Literary Agents

SYNOPSIS

SAME SAME BUT DIFFERENT is different. It is a journey of exploration through Asia that deals with the anger, the sadness the joy, the love and the frustrations of this journey rather than merely describing the physical environment. Adventures range from the dead bodies of the Ganges to being deported from Nepal and from the fear of yeti's to discovering unexploded bombs in Laos and Vietnam. SAME SAME BUT DIFFERENT is different. Read on.

SAMPLE OF WORK

CHAPTER 1 ICARUS IS DOWN

How do I feel right now? Like Icarus is down. Like Neo has just been plugged back in. Like my only real hero, Santa Claus, really doesn't exist. It's just that there are no more Saturdays. The Grinder has spoken, dragging me ever more reluctantly back to the Grind. Monday morning is finally here.

On Monday morning, I will enter the world of visual marketing. What the hell is that? Who cares? It's work and it's shit. After fifty weeks on the run, the bank has finally caught up with me. The world that has really only existed for the past eleven months on a few brief glimpses of CNN and the few Internet headlines that I could be bothered to read is about to consume me. About to engulf me. I will resume my life sentence of work, with the possibility of time off for good behaviour. Travelling was once described to me as every day being like Sunday and every night being Friday night. And yet it is so much more than that. Every day is like the best Saturday that you ever had and every night is potentially Saturday night, and an explosive one at that. There are no schedules and no deadlines. No pressure and no stress. No fuckwits to deal with except the ones who usually piss off the locals and make your blood boil. They truly are real groundhog days. But when the alarm goes off this time, I'll be plugged back in. There will be no fairytale ending. The Brothers Grimm didn't write this script. Or with a name like that, maybe just maybe, they did. And so, come Monday morning, I will re-enter the world of work with a grand title. A Visual Marketer or Merchandiser or whatever she called it on the phone. A fucking shelf packer more like. And will I rebel against this? Try one last time to rage against the machine. Maybe go on the mother of all benders on Sunday, hoping to wake up in a drunken stupor sometime on Monday afternoon? Or better still, Tuesday night, praying I've missed the Devil's Island Express?

No. I will resign myself to my fate. I will get the plugs ready. I will stay at home. Perhaps I'll watch a movie. 'The Man who fell to Earth' sounds good.

CHAPTER 2 BEDLAM

It's hard to describe the change. You're in the Western World, hanging around Heathrow with your sister, just waiting for the flight. Checking to see if there's anything last minute you can buy that you might need. Eating junk food for the last time in a long, long time. I discuss with Yvonne what to expect. We talk about what we want from the trip. We're both on our way to Australia with time on our side. No plans, no timetable, no worries. Yvonne has been planning this trip for a long time and I've just tagged along. Her friends let her down and seeing as I just split with my girlfriend, I felt it was time to do something different. Yvonne is one of those people who always likes a challenge, sometimes too much, so I felt that it would be good to go with her. Besides I'd done a bit of travelling before and knew what to expect. But India would be different, totally different. We board our comfortable jet for Delhi, arrive and it's bedlam. Absolute bedlam. It's almost impossible to describe. The first thing that hits you are the smells. The fuckin' smells. Oh, sweet Jesus, the smells. Is that really human shit I can smell? An assault on the senses? No, it's much, much worse. It's a complete violation of them. A rape of every sense you have from every angle you could possibly imagine. Sights, sounds, smells. Especially smell. Even the airport hits you like a train. Spices and shit, somehow intermingled into one long smell. And the streets just overwhelm you. The smell of humans, of cows, of dogs, of fruit, of piss, of shit, of cows' piss, of cows' shit, of human piss, of human shit, who knows? Of curries, of spices, of fumes, of dust. Of the hundreds of things that I have no idea what they are, that hit my brain like the circus coming to town, a bad mariachi band, a whole fucking Mardi Gras. And the sounds. Of car horns; consistent, consistent car horns. An endless stream. And music. And weddings. And buses. And motorbikes. And street sellers. And touts. And shouts. 'Hey, hey. Hey, hey'. Shouting at me, at their kids, at their wives, at each other. Just to be heard. Just to be heard above the noise and din of the other one billion who also want to be heard. And the sights. Far, far greater than I could ever have imagined. I don't think anything could have prepared me for this. It's just so different. Too different. Like a post-apocalyptic world where people gather in the streets after a nuclear war, just scrounging and selling and surviving. People huddle around fires and chat, and gather bits and pieces of wood and charcoal and anything else they can find, just to survive.

And then of course you experience the scams. Why wouldn't they? You're a walking dollar to them. A walking wad of rupees. An educated moron with more money than sense. But they've got to catch you early, when you're green, a novice. We get hit right out of the airport. Two really sound guys who are bringing us by taxi to the hotel. Why do we need two? I don't know. But of course they don't know where the hotel is. So they stop to ask a 'local'. Who doesn't know. And the next one. Doesn't know either. And the next doesn't know but tells them there's a government tourist office around the corner. We go there and the guy kindly rings the hotel we're looking for. I talk to them but unfortunately it's full. He offers me many other hotels but at a much higher price. 'No thanks', I say, 'just take me to the street that my hotel is on and I'll find another'. 'Oh no Sir, that would be a very bad idea, it's very busy this time of year. You should book now to ensure your place'. They are all so helpful, almost too helpful, that I grow suspicious. I ask if I can speak to the original hotel again. 'Why?' they ask. I claim that I think my friends are staying there and I need to double check. They put me through. I make up a name and tell them there should be a reservation under that name. They are very sorry they say, they have that name but have forgotten to reserve a room. 'But you had that reservation for three nights, right?' 'Oh yes Sir, of course. And we are very sorry for the inconvenience we have caused'. Very sorry for the inconvenience you have caused? I've just made this fucking name up and the number of nights and they're taking me for a complete fuckin' gobshite. Some clown on a phone, probably in the next room, pretending to be my hotel. The real hotel isn't booked up at all. And of course they know where it is. And this isn't a real government agency. They have just brought me here to book a hotel through them and then they'll all get a nice big fat slice of the pie. All paid for by the stupid gringo or 'gora' as they call them over here. And the guys on the street they asked? They couldn't have been in on it. Surely not? That would be far too elaborate. But sure, they probably just asked them directions for some non-existent place. And so I refuse to book another hotel and demand to be brought to the original one. They look pissed off but do as I say. And incredibly, five minutes later we're there. Fair play to them. A great scam. A great try. But I wasn't exactly saying that a few minutes ago.

[NOTE: This is half-way through Chapter 2]