Tag: backpacker

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 Kaewroyal palace Bangkokgrand palace BangkokAnd yes, the pants are super que fashion!

Juanito’s Travels 50-Yr-Backpacker – 1995 New Delhi India, free to do what I want Pt19

Sunny Guest House New Delhi 1995

1995

Having broken from my hotel owner’s shackles, by paying my outstanding debt, I was free to do what I want(ed). I managed to keep $100 from the $200 I was sent from Australia from the hotel scam guys’ pocket in the morning, I found my way to Connaught Place and booked myself in at a backpackers – at Sunny Guest House. I have virtually nothing I’ve saved from this trip, but I’ve managed to fish out the business card from the guest house with its warning, all too late now:

Do not believe the story of Auto Rikshaw & Taxi Drivers Come directly to Sunny.

Oh well, you live and learn. Tuk Tuk and rickshaw drivers can be dodgy for sure, my wife and I didn’t even bother taking a tuk tuk in Bangkok when we were last there on the 50-year backpacker trip, which I have managed to write about in a future post, which is where all these posts are leading to! So be patient. I also warned my friend Fyyaz who was in Bangkok the last few days to steer clear of the tuk tuks! Especially while drunk. Which he was. I hope he went for the dodgy tattoo idea I suggested to him though. Fyyaz did accompany us on part of our Vietnam/ Cambodia leg of the 50-year backpacker journey. I haven’t quite gotten up to that bit yet, I’m currently stuck in Laos (post 30 I think), but it will come! One day.

Okay, now, back in 1995.

The backpackers cost me around 100 rupees a night, maybe even 200, perhaps even less, I can’t remember exactly, but that was still only something like $2-4 a night so with my $100 I could still easily afford at least 10-14 nights in India. My next chance to get a flight out of India was still about a week away where Thai Airways said I might be able to get a seat on a flight to Bangkok. Thai Airways had guaranteed I could get a seat in another 10 days though, if they couldn’t find me one sooner. So I had to budget for 10 days, plus keep a bit leftover for my time in Thailand – the next leg of the journey – which may be another 2 weeks. I knew I’d probably have to lend a little bit more money from someone to get me through that period, but I’d see how far I could get with what I had in my pocket now.

Having bought some cheap street eats for as low as 20 rupees (around 40 cents AUD) over the last few days, I knew it could be done. Some dhal and chapatis, from memory, cost around 20-30 rupees, or 40-50 cents depending on how many chapatis you wanted. I was fine with 2-3 chapatis per dhal. Chai cost as little as 4-5 rupees (maybe 8-10 cents AUD). For breakfast I ended up having corn flakes with yoghurt made from the local street cows, for around 20 rupees, so full of cardboard and marigold goodness – it was actually very good! And then there were activities and transport. Entry into temples was mostly just a few rupees. Motor rickshaws didn’t cost that much, often less than a dollar. Sometimes you’d even get a cycle rickshaw, pedal powered solely by human effort, which was even cheaper, perhaps half that. If I was careful I could make it.

I ended up with a rough daily budget of around $7-10, including travel and accommodation, which would be very tight, but doable. I stuck with my cornflakes for breaky, dhal for lunch and chapatis for lunch and dinner, one piece of fruit a day, and about 5-6 cups of delicious milky and sugary chai, mostly from chai wallahs with a kettle brewing in the gutter, and occasionally a mango lassi.

A few words on the dha (which spell check keeps telling me is spelt ‘dal’ but I keep  ignoring it – no AI gonna tell me what to do). I ate what the locals ate. I’d find a place on the street set up with a few chairs, open walls and presumably some iron or something for a roof. You sat and ate your dhal in a little bowl, an almost creamy mixture of beans and lentils. You ordered a chapati from the guy with the plate of chapatis walking around. You rip off a bit of chapati and dip it into the dhal and eat the chapati with the dhal. Then the heat hit you. The spicy heat, a level I’d never experienced before nor since experienced since. My mouth and lips tingled, my throat went numb. The only flavour in the end was spicy heat. My eyes bulged and watered, I sweated profusely, I’d almost trip out with every bite. Then I’d take a sip of water, take a breath and try the next scoop until I’d finished my little bowl. If I’d splurged on a lassi I would sometimes take a sip of that to relieve the pain. I never went for naan, they cost extra. I never got rice, also extra. Almost every day I did that twice a day.

At Sunny’s I got a bed on a roof, again with no walls, just some sort of iron roof overhead to keep the rain out. There were maybe 30 beds up there. The shower and toilets were also up there on the roof. The shower had a door and was enough to get you clean. I didn’t drink the water but I did brush my teeth with it, using my tea tree toothpaste which I figured killed any bacteria in the water. Downstairs there was a little dining area where I got my cornflakes and yoghurt and my chai of the day.

On the first day I went to the Thai Airways to see what chance there was of getting on a plane. They said not to even bother checking for at least 5 days when there might be a chance of a vacant seat. Along the way I found a fancy hotel that looked like it had nice toilets, so I just wandered in there and used theirs. It became my main place of toiletry when I was in New Delhi and I’d make a special trip there at least once a day. The place also had a little train booking agency.

With no plans on what I should do in New Delhi I ended up taking a pedal rickshaw to Gandhi Park, to visit Mahatma Gandhi’s memorial, and just hang out. There was an array of activities including many earwax cleaners who would pour things in your ear to clean them of their wax. I hadn’t had much trouble with earwax but Delhi’s pollution was wreaking havoc with my nose, and at the end of the day  I’d have a thick wad of black snot that you could have lit like incense. I gave the wax people a go, apart from the wax they burnt your ear hair. Being 27 years younger back then I didn’t have a huge problem with ear hair. Now I’d happily go to the park every now and again for a good ear burning. They just used a lighter and their adept hands for the practice.

Also going on in the park was yoga and a lot of shoe shining. I had my shoes shined at least twice a day while there, but my Italian Scarpa boots would look almost as dry and dusty as they had been before the shines just 2 or 3 hours later. I sat down and warded off the throng of Indians trying to sell me their wares, they were persistent and very common. As soon as I walked out into the street from your accommodation or got off your rickshaw I’d have at least 3, usually 4-5 people following me around with bracelets, knick-knacks and the like. I never bought anything but that didn’t stop them trying. It drove me crazy after a few days, as did the intensity of the place. There are billions of people in India, like literally a billion people. People are everywhere, the noise is intense, the only time I felt I got any respite was when I was back at the guesthouse or inside a temple, and then as soon as I walked out the door, or gate, the intensity would come crashing down on me.

As I was sitting down on a bench, my ears fresh and hygienic, I looked around for a chai as I ignored the beggars and the vendors. I saw a man cutting hair or something and asked with a nod of my head and a point to his glass to ask where I could get one. He nodded his head and a few minutes later a kid came over and poured me a chai. I felt like a king as I sipped the deliciously sweet and milky chai – in a proper glass mind you, not some polystyrene cup, a proper glass. After my chai, perhaps the 3rd or 4th for the day, I made my way to the Gandhi Memorial. I remember it being simple, with some flowers and a flame. I looked it up on wikipedia and the image seemed to align with what I remember. I had another few moments of peace as I reflected in front of it, then headed back to Sunny’s.

Back at Sunny’s, in the bed next to me I found a fellow Australian. He may have been there in the morning but I didn’t notice him. He seemed very uptight and basically all round unfriendly, with a bit of a suspicious sneer, still he initiated a chat and asked whether I wanted to go look at some sites. We went to the Red Fort – my second trip, the sad cobra was still there, and other cruel animal acts that I hope they’ve since banned. Steve, which I think the guy’s name was, wanted to film with his fancy video camera. They tried to charge him at the gate but I suggested he just say he wasn’t going to use it and to just go on in. That worked and he could film for free.

At least I think that was Steve, I may have suggested the same to the German guys I met earlier. Who knows.

Steve was heading to Jaipur that afternoon and asked if I wanted to go with him. He was a bit tight and I think really wanted to know if I’d share the cost of a room with him, it wasn’t as cheap as Sunny’s but I think still ok for my budget at maybe $5 if we shared, so I agreed to meet him there the morning after next. I had nothing else to do and there was no chance of getting on a plane to Thailand for at least another 5 days, so it sounded like a bit of an adventure. Later that day I went back to my favourite lavatory in my fancy hotel and got the guy at the train booking station to book me a sleeper train – so I’d save money on accommodation for the following evening. I think I just spent the remainder of my time in Delhi, sitting around Sunny’s, though I feel I must have visited somewhere else the next day just to fill in the time, perhaps just wandering around the Connaught Place area and stopping here and there for some dhal and chapatis, chai and fruit.

Oh I also had to cash some traveller’s cheques at some point. I think the Western Union had given me most of my $100 in travellers cheques for some reason that is perhaps lost now in 2024, but made perfect sense in the mid-1990s when we couldn’t just get electronic Money transfers and the like. For whatever reason I had to go to an exchange place to exchange my traveller’s cheques for real money I could spend. I think I had $80 in travellers cheques in different USD denominations so I could get a little out at a time. I went into this fancy place and waited in queue to swap my travellers cheques. I watched some Japanese tourists leaving the exchange window with a plastic bag full of rupees, like they were carrying bags of bricks. My rupees would have been lucky to fill my wallet. I got to the window and I handed over my travellers cheques to exchange, and then the guy asked for my passport, I cringed a little and then handed it to him, he examined it, and unlike the immigration guy, he spotted the visa was over 3 months out of date. He looked at me with a great amount of suspicion and a frown in his brow that was also clearly under his manly black moustache.

“We cannot exchange these, you have no valid visa for India.”

I thought he was about to call the cops on me as he looked around the room, so without saying much more than another little whimper, I grabbed my passport and travellers cheques and got the fuck out of there. Around the corner and down the road a bit I paused, and took a breath having walked very quickly, just below a job, around the same pace as an Olympic walker, reckoning the immigration police weren’t on my tale just yet. I was like, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, in my head. Was I back to having no bloody money again. I calmed myself down and looked up and saw that a place across the street had a sign that they exchanged travellers cheques. It looked dodgy and had no Japanese tourists with wads of cash, more of a convenience store/ traveller agency/ ad hoc business. I went in there and decided to give that one a go with a smaller cheque. They didn’t even look at my passport and just handed over $20 worth of rupee. Quite the little fortune for a backpacker in India in those days.

“On second thoughts”, I said maybe I’ll exchange a few more. My heart relaxed a bit from its pounding, poverty narrowly avoided again.

After that I went back to Sunny’s, probably after getting another chai, and perhaps these peanut things covered in some sugary syrup which I’d been finding around the place, had a shower,  packed my blue backpack and headed off to the station.

Which you would think should be relatively straight forward, but which turned out to be an adventure in itself.

 

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

Inisglas biodynamic farm 1995

1995

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Hello’, he said, offering his hand.

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

******

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

‘What a surprise’, she said.

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

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

‘Do you have money?’ she asked.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.



50-Year-Old Backpacker; Blog; A Juanito’s Travels Chranicle. Bangkok Sapphires. Buyer Beware. BlogPt3

Bangkok river houses 19951995, March

I don’t recall the details of the plane trip to Bangkok. I doubt I slept, I may have read or watched something. I don’t know how we watched things in those days, there were no screens on the back of seats or devices to watch your own downloaded content. Perhaps someone got a 16mm film projector out and chucked on Jaws, or Flying High.

I don’t recall the details of getting to Khao San Road either, nor how I knew that Khao San Road was the place to go for backpackers like myself to find backpacker friendly accommodation. I think I’d just asked the taxi driver where  backpackers go to stay, in the same way you may ask where flamingos like to congregate, and he said something in that Thai accent I never get tired of listening to. To be honest I probably didn’t understand what he said, I’d never heard of  Khao San Road, I just trusted he’d take me where I needed to go, so I said, ‘that sounds good, take me there’.

Nowadays, I feel the taxi drivers might take you to some flash place where they’d get a big tip from the hotel, assuming anyone just rocks up to places these days and ask taxi drivers their opinion on where they should stay, and haven’t just booked every step of the way online already, which is often tempting, especially in new cities after long flights, though limiting in terms of having a real adventure, or getting bargains on last minute accommodation.

I arrived on Khao San Road at night, or in the early hours of the morning. It was after midnight I’m sure. The taxi driver dropped me off at the end of the street, and I made my way through a few night shift spruikers spruiking their hotels and hostels. I found a place for 40 baht a night (around $1.65 Australian) down an alley off the Main Street. The room had a balsa-strength door you could have kicked in without bruising a toe, or even pushed it in with the strength of two or three fingers. I left my camera in my backpack in the room, figuring no self respecting robber would bother robbing someone who paid 40 baht a night for a room.

I was soon to find that Thais have other ways of fleecing you besides nicking your camera.

thai Mona Lisa Bangkok gem scam 1995

Around 2-3 am, maybe, I went out exploring a bit. I suddenly felt like taking up smoking again after not smoking for almost a year. I bought a packet of Thai cigarettes off a guy manning a little stand with bits and pieces. The cigarettes were perhaps 25 or 30 baht. Maybe sitting in the smoking section on the plane coming from Australia brought on the desire for nicotine again. I had one and it was nice.

It was hot. Even in shorts and a t-shirt and in the early hours of the morning, it was hot. I was sweating.  Some street vendors were still open with their owners sitting about in the cool air, by flaming woks, or knick-knacks and cigarettes, some smoking cigarettes, on plastic stools with sandals planted on the ground, some with alley kittens brushing past their legs, relaxed and wide awake. The smell of fish sauce and stir-fried vegetables hung in the air. The honking of car horns and the puttering of tuk-tuk engines echoed through the alleys.  Little nooks and crannies were taken up by small bars, eateries, and entries to hotels and hostels, dimly lit, like a scene from Blade Runner, some open, some closed.

Bangkok was a 24 hour affair, a big city, the biggest I’d ever been in, an invigorating culture shock after the quiet year I’d spent planting trees and tending to goats on the Brock’s farm in Nutfield where we didn’t even have street lighting and the nearest neighbours were a few kilometres away. Actually Corinne and I had almost got lost one night when we went for a ride and couldn’t remember which road to take to get back to the Brock’s farm. Bev had put all the lights on in their house on the hill like a beacon on a hill which helped us make our way the last few kilometres.

After having my first brief look at Bangkok I went back to the room and slept for a couple of hours, barely a wink though with the excitement of the new city, the first time I’d been overseas on my own, a blank slate and adventure ahead, keeping my mind racing. I got up just before sunrise and headed out exploring the orange haze of the city. This time I brought my camera along, a spritely spring in my Scarpa covered feet.

I walked down the end of the street, past a group of waiting tuk-tuks, spruiking their wares. I think I’d cashed some traveller cheques at the airport, or somewhere so I had a few hundred baht to explore the town. I had no idea of where to go or what to see. I just walked around.

I found  a little place with plastic tablecloths and plastic stools, to have some breakfast. I had an authentic Thai noodley thing. I’d picked up a map from the tourist stall on Khao San Road which I unfolded and studied as I ate my noodles. I saw the King’s Palace was just down the road. After my noodles I headed down that way.

I don’t know the exact moment when it happened. I’m sure it was somewhere near the King’s Palace, maybe just outside its walls. It’s all a blur now as the events to come were both distressing and embarrassing. Very cringe-worthy. Especially for me. But, at some point this very friendly Thai man appeared. He was well dressed and polite, and started a friendly chat. If you’ve read any warnings on scams from Thailand or South-east Asia in guidebooks that description alone should ring scamming alarm bells.

But back then I was a young, trusting man with brand new Italian walking shoes, but without one of those touristy ‘guidebooks’, who was having his first morning by himself overseas, in a big bustling Asian city, far from home. I was excited. Bangkok is an amazing city. I was open to new ideas, to approaches from strangers. This was a Buddhist country after all, and  I am practically a Buddhist now myself I felt, having taken my Vipassana meditation course last year and keeping up regular meditation whilst on the farm in Nutfield. The Buddhist followed a few simple rules, one of which was not to take that which isn’t given to you. I now think they may have found a loophole when it came to just convincing people to hand over shit by their own volition.

Friendly Thai guy asked where I was from and what I did for a living and all those get-to-know-you small talk things that scammers do with a big broad smile.

Travellers note: first day’s in cities are often the time travellers are most fleeced. Like my wife and my first day in Havana, Cuba many years later where my wife was convinced to buy cigars and rum for around $100 USD, where maybe we should have paid $25 or $15. A trippy version of our Cuba trip is available here.

‘I’d like to see some authentic Thai stuff’ I said, or words to that effect. Of course ‘Friendly Man’ could help me out with that.

In a matter of moments we were heading away from the King’s palace. Crossing 8 lanes of traffic. Heading into Chinatown. We sat down at a restaurant. ‘You want something to eat, I pay for you’ he said with a broad grin. How nice I thought, what a gentleman. But I wasn’t hungry that soon after breakfast. I got a drink anyway, just to be polite. The nice man got to talking about how he could organise a good deal for a boat trip to look at Thai temples along the river.

‘I get you good deal on boat and temples, very cheap’, he said with nearly all his (fake) smiley teeth showing. I had barely taken a sip of my drink and before I was whisked to a wharf with a boat at the ready – as though they were waiting there for me.

2017 

My daughter and I are taken to a place in Chinatown and they try and convince us to pay hundreds of dollars for a private boat. You can read about that here.

Back in 1995. I coughed up a little money, it wasn’t hundreds of dollars, pretty reasonable actually, maybe $15. We went down some canals and onto the main river. It was all very exciting. I even took a photo of my scammer in front of some riverside houses on stilts on the river. I think I ended up chopping him out of it years later.

I visited a beautiful temple on the river – which my daughter and I also visited years later – for maybe an hour as the man and the boat waited outside for me, and then went to a nice Thai restaurant across the river and the nice man paid for a nice lunch for me. It was all exciting and new, and amazing. Nothing untoward at this stage.

At some point over lunch, the nice man indicated he could get me a good deal on gemstones. It seemed to come out of nowhere.

‘I take you get good deal on gemstone, good quality, you sell them in London on  Bond Street, double your price, easy money’.

Easy money I thought, or did I think, I don’t know. You’re probably guessing by now I was incredibly gullible and stupid, but hey I didn’t have much money and then this guy was letting me in on a deal where I could double my money! Wow, too good to be true. Though even with those thoughts part of me was still sceptical. But I was able to overcome the scepticism. I’d heard of Bond Street, it was on the monopoly board! And it seemed likely gems were cheaper in Thailand as everything else was. I mean I could get a room for 40 baht! Maybe it was true?

We made our way to the gem store. Immediately on walking in the door I was greeted by another smiling Thai guy in on the racket. Seemed like he’d just been there waiting for me. It was a well organised operation. He showed me photocopies of other tourists’ passports who’d bought gems and went to London to double their money. He showed me a range of different sapphires and indicated a few prices. They looked nice and real. I was getting into this idea, as risky as it sounded.

‘What your budget?’ he asked. 

 ‘Well, I don’t know,’ I said, maybe $150′.

‘Oh no, you can’t buy $150’, he showed me some gems and clicked some numbers on a calculator and it was all in baht and had a number of zeroes, ‘for this you get 5 sapphires’.

‘I don’t have that much, that’s a lot’, I said.

‘No problem, you sell on Bond Street, trust me, easy money, good quality’.

‘Are you allowed to do this?’

‘Yes, yes, no problem, I take your passport and fill in details, you go get money, no problem. I send to London so no problem with customs.’ He whisked my passport off and got the appropriate paperwork filled out.

I must have had some trepidation, but in the end, I was a naive young backpacker, I lacked sleep, and I was quickly getting reeled in by the slick and persuasive pressure tactics which didn’t leave me much time to think. It wasn’t long until I was in the bank accompanied by original ‘nice’ (bastard) Thai man cashing almost all of my traveller’s cheques. I just remember bits and pieces.

Thinking about it now, it was not like me to be that reckless. But there I was with a bunch of cash in hand getting a supposed deal of a lifetime. I’d somehow lucked upon it, just as I had lucked on getting the job with the Brocks. The universe was providing for me again. I should just go with it. So we went back to the gem store and I handed over the money and the gem store guy said he was going to send the gems registered post to London general post office, post restante, and I even saw him put them in the envelope. Transaction over, I was quickly whisked out of the shop and the nice man dumped me on some corner near Chinatown and with less of a smile, as though dumping a kidnapping victim after their families had paid the ransom.

I came to my senses for a moment. I still had some questions I needed to ask the gem store salesperson. So somehow I found my way back to the gem store, even though they’d driven me around in a circle to try and disorientate me. When I walked through the front door. They looked like they’d seen a ghost. Obviously, in retrospect, they’d hoped they’d confused my sense of direction to the point where I would never find my way back.

They answered my questions, yes the gems would be there in a few days, no problem. Don’t worry. I looked at the shop, it was just like the jewellery stores in Australia. The man assured me the gems would arrive  no later than next Thursday (or something like that) and that they did this all the time, no problem, and then I was quickly pushed out of the shop again. I was left with the promise of 5 sapphires being sent to me in London and just a couple of small note traveller’s cheques left. I looked at my receipt for the gems. Geez, I don’t know I’m sure I wasn’t drugged, but the lack of sleep was as bad as 4-5 joints in terms of affect on my judgement by this stage.

My nervousness rose, I now only had maybe as little as $150. Bangkok was cheap so it would be enough to get me to London to get my cash for my sapphires. So I waited, nervously. I sat at cafes each day on Khao San Road watching videos and eating beautiful vegetarian stir-fries. I walked through the markets and visited the local buddhist temple down the street to help feed the monks. I even went back to the King’s Palace and went inside. I was stressed by my lack of finances but even with that small amount I was still able to comfortably pay for an hour-long massage every day for 20-30 baht. So while in Bangkok, I could still survive. I was fine. For now.

I did need my sapphires though so I decided to bring my flight forward a few days so I could get them as soon as they arrived in London.  Then I could go to Bond Street and double my money, or at least get some of my money back.

I think I was in Bangkok another three or four nights. I was originally going to stop off in Kathmandu on the way to London but there was no time, nor money, for that now, so I arranged to fly straight to London.

In the few days I was still in Bangkok I had another smiley Thai man approach me. I must have looked like a ripe fruit ready for the plucking and screwing over or something. He walked around with me a bit, chatting and asking a few questions. He showed me a nice shopping centre not far from Khao San Road where you could get cheap fake rolexes and other false designers. In casual conversation he brought up the idea of going to a gem store. I said I’d already been and got some so I had no money left. While I had my back turned for a moment he disappeared in the crowd. I was more worried now.

Many years later my beautiful wife and I took a trip to Heron Island, an amazing little island on the Great Barrier Reef in Queensland, Australia, where turtles nest. It was still turtle nesting season. The little baby turtles hatched under the sand every afternoon and evening and made their way to the ocean in their hundreds. We were lucky enough to see them while we were there.

Most of the little baby turtles, with their cute little flippers and little shells, don’t make it to adulthood as between their beach nesting places and the ocean they’ll spend the years growing to adulthood in they have to run the gauntlet of seagulls picking them off one by one. And even when they make it to the water’s edge sharks and rays wait to snack on more of them.

Looking back I was one of those baby turtles. And the sharks had no problem gobbling me up.

The consequences of my innocence and poor judgement was soon to become apparent, as I boarded the plane for London.

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.