Portugal: Live DJing, Halal Ham and Forest Sh!tting

---

August was the main summer month and a very busy one in the Algarve. With so many cars and tourists, it sometimes felt like London when I couldn't find parking spaces or spent an hour driving home on a 10 min journey. Let's summarize a few things that have been happening in August:

There are a few decent clubs around which I've visited. The main one in Tavira is called "Ubi Bubi" (I know, strange name) and it's got a great vibe to it with the different themes and chillout areas outside. The last time I went I was very hungry .... as I am most of the time these days ... so I was delighted to find out they serve food. Not much on option of course, just non-nutritious junk, but I decided to go for the cheese toastie. I made it very clear that this shouldn't have any meat products in, just bread, cheese, melted ... done. This conversation lasted a few bounces back and forth as she kept asking me if I wanted ham in it and I was explaining that no meat also applies to ham. Eventually she got the idea, I waited 10 mins, and out came a ............ cheese and ham toastie .... !*&$45!

I've been wondering for a long time why there aren't police here in the nightclub car parks as hundreds of cars get filled up and driven off with wasted peeps, and my question was answered when I got in the car and drove down the 1-way street and immediately saw a police search area .... they searched the boots, under the seats, doing a complete inspection of all vehicles. Actually I've been stopped a number of times now, I dont like driving here after 5am because I get stopped and have to prove Im not drunk .... and every time they ask for my license and passport. I never carry the passport in case it gets lost, but they tell me its the law to do so if Im not Portuguese .... well it aint happening, a photocopy of my terroristic face will have to do.

Manta Rota was another club close to here I went to ... omg the honeyz in this place, 100% of Portugal's finest. Where else? Oh yeah, Albufeira too which is the tourist capital of the Algarve, plenty of young brits here swearing away, throwing up and toppling over ... basically showing the world just how graceful we are. When I went to the club in this town, I couldn't handle the music ... it's not hard house, not trance, just some really scary fast beats that make you automatically dance without intention, each bass kick puts your body into a spasm and you bounce onto the floor ... crazy experience.

We returned to the Pego do Inferno waterfall for a friend's birthday and landed there around 3am under full moonlight. This was awesome, 3 cars full of peeps, diving in the dark, thong action, injuries and home-made tapioca pudding (I made it for the bday but I was told it just tastes like milk). I learnt a lesson that day, dont take a car full of peeps to a wet/muddy place if they're drinking ... let's just say a huge car cleaning effort was made the following day, especially on the stained fabric seats. So to recap: People + fun + alcohol + water + mud = not in etch's car. There was no waterfall tho, this has dried up now for this yr.

I've seen on a number of occasions a weird tradition where men carry around bottles of water and randomly rub it under the armpits from time to time ... I've no idea what this means,, whether this is water, whether it's a way to keep cool, not sure. It was scorching hot here, to the point where I've been sleeping outside on the chillout balcony ... even needing a fan outside. It's dry heat too, sometimes getting as low as 9% humidity. Mosquitoes weren't a problem as in July/August there aren't many mosquitoes or ants around ... now in September they've returned with a vengeance. Sleeping out gazing at stars next to the lit pool is such a luxury I'm truly grateful for. Some nights it was still too hot to sleep so I learnt a great way to cool down. Here you can buy frozen raspberries ... a few of them in the mouth and you instantly cool down (and get a great source of fibre).

Praia do Barril is the name given to the beach at the center of Tavira Island. I went with a friend one afternoon and immediately needed to cool down in the water ... it looked so much fun with many people riding the waves. Little did I know that I was 5 mins away from 'seeing the light'. So I get in but decide not to venture out as far as other peeps as I can't tread water, it makes me sink (just like coffee puts me to sleep, im backwards). I start jumping over the waves and look around at everyone deeper in than me and I feel like a little pussy ... hell even babies are somersaulting over these tsunamis so I decide to go in deeper. And here is when it happened. The first wave came in and pushed my fragile body under the water ... I remained calm, held my breath and allowed myself to float up to the surface .... I was just about to take a breath when a 2nd wave immediately forced me back under ... ok so now I do need air ... I try to come up quickly against the force, and then a 3rd wave hits ... oh my days, I decided to give up then and started thinking about all the important little things in life .... you know like "why did I microwave all those poor fish fingers" ... but I swear, through the water I can see more somersaulting babies, so I decided to man the f up and get back out ... and ran out of the water, not quite Mitch Buchanan stylee .... maybe Frank Spencer.

I hit Lagos one evening deciding to go for a late night adventure. This is on the west coast of the Algarve and has great reviews. So we get there at 2am to find the place closes at 2am .... kind of. We're in the 1st bar and they stop serving ... walking around we're invited into another .... I ask her when it closes, she says "2am, come on in" and the time is 2.15am. We go in anyway, place an order, and the barman says they're shut and we're kicked out .... this has to be the best marketing tactic I've ever come across ... "Hey yh, come on into our establishment, it's temporary because we're gonna throw you out again". Later at 4am we went back where the 1st bar was and it was open and people were drinking ... wtf? But now they were shutting, convenient. There was a beautiful artistic homey vibe around Lagos with it's little streets and grafitti ...definitely worth a daytime visit.

My metabolism is so high these days that I don't like going out anymore because I just need to eat constantly, and then I end up eating junk when out. For this reason, when I went to the cinema last, I decided to take a home-made bean curry with me. As the movie began and peeps were crunching on the popcorn, out came a plate, curry, juice and a great smell that made people jealous. I'd like to go to the cinema with a group, not book seats but sit on the floor in front and have a picnic, "would you like saag/aloo with your 90 mins of special effects and no storyline?" ... "hell to the yeah i would !!!!"

I've DJ'd a couple of times in a bar here. This was an interesting experience, but one I'll talk about more on my DJ page (MixingGuide). What I will say is that after the 1st 4 hour gig, for the following week whenever I was listening to music in the car, I kept hearing horns. I turn the music off, no horns, music on, horns ... no matter what song. I'd be travelling thinking somebody behind me is pissed off, I'd be going on a roundabout thinking "shiiittt emergency breeeaaaakkkkk, somebody is warning me" ... but nah, it was imagined. Bizarre !!!! Almost as bizarre as a comment I got on one of my youtube videos about how my music is making this guy wanna do drugs .... he ended with "yh more coca!ne snorting".

Towards the end of the month a friend of mine mentioned a full-moon rave happening in a field, details to be revealed last minute. A few of us decided to go and as per usual I ended up being the token brown taxi-man, driving everyone there. Let's just say I never take my car to places like this again ... just people off their heads banging into vehicles and doing silly things. The theme was Psy-Trance, something very popular here. At first everybody was lively and dancing away to these repetitive beats (every track was the same and hurt my ears), and slowly people got fried ... by lunchtime the following day due to lack of sleep and substances, the dancefloor was filled with zombies. I am not into taking drink or drugs, yet this Hungarian chick was doing her best to get me spaced out, offering me this and that ... then telling me she'll secretly get me high and I should go back to her town with her partner in the back of the van. I got scared ... very scared.

The biggest issue with field raves is hygiene and human waste ... in other words, there's no clean place to take a dump. They put up cubicles which are in awful condition after 100s of drunk guys splash out all over the walls and the floor ... definitely not something I want to use. In the morning I needed to go so I decided to be nature boy and take a stroll into the forest with a bottle of water and tree leaves. Off I go, hiding away and I knew things could get messy so I took all my clothes off, made a little hole in the ground and squatted over it. The lighter I become, the greater the smile on my face and then I look up. I didn't choose my spot wisely, above me is a bridge with cars driving by and people pointing down to me ... and my tree leaves blow away in the wind and I have to run after them. I was glad no other raver was walking by this way ... but the incident made me forget to cover up the hole I dug ... whoops.

There was another incident involving a tranny, but we don't need to get into that.

Ok, car importing. I thought I was done here, until at the beginning of August I picked up my mail and saw a letter from customs from mid-July saying "You must come to customs with your car and documentation within 10 days ... it's about import tax". So these clever peeps think it's ok to give somebody 10 days notice in the middle of summer when vacations happen. I ignored it and pretended the letter never arrived. Last week they call me up and demand I come to see them otherwise Im paying the €14k tax. Bumba claats, so I visited them on Wednesday in Faro, and all they wanted was to read my VIN number in front and the mileage the car has done ... I think they want to see the car to make sure I haven't sold it, as I'm not allowed to for 5 yrs. I said to them, "is this likely to happen again? End of the yr Im going away for 3 months so wont be able to comply to any crazy demands such as 10 days notice" .... her response? "You cant go on holiday for 3 months, you're only allowed 1 month max" ... whaaatt??? So now customs own me, bumbas.

Clothes, I've given up on buying them here. For the past yr I've yet to find a store where they have something that isn't too big. I thought maybe in Faro it would be better, but even size small is maassiivvee. Man I dont get it, the smallest pairs of trousers go up to my man-boobs, am I really that small? Ive bought a few tshirts in the past that fit me snuggly and thats because they're actually from the woman's blouses section ... Im forced to buy woman's or children's clothing here. I thought I'd wait and get a new wardrobe when I visit the US (new clothes that is, not an actual self-assembly wardrobe). But now Im thinking "yh right, size small in the US is gonna cover me like a tent".

I'm going to end today by sharing some silly movie translations into Portuguese. For some reason they don't like translating things literally, which makes it very hard to find the movies you are looking for as you have no idea what they're going to be called here. Here are a few example:

"the man with 2 brains ... the erotic doctor"
"i love you to death .... i will love you until i kill you"
"planet of the apes ... the man that came from the future"
"the graduate .... the 1st night of a man"
"taxi driver ... taxi driver - taxi driver"
"stuart little .... my little stuart little"
"chicken little ... the little chicken chicken little"

Take care guys !!

---