Snakes on a Plain: the weird life and foolish death of the 'Snakeman of Sisaket'

If you want wack-jobs wont to live in small spaces with fierce critters, then it's hard to beat amazing Thailand. In the land of the Scorpion Queen and the Centipede King, one would hardly choke on one's cornflakes to learn there is indeed a 'Snakeman', from the dry dusty plains of unlovely Sisaket province in darkest Isaan. This one from the vaults originally ran in the Sunday Telegraph magazine (UK) and South China Morning Post's Postmagazine. It was later picked up by National Geographic channel, who coaxed me back to Sisaket to be part of filming for a piece on the 'Snakeman of Sisaket' for its 'Hunter/Hunted' series (Series 1: Victims of Venom ... see it here http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/wild/videos/victims-of-venom/ ) While filming a segment in the Red Cross snake farm in Bangkok, the gung ho serpent wrangler dropped a fiesty cobra on the floor inches from my feet. It then slithered through my legs before he pinned it with his snake-wrangling rake and restored it to its plastic box piled upon dozens of other snakes in plastic boxes waiting to be milked of their venom. I'm all for getting deep into the story, but a cobra bite to feel what the Snakeman felt before he popped his clogs would have been going too far, even by my usual silly standards ...

PHAO BUACHAN SMILES through a web of wrinkles, spits a jet of bright red betel juice through what's left of her crimson teeth, and regards me with a rheumy eye. 'I can't speak about my son without begging his permission,' she says. 'I'm scared the snakes will come, and they'll be angry.'

ELIZABETH TAYLOR'S UNDERSTUDY ON THE
SET OF 'CLEOPATRA'

She hands me a candle and a stick of smouldering incense, and we pick our way through a building site at the back of her wooden house to a white shrine dappled with shards of coloured glass and tiny mirrors. She nods. I kneel, mumble a few words and deposit the candle and incense in a jar of sand. Her prayer is longer, a rambling entreaty punctuated by slow-motion prostrations. When she's finally finished she stands, smiles again and says, 'Now we may speak.'

Her son, Boonreung Buachan, was the 'Snakeman of Sisaket'. In 1998, he had a fleeting taste of international fame when he appeared in the Guinness Book of World Records for spending seven days in an enclosure with venomous snakes.

Before and after setting the record - which still stands - Boonreung made a living by performing throughout Thailand. In his hour-long shows, he would pluck cobras from wooden boxes and drape them round his neck, stroking and kissing them as he kept up a steady patter of cobra lore. He would milk their venom, letting people get close as the deadly, viscous liquid oozed from scimitar fangs.

The sense of danger was heightened for those who knew him because Boonreung was epileptic and prone to seizures. While his friends say he never had an attack during a show, the risk weighed heavily on the snakeman's mind.

International attention was to come his way just once more. Unfortunately, he wouldn't be around to enjoy it. Three months ago, Boonreung, aged 34, was bitten by one of his pet cobras while putting on a show for three tourists. He collapsed in the dirt beneath his parents' house in Ping Pong village, a parched corner of one of Thailand's poorest provinces. By the time he was taken to hospital, his respiratory system had all but shut down. He never recovered.

STICKS AND STONES WILL BREAK MY BONES
BUT SNAKES WILL NEVER HURT ME

'A lot of people came after he died, but since then, no one,' says Phao, in her village of Ping Pong, 640km northeast of Bangkok. 'I'm glad you've come. I don't want the world to forget about my boy.'

The Buachans, while far from wealthy, became the envy of the poor farming village because of the success of their son. Their humble house is a palace compared with some nearby. Phao says she knew her second son was special from the start. 'When he was born, he had a patch of scales on his waist,' she says. Psoriasis, perhaps? 'No, no,' she insists. 'These were real scales - like a snake.'

Mad Men, Dog Days and Dum-Dums

My latest contribution to the South China Morning Post's 'Rewind' column, which looks back at a movie, book and album that share a common thread ... this week's theme was 'days', and the obvious suspect for film was Dog Day Afternoon.


On a sagging shelf in my dad’s dark and mysterious study, past the fraying macramé, the Ludlums, yoga manuals and The Joy of Sex, perched the tattered twin piles of his MAD magazines.

My dad favoured reading them on the porcelain throne, and so like father, like son. I’d grab a handful of dog-eared issues from the bottom of the pile and slope off to the loo, settling in to read my favourites, Dave Berg’s ‘The Lighter Side Of’’, ‘Spy vs Spy’, ‘Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions’ and which ever movie was being lampooned by Madison Avenue’s most subversive talents.

This put me in the somewhat post-modern position of having read, often dozens of times, the MAD satires of many classic 70s films years before I would be allowed to watch them or be fully capable of understanding them.

Of all these warped masterpieces, one stands out: ‘Dum-Dum Afternoon’. I would pour over its pages, troubled and fascinated by these weird, wise-cracking, self-aware bank robbers, the cross-hatched exaggerations of Al Pacino and Jon Cazale – especially Cazale - and the seething cesspit of a city they inhabited.

PACINO REDEFINES THE STICK-UP,
WITH SOME HELP FROM CHUPA-CHUPS

When I finally saw Dog Day Afternoon for the first time, some time in the 80s, Cazale’s pale, stricken visage as Sal, the dim-witted accomplice of real life bank robber John Wojtowicz, played by Al Pacino, had already been cemented in my brain as the archetypal scary, wild-eyed weirdo.

Wojtowicz and his friend Sal hold up a Chase Manhattan branch in Brooklyn in August 1972, bungle things badly, and in the hostage drama that ensues, New York becomes transfixed when it is revealed Pacino’s character has a second wife, a pre-op transsexual played by Chris Sarandon (in his first movie role).

Pacino gets the plaudits and pimp-suit, steals the scenes, sweats and screams, but Cazale’s pared-back portrayal of a sad, stupid, murderous loser in over his head and about to get a bullet in the brain is a revelation of a performance.

OUT THERE CAZALE

“There’s just something in that face that takes you into an area … that’s very dark. Personally dark … and … heartbroken,’’ said Sidney Lumet, Dog Day’s director. Cazale is the poster boy for New York in the mid-70s; a slouching, cadaverous angel of death in a broken city beset by blackouts, heat waves, muggers, riots, corrupt cops, gridlock, garbage strikes, race hate and decay.

When Dog Day Afternoon is released in 1975, New York City has just been declared broke and in massive debt. Vietnam is still raging, the Attica prison massacre has just happened, and Richard Nixon is seeking a second term.  (Taxi Driver, the other celluloid avatar of this era, is still a year away from its cinematic release.)

LUMET TAKES OVER THE ASYLUM

It’s an immediate hit, hailed as Sidney Lumet’s career high point, with a fine ensemble cast including Charles Durning, Carol Kane, and Lance Henrikson. Writer Frank Pierson (Cool Hand Luke) receives an Academy Award and a Writers Guild Award for his screenplay.

Cazale would die of cancer at 42 while making The Deer Hunter. Dog Day Afternoon is one of only five films he made, along with The Godfather, The Conversation, and The Godfather Part Two.

Lumet, who died in April 2011, was the embodiment of the bruised Big Apple, the anti-Woody Allen, always ready to shine the spotlight on some new dank corner of rotten Gotham. Pierson, who passed away this July, also kept New York close: his last job was as writer and consulting producer on the much-awarded cable series Mad Men.

Dog Day Afternoon stands as a time capsule of New York at its nadir, and a monument to one of the most creative and exhilarating periods in Hollywood’s history.

Midnight in Janette Slack's Garden of Good and Evil

This piece just appeared in the South China Morning Post's Postmagazine ... meet the one and only Janette Slack .... in fact, meet her in person when she makes her triumphal return to Asia this month following the release of her first album, Torture Garden Session



The biggest DJs don’t always live up to their names. Fatboy Slim was neither fat nor particularly slim. Plump DJs are notably svelte. Meat Katie is a bloke who prefers broccoli to beef. Pale weedy Moby is hardly leviathan. John Digweed does not in fact dig weed. DJ Scratch is a so-so scratcher. Beardyman is beardless. And Hong Kong’s prodigal DJ daughter and rising global star Janette Slack is anything but.

Slack is a force of nature in corsets; a genuine steel wheel diva, self-starter and anti-slacker with killer looks and the skills to back them up. She has become the avatar of Torture Garden, London’s premier fetish club which began with cult nights at Opera on the Green before landing its present home at the sprawling Ministry of Sound. Her glam brand of raunchy tech house infused with electro and breakbeats plus a personal interest in fetish fashion found a perfect home where the freaks come out and the gimps are brought out. Torture Garden’s legion of latex and leather-clad fans include Marilyn Manson, Dita Von Tease, Jean Paul Gaultier, Boy George, Courtney Love and Marc Almond (Adam Ant was famously refused entry for not dressing outlandishly enough). Slack has spun before most of them.

OH BEHIVE: JANETTE SLACK PROVES THE THEORY
YOU CAN FIX ANYTHING WITH GAFFER TAPE 

Part Eurasian sex bomb, part one-woman self-promotional juggernaut and part relentless energizer bunny, she has barely paused for breath since leaving Hong Kong and a well-paid teaching job for London on a make-or-break mission to achieve international DJ fame. And now she’s on her way back for a triumphal return, following a two-month tour of Australia, with gigs in Hong Kong and Bangkok to mark the launch of her first album, Torture Garden Session, a mixed journey concieved to capture the spirit of Torture Garden featuring six original Slack tracks and ‘re-rubs’, as she pervily terms her remixes, of the likes of D. Ramirez and Meat Katie.

Slack had to overcome parental disapproval and near starvation to make it in a city with ‘more DJs than bus drivers’, as Slack herself admits in ‘Veer’, one of a short film series sponsored by Dr Martens by cult director Doug ‘Scratch’ Pray on ‘people who embody an independent attitude’. The film’s release four years ago marked the turning point for Slack’s career and she’s been riding a rubber-studded rocket to DJ fantasy land ever since.

Slack’s sonic boom-boom has substance. No Eurasian Paris Hilton or DJ bimbo eruption, she is a professional sound engineer who writes and produces her own tracks, which she describes as “cheeky, chunky, twisted and demented ... a blend of rock riffs, funk, progressive melodies, sexy vocals and cinematic soundscapes with relentless basslines and thick, grooving drums’’. The first single from her album, ‘You Can’t Stop This’, a collaboration with Kickflip and Channel 4’s Phone Shop star Javone Prince, is at number four on Beatport’s electro chart and has been granted ‘must have’ status. Next to be released as a single is ‘Slave to System’ with Tyrrell, producer of Sasha’s Miami hit ‘Lalalalalala’ and 90s band PM dawn, and vocalist Kris Widakay.

She’s a Mixmag future hero, she’s won London’s prestigious Denon DJousts competition and Europe’s 2010 Pink Armada female DJ battle, been nominated for Best Breakthrough DJ, hosted the International Breakbeat Awards twice, and secured residencies at Torture Garden and Air. Her apartment has a sound studio and features an authentic replica of Dr Who’s time-travelling Tardis (an old London phone box) as its entrance, and she scoots around London in fetish regalia on rollerblades. As her biography reports, she ‘has the UK breaks and electro scene by its hairy balls and rides around London in a gold-plated beach lounger pulled by a team of pedigree swans’. This hyperbolic missive was penned by Frank Broughton, Mixmag deputy editor and author of Last Night a DJ Saved my Life. Co-opting influential friends to her cause is useful tool in the Slack skill set: she has been bigged up by everyone from Hybrid to Carl Cox and from Utah Saints to Air.

She has appeared recently on SKY1’s Gadget Geeks and spoofing a Eurotrash DJ on former Top Gear presenter Richard Hammond’s new BBC show ‘Secret Service’. She is regularly called up for photoshoots with London's edgiest independent designers, models for Vauxhall and Pepsi, and collaborates with one of London’s hottest makeup and hair designers, Sammm Agnew, while fetish godfathers Murray and Vern, Lady Lucie Latex and Kaori’s Latex Dreams now custom-make her outfits for gigs.

DAMMIT JANETTE: KISS KISS,
BANG BANG, AND HOLD THE PORNO HOUSE

“Even before I got into DJing, I always enjoyed any excuse to dress a bit differently to the herd,’’ says Slack. “Not in a rebelious way, I just saw stuff I liked and got inspired and intrigued by certain characters I saw in movies, TV or in real life. So when I discovered that bindis look good when even just wearing jeans and a tank top (inspired by Gwen Stefani) i did just that I school.

“When it came to DJing, for the first seven years, I did tone it down, as I was playing breakbeat, which is very male dominated compared to, say, house. So I went back to wearing baggy trousers, over size T-shirts and baseball caps, as I didn't want to appear to be a gimmick if I got all dressed up. I de-sexed myself, rather.

“I was in my mid-20s when I got my first gig at Torture Garden. I knew what I normally wore would make me stand out in the wrong way, as everyone makes an extra effort to dress up. So it was a good excuse to go shopping and buy a load of clothes I've actually always wanted but thought I could never get away with wearing. I thought f*** it, I've been DJing for 7 years now, on vinyl and on 3 decks, so I can wear what the hell I like.’’

CONTROLLER FREAK: TORTURE GARDEN'S 
LIMITED EDITION JANETTE SLACK BLOW UP 
DOLL WITH REAL NIP SLIP

Of her upcoming gigs, Slack says she loves playing in Bangkok but Hong Kong’s kinetic 24-hour clubbing scene will always be home. “Living in London for the past 13 years, it’s easier to take a step back to observe the countries I visit. When I had a chance to explore Bangkok for a month as a DJ a couple years ago, it didn’t take much time at all to settle in. It really reminded of the vibe in Hong Kong, where people are out every night and there’s always something to do.

“Bangkok is bigger and can afford to have stand-alone clubs like Bed Supperclub and Q Bar and the multi-room palaces of Royal City Avenue. In Hong Kong most of the clubs are part of high rises and are smaller. But both cities are equally vibrant and both have clubbers who demand and appreciate underground music.’’


Janette Slack’s Asian science fiction double feature opens at Club Fly in Icehouse Street on December 22, and then moves across the pond to Bangkok, with gigs to be confirmed at ‘one or two clubbing institutions’. With a brutal schedule of globe-trotting gigs in place for the next 12 months to lock in global dominatrix status, it’s a rare chance to catch the hardest working freak in show business on her home turf.

'Lunch is for Wimps', Belgian Thunders

Move over Marc Faber, Thailand's new 'Dr Doom' has arrived. This is a piece just filed for November's edition of Finance Asia on Stephane De Baets, iron-willed investment banker, part time 'Belgian Thunder' triathlete and ironman, prognosticator and seer, and all round good chap. Edited down somewhat for the magazine, I've put the original piece in full here.

WET MARKET: STEPHANE DE BAETS
OPTS FOR A LUNCHTIME SESSION

Investment banker with a difference Stephane De Baets is a breath of fresh air. The towering, boyishly touselled Belgian breezes into the bar in Bangkok’s trendy Soi Ruam Rudee, oozing enthusiasm and energy.

“There are a few things I’d like to talk to you about,’’ he says. “One is a new form of private equity venture which I believe takes a ground-breaking approach to fund management. The second involves reinventing fine dining. And I’d also like to touch upon inside out money flows, if I may.’’

While most investment bankers are content to merge, acquire and move other people’s money about, De Baets is on a different trajectory. When he’s not training for his next gruelling Ironman race, the founder, managing director and star turn at small but impeccably connected Bangkok boutique investment bank OptAsia Capital prefers to spend his time dreaming up new ways of doing things, taking aim at sacred cows and generally thumbing his nose at the establishment.

His no-holds-barred weekly ‘Trading Notes’ has become something of a cult publication in certain Bangkok circles for its bold predictions and colourfully tortured language: he is less of a gloom merchant than Mark ‘Dr Doom’ Faber, but when the mood strikes him, De Baets does a fine turn as contrarian Cassandra, railing against everything from Europe’s ‘slow motion, freeze frame car wreck’ to China’s looming hard landing and the mainland’s overvalued ‘laundry markets’ of Hong Kong and Singapore while referencing everything from the Fibonacci sequence, video games, hip hop to obscure Morrissey lyrics.

The Big Chill ... breaking worse in the Ice Age

Here's one from the vaults, a long and rather disturbing read on the insidious march of methamphetamine I penned for the South China Morning Post's weekend magazine as the millennium drew to its conclusion

BABY'S GOT BLUE ICE 

EVA conjures a pale ghost of smoke from a fold of tinfoil, using her lighter's flame like a lover's caress. It curls and shimmers and tries to escape but Eva chases it all the way down the foil, sucking greedily on a water pipe made of straws and a shampoo bottle clutched between her knees. She holds the smoke down, savouring it, letting it work its icy tendrils into the farthest reaches of her lungs, then tilts her head back and blows a jet of smoke into the gloom with a sensual sigh. Pupils start to swell. A delicious shiver runs through her body. She gazes down dreamily at the foil, where a milky trail traces the length of its crease. "This is my vitamin," she giggles, batting fat black lashes over big sloe eyes. "I have to take it every day." She flicks her lighter and strokes the foil and chases the ghost. And then she chases it again. And again. And again.

Eva's "vitamin" is methamphetamine hydrochloride, more popularly known in Hong Kong as "ice". It is also Asia's looming epidemic; a cheap and potent drug which gets users higher and keeps them high longer than anything else on the market while offering huge profit margins to drug syndicates. In the vivid argot of the drug netherworld, ice is to speed what crack is to cocaine; a smokeable rock form of the drug which transports the buzz to the brain faster and more powerfully than its powdered, snorted

cousin. But the hit from crack lasts 15 minutes.

A comparable amount of ice will get you up for anything from eight to 24 hours. It is, like crack, intensely addictive; a mental magnifying glass that initially transforms users into deities, eliciting superhuman performances at work, in bed, at parties. Once addicted, however, users can look forward to a long slide towards a panoply of pain and torment. Long-term use ravages the mind and body and can lead to respiratory disorders, hypertension, stroke, manic depression, paranoia, hallucinations, violent outbursts and psychotic episodes. The prognosis for recovery is far more grim than for someone hooked on heroin.

In the Philippines, South Korea, Hawaii and Japan it is already a massive problem. In the United States, Attorney-General Janet Reno recently named it a national threat and President Bill Clinton said it was on the way to becoming "the crack of the 1990s". And in Hong Kong, it is by far the fastest-growing drug of abuse. Even notoriously behind-the-times government figures record a jump of more than 250 per cent in users last year, while police warn it could usurp heroin as the territory's top drug problem in coming years.

US election: The view from Patpong

I was part of a team of 25 writers from interesting cities around the world asked to contribute dispatches  on the US elections for Roads and Kingdoms. For a view on the election many agreed 'sucked', I sought expert comment from a peculiar class of bar in the dark heart of Patpong Road.  http://roadsandkingdoms.com/2012/election/#bangkok

And for the whole collection: ://roadsandkingdoms.com/2012/election/


Fear, trepidation and disappointment stalked the streets of Patpong last night, as voting began in the US presidential elections.
      Fear flashed across the face of Nong Ning, one of several ladies loitering outside a blowjob bar with the unlikely name ‘Star of Light’, when I told her they were voting in America right now. “No drink alcohol tonight?’’ she asked. On the eve of local elections booze is banned in Bangkok, which means slim pickings for the nongs (younger sisters) of Patpong.
      Trepidation creased the mamasan’s greasy features when I entered the small and dingy bar. Three girls hovered around a single elderly fellow, making half-hearted, darting grabs for his crotch. No oracle appeared, despite the name’s vague promise of prophecy. Nothing was illuminated.
      “Obama or Romney’’ I asked. ‘Obama black man. Maybe he big,’’ one girl offered. The mamasan sniffed. “I like Bush’’.

THERE'S A PING PONG SHOW IN 
PATPONG EVERY MINUTE

      Disappointment, suddenly and crushingly, was all mine. I was in Bangkok’s heart of darkness, its ur-strip of sin and sleaze, where dank doorways portended parades of pudenda, and I was four years too late. For the first election in years, there was no Bush.
     Bush had been ubiquitous in Bangkok. ‘Good Bush, Bad Bush’ the t-shirts observed, juxtaposing George W’s idiot grin with a luxuriant tangle of pubic hair. ‘Fuck you Bush’ said the matter of fact graffito on a contstruction hoarding near my home.
     Dizzy with visions of puns unpenned, sick with the sense of loss, I lurched from the Star of Light, running the gamut of importunate hawkers, proprietors of ping pong emporia and leering ladyboys.
      I stopped, caught my breath, batted away a midget trying to sell me Viagra and reminded myself of the mission. The US Presidency had a long, lewd history with the hummer, from the Kennedy clan’s Camelot kneetremblers to Bill Clinton’s intern eruptions, sticky dresses, exploding cigars and limp excuses.

ALL ELECTION, ALL DAY, 
SUCKERS 

     This time, the entire electoral process sucked, from the first broken promise to the last forlornly flapping chad. “Campaign sucks hope out of US public,’’ sniffed Christopher Caldwell in the Financial Times.
      “How the World's Greatest Democracy Sucks at Elections,’’ Esquire explained to its readers. Vice.com lamented how ‘Voting Tech Still Sucks’, while Sheknows.com wondered if it “sucked more to be Michelle Obama or Ann Romney’’.
      But it was the Street Art Gum Election 2012 that posed the crucial question: “Obama vs. Romney - Who Sucks the Most?’’, allowing voters to decide with one spit of their gum.
       There was a perverse symmetry in asking a posse of Patpong oral sex experts which US Presidential candidate sucked hardest. It seemed right, somehow, to finally give them a voice, considering Patpong had been getting screwed by Americans since the Vietnam War.

OF THE SUCKERS, BY THE 
SUCKERS, FOR THE SUCKERS 

        I ascended the steep narrow stairs to Kangaroo Bar, perched on a barstool, and noticed the décor was strictly Down Under, as were some of the staff.
From a dark room at one end of the bar, shadowy movements and furtive slurping issued. I recalled asides about golf-balls and garden hoses, and suck-starting leaf blowers.
       I pressed on with my quest. But the mission was a bust. No one in the bar, at least no one capable of speaking, had a clue who Mitt Romney was. They knew the name Obama, and agreed this must be a good thing.
      ‘Mitt’, said a tall girl named ‘Chicken’ , sounded like the Thai word for knife.
    “Good Mitt or Bad Mitt?’’ I pressed. She frowned. Then smiled. ‘Bad if you are unfaithful. In Thailand, we use the knife to chop off the penis and feed it to the ducks.’’

Planet Neptune, the Handover and Hong Kong's Summer of Love

My recent cover story for South China Morning Post's Postmagazine, where I was senior writer for several years what seems a lifetime ago. Pulling the story together, as well as a reunion party at Homebase in Hollywood Road, the last place I DJ'd regularly in Hong Kong (I had caught the fever largely because of Neptune, Hong Kong's rave parties and being bowled over by the music of the day) was a fun but somewhat draining experience. DJing on Pioneer CDJ decks after being a vinyl aficionado and not having played a set in a club for three years also frayed a few nerve endings, but it turned out alright on the night. The real DJs, Christian and David Lam, played some great music at the reunion gig and there was no shortage of blasts from the past. Lee Burridge, who has made serious global waves (and .wavs) in the world of electronic dance music chipped in with some priceless observations. The story seems to have struck a chord (if not a piano synth arpeggio) in certain Hong Kong circles. 


One morning in 1996 I stepped through a neon portal and down a stygian Wan Chai staircase and found myself on another planet. The inhabitants of this alien world floated about with benign smiles, dressed in luminous garments, and seemed to communicate without words. Great pulses of electronic sound swept around me, drawing me to what seemed like the command centre, where an unfeasibly pretty leader jabbed buttons and tweaked strange dials, bending his people into improbable shapes.
     I had been in this same physical space on previous occasions; a subterranean Lockhart Road lair where Filipino bands blared and booze-rouged expats put the moves on amahs. But on this particular morning, somewhere after 5am, fresh from visiting my first rave party at Jimmy’s Sports Bar in pursuit of a story for this magazine about how the drug ecstasy was changing the face of Hong Kong clubbing, it was as if time and space had shifted.
     I felt as if I had stumbled upon the secret dawning of the Age of Aquarius; harmony, brotherhood and understanding seemed to flow through the thudding beats and the flashing strobe. This was no longer some dingy basement clip joint, it was a seething, surging, hugging, grinning, gurning, roiling, raving mad tide of good vibes.
    Suddenly everthing became clear. This was the mothership. The HMS Britannia of some parallel universe, setting sail for the wilder shores of altered states with a truly loony crew as the event horizon of Hong Kong’s handover to China loomed into view. This was frantic fin de siecle fantasy, escapism and hedonism, utter nonsense that made perfect sense. It was the best of times and the worst of times, the alpha and omega, the ecstasy and the agony, the soaring high and the crashing comedown.
    For the ‘FILTH’, the chancers, the gifted gabbers, the wide boys and barrow boys, the restless souls who had fled comfortable middle class lives for a great adventure and a fatter pay packet, and even for a wide-eyed naïve Brisbane boy like me, this was our Woodstock, our punk rock, and we knew it.
   To the north was the Motherland, and we all knew winter was coming. But for a brief season, Hong Kong’s ‘summer of love’ reigned.
    We had found the glowing magma core of the barren rock.
    This was Planet Neptune.