carnage in the happy night – Savannakhet, LAOS

I had just passed a Laotian wedding party – held in the cordoned part of a side-street that evening: tarpaulin, tables of food and drink and smiling, seated guests, others dancing merrily to the band beside a stack of huge speakers, been offered a glass of beer-lao by a guest and then 100 meters later a young girl running; her agonized shrieking alarming.

Mekong River – my room with view, Savannakhet

Next second I knew why she was so hysterical. Accident; just happened. Shit. Us first on the scene – more people running towards the carnage now. Two bloody bodies collapsed on motorbike; the front of this small truck massively punched in and windscreen scattered – fallen out in a collective web. Front passenger sitting, staring into space – not moving like attempting to flush out this bad dream, blood streaming down his serious, statue face. On the road below neither men wear helmets; one is fucked and the other is dead.

Reality is suspended in movie surrealism; a frantic, tortured hush of blood and impending death. In these seconds I am helpless – I don’t want to move the injured; surely his back’s broken; I can’t speak Lao; wish I was a doctor – as others  arrive. More people gather shocked, stunned, others frantic in action as Lao men lift the bloody bodies onto the back of the truck and then someone gets into the passenger seat and proceeds to drive towards hospital … as I wander away into the quieter, calmer night, stunned, as thoughts on the philosophy of life and death tease me.  

Just months ago during my hazardous journeys across West Africa on the back of taxi-motorbikes for hours traveling terrible rural or jungle trails – across Togo, Guinea and Sierra Leone – I had wondered when this would happen to me? There’d been so much great accident potential: the near-miss trucks; skidding on steep rocky paths; sliding into mud bogs; nearly-hitting livestock and people; and the constant danger of being humped-off the back of the bouncing bike …

So the sombre walk back to my Mekong River-view guesthouse got me thinking … Where is the luck to avoiding death? What is the logic that determines when one is to be consumed by death? And God tell me, when is it my turn, to die? 

MRP art exhibition – 2006

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Drugged, abducted, robbed & ditched in RUSSIA

Everyone around the tables was friendly. I remember having 3 shots with them and that’s it … until I remember stumbling and falling from weakness on gravel somewhere in the countryside amid early morning sunlight. Didn’t know where the fuck I was but it certainly wasn’t in the city. It dawned on me that I had been drugged, robbed, abducted and ditched on a road in the countryside.

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Head off the edge #2 – Buenos Aires, ARGENTINA

What jumping out of a plane didn’t achieve for me, jumping out of a moving car in Buenos Aires has … checked back into reality: maybe I’ll stay a while.

It started as a quiet beer on Saturday night with Murray (a Scotsman I’d met in Bolivia 3 months ago) but into the evening someone notified us that it was officially the first day of Spring and hence a huge party would consume the city all night.

He was right: 4 am and people pumping in the street, even homeless folks wasted in happy huddles. From the pub I progressed to The Big One – not talking penis size but BsAs biggest discotheque to see the UK DJ collective: The Ministry of Sound. Crowds from teenagers to transsexuals, business looks to punk. An din this 3 storied-cathedral I E-ed my way across the morning til the finish at 10 am to then taxi across BA to an after-hours (BA has numerous after hours clubs, open 10 am – 10 pm).

Drunk beer on a comfortable couch upon a sunny rooftop glasshouse of the club that Sunday, amid stark-eyed smiley clubbers and everyone, it seemed, was snorting coke or smoking grass or drinking; or all three.

I met an English-speaking Argentine of Syrian decent – we talked of my experiences there in ‘89 – and his friend, a big guy – looked Samoan -  from somewhere I forget in the Pacific. They were loaded with stuff, which they shared, and I returned their generosity by buying them rounds of beer.

Over the hours, tons of people joined our sofa area, including a – seemingly, small time – mafia boss, and a pock-marked, dark shades, sinister hitman-looking guy. (Both guys looked like shady movie roles). And over the hours many men and woman came over and paid their respects, check-kissing this boss, and introductions to them for me, them dudes asking which woman I wanted, I declined and was happy to just get wasted, for the moment. But substance offers were accepted across the afternoon.

I happily offered to keep buying beers, big bottles shared out among a growing crowd around me. Strange mix of middle-age cool dudes, old surfers, oldish sluts, young skins and techno teens. People came and went as did the hours because next I remember being in an underground club located in an old mansion. Must have gotten there with the two shady types but don’t remember how … got talking with a range of people including this nice chick who wanted me to return home with her and her boyfriend for a threesome. I agreed. 

We left the club together but so did those two shady guys but now also with a large skinhead.

So there we were waiting in the deserted street for a taxi. Six of us. I asked what was going on and they said maybe something to the effect of sharing the taxi home, dunno exactly.

After about 10 minutes we got a taxi but the driver was only willing to take 5 passengers. Two taxis would have been the obvious solution. But no, it left empty, and I don’t know what was said but the boyfriend, coerced, I suspect, left for the club and I got very suspicious and now, somewhat bored and concerned with these thuggish characters. I’d decided (around 1.30 am) it had been time to leave back in the club when I gave the boss money to buy beer and he didn’t return (equal to about $US 20) the change; when challenged he said that he’d returned it.

Now a police car passed and I flagged it down, and the chick followed me across to the car, and speaking in English she asked what the fuck I was doing. (Most Argentineans don’t trust the cops here, who had been linked to various kidnappings and other crimes in BA since the economic crisis hit last December.) I said it was to protect her; I didn’t trust the potential of a rape. Her reasoning convinced me to back away from the cops, that she didn’t seem worried. The cops took off and the guys now looked at me. What you do that for, the boss asked. I apologized, by dismissing it, “Sometimes I get crazy …”; “cops often give you a ride in NZ”.

So another taxi came and we all got in. I made sure that I was beside the door, with the chick to my right. Not sure if I had said that I want to get out or stop or what.

But my intuition set off the final alarm bell so I opened the door as we drove down a deserted main street, around 2 am. The chick grabbed the door, the bald bouncer also, and locked to the lock. “What you doing; are you crazy? I thought you were intelligent …” she said.

Can’t remember answer or how soon before I next reacted but I think seconds as we turned – hence slowed, into another deserted main street. My light said: GO. Everything so fast. I whacked the big guys arms away from the lock, somehow opened the door and leaped from the moving car to land running and wobbling but somehow still upright.

How’s it possible – upright. Stood stunned, wow, what happened, staring at the taxi stopped about 40m ahead with its red rear lights staring back at me … then it drove off … I don’t know how I landed unscathed or how I got the nerve but just reacted – there was no thought beyond OUT NOW. I remember saying as I exited: “Bye Bye. Fuck you!”

Less than 24 hours later and I’m still trying to recall the exact patterns of thoughts and movements but they are lost to the speed of things. It wasn’t a dream. Be easy to explain if it was … But seems like it. Rushing with crazy, confused adrenaline I couldn’t believe what had happened as I sat in another cab heading into the downtown for some comfort in a club girl.

I was so fuckin’ hyped; shocked; disbelieving. What with no sleep for 40 hours, taken Es, and an ongoing menu of dope, drink and coke, no food, you could say that I had an active imagination; but then amid the haze came that gut clarity that said, Danger, GO. 

It ended with whisky and a lovely, dark-haired Peruvian woman, 23. She was wonderful fun, and very beautiful. We shared loud, simultaneous orgasms across Monday morning. 

Now, Tuesday: woken from a deep sleep and have changed down a gear or two as I wonder which direction is next … after weeks in BsAs am bored by the clubs, cocaine, and sex-for-money chicks … need a new hit – for a few weeks, anyway.

This latest misadventure has encouraged me to Hit the Road –  time for some fresh air, time to travel again, maybe a back-to-nature trip; cos cities can make people crazy …

Prison visit – La Paz, BOLIVIA

My solitary Sunday was absorbed by a visit to La Paz’s San Pedro Prison.

No I wasn’t arrested for drugs or acts of public indecency, rather it was a straight forward tourist kinda thing.

There’s a guy, Fernando, English speaking, who’s been in the slammer here for 4 years for possessing 4 grams of cocaine, but he admits he’s actually been a drug dealer all his adult life; he got busted to now serve his present 8 year sentence. But he’s been organizing these tours of the goal, with the help of the corrupt prison governor – who he pays off with tourist dollars to shorten his sentence; his final 4 years have been reduced to 1.5 years and decreasing as his bizarre tours continue …

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Xmas in Lalibela, ETHIOPIA

Located in the central Ethiopian Highlands they remain one the least recognised man-made wonders of the world, yet once the Medieval rock-hewn churches of Lalibela were known as “The Jerusalem of Ethiopia.”

Within the compound of the church of Saint George – Lalibela

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The dreaming – Kontum, VIETNAM

Last night I dreamed a disturbing dream. Was walking somewhere, down some road when I came upon a street brawl. Within minutes the fight engulfed me. I felt every kick, every punch as I sunk, swollen to the ground. Brutal beating. And horror – as liquid drowsed my body wet and ree king of gasoline and flame.

That sanitised hospital smell, the bright lights, white walls and nurses are what I remember next. And then facing my bandaged, melted face and thinking: Am I glad to be alive? Wondering how could I face family and friends with this new look. Burnt beyond recognition. Asking myself how could I live that same confident life now that I’m grotesque. Ugly as sin, as they say; as people no doubt would say, or think. There goes my any chance of a wife.

And when I got home it was as I foresaw. Frightening children, sinking friendships, shelving the looks-are-only-superficial facade and realising that I couldn’t cope with the new me. I wanted to end it. I wanted the old me. I wanted people to remember me that way.

And I recall getting excessively high – then putting the pistol to my head, knowing as I did that I’d opted for the easy option. Dying. Knowing I wasn’t the strong, determined person that I’d thought myself to be.

Waking from that vivid dream some hours later still in Kontum, in the highlands of Vietnam, I realise – the movement in the corner of my eye -somebody stops and stares as I drink fresh orange juice in a dirt-floored shack -which is a shanty restaurant open to the street. At first I don’t really notice him. Just another curious person. Just another tribal. Just one of the million today who’ve stopped to look.

Just another beggar … Just another pained face. I glance again – I’m stunned.

My mouth hangs like the melted skin that drips from his face. He’s a zombie !!! Christ! It ain’t real. I dart my eyes back. This time he shyly turns away. And me too – shit, I’m gaping at a living horror – it ain’t polite. But this is real. A man with a melted face. A face of waxy, oozing flesh and thick- stretched, whitened lips. And an eyeball exposed, round and bulging from the skull. The man with the Napalm skin stares. But catching my gaze, he turns. I feel sick.

That man is me from my nightmare. But he’s better than me: A person who wants to survive because life is worth any lost vanity.

I’m guilt-struck, and feel the urgency to gain his approval. As soon as our eyes re-connect, I smile and call: Jarao! Hello in Vietnamese He grins. (His cracked, blistered face like a happy horror.) I wonder how often has anyone said “Hi” to him. Alone, and looking like a misfit.

I want to photograph this guy – but lack the courage, the nerve to confront such a task. Some minutes later, he’s away, hobbling and bent. His warped, blistered face.

He looked like a freak from hell – and probably felt it but really it is I who is the freak, for thinking of him so.