We’ve run 2 Sahara retreats now and they were both amazing experiences. We expected everyone to be overwhelmed by the beauty of the desert and to find time for reflection, to reconsider where their lives were going – what we didn’t expect was the almost-instant sense of community that emerged in the desert and the long-lasting friendships that were formed between those who came.

This year we’re putting a particular focus on mindfulness and meditation.

If you’ve ever tried to meditate but found it hard to keep your attention in the here and now in the rush of your daily routine, in the Sahara there can be such stillness and quiet that you can hear your own blood as it flows around your body. With no cell phones or internet you can tune into your original rhythm and experience the joy of being alive.

Sound too hippie? Don’t worry, the retreat is also a place to learn some aikido, tell travel stories around the fire and make some music with interesting people from around the world. Either way you’ll be blown away by the majestic dunes, the brightness of the stars in the desert and the magic of the Sahara.

Check out www.roadjunkyretreat.com to find out more.

The Sahara Retreat runs from Sunday Jan 27 – Saturday Feb 2 and costs 299 euros inclusive.

The Road Junky Oasis is a place where you can hang up your traveling boots for a while, trade some stories around the fire and attend workshops that help you along the deeper journey – inwards.

Set in an old house in the forest of Bulgaria, an hour’s walk away from a lake, the Oasis is open from April to the end of October and can host around 30 people at a time. We’ll be inviting teachers on subjects as diverse as aikido, singing and sculpture, there will be a library, a camp fire every night, pizza making sessions around the earth oven, storytelling and the chance to make friendships with the interesting, friendly people who come to stay.

We’re running the Oasis this year on a donation basis and hope that you will appreciate the work that goes into this and give as much as you can to make the project grow.

You can check out the program here and read more about the vision here.

We look forwards to seeing you in Bulgaria should the wind push you that way…

RJ: You’ve been living in Thailand for nearly 20 years now. What keeps you there?

Jim: One thing that keeps me riveted is the ‘bizarro factor’. In the Bizarre Thailand group on Facebook we have a constant stream of people posting weird tales, like the recent one about a Thai man who married the corpse of his recently deceased girlfriend and then put up a video of the ceremony on Youtube. What happens in Thailand just doesn’t seem to happen anywhere else.

RJ: Beyond the Land of Smiles clichés fed to us by the guidebooks, how would you describe the Thais?

Jim: Clichés come to be clichés because they do contain more than a few iotas of truth. Thais are some of the most welcoming and hospitable people on the planet. Of course, they have a dark side as well, which I have explored in the book, like the way politicians use black magic to increase their stranglehold on power, like the bloodshed on the streets of Bangkok during the red shirt protests and military crackdown in the middle of 2010, like the battles Dr. Pornthip, the famous forensics investigator, has fought against the police over certain homicides and the identifying of 5,000-plus corpses after the tsunami of 2004.

Because Thais have to be so sweet and smiley all the time they seem to build up a lot of excessive aggression. I have seen tiny women turn into tigresses and take on men three times their size – and these aren’t even the ones who’ve become possessed by their magic tattoos – and men using a motorcycle helmet to smash in the head of a man they’d already beaten into a bloody unconscious heap.

It’s a very extreme place, equal parts sugar and chili which is served on every dinner table, and that makes it exciting to write about and be a part of.

RJ: Thailand is so overrun by backpackers getting drunk, laid and going diving, is there any real travel to be done there? 

Jim: Definitely. The Northeast is only starting to blossom as a destination, with Khmer ruins, national parks, the friendliest locals, volunteer programs where you can be a rice farmer for a day or a monk for a month, a village in Surin province with more elephants than people, the Mekong-straddling town of Nong Khai with the most surreal and monstrous sculpture park in the world, and Loei province has the annual Phi Ta Khon (Ghosts with Human Eyes) Festival.

My favourites in Isaan, however, are the three towns I’ve written about in the story “Reptilian Menage a Trois”: the Cobra Village where most visitors raise snakes and put on daily shows of snake-handling; “Tortoise Town” where the number of tortoises outnumbers villagers by five to one, and they are held sacred and treated like pets as they trudge through kitchens and backyards, and mate in the streets during the rainy season; and the Phu Wiang district of this province, Khon Kaen, has the biggest dinosaur graveyard in the country and a national park where they’ve been excavated and a museum devoted to them.

Some of the best travel experiences in Thailand now are all the homestays in pastoral parts of the country where you stay with a local family, cook with them, shop in the market with them and drink and dance together at night.
For backpackers who want to go as native as possible this is the realest deal.
 
RJ: How did writing about Thailand change your perspectives on the place?

Jim: The real thrill of writing is the same as travelling: it’s the thrill of discovery. That might be finding an offbeat museum in Bangkok like the Corrections Museum with ancient torture instruments once used in Siamese jails, or realizing that the original guard towers from the old prison are still there in the midst of this beautiful public park. Is this a way of lightening up some dark bits of history or does it constitute some kind of triumph over that old savagery? Writers can only frame such questions, then the reader has to decide, which may very well challenge their preconceptions or prejudices.

Most of us sleepwalk through our daily lives, but when you’re in a new place everything is exciting again and travellers get filled with a child-like sense of curiosity and enthusiasm. That’s the same sense of curiosity and enthusiasm that authors bring to their subject matter, so you’re actually rediscovering a place when you’re writing about it, trying to fix every detail and smell in your head while you’re experiencing it or remembering it to give readers a voyeuristic sense of going or returning there.
Writing about any place, even if it’s just an email or a Facebook post, creates some of the most sublime memories.

RJ: You’ve recently released a non-fiction collection called Bizarre Thailand: Tales of Crime, Sex and Black Magic. Why should we buy it?

Jim: One of my favourite reviews of the book on Amazon.com mentions all the intriguing characters, like the former executioners, the freak show couple and Guinness-record holders the Scorpion Queen and Centipede King, the surreal architect and philanthropist, Sumet Jumsai, the corpse collectors who pick up the bodies on the streets of Bangkok, like the grand dame of Thai ladyboys and the Thai woman who founded an NGO to fight for the rights of sex workers.

Truth be told, a lot of the famous sites I’ve visited in recent years like the Taj Mahal and the Forbidden City didn’t offer much in the way of excitement or interaction or anything all that memorable that I couldn’t have seen on the Net.

History is a graveyard. What brings it to life and makes travel interesting are all the weird and wonderful people you meet along the way, like the old rice farmer I ended up interviewing for a story about the gradual extinction of the water buffalo who taught me some traditional Thai country songs, such as one that goes, “The rice liquor and the buffalo are my only friends.”

When visiting Angkor Wat, I remember reading an inscription written on the wall of a bar by some traveller. “This place is just a beautiful bunch of rocks, so I’m going to go diving and hang out with some cool girls.”

_You can buy a copy of Bizarre Thailand: Tales of Crime, Sex and Black Magic on Amazon and you can check out Jim’s blog here

It occurred to us that as much as we know about travel, all of you know a lot more. Imagine walking into a bar full of thousands of road junkies who could give you advice on destinations and share their most outrageous travel stories…

We couldn’t find a bar big enough so we’ve made a new site where you can share your tips, advice and insights with all the other road junkies out there. There’s no sign up process, you just start commenting straight away and the best stuff gets harvested into an official guide.

Here’s how it works:

1. Log on at www.roadjunkyguides.com with your Facebook, Gmail or Twitter ID.

2. Add your tip or comment.

3. There is no step 3.

There will be new travel tip questions asked each week and we’ll be rolling out the countries one at a time.

What are you waiting for? Start writing the travel guides now! and share your expertise with the world.

Neither had we. Then we bumped into the guys at Soviet Truck and they got us thinking about this vast tract of land which for most travelers is an unknown wasteland. When was the last time you saw a guide to Uzbekistan? So we asked them just what kind of operation they have going.

RJ: Why does almost no one travel to the former Soviet republics?

Soviet Truck: With a few exceptions tourism just hasn’t taken off in many of the former Soviet Republics. Partly because they just don’t understand what the western traveller seeks in a destination, and partly because they’re just unwilling to change. The bloated bureaucracy of the Soviet Union lives on more-or-less unchanged – just look at the strict visa laws. This legacy can make the nuts-and-bolts of traveling a source of intense headaches and empty wallets – especially when all that is on the menu of verbal discourse is Russian and a mountain dialect of Yaghnobi.

On the flip-side, you can expect locals to actually take an interest in you – you might be the first Westerner they have ever met. And without exposure to mass tourism you can explore a kind of parallel universe that few outsiders will experience firsthand.

Soviet Truck deals with the red tape, provides food to eat, a place to sleep and takes its travellers to remote spots that would be otherwise almost impossible to reach. Our team consists of both locals and bilingual Westerners; we know what travellers want and plug them into what’s going on in the places along the route.

RJ: What is there to see in the Soviet Union?

Soviet Truck: The USSR is a word that probably conjures up several pictures in most people’s minds: the Cold War, the Space Race, vodka, Stalin, gulags, hammers and sickles. Interesting though this list may be, it’s only a shadowy reflection of life in the former Soviet Union.

Few are aware that the Soviet Union prized itself as a pluralistic society. They fused a fifth of the world with a single language and ideology, forcibly uniting hundreds of culturally and linguistically diverse peoples. Where else in the world could you find peoples as diverse as the fiery Cossacks, Siberian reindeer-herders, Central Asian horse breeders and the mountain-warriors of the Caucasus?

The territory also encompasses incredible naturlal richness: volcanoes in Kamchatka, the expanse of the Taiga, the depths of Lake Baikal, the vastness of the Ural Mountains, the Crimean Coast, the Central Asian deserts, lush valleys of Kyrgyzstan, and the Siberian steppe. All things considered, the greatest mystery of the USSR is why so few people are interested in seeing it since its borders opened.

RJ: You’ve travelled around these parts a fair bit; what’s the driving like?

Soviet Truck: Driving in this part of the world varies from country to country: States such as Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan have a road rule that leaves the driver guessing whether Mad Max was based on a true story. On the other hand, Belarus, Ukraine, and the Baltic states have better infrastructure (and better drivers).

Occasionally, the issue of bribery famously arises when under-paid police officers try to make a little extra dough though we’ve rarely encountered this. In any case a discreetly-passed bottle of whisky can wash away most problems with those whose eyes are bigger than their pockets.

Road travel in the former USSR is quite safe, albeit sometimes unusual; it requires an experienced driver and it also helps if you’re in a really big army truck.

RJ: Why a Russian Army Truck?

Soviet Truck: While Soviet industry was not generally known for the high quality of its consumer goods, they poured huge sums into the development of vehicles essential for military use. The Soviets developed trucks specifically for the most demanding driving conditions on earth: the deep mud, raging rivers and snowdrifts of Siberia. A source of national pride, KAMAZ continues to dominate international off-road rallies such as the Paris-Dakar.

To avoid a western enclave, we decided to use small vehicles (relative to other overland companies), with just ten passengers per vehicle.

The GAZ-66 was the primary vehicle of the Soviet Infantry, making its presence on the roads and availability of spare parts ubiquitous, and they are extremely capable off-road: the ideal choice for our route.

RJ: What led you to getting your own tour company together?

Soviet Truck: The four of us are close friends. Shurik and Yegor are native Belarusians and qualified interpreters. Shurik has grown up working on Soviet vehicles of varying sorts, and Yegor makes Wikipedia look dumb.

David and David (American and British, respectively) met when they became roommates in the dormitory of the Minsk State Language University. They connected over their unique passion for roughing-it and all things Soviet. With backgrounds in Anthropology and Mechanical Engineering, this seeming alignment of the planets set the stage for the imminent advent of Soviet Truck.

The idea came to us one warm, Minsk evening whilst browsing the newspaper in search of a vehicle for a summer trip to the -stans. Everything seemed made for tourists, not travelers like us. So we reckoned using our combined creative might, we could assemble a journey better-tailored to people like us: open-minded risk-takers who want to see the world without spending a fortune.

RJ: What kind of people do you think will want to come?

Soviet Truck: We want to be clear: we are not so much looking for passengers, but fellow travellers who will take initiative to make the trip their own.

Our travelling companions will be taking a decked-out Soviet military truck for ten weeks across eight countries. New people will be met, new foods will be tasted, mountains will be conquered and, as in all great tales, things will go awry. The unexpected will happen, and when it does, we expect everyone on-board to have an attitude that boldly states, “this is what the journey is all about—and we will get through it.” At the end of this trip, there will be stories to tell.

Soviet Truck’s next trip is setting off from Lvov, Ukraine on June 12, 2012.

They’ll be traveling through 8 countries over 10 weeks – for more information on the route and how to sign up, check out Soviettruck.com

RJ: From some of your previous articles on South Korea, it’s fair to deduce you’re not exactly crazy about the place – so why did you stay so long?

David: I wasn’t particularly fond of Korea, but it’s easy to get comfortable there. I moved to Daegu in April 2008, just before the world economy went to shit, and even before that happened I wasn’t liable to get a decent job back in Scotland. Even now, the people I went to university with – talented, motivated, intelligent – are working in bars and shops. In Korea I was getting big paycheques to do an easy job. All I had to put up with was the rudeness of people whenever I left my house.

Of course, I considered leaving and going somewhere like China (where I currently live; I absolutely adore China) but after six months in Korea I met my wife. Our contracts were staggered by six months and could only be increased twelve months at a time. After the first year I actually switched to a much better job and life became a lot easier. We ended up staying there about three and a half years before making our escape.

RJ: How would you sum up Korean culture now that you’ve grown older and wiser?

David: If you’re on the inside, you’re taken care of. I guess that’s pretty important. The country has developed fast but they still have a lot of old traditions that have kept their significance. Like pretending to respect your elders.

Honestly, I have a lot of criticism for Korea, but I went there in search of a new, different culture, and although it’s hard for a foreigner to ever truly come to understand it, I did get to glimpse a lot of beautiful and fascinating elements of life there. I love the things like using two hands to show respect.

RJ: Do English teachers really get screwed so often by Korean language schools? How?

David: There are some great schools in Korea, but the bad ones are so nightmarish that they get most of the attention. In my first year, I don’t recall ever hearing people talk about how lucky they were, or how much they liked or respected their co-workers. In fact, all through my time there I’d say that the majority of my friends hated their jobs.

My first school was one of the worst. The recruiter lied about my hours and responsibilities, although that’s standard practice. The director was a monster. He beat the students with a stick, and treated the teachers pretty badly, too. We worked ridiculous hours and never got over time, and had all these fees taken from our paycheques. One of those fees was for health insurance, and one day I ended up in hospital and screwed for a three thousands US dollar bill because it turned out the director had been keeping my fucking money! Anyway, when I left that school I posted that story on the internet… and a few months later he sued me for libel.

But it’s not all bad and it would be unfair to suggest that there are only bad schools, even if they are in the majority. My second school (a job I found by word of mouth) was fantastic. The boss was very understanding and the hours were reasonable.

RJ: Can a foreigner ever really fit into Korea and be accepted?

David: No, not really. You can find your place there, but you will always be a foreigner unless you look Korean. They have a strong idea of Koreanness, and an equally strong notion of Otherness, and it all comes down to appearance. That’s one of the worst elements of life there: it’s very superficial. I had a lot of friends who were Korean-American and had come back to Korea after years of being told: ‘You’re part Korean, part American,’ by their adoptive families. Of course, back in Korea it turns out that unless they look Korean, they’re just plain American. A lot of these people had been put up for adoption because they had a GI for a father, and they wouldn’t have been accepted as a half-black or half-white baby.

If you can speak Korean and you marry a Korean and you have a Korean kid, you will certainly be treated a bit better than the hordes of teachers and soldiers that live there, but you will still be considered an outsider. You will still be expected to play the role of a foreigner, and no matter how many years you live there, you will not be Korean.

That’s pretty hard to get your head around from a Western perspective, and it’s something that made me really bitter about living there.

RJ: Tell us about your novel, the Dog Farm.

David: I knew before I went to Korea that I’d write a novel about it, although I suppose in the beginning I expected it to be a barely fictionalized version of the truth. I wrote notes and little bits and pieces for the first year and a half, but it was only in late 2009 that I sat down one day and started typing out the original version of the book as it currently is. I think the breakthrough came when I stopped trying to write my own story, and started putting together some actual fictional characters.

It then became a process of putting these characters into the sort of stories that you always hear about, and indeed things I had experienced myself. One problem came in choosing what to include. I mean, there are so many little quirks and experiences that are unique to life in Korea that I wanted to include. Somewhere along the line, though, I stopped trying to write about Korea and just focused on the characters. I let them take me through the story, and Korea just became a part of the scenery.

People tend to assume that the book will be more negative or aggressive than it really is, and that’s a fair assumption, given my old blog and some of the articles I’ve published. But the book is not an attack on Korea. Having grown up a bit, I’ve come to realize that we do largely bring our own fate upon ourselves, and I tried to explore that with some of the characters. They waltz into Korea and expect the country to solve all their problems, or play host to this drunken gap year that they have planned, and when they aren’t given the respect they want, they assume it’s racism. Not to let Korea off the hook, or to explain away much of the xenophobia that is rampant there, but probably the main theme of the book is this: that we may blame others for what happens to us, but often it’s our own fault.

You can find David Will’s book, the Dog Farm here on Amazon

Before you went somewhere you had no opportunity to exhaustively research your destination beyond rereading that same paragraph in the guide book you flipped through in the book store. The only opinions you could gather were from friends who had actually been there. And though you could phone up a hostel in advance to book a bed you never did because you had no idea if it was the kind of place you would want to stay. Besides, who could afford the phone call?

The internet has changed travel in many ways, some for the better, some incalculably worse. But like with all technology it’s how you use it that counts.

Take hostels – if you want to be sure of having a place to stay when arriving late in some big city you can now just book ahead and you’re saved the prospect of walking around dodgy neighbourhoods with your brightly coloured backpack calling the attention of every mugger in the area.

Yes, hostels can suck. They can make you feel like a teenager again with all the warning signs to clean up after yourself and the eternal fixation of other backpackers to get drunk and compare guidebooks.

But they’re also great places to find people to travel with, get clean after a week of sleeping on a beach and maybe even get laid. And there are some hostels that are an experience in themselves – fancy staying on a river, in an old jail or in the jungle?

Just don’t get stuck in them forever.

If you’re looking for a hostel, the cheapest bet is usually with Hostel Bookers

Parque Tayrona, a national park, the perfect retreat from Cartagena this is the place where Steve McQueen fell in love with the Guajira Indians after he escaped whilst playing Papillon. The park is a fantastic tranquil oasis of jungle-fringed Caribbean beaches and Indian ruins and located on the coastal side of the Sierra Nevada mountains, the tallest coastal mountain range in the world.

Like any good tourist I had called ahead to make my reservation. In broken Spanish I had enquired whether the park was open.

“¡No se puede señor!” I was informed by Colombian tourism. It’s closed for cleaning. What’s that all about, makes it sound like a hotel. I had visions of cleaning teams sweeping the jungle. Something must have got lost in the translation.

We blundered out east from Cartagena towards Santa Marta anyway. These coastal buses were fantastic, I was in air-conditioned splendor. Reclining back I soaked up, along with the locals, the busty blondes in a dubbed version of Baywatch. Pure bliss.

Santa Marta is a hot scruffy seaport, and a lot of contraband ebbs through this town. The cheapest hostel is called the Miramar, “Sea view” in Spanish. It is possible to see the sea, just. Although definitely not from any of the rooms, as they had no windows. But I was collecting a hammock that a friend had left in storage there, what more could I want?

Marijuana, cocaine: the words flew around the reception as soon as you entered. They were resonating from an old Colombian relaxing in a chair. For the moment I chose to ignore his chanting and deal with the formalities of checking in.

The hotel was small, only had about five rooms, and when these were full the enterprising owner would allow hammocks to be swung in the courtyard. Which was also the dining area. If you had this spot, as I did, you were the last to sleep and the first up, due to the kitchen activities, fine if you wanted to be the first in line for breakfast, otherwise a bit of a pain.

Sleep was almost impossible in this place anyway. Everybody had visited the two-word dealer reclining at the front of the hotel. Either that or there was a flu epidemic. I once heard Santa Marta owes it reputation due to geography. It’s right in the middle, almost halfway between the finest Peruvian coca plantations and the U.S.A.‘s bustling ports. Cocaine and marijuana leave this place in every way imaginable. I even read a report of a remote-controlled mini-sub packed with cocaine running aground on the islands off the coast.

“Tours to Parque Tayrona”, the message board announced. The owner was also organizing smuggled tours into the closed park. We poo-pooed his advances of tickets and made our own way there. About five- or six-strong we were. A tarmac road goes east out of Santa Marta towards Venezuela, and 34 kilometres away the park entrance is right across from a highway restaurant, where the big air-con buses disgorge passengers for “El Menu”, the set menu which is the same for breakfast, lunch or dinner. Sitting there we discussed our options over fresh fruit jugos.

I had already approached the two park wardens. It was indeed closed, but you must understand this park, this national park, covers some 15.000 hectares. Most of it is jungle, the rest beach. Surely bunking in wouldn’t be a problem.

At this point we all recognized the Miramar smuggle tour, it was one of those minivans with about eight people in it. Everyone got out, waved at us, then vanished into the jungle 100 yards past the park entrance! Whilst taking this in, two Colombian kids, no more than eight or nine asked us:

“Do you want to get into the park?”

“Sí!” we said in unison.

In single file we followed them 100 yards the opposite way. Past some small huts, the kids put their fingers to their mouths to indicate silence. I could actually see the park warden I had spoken to earlier, some distance off through the jungle.

There was a crazy French guy with us, come to visit his friend in Colombia, only for a few weeks. Hence he had a suitcase. Now he held it aloft on his shoulder as on tiptoe we circumnavigated security. Back on the road, just over a brow of a hill, out of sight of the wardens, our Colombian guides told us to just keep going.

“Es tranquilo ahora.” We had a whip-round and muscled up a few bob for the kids, then the jungle had them again.

The Miramar smuggle tour re-appeared from the other side of the road. With much backslapping (think they were a bit pissed off) we proceeded down the road together.

It was a good hour or so before you sensed something different. Less jungle, more palms. Less mud, more sand. The gradual amplification of crashing coastal breakers. The Caribbean Sea! This part of the coast has a very strong current. Just wading out to my knees I could feel the water pulling at my calves and dragging sand from beneath my feet. Not a place to swim.

Just along from here was the main resort area, Arrecifes, with a sheltered bay for swimming. “Resort” conjures up the wrong image. There was one restaurant, with maybe five tables. “Restaurant” conjures up the wrong image; try “a covered area with an open fire for cooking”. Tents could be put up, or there was a covered area with room for about five hammocks. If you so pleased, as most people did, you could also just wander along the beach, find a suitable coconut palm and swing your hammock. Of course some joker would always recite the falling coconut one-in-a-million chance story.

And then there were the donkeys, pack animals they were. Used to transport anything from the entrance to here. And always on the lookout for food stashed in ruc-sacs. One must be cautious, or go hungry.

Sleeping in hammocks. Now I sort of lie at an angle. It’s almost possible to get flat, and with just a sheet over you and the breeze from the sea to keep the mosquitoes at bay. So aids restful sleep. Someone had informed the French guy that it was possible to sleep on your front. “Bollocks.” I watched him give it a go that night. First he did a back-breaking banana impression. Then when the pain got too much he put both legs outside the hammock. Which must have created some sort of chaffing of the inner thigh. Don’t buck the system: thousands of years, the Indians couldn’t be wrong. Sleep on your back or sideways.

There are two ways out of Parque Tayrona: the road we came in on, or a jungle hike past some Indian ruins, called Pueblito (“Little Village”). We choose the latter. No idea how we found when to turn into the jungle from the beach, though – “Go right at the 200th coconut palm?” No idea how we didn’t become hideously lost.

A few hours in we came across the ruins, an hour or so more we came across the Santa Marta road. The only hiccup: my legs and thighs would not stop itching. They were fine when I’d set out. Two days later I was still picking ticks off my balls. I recall it now, at some stage I had ran through a bush, and it must have been infested. On numerous occasions I had asked everyone to stop and study my legs. I really was in pain, scratching away. Everyone thought I was mad, there was nothing there.

The first gaseoso soft drink when we hit the Santa Marta road, that was good. Closely matched by the first tinto coffee as we got off the bus in Santa Marta, and they even had a room for us at the Miramar.

“Marijuana… cocaine.”

I used to think Goa Trance was little more than a bunch of repetitive beats and irritating samples of people saying hey, this must be heaven, man! It was only when I came of age and spent a few seasons in Goa taking acid that it began to make sense.

Perceptions of the music were as subjective as the psychedelic experience. No one could seem to agree much on what made good trance. After every party, no matter how great a time everyone had, there were always but always people bitching about the music. The tracks were too old, they were badly mixed or the DJ wasn’t stoned enough. Perhaps one of the worse things about the whole phenomenon of the trance movement is that it spawned a whole new generation of music critics who considered themselves expert in the field.

But this was precisely because the music was so personal, melding as it did with your particular trip. Either way the music gave you the waves but it was up to you to surf them. At it’s best dancing to trance could be better than sex. At it’s worst, however, it became a cruel, mental torture that messed your head up all night.

In Goa I usually went to bed early and the woke up at around 3:30 am to go to the party. That gave me time to shit, shower and get my party gear ready. I’d need my torch to find my way through the jungle to the beat that was already calling me, money to buy my drop of acid and fluids and I learnt to take a packet of dehydration salts with me.

By the time I found my way to the party it was hoped that most of the darker characters had already gone home and soon the cooler crowd would be arriving. Old Goan mamas held reign on their chai mats, serving tea and cakes to stoned freaks who had no idea which pocket their money was in. The DJ occupied a discreet post somewhere to the side and there was minimal lighting on the dance floor itself.

The night could be hellish. Many people actually liked it that way, dancing through the dark in a painful anonymity, exorcising their demons before the dawn. Then with dawn you’d hear a wave of motorbike engines and feel a new energy taking hold of the party. The light began to grow and you’d suddenly realize what a beautiful place you were in. The dance floor swelled and hundreds of people would suddenly go wild as the DJ unleashed a new mood.

It was also the time when you saw who you’d been dancing with all night. You’d drift through the dance floor, testing the waters, looking for the space that suited you the best. Ideally no one stood about or talked and you’d feel the personalities of hundreds of people as expressed through dance. There were the hoof and elbow stampers of the Israeli chieftains, the springs and twirls of Greek nymphs and the martial aerobics of Japanese travellers exploring the meaning of freedom for the first time. The parties attracted characters and personalities from all over the world, people with dance that more resembled theatre and they generated energy wherever they went.

Most people were too high to care what anyone thought of them and were free to explore themselves and their personal journeys as far as their dance could take them. It was a medium that conducted the flow of thoughts and feelings in a way that word could never do. You found movements to express your anger, sadness or love. There were rarely any strong sexual vibes and most people were too high to even entertain the concept. Instead you were free to play roles as you moved and feel how everyone reacted to your personal dance. At its best it was a kind of group therapy.

At the end of a party you had gotten to know around a hundred people without ever talking to them. You knew who your friends on the dance floor were although you probably never exchanged a word. Often you might not even see them again until the next party and then you’d continue from where you left off. Soul mates recognized each other for the first time and no one could hide who they were. As dawn hit at one party I felt a tap on my shoulder from a young Portuguese DJ – he squeezed a drop of liquid acid onto my palm and twisted away into the dance floor before I could even smile.

As with any congregation you felt part of something greater than yourself. It was something more conductive than water where any wave of energy could spread through the dance floor in a moment. A fight, an embrace or a new arrival were all things you felt without using any of the five senses. It was like melding into some electrical field or making love to 300 hundred people at once.

The dust rose with the day and soon everyone’s nostrils and lips would be lined with red sand. You could feel a bottle of water being opened a 50 meters behind you and you’d all dance on even when you had no more strength to do so. Then it would suddenly all be over. After 7 hours of psychedelic experience you’d suddenly understand how the music had formed part of you, how it had flowed down your veins and poured out again as sweat. Lost and bewildered, you’d amble about in the sudden silence like soldiers after a battle, unsure of where your destiny lay next.

Other times it was pure hell. You’d turn up, drop acid and then be unable to find anywhere on the dance floor where you weren’t being hassled by some idiot. I remember one night where I danced for an hour next to a huge Scandinavian who stood about with a large rucksack on, sighing and glaring at everyone. Finally he grabbed me with one hand and with the other held a small Indian boy who was trying to sell something. I spun away before he could hit me.

When it wasn’t going well you could read the uncertainty and suffering on people’s faces. You’d join forces with a few other dancers and try to create some energy together but then a water salesman would set down his boxes between you and start counting his money. ´Get out of my fucking temple!´ I’d want to shout but these were the local mafia and the last thing you needed on acid was an enemy.

The New Year Goa Parties

The New Year’s parties were always the most chaotic. Thousands of tourists and Indians turned up for 48 hours of unmitigated anarchy. The Indians from the interior were the most irritating nerds imaginable. They walked down the beach fully dressed, socks and shoes and all to take photos of girls in bikinis. This was my girlfriend in Goa, they tell their friends back home. At night they’d become hopelessly drunk and every year a couple of them would drown as they tried to swim for the first time in their lives.

Frequently at the parties you found yourself playing policeman on the dance floor as you prevented hordes of Indians from surrounding unsuspecting Western girls. When one friend of mine tried to intervene at a New Year’s party the Indian in question withdrew a full length sword. He waved it around a bit until everyone kept their distance and then walked around with it the whole night. Oh-oh, there’s the lunatic with the sword again,´ people murmured and moved away.

New Year was also when the Goans got their own back on the arrogant Indian tourists who had been treating them like shit for weeks. Gangs of Goan lads looked for drunken tour groups from Bombay and then beat the shit out of them in the forest.

In the end it was always better to look for the smaller parties where you had a chance of finding friends. You never really knew what might happen to you or when you might need help. On my 21st birthday I was at a party and someone gave me a shot of acid punch. Someone must have made a mistake with the maths though as instead of a 100 micrograms I ended up taking closer to a 1000.

I spent a good deal of the night in a state of emergency, reminding myself every couple of seconds that it was time to breathe again. I could barely see or stand up in the storm of perception and found myself in the morning sitting next to a fire somewhere at the back of the party. I had precious little idea of where I was or what I was going to do. A friendly face arrived at my side and I managed to recognize it as belonging to my friend, Isaac.

“Isaac, I’m, uh, the night was, like, difficult, ah,. I don’t know how, I mean, difficult, is your motorbike with you?”

“Sure, where do you need to go? “

“Ah, I’m not sure-”

“Oh, did you have a bad trip?”

“Yeah.”

Once I managed to communicate that the word got around that my night had been rougher than most, there was a crowd of people looking to help. As I had no home at the time I was taken back to the house of some friends to be babysat. They fed me papaya and yogurt until the afternoon when I got my head together enough to head back to the beach.

Parties in the Himalayas

In general the family feeling was stronger in the mountains where the parties were smaller and more personal. Everything was a lot more work in the mountains and ensured that only dedicated freaks got to the parties. They were generally staged about 3 hours walk up the slopes and the hike in the darkness almost killed us. Once there was a party held at the house of a friend just one hour above our village. That evening however a heavy mist rolled in and by midnight no one had shown up.

“There were just five of us and a huge sound system,” my friend told me. “We thought no one was going to turn up. But then around 1am the wind picked up and swept the mist away. Suddenly we could see torchlight up and down the mountainside, hanging onto every rock and cliff imaginable. Everyone had got lost in the mist.”

In the full moon the snow-capped mountains gleamed blue and everyone in the party looked like an angel. Here we danced from midnight through till noon and in the morning the villagers came out to laugh at all the strange foreigners bouncing around in circus clothing. No matter how bad your night had been you couldn’t help but be blown away by the view in the morning and that was alchemy enough for most people. You could feel the whole mountain waking up and then just as suddenly as the dawn had turned the snow peaks pink, low-level clouds would roll in and you’d find yourself breathing water. If it rained on a cold night you ran the risk of breaking your ankle in the mud or catching pneumonia. Somehow it all seemed worth taking the risk.

All good things come to an end, they say. Maybe they just move on. I turned up at some of the same parties in the mountains a few years later and it was like taking a picnic at high altitude. Everyone sat around smoking and had no idea of what a party should be.

“It’s not like it used to be,” I moaned. An old fart at the age of 24.

Longer than the Great Wall of China. Stretches to five cities in China: Beijing, Shanghai, Xian, Tianjin and Nanjing. Room to house 300,000 people. Contains a cinema, two hospitals, a silk factory, a school, a library, vehicular access and cell phone access 80m below the surface. Secret, underground access to key sites around Beijing: Temple of Heaven, Tiananmen Square, Forbidden City, and Beijing Capital International Airport. An advanced ventilation system to protect against chemical attack, and allows for fresh air for seniors suffering from rheumatism and asthma. Large metal doors are also part of the protection against floods or attacks from the enemy.

Yes, all this and more! Although you, a card-carrying member of democracy will never see all of the Beijing Underground City. In 1969, Chairman Mao was faced with the military threat resulting from the Sino-Soviet Split. He enlisted thousands of workers to build a labyrinth of tunnels to be used as bomb shelters under the city of Beijing. It was completed in 1979 (3 years after Mao’s death), and opened only to the public in 2000. The portion open to tourists is minuscule compared to the network that spreads through out China, my guide Mr. Yee tells me.

“If you have enough biscuits, you can walk to Tianjin through this tunnel. It’ll take two days. No traffic! No fee! Let’s go!” jokes Mr. Yee. And yes, there is a sign with a handy arrow pointing down the one of three halls leading through this labyrinth. Mr. Yee, my guide in the Underground City is excellent, nothing like the other guides I’ve encountered in China. His English is clear and descriptive, and his tour guide chatter is full of facts and stories about the City and his personal life. I find out that he teaches Mandarin in the same language school where his wife teaches English. She’s from Los Angeles and apparently doesn’t speak very good Mandarin.

“What Mandarin do you know?” Mr. Yee asks as we wander past propaganda posters featuring Mao.
“Thank you, good morning, hello and excuse me,” I reply, proud of the last one, though I never heard it once during my week in Beijing. Walking through the concrete tunnels, our voices echo as he tries to teach me the correct intonation.

“Xie xie,” he repeats, the first xie combined with a quick slap on his hand, and the second accompanied by the hand saluting upward. This is great! Free Chinese lessons and a look at the greatest Communist secret to be published in a certain well-known travel guide.

At 20 yuan it’s pretty cheap (like everything in China) for the great level of service and a chance to look at the power Communism once had. Located on Xidamo-Chang Jie, a hutong off of Qianmen Dajie, its a 15 minutes walk from Tiananmen Square. A small doorway decorated in camouflage, with both an English and Chinese sign, its fairly easy to locate despite the ambiguous placing between numbers 62 and 64. It’s a relatively unknown tourist destination, and I think they like it that way.

“How did you know about this place?” Mr. Yee grilled me, his army training doing him proud.

“In a book,” I reply, holding my Lonely Planet in front of me like a shield. Mr. Yee grimaces, and despite his seemingly gentle nature, I can picture him planning ways to exact revenge against the travel publishers.

Another sign they aren’t keen about visitors is the lack of photos allowed underground. When asked if I could take a picture of 4 tunnels branching off, with rounded roofs, army fatigue cloth covering up to shoulder height of all the walls, and original Cultural Revolution posters, Mr. Yee looks into my eyes menacingly and says “No, it’s a secret. Do you understand?” Yes, sir! I wanted to reply. Despite these momentary lapses into Communist secret keeper mode, Mr. Yee is an enjoyable companion through these hallways.

What I’m struck by most is what I can’t, or am not allowed, to see. Mr. Yee is a tour guide and is preventing me from getting lost – but I feel there is so much more hiding just around each corner, like the Communists are planning a world takeover on the other side of that wall. My thoughts are proved correct, not about Communist world domination but about something hidden around each corner. We open a door labeled as the Meeting Room, but are met with a silk factory and shop, complete with no less than five shop ladies, eyeing me hungrily.

It’s a large room, with ceilings at around 18 feet high, and very wide, with four or five smaller rooms off the side. Filled with rows on rows of colourful silk shirts, dresses, ties, bags and pillowcases. There’s even a bed covered in a beautiful silk comforter. Its shocking, both the size and the colours after the nearly claustrophobic tunnels. Having been molested by shop keepers on the street all day, I point towards the large door at the end, and we leave the shop, much to the chagrin of the shop ladies. The door is large enough for a car to fit through, Mao’s secret exit. The road (it’s impossible to think of it as just a tunnel) tilts upwards and the tour is coming to an end.

“What do you think of our Underground City?” Mr. Yee asks, eager for my response. My mind is overloaded, not with information, just astounded by the magnitude of it.

“It’s so … interesting,” I say, knowing my lack of a worthy adjective is disappointing Mr. Yee.

“Most visitors say amazing,” he offers.

“Yes!” I grasp on to the word. “Amazing! I can’t believe it, and yet, here it is.” Mr. Yee grunts with satisfaction at my now suitable awe at the Communist accomplishment. As we near the exit, I receive a curt dismissal, but manage to get one picture of Mr. Yee in his army fatigues and me with my scarf, doing the peace sign in front of a place designed to protect against nuclear war.