The International Writers Magazine:Adventure Writer Birthday

---

Adventure Writer on Seven Years in Asia • Antonio Graceffo turns 40 Until someone asked me I had no idea that it had been seven years since I had quit my job on Wall Street and come to Asia to be a full time adventure writer.  “What have you been up to?” asked a Facebook message from an old friend who I had attended merchant marine school with in 1991. After shipping out on the high seas, I went on to university in Germany and Ryan went on to the Merchant Marine academy. We met again in 1997, when the question, “What have you been up to?” was easier to answer.

I had been at school in Germany, Spain, and Costa Rica. I had graduated with degrees in linguistics and business. I had been divorced, and I was back in New York, looking for a job in finance.

Now, keeping up with our once in a decade schedule, Ryan found me on Facebook and asked “What have you been up to?” He followed this with, “Why are you wearing a uniform in your profile photo? Are you back in the army?” And, “Why does it say you are in the Philippines?”
 
The life of an adventure writer is not easy. For one thing, I am the main character in my writing. Just like a TV show that has to change its format from time to time so audiences don’t get burned out, I need to shake things up to keep it interesting. I never have enough money, in fact, each month, I live hand to mouth until my small writer’s income dries up. Then things get really tough.
 
Things get so shaken up, I feel like I am suffering with a British nanny.

Right now, I am living on the bottom bunk of a dormitory in Manila. The room is charming, with cinderblock walls and no windows. I share the bathroom with eight people, and like them, I am a full time student, at paramedic school.   The following is the incredibly strange and twisted storey of how Antonio Graceffo became, the Monk from Brooklyn, the infamous travel writer and reality TV guy, and why he is attending paramedic school in the Philippines. There is also a side note, or perhaps a sub-plot, which explains why the police are looking for him (me) in China and Burma. If you don’t know who Antonio Graceffo is or what he has written, you can first check my website, speakingadventure.com there is a story on there called “Four Years of Living Dangerously,” which tells about my first four years in Asia. Also, I have four books on amazon.com and a new one coming out later this year. Next, you could google my name, there are like 50,000 (no lie) pages about me. Finally, put my name on youtube and you will find a lot of videos I shot around Asia and inside of Burma, as well as a lot of stuff that I did for History Channel and for movies.

When First Engineer Ryan and I met in 1997, I had just come back to New York, looking for a job in Finance. It was a struggle. I eventually got into a financial planner training program at a well known company (who might sue me if I print their name. they have forbidden me to even speak it. But suffice to say, it rhymes with purle.) I completed a three year education in seven months. Working a hundred hours a week, I got all my certifications, while living on the floor in my office with no money. Once I got fully qualified, I made three job changes in about 18 months and each time increased my income by about $40,000 USD. Eventually, I became assistant head of private wealth management for the third largest private bank in the USA.
 
After 911, I decided to drop out of life. I had so many dreams and things I wanted to do, most of all, to live a Jack London/Hemingway life and write books. I left a lot of unpaid student loans, taxes and other federal debts behind at that time, which puts the US on the list of countries I probably should never visit.
 
I took a job teaching school in Taiwan so I could start learning Chinese and practice Kung Fu. I was the first foreigner to live and train with the team there. I had practiced martial arts and boxing my whole life, but after leaving the service I stopped fighting in competitions.  Taiwan set a precedent and martial art became a full time part of my life from then on. I left Taiwan and studied at the Shaolin Temple in mainland China. By then, I spoke Chinese well and was completely fit again, recovering from years of university and banking.  

Because of the SARS epidemic I had to flee China, I was actually arrested and held in a hospital and had to fight the monks…grabbed an old sword off the wall, and threatened and cajoled my way out of the medieval doors. The full story became my first book, “The Monk from Brooklyn,” available on amazon.com   Because of the SARS quarantine I only made it as far as Hong Kong and couldn’t get any further. The money I had left from working in New York basically got eaten up at a rate of over $100 USD per day for six months of living as a deposed refugee in Hong Kong. Hong Kong was like “Rick’s American Café,” in “Casablanca.” It was full of people like me, waiting for our exit visa. I shared my plight with Brits, Thais, and Rhodesians, who insisted that the countries name “has not and will never change.”   Do you want to go get a coffee now? We aren’t even close to explaining why I am wearing an army uniform and studying in the Philippines.

Where’s Burma?
 
One adventure I always wanted to do was to cross a big desert ala Laurence of Arabia. Stuck in Hong Kong, I had nothing to do all day but, train in Filipino martial arts ( I am leaving out some steps here) and read up on the Taklamakan Desert. Eventually I took the train back into China, where I was wanted for assault, after physically flattening a guy who was ripping off my former employer in Hong Kong. (Once again, I have left out a whole chapter of my sorted relationship with China and my industrial espionage there.)
 
I did a solo crossing of the Taklamakan Desert on a tricycle rickshaw. I made it to Kashgar, near the Pakistan border, where the hotel manager asked me to put the bike on display in the lobby and to hang around and regal visitors with stories of my adventure, in Chinese. I left the bike there, chained to the spiral staircase, when I snuck out at five in the morning, returning to Hong Kong.
 
I arrived back in Hong Kong with about ten dollars in my pocket. I checked into a guesthouse owned by a mainland Chinese family who treated me like a Shaolin Priest, and collapsed on the bed. I went through several days of fever and pain. One day, the son of the family burst into my room, excitedly, to tell me that Taiwan had finally opened up. I flew back and took another teaching job.
 

The Taklamakan Desert became my next book, “The Desert of Death on Three Wheels.” Also on amazon.   Accelerating the story a bit. I was not able to hold a job in Taiwan because every time I turned on the Discovery Channel someone was doing something more interesting than me. I kept quitting my jobs to go do adventures around Taiwan, like cycling the entire island 1,500 KM alone and without a plan. Assorted Taiwan stories became a book, “Adventures in Formosa.”

I had heard about a monk, Prah kru Ba, in Thailand who did drug interdiction work on the Burma border. He took orphaned hill tribe boys to live in his jungle monastery, where he taught them Muay Thai (Thai boxing). Together, they patrolled the border, beating up drug dealers and telling the hill tribe people not to get sucked in by yaba (meth amphetamine) and opium, the two crops that were being used to fund the longest civil war on the planet. At this point, the war has been going on for more than 60 years.
 
I lived with Kru Bah, the monk, for three months. He taught me Thai language, Muay Thai, and Theravada Buddhism. I had learned Mahayana Buddhism in Taiwan and China. After I came out of his monastery, I did a series of adventures in Thailand, which became a book, “Boats, Bikes, and Boxing Gloves.”
 
I went to Cambodia searching for ancient Cambodian martial art, called Bokator. It took me eighteen months to find the master. Along the way, I learned the Khmer language and working as a freelance journalist, I published about 200 articles about Cambodia.
 
Since leaving Taiwan, my existence had been hand to mouth at best. I lived in $2 a night hotels. Slept in villages and temples. I didn’t always have money for food. I once sold my books so I could eat, then went back and asked the bookstore guy to loan them back to me so I could finish reading them. “I won’t get them dirty.” I promised.
 
Each time I moved, from a mountain village to a hotel, from an island nation to a mainland….I left most of my possessions behind, taking only what I cold carry, and traveling by the cheapest means, bus, bicycle…. Until a few weeks ago, everything I owned fit in two backpacks. I lost one of the backpacks in an accident in the war zone. Now, everything I own fits in one.
 
In Cambodia I used my diplomas to get myself a very well-paid teaching job at an Australian school in Phnom Penh. I took an apartment. Settled down. Began buying boxed sets of The Office, the Sopranos, Futurama, Sympsons, and Family Guy.
 
I trained hard in boxing and Khmer boxing (Bradal Serey) and I fought some pro-fights. I was physically at a peak I had never hit before, and I was in my late thirties.
 
But at night….the voices…the images from Discovery Channel (that channel should be banned)….A tour company offered to sponsor me on an adventure tour through Cambodia. I quit my job and it became my next book, “Discovering the Khmers” which is due out in 2008.
 
At the end of those adventures I was out of money again. I had to give up the apartment, the Simpsons, everything. I flew to Hong Kong to find a job, but ran out of money while I was waiting, so I flew home and went on a speaking tour to promote my books. I spoke seventy times in the States. I competed in the World Championships of Public Speaking, and made it to the semi-finals. I got really fat and never found a niche for myself back in North America. Out of desperation, I took a teaching job in Korea. In exchange for me signing a one year contract, they flew me to Asia, and gave me an apartment and a good salary.
 
I was miserable in Korea. To keep myself busy I studied Korean language and began working on a masters thesis, tracing the origin of the Korean language from Lake Baikal in Russia, which is a common origin for Manchurian language as well as many tribal languages spoken by nomads in central Asia and the Asiatic parts of Russia.
 
I published one article on the subject, comparing Korean and Chinese, and received a lot of recognition for it. But because I am more practical than theoretical I also received a lot of criticism for what I wrote. That and a lot of my articles are very insulting and if people don’t like it I threaten to Kung Fu their ass.
 
I can beat up most of the serious linguists I know.  
 
I was offered a scholarship to do my PHD at Dong-A university in Busan, Korea. But I didn’t fancy spending five more years in Korea. I also didn’t want to be in a classroom teaching Korean kids. And I didn’t want to do all my research from a book. I wanted to be back in the field. I quit after seven months and returned to Thailand. I had a lot of unfinished adventures there.  

My first order of business was to hook up with my old friend, Dave, who is the other half of our small production company called Two Guys from Brooklyn Productions. We had met years ago, in an Akha tribal village. He was doing a film. I was writing. We always said we’d work together again. Our first story was a documentary on the Long Neck Karin, one of the most exploited hill tribes in the world. Refugees from Burma, they are locked in tourist villages, like human zoos, where people pay money to gawk at them. You can google “Antonio Garceffo Long Neck Karen” and find the story.

Next we did a documentary on a Spanish monk, named Kru Pedro, who taught ancient spiritual Muay Thai.
 
I lived in Bangkok and studied Thai in an experimental program called ALG Automatic Language Growth. It was something I had read about when I was at graduate school in Germany. I got heavily involved with the program and began working on a book on Thai linguistics. To date, I have published a number of articles on ALG as applied to Thai language. At one point I went to stay in a temple in Khmer Surin, a part of Thailand which used to belong to Cambodia. I was there studying with one of my best friends, a Khmer monk, named Prah Sameth, also I was there to train with Tony Jaa’s martial arts teacher, “In the Footsteps of Tony Jaa.” While there I also did an article on the difficulties of constantly switching between Khmer and Thai, two languages, which, without sharing a common origin, share 30% of their vocabulary. It’s a long funny story, “Tongue Tied in Surin.” All my linguistics articles are actually pretty funny.
 
In Thailand I signed a one year teaching contract but lasted only three weeks. That was my record.
 
I quit the job and went to Philippines to study martial arts and write on an island called Palawan. Somewhere in here I worked on a Discovery Channel show called “Fight Quest.” Then I went to Cambodia to do a show for History Channel. After the show, I returned to Thailand briefly writing and studying more Muay Thai. I went back to Philippines to write on an island called Coron. In Philippines I write a lot about the indigenous people. There are countless tribes here, nearly a hundred, and an incredible number of languages and dialects. There are also a lot of martial arts, so Philippines is a good place for me. On my way back to Thailand I lived with a martial arts master, named Master Frank, in Manila. We are still friends and I still study Kuntaw with him.
 
I left Philippines and worked on a show called “Human Weapon” in Cambodia. I was employed for about three months writing and doing field research, although I only appear on screen for about two seconds. Very cool, one of my jobs was to find and fight every master in Cambodia and write my opinion of them. It took weeks of following up on rumors and traveling into remote rice paddies and villages to find these guys. Most of them were pretty fragile from malnutrition and never having recovered from the Khmer Rouge years, so I only played around sparring. The wrestlers were good, though. And try as I might, they made me look pretty silly, wrestling in the mud in their villages.
 
I went to Vietnam for a couple of weeks to explore Kampuchea Krom, a Khmer province which was given to Vietnam fifty years ago. I also documented Vietnamese martial art and sparred while I was there.
 
Somewhere in all of this I turned 40. I went back to Cambodia to work on a History Channel show called “Digging for the Truth,” and got about fifteen minutes of screen time. My big break. Also, my last date with Hollywood. Since then, we have kissed and flirted, but not yet married. I have come close to getting my own show, but it hasn’t happened. I do, however, have an internet TV show, called “Martial Arts Odyssey,” which airs on youtube. So, that is better than nothing.
 
I went back to Thailand to follow up on the most important and life changing adventure of my life.
 
We are getting to the most important part of the story here. So, I would appreciate it if you would take a long break, stretch your legs, drink some coffee, and be fresh when you read the next part.
 
Because of the Monk, Prah Kru Bah, who took me in when I lived in the jungle on the Burmese border, and because of the numerous tribal stories I had written, I had always been very interested in the war in Burma. A westerner I knew in Chiang Mai several years before had been heavily involved with the Shan State Army. There are a lot of Shan people living in northern Thailand. In fact a lot of my friends at the monastery and around Chiang Mai were Shan. They are extremely good looking people. I call them the proto-Thais because they were the original Tai people who migrated down from China to settle in Burma. The Thai, The Shan, and The Lao are all part of the Tai ethnic group and share a language which is 70% similar. The culture and the religion are also very much alike.
 
Through a series of events which I can’t publish yet, I wound up making it to the Shan State Army rebel stronghold inside of Shan State, Burma. The Shan share no similarities at all with the Burmese. They were never a part of Burma until the British drew a line on a map, around the end of World War Two. In 1962, there was a military coup in Burma, and General Ne Win took power. He began waging war, akin to genocide, against Burma’s many ethnic people. Since then, several million have fled across the border to become refugees. No one knows how many were killed exactly, because journalists and international organizations are banned from Burma, but we have been able to document countless cases of whole villages being burned and the villagers executed. The army uses gang rape as a weapon, and I interviewed a 14 year old girl, who at age eleven, was gang raped while her parents burned to death inside of her house. She could hear them screaming.
 

Since 1962, the Shan formed their own army and have been fighting to form an independent country, called Shanland. The right to secede from the Union of Burma was guaranteed them by the British, but so far neither Briton, nor the world has done anything to enforce this agreement. I hit it off with Colonel Yawd Serk, the commander of the Shan State Army. He invited me to wear a uniform and to come and go as I please in Shanland. When  I am inside, I carry my cameras and document human rights abuses. I film interviews with the refugees. The Shan State Army base has become a safe zone for refugees, driven from their villages by the government forces. They have a school and a temple there and a dormitory for about 650 orphans.

Many of the orphans actually have one or more living parents but the parents gave the children to the army so that the could be raised in safety and educated in the Shan State Army school, which is the best quality school in Shan State, offering a curriculum in four languages: Shan, Burmese, Thai, and English. In Shan State, it is illegal to teach Shan reading and writing, so for most kids, they don’t learn to read and write their native language.
 
If you are a parent, could you imagine things being so bad that you would give your child to strangers in the hopes that they would survive? Once a Shan person goes to live on the rebel army base, they can never re-enter Burma because the Burmese would capture them and torture them to find out information about the rebels. The parents don’t have phones or mail service. After a long trek, often several months of hiding, slowly making their way through the jungle, to hand their child over to the Shan State Army, the parents say “good-by” to their children, and they will most likely never see them or hear from them again.
 
When I am in the base, I do interviews all day, and often break down in tears. I interviewed two small boys whose parents were murdered. When I asked them, they couldn’t even remember the name of their village. They had blocked out the first several years of their lives. After they left, I told my translator hwo upset I was that two little boys should be made orphans for absolutely no reason. He said, “It’s normal.” My answer was, “It shouldn’t be.”
 
After more than forty years at war, there are very few Shan who remember a time of peace. “It’s normal.”
 
When I am inside I teach hand-to-hand combat to the soldiers. Outside, I publish my videos and articles and try to raise awareness of the Shan situation. I also coordinate donations through a great NGO who have the guts to go inside and render medical aid to the children. Most big NGOs and the UN won’t help the Shan because they have rules in their bylaws which say they can’t break the law and that they can only render aid if the government invites them. In the case of Burma, the government is doing the killing, so that invitation has been lost in the mail. Other large NGOs, who solicit millions of dollars from Americans every Christmas, have a policy of not aiding armed groups. “If the Shan lay down their weapons, we will come help them.” They said. Obviously if the Shan laid down their weapons, the Burmese would kill them all, and there would be no children to help.
 
The orphan dormitories are surrounded by trenches in case the base comes under attack again.
 
There are two small NGOs who are willing to risk their lives running aid missions into Burma. I have been in the filed with them both and I have great respect for them. The Free Burma Rangers (FBR) run training programs. The leaders of the tribal armies each send a few of their men to get trained as Rangers. The FBR teach them field medicine, patrolling, navigation, and photography. The men learn to do human rights abuse documentation. FBR even gives them cameras. If you have seen the movie Rambo IV most of the actual footage of atrocities was shot by FBR teams who risk their lives to get in and film. They also give direct medical aid when they can and provide physical security when they can. Many of the refugees only made it to the Shan base because an FBR team found them in the jungle and rescued them.
 
I have become very close with some of the young teachers in Shanland. It breaks my heart to see their students playing football on a field surrounded by landmines and knowing that if those mines were removed, they would all be killed. The day after Chidlren’s Day, the Burmese forces surrounded the base, waiting to ambush families who were taking their children home after the festivities.
 
I started a project called “In Shanland.” Basically I publish one video on youtube for free and one article for free which I send to about 4,000 people and organizations. I send out one article and one video per week, and will do so for a year. Hopefully by the end of the year, the project will have gained momentum and someone important will have heard about the Shan and come help them.
 
You can see some of the youtube videos
http://youtube.com/results?search_query=antonio+graceffo+shan+state+army&search_type=
 
Now I am in Philippines, attending paramedic school. I am taking as much training as I can in emergency medicine but also going to be taking courses with the police and army to get trained in close security and renew my training with heavy weapons. I plan to go back into Shanland in October or so. After I finish my training in Philippines, I may take a paying job somewhere in the world to help me continue my volunteer work in Shanland. The amazing part of this story is that I don’t work for any aid organization. I am self-funded and a number of nice people around the world have written in, making donations, helping me get through school. Among them are several deposed Shan princesses. The world is so strange. And people are inherently good.
 
If I wasn’t so poor, I never would have reached out, asking for help. And I never would have proved just how wonderful and caring people can be.
 
After I return to Shanland, I think I will carve out a niche for myself as a combat medic, doing aid missions in trouble zones all over the world. I love the Shan. But their plight made me realize that there are groups of displaced, stateless people all over the world and because of uncomfortable politics no one is helping them. Darfur is probably the example most people will know, but there are many, many others. And it doesn’t matter what color their skin or what language or religion, people are people, and more importantly, kids are kids, and they deserve the right to live and grow in safety.
 
Update May 8th 2008 Disaster and Repression in Burma
 
“100,000 dead or missing and 1 million displaced.”
FBR Relief Team Leader
 
 During forty years of totalitarian rule, the SPDC, the junta which rules Burma,  has demonstrated time and again that they view the civilian population as adversaries. Burma maintains one of the largest standing armies in the world, although they have no external enemies. Obviously, the purpose of the army is to maintain the junta’s power, to protect the government from the people. In light of the horrendous day-to-day situation in Burma, how can the world expect the junta to react with compassion and save its people after an horrific natural disaster?
 
To get an idea of how the situation is on the ground, I conducted interviews (mostly by email) with members of various aid organizations and pro-democracy groups concerned with Burma.
 
The Free Burma Rangers (FBR) is one of the leading and most well-respected organizations working on the Thai border. An FBR Relief Team Leader, had this to say.  
 
“We hope that the SPDC allows the international community to come in and give assistance to those in critical need at this time.”
 
Kind souls from around the world have written me and asked if I could get them inside of Burma. Sadly, I cannot. I work in the tribal areas, which we can access through the jungle. But Yangon, where much of the destruction took place, is only accessible by airplane, and you need a visa, issued by the Burmese government to enter. Many aid workers are frustrated. They sit with their medicines and food packages, waiting for visas to enter. So far, the junta has been slow about granting entry to aid workers.
 
“It's already slowed it down -- they are obsessed with the referendum. Making UN personnel wait for visas like tourists because they suspect journalists coming in to cover the stupid referendum.” Said another relief team member.
The immediate need is for foreign aid to get into the country, to feed, cloth, house, and care for those who need help. A long term concern, however, is that aid can be used as a tool, by the junta to strengthen their own position.
 
“Foreign aid should only go in with proper monitoring and accountability for its use.” Said an aid worker.
 
All of the workers, from the various organizations, asked me to keep their identity secret because they are in the process of applying for visas. The Burmese government often does checks of foreign press and blacklists people with close ties to the media.
 
Some Muslim magazines are very concerned that the people of the Arakan, who largely follow the religion of Islam, will be completely marginalized and no help will reach them at all. 
 
“The Rohingyas in Arakan are in an especially difficult situation and will need a focused effort to provide the assistance that they need.”
 
Some international aid organizations, who are willing to accept the Burmese government’s tight restrictions, maintain permanent offices in the capital. The tribal people, however, are largely served by small aid organizations, often faith based, who are ill-funded, but risk life and limb to save as many lives as possible. The Muslim people of the Arakan are in an extremely unfortunate geographical location. They are only accessible from Bangladesh and India, where there are very few foreign aid teams.
 
As an open request for help, I would be willing to serve as Emergency Medical Technician on any aid mission who wishes to try and help the people living in Arakan state or those who have fled over the border. The photos that I have seen of the refuge camps in Bangladesh are heart breaking with people dying of starvation and disease daily. If any Muslim organization, or anyone with a heart and a checkbook, is willing to help support aid to these people, I would be proud to help. Contact me Antonio@speakingadventure.com
 
Even the UN is waiting in line to help, but the junta has failed to answer. “The UN has requested access to provide relief but we are not sure of the status of those relief efforts.”
 
Many people know of my work with the Shan State Army, in Shanland. Unfortunately, although the cyclone missed the major tribal areas, the ethnics are still suffering at the hands of the SPDC.
 
“In the mountains where the IDPs are under attack by the Burma Army, attacks by the Burma Army continue. There the storm is, however, less severe and there have been no reports from our teams of large scale damage in eastern Burma. However, the ethnic Karen in particular in the Delta region were badly affected by this storm as they make up a large percentage of the population in the area worst hit by the cyclone.”
 
“There is an immediate need for drinking water, sanitation, food, shelter, blankets, cooking implements, and medical care. We are trying to develop a network to assess the needs, purchase or order supplies, package them, transport and distribute them in the most caring and efficient manner and account for and report on the assistance.”
 
“Right now the greatest problem is getting access from the SPDC to go help the people now. We hope that the international community will help those in need immediately.” 
 
Caring folks around the world have asked how and where they can send aid money.
 
They can send it to World Aid (checks payable to World Aid)
2442 NW Market Street, PMB# 434
Seattle, WA 98107
USA
Designate: Cyclone relief 
Our tax id is 94-3116991
 
Contact World Aid directly at: worldaidinc@gmail.com 
 
Now needs to be a moment of action. We, the world community need to send aid, volunteers, and workers. We need to pressure the junta to allow life-saving medicines and technologies to enter. Moving forward, however, let this disaster be the catalyst, the first step toward permanent and meaningful international intervention in Burma. The Burmese people, the Burmans, the Shan, the Karen, Karenni, rohingas, Pa-O, Palong, Lahu, Lisu, Akha, and all the various ethnic groups have the right to live in freedom and peace. They have the right to self-determination. They have chosen Aung San Suu Kyi, so let us help her take her rightful place as the leader of a new Free Burma.
 
Please say a prayer for the people of Burma.
 
Contact Antonio: Antonio@speakingadventure.com
 
 Antonio is self-funded and seeking sponsors. If you wish to contribute to the “In Shanland” film project, you can donate through paypal, through the Burma page of my website.
http://speakingadventure.com/burma.htm
  
Get Antonio’s books at amazon.com
The Monk from Brooklyn
Bikes, Boats, and Boxing Gloves
The Desert of Death on Three Wheels
Adventures in Formosa
© Antonio Graceffo May 2008
antonio_graceffo@hotmail.com

*Written before the great Burma tragedy of May 4th when 50,000 people or even more drowned inthe Cylone that swept through the country.

From Fighter to Paramedic
Antonio Graceffo in Manila EMS school
Having spent most of my life learning to end life, it is a bit of a change learning to save it.

More Life Styles

Home

© Hackwriters 1999-2008 all rights reserved - all comments are the writers' own responsibility - no liability accepted by hackwriters.com or affiliates.