Once Upon a Time in Little Tokyo
Ali picked January fifth for our reunion in Little Tokyo. I’m sure he wouldn’t have if he’d known it was going to be 95 degrees. The heat roared down from the Great Basin on one of those Santa Ana gales — the kind that sucks the saliva from your mouth and dries the sweat before it reaches your pores.
Ken, Mia, and I were in L.A. for Christmas, one of the hottest on record, and Ali wanted us all to get together for old times’ sake. A decade earlier, we’d all been night-class students at the Marugoto Nihongo Academy on San Pedro and First.
It was a short walk from the Metro station to the Tortoise & Crane, a bar whose faded paper lantern jiggled on the breeze, and at whose wooden counter the ghosts of our days as part-time Japanese language learners still swayed over rum, lime, and Angostura bitters. The only thing that had changed were the number of tattoos on the bar staff’s arms.
Mia was seated at the end of the counter. She had on a pink Hawaiian shirt, all hibiscus and pineapples, and unbuttoned to her sunburnt cleavage. A pair of flier’s glasses kept her dark braids in check and an iPhone was pressed to her cheek; her lips worked hard against it. She saw me and waved vigorously.
I slid onto a stool beside her and she patted my arm but kept talking, ‘Yeah, yeah, but we can’t do that right now. Let them sweat a bit longer ...’
I ordered a beer. Sweat a bit longer. I'd been leaking like a noodle sieve since 8 a.m. I drank half my beer in two swallows and was about to drain the glass when Mia put down the phone.
‘Michael Takahashi! How the hell are ya?’ She leaped up and squeezed me in an embrace that smelled of fresh sweat and sandalwood.
‘Good, good,’ I said. ‘What’s it been, five years?’
‘Six years! Six years since we barely graduated.’ She laughed loudly. ‘You haven't changed a bit. How's San Fran?’
I forced a smile. It was what reunions were all about: a little “Where are they now?” with a bit of “This is Your Life”.
‘Nice, but the rent is screwing me.’
She patted my arm. ‘Well, you’re looking good for a guy who’s getting screwed. Still studying?
‘Went back to Osaka in August. Problem was, all the cousins speak English now.’ I laughed. ‘You?’
‘Only use my nihongo when the Japanese TV and film crews are in town.’
‘How is the film business?’
‘Bochi-bochi ya naa. No money in it. Not for a make-up artist like me.’
I eyed her glass. ‘Is that why you’re drinking mineral water?’
‘Don’t drink.’
‘You’re kidding me.’
‘Nope.’
‘You used to sink 'em faster than Miley Cyrus.’
We raised our glasses, toasting the six years that had divided us. As I drained the froth, a hand pressed down on my shoulder, and a smooth baritone voice descended. ‘Tell me I’m dreaming. The old posse assembled?’ A man to whom the years had been kind stood with a frosted glass of beer in his hand, beaming down on us. Ali was tall, muscular, and tanned. The glass beads on his juzu bracelet chattered as we shook hands. He kissed Mia on the cheek and pulled up a stool between us. ‘Good to see you troublemakers again,’ he said. We raised our glasses to a new anthem: ‘To the good old bad days.’
We drank on. We laughed, reminisced, and recalled the bar sessions after Japanese classes, and after-after parties. We talked about the class of 2018, and those who’d been whisked off to Tokyo by handsome actors and gotten married, or gotten divorced, or who were managing tourist resorts in Hawaii, or who, in one case, were dead.
Ali looked at his watch. ‘Ken’s coming, right?’
‘He’s got a family thing. Be here soon,’ said Mia.
‘He’s in D.C.?’
‘Yup. Married, two kids, government job,’ Mia said.
‘Doing what?’
‘Well that’s the thing. Ask him and he never gives a straight answer.’
‘You can ask him yourself when he arrives,’ I said. ‘What about you, big man, what angle are you working these days?’
‘Single, no kids, coffee.’
‘Coffee?’
‘I import beans from Colombia.’
‘There’s money in that?’ said Mia.
He pulled from his hip pocket a key chain with a Porsche logo and dangled it before us. ‘Coffee is black gold in this town.’
For a fleeting moment, I wondered if leaving L.A. had been a good idea.
But the day’s pent-up heat which oozed from the sidewalk, rippling my view of the traffic passing down East 2nd Street, confirmed that it had been. The wind had momentarily subsided, and the locals of Little Tokyo, driven from their stifling stores and apartments, now trickled into the cool depths of the bar in their singles and groups. It grew crowded.
We drank on, letting the bar staff carry away our empties, and the alcohol our inhibitions. Just like in the old days, we peppered our conversation with Japanese. Funny how alcohol frees the mind. Then Mia disappeared into the restroom. When she came back she was rubbing her nose and her eyes were glassy.
‘Smell that?’ she said.
‘What?’ Ali said.
‘Smoke,’ I said. ‘It’s a brushfire up north. Did you see the news?’
Ali’s phone rang. ‘Sam, what’s up? You need it when? Hold on.’ He rose from his seat. ‘Back in a sec,’ he said and left through the bar door.
I had to relieve myself, so I followed. Turning into the men’s restroom I glimpsed Ali through the window. He stood in the parking lot talking to a shaven-headed man with a gallery of tattoos on his neck and a goatee as thick as a beaver’s pelt. Ali tossed his car key in the air. The man caught it and then he, too, was gone.
Back in the barroom, I asked, ‘Who was that?’
‘Who?’
‘The guy with the tatts.’
‘Business associate. Needs the company car for a bit.’
‘Didn’t look like a barista.’
‘They come in all shapes and guises.’
The sky outside had turned sepia on account of the smoke. I felt light-headed and loose-lipped.
‘I’ve got an idea—a sure-fire way to make a buck,’ I said to Ali, as we ordered afresh.
‘Let’s hear it, Mike.’
‘Your Colombian connections. With all those coffee beans coming out here, why not have them toss in a few bags of marching powder.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘The price is going ballistic right now.’
‘Price of what?’ asked Mia.
‘Snow.’
‘Coke?’ said Ali.
Mia guffawed loudly. ‘Yeah, sure.’
But Ali’s face had straightened. There was a glint in his eye. He glanced around at the tables of happy friends and neighbors as red faced and merry as ourselves.
‘Well now, it’s really funny you should mention that.’ He eyeballed the two of us. ‘The coffee trade is going well, but it could be better. These hard times are sucking the froth off our profits. We need to adapt or diversify, if you know what I mean?’
I drained my beer and ordered another. I nodded. I had no idea what he meant.
‘I’ll be frank. I’m looking for partners …’ he said at last. ‘To facilitate the cash flow of our new product.’
‘Which is?’
‘Snow.’
‘I was joking,’ I said.
Ali’s smile faded. ‘I’m not. I’ve known you guys for a long time. You’re the salt of the earth, I can trust you. Look, my cousin, he’s high in the Commancheros. They can move the product in with my beans.’
‘What about Customs and Border Protection?’
‘Taken care of. We just need to find ways to wash the proceeds, if you know what I mean.’
This time I did know what he meant. I thought about my $1,000-a-week apartment in the Mission District, the credit card bills that were piling up, and my kechi clients at the advertising agency whom I'd have to grovel to when I returned.
‘Launder?’
‘And I’m not talking about your dirty underpants.’
I didn’t laugh.
Ali continued, ‘All you have to do is run some of our cash through your company account. Nothing significant at first. It’ll look like your business is on the up and up. You're still running an advertising business right?’
I had trouble moving my head up and down.
‘Your cut will be somewhere in the ballpark of twenty percent of whatever goes through. I’m offering Mia the same deal,’ he said.
I glanced at Mia. She nodded, then winked at me. Then she looked up and squealed, ‘Ken!’
A man in a blue polo shirt appeared in the doorway with a beer in his hand. He was short, stout, with an olive complexion and broad forehead.
I stood unsteadily, watching him move towards us. He reminded me of a panther. ‘Ken, how the hell are you, man?’ I said.
‘Sorry I’m late,’ he said. ‘The Last Supper had nothing on our family lunches.’
‘We’ve been drowning our sorrows waiting,’ said Ali, gripping Ken’s hand. Before anyone could stop him, Ali left to order more beer.
‘Mia tells me you’re a government man now,’ I said.
Ken laughed; he looked embarrassed.
‘Taxation?’ Mia said.
He shook his head.
‘Foreign affairs?’ I asked.
‘What’s this? Six years and an inquisition in the first five minutes?’ He smiled. ‘No--no, nothing like that.’
‘You were always the most conscientious, clean-cut guy in class,’ I said. ‘You’re with Health and Human Services, right?’
Ken smiled, but said nothing.
‘C'mon, you can tell us,’ Mia whined. ‘Before Ali comes back. C’mon, you know what he’s like, he won’t let you finish a sentence.’
‘I'm head of Media Affairs,’ he said.
‘For the HHS?’ I said.
‘For the DEA.’
My laugh didn’t sound natural. I found my gaze searching for a resting spot, anywhere but Ken’s cheerful, engaging eyes which moved from me to Mia and back again. ‘Ah, hell, it’s boring stuff,’ he laughed. ‘I bet you guys are up to more creative mischief.’
‘No, no, not at all. That’s great. You’re going places,’ I said.
‘Yeah, well, the paid vacation is good. Just got back from a ski holiday with the family in Nagano. Best powder ever.’
‘Powder?’ said Ali, returning. The beer sloshed about in his glass. ‘What’s this about powder?’
‘Snow,’ said Ken, lifting his glass. ‘Kanpai!’ We drank long and deep.
‘Snow?’ Ali wiped his lip on the back of his hand.
‘Finest stuff you’ve ever laid eyes on.’
‘Where?’
‘Japan.’
‘You’re kidding me.’
‘I kid you not. I just got back from there.’
Ali slid onto the stool next to Ken, their shoulders rubbing. ‘Been to Colombia?’ Ali's face was serious now.
‘You’re gonna tell me Colombia has better snow?’
‘As a matter of fact ...’
‘What Ken means,’ I said quickly, ‘... is that the skiing is better in Japan.’
Ali looked at me; his gaze swung back to Ken. Laughter exploded from his mouth. He fell off his bar stool, gasping, and when he came up for air, Ken looked on bemused. ‘What else would I be talking about?’ he said.
But Ali was too far gone; he still couldn’t breathe. The heat, the beer, and whatever was itching his nose, had struck him like a velvet hammer. We tried desperately to reel him in before he swam out deeper.
‘Ken was just telling us about his work …’ Mia began, but Ali cut her off, ‘So you’re telling me I should be importing from Japan not Colombia?’
‘Importing what?’ said Ken.
‘Snow, man. Snow!’
‘Bro, what are you on?’
‘Ken’s with the DEA,’ I said.
‘What?’
Ken slipped his arm around Ali’s neck in a mock jiu-jitsu move. ‘What’s wrong?’ he said, grinning.
‘A cop?’
‘Me? Hell no, I couldn’t fight my way out of a paper bag. I run the Media Affairs unit. We handle the reporters, feed them the cartel news, gang war reports, drug busts …’
‘And snow reports,’ I said.
‘And the snow reports.’ Ken laughed.
But Ali wasn’t grinning. His lips had turned to wood. His gaze swung to Mia and myself, then back to Ken.
Three words pushed through his lips. They were the three most unconvincing words one might ever hear spoken by a drunk in a crowded bar on a 95-degree day in Little Tokyo, Los Angeles.
‘I love skiing.’
Shortlisted — 2025 H.G. Wells Short Story Competition
Boy Bites Shark
You awake to a warm sou’wester licking at your toes and the sound of honeyeaters squabbling in the banksia outside your window. From the end of the street a vague pounding of surf comes and goes with the breeze.
None of these sensations register as you rise Lazarus-like, hungover, to drag yourself from bedroom to bathroom to breakfast table, and a note weighted with a Vegemite jar which flutters beneath the ceiling fan.
Gone to Rose Bay for lunch with friend — Mum.
As if she’s watching, your phone pings: herald-sun offering cadetships. why not?
There’s a link attached.
Though you had reserved Saturday morning to feel sorry for yourself following your high school’s last hurrah, Mum's most pressing concern comes creeping back: what will you do with the rest of your life?
With six years of secondary school done and dusted, your options are precariously thus: apply for a hotly-contested journalism spot at University of Technology; failing that, get a pub job and study part-time at the Polytechnic; failing that, get a shire job on Coogee Beach—good money, benefits, sea view.
With Tetley’s in hand, you ponder this new possibility: a newspaper cadetship?
Clicking the link, you scroll the fine print and sure enough, three positions are up for grabs to applicants of any age who display outstanding potential in research and inquiry, critical and creative thinking, resourcefulness, and writing skills.
You mentally tick all the boxes, except for the last one which requires of you a piece of writing which demonstrates all the aforementioned.
You’re good at writing—your English teacher said so. But the leviathan matter of a sample news story is exactly that; a solid piece of journalism? You have nothing.
Noting the deadline is one week from today, you close your eyes and tilt your face to the fan breeze. Can you see yourself as a rookie reporter working the city crime beat? A foreign correspondent filing from the worn-torn Middle East? A travel writer holed up in a hot spring town in the Japanese Alps?
Hell, yes!
But wishful thinking only intensifies the pounding war drum inside your head. You drain your tea mug. From the laundry basket you fish out your unwashed boardies, grab a towel, goggles, and exit the house, resolving to rid the bottle demons the only way you know how.
***
By the time you reach Beach Road, you feel terrible. The morning’s dry breeze has risen to a hot rasping wind which sucks the saliva from your mouth. Crossing the road to Cotzi’s Fish and Chip Shop, you duck inside for a Coke.
As the lunch crowd ebbs and flows around you and your drink, your soul makes a tentative comeback. The cadetship returns to mind; the prospect of working for the Herald-Sun is gaining traction. Just one gaping hole remains: a worthy writing sample.
On the corner of Beach Road and Cove Street you look about for inspiration.
The Coogee Bay Hotel looms behind, oozing smells of industrial deodoriser and spilt beer from its cavernous interior. While visitors might see potential for menace, you know there hasn’t been a fight in there for ages. The sleepy-eyed bartender, bored bouncers, and the big men with hands wrapped around pints are, to you, exactly as they were yesterday, and every day before that.
Familiarity breeds contempt. What visitors might call ‘sinister’ or ‘exotic’ are just the humdrum of daily life in your seaside suburb.
Take the white ibises which roam the esplanade, for instance. You once read an article in the newspaper devoted entirely to these ‘iconic birds’ but failed to see how the ‘bin chickens’ which steal chips and crap all over the foreshore picnic tables can be news?
Glimpsing the sea, your glumness dissolves. You inhale the thick salty tang and descend to the sand where waves dump swimmers one after another in a maelstrom of foam and seaweed onto the shore. You read somewhere that Coogee Beach boasts the highest number of spinal injuries in the country. You consider putting a fresh spin on this, but abandon the idea because the happy squeals and laughter coming from the surf say that good news is no news.
Beyond the swimmers’ bobbing heads, Caspian terns dive for fish. You pause to watch them and something wraps itself around your foot. You glance down, surprised to find a pair of lime-green bikini bottoms hooked on your big toe. A newsworthy drowning tourist? You look up quickly, scanning the horizon, only to see a woman waving at you, laughing.
You press on, climbing the stone steps of the Coogee Surf Life Saving Club to Bay Street where you pit-stop at the public toilets. Hell is the impossibility of reason someone has scrawled in marker pen on the wall, and at the bottom of the bowl a cooker’s teaspoon glimmers like sunken treasure. Coogee Beach’s drug problem isn’t news either; it’s a sign of the times.
Desperation now stalks in your shadow. You badly need a topic of interest, something to make the newspaper editors at the Herald-Sun sit up and take notice of your application.
At the top of the street, you turn off to Smylie’s Sea Baths and descend through a grove of golden wattle and casuarina trees to the ticket kiosk.
“Kai, how’s it gaan, mate? Got plans for Chrissie?” asks the teenage part-timer at the counter. Speaking sends tremors through your skull, so you answer in a single-syllable negative, pay, and move on.
The tide is coming in. Breakers smash over the sea bath walls and onto the lap swimmers, and soon you’re among them, pacing through the cool frothy water until your head clears and you feel mildly better.
You buy a meat pie at the kiosk. As you tuck in, you can’t help but overhear two bathers talking at the next table.
The man’s accent is British: “Absolutely marvellous! How those men and women rise before dawn and swim out to that point and back again every morning is a wondrous thing. I really do envy their spirit.”
The woman speaks in the local vernacular: “Well—why donya join ‘em?”
“Oh, no. I’m not sure about that …”
“Why not? You look like a strong swimmer. Tell ‘em you’re visiting.”
The Englishman chuckles, chuffed perhaps at her kind words.
You wipe the tomato sauce from your lip and steal a sideways glance. The Englishman is in his 60s; has a tall, rotund body supported by long spindly legs; wears a gold neck chain and Speedos in watermelon print; and his skin shines like polished beef jerky.
It's the tourists which make Coogee tick. They stay for days, sometimes weeks, spending their money in the pubs, hotels, cafes and restaurants, acquiring their dream tan and tales to tell of swimming at one of the country’s most legendary beaches.
“Well, maybe I’ll do just that,” the Englishman says at last.
“Sure you will. They’ll be happy to swim you out and back again,” the woman replies.
He enters the sea baths, and for a while moves back and forth through the foaming green water with ease. He is a good swimmer.
Your gaze reaches beyond him, across the shimmering bay to the Point. You’ve never done the swim—it’s too far, and because your place is here in the shallows, where the lazy trevally lurk and sea urchins scuttle between cracks.
Bay Street leads back to the beach, but rather than cross the blazing hot sand, you detour to the Grotto, a cosy cafe run by a Japanese woman and her surfer husband which overlooks the esplanade. They know you and like that your name means sea in their language.
The floor is sandy underfoot as you take a table near the opened window and order a long black. Someone has left a well-thumbed paperback on the chair beside you. You mention this to Junko as she places your coffee down. “Oh,” she says with a smile. “That customer is flying home today—I doubt they’ll be back for it.”
You’ve never read JAWS by Peter Benchley, though you’ve seen the movie many times. Two coffees later, you glance up at the clock surprised. Two hours have passed and you’re on page 82.
You thank Junko, and waving the book, say, “I’ll have it back in a few days.”
***
With Mum not yet home, the sofa is yours. The pages of JAWS fly by as you race Police Chief Brody and his nemesis to their climactic finish.
Then a funny thing happens; a seed of an idea forms in your mind. You reach for the coffee table pad, scribble something you recall from English class: the 5Ws + How of storytelling.
What happened?
Where did it happen?
When did it happen?
Who was involved?
Why did it happen?
How did it happen?
Fetching your laptop, you shift operations to the kitchen table and trawl websites on marine biology, fisheries, water safety, urban myths, and local history. Within the hour you have your story’s protagonist:
The great white shark (Carcharodon carcharias — ‘jagged tooth’ in ancient Greek) is the world’s largest macropredatory fish. With a lifespan of 70+ years, it can swim at speeds of up to 25 km/hr and dive to depths of 1,200 metres. It is known to travel vast distances during its seasonal migrations to breeding and feeding grounds. The largest specimen ever recorded: 6.9 metres-long, caught by fishermen off Kangaroo Island in South Australia in 1987. Only known predators, orca—and man.
By late afternoon, you’ve cobbled together a short local history: in 1822, 18-year-old James Loughlan was fatally mauled by a great white shark during the Coogee Surf Club’s annual carnival; one month later, 21-year-old Alvyn Mannon was attacked and killed while surfing (shark species unknown); fast forward to 2022, an American diving instructor disappears at Crescent Bay. A tooth fragment later recovered from his pressure gauge determines it to be a great white shark over six metres in length.
That night, as Mum helps the tide go out on a bottle of Chardonnay in front of the TV, you lie in bed reading.
The distant pounding of surf lulls you with its muffled roar and retreat, and JAWS falls to the floor. Soon you are in a dream state, peering beneath the steely swells of the ocean where a goliath of the Carcharodon carcharias order moves soundlessly, its electroreceptors tuned and its dark eyes fathomless and unblinking, in unhurried rhythm along the coastline.
Your mind’s eye shifts to the shore where the dawn sunlight has yet to touch the sand and a dozen toned-body swimmers stand laughing and limbering in the wavebreak. Among them is the tall, tanned Englishman in watermelon print Speedos. His gold neck chain glimmers. He rubs his belly and stretches, chuckling with his new friends.
The swim leaders push through the breakers and out into the bay. The rest follow like a shoal of fish, forming a loose line which heads serenely across the gunmetal-grey water towards the Point.
The Englishman makes good progress, but his energetic start has waned, and lacking the open water swimmer’s endurance, he falls to the rear of the group.
Goliath senses vibrations. Though faint, they are enough to pique interest. With a flick of its caudal fin, the shark deviates towards the shore.
***
The next morning, in the air conditioned alcove of Bayside Library, you leaf through a pile of books on marine biology and oceanography.
Your notes are spare, but pertinent: Seals are fat and rich in protein. Humans are too bony (most fatalities caused by blood loss.) You think of the big-bellied Englishman with pin legs, and wonder what he would taste like to a shark?
Armed with a rudimentary knowledge of SMART drumlines, shark tagging techniques, listening stations, rapid response craft, bite proof swimsuits, helicopter and drone patrols, your next stop is the frontline—the surf life saving posts on Coogee Beach.
“Yeah-nah,” the tall, toned life guard says. “The government's SharkSmart program’s well-meaning and all, but let’s face it, not every shark is tagged.” His lantern jaw jerks towards the sea. “End of the day, it’s their world, innit?”
You ask him if he’s ever read JAWS. “Nup—but I seen the movie.” You had a feeling he would say that.
Later, at the shorefront kiosk where the open water swimmers gather each morning after their swim to thaw themselves on cups of cafe latte, you chat with the barista.
“Am I concerned about sharks in Coogee Bay?” he says. “Personally, no—unless it's a flying one.” His expression changes. “But if I was one of those morning swimmers, I’d be careful. No SharkSmart system is a hundred percent effective. I mean, isn’t dawn and dusk mealtime out there?”
A useful comment. You note it down.
Next, you approach a family tossing chips to the bin chickens on the foreshore. “We’re from South Australia,” the father says. “We got sharks as big as buses, I kid you not. They’re a big money-puller, loads of tourists come for cage diving.”
His teenage son chimes in, “Just don’t wear anything shiny—sharks love shiny stuff.”
That night, you turn the last page of JAWS. No wonder they turned it into a Hollywood blockbuster. Sensationalism sells. Which causes you to reconsider—is your story idea too sensational? All fiction is based on fact, you reason, and your story lies somewhere in the middle. Besides, the cadetship application asks for a piece of writing which demonstrates outstanding potential in research and inquiry, critical and creative thinking, resourcefulness, and writing skills. There’s nothing in the fine print that states the news story has to have actually happened.
Though sleep comes easily, the ending to last night’s dream eludes you.
On waking the next morning, you resolve to fix that.
***
Everyday for the next several days, you rise before dawn and descend Beach Road to get your coffee at the kiosk before the swimmers return. Then you mingle among the large dripping bodies, making conversation as they towel off and warm themselves on hot drinks. They’re nice people, older, some in their 70s, fit-looking, and with a strong sense of camaraderie which borders on family.
“Do I worry about sharks?” one answers. “I’ve got more of a chance of getting struck by lightning than being taken by a shark. But if it ever happens, God help me, I’ll know I’ve died doing something I love. No hard feelings for the shark.”
That night, you sit down at your desk. The sea breeze has dropped to a whisper and the fragrance of the neighbour’s jasmine vine creeps into your room. All is calm, all is peaceful, as you open your laptop and crack your knuckles.
You begin to type.
***
You beat the application deadline by a day. Mum is so happy for you that she opens a bottle of Chardonnay to celebrate.
The following day, you return the paperback to Junko and sit a while at the Grotto’s window table watching holidaymakers and school kids revel in their summer daze.
Christmas comes and goes, then New Year’s which passes with the usual fireworks on the foreshore and live bands at the pub, before the long hot lull of January really kicks in.
To kill time before university placements are announced, you find a part-time job at a paper factory in the city, working nights in the loading bay because the money’s good.
Then one morning in mid-January, you wake to the sound of a helicopter overhead. Sirens follow—not one, many. You rouse yourself, check your phone and realise you’ve forgotten to charge the battery.
In the kitchen you find Mum, hands on the sink, glued to the radio news.
“They've closed the beach,” she says.
“Why?”
Another siren sounds along Beach Road. “There’s been a shark attack.”
“What?” You hurry back to your room to check your phone.
When the screen finally illuminates, someone with a No Caller ID has tried to reach you six times. You check your in-box and find a single unopened email. The sender’s name causes your jaw to unhinge itself. You read, then reread the words, and your pulse rate soars. You rush back to the kitchen.
Your mother listens wide-eyed to your story. “Holy shit,” she says, “Call them back, quick!”
You make the call and are soon talking to the chief editor of the Herald-Sun.
His voice is calm, gravelly. “We've got reporters at Coogee Beach right now, but this story of yours …” He pauses. “We realise it’s just a writing sample, but it’s almost identical to what’s just happened. Can you vouch for the authenticity of your quotes?”
You answer, “Yes.” Then your mind and mouth race to explain the 5Ws + How, the rotund Englishman, your online sources, the library visits, the interviews with lifeguards, baristas, tourists and swimmers—only, you decide to leave out the stuff in the middle, the glue that binded it all—the dream and the JAWS parts.
“Well done, Kai. We’d like to use excerpts of your story in our evening edition if that’s alright with you? You’ll receive a payment of one-dollar per word we use.”
Your tongue turns to wood; you are speechless.
“Oh, and Kai?” the chief editor says. “You’ll receive a letter of offer from us next week. Congratulations, mate.”
***
That evening, you and Mum hurry down to the convenience store on Beach Road to buy a copy of the Herald-Sun.
The banner headline screams: Tourist Mauled at Coogee Beach Dies. The lead-in says the swimmer, who was attacked by a large shark early this morning off the Point, was pronounced dead-on-arrival at City Hospital. The victim, a male in his 60s whose name has yet to be released, is a British national. The shark, presumed to have been a great white, is still at large.
And there, beside the names of two other reporters, is your own.
Mum is very proud of you. She takes you to Cotzi’s Fish and Chip Shop, where, at an outside table, you order a large piece of flake with calamari rings and chips.
“How’s the shark?” she asks, sipping her Chardonnay and watching as you bite into the crispy battered fillet.
Fat and rich in protein you’d like to say. But with your mouth full you can only manage, “Good.”
35.0116° N, 135.7681° E
One Dog Day in Summer
犬 is for Dog
On the sixteenth day of August, two men wearing Hawaiian print shirts and dark sunglasses crossed a bridge over the Kamo River. They wore shorts, white socks and sports shoes, and both carried identical blue backpacks.
In any other Japanese city, the two foreigners — one short and stocky, the other tall and rangy — might have looked like an amateur comedy duo hurrying to a gig. But in Kyoto, on a thoroughfare which thronged with tourists and city folk swathed in colourful yukata, they moved towards their destination unnoticed.
The short one, Ballou, walked with purpose; the tall one, Mundy, with a slight limp. Sweat darkened the pineapple and hibiscus motifs on their Musa-Shiya shirts, and though their foreheads glistened and their mouths hung open, neither slowed his pace until they reached the opposite bank and entered a hillside neighbourhood of narrow, winding streets.
‘Time out,’ said Ballou, halting in the gateway of an old townhouse. They swigged noisily from their water bottles then set off again, fighting the gradient, leaking like noodle sieves, until the street narrowed and the Kamo River showed itself above the tiled rooftops.
At the top of the street they arrived at a small park filled with colour and noise. ‘There,’ Ballou said, pointing with his chin to a crowded stall set beneath a large paulownia tree. Buddhist monks moved back and forth behind the counter, receiving donations and passing out rough strips of cedar wood to old and young, sightseers and locals, and everyone in between. Onto these were penned prayers and messages, and handed them back to the monks.
To one of the monks Ballou passed a coin and received a length of wood. He wrote slowly, carefully, a message in good Japanese to a woman he had known, whom he had loved, and lost, and to whom he had promised to be on this mountain on this day in the Year of the Dog, the zodiac year of her birth.
Mundy removed his sunglasses. He wiped the sweat from his eyes with the back of his arm and searched the crowd for signs of law enforcement. Satisfied, he slipped the glasses into his pocket, glanced at his wristwatch and said, ‘C’mon chief, let’s roll.’
A sudden commotion sounded behind them. A group of young men with towels wrapped around their nut-brown heads pushed through the crowd, and after reaching the stall, hoisted the boxes filled with prayer sticks onto their shoulders and set off up the hill. Ballou and Mundy followed.
The neighborhood fell away and soon the climbing party entered a forest. As the gradient steepened and the path zig-zagged, the two men heard only their own breathing as they hustled to keep pace with the porters. All at once, the trees were gone and they found themselves standing in the open. A dusty trail snaked upwards through the low scrub of the mountainside.
‘I thought this wasn’t a tourist attraction,’ said Mundy, looking with dismay at the steady stream of people which filed up and down the path.
Ballou shrugged. ‘Me, too.’
It was now early evening and the air hung hot and heavy over the city. A temple bell sounded somewhere far off. The two men paused to catch their breaths and to look down on the cross-hatched patterns of shimmering lights which spread across the ancient capital like a blanket of jewels. The view gave Mundy reason to speak: ‘Somewhere down in that suffocating soup is a business owned by a greedy little man who fleeced us of our wages, our holiday pay, our rent money.’ He paused. ‘And inside that toad’s office is a safe made by Kumahira of Tokyo, makers of the strongest safes in Japan. And inside that safe is a postcard of Waikiki with ‘Arigatou-gozaimasu!’ written on it.’ Mundy grinned, but Ballou said nothing. The city, with its glittering lights and wide flowing river, seemed to elicit a different set of thoughts from him. He looked up quickly. A thunderhead of purple and crimson clouds rose against the darkening sky.
‘Chief, you alright?’ said Mundy.
‘Wonder if it’ll rain?’
‘Hope not--we got stuff to burn.’
When they turned back to the trail, the porters had separated; each one of them now stopped at ten metre intervals to unload their burdens at small concrete platforms. On these platforms stood a pyre of neatly stacked prayer sticks, and around it a skirt of dried straw. Bundles of kindling lay nearby. Dozens of pyres formed an arching line all the way to the top of the mountain. There, another line of pyres ran horizontally. A third line, symmetrical to the first, ran from the junction of the first two lines and arched all the way back down the mountainside, thus completing the kanji character 大, for 'big’.
Ballou and Mundy pressed on, oblivious to the banter of the porters and pyre builders, the crackle of their two-way radios, and the rich odors of scented wood and dried straw which rose from the dusty earth. The sun had set, and with it had gone any hope of a breeze.
Mundy grimaced. His limp had grown worse; a limp acquired from kicking a one-tonne Kumahira safe in frustration. If Ballou hadn’t cooled him, calmed him, allowed him to refocus and to trawl his memory for the combination of twists and turns which had momentarily eluded him, he might have done himself greater damage. Then for a brief moment his frown faded. He thought of the fat, green safe lying empty in that stuffy downtown office—and the thought pleased him. It pleased him almost as much as the half a million yen in tight bundles which now pressed against the small of his back as he hobbled up the trail.
It wasn’t until they stood atop the crest and looked down did they realise the magnitude of the event.
‘The whole freakin city is watching us,’ said Mundy.
‘We’re hiding in plain sight,’ said Ballou. ‘Be cool.’
Mundy knew his friend was right. It was the reason he’d agreed to make this side-journey part of their getaway plan. Yet, even with his promise that they’d both be on the 11:35 night flight to Chiang Mai that evening, Mundy fretted that sentimentality might ruin everything.
The fug shifted. A shrill whistle sounded from somewhere below them. The pyre teams lept into action. Lighted tapers flared against straw and flames quickly licked at the wood. Purple smoke filled the night air with its bitter-sweet tang. Up and down the mountainside the three giant kanji strokes twinkled for the entire city to see.
Ballou slipped off his backpack and fossicked. From a side pocket he pulled a brown envelope and emptied the contents into his hand.
‘She’s watching,’ said Mundy, eyeing the three talismans in his friend’s hand.
‘She sure she is,’ said Ballou, as sparks swirled across him from the pyre nearest them. He descended the trail and quickly tossed the three small embroidered pouches — an enmusubi for love, a katsumori for luck, and a yakuyoke to ward off evil — into the flames.
Though they looked at the foreigners curiously, the fire keepers said nothing; who were they to stop someone from burning old charms? Their power would return to the heavens, just as the prayers and messages penned onto the wooden sticks were bound for the same destination.
Now the fires raged across the mountainside, setting the night aglow above Kyoto, and thus fulfilling an annual tradition of which no one, not even the city elders, knew the origin.
Presently, a figure ascended the trail and approached Ballou and Mundy. Its bald head gleamed in the firelight, obscured by showering sparks, until it was close enough for Ballou to recognise as the monk who had received his prayer stick at the stall.
‘Good evening,’ said the monk, reaching the mountain crest. Greetings were exchanged and the three of them spoke in Japanese for a few moments. Then the monk slipped a cloth bag from his shoulder, and to Mundy and Ballou’s surprise, produced a bottle of sake and three earthen cups. It was his ritual, he explained, and that he had been doing it since he was old enough to imbibe.
‘Good fortune comes to those who see the reflection of Daimonji in their cup,’ he said, passing around the vessels and pouring them full. The three men studied their cups and drank them dry.
‘Did you see the fire’s reflection?’ said the monk.
‘To be honest, I didn’t,’ said Mundy, licking his lips.
‘Then, another?’
Mundy and Ballou held out their cups. But when Ballou tilted his to the firelight, his expression changed. He shifted position, tilting his cup more deeply.
‘You don’t see it?’ said the monk. Ballou didn’t answer; he stepped closer to the fire, and though the heat was intense and the sparks swarmed like fireflies, he looked baffled at his cup. He quickly drank and asked for another.
The monk filled the cup without comment. This time Ballou stood closer to the fire, until the heat grazed his cheek and arms and hurt him. Still he looked vexed.
‘What’s up, chief?’ said Mundy.
Ballou looked about. ‘Where’s the monk?’
‘He disappeared down the other side of the mountain. What’s the matter?’
‘What about the cups?’
‘A present, he said.’
Meanwhile, the pyres blazed. The fire keepers moved back and forth against their flickering flames, now feeding in kindling wood.
‘How are we going to get rid of the masks and gloves with all these people around?’ said Mundy. When no answer came, he turned to his friend. ‘Jesus, you look like you’ve seen a ghost. You okay?’
‘I’m burning the loot.’
Mundy waited for the smile, a guffaw, a noise or a gesture to affirm his friend’s joke. But none came.
‘Burning what?’
‘I’ve got a bad feeling,’ Ballou said. ‘That was a sign.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘I saw nothing in my cup. Nothing but darkness.’
‘You were just dazzled by the fire.’
‘That monk … ‘
‘Was a really nice guy. He gave us ...’
‘He was a messenger.’
‘What?’
Ballou slipped off his pack and again he rummaged.
‘What are you doing?’ There was an urgency in Mundy’s voice. ‘Chief!’
The fire keepers, busy on the other side of the pyre, did not see the stocky foreigner toss his brown paper package into their flames. They did not see half a million in Japanese yen notes whither and whiten. What they did see were the flames leap higher, and the higher the better.
Mundy choked. His eyes were so wide that Ballou saw the flames reflected in them. ‘What about the plan? Our plan to open a school in Thailand? Live the dream! The frickin dream!’
‘Do what you want with yours. It’s your choice. We can still make it happen — just not with my filthy lucre.’
Mundy began to hyperventilate; he looked close to tears. ‘But it was only five hundred thousand yen! Oh Jesus…’
‘We’ve got a plane to catch,’ said Ballou, picking up his backpack and descending the trail of pyres on the other side of the mountain. ‘Let’s go!’
Mundy looked back at the flames. His lips trembled. He glanced at his feet and saw beside them a large nozzled tin of accelerant and a barbecue lighter sitting in a box. He picked them up. Then he too was gone. But instead of following his friend, he left the trail and bounded through the scrub. In moments, he reached a small clearing and set down his pack. He pulled out a plastic bag and over this he squeezed the petroleum jelly, then lit it.
To his horror, the flame did not take.
What he did next might have been an act of solidarity or survival — or both. Whatever the reason, the effect was instantaneous.
Had the shouting fire keepers and the wide-eyed men with the whistles reached Mundy’s pyre sooner, they would have been in time to witness the rubber faces of two former Japanese prime ministers — Kakuei Tanaka and Yoshiro Mori — along with two pairs of surgical gloves dissolve in flames generated by a half million Japanese yen.
As it happened, Mundy panicked and dropped the petroleum can into the fire as he sprinted downhill to join Ballou. The can exploded, sending a projectile of napalm-like substance shooting across the scrub.
Down on the streets, river banks, and bridges of Kyoto, an excited murmur ran through the crowds of spectators who had gathered to witness Daimonji.
A single fiery streak had spread down the upper-right side, altering the kanji character, so that instead of ‘Dai’ (大), it now broadcast to the city an entirely new meaning — Dog (犬).
13.3622° N, 103.8597° E
Cambodia Dispatches
Flying out. Flying in.
Seven hours wandering the beige halls of Don Mueang International Airport, inhabiting the same cracked-tile toilets and coffee-stained bench sofas I used to kill time on more than 20 years ago. Down these halls the ghosts of travellers scurry, chasing flights to elsewhere in Asia and beyond. Another era, when travellers wrote postcards and carried their lives on their backs for as long as it took them to run their years of savings dry, or just grow tired and weary of life on the road and return home, financially wiped out but millionaires, spiritually-speaking.
Now, as the saffron disk of dawn climbs above Bangkok, I watch the stampeding hordes of newly-rich Chinese, arms full of DFS stuff, racing and shouting to catch their planes home, and I have flashbacks of first arriving in Asia, hailing a late-night taxi into Bangkok’s dark, steamy maw, passing truck crashes and beggars, durian vendors and clusters of cigarette-puffing tuk-tuk drivers - constellations of pin-pricks of red light in the night.
And so seven hours of memories fade into the hollow PA announcement of the ground staff making the boarding call for the one-hour flight to Siem Reap. The plane goes up, the planes goes down. A pre-lunch beer to ease my nerves, to settle that familiar mix of excitement, cautiousness and calm of landing in unfamiliar territory. The land rises up to meet me: flat, palm studded, with clusters of stilted farm houses clutching dusty roads, and beyond them green paddy lands crisscrossed by rivers and canals, a legacy of the ancient Kingdom of Khmer. Ponds like broken mirror shards cover the farmland, bomb craters made by the Americans during the 70s. Overflow from Vietnam, but which now harbor prawns, ducks and catfish. From death springs life.
Now, as the saffron disk of dawn climbs above Bangkok, I watch the stampeding hordes of newly-rich Chinese, arms full of DFS stuff, racing and shouting to catch their planes home, and I have flashbacks of first arriving in Asia, hailing a late-night taxi into Bangkok’s dark, steamy maw, passing truck crashes and beggars, durian vendors and clusters of cigarette-puffing tuk-tuk drivers - constellations of pin-pricks of red light in the night.
And so seven hours of memories fade into the hollow PA announcement of the ground staff making the boarding call for the one-hour flight to Siem Reap. The plane goes up, the planes goes down. A pre-lunch beer to ease my nerves, to settle that familiar mix of excitement, cautiousness and calm of landing in unfamiliar territory. The land rises up to meet me: flat, palm studded, with clusters of stilted farm houses clutching dusty roads, and beyond them green paddy lands crisscrossed by rivers and canals, a legacy of the ancient Kingdom of Khmer. Ponds like broken mirror shards cover the farmland, bomb craters made by the Americans during the 70s. Overflow from Vietnam, but which now harbor prawns, ducks and catfish. From death springs life.
Good as gold, Mister Saat
Weddings, parties, anything. The amiable Mister Saat
Siem Reap International Airport. Across the blistering tarmac and into the sweat-smelling bunker of bureaucratic formality to have my visa issued and my passport fingered by an Orwellian line of rubber stampers, sticker-putters and red pen wielders who might, with practice, make an entertaining rhythm section in another world.
Mister Saat is waiting for me among a knot of tuk-tuk drivers, hotel chauffeurs and other hopefuls. He holds a placard with my name. Above it his golden tooth gleams in the midday sun. His skin is the colour of kangaroo jerky - nut-brown with a matt finish. This is a man who spends his working days under the big Cambodian sun. This is a man who at 16 marched off to fight the Khmer Rouge in the northern jungles, leaving behind school and family for a soldier’s life. In that time he mastered the weapons of war: the AK47, M16, M60 and the 37mm anti-aircraft gun (a one-year training course), before spending his final years clearing Russian and Chinese-made mines in rural lands. Never shot anyone, he says. Only a python or two. His golden tooth gleams.
Mister Saat is waiting for me among a knot of tuk-tuk drivers, hotel chauffeurs and other hopefuls. He holds a placard with my name. Above it his golden tooth gleams in the midday sun. His skin is the colour of kangaroo jerky - nut-brown with a matt finish. This is a man who spends his working days under the big Cambodian sun. This is a man who at 16 marched off to fight the Khmer Rouge in the northern jungles, leaving behind school and family for a soldier’s life. In that time he mastered the weapons of war: the AK47, M16, M60 and the 37mm anti-aircraft gun (a one-year training course), before spending his final years clearing Russian and Chinese-made mines in rural lands. Never shot anyone, he says. Only a python or two. His golden tooth gleams.
Have Temple, will travel
The Golden Temple Villa, Siem Reap
The Golden Temple Villa lies down a sidestreet of undulating potholes and compressed detritus turned paleolithic. The hotel staff will memorise your name - they have been “programmed to receive” - but their smiles are for real and their tunics of salmon silk gleam in the subdued light of the lobby, welcoming and pleasing to weary eyes. They are all young, polite and cheeky. Room 44 comes with its own gatekeeper, "Mister Charles", a keen-eyed gecko.
Sit. Drink. Watch. Learn
Front row seats to the action, The Grand Cafe, Siem Reap
Le Grand Cafe sits on the corner of Street 9 opposite the produce market in downtown Siem Reap. The block comprises of French-Indochine style shop houses built in the 1920-30s and whose weathered pastel facades still defy the tropical heat and damp. Cuban jazz drifts from a sound system, playing background to the passing sideshow of motorised juice carts, tuk-tuks, scooters and bicycles. A motorcycle with three passengers whizzes by; one of them holds an intravenous saline drip above his shoulders - a hospital break-and-run? Juice blenders whirr, horns beep, “watch out!” sounds in a half-dozen languages and the Cuban jazz drives on. A hot-looking local girl skims by on a black scooter with the words “Black Jack” across the wheel guard. Le Grand Cafe’s ceiling fans rotate like a chopper blades, shifting the air, pushing it out, sucking it in; the night is heavy with tamarind and promise. I reach for the handle of my Angkor beer, the colour of urine with bubbles, take a sip and toss some peanuts into my mouth just as the lights stutter, and are gone. A cheer rises across the precinct; the cafe, the street and the market are thrown into a momentary blackout; the lights return and the table banter resumes with renewed vigor.
Siem Reap, like all bustling tourist hubs, comes to life in the evenings and any restaurant or bar worth its bloody mary or fish sauce, affords a street-side view of the action. Hot greasy vapors leap from woks of the cooking mamas on Pokambor Avenue, down the road from the Grand Cafe. I pull up a plastic chair and order a fresh beer as the tourist crowds thicken. A big man in a tucked-in Hawaiian shirt blocks out my light. Picking his teeth with his little finger, he asks me the way to the Grand Cafe. That’s an easy one, but I warn him the urinals are filled with pineapple slices. Two Frenchmen pass by looking like they've marched overland from Laos, in need of clean shirts and haircuts yesterday. The side show thickens as two tattooed youngbloods with Aussie accents clutching bottles of cheap rocket juice stop to get their bearings then stagger on. Back at the Grand, a large white man with a drooping mustache pays up and leaves with a small brown woman pressed to his hip. They climb into a tuk-tuk and are lost to the night. Hmmm nothing to write home about but I begin nonetheless, “Dear Mum, they put slices of pineapple in the urinals here…” but give up and pay up. The madness elsewhere is too good to miss.
Siem Reap, like all bustling tourist hubs, comes to life in the evenings and any restaurant or bar worth its bloody mary or fish sauce, affords a street-side view of the action. Hot greasy vapors leap from woks of the cooking mamas on Pokambor Avenue, down the road from the Grand Cafe. I pull up a plastic chair and order a fresh beer as the tourist crowds thicken. A big man in a tucked-in Hawaiian shirt blocks out my light. Picking his teeth with his little finger, he asks me the way to the Grand Cafe. That’s an easy one, but I warn him the urinals are filled with pineapple slices. Two Frenchmen pass by looking like they've marched overland from Laos, in need of clean shirts and haircuts yesterday. The side show thickens as two tattooed youngbloods with Aussie accents clutching bottles of cheap rocket juice stop to get their bearings then stagger on. Back at the Grand, a large white man with a drooping mustache pays up and leaves with a small brown woman pressed to his hip. They climb into a tuk-tuk and are lost to the night. Hmmm nothing to write home about but I begin nonetheless, “Dear Mum, they put slices of pineapple in the urinals here…” but give up and pay up. The madness elsewhere is too good to miss.
5.1333° S, 119.4167° E
Drifting with Indonesia’s Master Mariners
|
“Swiftly, swiftly flew the ship,
Yet she sailed softly too: Sweetly, sweetly blew the breeze - On me alone it blew.” ― Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner UJUNG PANDANG, Indonesia. “From Sulawesi to Surabaya it takes fours days under sail, if the winds are good," says Ronnie Herawati, sweeping his bony hand across the darkening horizon. He is the captain of the Golden Star, an 85-foot-long schooner, called a prahu, and one of a hundreds-strong fleet of traditional sailing boats which ply Indonesia's archipelago. Destinations are dictated by their cargo consignments; speed depends on the prevailing trade winds and ocean currents. Herawati is of Bugis heritage - an ethnic group whose mastery of star navigation and ship-building skills is widely respected throughout Indonesia. The weather forecast for the following day is not good. But Herawati's ship will set sail nevertheless for Balikpapan on Borneo island, to swap its cargo of flour for barrels of palm oil. The ship's gaping hold accommodate 60 tons of cargo. After that, there is little space for the seamen's quarters. They must make do in a warren of airless cubby holes at the ship's stern. Above deck, the eleven crew members mill around the galley preparing a dinner of rice, grated chilli and dried fish, washed down with muddy-coloured Torajan coffee. |
Along Paotere's docks, the loading of boats is a brisk and serious business. Shipping agents wiggle in and out of rigging, checking cargo lists and counting the lorries which come and go.
Cliff Barrung, a wiry 28-year-old, is an agent with Golden Star and its sister ship, Golden Gull. "Time is money and once a boat is emptied we fill it immediately," he says, overseeing the stacking of flour bags, biscuits and bicycles, coffee beans, plastic tubing and laundry tubs, by men with blood-shot eyes and legs like tree roots. By late afternoon, Paotere's cafes fill with dockers. In one cafe, yellowing photographs of Bugis schooners line the wall and a wooden model ship takes pride of place over the cash register. Small, moon-faced Bugis sailors chat and smoke fragrant kreteks, throwing the odd glance toward the docks where boats are arriving from Timor, Flores and Kalimantan. The sky swells with thunderheads, bruised and purple. The owners of tiny warungs - street kitchens - roll down their awnings in anticipation of the downpour. Now and again a Bugis schooner leaves port, crossing the horizon with its sails strained by the warm trade winds, heading south to Timor, Surabaya, or Bali perhaps. |
6.0833° N, 116.5500° E
Mount Kinabalu, Sabah, Borneo.
SABAH, Mount Kinabalu. At Laban Rata (3,300m) the air is thinner. I walk 50m from the bunkroom to the can in lead boots. A group of Dutch tourists abandon their climb - several of their members are overcome with altitude sickness. Freezing pre-dawn temperatures, sprained ankles, headaches deter others from striking out for Low's Peak (4,095m).
My ascent starts at 3am. To rise in the cold and wet at this ungodly hour is necessary in order to reach the summit by 6am for sunrise. I fall in with a procession of 40 other climbers making their way slowly, painfully across the granite rock faces; a funeral procession of scattered lights in the chilly darkness. Guide ropes ensure no one strays to oblivion.
At 6:10am, the first rays of sunlight break over Mount Kinabalu's cold peaks. The highest mountain in Southeast Asia! To the north, Sabah's waterways snakes lazily towards the South China Sea. To the east, Kota Kinabalu shimmers under streetlights and the tiny villages of yesterday are swallowed in cloud.
Stairway to heaven for the soul, highway to hell for the knees.
My ascent starts at 3am. To rise in the cold and wet at this ungodly hour is necessary in order to reach the summit by 6am for sunrise. I fall in with a procession of 40 other climbers making their way slowly, painfully across the granite rock faces; a funeral procession of scattered lights in the chilly darkness. Guide ropes ensure no one strays to oblivion.
At 6:10am, the first rays of sunlight break over Mount Kinabalu's cold peaks. The highest mountain in Southeast Asia! To the north, Sabah's waterways snakes lazily towards the South China Sea. To the east, Kota Kinabalu shimmers under streetlights and the tiny villages of yesterday are swallowed in cloud.
Stairway to heaven for the soul, highway to hell for the knees.
13.8333° S, 171.7500° W
Western Samoa
23.7000° S, 133.8700° E
The Camel Cup in Alice Springs, Australia
“Have a drink, mate? Have a fight, mate? Have some dust and sweat, mate? There's nothing else out here.”
―Tagline to the film Wake in Fright (1971)
“Have a drink, mate? Have a fight, mate? Have some CAMEL dust and sweat, mate? There's nothing else out here.”
―Doctored tagline to the film Wake in Fright (1971)
―Tagline to the film Wake in Fright (1971)
“Have a drink, mate? Have a fight, mate? Have some CAMEL dust and sweat, mate? There's nothing else out here.”
―Doctored tagline to the film Wake in Fright (1971)
17.0000° N, 146.0000° E
Guam and Saipan in the Northern Mariana Islands
Saipan teeters on the edge of the Mariana Trench — the Earth's greatest abyss. It plunges to a depth of 38,250 feet (11,582m), then rises to form a rocky knoll of mist-shrouded mountains and lush forests of strangler fig, ironwood and plumeria trees.
Ferdinand Magellan sighted the Mariana Islands in 1521, claiming Saipan for Spain and christening the archipelago “Las Islas de las Velas Latinas" (the Islands of the Latine Sails), because the sails of the native canoes reminded him of the Mediterranean fleets back home.
The island's fine coral-sand beaches and plethora of marine sports — including some spectacular WWII wreck diving — are the main attractions for tourists. For relic-hunters and war history buffs, too, Saipan is a time capsule of old Japanese command posts, forgotten airstrips and invasion beaches still littered with American tanks and bunkers.
The Marianas Visitors Bureau produces maps of World War II battle sights that pinpoint invasion beaches like those at Susupe and Chalan Kanoa, 16 miles (10 kilometers) south of the capital, Garapan, on the west coast.
It was here, on June 15, 1944, that the U.S. Operation Forager with its task force of 127,000 men, 600 ships and 2,000 planes began its sweep across the Marianas and on toward the Japanese home islands. Defending Saipan were 31,000 Japanese soldiers, holed up in caves and bunkers and ordered to repel the Americans at all costs.
For three weeks, one of the bloodiest battles of the war in the Pacific ensued, and by the time it ended on July 9, after Garapan had been taken, more than 3,500 Americans, 30,000 Japanese and countless Saipanese were dead.
Hiking along Susupe's high-tide mark, you can inspect Japanese bunkers, left now to the artistic whims of graffiti artists. Of the 68 tanks in the first U.S. invasion wave, all but three arrived safely on the beach at Susupe. According to local reports, one was swamped, another was burned, and the third one received a direct hit.
After more than 50 years in seawater, these rusting machines of war have become a more peaceful abode for hundreds of reef fish and crabs, while their intact turrets and cannons now double as race markers for jet-ski riders.
The Visitors Bureau also directs visitors to the village of San Roque and the Last Command Post, which is found in scrub at the base of the 800-foot (250-meter) cliffs on Saipan's north coast. It was here in 1944 that the Japanese commanding officer, Lieutenant General Yoshitsugo Saito, acknowledging his defeat in the face of overwhelming U.S. forces, committed hara-kiri with his ceremonial sword.
These days, tour buses swerve into a specially built parking lot, disgorging hundreds of camera-wielding tourists — mostly Japanese — to photograph the heavy guns, torpedoes and tanks that surround the post.
Others, more respectfully, pay silent tribute to the fallen soldiers at a small Shinto shrine nearby.
23.7000° S, 133.8700° E
Central Australia
RIDING THE GHAN
DARWIN-ADELAIDE BY TRAIN: Dust storms, 50-degrees Celsius heat, floods, and having supplies airlifted to stranded trains were all part of traveling aboard the Ghan, Australia's legendary outback train, during the early 20th century. Thankfully, the big skies and red dust are all appreciated from the air-conditioned side of a tinted window these days. Named after the Afghan cameleers who supplied the early desert towns, the weekly Ghan takes two nights to make the 2,979-km haul to Adelaide from Darwin. Choose between seats, budget sleepers or luxury cabins. Read more at www.gsr.com.au.
DARWIN-ADELAIDE BY TRAIN: Dust storms, 50-degrees Celsius heat, floods, and having supplies airlifted to stranded trains were all part of traveling aboard the Ghan, Australia's legendary outback train, during the early 20th century. Thankfully, the big skies and red dust are all appreciated from the air-conditioned side of a tinted window these days. Named after the Afghan cameleers who supplied the early desert towns, the weekly Ghan takes two nights to make the 2,979-km haul to Adelaide from Darwin. Choose between seats, budget sleepers or luxury cabins. Read more at www.gsr.com.au.
9.5333° N, 138.1167° E
Yap Islands, Micronesia
The Betels and The Stones
“There is nothing like a storm to make you feel closer to God," says Titus Yilus riding the clutch of his battered Nissan sedan down the jungle track towards a village called Bechiyal. Not exactly sure what my red-eyed, Camel cigarette-puffing, driver-for-a-day means by his remark, I continue to marvel at the magnificent deep purple seeping across the western Micronesian sky.
Located on the north coast of the island state of Yap, roughly 860km south-west of Guam, Bechiyal looks like the kind of place where Robinson Crusoe might have booked his holidays.
Beyond the ruffled thatched-roof huts and withered meeting houses, past the outer reef and its pulverizing swells, the horizon looks suddenly bruised and foreboding. Thousands of dragonflies fill the sky creating a crazy aerial traffic jam and the heavy smell of rain, omens easily read by Yilus, herald the end of another day of searing heat and sluggishness on this tiny Pacific island outpost.
Metres from the lagoon sits a stilt bungalow with a skinny dog standing guard. Yilus tosses me the key, lights a cigarette, ponders the heavens. “Big storm coming,” he says, jingling his car keys like a witch doctor. He disappears back up the jungle track in his sedan.
Sometime around midnight the storm breaks. Gusts of warm sea air burst through my window, inflating my mosquito net like a parachute and filling the room with a fine spray which gives everything a taste of salt. Lightning illuminates the coconut trees outside my door and thunder ripples through the timber of my hut. Burrowing deeper into my futon, a mattress no thicker than a rice cracker, I try to convince myself there is more than just a flimsy thatched roof between me and a sky charged with electrons.
“There is nothing like a storm to make you feel closer to God," says Titus Yilus riding the clutch of his battered Nissan sedan down the jungle track towards a village called Bechiyal. Not exactly sure what my red-eyed, Camel cigarette-puffing, driver-for-a-day means by his remark, I continue to marvel at the magnificent deep purple seeping across the western Micronesian sky.
Located on the north coast of the island state of Yap, roughly 860km south-west of Guam, Bechiyal looks like the kind of place where Robinson Crusoe might have booked his holidays.
Beyond the ruffled thatched-roof huts and withered meeting houses, past the outer reef and its pulverizing swells, the horizon looks suddenly bruised and foreboding. Thousands of dragonflies fill the sky creating a crazy aerial traffic jam and the heavy smell of rain, omens easily read by Yilus, herald the end of another day of searing heat and sluggishness on this tiny Pacific island outpost.
Metres from the lagoon sits a stilt bungalow with a skinny dog standing guard. Yilus tosses me the key, lights a cigarette, ponders the heavens. “Big storm coming,” he says, jingling his car keys like a witch doctor. He disappears back up the jungle track in his sedan.
Sometime around midnight the storm breaks. Gusts of warm sea air burst through my window, inflating my mosquito net like a parachute and filling the room with a fine spray which gives everything a taste of salt. Lightning illuminates the coconut trees outside my door and thunder ripples through the timber of my hut. Burrowing deeper into my futon, a mattress no thicker than a rice cracker, I try to convince myself there is more than just a flimsy thatched roof between me and a sky charged with electrons.
34.4553° N, 113.0253° E
The Songshan Shaolin Shi Decheng Wushu Centre,
Dengfeng, China
(嵩山少林释德成武馆)
Dengfeng, China: Kung Fu Diary Part I
Plane trees shade the sidewalk outside the Songshan Shaolin Shi Decheng Wushu Centre. Shade. Only water is more precious in August. The shade cast by these arbors determines the length of our course each day. In the morning, when the sun is low, our path is long and hard; in the afternoon when the sun is overhead it is short and hard.
The calisthenics to build strength and flexibility make even the fittest among us discover a new muscle everyday; one each for the splitz, turkey walking, bunny hopping, cartwheeling and the hand-standing against brick walls until our faces are tomatoes ripe for the picking. Sometimes our handlers order us to shunt each other wheelbarrow-like backwards and forwards along the footpath. Occasionally, the barrow dissolves into a heap of sweating, panting, sobbing flesh -- bloodied hands our badge of honour. No-one complains.
Slowly, painfully, my limbs reach higher up the trunk of the stretching tree. The threshold of pain is being pushed back. Once taut as piano wires, my muscle fibres are now tempered rubber bands. Next follows instruction in the 18 ‘classic movements’ - chi-bun gong - the nuts and bolts of Shaolin kung fu. They seem uncomplicated at first, but their simplicity belies the excruciating pain a novice experiences to achieve strength, speed, precision and endurance. Take ma-bu, the horse riding stance: squat, legs apart, lower your centre of gravity to a fighting position and hold for three minutes until your feet lose radio contact and you are overcome with uncontrollable shaking. That is ma-bu.
Training on the street puts this suffering in the public eye. The Number 2 bus passes every 15 minutes; its bored passengers look happy to see the tall white men dancing along the sidewalk outside the school, standing upside-down against its walls, or shaking like they have malaria at a squat beneath its trees.
I don’t know the name of the street but down it the neighborhood aromas flow thickly, of savoury fried dumplings, sickly sweet chungfah (flowers), incense and some days, when the breath of the Gods is strong, Gobi sand.
Spectators come and go, watermelon vendors, garbage collectors, granddads pushing babies, all amused by the tall white tornado kickers and or the praying mantis shadows on the wall that persist until the sun begins its descent.
“Exhaustion makes the best pillow.”
It sure does. But what use is an old Indian proverb if the neighborhood pyromaniac won’t let me sleep. The wee hours resound with the kaaaBOOOM of bunkerbuster firecrackers whose echoes rattle about the Songshan mountains like loose coins in a washing machine. I guess the Gods have heard it all before, but please, Mum, send me anti-bunkerbuster ear plugs in the next aid package!
Plane trees shade the sidewalk outside the Songshan Shaolin Shi Decheng Wushu Centre. Shade. Only water is more precious in August. The shade cast by these arbors determines the length of our course each day. In the morning, when the sun is low, our path is long and hard; in the afternoon when the sun is overhead it is short and hard.
The calisthenics to build strength and flexibility make even the fittest among us discover a new muscle everyday; one each for the splitz, turkey walking, bunny hopping, cartwheeling and the hand-standing against brick walls until our faces are tomatoes ripe for the picking. Sometimes our handlers order us to shunt each other wheelbarrow-like backwards and forwards along the footpath. Occasionally, the barrow dissolves into a heap of sweating, panting, sobbing flesh -- bloodied hands our badge of honour. No-one complains.
Slowly, painfully, my limbs reach higher up the trunk of the stretching tree. The threshold of pain is being pushed back. Once taut as piano wires, my muscle fibres are now tempered rubber bands. Next follows instruction in the 18 ‘classic movements’ - chi-bun gong - the nuts and bolts of Shaolin kung fu. They seem uncomplicated at first, but their simplicity belies the excruciating pain a novice experiences to achieve strength, speed, precision and endurance. Take ma-bu, the horse riding stance: squat, legs apart, lower your centre of gravity to a fighting position and hold for three minutes until your feet lose radio contact and you are overcome with uncontrollable shaking. That is ma-bu.
Training on the street puts this suffering in the public eye. The Number 2 bus passes every 15 minutes; its bored passengers look happy to see the tall white men dancing along the sidewalk outside the school, standing upside-down against its walls, or shaking like they have malaria at a squat beneath its trees.
I don’t know the name of the street but down it the neighborhood aromas flow thickly, of savoury fried dumplings, sickly sweet chungfah (flowers), incense and some days, when the breath of the Gods is strong, Gobi sand.
Spectators come and go, watermelon vendors, garbage collectors, granddads pushing babies, all amused by the tall white tornado kickers and or the praying mantis shadows on the wall that persist until the sun begins its descent.
“Exhaustion makes the best pillow.”
It sure does. But what use is an old Indian proverb if the neighborhood pyromaniac won’t let me sleep. The wee hours resound with the kaaaBOOOM of bunkerbuster firecrackers whose echoes rattle about the Songshan mountains like loose coins in a washing machine. I guess the Gods have heard it all before, but please, Mum, send me anti-bunkerbuster ear plugs in the next aid package!
34.8167° N, 134.6833° E
The Himeji Nada Fighting Festival,
Western Japan
34.8167° N, 134.6833° E
Himeji City Racecourse
There’s this place, see, where hard-working men gather to chew the fat, throw money to the wind and curse the Gods on a Sunday. It’s no secret that the people of Himeji city, in western Japan, love festivals. Weekend horseracing is no exception. Peruse your form guide, pick your winners and pray!
35.8333° S, 137.2500° E
KANGAROO ISLAND, SOUTH AUSTRALIA
There’s this place, see, way down in South Australia, where roads are long and lonely and roamed by animalia. Lighthouses stand forlorn on bleak and rocky points, and the old men who man them all have creaky joints. But these men are brave, oh indeed they are, to weather the Roaring Forties and white pointers from afar. Who come to Kangaroo Island to feast on juicy seals (kangaroos, on the other hand, get bottle fed for meals). So come to KI where signs point far and near, letter boxes are fridges and the locals love a beer.
18.0000° S, 179.0000° E
FIJI ISLANDS
There’s this place, see, way down in the South Pacific, where your room has a sandy floor and the sea laps at your door and men hunt wild pigs with dogs and knives and “bush rugby” is played with dried coconuts and days end with a tune on a beat up guitar and the clapping sounds of kava being passed. It’s not one place, but rather a group of places --islands with names like Kadavu, Taveuni, Ovalau, Vanua Levu and Viti Levu -- where time matters not and your smile is your currency.
0.7833° N, 127.3667° E
SPICE ISLANDS
Ternate and Tidore, Indonesia
There’s this place, see, way down in Indonesia, where men smoke tobacco through clove filters and women sell red sugar, cinnamon sticks and chilies that could put a man on the moon. It’s not exactly ONE place but a group of places, islands -- the Spice Islands -- and fifteen years ago I took a ferry one night that almost nearly didn’t reach its destination. But it did. And I live to tell the story in pictures. Of two volcano islands called Ternate and Tidore. It goes something like this....
