SHACKED UP IN A SOUTH KOREAN SEX HOTEL
A few years had passed since I was unceremoniously booted out of South Africa and issued with a temporary ban. I was in high spirits about travelling again and started to scan the horizon for reasons to get the heck out of the UK. I figured that I need not look further when, on my birthday, I set fire to a mattress while falling asleep with a lit fag in hand. The well of dignity had run dry, and the fire was as good an excuse as any to vacate my current mind-numbing reality once again.
A diet of pills, powders and emotionally stunted men was no longer satisfying my thirst for novelty and unabated adventure. Plus, I was living at my mum’s place in Edinburgh at the time and she and my stepdad were starting to get irked at the sight of me decomposing on their sofa all day after benders. I was keen to get working on a new version of myself, one that everyone would like and respect; one that could continue living out there on the edge but that gave slightly more of a fuck about the trajectory of my existence.
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TROUBLED BEGINNINGS
By the time I was born in 1984, the bombing, balaclava-wearing, and road barricading otherwise known as the “Northern Irish Troubles” was in full swing. Like most children born and raised during a civil conflict, other realities outside of my own didn’t exist. For instance, it was completely normal to see soldiers with huge assault rifles rummaging through my mum’s handbag, checking for explosives every time we went shopping, or to see burnt-out cars and buses on our jaunts into Belfast or to overhear conversations about car bombs and ceasefires.
The dubiously named “Troubles” was a civil war between the Catholic IRA and the British Army along with Protestant Loyalist paramilitary groups. The conflict lasted thirty unrelenting years and like most conflicts was rooted in events that took place long ago. It was a geo-political conflict fought under the guise of religion; a conflict so fundamentally complex that attempting to reduce it to a few sentences is literally impossible.
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ARGENTINA; A FIRE INSIDE
He swung round and lashed out at me violently, but luckily I managed to dodge him. By that stage, my friends had arrived on the scene and an almighty street brawl broke out. It was 31st December 2002 in a working-class suburb of Buenos Aires. New Year was supposed to be a time of celebration, but Argentina had just experienced its worst economic crisis in recorded history. The rage and frustration at the country’s politicians had been bubbling under the surface for some time and could no longer be contained. Add high-grade Bolivian cocaine and cheap booze to an already testosterone-fueled gang of twenty-something-year-old males and you can imagine the chaos that ensued. What the hell was I doing there you’re probably asking; a Northern Irish teenager thousands of miles from home getting caught up in South American street brawls. Trust me, I knew I was out of my depth, but cocaine you see has a way of making you feel invincible. Besides, my original plan had looked somewhat different, but fate had its own ideas.
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FEAR AND LOATHING IN ULAANBAATAR
Brought up on Black Beauty and a weekly subscription of Horse and Pony magazine, I’d long fantasized about galloping across the vast Mongolian steppe on horseback. I’d ridden horses from a young age and although I ditched my once favourite hobby for boys and booze in my teens and twenties, it still remained one of my biggest loves.
Ultimately, it was my experience living as an ex-pat in Korea that would galvanise my decision to travel to Mongolia. South Korea is a typical densely populated east Asian country. Most cities have populations in their millions and the heavy air pollution is a daily reality. After almost three years spent living and working in Seoul, I had started to crave wide open spaces clean air and escape from the crowds. I’d already decided to go to Lake Baikal in Siberia, on my way back to Europe, which was just a “stone’s throw” from Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia’s capital so in the end, it worked out nicely.
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