John Tyrrell is one half of nouveau breaksmiths Kings of the Wild Frontier. In November 1999 he set out on a world tour and this is his neo-Kerouac on the road diary, a kind of continuation of the Kings' "Trans Am" ep which journeyed across the U.S.A from East to West appropriating local musical styles as it went.

Below are the emissives he and travelling companion Jo have been beaming back to base.

Tuesday January 13th, 2000

Ey up. How's thee? We've done one from Thailand and taken up temporary residence at Igna2 guesthouse in the village of Ubud, central Bali. Nice spot. It's the rainy season so there's not too many tourist freaks all over the place - enough though. This place is lush lush lush. Our gaff is in a tiny little valley with palm trees, mad plants, lovely birds (the type with wings sadly), a view of the rice fields on the other side and a little stream gurgling at the bottom. Lurvely. The young fella who looks out for the place brings us coffee & pancakes when he hears us get up in the morning and tells us what the crack is round these parts. (John)

I got Jo to take my pic with the two leading chicks - hot stuff baby. The blokes kept making this noise while they were chanting like Chevy Chase when he's on the putting green with Danny in Caddyshack - 'na na na na na - noo noo noo noo noo'. Good work.

Happy New Year by the way. We stayed on Lanta and let off a big rocket on the beach listening to Dogstar tunes. We also went to a belting Muay Thai (boxing) fight on Lanta before we left. One bloke was like Sugar Ray Leonard in his prime - cheeky and unstoppable. We headed back to Bangkok after Lanta and had an away-day in Ayutthaya - an ancient seat of power. Lots of piles of old bricks. Very nice though. Anna's still in Bangkok - we reckon she'll be OK - we found a killer old 50's hotel called the Atlanta with a pool, fine food and a good line in old jazz standards. Nice. (John)

Friday, January 29th, 2000

We left our intrepid heroes in the bosom of the Igna 2 bungalows, downtown Ubud, Bali. In the end we spent a full week with Wayan's breakfast in the little jungle valley. In that time we took in a cremation service of a member of the local nobility, which is a much jazzier affair than you might expect. The whole town turned out in all their finery and a huge procession wove randomly down the main street of the town to the cemetary. In the crowd were a Gamelan band banging out a few bouncy little numbers, loads of chicks with mountainous offerings on their heads, and tons of blokes, most of them employed to carry the two huge bamboo rafts on their shoulders, one of which carried a big black wooden bull, and the other a 20ft tower from which a priest hung on for dear life sloshing holy water over the crowds below. Everytime they hit a junction in the road they all surged around shouting like a crowd at a football match so the spirit of the dead woman gets confused and doesn't try to find its way home. When they hit the cemetary they stuffed the corpse inside the bull and set fire to everthing they could lay their hands on. Bit of a showstopper all told. (John)

While we were in Ubud Wayan tipped us off about a bit of a skirmish over in Lombok. Seems like a bunch of Muslim troublecausers kicked off at an 'anti-sectarian violence' rally and burned down every Christian church they could find. We'd been planning to head to Lombok and also the allegedly very beautiful Gilli Islands, but it looked like we'd have to search for a beach paradise elsewhere. Lovina up on the northern coast, our first stop after Ubud, wasn't the place to find it. It was desperately dead when we arrived and the hawkers on the 'black sand' beach (mucky looking more like) lined themselves up in our field of vision waving the usual tourist tat so we couldn't even peacefully gaze across the waves. But then we only really went to Lovina for one thing - the dolphins. At 6am we oozed out of bed and hopped into the hull of a spider-like trimaran to join about a dozen other little boats to search for our romantic friends. Just when we'd started to think it was all in vain someone in a boat a little way away stood up and pointed, then it was a frantic game of cat & mouse as the dolphins appeared, flowing gracefully through the waves, only to disappear then reappear somewhere else completely unexpected. Every time our boatman spotted them he cackled manically, put his foot down and hurtled after them, while we held on for dear life. Cliches aside, dolphins are very beautiful creatures, and they even treated us to some very spectacular leaps from the water. Well worth the punishing early start. (John)

With our plans to travel to Lombok and Gilli lying broken on the rocks we scoured the Lonely Planet for some other hot beach destination to satisfy our craving. We decided to head for Nusa Lembongan, an island off the SE coast of Bali featuring "arcs of white sand". On the way we stopped at Sanur for a night where we narrowly avoided being properly ripped off by a money changer. They used devious sleight of hand to short change us by 100 grand (about a tenner), but my suspicions were aroused and a quick count up revealed their skill. I had a quiet chat with the chaps and the damage was reversed. Phew. A bumpy morning boat ride took us to Lembongan the next day, and as we approached the palm fringed coastline reminded us of Thailand for a moment. Feeling hopeful we 'docked' (sploshed through the shallows with our rucksacks) only to discover the whole place was a bit of a scruffy neglected dump that stank of seaweed. Boo. On top of this I'd contracted a wild dose of 'Bali Belly'. A day later Jo's guts followed suit. Nasty stuff. The saving grace of the island was the staff at Mainski Inn where we stayed. It was a favourite haunt of surfer dudes and the whole place was plastered with stickers and graffiti. The four Balinese lads who worked there, Tango, Waxy, Sylver & Bruce Lee (ha), meanwhile had taken to mimicking the Aussie accents and phrases with varying degrees of success, but it kept the cheap laffs flowing steadily. (John)

After 3 nights nursing our bellies we gladly set out back to the mainland to seek out the dude capital of Bali, Kuta. Turns out not to be such a bad little spot. I've been enjoying myself being rude to all the hawkers who buzz around incessantly whenever you go near the beach, and we found some huge shops and supermarkets which are always good for a few hours window shopping. But despite the shopping Nirvana here in Kuta I still haven't been able to track down what I wanted - the political party in power here called PDI Perjuangan have this superb red & black bull head logo which is plastered all over the place, but I'll be damned if I can find one of the t-shirts I keep jealously spotting on the backs of the Balinese folk. (John)

We did the ol' 'cheap accomodation - pay to use someone elses pool' trick again and we've spent a couple of lovely lazy days sploshing around going wrinkly in the sun. We even hired deck chairs on the beach one day for a bit of proper Scarborough style R&R. And the lure of the Kecak monkey-chant dance proved too much for us, so we went for second helpings at the cliff top temple of Ulu Watu at sun set. Very dramatic setting, and another quality dose of Bali high drama & that fantastic chanting. I even bought a CD of it, some of which might find its way onto my next hit single...

Now its all over and tonight we're off down the yellow brick road to Darwin to see what the mighty Oz has in store for us. (John)

Tramp back to Thailand or say g'day to Australia