Fear and Loathing in Vang Vieng

There comes an occasional time when the people you are meeting are less interesting than the book you happen to be reading. At times like this, whether you're in one of civilisation's last outposts or in the bath at home, it's essential to one's sanity to plug into the lyrical driven-beat vision of the Mighty Fall, who's music and lyrics steamroll over all things false, insubstantial or inconsequential...



Glam Racket

Stop eating all that chocolate

Eat salad instead

In fact, you're a half-wit from somewhere or other

Why don't you bog off back to Xanadu in Ireland or wherever it is

Glam Rick

You cut my income by one third

You are working on a video project

You hog the bathroom

And never put your hand in your pocket

Glam Rick

You're Glam Rick

You hang around with camera crews in shell-suits

You lecture on sweets

You read Viz comic

Glam Rick

You're paging Malaga in Spain

But can't read between the lines

Your price, cut down is amazing

You're one of the best songs I've ever heard by Stephen King

Your Clearasil produces Richthofen rashes

Sideboard-like on mountains

You post out sixty-page computer printouts

On the end of the world's forests

All the above will come back to you

And confirm you as a damn pest

Glam Rick
You're Glam Rick

Vang Vieng is a Glam Rick convention. The less interesting their utterances, the louder their voices. I can't stand to have another conversation about how long I'm travelling for and where I've been with someone who won't remember it, or me, tomorrow.

I'm going to get a badge instead: Deaf mute. Manchester. Three weeks.

The music they tolerate or even like, such as the pumping Bee Gees and techno at the riverside bars, is unlistenable most of the time. Yesterday at the bar near the crag the drunken tubers were wiggling to horrible beats for hours, apparently enjoying themselves. Just like drunken Brits in Benidorm. This has always been a mystery to me.

Mind you, last night I bumped into the two refreshingly quiet and intelligent Swedish girls who were on the kayaking trip a couple of days ago. Hours of decent conversation! They don't seem very interested in most other people here either, and have a neat trick of pretending not to understand anybody they don't like. I think I'll pretend to be Swedish from now on.

Meanwhile, news from Fall-land: new album out in February, which Glam Ricks everywhere will fail to understand and find unlistenable. But that will come back to them, and confirm them as damn pests!