Giorgio Bettinelli e Pandemonium suonano “Barista” in RAI, nel 1977. Un Giorgio inedito, attore e cantante, in questa perla sconosciuta del tardo beat italiano. Giusto per ricordare, ancora una volta, questo poliedrico personaggio. Mi manchi, Mr. Vespa.
Here at Monkeyrockworld we have an eye for adventure. If said adventure is Italian made, and also has an humanitarian backbone, we like it even more. Before closing up a long, exciting year 2009, it’s my duty to present an incredible adventure that is being overtaken as we speak.
Matteo Tricarico is an Italian with balls of steel who decided to pedal his way from Saigon, Vietnam to his city of origin, Manfredonia, Puglia, Italy. In the footsteps of a Bettinellian reversed Odyssey, and this time, by bicycle and not motorbike, the aim of this trip is not just the sheer adventure of it, but also a fund raising for disabled children centers located all over the route.
The final itinerary will be dictated by the meetings in schools for disabled children along the way and it will culminate with the visit of the institute for disabled students’ rehabilitation, “Cesarani”, in Manfredonia, Italy. (more…)
Non ho mai avuto grande fiducia o apprezzamento per le donne in viaggio: spesso lente, sperdute, aggrappate a una Lonely Planet, SEMPRE incapaci di mantenere i miei ritmi o anche solo di alzarsi dal letto e inforcare lo zaino sulle spalle in maniera efficente (intendo: in circa 15 minuti)… quasi tutte, compresa Kit Yeng 
Ovviamente non si puo’ generalizzare, e una tantum capita di incontrare donne di spessore e, soprattutto, con qualcosa da dire.
Ho incontrato Valeria, la “Signora Tripmaitrop”, a Kuala Lumpur con suo marito Paolo e quando ho deciso di cominciare a fare qualche intervista per approfondire gli argomenti di viaggio, ho pensato di prendere Valeria come esempio di “travellin’ woman” capace di imprese di tutto rispetto.
Ma non parleremo dei suoi viaggi, dei posti che ha visto o di altre banalita’ da “Manuale del Viaggiatore Zaino in Spalla” (ma chi e’ quel coglione all’EDT che permette di tradurre dall’Inglese in maniera cosi’ orrenda le guide Lonely Planet? E poi c’e’ gente come me che rimane senza lavoro…)… Valeria ha accettato da gran donna di rispondere alle domande di una Scimmia Maliziosa all’inverosimile… il risultato poteva diventare lo script di un mondo movie alla “Emmanuelle:perche’ violenza alle donne?” o di un porno storico alla “Messalina Orgasmo Imperiale” , invece ci siamo limitati a dare dei preziosi consigli di viaggio per le donne, ragazze e ragazzine che come Valeria hanno voglia di vedere il nostro meraviglioso mondo.
E in una nuova tradizione monkeyrockworldiana, inauguriamo la serie delle videointerviste di culto…. ciak! motore! AZIONE!!!
MM- You travelled with your wife recently, and she seems like she is quite cool in crashing wherever, eat whatever, take the longest and most uncomfortable bus rides etc. Someone says you are very lucky as a husband, but what is the real truth? Are women compatible with the hard road, the hard way?
Paolo- Someone said: “if you love me, you do it!”
Well, not all the girls are able to travel like I did. In these years I have had a lot of experiences with female travellers but I lost them on the road because it is not easy to follow the “beast trips”.
Finally I have met Valeria who at last won the reality show “the beast tripmaitrop”
(more…)
Paolo Iannamico, better known in the travel world as PaoloTripmaitrop, or “viaggiabbestia” is the second person I wanted to interview. His brilliant website Paolotripmaitrop was a source of inspiration and when we finally met in Kuala Lumpur a little over a month ago, I found him to be exactly on my same wave lenght.
Having travelled extensively around Australia and Asia with an adventurous trip of West Africa under his belt too, Paolo is that kind of adventure traveller that you wouldn’t come across easily in Khao San Road cafes or the beaches of Phuket, someone brave enough to take a boat from Thailand to India and hitch hike in the Great Sandy Desert of Australia without a drop of water in times where these kinds of adventure weren’t commercialised all over the internet and easily overtaken by any regular john.
His motto is “the less you spend, the more you travel” and I can just agree 100% with that… (more…)
MM- Tell me the worst travel experience you witnessed where white people were involved.
Tripluca- In KL, I was with Fulvio, another young guy and the scary monkey living in my closet. Joking. Nothing horrible, I just hate those white losers who go to Thailand and can’t see the difference between bar girls and non-bar girls, treating all of them in the same way. It should not be so hard.
(more…)
I decided to start interviewing some people I admire because I want to understand if my ideas are shared by other noteworthy travellers.
The main question is: has the Travel World become lame or what? What people that have already been there before can tell me??
I randomly started this new section of Monkeyrockworld firing off a few questions to some Italian travellers I had the pleasure to meet in person and shared some real conversation with. I wanted to see if people from my same cultural background could share some of my travelling pet peeves. So here you go, with the first man:
Luca De Giglio, better known as Tripluca . This is not some sort of kiss ass reverential thing, Luca is the first simply because he submitted his answers on time, and first… eheheheheh.
Luca has been travelling the world for quite a while now, before almost settling down, let’s say, becoming a “Non-permanent Resident”. He managed to sustain his travels with an Online Business and created a very useful message board suited to Italian travellers. I discovered Luca while looking for information on an Australian working holiday visa in a very hot Chicago afternoon, back in 2006. Three years passed, I met the man twice, and we have exchanged some witty conversation. He also nominated me as his “Travelling Writer Son” and praised my efforts and writing more than once, but again, the fact he’s here first his not a kiss ass thing but just a mere coincidence. It was almost mandatory I interviewed him for the new era of Monkeyrockworld, ehehehe…
