Xin Loi Vietnam!!! (Part 1)
Fate isn't without a sense of setting as my story of soul delight ignites in Seoul, South Korea, on the doorstep of some insane hypermarket which looked like Tesco’s and IKEA shared a few to many bottles of red one night and had a serious session exhausting the Karma Sutra on the demo kitchen floor and this was the resulting spawn. Anyway we had indulged in some food shopping and it was time to head home, I could get the subway as usual or take up my friends offer and perch on the back of his sports bike. That I did. The usual 45min journey was done in 10, my arse had gone through several anti-rhythmic muscle spasms in sync with my heartbeat and the kilo of frozen strawberries on my lap had super cooled my testicles, an inappropriate time to be at my most fertile. The journey home meandering through traffic, racing a pimped out racer boy BMW left me somewhat violated but utterly exhilarated. I had been exposed to this wonderful flu and from the moment of infection my fever was only just beginning to heat up.
Some time later after leaving South Korea, being not the most legitimate of residents, I found myself hiring the odd moped in India and Indonesia and such but the feeling just wasn't the same, it was fun, but it just didn't have that POW, that, pupils so wide my eyeballs are black, that holy shit do I have super powers?! It was a bit like really drunk sex, good fun but never mind blowing.
My wanderings had taken toll on my wallet and it was once again time to knuckle down into some work, but something new. I applied for my Australian visa in Indonesia and in the shallows of my future i could only envisage Western Australia, the great WA. I went with three things on my agenda, earn some cash, learn to ride a proper motorcycle and see Australia! (Not the international theme park that was parts of the east coast). I wanted something real, something raw.
The Universe was very good to me and my first job pretty much nailed all three of my check list, if I knew the luck I was in for I would have added my Scandinavian mermaid orgy fantasy to the list too.
I was hired as a Jackeroo, and I can imagine the expression you’re pulling just as you read 'Jackeroo', 'What the f&%k is a Jackeroo?' I hear your thoughts, I’m in your head, looming in one of the creases of you’re confusion and the best way I can describe it to you is a mixture between Bob the builder and a cowboy, or maybe mad max and a Sheppard. Which ever sounds cooler? I worked on a station, Australia's version of a ranch, all 365,000 acres of it. Ill follow Albert on this one and use relativity to get us all on the same page, my friends Farm in England is a nice sized English farm, it’s a mere 500 acres. I worked for some truly inspiring people, a family very dear to me, their attitudes were impeccable, their hearts as big as their country. I learnt things from this family that I will forever carry around with me as treasure in my soul.
I spent many hours each day riding not a horse but a dirt bike. 45 degrees gets a bit hot for a horse and water isn’t too much of a luxury out there (we drank rain water stored from the wet season). So the mechanical steed it was. I spent countless hours on those motorbikes, practicing and working, moving thousands of sheep through the rugged bush country and I became quite pleased with myself. I was besotted, that insane rise of euphoria, that wave of joy that just swells and rolls as the engines purr grows into a growl and roar as the revs hit red and she screams all the way until climactic relief is brought with a clunk into next gear and you get to listen and feel the machine do it all over again, all the time watching the world fly by as you blitz through the bush, You feel free as a bird, in fact the birds are looking at me with green eyes and they shed a tear of jealousy at the awesomeness they lay witness to. But their tears evaporate in the open furnace, never splashing on my skin nor quenching the baked land below.
So I finished the shearing season and in 2 months of working and riding as much as I could, I was smitten for these motorcycles and the feeling they could invoke. I can't explain how lovely the feeling is, obviously it’s not for everyone but I think most people would feel the same.
Back to civilisation in a swift social trauma as I go from seeing a max of 7 people in a day to New Years Eve in Sydney, I momentarily suffered from Anthropophobia. It was horrible. No horizon, no space, I felt like I was trapped in a river of people. A hive of voices, the horns and screams, it was like going from sitting with a lone banjo busker outside a lonely roadhouse to having an electro-pop rave in each cochlea with a Russian domestic just behind my eyeballs. I was tripped out, especially after joining my good friend for his usual substance rituals. I will never forget that, well the parts I could remember the next day anyway.
So I spent the next couple months wandering about before settling in the beautiful, and I mean BEAUTIFUL Broome, six glorious months working in a brewery as a barman, lapping up the hedonism and excellence of company that the place offered, amazing friends and an amazing lifestyle. But all good things must come to an end right? Or maybe a more appropriate statement is 'all good things must come to an end before another incredibly badass thing can begin.'
Broome is a different story, so I will leave that for another bedtime, or shit break, whenever you like to read. Since the station I had been harbouring the same motorcycle lust, although money stopped me ever gratifying such desires in Australia, it was always there. I had a plan, a dream, a real dream, one that was tangible, attainable, maim-able, one that was in my reach, I could smell it, taste it, it was so close it could poke me in the eye, and so close to the surface that most people I knew had suffered more than the odd conversation with me about it.
Of course that dream was to buy and travel on a motorcycle in Vietnam. It will be my pleasure to tell you about it.
