with me, which was even allowed on the planes in those days. He invited me out for some food. They wanted to go to some fancy place, but I still had very little money and had been going to the cheapest places I could find. I took them across the road, somehow slipping away from my minder and took them to a place that sold these vegetable patty things in soft white bread for about 4 rupees each – maybe 10 or 20 cents. I was really making sure the £20 or whatever I had left worth of rupees would last me until the money transfer arrived. I also had one traveller’s cheque left which was a small note, maybe another $20AUD. I don’t know what happened with the German guys, I think they were just there for a night.

The hotel guys kept taking me to the Western Union office to see if my transfer had come through. I didn’t tell them how much I’d asked for. When, on the morning of the third day the money still hadn’t arrived, they kicked me out of my room but said I could stay with the hotel staff workers. That was an interesting experience, they drove me around to an area of New Delhi I’d never have seen as a tourist, I suppose a typical local area. The workers all stayed in one room and we all had dhal and chapatis for dinner, sitting on the floor, just using our hands and the chapatis to scoop up the dhal. I was happy with that. There were about 4-5 hotel workers in the room. I think they didn’t just work at the hotel, they also worked for the hotel’s associated travel agency, but I wasn’t clear about that. I’d seen most of them over the last few days, often they’d be napping in the car they drove me around in, or napping on couches in the small travel agency office which they’d taken me to when they got sick of my money not arriving, to hang around. After dinner they rolled out some mats and the 5-6 of us slept on the floor taking up most of the space in the room. Years later my mum, son and daughter rented an AirBnB in Shinjuku, Tokyo which claimed to be able to sleep as many people in about the same space. Read more about the shonky Shinjuku AirBnB and our trip to the snow monkeys.

Possibly on the morning of the 4th day when my minders took me to the Western Union office again my money had arrived! And I had my $200! I got some cash and the rest in traveller’s cheques I think. Well I must have ended up with a few more travellers checks – which would again pose a few problems over the next few days, but I’ll come to that.

With my $200 I could finally free myself from my minders. I went back to the travel agent and braced myself for the bill, knowing it would be a lot. The travel agent guy did some sums, adding up trips to the red fort, hotel accommodation etc, I’m pretty sure he was just Putin random numbers into a calculator that would add up to the sum he had in his head, and then he announced, “$200 USD”.

Having mentally prepared myself for this moment I unleashed a tirade of abuse: “You fucking scammers, there is no way that place is worth $200 USD, my father is a diplomat (posing as a semi-retired carpenter driving taxis on the Gold Coast) and you’ll be in big trouble.” I was playing a role I’d rehearsed in my head for days, make as much noise and fuss as possible and keep whatever money I needed to survive the rest of my Indian leg at least. “I don’t have that fucking money, I only have $100 AUD and that is all I will pay which is still probably double what I actually owe you scammers” and blah, blah, blah. I felt kinda bad as I’m not usually like that but I needed to look after myself. The lower level workers who’d shared a floor with last night just gathered around, interested in the entertainment on an Aussie going ballistic.

“Enough with your fuckings this and fuckings that, you are being a very rude person”, said the travel agent guy and he took the $100 AUD, form his lack of protest I could tell I was being well and truly fleeced even at that price, but less fleeced that I would have been so I was ok with that. After the exchange was done and the yelling died down I said, “sorry, I’m just tired and want to get out of here”. He just looked at me. But it wasn’t quite done. I still didn’t have my luggage. The boss guy sent a worker off to get it. I don’t know where it was but it seemed to take a long time to get it. I was starving so I asked if there was any food around. The boss guy signalled to one of the workers to go get me something. He came back with some dhal in a clay pot. I gave him about 5-10 rupees. I was starving so I just ate the dhal with my fingers. The boss guy looked at me and said, “without chapati, what a waste”.

It was an awkward wait around with the travel agency guys. They kept giving me dirty looks because of all my swearing and carrying on. It was worth it to have $100 in my pocket. When the bag arrived I headed straight to Connaught Place to find a cheap backpackers to stay. There weren’t any Muslim/ Hindu problems. At least none that made it unsafe at the moment.

Juanito’s Trables 50-Yr-Backpacker – 1995 Vipassana in Le Boise Planté Pt17

I’ve left this post in draft for a few months now. My wife and I have moved from Canberra to the Gold Coast – where I grew up. We went to my Palm Beach Currumbin high school this morning to buy fruit and veggies at the Farmer’s Market there. It was where I went to year 11 and 12 in 88 & 89, where I met Christophe on my first day – my best friend featured in earlier blog posts – and hung out with Billy, the born-again Christian with an Egyptian background. I think he might have been born in Egypt perhaps, but his family had to flee when his dad read the bible, something frowned upon in the Egyptian Christian tradition he was from. There were arguments in the family and a knife was pulled by his brother, Billy’s uncle. The things people get upset about. Billy’s mum made awesome Egyptian sweets and other food, we were always treated to some nice things when we went over there. I first dislocated my shoulder at Billy’s house when we were playing handball with him, Christophe and I think our Lebanese friend Pascal. I once did a short scene in drama class with Pascal about racism. I managed to be racist against Pascal. Not the first time I was racist. I was a shit in that respect, and not just to Pascal. Hopefully I have learnt my lesson in that respect and certainly try and avoid passing on any lingering racist attitudes.

I was shocked the other day when my ageing aunt came out with some racist musings about how she was a ‘True Blue Aussie’ like Bryan Brown and that my cousin’s child, her grandchild was not, as his mum, her daughter-in-law is Filipino. I was shocked, but can’t say I didn’t hold such attitudes in the past. My love of history has led me to realise though that there are no ‘True Blue Aussies’ (which is a thinly veiled way of saying ‘pure white’ dare I say Ayran Aussies), and that we are all multi-cultural. Like my racist Aunt who had a mother who was Irish – who themselves were considered inferior by the English for centuries, and a great grandfather who was Chinese – a fact that only materialised when a few of our family did some DNA testing. Looking back I could see my great uncle Cyril looked a lot like a Chinese front the Guangzhou region. Sadly our family were so racist nobody ever admitted that we had that Chinese ancestry. Anyway, I own my own historical racism and I’m trying my best to rectify it. I realise now I don’t think any of us are born racist, we’re taught to be racist as we go. Not that I want to pick on Bryan Brown, but I’m guessing his connection to Australia doesn’t date back 60-80,000 years like the First Nation’s people who were dispossessed by the racist, and anything but benign British Empire.

Moving on though.

Planning for my 50th year backpacker trip continues. I bought an actual backpack at Pacific Fair a few weekends ago, it’s yellow, not blue like the original I had from 1995. I’ve booked a train trip from Vienna to Venice and paid for a train ticket between Salerno and Palermo, Sicily which we’re going to do in a day, around eight hours or sleeping, playing cards and watching the Italian and Sicilian landscape from the window. I know they’re both in Italy but I like the sound of keeping Sicily separately.

Back in 1995, I was still in France at the Vipassana meditation centre.

What more can I say about Vipassana Meditation? It changed my life and led to deeper insight into the nature of my existence, and of all existence which is no mean feat. Vipassana in the ancient Pali language literally means ‘insight’, or close enough to use the word ‘literally’ literally (not sure where to put the quotation marks on that one – could have gone for the 2nd literally actually). I don’t meditate anymore. I’m sure I’d benefit from it. I feel the next sentence I write should contain the words ‘I should get back into meditating’. Let’s see.

It’s been many years since I last did a Vipassana meditation course. I did it in the Blue Mountains west of Sydney. I’ve also written of my 10-day course in Herefordshire, England, which I did at the start of my trip in 1995, in a previous 50-Yr-Backpacker blog post, and another time when I went to meditate with Kosio and my RMIT uni friend Evan Karayanidis, gets itself a chapter of my ‘book’ The Adventures of Kosio and Juanito (and Corinne). So you can get details from there if you like.

There are different Vipassana traditions though, the one I did was in the tradition of Goenka, which draws on Burmese traditions. The Vipassana centres around the world are set up in very much the same way. Men and women have separate sleeping, dining and exercise areas. The meditation hall is also divided between men and women. I’m not sure how they deal with people who don’t identify with either sexes or are fluent. I guess they have to pick the side they’re most comfortable with and keep with that for the 10 days. There’s a spot at the back where they could perhaps sit in the middle.

In France, in around October/ November (I’m still not completely sure) 1995, I had agreed to serve on courses rather than sit one. That is, I helped support the running of the courses, by cooking, cleaning etc, rather than sitting silently for 10 days. Serving on a course at some point was part of the meditation technique, putting others before oneself, selfless service. Selflessness does benefit oneself anyway so in some ways it’s a good way to be selfish and benefit others, which is better than selfishness that doesn’t better others I guess.

It was the first time I’d served on a course.

There were a few differences with service on a Vipassana course as opposed to sitting a course. For one, you could talk. You could also mingle with the opposite sex in the kitchen area – you still had separate facilities and sleeping quarters for females and the males, and you couldn’t have sex.

Instead of meditating all day, you meditate 3 hours a day during the whole group meditation sessions where everyone meditated in the meditation hall. You would think nothing much could go wrong with those few little differences, but I managed to get in trouble. More on that in a bit.

They were a cool bunch at the meditation centre. Most had been to India, where Goenka first expanded the Vipassana centres and which was the historical home of the Buddha. Having travelled to India most could also speak quite good English. Good, as my French was bordering on non-existent, but I did end up learning the French names for most vegetables, or des légumes.

There were a couple of guys I’d met at the English centre who showed up in France. Beth, this English tapestry expert and some Polish Woman with a very round, cute face. There were also about 7 French, mostly guys but there was maybe one woman, and a German guy, who complained that the French would always speak French rather than English, and perhaps 1 other person from some other country.

The first few days I was at the centre, before the start of the first course I was to serve on. We mostly did gardening and cleaning, which is also service. We’d meditate at least 3 times a day, in the morning, around midday and in the evening. We all helped prepare our meals. Unlike when you were doing a course as a server you got three meals a day. We had a decent breakfast and lunch that we all ate together and then we had a light evening meal which we often prepared ad hoc.

Des légumes were delivered to the centre, they were amazingly fresh and tasty, completely unlike the veggies we got in Australia. There was a small vegetable garden a bit away from the centre, which was still part of the centre’s property, but out of bounds to those taking courses who were restricted to the meditation hall, their quarters and a small outdoor area where they could get a little bit of exercise a few times a time. The veggie patch was just a short walk up the road from the main centre, it still had a few courgettes, potatoes and tomatoes going from the summer which we collected and took back to add to dinner, which makes me think I probably arrived some time in October, as by the time November came about there was too much frost about for these type of things to survive.

As it was a fully vegetarian place there was also a large assortment of dry beans, lentils and chickpeas to add some protein to the meals. The milk, le lait, from la vache, was collected in big metal milk containers from a farm down the road. I drove the van down once with one of the French guys who I liked, as he was a very hippy type. I didn’t have a licence and didn’t really know how to drive too well, but I managed. I kept asking the French guy to remind me to drive on the right, rather than the left, as it didn’t come natural to me. We saw a huge owl on the way that night, it swooped down from the trees over the van.

A day or two after I arrived a meditation course started. Our chores were then focussed almost entirely on feeding the 60 or so students and cleaning up after them. So a lot of food prep and dishwashing. I made bread a few times for them and also a kind of mozzarella style cheese I learnt to make in Ireland which I prepared using lemons to curdle the milk and then adding salt and hanging in a cheese cloth overnight to get rid of some of the moisture. I only did that once as the centre manager said it was too expensive.

As servers, we all had to watch a VHS video of Goenka explaining to us the importance of service and reminding us to also keep the 5 precepts of buddhism. Got to love VHS with its Ring-like magnetic lines running through it, kind of like a link to the Other Side.

Everyone helped prepare the breakfasts, lunch and a light supper. There was this English guy, who showed up to serve on the course who kind of took charge of the meal cooking. He obsessively tried to sort through lentils to find little rocks, which seemed, well, obsessive. The French guy who collected me from the village was the head boss. He did the food ordering and stuff. He used to be some maître d at a hotel. He was nice and well organised.

We had a bit of free time after lunch so we could just walk around and hang out a bit.

During the first course I served on I was pretty chilled and relaxed. I chatted a fair bit with Beth and the Polish girl as we peeled and chopped vegetables and the like. The meditation teacher was this American guy. He came up to me one day and said I had to stop talking so much and so loudly as it was disturbing the silent meditators. My voice does carry. He seemed stressed. He should meditate more I thought. I’ve been waiting 27 years to express that come back. Perhaps I should meditate more which may mean I wouldn’t hold on to such pettiness so strongly. I also remember a time some kid stole my clutch-pencil for me in class in like year 6 or 7. It was one of those pencils with a plastic casing and a ‘clutch’ to hold in a lead (really graphite) which you didn’t have to sharpen as you just pressed up more lead (graphite) and voila (another French word) you have some more lead. Anyway some little prick stole it and even though I don’t need or want my clutch pencil anymore – it was green by the way – I still wish all sorts of misfortune and unluckiness on the person who did it.

Meditation supposedly helps you deal with such deep down attachments that are making you miserable. I bet the person doesn’t even remember taking the pencil – though I suspect the person knew exactly what the fuck they were doing.

Just focus on your breath. Watch it go in and out. Watch the rage rise and pass away. Rise and pass away. Fucking prick, in, let it go, out. You don’t actually say anything like that when you meditate, or at least the technique doesn’t teach you to do that. It teaches you to just observe.

Soon the first course had finished and a new one was due to begin in a couple of days. Us servers went back to doing gardening and the like. We all took a walk to a nearby village one day and had a look around. I had the best apple I’d ever tasted in my life on the way. It was on a tree hanging over the fence on the road we were walking on. It was so good that I tried to find the actual tree on Google maps years later. Just like in that movie Lion, where the guy tries to find the village where he was born using Google maps and then one day he finally finds it and goes and finds his mum who he was separated from when he was a young kid and fell asleep on a train. I think I actually did find that apple tree, I swear!

The first course had taken its toll, I realised it was time for me to go back to Australia and, as I had done at the start of the journey, I had miscalculated and had now run out of money. I did a calculation and it seemed after staying in Paris a few nights and buying that avocado, I probably didn’t have enough to even get back to London to get my flight back. I certainly wasn’t going to Barcelona to try and find Agatha, who had pretty much ghosted me, just as Corinne had.

I rang up my mum – who my wife and I live with at the moment as we’re trying to save money to buy a house, and well, she has 5 bedrooms and only uses one and we can use the whole top level, and she lives 800 metres from the beach so it’s a great set-up in its own right – crying and asking if she could lend me a little money so I could make it back, she said leave it with her and she’d see what she could do. I said I was ok for now, I would serve another course where I’d be fed, and have a bed and showers and all so it was all fine.

I think that day I walked into the forest that bordered the mediation centre and just sat under a tree for a few hours being one with nature.

Beth sat the next course so I didn’t have anyone to chat to in the kitchen really. She was a chatterbox as well to be fair, just my voice is deeper.

A Romanian woman called Elina came to serve on the next course. We did chat a little but I did the ‘right’ thing and didn’t gossip excessively with her. I did find out a little bit about her though. She said she was an actress. I joked and said, does that mean she was a waitress? She said no, she was a working actress. As we didn’t talk a lot towards the end of the course I asked for her address and started writing to her. I still write to her on occasions after nearly 27 years. I tried to catch up with her in Paris last time I was there a few years ago. But she was off filming. She does some weird stuff, which I like. She’s often semi-naked.

It turned out she really was a working actress. She was in Schinlder’s List and an episode of Seinfeld. However, she was discovered by a film director in the USA called Hal Hartley when she was a waitress, so I wasn’t far off the mark.

The American guy was replaced by a Swiss guy on the second course I served on. He was much more chilled and brought Swiss chocolate with him for the servers to eat. I ate too much one night and my body wasn’t used to it. Since I’d been obtaining from sexual activity it had all been pent up and the chocolate seemed a catalyst for my libido to go into overdrive. My Skin also got itchy. I tried going to have a shower to regain some balance, but afterwards I just had to have a wank and let it all out. There were a few stains on the sheet.

The second course also finished. As everything does. I’d managed to book myself a seat on a plane leaving from London in a few days so as soon as the course ended I said goodbye to Elina and hitched a ride with Beth, who was also heading back towards England, and some French girl who had done the two courses back to back, so she’d been meditating for like 20 something days in a row. We visited the French girl’s flat in Paris, it was just a little thing with a shared toilet in between her floor and the one below. She also lived with her mum, as my wife and I now do. We walked around Paris a bit and then Beth and I had to turn our attention to where we were staying for the night.

Beth said we could get a bed at Shakespeare bookshop. It turned out we couldn’t, we ended up getting a place at the California Hotel, or some name like that. We had contemplated sharing a room but I stipulated we definitely wanted separate beds. I don’t know if it was ever even remotely on the cards, but that was perhaps the last chance to have actual sex on my European tour and I was too Buddhist to even give it a go. Like I said though, not sure even if it was remotely ever on the cards!

The next day Beth and I hitchhiked from London to Paris. I won’t write about that again here, just click on the link above to check it out.

After Paris and London, the next leg of my journey was India.

Juanito’s Travels 50-Yr-Backpacker Zen Cleaning Robot, fiestas, mas drama y thinking of moving to County Sligo 1995/2022 BlogPt11

2022

I haven’t focussed on why I started this blog for a while, that is planning for my 50th birthday world trip. It turns out planning a 50th trip is a lot more complicated than planning a 22 year-old trip. When I was 22, in 1995 – for most of the year at least, I turned 23 in December – I didn’t think about jobs, kids, any wives, retirement savings or anything like that. I was like a bird that could just fly off and sit in a tree for a while when the desire took me. A simple life. I could just pack my blue backpack with a few things and hit the road.

Now, I research guidebooks, try and find the best time to travel to fit in with plans to move back to my hometown of the Gold Coast in Queensland, while maintaining a job here in Canberra where I’ve worked for various departments of the Australian government for the last 15 1/2 years. Thinking, should I quit my job, get a payout, travel around the world and then return and try and find another job, or should I try and keep my Canberra job, use up all my Long Service Leave and Annual leave, travel the world, visiting my wife’s family in Mexico, and having a 50th birthday party, on the way, then return to the Gold Coast and find another job, hopefully with enough savings to live off until I do.

Life was much simpler in 1995 when I was 22 and 2022 was some freakishly high number I could hardly fathom, where the Zen Cleaning Robots had taken over all the mundane jobs of the world leaving us humans to just run around having fun in free houses, rather than post-pandemic fears, rising housing prices, and, just to keep it interesting, part II of the 1850s Crimean War where Russia fought the West (and Turkey) for control of Sevastopol and other such strategic places on the Black Sea, which has also managed to drive up the price of lettuces here in Australia to $10 a head.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, people need to learn history, how often seemingly forgotten events from hundreds, or even thousands, of years ago can affect us and influence the current era.

But back to 1995.

1995

I returned to Wexford one summer’s afternoon, after visiting Agatha, Ines and the girls in Dublin. I think for once I got the train back to Wexford, as I’d managed to save a small amount of money over the last months and I couldn’t be bothered trying to hitch. When I arrived back in Wexford I had to walk from Wexford town out to Inisglas, in The Deeps, around 14-15 kms.

About halfway back the blackest of black clouds covered the sky which, moments earlier, had been clear blue and sunny. It was a most ominous sight. It came out of nowhere. Maybe not nowhere, it seemed to be from the direction of the Irish Sea. The elements erupted. A gale started blowing. Rain started pouring from the sky. The world turned black. Black as the night’s sky. Then the lightning started. Lighting strikes came down every 3-4 steps. 1,2,3 then a thunderous thunder clap. 1,2,3 and the ground shook like an electric bomb, and then another, and then some more. So loud. Whipping down from the heavens with a crack so intense it made my spine shiver, my hands shake. So terrified. I didn’t dare look up to see where the lighting was landing. It was close. Metres away close. No gap between the light and sound. No time to count to 1. How close to death I was, any step now I thought. I walked closer to the trees hoping they might take the brunt of any lighting strike, pulling my chin to keep the rain from my chest. No escaping it though. I kept walking. 20 terrifying minutes or so later, looking at my feet, drenched with rain. It was gone. Quiet. Just for the sounds of the water dropping from the leaves of the trees.

I can’t remember many times I felt so close to death than those 20 minutes. Apart from the time the Thai Airways’s plane’s engines had failed – twice – after coming out of Bangkok a few months earlier. Or that time Luke had boiled up a whole bag of magic mushrooms that Matt had picked on his birthday and put in the freezer in the house we shared in Newcastle and given me a whole glass without alerting me to the phenomenal mind-fucking strength he’d made it. I mean most people just put in 3 or 4 mushrooms. That’s more than enough! What psycho puts a whole fucking kilo or something in? I ended up at a pizza shop that night asking a waiter to call an ambulance because I’d OD on mushies. But as I waited I saw a dog and started feeling better and decided to follow the dog to Sydney or somewhere.

Inisglas was also changing. The Buddha went on about change all the time. I would hear it everyday in my Vipassana mediation courses. Change, change. Everything’s always changing. If you get attached to things without recognising they will sooner or later change, you will be miserable.

I wasn’t feeling that miserable at the time, so perhaps I wasn’t that attached. But there were certainly changes afoot.

Nora and Stuart hooked up. Because Nora and Stuart hooked up, Frankie and I were now sharing the little space above or near the flour mill near Anthony and Eve’s house as Nora had moved to the main house. Frankie wasn’t too happy about the whole thing but he accepted it with sad dignity and continued to tend to the vegetable garden, even though most of the community, including myself, weren’t pulling their weight in that respect. Mind you I did continue to help Frankie out, picking veggies, mounding up potatoes, but it was more like a part time thing.

I also kept helping Stuart with the cow milking and yoghurt and quark making from time to time. Frankie helped me once when I drank a bunch of fresh unpasteurised milk straight from the milk bucket and ended up throwing up. He was a really nice guy. I think I’d discovered that day I might have also been intolerant to milk and asked Eve whether we could buy some soy milk during the weekly shopping run. Anthony, already upset that we had a freezer full of a dead cow that nobody was eating as we always made vegetarian meals, rolled his eyes in regards to the idea of milk intolerances. He also said Plato was dead set against people eating beans because it ruined their philosophical capacity or some crap like that. Sorry, but if the Buddha and Plato were in a fight the Buddha would shit on Plato and his beans any day, even when he was in his unhealthy self-deprivation period before he found the middle path.

Nora’s hooking up with Stuart meant Stuart’s son was getting more attention and being slightly less feral and pooing on the front lawn much less. But it meant Nora’s son getting a bit upset as he obviously as less attention was being given to him.

The kids in general were like community farm kids, roaming about like free range chickens most of the day and occasionally getting into trouble. One morning they all came in screaming and yelling and us adults all sprung into action wondering what the heck was going on. After more screaming it transpired that apparently they’d all been down to the beehives and decided to whack the sides of the beehives with sticks, which the bees objected to. They were covered in bee stings. I think the homoeopathic vet had some lotion to put on the hundreds of stings. They all survived.

The homoeopathic vet also gave a cow that had eaten too much clover, and was thus getting bloated, some plain old dishwashing detergent. She held her nostrils and poured it down her throat. You’d probably charge someone £50 for that.

Then there was Jay. Jay had bought himself a donkey, and a cart, and was making plans with Anushka, or whatever the quiet German girl’s name was, to travel around Ireland picking winkles and smoking grass, while kipping on the cart. He was going to leave in a few weeks. Just at the start of Autumn. Not that I had any idea at the time as I hadn’t read or seen Lord of the Rings, but it sounded a bit like something a hobbit would do.

Michael from Denmark was getting tired of Ireland. He was planning to go back to Denmark I think, or perhaps go work with the other Danish people at the disabled home, where, I think, his ex-girlfriend was still working, but where he’d also get a real wage, which was not forthcoming at Inisglas due to its philosophy of not really making money from the farm despite it’s great potential.

Tron was looking into some biodynamic program somewhere else in Ireland or Scotland or Norway or something, so was soon leaving the place.

Ross, being on the run from the UK police, was happy to keep low and remain in place with his chickens, baconers and porkers.

And I, well I had saved a little money, but I wanted to save more, so I started looking into WWOOFing opportunities elsewhere in Ireland where all my food and board was included, so I could save all my dole. I had found a place in my granny’s home County Sligo, in fact around the area of her home town Tubbercurry, also spelt Tobercurry on occasions. I was going there in a few weeks so I was getting ready for that.

But there would be one big event before that move happened.

Inisglas’ main manor house was in disrepair, and since the farm barely made any money, there was no way to fix it. So Stuart had the idea of organising a music festival where we could sell tickets and put the proceeds towards fixing the place.

He turned out to be quite the organiser and got a few local bands to play at the event for free. He even managed to get his friends from a band called Elephant Walk, or some name like that, a folk/ world music outfit who’d played at Glastonbury. So we had a pretty good line up. To add to that, the guys at Inisglas decide to perform a few songs ourselves. We decided on Tears in Heaven by Eric Clapton, and two other songs I can’t remember. I was only singing choruses in those so I didn’t pay as much attention to them.

We decided for our performance we’d dress up like women. There was Frankie, Michael, Stuart and I, plus some googley-eyed German who’d recently arrived on the farm as a part of some farm stay thing he’d organised to learn biodynamic techniques. Tron was happy as he finally had someone on the biodynamic farm, besides Anthony and Eve who started the community, who was actually interested in biodynamics.

I liked Googly-eyed Person, but wasn’t there long enough to remember his name. He seemed like a good person.

We practised our songs for weeks and learnt all the words to Tears in Heaven which are still in my head somewhere today I’m sure. We did up posters, and put them up around town. Stuart got a spot on the local radio station to promote the event and after a few weeks, concert day was here.

It was a beautiful sunny day, though another summer storm threatened in the evening.

We decided that they Inisglas crew would start the event, so we donned our dresses like brides on a wedding day and made our way out for our big performance. Stuart had a nice slim dress which was in 1920s’ style. He even had a bit of lippy from Nora. Frankie, Michael and Googly-eyed German guy also had nice dresses. I was very happy with my dress, it was a lilac number, kind of thing you might see a Mexican woman wear on her sweet 15. I had really long hair, and the face of my great-grandmother from Sligo, so I think many in the crowd were thinking I might be the real deal, if it wasn’t for the obviously hairy legged men besides me. After Tears we had a more upbeat number and I went wild swinging my hair about. We had a ball.

The crowd was good and I think in the end we had a few hundred come along. We’d tried to get a liquor licence but were refused because we were holding the event on a Sunday, which was a harder day to get official permission to serve drinks given it was the Lord’s day. We got around the ‘law’ by having a game where you threw darts at a dart board, and if you hit a particular number we’d give you a free beer. It cost £3 to enter. After some confusion people realised the special number was any number, and even if you couldn’t hit the board we’d still give you a beer to console you. We kept making people throw the darts though as it was funny.

I’m sure if the liquor licensing people had come our whole scheme would have quickly fallen apart.

We also had sandwiches made with bread Michael and I had baked, some cheesy buns, also made at Inisglas, and home made cordial. Michael and I were the main bread makers at the time as Jay had moved more into beekeeping at that point and was prepping for his donkey-cart tour.

The rest of the real bands played throughout the evening and much craic was had by all. It did rain for a bit in the late afternoon and many of the families with young kids went off, leaving the harder core revellers. We ended up finishing up late into the evening smoking weed and drinking beers and wine by a big bonfire. It was like one of those wistful scenes at the end of some coming of age movie.

It was, really, the craic.

I decided to end on this high note, and in the days after, packed my bag and hitched up to Dublin to spend a few days with Agatha before heading to Sligo.

As it happened, Agatha had a friend who was coming to visit from Spain, so they’d organised a little trip through Northern Ireland and Donegal and were happy to drop me off at Tubbercurry, Sligo on the way back. So the universe was once again providing.

But just as change was happening at Inisglas, change was also happening at the Chaparrita in Dublin, and for me, most importantly, a change in my relationship with Agatha.

More of that in the next blog post though, I think finishing up Inisglas after a few months is also a nice spot to finish up this post.

P.s The Zen Cleaning Robot is a concept I came up with Rob Skelton at RMIT later in the nineties. I think it was for a school project on writing for the internet that started with a drunken night of wine and indoor soccer where I ended up sleeping at a house in Saint Kilda with the friend of a classmate who was growing a super awesome little weed plant grown from a seed form Holland.

I would have hoped Zen Cleaning Robots would be being manufactured by now.

Juanito’s Travels 50-Yr-Backpacker Inisglas Biodynamic Community 1995 BlogPt9

The day after arriving Ian drove the community van into Wexford to deliver some veggies and yoghurt to the health food shop. I went into the social services office and started the paperwork to get some unemployment benefits.

They gave me a number and issued me a plastic social services card which I still have today. I’m not sure if I actually got it on the day or whether they sent it to me later. Luckily I had enough documentation even without my Irish passport to prove I was Irish. They explained the unemployment system, similar to Australia in that you had to apply for a certain amount of jobs, but different in that they’d send a cheque to the address, which I could cash at the post office, rather than having money deposited in my bank account which they did in Australia. When I said I was staying at Inisglas they immediately recognised the place as it turned out just about everyone there was on the dole. Wexford wasn’t a huge place so people generally had a notion there was a bunch of hippy going-ons at the place, but that they were mostly harmless.

There were a few at Inisglas who weren’t on the dole. Anthony and Eve, and Ross – who probably didn’t want any official record of himself due to being a British fugitive – and the homoeopathic vet who brought in a basic income with the homoeopathic treatment of cows and the like. I think Wobbie also got most of his income from selling trees from the nursery. The others weren’t on the Irish dole, their respective countries had some sort of arrangement with Ireland so they could collect unemployment benefits from Denmark and the other places they were from. I think they got a bit more than us Irish.

I wasn’t that keen to be collecting the dole, but I really didn’t have much of a choice if I wanted to stay in Ireland more than 2 weeks. I soon also found there weren’t many jobs going in the local area so working on a biodynamic farm on the dole was going to be it while I was in Wexford.

I put my qualms about social welfare aside and quickly settled into a routine in the Inisglas community.

My granny from County Sligo had to move to Australia when she was 10, after her mother died. She worked on a farm in central Queensland close to Mt Morgan, near Rockhampton. I was sort of doing the same in reverse, but I think much more comfortable than my poor granny probably had to endure.

Before heading back to Inisglas I stopped off at one of the pubs in town with Jay and Frankie. Jay had a pint, I think I just had an orange juice again. Stuart popped in a bit later for a quick drink.

The day at Inisglas always started with a light breakfast, or at least a cup of tea and a snack, at the wooden table in the kitchen. There was a wood fired AGA oven in there that was always on low. There was always a kettle there and a pot of tea on the go.

Ross was obsessed with having the kettle going 24/7 and used to get pissed when anyone left it empty, or drank the last of the tea without making a fresh batch. As he often had that look in his eye like, ‘I’ll stab the next person who leaves the teapot empty’, it seemed wise to make sure the brew never ran dry. I was suitably scared of Ross, but I was also friendly so I tried chatting to him. He’d often just grunt, but he would also sit occasionally and drink tea at the table with me and smoke rolly cigarettes at the kitchen table. If there were too many people about he’d usually just grab his tea and run off to another part of the manor house.

You could tell this used to be a stately home because the kitchen had places for a bunch of bells which were attached to various rooms to alert the kitchen staff to the desires of the stately home owners. It was a big place with maybe 10 bedrooms, a sizeable living area and space for a fancy table. The fancy table was long gone and we always ate around the solid wooden kitchen table that easily fitted 15-20.

Breakfast would normally be a bit of soda bread baked in the AGA, which Jay or Anthony would make during the week. The community also had a sizeable bakery with professional bread ovens subsidised by the European community. But we only used that when we were doing the baking for the Dublin markets on the weekends as the ovens were only worth firing up if you were making dozens and dozens or loaves. I’d have the bread with jam for breakfast most days. Occasionally I’d go for a porridge or just fry a few eggs, depending on my mood. We have eggs and fruit in regular supply in the pantry as well as some dried and fresh fruit, and as much milk, freshly squeezed from the farm’s cows that you could ever possibly want to drink.

After breaky I’d head out with Frankie for a couple of hours to tend to the vegetables. It wasn’t overly strenuous. Sometimes we’d tend to the huge compost heaps which we’d use to feed the veggies. Sometimes we’d slash nettles and comfort and soak them in water to make fertiliser teas for the plants. Sometimes we’d plant out seedlings of kale – before kale was even popular – or spinach. It was still early in the season when I arrived and there wasn’t a huge variety to harvest, but we dug up a few Jerusalem artichokes which grew in abundance. Jerusalem artichokes are gassy, not super delicious, but highly nutritious and easy to grow root vegetables. Most evening meals made in my first weeks there at Inisglas included at least a few artichokes in them, while we waited for the nicer Mediterranean vegetables – although most of them originated in central America – like the tomatoes, zucchinis, eggplants. The other things ready to harvest in those first weeks of me being on the farm were carrots, some peas and a few beets and brassicas – kale and the like. I think we were getting the odd leek as well, so enough variety. Being Ireland we had a lot of potatoes growing, but in spring we could only forage a few little spuds, still plenty to add to meals though.

After a few hours in the garden we’d go back and have some more tea, some home made cordial and some bread and cheese, perhaps with some gherkins from bottles. After lunch we’d go do a bit more gardening, perhaps going to 5 PM, depending on the weather, or whenever it started getting dark, before stopping and heading in for dinner. I was amazed we never had to water much, just the stuff in the poly-tunnels and seedlings in the first few weeks after planting until their roots got down into the wet sublayer. We did regularly add the nettle and comfrey fertiliser teas though which gave the plants a bit of a drink I’m sure. Otherwise the rain was sufficient to keep them all going.

We took turns making dinner using some sort of roster. As mentioned, Tron was the worst cook. The rest of us usually did up a vegetable stew or curry with some sort of pulse like chickpeas, kidney beans, white beans or dried peas in it, as well as a few spuds, carrots, peas, parsnips and whatever veggies we were picking at the time, including the dreaded Jerusalem artichokes. Tron’s focussed on cooking nettles until Nora banned the use of nettles. I was thinking of writing: to be fair on Tron, nettles are nutritious, but I don’t think we should be fair on Tron and he should be rightly condemned for his cooking abominations, especially given the other delicious things we had at hand.

Often we’d add a few tins of tomatoes and tomato paste as well as herbs and spices to add flavour, and serve with rice, or pasta, or some carbs. There was always some bread to go with it if you wanted.

As there were around 20 people all up including kids you had to do up a big pot. As the veggies were fresh and full of biodynamic flavour the meals were pretty good, nothing super fancy but hearty and filling and never too boring apart from Tron’s nettles.

I’m not sure exactly what time of year it was when I started out at Inisglas, but one night soon after arriving I saw Eurovision was on the tele, which is usually in May. According to the Internet, the final was 13 May in 1995 to be precise, and Ireland hosted it that year after winning in 1994. I didn’t have the internet back then so I’ll stick with sometime in May just to be retro.

After initially focussing on helping out Frankie with the vegetables, I branched out a bit and started tagging along with Stuart, who milked the cows in the morning and afternoon. I got to be a regular cow milker and Stuart showed me how to make his Irish championship yoghurt. I had beginner’s luck and my first batch was as good as any Stuart had made. He also showed me how to make quark, a type of soft cheese, which, at least in Stuart’s version, involved putting yoghurt in cheesecloth and hanging it under the big rhododendron tree. It was another good thing to have for lunch with the bread from the AGA oven. I think we also made a type of cheddar cheese, or at least a cottage cheese, as well, which meant separating the milk curds from the whey, just as they did in nursery rhymes. Whey, for those who don’t know, is a watery yellowy buttery milky type of stuff, pretty clear and not white like milk. I’d take most of the whey to Ross who gave it to his pigs to fatten them up to make bacon out of them. Ross explained there were basically 2 types of pigs, porkers, which you used to make pork out of, and bacon’s, which you used for bacon. And thus endeth the pig lesson from Ross.

We would often save some cream from the milk, after we pasteurised it. You could have that on some of the cakes that people like Yvonne and Nora occasionally made. We’d also sometimes use a bit of the whey that Ross’ pigs didn’t eat to add to the vegetable stews. It gave a nice bite to the broth.

One thing we didn’t make was butter. Back then Ireland and Europe had a butter mountain and when you got your dole check they’d also send a voucher to get a pound of butter each fortnight which Eve would collect together so the community always had good Irish butter in abundance. I hope in some way I contributed to dealing with the butter mountain while I was there.

On Fridays I started helping Jay out in the bakery. After breakfast and tea we started making bread the whole day. We’d work up a sough dough or stoned ground biodynamic yeast bread batch, put it in the tins to rise, work on the next batch, and then chuck batches in the oven every hour or thereabouts. In between bakings, while the dough was rising and the risen ones were cooking in the oven, we’d sit and chat and have tea and cigarettes (me less than Jay who was a self confessed chain smoker), as well as freshly baked bread with some jam, cheese, and quark. We’d usually go from 10 am to 6 pm, then load the van around 7-8 PM ready to take the markets in Dublin the next day. We mostly had sourdoughs and yeast wholemeal breads just with some sesame seeds on top, but we also made a few fancy loaves. We made packets of flat pita style breads, some ones with olives and tomatoes, a sunflower seed loaf and a batch of raisin and nut loaf.

On Saturday mornings I’d hitch a lift up to the Dublin markets and help sell the bread, yoghurt, cheeses, bags of flour and whatever veggies we’d brought up with us. We’d usually sell out of everything by around 11 or 12, except maybe an olive loaf or raisin and nut bread. We alway kept a few loaves back at Inisglas for the community.

The drive to Dublin was nice. It only took an hour and a half to 2 hours. I was still getting used to these little countries after the expanse of Australia. We passed through County Wicklow, and got a nice view of the Wicklow Mountains. I remember a stand of Australian gum trees somewhere on the way and a few picturesque forest edged roads on the way.

Initially I didn’t stay much in Dublin, I just hung out at the markets for a few hours and maybe walked around whatever area that was in. I also took the chance to go check out the Dublin GPO to see if me Irish passport had arrived, which it never did. Later on though I’d come up fairly often to Dublin and stay with friends.

The friends from Dublin were ones I first met at Inisglas. One of the guys who seemed to regularly show up at Inisglas invited a few girls from Dublin to Inisglas one weekend. They were Spanish, well Ines was Spanish, Agatha, she was Catalan, as she would often point out. Stuart encouraged me to hang out with them and they invited me back to Dublin where they shared a house with an Irish guy, a Basque Spanish woman and a German woman, all in their twenties. After a weekend of fun on the farm and showing Ines and Agatha around I was keen to see more of them, so next time I took the bread up to the markets instead of going back to Inisglas, I took a loaf of bread, some cheese and yoghurt and headed off to their house. I started doing that every couple of weeks.

The first time I went to the girls’ house was a few weeks after arriving at Inisglas. By that stage my dole cheques were coming through. After contributing my £40 (yes it was still before Euros) I’d have £20 leftover. I used about £4 buying some duty free tobacco from Nora, who got it duty free on the ferry when she went over to London to study her Steiner education and brought enough back for all the smokers, which was pretty much everyone, except Stuart, who pretended not to smoke, but who ended up having a regular smoke. He was diabetic so he did need to try and at least to pretend to avoid it.

So I had about £16 pounds leftover each week which was enough to hang out in Dublin with. Especially if I could bring some bread, cheese and some veggies with me to cook at the girls house.

This allowed me to explore Dublin a bit over summer and party with the girls who had dubbed their house the Chaparrita. The girls were very short and this does seem to mean ‘shorty’, though sometimes I think it may have had a double meeting by the way they spoke and giggled about it.

More on Dublin next time though, I think it deserves some focus. Especially my relationship with Agatha Julia and Ines.

Juanito’s Travels 50-Yr-Backpacker Wexford, Ireland & Inisglas Biodynamic Community 1995 BlogPt8

Inisglas biodynamic farm 1995

1995

It was an overcast and miserable day when I made the crossing from Fishguard, Wales to Rosslare Harbour in County Wexford. I spent most of the time hanging out on deck watching the ocean, maybe a seabird or two, with a freezing nose. I wore my green Melbourne tram conductors coat Evan had given me. And my beanie, and a few layers more. I think it was late spring by that stage. The sun was nowhere to be seen.

I was on my way to Ireland for the first time in my life. Somewhere almost equidistant between Wales and Ireland I felt calm. I was nowhere for a few minutes. I didn’t know what was going to happen. I was sailing into the unknown. Starting with a blank piece of paper.

I don’t know how I got from Rosslare harbour to the town of Wexford, whether there was a bus, or I hitched a lift, maybe there was a train. Whatever way, I arrived in the town in the afternoon. I found a BnB in the middle of town for £14. It was one of those places that is probably listed on AirBnb now. It had a nice warm bed.

There’s an old ruined church in the middle of Wexford which I explored a bit the next day. It’s St Patrick’s Church and dates back to mediaeval times. I had no idea about that back then, I just thought it was cool and old and something I wouldn’t see in Australia.

The next day my bed and breakfast host served me a proper Irish breakfast. I was vegetarian so the host substituted bacon and sausages for more eggs and beans to make sure I didn’t starve to death with all my no meat nonsense. There was also toast and Jam. I was pretty happy with it all and had it my fill, not knowing when I’d next have such a feast.

The address I had for Nora, the neighbour of my friend’s mother in Tugun Australia, read something like: Inisglas, Crossabeg, The Deeps, Co. Wexford. There was no street number, nor phone number, so I asked around about The Deeps and Crossabeg. Apparently I had to cross over a bridge and go down the road a little bit until pass some viking tower – well back then I thought it was a viking tower, but it seems it’s a memorial to the Crimean War, which is still causing trouble today, both the tower being confused with mediaeval viking monuments and the Crimea featuring in the latest European conflict with Russia. Once past the tower I was to find a road which I would take to the left and would eventually lead me to the general area I was looking for.

So I put on my backpack and started hiking. The sun was out, the grass fresh and damp from yesterday’s rain. I stopped off at a pub on the way where some grannies were having some whiskey. I hadn’t been drinking, and it was still only 10.30 or something, so I got an orange juice, just so I could sit for a minute in one of the booths, and asked for some further directions before heading off again. I could see the Crimea tower from there which was a convenient landmark before the days of Google maps.

I crossed the bridge and passed the tower and found the road I was looking for and started heading towards the left, down some narrow laneways through hedges, green fields, sheep, cows and some river’s edge I think with reeds growing about. After around 1.5/2 hours walking I felt I should be getting close. I asked a local and they said Inisglas might be up further to the left. I kept walking and found a dirt road that looked like it was heading the way I wanted and wandered down, past some sheep and a fruit orchard. I found an old man cutting grass with an old scythe and he said this was indeed Inisglas. It turned out this was the founder of the Inisglas community, Anthony Kaye.

About a kilometre down the road I came to a huge rhododendron tree – I didn’t know it was a rhododendron back then I just thought it was a big tree – which stood before a stately country manor. I looked around for signs of activity. A few kids darted about ignoring me. After a few minutes a curly haired Irishman came up to me.

‘Hello’, he said, offering his hand.

‘Hi’, I said, taking his hand, ‘I’m John from Australia. Is Nora here?’

******

A bit later I got to chatting to Nora, she was surprised to see someone from the Gold Coast all the way out here at Inisglas (or perhaps Inis Glas) in The Deeps, Wexford not far from the mighty Slaney River.

‘What a surprise’, she said.

‘Yes’, I’ve come a long way. Didn’t want to explain the whole journey to date, especially the sapphire incident, just that I was travelling around and wanted to spend some time in Ireland and I was looking for a place to stay and work.

‘Well, they’re a bit wary of people just showing up and wanting to stay here.’ She said. She explained it was a community and that everyone would have to be consulted to see if they would let me stay.

‘Do you have money?’ she asked.

‘Yeah, I have a couple of hundred. But I’m an Irish citizen, I should be able to get some unemployment benefits.’

‘Irish?’ She said. She had residency in Australia it turns out. Her son’s father was Australian, so she was kind of used to the whole dual nationality thing. It also turns out the community was used to dealing with the whole unemployment benefits thing as well.

‘We can ask if you can stay. I can’t promise anything. How long would you like to stay?’

‘I’m not sure. It’d be good if I could stay for a little while at least.’

The community was brought together, there were a fair few people, of various ages and nationalities. On first count all up there seemed to be around 15 adults and a bunch of kids. We chatted and discussed whether they’d let me in, I was asked to give a bit of background about myself, kind of like a brief pitch to see whether I’d fit in. I told of my work on a farm in Australia, my desire to travel, my Irish granny who used to live in Sligo before travelling to Australia at age 10 (I may not have given that much detail then, perhaps just my granny was Irish which made me Irish and legible for the dole I’d hope) and my keenest to get involved with community there.

They sent me off and chatted amongst themselves. I must have come across ok because they called me back in and announced that they’d agreed to let me stay for a bit as long as I could work out the dole or some other way to bring in regular cash and help out with the running of the farm.

It turns out they had a mixed operation, with vegetables, some livestock, including sheep, chickens, pigs, and some milking cows, as well as a flour mill. It was all based on biodynamic principles – an esoteric farming method this eccentric Swiss or Austrian guy made up.

Everyone was expected to contribute to the costs of the place, £40 a week I think it was, which Eve Kaye, the kind of matriarch of the place, explained covered food, board and electricity. I said I could pay for 2 weeks up front and then organise some unemployment benefits or perhaps find a job.

Relief fell over me. After weeks of uncertainty I now had a reasonably priced place to stay, assuming they’d let me sign up for the dole. I was shown a little room in the main manor house and settled in. I could sort out the dole thing later, apparently someone drove a van into town fairly regularly and I could get a lift into the social security office the next day.

I’m not sure I can remember every single person who was staying on the community at the time. But here goes.

There was Nora, she was a preschool teacher studying Steiner education in London and travelled there every few weeks to study. Steiner education was based on the philosophy of Rudolf Steiner, the same one who came up with the practice of biodynamic farming. It was all pretty esoteric. I wasn’t opposed to a bit of esoteric thinking in those days, the more ‘holistic’ and ‘spiritual’ the better, though I still held a modicum of scientific doubt.

Nora had a kid, I forget his name. He was Aussie-Irish like me. Nora was going out with Frankie, the Irish guy who greeted me by the rhododendron tree. He mainly looked after the vegetable gardens, including, as you might expect in Ireland, quite a few potatoes. Nora, Frankie and the kid shared a loft apartment kind of above the flour mill, from memory, which was behind the main manor house.

The flour mill was run by the community’s founder Anthony Kaye. Anthony lived with his wife Eve in a nice stone house connected to the mill, next to, or below, I can’t remember exactly, where Nora and Frankie and the kid lived.

Then there was Ross, he was on the run from the British cops for importing drugs from Amsterdam. Which I suppose technically made him a ‘criminal’. He’d fled the UK while waiting to go on trial for importing drugs. He spent a few months hiding out in France in tents before making his way to Inisglas. Apparently the French police when they questioned him one day as to why he was camping out on French roundabouts said, ‘you know, the English do not help us, and we do not help the English.’ And that such crimes would only warrant a slap on the wrist in France, but that he had to stop camping on roundabouts. Ross mainly looked after some pigs and chickens, both of which he’d occasionally slaughter and sell. He was rough as guts, I think having spent a short time in prison. He was going out with a homoeopathic vet whom I don’t remember the name of. I think she had a kid whom I also don’t remember the name of.

Then there was Stuart. Stuart was the all-Ireland yoghurt making champion. He mostly milked the cows and made yoghurt and cheese for the community and for sale. He had a room in the main house down the hall from me. Stuart was a poet, he also won poetry contests when he wasn’t making yoghurt. He had a very feral kid who used to just shit on the front lawn. He was from Leeds.

There was a Danish guy (or he could have been Norwegian) called Tron. He was one of the worst cooks at the place (well, let’s face it he was the worst) and Nora complained that when it was his turn to cook the community meals he just boiled up a bunch of nettles. He was committed to biodynamics and liked making one of the main biodynamic farms special esoteric blends called 501 which is made by putting cow manure into cow horns and burying them from months and then digging them up and emptying them in big barrels of water and then stirring the mixture up and then spraying it around the farm to improve soil fertility.

There was Michael. Another Dane (if indeed Tron was Danish), he was mates with a few more Danes who worked on another nearby community which helped out disabled people – he had a Danish girlfriend who worked on that community. Michael had blond curly hair and liked chopping firewood, he chopped a lot of firewood. He also helped Frankie with growing the vegetables.

There was Yvonne and Ian. Yvonne was of a gypsy background. Ian was of north English heritage, spoke with one of those northern English accents that sounds kind of musical. He liked cider and weed. Ian looked after the currant and fruit orchard I’d seen on the way in and lived with Yvonne in a little shack just off the path I’d come into the farm on. Jeff also lived down there in another shack.

There was Jeff, or Jeremy, I’m sure his name started with J. Or maybe he was an Ian. No, actually he was just called Jay! He had dark hair which was shaved to a spiky shot length. He was a British hippy type, perhaps from London, who called the dole the ‘gyro’ who dabbled in beekeeping and ran the bakery.

Jay was going out with a German or Austrian woman called Annika or something like that. Perhaps Anushka. She was very quiet and I barely spoke to her the whole time I was at the community. Her and Jay may not have been going out together when I was first staying at Inisglas but it wasn’t long after that when they started shacking up in one of the shacks down the path from the main manor house.

There was another character called Wobbie, he looked after a tree nursery on part of the farm. I’m note sure where he lived exactly, he wasn’t staying on the farm though, nowhere at least that I knew about, but possibly close by.

That was everyone I could remember who was staying at the place when I first arrived. There was another Irish guy from Dublin who popped in from time to time, but I’ll come to him later.

While there wasn’t any strict division of duties, people were expected to get in and help out with the running of the farm. I ended up helping Frankie with the vegetables most days, mounding up potatoes, planting and maintaining the tomatoes, eggplants, courgettes, cucumbers and pumpkins in the plastic poly-tunnels, weeding the cabbages. leeks, onions, lettuces and the like. We had a large open field, which also housed a couple of plastic poly-tunnels, plus a walled garden.

I helped Jay in the bakery on Fridays where we’d make bread to sell at Dublin markets on Saturday morning. We took Stuart’s yoghurt to sell as well as bags of Anthony’s stoned ground biodynamic flour. We also took a few of these things into Wexford to sell at the health food store.

That was pretty much Inisglas. It was a largish property that included the walled garden, the mill, the fields, some pasture for sheep and cows, some barns for the pigs and a bit of forest. The property went down to the Slaney River, or River Slaney, and there was even a boat we could take out. I’d struck it lucky with having Nora’s contact. I pushed my luck by calling the mighty River Slaney a creek, but as much as that riled her up we were always on good terms.

After the uncertainty of the last few weeks, it was a bit of paradise. I felt comfortable, safe and accepted. If I could organise the dole, or some work, I’d have all the food I needed, a roof over my head and even a small amount leftover. It was all I needed at that stage.

Juanito’s Travels Cincuenta Años viaje – 1995 Vipassana Meditation in Herefordshire near Wales, UK BlogPt6

The first few days of meditation at the Vipassana Centre in Herefordshire didn’t have much impact.

It was like the demons of Bangkok and getting duped of all my money were just trying to rip my skin on their way out of my body while many more demons waited in queue. Rising and passing away.

For those who have never done a Vipassana meditation course, it’s not one of those relaxing visualisation things where you imagine butterflies and hummingbirds in green fields by clear streams. No, Vipassana is about working on your attachment. Attachment to both the things you like and the things you don’t like, recognising the impermanence of everything.

There was no escaping your demons here, you had to acknowledge them, face them, look them squarely in the eyes and let them pass away not through a fight with them, but by observing them, with equanimity (non-attachment). Things came into being for a while, you either like or dislike them and then, sooner or later, they passed away. But they were always changing and we were always forming attachments that made us miserable, at least if we didn’t accept that change.

$1,000,000 comes your way, maybe you’re super happy and spend it on stuff. Perhaps you invest a bunch so the interest it earns means the principal $1 million hangs on for centuries. But then you get attached to your million dollar lifestyle. And maybe you want $2 million, maybe you need to buy a BMW and the colour you want is out of stock and you crack the shits, or the leather interior wasn’t what you were imagining, or it’s going to take 3 months to deliver rather than 3 days.

Maybe you hire a butler and he overcooks the egg yolks for your eggs Florentine – is that the one where you put Hollandaise sauce over the eggs and have a little smoked salmon with it? – and you’re left with disgusting solid yellow lumps rather than delicious runny gooey golden yolks and you have to throw the hard egg yolks at your butler’s face because you’re not happy.

Anyway you can see how any sort of attachment can make you miserable.

The Buddha discovered the best thing was to simply observe with equanimity. Egg yolks are hard, well there’s people dying in the world so I’ll eat them today. Tomorrow I can have my gooey golden delicious runny yolks that runs around the plates so I can soak it up with some lightly toasted sourdough with olive oil.

Though tomorrow I could also bite into an egg and bacon roll at a cafe (since I don’t have a butler, because I fired the one who couldn’t cook the eggs properly, I mean that’s like a basic thing butlers should be able to do) and the yolks explode and go all over the sleeves of my jacket and over my hand and the waiter hasn’t even brought enough serviettes to deal with the situation. Which is exactly what happened just two weeks ago when I was in a cafe in Braddon in Canberra (in the year 2022 if you’re getting confused with this time travelling).

You get it, misery can be everywhere, even when you get exactly what you want.

How do you escape from suffering? The Buddha had some suggestions for this and a very simple technique of meditation which really helps. Don’t worry, I’m not trying to sell you meditation here. I’m just describing the Vipassana meditation technique and a bit of the philosophy and practice behind it.

First you have to be in the moment. In Vipassana this starts with observing one’s own breath. Inhaling in and out. Not controlling the breath but simply observing it. This is called mindfulness meditation and is a really useful technique in itself.

The 3-day meditation course I initially did back in 1995 in Herefordshire was just 3 days of mindfulness meditation. We didn’t progress to the Vipassana meditation part.

I sat for three days, observed my breath from around 4.30 am to 9 pm with breaks for breakfast, lunch and a light beverage and fruit for dinner, as well as some time to get up and stretch our legs. We sat for 3 days and then we finished. I said hi to a few people who had done the course, I got a few contact details in case I might hit them up for a place to stay, then I spent a few days volunteering at the centre helping in the garden and in the kitchen, waiting for the full 10-day Vipassana course to commence.

One of the meditation teachers offered to buy me a lolly in the nearby village in between the courses. In Australia offers of lollies are usually associated with paedophiles, but in the UK it apparently means an icy-pole, a zooper dooper type thing, an ice block. I hesitantly agreed, trusting that I’d meditated at least enough to avoid the karma of another poking up the arse (figuratively or literally) by a dodgy stranger. Whilst in the village I saw fruit trees for sale and I bought the centre a plum tree which I planted in their fruit orchard. I figured I didn’t have much money to donate but a fruit tree would keep giving for years to come. Perhaps someone’s eating one of its fruits right now, or whenever the plums ripen there.

They turned the heating off in some of the areas between courses so I almost froze to death trying to have a shower in the main block, but apart from that it was pretty pleasant. A bit of meditation, then a bit of work, then a bit more meditating. I got to chat with some of the fellow servers at lunch and around the place, and plant a few flowers and do some weeding. There were a few of us in our 20s there. A Polish woman, and one from France, and one from Germany, and a geeky bloke from England. There was a rather stern older lady from Austria or somewhere who made sure all us young folks were focussed on meditating and not other shenanigans – the centres, including the main meditation halls, are always divided between men and women’s sections to help with this as well, though the kitchen was a neutral area and we could chat with the opposite sex there. It was all very nice.

The 10-day course started about 3 days after the 3-day course. I think they’ve since dropped having those 3-day mindfulness courses as the Vipassana technique is the main focus and they suggest that takes at least 10-days to (begin to) master. Possibly people didn’t really come back for the 10-day courses after the 3-day course either and it was getting too confusing.

As part of the course you pledge to uphold a few simple rules, known as the 5 Precepts. The first are fairly straightforward to keep: to not steal, not lie or speak falsehoods (well, mostly the course is done in silence, so apart from the day at the end when we start chatting again, that’s achievable), not to kill, and to abstain from intoxicating substances (no drugs or alcohol). The last one is to abstain from sexual misconduct, which for the duration of the course means a vow of complete abstinence. I have never had sex with another person during a course, or even while helping out at a centre, that would be breaking the rules, but occasionally I get a bit desperate and need to masturbate. I’m not alone, I’m sure. During my first Vipassana course, that I’d done a year before, I was chatting to Evan and his girlfriend who I forget the name of. I think Evan resisted having a wank but his girlfriend was like, well you know at some stage I just put my hand down the front of my pants for a bit of a wank.

It’s something I could work on, but I can’t promise it’ll ever stop completely. I find 10 days a super effort to not ejaculate, if I’m not in a coma or something, and feel it may cause some medical issues if I hold it in too long.

I started the mindfulness meditation again for the first 3 and a half days. That’s 3 1/2 days from 4.30 am to 9 pm, some shorter sessions, some longer, just breaking for breakfast, lunch, a bit of lemon tea in the evening and a short talk from the Vipassana master Goenka, which was delivered via video. It’s probably digital now.

On day four the technique changes – rather dramatically led by Vipassana master Goenka, via video – from observation of the breath to the full-blown Vipassana technique, observing sensations through the whole body from head to toe, toe to head, up and down, down and up with equanimity (non-attachment).

Again, we do this technique from 4.30 to 9 pm, same sort of schedule.

Much easier said than done. A small itch becomes unbearable. Some heat in your ear searing. Your attention wanes, wanders, you go back to your breath to get some focus, then go back to observing the sensations over your body (these are physical sensations of your body by the way, nothing imaginary) and then I start thinking about that plum tree and when will it fruit, I should really have packed some more comfortable meditation clothes, and have I been doing this for an hour or 5 minutes, and when’s lunch? A lot of less mundane and more emotional stuff also comes up as well. For me it can be violent confrontations with my now deceased alcoholic father, or longing for a past lover in Switzerland. We have all this baggage from our years on Earth that we’re constantly replaying in our minds, not letting go of. Often making us miserable.

As I’d previously done a Vipassana course, and considered an ‘old student’ they gave me access to special solitary meditation booths. They were big enough to sit down comfortably but not to stretch your legs out too much. They were quiet, and despite the difficulties in remaining focussed and not letting my mind stray too far away, I was sometimes able to meditate for hours (or at least a full hour) on end.

At other times all the students meditated together in the dhamma hall. Men on one side and women on the other with the meditation teacher and those serving on the course at the front of the room. Those serving on the course meditate to the side up at the front.

Some of the non-spiritual highlights of the 10 days was that I saw a pheasant one day, a hare, some snowflakes, and a lot of birds in hedges as I walked around outside during the breaks. Occasionally a hawk would flutter in the sky looking down on some unsuspecting prey.

I ate my meals outside everyday, on a log overlooking the frosty fields in the morning and the wet and lush fields later in the day. Even though the course was 10 days of silence, I still didn’t want to hang around people eating in the hall during the meal breaks. I was often the only person out there looking at the lush green fields and hedges as I ate my porridge in the morning or my vegetarian curry stew for lunch, with a different pulse in it everyday. The food was pretty good actually.

It was day 10 of the course, we were released from our vows of silence around 10.30 and started to make the chatty readjustment to the real world.

It was over a fortnight now since I’d left London. I was ready to go back there, collect my passport and then head to Ireland to see if I could make a go of things.

The day went quickly, we still meditated a few times a day and there was also another evening talk by the guru Goenka. Most people enjoyed his evening video chats, and as the name Vipassana also means insight, so were Goenka’s discourses, just as insightful.

Goenka passed away in 2013.

Sometimes I think Vipassana meditation sounds super passive. But it’s not passive at all. Even though there’s really only 5 rules to commit to, and I regularly stray on the intoxicating substance one, these 5 rules can help you change the world.

If we all vowed to at least not kill other humans, even if we kill animals for meat and the like, we could avoid the misery and suffering of war and not have to spend billions on weapons to deter others. If we vow to avoid lying we could have open and transparent government and avoid having narcissistic psychos like Trump and Putin in power – though those pricks probably won’t follow the rules and abuse our good intentions, which you’re probably right about to a large extent. If we had vowed not to steal centuries ago we could have done away with colonisation, slavery and taking other people’s lands – and there’s still time to try and give compensation for the misdeeds of the past.

These simple things can allow us to live active and effective lives. I know many will want to argue about when it could be right to kill, or to take intoxicating substances, or even to lie. I know the world’s not perfect, but if you’re focussing on all the times these simple things won’t work, or aren’t practical, you’re not even trying and you might as well sit around like a potato rather than spreading love and joy in the world. Sure, we can have defence forces, but we should make every effort to address the reasons for war and to rid the world of the worst of weapons, especially nuclear weapons! We can also make laws, or individual purchasing choices to stop the privileged of the world exploiting the less privileged by making them work for 10 cents a day to make our clothes, or by hogging all of the COVID vaccines for westerners.

But all that aside. Back then in 1995, after 10-days and more meditating, I was ready to go and take control of my life again. To take action, and make plans, but also to protect myself from the ups and downs of life when things didn’t go my way.

It is like one of the slogans my dad had from alcoholic anonymous:

Lord grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

By the end of the 10 days I’d done enough to not be too fussed about sapphires, or plans going awry or anything. I just accepted, observed, then went back into the moment.

It was time to go to London to pick up my Irish passport and head over to Ireland.

Time to move on.

On the last morning, I thanked the meditation teacher for the lolly and got a lift to the train station, ready for the next adventure.

50-Year-Old Jovencito con mochilla, la Historia de Juanito’s Travels. Gotta get outta London BlogPt5

Have you ever had lettuce soup? I had it in Dublin. My friend Agatha Julia, from Barcelona, made it. I might get back to that at another time.

1995

I was still in London. April may have started by then. It was certainly getting close to Easter.

I hadn’t slept in a bed for more than 3 hours since Bangkok, three or four nights ago now by my sleep deprived calculations. Last night I’d roughed it like a homeless person on the front lawn of my, well I was about to write friends but in the end they were just some people I knew in Australia who I thought might be home in London and whom I thought might have put me up for the night under a roof. In a bed. Not on the lawn in front of their flat on a freezing cold spring night in London.

Well, screw them. I now at least had $250 and my sister was going to put a further $500 AUD into my account some time today. You could pretty much halve that and get the value in British pounds. So maybe £375 give or take. That wasn’t going to get me far if I was going to stay in the UK.

It certainly wasn’t going to get me as far as Switzerland, where I imagine a hamburger cost $25 or something. It could possibly get me as far as Ireland though. I could find a job there. I had one contact I could try there whole lived on a farm in County Wexford.

I had just been back to the Irish embassy in London and was sitting again in Hyde Park, not far from Buckingham Palace. I’m pretty sure the Queen and Prince Phillip didn’t have to try and work out how to make £375 stretch 12 months, which was the original time I intended to spend in Ireland, or elsewhere in Europe. The whole being ripped off in Bangkok through a sapphire scam had kind of thrown a spanner in the works. Long term planning was off the cards at the moment. It was like I only had 32 cards anyway. Which might be enough for certain versions of euchre I think. Metaphors aside, and the reality of only having £375 meant I could only think of the immediate days ahead.

Before I finished this day though, I wanted a proper fucking bed, and a shower. I made my way to the backpacking area of Earls Court and used some of my £375 to get a room. A little room. But a room all to myself. Not in a dorm, I wasn’t sharing with other smelly hippies tonight.

It cost a bit extra. I was extremely low on cash. But fuck it, I’d spent the last night sleeping on a lawn in from of Newcastle Chick and British Guy’s flat – the same British Guy who’d fucking slept on my cozy floor, with my cozy extra bedding, eating my cozy rolled outs and vegetarian food in Fitzroy, Melbourne.

I’d spent the night before that sleeping on the floor of Heathrow Airport – for all of 3 hours after almost getting deported, and the night before that I managed just 3 hours sleep at a hotel in Bangkok after getting off a plane which engines had blown up, not once, but twice, up in the sky, where I could literally die.

So tonight I was going to have a room to my fucking self. I checked in, chucked my backpack on the ground, got out some fresh clothes, went and had a quick shower, pulling bits of grass and twigs from my hair due to my previous night of homelessness. I hadn’t had the opportunity for a shower for the last 3 days. What a simple indulgent pleasure to feel warm water running down your naked body. I hung my towel to dry outside the Earls Court window. I got out one of my Thai cigarettes and puffed out the window while I contemplated my next move. And reviewing what had gone wrong so far.

It’s all started to go pear shaped when I bought those fucking sapphires in Bangkok, so number 1 things was to get rid of them. They were bad luck. If I couldn’t sell them I’d just give them away. I was starting afresh so the sapphires had to go. Number 2, I had to get to Ireland, Ireland was the only place I couldn’t possibly survive for more than a few days at the moment. But my Irish passport was still in transit from Australia to the London Embassy so I needed to wait a few more days to collect it.

I couldn’t stay in this backpackers in Earls Court, especially in my fancy single room, that I thoroughly deserved after my ordeal, waiting for my passport though, especially in a private room, so I had to find somewhere that wasn’t going to cost me anything. I ruled out further attempts to contact Newcastle Chick and British Guy. I ran through my other options. Then it popped into my head. A Vipassana Meditation centre! Vipassana centres were run on donations. While I really liked to pay I could always do that later when I had more money.

I could try and go to the Vipassana Meditation centre and wait in the UK until my Irish passport arrived. After that I had Irish woman’s address. Her name was Nora. I’d never met her but she did used to live down the road from Christophe’s mum’s place in Tugun and that was a close enough link at this stage. I’m not sure why I had the meditation centre’s address, I think I’d planned to do a course somewhere along the way, perhaps in India. But, they also had a centre in the UK, in Herefordshire.

So I finished my fag, grabbed my sapphires and went out the door to find a pay phone. On the way I saw a church. I’m catholic – well more a catholic buddhist are thinking hippy – and I suspect this one was one of those protestant types where Anglicans go. It didn’t matter anyway, a protestant in hand is worth two Catholic Buddhists in the bush. I found whatever protestants called priests and I handed him a bunch of sapphires and I said: ‘Look these sapphires are real, they are just not worth that much, maybe you could sell them and give it to poor people or something.’ Or words to that effect. The protestant priest guy looked at the gems, looked at me with the stunned look of someone who’s just been handed 5 sapphires, and before he could say much more than a muttered ‘thanks’ I’d made my way out of the church and into a pay phone booth.

I called the UK Vipassana Centre’s number.

‘Hello’, I said, ‘I would like to do a course, I really need to do a course as soon as possible’. It was a meditation emergency!

‘Well, we have a 3-day course starting the day after tomorrow, but we usually only use that as an introductory course. Old students like yourself, who have done a course before would be better off doing a full 10 day course. We have a 10-day course starting in a week’.

‘Can I do the 3-day course and then the next 10-day course and volunteer in between time?’ The more meditation I did the better I thought, plus I’d never volunteered at a centre and that was kind of like paying them while I couldn’t afford to donate anything else.

They agreed to that and gave me some basic details on how to get there from London and said they’d see me there the day after tomorrow. So at least I had the next few weeks sorted out. I went back to the backpackers. As I entered the building one of the backpackers staff asked me whether I was the one who’d hung his towel out the window. I said yes. They said I couldn’t do that anymore. I said fine, whatever. I went up to my room, took my towel in and just sat on the bed and read a book for a while before going out and finding some cheap vegetarian food to eat, which I can’t recall at all and then going to sleep. It was one of the top ten sleeps I’d ever had in my life. A new level of deepness.

The next day I rose and had breakfast. There was an abundance of toast, tea, coffee, and bits of fruit. It was like paradise. My journey had kind of begun, a born again journey to replace the one I’d started a week or so ago which I now wanted to relegate to history. I guess Nietzsche said whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. I preferred Buddha to Nietzsche nowadays, he’d said the source of all our misery is attachment. It was time to detach. It reminds me of a quote from cartoonist Michael Leunig : Let it go. Let it out. Let it all unravel. Let it free and it can be a path on which to travel. Leunig had been there at my first Vipassana meditation course about a year earlier.

I felt stronger after my fill of toast, Jam, margarine, more toast, tea, a few cups of tea, fruit and the such. I went into London again and did some touristy things, walking a bit along the Thames, looking at a few pigeons on statues and things, then it was back to my very own room again and more delightful sleep, in a bed and not in the garden outside of some supposed ‘friends’ flat who were now ghosting me.

The very own room bit really invigorated me. I should have been budgeting more and going for a dorm room but the spiritual lift it gave me was worth every extra penny or pounds. And I was still hardly spending much on anything else as you could find a bit of vegetarian pizza pretty cheap.

The next day I made my way to Herefordshire to begin meditating again. I took the train, it felt like going off to Hogwarts before I knew what Hogwarts was. We passed Oxford and I got to chatting a little with a professor who asked whether I was a student. No, just an Aussie on the way to a Buddhist retreat in Herefordshire.

The little pockets of forest along the way looked like the type Robin Hood might frequent. I went to school with someone who claimed to be related to Robin Hood. They might have been told the story by some Thai gem dealer as it turns out that even if Robin Hood existed (which he didn’t) he wasn’t exactly the sort of person one could relate their lineage to. I’m related to the Surtees family, they have some claim to the Tees river up in Durham. Here I was, just a few days in the United Kingdom and I was already being sucked in by their class wars, trying to prove I had some connection to a river I’d never been to to make myself think I’m all posh and fancy. I say the French Revolution didn’t go far enough and should have jumped the channel. But not to be. We do have the Queen’s bodiless head on our Australian coins though. And to be honest, if someone offered me a free castle on the Tees River at this stage it would be hard to refuse it.

I got off somewhere and got off and took a bus to a place which seemed to have a lot of constants in its name, which was surrounded by juicy pink pigs in muddy paddocks, where I was picked up in the vipassana minibus by one of the meditation centre’s volunteers.

The meditation phase of my journey had begun. The rest could wait. I needed to be in the moment now. To realise the impermanence of things. Both good things and bad things.