Monkeyrockworld

I had been expecting this for a long time, being unable to check it out last year because I was lost somewhere in Java. Two friends were staying here with us, a French and a Chinese. Plus an Italian and another Chinese, yes, it sounds like one of those jokes where people are about to jump off a plane or something equally silly. Well, the whole experience was as funny as a joke, by the way. We started taking a walk around my neighborhood around 3 pm, and we stumbled across a full open field full of people running amok, some pierced up for good, some others in the process of being savagely saucered, and others just praying and preparing for the massive feast of religion and craziness. (more…)

My connection with Daniele started randomly over the internet when a few weeks before embarking on my Chinese teaching adventure, I was googling and researching about Punk in China. His blog “Secondo Me” was the first search result, and he was the first to tell me a few random things about life in Beijing and North east China.

Almost three years passed, me and Daniele had the chance to meet several times over different kinds of mouthwatering bei cang, discuss several topics, and sample several kinds of lung melting Chinese alcohol. Since the first time, I was really captured by the mental intensity of this out of the ordinary character, currently a Phd researcher in the prestigious People’s University in Beijing, writer and academic publisher disguised for a cheap ass punk with holes in his shirt and shoes and a taste for cheap, oily street food. In three words, my kind of guy.

Since then I’ve been an avid consumer of his excellent blogs and have tried to keep in touch as much as I could over the years… and finally decided to show you how much you can learn from this man sending him a few intense questions. For the sake of internet communication brevity, we didn’t engage in writing an encyclopedia, but what follows deserves to be tattooed on your brains with psychedelic ink. Enjoy. (more…)

Malaysia has a different ethnic background constituted of Malays, Indians and Chinese. Each one of these groups have their own celebrations, calendars, holidays, parties and religious activities. It’s easy to understand that, for the random traveler or the long term expatriate, the country has always something on offer almost every week. Especially in Penang, where I currently live, things are even taken to the next level. (more…)

MM- You spent several years in SE Asia, can you briefly tell me, according to your perspective and experience, the best and the worst side every of the ones you lived in and visited has to offer.

The places that are the biggest adventures are those that have the least modern conveniences and comforts. So this is always the conundrum. Do you want to live like a human being or do you want the big adventure? You often can’t have both. Taiwan and Korea are extremely developed, so less adventure. Cambodia and Vietnam are still raw, so it’s exciting, but you have to deal with bad internet service, higher crime rates, dirty food…a lot of potentially uncomfortable situations and conditions. In Cambodia in particular, you want a local experience but local things are often so undeveloped or ill-equipped that you wind up going to foreigner things which cost as much as they do back home but with half the quality. People think living in a poor country is cheap. It’s not necessarily. For one thing, most products are imported, so they cost more than they do back home.

Thailand is by far the best place to train. There are 90,000 professional boxers in Thailand and probably 1,000 gyms with professional training and international fighting experience. The cost of living is also very low in Thailand. BUT bring your own money. There is nearly no way to earn money in Thailand. as a fighter you will some times get as little as $90 for a fight. As a teacher, most jobs only pay about $700 USD a month. (more…)

Antonio Graceffo is an Italian American adventure writer and martial arts enthusiast who left a Wall Street finance background to literally dive into Asian adventures and languages.

I discovered him by chance while surfing the internet in Australia, and I decided that such an interesting character needed some space in the Monkeyrockworld. Adventure writer, martial art fighter and TV host, Antonio spent the best part of this decade living and studying Asian cultures and languages, abandoning a pretty well-heeled New York background. The myths and mysteries about him are all unveiled in this exclusive interview.

MM- Hi Antonio, please briefly introduce yourself to our readers unaware of the fact you are an unstoppable adventure machine…

My parents are Sicilian. I was born in New York. I grew up speaking English, Spanish and Italian. I started martial arts and boxing when I was 12. my first martial arts teacher was a returning Vietnam war veteran named H. David Collins who ran the American school of empty hand fighting in Tennessee. It was 1979. He was way ahead of his time. He taught us boxing and kickboxing as part of martial art and set me on my career as a fighter,. At that time, nearly no one in the martial arts community was doing real fighting. There were always stories of black belts getting beat by street fighters and boxers. Today, things are much different. But at that time, even guys like Chuck Norris, never had any real fights, just point fighting. (more…)

This is amazing. Check 15Malaysia for more great Malaysian film making.

A few months ago I was making pizzas in Australia, one of the many shit jobs I had to collect money while on the road. Darwin has a big Asian community, and very often I was serving and observing them coming into the restaurant: Indonesian women married to Australian men, an Indian doctor who loved pizza very much, Papuan people who totally abandoned the life in the most savage country in the world and, of course, Chinese. My favorite kind. Why? I don’t know. I am just always fascinated by those features, those almond eyes, those movements. And it was quite weird after one year in China, a Malaysian Chinese girlfriend and a basic understanding of their language, see them almost perfectly integrated in the Australian society. (more…)