'Leaving the blinding sand for the cool shade of the trees, I walked carefully through the undergrowth to where Dave, using two twigs as chopsticks, was picking up a freshly severed human finger . . .'
John's three-week holiday in India starts badly. After his girlfriend falls ill with a severe case of 'Delhi belly' and returns home alone, he finds himself looking at the sharp end of a knife in a train station latrine. But such is the stuff of backpacking and his life is saved - and turned upside down - by Rick, an enigmatic, Streetwise traveller, who persuades John to throw a future of mundane security to the wind and embark upon a series of increasingly bizarre journeys.
On the island of Koh Pha-Ngan, John, Rick and Dave pose as millionaire aristocrats in a hedonistic Eden of beautiful girls, free drugs and wild beach parties. But all is not as it seems and eventually their new world comes crashing around their ears as they become embroiled in the politics of the Thai Mafia, stolen passports and arson attacks.
Narrowly escaping with their lives (and a stolen yacht) they head for Bali, but tragedy strikes and the unexpected follows them through Indonesia, Australia and Hong Kong changing the direction of their lives once again . . .
This is not travel for the faint-hearted: some backpackers never return.
‘ . . . Big Balls is number one!’ he shouted over the noise of the road. He had to shout, because even though we were riding in a Rolls Royce, the smoothest and most luxurious car on that road, it was a convertible, and even the world’s best engineers could do nothing about the sound of rubber rolling against tarmac. Nor could they redirect the air as it ricocheted off the windscreen and blasted around the ears, which, like the rest of the human anatomy, were designed in the days when aerodynamics weren’t a consideration.
‘I know he’s number one,’ I shouted, sliding forward on the back seat and resting my forearms on the leather headrest in front. His long blond hair was flying horizontally in the wind and I had to crane my neck, pushing my head between him and the driver to see his face.
‘I’m not disputing that. Big Balls is number one. Fact! What I want to know is: who was number two?’ The Triad lookalike who was driving us glanced quickly sideways at me, as though about to offer the answer to my question, before returning his gaze to the road ahead. ‘Don’t know do you? You don’t fucking remember!’ I slid noiselessly back on the animal skin and folded my arms.
‘Course I fooking do.’ He bent forward to light a cigarette in the footwell, momentarily disappearing from view, before reappearing in a mass of hairy smoke. ‘Joost give me time.’ He paused, puffing vigorously to keep the cigarette alight, and looked at his watch. ‘Fooking hell, can’t this thing go any faster? I’m gonna be late.’
‘Well it’ll be your own fault if you are,’ I said, and left a moment’s silence for my statement to sink in before turning to my girlfriend. ‘Apple, can you tell the driver to go faster, please?’
She leaned forward, one hand holding her long black hair against the wind, the other holding down her mini-skirt, and said something in Cantonese. The hum of the engine went up a pitch, throwing her back into the seat, and we rose on to the elevated carriageway into the fullglare of the bright morning sunshine. Each of us turned on cue, as though attached to the same strings, and squinted at the shimmering harbour.
‘Woo-hoo!’ He stood up on his seat, one hand holding on to the top of the windscreen for support, sparks flying from his cigarette as the wind buffeted his face. ‘Woo-hoo! This is it John, this is the day!’
from THE END...
‘Wow,’ I gasped, picking up my camcorder and starting to film. ‘I’ve seen it a thousand times but it never looked like that before.’ The harbour glistened in the sunlight causing me to blink against the magnified image in the viewfinder. As usual, the solitary government-sponsored junk was there, plying up and down for the benefit of tourists’ cameras, but it failed to spoil the scene. The harbour was to our right, and the shining steel and glass skyscrapers on our left. It felt like we were sitting on a speeding, metallic-blue bullet that had been fired between the two. A bullet with beige upholstery.
‘Woo-hoo! What a day it’s gonna be!’ He sat down, much to the driver’s relief, and turned to face me. ‘This is it, John,’ he said breathlessly, sweeping his hair from his face, ‘this is the day.’
I pressed the STOP button and lowered the camera. ‘Are you sure you’re doing the right thing?’
He hesitated, using one hand to shield his face from the sunlight, then nodded. ‘Yeah, the compass says so.’
Afraid to show my emotion to my best friend, I turned away from him and looked out over the other side of the flyover. Below us, in a tennis court, a perfectly synchronised group of old ladies stood on one leg as part of their morning t’ai chi class like a well-groomed flock of grey-haired flamingos. My head turned slowly, pretending to be interested in the display, as we sped past one group and then another, before they were replaced by another blinding skyscraper and I turned back.
‘You’d better have this then,’ I said, reaching into my jacket pocket and pulling out the little mahogany box. The sunlight caught its brass corners and made them wink. ‘Even though you can’t remember who was number two, I’m gonna let you have it. But don’t open it until after!’
He took it from my palm and shook his head pensively. ‘It’s been a long time John.’
‘Mmm, and a long way.’
‘“To Sir William George Garthrick Jenner”,’ he read from the gift label, ‘“From Lord John”.’
I wasn’t born with a title, no one from south-east London ever has been, and he had never been knighted, as far as I’m aware they don’t knight ex-North Sea fishermen, but we still have them, and no one can take them away. Even though the rules that tell us whether we’ll be a worker or a player are made before we are born, some of us learn to jump from one to the other.
Nobody told me how to jump but I’m going to tell you because I’ve learned and broken free, in the same way that the other man in that car did. There is no way of telling his story without telling my own because they are the same. And if that sounds like a cliché then so be it; I don’t know how else to say it.
We had come a long way. I don’t know how many miles or countries; I lost count. It all started when I went on a three-week holiday to India.
That was four years ago . . .
REWIND
Table of Contents
1 THE END 7
2 THE BEGINNING 10
3 THIS IS YOUR LIFE 37
4 SIR RICK 47
5 THE GREAT ESCAPE 120
6 TALES FROM TWO CITIES 173
7 MCPLAN 201
8 THE WET DREAM 233
9 MARINE 261
10 F**K! 298
11 MAGNETIC NORTH 338
Reviews
Front ...
'Fact of life number six: there are few individuals more boring than the 'recently returned traveller'. Too often these clowns labour under the misconception that we are remotely interested in their work-dodging holiday. John Harris, however, has managed to create a superb tale of adventure and intrigue that takes the reader on a backpacking schlep through South East Asia, in which he and his pals pose as wealthy aristocrats. But when the shit hits the ceiling fan, the idyllic setting is smashed and they are pursued by the Thai mafia, who are keen to give the travellers a little souvenir of their own. Gripping stuff.'
The Bookplace ...
'An adrenalin-fuelled tale.'
Fresh Direction Magazine ...
'Read this, you won't regret it... like The Beach but this one's true.'
About the Author
Born in 1964, John grew up on a concrete housing estate in south-east London. As a child, he describes himself as a 'spectacular under-achiever'. Hating school and teachers he left as soon as he could to become a builder.
At the age of 18, after a variety of dismal package holidays, he brought a ticket to Egypt; things would never be the same again. Following a few years of on-off travel, mostly in Africa, he decided to go a stage further and work in the developing world, joining VSO to work as a building instructor in Nigeria. He was sent home a year later for starting a riot by taking pictures of the local tribeswomen on market day.
Back in London, life proved uninspiring and the draw of distant shores called again. John set off on his trip round South-East Asia which later formed the background for The Backpacker. Five years later he still can't settle. 'I still crave mad adventure,' he says. 'I can't fight it. It burns inside me.'
