I think I swallowed a bug..

Sweet, two Apocalypse now references back to back, with the title of this blog being pretty apropos. Two nights ago I met up with my friend Phi, a Vietnamese girl I met with her boyfriend Thieu last year while I was traveling to Hoi An. She took me to her father's restaurant, which was close to my hotel, located on 70 Nguyen Thai Binh street, district 1. It was a glorified street joint, but it had a fairly deep menu, and it specialized in Chinese food. (Phi's father is of Chinese descent) Phi ordered a bunch of different things, the best being these small cooked clams. She then told me about this crazy bug he serves, which she called doung. I told her I'd like to try it, since I never ate a bug before, at least not intentionally. They brought it out first alive, these two giant larva things, moving around on a plate made of straw. They then took them back to cook them. It was actually pretty good, but it definitely felt weird, since it was filled with this milk-like substance that poured out into your mouth when you bit into it. (You eat it whole) I have pictures, but I can't upload them now. It was a great night, and I also met with Phi's friend named Houng.

So, yesterday was a really crazy day. In the morning I walked around the city, checking out some sights. I bought a $4 bottle of Hungarian champagne for new years, and then went to the river to sit and chill. In Saigon, there are all these people walking around, carrying these large flat displays with sunglasses and lighters, trying to sell them to tourists. Like everyone who peddles things to foreigners, they can be pretty annoying and pushy. While I was sitting at that bench, one of them came up to me, a guy in his late 50's. I told him I'm not interested, thinking he'll go away. He put his display down however, saying he needed a break. He started to chat with me, and when I told him I was from America, a big smile came on his face. He immediately told me that he fought on the American side during the war, which is how he learned English. He then told me about his life, that was from Danang, where his wife and grown children live. He has an apartment in Saigon, and sells crap to tourists for a living. I was pretty shocked at about how open he was about telling me he fought for the Americans, which he brought up several times, and even bragged about killing "four VC" at once during a fight. We talked for about a half-hour, and then he got up, picked up his display, and went over to a nearby bench with two tourists, trying to make a sale.

Later that night, I met up Hien, a friend of Ben's who works for an English school. She introduced me to an American friend of hers, Chad, who works at the school, and a friend of his, Polly, from Chile. We went over to a nearby park which had this big international food festival, with booths selling food from various countries. We had some pretty kick ass tacos, a somasa, some beers, and a lot of Vietnamese food. I also met up with Phi there, who was with Thieu, Houng, Phi's aunt and brother, and Houng's friend Tuan.

So, while everyone was at the festival, me, Houng and Tuan ended up going to a coffee shop to have a meeting. The previous day, I told Houng that I worked in the TV and film industry, and that I had some interest in maybe working on something in Vietnam. As it turns out, her friend Tuan worked in the TV industry in Ho Chi Minh City, and that he's looking to start his own cable channel. At the coffee shop, he gave some papers describing his business plan, and we talked about me me being an adviser for him. Vietnamese productions are pretty ghetto, and he said he's keen on having an experienced person from the U.S. helping him make a higher quality product. I told him that I would agree to help him out, and said he can use my name to help get him funds from investors. It was definitely a great conversation, and I'm not sure if anything will come of it, but I would love to be able to work on something out here. It's crazy how I was talking about wanting to get a production job abroad for a while, and then out of now where, I'm talking with a guy I just met about helping start a production company. We'll see if anything comes from this.

I later returned to the festival, where Phi took me to a booth where they had these giant snails, which were pretty good. Phi and her friends left, and I went with Hien, Chad and Polly to a nearby bar. We're sitting there, and then out of no where, Justin and Dana - Ben's cousins - just happen to walk by with their friend Natasha. It was great, since I wanted to meet up with them while they were in town, but couldn't reach them since I only knew their Facebook pages, but Facebook is blocked by the government in Vietnam. (While there is a way around it, for some reason, it stopped working) Hien and her friends peaced out, and I met up with Dana, Justin and Natasha for drinks. I got really shitfaced, and I think I drank snake wine, which is vodka that has a dead snake soaking in it. It tasted like ass, but it sure got me drunk.

I got home late and slept until 11:30, which made me late to a lunch meeting I had with Phi this morning. After lunch, her brother Han took me around the city on a motor bike, showing me a couple of pagodas in Chinatown. We drove around some, and then we met up with his friends for coffee at an outdoor cafe. Tonight,I'm meeting Hien for dinner, and then possibly Phi for the New Years countdown

Ho Ho Ho Chi Minh City

Saigon... shit, I'm still only in Saigon. Everytime I think I'm gonna wake up back in the jungle... I'm here about a [day] now... still waiting for a mission... getting softer. Every minute I stay in this room, I get weaker, and every minute Charlie squats in the bush he gets stronger. Each time I looked around, the walls moved in a little tighter.

Yeah, I would say that opening lines of Apocalypse Now sum up my first couple hours in Ho Chi Minh City, or Saigon as it used to be (and sometimes still is) called. Its kinda great to be back. After about an hour of walking around Pham Ngu Lau with all my bags through the sweltering heat, I finally decided on a hotel unfortunately called the Dung Hotel. $15 a night, AC, wi-fi, and a balcony, although the rooms smell like - you guessed it - cheap cologne. I aired out the place when I got in, thinking that would be enough, but realized they wash their sheets with chinese perfume, and the smell will just not go away. It might be a deal killer, as its almost making my eyes water as I'm writing.

Finding a hotel here can sometimes be fun. Oviously, you want a nice room, but I also try to go by the attitude of the person at reception. Most hotels here are family-run guest houses, where the owners live in a room in the hotel, so getting the right person can be key. The second hotel I walked into was called the Hong Kong, and the elderly women behind the desk had smeared lipstick and was wearing a motorcycle helmet. Definitely a good start, but the place kinda looked dirty. Still, the rates seemed good, and I told her I'd walk around to see other hotels first, but might come back. In order to seal the deal, she then takes out a worn out book of pictures of hot chicks, waves it around and says something about "massage" in my room. In a way, I'm curious what life would be like in a guest house run by a crazy old female pimp, but I have a feeling however it would be, it'd get old fast.

Last day in Bangkok was nice, walked around the city with my mom, tried to go the Grand Palace, but walked through chinatown and ended up at Wat Pho instead (the massage-teaching temple) then we met up with Nora and David for drinks at a place I think called Green Space or Beergarden. Neat place, on the 40th floor of an office building. Had chicken nuggets and french fries there, since I was jonesin' for some American junk food. Today in HCMC, I made plans to meet up with Phi for dinner at her dad's restaurant. I met Phi and her boyfriend last time I was here, going to Danang, and its always the best when you know people in a foriegn city.

Man-ssage!

A couple days ago on the night bike tour of Bangkok, we visited Wat Pho, the temple where Thai people have been going to learn the art of massage for hundreds of years. Inscribed on it's walls are diagrams of bodies, with written text on what to do with what part. Well, centuries of knowledge passed down for generations finally culminated in its ultimate purpose yesterday, with me getting my very first Thai massage. It hurt like fuck, was awkward as all hell, but I still came out feeling oddly good. When I called to reserve it, (the place was called Soul Leaf) the woman on the phone asked if I wanted a man or woman. I told her I don't care, which of course ended up meaning "Dude please." Never having a Thai massage before, I really had no idea how comically intimate the whole thing is.

The first thing the guy does was to oh-so-gingerly wash my feet, gently and slowly like we're in an R&B video. After that, I laid on my back, and it wasn't too long before the guy is essentially dry-humping me while he has my leg bent in some unholy position. I tried not to laugh, which was easy since no part of the massage was devoid of pain. I started to get a little concerned, since I realized the guy was looking dead at me the whole time, and every time I would glance at him, he would kinda laugh. So, like a rape victim, I just stared at the ceiling praying he didn't kill me. The whole thing was about 90 minutes, during which time I was just counting the clock for it to be over, but when it was finally done, I felt pretty damn good.

Later, my mom and I went for a walk around town where I went to a dive restaurant Nora and David took me to earlier, but didn't have much luck with what I ordered. At night, we went to a restaurant my friend Mark Morgan suggested - Wong's Place - but it was closed. So, we went to Vertigo, a bar on the 61st floor of an upscale hotel. It was actually on the roof, making it a pretty exhilarating experience, which we paid dearly for with over-priced drinks.

Bitchin' Bangkok

Last couple of days in Bangkok have been pretty chill. It's kinda nice to just relax a little, and not have anything to do. Staying at an upscale luxury condo don't hurt none either. On Christmas day, me, my mom, David and Nora went out for a walk, took the river ferry north a bit, and checked out Wat Arun, Temple of the Dawn. Really pretty, got to climb it about half way. And I do mean climb, since it has these extremely steep steps. After that, took the ferry across the river and walked around Chinatown a bit. We then went to the Gold Mount Temple, which doubles as this crazy Chinese cemetery built into the sides of the small cliff-like hill. Took the canal taxi, which is kinda cool, since the boats are fast and the canals are narrow, kinda like a mini roller coaster ride.

Yesterday was good; I got a lot done. Bought my ticket to Ho Chi Minh City, and pretty much got a lot of other things done too. That night, I went on a night bike tour with a company called Grasshopper Tours. The whole thing was pretty cool, although you do feel a lot like a tool, just jetting through narrow streets on a pink bike and loud ass helmet. If you get over having people literally pointing and laughing at you, it's a pretty fun thing to do. The people on the tour were nice, and our guide knew her stuff. After that, I decided to try my luck getting a beer in Khao San road, the big backpacker hang out. I had a whole previous blog about how shitty it was during the day, and it was pretty much a circus at night. Got one beer at a bar where a Thai guy in a cowboy hat and an "Alabama" t-shirt was playing old American acoustic and country songs on a guitar. He kinda ruled, not being the best guitar player ever, but more than making it up with gusto. He played "Folsom Prison Blues" by Johnny Cash, which was great. After that, tried another beer at another bar. Khao San is a strange place. Filled with tourists, it really reminds you of one giant Senor Frogs. Didn't meet anyone there as I had hoped, but it was still interesting. It didn't seem like many people were having fun, most people just sat drinking their beers in silence, either watching the soccer game that was on or just staring blankly into space. Went home after two beers.

Bangkok Whore Benefit / Christmas / Literally Asian Seabass

Landed in Bangkok early on the 23rd, and me and my mom promptly took a reserved taxi to Pattaya, a big tourist town two hours east of the city. Our driver was Julie, a Thai woman who spent half the ride doing what every cab driver int he world does, which is complain about how fucked up the country is. She ended up over-charging us, but I'm not sure if she was being scummy, or if there was something mixed up when she got the order. Supposedly, Pattaya is known for it's whores, which is kind of a redundant statement in any tourist spot in Thailand, but fitting with what we came here to do.

So, what's more awesome than going to a fund-raising gala event to benefit Thai hookers held in an upscale hotel? If you said going to a fund-raising gala event to benefit Thai hookers held in an upscale hotel with your mom, than your speaking my language. Sooooo, the whole reason we came out here was to attend this kind of fundraiser party that was being held in conjunction with an NGO where David - my mom's friend in Bangkok - works. (Btw, since when did hookers ever need a fundraiser?) We were told to to wear gold, and luckily the day before I was able to buy some gold looking silk pajamas in Hanoi. Well, besides the fact that I was under the impression that this was supposed to be a giant whore parade, and not something that was just held inside the reception room of a 3-star hotel, it was still probably the craziest thing I've done in Bangkok so far. (When was the last time you ever heard the San Diego Marriot hosting a prostitute fundraiser, or at least an open one) Nora, David's wife, met us at the lobby, and in her high-energy chaotic Spanish-ness, escorted us to a "changing room" where we could get into our gold outfits, which was really a giant conference room filled with Thai ladyboys getting changed as well. It was a good start to the day, kind of setting the tone for the rest of the event.

So, we finally walk into the reception hall, which is this giant space, and you can hear the blaring Thai pop music a mile away. I was greeted by some six foot Thai transvestite who just seemed way too happy to see us. There was a stage, where a bunch of other transvestites were dancing, and the place was packed and going absolutely nuts. There was about 500 people there, most of them prostitutes, both male and female. For the next couple of hours, various different Thai pop acts hit the stage, each getting a big reaction from the crowd, which was dancing like crazy. I rarely see any Thai men who are ever taller than me, but apparently the rules that seem to govern drag culture everywhere in the world are stronger than genetics, since nearly every cross-dressed male was well over six feet tall. A lot of them were carrying around these giant 3 gallon glass jugs from Carlos Rossi wine that they had filled with just the most horrendous alcohol ever made. Dubbed "Thai whiskey," it tasted more like Whole Foods herbal cough syrup mixed with drain opener. Didn't mean it wasn't a big hit with locals though.

Another Western "rule" that seemed to apply was the same one that governs any kind of dress-up party in the US, stating that gay guys need to go over the top and elaborate with their costumes, while the straight girls just have to dress like sluts. You'd think that Thai hookers would want to get out their work clothes for a thing like this, but you'd be wrong. It did make sense, however, because many of them were obviously still "on the clock." You see, what made the whole party especially creepy was the fact that there were a bunch of Johns hanging out there too, each escorting their Thai hooker "girlfriends." I'm not sure exactly how it works out here, but everywhere in Bangkok you see some middle aged white guy awkwardly holding hands with a much younger done-up Thai girl, each staring blankly and intensely ahead, their faces being as far away from showing anything resembling joy as can be biologically possible. You'd think the guys would be all about "hit it and quit it" when it came to foreign prostitutes they can barely understand, but apparently a lot of male (and even some female) tourists come here to get the whole girlfriend experience on the cheap as well, regardless of how utterly uncomfortable the whole thing looks. I've seen them go on walks with their hookers, tell them stories about their families, cuddle in public (albeit very uneasily) take them shopping, and even buy them ice-cream. Awwwww.

So when their little $200-a-night angels need to go to a fundraiser party, the thought of being away from snookums for one eency-weency minute (before of course they fly back home in a couple days and never see them again) is just too hard for the Johns to bear. And so, here we all are, me, about 30 college-educated liberals who work for AIDS prevention NGO's, about 400 straight and trans-gender prostitutes, and about a dozen or so creepy dour-faced clients, all just tearin' it up on the dance floor to best pop songs Thailand has to offer (Someone did do a cover of "Zombie" by the Cranberries though. Nice!) I'm not sure what I was expecting to see at a prostitute party outside of Bangkok, but for the most part it seemed like a everything was a whole lot of fun, up until a point though. Seeing male clients with hookers was a little creepy, but in many cases was at least kinda funny and even a little endearing (like the six-foot-plus computer programmer dude with a ponytail being taught to dance by his "lady.") It wasn't even that bad when I saw a girl leading a guy in his sixties by the hand into the bathroom, it just made me decide to use the downstairs bathroom in the lobby from now on. However, the thing that really broke my heart and made it all too real was when the girls were obviously much younger than the guys they were with. I'm sure all the sex-workers there, male and female, were "legal," but viscerally it was still hard to tell, and still didn't make it much better. It's bad enough that the girl sitting on a middle-aged white guys lap right next to me looked like she was 12, but it didn't really quite punch me in the face until when, after a new act would come on stage, she all her friends would start squealing like they just saw Justin Bieber get out of a limo. The guy looked like a serial killer, and gave me the look of death when I tried to take a picture of him

While illegal, prostitution is apparently much more accepted in Thailand than in most parts of the world. I've never seen it be so open and in your face in my life. In some ways, this openness is at least honest, since even the most respectable people on earth use prostitutes, so why drive the trade underground where nothing but bad things can happen. The fact that the sex-workers could come out and have fun without the burden of a Scarlett Letter-like shame is in someways very endearing. Much like modeling and porn, there is a short shelf-life for this job, one without any future, and you could see that evident at the party as well. It was hard to spot a prostitute in the room over thirty, and if you did, you wish you hadn't. You have to figure that everyone at the party knew this deep down somewhere, but at least for today, they could make the most of it, and have some fun while they still could

So, of course, the next day was Christmas, or really Christmas Eve, which is the day us Polaks celebrate. With my mom out here, we were able to get a pretty authentic "Wigilia" dinner, especially since David is very into his own Polish heritage. Surprisingly, we found nearly every ingredient you need, and had a really kick-ass Polish Christmas in Bangkok, the world of Thai sex-workers already a million miles away. Borscht, mushroom soup, sauerkraut and cheese pierogi (heavan!) as well as this amazing sea-bass baked with oranges (No carp, but I guess my nickname had to represent) All of it awesome, and all of it made me the most full I've felt in a while. Great first two days in Bangkok.

3 Day Trek

And so, after Ben and Huyen's wedding, began the best part of my Hanoi trip, the three day trek through the remote countryside of Vietnam. After Nimh Binh, we loaded up the ol' pink "ABC Royal Cruiser" bus, and headed out to Mai Chau, a small town west of Hanoi. It still was home to a fancy tourist lodge, where some of Ben's friends and family decided to stay. Me, my mom, and a handful of others went about a half a mile away to do a stay at a complex of traditional stilt houses. Even though it was clearly built for tourists, it was still a functioning farming village, with locals staying in the houses when they weren't rented out. We had an awesome dinner there, and then went for a bonfire in a nearby field, where we had the choice between having karaoke set up, or seeing a traditional Vietnamese dance preformed for us. We opted for the traditional dance, but the group of drunk Vietnamese college kids right next to us chose the karaoke machine, making for a interesting mix. We had this local wine, which is essentially whole, dried, fermented rice inside these good-sized clay pots. You fill them up with water, and let them sit for an hour, after wich you drink them out out of long bamboo straws. It was pretty good, although weak, but we may have not let the water sit long enough. The traditional dancing was kinda cool, and was concluded with everyone's favorite activity, having to hold hands and dance in a circle, while all the local dancers sang a song praising Ho Chi Minh. Later, Ben's cousin Justin passed out in front of the fire, so Ben decided to prank him and have everyone leave and hide behind some bushes and try to yell his name to wake him up. Huyen decided it would be better if a local went over to wake him, so she asked one of the villagers who was nearby to do so. It was a pretty funny prank, as Justin woke up making a big "Whaaaa?" sound. People could barely hold in laughing as he was scratching his head, wondering where everyone went and why this Vietnamese woman was yelling at him, but he eventually found us. He was a pretty great sport about it all.

We slept on the floor in these stilt houses, although we were given these thin mattress-like things, pillows and mosquito nets. I would have slept really well if it wasn't for the 20 fucking roosters that were all about, which decided that waiting for at least sunrise before they lead a never-ending screeching barrage of rooster calls was just toooooo much to ask for. Breakfast was the absolute tits; awesome crepes with sliced bananas and honey, one of the best breakfasts I've ever had in my life. We found out that the honey was local, and were foolishly unaware of the ominous omen that it would eventually turn out to be. (more on that later) We then started out on a 25 km hike to another village and home stay. This was by far the highlight of the whole wedding program, and probably one of the best thing I've done on my Asia trip so far, up there with the Nepalese monastery. We had a guide lead about a dozen or so of us. There was Ben and Huyen, my mom, Ben's sister Hanna, Ben's cousins Dana and Justin (both brother and sister) the Australians Claire and Simon, their 20-something kids Lily and George (who looked like fucking Greek statues), and my and Ben's friends J.R., Carbone, and Mark Roden.

Everyone on the trip was absolutely awesome, and I was really glad that we ended up with the group that we did. However, I have to take a moment here and single out Mark. I've known Mark for a couple years, working together on Big Brother. I decided to tell my mom before she met him that she might be taken aback by him, since he has a very forward personality and can come off as obnoxious. My mom, being my mom, later had decided, in the infinite wisdom that befalls us when we've downed a bunch of shots of rice wine, to tell Mark I told her this, but I think Mark got that I meant no harm. Either way, Mark - along I would say with my Mom - became the absolute life of the wedding. At the wedding pre-reception, Mark was doing his crazy wedding dancing, getting along with all the kids, teaching them to high-five. My Mom tried not be undone, and became a dancing machine herself, taking an old village woman to the dance floor, who looked about as happy as a person could possibly ever be. Anyway, Mark was busy making all the villagers crack up, and became everyone's best friend there. All along the way, I don't think I've ever seen him more in his element. I even commented to him that he had been "on" for something like four days straight, always cracking people up, but not taking over all the spotlight either. On one of the legs of the bus ride, he ended up telling one of the greatest personal stories I've ever heard, which culminated with him having a dildo-swallowing contest with a stripper at a bachelor party. I hate singling out people on the trip, since everyone was really just cool and fun, but for some reason I gotta tip my hat to Mark on this one. May the "ooooh, you and Mark are now boyfriends" jokes commence

So, back to the hike. 25 km (15 miles) through remote Vietnamese jungles and mountains. We had a guide, who would tell us to wait at a spot several times, wander off into the jungle, but thankfully always come back after figuring out how to go. The whole place was just absolutely beautiful, and I'll put pictures up later. The hike was fairly intense, and while there was always a trail it was definitely steep uphill and down, and we saw many people slipping and busting their ass. (Not me!!!) We would walk past some seriously remote villages, some consisting of just a dozen huts, most of them without access to water, electricity or even roads. We'd even walk through a large chunk of jungle to come across a single hut, probably housing some seriously anti-social Asians, although everyone we came across was super nice. One woman did pester me for money after I took a picture of her, but even she was nice, albeit crazy poor and crazy crazy. We all ended up bonding greatly on the trip, and I even was able to fall behind away from the group and just be by myself for about a half hour. It's hard to describe the experience of standing over a cliff opening up to an expanse of untouched jungle, surrounded by the cacophony of nature, but it was definitely a moment that lets you remember to be thrilled to be alive. One great thing about traveling to amazing places is that you get to be a cliche in a way, saying things that can come off as lame, but knowing that the experience put into words could only hold true meaning for yourself and yourself alone. I don't know how I'll remember this moment, or what I would think when I read this in the future (what's up future me, like hope shit's fucking awesome an' stuff) but even writing it now opens it all back. On a trip like this, with plenty of pit falls and bad experiences, I think it's important to remember the good you get from it all, and to cherish all those moments that you're lucky enough to have your breath taken away by, the reasons we do anything in life that's worth a damn.

One thing the hike taught me is that the Vietnamese are some tough motherfuckers, and they're probably a little curious how we ever gave them a serious fight in the war. We were all huffing and puffing after about a half hour into our trek, each silently complaining about the ever increasing strain their light backpacks were making. (or maybe that was just me) We then would walk past some middle-aged Vietnamese woman hauling 40 pounds of logs strapped to her forehead (yeah, I said forehead), barely breaking a sweat, and still having enough of it in her to just light up with a smile when she walked past us. Life out there meant hard work, and lost of it, the type I think Americans, with all our arrogance and judgmentalism (not a real word, I know, just work with me here people), have clearly forgotten was how the world lived not too long ago. One thing that was interesting was that it seemed like women did all the work in the fields. We even saw a woman plowing a field by hand, which shocked even Huyen, who claimed that this is usually the work of water buffalo. While the women seemed to be the ones tending the land and carrying the fire wood, the dudes seemed to be working on smoking tobacco out of bamboo bongs and just hangin' out. It may have just been a coincidence, or having my Mom nearby be a reminder that I have essentially been raised on a healthy dose of feminist tirades since birth, but I don't think I ever say any male working anywhere on the whole hike. Fucking chauvinists, it's guys like that that make us all look bad, ain't that right ladies.

After 15 miles and eight hours of some of the most memorable scenery I've ever seen, we eventually made it to our village, which luckily was next to a well-paved road, and meant we didn't have to hike back the next day to get back on the bus. It's the journey not the destination grasshopper, and I don't think I felt more relief in my life when I took off my backpack and sat in a chair. I chilled downstairs for a minute and enjoyed a Halida beer, while Ben and some others went upstairs into the stilt house where we'd all be sleeping. I heard someone say something about bees, but didn't realize what they meant until I peeked through a hole in the ceiling that gave me a view of a light bulb upstairs, swarming with hundreds of bees. "I hope people like bees" is what I think Ben said, but I don't think that's funny since bees scare the fucking absolute shit out of me, and don't even joke about it, cuz it's not funny. I got teased after I told people of my bee phobia (it's really a fear of most bugs), with my mom curiously joining in on all the fun. The bees apparently had their nearby hive broken recently, and decided to make the stilt house their new home. They were also attracted to light bulbs, something I've never seen before. I actually was surprisingly fine with it all, and even seemed much less scarred than many other people on the trip. (oh, not so funny when bees are all up in your grill, is it?) Huyen was the only casualty, being not only brave enough to have to sit directly under the light bulb where all the bees were swarming, but also barely making a fuss when one of those fuckers stung her. The bees became a highlight in a weird way, a great joke to bond over, just a great, terrifyingly traumatic experience to bring the whole group togrther. They really should think of releasing hundreds of bees into those corporate team-building retreats, or at least give it a try.

Oh, and this village had mean dogs too. I decided to do a late night stroll through town, but didn't get too far, and just stood out admiring a field that was eerily very well-lit by something in the sky. I could hear all kinds of barking coming from close by, even the sounds of an angry water buffalo. (J.R. had been literally kinda attacked earlier that day by one, and had to be be saved by a villager) On my way back I suddenly could hear a bunch of barking dogs coming closer, so I tried to quickly tried to walk up the path leading to the hut where we were staying at, suddenly realizing one of the dogs was close and coming straight at me from behind. Not the most vicious looking dog, in fact he, like all the other dogs in the village, was kinda cute, but I still was not looking forward to getting bit by any animal in a Vietnamese jungle-village. I quickened my pace, and then suddenly, out of no where, two dogs came running out of the house in front of me. I think, "oh good, I'm gonna get mauled by a pack of adorable dogs," but soon realized these two dogs were coming to my rescue. Luckily, they saw me be invited by the owner, and came to chase off the dog behind me. Thanks bros, I owe you one.

And also, more fucking roosters, the village had a bunch of them too. The bees had gone to sleep before us, but that just meant they were up before us too, so if you weren't woken up by the roosters, the much harder "beds" and pillows, the shaky bamboo floor that shifted below you every time someone turned around in their sleep, you defnitely were awake when you heard the soothingly unique sounds of a bee swarm just a couple feet away. Luckily we had mosquito nets, but of course I had to trade mine out earlier when I saw that I had the one that had bees on the inside of it. Oddly enough, everyone claimed to have very vivid dreams, me included, all being borderline nightmares (mine was being in weird situations involving being attacked by dogs) Breakfast was crepes again, with bananas and - of course - honey, which people seemed to get more serious when they saw.

We headed back, and while were only gone for three days, but it felt like a month. The last night in Hanoi was great, most of us grabbed some beers at a Bia Hoi, which is an open-air bar that's just is a collection of child-sized plastic chairs and some guy giving you ice-cold beers. While these are where most locals go, the one we went to was populated entirely of tourists, but still a lot of fun. We ended up later at a more Western-style bar called Half-Man, Half Noodle, which Ben seemed to like mostly because they had Jenga. Being back in Vietnam was just great, and being able to experience it with my mom was even a good thing, despite the fact that she did drive me nuts a lot. Since it was so well planned it obviously lacked the spontaneity and the same energy of my first trip (it was a little bit "been there, done that" this time around) but I loved it nonetheless. I've been to a couple Asian countries already, yet Vietnam still seems like the one where everything just makes a little more sense to me, and this trip seems to have solidified that bond. I'm looking on going back in about a week, maybe using up the rest of my one-month visa in Ho Cho Minh City for a week or two.

Ben and Huyen Wedding

Finally got internet access after an amazing five day journey that encompassed Ben's wedding. We left Hanoi early on the 18th to go to Phu Ly, a city about an hour south, where we stayed one night. Our last day in Hanoi, the 17th was just OK. Me and Mark had decided to find a shampoo massage place, which I'm told is the thing to do here. It's supposed to be an elaborate process that involves a face massage and a couple of people, and lasts about a half hour. The place we got just had one guy washing my hair for a couple minutes, while his buddy kept saying I have pretty hair. After that, we met up with Ben and a whole contingent of people that included some of his family, and we had dinner at a place called Quan An Ngon, where me and Mark coincidentally had lunch earlier. Great place, upscale, but not expensive, it's seemed to be almost entirely filled with Hanoi yuppies rather than tourists. After that, we had drinks at the hidden cafe; I never remember the name of it, but it's the place where you have to go through an alley or clothing shop to get to. I had some brilliant idea of drinking a ton of coffee that day, and got sick at the end of the night and had to go back to the hotel, but my Mom went out with Mark and her friend Jonathan for karaoke, and apparently then to some scummy gay-ish bar located in a barge on the river, which I'm sure Jonathan and Mark were absolutely thrilled to accompany my mom in.

So now the good stuff. Early on the 18th, me, my mom and Mark met with Ben and all his guests that flew in for the wedding for lunch, and afterwards boarded a rented tourist bus to Phu Ly, a small city south of Hanoi. Never felt more like a tourist in my life, sitting pretty aboard a gigantic fuck-all bus haulin' ass down roads flanked by ceaselessly staring locals. The bus became an organism unto itself, a cross between the PT boat in Apocalypse Now and a Carnival cruise ship, a traveling fortress allowing a tiny slice of the United States of America to safely cut through once hostile territory, harboring it's riders from the surrounding thicket of third world.

Our first stop was our hotel, which obviously also housed a jewelry store, karaoke bar and pool hall. After checking in, we then got back on the bus and headed to a nearby village that Huyen either once grew up in, or her parents lived in now. There we had a kind of pre-wedding reception, which included a series of pivotal Vietnamese ceremonies. The first involved me and four other of Ben's single male friends, and we had to exchange gifts and "lucky" money with five of Huyen's single female friends. The gifts were bought for us to give, and they included traditional Vietnamese items like booze, candy, and cartons of cigarettes. They in turn gave us "lucky" money, which we have to keep and never spend for our entire lives, or else we'll get bad luck with relationships. I'm assuming the reason my love life has been such shit for the last 32 years has been because I never got my lucky money, and am kinda pissed at Ben for not holding this wedding waaaay sooner. Thank god that's all in the past now! After our exchange, there was something that involved Ben asking Huyen's father for permission to marry his daughter, and since this was less than 24 hours before the already planned and paid for wedding, Ben was obviously fairly concerned what would happen if he said no. Luckily, Huyen's dad agreed, (he's a really cool guy) and then we had an amazing dinner on the roof of the house where the wedding took place, all of which was washed down with shot after shot of homemade rice wine. Huyen's dad assured us we would not get a hang over because it contained ginseng, which many of Ben's guests seemed to be unfortunately immune from the next morning. That was followed by the traditional Vietnamese super-happy-dance-funtime-techno-karaoke-disco ceremony, which seemed to be completely taken over by the American guests. While the white folk were singing "I Just Called to Say I Love You," the Vietnamese were out back no more than 20 feet away slaughtering chickens for tomorrow's wedding lunch. Somehow, Mark Morgan got roped into plucking feathers off of them. Later that night, we got back to the hotel and went to the karaoke bar below with Mark and my mom, and followed that up with some late night street pho and grilled chicken feet.

Ben and many of the guests in the hotel were hoping to get in some sleep that night before the wedding, but we found out the hard way that just outside our windows was a loudspeaker attached to a telephone pole that conveniently doled out loud Communist propaganda slogans (or something) in Vietnamese. Ben's cousin later claimed that Ben screamed "Ho Chi Minh, shut the fuck up!" from his room, but it seemed that this was information, regardless if true or not, that's best kept hush hush around the locals. The wedding itself took place in the same house as before, but the fact that it started at 10 in the morning didn't mean we had go easy on the rice wine. It definitely had that moonshine taste, but it was still pretty damn good, and since I miraculously didn't have a hang over, (maybe there's something to that ginseng) I definitely threw back a few with some of Huyen's side of the family. The wedding ceremony apparently more Westernized than usual, although Ben and Huyen's parents still used the traditional method of speaking at a Vietnamese wedding, which was through a microphone plugged into a karaoke machine with the monster-truck echo effect on. And while Ben and Huyen engaged in the Jewish tradition of breaking a glass on the floor to end the wedding, the ceremony started with the Vietnamese tradition of kick-ass entrance music, with Huyen and Ben walking down the aisle to a blaring song that sounded almost exactly like the Final Countdown, except more techno-y . It's crazy how unintentionally hip Vietnam can be, since I'm sure there was a wedding in Silverlake happening at the same time that probably did the same exact thing.

Soon after Ben and Huyen officially ceased their unholy life in unmarried sin, we began the next leg of the wedding, a 3 day trek to a remote Vietnamese village. After some shuffling of guests, we finally boarded our tourist bus and headed out again. At 32, I can say I saw my very first legit dead body on the street, a guy who had obviously just been in a horrific motorbike accident. At a distance, he looked like he was just laying in the road, but the look of horror on the faces of onlooking residents, and the fact he wasn't moving at all, made it clear this wasn't pretty. Ben had tried to calmly tell everyone not to look, advise I kinda wished I listened to. His head was flattened like pancake, and brains were spread all about the road, looking like dusty ground pork. Later that night, someone mentioned him, and to cleanse the palate, everyone decided to raise a glass to "that guy." The way the Vietnamese drive, I'm shocked you don't see more accidents like that, and you hope people here start to make changes in the way they look at safety.

We stayed at a hotel in Nimh Binh, a city west of Hanoi. We first checked out Hoa Lu, the remains of the ancient capital of Vietnam. Not much to see, it was filled with extremely aggressive locals hawking crap. One of the mainstays of most tourist spots in Vietnam is this army of locals who carry around low end Nikon DSLR cameras, and try to sell you poorly framed photos of yourself. Most will not bother if they see that you have a camera, but some think, hey, what's the harm in trying. The whole tourist hawking industry seems to hold the adage that there is no behavior too annoying, and that closer you hold a product to someone's face, the more likely they will buy it. At Hao Lu, an Australian couple, Simon and Claire, decided to buy a water from a woman selling various things she carried on her in a small bag. Big mistake, as this suddenly attracted about a half dozen other middle age women, all squealing at them to buy water and peanuts and whatever they happened to be holding in their hands at that time. When Claire took out her wallet and began to count out money for the water, three woman just dove their hands in there and started grabbing at bills. Her husband Simon and Justin, Ben's cousin, started to pull the woman away, and Simon, who looks almost exactly like Colin Firth in A Single Man started to get loud. The whole scene was pretty hairy, but luckily no one lost any Dong, and Claire got her water (I think)

The hotel in Nimh Binh was pretty swanky. They had four stars on their sign, but not quite sure if that was an official rating, or just a nice decorative touch. Either way, it was called the Legend Hotel, brand new, big and empty, just the way I like 'em. We spent a night on the town having goat hot-pot, or lau de, and washed that down with some Tiger beers. The next morning we headed out to an area near Tam Cac, which is where I went last year. This place was I think was called Ho Dong Chuong. It recently opened, and seemed better than Tam Cac, with the same premise; a giant inland lake with massive round cliffs poking out; the whole area being dubbed an inland Halong Bay. Unlike the last time we went, the guy rowing our boat used his feet to work the oars, and even let my Friend J.R. take the reins. With him rowing in the back, and me and mom using auxiliary oars we found at our feet, we got nowhere fast, and our Vietnamese guide had to take over to get us going. We were winded after about 15 minutes, while this motherfucker rowed for two hours without breaking a sweat, although to be fair, he was able to change up to feet or hands when he wanted. After that, we headed to this giant series of Buddhist Poagadas that was in the process of being built called Bai Dinh. It got a little hairy when Ben's mom had decided that we got lost for some reason, and did what any sensible person would do when lost in a foreign country and visiting a holy site, started yelling "Help!" at the top of her lungs. (*Update; I based this story on hearsay, and it may not have actually happened) Ironically, me, my mom and Justin ended separating from the pack later and did get lost, but I found that this gave us advantage of being able to take in some of the architecture and landscape without a barrage of talking that goes with any large tour group. This was especially true in Ho Dong Chuong, where falling behind when J.R. tried to row allowed us briefly take in the whole area, alone, with sounds of nature echoing throughout the jungle-ed hills.

Hanoi Seb

I'm in Hanoi now, landed a couple days ago. First day was kinda hairy. I flew from Kathmandu to Bangkok, where I had to wait 12 hours for my flight to Hanoi. I decided to tough it out at the airport, which is absolutely huge, and is more like a gigantic mall with airplanes floatin' around, than anything else. I finally get on my flight, an Air Asia flight, which decided to double my fare before I got on because my carry on bag was too heavy. Yes, they had a scale there, and even though it fits easily in the over-head bin, they still said too heavy. They made me check the bag in, and I somehow I managed to talk them down, but it annoyed my when all the over head bins were completely empty when I got in. After we took off, I pretty much had the single scariest experience in my life on a plane, after the whole thing dropped about 50 feet after we flew straight into some storm clouds. Everyone one the plane started laughing nervously when we straightened out, and again when the captain turned off the fasten seat belt light no more than two minutes after. I've lately been getting more scarred of flying, and this definitely did not help. I landed, and met my mom who had been staying at our hotel since the 11th. We decided to go out on the town, and when we got back, we realized that her purse had been pick-pocketed, and some bitch took her iPod (we were positive it was a woman who was aggressively trying to sell us crap at the Temple of Literature)

The experience did give me pause, as the whole day seemed to be one giant dichotomy. On the one hand, I got severely freaked out by the plane dropping and my mom getting robbed, yet at the same time I realized that I loved being back in Hanoi, and we started the day off right in terms of all the amazing food I had, and being able to hang out with my mom, my friend Ben August (who's upcoming wedding is the main reason for the whole trip), and my other friend Mark Morgan. We had these awesome pork meatballs things wrapped in vegetables at this place called New Day Restaurant. I ran into Vietnamese people who were legitimately happy to be able to talk with Westerners, exuding a child-like happiness that would come off as weird in the US, but I fell is perfectly alright, something that I wished people in the West could learn to do. People here have one thing that growing up in poverty can give you, which is being happy with less, and not getting too uptight and angry over every little obstacle you face in life. One thing I love about Hanoi is that people don't seem to care about being cool, and don't have all the fake posing and posturing that comes with it. I love being in a place where no one brags about dumb shit, or tries to impress other people and "sell" themselves all the time. My first day here I almost saw as a test, to see how would I paint my experience in Hanoi, whether I remembered it by the bad stuff or the good. I decided to just stay focused on as much good as I could, and so far, everything has been smooth (I literally just knocked on wood right now)

The second day in Hanoi was better, or at least devoid of shit luck. Had goat hot-pot with Ben and Huyen, then drinks with Mark at a place that didn't necessarily kick us out, but still made sure to let us know they wanted us to leave an hour before we ended up doing so. Yesterday, me, my mom and Mark took an overnight trip Halong Bay, one of the main tourist attractions in Vietnam. After a two hour drive, and and an hour ride on a ferry that takes you to a large island in the bay, we got on this awesome wooden junk (which is kinda like a yacht) and motored off. Besides us, the only other people on the boat was a middle-aged Australian couple, who ended being being really cool. Halong Bay has to be one of the most beautiful places I've ever visited in my entire life. You basically sail around a bay, with massive steep hills covered in vegetation shooting out everywhere. We took a kayak trip too, which when you stop paddling, lets you drift through the hills and natural caves of the bay, with only the sounds of jungle nature echoing about. Really takes your breath away. I was expecting it to be amazing, and it was still better than I hoped. Despite the fact it was really gray out, and even rained a little, we still went swimming, with Mark and Bruce, one of the Australians. Jumping into cold water and swimming 200 yards was probably not the best idea after eating a huge meal and drinking a couple beers, but fun never the less. We swam to a small, private sized beach on the side of one of the tiny hill-islands, which was cool despite it being kind of littered with trash and a rotting dead dog. On the boat, we had amazing food, an array of seafood caught mere hours ago. We cleared out their entire cooler of beer, but luckily they found a case of more. The Vietnamese tour guides even kind of hung out with us a little, despite knowing very little English, although you can tell it got kind of awkward for everyone after you quickly ran out of things to talk about. Nonetheless, it was amazing, and would highly recommend it. The tour we took was called the Eco-Tour, and from what I hear, it was the best tour to take, since they go where other tours can't, thus making the whole experience be devoid of crowds.

We got back to Hanoi later last night, and went to the Hanoi Opera House, where we saw the Vietnamese National Orchestra preform music by some guy named Dvorak. I would google him now, and at least pretend I've heard of him, but I assume he's some old Eastern European guy, and fuck it, I'm running out of time here. I thought they were good, but then I don't really have anything to compare it to. We then went to Nola, a cool bar cafe nearby for drinks. Met up with my friend Mark Roden and Anthony Carbone, and later with my Mom's friend Jonathan.

Naughty Nepalese Nuns

So, it's been a while since I've had a steady enough internet connection to be able to sit and write on my blog. I'm starting to turn to the dark side, and wanting a stupid iPad. I've seen tourists with them out here; they're small yet I think they'd be really useful. Anyway, a lot has happened in the last week, so I'll break down the blog, and just write about Nepal here, which by itself, will take up a lot of space.

After a stint in Kathmandu, me and Katie went over to stay at a Tibetan Buddhist monastery where she had been teaching English for the past two months to all the nuns that lived there. I guess it would be called a convent or nunnery or something denoting that it's a house for nuns, not monks, but they always referred to it as a monastery. It was close enough to the city to take a taxi, but up high in the hills, and far enough to feel like you're another world. Katie had told me that whenever she stays in Kathmandu - with it's ridiculously heavy smog, crowded streets, open sewers, and shady residents - she would always look forward to getting back to the monastery, and it's easy to see why. Clean air, quiet, and you wake up every morning to about the most picturesque place on the planet. You see the entire city of Kathmandu, nestled under a thick glaze of white smog, with the Himalayas poking through the background. The monastery was built 17 years ago, but definitely feels like a thousand years old. The place simply feels epic.

It's important to note that nuns here are a little different than what I would expect a nun to be like. First off, they're mostly kids, and it seems like nearly all of them are under 30. Because of that, the place feels more like a boarding school than a holy convent. Kids in nun robes run around chasing each other, and they're constantly giggling and chatting. Katie was really fond of a couple of the child nuns, who would always be trying to braid her hair or just hang around her. One of the nuns was really rebellious, and Katie described her as "very naughty." I tried not to laugh, but Katie did, saying that the nuns use that word with out a hint of sexual connotation to describe someone who is bad, unlike us heathen Westerners that put innuendo on almost every word or phrase imaginable. Naughty Nepalese nuns indeed.

The nuns hold these elaborate group prayers (which they called a puja) everyday in this massive hall in the center of the complex, and inside you feel like you're in the movie Inception. They do these crazy sounding chants, and have these super bass-y long horns going off, accompanied by giant drums. It's by far the most epic religious ceremony I've ever witnessed, and the first time I was able to sit in on one, I don't think I moved for hours. After a while, you realize that this is just part of the daily doldrums for the people here, so you often spy some teenaged nuns giggling and whispering gossip to each other instead of chanting with the others. It's actually kind of cool how human the attitude is here. On the one hand, everything here is holy and sacred, but at the same time, they're not uptight about anything. One of the nuns is good friends with Katie, Ani Sherea (Ani means nun) Katie told me some story of how when the two of them were walking around Kathmandu, one of the city's many homeless kids started asking Katie for money very aggressively, grabbing her clothes and not letting go. Katie just tried to walk away, and Ani Shera told him to stop in Nepalese. The kid snapped back that he can do whatever he wants, to which she replied "I'll kick your ass!" I guess having a woman in a Buddhist nun's robe threaten to beat the shit out of you was a credible one, so he quickly ran away.

While I was there, some big shot Llama was there. I think they said that he was the head of the monastery, and Ani Shera had told us that was considered famous in the Tibetan Buddhist community. He lead a lot of the prayers that they held in that big hall. It's interesting how all of it reminded me of Catholic mass, with the chanting and the structure of the ceremony. I even felt that uneasiness of being the only one who didn't seem to instinctively know exactly what to do during the whole thing. They held some major puja one day, that called a burning ceremony, which I guess was to honor a monk who had previously died in another monastery. The monk's entire family showed up, and the Llama had done some ritual involving burning an elaborate piece of paper. Afterwards, everyone gets up to get clonked on the head by the Llama with a giant gold plate. It definitely felt a little awkward being blessed by some high holy man of a religion you know nothing about, but the way the Llama was grinning, you at least got the feeling he got a kick out of it as well.

When I got there, I had met the caretaker of the monastery who was this deaf guy. I was told his name but soon forgot it, so I ended up just calling him Coco (Katie forgot his name too) He was a nice guy, but desperate for someone to communicate with. He didn't know standard sign language (neither did I) but made up his own, and would always be doing some hand signals to me, trying to tell me something. Some of it I got, most of it I didn't, but I still got a kick out of hanging out with him. He would sometimes dress G-ed out, with a hoodie, baggy pants, and a baseball hat slightly to the side, and I can tell that he really liked talking smack about some of the nuns and the nearby villagers. He took me to see his house, which he shared with his parents and his brother, who I briefly met.

Later that day, I decided to leave the monastery and walk around the village. I passed Coco's brother, who was hanging out on some motorcycles with all his boys. I passed him, and we nodded at each other. After about fifteen minutes, I walked to a series of homes where a wedding reception was being held. I was planning on just walking by, but a group of kids ran around me and started trying their English on me. One little shit asked "Can I have money?" then "Can I have candy?" then "Can I have a motorbike?" I replied I didn't have any of that stuff, but told him his English was really good, to which he responded with a giant grin. One of the wedding guests came down from the reception and started talking to me too, and within minutes he invited me up and gave me a big plate of some awesome food. They also gave me a cup of this rice wine they make themselves, which was actually kinda awesome. The whole thing took placed in a dirt patch covered by a series of tents, crowded past capacity. I talked with some old guy for a while, who told me he was a retired sergeant in the army. He said his son was that little shit that asked me for money. He then asked me to come with him to his house. Someone else comes up to me and says "If he gives you trouble, let me know." I asked what that meant, and they told me will probably ask me for money. Just then, Coco's brother shows up with his posse, and I just returned to the wedding with them. I talked with them for a while, and then walked back to the monastery with them, since they lived along the way. They invited me for drinks, which I wanted to do, but I knew they lock the monastery up at sundown, and didn't want to stumble back there drunk in the dark. So, I had to decline.

On Friday that week, I went back into town to visit a friend of my friend Larkin. I walked down the hill with the new English teacher of the monastery, a woman from Germany named Nicola. We took a bus to town, and I met up with the dad of Larkin's friend, Narendra. He works for the Ministry of Justice, and picked me up from another government building. He took me to his place, which was a three story house in the middle of the city. He was a really nice guy, but we quickly ran out of things to talk about while we waited for his son Nabish (Larkin's friend) and his brother Nishab. I even had less to talk about with his wife, that spoke about as much English as I did Nepalese, but I found out quick she liked getting her picture taken. I did some photos of her with my 7D, which she gladly posed for. She then brought me a series of photo albums. You'd think a mother of two would mostly hold pics of her kids, but the albums were almost entirely of her. Nabish came over later. He works for a Nepalese magazine, helping with their website. He just started, has no training in web designing, but said he learning. It's important to note that Nabish had some serious condition, where his legs were kind of mangled. He could just barely walk, needing crutches. It seemed like web design was a perfect job for him, and the sites he showed me looked pretty nice and elaborate. We ended up chatting for a long time, with him doing most of the talking.

I stayed at their house, and in the morning Narendra took me to Pashupatinath Temple, a massive Hindu complex nearby. It was Saturday, the holy day for Hindus, so it was fairly packed, but Narendra said that it's usually more crowded. There, I watched people do open cremations by a river that ran by the temple. It was kinds of weird inhaling the smoke coming from a series of burning bodies, but what the hell. Narendra told me that next to the temple was a deer park, closed off for people, where Shiva comes to have sex with animals. I also saw a Brahmin, who wore expensive sunglasses and a fleece polo (no local would ever be able to afford any of that). Narendra told me that the Barhmin, Hindu high priests, come from the south of India, and then told me with a noticeable amount of disdain, that they make nearly a million dollars a year. I asked if I can take a picture of him, and Narendra said yes. The Brahmin started then yelling at me for something, and when I asked Narendra what he wanted, he just kind of grinned. I think it was his way of sticking it to the man, having the clueless white tourist photogrpah some holier-than-thou a-hole high priests demanding exorbitant pay in a country of such mass poverty.

More Kathmandu

It's my last day in Kathmandu. I'm heading to a monastery outside the city for the next few days, which should be really cool. Last couple of days have been pretty crazy. A couple nights ago me and my friend Katie went to a bar out here called something like New Bottles and Chimney, in the tourist are of the city. They had a live band set up in the back, consisting of an old white hippie and two Nepalese guys. I guess they were playing a song, it was hard to tell, it seemed more like they were tuning up than anything else. The white guy was mumbling something into the mic that sounded like it could be some Tibetan chant, and it was obvious he had no idea how to play the bass that he was randomly strumming at. Luckily, the white guy left after his "song," and the two Nepalese guys were left doing mostly covers of 60's tunes. They actually kinda ruled, and I have video of them that I'll post later. After a couple drinks, the band stopped playing, and it became some weird dance club thing, with about eight Nepalese guys, me, and the only two females in the place being Katie and an old hippie lady from Australia. It was good to be in a club where people danced much worse than me, although this one Nepalese guy was doing some kind of crazy break-dance thing. It seemed that the poor "ratio" did not bother the Nepelese guys in the slightest, who were more than happy to dance with themselves. Before you yell "GAY BAR!" out loud in front of your computer, it was clear all these guys were straight, and that dancing with another guy couldn't be more masculine in Nepal. In fact, guys here are constantly holding hands and hugging each other very affectionately, just not giving a fuck.

Yesterday I did a lot of walking through the city by myself. At one point, a teenage kid comes up to me and starts to talk. At first I just keep walking, while he asks me what everyone hawking something asks, "Hello, where are you from?" I say America, and he asks where. I say California. He then proudly says, "Capital of United States, Washington DC. Capital of California, Sacramento. Goverenor, Arnold Schwarzeneger." Impressed, I tell him Arnold is no longer Governor, and that it's Jerry Brown now. He then walks with me for about twenty minutes. He tells me he can name any world capital if I tell him the country, which I try out, and he seems to be pretty good. I tell him I was born in Poland, and he even knows how to say thank you and hello in Polish. He tells me he's in school, and wants to study business management, which every Nepali in the country seems to be majoring in. He tells me about living in a village, and being forced by the Maoist rebels to move to Kathmandu. He starts talking to me about girls, and when I ask him if he has a girlfriend, he says "I'm working on something. Nepalese girls are very difficult." I'm pretty sure that there is going to be some kind of scam or sell coming up, but after that line, I'm thinking this kid is at least pretty funny. I'm even thinking this kid just wants to try out his English with a native speaker, somthing that I've found many peoiple like doing in other countries. After about 20 minutes, I tell him I have to take off. He then changes demeanor, and solemnly asks if I can buy him some milk for his family. While this really annoyed me, I figure he's a bright kid, and maybe he's the one kid out here who legitimately is hustling for milk for his family. He takes me to a nearby shop, where it seems like they tell me that two conatiners of powdered milk cost $3. I figure that's something I can just afford to lose, but then I find out it's actually $30. I tell the kid no fucking way, he gets mad, then starts to kind of cry about how he needs milk. I just hand him the $3, say do whatever you want with it, and leave.

The one thing about Nepal I'm seeing is that this place is more than just poor, it's depressingly so. I've seen poverty around the world, and it's never happy, but here there is absolutely zero hope for the future here. There's no industry, no jobs, and it has the kind of poverty that turns people into something hideous. There's kids here everywhere sleeping on the streets, faces full of dirt, huffing glue or feces out of bags in open public. It's super sketchy at night here, as there are absolutely no street lights, and I'm told most Kathmandu residents never go out past 8 pm ever. Meeting that kid was sad because anywhere else, he's have some kind of prospects. He was legitimately smart and educated, spoke English very well, and was pretty charismatic. It seems like in another poor country like Vietnam, he'd be able to have some kind of job, and even though it might not be a great one, it would still beat having to hustle tourists on the for $3. At least he wasn't huffing shit out of a bag I guess.

Nepali Please

I landed yesterday in Kathmandu, Nepal. This place is probably one of the craziest cities I've ever been in. It's ridiculously huge and packed, with with the streets so narrow they look more like alleys. It's by far much poorer than Bangkok, and there's certain things that I take for granted that are an issue here. Hot water is a luxury, as is a working toilet. I feel fairly confident eating off of street carts in Vietnam and Thailand, but here is anther story. Apparently the fruit and vegetables here has to be washed in iodine for tourists since almost all the farms in Nepal have sewage run-off that goes into the soil. Of course, your average Joe Nepali has to eat shit-stained produce, but guess they've gotten some kind of immunity from it.

The city is actually kinda cool. It's extremely picturesque, and I've been taking more photos here than in one day than I did in three days in Bangkok. I'm staying at hostel/hotel called the Kathmandu Guest House, which is pretty nice; eight bucks a night for a room the size of a walk-closet with a shared bathroom. At least it's clean, has hot water, a working toilet, and soap to wash you hands at the sink (another rare find) I'm hanging out with my friend Katie Jorgensen, who is staying with her friend who has an apartment. It's always good to have a someone to meet up with when you tavel some place, especially one has already lived there a while. She's got some crazy horror stories about life in Nepal, there's so many things that can kill you here it's ridiculous. Besides having to deal with massive food poisoning and roaches the size of small mammls, travel here is extremely dangerous, since the roads are chaotic and people here drive crazier than Armenians. Motorcycles are the main mode of transport, and they're not those dinky scooters they got in Vietnam. These motherfuckers got some serious horsepower, and it's kinda scarry watching them go about 50 down a crowded narrow street. No one wears helmets here, and I guess traffic fatalities are so common that no one gets too upset when they happen.

Today I'm feeling pretty good, but unfortuantely yesterday I had my first case of food poisoning. Right before I got to the airport in Bangkok, I decided to grab some breakfast from a street cart selling these small chicken skewers. I immediately knew this was a bad idea, and started getting sick when I got to the airport. Luckily, it wasn't too major; I got much worse food poisoning from the Big Brother kitchen than I did eating random food off the streets of Bangkok., but it did kick my ass yesterday. Today I feel much better now, although am a little more reserved about eating true local food. I wanted to get these kinda crepe looking things off of a street cart here this morning, but decided to try it tomorrow. Katie assures me that this is a horrible idea, since the Nepalese never refrigerate their food, so I'm guranteed to get sick again if I try something. Interesting enough, we had some bomb-ass pizza at a joint near my hotel. Hopefully I can find at least some local food that won't kill me. My friend Larkin gave me the number of a Nepalese friend of his who lives in Kathmandu, and he invited me to have dinner with him and his family at his house. Can't wait!

Chinatown!

While I was busy ranting about god know what on my last post, I completely forgot to write about Chinatown. Believe it or not, there is a Chinatown in Bangkok, and you know you're in Chinatown because - duh! - it's filled with Indians. Indians as far as the eye can see, hawking clothes, toys and of course, Indian food. The place is like a gigantic market you would expect to find in Bangkok. Stores and street stalls selling all kinds of things. Small, cramped alleys that maze endlessly, creating this super claustrophobic city in a city. It's almost surreal walking what seems like forever through a long tiny alley overflowing with goods, only to come across a bunch of kids playing in some open clearing in the middle of it. Walking through it alone is an experience in and of it self. What's kind of weird is that the place is just absolutely massive, and it's not the only market of it's kind in the city, not by a long shot. However, while it seems like they sell a lot, it all kind of the same thing over and over. Not sure how the thousands of vendors stay in business, but they do somehow I guess. There was something like 100 stalls selling just knife sharpeners, can't imagine those things fly off the shelf too much, but I'm still glad to know that there is in fact a "knife sharpener" section to Chinatown nonetheless. I did want to buy something, whether it be a hand gun, magnifying glass, gold suit, or bottle of Viagra, but the finicky shopper in me said no to everything. I am here a while, and will probably be back, so I may pick something up though. Taking requests for those of you back home...

I also got some bomb-ass soup from a street vendor today. The woman definitely went a little to easy with the portions, but it sure beat this crappy peanut noodle concoction that I choked down yesterday. I guess you can't succeed ever without trying, and you can't try without ever failing. The soup lady I met today was great because she and all her friends were wolfing down a box of Dunkin Donuts, while food that in the US would be considered trendy, exotic, healthy, and expensive was just sitting in front of her. I also checked out Wat Sakhet, a large Buddhist Temple. The place was apperently being spruced up for the King of Thailand's birthday tomorrow, so naturally they had two giant plaster ducks facing each other in the middle of a square at the entrance.

Day 3 - Bangkok

So, another day in Bangkok. Yesterday I went to the Sukhumvit Rd area, a big tourist spot. Not much there outside of hotels, although apparently there's a lot of clubs around. One thing that's crazy is that there is a large Arab, Pakistani and Indian presence here, so a bunch of shops around Sukhumvit Rd. are in Arabic and whatever other crazy languages they got over there. I also went to a large park nearby called Lumpini Park, where I saw a group of Thai school kids doing an American style marching band procession. Kinda random. Not much else besides that.

Later, I went with Nora and David to a friend's place for a small party. It was really neat, got to meet some local Thai's who work with David. They eventually agreed to drop me off after the party to a bar they like, although they couldn't go along. After looking for for a while, they dropped me off at some upscale place that was 100% local, and probably 200% over capacity. There was a band that was playing, but they stopped five minutes after I had squeezed my way to the bar and ordered a $6 Corona. To give you perspective on that, most meals at a restaurant here cost about $1 to $2. I downed my overpriced beer and headed out, seeing if I could find another spot. I ended up just walking for about an hour. It's crazy how busy the city is, even at night, and at midnight, you find throngs of people out on the street, checking out pants that some guy is selling on the corner.

While I was walking back, I ended up going past a gaggle of hookers. Being the only one on the street, let alone the only white guy for miles, I figured I was gonna get harassed big time. Well, I walked past, and I didn't even get as much a casual glance. They seemed to be only looking for people in cars, and captain hoofin'-it over here didn't seem to be their style. It actually made me even more annoyed I got ignored. While I have nothing morally against it, getting a prostitute is not my scene. But at the same time, one of the reasons you come to Bangkok is to at least come back with a crazy story that involves getting some weird, broken English come-ons from a Thai street-whore. And here I am, dorky-looking mid-30's white guy, pe-rrrrime candidate for customer of pay sex, and I don't even get a "herro, you want boom-boom big man?" Wtf? Adding insult to injury, I get bugged by a male prostitute 20 minutes later. Damn it.

Anywho, today I went on a long ass walk through the city. Took a river ferry to the north, and got dropped off near Khao San rd, which is the backpacker's mecca in the city. I love to travel, but one thing that always irks me is when local peddlers hawk their crap at you, since it inevitably seems to always insult your intelligence. The cheesy lines like "Hey dude, where you go bro? You like Ed Hardy shirt?" or the fact they try to sell you some shitty plastic statue, you think, "damn, how dumb do these guys think we are?" I mean I know Americans and Western Europeans are shallow and materialistic, but c'mon, we do have standards. Ed Hardy shirts are worn in America, yet also shunned. And you have to think that the people trying some corny vulgar line on you were raised to never use that kind of language with the locals. Why would they think we talk that way with ourselves. I know Westerners can suck, but we're really not that bad.

Well, then I step into Khao San rd. The absolute capital of grovelling third-world tourist peddling. Street vendors selling crappy plastic buddhas, food carts selling very westernized Thai food. I never saw one place selling pad-thai or egg rolls in Bangkok, and yet they're a dime a dozen here. This place is literally over-flowing with white tourists; they outnumber Thais easily, and it's the only part of town where I've seen that be the case. Bars line the streets blasting Lady Gaga and shitty Euro-techno, filled with drunk tourists from around the white-world competing to out-douche the other. It's about as bad a Rosarito or Vegas, (although no one ever goes to Vegas with the pretense of "Hey, I want to stay away from the tourist areas, and really get to know the local culture here") and then you realize that yes, it's true, Westerners are that bad. Those corny lines street vendors try on you are used because they not only work, but are used loudly by visiting frat boys on each other. (they had to learn them somehow) All those shops selling worthless crap stay in business for a reason, and that reason is that people from France, Australia and else where come and clean them out. It's like Khao San Road is not real, and it's actually filled with Thai's in white-face doing some sick version of a Westerner minstrel-show. The place has a very secluded, green-zone feel to it, where people come not to check out another culture, but simply want to go where the drinking laws are lax, and the prostitutes are cheap. Back home, people get shit on at work, owe burdening debts, and get screwed over by their banks and credit cards, but in the third-world, they can feel like big shots. Fuck anything local or authentic, they don't want to be anywhere near where those fucking rice-monkeys congregate. They just like to know that some of them out here are desperate enough to do ANYTHING for just one of their euros, and who wouldn't feel better about themselves knowing that. To be fair, I do plan on going there later during the night. It may suck, but then again, not being able to talk to anyone at a bar filled with locals only does too. It's all about balance, I suppose. Or maybe I'm just trying to feel better about myself by bringing other tourists down. Ah, who cares

Landed!

Got to Bangkok a day and half ago. After about 20 hours on a plane, I got dropped off at 4am at a spot my cab driver seemed convinced was the one I asked him to drive me to. It wasn't. Luckily, I wasn't too far, and after some help using a 7-11 employee's cell phone / FM radio, I made it. I'm staying with my Mom's friend's, Nora and David, who own a ridiculously nice condo in the heart of the city.

First impressions of the city are definitely not what I expected; The image of Bangkok seems to come from what it's name sounds like - Sex Penis. The stereotype seems to be that the city's populations consists mostly of hookers and one-eyed pimps. I always imagined the place is just a crazy, chaotic third-world shit storm, but, believe it or not, I was actually wrong. The place is actually really built up, huge amount of skyscrapers, multi-lane highways, subway and and elevated trains. It's actually fairly modern,, which is somewhat of a disappointment to me, but maybe not to most Thai's though. People so far have been retarded nice too, and I haven't felt like a walking hulking target for scams. The culture shock is definitely not nearly as strong as when I got off the plane in Hanoi last year. I do seem to see a good amount of middle aged white guys walking around with Thai girls and boys that would be well out of their league back home however. I guess there's always something to a stereotype.

It's also good that many Thai's speak very basic English, because uttering even the most common Thai phrase seems to require magic powers. I almost feel like I'm being punked. I'll ask "How do you say blah blah blah in Thai," I'll hear the reply, and then I'll repeat it. It seems like I'm saying it fairly well, or at least getting close enough for someone to understand me. Well no, I'm just dead fucking wrong, and not even close. Thai is a very tonal language, so the inflection in the vowels are key. What seems to me like an indistinguishably subtle difference in tone, to Thai's is probably the only difference between saying the phrase "Where are the Infinity Condos" to "Where is the child prostitutes." (Nobody likes it when you can't even ask for underage hookers using good grammar either) I sometimes feel like Helen Keller here, moaning and grunting to a confused local, in vain desperation trying to just say thank you.

Yesterday nonetheless was good. I hung out with Nora and David for lunch at a nearby place, got an arrange of food; BBQ chicken, papaya salad, this kind of seafood and rice noodle dish, and Thai iced tea, which I think the locals may actually call "Thai iced-tea." Food was pretty awesome, and can't wait for more. Later, Nora took me to the MBK center, a large, fuck-you-all mall in the center of the city, in order to get a cell phone. After getting one (searching at length to finally find a phone that was a whole eight dollars cheaper than the first one we looked at), we eventually met up with David at and Irish Bar, to listen to a local singer that they're fond of. Thai girl, really awesome voice, doing covers of Western top-40 classics. Initially was planning on going out after David and Nora retired for the night, but jet lag hit in, and I was passed out before midnight.