Don't Tell Mum: Hair-raising Messages Home from Gap-year Travellers
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It was quite a fun night. Those West Coast Kiwi girls are very forward and they seem to carry a kinda mad redneck vibe with them, which makes sense, as we are in the Wild West of New Zealand. So I get back to my backpackers’ hostel, try to manage a bit of sleep beside the drunk, podg, and smelly Germans getting up for the bathroom every 10 minutes. In the morning I met up with Alex, stored my stuff in his car, and got going to the festival.
Hokitika Wild Foods festival is about drunk people trying all sorts of weird food mixed with lots of drinking and overall local Wild West fun where people dress up and cause general havoc in the town. Here is a list of what me and Alex ate:
Live Huhu grubs (had those twice, the second ones were much fresher, straight from the log)
Worm dhukka
Magpie pie
Raw eel
Ostrich sandwich
Eel spines
Fish eyes
Possum pie
Gorse flower scones
Horse
Crocodile
Kangaroo
Duck tongues
I think there’s more but I can’t remember.
This menu seemed impressive even at a festival of wild foods, and our gourmet gapper was swift to cash in.
Here’s the part where I become a celebrity. On the main stage the presenter guy called up people in the audience who’ve eaten more than 5 wild foods to go up there, Alex being too busy with a beer in each hand. I said what I’d eaten and where I was from, and everyone – and I mean everyone – cheered for me to get the free T-shirt. Then the guy asked me if I’ve eaten anything else, and I said I couldn’t as I was running out of dosh, so he called out to the audience, ‘Can we help this poor pommy backpacker out?’ and so people started giving me money, I made about $60 – Oh! People were taking pictures of me in my T-shirt and if that wasn’t enough fame the TV crew ran up to me and interviewed me for the Discovery Channel (I will be on TV in about 5 months, they said). So after my interview and a few free beers I also ended up with a place to stay in Wanganui. My legendary status lasted pretty much the rest of the day and bought me beers for the night. I was one happy Pom.
You have to admire this guy’s guts, as well as his intestines. One senses that this email was more for the delight of his friends than for his parents.
The next day I booked myself in to do the Thrillogy bungee jump offer, it’s a lot of money but you get to do three different bungee jumps and you’ll be pleased to know that I got them all on DVD for you to enjoy at home.
The first jump was off the Kawerau bridge, and it was quite a small one at 43 metres. You get put in a harness and then the bungee is tied around your ankles, while lots of Japanese take pictures of you. I was scared, I didn’t scream in enjoyment. I didn’t know I was screaming but apparently I let out a gut-wrenching scream which I’ve never heard myself do before.
Thinking the next one would be fine, it wasn’t, I was crapping myself. The Nevis is 134 metres and you jump from a pod in the middle of a canyon. They do the usual strapping-you-up thing, but you have to shuffle on to this ledge like you’re walking the plank, only hopping as your feet are tied. But boy, once I jumped, it was amazing, a brilliant free fall experience, so once I had the initial brickshitting, I let out many ‘whoos’ of enjoyment.
Now the third was a piece of cake, in this one the rope is attached to your waist and you can run and jump off and at 43 metres it was all over very quickly. However, I got to dangle for a while as I hadn’t listened to the guy explaining the harness he uses to pull people up with, so I put it on wrong. You’ll see all about that on the DVD, if I don’t lose it.
Back in China, the fun just never ends.
Every year on 24 July Dali has fucking crazy fire day, all the shop and café owners buy these big dried-out logs that have been chopped up a bit so they burn well, and at about 8.30 everyone lights up. Imagine a street looking like some sort of road to hell with 10-foot pillars of fire blazing everywhere. Then another sick element is added – wood resin dust, you buy hefty kilo bags of the stuff, it’s just white powder, but when you throw a handful of it at one of the flaming posts it bursts into a ball of fire … when people walk past you they throw the dust and roast you. Everyone wanted to burn me because I’m foreign, but Lucy got hit the hardest. These two teenage lads saw her and threw shitloads of that dust at her legs, she was only wearing hot pants, so her bare legs were engulfed in thick fire. When I saw this I ran and grabbed one of the lads by the throat and started shouting at him in Chinese but I could hear Lucy screaming so I had to leave him, giving him a push as I walked away, shit, just thinking about it makes me furious, if I find those kids I’ll beat them to within an inch of their lives. Can you imagine seeing people set fire to your girlfriend? Lucy’s legs are OK, she has them bandaged at the minute …
A month later, and the couple seem to have recovered, though they may be wearying of the country itself.
Me and Lucy went to see that bastard Mao’s dead body this morning, it’s free to get in and they have him inside a big glass room which you walk round the edge of, the armed guards won’t let you stop walking so you get to see him for about 6 seconds, and he looks suspiciously plasticky and fake. If I have one thing to say about China, everything you see is fake, everything people say to you is a lie, at least that’s how it feels on a shit day like this.
Others, like this young man, find China far more agreeable:
The bloke who organized all our trips is also our friendly hash and ganga dealer, he kind of works for a local café, he’s about 55, thin, and usually wears a badly fitting suit with a faded old sports cap. Yesterday we went round to Mr Xi’s (Mr C) house. He lives with his entire family, including 95-year-old parents, in quite a big house with a central courtyard, the path leading up to his house was lined either side by small ganga plants, and he had a horse tied up by his kitchen door. We sat around drinking Chinese tea, then he gets out a mail sack full of ganga, and asks us if we want a pipe to smoke (‘Cheers, Mr C!’) and while we’re doing that he puts on the end of Titanic on video and his entire family, around 12 people, gather round and we all sit there smoking weed and watching Titanic.
This young man, also in China, went to see his first ever football match.
The match we went to see was the Chinese FA Cup final, Qingdao v. Dalian (I think). The final was split into two legs, and Qingdao had lost the first match 3–1 away from home, so we needed a 2–0 victory to win the cup. Now I’ve never been to a football match before, but this did seem a bit different from England, to start with everyone had these little plastic horns (yes, I bought one too) and when you’re in a 60,000-seat stadium that’s a lot of noise, but no one was wearing the team’s colours, and they weren’t really singing songs, although I did have some of the chants translated for me, one meant ‘Step on the gas’, and this guy behind me kept yelling stuff, apparently in English it meant ‘I hope your mother dies’, nice … the ref must have been taking the piss, because every decision was going our way, the other team even had a man sent off, and as he was walking off he was absolutely battered by bottles and oranges, I think someone even threw a shoe! Me and Tim started off a large part of the crowd waving goodbye to him, ‘Cheerio, cheerio, cheerio’, ha ha. The first half was 0–0, then Qingdao knocked in 2 in the last twenty minutes. The crowd got sick when the final whistle went, fireworks, drums, it was mental. Qingdao are the champions! I’m going for a curry later.
This young woman has been working as a journalist in West Africa.
Anyway, on Tuesday morning me and my co-journalist friend were sent to report on this political demonstration where thugs and hooligans were hired to cause mayhem. Spent all day trying to get on radio / TV / papers etc which wasn’t very hard due to novelty of white skin. Pictures in papers of us holding signs saying ‘Govt are theeves and really shite’ (signs forced upon us, spelling not the local forte) and anyway they are trying to deport us. Completely unfazed, due to newfound chilled-out persona.
Extreme weather is, of course, a source of great interest to gappers. This is from Urumqui in northern China.
On the way to Dunhuang we were in a sleeper bus for two days. We had just spent two hours repairing a burst tyre and had finally got back on the road, we decided to have a game of cards, having watched the same desert scenery endlessly rolling past, when everything suddenly turned pitch black. We thought we must have entered a tunnel, but in looking outside we were surprised to see we were still on the open road. The sky suddenly turned from a murky grey to a deep red, followed by a dirty, murky, raw sienna colour and the bus began to shake and rattle from side to side, we realized that we had been caught in a sandstorm. We lay there in the bus as the sand lashed against the side of the windows, twisting in the wind, forming wonderful pirouetting sand devils that danced on the ground and carried off anything that was not rooted firmly in the loose desert soil. It may only have lasted five minutes, but when it subsided we discovered that the sand had managed to permeate the bus, our clothes, hair and even our teeth were covered in a thin film of desert dust.
This young student spent a year in northern Russia improving her language skills. The winter of 2005–6 was one of the coldest ever recorded there.
I know it is v dull to talk about the weather, but it is MINUS 30 degrees today, so I think I am allowed. All my shampoo on my shelf etc. freezes every night and children aren’t allowed to go to school because they walk too slowly and tend to freeze to death before they get there. Nice. I am slightly worried as I walk at the speed of a lobotomized snail, there is 5 inches of ice on the roads and my new boots have strayed far from their natural habitat (the wilds of High St Ken.). On the first day of unbelievable iciness I happily stepped outside and within minutes my mascara had frozen my eyelids closed and my nostrils had iced over, after another few minutes I lost all feeling in my extremities, so by the time I reached the Institute I couldn’t see, smell or feel. I walk so slowly that I am often overtaken by octogenarian babushkas shuffling along in felt slippers with massive sacks of turnips on their backs. Every day Ludmilla smugly informs me that it is another 10 degrees colder than the day before and happily tells me how to notice the first stages of frostbite.
But there is some good news amid the frost and snow.
You will be glad to hear that I am hardly smoking at all, for I have managed to lose my gloves and as much as I want cigarettes I am unwilling to sacrifice any fingers to the habit. Luckily however for those times when I am overpowered by a craving for air which isn’t horrifyingly icy, I have worked out an ingenious system where I hold a cigarette in a pair of tweezers with my hand in a sock. It took a while to perfect this system, as the first few times I either charred the sock or managed to get the tweezers frozen to my upper lip. But now I have perfected the art, and have the satisfaction of knowing I can defrost my lungs and look really cool, all at the same time.
With Friends Like These
One of the joys of a gap year is meeting other gap-year students. Well, sometimes it’s a joy. It is when they turn out to be ‘safe’, ‘wicked’ or ‘well fit’. It is less pleasing if they are wankers or minxes or mingers. Or ‘gay’, which these days is an all-purpose term of abuse. Sometimes painful people can be ditched and discarded, almost by the roadside. Sometimes, however, the gapper is stuck with them in the school or the building project where they are working. It can happen that the dear friend with whom you set off turns out, under the stress of travel, to be a wanker or gay, and is busily managing to ruin your trip. Or you encounter a mixture of all of those. The key word to bear in mind is ‘annoying’, the deadliest of the seven sins. This is from West Africa.
I told some of you that what I was most worried about was not fancying any of the 38 boys that are here, well, that is an issue as I am most certainly fatter than them all and about as pale (one exception is the 18-stone boxer, but …). I wrote this email yesterday but it got deleted and the boy sitting next to me read it, and so I had to drop subtle hints that he was the fittest (he is, incidentally) so it doubled up as cyber-flirting. I am progressing on the friends issue. My fellow volunteers have branded me ‘the poshest person they have ever met’, but apparently it was ‘not meant in a “derogatory” way’. Well, at least I don’t make up words. Everyone is actually ace, give or take a few slightly annoying girls. I have taken to dropping my Ts when I speak and saying ‘you ge’ me’ a lot. I also spend a lot of time talking about my stressful summer jobs etc. (Does Daddy getting me work, and Cowes Week count?)
This is from Peru and the young woman who sent it is working on a building project.
Harrumph, slightly less grumpy today because dishy ‘greenhouse expert’ has asked me on a horse-riding date, but only slightly. Building project has escalated and I spent all morning shovelling cement, I shit you not, my arms will never recover. Builder’s tan is now well established and I have made myself a brand new enemy, he is called Jed, and he is sooooo mean to me, don’t quite know what course of action to take, might wee on his pillow and see how he likes it. My bogeys have turned black from all the mud and dust, my hands will never be clean again, and we have a snorer in the girls’ dorm. Mike, the ex-marine, burst into tears at lunch because he misses his kids so much, and Kelly, the girl in the next bed, has ringworm, which by the way is highly contagious.
As for rules, we have a curfew at 10 and there is a no-drinking and no-petting rule in the home. Actually, quite like some of my fellow volunteers, so in all not bad, and am actually having fun, just a different sort from our usual fun.
This girl is teaching in Malawi.
We are all finding it very hard to get on with Andrew, one of the boys living with us, who just seems to get more and more annoying, especially as he is now speaking with a South African accent, even to his parents, because he says he has picked it up (from where???!) and now can’t get rid of it. AAARRRGGGHHH! Completely lost it with him the other night because he was being such a prat. Very unlike me, but he pushed me over the edge! Then Jan had a huge argument with him later that night, so a lot of tension between him and us, and now quite tricky because nobody wants to travel with him …
This is from India, where ancient Hindu mysticism has yet to make its mark on our young Europeans.
Went to the pub and saw all the other volunteers, who seem to be having a much crazier time than we are. After tomorrow it’s only going to be me, Ellie and Drina in guesthouse, while the others are crammed full, so we will be completely out of the loop, and stupid Drina who is so annoying, and never sticks up for herself, and who has a stupid fake American accent even though she was only there a year, and has the HUGEST lisp and is doing her Masters in speech therapy – so all in all a complete nightmare, driving me and Ellie up the wall … off to have shower, but there’s really no point as I constantly smell.
This is from a Catholic orphanage in Sri Lanka.
Off to Trinco tomorrow and really looking forward to it. Just me and Em, because the other two are WEIRD. Nikki is from England and has a shaved head. Krissie is Canadian with lots of piercing, tattoos and seriously tight clothes. Both smoke like chimneys and the nuns hate them! Most of them want them out! It’s been quite a drama. Em and me are saintly in comparison, and milking it.
Some fellow travellers can be quite interesting. This young woman has been touring Thailand.
I’ll describe some of the people I’m with. Hendrik and Nils – these two Danish guys we met in Chiang Mai and have seen every day for the last two weeks. Nils has a shaved head, and has recently learned the ‘c’ word, so uses it at every possible moment, and some you wouldn’t believe possible. Hendrik dances like he’s on acid, and he’s not, I don’t think, and he won’t let you touch his Elvis-like hair. Both laugh at my (very) lame jokes, so I’m happy.
Jim, Kev and Jeff – these three boys (very generous word) we keep on seeing. Smoke opium the whole time, use words I never even knew – apparently unbelievably offensive – sing football songs constantly, get naked
in every single bar, drink beer at breakfast, can’t say a sentence without ‘fuck’ in it, jump into sewage water and make sure everyone is watching to see ‘just how mental they are’ and generally the kind of guy you would NEVER bring home to meet the rents, but would happily join with abroad.
Terry from Essex, forever smiling, half Indian and a bit fat, but very sweet. Sorry, shouldn’t be fattist, but he is ever so slightly annoying, when he makes me look through all 750 of his photos from the last six months travelling. Eurghhh. But he is so nice I feel I have to be appreciative and make sure I use appropriate amounts of ‘ooooh’ and ‘aaaah’ and ‘gosh, that’s stunning’, slightly loses its enthusiasm the 57th time.
There are many ways of being annoying. This lass spent time with tribespersons in Kenya.
I made a goat curry and we sat around listening to Dolly Parton. The problem is they have only one tape, and it has about 3 songs on each side so I now know 6 Dolly Parton songs by heart. One of the guys from another base, Bernard, was there that night, he is a born-again Christian, which was a little difficult. This guy sees visions of demons and stuff (or so he claims) and was preaching to us about the world being only 3,000 years old or something, and Piers and I were just being very quiet …
Or from a young woman who is teaching in a different part of Kenya.
You will have heard about our school swap. Becca and I are quite glad because Antonia is extremely annoying. We first clashed with her when she announced, ‘anyone can be taught English, but Maths is a gift’. She is doing a Maths degree, of course. The two girls we’re now paired with are lovely, so don’t worry, Mummy!
But they are not changing schools after all. In fact, matters become quite surprisingly complicated.
Barry decided it would be much easier to swap two people – Antonia and Cassie – than four. Now Cassie is coming to our school. What happened was that Cassie met her partner and the other two girls she’ll be sharing with at Heathrow, only to realize that one of the other pair, Yvette, was her worst enemy from school! Yvette felt the same way, so originally Becca and me were going to swap with Yvette and someone, but it’s much simpler this way. So Becca and me are still at the same school but with Cassie, not Antonia.