the wasta...

north korea numba one!
© 2004. the wasta.


mummy!!!!!!!!!!
this western capitalist pig just took my picture. run for our lives!!!
© 2004. the wasta.


rush hour in pyongyang 1.
© 2004. the wasta.


rush hour in pyongyang 2.
© 2004. the wasta.


the big cheese: meesta kim sr.
© 2004. the wasta.


hot south korean chicks.
© 2004. the wasta.


SARS in HK.
ok, which one of you just sneezed...
© 2004. the wasta.

"wasta" is a term i learned on my last trip to tibet. it applies to a "longterm" traveler. not any longterm traveler. i'm talking about a destitute westerner who seems to be drifting amongst the masses in places like india wasting away his/her life. how can i put it in north american terms? a wasta is a freeloading, wacky smoking bum who wanders from country to country for years and years.

on that same trip i met my friend jonathan smith. he's an english ex-pat living and teaching english in hong kong for years and years. we met in the hunza valley in the very north of pakistan in a paradise called karimabad. he had already spent a few months traveling along the silk road through western china and pakistan. i'm not sure how long he'd been wasting away in the hunza before i met him. all i know was this guy was kind of funny, in an amusing kind of way. one thing led to another (not in that kind of way) and we ended up traveling through the rest of pakistan, northern india and trekking in nepal for something like 2 months. that's a long time.

we managed to hit every museum of ghandaran art in northern pakistan, to get the wool pulled over eyes by a "friendly" doctor in rawalpindi, to dine at the pizza hut in lahore, to make friends with a "tortured" monk in dharamsala, to visit the guru of sikhism in the golden temple in amritsar, to climb mount rakaposhi, to fire off kalashnikovs in dara, to drink ourselves into a stupor in amritsar. never a dull moment.

anyway, i remembered jonathan smoked alot of wacky. traveled alot. vowed never to return to the UK. we laughed at the bums we encountered along the way. he kept calling them wastas. well, i've never heard of that term before. he explained. from that moment on, wanka (murray arthur - a kiwi we happened to pick up along the way) and i would call him the "wasta".

meeting people is obviously the reason why i travel. if there were more jonathan smith's out there, the world would be a better place. he's "stuck" in HK for the next while with his teaching position. he should get the hell out of there.

my tribute is posting some of his travel photos. click here to see more of his photos.