My friends and I were in Nimbin t volunteer at the Mardi Grass festival which is organized by the Hemp Embassy. Every year, for about 3 days, thousands of people come to this little town to celebrate marijuana and support its legalization. For some, it’s just a good opportunity to freely smoke in the streets really.

It wasn’t hard work to volunteer there. Basically you just had to roll fake joints with plants, paint rubbish in purple and stuff like that. In exchange, the Hemp Embassy gave us food, showers and weed. There are not a lot of places in the world where you get paid in weed…

Nimbin is located in the middle of the mountains. It is really just a main street with stores and coffee shops but everything revolved around marijuana. There was even a museum rooting for marijuana legalization.

There’s a lot of things happening during the day: mainly parades (old VW combi, Ganja Fairies), concerts and funny contest like bang throwing or joint rolling.

To mock the cops, a few volunteers were dress in police uniforms and handing fake joints to tourists so that the local authorities couldn’t tell who was really smoking weed.

After the festival I stayed for a few more weeks with the locals who were just all crazy and extravagant. We mostly spent our days smoking and talking about cannabis. Nimbin is definitely like no other town in the world…

Enjoy the photos!

Willy

One year ago, I was planning my trip to Rio. There's a lot of songs that I listen from time to time, that make me travel in my memories, and to the streets of this beautiful city. I had the chance to be there when it was the Rio Carnival... What a wonderful experience!

This year, the Carnival officially starts on the 18th of February... but the Cariocas started to party in the streets since the 18th of January. I figured that it was the perfect occasion to share with you some of my songs.

Jorge Ben, the Marchinhas de carnaval and Dario Moreno (Turkish singer very famous in France) will bring you to the Carnival, Barry Manilow to the 70's and Copacabana. Then, you will appreciate the fantastic cover of Bowie's "Life on Mars" by the Brazilian musician and singer Seu Jorge, and also his famous song "Tive Razao".

Enjoy some nice songs about "feijao" (the black bean eaten by all the Brasilians in "feijoadas"), Jesus Cristo and cachaça in order to really feel yourself in Brasil. And finish in the crazy baile funk of the favelas with some Carioca funk.

Tracklist

• 1. "Pais tropical" - Jorge Ben
• 2. "Mamãe Eu Quero" - Marchinhas de carnaval
• 3. "Si tu vas à Rio" - Dario Moreno
• 4. "Copacabana" - Barry Manilow
• 5. "Life on Mars" - Seu Jorge
• 6. "Tive Razao" - Seu Jorge
• 7. "Saco de Feijao" - Beth Carvalho
• 8. "Jesus Cristo" - Erlon Chaves
• 9. "Vamos farrrear" - Pinduca
• 10. "Bananeira" - Emilio Santiago
• 11. "Solta o Frango" - Bonde do Role
• 12. "Chapa Quente" - Os Tchutchucos

Download the soundtrack

Have a nice trip !

Maéva

Andy Council a British illustrator and street-artist who chose to represent our urban landscape using dinosaurs. A very accurate metaphor for modern giant cities like LA (as seen above) which have grown into gigantic monsters swallowing the individuality of its inhabitants.

Here are a few more of those. But we don't want to post too much here because you really have to go to Andy's website and admire his amazing work.

Now what we'd love to see next is a fight between two of those guys. Maybe L.A. Vs N.Y. or Berlin Vs London?!

Alex

Crouch End, London

Bristol

Barton Hill

The video above was created by British illustrator and designer Rob Bailey and commissioned by Cornerhouse for the 'Intertwining Line' exhibition. The series is composed of 30 animated road trip movies (by plane, car or submarine). You can see 9 of the videos on Rob Bailey's Vimeo page. We have featured here our three favorite ones but they are all amazing.

We loved those videos a lot because they provide an opportunity of contemplating travels from a different perspective and allow a quiet moment of thinking will you watch them. Why do we travel? Is about the journey or the destination? Should I be on the road or in this plane right now?

Here's what I suggest: turn off your music, forget about any boring task you have to do today and take the time to watch those videos. They are only 2 minutes long, which seems like an eternity in our fast-paced society. You might be tempted to skip forward in the video to see what happen, don't. Take the time. It's only two minutes. Use you imagination and escape your daily life for those two minutes. We call it traveling without moving. Rob Bailey's gorgeous videos are the perfect mean for that...

Alex

I have an issue with how the media has quoted some passengers as saying that crew members were "incompetent". In a world which feeds on a 24/7 news cycle, it seems like there is no longer any time to verify facts. Bear in mind that the crew evacuated over 4000 people safely, in the dark in under 2 hours. That's actually quite a remarkable feat. This is not to say that this incident is without human fault, however. Anyway there seems to be much misinformation and sensationalism over this story, so allow me to provide you with some insight from a "behind the curtain" perspective.

Firstly, it's law to have a passenger safety briefing within 24 hours of embarkation for all passengers. On the Concordia, this was scheduled for the second day of the cruise rather than pre-departure, which was clearly a poor decision. The purpose of this safety briefing is to inform passengers of their individual Muster station to assemble at in the event of an emergency. This is not about the location of the life boats but rather the meeting point where your Muster station leader, a trained crew member, will give further instructions on when and where to evacuate to. I can imagine the frustration and chaos for passengers if they had no practice beforehand.

PlaneFinder.net is a surreal website that shows you in real time the planes flying in the sky. And there's a lot of them! It makes me feel really small when I think about all those aircrafts and the millions of travelers flying over my head my right now. I'm also quite jealous because I'd love to be in of those planes heading to an exotic destination...

If you click on a plane on the map you will get details about the route and some info about the aircraft (airline, type, etc...) and even a nice visualization of it. You can also filter the main map by airlines or even search for specific flights. A good way to check if people are going to be later before you go pick them at the airport.

One thing that I noticed on Plane Finder is that you can't see any planes over the oceans and seas. So I checked the page that explains how the map works and learned that it uses land receivers that listen to the feeds coming from the planes close by. But obviously none of those receivers are in the sea.

Head to the website and become a plane nerd too!

Alex

If you are a regular reader of Hejorama, you already know Che. He's an illustrator from London and we collaborated on two articles. The first one was for our travel notebooks series and the second one was a map showing the location of his stickers around the world.

Che went to Berlin in December 2011 and got in touch with me since I'm currently living there. We hang out in the city and one morning I showed up with my camcorder at his hostel to film what's in his bags.

Che carries around everything you would expect from an illustrator: pencils, sketchbooks, stickers and three different cameras. Among them two Lomography cameras: a fisheye one and a fancy looking one called El Capitan.

Discover the rest in the video!

Alex

PS: I know we promised better quality videos in 2012 but this was shot in 2011. Sorry for the crappy sound...

Hans Kemp is a Dutch photographer that fell in love with Vietnam (he lived in Ho Chi Minh), and is well known for his books about Vietnam and Vietnamese contemporary culture.

He currently lives in Bangkok and continues to travel around Asia, looking for new pictures that will make us feel a thrill.

I really appreciate the work of this man, that describes himself as a "photographer, writer, publisher, traveler, doubter, optimist, pessimist, lover, fighter, black and white and a zillion shades of grey, colorful, boring, fallible, human". I'm very touched by his sensibility, that allows him to see the things that everyone don't see, in the life of everyday.

"Picture yourself rice fields in every imaginary shade of green. kids and waterbuffalos splashing about in streams and rivers, oxcarts loaded with the season's harvest, fishing boats with piercing eyes to guide them and streets full of motorbikes. Motorbikes?"

Hans Kemp

He immortalized some instants of the Vietnamese life in his book “Bikes of Burden”, like a tribute to the motor bicycles that flood the streets in a both chaotic and organized way and make live the country.

In Vietnam, there is an obsession for fresh ingredients for every meal. No frozen meat or fish, the food always comes directly from the farm, to the abattoir and the dock.

So instead of transporting large quantities at a time, many loads of small quantities get transported all the time and the bike is the favorite mode.

Hans Kemp thinks that in a few years, motor bikes will disappear as the favourite mode of transport in Vietnam... "People will rely on fridges and freezers as they will be too busy to make the daily trip to the market. Roads will be widened, cars will be more available and the world will appear through a window."

That why he tries to immortalize them, these Bikes of Burden.

I let you discover the poesy of Hans Kemp through his No Hans Land blog, and his beautiful photographs.

Maeva

It’s easy to think of the country as a tourist destination with all inclusive resorts, endless alcohol and state-run tourist excursions. For a lot of people that’s exactly what it is. It's all they will see, do and experience. I don't mean to take away from that, as a lot of people in the West need to take time away from our 60-hour work weeks, endless barrage of shit on TV, consumerism and commuting from the suburbs.

I went for a little holiday, and to meet with a friend whom I had met 10 years earlier while on exactly the same style of holiday. This time around, things were a lot different. Karel was my friend, and he invited me with open arms in to his life.

From what I gather, Cubans are easily some of the most friendly, proud, and hospitable people I've ever met in over a decade of travel. Not once did talk of work come up. The focus seemed to be on life, and the general attitude of Cubans was that we were all in this together so we might as well love doing whatever it is we do. A lot of media seem to portray Cuba as some socialist nightmare where everyone is stuck in 1959 in a world that is in 2012. Sure, the cars are old, and its not easy to make it, but in the world of capitalism, it seems we have the same problems.

The bills need to be paid, love is hard, and often, we just have to make do with what we’ve got.

Colter

Note from Hejorama: You can buy prints of these beautiful pictures directly from Colter. Simply get in touch with him at hello@coltersmyth.ca for that. Also make sure to check the rest of his photos and great design work on his websiteand Flickr account.

The British music label Soundway Records has made its mission to present to the world rare world music compilations and musical gems they find all over the world. On their website they published a fantastic musical map of Colombia (sent to us by our friend Yvonne). Explore it and hover your cursor over the white dots to discover the different musical region of Colombia. There are songs, videos and images on it for a full multimedia experience!

Also make sure to go on the original website to read the article from Soundway that gives further information about the music and the artists featured on the map. Fascinating!

Alex

Ps: if you wonder how the map was made, check out Thinglink.