How to Hippy Holiday

Me, when I used to wear waistcoasts in public.

These days I'm a Dalston punk fan with a New York rap twist, but once upon a time, I was a young man lost. And so I became a hippy. London was all getting "a bit much," so me and my girlfriend packed up and were ready to go. My idea was: "There's a party on the Black Sea in a few months" and "Morocco seems cool." With that extensive planning behind us, we proceeded to this place by the sea where boats depart. After hanging out there for 24 hours (and the ferry staff denying us entry because we were drunk) we were off on a hippy adventure that was to last for the next few months. Having made a decision that many others might consider this uncool or idiotic, I thought it would be appropriate to distill the consequences of this mistake into a list of wisdom. So here is my guide to going on a hippy holiday. If you're not a girl, hitchhike with one

This is the most obvious piece of advice I have to offer but there are probably a few n00bs out there that don't understand yet. Men dig cute girls standing by the side of the road wanting to be taken somewhere. Man's ultimate flaw is there to be exploited, either by hoes or by his bros (through the medium of hoes). I was getting around with a fairly attractive blonde, so it was an obvious call for her to be standing by the motorway with her thumb up in the air whilst I sat in the bushes reading a book. When a car stopped, I would leap out and get my ass in that car despite whatever protestations the driver may have had about only being able to fit one person in his car. Hitchhiking is free and you meet good people doing it. This one guy drove us half the length of Spain because it was Ramadamamanamam and he was feeling altruistic. He also gave us a Boney M CD. Lose your standards

Being middle class as you are you probably have standards. Standards when it comes to the food you eat, how you get around, the things you feel comfortable doing and your personal cleanliness. Forget about that shit. All of it. It's just not appropriate in these here circumstances. If you decide that you're gonna be saving your pennies, certain protocol that you would choose to follow back home will need to be left by the wayside. Eating out of bins is totally fine if you are travelling through cities. Clean bins behind chain stores are obviously the only ones you should go near. In London Pret a Manger locks up their unwanteds, but lots of other towns on this continent have less of a problem with feral nomadic kids and don't lock their bins. Make use of what they have. See it as a gift from the God of holidays. I would also say that, if you are attending any sort of psy-trance party in the middle of Ukraine, people will invariably ask for your participation in something that may seem unfamiliar. Just remember: "I'm on holiday, and standards have no place on a holiday," and you won't feel a thing. Leave as soon as you have the idea

Preparation is the enemy when it comes to going on holiday. It's all well and good going away for a period of time and having everything you need: pots, pans, a towel, a tent, some Calor gas, money, water, passport, etc. Actually, it isn't all well and good. It's stupid. If you are going any distance worth going you don't wanna be carrying ANYTHING. By the time my bag was light enough that I could haul it around on my back for 50 miles a day, it contained lots of seeds (to grow sprouts to eat); a T-shirt and a pair of shorts; various hippy accoutrements and spices; an old cereal box and a sharpie (to manufacture progressively smaller hitching signs); a bowl; the Qur'an; and a sleeping bag. So actually, none of the stuff I had was very useful at all, but I can't imagine having a tent would have made it any easier. Hippies are your friends

Granted, on a bus in a city, hippies are not what you want. Their hair smells, the rest of them smells and their aversion to war and the like gets pretty tiresome pretty quick (because the rest of us love child soldiers ripping each others heads off, right?) but when you are living like a homeless person THEY ARE YOUR PEOPLE. You are a part-timer, but anything useful you need to learn, you will learn off these guys. I met one called Giuseppe who hadn't touched money in six years. Traveling with him was cheap. His basic lesson was some complex combination of the previous two points. It will also get to the point where you think, "Hey, my life before this was so empty and devoid of meaning. I'm going to let my hair dread, get an obscure Hindu symbol tattooed on my back and bless everything I smoke." This is the dangerous point. Good luck returning to the civilized world, weirdo. Don't spend

As soon as you start feeling sorry for yourself and realize that you haven't washed in a number of days and are getting ill you will probably consider just going to stay in a hotel for the night to refresh. Once you do this you're fucked. You've broken the fourth wall and you'll never get it back and when you meet travelers they will be polite to you but deep down they'll be laughing. They are laughing because you suck. Have money by all means (it will come in handy when you need to bribe whoever you may need to bribe) but use it in emergencies and not as some sort of all-purpose, everyday bartering tool that has developed out of necessity over the last thousand years. Come on, who knows better? History or you? When in Rome…

When I was in Rome, I ate pizza but I didn't sodomize any young boys because that is what Romans USED to do. I also didn't visit the Vatican. Likewise, in Ukraine, they eat brains. There's no point exploring the world if you aren't going to explore. Upon arriving in Morocco, it wasn't immediately obvious what the Moroccans did, but I quickly learned to swindle westerners out of money and smoke lots of mountain plants. If you arrive in any country in the state I did, you won't be accepted as an equal but as a stain on the face of humanity, so you've got to roll with it and try not to offend. Happy hippy holidaying.