It's on the Meter

by Paul Archer

  Nimrod told us that he had independently come up with an idea to break the current world record, but when he had googled the idea he had been deflated to see we had already broken the old record back in Tibet in August. Then he thought: if you can't beat them, join them. The fact that we both happened to be heading to the same island in Thailand made it seem as if cosmic fate had drawn us together. Either that or a really slick scam was about to take place. But who were we to scam? Three unemployed British guys with barely the price of a bus fare between us, soon to be stranded in a sandy country thousands of miles from home and surrounded by the world's highest concentration of poisonous animals?

  By the end of the meal we had come to some sort of initial agreement. GetTaxi would give us a crazy sum of money and in return we would travel around advertising their brand. This would enable us to continue avoiding growing up and carry on driving around the world, albeit now with slightly different stickers on the car and with no more money worries.

  As we shook hands and walked back to the car we were all trembling. We were barely able to walk straight with the effort of keeping our exteriors vaguely professional; someone was going to pay us to go on a road trip around the world! It still sounded like some kind of dream. What's more, tonight was the Full Moon Party, only the biggest party in all of South East Asia. All I wanted to do was get in the car, drive around the corner and scream at the top of my lungs.

  'Just one more important point,' Nimrod called after us, suddenly serious.

  Uh oh, I thought, here it comes: the deal-breaker. The part where we all have to sell our firstborns into taxi-dom and have GetTaxi tattooed on our foreheads.

  'Leigh… my wife really likes your nail polish!'

  Our pent-up excitement roared out in waves of laughter way out of all proportion to the joke and we made ourselves scarce before we messed up the greatest deal of our lives.

  CHAPTER 42

  THE SWANSEA MASSIVE

  The Full Moon Party. The 18–30 holiday for the noughties. Sun, sea, sand and Rihanna. Every single bar since Vang Vieng had played a loop of the top ten dance-pop tunes and Ko Pha Ngan was no different. As we were driving back from Nimrod's, an Englishman on a scooter pulled us over, told us he owned a club in town and that if we parked the cab in front of it we could drink for free all night. This day was getting better and better!

  Later that evening, Leigh was so high on the local energy drinks and booze that he was raving in front of a speaker stack. Johno and I got to the solid task of getting shitfaced on free booze while sat on the taxi outside our new friend Woody's Club 9, absorbing praise like the couple of attention seekers that we are.

  'Maaaaaate. I love your taxi.'

  'Thank you.'

  He was a Welshman of mammoth proportions – covered from head to toe in tattoos and a three-foot-wide pure Swansea steroid-enhanced mass. He glared into both of our eyes, slowly enunciating each word, dripping with venom and intimidation.

  'No, I LOVE your taxi.'

  'Errrrm… cheers?'

  'I mean, like, I really LOVE it… can I fuck it?'

  'Fuck it?'

  'Yeah, fuck it… can I fuck your taxi?'

  Unwilling to provoke this behemoth of terror from the Valleys (and equally as interested to see what it would do next), we said, 'Sure.'

  A broad smile spread over his face and the atmosphere changed dramatically.

  'Really? Awww, thanks boyos.'

  With that, he knelt down by the exhaust and pulled down his swimming shorts and started to touch himself. A crowd was starting to form and Johno and I were laughing so hard we fell off the cab.

  We had seen some weird things on our travels but this had to be one of the most bizarre. It seemed that he had imbibed a few too many buckets of Thai whisky and was struggling. After two more minutes of feverish agitation, and at risk of giving himself a friction burn, he pulled up his shorts and gave up.

  'I'm sorry boys, I just can't do it, too much booze ya see… maybe next time, yeah?' He looked at us questioningly, genuinely checking whether he'd blown his one chance at having a London black cab in the exhaust on a Thai Island.

  'Um, sure…'

  'Thanks, boyos,' he said, and with that, he disappeared into the night.

  Leigh and I had both managed to cut our legs on coral while swimming in Thailand. Coral wounds can instantly become infected and, combined with the unsanitary conditions of living in a London black cab and swimming in the vomit- and urine-filled waters around Ko Pha Ngan at the end of the Full Moon Party, meant we were both healing slowly even after Leigh had spent 24 hours sweating out a fever in the hostel in Kuala Lumpur. Our main weapon in cleaning out our pus-filled gashes was a bottle of deepred iodine antiseptic from our first aid kit. As I sat on the porch one evening, redressing my leg, I reached over and grabbed the bottle of rich dark liquid.

  'Is this the new iodine, Leigh?'

  'No, that's soy sauce.'

  'Haha, very funny,' I said as I poured it liberally into my cut. I looked up to see a table full of shocked faces at just about the time when my leg started to scream.

  'Dude, I did tell you…'

  With Thailand behind us and with potentially only three countries ahead of us, things now seemed to be moving way too fast. In theory it could all be over in a month. Now instead of running from corrupt police we were showing our car to hordes of schoolkids as we stayed with a friend of Paul's who was a teacher out in Malaysia.

  Malaysia's perfect roads still had a few surprises in store for us as we suffered our first major blowout while powering along the motorway, but our spirits were raised when a couple stopped behind us as we tightened on the spare tyre and they invited us for lunch at the next service station.

  Following the usual questions of where the idea came from and what our favourite country had been, things suddenly got a whole lot deeper than normal.

  'So, how do you feel that you have spiritually fulfilled yourselves on this journey?'

  I felt uneasy. Was this the prelude to us being 'saved' by some crazy cult leaders or were they ramping up for a rant on personal social responsibility? Thankfully it was neither; they were actually on their way to speak at a conference in Singapore and wanted to use our story as an example of people following their dreams. It felt great to have inspired some total strangers enough to want to share our story.

  The car was due to be shipped from Singapore down to our long-awaited destination of Australia but due to the crippling expense of just about everything there, we decided to hole up in a Malaysian city called Johor Bahru, right on the southern tip of the Malay peninsula. The guesthouse was within metaphorical spitting distance of the Straits of Singapore and was looked after by a spirited couple who had been travelling for most of their lives.

  Although he was in his late 60s, Tom still had the rugged looks of a film star and he was a master storyteller who regaled us with tales of being arrested in England in the 1960s for being over-generous with his employer's whisky. His current lover was a feisty Spanish woman named Emma and they had both left their previous spouses to travel the world together.

  They became almost like surrogate parents to us during our stay, making sure Leigh's and Paul's Full Moon war wounds were tended to and helping our preparations for the upcoming shipping. However, when they thought they were out of earshot, while we were trying to sleep on the rock-hard concrete slabs covered in inch-thick mattresses that passed for our beds, we would often hear them arguing away like they had been married for decades. Apparently all was not quite as well as it seemed in paradise.

  Hannah was soon stowed away in a shipping container and I was stuck in the middle of Singapore's giant port with a flight to catch to the island paradise of Bali. It had transpired that it was cheaper to fly to Darwin via Bali than direct, and with at least seven days of ocean transit, it would be rude not to check it out.

  Leigh decided he'd also like to visit Bali, but we were quite looking forward to some time alone so I
took my two-day head start and ventured off to Kuta Beach – the Indonesian equivalent of Magaluf. It was full of 'bogans' – a kind of Aussie chav, but one who is generally ripped and tanned and showing off their tattooed arms in baggy singlets. I didn't exactly fit in.

  However, I got wind of a beautiful little island half a day's boat ride away that was largely bogan-free and didn't have any motorised transport on it. This sounded great, and would be the perfect place to get some peace and quiet.

  Sunning myself and enjoying the view of perfect white, palmedged beaches, and what seemed to be the entire female population of Sweden – tanned and in bikinis playing volleyball (seriously, this may be the greatest place on earth) – I was suddenly brought back down to earth when I heard dulcet Midland tones sneaking up behind me.

  'Alright dick-cheese.'

  Damn.

  CHAPTER 43

  QUARANTINE

  To me Australia had always been a land of stereotypes and I had seen half of my list within 15 minutes of stepping off the plane. First and foremost was a leathery old man yelling, 'Criiiiikey!' quickly followed by a group of fully grown men wearing backwards baseball caps, and playing 1980s arcade machines in the arrival lounge.

  Out in the unfeasibly clean parking lot, sun-bleached mulleted kids tore around and an Aborigine with a flowing white beard wandered past me in a daze. All I needed now was a guy in a hat with corks hanging off it, a boxing kangaroo and a lovable rogue to tell me, 'that's not a knife maate!'

  While Leigh and Paul were relaxing with the Swedish volleyball team in the beach paradise of Bali, I had caught a later flight directly to Darwin. Our old gal was supposed to be waiting for us there, ready to hit the road, but unfortunately, despite the shipping company repeatedly increasing our quoted costs, the ship itself was running almost a week late. Paul and Leigh had extended their Swedalicous break while I tried to scope out the importation situation and have things ready to roll upon their arrival.

  I wandered down to the shipping office at Darwin Port and was told, 'Yeah, no worries mate, the ship is due in on Wednesday, just pop down.'

  That was coincidently the day the others arrived, so on Wednesday morning we strolled down, backpacks and all, to the dock, rather naively expecting to be on the road that afternoon. However, we were quickly coming to learn that what shipping agents told us and what actually happened were two very different things. The ship had already been delayed by a week and now we were told matter-of-factly that it still had to be unloaded and inspected and that the car would probably be available, 'sometime next week'.

  This was a disaster. Darwin is a pleasant little city of 130,000 people and was definitely a nice relaxing and well-ordered place, especially after the manic streets of Asia. The problem came with being in a country where the minimum wage was about £12 an hour, meaning that everything is horrifically expensive. This was even more acute in the remote north and, although the hostel I had been staying in did have a hot tub, it also cost more for one night in a grotty dormitory bed than we were used to paying for a full week in a private room back in Asia.

  We racked our brains for options and only one presented itself: on the flight over I had gotten talking to a local headteacher. After explaining our story she had invited us round for dinner. We figured that just maybe, we could be cheeky and ask her if we could camp in her garden for a few days.

  We were halfway through the bus journey to her house when we suddenly realised that the tents were in the car, and the car was on the ship. We had been living out of hand luggage for approaching three weeks now.

  Over an amazing meal we told Bernadette about the car situation and without hesitation she invited us to stay with her while we got ourselves sorted out; we hadn't even got to the bit where we asked to camp in her garden. It was just one more example of the sterling hospitality we had received throughout our trip – we had learnt that this kind of generosity and welcome was not restricted to just one country but seemed to be a worldwide phenomenon.

  As Australia is essentially a huge island populated with a load of deadly and unique creatures, the Australians are understandably very serious about maintaining their uniquely isolated ecosystem, meaning that quarantine is a very big deal. We had all heard the horror stories about tourists being fined hundreds of dollars for accidently bringing a banana into the country, but our case was slightly different and we were rightly worried about Hannah's filthy innards when she was finally let off the ship that Friday afternoon.

  Although she had been fumigated in the container and we had spent many hours in Malaysia cleaning Hannah, we realised it wasn't good enough less than a minute into the inspection. The officer headed straight for the back rims, felt around underneath and came up with his fingers covered in dirt from Asia, India, the Middle East, Russia, probably even London itself. Now the car would have to be cleaned 'professionally' at the cost of £50 per hour. Worst of all, it wouldn't be re-inspected until at least Tuesday, so we returned to Bern's with the bad news that she'd have to put up with us a little longer.

  After giving some talks to her schoolkids, cooking her a few meals and generally trying not to be a total hassle for Bern, our D-Day rolled around again and we traipsed back to the port, awaiting the verdict of the quarantine officer.

  Mercifully he passed us this time, but there were two rather irritating factors that came from the procedure. Firstly, rather than power-washing Hannah in an enclosed space, as you would expect, they blasted off all the dirt, seeds and other 'sensitive ecological' crud that had accumulated over 30-oddthousand miles straight into the sea, where bits of it floated back into the port anyway. Secondly, when we mentioned we needed to change our oil to the Holy Environmental Protector of Australia™, he just suggested that we drive into the Outback and drain the old oil straight out into the dirt.

  Luckily we had some good luck in store.

  'I've been waiting for you guys.'

  This didn't sound good. We had no idea who the chap in the Import Office was, but when a legal officer is expecting you, you get concerned.

  'I read about ya in Practical Classics, love the trip – I knew you'd have to come to see me when ya got to Darwin and I've been looking forward to meeting ya.'

  We weren't aware we had been in the magazine, but his enthusiasm for our trip meant that he got our paperwork expedited within a day and ready to sign the next morning. We just had to sort out our MOT and we'd be away – if they were as nice as these guys, we thought, it'd be a doddle!

  'I probably shouldn't let you drive outta here.'

  We had failed most of the tests. Getting the cab out of the container with no power for the steering had wrenched all the steering rods out of line. The brakes stopped the car safely enough, but only three of them were technically working when put on a rolling road; the windscreen had a few big cracks made worse by the overeager power-washing earlier; a glance under the car revealed chronic rust in the body work (although the bombproof chassis was still fine); and the indicators had stopped working – again.

  The big chap in overalls who was testing the cab as part of the Northern Territories Vehicle Testing Centre handed us back the sheet covered in red crosses and instructed us that we could only legally drive to and from a mechanic's. I was glad he didn't actually take the car for a drive; otherwise he would have discovered that our gearbox had almost given up, too. Terrible Coventry-made brakes, made for the streets of London, and the largest mountain range in the world do not go well together so we tended to use engine braking wherever possible. The gearbox had taken the brunt of the abuse and made a disgusting whirling crunching sound if the car was doing anything other than accelerating in second or third gear.

  When we left to find a garage I thanked the mechanic and told him I'd see him on Tuesday, in four days' time, for the retest.

  'Make sure you do.'

  'Why wouldn't I? I don't really have any options.'

  'Well this German couple with a camper van came through a couple of months a
go, and when they heard that Queensland state doesn't need to test your vehicle, they just left.'

  At this point, the GetTaxi deal was still a long way from being confirmed. Although Nimrod had given it the go ahead, it had to go up the ranks to all their investors and was by no means a done deal. We had to prepare for the likelihood that Sydney was the end of the trip, as we couldn't afford to invest thousands of dollars repairing a car that was going to have to be scrapped by law in a month's time. To make things worse, Leigh's girlfriend was flying into Cairns in six days' time – a five or six-day drive away. We had also arranged our arrival date in Sydney and had people flying in from the UK for it, meaning little wiggle room on our schedule. Things looked bleak, but we had one more option. I told the lads what I'd heard about the German couple and we started to plot and plan.