It’s My Birthday

and I’m 77 years old.

The number is portentous, right? Two Sevens! And when you add them together, you end up with a Five – a favorite number of mine. I’ve always preferred odd to even numbers, maybe because I always liked odd things, odd people. “Normal” never was something I strived for. 

So – this seems to be a good occasion to look back and dig around old photographs. And what came to mind was the last time I ever traveled around with some hashish in my luggage; soon after, it became way too dangerous. The number of airplane hijackings had gone up steadily, and security was tightened. But when I flew from Kathmandu to Hong Kong to Tokyo in June or July of 1973, it was still possible to  slip through… 

But let’s start at the beginning of this trip (for earlier adventure stories, read On A Plane to Munich, Sightseeing in India, Nepal, and Sri Lanka, and Crossing A Dangerous Border). I’ll leave the overland travel from Germany to India in an old VW camping bus and the year I spent in India, Goa, Nepal, Kashmir, and then Afghanistan for another time. I had run out of money and smuggled a puppy out of Afghanistan in exchange for a plane ticket from Pakistan to Paris where I arrived on December 3, 1971. Back in Germany, I soon discovered that I didn’t want to stay there for a number of reasons, but I needed money to be able to leave again AND I had to go to a country where I would be able to work. So, I moved back in with my parents (they had a big house), and I found a job as an office assistant at a glass factory where I worked for one year and saved most of the money I earned. But where to go? I definitely didn’t want to be forced to return to Germany again. A friend of my sister’s had the solution; he had lived in Japan for a year or two, and he told me how easy it was to earn some money there: one could teach English and German (for some reason, Japanese medical students had to learn German), and tech companies were hiring foreigners to proofread their instruction manuals which had been crudely translated from Japanese to English and German. 

Morning Market in Vientiane, Laos. Image: Navigate89906

That’s all I needed to know – Japan, here I come! First, though, I was going to stop in Laos to meet up with some old friends. They had rented a house on stilts on the outskirts of Vientiane, the capital, right by the Mekong River. It was simply heavenly, especially after a year in grey Germany. Kind and friendly people; bougainvilleas and lots of other gorgeous tropical flowers everywhere, French coffee; and – swimming in the Mekong! I loved Laos.  

But then I felt homesick for Nepal. So I bought a plane ticket for Kathmandu and rented a little house near the Swayambhu Temple. To walk to town from there, one had to cross this ratty bridge; I remembered it from previous times in Kathmandu, but it had collapsed in the meantime. I have no idea any more how one got across, but I don’t think it was through the water…

And because hashish was ubiquitous in Nepal, it didn’t take long until I decided to take some with me to Japan. Not any big quantities, just for personal use and to share. But how to hide it? I didn’t have a suitcase that could easily accommodate a hidden floor. Some English friends came to the rescue with a great idea: make some necklaces with hash beads that look as if made out of wood. And so we went to work. We rolled beads out of hash, all the same size. Although good, fresh hash is quite pliable, it wasn’t all that easy to get them all to be even and identical! Then, one had to carefully poke a hole in each bead. Next, each necklace had to be painted a certain color. And then, each bead received some decoration, some tiny flower or a pretty leaf. My British friends were quite artistic! And finally, the beads were coated with clear nail polish, to hide the unmistakable smell. I think it needed more than one coat. The beads were ready to be strung up into tasteful necklaces! Maybe three or five, I don’t remember. But each necklace was absolutely lovely.  

You’d think that I would have avoided any extra unnecessary customs inspection because I was carrying an illegal substance with me, but no. When I was ready to leave Nepal and fly to Japan, I thought it would be fun to stop in Hong Kong for a week, and that’s what I did. I spent a fascinating week in the city, my first encounter with Chinese people, my first sighting of huge skyscrapers. I visited the New Territories, I took a ferry to Hong Kong Island, and I explored the Kowloon Peninsula. The more than strange Tiger Balm Garden was demolished for redevelopment in 2004 – I’m glad I got to see it!

In Kyoto. Photo: Dave Johnson.

My flight from Hong Kong to Tokyo was uneventful, and I made it through customs inspection without any problems. I took the bullet train to Kyoto and settled at first at Tani-San’s, a cross between a youth hostel and a traditional Japanese inn with tatami mats. I’m still in touch with some of the friends I made there, almost exactly 50 years ago – how amazing is that! I guess my necklaces gave me some extra popularity; hashish wasn’t so easy to come by in Kyoto in the early Seventies. The beads didn’t last all that long, but it sure was fun to peel off the nail polish and smoke what was inside. Oh, and the paint was watercolor — the English guys made sure that one wouldn’t inhale anything toxic. I wish I knew whatever happened to them…