After living in North America for nine years, I started asking myself the question why was I living over there when I could live in Australia.  I was really starting to hate the Canadian winters and I was starting to miss things that I took for granted when I lived in Australia.  Like body surfing and skin diving.  Even though I’m a pasty white boy, whose genetic makeup is more suited to hunting mammoth on the edge of glaciers, I grew up near the beach and I love being in the ocean (for longer than two minutes before I die). 

So on my way back to Australia in 1985 I stopped over in Tahiti.  I have to admit that my preconceived ideas about Tahiti were mainly informed by the old movie, “Mutiny on the Bounty”.  I guess I had some 18th-century fantasy in my head about cooperative young scantily clad Tahitian women in a tropical paradise.  I got to Papeete I was a bit surprised at how grubby and shabby it all looked. No grass huts anywhere and everybody was fully clothed.  This is not the first time in my life that my preconceived ideas have left me feeling cheated.  I knew that staying in Papeete wasn’t going to be pleasant.  So I asked around and some people suggested that I go to a Moorea, as it was much more spectacular and probably closer to what I was looking for.  They were right, bright green volcanic Moorea juts out of the ocean, all sharp, steep and angular, much more in line with what I had been expecting.

I stayed at the camp ground next to the Club Med, and one of the first things I did was go snorkelling for about six hours without sunscreen.  I spent the next two weeks in Tahiti, sitting in the shade, trying to ease the pain of my severe sunburn with alcohol.  Because of my stupidity in the sun and the pain that resulted, I didn’t see much of Tahiti or take very many photographs. I should’ve known better, after all I’m from Australia and I’d been sunburnt many times before. I guess all those years in a cold country had made me careless.

One day I was sitting in the shade of a tree that was about 100 m (about 100 yards) back from the beach, treating my pain with the usual cold Tahitian beer, when I saw three bare breasted Tahitian women on the beach.  Just like the postcards!  I stood up and I waved at them and surprisingly they waved back.  I held up my beer and pointed to it and then pointed to them, to which they waved me over to them. I just couldn’t believe that such a fantasy was about to come true. 

Making sure I didn’t look too eager I ambled over in a leisurely pace towards them.  By the time I was about 10 m (about 10 yards) away my naive anachronistic fantasy popped like a soap bubble as I noticed their thin hips, pronounced brow ridges and realised that they were transvestites complete with breast implants.  My pathetic need to be polite over-rode my freaked out and fragile little ego that wanted to flee in conflicted panic, so like a zombie I walked up to them and offered them a swig of my beer.  Gee, surprise surprise, they were really friendly and seemed most desirous of my company as they flirtatiously flicked their hair over their shoulders and gave me “come hither” looks with their eyes.  I felt like I was stuck and I wasn’t sure how to get out of the situation, but fortunately they only spoke French, so I nervously mumbled something like “here help yourself and see you later” as I handed them the beer and made a hasty exit.
 
I can remember thinking at the time, to myself, what a weird kinky little aberration of a tropical paradise that the transvestites were. I mistakenly thought that the French had brought some kind of old world cultural pollution to Polynesia.  The reality is that in Polynesian culture there is a tradition of feminine men known as “rae rae” (fa’afafine in Samoa) who aren’t necessarily homosexual but who do fulfil the female role.  Apparently being a rae rae isn’t seen as a trait to be discouraged, and they are considered to be part of normal Polynesian village life.  There is a distinction made between the feminine men who fulfil a cultural role and the transvestites who generally prostitute themselves.  Just like in most of the rest of world, prostitution is seen as a shameful profession in Tahiti.
 
So there you go, I did get a taste of some of the Polynesian culture, it just wasn’t what I was expecting.

When I was in Morocco back in 1982 I travelled for a while with two Australian teachers Bruce and Clara (not their real names). Bruce was gay and Clara was travelling with him for company and protection.

One day in Fez the guy in the photo below, came up to us and started to talk to us (as often happens in Morocco).

He seemed like a fairly friendly guy and I asked to take his picture, to which he replied that I could, but he’d cover his face because it was against Islam to make images of people. As usual we politely answered his probing questions until he turned to Clara and said, “you let them fuck you, why don’t you let me fuck you?”

I was just reading a blog and I saw with sadness that Gary Gygax had died on the 4th of this month. Unlike many people who played Dungeons & Dragons I’m not embarassed to say I used to love playing it back in the early 1980s when I lived in Canada.

Here’s a few pictures of the people I used to play D&D with on the roof of the house we used to share back in 1983.

It was a very boozy and relaxed social time. It was like taking part in a story that wrote itself. Because of the fact that each person who played was an individual, their choices of what to do in the game led the story of what was happening in unpredicatable directions. I’m convinced that whorthwhile fantasy fiction could’ve been written from some of the D&D games that I’ve been involved with.

On a side note this last picture is of my house mate at the time, Neil Cunningham (the guy in the blue cap in the top photo)who was the model for the Power Windowsalbum by Rush.

Neil got the gig because he had a friend who was the photographer’s assistant of the guy who took the photo of Neil on the front and back cover. The photo for the front cover was copied as a painting. If I remember correctly, Neil was flown down to LA for a couple of days and was only paid about $75 for the shoot.

In 1978, Conklin Amusements, which used to be the largest carnival company in North America, decided that for their 50th anniversary of being in business they would have an antique carnival section on their midway at the Calgary stampede that year.
 
At the time I was living in Toronto when I heard from a friend of my sister’s who used to work in the costume is department of CBC (Canadian Broadcast Company) that Conklin’s were looking for people to work at the Calgary Stampede that year.  I wasn’t enjoying my time in Toronto, so I just hitch hiked out there and got a job.
 
The antique carnival was set up about three weeks before the stampede to iron out any bugs there might be with some of the old games and rides. All the workers were dressed up in period costume from 1928, and all the games and rides were also from that period.  All of us guys even had our hair cut in 1920s style, and treated with hot oil conditioner so it would stay greasy for about two months. 

When I first got to Calgary, I made friends with one of the maintenance guys from the rides called Barry and I shared a company paid hotel with him for the first couple of weeks I was there for free.  Barry was a hard drinking party animal, who told me once that he chugged a whole bottle of tequila in one go, for a $10 bet and went into a coma for two weeks. 

My memories of the time that I spent with Barry in his hotel room are a bit of a blur as it was just one long dope, LSD and alcohol fueled party, night after night.  We were young, indestructible and indefatigable. “Ten feet tall and bulletproof” as they say here in Australia. It was all very rock ‘n’ roll, complete with Barry throwing a carton of beer out through the closed window.  The management was pretty cool about that as long as the damage was paid for, they didn’t even hint that they were going to throw us out. The Calgary stampede, at that time, was a fun place for a young single guy like myself.  The other carnies and myself found the people of Calgary to be very hospitable and friendly and it was not uncommon to just gatecrash parties and to be actually welcomed in as a guest.  Everybody was young and looking for a good time, and we had a blast.
 
After a couple of weeks in Calgary, Barry had found himself a girlfriend, so I couldn’t share his hotel room with him any more.  In the meantime I had met a local called Rick. 

Rick was an ex-con, who stood about 190cm (6 foot three) and weighed about 115kg (250 pounds) and he used to be a professional boxer.  I had seen Rick punch out a few people at parties for no real reason and I was in no doubt about his skills or his willingness to use them.  Rick seemed to like me and we got along, so when he invited me to come and stay at his house for a small fee, I jumped at the chance because it was so easy.
 
Unfortunately, Rick shared his house with a shrew of a girlfriend, whose name I can’t remember, but for convenience, I will call her Kate (as in Shakespeare’s “Taming the Shrew”).

Kate was slovenly, lazy and irritable, and for the life of me I can’t understand what Rick saw in her.  Maybe she could suck a golf ball through fifty feet of garden hose. I guess there are people reading this who probably can’t understand what she saw in Rick.  Rick said that the money I paid him for rent included food, but I soon gave up on eating there as Kate only ever heated up pre-made perogies for dinner. I guess that was the secret to her beautiful skin and svelte figure.
 
After I’d been staying with Rick and Kate for about a week and a half Rick told me they were going to get married and asked me if I would be his best man.  I couldn’t believe that somebody who knew me for such a short time would ask me to be his best man.  To be honest, as I got to know Rick I realised he was a bit of a unpredictable, violent lunatic and I didn’t really want to have anything to do with his wedding.  So at the risk of a beating, I begged off with the excuse that I didn’t want to wear a suit and be responsible and sober on the day.  Fortunately for my health and face, Rick wasn’t insulted and he got Barry to be his best man.
 
The workers at the carnival fall into two groups, the real carnies and the blow-ins like myself.  The real carnies were either born into the business or had been working in it for a very long time and they had their traditions.  One of their traditions is the carney wedding, in which the marriage ceremony is performed on a ferris wheel.  Since Rick had been in the carnival for about two weeks, he saw himself as a Carney so he approached Conklin’s management and asked them for a carney wedding on their ferris wheel.  Surprisingly, they said yes. I guess the PR department felt they’d get some good press and free advertising from the event.  The wedding was held a few days later.

By the time Rick’s wedding came around, I’d been in Calgary for over a month and had made quite a few acquaintances which I used to hang out with.  One of these guys is the fellow in the picture below, whose name I also don’t remember but for convenience, I will call him Tim.

Tim worked in the hammer joint where people used to pay money to see if they could hit a whole nail into a piece of wood with one blow, and if they did so they got a coupon that they could exchange for a prize.  Tim was not very tall and he was a quiet guy. I enjoyed his company because he always had something interesting and thoughtful to say.  Tim seemed a bit damaged and I spoke to him about this and he had said that he had only recently got out of jail in Texas. When I asked him why he been in jail in Texas he told me a horror story about hitch hiking with his girlfriend there.
 
Apparently Tim and his girlfriend were hitchhiking down near Brownsville at night when some police in a police car pulled up to question them.  Tim said that they separated him from his girlfriend and when one of them was questioning him he heard his girlfriend cry out as the other policeman slapped her in the face, so he ran to her aid.  And as Tom Waites would say, “push turned into shove and then biff turned into bam”. 
 
Tim was beaten up on the spot and dragged off into the police car and his girlfriend was left by herself on the highway. Tim never saw her again.  When Tim and the police got to the police station, they beat him up again and threw him into a cell with other prisoners.  Tim said he was kept in a cell for 10 days without charge and he never was before a judge in the whole time he was there. Tim also told me that at nighttime, the police used to come into the cells and force the prisoners to fight each other (in pairs like boxing matches) until one of them couldn’t stand.  I asked him what happened if he if they refused, and he said that the police used to get out their batons and beat them until they did.  After the 10 days, the police drove Tim the edge of town and told him not to come back.
 
I’ve had a few unjustified run-ins with the Texas police as well, and I know how they can be, so I didn’t doubt what Tim had to say for a moment.
 
On the day of Rick and Kate’s wedding, Tim, Rick’s future brother-in-law and I had been out shopping for their wedding present at a shopping mall while we were tripping on LSD. 

We bought Rick, a pair of Donald Duck scissors as a joke and a very nice German chef’s knife as the real present. After we bought our presents we spent the rest of the afternoon sitting outside of the department store beauty parlour laughing our asses off at what we saw as a chemically induced grotesque freak show.  We thought it was hilarious to see the blue-rinse set come out of the salon after their make-overs. They just looked ridiculous. We laughed so much that there were tears running down and our faces and our sides hurt.
 
Needless to say we were running late and we missed the wedding, but we did make it to the reception.  We were told that the press had been at the wedding and lots of photographs had been taken and the story would be in the newspaper the next day. The reception of about 250 guests was held in a public hall with a small stage at one end. Tim and I sat at a table off to one side with a few of the women that we knew. The girls knew instantly that we were both off our faces but they didn’t seem to mind though, because we were both in such good moods that our laughter was infectious and before long we were all laughing our heads off, telling jokes and having a generally great time. One of the women at the table was a biker chick and she had a very wicked sense of humour. I remember her telling Kate who was yelling and carrying on about something she had just said, that “if you can’t take a joke, don’t get married”. The wedding was turning out better than I thought it would be.
 
After a few drinks, Rick got up on the stage and then opened the wedding presents in public. He would open up the card, read out who it was from, open the present and then show it to everybody while thanking the person who had given it to them.  Rick looked very happy until he got to the Donald Duck scissors.  He didn’t think it was very funny at all and his smile turned to a scowl as he threw the scissors over his shoulder, shaking his head as he glared at me.  Rick’s mood quickly changed when he saw his real present and his glare turned into a radiant loving smile. I knew he’d like the knife. It’s a guy thing.
 
After the present unwrapping, Rick went back to his table, the music was turned up and every body started dancing.  Everything was going really well until a guy called Spade snuck up, unseen, behind Rick as he was relaxing at the table and dropped a blob of ice cream into the back of one of Rick’s loafers that was hanging off his heel.  As a Rick stood up later to have a dance his heel went back into the loafer and he stood on the ice cream. 
 
That was it, Rick went ballistic, and as quick as a flash there was a riot. Everybody just seemed to go nuts and started to try and kill each other with what ever they could lay their hands on. It was just like in one of those old westerns where everyone in the saloon was smashing each other over the head with chairs. That is everybody except us, in that I mean, Tim and I and the girls. Tim and I were just too happy and full of love.  It was all so surreal and all so full on with violence everywhere we looked. The amazing thing was, that most of these people knew each other and until the wedding I would’ve said that we were all friends. One of the women I was with said I should go over to Rick and try calming him down. 

Tim came with me as we ducked and weaved our way through the brawlers towards the centre of the the storm called Rick. As we approached Rick, he looked like a bear trying to shake off a pack of small dogs.  Barry, with tears streaming down his face came rushing past us with a chair in the air to smash somebody, to our right.  

I pulled a bunch a guys off Rick, who was also in tears and screaming out what a bunch of bastards everybody was and how they had ruined his wedding. I tried to get him to calm down, but he was in a hysterical (and I don’t mean funny) state. In between his hyperventilating blubbering he kept raving on about “that fucking Spade, he put ice cream in my shoe, I’ll kill him!” Rick then turned on Tim and tried to hit him, but Tim was too fast and jumped backwards out of his reach.
 
Rick was about twice Tim’s size.  Tim was amazingly fearless, he stepped back and he lifted his hands into a boxing stance standing his ground as Rick advanced.  Rick took another swing at Tim, but Tim just ducked, stepped back and then kicked him in the balls.  As Rick hit the ground like a sack of potatoes I grabbed Tim by the arm, dragging him out of the hall and we made a run for it.
 
I spoke to Rick the next day and he was full of admiration for how gutsy Tim had been. We also heard about a carney-wedding riot at a public hall on the radio. 

I bet that’s not the sort of publicity that Conklin’s was expecting.

About 50kms northeast of Mexico City are the amazing pyramids of Teotihuacán.

I didn’t visit Teotihuacán back in 1983 when I first went to Mexico because in my mind I thought they’d just be some kind of lame tourist trap. I used to have an elitist head space back then about travelling. I used to make a distinction between “tourism’ and “travelling”. In short I thought that tourism was for weak-minded lightweights and that travelling was somehow purer. Ah… the arrogance of youth. Now that I’m older, I see all travelling that’s not done for business, visiting family or to get to safety, as essentially tourism. Just going to places to have a look see.

I now wince when I hear someone declare with emphasis that are travellers.

Au contraire!

I “travelled” for 11 years straight which included probably over a 100, 000 kilometres hitch hiking and sleeping rough and when I look back I don’t feel that it could be described as anything more than tourism. I just didn’t have enough money most of the time to make it comfortable and that fact doesn’t turn it into “travelling”.

As a matter of fact, I’ve stopped staying at backpackers hostels when I do go abroad because I know it’s socially unacceptable to maim people bragging about what legends they are because have been “travelling” for a whole six months. I also feel it’s better for everyone that I remove myself from the temptation of perpetrating a little ultra violence when I hear some wanker ask a fellow backpacker, “how long have you been travelling for?”, so they can establish some kind of “I’ve been travelling longer than you” hierarchy. It’s a good thing that I didn’t meet myself when I was younger or I might not be writing this post.

Now with my little rant over, I will tell you a little about Teotihuacán. My wife and I took one of the cheap local buses from the Terminal Norte in Mexico City which turned out to be a good thing because it stopped at various little towns along the way and musicians would get on a play for tips. It was very atmospheric and muy sympatico.

If you ever go to Teotihuacán make sure you take a hat, some sun screen and water. There is very little shade and it can get very hot.

As you walk along the main avenue of the ruins, the charmingly named Calzada de los Muertos (road of the dead) you will see one small pyramid type platform after the other on either side in a row leading to the big pyramids at the end.

It wasn’t until I had visited Teotihuacán that I found out that the largest pyramid in the world (Cheops) might be in Egypt but the next two largest ones were in Mexico. Even though I’ve been to Mexico twice now, it still amazes me how many big pyramids there are in that country. I almost think that fact is being kept from the world, but then I realize it’s just my own ignorance.

 At the end of the Calzada de los Muertos the second largest pyramid at Teotihuacán known as the “Pyramid of the Moon”

and to it’s left is the larger (third largest in the world) pyramid, the Pyramid of the Sun. My wife and walked up the stairs to the top of the Pyramid of the Sun.

 It was pretty steep (not as steep as Tikal but much longer) and long but the view at the top is wonderful.

On the Pyramid of the Moon’s right is the Placio de los Jaguares which is quite different to the rest of the complex. It’s a nice place to sit a while in the shade and get some respite from the hawkers.

The Placio de los Jaguares is one of the few places in the whole complex where you can still see some of the old painted decoration.

 It must’ve been an amazingly colourful place. Almost psychedelic.

Not much is known about the people who built Teotihuacán as it is thought that it was started in the first century AD and abandoned by the eigth century.

Remember if you go there, that the hawkers are probably the descendents of the people who built the place and they have a right to be there and to eek out a living somehow. Don’t get annoyed at their constant attentions, just say no, thanking them politely (no gracias) and walk away if you don’t want to buy anything from them.

Yesterday my wife and I went to the wedding of her cousin Kari to Alex.

It was a perfect day at a beautiful venue.

Before I went to Vietnam last year, everyone I know who had been there said that Ha Long Bay with it’s fantastically shaped limestone islands is a must see destination. Usually such recommendations leave me with visions of some tourist trap crawling with tourists and the predators that prey on them.

My preconceptions of what Ha Long Bay would be like were basically correct but for the fact that it wasn’t a hell.  Yes there are a lot of tourists but there wasn’t a hassle with local touts.

Most people going to Ha Long bay have bought tickets on package tours on the junks that tour the bay, from one of the many hole-in-the-wall travel agents one sees all over Vietnam.

 I don’t usually like to go on tours and I tend to avoid them but I’d been warned by the lady (Meng Kee) we were staying with in Hanoi that it’s better to buy the boat tickets in Hanoi because it takes the hassle out of finding transportation to the coast and it works out cheaper to buy it as a package.

We were picked up from where we were staying in Hanoi by a minibus and driven to the coast with about 12 other people. Interestingly there were a group of five Spanish people (of whom four didn’t speak English), who my wife and I struck up friendships with. I was quite amazed at how much Spanish I’d retained from my trips to Spain and Mexico over the years and we were to make ourselves understood to them. The Spanish were really lovely people who were full of life and we spent two wonderful days having a great time laughing and joking around in one of the most amazing landscapes I’ve ever seen. It was quite surreal speaking broken Spanish whilst floating through a landscape that looked like a Chinese painting.

We spent two very comfortable days on the junk which was more like a floating lounge room come restaurant. The staff were very friendly and relaxed as can been seen from the photo below of our captain.

The food was pretty good and plentiful but it was the company that really made the trip for us. My only regret was that I didn’t take any photos of the Spanish people with my camera (I took a few for them with their camera though).

Most of our trip was spent on the roof of the junk so we could see the scenery more clearly. It doesn’t get much better than kicking back with a cold drink in the tropics and watching amazing scenery go by while hanging out with good people. I’ve always found that while the landscape can be beautiful, it’s always the people that make a place.

Part of our package included kayaking so we had a chance to explore a little on our own which was fun. The water was so warm that when we were offered an opportunity to go swimming we didn’t bother as it wouldn’t have given any relief to the muggy heat at all. Whereas the beer was very good and cold.

On the last day it was very hazy and were taken to the place in the photo below

to see the caves.

One other thing that was good about the Ha Long Bay trip was that the staff on the junk didn’t constantly try to sell us things. We later took a boat trip in Hue the see the emporer’s tombs and during whole trip of about seven hours we were constantly being pressured to buy things and it was a real drag.

After such enjoyable experience Ha Long Bay, I know I will be another one of those people suggesting to anyone who is going to visit Vietnam that they would do well to go on a boat trip there.