Monkeyrockworld

We left Matteo Tricarico in India, during his Travel For Aid odissey across Asia into Europe… after a short stint in Dubai, Matteo is now in Iran, a fascinating country full of culture, deserts and very hospitable people…

Before beginning this journey, I read on the internet diaries of other cyclists who travelled through Iran in the last ten years and their words reassured me since they all spoke highly of the kindness, hospitality and friendliness of Iranian population. So far, but I’m pretty sure that I will not change my mind; I can join in exalting these features of the Iranians. In the last eighteen months of travelling I could recall hundreds of examples people’s kindness and courtesy, regardless of the country where I was, I believe that in the case of Iran the “surprise” is due to negative image that the Western media give of this country. It does not seem possible that the citizens of an anti-western and traditionalist Islamic theocracy, where the Sharia is the law of reference, can be warm, friendly and even expansive towards Western travellers, who are supposed to be “infidels” trying to corrupt the local youth. The surprise to find so open and sympathetic people towards foreigners is the result of bias, combined with the prejudice, which comes from American propaganda, that  would like to submit to the Westerner rules this country that, among other things, is a  large producers of oil and natural gas and therefore it is to be stripped of these natural wealth … (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…)

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”
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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…)

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…)

Yes, I know, it’s totally gay to put a picture of yourself with your girlfriend as a post image, but I’m actually very happy to be back home. My second home, whatever it means, this spot in Penang state it’s definitely a welcoming one for me. And I feel at home. Six months of Australian adventures and work, I thought I might have wanted to stay longer but I found out, regardless being a decent country, Australia is not for me. Too easy, too English/Western oriented, too quiet for me. What I mostly missed was Asian chaos and beauty, the cultural differences, my own struggle for understanding, the cruising around on half-broken motorbikes, the insecurity, the fact I try to understand, and I don’t. It’s all beautiful. And she is of course beautiful too, as you can see. (more…)

I finally had the chance to get out of Darwin for one very well deserved day off to explore Litchfield national Park, just an hour drive south. As I was driving on the highway, passing huge featureless plains, sandy red roads and impressive termite mounds springing from the ground like weird tumors, all of those traveling sensations I had for two long months lurked back into my soul, and as Hendrix put it once, seriously “I know what I want but I just don’t know!”. (more…)