White Dreadlocks

Name: White Dreadlocks

Location: Seat 15B flight KL1687, somewhere probably over an ocean or something.

Occupation: soon to start.

Date: 12.09.2018

 This is where I’m located while scribbling this passage in a tatty old notebook, but this is not where I’ll be when you’re reading it. (Now I’m typing up and editing, this sentence feels like a lie, but I promise at the time it was 100% true.) It’ll take some time to type up and edit, (see there you go) but the little precursor above every one of my posts is useful for moments like this. I very much feel as though I am living completely when I’m craning my neck to stare out of the window from my middle-seated position. Soon, I will hopefully be settled in Spain. (I am! I also promise that I will not use this time-bending device again, because it’s confusing me more than anyone else.) ((Much promising in this blog-post! Must make sure I fulfil all of these.))

               After a few lovely days in Holland I’m starting a teaching job in Spain, ready for the usual, new ‘adventures’ to begin. To be honest, the next few days will probably be a lot of training, paperwork, and buying kitchen stuff, so I’ll try and drip-feed my eager three followers some stuff about Amsterdam until then. I’m going to attempt to keep this updated weekly for the sake of having something to work towards. After all, what do you do when you have an MA in creative writing and no professional or project to channel your effort into? Bother the internet, naturally!

               There’s a lot to say about Holland but maybe after I’ve exhausted those four days, I can travel around more beautiful European countries and find something else to write about. Maybe, I’ll tour round Spain until I’m an expert on the place. Maybe I’ll keep taking pictures of that same beach in Santurtzi while continuing to pretend I’m a travel blog. Who knows? My aspirations often outrun the capabilities of my bank account as you’ll see if you scroll down and look at China.  

               I know now, though, that I’m ready for a fresh start. I can tell that from the way I find excuses to shower nine times a day. I’ve wanted to wash off this layer of skin for a while now, and the best way to do that, short of a scouring pad, is to get somewhere where you feel totally new. I’m ready for messy, uncomfortable, tourist hell over dull, comfortable, citizenship now. I will miss the double-bed, the cat, the family, the pub quizzes, but hopefully not too much. Hopefully, the excitement will outweigh it.

This is the time to laugh at miscommunication and lost luggage, to embrace to total and utter uncertainty. That being said, if it’s shite, I’ll do my four months as specified by my contract and then move home again. After all, this is white dreadlocks, the obnoxious, privileged, white girl’s answer to traveling. I’m always gonna be reet.

               Same rules apply, there will be total, unflinching honesty, acknowledgements of middle-class privilege, and oversharing to the max. Unsurprisingly, I still have no shame.

               Yours faithfully,

               White Dreadlocks

Name: White Dreadlocks 

Location: East Yorkshire, England. 

Occupation: Professional neurotic packing checker 

Date: 08/02/2019

Dear the Internet, 

Name: White Dreadlocks

Location: Zhenjiang fuck still 

Occupation: Reading articles about coping with anxiety. 

Date: 12/07/2017 

Dear the internet,  I’ve kind of reached the stage of acceptance. Yes, my company is kicking me out days before my flight, yes, they’ve decided to pay me practically nothing, yes it is likely I will be financially fucked up until I get a part-time job at home and my student loan is accepted. I am not usually a ‘accept-a-bad-deal’ kind of person but I am emotionally drained. There is no post about Singapore. My company took my passport to cancel my work visa promising it would be five days. It was eleven. My month’s paycheck isn’t enough to cover the flights I missed and none of my employers will respond. But the idea of going into the office and screaming and kicking off AGAIN ultimately leading to tears AGAIN and nothing at all changing AGAIN makes me feel physically ill. So instead I’m going to get my own petty form of revenge in the way of bitching to 12 followers.  If anyone is following this page because they’re considering being a TEFL teacher I have advice: Do it. It’ll be worth it. If you commit and you’re ready to go you’ll grow and mature in more ways than you can imagine. Seeing the world is always a positive thing to do if you’re in a position where you’re able to afford it. 

But don’t go to First Leap Education. 

I was told I’d be unemployed for three weeks. It was two months. I ended up with a drained bank account and 5000 kuai from my last paycheck to last around 6 weeks till they paid me. A week before I flew out they told me I wasn’t in the city they promised in the interview. I’d be in a smaller city. Since I had no money, I had no choice but to continue on and take the job. I couldn’t chose my own apartment because they’d rented one for me. It was one room with no kitchen. They knew we required cooking facilities so they bought me a microwave. Don’t know what I would be microwaving. I don’t have a freezer and the fridge was broken. In this new city the cost of living was lower so my pay wouldn’t be what they promised in the interview. I’d gone from around 18,000 a month to 10,000 most months. The kicker was they knew from the time they interviewed me that there would be no places in the city they offered. First Leap lie to get what they want. It’s a flawless business model. 

NOW HOLD UP HOLD UP moving abroad is a very big deal. You have to be able to roll with the punches, that I believe. It’s never going to be smooth and I knew that from the first time. But I had a job in China. I had a flat, I loved my teaching jobs, I had friends, I was in a major city. I moved company because it made financial sense and I liked the benefits, not because I needed a fresh, new experience. First Leap Education lied through their teeth and stripped all the benefits they promised me.

 I loved my co-workers for the most part. But constant competition and telling everyone how to do their job, offering advice no one asked for got irritating. I had six months teaching experience and was treated like a child. I had bigoted idiots screaming in the office about how they hated black people, how free healthcare shouldn’t exist because if he was too disabled to work he would just die, how abortion was the murder of babies but people shouldn’t have kids they can’t afford and expect help, how Moonlight was disgusting, how he found a 14 year old hot and blamed the actress for wearing make up, how arabs were ugly, how there were hardly any gays in the world anyway so why does it matter? a constant spew of inappropriate shit that completely effected how I worked and never. fucking. stopped. I was taken aside and told to ignore him. We had a presentation about how we should avoid politics in the staff-room. The manager spent the whole time looking at me as though I was the problem. 

Now for the actual leaving let’s see:  I tried to hand in my notice and they told me I couldn’t. When I told them I had to leave and they had no choice a few weeks later, they cut my final paycheck, made me hand over my passport to cancel my visa, threatened to black list me if I didn’t comply and kept referring back to a contract that they hadn’t even signed. I agreed to hand over my passport if they agreed to pay for my flight if I missed it which they agreed to and then retracted. There isn’t fear like being a foreigner in a city without documentation or a way home. My last two weeks have been, oh, just about hell. But it’s coming to an end. And soon I’m gonna pick myself up, find some fucking work, start up uni and write again. But for now I’m gonna have my little online tantrum because I have no time for a company that fakes degrees to get people on Z visas, hires people on illegal visas, treats their employees as if they’re disposable and drops them if their situation is proving to be too dangerous but will threaten a 21 year old with the law unless she complies in all the unreasonable things they demand.  Sincerely, 

Name: White Dreadlocks.

Location: Zhenjiang China (FUCKING STILL: No passport addition) 

Date: 09/07/2017 

Occupation: So fucking unemployed it hurts. 

Dear the internet, 

Disneyland Shanghai in June is fucking warm. I mean impending heat-stroke warm, drumstick lollipop warm, protect the elderly and vulnerable warm. Disneyland was warm and I wore jeans.I’m pretty sure I lost half my body weight in sweat and gained it back in adorable mickey-mouse shaped ice-creams. The water-rides were full all day. At one point I think I saw a mirage.  

The thing is though, the place is kinda magic with it’s otherworldly-ness. All the shops look like a quaint 30s town, the castle is huge and magical looking and you forget, I mean you genuinely do forget, how much Disney shaped your childhood. I was never one of those who used to do Buzzfeed quizzes about which princess I am or clutched my heart when I found the best cuddly toy in the Disney store but it really was delightful. That’s why just wandering round was lovely, taking pictures, being part of the magic, trying not to faint all the things you love about a wholesome holiday. 

The queues were three hours long everywhere. We went on two rides. Now, I forget how much I love Disney but rollercoasters have, and always will be, the fucking shit. My love for rollercoasters is something I will not forget into adulthood. My grandparent’s lived a walk away from Blackpool Pleasure Beach and, being the youngest in my family, being scared of rollercoasters was not a privilege I was allowed. I was a stand-on-your-tiptoes kid and a queue up five times for the pepsi max, kid. My brother and sister trained me in how to stand tall with your shoes on the floor still so you didn’t look like you were on tiptoes. But the thing about China is, it’s pretty populated. So we had to be choosy. 

I do not regret my choice. Jack Sparrow is my idol. I love him. I love his chaotic neutral ways and how he doesn’t give a shit and he seems so clumsy and confused but knows exactly what he’s doing all the freaking time. My first confirming, queer experience was when I was at a Disney-Night in the uni club dressed as Jack Sparrow. I blamed the lesbian sex on all the rum I drank. I continued to drink rum regularly. He is a fictional hero of epic proportions and that fucking boat ride... it’s honestly pretty good. The effects are amazing, it was creepy and scary and entertaining in all the right ways. The two hour wait was worth it. All hail Captain Jack. (Should I post a picture from all my times as Captain Jack? Fuck it. Might as well. My generic pirate selfies could use some love.) 

But again, it’s happening! My posts are getting too long and no one really gives a shit about my time at Disneyland. There were no hilarious anecdotes on this day. It was just a good time. We got home fine, the hostel was good, it was all pretty cheap considering. I’d go if I were you. Just go. You might as well. It’s the most magical place on earth. 

Lots of Love,  White Dreadlocks. 

WhiteDreadlocks will officially stop being a travelling blog.  I am returning home to England in a matter of weeks.  I’m sorry to let down my fans (all both of you), but I am doing an MA to improve my writing and after that I will probably have another nervous breakdown about my future and end up painting carousels in Greece or whatever in which case, I will be back with more anecdotes. Before I go for good, there are a few more blog posts I intend to do. If you can’t be arsed to read them, I will write them in summary:  Disneyland in Shanghai was good. Queues were not good.  I will be in Singapore soon seeing a lovely, old friend and will definitely write about that.  I am currently selling a guitar if anyone in the Zhenjiang, China region wants it. (Optimistic. No one in the Zhenjiang China region follows me. ((Even more optimistic: a blogpost that indicates anyone follows me))  Lots of love, 

White Dreadlocks 

Travelling Quote of the Day: I would rather own little and see the world than own the world and see little of it. Failing both of those things, fuck it all off and live in Birmingham, reading terrible gay poetry at open mics. 

Me before teaching: Yeah I like to practice guitar, you know, get a lot of my anguish out when I sing. Sometimes I'm feeling Bright Eyes or Elliot Smith but I'm also into old blues music and sometimes folk. I can really practice anything if I like the song and I have the chords but I'm really not very good right now. I mean, I'm thinking about writing my own stuff but I'm just not sure I have the talent or the ability to perform in front of people. It takes a lot of musical know-how and writing's more my thing and I dunno... I'm just not sure. Maybe it's personal but I feel like music is just a beautiful way to express so many emotions and I would really want to do it justice because it really does mean so much to me.

Me after teaching: If I google the chords for Twinkle Twinkle Little Star then I can also learn The Alphabet Song! Das 2 songs!!!!!!!!!!! :))))))))) !! :) :D :)

Name: White Dreadlocks Location: Beijing Occupation: Alcoholic Temp Work  Date: 31.05.17

Does anyone actually like rave music? I feel like people like getting ket-ed off their faces in fields and techno artists jump on that opportunity to promote their art. Without recreational drug users in fields, everyone would just be listening to good music with words. I’m joking of course. I don’t actually mind it. It IS without a doubt the perfect background sound if you’re not bothered about looking like a knob at a rave and you genuinely do want to jump up and down.

  So, anyway, we’re all on The Great Wall of China and we’re jumping up and down pretending we’re not worried about looking like knobs. It’s a kind of strange since everyone around us is foreign and it makes us feel all bonded together and all that shit. But wait, what am I doing here telling this like it’s a story? The weekend was not a story but a block of time carved out especially for hedonism. There’s no plot development during a festival.f anything there’s character regression rather than development. It’s messy, but it the best way messy can be. But then without a story how can I make a blog post? Fuck it: I’ll write a list of tips and you can make your own story. God love you all for working so hard to make the plot-line whatever you want it to be. WHITE DREADLOCKS FESTIVAL TIPS:  1) Bring dry shampoo, you fucking need it.  2) If you’re into recreational drugs, fucking bring them. That way you don’t have to spend the first few hours of a festival asking anyone if they’ve got anything to sell. Your mentality will go from, ‘if it seems safe and I’m sticking to MD,’ to ‘fuck it, just fuck with my fucking head, I don’t give a shit,’ and before you know it you’re punching a DJ and being escorted off the premises. Be safe, stay with friends, stop asking strangers who are obviously not cool enough to do drugs for drugs.  3) It’s worth buying a few bottles of water or you will detest yourself in the morning.  4) Tent sex gets sweaty. There’s a bunch on condensation. If will feel like you’re on a slip and slide  5) People can see you having tent-sex and no, they are not judging you. They are too busy being off their faces pretending to like rave music. (I’m still not fully convinced.)  6) If you’re worried your dancing looks stupid, it definitely doesn’t.  7) If you’re thinking you’re dancing looks sexy as fuckkkkkkkkk!You probably look a bit stupid. 8) You can look as cool as you want with twirling fire but it’s China so there will still be an old man carting past with a wheelbarrow full of rubbish because he has a job to do.  9) Don’t take festival advice from loser bloggers on the internet pretending to be cool, fuck it, man, go live your life.  Lots of love,  White Dreadlocks

Me: ‘So your English is fluent, where did you learn?’ Chinese guy: 'Oh, I worked at this job one summer. An English person was there. Do you mind awfully batting that pesky feline away from the food? It’s frightfully unhygenic.’

Me: *Studies Chinese everyday. Moves country. Spends hours writing up notes, practices one on one conversations regularly.* Chinese person: Ni hao :) Me: TING BU DONG, MATE. *Jumps into river to avoid further conversation.*

Name: White Dreadlocks

Date: 17th May 2017

Occupation: Mostly crying

Location: Zhenjiang, China.

I confess, this is not a travel blog. This does not offer satirical insight into the world of a privileged traveller. I am not jumping on planes every two minutes and seeing different parts of the world. I am a teacher in Zhenjiang China and this is where I live. So let me tell you some shit about Zhenjiang and these beautiful fucking lakes in Nanshan. (Nanshan: literally South Mountain (I assume?? I mean there’s potentially like 12 other meanings depending on the tone. I hate this fucking bullshit language.))

It was one of us foreigner lot’s birthdays and she’d encouraged all to go to this beautiful picturesque lake on a day where it wasn’t as sunny or hot as every single other day where I sit in an office without air conditioning. She drove up in a boat looking cool as fuck, and four of us crawled in, prepped in swimming costumes. We dove into the water. Side note to this story: I am not a strong swimmer. Side note to this side note: It is hard to pull yourself back up onto a boat and you may need your friends’ assistance if you are not a strong swimmer. I don’t want to go all Ernest Hemmingway on you but there is nothing quite as liberating as swimming a body of natural water. Pools at resorts are all well and good, but the freshness of the smell mixed with the earth and the dirt, the trees and the mountains around you, the ultimate feeling of, holy fuck I am alive in this universe, is something inexplicable. Fuck, that was a bit to prose like for me, but honestly swimming without worrying about cholera just isn’t the fucking same.  

           A cop kicked us out. My friends swam to shore and I drove the boat back. We made out that we were leaving but really just went on a long trek around to another massive body of water. It took a while, we climbed some hills that were wrong and had to climb down, people were angry because they bought a BBQ and had flip-flops on. I did swear I would speak only honestly on this page. The place we found was dirtier, the rocks were harder to jump off. It was more private and beautiful and exactly the kind of secluded place you see in travel blogs. But I floated on my back feeling the freezing water turn comfortable and realised that this was exactly where I wanted to be right now. People compared travelling to ‘exciting hell’ as opposed to ‘boring heaven’ when we talked about culture shock during my TEFL training. That is pretentious and indicates people who don’t travel aren’t as crazy or brave or adventurous and I’m not sure I take kindly to it for various problematic reasons I won’t go into here. But for a minute, floating in that water, everything really was quite lovely and it didn’t matter that I wasn’t a strong swimmer and sometimes needed help back onto the boat.  

Name: White Dreadlocks Date: 10th May 2017 Occupation: Teacher and shit cutter-out-er Location: Zhenjiang, China

Dear the Internet,

I promised a blog about Shanghai and how could I possibly not deliver? (What, like with that Terracotta Army post you never fucking finished? (Shut the fuck up, there were load of them, the end. Anyway, this stream-of-consciousness, neurotic style of writing is messy and unoriginal.)) 

The water town was about as beautiful as you could expect, even on the cloudy day, even with a hangover. Some other company had tried to poach us the night before and we declined the job opportunity but accepted the shots despite our early morning rise for the bus. The bus didn’t come, the hostel changed their mind last minute about our pre-booked trip, so we spent an extortionate amount on a taxi instead. And it was worth it. The shops were fucking quaint, the water was beautiful, the boat-ride offered the perfect opportunity for selfies, (and also calmly reflecting on the refreshing nature of the sea, of course. We’re writers before we’re millennials.) 

Due to our sleep-deprived, hungover state, a plot-point you will see arising regularly in my retellings, we had to sporadically stop for snacks, coffee and sit-downs every few hours; like toddlers who you didn’t want to get too over-excited in case they got tired and cranky later. On one of these sit-downs we found a punk bar, with Sex Pistols and Ramones memorabilia everywhere, union jacks hung up on the wall, cool owners with tattoos and hairstyles where it seemed like vital parts were missing, the whole lot. I loved it. I felt hopeful in Shanghai. Like the present was going to protect me even if I was still nostalgic for the past. I drank a beer (hair of the dog, innit?) ate some chicken nuggets and read through the line-ups on posters of old punk festivals in Shanghai. I decided this could be the place for me. 

But this is a White Dreadlocks post and it wouldn’t be White Dreadlocks without a massive fuck up so let me talk about getting home after our admittedly delightful day. There are no fucking taxis around ancient, water cities. This a trip we did not plan, having stormed into a taxi, livid that our bus had been cancelled. We had no idea how to get back. 

Now my Chinese is not the best. However, certain basic phrases help me in times like these for example: 

1) ‘Excuse me, where is the metro?’ 2) ‘Excuse me, we would like a taxi, we’re going to the train station. Where can we get a taxi?’ 3) ‘Hello, I don’t speak much Chinese. Can you help us?’ 

All these phrases would be amazingly helpful if the answers to these questions were not: 

1) ‘The metro? There isn’t one.’ 2) ‘Taxis? Hmm, I’m not sure I don’t see any.’ 3) ‘No.’ 

We had no way of getting back and in a state of desperation, walked half an hour back to the water city. There we saw it! A taxi! Except it was empty and there was no one in it. 

Across the road there was a friendly-seeming man with nine fingers. He didn’t speak English but I managed to ask him to call a taxi. I speak better than I understand so I couldn’t exactly figure out if the situation had been sorted or not, but he took my phone off me and called many numbers and seemed like the most helpful person in the world. He had no reason to help us obnoxious, privileged foreigners who didn’t plan well for a trip. We thanked him profusely. He handed me back my phone and we were unsure if a taxi was coming or not but we were grateful he’d at least tried. He took out his car keys and started walking away and we figured this was the last we would see of this kind, helpful stranger right up until he crossed the road and unlocked his FUCKING TAXI. 

Now I don’t claim to understand much about rage but I understand it’s what I must’ve felt when I unthinkingly stormed after him screaming in my broken Chinese something along the lines of: 

‘YOU HAVE TAXI. WE WANT TAXI. WE GO TRAIN STATION. WILL GIVE YOU MONEY.’ 

This was followed by repeated, angry shouts of ‘WHY?’ while he desperately tried to tell me that he couldn’t take us because of something about the morning, (my Chinese is really terrible.) My friends had gone hysterical and were laughing across the road at our pathetic stand-off and then my phone rang. 

‘Hello?’

‘Wei, ni hao,’ I passed it back to the nine-fingered man. He spoke for a while then took us to the corner of the road to wait for the taxi he told us would be here in ten minutes. He waited with us while it came. I decided he was without a doubt one of the nicest people in the world despite the fact that he had a taxi and for some reason inconceivable could not take us. I offered him a cigarette he didn’t accept. 

‘He can’t smoke, he’s lost a finger!’ my friend whispered to me appalled. 

‘He has another hand, you fucking moron.’ It was then I realised we were all too stupid to deserve the help we got. 

The taxi came. We said our thank-yous and goodbyes. I hugged the nine-fingered, taxi-driver man and promised myself that if ever anyone in the world at any point needed a damn taxi I would call them one, no matter the language barrier, no matter the remoteness of the location. I owed it to nine-fingered, kind, taxi-driver man, our hero and God.  

But there’s no fucking chance I’m driving them there myself.