SUMMER FESTIVALS!!!

Oooh, I love the freedom that unemployment brings. The lack of income is becoming quite a problem, but...oh...the freedom. Although I toned down my original plan to attend festivals non-stop for the whole summer of 2010, I did end up doing pretty well.

Glastonbury

(A.K.A. The greatest festival in the universe)

I decided to use said freedom for good and volunteered to work for Shelter at Glastonbury. Shelter was providing volunteers to work at many of the bars dotted over the thousand acres of Worthy Farm, so I had no idea where I'd be assigned and what type of festival experience lay before me.

Recycling bins

We were to be there Tuesday-Monday, and only needed to work three 8-hour shifts in exchange for our tickets. We also had a secure staff campsite equipped with a subsidised bar and canteen, a chillout area with beanbags and lots of phone-recharger plugs, and most importantly of all, plenty of showers. Showers! As this must have been one of the hottest and sunniest festivals in its history, those (practically) queue-free showers were an absolute godsend.

Peak hour at the Pimm's Bus

As it turned out, I was assigned to work the Pimm's Bus. Brilliant! Not only did I get to wear a pretty red Pimm's shirt, I got to work shorter hours as our clientele tended to disappear with the sun's last rays. This meant I was free to explore the madness that is the Glastonbury Festival.

And this is the part that is difficult to explain. Glastonbury is like no other festival on earth. It's crazy. It's enormous. Various reports cite Glastonbury as either the second or third-largest city in south west England during the last weekend in June. The statistics are impressive: it's home to 3,225 toilets and 60 stages. Set over 900 acres of land, it's over a mile and a half from one side to the other. With 170,000 other people milling about the same pathways, it can easily take an hour to get from one side to the other. And that's not allowing for being distracted by the myriad of interesting diversions you'd find along the way.

Everyone always asks, "So, who did you see play at Glastonbury?" And anyone who's been to a few festivals, anyone who 'gets' Glastonbury, always comes back with the same answer: "It doesn't matter who you see. Glastonbury is an experience." I know people who don't see a single popular act, who go nowhere near the Pyramid or Other stages the whole time. And they maintain that their experience is every bit as awesome as those who manage to catch half a dozen or more of the world's hottest acts for the price of one of the expensive seats at the O2 Arena.

I'm not sure whether I believe that - going THE WHOLE festival without watching any music? I was a bit of both this year. The first couple of days I was there, the main bands weren't on (they start on the Friday) so I had a lot of time to wander the collection of villages that make up the festival: visiting the Green Crafts field, exploring Block 9 and The Unfair Ground while they were finishing their build, sitting in the Stone Circle and watching the sun go down. Once the big bands started, I tried to see as many acts as I could. I worked day shifts on Friday and Sunday, and a night shift on Saturday, so I missed out on a couple of bands I would have like to catch but it was no big deal.

The final list went something like this: the end of Snoop Dogg, most of The Flaming Lips, the opening of that poor excuse for a set delivered by The Gorillaz, Florence and The Machine, Dizzee Rascal, The Wurzels, a smidgeon of The Scissor Sisters and Ray Davies (from the Kinks) on a break from work, The Pet Shop Boys, a bit of Gomez, and Stevie Wonder.

In addition to that, I saw loads of unknown acts perform in smaller venues. The Fluffy Rock Cafe was a favourite and the Front Room in Croissant Neuf was brilliant. My mate and I also ended up popping into a salsa bar, dancing at 1am to a playlist of cheesy 90s classics, dipping into the madness of Block 9 with a visit to the Dog-Faced Geishas, getting harassed by a very creepy guy dressed as Heath Ledger's Joker as we tried to throw a ball through the gaping jaw of what looked like corpses on a daisy wheel, and having a million other amazing experiences that make Glastonbury the enormous bag of Awesome that it is.

I have an entire album of photo memories, but I'll leave you with the ones below as a taster.

I warned you that it would be difficult to explain. Just get yourself there next year. I insist.

T in the Park, Kinross, Scotland

One week back in London then I was off to Scotland to spend four days at T in the Park. My sister had organised everything, including earlybird camping tickets, only to realise about a week before the festival that she couldn't get time off work. What?? The lineup looked amazing, so I decided to head up there alone and check it out.

I caught a bus to Glasgow (9 hours, 15 minutes and no toilet stops, in case you were wondering) stayed a night there to recover, then dragged myself to what must be one of the world's longest bus queues to catch a lift to Balado Airfield in Kinross where the festival is held. Standing in the queue, I noticed for the first time what everyone I've spoken to since then seems to have already known about T in the Park.

Everyone who goes there is really young.

Let me explain for emphasis: when I say young, I mean proper young. I mean teenagers, with the (very) occasional mid-twenties festival goer. And when I say everyone, I mean everyone. I queued for 2 hours at Glasgow Buchanan waiting for a bus, and was part of a crowd of at least a couple of hundred people. In all that time I saw a grand total of two people who looked anywhere near my age. Sh*t.

I was actually dreading going to this festival. It wasn't even the fact that I was going to a campground festival alone - which was a bit adventurous, even for me - but rather that it had been too soon since my last festival experience. Everyone knows that it takes at least a week to recover from Glastonbury, and I had cut that recovery time short to replace it with a massive bus journey, a two-hour queue, and a muddy field full of teenagers. The thought of living under a little piece of canvas again so soon, and being reliant on portaloos, was almost too much to bear.

Still, the show must go on.  And in the end, it looked as though The Universe was pleased that I'd made the effort and decided to give me a helping hand.

I dragged myself and my camping gear to an open spot that was close enough to the...er...'facilities' for it to be convenient for late night toilet needs, but not close enough to smell them. I'd pitched my tent in a clearing, gone for a wee wander around the campsite, picked up some beer, and was back in the tent flicking through the programme when I heard a couple of Scottish accents setting up their tent right beside me. I wasn't even really listening, but some of the words that floated over my way were too hilarious to ignore. I can't really remember the details, but one snippet went like this:

Voice 1: "Put that in the little flappy thing. Use the yellow one."
Voice 2: "I don't see a yellow one."
Voice 1: "Well you need to use the yellow one."
Voice 2: "I'm telling you, there IS no yellow one."
.. 5 seconds later ..
Voice 2: "Oh, here's the yellow one."

I ended up laughing out loud, so stuck my head out to say hello to the owners of those accents and thank them for the laughs. Lo and behold, the Scottish accents belonged to two rather attractive Scottish lads who were older than the festival's average age of 19 years. Nice. Even better than the fact that I was now camped beside two hot guys, was the fact that they were both really nice hot guys. I didn't know that was even possible.

Rodrigo y Gabriel

Just as I was thinking all my christmases had come at once, they told me they had another mate joining them - he had discovered at the gate that he'd left his ticket at home so had to drive back home to find it. Luckily he lived somewhat closer than London. When he eventually arrived, it turned out that he too was hot/nice. Thanks, Universe!

You'll have to trust me on their hotness, but as evidence of their niceness - when the guys found out I was there on my own, they promptly adopted me for the weekend and I became an honorary member of their crew. Consequently, my weekend turned out to be all kinds of awesome. We saw great bands (Temper Trap), awful bands (Airbourne) and separate bands - I went to see the Black Eyed Peas while they went somewhere else that could not POSSIBLY have been as cool as the Peas set. All in all it was a fantastic four days and I made some great new friends.

I was so glad that I took the fearless option of travelling the length of the British Isles alone to a festival where I didn't know a soul. God bless Scotland.

Edinburgh Festival Fringe, Scotland

More Scotland time! Hooray! This time I'd had three weeks back in London, so I was well and truly ready for another festival experience. Still this was a bit of a last-minute decision, and it was only thanks to a generous offer of accommodation by my friends in Glasgow that I decided to go ahead.   I caught a bus up, again marvelling at how surprisingly non-awful the 9 hour ride (no toilet stops, remember?) actually was, arriving Thursday evening and spending time with a mate I hadn't seen in a while. Well, technically I'd gone out to dinner with him during my last trip 3 weeks earlier, but that doesn't count.

Like most normal people, J was working on Friday so I made the short trip into Edinburgh myself and started absorbing the festy vibe until he could join me later. I love Edinburgh at Fringe time. Every building with four walls and a roof becomes a venue and hosts performers ranging from the sublime to the ridiculous. This year I spent most of my time watching comedy shows. Free ones, paid ones, good ones, bad ones, and one that included a man singing about a monkey.

I had a brilliant time, and even managed to spend some time visiting one of the new friends I had met at T in the Park a few weeks earlier. R lived in a small village north of Edinburgh, so I spent some time with him and crashed at his house before dragging him in to the festival madness the next day. I love the Fringe.

As always, my time in Scotland was too brief. Five days flew past and it was time to head back to London, and back to the reality of a job search. Yuck.

Still, I live in hope that somehow I'll manage to continue to have awesome adventures. Just between you and me, I think that's a pretty safe assumption. Stay tuned!

 

VIETNAM: THE SEQUEL

Henry David Thoreau wrote that "things do not change, we do".
Henry David Thoreau was full of shit.

Ho Chi Minh City CHANGED, man!

I'd already been primed to expect a city very different from the one I moved away from six years ago. Just thinking back to the changes I saw over the three years I lived there made me positively nervous about the difference that another six years would make. And I was not to be disappointed.

It started from the second I stepped off the airplane, into a brand spanking new (well, three-year old) International Airport. Gone was the historic but dirty terminal I knew so well, and in its place I found clean glass, shiny floors, and vastly overpriced food outlets. The taxi ride into District 1 was down a street that had been widened since I was last there, and took me past highrise buildings that had shot up like mushrooms over the past few years. It was a long time before I recognised anything at all, which was disconcerting given that I once knew it so well.

The online Oxford Dictionary describes culture shock as "the feeling of disorientation experienced by someone when they are suddenly subjected to an unfamiliar culture, way of life, or set of attitudes." Well, that was me. Except I wasn't comparing Ho Chi Minh City to Australia, or even to London. I was comparing it to itself, six years ago.

Things that freaked me out the most over that first 24-hour period:

• Every single motorbike driver was wearing a helmet. (What what WHAT?)
• The city had installed rubbish bins on the sidewalks, and people seemed to be using them. (Well, sometimes. But the fact they even existed was a shock to me.)
• The vastly inflated cost of food (compared to 'the good old days' of dirt-cheap feasts).
• The completion of the Hyatt, which had stood untouched as an unfinished hulk for the entire time I lived there. And it was properly fancy now.
• SO many new buildings. (I could no longer navigate by the skyline, so had to find myself a tourist map. I felt so uncool.)
• A gigantic shopping centre in the centre of town that would not look out of place in Bangkok or Singapore. It came complete with Gucci, Prada and other luxury stores whose names I'm too impoverished to even recognise.
• The majority of my favourite hole-in-the-wall restaurants and beer 'halls' were gone. My favourite DVD seller's stall had been replaced by a hotel.
• The number of swanky bars in the city had grown from one to...well...lots.

Rubbish bins? Since when?

When I was living in HCMC, it still felt a little like a frontier town. In late 2001, it was still a challenge to find decent western restaurants or groceries; bars and restaurants were for the most part shambolic with their service and standards. Now it looked like the city was all grown up, moving closer to becoming a Bangkok each day, and like an over-protective and clingy parent, I found it confronting and difficult to accept. I had spent more time living in Saigon than I had any other city apart from the one I grew up in. Forget Brisbane, Canberra and Sydney, the place that had felt most like "home" to me was HCMC, so having it glare insolently back at me as if I were a stranger was freaking me out!

I always maintained one could collect
a whole pack of cards from those left
  lying around  the streets of Saigon.

My first night was spent with recently-returned friends who had lived here back in the day, and I unloaded upon them my confusion and culture shock while reminiscing about all the places that were no more. It helped a little, but I was still feeling a bit frazzled. The next night I had a delightfully random and boozy evening with some Aussie lads I met in the backpackers' district, but the more change I saw the more confused I felt. I decided that two nights was enough. I fled north to the former trading port of Hoi An to calm myself down and adjust to this new world order.

It was exactly the right thing to do.

Hoi An had almost been my second home when I lived in Vietnam, and thanks to its being a UNESCO World Heritage Centre, it had barely changed. There I was able to slowly re-integrate myself into the flow of Vietnamese life, and finally shake free of my culture shock. Plus, like every other tourist who set foot in Hoi An, I got a shit-load of clothes tailored at very reasonable rates.

I met up with some friendly travellers at the airport in Da Nang, and we ended up sharing the cost of the taxi to Hoi An. Especially cool were Vinko and Colette, who are now off having crazy adventures travelling around central America by bicycle. You can read all about their ongoing travels here. We all stayed at the same hotel, and spent a very pleasant afternoon eating delicious food and drinking Vietnam's famous "fresh beer" (bia hoi). The next couple of days involved negotiating with tailors,  exploring new stores, and eating a LOT of yummy food. Hoi An isn't known for its nightlife, but we made our own fun one night with an impromptu party in my hotel room. Free wifi + Spotify + Grey Goose vodka + one little balcony + five little travellers = a great night in.

Eventually - unfortunately - it was time to head back to the big smoke. However, the relaxation in Hoi An had done me the world of good, so I looked at the changes in the city as something to be excited about, rather than something to be mourned. This time,I  managed to catch up with some of my many friends who still live in Saigon, and had a wicked time.

but some things never change

Soon-to-be-demolished,

One day was spent luxuriating in the Caravelle's spa with a couple of mates from my Vina-years. One night was spent in a typically Saigon blurry whirl of cheap cocktails, crappy cover bands, motorbike taxis, random strangers, clubbing, and early morning dim sum in a 24-hour restaurant that I will probably never be able to locate again. I also had less decadent days and nights: spending time with a former work colleague who I hadn't seen in years and who has since become the mother of two very active twin boys; meeting one of my Vietnamese colleagues who had dreams of applying to study in Europe (do it!); seeing another Vietnamese friend for the first time since she became a married woman, which was a very big deal given that she had reached the ripe old age (?!) of 30 without having snared a husband.

Don't climb! It'll kill you!

AND I had a really cool "it's a small world" moment. It was a Facebook status update that alerted me to the fact that one of my travel buddies from China (the Bosnian-born Swede mentioned in this post from June last year) was in Ho Chi Minh City at the same time as me. Brilliant! We caught up and compared notes since that last trip. Her life had been much more exciting than mine, I'm afraid, but it was great to hear her tales and live vicariously for a moment.

Eventually though, my time in Vietnam ran out. Despite being stressed and nervous when I first arrived, I'd quickly fallen back in love with the place and was upset about leaving it again. In writing this post, I've been looking at the notes I made during my trip. I think this one sums it up pretty well: "This trip has been crazy! Crazy good!".

Thanks for the good times, Vietnam. Peace out.

The Opera House, Saigon

HIPPY-TIME IN THAILAND

With my 3-month contract finally concluded (after 7 months), and trips to Belgium and Hungary under my belt, the logical next travel destination was Thailand. There's some logic in that, right? No? Ah well, logic is over-rated anyway...

I hadn't been to Thailand for four whole years, so was very excited about this trip. Most people go to Thailand for the beaches, or the exotic nightlife, or the food. I like all those things, but my trips there usually serve a different purpose: "detoxification". That's right, I travel somewhere with delicious food, cheap booze and 24-hour entertainment, only to sit under a tree and meditate while fasting and abstaining from alcohol. That's pretty crazy, huh? It's cool though, and feels awesome...once it's over. I wouldn't recommend this type of trip for everyone though, and when you read what I get up to below, you'll know why.

I first heard about this place when I was visiting a mate living in Hong Kong. There was an article in the South China Post about a cleansing program at The Spa on Koh Samui. Titled "Down the Pan", N was reading me excerpts from it while grimacing with disgust.

"It says they eat NOTHING for seven days. Why would somebody do that?"

"Eww...this guy flushed a marble out of his colon that he had eaten when he was 4 years old."

"They pick through their poo with chopsticks. Urgh...yuck. I'm skipping lunch."

As my mate's face contorted with revulsion, my interest was becoming piqued. Could people really have marbles stuck in their colon for twenty years? The fasters in the article said they were eating nothing for seven days, and not feeling hungry. How was that possible? And they said they felt amazing at the end and had glowing skin and clear eyes. I LIKE feeling amazing and having glowing skin and clear eyes. It sounded interesting and unconventional and challenging. That combination made it irresistible.

So six months later I went to The Spa for the first time and did their seven-day fasting cleanse. It was strange at first, it was certainly uncomfortable going without food for seven days, but ultimately it really was amazing. There were no marbles or lego bricks liberated from my colon, and I couldn't really bring myself to do that thing with the chopsticks, but I was hooked. So there it is. My secret. I've been back to The Spa twice since then (2004 and 2006) so it was no longer strange and unfamiliar and scary for me. Not challenging = boring, so I decided to find somewhere else to do a detox program this time. I found a guy who offered a one-on-one physical and spiritual programme on Koh Pha Ngan, and signed myself up.

Now you're supposed to prepare for one-week fasts by eating lots of raw veggies and salad, avoiding fat, drinking lots of water blah blah blah. I knew from experience that I wouldn't be able to enjoy eating my favourite Thai delicacies once I finished the program (after a week without food, all your body craves is fruit and healthy shit - SUCH a downer), so I was determined to cram in as much Thai deliciousness as I could beforehand. Phad thai, som tum, Singha beer, cocktails by the beach and curry curry curry. It was awesome. I stayed over on Koh Samui to enjoy the decadence there. Eventually though, the time came where I had to foresake the pleasures of the tastebuds and head over to Koh Pha Ngan to start my fast. My last supper before commencing the fast included a Singha beer and hot chips. Whoops.

I met the guy who would be running the program, I'll call him my "guru" (although he would never call himself that). He was a young, tanned, attractive American guy who was relaxed enough to remain completely unoffended (or at least pretend to be unoffended) when I said I wasn't interested in hearing a whole lot of hippy shit. That said, by the end of the week I was nodding sagely away as he talked about the energy levels of different types of foods and how to create a psychic cloak of protection. Then again, at that point I hadn't eaten any food for seven days and had been throwing up the bentonite clay and juice mixture that one is supposed to drink twice daily to draw out toxins (and avoid the sensation of hunger), so my brain may not have been at its sharpest.

All in all, it was a really good experience but much much more difficult than my visits to The Spa. Mostly that was down to the fact that I couldn't stomach the juice/clay mixture, which meant I was hungry for almost the entire week. Also, as I was the only person doing this course, spending a lot of time with only my nutrient-starved brain for company wasn't as pleasant as I would have hoped. Oooh, plus I was forced to do yoga every morning which I HATED passionately. I hated the teacher, I hated the broiling humidity we practiced in, and I hated the fact that I couldn't do any of the stretches. However - proving once again how incomprehensible the female psyche is - I ended up really missing the yoga once it was over, and even paid to attend some more classes a few days later.

By then I had caught a ferry around to Haad Tien and was staying at The Sanctuary. Now THIS was the Thai holiday I really wanted to have. I could eat again (joy!) and spent my days reading, swinging in a hammock, or swimming in an ocean that was so salty I'd pop up to the surface the minute I relaxed my legs. I'd fall asleep to the sound of waves, and pretend I was a princess as I fell slept under a mosquito net canopy draped from the ceiling. This illusion was spoiled ever so slightly the morning I woke up to find gecko poo on the top of my mosquito net, but I'm sure that must have happened to Beatrice or Eugenie once or twice too, right?

So that was the end of my idyllic island retreat. I sailed back to Koh Samui, passing final preparations for that night's Full Moon Party at Haad Rin without an ounce of regret at missing it. My next stop was Ho Chi Minh City - my former hometown - and I was terrified about the amount of change I was likely to see after six long years away.

Oh, I appear to have forgotten to mention earlier that this trip coincided with the anti-government rioting in Bangkok that saw the centre of town blockaded by protesters and a number of buildings, and the Sky-train, fire-bombed. There was no way I was going to let burning buildings and an official "reconsider your travel" warning stop me from spending time in Bangkok. But, in a concession to the fact that at my age I'm supposed to be  a responsible adult, I decided to delay the Bangkok leg of the trip until after I returned from Vietnam. By this stage, the riots had been ongoing for more than a week, and with rioters already having burned down Bangkok's largest shopping mall, and survived one attempt by government troops to clear them out of the centre, I figured they'd get bored and run out of things to burn before too long. I gave them two weeks to sort their shit out. In the meantime - Vietnam!

HUNGARY AGAIN

I've gorged myself on travel recently. You'll not that I avoided use of the word 'overdosed' because honestly, how can you have TOO MUCH travel in your life?

So I've already told you about Belgium at the start of April, next was Budapest at the start of May. It was a long weekend with 12 friends, and marked my second time in the lovely twin cities of Buda and Pest. We went to the baths (of course), ate lots of food (of course), went to a salsa club (of c... actually that probably was a bit unusual in Hungary).

One of my favourite adventures was when a few of us were wandering the streets looking for a drink in which to rest our weary livers, and ended up at the surprising and delightful Piaf club. We were walking along the street and passed a nondescript black door with an enticing sign reading 'Ring Bell'. Having no idea what lay behind that door - perhaps it was the meeting place of some modern day cultural revolutionaries? - I found the simplicity and invitation of the sign too much to resist. I Rang Bell.

The door opened a crack and a head popped out. The view behind that head was of a dark, smoky room, seemingly decked floor to ceiling in red velvet. Sounds of jazz drifted out from behind The Head, and I thought I caught a glimpse of a singer in an evening gown drift past the entrance. The Head itself was brusque and Hungarian, and didn't seem welcoming by any definition of the word.

"Um...is this a bar or something?"
"Yes." No further movement, no opening of the door crack.
"Ah...can we come in then?"
"You pay."

Unsure what we'd be getting ourselves into, I was feeling the weight of responsibility for the group's decision on whether to enter this odd and uninviting establishment. However, once The Head elaborated that the entrance fee would include our first drink, all concerns were brushed away and we stepped inside to find out exactly what lay behind the door.

Piaf. It was red velvet curtains and sofas. It was red lamps, barely lighting the dark room. It was a sultry older woman with impressive cleavage revealed by a clinging ball gown, singing Edith Piaf songs and evoking the atmosphere of the 1940s. It was fantastic.

After an hour or so there, we noticed that other people were walking through the door, down some stairs at the back of the club, and not reappearing. At first we assumed the bathrooms were down there, but the 'not reappearing' aspect made that either unlikely or eerie. A couple of us went down to investigate, and we found a cavernous space, populated by flashing disco lights, flashy disco people, and pumping music. A proper nightclub!

The party moved downstairs, where we stayed until the wee hours. It was great, with lots of classic oldie tunes from the eighties mixed in with more modern dance numbers to keep the kids happy. We had such a good time that we returned the next night with the complete group. The second night was much, much messier than the first  (sponsored by Jägermeister) but equally as awesome.

Everyone was notably subdued the next day, but we still managed to get ourselves out and about. We found a very chilled bar for some hair of the dog afternoon beers. It was spacious and eclectic, with graffiti on the walls, old bath tubs transformed into cosy sofas, a pot-plant installation made from cut up plastic water bottles, and cheap beer. It was reminiscent of a squat or a student sharehouse furnished by particularly creative and ecologically aware students. It was unpretentiously cool.

Altogether, it was a cracker of a weekend. I returned to a three-day work week that would mark the end of my contract. So what do I do at the end of every work contract? Travel! Next stop...Thailand.