Mexico – Juanito's Travels

Pak Beng (aka pakbeng), Laos, to Luang Prabang and another day on the rather crappy slowboat down the Mekong – 50yr Backpacker Pt 31

After the Mekong Elephant Park we spent another day in Pak Beng. The smoke from the many fires burning around the country were just as terrible in the morning, so bad we again discussed trying to get out of Laos and into neighbouring Vietnam sooner than we had planned. The new Vietnamese e-visa application had still not been approved so we were going to have to spend at least another week in Laos, until the existing visa date. I had trouble trying to change the hotel booking in Pak Beng as well as I’d booked on one platform but I couldn’t change the booking on the same platform and the hotel owner couldn’t do anything unless we had first done something on the other platform, which didn’t work. So in the end we figured we could survive another night in the smokey haze, not waste money on another night’s accommodation, and head to Luang Prabang for the second part of our slow boat journey down the Mekong. I had initially so been looking forward to the slow boat. So far, my romantic notions had been dashed and mired by smoke, intense heat, the very uncomfortable seating and disappointment at the wanton dumping of rubbish in the river.

I’ve been reading Peter Frankopan’s The Earth Transformed. It goes into graphic and terrifying detail of how us humans are changing the Earth. As a tourist I can complain about the heat and smoke and do my ‘Karen’ thing, but for millions, probably billions,in the world it’s not about visiting a place for a few days, taking the photos in front of stuff and moving on the next day. While we were experiencing the devastating effects of climate change, we had the opulence to just jump on a boat (slow or fast), plane, train or bus to get out of the place. Billions will suffer with the heat, the fires, the smokes, the droughts, the floods, the pollution, and the waste when us tourists have been through. Our little trip is just a glimpse into that world. The average Laotian will have to live with this, mostly un-air conditioned, reality with no option to escape. As Frankopan illustrates, the world Earth doesn’t give preference to any one species it’s outlived lots of pioneering tiny little bacteria types, long stretches of huge T-rexs, brontosauruses, pteranodons, sabre tooth tigers, mammoths, Tasmanian tigers, dodos and all our ancestors like the neanderthals and all the other homos. The death of the homo sapiens through our own stupidity will go barely noticed in the universe. At least all the other species had an excuse, they didn’t have the ability to do anything about their own demise.

Of much less importance, though as a travel blogger I will of course mention it, is the impact on tourists like us carelessly venturing into countries suffering from the effects of climate change, and while complaining about it, and ironically contributing to it through our flights and consumption patterns back home, I fear climate change could be the literal death of many of us humans, perhaps taking much of the flora and fauna with us- though probably leaving a gap for something new to take over – perhaps the dinosaurs mark II! Apocalyptic I know for a travel blog, but travel opens your eyes to the issues the world is having and perhaps can lead us to doing something meaningful about it. If not, and we are all faced with the prospect of annihilation, I have been reading another book which I just finished called No Death, No Fear by Thich Nhat Hanh which I saw a Vietnamese guy reading. He ran a very small café on the opposite side of a little courtyard to our hotel in Ho Chi Minh, which was down an alleyway, rather cool. He looked super chilled so I took a photo of his book and bought it on Amazon when I got back to Australia. Which in the chronology of this blog is still a few months away. So No Death, No Fear could offer the insight we need to accept the impermanence of the world and perhaps the dire situation we are all facing with climate change, plus waste and general non-Co2 equivalent related pollution and sustainability. I won’t quote it directly as I’m too lazy to get up and get it out of the bedroom – oh now I’m making myself feel bad so I will get up and get it!

Animals, plants and animals all suffer because of the greed of human beings. The earth, the water and the air are suffering because we have polluted them. The trees suffer because we destroy the forest for our own profit. Some species have become extinct because of the destruction of the natural environment. Humans also destroy and exploit one another.

According to the teachings of Buddhism, all beings have the capacity of awakened nature. How can we stop ourselves from collapsing in despair? It is because Buddhas and bodhisattvas are present in the world. They are not somewhere else in a faraway paradise. Whether we are living or dying, they are here with us.

THICT NHAT HANH

Such insights might also help us address the issues that contribute to climate change and other environmental issues though with insights into greed, consumption, vanity, and lying to ourselves – such as “we’re doing our ‘bit’ to tackle climate change” which is code for we’re only doing enough to make ourselves feel good when in reality we’re all doing very little and are really just on a slow boat, down the Mekong, bags of rubbish floating past, smoke filling our eyes and lungs, and heat frying our brains.

The guy at the small café down the alleyway in Ho Chi Minh was what I’d imagine a bodhisattva to be. Quiet, focussed, humble. I took a look at TikTok recently and that’s the shit that makes me despair. Why do we need that stuff?

But I digress, back to our touristy trip down the Mekong River!

mekong river slow boat laos

It was way too hot to do anything while there in Pak Beng so in the morning I just did some blogging, at the stage where I thought I could actually keep it up while travelling! It’s almost exactly a year now since we were in Laos, and I only finished off the bits about my travels to Ireland, Europe, India and Thailand (well there’s still a little to go of that) from 1995, so this latest 50 year backpacker trip may still take a while to finish writing about. It will happen at some point though! Perhaps before the next trips we have planned: Mexico with my son Oskarito, and a 30 year plus anniversary (of my 1995 trip) to Ireland, Spain, Bruges, Germany, and maybe Tallinn, Estonia, plus Japan for the cherry blossoms which my kids and mum did back a few years ago now, and which I wrote about here. Though my wife thinks perhaps we should get ‘ a house’ before spending more money on travel. 😉

Back in Pak Beng, though it was way too hot to do anything, our new Canadian friend – new to being a friend rather than being a Canadian, which I think she had been all her life – decided to hire some guide to take her up to some Laotian village. We were like, good luck and we hope you don’t die along the way! After some blogging in the morning out in the breakfast area I decided to go for a walk as i was hungry and didn’t want to pay the hotel’s exorbitant prices, preferring the value of the one and only Indian place in town, which was at least a tenth of the price of the hotel. I made it as far as the Indian place on the main street, about a kilometre or two away. When I got there the owner was shocked that I’d even gone that far warning that I should have basically avoided any activity during the day. My wife was sensible and stayed in the room with the aircon going full blast. This managed to just take the most extreme of the heat off of the room as the aircon unit was way too small for the space. Also the doors didn’t quite shut properly which meant not only did some of the heat escape but the smoke, particularly in the mornings and evenings made its way in. They were helping out the elephants across the river in the park though so they can be forgiven.

So the last day in Pak Beng was really totally uneventful. We did go down to the pool once the sun went down a bit. We could catch a glimpse of the Mekong from there which was nice. When the sun had disappeared we ventured down to Happy Bar where they offered us a free starter whiskey, that we politely tipped out onto the ground after realising from one sip it could probably fuel a moped, and then buying a few Beerlaos, a very tasty brew that is nowhere near as toxic as the free Laotioan whiskey (there may be classier/ safer ones about, dunno). The Beerlaos IPAs are especially tasty though not available everywhere. Buddhism and alcohol, I know, rather contradictory. We stayed a while at Happy’s, it was the low season and not many people had found the place. There were a few overnighters who had come on the slow boat from Huay Xie (or perhaps Luang Prabang) a few hours ago who we were likely to see again on the boat in the morning again.

The next morning we got up early and had our breaky. Another plate of papaya, dragonfruit, weak coffee and ever so slightly toasted toast with locally made jam that was rather nice. We let the hotel know that we were leaving an empty suitcase behind. My wife deciding she couldn’t watch me struggle up the slopes of the riverbanks another day risking dislocating my shoulders. We had had to economise our clothes a bit, to fit it the remaining bags. I had finally drunk all of my Capital Brewery beer (from Canberra) which I’d lugged around the world thus far – it was just a four pack. I also had to say goodbye to my koala mariachi shirt which was irretrievably soiled from the day trip to the Mekong Elephant Park, along with a backpack cover – which I thought the airlines would have made me use to cover my yellow backpack, which in the end they didn’t seem to care about. I think a pair of shoes and some other random items may have also been jettisoned as well. We had managed to get the contents of the large empty suitcase into my yellow backpack, some mochilas (small backpacks) and one smaller suitcase as well as some green bags we usually used for our supermarket and market shopping back in Australia.

We hugged our new-found Canadian friend and exchanged Insta details. As she was going against the flow of the river up towards Huay Xie, we wouldn’t have the pleasure of her company for another day. And then we got on the back of the hotel truck and headed down the hill to the boat area. As we still had 30 minutes before departing I quickly ran into town and grabbed a few bottles of water, some soft drink and snacks for the journey. Then we headed down another steep slope down the stairs to the river and the boats, thankfully without dislocating my shoulders.

I feel the second day on the boat was not nearly as bad as the first. Firstly I think our romantic expectations had already been dashed, mine especially. I think my wife never held high hopes for the 2-day boat trip so she was about the same. The seats were marginally less uncomfortable and I didn’t notice any kids chucking empty plastic noodles containers overboard this time. I must say, all us foreign tourists kept all of their rubbish for later disposal, so we were good in that respect! There were still plenty of bits of plastic floating about from others and caught in the branches the dry season had exposed, but nowhere near as much as up Huay Xai way. The riverbanks, when not burning, were also a bit more interesting, more buffalo, more villages, more kids running about and swarming onto the edges of the boat selling bracelets when we stopped at villagers. We were also a bit better prepared, with more fluids to get through the day so we didn’t have to buy anything on the boat. I resisted buying a Beerlaos as it cost twice the price on the boat and stuck with what we had. We had a monk onboard who hopped on at one of the small villages which added a bit of tranquillity and colour to the boat. Our fellow travellers were all pretty chilled, also resigned to, or perhaps even excited for, another slow day on the river.

We went through signs of Laos’ modernisation with high bridges crossing the river at points. Perhaps it was just ‘A’ bridge but it was pretty impressive. There were also land reclamation projects on the side of the river with machines pilling up sand to build some sorts of buildings on. All financed by the Chinese I believe.

In the afternoon the river got bendier. The hills became slightly greener and less on fire. We spotted a cave temple which was not far from Luang Prabang which was beautiful and which we should have probably visited when we were in Luang Prabang but couldn’t as my wife vowed to never set foot on a slow boat down the Mekong ever again. And eventually we made it. Two, almost, whole days on the river and we had made it. To lovely Luang Prabang. Well almost to lovely Luang Prabang. The ‘wharf’ which I put in quotation marks as it’s just really a very basic collection of wooden walkways with enough space for maybe a dozen boats – maybe double or triple that in the peak season. Maybe the ‘boat landing’ place is a better description. The boat landing place was, again due to the dry season lack of water, about 10-12 metres below the road. It felt more like 300 metres as I again struggled up the hill, even with the consolidated luggage which was only a couple of less kilos lighter than when we arrived in Pak Beng.

On top, the lovely Luang Prabang was still nowhere in sight. Apparently they could take the boats all the way to lovely Luang Prabang itself, but instead they dock them about 30 minutes drive away to support the local, low level organised crime, taxi industry. I paid for a ticket on a collective taxi that was going into town. We were unlucky as they were still waiting for the taxi to fill up before heading off, so we had to sit around for a few minutes while everyone boarded. The collective taxi was one of those trucks with two of those long bench seats on either side and the luggage of all 12 occupants piled almost to the roof in the middle. So more of a back of a truck than a taxi.

‘I don’t think we’re all going to fit’, I’d said before getting on. To which a young backpacker replied, ‘oh we’ve fit more than this in before!’ Bless the hearts of those young backpackers, for despite having a yellow backpack myself, I now realised I preferred a little bit more comfort in my 50s! Which my wife would probably have said ‘te lo dige’ – or I told you so in Spanish!

Once we were all stacked in and unable to move, we were told, or perhaps not so much told as it was it became evident, that we still weren’t going anywhere for a bit as we didn’t have a driver, so we all sat there for maybe 20-30 minutes waiting for a driver to show up. I mean perhaps they could have figured that out before they shoved us all in ike sardines, but het, that’s just me and my 50-year backpacker ways. The younger backpackers all seemed down with it and unperturbed. If I was their age I’d probably be fairly stoned by now and also lacking stress about the situation. We did get a chance to talk to a few of the young people, they’d been travelling here, there and everywhere. That’s the life. In fact the life we were living ourselves at that moment! And then suddenly a driver appeared, and we were off to lovely Luang Prabang. Though at that stage we were still unaware at just how lovely it was going to be.

That’s for the next blog post. I’ve had enough today.

Oh, after bagging TikTok, I’ve started an account, it’s literally better than 95% of the shit I’ve seen on the platform so far: https://www.tiktok.com/@juanitos.travels Get your laptops out and check it out!

Juanito’s Travels 50 yr backpacker – Pushkar, India 1995 & Bangkok 2023, Mexican visas & changing plans pt22

In 2023

My ambition to have finished writing about my 1995 trip before starting my actual 50 year backpackers hasn’t eventuated and I find myself in Bangkok, Thailand, by a swimming pool, polishing off a Chang beer bought from the 7/11 for just 39 baht kept cool by my Bernie’s Kai Kai, Torres Strait Islander stubby holder I brought with me for just such occasions, with a MacBook in my lap not even 24 hours into our round-the-world trip, aka the Gira Mundial , which started with a few rough patches at Bangkok airport when we tried to get a visa on arrival for my wife who is travelling on her Mexican passport.

bernie's kai kai stubby holder

Our research showed that she should be able to get a visa on arrival in Thailand for 30 days and we based our plans around that. It turns out it’s not as easy as that. Firstly Mexicans travelling on their Mexican passport can only get 15 day visas for Thailand and also need to show an exciting plane ticket. I was ok as I am travelling on my Australian passport which means I get 30 days on arrival without filling in any forms. But of course I can’t leave my wife!!! After much convincing that we would indeed leave after 15 days to go to Laos by bus, the immigration guy stamped my wife’s form and she got her visa. Luckily we have e-visas for our remaining South-East Asian countries (Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia) and the Laos one didn’t specify a date of entry so we could go there a bit earlier than we planned so my wife can be within the 15 day visa timeframe. Which, the immigration guy reiterated, must be kept otherwise we’d have to pay 500 baht per day of the overstay. The visa-on-arrival costs around 2200 for Mexicans. We had planned to visit Thailand for 5 more days, so the penalty would only cost slightly more than getting another visa-on-arrival and keep to our original itinerary, which I did contemplate, but my wife is very much the stickler for rules, so in the end, we’re going to Laos 5 days earlier than we had planned.

But that was yesterday. Today we’re lounging about on poolside deckchairs after having spent the morning at Wat Phra Kaew and the Grand Palace looking at the most amazing architecture you could ever imagine. Dazzled by the beauty with every turn of the head, sitting in front of the Emerald Buddha not allowed to take photos just contemplating the room, and the littler Emerald Buddha that dominates the place even though it’s only around 60cm tall. Then wandering some Bangkok riverside markets, tasting the most sublime chicken red curry you can imagine, buying a hat for myself, which was sorely missed in the hellish heat on April in Bangkok – it’ll be over 38 every day we’re here and even though I wore a shirt down to the pool I can’t bear to have one on even as I type. Not trying to convey some sexy image, just can only wear the bare minimum amount of clothing at present to retain the socially accepted level of decency at a venue frequented by all ages. Also pretty desperate for a swim, but waiting till I do a bit more of my blog so I don’t feel I’m too far behind with it for the remainder of the journey. But anyway, such a wonderful, though almost hellishly hot day makes the visa troubles and the long flight, and everything worth it! And once through immigration, even though we were zombified level tired, we still managed to get a SIM card, book a Grab taxi, get to our hotel and all that without being totally ripped off – as I had been on my first trip to Thailand. Interestingly enough they still, 27-28 years later, have warning signs about people in regards to gem scams. I guess the model still works, why fix it!

Anyway, back in 1995, in India, on the way to Thailand, but still a few more days away (back then)…

In the morning I went over to the Belgian couple’s, who I’d shared the elephant ride with the day before, at the hotel. As I said, they had their own driver whom they offered to drive me to the bird sanctuary. Well, in the morning I rocked up to their hotel and they informed me that the driver had been annoyed that they diverted from their plans and had gone to Jaipur where he had had to sleep in his car, so he was pissed and was refusing to take som chippy with him in the car. So, at the last moment, the plans were changed, I wasn’t going to the Bird Sanctuary and had to find a plan B, or just stay in Jaipur, I guess, but I didn’t even contemplate it at the time.

The only other idea I had was from Steve who had mentioned Pushkar, so I just said thanks to the Belgians and good luck and I headed with my backpack straight to the bus station and made my way to Pushkar. Which you can read about here so I won’t elaborate any further. But for me, in 2023, I’ve almost caught up with my 1995 trip! Just one more leg (apart from Pushkar to go!) which I’ll make a new post for in the coming days while also trying to keep up to date with the actual, as it is happening now (or at least when I’m writing) Juanito’s Travels, 50 year backpacker trip AKA el Gira Mundial!!

And I will even start doing some more photos! Though the mystery of the written word without the millions of pics has something going for it as well. We have definitely lost the art of looking and reflecting now we can outsource our pictorial memories to our cameras. Our camera phones both promote mass tourism and will also be the death of the places we visit, if we’re not careful. Us humans are historically rarely careful enough though.

Wat Phra Kaew royal palace Bangkok grand palace Bangkok And yes, the pants are super que fashion!

Juanito’s Travels 50-Yr-Backpacker – Donegal (the greatest place on earth) in the Carrot Car, swimming in the Atlantic Ocean & Reflection on Gay Abandon – 1995 BlogPt13

donegal postcard 1995

In 2022, I’ve been reading a book called Jungle of Stone by William Carlsen. It’s about John Stephens’ and Frederick Catherwood’s journey into Central America in the 1800s to rediscover the great civilisations of the Maya at places like Copán in Honduras and Palenque in Chiapas, Mexico. I have my own stories about my visit to Palenque, on my first visit to Mexico, which you can read here, also one to Calakmul, another grand Mayan site in the jungles of southern Mexico not far from Guatemala. I thought it was a bit of a trek to both these sites, but nothing like in those days. I mean I was watching Mel Gibson dubbed into Spanish in the movie Get the Gringo on an air-conditioned ADO bus on one leg from Merida to Palenque while occasionally chatting to a few young women British backpackers who had seats by the toilet, and a British couple who were sitting just behind me. Meanwhile Stephens and Catherwood were held up by bandits and constantly attacked by nasty disease ridden insects. There are a few bandits about, but comparatively speaking I would say it’s a much safer trip now.

I haven’t finished the book yet, but it has already struck me that adventurers often have this sense of gay abandon. Decades before heading to Central America, Stephens’ tried to buy a house in Greece after visiting the great ancient sites there. He found they wouldn’t lend him money for it, nor were they that keen to sell a bit of their ancient country to an American. He shrugged it off and then jumped on a boat ‘at a whim’ and headed to Turkey. He wanted to visit Egypt but THE Plague was going around (yes THE Plague) and ports like Alexandria displayed red flags to say it was a no go zone. Stephens had to spend months in quarantine at several other ports in lazarettos, where even letters were treated as though they may be carrying plague and were allowed off of ships only by means of extraction with iron tongs, with the letters then placed in an iron box for their own quarantining period.

Nothing as exciting as that awaited us in our carrot car as we left Northern Ireland on the way to Donegal, Republic of Ireland. I just mention the Stephens experience as more of a reflection of the gay abandon I used to have in my twenties and the difficulties I have now to even contemplate such things, what with work, kids, a wife, bills and the like. Though the spread of diseases like COVID and Monkeypox are still ever present. And some years ago I did pop off to Mexico to visit some Mayan ruins in the jungle, plus a few Aztec, the archaeological site of Guachimontones not far from Guadalajara, oh and the ancient Purépecha site of Tzintzuntzan near Lake Pátzcuaro, Michoacan, with my wife to be. I also visited the Pyramids of Teotihuacan, another lost civilisation north of Mexico City. So I haven’t done too bad. I also plan to take my wife to Italy and other places. Perhaps even Turkey and Greece on a whim, sometime during my 50th year – oh yeah the purpose of this blog! Even I get sidetracked sometimes as to why I’m writing this!

I can’t say Donegal left a great impression on me. It was nice and all. We went to the ‘smallest pub in Ireland’. But the one we’d been at in Enniskillen in County Fermanagh the night before was, in my opinion, even smaller. I’ve seen smaller ones down alleyways in Melbourne. And added disappointment was Agatha’s Spanish friend who turned out to be a bit annoying. I felt myself more of a traveller, something more like the Patrick Leigh Fermor ilk (Patrick walked from Holland to Constantinople and into Greece in the 1930s – for those who haven’t read his stories or my earlier blogs), travelling along on less than £15 a day (Patrick did it for considerably less, but it was the 1930s). My Spanish friend seemed like some wealthy spoilt tourist, whose parents probably supported Franco (I’ve gone too harsh there, she wasn’t that bad!). I abandoned the crew a bit and left them to do the touristy Donegal things while I just walked around by myself. It seemed a bit hilly from memory. You could see the ocean. I think. I just wasn’t that into it. We did get some postcards and wrote ourselves a note and sent it to la chaparrita in Dublin. That was fun. And cheap. It was the only note I now have from Agatha. A memory of the last days I ever saw her, though I didn’t know that at the time.

On the postcard it said:

postcard from donegal 1995

It was the sort of thing you write in your 20s. Seems like Agatha’s friend was called Olga. She did predict that I would have kids in 15 years. Indeed I had a daughter and son by then, with my daughter having already turned 8 and my son 6.

I’m not sure where we stayed in Donegal. Some sort of backpacker place. I think we managed to get ourselves a room altogether again. Agatha and I might have even shared a bed again. I don’t know. We stayed one more night. Had some drinks, smoked some weed and the next day we were off to County Sligo.

Not before a quick drive north of the town of Donegal though. Now that I remember, if not vaguely. I’m not sure why we drove north of Donegal, or even whether it was north. It may have been Westish, but there doesn’t seem much West of Donegal. Perhaps it was North-Westish, but I’m sure not south.

We drove along one of Ireland’s coast roads. With no GPS we just went with the flow. We saw a farm that faced the Atlantic. It was a nice day. A sunny day. Mild. We drove along the road for a while until we decided we were lost. Not panicky lost. Just not knowing where we were lost. It didn’t matter. It was a nice road. With sheep, green grass, the wind, incomprehensible farmers who you think are speaking Gaelic but who just have that really thick Irish West coast accent. Majestic views of the ocean which stretched to Iceland, if you could see that far.

We stopped for a bit. Perhaps we had a sandwich. I’m amazed I can barely recall eating in Ireland in those days given my obsession with food now, but that was way back then in 1995. I wasn’t much of a foodie then.

I remember the first time I tried carnitas in Mexico though. It was on the way to the archaeological site of Tzintzuntzan near Lake Pátzcuaro. My wife was a vegetarian at the time but she insisted I try tacos carnitas – a slowed cooked pork delicacy. The man who gave me my first one ended up being featured on the Netflix show the Taco Chronicles. I thought I would definitely get food poisoning as the pork had been sitting out in the sun on a wooden bench with ZERO refrigeration for hours. I didn’t. And carnitas have become my second favourite taco type just behind tacos pastor, which is pork cooked with chilies, spices, pineapple, and achiote paste. Que rico!

Back in Donegal. I think we may have had some nice bread and a bit of cheese now that I strain my brain. With the Spanish adding some ham. I was vegetarian at the time, so cheese was my kind of go to protein source. We stopped by a little rocky outcrop which had a narrow path to the sea with Irish green grass lining both sides of it, which led down to a small beach with some fairly safe looking waves coming in.

It was warm for Ireland. I felt like a swim. Spanish woman stayed up by the car eating her jamón because she didn’t want to get sand in her shoes. German carrot car owner (I think I tried naming her in earlier blog posts. I liked her, I wish I was more confident of her name), Agatha and I went down to the beach. They sat on the beach smoking cigarettes. I stripped down and waded into the water. I didn’t go further than waist deep. I grew up by the beach and was always respectful of the ocean’s power, especially if I didn’t know the area. I spent about 15 or 20 minutes in the Atlantic Ocean. I put my head under a few times just to get my body temperature adjusted. It wasn’t warm. It wasn’t freezing either. It was almost approaching the Goldilocks zone, though more on the side of slightly invigorating. The Atlantic Ocean felt smooth and clean on my naked body. I felt alone. I wanted to be alone. I came out of the water and sat for a few minutes naked with the girls, smoking a cigarette before dressing and heading back up to the carrot car.

I had the feeling this may be the first and only time I would ever swim in the Atlantic Ocean. It could always be the last time you swim in the Atlantic Ocean. It could always be the last time you do anything.

Later we drove back along the same road, along the coast, then past Donegal and towards Sligo.

50-Year-Old Backpacker Blog, A Juanito’s Travels Chronicle. Plans & Preparation? BlogPt2

2022

I’ve got this Google Sheets spreadsheet that shows all the places in Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Italy, Greece and Turkey, I want to visit with my wife on our next trip – as the title of this blog suggests I’m dubbing it the 50-year-backpacker trip. The Google Sheet’s stored in the ether somewhere. I have a column for place names, one for estimated airfares, one for estimated accommodation costs, one for costs of travelling by train, bus, or boat between cities and one for notes on what we might do on a particular day. Such as ‘visit the Vatican’ or ‘walk around piazzas’. I’ve made allowances for travelling between places, resting and even to try and fit in some laundry which I failed to budget for when my daughter and I travelled back from Italy after her German excursion/ exchange trip which led to me wearing a long-sleeved business shirt in the steamy weather of Bangkok which was the only thing in my bag that was clean. You can read about our last Bangkok adventures here.

I’ve got a fairly well paid government job to cover the costs outlined in my Google Sheet planned trip. Though I don’t have a house or any of those other ‘grown up’ things. I don’t have the money for a house, in Australia at least. Partly because I divorced a few years ago and now I’m a single dad supporting 1.5 kids (my daughter is 0.5 now because she pays me $300 board a fortnight). Partly because I married a Mexican who has had me travelling back and forth to Mexico for a few years – for the record not complaining about that, just in case I get a chancla from my wife, which I may enjoy in the right place. Partly because house prices have gone completely crazy and the little money I had left after selling the house I had with my ex-wife went on private school fees and above mentioned travel. For housing price craziness I suggest reading Robert J. Shiller’s Irrational Exuberance.

So basically I’m on a pretty decent income but also pretty poor, at least by local standards now. Apart from a pretty reasonable superannuation balance. But rather than save more money for a house deposit I’ve decided to go on another trip because, you know, fuck it, it’ll be fun, and you got to do something to mark turning 50 besides getting a pirate earring and a tattoo. And after reading Irrational Exuberance I’m still waiting for a housing market post-COVID crash, which may still be a few years coming.

1995

Leading up to my first trip to Europe, I worked as a farmhand, or Farm Manager according to my resume, planting trees and the like for $10 an hour cash-in-hand. I had a return plane ticket to London and about $2000-something dollars in cash and traveller’s cheques.

I had one contact address in Ireland of an Irish woman who used to live close to the mother and boyfriend of my best friend from high school Christophe, in the Gold Coast suburb of Tugun in the state of Queensland.

On a side note on how times have changed, and the irrational exuberance of the housing market, Tugun used to be considered a little bit of a shithole – no offence Tugun. Now a former boarder of my mum paid around $700,000 odd for a tiny little flat there under a flight path.

Back in 1995 I wouldn’t have had any interest in what a house cost, it was just a house, who gave a shit what it cost, I was the motherfucker Nirvana generation, a band I’d seen at Fisherman’s Wharf on the Gold Coast in 1992, also with Christophe. In true grunge style, on the way to the concert we’d stopped off at some dude’s house to smoke some hash. I was so wasted I ended up just lying in the mud peering over people’s heads to get a glimpse of Kurt Cobain. Much fun was had by all.

Before my departure for Europe I think I’d been up for a quick visit to the Gold Coast, to say high to my mum, probably argue with my reformed, yet still mentally ill alcoholic father, and probably say hi to a few sisters and my brother, and some friends, including Christophe, from Palm Beach Currumbin High School, who still lived on the Gold Coast. Or was Christophe down Byron Bay at that stage? After being a born again Christian for a while who hated lesbians like KD Lang, he’d turned into a born again pot-smoking hippy type. I also considered myself to be a hippy type in between my grunginess, I even used to not wear shoes in Melbourne for a while. Hippy types tended to head down to Byron in those days. Now you have to be a Hollywood superstar or the like to live there. To all those types: Get Bent ;).

Christophe and his high school sweetheart girlfriend Tanya, whom I’d say was my friend in the end as well, had long ago been over to Scotland and worked in pubs and restaurants on the common young Australians’ former right of passage/ coming of age adventure to the heart of our old imperial masters. Christophe had taken the chance during the adventure to have an adventure with some woman at a backpackers while Tanya was upstairs sleeping. Christophe tended to do such things, he claimed it was because he was half French. Christophe and Tanya stayed together for many years, and at least one more Christophe ‘adventure’ that I knew about, until one day while Christophe and I were away doing a Vipassana meditation course in Queensland, Tanya went off and had sex with their landlord/ neighbour in Coorabell, a Polish guy named Sky. Coorabell is not far from Byron Bay, which is in New South Wales if you don’t know that already. Chris after maybe 4-5 occasions over the years of doing exactly the same thing was completely outraged and broke their relationship off.

Tanya moved next door and had a few kids with Sky. I accidentally caught up with her years later when I booked an AirBnB style thing in the little flat type thing which I didn’t realise was the same flat Tanya and Christophe used to rent just a few metres away from Sky’s house.

But that’s another story. The thing is, us Aussies often looked to go and have a bit of a working holiday/ jaunt in the UK in our twenties and I was no different. Except perhaps that part of my motivation was that I was chasing after the memory of a Swiss woman I had an adventure with for a few weeks myself. You have to catch up on my previous blogs if you’re lost at this point as they’re all connected.

I can’t judge Christophe or Tanya, my wife and I met while I was still married to my first wife. Life’s not always meticulously planned. My ex-wife and I separated almost immediately after my current wife and I met. My current wife and I split up for a bit between meeting and me returning to Mexico a year and a bit later. My ex-wife and I also stayed living together, in separate spaces, for about another year. I went back to Mexico a year and a bit after first meeting my wife-to-be and we got together again. I travelled back and forth to Mexico for a couple of years. We got engaged after I got divorced. Then we got married. Then we navigated the Australian immigration system. Now we’re together. Well not at this very moment as my wife is over in Guadalajara helping look after her terminally ill father. I was over a few weeks ago helping out. It’s tough. You can read more about Guadalajara here.

Again, plans? Life’s often a bit complicated to fit neatly into columns on a Google Sheet with daily rundowns on activities and costs.

So, with my trip to Europe preparations. I didn’t have much. I was still a hippy/grunge type in my early twenties. I had the address of the Irish woman, who used to live near Christophe’s mum’s house in Tugun, whom I’d never met. I had a copy of my WWOOFing guide. I also had one other contact in Britain of a couple I’d met in Australia.

Now, I forget the name of the couple but that’s also a little tale in itself. I lived briefly in the town of Newcastle in New South Wales, a largish town about two hours’ drive north of Sydney for those who don’t know, in 1993 or 1994, somewhere around then. It was around the time Christophe and Tanya went off to Scotland, and perhaps some other places, I know Christophe went off to Amsterdam at some stage to get wasted after saving for months in London and Scotland. Hippy power, in the weed capital of the world!

I’d gone to Newcastle because I was invited to visit Christophe’s brother Luke, who was living down there and I ended up meeting many of the colourful hippyish type crowd down there and renting a garage at a shared house where we tried very unsuccessfully to grow some hydro weed. We weren’t all peace and love type hippies, that was more the early 70s, we were those born in the early 70s, mainly unemployed or uni-going pot-smoking youth and perhaps something like archaistic , or at least ‘fight the power’ type hippies with a grunge bent.

Whilst in Newcastle, I met this woman whose name I cannot recall at all. She had met this British guy in Newcastle or somewhere, who was over here in Australia backpacking. They had an adventure and decided they wanted to continue having more adventures in life as they’d fell in love and blah, blah, blah all that romantic stuff.

Anyway, British guy whose name I also forgot, ran out of money and had to go back to England. He was flying out from Melbourne and was really skint. Broke as a two-bob watch as my father might have said in one of his senseless ranting where he’d also say things like ‘mad as a cut snake’ and ‘I wouldn’t piss on them if they were on fire’. Actually he may have used to say ‘mad as a two-bob watch’, which I don’t think makes any sense at all, but whatever, British guy was skint and had nowhere to stay in Melbourne. Newcastle chick was still in contact with me, somehow, I don’t know how we keep in touch before the internet, maybe by carrier pigeon or something. Newcastle chick rang me or wrote to me or something, and asked whether British guy could stay with me like 2 nights, and whether maybe I could feed him some rolled oats or something, as he was part Scottish I think and that’s what Scots love to eat. Unfortunately I had no scotch to offer him as only in later life have I discovered it’s nice, and been able to afford to try it, though I mostly now prefer tequila due in part to my falling in love with a Mexican, from the home state of tequila, and the town of Tequila, Jalisco, during my own adventurous travels.

So British guy comes and stays with me in the room I rented from that chick who went over to Europe or Asia in the Fitzroy share house for three months (see previous blog posts). And he’s all grateful and like, “if you ever come over to Britain, please look me up and you can stay a few nights with me”. I put that in double “quotations” as it will be something I’m very likely to refer to in subsequent posts, so I want it to be a firm quotation for the records. And I say to British guy like, ‘that’d be great’, and ‘no worries, have some more rolled oats and chickpea stew’. At that stage I had no job at the Brock’s, nor an adventure with a married Swiss woman, so no plans of really ever going to Britain. But I kept in contact with Newcastle chick, and British guy, when they reunited in Britain in the months that followed.

So before I set off overseas on my adventure I have a couple of random addresses and a WWOOFing guide, a return ticket to London with a stopover in Bangkok and potentially Kathmandu and New Delhi, and an idea I’d like to try and catch up with Corinne in Switzerland, as mentioned in previous blog posts.

So I was almost set to go. I went down to one of those camping stores in the Melbourne CBD. There used to be like a camping store district there where you could buy camping gear, maps and shit. I’m thinking around Little Collins Street or somewhere. I bought myself a brand new pair of Scarpa Italian leather walking boots, and a nice blue backpack. I’d also already gotten my Australian passport so I could actually get out of the country, and for good measure I’d put in my application for an Irish passport, as a result of my Irish lineage through my grandmother from County Sligo who moved to Australia after her mother died around age 10 to live on farms in central Queensland. I also needed to get some vaccines for India, Nepal and Thailand which were recorded in a little yellow book.

As my departure date got closer it became clear my Irish passport wouldn’t be ready, but they said not to worry they could send it to the Irish embassy in London so it’d be waiting for me when I arrived there. Sounded all reasonable, so, of course, now worries.

Scarpa, backpack and at least one passport in hand, I left the Brocks’ farm with kind blessing and many happy returns. They’d met Corinne so they were not too surprised I may want to try and see her again, though she hadn’t written – and I think I may not have written to her either – and I hadn’t mentioned that was partially the reason for going over to Europe. I forget, I also had her address amongst my handful of addresses, but since, as far as I knew, she was still married, I wouldn’t be just rocking up to her door, and, unlike British bloke who got together with Newcastle chick, I wasn’t exactly invited over there, so it was still just a thought bubble.

So I went down to Melbourne for the last couple of nights before I departed and stayed with my sister Louise. Her asking me to find other accommodation really triggered this string of events so it was perhaps poignant or something like that that I was back there to start yet another adventure.

I noticed on Louise’s bench a bit of paper with what looked to be a flight number. As Peter Brock flew around Australia doing a lot of racing and doing appearances I was pretty familiar with the Qantas flight numbers so I immediately thought my mum might be coming down to see me off. The next day I wasn’t too surprised to see her in Melbourne ready to come with me to Melbourne airport to see me off. Apparently my ranty dad forced her to go down to see me off, perhaps an indication that deep down he really loved his oldest boy and wanted someone down there by proxy to see him off in a tearful farewell.

So the next day, my mum came with me to the airport and tearily watched me as I passed through those special gates where non-ticket holders can’t go for security reasons. Though back then I was still able to bring the little Swiss Army knife Corinne had left me when she’d left after our adventure almost a year previously through the special gates and on the plane with me. I mean, it was such a little knife, not as though someone could used it to slit someone’s throat, hijack the plane and then fly it into some building shortly before some other people from the same terrorist organisation did the same thing at a few other locations, including the building right next to it, right?

I miss those days, where we were innocent enough to allow a little Swiss Army knife on the plane with you.

I was seated in the smoking section of the Thai Airways plane. Another historical curiosity now! I hadn’t smoked hardly at all since my first Vipassana meditation course – apart from the very occasional joint – about a year earlier. One of those joints was on the very first day after the course where I was walking around with this guy Evan, this Greek communist type guy, who’d also done the course with me. We were walking near the war memorial, and botanic gardens in Melbourne, chatting incessantly, still catching up on 10 days of silence when I blurted out, ‘I could do with a joint’, and then, I reached down on the ground and somehow someone had dropped a bag of weed right there in the middle of this huge park. True story. Anyway, it was a sign from the gods, or perhaps temptation from the mischievous sprites, so I smoked it. Evan abstained.

With the weed, I guess what comes around goes around. Some years earlier on the Gold Coast we were smoking weed with Christophe and a few random guys who’d moved to the Gold Coast. We were on Burleigh Hill, in Burleigh Heads, at night trying to find some caves or something in the little bit of rainforest that still exists on the headland there, and I freaked out and thought some monsters were going to eat me or something so I ran as fast as I could down the path. In the process, I dropped all my weed! I had a Twisties chip packet in case the cops pulled us over and put me in jail for 25 years, which they used to do in the sunny state of Queensland in those days. The amount I picked up on the ground in Melbourne was about the same. Go explain that rationally!

Enough distractions. That was the planning and preparation for my trip to Europe. Next stop was Bangkok.

50-Year-Old Backpacker Blog: A Juanito’s Travels Chronicle. BlogPt1

The Pre-Planning Phase.

The first time I went backpacking was 27 years ago.

I went to find a girl, a Swiss girl. Or to visit Ireland. It’s unclear now.

I met the Swiss girl in Victoria, Australia. Her name was Corinne.

The Swiss girl was married then. I am married now. To a Wonder Woman. I even bought her, my Wonder Woman wife, a Wonder Woman sweater at Six Flags theme park in Mexico City. It was after we got drenched on one of the water rides which she’d said we were going to get drenched on and which I thought we’d just get a bit wet. We had to get some warm clothes and the Wonder Woman top seemed like a good way to admit she was right!

My wife and I met around the Day of the Dead in Guadalajara, Mexico. You can read more about that here.

I met Corinne decades earlier. She wasn’t so much a Swiss girl as a Swiss woman. She was the first lover I’d had where it felt like I’d found that puzzle piece I’d be looking for for ages. It just fitted.

I bought a pair of Scarpa boots made in Italy for my first trip overseas. They were soft leather, though harsher than Corinne’s skin softened by Nivea. Corinne looked a bit boyish to begin with. I wasn’t even sure she was attractive. Until I saw her naked body under her boyish clothes a few days later.

“Excuse me, do you have the time?” She’d asked.

It was the 90s. There was a clock on the wall behind her at Hurstbridge railway station. At the end of one of the Melbourne lines. Past Greensborough.

I pointed to the clock behind her head, “5.15”. It was April. Or May. Not that long after Easter. It was already getting dark.

And thus began an adventure around Australia which I fictionalised a bit in my online novella: the Adventures of Kosio and Juanito. So enough of her, my Wonder Woman wife might turn her magic lasso and invisible plane to devastating effect if I harp on about a previous love too much.

Suffice to say, back then, this meeting of the Swiss woman contributed to my motivation for my first trip to Europe back then in the early 90s.

I’ve since been back to Europe with my daughter. I also spent a few days in Iceland, Paris and Germany without my daughter, or my then wife-to-be, who is not the mother of my daughter, and whom I’d left in Mexico after becoming engaged following a trip to Cuba and around Mexico.

For a few days between getting engaged in Mexico and travelling to Munich to pick my daughter up from a school excursion, I was just by myself, as I had been in the 90s. With a backpack, a return ticket to London, no plans and little money.

How could you plan back then? There wasn’t even any internet to speak of! I seriously can’t recall, I guess you got guidebooks and pamphlets and guidance from the travel agency. I used STA Travel back then to help book my plane tickets. I just looked them up, and, during the worst of COVID lockdowns, they went bankrupt.

I wished I’d forked out some money for the Lonely Planet guidebook back then in the 90s. It would have helped with events to come.

Back to now, 2022. Post-COVID(ish). Well I have COVID as I write this so it’s still going, we’re just mostly ignoring now that millions of us in wealthy countries have had two or three a few jabs.

While in the 90s you could do with a guidebook, now we have the wealth of the internet. Which I find a bit distracting but which occasionally is useful.

We have everything at our fingertips but not much it seems that’s really worth looking at. In many ways it’s taken the mystery out of travel.

Back in the 90s I ended up bumming around Ireland for 6 months staying and working on Organic farms and visiting Vipassana meditation centres in France and Herefordshire.

In 2022, I have a Google Sheets spreadsheet with an itinerary and rough costings for each day of my planned trip. Which, at the moment, is Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Italy, Greece and Turkey.

I’ve decided to name my posts the 50-Year-Old Backpacker, A Juanito’s Travels Chronicle for now because, I don’t know, I can’t come up with another idea and I’ve never done a regular blog before and I’m 49 at the moment and started writing for the internet back in 1997 so I still like to keep it simple.

And I told my son he should use full stops rather than keeping writing ‘and’ but he should do what I say and not what I do.

So, planning for a trip. Back to my first trip to Europe in 1994 or 1995, it was sometime in the early 90s I can’t be bothered getting my old passport out of the shoebox to check. Actually it must have been 1995 as my niece was born when I was over there and she just turned 27. Anyway, I was initially travelling to Europe to kind of chase a Swiss girl called Corinne I’d met on a train at Hurstbridge, an outer suburb of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.

That can’t have been the only motivating factor as I’d headed to Ireland, where I hold citizenship due to my grandmother Bee born in County Sligo, rather than Switzerland. But plans change. And for that trip in the 90s I didn’t plan much at all.

I’d been working on a farm in Nutfield, Victoria, not far from Hurstbridge. I had met Bev Brock, the partner of a famous Australian racing-car driver called Peter Brock. They weren’t married but Bev had taken on Peter’s surname.

Bev had offered me a job when, unemployed and on the dole, I decided to go out to do some volunteer work on an organic farm in East Gippsland through a scheme called Willing Workers on Organic Farms (WWOOF). This still exists, I just googled them and there’s a bunch of happy looking people in shirts picking chilli and talking to cows.

Bev was doing a weekend yoga retreat on the farm and we got to chatting and I said something like I wanted to help the planet by growing organic vegetables and she’d given me her number on a piece of paper on which she wrote Bev & Peter Brock. See, even back then some of us wanted to help the planet! Well back a long time before I was born many of us did too, it just seems like now it’s starting to get mainstream appeal as we’re on the precipice of turning the place into Venus where no life will live in the fiery inferno, nuked by UV radiation.

I didn’t know at the time Bev gave me the bit of paper that it was ‘the’ Peter Brock, the famous race-car driver, who, despite my general lack of interest in motorsports even I had heard of as he’d won the most prestigious endurance race in Australia at Mt Panorama Bathurst many times. A bit like Muhammad Ali, I’d never watched a boxing match in my life but all us kids in the 70s knew who he was. And we all knew who Peter Brock was.

I’d gone out WWOOFing, as they call it, following my first 10-day meditation course of Vipassana style meditation. There was another famous person who took that course with me called Michael Leunig, a cartoonist who drew ducks and teapots. He is also an Australian icon. As it was a silent retreat for most of the time (9 of the 10 days) I never chatted to him. I also didn’t recognise him, and being a bit shy I may not have really talked to him anyway. I probably said hi though, and I remember his curly hair and peaceful demeanour. I just like to mention that because I’m intrigued by famous people and where they pop up. I guess it’s not too uncommon to be drawn to fame, testament to this is the rise of Instagram and all those other attention seeking apps.

I’d finished the Vipassana meditation course out somewhere in country Victoria. I think it was at an old scout camp. It was around Easter. I remember as one day the servers on the course had given us all a few of those little chocolate Easter eggs wrapped in shiny foil. It was welcomed as they only gave you breakfast and then a lunch which they served around 11, in keeping with the monk and nun lifestyle of not eating after 12. They did give us a bit of fruit around 4ish but still I was starving. I can still remember the smell of the chocolate.

So I came back to a share house after the meditation course. I’d signed up for 3 months at a place in Fitzroy after my sister, who I’d been living with in Melbourne, ran out of space and asked me to move out. She had 2 kids by then and I’m not sure they wanted some hippy hanging about the place for too long. The shared house in Fitzroy seemed to have about 5-6 people in it. Some who lived there and others who were girlfriends or friends of the rent-paying occupants. I’d rented the room off some woman who’d gone over to Europe or Asia or somewhere for 3 months.

I came back from the silent retreat all enlightened and all – actually not really, I’d found the course extremely tough and like in those pictures where the Buddha sits cross-legged and all tranquil like! My housemates were all sitting around the TV basking in its warm glow. I looked at their profiles on the couch, said ‘hi’, which was barely acknowledged and then went upstairs to my room. I dropped my bags down.

I’d picked up the number for WWOOF somewhere in Melbourne, maybe on a lamppost or at the organic, anarchistic, hippy organisation, Friends of the Earth food store and coop in Collingwood where I bought rolled oats and beans. I’d got the WWOOF people to send me the printed guidebook so I could contact host farms. It had arrived while I was at the retreat so I started flicking through the pages. I found the yoga place in East Gippsland which looked interesting. I went out. I got on a public phone. I rang them up. They said I could go out the next day as they were going into Bairnsdale and they could take me out to the farm in Buchan. I went downstairs. I announced to the zombie TV people I was heading to a farm the next morning for a few days to which I got some grunts and what have you.

I went back up to my room. Since it was getting chilly I decided to try and start a little fire in the room’s fireplace. I quickly realised the vent was closed or something so the smoke didn’t go up the chimney, it just went into the room. I panicked and put the fire out before too much damage was done. But the chick’s clothes who’d I rented the room off got all smokey.

So I went out for a week to the yoga farm, planted cabbages and lettuces, tended to goats, picked corn, had cups of tea and went for bush walks in the days I had off. I got the number of Bev while I was there. I came back to Fitzroy to the same zombie glow of the house people, I rang Bev and then went out to the farm in Nutfield where she said I go live there and work on the place. I took the train back to Fitzroy, I announced I was moving out, I think I’d paid up till the end of the 3 months anyway. They grunted again. I never knowingly saw them again.

I’d like to say I’m sure they were nice people. But I’m not confident of that. They seemed like jerks anyway.

After moving out to the farm in Nutfield I’d noticed a few racing trophies and the like, not really in prominent positions but obvious enough for me to put 2 and 2 together. I realised I was working for ‘the’ Peter Brock, famous race-car driver and I rang my mum and said, ‘I think I’m working for ‘the’ Peter Brock’ out on a farm in Nutfield. To which she was maybe not that surprised.

The Brocks had a beautiful pink house on a hill overlooking a gully with a huge gum tree in front where they fed the cockatoos, galahs and a semi-tame kangaroo called Tilley bird seed in the mornings. They also fed the magpies and kookaburras a bit of minced meat which occasionally they’d forget and which we’d discover once it’d gone smelly.

The house was surrounded by ponds, one of which went inside and outside the house so fish could swim in. It was pretty amazing. Bev and Peter had their own part of the house where the kitchen and the inside outside pond were.

A few weeks after starting there I met Corrine, a Swiss architect who’d been studying English in Melbourne. She came to the farm and Bev and Peter welcomed her as well. Bev showed her pictures of the house in architectural magazines and we had dinner together with the family. After spending a few days on the farm together I announced to Bev that Corinne and I were going to travel north. Winter was coming so there wasn’t much to do on the farm at that point anyway. So we travelled up and down the east coast of Australia as far as Airlie Beach. Somewhere along the way I’d discovered Corinne was married, and my newly found Buddhist values said she should go back to Switzerland to finish that before she started a new relationship with me. Besides I actually had a job – and one I was really passionate about – now so I thought I should go back to it.

You can read a fictionalised version of that in my online novel: The Adventure of Kosio & Juanito (& Corinne) – a novel of sorts about fishing, love and life.

It was an amazing time of my life. I regret pushing her away back to Switzerland. But that happens sometimes in life. I should have also probably called the novella the Adventures (with an ‘s’) of Kosio & Juanito (& Corinne) but I’ve since rectified that with the title of this website and I’m going to keep the original name as well as all the typos I’m sure it still has. It’s not Hemingway’s Fiesta, but it’s worth a read in my opinion.

I’m now married to a beautiful Mexican whom I met on my travels to Mexico, so perhaps I’m learning from my regrets and proving the adage there’s more fish in the ocean. Although I also married her like 20 years or so later (than my days in Nutfield with the Brocks) so perhaps you should also be patient both in fishing and love (both themes of my first ‘book’: http://www.juanitos-travels.com/?page_id=1615).

So back to Bev & Peter Brock’s farm in Melbourne. After pushing away Corinne and only having her Swiss Army knife as a memory – as we didn’t get any photos together due to her being married and not having phones capable of taking photos in that day – I went back to the farm in Nutfield and spent the rest of the year tending to goats, chickens and vegetables, planting thousands of gums, casuarinas, wattles and fruit trees, seeing snakes, wombats and foxes and walking around in nature.

I still had, and still have, Corinne’s Swiss Army knife which she’d sent me by mail from Sydney while she waited to go back to Switzerland. She liked painting and had sent me a water colour of the Sydney harbour bridge with a beautiful note and the knife. I kept the knife, and for years the water colour and note.

I regretted not spending more time with her.

Bev & Peter paid me $10 an hour cash in hand (take it up with the tax office – their accountant made me some sort of director of a trust or something), but since I ate with the family every night, had no bills or rent to pay, and also that $10 was worth more back then, I was able to save up a few thousand dollars by the end of the year. I used to keep it in some books at my sister’s house to avoid the prying eyes of the taxman and the dole office.

So, after saving enough for a ticket to London return I decided I would set off and see if maybe I could find her. I had my WOOFing guide after all which included a few farms in Switzerland.

Early in 1995 I had my ticket, which included stopovers in Bangkok and either Kathmandu or New Delhi. I sent a note to Corinne in Switzerland to say I was keen to see her again. She’d left her address with the Brock’s but not with me. Come to think of it I wasn’t sure if I’d sent the note before I left or perhaps when I was in Europe. It seems more like me to wait until I was closer by. Still I sent her something at some point.

I think the plan was to go to Switzerland, spend some time on farms and maybe see if I could catch up with her again in her town of Elgg, Switzerland.

That was the plan at least.