The rain banished the May heat and turned the narrow streets of Florence into death zones with umbrella prongs passing at neck-height. Confused gaggles of tourists made the pavements unpassable and I already saw them as so many herds of sheep, proof that I was settling right in to the Flornentine way of life.

Getting ready to liase with Jim, the other Road Junky editor over Skype (a 21st century business if there ever was one with partners working on opposite sides of the world,), I followed my nose through the dripping streets in search of something to eat.

I came across La Cafe Sahara where drifting Arabic music floated out into the street and an attractive menu with a calligraphic font suggested dishes of hummous, baclava, kebab, felafel and Greek salads. Inside there were low tables with leather cushions, a stained glass design of a princess rubbing a genie from a lamp and toy camels on raised alcoves. Well-to-do Italians nibbled to candle light and it was a cosy, tasteful shelter from the inclement weather outside, obviously run by Italians who had traveled and fallen in love with another culture.

So I walked straight past it and into the Filipino kebab place.

Bollywood music was screaming from the television on top of the fridge and the kebab and curries available were set out on plates behind a glass counter. The light was the cheap, glaring florescent kind and the seats were stools at a shelf by the side. The felafel came wrapped up in a plastic bag and I helped myself to a beer from the fridge, watching the Indian dance moves as I munched.

A couple of African guys walked in and complained about the weather with an Italian man who had ventured out of the safe territory of pasta dishes to try something different. I finished, paid up and walked out, running back a minute later to grab the bag I’d forgotten and they were all waiting to give it back to me, laughing like old friends.

In Italy they say that ‘all the world is a village’. You can package up culture all you want and create some imagined ideal but usually the real thing is just around the corner. It changes, gets mixed up and generally stays quite interesting and alive. I travel these days just by going to get a bite to eat.

Let’s come out and say it: tipping sucks.

It’s the residue of ancient class distinctions when one kind of profession was considered inferior to another and the difference had to be compensated by a financial gift. Hence why when the anarchists took control of Barcelona in the early 30’s they banned tipping, as can be read in George Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia.

At other times it’s an act of pity, a social obligation or even a kind of disguised bribe to make sure you get reasonable service. Here’s a few extra coins to make sure you don’t spit in my soup..

I think the tipping point for me came when a taxi driver in the US got pissed with me when I waited for my $3 buck change from $20. He was making $50,000 a year, about 3 times my income and yet I was the bad guy for not paying him a gratuity on top of a ride I could barely afford.

Not that I’m playing Mr Pink here:

The reality is that all around the world people work exploitative jobs where any extra cents can make a big difference. As a traveler you can make a difference to someone else’s day by leaving a little extra cash. In many countries you’ll be the first person to even think about doing so.

But it still sucks.

First of all, because it’s a nightmare working out where to tip – try to leave an extra quid for the bartender in England and they might well throw you out. Fail to tip the barman in the US and expect to wait half an hour for your next drink.

Second, it allows a currency exchange to replace basic human interaction and kindness. As Paul Theroux noted in Dark Star Safari, tipping all the Egyptian taxi drivers, doormen, waiters, porters, guides and shoe shiners felt like he was paying for smiles.

People deserve to be paid a decent wage for the work they do and not have to rely upon the whim of the customer. Which is why it’s really cool in countries where tipping isn’t common practice – when someone is nice to you it’s because they are nice and genuinely like you. Not because they saw you were wearing expensive shoes and so were likely to leave more than 10%.

Roll on Digital cash.

Rereading Paul Theroux’s excellent The Happy Isles of Oceania, I felt moved to share some of the juiciest cultural oddities. At Road Junky we’re a fan of culture shocks to illustrate just what an absurd species humans are and how relative everything is. So put your politica correctness aide and read on:

1. “Can”-nibal Food

Across the Pacific, islanders subsist largely on canned food – spam from South America (with only a vague hint that corned beef resembles human flesh and thus strikes a chord with ancient cannibalistic tastes!) and tinned fish from Japan. The seas have been so exploited by Japan in any case that it’s hardly worth going out fishing any more.

2 Seasick Islanders

While the ancient Polynesians were the most accomplished navigators in human history, crossing thousands of miles of open sea in canoes on a regular basis, the modern islanders get invariably sea sick within minutes of setting foot on a boat.

3. False teeth Girlfriends

The French Foreign Legion maintain a strong presence in Tahiti and in keeping with the time-old exotic dream of the sultry naked island girls, many of them take a mistress. As Tahitians tend to snack continually on sugary food, however, many of the girls have terrible dental problems and so a common declaration of love is to buy her a set of false teeth. When the legionaries depart for a while though they often take the teeth with them to render their girlfriends less attractive while they’re gone.

4. Cargo Cults

Cargo cults are alive on some Pacific islands, where islanders are still waiting for the planes to arrive bearing all the precious material goods that they were once promised by a white man named Jon Frum who quickly passed into local mythology. Some have even built runways to accommodate the cargo planes when they come.

5. Funeral Feasts

On some islands, a pig will be slaughtered when to feed the village when someone important to the family dies. Thus a dying person might assess everyone’s opinion of how much time they have left by when they start fattening up the pig.

6. Starlight Reading

The stars in the Pacific are so bright in places as to read by. ‘the whole dome of the sky a storm of light above my head.‘

7. Missionairies and Cannibals

The Pacific islands are full of missionaries, especially if there are rumors of a cannibalistic past. Theroux writes: ‘rumours of cannibalism are like catnip to missionaries who are never happier than when bringing the Bible to savages. Missionaries and cannibals make perfect couples.‘

8. Mormons

The Pacific is also full of Mormons who believe, rather misguidedly, that the islands were colonised by Native Americans. And as Mormons believe that Jesus managed to fit in a North American tour, that means that the Pacific Islanders are actually Mormons and just don’t know it yet.

9. Gulf War Voyeurism

Theroux is in the Pacific during the first Gulf War and hears repeated worries that the fighting will come to the Solomon Islands just like during the last big global conflict. Islanders bring back home videos of news footage of the falling bombs to watch with all the family and many speculate that the scales will tip in favour of the US forces once Rambo arrives on the scene to help.

10. Weather Chiefs

There are chiefs on the islands who are reputed to be able to control the weather. ‘It seemed wonderful that there is a place where you could actually blame someone you knew for the weather.‘

Bruce Chatwin aspired to write a book about the nomadic instinct but died before he ever managed to put all of his thoughts together. He left behind rambling essays that examine the history of the nomads on the Mongolian steppes, the origins and functions of their shamans and the malaise of modern civilisation now that we’ve largely forgotten how to move.

There’s a passion to Chatwin’s writing that sustains his ideas even when he has difficulty tying them together. He’ll extol the superiority of the Mongolian horsemen over the corrupt society of farmers it plunders and then skip to images of the London tramp who must roam at all costs. Or the babies of the Kalahari Bushwomen who never cry because their mothers keep them in motion and how modern parents unconsciously imitate the rhythms of migration by rocking their babies to sleep.

‘Evolution intended for us to be travelers. Settlement for any length of time, in cave or castle, has at best been a sporadic condition in the history of man… we are travelers from birth. Our mad obsession with technological progress is a response to the barriers in the way of our geographical progress.’

Chatwin turns to the words of great travelers and mystics from the days of old to back up his thesis:

‘He who does not travel does not know the value of men.‘ (Ibn Battuta)

‘The great affair is to move,’ (Robert Stephenson)

‘Nobody was a prophet who was not first a shepherd.’ (Mohammed)

‘The heavens themselves run continually around, the sun riseth and sets, stars and planets keep their constant motions, the air is still tossed by the winds, the waters ebb and flow … to teach us that we should ever be in motion.‘ (Robert Burton)

And as travelers we sympathise with Chatwin’s struggle to get at the heart of the matter, even when the writing goes beyond his or the reader’s depth. In essence, Chatwin wants to understand his own restlessness and even if he gets a bit grandiose in the process, it’s understandable for a wanderer to search for his place in the great scheme of things.

The same urge occupies most road junkies, after all.

The fast food industry in the US tells you pretty much all you need to know about the story of modern America. Reading the likes of Eric Schlosser’s Fast Food Nation you learn about the lobbying in Washington by the big corporations, the saturation of advertising targeted at infants (future fast food customers), the chemical processing of the food until it’s barely recognizable as such and the exploitation of an underpaid transient work force that keeps costs to a minimum.

Morgan Spurlock’s documentary, Super Size Me, complements the journalistic picture gonzo style by embarking on a diet where he ate nothing but McDonald’s meals for a month and almost destroyed his health in the process. With a quirky sense of humour and a disarming interview technique, Spurlock brings out the goofiness in American culinary culture – or what passes for it.

Super Size Me Part 2

Super Size Me Part 3

Super Size Me Part 4

Super Size Me Part 5

Super Size Me Part 6

Super Size Me Part 7

Super Size Me Part 8

Super Size Me Part 9

Super Size Me Part 10

In the old days your chances of getting taken home by a stranger to sleep at their place were slim. If you were hitchhiking your driver might take pity on you as the sun went down, or you might have got lucky spending your last few bucks on a round of drinks at the local bar.

But mostly, the only time you couchsurfed was when you looked up those travelers who had been foolish enough to scribble their addresses on a scrap of paper. Hi, remember me? you said, knocking at their door and smelling of a 15 hour journey, their uneasy expressions testament to a sudden attack of amnesia…

The modern world with its all-pervading media has us all afraid. Mothers no longer let their kids play out of sight, everyone’s doors are locked, we tear up our receipts for fear of identity theft and we increasingly live alone, separated by the very technology that promised to keep us all in touch.

So when couchsurfing.com came along it seemed a bit unlikely. Why would people who drive to work alone, increasingly work alone (unless you count a computer as company) and maybe live alone, suddenly become as hospitable as Arabs and invite unknown travelers into their homes?

The answer is that human nature will always find a way to buck the trend. People do want to meet others, share their experiences and help others out. Maybe they’ve been terrorized by a million news stories and movies of murder, rape and robbery but in essence, we don’t change that much.

Couchsurfing recently passed the million member mark and has become an indispensable tool for travelers around the world:

Going to a new city and you don’t know anyone? Meet new friends who will show you around the coolest places and introduce you to new people.

Heading to New York for a few days and you can’t even afford the hostels? Someone will probably put you up and give you a bed with the kind of homely atmosphere you’d never get in a dormitory.

Live in a beautiful place in the country where it gets lonesome? Have travelers from around the world pass by and share their tales from the road.

And if it still seems unlikely that in the 21st century peope would be opening their homes to strangers, leaving them the keys and the contents of their refrigerators, then you probably still haven’t grasped the paradigm shift of online social networks. People can work out if you’re trustworthy by checking your profile and checking what others say about you. The references left by those you’ve stayed with or hosted create a vast network of trust that would be difficult to fake and provide the threads that tie together a community of like-minded souls across the world, even if they are constantly on the move.

Couchsurfing is a miracle of the internet and given travel a whole new dimension.

Some people like to travel light. And the idea of taking a musical instrument with them on the road just seems like too much hassle. Guitar strings break, harmonicas get filled up with dust and while a double bass can be used as a sledge in emergency blizzard conditions (if you happen to have the huskies), if you travel only with a toothbrush and a towel then an instrument is just one item too much.

But that’s no reason for you not to become a virtuoso musician along the way.

Human beatboxing is within the reach of any traveler who finds themselves hitchhiking for hours by the side of the road, waiting for trains that arrive hours late and generally walking the streets of foreign cities, spinning out at angels in the architecture.

Beatboxing is about simulating the sounds of instruments, laying down rhythms and generally making strange sounds using the mouth and throat alone. Check out Felix Zenger:

It’s possible that the Indians started beatboxing with Bol) singing, the vocal representation of tabla music but most likely it came from black kids in the US doing rap routines in the street and humming along to hiphop, making music in an organic, ground-up kind of way.

How to Become a Human Beatbox

So how do you learn to beatbox?

There are guides available on Beatbox.tv and humanbeatbox.com but mostly all you need is some imagination. Styles of beatboxing vary from the cute sounds made by Camille, to the wheezy gasps of Tom Waits to the altogether weird garbles made in the beatboxing competions.

But really, you learn by yourself.

When you’re waiting for a ride or a train or stuck in some lousy hotel room, you have all the time in the world to start making ridiculous sounds with your lips, cheeks, tongue and throad. Keep a steady beat by clapping your hands and see if you can get some rhythmic cycles going. Improvise over a tune that you already know and see if you can do a beatbox version of White Christmas or Summertime.

If you can carry a little recorder with you then you can listen to your latest efforts and work on honing your sounds. You can get inspired by checking out the beatbox artists on Youtube at any internet cafe and when you’re confident of your licks you can start to jam with musicians you meet on the road.

And if you get any good, you can buy yourself a loop machine and start laying down multiple tracks and voila, you have an original busking act that’s sure to pay for your next flight ticket.

Here’s Dokaka for inspiration, doing just that with a Nirvana interpretation:

Here’s Camille:

And Tom Waits:

What cannot be said about Fela Anikulapo (he who carries death in his pouch) Kuti?

Innovator of the ever-so-groovy afro-beat; human rights activist; anti-colonialist; “Africanist” visionary; lower class hero; notorious sexist and polygamist; government wanted rebel.

Much of this is portrayed in “The Black President”, an hour-long documentary about Fela, his entourage — The Africa 80 and the sights sounds and horrors of 1980s Nigeria.

Though his attitude towards women left much to be desired, his musical legacy and relentless fight against oppression has captivated and inspired the hearts (and dance-floors) of Nigerians and others to this day.

Warning: Afro-beat may cause hypnotic swaying of the hips, and jubilant wiggling of the upper torso.

The last words of this clip are: “…no Capitalism, no Marxism-Leninism; Africanism!”

Naked on a Rooftop

Some years ago I was in Delhi and was pretty sure there was something living in my gut. A book on ayurveda suggested that rubbing some fennel oil onto my belly might help so I bought a little bottle and retreated to my dingy hotel room on the rooftop of a cheap concrete hotel.. Before going to bed I stripped down and rubbed a few drops onto my navel.

The next moment my body tensed up in pain as a couple of drops of the concentrated essential oil fell onto my penis and began to sear away at the sensitive skin. I looked around the room for a bottle of water to douse the burning sensation but there were only 5 empty Bisleri bottles in the corner next to a hole in the wall where cockroaches scuttled in and out.

Hopping up and down in agony, I opened the door of my room a few inches to see if anyone was in the communal shower. The light was on and I could hear the sound of running water so I knew I was out of luck but there was a tap on the rooftop I\d previously overlooked and beneath it a metal bucket. I dashed out naked on to the rooftop and set the tap running before darting back into my room, gritting my teeth all the while as the oil continued to burn away.

The bucket seemed to fill at a snail’s pace and I blew cold breaths of air downwards while I waited but to little or no effect. Almost beside myself with pain I jumped out on the rooftop to drag the bucket into my room but to my horror it would only move a few inches.

It was chained to the tap.

No longer caring who saw me, I lowered my groin into the bucket and found relief n the cold water as I maintained a steady push-up position. Other guests passed from their room to the staircase and refrained from returning the awkward smile from the strange English guy with a penchant for exhibitionism with buckets of cold water on Indian hotel rooftops.

Dancing for the Dead in Africa

I met an Australian guy once who had traveled far and wide, ever on the look out for a good party. It happened that he’d once been way off the beaten track one night in Botswana, enjoying a good smoke with a few friends in the bush. There wasn’t much going on though and when they heard some wicked drum beats from not far away, he and a buddy went to check it out.

They made their way through the trees and they came across a gathering of locals dancing around a fire to hypnotic percussion. He and his friend wasted no time in getting on in there and shaking their thing with all the freaky moves they’d picked up on dancefloors all around the world.

To their surprise, they were set upon by men with sticks and beaten until they fled away into the night to safety.

It turned out they’d gatecrashed a funeral gathering.

Diarrhea in a Minefield

An American friend of mine had been traveling through Egypt and was on his way up through Sinai towards Israel on a local bus when his bowels began to fail him. He had to wave money in the driver’s face before he agreed to stop and let him take nature’s course.

He got down in the desert and hobbled a little away from the bus and was about to let go of his poor sphincter muscles when a coach pulled up and out trooped about 50 European tourists with cameras. In desperation he looked around at the barren, flat expanse and saw just one area that promised a little shelter and hopped towards it as fast as he could.

As he drew nearer the slight dip in the land with the odd, thin bush offering a little respite from the field of view, he noticed a pole with a sign reading:

DANGER! MINES!

He said it was one of the hardest choices he ever had to make.

Anyone who thought Monty Python’s Life of Brian was exaggerating need only spend a while in Jerusalem to see just how many travelers end up preaching to the crowds, waving bibles and singing psalms as though their lives depended on it.

Around 100 tourists a year are admitted for psychological treatment after having heard the word of God, angels or holy spirits and nearly half of these need to be taken into care. It’s debated whether they were already psychotic when they arrived in Jerusalem or whether there really is something in the air in the most polemic city in the world that brings out the prophet in anyone.

Louis Theroux gives us a brief look at some of the more entertaining characters with Jerusalem syndrome to be found wandering the streets. It takes 30 seconds or so to begin: