The Golden Rules (Rockstar etiquette abroad)

When visiting the pristine environmental conservation sanctuaries across our tourist friendly homeland I once received esteemed advice from arguably the best man in the ecotourism industry.

Young and bashful Boyd Varty was maneuvering his Landcruiser down the acacia clad avenues of eastern Mpumalanga with the skill and finesse of Lewis Hamilton when he spoke this truism. He spat out the grass seedling that perpetually sat on his bottom lip, lowered the brim of his leather hat to deflect the eye-squintingly bright setting African sun, glanced over his taught yoga sculptured shoulder and spoke; "Gavin my man, when you come here, you take nothing but photos and you leave nothing but footprints..."

It is highly likely that I will never be able to emulate this great man's achievements or oratory skill but maybe I can pass on some advice as I learnt it.

Golden Rule #1:

Coming from the economic mighty mouse our beloved tip of southern Africa you travel with the knowledge that our Rand is as strong in international markets as an under-poured cocktail and sometimes just as ineffective.

Assuming then that you haven't traded in our lifestyle of hot climates and hot girls to chase queens or dead presidents in places where the only thing colder than their summer is their female population you are faced with two travel options:

1.) Go 'baller' it for exactly one night in a place where even police transport is made up of murcielagos and the culinary aspect of the included meal in the hotel room price is spawned from Caspian see sturgeon fish, or

2.) You can spread out the power of your buffalo bills across a more economically suitable country. A country like Thailand...

Now after numerous fact finding mission, accompanied by my rockstar editor&chief and his blonde ladyboy travel companion, we came up with some interesting price conversions.

Okay my rudimentary excel table isn't going to headline any major presentations but it shows the facts. The night club mark up on the price of beer is 500% whereas on a bottle of something it is less than 100%. However, if you are going to drink singles or doubles all night you will end up paying (30 shots in a bottle) 4500 baht for the bottle which is 4 times the wholesale price. If you choose to drink beer all night you will be slotting 5 ice cold green ones for every bottle of whiskey your dance companion drinks...

The prices above apply to foreign brands (smironoff and johnny blue or red) in a club that caters for locals. The two variants are the establishment and the brand. The local brands are far cheaper, except drinking thai rice whiskey all night may find you waking up bleeding from your eyes, and in places that cater for the foreign market the prices are even higher, like 250baht a beer...

Thanks sweetheart, and while you're there grab us a bucket of ice!

I fear running the risk of sounding like one of those guys that advocate only drinking cane all night and then posing for a photo with it but in truth there isn't really a choice: When in Thonglor do as the Thonglorians and buy yourself a bottle...

Golden Rule #2:

When imbibing large amounts of social faculty restricting liquids you must remain mindful of the fact that you aren't swaggering around your home town. This is an away game for you from the start, and as the visiting team must adhere to the local rules.

The obvious advantage of not knowing anyone there allows you to approach the dance-floor with less inhibition than a thai street lady approaches a taxi door but the more glaring disadvantage is that when you get surrounded by all on duty security personnel and managements undercover henchmen you're in trouble.


My previously celebrated traveling partner got placed under suspicion of carrying a concealed weapon whilst preening himself in the men's bathroom. He will staunchly claim that his accuser witnessed him to unloading and reloading his 'guns' in the mirror, (yes he does that) whereas retrospection makes me think he was just returning his fro-comb into his back pocket.

So what can I tell you when 8 guys accuse you of carrying a knife in a club, in a country infamous for a swift death sentence and a city renowned for kangaroo punishment? Plead innocence like the virgin mary and then agree to be escorted to a safe-zone for the required knife search by the manager and the manger alone.

Play your cards right and you might turn the situation in him buying you guilt drinks for the rest of your stay.

Golden Rule #3:

This one is very straightforward. That genre of movies that Taratino is so fond of that portrays every short asian person as being equipped with lethal fighting skills from any one variety of martial arts is not far from the truth.

If someone wants to fight? Let them; just make sure you're not the opponent. We witnessed some intra-local bloodshed outside one night. Unless you're the real life character on which Blade was based it wasn't pretty.

Our chaperone that night had a friend involved and later told us that the fight continued in the parking lot of the local hospital where it flared up again later. Eventually the police broke it up with warning shots.

The stuff you learnt in Roeland street 3 afternoons a week is for the ring at Cape Town glam fighting events...nothing else.

There are various other rules pertaining to taxi rides, bar fines, bar girls, street food and ugly foreign backpacking girls from Europe but if you don't learn those yourselves traveling wouldn't be any fun...