Brian Thacker is a Travel Writer who thinks of silly travel ideas, such as turning up to numerous countries without a guidebook and actually acting on them.

He then turns these experiences into a number of Funny Travel Books which are a great read.

Actually, I’m a bit envious of him – he travels, writes, gains income from his books, and then goes travelling again!

One of his titles, ‘Where’s Wallis’, made my Top 5 Funny Travel Books.

Anyway, I’m on a roll with this interviewing stuff! After managing to score Paul Sorvino and Peter Moore for a chat, Brian’s agreed to an interview after a sizeable deposit to his bank account (Check out his official site !).

If you’re wondering what a ‘Possie’ is, that’s a fusion term between a ‘Pommy’ (an Englishman) and an Aussie! See more about Brian Thacker’s bio.

Anyway, here is the Brian Thacker interview!

The Travel Tart: Hi Brian, thanks so much for this opportunity to have a chat. You’re travel writing is definitely skewed towards the humourous side of travel – which is why I’m drawn to it! The irony is, if something is funny, it’s because it’s so close to the truth! I was wondering, what made you decide to become a travel writer, especially one with such a humourous bent?

Brian Thacker: I was working as a tour leader dragging drunk 18-30 Aussies and Kiwis around Europe when I read my first travel book. It was Bill Bryson’ ‘Neither Here nor There’ and I thought what a great job being a travel writer would be. I didn’t think it was something I would (or could!) actually do, but when I got back home to Australia I went through my travel journals (I’d written down all the fun and games passengers, crew and the locals got up to) and thought that I could (and should!) write a book. So, I wrote down a few stories and decided that I could do it then took four months off to write what would become my first book ‘Rule No.5: No sex on the bus’. The humourous bent part was easy because it was hilarious what happened on those tours. I couldn’t make that shit up.

The Travel Tart: In your most recent book, ‘Sleeping Around’, you ‘couch surfed’ around the world and stayed with a number of interesting characters. Can you put to bed the fears of some travellers who think they might accidentally book a couch with an axe murderer? I know there are checks and balances with Couch Surfing, such as an eBay-like rating system, but what’s your take on this relatively new phenomenon on travelling?

Brian Thacker: When I did my travelling for my book there was 140,000 members on couchsurfing.com.  There is now close to two million with almost 20,000 joining every week. It keeps growing because it works, The whole reference thing is wonderful. If 20 people have vouched for someone then it’s very unlikely that they won’t be as good as their references say!

The Travel Tart: Like yourself, I like the odd beer now and then. I try beer(s) in every country that I go to, as well as getting stuck into the food. I’ve even developed a Beer Index where I’ve measured the affordability of a country by the price of its beer per litre. I’ve even sampled millet beer out of a plastic rubbish bin in Namibia – which was actually pretty good!   I was just wondering, trying to pick your favourite beer can be quite a taxing task, but what’s the worst beer you’ve ever drank?

Brian Thacker: Oh, that’s a hard one. I think I have two joint winners. The first is Stella beer from Egypt. I’m sure it’s made from water from the Nile with very suspicious bits at the bottom of each bottle. And the other shocker is Tooheys New. It’s just tastes horrible and they don’t even make it from Nile water.

The Travel Tart: When I talked to Peter Moore, he mentioned that his travelling days have been somewhat transformed since the arrival of kids. How about yourself? How has the addition of kids changed your travel habits? Are you planning to badger your kids into becoming travel addicts like ourselves?

Brian Thacker: Having a kid just changed the way I travel (and write). I do much shorter trips and if I have to travel longer then I split the trip up over a few months so that I’m not away from home too long. It does also have it’s advantages, though. Because I work from home I can pick up my daughter from school and help out in class and I also get to hang out during school holidays.  And yes, my daughter is a great little traveller – she’d been on 50 flights by the time she was five!

The Travel Tart: I also asked Peter when was the specific time and place where he was bitten by the travel bug. Mine was in Kosovo, Peter’s was in Vanuatu. How about yours?

Brian Thacker: I first ‘travelled’ when I did my Big Trip OS to Europe when I was 24. From the moment I stepped on that plane I was hooked and by my first day in Frankfurt (where I just wandered around aimlessly) I was totally addicted.

The Travel Tart: I pissed myself laughing when I read about you visiting the Tamworth Country Music Festival in New South Wales, Australia as part of The Naked Man Festival. Especially the bit where you heard someone singing the song ‘I’ve Never Been To Bed With An Ugly Woman But I’ve Sure Woken Up With A Few.’ What a great title! One of the joys/horrors of travelling is coming across the different types of music that is usually blasted through numerous sub-woofers in barely roadworthy vehicles. What was your worst combination of a) music and b) transport?

Brian Thacker: Recently I was in East Timor and I caught a 16 seat bus that had 33 people in it. It was like a nightclub. There was blaring distorted house music, it was full of smoke and someone threw up on my shoes.

The Travel Tart: What was your scariest plane ride? Mine was when I took an internal flight in Kazakhstan, and I was transported in a plane that was, at best case, 25 years old (I love the Yakalov 40). I remember checking my bags in, going through security, and then having to load my bags on the plane myself! But the crew realised that there were too many passengers, and not enough seats! This created havoc where the flight engineers unbolted some ‘business’ class seats, and then they installed 5 extra rows with seats borrowed from another plane! This all happened while I was on the tarmac watching the whole fiasco! But I lived to tell the tale!

Brian Thacker: On a flight from London to Agadir in Morocco (with Royal Air Maroc) we got off the plane and when we were waiting to get into the terminal my girlfriend asked ‘Why does the sign say Marrakesh?’ We’d got off at the wrong stop. When we ran back to the plane a platoon of army dudes with very large guns ran after us and began screaming and waving those very large guns into our faces. Now that was scary!

The Travel Tart: Do you have any crazy adventures planned for the near future?

Brian Thacker: I’m currently writing my new book, so I had my dose of crazy adventures last year. I travelled through South East Asia using the original 1975 Lonely Planet ‘South East Asia on a Shoestring’ as my only guidebook. It was a wonderful trip and will make for a wonderful read!

The Travel Tart:  Looking forward to that one coming out!  Hey, I’m crazy too, and I’d like to tag along! Thanks for your time and enjoy your travels!

If you feel like a laugh and want to stir up your Wanderlust at the same time, check out any of Brian Thacker’s books.

Anyway, Brian Thacker’s titles are:

• Rule No. 5: No Sex on the Bus: Confessions of a Tour Leader
• I’m Not Eating Any of That Foreign Muck: Travels with Me Dad
• Planes, Trains & Elephants
• The Naked Man Festival: And Other Excuses to Fly Around the World
• Where’s Wallis?
• Sleeping Around: A Couch Surfing Tour of the Globe

Travel Blogger For Hire.

That one is for Google so that some silly sod might employ me on future Travel Blogging Trips/Junkets when they do a keyword search!

No seriously – I learnt a lot about Travel Writing/Blogging From the Road on my recent month long trip to Indonesia.

I loved every single second of this trip.  However, I learnt so much about the practicalities of Travel Writing in a challenging environment that I wanted to pass on some tips to others who are lucky enough to experience the same thing!

As with all trips I undertake, I decided to be ruthless with my backpack weight and not take a laptop (that was the Tight Arse Personality Type coming out), and either a) create all my posts from Internet cafe’s or 2) use the local bloggers computer.

Most of the time, I was using the Internet Cafe.  And in Indonesia, that was certainly an experience.

There are pros and cons of taking/not taking computers with you on a Travel Writing/Blogging trip.  For me, the con of extra weight was enough for me to place faith in the Internet Cafe system of a third world country.

I’m pretty anal when I come to backpack weight, and I try to keep this down to about 12-13 kilograms, or about 20 pounds.  I hate looking and feeling like an overweight tortoise whilst locals are trying to convince me to board their barely roadworthy form of transport!

Anyway, here are some valuable lessons that I will use in the future, and that I’d like to pass on to others.

Lesson 1. Without The Internet Working, You’re Totally Crippled

Sounds obvious, but when you’re travelling in third world countries, expect the Internet to cut out for any unknown reason.  There were numerous times where I was uploading photos, or about to push ‘Publish’ where all of a sudden, my entire post crashed, almost forcing me to scream with frustration.

Couple that with the odd power outage, and you’ll be pressing the ‘Save Draft’ button every 5 seconds, just like I was.

Lesson 2. Even With The Internet Working, It’s Still Challenging To Write!

Internet speeds can vary dramatically.  It might take you anywhere from 10 seconds to 5 minutes to upload a photograph. But try doing this activity for a few hours, sitting next to 11 year old boys smoking away (no joke) on their high tar cigarettes, whilst your eyes are stinging from the combusted tobacco wafting into your face.

I think I also have industrial deafness now – most of these 11 year olds were playing computer games that involved blasting the crap out of their friends sitting next to them – which included exuberant celebrations when someone was killed off.

The term ‘Fire In The Hole’ is now embedded forever in my grey matter.

And because of the smoking, you smell like a well cured salami when you walk out of the Internet Cafe. Ironic, because I have Italian heritage as well.

Another Internet Cafe hazard, especially in Indonesia, is that there is a chance that an earthquake will hit when you are writing something critical.  I was in Banda Aceh when the tragic Padang earthquake hit Sumatra, and the whole room shook, including my chair, for about half a minute.

Banda Aceh was 400 km away, and I must admit, the Tsunami word did enter my head.  However, none of the smoking 11 year olds were too concerned and carried on playing their computer games as if earthquakes happen every day.

Lesson 3. It’s really hard to fix annoying Word Press Bugs

When you are a techo gumby like me, the simplest Word Press bugs (for those who aren’t familiar, this is the software that powers the website) become almost insurmountable when you are challenged by internet speeds.

I had a problem with my visual editor which did not let me schedule posts when I wanted to.  So I had to go to an Internet Cafe and physically push the ‘Publish’ button when I needed to.

Not ideal, but I got away with it.  I only found out how to fix this bug when I got home.  It would have taken me hours to fix it in Indonesia because of the Internet speeds.

Lesson 4. It Really Sucks When Your Hosting Provider Stops Hosting Your Site – In The Middle Of The Trip

You should try harrassing your Internet Host when you are out of one of their base countries.

Of course, I had to go to the Intenet Cafe and send a barrage of emails to try and get my site back online considering that a lot of the travel world was watching.  I even had to organise people in Australia to do this for me!

I also used Twitter to draw attention to the problem!

In the end, the site was down for a day, and everything has been fine since.

Lesson 5. Extremely Hospitable People = Less Time To Write!

The reason I love going to Indonesia is because of their people.  I’ve always had a great time there because they are so willing to show me their world.

The flip side to this is that it’s hard to drag yourself away from all of the great cultural experiences you are having with them so you can write!

But it’s a great problem to have, and I’m not complaining!  I gained so much material to write that this may keep The Travel Tart going for a bit longer before I have to travel again!

So there you go, there are some of the Pitfalls of being a Travel Blogger and Travel Writing From The Road.

These are some of the issues that can happen when you travel without your own laptop!

Just think of this post next time you want to be a Travel Blogger For Hire!

My Travel Writing

You would have noticed that I don’t take myself too seriously – and that my Travel Writing leans towards the quirky side.

I’m available to undertake Travel Writing/Blogging trips to anywhere you want to send me!

Check out some my efforts here, but there’s loads more around the place:

The Gin and Tonic Bar at Rundu, Namibia – My Favourite Bar!

52 Perfect Offbeat Travel Tips

The Worst Drivers In The World

The Top 5 Places to Indulge Yourself

Soccer Match – Argentina

Review of Pesta Blogger (Blogger Party 2008) – Indonesia

Other Travel Writers

I’ve listed some Travel Writers below who I think are pretty funny – they definitely take the piss out of world travel today.  Their books are well worth reading.

Peter Moore – he’s a Travel Writer who has clocked up a century on the country counter, and he’s done crazy shit like travel from London to Sydney overland, and he’s done Cape Town to Cairo via all sorts of un-roadworthy transport.

Brian Thacker – a Pom turned Melburnian Travel Writer, he also likes to take the piss out of travel.  He’s a former travel guide, and has turned up to countries without a guidebook to see if his experiences would be any different.

Tony Hawks - a Travel Writer famous for ‘Round Ireland With a Fridge’ and ‘Playing the Moldovans at Tennis’, Tony likes to place silly drunken bets with his mate at the pub, which then gives him silly ideas to undertake silly adventures which he then writes books about, and then makes money from them.  Part of his 15 minutes of fame was that he was a member of ‘Morris Minor and the Majors’ , a band that specialised in parodies, including the massive hit, ‘Stutter Rap’ – a piss take about the Beastie Boys.

Have a look around the blog for more strange examples of my Offbeat Travel Writing.