I spent the night thinking of cancelling my flight to Mexico City and going somewhere else instead. 

I couldn’t stay in America a day longer, my three month visa-free status was up and I had to go, but I was having second thoughts about Mexico. 

Mexico was the obvious choice, if only because the flight was cheap and it was next door. I was feeling anxious about it though. 

Mexico felt like a true foreign land. 

The night ran out on me and without an attractive alternative presenting itself, I grabbed my bag, checked out and jumped in the shuttle to LAX. 

The Kiwi couple sitting next to me in the shuttle were also going to Mexico City, on the same flight and staying in the same hostel. We hadn’t met in the Venice hostel but they seemed nice enough. 

I was still half asleep, backpack between my legs, swaying gently from side to side in the rhythm of the shuttle ride when I noticed Kiwi girlfriend giving me glances. 

‘Hm?’ 

I looked at her and she gave me a cute little smile. 

‘Eh?’ 

The shuttle bus started bouncing up and down as we sped up on the highway. I laid my head back on the headrest and stared out the window. It was early in the morning and the sun was still down. 

Kiwi girlfriend placed her hand on my leg and whispered some question to me. 

’Fuck! Seriously?’ 

Kiwi girlfriend liked me. 

Kiwi girlfriend liked me, even as her boyfriend sat fiddling with his camera equipment right next to her. 

I didn’t not like Kiwi girlfriend, I just wasn’t too bothered, and I was still in love with Bright. She was Aussie girlfriend, I missed Aussie girlfriend. 

I was hungry too. Too hungry to start seriously contemplating anything other than dirty American calories. 

I was cool in my replies to her whispered questions and her hands stayed in her lap and off my leg for the rest of the ride. 

These new travel mates were odd but they did give me a sense of security, a very intangible loose sense of security. I felt better that I would have people I knew in Mexico even if I had only just met them. 

At the airport I ate a big meal and watched the planes spin around on the tarmac. 

There was something shitty about this airport. I didn’t like it. In fact there was something shitty about every American airport I had ever travelled through. 

I walked around the shitty airport for a couple of hours before getting on the plane that would take me to the United Mexican States. 

‘We’re going down!’ a voice inside stated as I boarded the suspicious looking plane, ‘We’re going downtown MEXICO CITY!’ I screamed back. 

An OCD cycle kicked in. 

‘We’re going down!’ 

‘Downtown MEXICO CITY!’ 

‘We’re going down!’ 

‘Downtown MEXICO CITY!’ 

‘We’re going down!’ 

‘Downtown MEXICO CITY!’ 

I walked the aisle and looked for my seat whilst fighting an internal war. 

The interior of the Alaska Airlines plane was old, very old and dusty and dirty and fucking anxiety inducing. 

’If the inside of the plane looks like it hasn’t been updated since the 80’s, what the fuck does that mean for the engines? The fuel tanks? The instruments? The nuts and bolts that hold everything together?’ 

As we took off from Los Angeles, the bad feeling in my gut only worsened. The plane banked across the Pacific and felt unstable, its banking much too enthusiastic for my liking. 

An hour later we were flying over the golden brown deserted areas of inner Mexico and my mind was finally at ease. The beauty of the landscape below took the edge off. If we were going down, at least I’d have a beautiful grave. 

The plane swung uncomfortably close to Mexico City’s skyscrapers while on approach and the anxiety returned. 

‘For fucksake. Land. LAND. FUCKING LAND.’ 

It did. 

            …

I had heard horror stories about Mexico City taxis. I had pre-booked a taxi in Los Angeles so I wouldn’t have to deal with any bullshit or kidnappings. 

I was starting to think that I had made a mistake. My taxi driver had pulled into a random parking lot soon after leaving the airport and exited the car. 

He just left, walking out of the damn lot. 

‘Free car for me? Taking a smoke break are ya? Gang time, gang coming? Siesta, need a siesta? What the fuck?’ 

Five minutes later, he returned with no gun or gang and I arrived at my hostel in the center of the city safe and sound. 

It was probably all paranoia. I was in a state of hypervigilance. It was a state that would continue for the first few days. 

At the hostel I ran into the Kiwis again. 

I had barely checked in before I was off on a walking tour of the city with the odd couple and a wispy hostel worker dude acting as a guide. 

The Kiwis frantically clicked away at their DSLR cameras while I just looked around with my eyes. I wasn’t much interested in it all, I was bored and hot and having nicotine withdrawal symptoms. 

We walked and walked in the burning sunshine, the Kiwis did their clicking and the guide zipped in information about our surroundings, this went on for about half an hour. 

The 30 minute mark was my breaking point, I needed my life fuel. I mentioned the need to the guide who happily opened up a little black cardboard box plastered with death warnings. I slid a stick out and lit up. 

The London Underground’s distinct smell, a smell you can visualize when it hits you, a smell of black coal and smoke, of death and disease, that’s what this cigarette tasted like. I still finished it of course, for nicotine was nicotine and half my being was fueled by the stuff. 

The long tour finally ended at a bar overlooking the historic centre of Mexico City. 

Kiwi girlfriend was back to touching me. I didn’t mind it as much anymore. We ate insects and drank flamed up shots as the flag of Mexico danced atop her flag pole outside the window and the busy mass of the Zócalo circus spun below us. 

It was a fun welcome, even if my throat was burnt for the next two weeks. 

                                                       _

The first few weeks in the city were uneventful. I didn’t see the odd Kiwi couple again and found nobody of any real interest to explore the place with. 

I met some potential each night while drinking on the rooftop bar but all potential that was leaving the next day. 

My only memorable outing was to Chapultepec Castle with a dormmate who I was convinced was in a deep state of clinical depression. 

The familiar feeling of road blues had kicked in. It was shit. I had to do something to change it. 

I was seriously considering taking the flight to Toronto I had booked as an onward ticket head fake for border security. 

The morning of the flight I booked a taxi and was up on the rooftop smoking and waiting for it before at the last moment deciding, ‘Fuck it!’ … 

I went to sleep and gave Mexico one more chance. 

I moved to a new hostel soon after and met a ragtag group of British, Kiwi, American and Canadian travellers. From then on Mexico was different. The road blues disappeared and the fun began. 

_-_-_-_-_-_

Severely drunk. I karaoke. Tequila head, blood pumping. Nicotine Man. 

I karaoke. 

Puff puff puff away in the large hall full of Mexicans. 

Blonde Kiwi girl with the pretty face and the big boobs likes me. Her sister hates me. 

English girl is very drunk. 

The American boy just fell over. 

I dance. I karaoke. The stage is mine, blonde Kiwi, English girl cling to me. 

I karaoke. I dance. I dance. I karaoke. 

I lead the room, 60? 70? More? Mexicans! The giant dancing snake forms. Cigarettes and bottles of booze. Music. Grab a waist. 

Oh she’s hot. My dick, someone grabbed it. It was her. She’s hot. I’m drunk. I’m leading the snake. I am the snake. God snake, snake god. God of All!!! 

I karaoke.

_-_-_-_-_-_

What the fuck was going on? 

I didn’t know. 

Just one night of many. 

Mexico City was fun. 

We somehow found the way back to our hostel every morning, each of us falling asleep, clumps of dehydrated human clay. 

After this ragtag group dismantled I decided against forming any more alliances in Mexico. 

I didn’t want a group, I was sick and tired of the process. Instead of any more of that, I decided to take over the hostel rooftop and make it my domain. My territory. 

The rooftop was a large area with a panoramic view of the skyline of Mexico City. 

I spent most of every day there. 

Guests came and went. The workers did too. 

Mexico City chased it’s tail. I sat in my chair. 

Night would come and there was no shortage of drink and drugs to keep the night until morning. 

I loved my rooftop paradise. The first hostel’s rooftop in Mexico was alright but nothing compared to this one. It had some mystical Feng Shui that encouraged wild behaviour. 

That wild behaviour got tiring after a while though and my mind had begun to shift from thinking south to thinking east or west from where I was. 

The thought of doing something different was forming in my mind. 

I originally planned to carry on travelling through Central and South America but I needed something new, a culture vastly different from what I had experienced before. 

All the travellers I met were heading the same way, why not go another? 

Asia? Korea? 

I made the decision and with that decision made I allowed myself one more week of rooftop fun before swapping the Americas for Asia. 

The last big night of drinking and drug taking on the rooftop began when one of my dormmates, an Australian, burst through the door and woke me up, “We got some charlie on the roof, come and make yourself known!” he screamed. 

As the lines began, another Aussie, a big bald and now frantically speaking Aussie was abusing my ear about the girl he was in love with. He went on and on, explaining she lived in Canada, that he was hoping to move there, he was going to get a job so that he could be with her and that she was the first girl he ever confessed to. 

Charlie Aussie talking even faster showed me his journal and told me about a meditation retreat he had just finished in California, “It’s free, free accommodation, free food and all you have to do is meditate most of the day.” 

After the eighth line I felt a sudden shot of pain in the left side of my head. I went to the bathroom for a minute to make sure I wasn’t having a stroke, when I returned I excused myself from line nine. 

A few days later I booked a ticket to Seoul. The plan was now set. I would spend a few months travelling through Asia and head south until I reached Australia. 

       _ 

It had been a slow day, with delicious homemade Mexican sandwiches, the usual cigarette and coke diet (the cola not the white stuff) and anxious thoughts about my debit card – the only one I had – not working. 

I had seen them a few times up on the roof smoking hash, we engaged in small talk sometimes but no real commitment to connect was ever made. 

They were among my least favourite people to find on my rooftop. 

I sat down on one of the chairs in the sun and was eager for some hashish. 

He could have been cast as a Californian skater until he opened his mouth and the soft southern English accent vanished those thoughts. He rolled a hash joint and inhaled deeply, looking at it in his hands before passing it to me. 

I took three deep inhales and three long exhales before passing it to his friend. 

“How was the church?” I asked, remembering they had told me the day before they planned to go. 

“We didn’t go, seen enough churches.” English Californian Skater mumbled. 

The conversation was dim and uncomfortable. It prickled the skin. It was taking real force for all of us to get the words out. 

“So where you guys going next?” I questioned them, trying to force them to drop the cool display and show something of themselves to me. 

“Going home, back to uni, what about you?” he said, looking up from his pile of hash, unsure whether to ask the question. 

“Going to Korea, going to stay in a tent on a rooftop.” I said. 

I readied myself for the questions to pick up, then he asked what nobody else had yet, “You looking forward to it?” 

I was.

I was looking forward to something different. Mexico had thankfully turned out to be a lot more fun than the first two weeks had suggested. It was a special time, but I felt if I continued south I would regret it for some reason. My great Central and South American adventure was waiting out there in the future but not now. I just had a feeling, Asia needed to be next. 

And Korea was my choice for my first Asian nation. 

The next night I was on the rooftop, backpack prepared, smoking excitedly and looking out over the ledge for my taxi to arrive. 

It finally appeared and I was ushered into it by the receptionist at the hostel, who was tired and a little confused from staying up late to wait for it for me. 

The taxi was an older one, as I got inside I searched the car for the telltale signs of horror ahead. Despite finding them I made it to the airport and the next day to the something different I wanted. 

                                _

Throughout the last few weeks in America, everyone had the same things to say when I told them I was going to Mexico next. 

“Why the fuck are you going to Mexico?” 

“Keep your wits about you.” 

“Haha, you’re a gringo, you’ll definitely be a gringo!” 

I found most of the stereotypes and fears unfounded though. 

The laid back attitude was in contrast to the US. Money wasn’t the dominant currency, more trust and mutual respect. 

I had experienced it many times. 

The local grocery store owner who encouraged me to take whatever I needed when my card wouldn’t work in the ATM that day. 

The hostels where I stayed not charging me for weeks at a time. I just kept staying over the original bookings and paid whenever I ran into the people who worked there. 

I met some really sweet Mexicans. 

I did enjoy my time there. 

Mexico City had a distinct atmosphere too, I can never really compare it to anywhere else. It smelt unique, looked unique. 

Something hard to capture in words. 

There was a huge taco on fire outside the city, 

   constantly burning, 

fueled by tequila and sweat. 

There, that’s the best description I can think of.