London – Juanito's Travels

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 London Again, Priscilla Queen of the Desert , Cardiff, Wales 1995 BlogPt7

1995

I contacted one of the guys who’d done the 3-day Vipassana course with me a few weeks earlier. He’d agreed to put me up on his couch for a couple of nights in London. I don’t think he was that keen on putting me up, but he agreed, which was good enough.

I’d like to say I think he was an Aussie guy who’d been living in London for a few years. Truth is I can’t remember exactly. He might have been a kiwi. He was tall and I feel kind of blondie and probably from my neck of the woods. Maybe the Gold Coast or somewhere.

Once I got off the train from Herefordshire I got a double decker bus or two to get to his flat. I’d never been on a double decker bus. Even before I’d read the Harry Potter books, or watched the movies, I still found this quintessential London fun new and exciting, just as the train through the English countryside from Hereford had been.

It took me most of the day to get from Hereford to London, so by the time I’d arrived at Aussie/Kiwi guy’s flat it was evening. And because it was still spring, a little cool, much cooler than the equivalent time in Australia would be, but fine for a light jumper, with no need for my green Melbourne tram conductor’s coat, as cool and fashionable that was.

I dumped my backpack by the Aussie/Kiwi guy’s couch and then the guy announced. ‘We’re going off to see a movie if you want to come.’ I can’t recall who the ‘we’ were, perhaps we were meeting someone there, or he had an imaginary friend, or a house else like Dobby from Harry Potter. I don’t remember anyone else at the flat, but there could have been some others lurking.

‘Sure’, I said. It would be a bit weird if I hadn’t agreed, hanging out in the flat by myself, having just met the dude, it would be awkward. House guest protocol dictated that I go.

‘It starts in about an hour’, so we better go.

We got onto a few more double decker buses and made our way to Piccadilly Circus. Another place I usually tried to buy when playing Monopoly as the yellow ones were mid-priced and it was both affordable and achievable to get all 3 of them.

The movie was Priscilla Queen of the Desert. Before the movie started there was a drag show. It was the first drag show I’d ever been to. I liked it more than the movie. I did like the movie. I just liked the drag show a little more.

I was tired and couldn’t remember most of the rest of the night. I think we walked around a bit and grabbed something to eat. I barely remember eating much the whole trip. I wasn’t much of a foodie back then and just ate for sustenance. When I couldn’t cook myself, a bit of vegetarian pizza would usually suffice.

We got back to the flat and I crashed on the couch. I had breakfast with the guy but then he had to go off to work. He trusted me enough to leave me there by myself, but I assume I didn’t have keys so I had to meet up with him later in the day so he could let me in.

I made my way back to the Irish Embassy to see if my Irish passport had finally arrived. I discovered it was still somehow in transit after 2 and a bit weeks. I was not disappointed, I just accepted the news. It was just news, neither good nor bad, just the way it was. I told them I couldn’t wait any longer and they said when the passport arrived they could forward it along to Dublin GPO. I thanked them and left.

I hung out in Hyde Park a bit, I liked seeing British people walking about. I went and took a squiz at Buckingham Palace again, then took another walk along the Thames. I think I found a vegetarian curry somewhere and at that as I looked over the river towards Westminster. I didn’t realise I was looking at Big Ben as well. I was the worst tourist, more of a traveller.

I’d already made my mind up to go to Ireland when I was at the meditation centre, some time after the 3-day course I did. I was walking around looking at pheasants and hawks and hares and I knew I needed to go to Ireland. There was no other option really. I had to keep going, to move forward.

I was still desperately short of cash. I was lucky to have scored a couple of nights with Aussie/Kiwi guy but I couldn’t push it. Every pound spent lessened my chances of staying longer on this side of the world. I was determined to see if I could make a go of it in Ireland at least.

I felt like Patrick Leigh Fermor. He walked from Holland to Constantinople (in his time, recently renamed Istanbul) in the 1930s, saving every precious penny he could, living off cheese, bread, tobacco and booze. He just decided one day to walk across Europe and to the edge of Asia. He pretty much walked the whole way, refusing offers to get trains part of the distance. He occasionally got a lift with someone to visit places, but the rest was on foot. I think people in their twenties should be much more of the Fermor mindset and much less of the worried-about-getting-a-mortgage-and-house-and-job-and-all-that-responsible-stuff mindset.

Then again I’m turning 50 this year – the inspiration for this blog leading up to my planned 50th birthday trip next year – and while I have a good job, the housing market has escaped me. Perhaps all the more reason to just abandon it all and hit the road for a bit and ignore the whole worried-about-getting-a-mortgage-and-house mindset.

As it stood, I probably had enough money to go over to Ireland for a few days, perhaps a week or so, and then make my way back to London where I could still use the return ticket to Australia. I had a super flexible ticket, so as long as there were seats available I could get back home. If it was today I probably wouldn’t risk it. Back in 1995 I figured I could stretch the whole trip to this part of the world if I didn’t have to pay for accommodation for a few weeks, and maybe score a job somewhere straight away.

I decided to try my luck contacting the Irish woman I had the address of in Wexford Ireland that my friend’s mother’s boyfriend had given me – the only contact I had in Ireland besides those in my WWOOFing guide. Unfortunately I didn’t have a phone number for the place so I’d just have to rock up and see how I went.

I booked a train ticket for Cardiff, Wales for the next day. From there I was in striking distance to Ireland.

Had I known my passport was not going to be there in London I could have maybe saved a few quid going across the country and just headed straight down from Herefordshire to Cardiff. I didn’t have Google maps back then though so I hadn’t realised Hereford was only like a 2 hour drive away from Cardiff. I could have probably hitched the distance in a day. Then again it was only 3 hours to London, and I’d only spent a couple of pounds on bus fares, a cinema and drag show ticket and some food. So worth a detour after the couple of weeks of meditation.

It was all such short distances compared to Australia, where you could travel 8-15 hours between big cities. So going back and forth across the country didn’t seem like a big deal.

I had another contact from a dude who did the 3-day Vipassana course with me who lived in Cardiff. I rang him and asked if I could crash a night or 2 on the way to Ireland. He didn’t seem that keen either but he was like, ‘Well, I guess you don’t have anywhere else to stay?’.

‘No’, I said.

The next day I got up, packed my backpack and headed out. I found an ATM and got out a bit of cash. I went back to Aussie/Kiwi guy’s flat and slipped £20 under his door to say thanks, and then went to the station and got on the train for Cardiff.

*****

Cardiff

The guy in Cardiff met me at the train station. He lived with his girlfriend. He apologised for not just immediately saying yes to me staying. He’d been a bit of a street person at times and still found it difficult to trust people due to being burnt a few times in the past. I didn’t judge him, he could of said yes or no, it was up to him.

I was grateful to stay with him and offered to cook him and his girlfriend some dinner to say thanks. We went to a little store and bought some rice, a few spices, some frozen broad beans, and other veggies, and a tin of tomatoes. Then we went to some street stall and bought a few potatoes and carrots, and some garlic. I whipped them up a vegetable curry which was very average but which they seemed to enjoy. I don’t think the Anglo-British were used to using spices despite their love of Indian (which was mostly Bangladeshi) take out.

The guy and his girlfriend were happy that their guest was showing his appreciation for their trust. The guy worked as a cook, but I’m sure he wasn’t into gourmet shit, more your British fried fares and pies I imagined.

The girlfriend was very nice and I chatted with them about the Vipassana course. The guy was keen to do the 10-day course soon. He said he could see that it had a good impact on me and that he wanted to continue his spiritual journey. His girlfriend was also keen to try it out. I think they did a course a few months later.

The guy showed me some of the sights of Cardiff, including a castle that had been built in mediaeval times on the spot the ancient Romans had once had a fort on. I didn’t go inside, it cost money. I couldn’t spare money at the moment.

The guy kept talking about the weather, it was spring he said and he was waiting for some warmer weather. We were getting tops of maybe 17 when I was there, he was hoping that it’d crack the 20s at some point soon.

I remember passing a car at some point which had had the window smashed. I asked whether we should tell the police and the guy said it was best to keep out of it.

The next day he took me to get the bus down to Fishguard, where you get the ferry across to Ireland. At some point during the visit he’d taken me on the bus somewhere out of Cardiff to show me something I can’t even remember seeing now. I remember the bus and also him trying to sell the remaining portion of his ticket to random people once we got back to Cardiff. I think the tickets lasted the whole day so you could get a little back if you sold it on. I think we went somewhere near the beach, or to the country. It obviously didn’t make a huge impact on me.

I remember hearing people speaking Welsh. It was nice. Especially the older ladies, speaking their Welsh.

I think I spent 2-3 nights there. That was the limit for guests and fresh fish before going off.

I didn’t go overboard with my thanks this time and I didn’t give them £20. I think they were happy to have someone cook a meal for them and to leave a few things in the pantry. I kept in contact with them for years but I didn’t quite hit the social media era so once our letters stopped and I forgot their address I lost touch.

He was a nice guy. His girlfriend was also nice. To help a stranger out, it’s a bit of a risk. It’s nice people do it from time to time.

Heading to Fishguard I realised I’d made it another step of the way on the journey. I was on my way to Ireland.

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.

50-Year-Old Backpacker, A Juanito’s Travels BLOGnicle. Bangkok to London Detention BlogPt4

1995

Flying from Bangkok to London. Hurrying to pick up the sapphires I bought from a gem store in Bangkok so I could recover some of my travel savings. Crazy.

Fuck. I was nervous. This is crazy. Gems, Bangkok, London. How did I find myself in this situation?

Too late. It was done now.

I got on the plane leaving Bangkok. We take off and are on our way. 15 or 20 minutes into the flight there’s an announcement in Thai. A Thai couple next to me look at each and are obviously worried. I look at them and wonder what the fuck’s going on. Then the announcement in English.

Ladies and gentlemen. There is an issue with one of the plane’s engines. We will return to Bangkok to inspect this. It is nothing to be concerned about, it is just a precautionary measure or words to that effect.

Fuck.

We put our seat belts back on. I look at the Thai couple nervously, they look at me nervously as the plane turns back to Bangkok. I start to meditate, if I’m going to die, I’d like to die calmly.

But we make it back safely. We land and head back to the terminal and wait maybe 3 hours or more. Then we’re ushered back onto the plane. We strap ourselves in again but I think how could they possibly fix a faulty engine in just 3 hours? It didn’t seem possible.

We take off. 15 or 20 minutes later an announcement in Thai. I look at the Thai couple again and they confirm with a nod and another worried look. They didn’t fix the engine in 3 hours. I resign myself to the fact I might die again (not that I actually died the first time, just to be clear), I was pretty calm about it to be honest. Up there in the sky, what else are you going to do, there’s no point panicking, you can’t go anywhere, if you’re going to die you’re going to die. I just started meditating again.

We head back to Bangkok for a second time, we land safely a second time. This time it’s late in the evening. We wait a few hours and it’s clear to all us weary passengers the plane’s not going to be fixed quickly. When you’re fixing engines, – and I’m not an expert aircraft engineer or anything – but when you’re fixing engines, I think, take your time! After another few hours they tell us we won’t be flying until the morning so they put us up at a hotel.

I get to the hotel, put my head down on the pillow and start sleeping. I feel like I’ve only slept for a few minutes when the phone rings again. The plane’s ready. Apparently. We’re going back out to the airport.

So we’re all put back on the plane. It’s a different one, they must have given up on the one with the broken engine which I think’s a good choice. for a third time, they send us on our way. 15-20 minutes into the flight, nothing happens. 30 minutes in nothing again. After a couple of hours I look out the window and we’re crossing the Himalayas. It’s sunrise I think, and the peaks are that early morning pinky orange. Feels like we’re not too far above the biggest peaks in the world and I can look down into the valley trying to spot some animal or something. It’s amazing that us humans can just pay for a ticket and then get into one of these things that fly over mountains. I feel like I might take it a bit too much for granted nowadays, even post COVID travel restrictions.

I think about my sapphires. I had to be able to sell them in London otherwise I’d run out of money in a day or two in London. Actually I hardly even had enough for a night in London. It wasn’t 40 baht a night there, you had to pay real prices in British Pounds!

When my friends Christoph and Tanya had flown over to London they were in a similar position, they barely had a couple of hundred pounds between them. Luckily Christophe was the chatty type and he got to talking to a British couple on the plane. When the British couple found out how little money the couple had they were like, you’re not going to last more than a week in London on that.

The British couple then offered the lucky bastards to put them up for a week at their house so they might have time to find a job. I was praying for something like that at the moment thinking my sapphire plan was rubbery at best, non-existent at worst.

I manage to get a bit of sleep and do a bit of meditating to calm my racing thoughts. We fly over Pakistan or Iran or Iraq or somewhere and then over Europe. Eventually, in the early morning – another morning, I was losing track, we had a sunset when we crossed the Himalayas, morning, night, who knows – we arrived in London.

I get out and line up for immigration. The immigration officer looks at my passport and looks at me.

“How much money do you have?” she asks. Christophe and Tanya had been asked the same question so I knew it might be on the cards. Seemed like Australians often rocked up on a wing and a prayer.

“60 pounds I think, maybe 65. I have some more money in my bank account”. I think I had about $10 or $15 Australian in my bank account.

“60?”

“Yes”.

“Is that all?”

“I have some sapphires I bought in Bangkok waiting for me at the post office.”

“Sapphires?”

“Yes”. I was starting to feel very stupid. Well stupider than I really was. “I can take them to sell them on Bond Street.” I showed her a bit of paper that the dodgy Thai guy gave me. She looks at it with the scepticism it deserves.

“And you have no work permit?”

“No”, although Christophe and Tanya had very little money they did, at least, have work permits, so they were reluctantly let in despite their small amount of cash. I suppose they also, by luck, had a place to stay. I had no work permit. Mainly because I was an Irish citizen so I didn’t need one, so I didn’t bother with it. But I didn’t have my Irish passport, or any proof of Irish citizenship apart from my red hair. And, since I was travelling on my Australian passport I was being treated as a broke Aussie instead of a broke Irishman.

“I think you’ve been duped on the sapphires”, she says.

My heart sinks, I know she’s likely to be right. “But I am Irish.” I say.

She goes and chats to her colleagues. She tells her colleague something like, ‘he says he’s Irish’, and they mumble and the like.The rest of the plane have now mostly made it through immigration.

“You say you’re Irish. Have you got proof of that?”

“Well, no, not on me. I was waiting for my Irish passport in Australia but they didn’t have it ready so I had to leave without it. I had to send them my foreign births registry papers as well, so I don’t have anything at the moment.”

“Well, I’m afraid without a valid work permit we are going to have to refuse you entry into the UK”.

My heart sinks, after this long journey I was just going to be sent straight back. The immigration officers chat. All the other passengers have gone, I’m the last one standing there. The airport seems almost deserted. I’m alone, I’m tired, but I’m kind of calm. After a while the officers get back to me.

“Apparently Thai airways don’t have another seat until tomorrow afternoon. We are going to issue you a 24 hour permit so you can leave the airport but you need to return for the flight tomorrow afternoon. Had they had a seat on the next plane you’d be going straight back. But they’ve cancelled that flight.”

“What if I can prove I’m Irish in that time?”

“If you can provide proof of your Irish citizenship in that time we can give you an entry visa.”

They hand me back my passport with the 24 hour visa. They tell me I have to be back at the airport by 2 PM or something the next day in order to be deported.

I walk out and try and find my backpack. Everyone else has long gone so they think it’s abandoned and I have to go to a special spot to get it. At least I’d gotten this far, I’m kind of free and I am in the UK, for now. And I can at least get out of the airport. Thankfully Thai airways only had that one plane operating between Bangkok and London due to the other one having a bung engine, which allowed for this little reprieve. I can do it! I can make it into the UK! I just had to prove I was Irish and use my Irish luck! Don’t know how I’m going to work out the rest, but something will work out, just got to stay positive.

I feel like I’m in a Hollywood film, 24 hours, and maybe 60 British pounds, plus whatever I could withdraw from my Australian bank account, to sort out the gems and my Irish citizenship. The clock starts its countdown.

It’s 3 or 4 am, the tube trains don’t start until 5.30 or 6.00 am or something. I’m dead tired so I find a bunch of passengers who are sleeping by the departure gates. I crawl under some chairs, desperate to get an hour or so sleep. Not having had a decent sleep for about two days now.

5.50 am, I’m at the tube gate buying a ticket and waiting for the train into London. I get on a train and head into London. The city is just waking up once we’re out in the open I can see over the houses, with their chimneys wafting steam and smoke. The sun is just coming up and there’s a similar hue to that which I saw over the Himalayas the previous night or morning, it was all a bit disorientating now.

7.15 am. I get into London. I have the Irish embassy’s address, but they don’t open until 9.30 am. So once I’ve identified where it is I just loiter in the general vicinity.

I’m hungry but super short on cash so I decide to get a piece of fruit.

“Excuse me, do you know where I can buy some fruit?” I ask a gentleman in a light trench coat.

He laughs his jolly English laugh, I think it’s like a nervous tick English have when they are uncomfortable talking to hippy backpackers on their way to work (obviously he was on his way to work – the hippy, being a hippy, can just roam around freerange during office hours). An Australian talking must sound quite quaint. He points me in the direction of a fruit stall without pausing much. I find the place and I think I decide on an apple, or perhaps some stone fruit were in season which sounds more like my cup of tea as I’m not that fond of apples. I’m happy I’m getting to see a little bit of London now, if they kick me out of the country, which I’m still hopeful they won’t, at least I’ve got to look around a little bit.

I take a stroll and find a place on some roundabout and watch the traffic go by. Eating my piece of fruit. I think I may have taken some bread rolls, and a little plastic packet of butter and jam from the plane so I munched on that as well. Or maybe I bought a bread roll. I must have had some water or fluids as well. Though unlikely very much as I was still thirsty.

9.30am comes around and I head straight into the embassy. I explain my situation. I got to London, no money and the stupid English want to kick me out if I can’t prove I’m Irish and they have my passport ready at the Irish embassy in Canberra and my proof of citizenship papers and all that, I’m seriously legit Irish.

They are rather friendly. Of course, they’re Irish. But they don’t think they can do anything for me at the moment as it’s night time in Australia. They’d have to fax through some request and have the Australian embassy fax something back, and I’d probably have to come back the next morning to see if they were able to do something. But I could try in the afternoon just to see if they’d heard anything.

I thank them and head back out into London.

I have all my luggage with me. Thankfully that was just the backpack which wasn’t super heavy. So I decide I might as well explore a bit and maybe go and check if my sapphires had arrived. If they were going to kick me out of the country I at least wanted to pick up my sapphires first.

So I walk down to the GPO. Probably more of a hike than a walk, Google maps tells me it’s an hour’s walk from the embassy which I could do relatively easily in those days, even though my back was feeling it along the way.

I’m able to go through Hyde park, and I sit for a bit and watch the swans and then check out Buckingham palace, and then onto the GPO. Without Google maps I’m not sure how I managed it. I must have had an analogue Google map.

Having acquired the sapphires in such a dodgy manner, I’m half, or even 4/5ths expecting they wouldn’t have even sent me anything.

But, somehow they are there waiting for me!

Because it still seems very shady – still I say now, back then I was hoping through my idiocy I may have just got lucky and I could actually sell those stones. After I collect the package I take it to an inconspicuous corner of the place and pour out its contents. Yes indeed, the gems are there. Well, maybe I can sell them? I think.

I make my way to Bond Street – perhaps using my great knowledge of the Monopoly board, as I had no GPS, figuring it must be around Regent Street and the other green one. The address the Thai gives me is of course not able to be found (although Bond Street itself exists, why else would they put it on the Monopoly board!). I wander around a bit more and I find a Christie’s auction house. At least they might be able to tell me if the sapphires are worth anything.

I walk in and ask if a valuer can take a look at my sapphires. They have me wait, there with my backpack in their fancy shiny wood lined corridors. Soon a polite English gentleman comes out and greets me. We go into a room and he has a look at the sapphires.

“What did you pay for them?’ He asks. I tell him the amount and he grimaces. “They are not worth that. But, at least they’re real, I’ve seen plenty bought for similar amounts which turned out to be pastes” – I later found out pastes are just a fancy term for fake gems, or more precisely where you have a slither of real gem pasted onto some glass or something like that.

“So I can’t sell them here?”

“Well no-one will want to buy them, they are very dark, and not the type anyone here in England wants. We prefer the lighter colour ones.”

My heart sinks to a further level. The titanic level. Where only James Cameron would be able to find it.

I head back to the embassy, just in case they’d heard anything. The embassy hasn’t heard back from Australia. I’d have to try again the next day.

I go to Hyde Park and sit under a tree. I’m more depressed and despondent than I have ever been in my life. I assess the situation, little money, enough to last a day or two max, but not even that if I have to pay for accommodation. I have no Irish passport, so I’ll have to come back to the embassy tomorrow. After internally crying and despairing and swearing, I think. Think John, think. I was going to have to find a place to stay the night at least and get some cash.

Firstly I get onto. the cash situation. I needed cash if I was to stay in the UK, otherwise I might as well just go back home. So I find a public phone. Luckily my dad had bought me a phone card so I could call home. I rang my mum. It was sometime in the middle of the night over there (In Australia), but I couldn’t work out exactly what time it was exactly. It didn’t seem to matter really, she was just kind of just glad I wasn’t killed or had my kidneys taken out yet.

I explained the whole situation as best I could. Somehow bought sapphires off a dodgy bloke in Bangkok, they were real but not worth much, so can’t get money back. So could I borrow some money in case the Irish organise proof of me being Irish in time for them to stop the deportation process. Kind of sounds funny now, but believe me at the time it wasn’t!

Luckily my dad had also told me that I could withdraw money using my Australian bank card in England as I had no idea you could do such modern things and had mostly planned to rely on travellers cheques and just leave my useless bank card in Australia. My mum says she’ll work something out but she’ll have to wait another nine hours or something before the bank opened. I thanked her and got off the phone, relieved to have crossed one worry off of my list. Well it was at least in progress.

It was already around midday in London, even if they could get the money straight into the bank when it opened I still wouldn’t see any more money until the early hours of the morning. So the few pounds I had left would have to last the night at least. And I didn’t really even have enough to stay at the worst hostel for a night. Or not enough to do that and eat as well.

Next thing then was to try and find a place to stay, for free. Ah, ha! I had the address and phone number of Newcastle Chick and British Guy (see previous blog posts if you don’t know who they are). I’d written to them before I’d left and said I was coming over to Europe, so they would not be too surprised if I rocked up. I think they’d even written back and said they looked forward to catching up or something like that.

Surely they’d let me stay with them. British guy had stayed with me a few nights in Melbourne the year before after all (again, see previous blogs if you’re lost). He’d be right to return the favour, it was just what people did. Anyway, I didn’t have much fucking choice (pardon my French, but I was tired and upset at the time).

So I get out British Guy’s and Newcastle Chick’s number and I ring and ring, and ring, no answer. I think, fuck it, I’ll just make my way out to their flat. I had their address. But first I walk around a bit more, catching a few sites like Nelson’s Column, Trafalgar Square (maybe that’s in the same place, who knows) and other third reich empire style stuff that showed how great the British empire was compared to say, the third reich, as they treated all their natives in India, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and other places nice, unlike the Nazis who were plain nasty. No, no the British were a benevolent lot and only interested in making sure everyone could enjoy a nice cup of tea picked by their subjugated subjects sweetened with tea grown by slaves in the West Indies, on doilies made from wool grown on stolen Aboriginal land down in Australia. I also get a slice of vegetarian pizza for £1.50, and some sort of drink. Then I head out on the tube.

Newcastle Chick and British Guy lived on the outskirts of London. I can’t remember exactly where, but there was a museum which had a Picasso exhibition on, and it took a fair while to get there. It cost another few pounds to get on the train. I was watching every precious pound trying to make sure I could get through the night at least.

By the time I got out to the place it was getting dark, around 6 or 7 pm, the banks in Australia would still not be open for a while. I checked my account anyway. There was enough in there to get £5 out. That was still a precious amount when I was so close to completely running out of money so far from Australia. Probably still didn’t have enough overall to get a place to stay though.

I tried ringing Newcastle chick and British guy’s flat again, again no answer. It was starting to get very late now so I just made my way to their house and rang their doorbell several times. Again, no answer. I found a pay phone and tried ringing again a few times. Desperate, I decided to try a different tact.

For some reason I had Newcastle Chick’s mother’s phone number with me in my little address and phone book. Possibly because in those days nobody had emails or social media, or mobile phones, so one of the only ways to keep in touch with people when you travelled about was to hand out your parents’ address and phone number.

I still didn’t know what time it was in Australia but I called Newcastle Chick’s mum anyway. Unlike her daughter and British Guy she actually answered! I explained my situation and that I really wanted to get in touch with her daughter and partner, I read out their phone number, and yes, it was correct. I read out the address and yes it was correct. Supposedly as well they were meant to be home as far as she knew. I thanked her and went back to their flat and tried ringing the doorbell a few more times. I assumed they were out and would be back at some stage, so I just waited by the front fence, a low brick wall, for what seemed like hours and hours.

At some point it became obvious that this just wasn’t going to work out. But it was too late to even try to get back into London centre and it was now almost 3 days that I’d been without proper sleep. I could barely keep my eyes open.

It was cold, but I had a few decent clothes, and importantly a green woollen Melbourne tram conductors coat that Evan, who’d done my first vipassana course with me in Victoria, and who used to be a Melbourne tram conductor had given me. So I found a spot in the front yard outside the flats where Newcastle Chick and British Guy lived, a place behind some bushes, and I just crashed.IT was a big city, people probably just assumed I was homeless and ignored me. I woke around dawn and headed back to the train station again. I didn’t bother to try the buzzer for the guy’s flat again. What was the point? I found a bank and checked my money situation. Still nothing, so I ring my mum and dad again, my dad is awake and super stressed but he’s been up to the bank and my mum tells me that my dad said the bank said that it could take few hours for the money to show up but in my account but that they’d put $250 in my account. It wouldn’t have possibly been easier if my dad had told me directly, but he never talked to me directly much. $250, It wasn’t much, but I thanked them as it was a life saver. They said my sister Christine said she could lend me a further $500 but she hadn’t been to the bank yet.

I still had a bit of cash so I made my way back to the Irish Embassy to check on the passport situation. When I walked in they immediately recognised me and gave me the good news that the Irish embassy in Canberra had faxed a copy of my passport to the office and that they had put a notary stamp on it to verify it so this would probably be enough to show the immigration officers at Heathrow Airport. They were also sending the passport to the London embassy, so it should be there in a few days’ time. I thanked them profusely.

I checked my bank again, and this time, yes, money was there, things were starting to look up! I went back out to the airport, walking past a bunch of Pakistanis, Bangladeshis and Indians waiting to be deported. I went into an office, showed my papers, and they had no choice but to let me stay in the country, giving me a brand new stamp. I felt bad for all the other guys as I walked out a free man. They didn’t have the same Irish luck as me.

I was now officially allowed to stay in the UK. How I could do so for more than a few days, I didn’t quite know, but one step at a time.