Don't Tell Mum: Hair-raising Messages Home from Gap-year Travellers

by Hoggart, Simon

  Phew! Glad we’ve got that sorted out. But it matters – companions really are important. This young man finds himself in Sydney, on his own.

  After a few hours’ sleep I woke excited and expectant, hoping to see a hostel in full swing: people eating, cooking, chatting and doing other ‘ings’ besides. The reality, however, was very different. The majority of the backpacking community in Australia had moved north to Cairns, taking the party with it. Those that had been left behind were the human equivalent of the colour beige. They were boring spinsters and grouches who had come to Sydney months before with the intention of travelling up the east coast, but lacked the initiative to move more than 100 yards from the hostel, let alone buy a bus ticket out of Sydney. As a result many had ended up staying indefinitely and regarded any new people such as myself with muted suspicion and contempt.

  Worse are people who attach themselves to you and won’t take any hints about your wanting to be alone, or at least separated from them. This youth wrote from India.

  Oh news, I forgot, we bumped into Pete from Surbiton yesterday so we’ll be travelling with him. Despite repeated attempts to poison her dates and put snakes in her bed, Deirdre from Manchester is still clinging to our bagstraps …

  Travelling companions who turn out to be tossers are a serious problem. This is from Morocco.

  What an awesome last few days! Before I start I’d just like to say, Curt and I have kissed and made up, though he is still not coming to Crete. It’s a damn hard thing travelling, it ain’t all peaches and cream, so my words of wisdom are: be careful who you travel with, because even good mates can end up having huge blow-ups. I mean, it’s only been three weeks. Me and Harry have got 7 months together, ha ha ha.

  This can be a cause of some anxiety to parents at home. The following email arrived from Cambodia.

  Hi, Mumsie, I think you should stop being so lame and asking me if everyone is all right. Just cos I don’t mention someone in an email (you know I only talk about myself, anyway) that doesn’t mean we have had a massive fight and are not together, or whatever. We are having a seriously ace time, and getting on very well. So don’t fret, pet.

  This young woman has been working in a ski resort. As usual with gappers, work seems fairly low on the daily agenda.

  I have been blessed with two seriously entertaining flatmates. Peta is a 20-year-old who has a lot in common with Hagrid lookswise, who insists on watching me change, and calling me ‘Treacle’ at any given opportunity. She doesn’t ski, all she does all day long is sit in bed and plough her way through copious amounts of chocolate, so I have made it my aim, albeit ambitious, to get her on the slopes if it kills me. Did I mention that she has got her hair down to her bum which she only has time to wash once a week, cos both her and her flowing locks cannot fit into the bath all at once, so it becomes a bit of a mission. She spends on average 4 hours a day on the internet to her girlfriend who she has never met, and who is a trucker in America, quaint!!!!

  Tracey: love her, she is a star, semi-professional boxer, keeps a knife by her bed, which, by the way, fell on to mine, the bunk below when I was out for the count. Her parents are publicans, and are coming to stay in a few weeks’ time, so it’s going to be cosy. Let’s just say, kindred spirits are thin on the ground.

  She sends a later update:

  I thought it was high time I gave you another insight into the quaint life I am leading. Masses has been going on. Tracey, my flatmate (the semi-professional boxer who keeps a knife by her bed) has been sent home. She toppled down the mountain the other day, got taken down by a bloody wagon, the driver of which was probably in a lot more pain than her, considering her generous curves. But the long and short of it is that I now find myself living with just Peta, the 20-year-old bisexual, dress size 22. I have, however, established that she does not see me ‘in that way’ so it’s all quite chummy. I ply her with leftover brownies, which keeps her sweet.

  My chalet is palatial, all the mod cons. In the past month the hot water has gone twice, the oven’s broken, the bath doesn’t run, the dishwasher is clogged and last week one of my guests came down the stairs looking somewhat pasty having been greeted by a mouse, sitting chilling by her bed. I was keen to keep it, my boss felt otherwise, and sucked the entire mouse population up with the Hoover. Brilliant.

  My birthday was unforgettable. Four of my nine guests spent the whole evening chatting to the big white telephone and minutes before I was going to give the children high tea one of the boys chundered EVERYWHERE. Great party that evening, though, great party ...

  Of course the first sight of the people you’ll be travelling the planet with can be somewhat disconcerting. This is from Tel Aviv.

  Today we have spent hours and hours in the Indian Embassy dealing with our visa applications – I think they must make us hang around just to test how much we want to go to their country. However, we had a bit of light amusement as we waited, watching our fellow applicants, most of whom were aged, beardy hippies, or freaky-looking Israelis dressed in bug-eye glasses and strange attempts at traveller-type clothes, all of whom looked tough as the only form of nutrition they had had for the last few weeks came from a hash plant. Do you think these are the people who have found themselves? Slightly worrying …

  Drink, Drugs and Rock ‘n’ Roll

  What would conceivably be the point of a gap year in which a young person was not pissed, bladdered, mashed, smashed, wrecked, wasted, legless, and off his or her face for much of the time? As one young man points out in this chapter, faced with an offer of free beer, what is he supposed to say? No? Drugs, too, have always been an important if more worrying part of the gap-year experience. One curiosity is that since many gappers are the children of the first openly druggy generation – their parents tried LSD, many continue to smoke pot and some of the racier ’rents do coke – they are not particularly embarrassed about sharing their pharmaceutical experiences. Take this young man travelling with a friend in Thailand:

  Parental warning: this episode does contain drugs, though sadly no sex and fortunately no violence. In the past episodes I have edited out my drug experiences for three reasons:

  1. It has never been a core part of our travels, more a side issue.

  2. You may be liberal, but it would be embarrassing to mention my drug experiences in front of my parents, and also I really dislike that drug pulp culture literature of Irvine Welsh and Howard Marks.

  3. It would worry Mum, and everyone else. It’s needless to mention unless I have an overdose, and I am sure you would hear from some means if that happened.

  And with those comforting words, he gets down to a description of all the fun they have had in Thailand.

  We headed for Farang village, full of crusties (who have not left since their LSD trip in 1974), also there are the ravers (coming up or down depending on the lunar cycle) and your average pedestrian tourist (following Lonely Planet religiously). I leave it to you to place us in a suitable category … anyhow the Full Moon [party] was at Bottle Beach in the north of Koh Pha Ngan. At the first Full Moon I had a lot of expectations that were smashed by my motorbike crash, a dodgy mushroom shake and the fact that I could only hop. So going into this Full Moon I had no expectations, which is why it was so much fun. The beginning of the night was all blurred neon lights and distorted sound systems, me and Tom were reduced to meandering, wandering zombies through lack of interest rather than drug intake (don’t worry, Mum!) …

  They meet old school friends, which cheers them up, but not for long.

  Anyway, calling the Full Moon party a ‘rave’ is giving it too much credit, I mean it is a huge amount of people dancing on the beach, off their tits, to poor sound systems, playing the same tunes again and again. Or maybe I am giving raves too much credit.

  Life being a trifle on the tedious side, they try some magic mushroom omelettes.

  My trip consisted of me imagining I was a 19th century sailor, also heard lots of music, the sea, trees, plants throbbed with
colour and everything was really weird and fucking amazing at the same time.

  Okay, maybe you haven’t convinced us yet. Trips seem to be rather like other people’s dreams – however fascinating they are to the person describing them, they are exceedingly dull for the rest of us. However, his friend Tom seems to have got better value for money.

  He thought he was a lizard, and created a reptile world. Looking back, what he describes sounds like rebirth, he re-experienced the wonder of his being. ‘Look at my arm, I can stretch it, this is amazing.’ I personally could feel the power coming from him, and it scared all three of us as he chased us into our bungalow. After his come-down, there were tears ‘at our rejection of his new self’, as he put it, though we all ran because he was tripping us out and chasing us. As soon as we heard him cry we looked after him, but he cried even more, saying he could ‘feel the love we were giving him’.

  They are not deterred, and three days later hit the omelettes once more.

  For Tom it did provide the next step. Instead of realization of himself, he had realization of the wonder of the world all around him. It was like he had re-arrived, constantly telling us how the world is round and it turns, and circles the sun – blatant stuff that confused me. After that he re-visited the morals he (and us) live our lives by, finally saying, ‘love is the best thing I know, all you need is love’. He spoke this as if it was new, but it frustrated me that he thought it was new.

  So nothing, you might imagine, could put young persons off drugs quicker than the experiences of the people who try them. Rather than having posters showing brains being fried, or getting earnest policemen to visit schools, they could just have someone like Tom standing in front of the sixth form, mumbling incoherently that the world is round and all you need is love … Or this next young man could recount his experiences in New Zealand, narrated here in an email to – perhaps surprisingly – his mother.

  The local culture in Auckland is ‘kandi’. It’s a drug that is very similar to ecstasy, with one major exception – it’s completely legal. I figured that as they were legal, they couldn’t be that strong, so I ignored the warning not to exceed four pills per week and took twelve in one night. It was crazy. I forgot how old I was, and had to get a kid I had just met to tell me … about seven in the morning, the other guys tried to get some weed, and as if by magic a guy appeared out of nowhere offering weed. It normally wouldn’t be a problem, but I was coming off the drugs in a serious way, and they are well known (to everyone but me) for their tendency to give people anxiety attacks when they begin to wear off. I was absolutely convinced that we were in the middle of a police sting operation and a squadron of police cars were going to come round the corner. I ran around Auckland for nearly two hours, freaking out. Every car seemed to have flashing police lights, till I got closer and could see it was a taxi. I even crossed the road from an old lady on her bike, just in case the police were using her as a decoy. I couldn’t talk properly and my mouth was caked with dry saliva … it was the most screwed-up come-down I have ever had. Sorry it’s been a few days since I last emailed, but I was convinced the police were checking my emails.

  But the Kiwi police seem to be rather a helpful lot, at least to those who have not undergone a consciousness-lowering exercise like the previous young man. This young woman was with a carload of friends.

  We set off to Nimbin. When you read about this ‘town’ in Lonely Planet, it is described as not unlike Christiana in Copenhagen, a lawless community in Denmark where marijuana is sold and the police turn a blind eye to the activity provided it is kept under control and no problems arise from it. We were surprised to find nothing more than a tiny village, hamlet even, and everything was shut. So, tired and disappointed, we trudged into the pub. Emma had been driving for the 21⁄2 hours, so I told her I’d drive back, and had a Coke. We then sat in the pub, clutching our handbags with varying terrified faces, until we realized that everyone was very friendly and not trying to make us into drug addicts. We asked the barman the quickest way home, and he wrote us directions, so we left Nimbin on the route we thought he had told us. Alice wanted to buy some marijuana, so had a quick chat with a man outside the pub, and a few minutes later had a small amount of locally grown weed. Then, 30 seconds out of the village, someone at the back pipes up, ‘I thought we should have taken the other road, actually,’ so I begin to execute a U, and as I do it, a police car pulls up alongside us. The policeman asks me if I’ve been drinking at all. I answer, ‘No, just a Coke, is But the police in the Antipodes seem to be rather a helpful lot, at least to those who have not undergone a consciousness-lowering exercise like the previous young man. This young woman was with a carload of friends in Australia. there a problem? Did I do something wrong?’ He says, ‘Yes, everything – only kidding! Just a routine breathalyzer, we saw you coming out of the pub.’ (Did he see Alice buying weed? Apparently not.) So, the breathalyzer is clear, and I say, ‘Ooh, I’ve never been pulled over before, can I get a photo of you and me together?’ He laughs and thinks this is hilarious. ‘Yeah, sure, now where are you girls going?’ We tell him Byron Bay, we have these directions from the barman, do they look right to you? ‘No,’ he says, ‘I don’t know where he was sending you. Was he on drugs?’

  Drug users have their own particular code of ethics, as revealed in this next missive from a young man in Bali, also to his mother.

  To put your mind at rest I haven’t been tested, but if I was I’d be clean (that’s the truth!!!). I’ve been offered marijuana tons and tons of times here so far, though. I could walk down the street and be offered it 5–6 times in five minutes. I’ve heard from people that it’s literally just grass, however, the stuff off the ground! Also there are dealers around who work with the police and grass (!) buyers up and they have to pay a whacking great fine to be cleared. The dealers of course get their share from the police for setting up the situation. I don’t think it’s fair that there are drugs tests going on, people may have taken drugs before arriving in Bali, and still have it in their system, therefore it’d be none of the police’s business.

  Whereas, elsewhere in the Far East, obtaining drugs is less of a problem, as this young man reports.

  Greetings from Laos, ‘Land of 1,000,000 elephants!’ Laos very rural and stunningly beautiful. So far we have explored the north, which is deep jungle, hills, rivers and lush valleys of bright green rice paddies. Laos is 40% animist tribal minorities such as the Akkha, Hmong, Black T’Ai, White T’Ai [possibly a joke] and they all wear amazing outfits, headdresses, embroidered turbans and jewellery as everyday wear, giving everything a kind of National Geographic look. This takes a turn for the surreal when the old hill tribes women, beautiful but toothless, pendulous breasts alfresco, occasionally grab you by the arm, lightly pinching you and tweaking you down to their level (4 foot). Then they glance around in a deeply conspiratorial manner, whisper ‘opi-u-uu-m’ and give you a winning smile. Up here on the edge of the Golden Triangle, opium is the opium of the masses.

  Sometimes our gappers find that their druggy experiences are actually a fine way of getting the chemicals out of their system. This girl and her friend go to a ‘Stardust Dance party’ in the Abel Tasman National Park in New Zealand.

  We spent most of the day watching people arrive and set up tents, with an occasional walk around to see what was going on. By about 8 p.m. they had music playing in all the zones, but there were still not many people around. We sat in the middle of the field in the sun, chatting to passers-by and listening to the music. In New Zealand they have a huge range of legal highs and Lex and I decided we would buy some called ‘The Big Grin’. It was a huge mistake. I thought it would make us laugh, and we would have a fun time, and that it would be safe because it was legal, but it made me really sick. I didn’t take it until about 11.30 p.m. and had enjoyed my night until then, but was very, very poorly for the rest of the night … I am NEVER taking any drugs again, whether they are legal or not. I am really quite excited about this dec
ision because I find that these days I do have the best time when I am totally sober and have all my senses at 100%. My body just cannot handle them any more, and the time has come to stop. FOR GOOD!!!!

  In the end, in spite of all the chemical temptations, it does turn out that most gappers prefer good old-fashioned booze. Or possibly that’s just what they want their parents to think. This is from a young woman in Peru.

  Thanks for all the birthday cards etc. I apparently had one of the best birthdays EVER! I would love to tell you all about it, but I haven’t yet told myself! We went to McDonald’s for my party, party hats and all! I was presented with a sarong and a bracelet bought by all the group, then we rushed back to watch El Mundo No Bastar, i.e. The World Is Not Enough, and played the Bond game. For those of you who don’t know, this is where you have to drink a shot of a vile South American drink called Tropico every time the word ‘Bond’ is said in the film. Unless you have played this game before, it is impossible to believe how often they say it! After 11 times in half an hour, most people begin hoping that someone will simply shoot Mr Bond and be done with it, however by the end he is obviously still alive and well, and strangely enough you don’t really care because you can’t see the screen anyway.

  Then we went out to Alfonso’s bar. The birthday girl was still the centre of attention (still wearing her Ronald McDonald hat, and now also streamers from somewhere). All the group plus loads of random people bought drinks for her, bastards. Lots of dancing on the bar … then someone gave me Bob. Bob is a very special coin, but he cannot swim. If he ‘accidentally’ falls into your glass then you must, without hesitation or breathing, drink all of it in order to save him. Despite virtually swallowing him I did save him from countless deaths but he never seemed to learn and strangely seemed to prefer my glass to anyone else’s, bastards again.